The Skeptical Mystic

The Soul Tribe: Your Spiritual Social Network

2011-02-15T22:55:00.001-08:00

Some time ago, I discovered (on my own – somewhat by accident) a method of conscious creation… it is hard to describe, but there are times when it’s necessary not to set a deliberate intention. Instead, I visualize myself as naturally and effortlessly flowing toward my natural evolution.

In order to relate to this concept symbolically, I might visualize a stream of light issuing from some part of my body that joins me to a greater river of light. I smooth out any tangles I see and any obstacles which prevent me from joining that river, then I jump in. The ultimate point is to direct myself toward my highest purpose and then coast there.

I later discovered that a similar technique is described in a book entitled “Flowdreaming” by Summer McStravick, and I’ve seen versions of this same technique described elsewhere as well.

The point of this exercise is that sometimes, all I know is that I want a good result, but I don’t have a visual of what that result might actually be, or in what package it might present itself. This is how I got one really decent job when I had no idea what my work environment would look like, or even what I would be doing. I asked myself, “Where is my qi naturally flowing?” and simply followed. And I realize that I probably completely misunderstand the concept of qi.

In the past year, I applied this same technique to solve the problem of my social life and career life. I didn’t want to actually “make a decision” or use any part of my left brain to decide what I was going to do, because I didn’t know at all what I was going to do and often times, using your left brain may actually create resistance.

I wanted to do this a little more intuitively. I also knew that I wanted a fulfilling social life, but did not care to go much out of my way to find one.

I didn’t set out to solve the problem of my social life at all. Instead, I followed my path. A set of very natural and effortless circumstances led me to taking up my art major once again.

And without working at it, I found myself meeting people with whom I “click” like I’ve clicked with no one before. We “get” each other. We have similar goals and mindsets and I can even say that we are all fairly high compatibility. Because I’m at my highest level and working on my goals, and because my goals and my inner values are congruent, I meet people with compatible dreams and mindsets.

I probably would be compatible with any one of at least half of these people as romantic partners, because of the high compatibility as friends – if our sexual orientations, genders, availability (and of course animal attraction) all managed to line up.

What is more uncanny is that in many cases, strange coincidences have brought me to meet more members of this “tribe” if you will. Sometimes I meet someone from completely outside my normal social milieu (school and the art community) and they turn out to have mutual friends… and it turns out that I would have eventually met these people through my core social group!

One benefit of this is that I no longer find myself with an attitude of scarcity regarding meeting “kindred spirits”. They’re all around me, between a decent number of “Away From Keys” friends and some (surprisingly?) meaningful internet friendships.

I have no shortage of people with whom I “click” and when I’m at school, I couldn’t even eat lunch alone if I wanted to. I’m enjoying tremendous social abundance. Though I don’t get to go out “partying” that often, and have limited access to many community events, my social life suits my present circumstances (full time student who must devote considerable time to her projects) which I suspect is why it hasn’t expanded far beyond the opportunities I’ve already manifested. It’s just enough, and any more and I might find myself overwhelmed, as I’m still learning how to manage my time. I’m a recovering introvert, and this gradual (rather than overnight) expansion of my social opportunities has suited me just fine.

I like to call this group my “Soul Tribe”. Being with them is as easy as breathing. I’m thankful every day for them.

I can also say that I live a “holistic” life. Everything I do, is in the companionship of these fabulous people – I don’t need to fragment myself or compartmentalize my life the way that most find that they must in the normal corporate or work-a-day world. I live the same life every moment I’m awake, and everything I presently do is as natural as breathing… even when it involves “work”.

Perhaps it’s due to being a full-time student that I am not a different person between 9-5, than I am during the rest of my hours. However, I suspect it’s because my goals and my values are congruent. Due to the fact of training in the same field and at about the same level, and having the same goals, it’s likely some of us may even end up working together in the future.

However this came to be, though, the end result is that I have a soul tribe, I have identified my soul tribe and I’ve embraced a form of abundance I’ve never before welcomed into my life.

I’m still chewing on the whole concept of “soul mate” (I think this is merely any romantic partner who’s in your soul tribe!), but given that a year ago I could never have believed in a “soul tribe”, I am now tasked with learning to see partnership as an inevitability I am slowly learning to embrace rather than an improbability in which I desperately want to believe. After all, as I’ve narrowed in upon my deeper values, my tribe has become more and more reflective of them.

It’s quite awesome. I'm deeply thankful for all of you, and love you all, even those of you I haven't physically met yet. ;)

Love Dot Com

2011-01-11T20:23:00.003-08:00

We somehow have gotten to a place in our culture where computers are necessary for the most basic of human transactions. We wouldn't know what to do if a computer weren't somehow involved. The reliance upon the internet has created a world in which our relations with others are summed up in small bites of information, like a soundbite: basically, ad jingles. Twitter tweets, Facebook status updates. You can keep up with your friends very easily, but keep all information under the character limit for the medium. Now, we no longer even know how to form bonds and create other human beings without electronic assistance.

Worse, we're so used to this means of communication that we expect to sum people up quickly and efficiently, when in previous times (even in my own lifetime and experience), it was generally a given that there were no shortcuts in the process of getting to know anyone.

I'll address online dating. Online dating is actually nothing in fact in any way like any real organic means of dating. In real life, if you had met someone, you would meet them "in person" via a mutual hobby or something connected to your mutual values, and probably spend time with them in a group. It would be a given that you already shared certain lifestyle compatibilities and possibly even values. You would give yourself a chance to know people without expectations, and this unfolding may take place over a period of time - days, weeks, months. If you did indeed go on a date, it would be because you already like the person. You aren't placing expectations (and we ALL have them) upon a total stranger.

If you didn't go past a first date with them, you might actually continue to be friends or at least be in the same social circle. And virtually no one I know... even dates like this anymore. It is starting to look as if most people, past college age, rely upon the internet to meet anyone. Despite the fact that there are indeed a high number of singles over the age of thirty, they're not actually easy to meet without going to a singles-specific venue... where there is always the heavy, sticky, loaded expectation that any meeting is going to produce a relationship of some kind (whether the kind that lasts a night, several nights or a lifetime) and that this can be achieved quickly and efficiently. And when nothing comes of anything, there's always at least a little bit of disappointment.

The trouble is, people are just as scared of something happening, as they are of something not happening. We are scared to death of love that happens quickly and efficiently - we expect expediency because we are using a medium whose main purpose is to get us into some sort of relationship, but when in fact we do have quickly evident chemistry with anyone, it tends to actually be a horribly frightening experience... relating is something that threatens the ego, and most people (smartly) don't want to break out of their ego for the sake of someone who, one hour ago, was a total stranger. We push away what we want and need the most.

There's some part of our instinct that realizes that love is in no way supposed to be efficient. It is in fact messy, and all human beings come with baggage. Thirty, forty or more years of life experience cannot be summed up in any brief acquaintanceship, let alone in an advertisement and series of infobites. We only love a person's real richness and depth, and via the means upon which we are forced to rely, there is no way to access that depth. There are plenty of shortcuts and rituals for dating, but no shortcuts whatsoever for intimacy or being known.

Another flaw of online dating is that it tends to stress being "desirable" over being "lovable". People in the singles' world can easily forget that there is a difference. Take a look at what is offered by most dating services - "We have the most desirable singles!". Most people feel pressured on some level to sell themselves as being desirable - well traveled, acknowledged, accomplished, and any number of other traits which make a person look superficially like a "prize", may make a person seem like an interesting guest at your dinner party, but in no way actually bring anything to a relationship. "Desirable" traits are like diamond... shiny and impressive... but also hard and cold. Desirability tends to dry up and blow away once you actually know a person - it is interesting dinner party conversation, it may boost your prestige when you are seen with such a fascinating creature.

But ultimately, it's just a smokescreen. And it evaporates quickly. She has to cancel a date because a child was sick, or for that matter, the babysitter was sick. His mother is in the hospital. He is laid off from work and must find out sooner than later if she is going to be a woman with whom he could enjoy a cheap bottle of wine and homemade spaghetti.

Sooner or later, a person's real relationship qualities come to the fore and it becomes plainly obvious that your date's Pulitzer Prize in literature, passport full of stamps and/or beauty queen status is actually going to add nothing whatsoever to your daily life with the person. Or perhaps you're the one who's tired of the sheer work involved in being "desirable". Nobody can stay fascinating 24 hours a day.

The trouble is, even if we want to marry "lovable", we still tend to look for "desirable" and advertise ourselves as "desirable". We often look for dinner guest or celebrity spokesperson qualities as opposed to life companion qualities, and we agonize over the fact that we aren't fascinating and desirable enough.

After a while, people may feel pressured to play down the traits which make them human and genuinely lovable... and "lovable" people often complain that they seem "boring". "Lovable" traits can expose vulnerabilities. Who wants to volunteer to expose themselves to thousands of anonymous names on the Internet? Most wouldn't.

We also feel pressured to conform ourselves to some role... "how can I sum myself up in a quick data-bite so that I can be attractive to the maximum number of people?"... which results in making ourselves over from an individual into some sort of brand or stereotype.

The fascinating, "desirable", athletic professional who enjoys wine tasting. The left-wing aspiring filmmaker. The geek. The good Christian, Jew, Muslim. Most people can't be summed up in any one of those categories. Many of us span several. Many of us stubbornly refuse to be summed up so tidily, if it were even possible.

Again - it is simply not possible to fit the sum of thirty or more years of life experience into a headline, short essay, or even two hour meeting. Even if you read through hundreds of ads that all seem about the same, no two of these people are really indeed the same.

But it all serves the same purpose. Looking for a stereotype... and being a stereotype... does some of the work of loving for us, so that we don't really have to deal with the messy business of getting to know anyone.

In the end, we end up with this conflict:

To love, we have to weaken our ego.

The trouble is, this is one of the most dangerous things we can do. Stepping into oncoming traffic is less risky.

So we step out into the oncoming traffic of life - we try to meet, try to connect - while at the same time, keeping our ego intact. We present ourselves as shiny advertisements for human beings instead of as human beings. We tailor our communication into quick and efficient bites of data. We hope for efficient love the way that we hope to order something from Amazon.com or Ebay.

Yet we are terrified of this same efficiency. Most singles I have known, have reported the following experience: they go into a room full of other singles, and then go home, saying that "no one was there". Chances are, there were plenty of people there (they may have just been more lovable than desirable)...

...but everyone was safe, behind the barrier of their own ego, coming up with constructs and fabrications.

Safe from the most terrifying on earth... the prospect of having to deal with another human being.

The Student's Guide to Happiness: Part One

2010-08-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, I don't know about promising everlasting bliss. But I can offer a handful of little common-sense tips I've picked up as a college student, on how to make the ride a little smoother.

Much of this is from the point of view of the commuting student, but some may also apply to those who live on campus.

1. Schedule your classes on the same few days a week, instead of every day.
You may end up with two to three long days instead of a bunch of short ones, but this makes things a bit easier for the following reasons:

Your commute will be cheaper. Instead of paying for parking or transit for five days a week, you'll pay for two. This can be major savings. In my own case, changing my schedule to two days per week from five days per week, amounted to a savings of around $35 per week! You can save that money, or spend that same money on food. Or copies/prints. Or coffee, which you'll need during finals week... or, for that matter, beer.
It will make it easier for you to work while in school, for all kinds of reasons. While it's best not to work while in school if you can help it, plenty of us find that we have to. You're more likely to get hired if you have plenty of availability (several whole days available as opposed to four hours here, four hours there) and your employer does not have to work around a staggered, confusing schedule. Your employer is also less likely to schedule you during class if you always need exactly the same days off. While plenty of employers do say they will work around your schedule, in practice, you'll get the best results by meeting the employer halfway and making sure that your schedule is not confusing. If you have to look at your printout every time someone asks for your schedule, then your schedule is too confusing.
You'll have the whole next day to finish your homework. You will have one free whole weekday between each class. This doesn't really need much elaboration.
It'll actually seem like a lighter courseload. The act of going to school can actually feel like more work than being at school. Once you're actually on campus, you may find that your day goes pretty quickly, especially if it's busy. You've all likely had the experience of inertia... you dread going to school, the gym, or work... but once you're actually at your destination, everything is fine.

If you do this - be sure to leave yourself a few hours in the middle of the day, for lunch, visiting the library, joining a student club, or hitting on people! :-)

2. Bring your own food, and plan ahead.
This is assuming you're a cooked-food vegan at the most uncommon. If a can of Chunky (or Trader Joe's vegan split pea) soup and a sandwich won't work for you, then you've probably already figured out your own workarounds. It's really the Standard American Diet eating majority that I'm addressing.

Make a meal plan for the time you're at school. Figure out what you will eat, and what you will need to bring with you and buy it in advance.

If you're doing the twelve hour marathon days that I do, then a typical day's food will consist of one sandwich, bag of nuts or trail mix to snack on, piece of fruit, and can of chili or soup (bring a can opener and a tupperware bowl).

Even better are those little microwavable pouches of Indian food and cooked rice that I get at Trader Joe's. They're cheap (especially if you get them at Indian markets and NOT at Trader Joe's!), and they don't add much weight or bulk to my backpack.

If you really have no taste buds and are a show off (and paradoxically, either an extreme geek or extreme jock), then you've probably already started bringing military rations ("MREs") to school. Poser. ;-)

Your options dramatically increase if you invest in a cooling lunchbag or small igloo cooler (the latter's only an option if you have a car). If you are driving to school, just keep your canned food, igloo type cooler and utensils in the car.

If you must eat junk food (which I do at times, because a Snicker's bar really does have all the same nutritional value as many "energy bars" out there), candy bars are cheaper at Target than they are at the school bookstore or out of a machine.

I don't really address the raw lifestyle or anything more uncommon than cooked vegan, because most people who do not eat the Standard American Diet have already figured out their own workarounds to the problem of Portable Food. It's the rest of us who tend to take for granted that we're going to just buy food wherever we happen to be.

3. Bring your own drinks. Don't spend money on bottled water, sodas, coffee, or tea. Instead, get a commuter mug and/or steel water container (it can be used for stuff other than water). Most school cafeterias won't charge for hot water, so bring your own sugar/sweetener packets, hot chocolate packets, tea bags, powdered creamer and instant coffee. You can measure out individual servings of coffee and creamer and store in ziploc bags. Don't buy bottled water; refill your water container at school.

4. Take advantage of your school's gym.
Plenty of schools have a fitness center that you can visit on your leisure, and you sign up like an ordinary PE class. This will save you considerable money on a gym membership, plus, you'll be on campus anyway. I don't need to go into a spiel about the benefits of exercise, but the extra boost of blood to the brain will help you in the next class. Your body will actually produce "stay awake" hormones, while producing other chemicals that curb anxiety.

5. Use your gym locker for other stuff besides gym clothes.
This is one of the benefits of taking a PE class. This is for those of you who are not automobile-enabled, because a student's car is basically a locker on wheels. Your school may allow you to store things in your gym locker overnight. Assuming you want to chance this (I suggest a good, solid lock, such as a bicycle lock), you can keep things in your gym locker instead of dragging one of those roller bags around (or worse, carrying all that stuff on your back).
And by "things", I do not mean your laptop computer or anything really that valuable. I certainly don't mean your textbook, because I don't even encourage you to buy one - I'll go into that next.

6. Take advantage of technology.
Here is a basic survival kit. While I'm all in favor of saving money, a few high-tech investments may save you time (which saves you money), stress (which saves you money) and... yes, money.

Netbook or tablet PC. A laptop will work just as well, but a netbook is cheap (around $300) - you may actually be able to replace it if it's lost, stolen or damaged. It's lightweight and small - about the size of a trade paperback, and you have textbooks that weigh four times as much as your netbook. You can use the netbook to take notes in class, in many cases - though you may have some teachers that will pitch a fit about it. Furthermore, if you follow my advice further on in this article, you will need a netbook.
Small, cheap MP3 player and headphones. I recommend something like the Sansa Clip, which retails at around 40 bucks or so. First, this will keep you from going crazy on the bus ride, if you have a long commute. Secondly, you can play back recordings of your own study notes. You can even (in the case of some MP3 players) discreetly record the lectures. It can double as a portable mini hard drive. Get a small, cheap player that stores about 4 gigs, even if you listen to music on your Droid or IPhone, because your smartphone is a little unwieldy to use in the weight room and much more expensive to replace.
Extra phone and computer cables. Just trust me on this... bring one to school (keep in your bag) and leave one at home.
Smartphone. You can read your notes on this, and record and play back notes. There are a gazillion decent flashcard applications for both IPhone and Droid. And (if it's a Droid, at least) you can use it as a portable 17 gig hard drive. Which is very important if you forget your thumb drive on your morning class, like I did last week. You can also use your smartphone to schedule things that you need to schedule. In the next few blog entries, I'll cover how to use your smartphone to do power scheduling.
Thumb drive. Some classes require them, but it's a good thing to have anyway.

That's the end of this lecture. Next class, I will help you save a LOT of money on textbooks (and possibly, not spend any at all) and I'll show you some ways to make your netbook and smartphone work for you to save you a lot of time and a lot of brain cells.

Class dismissed!

Are you an Everyday Loser?

2010-08-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

The "everyday loser" culture and thought pattern may be something contributing to your lack of wins.

This is the constant, ambient, low-lying level of negativity that's present in the world the moment you step outside, that is fed by the news, the dread statistics (about your chances of finding a job, a mate, et cetera) and your friends and family... and the social conversation that you hear in line at the supermarket, that goes like this:

"Oh, it's so hard these days."

An Everyday Loser may not be living in a van down by the river (heck, for all we know that person isn't a loser at all), he may seem to "have it together", but he surrounds himself in a constant aura of negativity and calls it reality.

The problem is this:

MOST PEOPLE ARE "EVERYDAY LOSERS".

I'm often around people who talk about "how hard it is" (to find a job, to find a job in THEIR preferred field, to find a mate at whatever age and/or social demographic they belong to, etc etc). They tend to call it commiserating, and it seems a common form of social conversation.

When people are in this habit, there tends to be no way to bring them out of it. They tend to ignore the success stories, and they tend to not be quite so supportive when somebody in their group has a "win".

They also don't see how their thinking contributes to their lack of "wins".

Here are some of the general patterns that Everyday Losers tend to have:

No happiness for others
First, there's no happiness for others; the "everyday loser" mindset seems to be to discourage, not encourage. Everyday Losers (and again, I stress that these are MOST PEOPLE) tend to want to keep other people down in the dumps of everyday loss right along with them, so if someone has a win, best to nip that in the bud! Worse, losing may be the very basis of the friendship... and in fact, it's a basis for a large majority of friendships: "We're all in this together" and "We're in the same boat". They don't know how to be happy for you, but they sure do know how to commiserate and they'll be there if you need someone to be sad for you.

They fail to see how their results are affected by the contents of their mind.
The Everyday Loser has already made up his mind that he is going to lose, the moment he opens his eyes in the morning. When he goes to his job interview or on a date (and these two processes are alike in more ways than I can count), sadness and worry is already etched onto his face and his entire bearing is imbued with a certain heaviness.

A certain sluggishness may pervade the Everyday Loser's speech and bearing, or he may be the opposite - overly nervous. He may sabotage himself in ways he's not even consciously aware of.
The problem is that other people sense, on a level just below the conscious, that the person has decided to fail. Having made up his mind that he's already lost, the Everyday Loser sets the wheels of failure in motion.

There is a certain facial expression permanently etched onto the faces of the more extreme cases of Everyday Loser thinking... eyes downturned at the corners, an almost apologetic smile... the expression of a begging, beaten dog.

But for the Everyday Loser, these may be good things - you can always complain to your buddies at the bar. And since most of your friendships are with Everyday Losers, heaven help you if you win.

Everyday Losers complain a lot
They complain, complain, complain. It's Conversation.

Complain at church, in a meeting, on an interview, to their friends, at the checkout stand: "Times are tough right now."

They call it conversation. Because commiseration is the only kind of conversation that they know how to have, they're in a real bind if they try to stop complaining.

Everyday Losers work like dogs
Everyday Losers are mystified by the entire process of winning and tend to put it off to luck, circumstance or very, very hard work. The Very Hard Work model of life seems to be a remnant of medieval peasant/serf thinking that's hung on stubbornly into the 21st century.

Very Hard Workers have a model of reality wherein life is very, very difficult and one ought to just accept facts. The problem with ascribing wins to very hard work (when every person who "wins" at even a small level, will simply tell you that they worked smarter, not harder) is that it's easy to say, "I just couldn't work that hard" and let yourself fail.

Very Hard Work is a... ahem... win-win scenario for most Everyday Losers. If you win at it, then you become a heroic figure... an inspiration... who becomes a model for how Very Hard Work can occasionally pay off.

But if you lose at it, then you join the millions of other Everyday Losers who fail at the Very Hard Work model of life.

Everyday Losers only grasp for opportunities offered by others
Everyday Losers don't innovate. They don't create their own opportunities. Because they tend to follow the Very Hard Work model of life, they miss out on the real mother of invention: laziness combined with creativity.

Practically all of the great inventions of the world were designed to make life easier, not harder. The car was not invented by somebody actually willing to walk five miles in the snow.

They complain about the reality of having to work for someone else at a Very Hard job, but they lack the ability to see around the problem. They only grasp for opportunities offered by others.

Winners, however, practice energy conservation. They see ways around their problems and come up with innovative solutions to save time, money and energy.

Everyday Losers reinforce each other's negativity
You'll notice this the moment you try to be an Everyday Winner. You step outside... and the moment you're in the first checkout line, somebody will say...

"Times are tough right now."

What if I am an Everyday Loser?
Well, you can stop being one. You may find that your culture is your biggest obstacle, because of how pervasive the stench of ambient negativity tends to be. In fact, you may not even be aware of its existence until you start becoming more positive and getting into a more positive social framework. Suddenly, you'll start seeing how most people bitch, bitch, bitch the moment they wake up in the morning.

Maybe you can't change reality, or maybe you can. That may depend upon what model of reality you follow, and your skill level at manipulating it.

Regardless of this, you can ALWAYS change the contents of your mind, and even if "times are tough" (in fact, times are just times; you can label the times whatever you want), you can choose to decide that life is not so hard, and you can choose to be happy.

But what if I just can't stop being an Everyday Loser?
You are in good company.

You can always complain at the bar, support group, in the checkout line... "Times are just tough right now."

Common Love LOA Mistakes

2010-08-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

I have done love processes (okay, “spells”, if you like) more than any other kind, from the time I was fifteen. In fact, I've attracted most of the people I've ever dated (or lived with, or in one case, married) via mostly non-physical means.

If you want to count the first pet I ever attracted, then I've been doing love processes since the age of 5.

In this same time, I've interfaced with a variety of other people who do the same practices, and receive the same, better or inferior results. Some only need ever do the process one time and one time only. Others (probably plenty of others) are good at attracting, but still have poor selection skills or don't manage to hold onto their results for reasons having nothing to do with their manifestation skills.

I've noticed that there are a handful of common mistakes in the love manifestation world, and a handful of common experiences.

Common Mistakes

Attracting people, not relationships

This is possibly the biggest beginner's mistake. When one does this, they draw the conclusion that manifestation does not work, and they give up.

It's like deciding that you want to see plenty of your favorite car on the road, or test drive your favorite car... but you're still not manifesting your ownership of the car or the change of identity to one of a driver. When you get exactly the results you intended, but are still not magically behind the wheel of your favorite car on a more lasting basis, you get ticked off and announce to everyone that this manifestation stuff just does not work.

It worked perfectly. The problem is, you couldn't see yourself in your new role. It's like creating a movie in your mind, but not placing yourself in that movie.

This is perhaps a form of over-literalness.

In one of my communities, a young man asked if the right tactic was to he show himself surrounded by pictures of beautiful women.

There is a problem with this.

If he does not actually see himself actually relating to these women – then he is likely to manifest a lot of beautiful women into his experience, but not in any way improve his ability to relate to them. This is the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that by collecting pictures of beautiful women, he will manifest a free subscription to Playboy!

Another woman I was once acquainted with, was convinced that it was necessary to meet a lot of men in order to meet one that she wanted to marry, and so she was sure that she had to manifest all of these men into her experience. She insisted that it was necessary to create vision boards of herself surrounded by lots and lots of men. And of course... she was always meeting men and always being flirted with, but none of her relationships got past this shallow level because she couldn't actually picture herself in a relationship.

Manifesting initial attraction without envisioning the end result

So you decide to manifest something – because this is the “love manifestation mistakes” article, I'll use love manifestation as my example.

While deciding what you would like in a partner, you focus entirely upon what would initially excite you without thinking about what the relationship would look like a year or more down the road. Relationships are easy when we're all being buoyed along by the newness of this exciting new partner, but what would keep you with that person?
Here is an easy workaround for this issue. Take stock of your past relationships, and think about what you fought over six months or more into the relationships. This will help you gain insight into what core values are most important to you, and what you need in a partner.
But while you are considering your past, be careful of the next common pitfall...

Manifesting the past, not the future

You draw up lists of your favorite traits from your past partners and create a Frankenstein monster of a partner, consisting of only the good parts of your past relationships...

...and of course, every relationship ends the very same way. But you keep doing this.

Has it struck you that you've been in the same relationship, over and over again? You may as well have stayed with the first person.

Lacking the “muggle skills” to hold on to your results

This is an issue that afflicts conscious creators of just about any endeavor. If you create a job for yourself but your work ethic is terrible, then you won't have the results you hope for. Plenty of people create relationships without actually working on their relationship skills.

Not releasing the past before setting your intention
Practically every book specific to Law of Attraction as applied to love, first walks you through some series of exercises in releasing the past.

You can go ahead and try this without doing a release – and you'll find that predictably, a few things happen.

One is that every time you set your intention, people from your past will circle back into your life. I can't explain in any skeptic-approved way why this is so, but it happens, and I've seen it happen... and frustratingly, had it happen over and over.

You don't meet new people, just attract more drama with your exes.

Or – because water tends to seek its own level – you meet people who themselves are still fixated on somebody.

Thirdly, you may just strengthen your attachment to the past, instead of moving forward.

Attracting from a low-vibration place

This is when you decide to attract while in a place of sadness, depression, stuckness, emptiness or loneliness. Invariably, you'll attract other people in the same emotional space... and have a less than satisfactory experience. Worse, you may find that you and he or she reinforce each other's negativity, and find yourself sinking even lower... and when the relationship ends, you're even more bereft than you were before.

Some people stay in this cycle for their entire lives – being negative and depressed as single people, then magnetizing negative, depressing relationships.

Instead of attempting to attract a partner while in this state, you'd do much better to bring yourself into a happier mental state on your own. A suggestion? Decide upon a period of time to remain single and work on your own healing.

Seeking a relationship to relieve boredom

One of the biggest problems in a relationship is that after six months to a year, one or both parties will often complain of feeling “bored”.

In reality, you probably felt bored before you ever met this person. Now that the newness has worn off, you're back to life as it was before the relationship started, because the fact is:

Being in a relationship is just like being single – only with another person there

If you are a boring person, you'll probably attract other boring people... and have a boring relationship. Whatever you took with you into the relationship, will be what you have to deal with.

Not preparing yourself for the identity change to that of a coupled person

One of the failures in conscious creation is when you don't make the conscious shift into the new role. While on your meditation cushion or in your magick circle, you may envision the relationship as a movie montage of romantic bullet points: the first kiss, the first sleepover, a walk on the beach. This is fine if all you want to manifest is a six-week tryst, or something less enduring, but if you want more, then you've left out all of the meat and potatoes of what it really feels like to live with someone.

Because manifestation works most or all of the time, your results are as follows: you experience shallow romance with any number of people. Of course, you wonder why you've created poor results, and assume that conscious creation just does not work. It did work: you just didn't create lasting results because you didn't envision them.

This problem is relatively easy to treat. The previously-married have an advantage here because they've had the experience of living with another human being on a day to day basis. But if you have never lived with someone, it's easy enough to pay attention to long-term couples that you know. You can go a step further and use Neurolinguistic Programming and other techniques to model or “step into” their reality.

And that's all I could think of, for now. This post have been brewing for quite some time, and I managed to finally put it up while on a holiday in the mountains... thanks to a netbook and an ethernet connection. :)
I hope your week has been as relaxing as mine.

Public Service Announcement

2010-08-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be out of town and laying by a pool somewhere, so I expect I may not be able to post very much.

I'll do what I can, but it's likely to be in the form of brief mobile posts. In the interest of more quality than quantity, though, expect the meaty stuff next week.

Thank you to everyone who's read and supported my blog not just for your readership and support, but also for giving me the reason to write. :)

In 2010, I Built a Time Machine

2010-08-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

Who wouldn't want their own TARDIS?

Hopefully, one far more reliable than the good Doctor's (for you science fiction geeks).

Able to travel backward and forward - and change universes, if you like.

This is the basis of my present experiment.

Using the model of Steve Pavlina's Thirty Day Trial , I am applying the concept of Time Control to the model of Intention-Manifestation.

Why?

Because I can, and it'll be fun, and I'm sure I'll learn something interesting.

How do you do this?

Simple.

In my own case, I chose the date 08/05/2012 (two years after the authorship of this post).

I decided to treat several of my manifesting goals as having already happened in the past, and the day 08/05/2010 as a memory.

I've done this for smaller amounts of time before, and with smaller intentions. I will keep everyone posted as to what develops, and what I learn.

Wish me luck!

* Actually - as I recall, you all wished me luck, and it went splendidly!

How to Control Time

2010-07-27T19:54:00.000-07:00

Who wouldn't love to control time and space, like Q from Star Trek?

Okay, I don't know if that's possible.

But... you definitely can control your experience of time. I do this frequently.

Here are two experiments.

Time Contraction

This is how you make time pass.

To do this experiment, you will need to do something boring and repetitive. A good place to try this is at the gym, if your next dentist appointment is too far in the future.

See yourself having already completed the task. Really get into that vision.

Start with something small at first - a task that will only take a minute or so, maybe two minutes. Like for example, swimming laps... see yourself already at the opposite end of the pool, touching the concrete or doing your flip turn. If you're walking, see yourself already at a specific landmark on the street, such as the other end of the block.

See yourself already there, and involve yourself in that vision. Don't do this while driving until you have gotten good at splitting up your attention while doing this process.

Now that you've done this, keep doing it. Each time, do the task a little longer while holding the vision in your mind that you have already completed it. Go from speeding time so that you see yourself already at the end of the block, to speeding time so that on your first day of school, you've already completed finals.

I'm not even there yet, I can fold time by about a few days presently... still working on this time-folding fun :)

This is how I'm able to exercise, sometimes beyond what I think is my capacity... by having already done it in my mind. I noticed that when I was swimming laps while doing this, my times and reps actually went up and form improved.

Time Dilation

Now, we're going to do the opposite and slow time.

While doing the same things - say, going on a walk - don't think of the endpoint. Involve yourself in every moment, in the minutest details. A snail crossing your path; the feeling of the breeze. A leaf crunching under your boot.

You probably experience this during peak experiences... you remember every detail. You probably remember every moment of your first kiss, but plenty after were forgettable. Ever notice that when you go on a driving trip, the way there seems to take longer than the way back? That is because on the drive there, you were more present. Paying attention to everything.

One time I had to give CPR to someone while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, and being talked through it by the emergency worker on the phone.

This probably took place in a very short period of time - a few minutes at most - but it was the longest few minutes of my life. It felt like an hour, and I remember every single thing that happened down to what she was wearing and what I was wearing and what time it was.

Anyway, that's my post for today. Just thought I'd share an exercise that I discovered that I happen to find a great deal of fun, and pretty darned useful, too. I hope that you get some benefit out of it as well.

The Nine Habits of Socially Awkward People

2010-07-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

At risk of joining the multitudes who ride the coattails of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by saying "the seven habits of ___", I present:

The Nine Habits of Socially Awkward People.

These are characteristics which socially awkward, anxious or inept people tend to share in common. These traits are not necessarily the cause of social awkwardness, but I've observed them in so many socially awkward people that these cannot possibly merely be a set of coincidences.

Note that I may be talking about a specific type of socially awkward person... the highly intelligent, hyperanalytic, oversensitive type who is paralyzed by his or her degree of self-monitoring in social situations, and often "stuck in their own mind". None of this may apply to someone who is socially awkward because they are somewhere on the autistic spectrum, or are a low self-monitor.

Background
I, myself, am a recovering Socially Awkward Person (SAP?). Over the years, I went through courses of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, attended the Landmark Education Basic Course, did a lot of peoplewatching, and in general, observed the difference between people who are less Socially Awkward versus people who would describe themselves as very Socially Awkward. I have been in social groups which are primarily composed of people who are Socially Awkward, and I've been in social groups which were composed of people who are less so.

The First Habit: Overthinking
Without exception, every time I talk to someone who is socially awkward, they tend to be highly analytical. They will analyze - often to death - every nuance of... just about everything. Some Socially Awkward People often have amassed a tremendous collection of social and organizational books, often have an obsessive interest in the temperament types of Kiersey/Myers-Briggs such as outlined in Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types, are are interested in astrological signs or Enneagram types. They may even spend time making up their own theories... I know, yes, this is practically my stock in trade. Basically: if you're even interested in the topic of Social Awkwardness, you are probably Socially Awkward to some degree.

The Socially Awkward have a tendency to indulge in what is often referred to as Analysis Paralysis.

The Second Habit: Negativity
Socially Awkward people are often negative. They imagine that a social situation will go poorly before they've even arrived, and often imagine the worst after they've left. They tend to interpret every transaction as having disfavored them in some manner or another - Socially Awkward Jason will interpret John's laugh as being directed at him.

The Third Habit: Sweating Every Encounter
Socially Awkward people often obsess over every social dealing. They worry about how every phone call will go. They aren't able to be relaxed. Once the encounter has already taken place, they worry over how it went, even though they have no control whatsoever over the outcome now that the encounter's already happened.

You can especially observe this in dating and job-searching (which strangely, have many similarities... that should be another blog entry).

The Fourth Habit: Self-Involvement
Socially Awkward people are often quite self-involved. They can be so focused on their own impressions of things, their analysis, or what the other person thinks of them that they fail to really tune in to where the other person is at. All of this is actually quite narcissistic, in its own way. Many Socially Awkward people seem preoccupied with their own thoughts.

Some Socially Awkward people, additionally, have trouble managing the two-way flow of a conversation. If they weren't the center of attention, they assume that a social transaction went poorly.

Perhaps this ties in with why shy people are often seen as self-centered... maybe some of them really are.

The Fifth Habit: Poor Communication
Poor communication may take many forms. I've observed a few types.

Rambling - going on and on without actually making a point.
Cluttering - an actual speech disorder. Clutterers often drop the final word or syllable of a sentence, or derail in the middle of a sentence and switch topics. Sometimes they will revise things they've already said.
Hyperverbosity - saying more than is actually needed. You actually see this quite a bit on the Internet, moreso than in real life, where the Socially Awkward person may actually tend toward being shy or quiet, or be good at scripted communication. The same people may talk, talk, talk once you get them talking, or may write novels when they post in their blog or in an internet forum. Some journal and fill up every bit of white space in their journal. All of this talking and writing does not constitute communication. When you read these posts, they tend to be repetitive and circular.
Circumferential Speech, also called Circumstantiality. The person just does not seem to be able to answer a question in any kind of yes or no, linear fashion. Typical circumstantiality is as follows. Let's say that you ask Socially Awkward Mike what time it is. He will then respond with a rambling lecture on the meaning of time then explain why he's philosophically opposed to wearing a watch. Some of the people I've known who spoke like this, also tended to write like this. Actually, it was easier to spot their communication issues on the Internet, because "in person" they would tend to be quiet for the first few encounters.

The Sixth Habit: Poor Thinking Skills
How is it that a group of people who tend to be so analytical, and have such high IQs, can actually have poor thinking skills? Thinking a lot isn't the same as thinking effectively. Some Socially Awkward people seem to show signs of thought disorder in their communication.

The Seventh Habit: Inability to distinguish between emotions and facts
This would technically fall under the Sixth Habit, but it seems so common with many Socially Awkward people that I thought it should get its own category. Socially Awkward people often communicate that just because they feel something, then it is.

The Eighth Habit: Stiltedness or Script-Following
Some Socially Awkward people will tend to act as if they're reading off of a script, and then get very uncomfortable when any social transaction veers at all away from the script. They may seem uncomfortable, or change the subject, if a topic veers away from something they know how to deal with. They may even go quiet and shift the subject back to one of the topics with which they are comfortable, which can give the impression (right or wrong) that the Socially Awkward person in question is quite self-centered.

The Ninth Habit: Specialness
Many Socially Awkward people feel they are special or different in some way. When this is ego-dystonic (they don't feel "okay" with it) they will feel that they are "weird". "I'm different, nobody likes me". When it's ego-syntonic (they do feel "okay") then they will tend to say, "I am special, different and superior to most people". Often times, they will find a group of other people with the same feelings, and become very cliqueish within that group... feeling that their group has some kind of special insight that "normals" just don't have. Their feelings of specialness and superiority, however, mask deep insecurity. Both ego-dystonic and ego-syntonic Specialness have the same word in common... ego. They're both highly narcissistic frames of mind.

Bonus Habit: Failure to Know Your Audience
The Socially Awkward sometimes don't know what is an appropriate topic for an appropriate setting. Sometimes they don't recognize that appropriate conversation differs from setting to setting.

They often drop group-specific in-jokes and comments in the wrong group... telling Linux jokes at a wine tasting, for example, or failing to respond appropriately to small talk. They often don't recognize that small talk serves an important purpose. This behavior will tend to immediately identify the Socially Awkward person as "not one of us".

Also, sometimes Socially Awkward people will make little comments out of an attempt to amuse their audience...

The reality is, the Socially Awkward person doesn't realize who their audience is.

All of this will tend to contribute to others' impression that the Socially Awkward person is self-centered or a bit "off".

Socially Awkward People and the Internet
You would tend to think that the Internet is a place where one can more easily mask social awkwardness, but the reality, I'm finding, is that it's easier to spot. Many organizational settings are quite scripted and stilted - the perfect environment for a socially uncomfortable person... who may find things starting to fall apart when he or she is invited to a casual social function by coworkers, only to never be invited again. You can even mask social awkwardness quite effectively in a setting such as Toastmasters, which relies on prompts and scripted communication and does not stress casual social dealings. Which brings me to...

Toastmasters will NOT cure you of Social Awkwardness!

Almost universally, one out of two Socially Awkward people will get told to join Toastmasters. Alright, I pulled the "one out of two" figure out of my hat. But plenty of Socially Awkward folk have been told to join Toastmasters at some point, as if the organization were some kind of cure-all for all manner of social ills.

Don't get me wrong. Toastmasters is a wonderful organization, and a great way to make friends and network with people. The problem is that it focuses on public speaking and organizational behavior.

Plenty of Socially Awkward people have no problem with public speaking, organizational etiquette or any other form of scripted communication. Some even may not show their Socially Awkward colors on the job, and may present the appearance of any other normal, well-adjusted employee. The problem reveals itself when the same employee is at a company lunch or workplace-sponsored social occasion, or has been invited to some casual get-together by his or her coworkers... then wonders why he or she wasn't invited back.

Toastmasters and other similar organizations are a great place to practice public speaking, but if a Socially Awkward person mistakes this for actual social skills, that person might just make his or her problem even worse. There's nothing more annoying than a Socially Awkward person who gives speeches, or treats every new subject like a Toastmasters Table Topic. While having a drink with you.

Bonus Material: MANY "normal" people have some degree of Social Awkwardness
Hallmark makes their living on helping the clueless smooth things over. The degree to which I get the same platitude about the Rainbow Bridge every time I've had a sick pet, is an indicator that most people just don't know what to do, or what to say. They would rather give me a canned platitude that I've heard about twenty other times from twenty other people just that same week, than be present with me.

On a scale of 1-10, most "normal" people are probably actually somewhere at 5 when it comes to their level of social aptitude. Which means they will have situations they just don't know how to handle, or topics about which they feel awkward. They may often be more concerned with seeming sensitive than actually being sensitive. My brief contact with an adult Asperger's group revealed that "neurotypical" people can be as rude, self-centered and insensitive as anyone else.

Proof that "normal" people are worried about social awkwardness to some degree or another:
When I was planning a wedding, I discovered that plenty of (non-addicted) people would outright refuse to attend a wedding that was "dry". They cited that they couldn't enjoy weddings at all without something to help "take the edge off". Weddings tend to be high-stress, often high-attendance events with very high expectations of proper social behavior... which can bring out the latent social anxiety in any person.

Finally - here is yet more proof that this is a concern for virtually everyone.

The rules of social etiquette are there to make everything go a little smoother. Some people are so socially adept that they can treat these rules pretty cavalierly, but the fact that there are rules indicates that there is a need for them.

What you may take from this:

Everyone is sweating to some degree or another.

Knowing that, you can relax, get out of yourself, and get over some of your Social Awkwardness.

Will without Action

2010-07-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

The "tribal knowledge" in Intention-Manifestation/Law of Attraction circles is that action is a necessary component when it comes to creating results.

This action was generally understood by my acquaintances to be something difficult and requiring a lot of expenditure of energy.

For example:

Going out with a hundred men or women after intending a romance.

Plastering one's resume all over town in order to find a job.

I have been giving this issue a lot of thought lately, and realized that not only doesn't it jibe with the results created by my friends in magickal ("old school" IM/LOA) circles nor with all of my own results.

My greatest results seemed magical. There was nothing conventional about them. My results often came in the form of a phone call the next day which I did not initiate, a get-together which I was invited to and did not seek out on my own, or somebody offering me something, or telling me about an opportunity. In no case did I have to work very hard. I didn't have to do anything except for will the thing, and relax into the results. In fact, the harder I worked, the more I blocked my results from manifesting.

From the outside, it would seem I did nothing at all apart from the New Thought or magick process which brought the results to me.

In breaking down how this was so, I'll deal with three basic concepts: Skillful Means, the Web of Relationships, and Ask/Allow/Receive (a la Abraham-Hicks).

Skillful Means

It's struck me that many people are stuck on the idea of 'action', but don't seem to grasp 'skillful means' area of action - going to one mixer where they had a lot of fun and flirted with the waitress (for reasons I'm going to explain in the next section), can be more effective action, sometimes, than sending fifty resumes. Sometimes all the latter proves is that it proves to the person's ego that yes, they really are trying. I've known plenty of people in my lifetime who don't really want to work, who do nothing but send resumes. At the same time, I've known highly motivated people who only needed to get in touch with the single right person, but it looked to the outside like luck.

It takes a lot of effort to cut a diamond. However, diamonds aren't actually cut via brute force. You're not sledgehammering away at that diamond hoping it will break, or just randomly chiseling. This is what most people inadvertently do when they try to take action in creating their goals - they keep hurling putty at the ceiling hoping it will stick.

The trick is in using the right tools and in knowing the proper technique, so that the least amount of force is necessary.

If willing your intention is hard, and you're having to expend a lot of effort once the intention's been set, you're either trying to intend the wrong intention, or you're not doing it right!

Yes, you may have to take some action. However, this action shouldn't be difficult.

The process should be easy, natural and fun.

My most dramatic results, in fact, required very little output of physical energy.

They came about as a result of things I was already doing: for example, the two jobs - they were great opportunities, as a matter of fact - which came about as a result of my interests in Star Trek and creating comic books. I didn't have to do anything particularly out of character or develop a new set of interests in order to get these jobs. Additionally, my most effortless personal relationships were just as easily cultivated.

You should not actually be having to do anything too far out of your character. If you are, it's likely you won't maintain your results for very long. And sometimes there are completely mundane explanations for why this is so. If you want an executive job but mingling with executives sounds like your very idea of hell, then yes, it will feel like work. It will feel like a lot of work to get from point A to point B.

And if something feels like work, it's for one of a few reasons: either you are creating resistance, or it's out of character for you. It's much easier to create results when the results are things that are in character for you and require little effort on your part. The less effort you have to expend, the less resistance you're going to be creating.

Finally, sometimes we create results via no action whatsoever, in ways which seem impossible. For example, I just got a call from an art school - I'm presently looking for one to transfer to - the representative dialed a wrong number and hadn't meant to call me!

The Web of Relationships

The Web of Relationships, as I like to call it, is how a lot of results tend to show up.

It goes like this: you Will a result; then, very quickly, you get the result. How did it happen?

That day or the next, you get a phone call or an unexpected visitor, or you run into an old friend at Starbuck's, and opportunity knocks.

More than likely, this will not be a stranger. It could be, or this wouldn't be wondrous and magickal; but just as likely, opportunity knocks in the form of a person you already know.

The truly magickal part will be that they will often say...

I can't explain it. I was just thinking about you.

What's even more incredible, is that often times this person is someone you haven't heard from in ages!

You can think of it as telepathy or coincidence, but how I see it is that you sent a pulse of energy out along the Web of Relationships - because every Willed intention sends this pulse of energy.

Cultivating the Web is really the most important physical action you can take. Groom high quality relationships and nurture the ones that you already have... although, you never know. Frequently results will manifest via a person you haven't spoken to in years. Sometimes (and this is truly magickal!) you will find new relationships being added to your Web after the intention has been set.

I can't stress how important the Web is. Cultivating the Web may be the only actual physical action you need perform. At all.

I'm going to have you do an exercise right now, though for some of you, this won't be necessary. Some of you "get" this concept already (because of familiarity with networking, or thanks to the advent of social networking websites).

For this exercise, you will need two pieces of paper and a pen or pencil.

On the first piece of paper, you're going to draw a line down the middle, and make a list of five acquaintances in the left hand column. For the purposes of this exercise, we'll keep the list short; also, the first five people you think of are likely to be your five most important connections.

In the right hand column, you're going to make a list of at least five people that they know. If you can't think of five, that's okay, and many times there will be overlap between your own network and theirs.

Now, with the second piece of paper, you are going to write your name. You are then going to draw a line radiating out (be sure to leave room on your paper; the lines can be short) from yourself, representing each relationship that you have (or at least the five most important ones).

Next, you are going to represent each of these people as having their own Web... with lines radiating out representing five people that they know. Sometimes people will share nodes, sometimes you will share nodes with other people. That's okay, it's the way of things.

The point of this exercise was to give you a visual representation of the Web of Relationships. This is an extremely simplified version. There are indeed all kinds of ways to map social networks, ranging from the simple to the complex.

What was the point of all of this and how does it relate to working your Will?

It's simple.

Many of your results will manifest via the Web of Relationships.

Not all of these relationships are with your friends. Some may even be with your enemies. Each time you make a connection with another person, you've added another node to your Web.

Even putting your resume on Dice or interacting with someone on Eharmony is opening a connection. It's not necessarily a high quality connection, but it's a connection.

Some nodes will be stronger than others, and will bear more fruit. Virtually anything where you exchange casual, person to person contact is going to bear more fruit than any method where you are merely a name and number, or for that matter, an anonymous face in a crowd.

Also, this is where the truism about "you will only be as successful as your five closest friends" comes into play.

Also, take a moment to think about how your friendships are giving back to you. Many people are stingy with their social energy. I have known people in my life that never, ever introduce their friends to each other. They go to lots of parties and events alone but never invite their friends or even tell their friends about the events.

These people may be huge social hubs, but for your purposes, they represent only a single thread or node... because no matter how long you know them, they will never expose you to a greater social network.

Finally, is your social life static, or are new people coming and going on a fairly regular basis?

Your Will may work via any number of ways, including a chance encounter with a complete stranger or a chance serendipity. Cultivating your Web of Relationships deliberately merely stacks the deck in your favor.

It's been true in my life that most intentions I've set, have manifested via people I already knew.

Not all of them, but a significant enough number that it definitely bears a closer look.

And yes - as an experiment - you can intend to grow your Web. I've done this before. I created a vision board one time, with the word in big bold capitals: "GIRLFRIENDS", showing a representation of myself surrounded by groups of women. Within a month, I had a very full social calendar full of coffee dates and various other things that women tend to do when we get together. It was easy, and effortless, and came about via activities I was already doing. I had enough in common with most of these women. I didn't have to bend myself into a pretzel, expend tremendous effort (beyond that of nurturing the friendships as they came into my existence) or do anything whatsoever out of character.

This is not a difficult process, nor should it be.

If you are finding any part of it difficult, or find you just can't meet all those boring executives that you need to socialize with, maybe you are not being authentic. Maybe you're really not an executive at heart.

The seminal "mundane" text on growing your Web of Relationships is How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. But the deeper you go into this process, the more you'll see that there is nothing at all mundane about the Web of Relationships.

Ask, Allow and Receive

This is the final concept I'm going to touch upon. It's one we often have a great deal of trouble with. Now, I didn't coin this term; I've heard it used in various Law of Attraction circles. The main place I've encountered this is in Ask & It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks.

It breaks intending your Will down into three discreet steps:

1. Intend

This is the basic act of setting your intention. Whether you "ask" or "envision it already having happened", or do a hypnotic process or a vision board or a magickal ritual, depends upon your own choice and preference; that's not the most important part of setting the intention.

Setting the intention is the most important part of setting the intention.

Plenty of people go through the motions of gathering wild strawberries at midnight during the first new moon of April, or repeating hypnotic suggestions over and over, but have no clear intention.

I don't need to go on about this; plenty of other writers have done much better and more concisely.

2. Get out of the way

Yes.

This is something that I find pretty well grasped by magickal schools of thinking. Once you've released your intention - get out of its way and let it happen. This is actually pretty easy for magick workers as we often find that a successful ritual tends to "release itself" and we tend to forget about it.

If you continue stirring the pot once it's set to simmer, you're likely generating negative energy or increasing your attachment to the thing. Attachment and allowance are two opposing forces.

3. Let the thing happen

This means, recognizing the opportunity once it's presented itself. Plenty of people manifest great results all the time, but turn away the results when they're presented.

There is an old truism.

A drowning man prays fervently to G-d asking that he be rescued.

First, a Coast Guard clipper shows up; he turns this away.

Secondly, a cruise ship shows up on the scene; he turns this away.

Thirdly, a Coast Guard helicopter shows up; he turns this away.

As he is getting into heaven, he's angry with G-d and asks, "Why didn't you save me?" to which G-d then replies, "I sent you two ships and a helicopter!".

Many times, your Will is working at all times, generating exactly the results you desire. For some reason or another - your intention is inauthentic, you have blocks, you are filtering the results out so that you don't see them (how many lonely people never notice that there are interested single people around them all the time?), or you are intending something out of character.

Sometimes, it comes down to being able to maintain the results you generate. Sure, you generate the job - but your work ethic is lousy.

And that is one of the most important applications of Action, and for the purposes of this article... one of the definitions of Skillful Means.

In one of my next articles, I will discuss the path of least resistance, or what some authors call "The Flow" - where effortless manifestation seems to take place.

Adventures in Paradigm Piracy

2010-04-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

Hello again, fellow reality hackers.

It's been a while - specifically, more than a year - and here is where I come forward with why I haven't updated, and what I did with my time.

I spent a year performing an experiment. I was to submerge myself, total immersion style, in the practices of another religion, changing to that paradigm as much as possible and completely relying upon that belief system. I would put my magickal and New Age trappings to the side, stop any other form of practice, and work solely within one religion's framework.

I decided to work with a group that already openly practiced some form of Law of Attraction type of practices, and more, they had to fit seamlessly into the mainstream. Even if I were to attempt to practice Paradigm Piracy (as defined by the "Chaos Magick" of A. O. Spare, Peter Carroll and Phil Hine) with the aim of achieving a Paradigm Shift, I did not want to join a paradigm which would create too much difficulty in my day to day life.

I also specifically wanted a group which included many khaki-wearing members of both the working and middle classes.

Nichiren Buddhism (more specifically, one of the offshoot sects) met that requirement.

It may seem that I didn't really do Paradigm Piracy per se. I didn't attempt to become a Catholic, or something equally intense. I stuck with a religion that allowed me to practice for ends similar to those for which I practiced magick, and also a religion that didn't require an involved conversion process.

At some point, I may actually attempt a piracy experiment with a more intense religion, but at this juncture, I didn't need to. I had specific ends in mind and I'm happy to say that I achieved them.

During my year (which was a minimum requirement of time investment that I had decided on, but not a maximum requirement) I participated fully in the organization and beliefs, received Gohonzon and performed Gongyo and Daimoku twice a day, and attended study groups.

The reason I chose this specific group is because of its rather mainstream cultural veneer, large organization, and exclusivity (unlike other Buddhist traditions, which I've practiced). I would avoid my usual magickal practices as much as possible, and place full reliance on the faith as tends to be encouraged. Part of this was to see if I could generate results (referred to as "conspicuous benefit") within the group, without relying in any form whatsoever on my previous methods - if I could practice magick without... the magick.

Another was to have the experience of belonging to a large, church-like organization. As a secularly-reared child of hippie parents, I've never had this experience. All my life, I've observed that there are certain benefits to having an identity based in some large, mainstream organization.

Many people join an organization to pick themselves up and dust themselves off after a particularly rough patch of life. I had one such.

Years ago, my magick stopped working very well in any manner that I wanted or expected it to. It was very flashy and bright, but after a while, shit like visiting a friend in a dream, disappearing in a crowd or conjuring pretty sparkly crap that other people can see, starts to seem more like mental masturbation than anything particularly useful. Even my more useful attempts at Reality Engineering began to hit a wall. Especially after I lost a few years to nothing but mental masturbation and RPGs and checked out of the very reality I was attempting to learn to hack.

I also began to question my sanity. While doing so, I went on a drug called Paxil. This stuff deadens you inside. I stopped having any craving for any kind of mystical experience and became Hardcore Mundane for a while. Pretty depressing. I also stopped producing art or writing to speak of.

After two years on the drug, I learned that I had an autoimmune condition called Graves' Disease which was responsible for my weak hold on my sanity. Once I was on thyroid meds, life looked different. It took me some time to shake the effects of the Paxil. My interest in Reality Hacking returned.

At a particularly low patch of life, I found that my Reality Hacking experiments weren't yielding useful results. I also was having the usual "unusual thinker" disconnect with real life... like all those witches and wizards we all know who seem to have great tools but just can't seem to get off of food stamps.

The first group I began studying were the higher-income Law of Attraction practicioners. However,
I decided　that the thing I needed most, was to learn from the mainstream, not from other weirdos like myself, and that the New Thought movement had its own kind of groupthink and not the type I was trying to learn about.

I would need to get, in every way possible, the Thinking of the Normal Person.

It was time to become a Pirate.

I chose a group that is completely mainstream - only a smidge less mainstream than Baptist Christianity - and that practices, as I saw it, some form of Reality Hacking.

I gave the group the college try, with the idea that if it was of value to me, then I'd stay with it. My intention at the outset, up until later in the experiment, was completely sincere. This sincere intention was the only way that the experiment would actually be legitimate and yield real results.

The spiritual and magickal reasons for selecting my group, were simple. Members of certain Nichiren sects - Soka Gakkai International and Nichiren Shoshu, to name a few - practice a form of magick. They have a common, empowered egregore in the form of an inanimate object, the Gohonzon. They place faith and full reliance upon this object while seeing the object specifically as a reflection of their own life, without ascribing to the Gohonzon any special personality or human identity.

Meanwhile the practice has a bare minimum of fluff and filler, and extremely simple ritual that was not time consuming; it could be completed in one morning session and one evening session, each of about fourty-five minutes.

I found the practice perfectly valid on its own. Chanting from a sutra in Japanese, without a translation, was no different than any other practice I've done that involves repetition of words which may as well be meaningless to me. Because of the organization's sheer size, I had the benefit of practicing in a room of up to a hundred people who all had sincere faith in the practice.

Also, any mantra in my experience will produce some form of gnostic state. Plus, you eventually come to believe in anything that you practice long enough. Belief is a malleable tool which enslaves most people, and it is created by a lot of influences outside of ourselves. Most people don't realize that it is malleable.

So, I never had a problem with belief. I expected to see results from the Gohonzon. It is a perfectly valid, charged egregore - effective because of the millions of people who have empowered this object. Also, I believe that if you practice *anything* long enough for it to become subconsciously embedded, you will see results of some form. The beliefs were easier to swallow because of a common Nichiren belief (ironic, that) that belief is not necessary to see benefit... which is actually standard issue Buddhism, because Buddhism is said to be about proof and not belief.

I learned quite a bit that informs me as a Reality Hacker. I learned about two kinds of benefit, as defined by this form of Nichiren Buddhism:

Conspicuous Benefit - changes in one's environment as a result of practice. My own conspicuous benefit was often in small proof, which I came to understand is most people's experience of conspicuous benefit. If I desperately needed twenty dollars, it showed up, without my even really asking for it in front of the Gohonzon. Where this differed from my practice of magick, is that I often obtained conspicuous benefits with little effort, without directly willing a specific thing. It resembled more, in practice, what I've come to identify in my own magick as "small push" magick... a constant, minute nudging of reality toward the direction of my Ku (Huna terminology) or True Will, or my Buddhahood as defined by this form of Buddhism.

Inconspicuous Benefit - changes in one's understanding as a result of practice. I started to see my results as part of a chain of events and thoughts, and started aiming for the root of my results, rather than the result itself. I came to understand why my magick, while big and flashy, often didn't work as I hoped. I would ALWAYS obtain a short term material result, but it wouldn't stick. Via my practice of this form of Buddhism, I came to understand that I needed to work on the root causes in order to have better effects.

What I learned from my practice of this Buddhism was invaluable. It was almost enough to stay with the group. I gained insight as to what was wrong with my magick, and why it wasn't producing the results that I wanted it to produce. I realized firsthand that my magick has *always* produced results - just not always the ones I expected. I realized that just by making very minor changes to b>myself, I could cause ripples in causality.

Now, this is common knowledge in magick, otherwise there wouldn't be all of these practices to unite with one's divinity, Holy Guardian Angel, yidam (oops - I just accused Tibetan Buddhism of being magick) or in the case of many Chaos Magicians... your inner superhero, if you wish... and that this stuff is the preliminary long before you get to the juicy "reality bending" stuff.

However... "change yourself first" is something that I never "got" from personal experience.

I *did* "get" this from Nichiren Buddhism.

Which is precisely one of the reasons why we Pirate. If you don't get what you need from one system... switch to another for a while.

Another way I benefited, was because this form of Buddhism placed little reliance on form. The ritual, as I've noted, was extremely simple. I had to cease relying upon all of my bells and whistles and pretty objects and deal strictly with the contents of my mind.

And I learned something else that has been invaluable in my magick.

Create causes, not effects.

Even an effect is a cause.

You could create something very grand... but what cause do you have for it in the here and now, and once you find your soulmate or get that million... what *then* will it cause?

After all of this, in a perfectly valid system, it wasn't enough to stay with the group.

First of all, I couldn't really leave magick behind, even if the group was practicing (from my perspective) a form of magick.

Once you've received anything like an initiation - I mean in the personal sense, not the group membership sense (which is COMPLETELY valid, in my view) - nothing short of hitting bottom in your life and experiencing a total brainwashing by some mainstream organization (looking at you, Christianity - why do I know so many born-again Christian ex-witches?) will undo that initiation.

Ever since my introduction to some basic reality hacking tools, nothing has been the same.

When I started practicing Tibetan Buddhism at age 22, nothing (not even the monks and teachers) could prepare me for the gouge-out-your-eyes-and-skullfuck-you reality-bending experiences I had as a result of the practices. Tibetan Buddhism, after all, is a form of Ceremonial Magick.

I began treating the deities in a very Western Magickal manner. I couldn't quite let go of the idea of integrating a chaosphere into a mandala practice, or calling up Tibetan protector deities at the four circle quarters.

So, it's no surprise that the same thing happened to me in my new form of Buddhism. Once I assimilated the ideas outlined above (benefit, and create causes, not effects), I found myself feeling hindered by the group rather than helped.

It was an exclusive practice, and at the end of my year, I came to find that membership in the group hampered my growth more than it benefited. I met many fine people, and learned many great things.

The problem with being a member of any group, is the groupthink. The drawback of being a Reality Hacker is that once you stop learning anything new in a particular setting, you tend to become anxious to pull out and try to apply it outside of the group (ask my friends about my practice of Tibetan Buddhism). And groupthink can be the enemy of any Reality Hacker.

I may be returning my Gohonzon to the organization, and donating my butsudan (the shrine which houses your Gohonzon) to someone who may have need of this practice.

I will still have a Gohonzon above my altar, though, just not one belonging to any organization. Among my other practices... I still put on my Nichiren Buddhist hat from time to time, to remind myself:

Create good causes.

How to fall back in love with your partner.

2009-02-15T19:12:00.000-08:00

Most of us are slaves to our emotions. They blow like the wind, we follow them.

We don't realize that we react to very predictable stimuli. Some of us even learn how to hack our interactions with others, through knowledge of psychology (especially operant conditioning, game theory, transactional analysis and scarcity models).

Most of us never, ever think to hack OURSELVES. Yes！YOU are as subject to your own engineering, as others are! Novel, huh?

Now, here is the problem. You are in a perfectly ordinary relationship... in about average working condition. It serves you, you serve it, you don't really want to leave it... just... something is MISSING. There's really no reason to leave the relationship. You just want "that feeling" back. And it's gone.

Let me guess.

Your partner adores you now. You've won her (because I assume it's a her). She isn't a Tactician, and she's now all "take me, I'm yours!". And you're bored half to death.

Assuming you were the initiator, what has happened is what Judith Sills (in her book 'A Fine Romance') has called "The Switch".

You COULD go through relationship after relationship hoping someone magically gives you that feeling and keeps you chasing enough.

Or you could try to work with this, right here, right now.

This is how you fix a Switch.

You need to get the role reversed again, and stay the chaser.

This means that you need to drive your partner off. Just a little bit.

This will not happen by asking her (because most people with this problem, are guys) to back off. That'll intensify her feelings.

You need to RETURN HER INTEREST - MATCH IT AND TWICE OVER.

If she is calling you every day, you call her twice that.

If she's making you home cooked meals, you send flowers.

Every other day.

Until she asks YOU to back off.

Reversing the Switch will only happen by you PURSUING HER! Pursue her with all the fervor of the beginning, and you have to OUTMATCH *HER* PURSUIT.

It seems counterintuitive, because most of us, when someone is chasing, we run faster and harder.

You need to get her to stop chasing, and start running.

She'll turn around, withdraw, and within a few days - you'll be sincerely chasing, all over again.

This isn't manipulation.

Smart people eventually realize that chemistry is a game that two people enjoy. You can go through life awake to these dynamics and how they work - or you can remain a sleeper. It's your choice.

You can reverse the Switch. You're enjoying being unbalanced, that's what makes the excitement hormones.

You can turn it around and get unbalanced again.

Instead of hitting the ball back to her, walk over to her side of the court and GIVE HER THE BALL.

It works.

I promise.

Happy fun and games.

P.S. It only works with people who have secure attachment styles and are relatively socially/mentally normative... i.e. the average "sleeper" woman with absolutely no tactical skill at dating. If you're dealing with an unbalanced person, whatever you give will be like trying to fill an empty hole.

Manifesting a specific person, Part 2: a ritual to deal with oneitis.

2009-01-19T10:03:00.000-08:00

So, you DO want a specific person, after reading all that.

The trick is not to try to "Make Bobby Love Me" (to paraphrase Wiccan author Laurie Cabot). The trick is more to "LET Bobby Love Me".

Take for Oneitis, crushes or being in love with a scaredy cat.

Here's a twist on something from my "Teen Witch" days (Wicca is where I first learned about LOA) that I/friends did when there was someone specific, that still left room for free will. I've used this with people when there's someone specific. Wicca is very touchy about free will and threefold return and manifestations backfiring on you.

I'll just give you the basic visualization rather than the specific ritual details (because there was more than one - we could argue all day and night about whether to use sage and cinnamon and whether to use rose petals, what color candles, and what phase of the moon, then what deity to invoke). Here is the meat of it, without any religious trappings, with a little variation.

So, here is what I did...

1. Visualize you and the other person

2. Visualize you and the other person, facing each other

3. Imagine the strings/webs of energy that represented the obstacles between you, that keep him/her from approaching. You can visualize tangled yarn, smoke, spiderwebs, et cetera. You may need to do some preparatory work to really get it into your subconscious that tangled yarn/smoke/spiderwebs/whatever represents obstacles/negative stuff. Make sure that whatever symbol you choose, isn't used for anything else (I don't use spiderwebs, because of my work with Web of Relationships).

4. Imagine untangling it until it is all clear and out of the way, and the path between you two is clear. You can make this a physical act to add to your visualization, by using a stick of incense, smudge stick, et cetera - similar to smudging or how people in pagan rituals "mop up" the negativity before starting a ritual. Imagine the obstacles sinking into the earth or dispersing.

Important:

Pay attention to whatever spontaneous visuals come up during this time - if you see yourself and the other person with no "mess" between you, but then they can't come to you because there's an incomplete road or bridge between you, or suddenly a river pops up between you - pay attention to that.

5. Now the letting go part. Take your visualization of you and other person, imagine putting it all into a ball, open your eyes, imagine ball shrinking down to fit in your hand, then bless it, release it (send it on its way). Bless it, let it go, and get on with life. Don't think about it. This is easiest if you work on strengthening your emotional tie to the situation you're working with, and pouring it all into that ball. It frees up your energy for other stuff.

You didn't actually force anyone's will. You're just clearing the way, and leaving room for your intuition to tell you if there are more obstacles. It works surprisingly well, when there's actually a mutual interest, the obstacles a lot of the time are on your end.

Some people don't just plow right ahead in pursuing someone. They wait for a lot of little signals and get discouraged by the slightest sign of disinterest. Clear the obstacles and you may find yourself projecting more availability and warmth so that if they were going to approach, they're more likely to do so. You may find yourself being more relaxed and they may react to the change in your behavior around them if the idea to get together was in their mind already.

I still use it when there's a specific person, but mostly to let the interest go and let it go on as it will.

Manifesting a specific person, part 1: why it's not immoral.

2009-01-19T09:25:00.000-08:00

In the Law of Attraction communities, I see this question all the time. Someone wants to manifest a relationship with a SPECIFIC person. The trouble with this, is if a relationship were possible, it's likely already happening.

It particularly comes up in "vision boarding/treasure mapping" when someone wants to use a picture of a specific person or someone who looks like them.

I will make another post about my criticism of the vision board technique based upon my own experience - it has had pluses and minuses for me, though Your Mileage May Vary.

I won't go into the whole magickians/witches philosophy of "forcing a person to do your bidding", bad karma, threefold return, yadda yadda.

Why? Because I don't believe that. If I did, I'd have to call this blog something other than "The Skeptical Mystic".

Trying to get someone else to do something is not wrong.

What it is, is a waste of time.

There's an old saying that trying to teach a pig to sing, frustrates you and annoys the pig.

First off, most of the time, it doesn't work. Here's what tends to happen:

1. You become more obsessed with the specific person

The trouble as I see it, with focusing too intently on one specific person, is you can actually strengthen your obsession with that person, which is a huge drain of your time and energy, and often a dead end. You're really casting a love spell on YOURSELF.

2. Energy and attention, is a circuit. Putting it into something that won't return the energy, is a waste of yours.

This is where I actually (oh noes!!) criticize Threefold Return. Any religion has to make up a dogma about how bad things happen to people who do bad things.

The "threefold return" of bad things is because you're diverting your energy into an energetic dead end and draining your own batteries, and investing in something psychologically injurious. You're not focusing on things that have more chance of a return on your investment. It's like taking food out of your closet then digging a hole and burying it under cement where even the ants and maggots won't find it. It's not feeding you, it's not feeding anyone else, it's just going away and leaving your cupboards bare.

It's not morally *wrong*, it's just a tremendous waste of resources.

If you get sick (this seems a common thing that happens to people when they do intense energetic work) then it's not law of threefold return, it's you draining your batteries and catching a bug.

3. You COULD get the person, but it won't be a situation you really want.

Sometimes you're able to succeed at this particularly if it's someone who was very lonely and just needed a little "push". They were going to fall into anyone's arms sooner or later, you just gave a little "push" so they'd fall into yours.

I didn't think you wanted that. Relationships between people who don't really want to be in them, obviously (duh) end up not being as strong as ones that happen between people who really do want to be in them.

Well, there you go.

Now that you know my take, in part 2 I'll give you a nice, morally safe, "white magicky" way to deal with your Oneitis.

Here Come the Specialtons

2009-01-18T08:39:00.000-08:00

You're a Specialton when you are a special snowflake, that we need to all understand, who either has special abilities/powers/insights or is alone and lonely and needs sympathy.

Being a Specialton is a huge draw for some. Some people take on a major change in lifestyle (such as going raw, fruitarian, breatharian) or change their religion to one that is non-mainstream in their culture, in order to be Special.

As a teenager, you may be a Specialton by becoming Emo (which is borderline mainstream, barely qualifying for Specialton status) or a Goth (which can be done with self-mockery or tongue-in-cheek humor, making fun of the whole Specialton phenomenon, and thus disqualifying you from true Specialdom).

Here is the evolution of my own Specialdom:

1. Magnet student, briefly (before I dropped out of high school). Magnet programs are training camps for Specialtons!

2. Nerd

3. Teen Witch. After I dropped out of high school, they took away my Nerd card. So, I had to find another way to be a Specialton. After buying a few Scott Cunningham and Raymond Buckland books (these days it would be Silver Ravenwolf), writing my name in Theban and buying some snazzy new black clothes, voila! Instant Specialton! Teen Witches get to enchant boys, have a snazzy new set of clothes and dance around sprinkling glitter on everything. As ways to be a Specialton go, Teen Witchdom is a lot of fun, even though you're not old enough to go to all those dancing-naked-in-the-woods festivals. Plus a day after your conversion you're entitled to claim membership of a persecuted minority. Plus, Teen Witchdom, for a teenage girl, is very empowering and you get to join this secret club of Girl Power. Punky Power, only wearing black. Another perk of Teen Witchdom is that black is very slimming.

I distinguish Witch from Wiccan in this usage because the appeal really was the general trappings of witchdom, let's get honest.

Teen Witchdom tends to be dropped the moment you actually get a boyfriend with one of your love spells because you tend to think that the only purpose of magick is to get a boyfriend.

4. Special Buddha
Of course, I mocked all the other Special Buddhas. You are never a Special Buddha. Just the other people in your sangha. They are all
Special Buddhas.

In Tibetan Buddhist groups, Special Buddhas sometimes consider themselves superior to the Tibetans in the same group because the Tibetans eat meat.

Special Buddhas are easily fended off with a Republican-oriented bumper sticker, a normal/healthy outlook on sex (for some reason, SBs are all hung up about sex), and a Big Mac. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa, is to Special Buddhas what the Malleus Malificarum is to Teen Witches. They are repelled by handguns and the discussion of free market economy, in the manner that vampires are repelled by garlic. But sex (which they are all hung up about) will probably capture their attention because the repressed usually are the most fascinated by the thing they're repressing.

Other ways one can become a Specialton are to join a third party political party, claim to be bisexual so they can claim 'Queer' - the perk is you get to be Queer but never actually have to have gay sex. You can also polarize as a Lightworker or Darkworker. :D

How to combat your own Specialdom?

Deliberately battle the things that you collect as part of your ego building.

If you're a Teen Witch, force yourself to be a Teen Witch in Gap clothing, or take up cheerleading.

If you're a vegetarian whose primary attraction to vegetarianism is to tell your grandmother "I can't eat that" at family reunions, then admit it. You have two options: cease your attempts at being a Specialton and allow the your grandmother's cooking to fight your attempt at ego-building. The other option is the Reverand Wing Fu Fing's Fuck, Yes! approach. If you're going to be a Specialton, why not give in and go all the way? No half-measures.

Become raw or something, because lacto-ovo vegetarianism is really passe.

If you really want to give your family the old "I can't eat that" or "We can't eat there" at every get-together, you need to take up something more extreme. Go raw or macrobiotic! You'll feel much specialler! There's the pleasure of explaining a lifestyle that your family didn't see on TV, so you get to be an expert about something in addition to being Special. Plus you get to watch your family run around like crazy trying to soak raw cashews and blend them in the food processor, you get to eat a TOTALLY different meal than what they are eating, and you get to go run into the spare room they've kept for you with your Punky Brewster posters and cheerleading pennants and cry about how they don't understand you, thus nobody understands you.

If you're from a Jewish family of average American observance, become Kosher. This offers a one-two punch of Specialdom. You not only get to be Special, but you get to be "better" than your own family! Why settle for ordinary Specialdom?

Ritual: The McDonalds Mass

2009-01-11T22:12:00.000-08:00

I'm all for people finding what works for them, and finding out what their morals do and don't allow them to do. What bothers me is how I see people falling into dietary orthodoxy and taking it in a package deal with personal development as if food is going to get them into heaven. That's fine. Maybe it will make you more effective if you follow your own moral compass. The trouble is when this becomes another object in your collection (to paraphrase Chogyam Trungpa in "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism").

This was a struggle for me for a long time. I was in the trap of trying to follow the latest spiritual diet trend. This robbed me of my time and my power and critical thinking abilities.

For that reason, I have a very deliberate ritual to deal with this issue. It addresses a few taboos. Taboos contain more power than "accepted" things. I invite you to look at your taboos and specifically try to confront them.

The McDonalds Mass

Eat a McDonalds happy meal. Experience the power of the arches logo in the mass consciousness. Offer to Ronald McDonald. Request that the Hamburgler steal away ignorance. Laugh at the silliness of having a ritual around McDonalds. You may keep the toy that comes with the happy meal as an idol if this has power for you.

The whole idea is to look at what's orthodox then deliberately break the thought patterns of orthodoxy. A consciously confronted taboo has ten or more times the power of an "accepted" pattern. Give it a try.

You want to manifest (just)SEX!! SHAME ON YOU!

2009-01-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

This started off as a response to one of about umpteen billion posters over at the Personal Development for Smart People forums who asked, "How do I manifest sex?".

As usual, he got pounced on by a few folk, in a predictable manner.

Any time anyone asks about "hey, how do I get lots of sex?" they get a lot of responses to the tune of, "you really should be looking for lurve!"(I will address "lurve" - which is romantic love, as most people seem to construct it - in another post). A lot of people (particularly women and some sensitive men) get offended. They think it's immoral somehow to look for sex for the sake of looking for sex.

What is immoral about looking for sex?? I see people being honest about their real desires - this is a new meme in our culture, and it can only be positive. I see people moving *away* from manipulation and conning. This can only be a good thing.

"Shoulds" need to go right out there with "have to's". I'm not sure who said this, but the only thing you HAVE to do is die, and the only thing you SHOULD do, likewise, is die eventually (what good would it be to be immortal anyway?). Everything else is between you and your own sense of right and wrong, and what consequences you are willing to accept.

In my opinion, "looking for sex" isn't any more right or wrong than "looking for love". If love is everywhere then looking for sex isn't contradictory. Love is not something that's wrapped up in a neat little package called a relationship.

And "looking for sex" doesn't have to be manipulative.

You can approach it with joy, love, and decency.

The people asking this question are asking it in Conscious Creation/Manifestation/Law of Attraction/abundance communities. Therefore I will assume they are looking for it from the point of view of Law of Attraction.

To look for sex from that point of view, is to put oneself in a position where they are receiving the bounty of their intention/the universe/Ralph the Cosmic Muffin/long-dead Great Aunt Sophie or whatever it is they believe in. Therefor, there's no conning. From this philosophy, to manifest casual sex would mean one is manifesting themselves as the receiver, and that they are manifesting themselves as existing in an abundant universe wherein there is lots available of what they want.

Conning is a scarcity tactic.

What I told the young man:

You can have sex with other people who want the same thing as you. Consider that you can offer pleasure to someone and experience pleasure, yourself. And that the more they get out of it, the more you'll get out of it too. You can manifest sex to come to you, to be offered freely and purely (without any ulterior motives) just out of the joy that others have in sharing themselves, having fun, and giving/receiving pleasure.

That is a VERY different thing from "manipulating others".

Consider that the universe is full of people who want just what you want. You're not a "specialton".

Now, here is what good it will do society for men and women to come right out in the open about looking for sex.

The people out there who want a relationship and not (just)sex - will find it that much easier to find one. Nobody will have to pretend to want "love" when it's sex they want.

So, in response to the people who think that manifesting sex is somehow wrong because it's "manipulative" - I can think of no thing less manipulative.

It's far less manipulative than going out and *dating* to get sex.

If everyone has the same agenda, nobody was conned. Let's all be honest about our agendas.

As a postscript, though, I bet these young men start meeting a lot of older women.

Snark: Indigo children

2009-01-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

There's a reason I'm called the SKEPTICAL mystic.

~~~

The ten most common traits of Indigo Children:

1. They come into the world with a feeling of royalty (and often act like it).

Gee. My parents *accused* me of that...

2. They have a feeling of "deserving to be here," and are surprised when others don't share that.

Yeah. It's called an overweening sense of entitlement.

3. Self-worth is not a big issue. They often tell the parents "who they are."

See above.

4. They have difficulty with absolute authority (authority without explanation or choice).

Gee... back in the day we just called em brats...

5. They simply will not do certain things; for example - waiting in line is difficult for them.

Try being in a crowded restaurant full of these children.

6. They get frustrated with systems that are ritual-oriented and don't require creative thought.

Sounds like a projection on the part of their hippie parents.

7. They often see better ways of doing things, both at home and at school, which makes them seem like "system busters" - (nonconforming to any system).

I'll think about this one, too.

8. They seem antisocial unless they are with their own kind. If there are no others of like consciousness around them, they often let no other human understand them. School is extremely difficult for them socially.

Yes. Today's kids *are* pretty damned antisocial - it's because today's middle class parents do the whole scheduling and "playdate" thing. Kids don't have to make their own friends anymore.

9. They will not respond to "guilt" discipline - (Wait till you father gets home and finds out what you did").

Again, the brat thing.

10. They are not shy in letting you know what they need.

Yep. An IPod is usually at the top of the list. And designer clothes.

The Sociocircuitry Hypothesis.

2009-01-10T18:54:00.000-08:00

I refer to something I conceptualize as "energy" or "energy-food", as something that goes back and forth in all relationships. I don't mean some kind of psychic New Age kind of energy. I just have no other way of conceptualizing this concept.

There are four basic modes: two major, and two submodes. We act out these roles at different times in our lives, and in different settings. Some people are most comfortable in one role as opposed to another.

The two major modes are Projective and Receptive.

PROJECTIVES

Projectives are "outrospective". Those operating from the Projective model act out of accord with their inner nature, creating the world around them. Features of Projectivity are contact with the external world. Projectives make their dreams reality. They create reality for others to carry out, and they make plans. They pursue. Projectives are producers of potential energy. Projectives are the predators. They are goal-oriented. People who act out the Projector mode in their employment sphere, quickly grow restless and bored in mainstream, day to day jobs, because most jobs are exercises in Receptivity: doing a task someone has set before you. Most people, however, conceptualize love from the Projective angle (pursuing and catching a mate), whether they actually play this role or not. Occupational Projectives are entrepeneurs, creatives, teachers, and leaders.

RECEPTIVES

Receptives are introspective. Those operating from the Receptive model act out of accord with the flow of the external world. They gain their energy from the activities of others, particularly Projectives. Features of Receptivity are contact with the emotional and internal world. A Receptive receives his or her energy from the world around him or her. Receptives are more concerned with the attainment of energy in any form than they are discriminating about what type of energy they receive. They are process-oriented. Most employment is of the Receptive variety: completing a task that another person has set before you.

MODE SWITCHING

Mode switching often happens when people find that a particular pattern is not working for them. The bored Receptive middle manager, frustrated with the same job for fifteen years, switches to Projective and decides to start his own business. A Receptive housewife hits fourty and decides she is tired of living for and through other people; she leaves her husband, loses twenty pounds and starts singing in a nightclub.
The frustrated Projective musician, unable to feed his family, takes a job in an office. Projective women - finding that "chasing men" does not work - either position themselves in a subculture that accepts them as they are, or they follow a book like "The Rules" and switch into the mode called "Covert Projection" wherein a Projective pretends to be Receptive.
A frustrated, lonely Receptive, unable to get his meeds net, adopts the Assertive Receptive/Mock Projective tack and starts going out and actively trying to get people to pay attention to him. He puts on an "act" of Projectivity, but his basic approach and mode are still Receptive.

Also, people switch modes when they have entered a relationship or other dynamic that was initially based upon a pretense of what mode they were acting out.
Example: setups that sometimes occur, wherein the Covert Projective woman who snares an Assertive Receptive man with her "feminine wiles" (a Covert Projective tactic if ever there was one). Once the goal (marriage) has been met, the masks come off and we see the two parties for the roles they really are acting: Projective and Receptive. The husband starts acting like a Receptive, and the wife starts acting like a Projective. "The Rules" are all about withholding energy-food from the Receptive, in order to keep them interested.

The Projective-Receptive Dynamic:

Receptives receive the potential energy given to them by Projectives and transmute it into kinetic energy, which then energizes and enables the Projectives. This increased, purified energy then becomes fuel for greater exterior accomplishment on the part of the Projectives, who then have more energy-food to give to the Receptives.

You can identify the four types based upon their relationship philosophy.

The Projective: "If you want something bad enough, and you work at it hard enough, you'll attain it."

This is an active's philosophy as opposed to a reactive's. Projectors are busy planning events and creating the universe around them. The projective worldview is that they can create situations through hard material effort. Projectives know what they want from day one. When you are in a bar, you are in a setting where Projectives are looking for sex and only sex: it is Receptives who are fluid about the roles into which they cast other people. When you go to a matchmaker, you are in a setting where Projectives are looking for marriage and only marriage. Fully realized Projectives are always clear about their goals. Where a relationship or job is supposed to go is never an issue. They either want a relationship or a job, or they don't. As a result, Projectives generally cannot be woo'd or gradually won over the way Receptives can. Switching to a Receptive role may be the hardest thing a Projective ever does, but many often do.

A Projective, wary of distracting herself or himself from life-goals, may put off mating until these goals are achieved: "I'll marry when I finish med-school", because a Projective pursues one major goal at a time, whereas all facets of life are equally co-existent for a Receptive to whom all things are equal possibilities and all possibilities represent energy-food.
Many Projectives are likely to be frustrated with traditional expectations. While most dating services and marriage traditions are created by Projectives and marketed to them, the basic media image of romance is a Receptive one. They are likely to collide head-on with the Receptives' philosophy that "love comes when you least expect it". A Projective is incapable of "not looking" or "just letting it happen". Projectives achieve their best results when they clearly know what they want and know where to best locate it. A Projective needs to cherish their partner and be inspired by them. When their Receptive partner provides this emotional support and inspiration, the Projective ends up even more energized, and transforms this energy into greater Projective energy and ability. This is a Projective's greatest ideal of a relationship. Projectives are concerned with doing, as opposed to process, so they are likely to choose a mate who blesses them with greater confidence in themselves and their ability to do. The Artist/Muse relationship is a Projective/Receptive one. It was probably a Projective who said "She made me feel like I could do anything".
Women who are openly Projective (as opposed to Covert Projective, which I think most women are actually trained to be) may run into opposition from Western society as a whole. Since women frequently have a longer road to travel to achieve material success, Projective women may put off marriage for a long time. When they are ready to marry, they may find themselves at odds with society that says they are supposed to be the Receptive partner, and in conflict with these roles: they must be a Projective at work but a Receptive at play.
A key difference between Projectors and Receptors is that Projectors are likely to view their career (potentially the dominant receptacle of their energy-food) as a key part of their identity, while Receptors are likely to view their relationships (the source of energy-food) as the cornerstone of their identity. Many Projective women respond to this by finding a younger, attractive, and inspirational man to play the Receptive role. Others respond by using a Covert Projective tack in the relationship world: they "fake" being Receptive, but they are actually playing the Projective role.
Clear about their goals from start to finish, Projectives know from day one what they intend to do with a relationship. "I knew I wanted to marry Marlene the year before I met her," is a Projective philosophy. Ever the planners, Projectives must be psychologically ready and prepared in advance for whatever they pursue. They are not given to whim. Projectives' cues of interest are generally unambiguous. Projectives are either your friend, your sex partner or your spouse. They are likely to be very uncomfortable with ambiguity. The most commitment-minded type, they are most often moved to commit to the Receptive because it is the only way to pin the Receptive down.
Finally, True Projectives are not as concerned with the process by which they win, as they are with the act of winning. "He chased me until I caught him" is actually a refrain about a Covert-Projective ensnaring an Assertive Receptive.

The Receptive: "Love comes when you least expect it."

The Receptive is the idealized Artist's Muse; the most attract-IVE mate. It is the Receptive that you see from across a crowded room. Receptives receive their energy from the universe as a whole, rather than generating it from within. Receptives are the most alive when things are happening to or around them. They like to place themselves where things are happening, and they enjoy helping things to come into fruition. They may even be highly creative, but do not get their energy from being visible. They get their energy from helping others be visible. For example, the illustrator who enjoys most of all illustrating other writers' ideas, or the musician who enjoys being part of an orchestra (as opposed to being a soloist), are both acting in a Receptive manner. The old saw "behind every good man is a good woman" is idealizing a female Receptive role.
Receptives frequently take control of their lives not by visualizing and pursuing what they want, but by experiencing lots of different options that have already been offered, and choosing their favorite. Receptives frequently also may put themselves in the path of the most desirable of options to increase their chances of fortune smiling upon them. "Be where the boys are" is a Receptive philosophy.
The Receptive life-strategy is to have as many sources of potential energy as possible. A person acting in Receptive mode sometimes has no idea where they intend to take something, since they are responding to the world’s cues. Many Receptives exist in a world of emotional shades of grey, compared to the black-and-white reality of the Projective who sizes things up as "viable" or "nonviable". In love and lust, Receptives gain the most energy when they are being fed the active pursuit of the Projective. They require Projectives' interest in order to be energized. "I feel like a lifeless puppet until someone comes along and pulls my strings" is an extreme and maladaptive form of Receptive philosophy. The most extreme of Receptives are unlikely to be able to actively sever a relationship that isn't going anywhere, since any relationship at all is still the energy-food they require. Receptives will end when they find a superior source of energy-food, or when they stop receiving energy-food from their partner altogether. The most extreme Receptives will frequently give anything to get energy-food from the other partner. Some Receptives "give sex to get love" - or in this case, energy-food.
When a Receptive receives their energy supply without having to give very much to get it, they may be totally satisfied and never again have any desire to pursue the situation until the stored bank of energy-food they’ve been given, has exhausted itself. Many people find themselves completely uninterested in partners who do everything for them and who are there for them all the time.
In the case of the Receptive, the Projective has already invested his energy-food without the Receptive having to transform that energy.
The Receptive is not likely to view herself as a user. Many Projectives have to go through periods of being used for their car, their escort, et cetera until they either finally learn how to successfully relate to a Receptive, or adapt their strategy in order to date another type of person.

The Covert Projective: "He chased me until I caught him."

This is the Covert Projective at her best. The dating strategies taught to women at Grandmother's knee are really Covert Projective, not Receptive. Covert Projectives are Projectives who have learned to use their Projective energy "from behind" (ie, manipulatively) rather than openly. For instance, instead of openly pursuing a man, Coverts pretend to be Receptives to "catch" a man. In reality they are using the pretense of Receptivity in order to gain control of the situation and direct it. The Covert Projective for instance is likely to use dating manuals such as The Rules. Strategies like this, while weeding out the most insincere of Projectives, are actually most successful with Assertive Receptives, who may be too easily satisfied with the most minimal of commitments at the basic emotional level, once they have their partner's full attention, and never have any impetus to move the relationship forward – being in Receptive mode, they have attained the primary goal of a relationship early on, which was to gain the other partner’s attention and energy, while the Projective still has a specific goal in mind.

Haven't gone into the Assertive Receptive role that much.

The rabbit hole went even deeper than that wherein I started getting into up to eight or more levels of "mocking" (a Projective pretends to be a Receptive pretending to be a Projective pretending to be a Receptive... etc) which is when you seriously start getting into Dr Eric Berne/"Games People Play" and major attachment dysfunction territory.

Lexicon: Emotional Vocabulary

2009-01-10T12:41:00.001-08:00

Almost, but not quite, identical to what Landmark Forum terms "distinctions".

It is hard to sum up, in a clean, neat definition, what emotional vocabulary is.

One builds EV through life experience, reflection and education. For many people, therapy is where they will do much building of their emotional "word bank".

When one has a higher EV than another, it is difficult for them to communicate with that person. Much EV is gained through life experience, but still more through exposure to terminology with which to describe emotional and psychological processes.

At clinical/pathological levels, low to nonexistent EV is called alexythymia, but one need not be as severe as an alexythymic to experience the frustration that can be encountered when people of two differing EVs try to communicate.

A very severe poverty of EV can cross over with lacking Theory of Mind, when one is not only unable to describe their own emotions, but unable to comprehend the emotions of others.

If you've ever said someone "doesn't get it" no matter how much you try to explain an emotional or social process, you are describing a difference in Emotional Vocabulary.

Influential factors are:

* Sex. This may be the chief factor. As you probably assumed, women have a higher EV than men. Among people with average EV ranges, the difference is not so important that the opposite sexes don't get together and stay together; half of people still don't divorce. Nonetheless, the difference in EV between men and women, is responsible for the wealth of sitcom writers and hack authors.

* Exposure to people with different experiences. People with diverse social groups, who are friends with both genders alike, will tend to build a higher EV than others. Men who are friends with women, and who have strong mothers, and/or have sisters, for example will have a higher EV in terms of how women think (though this isn't actually important to succeeding with the opposite sex; I'll write another post on why this is). Ditto for women who are friends with men.

* Neurology. Some people with Attention Deficit Disorder, because of craving for novelty, may have a very high EV (but may seem low EV because of inability to focus in a conversation). People with an autistic spectrum disorder might be likely to have a low emotional vocabulary, but even this isn't a hard and fast rule; the authors Donna Williams and Mary Meinel-Newport seem to have high EV. However, the high EV autistic writers seem to all be women.

* Minority vs majority status. I suspect that minorities tend to have somewhat higher EV than majority members. This may be a survival necessity. Whether you see this same EV skew in settings where minority members spend most of their time only around their own group, would be a good question. Majority members, even ones who have diverse social groups and live in big cities, generally have blind spots about minority experience because there are certain things you can only understand as a member of that minority. Much of the issue that minorities have with well-intentioned "Allies" seems to me to describe the difference in Emotional Vocabulary.

My nitpick of Alpha Male Theory.

2009-01-10T10:18:00.000-08:00

Here is a nitpick from a bio major, former anthropology major, and watcher of nature shows.

One problem I have with the whole thing is that it's become a mainstream meme that "Alpha" and "Beta" as applied to wolves, gorillas, and other animals, even applies to human society in the same way.

We are not gorillas or wolves. The Alpha is not the only one who gets to mate. Other males are not forced to leave town to find a mate.

Secondly, in nonhuman society, betas play an important role - perhaps the most important one where it concerns the actual function and cohesion of the group. Not all wolves can be an alpha. Nor should they be.

It's certainly not true among humans that only one guy gets access to all the females. I haven't observed this at all, especially not in monogamy-oriented cultures. How it will work in polyamorous society remains to be seen (as opposed to polygamists, and "polyamorists" who are actually covert monogamist "poachers"). Even in polygamist society, only a few men marry more than one woman. My cultural anthro teacher pointed out that polygamy may be the preference, but monogamy is still the majority.

And I've seen groups of bachelors pass the same women around back and forth like a joint, and compare notes. One guy definitely isn't getting all the sex.

Among most modern people, one guy getting sole access to females, doesn't happen without some degree of social engineering (PUA for example). It isn't organic. It's WOMEN who control other women's access to MEN, not vice versa.

I've observed in groups of men and women that it'll be one *female* who gets most of the attention and that the female "stragglers" leave the group to look elsewhere. Or else they align themselves with the alpha female (who henceforth will be called the Queen Bee), establish themselves as a member of the Queen's Court, then covertly try to unseat the Queen or gain access to her rolodex/social network/etc. in order to form a hive of her own.

This is why things like "Table for Six" don't work (because you will end up with one woman who gets the attention of all three men), and why the concept behind "The Bachelorette" is brilliant, yet "The Bachelor" doesn't really work.

Men don't really do the choosing of women. It's only bitter and disenfranchised women (women who are low ranking in their hive) and REALLY strong PUAs that could possibly think so, and it's not true for most average men and women.

AFC goes both ways. For every Average Frustrated Chump, there's an Average Frustrated Chick. Average Frustrated Chicks often do eventually figure out that everything they think is true is WRONG. That men don't do the choosing. It only looks that way from the outside.

The actuality is that there is the female equivalent of a player. She's after being the object of attention, resources, and other such. She brags about how many marriage proposals and how many expensive gifts she's gotten, not about how much sex she's gotten. And her game is actually to withhold sex from 99% of the guys, to only have casual sex outside of the group if at all, to have a huge number of male "friends" who can be activated as a boyfriend at any time and are kept interested by an indefinite "definitely maybe". Any social group can have a Queen Bee who's actually quite sexually uptight, and any number of Average Frustrated Chicks who are open minded, sensual and easy going about sex, because that's how the dynamics work.

The female equivalent of a PUA (who I'll refer to henceforth as a Rulesgirl, because "The Rules" by Fein/Schneider very much is the Bible of this dynamic) will go into an environment with little competition (unless prepared to do a brutal battle, which even if she wins can be at great cost) and position herself in a group of Average Frustrated Chumps and become the object of their one-itis.

It's interesting to study Rules and PUA side-by-side, and also study "Queen Bees and Wannabe's" because I think that's where you get the whole picture.

RGs and PUAs are each other's archenemies. And they use so many of the same tactics...

Tribescanning: the science of small talk.

2009-01-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

I have less aversion to small talk now that I've come to understand its purpose. Small-talking is a social signal in and of itself, rather than being intended to convey real content.

"I'm feeling you out. If you throw the small talk back to me in the right way, you are Not A Weirdo. You are a member of my tribe, not an outsider. If you don't participate, or if you bring up your mommy issues, I'm going to back away slowly."

There's also another level that goes on. By throwing out minor things about TV, music, or the weather, they're looking for synchrony/parity, which for many people is a major trust signal. "This person is of the same tribe."

It's easier to spot this behavior in "invisible minority" and counterculture populations though than it is among the majority, even though all people do it. You see a bit of name-dropping going on. My hypothesis is that this is a form of parity-establishing social signal, the same as when teenagers ask each other what music they like.

For example, when a gay person suspects you're gay but doesn't want to make a deal, often he drops a vague cultural reference that only someone else who is also a member of his social circle, will "get". For example, referencing the author Michaelangelo Signorile - as opposed to mentioning a gay reference that everyone knows. Being homosexual itself doesn't mean you'll get the reference; being part of his group, however, means you probably will. In this case, there's less chance of being harassed or abused if you ARE gay but he doesn't "tag" you because you didn't get his social reference, than if you aren't gay, but you get a reference that everyone knows (such as "Will & Grace"). He's chosen the safer of two paths to establishing parity. In the case of the invisible minority, it's safer to miss a potential connection than to trust the wrong person.

Once I started recognizing this behavior in the counterculture, I suddenly started noticing that people do it everywhere. All people. They just use mainstream-culture references instead of counterculture references. What's "weird" or uncomfortable to people is to talk about intimate or controversial topics before social parity (basically, what tribe you are from) has been established.

I went through a phase where I thought I had Asperger's Syndrome, when I was in my 20s. I would mention I was "pretending to be normal" to other people, to "tribescan" people for familiarity with Asperger's culture - "Pretending To Be Normal" is the name of a well known book about Asperger's. The irony of this is that most people with AS generally do NOT tribescan. At all. Period. And neurotypicals DO. It's one of the ways to distinguish an "Aspie" from an "NT". The Aspie will talk without tribescanning first, whereas most normatively socialized NTs will ALWAYS pre-qualify people (by tribescanning, or joint group membership) prior to talking about anything actually of personal relevance or interest.

Now that I understand tribescanning and how it works, I don't have a problem engaging small talk. It's not about communicating. It's a process by which people decide whether or not to communicate further.

In some settings, where the parity has already been established (pre-qualification via joint group membership - they are at the same convention, belong to the same church or are at a group specific to your invisible minority), you've already cut through the primary reason for tribescanning: safety. Tribescanning now serves to establish subtler levels of parity. At a science fiction convention, your trick is to find out "literature geek or media fan?", not "are they geek-friendly". The object has changed. It is no longer about not weirding out someone in the mainstream. It's now to find out where their interests lie, before you bore a Trekker with an analysis of the work of Arthur C. Clarke (although in my experience, in SF geek culture, there is plenty of overlap of interests).

Suppose you are going to tribescan at a gay pride parade. Your trick is to find out, "gay or straight ally?" or which social camp of gay, not "are they going to stomp my head or not". People *in* church social settings don't bring up church as much as people outside of church settings, who are trying to establish whether or not you go to the same church.

But outside of those settings, it's all small talk. You are still struggling to establish synchrony and parity.

For example, if a stranger says, "Did you see last night's episode of The Apprentice?" it means something completely different from if a friend asks you the same question.

The stranger doesn't really care that you did or didn't. They're looking for volumes of information "between the lines", without being too direct about it. If you catch the ball and throw it back - "Yeah!! I'm glad Jen C finally got fired - what a moron!", you've established some parity - you both watch "The Apprentice" - although you may have given too much information. Again, they didn't want to know what you actually thought.

The book "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker talks about advanced tribescanning and rapport - that victimizers, con artists, and rapists often have a very keen sense of these techniques, and will do whatever they can to force rapport. They create an artificial sense of rapport with the other person, establishing "we're in the same boat together".

Most people seem to get their food-for-small-talk from television, which may be the ultimate safe topic among strangers. Which TV shows they watch can tell you volumes, without the person actually saying they are gay, Christian, conservative, working class. It's also less threatening than asking a person what they read, although "what books do you read" follows "which TV shows do you watch".

The Dark Side of the Farce

2009-01-07T00:13:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd reprint this from my days on the school newspaper. Although now at 35, I think in other terms than whether or not to be a Goth, I think it applies to much of the talk that's been going on in my communities, about "lightwork" vs. "darkwork".

I've since realized that Gandhi and Hitler are not examples of a "lightworker" and a "darkworker". They had the same motivation. The intention to do what you think is good for the rest of us, is probably at root of more evil than the actual intention to be out for yourself. But that's a topic of another post.

~~

Somebody, a long time ago, tried to call me a "Goth". I countered that calling myself something would take the fun out of being a non-conformist. And if I'm going to spend some time in the darker side, I'd prefer it to be the dark side of my choosing as opposed to somebody else's prepackaged Dark Side. But what IS the Dark Side, anyway? The real Dark Side isn't in anything which can be bought at Hot Topic.

The spiral of Passion, Death, Enlightenment, the Sacred and the Profane is part of the most primal myths that make us. Since white is the combination of all color, all of this - the sum total of everything, profane and distasteful included - is the Light Side.

The Dark Side are those among us who tell you that you will meet some horrible, supernatural fate if you do not do exactly as they say every Sunday.

The Dark Side is the force that makes anything at all "all the rage". The Dark Side is when one person feels compelled to look, act, or act just like some other person.

The Dark Side was the Nazi view of a perfect, sanitized, obedient humanity that all looked the same.

The Dark Side are those among us who tell you that you will meet some horrible, supernatural fate if you do not do exactly as they say every Sunday.

Hell is on Earth, because people are creating a hell where we turn to a fake father or mother figure for our basic counsel because our own collective will, spirit and voice have been beaten out of us. Creating a hell where human beings do not make their own decisions or their own choices about such basic things as how to raise their children or who to sleep with.

In fact, even the so-called "oppressed" are as guilty of creating this Hell as those who would take their rights from them. The more militant aspects of the Gay Pride movement is an example of this. In defending the right to a companionship style of one's choosing, a lot of people adopt this rhetoric that says you have to look a certain way, act a certain way, and listen to a certain type of music. Isn't the whole point human rights and the right to be with whoever you choose to be with, period? This kind of militant thinking existing on both sides would lead to a world in which either gay people are persecuted or straight people are persecuted.

In any case, controlling a human being's basic right to do whatever they wish with their body, to seek their own counsel and to seek whatever type of companionship they choose with whomever they choose is the most basic and assured way to create a society of willing sheep who can't think for themselves, who will be easily led around by the first charismatic leader (whether it's a Hitler, a Stalin or the biggest one of all, Mr. Dollar). Then it will take another equally charismatic leader such as a Gandhi or a Moses or a Dalai Lama to free them.

But the point is, people will still need to be lead. We will spend the millennia torn between the Gandhis and the Hitlers. A Gandhi will free us from a Hitler, then when that system falls (because all systems seem to do, eventually, no matter how well intentioned) another Hitler will come and take his place and it'll take another Gandhi to set us free.

An example of where this can ultimately go is that there was once a society living under an oppressive, totalitarian tsar. It took a group of highly dedicated, idealistic individuals to get rid of this jerk. Then - lo and behold - eventually another oppressive totalitarian system took the place of the previous.

As long as we're caught in this struggle, we are still playing a game of Follow The Leader. Neither side is right or wrong or good or evil. Just the side you're on. Perhaps the human being is made for something more than this. Such as self-determination. Maybe, one day in the distant future, we'll collectively be ready for it.

The Cheap Suit Brigade of God

2009-01-07T00:05:00.000-08:00

We're about due for a new religion. It's inevitable.

Despite the intentions of the original writers of any doctrine, who may have very well intended good, doctrine ultimately falls prey to the one unavoidable fact of the highly organized society: the human need to organize and contain other humans within heirarchies.

The Dark Side are those who beat the spirit out of humanity, then give humanity an artificial spirit to replace the spirit that they robbed us of.

Institutionalized religion is the most effective and elegant means of containing humans within hierarchies, and rendering their teeming numbers more manageable. It accomplishes several purposes at once:

1. It tells people what to do with the Four F's (fighting, fleeing, feeding and sex). By doing so:

2. It conditions people from a very young age to be blind to their own internal counsel and to replace this counsel with a higher force such as the three G's: God, Guns and the Government.

I'm not a proponent of institutionalized Atheism, either, in the name of Freedom - or in the name of anything else, for that matter.

Of course, we all know that those thousands of Tibetan monks and nuns who were tortured, killed, raped and had their monastaries destroyed were all giving their lives in the name of Freedom, right?

Institutionalized dogma, in the end, does one thing: it tells you how to think, regardless of the form it comes in.

And what about the eternal battle of good versus evil, light versus dark? The Dark Side are those who beat the spirit out of humanity, then give humanity an artificial spirit to replace the spirit that they robbed us of. That is the real Dark Side. Enlightened wisdom eventually and inevitably gets regurgitated by the "System" in some completely unrecognizable form.

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of things such as Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu iconography reprinted on t-shirts and offered for sale at such stores as "Hot Topic". Wasn't the point of the teachings of Buddhism, and of the transcendent ideals of Hinduism, to look somewhere aside from Without for your counsel - and to shun the Worldly for the spiritual and intellectual?

Christianity, Buddhism and Communism all evolved in environments which, at the time, were perceived to be oppressive. But as more and more people latched onto the new ideologies, it became inevitable that politics at large would seize upon the opportunity to create a more tractable, idiotic mass by taking advantage of the new cult and making it the state religion or dogma.

So, with this pattern in mind, I assert that we're about due for another big religious movement, because it's followed this pattern all throughout history: spiritual seeker creates doctrine, doctrine is adopted by hierarchy, hierarchy reinterprets doctrine, next spiritual seeker forms new movement to escape previous hierarchy.

I have an idea for the next big religious movement. The next generation of spiritual seekers will be long-haired people in business suits, because they'll have to be such to rebel against the latest crop of shaven-headed groupies wearing polyester Buddhist robes that they bought at Hot Topic. To properly rebel against the materialistic ethic, they'll buy their suits from Salvation Army or buy cheaply made suits.

The next religion will be the Cheap Suit Brigade of God. But it won't end there. We'll have to establish a dogma that tells us what to do with ourselves, or the government won't give us a tax break. One universalist-themed, non-dogmatic religious organization, located in Arizona, is having trouble with the government because of this very law - the IRS is demanding that they construct a doctrine in order to receive their tax benefit. I can assume that the Cheap Suit Brigade will face the same complications.

We will have to have some means of supporting our new religion. I propose a 10 percent tithe of the parishioners' income so the clergy can have a place to live. To support ourselves, we'll start selling watches with the Cheap Suit Brigade logo, and enlist the support of several corporate heads.

Then someone will have to create a breakaway cult to rebel against us. They'll have to be nudists, because everything else has already been done.

-- This is from an article I wrote for my school newspaper years ago. Some stuff may no longer be relevant. Just reposting some stuff to get this blog started.

I'm a special Buddha, just like you... only specialler!

2009-01-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

(I am reposting this from an old blog of mine, sensiblemystic.blogspot.com, because I can't figure out how to log into that account!)

A reflection that happened during the time I tried to be Buddhist, which was on and off for several years. I don't mean to disparage all Westerners who practice Buddhism. Buddhism isn't meant for one group of people. This was merely my observation in a couple of different sanghas I sat with.

A sangha would start off as a mix of Asian and Western. But then a curious phenomenon always happened. The Westerners always took over, took up the most space, talked the loudest, and became the "experts". Many regarded the Asian practicioners (especially the monks) as "cute little men" or in some other patronizing and demeaning way.

These same Westerners purchased malas (prayer beads) made of semiprecious stones.
They practiced vegetarianism with militant fervor, even using it as a way to state their superiority to their Asian co-parishioners. If they could be vegan, all the better. They wore clothing that trumpeted their enlightened sensibilities about the environment. They all had Relationship Problems. Many of them struggled with "am I gay? Am I straight? Should I be celibate?", never really coming to any real conclusion. A large number were single, and lonely, but didn't seem to even notice that there were other single, lonely people of compatible sexual preference and gender configuration, in the room with them. When it comes to love, they were like the Preta, who are condemned to starving through eternity but are cursed so that the slightest taste of food will make them choke.

They bragged about what lama they practiced with, how many expensive empowerments they'd had, how many retreats they took. When they couldn't trumpet their wealth, they trumpeted their uniqueness and specialness in some way... they talked about what made them different.

These "Specialtons" were typically in their twenties, fresh on the tails of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts - many of whom have now left that movement in order to protest the war in Iraq.

Like all "Specialtons" they listened to indie pop music. They were middle class kids who were smarter than the other kids, their parents never loved them enough, and they had problems with relationships, and they couldn't really find an ideal job (and didn't really need to because their parents would keep supporting them into their forties),
and in general, in common with the Buddha's First Noble Truth, life just plain sucked. They tried being a Wiccan as a teenager, but that was passe. Now being a Buddhist made them special. And they had to remind all their non-Buddhist friends how they were Buddhists. All The Damn Time.

Being a Buddhist variety of Specialton meant that you could have all the holier-than-thou crap of your Christian friends, but stay counterculture and be very cool about it.

In fact, all the arguments about homosexuality and abortion, took place among the Westerners. They argued the issues the loudest, to the embarrassment of everyone else. They argued the issues with the monks. The Western monks usually were the ones to give the most satisfactorily contrarian answers. And this would make the followers angry. "Why can't we just pick and choose the parts of THIS religion that we want, and throw out the rest," they'd argue. And ironically, the monks weren't even as contrarian as their sangha would've liked. They would tend to give a reaction equivalent to... "Meh."

"So you're AGAINST abortion. I knew it!"

"Meh."

"So you're not?"

(shrug) "...meh."

Like in any religion, these fervent new followers would project all of their neuroses, and parent-complexes onto the monks, who would nod beatifically as if to say, "OK, whatever you want to think," which is of course one of the reasons why Buddhism appeals to so many Westerners. You can have as much baggage as you want, but you're to blame for it. The religion didn't saddle you with it from birth/confirmation/First Communion. It's all yours.

Where this all comes in:

Apart from the liking of indie pop music, I was one of these kids.