One more thing... You can tell you are in an urbane academic neighborhood when someone mail-tags the bathroom of a restaurant, but they only use authentic German packing labels.

Just had to note that.

I think the loss of weight of my hair on my brain has somehow helped free the flow. I've been walking along the mildly infamous University Avenue strip, since I had my hair semi-sheered after a two-month presence of the Jewfro, and I've had some clearly interesting thoughts (most of which will take some considerable hammering before I can record them here lucidly.) Now logic from this field experiment would dictate that I should get my head fully shaved for full pressure release. But considering how klutzy a child was, the top of my skull probably looks like the topography of Mars under the hair. For some reason the Post-Auto Accident Kojak look doesn't so appealing. Plus, I'd have to give up wearing my fedora, and I can't do that. If God sees my clearly uncovered head, He will finally notice me as the heretic I am, and I'll get a well-deserved smiting. I know He's been saving up since I had the double bacon-cheeseburger on Yom Kippur when I was 17.

I've been really thinking about solitude. I'm not sure if I am mixing up quietude and solitude, or looking for the former while actually needing the latter, and vice versa. I really need to reexamine my current definitions, as it's apparent that these are two concepts I've defined badly through the years. I believed that social withdrawal was solitude, so I could and justify spending the vast majority of my time alone in the couple comfort zones I've established by habit. My current reevaluation of cannabis use non-recreationally, outside the home comfort zone, has been telling, where I have confused voluntary vegetation with fruitful silence. Quietude is really the most difficult of the two to confront, since I believed for most of my life, I don't know what quiet really is. It's really hard, verbal or written, to describe what it feels like when your head doesn't ever "turn off." There is this hyperawareness of the undifferientated thoughts, perceptions, and intuitions that roil just below the surface of the human mind. I have a compulsion to examine and analyze everything around me in intricate and philosophical way, so that mental morass feels to me heavier than it should be. The surreal disjointed montage dreaming that keeps me from restful sleep, I've taken to be what happens when the body shuts down for the night, and the insomniac mind filters all that unspent energy through itself alone. Notice must be made here for my inability to understand how others think, process-wise.
For solitude, I will have to find some way to maximize seperation to compensate for solitude. I really wish I could rent a cabin in the woods, and such, but my economic and temporal means instruct me otherwise. I just don't want to define any of this absolutely. After I finished my last entry, and went on that walk; I wandered up toward Volunteer Park, and found my way up to the top of the bricked-in water tank, to the observation deck. No one else was up there, and I sat down on a bench facing the central view of the Space Needle, and the bay behind, and I really think I was alone and quiet for those few moments. There I was, surrounded really on all signs of human density, with the noise thereof. Below the tower was a road into the park, so cars roared by, windows down in the Summer heat, and music blasting, and yet I felt a mild serenity, for which any level of peace is rare for me.

In the end, I guess I suffer from the common ailment for fellow Travellers, who after sweating and crying their way from one developmental phase to another, confront the amount of work still ahead, at square one of the newest cycle. I know how pretenscious that always sounds, but hard to describe it otherwise. Then, it is ego that makes this the bitch, since I can't easily face that after everything I've done and learned, it was to get to some place where I had to disown alot of what I did and learned. And I fucking hate feeling wrong. No wonder, this way isn't for everyone, since I've come to believe that most humans fucking hate being wrong.

Just a week in review note here: I did place an ad on the much vaunted craigslist site under "activities," inviting Seattle's freethinkers and apostates for some coffee and consciousness. My one (and only) response so far came from an atheist and Situationalist. Don't that beat all?

As I keep working around my neural blocks, and directly confronting my conditional responses, it is playing holy hell with my energy levels, as this week will attest. Twice, I got really angry for no good reason, got it in check, and nearly collapsed afterward. Literally. My knees buckled when I had to slam down being pissed over work, since I have the least amount of control over that five-ton sack of bullshit. And once I did pass out, somewhat. After coming home from work on Wednesday, I got myself riled up with some defiant musical selections, and one hour after arriving home, I fell onto my bed and slept for three hours. And this is still early in the game. If I owned any chainsaws, I would have locked them up by now. Otherwise, I've found I'm alot more in a positive flow than I have been of late. I put up an add for fellow head travellers in craigslist in hope to get a better dialogue going. The big thing I am pondering is looking for a solo space for a soon weekend, and maybe fast and go off the grid, as the expression goes. Much as I love living in this communal house, I miss the opportunity for solitude. I am still very bummed about not being able to do the sense dep, so I am considering other angles.

I'm bordering on current events burnout again, as I just can't take in the cyclical failure of humanity to understand perspective. Look at the space shuttle. The news is ablaze with American Pride that we managed to launch the US orbital Edsel without too much of it falling off, and NASA neurosis runs rampant. The US gets a craft to the International Space Station for the first time in two years, which is a year later than the station mattered. Manned space ventures have become utterly political, while small robots do some nice work, but the Hubble waits for someone to load another quarter into the slot for fifteen more minutes viewing. Its all about the spectacle, while whatever true gains humanity can gain from frontierism is lost. I know the ocean is considered a frontier too, but the sea will be a wet desert of life before we figure out what it means. So we might as well forget physical frontiers as a challenge to push human development for least a half-century. I have a feeling the first manned mission to Mars will be sponsored by Nokia and Pepsi One. I think all this waste of literal space is just an extension of the Establishment grasping desperately to hold on to a changing world. Space travel is only useful as a trophy on the mantlepiece, and anything else might reach further than those who define the boundaries of the political world feel they can control. Sad. Very Sad.

No wonder that humanity has pretty much mined out the gold of the past, and is left polishing what is really iron pyrite. So much of the world's conflict seems to be the recent past vs. the ancient past, with nobody realizing the past in any form is dead. That's what tradition is, really, badly frozen time, not stored or perserved, the ice crystals of the present invade the body of the memory and burst all living cells, to make room. What pisses me off so much about nostalgia expressed through fashion and media, is that whatever feeling defined that social moment is so long dead, that nothing is left but the false hope of substance. When I was much younger, I did do the Society for Creative Anachronism, but it was more an excuse to camp out and do some underage drinking. I mean, come on, I'm a Jew. Being Jewish in the past just plained sucked. Nobody wanted the Jews around for long, and if they did it was to do the economic crap they thought was below them. Jews never really had glory days, just times when we weren't being invaded and massacred as much as usual. How can you find any potential in the past? Whatever potential was expended to the kinetic, so that more potential could be stored for the present and future.

I think I will finish my beer.

A little work, some shrinkage, and now caffienated wanderings.... a wholy sound Tuesday. Avram weighs more than I should carry on my back, but I wanted to get out and both blog and walk.

It's been an odder day, though, with this unexplainable edginess that borders on amphetamine sketchiness. It might be arising as I tug and twang on nerves, awakening some subconcious neural connection that feels really old. It's a horrid thought if this is some childhood thing, which means the behaviour is was probably switched on all the time back then. Still, might have been necessary, considering my placement on the youth social scale was below psycho-geeks, and just above those who never took off their trenchcoats. Least I'm hoping that is what this is. Honestly, alot of personality reactions are simply inexplicable lately. Long as I don't take up a meat cleaver, and run after men yelling, "Play Misty for me, lover!" I should be alright.

I'll expect more of this, realistically, as I explore around the edges of my psyche, while I build a basic set of new skills. Square one time. Just sitting quietly is a humongous challenge. I'm considering if I want to take some kind of classes in meditation, I just have to find one open-minded, and not loaded down with obtuse New-Ageist claptrap, or badly interpreted Orientalism for the block-headed Westerner. There is a Zen Buddhist temple in Queen Anne, I think. That's pretty much what I want, the skill of just sitting there and being quiet as you filter out perception into purity on mind. I have to trace back in prep further, still. Like taking the stiffness out of my body along with the stiffness of my mind. Back pain is a hell of a distraction. I actually did physical therapy exercises yesterday. I am working over my resistance on yoga, which I always believed was contradicted by my hyperactivity. Translated, I convinced myself I twitch too much for yoga. And I will have to start cutting corners to afford any of these options.
I'm having a harder time in principle with this physical angle, since I've lived so much in the "Body is Meat" cyberpunk-esque mindframe, and anyways, there is plenty of evidence, how this path is beat by many an organic Seattle liberal, wandering around in Birkenstocks, with a rolled up exercise mat stuffed in their knit Peruvian backpacks. As a Western Anarchist, the right path would better involve getting so drunk on bad booze that I go blind, and have a philosophical epiphany when I am peeing on my combat boots in a scuzzy alley behind a gay dive bar. But I don't hold my drink that well.

Maybe I can just rent myself out as a tipsy heretic for parties and Bar Mitzvahs, to give any urban gathering that proper overdramatic pretenscious flair.

Time to walk.

Ah, hail the return to the new grand Friday tradition. It's good to be at the German tavern after work. I'm going to blog... and drink... and await the arrival later of the Indomitable I, who will be joining me for a few half-liters. The last few hours of work, I was sure that my head wasn't going to explode, but go right to total instant vaporisation. Beer and sausage soften the impact. Also helps that I'm finally losing that disjunctive mind-reality mode that I've had since I woke this morning. Since I've shifted into this more consciousness responsive space, I've not slept really well, honestly.
The hyperactivity insured that I'd never been good at getting to bed, and moreso, staying asleep at times. But this is something else. The hyperactivity usually drowns my sleep in quasi-dreaming that is more like a light-REM perceptual overflow that comes out more like some bad pastiche movie, in which I don't usually even show up. It's more like I'm watching from the cinematographer's chair. The only meaning I've ever drawn is a reminder of why I used to believe to view my movie as scenes and filler in some unknown film script. I remember even less of this stuff than I do of my "meaningful" dreams. One night I slept for four hours where Lucille Ball and the guy from Circuitry Man drove across the some alien desert in a VW bug, that might or might not have been Herbie, the Love Bug. Even more often, my sleep is haunted by odd tactile mirages, ranging from feeling like I am on a roller coaster, to the sensual touching of phantom hands. For reasons like this, I've taken my dreams, with the rare few that are so vivid and indistinguishable from the "real," with a grain of salt. I can count the rare powerful dream that I can recall two hours after I awake on two hands.... so when I have like five of them over a fortnight, it is worth nothing, including two consecutive over the last two nights.
The most unsettling was the night before last when I dreamt I was being scolded on my less than healthsome habits by a couple women, who I am sure I knew who they where, but lost in awaking. I was very physically uncomfortable and was sunk into some kind of pillowed seat. I remember being told not to light up a cigarette because I has someone else to think of now. That is when I looked down at my belly (which is not exactly lean in the first place,) and realized I was several months pregnant or more. That's when I awoke, and I had to walk around for a little while, before I could attempt to sleep again. I wonder what else I forgot about it. I dare not really try to interpret it without some assistance, like a dream symbol dictionary. But, I'm sure this isn't an uncommon male dream, even if I am gay. But something about it has niggled into my psyche like the proverbial sand in the swimtrunks. Last night, all I can clearly recall was bawling my eyes out in pure emotional release, listening to some music, with those who represented a continuum of my friends I have had over the years. I've wondered if I wasn't dredging up something about the intense group therapy sessions I had to go through not long after the Great Jewish-American Texas Meltdown. When I awoke, I was sure I had been dreaming all night, and it must be close to my wake-up time at 5:30 AM, but it was barely minutes after one o'clock. The other two, I can't attest to much but the feeling like someone had scoured my being with iron wool. I know from my ex-boyfriend, and others, that I talk fervently in my sleep, but I've awoken alot lately finishing sentences out-loud that I had been speaking in dream. I know one I had been arguing impassioned with someone, so much that I was yelling at the top of my lungs, and I was sure I had been shouting still when I awoke suddenly. I checked with NP but he didn't hear anything, so I'm not sure. I guess the transitional verbal exchange is just alot more startling than I let on. The other one, I awoke to the end of a talk on existentialism.
At some level, I shouldn't be surprised, considering dreaming can be one of the few purer conduits between our mind and our sensory systems, that is seperate from the physicality limitations that things like time and direction hold us out of the fourth conscious circuit and above. I really should expect it to get more bizarre as I progress. Dreams feel like sometimes the only place where Post-Enlightenment psyches can still meet with the myth-symbol reality that was more understood by our ancestors, in that place where the metaphysical mingled with the physical. Least it makes sense why so many religions are spawning these zealous literalist movements who seem to have no idea about the living allegories that are their holy books. I find something gained in knowing least one space exists where the observed and the observing meet to exchange meaning. No wonder dream-life, and being-life clash so hard. There really is no way to know how those who came before interacted with the multi-phasic reality, suffering in a much harder and immediate world, trying to expand consciousness without any of the overbearing scientific linguistic acrobatic we tangle in.
I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't consider taking mushrooms or peyote. They don't hold the exact stigmata that LSD holds. The biggest problem is that I'd have to set up a very controlled environment, with low outside interference, and do it with someone experienced. This is alot to ask for a guy who lives in a communitarian household. I really should reach out to other seekers, and expand my limited network. The bummer of the week is that the place with the two sense dep tanks is temporarily closed for relocation. I really wanted to do that this week.
I don't know. I won't lie that I am afraid of my own dreams, and of anything that could induce visions along the same neural pathways. It's hard enough to read one probability, let alone slide into an alternative reality that is simple unmanifested, or impossible to understand in the mental-emotional framework I am limited to, right now. But the curiousity does outweigh the fear, for once.

Just blogging before I meet an friend to go see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

Not so long ago, I used to believe that there could be no great powerful conspiracies, simply because people screw things up well enough alone, and that the powerful never seem to really agree since that would make them less powerful to do so. I'm reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail which first put forth to the popular readers, the idea that Jesus didn't die on the cross, that he ran with the Magdalene to France, married, and his bloodline started a Frankish dynasty whose lineage are still influencing European affairs to this day through secret occult knowledge. Okay, well least it makes more sense than David Icke's Venusian lizard-human progeny run the Earth theory. And lest we forget the Illuminated Ones, who are the bad-good-bad concern of the Discordians and aluminum-hat wearers everywhere. I've come to a realization through reflecting on my past attiude, a tenet of the new faith that has shaken my world.. No, even though I am becoming more sure that there is something to all this conspiracy stuff. The Bilderbergers, and the Bohemian Grove don't just get together to sip brandy and play high-stakes backgammon. I believe now that NO-ONE is in control and really ever has been in control . Nobody behind the helm of Spaceship Earth, no shadow masters fulfilling the grand design. Not that they may not be trying, or that the Establishment doesn't influence the course of modern human affairs, in a myriad of benign and malign ways, just They, the Man, do not control a damn thing. It's the only thing that makes sense.
Yesterday, I listened over the radio as the new meat over at the main building, where I used to work, completely botch and bumble their way through the simplest of duties, knowing they were most likely hired by the equally incompetent management for their sycophancy and simplicity. My radio died a final horrible death, while a new radio sat a few inches away from it, but remaining mostly useless due to the fact that property management allowed themselves to get so shafted by the telecommunications company that no signal boosters will be installed for my building until probably after they finish in court. It was one of those days where you were sure that cartoonish steam would shoot out your ears, and the top of your skull would explosively launch into orbit. But the subsequent near nervous collapse wasn't from anger overload but from sudden rage flush as I asked the question which of late has been so destructive to my static ways, "What the hell am I doing?" Here I was getting mad at something so patently absurd. Here I was witnessing the flowering of business thought, that most sacred of American instutions, the management model. Nobody was truly in control of my site, the operation hovering on disaster only diverted by the tepid winds of security providence, and everyone involved knew this truth, but yet onward went the plague ship without a navigator, the timbers rotting away.
What was worse was that the same thought applied just as relevantly to me as to the Powers That Be. Inside me, I still believe that control equals order, order equals reality, and therefore control equals reality. That everything answers to a plan, be it the randomness of the universe, or the will of a Supreme Power, and all I needed to do to make it all work was will myself to make order happen, even if I have to shrink my universe to the size of a small walk-in closet to make it happen. I will not accept that choice is reality, and choice is not order. I do possess free will, but only if I real the probablities, chose the best state, good or ill, and not mix up results with causality. Nothing really does matter, but this isn't nihilism, it is perceptual apostasy. I don't travel though life, with its other people and other events, mundane and profound, I collide with their choices as much as they collide with mine. Human magnetism. I should let it instill wonder, and not fear. As my friend said to me yesterday night, I'm doing what I feel is right, but that doesn't mean it's any easier. And what does this mean to me emotionally? If it doesn't have emotional impact, I have to consider it an intellectual construct, and intellectual constructs are not real. The menu is not the entree.
But I doubt this means the Jesus lizards aren't still out to get me.

The myth is not the meaning. I've been thinking on that alot too. Let me get back to you on that. I think I really should read MacLuhan soon as I finish Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

Sitting around nearly all weekend in a narcotic daze is hard to call a serious entheogenic experiment, but then I'm really doing all this half-assedly, like a blind man throwing a handful of darts at the board, all at the same time, and figuring the odds are something will hit. Then, I'm also shaking off some culturally preconceptions of usage, in the sense that drugs like cannabis have always been considered escapist leisure activity, with no redeemable qualities per se. Then there is the fact that I actually spent a couple hours at work today wondering if I should actually say I smoked hash this weekend, as if the eyes of The Man are just waiting for a 34 year-old security guard with latent anarchist tendencies to slip up and bring me down for rebelling against the powers-that-be. Right now, I can only aspire to be that dangerous. You know, like Abbie Hoffman dangerous. This is supposed to be an honest, if humorous, chronicle of my life, so if I cadge words for some social or legal fear, then I am going against the freedoms I aspire. I smoked alot of hash this weekend. If the Man was coming for me, he would have gotten me for my plan to use the homeless to watch the nation's borders. Satire, the deadliest art.
My results are slipshod more because of my lack of linear method, than by reliance on alternative tools. Not that I should create an intricate experimental-functional model before I do anything, because that would just feed the stasis I am trying to overcome. Even if I had access, and willingness, to use the "true" entheogens, like the psychedeics, I would still probably produce scattered results. I wish there was some Jewish shamanic tradition I could follow, but beyond Kabbalistic breathing exercises, I'm shit out of luck. (Even if I enjoy the image in my head of sitting with a group of Jewish elders, dressed only in loincloths, prayershawls, and odd fuzzy hats, around two huge sabbath candles, chanting a primitive Adon Olam, and sucking on pickled herrings until I pass out and have a vision of Rabbi Akiva.) So I will continue with cannabis and its derivatives, and keep researching into herbs and other substances that can add clarity without taking me way too out of my head. Least for now. I'm still trying to achieve what I am little ready for, expecting the arrival of the truth with the immediacy and immanence of a born-again Christian, thinking some times on the knees with the arms waving in the air is enough to bring God. Much as I despise it, just treating my body better, and sitting in silence some everyday might produce more. Then I can build on that foundation. I have to reexamine my unwillingness to do yoga, and that sort of thing, too.
It's not that this weekend's dabbling with hash was unrewarding or unfruitful. First off, I found that the time-dilation effect allowed me to "turn down the volume" on my backthoughts, due to the dispersion of tension, and construct some interesting lines of inductive logic and emotional deconstruction, but since I am still trying to reach further than my language will take me, I ended up losing the threads when the next node was beyond my mind to grasp. But that I could envision how I got there was a gain in itself. Probably the most interesting observation came from a repeat of last weekend's sensory quasi-deprivation, with the earplugs, prone, in a dark room. I didn't aim this time for some state of silence, because I realized I was still using some half-cocked Occidental definition, and just tried to hear my thought process. Basically to listen to my transmission from my neural net. It wasn't until today that I found the right metaphor to describe it. It's like being outside a building's generator room, hearing all the machinery humming away beyond concrete, feeding air and water to all parts of the building, but it's not like I am trying to get inside the generator room, but that the generator room is outside, and I can't get past the concrete. I know there is a door, but I can't see the door clearly, let alone the lock on the door. I think if I can practice meditation, in whatever form seems best, and I work out the pain and discomfort that comes from physical disuse, then I might be able to better refine the entheogenic experiences. But being pragmatic, I think I'll keep trying cannabis, on the side. I have to allow for the room to be surprised. So much of my life is not so much being smacked by epiphany, as it is having the baby grand piano of revelation dropped on my head from several stories.

I'm good long as I hold onto the marvel that I've come to such a place in my life, to be able to experiment like this. In alot of cases, the hypothesis of a life like mine usually ends up in terminal expiration before any results occur.

The word entheogen is a modern term derived from two Ancient Greek words, ενθεος (entheos) and γενεσθαι (genesthai). Entheos means literally "in God", more freely translated "inspired". The Greeks used it as a term of praise for poets and other artists. Genesthai means "to cause to be". So an entheogen is "that which causes (a person) to be in God". The translation "creating the divine within" that is sometimes given is not quite correct -- entheogen implies neither that something is created (as opposed to just perceiving something that is already there) nor that that which is experienced is within the user (as opposed to having independent existence).
In its strictest sense the term refers to a psychoactive substance (most often some plant matter) that occasions enlightening spiritual or mystical experience, within the parameters of a cult, in the original non-pejorative sense of cultus. In a broader sense, the word "entheogen" refers to artificial as well as natural substances that induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional shamanic inebriants, even if it is used in a secular context.

Terminology and uses of the word
The term "entheogen" was coined in 1979 by a group of ethnobotanists and scholars of mythology (Carl A. P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Richard Evans Schultes, Jonathan Ott and R. Gordon Wasson). The term was coined as a replacement for the terms "hallucinogen" (popularized by Aldous Huxley's experiences with mescaline, published as The Doors of Perception in 1953) and "psychedelic" (a Greek neologism for "soul-expanding", coined by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, a friend of Huxley's). Ruck et al. argued that the term "hallucinogen" was inappropriate due to its etymological relationship to words relating to delirium and insanity. The term "psychedelic" was also seen as problematic, due to the similarity in sound to words pertaining to psychosis and also due to the fact that it had become irreversibly associated with various connotations of 1960s pop culture.
The meanings of the term "entheogen" were formally defined by Ruck et al.:
In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be shown to have figured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated entheogens, but in a looser sense, the term could also be applied to other drugs, both natural and artificial, that induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional entheogens.
Since 1979, when the term was proposed, its use has become widespread. In particular, the word fills a vacuum for those users of entheogens who feel that the term "hallucinogen", which remains common in medical, chemical and anthropological literature, denigrates their experience and the world view in which it is integrated. Use of the strict sense of the word has therefore arisen amongst religious entheogen users, and also amongst others who wish to practice spiritual or religious tolerance.
The use of the word "entheogen" in its broad sense as a synonym for "hallucinogenic drug" has attracted criticism on three grounds. On pragmatic grounds, the objection has been raised that the meaning of the strict sense of "entheogen", which is of specific value in discussing traditional, historical and mythological uses of entheogens in religious settings, is likely to be diluted by widespread, casual use of the term in the broader sense. Secondly, some people object to the misuse of the root theos (Greek: god) in the description of the use of hallucinogenic drugs in a non-religious context, and coupled with the climate of religious tolerance or pluralism that prevails in many present-day societies, the use of the root theos in a term describing non-religious drug use has also been criticised as a form of taboo deformation. Thirdly there are some substances that at least partially fulfil the definition of an entheogen that is given above, but are not hallucinogenic in the usual sense. One important example is the bread and wine of the Christian Eucharist.

- from Wikipedia

One more poem from Rumi....

THE ONE TRUE LIGHT

The lamps are different, but the Light is the same: it comes from Beyond.
If thou keep looking at the lamp, thou are lost: for thence arises the appearance of number and plurality.
Fix thy gaze upon the Light, and thou art delivered from the dualism inherent in the finite body.
O though who art the kernel of Existence, the disagreement between Moslem, Zoroastrian, and Jew depends on the standpoint.

Some Hindus brought an elephant, which they exhibited in a dark shed.
As seeing it with the eye was impossible, every one felt it with the palm of his hand.
The hand of one fell on its trunk: he said, "This animal is like a waterpipe.
Another touched its ear: to him the creature seemed like a fan.
Another handled its leg and described the elephant as having the shape of a pillar.
Another stroked its back, "Truly," said he, "this elephant resembles a throne."
Had each of them held a lighted candle, there would have been no contradiction in their words.

I was thinking today about how badly dogma can age. You can change the language the dogma is expressed in, you can modernize the interpretation, but what you still get is dead dogma. I wondered if for that reason, would religion itself have an expiration date? You know the day that either all the followers have died, and no one has replaced them, or the religion is only practiced in one tiny corner of the world. I had a hard time imagining that for religion overall, really, since mortality has a tendency to make humans spiritual, with the whole big after-death trip. Maybe the old style of worship, in one particular way, usually the most hierarchical and dogmatic is stamped with a date.
What one could consider old-school Judiasm had an expiration date. But loosing the Temple in Jerusalem had alot to do with that. I mean, how much of the Torah seems to be devoted to animal sacrifice needed to appease God. The Jews got dispersed, and now, no animal sacrifice. And no side worship of other gods, either. Reading the Jewish prophets made this clear to me, since it seemed like each mouth-of-God came out from the wilderness to lay into the Hebrews for making side bets with foreign gods, and making altars to the old nature gods. The Hebrews would usually not listen, God would smote the Jews with some disaster, and they'd fall in line until they needed the next prophet. Even post-Diaspora Judiasm is no longer the whole of the religion, like how there was really only "The Church" for Christians. Mostly Jews did this because they wanted to drive for business on Saturdays, but only after services, of course. And the traditional ends up as "Orthodox," but then again, even middle-of-the-road Jews are "Conservative."
So I guess I should be comforted that I believe one day fundamental Christianity, with a zealous need for literalism, that has made it more conservative than the prior practice it replaced (even if it did away with guys in funny hats feeding crackers and juice,) will hit that expiration date to become the curdled cottage cheese of faith. I can't deny that some of the Christian sects seem to be getting the lesson of the Jews: Be religious as all heck, but change with the times. The Lutheran wedding that I attended in Spokane was officiated by a woman priest. Other major sects, like the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians, are modernizing, allowing for alternative lifestyles and looser canon. Hell, the birthplace of the Inquisition, just gave the razz to the Catholic Church and gave same-sex marriage equal rights before the law. The recipe for keeping alive seems to be add modernism, influence of other faiths, and social growth, then whip into a thick frothing goo, and pour into the symbolic icon mold. Break the old mold before serving.
Maybe there will be a time when religion is no longer practiced in humanity, but that won't be because we gave up religion, but hopefully because we accepted unity.

I will quite glad when tommorrow comes and this vow of silence will be over. I think I've gotten all I am going to get from this, and it's apparent that my fellow guards think I'm being rude. It's really hard to complain in bad sign language. I might continue with a side experiment, and see how long I can go without complaining. But this might be as good as a vow of silence, since 95% of my lips flapping seem to be bemoaning something or the other. We'll see. The idea is if I keep it routine, make it an unconventional routine.

This is my single communication this weekend, right here on my blog, as this is the longest block of time I have where I have to be totally silent, since I know I am not doing a full vow, considering how much talking I've had to do at work. This experiment has taught a secondary hypothesis: When doing a long-term experiment, use vacation days. It's oddly funny to me how I have to design shorter experiments to balance with time at work, when so much of my life has been humongous blocks of free time, due to the economic leechery from the father. The irony is that I wouldn't be in the right space to do these experiments when I had all the time, because I didn't need to do them when I was not responsible for my life. Anyway, so I have denied myself any comforts from earlier this week, like two hours of TV or blogging, or whatnot, to make up for the fiasco of night three, when I spoke three times, without thinking. And on the most inane things: responding to a farewell, asking if the cats were in the bathroom, and asking are there still cats in the bathroom. (Okay, since it involves, the Great Felini, the Houdini of cats, the last two could be said to be quasi-valid.) But the idea of considering these experiments is working out, I've already came up with three possibles, including a couple hours in a sensory deprivation tank, (unsurprisingly, this being Seattle, there is a place with two of them for hourly rent just 25 blocks from here. And people ask why I never considered living in Iowa?)
Questions have been levied at me since I started this, left unanswered, by those who wonder why I'm doing this. They will be even happier when I can talk, and they find out I have no real idea why I am doing this. I just wondered what it would be like to be quiet. I didn't expect any great profundities to come of this, I was just curious. Anything interesting learned from this experience, is a bonus.
If there is a deeper theme to this as my first larger experiment, is that I'm trying to discover new ways to broaden my field of perception, physical or meta-wise. The odd bit is I really can't do all this, totally humanistic, because as the Sufis say, You can't look at the flame of a candle, without being blinded by the light of God. Is that You? Are you listening? But then, makes sense, since I'm learning that my rejection of authority was so psychically violent, that I was rejecting God forthright, as anything but some nebulous source of cosmic motion. Personally, when I die and I actually end up in Heaven, I'll probably still ask God what is so special about Him.

Old Story goes like this...

A farmer, good man and honest neighbor, was a zealous atheist. He went about his day, in the fields, for year upon year, thinking over and over, "There is no Vishnu. There is no Vishnu." Then when death came upon this man, he was shocked to find himself in the paradise of an afterlife, standing before Vishnu. The farmer asked, "How can I be here, I never believed in You!" And Vishnu replied, "Well, you were thinking of me all the time, weren't you?"

Artist: Talking Heads
Album: Remain in Light - Song Title: Once in a Lifetime
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
wife
And you may ask yourself-Well...How did I get here?
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

Still having alot of problems with speaking thoughts to myself, mostly at work, but day two has shown better results at home. I did nearly have a coronary at work when the LaRoucheites set up a table on the sidewalk in front of my building around lunchtime. Oddly (but Seattle is heavy into the Oddly," Lyndon LaRouche has gathered a local youth brigade who spent many a summer afternoon handing out his arcane pamphlets from a folding table. I never have understood how younger adults have fallen in with such an Old School conspiracy relic, the left-wing's John Birch, considering that LaRouche seems to condemn anything that doesn't come directly from the Golden Age of Athens. But then, the Rev. Moon also takes in new recruits.
I had to tell the LaRoucheites not to cross onto property, and one of them said I should come back on break and talk to him about Lyndon. Vow holding, I just waved him off, but when I went on rove, I was struck with a flush sweat. I twisted in my boots like a junkie who just turned down a fix. Not to confront these guys was probably harder than anything so far. Then again, this is just day two. And if I am this bugged on day two, and at the one place I can talk...

I was thinking all day about this old joke....

A pious man was forced to the roof of his home by a terrible flood, and the water was still rising. When the water reached halfway up his roof, a man in a motorboat came by to take the pious man to safety. "No, No," said the man, "God will save me." Finally the water reached nearly to the top of the roof, and the pious man clung to his chimney. A helicopter flew in and lowered a rescue basket. "No, go on, God will save me," said the pious man. The waters swallowed up the man and he drown. In the afterlife, he angrily went to confront God, "Why didn't You save me?!?" God said, "Well, I sent a boat and a helicopter, didn't I?"

"A Sleep and a Forgetting"

One who has lived many years in the city, so soon he goes to sleep,
Beholds another city full of good and evil, and his own city vanishes from his mind.
He does not say to himself, "This is a new city: I am a stranger here";
Nay he thinks he has always lived in this city and was born and bred in it.
What wonder then, if the soul does not remember her ancient abode and birth-place,
Since she is wrapt in the slumber of the world, like a star covered by clouds? --
Especially as she has trodden so many cities and the dust that darkens her vision is not yet swept away.

- Jalalu'l-Din Rumi

I did it. I took the vow of silence, starting it first thing today. It would be alot more effective if I didn't have to talk at work, but rent reigns supreme, sadly. But I am trying to keep my words to a bare minimum at work, which is damn hard. Not just to chatter with those in the building and such, but not to talk to myself. I've been a solo flyer for so long, work and home, that it is amazing how easy it is to fall into vocalizing thoughts directly from brain to mouth. I found myself unable to think certain things without speaking the thought at the same time. I'd like to solely blame my past hermit tendencies, but if it was that, I wouldn't feel like I want to chew off my foot, with not even a single day of the vow passing. One of my negative tendencies I've elevated to proud celebration is how enamoured I am with the sound of my voice, since I've made a lifestyle out of making sure it is really the only voice I hear. I am not enamoured with my own voice, I am addicted to it. I expect to get the sweats and the shakes as I yank hard on the neurons that help direct this behavior. Language is a wonderful thing, really, considering the amazing complexity of internal and external factors that had to develop in the simian mind for thousands of years just so we can ask where the bathroom is, and watch out for that large bus coming right at you. But like Krishna says, you easily lose sight of the meaning when you revel in the means.
Language as blunt force trauma. Least that's little of a surprise, considering that just having dinner with my parents ranked in decibels somewhere between the first three rows of a The Who concert, and a low-yield thermonuclear device. I tall like a tourist in a farflung land, where I am certain I can convey what I want in my language to them, if I just speak it at the top of my lungs. This is going to be an insane week, because I am feeling already how vunerable I am without my Battle English.
I did finally realize what it is about The Man, owner of the fine house I live in, that always makes me feel somewhat uneasy around him. I used to think it was because he was managing his life so much better than me, or that old universal chestnut, that he was surely getting much more sex than I. But, no, it is because the Man is actually the Anti-Jew. That sounds bad, actually, he is the happiest Nazi in Seattle. Lets say that he could considered the Mirror Jew. In a show of deep geekiness, I will now refer to the alternative mirror universe in Star Trek. You know where people are generally the same beings, but flip-flopped. Except, the Man isn't my evil twin nemesis or anything. It's just that he is so Jewish, at times. He has the monetary sensibilites of a Good Jew, very thrifty, and he tries to keep his business within his circle. And he has the nose of a Morty Fishbein. Okay, I am exaggerating, it's more like an Aaron Greenblatt. Still he is the anti-Jew. He's so damn quiet and concise. He doesn't seem to raise his voice even when he's mad. I nearly had an aneuryism the first few times I called him, because he would only hear me in Trinary, meaning all questions must be answered "Yes," "No, or "Derrr...." I've even picked up this habit in all my calls, and I still feel like I must be rude, if I hang up after the main meat of the call is done, without complaining about my lower lumbar, or waffling more than an Eggo factory. Okay, and there is fact he has the least religious beard I have ever seen.

Just a note, the whole not talking to myself has already worked. I came up with an idea for another life-action. I am going to hold a pie fight. It would be cool if I got a platoon of pastry-pasting people, but I'll work on 3-5 for now. I'll work on the details, since I won't get started until I release myself from this vow. I just need to remind myself that slapstick is a truly empowering thing, when done with abandon. I've been much too serious again. Time to consider a return to Comedy as the truest expression of my beliefs. That, and I really want to see if I can get complete strangers to throw pies at each other.

More to come. I'm offline from chat and other interactives, and I'm avoiding the web. But I still will be checking email, and mostly, writing here in the KPC. I'm interested to see what kind of writing I will produce, when this is my sole point of record and release.

I need to take notes as I go, that's for sure. But I will make a single observation on my first experiment, cannabis and earplugs, combined with being prone in a dark room, produce a ghetto sense deprivation experience. But next time, I need a mild stimulant, so I won't fall asleep. Oh, and then don't get woken up by a 18 pound cat sitting on your chest. Okay, so I'm no John Hurt, but then I'd look really weird as the first Hebrew psychedelic Pillsbury doughboy. But even ten minutes of relative silence can be considered an initial success by how much it rattled me. I'm actually wondering what a vow of silence for say a week would do to me, right now. I'm trying to imagine not hearing my own voice, romancing the language, would be like. As one of Jewish descent, I firmly believe that my head would implode on day five. But I am curious, nonetheless. But I doubt management would be happy the first time I don't direct tell someone where the bathroom is.
But I am thinking I could cull down my words to the bare minimum for a week. I'd still be forced to account for my actions without qualifying them verbally. Hmm.

V. THE NEUROSOMATIC CIRCUIT (The fifth of eight circuits of consciousness described by Dr. Timothy Leary and detailed in Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger I )

When this fifth "body-brain" is activated, flat Euclidean figure-ground configurations explode multi-dimensionally. Gestalts shift, in McLuhan's terms, from linear VISUAL SPACE to all-encompassing SENSORY SPACE. A hedonic turn-on occurs, a rapturous amusement, a detachment from the previously compulsive mechanism of the first four circuits. I turned this circuit on with pot and Tantra.
This fifth brain began to appear about 4,000 years ago in the first leisure-class civilizations and has been increasing statistically in recent centuries (even before the Drug Revolution), a fact demonstrated by the hedonic art of India, China, Rome and other affluent societies. More recently, Ornstein and his school have demonstrated with electroencephalograms that this circuit represents the first jump from the linear left lobe of the brain to the analogical right lobe.
The opening and imprinting of this circuit has been the preoccupation of "technicians of the occult"--Tantric shamans and hatha yogis. While the fifth tunnel-reality can be achieved by sensory deprivation, social isolation, physiological stress or severe shock (ceremonial terror tactics, as practiced by such rascal-gurus as Don Juan Matus or Aleister Crowley), it has traditionally been reserved to the educated aristocracy of leisure societies who have solved the four terrestrial survival problems.
About 20,000 years ago, the specific fifth brain neurotransmitter was discovered by shamans in the Caspian Sea area of Asia and quickly spread to other wizards throughout Eurasia and Africa. It is, of course, cannabis. Weed. Mother Mary Jane.
It is no accident that the pot-head generally refers to his neural state as "high" or "spaced-out." The transcendence of gravitational, digital, linear, either-or, Aristotelian, Newtonian, Euclidean, planetary orientations (circuits I-IV) is, in evolutionary perspective, part of our neurological preparation for the inevitable migration off our home planet, now beginning. This is why so many pot-heads are STAR TREK freaks and science fiction adepts. (Berkeley, California, certainly the Cannabis Capital of the U.S., has a Federation Trading Post on Telegraph Avenue, where the well-heeled can easily spend $500 or more in a single day, buying STAR TREK novels, magazines, newsletters, bumper stickers, photographs, posters, tapes, etc., including even complete blueprints for the starship ENTERPRISE.)
The extraterrestrial meaning of being "high" is confirmed by astronauts themselves; 85% of those who have entered the free-fall zero gravity describe "mystic experiences" or rapture states typical of the neurosomatic circuit. "No photo can show how beautiful Earth looked," raves Captain Ed Mitchell, describing his Illumination in free-fall. He sounds like any successful yogi or pot-head. No camera can show this experience because it is inside the nervous system.
FREE-FALL, AT THE PROPER EVOLUTIONARY TIME, TRIGGERS THE NEUROSOMATIC MUTATION, Leary believes. Previously this mutation has been achieved "artificially" by yogic or shamanic training or by the fifth circuit stimulant, cannabis. Surfing, skiing, skin-diving and the new sexual culture (sensuous massage, vibrators, imported Tantric arts, etc.) have evolved at the same time as part of the hedonic conquest of gravity. The Turn-On state is always described as "floating," or, in the Zen metaphor, "one foot above the ground."

- taken from Deoxy.org website