Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Adonai Elohim
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Adonai Elohenu
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Adonai Melehk
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Adonai Ha'aretz
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, YHVH Tzabaoth
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, YHVH Elohim
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, YHVH Elohim Gibor
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Metatron
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Michael
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Gabriel
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Sandalphon
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Raphael
Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh, Auriel

Kalla Meschiach, Yeshuah Meschiach.

Attended by Six of the Mighty Seven,
I am a Child of Earth and of the Starry Heavens,
But my race is of Heaven alone.

Om Bhu Om Bhuvaha Om Svaha
Om Maha Om Janaha Om Tapaha
Om Satyam Om Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dimahi
Diyo Yonaha Prachodyat

Om Aim Hreem Shreem Shri Lalita Tripurasundari Padukam Poojyami Namah

Om Namaha Shiva
Om Namaha Durga
Om Namaha Kali
Om Namaha Krishna
Om Namaha Vishnu

Shema Y'Israel YHVH Elohenu YHVH Achad!

Hello, all my dear Jewish and Hindu friends. Judgement Day has come and gone and yet here we are.

Part of that could be due to the vile garbage being discussed at various blogs here that we are all imposters to the throne and that the African-Americans and Hispanics are the True 12 Tribes of Israel. Neither pity nor curse them. Love them and understand that they are confused by their short and transient stay on Earth.

Namaste!

Bothering the Bejesus outa Me.

So, tomorrow is judgement day. Oh my. There were so many things I had hoped to do. Probably the best thing I've managed to do is acquire an admirable arsenal and an elephant-load of ammo.

The good pastor that declared Saturday the End....the Hagees of the world, the fundamentalist nutjobs that apparently take every book they read LITERALLY, are just waiting, hoping with baited breath that their self-serving predictions will come to be. Bring on the Beast and Leviathan, Babalon and the Dajjal!

These people are spiritual predators. They have no more answers to the deepest questions than you do, but you just don't know it. You've fallen into a sort of sleep, a deep trance, and you've forgotten your origins. Here. Let me remind you -

"We are children of the earth and of the starry heavens,
  But our race is of the Heavens alone."

Simply walk away from the hate-mongers, the fear-mongers and the True Black Tribes of Israel, all the fundamentalists that would stone a rape victim or a homosexual or an adulterer and find the truth within you.

"That which you find within you will save you. That which you fail to find within you will destroy you."

Prophecy?

After many years, this statement is prophetic enough to be a little scary.

"The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

The sciences, each straining in its own direction have hitherto harmed us little, but someday, the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality and our frightful position therein that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

Lovecraft.

Jesus H. Christ

Welcome to the lunatic fringe! Here, you will find things that will both amaze and nauseate you.

How about an old lady who's had phone service for 30 years, cancels and get a final bill for $5.00. Then, later she gets a "revised" closing bill for $1.13. Then, she asked to have the bill taken out of her dead husband's name and was told it would cost a fee to add her name as the main account holder!

Clearly, I have a robust dislike of capitalism, but what is going on when people, old people, on limited income, get treated like this by people who own yachts and three houses in the mountains?!

Burn this shit down and start all over again. 'Cause if we don't, someone is going to whether that be Middle-Eastern extremists or the Chinese or our own people. Something's got to go and my suggestion would be the corporate fat-cat that should (as my radical Romanian ex-wife used to say) be taken outside, put against a wall and shot. When the world loses its sense of justice, compassion and empathy, it's time for heads to roll, so let's get to rolling.

These people feel invulnerable to any results of their actions. They rule the status quo and live like kings, yet will gladly take away so-called "entitlements" from the old and the poor. They are our representatives yet what they truly represent is themselves and their special interest cronies. Not one of them casts an eye on the future and says "hey...wait a minute." When I read today that SSN will run dry around 2021, I about had an aneurysm. That's right around the time I would be retiring. That's ok...I'll work til I drop dead, but what about others who might have physical limitations, others who are just plain too old and tired to work anymore. No benefits for them?

I supposedly have PTSD, anxiety disorder and bi-polarism. I take a scad of pills every day because of this and the cancer. Chemo has me about wiped out and you know what the corporate bigwigs think about that?
They think I need to work my scheduled hours as if the bottom line of the corporation somehow trumps my health and my life. Well, I say to hell with that. If I have to work til I drop, I will do so but I'm not going to be the most pleasant employee to deal with.

Why don't we stand up and tell these gray-headed goofballs that we've had enough? What are they going to do, send the military after us. Do they really believe that American military men will fire on their wives and children, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters?! It goes to show just how power-crazed and irrational our so-called "leaders" have become.

How I wish that Obama could send Seal Team Six into Congress and the House to do some "housecleaning."

Life As I Know It.

I owe the IRS 6K. Nothing new...it's been over ten years since I made my mistakes and they managed to file a federal tax lien against me but that's as far as it's gone. Guess I'd be willing to do a reasonable amount of jail time if it meant I could get that monkey off my back but I don't think jail is an option. Will I pay it? I don't know. We give away so many billions of dollars to those who openly want us dead that I feel a little indignant having the government after me for $6000.

I've been single (for the most part) for 12 years. I'm growing older now and the beautiful creatures you see on TV, with white hair, in good shape and truly pretty don't actually exist in real life. I've idealized love and have come to terms that I will never find her, therefore I shall remain alone for the remainder of my days. Companionship is awesome, but imagine how a woman would feel if I was like "well, I love your company, I just don't find you appealing to lay down next to." Ouch.

I've been told I have bi-polar disorder (whatever the hell that is.....I have bad moods and good moods like everyone else), anxiety disorder (yeah, I can be a pretty nervous cat), PTSD from the Big One in Northridge in 1995, depression (who doesn't have depression? Life sucks once you scrape away the niceties). Taking an ape-load of medicine but still often sleep til 4 in the afternoon. And the most amazing thing about it is that I appear to be a normal guy, actually a nice guy.

I've been fascinated by the spiritual questions, the perennial questions. Not much else matters to me besides the twenty-five years of questioning the whys, wherefores and hows of existence. I believe, after much studying, that we are part of something so big, so alien and so unlike anything we can imagine that it defies the human language. God? Hardly. What I envision cannot be called "God" because It would not agree with that moniker. Really, it's a personal thing and doesn't warrant much discussion.

Terrorism, war, poverty, disease, and the deep existential unhappiness I encounter in people I meet all are things that bother me. If our mission is to evolve or die, I fear for the worst.

So, I am middle-aged, approaching "old". Have nothing of any monetary value. Have debt from which I cannot escape. I love intensely, but from a distance. I'm in incredibly good shape from my former military days or I'd probably be dead or crippled by now. I believe in god but not in the big Father in the Sky who watches us and is pleased or displeased as if by whim. I do not expect to encounter happiness (in the regular person's definition) for the rest of my days and have a feeling that the future holds some level of dread for each and every one of us.

What an approach to life! Godspeed to you, dear reader - be blessed, and let courage, truth, and love be your allies for all your days.

Hope For Trinity

Heard from an old friend a couple of days ago. Hadn't heard from her for about one and a half years and didn't think much of it since she is a bit of a "free spirit".

Was quite happy to hear from her though, because I had missed her. She related the story of her year to me.
As it turns out, her little girl Trinity had contracted bone cancer and was undergoing what would hopefully be lifesaving chemo and other treatment. Last time I saw Trinity, she was around 4 and was a quiet, adorable little red-head full of playfulness and wonder.

It hit me hard to hear that she spends most of her time just being sick and staring at the ceiling. My own cancer experience is a walk-in-the-park compared to what she's going through and I would wager that her young heart and mind contain more courage to battle through this and sustain life than I have. I sure hope so.

Then it dawned on me that despite my years of searching for the answers that we all yearn to find, I've yet to uncover a satisfactory explanation of why there is evil and suffering in the world. Why the hardened hearts of the status quo don't explode with grief over the plight of these kids (and the thousands who die each day from hunger, preventable disease, and neglect) is beyond me.

So why evil, why pain and suffering in one so young and innocent? Plenty of people have an explanation ranging from "The Fall" to numerous other mythical or theological explanations, but I'm sorry...none of them seem to fit the bill of explaining why suffering is an integral and natural part of life.

The Buddha posited that our suffering comes from craving, from clinging to that which is impermanent and can never satisfy. I've seen this theory in action and know that it makes sense, but I wonder how much sense it makes to a child who has not even lived long enough to conceptualize impermanence?

If today was my last day, I would still struggle with those questions to which there seem to be no workable answers. I think of little Trinity and the thousands like her and can only hope that one day we will rise above the "human condition" to a deeper understanding and a more effective way of dealing with disease and handicap.

Idiotic Genius

Hi, all. I'm a chronic underachiever and thought I'd share that with you, just in case you ever feel like an idiot. I'd like you to know that you are not alone.

I was beat over the head as a child by my parents, my principal, my counselors, and my teachers, all about the same old thing. I supposedly had an IQ of 166 (somewhere like six points beyond Einstein) and yet I had the most absurd trouble with algebra and other advanced mathematics. It was a living hell. IQ points notwithstanding, if I were as smart as Einstein I probably would have had at least an inkling as to what to do with my life.

My interests in boyhood were, pardon me, being a soldier, a cowboy, or an astronaut. English grammar, world history, and math all seemed mundane despite my lack of understanding. Now, after having gained decades of "wisdom" I see the error of my ways. Since it appears that the "language" of the "universe" and "nature" is actually based on numbers, I find mathematics incredibly fascinating in a kabbalistic kind of way. What I wouldn't give to be able to frantically scrawl calculations and equations on a whiteboard while looking solemn and important. I'm a physicist who missed his calling.

All things that were boring to me as a child, I now find fascinating. Ancient history, circa bronze age and beyond, is one of my favorites. English and grammar, despite my apparent lack of punctuation knowledge, remain my strong points but even then I can often find it difficult to come up with a one-line blog. So here I am, an idiot trapped in the body of a wunderkind. It's not easy. The surprise people express when I start rattling off trivia or other knowledge not generally accessible to the average joe is quickly offset by my obvious lack of any practical acumen. Balancing checkbooks, keeping up with bills, filing with the IRS, all forward motion or progress in this life, for the most part, seems beyond my ken. I can speak endlessly on Renaissance philosophy and arcane subjects but trip foolishly over my own tongue when trying to address subjects like retirement, 401 K, stocks and all that good stuff that helps to make us well-monied.

So, I'm a moron with the intellectual desire of a University professor. If you see me on the street, pretending to be knowledgeable, take pity on me and maybe offer an idiot's stipend for my show of bravado in trying to convince you that, no, I'm really not as stupid as I sound nor as brilliant as I look.

Or is it the other way around?

Tiny Travelers, we be.....

Have you ever considered your smallness in the greater scheme of the multi-verse. Zoom out far enough and entire galaxies become tiny blips of light, so imagine how minuscule your little five or six foot frame is in the grand overview.

And if each of us is so very, very tiny, then how very small must be our worldly concerns and anxieties.

Smallness is key here, I think. We can zoom from the infinitely immense to the incredibly (and infinitely?) small.
Living in a small way, being humble, and throwing a noose around the scrawny neck of burgeoning ego is perhaps the most direct way to proceed with the "small" life.

What is so special about me that I stand exercising dominion over all I see? What is it that empowers me to represent the be-all and end-all of Life and Existence. Why, absolutely nothing!

We are whirring through empty space at breakneck speeds, plummeting blindly through a mostly hostile universe and heading straight to our demise, however and in whatever form it may come.

How pathetically laughable must be the arrogant in the eyes of the twin powers of Life and Death.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, or Blessed Ostara, whatever your belief may be. 'Tis the legendary day that He rose from the dead and hearkened in thousands of years of Solar dying god worship. Be it Jesus, Mithras, or Krishna, they all were crucified and faced the underworld of death before returning with "good" news. True or not, it is a good thing because frankly, what other reason would the average person have not to blow his brains out if not the hope that the future will bring wonderful tidings and great things.

Yeheshuah Ben Joseph, The Christos (The Anointed) can be looked at from a myriad of perspectives. His first name, qabalistically, is composed of the Divine Name YHVH with an inserted Hebrew letter (Shin, meaning "Fire", particularly the fire of Spirit), rendering the name Yeheshua which translates as "Yahweh has Delivered". Heavy stuff when you think about it. And whether His true name is Yeheshua Ben Joseph (Jesus, son of Joseph) or Yeheshuah Bar Miriam (Jesus, bastard son of Mary) I am damn glad the six or so billion people of this planet have a choice between the Anointed One, The Enlightened One, or any host of others to follow and place faith in.

So, unless you are an atheist, or a Buddhist, or a Hindu, today's a big day. Forget the fact that Christ failed in his mission and ultimately cried out in forsaken disbelief to the "Father". He was the King of the Jews but never assumed Kingship. He and his disciples expected the eschaton (or Revelations, to Bible readers) within their lifetime.

His resurrection left a hint, a tiny gasp of possibility that we can survive death. Some think it's poppycock, but I for one believe that there is something afterward no matter how strange, alien, or disorienting it may be.
That hope has served me well as a balm to sooth my aching tormented soul and keep me alive in this incarnation.

Thank God for that....

The Big Hand Comes Down

Well, it's now springtime in the Midwest. Flowers are budding, birds are returning for their sojourn, and countless kids are sitting glued to the History Channel, terrified and counting the days until the Big Guy in the Sky, in sync with the Mayan calendar, raises his mighty hand against his wayward offspring and with people of all ages contemplating what exactly the Big One is going to consist of. Much self examining going on - "Will I be a hero?" juxtaposed with "Will I cower behind my friends and whimper as the big hammer falls?" We are all curious as to whether we have a "clean slate" or at least clean enough to get an easy go when the trials and tribulations hit.

These are thoughts our young people are having. How unfair to be born into this world to a cacophony of doom and annihilation being broadcast in every media years before the event.

If I were twelve, I would ask - "What about my future?" And I would be monumentally pissed.

I used to blame the carefree and jitter-bugging "greatest generation" for our woes but have come to realize that we all - each and every one of us - has played a part in sullying the earth, banishing the qualities of compassion and empathy, and practicing a material gluttony that detracts from our human-ness. Each of us has collectively agreed to lay our heads upon the chopping block and now that the axeman appears to grow near we become unnerved.

Frankly, it's far too late to assign blame (and the true culprits are far too rich and insulated to accept any culpability anyway) and all we can do is wait. Will the Earth finally shrug and caste us off like sand fleas, with mass death and destruction, or will 2012 come and go as just another mundane day?

Either way, we can only blame ourselves. Perhaps the "Ascension" as they call it is the collective discovery and understanding that there just might be a better way. Perhaps we will experience, in one night, a mental and spiritual evolution that humankind has never experienced before. It's too far off to tell but if the "signs" are any indicator, there are more earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes and gun-wielding madmen than ever before in our history. The earth is clearly wounded and she has been harmed by her very caretakers.

Whatever happens at 11:11 GMT on Dec 21, 2012, rest assured that the galaxy is going to give us a show the likes of which have not been duplicated in tens of thousands of years. The supermarket shelves will be utterly devoid of stock, and the apocalyptic crazy will be gathering in droves across the world to await the end.

And really...if you think about it fairly and objectively...we kinda have it coming, whatever it may be.

In fact....

(Removed at the Request of Self)

In light of a tremendously negative mood on yesterday's post, my self said to myself  "my, that certainly is negative!" Thusly, in an effort to spare the mood of any potential readers (even 1) I have removed the post.

Doesn't change much though. I still think America is being run by a bunch of self-serving monkeys.

BWAHAHAHA!

Found out today that I'm probably going to be fired for failure to increase my sales quotas. If I can get them up over the next week, I'll be ok but so far, it's not looking good.

I guess the problem I have with this is twofold. First, if you want me to take calls and make sales then please assure that I am not a switchboard. Yep, I take every call that comes into the organization whether it's a sale or not. Mostly tech support calls because we can't seem to keep an internet connection running properly.

So here I am. About to be un-employed. With cancer. Knowing that if I apply for jobs and give them an honest application and admit that yes, I have cancer and do miss work from time to time, they are certainly not going to hire me. If I lie and tell them that I have no restrictions as pertains to the job description, I'll get fired later for being a liar. So I'm really kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. Not good enough to do telemarketing for this company and not hire-able for any other.

Why don't they just take me out and put a bullet in my head?

I used to be a patriot but the way I see it now is this: from time immemorial, we have allowed a group of well-coifed fat-cats to make all our decisions for us. Every decision - moral, ethical, economic - is made by them as our "representatives". However, they have let us down as they seem to only represent themselves and their own interests. Greed and lack of foresight has all but destroyed us and still they bicker and fight and accuse each other as our country goes further and further down the drain-hole.

We've paid into Social Security and now they debate the fate of those funds. I've worked all my life and now my future is in doubt because of state unemployment rules (set up for us by well-coifed nicely-suited fat-cats) and my failure to make the greedy taskmaster a bunch of money. I can handle the cancer. I just don't want to deal with it if I'm living in the street.

I've begun to hate this country and the elite who run our daily lives at their whim. The founding fathers are spinning in their graves. America has been sold out and so has its citizens.

Only the VA has supported me and they are only there for medical purposes. Paying my rent is not on the VA agenda.

The chickens are gonna come home to roost one day or another and then "they" will get exactly what's coming to them. Sadly, the rest of us might already be gone by then if we keep letting Big Brother write all the rules.

The Sick, The Lame, & The Lazy

Aw, I know life is hard and that sometimes it's easier to stay in bed than get up and face the bogeyman of our existence. Life is fraught with peril. Sometimes we have to do things we dearly do not want to do. People, in their obvious lack of wisdom, hold us up to a standard that we often find hard to achieve. So, what's the answer to this dilemma?

Disability! Yes, disability is a wonderful program in which anyone with a lazybone can enroll in which guarantees that not only do they not have to get out of bed or get off the couch all day long....they actually get paid for it.

One terribly debilitating malady I hear quite a lot about these days is the dreaded anxiety. Anxiety - becoming anxious or nervous about a situation or circumstance. I would hazard a guess that we all have a little anxiety hanging around our necks like a psychological albatross. Perhaps we should all file for disability.

I know one young person who is receiving payments because she has anxiety and a "fear of crowds". These crowds are apparently crowds in which people are doing work, because if Brett Michaels shows up for a concert, she's right there in the middle of the crowd. When the check comes, she's able to brave the crowd at Wal-Mart with no problem. Seems it's just any crowd involved in work that gets her anxiety levels up.

Can I say...give me a break?

Get your lazy, tired, weak behind up off the couch, turn off the DVD player, put up the hash pipe and do something for a change. Your anxiety is no worse than the anxiety of, say, the average lab rat or the average man or woman on the street. What else matters to you aside from how much food you have in your belly? Does anything matter?

You just don't want to lift a finger for anything, ever. It's sad and pathetic. Good luck once the little ones fly the coop and you're left on your own. Who are you going to turn to then? The world's not getting any easier. Do you watch the news? Better buckle up and start fending for yourself.

Perhaps consider your destiny if you continue along the same path of hand-outs, hiding on the couch, and failing to interact with society, failing to provide for the future. Likely it will be a lonely, destitute, miserable death. So let's go. It's not that hard. Get a job. Any job.

There Be Monsters...

There be monsters among us, beside us, all around us. Not just any monsters, but particularly nasty and vicious monsters that can adapt their modus operandi to foil all but the most crafty monster-hunters.

Look to your right or your left. Chances are, if you're in public, that you might catch a glimpse of one of these beasts, snarling and snapping at all who come within reach. Careful! You might lose a limb or even worse, your life!

People just find it so hard to be nice anymore. If it is true that humanity is basically good, that goodness is covered under a thick layer of selfish and irritable sludge. So many people lack the basic virtues of compassion, patience, trust, and friendliness that in many places, it is nearly impossible to establish human contact.

Of course, there's stress and anxiety in everybodys' lives and that's just the human condition. How much easier though to squeeze out a smile or a greeting than to snarl and act superior when everyone actually knows better.

There's a concept that life, the universe, or whatever you choose to call it, is like a mirror. Look at life and curse and life will curse back at you. Look at life and laugh and life will laugh with you. Look and life and smile and life will smile back.

Try it!

Music to Sooth the Savage Beast

Ah, music. It takes my soul to wing in a breathless rearranging of my aural reality and changes everything.

But I've a very narrow view of what's good. I'm like a one-act play when it comes to my tunage.

Currently (like now and going back a good two years) I listen to Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath featuring Tony Martin or Ronnie James Dio. Other stuff I listen to is Iron Maiden, some Tony Martin-era Black Sabbath and sometimes the Sab with Ronnie James Dio aboard. Then of course there's Maiden and occasional Black Sabbath.

I don't listen to this stuff because it's gloomy and doomy. I find Iron Maiden to represent the technological and virtuoistic pinnacle of modern guitar music. Deep and historic stories being told over the ambient throbbing and rumbling that is both foreboding and triumphant. And anyone who denies the supremacy of Bruce Dickinson's voice as it pierces the heavens quite actually knows very little about music, sorry to say.
When you can go into their inventory and find songs on all subjects from prehistoric man to an astronaut lost in the void to a fallen WWII soldier, you're not dealing with pimply-faced angsty teens anymore but magicians of the plucked string and story set to music.

I submit their excellent piece-de-resistance album "The Final Frontier" for serious consideration when the Grammys come around.

And Sabbath? Well, my first actual music ever. It was the summer betwixt 8th grade and freshman year and I received a copy of "Paranoid" to listen to on my little Hitachi cassette deck. My first rock and it was crunchy indeed.

Now that I'm older though, I can do without Ozzy's caterwauling. I think Sabbath should be Sabbath and Ozzy should be Ozzy and other than four or five damn good albums, it was a thing that needed to die. Try listening to "The Headless Cross" album or "The Devil You Know" if you don't agree.

What else do I listen to? Pachelbel's Canon, lots of world music, Sarah MacLachlan, Nightwish....and NO radio.

I've grown stuffy in my old age.

A Mission Gone Awry

So Nato, in all their martial excellence, managed to bomb some rebels in Libya presumably quite by accident or perhaps in a case of mistaken identity, since the rebels are using acquired Libyan army vehicles. Anyway, the rebels are now angry and have been recorded yelling "Down with Nato. We don't want Nato anymore!"

Is there a clearer case of biting the hand that feeds?

Sadly, I think it was a mistake of majestic grandeur and import for the US to turn over the no-fly zone to Nato.

If  you want something done right do it yourself or so says the wisdom. This seems to be the case since after the US launched the very first strike it decimated approximately 30% of the Libyan military.

I'm passionately anti-war but if you must...why not just do it right and be done with it?

And even stranger aeons..

So, we see that according to the masters of the last several millennium - Christ, Buddha, Nagarjuna, Milarepa, Abraham the Jew, The Ari, The Baal Shem Tov and so many, many others - we are only several steps removed from the Most High and can retrace our steps back to the presence of Divinity. However, some of us who see ALL as an aspect of Divinity ("turn over a rock and I will be there, roll away a log and there you will find me") there is no separation. That rock is God. You are God, I am God. This is not to insinuate that there is not something greater, nor to insinuate that we (as "God") are the end-all and be-all of Creation and the sustaining force that keeps it in motion, not to say that there is no absolute or ineffable. Only that we are Its children and so too are we divine by birthright.

Once, as theory has it, we discover the spark of divinity within, the HGA, we no longer need worry about getting lost in the world, doing the wrong thing, giving into base desires, or living in chaos and confusion. The HGA is our guide and our companion, eager to teach, accompany, and protect.

However, adversely, this connection can render us ineffectual in the world. There are those who get so caught up in the pursuit, in the journey, that they have a difficult time holding a job, functioning within society's confines and are often labeled as "nuts" or "lunatic". Life and existence become incredibly expansive and the things we used to ground ourselves and define our precarious position in the world of matter become very much irrelevant. Almost like a drug, enlightenment and wisdom become the only goal considered worthwhile and the only thing towards which energy and effort is projected.

This would render a person somewhat incapable of some of the more worldly pursuits. Like work. Like mundane conversation. This is where the seeker's path leads to undesired results and hence the many dire warnings found in almost all books on the subject. The Sufi's "Drunk on God" and the Kabbalist's "Divine Madness" fall into this category and should be guarded against.

Why am I writing this? I don't know.

Stange Aeons

If you're like many, you've dabbled in various new-age versions of so-called "magick" from both ancient and modern sources. Alternative spiritualities are all the rage in this new millennium and cover the gamut from witchcraft to NLP, from Medieval grimoires to Positive Thinking.

Neo-pagans notwithstanding, it has been my experience that there are a great many different ways to the same destination, some more perilous than others and all worthy of at least a look.

The idea of all of these systems is built around the concept of a middle spiritual agency between Gods and men and women. Know variously as the agathosdaimon, the Higher Self, and the Holy Guardian Angel, this being serves as a middle man between us and the Absolute and once the acquaintance is made it renews us and guides us gently but firmly down the path of knowing our own True Will, our purpose in this life.

While many have attained, few have achieved and I am one of these. While my journey has not entailed the  "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel", it has left me - in many ways - wise.

As Crowley stated, "the purpose of the operation is to raise up the complete man in a vertical line. All other operations tend to black magick." What he meant is that every young dabbler who tries to enchant another, or get revenge, or magickally cram for finals, or make themselves beautiful through the art of Glamoury, it is all out of balance with the will of the All, and therefore is black magick.

to be continued......

Makes me mad...no, sad...no, mad....no, sad....

A year ago, I received a diagnosis of aggressive bladder cancer. Since then and three surgeries later, I think I'm probably going to live. However, I'm a bit livid that people I've know for over 40 years don't seem to have a lot to do with me anymore. It could be that they don't know what to say or they feel uncomfortable. It could be that they've bought into the idea that cancer is contagious. I really don't know. I only know that after all these years, real-life friends seem few and far between.

Then I think more about it. These friends and I, despite knowing each other for decades, have very little in common. They love sports. I was a wimpy kid and didn't participate in scholastic sports. As I got older and became less wimpy, I got into sports like MMA and downhill racing (via skiis) and never had the time of day for football, basketball or baseball. That makes me sort of an odd man out. They don't know or like my sports and I don't know or like theirs.

They are adept at fixing engines of any type. Car engines, lawn mower motors, bike motors. I am not.

The empty space between my view of life and theirs is an insurmountable abyss. But I still liked the company and the interaction. It kind of hurts my feeling that they aren't there for me. However, on hindsight, perhaps I don't have enough time to spend on counter-productive friendships and need to seek out kindred souls and kindred spirits.

Anyway, it makes me sad and a little mad.

Life as I know it

What's it really all about, anyway? We do not ask to be born, to be labeled with a number or to spend our lives in subservient obeisance to the powers-that-be, yet we are daily told what a gift life is, how lucky we are to exist and have consciousness.

I love the phrase "well, at least in America we're free." Not a one of us has been free since we squirted out onto the birthing table. Even the freedom of childhood, with all its innocence and wonder, is slowly indoctrinated out of us by the time we reach school age. By the age of five or six, the magic is gone.

Freedom is just that...the freedom to do as you choose, when you choose in the manner that you choose. By being born into a society in which the only measure of success is the 40 (or more) hour per week we are born into a form of slavery, no matter how nicely we re-arrange the circumstances. By living in a society in which the "good" things of life come at a premium cost, we deny those things to the majority who do not have the ways and means for things such as health insurance, fancy cell-phones, vacations, and nice clothing and cars. I at least had a period of my life where I could afford what I wanted and my heart bleeds for people who will never know the feeling of being absolutely secure or able to live as they would like to.

Western society has based everything on the almighty dollar, the omnipotent euro, and we have estranged our fellow people, divided the masses into those who are "worthy" and those who are not, decided who lives and who dies based on income and affluence. I read about a cancer patient who is being treated at City of Hope Cancer Treatment Centers and I hear about many alternative therapies and drugs that are not available to me by going through the Veteran's Administration. I am so thankful that they were there for me, but tell me this...is my life not every bit as precious as another, or is my life somehow worth less because I do not hold an exalted position in the community or in the financial world?

This obsession with money and power, combined with the iron fist of a morality based on the two-thousand year old ramblings of a bunch of desert primitives is a life-destroying combination. None of us knows if there is anything after, so all we really know for sure is that we have this one life. What right does any group of people have to dictate the parameters of this one life? So you decided we should live in a democracy because by your reckoning, democracy is the "right" way, but maybe I don't agree. You've decided marijuana should be illegal based on your misguided understanding brought about by anti-drug propaganda from the 20's and 30's. Did you know cocaine is illegal because the fat-cats in the suits were afraid of the ramifications of the "drug-crazed negro?" How ridiculous is that one?!

Bottom line is this...they decide for us and we comply or face the music. Like Bush, they are the "deciders" and our only task lies in acceptance and compliance with their view of the world and their concept of society.

We are slaves and they are our masters.

Get Real.

Get real. No, really.

Forty years on the job in one form or another.

Three years as a high-speed Army commando type.
Four years as a private investigator doing undercover, surveillance, and interviewing.
Six years in upper management in the production industry of Southern California.
Six years of customer service and tech support for Worldnet, Netchannel, Earthlink, Comcast, and Nextel.

and somewhere around another 20 years doing graphic arts, database management, writing, product acquisition and a variety of other things.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to disrespect you. After all, you ARE my supervisor. However, since this is your first job and given the vast experience you've not accrued in your 19 years of life on Earth, please understand that when you speak, I don't always listen. I don't need you to tell me how to speak to people or how to conduct myself in a corporate environment. You came along a few years to late to be able to do that.

Oh, to Hell with you....

Here I am again, getting warned about my impending termination unless I "get with the program" and start selling a bunch of garbage to an unsuspecting public. Yes, telephone service, DSL internet and Direct TV, three items I should be more than happy to shove down everybody's throat and if my moral character kicks in, if I hesitate to take money out of the pockets of those who can scarcely afford food and put it in the pockets of the corporate hoi-polloi, I stand the chance of being fired. Let us not concentrate on the fact that I deliver world-class customer service and exceptional trouble-shooting, but let us only consider that if my "revenue per call" is only $37, I am only making the company $37 for each and every of the 30 or 40 calls I take each day. If one wishes to see corruption and the very worst of human nature, one only need look at the telecommunications industry and observe how they treat their "valued" customers.

We work on an internal system that is so slow it can take 3 minutes to get from one webpage to another, that crashes on a regular basis, and that cripples us in every interaction. The call center is louder than a packed bar on Friday night and often we cannot even hear what the people on the other end of the line are saying. At least 95% of our calls are based on issues such as billing complaints, service outages, and unfulfilled promises. And our company promises 99.9% network reliability but I can tell you for a fact that this number is nonsense. We get a huge amount of calls for non-working internet and phone lines.

The company pays us between $7 an hour and $8.25 an hour, so lets do the math. In an eight hour shift, if I take 30 calls that is one call every 16 minutes. I get about $2 for each call and the company gets $37 for that call. Quite a profit considering most the time I'm just answering questions.

Sorry guys. I was trained at Tele-Tech in Los Angeles, one of the premier international customer service call-centers in the world. If they tell me that customer relations and support are more important than sales, I have to agree with them.

I just got a call from a guy who received an unexpected $400 bill. I was unable to help him and any department that IS able to help is presently closed. Should I have been able to sell him something? I don't know. He got screwed the first time around, so why would he make a purchase while holding a bill that he claims is in error?!

This place just flies in the face of everything I believe in. So fire me. Do me a favor.

Friday on Tuesday

Well, it's my Friday. I live for this day. It becomes a more joyful occasion relative to how tired I feel, how sick I might feel at a given time or how much I hate my job on any given day. Each Tuesday night I leave here knowing that I have two glory-filled days of doing whatever I choose, even if what I choose to do is absolutely nothing.

Sometimes, just sacking out for two days is a pleasure. I usually don't have two nickels to rub together so that kinda rules out having too much fun or going shopping to any degree.

Oftentimes, I feel like crappola, so two days of laying around is a godsend. It appears that I'm going to live after this year-long "battle" with cancer but it is truly a pain and going to the bathroom will never be the same. Let's just say I go with an urgency that will not be thwarted by God nor Man.

I'm sorry to admit this, but I would push a little old lady out of the way just to get to the restroom when the need calls. After three TURBT surgeries, the bladder just isn't what it used to be.

All this just begs the question - how is it possible to be so utterly boring and yet come up with an acceptable blog?

Things I would do differently...

if I could do things all over again:

Now that I'm at that point in life during which our choices seem to have more weight and greater consequences, I've begun to look back and realize that there are a good number of things I would change if I could.

A Buddhist aphorism goes on about "living and dying without regret." Now it's one thing to regret things. It's important not to give in to regret. Rather, I look at things like "Gee, I wish I had done that differently."

I would have lived, at least for a little while, in the British Isles. Not that I don't love being an American...no, it's just that my soul calls out from another place and given my heritage, I believe that place to be England or Ireland. I would have loved to be a resident for at least six months if not for longer. Can you say "ex-patriate?"

I would have used my ample GI Bill to go to school for a worthy pursuit. My inner Mother Theresa is coming to light in recent years and I have an incredible drive to help people. How? By being a doctor! I would have pursued the career of medical doctor, something which was totally unappealing to me when I was younger. And because of the show House, I could have been a good doctor and a totally obnoxious butt-hole all at the same time. Sadly, I think I missed my calling.

I would have pursued and landed one of the three or so great loves of my life. Annie, Debi, and Iris...if any of you ever read this, you can rest assured that I've spent many, many days beating myself up for being foolish and not recognizing something precious even when it was under my nose. Each of you holds a place in my heart and the empty spot in my life will always belong to one or all of you three incredible women.

I would have spent more time in the military. In the 21st century, so many men are veterans of the various conflicts we've engaged in and while my service was both elite and very difficult, I failed to capture the badge of honor - the Combat Infantry Badge - that distinguishes these warriors from all others.

I would have also pursued my various interests to their natural conclusion. Black belt. Virtuoso guitarist. Published writer and artist.

Alas, the past is gone and cannot be molded, the future is coming too quickly and cannot be captured, so all we have to work with is the present moment. As an expert on the subject, let me urge you not to squander the time you have for that can easily lead, later in life, to regret.

Musings from the Hot Seat

Ah, work. Tedious and mundane. "Help me! My Internet is too slow!"  Stressful. Unrewarding. Hopeless.

Been here for twenty-five minutes and already I can feel the contents of my morning meal rumbling around in my gut, threatening to spew forth in a torrent of refusal to answer one more phone call or listen to one more complainer.

I remember the early days. I didn't get on the Internet until after Windows 3.1 arrived and even then, I was more confused than not. Then, diligence paid off and by the time 98 came out, I was a surfing fool. This went on for almost two decades. Recently, after calculating finances I discovered that the Internet, once meant for everyone, once a great bastion of information and connectedness, has become unaffordable for my budget.

This represents a great tragedy to me since the Internet was such an integral part of my life. This in turn makes it hard for me to listen to somebody whinge and whine because they think their Internet connection is either over-priced or too slow. Talk to the hand, 'cause Jimmy ain't listening!

"And then God gave me cancer....."

"...made me lose my job/caused my marriage to fail/caused the earthquake (flood, fire, famine)/punished me for being human."

For God's sake, people (literally)! Take a chance.. if you believe in a supreme being or a creator try to stop picturing a cranky bearded old man in the sky who hands out rewards and metes out punishment. Just for one second, consider that this "being", by whatever name you choose, actually might have no preferences, actually might not think like we do, and actually might not be up there watching you and just waiting to lay you low with another plague or misfortune because of your perceived iniquity.

Imagine the freedom, the relief you might experience once you make this realization. Maybe "God" doesn't cause the bad things to happen to you or the good things to happen to you...maybe this being doesn't care other than to have you experience life with all its ups and downs, to experience the exhilaration of existence and consciousness with all the good and bad that life has to offer.

And it will make you sound more sensible and more rational, because really, think about it - the concept of an old man in the sky who makes life good when we are "good" and makes life bad when we are "bad" is really rather childish, isn't it? And then, as George Carlin so aptly stated, he will make you burn in hell for all eternity because he loves you.

Throw off these foolish bonds and do what thou wilt. As Rumi, the great Sufi mystic wrote - "He is a letter to everyone. You opened it. It said 'live'".

Just live.....

It Is What It Is

Polar caps melting, fresh water and fossil fuels running low, starvation, famine, drought, radiation, sunflares, earthquakes...and then some dimwit says "It is what it is".

WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?!

What a cop-out. What a stupid thing to say! Of course things are what they are but it does little good and shows little intelligence to use those five words as a blanket statement on every subject.

"It is what it is". You say this because you don't have enough mental chutzpah to say anything that means something.

Live to work, Work to live...

Oh my. I hate my job.

I didn't just discover this. No, I've known it for quite some time now. After forty solid years of work I've been consigned to the low-income lower middle class dung-heap. Some of it is geographical, some of it is economical, some of it is dumb luck and quite a lot of it is due to my self-destructive and rebellious refusal to comply and to be mundane.

And, while life is unfair, I just feel it's quite a travesty for me to be yelled at for a living. Not sure how much time you might have left and want the rest of your days to be at least passably pleasant? Do not go to work in customer service, especially not for the phone company. These devils have been sticking it to people for years and now that they've found themselves under attack by thousands of unhappy customers, they hire a few unsuspecting dupes to field the phone calls of bitterness, disappointment and anger.

All this without as much as a kiss or a reach-around.

The First. The Worst.

My first blog. Nothing Earth-shattering or paradigm-shifting, nothing like that. Just an introduction and a chance for me to see if this gets old with one entry or if I'm in it for the long haul.

Rotten childhood, like most people seem to have had. What are there, two good parents out there? Alcoholic father, passive mother, and me with a hankering to learn, to experience, and to grow. Forgot about the bad times 'til recently when they resurfaced in consciousness, empowered by years of neglect.

Nothing hurts like pain.

I'm at that time in life where, after 25 years of "seeking", I've found that certain things are not what they seem.

"Lead me from the Unreal to the Real". Well, the real seems pretty unreal most of the time. After a disastrous road trip during which I lost most of my possessions, I came home with my tail between my legs to later find out that my body was playing host to an uninvited guest. Cancer. Recurrent bladder cancer. One of the best you can get if you catch it early, so I was fortunate. Three surgeries later, I once again have a clean bill of health although I would be naive to suggest it will not return one day. I pee more than a platoon of hard-drinking sailors and can intuit there is something amiss with my cells but so long as the doctor doesn't give me a checkout date, I'm ok with it. Even if the doctor does give me bad news one day, I kind of have to be ok with it. Not much choice.

Perhaps this is why people tend to piss me off like they do. I'm friendly and get along with most everyone, but what I would like to do is wear a sign around my neck - "leave me alone". This, I think, would suffice to accomplish my goal of not being bothered by naysayers or busybodies.

I have an insatiable appetite to explore things that we don't (perhaps can't) know the answers to. What they call the "Perennial Questions". This much later, I've not found any answers but I have made some observations. Only perhaps one tenth of one percent ever ask these questions. A writer once scribed that life is "nasty, brutish, and short." He could have easily used similar words to describe the human race and the way we treat each other. How many of us choose to concentrate on our selves to the expense of all others, the me-me-me mentality - what's for dinner, what's on TV, whose for sex, am I important yet, is it all about me yet?"

The minute we switch from being self-directed to being other-directed something inside of us flowers and we bloom, opening fully to the Sun and its warming rays. As Yeshua is stated to have said - "That which you find inside you will save you...that which you fail to find inside you will destroy you."

I'm older, smarter, and more tore-up-from-the-floor-up messed-up-from-the-chest-up than ever before. Seems that as we reach our highest pinnacle we also reach our lowest low and sometimes the juxtaposition can be confusing.

I love animals with a passion, and also love martial arts, music, the outdoors, and computer technology. Good books, good CD's, good movies, good food, and beauty all provide me with inspiration and a great deal of satisfaction too. The two things I fear relinquishing at death, more than all other things, are Iron Maiden and knowledge. Not sure what I will do without these two things. Maybe just stand around sticking my fork into the slackers in Hell.

Anyway, if I continue to blog, you will hear things you've not heard before. If I fail to continue, you won't.

It just may be that I don't have all that much to say.