Spiritual Hedonism
What is Spiritual Hedonism? It is both a practice and a lifestyle a very specific way of being and looking at the world. It is the embracement of the human experience to its fullest extent while recognizing the fact that a spiritual or energetic essence permeates every cell of our being and enlivens us, and that we are neither spirits having a human experience nor are we humans having a spiritual experience, we are in fact both. We are a non-duality. Every religious and spiritual system in existence currently or in our past has incorporated a division between the physical, gross, material, animal aspect of our being and the spiritual, ethereal, soular, non physical and more often than not these dimensions have been presumed to be in conflict with each other. Often...
Read MoreCookie Cutter Dreams
Whose Dreams are you living? We all fantasize about the things we desire, from a passing daydream to concrete itemized aspects, objects and or experiences. Most of us however never stop to figure out where our desires come from and if they even make sense to our innermost selves. We assume that they are ours as they are formulated within our minds but the reality is far from being so simple. From the moment we are born, we get bombarded with specific messages of the things that we “ought to” or “should” desire. From toys to activities, from people we hang out with to our future roles, we move through life steered towards specific desires not only by clever advertising but especially by people in our immediate vicinity of influence. Our parents of course...
Read MoreA Curious Case of Deserving.
A few years ago a very specific concept flashed in my awareness which I found both true and startling. Something must have been potent within it as after sharing it with a couple of friends it became something of a mini-meme, a repeated statement, which although not fully understandable, seemed to resonate with all who heard it. I even saw it being tweeted by people I do not know which I thought was interesting. The concept is quite straightforward. “Out of the endless possibilities in life we only choose among those we feel we deserve” For whatever reason the statement has a quality of being sound at first grasp, but it also has a flipside. It finds itself very challenging to penetrate into our inner core. Over the years I’ve asked people who...
Read MoreHitch’s last gig
The world is a poorer place today. It is with deep sadness that I read this morning about the passing of one of the most ferociously brilliant minds we had grace us in our generation. Christopher Hitchens, lost his battle with esophageal cancer and we will no longer be able to enjoy his fiery and mesmerizingly lucid intellect except through the many books, articles and filmed debates that he leaves behind. The New York Times have put their presses on hold last night to completely rework the front page to include his obituary. When what is arguably the most influential newspaper in the world does this to honor a single man, few things can be as convincing a tribute to his genius, gravitas and far reaching influence. Above all else, Hitchens will be remembered as...
Read MoreWho’s your (mind’s) Daddy?
Are you sure you know the answer? Most people are completely unaware of the dominant operator of their decision making processes and therefore the forces involved in shaping their life. All things in our immediate awareness are usually classified as a conscious mind activity. When it is slightly or completely removed from immediate awareness, we refer to it as subconscious or unconscious mind activity. Because the non-aware aspects are most easily observable in experiences such as dreams, sudden flashes of intuition, in phobias, fantasies, inexplicable obsessions and so called Freudian slips they are generally challenging to study scientifically and numerous often conflicting interpretations of them exist. There is an unspoken hierarchy within the sciences making...
Read MoreAffirmation & Resolve Formulation
What would you like to change in your life? An integral part of the conscious manifestation (willful change) practice, regardless of tradition or methodology, is the correct formulation of an affirmation or what I prefer to call a resolve. I should clarify that by ”correct” I simply mean “effective”. Because the subconscious mind, which is the predominant operator of our decisions and actions, speaks in its own language we must structure the wording of our intent to be accessible and clearly translated by this aspect of our consciousness. Many people are familiar with the power of affirmations but most don’t realize that affirmations can only be made effective if one is to access the subconscious mind to plant the seed of a new belief....
Read MoreBirds of a feather
I’ve managed to knock off 2 different bucket list items this summer. The first one being celebrating a birthday in a medieval Irish castle, (it actually ended up being 3 of them….castles not birthdays) and the second was flying a hawk. Ever since I was old enough to understand that birds of prey can be played with and trained, I wanted to experience it. It was during my youth growing up in North Africa that I saw my first hooded falcon, up close and in the care of a grizzled Bedouin hunter no less. As it’s not exactly the kind of thing that you can do anywhere, although domesticating birds of prey for hunting has been around for more than 4000 years with earliest accounts of it showing up in Mesopotamia and Mongolia, it is now only practiced in a handful...
Read MoreFull Moon Magick
The sheer exuberant glory of the full Moon. Tonight it happens to be in Taurus and in the crystal clear sky of the New Mexican desert it is easy to see why it has fascinated and enchanted humanity since its beginning. I have an added bonus of listening to the serenades of coyotes on the hills around the house as the giant spotlight looms overhead which if you can imagine further adds to the surreal sense of the primeval magick. As a Cancerian I have apparently an even more ordained affinity with Luna than most others and although I can’t say that I feel that much different when the moon hits its different phases, I am and always have been deeply in awe of its beauty. The moon as a magickal and psychological archetype has been variously associated with the male...
Read MoreThe Golden Apple
No this is not a story about a new iphone. It is about something predating it by about 2000 years involving a fruit and a goddess scorned, and what in mythology is considered The Original Insult (I have loved mythos as long as I remember, with my grandfather’s readings of ancient fables of mortals and gods to me when I was too young yet to read myself) In Greek mythology there is a story about the chaotic consequences of an unfortunate decision involving a great wedding feast to which all the denizens of Olympus were invited….except Eris (the goddess of strife, disorder, chaos and discord) after all who wants all that on a happy day. Eris got understandably pissed off when turned away at the door and as would be her natural tendency, decided to do what...
Read MoreAspects of Chaos?
The working title for my personal blog/site has always been “Aspects of Chaos”. Why Chaos? The reasons are few but in my attempt to keep things simple (as I have been gently kicked in the ass by people who know that I have a tendency to cover too much in my musings) I will only mention 2 reasons for Chaos. 1) Because it is the underlying state, feature and common aspect of all that exists despite the appearance of order. Yes systems have tendencies to organize in often precise, geometric forms repeated with mathematical precision. This is evident everywhere from outlines of planetary orbits, to the shapes of both organic and inorganic matter (think sacred geometry shapes from snail shells to snowflakes) but despite this, underneath all “things” chaos...
Read More