Intimate Connexions
I had a pet dog once named Pepper. I was hanging out with a few cousins at the local mall. We went into this one pet store and my eyes fell on this cute little black and white puppy no bigger than your hand. You can hear me and girl cousins go: “awwwwe” in unison as all of hearts melted onto the floor because the puppy was licking the window of her cage and wagging her tail so hard her little body wiggled with it.
So we were in the pet shop for an hour petting and squeezing her. The older boy cousins just stood there annoyed and they realized that if they didn’t buy the puppy for us, that we weren’t leaving. And so one of the cousins bought the puppy for $1000 because she was a pure bred Shi Tzu.
Pepper was a spoiled brat. We bought her a doll house as her little dog house and put a soft dog bed in it for her in my room and she would refuse to sleep in it. She’d whine and cry all night until you lifted her up into bed with you and she’d curl up by neck and fall asleep.
There were those times when I would be in my room by myself doing my school work and Pepper would just be sitting there staring at me, and you just can’t help but ask yourself: “What a little weirdo, I wonder what they’re thinking about? Do they even think? What are they thinking about when they’re just staring at you?”
I know if Pepper does think, that it’s not how we think. We think in language, which is really more like an internal dialogue. And dogs obviously don’t have a language to think with. So I assume that if they do think, that they think like new little babies that have not learned to think in language yet. And you can tell those 6 month old babies are thinking, or doing something like thinking.
I started to notice other similarities between Pepper and my baby cousin. Both of them can’t speak, but yet I know what Pepper wants and needs and my aunt-mom knows what her infant baby needs? Because all Pepper does when she wants something is just sit there and somehow you “know” or feel exactly what she wants. And a baby just cries and somehow my aunt-mom knows what the baby needed. Even thought the cries sounded the same to me, my aunt-mom can tell if her baby was hungry, or if she needed to be burped, or if her diaper was on to tight or something. It’s funny because it reminds me of that one very old show about a dog named Lassy. Lassy would just stare and bark at her boy master and the boy would say something like: “What’s that girl? Somebody need’s help? Billy’s stuck underneath a fallen tree? What’s that, a juniper tree even? Out by the creek? The creek by Old McGee’s barn!? Let’s go girl!” So I figured there was something going on.
Then there were those moments when I would clean up her poo and bathe her and slave over her, and I think to myself: “Boy, I wonder how this relationship between a primate slaving for a spoiled canid fits into the theory of evolution, and evolutionary psychology huh? I mean how am I benefiting from this relationship?” It doesn’t seem to be fair as far as quid pro quo goes. I – Nature’s most advancedly evolved organism – serve her, and all I really get out of it is to pet her fur? What a lousy rip off.
But, it’s because I love her and adore her that I serve her. In the same way my mothers serve me. And from that Love and Devotion of service, is born something unique and wordlessly indescribable: Loyalty. Besides that incredible bond between a mother and her child; there is nothing more profound than the simple, unconditional Loyalty Pepper gave to me.
We often think that these “lower life-forms” are stupid, and that we are superior to them because of our intelligence. But our human relationships with other humans is superficially trite, based on breakable bonds, conditions, usury, and such. There’s the usual: I’ll marry you if you’re a made man. Or, I’ll divorce you if you get fat. Or, I’ll be your friend if you think like me or if you have the same skin color as me. We’ll give your country money if you support our foreign policies. We think we are better then dogs, but yet we humans can’t even duplicate the Loyalty and unconditional relationships a dog makes.
Mindful Mindlessness
When I was in high school my youngest auntie, who wasn’t much older than me was going to college. She, my mom, and my aunt-mom had had a talk with themselves about keeping out of trouble and they decided to make me go hang out with my youngest auntie and her college friends on their campus everyday after school.
So I had 12 hours of school life from 8 in the morning, to 8 in the evening 3 days out of the week. Everyday after my school when my youngest auntie has classes, my mom-aunt would drop me off at the college campus and my youngest auntie would come get me and make me sit in her classes with her. There were even some days when she had so much school work to catch up with, she’d make me take her place in her classes while she studied in the library. I ended up also proof reading, and editing, and doing her friends’ school work and tutoring them because many of them didn’t speak English well. And I couldn’t leave campus because all of her friends kept an eye on me. There were those days when there was nobody to talk to on the phone and where I would just spend 5 hours sitting and waiting, reading random books in the library to go home. I must have read a thousand old dusty books during those years.
One day I was sitting in a quiet study hall with a handful of college students doing my own homework. It was a big hall with many table and this one soda and snack vending machine by the entrance which I was facing. I had been doing my homework for about an hour and I saw somebody buy a Coke, so I thought I’d take a break and get a drink to. I reached into my pockets and realized I had no money on me at all, and I was thirsty, and it would be another hour before my auntie came out for lunch.
I thought I’d wait it out. But as time rolled by so slowly from boredom I kept on getting more thirstier and I wasn’t planning on taking a walk to drink fountain water. I was going to ask the guy next to me for a dollar, but then Pepper popped into my mind out of nowhere. So I thought to myself, if Pepper can do it, maybe I can too? I’ll just sit here like a dog; concentrate on my thirst; and look at everybody that goes to the vending machine and see what happened.
So there I was in a quiet room, not thinking in words, but just letting the thought of being thirst and allowing the Intent of wanting someone to buy me a drink to resonate and fill room. As time ticked away slowly, one or two people would get up and get a drink, and I’d try to do what Pepper does and just look at them with this empty stare and smile, and my thirst was getting stronger. It was really hard to just sit there and not think about anything, but the feeling of thirst and an intent.
I sat there for an hour and nothing happened. I got angry and started to pack my things up since we were going to get lunch or dinner anyways. As I was putting my books in my backpack I noticed a fat lady at the soda machine say to herself quietly: “Wrong button, why did I push that?” I got up, put my back pack on, and slowly started walking thinking to myself: “Is she’s going to do what I think she’s going to do?” I noticed she had put in another dollar to get herself a second drink. So I looked at her smiling, and she said to me: “I got this on accident, do you want it? I’m on a diet. I didn’t do anything to it.” So I took it and thanked her realizing that my pet dog had taught me something we often never notice about life.
Happenstance & Coincidences
It seems as though – long ago – that the more I got to know about the intimate details of Kayla’s everyday life, and the more bizarre coincidences there were? Not just in the mutual friends we shared, but stranger. Like when we discovered that my paternal Mexican grandfather and her maternal Mexican grandfather had the same last names; but they weren’t related. Or how as little children [long before we knew each other] our parents took us to Disney Land, and we both got our pictures taken at the same exact spot with Mickey Mouse! Or like how my Mexican grandmother and her Mexican grandmother came from the same city in Mexico and shared a distant relative in common.
It’s like the deeper you look into things, the weirder things get. I said to her during those freaky moments: “Wouldn’t it be hella weird if we were long lost half sisters or something?!” She said: “Ooh.”
So anyways, one day after our college years one of our friends got accepted into UCLA and she needed a place in LA to stay in so she had asked me and Kayla if we would like to move in with her to help her pay rent and stuff. We decided to do it so since we had nothing else better to do we drove around LA looking for a small house with a for rent sign in the front.
After two full days of driving in stupid LA traffic and not getting any leads we got extremely frustrated. It was in the evening and Kayla says: “Ok, this isn’t working. I’m getting really irritable and pissed off, don’t talk to me right now or I’ll start screaming ok? We need to find a coffee shop and relax until traffic dies down, or I’m gunna run people over.”
So I just let her drive up and down trying to find a coffee shop without saying anything, since we both didn’t know where a coffee shop was in the area. But as we were driving down this one block she stops the car and says: “Does that say ‘for rent’ Chloe? Can you go get the number real quick?” I went and checked for a number, but their wasn’t one. So I came back expecting her to scream upon me giving her the disappointing news.
I said: “No number; but I almost tripped over a box of books getting out of the car. Who the hell leaves their books out in the middle of the curb?” I had picked up the first book I can grab and got inside and she turned on the car light to see. She said whispering, reading the title of the book: “The Interpretation of Dreams?” we both looked at each other with our mouths opened because we were talking about dreams and what they means just the day before. She opened the very old book and a card fell out. I looked at the card and looked at her with that ‘you’re not gunna believe this’ look. She asked me what the card said. It was a business card of a coffee shop. So we drove ourselves to the coffee house on the card.
We didn’t know what to expect at the coffee shop. We just thought finding the book and the card was already a cool couple of weird coincidences. So we ordered our drinks and waited around for 2 hours to let the freeway traffic die down. It got boring after thirty minutes so we took a walk around the place to check out all the little shops, and as time passed on, the frustration of the day went away, and we even forgot we were in the area looking for a house to rent because the little cool shops had captivated our attention.
Just before it was time to leave for home, we thought we’d go back to the coffee shop to have one last cup of coffee. I stayed inside looking through the knickknacks I had bought, and Kayla said she was going to go out and smoke a cigarette with the small crowd of smokers outside. Five minutes later she calls me outside with a shocked look on her face. I had noticed she was talking with an older guy and was wondering why he was talking to her. She introduced me to her new friend she had made. Kayla was complaining to him about our frustrating day looking for a small house to rent, and the gentleman had told Kayla that he owned a house just up the block in walking distance from the coffee shop which he had just put up for rent! A week later and we were living in the house.
Secrets of Magic
Kayla’s ex-hippy parents owns a small little New Age book store who had asked us if we wanted to help out and run the book store since her and her ex-hippy dad were getting stressed out. They needed a vacation and some time away from the book store, but they couldn’t do that because the little book store was their livelihood and they knew nobody they could trust to manage the store. So we offered our services after school during our college years.
Kayla actually helped put the store together when it first opened. So it’s got all these little drawing and pictures from magazine cut outs pasted on painted ladders and boxes she did as her hippy art work. The little book shop has all these beaded curtains and shelves of incense, colored candles, and herbs. It’s got antique décor, sofas and tables, with crystals every where, and shelves of New Age books on the occult, with most of the books on Wicca and witchcraft.
So we were to be trained on how to work and run the store, how to place orders, and things like that so they can leave for a while before they went crazy. I went in for my first day of “work” expecting to be trained on how to use the cash register and stuff but boy was I over expectant. The book store is actually this bohemian hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere. So it not busy a Barnes & Nobles is. I went in and Kayla’s dad says: “Hey, come on over around the counter Chloe and I’ll show you your first responsibility as an employee of this magnificent occult book store. So I went around and he sits back down and asks me, as he was dividing up the new paper he was reading: “Do you want the funnies or the real news?”
I think we sat there for an hour without anybody coming in just talking like we usually do. He’s really mellow and speaks softly and his hair and short beard is usually not combed. So then Kayla’s mom pulls up with the in the back and says to us: “Hey you two I brought lunch, you guys wanna “take a 5” before lunch?” Kayla’s dad looks at me with a raised eyebrow and says: “Break eh? Come on Chloe, I’ll teach you how real musicians take a five.” He plays the drums. So we walk into the back and Kayla’s mom pulls out a joint and lights it, puffs on it, and hands it to me? I was a little shocked, but hey, when your bosses at work are peer pressuring you to smoke pot, don’t argue.
I was thinking to myself that all this time I didn’t know they smoked pot, and I wondered to myself if Kayla knows about this, or if I should tell her or keep it a secret or what? But speak of the devil, she pulls up in her car, and I look at her mom saying something to try and warn her: “Kayla’s here.” And she said as she was waving at Kayla with one hand and passing the joint to me with the other: “Yeah, I told just told her a minute ago to come over for lunch, but she was on her way anyways.” Kayla comes over, says hi to her parents, gives me a kiss and a hello, and said: “Break time?” While her dad hands her the joint.
So a week later her dad had told us he was going to teach us the ancient family secret of making magical oils and potions which her dad inherited from a long line of pagans and witches. Me and Kayla were excited. They sell these little vials of magickal oils with labels on them like “Love,” “Money,” “Luck,” and stuff and people buy the oils to rub on colored candles. And those magic oils sell out fast.
That day her mom takes over the register while her dad took us into the back room with his back of magical ingredients. And we sit on the floor in a circle, me and Kayla just looking at her dad as he pulls out thing from bags, expecting to see a ritual or prayer, or something. Her dad says to us: “Well need this almond oil; these things of food coloring, and girls, you can buy this at any grocery store; and these empty mustard squeezy bottles. Ok now Chloe you mix some green food coloring with some of the almond oil and squeeze the magic oil into those little vials that says Money. Kayla you do the yellow for Luck; and I’ll do the pink for Love, since I have more experience in that department then you two. Oh, we put this scented oil in the almond oil to make it smell nice.”
So after we were done filling our vials, he says to us: “And we’re done! Let’s go sell some snake oil girls! Remember, this is a family secret. I’ll have to kill you two if you tell.” Me and Kayla were a little confused so I asked: “But what about the secret magical ritual? We didn’t put any magic into them yet?” And Kayla’s dad chuckles, leans over to us and tells us: “You guys think I believe in this crap?”
It turns out that Kayla’s parents don’t believe in the crap they were selling. They were just good bullshitters with their customers, who bought every word of it. And as I worked there I would actually see the same group of people come back to buy the “magic oils” and candles who even tell me that the oils are really powerful. I asked Kayla’s dad once when we were working together and it was quite why those customers say the magic oils work but we didn’t do anything magical to it; and why the magical herbs work if we get them from the food store? He didn’t know either and said it’s probably like prayer, if you believe in it and have faith in it, that it’ll work.
So after working at that book store and knowing all the “dirty secrets” of the occult business I didn’t believe in magic and I thought those people that came to buy our stuff were either crazy or really gullible or were just looking for something to believe in.
One day, a year later, I was working by myself in the evening since I was going to close the shop. I was reading a book on Buddhism since it was a slow evening and this old gentleman with a cane walked in to look around. I smiled and went back to reading, but I thought is was really strange because it’s not usual that a very well dressed old man with a shiny black cane walks into an occult book shop. He spent a very long time looking at every single book and thing in the store and seemed more interested in our furniture. Particularly a large beautiful varnished table with a central leg with lion paws we used to display these crystals and “magical tarot card boxes.”
He asked me fascinated: “This is a very nice table, where did you buy it at?” I answered: “Oh we didn’t buy it. It was free. The owner of the store found it in an alley by the trash bin. Somebody threw it away. It was in three pieces and really worn out. So me, him, and his daughter would work on fixing it up when we had nothing to do. To give it a new life. It took forever for me to sand it down by hand and to accentuate the detailing in the curves and the paws. It’s amazing because before nobody wanted it, but now every body that looks at it wants to buy it.”
He nodded saying: “Yes, it has a feel to it. A certain magical essence to it wouldn’t you say? From all those hands that put so much time and energy to it. I love the gold colored grain of the wood. I was going to ask you if it was for sale, but I assume it isn’t?” I smiled and said: “No, it’s not for sale. I wouldn’t go so far as to say anything is magical about it. We just gave it some love and devotion, and expensive varnish!” He laughed, and walked over to me extending his hand: “Theodore, but my friends call me Teddy.” I shook his hand and gave him my name, but my mind fell onto the gold chain that went into the pocket vest. I assumed it to be a pocket watch, which I thought was really odd.
I asked him: “Is that a pocket watch? I didn’t think they make those things any more these days?” He laughs, and says: “Yes, it’s an old pocket watch of an old man. Buddhist?” He saw the book I was reading, so I nodded; and he said: “Isn’t that something, we both find the other odd and out of place.” I asked him what he meant and he said: “Well, here you are a Buddhist who doesn’t believe in magic working in a book store that sells book and supplies associated with magic. I’d say that was peculiar don’t you think? Why don’t you believe in magic?”
And I answered: “Because I think of myself as a rational person, and I need proof that magic is real before I can believe. I have tried to experiment with the stuff in those books and nothing happens. So I conclude that magic is not real. That it is just a superstitious belief which is a component of certain belief systems.” The elderly man said to me: “Well there’s your problem! You look for magic and proof of it in book and in people whose only real understanding of magic is what they have also read themselves and what they have written and published to sell for money. My dear, you are looking for magic in the wrong places.”
I asked him where I should be looking then if he was so smart, and he said: “Magick is everywhere! It’s what you are. It’s what the universe is. There is no difference between Magic and Life. ‘We are formed and molded by our thoughts,’ so the Buddha says. Our thoughts are things. What we think becomes what we experience. Looking for Magic in book Chloe, is like looking for Life, or Enlightenment, or Love in books. You don’t look for these things Chloe, they must be experience. No one, no book, can teach you or prove to you that Magic is real. You must come to the understanding on your own through personal experience.”
After we had our nice talk, Teddy shook my hand with a smile and excused himself like a gentleman and walked off into the evening. The oddness of the man and the fact that he came in the store not to buy anything, but to spend an hour to talk to me about a topic I really had no interest in made me think about what he had said, and about the experiment he asked made me promise to do for a year. Or at least I thought I had no interest in it. It’s hard to be working in a book store which deals in the subject of magic and have a Family that talks about magic to not wonder. So I kept my promise I made out of curiosity.
For 365 days exactly; which was a full year; I was to keep a special diary in which I would keep a daily record of three things: 1) My daily thoughts; 2) The events of the day; & 3) Any dreams I can remember having.
I was to go about my day mindful of every thought I entertained in my mind. Which meant my day dreams, my pondering, my desires, my worries, and any thing which I spend my waking moments thinking upon. I was to describe this as detailed as I could. I was then to write down to the best of my ability a detailed account of everything that happened every day: the people I meet, the things I did, the places I went, even the strange things that stood out. Then I was to describe as best as I can my nightly dreams, as best as I can; like the scenery, the people I meet, what I did in the dream and so on. But I was not allowed to read what I write. I was to just write it in the morning and before retiring at night and not review it. I was only allowed to read the full content of my diary after the full 365 days had expired. I told Kayla about the weird old man and she kept a year long special diary of her own. We kept our journals in our laptops for the whole year.
A Deeper Look At Life
Having a second person do this experiment is more fun because you at least have someone to look at wide-eyed with your jaw hanging opened when you begin to realize just how strange Life is when you for once take notice of Life.
Reading through our year long record of every thought we had, every event that took place, and every dream we had for a full past year was in itself a mind trip. Half way through the journal a chill goes up and down your spine and tickles your ears as you realize right in front of you [in the diary] that your life unravels “like fractal patterns” as Kayla describes it. It’s hard to explain unless you have dedicated a year to do this. But as you read the older parts of the diary you see with your own eyes bits and pieces of “seed” thoughts, seed ideas, seed desires, seed dreams, seed events, that gradually grow or come together to form things you experience in the last half of the diary. You literally see – with your own eyes – your own life unraveling and manifesting from intangible thoughts, desires, and dreams.
But that wasn’t where the experimented ended. We noticed that a large portion of thoughts, day dreams, desires, dreams, and seed things did not seem to materialize during the year. Those were to materialize for us that following year gradually, for us to consciously – with full awareness – experience the Magic of Life.
It was fun. We could be driving and all of a sudden you hear one of us gasp or say “holy shit” and point then we’d hurry home to go through our special diaries to find the exact dreams or seed thoughts or seed events what we saw or just experienced came from; and stand their in utter disbelief saying the now usual: “No fucking way!” And the proof was written down for us a year ago which was the best part.
For example this one time during my year long experiment I wrote down in my diary a weird dream I had. The dream was unusually vivid and in color. Basically I was walking in the back of some school grounds I had never seen before which had this row of trees and bushes all along the back. I was walking along the trees and bush and remember passing three white gazebos and I found a clearing in between the bushes which I crawled into only to find a fence. I can’t remember how I got to the other side of the fence but I did. I found myself standing on a hill with my back to the fence looking over a farm.
The farm had several red barns. As I was walking through the farm I saw pigs, a horse, and a donkey, and a group of geese. I made my way to a side walk just beyond the little farm to find myself standing in a huge parking lot which was empty. I looked back to see the hill and trees I came from and I woke up.
Over a year later me and Kayla were driving out to a fair to meet friend. It was a city in the middle of nowhere we had never been to, so naturally we got lost because “somebody” didn’t even bother to write down the exact address. Kayla said her friend said you just make the exit and drive a mile past a few stoplights and the fair grounds was to the right, you gotta be an idiot to miss the fair because there are freaking giant rides she said. I wasn’t driving so it wasn’t my fault for getting lost.
At the time I had long forgotten those old dreams and we were so frustrated they were the furthest things from my mind. And we didn’t want to call our friend either because then we’d look like total retards for missing a big ass fair ground.
We kept on driving up and down the same street, back and forth, and Kayla says to me: “Chloe do something! Where the hell is it? It’s a fucking big ass fair!” I said: “I don’t see shit Kayla. We aren’t gunna find it driving up and down the same street. All I see is a fucking school and a big fucking parking lot.” So she asked me: “You think the parking lot is the fair? I don’t see any rides on it, do you see any rides on the empty fucking parking lot Chloe? Cuz I don’t!”
So as we were fighting and driving up the street again for the 8th time at 7 in the morning, we drive past that school again and I go: “Kayla look at that weird school, its on a hill.” She was screaming something at me about not looking for a fucking school but a fucking fair. But my mind was drawn to the weird school because I had this déjà vu feeling when I saw a row of trees in the back and three white gazebos. Then it hit! I had seen the exact same scenery in a dream. So I said all amazed and excited: “Kayla look at the gazebos! I saw that school in a dream! Baby there’s a farm on the other side of the hill with a horse and donkey I bet you. Maybe the fair is on the other side of the hill too, hence the big parking lot?” She was making one of those angry disbelief laughs shaking her head and said: “What the fuck Chloe?!” But she made a right turn to go around the parking lot and hill and there was the fair; and the farm was a petting zoo which was part of the fair! We were just a little early.
Seeing bits and pieces of seed thoughts and seed desires come together to unravel into something you experience is even more unexplainably cool. One of the thoughts Kayla found herself worrying over when she read her diary was her older sister who got a divorce and was lonely and depressed. She thought about that most of her waking hour, and also had a desire to find a great guy for her sister. In one of her daily events Kayla [for some strange reason I can’t figure out] described a movie she we rented and watched? As if that’s a significant daily event to write about. But in her description of the characters in the movie and how she described it she seemed fixated on the lake in the movie, which the movie didn’t even revolve around.
In a different part of her special diary she had written down a little weird even she had where she had a dream about white Easter lilies, and that one day as she was pumping gas a truck drives past her with a white lily on its side. So she thought that was weird. During a different time of the year she describes meeting a guy she briefly met named Roland at school. She and Roland, and a few of their classmates were working on a project together. He had a girlfriend. But she just wrote him down in her diary because he just stuck out in her mind.
So one day, over a year later, me and Kayla thought we’d take my car for an oil change. We had walked around waiting for it to be done and came back at the time he [the worker] told us to come back. We were told that it would be just another 10 minutes and it’ll be done, so we sat in the waiting room where there were these magazines. Kayla picks up the nearest on to her and I did the same. She had picked up an apartment guide and was flipping through the pages and she reads to me the description on a classy apartment that is describes as being near a beautiful lake. I said: “So?” And she said: “I haven’t been to a lake in a while. Do you wanna go check this lake out?”
We went to the lake the first time to check it out real quick so we’d know where it was. It was actually pretty. We saw a huge pile of ducks and geese swarmed around this family feeding them bread, and we both agreed we definitely have to come back on the weekend and feed the ducks and make a day out of it. So we did.
That weekend we bought 3 bags of bread and fed the ducks first. Those things will step on your feet and bite the bread out of your hands before you throw it at them. We had to retreat to the table to stand on it so the won’t peck us. After that we thought we’d walk around to see how big the lake was. After 15 minutes of walking we realized there were two lakes actually. We were standing in front of this booth which rents these bicycle cart thingies. So we decided to rent one for $40 to ride it around both lakes.
Well as we were riding we noticed that there were actually three lakes and the third one was the biggest. The third one had a place where people were racing those remote controlled race boats. So we thought we’d have lunch by the side of the lake and watch the boat races.
Anyways, after a full and beautiful day at the lake we thought it was time to go home so we walked to the car and I was feeling my pockets for my keys as we approached the car and I stopped in horror [as I often do because I leave my keys, and little wallet places and lose them]. Kayla looks at me terrified and says: “Please don’t tell me you lost your keys somewhere out there Chloe.” I walked to my door and looked in hoping the keys would be in there, and they were, still in the ignition thing. Then we got into a big fight because I had to ruin the whole day.
Lucky she had Triple A so she called them after she cooled down to send somebody over to pick our lock for us because we left the keys in the car. The guy who came to help us had a name patch on his work shirt that said Roland. I didn’t think nothing of it, but the name woke up Kayla curiosity or that weird feeling. He was a nice guy. Attractive, very well mannered, built, in his mid thirties. He had this long thin metal thing which he just stuck down the side of the door but in the inside of the door and in less then a minute we heard a clique and the door was unlocked! I said to him: “Shit, where do I get one of those at?” Which started a long and nice conversation.
After 30 minutes of talking we made plans to grab a bite to eat with him in an hour when he gets off work. He was a really cool guy. We went to get some dinner and a few drinks and after the night was over Kayla had set him up on a date with her older sister because he had just gotten a divorce. She called me over to her mom’s house that day Roland was suppose to pick up Kayla’s big sister to watch. Roland came punctually and knocked on the door and Kayla’s mom answers it. He was dressed very nicely and he held in his hands two white lilies! He introduced himself to Kayla’s mom and gave her one of the white lilies, and gave the other white lily to Kayla’s sister. Anyways, those two are today happily married, and like me and Kayla, the deeper they look at their lives and past, the more strange coincidences they found that their lives also crossed paths in the past in many ways; but as Kayla’s mom says, it just wasn’t time for them to meet. True story.
It’s very hard to explain, after all these years since that initial year we started that experiment to experience Life consciously – with mindfulness – of the daily motions of Life, how Mysterious and Magical Life is; yet how so much of this Mystery and Magic goes unnoticed.
It’s like that car game you play we were kids sitting in the back of the car. You and your sister or whoever is playing with you take turns picking a color and the first one to spot a car on the freeway that color gets to punch the others on the shoulders as many times as the number of cars of that color you suddenly become mindful of. It’s amazing after playing that game to realize just how many red cars there are.
Or it’s like a paleontologist who focuses his trained awareness – his consciousness – on the dirt we normally walk on which we never notice. But the paleontologist becomes aware of things in that same dirt and as he concentrates his mindfulness and energy on that same ground consciously aware of every little bit and piece. With determination and a deeply focused mind, he magically – in Time – manifests a dinosaur [the skeleton of one]. From ground we all know is there, but are not mindfully focused on it.
If we were to place me who knows nothing of the art and science of becoming aware of dirt in a debate with a trained paleontologist who is conditioned to focus his mindfulness on such things to see things I can’t and I were to say to him: “I walk on the ground every day, I should know what dirt is all about and what it has or does not have. You can’t pull a brontosaurus out of dirt!” How foolish would I look, and how irrelevant would my ignorant and arrogant opinions be to what the ground is and what it mysteriously hides, and what can magically be manifested from it?
Or its like this one time when I drank a bottle of Coke which makes me need to go pee every five minutes and my parents were driving us down to Las Vegas. As we drive my parents are like: “Wow Chloe, look at the mountains. Wow Chloe, look at mesquite shrubs they’re everywhere, you know they make barbeque wood with them? Wow Chloe look at Death Valley.” But in my mind I’m saying to myself: “Just take me to the nearest Rest Area, my freaking bladder is full!” So what is a scenic trip to Vegas to my parents, is a constant desire and anticipation for the nearest rest area for me.
That is how Life is to most of us – when we think in Mundane [re: worldly] levels. We each live and experience Life as a constant desire, a constant “looking forward to” for the nearest “rest areas” of Life. For our 5th birthdays when we can stay up later. For that moment when we finish 6th grade finally. For us to turn 13 to go through puberty like everyone else. For our first kiss. For our first real bra. For our first boyfriend. For that moment in the distance when we graduate high school. For the right job. For our bi-weekly pay checks. For the “Right One” to come into our lives. For marriage. For retirement.
And before we know, we realize that Life has pasted us by. Or more accurately: That we have pasted Life by never noticing anything about it except for the handful of mundane things we expect or anticipate. And when somebody who notices the more subtle flow of Life; the more Mysterious nature of Life; the more Magical essence of Life, we resist the foolish notion, believing that what mundane events we notice in Life is all that Life is.
My grandfather who is a monk says to: “Live Life with your breath.” Just as in meditation when you become mindful of every up and down movement of your breath, so should you also become mindful of Life and experience it with the same focus of mind and concentration; to become aware of everything that Life becomes not by expecting and anticipating distant things, but by noticing the nowness of each movement of Life that passes by with each breath.
When you live you Life with your breath, you notice the finer, more subtle movements of Life. You notice the coincidences, the “signs,” the deja vus, the interconnection of thoughts and experiences. You notice the unfolding and unraveling, or blossoming the Life constantly is. From each seed thought in you give birth to in your mind. From what seed thoughts you entertain and feed psychic energy with the constant thinking of them. Whether those seed thoughts are negative or positive. Such seed thoughts weaves together into the fabric of your future experiences.
You become aware and Realize that the difference, or separation, between you and Life is an illusion. That you do not stop at the surface of your skin. That your thoughts do not stay inside your Mind. Because you and Life are the same thing in the same way that the sun and a focal point of light a magnifying glass makes are in essence the same thing. Not merely the same thing in the goofy mundane philosophical sense that the Sun is the Macrocosm, and the little Sun on the other side of the lens is the Microcosm. But in the true meaning of the words “The Same Thing” meaning there is no break or division in the Big Sun’s rays of light that passes through the Nexion of the lens to literally become the Smaller Sun. Or as the Taoist Adepts say: “Heaven and Earth United.” The Sun in the Heavens and the manifested Sun on this earth is One continuous Flow of Light/Life.
When you have learned to live Life with your breath; you will come to the Self Realization that you and the Living Cosmos are One Being and that you are Intimately Connected to the Living Cosmos. As if in a dance together in a cycle of Mutual Creation: The Living Cosmos creating and manifesting as you and the Life you experience; as you create and manifest the Living Cosmos into the Life and reality you give birth to from your thoughts.
Dark Providence
It is not my desire or intention to enlighten and illuminate those mundanes. I was raised and bred to see those wretched creatures as a source of one’s wealth, power, and pleasure in life. Illuminating them works against my nature and desires. I don’t care if they read this and do not understand or take it apart to debate upon it validity philosophically. I write these Insights I have down as they come to mind before they fade away. For what future children I will have and for their children. And for those of us of the ONA who may see value in such insights to come to a closer and deeper apprehension of Life, so that you may each use what comes of such insights to evolve yourselves to your highest potential. Not only to be more intelligent they the anariya. But more importantly to be Master of your own Lives. To manifest and materialize the Life you desire to live and experience. To be Master of your Life, rather than to have Life master you.
It is as if you are in a flowing river: you either swim to a destination of your choice, or be carried by the flow of life like driftwood to nowhere. Because to Nature all you are essentially is a means – via your sperm and egg – for Life to continue itself. You mean nothing more to Nature. You must struggle in Life. You must fight Life for what you are worth. Just as a sapling in a jungle must struggle and fight Life to the top of the canopy for Light or die to be replaced by another sapling who has the will, determination, to pierce the canopy for its reward: the gift of seeding Life’s next generation. If Life/Nature desires to evolve, to expand beyond this small planet of ours to vivify the Galaxy, then it must have this ethos of rewarding the most capable. To insure its own eternal evolution and expansion.
Mastering Life begins with Mastering your own Mind. Because it is from your thoughts that the threads of reality is spun: the weaving of which is the Life you experience. Such that if you worry about bills and spend your waking hours worrying about bills, Life will give you bills to worry about. If you are a guy and you spend your waking hour think about sex and girls, those waking thoughts gradually manifest through you as the emotional drive you will feel, or the determination and will you will have to fix yourself up, eat right, lift weights to make yourself attractive and such; so that in Time, you Life rewards you with what you have “asked” for.
So it can be easily understood that if you are a guy, and you suffer from mental and emotional issues. Such as insecurity, self loathing, and worry about girls not liking you for the many illusory reasons you tell yourself. Then such constant thoughts will not drive you to look better, buy better clothes, get fit, or learn to socialize and talk to girls. And thus, Life gives you what you have mentally asked for. And if such a guy does not have the power to change his mind – to control his thoughts – then whose fault is it that he lives and experiences such a resulting Life? Your thoughts, those thoughts you hold and entertain during your waking hours, literally manifests as what you will experience in many ways.
For instance compare two stray dogs. One stray dog is emotionally damaged from abuse and abandonment and he does not trust humans. He shows his teeth and growls at people that walk past him. The other dog, not affected by being rejected and unloved continues to wag his tail and offer people who walk by friendly smiling eyes. Which of the two will eventually starve to death or end up in the pound waiting to be euthanized, and which of the two will eat or even find a new home? You don’t have to be able to speak and be human for your thoughts to affect your life because thoughts came before language.
In essence, you are in a Cosmic Dance and your partner is Dark Providence. Dark Providence neither likes you or dislikes you. It is beyond human valuations of good and evil. It will indiscriminately give you what you “ask” for. Just like a vending machine: you put in the money and it will give you what you ask for according to the buttons you push. If you don’t like the taste of what you get, it is your own fault for pushig those buttons.
Or Dark Providence – which is the Living Cosmos – is like a lake; such that if you cause a ripple in this causal realm, then that the same movement of ripples comes back to the center from which it originated. The Center being your Mind. And sense we are all, and everything is this same Living Cosmos in causal manifestation, when such ripples comes reverts back to its center of origin, it travels through its causal forms: other people and causal events. This is one of the esoteric meanings of Wyrd: your thoughts not only affects and alters your life, but they affect and change other people’s lives as well. Not just causally, but psychically.
Belief Causes Suffering
Belief – as opposed to Experience – causes one to suffer in Life. We have seen the amount of suffering the mere Belief in sin has caused in Christendom. We have seen the suffering Communism has caused. We can see the suffering the Belief in Consumerism is causing. We can come to understand that the Belief in “religion” has and does cuase suffering.
To Believe is to accept another person’s ideas [memes] without personal direct experience. If you Believe in a Heaven, have you ever experienced it? But to experience something to come to a Realization. People don’t Believe fire burns skin and hurts, you Realize it after experiencing fire burning. You don’t believe in the color green, you’ve seen it. You don’t Believe in sex, you’ve done it, so there is no belief involved.
These Beliefs – all beliefs – distracts you from Experience because you accept your beliefs as being true already. Without Experiencing Life, you will not come to Realize the esoteric Mystery and Magic of Life. When you do not Realize such aspects of Life you do not have the ability to utilize it to your advantage. You do not have the capacity to Master Life. If you cannot Master Life: Life masters you. If Life masters you, the causal result is suffering, which is Life in atrophic recession. It is a movement of Life – Acausal Life Force – receding from you, because Life cannot thrive through you; like healthy people moving away from a leper.
It’s like that question: Which came first the chicken or the egg? Which came first the miserable man or his miserable life? It’s common human practice to blame everything wrong and bad on everyone and everything but our own selves, while taking the credit for all thing right and good for yourself. So it’s not shocking that a Life Dysfunctional man [re: a miserable] will blame his suffering on his miserable [dysfunctional] life. Like how a guy will blame his wife for a dysfunctional marriage when it’s his fault half of the time because he’s half of a whole marriage and the wife reacts half the time, because she is the other half you see? It’s just one marriage; as it is just one Life: you are marriage to the Cosmos. And unlike a human marriage, your marriage to the Cosmos really is ‘till death do you part.” You either learn to make your marriage with Dark Providence work, or endure a life long suffering, or kill yourself.
The reason why I have written all these pages of insights is because I do not want my own children in future, or anyone who is of the ONA who is esoterically inclined to value such insights to be entrapped by the illusion and abstraction of beliefs. Because beliefs misdirects your attention away from the intimate Direct Experience of Life. It’s like some one were to tell you on your way to Vegas via the scenic route: “You know, there is a really exceptional rest area just a mile away with impeccable toiletry facilities Ralph.” And instead of noticing the passing scenery and absorbing the experience and learning; you just ponder on magnificent toilets.
Such as the Belief in Materialist Atheism. In your Belief of such foreign memes, you reject the entire idea of magic and mystery of a Living Cosmos. So you never notice such things or work to experience them. Not experiencing them, you end up mastered by Life, like driftwood helplessly caught up in Life’s current.
But also the Belief in what we might call the “magic” of the Western Tradition, such as what you would find in the OTO, the Golden Dawn, the Kabbalah, Wicca, Chaos Magic, is also a distraction. Because where is your attention, your awareness, your mindfulness diverted to? To the motion of the rituals, the noise of arcane languages, the list of gods, the colorful lamens and shiny knives. The belief that somehow these things changes Life. That somehow with a colored robe and candles and words of power that you can gain an intimate understand of what you are, what Life is, and how your relationship with Life works.
How many so called occultists and magickians can stop smoking or lack the will power to lose weight? How many of these people can’t find a date or lack the will to go up and talk to a girl? They have to make a magic “love bag” and wear around their necks and hope that somehow attracts a girl to come talk to them. Even if one came over, the nerd would still lack the skills to get her. Why are there so many money spells and loves spells out their and why do these two kinds of spells sell the most in the occult and magical world, if they work? Why are most occultists and magickians I meet miserable and depressed? The point is the Belief in this kind of magic and the dependence on such draws your mindfulness away from the subtle aspect of Life. Mastering this kind of magic is not Mastering Life. You are confusing the Essence for an outer form.
Such exoteric and mundane systems of magic are just a set of Beliefs – memeplex – and my contention with such things is that it causes suffering. Because how many occultists and practitioners of “magic” do you know have not found inner piece? Have not learned to still and find their Center? Have not learned to materialize a genuinely fulfilling Life? Are still searching? How many of them have actually gone deeper into their delusions of sepheroths and qlipoths, of gods, and such, and have moved away from Life to not even be able to apprehend what Life there is out side of their ritual chambers and memeplex?
I’m not saying that all “outer forms” of so called Magick is misdirective. It is a matter of focus: what is that outer form directing your consciousness on? On itself to produce a dependence on such outer forms, as one becomes dependent on opiates? On a superficial illusion of Life. Or on Life itself? Those rites that we have in the Black Book of Satan and Naos are our Traditional Foundation of the ONA which does genuinely draw down Acausal Energy and cast our attention via such things as Physis and the Star Game inward and upon Life. But an architect builds upon a Foundation a structure of his own craft and design.
The Star Game is perhaps the most effective means to apprehend the subtle nature of Life. Each piece changes as it moves and each move influences another change and move. Like the gradual unraveling of a fractal pattern. Such that what moves and changes you commence the Star Game with determines the end results. When you have played an entire game through, you come to realize that each move and change is not actually a separate and individual move, but that the whole session was a single unraveling or motion. The expresses one of the meanings of Wyrd.
Life is also like the Star Game where each though we think changes us and each move we make in life influences our next move and other people’s next move. And if we learn to see life from a different perspective, we realize that our thoughts and motions in life are not isolated islands, but a fleeting part of an unraveling of the wholeness of Life.
Such Traditional aspects of the ONA found in the Black Book and Naos gradually divests us of our outer superficial garments we wear as a barrier between us and Life. It stripes us of the comfortable shirt of mundane illusions. From the pants Beliefs. From the panties of our private convictions. And we are immersed – naked – into the flowing river that Life is. In that condition – without barriers – we feel Life directly not just without our eyes and ears. But with every inch and curve of our bodies. Our naked skin surrounded in every direction by the subtle motions and undulations of life moving between our toes. In that state of Naked Being, we Realize that we and Life are the same thing. As a single current of many moving currents IS the river.
Life must be lived directly by plunging into it and experiencing it. It is from that Naked Experience of Life, and the Realization that Magic and Life are the same flowing – Becoming – “thing” which is also YOU; which you are the center of; that you begin to learn the finer details and hidden mysteries of Life and learn to make Life work for you. Our thoughts – what we spend our waking hours entertaining Within – sets the Flow. As Within, So Without. There is no need to search for answers and magic outside yourself. For such “outsideness” has its origins from Within.
There is this nice old Greek story I love which has a profound meaning. Long ago when the Olympian Gods formed Mankind they made mankind to tend their cows. But some of these first humans began trying to climb up Mount Olympus to obtain the Divine Flame. The gods were afraid that if Mankind got hold of the Divine Flame that they would also be gods and there would be nobody to tend the cows.
So the gods held a great meeting to talk about where to hide the Divine Spark. Some suggested that it be hidden at the tippy top of the highest mountain, while others suggested that they hide it way down deep at the bottom of the ocean. But Zeus didn’t like these ideas because he knew mankind would eventually go to these places.
Then, an unknown goddess named Aphrodite gave a suggestion to Zeus. She suggested that the Divine Spark be hidden right inside these mortals, which would be the last place they will ever look. And to keep them busy, she suggested that Mankind should be split into male and female [since people were androgynous]. Zeus was so please he made Aphrodite an Olympian and named her the Goddess of “Love.”
We are kept busy with the illusion of Dualism, constantly searching for our other half, constantly trying to make sense of things in such dualistic terms. When things are all really One. And we go about Life searching for answers in everything and in every place from churches to religion, from magic to money, in books and in gurus. Never Realizing that the Numen of the Living Cosmos is right inside of us. When you search, Life will always give you something to search for. It is when you have learned to stop searching, and to become Mindful of the Numinous Within, that you find your Enlightenment. That you Realize the Oneness of you and Life. That you Realize that Life is in essence Mystery and Magic in motion.
As an engineer who has become Mindful of the intimate details of air and wind. Such that he learns to make airplanes to utilize the natural motion of such wind. When you have Centered yourself Within, and have learned to become Mindful of the natural motion of Life. You learn to utilize Life to move you to where you want to go; to manifest what you need out of Life. When you have come to Realize the intimate connexion that exists between you and the Living Cosmos, you come to Realize that you are like a little spoiled puppy who is taken care of by Life itself. Whose every need and wont is Provided, and whose every desire is granted.
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
121 yf
