There’s plenty of pessimism about our civilization’s future. Lots of people seem to think that we’re in for trouble. I’m certain we are, but extinction? Well, I don’t know about that — Certainly change. Perhaps ‘Correction’ to use a soulless economic term. Ecological Correction.

The truth of spiritual awakening is that it generally comes from extreme pain and suffocating fear. Some people even have to die, or almost die, to have their lives changed in a radical enough way to see Life as a miracle. Our collective suffering and fear for the future is the most powerful prophecy of our rise as an enlightened, planetary civilization.

As I see it, we have more potential than ever for living our lives and shaping the future that it’s hardly a justifiable use of our precious time to sit around worrying about something like humankind being wiped out. For me, there’s no escaping such a vision and I wouldn’t want to run away, anyway. Where am I going to go, the moon?

All that matters is that we choose to live, love and wage war upon the blackness of oblivion. Create, play and spread love not by preaching about it but by learning the ever nuanced, ever subtle artistry of love. The technologies of love. The vision and compassion and inner-peace that is your inheritance as a human being. You matter most to me, the planet second. What use is the planet to us if we have no place upon it?

But you may come to the conclusion that life on this planet is worth saving – if only as a hobby. I firmly believe that even if this global civilization was to fall so soon in its infancy, people could still live meaningfully and with courage and dignity. If we realize the truth of just how interconnected we all are I’m not so certain we’d have a planetary crisis for long.

I am a new type of citizen. I was born in a world that had always known computers and the Internet. Where jet planes flew over the once immeasurable oceans hundreds of times daily. I am of a world where machines orbiting our planet have mapped every square inch of territory, in data if not in spirit. I have never known a moment in my life where I was not intimately connected with the total pain of our undivided global nation.

When people insist that history repeats itself they fail to realize that we live in a world that has risen overnight — and whether we are fighting each other or working together, there is a kind of unity that has never existed before. Whether we make war or find peace, love or hate, act or do nothing at all, our fates are inextricably bound together.

I am a poet. I believe that words can touch and paint and that the language of the universe is poetry. However, no word will ever hold the truth. It can only represent it.

I am an artist. I believe that nothing is black and white, nor is everything shades of grey. There is black, and white, and grey… millions of colours in the visible spectrum… and qualities of things which our eyes are yet not evolved enough to see.

I am a teacher. I do not believe that people are stupid, and I don’t believe it’s stupid if you think they are. The stupidity and insanity of this world can be very convincing. However, I have chosen an axiom as my operating principle: people are not stupid, people are not evil and everyone has a profound place in my life and on the dimension of the sacred.

I am a student. I believe that the universe is infinitely and incomprehensibly more intelligent than myself, but that that is not a good reason to try to simplify it or give up trying to understand it. I believe our ability to grasp complexity, subtlety and nuance is infinite if we have the courage to admit that it might be. I bow to the unknown and wander in the darkness. I feel better knowing I am lost.

I am a visionary. I believe that no one way of thinking, that no one system of belief is useful without others to compliment it. The greatest human skill is to not need to believe in anything at all. To see from any angle. Every system of rules crumbles around the edges – therefor overlap systems. You don’t need eyes to see, you need vision.

I am a lover. I am truly heartbroken and therefor forever free of heartbreak. My mind may be sharp and guarded, but my heart is hot and passionate from the tenderness that makes me strong.

I am a servant. I believe there is one unalterable, inalienable, ever expanding, ever evolving truth and I do not believe in giving it a name. It will never be grasped by the mind. Never be explained. It is the one most obvious and yet most secret of things. And I pledge loyalty and servitude to this truth alone: love is my only master and peace my only oath.

I am a warrior. The true warrior is at once healer and a warrior, because to heal is a powerful weapon. Each movement, every utterance is a weapon against the manifestation of wickedness. This is grace. By healing, he is attacking. By curing, she is combating. By fixing, he is not allowing his true enemies to form. By waging peace, health, love and life, her machinations stalwart, vigilant, ceaseless… she guards against evils unimagined.

A true warrior has stared into the deep! She has looked into the abyss long enough to realize that something… was gazing back. Indeed his enemies cannot see the sun, only the shadows it casts. Because the warrior knows fear as a lover, those who would use fear and cultivate hatred and discord tremble inwardly before the intimacy of the Righteous, and flee from her.

There is a saying: Know thy Self. There is also a saying: Know thy Enemy. Trust that there is only a very subtle difference and then find this very subtle difference in everything your mind happens upon, until its questions are tamed and you know what to do.

...

I moved to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in January and I'm eager to have a fun summer. I tend to gravitate toward people who enjoy freedom, who have courage and passion and have a love for communication, real friendship and solving the problems in their lives (and in their society) that most people tend to ignore. I also have a remarkable humour and can bring laughter and light into the darkest of places.

I am very interested in educated men and women who remain open minded, and have an appreciation for their own beauty and the beauty around them in the world. I am too old now for the trivial drama, the push and pull of manipulation and control, and tend to see right through bullshit. Alas, if I were only a little less perceptive! Oh well.

I'm interested in being real, and I hope you feel the same. I'm not sure I want to save the world, but I'd really like to stop pretending. If you're reading this, you should know that it's just an honest snapshot of where I'm at, and I hope you'll get in touch if that's what you're moved to do!

Talk to you then!

You are illegal. You’re the scene of a crime called intelligence, called awareness, called humanity. It’s called all sorts of things, but I assure you it is illegal and there are some very powerful people who would rather you not be doing any of it.

Your entire life is not a coincidence. It is the scene of a crime. That crime is YOU WAKING UP. How did it happen?

You must investigate yourself.

One meditation exercise I described to a friend was to imagine you were not from here. That you had been sent here on a mission you couldn’t recall and that every single tiny thing you did had an effect on the outcome of that mission. As a matter of fact, your memories are more propaganda and imagination than relevant to tracing your path, so we must for the sake of this exercise proceed deeply into the Now, whether through normal breathing exercises, following our heart into the warmth of our lifeforce or other mindfulness techniques.

Once you are in the Now, and prepared to discount any thought-waves that might be memory oriented, you can begin our self-investigation. You can start from right where you are and as soon as you’ve finished reading. The person who has been living this life is no longer you, but henceforth referred to as ‘the Suspect’.

Look at the things around you. Who is this person, this Suspect, you’ve just arrived into? Are there immediate things about the Suspect’s body that you notice, small habitual movements or marks that indicate that some form of past may be relevant to the present situation. Don’t go to the place the marks or habits came from and create a story about it. You must bring them into the present moment with you and keep them here with you rather than let your mind trail off into its cause-and-effect storytelling.

There are clues in the books lying around, even the ones the Suspect has bought but hasn’t read. There are clues in the decorations of the house, or the place the Suspect works, in the clothes being worn. Do not move anything from the crime scene at this point and take notes if you absolutely must (be careful, the Suspect may occasionally return during this exercise and you will have to hide what you’ve been doing).

You are looking for traces of a life that has been going on without your express attention. It is not YOUR life, remember, it is a crime scene that you have just now arrived into. You have no obligations to its past or its future, only to the ’smoking gun’.

What is the crime? What is this person up to? What can you deduce about their motives and agenda. Remember that no matter how much you feel that you may in fact BE this person you’re investigating, you have no proof of that. For the sake of argument, and for this exercise, the notion that you ARE in fact the person you are investigating is sheer psychotic delusion. Memory is propaganda and misinformation ONLY. Remain detached and clinical and present.

Notice the assumptions you make about this person based on what you find and notice when you make your judgements. Remember that you need to gather evidence and build a case: innocent until proven guilty.

Can you find, in the environment, at the scene of the crime, any indications of the material that may have led this person to do the forbidden, insane act of actually attempting to awaken? It is bold defiance to attempt to break conditioning and thus waste hundreds of millions of dollars that has been spent in order to assure that similar people do not wake up, do not question, do not think deeply about life? Find the clues.

Perhaps most of all there are clues in the relationships the Suspect is engaged in. You are permitted to disguise yourself as the Suspect: you have a magical advantage right now in that you currently look the same (though others may be keen and notice you are behaving oddly, so beware… that is, be aware.) See what you can find out about who this criminal has been talking to recently. You will find various sorts of Influences, it is recommended that you examine how these people impact you with their presence. Which ones have been dutifully dragging ‘you’ down, numbing ‘your’ consciousness and doing what they can to be poisonous?

Especially, watch out for people who are offering new doors or ‘gateways’ to further thought-crime. You will recognize these people because they offer exciting possibilities into the unknown and are often fairly chaotic Influences in the life of the Suspect. They may have recently provided the Suspect with grandiose shifts in self-definition and identity. They may have freed energy up for the Suspect so that they have more time and resources to pursue freedom.

Such Influences may suggest that the Suspect begins to act pragmatically. They may encourage the Suspect to explore new thought, engage in physical activities, eat healthy and may in extreme cases enable the Suspect to think critically and solve problems creatively.

Make note of what these Influences introduce into the Suspect’s lives because this evidence is vital to our understanding of the methods in which terrorist grassroots organizations are attempting to level the playing field. Any awareness increasing evidence should be collected and removed from the Suspect’s environment.

...

Some notes on the role of memory:

There must be some ways that the task, our work, can become more clear. I think that the focus needed to maintain our material form on the physical plane demands so much energy that we necessarily ‘forget’. Also the components of our memory that are hardwired into our brain obstruct rather than promote a deeper remembering of the collective, and of our past incarnations. There seems to be some conflict between who that brain believes it is and who we truly are as well as where/when we truly come from.

Can we find clues in the present moment, in our actual pattern? It seems that we must! Our advantage in observing the present far outweighs our ability to predict or recollect. Therefore the greatest clues we will find evidence themselves smack in front of our noses: I have found, at best, that an awareness of context is the most the past (or any conceptual framework) can offer. At worst, memory and thought will obscure the truth in those moments we need to observe — note here that thought is the PAST TENSE of thinking and also note how interesting it is that we use the word at all! Reflection (that is sitting, remembering, thinking, analyzing, deciding and taking new action) can be postponed and relocated to appropriate times, rather than compulsively intrude on us, either when we are with ourselves or when we are with our trusted advisers.

So give priority to the present instance, collect all you can from it, and then and only then draw from past experience. Otherwise you risk constantly colouring events and people with stuff that isn’t actually there, stuff you’ve brought with you and you alone will add to the encounter. You will constantly be collecting the WRONG data from the present, which will create the WRONG memories which will further colour your experiences in a way that runs contrary to truth.

Memories, at most, should be treated as propaganda.

This is so daringly counter-intuitive! When I began the practice of prioritizing my inputs and treating memory as biased propaganda I found only an initial discomfort. We do this same exact thing to the perceptions of everyone else around us and to their input, identities and stories (even if we are gullible and naive, we do this more to others than we do to ourselves). We know they often don’t see themselves or what Jung would call their own shadow.

Memory IS unconscious! How can we depend on any available memory to somehow transmute itself into conscious awareness? Memory, in this sense, arises from mind and in my experience, (and apparently in neuro-science too) awareness and/or consciousness simply cannot be found in the brain or the mind.

The very act of remembering, if you permit me a broader definition than is normal, is psychotic and delusional in that it is neither the present, nor is it sufficient in and of itself to be the truth. Sift through this stuff with great caution and utmost suspicion, because it is constantly and aggressively telling you who you are when in fact we can be certain that it is largely unawakened, incorrectly interpreted, hyper-selective bullshit.

The Way of the Warrior is a difficult path to justify and takes great care. Some believe in “peace at all costs”. To them the word warrior is like a curse or swear, because there is so much war and hate in our world. Yet the Way of the Warrior does not create soldiers and mercenaries. If we had more warriors, there would be less war.

Why must it be spoken in riddles? Poetry? Plain language is not sufficient. Therefore we say that the warrior is also a poet. Language conceptualizes reality into empty symbols. What was once a symbol for a thing… its definition lost… now is not a concept in the mind. No one teaches it, because no one remembers it. So the truth is beyond language to grasp or to convey, though we must try anyway just as we maintain the cleanliness of a sacred space.

To be a warrior is to take an oath. A warrior is a teacher, a healer and a seeker of quests. When we take an oath it is to the highest cause, the greatest quest. So you must find that highest thing, a taste or glimpse of it, and then take a solemn, personal oath to serve the universe.

The Oath of the Warrior-Poet

In silence sweet
we tread our feet,
In sands
on shores
of time.
Seeing past the rhythmic beat,
And truly touching those we meet,
Is why our only weapon is our rhyme.
For as it’s said,
or so I’ve read,
Words are dozen’s by the dime…

A warrior must be aware! It is not the warrior’s duty to awaken those who sleep, but to protect them until they wake. One might be woken early, but the body needs rest to heal, as does the mind and spirit. So the warrior stands guard. But never idly! Sometimes the warrior crosses a dangerous chasm, and might stop to build a bridge for those who shall someday follow.

A warrior teaches what he can to others, but cannot force them to learn. One must learn of the world first hand. To shelter someone from the world is to build a prison. In meaning to save them, they will be imprisoned. The warrior must know the truth of the world, and face it, and will realize that this is the right path for all. Leave prisons for the truly wicked. Give wings to the innocent and catch them when they fall. The warrior serves thanklessly amongst mortals but soon discovers the thanks of heaven, and is welcome in the company of saints and angels.

The warrior must minimize their own harm upon the world, but not renounce it. Destruction and creation are one. Birth and death are one. This is Life, and to renounce one thing over the other is not the Way. To renounce one thing is to oppress the universe – and the true warrior is no oppressor. The universe is good and you are its servant.

Fear has its place in every heart. Bravery is the response to Fear. Courage is Fear’s dance partner. The path is glimpsed when the warrior asks honestly “What do I fear?”, and revealed when the warrior finds out why he fears it. If you follow your shadow and find your fear, you will discover that it is the Light that casts the shadow … and that the shadow is nothing more than a quality of the Light. The Light reveals Truth.

The truth is never mistakable. It haunts our mind and our dreams even as we struggle to remain blind. The truth is always with us, screaming into our faces demanding that we obey its reality. It is the eternal drill sergeant and the only master you need ever serve.

There are those who know when we lie but will never reveal what they know. What does this mean of people who can read our thoughts and do not disagree? What secrets must they hide from all of their beloved? Beware these silent warriors because they will see past your words and hear past your actions and they shall let you err into oblivion. They have cultivated within them a great indifference to wickedness and manipulations and may indeed let you destroy yourself utterly.

The truth is beyond guidance only you can find the way. Others may point, and point well but you will forever be obligated to make the movement toward it yourself. Such is the nature of courage! As awesome as truth is, it is necessarily terrifying because the parts of us that are false — hyperbole to others and lies to ourselves — all these parts must die as we step closer to the silent illuminations of reality. So pain, and suffering, fear and death are intricate parts of the search for truth and indeed they remain upon the spiritual battlefield of the warrior as conscious allies: enemies made friends.

Though you feel blind, though you feel ignorant though you feel lost and strive to find some faith: No one in this world is better off. Every one of us has to confront our deepest suffering and wildest fears. If we do not, then we return – reborn: there is no escape. We all start thus, the same. Every life a shadow, every place a marker, every time a measure… in relation to nothing. Rich or poor, the details are trivia. History may not remember us because we are the memories of an already forgotten age. What use history if the historians have never known the present. Listen: If you know one moment in completeness, if you know the fullness of an instant with the emptiness of your mind, all of history will be revealed to you. The length and scope of the war we are involved in is one of the sorceries that a warrior learns. Thrive on chaos and find peace in battle.

Remember, you cannot always change the world, just as you cannot always predict the weather. The weather knows not its own course and cares little about such direction. Every great storm has her eye but we must weather the storm to find it. Your journey may exhaust you, and in such moments that you are able to find rest, and healing, look to the horizons. In the eye of the heavens we shall be seen, staring up, catching our breath… and the heavens shall ask us, with a smile, to go on.

Life is breath and water and light. But what is Humanity? We do not start with such a thing even as we must earn our breath by breathing for the first time. Humanity is earned and defended and protected. Freedom, courage and justice can never be taken from us… not even by the nightmares of the damned. Such things are intrinsic to the circumstances of our battle, just as the elements combine to fashion the material plane, so does the heart and mind combine to fashion the spirit.

The highest ideals for a warrior are to champion peace and love. To nurture compassion and build courage at every turn. Freedom from fetters and justice for the innocent. Such things create the only fire hot enough to forge the perfect warrior: the greatest challenges, the rarest substances and the only things we can take with us through to the other side. We can only take such things as the body is destroyed so be sure that we once again understand that the Kings of this world value honour above all, and that honour serves peace, love, compassion, courage, freedom, justice and innocence.

Never seeing these virtues in this world, only look within: this is where they dwell, our deepest most protected things that even a sword through the heart cannot touch. Those whose movements and lives orbit such virtues gain humanity, are invulnerable and thus immortal.

A warrior does not conquer to rule but conquers to liberate. Once freedom is truly understood, it must be sacrificed, otherwise it too can become a chain.

To conquer the world is the easy path. To conquer the self is the hard. To train in weapons, to fight for wealth, to serve anything else other than the highest good means that you are a mercenary or a criminal. The greatest warriors train upon the hardest path, so that they are the hardest warriors. Love and compassion: these are the strongest forces in the universe, so the Way of the Warrior is to master them. Just as weaving love and compassion makes the healer potent, so do they make the warrior powerful.

A true warrior cannot say: “I do not believe in violence or force.” Clearly, the violence of this world exists, in nature and humankind. Obviously wicked deeds occur and leave their evidence in scars that remind us that the past was indeed real. Scars on the earth, scars on the body, scars on the mind. And yet our triumphant laughter comes from the tears we shed, just as our freedom comes from the chains we shed.

The true warrior knows that things are dire if they need force to solve. If justice demands force, so be it, but such battles are the least glorious and least graceful for the warrior. If force must be used, then it can be justified. It cannot be that the good people of our world must never raise a hand. It cannot be that the good are doomed to extinction to the wicked who see their brothers and sisters as prey. Remember too, that it is not the weapon that must be disarmed, it is the hand that wields it that must be held, and lowered.

The true warrior is at once healer and a warrior, because to heal is a powerful weapon and skill. Each movement, every utterance is a weapon against the manifestations of wickedness and evil. This is grace. By healing, he is attacking. By curing, she is combating. By fixing, he is not allowing his true enemies to form. By waging peace, health, love and life, her machinations stalwart, vigilant, ceaseless… she guards against evils unimagined.

Yes, mistake her not, that valkyrie, and mistake not her beloved warriors. A true warrior has stared into the deep! A true warrior has looked into the abyss long enough to realize that something… was gazing back. As others gaze toward the sky, and enjoy the light, a true warrior is a mighty shadow to his enemy — the rising sun always at her back, ever fighting West. Indeed his enemies cannot see the sun, only the shadows it casts. Because the warrior knows fear as a lover, those lost in their own confusions and conspiracies flee. Those who would use fear and cultivate hatred and discord tremble inwardly before the intimacy of the Righteous even as they plot and hiss and bare their fangs.

There is a saying: Know thy Self. There is also a saying: Know thy Enemy. Trust that there is only a very subtle difference and then find this very subtle difference in everything your mind happens upon, until its questions are tamed and you know what to do.

The Power of Humility is significant. Power is defined by dictionaries as the ability to act effectively. I believe that it is a positive thing, though there are plenty of instances where power is associated with abuse. But power can be used for noble ends! Never before have I felt so much power, so much new ability to act, and learn, and know, and be. It is as a direct result of my recent insights on the virtue of Humility, which I wish to tell you of.

In a world of ego, humility seems the most nebulous of the virtues. Ego is not understood, so humility is not understood. At least, that is how I felt... I rarely use the word ego in spiritual talks and writing, because I feel so strongly that it is misunderstood and actually gets in the way of understanding. So I undertook a specific quest, a shift in focus: to find the meaning of humility. It has been three weeks since I made a list of virtues I wished to explore, and I chose to begin with Humility.

It is my understanding that Beginner's Mind can only manifest with great Humility. I've been searching for a teacher for a long time, and I've always taken the role upon myself. I felt as if there was no one to help me learn, so I had to do it all myself. The one thing I had to surrender, and continue to do so, was the certainty that I knew. This is hard for me, even though I am known to be a critical thinker, a skeptic and a doubter, despite my great faith in the universe and the gods. Despite all the instances in my life, the concrete experiences of interactions with the Divine, conversations with god-like beings and witnessing my own ability to perform great acts of magic and kindness, I question endlessly.

But it wasn't 'the certainty that I knew' that was the hardest thing to shake. Something new is arising within me. Even as I type, I feel bumps shiver across my skin at the notion. The certainty that 'all things should be questioned' has been laid bare before me in my mind and suddenly I am not so certain that questioning everything is useful to my growth. This is becoming real for me now. The exact phrase eludes me, but the gist of it is that I have been challenged to believe in myself and through myself, manifest heaven.

To find my teachers, to be able to learn and move forward toward the truth, to become the master, I had to become the servant to a thing higher than myself. I have to give up one question, and one question alone, then give it my all.

Humility is the symptom of someone who has taken upon themselves the ultimate service. It is a badge of the initiated, and to be initiated into the fold of my higher self requires absolutely unquestioning faith in the highness of that self. It is an act of courage, obviously. And this type of service is not a sacrifice of freedom but a further movement into liberation. You see, all these virtues create intricate patterns and knots and interrelationships. Their sum is love, and that love is the illimitable sacredness of being.

Humility is the state of pure learning. Humility is strong, not weak. Humility is unshakable. It is not to become meek, not to abase oneself to make other people feel comfortable. It is to become great and to use that greatness to elevate this earth and its peoples toward heaven in every action and gesture my consciousness allows me to activate as mine. It is the most beautiful progression toward perfected patterns of life. It is harmony with the transience of all things.

Humility has helped me find love, in you, Stephanie. Humility has allowed me to unfold and open in a way I have never even contemplated and for once, yes, such a blessed thing has happened -- I am at a loss for words! The energy of words pours now into my heart, into my blood and life force, translating into proactive awareness and action. I have sprung into new life, new awareness, new ability and this is what I mean by 'power'.

I also found that Humility is to limp from an uncertain battlefield. Returning home into your arms, and allowing the possibility of healing. I cling to my wounds, my pain, my hurt and couldn't let it go, because of pride. And with that pride, like you said to me, is a guilt for fleeing, for failing. So a phantom was haunting me but only because I dragged it along behind me from the past.

I was proud too, to have the identity of someone who gave it all against impossible odds. But I think that some wounds will heal if I just let them go, if I stop telling myself the stories that they are my personal wounds from my personal battles. These are neither wounds nor battles, and they certainly are not personal. Humility discards the personal for the divine.

Humility is to surrender the fight. To sit down and let loss blow through you and take your petals into the wind. It is great peace and solitude. It is to become your only opponent and your closest friend. Humility is not in competition with anything at all, not even itself. There is no 'very humble' person. There is either Humility, or there is resistance, obstacles, problems and the inability to listen, the inability to learn and thus the inability to heal, to live and to truly love.

With Humility comes a profound gratitude. The burden has been lifted at long last. With gratitude come endless abundance and the ability to give. And Humility also allows me to receive, which is after all, a giving of the very gift of giving! A restoration of the balance. Allowing another to give and allowing myself to receive. I have become able to trust, and to have faith... in myself, in God and in you.

And with that I feel something I have never felt and have never named and in it, I am born truly into this life, and into your arms.

Today was the first rain of spring.

Air has never felt so good to breathe.