Here and There

This is an astrally post, of not much importance. Not everything that goes on over there is life altering. Sometimes being there is as simple as relaxing a little bit. Other times it can take all my effort to get through. This is one of those days where I’m already halfway there.

Here: I sprawl sideways in my computer chair. I’ve got headphones on. My phone is in my hands, texting my girlfriend two states away.

There: I sprawl sideways on the couch in the apartment. The stereo plays the same song as my headphones. A goddess sits next to me. I’m not sure which one. My senses only tell me “goddess” and “one of ours.” She chides me for bothering to play that game and reminds me that I’m shut down for a reason. (If you can call this “shut down.”)

She notices the phone in my hands and asks who I’m texting. I tell her it’s my angel friend, and I grin. “You like her, don’t you?” she asks. Then I tell her about a friend of mine who was texted by a god, one of those half-waking visions that seemed real. “Clever,” she says.

The apartment is filled with “ghosts.” Not really ghosts, but the shadows of other gods walking around, both here and not here. I feel better knowing they’re around. I only see wisps and vague movement here and there, but I know if I call they will answer.

Talk about, What?

I think I will just go ahead and talk about whatever I feel like discussing on here. Some private things probably will stay private if I don’t feel like discussing them. If something nags me about wanting to be told, then I’ll give in and let it come out.

It really is kind of petty of me to think about page views or “likes” or comments. Doing that disrupts the flow. I should just grow up. I’m not on any great mission to reform Kemeticism. It seems to be trucking along just fine whether I stick my nose in or not. That doesn’t mean I won’t gripe and complain about stuff I see now and then. It’s pretty predictable which parts I object to, basically anything that hurts other people. If it’s not hurting anybody, then I let it go. If I want a place to talk about the kinds of things that interest me, then, this is the place.

Ra was actually proud of me for coming out about our arrangement on the Angst post. I was surprised because he never gave me any indication that he wanted me to talk about it. It taught me that others may run into similar situations, and it helps to have some frame of reference for how to handle it. I have a pretty good instinct for interpreting these things, but not everyone does, and even then the cultural dissonance can throw me for a loop.

The cultural norms spirit-side are different from the norms here. It helps if you can speak metaphor fluently. If you tend to take everything literally, then, gods help you. Best to keep your feet dry and stay on this side.

That reminds me, I should write a sticky page about how to read astral UPG posts without misinterpreting the heck out of them.

Added: Astral and UPG guide is on the side bar now. 🙂

Purity Revisited

If flow is “how to peace” then maybe purity is “how to flow.” Or maybe they’re different ways of looking at the same thing.

I talked about rocks being thrown into the stream last time. We enjoy the splash and the burble, but over time, those obstructions restrict the flow. Purity is what happens after you clean up the mess. Not only that, purity resists being messy in the first place, just as a lotus leaf resists the muddy water.

Aset was around today and she pointed out that hurtful magic can’t stick to what is pure. I think you have to read that statement in a certain light. It’s not an assertion that bad things only happen to impure people. I’ve seen perfectly good lotus leaves get caught up in circumstances and submerged anyway. It happens. But if your house is “clean,” you have less to fear from the law. If your mind is clear, then the slings and insults of the internet have a harder time getting wedged in your thoughts. No, that post isn’t about you. Those people are simply describing the shadows they made up in their own minds. (Hypothetical straw people don’t really exist.) It’s like a non-stick coating for your brain.

Purity doesn’t mean that you’re happy and smiling all the time. It doesn’t mean that you’re full of love and light nonstop. It means, whatever happens, there you are. You can be purely happy. You can also be purely sad, or purely angry, or purely scared. It means you don’t try to be something else. You don’t fight yourself, and when it passes, you don’t fight the passing. You don’t desperately cling to pleasure. You don’t look for reasons to stay angry. It’s too late by then. There’s already something new there that you need to embrace. If you’re fighting that next thing, then you’re not purely experiencing it.

This is not the same as temple purity, but one can have an effect on the other. The act of cleansing can be a reminder to clear your mind as well. Let the past be in the past. Let those clinging thoughts be washed away.

The Mirror

UPG astral post disclaimer, blah, blah.

This story was stuck in my head this morning. It’s something that happened years ago, but if I’m revisiting it now, it probably means I should write it out and reexamine it.

Back then, I was training with Wakinyan, the Lakota Thunder Being. Sometimes Waki* is called a Thunderbird, but I find that if you get your cultures mixed up, that the Thunderbirds that other nations talk about bear little resemblance to the Thunder Being. S/He technically has wings but that’s where the resemblance to birds, or anything else, breaks down completely. Or, Wakinyan can look and act like a guy, even though he’s really a she. The lore says that if you see a Thunder Being’s true form, it will drive you insane. This explains much. Though honestly, I don’t think I had far to go in the first place.

Waki had me do this thing where I’d fly to the top of the mountain where I could look over my city. It was MY city. I had bonded with it. If anything went wrong, I could feel it like an itch that had to be scratched. If you hurt my city, you hurt me. I would feel compelled to fly down and do battle with whatever was causing the problem. I would fight spirits and constructs. Then I’d spend a few days to a week, healing from my injuries. Then I’d go out and do it again.

One evening I was hanging out in Waki’s house. His house is a wreck. There’s papers and stuff scattered all around the place. I noticed that the closet door was left open. I went to have a look. There was a full length mirror on the inside of the door. Astral mirrors have this nasty habit of telling the truth.

In the mirror, I saw a handsome young man. I can’t really tell you about any specific features, except that he appeared “golden.” I remembered what Sekhmet had told me a long time ago about my connection with Horus/Heru. I saw him in the mirror, and I knew exactly how bloody, freakishly, violent he could be. Like a lot of pagans, I started out with Wicca. “Harm none” had been thrown out the window and trampled to death a long time ago. I felt that he had no right to look that pretty. If he was going to act like a monster, he should have the courtesy of looking like one. My fist smashed the glass.

I often get the feeling that people don’t know the real Heru. I can’t really blame them because I don’t think he wants them to. I’ve met a lot of veterans with PTSD. I even married one. It’s complicated.

*Waki is not just a shortened nick name. It has a double meaning that is highly appropriate. I used to take an Iaido (Japanese katana) class. In it “waki gamae” was an upside down and backward hidden sword. Since Wakinyan is backward and contrary and Thunder Beings hide in the clouds, the name stuck. My friend used to always think it was pronounced like “whacky” which in terms of silliness and strangeness is also appropriate. It’s more like (wah-kee) the full name, Wakinyan, is more like (waw-kee-yaw).

Added:

I lied down on the mountain top, sprawled out on my belly. My awareness spread across the land, across dry, jagged rocks, between scratchy creosote, yucca and sotol plants, across pavement and houses, north east to the desert, and southwest to the river bed. Waki walked up and stopped a few feet away. “Are you ready to love again?” he asked. He came close, but I knew he wouldn’t touch me. I wasn’t his anymore, and my energy had been changed by Ra’s fire.

Love, so that’s what this is about.

White Fire

This is an astral, UPG kind of post.

The white fire has been a specialty of mine in the astral for years. To the corrupt, it’s a terrifying weapon that can reduce an isfet-creature to ash. To the pure, it’s not much more than a refreshing spa treatment. (This solves the classic no-eyed Heru-wer problem of being unable to distinguish friend from foe.) Most of us fall somewhere in between. It burns, but you feel better after it’s over. The price for wielding it is that it burns both ways. I’m not immune. Add an empathic connection to the mix and you can see why I only use it when things get serious.

All the talk I’ve heard lately about lakes of fire made me wonder if there was a lake of this stuff somewhere. Lakes of fire aren’t all that new to me either. I used to astrally hang out inside a live volcano when I was younger.

I did find a small secluded pool of the white fire. I had the impression that it was at a high elevation, surrounded by a broadleaved evergreen thicket, and hidden by a shroud of mist. I couldn’t see the sky. Only the soft glow of the pool itself illuminated the place.

I stepped into the liquid fire. It was more gentle than what I normally use. Instead of ripping through the body in seconds, this is the kind of place where you lie back and soak as it slowly infiltrates your barriers. It still burns when it finds something worth burning. After awhile, Ma’at, or one of her netjeri, lifted me out of the pool and wrapped me in a wet cloth to recover. It was then I realized that she owned the pool.

When I woke up, I shivered as if I was freezing, and the chronic knots in my shoulders had loosened up. I probably should have gone to the spirit-side apartment before coming back to ease the transition. I ate some food and that helped. I may be spending more time there.

White Sands

Picture by Jennifer Wilbur, via Wikimedia Commons (The sands are good at ruining cameras so I didn’t take very many pictures this time.)

Yesterday, we took a trip to White Sands National Monument. The sands are made of gypsum, not your usual silica. That’s why they’re white instead of tan. My daughter joked about how if it snowed there, no one would be able to tell the difference. Yes, we do sometimes get snow in the desert, but it rarely lasts the whole day at ground level. It can stick to the mountains though.

First, we went to the visitor’s center where we learned about the local geology and wildlife. Then we went out to the dunes and studied the fastest way to slide our butts down a steep sandy incline on a saucer sled.

Climbing up a twenty foot wall of sand made my heart pound. White Sands has an elevation of roughly 4000ft, which doesn’t sound like much until you try to do something like that. My first run down the hill was fast enough that I had to close my eyes to protect them from the sand that I was kicking up. I ended up about ten feet into the hard packed parking area. The other runs after that were less impressive.

Most of the time, I sat at the top of the dune with my toes buried in the cool sand and watched my daughter play with the other kids and run and slide around. It was like going to the beach, but without the ocean. They slid down the hill, dug holes and made sand castles. The sand is moist if you dig down far enough.

The weather was perfect, slightly cool, not windy, and a layer of clouds cut down on the usual glare. Don’t go there in the summer unless you enjoy baking and being sunburned from above and below.

Angst

I am “doing the work.” The problem is that most of the time, I can’t talk about it. That’s not because I think it’s super secret. It’s because I know exactly how bad it would sound. I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.

I’m torn between coming out with things and risk alienating a lot of people, or just keeping this blog public-friendly. I don’t like either of those options. I do care what people think, but the inability to speak freely chafes. I’ve taken some steps in that direction. I try to choose my words carefully. There is no simple answer.

Maybe I’m not quite sure what I want this blog to be. Do I want to keep it small and intimate? Or do I want to appeal to a wider audience? I can’t really do both.

When I visit Ra, most of the time we’re in the Sun Room, his private quarters. I act much differently there than I do when he takes me to Court. In the Sun Room I can be raw and honest. In Court, you might mistake me for one of those stone statues.

I do have a private blog where I can put all those Sun Room things. I thought it would be fine to use this one differently. So why doesn’t it feel fine? I understand the purpose of Court. It doesn’t mean I like it. But if you’re doing the stone faced thing, that means you’re not really playing the game. It means you’re letting others play for you.

What do I want to say? And what are my motives for saying them? My actual motives are that I want to talk about the things that are such a huge part of my life. The problem is that others will assign different motives. Most likely shock value or self-importance, when I really just want to have a conversation about advanced energy work theory.

Can I say that I’m Ra’s nek-boy without having everyone shun me? Probably not. And once I’m shunned it’s too late to give the very rational explanations for why it has worked out that way. Even if I did get that far, it’s so far outside of most people’s experiences that they wouldn’t know how to put it in context. If we can’t get past that, then we can’t even begin to talk about the magic that is the real focus of the act.

Fighting, fucking and healing are all the same thing. That is what Wakinyan taught me. That’s the kind of magician I am. (If you think about it, that’s what kind of magician Heru is too.) That is the triad that I understand, in the astral anyway. My daily life is pretty boring. I can’t talk about passion and the exchange of power. I can’t talk about fire and blood and seed. I can’t talk about how I got the burns or bandages on my astral body. I can’t talk about how as soon as it heals I will feel compelled to go out and do it all again because the job isn’t finished yet.

I remember kneeling before Wesir’s throne. My body was covered in scars that shone silver because I had earned them while in service to Heru. The judges turned their backs, saying that they had no questions for me. I’m not temple pure, but I do the work.

Music for Heru

“Mr. Mastadon Farm” by Cake

Flow

I asked my inner “houseguest” what he likes to do for fun. In response, I got a nonverbal impression of what it feels like to practice tai chi. He wasn’t talking about tai chi specifically, but about flow. That sense of flow can happen anytime and anywhere, but it comes easiest while engaging in skills that have been practiced over time. The mind is settled, and the body moves with grace.

I was supposed to seek peace for him, but I wasn’t sure how. Maybe this is part of the “how.” Maybe this is part of what I was seeking when I said I wanted to be a monk. These are related concepts. If you have flow, then your mind is at peace. Your thoughts rest lightly on the waves. Most of the action takes place under water, out of sight.

Flow and peace are related but not exactly the same. In modern terms, peace is the absence of conflict or war. A skilled martial artist can achieve flow in the middle of a fight. Maybe that’s a testament to how an understanding of flow can bring inner peace even under the most stressful of outward circumstances. If I say that I seek peace, you’d think I’d make an effort to avoid all outward conflict. That’s not how life works, however. I will say that it is easier to cultivate flow in quiet surroundings. Like any skill, it gets stronger with practice.

How do I practice? Tai chi was the example given, but flow can occur while doing pretty much anything. You can achieve flow while cleaning the kitchen, or doing yardwork, or writing.

There’s not much more to it than being aware, but the simplest ideas are often the hardest to implement. We like to throw pebbles into the stream and delight over the sound and the ripples. It’s doing something exciting, so that must mean there’s more water! Over time we start to wonder why the flow has slowed down to a trickle. What is that supposed to mean? I’m not completely sure. He likes to talk to me in image-concepts, metaphor. It’s up to me to decide how to apply it.

Our resistance to flow is based on the feeling that nothing is really happening. It’s quiet. The surface is still. It does result in artistry, but it’s of the type that makes the viewer believe it is effortless. It is overlooked by those who prefer noise and splashing.

Spring in the Southwest

I smell like rosemary. I was just outside clearing away the dead wood left over from the winter. The lantana is already trying to leaf out, in fact, a few stalks closest to the house never died back. I saw one or two trying to bloom already! Still, they need to be cut back to make room for this year’s growth. From my window, I can see a pale yellow-white butterfly fluttering around the mustard weeds.

There was a small bit of orange showing from under the floating algae in the fish pond. I poked at it to see if it was alive, and sure enough, our one goldfish darted around in a panic at being disturbed from its sunning spot. It’s good to see that it made it through the winter just fine. The mosquito fish are still all over the place. I pulled most of the algae out of the pond with a stick and set it next to the plants for fertilizer. I left some algae in there on purpose. The bees have woken up and they need a safe place to land when they come to the pond for water. I pulled the pot of lilies up to the surface and cleaned the water weeds out of them. The tiny curled up leaves are starting to reach for the surface again. They appeared to be dotted with jellied fish eggs.

My shoulders are a little sore from the yardwork. I will need to make friends with the tiger balm again and practice my stretches.