“People long to be eternal, but they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they’re not what you last met. In any hour, they’ll kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict—and they call it growth. At the end, there’s nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass.” -Ayn Rand

Auguries of Innocence

Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night

Towards the End...

Over the past few days I've been thinking a lot about evolution and the place humans occupy in it. Repeatedly, I have come back to the fact that my last post may have ignored the one distinguishing feature that sets us apart from other species—our minds.

Historically, the very first homo sapiens came on the scene during the Ice Age. As they moved away from their ancestral home on the African savanna, they faced glacial sheets, much like the one that covers Greenland today, advancing and retreating with the seasons. Each time the sheets advanced, the humans were forced south; when the sheets receded, the humans moved north to find abundant hunting grounds in their wake.

During this period, the selective process for better brains must have been intense. Only those humans with bigger, more developed brains would be able to reproduce among the perils of new lands and harsher climates.

As evolution progressed, this trend continued. Those humans with the greatest mental capacity survived the longest. Those who used their brains in the most effective ways succeeded. Today, things have changed a bit and arguments could be made about modern medicine allowing the human genetic pool to become polluted with disease, infirmity and handicaps that would have been wiped out in earlier ages—their carriers simply would not have survived long enough to reproduce. However, it could also be argued that the sympathy—the humanity—we express through our mastery of technology and medicine are hallmarks of our evolution away from the beasts and toward something greater.

Either way, the MIND is the key. Consciousness. It is clear to me now that this truly is the central drama and purpose behind all these billions of years of evolution. Consciousness is what life has been heading for all this time. And it has manifested in us!

Can you grasp the power of that?

Think about it like this:

• 3.5 billion years ago… life on this planet began.
• 2 million years ago… apes evolved into the homo genus.
• In a single century… we've discovered and traced the evolutionary forces at work.
• In a few short decades… we've revealed the very basis of life: DNA.

It seems we are fast approaching an Omega Point, where the consciousness of all mankind works together for some grander purpose. Call me an idealist, but no one—human or alien—can doubt that our species will lead this planet and all its inhabitants into a whole new and final unification…or to its ultimate destruction.

I don't know about you but the point of all this can't just be fast cars and rock stars and bank accounts and MTV. Though our current cultural conditioning certainly seems to be pointed that way, if you have any sort of feeling beyond the basest impulses for food and self preservation, you must realize that there is more—and I'm not talking about religion per se.

I think Daniel Pinchbeck says it best:

"The possibility of establishing a radically new understanding of the psyche… threatens the underpinnings of a culture obsessed with acquiring goods, wealth, and status. If we were to discover that other aspects of reality deserved serious consideration, we would have to reconsider the thrust of our current civilization: entire lives and enormous expulsions of energy would seem misdirected or even wasted…"

Consciousness is the key. We have to avail ourselves to the possibilities life offers, whether they seem profitable or not. We must listen to our inner impulses and follow them faithfully, even if we don’t fully understand where they bringing us. What else do we have to go on?

In the beginning…

In the beginning, the Earth was cold and the seas as barren as deep space. The primordial tides rose and fell against small, lonely patches of wasteland. The oceans stretched on and on and on, and there was no sound save for the thresh of the wind and the omnipresent roll of thunder rattling in the distance…two billion years before an ear existed to hear them.

And then one day—a day like any before it, a day that seemed almost stupid with its regularity—a very peculiar thing happened. It wasn't an unheard of event exactly, it had happened in other places on other worlds, but this was the first day it happened on this planet. On that day, not far from the surface of the ocean, a microscopic single-celled organism gained the miraculous (?) ability to divide and reproduce itself. Not long after that, another single-celled organism gained the same ability. Then another, and another, and another… The conditions were perfect to permit it. Time passed, and the single-celled organisms became soft, multiple-celled organisms. These, in turn, joined with others to become larger, more complex organisms, eventually leading to the formation of primitive water-dwelling invertebrates.

These creatures were well adapted to the ancient seas, and they flourished. Over a short period of time—perhaps 1 million years or so—they multiplied so many times that hosts of mutations inevitably occurred. The most successful mutations adapted to their environment and blossomed in that place. The creatures mutated further, and again, the most successful lived on, eventually becoming a class of creatures we might today call fish. This was about 365 million years ago.

Mutation and selection worked its magic, and the fish eventually developed better fins for swimming and better jaws for catching prey. The ones we call crossopterygians developed a primitive lung in addition to their gills. By pure chance, some of these crossopterygians were born with mutated legs, which allowed them to waddle onto the land formed by the receding seas, opening up for them a whole new habitat. These creatures existed on the tiny insects flying at the edge of the water. Time passed, and they mutated further into antediluvian amphibians.

So it went that the fish begat the amphibian, the amphibian begat the reptile, the reptile begat the mammal, and from small, ambiguous mammals came the primates, from the primitive primates came the apes and monkeys, from the apes came australopithecus, homo erectus, homo habilis, the Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon man, and finally homo sapiens: The modern man was born.

Half a billion years of evolution… and at every step of the way, mutation and selection flowed through life like water through rock, carving away the useless, the inadaptable, the weak. Creatures that were not strong or ruthless enough to thrive did not get a chance to reproduce.

And now, to the surprise of many, modern man has escaped evolution. Survival of the fittest no longer applies to our species, at least not in the manner that it has in the past. Physical mutations no longer affect the carrying on of our genes to the next generation. We now have the choice of whether to reproduce or not. Sex is a leisure activity; children a financial decision. Neither hold the instinctual/survival obligation they once did.

When seen on a scale like this, the worries of our everyday life seem utterly insignificant. Who really cares if this or that project gets done today, next week, or next century? Does it even matter? In the space of 70 years—a human lifetime; a micro-blink of the evolutionary eye—what real meaning could anyone’s life really hold? Who really cares if I do or don’t have children, go to work today or stay home, pay my bills or set fire to my credit cards, live, die, kill, be killed… do anything at all? Does it really matter?

Religion, too, takes on a strange, artificial pallor when seen through the evolutionary lens. Where is there a place for God if life is purely mutation and selection, a set of coincidental circumstances occurring with scientific regularity when the conditions permit?

I’m not the first to ponder these issues, and I’m sure I won’t be the last either. Anyone? Is anyone else out there?

Not many men will say what I'm about to reveal to the world right now. It's a confession of sorts, but I can't hold it in any more.

I LOVE AIMEE MANN!

There, I said it, OK? I feel so much better.

The soundtrack to Magnolia rules, as does her 2002 album, Lost in Space. But lately, my fave song of hers is right here. Bad video quality, but the content is classic 80s.

(BTW The guy in the vid is super familiar looking. I think he might have been a regular in 80s videos...)

Enjoy.

“As soon as strong initiative is taken to change our nature toward refinement, a new inner process begins to take place. The forces of positive accomplishment from each of our past lives begin to manifest in this one. These good deeds are vibrations in the ether substance of our memory patterns, because each of us, right now, is a sum total of all previous experience.”

-Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

I know we have all had it up to here with the Iraq war, but when I saw this article (“War Costs and Costs and Costs” by Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz) on GlobalResearch.ca today, it made me stop and think about it again in a new way.

“The Bush administration said the war would cost $50bn. The US now spends that amount in Iraq every three months. To put that number in context: for one-sixth of the cost of the war, the US could put its social security system on a sound footing for more than a half-century, without cutting benefits or raising contributions…

The war has had only two winners: oil companies and defense contractors. The stock price of Halliburton, vice-president Dick Cheney's old company, has soared. But even as the government turned increasingly to contractors, it reduced its oversight…

The largest cost of this mismanaged war has been borne by Iraq. Half of Iraq's doctors have been killed or have left the country, unemployment stands at 25%, and, five years after the war's start, Baghdad still has less than eight hours of electricity a day. Out of Iraq's total population of around 28 million, 4 million are displaced and 2 million have fled the country.

The thousands of violent deaths have inured most westerners to what is going on: a bomb blast that kills 25 hardly seems newsworthy anymore. But statistical studies of death rates before and after the invasion tell some of the grim reality. They suggest additional deaths from a low of around 450,000 in the first 40 months of the war (150,000 of them violent deaths) to 600,000.

With so many people in Iraq suffering so much in so many ways, it may seem callous to discuss the economic costs. And it may seem particularly self-absorbed to focus on the economic costs to America, which embarked on this war in violation of international law. But the economic costs are enormous, and they go well beyond budgetary outlays.

Americans like to say that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Nor is there such a thing as a free war. The US - and the world - will be paying the price for decades to come.”

I'm not sure where I found this mandala, but I'm feeling it big time. Something about it just reaches out and grabs me. Hope you dig it, too.

All you revolutionaries out there--make sure you don't miss ZEITGEIST! You can watch it for FREE on this website or check it on Google Video here.

Zeitgeist is one of the most expansive conspiracy theory films I've ever seen. As low budget as it is, it’s both powerful and frightening, and I would recommend it to any free thinking human out there. It's way too large to describe here, so I won't even try. Suffice to say that it covers the gamut, questioning the Bible, the existence of Jesus Christ, Vietnam, 9/11, the Federal Reserve, brain implanted microchips ,and the ever advancing plans for One World Government.

Watch it with the lights on. Yikes!

An old Cherokee Chief put a hand on his son’s shoulder and led him away from the campfire. It was frigid night, and though he hated to walk away, the boy had the utmost respect for his father, and so he went without a sound. Once away from the glare of the fire, they looked up at the sky, and were silent in awe of the brilliance of the heavens.

“Inside of you, there are two wolves fighting,” the Chief said. “The first wolf is the embodiment of all that is spiteful and hateful in you—all that is lazy and arrogant and ignorant and immature and greedy and selfish. In it’s jaws it holds all your fears of tomorrow and all the failures yet to come.

“The other wolf is the embodiment of all that is good and pure in you—all that is kind and forgiving and loving and gentle and wise. In its jaws it holds all the promise of tomorrow, and of all your potential that is yet to be. These two wolves are always at one another’s throats, in a desperate struggle to get the upper hand.”

After a moment, the boy said, “But Papa, who wins?”

And the old chief looked down at his son and said, “Whichever one you feed.”

Perspectives on Levels of Consciousness

Two cool articles just popped into my life that I'd like to share. They both deal with the states of consciousness we experience and how we progress to higher states as we mature, but they look at the issue from different perspectives

The first is from the blog of my friend Adrian Cox, who runs the excellent Yoga Elements Studio in Bangkok. The Seven Levels of Consciousness deals with the different states of awareness we experience from kind of a conceptual angle. He classifies the states as waking, sleeping, dreaming, and four other states of higher awareness one can reach through meditation and yogic practices. He looks at the issue from quite an Eastern perspective.

The other article is from the speaker and writer Steve Pavlina, who does something similar in Levels of Consciousness, but approaches the topic from a perspective of our general attitudes as we progress through life. He breaks up the levels according to our general feelings: Courage, Pride, Reason, Joy, Love, Enlightenment, etc. This is quite a Western perspective.

Both authors holds that we generally stay in one to three stages most of our lives, and that to get to the next higher stage requires a good deal of discipline and conscious effort. I recommend both!

Kenneth Anger's films are amazing. Below is a short clip from "Invocation of my Demon Brother." I recently read an analysis of this film, basically saying that by "demon brother" Anger meant one's higher self, not a devil or something. This film was constructed to awaken the higher self in the viewer.

Anger actually believed that by constructing his film in a certain way, by sequencing certain symbols and images - images that that one may not understand consciously, but that one's sub-conscious would recognize - he was actually casting a spell on the viewer. By watching his films, he believed he could awaken the eternal soul in each of us - a soul that would know what its talents were and what its true direction in life should be.

Looking at the film, I can believe that a spell is being cast!

The Mariner
Chapter 6

The mariner walked back towards the waterfall, the call of tropical birds echoing in his ears. The sun-dappled jungle floor was alive with insects and tiny creatures. Such a beautiful place to be, he thought, but not against my will… Why does Murzium keep me here? Could he really be that lonely?

It was a mystery to him. Loneliness was foreign to the mariner. After his father walked out on the family when he was very young, he taught himself not to get attached to the company of others. Since then, he could only remember being lonely once in his life, and the woman who made him feel that way was in a grave not 48 hours later.

Suddenly, a sound. An animal calling so strange and beautiful, it took his breath away. It was a rhythmic, almost melodic warbling—a tone too low to be made by a bird. There, on the lower branches of a willow tree, sat a squirrel. It had a lush coat of reddish gold, like that of a fox. The hair on its head stuck up like ruddy flames in a V-shape. It made the warbling sound again, cocking his head to one side. The creature didn’t have the nervous twitch most squirrels possessed. It called out once more, then leapt across the branches and up the adjacent hill.

The mariner diverged from his path, following the enchanting creature away from the waterfall. He climbed over a rocky ridge and spied a beach he had never seen before. Unlike the one where his boat was docked, this beach was small and pebbly. Nearby were some young coconut trees, which he shimmied up and trimmed. He split the coconut the way the islanders at Yamdena taught him, then slurped the sweet, clear juice inside. When it was done, he scooped out the slippery meat. It tasted good. It had been a long time since he had a coconut.

When lunch was done, he lay in the grass beyond the beach and stared up at the sky, blue as his own two eyes. A cloud passed over that looked like a flying fish. It reminded the mariner of a time when he lived with the sea gypsies at Yamdena and they told him their legend concerning that creature.

* * *

Long ago, before Man appeared on the face of the Earth, there was a very beautiful and very proud bird called the Pulau. The Pulau was dignified and gracious and had a plume of feathers on his head that every other animal envied. But the Pulau knew his position in the hierarchy of things, only too well. He bragged relentlessly to all the other species about how he alone could fly the fastest; he alone could soar the highest; he alone possessed a coat that every other animal would kill for. And they hated him, because they knew he was right.

But there was no other family the Pulau was crueler to than the Fish. He would mock them mercilessly, flying low over the surface of the Sea everyday, displaying his stalk of feathers and calling out to the fish, “Don’t you wish you soar the skies and touch the Sun? Don’t you wish you could move as quick as the Wind and quiet as the Dawn? Don’t you wish you could feel the air rushing through a set of feathers so beautiful, so rare, even the Leopard burns in jealousy? Don’t you, hmm? Well, don’t you?”

Every living thing in the sea hated him for it. And so one day, when the Pulau was gliding low over the sea and mocking, Phlaxis, the god of the Sea, reached his arm into the air and grabbed the Pulau and pulled him deep, deep underwater and held him captive there.

When Perse, the god of the Sky, found out about the Pulau’s imprisonment, she was secretly happy the loudmouth had finally gotten his due, but at the same time she couldn’t allow for such an injustice. As was her duty, she went to meet Phalxis and plead a case for the bird.

She said, “Dear brother, you know as well as I, a bird belongs to the sky. No matter how vain he be, he cannot be kept in the sea. The Pulau must fly again—such was Creation’s intent.”

And in the fashion of many gods of that early age, Phalxis agreed… on his own terms. In accordance with his sister’s wish, he turned the Pulau into the Flying Fish, so that although he would fly again, he would never soar, and he would never glide. He would merely float a breath above the surface of the water—just enough to remember how agile he once was, and how far from grace he had fallen.

* * *

The cloud floated on, and the low, warbling sound roused the mariner from his daydream. He turned and saw the squirrel sitting on a large boulder at the edge of the jungle.

“You again?”

The squirrel voiced a reply in its squirrel language and the mariner smiled. He walked towards the boulder, and the creature disappeared into the brush. Near where the squirrel was sitting, the mariner found a very peculiar looking plant. It had long, thin leaves and red flowers with white streaks shooting from their center like lightning. Though he couldn’t put his finger on it, the plant very curious, as if it had an energy all its own... After caressing it, he smelled his fingers. Cloves.

There was an overgrown path nearby that ascended steeply into the thickest part of the jungle and stretched towards the island’s single peak. He followed it for a while, the heat of the afternoon making the concave space between his breasts moist. He pushed on, making his way hand over hand through a forest of trees with fruit that tasted like pomegranates. After hiking the arduous trail for an hour, the trees thinned out and he came to a promontory that overlooked a huge expanse of sea. To the east, there was another island that seemed smaller than the one he was on. Other than that, it was water—as far as the eye could see. He took off his damp shirt, and while hanging it from the waistband of his pants, he saw it.

Beside the side of the path, where the rainwater had turned the dirt into a thick mud, there were animal tracks. They were small at first—a four-legged creature with claws—but in a matter of paces, they grew grotesquely, becoming almost human size before disappearing into the rocks. The mariner’s blood ran cold.

“Hello, stranger,” said a voice.

The mariner jumped. Looking up, he saw a sprightly young man sitting on a thin ledge several meters above the clearing. His reddish golden hair flew strait up like horns in a V-shape, and he had strange, grey eyes. He wore dark overalls and had hairy feet ending in menacing claws.

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” it said. Then it smiled, revealing a brilliant set of fangs. “Have lunch yet?”

photo by photo landscape

The Mariner
An adventure series

Chapter 5

The mariner stood looking at the old man delicately weeding flowers on the far side of the pool. He said nothing. He had heard about spirits of the woods and waters before and their mischievous ways, how they would trap humans and keep them as slaves, but he had never run into one himself. The cool air of dusk chilled his bare skin and raised goose bumps on his flat abdomen.

“Why me?”

Murzium seemed to find it funny. “There’s no use arguing over it. If you weren’t here right now, you would be dead. You would have died right where I left you, in the middle of the ocean. If by some remote chance you made it to these shores, you would have died in the jungle. It’s that simple.”

The mariner gathered the rest of his belongings and put them on. While strapping on his belt, the haft of his dagger brushed against the skin of his hip. He paused for less than a second, then continued securing the buckle.

“You’ll get used the idea, overtime, son. The violent thoughts will cease.”

“How do you know?”

He smirked. “I know. You think you are the first?”

The mariner stood and thought about that. The next moment, he was looking at the cove from a distance and the light was different. A shirtless boy with brown hair in long, tangled curls scampered over the ridge holding a fish, still alive. He yelled to the old man and the old man emerged from behind the waterfall with a wide smile. He looked exactly the same—beard, clothes, everything. The boy cleaned the fish to the side while the man built a small fire. The flames grew and the pair chatted and laughed. Then they cooked the fish and the boy ate it.

“He was shipwrecked. Same as you, and when I first found him, much worse off. He could hardly get over the hill. But he lived here for many years. We were both very happy.”

“How do you know?”

“You think I can’t tell when a boy is happy? Children are like glass figurines—you can see right through them. They no reason to hide anything and they don’t even try. You can tell immediately when something is wrong.”

“And he never tried to leave?”

“No, he didn’t want to.”

“He never wanted to go back home?”

Murzium put his hand on his waist. “Well, of course he did. It wasn’t always easy for him. There were nights when it was all I could do to keep him from crying himself to sleep. But I was honest with him. There was no way out. It was a physical impossibility.”

“It’s not impossible.”

“It is!” The old man threw the weeds on the rocks. “For a boy like him, at least, it is. He had no boat. He arrived here on a piece of burnt timber from the ship he last crewed, the ship to which his parents sold him. He was a powder monkey, blasted out of the water by pirates two leagues from here… He lived like a slave, the poor thing. I gave him a life he could at least enjoy.”

"And then?”

“And then, what?” The old man glided to the top of a tall rock and sat there, a tired look on his face. “He… expired, several years ago. He lived a good life. We were so happy. But humans…” He shook his head. “So frail…”

The mariner bit his lower lip. He took his hands out of his pockets and walked to the highest rocks in the cove, from where he could see the ocean beyond the rock wall. The sky was heavy with clouds and all dark but for a paper-thin strip of orange melting into the sea. He stood there and watched the orange turn to grey then disappear completely, and the sea turned black.

* * *

The next morning the man woke and the sun was already up. He went to the water’s edge and drank. He splashed water on his face and neck, then ran his fingers through his dark hair. His reflection in the water looked good. He needed a shave, but other than that, he looked OK. Murzium was gone.

Walking through the jungle, the man stopped occasionally to inspect plants, eating berries as he went. The birds were quiet that morning, but it was sunny and clear.

Eventually, he came to the edge of the beach, where he could see his sloop floating in the shallows. He walked over the sand, which was not too hot yet, and stood in the water with his right hand on the boat. It bobbed up and down in the gentle surf. I could just get in this boat and push of right now, leave this cursed island and its delusional spirits. Right here, right now. It’s that easy. All I would need is a little fresh water...

He turned around and the old man was standing in the shadow of the trees on the edge of the jungle, squinting at him. He couldn’t read his expression. The mariner just stood there, defiant. All of a sudden, the wind picked up and the waves started coming in harder. The sky seemed to darken, and the boat quaked, jumping and ducking more and more violently. He put his left hand on the bow to try to steady it, then a big wave came and wrenched it from his grip, knocking him to his knees. He stayed on all fours for a minute, letting the sea wash over him, taking his time getting up. When he was standing, he looked up the beach and saw the old man turn his back and fade into the blackness of the jungle, and the surf was gentle again.