Every day, like today, in many ways, 

the voice of authority makes itself known.

We can take these moments as metaphorical flashes of insight

and remember our place in the universe and be grateful

we have another day to find expressions of love in our life,

or we have the free will to ignore the signs 

and create our own hells to live in.

This was the reminder I got today

and I wanted to share my capture of it,

just in case...

 

THE BIVALENT SALVATION OF THE WORLD 

The devil inside is more than idealistic,
more than genuine, more than fully actualized.
The devil inside must be more all the time 
of everything I imagine I am and am not.
The devil inside is my heavenly judge, the tragic ideal made whole, 
it’s me piercing my necessary nature, restless as deflating contrast,
poking situational truth into gaps of silence and darkness to give substance 
to the expansive flourishes and light of my wishful divine bliss,
a bliss sparking on the periphery of hellish realms of rueful dreams of ideal good.

My devil is more than willing to face the risk of my sincere gratitudes,
those heartfelt terrors of thankfulness in the face of a stark reality that doesn’t sustain, 
in the light of mystical yearnings that are nothing 
but impossible in the here and now where I must live.
My devil encourages gratitude to be proclaimed in the face of despair,
loneliness, and unreasonable suffering for where else does life’s vaulted meaning come from? 

My devil inside understands the inverse miracle of me in a way the angels don’t,
in ways the humans dare not, with a passion the saints can’t express without shame.
My devil knows the only thing impossible and not desirable is me
when I fail to show up and answer for myself when I call,
and my devil calls me all the time, as me, for me, for I am all important to it.

Justice and mercy are perfectly balanced in the temptations of my devil
for my ideal judge knows my compulsive impulse, my addictive drive, my insatiable desire,
it senses all too well my aspiration to the goal when the goal is an infinite game
with one player playing all plays, making all moves in a vacuum of valued certainty.

Temptation is my ideal judge of how I interact with my potential
while doubt and certainty interchange as sacred and profane faces of my devil,
for my devil inside never lets me forget how I assume I’m authentic to myself,
it forces me to relate to myself as the contentious community I travel with across time.
My devil won’t let me escape that personal journey, won’t let me live 
in the objective moment even if the temptation promises a full life in such blessed amnesia.

My full Self and my eternal soul parley into ultimate tricksters as played by me
using the face of my devil as artful device in the act of navigating life.
My devil has four faces and six wings when it’s useful whenever it dotes
on my every ego construct with idolizing worship.
It knows me as I know not myself and it feels me as I wish to be felt
for only the ideal judge can fault one so full of such indulgent compassion,
it relates to me with an open empathy that accepts all I can possibly take astray.

My devil has me looking back to understand where I’ve been
for wherever that takes me is not the full essence of what that past could have been.
My devil has me looking forward to understand what I yearn for
for whatever that is will not be the fully realized potential the divine spark put into me.
For the past could always have been better and the future could always be more
and my devil will never let me forget this, it motivates me, inspires me
by whispering how I am enough just as I am as I always was and always will be.
No need to worry about the dubious sin of missing the mark in a place without a bullseye
for the sacred center mark is an ideal and that ideal doesn’t exist in the here and now
and it’s not likely to exist since those who are here don’t value it at all.

My devil judges me as a wavering constant without recourse, 
it implores me forward as a depreciating value without applicable measure, 
it coaxes me into life’s imprecise process without beginning or end, 
it assures me I’m a thought I must have of myself when no thought is necessary.
My devil meets me in the confessional to remind me, my wound is always my redeemer,
that all my suffering is a blessing, that every loss and regret and heartache is the way through
and no one but my devil is better equipped to guide me off the path of redemptive avoidance
so that I may live fully in my imperfection while I’m here
and be so totally wounded and qualified for salvation.

My devil rescues me from virtues too pure for this world
even as my heart aches for them with holy innocence.
Naïveté and callow aspirations of special significance sicken my devil
into torturing me with the judgments of facing facts,
for this world is not good, this world is not evil,
my devil squirms in the tension of this world being both and neither
as it consecrates me in the fires of my own willful folly and excess.

My devil, my ideal, my judge, is the lord of my shadow
and I pray to it each day with the dark side of my conscience.
My devil has me pray to be delivered from all the virtues that bring me pain,
all the sacredness that plague me with sorrow,
all the absolute values that shackle me to my traumas.

My devil knows me as a duplicitous creature of opportunity,
a raging heart of selfish emotions, a confused child of genius Machiavellian constructs,
a hopeless scavenger for endless mercy, a lustful animal of wanton desires,
a lazy consort of creature comforts, a second smiling face in front of ulterior intentions,
and my devil loves me for all of it and passes final judgment on me as human
thus condemning me to feel my irrational nature as the living beatific vision.

Pain is joy when my wound transubstantiates into the god of what must be,
for no wound is ever healed nor should it be if life itself necessitates its existence.
My devil shows me, seen from the vacant space of pure existential potential, 
there is no reference point for determining lower or higher,
and my flaunted humanity is the wound most essential in all respects and all orientations.

All the while I am told the devil inside me is my lower self, without which
my higher self would have no perspective on itself.
In quiet moments of brief numinosity, I suspect my true self is neither of these
and the doubt this places in me is encouraged as wisdom by my devil within,
for never truly knowing myself, in the end, is my sole ascension, my soul salvation.

Forever redeemed, forever in pain, forever in league with the devil within life,
a devil that must exist in me if any good is to come 
from my human days passing into void from dreamlike Earth.

 

WHEN HEALING GETS WOUNDED

darkness to darkness, light to light,
tear out offending eyes to find unconscious sight,
go into the pain and flames from sighs of pure bliss
but be sure to close those sightless eyes before that first kiss.

our disaster manifests from dis-aster, a separation from the stars,
where solitary deep intimacies form around shape-shifting scars,
we live life as a false memory projected from a tenacious but specious personality
yet nothing else matters but healing, not even the effects from invasive raw carnality.

the revelation snake in the squirming baby simply has to be fake
for how much endless hellish healing can one person take?
the old wizard in the forest, the young witch in the woods,
the holier-than-thou devil in our soul, they’re all misunderstood,

a brittle dominatrix daemon casting spells with omnipotent power
hides in the walled garden with magic stolen from the priapic tower,
she says to the world go forth and lie boldly for God’s mercy is boundless
and accept your creative inflations for all else is groundless

while Mistress Adhedonia, stern goddess of numb surrender,
demands our practiced disassociation be so loving and tender.
shame on you, can’t you see how your reactions to love’s pain 

only hurt the one you love most?

wake up - your feelings are delusional phantoms chasing mischievous ghosts,

be on notice, love’s latest ultimatum is facing you down,
your response better be certain, like the sanctified color of a proper wedding gown,
for no where is it truthfully written that life will be anything, no, nothing at all
and trauma is just a word people use instead of saying ‘close call’

for where we are and what this is doesn’t get any nearer to open expression
than the aching swirl that envelops you when entertaining your depression,
there is no where else to go, there is no way out from the transcendental bleakness
for an inner self that doesn’t comprehend why what it knows is a sickness.

what happens when the relational need to heal yourself
presents the looming prospect of not being you if you do
but the existential need not to heal is deemed stubborn and heartless?

light to light, darkness to darkness,
have blind faith in the process oh sightless one,
there can be no other kind of faith for you now,
what has happened to you is done,

a finality as hopelessly vacant 

as idealism’s first and most egregious vow.

 

DREAM INTERPRETATION

In the end, life is but a dream,

a daily recurring dream mistaken 

for a transformative vision we can make lucid.

Instead, the unavoidable folly of our living actions

imprints in how we interpret that dream,

in how we warp its field of vision,

in how we freely associated it away in shadowy illusions.

Into divine dreamtime we assert what we deem essential,

no matter how ephemeral, no matter how discordant.

We cast ourselves upon roiling tides of emotion

with drives and schemes that crash us on the rocks,

all the while clinging tight 

to the complex phantoms we are led to value.

We play out our projections symbolically

in who we try to be and what we choose to believe.

All of it we foolishly identify with as real.

In the end, we must let it all go, all of it.

It flows from us without analysis,

it fades to nothing in our fatuous fog taken for fate.

And then, after the end,

perhaps our inscrutable living dream merges beyond

only to awaken upon the start of another dream,

this time a dream without a dreamer but a dream nonetheless,

a dream that is dreamt when the only thing that remains of us

is the shining void of our active imagination – 

surrendered, thereby exalted.

 

THE FIRST MIRACLE IS WITHIN YOU

There once was a rich but thirsty man. 

He was rich in the precious and the sublime 

but none of that mattered if he couldn’t quench his thirst. 

He searched in vain high and low for the finest Pinot Meunier, 

the rarest Pinot Noir, and the most coveted Grand Cru Chardonnay. 

He thought he had found a 1907 Heidseick, but no. 

He dreamed of a Pernod Ricard Perrier Jouet 

or a Bollinger Blanc Rose Gold Methuselah, 

but dreams would not satisfy his thirst. 

He plumbed the deep sea for a Juglar Cuvee 

or a Veuve Clicquot but his nets came up empty. 

At the end of the day, exhausted and parched, 

he struggled to find the strength 

to accept a dented cup from a passerby. 

Knowing nothing but thirst by then, 

he simply gulped and gave thanks. 

The water in the cup had no vintage 

and yet it held the ultimate distinction – 

it quenched his thirst. 

Sighing in relief, he realized 

the sublime riches of precious necessity.

The water was still water

but the miracle had happened.

 

Mass Psychogenic Illness - DHS Warning 

Wikileaks has made a storehouse of information available. One document is a July 5th, 2006 HITRAC Private Sector Note from the Homeland Infrastructure Threat and Risk Analysis Center warning about the possibility of "Mass Psychogenic Illness" events. They define these events as follows:

"Mass Psychogenic Illness

(U) A phenomenon in which social trauma or anxiety combines with a suspicious event to produce psychosomatic symptoms, such as nausea, difficulty breathing, and paralysis. If many individuals come to believe that the psychosomatic outbreak is connected to the cause of the trauma or anxiety, these symptoms can spread rapidly throughout a population."

The DHS warning goes on to say:

"The observed symptoms of many mass psychogenic illness events are similar to several non-specific symptoms of possible chemical and biological weapons—including chemical agents, inhalational anthrax, and avian influenza. 

⎯ (U//FOUO) Recent cases of mass psychogenic illness display a transferal of the symptoms onto contemporary anxieties."

The warning document gives three example events:

1995 release of Sarin in the Tokyo subway / 12 died but over 5000 people claimed exposure, flooding over 260 medical facilities, although the actual release was confined to a small area

2003 in California when a man entered a bank, sprayed an unknown aerosol into the air, then left / bank employees and customers soon became ill but no chemical or biological agents were ever found

2005 illness in children in the Shelkov region of Chechnya but medical officials determined it was a case of psychosomatic contagion—mass psychogenic illness—brought on by anxiety over Russian military activities in the area. 

The DHS should now update their warning by adding Covid-19 to their list of example events.

See document at:  file.wikileaks.org/file/dhs-mass-psychogenic-illness-2006.pdf

 

The Undiscovered Self

“The bigger the crowd the more negligible the individual becomes. But if the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of his own puniness and impotence, should feel that his life has lost its meaning – which, after all, is not identical with public welfare and higher standards of living – then he is already on the road to State slavery and, without knowing or wanting it, has becomes its proselyte. The man who looks only outside and quails before the big battalions has no resource with which to combat the evidence of his senses and his reason. But that is just what is happening today: we are all fascinated and overawed by statistical truths and large numbers and are daily apprised of the nullity and futility of the individual personality, since it is not represented and personified by any mass organization. Conversely, those personages who strut about on the world stage and whose voices are heard far and wide seem, to the uncritical public, to be borne along on some mass movement or on the tide of public opinion and for this reason are either applauded or execrated. Since mass suggestion plays the predominant role here, it remains a moot point whether their message is their own, for which they are personally responsible, or whether they merely function as a megaphone for collective opinion.

Under these circumstances it is small wonder that individual judgment grows increasingly uncertain of itself and that responsibility is collectivized as much as possible, i.e., is shuffled off by the individual and delegated to a corporate body. In this way the individual becomes more and more a function of society, which in its turn usurps the function of the real life carrier, whereas, in actual fact, society is nothing more than an abstract idea like the State. Both are hypostatized, that is, have become autonomous. The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it. Thus the constitutional State drifts into the situation of a primitive form of society, namely, the communism of a primitive tribe where everybody is subject to the autocratic rule of a chief or an oligarchy.”

                       - Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self 1957