Some notes on crucibles.

My method regarding the relationship I was in and which has now gone into some spontaneous regenerative process is of utility.  I did in fact ride to the brink of jettisoning the relationship with a heart and mind  of determination.  What is interesting is the quality of the determination.  My intention was to move into a relationship, either some future iteration of this one or some other wherein certain of my needs would be met. This intention,  (qualified by merits one might find in a magical or other ceremonial operation)  was conditioned with the conception that all and any involved would achieve some greater measure of wholeness by moving through the process..   

What went on was something that had every aspect of a breakup and diaspora..  but then what ensued involved a tiny immature black Japanese kitten,  A fantastic dancer in a club in Hiroshima and a midnight phone conversation with an Amazonian shamanness deep in my confidence..  which phone call of course happened on the full moon just after an intensive healing ceremony involving Ayahuasca and the prospect of my arrival there to design/build temple space...  

Long and short,  everything exploded.  there was tears and anger and dejection...  and then somehow, later that day a healing ceremony involving 7 Japanese people,  some leftover Amazonian medicines,  some illicit materials from the market district and some inspired interaction between Tarot, human desire and some brand of diagnostic yogic interpretations of people's energy states and auras unfolded without agenda or previous experience.  Things just happened..  and it was clear choreography like any great ceremony...  When it was done...  the intention came full in its most unexpected manner,  everything was rearranged like the shuffle, perfectly stacked between hands of Pinnochle...   poof!  new world!

Love Arts Unbound

      In a volley of text messages with my first Love, from a relationship that started in my 18th year, I salvoed "I need someone to laugh at me"  and proceeded to explain a situation regarding what I see as the changing of my current relationship which is in process now.   I realize I chose her for the laugher for a very important reason...  There is no one on earth with as long a view on me and my character as well as what I am in the arena of Love Art.  I wanted to hear from someone who had no illusions,  but also no antipathy..  At least in my summation,  we've made our peace,  but continue to hold each other in regard and with special meaning for the gamut, or gauntlet of our lives and mutual becoming in those years..

     My unequivocal note to a Japanese woman, Miyuki, whom I danced with a couple of times and have some interest in knowing better was copied to 1rst loves message.  It is this  "hmm.. sounds complicated... I want to dance with you... I want to feel this amazing connection. I don't do complicated and I won't stay at a hotel. You're fantastic and I think we could share some incredible things... Figure out what you really want and get back to me.. I'll be in Japan for another week. If you want to see me, invite me to your house... we'll dance and talk and eat... otherwise... meet me in Nepal."

   
      To which 1rst Love replied "You acquire and discard mystical loves at a rapid pace these days.".  I thanked her sincerely in response.  But not as one might expect, because it sent me reconsidering myself as in error or mistaken...  that sort of reaction can be found in numerous other articles by other authors.

What riveted me was the word "Discard".  This is something that has been going through my head for years..  The idea that changing the relational elements of a relationship for whatever reason is Discarding  someone.  In some cases I find this to be the case.  Not always though.  (hanging participle?)

     Our society has a preloaded, largely unexamined presumption that every time you get into a relationship,  you should make it last forever in the state that it is begun.  It's a beautiful concept, but is it always the best idea?  I propose that it is not for everyone and not in all cases and we as visitors here must change when it becomes apparent that it is in the interests of ourselves AND the person we are with.   The saying "good for the goose, good for the gander" comes to mind.  And though many might think otherwise, I intimate that if you really look at it and if you look at your experience on a more whole and discerning perspective, it is in fact impossible for someone to do what is right for their health, their needs and their heart which in the end is not good for everyone else including the so called "jilted lover".  

     I do not mean to say that it doesn't hurt.  My reference is to our soul and it's unquenchable need to be what it is and in its way.  Nobody gains from remaining in a dysfunctional partnership.  And one should never disguise their feelings in manner of staying with someone who does not inspire them. In the case of being in a relationship with someone who is no longer invested it is demeaning to the receiver and destructive to the one carrying that load.  

     As anyone with eyes to hear knows, not all pain is futile. nor is it without gifts.

     My reflection on the trend of culture thinking that staying with people forever is a necessary condition has 2 origins that I reckon. 

1. In the past we were civilized in such a manner to lose track of the abundancy of life and so people needed to stick together, often no matter what happened. 

2. It hurts.  I don't like to hurt people even if an unavoidable circumstance might do so.  I also don't want to be hurt though I know what a gold mine it can be when we are blind.

     In regards to "Discarding people",  this is the juicy bit,  the valence.  In my younger years this seems to be the outcome of leaving relationships.  In retrospect I see that it is, in my opinion, a conditioned cultural artifact.  To wit,  If I've loved someone for 3 years and then realize that we are no longer fit to each other for whatever reasons and we've worked and discussed and tried whatever changes or ideas we could come to, then sometimes the answer is, "Though I love you still, I must go". 

     In the realm of the heart,  what is real is real,  the heart can not compromise, nor can the soul if we are alive.  That which feeds the heart and the soul must be had in order that we grow.  The caveat for my reasoning is an important factor to this understanding and that is the question of the manner in which separation is made.  To the point, when we must go, then we must,  but incumbent upon us is to do our utmost in clear communication, moreso, clear understanding. 

From my experience in "leaving relationships"  and watching others do so,  the understanding is often cluttered with various homages to why things suck.  This is not the definition I am working from.  Understanding in my process refers to sense of true soulful communion if it is viable and I reckon it is if we haven't sullied the temple of our love too terribly in the arrival at this juncture.

     I've spent a number of years relating to and working with the ceremonial world.  I would say the earliest was some of the moments in a real Roman Catholic church, some of which can be quite pervading in a real cathedral.  Later I went to a summer camp for boys run by the YMCA and we had opening and closing ceremonies which were quite exciting.  These camp ceremonies involved the counsellors dressed in loin cloths, made up in some Native American approximation  and doing reenactments of Native American stories which involved mach battles with flaming torches,  big bonfires,  drummers way back in the forest booming everywhere through the trees and across the waters of the lake While an elder recited the story. In later years I took a role in these ceremonies.

     I developed a lifelong interest in ceremony, though I had left the church by around 6 years old at the hands of an abusive boyfriend of my mother's who sure could pray and was handy with a leather belt.  These days I say "Life is ceremony" and within the patterns of our lives there are many ceremonies.  I am reminded of the Mandelbrot fractal.  One of the elements of any ceremony, to make it worth anything, is the opening and closing thereof.  From my perspective,  a love relationship falls in this domain.  Like any ceremony,  though we may choose when it starts, we do not always know when and how it will end.

In love,  cierto,  we don't really choose its beginning or its end though we might like to reckon so.  It is important here to note,  I am making a definitive bifurcation  between loving someone and the state of a relationship as well as the types of love one may be referring to.  That is, we can be "in love" or simply 'love'  but not be in love.  I know there are those who say it is not realistic to think  that we should continue to be in love with a partner after some time.  I don't agree and I don't mind if I'm a dreamer.

     A point I feel drawn to understand for myself is once again the word "discard".  My case and point is my note to 1rst love.  I still love her,  she is not discarded though we are no longer "together"  in the intimate relationship sense, but we still have discussions,  think of each other and make each other laugh.  I never discard anyone, because people aren't things and they always have meaning once they have entered our lives.  Nothing made by men or gods can nullify this reality.  I am a man,  we are souls in physical vessels creating a world of experience and nothing can change our love as it is all that we are, who we may bed down with one year vs. the next aside.

     The important facts in my perspective have to do with the ceremony of it all.  How a thing is done,  just like a place where we may dwell should have good proportions, adequate light,  smooth passages, natural elements, peaceful places and creative spaces etc..  Our ceremony must have them as well as good entrances and exits.  By bringing true, deep understanding to the changing of relationship,  we can go from a futile, destructive, painful rejection to another quality of series of realizations.

     The thesis is alchemy.  We come together for all variety of reasons, we part for a multitude more.  My intention is to cut through the barbarity of "discard" and rejection and the need to change relationships only after people become intolerant of each other, but instead to begin thinking with ceremonial a-logic. First, I imply that instead of 'ending"  relationships we begin to use the word change or evolve,  because that's what it is!  Each relationship is a ceremony and every ceremony has a crucible.  What we get from the crucible is dependant upon the ingredients we put in AND the condition of the wholeness of the locus and the time in which it is done. Ceremony or alchemy does not depend on any standard sort of physics.

     When we change a relationship, for example,  from a monogamous love relationship to some other kind of partnership, we are retaining the monoatomic gold from the crucible to be put to further revelation.  To do this,  we must as lovers come to a sometimes difficult but simple understanding;  Though we have loved each other,  the crucible has delivered to us this stone and this work is done..  The change can come without all of the desolation and grief if it can be done without the "how much this sucks"  homage.

Closing Ceremony. 

     1rst love was a great mystical love, but we parted of necessity and so it is a reality that everything in the universe has some magical clock by which it runs.  My purpose is that love is not diminished only the power of our worldly self to give attention to anything without pause. Exit with as much love as you enter and eventually understanding will trump culturally endowed habits of interpretation.  Only love lasts forever,  but not a particular architecture of relating between any entities whether it be man and woman or even river and mountain.

Love and Light

J.W. Starr

Thuoc lao CHINH HIEU - 8 Hang Ga - Ha Noi

Or a Potent Vietnamese Tobacco.. Tonight's Experience.. Smoking Hang Ga and walking. This is not for Amateurs. I don't know exactly what this stuff is or if there is something added to it. It has incredible, overwhelming power. It is strong and should not be smoked anyplace where there are obstructions to reaching an operational toilet or satisfactory whole which can be evacuatated into.

A white haired, striking featured, potent seeming man loaded a typical bamboo water bong for me when I was in Hanoi. His tobacco came in a special silver bag and was from Saigon I think. It was of even higher octane and led to me losing all facility to see or hold my body up and so I sagged toward the table in front of me. The fall wasn't far as we were sitting on some combination board/bucket improv bench. To be sure of the rush, in Hanoi, they pack the bowl full and smoke all in one long improbable pull.

I could not at the time come close to taking it that way. Of course the Vietnamese men around me took this as hilarious and various of them proceeded to instruct me at separate instances. They were excited to see me taking to their culture in this way and poured me copious glasses of Vang Dalat, the wine of the region. Though I couldn't pull the loaded bowl, I was treated as a honored guest for my earnest endeavor.

Ms Guerilla and I purchased some 30 bags of this stuff on our way out of the party at the beer hall (can't remember the proper title, but his is close). We were on our way to the Airport enroute to Fukuoka, Japan that hour and wanted to bring this wonder of Vietnam along.

Faculty of Seeing

I mention "Faculty of Seeing" in my previous post. In case clarification is needed; Faculty of Seeing refers to discernment. When one discerns one does not feel emotions. One sees without wanting or disliking or expecting or judging or even thinking. Most people do not have mastery of this skill. It is a skill and must be developed like any muscle. If one doesn't have the skill then one doesn't know what it is. This makes sense if you think about it. It's a state, it's not an intellectual idea. You can't understand the meaning of the word unless you do it.

Loving People | Leaving People

The marriage I've left behind was the result of confusion within a complex of excitement, change and desires as well as fears. Something I realized about the experience is that one ingredient of my confusion was something very beautiful though it led to some pain. I had reached a place of feeling love and compassion toward people in a way which I never had before. This was a product of my personal evolution which I had been nurturing much of my life. This expansion of my capacity to love happened at the same time in which I met SleepingGuru, whom I later married and have now separated from.

I felt love so much more deeply than I ever had and this led me to the assumption that she was somehow integral to that. This wasn't true and I realize that now. The truth is that I was never in love with her, but I loved her. I had no meter with which to tell the difference in my expanded state. That relationship taught me the difference and gave me a meter.

As I consider the action of karma here I see with new clarity. I am sad to have hurt SleepingGuru. As I reflect I see what is most crucial. The part of me that fears some cosmic retribution, or the onlookers who predict it would see that occur in my life if I did not learn the lesson. By seeing this in full clarity, looking directly into the mechanism, the lesson is fully integrated and the karma is broken.

I think this is interesting for people who come from the west to consider. We are deeply conditioned by guilt and punishment ideas in our culture. Karma is not punishment, it is action. When we have expanded beyond the level of the action, by encompassing all aspects, like being on both sides of a coin, there is a release. Or in other terms, the thing that makes a mess of people is continuing to do something, which creates inertia and causes the sorts of rebalancing phenomena that bring about more pain.

The universe has no need nor mechanism with which to cause pain once we stop doing the thing that hurts. Conversely, if a relationship ends and one person continues to labor in pain while the other is joyous then this is also a karmic lesson. (I do not know that SleepingGuru is in continuing pain or no) Understand that Joyousness is a divine spiritual state not an emotion. One who has acted without compassion must resolve this in order to be joyous. The one who is in pain is in a process of remanifesting the same painful experience. This pain is not a result of something that was done to them. The true karmic lesson is that this person is allowing their mind to use theirself, they are in fact asleep and dreaming. They are causing the pain which they are experiencing to theirself. When they take control of their mind, the pain will stop.

This pain cycle will be deepened and lengthened by blaming the partner for the pain. This is because the pain is not under their control once this happens. Then if other sleeping people tell the one who is suffering that they have been in some way wronged and encourage this blaming aspect, the whole problem becomes a kind of distributed agreement and reinforcement to continue to be in pain.

As I left the situation I asked myself how I got into the thing to begin with. This has been an incredible wellspring of wisdom and transformation for which I am deeply thankful. I am also Joyous. I feel I've had to take some huge risks which have delivered me into a life I had never imagined. I would not be who I am if I had not had that experience and I don't think those lessons could have been learned any other way. In retrospect I feel like we were handed a perfect package, custom made for us to learn everything we needed to become ourselves.

I don't know how SleepingGuru is processing things now. I know when we were together she lacked the skills to move through pain and work with herself in such a way. She had trouble loving herself and in discernment generally. From her notes to me I know that some of what I described above regarding "the partner in pain" was going on in her. This is her journey and what she must gather from what we did.

There are a lot of things that went on which people around us will never understand and probably couldn't until they've developed the faculty of seeing. I do not blame her. Part of the reason I have left and my life continues to expand in joy is that I don't use my energy in that way. I don't have it in my world. I thought about it as I was being blamed and realized that in fact I felt hurt, abused, manipulated, undermined; All sorts of blamable things. But I made a decision. I feel love, I am creating the most amazing life anyone has ever lived. I am ready for the world.

Karma and Love

As I listen to the discourse in my head with the various voices and opinions regarding my leaving behind my previous life I hear one that comes to ideas of karma. What my reflection yielded as I sat in silence is the following; Karma is not a mechanism, the function of which is to make us suffer. It is a flawless mechanism by which we can learn the truth of ourselves without any other instruction.

Sanguine: Varously described as very happy or bloodthirsty

I love it. Kampeki! If I had 17 yen I would go and get a Big Mac.

Starbucks, I swore I'd never speak to you again But I'm back with tail severed and inserted in my empty eye socket....

What the Fuck is going on?

I'm going to tell you. But FIRST!!!

Crumbling Empires! Burning Effigies! Rotting Corpses of financial institutions and their lackeys.. Any Direction is Misdirection. Nowhere is a place I've heard of but they say you can't get there from here! Curses! Screeching Invective! Inspiration and it's Loss! Now I relieve some pressure from my root so's I can give your ear a proper thrashing!

Getting Married, Getting Unmarried, Getting Remarried. I'm eating rice grown by nuclear disaster zone farmers. Being in perpetual on-the-road-ness puts one in a special frame of consciousness and gives a different set of concerns. The word is infected. Burn this message as soon as you read it. Burn this message before you read it. Too Late - Shikaku! Send money. Money won't mean much for much longer.. I'm a gypsy... so is this crazy Japanese lover. Now we just need to remember how to play all the wild-oold-world dance love and drinkin' songs.

Ysitta! but Her secret name - Prize and Penance. So perfect. Creative, beautiful, forceful, selfish, cruel, demanding, visionary, spirited... so nourishing. We make love twice a day. She asks me permission for things even though she's going to do what she wants anyway.. just giving me a chance for scorn.. for punishment or forgiveness.. Everything so different when there is this much passion driving everything. The dream manifesting. Go with the heart or just go.

Pressure building up slowly from underground. I think therefore you don't have to.. I recommend sending love letters to people you barely know. You can sign my name if you don't feel up to it. But I'm going to take the credit. I'll dress up like you when I show up at the grass and mud cottage on the hill where your lover was born. Get there first or I'll give'r the Guerilla Love - there's no going back!