There are Degrees of Knowledge of the Divine

It's like this: there's reading a description of lightning in a book. There's watching video of lightning in the upper atmosphere. There's being outside in a terrific thunderstorm and witnessing lightning blast a tree to smithereens. And then there's being struck by lightning yourself.

One of my biggest problems is that I can't find anyone (with one or possibly two exceptions) who's done more than watch a storm through the picture window of their comfortably warm and dry living room. They've got no interest in being cold and wet and afraid, and they simply don't believe anyone could survive being hit by a bolt from the heavens. So much so that when I say "Hold my beer" and then run out into the rain waving a tall steel rod while yelling, "Watch this!" they refuse to even look.

If you ask, "Why in the world would you want to be struck by the Divine Lightning?" I can only answer, "Because it turns you into this."

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A New Way to Use Psychedelics

I want to tell you about my approach to working with psychedelics, because I think I'm breaking new ground. If you or someone you know is working along similar lines, get in touch. I want to talk with you.
For now, at least, I'm calling this approach "phonomancy," meaning "divination via sound." If you're a recreational user, it likely won't appeal to you. If you're someone who's dipping your toe in the psychedelic water via microdosing, or someone who is primarily interested in using psychedelics to treat trauma, depression, or addiction issues, you might find the practice I'm going to describe off-putting or even alarming. That's because phonomancy is not therapeutic--it's augmentative. It's a program for developing supra-normative emotional and spiritual capacities via psychological hormesis. Some risk, pain, and fear are part of the process. But that's the price of transformation.

THE ORIGINAL TWO "S…

The Devil Horns: A Formula for Success

Nietzsche wrote, "My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal."

He also wrote, "My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.”

And this: “What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”

And "...all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer."

That's some good shit right there.…

"One Weird Trick to Achieve Salvation!"

It's still inchoate, but this weekend I received a novel and possibly very useful new image of the Goddess. It was She Who is Not There, a three-dimensional hole in the world in the shape of the wife I never found. It inspired an epiphany:
Your "heart" is part of the perceptual apparatus of your consciousness, like your mind. And like your mind, it always has an object of its apprehension.

If, like William H. Macy in "Magnolia," you feel like you have love to give and nowhere to put it, if you're dying inside because you've got no one to love, understand that the pain you're feeling is a sure sign you *do* love Someone, a Transcendental Person who feels the same way about you, only times infinity. Your heart sees Her, even if you cannot.

So I offer you one weird trick to achieve salvation. All you need to do is reframe your suffering to recognize that your longing is proof that She is real, and you will be delivered. Loneliness is a strange attracto…

The First Church of David Bowie, Phonomancer

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