Magnitude

Dear Taim,

Every day I imagine what adventures you're going on and what ones we will have in the future. I miss you and your mother every day.  I sit here and wonder, "how can I make it all worth it?"

Working my way from under your mother's magical webs upon my heart and mind has been one of the most difficult things that I've had to do.  I'm unsure of how much of what she did was deliberate manipulations or subconscious programming running it's full course, what I am sure of is that it was meant to break me.  I don't believe in coincidences.  Nothing just happens.  Everything has a cause and everything has an effect.

If I were to break out a life's lesson that I've learned from all of this is that the only thing that you have to be sure of is yourself.  Able to stand and face whatever comes your way.  Able to understand and adapt to change.  And able to see that most people are not sure of themselves so they present something that makes it seem like they do.  But they don't and the best they can do is pretend.

But that is also okay, because like Kurt Vonnegut said, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."  Growing up I pretended I was a noble knight in King Arthur's Court, one of Robin Hood's Merry Men, teaming up with super heroes to take on villains, rescuing princesses from castles, and traveling across the galaxy fighting to balance the Force.  I wanted to be strong enough to face every evil and monster that would appear in my path.

That's how I have faced all my problems in the past.  Imitation of the ideals that I read and saw and wanted to be present in my life.  It is what the greatest artists do, it was what the Grand Masters taught.  It's how animals learn their survival skills, and how children pick up traits and behaviors from their surroundings.  Here is the coolest part of the whole ordeal:  For us, human beings, it's a deliberate choice on what we learn and how we behave.  We have the opportunity to break above the lower instincts through conscious will alone.

That also means that love and fear are choices.  Without us consciously being merciful, forgiving, and honorable they would not exist.  There is not a single molecule of love, true love, in the universe.  We create it.  The inevitability of time and death drives us forward, always forward.  But do we take each step purposefully?  Do we tell ourselves how we will be? When we find out that we have locked ourselves away, what experiences are we denying ourselves, what would the cycle of the seasons have brought us had we stepped forth openly and in full confidence in who we pretend to be?

We might be only meat popsicles living a finite existence, there might not be anything after this experience.  Whatever energy we are is released back into the ether, only to be recycled into something else.  Who knows?  Who really cares?  Are we really going to waste this limited life over petty grievances?

That's why when I think of your mother and you I am filled with understanding and love.  It's because it's a choice that I make.  All those years of wanting an opportunity to prove to myself that I am true to that which drives my heart, all it took was you and her.  To find the reason to survive.

And survive I will.

Hopefully I'll see you soon.  I want to be a good father to you and regardless of how your mother behaves, I'll still be a good man towards her. That's all I've wanted to be, and the funny thing about life is that until it is tested, it is all just pretend.

Practice being who you want to be, so that when the test comes, you're prepared. In the end, that's all that matters.

Love,

Dad

Philosopher's Stone

I gather all the memories
And see them in my mind
And from the recesses of my heart
All the emotions I can find

I play the lust, the pain, the rage
The release of my heart
From it's fear laden cage
And I place it upon the fire

To purify the soul
To be reborn anew
Into the copper bowl
The Alchemy must stew

Into the concoction I place in double
All my toil and all my trouble
And into that black mess must go
All the love that I could ever know

As that potion turns to ash
Through the white the embers glow
I reach back in the distant past
For the seeds that I must sow

I cultivated naught but dust and stone
In the garden of my soul
For to myself alone
Must I die

When she came, she gave me shade
I hesitated to sate my thirst
From her waters, drink she bade
My wounded soul she had nursed

The poison that was in my blood
Mixed with Love in a torrent flood
I held the Alchemy within
Mixing the yang with the yin

In that garden an oasis formed
And life came to my dessicated bones
The breath of life filled my lungs
I rang with pain and pleasure in my moans

In the midst of my troubled woes
I panicked and I fought
Fear rang in cavernous echoes
And rage boiled within

All of this my mind's eye did see
Into the copper bowl it went
In the mixture I grasped the key
The universe had sent

Ashes to ashes, the fire burnt
The water mixed with fierce current
The air boiled within the hearth
Seeped within the blackened earth

I gathered what was left of me
Threw it in the cauldron
Surrounded it within the void
And broke the world's illusion

The mixture brewed
The elixir bubbled
The transformation had renewed
The garden for the seeds

In the observers seat I sat
Devoid of all desire
No longer did I have to combat
Death's final funeral pyre

From this process I was reborn
No longer was I forlorn
The brightness of the Phoenix shone
For I had created the Philosophers Stone

Remembrance

I remember staring at
Your outline in the Dark
Memorizing your shape,
The way the Light would spark
To dance across your body's silhouette
And how my heart would quake.
When you asked me "why" I stared at thee
No answer I could make.
My emptiness was consuming me
You were the anchor of my mind
I imprinted all your highs and lows
That in your shadow I could find.
The mountains of your breast
The valley between your thighs.
How your back would crest like water
In pleasure we would share our cries.
I remember grasping your curling black mane,
You wrapping your arms around me.
In the balance of Light and Dark,
With you I could simply be.
I remember everything that you have ever done,
But this I remember most:
The way I loved you with all my heart
And how you gave life to a ghost.

INTERLUDE: Alchemy Part II (FINAL)

I have come
to drag you out of yourself,
and take you in my heart.
I have come
to bring out the beauty
you never knew you had
and lift you like a prayer
to the sky.

-Rumi

***

Normally these things I write happen instantaneously, as if they're being pulled out of me by some greater force.  With this one, my heart told me to wait. I had to delve deeply and listen, and search for the signs the Universe had to show me for the direction I needed to go.

I am a man who would have said that I had lost my faith.  In people, places, gods, and things. I had pursued my dream to the very edge of madness.  When my Dark Lady beckoned me, my Malice of Wonderland, I gave in and lost whatever illusion of control I had imagined.  Then I lost my hope, my godspark, my will to live.  The Demiurge had cast it's trap.  My soul had died, but my heart was still beating.

Since the end of February, I've questioned my entire existence. Never have I really done that before.  I had always known why I existed, whether that was through God's creation or to seek reparations for the dead.  That much had been clear, and will be expanded upon in the next series named PANTHEON, but will only be mentioned here.  I had given everything to Melissa.  Dredged up every grain of myself, held on because of her and my son, and in the end... it seems like it has been worth nothing.  And I had to question:  What does that say of me?

I have reached out to find answers only to be spurred with scorn and hate from her friends and family.  I know I've done nothing to deserve that treatment.  The Norwegian Government has refused to cooperate with me, even to the extent of violating international law and their own civil penal code.  I've contacted Lawyers and schools, the US Embassy in Norway... and nothing.  It's like the Universe has spurred my existence and everything that I had done means nothing.  I was simply used and discarded. Again.

What does that say to me?

I've had very few "Spiritual" experiences outside of the Shamanic realms.  Those I had attributed to the imagination, my interpretation of the outer realms with an inner experience.  Completely valid and real, sometimes more real than this world, but ultimately I had been unable to integrate it to pursue a balanced life.  I had won my war, fought every battle and had overcome, but had been unable to live at peace with myself.  And now I have to fight a war that I never wanted.  One against the very person with whom I love the most.  My Twin Soul.  And all I have is myself, and nothing more.  No money, no support.  Just me.  I have to hope that is enough.

It's driven the knife that rests within my heart to my very core.  It's bled me dry leaving a husk of grief and sorrow.  I had gained my soul back through my deeds, felt the weight of the mountain of duty fall from my shoulders, freed my heart, truly freed it, after over a decade of hiding it away.  In my most vulnerable, the knife flashed out of the darkness, for the final killing blow.

I had lain on the floor of my mother's apartment for months, ready for my final breath.  It never came.  Every day, I'd pull my husk out and greet the day with my dog.  I'd practice my yoga and Tai Chi. The prison of my flesh keeping my spirit bound and the universe ignored my cries for freedom.

And in my loneliest of lonely's, Kali Ma came to me.  The multi-armed goddess of Creation and Destruction stood over my body, with lust and destructive joy, naked and glorious, a mirrored reflection of the Lover I had left in Norway.  Her divine blade came down upon my neck, and whatever was in me holding on, died.  I fell from my head and into my heart for the first time.  It was there, in the desolate wasteland of my own heart that I had found the treasure I had been searching for, that no intellectual thought could produce.  I sat as an observer in my own mind as my intuition tore away at the reality that I had created.  I had found my Philosopher's Stone. It wasn't in the mind or body, or even the soul.  It was the core of my heart, covered in the grime and dust of negativity, compressed and pressured over the years.  The true and hidden driving force behind my every thought and action.  Refined through Alchemy, the desperate and needed process for spiritual growth, I held in my hands the seed that would transmute the grief and sorrow, pain and rage, in the the purest substance in the Universe.  Unconditional Love.

I said to myself, "what does this mean for me?"

***

The process of inner growth and change isn't a straight line. Like any true creation, it takes many prototypes to get a working design, and like any great scientific discovery it usually happens on accident.  And in my case desperation.

When I've searched for answers all I have done is fill my head with knowledge but my application process had been struggling, frustrating, filled with failure after failure. When I would feel like I had gained a measure of control of my life, my feet would be swept out from under me.  I eventually gave in to what is known in the Psychological field as "learned helplessness". And in the recent months since my finding of my Philosopher's Stone and my experience with Kali Ma, I've learned quite a bit about my PTSD and how to utilize what I have to combat it.

I've been in a VA inpatient program for almost seven weeks.  I've been building a framework for myself to hold together and not collapse when I have to weather more storms of depression that are invoked by my trauma.  For many years I had been studying and giving myself the tools confront my shadow and pain, but have had very little success in structural stability.  It was like I had thought that simply having the tools would give me the skills needed, and I had continued to build my house upon the sand so that when the storms did come, it collapsed. And collapsed. Over and over again.  Until finally my tools had been worn out, bandits had lain in wait for me, and I could do nothing to reassure the ones that I love that everything would be alright.

Now I have education in the skills that I needed to utilize the tools that I already have.  Not only that, I have new and innovative tools to use that I had never realized before.  I also have my Philosopher's Stone to add to my forge.  Where before I would have added my grief and sorrow to the weapon I had created of myself, the one that Shattered into a thousand thousand pieces unsure if I would ever be able to put it back together again the night that I had attempted suicide and then struck my Lady Love in self defense, I now can change the makeup of that weapon utilizing Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing something with gold.

I no longer have to look at my brokenness with shame and disgust, but with pride of the history that I have overcome.  My past and scars are my Legacy.  My blade can finally rest, only to be picked up when needed. I am the Master of my Fate, the Captain of my Soul.  And I will pick the battles that I want to fight.

My heart is whole and pure once again.  And that was the awakening of my solar light.

INTERLUDE: Alchemy Part I

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." – Carl Jung. 

I'm not a Jungian, but I highly admire Carl Jung's branch of psychology which delves into the the spiritual symbolism of the mind.  I'd highly recommend any of his works, as well as others like James Hillman's The Soul's Code, but the process of individuation and dream interpretation is found in Psychology and Alchemy. A process that I have been going through for many years, but only recently discovered for myself, needing to delve into with both feet while on my Path.

Though my own process doesn't use very many of the technical terms, I'm still learning, I can easily recognize that the Path that I walk is the one that every man needs to in order to transform in to his true self, or die in waste. In here I have learned how vastly important the stories we tell ourselves are.  That we recognize our Imagination as the true driving force of our Will.  That as we search for the Higher Truths, they become more and more recognizable through our imagination, not because we are able to make things up, but because it allows us to recognize the truth in all things. To be able to speak with the very heart of the universe. Every word written becomes Holy, and every piece of knowledge becomes Divine.  That is because everything drives us to become more awake or delve deeper into sleep.  The process of Awakening is painful but enlightening, using that pain to give us greater understanding of love.  Where the process of Sleeping is comforting and sheltering, causing us to react to those things that disturb our sleep with fear.

In the Alchemical tradition, there are four stages to becoming your True Self.  Nigredo, Albedo, Citrinitas, and Rubedo.  They are the Dark Night of the Soul which is the putrefaction and death of the soul. The Purification of the Soul, the washing away of impurities. The Coagulation of the Soul , or the dawning of the solar light. Then finally The Completion of the Great Work also known as the Magnum Opus.

My formative years, until I joined the military, I lived a different life than most of the world.  I was protected from the greater chaos but given mostly free reign to explore my surroundings.  I had no father or any strong male figure to mentor me through life.  I had my Great-Grandfather, he was my wise old sage full of great wisdom and displaying great love, but I was left alone to figure out the rest.  My environment allowed me to do that in safety.  Though my religion put the chains of sin around my ankles, it did prevent me from making most of the mistakes that young men do make early on, and though the mistakes I made when I was "free" of those chains were of greater consequence, I had been stable enough to figure my own way through them and learn the lessons that I needed to.

When I joined the military I began my Nigredo and it lasted for over a decade. My interactions with my peers and others mixed within me the darkest parts that humanity had to offer.  Murder, rage, deceit, apathy, conformity, and many more.  These ate away at the child that I had been, like an acid dissolving the my innocence and calcifying my entire being.  Whatever core that was inside me fought, endured, and survived, finally breaking at the hammer of my physical trauma when I had thought that I had escaped that final death of my soul.  But that breaking didn't destroy me, it only shattered me into a thousand thousand pieces.

My process of Albedo, purification, came at the insistence of my own Will and the guidance of the Universe.  Of that I have no doubt.  The dead that had appeared to me in my dreams protected me and gave me their strength, because only I could honor them in the proper manner.  They formed the framework for my shattered soul as I worked on it like a puzzle whose shape changes with need of where the pieces are to be placed.  The attacks against me were the forge and supplied the fire within to bind myself back together.  And so a weapon had been forged, shaped by my Will like a master smith lost in a trance.  The edges cut, sharp and deep, nothing could stand against it, but I had, at times, misused the weapon that I had become and blunted and dirtied it against the dull stupidity of the enemy.  So I would have to go back to the forge to repair and clean.  And I learned, that the sword of my spirit not only cut my enemies, but also cut myself.  I sheered away that which I found of myself I no longer needed or benefited me. I added them to the forge but the weapon was still incomplete.

When I had met my Shaman Teacher for the first time, he connected me to my ancestors.  I stood in front of the Great Assembly of Men in judgement.  I watched as my life played out in my minds eye, and felt them watching my every reaction.  They had already seen me for what I was.  They were watching me for who I would become.  They showed me not only my own traumas, but those that I had caused others.  Then they gave me Names.  I was the Red Handed.  The Obsidian Heart.  The Grim Dreamer.  In these I felt the weight of consequence.  Marks upon me that would forever identify my deeds.  I accepted them as one would accept a sentence of doom.

Then I felt my Great-Grandfather's presence.  There were no words, more vibrations and feelings.  he conveyed to me this, "You judge yourself harsher than anyone of us could ever judge you.  Forgive yourself. Remember that you are loved."  And in my sorrow mixed tremendous pride.  My repentance wasn't for them to give me, it was for myself to realize.  They found me worthy of the weapon I was forging.  The names that I had been given were added to the forge and placed into the weapon, their purpose unknown to me at the time.

The first time I had stepped fully into battle after that experience was my BBC Hardtalk interview. After that I confronted the Montana Court System with the false animal abuse charges, stepped into the Bundestag, traveled over Norway to speak, spoke at the Nobel Peace Center, did a TEDx Talk, premiered the DRONE film in Time's Square.  For six months I was a whirling dervish, untouchable, filled with joy and reckless abandon. Death was at my door and I was rushing gleefully into her arms.

The secret wish of my heart wasn't to die but to find a reason not to.  I had accepted the inevitable, the people in positions surrounding the drone world have fragile egos and the narcissistic tendency to eliminate anyone who is a threat to their power, and there is no greater threat than Truth.

The Universe is the Great Chemist of the Soul, and she knew the secret wish of my heart.  That's why I had to meet Melissa three times before I understood the language the universe was speaking at me. Maktub.

In the process of chemistry, to purify a substance any number of techniques can be used.  I had reached the point in my own Albedo process where I had let go of the past and future on my own.  I was living in the moment.  I might not have "loved myself" but I was satisfied with my life had it ended then.  Death is simply a step in the cycle anyways.

When her Love was added to me, I felt ready to burst with radiant light!  The last of the impurities, the sorrow, the grief, the disappointments were rising to the surface. Some nights I would shake almost like I was having a seizure, and my mind was bursting with what the ancients would call "Shamanic ecstasy."  But Melissa was scared because she had no idea what was happening, and she attributed it to psychosis.  Her fear latched on to me through the opening of love and I closed it away.  Immediately I started getting physically sick again.  I really had no idea what was going on other than I was experiencing an extreme release of emotional energy.

And when I had finally thought I was free, a few individuals decided to stalk me, threaten me, and slander me where they could.  That fear latched on as well and drove me down into another Dark Night of the Soul.  The only thing that got me through that was my Love for her.

I can't really say what went on in her mind, she never really was that communicative with me.  Her harsh words drove me more and more into myself.  When I brought her to Germany, my final speaking engagement there, she had told me that she had thought about cheating on me and the first night she was there I had a horrid nightmare that I had been abducted by aliens and experimented on.  I did everything that I could to show her that I was dedicated to her, through all the pain and misery that I was dealing with.  The German politicians that I was dealing with wanted to suck the life out of me for next to nothing, and because of her advice I decided to take care of myself.  I was done anyways.  I didn't need to participate in that drama any more if I wasn't going to get the support I needed.  My son was conceived in Germany, the only thing good about that whole trip.

A month later I went back to the states to get my dog, check up and deal with the VA, get a handle on those jerkwads who were stalking me from a ground perspective, and then boogie back to Norway.  That's when I found out that Melissa was pregnant and any reckless behavior that I had thought about pursuing vanished from my mind.  And the process returned to the purification.

That summer was an interesting one to say the least.  I had let a veteran buddy borrow my car and he had sold it for heroin money.  I ended up reporting it to the police, and in the meantime I purchased a 10 year old ford van so that we could travel around the USA in a road trip.  Even when things went wrong (our van was towed in New Orleans and it cut into my budget by $300), I like journeys that test me so that I can see where I need to improve.  We had some great adventures.

I sent Melissa back home, and that was tough because I really did rely on her support and I didn't want to leave her alone and pregnant. I just hoped that everything would work out okay..  I was trying to deal with the VA and that was like pulling teeth.  There is no adequate healthcare in Norway for somebody like me, and I didn't want them to think that I was using their system to get it.  That took almost two months.  During that time I fell into another depression.  Fear and Love warring inside of me like two primordial Titans vying for dominance.

When I got back, it was with my dog, my partner, and my soon to be born son. Everything that I had ever wanted and needed. But it was like something was draining my life from me.  Sucking my very soul.  The blackness threatened to suffocate my light and my love.  Melissa must have felt it too.  Her attacks became more and more harsh, and I withdrew into myself more and more.  I felt like a zombie, and I couldn't figure out why.

That's where this story begins.  So I don't need to retell it.  The circle has been completed.  The purification process finalized.  And so begins the next step.  The Awakening of the Solar Light.

DEVOTION

Dark Lady guide me
Through the Night of the Soul
And if my feet should falter
Encourage me to see

Dark Lady teach me
How to die to my self
And if my ego clings in desperation
Give me patience to be

Dark Lady protect me
From my own recklessness
And if my heart is wounded
Help me pick up my debris

Let my Light thrive in your Darkness
And discover who you are
You are the reason for my Creation
For you, I have journeyed far

Shelter me in your mercy
Forgive me for my faults
Build with me a sanctuary
My heart a treasure for your vaults

Place your wisdom upon my soul
To guide me into old age
Humble me with your passionate love
Let me write my devotions upon the page

I give my life only to serve your Grace,
This life I live is mine to give,
And it is wholly, and completely
Yours.

Chasing Love and Revelation: A Reflection AFTERWORD

INVICTUS
by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

***

I started writing this piece as a memento to the woman who takes her place as my Dark Lady in my pantheon because the funny thing is, in the book mentioned in the opening to this reflection, the main character sees the Virgin Mary as a Dark Lady. When I first met Melissa, I couldn't think of her as anything else. I see her now as Kali Ma, the Vedic goddess of destruction, time, power, and creation. When I read Chasing Love and Revelations: A Fable About Finding the Heart's True Desire, I was actually shocked at how much it rang true, but I think that is also a point of fables.

For as long as I can remember I've had some reoccurring dreams that play out in front of my awareness while I'm fully conscious of it.  Growing up in the Christian religion, I knew the importance of dreams, but when I had talked with an older gentleman about them when I was around the age of 15 he tried to convince me that, and I'll quote, "Since Christ is coming back there is no more need for dreams and prophecy because there is nothing new to tell.  Your dreams sound evil and are trying to tempt you to sin."

You can imagine how much that can fuck with a young believer's mind.  After that I fought against my dreams, though they never stopped coming.  So I stopped sleeping.  A few of my former friends could tell you how hard I pushed my non-sleeping agenda upon myself.  To the point where I was sleeping 20 minutes every four hours, and I did that for 4 years. I sustained myself on mediation and mental focus. Until February 2010 when I had pushed my body so hard that I had to go to the emergency room because I had shit and puked blood while working in the 3rd SOS. Then my dreams had to find their way back to me.

By the time that I had left the US Military I had given up all pretense of religious faith.  It was vapid and empty, much like the spiritual reflection of our physical society today.  I wasn't necessarily Atheist, or Agnostic, I simply didn't care one way or the other.  That left the dreams that had come lose their significance for me and when they came back they were terrifying and confusing.

My dreams can feel more real than the waking world at times.  And in most of my dreams there has always been a Dark Lady, somebody that I had felt was waiting for me.  That I had to find.  Where I had once dismissed them as idle and unrequited longings that I could never fulfill, the pain of separation keeping me seeking and seeking until I could seek no more,  the moment I saw Melissa I knew. But I didn't know what I knew.  The dreams that I had turned away from, the Goddess of my Nightmares had been made flesh, and the possibilities opened up to the Endless expanses of reality.  

I had spent so much time seeking that I never took the time to figure out what I would do if I ever found.  I had spent so much time believing that I would never be complete so I let the world tear what I had of me apart.  So when I had finally found her, I held on to myself, what was left of myself, as hard as I can.  In order to fight through the dullness of my mind that had been given to me through pain, I grasped my anger in both hands and held it's heat as close to the dying embers of my heart as I could.  When THEY attacked me out of their cowardice, it ignited the flame from a candle to an inferno.  

Being with me that year must have been difficult.  It certainly was difficult to be with myself.  If nothing else it certainly was confusing for me.  I had only trusted that she would be strong enough to endure it while I figured out what to do.  I don't think anyone is that strong, anymore, and her realizing that she wasn't enough hurt her pride and self image.  Enough for her to make some very poor decisions that have hurt both of us.  I'm not exactly sure what went on in her mind, but it was nowhere near the fantasy of enduring for love that I had in mine. 

So this was my farewell, if not to her then it was to the heart that had endured for her.  It was a reminder of what I had gone through in my search for the possibility of her existence, and a sharp reminder of my wounds which drove her away.  Love like this exists, somewhere in the universe, and you can see the lengths that somebody would go, that I have gone, for it. 

I have made many mistakes in my life, and none so regretful as the ones I made with her. Whether that was with giving myself to her or not running away, only the Fates can know. I will, however, not let that stop me from living my life.  And in essence, these writings that I have posted have been used to transmute my grief into the love that I had so much trouble expressing while I had dealt with my own pain.  Now that it has mostly been expressed here, I can put my heart on the alter of Love and sacrifice it completely.  

 To Kali Ma, the Life-Giver, the Preserver and Destroyer. you are the fount of my Love and the tearer of my soul.  In you, my ego has been slain, my consciousness released from my head and into my heart.  In this heart, I give back to you, a sacrifice.  Take it. Destroy it. Scatter it to the four winds so that it's essence my join the world, and maybe find it's way back to me again.  Thank you for the pain, for I would not have realized joy.  Thank you for the grief for I would never have realized the depth of my love.  And thank you for my anger so I could empower my will to hold on when I had felt that I had nothing left.

With the Death of my Heart, we go and visit the gods of my pantheon.