For a Moment

(This was written as a personal narrative for a college composition class my first year of college. I reread it, and ponder how much I've grown and how much growth there is to experience.)

Footfalls on dry leaves broke the dark afternoon reverie I was in. I listened carefully in the direction they had come from, but heard only the silent trickle of the Autumn stream close by. I became lost in the sound of the water.

Again footfalls.

Am I being stalked, I wondered? I crouched low and listened hard, scanning the woods for movement. I loosened the knife on my belt, comforted by its smooth leather-wrapped handle. The only movement came from the Chick-a-Dees flitting in the hemlock trees. I felt foolish.

Footfalls.

This time, I was prepared and saw movement in the trees. I was ready to see a deer or maybe one of my brothers. But a gray and rusty figure emerged from the trees and my breath halted.

It was a large canine. My first thought was that it was a German Shepard. But while the seconds ticked by in that slow dimension of bewilderment, I realized that it had never been domesticated. There was no collar or even the impression one had ever been there, and its gaze was like nothing a domesticated animal could replicate. So calculating and unafraid were those amber eyes. It found more in me than I could ever find in it. Not twenty seconds did it study me before it bound away into the trees. It flowed over the hills, through the raspberry bushes and beyond my sight.

My mind buzzed with the encounter. One thought overcame all others: had I just seen a wolf? It certainly looked like one. Its fur was primarily gray except for a reddish undercoating. It was larger than any coyote I’d ever seen, with shaggier fur. Coyotes always seem skittish; unwilling to stop and obey curiosity in spite of danger. But the canine I saw that day showed no fear. In fact, as it leaped away, I got the distinct impression of superiority, as if it were saying, “You are just a visitor and must return to your womb of artificiality. I live forever in Reality.”

The encounter was staggering, and I crouched there in the middle of the forest trail for a good half an hour interpreting it. When my brain finally switched back to reason, I began to doubt my impression of seeing a wolf. It must have been a coyote, or a wild dog, I told myself. The wolf has long been extinct from Maine, and even if the few reports of wild wolves are true, they would be too elusive for me to see them.

But what if I had seen a wolf, just not in physical form?

To admit this, even to myself, is strange, but why not? I grew up being taught Christianity, and have added my own beliefs and philosophies to that spiritual foundation. So why the unwillingness to believe that I’d seen a wolf spirit? It probably has to do with the common human question of “Why me?” There is a certain amount of timidity when dealing with the divine, and when face to face with the potentially supernatural most will wonder why such a vision would come to them. I wonder what purpose a spirit would have in showing itself to me. At the time, I was in my early teens. As all young adolescents must, I was defining myself, struggling to find my place in the world. It was a lonely struggle, filled with social angst and educational demands. This forest was my sanctuary, these walks were my meditation. Alone I worshipped the wilderness that for a while could hide me from the mechanized world of human civilization.

It was then that the wolf came. A majestic creature of my imagination incarnated in flesh-or spirit. It filled me with a sense of the mystical. It reminded me that beyond the concrete barriers of human existence, beyond the complex steel web of social expectation, and imbedded deep in all of us is the reality of Eden. It is the illusion of civilization that constantly occupies my mind, but that vision, born of a walk in the forest, did much to clear my mind, offering me a glimpse into the world of the Wild.

Now, as a young adult sitting in a college dorm room, with conventions of the modern world surrounding me, I reflect on the encounter and wonder. A coyote it probably was. A wild dog it probably was. A wolf? Probably not. A spirit? I’d love to believe so, but reason shoots doubt into the idea. Nevertheless, I still feel the soul of the wolf was present in that encounter; some underlying nature in my mentality. And if it was just a mental longing to see something that physically wasn’t there, wouldn’t that be spiritual in itself? I gained something from it; a new way of seeing the world, perhaps a hidden part of my core that I‘d never before realized. A glimpse into the mind of the wolf, and that image drives me.

In the forest I imagine myself as the wolf. I flow over the hills, and through the raspberry bushes. I stalk human hunters in the fall, unheeding the danger of being mistaken for a deer, overcoming fear for the sake of the experience. I howl at the moon. I lose myself in the Wild, for I know that I must return to the womb of artificiality. I taste Reality, but know that as a human, it’s mine for but a short while.

For the moment.

Chaos

From a seed, a tree grows. Fruit encapsulates a seed. But at the center of an apple there is no seed, no fruit, only air. From our perspective, there is nothing.

From Brian Browne Walker’s translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching:

“Thirty spokes meet at a hollowed-out hub;
the wheel won’t work without its hole.
A vessel is moulded from solid clay;
its inner emptiness makes it useful.” (Lao Tzu, 11).

At the center of all ordered things, there is chaos. Not modern disorganized chaos, but the Greek chasm of chaos; the Middle English primordial formlessness of chaos.

Thus is the canon of Chaos Magick. Before there is something, there is nothing, and out of that nothing arises everything. Before there is God, there is the Unknown God.

For a Chaos Magician (Chaote), belief is formed from nothing. Our view of reality is a belief; based on a faith in sensory information and the ability of the brain to interpret it. Belief is faith in a distinct set of the symbols that form our reality. The paradigms--mental models based on interconnected symbols--through which we view our existence can be crossed and changed. Chaotes call this “paradigm shifting.” It is through this that Chaotes will cross religious symbols, invoking Japanese gods during a Wiccan Esbat ceremony, let’s say, or offering special prayers to the Abrahamic God in the different spokes of a Native American medicine wheel.

Paradigm shifting is especially useful for a mystic--one who seeks an understanding, awareness, or oneness with a greater reality. It allows the spiritual explorer new lenses through which can be seen the different shadows of reality, to journey down different paths--and minds!--and peer off of them into the darkness beyond.

I exist in Chaos. My body is the sensory razor that splits and categorizes it into symbols that my mind can experience. I am the Tao. I am the Everything!

“Out of silent subtle mystery emerge images.
These images coalesce into forms.
Within each form is contained the seed
And essence of life.
Thus do all things emerge and expand out
of darkness and emptiness.” (Lao Tzu, 21)

Pools

I thought I was finished, but still the waves
Distant me from the shore.
Drifting, drowning, I reach for stars,
But find more water.

Sometimes I don’t care,
And that is the worst.
I sift through emotions that flit like insects
Between the bloody leaves.

We all delve into pools,
And hope to never find the bottom.
The murky, mucky depths
Are the threads of fantasy.

I think I’m done, but I know again
The waves will call me back.
And though I struggle, something older,
More powerful will win.

Returning Home

I found a feather returning home today.
It was snowy, tinged with black on one side.
I held it against the leaden sky
And kept it because I couldn’t bear leaving it for the rain
To clump the follicles together and ruin the silken beauty.

So I carried it across the grassy hillside and down my sandy driveway,
But it fell before I opened the door.
Perhaps it didn’t like the way I twirled it between my thumb and forefinger,
Or maybe it simply didn’t want to go inside
Where the sun and sky are boxed in.

Either way, I left it to be rained upon, or blown by the wind.
Maybe it will be crushed by the tires of a guest.
I would have lost it at some point, or stepped on it accidentally.
Such small things tend to be forgotten.
So I left it there by my door in the sand to return home.

Science and Art

We are sentient creatures in a vast and complex universe. Our curiosity is a useful tool of survival, forcing us to learn about our surroundings thereby increasing our ability to adapt. Thus, we are born scientists and philosophers. Our rationality is curiosity's tool.

We are also emotional creatures in a tumultuous universe. Emotion is also a tool of survival; it provides reactions intended to increase either our longevity (fear, love) or our reproductive success (desire). But the role of emotion in our lives is so much bigger than a survival adaptation. Our experience of them makes us artistic (the attempt to define our experience in a physical way) and religious (the attempt to create meaning and purpose based on our emotional responses).

Being the scientist, artist, philosopher, and religious creature makes us human. Logic and imagination are bedfellows that we imagine as opposites.

The meaning of the Life Experience is found in both science and art.

Bullets for a Saturday Night

Folded in triplet
And emblazoned with the bust of War,
You await an evening’s conquest
Loaded with guilt and nonoxynol-9;
The armor of trust.
A mask--
For within are seeds of something more powerful.

Deeper than the breast of the sea is your spirit.
Purity prepackaged and more potent
Than the horns of Aries,
You await an evening’s conquest
Loaded with lube and razor blades.

The Greatest Being

"Now we believe that [the Lord] is something than which nothing greater can be imagined." - Anselm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm%27s_argument#Anselm.27s_argument

I ponder Anselm's Ontological Argument, as I do sometimes. Can I imagine the Greatest Being?

I can. I can imagine an omnipotent being defying all rational contradictions and paradoxes; one that can create a burrito so spicy that even It cannot consume it.

But wait! There is an even Greater Being than the Greatest Being of my imagination! For there is the one that created it.

Me.

I am greater than the Greatest Being I can imagine. I created it, after all. But I am an illusion, aren't I? Born of the distinction of "I" and "not I"?

So "I" am the Greatest Being I can imagine. (Other than, of course, the I that created "I.")