Aidrian O’Connor 
  
  
Steryl: 

 Well, here is packet one. I am disappointed to say that I feel particularly happy with the work that I have done here. I feel like the same thing happened with this first packet as happened with the first packet I did last year, that being that I tried to get too much done, and ended up rushing through what I did do in hopes of sticking with my pre-set schedule. You obviously predicted this with your comments on my study plan, and in fact I was even aware of it going into my work after the rez. On the one hand, I’m glad that I did do a large amount of work, but at the same time I feel like I wasn’t really putting my heart fully into what I was doing. 

I’m having a little bit of internal trouble with my work that you should probably be aware of, as it might lead to a change of direction later on. Frankly, I’m sick of reading a bunch of old guys’ intellectualizations on a subject that has nothing at all to do with the intellectual realm. It seems like nearly all of the essays that I read and took notes on were written by people more concerned with using big words to seem intelligent than with imparting some kernel of wisdom on to the reader. The exception to this rule was, not surprisingly, the essay written by Daisetz Suzuki. Reading his essay really brought to a head my feelings of discontent with the way this subject has been dealt with by the authors I am dealing with. You will see the contrast between the note-taking I did on the other essays and the creative piece I wrote in response to reading Suzuki’s. Though I don’t feel that I quite hit the nail on the head with my response to Suzuki, it is this vein of work that I truly appreciate and want to pursue. At the same time, I’m not too sure how exactly I could pursue that with enough formal organization to call it schoolwork. 

For the most part, I feel like I relate most with Rinzai, as portrayed by Suzuki in his paper. According to the author, Rinzai spent a lot of time with intellectualizing, and went as far as he could with it. Then he turned to Zen, and his journey began anew. I feel I am at that stage now, but I can’t see how I can "turn to Zen" (or any other similar doctrine) and still do schoolwork. I’m not interested in having you be my councillor, but if you have any suggestions, I am more than open to them. 

The following is a part by part breakdown of what my packet consists of this time. For your own understanding of why each of my responses to these essays is so short, it is mainly because the original essays themselves are short (less than 50 pages each). Besides that, I was rushing to try to work through eleven essays in one packet’s time. Note that I actually got through four before deciding to just slow down and do some creative work. 

Notes on Mircea Eliade - A quick sum up for my own future reference of Eliade’s ideas on transformation. Though this was the first essay I worked on, I felt that it influenced my understanding of transformation the most of any of the "intellectual based" essays that I read. 

Notes on Fritz Meier - These notes mainly discuss the similarities I found between the Sufi techniques of transformation and the Buddhist techniques of the same purpose, with which I am already to some degree familiar. 

Notes on Ernst Benz - Benz writes on Schelling, and I write mainly on what Schilling’s ideas were on the transformation of humankind as a whole over the course of history. I found that Schelling had a very interesting system of understanding, but was limited by an all too common Christian narrow-mindedness. 

Notes on Daisetz Suzuki - As noted above, my favorite piece of reading this packet, and my favorite product as well. I’m particularly interested in your feedback on this piece, so even if you skip the rest of this packet, please take your time on this part. 

We Thirteen - A creative piece that I wrote as a chronicle of something that has happened in my life, and the possible, if new-age-ish, future outcome of it. This piece might weird you out, and it also might seem like a stretch of the imagination, but in fact it is actually based on some very real circumstances in my life. All of the events which are related as happening up until the current date are true (as true as anything can be, anyway) and all of the strange scientific information about the Earth is true according to a man by the name of Greg Braden, whose videotapes I watched some time last year. I want it to be clear that I don’t necessarily believe that the future I write about is going to happen, or that the two bodies of information (my experiences and the scientific body of knowledge) are actually related. I write it as a possibility, some which could exist, and consequently, in someone’s world, probably does. The whole purpose of this part is to give a modern and post-modern look at how transformation could be viewed and experienced. 

Notes on a Full Moon Night - This is basically just a journal entry that I wrote while working on this packet. It’s just me being as honest as I can be about where I feel like I am on my own journey of transformation. 

Good luck to you, Steryl. I don’t know how much feedback you’ll really be able to give on the first three sections of this, because they’re pretty black and white note taking type stuff. Do what you can, and if you feel like there just isn’t much to be said, then just don’t say anything, and I’ll get the idea. 

Take care, 

Aidrian 

P.S. I haven’t had much time to go looking for your Celtic music books, but I did make a call and found a place that sells them. I’ll send the stuff out with my next packet. If you have any specifics on what it is that you’re interested in, let me know when you mail back your response to this packet, and I’ll take that into account when I go to pick stuff out for you. 
 
  

Notes on "Mystery and Spiritual Regeneration in Extra-European Religions" 
by Mircea Eliade, from Papers from Eranos Yearbooks, vol. 5 
  

In this paper we find Mircea Eliade’s summery of various primitive culture’s beliefs and practices concerning transformative ritual. He deals mainly with initiation ceremonies, as well as the ceremonies and rituals which are a part of both men’s and women’s "secret societies" which are a part of these cultures. 

The author points out that by observing and taking part in their ancient rituals, ancient people were in fact rejecting the profane world by willfully reliving the deeds of heroes and gods from their respective mythologies. To clarify, ancient people to some degree were sacrificing their own total individuality, by acknowledging that the acts which were performed before the beginning of time by the gods and heroes spoken of in their mythologies were sacred and timeless acts, which were beyond the profane realm of existence, and thus were meant to be repeated over and over again. By sacrificing their own individuality to the repetition of these acts, ancient people were partaking in what they viewed as sacred cycles, which would continue until the end of all time. This is interesting to note, especially if compared to the idea that primitive peoples’ egos were not as developed as ours are today. This self sacrifice of individuality would seem to suggest that, to some degree, these ancient people were willfully allowing their egotistical individuality to slip away at times, an act which one might be hard pressed to find in the supposedly "egotistically advanced" common person of today. 

Another interesting point made by Eliade is that primitives fully understood that the transformative process, which their rites and rituals marked as milestones, was never instantaneous, but was instead a process which took many, many years. This is easily observed in the fact that transformative rituals never consisted of a single rite of passage, but instead was drawn out over a series of steps - "a progress by degrees." (pg. 5) which was stretched out over several years. This also suggests that ancient people understood clearly that their rites never represented a finishing point, but instead were simply markers on a path with no apparent end. 

Obviously, there are several points which are of particular interest to me in this paper. The point which comes out most clearly through all of the author’s descriptions, however, is that there is a common pattern which all transformative rituals adhere to, with slight variations from culture to culture. The pattern which the initiate is exposed to is as follows (in the following order): 

A. Seclusion from the known world to a realm of chaos. 

B. Trails and tortures. 

C. Death and resurrection. 

D. Imposition of a new name. 

E. Education of a new and secret knowledge. 

F. Re-emergence into the known world 

The most basic and fundamental part of all transformative rites is step C, "Death and resurrection," with the other steps adding to and filling out the initiate’s experience of this idea. For logic’s sake, however, we will start with the first step and work our way through. 

The initiate is removed from the world that they know, and taken into a realm which represents chaos. This varies from culture to culture, but common symbols of chaos are the wilds which surround the village (often times forest or dessert, etc.), or possibly a nearby body of water. I would venture to say that any physical environment which is a common symbol of the subconscious mind would, could, and probably has been used. The purpose of this stage is to remove the initiate from the safety of the ordered world which he or she has come to know. Occasionally, within the realm of chaos will be a hut, or possibly a construction representing a large beast, and the initiate is led into this construction before the next stage of the ritual begins. When this symbolic action is used as part of the ritual, it is to represent entering into a sort of primordial womb or athanor within the realm of chaos. If the beast construction is used, the initiate is entering "the belly of the beast," which in the end reduces to the same symbolic meaning as the primordial womb. What we are dealing with here is simply removing the psychological safety net which the initiate would possess if he or she remained within the confines of his or her known world, thus automatically causing the initiate to break through into an altered, perhaps more primal, state of mind in preparation for the rite which is about to occur. By taking the basic step of removing the initiate from everything that he or she knows, he or she is automatically experiencing "other," and perhaps for the first time in his or her life. Undoubtedly, this has a powerful effect on the initiate’s perception of what is about to occur. 

Having been effectively plunged into chaos, the initiate now undergoes a series of trial and possibly tortures, depending on which culture one chooses to look at. Eliade does not venture too deeply into the possible reasons for subjecting an initiate to pain, but several possibilities leap to mind. One idea that occurs is that the pain is acting in much the same way as entering the realm of chaos does on the initiates perception, forcing a break in the regular continuity of life and thought. Also, as noted above, the central motif of these rites of transformation is death and rebirth, and it is certainly possible that the experience of pain is equated with death; a sort of "small death," if you will. In any case, the torture serves to eradicate the old being from the initiate, in order to make way for the new. 

After the trials and torturing stage has been completed, the initiate is effectively dead to his or her old self, and shortly thereafter he or she is reborn. Sometimes this death and rebirth process is enacted through symbolic actions, and sometimes it is simply left to the initiate to experience in his or her own inner realm. This symbolic death is a total liquidation of the past, so that the initiate can begin anew, with a wholly clean slate. 

Through the initiates own rebirth, so is the entire world begun again, and this idea is certainly one to be pondered over. As the initiate returns to the time before time, the moment between death and rebirth, all things superfluous are wiped away from him or her, and with those inner superflualities go all the superflualities of the outer realm. By experiencing these "small deaths" over and over, primitive man was affirming that there are three stages to existence (generation, death, and rebirth) and that no one can ever remain within one of these three stages. By affirming this ultimate cosmology, they were, to some degree, approach immortality, and overcoming the restrictive aspect of death. Having experienced these "small deaths" many times, final physical death became not final in any way, but instead became simply the ultimate initiation to an ever greater state of being. 

After the initiate was reborn, he or she was often given a new secret name, which falls directly in line with the idea that this is a indeed a new being. Sometimes, scarification or tattooing was implemented at this stage, which served as a sort of badge of honor, as well as a marker of new existence (the body has been changed as well as the being within). 

The recently reborn initiate is then taught a new and secret body of information, and this serves to infuse the new being with a new knowledge of the ways of the world, and what part he or she plays in that new world. To some degree, I feel that this new knowledge is almost as fundamental as the death and rebirth motif, as the initiate might be killed and reborn, but if he or she is not giving a new inner vision, then they will certainly just regress to the old being which they once were. The initiate must be given a new way of viewing the world in order for both them and their world to be truly reborn and allowed to grow in a new direction. The information which the initiate is taught at this point is always considered secret, and there are good reasons for this. First off, it was of utmost importance to the secret societies which held this knowledge that the information must not be altered in any way, so that it could remain true to the original knowledge from which it descended. Also, by keeping the information secret, the secret society was much smaller than the regular clan, and thus represented a smaller ring inside the greater ring of the clan. This meant that the society could be more selective about who was ready for what information, and who was not. 

After educating the initiate, he or she was allowed to return to the known world, and was there accepted as a new being. Sometimes this was taken to an extreme, and recently initiated folks would be taught how to walk again, etc. Other times, it was simply known that this person was now fully, as an example, an adult, and would never be treated like a child, or for that matter, act like a child, again. With this final stage, the transformative ritual is complete. 

Note that simply because the rite is completed does not mean that the transformation has taken place. The rite undoubtedly causes a rift between what was the old way, and what will be the new, but the transformative process is never anything so easy as simply taking part in a rite. It is, as state earlier, nothing more than a milestone marking a place along the endless path of existence. 
 
  

Notes on "The Transformation of Man in Mystical Islam" 
by Fritz Meier, from Papers from Eranos Yearbooks, vol. 5 

  
I would like to start these notes with the statement that up until this time, I have had very little exposure to the doctrines and ideas which the Islamic body of literature represents. Unfortunately, reading this essay did little to clarify my understanding (or misunderstanding) of the Islamic religion. What I found in Meier’s essay was a lot of confusion and unexplained paradox, as well as a good bit of what I would call just plain negativity in the attitudes which a Muslim is expected to view his or her world with. Of course, this is simply my opinion, but this negativity and unexplained paradox seem to be two of the fundamental common threads which link Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 

One of the various things that I learned from my last semester’s work, however, was that focusing on my own disagreement with topics and ideas presented by authors does little to further my work, and as such, I am going to turn my attention to those topics in this essay which did ring true with me. Those topics came after Meier’s general introduction to the Islamic faith, when, in the third section of his essay, he begins to describe in depth the various transformative attitudes and practices of the Sufis, who are considered the mystics of this particular religion. 

What I found, much to my amazement, was that there are clear and obvious parallels between the attitudes and practices of Sufis and Buddhists. On the one hand, any student of comparative myth should never be particularly surprised to find such similarities, but still the likenesses were so close that I was frankly astounded. What is even more astounding is that the lay Muslim is specifically forbidden to take certain attitudes and practice in certain ways, but these rules and regulations fall away when the practitioner happens to be a Sufi, and in fact sometimes are turned around 180 degrees. It almost seems that Buddhist practice has been inserted into and hidden within the overall faith, but is only taught to those who are considered to be worthy enough to be mystics. Of course, these practices and attitudes are not strictly Buddhist, as they are found in many religions, but I will label them as such here because it is the Buddhist system which I have studied the most, and am most familiar with. 

It is a basic precept in the Islamic tradition that God (Allah) and a human can never be one. Even their greatest prophet, Mohammed, is considered wholly a man, and not half man, half god, as Christ is considered to be by the Christians. However, this idea would seem to logically cancel out the possibility of true mysticism, which by its very nature suggests that a person can strive towards unity with the godhead, and it is here that we find one of those surprising allowances for Sufis. What is found is that a person and godhead are not unifiable, but it is possible to remove the identity of the person from the mind, and thus let Allah’s presence come through. This removal of personal identity is described in Meier’s words as "a forgetting of the individual’s own existence." (pg. 41) It seems obvious that what Meier is talking about here is nothing other than the loss of ego which is described in Buddhism. 

There is no doubt in my mind that loss of ego is being described here, as several of the quotes from various Muslim mystics point to the fact that they understand some of the subtleties of working to remove one’s own ego. As an example, Abu Sa id al-Kharraz is quoted as saying "He who believes that he can reach God by his exertions hurls himself into an endless torment; and he who believes that he can reach Him without exertions, hurls himself into an endless wishful dream." (pg. 45) The term "God" here I interpret as egolessness or enlightenment. What al-Kharraz is describing here is the Middle Path of Buddhism in one of it’s many forms, and this is something which cannot be fully understood without actually experiencing it. Meyer’s own words state the following: "The shaykh (mystic master/teacher/prophet - A.O.) who has attained the goal, who has overcome his "I," is regarded as God’s mouthpiece...." (pg.49) Or consider the simple but beautiful metaphor employed by Junayd when describing the experience of fully becoming an instrument of God, "The color of the water is the color of the vessel." (pg. 67) 

To approach this "overcoming of one’s I," the Sufis take a route of sever introversion by downplaying the function of exterior sensation, and consequently focusing on a heightening of the intuitive faculties. Also, in a similar vein, the role of feeling is elevated above that of thinking. This attitude is taken to such an extreme that the exterior world is considered to be, at least by some Muslims, intrinsically evil. God is considered to be within one, but it is only though excessive devotion and introversion that one can ever hope to realize the fact fully enough that He shine through into one’s mind and actions. 

The following transformative ritual serves to illustrate this idea nicely. A Sufi would enter a dark subterranean cell for forty days, in effect a self-imposed solitary confinement, in hopes that he (or she?) could break through the final barrier between himself and God. This confinement was not only to cut off all sensation of the exterior realm, but this was certainly a factor in the exercise. The Sufi was expected to "think only of God (pg. 56)" for the entirety of his stay in the cell, and this he did by continuously repeating one of various holy phrases over and over again, concentrating on it with all of his will day and night. While concentrating, the Sufi would sit with legs folded under him in what a Buddhist would call meditation posture, which was a position "not permitted in ordinary (Islamic) religious worship." (pg. 56) It was thought that this position "encouraged concentration and enhanced its effect." (pg 56) The Sufi was expected to eat and sleep as little as possible for the duration of his stay in the cell, and it was felt that if the mystic fulfilled all these requirements, he would almost certainly break through the wall separating himself from God. 

The similarities of this ritual with regular sitting meditation are so striking that it borders on ridiculous. The use of repetition of holy phrases has an obvious parallel with Buddhist mantras, and the special allowance of regular meditation position speaks to the same point of similarity. 

It is also interesting to note that the above ritual clearly has several parallels with the six steps laid down by Mircea Eliade in the previous essay. It is clearly stated that when Sufis entered the cell, it was considered to be a grave, and is described as such several times in the essay. This points directly toward the idea of death and rebirth which Eliade discusses at length. Also, the removal from the known world to a realm of chaos is presented here, and is taken to the extreme that an attempt is made to remove the external world as much as is possible by placing the mystic in a subterranean chamber. That the chamber is a symbol of the subconscious mind need not even be stated. 

Other similarities abound between Meier’s description of Sufi tradition and that of Buddhist tradition. It is a well known idea in Buddhism that, in order to escape from the wheel of samsara, one must move beyond one’s hopes and fears. Compare that with the following: "..the Sufis often declared that the fear of hell and hope of paradise should not be used as spurs to religious endeavor." (pg. 57) Another common idea in Buddhism is that Buddha consciousness can never be truly realized through an external object, but can only be fully realized within oneself. In the Buddha’s own words, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." In resonance with this is a quote of the great Islamic mystic Bistami, who, when his house was suddenly and unexplainably illuminated, prayed, 

Despite the Sufi rejection of the external realm, there are teachings which relate directly with the ideas of loving-compassion in Buddhism. A Sufi is expected to give of him or herself freely and compassionately to those who would need it, and even to those of the animal realm. Another interesting comparison is the story of Abu Utman al-Maghribi, who heard the words "Allah Allah" over and over in the sound of a water wheel working. This is quite a coincidence when compared with Hesse’s Siddhartha, who at the end of the novel of the same name hears the seed sound "Om" in the sound of a flowing river. 

Consider the following quote by Du’n-nun al-Misri, which I feel speaks volumes of the Sufis understanding of the eternal nature and sensation of experiencing a life in pursuit of divinity: "The knower is not confined to a single state: for at every moment a new state descends upon him from the supra sensory world, so that he is in reality a vehicle of states, not of any one state." (pg.67) To the same point answers a story of Abu’l-Husayn an-Nuri, who prayed, "O God, grant me a state and a mode of being in which I shall no longer change," to which God is reported to have replied 

Notes on "Theogony and the Transformation of Man in Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling" 
by Ernst Benz, from Papers from Eranos Yearbooks, vol. 5 
  

If we are to believe Ernst Benz' presentation and interpretation of Schelling's work, it is clear that Schelling expostulates several excellent ideas in his work. Among these are the idea that it is possible to map the growth and transformation of the greater human consciousness by following the rise and fall of mythologies and religions throughout history, and also that all mythologies and religions have been leading to the reunification of humankind's consciousness with divinity. Unfortunately, Schelling was limited by the fact that he was a devout Christian, and as such viewed Christianity as the pinnacle of the development of all myths and traditions. That is, he believed that all other mythologies and religions were in effect less pure understandings of God than Christianity is. However, he must be given credit for placing as much value in other religions as he did, having stating clearly that all myths and religions have spiritual significance, no matter how "corrupt" he believed them to be. We must especially give him credit for this if we consider that he wrote most of his works in the middle of the nineteenth century, before the field of comparative myth and religion even existed as such. 

The following is a summery of some of Schelling's ideas, with a healthy dose of my own opinions interjected for good measure. What I am representing here is a system of understanding which I gained from working with Benz' overview of Schelling's work, and is in no way a hard line report on Schelling's work itself. 

STAGE 1: HUMANKIND AT THE CENTER OF GOD; OR, UNITY 

In the initial stage of humankind's consciousness, according to Schelling, it resided at the center of God. A huge variety of traditions from all over the globe are based in the fundamental idea that before we existed fully in the material realm as conscious beings we were a pure part of the union of dualities which God represented to Schelling, and I believe that the author is working off of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise when he discusses this state. To some degree, one could question whether or not human consciousness could be considered human consciousness if it were still in union with God, but to expound this point here would be an unnecessary digression. 

To expand our understanding of what Schelling understands this stage to represent, let us use the example of his own words: 

STAGE 2: THE REMOVAL OF HUMANKIND FROM THE CENTER; OR, GROWTH 

Here we find that humankind has been ejected to the far edge of the material realm. Schelling's view of why this ejection had to occur is particularly refreshing, as he sees it not as a fall, but instead as a liberation which leads to growth. He points out that, when humankind occupied it's central position within the godhead, it was in effect a captive of God, as it had not yet "exercised (its) freedom" (pg. 214), and as such had no chance for development. This development comes, of course, through humankind's journey back to the godhead from the perimeter of the material realm, which we will speak more of in the discussion of the subsequent stages. A large part of this journey of growth, states Schelling, is the voluntary self-sacrifice of the freedom which was given to humankind by its removal from the center, as it must of its own accord give up this freedom if it ever hopes to reunite with it's prior position in God. 

Once again, we shall view a quote of Schelling's to understand what he intends by declaring that humankind's ejection from the center was indeed necessary and even positive: 

Humankind is now at the periphery of the material realm, as far from the godhead as is possible. Immediately it begins to work its way back toward the center. However, it is haunted by memories of its prior unity, and it is these dream recollections which Schelling believes leads directly to the formation of all mythologies. Because humans all over the globe were in effect ejected to different places on the periphery of the material world, the particular imagery of their mythology varies, though as we know nowadays from comparative myth, the themes remain the same, and it is these themes which represent the true kernel of humankind's collective memory of unity. Schelling takes an interesting point of view here, believing that it was not various peoples which existed first who then created various mythologies, but in fact it was the various mythologies which existed first, which then caused the variety of the peoples. Hand in hand with this theory, Schelling promotes the subsequent ideas that the variety of languages and cultural beliefs and practices result directly from humankind being scattered to the various points of the periphery. Also to note is that he believes that the original monotheism of unity with God was not in fact true monotheism, because there was an ignorance of the possibility of there being any other state. Consequently, true monotheism can only exist once humankind has experienced the perimeter and its various mythologies, and then returns to monotheism. This is an interesting idea, if a bit biased towards the Christian ideal of supposed monotheism. 

In the following, rather lengthy, quote, Schelling reveals his understanding of this stage: 

The various mythologies, or dream recollections of unity, eventually evolve into the various polytheistic traditions. Schelling views these polytheistic traditions as resultant and representative of the fundamental split from unity, and claims that this polytheism makes impossible humankind's return to unity, by the very fact that it divides humankind's understanding of divinity itself. Though these ideas do have merit when considered on their own, they are unfortunately used as a plug to support Schelling in his belief that Christianity is the greater understanding of God, in this case because Christianity represents the belief in a single godhead. Of course, this could be disputed if one considers the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or the various Christian sects which worship Mary with enough fervor to give her god-like status. In either case, it matters little, because Christianity is simply not any greater in its understanding of the godhead than any other tradition or religion. 

Various traditions have risen and fallen in the history of humankind, and Schelling proposes that this rising and falling is nothing short of a total and complete map of the history of human consciousness, and as such, of the godhead. One tradition would be succeeded by another, the former most often being integrated into the latter in the process. The belief is put forth that this succession of traditions is the map of humankind's journey toward the center, with those traditions which fall into the past being vehicles which carried human consciousness for a period, but were weeded out by the gradual divinization of humankind. These dead traditions are not to be regarded as empty of divinity, but instead are a sort of vestigle organ which humankind carries within it. 
  
  
STAGE 4b: HUMANKIND APPROACHING DIVINITY; SCHELLING'S ERROR 

As hinted at previously, Schelling was firm in his belief that Christianity was the final stage which the greater human consciousness would enter before total reunification with the godhead. He states that all other religions, which he liked to call in general the "pagan" traditions, will fall away or become absorbed into Christianity, so that all of humankind will be close to God through their supposed better understanding of Him. Naturally, this attitude must be viewed as theocentric and narrow-minded, though this comes as no particular surprise considering Schelling’s firm entrenchment in Christianity. Christianity is indeed one of the current major religions, but its way is not everyone’s way, and indeed, I feel safe in claiming that it never will be. 

I might note here that in all the religions and traditions, there has always been some element, whether to a greater or lesser degree, in believing that the system which one puts their own stock into is better than any other system, even if the religious doctrine is open to other modes of belief. However, it seems from my current standpoint that it is only the three dominant religions which spawned from the ancient Hebrew tradition (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) that seem to believe that everyone else must subscribe to the very letter of their own doctrine, even to the point of slaughtering thousands and millions throughout history and the world who refused to do so. This "my way must be your way" attitude absolutely baffles me to no end, and the narrow-mindedness it inspires, even in its less severe forms, can be seen all around us. Indeed, we find it right here before us, in the work of an otherwise brilliant man. 
  
  
STAGE 4c: HUMANKIND APPROACHING DIVINITY?; CORRECTING AN ERROR 

Naturally, my response to Schelling’s error is simply to move Christianity from its central position to a lesser position nearby. In the case of the above shown chart, Christianity would fall in the ring entitled, "Current Doctrines," and it is important to note that, thought this ring appears to be in close proximity to the godhead, I do not feel that we are now as an overall racial conscious any closer to ultimate reunification with the godhead than we ever were. I have found in several essays from all doctrines the fundamental idea that the being walking the path towards unity never finds his or her destination, because the goal is not the focus of the journey. Instead, it is the walking of the journey itself which is the goal, though nowhere is it evident in this essay that Schelling was aware of this idea. So my chart here is only accurate if it is understood that the center circle which represents the godhead and reunification of the dualities is simply in infinitesimal center point which we are no closer to now than we were when we first were ejected to the perimeter. 

There is a good chance that one would ask then, "But what is the purpose of an eternal journey with no destination, to which I must answer, "What is the purpose indeed?" When we humans as a collective conscious can realize fully that there is no goal to strive towards, that it is the walking of the journey which is the only goal, then we will find that we have moved to the center of the above shown diagrams, or perhaps that the center has moved to us. Thus the journey can attain it’s goal as related by Schelling, i.e. reunification with the godhead, but this can only happen if we cease to project our position as anywhere but in the center, and on the perimeter, and everywhere in between the two. It would seem, however, that humankind as a whole will quite possibly never realize this experience fully, and as such, we are back to the fact that we are on a journey with no end in sight. 

  
ADDITIONAL NOTES 

Schelling had several other ideas worthy of note which were not discussed or only briefly touched upon in the above work, and so I will mention them here. 

One idea which is particularly worthy of note is that by following the rise and fall of the various mythologies and religions which humankind has created and believed in, we can in fact follow the very growth of the human consciousness. This idea has far-ranging possibilities, and there is a fair chance that I will explore this further in my next packet. To sum up quickly, I offer these various quotes, written by Ernst Benz: 

The following are two quotes of Schilling’s which I will let stand alone and without comment, simply because I feel they are of value on their own: 

For discussion’s sake, let’s say that we have been given a lump of clay to work with. Possessing human minds, chances are that we’re not particularly content with just a boring old lump of clay, so we set out to improve the clay - sort of give it more depth and beauty by molding and forming it. We could do pretty much anything with the clay at this point, give it any form in the world. But let’s say that we do what most human creators seem to do, and we form the clay into something resembling our own image. 

Now we have this little human shaped clay figurine. It doesn’t have any real details yet - it’s just two legs, two arms, a torso, and a head. So the possibilities are still seemingly endless. But we want to explore those possibilities, really give our creation a life of it’s own, so we start to make some decisions. We decide what sex our little figure will be, and we give it little clay genitals to match. We decide whether the doll is black or white or Asian or whatever, and we change it’s features in accordance with our decision. Also, our figure needs some sense of age, so we form it to be young or old, or middle aged - whatever we decide. Finally, we give our creation a name, a name that would fit in nicely with all the characteristics we have given it so far. Now, with all these things clearly defined, our doll is really starting to get some depth, some character. 

But there are so many more possibilities, and we want to explore them all. Our doll will need clothes, and the clothes we give it can really say something about the doll’s personality. I mean, let’s face it - the doll doesn’t have to worry too much about having clothes just to keep it warm, so the clothes become a real expression of what we feel is inside the clay figure, what his or her place in the world is. We give the creation a hairstyle that goes with its clothes. To round out the doll even more, we pick out a type of music for the doll to listen to that goes with the doll’s clothes, hairstyle, age, gender, and race. 

In our minds, the doll is really starting to shape up now, but our fun is really just beginning. That’s because we can now start to surround the doll with others, with friends and family and, perhaps most interesting of all, enemies. Now we get to decide how our little doll interacts with all these other dolls - whether our clay figure is pleasant or cruel, giving or selfish, gay or straight, married or single, and on, and on, and on. We might even go so far as to decide what general philosophy our little doll believes in, and which god he or she puts faith into. Once this possibility is opened up, it could be explored forever and ever, with every new situation that the doll encounters becoming a new way to define who and what exactly the doll is. 

After this whole process has unfolded, we have a little figure with so much depth, so much personality, that it is almost possible to believe that the figurine has a life of it’s own, that it really exists as its own sentient being. And isn’t it wonderful what we have done with what was once just a boring old lump of clay? 

Well, in some respects it is wonderful, but in another very real way, it isn’t wonderful at all. 

The process I have been describing here is, of course, nothing other than our own process of trying to define who and what we are. We start off with something very simple, earthy and good. Like clay, in the beginning we don’t have any real idea of what we are at all - we just are. And also like a lump of clay, at this early stage we can be anything, anything at all. We can be anything that a situation needs us to be. But our human minds like to understand things, to take things apart and label and compartmentalize things. Certainly, our selves are no exception to this rule, and indeed, what could be more challenging to take apart and understand than one’s own self? So we start with simple things, like "I am a boy, and therefore I act this way...." or "I am black, and therefore I act this way..." Gradually we work our way up in complexity, and we start to say, "Because I am all these things, I will wear these clothes, and that will express all these things that I am," or, "I will listen to this music and it will express all these things that I am," or whatever. Whatever it is that we call ourselves, or whatever it is that we identify ourselves as, that is a product of our need to label and compartmentalize ourselves. 

Now, this self-identification is not the actual problem - chances are we are going to do it no matter what. To return to our clay figure example, the problem comes when we think that we are our labels before we are the basic earthy clay that is behind all of them. We forget that we are just clay, because it’s so hard to see through all the names we have piled on top of the clay. And, perhaps most importantly, every time we label the clay, or our selves, as any one particular thing, we are limiting what the clay can do and be. When we believe first that we are white, male, young, hip, straight, single, or whatever, we can’t just be earthy, moldable clay in a situation - we have to be something that falls in line with all those other labels that we’ve already given ourselves. That interferes directly with us just being what we are, right now, because we are just too busy trying to be what we think we are. It’s really quite simple. 

Now, here’s where things start to get interesting. As I said, we put all these labels on the clay figurine, and we forget about the clay underneath - we forget to feel the cool, earthy quality of the clay that we are. This means, of course, that we are the figurine itself. When we can stop thinking of the figurine as this separate, external object, then we can experience the fact that we are in actuality the figure that we have been molding all along. Now this is particularly hard to understand, if you’re trying to think about it as an abstract idea. But thinking about it is not the point at all. 

You can experience the feeling that you are not only the modeler of the clay, but at the same time you are also the clay which is being modeled. This feeling is experienced by many sculptors, as well as other artists, who "loose themselves" in their work. For a short while, they become so caught up in the act of creating that they become the medium they are working with. There is no longer a personality molding the clay, there is only the clay being molded. Thus the sculptor becomes the clay. At the same time as this is occurring, the sculptor is not only the sculptor and the clay, but he or she has become the act of molding the clay as well. 

Now, if we are trying to understand this idea of being three things at once, we are still taking simple, earthy clay, and trying to understand it through the labels our minds can apply to it. But our abstract labels and descriptions cannot teach us anything about what it is to feel the cool simplicity of good old earthy clay between our fingers and under our fingernails. That is very real, and that is the whole point. 
  
  
We Thirteen 
  
There isn’t much time now, which means I have to get this down quick. I don’t have the leisure to be able to explain everything, so the bare-bones are going to have to do for now. 
  
Back at the end of 1994, we were living up in Portland, Maine. My brother started to report that he was having strange experiences in the middle of the night. He said that he would very suddenly come to a sort of half-conscious state, where he was aware of the room and everything around him, and yet he was not quite awake. Initially, he spoke of being aware of some kind of presence in the room with him, which would sometimes sit atop his chest, and sometimes simply lurk near the door. In either case, there were three constants to his experiences - he could not move, could not breath, and he was absolutely panicked with fear. 
  
At first, despite his protests, we assumed that he was just having some rather intense dream experiences. But the experiences continued. He began to purposefully nap during the day to see if the strange experience would recur in daylight hours. They did. Shortly after the first few experiences, the aspect of feeling that there was a secondary, threatening presence ceased. But the paralysis, suffocation, and sensation of panic did not wain, as it was the latter that my brother began to try to work with. 
  
After the sense of a secondary presence dropped away, it was replaced with the sensation of what he described as a hugely powerful energy which wracked his body. He said it felt like he could possibly explode at any second, and the feeling was accompanied by the sound of a high pitch tone. This feeling of intense energy seemed to cause a good deal of the panic he felt, and so my brother began to try to understand it, to find a way to make the intense sensations more easy to deal with. 
  
Every time the experience began, he would suddenly become aware, as described above, and find himself paralyzed and unable breath, with the sensation of intense energy pouring through him. The panic in his brain was automatic, indeed seemed inseparable from the experience. But, over time, he gained the ability to retain enough presence of mind to try to will himself to relax. By no means was this easy, and I would receive daily reports now of how his sleeping experiences faired. 
  
Gradually, over time, my brother learned to quell the panic in his mind, and the feeling of intense energy to some degree subsided. The aspect of paralysis did not waver, however, and it was this that he started in on next. 
  
By the end of 1996, things had started to change. My brother reported that he had to some degree learned how to move when the experience occurred. He described it as a different kind of movement than we know - a movement which only occurred if the full will is applied to the act of moving, and the urge to attempt to physically move one's limbs can be totally forgotten. He said that if one tried to physically move, the force of weight you’d feel on top of yourself was enormous, but that if you can manage to move using the will only, that the sensation becomes as if the body were made only of air. He occasionally managed to rise up from where he lay, and walk a distance away from his resting place. But most often after a few short steps he would suddenly find himself right back where he lay in the first place, unable to move once again. The process of moving with the will alone would start over, and many times he would make it the same distance away from his resting place as the first time before being whipped back into the same sleeping position again. When this frustrating cyclical experience occurred, he said, it would repeat an unknown number of times, but certainly several times, before he would come to full and regular consciousness. 
  
Then at the very beginning of 1997, three other people I knew well, including my own self, began to experience strange sleeping phenomena. The descriptions of our experiences matched almost exactly my brother's descriptions of his initial experiences two years before. Now, I'm not generally one to leap to conclusions, but I couldn’t help but feel that something, whatever it was, was happening. Four people within my small reality were going through the same unexplainable experience, and though it seemed like it might never affect anyone else's reality, it certainly was affecting ours. 
  
We began to talk, naturally - to compare notes on our experiences. We had no idea why this was happening to us, but it was happening, and so we were determined to work it out. The four of us were all people who had each, in his own way, recently come to what could be called a more spiritual way of understanding the world, though all of our ways were different. I couldn’t help but feel at the time that this thing that was happening to us had something to do with that, but at the same time I knew that there was probably no good way to know either way. 
  
And so I decided to focus on working with the experience, as my brother had. We all did. Because he had to some degree gone before us into this thing, my brother was able to help us learn to work with the experience, and we caught up to the point he had reached much more quickly than he himself had. At different times we would have various hang-ups - one of us might feel caught at a certain stage for a matter of weeks, or something similar. We tried to just support each other as much as we could, because we all knew with our hearts, as well as our minds, that when it came down to it, you were going to be facing this thing all alone and in the dark. 
  
All of this intercommunication was complicated by the fact that the four of us lived in different parts of the country. Long phone calls and e-mails had to suffice, and in the beginning, when the experience was always heralded by gut-wrenching panic and fear, it was hard to know that the nearest person you could turn to that would understand was hundreds of miles away. Those first few months, the nights were long for the three of us who had just come to this thing. My brother worked to reassure us all that the fear would pass, that we had the strength to go into the fear and survive intact. We did our best to believe that he was right - frankly, it was all that we could do, because wether we wanted this thing or not, it was evident that it was here to stay. 
  
By the end of ‘97, four more friends were added to the list. 
  
By the summer of ‘98, another four. 
  
Now we were a network. We still didn’t know why this was happening, but we had more and more ideas every day. It was obvious and undeniable that something was happening to us, to others, whatever it was. Various reports came in from the members of the network that they were meeting other people that were reporting odd sleeping patterns as well, like people who said that they literally had not been able to sleep for days at a time, or others who said that they would go to sleep and not wake up for twenty-four hours or more. It all could be explained, sure, but why hadn’t we heard stories like this before our experiences started? Was it just that we were hypersensitive to the subject now? Or was something really happening to humankind? Almost all of the reports that came in to the network showed fundamental differences in other peoples’ experiences when compared to our own experiences. Most of the stories, like sudden insomnia, or extended bouts of narcolepsy, were nowhere near as intense as our experiences were. People would just make small comments, and our ears would perk up, take note. How could we not take note? We all were so unsure of what was happening, and we were looking for any indication from the "outside" world what this thing was. And frankly, we were paranoid, afraid that there might be someone out there that would do something to us if they found out what we were. 
  
By the time we numbered twelve, the original four had begun to make good headway. We had, for the most part, learned to recognize the experience as soon as it started, which was a much bigger step than it sounds like. I don’t think I really made it clear enough that you would just suddenly come to a type of consciousness and be totally and completely out of control. That initial fear, paralysis, and lack of control always started the experience, no matter how many times it happened, almost like the experience was automatically hitting you in this primal "fight or flight" zone. It didn’t have anything to do with your conscious mind - you as a consciousness were just along for the ride, and it was the most horrifying ride you could possibly imagine. But, as I said, we learned to recognize the experience almost as soon as it would start, and that gave us the modicum of security that was necessary to start to try to work with the fear and paralysis. It was like, by being able to say, ‘I’ve been here before" your standing in the situation improved immensely. 
  
Naturally, the four of us worked with the other eight, just as my brother had worked with us three in the beginning. The eight learned very fast, it seemed, even faster than we three had. I guess it’s understandable, though, considering the kind of networking that we could do now. One of the twelve was able to set up a website, you see, and we all managed to keep in touch this way. At that time, things seemed like they were improving for us. 
  
While all this time had been passing, with all of us learning to deal with this thing, we were trying to keep our heads on straight in the regular daily world. Meanwhile, the regular daily world seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket. We were all trying so damn hard to just appear normal to the general public, to pass as average citizens in an average country, but it was hard to figure out what average even was anymore. It was like some kind of critical mass had been reached. The government was totally out of touch with the people, and the people didn’t seem to care. Everyone was too busy just trying to find their own piece of sanity in the big struggling mess that was our culture. It seemed like there was at least a dozen wars going on in little countries we’d never heard of, and our government was involved in all of them. Stories of genocide in those little-known places became everyday news, and people didn’t even seem outraged to find out that our government was in on it all. Multinational supercorporations were doing whatever they wanted, however they wanted, with no regard for worker, consumer, or environment. They ran sweatshops in other countries to maximize their profit here at home, in effect enslaving whole third world nations at a time, producing products that weren’t with the gas it took to drive to the mall to buy them. Advertising became ripe with what seemed to be obvious subliminal messages - you never knew what it was that they were putting in your brain, but you knew that dozens of different images were shooting onto the tv screen every second, strobe-light style, and you could actually identify maybe two out of twelve. The environment was the saddest part of all to me. It seemed like there wasn’t a city in the country where you could drink the water that came out of the tap, and every time you turned around you’d see another media blurb about them cutting down another 100,000 acres of some national park woodlands. People in general just seemed to be going nuts. 

And, amidst all this, our network was caught up in dealing with another world. We pushed on, trying our best to keep sane, hoping that whatever it was that was happening to us was leading us somewhere good, or even just somewhere else. What we eventually realized was that it helped immensely to try to live in a way that we knew was right. That’s hard to define, but so was every aspect of the experience that was happening to us. What I mean is, it was like if we tried to just be open in our regular lives, to just accept things as they were, even as fucked up as they were, then we could be more open to the thing that came late at night. When we were open to it, we didn’t fight it, and when we didn’t fight it, it was easier to deal with. That’s how we began to learn - we just tried to be open to it, and it would show us how to work with it. 
  
Towards the beginning of spring in early ‘99, two more people came into the group. These people were not as well known to us as the others - one of the twelve had met them, and somehow a discussion of the sleeping experience occurred, and our friend realized that these people were going through the same thing that we were. After some discussion about whether it was safe to allow them in, we gave them a formal invitation. 
  
At first we were weary. I in particular was weary. I’ve never been known for trusting total strangers, and I was pretty damn paranoid by this time. I didn’t know who they were, but I felt certain that they were plants from some agency or another, out to get us for being what we were. But, after time, I and the others learned to trust them. It seemed obvious from their descriptions that they were indeed going through the same things that we were. After a few months of being stand-offish, we finally fully accepted them as members of the network, and we set about helping to teach them what we knew. 
  
Meanwhile, my brother had finally perfected movement. He was initially limited in how far he could move from his body, as I stated earlier, and it took him a full two and a half years to overcome this limitation. But when he did, the damn broke. He described his experiences now as flying - flying anywhere. He described trips around the block, across the country, to other countries, to the moon, past the moon. It was obvious to us now that we were, for some reason, spontaneously being popped out of our bodies in the way that many before had described with the terms "out-of-body-experience," or "astral travel." We still didn’t know why it was happening to us, but the knowledge that what we were working towards had some kind of beautiful goal reinforced us immensely. We set out to buy every book on O.O.B. experiences and astral travel that were on the market, and once again, our overall learning rate increased. 
  
That is, for all but one of us. One of the two who had joined last was having trouble - bad trouble. He couldn’t get past the fear stage. We tried to help him as much as we could, but it seemed like he just kept trying to grasp on and control it instead of go with it. We promised him that the fear would pass, but he didn’t believe us. He thought he was different than the rest of us, that he just couldn’t do it, couldn’t handle the experience. The experiences became ultimate terror to him. He started to take various drugs, all types of speeds, so that he could avoid sleep as long as possible. Then, when sleep finally overtook him, the experience would come on with what seemed to be a terror that far surpassed anything that we had experienced. We tried to help, tried to support him and teach him, but it didn’t seem like there was anything we could do. His terror began to rule his everyday life, and it became obvious that he was becoming dangerous, both to himself and other. We didn’t had no idea what to do, and the desperation for an answer grew with each day. 
  
Finally, we did what was probably the hardest thing we as a group have ever done. Without him present, we all met on the website - seven women and six men - and we decided that we had to cut him off. After hours and hours of frustrating bickering about compassion, love, self-defense, and the group’s well-being, we finally decided that it just had to be done. He was no longer sane, no longer the person we met and embraced as a brother, and we had to be rid of him before he did something that would bring down the whole group. He didn’t live in a city near any of us, and it seemed unlikely that at this point he could get himself together enough to travel across the country, so we figured all that we had to do was move the website, and we would effectively be rid of him. So that is what we did. 
  
None of us have heard from him since. 
  
We had to push on, and as such, we did. By the turn of the millennium, we could all "fly," as we came to call it. Our night experiences took a 180 degree turn from the way they had started - flying was the most beautiful sensation any of us had ever experienced. We found that we could agree on a meeting place, and all fly there, and simply by sharing the same space we could communicate in a way that can only be described by the term "telepathy." We still didn’t know why this was happening to us, but a few of us started to write books describing what we had learned, what we did know, hoping that others could share in our newfound joy. 
  
The rest of the world, however, didn’t seem to care. Things were rapidly declining now on a cultural level. The numbers of poor and homeless escalated seemingly by the minute, and as people became more and more desperate, they took more and more drastic measures to try to survive. The crime rate skyrocketed, and to offset this the police force grew and grew, were allowed to take more brutal measures, were given more power to judge and execute supposed "law" on the spot. Of course, they became more corrupt, just as every powerful organization seemed to, and soon it seemed that you were in as much trouble if you ran into a gang of cops in a dark alley as a gang of hoodlums. The thirteen of us were lucky enough to all have steady jobs. Poor paying though they were, they were enough to keep us all fed and with roofs over our heads, which was more than could be said for most people at that time. We kept our noses to the grindstone, and lived for the night. 
  
Well, I write this now, and it’s 2003. Things are not getting better for the world, and it’s obvious that they’re not going to get any better. There are a lot of stories as to what is going on out there, but no one really knows anything except for what is right in front of their own face, what the little world is that they live in. To watch the media, you’d think that everything is hunky-dory. The government finally took total control of anything news related about a year ago, so there’s no real way to know what is happening out there. The reason that I write this now is because the group, we thirteen, are at a turning point. That much is clear. We think we know why this thing is happening, why it has been happening all along. 
  
Though the government didn’t want the message to get out, it turns out a group of fairly affluent and moral scientists banded together and decided that it was time that the people had to be informed. The government was barely on top of things the way it was, and the little control that they had was all based on the media. And what is the media based in but the technology which carries the media’s message to the people. Well, as we all well know, technology is made by scientists, and it was through their greater control of technology that they were able to get the message across this country. 
  
It lasted for six hours. Somehow, they managed to get this two hour long loop of information played three times on sixteen channels during prime time yesterday before the government found a way to shut it all down. But it was way too late by then - enough people knew and believed that the government would never be able to fully recover control. People panicked and started doing stupider shit than they ever have, as if that would somehow help. 
  
Here’s what the broadcast said: 
  
The commentator reported that the Earth is rotating more slowly with every passing year. He says that the scientific community is and has been fairly conscious of this fact for some time, and that no viable explanation has yet been presented for this strange occurrence. 
  
He also cited another supposed scientific fact - that the hertz rate of the Earth's magnetic fields is slowly beginning to climb. He explained that the Earth is in effect a giant electromagnet by nature, because of the fact that it has a core of molten iron which remains fairly stationary, while the crust of the planet spins quickly (about 1000 miles per hour) around this stationary core. As a result of the crust rotating around the core, electric fields are thrown off from the planet, just as one would find with a small electromagnet, and these fields have, for some time, pulsed at a rate of eight pulses per second, or eight hertz. In the early ‘90's, however, the hertz rate of the Earth's magnetic fields had begun to climb, and currently resides at about 8.7 hertz, according to the report. 
  
Now, just like a small electromagnet, or any magnet for that matter, the Earth's magnetic fields have a north and a south pole. Through some scientific process with which I am not familiar, the commentator claimed that ancient strata of rock have been analyzed, and show that the Earth's magnetic poles have switched for short periods of time on several occasions in the planet's history. The only way for this to possibly happen in a small electromagnet is for the external layer of the electromagnet to rotate in the opposite direction than normal, which would seem to indicate, despite all logic, that the planet Earth has come to a standstill and rotated for a briefly in the opposite direction than it does today. 
  
To complicate matters further there are a set of numbers known as the Fibonacci series, which are best known because of the fact that nature has the tendency to employ these numbers with astonishing frequency. The growth of plants, the way which lightening forks, or the splitting of water into deltas are but a few of the many examples where nature seems to have made up its mind to stick to the Fibonacci series, claimed the report. Well, it just so happens that one of the numbers in the series is eight, and the number to follow is thirteen. What the scientists claimed is that the Earth is slowing down in conjunction with the end of its eight hertz cycle, and will then make the leap to a thirteen hertz cycle when it begins to rotate once more. 
  
The scientists were unsure when exactly this proposed standstill of the Earth’s rotation, along with the subsequent leap in the magnetic field’s hertz rate would occur, but if the current predictions were accurate, it would happen sometime around the end of the year 2012. 
  
That’s pretty much all the information that the broadcast contained. There were no solid predictions as to what would happen to life on the planet when the hertz rate went up, but it seemed obvious from the urgency of the message that something drastic, whatever it was, would occur. It was enough to make a lot of people panic, anyway, and that’s what’s been happening ever since. There is looting of stores everywhere, and the national guard has been called out to stop it. Consequently, sides are beginning to form, and full-fledged riots are starting as I write this. 
  
One of our thirteen owns a little piece of land up in Canada, and it’s there that we’re all headed. We’re just packing up whatever we think that we need, and getting as far away from the rest of the population as we can, because the only thing that really is threatening about the whole world right now is all the freaked out people that are running around and acting crazy. Our plan is to just get away from it all, far enough away that no one will bother us, where we can provide what we need for ourselves and just stay away from everybody else. It’s not going to be easy, but we’re going to make the best of it for the next couple years, and just wait for the big change-up. We think we know what the change-up will be, because we’ve been forced to get prepared for it for the last six years, even though we had no idea why it was happening to us. Now we know. 
  
I don’t know why I’m writing this. Maybe someday after the change somebody will come across this and know what it was like before things altered. I don’t know. I feel like this is the last postcard from the edge, the last time that I will write of normal life and what it has been, even though "normal" could never describe this world or the last six years. 
  
The others are here. I’ve got to go now. 
  
  
Notes on a Full Moon Night 
  
I have come to a point in this continual process of transformation that feels like I could either break through to something new, be reborn fully into a new sense of being, or I could fight the birth and be killed in the labor process. I don't really feel like I'm fighting, but I can see the fight in my actions, hear the fight in my words. I don't want to view this as a battle with my self, because I know that I can't win that fight, that nobody wins that fight. But I'm sick of part of me, so sick it makes me feel insane. 
  
The part is the voice in my head. Now, that sounds insane. But I mean it literally. There is a voice inside my head, and it is what is supposed to be me. It's the voice that tells me who I am and what I believe and how I act. It tells me what I am afraid of and what I am hopeful of, and what I must do to avoid the things I am afraid of and be next the things I am hopeful of. 
  
I am sick of that voice because I don't think that it is me anymore. I have seen the side of me that has nothing to do with that voice, and that other part is the world. When the voice isn't there, there is room for the world to be there. But when the voice is there, the world is gone. 
  
I have grown to love the world, to trust the world, and to want to be a part of the world. I find it very hard to love and trust the voice at all. The world seems to make very wise decisions, to always know just what I should do and when. The voice seems too caught up in itself to have any wisdom at all. I am tired of the voice getting in the way of me and the world, of it crowding the world out for its own sake. 
  
I have read that it is important to love the voice as well as the world, but I can't see how that is possible at this stage. I don't want to kill the voice, but I certainly want it to die. Maybe that will change with time, but I really won't know until it happens by itself, until that particular death and rebirth occurs. 
  
I study transformation in hopes that it will help me let go, to understand my own transformation better, but I feel sometimes like the voice wants to understand transformation better for its own sake, and the world doesn't really care about all that. But watching and studying this transformation has been the only thing I have known for so long, and I don't even know if it is the voice or the world that compels me to do the work I do. The same thing goes for trying to talk about the process of transformation with other people. I seem to do it anyway, so I guess it matters little why I do it. 
  
In either case, it all comes down to not knowing anything at all, and it is that which causes me so much turmoil. It seems like the death and rebirth cycle happens every day now, and I never know if this particular one is going to be a healthy live birth, or a drawn out and difficult labor, the pain of which will drive me mad. I mean that sometimes it is so easy to slip into the new mode, but other times my clinging to the old makes the rebirth painful and ripping, just like a difficult labor. 
  
Right now it seems like the voice in my head is both the grasping and the old mode itself, and its firm entrenchment in my life is causing a bloody and unfortunate labor. It needs to go, so that I can just be born - come out of the womb, and finally live in the world. 
  
I can't fight the voice though, because that will feed it. So I must be patient, and wait, and watch, and learn. I'll continue to study transformation, I'm sure, whether it is someone else's experience of it, or my own. It somehow makes the waiting seem easier, if you know what I mean.