You Will See the World Change

"You will see the world change."

Words that keep coming to me lately - the voice of gnosis, always accompanied by a download of information in one form or another. Sometimes the information correlates with things in my own life. Other times, it's like picking up a book at random in the library, and not really having any clue what it's about. There's no cover and no synopsis, and the pages are out of order. But it's all there... just a matter of putting the pieces together. That's how it feels. Sometimes that's even how it works.

I've talked about it before - this long and winding road that stretches out across the desert. Route 66. Kelbaker Road. Nipton Road. Cima Road. Depends on what broken segment of it one is traveling what it's called. In the course of our business, we have occasion to be on that road a couple of times every year... and every time we pass along that way, I find myself thinking of how it seems nothing ever changes out there, except in the seasonal manifestations of summer blistering asphalt with dancing heat monkeys, and a glittering icing of snow on the mountains in winter. This time, ice crystals glittered like diamonds on the road to remind us of the storm that had passed through the night before, but other than these transient reminders of the changing seasons, the land remained exactly as it was the last time we were through there... and the time before that... and the time before that.

Impossible to describe the sense of timelessness that exists out there. Far more than almost anywhere else I have been - more than even in the isolation of the mountains when one is all alone. It is a sense that the world might even be laughing at us in our transient hurry to be always rushing from one location to another, moving our fragile bodies from point A to point B in search of... what? Out there in the stillness, that's what the All of it seemed to be asking as we sat in our car, pushed along by exploding gases in the engine, propelled along a road that is patches on top of patches on top of potholes deep enough to swallow a Volkswagen.

"Where are you going? What are you hoping to find over there that you would not find right here? What is your mission, little ant? Where oh where are you going?"

Oh, there's a rational answer. Simple enough. Going to Las Vegas for a trade show. But that wasn't what the All of it was asking as it stood there all around me, hiding in plain sight with its shivering chaparral bushes and its sea of dry grass and its stalwart Joshua trees. "Where are you going and what are you hoping to find?"

Impossible to put to words, but it often feels to me as if we live in a completely insane, made-up world. The All of it out there in the desert knows it, too. It sees what we humans try to hide from ourselves. It sees our transient nature, and it sees the madness we have built around ourselves in some vain attempt to deny that nature. It sees that the fashion runways at the trade show are just another manifestation of the road to death. One way street, then turn around and go back the way you came, such a short time on the stage, glittering one moment, gone the next. It sees the ruins built along that road to nowhere, and perhaps it even converses with the spirits of those who once inhabited those now-crumbling walls.

"You will see the world change."

The voice of gnosis - different in certain regards from the voice of the All. The place of silent knowing. The heart of the double. For a moment, it's as if the All is on the right, the east; and the double is on the left, the west. Not in any literal sense. Just how I interpreted it for the sake of being able to listen to both sides of this rather profound yet utterly silent conversation which had begun to take on elements of a debate.

The All:

"You pass along this road to nowhere a few times in the course of your mortal life, and then you are swept from the stage, just so much dust at the mercy of the wind, the broom, the hand of time. If asked where you are going, you will say you are going to meet your death so that you might break his hold on you through this state you call freedom, and yet not a single one of you has ever returned from that appointment to report your victory. Therefore, I maintain there is no destination and that the road which you call the path is just a dead end where humans, like lemmings, leap into the ocean to be drowned forever in the Nothing.

"You build monuments to the madness of your species - tall buildings stretching toward the sky like bony fingers reaching out of the earth in defiance of their illusory existence. You attach yourselves to cultures and morals and ideas designed to obfuscate the madness which has overtaken your species as a direct result of the knowledge instilled within you that you ARE transient, mortal, impermanent beings. You dispense intangibles to one another in the hopes of defeating the illusion you yourselves have created, but at the end of the day you are still mortal and still human and one day closer to death. You chase the illusion of fortune or fame or whatever it is among you humans that is called 'success', and you pray to your manmade gods to help your team win the SuperBowl, or your team to win whatever war you have manifested, never stopping for a single moment to understand that your prayers fall on the deaf ears of an impersonal universe, and you are therefore only enforcing your own impotence while walking along this road, each step bringing you closer and closer to your death."

Grim little bastard. But not incorrect. That's the hell of it. Somewhere inside of ourselves, we know all of these things. But the madness of our agreement will not allow us to turn and face that awareness. So we sweep it all under the rug and go right on pretending things are going to change. "They" are going to find some magical elixir that will make us all immortal. "They" are going to solve the economic crisis so "we" can go back to our petty indulgences and not have to be reminded of the mess we have made of the world.

And yet... outside the car window, there is only the snow-covered mountain, looking more like some free-form sculpture carved by the unwavering hand of eternity than any sort of natural occurrence. Just an etching on the big blue marble, hand painted with soft vanilla frosting.

It mocks me, with its illusion of permanence.

The Double:

"You will see the world change. This is something you know inside yourself, though at times it is difficult to simply Be what you know because of the chatter and clatter of all those places you have been and all those things you are doing and all those roads you have yet to travel. But in your heart, you know it to be true when I tell you that you will see the world change. 

"Within the hologram of your totality, you are no different than the All, no different than myself. What are we? Simply this: perceptions of the infinite. We are the experience of eternity - the creator of it and the creation itself. This is the way of the warrior, the task of the mortal self and the immortal other as we dream toward one another in the infinite sea of awareness. At this moment inside of time, you perceive the experience from the assemblage point of your humanform existence - the dreamer in the process of creating the dream. As your immortal awareness, I perceive the experience from some other position on the map of time, or off the map altogether. Such is the dance we dance together. Such is the fire that forges the Dream and breathes life into itself: phoenix of its own ashes, the quantum conundrum of the creator breathing life into herself so that she might exist to breathe life into herself. 

"You may perceive the crumbling ruins scattered alongside this strange road to Nowhere, while I may perceive those same ruins as a memory of a place I once lived in some otherwhen existence that is no less real than this moment. In a thousand years, perhaps you will walk this same road, or another one that has been built in its place, or perhaps you will walk the silence that lingers long after Man is gone, and you will see this same ruin, only dust now, and you will remember when you passed this way in your mortal manifestation and saw it for the first time. You will see civilizations rise and fall. You will taste the dust of all that has ever been, and at the same time you will Dream the substance of the All, bringing All things into being because that is the nature of creation and the process of evolution.

"You are the dreamer and the dream. And in that manifestation, surely you can see how it is that I tell you... You will see the world change."

________

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Agreements

A fellow seeker recently asked the following question:

"Agree or Disagree? What happens before you agree or disagree with someone?" 

It's always seemed odd to me that humans place so much value on whether someone else agrees or disagrees with them. Having examined my own life under a ruthless microscope, I've reached a point where it no longer matters to me if someone agrees or not. But in a way - that's the opposite side of the coin of the question - what happens when we agree or disagree with someone else.

If someone else states an opinion, I may choose to agree or disagree, but as a warrior who is ruthless with herself, that agreement or disagreement will be based on experience and not on some grandiose opinion that probably isn't worth the energy required to express it. Opinions are nothing more than belief systems unless that opinion is based in experience - in which case, it is more accurately a statement of what-is from within the perception and unique reality of the one stating it.

For example, I've had numerous experiences that have proven to me beyond any shadow of a doubt that what we call "time" is an absolute illusion, nothing more than a creation of humans. There is no actual entity or force which can be identified as "time" - therefore, in and of itself, time does not exist. This is not an "opinion". To me, it is a fact of life, a state of being, a knowing from the place of silent knowing. However, it is admittedly subjective, and so whenever I've had people try to argue with me that "time is an absolute", for example, I cannot become invested in their belief systems. In other words: because I have experienced the illusion of time, it makes no difference to me whatsoever if someone else needs to believe in the absoluteness of time or not.

I've had people disagree almost violently with my experiences about the double and the higher self, and yet when I question them, I usually discover (at least 99% of the time) that they are actually disagreeing because they are heavily invested in some belief system that has nothing to do with the manifestation of energy at the level of quantum. Either they still want to believe blindly in reincarnation or resurrection, or they simply do not want to take responsibility for the fact that the double is not some automatic "right" handed out at birth along with fingers and toes. Most people disagree because what is being presented to them threatens their status quo - and rather than allow the new data to perhaps change the way they look at things, they would rather go on seeing the earth as flat as opposed to trying to wrap their mind around a round globe. So, a lot of disagreements are rooted squarely in fear - in specific, a fear of change. Easier to righteously proclaim, "I disagree!" than to consider what is being offered.

Sure, it can be challenging on many levels to get into debates about things of a spiritual nature - largely because most of those things are going to appear nebulous and non-absolute to most people. The reason discussions in Toltec arenas can get heated is because a lot of warriors have had experiences which contradict the consensual reality - aka, "the agreement" - and sometimes even warriors can run the risk of thinking "it matters" whether someone agrees with them or not. It doesn't. Not one bit.

On forums, for example, I might use the words, "I agree" or "I disagree", but it is from a purely detached perspective - at least 99.9% of the time. (The other .01% I allow for Being Human.) But seriously... if you tell me "Worshiping the Tree is the way, the truth & the light," and I happen to say, "I disagree," why would that matter to you in the least? If it does matter, then there is at least a rudimentary doubt in yourself with regard to your own opinion - and at that point you would need to ask yourself whether it is the opinion itself that bears re-examination, or whether you are simply attached to the opinion because it may support some other pre-existing belief system. You would need to ask yourself why someone else's agreement or lack thereof would have any effect on you at all. You might discover that it's just an old program - something inside of you that still struggles for approval or (in certain cases) actually thrives on disagreement and conflict.  And yes, the world is full of people who actually do thrive on conflict - largely as a way to create a distraction for themselves so they can go right on believing the very things that are holding them in spiritual stasis.

Even with the works of Carlos Castaneda there are issues, ideas and notions, some of which I agree with, some with which I do not. Perhaps at some point, without resort to anything more than "I think that is right", information is sorted and accepted or rejected. Perhaps it comes down to a matter of trusting self.

Maybe part of it comes down to trusting yourself, but when you say there are things in Castaneda's works with which you do not agree... it might be interesting to ask yourself where that reaction is coming from. If you examine yourself ruthlessly, it won't be difficult to track it down. Maybe you disagree because what is being said somehow conflicts with your existing beliefs. Or maybe you disagree because your own experience contradicts what is being reported. If it's the former... well... you don't have a leg to stand on other than what you believe. If it's the latter, then this begins to address why I have said on occasion that a wo/man of knowledge has what amounts to a "responsibility to the knowledge itself."

An example from my own experiences with Castaneda. I do not agree with everything he has written about the double and double beings (Naguals) because my own experience has been somewhat different. I do not say he was wrong (because there is no right or wrong), but I do feel that there are other ways of looking at what he presented, and so I have offered up my own experiences not to refute CC, but to basically say... "Here's another possibility, based on another person's experience."

I have no doubt that Carlos described his experiences to the best of his ability, but me agreeing or disagreeing with him is entirely pointless if that is based wholly in what I "think" or what I "believe". Only direct experience really means anything in the warrior's world. So when I might disagree with Castaneda about certain things he stated as absolutes with regard to the double and double beings, that disagreement would be based on an experience of my own that does not "validate" what was reported. Neither is right or wrong, but if we are looking at Toltec as a "system of knowledge", I feel it is important for others on the path to report their Knowledge in the same way CC did. Put it out there and let it be. Doesn't matter in the least if someone agrees with me, disagrees, or thinks I'm completely crackers. What matters is the doing of the thing itself, because that is what enables us to define who we are as individuals, rather than just agreeing or disagreeing with what someone else said.

Point being... it's important to know why you are disagreeing - whether from belief, mere opinion, or personal experience. Having that awareness shows you something about yourself. From there, what you do with that awareness is up to you. It's just one more way of taking back your power.

___________

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Knowledge, Masks and Roles

One thing I have consistently observed is that people can and do learn from one another as a natural occurrence. I've learned as much on my own path from fellow travelers as I ever did from any extant teacher, but in the big picture I've learned far more from my own higher self (the shaman's double) than from all other sources combined. To me, that's how it must be - in the end, we really have only ourselves to rely on and the process of silent knowing (aka "gnosis"). And yet, it must be acknowledged that most do not really start out on the path with that connection to the infinite already established. Part of the path is establishing the connection & learning to use it, so in many ways it can get into the conundrum Orlando (my own double/higher self) presented me with a few years back, and which has become almost a mantra: "You have to be immortal before you will know how to become immortal." 

So, how does one get to that point of having "already" (time being an illusion notwithstanding) experienced the wisdom/totality/Knowledge of one's double without first going through the process of building the connection to that infinite self? For even though all Knowledge is accessible to the infinite self, it really is the matter of learning to access it and put it to use in our ordinary lives that brings the warrior/seeker to a higher level of awareness where the conundrum stated above begins to make sense. It is only after we have experienced the infinite that we know how to become/be infinite... and yet we have to be infinite before we may truly manifest the entire process of becoming infinite. 

Ultimately, for myself, this process involved a wide range of experience which could not have been predicted nor even wholly understood from within the process itself. I might say it began with an inquisitive and unrelenting nature - to experience the unknown, to dive headlong into the mysterious call of the nagual while all my peers were basking in "the light". But part of the process also involved a willingness to simply let go of what I believed I already knew, so that I might begin to experience things outside the range of my previous combined experience. Sounds simple, but for many of us, it really isn't. We have a tendency to hold onto what we believe when it may well be that those beliefs are holding us back from actual Knowledge. 

So what does this have to do with teachers, apprentices and being immortal before we will know how to become immortal? Simply this. One thing I am constantly observing is my own reaction to to life, experience, other people, my own thoughts, what have you. And one thing I have observed to be true with nearly all humans is that we are the result of the sum total of our programming - both positive and negative (if such words must be applied at all). 

What this means is that there is a tendency for humans to take on roles of mimicry just because it is our nature. In our early lives, we learn by mimicking our parents, siblings or other role models, and it is a habit that follows us into adulthood. If we are not ruthless with ourselves, even warriors may find themselves falling into old patterns of behavior with regard to roles and how we may see ourselves as a reflection of our programming. Without awareness, in other words, we run a high risk of simply being little robots acting out some belief about how we think we should be in any given situation. 

One of the areas in which this becomes most evident is when dealing with the whole concept of teacher/student/apprentice. The words themselves conjure up images and ideas which are altogether arbitrary and inaccurate. A teacher is anyone or anything from which we may learn something. A student is anyone who may be open to learning (sounds simple, but isn't). And an apprentice may simply be someone who dedicates him/herself to the pursuit of Knowledge. Beyond that, all bets are off. 

But the problems and issues arise when the participants attempt to take on certain roles - and it is the roles themselves which create the issues and house the issues. Example: the moment someone enters the scene and proclaims, "I am the teacher and you are the student," a certain series of expectations is automatically created. The "teacher" has assumed a seemingly "superior" role, which may have the automatic result of causing anyone else in the arena to feel inferior. And at that very moment, the roles have become perhaps more important than the individuals inhabiting them, and most opportunity for learning will go right out the window. Why? Because ultimately whenever we attempt to inhabit a role (whether student or teacher), we may actually feel a shift of the assemblage point which moves us away from our authentic self and into a place of what we believe we should be/do, and it is then that we find ourselves affixed utterly in the ordinary world, and we have become actors in someone else's drama,which is usually a big tragedy all the way around, since it is not really anyone else's fault, but just our own lack of attention to the matter of ruthless maintenance of our own awareness in the Now. 

Put another way: when we forget who we are because we have been told we are something else, we are nothing. When we lose the assemblage point of the authentic self, we stray into the territory of sheeple and begin to graze on the poisoned oats of our own complacency. 

What is the point of this? Simply to point out (mainly to myself) that it is the roles and the accompanying "costumes" which may ruin an otherwise prime opportunity for learning. If someone insists on assuming the role of teacher, it may well be that the requirements of the role itself can blind the teacher to any true learning. By the same token, if a "student" automatically defers to a "teacher" just because s/he has been told that this person is The Teacher, then it may well be that the "student" automatically assumes a role of being "lesser than" the self-proclaimed Teacher, and what we are left with are two people caught up in their roles, with both probably missing an otherwise prime opportunity for learning & sharing that can ONLY exist when all roles, expectations and belief systems are ruthlessly shed through the process of stalking oneself. 

One way I learned to do this was simply to observe myself as I interacted with different people who were in different "roles" in my own life. If I found that I was automatically "deferring" to The Boss, for example, I would force myself to climb out of that role and simply see The Boss as another human being bumbling along his own path, whatever that may be. If I found myself feeling superior to the homeless man in the gutter in the streets of Los Angeles, a very small bit of stalking would remind me in a hurry that I was no different than that man in the gutter except through the choices I might make from moment to moment - and so the man in the gutter had become a divine teacher and the boss had become a human being... and it is then that we begin to be able to navigate the path from a more authentic self rather than automatically falling into the roles which are based on the assumptions that guard our belief systems. 

Now, if I see someone I believe I might learn from, I simply take it at that and see where it leads. It's usually the expectations that will get in the way of learning or teaching, so for me it's a matter of shedding all the baggage before taking the next step on the path, whatever that step might be. 

If someone needs to believe they are "The Teacher", that doesn't mean I can't learn something from them. It might mean they cannot learn anything from me, but that is not my concern. That's their little role playing game rooted in their own journey through the tonal, what they need to believe about themselves. So, for me, it's a matter of remembering that everyone and everything is potentially the finest teacher I will ever encounter. And it is a matter of remembering that I am an apprentice to Knowledge... not to any person or place or thing. 

Knowledge wears no masks and is free to all who seek it. The sorcerer's trick is learning to see it even when it is hiding in plain sight. A hint: it's within us all the time, but the path to finding it takes many twists and turns until one eventually sees the answer to the conundrum: "You have to be immortal before you will know how to become immortal." What we do in the Now affects not only who we will be in the future, but who we have been in the past... because Time itself is the ultimate human illusion, and only when we begin to navigate outside of it do we really begin to glimpse that the connection we forge to the Infinite Self in the Now is the vessel of timeless "immortality" in the form of the shaman's double. We are not linear beings, despite what our roles and our teachers would have us believe. 

In order to see that, we have to let go of our roles. In order to be that, we have to embrace it in the now, so that it becomes the teacher within, timeless and free. 

______

Della Van Hise
April 15, 2007
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Questions Along the Way: Conversations With a Quantum Shaman
Book 3 in the Quantum Shaman Series
Available from Amazon or directly from www.quantumshaman.com

Into the Infinite: Opening the Door to the Unknown
Book 4 in the Quantum Shaman Series
Available from Amazon or directly from www.quantumshaman.com

Castaneda: Shaman or Sham?

A seeker wrote:
 It seems to me that Castaneda just snapped toward the end of his life, and the fact that he died a human death instead of burning with the fire from within would also seem to invalidate a lot of his earlier teachings.

All we really know are stories told by disgruntled former followers, and that's rather like listening to the robber's version of what really went down in the gunfight. What a lot of people fail to take into account is that we are all - Carlos included - human begins with human frailties. No matter how accomplished we may become as stalkers or dreamers or Naguals, we are still human - and personally I'm not sure that how Carlos lived in any manner affects or sullies the Knowledge he gave to the world in the form of his books.

In my own life, I've made the statement that anyone looking to discredit me will easily be able to do so a thousand times over - and I will even provide them with the tools with which to do it. But at the same time - the magic of duality allows two seemingly contradictory "realities" to exist simultaneously, overlapping, side by side... and neither obliterates or obscures the other. Point being - just because Carlos spent the last few years of his life apparently fucking his apprentices and raving like a madman really has very little bearing on what he Knew and what he wrote about.

Sure, we can all point fingers of blame and say he should have done things differently or should have practiced what he preached... but the bottom line (and I speak from experience) is that sometimes the Knowledge we receive channels initially from what some have called a "higher source" - what I myself would call the double or the infinite self - and that infinite self is not prone to our human frailties... and especially not prone to the deterioration of the mind/body which occurs as a natural (and perhaps unavoidable?) side effect of being in human form in the first place.

A lot of younger warriors like to believe they will not succumb to the ravages of old age - but there is a reason Don Juan listed old age as the fourth enemy of a man or woman of Knowledge. It is the only one of the four enemies that cannot be defeated. No matter how well-conditioned you are right now, my own experience has been that the body is simply made of organic stuff (even though it is energy at its source), and the juxtaposition of our matter/energy construct is such that even the finest warriors among us may have a genetic predisposition toward Alzheimer's, liver cancer, brain tumors, or something else which might be identified as simply a tool in Death's hip pocket.

I could be wrong. I personally like to think tales of The Tenant (the death defier) are real. But I have had the word out for years that I would be most interested in meeting him/her, and so far the phone isn't ringing off the hook. Then again, I may well have met him/her back in the late 80s and simply didn't recognize him for what he really was. Who's to say with so many years between then and now? Point is - to blame Carlos for being human is sort of like blaming fire for being hot. It just is - and I've seen a lot of folks using the fact that he seemingly died a human death of liver cancer as some sort of banner-flag to be waved about as some sort of proof that he was a charlatan and a fraud and a whole host of other things... when the simple reality is that he was just a man like any other.

A few years back, I began to think about my own changing body, and I wondered to the universe one night in meditation, what would happen if I simply grew old, forgot everything I ever learned on the path, and became a drooling liability in a nursing home. I ran this question past several other warriors, including a couple of self-proclaimed Naguals, and the consensus at the time was that none of them could really provide an answer on any level.

It was about 2 weeks later, in a trance-dreaming state, when I received very clearly the message which provided the following information: Once we accomplish something, that something becomes part of the matrix of the I-Am. In other words, if I were to become a woman of Knowledge in the year 1996, for example, with all the attributes that term implies, but then lived on another 50 years and turned into a raving lunatic with a brain tumor, it would not alter the fact that in the energetic framework of the universe, I would still (and always) be a woman of Knowledge. Duality. Depends on where one is standing on the time/space map that determines how we perceive it, but the reality is much larger than any single point on the map. Once something is experienced (such as the state of being a woman of Knowledge, for example), that experience becomes part of our personal hologram - which cannot be destroyed for as long as even one microgram of energy of the hologram remains in existence.  (See "The Holographic Universe"; Michael Talbot).

And this also brings us face to face with the need for Do-ing. It is through Do-ing that we actually accomplish the things that become part of our energetic matrix (the I-Am). To think about becoming a woman of Knowledge is not the same thing as going through the process of becoming a woman of Knowledge. To fantasize about walking with an ally is not the same thing is spinning with the ally and risking the very real possibility that one may never come back to this world at all.

Even as we grow old and become frightful reminders of the fourth enemy to warriors of the younger generation, what must be taken into account is precisely what I learned in my own do-ings: once we accomplish "the thing", it can never be taken from us. Once we become a woman of Knowlwedge, that Knowledge can never be taken from us within the energetic framework of the hologram of the I-Am. 

So just because Carlos died a human death doesn't automatically make him a charlatan or a fraud, as a lot of folks like to say. What is limited there is their own thinking - and what may be called into question is why they were willing followers of a man who had basically told the world through his books to go out and do/see/be for themselves. The fact that people would fall in line to follow someone who had spent his life telling them not to be sheeple... speaks far more to their shortcomings than to his.

Some may choose to see this as me defending Carlos - but that is simply not the case. I never met the man. Never knew him. And probably would not have liked him much had I followed through on any of the multiple chances I had to meet him. Do I think he was an ass in love with his own ego? Not up to me to decide, because I wasn't there.

Point is, trying to invalidate the teachings by invalidating the teacher just doesn't work for me.

__________

  

Questions Along the Way: Conversations With a Quantum Shaman
Book 3 in the Quantum Shaman Series
Available from Amazon or directly from www.quantumshaman.com

Into the Infinite: Opening the Door to the Unknown
Book 4 in the Quantum Shaman Series
Available from Amazon or directly from www.quantumshaman.com

Life: Tragedy or Comedy?

Comment from a seeker:
Being in human form can be nothing but a tragedy. Or as Gautama put it, being human is suffering.

Sure, at a certain level, that is a true statement. Buddha was also depicted as laughing a lot. Rather like don Juan. If we are smart, we learn not only to see beyond the suffering, but to live beyond it. Buddha clearly managed that. As did "Jesus". As did don Juan. As does any man or woman of Knowledge.

This morning, I walked out onto our carport to fetch something-or-other and my eyes fell upon my mother's walker leaning up against the wall, gathering dust. It was one of those moments when I realized what a tragedy life is. The universe has holes in it, left by those who once walked the earth. That's a tragedy. Or is it? Is an empty nest left in the tree a tragedy or a triumph for the mama bird whose fledglings have flown away? Do we mourn the eggshell left behind when we emerge from it into a larger world?

Questions. No definitive answers, but is that what we're looking for? Or is it the questions themselves that form the path which we call the journey? Many are fond of saying that we cannot know for certain what lies beyond this life, and I have never disagreed with that. On the other hand, I think we can learn much from speculation-through-experience. The chick inside the egg may not be able to clearly see the world that lies beyond the shell, but there are flashes of light, moments of warmth and coolness...

And perhaps it isn't the Absolute Knowing that matters, but our ability to create possibilities with our thoughts. If I believe based on experience that the human organism projects the double and has the potential to inhabit that assemblage point as a singularity of consciousness for eternity, then perhaps that is the reality I create through the quantum manipulation of energy. Perhaps not... but there is at least joy and satisfaction in that journey, as opposed to the "tragedy" and "grief" I see in a lot of others who claim to be on a spiritual path.

So my point here is that if you believe that nothing can be known beyond this life, then do you take that as an excuse not to look? If you believe the double has no relevance for you, do you assign some different meaning to your own experiences as a way of keeping those experiences quantified within an existing parameter?

You say life is a tragedy. And so it shall be.

QUESTION/COMMENT:  Reach for the infinite all you want. Explore the reaches of third attention. Be taught by the mushroom ally. Learn to see through the little smoke ally. Experience power places in the lovely desert. Conjoin with your double. Conjure things, direct lightning, manipulate energy. You still come back to this reality, the tonal, and none of those experiences changes one iota of the tonal.

The purpose of experience is not to change the tonal but to shift the assemblage point of the Self. As a result of the things you have listed above, I am not the same person I was 25 years ago or even 25 minutes ago. When a warrior's energy becomes fluid, the warrior becomes the river rather than being merely a leaf carried along in the currents. That may not change "the tonal", but it changes everything - every thing - within the warrior herself.

The real purpose of walking with allies is not to just ride along like some lazy passenger, but to actually learn to drive the bus. The bus is yourself. If you treat the ally like a "carrier", then all you will come back with are memories of the experience. But if you approach the ally as a teacher, you come away with a shifted assemblage point. The world is no longer seen through the same eyes.

I once lamented precisely what you are saying here. Until the ally itself reached out to me long after the journey itself, and said, You can remember our time together or you can walk with me outside of time always. The experience is not something of the past. It is ongoing - because I consciously chose to "remember" the assemblage point of the mushroom ally in the Now and not just look back on some fading memory.

QUESTION/COMMENT:  Equate don Juan to Jesus. Equate Carlos Castaneda to say any of the apostles. I really don't give much of a shit what the apostles had to say or do. My only concern has been with what Jesus himself said and did.  I could care less about Castaneda, what he said or did. I'm interested in The Man, and that would be don Juan.

Keeping in mind that Carlos was a "trickster" who allegedly learned from don Juan, the possibility must be allowed that Carlos was don Juan. In fact, it almost cannot be otherwise.

Maybe a lot of puzzle pieces were taken from older paradigms - i.e., there are rumors that say Carlos patterned don Juan after a couple of shamans he met over the years - but ultimately Carlos wrote the books... and no one (no one) ever met don Juan other than Carlos, at least not that can be verified. Some of the women in Carlos's world claim they did, but did they really? Simply no way to know.

Don Juan remains a mystery, but I am a believer in Occam's Razor. Carlos was don Juan - the man behind the curtain. But the wizard's magic remains real even if the wizard is seen to be "just a man". The wizard is spirit. The magic comes from spirit, channeled through our humanform at times, but remaining pure in and of itself.

A serious question: what would you lose if you let go of your beliefs (about anything - not just the current topic), and lived your life (even if for just one day) from a somewhat opposite perspective? I've done this as a matter of stalking from time to time - walked through the world with the "belief" that I am a 90 year old black woman (one experiment), or that I am invisible (another experiment), or that I am scheduled to be executed at midnight this very night.

The results are that when I shift my AP into an entirely "other" position, I actually see the world quite differently and sometimes that enables new windows to open, new cracks in the cosmic egg to become visible. Digging in my heels only means I then have to defend something, and we all know that leads nowhere with a giant lead weight around one's neck.

When I start stalking myself and asking where my opinions come from, I usually find that if they are only opinions, they do not come from my own life-experience, but from either "book learning" or second hand information. Not of much value in the nagual, nor even in the tonal, actually.

Just my opinions.
__________

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I Can See Clearly Now...

A fellow seeker recently asked me to tell the tale of how I defeated the foreign installation**. What's funny to me is that there is no single definitive tale of power, but instead a cumulative effect. Although I had been on a path of heart since childhood (I might even say "I was born this way!"), it was late 1994 when I had what amounted to a spiritual awakening as a result of a sudden and acute awareness of mortality - not even a brush with death. Just an extreme awareness of what don Juan would have categorized as "You are a being who is going to die."

I didn't like that much. Life is good. I didn't want to die.  Hell, I wanted to live forever! I began to squirm inside my skin. Death as an inevitability seemed not only wrong, but sinister - an Agent Smith who had become a fixture of the consensus, a paid employee of The Machine. It wasn't a fear of dying - it was merely a sense of indignation that it has taken each of us at least 10 billion years of evolution to reach our present state of identity, and to have that suddenly and irreversibly ripped from us (for I do not believe in deities or reincarnation in the least) just seemed... absurd.

This is one thing I perceive as a huge problem in the human organism. We have been programmed to accept - even to believe, and to actually defend - this notion that "All things die." It is the mantra of the consensus, the prevailing belief system at the root of all religions and most political ideologies since long before the first chronicler picked up a Bic and started writing it all down as if it were absolute truth. Just because we perceive that some things die does not automatically mean all things die. I stress this because that was really the first step in stripping away the programming that enslaves us to our mortality and even causes most people to believe Death is somehow good and righteous - a doorway to heaven or at least an escape hatch from the horrors of old age. But if you take a step back and really look at that belief system, it's no less insane than the notion of reincarnating as a bird or a bee or somebody's Uncle Jane. Death is just another belief system - which is one reason figures like the vampire are so popular in literature throughout history. It isn't just that we want to live forever. It's that somewhere deep inside our DNA, far beyond the program and outside the Pandora's box of our self-imposed limitations, we know we can.

I'll avoid the deeper philosophical ramblings on the subject (and anyone who has read my books or even my website is probably aware of them anyway), except to say that this twisting and turning of my Spirit resulted in 1) a tremendous amount of energy roiling and churning and accumulating inside me as a powder keg of personal power, intent and will; and 2) a clear and concise connection to my double (whether you call it the higher self or the shaman's double or the dreaming body or the immortal Other).  It was through working directly and almost constantly (I'm talking 24/7 for a period of about 3-5 years) with my double that the programs began to crumble.  One or two at first, then another, until one day, it occurred to me that I had become a seer - what is defined as essentially someone who sees things as they are, not as we believe they are, or as we think they are, but the reality behind the reality, the man behind the curtain, the world outside the box.

Once that occurred is when I finally understood that being a seer is really nothing more than being permanently outside the belief systems that otherwise hold the world together. Or, more precisely, the belief systems that create what is commonly called the foreign installation - the predominant series of beliefs and practices that influence, guide and ultimately control human behavior. The end result of being outside the box is that the world and everything in it becomes essentially transparent. That isn't to say I can tell you the winning lottery numbers or the precise date on which the collapse of civilization as we know it will occur. What it does mean is that it becomes possible to discern shit from shinola, truth from lies, seekers from pretenders, and on down the line.

Obviously this was a a complicated time in my life, but also a very simple and magnificent time. And yes, there were other factors involved in the ultimate defeat of the foreign installation - everything from half a dozen journeys with the mushroom ally over a period of 5 years, to intense and extended lucid dreaming with my double wherein I received large "downloads" of information and Knowledge that took another few years to process, to developing a discipline of meditation and contemplation that eventually led to a permanent connection to gnosis (silent knowing). Once that permanent connection to silent knowing is established, the foreign installation can no longer get a foothold in the shaman-sorcerer's awareness, for the foundation/frequency on which the foreign installation previously existed has been permanently obliterated.

The end result is a permanent shift of the assemblage point***.
________

** Foreign Installation: If it can be perceived that the consensual reality possesses a rudimentary “hive mind”, it then becomes possible to see that this hive mind is predatory in nature, in that it invades and usurps the individual unless the individual has mastered extreme awareness. In other words we may be “taken over” by the consensual hive, whose primary agenda is to preserve its static status quo. Other – more extreme – definitions have been offered for the predatory mind, and may in fact, have truth as well.

***Assemblage Point - The mindset from which one assembles their world, consisting of a cumulative set of experiences which form a reference point unique to the individual, yet shared in common (to a point) with other members of the same species.

________

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I Rant In Your General Direction

I've toyed with the idea of creating a blog that would be totally truthful - not just with regard to this path but with regard to life, death, the universe and everything in between. Problem is - nobody is really interested in The Truth According to Me. Nobody is interested in much of anything, it seems. We no longer live in a world of curiosity and imagination, but a world of technological entitlement and instant gratification. Maybe some would consider that a forward step in evolution, but I don't see it that way.

As a child growing up in a rural environment, we had a little black and white tv that got 3 channels if somebody wanted to stand behind the box and hold the rabbit ears just-so, while simultaneously tap-dancing on one foot and praying to the weather gods to send a storm, because for some strange reason, reception was always better when it was raining. Go figure. It was a simpler time - when kids had no alternative but to use their imagination if they wanted to entertain themselves. So we read books and told made-up stories to our stuffed animals or baby dolls or teddy bears, or whatever we had that passed for friends to a kid growing up in the middle of bumphuk, geographical center of nowhere. In hindsight, even then we were summoning the twin (the shaman's double, the dreaming body, the higher self) - telling him or her who and what to be, filling them with all our wonder and inspiration and love of the unknown.

I honestly believe it was imagination and a longing for something outside myself (a reflection, a companion, a friend - even if invisible) that sparked my interest in the things that can't be found in an x-box or an app or a smart phone. We were forced to use our minds rather than just our organic brains. We were forced to create some manner of reality (even if "fantasy") - perhaps as a matter of simple emotional/spiritual/intellectual survival. Otherwise, life was an endless stream of dayshine demands - rattled out of bed at 7:05, dress for school, attend class where most of the other kids were already mouth-breathing little zombies absorbed by the clutches of religions or their parents' beliefs, a hearty school lunch at noon (gold star if you don't throw up), time in the yard at one, back to the confining cement block walls a bit later, then onto the vomit-scented yellow bus, home again home again jiggity jig, then supper and bed and do it all over again.

Whether school or job or simply the drudgery in any human life, makes little difference. Unless we use our imagination to break out of the prison, we are nothing more than nasty little turds stuck in the constipated asshole of The Machine. The Matrix. The Consensual Reality. Whatever you call it - we are its keepers and its slaves for as long as we agree to the agreement that holds us captive to our own self-limiting beliefs and practices.

Nothing here that I haven't said a thousand times before. My friends (if I have any left) would say that I'm preaching to the choir or jerking off to the same old porno mag, which is just an ugly reflection of all the things we pretend to desire, or even believe we desire, but which are nothing more than hollow placebos shoved down our throats by a society that worships YouTube and beautiful people and Facebook and shitty rap music and violence and hatred and drugs (whether street-grade or prescription makes no difference) and The Almighty Dick or The Sacred Pussy... and all of it is nothing more than the scribblings of the brute with the scythe, written on our headstones while we're jabbering and hammering our high and mighty worthless opinion to some total stranger on some social networking site, daring to think for a moment that any of it makes one iota of difference.

It doesn't. Never has. Never will. Just the background noise we hum to ourselves while waiting for It. What is "It?" Death, of course. The End. Cue the minor-keyed fanfare and release the hounds of hell. The problem is - "It" has been shoved under the rug and conveniently kept out of sight for so long that most humans in the west seldom if ever see "It" until "It" is staring them in the face. And yet, I ask myself if it would make any difference if they did see "It"... and the answer is always a resounding, "Nope! Are you kidding? We don't want to look at Death when we can be looking at celebrity foibles and who's fucking whom in the White House, and speculate as to what the final outcome of Breaking Bad will be. I mean - Walt White isn't really dead - can't be! - because I need my fucking fix just like all those blue meth junkies need their stuff, so somebody needs to get off their lily white ass and get me what I need and I mean right fucking now!"

But of course, all that is only the tip of the diseased dick. Let's talk about why I'm really in a rotten mood right now. And, yes, for the record, I know perfectly well that none of this matters, nobody is really listening, and if they are listening out of sheer boredom, nobody gives a rat's fried ass, and that is exactly as it should be. I'm not looking for answers or even helpful suggestions. I am already well-aware that this is a solitary journey, and that the journey will eventually cost the seeker everything. That, boys and girls, is a truth that is too true - and if you think it won't happen to you, you need to rethink your faulty thinking.

The reason this path costs you everything is because once you really see through all the bullshit, all the overlays and transparencies, and you actually see the world as it is, you alternate between laughing and crying and throwing fragile things against the walls of your cell (the one which is all around you, but has no bars or windows) just to see if you can break something sharp enough to use as a blade to cut your miserable wrists. But on the heels of that absurd notion comes the counterpoint, which makes you scoop up a stray kitten, clutch it to your chest, and weep with joy until your eyes bleed, because it is the most perfect and most vulnerable lifeform on the planet. It's just a creature struggling to get through its day (just like you), and if you disrespect that lifeform or its journey, then you are no better than a green shit floating on the putrid surface of the River Styx.

The other thing is this: once you really see through it all, nothing has any value anymore. There is nothing in the material world left to want, because it is all just heaps of garbage with one single mission – to distract you from whatever may exist that does have some meaning. And, of course, finding that is the quest for the holy grail. It's right in front of us, but we don't see it because we don't know how to look, or we're still locked into some belief system of what we think we're looking for, and so we fail to see that what we are craving with a crack addict's ferocity is love.

If you rolled your eyes or you mumbled to yourself, "Love doesn't exist," then you are in the wrong place. It's appalling to me that a lot of the current generation doesn't believe in love. They don't "make love." They "hook up." They don't "fall in love." They "get serious." They don't make loving commitments. They sign marriage contracts.

And then they wonder why they live in a world of hollow-eyed zombies who trample one another for a flat screen tv on Black Friday. They wonder why they have no real sense of happiness or even human contentment, but must  live vicariously through their children. Dance lessons. Piano lessons. Soccer practice. Little League. Girl Scouts. Boy Scouts. Church camps and smores and all the trappings of a normal life... but there is nothing normal about it because it isn't real.

Both the child and the parents lose all sense of imagination because there is nothing left to imagine, and all the participants have been reduced to the lowest common denominator of humanform existence, which might be best described as a living death. Where there is no love, where there is no passion, there is no Life.

So what the path really ends up costing the seeker is any illusion of meaning – which is perhaps more easily recognized during the holidays, when all the little 2-legged animals are rushing about, going through the motions of happiness, yet completely oblivious to the fact that they died a long time ago, when they bought into the dominant paradigm and sold their soul to the dayshine world and went back to the matrix for nothing more than that juicy steak.

There is no purpose to this rant. It exists only because I chose to call it into being – for my own satisfaction, an attempt to scratch that impossible itch which every seeker knows all too well. It's only the tip of that fatal iceberg, scrawled in blood on the surface of the ocean, quickly disappearing and altogether insignificant.

So, knowing all of this, why would the seeker want to live forever?

The answer is simple – for those who choose to see it. I could tell you, but I'm going to leave it to your imagination.

Copyright 2016, by Della Van Hise

All Rights Reserved

_______

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Leaving Plato's Cave

On the various forums and groups I frequent, we've talked about enlightenment, the matrix, Plato's cave, transmogrification, vampires, empires, con jobs, snow jobs, hand jobs, and the meaning of life.  Sometimes our talks have been pleasant and reasonable. Other times, not so. And at times of late, I find myself asking... Where are we going with this? What do we hope to accomplish here? Even if we were all to come to a single agreement - God is a giant potato and we will all be freedom fries in the afterlife which is promised to us by The Great Spud - so what?  Really. So what? Where does the agreement get us?  What does it do for us? Does it advance us, or does it actually limit us? Are we here seeking freedom, or just arguing for our limitations?

When I initially opened my first forum it was largely for my own assimilation, a place where I could bounce my ideas off of others on a similar journey - challenge my beliefs to the core through direct interaction with others who were wrestling with the same concepts and essentially form a foundation of my own Knowledge. Not for any great purpose. Just to see if I know, even remotely, who I am.

What I found over the years was that the foundation not only held - though it went through several modifications & structural changes, which I see as an ongoing evolution - but it gave me a far deeper understanding of the workings of "life" than I ever would have believed possible. Understanding "the double" led to a much broader understanding of how the energy of consciousness functions, for example, and with that understanding, I was able to formulate what amounts to a personal "plan" for burning with the fire from within, slipping past the eagle, and all those other tired old cliches which have run the high risk of becoming "just words" due to overexposure. But no matter. We all know what we're talking about. Experience>Assimilation>Knowledge>New Experience>Deeper Assimilation>Evolving Knowledge. And so the cycle goes. And all plans are subject to last minute revisions.

Lately, however, I've found myself facing some rather serious dilemmas in this whole thing. Nowhere to start except in the middle. I get about 20 emails per day on an average, most coming through the Quantum Shaman website.  While most are simple in the sense that they may be someone just looking for a word of encouragement, or some acknowledgement from a stranger on the internet that they aren't alone in their experiences, there are some that are of a far more serious nature. I've gotten emails from one person who is at the brink of despair with health issues; another from a young man who has lost everything - home, family, career - and wants to know how he may apply his path to regaining his balance; another from someone having what she herself described as "a crisis of faith regarding the Toltec path"; another from someone wanting to come live at my house and be my apprentice; and dozens more from people with issues that may appear far less serious to me, but are obviously every bit as serious to them.

Aside from ascertaining that these folks had exhausted all normal channels first (doctors, psychologists, or what-have-you), I used to ask myself what I could do to help them. Now, I just write to them and hope that spirit/gnosis/nagual will open whatever connection is required so that my words might point them in the direction of whatever tool or understanding they are seeking. I never know, of course. All I can do is share my knowledge, share whatever tools I've found, and make sure the person I'm talking to knows that whatever path they are on is their path. "Here - take these tools, do what you Will with them - just don't try to recreate my path (or anyone else's) because then all you're doing is building sets on the stage of the play." Frustrating thing is, even when I have said to some of them, "I can't help you - I don't have the knowledge you're looking for," many will come back with something along the lines of, "Then help me to get to the place where you can help me. Do I need to take a workshop? Do I need to read any particular books, attend any particular seminars?"

No. No. And no.

Sure, I have workshops available on my website. They may even be helpful in overcoming some programs, or gaining some new techniques for stalking oneself, but ultimately no workshop or seminar is going to instill in anybody any real Knowledge. These are just tools. Take all the workshops you like. Go to all the seminars you want. But at the end of the day, if it doesn't assimilate into your life - if it isn't who you are - then it's all just fingerpainting on the deck of Titanic while the boat is going down fast. Amusement. Entertainment. A do-ing that cannot substitute for simply being present in one's life from moment to moment - aware, awake, filled with simply the love of being alive.

And yet...  "So how do I wake myself up?" many ask. "How do I stay awake? How can I do with my  double what you've done with yours?"

Maybe you can't. That's my journey.  Maybe it isn't your destiny at all. If it were, I suspect you'd be do-ing it - manifesting it, creating it, experiencing it - instead of looking for it. So all I can say in that regard is the same thing that's been oft-repeated here over the years. There is no path to follow. There are no gurus who can show you the way to enlightenment. All you really need to do is ask yourself one question: What does your heart want to do? I'm not talking about the frilly emotional baggage that often gets associated with the phrase "path of heart". I'm talking about the nitty-gritty confrontation one does in one's own mirror. Do you want to be a stock broker or do you want to be a rock star? If you do want to be a rock star - now here's where it gets tricky - do you have the ability, the commitment, and a sufficient presence of Will to actually bring this into being?

Ain't easy.

So what does that mean in the big picture?  If our heart wants to be a rock star, but we have a voice like Alvin the Chipmunk, what to do? How do we apply the path of heart to our day to day lives? Do we work as a stock broker in the day and sing karaoke in the local pub at night? Maybe. If that's what satisfies your heart, then why not?

I always wanted to be a writer. Never was able to make a reasonable living at it for many reasons, but because it is the path of my heart, I write anyway. Too much for some to handle, I'm told. But ya know what?  I ain't writing ANY of it for you. This is my journey and my path... get it? I started writing when I was about 11, on an old Royal typewriter that would cut your fingers to the bone if they slipped between the keys and down into the inner gazurkis. And in so many ways, that is how I created my double. That is how I summoned my own muse, and breathed him into being over the years. I don't expect anyone to understand that - and I certainly don't expect anyone to try to do it in the same way. Wouldn't work anyway, because it would be a recreation of someone else's path, rather than a crying out of the human heart into the void.  If you want to meet your double - if that is truly the path of your heart - then you will do what it takes to manifest that reality. For me, it was Star Trek and sci-fi and going out into the night and shaking my fist at the sky, saying to the empty place in my spirit, "If I can't come to you, I'll bring you to me!" 

Shake your fist at the sky! Howl and dance! Do whatever it takes to manifest your dream, but for the love of life, don't try to manifest someone else's! Castaneda didn't hold the patent on awakening. It's been going on for thousands of years and has taken as many forms. And I dare say that those who do awaken will do it on their own terms, and not at the hands of any extant guru, yogi, swami, holyman or the like. Sure, those folk have some great tools to offer, but there comes that critical point when you have to hear the beat of your heart and no one else's. Then, and only then, will you have the ability to be the journey, instead of seeing yourself as some being on a journey.

At least several times a month, I have someone say they want to "walk the magical path" - but ultimately I have found that really isn't so. Not really. What they usually want is to sit at the gates and peer in at whatever magical kingdom they believe they want, but most simply are not willing to take even the first step toward manifesting the desires of their own heart. Why? Many reasons. Too many to list, but just to name the most prominent, I would say the mundane hive mind itself stops them at the threshold just by saying to them, "That's crazy! It's okay to dream it, but if you ever try to be it, they'll lock you up & throw away the key!"

Fear, in other words. Fear of losing one's sanity. Fear of a permanent displacement of the assemblage point. Fear of loneliness. Whatever it is...  it is fear. The internal dialogue. The consensus reality. The agreement. All of it. The checks & balances that hold us in stasis unless and until we simply decide to wake up.

And here's the thing.  For those people who do only want to sit at the gates... That's okay. But if you truly want to live in what we've come to call "The Sorcerer's World" - you Will. Nothing and no one will be able to stop you, for that is the path of your heart. That is where your world will come alive and fill every aspect of your life - no longer any division between your "spirituality" and your "real life persona." They will become one and the same - or that hollow, empty place will remain and you will continue to be just an actor in your own drama. And that, too, is okay... if it's what you choose.
But if you want to find that wholeness, that "awakening" into "the sorcerer's world", you will risk everything. Maybe you will even lose everything.

When I first started this journey, Orlando warned that it would cost me my friends, my family, and any sense of belonging to the so-called "real world", and that has certainly turned out to be the case. Not because he said it would be so, but because that is where the journey has led over many years of experience and, at times, exhaustive effort on my part to prove him wrong! But, in the end, it is what it is.

Eyebrows raise, perhaps.  "Is Della saying we should leave our families and join a cult?"

No.  No.  And no. If you think that, you need to clean out your ears.

What I am saying is that in my own personal experience, I have not found it possible (nor desirable) to attempt to maintain the polite facades required for "a normal life" - and that includes interaction with those who have tried to say to me over the years, "Can't you just be more positive? Can't you just be my friend and, by the way, here's the script for what I want you to say on any given occasion. Can't you just nod politely and pretend you agree with me? Can't you just be one of the guys? Can't you be this way or that way?  Can't you be who I want you to be instead of who you are?"

No.

That's the price.  And for most, it is too high. "Well, I want freedom, but if it means having to give up my family and friends, then I have to find some other way." Good - do so. Find another way! By all means! You have to do the path of your heart! When Orlando said this journey would cost me everything, what he meant was that it would become a choice for me - because, ultimately, the journey itself holds far more value to me than family gatherings and polite dinners with old friends to discuss who's fucking whom and the proper care and feeding of rugrats. Don't get me wrong - those things are of ultimate value to some. Maybe to most. But to me, I just keep finding too many "Smiths" taking on the mantra of the consensus reality, striving as always to drag us back into the programs. Phantoms on the road to Ixtlan, we call them in Toltec terms. Rest assured - they are very real, and the lure is a phenomenal force. A sense of belonging. Even love.

"Just let go of all of this silly stuff you write about, Della, and you can be one of us. We'll love you and warm you and give you milk and cookies before you go to bed, and we'll all be together like a big, happy family." Anybody here ever seen a happy family? I haven't. Oh, I've seen a lot of pageants and pretenses, but in my neck of the woods, most families aren't really happy nearly as much as they are stuck with one another by default. But no matter. That's my experience. It doesn't have to be yours.

I've had a strange and wonderful life. Hope it continues for a long, long time to come. Over the years, I've had some friends who have gazed in at my strange life, and wanted to be a part of it in some deeper way (whatever that means). They want to have the experiences I've had. Or they want me to produce Orlando for their amusement. Or they want to be "along for the ride" when I side-step this reality and enter a world where time goes missing and inorganic beings hold tea parties at the edge of the abyss. Yes, I've done these things. Yes, some of them are even documented. And yet... so what? They are, quite simply, my experiences. Yes, I do believe others can have similar experiences, but those experiences have to be the ones you create - not anything that has been created for you in books, or tales by the fires of eternity. Your experiences.  Yours alone.

And, yes, I will tell you that the price is high.

And yet...

If it is who you are, no force in the universe can stop you. If it is who you are, there is no price at all. You will follow your heart even if it leads you into hell, because what you will find is that you are perhaps happiest when battling the forces of hell, rather than sitting around the fire toasting marshmallows with all your personal demons.

Find your voice.  Even if you sing like Alvin, it will be your song. Maybe nobody will love you for it.  Maybe nobody will hate you for it. Doesn't matter. It's still your song, and there is not another one like it in all the universe.

Be the journey.




_____________
Copyright 2016 by Della Van Hise
All Rights Reserved

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