Lesson the first: Hedonism is the only sin I’ve ever been able to categorize. This is difficult for me to say for two reasons. One, I don’t really believe in sin, and two, I consider myself rather hedonistic at times. I was wrong. I saw real hedonism at Starwood.

Hedonism, to paraphrase Wikipedia, is the philosophy that pleasure is the ultimate good. In essence, everything is done, or should be done, in the pursuit of pleasure. I can’t express strongly enough how wrong this philosophy is. Pleasure is indeed a good thing, but the blind pursuit of pleasure is as wrong and dangerous as the blind pursuit of anything else. Our existence is predicated on a spectrum of experience and relationships. When our pursuit of pleasure is more important than those relationships it becomes self-destructive.

Hedonism, at it’s worst, seems to me an addiction. It drives a person ever towards their next fix. It teaches us to avoid any discomfort or pain and to seek out pleasure wherever it may be found. When our ethics are determined by our addiction we are completely unable to live or operate in a sustainable relationship with the world around us. We see this demonstrated by drug addiction on a regular basis in our society. I am beginning to believe that our cultural predisposition towards the misuse of drugs and alchohol is actually a symptom of the hedonistic philosophy underlying our consumer economy.

The Starwood bonfire, which took all week to build, was a prime instance of hedonistic excess. The entire community was focused on this act, on this revelry, but the event was devoid of any meaning or purpose beyond induldgence. There were no words spoken, no forces evoked, no reason given. The bonfire was reason enough. The sheer pleasure of the act was purpose enough.

I feel small. Terribly terribly small. Like I’ve taken on burdens far beyond what I can reasonably sustain. I feel as though the city is crushing me. Like I haven’t had time for myself, for my own healing, my owh thoughts, my own processes. I feel little and crowded. The introvert in me is positively screaming and begging to escape.

I feel weak. I feel like my will is not anywhere near strong enough to sustain the person I’m trying to become. I feel naive, like my dreams, like my love, like my compassion are foolish fantasies that are best put away with other childish romances. I feel as though the world is full of wisdom and almost all of it is laughing at me.

I feel alone.

I feel as though whatever grace I may have shared has left me bereft, that I am diminished by the world around me. I feel tainted and impure.

I feel afraid. I feel afraid that I have nothing to offer of any worth. I feel afraid that these feelings are the reality, and that I am delusional. I feel as though the faith I have in myself is crumbling and I am standing precariously upon a collapsing cliff.

These are my feelings. They are not new feelings. They have not ruled me in a long time, but neither have they been as present as they are today.

There are many things we can do when we are feeling like this. When the world is too much for us. T. Thorn Coyle recommends we breathe. I agree with her. Breathing is perhaps the best thing I can do right now, the best thing any of us can do.

These feelings are part of me. They are part of where I come from and where I am going. They are part of who I am, and what I am. My battle with them is one of the struggles of my life.

We all have demons, and this is one of mine. I am susceptible to self-doubt, to the spiral of my fears of inadequacy. To the belief that I must fail.

So right now, I am breathing and I am writing. Later, after I have breathed, after I have written I will open my eyes and see the truth. I will cry a little. I will see the faces of those I love, of those who love me. I will see the good I’m doing. I will see the lives I touch. I will hear the voices of spirit lifting me up. I will embrace my feelings of smallness, of weakness, of lonliness, of taint, of fear. I will hold them to myself and I will let me wash through me. I will see them for what they are, and I will give myself permission to feel them. I will see that they are my demon, part of me, but not the whole.

I will see that they are the truth, but not the whole truth nor the only truth. My fear is fear and my weakness is weakness. But this does not make me fearful or weak. It means only that I contain these things. These things and multitudes of others.

I don’t believe, philisophically, that people choose to behave badly. In fact, I don’t believe people make the choice of being evil. Evil is the product of different values, bad judgment, an inability to reason, or an inability to temper reason with values, or any one of a hundred other mixtures of state. I believe that people are inherently good. They do what they think is right. It may not be in line with their stated or cultural morals, but they think it is the best decision they can make at the time.

I’m not interested in arguing this point endlessly. Suffice it to say that I have adequate reasoning and conceptual understanding to make this belief tenable for myself. Unfortunately, I’m coming to realize that no matter how I turn things around in my head, there are times when I simply can’t see something as anything but stupid and wrong. I still believe that the person thinks they’re doing the right thing, but the behavior can be so heinous and without reasonable cause that it calls into question everything I know about the idea of motivation and cause. It makes me revisit previous perceptions, previous behaviors, and previous sentiments, and sometimes I have no choice but to accept that there is motivation at work that is not even imaginable to me.

I’m dealing with this right now, and I have to say it is one of the most uncomfortable mental processes I’ve ever undergone. I tend to assume the best in people, I have trouble imagining a world where people are purposefully destructive without some powerful motivator. I have trouble believing that people actually act with intent to undermine and weaken those around them. I’m not comfortable with the idea that such emnity is a standard mode of operation for people. I suppose this makes me naive. I’d rather remain naive than live in a world where I must constantly question the motivation of people around me, constantly wonder not only what issues motivate their actions, but wonder also if their behavior is actually malicious.

I have trouble accepting that malicious behavior even exists. I don’t understand it. I’ve yet to be presented with adequate evidence of it. But I’m much closer today than I was a week ago. That bothers me. I feel like I’m losing my innocence, like my ability to see the divine light in everyone around me is jeopardized by this. I feel as though some precious gift is being stolen from me, and I don’t yet know if there is anything I can do.

I’m fighting a dogmatic battle with myself. I want nothing more than to turn my eyes away from the evidence I’m being presented with, but my ethics demand that I be open to truth in all its forms. I feel as though I need to protect myself from this idea, an idea that I feel, that I fear, may have the power to corrupt me, to crush me. But if my faith is never tested can I even hope that it is strong enough to sustain myself and my community?

I’d rather wash my hands of it all. That’s not who I am, but I am at this moment tempted to do so. Instead I will endure. I will breathe, and I will meditate. I will divine and ponder. I will allow myself the freedom to grieve, to process, and to be strengthened. I will listen to my gods, spirits, and heart. I will find a peace, and there I will endeavor to dwell.

School yourself to patience as you have before. And school yourself to denial. The path of the ascetic has lessons which you have not learned. Avoid not desire, but recognize the pursuit of desire differs from the pursuit of the wrong. Desire is good, a strong pull and a stronger knowledge. But choose to pursue the desire that drives you, not the desire that is driven.

We will hold you in our hearts as you hold us. Know that no force can withstand your pursuit of desire if you understand the power of denial.

It’s interesting because that is exactly what I’m doing at the moment. The Discipline of Denial is fascinating to me at the moment. It is taking my attention and I am learning many things from it. So far, the most interesting thing I’ve learned is that denial doesn’t need to come from a place of mortification. The most common motive for asceticism is the belief that the flesh is weak or illusory, that physical experience and interaction (often pleasure specifically) is corrosive to the spirit. By forsaking the world we achieve enlightenment and free ourselves of maya.

This concept has never sat well with me. In fact I find it kind of disgusting. I believe that the purpose of spirit is to exalt and better the human condition, to bring our most noble nature to the forefront and in so doing uplift the entire race. The attempt to mortify and escape the physical body out of the belief that sensation, sybriantry, and induldgence are bad or wrong goes against many of the foundational aspects of my philosophy. What I’ve come to realize recently is that there are other reasons to practice denial.

(I hesitate to call it asceticism, partly because of the connotations and partly because I am not certain I have a strong enough understanding of the definition of asceticism to be sure that the usage is accurate.)

What I’ve discovered is that denial does not have to distance us from our body. It does not have to deny or disrespect the value or beauty of the material world. In fact, when practiced from a place of self-love, with the idea that one is rarifing the flesh, the practice of denial becomes a way of making all aspects of wordly interaction sacred.

I have an idea of what this might look like, but it will take some time to put into words. Until then, imagine if you will, what it would be like if you alleviated yourself of the burden to please or satisfy your ego and instead focused entirely on two things. 1) Tending the temple that is your body by taking exemplary care of yourself, but doing so only in the service of that temple and avoiding behavior that feeds only your psyche. 2) Tending and nurturing the ego/psyche of those around you in many manners including the physical closeness and comforting behavior you deny yourself.

Maybe it’s turning 30, but I’m thinking a lot about legacy lately. About the future. I’m 30 years old. I have a relatively stable career. For the first time in my life I’m beginning to be financially comfortable. I’m understanding how money works and how (I hope) I can make it work for me instead of against me. I’m doing meaningful work in other parts of my life, and I have fulfilling, valuable relationships with friends and family. I have colleagues in and outside of the Brotherhood, many of whom I’m blessed to call friends as well.

The world is turning, changing around me, and I wonder what will I leave for future generations? Will it be these words, so often the equivalent of scribbles on looseleaf pieces of paper? Will it be the things that I’ve taught? The lives that I’ve touched? Will it be the nieces, nephews, and godchildren that I help to raise? Will it be something I haven’t even considered yet? Will I leave nothing behind at all?

I’m not asking myself these questions in a depressing way. In truth I’m just curious. Herbis Orbis and I were talking about vocation again recently. Not about what it is, but about how it colors our view of who we are and what we do. I often find myself confused these days, when I see people devote huge portions of their lives to things that are ultimately meaningless. When I see all a persons energy go into their dedication to a television show they watch religiously, or a fandom to which they are devoted, I often find myself amazed at their commitment. Not because the committment is something I don’t understand, but because it seems that the committment is wholly self-serving, by which I mean it seems to sustain itself, but very little else.

I find it repulsive. If we are to devote ourselves to a project or a community that work should mean something more than an emotional attachment to a reality television show. It makes me profoundly sad to watch a person give such committment to something ultimately meaningless. I must, however, check myself when I feel this. I realize that a good deal of my revulsion over this ‘waste’ of energy is because I am hard-wired by my vocation. Spending such vast amounts of time and energy on something with no impact or meaning beyond immediate emotional gratification is, quite literally, sacreligious to me. But I have to remember that it is sacreligious to me, not to everyone else. It is not in my ethics to hold other people to my standards for myself, nor to demand that they spend their time as fruitfully as I attempt to spend mine.

Nor am I some paragon of self-sacrafice. I do plenty of things just for myself, and I think it’s important that all of us do so. It’s one of the things that I struggled not to model from certain teachers. The pattern of giving too much of myself and not holding enough back is something I stubbornly refuse to perpetuate. But the biggest movements in my life, the moments that are important, that my emotions are driven by, are not self-serving or selfish. They are the moments that point to my legacy, my impact on the world. They are the things that I do that better the lives of the people around me.

Herbis Orbis and I discussed this briefly, and we seemed to agree. It’s important to know what our standards for ouselves are, and equally important to realize that those standards can not be applied to people who do not come equiped with a calling like ours. It is of course, just as important to realize that having a vocation, a calling, doesn’t make us better people. It just means we’re hard-wired with different priorities, different ideas about what legacy is.

I sometimes wonder if the reason so many traditions of priesthood require celibacy is a way of encouraging those in the priesthood to embrace their vocation and become enamoured with the more common concepts of legacy and work. Our culture thinks of legacy most prominently in terms of our children. Our offspring are the gift that we give to the world, and once we begin to procreate a great deal of our energy goes into devotion and service to those children, to prepare them and create a world for them to live in.

In other views we see our legacy as the changes we’ve made. The amount of money we earned, the patents we filed, the companies we started and sold. The idea of economic legacy, of creating or sustaining a dynasty in the financial or political sense is a powerful pull.

And then there is the vocational idea of legacy, which is what I’m finding in myself. My legacy is quite literally leaving the world a better place for having been here. Through writing, teaching, counseling, loving, and suffering. Through all the work that I do, I want this world, and the people in it, to be more full of song, more filled with light, more joyous, more loving, and more beautiful than it was before I got here. I think that is vocation, and that is vocational legacy.

I’m thinking too about duty. Responsibility. What are our responsibilities to the people around us? To our families? To our communities? When do those responsibilities begin to break down? When do they become stronger? I have a lot of thoughts here, but I think I may be able to get some sleep now, so they’ll have to wait for another time.

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I won’t go into how heinous I find that, although I’m tempted. My own views on psychopharmacology are not very positive, as I’ve mentioned at least a few times before. But what interests me is that we have a very different relationship to depression, to all unpleasant emotional states, than our counterparts all over the world.

That is to say, we have a culture of unhappiness, but we don’t revere or honor that unhappiness. A great deal of our social mores, norms, and patterns are designed to make us unhappy. There are hundreds of things we can do or experience that will make us unhappy. It’s practically impossible to live a life virtuous enough to be happy. Instead, every day, we are surrounded by things to make us upset. We’re fucking depressed by the rain. Seriously. What’s with that? We’re not happy with our health, our bodies, our income, our family, our insurance, our government, our celebrities, or our relationships. We feel we’re entitled to live a complete untroubled life, and when that turns out to be impossible we get depressed about it.

It’s very hard to find a person who is truly happy in our culture. And that’s OK. We aren’t supposed to be happy all the time. We’re supposed to experience all sorts of emotions, because that’s how our psyche is built. Unpleasant emotions help teach us how to thrive, how to be fruitful. From an evolutionary standpoint, rejecting the acceptability of unpleasant emotions and trying to supress them is akin to reinforcing negative traits in our genetic line.

Everything we do is aimed at depression, unahppiness, and dissatisfaction, and yet we’re surprised that we aren’t happy. I’ll be honest and say I don’t have a clue what is going on there. It makes absolutely no sense to me. More importantly, and more frustratingly, most people seem to accept it and think it makes perfect sense.

But we’re in denial about the nature of our culture. We are encouraged to be unhappy, and in fact our social structures enforce (sometimes violently) that unhappiness. But we hate that we are unhappy, and consider it a disease or a failing in the person. Somehow our unhappiness is a sign of defect.

I think this is a fundamental conflict in our culture. In fact, I think it’s the defining trait of our culture. Our culture is defined by the fact that we believe ourselves to be flawed, and that the product of our work is equally flawed. “Nobody’s Perfect” tends to be our catch-all excuse for our failings. We repeat it like a mantra whenever we make a mistake, and accept that we will never be perfect. We ridicule and shun people who are trying to improve themselves, and indeed the desire to better oneself is looked down upon by our culture. We are intransient, and we do our best to prevent each other from changing or growing.

How many times have you heard someone say “This isn’t like you.” or “What have they done to you.” or “You’re not the person I thought you were.” Our expectations of each other are rigid and demanding, and any deviation from those expectations is often met with emotional violence. I could easily blame this on our Puritanical ancestors, but I don’t think that’s fair, or even accurate. The truth is, we make our culture every day. We buy in to the idea that we’re broken and need to be fixed. We support it every time we devalue unhappiness, or pain. Every attempt to manipulate eachother for our own comfort, to bring another person down or rail against their harmless decisions.

It’s not something that’s easy to fix, but I want to fix it. I want to fix it very badly, and I don’t really know how. Except by creating a counter to it. A cultural shift that is based on principles, acceptance, and respect. By living as an example against that culture, a different face, a different voice, striking clearly through the din. But it will take many voices, many strengths, many truths. I choose to be one of them. Maybe you do as well.

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The interesting thing is that we deduce the next moment, the next frame of our existence by understanding the directional forces (intertia) at work in the Now. We observe the past by deducing the directional forces that must have been in place to prepare our state to manifest the Now.

This is all speculation of course. The fact is, Time does exist. Now, State, is constantly changing. I suspect that Time is inherently a function of life, that all motion is an expression of life. Death, perhaps, is simply the absence of motion. Certainly that is how we attempt to define it today. We are dead when the heart stills, when the neurons cease to fire, when the energy of our form has dissipated. Of course we live on. Our physical form is broken down and carried back to the natural world. Our bodies do not stay still. And physics tells us that the energy of our life has to go somewhere. That animating force dissipates, but the force itself can not be destroyed. The only real death is the absolute binding of our energy. The absence of time, of movement, of force.

(On a related note, this ties in interestingly with some of my previous thoughts about the Arthurian legends. Arthur as the Warrior against Time, attempting to bring it to a halt, may in truth attempting to bring absolute death to the world.)

So thinking about time, about stillness, about death, I wonder that we spend so much of our now thinking about yesterday and tomorrow. I’m not convinced that this is wrong or bad, but I find it curious. The primary function of thoughts of the past or future is reconciliation and reparation. We want to understand, to reconcile our previous states. We want to repair the future, by which I mean we desire a specific outcome. Note that I say want. We desire reconciliation and reparation. We look to the future and the past out of a desire or a need.

What is that desire? Where does it come from? How does it manifest in the now?

By default I operate on the assumption that Will, (which fuels desire) transcends time. But ignoring the possibility of transcendence, how can we operate with our emotions, our desires, inside of the Now? Can desire be summarized by State in the Now, as a set of rational forces in potential? Is my desire, that state, simply a neurological pattern of forces?

What about our memories of emotions? Are they the reflection, the remains of previous states? Lasting impressions or lingering patterns of a prior state?

The simple answer is yes. Emotions are as illusory as time. They are a function of forces inside our state. However, is emotion the prime mover of that state? What started all the motion? Was it an inevitable consequence of super-dense matter, or was it begun by some primal emotion?

I ask, because if you think about it, our emotions are what connect us throughout time. In the Now, we have a single state, a rational composed set of forces that can be understood. We can perceive the outcome of those forces, but without engaging desire, we have no influence upon those forces. Without desire, without will, those forces will simply cascade through successive states without any further change. The forces that drive will though, those introduce the true element of chaos into the equation, because those forces influence independent action. A directed application of force instead of the consequential.

And that’s what it comes down to. It is easy to believe that free will is an illusion, that we are all the product of cause and effect. That our state ultimately determines our proceeding states. And perhaps that is true. But we aren’t functioning in a closed system, or a singular system. We are functioning in an infinite universe with multiple systems of force interacting. This is the fundamental truth of chaos. the forces of the physical realm are easily understood (relatively). This is why our physical science is so advanced. However, the metaphysical forces, the psychological forces, the spiritual forces, are not so easily defined, let alone understood.

I sat down in bed last night, and I was going to write, but all the stuff that would have come out just sort of settled in, and nothing happened. My dreams have been more active of late too, some of them very telling and others just random. One thing that I realized this past week is that I am missing alone time. Time for just me. I have never lived alone for more than a few months at a time. I’m not sure that I want to live alone, but I sometimes find myself wishing for more alone time.

It’s not privacy, just that there is a difference of quality between being alone in my room, or at my computer, and being alone at home. I have been aching for that particular quality, and I’m not sure why. I think part of it is that I feel like getting away from other people more will help me get a better handle on who I am. I am too often defined by the people around me, by what I do.

There’s a scene in Across the Universe:

“Why is it always ‘what are you going to do?’ Do, do, do. Why can’t it be about who I am?”

An older relative replies “Because what you do, defines who you are.”

The young man responds “No! Who you are determines what you do.”

I agree with the young man, not because he’s right, but because he should be right. What we do should be a product of who we are. Our job, our impact on the world, our purpose is, or should be, a function or expression of our being. Too often this is not the case, but it should be. I feel a little trapped lately, like I am letting myself be defined by the roles I fulfill instead of filling the roles with myself.

Sometimes I wonder how much of what other people see in me has more to do with the role I’m fulfilling for them than who I am. I know this is not a new observation, or even a particularly startling one. But right now it’s bothering me a little bit. Do our parents ever see us as anyone other than their son or daughter? Do our students see us as anyone other than a teacher? Do our teachers see us as anyone other than students?

Can you tell someone who you are without indicating a role? Can you explain yourself to them? There is a maxim:

If you can’t explain it in three sentences you don’t really understand it.

Who am I other than son, student, teacher, friend, priest… ? The world of Branding is all about roles. I read every day how to have a brand you have to have a brand statement, and it should be about what you do. This kind of bothers me, because what we do is so little of our brand. It doesn’t explain our personality, our passions, our motivations. Believe it or not, these are the things that make us who we are. I’m not talking about cause and effect either, just a realization of who we are.

And how does that realization take form? What are things we do, and what are things we are? Do I program for a living, or am I a programmer? I think everyone needs to define that for themselves. For me it’s about passion, personality, and purpose. I am passionate about love, about connection, about people, and about discernment. My personality is petulant, earnest, acerbic, and sometimes sweet. My purpose is torch-bearer, someone who holds the light for others to see by, to illuminate and reveal who, what, and where we are.

Dancing with Myself, although I haven’t seen the episode yet, is amazing. I’m so glad to hear Artie (I can’t remember the name of the actor) mostly on his own, and the song is so wonderfully done. I can’t wait to see the whole scene for this song. I think I’m going to cry. Artie’s voice has a great timbre to it, a great deal of personality. I could say that for almost the entire cast, but something about Artie stands out for me.

Defying Gravity blows my mind. I love the arrangment. Sweet Caroline gives me the warm-fuzzy-happies. Somebody to Love is such an amazing showcase song, and full of individual voices and styles that make me remember all the moments I like with each character.

Keep Holding On, of course, hits that part of my heart that makes me think of my vocation. Not because it makes me teary, although sometimes it does, but because like much of the art I find most meaningful in my life, it reminds me of the strength and power of the human condition, and our opportunity to persist and overcome. It reminds me of our best qualities.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that off and on lately. Our strength as humans. Our nature. I am a terminal optomist. I believe we all do what we do because we think it’s the right thing, the best thing, the thing that has to be done. As a result, I often have a lot of trouble understanding or even communicating with people who don’t seem to get it. My ethics are deep and rooted strongly in my philosophy and understanding of the world. I often don’t understand how deep they go or how fundamentally philisophical they are until I try to explain an ethical principal I hold to another person. As with many things, trying to illustrate those principles helps me codify them in a linguistic and logical sense. No matter how hard I try, I often simply have no way to connect or comprehend or accept a person whose philosophy or ethics are fundamentally in conflict with mine.

The most notable example of course, is I can not even approach an understanding of the belief that sex is dirty or wrong. Our fear and stigma surrounding sex absolutely boggles my mind. I’m fortunate to run afoul of that stigma far less than I personally expect. I take that as a good sign that our culture is changing its views on sex. Still, I know it will be a long time.

In those thoughts about strength, about purpose, and about my optomism, I found myself having a conversation with myself about vocation. As a member of the Inner Order of the Brotherhood of the Phoenix, I’m a spiritual leader and Mentor for a good sized community, and many reaching elements of a larger community. I love to write and perform ritual and help bring spirituality to people. It’s a great joy for me, but it pales in comparison to the passion I have for teaching/mentoring in smaller groups. 1 on 1 or in small class sizes (2-4). The personality of small invested groups is greatly enjoyable to me. Helping people find Spirit, listen to it, and move with it is perhaps the most beautiful thing I can think of to do with my life.

I began to think about where I am and how I’ve gotten here. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past considering the concept of Worth. What makes me worthy of recognition as a priest, as a spiritual leader? What makes me worthy of the blessings in my life? I had a conversation with Shivian the other night that brought these questions back to the front of my mind. Why me? What is it that makes me a spiritual leader? (I of course think this is a special and wondrous blessing. I recognize not everyone would agree with me.) My path to mentorship in the Brotherhood has been long and storied, full of twists and turns and a great deal of challenges and conflicts. But here I am. I realized the other night that I no longer doubt my worthiness. In fact, I kind of feel an obligation, that I do this work out of a necessity. It needs to be done and I’m capable of doing it.

And when I think back, and am honest with myself, I was a spiritual leader and lightpost long before I became a member of the Inner Order. This acknowledgement was powerful and meaningful to me, and I don’t mean to diminish it. But I realized before I accepted my place in the Inner Order that I would do the work with or without that acceptance. The work is there, and it can be done in many capacities. I never thought about what this realization meant or how important it was to me until the other night. Somewhere in the long course of progress from student to mentor (although we are always both), I stopped looking at mentorship as a reward or goal, and began looking at it as a part of the person I am.

There are thousands upon thousands of people out there who have no rank or authority, but step up every day and give of themselves in many capacities. It is this action that defines us as leaders, as mentors, as teachers, as healers, as humans. More than the realization that we are all teachers and students in turn (although this is a supremely important understanding) I am struck by the sheer simplicity of living the vocation. It is not always easy. In fact many days it is hard. Though I have an official capacity in the Brotherhood, I still find myself performing ministry unofficially on a fairly consistent basis. Regardless of the title or honor, I will always be a priest and teacher, and it is the vocation and work that is important, not the recognition for that work.

I’ve spoken with @HerbisOrbis about this before (and probably will again). Sometimes it’s frustrating not to be recognized for the work you do. HerbisOrbis and I both find ourselves in experiences and situations where we must assume the duty of priest or priestess, of minister or mentor, whether we are in our element or initiated tradition or not. As I’ve mentioned to George recently. The work calls, it has to be done. I consistently find myself coming in at just the right point in a conversation, or sitting around when someone who needs to talk just happens to enter the room. If I were less faithful I would call it coincidence, but it has become far too common to write off.

On another level though, I think this is really an exemplification of what I mentioned earlier. Human nature. It is in our nature to care. It is in our nature to nourish each other, to bless each other. It is in our nature to heal. It is in our nature to Love each other. If answering my vocation, stepping up and teaching, healing, and blessing, is what makes me a spiritual leader; then I am no different than anyone else. I am just a guy, with my flaws (and there are plenty), and stepping up to the work is just fulfilling the promise of my nature.

It’s scary. There is so much possibility of judgment, disapproval, and ridicule. It’s hard to fulfill that promise, to accept that the man I barely know who interrupts my meal to say hi, needs my attention and blessing, my compassion. It’s hard to put aside my own mood and desire and give that attention without feeling resentful. It’s even harder after realizing that more often then not, my effort will be taken for granted and unacknowledged. The Work is ultimately its own reward, and we must be strong enough, whole enough, confident enough, that that reward is sufficient.

I have a lot more on this, but I’m no longer truly lucid. It’s late and I must sleep. I will post this in the morning if I can. More in the future.

Lancelot, the stereotypical Knight in Shining armor, is the essential warrior. His purpose in life is to fight, to protect. Unlike Arthur however, he is not fighting to stave off time. Lancelot doesn’t attempt to change the world, or bring about some mighty shift in the nature of mankind. Instead Lancelot fights for Love, for Honor, and for Duty. This is where his nobility comes from.

He is not a great man, nor a god. He is a simple knight, whose strength and might are the stuff of legend precisely because they were offered up to Arthur and Camelot as a gift, a sacrafice to duty and honor. Lancelot is also a foreigner to British soil, coming from Gaul, what we now consider France. The masculine divine he portrays is always that of an outsider. We do not truly know his motivations or purpose, how he came to be in Britain or where he will go when Camelot falls.

His affair with Guenevere only proves his highest duty is to that of Love, which our nobly inclined Albioners tend to avoid as purpose. Arthur and Mordred seek cause in their principles, in their purpose, in their Will. Lancelot, as an outsider, is not bound by their mandatory idea of purpose. He is instead bound to the more primal calling of his heart. This strengthens him, which is why he is the most recognizable knight of the round table. But in our culture it also diminishes him. Our stigma against following our feelings, our intuition, our heart is so great that we pronounce Lancelot impure for his love and communion with Guenevere.

In this context though, as a Warrior for Time, Lancelots pursuit of love is the necessary movement of Time forward. It is the catalyst of change that defeats both Arthur and Mordred.

Galahad of course, is Lancelots son, and usually considered the most pure of the Arthurian knights. And he most certainly is, because he is possibly the most illusory of those knights. He has neither his fathers prowess, nor Arthurs drive, nor Mordreds hate. He lacks Gwains courage, and bears no magical weapons or armor. He has no affairs or world-changing quests upon which to embark (Except for the grail quest).

No, Galahads defining trait is his piety, which is most often portrayed as a vocation, a love and adoration of the Christian God. In many ways he is a priest, but in many more he is the Servant of time. Galahads purpose is to guard the queens chastity, to prevent her from breaking her marriage vows, and guard her against the wearing of Time. This is what Arthur sets him to, his most vital role, and in this he fails utterly. Lancelot despoils the queen and Camelot falls into the mists.

But despite his failure we revere Galahad. Perhaps because of his quest for the grail. But in truth, Galahad did not fail. Arthur, indeed most tellers of the story, mistake Galahads purity for piety, and they are not the same. Galahad, though he may service the church with his words, is the mighty warrior of the old ways, the Champion of time. His purity does not come from abstinence or devotion to God. It comes from the power of memory, which both Galahad, and the grail represent. As I said to Herbis Orbis last week, perhaps Galahad’s purpose is not to guard Guenevere’s chastity, but to protect the memory of that chastity.

Galahad’s purpose is to protect that which is most sacred, most pure, most revered. And in a reflection of patterns we still uphold, that which is most revered is that which has already passed. We covet purity because it is rare, and it is all the more rare because all purity must eventually be tarnished, with the exception of our memory of that purity. There is nothing more rare than that which has passed. History, memory, is ultimately the only true purity, and it is Galahad’s purpose to maintain the memory of Camelot, to forever embody that memory as a shining example of the best traits of mankind.

We revere Galahad because he holds the sacred cup, the power of memory and history, and in holding it he becomes it’s bearer and it’s representative. He, Galahad, is the legacy of Camelot, forever suspended, forever pure, holding open the doors of time for Arthurs eventual return, for the eventual return of camelot. Because that dream is even more potent, not just the memory of the past, but our memory of the future, that the past will return and become real again. That purity lost can be restored.

It is interesting that Galahad is the agent and champion of Time, but we, in our adoration of Arthur and fear of change, turn Galahad into a symbol representing the eventual conquering of time. The truth is, he does not represent our defeat of time, or a return to purity, but he represents a wholeness, a more full understanding of time and purity that we are not truly able to understand yet.

There’s been a lot of stuff going through my mind lately. So many things that I’m trying to get done, and transformations I want to make. As a result it’s been really hard for me to focus on any one thing, even though it’s very desirable for me.

There is an older woman on the train talking to a noncorporeal entity. Not sure if she’s delusional or if her friend John is really with her. She doesn’t have an otherworldly air about her, but neither does she seem deranged.

Last week before she left for international travel, Herbis Orbis and I were talking about the divine masculine, primarily in the context of Arthur and Galahad, as the pillars of that divine form. We neglected to discuss Mordred and Lancelot, although I think it’s primarily because we aren’t faced with a compelling example of that aspect of the masculine diivne in our experience.

One of the things that struck me about our discussion, is the realization of how important Time is to the masculine Divine. And it is more interesting that Time itself is often viewed as part of the femenine, part of water. Time flows. It has a stream. It stretches, creates, and does not end. — It is true that we can only take the stream metaphor so far, and since I’m not entirely convinced of the linear quality of time it, perhaps, holds even less water. But the connection is there, deep in our mythic history.

So with time the strata in which the masculine divine manifests and moves, I’ve been evaluating or examining the relationships that our Masculine Heroes have with that strata. Arthur, of course, is the warrior of time. He supposedly suspended outside of time, awaiting the proper moment to come back and raise camelot from history. This is the result of his battle against time and his eventual surrender to it. Arthur, throughout his reign struggled over and over again with the fact that time would not slow down and stop. He fought to create equilibrium at camelot, in many ways he fought to halt the passage of time. It was his greatest wish to create a kingdom of nobility and righteousness that would stand against the ravages of time, that would not degrade or fall apart.

Arthurs acceptance of Christianity, and taking Guenevere as his bride, is often told as an indication of how he turned away from the old ways. And it certainly is, but why? It was certainly a betrayal of Avalon, but perhaps Arthur was looking for something that the new religion offered that Avalon could not. Time. I do not presume to know the truth of the pagan traditions of the british Isles historically, but if the assumption is correct that the pagan culture revered change, and the passage of time, as many tellings of the arthurian tales reference, then it is entirely likely that Arthur could not have any faith in the survival of camelot. The Christian faith however, makes strong promises about perpetuity. Perhaps Arthurs betrayal of Avalon is as simple as his desire to live forever.

This makes him the champion of Christianity, and in many ways of rational humanism. Arthur the conquering hero, Once and Future King, the king who defeated the old ways, the ways of darkness and mystery, and heralded the dawn of science, of mans ability to truly master this creation, to master the ultimate enemy, Time.

Thus Mordred, who we most often see as the villian, is the warrior of the old ways. Not time precisely, but the reverence of time. In many ways, Mordred is actually the divine child. He carries the power of the divine masculine, but as Arthur in his youth, he is in truth a warrior of the Divine Femenine. His battle is to preserve the old ways, both good and bad, because he rejects mans dominion over nature. Both over the nature of man, and over the natural world. It is here that we find his darkness. Mordred seeks revenge on behalf of the betrayal of Arthur, and himself becomes a symbol of that which Arthur hates most. The passage of time.

There is of course the obvious reference to Arthurs own mortality in Mordreds existence and adulthood. What father is not at some point scared by the fact that his son is aging, primarily because it means his death is that much closer. Note though, that Mordred is not fighting on Times behalf. He is the counter to Arthur in his beliefs, but not in his enemy. Arthur fights to become the Lord of Time, to conquer it. Mordred fights to conquer it in his own way, by preventing it from moving forward. Arthur wants to vanquish time. Mordred merely wants to stop it.

This is perhaps Mordreds greatest flaw. He is shallow. He has no great mission of his own, no divine purpose. He is the force of the masculine divine with no Will of it’s own, and that destructive force obsesses upon the betrayal of Arthur, the driven divine, and so seeks to destroy his work. Once Arthur has been killed, his great efforts destroyed, Mordred too may die, having no greater purpose upon which to spend his will.

Time is up. I’ll write about Lancelot and Galahad when I get a chance.

Today, the timing is different. We have a global season for planting and growing, and a shortfall or failure to harvest probably won’t mean my family starves this winter. (I am fortunate to live in a first-world country, and I realize this is not the case for all places on the planet.) But the truth is still there. In order for my family and I to survive, we kill things around us. Often brutally.

Around this time of year, conversations often come up that talk about sacrifice. I think it’s just part of our social consciousness, particularly as pagans. Many of them, like this one at About.com About.com Paganism/Wicca (Patti Wigington) Attorney: Why I Defent Goat Sacrifice. The comments are what I’m pointing to, not the post itself.

Why is it that we can’t accept that sacrifice is part of life? The nature of sacrifice is simple. You give up something of value in hope that you will recieve something which you desire. Sacrifice takes many forms, and has many layers. I think it’s not only wise, but vital, that we as people consider the various levels upon which our actions and sacrifices have meaning.

For instance, I often (among pagans anyway) hear people thanking the earth for providing the bounty of the harvest. But I almost never hear them thank the spirit of the plant or animal they are planning on ingesting. I think making the food they are about to ingest spirit-less prevents us from thinking about the truth of what’s going on. We are killing this other thing that we may devour the force of it’s life and sustain our own. Thanking the spirit of the food is far more difficult, and far more respectful than thanking a nebulous earth-mother-goddess for providing. Yes, she has provided, but we make the choice to partake of what has been provided, and that requires sacrifice. Pretending differently strikes me as a self-delusion perpetuated by the Harm None myth.

There are a lot of facets that come up for me here. One of the ones that frustrates me the most has to do with vegetarians and vegans. I know many of both, and I have a deep respect for their choice of diet. However, I sometimes question the motives of vegetarians. If you believe it is healthier for you to eat vegetarian. That’s great. If you have an ethical dillema with the way livestock is raised and slaughtered, we’re cool. I might question your thoughts on the mass-production and forced growth of crops, and how that affects the lives of humans and livestock, but it’s cool. If your reason for being a vegetarian is “Because I don’t think other things should die so I can survive,” I’m going to get annoyed, because life requires death. If you don’t see that then you aren’t paying attention.

I don’t want to rant about that much, so that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. Getting back to sacrifice, think for a moment about what it means to sacrifice something. To give up something of value. For a sacrifice to mean something, you have to miss it. You have to give it up. The more important what you are giving up is to you, the more valuable the sacrifice, the more meaning it has, the more power it has. I think this is something that we miss when we talk about sacrifice today. I think it’s something we don’t want to see. We’re all caught up in symbolic sacrifice, which has value and power. But we sort of see it as a way of getting around the necessity of sacrifice to create change. Symbolic sacrifice is powerful because it reminds us of the real deal. It stirs the feelings and memories of real sacrifice, and that gives it ooomph.

But in the end, it is only symbolic, and there’s only so much ooomph our memories and fears can give it. Imagine the discipline and power you could generate by fasting for a day. That imagining can be given as sacrifice. We can make it real and experience it in our minds and it can have great power. But the experience of fasting for a day releases a far greater power, because we have actually pursued the course and given of ourselves to the path. (On a side note, we often lose the power of sacrificial acts by spending time focusing on the act of the sacrifice, and not focusing the energy on our goal, or spending too much time congratulating ourselves for our efforts.)

Just as important, is the realization that the object being sacrificed is not necessarily the primary source of power when talking about sacrifice. The power comes from what we have sacrificed yes, but also from our reaction to the act of that sacrifice. Burning a wicker goat in place of cutting a real goats throat may have exactly the same physical energy involved (although if we bring spirits and Gods into the equation, often the object being sacrificed is of tantamount importance). But it is much easier for us to burn a wicker goat than to actually cut the throat of a real one. The power of our reaction to the act of actually killing a goat is (in general) much more visceral and powerful than our emotional response to watching a wicker pile go up in flame. This is the level that we ignore often. Sacrificing our own desires, compromising our ethics or taste. These are the things that powerful sacrifices are made of. It’s not about the goat. It’s about what you have to give up in order to carry out the sacrifice of the goat.

One could view it in a karmic light, and I think one should explore that, but it’s not my point of interest tonight. For now, think about that goat. What does it cost you to burn a wicker effigy of it? What does it cost you to shoot it with a gun from 50 feet? To inject it with poison? What if it’s a goat that you’ve never seen before? How is that cost different if you raised the goat from birth? If you eat meat, is the sacrifice different if you slaughter it in a way to make the goat inedible, wasting the virtue of it’s flesh?

The point I’m driving at here, is that sacrifice is not so simple as give up A to get B. The power in A, the value of A, is not the most important part of the equation, it’s only one part of the price. The other part is equally important, and sometimes more important. What does it cost you to give up A?

One last thought. In our society, A is almost always money. How does it affect your relationship with money to think about it as the currency of your labor, the product of the hours you have sacrificed at work? And if we view money as a symbolic sacrifice of that time and effort, are the things we spend it on worth it?

I’m not feeling down, just emotional. This is probably the emotional high to match the mental high I felt this morning. The full moon is bathing me. I feel full of life and love. Everything feels more potent at the moment, my fear, my excitement, my hope, my desire. Strangely absent is my obsession over these things. I seem to be experiencing my feelings without holding onto them or grabbing them in my greedy fists. I have some ideas about what’s up with that, but nothing I care to share yet.

I just got done watching Spaceballs a bit ago. Great flick. It makes me smile, plus the guy that plays Lonestar is cute.

I had to dim the light of my laptop screen cause it was too bright, casting too much light into the bedroom. There is moonlight on my wall, a little bit of it is hitting my arm. I like it, and would rather see it than the monitors glow.

There’s a lot going on in my world right now. I’m preparing myself to marry my brother and his fiance in October. Pretty shortly I need to start learning lines for SoulSong, which is in about 10 days now. I feel like I haven’t really done any lasting work in weeks. I haven’t had time to write consistently, or do anything more than sketch outlines for workshops and book chapters. The time that I have had has been spent trying to put out fires or help my friends, clients, and family through their issues, or working for the Brotherhood.

On top of it all I feel like I’m neglecting my career. I wanted to focus on my career this year, but it’s just not happening. I’m focusing on it more than I did last year, but not in the way that I thought I would. This should not really surprise me. My career is not the first priority to the spirits or Gods. I should probably be thankful that I’m not destitute as so many of my peers are.

I also find myself missing a friend and teacher again. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and then I got to spend hours with him on Monday. It was like he’d never left, and I remembered how strongly I always react to his energy, so very different and yet complementary to mine. And I could see how frustrated he was by the distance between us, and I shared that frustration. It had been so long since I’d seen him that it was easy to remember all the times we disagree and not miss him so much, but he’s only been gone a couple days and I am already missing him again.

Too, I’m missing friends that are right here. HerbisOrbis isn’t even all that far away, but we don’t live next door to each other, which would be ideal. Or at least on the same block. George is gone for the next 9 days, and John will be around sporadically only. I get to hang out with my younger brother on Friday, so that will be nice. Hopefully we’ll be at my place so I can work on fixing Samantha’s laptop, but we’ll see how that actually goes.

What Angel wakes me from my flowery bed. I pray thee gentle mortal, sing again. I pray thee gentle mortal sing again.

Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note. So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape. I’ll follow thee. I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell. I’ll follow thee. I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell. And make a heaven of hell.

No, not lonely exactly. I don’t feel lonely, which is odd in itself, because this would normally be a lonely feeling. It’s not exactly ennui either, more like a desire for emotional companionship. There’s a secondary element in play, the desire for physical closeness. It feels like emotional exhaustion, but not the bad kind. Just as though I’ve put my emotions through a very strenuous workout and now they’re tired and want someone to be slothful with. Perhaps I need an emotional workout buddy.

I also feel tired. Not physically, but mentally. I feel as though I want to put down a burden I’ve been carrying all day. As though I have done the Work and wish to rest now. It is very curious. Changes abound, and I knew they were coming, but it is impossible to anticipate all of them, or to really understand them until you’re living with them. And so it is.

okay, almost time to go to bed. First I shall post this, then I shall read a little bit. Then I shall stare softly at the full moon through my window and think fond thoughts of her as she drifts across the dusky purple sky.