Song Of The Day: The Other Side Of Summer / Elvis Costello
Word Of The Day: Phthisozoics / the art of killing harmful animals (fthys-o-ZO-iks)

Now you can’t afford to fake
all the drugs your parents used to take
Because of their mistakes
you’d better be wide awake

You tell 'em Elvis.

I spent the week with Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Kashmir Shaivists, Hindus all gathered in one room, part of Integral Spiritual Center's second gathering of all traditions in a dialogue / four quadrant square-dance of Love in action. Not one fist fight. If anything, we all wanted to make out. We were tri-kaya frisky, you all. My only regret is I have but one religion to debase (Zen). Oh, so many great traditions, so little time... or not. I mean, incarnation, excarnation, you'll get a chance to inhabit every religion under the Sun including the Solar over-Soul. We had Rabbi Mark Gafni, Father Thomas Keating, Brother David, Rabbi Zallman, Swami Sally Kempton, Patrick Sweeney, Steve Brill, Larry Wachowski, Genpo Roshi, Diane Hamilton, John Kestler, Vidyuddeva, Elizabeth Lesser, Jim Marion, Fred Koffman, Frances Vaughen, Roger Walsh, and ... who am I forgetting? Oh, Ken Wilber.

I know what you're wondering. How was the food? Really good. I internalized, extracted its beneficial properties, and excreted the rest in solid and liquid waste. Which was hermetically sealed, enshrined, and displayed as the sacred relics of ISC week. At my house, anyway.

I know what else you're wondering. Why no Shamanism?? Where were the shamans, mofo? I held that piece. As all good rock 'n roll is really Shamanism in disguise, or vice versa, or whatever, don't worry, I had a voodoo doll in my pants the hole time.

My favorite moment of the week? When Rabbi Zalman took the stage and gave a passionate call to arms for (in my words) the esoteric traditions to cultivate a new subtle technology, manifest the science of spirit, cultivate the mystical art of meta-psychiasis (psychiasis is healing of the soul, so meta-psychiasis would be the trained capacity of any agent of the Mystery to operate upon and exert positive influence within the Over-soul, or psychic / subtle dimension of sentient beings). He was explicit and clear, he did not mean this as a metaphor, and that is what I most appreciated. I deeply concur, we simply will not negotiate the path of evolution in the next 1,000 years (or 100, for that matter) if we do not step forward into another order of engagement. There are three bodies -at least- so when the fuck are we going to OWN all of them, train ALL of them, and summon every capacity and faculty in the pale of humanity toward a more awakened World? I am so sick of these dimensions (psychic, subtle, causal) being entertained as ornamental constructs, vague abstractions that "somehow" get grandfathered in to our collective "reality" as blips on the periphery, epiphenomena on margins of Mind. Fucking Fact open for verification for anyone who cares to submit to the rigors of trans-rational empericism (think there's no such thing as trans-rational empericism? Talk to me after your soul has vacated its corpus.): Three Bodies. THREE FUCKING BODIES. Our present efficacy as Agents of Communion in the macro- dimensional diamond of ~!~?~!~ is a withered, anemic forfeiture of our divine right, our sacred entitlement, our simple Lot as Love. Rabbi Zalman was basically the first man or woman I've heard stand up and unapologetically call a Kosmic Spade a Kosmic Spade: It's NOT A METAPHOR. We need to fucking own it, stand in it, train it, cultivate it -IT being our inherent capacity to function fluently in the very real, critically important dimenions of Psychic, Subtle, and Causal arenas of Being. I believe the word Reb Zalman used was "Psychonaut".

Like it or not, that's our gig. Ignoring and denying the anatomy of our Essential Self will not alter it. When we die, and our fucking filters of fear are annihilated in the Radiant Light of Reality, we're gonna be plunged back into the unmediated Wow of What Is, and we'll wish we'd spent TWO FUCKING seconds training, working, cultivating, PLAYING in the light of Reality instead of contracting over and over, shrinking into the shadows of delusions, craving, aversion, and the general assemblage of dimensia known as the Human Condition. While we -even esoteric mystical practioners- sit around and speculate whether or not these dimensions exist, what their implications may be, and how we might someday begin to engage them more consciously, our WINDOW IS CLOSING. This drives me nuts, and I will forever be in admiration and gratitude to the Rabbi for calling us out, calling us forth, and stating flatly that these realms are not phantasy, not conjecture, but are inseparable, indispensable, and without a working, practical facility with those domains... WE'RE FUCKED. (again, my words)

I was moved by the Rabbi's words, and I went over to tell him in person I am devoting my life to doing whatever I can with whatever is available to train these capacities, to explore these domains, and engage the Game of Being as deeply as I can, for the sake of all beings everywhere. Constant consciousness in all three bodies or BUST! i want access to every part of the dream, every inch of the labyrinth, anything less is bullshit. anything less is a fucking cowardly retreat from the life and death struggle of our brothers and sisters.