How To Find Your Magical Home Airport
by Gordon • • Life, Rants • 16 Comments
This post was written on an iPad, drunk, in the air over France on the way between London and Milan. Apologies for the typos… And everything else.
When I was younger, prettier and single I used to hit the Sydney club scene fairly frequently. I’m talking thrice a week. Minimum. Till sunrise. This was back when the music industry was actually a cool place to work ( if you were young, pretty and slutty.)
Here’s my abiding psychic impression.
MDMA, the active ingredient in the pills I was taking was actually a powerful clairvoyant inhibitor. (And I’m talking “active”. You English or east coast people don’t know what you missed… West coast is feeling me because their drugs were more Mexican and thus more potent. East coast made the mistake of bringing some of theirs in from eastern europe or africa. I got this from a mexican druglord I had a stoned “club encounter” with. But mostly I’m talking to the English. your ecstasy is like aspirin. I encourage you to read into that.)
However, it turns out, it was also an extremely potent clairsentient activator.
In fact, it got to the stage that I could tell my pills were coming on when my psychic vision would “dim” like stage lights and I would become aware of being -outlines in the dark- standing around me, occasionally and probably begrudgingly moving in time with the terrible late nineties trance I adored. (And still do. Sorry.)
I loved these beings. I could only call some of them by name and that was as a result of doing some workings when I wasn’t out on a Friday, Saturday or -gods help me- Wednesday night. But the feeling of connection was there. Most of them weren’t me but also, they were. Even those that werent technically me would still be the last things standing next to me, even if i were sitting in the chair at the end of death row.
It was like discovering you had another six arms you previously didn’t know were there.
These are beings that I can still call in now, if not by name then at least by feel.
And it wasn’t just me.
As I peaked I could see every other clubber, every other raver, and eventually even the taxi driver taking me home (or -too often- to some random waiter’s home) was like a complete, inviolate X-men team of guides, totems, ancestors, familiars, angels and selves.
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. It was unbelievably inspiring and certainly comforting to feel -if not to see- just what another human looks like once you have stepped sideways.
And here is where we get to an unavoidable failing in the classic chaos magic approach.
In any complex system -downsizing corporations or the public service for instance- there is a point beyond which you can’t cut anymore or the whole thing will collapse… An unrelenting drive toward efficiency actually becomes less efficient. An overweight horse isn’t efficient but half a horse is useless.
If results are the top priority then, paradoxically, the belief that belief can be used as a tool may not actually be the most efficient, most “results friendly” metabelief. It might be half a horse.
Milan didn't look this romantic/Miramax but I spent most of my time in a conference
Surely, when you temporarily adopt the belief that some silly robes, funny sounds and mildly unpleasant smells can change the momentum of this universe it’s better to underpin this belief with something that is potentially more revolutionary than just “fake it till you make it seems to work”.
What about the belief that a human being is a luminous, complex, multipart, unknowable being unique in the entire universe….
Surely it is better to throw out the clairvoyance -the arrogant “seeing” and go with the more primal “feeling”.
Be assured I’m not exactly saying this is “true”, just that it might be more effective than a belief in effectiveness.
Outside of actual spell casting, think of making this your “resting place”, your default setting, your home airport:
What you look like to a high, accidentally trance-susceptible, gay teen in a Sydney nightclub is the real you.
You can tear down whatever ideas you like about however you think magic works… But in the long run both your sorcerous efficacy and your spiritual development will be better served by really stitching this idea at the bottom of your brain:
You are a luminous being, unique in all the universe.
If you need any help implanting this idea then read this micro short story and then -for the love of trance- buy this incredible book.
But before that, read this short story about a horse.
In the afterlife, you are treated to a generous opportunity: you can choose whatever you would like to be in the next life. Would you like to be a member of the opposite sex? Born into royalty? A philosopher with bottomless profundity? A soldier facing triumphant battles?
But perhaps you’ve just returned here from a hard life. Perhaps you were tortured by the enormity of the decisions and responsibilities that surrounded you, and now there’s only one thing you yearn for: simplicity. That’s permissible. So for the next round, you choose to be a horse. You covet the bliss of a simple life: afternoons of grazing in grassy fields, the handsome angles of your skeleton and the prominence of your muscles, the peace of the slow-flicking tail or the steam rifling through your nostrils as you lope across the snow blanketed plains.
You announce your decision. Incantations are muttered, a wand is waved, and your body begins to metamorphose into a horse. Your muscles start to bulge; a mat of strong hair erupts to cover you like a comfortable blanket in winter. The thickening and lengthening of your neck immediately feels normal as it comes about you. Your carotid arteries grow in diameter. Your fingers blend hoofward, your knees stiffen, your hips strengthen, and meanwhile, as your skull lengthens into its new shape, your brain races in the changes: your cortex retreats as your cerebellum grows, the homunculus melts man to horse, neurons redirect, synapses unplug and replug on their way to equestrian patterns, and your dream of understanding what it is like to be a horse gallops toward you from the distance. Your concern about human affairs begins to slip away, your cynicism about human behavior melts, and even your human way of thinking begins to drift away from you.
Suddenly, just for a moment, you are aware of the problem you overlooked. The more you become a horse, the more you forget the original wish. You forget what it is like to be a human wondering what it was like to be a horse.
This moment of lucidity does not last long. But it serves as the punishment for your sins, a Promethean entrails-pecking moment, crouching half-horse half-man, with the knowledge that you cannot appreciate the destination without knowing the starting point; you cannot revel in the simplicity unless you remember the alternatives.
And that’s not the worst revelation. You realize that the next time you return here, with your thick horse brain, you won’t have the capacity to ask to become human again. You won’t understand what a human is. Your choice to slide down the intelligence ladder is irreversible. And just before you lose your final human faculties, you painfully ponder what magnificent extraterrestrial creature, enthralled with the idea of finding a simpler life, chose in the last round to become a human.
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
Gordon, you always tell the truth. Always! But alcohol and French airspace seem to make you really, really truthful. Go there and write as often as possible, okay?
The horse thing: are you slyly responding to my last posting, or did we get onto the same imaginal wavelength? I’m assuming you’ve been so biz you haven’t had time to keep up with your feed reader, in which case… wow.
Scribbler´s last [type] ..Imposing Discipline with the Four-Banger
@Scribs haven’t got there yet. And it’s off to Barcelona tomorrow so I’ll read it now.
@Vivienne Haha. Cheers. But you know what they say: “in prosecco veritas”.
This post is mad and I like it!
Skye´s last [type] ..A Call
1. I love that you said step sides, Chrys and I have been talking about White Wolf and magic on twitter lately.
2. I know what you mean about the club experience, when you see everything open up and you feel that universal heart beat and can See people. I never tripped but I drank so much I may as well have been.
3. I’d love to be seen through that lense and be told what is seen/felt.
4. I was a goth club kid so it was a similar experience and some days I still miss it even though most of the time by 10p I’m not ready to start my night. So for old time’s sake, I’m hoping to get to my old stomping grounds next weekend. The goth scene is kinder to its elders more than other scenes.
5. You know this means we’re going clubbing together when I visit, right?
Fascinating…
I picked ‘human’. The ‘simplicity’ I chose was to be female, but in a time/place where male domination, endless babies, pain and early death were not automatically fated for me. Sure, the dire tide was (and still is) still against me, but I prevailed.
I think I chose well- got to remember my previous magical lives, got to learn the Subtle Things, and had the leisure- and the health- to cultivate my senses.
I’ve never tried the drugs (and don’t want to, at this late date), but that trance rhythm does kick the Theta beat in the mind into gear…
I love trance and techno for that very reason.
I not sure how it fits in with what Gordon is writing but I feel compelled to share about my experience with decision making through consensus vs majority vote.
In my experience for reasonably small (up to 25 or so people) and homogenous groups consensus is faster and leaves everybody feeling better about the decision. Every decision after that will also benefit from the trust built up in the consensus process.
But that’s counter intuitive. Most people think that if you get a quick vote and what the majority wants is what happens, that will be faster. So we end up with decision making that polarizes people and creates enemies and resentments over time. Plus it takes longer because people talk more when they don’t feel heard.
Apel Mjausson´s last [type] ..Authenticity of Magickal Ingredients
Interestingly, the natural state of enlightened awareness in the Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen teachings is sometimes called “intrinsic primordial luminosity” or something like that, depending on the translator.
I cannot judge though have you experienced this primordial luminosity or not. The natural state is a subtle thing and it does not reveal itself through writing easily.
I do agree with you, that the metabelief of using belief as a tool is a half a horse. Where I have found the belief shifting useful is the attitude that if you do something magically wise, you really do it and you do not just pretend. But as a in depth view of things magical, it does not appear to function well.
Kündröl Namchuk´s last [type] ..Drifting in Helsinki
That horse bit….fantastic, sir.
Frater AIT´s last [type] ..Pantheacon this year is going to be Special
Where’s Gordon 02/18/2011?
RO´s last [type] ..Its on- like Donkey Kong!
Lately I have started to experience half a hourse ineffectiveness. Streamlining, working more, spending less, eating less.. have honestly made me tired, cranky, and less productive. Which is why I have been taking a step back.
Jow´s last [type] ..Awww maaaan
@Ro Barcelona. Let’s say it all together: “bar-r-r-r-rth’lona!”
And apparently they don’t have much internet access in Barrrrrth’lona. Isn’t there a Gordon’s Observational Law that says you’re not allowed to go 9 days without posting something on a blog?
RO´s last [type] ..Different Strokes
Beautiful reflection, and beautiful short story for an ending. You shouldn’t start this post by apologising
I’d like to say one thing about metabelief, because i think there is some general confusion around this. Belief is about interpretation, not about perception. You can’t doubt your experiences; what you must doubt is the explanation, you give to your experiences. Explanation is always a belief. Experience is never. It isn’t faith either. It’s unquestionable certainty. What you live, is, and in the end it is the only thing that really matters.
So, for example, you can think: maybe i could operate as something else than matter; maybe i could fly, maybe i could go through walls, and in the end that kind of thinking is one of the things that turns you into a magician. But you KNOW you CAN experience yourself as matter. You know you can reach out, take your glass of booze, then drink it, use your legs to get on a plane, pick up your tablet and write some stuff. If we started doubting this, we might as well be gone, because we would never reach enough certainty to actually take any decision or do anything. And you don’t even have to have faith in experience either. Belief being a tool means it isn’t the core of your understanding.
So my point is, if you stretch your perception to the point that you can understand the human being as a luminous being, not as a visualization but as a reality, just as real (at least) as the physical body that almost all of us understand, that’s not a concept anymore. That’s your experience, and there’s really no point in doubting, or believing it, anymore. You just know it. The only difference between this understanding and the understanding of having hands is that you’re going to have a lot less social consensus with the first. But tell you what, if someone came and told me that my hands don’t exist, i’d probably tell them to go screw themselves, and i wouldn’t feel any less open-minded for that. Unless they had cut my hands first, in which case i’d think they had a sick sense of humor. Luminous beings are we. We’re also this crude matter.
Metabelief is, for me, a milestone in the evolution of human thinking (or will be when it standardizes… i hope). But it only applies to reason. If we start applying it to everything else, we’re damning ourselves to drift endlessly in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go. We are locking ourselves in Chapel Perilous indefinitely for no reason.
Come again, most of us need to do that at some point or another in order to learn to separate our unconscious beliefs from our deep experiences of reality. I know i still confuse them sometimes. One would say they’re completely different things and we shouldn’t have a problem in telling them apart, we human beings as a whole standing out as we do for knowing ourselves. Oh wait.
But this is what metabelief is for. Tell you what. Metabelief is also a tool.
Correction: i still confuse unconscious belief for direct understanding A LOT OF TIMES. Let’s not try to mask it.