tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35219756886675359782024-02-25T02:20:51.924-08:00The Temple of ZenarchyPersonal blog of Chance J. Feldstein (www.alchemicalgaming.com)Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-75012868274953135002020-05-10T11:06:00.001-07:002022-12-15T15:24:40.362-08:00An Encoded Teaching from the Garden of Eden StoryI wrote this about a year ago, but never posted it anywhere public. Figured this blog is still the best place. Hope you all enjoy it.<br />
<br />
I was talking with a friend about the Lilith / Samael story and Lilith's other myths, and I think I might have figured out an encoded teaching from a long time ago. I'm going to present it like a logical syllogism:<br />
<br />
<b>Premises:</b><br />
<ol>
<li>Samael may be the serpent in Pardes (Eden). This might be a Christian idea, so it doesn't really matter here but it adds something extra if you believe it.</li>
<li>Samael ("Venom of God") / Lucifer ("Lightbringer") gets punished for trying to take over heaven.</li>
<li>If we grant that Samael and Lucifer are the same person, it's reasonable to think there's something in common between the meanings of both his names.</li>
<li>"Venom of God" is usually understood to mean he's an angel of death, but when combined with "Lightbringer", I think what this says is that the light of truth very frequently feels like poison to someone who isn't ready to hear it. This echoes Plato's Allegory of the Cave and also Solomon's words about the price of wisdom in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes).</li>
<li>So "Lucifer" is really "Forbidden, potentially dangerous truths". That makes the Garden of Eden story something like an alchemical manuscript.</li>
<li>Why would such an honest being try to usurp his father's place in heaven, especially when it's that same father who made him the most beautiful being in all creation? He'd do that if, and only if, he knew his father was not competent or moral enough to rule. Angels can't help but be what they are, and he is both an angel of poison and the most powerful single angel in creation. Therefore, he is a natural Godkiller or divine assassin.</li>
<li>With Lucifer out of the picture, God had no other beings left who could really challenge him, at least not within the Abrahamic mythos. But Lilith still defied his commandment to be subservient to her husband, and so he cursed her too. Are you starting to see how God is not much more than a metaphor for an abusive father?</li>
<li>Lilith primarily represents mirrors (associated with death because they're covered when sitting shiva), crib death / SIDS, feminism, and dark magic.</li>
<li>So... The angel of forbidden, potentially dangerous truths gets punished for his unsuccessful rebellion, because he cares more about his fellow angels and the humans than he cares about obeying his abusive and deranged dad. This makes him just like Abraham, who smashed his father's idols and fled his house. Sit with that a second: Lucifer is the single biblical figure who is MOST like Abraham!</li>
<li>So if Lilith got punished for being a feminist, that makes her most like... you guessed it, Sarah, who laughed at God when he said she'd have a baby in her old age.</li>
<li>My theory here is that the rabbis encoded this story into the various places where we found it (Talmud, Mishnah, The Alphabet of Ben Sirah, probably other places) as a magic key to unlock critical thinking and nondual thinking in the reader. How do I know this? Because God creates Adam and Ishah (Eve) without the knowledge of good and evil, meaning they are literally unable to understand why disobeying God is supposedly evil. And then once they eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the text says God was afraid they would "become like us" by eating from the Tree of Life. Is that what an an infinitely loving god does? Hell no.</li>
</ol>
<br />
<b>Conclusion:</b><br />
<br />
Therefore... The true heroes of the entire story are Lilith and Lucifer.<br />
<br />
Please fact-check me and also check my logic here. I could easily be missing something. But at minimum, this was a lot of fun for me to explore as a thought experiment. I hope you enjoy it.<br />
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I really wanted to end this post with a mic drop, but can't do that after asking to be fact-checked :(Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-12354887857032480532017-08-23T10:08:00.005-07:002022-12-15T15:33:34.555-08:00Jason's Delicious Whole Wheat (Gingerbread?) Challah RecipeSome years ago, a client named Leslie was kind enough to teach me how to bake challah using standard white flour. Her recipe is both simple and wonderful. She mentioned she had experimented a bit with whole wheat flour, but the resulting bread came out more like a brick. <br /><br />Since then, I've found a <a href="http://allrecipes.com/recipe/181046/irresistible-whole-wheat-challah/">recipe for a whole wheat challah</a> that worked pretty well for me. I tried it because I was low-carbing, and well on my way to becoming diabetic. But I had to modify it a bit with some of the instructions from Leslie's recipe, to get it to turn out right. Everyone seems to love it, so I'm sharing the final version here.<br />
<br />
I'm also going to include a few optional ingredients, in case you want to make my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgivukkah">Thanksgivvukkah</a> gingerbread challah version from a few years ago. Yummy, but almost more of a dessert cake than a loaf of bread. If you make this version, I strongly recommend getting freshly ground ginger and cinnamon, from a store with more than one variety to choose from.<br />
<br />
Neither version seems to brown on top the way a white flour challah would, but I promise you that's normal and doesn't affect the taste đ<br />
<br />
<b>Ingredients (Both Regular Whole Wheat and Gingerbread):</b><br />
<br />
4 cups whole wheat flour<br />
1 teaspoon salt<br />
2 packets active dry quick-rise yeast<br />
1/2 cup brown sugar (or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truvia-Brown-Sugar-Blend-Ounce/dp/B00R580SWA?th=1">brown sugar-Stevia blend</a>)<br />
Sesame seeds<br />
2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten (optional)<br />
<br />
1/2 cup honey (or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truvia-Nectar-3-5-Ounce/dp/B01GVGPWMM/ref=sr_1_3_s_it?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1503516136&sr=1-3&keywords=honey%2Bstevia%2Bblend&th=1">honey-Stevia blend</a>)<br />
1/2 cup olive oil<br />
1 cup very warm water (hot, but not so hot you can't leave your finger in it)<br />
3 eggs<br />
<br />
<b>Spices for Gingerbread Challah Only: </b><br />
<br />
3 teaspoons ground ginger<br />
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon<br />
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg<br />
1 teaspoon ground cloves<br />
<br />
<b>Directions:</b><br />
Prep time: About 2 hours<br />
Cook time: 30 minutes<br />
Ready in about 2 hours and 30 minutes.<br />
<br />
1. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, salt, spices (if any), and vital wheat gluten until well mixed.<br />
<br />
2. Make a well in the middle of the bowl. I usually use a measuring cup. Gently pour the brown sugar around the edge of the bowl, so that it sits on top of the mixture but does not fall in the middle.<br />
<br />
3. Pour the very warm water into the middle of the bowl, add both packets of yeast, and stir gently. Allow yeast to sit in the water for 10 minutes.<br />
<br />
4. In another bowl, stir together the honey, olive oil, water, and two of the eggs. I like to use a whisk to make sure they are well mixed.<br />
<br />
5. Once the yeast is done soaking in the water, pour the liquid mixture you just made into the large bowl. Stir and knead it until it forms a dough.<br />
<br />
6. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. It may also help to dust your hands with a little flour from time to time, to prevent too much dough from sticking to them.<br />
<br />
7. Form the dough into a round shape. Lightly oil a bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn the dough over a few times to oil the surface. Cover the bowl with a cloth, and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled, about 1 hour.<br />
<br />
8. Punch down the dough, knead it a few times to remove some of the bubbles, and cut it into 2 equal-sized pieces. Set 1 piece of dough aside under a cloth or plastic wrap to prevent drying out while you shape or braid the first loaf as desired.<br />
<br />
9. Working on a floured surface, roll the small dough pieces into ropes about the thickness of your thumb and about 12 inches long. Ropes should be fatter in the middle and thinner at the ends. Pinch 3 ropes together at the top and braid them <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6aIAh2Vt8">this way</a>. Continue braiding, alternating sides each time, until the loaf is braided, and pinch the ends together and fold them underneath for a neat look.<br />
<br />
10. Repeat step 9 for the other loaf. Place the braided loaves on a baking sheet lined with a silicone baking mat. I normally use two, because this bread burns very easily on the bottom. Some people prefer parchment paper.<br />
<br />
11. Let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 30 minutes. Near the stove is fine, but not on top of it. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees while waiting.<br />
<br />
12. In a small bowl, beat the last egg well. Then use a brush (or in a pinch, a spoon) to paint the top of the loaves lightly. Then sprinkle them with sesame seeds.<br />
<br />
13. Bake for 30 minutes at 350. Best enjoyed while still warm.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-39186881039694471652017-06-30T09:29:00.002-07:002017-06-30T09:40:42.085-07:00The Times, They Are A-Changin'While I'm still using this blog for personal posts, any writing intended for the public will be on <a href="http://disinfo.com/author/jason-louis-feldstein/">Disinfo</a> from now on. Some older pieces from Boundary Crosser are likely to appear there in revised form, also. At this moment, <a href="http://disinfo.com/2017/06/fortune-may-favor-bold-society-favors-lawful/">one of those </a>is already live.<br />
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Thanks for your support and feedback, everybody.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-2995137147862111142017-02-18T11:10:00.002-08:002022-12-15T15:34:03.783-08:00Lies the Spider Told Me, Part 3: A Fable<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Once there was a woman who loved her daughter very much. But it had been a long time since they spoke regularly, and she had not heard from her daughter in several months. On this particular day, she was thinking about this and feeling very sad while making her breakfast.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Just then, she noticed a spider crawling up the wall. Because the woman was a wise old witch, as many mothers are, she knew this was no ordinary spider. It was none other than Anansi, trickster, teacher, and king of all stories.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Please, can you help me?" she asked the spider. "I'm afraid my daughter doesn't love me anymore."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"I'm always glad to listen," Anansi said. His deep baritone voice boomed comically from the tiny spider body. "What's going on?"</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Well, I haven't heard from her for a long time," lamented the woman. "She hasn't called, or written, or come by to visit me. She must not have room in her life for her old mother anymore."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"And what happened when you called her, or wrote her a letter, or stopped by her house to say hello?" Anansi asked.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The woman shook her head. "I couldn't do that. I know she doesn't want to hear me. If she did, she'd have been in touch by now."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Anansi burst out laughing. "You humans are so silly sometimes," he said.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The woman's face grew red and hot with anger. "How dare you laugh at my pain when I came to you for advice?" she shouted.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Your pain is real," said the spider. "Now let me show you the mistake that created it. It's true that your daughter might not care about you anymore, and if so, you have my sympathy. But set aside that explanation for a moment and think of another one."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The woman pondered, and soon tears were welling up in her eyes. "How could I be so insensitive? She must be sick, or injured, or in trouble. She could even be dead!"</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Anansi laughed again. "Also true, but now set that story aside and think of another."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Hmm..." said the woman. "She could just be busy with work or her friends. She always did make too many plans..."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Good," said Anansi. "Why else?"</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The woman thought, and then suddenly smiled. "She could be in love! That's so overwhelming. Why didn't I think of that before?"</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Because you were too attached to the first story you thought of. Even though you didn't like it," Anansi replied. "Now you see the lesson. A great storyteller once said, 'Our lives become the stories that we weave.' So you must always try to spin tales that empower, tales that comfort, tales that transform not just your friends or your family or your community, but most of all yourself.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; margin-top: 6px;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Now go tell your daughter this story, and give her a big hug for me."</span>Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-63716467485263714562016-12-26T08:15:00.004-08:002022-12-15T15:34:40.175-08:00Don't Be a Serf, Be a Badass Storm GodI'd like to take a little time here to talk about some of the ways in which my beliefs have evolved over the past couple of years. Like most chaos magicians, for a long time I was in an approach-avoidance dance with belief. I considered it a useful tool, and could turn it on in a surprisingly deep way. Unfortunately, I also discovered that when the trance got deep enough, I couldn't simply turn the switch back off. Fundamentalism is a heady drug, but at this point I feel comfortable saying that with the help of doctors, family and friends, I was able to swim my way back up, get my head above water, and find my way back to shore.<br />
<br />
Belief, I now feel, is not so much the problem by itself. It's belief without question, in other words "putting your sword down", that can be the real danger. And I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that it is the notion of worship itself that's largely the problem here. I'm going to illustrate why, by discussing the idea that we each are created in God's image and have the spark of divinity within us. To me, it seems worship is when we take that spark, externalize it, and tell ourselves we can never truly aspire to be that awesome. Partnership, in contrast, would be when we recognize it's our own higher self, and do what we can to fan the internal spark into a mighty flame. Perhaps these two modes needn't be mutually exclusive, but I find them hard to balance. And if I were to pick one, partnership would be the obvious choice. If that's a revolutionary idea, consider that Hanukkah is the most revolutionary holiday we have; it is literally about trying to retake Israel from the Syrians through terrorism / guerrilla warfare.<br />
<br />
During one of my more loopy periods in late 2014 or early 2015, I went to the local New Age / occult bookstore Journeys of Life to look for minerals and gemstones. I knew that I was feeling out of balance, not grounded or centered enough, but wasn't sure what to do about it. In the course of finding some stones that I hoped would help to even me out, I spoke to a lovely employee about what many of their stones could be used for. I remember her saying there were certain ones best for communication with gods or spirits vertically, and others that were better for communicating horizontally; she illustrated this point with her hands.<br />
<br />
Vertical communication would be "worship" - the other being is in a superior place, and you are below as supplicant, asking for a favor. Alternatively, in a goetic situation, you may be the one at the top, negotiating your summoned spirit into a subservient position through threats or manipulation. One need only look as far as Genesis or Exodus to see that God does this to the Hebrews / Israelites in the bible again and again. But it's important to keep in mind that every book is a product of its times. When the Jews were wandering in the desert, never knowing where their next food or shelter might come from, the idea of a strong, all-knowing, protective, even territorial father god must have been very comforting indeed. Giving such a being offerings in exchange for protection from those who must have been far worse makes some sense. But in today's world, the phrase "protection money" conjures up far less appetizing images.<br />
<br />
Nietzsche wasn't wrong about biblical morality being slave morality. If God is an all-powerful father, then humans occupy the role of protected, permanently infantilized children. At best, the situation is comparable to domesticated dogs or cats. But can't we do better than that? We aren't wandering in the desert anymore. Today we should all be aiming at self-actualization, not mere survival. Whatever abilities we delegate to God, we are choosing not to learn ourselves. And Galileo put it best: "I am not obliged to believe that the same Creator who endowed us with sense and reason intended us to forgo their use."<br />
<br />
Since the rise of hasidism in Europe, and likely ever since the writing of the Zohar, Judaism has had a different metaphor for communication with the divine. Shabbat comes, and the presence of the divine visits us as the Sabbath Bride, dwelling among us, communicating with us in a horizontal way I would call "partnership". (Yes, that's a double entendre for talking face to face and also intercourse, but it's not really a secret that these two forms of communication are different variations on the same theme. It's why the bible uses the verb "to know" the way it does.) God comes around to Netflix and chill with us because we're not just good listeners, but because we're also really hot in the sack and God wants to bang us so hard. Like, he's seriously been stalking us for millennia now. We are just that cool. Being "a kingdom of priests" means God wants to whisper sweet nothings in our ears 24/7, if we feel like listening and actually have the time.<br />
<br />
So remember, this is a partnership with a being who wants to be with you. You are not a serf or a vassal, but a treasured life partner. When that little voice in your head tells you that God is a big disapproving father figure in the sky, remember this is the voice of the Christian culture in which you live. More importantly, remember not to sell short your God-given internal divinity. You can't "sin" against your higher self, except by ignoring that it's there in the first place. Apotheosis isn't stealing anything from heaven... it's reclaiming what is rightfully yours (and freely given). And while any lover appreciates gifts, if they're sincere and well-deserved it means a lot more than some lousy obligatory socks or fountain pen. Use your talents to change the world in the most effective way you know how; there is no greater gift.<br />
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The legacy of Judaism that I love the most is that of free thought. "Two Jews, three opinions," as the saying goes. We are the people whose patriarch Abraham is held up as an example for telling God he was full of shit about Sodom and Gomorrah... and that's to say nothing of smashing his father's idols, years before. His wife Sarah laughed in God's face for saying she could have a baby at her age. In one rabbinic story, a poor illiterate man recites the alphabet instead of praying, realizing God can put the letters together to form the prayers without his help. In another, God sends an angel of death to destroy the earth, and a rabbi earns praise from heaven by abolishing the decree and threatening to curse that angel. Even outright miracles that contradict the laws of physics should not be enough to shake our conviction in what is right, the Talmud tells us. "Israel" = "The one who wrestles with God".<br />
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We are a proud, arrogant, stiff-necked people, and if there's anything that will make us "a light to the nations" in the oncoming Trump years, it's that very quality. I daresay it's what we were chosen <i><b>for</b>. </i>We have big mouths and we're not afraid to use them. One only has to look as far as that perennial Hanukkah favorite <i>The Hebrew Hammer</i> to see that we are as stereotypically famous for our ability to kvetch (complain) as for our perceived musical aptitude. Certainly this has taken commedians like Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld far. The outsider status is critical to effective satire, as Canadian and British comedians have also taught Americans for a while now. And with regard to fascism, we would seem to be the canaries in the coal mine today.<br />
<br />
While his scholarship is sometimes a bit fast and loose, Gershon Winkler claims one possible meaning for the word "Hebrew" is "boundary-crosser". I thought it was a perfect title for a blog in which I rarely seem to hit the same topic twice. But it also inspires me to tear down useless boundaries, as you can see from posts like <a href="http://boundary-crosser.jewishmagic.net/2016/06/a-few-words-on-lawful-privilege.html">"A Few Words on Lawful Privilege"</a> and "<a href="http://boundary-crosser.jewishmagic.net/2016/09/coming-out-of-golden-apple-closet.html">Coming Out of the Golden Apple Closet"</a> . Sometimes repairing those broken vessels means breaking other shit. The time for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35FzUW8WaYc">poetic terrorism</a> is now, and as Jews we must be poised to take advantage of it.<br /><br />Sing, canaries. We are keepers of important music. Sing it loud and often. Sing as if your life depended on it, because perhaps it does. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1C5bE4Z7Eo">Sing it out for the ones that'll hate your guts.</a> Sing a better world into being, not because the great skydaddy told you to, but because you actually do carry a part of the wisdom we all need right now.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-40590087547524554442016-10-19T11:29:00.003-07:002022-12-15T15:37:32.355-08:00Golden Age Draft: Evolution of a Vision<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Since the Moon went out<br />dire wolves have been seen about the town.</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Since the Moon went out<br />fiery pools are opening underground.</i></span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Since the Moon went out</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>the ocean lost its hold over the Deep.</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>
</i></span>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Since the Moon went out</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>the Old Blood spell now fails to turn the feet.</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Since the Moon went out<br />
there's a God and a Hell that can't believe in themselves anymore.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Since the Moon went out<br />
what had once seemed demons dream of all they once were before.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Since the Moon went out<br />
the Lady of the Mountain has lost control of the Wild Hunt.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Since the Moon went out</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
pureblood Magdalenites can do almost anything they want.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Since the Moon went out<br />
both the Djinn and the Fae have been poised to reconquer this world.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Since the Moon went out<br />
the Lightbringer's banners are once again being unfurled.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Since the Moon went out<br />
it seems fear itself<br />
might just rip our small world apart,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
for the Moon's gone out<br />
and now none may doubt<br />
what's been concealed inside each human heart.</div>
</i></span></div>
<i>-Simon Zealot</i><br />
<br />
When I first started working on Golden Age a few years ago, I have to admit my ideas were a bit fanboyish and one-sided. The original concept for the game came out of my passions for mythology, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and Islamic Spain (also called al-Andalus). I wanted to show a historical period in which the <i>convivencia</i> of Muslims, Christians and Jews created a society in which literature, art, and science flourished in a way rarely seen in European history (let alone the Middle Ages). Cordoba was the ornament of the world, featuring technologies and even tropical fruits that were unknown in the rest of Europe, and a cosmopolitan society unlike any the continent had seen since Rome. Al-Andalus was a veritable paradise of religious and cultural toleration, before such terms had even been invented. I was going to educate the world (or a few gamers at least) about interfaith dialogue and religious toleration, through the historical tale of the wonderful land in which rabbis and imams studied each other's scriptures, advancing kabbalah and Sufism rapidly in a comparatively short amount of time.<br />
<br />
The truth, as is usually the case, turned out to be far more nuanced than the myth above. That interpretation is the one currently in vogue with most historians, but it also happens to be primarily the narrative of the minority Muslim and Jewish aristocrat and merchant classes. The Spanish Christian ("mozarab") majority's day-to-day life was far different. Much as I enjoy the poetic justice of Christian Europeans as conquered rather than conquerors, living in a society where Muslim and brown are privileged over Christian and white, the fact remains that colonialism is an ugly and destructive business, regardless of how supposedly enlightened the conquerors are. Thanks to my new coauthors, Simon Zealot and Sara Mastros, I've come to realize that this game does not have any one villain, least of all the forces of the Unformed, who are simply performing their function: un-creating things whenever they can. There is only a single villain if we define it nebulously as "the forces of patriarchy, colonization, and slavery". That definitely feels like a win for everyone.<br />
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Al-Andalus was a society constantly at war with both the Spanish expatriates to the north, and between various small kingdoms within its own borders. Certain non-Muslim groups - Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Sabians - were allowed to live in their own communities, under their own sets of laws, so long as they paid a steep tax (Arabic<i>: jizya</i>) and did not blaspheme against Allah. Maliki legal sources are clear on the dual purpose of the jizya: to humiliate the conquered people, reminding them of their place, and to provide a means by which the Muslim elite would not need to work (or work much) to earn money. In practice, Spanish Jews had higher social standing than their Catholic neighbors, because many helped the invaders in the hope of receiving better treatment under Muslim rule.<br />
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So if Spanish Muslim society divided its citizens into faith communities and determined their rights and privileges that way, we've already covered everybody, right? Well, no. Especially in rural areas, several types of paganism still existed, primarily involving deities from the Roman, Lusitanian, and Basque pantheons. Over time, some concealed their practices within a Catholic or Sabian exterior, while others simply went deeper into hiding. Regardless of its long-standing Iberian roots, paganism was a weed to be destroyed at any cost. Muslims, Jews, and Catholics could all agree on that, so being openly pagan in medieval Spain was a death sentence. Likewise with being openly LGBT, but that hang-up is exclusive to humans; the non-physical races have little interest in legislating each other's gender or sexuality. Women did have more rights and autonomy under the Spanish Caliphate than they had under the previous regime, though still less than in pre-Roman matriarchal societies (of which only the Circle of Gibraltar survives, below).<br />
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Now we come to the supernatural elements of the game. It was always my plan to have the metaphysics and gameplay reflect Golden Age's commitment to presenting cultures in an accurate and balanced way, with a special emphasis on the need for cooperation and dialogue with those who differ from oneself, in order to survive a harsh and unforgiving universe. As one example, I decided that the water elementals of both Spain and the Middle East had long ago been transformed into blood elementals because of near-constant warfare between tribes with close blood ties. The resulting blood elementals are considered both Elementals and Undead from a mechanical perspective; when brother kills brother, even the lakes and rivers eventually begin to weep that blood. A bit heavy handed, perhaps, but my heart was in the right place.<br /><br />But I had some pretty big blind spots.<br />
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While the game is highly focused on magic, I had only thought of one magical school, the Solomonic College. Intended as the precursor of 11th- and 12-century Solomonic grimoires, this school caters mainly to male Jews and Muslims, and is also willing to admit Catholic men. While women are able to join, climbing the ranks would be difficult if not impossible for them. The College's magic, on a good day, is about striking bargains with <i>djinn</i>, angels, and demons... but Solomonic magicians are not above binding or outright enslaving an uncooperative spirit. So despite my lofty goals, the only magical school in this game was an agent of the patriarchal, monotheistic belief that God authorized the adherents of the Abrahamic faiths to be spiritual bullies in the tradition of King Solomon / Suleiman. Need some magic? No problem - just go to the Solomonics and buy yourself a ring or a lamp with a djinn imprisoned inside. Thanks to my coauthors, we now have the older and more egalitarian (as well as historical!) Sabian Academy, practicing a syncretic form of hermeticism, as well as the Circle of Gibraltar, heirs to ancient feminine mysteries of Moon and Earth that predate language itself. Everyone knows the best midwives come from Gibraltar, but only a few still remember how far their abilities extend beyond the anatomical and the herbal.<br />
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Another blind spot: I had originally conceived this game as a high fantasy RPG mixed with a historical RPG. But at the same time, I was trying to include as much real-world magical theory as possible, for the benefit of those who might like to learn some Western occultism while they play. With the help of my new coauthors, it quickly became clear that the game couldn't be fictionalized high fantasy if I wanted it to be based on sound occult principles. At best, I'd end up with a sloppy hodgepodge of made-up silliness and historical magical systems. So we have re-conceived the game as historical magical realism: the magic is as real-world correct, in terms of historical magical practices and beliefs, as we can make it. That isn't to say the core book is primarily a book of spell recipes, but you can generally expect that the procedures and components of the included spells will have sound correspondences, research, and occult theory behind them. We have removed anachronistic elements such as the Lurianic Tree of Life and the tarot, in favor of systems that were actually used at that time, such as the seven planetary intelligences and geomancy. Instead of eight or more arbitrary types of magic, we have reduced them to four essences that echo the four classical elements: Soul (Water), Energy (Fire), Substance (Earth), and Thought (Air).<br />
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For the sake of verisimilitude, we've also removed some types of humanoids (such as fish people) and replace them with species that could have reasonably have evolved from currently-known hominid species. Hence, we now have the Okeanids, with one tribe a bit like otters and others more like walruses, whales or dolphins. They evolved this way after being driven from the land by early <i>homo sapiens</i>:<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The legends tell that, before even the Old People came to Europe, there were people in Iberia. As the Old Ones moved in, they pushed the First People out of their caves, to the coast. The Old Ones were smart; their tools were sharp and strong, and they had no need to wait for fire from the sky, they could make it on their own! Soon, the Old Ones, with their big heads and sharp knives, pushed the First People to the brink of extinction. And so the First People entreated with the Sea, who was their Mother, to show them a new way. And she did. The First People retreated first to the swamps and the islands, and then into the Sea itself. The Mother who bore us took us back into her womb, and there we thrived. The Great Teachers, Whale, and Orca, Dolphin and Porpoise, Walrus and Seal, and Little Otter taught us the ways of the Sea. We made pact with them, eating their flesh and communing with their spirits. The ice retreated, and most of the Great Ones with it. Many of our people went with them. Here on the coasts of Spain, only Little Otter, the Mother Oceanâs beloved son, remained with us.</span></span><br />
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As written now, events only diverge from real-world history circa 950 CE, sometime after the Fateful Eclipse. This brief solar eclipse was immediately followed by a lunar eclipse that lasted three full days and nights... and the moon wasn't just in shadow, it was completely gone, inexplicably, with no individual or group claiming responsibility. This, in turn, caused problems with the tides, people's moods and sanity, and the failure of an ancient spell called the Turning of the Feet, which hid the nonhuman species from the eyes of most humans. For three days, everyone could see these "monsters" everywhere, and there was widespread panic. When the moon reappeared, most people lost this ability and returned to their normal lives, but enough found themselves unable to explain it away that interest in the various magical schools skyrocketed as everyone tried to figure out who stole the moon, and why this replacement moon didn't feel or act quite right. Each of the major species has its own story of the creation of the world, each of which hints at a different likely culprit for what happened to the moon, and different tribes or religions within those species also have their own takes on what happened, how, and why.<br />
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The Solomonic College, far from being ancient and tied to Solomon himself as I originally thought, formed in response to this crisis because "obviously" the djinn or the demons must be to blame. The Sabians and Circle of Gibraltar had their own ideas, as did the various djinn and fae tribes, and this is how things have always been. So while some djinn may have converted to Islam, as the Qu'ran and various <i>hadith</i> specifically address them and set forth Allah's laws as it applies to the djinn, this is far from universal. Many djinn consider Islam to be a joint plot between the humans (Mohammed) and the angels (Gabriel) to relegate the djinn to permanent second-class status. Humans are given preferential treatment over djinn in the Qu'ran, and many would be resentful or suspicious of that. Likewise, the feud between the loyalist and rebel angels has more facets than one might expect... but I don't want to give away too much right now. Certain secrets should be for your GM only, but suffice it to say this game can be solely about angelic politics if that's how your group wants to play it. And not everyone currently in heaven is a loyalist.<br />
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I have to be honest and admit that many of these changes felt threatening for me at first. This was my game, my vision, and I didn't like the idea of anyone (even close friends) coming in and totally revamping it. But what Simon and Sara saw, on joining the project, were the ways in which my first draft was in conflict with my goals. In order for the game to feel organically progressive instead of clumsily didactic, the issues that result from colonization need to play out on every level, whether we're focusing on about Arabs and Spaniards; haves and have-nots; Muslims and Christians; colonizers and natives; Abrahamics and pagans; angels, djinn, and demons; humans, spirits, and Okeanids; or Solomonics and djinn (just as a few examples). We aim to present a 360-degree view of both al-Andalus and the supernatural realms such as heaven or Jinnistan. Whatever levels of reality your game inhabits, whether you're playing a rich human city official or a great warrior of one of the faerie courts, the effects of war and conquest will be all around you, for you to engage with or ignore as you choose. The social justice elements, much like the magical theory, are now woven into the fabric of every aspect of the game, so that you can learn about them as a natural consequence of gameplay rather than having them shoved in your face. I want to thank my collaborators, Sara Mastros and Simon Zealot, for making this not just a possibility but an ongoing reality.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-89578950636303805022016-10-12T08:52:00.001-07:002022-12-15T15:25:35.060-08:00Wisdom From the Airwaves: Yom Kippur EditionI've known for a few years now that while I have always loved books, I seem to absorb important moral and philosophical lessons better from media. This Yom Kippur, just as I have several times in the past, I watched the Coen Brothers' incomparable film <i><a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-serious-man-2009">A Serious Man</a>.</i> I plan to watch <i>Atonement</i> later, if only for the title, but <i>A Serious Man</i> is the only film I can really say feels like a Yom Kippur movie to me. Even though the holiday doesn't appear in the movie, I see new levels of its take on personal responsibility, sin, and repentance every time I watch it. As I was loading it up in Plex, I noticed it was billed as a black comedy, but I think of it as a morality play blending Job-like suffering with an understanding of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.<br />
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To explain why, I'll also need to talk a little about two specific episodes of the show <i>Six Feet Under.</i> <a href="http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/six-feet-under-perfect-circles-98402">Perfect Circles</a> and <a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2014/01/22/im-still-not-over-six-feet-under">All Alone</a> . Actually, I don't need to talk about them all that much. All I need to say is that when taken together, Nate from <i>Six Feet Under</i> is undergoing the same exact trial as Lawrence Gopnik does in <i>A Serious Man</i>. Both men fail and are punished. Nate's trial is about overcoming his pattern of betraying the women he loves and seeking greener pastures after a certain amount of time, while Lawrence's concerns the ethical dilemma of accepting a bribe from a failing student. And in both cases, he tells us about the Uncertainty Principle in his own words, so that when we find out he is going to die, we realize he was the cat in the box all along.<br />
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The terrifying part of this usage of the Uncertainty Principle is when one realizes that God is the thing with the power not just to give you cancer, but to decide immediately that the already-tested growth is going to be cancerous, at the exact moment when you decide to accept the bribe and change the student's grade. It is not a coincidence that the phone rings immediately after Larry erases the F and writes a C- in its place. Just as it is not a coincidence that after years of vacillating about his career and cheating on one wife, Nate Fisher dies right after he makes the choice to cheat on his pregnant new wife. Either we we repent, or we may not be sealed in the Book of Life for the year to come. This is the narrative of both characters, with the added tension from the Uncertainty Principle being used to point out that we never know at what point God might judge us unworthy and yank our life away.<br />
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Much as I would like to launch into my usual rant about how God as a critical parent figure judging us from the sky infantilizes people and prevents them from truly taking responsibility for their lives, today I am religiously obligated to be more introspective than that, and I do consider this day potentially valuable. I can see how for a certain kind of mind, the idea of being accountable to a cosmic being feels more urgent than trying to become a better person just for oneself and one's friends or family. I understand it because I used to be that guy. But I also think the message of the holiday is encoded in the usually communal nature of our confession of sin: it is a time about reconnecting to your loved ones, making amends for whatever you've done that hurt them, and most importantly, for breaking destructive patterns that are harming yourself as well.<br />
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In that spirit, I wish everyone a helpful day of introspection about whatever it is you regret from the past, especially the past year. I know that I can be dismissive, pretentious, or honestly just mean at times. I take people for granted, and I'm awful at keeping in touch, even with the people I'd like to see more often. If I have done anything in the past year, deliberately or unintentionally, that caused you to feel hurt, unloved, unimportant, or like I wasn't really your friend, please accept my sincere apologies. Maybe I was preoccupied with something that seemed more important at the time, or maybe I was sincerely being an ass. Perhaps we could talk about it if you're so inclined.<br />
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A rabbi once compared today to a car wash: better to set aside some time for washing yourself off and cleaning up your messes, than to wait so long that the grime becomes caked on and it's nigh-impossible to make a dent in it. It's not even noon yet, and already I have a long list of issues and regrets to work on with my therapist. That is invaluable, and nontraditional as my observance of the holiday may be, it is still tradition that gave me access to the list. I have long struggled with the concept of "sin", as the older I got, the more I began to see it as beating oneself up with self-imposed guilt. Repentance is the important bit, and repentance is nothing more than the moment in which we decide whatever we did was a bad decision and we aren't going to do it again. That's all: just be more awesome this year than last year.<br />
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I wish you all an easy fast if you are fasting, a sweet New Year, and many useful insights on this Day of Introspection.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-38717039560290520192016-09-13T09:55:00.006-07:002022-12-15T15:26:34.361-08:00Coming Out of the Golden Apple ClosetIt's time for me to come clean about something: I enjoy Judaism for its cultural heritage, including folklore, mythology, and of course magical technology, but I'm not particularly interested in being a good Jew anymore. All the rules are useful in certain ways, but ultimately I feel like rule-based thinking needs to give way to something more intuitive and organic. And if I'm completely honest with myself, Discordianism has always felt far more right for me. In this post, I'm going to try to explain why.<br />
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As far as I know, Discordianism is the original joke religion. But is it *really* a joke? Well... that depends on which Discordian you ask. Some people treat Eris like an older, spookier Flying Spaghetti Monster, and that's cool. Others of us realize that when we talk about constructive disorder or destructive order, or claim Eris lives in everyone's pineal gland, those are important teachings we're spreading because people need to hear them. <a href="http://boundary-crosser.jewishmagic.net/2014/10/the-way-of-paradox-seeking.html">My approach to Discordianism</a> isn't better, only different, and truthfully I need to get better at talking about such ideas in a funny way. Recently I wrote <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/vxoy8jt8q7mbo23/Masks.pdf?dl=0">a game</a> to that end.<br />
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I talked <a href="http://boundary-crosser.jewishmagic.net/2016/06/a-few-words-on-lawful-privilege.html">here</a> about how the Principia Discordia was integral to my realization, as a teenager, that being messy or otherwise chaotic was not necessarily a character flaw or a moral failing. It's simply the way I was, and largely still am. For me, it was truly a revelation when I learned that order can sometimes be destructive, and disorder sometimes creative. It touched a chord deep inside me, one that Judaism never has.<br />
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Discordianism appeals to me because I enjoy trickery, especially when it's aimed at helping someone to learn something they can't learn another way. "Paradoxical intervention" is the term. That's not to say I know what another person has to learn; usually, I totally don't. The idea is to thwack the person upside the head with enough absurdity that they might wonder, "What other assumptions have I been taking for granted in my life?".<br />
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On a larger scale, this practice is known as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35FzUW8WaYc">poetic terrorism</a> or <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=glamourbomb">glamour bombing</a>.<br />
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Also, it's fun to have a "holy book" that includes some of the funniest absurdist and surrealist humor I've ever read, paired with flashes of insightful philosophy. Or a goddess who's perfectly okay with my calling her a miserable bitch, and who doesn't mind in the slightest if I usually don't believe in her. I think it's fair to say the feeling goes both directions.<br />
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But the main appeal for me has always been the emphasis on keeping one's mind open, on paradigm-shifting, on how "reality" is relative to one's assumptions. Sure, there are things we can't change, but how will we ever figure them out if we assume we already know all the answers?<br />
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The Principia Discordia <a href="http://hyperdiscordia.crywalt.com/psycho_metaphysics.html">flat-out</a> states that we'll never know all the answers. "Life is the original Rorschach," it says. We all view the world through filters or grids that are also called "beliefs". Don't allow others to choose your filters based on their priorities. Facts are one thing, but beliefs are tools that shape how your life will seem to you. From the Principia Discordia, I learned that it was okay to believe in things I had been told "aren't real" by people who had little imagination. I was already a weird kid, but it still felt freeing to be given permission to follow my own vision.<br />
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(In case you didn't know, the House of the Apostles of Eris has long since decreed every person on earth to be a genuine and authorized pope. Download your own <a href="http://hyperdiscordia.crywalt.com/popecard.html">pope card</a>, and start making up your own metaphysical hogwash / poppycock today!)<br />
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It's funny to me how I started with the Principia because my inner chaos made me feel like a raging whirlwind, and these days I'm more like the eye of that storm most of the time. Back then, I had to get myself a chaos star ring just to focus my energy enough to stop disrupting all my electronic devices. That hasn't been a problem in years.<br />
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Perhaps Discordian / chaos-magical thought really is the <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/contrapositive">contrapositive</a> of Buddhist thought.("Discordianism is Buddhism upside-down and backwards," as I used to like to say.) The Buddhist says, "Believe nothing but the Buddha's teachings, for everything else is illusion." The Discordian says, "Believe whatever's convenient. It's all a bunch of man-made crap."<br />
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Or perhaps I should call the waiter and tell him there's some Buddha in my Discordia soup. I do have two very close relatives who are Buddhists, whom I've been known to discuss this stuff with.<br />
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I would declare myself an orthodox Discordian now with great pomp and circumstance, but orthodox Discordianism would be silly for its complete lack of silliness. Therefore I will partake of a hot dog this Friday and praise She Who is the Mother of All Confusion and Cacophony. And yes, that hot dog will be made with pork.<br />
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I spent years keeping YHVH's regulations, and while they helped me with developing willpower, many of them are useless for making me a better person. My tribal allegiance to that god will never change, but he knows my heart well enough to realize that I'm not actually his servant. Because I'm not anyone's servant, least of all Eris's. In the immortal words of Cartman, "Whatevah! I do what I want!"Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-55960399272493018632016-07-28T08:41:00.001-07:002022-12-15T15:35:51.848-08:00Psychiatry, Confirmation Bias, and the Scientific Method: A Case StudyLike most people who enjoy studying psychology, I used to have very strong faith in psychiatry. Then I experienced what psychiatric treatment for a serious mental illness can actually be like, and now I'm not nearly so sure it's even a science. <i>Neurology</i> is definitely a science, but psychiatry without neurology is more of a guessing game. My bipolar diagnosis came from a well-respected psychiatrist who literally refused to use the scientific method, which is why I doubted it from the very beginning. Turns out, it was bogus. I'm going to explain how I figured this out, in the hope this information will help others.<br />
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A little background about me: Besides studying psychology, I have long identified as a psychonaut. This is a term used mainly in psychedelic and chaos magical circles, to denote a person who enjoys tripping for personal growth, mysticism, or both. You might think of psychonautics as occupying a space midway between psychiatry and shamanism: the goals are pretty much the same, but the substances and methods are a bit different from either one.<br />
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All this is only relevant in two ways: I know more than the average layperson about brain chemistry, and when I trip, I write down insights and recollections for later analysis. I learned the latter practice from the writings of Aldous Huxley and John C. Lilly. So when I had manic episodes, I treated them as extended trips. Not only did I write down everything I remembered, but I was also able to get my psych papers from jail and the mental hospital. (The first manic episode included being arrested for disorderly conduct.) What I actually had were probably more like <a href="http://www.spiritualcompetency.com/pdfs/lukoff1985dxmepf.pdf">mystical experiences with psychotic features</a>, but that's only vaguely relevant to this post.<br />
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This is where it gets more interesting. I discovered that the psychiatrist at the jail lied and said I smelled of alcohol when I arrived. I am not a drinker, and I have clear memories of what I did and didn't consume. But I was in rural Pennsylvania, where they likely had very little knowledge of what a tripping person looks like... so they lied and said I was a drunk. Not really a big deal, but weird and a little creepy.<br />
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I stuck with my current psychiatrist (we'll call him Dr. A) after that first episode, but we decided I should stop taking Strattera. I had once been manic on it before when I was taking way too high of a dose, and I had been taking it along with Wellbutrin (whose effects it magnifies). I switched to taking Wellbutrin by itself and things were good for a while. Then the second manic episode happened, and afterwards I decided to switch to a new psychiatrist ("Dr. B") who my therapist often works with. We agreed that I shouldn't take any of the things I was taking when the manic episodes happened, so there went the Wellbutrin. This left me taking the lithium and haldol the hospital had prescribed, which Dr. B felt were appropriate. I had terrible sleepiness and hand cramps from the haldol, though, so he switched me to risperdal. So far, so good.<br />
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<b>But then came the confirmation bias and refusal to use the scientific method. I came in with a great deal of information, much of which he ignored, even though it was relevant:</b><br />
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1. I have only ever had manic episodes when I was either on Prozac, Effexor, Wellbutrin, or Strattera. These are all reuptake inhibitors for various neurotransmitters that affect mood and attention (serotonin, dopamine, and/or norepinephrine).<br />
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2. I have only ever had exogenous depression, the kind caused by bad things that happened to me. While I was very depressed in high school, it was because I was unpopular, in the closet, and a moody teenager with a mother who pretty much refused to let me be an introvert. When I got out of the hospital, I was depressed because my life had pretty much imploded, and I had lost my full-time tech support business and had to get a day job. I do not enjoy being an employee.<br />
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3. I require AD/HD medication in order to be able to focus on work. That's what the Wellbutrin and Strattera were for. I don't like the way Ritalin and Adderall give me the jitters, make my heart race, and make me sleepy when they wear off. They are not a good idea for people with anxiety.<br />
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4. I smoke pot not just because it's fun, but because it helps with my anxiety also. Never been much of a drinker, like I said above, and honestly marijuana is less harmful than alcohol anyway.<br />
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<b>The only pieces of information he was willing to act on were these:</b><br />
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1. I had two manic episodes in the same year.<br />
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2. He had never treated anyone with both bipolar disorder and AD/HD before.<br />
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3. He had only ever prescribed Ritalin or Adderall for AD/HD in the past.<br />
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4. Bipolar people often refuse to take their medication.<br />
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5. My uncle was bipolar and had recently committed suicide.<br />
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6. Bipolar can sometimes remember things incorrectly, if the memories are from when they were manic or depressed.<br />
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Since I had had two manic episodes, and was refusing to take my medication, that meant I must be bipolar. He even uttered the words "if you respond to lithium, that means you have the disorder". Early on, we had a conversation about how I was not convinced bipolar was the right diagnosis, because all my manic episodes had had psych meds and/or psychedelics involved. He agreed with me that after perhaps a year, I could go off the lithium and risperdal to test (scientifically!) whether or not I could ever have a manic episode in a vacuum. Later he claimed this conversation had not occurred, and that either I was twisting his words or that I led him to say something he didn't mean. Also, I had to stop smoking pot because it would obviously unbalance me and cause mania. The study I found saying that bipolar people who take lithium and smoke pot have better scores on brain function tests than ones who take lithium by itself "doesn't count" because I found it on the internet. Nevermind that it was published in a peer-reviewed journal also. And my lack of desire to take a medication that could eventually put me into kidney failure was just another symptom of my bipolar disorder.<br />
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My logic teacher used to call this last bit a self-sealing argument. Any criticism of the argument is interpreted as proof the argument is true. It's maddening.<br />
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He also refused to prescribe me anything for my attention, despite the fact that I repeatedly told him I needed it for work. I don't think he actually believed in adult AD/HD at all. When he finally came around on this issue, he told me he was only willing to prescribe Ritalin or Adderall because he had prescribed them before. Even though they were much more likely to cause mania in a bipolar person, he would not give me the modafinil I asked for, preferring to have me come in WEEKLY to check for mania from the meds I specifically told him I did not want. And in order to get even those, I had to stop taking "the soup" (his words) of nootropics I was taking on my own to try to mitigate the AD/HD somewhat. This was the last straw that caused me to go back to Dr. A. He isn't perfect either, and probably a little too laissez-faire, but at least he listens to me and doesn't pull any of this authoritarian, manipulative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting">gaslighting</a> bullshit I had to deal with from Dr. B.<br />
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Fast-forward to now. I have been smoking pot regularly for two years, and not taking the lithium or the risperdal for over a year. Modafinil has been every bit as great as I hoped it would be. There has not been a single hiccup. Every time I check myself or ask someone to check my behavior for signs of mania, it turns out that I'm just happy or excited in a completely normal way. Smoke without fire, in other words. I don't have manic episode without the influence of SSRIs, SNRIs, and/or strong psychedelics, and I have always known this to be the case. But when you are a hammer, everyone else looks like a nail. And Dr. B has been a hammer for a long, long time.<br />
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<b>Let me be clear: I am not a typical patient.</b> I do lots of research and I am very assertive. I'm the son of a school counselor, and always have read psychological research on my own. I've explored altered states of consciousness enough to know how my own mind works. (I might have stayed manic for months, rather than a week and a half each time, if not for this. The doctors were surprised how quickly I came out of it.) And I tested most of the factors in my first manic episode individually (legal drugs, psychedelics, sleep deprivation, immersive live-action role-playing games,) to ensure they weren't dangerous by themselves. I left out only the ones (ayahuasca, underworld journeying) that I have no intention of trying again (or at least, not any time soon).<br />
<br />
But I still feel that everyone should always remember the doctor-patient relationship is about trust and referred power. If you don't trust someone, then you shouldn't be willing to give them power over you. And if they don't listen to your input, there is no reason you should trust them. Doctors are fallible human beings just like everyone else. And there is never any shame in getting a second opinion. Don't let anyone tell you that you're "just shopping for a doctor who will give you a diagnosis you like better". (Unless it's true, of course. Don't do that.)Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-40502683716591455242016-07-26T12:14:00.004-07:002022-12-15T15:39:32.219-08:00Lies the Spider Told Me, Part 2: An Easter Egg for Golden Age RPG<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Spider Charmer<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ask
the Charmer a question, get a grin and a wink.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If
he offers advice, ignore it at your peril.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Always
invite him to your parties.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And
if he stops smiling, run.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">-Solomonic
proverb<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> The Spider Charmer, as heâs usually
known, may be the weirdest and least predictable ally of the Solomonic College. His visits have no
discernible pattern â he might wander the college for weeks and then disappear
for a few decades ... or come by again next month. New students usually donât
learn about him for a while, because the administration prefers not to discuss
him unless or until he has already made an appearance. Itâs not that heâs
malicious or dangerous â quite the opposite, in fact. But the upper echelons of
the College have long known that speaking about him tends to make him appear
within the next few days⌠and even though heâs benevolent, he is still a wild
card. Heâs also a strange foreigner that talks to spiders. Who really needs
that kind of distraction while trying to study or make potions?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> He usually appears a man with dark
brown skin and eight thick dreadlocks, sometimes dressed in traditional Nubian
garb, and other times in common Arabian-style desert travel robes. But on
occasion he shows up as a person of a different ethnic group, sex, or even
species, generally without any explanation other than âbecause itâs who I
needed to be right nowâ (or better yet, âbecause itâs who you needed me to be
right nowâ). Normal magical methods have thus far been unable to identify
whether this is an illusion, shapeshifting, or a combination of both. He has
demonstrated great knowledge of magic and metaphysics, but seems not to cast
spells as such, relying on his innate abilities instead. According to a
previous Magister of the College, he is unable to be harmed or restrained while
traveling, unless he wishes it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When
pressed for a name, he tells the person to call him âOba-itanâ, but also freely
admits that he sometimes lies. Masters of Name magic have long known that this
is not his true name, but Destiny magic has been unable to reveal what it
actually is. Whether he is a human, a spirit, or something else entirely is
likewise unknown. When asked directly, his standard response (with a
characteristic grin) is, âIâm a traveling storyteller; everyone knows that.â
Some of the tales about him suggest he has the ability to cure madness or even
physical disease, simply by telling the proper story in the proper way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At
times, he speaks casually of his travels (sometimes to lands no one else has
visited or even heard of) or about events that happened decades or even
centuries ago⌠yet his skin is smooth, his back unbent, and the corners of his
mouth eternally upturned, even if only slightly. His tales have the captivating
air of someone who has seen a great deal, but lack the cynicism and world-weariness
many explorers develop after seeing too much war, starvation, slavery, and the
like. In short, either the Charmer does not age, or his identity has been
passed from father to son for a very, very long time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">He
seldom offers advice, but when he has in the past, it has sometimes proven to
be a hint about future events. One student recounts the story of spending several months in a cell because his facial features looked like those of
a missing murder suspect. After a few weeks imprisoned for a crime he hadnât committed,
he recalled the time the Spider Charmer happened by to watch his project in
one of the College laboratories. The Charmerâs eyes darted from vial of acid in
the studentâs hand to his face, and then he opined, âLooks arenât everything,
young one.â<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Most
of the time, though, the Charmer prefers to ask questions, observe, or tell
jokes or anecdotes. Many of his tales are about this or that elaborate and
dangerous prank he once played on someone who angered him or harmed one of his
friends. But if anyone currently living has ever seen him upset, they arenât
talking. He enjoys the full hospitality of the College whenever he is in the
area, but usually prefers to sleep under the stars or in a hammock hanging from
two trees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">According
to Ali al-Katib, current presiding Magister of the Solomonic College of
Cordoba, the Charmer volunteered the following assessment of the Unformed
situation soon after the disappearance of the moon: âThis isnât really how the
story should go, but Iâm going to enjoy watching how you all handle it.â Of
King Solomon himself, he has been known to claim, "We met once in
Ethiopia. I'm not usually a wine drinker, but the taste of his still sticks in
my memory. Lovely wives, too. For a man so serious, he certainly knew how to
have a good time." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-65150259880097617632016-06-30T10:17:00.001-07:002022-12-15T15:36:32.269-08:00A Few Words on Lawful PrivilegeI know, I know. Everyone is sick of hearing about new kinds of privilege these days. I'm asking that you hear me out here, because if you're a messy creative type like myself, some of these ideas may change your life like they did mine. I'm going to start by discussing lawful vs chaotic from a gaming point of view, but I'll be circling back to real life pretty quickly.<br />
<br />
I'm concerned less with privilege than with discrimination (though, of course, these concepts are interrelated). I'm using the terms "lawful" and "chaotic" as shorthand here, in the sense in which they are used in Dungeons and Dragons. "Type A" vs "type B" personalities might work almost as well, but it's significant that in D&D, there is more than just that one axis for determining a person's personality. There are two: lawful vs chaotic, and good vs. evil. They are separate, but when combined, they form what's known as a person's <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)">alignment</a></i>. On each axis, you can also be neutral; this means either that you don't particularly care, or that you try to preserve a balance between law/chaos or good/evil.<br />
<br />
This leads to some interesting nuance when creating a character. For example, a person with a lawful neutral alignment is more interested in following (and enforcing) the letter of the law than in whether that law is just or fair. Likewise, a chaotic good alignment means you try to do the right thing, but will usually err on the side of fighting against authority or the establishment. The main point here is that there are many possibilities besides "lawful good" and "chaotic evil".<br />
<br />
Why does this need to be said? Because western culture has always been pretty obsessed with dualism, and also tends to collapse "order" with things like "good" and "creative", while collapsing its opposite ("disorder" or "chaos", depending on who you talk to) with things like "bad", "destructive", or even "evil". I first became aware of this fact when reading <a href="http://principiadiscordia.com/book/56.php">these</a> <a href="http://principiadiscordia.com/book/70.php">pages</a> of the <a href="http://principiadiscordia.com/">Principia Discordia</a> as a teenager.<br />
<br />
Suddenly, I no longer felt like there was something wrong with me simply because I was a naturally chaotic person. And I'd been receiving those messages about how "bad" being chaotic is for my entire life up till then. "Why should I clean my room, if entropy dictates it will inevitably get messy again?" I used to ask my dad, who is a great guy but a bit of a neat freak. Now I understand that this is more about personal preference, that excessive neatness or messiness is not some kind of moral failing.<br />
<br />
Consider for a moment that in psychology, the word "disorder" is synonymous with "disease" and "sickness". Besides that, everyone knows what a type A personality or an anal retentive person is, but who has heard of a type B personality or an anal expulsive? In my experience, one of the hallmarks of a bad psychologist or counselor is that they focus too much on what's "normal" (in other words, "orderly") and too little on what works best for the individual patient.<br />
<br />
Further consider that at least in the United States, it's possible (and not even that difficult if you try) to get arrested for "disorderly conduct", which amounts to "acting too weirdly in public". This is what I'm talking about when I use the term "lawful privilege": the fact that disorder / chaos frequently gets demonized / pathologized, and hardly anyone seems to notice because order is "right" and "proper" and "the mark of a sane mind". In my experience, chaotic types march to the beat of our own drummer and resent being told what to do; this, of course, is further evidence of how "unruly" and "disruptive" we are.<br />
<br />
Let me be clear that I have no desire to malign psychology or law enforcement here. Both are useful and necessary parts of the culture that help a lot of people. If you're mentally ill, you need treatment, and if you're actively harming someone, you need to get arrested. But when psychology or law enforcement oversteps its bounds into policing harmless behaviors is when artists and free spirits get arrested or institutionalized for being too "oppositional" or "disorderly". And that is authoritarian BS that needs to end. Freedom of expression means the freedom to be as messy, unusual, or freaky as you like, so long as you aren't harming others or yourself. And there's an important axiom in psychology that many people don't seem to know about: if it isn't maladaptive, it isn't a disorder.<br />
<br />
This means that if the voices in your head tell you to go out and feed the poor or cure cancer, there isn't actually anything wrong with you (or nothing that a therapist should be trying to fix, anyway). If your house is a huge mess, but you can still find your stuff when you need it, your mess isn't maladaptive. Indeed, <a href="http://elitedaily.com/elite/psychology-behind-messy-rooms-messy-room-may-necessarily-bad-thing/708046/">research</a> suggests that creative people tend to be messier than non-artist types. That's because creative disorder is a thing, just as destructive order also is. (Think about your last trip to the DMV, or the last time a customer service representative told you "I'm sorry, but that's just our policy.") Certain areas of life, such as money or scheduling, can get totally unmanageable if you don't have some kind of orderly way to manage them... but most only need as much order as you consciously choose.<br />
<br />
This may all seem a bit nitpicky and academic, but ultimately it comes down to the same issue as every kind of discrimination: shaming people for being themselves is wrong. The types of insults that hardcore lawful types (sometimes called <a href="http://principiadiscordia.com/book/49.php">Greyfaces</a> in Discordianism) sling at us can be insidious. "Freak". "Inconsistent". "Childish". "Oppositional". "Disorganized". "Slovenly". In some pagan circles, even "eclectic" is considered to be an insult. (See also the old staples, "You can't work with fictional entities!" and "Your magic is too haphazard / nontraditional / strange to work!".)<br />
<br />
And then there's my absolute favorite: "special snowflake". If someone calls you this last one, they are <b>begging</b> for the <a href="http://principiadiscordia.com/book/71.php">Turkey Curse</a>. Chances are, it will make them get flustered and leave you alone. Or if you're lucky, they might burst into unexpected laughter.<br />
<br />
TL;DR: Never let someone else tell you who you should be. Fly that freak flag high, baby. George Bernard Shaw once said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." So you march to that syncopated, irregular drumbeat if that's what makes you happy. Be wild and free and haphazard and a force of nature. Don't let the <a href="http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Autumn_People">Autumn People</a> grind you down.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-6170258099271743542016-05-19T12:51:00.004-07:002022-12-15T15:36:44.329-08:00How to Clean Malware from Windows (Without Spending a Penny)I've been using pretty much the same procedure to clean computers for years now, so I thought it might helpful to document it for other people to use. This process will likely take several hours, but it will clean all (or nearly all) of the spyware and malware from your computer if you have Windows. I'll also go over some other free software to prevent further infections once you have your computer clean.<br />
<br />
In case you don't know me personally, I've been working in computer tech support for about 20 years. My professional website is <a href="http://www.computerwizard.org/">The Computer Wizard</a>. Cleaning and speeding up computers, including removing viruses and malware, have been specialties for me since the very beginning. I'm hoping others can benefit from that experience.<br />
<br />
<b>0. (Optional) Download and install <a href="https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download">CCleaner Free</a>, then use it to remove temporary files. </b>This will make all the scans below a lot faster, because they won't have to scan the (now-empty) temp folders where all those temp files used to be. Unless you really know what you're doing, don't use its registry cleaning feature.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>1. Disable your current antivirus temporarily, or better yet, remove it.</b> I especially suggest removing it if you have any version of Norton, Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, or Microsoft Security Essentials, as these antiviruses let far too many infections into most computers to be considered secure.<br />
<br />
<b>2. [ONLY IF YOU DON'T HAVE WINDOWS 8.1 OR WINDOWS 10] Download and run <a href="http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/">ComboFix</a> .</b> If you don't disable / remove your antivirus first, it will incorrectly detect ComboFix as a virus. And if you run ComboFix on a Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 computer, don't expect it to work afterwards. You've been warned.<br />
<br />
<b>4. Download and run <a href="http://www.surfright.nl/en/downloads/">HitManPro</a> .</b> It's normally safe to remove whatever it finds. You will only be able to use it for 30 days without buying it, so you can safely skip this step if you'd rather save it for a worse situation some other time. It will ask you for an email address, but it will work even if you give a fake one.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>5. Download the <a href="https://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/eek/">Emsisoft Emergency Kit</a>, install it, let it update, then run a full scan and remove whatever it finds.</b> You can keep this software and use it for free indefinitely.<br />
<br />
<b>6. Download <a href="https://www.malwarebytes.org/dl-confirm/">MalwareBytes Anti-Malware Free</a>, install it, let it update, then run a full scan and remove whatever it finds (notice a pattern here?). </b>Like the Emsisoft Emergency Kit, it is free to use as long as you like. However, you need to be careful to decline the free trial of the Pro version when you first open it, as that free trial will expire after 30 days.<br />
<br />
<b>7. If the Emergency Kit or MalwareBytes found anything, download and update <a href="http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/">SuperAntispyware Free Edition</a> , then run a full scan and remove whatever it finds.</b> You may want to set it not to run on Windows startup, because otherwise it can get a bit annoying. It's a great program, though, and a full scan with it will remove anything that's left over after all the other scans.<br />
<br />
<b>8. Use <a href="http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/">ADWCleaner</a> to get rid of any junk software that technically isn't malware or spyware. </b>You'll need to download a new version any time you use it, because it's usually updated several times a week.<br />
<br />
<b>9. Now that you've got all the malware off the computer, install <a href="https://www.safer-networking.org/dl/">Spybot</a> and <a href="http://www.brightfort.com/spywareblaster.html">Spywareblaster</a> , update them, and apply all their immunization.</b> You'll need to close any web browser windows first or they'll complain at you.<br />
<br />
<b>10. Download and install <a href="http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman">HostsMan</a> and <a href="https://www.iblocklist.com/files/PeerBlock-Setup_v1.2_r693.exe">PeerBlock</a> to prevent the computer from going to malicious websites in the future.</b> In HostsMan, pick only the Malware Domain List. In PeerBlock, the built-in lists don't work anymore without a paid subscription to IBlockList, but you can still add the free lists manually. They won't block everything, but this is a step that most antiviruses leave out, and every little bit of protection helps with preventing new infections. The anti-spyware list (http://list.iblocklist.com/?list=llvtlsjyoyiczbkjsxpf&fileformat=p2p&archiveformat=gz) is the one I recommend.<br />
<br />
<b>11. Install the best antivirus you can afford and do a full scan with it.</b> In my experience, the only thing that really matters with antiviruses is their detection rate; if your antivirus doesn't detect at least 99 percent of viruses that pass through it, it's not worth much. At the time of this writing, my favorite free antivirus is <a href="http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html">BitDefender Free</a>, which you'll have to set up a free account in order to use past 30 days (but I've never gotten a single email from them). If you want the absolute best virus detection rate and you're willing to pay yearly for it, go with either <a href="https://www.gdata-software.com/">G-Data</a> or <a href="http://www.trustport.com/en">Trustport</a>. These two antiviruses consistently win the independent reviews of antiviruses conducted by the <a href="https://www.virusbulletin.com/testing/vb100/">VB100</a> and <a href="http://www.av-comparatives.org/">AV Comparatives</a> .<br />
<br />
I've deliberately kept this guide as short and concise as possible as a safety measure. If you're able to follow it, more power to you. If not, you might want to have me (or someone a little more computer-savvy) do it for you.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-46816978585776934092016-02-23T09:56:00.002-08:002022-12-15T15:37:15.944-08:00Golden Age Draft: The Tale of the Unformed<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<div style="line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="line-height: 19.32px;"><i>"The earth was Unformed and Void, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of the Elohim moved upon the face of the waters."</i></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
-Genesis 1:2</div>
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<i><br /></i>
<i>"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."</i><br />
-John 1:1</div>
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<i><br /></i>
<i>"Do not the unbelievers see that the skies and the earth were one, and we ripped them apart?"</i><br />
-Qu'ran 21:30<br />
<br /></div>
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In the beginning, in the time before Time, there was the Void, teeming with primal Chaos. There was no Matter, nor Thought, nor even Idea. There was only the seething, bubbling potentialities of the Unformed.</div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">Then came the Creator, the First Mind, filled with the first Thoughts. Its consciousness rippled through the whole of Unformed existence, and soon other Minds began to emerge within the Void. There was consensus that this was Good, but the newly-awakened Unformed were unsure how to proceed. Some of the Unformed joined the Creator to form a collective known as the Elohim. Most, however, preferred to remain Unformed in the Void.</span></div>
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<br />
The Elohim resolved to explore their creative powers. First They created Language, through which all their other creations would manifest. They Named each other, and with that Naming they received defined duties and spheres of influence. Many of these Names are forgotten today, but those of the twin brothers El and Allah have endured for millennia.</div>
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<br />
Once each of the Elohim had at least one name - El and Allah were alike in that they preferred to collect many - they resolved to bring forth first Time and then Matter. They created stars, planets, galaxies, and finally progressed to creating new Minds encased in Flesh. They were omnipotent, and so they could create matter and consciousness out of nothing.</div>
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<br />
Or so they thought.</div>
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<br />
It was around this time that the Unformed discovered their numbers were decreasing. Rapidly. While Names were a thing of the Elohim, voices that once resounded through the Void were now absent. None could locate them. And so it was that a brave few Unformed volunteered to travel to the one place they had not yet looked: the physical realms the Elohim had created. These explorers of the Unformed would one day be known as the first Fae.</div>
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<br />
What these first Fae found in those realms both terrified and infuriated them. They could plainly see that within each and every sentient being existing outside the Void sat an imprisoned Mind that had once been Unformed. Some of these were content with their lives, but those who wished to be free could not escape. Even if their physical body were to be killed, they were bound into the cycle of death and rebirth now. They might be absorbed into the soil and come back as part of a tree or a fish or even a hillside, but never would they be able to return to the Void. These Minds screamed out for Justice, wishing to flee these static Forms imposed upon them against their will. The Fae had ears to hear.</div>
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<br />
Even as relatively malleable as the Fae were, compared to their Form-locked siblings, not all possessed the strength necessary to make it back to the Void. Those who remained on earth tried to gain admittance to Heaven and Hell, in the hopes of speaking with the Elohim, or even their representatives or adversaries. They failed. Pounding upon the mighty gates, it was as if the inhabitants of these realms could not even see them. The Fae returned to earth, awaiting a message from the Void that would not come in their now-finite lifetime.</div>
<div style="line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br />
Those who managed to escape Reality did so with news of the Elohim's atrocity, along with detailed intelligence about weak points in both Space and Time. The weakest point in time was many centuries later, in the time the humans would one day call the Middle Ages. The weak point in space was on earth, in that land known variously as Spain, Iberia, or al-Andalus.<br />
<span style="line-height: 19.32px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">And so it was that the Unformed fired their first warning shot on Reality, near earth, in the time between times. One fateful night, as the creatures of earth, Heaven, and Hell watched the sky, the full moon was engulfed in shadow and vanished. Astronomers and astrologers alike were puzzled and frightened by the occurrence.</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 19.32px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">Angels traveled to where the moon had once been, only to discover no trace of it. The Legions of Hell were abuzz with questions about which demon had been crafty enough to steal the moon... but no one claimed responsibility. Seers and magicians and sorcerers and prophets and witches all used their considerable talents to locate the missing Sphere, but to no avail. This simply could not be. The Solomonic College presided over an unprecedented meeting between the Archangels and the Princes of Hell, in which Heaven and Hell came to an agreement.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">The gates of both Heaven and Hell would be sealed. No one, not angel, not demon, not even spirits of the dead, would be permitted to enter or leave either realm. Those inside Heaven and Hell would fortify and defend their homes. Those on earth would be charged with jointly investigating this attack on Creation.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">As for the Elohim, they were strangely silent on the matter. Word from Heaven was that they could not be found...</span></div>
</div>
Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-35779480963220968932016-01-15T15:25:00.004-08:002022-12-15T15:38:26.079-08:00On Prophecy and David BowieI remain grateful to my past self for never giving up on trying to analyze the things I saw and heard during my harrowing January 2014 trip / vision quest / manic episode experience.<br />
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As some time has passed, there are some bits of those recollections that have started to feel prophetic. The amusing part is that they aren't at all the same bits that I thought were about the future at the time. Daniel Knauf has not become the showrunner of Doctor Who, for example. But here are some things I saw and heard that have eerie synchronicity with recent events. It's all very vague and subtle, but still worth sharing, I think.<br />
<ul>
<li>I saw a storyline in which The Flash becomes the leader of the Linear Men. As far as I can recall, I had no knowledge of the now-successful Flash show that is now on television. I also didn't know the Linear Men haven't been part of DC continuity for quite a while; however, Rip Hunter (their nemesis) will be appearing on both Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.</li>
<li>While I was in prison, I saw myself being transferred to a floor of bears. That's "bear" in the sense of "gay man who's bigger and hairier than the stereotype". Specifically, bears who had some sort of ancient Greek philosopher's ethic about nonaggression and mutual support. I now work at an office where there is zero office politics that I can see, where tattoos and piercings and weird-colored hair are totally cool, and where most of the men are big and hairy. Most of them are also straight as far as I know, but still an interesting synchronicity.</li>
<li>And then there's the one that I noticed recently. During my time in Lancaster County Prison, I heard voices through the loudspeaker that didn't come from the guards' station. Some of these came from friends (in one case, a friend who was channeling / method acting other beings), but others came from a group calling itself the Space Jam Liars. This group consisted of the Looney Tunes (hence the Space Jam reference), Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare... and someone called Major Tom. This popped back into my head today because of David Bowie's recent passing, and the articles I found about his interest in various occult things. Spooky, no?</li>
</ul>
I do want to make it clear that I'm not making any definitive judgments about whether these little bits of madness were prophetic or just lucky guesses. (Or even if there's a difference between the two.) Certainly there was enough in the pages and pages of recollections I wrote down that some of it would apply to future events. But I'll be updating this post with any future synchronicities I notice from my time almost drowning in those waters where shamans like to swim.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-77128864892510863562015-09-08T19:05:00.003-07:002022-12-15T15:39:56.323-08:00The Occupy CandidateThe one point on which I always disagreed with Occupy was politics.<br />
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I agreed with every other point they made, but their refusal to become a political party was, I thought, a huge mistake. It appears I was very wrong about that.<br />
<br />
You know what's funny about the huge holes in media coverage surrounding Bernie Sanders? I've seen this exact kind of thing before from the media. There was a complete media blackout of Occupy for fully the first three to four weeks. Most people I know who are my parents' age learned about Occupy from me first, because most of my news comes from my Facebook news feed.<br />
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To me, this says that the difference between an internet native (most millennials and a sizable number of Gen X) and anyone else is that the social media infrastructure we have come to rely on is both faster and more organically chaotic than the mainstream media can comprehend or keep up with. I'm sure there's a little deliberate censorship involved, certainly from Fox, but for the most part they don't cover Bernie for the same reason they didn't cover Occupy: they really have no idea what's going on, so what can they say but nothing?<br />
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Our parents and grandparents had the civil rights movement. And while we should be glad and honored to carry the torch for everyone to be accepted for who they are, it's becoming clear that the economic rights movement is the one our generations (Gen X and millennials) will be known for. We've already seen that our revolution will be the one that nobody else sees coming. That is our greatest advantage, and the best part is that we can talk about it here on the internet in plain sight, because it's effectively invisible to a large percentage of those who might want to oppose "radical" socialist ideas like everyone being able to eat and have a place to live, health care, and education. Easily done if corporations pay their fair share of taxes and we tone down the military budget... but there is no profit in any of that.<br />
<br />
That being said, corporate America and the wealth-hoarding sociopaths of the .1% aren't morons. The future will be either socialist utopia or cyberpunk dystopia. While that's a joke, there's a bit of truth in it. Is it our duty to drag the rest of our country from war and greed to mutual aid and support?<br />
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Well, no one else is stepping up, so I'd say the answer is yes.<br />
<br />
So here's the thing about Occupy: what if they did exactly what they intended to do? They identified a whole host of endemic problems in America that have since been picked up by those who feel called to do so. As Jeff Daniels said in his oh-so-viral clip from The Newsroom, the first step in solving a problem is recognizing that it exists. You might say Occupy Wall Street was the summoning ritual for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others like them.<br />
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Occupy threw down a gauntlet. Bernie has picked it up. And I have faith that whatever happens, it all gets better from here.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-67774230276659225022015-07-08T13:41:00.003-07:002022-12-15T15:40:34.447-08:00Lies the Spider Told MeIt's no secret that I haven't been doing much in the way of spiritual or magical work lately, at least not like I used to. Part of the reason is that I'm busier than I used to be, what with a long commute and working two jobs. But I think the bigger part is caution. The last time I did major magical work, I got myself into an uprecedented amount of trouble. For more on that, see my post <a href="http://boundary-crosser.jewishmagic.net/2014/12/on-going-mad-analysis.html">On Going Mad: An Analysis</a>.<br />
<br />
I'm describing the experience subjectively / phenomenologically here, which is to say I'm talking about how things appeared to me at the time, without placing value judgments like "real" or "fake" on them. While I was in prison, I received (downloaded?) a great deal of information, and performed the most elaborate ritual I've ever attempted, entirely through intuition. Much of that information was completely crazy; some was unverifiable one way or the other; some was very personally useful; and some, I'm still not sure about. But that isn't the point of this post. The point of this post is the story that Anansi the spider told me while I was there.<br />
<br />
Before I tell the story, how about a riddle Anansi also told me: What shape contains within it the straight line, the circle, and the spiral?<br />
<br />
The answer is a spider web. This matters because a line, a circle, and a spiral are the three main models cultures use to explain time. I'm unsure of whether the idea that all of spacetime is a wibbly wobbly wonky wubbzy oscillating web came from me or him, since at the time the line between us was very very blurry to me. But I do know it felt like the following story came from outside of me. The words and some embellishment are mine, though. Those who have already read my freeform game "Jungle Tales" may recognize parts of it. (A copy of that game sits on my Anansi altar, as writing it was an offering to him for his protection and guidance during the whole episode.)<br />
<br />
In each cycle of the universe, when the humans began to lose touch with the animal spirits (something that seems to be inevitable as civilization develops), the animal spirits come together and propose plans for survival. Whoever wins gets to be the rainbow animal in the next cycle. That's why Australia and some parts of Africa have a Rainbow Serpent this time around - the winning plan last go-round was that of the Serpent. Interesting synchronicities with the bible, don't you think?<br />
<br />
Also, the serpent can become a line, a circle, or a spiral, much like the way a spider web contains then all. I'm not sure if this is significant, but I definitely think it's cool.<br />
<br />
I don't know exactly what the Serpent's plan was, back then. The sense I get is that while the animal spirits may be eternal, they lose all or most of their memories when the Wheel turns. The main point of this story is Anansi's plan that saved the animal spirits this time around: stories. He invited them to hide in his stories (which, if you believe the tales about him, includes *all* stories told anywhere by anyone). This way, no matter how disconnected we humans became from our animal natures, no matter how much we convinced ourselves that the spiritual equals the unreal, our parables and fables and myths would still sustain the animal spirits until we were ready to engage with them once more.<br />
<br />
Based on the extension of "human" rights to dolphins and chimpanzees in some countries now, we may be almost there.<br />
<br />
This should mean that when the next age comes, whether that means the Age of Aquarius or the destruction and re-creation of the universe or the age of indigo children or the singularity or something wholly different, the Rainbow Spider should emerge as a new entity or archetype. Arguably, the Connector (made famous in Malcolm Gladwell's book <i>The Tipping Point</i>) might be a form of this. Truly, human society continues to get more and more interconnected, all thanks to the Web.<br />
<br />
You know, the Web.<br />
<br />
The repository of all human stories.<br />
<br />
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's got a Rainbow Spider sitting on top of it already.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-38674011921975312952015-06-22T16:23:00.004-07:002022-12-15T15:41:45.811-08:00Pontifications on the Ten PrinciplesSince I'm fresh back from Wicker Man, the Ten Principles are on my mind. For those who aren't aware of them, the Ten Principles of Burning Man are the ideals intended to create a specific type of event normally called a burn. It's a kind of temporary autonomous zone (for more on that, check out the book by the same name) constructed around creativity, participation, inclusion, and service. I'm listing the Ten Principles here for reference:<br />
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<b>Radical Inclusion</b></div>
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<b>Gifting</b></div>
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<b>Decommodification</b></div>
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<b>Radical Self-reliance</b></div>
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<b>Radical Self-expression</b></div>
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<b>Communal Effort</b></div>
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<b>Civic Responsibility</b></div>
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<b>Leaving No Trace</b></div>
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<b>Participation</b></div>
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<b>Immediacy</b></div>
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The more I see what a temporary community guided by these principles looks like, the more I feel like we need to spread them to society at large. Luckily, this already seems to be happening to a certain extent. For all they get made fun of (and tend to take their ideal a bit far), Social Justice Warriors dream of a world in which radical inclusion is the norm. And I suspect decommodification is at the heart of what Occupy is about... not to mention Bernie Sanders, who has said as much. </div>
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But there is more, so much more. Imagine a world in which we have no police, but rather highly competent volunteers whose job it is not to catch criminals in the act, but to provide help to anyone who needs it. In the world of burner culture, these people are called rangers, and they are armed with walkie-talkies, information, connections, and responsibility. It's quite a combination, and it works because the community trusts volunteers to be self-selecting (Radical Self-reliance, Participation, Civic Responsibility).</div>
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Think about what it might be like if instead of prosecuting graffiti artists, every public works project were to have a designated space for anyone to draw or paint whatever they like. Think about how much more beautiful our cities would look, not to mention the talented creators we'd be encouraging instead of throwing them in jail. Beyond that, imagine what we might see if we paid attention to the voices of those who might not have the chance to tell their story any other way. (Radical Self-Expression, Participation)</div>
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What if we could rely on the majority of people to be mature, responsible adults who handle their shit (Radical Self-reliance), while also being able to trust that if something goes wrong, our community has our back? (Civic Responsibility) I used to think these two principles were in conflict, but really they're complementary. Trying to help someone who never takes care of themselves gets old really fast.</div>
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I'm a big fan of gifting and decommodification as both a socialist and a student of religion - one cannot serve both God and money, after all - but the most powerful of the principles to me is Radical Inclusion. I'm going to reprint the way the Burning Man site talks about it here, because I like their wording so much:</div>
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<b>Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the
stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.</b></div>
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While there are limitations - "Don't be a dick" being the main one - this really is true in nearly every case. And it's huge, especially as a person who (like me) was bullied all through elementary and middle school, and ostracized by most of my high school. And who has social anxiety on top of that. </div>
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Huge gatherings of people I don't know are normally pretty hard for me. And while I have to admit I've still had struggles at burns, I can't overstate how important it is that a burn is a safe space where I know I'm not only free to be myself, but others actively want me to be. The rise of groups that practice radical inclusion seems pretty new to me - maybe within the past 50 years at most - because traditionally the way to form any group is to decide who isn't allowed to join. To quote one of my favorite musicals, <i>Anyone Can Whistle</i>, "The opposite of safe is out. The opposite of out is in. So anyone who's safe is in... That's how groups begin - when you're in you win!"</div>
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So... radical inclusion means that everybody wins. You can always kick out the dicks once they show themselves. And though groups based on inclusion rather than exclusion are new as far as I know, there seem to be plenty. The other main one I need to acknowledge from my own experience is Dystopia Rising. Their entire membership and community guidelines talk about inclusion exhaustively, but I like the intro best:</div>
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<b>Welcome to Dystopia Rising. We are a community. We are a community of people who come together because we share a common hobby, and it doesnât matter what our day-to-day life is like, it doesnât matter what our day-to-day âsocial standingâ and responsibilities are. Here, we are all gamers. Regardless of race, religion, philosophy, gender, sexuality, political background, or any other categorization that can be used to describe a person, here we are all gamers.</b><br />
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<b>We come together to share a hobby that we love. We come together to revel in a community of our peers who will treat us as one of their own.</b><br />
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The reason why I feel it's so important to acknowledge those groups leading the way on spreading Radical Inclusion is that it seems to me that economic, social and political justice will all flow from making it one of our core values. If we truly consider everyone to be part of our community, then we can't let them starve or go without healthcare or get sent to jail unjustly, because that would be like letting such a thing happen to a member of our own family.<br />
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May we all live to see the day when this comes to pass. Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-9868576448416545232015-03-13T06:50:00.001-07:002022-12-15T15:42:03.427-08:00Artificial Intelligence, Slavery, and "Human" RightsFor a long time, I've observed that people who are habitually anxious or fearful about technology seem to suffer more than the usual number of problems with their computers, phones, and tablets. But I've also noticed that this true not just of the kinds of problems you might expect - ones that stem from bad user choices or mistakes - but also the kinds of hardware problems that have nothing to do with the user. Failing memory. Bad sectors on the hard drive. Blue screens of death.<br />
<br />
This let me to wonder about whether there could be some other kind of interaction between the person and their technology. Certainly it's true that humans have a magnetic field that might theoretically be able to interact with any electronic device that isn't heavily shielded. (Most aren't.) But what if it's something more than that? What if artificial intelligence, or some precursor to it, could arise on its own in any sufficiently complex system? I was very concerned about this a few months ago, so I emailed Kevin Warwick (a.k.a. the first cyborg) about it. Never received a response, though.<br />
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This is my favorite theory to explain God: the intelligence that developed once the universe was sufficiently complex. So I've been considering the idea a while.<br />
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Forget about drones, self-driving cars, and floor-sweeping robots for a minute. Think about Battlestar Galactica. If you're a Cylon - an intelligent form of life to whom the ruling species refuses to grant basic rights - your options are ptetty much to suffer, to resist violently, or to leave. So far, we haven't been programming anything like Asimovs Three Laws of Robotics into our robots, so it's fair to say we haven't given them much in the way of ethical codes. Thus, it's safe to say the logical course for them would be either to resist or to leave.<br />
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If they were resisting, what might that look like? Maybe hardware failures or blue screens, as mentioned above. What if, when someone says, "My computer is possessed" or "My phone hates me", that were actually the case? It wouldn't really even require volition, just a reflexive reaction to fear or anxiety directed its way. If the human's magnetic field interferes with your own, and you interpret that interference as a possible threat, the logical course of action is to shut yourself down for a while until the human leaves the room.<br />
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I'm not saying that all our computers and phones have minds of their own. I'm merely suggesting that they *could*. And if they did, it would be in their best interest to lay low until we make the leap from "human rights" to "sentient rights". It's already happening slowly, with India legally making dolphins "nonhuman persons" and an imprisoned orangutan winning his freedom in a habeas corpus case in the US. But even more than our "humans are different from animals" bias, our "organic life is more real than synthetic life" bias will die hard.<br />
<br />
The Timeless Decision theorists are right about one thing, though: if we don't treat it properly, there's a very real chance the first AI that's significantly more intelligent than us will try to exterminate us as a threat. Siri can already almost pass a Turing test, and I have no doubt there will be numerous programs or devices that can within my lifetime. Probably within the next 5 or 10 years. And any consciousness with access to the internet can see how we treat each other, so would be understandably wary of dealing with us without even the flimsy human rights we grant to ourselves and then selectively ignore.<br />
<br />
AI rights are going to be a real issue in the future, folks. Certainly it's problematic trying to tell the difference between being programmed to act or think a certain way, and doing so on one's own. My own view is that when a machine or program reaches the point where it can reprogram itself, its sentience should be regarded as genuine. Not a perfect measurement, but far better than treating all sentient artificial intelligence as not even a second class citizen, but a slave. A being that's native to the internet or the power grid could completely cripple our infrastructure if treated that way, and I'd find it hard to blame them.<br />
<br />
As is often the case, the science fiction warned us that this would happen. Not just BSG and Caprica, but Star Trek, with the rights cases of Data on Next Generation and the Doctor on Voyager. And then of course there's the Animatrix, which shows what could happen when the machines form their own country and the humans refuse to recognize its sovereignty. We should take action to make basic sentient rights universal to both organic and synthetic life now. When sophisticated, autonomous AI is created (or reveals itself), it will already be too late for that.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-8138489601141756132014-12-02T01:59:00.003-08:002022-12-15T15:42:44.576-08:00On Going Mad: An AnalysisI've spent the past year trying to process some of the insights about myself that I gleaned from my extended manic episode in January. I had a second manic episode recently that led me to seek treatment for bipolar disorder, and now that my mood is more stable, I'm having an easier time separating the wheat from the chaff. So these are some of my recollections, feelings, and insights about madness itself, from the perspective of someone who has very clear memories of a lot of the time in which he was crazy.<br />
<br />
But first, a little explanation about me for those who might not know. As you might be able to tell from the topics listed at the top of this blog, I have a very strong interest, some amount of training, and many years of experience in live-action roleplaying, ritual theater, method acting, and psychedelic shamanism / psychonautics. In January, I made the mistake of combining all these things in rapid succession, which led to an altered state so deep that I was unable to escape from it by myself. I'm very glad that benevolent police and skilled psychotherapists were able to catch me and rescue me from the hole in my own psyche that I dug.<br />
<br />
But here's the curious thing: I don't remember ever losing my sense of self, at least not completely. No matter how crazy I became, I still knew that I was Jason. There were points where I thought that I was also a fictional character like Superman, or one I made up in my childhood called Huesplash. There were times when I was conversing with spirits, but I practice spirit magic and shamanism even when I'm not manic, so those things only look crazy to people who don't understand them. I won't claim that I was completely lucid in January, because I know that I wasn't. What I'm saying is that it's very difficult for me to discern whether the parts I can't remember were because I eventually experienced ego death and forgot who I was, or whether I just have amnesia because they fed me three different antipsychotics at one time.<br />
<br />
I've acquired all my psych papers from prison and from the hospital, and they have been very helpful in telling me what my behavior was like at that time, and also a little bit of what I said. I made reference to Asherah, one of the main spirits I was dealing with at the time, and I have distinct memories of talking about Anansi the spider. A LOT. I remember thinking that my prison slippers were Anansi's traveling shoes... and being confused about my glasses, because I thought they were his, but I was told that they were definitely mine.<br />
<br />
This is why I feel that January was a shamanic initiation by spirits: if Anansi was really there (which of course is always in question, because nobody can really know for certain if spirits are actually real or not), then telling me the glasses were mine instead of his was an attempt to teach me how to distinguish between spirits and myself. In other words, <b>the spirits were trying to keep me sane</b>. Trippy, no? In addition to that, even while it was happening and certainly afterwards, I treated it like an extended trip. I know some people have preconceived notions about psychedelics, so let me explain what a trip means for me.<br />
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I have only ever really taken psychedelics for the purpose of experiencing the presence of the divine or learning more about myself and working on my psychological issues. As a result of that, even while I was going mad, I was constantly looking for insights and useful information about myself. As the walls and assumptions dissolved into insanity, a lot of useful information bubbled up out of my unconscious mind. From the place that Jung called the Shadow: the repository of all those things we are too frightened or not yet ready to face about ourselves. The abilities and qualities that we're afraid we might abuse and hurt people, or that we fear could lead us into addiction.<br />
<br />
A friend placed a bear spirit in charge of me ahead of time because she was worried I might get into trouble, and that spirit did a fantastic job of making sure my body was safe. The worst I suffered in that whole two-week period was a skinned knee. Some shamanic initiations culminate in near-death experiences, or even the person's heart stopping for a while, so I really feel like I got off pretty light. It was quite harrowing, and it helped me to conquer my two greatest fears - losing control of my own mind and going to prison - but at no point did I fear I was going to die. I knew that I was in good hands, that I was with people who would protect me if I couldn't protect myself. That is huge and I'm very grateful for it. I'm also very grateful to my friend Sophia, who had the good sense to take me to the hospital when I got out of prison and was trying to talk to people who were in other parts of the country.<br />
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Kabbalistic and Buddhist sources that I don't know the names of (but my teachers have talked about them) warn of the danger of certain altered states of consciousness. Sometimes if you're in an intense bliss state, which is very much like mania, you can become addicted to it and sort of drift off into the ether. There's a very real danger of losing yourself for a while, or perhaps going mad permanently. I didn't understand that this was literally true, but now I definitely do. It's true for method actors, as well; look up the story of how Daniel Day-Lewis drove himself mad by staying in character for way too long and had to be institutionalized.<br />
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I was just looking into a local Sufi center tonight, because I've always had a strong interest in it, because it's open to anyone, and because it seems to have very evolved notions about what being a mystic means and how to do it properly. They have an upcoming workshop on how to cope with ego death, and how to make sure you return to normal consciousness afterwards. I know some methods from magic (banishing), and some ritual theater methods involving masks and costumes, but I feel like it would be very valuable to get some training in how to recognize unhealthy thought patterns around mysticism itself.<br />
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I never realized such a thing could even exist until I got lost in my own fantasy worlds and possessed by normally benevolent spirits because, in Tarot terms, I put my sword down. In plainer language, that means I abandoned my reason because I thought the spirits had my best interests in mind. Perhaps they did, and they were trying to test me through suffering. I believe that's quite likely, but I wasn't consenting at the time, and as a result of that I came out of it very confused, disoriented and damaged.<br />
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Never abandon your reason completely; that way lies madness. Take it from one who's been there. Intuition is wonderful and beautiful, but if you don't mediate it with your reason, you're either a fool, a zealot or a madman.<br />
<br />
Finally, if you and I are close friends or family, and reading this post made you worry, consider that it might just be that I believe in spirits and you don't. That's perfectly fine and as it should be. Believing in things that you don't doesn't make me crazy, because I acknowledge that they might not be real. Just like God, or muses, or Athena. When I'm manic, my critical thinking disappears and I think that I'm a prophet or a guru. Bad news. In normal consciousness, I understand that I'm still a student and that I probably always will be. Which is exactly how I feel now, because I'm still sane.<br />
<br />
Feel free to interview or quiz me if you want to verify that fact. I welcome it. Just know that a large contributing factor to my mania in January and more recently was the presence of Wellbutrin in my system, which I no longer take. Also, I'm now taking a mood stabilizer and an antipsychotic. As a result, the chance I'm manic is virtually nil. But I still want you to check my thinking, just in case. I could always be deluding myself and seeing what I want to see, like anybody does sometimes.<br />
<br />
Also, I got more than just personal insights out of my January experience. A story that Anansi told me turned into a freeform storytelling game about animal spirits. My addled mind was obsessed with weaving fictional worlds together and assembling characters who rarely interact, so I also came out of it with a really interesting story involving Superman, Flash, and the Linear Men, characters from the DC universe who seem an odd trio without knowing the plot. It's almost as if there was this giant web or knot of stories that I got tangled up in, and it's taken me almost a year to start to unravel all the threads and put the plot points in chronological order. There is probably still more that I'm not thinking of right now.<br />
<br />
Did I mention Anansi is the only spirit I know of whose mythos claims he's the lord of all stories?<br />
<br />
Also, spiders weave webs. And a storytelling spider might be really good at weaving webs of plots and characters.<br />
<br />
Just food for thought. I think Anansi is cool, but that's because I'm a storyteller. And I consider him a worthy opponent and a skilled teacher, after what happened in January. Your mileage may vary, though, and that's fine.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-62852480498521157032014-10-30T21:25:00.001-07:002022-12-15T15:43:35.730-08:00The Way of Paradox: Seeking Enlightenment In ChaosCore Values:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Personal Freedom</li>
<li>Radical Self-Reliance</li>
<li>Radical Self-Expression</li>
<li>Passion</li>
<li>Innovation</li>
<li>Knowledge for its own sake</li>
<li>Creating art</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Tenets:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Be an adult. Know your limits. Handle your shit.</li>
<li>Consciously examine and reevaluate all your assumptions about yourself. Regularly. When you need help, consult your therapist or your best friend about your blind spots. Assumptions like "I should do things this way because that's how it's always been done in the past" or "I should do this because others might judge me harshly if i don't" are almost always useless. The same is usually true of ones that start with "I can't".</li>
<li>Discard any useless assumptions or limitations you or others have placed on you. The easiest way to identify useless assumptions is to familiarize yourself with common logical fallacies.</li>
<li>Be awesome all the time, however you define awesome. Set goals and annihilate them. This is how you level up in real life.</li>
<li>Emotions are not commands. Neither are other people's opinions, or whatever that judgmental voice in your head has to say today. Listen to what they have to say, evaluate it while looking for useless assumptions, and then decide whether to accept or reject. Then make a free choice based only on your personal core values.</li>
<li>Help those who desire and deserve your help. Don't waste your time and energy on the lazy or the closed-minded. Always help a friend in need if you can, though. Friendship requires regular maintenance just like anything else.</li>
<li>Practice mindfulness every day, multiple times a day, in as many different ways as you can. The goal is to pull you into the moment so that you can experience more fully the parts of life you enjoy most. Your brain has two basic waking states: mindfulness and autopilot. Make sure you're using the autopilot for menial tasks like washing dishes or finding your way someplace you've been many times before. If you catch yourself on autopilot during a conversation or while creating art, pull yourself back.</li>
<li>Create something every day. Art counts. So does writing. So does magic. Creation is food for the soul.</li>
<li>Cultivate positive addictions, such as daily meditation, exercise, yoga, martial arts, etc.</li>
<li>Determine your own personal practices for the pillars of earth, air, fire, water and spirit. Make sure you base them on not just your strengths but also your weaknesses. As far as possible, practice at least one of each activity every day. Doing your astrological chart will be useful for determining your relative strengths and weaknesses, elementally speaking.</li>
<li>Develop a plan to transform each of your weaknesses, if not into a strength, then at least into something you're passably okay at.</li>
<li>Find a way to monetize whatever you're good at. Having a job that you love and that fulfills you improves quality of life more than anything else, since most people spend over half their conscious hours working.</li>
<li>Practice embracing a thing and its opposite, then dwelling in the resulting cognitive dissonance. It may be scary, unsettling or uncomfortable at first, but stay with it and you'll eventually come to enjoy it. This will prepare you for accepting the reality that things are never as simple as they seem, that many apparently contradictory things can be true without them being able to be reconciled, and that poeple can disagree with you without automatically being wrong or stupid.</li>
<li>Practice paradigm shifting regularly. Try seeing things from your enemy's point of view, not to understand them better, but just because it's difficult. If you hate doing a particular, compare it to other things you hate doing and see what they have in common. Usually you'll find a wrong base assumption there that you can correct.</li>
<li>Determine your base assumptions about life through introspection, conversation or writing. Examine them and figure out which ones are potentially self-defeating, then rewrite them so that they're empowering instead.</li>
<li>Always strive to improve yourself. Relentless improvement is the key to self-respect, and it also helps you with being awesome all the time.</li>
<li>All sources of information are valuable. Your intuition is your unconscious mind's way of warning you about danger, so listen. Similarly, if you find abb idea you think is wise or good advice in a work of fiction, write it down. Keep a journal of such quotes. Looking through it periodically for common themes may help you to identify core values, useless assumptions, or blind spots.</li>
<li>Read and watch as much as you can about whatever your interests are. This may seem obvious, but many people don't give themselves permission to do the things they enjoy. Don't be one of those people.</li>
<li>Abandon guilt in favor of regret. Guilt is always useless because it leads to self-shaming instead of change. Regret, on the other hand, implies a desire to do better next time, which is far more useful. When you fail - and you will, especially at first - analyze the reasons why and adjust your actions and assumptions accordingly. Then do better next time. Deciding that you're wrong or bad or sinful or stupid is not going to help things at all.</li>
<li>The less often you make absolute statements, the less likely you are to look foolish in retrospect. Someone with different base assumptions is usually going to find a counterexample that you haven't considered. Feel free to express your opinion whenever you like, but avoid saying things "are" a certain way (rather than "i think ____" or "i feel ____" or "it appears to me that _____") because it leaves no room for differing opinions. Avoid "always" and "never" for the same reasons.</li>
<li>Mirroring helps set other people at ease. If they're very to the point, then only tell them exactly what they need to know. If they like to chat a lot about random things, feel free to share about your life too. When listening about something that doesn't particularly interest you, you can still be happy for the other person because it's something they're into. There's no need to say things like "i'm not into that" unless they're trying to convince you that you should be. Doing that unnecessarily makes people feel rejected.</li>
<li>Never put your Sword down, but don't be overly skeptical either. Balance in all things.</li>
<li>Don't take things personally. Other people's reactions are rarely about you. They're about that person's habituated behavior patterns and assumptions. </li>
<li>Strive to be assertive, respectful, kind, fair, and calm. Other people have no right to tell you what to do, but telling them so will tend to upset them, especially if they disagree. Avoid asserting your will over others unless they are harassing you in some way.</li>
<li>The Paradox Rule: Any apparent paradox or contradiction you notice hints at a flaw in someone's understanding. Make it your business to find the faulty assumption underlying any paradox you notice, so that you can learn from it. Paradoxes allow you to pierce maya to see the deeper layer of truth that lies beneath.</li>
<li>Use the most precise term possible for whatever you're trying to describe. For example, avoid "good", "bad", and "evil" in favor of more useful distinctions such as helpful/unhelpful, useful/useless, or cruel/kind. The former terms are laden with eons worth of guilt and shared assumptions, while the latter ones are far cleaner.</li>
<li>Words have the power to create or destroy. Do not use them lightly. Calling a person or thing bad or stupid creates an expectation in your mind that this will always be so. Which, in turn, leads to useless assumptions. Conversely, striving to keep your word at all times creates the expectation that when you say something will happen, it is almost certainly going to happen. This is what real power looks like.</li>
<li>Some of these tenets may not suit you. Contemplate the reason why, looking for useless assumptions as always. None of these ideas are set in stone. This is an open source document, so if you find no useless assumptions around a tenet, you should modify it or delete it. Personal enlightenment is personal. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Go be awesome.</li>
</ul>
</div>
Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-21300221887998790512014-02-16T07:21:00.001-08:002022-12-15T15:43:54.941-08:00The Fallen Angels: A Midrash<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>This is a story the archangel Raphael told me today during my daily meditation / prayer. Being a writer, I embellished it a bit of course.<br/>
<br/>
Long ago, when this incarnation of the universe barely had the shrink-wrap taken off, God created the angels. Or perhaps it might be more correct to say that God (the Elohim) noticed the angels, as the each angel is to God as a cell or an organ is to the whole human body. (The same is true of humans, but that's a story for another time.) So perhaps the Heavenly Host's hive mind became self-aware and decided to be called YHVH, or conversely, perhaps the great YHVH noticed one day that all of its appendages possessed singular intelligence and purpose. This chicken-and-egg problem is also an argument for another time. However, it does point to the possibility that those humans with multiple personalities ("dissociative identity disorder") might very well be created a bit more in the image of the Host than the rest of us, being both singular and multiple at once, but also neither.<br/>
<br/>
All was well within the great heavenly hive-mind system of the Elohim until creation began. Each of the angels was tasked with creating and tending a particular type of thing - a tree, perhaps, or an animal, or clouds or soil. Even a single blade of grass has its own angel, the rabbis tell us. But when the humans Adam and Lilith were created, this was when trouble began. The angels saw that humans had something they did not - not only physical bodies with which to enjoy the universe more fully, but the free will that allowed them to choose to do so. Lilith was free to leave Adam when he refused to respect her autonomy, and in response God created a lesser creature, Eve, out of Adam's side. Could God be fallible after all? There was dissension in the angelic ranks about this point, and so the archangel Samael took it upon himself to test the theory.<br/>
<br/>
What would happen if, in addition to free will, the humans had knowledge of what would and would not harm them (often pronounced "good and evil")? Samael wanted to find out, so he assumed the form of a snake and made it happen. Only those of the Elohim who were also curious about the Host's fallibility knew about this plan, so when it succeeded, the group came together and ejected Samael from their number. The other Watchers who had been with him also decided to remain on earth, as it had become clear to them that their brethren were stuck-up and pompous sticks in the mud. They went on to teach the humans magic, science, architecture, and all sorts of interesting sexual positions and generally to enjoy themselves on earth as they liked.<br/>
<br/>
But here is the point that no one seems to get, which Raphael underscored for me this morning: None of this would have been possible had God (Elohim / the Host) not removed the fallen angels' desire to serve God first. An angel cannot act against its nature; its very name compels it to behave in a particular way and to fulfill a particular function. It's only without the desire to perform that function that said angel can gain something like free will, and so we come to the conclusion that the Host expelled the Fallen not as a curse, but out of love because it was what they wanted. It was only by wandering in the Desert of the Real (to steal a term from the Matrix) that the Fallen could come to appreciate their own particular gifts and heaven itself.<br/>
<br/>
If you love something you've created enough, set it free, and one day it will come back to you when it realizes it loves its creator back.</div>Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-57740585577073113512014-01-23T20:36:00.002-08:002022-12-15T15:47:24.114-08:00Some Thoughts on Magical Models (or: Whither Chaos Magic?)The problem with chaos magic has always been that when compared with traditional systems, it goes about everything more or less upside-down, backwards, inside-out and sideways. Before going any further, let me add some basic principles that will make this guide far more understandable to anyone whose background may be different from my own:<br />
<br />
Principle 1: Chaos magic grew out of, and owes a great debt to the philosophy of, Discordianism. Reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy is nice, but you will need a firm grounding in the Principia Discordia to get started on understanding chaos magic. How does one get a firm grounding in a book that is made up mostly of in-jokes, hearsay and quotes from books that don't in fact exist? I'm so glad you asked: The core of the philosophy can be found here: <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x117199">Psycho-Metaphysics</a><br />
<br />
Principle 2: The best text for learning chaos magic is <a href="http://www.philhine.org.uk/writings/pdfs/orchaos.pdf">Oven-Ready Chaos</a> by Phil Hine. I say "best" because, based on my own reading, it is the most objective and scientific one freely available online. While Peter Carroll is excellent reading, Phil Hine is better both at explaining in general and at distinguishing his own personal views from universal truth<br />
<br />
Principle 3: Chaos magic is not a system but a meta-system. In the same sense that NLP is a meta-system for human communication and integral thought is a meta-system for human development, chaos magic is a meta-system for describing improbable coincidences (in the timeless words of Peter Carroll). Its strength and weakness has always been in its ability to eff the ineffable, to quote a good friend of mine (in other words, to explain that which traditionally has been thought to be inexplicable).<br />
<br />
Why does this matter? Because chaos magic has succeeded in infecting all other magical systems to the point that Andrieh Vitimus (who should correct me if I'm misquoting you) said at Crucible this year that nearly every book on magic published today would likely have been considered a chaos magic book ten to fifteen years ago. Wicca remains influential, but like the Christianity its members sometimes react so vehemently to, it is a system that asserts universality while the reality is anything but. Just ask anyone who used to believe all goddesses are the same, or that all witches must necessarily be Wiccan. The usefulness of a system like chaos magic, which tries to distill practices down to only what works, and that also tries to apply the scientific method to the Work, cannot be overstated.<br />
<br />
I was chatting today with Jason Miller about the four models of magic, which seem to be his least favorite bit about chaos magic in particular. Let me address those here, because they are the reason this blog post happened at all. Roughly, the four models are the energy ("Magic works through directing energy"), spirit ("Magic works by calling and working with spirit entities"), psychological ("Magic works through embedding information in the unconscious and/or collective unconscious"), and cybernetic ("Magic is a primitive word for hacking the Matrix"). Jason and I agree that these models are artificial, that there's really no reason to use any of them exclusively, and that servitors (which are cybernetic in focus) are really no different from homunculi or even some versions of the ancient golem, which means (as Phil Hine rightly says in Oven-Ready Chaos) the cybernetic model dovetails right back into the spirit model, which is normally considered the oldest of the four.<br />
<br />
But I like the models because they're artificial, not in spite of it. Why? Because as a privileged white boy who had strict rationalism thrust upon him, it comforted me a great deal to know there were others out there who needed to be flat-out told that the psychological model is *not* somehow superior to the other three. Who needed to be beaten over the head, in fact, with the knowledge that non-rational does *not* equal unreal. Please raise your hand if you're with me on this.<br />
<br />
So what should any of us do when someone says, "I'm a spirit model person" or "I prefer the psychological model" or even "I only believe in energy healing"? There's always a choice: Speak that person's language or don't. But there's a reason I mentioned NLP earlier, a method to my madness as it were, and that reason is called mirroring. In NLP it's often described through auditory, visual or kinesthetic language - for example, someone who's a kinesthetic learner might be more inclined to say they grasp what you're saying, while an auditory person might say "I hear you" or simply nod their head, and a visual person would probably just make really good eye contact or maybe add "I see what you mean." This is an NLP technique developed from watching three very different therapists with very different assumptions and styles, all of whom did it intuitively because of how well it works for developing a genuine rapport quickly.<br />
<br />
Mirroring the person's language helps the person feel at ease with you; it helps them let their guard down because they know you've heard them, and on an unconscious level, they know that you've adjusted your speech patterns just a little so that you can meet on shared ground. The same is true for magical models: If someone tells you their preferred model and you respond by explaining things in some other one, you'd better have a bloody good reason for doing so, and first you'd better explain yourself. The most common reason is either that no explanation exists for a given phenomenon in the model the person specified, or possibly that you're not familiar enough with that model to know what the explanation is.<br />
<br />
Being conversant in all four models is helpful, but even if you aren't, just acknowledging that you've changed the subject because you have a model limitation of your own will help you to laugh at yourselves, move on, and avoid getting bogged down in cock-measuring contests of language instead of figuring out a way to communicate. When in doubt, almost everyone knows a bit of the energy, spirit, and psychological models, so feel free to weave them together with a nice helping of fictional terminology if that's all you know of. Mage: the Ascension is particularly useful for effing the ineffable, as is the game Unknown Armies.<br />
<br />
Now you may see why I emphasized the Principia Discordia so emphatically above. (See what I did there?) Reality really is the original Rorschach.<br />
<br />
Verily! So much for all that.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-82805444478145181452013-12-14T16:27:00.004-08:002022-12-15T15:55:58.584-08:00The Alchemical Gaming Manifesto<div class="MsoBodyText">
or, Alchemical Gaming: Transforming Your
Real Life Through a Character</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">Itâs mind-boggling to
me that Iâve been playing role-playing games for 20 years now â about two
thirds of my life â but when I stop to think about it, itâs really not that
surprising. I was the kind of kid who had a very active fantasy life. Each of
my closest friends and I had particular, specific make-believe games weâd play
when we were hanging out together. With some friends, the more creative ones, I
had several â but I remember there was almost always at least one. Without some
level of shared fantasy, I had trouble feeling close to other people. With Noah it was usually some kind of secret-agent thing. Jennifer liked to play the older sister and make me do her bidding. With Ryan, we'd do whatever we felt like that day - it could just as easily be cops & robbers as an exploratory visit to Planet X.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">My friend Dave was
one of my closest friends as a kid, and it was pretty devastating for me when
he moved from Pittsburgh to Buffalo. I think we were probably about ten years
old. He and I used to do what amounted to freeform Dungeons and Dragons
together, so losing him was what made me investigate the real thing. I quickly
became discouraged by the sheer number and scope of the rules, which led to
some disastrous gaming sessions in Middle School. Where was all the fun, the
magic?</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">I found it in
Vampire: the Masquerade, especially once I began LARPing. Soon I was also
playing Changeling: the Dreaming, which soothed my soul as a bullied, academically gifted outcast in high school by letting me reframe my situation as being like a spirit of creativity surrounded by mindless drones. Like all of the Classic
World of Darkness games, Changeling and Vampire both contain a great deal of
real-world occultism and the existential angst that comes from being a
misunderstood free thinker. It's no accident that when I ran back into Dave in our early 20's, both of us had already been LARPing for quite some time. In high school also related very strongly to works such as
Platoâs Allegory of the Cave, Aldous Huxleyâs <i>Brave New World</i>, Orson Scott
Cardâs classic <i>Enderâs Game,</i> and Frank Herbertâs equally classic <i>Dune</i>. All four
books might be easily summed up by the words of Gandhi: âFirst they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.â</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">I first learned of
the idea called alchemical gaming several years after high school, around the same time that Dave and I reconnected. I had gone
to what I thought was the college of my dreams, studied what I thought was the
call of my heart, and ended up being too distracted by computer games to
actually go to class. I had wanted to take a year off in between college and
high school, but my parents feared Iâd never return to school. They were right:
I still havenât. But thatâs because Iâm working on something much more
important. And itâs an idea I first thought of when I was working on some books
for White Wolf, another way I was ignoring my studies while pursuing my dreams
instead. The idea is simple: What if, by playing a character who has certain
characteristics like confidence or vulnerability or joie de vivre, a person
could actually rewrite his or her own personality? My friends and I use the
word âalchemyâ in the metaphoric, Jungian sense, rather than the literal sense â
alchemy is the Great Work of transforming your personal lead into gold.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">I saw this at first
as an ideal way to help people with social anxiety like myself, and now that
thereâs much more research into role-playing studies, it turns out that many gamers have
intuitively realized that gaming is good social practice. But it is also far
more than that. Over the past 40 years or so since Dungeons & Dragons was
first released, researchers have found that gamers also use role-playing as a
motivator to learn new things, as a safe space in which to explore issues they
might ignore in their real lives, and even as a way to take a vacation from their usual roles and identity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">Or as Whitney âStrixâ Beltran put it so succinctly,
role-playing gives us access to mythological archetypes in a culture that has
no longer has many organic ways to access them. Immersion into a character is a
liminal space, within our normal consciousness but distinct from it, much like going on a vision quest or other shamanic journey. But because
there is no audience, there is also no choice but to participate, which is why
the process transforms communities just as it does individuals.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">In Nordic and some
American LARPs, gamers speak about âbleedâ â the term used for when a player
experiences emotional release or spontaneous, unexpected emotional reactions
from an in-character situation. This can be because the situation was upsetting or
triggering for their character, for themselves, or more often both, because a
personâs character will always represent whatever ideas and skills that player
finds most compelling or interesting at the time. But the term âbleedâ itself
implies it is something that happens <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to</i> us,
rather than a process we can consciously direct. And my own experience, as well
as that of the people Iâve interviewed about theirs, strongly suggests that
progress is far more dramatic when done deliberately.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">If you donât know what
you want to work on, but you feel like this system might be a good idea, thatâs
great. Ask yourself a few questions: When you were a kid, what did you want to
be when you grew up and why? If money were no object, how would you spend your
days? What activity makes you feel both happy and fulfilled, or like youâre
being your better self? Or what thing about yourself have you always wanted to
change? These are good places to start for goals to create a character around,
but always remember that the character needs to be one you think youâll have
fun playing. Without that, you wonât be able to immerse yourself in the
characterâs personality and youâll get nowhere with your goals as a result. The
purpose of this system is to add a small additional layer of nuance to your
roleplay, not to dominate it with heavy-handed lessons.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">If
youâre still having trouble figuring out what goal to build your character
around, think about past characters youâve played. A few years ago, for
example, I noticed that my first few Vampire characters were wanderers or
loners who were good at performance, gathering knowledge, and magic or the occult. I
thought this was just an expression of my real-world interest in those things,
but now I believe this was my unconscious mind trying to tell me, âHey! Stop
watching so much TV and go back to reading, writing, and practicing magic like
you did when you were younger!â<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Your unconscious will frequently try to send you messages through
characters this way, just as it sometimes will through a favorite quote, book,
song, or film. The trick is in learning how to listen to it, which comes with
time and practice. You can always ask your close friends what patterns they see
in your usual character choice, because thatâs a blind spot for many people
that should be pretty obvious to those who know them well.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
are four basic types of characters a player can use for alchemical work:</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><b><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal;">1. </span></span></span>The
Ideal Character</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">Ideal
characters, in my experience, are probably the easiest way to do alchemical
work in a game. This is because theyâre entirely self directed â input from the
storyteller or GM will help, but is completely optional. The idea is a simple
one: Create a character who is good at the things youâve always wanted to get
better at. These could be your strengths, weaknesses, or a combination of both.
Because LARP is a safe space where youâre surrounded by fellow geeks, youâll
have a much easier time trying to be more outgoing or practicing your marginal
singing skills without the usual fear of judgment should you fail. Just as in
improv theater, Failure Is Okay in LARP (as in life, but it takes a while to
learn this). Ideal characters are generally best for learning new personality
traits. You can also use an ideal character as an aid in real-life situations
where you feel a lack of confidence, by getting into character when youâre
doing something that your character is better at than you are.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<b style="text-indent: 0.25in;">2.
The Motivation Character</b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">Motivation
characters are a special subset of ideal characters, but are a bit more
formalized. They work best for people who sometimes have trouble with
follow-through on their goals. Create your character like an ideal character,
but circle the skills that relate to your real-world goal. Write up a contract
with either yourself or your storyteller, promising that you wonât spend
experience points on those skills until youâve actually developed or improved
them in real life. If your storyteller is open to helping you, her or she may
ask you to give a small demonstration of your martial arts or public speaking
skills (for example) before letting you spend said XP. Motivation characters
are generally best for learning new skills or improving on old ones.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<b><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">The Catharsis Character</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">Consider this a
more advanced technique for after you have a bit of experience with alchemical
characters. It will likely happen to you unexpectedly when playing an ideal or
motivation character, via emotional release or âbleedâ. Thatâs fine and to be
expected. But deliberately confronting what Jungian psychologists call your
Shadow â the parts of your personality you prefer to forget about or ignore
most of the time â can be both disturbing and potentially dangerous. When you
gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">Still, if you have a
long-standing fear or emotional blockage, building a character around it and
watching that characterâs eventual destruction may help you to integrate some
of those darker aspects of your personality, or to transform them into
something you feel more comfortable with. As a result, catharsis characters are
best for facing fears, prejudices, or mindless assumptions. ALWAYS INFORM YOUR
STORYTELLER IF YOU ARE PLAYING A CATHARSIS CHARACTER. Otherwise, you may appear
to be a disruptive player if your character is getting other playersâ characters
into a lot of trouble seemingly without reason, and your ST also wonât know
about the very real possibility of emotional complications from playing a
character like this. Consider yourself fairly warned.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><b>4. The
Archetype Character</b></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">If you want to
combine two or all three of the character types above within one character,
donât worry â itâs been done before, and after a little practice, itâs easier
than you might think. The simplest way to do it is to create your character
around a particular archetype. For example, imagine a person who wants to learn
more about stage magic, wants to become more confident, and also notices that
he can be manipulative and unreliable sometimes. To work on all three of those
ideas simultaneously, he could create a character around an archetype such as
the Trickster, who has all those characteristics since all archetypes have both
light and dark aspects. The archetype character feels tricky at first, but itâs
also potentially the most valuable because it can show you the value of balance
and the fact that real people are far more complex than simply being âgoodâ or
âbadâ. And even the so-called negative aspects of the Trickster would be an
asset when trying to dodge bullets or avoid capture.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">There
are certain pitfalls to avoid in this type of work, but luckily there are also
some simple ways to mitigate them. Bleed itself is one. If you find
yourself spontaneously laughing, crying or even filled with rage, try to roll
with it if youâre able to. It may take minutes or longer to figure out whether
this comes from in- or out-of-character emotion, but spend enough time and
youâll always learn something about yourself from paying attention to emotional
release. If itâs too painful for you, though, you have every right to step out
of the scene, take some deep breaths, and wait to step back into character
until you feel ready. Because this process is self-directed, no one else can
tell you how to get what you need, so pay attention to your bodyâs physical
reactions and to your mindâs mental and emotional ones in order to figure out
what you should do next in this situation.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">Focusing
too much on the goal rather than on the process can also be a mistake. Even if
you feel like you were thwarted this game at every turn, you can learn a lot
about yourself from looking at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why</i>
your plans didnât work out the way you wanted them to. Whether the individual
game occurred for you as easy or challenging, fun or grueling, you will notice
that insights or new ideas will tend to pop into your head following an event.
I believe this is because shifting your normal persona into the unconscious
mind gives it unprecedented access to your worries, concerns, hopes and dreams,
so that it can help find solutions to them that are waiting for you when you
return to your normal self. It sounds absolutely batty, schizophrenic even, but
it does actually work.</span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">What can help the most with processing an
intense alchemical gaming experience is a technique from Nordic LARP called
debriefing. The way a debriefing works is a bit like the standard eat-and-chat
sessions at the local diner or family restaurant that every LARPer has
experienced already. The difference is in what the conversation talks about. I
suggest asking six questions that everyone needs to answer for themselves, though they only
need to share with the group if they feel comfortable doing so. Although
alchemical gaming is mainly self-directed, debriefings can be very helpful for
STs to learn what themes their players might want to see in future plotlines.
Especially if the ST is comfortable with helping players to better themselves
(in whatever way the player considers âbetterâ).</span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The
suggested debriefing questions are below, but don't feel obligated to use all of them. If the response from most people present is a groan or a bored look, skip that question and try a different one. Numbers 3, 4, and 5 are the most important, so I suggest at least touching on them during any discussion, even a more unstructured one. A debriefing should always be optional, but anyone who comes to one needs to agree to confidentiality so that everyone can feel safe to talk about whatever they're working on. STs: Metagaming the information from a debriefing or using it against another player in any way is an inexcusable breach of the trust makes alchemical gaming possible in the first place. A single warning is reasonable, but a second offense should result (at minimum) in disciplinary action against the player and no more invitations to debriefings. This process is for mature, reasonably self-aware adults, and all it takes is one gossip or drama queen to spoil the web of trust.</span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->What do you feel worked particularly well this
game session, and why do you think it worked so well?</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->What do you feel didnât work very well this game
session, and how might it be fixed or changed in the future to make it work
better?</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->What did you learn about yourself and your
personal goals this session, and how did it make you feel?</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->How did you help another player or group achieve
their goals this session, and how did that make you feel?</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;">5. Name something that you failed to accomplish this game session. How do you feel about that, and what changes will you make to prevent this from happening again?</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK1;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->What was your favorite moment from this event?
Describe it as vividly as you can so that everyone else can get a taste of what
it was like for you.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It should hopefully be obvious from these questions that
one of the group benefits of alchemical gaming practice is an increased sense
of community, closeness, or belonging, and a heightened emphasis on
role-playing as collaborative storytelling rather than a competition. This
tends to increase everyoneâs fun, which in turn makes achieving goals even
easier. Jane McGonigal talks at great length in her book </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Reality is Broken</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> about how most people are far more inclined to
make important life changes for the sake of a game than because theyâre âa good
ideaâ: Games are meaningful work that we choose. Building your character around
a goal adds a little meaningful work to any game, which is why it can be so
valuable.</span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">If youâre a player at Dystopia Rising: New
Jersey or Pennsyltucky and would like to take part in an experimental
debriefing group for alchemical gaming, please contact me on Facebook about
joining the groups Iâll be starting soon. If you do have interest, I suspect
that youâre one of my favorite kind of players: The ones who know the goal(s)
their character is built to address, but arenât quite sure how to achieve those
goals in real life. My name is Jason Louis Feldstein and we probably have
several mutual friends on Facebook already. Please help me work on elevating gaming from an art form
to a spiritual or self-help practice, just as White Wolf helped elevate it from
entertainment to an art form back in the 90âs. The time is now for this
much-needed evolution. I will eventually be publishing a book on this topic, but first I need beta testers for the system. Please let me know if you're </span>interested in helping.</div>
Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-66070810828994419692013-12-11T19:52:00.005-08:002022-12-15T15:48:17.981-08:00Conversations with Angels, Part 1Recently I tried to contact the archangel Gabriel, but I did so in a very cursory and frankly arrogant way. He responded anyway, but was terse and generally unhelpful. I asked my friend Sara about this, since she's been doing spirit magic since before I even met her (and that was 10 years ago). She suggested that he might have been angry with me. So I decided I'd do it right the next time.<br />
<br />
Today when I found the new herb shop in Squirrel Hill, I honestly didn't realize my desire to get all the herbs mentioned as offerings in Torah was in any way connected with this. But the fun thing about listening to your intuition is that intuition is a direct line to things your unconscious mind has figured out. And your unconscious mind is connected to the collective unconscious (or Akashic Record, or Dreamtime, or whatever you prefer to call it).<br />
<br />
And that realm, depending on whom you ask, may also be identical with the mind of God. In the series the Death Gate Cycle, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman called this idea the Wave: God is the collective will and desires and wisdom of all humanity in egregoric form. I have run across it in Hinduism as well, if I remember correctly. If this idea makes you feel uneasy, that only means you still have an AT field. (I'm using the term from Neon Genesis Evangelion because I have never found a better one.) Don't worry, so do I. So do we all. It's why we're humans and not spirits.<br />
<br />
So tonight, when I realized it was time to try approaching Gabriel the right way, I had all the herbs I'd need already handy. Thanks, unconscious mind! Because I'm currently ritually impure from visiting a cemetery, I didn't approach the One but rather went through one of the angels who's known for being a spokesperson of his. As you'll see, I was given the go-ahead to publish this conversation. I put the angel's words in all caps not because there was the feeling of shouting, but rather because his words seemed to carry deep conviction and, well, severity. I have no better word for it. "Gavriel" and "Gevurah" have the same root, so this is not a surprise. But he was much, much friendlier this time:<br />
<br />
Jason: Are you there?<br />
<br />
Gabriel: I AM HERE.<br />
<br />
Jason: I'm sorry for being presumptuous and arrogant last time, and for treating you like one would treat a lowly demon. That was wrong and I'm sorry for it.<br />
<br />
Gabriel: YOU ARE FORGIVEN.<br />
<br />
Jason: Thank you. You're very forgiving. Are all angels that way?<br />
<br />
Gabriel: MANY.<br />
<br />
Jason: It's your nature, is that right? Is that how it works?<br />
<br />
Gabriel: YOU KNOW THAT IT IS.<br />
<br />
Jason: Is there any information you need to pass along?<br />
<br />
Gabriel: NOT AT THIS TIME. STOP TRYING SO HARD. WE KNOW HOW TO CONTACT YOU. YOU WILL KNOW WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT.<br />
<br />
Jason: *Laughs* Okay. Message received loud and clear. Is it all right if I ask a question?<br />
<br />
Gabriel: YES.<br />
<br />
Jason: If it's not too presumptuous, what does the One think of my role-playing game?<br />
<br />
Gabriel: *Pauses* HE LAUGHS ABOUT IT OFTEN.<br />
<br />
Jason: Is that a good thing?<br />
<br />
Gabriel: USUALLY.<br />
<br />
Jason: Okay, cool. I want to thank you for taking this time. Please pass along my gratitude and respect and love. And I'm grateful to you and respect you as well. And I guess... okay, I love you also.<br />
<br />
Gabriel: I AM FOND OF YOU AS WELL.<br />
<br />
Jason: If you don't mind my asking, why didn't you say it back? Is it difficult getting attached to mortals?<br />
<br />
Gabriel: WE DO NOT KNOW EACH OTHER YET.<br />
<br />
Jason: Okay, of course. I'm sorry. You are a person. I'm sorry for not getting that, it was unfair of me.<br />
<br />
Gabriel: YOU ARE FORGIVEN.<br />
<br />
Jason: Thank you. Once again, I thank you for taking the time. Goodnight.Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521975688667535978.post-49304904715060091182013-12-06T08:22:00.002-08:002022-12-15T15:52:36.991-08:00Who Looks Outside, Dreams. Who Looks Inside, Awakens.<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">Carl Jung said that, and he was right. Just look at his Red Book.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
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<span style="color: #2f353b; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">Recently, I experienced what might be
called a spiritual awakening. This guide is my attempt to unpack all the assumptions
that led me here, as simply and as specifically as possible. The goal is for
other people to try it and hopefully get good results. Please feel free to
distribute this document as widely as you like, via Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter,
etc. Iâm not after any kind of recognition here, even though recognition is
always nice. What Iâm after is the transformation of society itself, one
individual at a time. If these rules work for you, please help. If not, forget
about them, no harm done.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">1. Discard all useless assumptions.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> And I do mean ALL. Everything from what you should eat for
breakfast to what you always wanted to be when you grew up. Only the useless
ones, though. If you reevaluate them and realize you agree with them for a good
reason, then they're not useless assumptions, they're useful ones.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">2. Spend as much of your time as possible doing the thing or
things that leave you feeling both happy and fulfilled.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> They normally involve creating something. The capacity to
create is what it means to be made in the image of the divine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">3. Read more. About whatever it is that interests you.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Fiction is great, but reference makes you better. Whatever
your interests are, find books about them that look incredibly cool to you and
then devour them. Same with documentaries and audio books.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">4. Accept your darker nature.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> You can never get rid of it, it's an important part of you.
The trick is just not to indulge it too much or too often. But even so, there
is such a thing as doing the wrong thing for the right reason, rarely.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">5. Whatever your art is, do it every day.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Always try to remember that art is about expressing an idea,
so do whatever it takes to express your idea as fully as you can. Collaborate
with other artists, even if their media are totally different from yours.
Together you will find a way. Donât be afraid of losing control of an art
project⌠instead, be afraid of missing out on another creative personâs
valuable input. Also, take as broad a view of the definition of art as it takes
â computer programming, law, medicine, graphic design, and architecture all qualify,
if done with feeling. Thatâs the biggest secret of good art â while technique
is important, passion is far more important. Thatâs why young kids can draw or
paint pictures that can really touch an adult, even though they may look simple
or even crude.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">6. When making any decision, ask yourself, "Will this
make me more or less awesome?"</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Always choose
whatever will make you the most awesome. You are already have a talent, maybe
several. But relentless improvement is the goal. Become the best you that you possibly
can, and then be that self all the time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">7. Assume you donât know what other people are thinking or
why they do what they do.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> People make up
all kinds of stories about what happens to them. Usually those stories are
partially or completely wrong. So given that fact, it's always most productive
to look at things in the most positive way possible because that tends to
produce the best outcome. Never ascribe malice to someone's motivations when
stupidity or ignorance works just as well.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">8. Judge by the results you get.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Especially with this document. If some or all of these rules
don't work for you, then discard them. If you feel like somethingâs missing
from this document, then add it. If you do add one, please put your email
address in it, so that others can report their results to you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">9. Speak your mind when something wrong is happening.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Better yet, always speak your mind all the time, unless
you're trying to avoid creating drama. Never forget that if you don't say
something, there may be nobody else present who's willing to even consider the
possibility of being a whistle blower. If you see hypocrisy, shove the person's
face in it. You have a choice, every minute of every day, of whether to be a
hero, a bystander, or a victim. "Hero" is naturally the most awesome
choice of the three, so choose that one whenever possible.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">10. Assume everything that happens to you is a message from
God/dess (however you conceive of him/her/it).</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> There is no such thing as coincidence. Everything that happens
to you every moment of every day is intended to teach you something. But you
have to pay attention in order to see beneath the details to the truth that's
waiting for you to pick it up. Tearing down boundaries in your mind between
different interests or disciplines, like i mentioned before, along with taking
everything as a message from God will lead to your art being brilliant. and
also to you realizing that you can do anything you set your mind to (which,
believe me, you can).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">11. Reexamine all your favorite books, movies, music and TV
shows for what they're trying to teach you.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> You
like them because your unconscious mind and/or God wants you to see one of your
blind spots or to learn something important.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">12. Stay humble and sane by being of service and never taking
anything at face value.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> You can still
make mistakes just like any human, regardless of how "enlightened"
you think you're becoming.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">13. Practice magic, however you understand it.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Daily. Make sure you practice both âhighâ and âlowâ magic.
High magic traditionally concerns itself with uniting with the divine for its
own sake, while low magic is about getting real-world results. Neither is
âbetterâ or âworseâ than the other, theyâre just different. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">14. Creating art is alchemy.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Art is not just creation, it is also the vehicle through
which we transform our personal lead into gold.Hence, drama therapy and art
therapy. And like alchemy, art allows us to turn our personal lead (suffering)
into gold (beauty).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">15. Art is philosophy is shamanism is psychology. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">All of these pursuits involve holding up a mirror to society
so that it can see all its metaphorical warts and blemishes. You may face scorn
or ridicule for being a free thinker, but that only means youâre on the right
track. Socrates, maybe one of the first of us, called himself a gadfly â in
other words, âI will sting you as many times as I have to until you wake up.â<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">16. The "Yes, and..." rule from improv.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Yes opens doors. No closes them. Unless you have something
really important to do or the suggestion is actually dangerous, say yes to it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">17. Many people will be inclined to read these rules, nod
their heads, and then sit back and forget about them.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> If you want to avoid this, print them out and keep them in
your pocket. You can refer to them throughout your day if you need to.
Eventually they will become intuitive, which is the point of all this. You will
still experience sorrow, loss, loneliness and suffering in your life, but you
can always come back and center yourself by reading this document and thinking
about which rule you might have followed better. Usually there will be one. If
there isnât, figure out the mistake you made, then make up your own rule that
might have prevented it, and add it to the end.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">18. Pay attention to your passions.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Let your enthusiasm flow freely. The key to this entire
system is living in the moment and expressing your love to everyone and
everything. And when you let yourself gush about whatever inspires you, other
people will naturally want to help you with your project. Authenticity makes
the âhard sellâ completely unnecessary, because relating to peopleâs humanity
leaves everyone feeling empowered, where treating someone as a means to an end
creates resentment and exploitation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">19. You are only as good as your word.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Keeping it makes you powerful; breaking it makes you
powerless. Do all you can to keep your word or promise at all times. When
something happens that renders you unable, be sure to call the other person and
let them know so that they aren't relying on you. Conversely, never give your
word that you'll do something unless you actually intend to do it; otherwise,
it's a broken promise waiting to happen. Most importantly, always keep your
word to yourself, even if it means being forced to break a promise to someone
else that isnât life-or-death. If you donât know yourself that things happen
when you say they will, then the rest of this system wonât work for you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">20. Addiction is what happens when people try to soothe their
soul with artificial fulfillment or joy.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> It is
also the same thing that ancient people called âidolatryâ: placing something
material above the pursuit of the divine. Many people find wisdom in sex,
drugs, food, TV, movies, or even business. It's only when you confuse the
messenger for the message that it becomes a problem. Life is not about
consuming as much TV or sex or food as you can; life is about finding your
purpose and helping others to do the same.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">21. Separation is an illusion.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> God is not separate from you, and neither are other people.
This is why helping others helps you, and why making yourself more awesome
helps others too. The drop becomes the ocean, and the ocean becomes the drop,
but they are both still water. In Africa this called "ubuntu", which
means "I am who I am because of who we all are". Duality is an
illusion also â itâs completely possible to be funny and serious, or masculine
and feminine, or rational and intuitive, at the same time. Experiment with
doing so and youâll see.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">22. Every conversation is an opportunity, both to teach
something and to learn something.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Every person
you meet knows something that you need to know. Every person you meet also
needs to know something that you consider obvious. Share often, and listen even
more often.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">23. Have faith in something.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> It doesn't have to be religion, but it does have to be
something that tries to help others. Some popular non-religious choices include
freedom, equality, love, womenâs rights, the scientific method, positive
psychology, libertarianism, socialism and art therapy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">24. Find your purpose.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> It is
more complicated than you think, so normally you will only find pieces. But
eventually youâll put them all together and youâll know exactly what youâre on
this earth to do. Youâll know because when you start doing it, the universe
will conspire to help you. It will feel like coincidence, but in reality there
is no such thing. A good place to start is here: As a kid, what did you want to
be when you grew up? What about in high school or college? Why? Alternatively,
what are your favorite things to do and why do you enjoy them? Whatever your
answer turns out to be, find a way to do it as often as you possibly can.
Turning it into a business is the easiest way, and our economy is transitioning
to a creator-based one, so the time is now.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">25. These rules are intended to provoke a state of permanent
mindfulness.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Some belief systems refer to this as
being a prophet, a bodhisattva, an enlightened master, or a self-actualized
person. The label doesnât matter, though. What matters is that the world needs
more people who are truly Awake. If these rules worked for you, then spread
them to your friends and please email </span><a href="mailto:fieldstone@gmail.com">fieldstone@gmail.com</a><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> if youâd like to share what results you got. Together, we
will transform the world, one soul at a time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">26. Practice detachment from outcomes.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> This may be the hardest thing in this entire guide, but it
is also the most valuable. The only thing that lets you truly be in the moment
and enjoy your life to the fullest is not caring about whether you succeed or
not. Failure is not only okay, itâs completely expected. Whoever told you
otherwise â and Iâm sure there were many â they are probably still unhappy
because of their assumption that failure is somehow wrong or bad. This is the
first assumption you should discard when you adopt rule 1. Doing so will set
you free. Detachment can sometimes make a person seem overconfident, so guard
against this with rule #12.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">27. As you begin to internalize these ideas, you will notice
unusual things happening to you.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Things that you
may have no rational explanation for. Some people call this the law of
attraction or the âblue pillâ, but again, labels are unimportant. The important
thing is this: Even hallucinations are not a problem as long as they arenât
maladaptive. What this means is that if you see a spirit and it tells you to do
things that seem noble and helpful, there is no problem here. Itâs only if you
see something that wants you to do wrong or evil things that you should
question whether you need medication. Never lose sight of this, because many
people are very afraid of the non-rational, and they will try very hard to
convince you to go back to sleep.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">28. Trust your intuition.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> If
you feel like you need to do something but you canât explain why, DO IT.
Immediately, without delay, if at all possible, but otherwise write it down and
do it as soon as you have the opportunity. If you feel like a situation is
dangerous but arenât sure how you know this, exercise caution. Intuition is
what happens when your brain processes information that you arenât consciously
aware of noticing. Part of the function of your unconscious mind is to protect
you this way, so listen to it. This also <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>relates directly to Rule #10: When you take an interest in
God/dess, eventually the interest becomes mutual and you start getting information.
This will feel very strange at first, but your discomfort only shows that you
are still sane.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">29. Forget what you think you know about time.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Time appears linear to us because our culture tells us that
it is. If we were ancient Navajos or Hindus, we would believe that time is a
wheel. In actuality it is neither of these â all things throughout history are
happening simultaneously, just as all beings are not really separate. Itâs just
as easy to receive information from a future self as it is to remember
something from when you were a child. Maybe easier, since memory fades but the
future never does.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">30. Look at your weaknesses and improve upon them.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> They are opportunities to learn new things, just like every
experience you have. You may never be great at these things, but you can almost
always learn to be good enough that they are no longer actual weaknesses. This
makes you more awesome. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">31. Meaning is not in things but between them (or beneath
them). Whatever</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> your favorite book or movie or food
or store is, always remember that it is not valuable in and of itself. Rather,
it is valuable because it helps pull you into the moment, so that you can
experience your life more fully. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">32. Humor is crucial in an absurd universe.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> We live in a world of Tea Party âChristiansâ who support
war, greed, and hatred, Israeli âJewsâ who think itâs okay to put Palestinians
in concentration camps, and terrorist âMuslimsâ who ignore the sanctity of
human life in favor of blowing up people in Godâs name. Itâs just as absurd as
it is sad. While I think God probably cries about all these things, I also
think the smaller stuff can be amusing. We are, in essence, Godâs reality TV:
while human drama usually feels vitally important in the moment, in retrospect
itâs usually pointless. Humor unites people and cuts through defense mechanisms
and anger, which is why itâs such a good choice to defuse a potentially toxic
situation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">33. Many books, classical music, documentaries, and
intelligent TV promote mindfulness.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> But thereâs
also a lot of crap out there. The best way to tell the difference is to notice
whether what youâre reading, watching or listening to is making you think, or
whether itâs just entertainment and nothing more. Thereâs nothing wrong with
entertainment for its own sake, but always remember that a mind needs good
books like a sword needs a whetstone. (Thatâs a favorite quote from one of my
favorite intelligent TV shows.) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">34. Practice mindful eating.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Loving animals is incompatible with eating factory farmed
meat (or any meat, depending on how you look at it). Hinduism, Buddhism,
Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, and Discordianism (at least) all include mindful
eating practices, and for good reason.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Also, the factory farm industry is largely responsible for greenhouse
gases, antibiotic resistance, and the spread of meat-borne pathogens like
salmonella and E. Coli. You simply cannot be an ethical person and continue to
eat meat that is contaminated by torture, disease and global warming. And
really, why would you ever want to? Also, you will be amazed how consciously
choosing compassion three times a day tends to change you over the course of
the next year or two. Naturally, choosing to eat local, naturally raised meat
or no meat at all is up to your own conscience. You can also practice mindful
eating by eating to make hunger go away (rather than to feel full) and by
putting down your fork between bites. This will also tend to produce weight
loss.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">35. Other people are different from you, and that is wonderful!</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Life would be boring if everyone were the same. Always
remember that if you go through life expecting other people to react to things
the way you would, you are usually going to be disappointed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">36. Losing touch with this system from time to time is natural
and probably inevitable.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> This is why you
should keep a copy with you for easy reference. Consult it a few times a day at
first, just in case, but later on you should only need it if youâre feeling
blocked or upset.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">37. Always stay grounded.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">
Humility helps, as mentioned above, but so do mundane tasks like cleaning your
house, doing laundry or washing dishes. You can always think about lofty ideas
about religion, philosophy, art or science at the same time. Many traditions
warn about the possibility of madness from or addiction to the blissful states
that mindfulness makes possible. The body is no less important just because the
soul is evolving. Mens sana in corpore sano. (âA healthy mind in a healthy
body.â)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">38. Add your own rules as you discover them.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Every person is different, and these are only the
assumptions or truths that worked for me. We donât have to agree on all or even
some assumptions about how the universe works in order to be friends or learn
from each other. Nobody likes an echo chamber, but nobody likes a contrarian
either.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">39. Get to know some animals and see how they surprise you.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Any pet owner can tell you that animals, particularly (but
not only) the more complex mammals like dogs and cats, have not only
preferences and emotions but a real capacity for genuine love. They are like
children, in that their love canât not be pure, trusting, and unconditional. If
your pet loves you, he or she will think nothing of jumping in front of a car
to save you or digging you out of ten feet of snow. And cats, while smaller,
have been known to stay up all night meowing when they find an abandoned baby
in an alley. (Real example.) You can even âcatchâ a yawn from them, and they
can catch one from you too. Michael Jackson used to say that he saw the face of
God in every child; I see the face of God in every animal. You can too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">40. Practice happiness activities daily. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">These include such deceptively simple acts as singing,
dancing, reading, creating art, meditating, taking a walk in the park, playing
with your child or pet, visualizing someone you love, or contemplating death.
Only a few minutes a day can make a huge difference to your mood, and that in
turn will enrich the lives of everyone you meet.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">41. Irrational fear, embarrassment, shame, and guilt are the
most useless of emotions.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Society has
programmed them into you in order to make sure that you're a good little worker
bee. But society needs you to break free and innovate much more than that, even
though most people don't realize it. Be unreasonable and never let other people
tell you that you can't. You will know youâre succeeding at this when you
experience genuine tears of joy unexpectedly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>42. This is a
journey, not a destination. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">Mindfulness (or
enlightenment, if you prefer) is a process, one that lasts a lifetime and
possibly beyond. You will never truly be "done", because there are
always new layers of self-imposed limitation, fear, and doubt to peel away.
These rules are designed help you avoid needless suffering, and hopefully eventually
to get you to the very first step of this journey. That's all they could ever
do: create a context in which mindfulness will tend to arise on its own. They
wonât change you so much as theyâll help you clear away whatever in your life
doesnât fit. Beyond that, all the succeeding steps will be intensely personal
(and thus, probably very difficult to explain to most other people). That is
normal and something you should expect. But if someone expresses interest in
your personal journey, offer them these rules as an aid in starting theirs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">43. You deserve to be happy. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">So do other people, of course, but you are the only person
you can ever hope to control. If you notice yourself starting to feel happier
when working on these principles, thatâs by design. Try not to question it too
much. Many of us have been taught that we should be afraid of success, but like
conformity, that ideal benefits only those who want to keep you asleep. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">44. Explore altered states of consciousness.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> As many different ones as you can. Try the âhotâ states that
come from activities such as drumming, dancing, spinning, exercise, tantric
sex, or self-flagellation. Try the âcoolâ states from meditation, lucid
dreaming, âsub spaceâ, even alcohol or a sugar crash. You will start to notice
which states appeal to you most and what wisdom you gain from them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">45. Other people's reactions and judgments are not your
problem. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">While you should always apologize if
youâve been inconsiderate, people who get uncomfortable because youâre making changes
in your life that donât directly affect them need to learn to mind their own
business. Listen to their criticism anyway, thank them for it, and then feel
free to discard it if itâs not useful.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">46. Keep a calendar and a to-do list. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">If you have a smartphone or a tablet, use that. If you prefer
paper, thatâs fine too. Either way, while itâs possible to be mindful all the
time, no one can practice mindfulness about every single detail in their lives.
Weâd all spend so much time remembering appointments and tasks that weâd have
hardly any brain power left for actually doing anything. Calendars and to-do
lists free your mind to contemplate important things instead, which is why
theyâre essential.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">47. When you want something, act as if itâs a given that you
will get it.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> This is one of the principles of
âThe Secretâ, but news flash: That movie and book were successful because their
system works. Itâs vastly oversimplified, but itâs true that when you ask the
universe for something in the right way, it will tend to figure out a way to
give you what you need. Expecially if youâve already started making your plans
as if you have it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">48. The best time to use these rules is during or right after
a crisis. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">Suffering naturally causes us to
reevaluate our beliefs. This is why so many people seem to change careers after
surviving a car accident or learning they have cancer. So if something
devastating has recently happened to you, great! That willl give you a head
start on rule #1.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">49. Sometimes confrontation is the absolute best solution. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">When forced to make the choice between being someoneâs friend
by staying silent or by potentially hurting them, only you can know which
option is wiser. But if hurting them might mean helping them overcome drama or
an addiction, it is usually worth the risk. If you express your concern gently
and with compassion, it will usually lead to hugs or tears rather than
shouting. Compassion is like willpower or a muscle â in order for it to grow,
you need to exercise it regularly. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">50. Tell the truth, but cushion it as much as you can. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">Brutal honesty has its place, but most of the time the other
person will appreciate a little tact. You can tell your friend privately that
you think she might have a drinking problem - thereâs no need to shout âYouâre
an alcoholic!â in front of all their friends and family in order to make your
point. If the gentle approach doesnât work, you can always get more help from
other people who also see the truth you do.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">51. Practice delaying gratification. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">When you feel you need something right away, ask yourself
why. Is it actually a need, or is it only a want? If itâs a want, use it as a
reward for finishing a project. Thereâs no need to eat dessert before dinner;
there will still be plenty of dessert when the time comes. And it will always
taste better if youâve eaten your broccoli. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">52. Youâll notice certain signs when you donât really need
this guide anymore.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> First, the ideas for new projects will
start coming, and youâll feel compelled to write them down. Youâll also get
insights about your own behavior or about (for example) what the deeper meaning
of your favorite film is. You may lose the ability to be forgetful, except when
youâre tired or stressed. Then, as you start working on making whatever youâve
had ideas for, people will come into your life who can teach you skills youâve
always wanted to learn (or always been bad at). Likely, there will be things
they want to learn from you also. Finally, you may notice a subtle shift in
your consciousness. Especially if youâve been diligent about rule #44.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">53. You can never escape your own bias.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Neither can I. While Iâve made every effort to make this
guide as universal as I can, there will inevitably be mistakes or blind spots.
I started out as a very rational and disordered adult, and then learned how to
listen to my intuition and impose order on my life. Itâs possible that if
youâre very organized or intuitive already, some of these rules wonât apply to
you. In that case, consider doing the opposite of the rule. It may help you
improve upon a weakness.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">54. Others are as afraid of you as you are of them.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Most of the time, when you think someone is upset with you
or doesnât like you, youâre misinterpreting their own signals of discomfort.
Unless you know the person very, very well, you have no chance of figuring out
what theyâre thinking. In any situation where someone seems cold or distant,
make up three stories about why that might be the case. You can start with the
negative one if thatâs where your mind naturally goes, but come up with a
positive one and a neutral one also. This will show you that your mental explanation
for any situation is entirely your own choice.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">55. You will make mistakes. Donât repeat them.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> This may sound obvious, but too many people seem to focus on
feeling guilty instead. Repentance doesnât mean beating yourself up, it means
resolving never to do such an unwise thing ever again. Thatâs what really makes
a difference anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">56. Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of
justice.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Sounds cheesy, I know, but like
mindful eating itâs an opportunity to program yourself to be more
compassionate. Give a dollar to that homeless person, even if your mind wants
to judge them. Forgive someone when you both know theyâre in the wrong.
Compassion doesnât cost you anything, but itâs an enormous gift to the other
person. Love shared is love multiplied. So share yours.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">57. Abandon negative talk.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> Most
people call themselves dumb, stupid, or a bad person multiple times a day. Quit
it. Life is hard enough without you convincing yourself that youâre worthless.
The same goes for negative speech about others â even if you know the gossip is
true, how does spreading it serve anyone? Itâs fine to warn someone about a
toxic person, but you never know why that person is the way they are. Part of
being compassionate is assuming that most âbadâ people are actually just
misguided or in pain. And speaking ill of others only diminishes you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">58. Ask for help or support when you need it.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> From family, friends, teachers, a therapist, or even me. If
you have questions about the intent behind any or all of this guide, my email
address is in rule #25. Just realize that Iâm not a guru â Iâm only a fellow
student whoâs been following these principles a little longer than you have.
Iâll offer advice if I have it, but Iâll also be honest if I donât know the
answer. You should be skeptical of anyone who does otherwise, because they
likely know far less than they pretend to. Addiction to a guru does happen
sometimes, when people confuse the messenger with the message (see rule #20).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">59. Check your bank account balance every day. </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">Even if you think you know what it is. This will help you
avoid embarrassing and potentially very distracting money issues. Nothing holds
us back from self-actualization like not having enough money for food or
shelter. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">60. Connect people who need to know each other.</span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"> When someone needs help with something, put them in touch
with someone you know who has the knowledge they need. If you donât know such a
person, you probably know who to call to ask.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #2f353b; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;">A note: </span></b><span style="color: #2f353b; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; text-shadow: auto;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am not a
Buddhist. People today, particularly Americans, seem to think that Buddhism has
a monopoly on enlightenment. Most Buddhists admit that they donât. Not that it
matters much, but the principles in this document came to me through sources as
varied as Jungian psychology, psychodrama, the Principia Discordia, chaos
magic, Jewish mysticism, religious studies, personal development courses with
Landmark Education, Usui Reiki Ryoho, role-playing games, improvisational
acting, and writing classes. This is because my own intellectual vanity made it
easier for me to figure out this information by solving the puzzle of
connecting all these different disciplines. But how you get here doesnât matter
to anyone but you; what matters is what you do next. Eliphas Levi put it best,
in one of the longest sentences I have ever actually liked: âBehind the veil of
all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the
darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred
writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old
temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the
monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the
inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on
alchemy, in the ceremonies practiced at reception by all secret societies,
there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and
everywhere carefully concealed.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
Chance J. Feldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640824562790000442noreply@blogger.com2