Why I Walk the Way I Do

May 5, 2025

I don’t walk to train. I don’t walk for records, medals, or to impress anyone. I walk because it steadies me. It carries my thoughts, my breath, my prayers. It opens the body and quiets the mind. It’s the simplest thing I can do every day to remember who I am.

In September 2021, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. The numbers were clear, the warnings louder. I was offered medication—but something in me wanted to try another path first. I chose to walk. To eat differently. To live more deliberately.

Since then, I’ve walked almost every day—briskly, with intention, usually around 5 kilometres. I changed what I ate. I simplified. I gave my body a rhythm it could rely on. Over time, without medication, my blood glucose stabilised. I lost 18 kilograms, dropping from 88kg to 70kg, and I’ve now been in constant remission for over three years.

Alongside walking, I began doing simple resistance exercises — bodyweight movements like push-ups, squats, step-ups, planks, and curls with light dumbbells. I spread them throughout the day. No gym, no machines, no memberships. Just consistent effort in my own time and space. It’s nothing fancy — but it’s steady, and it works.

Recently, I discovered something else: my resting heart rate is 47 beats per minute — a number typically found in elite endurance athletes. For comparison, the average resting heart rate for a man in his 70s is around 70–75 bpm. Mine has averaged between 47 and 50 over the past year.

I’m 73. I’ve never run a marathon. I smoked in my youth. I’ve lived an ordinary, frugal, imperfect life. And yet, my heart beats like someone who trained for gold.

I don’t share this to boast. I share it because I find it mysterious. Beautiful. A quiet reward I never aimed for.

Most afternoons, I walk along the riverbank near where I live. Over the years, I’ve taken hundreds of photos — of the sky, the water, the shifting moods of light, and the quiet animals I encounter along the way: water dragons, ibises, ducks, and others. I share some of these images on my Bluesky account, and many are gathered here:

Photos from a River Bank & a Flood Plain:
https://dodona777.com/photos-from-a-river-bank-a-flood-plain/

It’s become a kind of visual journal of stillness in motion.

I walk because walking helps me listen. I walk with purpose, with rhythm, sometimes with prayer. I walk west in the afternoons, as the sun leans into shadow. There is a place along the path where I stop to breathe and pray. Then I return east—to the place of beginning, where the sun rises. It’s not exercise. It’s something older than that.

I believe the body remembers truth. And perhaps, over time, it reshapes itself around that truth. My heart doesn’t beat slower because I’m extraordinary. It beats slower because I made space for stillness every day, for years.

That’s why I walk the way I do.

This reflection came to me not while walking, but while lying still, listening—on a day I chose to rest.

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The Fractured Cosmos: Crime and Capitalism Unveiled

December 10, 2024

The monster lives—a being of primal, vestigial flesh, ancient yet evolving. It is our charge to nurture it, to coax its grotesque beauty into full bloom. This is no ordinary monster, for it is not of the material world alone. It embodies all that is untamed within us: the rage, the lust, the fleeting glimpses of transcendence. Our task is not to suppress it but to help it grow, for only through its growth can we understand the fractures within ourselves and the universe we inhabit.

We do not dwell on the petty crimes of the cradle—the foolish missteps of a fledgling species. Such crimes are symbols of a planet still finding its place in the greater cosmic order. They are phases, reflections of a culture struggling to reconcile its roots in the soil with its dreams of the stars. The criminal mind, at its core, is narcissistic—a mirror too focused on itself to see the vastness beyond.

But even as we wrestle with our own shadows, the angelic influence stirs the heavens. It is said that once, in an act of rebellion or grace, an angel threw the moon toward the Earth, setting it into motion. The tides rose, the rhythms of life were born, and yet, with this gift came the seeds of discord. Every cycle of creation invites a counterforce, and we now stand at the precipice of The Last Days, where the battle lines are drawn between mammals and machines.

The Pole Shift looms on the horizon, a magnetic upheaval echoing the chaos within. It is not just a geophysical event but a metaphor for the inversion of values, the tilting of the moral axis. What was once revered is now reviled, and what was once reviled is now celebrated. This shift connects to the crimes of our age, each a wound inflicted upon the fabric of existence.

Crime and Capitalism: are they one and the same? The boy who stole from the computer hackers their gift of hacking—was he a criminal, or was he simply redistributing stolen fire? Capitalism, with its rising tide of insecurity, extracts not just the essence of labour but the very essence of the sea, of the Earth, of the soul.

The Flower-Telepathic Computer: a marvel of sentience and sensitivity, it blooms in the minds of those who dare to connect. Yet, its very existence exposes a cascade of crimes—against family, against nature, against space and time. What is the theft of a wallet compared to the theft of an epoch? What is a lie told to a friend compared to the lies encoded into the nervous system of our galaxy?

Holo-Crime: crimes against the holographic unity of the one. These are the incursions into the sacred matter of space, the violations of the thin, shimmering membrane that separates what is from what could be. The maniac who murdered—did he act alone, or was his hand guided by the collective desperation of a species that has forgotten how to dream without violence?

The Essence of the Sea: shell extraction, the taking of the ocean’s soul. As we strip the Earth of its treasures, we strip ourselves of meaning. What rises in its place is a tide not of water but of fear, insecurity, and longing.

The crimes mount, layer upon layer, until they form a tower that scrapes the edge of understanding:

The crime against the family, for it severs the roots.

The crime against nature, for it poisons the soil.

The crime against angels, for it mocks their grace.

The crime against demons, for it denies their necessity.

The crime against the planet, the sun, the nervous system of the galaxy.

Each crime is a fracture, yet within each fracture lies a seed of potential—a lesson, a call to reconciliation. If the monster within us is to grow, if we are to nurture it into something more than the sum of its appetites, we must confront these crimes not as judges but as witnesses. We must see them for what they are: the echoes of a species learning how to wield its power.

And what of Capitalism?

Is it truly the villain or merely the mask we have chosen for our shadow? Like the essence of humanity, the nature of crime is neither fixed nor simple. It is a hologram that reflects the one fractured into infinite pieces. To heal, we must not only piece together what is broken but also embrace the fractures as part of the whole.

In the end, angelic influence will not save us, nor will the machines, nor the rising tide. Only the monster—the raw, unfiltered essence of ourselves—holds the key. To nurture it is to nurture the cosmos, for we and it are not separate. The crimes against the sun, the moon, the Earth, and the stars are crimes against ourselves. And in their reconciliation lies our redemption.

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The Art of Magic, the Magic of Art

December 1, 2024

True art is magic, and any true magic is art. With the touch of a pen, a brush, or even a finger, an artist—if aligned with the essence of their vocation—commands worlds both seen and unseen. Percy Shelley once declared that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” and though his words echo from an era long past, they feel uncannily prescient.

But what does this mean in practice? Some might argue that if poets and artists truly wield such power, they are the most woeful rulers ever to preside over humanity. After all, if art is shaping the world, why do the screens that dominate our lives churn out nothing but dissonance, despair, and empty spectacle? Is this dystopian noise truly the vision of today’s artists?

I imagine Shelley himself interrupting from the shadows of the ether: “Don’t be so literal! I meant it metaphorically. Art isn’t governance by laws; it’s governance by ideas, by imagination, by what transcends the mundane. But for heaven’s sake, don’t turn poetry into a cargo cult—worshipping its form as though it’s divine by nature rather than by what it creates within you.”

And yet, there’s a peculiar magic in this metaphorical cargo, in the words, images, and sounds that tumble into the open space of our minds. For those who see the world in myths and metaphors, art carries immense weight. It is both vessel and spell, weaving meaning from the chaos.

Take, for instance, the ancient stories we hold as sacred. The tumbling walls of Jericho. The resurrection of Christ. The creation of the universe in seven days. Do these stories endure because they are literally true, or because they resonate with something deeper—something ineffable? These tales are, above all else, poetry, built to inspire, to guide, to anchor us in moral or spiritual truth. Their magic is not in their factual accuracy but in their capacity to awaken a sense of wonder and move us toward the good.

In this sense, the Bible, like all great art, is a magical artefact. It is less a document of historical fact than a talisman, transmitting its moral and poetic energy across centuries. It scarcely matters whether Jesus of Nazareth held an identity card or walked among us as a historical figure. What matters is the poetic proof—the themes of redemption, sacrifice, and hope that compels us to strive for something greater.

Even today, this ancient poetry retains its power in a world awash with “meaning packages” from advertising slogans and clickbait soundbites. The cynicism of the modern world would have us believe that such stories are relics of the past, yet their resonance persists. True art, like true magic, touches something eternal. It reaches into the ineffable and makes it visible, if only for a moment.

But here’s the tension: if art is so powerful, why does it so often feel powerless in the face of modern chaos? The art world seems increasingly commodified, trapped in an endless cycle of trends, likes, and algorithms. It’s tempting to believe that the magic has been diluted, reduced to spectacle, or even silenced altogether. Yet, history reminds us that art’s power isn’t always loud or obvious.

Think of Picasso’s Guernica—a painting that “legislated” not through laws, but through the weight of its horror and the clarity of its vision. Or Maya Angelou’s poetry, which legislates even now, carving spaces for hope and resistance. True art doesn’t demand attention; it reshapes the world quietly, insistently, often long after it is created.

Art’s magic, much like a magician’s sleight of hand, often works unnoticed. It transforms us subtly, weaving itself into the fabric of our lives without our conscious permission. Consider a song that makes us weep, a novel that reframes the way we see the world or a photograph that stops us in our tracks. These are not passive objects; they are spells cast by creators who reached into the ineffable and returned with something transcendent.

The danger, as Shelley warned, lies in worshipping the artefact itself rather than the spirit it conjures. Too often, we mistake the form for the magic, clinging to what can be packaged, sold, or commodified. But art’s true power is never in the object—it’s in the transformation it invokes within us.

This is where the artist becomes a magician, conjuring meaning from raw material and shaping worlds from chaos. True art challenges the status quo not because it seeks to destroy but because it dares to create—to reimagine what is possible. The poet legislates not with authority but with imagination, reshaping the boundaries of what we believe to be true.

Even in today’s fractured world, art retains its quiet, ineffable power. The greatest works endure not because they are timeless, but because they speak to the timeless within us. Art—like magic—relies on the participation of its audience, on our willingness to suspend disbelief and step into the unknown.

So yes, art is magic, and magic is art. Both touch the eternal, both pull at the ineffable. And whether we realize it or not, both shape the worlds we inhabit. The artist’s hand, like the magician’s, is at work all around us—transforming, challenging, inspiring. The question is whether we are brave enough to recognize it.

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The quote is from Percy Bysshe Shelley who said that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” This famous phrase comes from his essay A Defence of Poetry, written in 1821 but published posthumously in 1840.

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

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My Lady of the Earth: A Tale of Renewal and Time

November 12, 2024

In the heart of a forgotten desert, a lone figure trudged down a cracked highway, each step scraping against the sun-scorched asphalt as if metal clanked against stone. His feet felt like tin cans, hollow and beaten, dragging his weary body forward as he clutched an old glass bowl—its only inhabitant a sliver of something ancient and alive, a glint of Time itself suspended in water. His arms ached, heavy and empty, as though they’d died long before, holding nothing but the fragile keepsake of ages past.

But just as his strength waned, there was a shift. She appeared as if conjured from the dust itself: My Lady of the Earth, the Sun’s seventh Queen. With a graceful lift of her arms, she raised him above the smoke, the Screen of all that clouded and concealed. Her touch was unlike anything he’d known, reaching through the rusting paths of his veins, setting them aglow with purpose. In her embrace, he felt something long lost—a feeling like Home, a warmth too timeless to describe.

He looked upon her as her veil began to dissolve. Beneath it, her face bore the quiet strength of mountains, still and unyielding, forever patient. From her eyes spilt silver brooks, flowing over her cheeks without urgency, slipping past with a gentleness that defied the chaotic world below. The brooks whispered of hidden peace, where Madonnas rested in perfect balance, and saints lay quiet in their coffins, untouched by mortal turmoil. Shadows of the powerful faded here, hollow ambitions dissipating like smoke. Even the rooster—herald of dawn and disturbance—lay silent in her presence as if Time paused.

She was both familiar and fierce, the Only Child of Passion and Earth’s eternal heartbeat. Winds swept through the dust, weaving through her form, rooting into her flesh, and carrying the age-old whispers of forgotten stars with them. Her body, raw and untamed, glistened in the light of the Sun, bound to it yet free, dancing in an endless circle of life and death, decay and rebirth.

With a flick of her golden feet, she nudged the Moon, sending it into an orbit known only to the wise and the wild, beckoning all with a silent proclamation. The man held his breath, feeling the weight of her gesture, her assurance—this was no end but the beginning, an age reborn. And as he stared into her eyes, he understood: he was no longer lost in the desert. He had been brought back to her, the soul of his journey entwined with the spirit of the Earth, who whispered to him that, like her, he too was eternal.

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The Folly of Creation

November 7, 2024

How do you record a moment of recognition? How do you capture moments of lost time and fill them with flowers? How do you grow a second self, one with ink for blood and paper for bones? By writing, of course.

Why attempt such folly as reshaping the world within your mind just to watch it transform again outside? It’s absurd, isn’t it? But if you’re not breaking down the world, how do you build anything new?

I’m making payments to the wind and sacrifices to the moon. Writing demands these offerings—it asks you to confront what threatens everything you hold dear.

If I understand you, then yes—now is the time. The time has come for flesh and blood to transmute into paper and ink. The only problem is, paper burns. But then again, man rots.

In that fleeting moment of recognition, we glimpse our own folly in this battle with mortality.

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When the World Gazes Back

November 5, 2024

The old man feathered the last moments of his career with stories, tales that drifted through the room like the whisper of wings. Each word held the weight of years, worn smooth with retelling but still gleaming. He could sense the dual reactions in his listeners—frustration and unexpected tenderness as if his presence coaxed them to teeter between exasperation and compassion. It amused him how people sought certainty and tried to pin down meaning like an insect under glass. Did they not know that meaning moved? That it was as alive and elusive as breath?

How far, he mused, does coincidence extend its net of significance? He had asked himself this a thousand times in the quiet hours before dawn. Could one take any number of random events—snatches of conversation, objects forgotten on a windowsill—and draw them into a pattern that whispered truth? He knew the answer now, in his final years: yes. But not in the way the young or the impatient might think. The act of seeking, the mind’s restless weaving, made meaning spring forth. It was the seeking that revealed the hidden architecture beneath.

As his voice filled the room, he considered the balance between what he called the ‘real’ world and the world of omens, the oracular glimpses he’d chased in private. To him, there was no hierarchy between them. Each world was as substantial, as fleeting, as the next. The mindless churning of existence, with its nerves and synapses, was only one half of the story. The oracular world, though—ah, that required a different lens, a careful marriage of heart and mind until something else appeared, a perception that belonged neither entirely to reason nor to intuition. It was a simple shift, not mystical or eerie. The world turned inside out, and suddenly, what was hidden became visible.

He remembered trying to explain this once to a friend. They had stared at him as if he had grown another head, their eyes blinking slowly as though trying to adjust to a sudden light. “It’s not about predicting the future,” he had said. “It’s about seeing the shape of things as they are, from seed to blossom to decay. Each moment is a whole, a micro aeon within the larger arc. The hexagram from yarrow stalks is just a fingerprint, a snapshot of that whole.”

He paused in his storytelling, looking into the expectant eyes across the table. Why did people seek meaning in things as simple as sticks or numbers? Why did 2 + 2 need to equal 4 for them to feel anchored? “Perhaps it is childish,” he thought. Yet, as he spoke again, he felt the familiar electric hum in the air, the moment when observation shifted. When the seeker stopped being the observer and became observed when the world turned inside out and gazed back with its own eyes.

That was when history became soft, dissolving into a bouquet of time’s petals. All the crimes, victories, and forgotten moments of humankind—each one a petal on a single, magnificent flower—the old man wondered if beneath each word, beneath each silence, there were universes folded up like secret notes, crystalline palaces shining their light inward, into the very marrow of him.

Expression, he thought, was a prison of sorts. Words carved meaning in stone, but the stone always fell short, chipped and weathered. Truth was a living thing, alive only when veiled in a lie beautiful enough to reflect its facets. The more exquisite the lie, the closer it came to capturing the truth’s pulse. Was that not why nature adorned herself with roses, daffodils, swaying palms—her final goal reached in beauty? He realized then, as he looked out at his listeners, that the truth lay not in what was said but in what shimmered in the silence, what was caught between the eye and the breath.

And the old man, with all his stories and musings, felt the joy of the garden before him—a place where the botanist’s microscope held no power, and each listener stood barefoot, waiting to sense the bloom.

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Soul Searching Under the Spell of Shadow Magic

October 14, 2024

Sitting under a wide, cloud-streaked sky, it’s easy to see dragons protecting fair maidens—shapes forming and dissolving like ideas half-formed. This is soul searching, a turn of the dial hoping to find clarity amidst static. That’s why I’ve come here, to the quiet of the countryside, away from the city’s endless grind. Winter’s chill creeps in, but perhaps the soul thaws when freed from its corporate chains.

Still, the absurdity of it all strikes me. My 1960s stripes are showing, but that’s okay—it’s the 2020s now. What once felt raw, visceral, and alive has been packaged and sold back to us as curated content. Rebellion itself is now a lifestyle brand. You can buy a $60 band tee, a protest-themed candle, or an algorithmically curated playlist of “protest anthems.”

Sex sells, they say—cars, perfumes, ideologies, even people. The marketplace has commodified humanity itself. The icons of individuality—once untouchable, electrifying forces—have been domesticated and rebranded as influencers. These influencers don’t just sell products; they sell the illusion of a life you think you should be living. It’s a polished performance, a constant reminder that you’re incomplete.

Advertisers and influencers are the shadow magicians of our age. No, they don’t conjure fireballs or brew potions, but their craft is no less insidious. They convince us we lack something intrinsic, something we already possess, and then sell us fragments of our wholeness at a markup. They turn rebellion into product lines, package freedom in cans, and sell identity at a discount.

We’ve entered the era of the psychic supermarket. Neon lights, slick branding, and shiny apps promise “insight,” “transcendence,” “authenticity”—but all they deliver is distraction. The spiritual hunger that once drove revolutions now fuels workshops, weekend retreats, and life-coaching apps. Gurus with trademarks stamped on their third eyes sell “enlightenment,” but their products are more like chains than keys.

What does all this have to do with shadow magic? Everything. In the Renaissance, magicians were acknowledged as such. Rasputin helped bring down the Romanovs; today’s digital influencers and ad-tech sorcerers are just as powerful, spinning illusions that shape entire nations. Their methods are subtler now, cloaked in data analytics, viral trends, and algorithms optimized to hijack the soul. It’s not just conditioning—it’s enchantment.

Take rebellion, for instance. Once, it meant something. It had a pulse, a fight, a fire. Now, rebellion is a glossy ad campaign for sneakers or energy drinks. The ethos of “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” has become “sleaze, addiction, and mindless consumerism.” Even awakening itself has been commodified, sold back to us in mindfulness apps and wellness retreats. Choose the blue pill, and you stay plugged into a world of viral dances, curated feeds, and endless scrolling. Choose the red pill, and you wake up—only to realize that even enlightenment comes with a subscription fee.

Advertisers don’t just sell products—they sell people. The stars of the golden age of cinema have been replaced by viral TikTok influencers and Instagram idols. They are brands, and we consume them as eagerly as we consume their endorsements. The human soul has been commodified, packaged into likes, swipes, and carefully curated feeds. The smile of the influencer is a product, optimized by algorithms to sell us something—beauty, status, belonging, or just the faint promise of being seen.

And behind it all, the shadow magicians profit. They don’t just take our money—they take our attention, our dignity, and, worst of all, our sense of self. The tragedy isn’t in enjoying a good streaming series or the latest tech gadget; it’s in losing the capacity to see beyond them. We’ve traded pieces of our souls for branded personas, and the worst part is, we hardly even notice.

Yes, this is heavy stuff. It might sound extreme to say advertisers profit from souls, but consider it: they convince us to buy not just things, but meaning, identity, and purpose. They replace the shared wisdom of communities with synthetic substitutes—neatly packaged remedies for the emptiness they themselves create. Each product promises to fill a void, but the more we consume, the emptier we feel.

As we rise up the modern pyramid—a fusion of Instagram stories, YouTube ads, and AI-generated content—we witness a Tower of Babel built from distraction and desire. The shadow magicians have sold us illusions of ourselves, and in doing so, they’ve blinded us to what we already are. The battle isn’t just for our wallets—it’s for our souls.

But here’s the thing: the spell only works if we believe in it. We’re not powerless. What’s the way out? Maybe it’s as simple as returning to awareness. The images we cultivate in our minds shape the world we create. Will they be pyramids to ego, or bridges to collective responsibility? Love must move beyond the self—beyond the petty “me”—to embrace stewardship of our planet and its people.

The shadow magicians won’t stop. They’ll repackage even this message, selling “save the planet” kits with a monthly subscription fee. Awareness requires vigilance, a willingness to question even the noblest calls to action. The battle isn’t fought in boardrooms or markets—it’s fought within. It’s a fight to reclaim the soul from those who would sell it back to us in pieces.

So, here I scribble—seeking clarity, exorcising spells, and reclaiming the space I almost lost. Perhaps this is just an exorcism, a way to break the spell over me. But I hope it’s more than that. There is a battle going on—inner and outer. For too long, our eyes have been closed to the inner world, the world that contains the outer one like a Madonna and child. This psychic terrain is populated by forces—good and evil—and it’s up to us to choose sides.

The choice is simple: shadow magic or light, me or we, destruction or renewal. This time, let’s break the spell. And let’s get it right.

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The Dance of Mind and Heart: Finding Meaning

September 28, 2024

Mind: How can you know where you want to go in a non-conceptual way? Knowing is inherently conceptual. You claim to know your direction without knowledge. Can you explain that?

Heart: It’s true; my previous statement may seem nonsensical. Let me rephrase: I don’t know where I wish to go or what I want to write, but I feel a direction. It’s not knowledge as you understand it, but it’s no less real.

Mind: A feeling? Now you’re stepping into territory that doesn’t compute. You either know or you don’t. What you call ‘feeling’ is a fleeting, unreliable sensation—something grounded in chemical responses, nothing more. Don’t introduce it as a third state between knowledge and ignorance. It’s simply you grasping at shadows.

Heart: Shadows? Perhaps. But what if the shadows themselves lead me to something more? Something you, with all your calculations, cannot fathom. Feeling is my map—it tells me where to go, even if it’s into the unknown. And I trust that.

Mind:  This feeling must offer you more than the uncertainty lurking at my realm’s edges. How can you venture into darkness without light or a map? I doubt there’s anything beyond my domain. This darkness could merely be the boundary you wish to cross.

Heart: (more impassioned): What if I don’t need your map? What if I navigate around you, above you, beneath you? What if you, dear Mind, are the source of my doubts, the cage that keeps me from leaping forward? Perhaps this very dialogue with you holds me back from answering the call of something bigger than us both—my destiny.

Mind:  Be cautious; you’re starting to sound irrational. You’re proposing unfathomable ideas. How can you use words to traverse this invisible path of feeling? Words are my essence—my very being. Now, you claim to transcend them. It’s absurd, like trying to leap over your shadow or lift yourself by your bootstraps.

Heart: (voice trembling with frustration): Listen, Mind—my heart beats without you telling it to. My blood flows, and my breath rises and falls. Why can’t I express the words within me without your rigid orchestration? Words are surface-level—the crust, the shallow layer of something vast beneath. You think you hold all meaning, but real meaning is hidden below your borders.

Mind: Now you’re introducing another term—meaning—as if it exists apart from me and my realm. How can you have meaning without Mind? That’s utterly ridiculous.

Heart: (with passion): What’s ridiculous is your blind belief in your sovereignty! You may be necessary, but you are not the king. Meaning comes alive when you and I collaborate, yes, but it begins with me. It rises from the depths where words can’t reach. Look at joy, for example. Joy needs no words—it is felt in every part of you, a deep swell that exists without concepts or definitions. And yet, it carries meaning! Joy is meaning in motion. What about love, Mind? Can you break it down into logic? Can fear be measured by words alone?

Mind:  Fine. I disagree with your abstractions, but you venture into places I cannot see. Have it your way. I will always be here if you need me, and since you’ve chosen to communicate through words, I will remain your foundation—even if, as you say, I’m only the tip of the iceberg.

Heart: (softly, almost vulnerable): Thank you. But even with all of this… the question still lingers: What is my way? How will I find it?

Mind:  You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?

Heart: No. It’s my question. And I hope that we’ll find the answer together with your assistance—one step at a time.

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Finding Meaning in the Blank Page: A Writer’s Reflection

September 27, 2024

I found some old notes written by hand—this one around 1979—and OCR scanned them. I revised and edited them, and here they are.

I have been sitting here for centuries, for months, for days, waiting. What am I waiting for, exactly? It’s a mystery that even I can’t unravel.

This blank piece of paper yawns at me again. Yes, yawning—not roaring or demanding—but simply sitting there, an expanse of white, opening its mouth to be force-fed words. But why force-feed it? Why sit here, pen in hand, scribbling down words that may or may not carry meaning?

Listen carefully. Read between the words, beneath them, through them, and beyond them. Somewhere within this ink, there is a reason, a lifeline that could pull me into a world where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, the mundane becomes miraculous. The world where one is equal to nothing, and nothing is equal to all. What? Am I trying to touch the portals of Heaven through this thin squirt of ink?

Listen again—is it not I who leaves the rind of the world behind? Is it not I who is lifted into the wild, illogical realm where reason twists like a pretzel and humanity shrinks to a slug? By excreting these lines (yes, excreting!), I have an activity fit for a lazy bum like me to call myself an artist, an author of the world. This is my voice, my essence, spilled onto the page.

It is as if a visitor sweeps away the remnants of me, picks up the pen, and records what he sees, feels, and tastes of this world through an eye that sees beyond the immediate, beyond the personal—the ‘cosmological eye,’ as Miller calls it. This act is like a cigarette slowly burning, like a caterpillar shedding its caterpillarness. Leaves fall from trees, and they realize they are always part of something more significant when they touch the ground. I want to understand what I am part of without leaving the tree—and the only way to glimpse that is to write myself into extinction so that the eye may peek through the smouldering ashes of these words.

And you know what? Just sitting here and rambling on is fun. But what is your aim? You might ask. Do I need one? What is your purpose? Do I need one? Few aims and purposes come with capital letters. Right now, I’m having fun, and that is all there is—pure, unadulterated fun.

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Transcending the Swarm Mind: A Journey to Freedom and Grace

August 16, 2024

Where there is freedom, there is grace. Where there is freedom, devils dance with angels. Yet, in the heart of the Swarm Mind, these forces are chained, bound to the Swarm World.

Freedom is not the result of seeking an end; it is the means to an unknown destination, a state imbued with grace. The Swarm’s concerns strip away the soul, leaving only husks of social beings. To be free is to be true to oneself, and to be true to oneself is to give of oneself—for in the act of giving, the bud of truth begins to bloom.

We must ascend to Heaven while keeping our feet firmly on Earth. Renewed energy—a gift from Above—should radiate through us into the Earth. This emanation is not ours but from Heaven itself. As men and women, we are merely the medium through which Heaven meets Earth.

Through freedom, we move both upwards and downwards, both inwards and outwards. Riding the Devil’s back, we touch the soles of God’s feet.

The Swarm Mind, a pivotal concept in this post, symbolizes the collective consciousness of society. It is often driven by conformity, fear, and greed, and stands in stark contrast to freedom. The Swarm Mind restricts individual thought and action, leading to a homogenized worldview.

How can I let life unfold when I crave control? The part of me that is a control freak, the “I” that seeks a result, is the Swarm Mind within me. Freedom lies in recognizing this Swarm Mind, though “seeing” might be the wrong word. It is always a feeling, a quality beyond words—a heart’s clarity.

The Bay: A Sanctuary Beyond the Swarm – The Bay is a metaphor for a state of mind that transcends the limitations of the Swarm World. It represents a place of solitude and introspection, where one can escape the noise of the collective consciousness and connect with a higher truth.

I stay by the water at the Bay to escape the crowd and find solitude. To reach it, one must be guided by an inner need—an undeniable, real need—not a mere whim. The Bay is where physics and direction blur, where up and down, in and out, are part of a continuum. Everything connects in a multidimensional Möbius Strip, defying the Cartesian Spread.

Goethe said, “In nature, we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, under it, beside it, and over it.” Yet, he missed the “inside”—the entry point to the World beyond the Swarm World. Inside everything, on the beach, far from the Swarm’s buzz, lies the path to the North. The compass is our conscience.

Transcending the Swarm: A Call to Personal Growth

The Swarm Mind, in its rawest form, incessantly buzzes within a Bell Jar, a metaphor for the limitations and constraints imposed by the Bell Curve—Consensus Reality, the 3D World, and the perspective of the Vegetative Eye. The journey to transcend this requires a relentless battle against the hypnotic motion and buzzing of our busyness, a struggle that engages us and fuels our motivation.

Our journey beyond the Swarm World requires substantial assistance—help free ourselves from the Swarm Mind’s buzz and go beyond fear and greed. Yet, we must also function effectively within the Swarm World, for our physical survival depends on it. This paradoxical position requires us to engage with the World while detaching from the noise that obstructs our vision of another world beyond the Bell Jar.

The Digital Revolution and the Dematerialization of Reality

As the World transitions from material to digital, the concept of physical location dissolves. Modern telecommunications have made global video conferencing a norm, and advances in holographic technology will soon allow life-size interactions in our living rooms, simultaneously placing us in multiple locations. This digital revolution, coupled with modern physics, has led to a dematerialization of our World, challenging our understanding of reality.

Yet, these advancements are accessible to only a fraction of humanity, highlighting the growing concentration of power. While the Swarm World’s telecommunications system connects every inch of the Earth, most still need to be more nourished and impoverished.

Seeking Balance and Clarity

At the Bay, the 3D World becomes porous, held together by dimensions beyond our usual perception. The Swarm Mind clings to the sweetness of its 3D existence, unable or unwilling to see beyond.

In this ever-changing reality, we must actively seek moments of clarity and higher consciousness—our metaphorical ‘Bay.’ This balance, found at the intersection of physical and digital existences, is not just beneficial but crucial for our survival and spiritual growth. It serves as a guiding light, reassuring us that we are on the right path.

Let us continue to ask: How can we maintain our individuality while benefiting from our interconnectedness? How do we balance our physical and digital existences? And ultimately, how do we use these insights to create a world transcending both the physical and digital realms?

We seek clarity, question our perceptions, and strive for freedom, transcending both the physical and digital worlds.

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