I’ve actually made a lot of mistakes, and seemly continue to do so, and probably will until I’m very dead.

The specific mistake I’m referring to is teenager-esqe arrogance. Somehow it carried through until just very recently.

I don’t have the answers… I never did. I have a few ideas of what could be cool, and might work, but answers? The Truth?

Nope.

Education is a bitch. If you’re really learning, it’s a continual process of revelations of ignorance. Every bit of new information shames your long-held, uneducated beliefs. By the end, you get to that point where you can barely move, unable to speak, as the level of you unknowledge is fathomless. People come to you for answers, and all you can do is say, “I… I don’t know.”

If you want a career, you have to back up that with “But, here’s some cool ideas that might work.” You swallow the shame of your ignorant opinion, taking some solace in that fact that no one else seems to know, either.

I’ve recently discovered that civilization itself is unsustainable, and taking it down is the key to establishing real, true and lasting sustainability for humanity and the planet. But that’s all I know, and I’m not even sure that’s the entire picture. I don’t have alternatives, just “someday” ideals that could come to pass. I don’t know how to save people and stop the destruction of the planet. I don’t even know how to save myself and the people I love without going to jail or worse.

I’ve taken the entire weight of the world upon my shoulders, and I know that’s not enough. There’s so much more to this than I’ve discovered in this short period of education. I cannot shift, like so many others, to some idea of salvation, some simplistic fix-all solution that is entirely out of my hands. Everywhere I look people are giving up, because they can’t handle the decent, the revelation of the terrible truths and the fact that we all, every one of us, are all individually responsible for it, and are equally responsible for changing things.

I decided, long ago, that I wouldn’t take the well-traveled path. I knew then, as I know now, that it’s not going to be easy. So far it’s been hell. But god damn, I couldn’t live any other way. How could I just live a normal, shrugging as we kill the planet and each other, saying things like “it’ll all work out” and “everything will be fine” while perpetuating the problem?

I’ve recently been confronting mortality. We’re all going to die someday. It’s coming for me, and whether I have 100 more second, days or years, the final result will be the same. I can either look after myself, play it safe, not rock the boat, or I can get something done. I can do things most people are unwilling to do, because that’s who I am. I’m crazy. I’m a warrior. I have bones and muscles, breath and sight, and I can do something.

But what can I do?

I don’t know.

Reading: Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin, chapters 1, 3 and 7

“A man walks down the street   It’s a street in a strange world   Maybe it’s the Third World   Maybe it’s his first time around   He doesn’t speak the language  He holds no currency   He is a foreign man   He is surrounded by the sound  The sound  Cattle in the marketplace   Scatterlings and orphanages   He looks around, around    He sees angels in the architecture   Spinning in infinity    He says Amen and Hallelujah!” – You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon

Despite the size of the reading, and the author’s tendency to say more when less would do, I thoroughly enjoyed and identified with this reading, and am purchasing the book.

I identify with this adolescent stage, the Wanderer in the Cocoon, as a very real and visceral stage of being. I know exactly when I made the transition from the previous stage (almost down to the day, back in 2002) and I can feel or see when I will step out of this stage (about two years from now). I can see when I embraced the urges of my soul (the world traveling, joining a monastery, turning inward and studying the mystical and embracing the darkness), and I can see when I fought against it (trying to establish a career and publishing too soon, swimming against those currents in my life). I have designed rites of passage that excited me, if for no other reason than I felt their profound lack in my life – rites that require a community built around them, that acknowledge and hold sacred these journeys and ceremonies. I have designed entire civilizations in my mind to fill that deep void inside.

Story: When I first arrived on American Purusha, I awoke one night bathed in terror. Demons were out to get me, I could feel their evil presence, and there was no safety in my room. In a panic I got dressed and ran outside, hoping to get to the only place I might be safe – the Stapatya-Veda correct Meditation Hall. I ran up the street, shivering, swinging my walking stick as I felt “them” get too close, heart pounding. The thickets seems alive with malevolence, and I was so, so vulnerable.

I made it to the building, which was locked, so I walked up the side stairs and sat on the upper balcony. I calmed down, as I sat under the stars, and reflected. I don’t really want to say what revelations I had up there (partly because I can’t really remember).

What I can say is that, after spending some time in that “sacred safe-zone,” some part of me came to terms with the darkness. In that acceptance I no longer saw evil demons, I simply saw the night, like day only darker. I walked back to my room in a peaceful state, seeing for maybe the first time the dark woods at night for what they really were – beautiful, serene, lovely. This did not rule out the idea of demons, or angels, or anything else – they may have be real, and drove me up that building to help me reach this new state of understanding. Or maybe I just reached a spot where my projected fears manifested in my mind. Whichever, whatever – the experience was gained, and the difference was almost literally night and day: I now saw the day in the night – like we see shadows at noon and reach for them for release from the crushing day, the night was that blissful release spread over this side of the globe.

Experiences like that are a dime a dozen in this wandering cocoon phase of life.

Activity 3: Being There. (Experience Nature’s Loving Intelligence through deliberate communion and communication on a non-verbal level – the level of love and attraction.) Michael J. Cohen.

There is a regality to man that is often vilified by eco-activists. They would see us as no better than a fly or shoot of grass. They see our current ills coming from hubris – that we think too highly of ourselves. I think it is the opposite.

I was tromping through the lush summer woods, looking for the fabled “elder oak” that was over 350 years old – if I had to communicate with some nature thing, I wanted it to be something significant. I was following a deer trail, the tiny, twisting path through the verdant undergrowth, when I came across a tree near the stream, bent in such a way as to invite a climb.

As I got closer, however, I noticed some brilliant green moss thriving on the bark – tiny stems poking out, fuzzy and warm. What right did I have, I reasoned, to climb the tree, if by doing so I would destroy this beautiful moss? Feeling somewhat ashamed for my destructive tendancies, I left the tree alone and continued along the trail…. this trail… which was a trail by virtue of the deer stomping upon, and outright killing, so many plants.

No one debates the naturalness of deer, even in their destructive capabilities. Is this their intelligent love? To move through the woods, killing and consuming as they please? What is man’s nature, if deer have such freedom?

Needless to say, I wasn’t having much fun. The idea of pushing through the hot, buggy wood to find a tree and “communicate” with it seemed odious to me. I stood on the creek-side, looking out on to the cool brown water, and it became obvious – I’d much rather go creek stomping. That, to me, seemed fun.

It became clear to me, as I slipped into the cold water, that nature’s design for me was to have fun. If there was an overriding intelligence in those woods that afternoon, if it was aware of me and who I am, then fun was the method of communication. That is – whatever seemed like the most fun to me WAS what nature wanted me to do, because nature was here for me to enjoy. Life itself, that Force that was generated by and flowed through all living beings, speaks to me in terms of enjoyment alone.

I let the idea float through my mind as I slowly pushed upstream. Why should nature, if we speak, speak in terms of fun instead of a “wholeness?” Why wouldn’t it communicate, like the baby deer I had encountered earlier, in terms of threats, of food, or any other more basic levels? I had a feeling that my fellow classmates, sprinkled throughout these same woods, were having similar experiences – not a communication of basic needs, but of higher, more spiritual needs.

And why not? Out of all the forms of life, only I could dictate the terms of my life. I was the only one in the woods, classmates aside, who could decide when, where, what, who – eating, breeding, sleeping, elimination. More than this self-selected destiny, I held an almost unlimited power over other forms of life. As I took each sandy step up against the current, I looked around – I could cut down every tree and plant, move the earth up and down to radically alter the topography, kill or encourage every animal, even change or eliminate the very creek itself.

This potential, I feel, is as natural to man as making a trail is to deer. Man is King of Nature – his power is absolute. When man speaks, nature listens intently. But when nature speaks, how does man hear it? Is he a wise ruler, listening to his subjects, and out of love do what is best for them? Or is he the worst tyrant, ignoring the legitimacy of his citizens, while he pursues an agenda based solely on his own profit?

What most tyrants don’t realize (until they are made painfully aware of it) is that they derive their divide power of sovereignty from the consent of the ruled. If there is a link between a King and God, it is through the expressed will of God’s people – in this case, my divide right to rule over nature comes directly from nature, not in spite of it. I am fit in my ability, as is every man, but have I earned that love and support necessary to rule effectively, working for the benefit of all?

I reached a point in my stomp where the stream seemed to say “no further this way.” The line was obvious, but I tried anyway – and lost my footing, going face-first into the water. I popped back up and looked hard. Yes, I could push past this point. I could destroy every part of this barrier, pour concrete and steel and just walk past it. I could certainly, at least, just keep pushing forward. I considered doing it, just to make a point – but the potential and the actual seemed to be the same to me. Yes, I could – but why bother? To whom would I prove this trivial point, and to what end? Whatever I would gain from it, I would lose something else – even, to some small degree, that ability to listen to nature.

Communication and laziness won out as I turned and, leaning back, began the slow float back downstream. Fun, again, was the key – drifting downstream was vastly more fun than trying to push past some arbitrary boundary to prove a point. The air was fresh, cool and shaded under the trees and birdsong, arriving and departing from those hot spots of sunshine at the easy pace of the stream – subject, at any time, to my desires. My desire, however, wasn’t domination but a cooperation – blessing the creek with my presence, allowing it to feel my bliss, and receiving it’s joy in return. I could ask, then – “What is best for you, stream? How may I use my abilities to help you?” And for it, the answer seemed to be – “There is no greater completion of being for me, the Great Nature, than the simple enjoyment of Sovereign Mankind. Although, to be fair, I could do without so much runoff in my water.”

We may fight, influence, help or hinder each other – man and nature. But there is more than the simple science of helping, which can be of a great boon to all life – the deep ecology is nourishment. Man provides the food of attention and bliss, a factor that nature may do without… but it would be lonely, without a companion. I am compelled to believe that if Man were not, it would be necessary for Nature to invent Him.

I witnessed a slight miracle there, as I stood near a log poking out in the middle of the stream. A stick appeared from behind me, appearing suddenly, as if dropped by an angel, and knocked directly into the log, balancing precariously upon it. Both it and the log weaved and bobbed in the current, as I watched in amazement – this stick, so fragile in its situation, stayed there for no less than ten timed minutes. It was still there when I grew bored of it and walked back to the shore. It was weird.

As I climbed out of the water I was reminded how hard and static life on land can be. I threaded my way back to the trail, passing classmates in various stages of communication – eyes closed or open, silent, feeling energies and deep in contemplations. It reminded me of once, when I was out in the woods, I decided to “Namaste” everything I could. It was an intense experience – suddenly everything, every single thing, demanded my attention and devotion. I was paralyzed, unable to move, not wanting to slight anything or offend anyone. It was too much, really – every rock, every plant, each leaf upon it, every tree and insect and…. I had ended up running, just chanting Namaste over and over, not able to look around me.

This time, however, I realized a new mode of being: Every being, everything that entered into my awareness came to that place of Namaste – an automatic response, a deeper understanding instantly communicated without the hands or the words. As I walked down the trail, I reached out my hand and felt some grasses – these were the adoring hands of my subjects.  My devotion to my Kingdom was complete. My Kingdom, Nature, accepted me as their Ruler in return, for my devotion inspired their trust.

True communication cannot occur without trust – and trust is nearly impossible without both parties knowing their roles in their relationship. It was only after I had come to accept my role as King that I could freely communicate with Nature – all the mood-making and forced empathy I had attempted before seemed silly and pointless. No… I am a Man. I am the small God of Nature. I derive my power from Nature’s consent, and this is the basis of our connection – equal partners in life and death.

This is intelligent love.

I’ve been wrestling with this idea for years, but I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that might makes right.

“Right,” in this case, means actualized, manifest correctness. It does not mean, nor imply, any unrealized concept of correctness – that is to say, as understanding and experience increase, so to the potential for better rightness. Until that improved rightness is successfully implemented in the world, however, it is not right.

The method by which an improved right is brought to the world is Might. Ability. Power.

This means that any dominate thing is right, at this moment and in whatever place it holds power. To replace it with something new requires energy, attention – that is, a conscious effort to replace old with new. Without power this could never occur. We can say, then, that any concept that has failed to replace an old concept (or paradigm) is not mighty – that is, it is not right.

Rightness and might are contained within each other, and as each new and better form of right evolves, so to does the power it contains.

So consider this: You might be right, on your terms – but if that rightness cannot manifest in the world because it lacks mightiness, then of what use is it?

The same dynamics at play in this video work on almost every scale, in practically every aspect of life. Our failings come from stopping too soon, from rejecting those around us, from waiting for better circumstances… when all we really need to do is dance.

It’s a good lesson for me, in any event.

If you don’t, the maniac will shoot you.

Get Volume 1 Now!

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