All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

 Poppies in February, Big Creek

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PENDULUM DREAMS:

THE GOLDEN SNAKE

   Not long ago, I drove through Los Angeles on my way to San Diego. At two in the afternoon, I was inching along and decided to consult SIRI to find another route. I ended up in the LA area for five hours. On every freeway and city street, gridlock was inescapable. For hours, on ten-lane freeways, thousands of us were creeping between one and five miles per hour as more and more traffic streamed in, and I grew more and more dumbfounded that millions of people have agreed to participate in this total insanity on a daily basis.
   Once, as the car came to a standstill for the umpteenth time, I remembered a Saturday when I was fifteen, sitting for hours in a lawn chair, staring at the wall, paralyzed by the realization that I could be obliterated any second by a nuclear weapon. What did the other members of my family tell themselves to keep from going insane? How did they maintain a sense of normalcy? How could anyone take life seriously if everything could end as smoke and ashes with one push of a button? How could we claim to care about each other and allow the threat of global annihilation—or the policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD)?
   When I was growing up my father compulsively changed jobs every few years, which eventually led him to make long commutes in the LA area. He would come home exhausted, filled with quiet rage after a long day at work and an hour and a half of maneuvering through traffic jams. He would occasionally vent his rage in long diatribes against communism. We escaped in the early 1970s by moving to Fresno.
   All of the men in my life as I was growing up usually remained silent, as if shocked into an inability to express themselves by some unspeakable trauma or defeat. My grandfather had survived being gassed by the Germans in World War I, then had lost his job in Chicago when the Great Depression hit. My father and uncles had grown up in rural Illinois and joined the military the first chance they got. Two of my uncles were shot down, one over Germany, the other over the Pacific. They both miraculously survived but remained traumatized for the rest of their lives. As I was growing up, the women in my family also rarely ever said a word, as if they were taking their cue from the men to remain silent. I am still not sure why they were so quiet, but it occasionally inspired me to question authority and say crazy things about global annihilation, especially at the dinner table.
   While fishing, I sensed my father moving beyond thoughts of raw prejudice that stemmed from fear and anger and frustration. I felt our connection as he cast his line in the water, the dark thoughts flowing away, the wind slightly ruffling the leaves and the surface of the river. I could sense his love for the water and the rocks and the trees—I could feel it in the same way that I know that friends are going to call or send a letter. Some people, even though they are silent or rough and intolerant form a bond with you that cannot be broken, a bond that transcends appearances and prejudices.
   My father has been dead forty-five years. In that time, humanity has edged even closer to the brink due to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction combined with perpetual destabilization of economies and societies, as well as climate disruption, overpopulation, ecocide, dwindling resources, species extinction, pollution...and we keep scrambling around rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The question remains: How can a society become sane?
   One day a few years ago, I was swallowed up by eternity in a vision: In the middle of the desert, the wind started whipping around the rocks, lifting away the sand. I was afraid that the wind would carry all the sand away, and suddenly there was nothing left, only a golden snake biting its own tail in a deep blue sky. Suddenly I was inside the snake. At first, I was afraid, but then the darkness comforted me. I realized that I could change my perspective anytime. With one thought, I could be outside of the golden snake again. When I was outside, I discovered that I was merely an atom compared to the snake and the sky, so after awhile I shifted back inside.
   Oddly, like most of my visions, but unlike most of my memories, the golden ouroboros remains crystal clear, as if symbols from the archetypal plane are more real and enduring than the experiences of daily life. That vision seems like a pretty good symbolic depiction of eternity, which suggests that maybe I shouldn't worry about the end of the world, but of course I don't currently live on the archetypal plane—I live with a family and a community that I need to protect, so the problem remains: How can anyone help their own culture get a little saner?
   I wasn't on drugs when I had the vision. Once, though, a long time ago, a friend handed me a tiny tab of paper as we were finishing a meal at a restaurant and commanded, “Put this under your tongue. It'll dissolve in a few seconds and will take affect in about ten minutes.” I was still young enough to try new things. The simple act of placing that tab under my tongue resulted in a crazy, indelible memory of an otherwise ordinary night in America. Oddly those few hours of insanity give me some perspective on what it means to be sane.
   My friend had never taken any drugs in front of me, nor had he ever shared drugs with me before, and I wasn't exactly sure what he had handed me, but we had just finished a grueling week of canvassing for environmental and social justice. I trusted him completely after struggling in the trenches with him for several months. After we left the restaurant, suddenly the breeze on my skin induced ecstasy. My friend drove us to a gas station, and it seemed like pumping gas was one of the most magnificent acts that a human being could perform. We ended up at a local club, and to me the rock and roll was astounding, every note absolutely perfect, lifting me into greater and greater heights of exultation.
   At the club, we hooked up with another canvasser, then drove out to a reservoir at about two in the morning. We kicked back in the car for awhile, and I noticed a fly between the dashboard and the windshield. I wondered what it was like to be a fly, and my sight suddenly broke up into numerous facets. I heard a great buzzing, which annoyed me until I realized the sound was coming from me—I was the fly, but my consciousness wasn't processing the fly's perspective in a way that made sense to me. However, even though I had become the fly, I didn't feel different, as if one overarching consciousness was experiencing life from countless perspectives. 

Pounding Stone:

Bottom of Pine Flat Reservoir

   I suddenly felt trapped, so I stepped out of the car, and human sight immediately returned to me. The grass was breathing, each blade aware of me. I hiked toward the woods and felt many eyes watching me in the darkness. I sensed a great hatred toward me, toward people in general, emanating from the forest. I didn't understand why until I turned back: The reservoir had eaten away the hillsides.
   I told my friends that I was going to the car because I needed sleep, and they nodded at each other knowingly. One of them chirped, “Okay, go ahead, but you're not going to sleep.” I stretched out on the back seat and realized that I was dreaming with my eyes wide open. I knew that I would not get to sleep for a long time. I would just have to deal with it, possibly, I remember thinking, for the rest of my life.
   When dawn finally arrived, we drove back to town. I stepped out of the car onto some gravel and suddenly understood that an absolute logic exists behind everything in the cosmos. Forces beyond my comprehension and control had operated throughout the ages, eventually depositing pieces of gravel on the dirt for a parking lot. Complex processes had occurred so that one piece of litter was resting upon the gravel at the exact moment that I stepped out of the car. Each atom was in a particular time and place for a reason that as a human being I would never be able to fathom. At the same time, I understood that all processes were linked and that I was part of everything that had ever lived or would ever live. I felt so exhausted that I almost lost my balance.
   Back at the apartment, I tried to sleep but started hallucinating. When I went to the bathroom, everything synthetic on the sink—hair brushes, toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, combs—elongated and twisted and wiggled and bent as if the plastic in the bathroom remained in a perpetual state of frenzied insanity, unable to remain still for a moment. I went back to bed and finally fell asleep after many hours. The odd thing is that I didn't feel frightened by the hallucination, only trapped in a bizarre reality.
   My friend had subjected me to an acid test, which shook me to the core. I will never knowingly take LSD again because of its potential for inducing psychosis. I eventually came out of it, but others have not. However, if I had not placed that tab under my tongue, I would never have experienced some of the potentials of the human mind. I felt indescribable ecstasy while performing the most mundane acts, such as walking down the street and pumping gas. I experienced the reality of a humble fly and recognized that its consciousness is probably not very different from my own. I understood that all living things are sentient and perhaps keenly aware of the damage that people have done to this planet.
   While hallucinating, I understood that chemicals in my brain made all synthetic items seem alive and totally insane, just as before taking the drug, chemicals in my brain had provided me with “normal” human consciousness. My experiences seemed to be more than the result of a chemical reaction, though. The drug seemed to suppress normal brain consciousness and allow another dimension of my psyche to surface, some part of me that could experience absolute joy in the smallest acts and connect with the humblest of creatures and understand the absolute logic of the cosmos, a logic that extends all the way back to the beginning of time and will continue to the very end—if indeed there is a beginning or an end—an absolute logic that usually appears like randomness to my very limited human brain.
   I felt trapped in this strange reality for many hours, but then again I have been trapped in the bizarre, collective reality of the human race my entire life. I have trusted relatives, friends, teachers, politicians, doctors, capitalists, and authorities on this or that, believing in our accepted collective reality even as our species continues to lurch toward global destruction.
   After my "trip," I understood the meaning of “turn on, tune in and drop out.” In other words, tune in to the vast, living cosmos and drop out of meaningless behaviors. Cut through the bullshit and live a meaningful life.
   A psychic once suggested that the acid trip woke me up to the spiritual side of things. That experience, along with paranormal experiences that I've had since that time suggest that consciousness is essentially nonlocal. In other words, consciousness is not limited to what my physical senses perceive or to what my brain processes in one particular place and time. My soul can experience and know things that my physical senses cannot perceive, such as the consciousness of other creatures and people and spiritual entities, and the future and the past, and other dimensions of the cosmos.
   Based on my experiences, I must conclude that consciousness is limited by the physical senses and the brain, not created by the brain. The part of consciousness that transcends brain consciousness has been known by different names in different cultures throughout the ages: daimon, genius, holy guardian angel, higher self. If consciousness is limited to the functioning of the brain then the key spiritual experiences of my life are unreal and absurd, in which case many of my clearest, most meaningful memories are merely a sign of insanity.
   In quantum physics, nonlocality describes the ability of objects to know about each other's state, even when separated by large distances, potentially even billions of light years, as if the universe instantaneously arranges particles in anticipation of future events. The cosmos consists of field upon field of entangled, interconnected energy. Consciousness, like physical matter, is energy.
   Spiritual development should take place under the supervision of a master, just as the use of hallucinogenic drugs should only occur under the most controlled conditions. If one is not careful, authentic spirituality and drugs can lead to insanity. I, unfortunately, have experienced baptism by fire in all aspects of life, never affording the luxury of expert assistance. I do not recommend embarking on any journey into the unseen without at least the most dedicated commitment to the highest good, for anyone traveling through the unknown will sooner or later encounter evil or the incredibly bizarre. If you encounter angels you will more than likely also encounter devils, and when you do, you will need to choose your next step with great care.
   The genius or daimon (not demon) or guardian angel is the nonlocal aspect of the self that transcends space and time. Intuition, sympathy, telepathy, precognition, retrocognition, psychometry are all capacities of the higher self. I can't help but believe that we will edge closer to a sane society when the average person recognizes the transcendent aspect of the self and its connection to all things, past, present, and future.
   During a recent ritual, I was focusing on the feminine principle of the cosmos and suddenly envisioned the Tarot card known as Three of Swords, associated with the supernal Emanation of the Goddess. Then I saw the path of The Lovers extending from my heart center to the right side of my brain, the path on the Tree of Life from Tiphareth, the Christ center, to Binah, the supernal sphere of the feminine principle. Then I unexpectedly took on the God form of Raphael, represented on the Tarot card The Lovers, and the powerful living image has stayed with me everywhere I go. For the past few days, at work and at home and even at a restaurant, I have suddenly envisioned myself as the Archangel Raphael, with a golden sun at my crown, my hair on fire, and masculine and feminine forces balancing each other within my aura in naked white light, all doubt and suffering and regret cleansed from my mind. 

   Raphael means “Healer of God.” One of the most basic forms of healing is the integration of the self. During ritual as I move from one quadrant to another, I often recover a sense of the different dimensions of the self: the spiritual dimension, associated with the higher will (Fire); the conscious mind, associated with the intellect and spirit (Air); the subconscious mind, associated with the subconscious and emotions (Water); and etheric background energies of matter, associated with the physical body (Earth). But the Tarot card known as The Lovers reveals that there is another way to look at the self that includes a distinction between the lower self, the personality within a specific incarnation; the evolutionary personality, or soul, which develops over many incarnations; and the divine spark, or spiritual core of the individual. The card represents great healing—paradise regained—because the lower personality, the soul and the divine spark are integrated into a unified whole.
   As insane as it sounds, the living image of the Archangel Raphael has made me feel more sane than I have ever felt before. I feel integrated and free of negativity. How a living Archetype has such a powerful influence on me I don't exactly know, but I do have the sense that the Archetype chose to help me, and I was open enough to the possibilities of nonlocal consciousness to allow it to happen. I have always, at least since I found my spiritual path, felt a great kinship with Raphael. Perhaps, once the soul becomes entangled with healing influences from spiritual dimensions, they remain connected, just like a particle can remain connected over great distances with another particle, like one person can remain connected with another, no matter how far away they are.

All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Ten of Cups: Mars in Pisces

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TIMES LIKE THESE

Words and Music By Jim Robbins

Right now our hearts are lamps of the spirit
that light a path to our roots in Eden.
It's time like these
our bodies spread the light of the Source.
It's time like these
our hearts light up the heavens on earth.

There are times when we have felt like less than half,
times when our hearts and minds have almost shut down,
times when we have felt like no one would ever find us,
but it's times like these
we dance with the angels in our hearts.
It's time like these
we feel the sun in our souls.

We are light. We are love,
for we are one with the Source.
We are blessed. We are blessed,
for we are one with the Source.

Right now our spirits clear a path
to the moon and sun and stars.
There have been times
when we have felt like bubbles
drifting in the wind.
But we have always kept dancing toward the light.

It's time like these
light dances on the facets of the heart.
It's time like these
our bodies spread the light of the Source.

ENTANGLED:

Part Eleven

   As the Princess was recovering fully, the queen was changing her evil ways. The queen, herself healed, no longer felt jealous of her stepdaughter and made no objection when Simon and the Princess announced their engagement. Within a decade, Simon and the Princess became king and queen, and they ruled wisely and compassionately. Their rule as king and queen seemed almost magical. The kingdom prospered under their rule, and the people loved them.
   Katie remained in rehab for several weeks, making a complete recovery, except for a little numbness in her left foot, which eventually disappeared. All the doctors and nurses were amazed by her miraculous recovery. Most of the other stroke victims were older and experienced great difficulty moving or talking. Katie, fortunately, had brilliant doctors, strong spiritual support, and an incredible will to survive. She was able to walk all the way out the front door of the rehab center by herself. The nurse who escorted Katie out to the front door mentioned that she had never seen anyone else walk out of the rehab center before….

   Before the Creek Fire incinerated almost everything living and dead in the forest around and above Shaver Lake, Tamarack Creek helped to weave the threads of my soul together. Stunning wildflowers once bloomed profusely in the meadows in July and August when the lower hills are brown and threatened by wildfire: Tiger lilies and columbine and larkspur flourished with tapestries of lupine, paintbrush and arrow-leaf tansy. Snow still covers these parts in mid to late June. Before the conflagration, when the snow melted away, wherever there was water, life sprang forth, jewel-like and fresh. 

   One sniff of a tiger lily, and my soul felt free as rivulets fed roots and streams, which meandered down to rivers that searched for an ocean. Then the water eventually evaporated and returned as snow and rain. As I sat next to the creek, feeling this cycle as though it were part of my own circulatory system, with dead trees and branches strewn on the ground, I understood why there had been so much cognitive dissonance in my life.
   Before the fire, when I sat on a rock in the sun at 7,500 feet, I felt like a renegade. Who I am or what I have accomplished didn’t matter at all, very much like when I was a child. What mattered was the energy of the sun inflaming my solar plexus and pounding through my veins, the source lighting and warming and feeding the cells of all the plants and trees around me. I was part of that huge, radiating fire, wild and sentient and intense. Without it, no life on this planet would have ever existed.
   My soul is likewise a sun after all negativity has burned away; I can see it in my mind’s eye when I envision the subtle planes during meditation and ritual. At times, that is all I am, a conscious point of intense white light that resonates with the fiery life generated by the sun. When I sat by the creek, I could barely glimpse the sun if I squinted, but I knew that its light manifested in the world all around me.
   I am a fool. As I was growing up in Fresno, 7,000 feet below in the San Joaquin Valley, over the years I was conditioned to believe that other life forms such as plants and animals aren’t really alive the way humans are--they don’t have feelings or consciousness--and I believed it. Now, I remember that next to Tamarack Creek, I sensed consciousness all around me, in the sunlight and the flowers and the towering trees, in the birds and the chipmunks, even in the water and the rocks. Now I cannot believe that the sun that gives life to everything on the planet is devoid of consciousness, that the earth providing a home for that life is also without consciousness, that the incredible plants and trees within the biosphere do not have their own forms of consciousness.
   I was also conditioned to believe that I am right-handed when I am really left-handed. I was conditioned to believe that the vast majority of the foods that weigh down grocery shelves are good for me when the American diet has been killing me. I don’t know why I am surprised that I have been lied to about nature: In a capitalistic system, considering nature lifeless makes it easier to commodify it and kill it and exploit it without remorse, just as it is profitable for capitalists to lie to people and convince them to consume what is toxic to them.
   I have also been conditioned to believe that people in this society who claim to see ghosts or sense subtle forces are highly suspect, kooky, possibly even insane, yet after going through a process of self-purification, I have grown more aware of spiritual dimensions, regularly sensing subtle energies, whether they are the feelings and thoughts of other people or the consciousness of plants and animals or the presence of supernatural entities. Either my reality is a lie, or what is generally considered reality in this society is such an over-simplification that it ends up being a twisted lie. I can no longer believe in a materialistic view of the cosmos. Alone at Tamarack Creek once, I officially declared that I have moved beyond social conditioning and am now a member of the fellowship of the sacred light.
   When I was a child, I was quite good at following directions. I smiled at the teacher a lot and gave one hundred percent in school and during sports activities. I had high hopes that I would accomplish great things. Then I became ill, and that is when I first started questioning authority and drawing negative subtle forces to me.
   Without health, prolonged misery causes the psyche to break down like the body’s organs and immune system during the onslaught of disease. On the subtle levels of the psyche, if you are healthy, you draw positive, solar energies to you, but if you suffer physical distress for years or continuously have negative thoughts, you eventually become a magnet for dark, insidious forces. Depression and misery attract dark forces like a seabird with a broken wing attracts hordes of crabs. It’s as if the cosmos conspires both on the subtle and physical levels to eliminate anything no longer healthy enough for the world.
   I have discovered that foods that cause allergic reactions affect me on a subtle level: I feel depression for no reason other than that I have eaten a piece of bread or something else with gluten in it, and the ensuing psychological distress over time attracts harmful subtle forces. While I was meditating during the self-purification process, for example, my subconscious mind revealed hundreds of subtle, headless, black spiders attached to my aura as well as black blobs and polyps, all of which were feeding off of my energy and maintaining psychological distress. After clearing my mind of these entities, my depression waned; I stopped hearing critical voices in my head and unexpectedly began having visions of symbols that reveal spiritual principle, such as the lemniscate, the thousand-petaled lotus, the golden, equal-armed cross. My higher self began communicating with me.
   For me, evil forces are not like the demons presented in movies. They are usually invisible, but my subconscious mind presents an image of them in my mind’s eye. I am not clairvoyant like some psychics. I have only once glimpsed a spiritual being for a moment. I am, however, clairaudient and clairsentient: I have heard them distinctly, and I have been shaken and nudged and touched and enveloped and held down by them. Most of the time I simply sense their presence. Some seem to be discarnate humans, but demonic spirits have an aura of malignity. Some are probably no more intentionally vicious than a virus or a bacteria, but many of them, at least in the way that my subconscious presents them to me, appear alarmingly malicious.
   During meditation, in other words, I discovered how demons and gods and angels are born: Those who are sensitive to subtle energies can tune their mind to lower or higher energies and symbolic images that personify them rise into the conscious mind. In other words, the subconscious mind often gives form to the forces the way that it gives form to forces and ideas in dreams: through symbolism. The force is real, but the image that rises into the conscious mind is symbolic.
   Celiac disease, an incurable, chronic physical illness, has attracted insidious forces to my psyche for the better part of four decades. I have never dabbled in the dark arts, but because of this disease dark spirits have attacked me and negative entities have latched onto my psyche. One night, for instance, just before I began manifesting the worst symptoms of the disease, a demonic spirit, cold, heavy, and invisible, enveloped me, paralyzing me for about fifteen minutes. I wasn’t afraid because this had happened to me a few times before, and I knew that if my soul radiated light like the sun, I would mentally repulse it. The simplicity of that might sound absurd, but I have discovered that if a dark spirit cannot latch onto fear or negativity in the aura and instead encounters inner light, it is either repulsed or loses interest. Before it departed, however, it pressed down on my stomach, the part of the body that celiac disease ravages the most, for about a minute, as if to indicate that worse things were in store for me. Soon after that, I began having irregular heartbeats caused by gluten--for hours at a time.
   In Fresno, people tend to question your sanity if you claim that you have experienced malicious or demonic spirits. Even claiming that you have a soul is enough to make some rational people flee in terror and avoid you. So much of “rationality,” though, is about appearances and agreement about what is true. What can be perceived by the physical senses is “real” because a group of people or a device has provided some sort of verifiable proof. Then a larger group of people agree that the proof is real, which can lead to an even larger number of people accepting it without question.
   If your job or your future survival depends on agreeing with the prevailing beliefs of your community or society, fear becomes a factor in whether or not you will even entertain different ideas or experiences of reality. If a group of people have some investment in a particular reality, if they benefit from it, for instance, then other people are gently or forcefully encouraged to conform to that belief. Anyone who does not conform risks being demeaned or vilified or worse by other members of the group. In a hierarchical society, those who are higher up on the ladder tend to ignore or dismiss anyone who challenges the reigning belief system. Those who are lower on the ladder often ridicule or attack the person who is challenging the system.
   When relying on the five senses, agreement about the reality of a rock or a tree is fairly easy, but what a physical object really is on the subatomic level has become more and more difficult to determine. According to chem1.com, “Our intuitive view of the ‘real world’ is one in which objects have definite masses, sizes, locations and velocities. Once we get down to the atomic level, this simple view begins to break down. It becomes totally useless when we move down to the subatomic level and consider the lightest of all chemically-significant particles, the electron....The electronic structure of an atom can only be determined indirectly by observing the manner in which atoms absorb and emit light"(1). Whether light is made up of particles or waves depends on who or what is observing it. Agreement about a subjective state or a subtle force, of course, is even more difficult.
   How did those in power benefit by conditioning me to believe that there is no spiritual dimension or that there is only one way, one savior to honor and one devil to fear? 

   I remained oblivious to the god-like potentials within me. If I thought about it at all, I tended to believe that the spirit world does not exist or that it exists in a realm far beyond me where some god or savior is waiting to judge me for my sins and mistakes, as if I were given a reliable guidebook for addressing each and every problem in this increasingly complex world. I did not know, until I began having visions during meditation, that I could tune my mind to the god-like potentials represented by the Tree of Life and develop them in myself. I did not know, while working at shit jobs, that I could move beyond social conditioning and learn to become more psychic and speak my truth effectively and create beauty and manifest the Christ force and become a courageous peaceful warrior to neutralize evil--a magnificent spiritual being ruling the domain of my own mind. With that knowledge, it's a lot harder to remain a compliant unit of labor.
   Once when I was in the boy scouts, a friend "accidentally" lit my tent on fire in the middle of the night, and the back of my head burned while I was sleeping. The next day I was in excruciating pain, but I had no way of surveying the extent of the damage. I asked a small group of friends if anything was wrong with the back of my head, and they all said, no, nothing’s wrong--because they didn't want to get in trouble--and I believed them. When I got home, my mother noticed a large patch of red and black skin on the back of my head immediately. In other words, despite the agonizing pain, I was duped because everyone in the group seemed to be in agreement. The ability to deny the subtle or invisible, such as an emotion or a force or a spiritual entity, is far easier.
   I now often perceive the world around me with a different set of senses, what I call my soul senses, which in my case means that I see, feel, or hear forces that others do not perceive. And I am well aware that when I say that I perceive subtle forces, I sound crazy to people in a materialistic society.
   There is an old saying: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” In a capitalistic society, and especially in the San Joaquin Valley, home of the rawest forms of capitalism, the one-eyed man is insane. By claiming that I perceive forces that others cannot verify, I am no longer conforming to reigning beliefs about reality, and no doubt when powerful people read this I will become forever unemployable, but I did not choose to break out of conformity: my very survival depended on it. I have been conditioned as much as the next guy to rely on appearances to make my way in the world. My father, for instance, would often declare that the world is all about appearances (or some variation thereof). My father was well aware that we live in a culture where people are often judged quickly and decisively based on their appearance and their worth as a unit of labor. My father used to say that if you focus on appearances, you’ll end up all right; you’ll have a good job and be able to support a family. Because of my chronic illness, my compulsions to be creative, and my perception of subtle forces, I have discovered that maintaining appearances while remaining true to myself is an arduous challenge. Struggling to remain true to oneself is not attractive to other people who are desperate to fit in.
   In older cultures, many adepts, or “gurus,” believe people from Western societies are too spiritually immature to take on as students. In Fresno, CA, I have had to deal with spiritual realities without assistance from a guru or anyone else. I had to "break on through to the other side," so to speak, by myself. I suppose that I would have preferred to live a life based on appearances; instead I have had to rely only on myself to weave together threads of experience to understand the truth about the forces behind appearances. I know that radical evil exists, just as I know that higher and more exalted forces exist than people in this society generally acknowledge, and they are not all associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition.
   I discovered, after envisioning spiritual symbols during meditation, that all forces symbolized by authentic spiritual traditions over the centuries are represented on the Tree of Life, a composite symbol that has been handed down from ancient times. All the symbolic representations of these forces, including Gods and Angels and demons, fit on the Tree (the demons assigned to a state  of unbalanced force known as the Qlipoth). In other words, I discovered that I am not alone in my perception of spiritual dimensions.
   Each Emanation, or state of being, on the Tree of Life contains a virtue--an ideal, balanced use of its energy--and a vice--a potentially damaging, unbalanced use of its energy. In the sphere of the intellect known as Hod, for instance, the virtue is truth and the vice is dishonesty. When climbing the Tree of Life, I have discovered that it is extremely important to strive for the ideal in each sphere. If I am glamorized by appearances or caught up in illusion, I cannot understand the virtue within each of the higher spheres. In fact I would not know the spiritual dimension at all because I wouldn’t be able to see beyond the physical plane to experience subtle forces and comprehend spiritual principle. The Emanation, or state of being, “above” Hod is the sphere of nature and the arts known as Netzach. If I did not live in truth, I would not be as affected by the beauty of nature or the great works of humanity and not as compelled to create beauty myself. I know that if I did not live in truth, I would have been unable to experience the Vision of Harmony and the Mysteries of Sacrifice in the state of being above Netzach known as Tiphareth, the Christ center.
   Living in truth, the virtue of Hod, is one of the most difficult things a person can do in this society. I have struggled over the years to know the truth about myself mainly because of the misery caused by chronic illness. During a long process of experimentation I figured out that I am allergic to eggs, milk, and wheat and eliminated them from my diet, but I did not, until recently, realize how seriously gluten was threatening my health. For far too long I remained ill, no matter how much I experimented with my diet. After awhile I developed a heightened awareness of evil as black subtle forces assaulted me.
   According to Beth Beurkens, M.A., a wake-up call “may come to us involuntarily, tearing the fabric of daily life. Accidents, illness, loss, and misfortune can all have a spiritual dimension to them. The loss of a career, a serious illness, a near-death experience or the death of someone close may all serve as turning points for rethinking the purpose and meaning of our lives. Feelings of disconnection, disorientation and suffering often accompany the inner call to a spiritual path.” She goes on to say that “emotionally challenging, sometimes life-threatening crises are similar to the calls that indigenous shamans receive. They may be the beginning of the initiatory process”(2). My daughter's stroke and miraculous recovery might end up being her wake up call, just as my chronic illness and my visions during meditation were my wake up calls. As I mentioned, I managed to survive by purifying myself physically and mentally, with the added benefit that I became more psychic. It’s second nature for me now to perceive dark energies and spiritual taints with my subtle senses--in myself and other people.
   There are spiritual taints in places where you least expect them. I feel them, and I can see them in my mind’s eye, not because I want to or because I am biased against anyone in particular, but because they simply present themselves to me. For instance, one day I saw in my mind's eye a "hive" of spiders above a bed in my house. I shuddered and soon forgot about it. A few years later, my daughter described a dream in which spiders were dangling down from a "hive" above the bed and crawling all over her. Coincidentally, she was at the time sleeping in the room where I had "seen" the astral spiders. 

   Another time, I stepped into the office of a person at a local college one day and immediately sensed something was terribly awry despite all appearances to the contrary. The man, whom I had met only once before, was strikingly handsome and genial and did an excellent job revealing how to operate a computer program, but I could see in my mind’s eye that some kind of black slime was floating in currents all around his office. He was nice enough to me, but I was in the awkward position of knowing that he had attracted an evil taint into his sphere of influence. I couldn’t ignore it, but I couldn’t say anything about it without sounding insane and unemployable. The man, by the way, turned out to be a "slime."
   As I have mentioned in a other posts,  sometimes I am physically affected by a person’s antagonistic thoughts. For instance, one of my wife’s friends appeared pleasant when around us both, but she kept hurling hateful subtle energy at me that literally felt like a large screw twisting with great force into my heart chakra. I had no idea at first what was happening until I realized that it only occurred when she was visiting us and when I was talking. I have rarely felt anything so damaging on a subtle level before or since.
   I think it’s true that the best priests have known the worst evil. I can detect spiritual taints because I have experienced the blackness of evil, but  unfortunately I can’t discuss this in most social situations, and so far I have not been able to help anyone understand what kind of psychic damage insidious forces can do, which is unfortunate because they can be as harmful as any physical disease. Certainly spiritual taints can be more long lasting. I eventually found some people, however, who have described to me their own experiences with evil, some of which are very similar to my own.
   I must confess that before I developed this sensitivity, I was often quick to demonize individuals or groups (Republicans and corporate CEO’s, for instance) while I remained oblivious to the presence of the evil beneath appearances. Despite living in a nation with a long history of genocide and slavery, I used to downplay evil as merely a label that we place on aberrant behavior or as a form of treatable insanity. Even if evil existed, I reasoned, a person could remain so morally superior that he or she could remain untouched by it. I’ve discovered, though, that with all the evil in the media, in corporations, in politics, and with all the taints in daily life, maintaining spiritual balance is a struggle that requires constant vigilance and dedication. For me, self-purification is the only effective way to keep evil at bay. The more negative energy I eliminate from my psyche, the more I can see beneath appearances. More importantly, I have also found ways to neutralize evil to create balance.
   I suspect that thanks to the spiritual taint associated with my illness, I have also drawn several extremely negative people into my life. Once, I drove with my wife to a friend's house to feed his cats--my wife was afraid to go alone. While waiting for her to finish providing the cats with food and water, I had the overwhelming sense that someone was hanging out in one of the back rooms of the house. Sure that I would find a transient squatting in the house while our friend was on vacation, I tiptoed toward the back bedroom. The closer I got, the more certain I was that some angry, hateful person was hiding in the house. I approached the doorway to our friend's bedroom with some trepidation, but when I peaked into the room, to my surprise I didn’t see anyone. I searched the closets and under the bed without finding any evidence of another person, the whole time feeling like I was being watched. As I was leaving, I turned to take one last look and felt a kind of energy emanating from the corner of the room that I can only describe as demonic. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but now I realize that our friend had probably attracted this evil through his own thoughts and feelings. Soon after that experience in his house, whenever I saw him I felt a homicidal rage emanating from him even though he was very good at maintaining appearances.
   Before the fire, Tamarack Creek for me provided a sharp contrast to modern society. The San Joaquin Valley where I live, over 7,000 feet below, has some of the worst air pollution in the nation. Since I lived in L.A. until I was eleven, for most of my life my body has been contaminated by toxins in the air. In addition, I now have to eat organic produce and drink purified water or I get physically ill. Worst of all, I experience irregular heartbeats for long periods if I ingest even a smidgen of gluten. It has taken me twenty years of experimentation with different foods as well as a long process of physical and mental purification to return to some semblance of balance in my life. 

   My mother died from a stroke. My daughter almost died from a stroke. My father died at the age of fifty-five from heart disease. I know that I could die from a stroke or a heart attack if I continue to eat gluten, an indigestible protein that affects everyone who eats it to some degree.
   Humanity is experiencing a world-wide crisis due to overpopulation, climate disruption, economic meltdown, the pandemic, pollution, ecosystem loss, species extinction, weapons proliferation, the potential for nuclear war and the rise of fascism. Call me a fool, but I believe that these crises will become humanity’s wake up call. After centuries of building to these crisis points, we will no doubt take many years to reestablish equilibrium. It took me many years to purify myself and overcome my illness--only after I had reached a point where I had one choice: change or die. We will no doubt as a species experience several agonizing periods where we have to move beyond social conditioning and break out of conformity in order to deal rationally and effectively with large-scale challenges on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels.
   One day after purifying myself, I envisioned the color pink in my heart center. I was startled but remembered that the color pink is prevalent during Valentine’s Day. I checked the color code of the Tree of Life for the colors associated with the heart center and discovered that pink is the color that represents the highest form of spiritual love. That day, as I was strolling by my wife, I envisioned the same color in her heart center as well. Perhaps once we have purified ourselves and dealt with our crises and brought balance back into our world, we will be able to see that color in the heart of every human being.

(1) http://www.chem1.com/acad/webtext/atoms/atpt-2.html
(2) http://www.shamanicuniverse.com/shamanic-initiation.html

All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

The Empress: Venus

Open music in a new window.

RETURNING TO LIFE

Words and Music By Jim Robbins

She struggled a long time through a dark forest

to find the first jewels of spring. I know she feels reborn.

I know she is reborn. I felt her rebirth so intensely

that I knew she was no longer afflicted.

I know now that she is with us. She will be happy and whole again.

We thought that we had lost her, but she is coming back to us.

She is returning to life. I know that she is healed.

She'll soon be happy and whole again.

I know it deep in my soul. I know it deep in my heart

that she is happy and whole again, and we shall soon

be together again, totally and joyfully

together, together again.

Like someone whose ship sank in a storm,

she swam for days and almost drowned,

but she made it back to shore.

She has made it back to shore.

So much love enveloped her, came down

and renewed her. Sometimes it takes a village

to make a person whole again with healing love.

I know that together we can heal each other.

I feel it in my heart so intensely. I know now

that we can heal each other. I know now

that we are together, together in consciousness.

We once thought that we had lost her,

but she is coming back to us.

She is returning to life.

Entangled:

Part Ten

   The queen found out from one of her spies in the town that Simon had enlisted the support of the townspeople to heal the Princess, so the queen redoubled her efforts to make the Princess disappear. The Princess kept fading in and out for several days. Simon eventually realized that his plan would only work if he could find some way to heal the queen. He told the Princess that they both needed to imagine the queen as happy and whole, full of light and love and aware of their forgiveness. Simon and the Princess spent hours together imagining the queen free of negativity and full of abundance, harmony, and magnificence. One morning, Simon and the Princess looked at each other, knowing that the queen had been healed. Soon, the Princess returned fully to life.
   After two weeks on a roller coaster ride, Katie finally stabilized and was soon taken off all medications. She was then transferred from the ICU to a lower floor where she could recover while under observation. She was able to walk a few feet and talk clearly, and move all of her limbs, with only some numbness on her left side. In a few days, she was transported to a rehab facility. She had returned to life.

   I knew that Katie was experiencing both physical and spiritual healing, a belief that stems from a few childhood experiences. There are places where it doesn’t matter at all what you’ve done with your life in the little time you’ve been allotted, places where one moment you were a child and the next you're old and you realize you haven't changed much in the core of your being, places where you might be lost in a daydream and then suddenly feel powerfully connected to the Soul of the World. My Dad with his fishing gear spent much of his free time in search of these places, and when he eventually found one, I felt his soul quietly tune to the "Heartbeat of Mother Earth," the Schumann Resonance. As my soul tuned to the peace in his soul, I also experienced the harmony in the trees and grass and water and stones.
   On a fishing trip one day when I was twelve or so, my brother and I searched together for a way down into the river canyon. Our Dad had already thrashed his way through poison oak and had slid the rest of the way down a steep slope, but my brother and I kept searching for an easier way. We followed a faint trail down to the edge of a cliff and stared at the river below. Then my brother dared me to climb down the cliff. He insisted so much that I finally began the treacherous descent. Halfway down I realized that I was in a potentially fatal situation. The incline was steep, almost straight up and down, and if I fell, I would hit rocks fifteen to twenty feet below. I panicked for just a moment and then treated the situation simply as a problem that had to be solved. With my senses totally engaged, I soon descended to the bottom like a seasoned mountain climber.
   “Come on down,” I yelled.
   “No way,” he muttered.
   “C’mon, it’s easy!”
   “Nope,” he replied. Then he disappeared.
   Another time my brother and I were hiking, with him about fifty feet ahead of me on a trail that suddenly rose to a ledge about twelve feet above the creek. I was running to keep up with him and suddenly noticed him motionless at the highest point of the ledge. When I caught up with him, I suddenly experienced absolute terror before I could even sense any danger in our circumstances. I had, in fact, simply come into the range of my brother’s emotional sphere of influence, which immediately paralyzed me with fear. I looked around and discovered that we couldn’t climb up or down. We could only go forward or backward on a very narrow ledge. My brother was literally shaking, eyes wide with terror. When I was finally able to turn my gaze down at the creek, the water seemed menacingly far away, and I was certain that I would slip and plunge to my death if I moved even a tiny bit.
   We both stood quaking on the ledge, unable to inch forward or even talk, for what seemed like an eternity. Suddenly, to my great surprise, my brother broke free and headed down the path without a word, leaving me alone on the ridge, still paralyzed. I don’t know how long I stood cowering there, but my Dad finally found me and coaxed me down the path. When I turned around, I couldn’t believe that I had even been afraid. I had experienced situations far more dangerous than that without even breaking a sweat.
   I experienced, with both my father and brother, the little-understood ability to adjust the mind to the emotional and mental frequencies of other people. I felt my father’s deep sense of peace and harmony and my brother’s fear of heights. As a child in nature, unlike my father, I tended to be more concerned with playing than being meditative, and, unlike my brother, I never once felt climber’s panic while on my own, no matter how steep the cliff or treacherous the trail. Telepathy is the communication of thoughts and feelings through means other than the physical senses, involving mechanisms not currently understood by science. Ten years ago, despite my childhood experiences, I would have maintained the materialistic viewpoint that telepathy is a fantasy of the delusional brain, but in the past ten years, due to my spiritual practices, I unexpectedly became telepathic--not all the time, mind you, but often enough to know that we are connected on a fundamental spiritual level. Often I will be swept by a wave of emotion or hear a word or see an image from the mind of another person, and I know that I’m not delusional because more often than not I ask them what they are thinking and usually discover that my intuition was correct.
   Most of us have thought of a person and then a little while later unexpectedly received a phone call from that very person. We tend to dismiss such occurrences as mere coincidence despite the mounting evidence in favor of telepathy. Unfortunately, the experience of telepathy is extremely difficult to duplicate for several reasons. First of all, it often occurs between people who are unusually close to each other, such as identical twins, or during moments of extreme emotion, or during spontaneous daydreams when the mind relaxes into a mental frequency that allows psychic connection. The attempt to produce the occurrence of telepathy at will presents a basic obstacle because demanding the effort creates an element of struggle that makes the appropriate mental state impossible. Because testimonial is necessarily the basic form of evidence, documentation gathered over decades of study is usually treated as merely anecdotal.

   The belief in telepathy, however, is the basis for common religious practices, such as prayer and invocation. Uncountable people throughout history have believed that it is possible to connect through the power of prayer with subtle, imperceptible deities. A materialistic scientist therefore finds himself in the uncomfortable position of claiming that billions of people are essentially crazy.
   Oddly, many rational people accept telepathy as an unassailable fact on the spiritual level--between the mind of a physical person and a spiritual entity--but dismiss as delusional anyone claiming that telepathy has occurred between people in the flesh. Stranger still, in some parts of the country, a man could lose his job for claiming that Jesus doesn't answer prayers, on the one hand, and on the other hand the same man might lose his job for claiming that he can read people's minds.
   Perhaps not coincidentally, the experience of telepathy is sometimes compared to a “religious experience.” In other words, people sometimes feel when experiencing telepathy that they have slipped into a spiritual mode of thinking that transcends limited personal subjectivity. This suggests that there is a spiritual dimension that the human mind can access, a dimension that is not just “out there” but within each person.
   The experience of telepathy, and many other things considered paranormal, flows from this imperceptible spiritual dimension, which accounts for why so many things cannot be explained nor explained away.
   The phenomenon of telepathy between two individuals is closely akin to mass hysteria and mob mentality, both well-documented. In moments of crisis or intense emotion, a thought form can explode through a group, causing inexplicable symptoms of disease, such as vomiting, rashes, or fainting, or strange behaviors, such as uncontrollable laughter or dancing, or unruly conduct, such as violence or wild adulation.
   A belief in the group mind is commonly held in esoteric spiritual orders. A group mind consists of a number of people tuning to specific mental frequencies, usually in order to contact the mind of spiritual entities. Here, we are treading on ground that hidden mystery traditions have explored for ages, and we encounter again the belief that thought, specifically a thought form filled with emotion, can influence individuals and large groups. In this case, it is believed that a thought form can create a frequency that exalts a person's mind as high as the angels. In the case of a group mind formed by a mob, of course, the thought form can reduce a person or a group of people to the level of the beasts, or lower.
   On a personal level, if there is anything significant about me, it is simply this: I have transformed my emotional and mental frequencies from deeply negative to extremely positive frequencies through physical and mental purification and positive visualization. I remained mired in despair for the better part of two decades, then transformed myself into a person who for over several decades now has experienced peace and harmony on a regular basis. During those twenty years of despair I completely ignored the spiritual dimension, but for the past twenty years I have become far more intuitive than I could have believed possible, and I believe my transformation has ramifications for society as a whole because of our innate tendency to tune to each other’s emotional and mental frequencies, for good or ill.
   My father died when I was a teenager. Around the same time, I began experiencing a debilitating, chronic physical condition that causes severe depression. I had no choice--with the grief and illness and despair, I literally had to establish harmony in my life to survive, a process that took over twenty years of serious attention, mainly because I had to do it solely by myself. First, I slowly eliminated everything from my diet that caused physical or mental disturbances. Then I went through a long process of mental purification. In other words, I started meditating and eliminated negative energies from the chakras, the energy centers within the aura. Soon, I unexpectedly began having visions of archetypal symbols that led me to the ancient symbol systems of the Tarot and the Tree of Life. The Tarot and the Tree reveal the archetypal facets of human experience and together offer the keys of ancient wisdom both to solve ingrained emotional, mental, and spiritual problems and to achieve higher awareness.
   After my self-purification I have experienced over and over the effect people have on each other through thoughts and feelings. Intense negative emotions especially envelop me. I have, for instance, felt homicidal rage emanating from a person who did an excellent job looking like nothing was wrong. Usually strong emotions will "float" over to me during what appears to be a normal conversation. Perhaps the most unusual example regards an intelligent young woman who appears extremely well-adjusted. Six times when I had been waxing eloquent on some topic in the young woman’s presence, I suddenly experienced negative energy boring like a huge screw into my heart chakra, so quickly and intensely that I felt an almost overwhelming urge each time to lash out at the young woman. At first, I had no idea what was happening, and then I realized that the force she projected reversed the clockwise turning energy vortex of the chakra, an act that might have damaged my heart. My friend has a hidden and extremely disquieting ability to project powerful negative thought-forms in a way that can do serious harm to other people, an ability possessed perhaps only by shamans or true magicians. She might not even realize that she has the ability, which she might have developed in response to some recurring abuse or trauma in childhood, but I know also that she has caused other people to have a similar "irrational" reaction to her.
   As I have mentioned previously, before the age of forty-two I had no belief at all in a spiritual dimension and knew nothing whatsoever about the occult or the paranormal, but after my visions of archetypal symbols and heightened awareness of other people's thoughts and feelings, I began doing some intense research on different spiritual traditions. I discovered that the Gods in different cultures throughout history are different versions of the same forces symbolically represented by the Tree of Life and the Tarot. I began treating the archetypal figures in Tarot cards, perhaps because they are more commonplace and human than the Gods in different pantheons, as "allies" and discovered ways that they could help me to banish negative energies and bring positive energies through into my sphere of influence--to invoke, in other words, the forces of spiritual harmony, abundance, and magnificence.
   Our ally below is obviously no stranger to depression. I’m sure some of us can identify with this person’s despair.

Nine of Swords, Lord of Despair and Cruelty
Mars in 11 - 20 degrees of Gemini
Moon in Yesod, the Foundation (Ninth Emanation)

   Th figure sits up in bed, hands covering her face. Nine swords hang horizontally over the bed, three of which, as she bends forward, seem to pierce the four chakras related to the spiritual dimension of the self: the crown, the third eye, the throat, and the heart. At first glance, our ally appears to be suffering from the effects of cruelty, which is a vice of Mars stemming from unbalanced force, or she might be suffering from grief, which is a common result of the constant change associated with the Moon. However, on the level associated with the element of Air in the ninth sphere, the influences of Mars and Gemini can also be felt on a deeper level. The scene suggests that a blockage of the life-force between the higher and lower chakras, the energy centers in the aura, causes the despair. Stress and trauma from dysfunction or physical illness or cruelty can close or block the chakras. Gemini symbolizes the dual nature of the self, the physical and spiritual aspects of the human being. She is covering her eyes, blinding herself to the spiritual dimension and its relationship to the physical dimension of the self, hence the blackness in the background. All levels of being are connected, and this is no different in the chakra system of the aura. The true power of Mars on the physical level is linked to a balance of the higher chakras with the lower chakras, the life-force flowing harmoniously throughout the whole system, both upward and downward. When a blockage exists between the spiritual and physical levels, the life-force on the lower levels, which includes the sex-life (associated with the Moon), is adversely affected, and weakness and psychological suffering can result. It’s no accident that the spiritual dimension is blacked out and the lower half of the body is covered. However, there is always hope. On the blanket are red roses, red symbolically associated with both Mars and romantic love. Also on the blanket are astrological signs, a reminder that the psyche always has the potential to balance the subtle life-forces and regain the health of both mind and body.
   Why despair and cruelty? Despair can easily turn into cruelty, especially when fear is introduced. In times of crisis we tend, both individually and collectively, to believe someone else is to blame for our despair, and once we find a suitable scapegoat, whether a person or a group, we project our anger and frustration and hatred at them for causing negative feelings. This is often based on the erroneous belief that harmony can be established by changing or even eliminating types of people that the majority has labeled as "different" or "subhuman."
   Fear is often both the cause of our denial and the reason for lashing out. Often the self finds it too threatening to identify the actual psychological sources of dissatisfaction or disturbance (usually the people close to us), so fear motivates people, even strangers, to band together and blame a person or group based on ethnicity, race, political affiliation, sexual orientation, or any of a host of other reasons.
   The danger is the very fact that we are able to influence each other on a subtle level to the point of frenzy or paralyzing fear with thought-forms charged with intense emotion. In a split second we are capable of profoundly affecting each other on a subtle psychological level for good or ill. We can get so swept up in demonizing a target, whether an individual or group, that we are capable of leaping into extremely damaging conflicts without moral justification.
   In order to adequately address personal and collective tendencies that lead to cruelty, we must first acknowledge the powerful, subtle psychological effects that we can have on each other.
   I have discovered through my spiritual practices that we are able to control physical and mental health to a very large degree. The mind can purify the various chakras and energy sheaths in the aura surrounding the body, eliminating negativity, and that has a tremendous impact on overall health and well-being, which then has a positive effect on the people around us. The mind can eliminate, or "banish," negative thoughts and feelings and replace them with positive energies like the archetypal energies represented by the Tarot and the Tree of Life.
   Like my father, for many years I have chased peace throughout the mountains. I have hiked through numerous watersheds on ancient Native American trails in remote areas where now only cowboys and determined hunters occasionally stray. The only predators I have encountered are coyotes and bobcats and a few mountain lions because the more intimidating predators like bears and wolves have already been cleared out by hunters and ranchers. I have gone on many adventures searching for wildflowers and birds, instead of fishing like my father, and finding evidence time and again of native cultures that were also "cleared out" a century or so ago. In some remote areas, I have found numerous Native American village sites with pestles still in the mortars of the pounding stones, and I have also discovered many house pits where huts once stood.
   At first, I did not even realize that I was hiking on ancient trails, some perhaps thousands of years old, until I kept stumbling upon one native village site after another as I explored the mountains. Grazing cattle still follow the ancient trails from one water source to another and keep many of the trails distinct. I am amazed every time I discover a native site, and I can’t help but wonder why we as a people are not lamenting more about the genocide that occurred so recently on our continent.
   After the genocide in Europe in World War II, of course, we have lived with the fear of global annihilation, and many other complex problems such as overpopulation and climate disruption continue to threaten to unravel civilization and the environment. Genocide a century ago is a haunting reminder that past is prologue, not one of the many immediate threats to survival, but I have realized due to a spiritual transformation that lack of resources is not the essential problem: lack of inner peace and harmony is the source of most, if not all, of our thorniest difficulties. We have enough resources on the planet and enough resourcefulness in ourselves to enable the vast majority of people to live satisfying lives. There are many paths to inner peace. A great gift that we can give to the world is to let inner peace and harmony ripple out into the world. Once we release the negativity within our minds and our aura, we can then continue to expand consciousness by building our own inner temple.
   Once, when I was fishing with my father and brother at Dinkey Creek, I put down my pole and sprawled on a smooth stone. I was fourteen at the time, and I remember feeling stressed from a rough week in middle school. On the cool stone, as I gazed at the pine trees and listened to the stream, suddenly all tension slipped away--as if the surrounding trees were breathing tranquility into me, and my consciousness ballooned. The pine needles were glittering in the sunset, and I sensed the trees and I were part of innumerable fields of living, light-filled energy. I was totally inspired, as though a god had breathed into me, and I felt connected to all things.
   My father turned his thumb toward me and muttered to my brother, “Why can’t you be more like him?”
   My brother stared at me. My Dad seemed to be glaring at me. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I realized that my inspiration had somehow become apparent to them both. I felt like I was emanating light and love, but I was at a loss for words. Any attempt to explain my exaltation would only diminish it, and I didn't want to annoy my Father any more than I already had.
   That was one of my first magnesium flashes of higher consciousness. Since then I have occasionally experienced an unexpected expansion of consciousness at strange times and places, such as two in the morning in my living room or nine in the morning at work. How I am feeling at the time before the exultation seemingly has no relevance: I can be feeling miserable, bored to death, exhausted, comfortable or uncomfortable. Only when lost in hyper-focus while painting or writing or composing music, or lost in the void during meditation, or lost in devotion during ritual have I experienced exultations similar to the moments of unexpected ecstasy.
   I developed a thirst for inspiration at a young age. The flashes of exultation often left me with the sense that daily life was stale and dull, but in retrospect I realize that each inspiration provided an expansion of consciousness that never completely diminished. I eventually discovered that every time I made myself available to moments of inspiration--in nature, in ritual, in meditation, and through the arts, I opened the door a little more to higher consciousness.
   Only when I began having visions of archetypal symbols that represent spiritual principles did I realize that these moments of profound inspiration were related to a state of being on the Tree of Life known as Beauty, the sphere of the Sun and the higher self. Since the term “higher self” has been so over used that I believe it now has little meaning, I am choosing now instead the term “inspired self,” which suggests the "immediate influence of God or a god," (from the Latin spiritus, breath, spirit) and suggests as well the inebriation of ecstasy, joy, exaltation. (Being “inspired” is similar to being “enthused,” literally “possessed by a god.”)
   Recently during meditation I envisioned my soul radiating light like the sun: I felt free, without labels or limiting beliefs, without need for anything else. Then suddenly a golden plate and chalice on a white tablecloth appeared in front of me. A golden, equal-armed cross with a brilliant light around it floated to the right of the chalice. Finally, in my mind’s eye, I saw a golden crown on the white tablecloth. Beauty is the Sphere of the Sun, the source of light and life, and gold, which is incorruptible and does not tarnish, is the mineral associated with that state of being. The symbols in my vision reveal the magnificence, harmony and abundance within the human spirit. I also had an epiphany about why I was experiencing the vision: Cumulatively, the moments of inspiration expand consciousness until higher psychism is possible.
   I consulted my dog-eared copy of The Mystical Qabalah. According to the author, Dion Fortune, in Tiphareth we find the archetypal ideas behind creation that have emanated from the higher planes. Fortune refers to Tiphareth as the “Treasure House of Images on a higher arc” while making this critical distinction: “but whereas the astral plane is peopled by images reflected from forms, the images of the Sphere of Tiphareth are those formulating, and as it were crystallizing out, from the spiritual emanations of the higher potencies" (1).
   The lower astral plane reflects the forms within the human mind and the physical plane. The mind during moments of higher psychism in the Sphere of Tiphareth, on the other hand, rises above the lower astral plane to the archetypal ideas emanating from the higher states. Tiphareth (“Beauty” in Hebrew), is the transition point between the states of force and form and also functions as a point of equilibrium on the Tree. The astral forms of archetypal symbols in Tiphareth, such as the golden, equal-armed cross, embody the spiritual principles that emanate from the higher, formless Spheres.
   The mind can only become prepared for this higher psychism through the expansion of consciousness that occurs through repeated experiences of inspiration. Fortune points out that the mystic is at first like a child in a humble manger, not like the Christ giving the Sermon on the Mount. The mystic, in other words, must first “build the Temple” through these moments of exalted and expanded consciousness. After each inspiration, the white heat of pure consciousness eventually diminishes, but “in the brief space of its lasting, changes occur in the temperament, and the mind receives new concepts and undergoes an expansion that never wholly retracts. The tremendous exaltation of the experience dies away, but we are left with a permanent expansion of personality, an enhanced capacity for life in general, and a power of realization of realities that could never have been ours if we had not been forcibly swung across the great gulf of consciousness by the momentum of ecstasy” (2).
   Usually we spend our time in what Fortune calls “brain-consciousness,” the surface mind that addresses the demands of daily life. In a stressful capitalistic society, the effective use of brain consciousness is highly valued, to the point that any attempt to expand consciousness beyond the physical plane is often considered irresponsible, narcissistic, kooky, impractical, even unsafe. This reveals the essential conflict within a society that is both capitalistic and Christian: without the expansion of consciousness produced by inspiration, the individual cannot know the emanations of spiritual principle from the "higher potencies" in the Sphere of the Cosmic Christ.
   Every human being can access the Christ-center. This requires sacrifice, which is the transmutation of force through a shift of focus, a different use of emotional and mental energy. This sacrifice is an aspect of the Mysteries of the Crucifixion, one of the two spiritual experiences of the Emanation of Beauty, the other being the Vision of Harmony--the realization of the harmony, magnificence, and abundance within the human spirit and within the cosmos, an understanding that occurs in the temple of exultation.

 All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Six of Wands: Lord of Victory

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SMALL VICTORIES

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

 

I know a hero, someone who never gives up,

someone who instead keeps taking one step back,

then two steps up, someone

who keeps fighting for small victories.

 

She never stops struggling to be free

from the sickness, from insidious spells,

She keeps taking one step back, then two steps up.

She keeps fighting for small victories.

 

It has to be about small victories,

two steps up and one step back,

to win back her health, to win back

the freedom of her heart and mind, of her heart and soul.

 

She’s always believed in herself enough

to fight for wholeness and harmony.

Others may have goaded her

to not believe in herself,

 

but she refused to listen to them.

Others may have tried to make her feel weak and afraid

so that they would always have power over her.

She keeps struggling to find wholeness

 

through small victories, one step back

and two steps up until she wins back

her health, until she wins back

the freedom of her heart and soul. 

Entangled:

Part Nine

  The next day, the Princess faded in and out many times. Simon’s attempt to enlist the help of the townspeople had nearly succeeded. Something was still missing though. Simon meditated for a while and realized the Princess herself needed to imagine that she was completely back in the physical world. She needed to remember times when all of her senses were engaged, like when they were hiking next to the river. She needed to remember being immersed in her surroundings, one with the earth and air and water and light. Combined with his love for her and the help of the townspeople, she might return completely.
   Katie kept stabilizing and destabilizing for another week. The nurses kept mentioning that recovery was all about small victories and how amazed they were by Katie’s resilience. When Katie was conscious, I encouraged her to imagine herself as happy and whole and engaged with the world around her.

   Once, after I had scrambled down a trail about five hundred feet into a secluded foothill valley and then had hiked about a mile and a half along a creek in search of Native American artifacts, I suddenly knew, without a doubt, that someone was breaking into my car--even though the car was parked far, far beyond the range of my physical senses.  Alone in the woods and helpless to stop the crime, I plopped down on a rock and bitterly lamented for at least twenty minutes about all the evil in the world--without any evidence at all that anyone had even touched my car.  I just simply knew, in a way that no one could explain--or explain away. In the same way I knew that Katie was going to be all right.

   That day in the foothills, after I found my way back to the car about an hour and a half later, I found that someone had indeed smashed a window on the passenger side of the car and had opened the glove box.  On the way home, I was furious as the cold air blasted me. I soon forgot about my intuition as I drove home from that remote foothill valley.

   Like many others, I have experienced inner voices, visions, and intuitions that transcend space and time, wise inner voices as clear as the voice of another person, symbolic visions that have revealed spiritual principles, and powerful intuitions about people and events.  Since these voices, visions, and intuitions have occurred sporadically over a period of forty years, and since they are not scientifically explainable nor even socially acceptable, they have tended to become lost in my daily concerns.  Many predictions by my higher self, my holy guardian angel, have come true, the cumulative impact of the various communications creating, for me at least, an undeniable truth.

   The Greeks believed the inner voice of intuition and enlightenment came from a person's “daimon.”  Some believe, like Plato, that the daimon is a kind of spirit that is separate from us, a spirit that adopts a person at birth and follows that person even after death. Plato calls it, “the daimon which has received us as its portionment.” The ancient idea of the daimon, therefore, appears to be analogous to the guardian angel, which has been described as either a hidden dimension of the soul or separate from the soul, an intermediate power of divine order, or a god of the second rank, as characterized by Maximus of Tyre (1).

   This god or angel, I believe, is the highest dimension of the psyche, an unpredictable intermediary between the human personality and the divine Source.

   The Romans translated the word daimon as “genius,” from which we get the word “genie.”  The Romans also viewed the genie as a personal guide whom one can contact through prayer, trance states, visions, and dreams, or experience as an inner voice, intuition or compulsion.  The higher powers and abilities of each human being are attributed to his genius.

   Each organized unit of nature, moreover, has a genius, known as a genius loci, or “spirit of place.” Believing that the genius is the unique spirit which exists in every living thing, the Romans worshiped the genius of the river, the tree, the family.  For the Romans, each and every God has a unique genius, which is how the Gods can be distinguished from each other. Sacrificing to the genius of a God or local deity was a way of appeasing it and harnessing its power (2).

   Each person, moreover, has a unique genius--a kind of driving force which must fulfill its own destiny--forcing an individual to become that which he or she is really meant to be. Ignoring the genius means not only denying the power within but also denying the ability to realize one’s potential.  The daimon often creates the inner compulsion to do things seemingly without concern for the consequences.  It might compel a person, for instance, to give up a career to become an artist or sacrifice his life as a martyr.  The daimon doesn’t care what kind of money a person makes or what kind of reputation a person develops.  A person who heeds his or her daimon sometimes feels pulled this way and that--even deeply violated.  Heeding the daimon can lead to a life of poverty in pursuance of a dream.  Choosing not to heed the daimon can lead to a worse fate, however:  a sense of failure accompanied by feelings of emptiness or regret--no matter how successful a person might become in a worldly sense.

   Another time, even though my hikes were almost always focused on finding Native American artifacts, I had an overwhelming urge to climb a mountain that I knew was probably not connected to any Native American village site.  As I climbed higher, the slope became steeper and clouds grew darker.  A thunderstorm was on the way. I was also worried about rattlesnakes in the tall grass and the rocks since I had seen several rattlers on the road.  Yet whenever I paused to ask myself if I should climb higher or go down, a voice in my head always replied, “Higher.”  Finally, my way blocked by a tall outcropping of rocks covered by poison oak, I sat down to rest on a smooth stone at a vantage point that enabled me to see the mountains for miles.  Suddenly, I was totally overwhelmed by a sense of the spirit of the place and recognized that the aborted hike up the treacherous slope was  simply for the purpose of connecting with the spirit of the watershed.  After feeling an unexpected, powerful connection with the spirit of place, I felt no need to go higher, so I flew down the hill as rain soaked me to the bone.

   I, of course, have no way of measuring the experience or in any way proving that I connected with the genius loci.  Western societies tend to ignore or dismiss as fantasy or psychosis the mysterious compulsions and communications of the daimon, or guardian angel.  However, according to a Theosophical source, 

   The belief in daimones as mediating spirits between gods and men was customary in ancient Athens and sacrosanct in Vedic India. Socrates regarded the intervention of the daimon – what Gandhi called his 'inner voice', which sometimes spoke to him and remained silent at other times to his deep despair – not so much as a command laid down on the human spirit by an external power as   "an absolute law of the spirit itself,” to quote Hegel's terms for the sacred task of the Delphic oracle. To make this interior voice wholly subjective is to destroy its spiritual character and distort the position claimed by Socrates and Gandhi. For a few pre-Socratic writers and for some Indian mystics, the daimon or devata was no more than the genius or over-brooding spirit unique to each person. If we adopt a facile rationalist attitude and take the daimon merely as an inflated metaphor for a familiar psychological process, thus denying it all transcendence and regarding it simply as a pathological oddity, a hallucination or a paranoid or hysterical symptom, we are, in fact, denying that it is an instrument of any meaningful communication and leaving Gandhi and Socrates, and many of the great mystics, enclosed in themselves….(3) 

   The Qabalists believe that each person has a Holy Guardian Angel, a higher self in touch with divine knowledge that transcends our limited physical senses.  For the Qabalists, the supreme spiritual experience of The Kingdom, the material plane, is the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.  This simply means that the higher self communicates with the conscious mind through intuitions, inner voices, and symbolic visions. 

   Why is it important to connect with your daimon, your guardian angel?  For one thing, it can save your life.  It can lead to a state of optimum physical and mental health and a sense of connection with the divine. 

   My connection with the holy guardian angel began when I started meditating, purely to relieve stress, at the age of forty-two.  I did not believe in a spiritual dimension and knew nothing about the daimon or the Tarot or the Tree of Life, or anything else considered occult, or “hidden.”  The last thing I expected at the time was a spiritual experience; in fact, for several decades before then I had doubted the existence of a spiritual dimension. But I started to meditate, usually when I woke up from a nap, emptying my mind completely.  Unexpectedly in my mind’s eye, I started envisioning pearls in the joints of my fingers and a rainbow of wheels, known as chakras, spinning in front of me along my spinal cord.  I noticed impurities in the vortices and mentally wiped them clean.  Some of the spinning wheels were harder to keep clean than others, however.  I kept mentally draining the blackness from my heart and emptying trash from my crown chakra, for instance, but the blackness and the trash kept returning, so for a long time--in fact, until this day--I continue to purify my aura.

   One day when I finally felt purified, I began having visions of symbols, such as a simple mandala comprised of a golden, equal-armed cross with angels at each end, each angel in a differently colored robe; a gray, horizontal figure-eight above my head; and a pure, white flower with countless petals above my head.  (I had thought at first that the flower was a rose, but a voice in my head whispered, “Lotus.”)  

   I continued meditating and noticed in my mind’s eye a patch of black under my right arm.  I mentally drained the black energy from my body and filled the area with blue, yellow and brilliant white energy.  Several days later I pressed a round ball of white flesh, the size of a musket ball, painlessly through a slit under my arm.  Weeks later I envisioned another black streak, this time under my left arm.  After doing the same visualization, mentally draining the negative energy and filling the underarm with positive energy, a large round boil surfaced under my arm.  Several days later another round ball of flesh, along with a teaspoon of pus, painfully oozed out.  The same process occurred two more times over the period of a year, my left underarm forming a boil and white growths oozing out--after I had mentally drained the black energy from my aura.

   From then on whenever I envisioned a streak of black anywhere in my aura, I mentally drained it away into magma and engulfed my aura with blue, yellow and white energy, and soon I began to feel healthier than I have ever felt before even though I was almost fifty years old.  I continued to drain the black energy from my heart whenever I envisioned it there and slowly felt more and more joyful, experiencing a radical innocence that I have not experienced since childhood, and rarely even then.

   If one goes through a process of mental self-purification in meditation to clear negative energy from the subconscious mind, the higher self can then reveal to the conscious mind problems with the mental, astral, and etheric energy "vehicles" or “sheaths” in the aura surrounding the physical body, just as the higher self can then also communicate to the conscious mind profound spiritual principles through archetypal symbols, inner voices and intuitions.  The idea of connecting with the guardian angel or daimon is ancient, but I believe that the “knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel” has potential applications in terms of mental and physical health that make it more than a spiritual understanding:  It is a way to heal oneself and others on all levels of the psyche as well as a way to “clear a path” to the divine.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(classical_mythology)
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_loci
(3) the Avatar, http://theosophytrust.org/tlodocs/Daimon.htm Copyright©2011 Theosophy Trust