dreaming

Japan and Birmingham

I play a lot of music during the day as I work in my home office. It never ceases to amaze me the power of music. In particular, its power to evoke memories and trigger mood and emotional responses. If I want to meditate, I simply go to youtube these days and select a nice suitable piece of music and I am off to other spheres…..

Today, I played some Japan. It has been a long time since I did and I was immediately transported back to Birmingham and 1979. My best friend at college – Steve – introduced me to Japan one afternoon at his flat. We were playing Dungeons and Dragons and he put one of their albums on. I loved the music and the deep rumbling of David Sylvian’s voice. I immediately went out and bought that record – and the next and the next. I devoured Japan music. Now, I listen and I am back in that room all of those years ago……. that is the power of music. 35-years on but ‘Nightporter’ sends me back in time every time.

I also went to see Japan. In Glasgow while doing my Ph.D. Perhaps they were an acquired taste but I could get no one to go with me and so I went alone. Amazing evening. Given it was a sell out at the Glasgow Apollo I have to wonder why none of my friends wanted to go? The music of Japan accompanied me to Nova Scotia and periodically through my life. I still adore David Sylvian’s voice and have two of his solo efforts too.

David_Sylvian_3

It makes me wonder. What music will I associate with now? In a few years time, will I be transported back to my office in our apartment here in Brno by the sound of some artist or song? I guess I will.

Here is some David Sylvian to float to –

 

 

Your Life is One Big Lie

One of the central themes of all my writings – even the My Haunted Life series – is the nature of reality and the role that we may play in dictating that. Over the last twenty or so years (if not my entire life really), I have read, meditated on, studied and discussed this topic and the process I have come to several conclusions. One of these is that I now believe that much of our world is an illusion.

It’s easy to draw analogies with movies like the Matrix here and I and others often do but what I mean is a lot of what we think we know isn’t real. It isn’t truth nor fact. I once said (and thought it was rather cute) –

“The more I think on it the more I realize that certainty is an illusion. History was written by the winner, the news is provided with a spin and other people are opaque. We know nothing for certain. It used to be that the internet might provide information,but it too is now nothing but opinion and scare mongering. Nothing can be relied upon. We have to look inside ourselves for anything of value – anything that can be relied upon – but it too is colored by our ego and personalities.

So in the end, if the past is a colored view and the future a fancy, what do we have left?

Simply to live in the moment…..” (The Mystical Hexagram (Vasey & Vincent, 2012)).

Life is an enigma and I may never actually understand the answers but I do know this. Everything that we take to be true is probably not. Let me give a few examples;

1. History – history is written by the winner and it reflects a perception or view of what happened. There are alternative histories for everything and the sad thing is, they are all colored by the same issue.

2. Education – Education is partly about providing certain tools – reading, writing, critical thinking, analysis – but only in limited degree. The rest of education is essentially to ‘brainwash’ you with cultural normalities, cultural convention and to ensure you don’t actually challenge the system. Most people accept what they are told as the gospel truth and never for a minute stop to think critically or analytically about things. In this way, the illusion is maintained.

3. Religion – While all religions are probably based on wisdom and spiritual truth, they are all and without exception, subverted to match someone’s political or cultural agenda. They become the basis by which people can be manipulated and controlled.

4. On a more mundane level, the music or entertainment industry can be used to prove its all illusion too. Many singers can’t sing (they use computer software now to ensure perfect pitch), many musicians can’t actually play, many live performances are lip synched. It’s all a lie (It didn’t used to be). Actors and actresses public personas are creations and false often nothing like the reality. Show business is really all a show – an illusion – just like everything else in your life.

5. You are bombarded day in and day out with messages – some subliminal and others in your face – buy this, eat this its good for you, holiday here and so on. The marketing machine uses our ability to imagine and visualize – a rudimentary skill though it is in the  majority of us) and uses OUR magic making ability and equipment to have us make THEIR reality. Our magic has been hijacked!

I could go on and on but I won’t. Don’t ask me who the THEY might be. I have no idea and I am not a conspiracy theorist – that’s just another fantastical dead end. That there is a THEY – whether THEY actually know it or not, I am sure.

I also have concluded this. Given everything turns out to be illusion and that I cannot trust anything, then I must turn to the only thing I can rely on – me. Unfortunately, I have to first clear the Me of all the nonsense I have been conditioned with and am bombarded with daily. As Mark Stavish terms it – I must know my own mind. This is far from easy and may not be attainable at all but I can make progress towards it and, in doing so, I can take control of my life and my reality. I can be a true mage and imagine my thoughts into reality. Of course, I also live in other people’s realities too and I must learn how to interact with their parallel universes too.

You know, if the outer world we call life is an illusion while the inner world is real then surely, the Kingdom of heaven truly is within us and faith – well, it can move mountains.

jesus

 

Adam and Eve

I have the words
But perhaps I lack the wisdom
Exploration is an exciting game
Especially of those darkened inner regions
As I build my tortuous iron chain
Just like that of poor Mr. Marley
Seeking ever more worldly gain
To take along to my final party
But there are chinks in my armour
That steely shell that I built
To protect myself from me
Don’t need that silly psycho drama
Strutting on a worldly stage
Never to be heard no more
A fool full of his own import
But trapped in the guilded cage
Of his own idiotic nature
Nothing, nothing more to be
Life’s a package of candy
With sticky tangy centers
Pungent tastes in the chewing
Dissolves to nothing but tasty spit
As I fade into the glory
Of a life fell foul
I wonder if he knew
I wonder if he turned
The other cheek
Played hide and seek
In his inner garden
Eve and that bloody apple
Played out once more
Rotten to his very core
But redeemed
It seemed
At the very last bitter sweet
Moment.

eve

Life is But A Dream

I recall singing that song when I was a small child and wondering what did it mean? – Life is just a dream?

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

But where did this come from and who wrote it? A bit of research suggests that the earliest printing of it was in 1852 but who wrote it and why seems lost in the mists of time. If anyone knows, please let me know…

I thought life a dream when I was a child or rather, I thought it a game that I controlled. It was a sort of virtual reality (as it would be called now) and I was sat in a box connected to a machine that gave me vision and senses. So to be honest, I didn’t puzzle too much over the idea that life might be a dream. I rather accepted that it was.

I have lost so much as I have grown and yet I have gained so much. My imagination as a child was beyond equal. I could create other worlds right there in my head and my dreams and my waking life seemed interconnected and one. I could fly back then. Magic – physical magic was real and so were elves. There was a girl I loved so much trapped on an island of towering cliffs looked after by her wicked witch of an Aunt that I dreamed about over and over again. One dream ran into the next even weeks apart until I finally rescued my love and the wicked witch met her destiny.

There may have unlimited imagination as a child but there was no experience of life. In the Mystical Hexagram, I talk about the hardened horny matter that is built up by life. We talk about the burning away – the transformation through fire – of life’s experience. The breaking down of this hardened horny material that we build up through life.

It’s as if we build ourselves a prison.

It starts early with our parents who, knowing no better, burden us with some of the hardened life material. Next, its other kids (peer pressure) and our teachers (culture, way of seeing things etc.). We lose our ability to just imagine and it is replaced with the straight jacket that is normality and acceptance. We no longer ‘row the boat, gently down the stream’ but rather fight the currents going in God knows which direction and to what end? Oblivion?

Life loses its innocence, its gaiety, it’s merriness. It’s no longer a dream but a nightmare.

That is until you remember how to imagine. How to center yourself and imagine. Learn how to dream again. How to cast off the horny matter and transform the experiences – no matter what they are – into something of eternal value and meaning. Something spiritual and energizing. The combination of childish imagination skills and the adult’s experiences of life to at first remember to row, gently DOWN the stream (with the current – Just as Asteroth said ‘don’t fight, go with the flow merrily understanding, it is YOUR dream and you can create your own reality.

allure4s

Originally posted on Asteroth’s Domain.

All is One

I looked down onto and across a very strange and unfamiliar landscape. It was a rocky, largely barren place with sharpened peaks rising all around. Yellows and grays beneath an azure sky. It was like looking into a vast ampitheater and I recall thinking that the heat of the midday sun must be unbearable down there in the center. Strange, because ‘down there’ was really up there on top of a flattened peak of dust and bare rocks. It was a strange and crazy point of vantage that I had of this scene. There were a number of squarish whitened buildings dotted around in the yellow-green valleys – signs of life at least.

It was then that I noticed that atop the flattened rocky peak in the center of my vision there were figures. From my position of vantage it seemed as if there may be a small crowd and three crosses. I recall idly wondering about the crosses until somehow I seemed to zoom in upon the scene as if to clarify what it was I was seeing. Sure enough, there were about 50 or so people gathered atop this cross between a mountain and a hill and three crosses. Each cross had a man upon it wracked in agony. The central cross was the one that drew my attention and that of the small crowd as a soldier thrust a spear into the man’s side. The crowd gasped and cheered.

For me, it all happened in a rush as if the entire world had snuck in on me in an almighty rush of energies, sound and light. I realized clearly and without doubt that the Nazarene was dying and as his head dropped and he gave a last breath there was a massive explosion of light and energy. Momentarily, it was suddenly as dark as night and then a small spark of light seemed to appear emanating from the Nazarene dead upon the cross and this light moved outwards in a massive concentric circle, expanding and expanding to encapsulate everything. Again, my vantage point shifted and now seemed seemed distant as I watched in sheer amazement at this concentric shower of light and energy that was spreading through every rock, tree, living creature – every single molecule and atom on the planet.

I hadn’t expected it but the concentric ring of ever expanding light seemed to hit me and I was knocked back as if hit by a nuclear blast. The light filled me up. It enlightened every atom of my body sitting there in my office chair in Houston, Texas. A powerful rush of energy like nothing I had experienced to that point and have not experienced again. The effect of this was to momentarily knock me out – I blacked out literally. But then I was back.

I was everything. Everything was me. We were all one thing in total harmony. The planet, the Universe, you. It was all me – us.

It lasted for an just instant and then the light was gone moving off into the Universe in a huge concentric circle.

But just for a moment, I had been fortunate to have the light of the Christ show me the Truth.

christ crucified

You can read an alternate account of this experience in my book Inner Journeys (Thoth, 2005)

The Art of Dreaming

For a while this morning I was researching Carlos Castenada. I had read his first four or five books as a teen and was thinking perhaps it was time to refresh my memory as regards their content. Pretty soon, I was reading about the man and how most likely, he was a fraud who rather than sitting in a small room with Don Juan was reading books about the subject at the University Library. I felt a rising sense of disappointment too as I read how he had retreated to a mansion with three female followers who gave up everything to live with and follow him and how he treated his family. All the classic symptoms of ego, sex and cult. Very disappointing.

I read too a summary of the content of the books. Even though Castenada himself may have been suspect, mysterious and perhaps a fraud, for me anyhow the books do contain a synthesis of real wisdom and knowledge. Who knows how he really came by that knowledge and who knows what the truth about him really is perhaps instead what matters is what we make of his books. Castenada himself talked about how reality is described to us and we eventually accept reality as described. From the moment we are born, we are described things and eventually we take on this view of reality. He said that to begin to see one had to stop the world. When you stopped the world or as I understood it, questioned what really was around you, you would begin to learn to see another reality or realities. Though he may use terminology that is different to the words I may use, he is saying what I am coming to accept as well. Any form of occult training essentially has the same objective and that is to break down the reality you were taught and help you to observe your own version of it.

download

This in turn naturally leads me to the conclusion that in a way, we all create our own realities. It explains why for example, some people live conspiracy theories or see roadblocks and objections everywhere. They choose to. On the other hand, it can explain why people who can truly visualize success become successful. They create their reality. But before you can do that, you have to know yourself and be aware of what filters you have been given – how the world has been described to you. Hatred, racism, homophobia for examples, are all inherited filters – they are all a description of acceptable reality for a consensus or majority.

So while, Castenada may be a disappointment to me I feel his works are valid. They originated somewhere in his reality and they describe an alternate reality as well as providing a map for getting there. I shall re-read his books…….

Two Weeks of Silence

After today, I can promise you almost two weeks of silence from G Michael Vasey. While I am gone, I will imagine you all running out to buy my books and reading my archive of delicious articles on this blog and on Asteroth’s Domain Me? well, I will be laying in the sun, swimming and drinking cold beers to cool off in Kos. I can’t wait.

I have been neglecting Asteroth’s Domain which I reserve for more esoteric articles mainly. I guess, I simply haven’t had much to say esoterically recently. Instead, I have been focused on building a business (Commodity Technology Advisory LLC) and trying to build a platform for my writing. Both are non-stop activities and can slowly eat away every minute of the day one way or another. After a while, you look up and kick yourself because you realize that yet again, you have slowly losing sight of what is really real and important. Meditation has gone from 30 minutes plus daily to once in a while again. I think at such times, my subconscious self gets truly pissed off with the other me. That’s when I get bad and weird dreams like the one I described the other day. I have had weird dreams all of this week to be honest and so as I lay in the sun and in between frolicking in the pool or ocean with my daughter, I shall try to refocus again……

I often think that in fact, this is the dream and the false illusion that we get sucked into and allow it to become our only reality. The truth is that there are almost certainly many realities created by the many me’s that exist. Some of you may take that as the statement of a crazy man but think about it. We are all fractured characters playing roles and being different people for different purposes aren’t we? Mum, daughter, friend, enemy, clown, and so on…. as we play out our roles, we are creating a reality for them too. Each character that we play has an audience and an energy and they create the daily dramas that occupy our lives.

The trick, I think, is to wake up and recognize this. To start to try to bring all these separate bits of ourselves and all of those different reality streams under control… the control of our true will. Some people will call this God, some Goddess and yet others Divine Providence or simply the Perfected Self. Whatever you name it, it is the same thing. In order to listen and take guidance from this presence, we have to be quiet and listen. We have to talk to it via prayer – creative visualization. We have to allow It to guide us and in doing so, hopefully, we bring together the fractured aspects of ourselves into the Divine whole we were always meant to be.

energy-in-motion by michael-massurin

energy-in-motion by michael-massurin

The Dream

Last night I was dreaming something though now I cannot recollect what it was. I know that it was a long and continuous dream and that I was in a remote and beautiful place. I was revisiting it with my partner and child. The place was familiar and yet not. I recall thinking it was the Island of Eigg but it was not – it was somewhere I have not been to in this reality. Anyway, I was walking down a rough lane between two flat fields of grass. My two companions were behind me a short distance.

Up ahead, I could see two figures one an adult female and the other a child. As I saw them, it began to darken and to snow and I was thinking that this was a tad strange. I continued to walk and with the light fading, the weather changing and the two figures motionless as silhouettes in the distance, I began to feel a rising sense of ill. The feeling changed from one of worry to fear as I got closer to the two figures. The first was an overweight peasant-type woman dressed simply in a shawl with her hair inched back severely into a bun. She did not smile and her skin was grimy. Her eyes seemed fixated on the distance behind me as if gazing miles and miles. The child was equally ragged and dirty and as I approach I noticed the child had black eyes. No white in those eyes – pure black. On seeing those eyes, the fear and dread within me reached a peak and I began to float. As I floated over the top of the two figures I was turning in the air and my gaze was on the child’s eyes. I was scared for myself but also for my companions who had lagged some distance behind me. At that moment, the child opened its mouth in a terrible scream and that mouth opened so wide it could swallow me. I woke up, trembling, sweating and shouted No, No, No.

It took me a good 30 minutes to rid myself of the feeling of doom, fear and indescribable horror of the dream.

nightmare

Reality Really is Weird

I am reading a book about the nature of reality. It has an interesting way of working its theme as it has you conduct experiments. This last two days, I was doing one of the experiments where you simply look everywhere and expect to see something. In my instance, I decided on a pink car. Don’t ask me why. It just seemed like something fairly rare….

I actually finished reading the instructions on my Kindle riding a bus to pick up my car from service on Friday. I decided, pink car and looked up. As my eyes refocused on the view through the back window of the bus I noticed another bus. It was white but…. it had huge pink stripes on it. I thought to myself “OK, thats not a car nor is it totally pink, but that is pretty bloody weird!” I got off the bus and had to walk back about half a kilometer and I was looking at all of the cars – parked, in motion – all of them. I realized that some reds had now began to look pinkish to me and then I saw it… yes, a dark pink car went sailing past. In 24 hours, I saw two dark pink cars like that and one clearly pretty little girl pink. Not only that but everything pink, I began to notice. As I looked across a scene, pink items would jump up out of all the reality ‘noise’ in front of me. I saw pink writing, pink on billboards, pink houses, pink clothing, pink hair, pink ribbons…. lots and lots of pink.

Now, let me tell you something. I have never ever seen a pink car in Brno before. Never.

The second 24 hours you had to change it to something else… something living perhaps…. yes, an elephant. That’s what I decided…. an elephant. That was last night in front of the TV and almost immediately as I looked up, yes, there was an elephant in a commercial as if right on cue. Later, watching a youtube reel of funny cat videos (yep – you caught me doing that!), one had two baby elephants in it too. Obviously, I didn’t see a lot of elephants but I did see some. Normally, I would not have done.

face

So, what does this prove?

Well that reality really is bloody weird.

It doesn’t at this stage matter if by focusing on pink cars or elephants, I brought them into my reality or that by focusing and actively looking for something, I saw it. Both are stark results when it comes to reality. In the first, I really do create my reality by manifesting what I concentrate on and in the latter I manifest something that was already there but previously unnoticed by my consciousness. In the latter case, we receive so much data at any point in time, we must filter almost all of it out so that we only see what we are focused on seeing. If by focusing on something else, we now see this in the noise then this proves something powerful too. I mean, what are we not seeing because we DON’T know how to look for it?

I would say that in the above paragraph, if we create our own reality that is magic but if by shifting our focus and noticing something that was always there but remained unseen, then that is magic too.

You see, in magical training, much time and effort is dedicated to knowing ourselves. As we learn about ourselves we become aware of aspects of ourselves we did not know about, we become focused on something we never saw before and we begin to try to change ourselves – to be more deliberate and less automated. As we do our magical training, some people may experience an increase in psychism for example. Is this actually that person changing their outlook and changing what they chose to notice and now seeing something that was always there but they never actually saw before?

I think so. Think about that for a minute will you?

By the way, that book is called E Squared.

My book about reality, set as an exciting novel about magic is called The Last Observer.

Am I Alone?

I must confess that I often wonder if I am in fact alone.

I mean, are any of YOU actually REAL? Much more likely, you are all figments of my furtive imagination.

Think about it. The only thing that can really be real to us are our own experiences. Those experiences are second hand since if I touch you, it is in fact something in my brain that interprets what that touch should feel like and hell, what is ‘feeling’ anyway? Its something in my consciousness and in my brain and nothing to do with the atoms and molecules of my hand brushing against the atoms and molecules of you. Our entire experience of OUT THERE is ….. INSIDE OF US.

You do not exist people I know it. I create you in my mind and consciousness and there is just me. I am alone.

Perhaps this is really The Matrix and I paid money to play this game. Pushed into this creation for a while to experience something different? As I have written before, even though I awoke this morning and knew continuity in my life, there is no proof that yesterday ever happened. It could simply be an experience programmed into my consciousness to give me context for today. I am alone and just for the day.

Think about it. Well, if you have any reality outside of my consciousness, think about it and get back to me…. Are you real?

Or am I alone?

alone_in_the_universe__hd_wallpaper__by_zeozozolen-d5ghu2o