Can someone remind me what it means to love? what it means to be loved? can someone remind me of the hearth within the cold, empty, desolate void? can someone remind me of life’s greatest why, the why that allows men to endure any what, any how? can anyone remind me of love? 

Envy’s selfish admiration,

a poisoned rose thorn–

so much of this world’s healing pertains to allowing women to express what men have traditionally always been allowed to express, and additionally, in allowing men to express what women traditionally have always been allowed to express.

Feminism contains the first portion of this equation, the leveling of the playing field, allowing women to step into positions of social, personal, and interpersonal power, which traditionally was reserved strictly for men.

However, I have not seen an adequate enough equal and opposite movement for men, led by men. 

What we do not realize is that men did not just blockade women from expressing what was traditionally deemed “masculine.” They weren’t just confining women. No, in addition, they were confining themselves to the chains of the toxic masculine, in all of its emotional starvation. They erected a barrier that kept both women out and men in. 

The healing of the world pertains to the marriage of masculine and feminine. Women must be allowed to express the masculine, but men must also be allowed to express the feminine. 

Liberation from the toxic masculine necessarily involves men making peace with their own feminine. Once a man has made peace with his own feminine, he will have made peace with women and all feminine beings.

The fruits of Eden are ripe!

To eat or not to eat?

What have we to learn from the parable?

You were the fruit —

better known as a concept, an idea —

yet to be held in my hand,

yet to be tasted.

That holy garden was paradise.

Then, once you,

the fruit, forbidden,

were plucked from the tree,

no longer coveted, 

admiration from afar turned to possession,

the fruit consumed,

oh, then did the Fall at once come to be. 

Oh, the suffering that can come 

from met desire, its flame quenched.

Know when yearning is best unfulfilled,

Know when a fruit is best admired from afar.

…

You just had to know, didn’t you?

Couldn’t be left wondering what it would be like–

The fruit of knowledge couldn’t be left 

with its secrets untold.

curiosity kills, forsooth,

friendships the collateral.

…

the lesson of the Garden

is that,

sometimes,

it’s better to be teased

than to taste ruin

“But even in the dark, I could see her eyes — fierce emeralds. She had the kind of eyes that predisposed you to supporting her every endeavor.”

here’s what I’ve learned

it requires a little bit of ego to change the world.

Here’s the thing: there are going to be people who go out there and decide how the world should be. There will be people who trust themselves implicitly when they shouldn’t, and they’ll go out there and shape the world according to their vision, regardless of how beautiful that vision is or isn’t. 

And, often times, it will be people who shouldn’t be shaping the world who put their hands to the clay, simply because they believe in themselves enough to do it.

But the people who tend to be more pure of heart, the people who might actually have something beautiful to offer the world if they’d believe in themselves enough to do the shaping… they’re often the ones who exercise “humility” in waving their white flag. They’ll instead shape, maybe, their own personal world as they see fit, not daring to get involved in the lives of the greater community. Or, they might not even believe that they deserve to shape their own life in a way that makes them happy. 

This so-called humility, this so-called egolessness, it is a disservice. It is wrongdoing through inaction. I’ve said before that the mountains tyrants summit are composed of the backs of the deadweight masses. I can tell you that these folks who fall to lives of inaction because they are “without ego” are actually selfish; they wrong themselves, and more importantly, wrong the whole because of their own fear. 

I believe we have a moral obligation to act. You’re less what you say and more what you do. The meek might inherit the Earth, but the weak condemn it. 

So, yeah, it requires a little bit of “ego” to effect positive change. You have to believe in yourself just a little bit. You have to believe that you deserve a say in things, for you do. You have to believe that you can be an active participant in life, that you’re worthy of such a position.

so many people with a priori morality; I can tell you that living what you’ve held in theory is for the folks of substance 

one of the greatest indicators of growth is embodying a strength that your younger self might have considered weakness

you’ve not known living until you’ve danced around a fire under the Moon with loved ones, you’ve not known living until you’ve swayed with the Moon, you’ve not known the life that has been lost in modernity. you’ve not known the goddess until you’ve let her Moonbeams seize you and make you move as she sees fit, you’ll feel like a puppet pulled by her strings, and you’ll relish each moment of it, you’ll see that that body of yours wasn’t being used properly, it’s potential not being fulfilled, until you let Her take control. you’ll begin to see that there is a sickness shared by most of the first world, and that sickness is marked by deprivation of Moonlight — it is estrangement not just from the goddess, but estrangement from the beautiful mystery that makes life worth living. It is the unspoken wisdom that looks like insanity from the outside, but is the only truly sane thing in this world. It is chaos that makes all truly orderly. 

Oh, the Moon! 

Is there anyone else who has been touched by her magic? Is there anyone else that has seen her for the panacea that she is? My heart swells with gratitude. 

Please, do me a favor and sit alone with the Moon. Look not just with your eyes, but open your heart to Her. No, do not buy into the myth spread in our paradigm of spiritual paralysis that she is inanimate. No, look to the seas given life by Her, look to the tide, and know that all of the aliveness of those oceans exist with Her, in Her, because of Her. Look not just with your eyes, but with your heart. Let your heart be like the face of the Moon — she is a mirror of that happy Sunshine, but then let yourself be a reflection of that reflection, a mirror of that mirror, the cycle is complete once the Sun-Moon duality is turned into a triad, you the critical point needed for completion.

Edmonton was livid. 2,000 years of living, and infinite more to come, and that thorn in his side — whose name made him wince to even think — still roamed free. 

Maybe millions of minor inconveniences that his arch-nemesis had formulated simply to make his eternity of living constantly, ever-so-mildly annoying had instilled in Edmonton a rage so deep that it would only die if his enemy were to perish as well. 

What he wouldn’t give to go back in time — that cursed resource of which he had infinite, so much that each second became more and more worthless as they came — and stop his younger self from making that one decision that would keep him young forever. A timeless oracle promising immortality to a young alchemist in pursuit of that panacea. Why wouldn’t he have taken it? The promise of his pursuit of that elixir of youth finally ending, for him to clutch that holy prize? 

“All on one condition,” she said. “All your days will be slightly dampened by a creature who is like a pebble in a shoe that will never come off, like a thorn in your side that will never be plucked free.” On top of it all: “The only way for this creature to yield and cease his torment is for true love’s kiss to grace your lips.”

You’d think he’d have chosen a different name for himself at this point, being given opportunity after opportunity to remake himself as ages came and went, as empires rose and fell. But no — he held onto Edmonton. Perhaps it was a means of retaining some of his core identity, a blanket taken from home to ameliorate his homesickness that would never leave. 

Despite the constant trickery and annoyances of his slick, silver-tongued nemesis, there were many joys to be discovered in the millennia he’d stalked through as a shadow who came and went, a ghost who materialized and immaterialized as he saw fit. 

Despite how heavily he craved liberation from that troll, that poltergeist, that fucking cretin who lurked behind every corner, he more greatly feared the inevitable sorrow that awaited him if he fulfilled the oracle’s requirement: to watch his love die, and for him to live on, alone. 

He suffered the minor torment, rather than that colossal agony he knew would befall him otherwise.

Fear, fear, what is fear?

How much can be learned through identifying anyone’s greatest fears. Fear, it is where all power is lost — fear, it is where the heart is most at risk of being forgotten. Fear is the venom, the poison — fear, it is the fork in the road, fear, it is where we choose to run or maintain its gaze, for when we win this unholy staring contest, its yields are untold riches, oh yes, the winner truly does take all — so choose, choose: will you take all, or will you lose it all?

I know no power that doesn’t involve the facing of one’s deepest fears. I know of no freedom that doesn’t involve the facing of one’s deepest fears. I know of know real truth that does not involve liberation from fear. Fear, fear — what are you but the guardian of the threshold? What are you but the keeper of the treasure, the dragon encircling gold? To conquer fear is to conquer oneself and oneself only — 

Nothing makes me feel more alive than to do things that scare me, nothing makes me feel more alive than to activate that system designed to escape death. 

I can tell you this, this immutable truth, there is no way around what I am about to say — no gymnastics of the mind that can dodge this reality, and that reality is this:

A life lived obeying fear, that system ingrained in us to escape death, is how one comes to live a life that is death, it is to become one of the walking dead.

You’ll never know any greater joy, you’ll never know any greater exhilaration, never know any greater bliss, nor greater fulfillment, than to overcome your fear–

Yes, a life lived facing fear is a life truly lived.