When others saw worldly descent, there was, in truth, spiritual ascent –

When others saw worldly ascent, I saw, in truth, spiritual descent.

For it would mean admitting how dissatisfied I am with our world, and with our existence.

To give in fully to the bliss of my heart would incur such great melancholy and despair; to allow my heart to fly and soar to the heights of euphoria it is capable of would make the heaviness of my vessel all the more clear. How long can a bird in a cage fantasize about freedom, about spreading its wings and tasting open air, before relinquishing and accepting its confines?

I guess I’m afraid of wanting, for to want is too vulnerable a thing.

To let myself dream would make me weep at my waking reality.

And of what would I dream? What might my fiction, my written falsehoods, convey, in truth, about me?

Might every single thing I translate into my fiction be a mirror image of the ways in which I am unsatisfied?

When I illustrate with words my inner vision, my own epic tale of being a powerful hero, I am then really telling you how impotent, helpless, powerless, and out of control I really feel —

When I write a tale of pure, sweet, and rich love, I’m telling you how cold my heart has been —

But, when I write a story of darkness taking over the land, and a reign of fear casting a thick shroud, a weighted, crushing blanket, fire retardant to the spark of spirit contained by all humanity, evident in the posture of all, with curved upper backs, heads trained on the exact point the tyrant king would like to pin all beings towards,

Then I am telling things exactly as I see them to be. Then, I am telling you about the being who has made me afraid to hope, afraid to want — afraid to stand up, for fear of being smacked back down.

But, if I cannot defeat my captor even in fantasy, how could I ever dream of doing so elsewhere?

It is easier to convince oneself they’ve never wanted at all, than to face the crushing, painful awareness that the desire of one’s heart is not met.

This is why I am afraid to write fiction. I am afraid of love; I am afraid of how deeply I love. I am afraid of wanting; I am afraid of how deeply I want. I am afraid of how deeply I need, how deeply I hurt, how deeply unsatisfied I truly am, and to conceive of a realm in which that is not the case may make the painful burden of the reality I am currently in too much to bear…

But, with this awareness, of course I’ll not remain actionless. With the profundity of this realization, what else is there to do but write fiction? What else is there to do but face that blissful, glorious ache of my heart?

What else is there to do but rip off the bandaid, taking hair with it, my desires like maggots having festered upon my flesh, ready to be unleashed upon the world… ugly, brooding, preferential to the dead, dark, and damp, not quite ready to see the light of day, but not quite, now, with a say in the matter…

Here, into these words I’ve infused soul,

Feel you now it’s magnetic pull, the longing from within of old.

If only I could make you feel what I feel, and see what I see. Our hearts could come together as one, the masquerade may at last end. This animatronic vessel hides an operator from within, pulling the strings; it’s awfully dark and damp in here.

I’m a gamer on the other side of the world operating my character, hoping to convey epic novels in emoticons, torrents of feeling in a digital wave.

To be stripped of this vessel, you might see the real me. A twinkling star. None of you see the real me, but those of you with your faculties of feeling enlivened might get a taste. Those of you who have opened your hearts might perceive something omnipresent, and yet hidden all the same. Omniscient, and yet a naive toddler. Omnipotence contained within a baby’s cries.

Bravely fearful. Perceptively blinded. Wisely ignorant, nourishingly starved.

No, I am not the man you see me as, and I’m coming to understand that myself. The physical still exists, but to be beckoned by this reality beyond it is a tad irresistible. Endless seas of creativity, born in the understanding that form cannot limit anyone.

The wonder of our spirits can be contained in infinitudes of vessels and forms.

So, why did we pick this specific instance? This point in time, this locality, this form amongst unimaginable quantum possibilities?

I feel my future self, my higher self, my spirit, knocking on this door. I am aware of how unaware I am, and I long to let Her, let Them, let Him in. Might I need to accept that part of life is to regret? Can anyone live a life without regret?

I operate a cold vessel of stone. I’m condensed light, leaden gravitas seeking to be liberated once again as luminous plasma. I see the divine contained within all things — or I might hope to — a fractal at the bottom of the ladder, one bubble of many to shortly pop, reuniting the air contained within with the source from which it was captured.

I now understand the divine to be the air contained within the bubble, and we are the water borrowing it to maintain form — but, oh, how we will pop one day, and how we will reunite when the air of our lungs leaves at last to return to that omnipresent divine breath that contains us in her belly —

Within me is futility and infinite possibility. Mediocrity alongside grandeur.

Nonattachment is only the understanding of our mortality. To let go of attachment is to recognize we all must return home one day, that the umbilical cord will rope us back in eventually.

Ah, so you desire to inquire on how to get your spirit to fly ever higher?

Such wisdom isn’t sold to the highest buyer;

No, rather, send your soul into the purifier —

There might you discover a spiritual fire,

That will protect you from all worldly liars —

All of its different “gurus for hire” —

Of conmen I’ve grown so tired —

Our spiritual crisis grows so dire —

I’m going mad, a real live wire —

Oh my dear, give me your ear and hear my words most sincere: steer clear of those who may feed on your fear, selling lies, evil profiteers,

From your heart, may the damned be banned, the ignorant minds I just can’t stand, awfully in need of reprimand, but over ears are clasped hands —

Look at this world, all its land. Could not any of this have been planned? Certainly there must be some sort of hidden hand, pulling strings on each and every atom and grain of sand —

Take this into account every time your faith runs out, may those divine whispers within turn into shouts, trickles of wisdom into glorious founts, washing away each and every shred of doubt —

Something I’ve always thought about is that free will and fate can coexist.

In that, the choices you are going to make, you always were going to make, because you are who you are…

So, you make all your choices of your own volition, but it was already written down, because, by virtue of who you are as your truest self, you were always going to make those choices, as those are what are natural and true to you. There was never anything else you were going to do. So it is both entirely you, and entirely fated, perfect as can be.

So much to comment on here though, holy shit.

In no particular order…

I don’t necessarily think we shape the qualities of the planets. And yet, we do. Perhaps as we grow, evolve, and shift, the perspective from which we look at them will grow, evolve, and shift, too, similar to how we may view our parents in a different light than we did as kids, as we grow into adults.

Who knows? From a grander, larger perspective, what if the planets, and our solar system as a whole, have an evolutionary path set out for them as well? What if the planets have consciousness, and what if they are — on a level incomprehensible to us — seeking to blossom and grow evermore? They are incomprehensibly massive to us, our celestial parents, but even one’s parents has parents. Who are our grandparents? Who is the father of the Sun? Who is his dad? What of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy that our Sun orbits? What does that black hole orbit?

I would also advocate for the presence of certain knowings that one need not prove. Do we have to prove that we have free will, or can we hold it true to our hearts, a nonverbal knowing? Is it possible that such conversations about free will and fate are merely masturbatory, with no real effect at all? A desperate grasp for control in this grand, terrifying soup of reality that we are all subject to? no matter how much we discuss this matter, the underlying reality behind it remains the same… or does it? Can we change reality by observing it differently? What does that say about free will if such is the case? Can we cultivate free will by believing we have it? Is anything about this reality static, at all?

Ultimately… I do believe we have free will. Because, perhaps, it serves me to believe this. If I do not believe I have free will, it is possible that I will begin observing the worst parts of reality, and the story I am writing right now — the story of my life — will be a little less… splendid, than it otherwise might be.

If I believe I have free will, I may be able to write a bit cooler of a story. To make it an epic poem.

The question of free will to me, too, has a lot to do with the whole quest of enlightenment. I am reminded of the saying, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.”

Perhaps the whole goal of free will is to do that: make the unconscious conscious. Perhaps free will is something that is discovered ever more gradually. Perhaps our evolutionary path is in discovering ever more free will. Surely it exists on a spectrum: do humans have more free will than dogs? Do dogs have more free will than a flower?

Perhaps our enlightened masters, if they do indeed exist, have freed themselves from the dark veil of ignorance, and have thus claimed total free will, in the ultimate quest of total liberation: spiritual enlightenment.

So… does free will exist? Yes. No. Maybe. Perhaps it depends.

I am reminded of the biblical tale of the fall. In the myth, it is the consumption of the fruit of knowledge that granted mankind free will. Awareness and free will, in this story, are one and the same. Perhaps as awareness increases, so too does free will. Perhaps the more aware one is, the more free will they have.

Do you have free will if you are subject to the whim of your instincts? Does an addict have free will if they know they want to quit, but give into the impulse powerlessly? One might argue they have free will, but simply aren’t using it. One need not such an extreme example to grasp our potential lack of free will; what are our irrational fears but slavemasters that we foolishly obey? What is reason and truth but the corresponding Underground Railroad towards liberation?

Perhaps this is where I’ll leave it: the quest of spiritual enlightenment is the quest of total freedom — or, in other words, totally grasping the fruit of knowledge, that perfect fruit, our Philosopher’s Stone, and total, ultimate free will.

Perhaps we exist in an in-between state, between the animal and the divine, and that purgatorial state is what we know as the human condition. Perhaps free will is the natural product of that duality, of being suspended in a binary reality; there’s always two paths to choose from. We can always go left or right, and perhaps that is the message of the biblical Fall — that split from one — the perfect fusion in Paradise — to two, and we are here now, always having two options to choose from as a result of the Monad being split into the Diad.

I know that became more incomprehensible and incoherent as I went on, but I am okay with that.

Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Art and beauty are one and the same.

However, we consider beauty in a spectrum far more limited than we consider art.

We need to widen the scope of what art and beauty are.

Why can I not find art and beauty in shit?

Why can I not find art and beauty in death?

Why can I not find art and beauty in ugliness?

Why do we seek such narrow bands of feeling? Why do we choose to paint only with one color? What of red and brown?

What of black?

What would a world be like where art and beauty were universals, not limited to a specific arrangement, not limited to a specific pattern, but merely an intrinsic quality of all things that exist?

I’m not so convinced that’s not already the case.

I’m not so convinced that that’s not already the case, and that we just aren’t looking at it, that we aren’t aware of it, and that we’ve chosen to ignore this universal principle.

What is a great novel, a great story, without an antagonist, without a central conflict? We view the antagonist as a force to be defeated, a conflict as something to be worked through — but do we forget to thank those central themes, central roles, for the great gift that they are in creating a story?

Is it possible that only through the presence of a conflict, through the presence of an antagonist, that a protagonist can be born, and that a resolution can be created?

This is the art of alchemy. There is no Philosopher’s Stone without lead, without the prima materia.

While you explore me

My muscles harden

But my spirit softens

A flood of healing water,

Purifying,

Descends from the heavens…

And yet,

All the same,

A roaring fire,

Destroys and burns

The walls

That contain that one central point

Immaculate

A burning water

A liquid fire

Free me

From my masculine confines

Transmute me,

from water to wine

Sip from me

Put your lips upon my cup

My poisoned chalice

Of rosey red hues

Now stains you

Might I intoxicate you?

Might you come back for more?

I’d like for you

To taste power

Drain me

For I know

The returns are infinite

Suckle upon my blood

craving your tongue

exploring my feminine

You are a conductor

And each flick

of your

“wrist”

Creates music of ecstasy

orchestral cries,

a symphony of moaning.

I’ll give back tenfold,

this bliss you’re loaning —

Your lingual baton,

Makes me sing —

I follow your lead,

Master of music —

Lay claim upon me.

My heart desires conquest.

I am a prize to be won,

A flag to be captured —

If you want me,

Come get me.

Rescue me,

From myself

For I am both

Princess and dragon.

If you raise your sword,

Forcing me into surrender,

You may liberate the princess

But until you threaten me

With spilt blood

The veil will remain.

My urge for self destruction

Is because I recognize

I am my own captor.

My urge for you to

Attack me

Is me requesting freedom.

Set me free from myself