15 posts tagged “surfing the tao”

After having written a book and blogged for nearly four years now, and found myself now to be much preoccupied with the reality of living with the world in its present precarious state, I really wonder how much more I have to say here. At what point has one proved their thesis on a blog such as mine? The state of our world is nearly perfectly aligned with many ancient prophecies. It’s now a matter of living through the transitions as they come, and they are already present in various incarnations. 2012 doesn’t have to come and go to know we are in for some big changes.

Personally life has not gotten easier; I know many may feel the same way. Economic hardship has hit us all one way or another. It’s been useful to find so much support in terms of raising consciousness, because at the same time, the world is sure making it more challenging to overcome. At least we know we are not alone, and I have great appreciation for all the great thinkers and writers I have met online.

But the actual living through it, in a nutshell, is what Surfing the Tao is all about. Like I’ve said many times, if I had perfected the living of this philosophy myself, I wouldn’t be here anymore to write about it. I go through my own daily ups and downs, and am grateful for the support of friends and family - believe me. I couldn’t do it all without them. You know who you are.

I hate to admit that Twitter is about all I have time for these days – that 140 character limit makes it easy for me to get a few headlines and thoughts out, without the hours spent writing, editing, and searching links. Still, I go days without signing in even there. It’s unfortunate, I know. But there it is.

I am discovering what it means to grow vegetables in Hawaii and battle the bugs. And it’s hard to discover that some of your dear chickens are roosters, instead of the egg-layers you signed up for. It’s a learning curve, to be sure, and I’m grateful for the lessons – I also recognize these are important lessons that deserve my time right now, and along with all the other normal daily dilemmas, the schedule is simply overbooked.

The job situation is too much to even write about. It’s agonizing on so many levels, and not just for me, but for people close to me as well. Many of us are discovering how time seems much, much shorter than it used to; the days flash by and our creative projects languish. If there’s not a quickening currently afoot, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

Meanwhile I am still somewhat languidly watching the headlines, and not being surprised at anything. We are living in the times I was warned about many times over. Behind the scenes, the p-t-b are busy. Frankly I’m even a little bored by it. Yes, our food is contaminated. Our drug and oil industries are corrupt. Politicians are not who they claim to be. Powerful control mechanisms, such as mind and weather control, are no longer only the realm of conspiracy theorists. Wars and catastrophic earth changes loom on the horizon. Bizarre synchronicities abound. The eschaton is being immanentized. Story at 11. Moving along.

I do sometimes have moments of panic, that I’m not being present enough for those who might need more support during these times. But that doesn’t mean the bad guys have won – far from it. The good guys have already won, but we need to live through it right now. In other words; once you’ve educated yourself on the Truth, step back, cease the panic, and take stock. Love is the only thing that will truly matter in the end. And – til I’m blue in the face – it’s all good.

I, as many others, have years of work behind me, a book even, so I’ve done my part, as best I could. Read my archives. And I’m not disappearing altogether. When more sh-t hits the fan I will be here to comment and advise; that is, if there still is an Internet at that point. But right now, I have to concentrate on my family, my livelihood, my own immediate reality. Perhaps it’s what we should all be doing right now. Get up from the computer, take a look around and wonder what you would do if the power went out – permanently. Even if it doesn’t, you would be well-prepared not only for emergencies, but in your own personal development and relationships. At some point we must all realize that the next step takes place within ourselves.

I have had my own set of personal warnings. How about you?

The Master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone.

-Tao Te Ching #38

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” - Pablo Picasso

Much is being written about 2012 and what changes that year will bring. The Mayan calendar and various other religious and spiritual prophecies have seeped into popular culture to the extent that much of the world will be holding their breath on December 21, 2012 at 11:11 PM Universal Time, like Y2K to the umpteenth degree.

I have often been asked what I believe will happen on that day, if anything. The way I see it, it is already happening; we are already knee-deep in the preamble web of events, from which the tendrils of our future will be created. Whether as a result of ancient prophecies coming to pass, our having to finally take responsibility for the excesses of the past century, or simply the full-blown noospheric power of the expectations of millions of psyches, 2012 promises to be a banner year.

Whatever the cause, I must admit to a sense of further quickening. Terence McKenna is likely smiling knowingly from Somewhere, as the lines on the graph of his Timewave Zero theory march their way towards the 2012 zenith. I believe we are now witnessing the rapid spiraling of current crises and scenarios into some terrific opportunities for nefarious solutions by our world’s elite, not to mention the documented potential for spectacular destruction within our solar system. Whether these events will happen, much less converge exactly on that 12/21/12 date, or even within that year, I could not say for sure, but the timing is notable.

Frankly it’s coming so fast and furiously right now that I can barely keep up with it, as the same quickening seems to be happening in my own life, on smaller scale, in some kind of ironic, synchronistic testimony to the scalable unified field. I simply don’t have time to write about it as I would like, because I’m so busy living it. Perhaps we all are, in our own ways, navigating the Eschaton, whether we believe in it or not.

We are certainly being inundated with a constant banter, which perhaps attempts to instill fear, though ought to only keep us focused and alert. Economic crisis, world currency, new world order, world war, civil liberties, socialism, artificial intelligence, nonlethal weapons technology, seed banks, UFO disclosure, 2012 solar cycle, prophecies, earthquakes, volcanoes, sustainability, self-sufficiency, gardening, alternative energy, free energy, consciousness shift, revolution, evolution…truth does seem to be stranger than fiction these days.

Another resonant topic which continues to haunt me is Planet X or a binary star/sister sun theory, though I cannot provide substantial third-dimensional proof, enigmatic Vatican probes and Antarctic telescopes notwithstanding. The only shred of mainstream scientific evidence could be that our ‘global warming’ phenomenon seems to actually be happening across our solar system, not just on Earth. Polar ice continues to melt, but Jupiter’s great red storm is shrinking too. Still others say we are headed for another ice age. How about this radical take at Rense: Evidence of Solar Manipulation and Solar Changes?

What doesn’t seem to be up for debate is the fact that our Sun’s behavior can be worrisome. Many of the ancient prophecies seem to include mention of the Sun, and/or other planetary movements, such as the Mayan belief that the 2012 date indicated the end of the time of the Fourth Sun, and the beginning of the world of the Fifth Sun. In Revelation 6:12, the sun turned black after a great earthquake. Other ancient prophecies, including the Koran, the Norse Ragnarok, the Egyptian Ipuwer Papyrus, the Kolbrin Bible, North American Indian prophecy and many, many other books in the Bible warn of a future time of destruction during which the earth will burn and shake violently. I enumerated many of these in my book in the chapter, Destruction by Fire. I noted the strange recurrence of these similar warnings across time and culture. Here’s a good overview of the Mayan calendar and the solar cycles.

Strange ancient hieroglyphics, now discovered in widely diverse locations around the globe from Colorado to Yemen, Australia and South America, all seem to be referring to “some event, possibly related to the Sun, which was prophesied to change human civilization.”

Currently our Sun is in a period of extreme quiet, with the lowest sunspot activity in nearly a century of recording, the great calm before what is now expected to be a great solar storm in 2012, when the sun reaches the apex of its 11-year cycle. Due to the weakening magnetic fields around both Earth and the Sun, it is expected to be more ferocious than usual. A recent report on severe space weather and its potential economic and societal effects has been making its way into the mainstream media. One can now find various releasing hair-raising alerts in this regard, one after the other.

From the Telegraph: Scientists are expecting a more intense solar cycle this time around. Jimmy Raeder, a physicist with the University of New Hampshire, explained it is “because the Earth’s and the sun’s magnetic fields will be in sync at the cycle’s peak, expected in 2012, that will cause an influx of solar particles”.

From NASA: A Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field, “NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth’s magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist.” At first scientists couldn’t even believe it. Themis is working to determine the severity of the expected upcoming solar storm,and the magnitude of effects it will have on our electronic grids and satellite systems.

In December of last year, from Fox News: Powerful Solar Storm Could Shut Down U.S. for Months. Another recent Fox News report with physicist Michio Kaku is frighteningly clear. WATCH IT. I am familiar with Dr. Kaku and his calm intelligence, and this seems almost outrageous coming from him. He claims he and his fellow scientists made a mistake, and that the 2012 solar cycle will be far more disastrous than previously imagined. Wow.

Here’s a real doozy of a doomsday scenario recently outlined by New Scientist: Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe. Or how about this from the Daily Mail, Solar storm could cause planetary disaster at any time, warn scientists. A Danish study has even concluded that the earth’s magnetic field is impacting our climate. All this, and CNN is still debunking 2012 as a meaningless popular culture meme? Well, which one is it??

Australia is adding a new magnetic field observatory to study the weakening field and hopefully gain warning of an imminent polar reversal. Meanwhile check Spaceweather.com for news and updates. NOAA provides current solar data, and here’s their solar activity monitor. Here is their space weather prediction center. And the seed banks continue to be made ready by 2011.

Here’s a YouTube video of Jay Weidner at the recent 2012 conference talking about the sun’s reduced heliosphere and an inundation of radiation from the center of the galaxy by 2012. The warnings, he explains, are important, but he also separates himself from the ‘gloom and doomers’ by expressing that this change could be seen as an opportunity, even if it was forced upon us.

I find myself agreeing with that. Using a pending Apocalypse as an opportunity is the essence of Surfing the Tao. Whether anything will happen in 2012 or not, current world events are forcing us to take a hard look at how we are choosing to live on this planet. There are of course many people who are too conditioned to the trees to even notice the forest, much less discern any correlations and make adequate preparations within themselves. But more people are growing vegetable gardens this year than ever, and companies are even running out of seeds. Murmurs of alternative energy solutions are louder than ever. Communities are turning inwards for solutions, as well we all should. Networks espousing such thoughtfulness, teamwork and sustainability are springing up everywhere. Whether it’s to prepare for the End of the World, or just the end of an unsustainable world of bad habits, it’s all good.

Many believe there will be a shift, whether wholly on this day or as a beginning on this date (or perhaps now already started, to be completed then) from the third to the fourth density; in other words some kind of shift in consciousness, or dimensions. Of this possibility I have also received a kind of inner confirmation, though it remains nebulous as to what, how, where, and when. People seem to have their own theories on that, to be sure. Love is key; true unselfish compassion is essential, and perhaps if we can cultivate that, the rest will come. Personally, I suggest the teachings of Jesus remain the best wisdom to follow in that department, whatever your religious or spiritual beliefs, if any.

Indeed we are very much affected by magnetic fields; would a significant change in the field give us just what we would need to reach Beyond what we think of as reality? A “perfect storm” indeed perhaps? Creation from destruction? I might like to posit one additional intuition here as well. I have always felt that this ’shift’ might also either require, or gain a significant boost, from some sort of technology, yet to be pinpointed. I’m not sure why I think that, or what it is, just the idea of some kind of portal, stargate or even shield has continued to nag at me. Call me crazy, but I think there are a lot of puzzle pieces still out there. Just take a look at the megaliths around the world. Seems a bit too contrived to be random. Anyway just a thought.

Whether events converge to create the perfect storm in 2012, or simply give us the perfect opportunity for a positive evolution, the best advice I can give is pay attention. Be prepared, but not fearful. Keep your ear to the ground, and use your inner discernment to find the thread of truth.

And love your neighbor. You might need him one of these days.

Prevent trouble before it arises.

Put things in order before they exist.

-Tao Te Ching #64

Please note a couple of excellent recent articles by two of my esteemed ‘blogeagues’, Kingsley Dennis and Neil Kramer, whose insights and intelligence continue to inspire me here at Surfing the Tao.

Neil Kramer has blessed us yet again with another thoughtful post over at The Cleaver, entitled What Lies Beneath: Is Belief a Big Con? From religions and spirituality to new physics and our concept of reality itself, how and what we believe, and how we apply these beliefs, can either uplift and heal, or bring certain doom. Our traditional concept of reality, including ‘mainstream’ science, must at some point begin to absorb the study of consciousness itself, to take a note from our ancient sources of wisdom. The two are intricately intertwined on a level we perhaps have not yet come to terms with. Certainly “unveiling the Control System” is important initially, but how we react and what we do with that knowledge is the ultimate key to an enlightened and sustainable future. It’s all in how we catch the wave.

One might understand why I mention Neil’s post in the same breath as Kingsley’s incredibly well-researched article, Global Gridlock: How the US Military-Industrial Complex Seeks to Contain and Control the Earth and its Eco-System. Kingsley does indeed note the spiritual implications of our ‘new reality’ in various posts on his blog, Between Both Worlds, and so this most recent article is received in the spirit of understanding there is a vast amount of information out there we need to be made aware of. The government is intent on achieving dominance over the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including the development of a ’synchronic’ society with regards to tracking and monitoring even the biological elements – this is powerful information that could have vast implications with regards to our future as a society, and even as living beings within it. Making well-informed decisions about how we progress in this world is imperative, and Kingsley is a very important source to pay attention to on that front.

“…the Master concerns himself with the depths, and not the surface, with the fruit and not the flower…” - Tao Te Ching, #38

“I believe that the World Wide Web is, as a matter of fact, the noogenesis of the noosphere.” - Ralph Abraham, The Evolutionary Mind (1988)

Lawrence Hagerty wrote in The Spirit of the Internet,“…the Internet is not the noosphere. It is merely an infrastructure that is now available for the noosphere to use.” Hagerty goes on to profess, “I believe that the Internet is serving as just such an attractor, or basin of attraction, drawing the Earth’s most creative minds into a synergistic union out of which a new form of human consciousness can arise from the wells of chaos.“

The noosphere is a term created by Jesuit priest/radical thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose ideas were frankly force-fed to me in college in the eighties (I happened to attend a Jesuit university where he was practically worshiped as a god). For that reason perhaps I wrongly assumed his teachings were more widespread than they actually were at the time. But I find no uncertain irony that his ideas continue to haunt my own delightfully synchronous journey towards Singularity.

Not the technological singularity of Ray Kurzweil; I’m talking more about what’s happening over at Reality Sandwich, and other important, alternative think tanks of our time. “New science” is termed thusly because, reminiscent of Capra’s intuitions of decades past, scientific discoveries are merged with new (and perhaps very old) interpretations of consciousness. This is how it should be; the Newtonian universe must ultimately be discarded in favor of the quantum discoveries that tickle our brains, easing us into new frontiers of existence, consciousness and human evolution. The homo cyber I find mentioned here and there, if left alone in the wilderness of pure artificial or mechanistic intelligence, would be the unfortunate result of not taking the final step of this process. Like refusing to take the red pill, our psyches would be left to rot inside the prison Matrix of third dimensional space-time. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” reminds Shakespeare.

The Internet may be Noosphere 1.0, a precursor to an enlightened state of consciousness; or perhaps, Noosphere for Beginners, or Noosphere for Dummies. Though arguably a creation of Big Brother’s sinister and eavesdropping omnipresence, the Internet is also being used, perfectly a la Tao, as a vehicle to transmit thoughts and ideas in preparation for a purely telepathic noosphere. The next several years its role will be vastly influential in terms of the global progression of consciousness, and I urge all to participate as they can until then (or until the government curtails this freedom, much as it has done with suppressing entheogens); but at some point, perhaps soon, the circuits and transistors will go the way of the covered wagon. Many of us will leave our electronic devices abandoned on the beach as we eventually look up and realize the great sea of enlightenment and oneness is before us, and go in for a dip – never to return. The key to ridding ourselves of the shackles of this reality is love, pure and simple. Love is the thing no machine can transmit; love is the unique trait, or ability, that will catapult our transformation from homo sapiens not to homo cyber, but to homo luminus.

The minds at work on the great consciousness project at this moment are alive during this time not by accident. They are all Surfing the Tao though they may not be aware of it. We are all giving what we have, and taking what we need, in some kind of post-modern, spirit-driven, psychedelic communistic mind trip, hastened by our collective visions of 2012 and beyond. Hagerty calles it entheospace; I might describe the sensation as a sort of dreamstate, finding oneself floating down a river of consciousness, gently colliding with others riding down the same stream in a kind of synchronistic, fractal pattern of atunement, as we all slip closer to the great sea.

Daniel Pinchbeck’s first book was entitled, Breaking Open the Head – which I mention here not for its particular content, which is a mind-expanding examination of the entheogenic experience, but because it so aptly illustrates my own particular state of being.

My own head cracked in college, during several misguided entheogenic experiences. I discovered Terence McKenna, but as far as spirituality goes, I was definitely a seeker who didn’t really want to spend any time looking.

This all changed in 1999. The previous fracture, which had begun to scar over, was rent asunder, and a torrent of new knowledge and higher frequencies began to stream in. I will only say: the true masters are truly hidden. And it is meant to stay that way, for now, perhaps because actual participants can often teach each other more in the beginning. But I was urged to continue meditating, and before long I had what Neil Kramer over at The Cleaver might call a fourth dimensional experience.

Without any entheogenic aid, I crossed over into the void. Suddenly, I Knew.

There are no further words for what I experienced. The language simply doesn’t exist. But it changed everything I knew, all that I was. What followed was years of reading, researching, listening, loving, meditating and change. Many of the books that appeared as if by magic I have listed here. My intellectual side was frustrated, but my spirit was at peace for the first time I can remember in my adult life. The end result of that was, I wrote a book, which was really just a cathartic expression of my overwhelmed psyche.

My own path is still guided by amazing synchronicity and coincidence. I find it startling how often I find articles written about the very subject I had been ruminating about. How I discover brilliant minds have already found answers to the questions I have been asking. How so many of our paths are beginning to converge on the Great Path. Spirituality, Taoism, 2012, eschatology, Planet X, the Matrix, conspiracy, sinister agendas, alien technology, symbology, synchromysticism, mind control, electromagnetism, alternative energy, quantum physics, plasma physics, torsion physics, entheogenic-inspired thought and conscious enlightenment, ecocentric living, — the puzzle pieces are coming together rapidly. I cannot explain how I know what I Know, yet I will say; the quickening is upon us. The noosphere is coalescing. The Puzzle of Being, and the question of consciousness, is in the process of being realized by a vast cadre of psycho-cryptographers.

The great irony is, I sense, that this enlightened, super-charged, noospheric state of being is and has always has been, here and now. This ancient Way that has been lost during our fall, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, is now being quickly rediscovered, picked up and dusted off as some kind of primordial reflex to protect ourselves from what we subconsciously know is coming. We are remembering, so that we will survive.

I remember Y2K. Regarding expectations for 2012, the intensity of thought, intellect, spirit, and energy now in 2008 is somewhat on par with what happened the months previous to Y2K. And we have nearly five years left. What incredible postulations, theories, discoveries, transitions, realizations, opportunities, manifestations, creations and expectations will surface between now and then?

And what will happen on December 21, 2012 at 11:11 universal time? That remains to be seen; but to prepare for either global catastrophe, psychedelic wormholes or simply more life as we know it – the only answer is, and always will be: love, peace and harmony.

Sometimes I wonder how I find what I do here online – and when I do, I wonder what else I’m missing. I’m only one person. Only one computer. Only so many hours in the day.

If you’ve made it this far, please consider leaving a comment here regarding what author, what religion, what spiritual path, what thinker, what scientist, what discovery, what issue, what website, what experience – what ANYTHING that has made a difference for you on your journey.

Give what you have. Take what you need.

As it acts in the world, the Tao

is like the bending of a bow.

The top if bent downward;

the bottom is bent up.

It adjusts excess and deficiency

so that there is perfect balance.

It takes from what is too much

and gives to what isn’t enough.

– Tao Te Ching #77

• Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano update: lava now flowing through a lava tube, which means it could go farther and faster. No one is “officially” worried but I know people living down there who are on edge.

• Comet Holmes still getting brighter and now has a tail. Check out this photo gallery.

• The Daily Behemoth points out a Times editorial on population control. Eugenics, anyone?

• Daniel Pinchbeck’s latest article discusses the ‘Homeland’ and Naomi Wolf’s “The End of America.”

• Is a submarine-based helicopter in our future? The invisible tank, though, is already here.

• Fireballs in Turkey.

• Brasscheck.tv has a great collection of videos you have to see.

• Rosslyn Chapel videos.

• The Danger Room on “White House Candidates Battle Aliens.” And in Canada, Exopolitics Toronto also pushing for disclosure.

• Heads up to TrueTao sage Derek Lin at Journey of A Thousand Miles, on his latest post “An Easy Way to Understand Wu Wei” and the surfing the Tao analogy. Derek is a wonderful source of Tao wisdom and I highly recommend his Taoism.net.

Journalist Daniel Pinchbeck, self-proclaimed cynic and son of Beatnik parents, transversed the realms of the psychic and the psychedelic, as well as his own personal drama, to bring us his version of the Eschaton in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. His scholarly prose is punctuated with radical, apocalyptic refrains which underscore his own revelations as to the immanent arrival of something both terrifying and wonderful. If he is correct, our near future contains the potential for both catastrophe and conscious enlightenment, a view I happen to share to some extent.

Whether this transformation will occur in one simultaneous event on December 21, 2012 remains to be seen. However Mr. Pinchbeck threw himself to the wolves in this book, revealing not just his own relationship issues, self-doubt and twisted shamanic journeys, but a full-on prophetic experience of Quetzalcoatl himself and a vision of our future perhaps only a very small handful of people are willing to consider.

He calls this book an “extravagant thought experiment”, explaining his dual lines of investigation from philosophical groundwork to his own “process of discovery”, which led us from psychedelic trips all over the world, to crop circles, alien abduction, occult manifestations, time vs. consciousness theory, global environmental and economic collapse, and back to his own frustrating and comparatively two-dimensional Manhattan habitat. Through these various means, he points out our general unwillingness as a species, in these post-modern times, to recognize the ever-increasing void of spiritual awareness; our cultural blinders have rendered us more or less incapable of recognizing the signs of our own imminent demise, which come to us through journeys into a level of consciousness few seem prepared to take.

While his writings and experiences differ greatly in style, organization, and attitude, I found the skeletal framework somehow reminiscent of my own, as if there were some great field of knowledge to be tapped into whose messages are passed on through one’s own particular experience, research, circumstances, filters, lexicon, allegory, etc. – the flesh, as it were. Granted, the subject matter stems from the same genre, though our intentions are arguably dissimilar; however I couldn’t help but notice how much of this work resonated with my own in Surfing the Tao. After much agonizing over whether to share what I found to be synchronous lines of thought, I have decided to note some here humbly, knowing my own self-published, obscure volume will likely only make it into a handful of minds. I ask the reader not to misinterpret the following as any folly of ego; I recognize my own small work can never be compared to Pinchbeck’s literary talent, however critiqued he may be. I do this only in the spirit of noticing how similarly the Tao can touch the thought patterns of an open mind and heart, and that the synchronicity of it all could raise a few eyebrows as to what may or may not be truer than we realize…

DP: “Throughout my early life and into my thirties, I lacked a metaphysical view of any sort.” (p. 19) AVM: “For the first thirty-odd years of my life, I wandered in ignorance.” (p. vii)

DP: “…I concluded, sadly, that our current civilization is not a machine built to last. (p.8) AVM: “As time and technology progresses, general knowledge is actually regressing…A system based on money instead of love will eventually falter.” (p.7)

DP: “…the modern materialist sees myth as antiquated and simpleminded – at best, metaphoric or symbolic.” (pp. 9-11) AVM: “..we have been taught to think of the ‘gods’ as mythological or symbolic…”(p. 31)

DP: “…a text can only act as a scaffolding of concepts, a ladder for others to climb.” (p. 15) AVM: ““Though some texts can be used to help guide us, no one ever entered the actual ascended state through the pages of a book.” (p. 210)

DP: “Real knowledge of what I am saying must be earned, and lived, by each individual, in his or her own way.” (p. 15) AVM: “This is a highly personal experience…little things will pop up in everyday life that will start to ‘prove’ it to each person in their own way.” (p. 14)

DP: “Few of us have time to make our own investigation of such abstruse realms as psychic research – and why would be bother, when our ‘experts’ assure us they have the situation wrapped up?” (p. 38) AVM: “…those who control the leading educational and intellectual institutions of our day have settled on the general public view of non-supernatural evolution…Many would rather accept the lives they have been taught…and not bother with anything more.” (p. 5)

DP: “…modern physicists…were surprised…[to find] that matter was largely composed of empty space. At this quantum level, physicists discovered that their attempts to measure the phenomena they were studying affected that phenomena…” (p. 47-8) AVM: “…inside an atom, there really isn’t any substance at all; just tiny sparks of energy…physicists are surprised to discover you can’t measure sub-atomic activity without influencing it.” (p. 15)

DP: “I found that attuning myself to synchronicities…required the development of a kind of intuitive skill…some of these synchronicities involved conjunctions between personal episodes and world events that seemed to me both numinous and inexplicable.” (p. 55) AVM: “My life became filled with so many bizarre synchronicities and small daily miracles that few people would even believe them.” (p. vii)

DP: “It is only as a fully self-reflective individual consciousness that one can make the choice, out of free will, to reconcile with the Divine, through sacrifice, or supercession, of the ego.” (p. 117) AVM: “Choose love: use your free will to seek His will, and soon it will coincide with your own and your life will be truly blessed.” (p. 20)

DP: “In the popular culture of our secular age, the gods, demigods, fairies and gnomes of the old mythic realm have returned as extraterrestrials.” (p. 121) AVM: “Author John A. Keel wrote in his work Operation Trojan horse, “The UFO manifestations seem to be, by and large merely minor variations of the age-old demonological phenomenon.” (p. 50)

DP: “According to this hypothesis, Christ ‘redeems’ us only when we follow his lead. We still have to save our own souls.” (p. 117) AVM: “It is a bit of a paradox – we must first save ourselves, by refusing to be fearful, and maintaining a positive state of mind.” (p. 199)

DP: “Our conventional notion of history, like our conventional understanding of space and time, supports a linear, evolutionary and causally deterministic view of events.” (p. 189) AVM: “Most people alive today probably think our world is just the result of natural evolution…” (p. 1)

DP: “As represented in the Tai Chi symbol, one pole does not negate its antipode, but reflects and includes it.” (p.209) AVM: “Yin and yang are not opposites – yinyang is the essence of the oneness of all things.” (p. 28)

DP: “The superstrings, quantum jumps, and wormholes through space-time described by contemporary physicists might prove the basis for shamanic techniques of visiting other realms…” (p. 245) AVM: “The passageways between [black and/or white holes] are referred to as wormholes, gateways through space/time…This concept mirrors our ancients’ views about our reality [re. origins of ‘the gods’.]” (p.42)

DP: “’EVERYTHING IS SAFE IN GOD’S HANDS.’ This telegraphed answer [to a question regarding the fate of humanity] was startling – and reassuring…It has liberated me from fear and anxiety.” (p. 259) AVM: “God’s plan is great but complicated…only know that He loves us and everything will be ok in the end…Stop worrying…never give in to fear.” (pp. 250-1)

DP: “As it says in the Tao Te Ching, ‘Non-Tao is short-lived.” (p. 375) AVM: “’That which goes against the Tao comes to an early end.’ - Lao Tzu” (p. 14)

DP: “Such a shift would not be the ‘end of the world,’ but the end of a world, and the opening of the next.” (p. 15) AVM: “Far from being the end of everything, this event could trigger our ascension into a higher realm…” (p. 249)

But whereas many of my own thoughts seem mirrored in his book, I found it interesting how his own particular circumstances, and journey towards this consciousness, manifested in such different ways. While I’m no stranger to psychedelics and have indeed had some prophetic experiences thereby, my most profound revelations were actually not drug-induced but rather brought about during moments of startling clarity during deep meditation. What truth I believe I stumbled upon comes from within; our own atoms already contain the necessary ingredients for wisdom, transcendence and enlightenment. Mr. Pinchbeck does not hesitate to tell of his terrifying psychedelic foray into the realm of the trickster daimon and the occult; he does indeed admit the inherent dangers therein, “The initial visions had been seductively Luciferic.” (p. 72) While he does admit the inherent dangers of the “daimonic reality”, I might suggest the best protection there, as anywhere, is love. And love is something he seems to have struggled with, on a personal level, throughout – though he does recognize the necessity and power of positive thinking, something he was not afraid to comment on during a recent and much-discussed argument with Whitley Strieber on his radio show.

But he is on a very different journey than I am; for many, psychedelics offer a way to, in Pinchbeck’s own words, ‘break open the head’ in a way they might not otherwise be able to, in a world that seeks to keep this kind of knowledge hidden. Certainly one cannot help but be mystified by the profound and strikingly similar types of inferences made by the likes of McKenna, Burroughs, Narby, Pinchbeck himself and others in these altered states. To seek knowledge of another realm, consciousness or dimension, you have to somehow travel there.

Towards the end, Pinchbeck shares the transmission he received from Quetzalcoatl. I read it umpteen times, my sense of discernment on high alert, as if searching for a way to Know…I am left with the overwhelming sense that he did intuit truth and wisdom, the sort of truth one gleans from Knowing with the Spirit; in the intellectual world, nothing like this could ever be proven. I suffer the same dilemma. Somehow I find solace knowing that if these revelations indicate mental illness according to western psychiatric theory, at least I would be in good company in the psych ward. So, knowing how difficult it is to write about these things in a secular materialist culture, he does win my respect and admiration for even coming out with this material. As I said before – the wolves are eager to tear it apart, and he has laid bare his jugular, “Even if it required isolation from the mainstream, I preferred to sacrifice my beliefs and preconceptions, along with the comforts and status they afforded, rather than cling to a set of inherited values that I increasingly suspected to be false.” (p. 40) At the risk of repeating myself, again I find evidence that our many diverse paths have the potential to converge onto the Great Path – that singular Truth of Being which seems to so deftly escape our waking consciousness.

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl was published in hardback in 2006 and paperback in 2007. Mr. Pinchbeck can be found online at Breaking Open the Head, Reality Sandwich, Whole Life Times, featured in a video at Postmodern Times, his Amazon blog and MySpace among others.

Yes, things have been crazy around here. I am working on a few ideas right now but for whatever reason the Tao has me surfing other breaks at the moment. I’ll be here soon…It’s All Good …

There is a time for being ahead,

a time for being behind;

a time for being in motion,

a time for being at rest,

a time for being vigorous,

a time for being exhausted;

a time for being safe,

a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,

without trying to control them.

She lets things go their own way,

and resides in the center of the circle.

TTC #29

Learn to sway in the wind or you’ll break. No matter how many times the gales blow, it’s always the same.

Float down the center of the rapids, don’t try to swim against the current. No matter how often the rains come, it’s always the same.

Balance over the abyss but don’t fall in. No matter how hard you’re shaken, it’s always the same.

What’s different about today?

Nothing.

“They definitely do not want us to learn to Surf the Tao, for then we would no longer be victims to their abuse.” - Surfing the Tao: A Revolution of Free Will

My husband, who is a bit older than I am, commented this morning that if someone went to sleep in 1950 and woke up today, they'd think the world had gone frigging insane. I suppose you could say that about any stretch of time in history, but as I pondered his frustration I realized in this case, he really could be correct.

Since most of us haven't been asleep for decades, we generally absorb the changes and news as they come without too much trouble. The paradigm shift happens slowly, so that most people don't really notice it's happening until they look back and remember what used to be. Certainly there are major events that shift the paradigm rapidly and radically, like 9/11, and can be a bit more difficult to adjust to. But just consider news from the past few years – genetically modified foods, millions dying from hunger and poverty while a few elite get even richer, transhumanism, a military that admits testing on its own citizens and is creating new weaponry that threatens the brain wave patterns of entire populations, robot wars, weather modification, nanotechnology and implanted control chips, pharmaceuticals, wars over oil, disappearing children, genocides, economic collapse...the horrors seem to grow by the day and few seem to notice. We flip the channel from the daily body count to tabloid news without blinking. It's not as much that we've grown numb to these things as much as this has simply become our paradigm.

It got me daydreaming about what our 'paradigm' was truly meant to be like, and maybe could have been, if we really did live in conscious rhythm with the harmony or harmonics of the universe – if we really did Surf the Tao, so to speak.

It also made me realize that it's quite possible, in fact in my personal opinion it's quite evident, that our paradigm has been under attack for quite awhile. It's as if we are tired and want to go to sleep, but there's someone constantly poking at us and making noise and stuff. Or perhaps the opposite; we are trying to wake up from a nightmare but someone keeps drugging us. Either way it's very annoying.

I suppose you could argue about the nature of human existence, as many have and continue to do of course, but all I can do is give my opinion as gleaned from my own inner Surfing revelations. Humans are uniquely capable of an intense, conscious and compassionate loving nature. Those out there without this consciousness are either 1) not human or B) devoid of spirit.

The not human thing is particularly difficult for many people. I don't really go there on this blog very much, yet I do touch on it quite a bit in my book. It's radical and still outside our mainstream paradigm; yet I feel we are in the process of conditioning by the Paradigm Police in preparation for this next radical shift (science fiction as entertainment, UFO videos whether real or hoaxed, more and more people 'channeling' one or another type of being, certain 'disclosure projects', etc). In my opinion the evidence is quite strong that are other, non-human, highly evolved, sentient beings involved in our global affairs, directly with our heads of state or business, and/or from extradimensional realms into our own consciousness.

Whether they come from outer space, cloud nine or even the inner earth is irrelevant. What matters is what they are telling us. Because as every good Trekkie know, the #1 Prime Directive is don't interfere with a more primitive civilization. Period. If they are, they're either pushing their own selfish agendas, or claiming that they are attempting to 'save us' from such interference. I am leery of both; I see it much like our own political scene, in which it seems like there are two sides but in reality there is only one puppet master manipulating us into the position he wants. Again, within my own spirit, I have the sense that very few, if any, of 'them', are Surfing the Tao. The real good guys know the truth about our present reality; it is illusory and impermanent anyway. It's not really the job of any enlightened being to tell us directly what to do or how to think, aside from love. They never tell you what to do or where to go. They are the very opposite of the Paradigm Police. They want us to sense and follow the Great Rhythm from within our own hearts. It's like the old saying; give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. That's why those who insinuate themselves upon us for their own gain are the most insidious of all. They are interfering with the very Rhythm of the Tao itself, instead forcing their own agenda-laden paradigm upon a naïve and unwitting population.

As for B) devoid of spirit; well, talk about unwitting. It's pretty obvious most people live today without any spiritual awareness at all, thanks to the Paradigm Police and their swanky, third-dimensional stage set up by our world's elite, who profit from our ignorance and resultant powerlessness. Of course there are many varieties of spirituality out there today and many conscious, loving souls who work hard to stay above water in a material world flooded with distractions and physical stimuli. And yet, for the most part, our world's spiritual paths have long been infiltrated; they are sterile, third-dimensional, close-minded, traditional, political, hierarchical, cultural and habit-based practices that in most cases leave the real spirit generally uninvolved. It leaves that empty place within ourselves open to harassment from other sources. If we don't even realize or believe we have spirits, they are in danger of being usurped for other agendas. Nature abhors a vacuum. That's where the nasty side of human behavior comes from; without conscious love, people are susceptible to cruel, criminal behavior – as well as simple blind acceptance of the status quo. Lack of spiritual awareness leaves one open to interference from the Paradigm Police. It keeps us from two very important realizations: that our world has become completely ridiculous, and that we have the power to do something about it.

Looking back throughout history one sees evidence that there has always been those who attempt to harness and control and mindsets of the people of the time. Most have done this through politics, war, culture, etc – though some have tried to teach us otherwise, i.e. Jesus, Buddha and others. Unfortunately even their messages have been turned upside down by the powers-that-be. Ours is a winding road replete with detours, roadblocks and misleading signs; and yet, if we truly stop and listen to our Higher Selves, we will realize the Way is not Out There, it is Within Us. This truly would be a revolution of free will. If just one person at a time were to wake up and take away the power of the Paradigm Police our world would begin to shift, perhaps upwards to a place we have yet to imagine.

“If powerful men and women could remain centered in the Tao, all things would be in harmony. The world would become a paradise. All people would be at peace, and the law would be written in their hearts.” - Tao Te Ching #32