INSANE IS THE NEW NORMAL: POST THIRTY-EIGHT

Fiesta Flowers, Wind Poppies, Chinese Purple Houses 
near Burned Trees

AFTER THE ROUGH FIRE

     The Rough Fire, which left nothing but charred earth and vegetation throughout a large region of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, halted on the east side of the narrow road above the North Fork of the Kings River. When I traveled to the Kings River a few days after fire crews had extinguished the inferno, the hillsides were so blackened that I couldn’t help but believe that fire had blotted out the entire region forever. The blaze had reduced the best part of my childhood to ashes: I had spent many happy hours by the river, fishing with my family, but that day much of the ecosystem of my memory was entirely blacked out. As I stepped out of my car to search for any sign of life, I felt like I was going to vomit due to the smoke that still hung in the air, so, discouraged, I drove home. I returned in spring, months later, and discovered that most of the oaks had miraculously survived, the hillsides glowing with wildflowers. Fire had regenerated the region, the earth bearing the most stunning profusion of flowers that I have ever witnessed there.

Ithuriel's Spears and Lupine after the Rough Fire

     When I began meditating in my early forties, I could see in my mind’s eye that Illness and betrayal and ruination over the years had blackened my aura, but I eventually released the negative energies in a process of mental purification, and a miracle occurred: I became a new man who recognized light in all things. My creativity blossomed through music and art and writing. I began to experience a spiritual dimension that I had never believed in before. My circumscribed personality vanished, and I identified more through my imagination with the soul of the earth and its countless manifestations. And now I know this in my core: Regeneration is possible on all levels of being—though it may be the hardest process a person ever experiences because it entails the death of an old self and the birth of a new one. Regeneration recurs in the evolution of the soul, allowing the soul to spiral higher and wider: When it occurs again, if my past is any indication, I will become even larger, more sympathetic, more imaginative, more creative than I was before. I will be even more in tune with the energies of the cosmos.

Lupine and Poppies after the Fire

     I had a dream recently in which I had climbed a flight of stairs, and when I reached the top, I turned around and encountered a double of myself directly behind me, dressed in black clothes with a dark blue sheen. I felt so terrified that I whipped around and pushed my double over the railing. When I peeked over the side, I didn’t see my double at the bottom, but I heard groaning and cries for help and realized that the sounds were coming out of my own mouth as I stood at the top of the stairs. Nobody came to help me, perhaps because my double below was invisible, and my cries became fainter and fainter. Just as I recognized that I was dying, I woke up. As I contemplated the dream, I understood that I had pushed my etheric double over the edge because I was too afraid to deal with the black energies that had accumulated in my aura from my disease and related personal woes. I couldn’t see my etheric double on the floor below because it had again become invisible to me: I had focused so much on climbing higher that I had ignored the health of my etheric body. It had only showed itself to me in the dream as a warning about the extent of my disease, but I was in so much denial that I panicked and pushed it away, which in the dream resulted in the destruction of my physical body as well, for the etheric body is the foundation of the physical body.

Wind Poppies after the Fire

     Recently I had become so busy with work and so fatigued by my disease that I had ignored my spiritual practices. I still performed the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram at night before retiring, but I was no longer meditating or performing my Tarot Pentagram Spread rituals; instead, I was taking a two hour nap every afternoon after work. As my dream suggested, I had allowed negative energies to swamp my etheric body, and I was suffering the consequences: I was again experiencing mild Afib without any discernable cause. I was feeling pain in my esophagus from inflammation, which worried me because inflammation from gluten can lead to gastrointestinal cancers of the esophagus and the small intestine. Inflammation caused by gluten also damages the villi, the small, finger-like extensions that line the small intestine. The villi flatten out and no longer effectively absorb nutrients. Eventually, other health problems associated with inflammation and poor nutrient absorption include iron and vitamin deficiencies, low bone mineral density, skin rashes, defects in the enamel of the teeth, chronic fatigue, joint pain, and depression, among other things. Unfortunately for me, the most miniscule amount of gluten in my system causes inflammation and makes my heart go haywire. I cannot allow any gluten in my diet whatsoever, but removing it entirely is damn near impossible because gluten is so pervasive, and I can’t examine each bit of food under a microscope.

Bird's Eye Gilia, Lupine, and Poppies after the Fire

     This summer I have begun to perform the Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram every day again for the purpose of invoking elemental energies to heal my etheric body. During the climax of the first ritual, I saw, in my mind’s eye, my etheric double behind me again, this time without the black clothes. As a body of light, it joined with my physical body. The next day I felt better, and the Afib had all but disappeared. During the next ritual, I had a clear vision of myself with a golden crown on my head and a golden, equal-armed cross over my heart. I was sitting in front of a table with a brilliant white tablecloth, on which rested a golden plate and chalice, a full moon floating above the tablecloth as if the edge of the table were the horizon. The vision was so powerful that I decided during the ritual that my mission is to show humanity the magnificence, harmony and abundance within each soul, but I soon had second thoughts after the ritual due to the sheer magnitude of the undertaking.

     The next day during the ritual, I invoked the Archangels of the Elements again and asked them to regenerate my etheric body with their elemental powers. I also asked what sacrifice I needed to make in order to serve them for the highest good. Again, I

Indian Pinks after Fire

envisioned the golden crown and equal-armed cross, the golden plate and chalice on the white tablecloth, with the full moon floating just above the edge of the table, but I also envisioned above me a brilliant white sun with a black Calvary Cross in its center. The Calvary Cross, on one level, is an unfolded cube of space and time, a symbol of sacrifice and regeneration, of crucifixion and redemption, of the death of the lower personality and the birth of the higher self. In my vision, the moon, always waxing and waning, represents the soul on which the Sun of Tiphareth, the Christ center, shines. During the ritual, in that deep state of meditation, my personality vanished: I was Everyman and Everywoman—in front of me a banquet of abundance, on my head a crown representing magnificence and in my heart the equal-armed cross of harmony.

     The next day during my ritual, I had the same vision of the golden symbols, the white tablecloth, the moon, and the sun with the black Calvary Cross. I asked Archangel Michael to reveal my sacrifice, and the black cross suddenly fell from the sun into my body. I intuited that I must take the blackness from people who had harmed me, or from those whom I had harmed, their negative energy in the form of a black cross entering my heart chakra. I envisioned a particularly problematic individual from my past and took the black cross containing all the negativity he felt for me into my heart, and then after a while I let it fall out of my aura, down into the magma below the earth, where it burned up. Then I intuited that I should fill that person with light. When I did so, suddenly a golden crown appeared on his head, a golden equal-armed cross over his heart, a golden plate and chalice on a white tablecloth before him. Then I imagined pink energy filling his aura, pink being the color on the Tree of Life corresponding to the highest spiritual love.  Then I envisioned another prickly individual, and I performed the same cleansing ritual in my mind. I recognized an important facet of regeneration: In order to cleanse myself completely, I needed to cleanse each person who harbored negativity for me as well, taking his or her blackness into myself as a sacrifice and then releasing it, an act that freed us both and revealed the magnificence, harmony and abundance in the human soul.

Wind Poppies, Chinese Purple Houses, Tarweed after Fire

     This vision occurred on an archetypal level, a level deeper than the personality, in the state of being represented on the Tree of Life as Yesod, the Foundation. Just above Malkuth, the physical universe, on the Tree of Life, Yesod is the Sephira of etheric energy and The Holy Ghost. During meditation, if you can go deeper than the personality and its personal subconscious content, you can encounter transpersonal symbols that reveal spiritual principle. These symbols can swing you above Yesod across a gulf to the Sephira of the Sun known as Tiphareth (Beauty), a sphere of harmony and healing and spiritual inebriation. On the Tree of Life, one symbol representing Tiphareth is a sun with a black Calvary Cross in the center. The Calvary Cross on one level represents the sacrifices needed to establish and maintain harmony within the self and the community and the world, but it also symbolizes death and regeneration, the death of the personality and the birth of the higher self. One spiritual experience assigned to Tiphareth is The Vision of Harmony, where you recognize that you are a thread in a vast tapestry of interwoven energy that includes all of life, including the earth and plants and animals and other people. The other spiritual experience assigned to Tiphareth is The Mysteries of Sacrifice, in which you recognize what is necessary to maintain harmony and regenerate the soul.

Lupine and Poppies after Fire

     I have experienced intense hatred for many people over the years, which, I realize now, has become a deeply ingrained spiritual problem responsible for at least some of the blackness in my aura. I could only become whole if I changed my hatred into love, recognizing that those people are magnificent spiritual beings who struggle in difficult situations, just like me. Unless they are psychic, of course, they will never realize that I forgave them and saw them as they are. However, it became clear to me that forgiveness on an archetypal level is a way beyond the negativity that plagues so many of our relationships. When I experienced it, I felt whole again as a spiritual being. I felt a sense of spiritual regeneration even though I remain physically frail, and I believed that they subconsciously felt less negativity and more light, since on the archetypal level we are all connected.