Near and Far

[kimberlysteele]

When I vacated the commercial space my lesson studio had occupied for 13 years, I had to re-home my two pianos, an upright and a grand.  The grand piano ended up in my parents' living room where it seems quite at home.  The upright went to my little house in Aurora.   My two cats have different attitudes towards the upright.  To Shadow, my black cat, it is just another object to climb and sit upon.  To Ash, my thoughtful gray cat, it is a source of fascination.  One of my piano students, a little girl aged 6, loves seeing the cats when she has her lesson.  During one of her recent lessons, Ash watched and listened from a nearby chair in rapt attention as she played her songs for the week.  When the keys are exposed, Ash takes special care to walk over them and not on them.  I suspect Ash will end up as a keyboardist or at least a musician in one of his future lives.

Once I asked, "What's it like to be a god?" 

I got an answer.  I'm not sure who answered.  It/he/she said: "It's like trying to teach an amoeba to play the piano."

In other words, I think the entity who answered me was trying to sum up how much patience and benevolence it takes to work with our species.  I also believe the entity was implying not all gods have interest in teaching amoebas to play the piano -- of course they don't.  It is human vanity that makes some of us think that human evolution and development is the summum bonum of a god's work.  The gods willing to work with us are very special.  It was our bumbling mistake to (temporarily) forget about them in favor of the false gods of Progress and other demons who told us what we wanted to hear.  I think our species is beginning to rectify that long series of errors though, slowly but surely, one person at a time.

Doctor Strange's Magical Shapes

If you've seen the movie or read the comic Dr. Strange, you know it's about a brilliant surgeon who gets into a car accident, nearly loses the use of his hands, and goes to Tibet in order to find an alternative healer.  He falls in with a weird group of ascetic monks in Kathmandu and learns magic.  Doctor Strange first appeared as a Marvel comic in 1963.  Though he was ostensibly created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, the character has more than a dash of Eliphas Levi and Manly P. Hall.  Dr. Strange and his posse spend a great deal of time reading old books, shaping and controlling their minds, and drawing magical symbols into the air.   

Back in the real, non-comic book world, we have the Sphere of Protection or SoP, one of many revived banishing rituals from Western magic.  The goal of the SoP is to create the non-literal, imaginary version of Dr. Strange's glowing pentacles and portals.  Dr. Strange can actually walk through the dimensional portals he creates to escape from his enemies into a desert or a mountainous taiga.  My landscapes exist in my mind.  Just like Doctor Strange, the better I am at drawing the magical shapes, the stronger my power becomes.  Unlike the good Doctor, I have an edge.  The gods help me with my shapes and they connect with me through the landscapes.  They help me in my daily practice to restore the balance I (along with the rest of humans) have lost.

Astral Gunk

Before I did the SoP, I had an astral gunk problem.  The astral plane is gunky enough right now that I often still have it though I never miss an SoP.  I can tell when it is gunky when I lay down to go to sleep and my mind races with images despite my intention to settle down and go to sleep.  There isn't much of a cure for this condition outside of constant prayer, which is why I sing the Orphic hymns.  When a popular music ear worm is burrowing through my brain in the astral muck, I replace it with one or more of the Orphic hymns for which I have composed music.  In this way I am able to bring gods closer and to drive demons further away.

The trouble with the time before I did the SoP was the closeness of the astral gunk.  Without any protection, the discord and upset of the modern collective astral caked me and insulated my poor, tormented brain from divine influence.  No wonder I saw God as indifferent, far away, and in the worst case scenario, non-existent.  The SoP repels the gunk like a daily shower repels body odor.  Prayer does this as well.  In the old days, the Catholic mass served the purpose for large masses of people.  These days, not so much.  

Demons Desire Dissolution

Demons are in their Golden Age right now.  Forget the horror movies that fixate on Satan being born a la Rosemary's Baby or Damien: that part of Revelations has already occurred.  Look at the broken families, the rioters with pink and purple hair and face tattoos labeling themselves as peaceful protestors, and the lies coming out of every pretty talking head on an airport TV screen.  This is Hell and we're soaking in it.  The Antichrist isn't just born, he's come of age, found a mate, and he's had his own pile of kids.  He'll become a grandpa soon, if current trends are any indication.

As a vegan I had multiple opportunities to join a group of violent Marxists called Direct Action Everywhere or DXE.  DXE was the group known for its PeTA-like antics of sending groups of people into restaurants and grocery stores to shame them for eating meat.  Unsurprisingly, DXE ate itself within a few years of its creation when it became apparent that nearly all of its founders and higher ups were grifters and sexual predators.  That's the problem with using shame as a weapon -- if you have a great deal to be ashamed of, it will come back to bite you.  DXE's approach was one of dissolution.  Though DXE stood for direct action, its actions were always fixated on dismantling the "evil" work of others instead of building up the powers of good.  If they were being truthful, they would have called it Dismantle Times Everything.  Demons want to dismantle things.  When Antifa or some random feminist agitator speaks of dismantling the Patriarchy, what they are actually talking about is the urge of demons to smash the good works of others into smithereens.  Clogged with astral gunk, the unwitting tools of demons become saturated with poison until their own families and friends are dismantled.  Religious practices designed to send the gunk away have become poisoned as the gunk itself, for instance a church service I once attended with an Erma Bombeck styled comedian who sought to convert Christians but was a thinly-veiled recruiter for the Prosperity Gospel.  In my opinion, Joel Osteen's Prosperity Gospel and its McChurch ilk is straight up Satanic, which is why I'll have nothing to do with it.

The funny thing about those who claim to fight demons and the demonic is how ass-backwards their approach is.  If I want to clear a clog from my drain, I don't attempt to force it out by clogging the sewer with more hair and other crap.  Any materialist approach to unclogging the astral is inherently doomed, which is why donating money to Joel Osteen never helped anyone get to heaven.  Antifa's antics create more miasma than they dissipate.  Smashing the windows of someone's store only helps the demons driving you to hurt others and eventually kill yourself and your family, especially if your motivation to smash the store's windows was materialistic, such as wanting the expensive shoes inside.

Hexing, cursing, and rioting only give the other side the appearance of being more virtuous.  That's why I don't do it.  I am very good at hexing and cursing as I have often explained.  I have dark, dark thoughts that are the product of my wacky past lives and my current quirks -- I just don't act on them.  I know a thing or two about it.  I don't do it though, because I'd rather not backslide into astral gunk.  I've already been there and it sucks; no thanks.  I no longer allow myself to become like the evil I want to dismantle.  I do want to dismantle tyranny, for sure, I've just had an epiphany that made me realize I was going about it wrong back when I was full of astral gunk.   The first step to get out of the hole is to stop digging.  This amoeba, with copious help, will learn to play the piano... eventually.