After the Authors

I had a dream last night that I was a character in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.  Those who've read know it's partially a story about the relationship between an author and his characters.  My dream placed me at the end of the book, where I had to say goodbye to King as he left the world of the books and returned to Maine.  I knew that, despite any attempts I might make, my narrative was complete, and my story was done.

At some point, the authors of your life will leave you behind.  Or you will leave them behind.  Some difference, no difference.  It could be a girlfriend or an organization or a practice or anything.  She will stop taking your calls or they will inform you that you services are no longer needed or you will no longer be able to do the asana.  It is inevitable.  Entropy comes for everyone.

And when you wake up from the nightmare, you realize that you have no author, or that everything is your author.  Some difference, no difference.  The story keeps going, and what you think is an ending is just a really sad part of the book.

Or a really happy one.  Maybe if enough of your authors disappear, you can stop living narratives and start living reality.

The Fifth Element

"Spirit?  Oh well, it's dazzlingly obvious then.  The spirit's role's always unpredictable, you know that.  It exists to galvanize and revitalize the elements around it.  Here's a boy whose hatred of authority is such that he even rebels against us.  I think he's here to test you to your limits, Gideon, that's what I think.  He's here to shake you to the core."  Grant Morrison, The Invisibles

If You Were There, You Are There Now

I brought a case of the blues back with me from vacation.  Amy Schneider's class tonight helped a great deal.  I wasn't at my best, but I made the conscious effort to not let the blues stop me but to integrate the blues into my practice.  I worked with the blues, rather than against it.  I decided to be softer and more fluid.  It felt great.

Still, in savasana, the blues planted doubts in my head.  The blues said that I'd never reach the states of awareness that I wanted to reach, or even make it back to the states of mind where I felt I was making real progress in the past.

But, see, the blues fucked up when they mentioned the past, because I know enough about theoretical physics to be dangerous.  Theoretical physics sees time as a dimension like space, which opens the door for time travel and other, more interesting ideas.  Grant Morrison introduced me to one of my favorites, which is, if we were all fifth dimensional entities that could look down on the four dimensions humans perceive, we could theoretically point to different areas in time, and we'd see that all moments in time are actually part of the same thing and could really be said to be happening at once.

So, if that's the case, every moment in my life is happening right now.  The time years ago in Florida where the universe manifested itself to me as interlocking golden light that makes up everything is happening right now.  The time in savasana where I realized that God is real is happening right now.  There's no beginning or ending to anything, which means that if I have ever had a transcendent, spiritual moment in which I glimpsed higher existence, I can have it right now, if I just open myself to it.

And since we're all one thing anyway, if I've had such moments, you can too.

Needless to say, savasana got really, really trippy after that.  And really, really good.

Meditation Overload

I am in the midst of an identity crisis that cuts to the core of who and what I want to be.

Do I want an end to suffering?

Do I want to awaken?

Or do I want to transcend the limits of human perception and trip the light fantastic?

The first wonderful experience I had in meditation came about two years ago, thanks to Grant Morrison and his wonderful little book called The Invisibles.  Morrison sold me on the idea that there was a hidden world just outside of the reach of the every day that humans had and could access, if they'd just dive far enough into the weird and wild, where all the good stuff resides.  The fan website Barbelith led me to Condensed Chaos, which is as good an introduction into the principals of magic as I can imagine.

One of the first things an aspiring magician needs to learn is how to achieve the gnostic state.  Basically, you close your eyes or look into a mirror or a bowl of water and just...let you mind go, wander, play.  Don't forbid yourself from seeing anything, and you might see everything.  When I stopped worrying about whether what I was seeing was real, I could see a lot more cool stuff, a lot more meaningful stuff.  I saw myself as Gandalf retreating to my castle of ice.  I met my spirit animal, the grey wolf.  I journeyed deep into the heart of death and found complete peace there.  I learned so much about myself, and I felt I was moving forward.

Books got me on the gnostic path, so it's fitting that a book should have knocked me from it.  Magic had shown me glimpses of the whole world, but I didn't want a piece of the world.  I wanted the whole thing, and Buddhism Plain & Simple seemed to offer that.  All one had to do was let go of everything superfluous and just...wake up.  Awaken to ultimate reality.  Right now, because there is only now.  The key wasn't to let your mind wander but to stay present in the moment.  If one could understand right now completely, without hope or fear of anything else, one might actually wake up, and then one really could see everything.  As I learned just a little bit about Tibetan Buddhism, I saw a lot of stuff floating around like bodhisattavas that matched some of what I saw in gnosis, which only furthered my belief that Buddhism was big enough to encompass magic and a lot of other stuff.  I felt I was moving forward.

With the beginning of yoga teacher training, I've encountered a third organizing principle for meditation.  Yogic meditation seems to want to calm the fluctuations of the mind, not for the sake of awakening, but just because.  Because it will make you better, fuller, more content.  I confess I've thought the least about this type of meditation and that it appeals to me the least.

Frankly, all that the yogic ideas behind meditation have done is bring to a head a situation that had been developing for quite some time, which is that I've officially hit meditation overload.  Too many chefs have spoiled the broth.  I'm confused.  I don't know whether to seek calm or enlightenment or visions from another dimension of reality.  Too many ideas are competing for the time I spend in lotus.  I don't feel like I'm moving forward.

In the long run, I'm not too concerned about where I am.  I'm not going to stop meditating, and I recognize that even the best journeys have times spent at pit stops, lost, or stuck in a ditch.  I believe Steve Hagen when he says that all we need to do is show up and meditate each day, and the practice will teach us everything we need to know.  Ultimately, I think all of these paths have one final destination, anyway.  The Buddha and the great magicians and yogis of history are all chilling at the top of the same mountain together, calmly sipping mushroom tea and tripping off the world in all its glory.

I get all that.

But that doesn't mean I'm not frustrated now.

Everything and Nothing That You Were

Yesterday, as part of its year in review, the New York Times ran a memoriam for Beastie Boy Adam Yauch that didn't sit well with me. Specifically, it maintained that MCA was never down with the Licensed To Ill-era frivolity:

"“Fight for Your Right” created expectations; the Beasties met those expectations by touring with cage dancers and a giant inflatable penis and hosing one another down with Budweiser onstage. But they weren’t those guys, not really....Even in “Licensed to Ill”-era interviews, you can see the Beasties already growing weary of playing the roles they’d assigned themselves."

This, frankly, is a load of shit. Yauch himself, in a quote the author includes, noted that he was more than willing to play along with the shenanigans: “I went and got drunk and made some stupid music.”

I have a problem with any attempt to scrub a person's record after they die. To do it after a Buddhist dies seems especially disrespectful and clueless.

Look, MCA was an asshole. He was a guy who gleefully made a lot of money putting women in cages on a stage.

And then he changed.

When we pretend, "oh, he was always this saintly person, they didn't REALLY mean all the bad shit they did," all we do is miss the fundamental lesson: Adam Yauch was an asshole. In my life, I have certainly been an asshole. If you haven’t been an asshole, you’ve been something else that you’re not proud of.

You know who else was things he wasn’t proud of? The Buddha. I prefer not to get into the Buddha’s previous lives stuff, but even if you accept that he was the end result of a lot of lives dedicated towards awakening, at the beginning of that chain of lives, the Buddha was not special. He was not a saint. He was as far from perfect as the rest of us. At some point in his chain of lives, the Buddha was an average guy.

And then he changed.

He got better. He found calm, and he knew that if he, vile sinner though he might be, could find enlightenment, anyone can.

When we make people we admire into saints, we rob them of their humanity, and we lose the most critical message of their lives, which is that anyone can be a hero. Anyone can wake up. It doesn’t take someone special. It doesn’t take a saint. It takes you, and you can do it right now. No matter what you or I have done, an end of our suffering is available to us. It is our birthright, it is our destiny, and we can have it right now, in this moment.

Happy New Years.

What We Owe the Gay Community

On Sunday, I had a great exchange with friend and former PASC staff member Saige Martin. He indicated that he would never attend a Pride parade so long as they continued to be the gaudy, flashy, decadent events they often are. In his view, such events provided fodder for the Right's efforts to continue the systematic oppression of the LGBT community. Saige would like to see Pride parades that show community members as normal people wearing normal clothes and acting in ways that the broader society would consider socially acceptable. In Saige's eyes, such parades would go a long way to erasing negative stereotypes and help the efforts of activists like himself to ensure full equal treatment for people of all sexual orientations.

(I've tried to summarize Saige's argument as best I can. Saige, if you read this, please feel free to clarify anything I got wrong.)

In case you couldn't tell from my entry on the Sexcamaids, I feel a lot more positive towards Pride. As pessimistic as I can be on a lot of issues, I am very optimistic that Western society is moving towards personal liberty, at least on social issues. Each year, more and more people seem willing to accept other people's lifestyles, so long as they do not harm someone else. We've clearly got a long way to go, but relative to where we were even 20 years ago, we're moving in the right direction.

And society owes a lot of this progress to the LGBT community. I am no expert on the history of personal expression in the Twentieth Century, but here's how I see it: after the backlash against the social movements of the 1960s, most groups stopped pushing the envelope and started to work for more incremental solutions, solutions that the mainstream society could accept. Word to them. That's one, completely legitimate way to achieve social change. Certainly, parts of the LGBT community adopted that strategy.

But other parts of the LGBT community seemed unwilling to compromise. Given even the tiniest opening as a result of the upheaval in the 1960s, certain people decided that they could not nor would not go back to the way things were and that they needed to allow their personality to flower in full. I see Pride as an outgrowth of that. The average gay man couldn't strut and preen in public like, oh, Elton John or Liberace...except at selected events one or two times a year, where, if only for a moment, they could express themselves. Hell, they could even go OVERBOARD in expressing themselves. In other words, while the rest of society moved away from expression at all costs, parts of the LGBT community embraced it.

We know how I feel about outlandish public displays of self-expression. But heterosexuals like myself have the privilege of being able to be as flamboyant as we want in public while still enjoying all the rights that come as part of what is deemed as normal and avoiding the stigma attached to being in the out group (no pun intended, but it's pretty good, isn't it?). I can't even imagine the courage it took just to put on a damn costume and dance in the streets during the 1980s and AIDS and all that horseshit.

So, to the LGBT community: thank you. Thank you for pushing the envelope. I know you don't necessarily do it for the broader society, but the broader society needs what you do. It needs to regard gender roles as more fluid. It needs to see that sexuality can be public without being vulgar. It needs so many of the things that it wouldn't acknowledge without you.

PS: I am sure everyone can tell, but I am painfully inexperienced at writing and thinking about issues of sexuality. In referring to the LGBT community, I've tried to use the terms I thought were most accurate or complimentary, but I freely admit I may have used the wrong words at places. Please feel free to correct me so I can get it right next time.

Sex and Mermaids

What's it like to be down with the Sexcamaids?

You may have seen stories or, hopefully, pictures from Coney Island's 30th Annual Mermaid Parade, held this past Saturday.  Basically, the Mermaid Parade is a Pride for everyone, a chance for any and all to let their freak flag fly in the middle of Brooklyn in front of half a million people.

In my incredibly biased opinion, no group better represents what the Mermaid Parade is and should be all about than the lovely Sexcamaids, a dance troupe that calls themselves 'the sirens of the sex world."  Saturday, they were the ladies wearing just enough clothes, rocking the best, most coordinated moves, pushing the loudest, rudest speaker stack, and otherwise behaving like those untouchable bad girls you were scared to talk to in high school.

(Please keep in mind that a heterosexual man wrote the preceding paragraph and that your experience with the Sexcamaids may vary.  For example, every little girl saw the coolest set of big sisters to ever walk the Earth.  If you want to see happy, you should see an 6 year old girl who sees the Sexcamaids and realizes that, despite whatever her parents have told her, she can play dress up for the rest of her life.)

I had the opportunity to join the 2012 version of Maids' support group, the (ahem) Sea Men. The Sea Men are the Alfred to the Maids' Batman. We do the logistical stuff that kept them dancing and looking good. We push along the sound system that plays their music. We drag along the coolers and give them the water that keeps them from passing out. We deal with the overzealous paparazzi. As befitting any superhero support team, the Sea Men are in costume, which is how I found myself pulling a cooler and dancing down the streets of Coney Island wearing nothing but a sailor's hat and a pair of white rhinestone-encrusted booty shorts.

It was one of the best experiences of my life.  Even as a sidekick, I felt and still feel like an honest-to-God superhero.

I had a bit of a "come to Jesus" moment Saturday.  Now I understand, to a far greater extent, Pride and Goth and Lady Gaga and S&M and so many other things.  Such diverse phenomenon usually get lumped under the banner of sexuality, but after Saturday, I'm convinced that all of these things are about so much more than sex.  They're about expression and freedom and experimentation and role play and performance and power and giving it up and community and billion other things for which either I can't find the word or the word doesn't exist.  We lump so many things under the banner of sexuality because, like sex, we're profoundly scared of many of these things, because they're SO powerful.  We worry that if we let them out even a little, they threaten to flood us and knock away all they fragile little bridges we've built that we think makes us into functional adults who don't have to sleep in cardboard boxes.

I'm not a stranger to self expression or risk taking or any of this stuff, but being a Sea Man hit me in a way I hadn't experienced before.  My enduring memory of the 2012 Mermaid Parade will be that I played with the boundaries of who I was in a way that I hadn't done before, and I had 500,000 people in the crowd who were THRILLED that I was doing so.  When you take a risk and show some side of you that you've rarely shown before in front of that many people, and they show you so much love in return, it can make you feel like every chance you've ever taken to be a better, more complete, more free person was completely worth it, and it makes you want to do it again and again.

Even if you can't see yourself down with the short shorts and pasties crowd, the Mermaid Parade and the Sexcamaids have a lesson for you, and it's really probably the only lesson that matters.  You know that thing you want to try, but you're scared?  You're worried you'll get fired, or your spouse will judge you, or you're just too old/Christian/cool/whatever?  Do it.  Find a safe space and supportive, decent, caring people who will provide you a healthy environment to try something you've never tried or even though of, and let it rip.  There's nothing to lose and everything, everything, everything to gain.

Thank you for letting me tag along, Sexcamaids.  If you'll have me back, I'll haul, push, water, or whatever you need in 2013.

Postscript: Don't get me wrong. It's not not about sex either. Ladies, I am in love with each and every one of you, and so is the rest of New York. You know it, and you wouldn't have it any other way.

The Road Map to Happiness

Elephant Journal has a great article in which Julian Walker discusses the meaning of asana, or the physical practice of yoga.  I can't recommend it enough.

I posted it on Mike Lyons' FB wall.  Like any good yoga teacher, he challenged me, probably without even meaning to.  Specifically, he wondered about my reaction to the comments that maintained that the physical practice of yoga is deeply rooted in ancient Indian tradition, a point with which Walker disagrees.  I reacted on his wall, and I'd like to expand upon what I wrote here.

I tend to think of what happens at places like the Greatest Yoga Studio Ever as the starting point on a treasure map.  It's not the starting point for the quest, of course.  Something got the map into your hands, and nothing has a clean beginning or ending anyway.  But when you go to enough modern US physical yoga class, you start to realize that there is something to this "yoga" thing.  On the most mundane level, your body should feel a whole lot better, but a lot of people can't escape the feeling that yoga offers more than "just" relief from physical pain.

And what happens from there is entirely up to you and your desire to follow the map in pursuit of the treasure.  The map can be hard to follow, but it's all right there.  The physical practice can make you want to meditate, pursue a spiritual teacher, give up meat, live a more compassionate life, and so on and so forth.  I actually do believe that once one comes to view yoga as central to his or her identity, one has taken the first step on a path that can lead to nirvana.

There are some pretty sizable caveats, however.

1. No two people get the exact map or the exact same final destination.
2. Point number 1 means a lot of people are going to make a lot of choices you don't understand.
3. Capitalism has also become pretty damn good at exploiting point number 1 to sell you things that they say should be on your map but probably don't need to be and even shouldn't be.
4. As a consequence of #3, you're going to find yourself struggling with some very unyogic emotions, thoughts, etc. about much of what passes for yoga.
5. Yoga's certainly not the only way to get to your goal.  Buddha would say you're at your final destination right now, and your task is just to get out of your own way.  If that sounds good to you, maybe you should read Buddhism: Plain and Simple rather than going to an asana class.  Maybe you should go for a run.  Maybe you should work on your motorcycle.
6. Why do you need a goal, anyway?

I guess I think the ultimate value of asana is that it's something you do every day for its own sake.  I've come to believe that if you do anything at all long enough and consistently enough, you will do that thing through something like the full range of things we can experience.  You'll rejoice and struggle and, if you're paying attention, learn how to rejoice in the struggle.

The other great thing that asana can give you is its failure.  I will never do every possible pose, and someone will always do better and more poses than me.  Most importantly, consistent asana practice has not and will not solve all my problems.  The great gift here is that realization and the question that accompanies it: "Well, fuck.  Now what?"

That's the most important question there is.

If ashtanga or universal principles of alignment or some other physical practice seem to be moving you forward on your map, ignore everything I just said and keep practicing.  For all I know, I may end up right next to you.  I reserve the right to change my opinion and reject any and all of this in the future.  After all, I have no idea where I am on my map, other than a vague notion that I am moving in the right direction.

The One Path

So I've decided that Buddhism is not for me, at least for now.

I fully accept what I believe to be the Hindu notion that many ways exist to reach heaven, nirvana, the tenth level, Barbelith, whatever you want to call it.  Hermann Hesse said that people who reach such heights will often say things that seem to directly conflict with the teachings of other enlightened ones, but that's only because teachings are words are concepts that cannot possibly express the whole of Truth. It's all one thing.  I believe that with all my heart.

But while the Truth might be singular, I am a flawed finite vessel.  As I've read different versions of the One Truth, I've often found myself more and more confused.  Should I be going through my day with the intention to spread joy, equanimity, compassion, and kindness, or should I strive to be unattached?  What about when I meditate?  Even though that I'm sure an enlightened being knows beyond all doubt that there is no difference between the approaches, I do not.

I recently had a conversation about the necessity of giving one's self over to a teacher.  At the time, I thought we were talking about the need for discipline and the subsuming of one's ego, but now I'm pretty sure that limits are part of that equation.  If all paths lead to the top of the mountain, the only mistake one can make is trying to take multiple paths at once, because then you are always returning to the beginning of the journey.  I'm not claiming this approach is correct for anyone other than me, and I reserve the right to change my approach when the situation dictates.  The Buddha's definitely right that if you hold fast to a fixed doctrine, you will see it fail you eventually.

But for me, now, I need to take one path and look forward to the top of the mountain, where I'll meet people who say completely different things that all mean the same.

A Valentine for You

Having done a lot of gratitude posts lately, I was a little hesitant to go forward with the following concept for Valentine's Day.  I'm also conscious of not blowing up anyone's spot.  I guess it's ok to put people's names in these blog entries, but I do want to respect the privacy of everyone, especially the people for which I am most grateful.

But then I thought again.  The world needs nothing so much as it needs joy, equanimity, compassion, and kindness.  In that spirit, Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, but especially to the following people.  I'm keeping names out of it, but I'll be as specific as I can so you know when you're getting shouted out.

The Anthem.  Get Your Damn Hands Up

• To my family, for everything ever but especially for their support over the last year.
• To my professional colleagues who have stood by me through the last year.  I learned that the upper boundary of the best behavior from caring, dedicated professionals is much higher than I had thought.
• To my friends  who have been with me from the jump.  I could not have made it through without you.
• To my friends who I just connected with over the past year.  You've made life in North Carolina richer and more fun than I thought possible.
• To everyone who has contributed to my yoga practice ever.
• To all the students I have had the pleasure of teaching.
• To the airplanes and internet providers that keep me close with all of the above.
• To the sun, the moon, the sky, the earth, and the spirit.
• To Lindsey Andrews, whose former FB profile pick I've been looking for an excuse to steal for months.  Words to live by.

11 Things For Which I'm Grateful

1) The grammatical constructions "for which," "to which," and so on.  They make me feel smart.

2) Pitchers and catchers in eight days.

3) Lavoy Allen balling out.  If they really wanna do this thing, the Sixers need toughness and physical play.  Lavoy isn't enough, but he's been a pleasant surprise.  He battles his man on defense on every position, he rebounds, he hustles, and he makes open jumpers.

4) Recently, the Alliance for Student Activites, an organization dedicated to the promotion of the value of student activities for middle school and high school students, launched its "When X=Student Activities" campaign.  This presentation and its accompanying parts are a grassroots effort that will change the public education debate in this country, and I am proud to be a part of this effort.  Please click on the link above and "like" us.

5) The opportunity to work with Bob Tryanski on #4

6) "Postcards from Hell" by The Wood Brothers

7) The staff of the PASC Grove City Gold Workshop

8) David Uzumeri says that Frank Quitely is almost done with his issue of Grant Morrison's Multiversity, which may come out this summer.

9) A semester of leave, which allowed me to submit on Sunday the best article manuscript I have ever written and researched.

10) "This too shall pass, so raise your glass to change and chance.
And freedom is the only law.
Shall we dance?"

11) New opportunities

Early Bonus Scotchtime Manichean Madness

Note: I cheated a little and wrote this last night, while drinking scotch to numb the damage my idiot dentist wrought.  Warning given.

I believe Lovecraft.

Who I haven't even read yet.

But mean to.

(Once I found out that one-sentence paragraphs annoyed Takao, I dedicated my life to them.)

Anyway, I believe H.P. Lovecraft.  The universe is big and huge and scary and doesn't care about us even a little.  We are scared and alone and can't possibly comprehend the forces that are not aligned against us, but are completely indifferent towards us.

And yet.

And yet.


I believe Morrison.

As a species, we are destined to evolve and transcend.  We are all united, and united we will breach the walls of the possible, and it will be glorious beyond any words, and it is already happening.

You are a light.

Don't waste it.

Sci-Fi Jesus

I came up with one of my greatest ideas ever as I was falling asleep last night, and I am giving it to the evangelical Christian community free of charge:

Sci-Fi Jesus.

The concept: The Bible establishes Jesus has some pretty sweet powers.  He can turn water into wine.  Feeding the multitudes and alladat.

But, see, those are the powers we mere mortals can perceive.

You know that Jesus was on some behind-the-scenes isht.  

We already know that Jesus forbade physical violence but waged metaphysical war on the ideas of violence, oppression, sin, and the like.  So what if someone made a movie that showed that metaphysical warfare in terms we could understand?  You're telling me you wouldn't watch Jesus in a superhero movie where he brings the ruckus to the literal manifestation of evil using powers across all 11 dimensions?  That Jesus punching out Evil and saving the day with a punch that he conceals by delivering it through a pocket dimension wouldn't make everyone you know go see that movie 15 times?

And for the sequel, imagine that the Hadron is actually an evil secular humanist plot to rip apart the universe.  But, of course, they can't get that sh!t past Jesus.  From his physical existence 2000 years ago Jesus perceives the threat, reaches across time and space, and undoes the work of the Hadron Collider at every instant.  Hadron Collider always rips apart the universe, but Jesus simultaneously rebuilds it.  And he lets the evil scientists KNOW that they are constantly succeeding but failing, because that's all part of some OTHER metawar that we'll tell you about in the third film.

You'd go see that movie.

To my faithful Christians out there: don't be mad.  One, I agree that we have to do this right.  That means any filmmaker needs to demonstrate strong Biblical knowledge, and Michael Bay is not allowed within a thousand miles of the set.  Two, I'm pretty sure Jesus is down with this plan.  We know that Jesus is beyond our understanding.  We know that, in order for us to better understand some part of His infinite wisdom, He often spoke in parables.

Well, these would be parables.

Parables about KICKING A$$.

And all of a sudden, Jesus would be the coolest kid on the block again.  Batman would have nothing on Sci-Fi Jesus.  Church attendance would swell, allowing you to talk to the people about...whatever it is one talks about in church.

Thank you Sci-Fi Jesus!!

Yoga, Einstein, and Grant Morrison Walk Into a Bar

My favorite reading on my syllabus for my course on Research Methods comes George Lackoff's The Political Mind.  Lackoff summarizes the knowledge science has gained about how the brain works.  The main takeaway point is that we think in terms of concepts and narratives.  Its application to politics is, none of us believe what we believe politically because we objectively weighed the facts and came to the most logical decision.  Our brain doesn't work nearly so neatly.  We believe what we believe because our brains seek to fit new information into a relatively narrow set of cognitive frames.

As fascinating as the narrow application of that theory is, its broader meaning is even more mind blowing.  None of us see the world as it is.  We perceive only the segment of the world that our brain allows, and our brains are such a murky, weird, not-rational-but-biological place that we shouldn't even be all that sure that what we can perceive represents something true or immutable.

If nature isn't your thing, let's talk about nurture.  By the time most of us were 10, we had probably learned that no two snowflakes are exactly alike.  If that's the case, why do we call all the white stuff that falls from the sky snow?  Probably because we lack either the perception or the words to delineate the infinite different varieties of snowflakes that exist.  Some linguist can give the citation, but I am sure that our perception is greatly limited to those things/categories/concepts for which we have adequate language to express them.

Thanks to yoga and comic books, I have spent a lot of time thinking about magic, meditation, religion, theoretical physics, and the psychedelic movement.  At this point in time, I think they're all reaching for the same thing.  They are reaching for that moment where we can transcend our normal perceptual and linguistic limitations and more accurately perceive the nature of reality.

If you don't understand anything I just wrote, don't feel bad, because I don't either.  This is the biggest idea with which I have ever struggled, and I lack accurate words to describe it (because, hey, the idea is that words can't express).  But this idea is also one of the most important things I have ever found.  If any one thing has inspired me to start this blog, it is the opportunity to talk about this idea--to try to get a better handle on what it is, and to try to open the way to others to see it, as others opened and continue to open the door for me.

And because the Idea is infinite, and my supply of words only slightly less so, you can expect numerous fumbling attempts to explore it over the next 359 days.

PS: Please note that I said that I had THOUGHT about the psychedelic movement.  For the record, I have never tried a single hallucinogenic drug, and you can polygraph me any time you'd like about that claim.