On the Importance of Playing in the Street

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, 

not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, 

but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."

—Tom Robbins

Ten trips 'round the Sun since the fall of the twins. Why did they fall? Why fall?

We're in the twilight of Strange September now... the genesis of the grand, cyclic fall, the strange ninth month named for seven. The Sun has been writhing in ecstasy for months now, slamming us with solar winds, and whether we are aware of it or not, these winds have set us ablaze. The harmonic on this planet is shifting, accelerating. First in the East, and now finally in the West, human beings are remembering themselves as being in the midst of the Grand Game—and they are choosing to play. En masse. In the street.

Many of us have been culled into a most dramatic seriousness. We see the play in the street and we misunderstand it. Our logical mind interjects and, by butchering and dissecting what we see, it tells us what to feel. What sick jokes the logical mind plays on us! The predator mind has no interest in playing in the street; the predator mind is threatened by all such activity. For you see, in the street the Sun may shine, and the predator mind recoils from this light... because it does not want us to discover it. 

The predator mind is the favorite tool of those who mean to restrict play upon this planet. We can be so predictable, you and I, and what a shame it is when we are! How love and life alike flee from predictability! But I swear, by the virtues of courage and comedy, we can conquer our predator minds. We hold it, just as it holds us, and we can drag it kicking and screaming into the holy hot light of the Sun til it retreats from us; until we sweat it off!

Sol—our star—is calling us, we who have slept, to the playing field. She is lovingly nudging us towards the edges of our comfort zones in a bid to remind us of what we are and why we are here. She would have us step into the light, together. Good riddance to our comfortable lives, lest we sleep another thousand years! 

We are not interested buying the repeatable past that is being sold to us. We are groping for a new future. We are occupying the present in growing numbers. 

WE ARE FAST APPROACHING.

EXPECT US.

Winds & Tides

Avast!

Readers, you are most seasoned sailors of the seas of life. It makes little difference whether you're the captain of your own ship, a passenger or merely a deckhand - if you still have air in your lungs, you're a success story. Either you've tactfully managed to navigate the treacherous pond, or you've white-knuckled your way out of falling overboard and becoming shark bait. Either way, Congratulations. Darwin would be proud.

I don't presume that all who read this are concerned with navigation. For this voyage, many of us are merely along for the ride. If your wanderlust is anything like mine, however, then you have an inexplicable compulsion to take command of your direction. For sailors like us, proper navigation is not merely advisable, it's necessary. But navigation is no easy task.

Proper navigation requires a fluid understanding of the forces of nature.

 

Any cretin can wet their finger, wave it in the air and tell you which way the wind is blowing. Any student of the heavens can make use of the constellations as a guide... this is The Realm of the Obvious. All knowledge of things you can see, hear, smell, taste or touch fall into the order of the obvious realm. Most conversation is concerned with the obvious realm. A pragmatic knowledge of the obvious realm is absolutely necessary in the proper navigation of the seas, but it is only a fragment of what there is to know. A quaint, poetic fragment perhaps, but hardly a shadow of the whole.

Should a sailor manage to master all the information of the obvious realm in a lifetime, she might still find that her course is being lead astray by imperceptible, powerful forces.

These forces are the tides, currents, and the rumblings of the watery depths. The ancient inhabitants of the abyss. Brooding, unsettled goliaths. The Realm of the Occult.

By now, you may be imagining masonic rituals, seances, tarot cards, ouija boards, maybe one of those cheesy psychic parlors. This is the meaning that the world "occult" has taken on over the generations. For our purpose of navigation, this definition is useless. Instead, let us imagine the occult as the realm of all things secret, hidden, or not plainly obvious.

We can observe the direction of the waves on the surface of the water, but this is not sufficient for an understanding of the actual kinetic phenomena at play. Remember the Titanic. The assumption that the obvious features of an iceberg encompass the whole reality cost some 1,500 people their lives. Not only is the obvious an inadequate picture of reality, it is often a gross misrepresentation of reality.

Readers! Friends!

We ride the horizon. Residents of Midgard... torn between forces both obvious and occult. It is essential to our survival not only as sailors, but as a species, that we come to grips with this paradigm. Too often I hear, "My generation is going to save the world! There are more and more of us waking up all the time!". As long as we identify with our generation instead of accepting the power of choice, Spaceship Earth will function as little more than a slave vessel. 

It is not up to 'your generation' to take control; it is up to YOU.

The sooner we sailors stop taking surface details for the whole picture, and take it upon ourselves to seek knowledge of the finer, more nuanced things in life, the sooner we can realistically open a discussion about what uncharted waters we wish to navigate towards.

BE MORE CURIOUS. Our journey depends on it. :)