An Effective Exorcism

Below are journal entries from a time when I endured a state of utter despair. The views of the author do not necessarily reflect views of the author?

A willingness to be vulnerable enough to show how this process is worked through is what the author reveals here, surprising, most of all, himself.

Take it, leave it, rejoice in it or grieve it! Just get on with it!

3-13-2021

When we give up on the melancholy and fade away into a happiness bled dry by insatiable vampyres we abandon our most essential selves to a fate which will not even provide us sorrow, let alone joy. The numbness, however, makes us impervious to pains which will turn away weaker wills. We commit to killing ourselves slowly, descending ever deeper into an abyss without sustenance. Eventually we are lost so completely we have found not the self we lost but the right to recreate ourselves any way we want.

***** * *****

To state that the complex arising from repetition-compulsion is a disorder arising from trauma is to miss the point entirely. Birth is trauma. We are all born traumatized by our helplessness. How we develop determines how successfully we deal with the original trauma—the trauma of being born. To write one's shitty behavior off on past trauma, though it is technically, mechanically true, is ultimately a cop-out. The harsh reality is that this original trauma cannot be undone without creating a second birth, and therefore a second trauma. Trauma is, then, inevitable. If one wants to overcome the debilitating effect of the original trauma, one must become what one is, not untie the knot of everything one is. For another knot must be tied. Rather—strengthen the knot and make more. Give oneself, as it were, a rope, and use it to climb out of the abyss, rather than to hang oneself from one of the many decrepit trees that have grown, gnarled and forsaken, within its wastes.

3-14-2021

I stood out on my front porch with a cup of coffee, watching a young squirrel dig through the grass in my front yard for vittles. The little guy dug around all over the yard, finding things buried here and there, which it would pick up between its paws and chew. I was close enough to hear the sound of crunching as it tore away at its meal. It drifted nearer and nearer until it was right in front of me, still poking around in the grass, oblivious to my existence. I might have been just another tree, standing there on my porch. Finally, it looked up and our eyes met, and it ran to the actual tree in the middle of my yard, eyeing me warily from that distance. I went in then, to leave it undisturbed in its search, but silently thankful for the spectacle, which gifted me with an uplifting mirth.

I begrudge the human animal perhaps too much for its sense of entitlement to happiness, but I could never begrudge another animal its right to survive. Perhaps I should take a page from the squirrel's book and poke around in my own yard today rather than drowning myself in these intellectual endeavors.

***** * *****

It's okay to watch it burn. I did everything I could.

3-15-2021

That last thought came to me as I sat in front of my chiminea, burning trash, and wood from fallen trees.

I did end up poking around in the yard yesterday, doing things which had been too long undone.

The world will pass through this cycle with or without me. What can I do that I haven't already done? I could never do much anyway.

Let it never be said that I did not care.

If I am callous, it is because I cared too much for too long and became blistered and torn.

I have the right to heal and go on with what remains, to be happy as the scarred being I am rather than to continue to subject myself to the suffering of others. It still seems to me that we must each conquer our own demons, that we cannot fight those of others without hurting them and ourselves. For the demons work through you, and they want you to fight, knowing as they do that it is your body, your mind, your life that will be destroyed. Their existence is eternal torment, the very essence of pain. Why should they be worried?

“Empathy” is their doorway to other souls, not our doorway to an effective exorcism.

***** * *****

Rommentary:

I want to clarify that when I put the term “empathy” in “scare quotes”, which I am liberally “misusing” here, I mean to indicate that words will always fail to represent actions. Theory is never practice. Neither thought nor feeling are experience but a reflection thereof.

Beware the labyrinth of mirrors!

I’d also like to elaborate on the deep significance the hoodie in the picture has to me. It was a Christmas gift from my kids.

I especially appreciate that it is purple—or I might say Purpureus, as fellow wordsmith Dharrsheena so eloquently puts it!

Purple, being the result of the combination of red and blue, represents a regal harmonization. However, it is well known that I am a jester in this court, so I’ll not claim to be the King. Nevertheless, the jester wears a motley rainbow raiment to remind the King that his own regalia is meant to indicate not just his ability, but his responsibility, to harmonize.

The Exorcist is both my favorite movie and my second favorite novel. My kids and I watched the film and talked about the significance not of the possession but of the priests’ sacrifice. Father Karras and Father Merrin were two very different men. Karras was immersed in a crisis of faith where Merrin was called back to a faith which experience taught him to no longer doubt.

I am not Catholic, though I was educated as such. I still refuse organized religion wholesale, ironically—perhaps—under the ancient Vedic notion of “Neti-Neti”.

“God” is “Not This, Not That”.

But I can no longer remain a pure materialist. However, it was materialism that bid me explore, unbiased, the world of my senses until I realized that absolute reality, though inexpressible and unassailable, is fully realizable.

All the scientists who advanced our technology to this point were also mystics. Both Newton and Tesla would qualify, to give only two examples.

Mysticism is only obscure because too many who study it rest on theory alone to the exclusion of practice. The pure materialist is as bad as the pure religionist. Both are fanatics who fail to discern the spirit in the letter. Secular and religious ideologies share a major, sometimes fatal problem in common: ideology. The Buddhists have a term for this: Vajra Hell.

Yet all paths, even the most subterranean, lead back to the light. As I have elsewhere stated:

When we stray too deep into the dark night of the soul we must become our own sun.

And… oh, but oh my golly-gosh—have I strayed! And wandered! And loved! And lost!

We who plumb the depths do so out of insatiable curiosity. It is the reason for our initial damnation and the inevitable torch that shows us the way out.

Another way to put it: those who come to faith through faith alone may place their faith in the wrong things. Those who come to faith through doubt will know that in which faith is best placed.

If they manage to save others the trouble of going through all that pain, they need no reward. But, as the world is ever-changing—Neti-Neti—there come about eras where certain old constructs have stagnated and need reworking.

If you find yourself faced with such a dire task, remember that, though you may not yet be aware of how, you were prepared beforehand. Keep your mind open to the idea of Neti-Neti and things will make sense in time.

If you do not find yourself faced with such a task, simply be thankful that others have come before you to scout the way. Walk the easy path in peace and know that you are blessed by those hallowed souls through grace. They did not force a path through the wilderness but tread it again and again with love and reverence for the nature that allowed them passage.

We should do the same.

Our modern world is both a technological marvel and an industrial wasteland. The waste is a result of those who forced a path not revering the nature that gave great men like Newton and Tesla the profound knowledge of how to tap its awesome powers. In this sense, the communists have been no better than the capitalists, and we should seek to put to rest the idea that there is or ever has been any real difference between the two.

Community only works through communication. An obstacle course of shit tests and mind games only leads to exhaustion; and when we shit test others, we tend to reveal more of our own character than that of our target, don’t we?

A new day is dawning—or at least so hopes this subterranean scout—when people will clearly and directly communicate instead of relying on secret words and signs.

For secrets are merely clumsy attempts to veil the truth whereas mysteries are truths which we must equip ourselves to understand.