Chapter 1 Welcome to Oz
“I am Oz. The Great and Powerful. My authority is impeachable, you silly, sniveling, sanctimonious, side-show excuse for a side-kick want-to-be. Pay no attention to that man behind the computer screen. If humility, meekness, kind words, and beautifully colored and flowery incense flavored smoke worked, wouldn’t you imagine Tibetan Monks would be Army Drill Instructors? Have you ever seen a long hair, flower toting Navy Seal bringing a box of tissue to soften your tears?! Grow up, you impertinent, impotent, ignorant excuse for a human.”
Ego much? You know what it feels like when you come across it in others, but what about in yourself? The above parody quote is necessary. It’s harsh, but humorously so, contextually- if you’re in the right mind frame. You don’t become a warrior with flowers, though that does make for a good Geiko Commercial. This book is not mainstream. It may not even find its audience. If you find yourself reading it, it might be something you need to hear. I am partial to the idea that we don’t always get what we want, but sometimes, when we try… I suspect, it’s something you’re not likely to hear randomly.
If you follow the popular culture, or even the more extreme esoteric culture, one of the things you will find more often than not is the recommendation to get out of Ego, kill Ego, or some variation of reduced ego. Ego is compared to a drug. It’s addicting. If this is a drug and we can’t get people to stop using drugs, then maybe it’s time to employ the harm reduction model. Some ego is good. Ego is functional. It keeps you alive and in the game. It’s your spiritual signature in the present medium. Through the course of this book, I am going to go further and suggest to you it is an absolutely necessary construct. It is your worst enemy and your best friend, if you cultivate the meme ‘the Way of the Warrior.’
I will approach it from a variety of perspectives in order to best illuminate the path I have been traveling. Much of what I will offer is metaphor and analogy. Some things are literal. Something’s are both literal and metaphor. It is up to you, the reader, to determine what that is for you. I am a counselor. Hypothetically, if you were my client, I could never give you advice, I can never tell you specifically what you should or shouldn’t do, but as a guide I can help you explore your strengths and weakness and trust the reality of your own map. I am not your counselor. I can give you advice here. I call them experiments. You try it on for size, and if you helpful, great- share it. If not, move on. You could try things more than once. Some initial failures are not due to bad advice, just poor application and implementation. Sometimes the story we were given was not the fit when first tried it on.
Don’t make your keys absolute; strengths can be weaknesses, and weakness can be strengths. We all make maps. We are on the map all the time and what we have on our maps naturally reflects how we interpret the terrain. When in the trenches, there may seem to be no way out of a predicament. From the mountain top, we can look down on the valleys of life and see, ‘oh, there was a way out right there.’
Jung reports enlightenment doesn’t come from sitting around imagining beings of light. If you want to get to the light you must go through the shadows; the light is on the other side. Enlightened beings do not sit on the mountain top shouting directions down to you. You don’t get to heaven by following the commands of angels who have never left their clouds. It’s hard to trust someone whose white coat hasn’t gotten dirty. Seriously, Lucifer in the Bible was often referred to as the ‘shiny one.’ The attractive one. The real angels are in the trenches with you, getting dirty, walking in the mud, putting their arms around you and helping you walk. They get dirty, they make mistakes, because they, too, have decided to walk the path so that they can better relate. If you dismiss a messenger because they have fallen, then you have judged your book by the cover. Truth is truth. Even a dirty or broken cups can deliver enough water to your lips to sustain you.
In the old days, Plato’s Cave was the vehicle that helped people realize what they are experiencing on a frequent basis is illusion. I am not in disagreement with that. I am not going to tell you to forget the old ways. We may no longer fall back on Freud as God, but his work was foundational in terms of raising us to the next level. I will tell you, it’s time to update Plato’s Cave in one particular way: there are no chains. It is likely I share this with Terrence McKenna, if I didn’t flat steal it from him- we come here willingly, the same way you buy a ticket and go to a movie. Actually, that may stem from reading Richard Bach, specifically his book ‘Illusions.’
This stuff is old and new and it has come at me in a variety of ways and forms and different messengers. The most recent form is “Reality Transurfing”, by Vadim Zeland. Like Jung, I find synchronicities interesting, spooky, and meaningful in a way that elevates a respect for that phenomena that transcends the materialist worldview. Make no mistake- I experience magic and the paranormal. I think Dean Radin said, or quoted someone as saying, “Magic is Real.” That is my stance. I don’t think it’s paranormal. I think the paranormal is the normal and we’re in a constrained reality frame of our own making.
Most of today’s audience will tune out at the mention of magic. If you hung out this far, but have some problems with the metaphorical relationship to that word, I would have you consider this: it doesn’t have to be Harry Potter magic. I operate from a consciousness first paradigm. If you were dreaming, you have a context for magic. You can adopt this idea directly from “The Holographic Universe” by Micahel Talbot. Consciousness and Simulation theory both allow for ‘magic.’ Sometimes things work that shouldn’t work. Some things don’t work that should work. Placebos work and nocebos work, confounding the pharmaceutical companies that want to know if their medicines are working better than chance. Every drug has a statistical number attached to its effectiveness, which you really don’t hear much, and it’s measured in how many hundred people have to take the drug before one person realizes benefits. Number Needed to Treat, or NNT. Interestingly, science has noted a decline in drug efficacy. There seems to be a correlation to an increase in commercials that rush through a list of possible side effects. They’re obligated to disclose risk due to liability. Disclosure of risk clearly minimizes benefits. How could it not? “This drug can help this, but it may give you these six side effects…” Tell me again that we’re not dealing with magic here. How am I supposed to sell any snake oil in this market? Come on!
When I am dreaming, a regular old, normal dream- the dream works fluidly. I do not question the reality as I experience it. I follow the script. I don’t question it. I have a nice dreams. I love my dreams. It is only when I become lucid, dream mechanics start to malfunction. I turn on a light switch in a regular dream, light works. I am lucid- light switch is hit or miss- I turn on the switch- it doesn’t work. If I switch it on and off and I get stuck trying to make it work and I go back to sleep- and back into dream world doing dream stuff. But if I say, that’s weird- “let their be light,” then suddenly there is light. Sometimes it doesn’t work and I say, “Oh, but I know this is dream and I command you to work” and then it works. I want to suggest to you that reality is like this, with caveats. The book the ‘Secret’ does not work for the majority of people who read it because they don’t understand the caveats. Reality Transurfing actually offers insight into the mechanics of why it doesn’t work for most people. Notice, I am not saying ‘The Secret’ doesn’t work, or that it’s not a valid perspective. It worked great for Rhonda! Yay Rhonda. (Invoke the Beach Boys song, ‘Help me…’)
NLP, neural linguistic programming, works. It has been authenticated and considered a reasonable, rational approach to mental health. It’s not magic. Maybe the ‘Secret’ isn’t either. Here’s an example. Fear and anxiety have the same physiological pathways. Neural epinephrine is the thing that transmits this noise. It’s a signal. I am calling it a noise. Remember this when you arrive at the fear and anxiety chapter. Anyway, you can use breathing techniques to disrupt the signal, to bring down the noise. Breath works takes anywhere from 8 to ten minutes to fully eliminate the noise. You could, however, on recognizing fear or anxiety, say out loud over and over, “I am excited, I am excited, I am excited!” and get the same results instantaneously. It’s called reframing. Interestingly, before there was NLP, there was Dorothy- “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…” If it comes from Glenda, it’s fucking magic. If it comes from Harvard, it’s science. And we’re in a world where you can’t believe either.
Here is a trick to reading my map. Every time you find yourself in a metaphor, I need you to realize you’ve experiences a floor change. You’re on new level, and you need to own that new perspective. Owning means you adopt that metaphor as the meme to such a degree it becomes literal. As soon as you make it real, throw away the metaphor! Let go. Don’t keep it as an absolute. (Unless you’re a Sith Lord. Or a Jedi. Seriously, ben saying, “Only Siths deal in absolute…” Oh, wait maybe Ben was Sith!) The metaphor was just the vehicle that got you to the new perspective. You now have to map out the world from this perspective and create a new key system and make new connections and analogies. If you’re getting metaphors from dolphins, and you’re land dweller, then you may not derive the maximum benefit. You have to remember, Dolphin World is fluidic and constant change. It’s chaos. One day they see a branch with a squirrel on it. (Squirrel!) One day they see a plastic container, coincidentally with word ‘Tide’ written on it. (Why can’t take their plastic back to them so they can clean it up and reuse it?) One day they see a beach ball blown out to sea and they play with it. The next day… Keep on swimming might be a good mantra from them, but that meme is not a good thing for people. If you’re in a crowded mall and a child falls in front of you- you stop, you don’t trample them! You give the child’s parent time to correct. The person behind you should also stop, but if they get mad and start yelling ‘keep swimming’ it’s not because they’re angry or stupid, it’s because they don’t have enough perspective to understand you were giving the right away to someone in need. Also, we’re not bloody fish! Neither are dolphins. It is also true, people who blow their horn are not stupid- they’re just in the wrong frame from driving. They’re likely in an anxious, selfish mode which promotes distrust- they erroneously believe their perspective is correct and don’t allow for the other person to driving appropriately. It isn’t even reasonable to ask yourself, “why is that person slowing down...” The job of all drivers is simply to be aware of environment and respond appropriately. If people would assume someone was responding to something and give them a moment, the matter usually resolves itself. The world doesn’t operate on your time schedule.
We tend not give ourselves or others enough credit, or time to resolve ourselves.
That said, understanding that the world is not operating on your time table is part of the dream. The dream is necessary. The delay is either a distraction from waking, or is actually the call to wake up. The emotion you feel is the key to wake consciousness within you. All of life’s troubles, the slings and arrows and misfortune, are symptoms of being asleep and call for wakefulness. Resisting or ignoring the symptom results in increased drama and pain. Too much emphasis on the symptoms, celebrating the symptoms, results in more drama and pain. Don’t ask ‘why me?’ Unless you’re 12 or younger. Then that’s okay. Don’t get stuck there. Never analyze the symptoms while in the dream. When you wake up, you can evaluate it. From Jungian perspective, all misfortunes are symptoms. If you hallucinate a demon and you run from it, you guarantee it will chase you. Even if you think you get away- because it is a manifestation of something inside of you, wherever you run, there you are, facing the same problem. Jung is very clear on this in ‘the Red Book.’ Stand your ground, face the demon, and ask its name. Ask it what it represents. It will change.
Symptoms are calls to be lucid. It is true if my tires are worn, I have greater chance for accidents. If I don’t have money to get new tires, like most people, I delay until I can or am forced to confront the problem. If I remain aware, and I know I am about to drive in inclement weather, I can still remain safe by increasing safety distance. If I drive on autopilot, which most of us do, and I forget to accommodate for the situational environment, I am likely to slide into someone. If at any time in your driving experience you are suddenly called to rage, call someone a name, or experience a near miss or accident, you were on autopilot and you were not as aware as you could have been. You were definitely not being kind if engaging in road rage. Most people are kind- so why is it so many people becomes monsters in the car?
Your rage is not you. This is not ‘Fight Club’s ‘I am Steve’s rage’ and I need to blow-up the world. It is but it isn’t. Welcome to Oz. It is you and not you. When the Wizard is confronted directly, he is much humbler, a little bumbling, capable of erudition and right thinking and kindness- but behind the mask, he is a menace and terror. You, too, are capable of this. What is interesting is that what some people do in their cars is something they would never do in a one on one or a group setting. There are people in online communities that rely on the anonymity of their avatar to manifest downright despicable behaviors, things they wouldn’t do in person. They, too, are OZ. (Malkovich, Malkovich.) Yeah, some people don’t need anonymity, they’re just that contemptuous of social protocol and show no discernment regardless of settings. Most people show discernment. All of us have this nastiness inside of us- and it bubbles out at inappropriate times, usually when we’re tired. I have worked in psych hospitals where people were acting complete fools to such a degree the nurses and doctors gave up, called for law enforcement, and by God, police show up and the person, or persons, have instantaneous behavioral changes and start complying. Some of that may be a response archetype. Some of it is the reality that the hospital is a step above going to jail and even a crazy person knows that much.
This path that I am on and will invite you to walk is not an evasion of responsibility for actions, thoughts, and behaviors. It is a call to recognize it is much more complex than you suspect. Personality is much more complex than people realize. It is not one thing fixed for all time. It’s a continuum. It has features and attributes that modify it in real time. It has buttons that are wired to give cokes. Those are triggers that are booby trapped or attached to past events, and when people discover them and push a button, they get cokes. And by god, if you push my button and get a coke, I am going to make you drink it. I am 52 years into emptying the coke machine and turning off buttons. You know it’s a trigger to a past event when the amount of coke that comes out is out of proportion to the change that went in.
We need a new theory for personality. No one has a clear grasp of it, and beyond Jung and Campbell, I know of no one that is really trying to tackle it. I see some parallels with Jung and the direction of neuroscience. It is my intent to meander my way there, because it’s important… And again, illuminates the spiritual, magical feel to this thing. ‘Same above, same below.” Human beings are smart, and some of the smartest of us intuitively define reality for ourselves and others. Some of us touch upon realities we can only speculatively engage. There are cultural barriers to experiencing greater realities. This is not speculative. There are things you can say in French that doesn’t translate into English. All languages have a unique treasure that doesn’t translate well, if at all. Some cultures have complex emotional states that other cultures haven’t experienced. If you don’t feel robbed hearing that, you are not grasping how seriously profound that statement is. You may have heard this: the Inuit have a hundred words for snow. Russians have more words for blue, and so by default they can experience a myriad of shades of blue that English people can’t. Even within the context of my own language, my artist friends have access to a greater color palette than my rainbow 7. A wine expert can tell you quality, and likely age and origin- where I am like, ‘oh, that’s nice.’ If you can accept that- then aren’t you a little bit interested in knowing if you can learn to experience a greater range of emotions than the few you have access to- happiness or anger?
Rumi, Blake, Whitman, they have all given us glimpses into reality that have paralleled and even highlighted what has been discovered in physics. To me, there is no distinction between science and mysticism. The hard science has for too long dismissed the soft science, and completely ridiculed spirituality and metaphysics to the detriment of humanity. We have no faith in anything, not each other, not the country, not science. COVID bears the truth of that. How many scientist made discoveries in their dreams, or coming at things in non-rational ways? Almost all the major discoveries were this. Even Einstein was daydreaming in a boat when he ‘envisioned’ his solution. Most people can’t touch magic because to do so is to invoke real world ridicule. Some scientists are trying to bridge their way back with ideas such as ‘pan psychism.’ There is evidence that some scientist are wanting to return to the concepts of an ether, but no one is going to use that term or admit as much. What is zero-point energy field if not the ether? How do we have gravity waves without space-time being a material-ether- a medium in which waves could travel? How many words have we changed to either avoid stigmas or connections to perceived ‘negative’ associations? ‘Retarded’ became ‘handicapped’ to ‘handi-capable.’ No matter how you describe the ‘thing’ it is still the ‘thing’ and all new terms will eventually be used in a negative ways because, let’s face it, there are some mean ass people in the world. Fearful people. Stupid people. Seriously, you would have to be mean or stupid or both to pick on someone who is clearly challenged. Heroes protect the weak and disadvantaged, not take advantage of them. You can’t run from the thing! UFO’s are now UAP. Okay, so, the government didn’t lie- by virtue of a technicality? “No, we’re not investigating unidentified flying objects. We have, however, been investigating unidentified aerial phenomena.” Just saying.