Evolution by the Numbers: Number Seventeen

 number seventeen: understand what’s the same, and what’s different 

what’s the same:

you have the same 24 hours in every day as anyone else

you have no idea how many of those days you will get, just like everyone else

you eat, sleep, breathe, bleed, and feel pain just like everyone else

you operate in the same universe, with the same physical, mental and spiritual principles as everyone else

you are doing what makes the most sense to you, with what you have, just like everyone else

you can only do what you know, just like everyone else

what’s not the same:

nobody has had the same life as you

nobody has learned exactly the same things you have learned

nobody else had your parents, and even your siblings didn’t experience them the same way you did

nobody else had your exact mix and understanding of teachers and role models

nobody else has had to make your choices, the way you had to make them

nobody knows enough about you and your life to judge you, just like you don’t know enough about them, to judge them

nobody is enough like you to make a comparison strong enough to hurt yourself over, or to hurt anyone else over

Evolution by the Numbers: Number Sixteen

number sixteen: doing it feels better than not doing it

In any practice, especially practice like we do here, there will be days where it feels like shit. There will be days where you’re too goddamn tired. There will be days when you can think of a million other things that seem a lot more important, or at least more urgent, which is a much different thing.

There’s nothing wrong with not being able to do the things you love all that well all the time. What’s really corrosive to your soul, however, is knowing it’s important, and then lying to yourself about it, so you don’t have to try. So you don’t have to suffer the sting of thinking how shit you are.

The hidden message of this is to stop thinking of things in this way. But the one you can take away right off the bat, is, it’s better to do it, even if it’s crap, then to live with the scars that come from not doing it. If it’s important, if you really want and need to do this, then accept it, live with it, and commit yourself to it. Don’t backpedal and tell yourself stories when it turns out to be a painful sometimes.

If you want to master anything, you have to treat it like a master does, and the secret every master will tell you is, you have to show up, even when it’s a waste of time. Especially when it’s a waste of time.

Evolution by the Numbers: Number Fifteen

number fifteen: abandon comfort

almost by definition, the ideas of growth and evolution are antithetical to any notion of comfort.  Any area in which you are content to simply wallow in an established state of affairs, is one where are not pushing yourself.

The area of physical and mental activity which is your normal or current comfortable domain is almost certainly some minuscule slice of what your total capacity for free action actually is.
Which is not to say that you must never enjoy a rest or some luxury now and again, and it’s hard to find something that can’t be put to some constructive use, or interpretation, but again, it’s a matter of intent. If you’re out to kick back, veg out and stop thinking, questioning or watching, you have Lost the Plot.

Evolution by the Numbers: Number Fourteen

number fourteen: expand the pie

This is a real simple concept, that’s hard to get your mind around sometimes. particularly in this age of consumerism, where everything is about maximising profit and minimising loss, and ‘externalising’ the downside of everything, which is just a nice way of saying ’shit in someone else’s well, not your own’.

The strategy that nature actually uses is totally not that way, and the sooner human beings get our collective heads around it, the better off we’ll be.

Quite simply, what you want to do is, in every interaction you have, be it business personal, environmental or whatever, is to enrich the total field of resources from which you are partaking. Rather than just taking the biggest piece of the pie, take your piece, but also do something to expand the pie, so there is now more for everyone.

This is the true meaning of ‘economic growth’ which gets lost in an endless stream of cooked books and starving people. If you advance technology, enrich relationships, build trust, open up the playing field, add to a common resource, then everybody wins and everyone does better.

The real problem in the world, if you had to pick just one, is what’s called ‘the tragedy of the commons’. Basically, if everyone abuses a common resource in some relatively minor way, magnified by hundreds thousands, millions, that resource is destroyed.

One person trampling the grass on the way to work is trivial. A hundred people will wear tracks in the earth. A thousand will turn that field into a mud-hole with nothing in it, in short order.

Abusing someone’s feelings in some small way for the sake of expediency might seem harmless, but that’s why relationships end: eventually all you have left is a list of times someone has abused you and taken away from whatever common well of empathy you started with. If you took the time to build empathy, build trust, add to communication, that wouldn’t happen.

Are you going to tell someone they can’t take that shortcut, catch that fish, abuse that trust, take advantage of that privilege? Maybe, maybe not, but if everyone does it, you end up in the situation we’re in today. Everyone means well, or at least not too ill, and yet we’re still fucked.

It’s relatively easy to apply this to nature, because this is what nature tries to do anyway. It’s not too much of a leap to tend the ecology of our minds, our society and our relationships, much the same way.

Evolution by the Numbers: Number Thirteen

number thirteen: write it down

One of the hoariest conventions of doing magical work is to keep a journal, variously known as a ‘magickal record’

Myself, I never saw much use in this, as I have a nearly-eidetic memory for most things, and writing down stuff I knew I probably wasn’t going to forget seemed pointless. But it wasn’t until recently that  I understood the larger part of this.

Every day we live is a kind of reset button. It may not seem like it, but each night and new day takes the edge off the endless stream of experience and allows your mind to meander in all the same ways it likes to do, allowing you to forget just enough of your dull routine so that it seems new enough to bother carrying on with.

When you actually record what you’re doing, esoteric or not, from one day to the next, it binds your life into a narrative, and when you do that, a certain part of the mind responds to that and begins ordering your life into a narrative as well.

Besides the benefits of exact note keeping, you may find that turning your life into a story invites the possibility of  actual story resolution.

Sound suitably cryptic? Good.

…and no, I don’t care  how exactly you do it.  Get a book. Write something in it everyday. If it happens to relate to this stuff, then so much the better.

Evolution by the Numbers: Number Twelve

number twelve: start counting your breaths

 At any point when you aren’t preoccupied by something else, either walking or sitting, put your attention on your breaths and start counting them. Even the actual numbering isn’t that important, but if you lose track of the numbers it’s a good sign to reapply your attention.

 The nice thing about this is that you don’t need to know why this works, only that it will. Learning some of the subtle changes in focus will make it go quicker, but it’s just as likely you’ll figure them out yourself.

  Besides sharpening your concentration and calmness, this is a natural doorway into some profound meditative states, and with practice you can carry this anywhere doing almost anything.

  There is literally nothing else you need to know to become a master meditator. If you spend enough time with this process all else becomes clear. The only caveat is that it takes most people several years to really take off doing it this way, so I wouldn’t cut you loose on that alone. That said, the only reason it usually takes several years is that most people spend most of that time trying to avoid actually doing the practice.

  So do as you will.

Evolution by the Numbers: Number Eleven

number eleven: get your freak on

I’m going to err on the side of caution once again, and assume that most of your are suffering some kind of neurotic tension, sexual repression, or misdirected, distorted or pathological manifestation of your bodily energy.

The reason Ican say that with some confidence is that developing these maladaptations is kind of the default conditioning given to us for dealing with the sick, emotionally hysterical, borderline psychotic society such as much of the world now is. That, and the demographics for mostly white, mostly male, internet using, highly abstract thinkers skew towards the neurotic.

So I don’t mean to suggest that you might be sexually frustrated, suffering from warped body image, repressed fantasies that lean towards the perverse, and getting worse all the time, or that you might be suffering various body syndromes and disorders resulting from same… but for the moment indulge me while I address all those other fucked up people over there.

Quite simply, the best way of dealing with this kind of crossed wiring, and the slightly disturbing energy that you are probably giving off because of it( which is not so bad as it sounds since most everybody else is too, to some greater or lesser extent), is to vent all that stuff in some kind of healthy, socially responsible kind of way.

For those of you in a ‘relationship’, however loosely you define such a thing, this probably means actually talking to your partner about what you really want, and seeing if you can’t come to some sort of acceptable arrangement. Instead of, you know, hoping they become telepathic and find out that you secretly want to be bound and whipped and subjected to golden showers or something.

Sadly most people are so insecure, even in what passes for a loving partnership, that they can’t even talk about these things, and play tippey toes around each other, and any hint of organic libido, and how it might pass through the prism of our own unique imprinted imagery.

I will be the last to say that a relationship ought to be founded on sex, but I will also be the last to say you should try to ignore it either.

For the rest of you, if you’re not in a relationship and you want to be, a big reason for that is probably some of that body pathology and distorted self image I was talking about.

One of the better ways of redressing this that doesn’t involve depraved sex acts, is to get some body work. Y’know, massage and stuff. One way to reprogram the body and it’s responses is to wipe the slate with some pleasure signals. Getting a nice thorough massage on a regular basis is a good way to do this.

If you feel good, you will look good( or, at least, on a subtle level, better), and when you look good, it’s more likely another human will want to see you naked.

And lastly, if you’re a celibate either for a temporary undertaking, or as a lifestyle, some body work will still probably be useful to smooth out the repressed body energy, and help you focus it on whatever else it is you’re doing.

Evolution by the Numbers: Number Ten

number ten: notice your reactiveness

Life is full of things you do without thinking, but I’m going to suggest that your start thinking about some of them.

By reactiveness, I am, for the moment, referring to automatic negative reactions. When something you don’t like occurs and itimmediately triggers some other mental or physical response to it, to make it either stop happening, change it’s presentation, or disappear.

You don’t need to do anything about it just yet. Start with noticing it. Taken in toto, this consitutes your conditioned pattern of rejection of the world as it is, and/or flight into the world as you think it ought to be.

Worth paying attention to.

Evolution by the Numbers: Number Nine

number nine: become consistent

One thing I’ve heard Douglas Rushkoff say that I thought was especially smart, and this is coming from a guy who says a lot of smart things, was that the most revolutionary thing anyone can do is to become totally consistent in the very smallest of their actions.

What does that mean? It means if you have a value, a principle, a practice, an observance that holds meaning for you, don’t just do it when it’s convenient, or interesting, or rewarding. Do it all the time, do it everywhere you can do it. Don’t just hold up your standards when it’s easy, but when it’s hard, when it’s unbearable, when no one is gonna pat you on the back for it.

If you want to meditate, then meditate every day, every chance you get. Don’t treat your life like the metaphysical supermarket. If you’re gonna do these things, then DO THEM until you cannot learn anything more from them, or you you simply cannot continue.

If truth, or justice, or understanding hold meaning for you, then apply them everywhere. Speak the truth to everyone, apply your integrity and justness to every interaction, not just the people you like or respect. If you really want to be healthy, then don’t just have a vegan shake on the weekend. Throw out the crap in your fridge, and don’t buy it again.

If you’re going to bitch about economic disparity and poverty, the inequities of the global financial system, then quit spending so much money to support it, it’s banks, it’s currency, it’s buisnesses.

If you do even one of these things, your life will get very interesting, very fast. So don’t complain if your life isn’t as compelling as you’d like right now. It is what you have made it.

Evolution by the Numbers: Number Eight

number eight: get interested

The usual way of conducting one’s life is to concern oneself primarily with those things that directly impact or interest  ‘me’.  And by ‘me’ I mean ‘you’.

However, at any given moment, the percentage of observable phenomena in the universe that have any bearing on ‘you’ whatsoever is so vanishingly small that ‘you’ might as well not even mention it. Except, of course, that it’s really important to ‘you’, isn’t it?

The only solution to this frankly lousy predicament is to widen your horizons a little bit and start to asses reality and it’s merits based on something besides servicing your sense of utterly delusional self-importance. If ‘you’ actually want to understand what’s going on well enough to create anything of interest to yourself , ‘you’ need to set yourself aside and actually start to care about everything else that’s going on. Feel free to vanish up your own ass into self obsession if you want, but sooner or later the universe will recycle your ass and no one will  know the difference. Except insofar as it happens to service their own self obsession in that particular moment.

It’s not about you.

  It’s never been about you.

  It will never be about you.

It all goes along just fine without you. 

  Get over it.