Bugging About

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The Old Plan was to own raw retreat land, for a Bug Out scenario. I did it, with limited success. 4 acres of wooded, rolling land way the fuck out in the mountains, an insulated & sheetrocked 8x14 "cabin"...and unfriendly maryjaners on all sides. After 4 years I just couldn't deal with the unfriendlies any more (seemed like it was tempting fate to stay there), and I sold the bugstead...at a profit, which was nice, since making money on that land had never been part of my plan.

The New Plan is to own a suburban home, for a Bug In scenario. It's in process, the purchase of a 2-bedroom/1-bath semi-detached cottage with a 30x35 yard and an 8x12 outbuilding. Plans include installing an additional 6x10 workshop/shed, planting a combined raised bed/container food garden, and converting the attic into a work/storage room.

It's a completely different paradigm, this new plan. I'm still bewildered at how quickly everything changed. One minute I was looking for a Bug Out cabin in the sticks...the next moment I fell in love with a cottage in an urban housing co-op. Although I still have yet to actually experience the Bug In plan, I've composed a list of the advantages and disadvantages of both plans:

Bugging Out

Advantages: The land was REALLY cheap and I paid it off in 4 months. There was no code enforcement. There was no law enforcement. The air was clean. A low-tech, no-maintenance lifestyle. There was freedom to do whatever I wanted. In the event of a SHTF scenario, I would have been far, far from the crowd.

Disadvantages: Crazy, low-life, outlaw neighbors. No code enforcement. No law enforcement. Random, sustained discharging of weapons by the neighbors at all hours. Half-wild dogs roaming the forest. Illegal clear cutting, legal logging, abandoned vehicles, ubiquitous white trash living on all sides. One neighbor shot another neighbor. One neighbor lit the forest on fire. Someone lost a leg to his friend's deranged dog. The drive up there took 5 hours. Water was non-existent in the Spring and Summer. There was the ever-present danger of robbery and burglary. If the shit had ever hit the fan, my neighbors would have fucked me, skinned me and cooked me within 24 hours.

Bugging In

Advantages: Utilities. Consolidation. No more always having one foot out the door - I can finally focus exclusively on where I live, because now MY HOUSE IS MY FORTRESS. The new pad is on an island with a community spirit. I know a lot of people in the neighborhood. Some of them are preppers. I'll be able to walk and ride my bike everywhere, every day. Even to work. It's a safe city.

Disadvantages: Long-term debt. Nowhere to run. High density living amongst sheeple. Code/permit enforcement. Law enforcement. Dependence on the grid.


I'll have much to write about in the coming months, as I work my ass off setting up the burbstead the way I want.

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A Memory

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Once, when I was in college, I fell asleep for just a moment in Physics. For that moment I was deep in Interstellar Space, surrounded by distant stars. There was a milky-white globular cluster above me, and I came up beneath it so that it nestled onto the top of my head. It fit perfectly. Then I awoke, and class continued.

You might say that Interstellar Deep Space was, in that dream-moment, a metaphor for the Void, which is one state of God (the state in which nothing exists, but all things are possible) and which is characterized by absolute darkness. And you might say that in that dream-moment the milky-white globular cluster was a metaphor for the Source, which is another state of God (formless Unity/Consciousness), and which is to be found in the chakra that exists above the human head and corresponds to the color white.

That is my experience: That in that dream-moment I experienced two states of God. They had nothing to do with religion, tradition, words, humans, the world as we know or experience it - they existed completely outside of the human experience. But they were awesome, and perfect, and I miss them.

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Update

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Am fighting strep and feeling some grief & stress right now. Combine them all & life has become sort of hellish & I keep wondering when my sojourn thru this Darkness will end. Or, how long will it last this time around?

While we are on the subject of Darkness, you may wish to watch a movie called CITY OF LIFE & DEATH. Consider it a Schindler's List-esque take on the Rape of Nanking. Unceasingly gray and grim, with possibly the best urban battle scene ever portrayed in film (about 30 minutes in). Not for the meek, this movie will scar your soul and remind you why you are a pea shooter-loving Survivalist. My sentiment after watching the film? NEVER AGAIN. Or at least, OVER MY DEAD BODY.

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Just when you figured He was dead, you find His signature scrawled on the local parking lot asphalt down the block:

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A few months ago I stopped doing drugs, drinking and smoking, as a result of a dream I had. Life since then has been most interesting, with many changes and healing/breaking circumstances arising. Would I wish this kind of circumstance on my worst enemy? Maybe. If I hated him enough. Har har. It is a difficult time, one of transition, but it seems to be yielding positive results. I just hope I feel better soon. The good thing is that I have re-connected with a spiritual side that I once had but buried for many years. Because I am older now, the experience is different than it used to be, but I do feel a presence in my life that I would liken to God, or Spirit. There is a white mist around me. It feels as if it is energy that emanates from the Source. A good feeling.

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More Changes of Mind

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Eating a kale salad for lunch. With quinoa on the side, & slices of raw milk Swiss cheese. Mmmmm. &...trying, as always, to pinpoint what is wrong with Survivalism.

Some thoughts:

*The excessive Survivalist preoccupation with physical survival supersedes the call of Spirit, & stifles growth on that level.

*The excessive Survivalist preoccupation with logic & control supersedes the creative/intuitive/spiritual aspects of Mind. The trouble with this is that intuition is almost always correct, but never logical. By its very nature, the creative/intuitive side of Mind cannot be anticipated, controlled or planned for. It is spontaneous, immediate & cannot be quantified. It is also the truest & best survival resource we have.

*Religion & spiritual thought almost universally preach against killing, yet Survivalism places great emphasis on firearms & the use of deadly force to insure one's own survival.

*Survivalism's extreme preoccupation with personal physical survival works against any notion of societal/community survival. This is a fatal flaw. Without true human love & compassion for one another, a viable society cannot exist. Community requires self-sacrifice in order to remain cohesive. Herein lies the rub: As humans, it is in our higher nature to sacrifice for the greater good. To even sacrifice our lives, if necessary. & there is nothing wrong with that - self-sacrifice is a noble & heroic way to exit the earthly playing field.

One conclusion:

*A true Survivalist will incorporate the spiritual aspects of existence into their life & place equal emphasis on logical & intuitive thought. Utilizing both aspects of Mind allows for true adaptability, & also for fulfillment in the NOW. It may also lead to one's demise...but the true Survivalist must accept their place in the greater scheme of things, and understand that Spirit dictates life.

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Stuff

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Another successful wine box-tool box conversion:

*This cool "free library" box is in front of someone's flat, down the street. At night they leave little LED spotlights in front of it:

*Lost 10 pounds since Christmas. Started with a ketosis diet (low carb) for the first 5 pounds, then switched to a no-shit-carb diet for the next 5 pounds. Maintaining that for the next 5 or 10 pounds, then re-evaluating my diet. Today's lunch: An awesome organic salad w/kale, carrot, cabbage, tomato, avocado, sprouted sunflower seeds, parmesan cheese & Bragg amino salad dressing. Plus a slice of raw milk Swiss cheese.

*Let's hope that Ron Paul goes far. Far enough to shake things up & change things. The whole world is sick of materialism & lies.

*My Poor cat just tried to lunge thru the window to get a bird. She's too proud to acknowledge how silly that was, so she's ignoring me now.

*Hippie dream I had last night:

Dreamt I was in a landscape of rolling green hills and Oak Trees, somewhere up near Grass Valley. It seemed to be night time, but I could see quite well. This figure appeared on the hill beneath me. He came running along the ridge, right to left, and stopped under an Oak tree. Because I was looking down on him from one ridge away, from my perspective he appeared to be quite small. It was as if I was watching a miniature man in a miniature landscape. The most noticeable thing about this guy was the sounds he was making. They were not human sounds, or animal sounds, or like any sounds I've ever heard. It's very difficult to remember them now, but they were like a long series of different chirps and other sounds that were almost electronic in nature. They were patterns of some sort. But the unusual-ness of this guy did not stop there. He had an owl costume on, and he was kind of dancing, moving in strange sequences as he stood under the Oak tree. He seemed like an electric being. My first thought was that he was a shaman who was in the act of performing practices to enable him to enter a different plane, an energy world. But if that was the case, then he had so mastered these practices that he had in fact entered the energy world completely, and was now residing there. But maybe the sounds he was making and the dance he was doing were what was keeping him in the energy world? I also wondered if perhaps he was a deity, a Kachina, who actually existed in the energy world to begin with. But even if that was the case, it seems to me that the kachinas are shamans who learn to enter the Kachina world so to speak, and commune with the deities. So, whatever this little guy was, he was in the energy world, and he was an electric being.

This all happened very quickly, I simply observed all of this in a couple of seconds.

Next thing that happens is that two figures appear from the right, chasing or tracking the first guy. They are green, and they are also electric beings. Again, it is impossible to clearly determine their origins. But, they are chasing the first guy. Suddenly all 3 of these figures have spears and I begin to back away from the scene, for fear of getting hit in some kind of crossfire. At this point the entire scene/landscape is electric...I am perceiving it as someone on psychedelics might perceive it. It's not like a video game, though, it's more like a brilliant, electric world - I can see at night, and there are these 3 electric figures running around. Anyway, so the owl guy throws his spear at the other two, and it misses them but lands kind of close to me, so I back away, afraid I'll get hit.

That's it. It was awesome.

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Prophecies of the Kali Yuga

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The Kali Yuga is the Fourth Age, the Iron Age, The Darkest Hour of the Night

"In the Kali Yuga, wealth alone will be the deciding factor of nobility, and brute force will be the only standard of deciding what is righteous or just. Mutual liking will be the deciding factor in choosing a partner in marriage, cheating will be the order of the day in business relations, and satisfaction of sexual pleasure will be the only consideration of male or female excellence and worthiness. People will be greedy and take to wicked behavior. They will be merciless, indulge in hostilities without any cause, and be extremely covetous of wealth and women. Deceit, falsehood, lethargy, sleepiness, violence, despondency, grief, delusion, fear and poverty will prevail. Mortal beings will become dull-witted, unlucky, voracious, and destitute of wealth, and women will become wanton and unchaste."

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The Limits of Survivalism

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The trouble with survivalism is that it is almost purely materialist and selfish in nature. I know that many survivalists portend to be Christians, but I'm talking about the goals of survivalism as an ethos, as opposed to the goals of religion. Taken to its logical endpoint, survivalism means that I WILL KILL YOU TO PRESERVE MY OWN LIFE. The end.

And therein lies the rub.

BECAUSE, that is a destructive means to achieve my own survival. What is missing is a higher ethos, that of brotherhood and self-sacrifice and genuine love for other human beings. These things supersede the physical. They supersede material wants, even needs. They bring people together, they form lasting community. They assist with our spiritual evolution. And they reduce selfishness.

We must have community in order to survive, and we must have sustainability in order to survive. Survivalism has traditionally relied on weaponry and individualism instead of on community, and on hording instead of producing. I am not saying that weapons and stored supplies should not be part of the hippie survivalist regimen, BUT, they should be tempered with an honest and heart-felt attempt at creating community and viable food gardens.

As this century progresses, and the current trends -- both constructive and destructive -- all reach their logical endpoints, each of us will need to make choices again and again regarding our own inner alignment. Are we on the side of creation, or destruction? Each time we reach a new crossroads, we will need to make the choice and take the road offered. That involves deciding what is most important and dear to oneself.

Me, I will choose the side of creation. For me, the spiritual outweighs the material. It leads to the evolution of my spirit, which has lived human lives before and will live them again. But also, I believe that it can lead to a more fulfilling life, and as mentioned above, to real, sustainable human community that is based on sharing, caring and mutual love.

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Nothing Left to Poop

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I like to think outside the box, and I'm pretty sure it's time we re-assessed the concept of dieting. What I propose is a book called Nothing Left to Poop, which examines dieting from the rear end, so-to-speak. Instead of counting the calories that go into our open upper orifice, this book studies the size, content and frequency of our poop. It correlates poop and weight-loss. Because, I'll tell you, I've been dieting for the last week, and I've noticed that I'm simply pooping less. I mean, I still poop once a day, but I poop LESS, once a day. My theory is that if I perfect my diet to a T, I will have virtually nothing left to poop, because my body will absorb almost all the nutrition I put into it. A bit of roughage is all that will remain in my ejectum. So, yeah. Maybe I will go eat a little something now. Feeling light-headed, don't you know!

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Happy New Year 2012

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OK. It's 2012. We have almost a year left until the world goes down in flaming heaps of plastic shit on the next Winter Solstice ;-). Some thoughts:

•This blog has focused way, way too much on weapons. It's time to bring in some higher love, so to speak. Guns can protect us and feed us and they serve that pragmatic purpose, but they can also easily bring about the end of the American social order thru wanton violence. We need to remember that community is what will ultimately save us. It is foreseen that there will come a day when there are so few people left in the world that people will greet all travelers with open arms, without any head trips at all. We need to re-connect with our own humanity, to make it thru the coming times.

I recently traveled to the Hopi Mesas and the Taos Pueblo. Sadly, last year the last 5 remaining families moved away from the single surviving strictly old-school village on Second Mesa. This means that that village is now occupied only for sacred rituals. I was also told by a local that the new generation of Hopi dancers is not as devoted as their forebears, that they have succumbed to the seductions of the modern world and do not have their hearts in the sacred rituals. This is bad news for the rest of us, because the Hopi are the Keepers of the Earth, and as their sacred rituals die, so does mankind and the planet.

On a more positive note, the Taos Pueblo continues on as it has for millennia, with its inhabitants still living the pure life on their sacred land. They hunt in their pristine ancestral land and still drink from the stream that flows directly thru their village. This is good, good news. I talked directly with Indians who have spent their entire lives on the Pueblo, living the traditional life. They are good, friendly people. Go visit them and talk to them. They reminded me of the old hippies I used to see. Then I realized that those old hippies were modeling themselves on these same Indians. The hippies are now gone, but the Indians remain.

I came away from these Native communities with this thought: The world is in a cycle of unprecedented change, and ancient ways and cultures are indeed vanishing all over the earth, never to return. These native cultures are usually bound in secret earth-based rituals which were designed to preserve their cultures, and by keeping those rituals secret as they die, these cultures are extinguishing themselves completely. I have resisted accepting that technology is part of the future, but now I believe that it will remain part of human culture for the time being, and I embrace it. My thoughts are generally in line with what Penny Kelly expressed in ROBES, when she said that the future surviving "Family" communities of the late 21st & 22nd Century will in fact use high technology (if humanity succeeds in avoiding total collapse and a new Dark Age). That does indeed seem to be the route we are on.

Lastly, I spoke with a woman in Santa Fe who is part of the burgeoning local/organic food movement. She and a friend are getting into sacred bee shamanism, and starting a home-based honey business. They will be adding 10 new hives this year alone. Also, they grew so much food last year that they had to give it away. All this on 2 1-acre plots. Yay! Yay, yay, yay! This is what will save us: Locally grown food and home-based businesses. So, join the trend and choose your alliance. Become a Creator, and get back to your sustainable, earth-based roots.

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