Planewalker .:.:. Waveform Wizardry

(left to right: Miyun Park, Planewalker and Moby)

A couple of weeks ago, when browsing through the Powell’s Books calendar of events, I noticed an event titled “Moby”. The listing read:

“In Gristle (New Press), multi-platinum musician Moby, one of the world’s most famous vegans, brings together 10 of the country’s leading foodies, doctors, policy makers, business leaders, and activists to great a smart, concise guide for Americans who are questioning the meat in their diets. Moby will be joined by editor Miyun Park.”

I was floored. I’ve been to the book signings at Powell’s before, which are always a lot of fun, but this was extraordinary. Moby is a giant of a musician, having sold over 20 million albums on which he played most of the instruments himself. Being a vegan musician as well, and more specifically an electronic musician, this was going to be an incredible opportunity to connect with someone I immensely respected not just as a musician, but as a person. I marked it on my calendar and began waiting for the day to arrive.

When finally I arrived at the front door of Powell’s Books, I found it very crowded. I had to squeeze between people to make it up to the third floor. It was packed, with more people than I’ve ever seen at a Powell’s Books book signing. Yet it was still a small intimate atmosphere. There were about two hundred people seated, waiting for it to begin. Looking for a copy of the book, I was unable to find one. I inquired about it to a store assistant, who said that they were currently being signed. I made my way over to the right of the podium and sat down. The woman sitting next to me offer to let me look at her copy, which I began browsing through. The first thing I noticed was how visual the book was, full of graphs, charts and diagrams. It is the sort of book that is easy to flip through and get a lot of information without doing much reading at all.

After waiting a few more minutes, Moby and Miyun Park walked in the room. I had heard that he was small, but he wasn’t really. Yet he had a very soft air about him, a humble demeanor. He was wearing a t-shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, and seemed just like any other guy browsing through the aisles at Powell’s. He seemed slightly nervous. He blended in so well that I would not have recognized him had I not expected to see him, which is an invaluable skill for anyone famous. I was pleased.

They began talking about the book. They explained that they had decided to donate all the proceeds from the book sales to animal protection organizations, which garnered a round of applause. They then further explained that the book was not advocating militant veganism or vegetarianism, but was really more about educating the public about the impact of factory farms on health, the environment and the economy. They also explained that they did not write the book, but merely the introduction and the epilogue, leaving the various chapters and topic to be written by the most qualified researchers on the subject. The way they put this together struck me as extremely forward thinking, and the perfect example of how a celebrity can use his influence to support a righteous cause without going outside his chosen field of expertise. The book wasn’t about Moby or Moby’s view – it was about the facts.

The rest of the discussion was a giant question and answer session, in which I asked two questions to Moby and Miyun. I was brave and asked the first question of the day: “Seeing as militant activism is ineffective, even counter-productive in really helping raise awareness, what is the best way to educate people about this subject on a personal level?”

When Moby turned and looked at me, suddenly I felt the intensity of this man. Up until now he had not really been looking too much at the audience. He was looking at the floor. But when he looked at me and began talking to me, something happened, and I became aware of his spirit. They say the eyes are a window to the soul, and although his stature and demeanor were humble, almost ordinary, the size of his soul was immense. I could feel the power, the conviction of this man. It was intense and real, but not threatening in any way. “I think that’s a great question.” He said. He proceeded to answer my question, explaining that it takes skillful means to introduce this knowledge to someone, and that you have to be gentle. He advocated the book itself as a means to do it in a gentle way, allowing someone to absorb the information as they liked, without too much pressure. It was a good answer.

It would take far too long to detail all the other questions that were asked, but on the whole the event was highly informative. Moby and Miyun traded back and forth answering the questions, and were very thoughtful in their answers.

I cannot describe how good it felt to be seen and acknowledged by this man. In an instant it changed me. I reclaimed some part of myself that had been lost as a child. I suddenly understood that I too, could do what he was doing, because he’s just a guy like anyone else. What sets him apart is his dedication, his commitment to action and activism, his kindness. Being the son of a famous musician, I have never really cared too much about celebrities in general just because they are celebrities. I don’t read People magazine, and I don’t put people on pedestals.

But I resonated with Moby in a unique way. He gets it. He’s not just out for himself, and the example he sets is inspiring. I have never actually seen him perform. But his music is uniquely his, and he’s always stricken me as someone I should get to know a little bit more. I think what impresses me is his profound presence and awareness. Beneath the image on the album covers, beneath the fame and the music, there is this gentle and powerful soul.

After the talk, I got my copy of the book signed and told them that being a prolific blogger, I was going to write an article about this whole thing, and asked if I could take a picture with them to put in the article. I then helped out a little bit with the book signing, stacking the signed books in the hope that I might get to exchange a few words with him afterwards. There were two small film crews that had set up cameras to conduct interviews with him, so I had to wait a long while. In the mean time, I thought to exchange a few wards with Miyun, who lit up when I approached her. I asked her for her email address so that I could send her a link when the article went up on my blog, and she gave it to me. After all the books were signed, he seemed eager, as is quite understandable, to be done with the whole thing. Having watched my father go through autograph sessions, I know how exhausting it can be.

I followed him and Miyun down the stairs to the first floor, hoping the chance would present itself to ask him a few personal questions. I became very self-conscious that I was following a celebrity, as I did not want to make him or Miyun uncomfortable. I began to think my chance to connect might vanish, as they were fast moving towards the door, but I made one last bold move. “Moby.” I said. He turned around to look at me.

“I understand you probably want some time for yourself now, but I have a few personal questions about music I’d like to ask you. Is there some way I can ask you, perhaps later on?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll give you my email address. Do you have a pen?” I didn’t. I was about to start kicking myself. Somehow, by the grace of God, a pen appeared out of the woodwork. I gave him a piece of scratch paper. He wrote on it, and I could not quite read it.

I pointed to a letter. “Is that a J?”

“Oh, no. It’s a D. I have kind of messed up handwriting.” He had made a lot of comments like this during the book signing. At one point he said that Miyun was smarter than him. He seemed to be making regular efforts to humanize himself, point out his own shortcomings to keep people from putting him on a pedestal. It must be frustrating in some ways to be so famous, and I understood. Even doing that makes you seem humble, which of course just increases people’s admiration. There’s no way out! I was glad for him that he was so good at blending in, because I can imagine how hard it would be to live a normal life after selling 20 million records.

I held out my hand, and he took it and looked me in the eye. “It was nice to meet you. Yeah, email me. I’d be happy to answer your questions.”

And so ended my time with the most famous musician in the history of electronic music so far. But the dialogue is not over. Rather, it has just begun. I look forward to reading this new book and learning more great facts about the awful problems created by factory farming. Stay tuned for a full review of the book in the weeks to come!

Filed under: Journal Entries
by planewalker
9 Comments »

A month or so ago, I became conscious of a horrifying pathology deeply rooted in my psyche. Like most of the hardcore pathologies, this one was brought to the surface through interaction in a romantic relationship of mine. Conflict in the relationship revealed truths about me that I may have never seen had it not arisen. My partner and I had become mirrors for each other, reflecting the grief of our childhoods upon each other so intensely that it shattered our life together.

In a nutshell, I realized that I was in some fundamental way disconnected from my masculinity, and stuck psychologically in a place where I had been interposing the role of my mother on every woman I had a romantic relationship with. Why this was the case, I did not know, but I knew that it was true beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that I could not in good faith remain in the relationship knowing full well that I was not even really in a relationship with my partner to begin with. Rather, I was in a horrifyingly Freudian and incestuous drama game with a ghostlike image of my mother, of which every relationship I had entered was merely a re-enactment.

Contrary to what radical feminists might say, men have it tough nowadays. Boys grow up without fathers being present, without initiation into the world of men, and thereby wind up weak and stuck in addiction, never really becoming men but remaining boys, sometimes for their whole lives. This has not always been the case, and has really only become a serious problem in the last 150 years.

While the women’s liberation movement has done much for women, the anger at men in general that was fostered by the radical feminists is still rampant, so rampant that many of us men have been co-opted into a sort of self-hatred of our own sex, where we cannot give ourselves permission to grow up and move from boyhood into manhood, because manhood is the “evil patriarchy”. Some of us have even been thrown into such a distorted place that we look at the whole earth as female, “mother gaia”, whereas the masculine has been relegated to the realm of the sky, where there is substantial nothing to grab hold of.

The results are harmful to both men and women alike. Men become flighty and birdlike, literally made of air with no substance to them. Women are fraught with problems in their relationships that drive them mad. So many men in this day and age cannot take care of themselves – they are stuck in a perpetual boyhood. Getting stoned, playing video games, spending all their money on expensive toys – this is how so many are living their day to day lives, with little to no work in the picture. If there is work, it is usually not fulfilling or empowering. Even if it is so, the man is so wrapped up in it that he is not present for all the rest of what life has to offer.

This pattern results in men who cannot be good partners, who cannot be good fathers, who are so concerned with themselves and their own issues that they barely even see the women they supposedly love, using them as a place to escape to for comfort or gratification whenever they are not working. The women in turn become maids and nannies, doing the man’s laundry, cleaning the house, making meals, buying groceries, taking the children to school, all while the man lives in his own little world, whether it is his work, his passion, or a massively multiplayer video game.

Once I became fully conscious of how I was suffering from this problem, I set out to find out what could possibly be done about it. I was at a loss for information, not even really knowing where to look. Still in communication with my partner who I had just separated from, she suggested I check out a book called Iron John written by Robert Bly. I immediately ordered the book and when it arrived, proceeded to tear through it like a hurricane, drinking up the information as if I had been stranded in the desert for a week without water. Indeed, I had been stranded my whole life without the precious information that I needed to understand myself, what it means to be a man in this day and age. This is something that no woman can teach – not a mother, not a lover. Women do not suffer from the same problem. They have no experience with it, and at best could only understand it from an intellectual perspective, just as man could only understand being pregnant from an intellectual perspective.

Bly makes the argument that the line of masculine power that enables men to grow up has been severely and incrementally damaged as society has become more “civilized”, crippling men in highly developed societies from getting in touch with their masculine power. This happened in two major steps.

The first step happened when society did away with male initiation rites, where boys at the age of twelve or so in tribal societies were forcibly seized from their mothers by the tribal elders and kept away from women for over a year, interacting only with other boys the same age and older men, learning the way of the warrior and the hunter. This initiation rite served two purposes – firstly it made a clean break from the mother, a second weaning, so to speak, thereby cutting the boy’s emotional dependency on his mother and need for approval from her. Since a boy’s mother is the first woman in his life, if he does not have a clean break from his mother, he will treat all other women like he treated her as a boy once he gets sufficiently close to them. The second purpose was to show the boy that the mother’s house is not the only safe place to be, but that there is also safety and love in the company of other men in the tribe. If a boy does not learn this, he will live the rest of his life thinking that the only safe place is in a woman’s arms, and will never feel safe in the company of other men, but will always hold them in suspect.

But even when this rite was lost, all was not lost. Fathers were still around, and sons still left the mother’s house at some point to begin education in their chosen craft. When the boy left, he was expected to master his craft in the company of other men and become capable of supporting himself and a family before marrying. While this new way was not as effective a method to create a clean break from the mother, it still marked a clear transition from boyhood to manhood with the departure from the mother’s house. At this time, women still lived mostly domestic lives, and so by default a man was always around other men when working, even though he was not forcibly held away from his mother or other women.

The second step came as a byproduct of industrialization. When the guilds died and gave way to corporations, men lost ownership of the tools of their trade. Instead of being independent craftsmen, they became employees of giant companies, working in factories, mines and other places for twelve or sixteen hours a day. Suddenly, the father vanished from the home, and the son did not see him working. Understandably, when he came home he would be in a sour mood, making hard demands, and vanishing into his man-cave to spend the rest of the night alone. He became an object of ridicule, like Homer Simpson. He was made out to be a stupid, beer-guzzling, bald fellow with little to no attractive qualities. Instead of going to the shop to work with their fathers, boys were thrown into public schools. When boys finally get out of college now, which is hardly a substitute for the male initiation rite or apprenticeship with a master craftsman, many go back to live with their mothers again, and many never leave.

In this way, a boy in these times grows up in a woman’s world, with little to no connection with their fathers or elderly men. Many grow up without fathers altogether. This is dangerous to the world, and is creating a society where men are becoming progressively weaker, less attractive, and a greater threat to themselves, society, and women.

There is no clear path for a growing boy to ascend into manhood, no steps to mark the way! For women this is not an issue, as the changes in their bodies clearly mark the transition. Still, they are deeply affected by the absence of and pathologies of their fathers. But their mothers are there to teach them, and most of them learn well at least how to care for themselves. And while a mother can teach her son how to take care of his things, his space, and his body, she cannot initiate him into manhood. Only a man can do that, and really it takes a community of men to do it right.

So what solutions are there to this problem? I am currently in the process of researching that question. My preliminary findings suggest that there are indeed solutions. Joining a fraternal men-only organization like the Freemasons, or becoming part of a men’s support group are definite avenues that have resulted in success and integration for many men.

I used to be suspicious of men-only organizations and events, probably as a result of being raised in a place and time of radical feminism, where women-only things were good but men-only things were viewed as sexist and oppressive of women. But if men cannot have their place, women will shoulder both the burdens of womanhood and the burdens of manhood – they will have to be both mothers and fathers. No matter how strong they are or willing they are, it is not in their nature, and moreover it robs men of their rightful place in the world.

Just as women deserve to have their own places where the men are not allowed, men too deserve to have their own places, where women are not allowed. In fact, we need them in order to become men, to become good lovers and good partners. Women will not be hurt from this. To the contrary – they will greatly benefit from it because they will have better men around them. They will be free.

After reading Iron John, I think that such men-only things are probably my best bet for tackling this problem. The question now becomes, which one should I try first?

Filed under: Journal Entries - Reviews
by planewalker
2 Comments »

Last weekend, I went to a darkpsy party called Divine Intervention in Portland, organized by a group of long-time organizers that used to go by the name Apollo’s Lute, but who no longer have a name. The event featured live sets by Psykovsky, Secret Society and Freakazoid, and a Funktion One sound system. Every element of the party was of the highest quality. Amazing venue, beautiful deco, stellar speakers, familiar faces and great food. Kudos to all the people who put their heart into this event. A lot of effort, dedication and creativity was there, and it showed. I have a deep respect for those who made it happen.

Unfortunately, I had zero fun at this party, and probably went through one of the most deeply difficult experiences of my whole life. I wanted to have fun, but fun was just not in the cards for me. I went mostly to socialize and reconnect with old friends on a heart level, but also to really try giving the all-night-long-five-million-beats-per -nanosecond-dark-psy-core thing a chance again. I came to the party a bit broken, looking for healing. Within a couple hours time of being there, I felt like I had been sucked into a black hole with demonic aliens trying to rip out my soul and throw it into a blender, with no way out. I resisted, and managed to hold on to my soul, but it took all the strength I had, and I was in the dumps for days afterward.

I had a similar experience at Goa Gil Oregon 2006, but this time it was even more challenging because it was indoors and I couldn’t go anywhere that felt safe from the sonic onslaught. I became numb and mostly inanimate very early on in the night, fighting hard to remain centered. I understand now that the whole point about this kind of party is to completely surrender yourself, letting the beat completely take over your body and propel you into outer space. It’s about surrendering to ego-destruction, allowing the shiva or kali energy to kill your individuality for a time. It is highly aggressive. To seek healing in such an environment is like going into the desert in search of water. The desert is beautiful, and has it’s own beauty, but it is not a place to look for sustenance.

I had thought I would give the whole surrender-to-the-DJ thing a try once again, but I understood very quickly on an intuitive level once I got there that it would not be in my best and highest good, and thus began a long, hard battle. I like being present and attentive to the needs and feelings of those around me, and it’s really, really hard for me to do with that kind of music playing all night long. My heart starts beating so fast that I feel like I’m getting chased by a tiger, and yet I am paralyzed and mostly unable to move. There was nowhere to go where I could relax. The best place I could find was a dark doorway in a nearby alleyway. I spent a lot of time out there, staring at the pavement, trying to relax. It never happened, and I left the party alone, even more broken than when I had come, in a swirl of anger and despair.

Despite all of that, I am grateful for the experience. When I finally recovered, I found myself much stronger in spirit. They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I felt close to death at this party so I guess it makes sense that I feel a hell of a lot stronger now. I learned a lot from reflecting back on the course of events throughout the night. I think it’s awesome that Secret Society and Freakazoid have been staying so creative, and that most of the music was live and original. It was a pivotal event for me, despite how difficult it was, and I have gained a lot of clarity and understanding of who I am, and who I am not, from it. I understand the direction I want to go now, and I have the party to thank for that. The party was true to its name for me – I was ready to surrender myself, and felt like divine beings with my best interests at heart intervened and put a sword in my hand. And now I’m in touch with the warrior inside me again, which will undoubtedly help me a lot in the times to come.

Happy spring equinox, everyone!

Filed under: Journal Entries - Reviews
by planewalker
1 Comment »

My track “Psychic Evolution” was selected for Dr. Spook’s Psychic Chakra 2 compilation, also featuring tracks by esteemed psy producers Atomic Pulse, Jirah, Bodhisattva 1320 and Random. Here is the full track list for the album, which has been posted on Psyshop’s Coming Soon List:

1. The Phoenix
SOUNDAHOLIX

2. This is future
ANIMALIS

3. DNA Manipulation
DR.HOFFMAN

4. Altimetry
JIRAH

5. 2-Fly
BRATEX

6. Psychic Evolution
PLANEWALKER

7. Cybernetic (Tripy rmx)
MINDSTORM AND ATOMICPULSE

8. Experiments (RandomRobot rmx)
INTERSYS

9. Dimentional Entity
BODHISATTVA 1320 AND RANDOM

10. Feed your ego (Frost-RAVEN rmx)
ECTIMA

11. Paradise
BIRD OF PREY

The promotional blurb of the album reads as follows:

“The Good Doctor, leads you through an intentional sonic meditation for the Mind, Body, Soul combination. He creates an immediate uplifting response by using each chakra to cleanse and prepare the little known 8th 9th and 10th Psychic Chakras. These ‘Energy Chakras’ are located outside your physical body but connect your personal trinity (M.B.S.) directly to your higher self. So gather your past and future energies together and ready your self to connect to the collective positive sub-conscious.”

This will be one awesome compilation! I can’t wait to get my hands on some copies…

Filed under: Uncategorized
by planewalker
1 Comment »

One thing great about my line of work – it never fails to be interesting. Whether playing at an event, producing music, or initiating people, the kinds of people I get to hang out with are always really cool. When I was in Boise last summer, I met a fellow named Matt who was just beginning his new company, MyEcoServer, a 100% green, solar-powered web hosting company. He took my Waveguild Lightworker class along with several other highly interesting and fun people, and from the looks of it he’s really taking off with it!

I have made the decision to move all of my websites and client sites over to his servers to reduce my carbon footprint, and you should seriously consider doing it too! Matt is a great guy and he’s doing something seriously important for business development in the most environmentally responsible way. The web hosting business is growing rapidly, and carbon output for many hosting sites is quite considerable. Take a moment to go check out his site myecoserver.com and learn all about it. Eco-friendly is the way to go!

He asked me to help him with a web design project for the company, which I began in January of this year. Using Wordpress, I designed a template for his site and began putting some graphics together. Half way through my design process I had to start looking for a new place to move to, and the whole moving process threw a massive wrench in the gears of my development for him. After finally getting through the move, I discovered today that Matt had essentially completed the entire site all by himself. I was floored! I could hardly believe my eyes. He had done an incredible job – at least as good as I could have done. He’s so motivated and talented that I am actually not sure he really needs me to help him anymore.

The service that Matt is providing is so essential these days, for any business. Statistics show that less than 50% of businesses in the USA have an Internet presence, and that having one can significantly boost your number of customers. To have an Internet presence requires you to have a website, which in turn requires a server to host the site. Although the storage requirements for most websites are fairly small, allowing one server to host many sites at the same time, the servers themselves require a lot of power because they have to be on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to allow anytime access to the websites they host.

Green web hosting is a new trend, and although there are several companies offering attractive plans, none of them can hold a candle to what Matt’s company is doing. Most “green” web hosting companies back their claim of being green by buying clean energy credits, which support the development of cleaner energy on the grid. By contrast, MyEcoServer is actually 100% off the grid! No credits here, no carbon footprint, just pure clean web hosting powered by the sun with zero environmental impact! Some other companies purport to be 300% or even 400% green, but their claims are not really justified because they are still drawing power from a grid that is not even close to 100% green! Therefore they still have a considerable carbon footprint.

No matter how many clean energy credits you buy, you can’t undo the pollution created by the carbon footprint in the first place – all clean energy credits do is support the development of green energy by established power companies. In other words, any web hosting company that still draws power from the grid cannot possibly be even 100% green unless the grid itself is 100% green energy powered, which it is not. MyEcoServer is unique by being 100% off the grid, and represents an impressive and serious commitment by Matt and his customers to be totally environmentally responsible. You owe it to yourself and to the environment to send business his way as the web continues to grow, because in doing so you have the chance to make a direct impact on reducing the carbon footprint of the Internet, while growing your own business at the same time!

Filed under: Announcements - Reviews
by planewalker
4 Comments »

I always resonated with some things in astrology deeply, but not with others. For example, I get the Gemini thing and find the light vs. shadow self idea useful for understanding myself. But I also think all the signs have useful information for self-understanding and I think one can understand oneself in the context of any or all of them.

However, when it gets to the more specific predictions, horoscopes and compatibility charts, I have not been so sure what to think because there isn’t consistency between the systems and interpretations. I guess I am just a little suspicious of any fixed system that claims knowledge of my soul’s journey through the measurement of objects, whether it is astrology or chemistry, because I know it’s just not that simple. I am furthermore wary of allowing any fixed system to influence my decisions, because it may lead me astray from my path. I am not a fixed system and therefore I cannot be defined by one.

I trust my own judgment above all symbolic systems both ancient and modern, and I do not surrender my will to any of them no matter how well they seem to work. I get the feeling that humanity’s desire to understand is so great that sometimes we invent systems of understanding just to help us feel more in control, when really we’re not.

I have found it helpful to keep in mind that any model is a system of archetypes. They are signs on a map, and the signs are not the things they represent. The map is not the territory, etc. They are powerful because they are deeply rooted in the collective unconscious, and provide paths through which understanding can be achieved between human energies. There is much ancient wisdom in these paths. But they are paths that we built, paths that we carved out of the wilderness. They are not written in stone and they can be changed.

Systems of archetypes are useful for simplifying complex and confusing energies into more understandable and manageable symbols. They are useful to a point to help a confused mind gain clarity through simplicity. They help you orient yourself when you are lost and don’t know where to go, and it is better to pick a landmark and take a step than just stand there not doing anything. And it’s useful to periodically check the map to make sure you’re on course and going the right direction.

But beyond the points of orientation, I have found things like astrology to distract me from the road of life. Geology changes and maps are never 100% accurate. Moreover, to the extent that you are looking at the map, you are not looking at the road, and it’s dangerous to look at a map while you’re walking or driving because you might run into something.

In the same way, I feel that some astrologers are so busy looking at their maps and trying to fit everyone they know into archetypes that they fail to actually encounter reality. The map can certainly help you understand the road, but you can definitely understand the map in detail without ever going on the journey. When I was in college there were a number of people I met that I got quite frustrated with because they would try to fit everything I said into the framework of astrology, and thus failed to actually understand what I was trying to say. It was equally frustrating to speak with people who tried to understand everything in terms of mathematics, or of philosophy or psychology.

Tarot, numerology and kaballah are similarly useful, but only to a point. I like to use them when I am confused about a situation. But when I am not confused or seeking direction, I find that they can obscure by oversimplifying, in the same way that language in general does. A human being and all the parts therein constitute an incredibly complex and multi-dimensional thing, and does not fit perfectly into any model of understanding.

Nevertheless, I still find astrology fascinating and am always curious to hear someone’s take on me or a situation from that perspective. Sometimes I get exactly what I need to hear, and it’s the perfect thing! At other times I feel like it’s more important to the astrologer to express their understanding of me through astrology than it is to actually see who I am.

Filed under: Journal Entries - Reviews
by planewalker
1 Comment »

The last two years, I have moved 7 times! It seems that a lot of my friends have been having a similar experience. With the way technology is changing things, it is possible to live a life like this, but it’s not fun. I had thought that it would be fun being so transient, but now I am ready to stay in the same place for awhile. I am sick of traveling. Although you get a lot of excellent experiences, there is a lot to be said for being rooted. You can grow faster with roots.

Everyone knows how maddening it is to move. And I’ve always been really bad about it, leaving stuff right until the last minute, thinking that it will be easy when it never is. This time it was no less difficult, but one thing two years of moving has done is taught me how to travel light, and how to get rid of things I no longer need. My living space is much more streamlined now. I’ve given away so much stuff! Still, I have a lot more boxes to go through. I’ve definitely learned that I don’t need that much stuff to be happy. In fact, I am a lot happier with the basics. No matter how much you get, there is a limit to how much you can actually use.

As I sit here at my new space, I am contemplating the fact that Portland is really home for me. I love the lush greenery everywhere. I love the bike-friendly environment. I love all the vegan restaurants. And people are so chill and laid back. I’ll be here for awhile I am sure. Mt. Tabor is right across the street, and it’s really the perfect place to be. I feel myself getting settled much faster than I normally do, working on the things that are important instead of wasting time on Facebook.

I’ve got a huge backlog of work to do in the next few days. One of the effects of moving all the time and not having roots is that it makes it much harder to work. I thought that having a laptop would allow me to work from anywhere, which technically it does, but I have also discovered that my state of mind and emotional health have to be in good shape to work anywhere and be happy. Many things have to be considered and dealt with in a delicate balance to create the right work-at-home environment. Cleanliness, organization, food preparation, errands and exercise must be properly maintained to remain in the optimum state of mind for work. When I am wasting a lot of time doing useless things on the computer, I now know that it’s generally and indication that I am not doing a good job taking care of myself.

But above all, perhaps the most important thing is to actually spend a little time with yourself every single day, meditating and giving your spirit a chance to unfold. The proper guidance is always available to us if we can just quiet our minds enough to hear it. The right path is always visible once we clear away the fog from our perception. Last night I took the time to do that, and it’s amazing how just a couple hours of focused meditation and ritual was able to instantly shift my whole modus operandi and allow me to get back to focusing on what really matters. It’s important to do it every day, because otherwise you risk getting distracted, lazy, or negative.

So amongst the other things I’ll be doing now, I realized how important it is to post to a blog every day, as if it were a daily journal I am sharing with the world. Some things are not meant to be shared with the world, but it’s important to keep a log of your journeys so you can go back and see them. Those daily insights can prove quite valuable to others, I have discovered. So here we go – let’s see how many calendar days I can fill with posts in March!

Filed under: Journal Entries
by planewalker
1 Comment »

Ok, so I just made a chat room for Astral Force Radio! Tune in at http://astralforce.net and talk to me about the music!

Filed under: Announcements
by planewalker
2 Comments »

This is me outside my new castle home in Second Life! I encourage you to come on over and hang out with me while I am broadcasting. Here are the teleport coordinates http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jaculus/53/102/43 See you at Chateau Psy!

Filed under: Announcements
by planewalker
No Comments »

Tune in to http://astralforce.net for 24/7 live psytrance streaming! Chat with the DJs in our chat room on the upper right corner of the stream page. Experience the virtual party!

Filed under: Announcements
by planewalker
No Comments »