Jane’s Journey
—-

In the astral world, Jane’s soul was exploring. She saw the pyramids of Egypt in their greatest glory. She flew over Atlantis, populated by ethereal glowing balls, that she could only assume had once been something like human.

In this level of consciousness, she could move at the speed of thought. Was this alacrity in it’s first stages? She wasn’t really sure at all.

In all of these wild and wondrous places, she felt like an observer. No one seemed to notice that she was there, even when she tried to get their attention(which she did. Often.). Even without interaction, she was learning much by observing.

She could sink her soul down to the material realm and fly through cities. People using magic, or even attempting to, shot up lights like a beacon. Jane would fly to these beacons and watch the people. Sometimes it was someone walking down the street, and she couldn’t tell what was causing the light. Other times, people would clearly be focusing on an antiqued and mundane spell of sorts.

Every now and then, as she floated through the streets of large cities, people would see her. They would give her funny looks and walk off. Children would smile and giggle. Dogs would bark at her. Sleeping cats would send their astral selves to her hands, floating lazily in the air, until she would stroke their oddly soft fur. It was an odd feeling, petting these not so real cats.

Jane thought of all the Earthly places she had always wanted to see. She visited them one by one. She thought of places that had disappeared with time. She visited them as well. She was experiencing history.

When Jane realized this, she also realized that she was not bound by time here. She could watch the past, and to an extent, the future.

She watched as hundreds of men built the great wall of China. She saw the Berlin Wall torn down. Julius Caesar died a bloody death before her. Yeshua ben Yoseph preached his new ideas to a crowd of Romans and Isrealites. Years later a man named Paul would twist words and confuse people with the teachings of ben Yoseph.

Jane could see beyond that. She could see the tiny bluish-white lines that tied all of these people to their history and to their destiny. She could see that undeserved pain was sometimes necessary for the world to grow. She thought it was odd that the history of the world so often hinged on one person. One person’s self-sacrifice to appease the lonely astrals.

She was getting tired. Very tired. Astral travel taxed her physical constitution. She needed to sleep. She thought of her body and of Minus’ basement. She closed her eyes, and could feel the rapid movement. When she opened her eyes, she was not in her body, but instead, inside a large building filled with books. Thousands and thousands of books.

“Fuck. What? Where am I? Is this the Akashic Library?”

A booming masculine voice answered her. “Some beings call it that. But it is so much more. Welcome to my home, Jane De la Moore.”

She went silent with shock. Someone could see and hear her! She felt a sensation of shear excitement. If she had been in her body, her heart would be racing.

“I am the Keeper,” the voice boomed again. She saw a robed and hooded figure coming down a set of stairs to her left. “This is my home. You are welcome to use my library. I have expected you for some time.”

—-

Jack
I Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #26
Jane’s Journey

The Tao of Minus
—-

Mancini was a little startled when Jane asked about the Akashic Library. But he knew that she had that right, even if she did not have that power.

So, they talked at length about the great teachers of the past, about the holy guardian angel, and about the Akashic Library.

He suggested she take the six month sojourn to learn about the Holy Guardian Angel before trying to access the Akashic Library.

“But… hmm.. When Minus returns, we will talk. He may have a short cut for you. You have every right to view it for yourself. Especially since I have an oath to not speak of what I see there. Minus is not allowed to enter. But neither of us really know why. Sometimes, it’s almost like he has no book. Like his lifetime is not recorded, as it is with the rest of us.”

Jane didn’t know how to answer. Mancini appeared puzzled, even in his ghostly astral form.

Mancini continued, “The information I have about Minus is from my personal experience with him, and from reading the life books of others that have interacted with him. There are large blank periods, that I can find no information on. Five years ago, shortly after we had met, he completely disappeared. No one knows why. Or where he was. He refuses to talk about it.”

“From what I’ve learned of alacrity,” Jane interjected, “Is it possible that he got lost in it?”

“It’s possible. But Othin practices alacrity too.. I’d think Othin would have been able to find him…”

“And then he disappeared for three years with me, at that bar..” Jane was trying to string together the facts. This whole mess was terribly confusing to her. She had never known magic like this. All of these things were brand new to her.

“Yes, that’s right. Minus is… well, odd. It’s almost like he has a cloaking ability. Kotoko witnessed it with trying to find this house. This house is totally off the official radar. Only a handful of people know it’s here at all. But it has been here for fifty years at least.

“Although it wasn’t his fault, you two were completely masked inside that bar. In the same way, Minus is completely hidden now, at the world tree. No magic can find him there. If you were to walk up to the exact tree he was on, you would not be able to see him.”

“Does he know this,” asked Jane.

“Sometimes.. Definitely not all of the time. He doesn’t dabble in divination, so he really doesn’t understand the concept at all. All of his magic comes naturally, through self-sacrifice.”

“Like now? Like his trip to the world tree?” Jane’s curiosity was peaked.

“Yes,” the doctor answered. “Just like now. This is not the first time he has performed the self-sacrifice rituals for knowledge, or power. It’s almost like the gods favor him. His family has no history of magical blood. Unlike me and you. There is no reason for Minus to have the power and understanding that he does. I’ve spent a long, long time trying to figure it out.”

“What about Othin? I thought he was Minus’ uncle?” Jane interjected.

“Othin is not a blood relative. He was a friend of Minus’ mother. But she never knew about Othin’s magical side life. You see, to most people, Othin just looks and acts like an old, burned-out hippie. I’ve known him for five years. He has not aged a day, but we can discuss that later.

“It really boils down to the fact that Minus basically gave me my powers. I’m certain that he has had a positive impact on your magic as well. Probably Kotoko, too. Othin often tells me about personal relationships with gods, but I usually chalk it up to metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Most of the gods are dead, or were never there to begin with. Maybe I should reconsider that. We’ll talk to Minus about it when he returns. Not long left.”

And so, that night, Jane began to practice astral travel to see if she could find this Holy Guardian Angel and the Akashic Library. She was tired of being out of the loop. She was worried about Minus, and she had to do something about it.

—-

Jack
Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #24
The Tao of Minus

Please Don’t Leave Your Ectoplasm
—-

Minus touched the top of the monitor where Mancini had been sitting. He pulled his hand up and it had a yellow slime on it that stretched to the monitor.

“Aww, dammit. He always messes up my fucking monitors. Jackass.” Jane could tell that Minus’ irritation was mostly sarcasm.

“So he talked you into taking one of his messed up astral travel pills, eh? I think he always gives me so many in hopes that I’ll mistake them for Vicodin when I’m drunk,” Minus laughed.

“Yeah, he told me that you were quite the alchemist,” Jane replied.

“I like to play around. I can move molecule to molecule from the base if I enter into speed thought. So just about everything in that drawer is a custom made mind trap of some sort.

“Did he tell you that he’s afraid of the Alacrity Motion?” Jane nodded at this question.

“He can barely understand the concepts, but he was probably right. You should work on other things first. He’ll be able to teach you a lot while I’m gone.”

“Where are you going? That tree you were talking about?” Jane asked.

“Yeah. Closest one is north of here. In the park area of Washington. I’ll have to walk most of the way there, but that’s not really an issue. There are waves I can ride. My truck will be here, if you need it. But please try to stay inside.”

“I’m sure Victor will keep me busy most of the time. It seems like I am pretty out of the loop. I never thought people could use magic like this. I thought the glamors and astral stuff was my gypsy heritage. I mean, my mother taught them to me…” Her head was starting to swim. She felt floaty and very sleepy.

“Why don’t you call your friend and see when she can get here. After she’s stopped by we’ll rest. I’ll need to leave early tomorrow.”

—-

Jack
I Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #17
Please Don’t Leave Your Ectoplasm

*****

It started off innocently enough, like most things. Especially things in Minus’ life. He often felt like the opposite of King Mitus, since everything he touched turned to shit, instead of gold.

“But it’s different this time,” he thought to himself. He always thought this to himself. He seemed to really like writing an internal monologue.

So, there he was: very happy, very stupid, and very drunk. What was different from every other day? Nothing. Nothing at all. Or so he thought.

It was near midnight, and after several pitchers, when he found himself alone, talking to a girl in her early twenties. The volume was turned down on the rest of the bar. The people moved in slow motion and sound traveled as if through water. Minus loved these moments, when he felt so very at home. These moments seldom lasted, and took much drink to accomplish.

The girl was cute, but young. Minus had already forgotten her name. But this time was different. She had that silken aura glow, like the girl that haunted his dreams. He’d seen her play a dozen roles in his dreams, but she was always obviously the same person. He could always tell by that bright white glow. She was a mother one night, a sister another, a lover more often than anything. In his dreams, Minus never looked the same. He knew who he was, even when dreams happened from odd perspectives, as they often do. And he always knew who she was, even when she was nothing like the night before, or any of the thousands of nights in his life.

This was a long dream. It haunted and beckoned. It tore at his heart strings and played death metal in his rotten soul. Minus was not a bad person, but a person consistently forced into bad situations. He couldn’t really grasp how at least half of his life had actually happened. But it had. Dreams through a Seconal haze. Hadn’t there been another dream-girl a few years(or a lifetime) ago? The Thorazine year that followed that instance had taught him that, no, there had never been a girl in his life with this aura. Even though his pineal gland would ram itself around to try and break free from the anti-psychotic’s numbing embrace.

But the pineal gland survived for moments like this. Brief glimpses at reality on the other side of the vale. And it shouted as he talked to this girl.

Minus fought a little when he felt the vertigo pulling him in. He was never very good at fighting this falling feeling, even though it almost always lead to pain directly. So he funneled down in to the synchronicity that surrounded this girl.

Her name, it later turned out, was Jane. Jane was 22, not really old enough to know better. Minus knew better, he just didn’t care. If Jane had known better, she would not have cared either.

——–

Jack.
I Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #1

—————————–

It’s hard to quantify things when you are looking backwards through the filter of memory. What happened? What did we do? Where did we go? Two months in California, surely I have stories to tell. For a singular moment in time, I am that goofy, straight-faced, storyteller again. I remember. I remember good things. I remember bad things. I remember sloth and melancholy. I remember unbridled joy and wonderment. If anything I mention here has been in a previous post, I apologize. Perhaps the stories will be slightly different now with the influence of time.

So, let’s get started.

Scarab and I are walking down Sunset Boulevard to the library so that we might check emails and such. We’re a little early and the library is not yet open. We light up cigarettes and try to kill the ten minutes or so before we can go inside and get out of the heat.

A man, no younger than 60, approaches us. His clothes are tattered and he carries a small backpack and a 3 day beard. He asks for spare change. We scramble through our pockets, but find nothing. Scarab offers him a cigarette and begins to roll up several as we talk. He tells us that he’s homeless, which we could have guessed. Talks a bit about his former life. A happy gleam in his eyes. Then the present breaks through the dream-memory. He says his wife is gone. His children won’t speak to him. Everything he owns is in the pack on his back. He was a Vietnam Vet, like so many of our nation’s homeless. He sleeps on the wheelchair ramp to the library when the LAPD doesn’t run him off.

Scarab finishes up a handful of cigarettes for the man, and he departs. I’m sure we’ve already faded from his memory. But we don’t forget.

Jack.
I Listen.

Fragments
#2
Homeless in LA

Why not spend part of your Thanksgiving Day helping out at the local soup kitchen? You could make a lot of people thankful with a few cans of food, or an hour or two of volunteering.

What am I thankful for? Lots of things. Lots of people. For the reader’s here. For my extended family over at Twitter, and my real family right here. I’m thankful that I can talk to the far side of the world on a regular basis. Thanks to everyone who helped out with Twitter Travels this year. Not a one of you has been, or will ever be, forgotten. Thanks to all of the people who are helping with my first book release, even as I write this.

It’s been a strange year, but I wouldn’t change it. With winter, comes change. Are you ready for that fresh start?

What are you thankful for?

-Thanks to all my friends, family, and readers.
-Jack Lhasa
-Yeah, I Listen.

• I’ve been in a real, deep, down, funk these past couple of months.  I’m working on this and starting to regain myself.
• Due to that, I have neglected my blogging and online communities.  That changes now.
• I was luck enough to get an invite to alpha test for chi.mp.  You can see that here.
• @Phyrdancer , one of my Twitter friends, was kind enough to design a favicon for my chi.mp page.
• Twitter Travels is defunct.  Due to many, many issues that I will not go into here.
• I will be arranging all of the Developmental Theology 089 lessons into an ebook format for free download in the coming weeks.
• The Basic Ideology 101 articles will start coming up again.  Look for them. 
• I spend a lot of my free time on my Xbox 360 these days.  You can find me there with the handle “jacklhasa.”  You can also read about it here.
• I’ve been trying to keep up my tumblr account.  This will also get better.
• I spend more time looking at kwippy and friend feed than twitter these days.
• I’m currently working on something in the background.  Revelations to come.

Well, I think that about covers it for now.  You’re gonna start seeing actual “content” from me again.  Worth while stuff, I hope.  Stay tuned.

-Jack

“It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.”

– Saint Augustine of Hippo: The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408]

Saint Augustine’s ideas on the nature of truth and science are essential to modern understanding and have influenced many great teachers and philosophers of all ilks.

-Jack
I Listen.
I do that Travel thing sometimes, too.

Basic Ideology 101

Lesson #2
Saint Augustine and the Reconciliation of Science and Scripture

Looking for answers is often just a waste of time.  Sometimes the answers just come to you.  Instead of looking for answers, trying living for results.  If you can be here, now, it’ll all work out.

But what do I know?

-Jack
I Listen.
I Travel..

Let’s break away these walls and join each other.  I am no more teacher than I am student.  Richard Bach once wrote, “We teach best what we need to learn the most.”  Nothing could be more true.  So, here I am, on the cusp of something extraordinary, and I want all of you to join me.

Some secrets may change hands.  Life may transform as we evolve both physically and spiritually.  The adoption of technology to the shaman’s path is of utmost imprtance.  The shaman can no longer be just about nature.  The shaman has to grow with the culture, and the culture is growing rapidly.  Never has the shaman had the chance he does now.  The chance to be everywhere at once, literally.

As saplings we all start, but soon we grow into trees that devour our surroundings.  Be the oak tree.  Give something back for what you are taking.  Do not be the weeping willow, who takes all of the water it can, but offers nothing in return.

It’s time that we began to think globally.  There is more out there than your own backyard.  Jump for it.  Strive for it.  Become other worldly with me.   We cannot forgive those you have never reached for something greater.  The fate of mankind is in each of your hands.  Can you make it better?

-Jack
I Listen.
I Travel.