Hollow

There’s no place to run to. I’ve hollowed out my capsules, dissolved paper, and digested fungus. Screens are empty windows and movies are inescapably temporary. Nothing can pacify, nullify the impact cascading emotions now. There is nothing I can do but accept the cold dark embrace of all my shadows.

Liminal Dismay

As the forlorn atmosphere of coming back to oneself envelops your eden, the tree of poisonous serpents lies coiled beneath the canvas of dreams.

The apple of your eye lies dormant in darkness, fast asleep, despite orbital decay. Will it break the dawn with display? Or disintegrate liminal dismay.

Blackness

For me Art is very much about the incarnation of spirit into matter, the souls descent into space and time, into dissolving states of chaos, repressed trauma and dissolution of defences. This descent can be frightening for most people at first, but ultimately It's about going into the unknown blackness, to find your light, the parts of you that remain even as the self structure dissolves.

The blackness represents the shadow self. The shadow deals with all the parts of ourselves that we do not want to look at, that ego rejects. The shadow is the“sum of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility with the chosen conscious attitude, are denied expression in life.”- Jung

Embracing the fact that shadow and light can only exist as concepts relative to each other, is the first step to integrating, and transforming the shadow into alchemical, artistic gold.

As a fairly young species we have found ourselves living in a world predominantly driven by external phenomenon. That is to say we exist in a collective paradigm transfixed on experiences that can be quantified through the narrow funnel of our human senses. Take the allegory of Plato's cave for example, we tend to think of it as a place for the unenlightened, or poor prisoners of darkness and ignorance, where all they can perceive is the shadows, they cant see the light in this case associated with higher states of consciousness, mathematics, geometry and deductive logic. In Western societies we look at these aspects as being the most important, however I'm inclined to disagree because when you are contemplating shadows, the imagination and psyche must come into play and that is perhaps more interesting, as it paints a truer picture.

Ad Reinhardt had a series of black paintings where he talked about how you have to meditate on the blackness to see it become a thousand different things. “Stare into the abyss long enough and eventually you find the abyss stares back at you.”- Niche

In my own inner experience I also discovered the once feared void was actually a space of vigorous creativity as anything can come out of the black. Having spent much time exploring within, I perceived many forms emerging from the gloom, eye witnessed yellow dotted, orange hills develop into an entire world of creative machinery, felt entities kiss me blessings as they passed through me, and experienced some of the most preternatural other-worldly events that have upgraded me forever.

So I'm interested in venturing into the blackness to find sacred sparks of inner truth. As an artist being able to transmute the spiritually rich, transcendental data from these worlds, to visually map visions so that they may be collectively deciphered, is the result of my psyche's descent into darkness.

I believe its this fearless journey that we all must take, which lays the groundwork to discovering the truth of who we really are, and what we aspire to become.

Trip Report 04/22

Confidently munching on 3.5 grams of mushrooms after swallowing two tabs of LSD, I almost miss the feeling of being anxious before a trip.

Back in the day, I sometimes worried about being unprepared for the experience, as if there was the possibility I could get irreversibly crushed by the psychedelic wave, and that my mind would fail to re-member itself after melting away from a manually induced altered state. In this context fear is a powerful emotion, something that jump starts that ancient instinctive fight or flight mode, aiding bio hacked sleepers, into wakeful beings once more. . . I miss those days.

Instead the feeling was more like sending out a single, and excitedly waiting for my meta physical friends to join in on the fun. It was the first time mixing the two substances and there was a point early on where I felt the two entheogens were awkwardly interacting with each other, like they were talking over one another instead of waiting for the right moment to express their uniqueness. Unease washed over me because it was unpleasant and I was about to enter a long journey with the two of them. I had to create a synergetic environment for the three of us so I sat up and focused my will power, like a mediator of sorts, and somehow managed to stabilize equilibrium between the two substances. I laid back down, closed my eyes, and brought my attention inwards to the closed eye visual show transpiring. I peered into the black as long tendril like arms wrapped in colourful, repeating patterns stretched down towards me. No doubt a mycelium web of interconnected data exchange was happening. Like being plugged into a new dimension via arteries that feed you cosmic energy from an ever flowing great stream of collective, transpersonal data. Deep in the black something occurred to me, I had completely conquered my fear of taking that deep dive within. I recall thinking, Oh yes we’re in Aaron’s mind now, and that was a good feeling. The fear of unpleasant mind distortions, demons or ego death was no longer present. Even without the ego intact we are reality creating machines and this truth was very obvious to me throughout the experience.

I could perceive a spiralling charcoal tempest before me made of shifting geometric cubes and dark smoke clouds. Each cubes face had moving images on it, animations or memories contained within them and they were also individually spinning. Some images I reconized as familiar others I did not. I realized I was at the nexus of ultimate liberty because I could choose to enter the world within any of these boxes. Enormous chunks of my earthly being seemed to be categorized on 2d surfaces that I could simply swipe away if I chose to. This phenomenon liberated me greatly, feeling that whatever stress I had in this life could easily be flipped away without any further thought. In fact the entirety of my life, the collected weight of experiences through the vehicle of Aaron’s body, could be simply put aside so that all that was left was pure awareness. My excitement towards this enfolding is certainly due to the mental machinations of an untethered spirit, but also deriving your sense of self from a point far deeper than the external world.

later in the trip a large number of the women I cared about or desired in my life made an energetic appearance. They called out to me showing me their true nature, and I felt they could see me too, no longer veiled by emotional masks, or even skin, they saw all my raw weaknesses and strengths. An apparition of a smooth perfectly curved body appeared before me. The owner of this beautifully sculpted wonder was unknown. Continuously it hovered in front of me, it’s owner nameless, it’s beauty timeless. She comfortably embodied all women, yet none of them at once, just a symbol beckoning my desire to make contact on this elegant belly surface.

Towards the end I remember feeling that I had essentially solved life, that my dreams and aspirations, had already been set in motion, and all that was left was to enjoy the ride as it took me into the next chapter of of my life. Perhaps I had jumped into a future version of myself, because I felt I had already accomplished everything I wanted at the time. I do not believe spirits are bound by the space time continuum the way our bodies are, therefore they can jump anywhere on the timeline, to carve out set paths most aligned with our deepest truths.

This is the way of Dreaming your reality awake.

Darkness Enfold

As of late I feel drawn to the state of hopelessness. Its predictability is oddly comforting. I want to see the pattern of my demise, to hear my resolves echo alone in the dark.

Perhaps I’ve dug this hole to give myself the chance to climb, to ascend the dirt, to call in the warrior spirit and awaken an inconceivable inner power.

This cyclical movement towards shadow, surrounding my state of fabricated hopelessness, envelopes me in a darkness of my own creation, because I want to see a new form grow from the disassembled husk of my illusions. Invoking a rebirth from the ashes of my past self is the only way I see fit to move on.

EVER GLADE

As Air would have it,

the age of aquarius rotates into the sphere of perception once more bringing with it mystical powers, prophetic wisdom and vital regeneration.

Endless gratitude to the ONE in existence, as we welcome you to the

‘Ever Glade of Celestial Enchantments’.

First blog

Here we are again, together through dreaming, singing, dancing, communing and creating, even as the world ends. But we can choose the ending we want. The perimeter of imagination outlines the shape of your destiny, and I’ve envisoned a future which sees humanity form a synergy with our technological counterparts. Art and spirituality in the advent of technology as we navigate new ways to utilize these synthetic creations as tools, tools for consciousness expansion and reconnection to inner truth.