Update on University and Spiritual Journey

My Exam is finished. I am officially a free man. I even got my Ginsberg essay back. I got an 85, which I feel a bit disappointed about because that was a damn fine essay.

As many of you may know, I have been looking into the Western Mystery Tradition as I like to call it, which has lead me to develop an interest in the Kabbalah, or Qabbalah, or Cabala. However you spell it, I have recently been in contact with the guys who run the Chasing Hermes podcast. One of them, Jason, has dropped by and said hello. I emailed him earlier, because I had the Naos dream. His theory is that Naos represents a higher order of my being and thus might be more interesting then stuff that one usually sees in lucid dreams. He also made the comment that he would really like read what the "Kabbalistic" literature I come up with, but warned me that I should avoid getting to preachy. I agree with him frankly, because preachy writers can be annoying, unless it's Robert A. Heinlein because then I can giggle about all the polyamory. He he, Heinlein you dirty old bastard. Anyways, I don't think that will be to much of a problem. I already have plans for religiously themed novels, and I hope they can turn out something like Dostoevsky's work. He writes what is basically religious-themed works, but it's still pretty cool.
Amyways, I'm looking into the Western Mystery Tradition very seriously now. I'm reading a book on Kabbalah by a guy called Gareth Knight. He seems to be alright, but I'm still a student of this and have yet to put it into practice. What I have got is that meditation is very important and that the Western Mystery Tradition emphasises living in this current world, as compared to the Eastern Mystery Tradition, which doesn't care so much for this world. I know a guy who can teach me meditation, but he comes from the Eastern school. It may be the same thing basically. I also had a lecture David Lynch made about how meditation has helped him with his movie that seemed interesting. I hope to apply these very soon. Now that I don't have an exam to worry about I probably will. I will also be looking into lucid dreaming and astral projection, since it seems like fun and might give me a few ideas for stories or poems.

Naos Dream

I forgot about this for awhile, but I feel I need to bring this up. Last night I dreamed I meet Naos, but my life was different. My family all lived in the same room, and slept in the same bed but not because we were poor but because everyone did it. I also had a Tarot deck based on Hindu Mythology and a Rama action figure. Then I meet Naos. I rescused him from a riot, because he was tied up to something. I think he was being sold as a slave. I ended bringing Naos back to my room and we talked about Tarot. I can't remember much else.

This is the first time I meet Naos in a dream. This is interesting, since I was liseaning to a podcast on astral projection, and dreams are the first step. I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool if I could meet Naos and Helen and other fictional characters in my dreams or in Astral Planes. I wonder if I'll dream about Naos again? This could prove very interesting. Can I meet the characters I make in my dreams? If any nice friendly astral travellers are reading this I would appreciate advice on this.

Mostly About Kabbalah

Something appears to be up with this computer. I think I am approching the time when I need to change my virus protection. Who's idea was it for computers to have viruses anyways?

Most of my time since I got the letter about Remodernism has been concerned with writing outlines for my English exam. I am going to have to answer three out of the six questions I have been given and I am writing outlines to give me an idea of what happened. So far I've planned out most of them or have an idea of what I'm going to do with half of them. After that I will be looking for a summer job, so I have money to go to Revel and buy books. My parents have me on 20 dollars every two weeks, which is a bit less then what I used to have. 20 dollars per week. Apparently Allen Ginsberg had 15 dollars a month when he was at University. He also was obsessed with Neal Cassady, who wasn't interested in Allen in that way though apparently they did have sex. I feel like a kindred spirit to Ginsberg in many ways, and I'm hoping to learn from his mistakes so I don't make them. It's very easy for me to fall head over heals in love with someone, it has happened before. So far I haven't been overwhelmingly obsessed with someone.
I'm starting to wonder how much of my life I should put down in my fiction. For awhile I thought this may be a bad idea, but I think that it would be a nice place to start. I don't want to be one of those writers who just rewrites his own life into fiction. I think I can do that, but most of my story ideas are leaning towards historical-occult fiction with various esoteric Judeo-Christian overtones. I'm thinking about looking into this sort of thing, I've been toying with studying Kabbalah for a long time now, ever since I read Promethea, and will be doing it in the fall since I am defenetly taking the Kaballah course. I'm probubly one of the few people who didn't get into Kabbalah through Madonna these days. To be honest, if your going to get into Kabbalah then it would probubly best to get into it from a comic book written by a British man who hasen't shaved since the Thatcher administration, studies the Western esoteric tradition and once saw a fictional character he invented in a bar then a pop singer from the 80s with a coffee table book about sex or something like that. Or you should at least learn it from an old Jewish guy. Also, selling Kabbalah water for $2000 dollars is probubly the stupidist thing I've heard off since, well bottled water. Water should be free and should not have anything to do with ancient mystic paths unless it is a metaphor for something, like rebirth or something.

Basically, what I know about Kabbalah is that it is supposed to be an "operating program for the human soul." Besides the Promethea comic book, most of what I know is from a podcast on the know defunct, Out There. Out There is a pretty good podcast if you want an introduction into the world of occultism, conspiracy theories, fringe science and weird stuff like that. Some of the episodes freaked me out, such as the one about 9/11 truth and another on 2012, but others such as Kabbalah and the episode on James Shelby Downard that proved to be very interesting. It's really something of a crap shoot on the affect, but either way alot of the stuff I hear on this will probubly worm it's way into my writing. I'd like to do a conspiracy novel based on the writings of James Shelby Downard at some point, but were talking about Kabbalah. Basically, it's very complex, has a cool tree thing and will give it's practitioner the gift of Prophecy, which is something that sounds pretty cool. If memory serves, then to practice Kaballah one must get involved with making humanity better while studying alot of ancient texts, specifically the Bible but you can use it on anyting according to the person who read it. I imagine that the Orthodox Jews would say, no you can only use the Bible, but I imagine that you could use the Bible as a sort of basic text and everything else can be a sort of spring off of that. It works too, because apparently people who study English Literature do much better if they're familiar with the Bible, because it's the basis of Western Literature. I can connect the Bible to all of the books I'm reading now for instance. The Brothers Karamazov, easy. Dostotevsky's work is fundamentally Christian. What's Bred In The Bone, deals a lot with Christianity's affect on the main character at the moment, and it also has an angel (The Lesser Zadkiel) and a daimon who's name I forget, who are working on said character's biography. Also, I wrote an essay recently about Allen Ginsberg that compared him to an ancient Hebrew Prophet, only with more homoeroticism. Not sure how Jews would take to most of this, but I'm sure they can admit that Christians are really just unclean slightly-pagan Jews, mainly since most Christians aren't going to kill the Jews for saying that and because it is basically true. I'm comfortable with being a bad pseudo-Jew myself, I may even work on becoming more Jewish one day.

Well, that is all for my musings today. I'm going to talk with a friend of mine now.