Tag Archives: doubt

The Periculum: a vision

(This is an edited culling from a series of visions experienced by the author, first published online in July of 2007 as a column titled THE PERICULUM.)

+ + + + +

With the Industrial Age the modern era began, followed in rapid succession by the Atomic Age, the Jet Age, the Space Age and, most recently, the Information Age.  All of these are characterized by technology, humanity’s method and means to control and dominate its environment.  There is little doubt that this era is soon to collapse under its own increasingly ponderous weight.  We are at the thin end of the wedge of a new epoch, an epoch that will signal a spiritual renaissance or the ultimate destruction of humanity as we know it.  A New Day will dawn as the Imagination Age.  What (if anything) succeeds this final Day remains to be seen.

Traversing the narrow corridors of our existence, we prefer stupefaction to cognizance.  So long we have a strong cell signal and new Tik-Toks are available to watch, all is well and life is as it should be.  Lip service is paid to the sad state of things, but even this is forgotten when the news of some celebrity’s latest travail requires dissemination.

Hear the truth- Humanity has but superficially emerged from the dark ages.  Times have changed greatly, but the spirit has changed very little.  As it has been proven, the mundane can and will destroy the magickal if magick is stripped of its importance in our lives.

Know your enemies.  Outside the castle are people who know the Right Way.  Because you know not the Right Way, they wish you dead and they have no hesitancy in giving their own life or the lives of their family and friends to see that you get your just reward.  Inside the castle walls, those sworn to protect and defend long ago lost their way.  Nothing is of greater importance to the guardians than the retention of their Power.  For that, you must obey.  You must conform.  And conform you do.  You expect them to keep you safe; under their aegis you believe yourself to be free. This is an illusion.  You have no freedom, no safety.  Abdicate your responsibility and you rightly deserve to enjoy neither.

On the one hand, there are those who cry, “We must talk!  We must give!  Surely they will listen to reason?!”  Whose reason?  Yours?  What arrogance!  You expect the rest of the world to think like you, to process like you, to have your values, your mythologies?  Then you are a fool.  Millennia divide those shores.  On the hand opposite, those who enjoin wholesale destruction of the enemy, of the land, of the Self.  “Rain fire down and conquer; the pittance remaining we shall claim.”  Such ignorance!  Each position flawed, extreme, fatal.  Arrogance and ignorance, ignorance and arrogance.  Singularly, a scourge; combined, deadly, a brew most foul.

Eyes numb and dead (or alive with fear), the parrots march and chant their silly slogans, sure that they walk the Path of Change.  The dullards will say what is wrong is right and right is wrong.  People will die while the media dances.  The dance is to convince us to ignore the truth, to offer solutions to problems that do not exist, while that which kills us creeps and spreads.

Political machinations contrived to control others by those who lack the wherewithal to control themselves.  Deceptions bought and sold, masters of illusion spinning webs of self-delusion.  Those who would rather lie than speak the truth inevitably lie most to themselves.  What was once frustration has grown the wings of desperation.  The Sun will rise to reveal the carnage.

The absence of Truth,

The absence of Trust,

The absence of Restraint,

The absence of Foresight,

The absence of Insight,

The absence of Creation,

The presence of Violence,

The presence of Ignorance,

The presence of Arrogance,

The presence of Denial –

– these are the Commandments of a sick and dying people, written on the crumbling stone that used to be their hearts.

Death is feared; Life is feared all the more.  The line will bruise the Circle.

Things do not exist in isolation.  Not humans, not animals, not plants nor waters nor rocks, not capitalism, not socialism, neither philosophies nor religions.  What happens to the People happens to All.  Your dream as you know it may soon become a nightmare.  Techno-junkies without a fix, slaves betrayed by their ignorance.  Variegated and shadowy, the Death of Hope is near.

Greatness shackled, endeavor blinded, a great hope corrupted and defiled, changed from plowshare into bludgeon.  Warriors overrun by mindless, thoughtless, soulless soldiers “just following orders.”  There is motion without progress, becoming stillness, becoming Death, fair evidence of this generation’s plague.  Winds blowing that which long ago stopped being air.  Do you give sanction to your murderer, or do you say “NO!” and dare to make a stand?

This is not the raging of a spiteful God.  This is Chaos bringing Order.

©Billy Red Horse

#MysticOffTopic

In my Life generally and in my work specifically as The Gentleman Mystic, I speak to the creation, experience, and expression of Beauty.  I teach that the reason we are born into this Life is to know the Joys of living.  For me, this manifests through Self-awareness and the process of continual personal refinement.  My work has absolutely nothing to do with providing commentary on the cultural distractions of politics or its attendant machinations.  Hence the title of this present dispatch being #MysticOffTopic.

My concern is not with any specific political stance, party, or affiliation.  Believe what you want, support whatever candidates or positions speak to you, it makes no difference to me.  What motivates me to write this piece is what I perceive to be the proliferation of throttles and downright suppression in the marketplace of ideas by the gatekeepers of the Big 3 social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube/Google.)

I understand that the Constitutional guarantees regarding freedom of speech are in place to stop the government from using its power to limit expression by the citizens of this nation.  I also know that the private sector is not bound (nor should it ever be) by those sacrosanct constrictions.  If the aforementioned Big 3 wish to limit the type and tenor of discussions and interactions on their platforms, they are absolutely within their rights to do so.  What disturbs me is the unevenness with which these platforms choose to dole out their restrictions, suspensions, and outright bans to certain individuals that could be viewed as libertarian, conservative, or otherwise right-leaning, all the while protesting that they are showing no favoritism and are simply abiding by their own previously established terms of service.  Even more troubling are the number of accounts I have observed to be suspended or banned which, though not political per se, do not fall within the present zeitgeist of political correctness, yet are otherwise not even remotely incendiary or maliciously provocative.  Conversely, there are accounts (many belonging to well known celebrities) currently active on Twitter that routinely tweet out all manner of vile and inflammatory rhetoric with no consequence.  The difference?  Those in the last group are openly and vocally left on the political spectrum.

(Lest anyone accuse me of declaiming that my personal “preferred” ideology is being unfairly victimized in/by social media: 1) Unless you have spoken with me personally, you very likely have no idea what are my political leanings, and 2) I would be just as concerned with what I perceive to be unequally meted out redactions if it were the right which were the beneficiaries of such actions.)

The Big 3 platforms will undoubtedly trundle on as they see fit.  Certainly, market pressures can be brought to bear but, until dollars (or the loss thereof) supplant ideologies, there is little reason to expect a lessening of the affronts to the right or the non-PC center, or parity with the left being more stridently scrutinized and admonished.  So what to do, then?

I have never had a reason for any of my social media accounts to be censured but, as I have already alluded to, reason is a sometimes nebulous and flimsy thing in these matters.  (For all I know, the contents of this very dispatch could be sufficient provocation for an audit of my social media presence if word of my position somehow made its way to the proper inquisitors.)  It is my intention to remain active on Twitter with it being my primary social media outlet, along with my extant Instagram account.  This does not mean I have any degree of confidence that my anodyne gentleman’s voice is in any way safe or above misguided reproach.  It is with this in mind I have opened an account with one alternative to Twitter, that being Parler.  My handle there is the same as my Twitter handle.  Should other viable options present themselves I will certainly give them due consideration.

Two of our greatest freedoms are those of expression and of choice.  I hope you will use both wisely.

©Billy Red Horse

What If I’m Wrong?

This question can elicit from deep within us a terror of the worst sort, for it requires a forthright examination of our suppositions and suspicions and shines a light on dark places that we would much rather remain shadowed.

What if the ideas and hopes, the positions and assertions we hold dear are shown to be flawed or otherwise unreliable? What if those things in which we have invested our Energy, that we have defended and even promoted, turn out to be a house of cards? What, then, do we have? What, then, do we do?…

It is certain that we hesitate to question our beliefs because our culture preferentially rewards the “right” answer or the “right” action and summarily castigates and sanctions those which are “wrong” or “unacceptable.” It is this inculcated aversion to incongruity that can lead us to avoid the difficult work that may well reveal that which we would prefer to not acknowledge concerning our most cherished convictions. To put it bluntly, we find it embarrassing to be wrong. Embarrassment, however, is insufficient reason to cling doggedly to our inherited cultural mythologies or the mythologies we have painstakingly formulated and collected about ourSelves.

Then there is the doubt.

Should we discover a breach in the ramparts of our certainty, it is then that we may find our confidence is shaken and the poison of doubt has started to seep into the crevices of our Self-esteem. Doubt can be the most caustic and debilitating of adversaries.

The antidote to doubt is the recognition and acceptance of the verity that, so long as we are willing to be proven wrong, we can find peace (and even excitement!) in the knowledge that there is always more to see, always more to feel, always more to experience, always more to learn. “Wrong” does not have to be forever. Being wrong or mistaken or misguided is not an irreversible condition.

To ask “what if I am wrong” is a daunting question. It is a question, however, that the Self in search of integrity and a Life grounded in mindfulness of the Real must be bold and courageous enough to ask, over and over and over again.

©Billy Red Horse