My Blog

Put some Love.

niymae — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:00:25 GMT

Prayer for You I'm happy to announce that this is a perfect moment. It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer for all of you. I've been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of you -- even those of you who don't believe in the power of prayer. And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods ... the God beyond all Gods ... the Girlfriend of God ... the Teacher of God ... the Goddess who invented God. Dear Goddess, You who never kill but only change: I pray that my exuberant, suave and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads this benediction. I pray that you will give them what they don't even know they want -- not just the boons they think they need but everything they've always been afraid to even imagine or ask for. Dear Goddess, You wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground: Many of the divine chameleons out there don't even know that their souls will live forever. So please use your blinding magic to help them see that they are all wildly creative geniuses too big for their own personalities. Guide them to realize that they are all completely different from what they think they are and more exciting than they can possibly imagine. Make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic and totally tasteless for them to be in love with anyone or anything that's no good for them. O Goddess, You who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing: I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the dumb ideas, bad decisions and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed the wise and sexy virtuosos out there. Remove, banish, annihilate and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung to them, no matter how long they've suffered from it, and even if they've become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship. And please conjure an aura of protection around them so that they will receive an early warning if they are ever about to act in such a way as to bring another hex or plague or voodoo into their lives in the future. Dear Goddess, sweet Goddess, You sly universal virus with no fucking opinion: I pray that you will help all the personal growth addicts out there become disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction. I pray that you will teach them the difference between oppressive self-control and liberating self-control, awaken in them the power to do the half-right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing. Arouse the Wild Woman within them -- even if they're men. And please give them bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems. Dear Goddess, You pregnant slut who scorns all mediocre longing: I pray that you will inspire all the compassionate rascals communing with this prayer to love their enemies just in case their friends turn out to be jerks. Provoke them to throw away or give away all the things they own that encourage them to believe that they are better than anyone else. Show them how much fun it is to brag about what they cannot do and do not have. Most of all, Goddess, brainwash them with your freedom so that they never love their own pain more than anyone else's pain. Dear Goddess, You psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains: The curiously divine human beings reading this prayer deserve everything they are yearning for and much, much more. So please bless them with lucid dreams while they are wide awake and solar-energy-operated sex toys that work even in the dark and vacuum cleaners for their magic carpets and a knack for avoiding other people's hells and their very own 900 number so that everyone has to pay to talk to them and a secret admirer who is not a psychotic stalker. Dear Goddess, You fiercely tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm animal bodies: I pray that you provide everyone out there with a license to bend and even break all rules, laws and traditions that keep them apart from the things they love. Show them how to purge the wishy-washy wishes that distract them from their daring, dramatic, divine desires. And teach them that they can have anything they want if they'll only ask for it in an unselfish way. And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God, Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these mysterious moments you have begun to change everyone out there in the exact way they've needed to change in order to express their soul's code. Amen. Awomen. And glory halle-fucking-lujah.

in order of appearance

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:44:13 GMT

the preceeding personality types (maid of honor, priss, nymph) are here because i took the dating persona test on okcupid.com a few times. i scored nymph and then 'the wild rose' http://www.okcupid.com/personality?type=RBLD&g=2&o=1 .then i scored as the priss but i have not yet scored as the maid of honor, i'd sure like to be more like her, though. although my high sex drive is very real and undeniable. i wish i could find someone to make Good Love to me All Day!! that'd be nice. And of course, to make love To me is to make love with me. language is difficult, huh?? but Fun & Intriguing!..

i, emily mehr..

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:31:42 GMT

..now put intention into the presently true statement: 'I Aspire to BE all three!' -minus the lying. *gigglenRunnin' MothaFuckas!*

although a kind, endearing friend is..

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:26:40 GMT

Worth Soo Much More!!!. She is: The Maid of Honor Deliberate Gentle Love Master (DGLM) The Maid of Honor Appreciated for your kindness and envied for all your experience, you are The Maid of Honor. Charismatic, affectionate, and terrific in relationships, you are what many guys would call a "perfect catch"--and you probably have many admirers, each wishing to capture your long-term love. You're careful, extra careful, because the last thing you want is to hurt anyone. Especially some poor boy whose only crime was liking you. We've deduced you're fully capable of a dirty fling, but you do feel that post-coital attachment after hooking up. So, conscientious person that you are, you do your best to reserve physical affection for those you respect...so you can respect yourself. Your biggest negative is the byproduct of your careful nature: indecision. You're just as slow rejecting someone as you are accepting them. Your exact female opposite: Half-Cocked Half-Cocked Random Brutal Sex Dreamer Always avoid: The False Messiah (DBLM), The 5-Night Stand (DBSM), The Vapor Trail (RBLM), The Bachelor (DGSM) Consider: The Gentleman (DGLM), someone just like you.

she's also kind of "Cool!" although lying sucks!!

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:23:16 GMT

The Priss Deliberate Brutal Love Dreamer (DBLD) The Priss Mature. Responsible. Aristocratic. Excuse me. The Priss. Prisses are the smartest of all female types. You're highly perceptive, and confident in your judgements. You'd take brutal honesty over superficiality any time--your friends always know where they stand with you. You're completely unfake. Don't tell me that's not a word. You're also excellent at redirecting internal negative energy. These facts indicate people are often intimidated by you. They also fall for you, hard. You have a distant, composed allure that many find irresistible. If only more of them lived up to your standards. You were probably the last among your friends to have sex. And the first to pretend that you're pregnant. LOL. Though you're inclined to use sex as weapon, at least it's not as one of mass destruction. You're choosier than most about your partners. A supportive relationship is what you're really after. Whether you know it or not, you need something steady & long-term. And soothing. Your exact female opposite: The Playstation The Playstation Random Gentle Sex Master Always avoid: The Playboy (RGSM), The Loverboy (RGLM) Consider: The Manchild (RBLD) )heh, eew. most of them that i've met have been in real bad shape and really gross and twisted!( am i destined to hop on son? i'd rather hop on Pop or on a Horse, if you know what i mean. ;*

a condescending bitch imbues her fluids to whom she feels

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:09:54 GMT

The Nymph Deliberate Brutal Sex Dreamer (DBSD) The Nymph Sly. Sensual. Guarded. Different somehow. You are The Nymph. It appears like you're looking for a fling or a casual sexual relationship, but it's Not that simple. You're a hungry but also very careful person, and this generates a certain amount of sexual tension within you and in your relationships. In other aspects of life, you get what you want. In relationships, that's not always the case. It's possible you intimidate potential lovers. Most likely, though, you're a little closed off--therefore mysterious--and, naturally, people find that difficult to get with. Maybe it's just part of your selection process, though. You've been in enough relationships to know to expose yourself slowly. When you do feel comfortable with someone, though, your torrid sexual appetite will make him very happy. Your cautious nature is also a big asset in a long-term relationship. It might take longer for love to establish itself, but when it does, it's all the stronger. Your exact female opposite: The Peach The Peach Random Gentle Love Master Always avoid: The False Messiah (DBLM) Consider: The Playboy (RGSM)

~:baby with snake:~

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:05:19 GMT

Do you remember when you were born, by the way? It was a difficult miracle that involved many people who worked hard on your behalf. No less miraculous is the fact that you have continued to grow since then, with millions of new cells being born inside you to replace the old ones that die. All of this happens whether or not you ever think about it.

!very Lovingly!

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:56:50 GMT

i so often and unimpressively act like a know-it-all who has everything all figured out. is it boring you? let me know!! in the united states: 1-510-350-8356. emily mehr..

:Your IMAGINATION:

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:49:12 GMT

LIBERATE YOUR IMAGINATION The following piece is adapted from my book PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings Let me remind you who you really are: You are one of the chosen ones. You're a luminous being. A primordial miracle. A resplendent avatar. You are a deity in disguise--not a Buddha or a Christ, but of the same lineage and made from the same mojo. I want to be sure you get what I'm saying. You're an immortal messiah. You have been around since the beginning of time and will be here after the end. Every day and in every way, you're getting better at playing the mysterious master game we all dreamed up together before the Big Bang bloomed. Let me put it another way. You're a rebel creator longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary. You are a dissident bodhisattva joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment. It's time to remember. You are a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs that has temporarily taken on the form of a human being, agreeing to endure amnesia about your true origins. And why did you do that? Because it was the best way to forge the exquisitely unique and robust identity that would make you such an elemental force in our 14-billion-year campaign to bring heaven all the way down to earth. You and I are freedom fighters scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve all of our fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with more blessings than they know what to do with. * Lately, I must admit, our work has seemed almost comically impossible. Many of our brothers and sisters believe that everything is upside-down and inside-out. Is war really peace? Is slavery really freedom? Is ignorance strength? How did it all get so insane? Even many of the smartest among us seem to have lost their vision. Cynicism has become a supreme sign of intelligence. Compulsive skepticism masquerades as perceptiveness. Mean-spirited irony is chic. Beautiful truths are suspect and ugly truths are popular. At this peculiar turning point in the evolution of our 14-billion-year-old master game, it ain't easy to carry out our mission. We've got to be both wrathful insurrectionaries and exuberant lovers of life. We've got to cultivate cheerful buoyancy even as we resist the temptation to swallow thousands of delusions that have been carefully crafted and seductively packaged by those among us who bravely volunteered to play the role of deceivers. We have to learn how to stay in a good yet unruly mood as we overthrow the cockeyed mass hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as reality. Maybe most importantly, we have to be ferociously and single-mindedly dedicated to the cause of beauty and truth and love even as we keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free. We have to be both disciplined and rowdy. That's especially thorny because of the fact that a genocide of the imagination is raging world-wide. It threatens to render our imaginations numb and inert and passive and tame. I know you know what I mean. Aren't you psychically assaulted by dangerous images every day? Don't the media relentlessly blast you with their trendy doom and gloom fixation, barraging you with messages about how bad life is? Doesn't the entertainment industry force-feed you insipidly paranoid scenarios in the same way a French foie gras farmer crams eight pounds of corn down the gullet of his prize goose every day? Aren't your eyes and ears constantly scalded by blistering harangues to buy stuff you don't really need? Isn't the sacred temple of your imagination pounded ruthlessly by smart bombs whipped up by evil advertising geniuses in their Madison Avenue laboratories? Hasn't your ability to envision the astounding intricacy and richness of the web of life gotten hijacked and hooked on decadent fantasies about new possessions that would allegedly make you happier? Your imagination is supposed to be the engine of your destiny. It is the wizard's wand you can use to design your future. Your imagination is your power to create mental pictures of things that don't exist yet and that you want to bring into being. Every human creation on this earth has begun as a vision in someone's imagination. Your imagination is also your very own all-purpose joy stick, your snakeskin bag of magic tricks. It's your remote-control channel-changer, and the only reliable rearranger of anything anywhere anytime. It's your X-Factor, your wild card, your wicked funny instigator, your Goddess-sanctioned trouble-maker -- your swarming, terraforming, always-morning brainstormer. Love desperately needs your imagination. As psychologist James Hillman says, "For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, and boredom. Intimacy fails not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining." Your imagination is the single most important tool you have in your daily fight to be free. It is the source of every act of liberation you will ever need to pull off. But how can your imagination flourish--how can it dream up scenarios that energize you to create your own version of heaven on earth--if you are forever deluged by dazzling psychic toxins that sting and sap and wound your lust for life? Too many of our brothers and sisters have fallen victim. Their swarming terraforming always-morning brainstormers have been cruelly fooled into acting as if their deepest desires are impossible lies. As a result they live incoherent lives corroded by chronic anxiety. I for one am no longer willing to tolerate the epidemic obsession with big bad nasty things and flashy trite empty-hearted things. I say it's time for us to re-consecrate and regenerate and lubricate and liberate and take back our imaginations. Here are my demands. DEMAND #1: I demand that Amnesty International launch a crusade against a form of terrorism I call the genocide of the imagination. DEMAND #2: I demand that you periodically go on a media fast. For a week at a time, once a season, avoid all TV, movies, novels, yalk shows, newspapers, magazines, and Internet. DEMAND #3: I demand that you learn to tell the difference between your own thoughts and those of the celebrities who have demonically possessed you. DEMAND #4: I demand that People magazine do a feature story on "The World's Fifty Sexiest Perpetrators of Beauty, Truth, and Rowdy Bliss." DEMAND #5: I demand that you wear underpants on your head and dance naked in slow motion whenever you watch movies on TV about tormented geniuses who create great art but treat everyone in their lives like crap. DEMAND #6: I demand that you refuse to be entertained and entranced by bad news--by stories whose plots are driven by violence, abuse, terrorism, bigotry, lawsuits, greed, crashes, alcoholism, disease, and torture. DEMAND #7: I demand that you seek out and create stories that make you feel that the universe is friendly and life is on your side. You could hunt down stories about how, for example, rising rates of intermarriage are helping to dissipate ethnic and religious strife worldwide; how the violent crime rate in America has been steadily declining for 30 years; how death rates from cancer are shrinking; the birth rate among teenage mothers is the lowest it's been in six decades; acreage devoted to organic farming is increasing rapidly; the number of refugees and weapons sales all over the world are way down from the level they were 15 years ago, and how the actual bare naked truth is that levels of literacy and education and political freedom and peace and wealth are steadily growing all over the world. DEMAND #8: When you're too well-entertained to move, screaming is good exercise. Which is why I demand that you scream now and then whenever you're soaking up slick crap generated by the imaginations of people who are devoted to money, power, and ego instead of love, reverence, and play. * There is another force that fuels the war against the imagination--and that's fundamentalism. The fundamentalist takes everything way too seriously and way too personally and way too literally. He divides the world into two camps, those who agree with him and those who don't. There is only one right way to interpret the world, and a million wrong ways. The fundamentalist not only enslaves his own imagination to his belief system, he wants to enslave our imaginations too. The liberated imagination, God forbid, is taboo. In one of her poems, Diane DiPrima declares that a war against the imagination is raging worldwide. "The only war that matters is the war against the imagination," she says. "All other wars are subsumed in it." If she's right, then the war against terrorism is a symptom of the war against the imagination. The war against our civil liberties is a symptom of the war against the imagination. The war against the environment, the war against the poor, the war against some drugs--all symptoms. It's the fundamentalists who want this war. They fight it and force everybody else to fight, too. And who are the fundamentalists? It's not just the usual suspects; it's not just the religious fanatics of Islam and Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism. There are many other kinds of fundamentalists, and some of them have gotten away with practicing their fundamentalism in a stealth mode. Among the most successful are those who believe in what Robert Anton Wilson calls fundamentalist materialism. That's the faith-based dogma that swears physical matter is the only reality and that nothing exists unless it can be detected by our five senses or by technologies that humans have made. There is no inherent meaning or purpose to the universe, the fundamentalist materialists proclaim. There is no divine intelligence. The universe is a dumb accidental machine that grinds on endlessly out of blind necessity. I see spread out before me in every direction a staggeringly sublime miracle lovingly crafted by a supernal consciousness that oversees the evolution of 500 billion galaxies, yet is also available as an intimate companion and daily advisor to every one of us. But to the fundamentalist materialists, my perceptions are dead wrong and utterly idiotic. There are many other varieties of fundamentalism. Every ideology, even the ones I like, has its share of true believers, fanatics who judge all other ideologies as inferior, flawed, and foolish. I know astrologers who insist there's only one way to do astrology right. I know Buddhists who adamantly decree that the inherent nature of life on earth is suffering. I know progressive activists who sincerely believe that every single Republican is either stupid or evil or both. I know college administrators who would excommunicate any psychology professor who dared to discuss the teachings of Carl Jung, who was in my opinion one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. I know pagans who refuse to consider any other version of Jesus Christ beyond the sick parody the Christian right has fabricated. There are true believers everywhere. And they don't like to hear that there are at least three sides to every story. They don't like to hear that everyone has a piece of the truth. And here's the really bad news: Many of us here, including me, are infected with the fundamentalist virus. Each of us is fanatical, rigid, and intolerant about products of the imagination that we don't like. We wish that certain people would not imagine the things they do, and we allow ourselves to beam hateful, war-like thoughts in their direction. We even wage war against our own imaginations, commanding ourselves, sometimes half-consciously, to ignore possibilities that don't fit into our neatly constructed theories. Each of us sets aside certain precious beliefs and symbols that we give ourselves permission to take very seriously and personally and literally. Our fundamentalism, yours and mine, may not be as dangerous to the collective welfare as, say, the fundamentalism of Islamic terrorists and right-wing Christian politicians. It may not be as destructive as the CEOs who worship financial profit as the supreme measure of value and the scientists who ignore and deny every mystery that can't be measured. But still: We are all infected, you and I. We are fueling the war against the imagination. (What's your version of the virus?) This has got to stop. We are primordial miracles. Resplendent avatars. Deities in disguise. Rebel creators. We are wrathful insurrectionaries and exuberant lovers of life dedicated to navigating our way through this peculiar turning point in the evolution of our 14-billion-year-old master game. It is our sacred duty to keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free, and to make sure that all of our fellow messiahs, even those who volunteered to play the roles of ignorant deceivers, have the chance to keep their imaginations wild and hungry and free. How might we start curing ourselves of the virus and move in the direction of becoming more festive, relentless champions of the liberated imagination? For starters, we can take everything less seriously and less personally and less literally. We can laugh at ourselves at least as much as we laugh at other people. We can blaspheme our own gods and burn our own flags and mock our own hypocrisy and satirize our own fads and fixations. We can enjoy the pleasures of healing mischief, friendly shocks, compassionate tricks, irreverent devotion, holy pranks, playful experiments, and crazy wisdom. We can inspire each other to perpetrate healing mischief, friendly shocks, compassionate tricks, blasphemous reverence, holy pranks, and crazy wisdom. We can be humble enough to understand that it's a crime against life to act like a know-it-all who has everything all figured out.

~The Progress Paradox: Ivory Lightening.~

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:47:52 GMT

Sense & Spirituality SENSE & SPIRITUALITY opinion & commentary on the modern spiritual search by D. Patrick Miller When People Feel Bad about Good Things Happening If you think the world is going to hell in a handbasket, you may need to update your attitude. In his new book The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, journalist Gregg Easterbrook has gathered a formidable array of facts and figures to suggest that human beings have never had it so good on this planet — at least the 500 million human beings who are fortunate enough to live in America, Western Europe, Australia and Japan. "The creation of entire regions of the world in which most people are well-off — in which the typical person lives what all previous generations considered a dream — is without precedent in history," says Easterbrook: "Public health is improving by nearly every measure…. Doomsday claims to the contrary, environmental trends are nearly all positive…. Drinking, smoking, and most forms of drug use are declining. Teen pregnancy is declining. Welfare rolls are shrinking without increase in poverty. Women, immigrants, and minority group members are acquiring ever-larger slices of national pies. The divorce rate has stopped increasing. Personal freedom has never been greater. Book sales hit new records almost every year. Movies and television may at times be excruciating, but otherwise art and culture have never been more active, interesting or diverse. Nearly all forms of death due to accident are declining. Crime has declined so rapidly that the fall has been almost eerie…. " And so on. All these sunny conclusions, and more, are backed up by oodles of statistics selected by Easterbrook — although skeptics may observe, as did a Publishers Weekly review of Paradox, that one could always come up with alternative statistics to prove that things are really awful. Indeed, political candidates, lobbyists, and virtually all journalists besides Easterbrook butter their bread with bad news, and the general public depends on what they hear from such sources to fashion their grasp of reality. As an example, Easterbrook reports that "Overestimation of crime is amplified by the fact that 45 percent of crimes reported in the media involve sex or violence, though only 3 percent of all crimes involve sex or violence. Television's sex-and-violence-obsessed approach causes viewers to have highly unrealistic impressions of the risks in their own lives…." Even Easterbrook admits that some of the progress he cites has a real and undeniable backlash. The unprecedented freedom of movement enjoyed by civilized Westerners has created the modern scourges of air pollution, traffic jams, and deceptively dangerous SUVs careening along the freeways. In the ranks of poverty, there has been a dramatic and ironic shape-shifting: instead of being thin and malnourished as they would have been a century ago, today's poor Americans are more likely to be obese and diabetic. And in terms of geopolitics, the tension created by the gap between Western affluence and severe poverty in other parts of the world obviously contributes to terrorism and other forms of violent conflict. But the biggest paradox of the West's undeniable material and social progress is that we just don't feel very good about it. "Adjusting for population growth," notes Easterbrook, "ten times as many people in the Western nations today suffer from 'unipolar' depression, or unremitting bad feelings without a specific cause, than did half a century ago. Americans and Europeans have ever more of everything except happiness." In part this is because most of us are making too much money to buy a better disposition; Easterbrook cites one study suggesting that for those making less than $10,000 yearly, getting more money really does increase their happiness. For those used to making more than $10,000, greater affluence may hold the promise of more joy and satisfaction but generally fails to deliver. Since the average per-capita income in the US and Western Europe is about $30,000, many of us have long passed the point where winning the lottery really will feel like a dream come true. Where Easterbrook thinks we can find greater peace and contentment is in the conscious development of inner qualities that most reporters don't like to talk about, lest their colleagues suspect them of going all warm and fuzzy. But Easterbrook suggests that "society is undergoing a fundamental shift from 'material want' to 'meaning want,' with ever larger numbers of people reasonably secure in terms of living standards, but feeling they lack significance in their lives…. This is a conundrum, as meaning is much more difficult to acquire than material possessions." Finding meaning is not an impossible quest, however. In Easterbrook's view, the key to the search is consciously developing the attitudes of forgiveness, gratefulness, and optimism. And he tirelessly presents more studies and statistics to support that proposition — including the intriguing information that people who acknowledge the importance of gratitude in their lives also tend to be a little more cynical about the state of the world than habitual ingrates. That may seem paradoxical, but to me it indicates a dimension of spiritual experience that Easterbrook doesn't explore in this work. The fact is that forgiveness and gratefulness, if deliberately practiced as spiritual disciplines, don't merely lead us toward feeling better about how good (or bad) our lives are in material terms. If these attitudes become truly ingrained in our consciousness over time, they increasingly lead us toward the surrender of "material reality" — and the acceptance of spiritual experience as a surpassing reality. Along the way toward that momentous shift in vision, it's entirely possible to feel that the world isn't all it's cracked up to be, and that conventional efforts to "save" or significantly change it aren't likely to succeed. That means people who practice gratefulness and forgiveness may sometimes still be tempted to think the world is going to hell in a handbasket. But they will also understand that things are not as they seem in the everyday material world — and that all things can be transformed by an ever-deepening spiritual perception and activism. Early in my own gratitude practice, I learned the importance of feeling grateful for the seemingly negative events or circumstances in my life, with the eventual result that what once seemed bad turned good, at least in terms of serving as useful challenges. The more forgiving and grateful you feel for all the current circumstances of life, the more you will appreciate that those circumstances only reflect your inner state of mind. In fact that's why some people can be happy about relatively meager circumstances, and others will be bitter in the midst of riches. I don't expect a senior editor of The New Republic to blow the lid off the story that our reality is spirit and all else is illusion — but I'm nonetheless grateful that a mainstream journalist has gone teetering out on a limb as far as Gregg Easterbrook dares to go. D. Patrick Miller is a writer, editor, and independent publisher specializing in contemporary spirituality. The author of five books and over 75 magazine articles, he examines social and political issues from an eclectic spiritual viewpoint without evangelizing for any particular religious belief. This edition of his "Sense & Spirituality" column is reprinted with permission from the Fearless Books website at www.fearlessbooks.com ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Susanna wrote me a thoughtful email in response to the "Sense & Spirituality" piece above. She raises questions every purveyor of pronoia should deal with. What do you think? She says: D. Patrick Miller's piece bugged me because while he and the book he discusses note that it is people in the "civilized world" that are so well-off, he neglects to mention that we are well-off precisely on the backs of the rest of the people who are sewing our clothes, growing our food, etc. for sub-living wages in dangerous work environments and living environments. Maybe the reason First Worlders are discontent is that beneath the surface surfeit of stuff, we realize the fundamental contradiction: that our plenty depends on the misery of others. This doesn't require only the cultivation of personal values like forgiveness, gratefulness, and optimism, but also putting these to service in group public action against the scourges of poverty, misogyny, racism, and imperialism that plague our world. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Here's D. Patrick Miller's response to Susanna: Although I didn't have the space to summarize all of Gregg Easterbrook's message in a short column, he (and I) would certainly agree with Susanna that part of the West's unhappiness has to do with an unconscious recognition of economic inequalities from which the West benefits. In fact he spends some time in the book detailing some Western excesses of affluence and recommending more effective foreign aid, etc. And it's safe to assume that he promotes the inner qualities of forgiveness, gratefulness, and optimism precisely because he believes they should be applied, as Susanna suggests, "to service in group public action against the scourges of poverty, misogyny, racism, and imperialism that plague our world." What I have to say about that, however, is that political activists rarely act from such a spiritual basis; instead they more often act from inner attitudes of anger, embitterment, moral superiority, and either a self-defeating fatalism or a self-promoting righteousness. I know that when I was younger I thought you had to be really angry to change the world for the better. Now I know that anger is the least productive political emotion, and serves chiefly to make the angry activist feel important while he or she actually gets relatively little accomplished. Anger clouds your perception; forgiveness clears it. Clarity is essential to political action that actually creates positive change. D. Patrick Miller www.fearlessbooks.com

_milk in these titties!!

niymae — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:25:10 GMT

this has been going on for me for a few months now -as in, a few drops here and there but as of the past three or so weeks, my breasts have been really rounding out and developing a lot of creamy, white-colored and Very tasty milk. it tastes Delicious!!!!!!!!!!! and sometimes it squirts in three or four streams from each nipple when i squeeze! sometimes it travels for more than a foot or two when squirting. it's soooo funn!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D:D :D :D :d :d and 'm not pregnant nor do i have a baby or a Lover so..more yummies for me; Hooray-Ass beeytch! :D

Intimate Pronoia therapy

niymae — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 16:27:10 GMT

INTIMATE PRONOIA THERAPY excerpted from PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia 1. Celebrate Unhappy Hour at least once a month. During this ritual blowout, you have license to complain and rant about everything that's driving you crazy. Get a sympathetic listener to be your receptacle or deliver your blast straight into the mirror. If you prefer, write it all down. One way or another, grouse nonstop about your secret shame, raw sorrow, unspeakable guilt, and unnerving twists of destiny. Feel free to unleash guttural moans or rueful cackles. If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties you of psychic toxins. Pronoia will then have a chance to flourish as you luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions. 2. Describe a past event when you let yourself wander to the edge of unreasonable joy. Then imagine a future adventure that might once again bring you there. 3. If you’ve ever watched The Simpsons TV show, you’ve probably heard Homer Simpson’s favorite toast. “To alcohol,” he proclaims, “the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” My own salute is different. “To the Divine Trickster sometimes known as God,” I say, “the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” Compose a prayer in which you simultaneously curse and thank the Primal Source. 4. The English language is in a state of rapid ferment. New words are barging into the dictionary at an unprecedented rate, even as old familiars fall into disuse. There’s one exception to this trend: profanity. Hoary favorites like “fuck,” “shit,” and “asshole” have gained an acceptance unthinkable 30 years ago, but fresh curse words are rarely coined. At the Beauty and Truth Laboratory, we find the overused classics inadequate for expressing our ever-evolving rage at injustice and ugliness. Furthermore, as deadening clich?s, they don’t satisfy the pronoiac mandate to use language with sonorous precision. There’s another problem. Anger has become one of the trendiest emotions of all. In moderation it can be a righteous force for constructive change. But its hackneyed omnipresence means the vast majority of its outbreaks are trivial. The paucity of colorful obscenities is aggravated by an abundance of frivolous wrath. How can you purge the clich?d wrath that dilutes the useful, inspired stuff? One good method is to make fun of it by expressing it bigger than life. Try this. Go alone to a place where it’s safe to feel blind rage. Envision a person or deity you love to hate, then unleash the following mantra 15 times in the most vulgar tones possible: “You miasmic heap of shaved-off cemetery warts. You curdled slosh of rotting fracas-spawned opinions. You mangled preen of politicians’ tongue scabs. You brackish tripe of experts’ ego tinkles. You fragile crap of orphaned tyrants. You demented cluster of fickle weasel vows.” Now how about if you get to work helping us coin a new generation of profanities? For more inspiration, see “New Curse Words”. 5. Feminist writer Elizabeth Hilts redeemed the misogynist word “bitch” in her book Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch. Gays proudly appropriated the previously derogatory word “queer” to describe themselves, thereby celebrating their outr? power. In this tradition, the Beauty and Truth Laboratory proposes to reclaim the curse, “Go fuck yourself,” turning it into a sincere wish that the person to whom it is addressed will indulge in life-affirming, self-administered pleasure to the point of rapture. Now go fuck yourself. 6. ”Americans live inside their own private echo chambers,” says syndicated writer Matt Zoller Seitz, “endlessly revisiting things they already know they like and avoiding exposure to anything new and different.” Your assignment is to ask yourself if you fit Seitz’s description, and then—if you do—to escape your private echo chamber. So for instance, if you’re a tattooed pagan performance artist, attend a rodeo or NASCAR race; if you’re a Christian Girl Scout leader, listen to Ani DiFranco or Radiohead, or read Noam Chomsky’s radical critiques of American foreign policy. If you’re an atheistic intellectual, take a workshop in ecstatic Sufi dancing or a class in Buddhist meditation. 7. Kick your own ass 22 times a day for the next 22 days. There’s no single right way to perform this exercise, so experiment. My favorite technique is to jump off the ground with both feet and snap my heels forcefully backwards against the target area. 8. Qabalist teacher Ann Davies told a story about a U.S. Army general negotiating with a cannibal chief in New Guinea during World War II. The general wanted the chief to rally his tribe to help American troops fight the Japanese. The chief refused, calling the Americans immoral. The general was shocked. “We are not immoral!” he protested. “The Japanese are immoral!” The cannibal chief replied, “The Japanese and Americans are equally immoral. You both kill far more people than you can eat.” Using this tale as your impetus, describe how parts of your own moral code are not rooted in an absolute standard of what’s good and evil, but rather bound by the idiosyncrasies of your culture and historical era. 9. In 752 A.D., the Japanese Empress Koken wrote a lyrical poem in praise of the eupatorium plant, whose leaves turn a vivid shade of yellow in summer. Recently, scientists demonstrated that the lovely foliage of the eupatorium is caused by a disease virus. In my view, this shouldn't diminish our appreciation of either the poem or the plant. Beauty often forms in response to a wound. Give examples from your own life. 10. Cancer cells are constantly developing in our bodies. Luckily, our immune systems routinely kill them off. Similarly, our minds always harbor pockets of crazy-making misconceptions and faulty imprints. They usually don’t rise up and render us insane thanks to the psychic versions of our immune systems. How can you stay strong in your ability to fight off sickness and madness? You know the drill: Eat healthy food, sleep well, get physical exercise, minimize stress, give and receive love. But as an aspiring pronoiac, you have at your disposal other actions that can provide powerful boosts to your immune system. Here are examples: Scheme to put yourself in the path of beautiful landscapes, buildings, art, and creatures. Exercise your imagination regularly. Get in the habit of feeding your mind’s eye images that fill you with wonder and vitality. Eliminate uhs, you knows, I means, and other junk words from your speech. Avoid saying things you don’t really mean and haven’t thought out. Stop yourself when tempted to make scornful assertions about people. Every night before you fall asleep, review the day's activities in your mind's eye. As if watching a movie about yourself, try to be calmly objective as you observe your memories from the previous 16 hours. Be especially alert for moments when you strayed from your purpose and didn't live up to your highest standards. With a companion, sit in front of a turned-off TV as you make up a pronoiac story that features tricky benevolence, scintillating harmony, and amusing redemption. Speak this tale aloud or write it down. Take on an additional job title, beautifier. Put it on your business card and do something every day to cultivate your skill. If you’re a people person, bring grace and intrigue into your conversations; ask unexpected questions that provoke original thoughts. If you’re an artist, leave samples of your finest work in public places. If you’re a psychologist or sociologist, point out the institutions and relationships that are working really well. Whatever you do best, be alert for how you can refine it and offer it up to those who’ll benefit from it. If you’re going through a phase when you feel you have nothing especially beautiful to offer, or if you think it would be self-indulgent to inject your own aesthetic into shared environments, turn for help to great artists and thinkers. Sneak O’Keeffe or Chagall prints onto unadorned walls in public places, for instance. Memorize poems by Rilke and Hafiz, and slip them into your conversations when appropriate. Program your cell phone so that its ring is Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater in C Minor. Scrawl passages from Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk on the walls of public lavatories. 11. Write an essay on “What I Swear I’ll Never Do Again as Long as I Live—Unless I Can Get Away With It Next Time.” 12. Take off your mask. You say you’re not wearing a mask? But you are. The muscles of your face are so accustomed to displaying your familiar emotions, they’ve gotten stuck. Raw new emotions are aching to show themselves, but can’t dislodge the incumbents. Start an exercise program. Gaze into the mirror and make hundreds of rubbery faces. Loosen and tone your muscles. Flush those ancient expressions. 13. Many concepts we use to interpret our experience originated in books written by people who are long gone. That’s why philosopher Norman O. Brown (who died in 2002) says in his book Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis, “The bondage to books compels us not to see with our own eyes; compels us to see with the eyes of the dead, with dead eyes. There is a hex on us, the authority of the past; and to exorcise these ghosts is the great work of magical self-liberation.” Melville Davisson Post (who died in 1930) echoes the theme in his book Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries. “It is the dead who govern. Look how they work their will upon us! Who have made the laws? The dead! Who have made the customs that we obey and that form and shape our lives? The dead! All the writers, when they would give weight and authority to their opinions, quote the dead. Our lives follow grooves that the dead have run out with their thumbnails!” Whose dead eyes do you see with? What would it be like to see the world without them? 14. Create or obtain a symbol of your most inconsolable pain. Mail it to us at the Beauty and Truth Laboratory. We will conduct a ritual of purification during which we will burn that symbol to ash as we pray for your relief. While this may not eradicate your anguish entirely, we’re confident it will provide a tangible healing that you’ll feel the benefits of within a month. Send a representation of what hurts you most to Angst Incinerator, P.O. Box 150628, San Rafael, CA 94915. 15. Charles Darwin said the “survival of the fittest” is a central factor in the process of evolution. What exactly did he mean by that? He makes it clear in his book, The Origin of Species: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” What would you have to do to make yourself supremely fit according to Darwin’s definition? 16. ”Watch out for the dark side of your own idealism and of your moral sense,” says Howard Bloom. “Both come from our arsenal of natural instincts. And both easily degenerate into an excuse for attacks on others. When our righteous indignation breathes the flames of anger against a ‘villain,’ we all too often become a fang in nature's scheme of tooth and claw.” What's the dark side of your idealism and morality? 17. ”Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” So begins Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield. Buy a blank book and write that sentence at the top of page one. 18. Thank you for not smoking while communing with this subliminal prod. Thank you as well for not burping, drooling, picking your nose, getting drunk, spilling food on yourself, thinking nasty thoughts about anyone, and letting your mind leap from undisciplined ideas to out-of-control feelings like a mean monkey on amphetamines. All such behaviors would interfere with your ability to register on deep subconscious levels the meaning of this subliminal prod, which is: Sometimes you’ve got to be a bit of an asshole in order to avoid getting burned by the ass-souls. Do you agree? Provide evidence pro or con. 19. Computer programmer Garry Hamilton articulated the following “Game Rules” on his website. Give examples of how they have worked in your life. 1. If the game is rigged so you can’t win, find another game or invent your own. 2. If you’re not winning because you don’t know the rules, learn the rules. 3. If you know the rules but aren’t willing to follow them, there’s either something wrong with the game or you need to change something in yourself. 4. Don’t play the game in a half-baked way. Either get all the way in or all the way out. 5. It shouldn’t be necessary for others to lose in order for you to win. If others have to lose, re-evaluate the game’s goals. 20. Here’s the catch about pronoia: Life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it, but it doesn’t necessarily give you exactly what you want, exactly when you want it. Talk about the differences between what you want and what you need. 21. Write a letter to the person you’ll be one year from today. Tell this Future You that you’ve taken a vow to accomplish three feats by then. Say why these feats are more important to you than anything else. Describe them. Brainstorm about what you’ll do to make them happen. Draw pictures or make collages that capture your excitement about them. *

yum yum...

niymae — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:08:40 GMT

ya, on my way to say the least, i feel fucking exhilarated and at times terrified and lotsa weird stuff is going on (like last night i vomited my guts out after eating shit food. (FUK THIS, I'M GOING VEGAN AGAIN!! ) then i got this NASTY two-holed bug bite from sleeping on the grass at the lopburi train station (i took it last night and am now in bangkok again) ad i SWORE i was gonna die! IT HURT SOOOOO BAD!! i was sobbing and asking people for help. three people came and each one gave me ointment to rub on it. it was right on this big vein on that really soft sensitive part of the belly right on top of that highest point of the pelvic bone so i swore the poison was coursing through my system and i was over. haha. i was conviced that the only thing to do was lay down and wait to die cause if i got up and walked around it would make the poison course even faster. then i woke up a few hours later and felt sooo much better. lotsa really positive powerful stuffhas bee happening too, of course, like today, i made almost 700 baht in twenty minutes just asking for it from passers-by! so i just put a down payment on my ticket to calcutta! and haha! all these dogs have been coming up to me and smelling me like crazy and some of them just go ballistic wit barking, others just won't stop sniffing. i realized its cause of the monkey smell! so... more to come!, Friends

THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!

niymae — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 11:45:22 GMT

heres an update! (written today in an email to a friend): hi sweetheart, ya, i knew my bank account was overdrawn and wow thats really sweet of you to take care of it for me! ..such a dear!! wow, i AM blessed! you can go ahead and withdraw the money you spent as soon as it gets there. basically, i had some emergencies due to an abcess/infection i incurred in the scrotum after surgery and the medicines and taking care of the stupid thing broke me flat. ..thought i had no money in the bank but the atm gave it to me anyways. i was right but didn't know it. i thought it was just magic i guess. like the old story from the torah about the oil lamp that just kept on burning even though it had no oil. hehehe but ya, then the other day i realized my "balance" was getting "bigger". then i saw a negative sign on the right of it. then it hit me. they put the negative sign on the right of your "balance". thats stupid. so ya, i have 170 baht til the next check comes in. and supposed to pay mom back $200 that she had to loan me to get me by and take care of my wound/buy a place to sleep and food. then i got broke again and said "fuck this, i'm gonna say to hell with what these people think of me and start table-scoring and eating what i can find." and surprisingly, the thai people have been really kind. on occasion, they've seen me eating leftovers and have bought me food or given me theirs. i'm eating alright but FAAAAAR from how i'd like to be. its been lots of rice and meat and its doing a number on me. think i've eaten some sugar in stuff too and that was major shitty afterward (pun somewhat intended..haha). but i slept outside last night at a fucking gorgeous temple ruins in lopburi called wat matahathat and for some reason it was just really awful all night. i kept having really weird paranoias and visions of death (a guard bashing my head in with a chrome maglight) and then a dog barked loud once right by me and ran away. i was awake (i think all of the sudden but it was such a fitful night i can't really remember) BUT I COULDN'T MOVE AND I COULDN'T SPEAK. all that would come out was breath. i just lay there and tried to be calm. i thought i had gotten rid of that shit (sucking goddammned succubi and shit!! UUUUUUUGH!! what the fuck???! but when morning finally broke i was able to get up, eat breakfast and actually proceed to have an amazing, gorgeous day! this is the town (where i am now) that is famous for all the monkeys! i made it!! woohoo!!! today i think has been the best day of my LIFE, edna!!!!!!!!!!! after i ate, i stumbled upon a market and bought a big bag of durian fruit for the monkeys, sat and cut it up, bagged it, took my recorder and my durian and set out for the temple where they mostly hang out (which was right around the corner!). as soon as i'm inside the fence that i hopped to avoid any possible fees, there was like five moneys on me!!! actually on my body. hanging off of my pants (pulling them down!), on my shoulders, on my head, on my backpack, eating my tiny little pieces of durian i had cut to make 'em last all day. and i still have a bunch after starting feeding at 7 or something. first feeding of the day and its AAAALL MINE!! haha!! YES!! the monkeys are a little grabby at first but once they realized that with me, theres no reason to be that way (i started really giving them love vibes and they calmed down soooo much and started being sooo gentle and sweet and cooing and rubbing their faces on my cheeks and head, i wanted to cry but all i culd do was laugh and keep passing out durian, playing my recorder and giving them love!!) cause i'll just keep shelling out the durian to each and every one who comes and theres always more to go around! there were babies on me, mamas and papas and who knows what else (probly a good dose of lice or something (thats another thing, after chilling with the monkeys for a bit last night i was itching my fucking ass off alll night. mosquitoes, lice? who knows.) [one other thing that was sooo cute was when they would lick my fingers!!!] butanyways, so after a good hour or two at the one temple i headed over across the street to the "monkey guard" temple where the monkeys FEAST on aaall kinds of food people give them. i sat right the fuck down with em and feasted MY ASS on helluv fresh coconuts (all while sharing them with the monkeys!!!) and the juice, hardboiled eggs, parsley, some kind of other green, and kept on shelling out the durian and playing recorder while monkeys all over me!!!!!!!!! fucking gorgeous!!!! SOOO GOOOD! i climbed a tree, ate eggs and cucumbers up there, then jumped down (mind you, theres people EVERYWHERE at this temple and they're all loking at me like i'm sooooooooo far gone out of my mind!!! HAHAHA!!!!!! FUCK YOU!!!) and climbed up to the top of this large rock formation (about 50 feet) and found out its like, the monkeys personal space territiory whatnot. they were all laying around grooming each other, relaxing and having sex, nursing their babies. i sat and played recorder and after a while one of them welcomed me with a light punch-in-the-head-and-run scenario and i felt somewhat initiated and totally cool about it. goes with the territory i guess. hehe. love. so then it got really nice cause they started treating me like family it seemed. thinking about it, tears come to my eyes. the monkeys really are my family. people use them as kicks and 'fun and games' and treat them like shit, look at them weird and call them names, shoot them with slingshots, hit them with sticks and expect them to be nice back and eat out of their hands like their doing with me. fuckers. oh well. at least i was up there on top with the fam and feelin good while all those stupid tourists and sightseers were down below feelin stupid and left out. haha. the baby monkeys started coming around more and more and getting on me as their mamas got comfy with my presence. some of the monkeys were rubbing my legs , hands, neck, face and picking through my hair as if they really really loved me, were comfortable with me. its beautiful edna. its gorgeously beautiful and it makes me breath heavy and cry right now cause its soooo perfect and beautiful and blessed. wow. after a while some people came up there and told me i should come down cause 'monkeys bite'. i said 'the monkeys don't bite me. they are my family. i am their family. we love each other.' they just laughed and made me come down. turns out it was the 'manager' of the place and he thought i was drunk and might fall off. haha. bullshit. he was just jealous. haha. looozer. hehe just kiding. but its really funny after all, i think. HAHAHAHA!!!! LOOZER!! hehehe... i sat around DOWNSTAIRS for a while, ate some bananas (couldn't resist!! monkeys love bananas!! how can i be a monkey and not eat an occasional baby banan or two spread on a rice cake with fresh tangerine juice poured on it? hahaha! YESS!! then a tranny girl came by and she was really HOTT (looked VERY MUCH like isabella, but thai, (and YES please DO show this to her!) ). she sat down across from me and watched me eat, then i got up, washed my face and hands in the monkey faucet and afterwardsbroke into a GREAT WHIRLY JIG! she was laughing and thought that was great. i told her i was going back up top and invited her and she frightfully declined so up i went! but the monkeys were nowhere to be seen and so i played some more recorder. then OUT OF NOWHERE came this huge caravan of pickup trucks FULL of thais with a live band and booze and the full fukken nine!! they stopped at the monkey temple and so i RAN to meet them and jumped up on board with my recorder in full play!!! they LOVED me!! we rocked the fuck out and after these two ritual tranny monks did their thing inside the temple (they brought gifts!) we departed and headed up to this hill where there was another temple (a buddhist one. no monkeys.). we got out of the boats and then there was a ritual dance all around the temple while the live band still played and EVERYBODY was just so jotful and FULL!!! we circled that thing ten times or something. WOW!!!!!!!! FUKKING WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! SERIOUSLY SOME AMAZING SYNCHRONISTIC SHITS GOIN ON HERE, YA?!! then, once everything was over they gave me a ride back to the monkey temples! how cool is that? i meditated with buddha a little and blessed her and drew a stick for a fortune (there is s ritual here i guess where there are many bamboo sticks in a bamboo jar. you shake it until one falls out or until you feel the need to pick one and then it has a number on it which corresponds to a piece of paper on a board with a fortune written in a few different languages), found mine on the board and it was VERY similar to one of the same kind that i found earlier today at the first temple ruins i went to. whoa! said 'forthcoming child shall be a baby girl' and both of them said 'lost objects can never be retreived' HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!! so this has been my day so far and now i'm spending 60 baht of my present 190 baht to write this email but its worth it cause i got a lot out and now i can use it as an update for all my friends everywhere who will read it! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY! yesterday, when i got here i walked around for a while and when i went back to the train station, i asked the man if there was a temple i could sleep at for free and he replied there was (he thought). so i hitched a free scooter ride there and fukken A, it was GORGEOUS!!!!! with a 25 foot (or something very close) buddha inside (Wat Tao Seung Song is the temple name. Wat means temple in thai.) i spoke with the monks, none of them spoke english but a nearby thai man from maryland did and he asked them for me if i could sleep there. they said no but feel free to hang out and so i did and sat upon a 50 foot (easy) chedi with five beautiful buddhas, each one with a different expression on their face and with different foot postures. each one had its right hand (giving hand) palm out. after a while of meditating on the lower ledge, i climbed up the the last reachable one and sate there for a while half-lotus. then i got up and put my right hand on the left hand (recieiving hand) of the buddha above me and my left in its right (another note: each buddha's right hand had a bump in the middle of its palm) and opened up a circle of love flowing through us. wow, i was pretty high up so i had to keep my focus or else i could have REALLY flown somewhere with that energy!! WOW. powerful vibes. really powerful. after a while of this, i walked the ledge to each of the 5 buddhas and sent love through my right hand into its left, knowing that this love was being magnified so extremely intensely and going out to ALL BEINGS. the whole world and more. THE UNIVERSE. after this, i sat and brought down a spiral dome-web of light around the chedi; giving it back to the universal web and bringing it down again, over and over again until i felt the true need to move on. after i got my backpack on, some monks walked by and gave me a cigarette they had already been smoking. i LOVE smoking after monks. ESPECIALLY THE GANJA!! hehehe. which happened on koh phangan a couple times. i visited a temple one night and the next day -after sleeping there- one of the younger monks came down where i was sorting through my stuff and asked i i had some smoke. i sure did and of course, it was all his at this point. pulled it out and he got REALLY excited!! i packed the bowl and we smoked some and then he ran upstairs and told me to follow. he pulled out a BIG bamboo bong some monk had obviously made by hand (maybe it was the saffron colored putty that tipped me off..haha!) and he proceeded to pour the ganj and the tobacco on a sheet of paper, mix it up and take a butcher knife to it, mincing away at the stuff like a pro. RAD!! we took a few big hits and i was rocked. then he taught me a father/mother meditation. breathing in after saying 'goot' and breathing out after beginning to say 'toh' and continuing the syllable some throughout the out-breath. this was very calming and centering and it felt so easy to achieve and peacefully calm. just really there. really here. really now. really cool. , that place was gorgeous: the temple. i'll remember the name later and post it. or if anyone is interested, write me and i'll get the name to you. have it somewhere..hehe. its in ban tai...Wat Phra Kham or something. ... wow. thailand surely is amazing. and i thank the universe for having brought me here!!! 'GUT' ... 'TOH' ... LOVE. PEACE AS WELL. WE ARE ONE. aloha, my friends. keep being well. ..