Something I wrote this afternoon for my LJ blog during an incredibly slow day at work....

Off to Pantheacon this weekend! Can't miss this one, as it includes not one, but two memorial celebrations of the life of Robert Anton Wilson, not to mention the official Meme-Orial at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk on Sunday (to which I have scored a ticket). RAW's writings and lectures were a major influence on me during a time when I was trying to sort out and understand some strange experiences and unexpected "reality tunnels" that I had wandered into earlier in my life. I discovered him through the "Illuminatus Trilogy" some 20 years ago and nothing "was" the same after that. I'm yet another person whom Pope Bob helped to see the Fnords. I've been a proud card-carrying Discordian Pope for many years now, except during those sad intervals when one would go through the wash and have to be replaced. (Card, that is, not Pope. Popes require dry cleaning.) In my old wallet I always kept one displayed next to my drivers license so I could confer instant pope-dom on any store clerk who had to process a check from me.

I've been to many a P-Con and always enjoy them despite self-identifying as only nominally Pagan these days I suppose - sort of a Beltane-and-Samhain-Pagan, in the manner of my Christmas-and-Easter-Christian upbringing. At least that's how I see myself in comparison to many P-Con regulars who are intensely devoted to their various traditions and paths. But good-on-em, says I! I enjoy the company, perspectives and spirits of most of my Pagan brethren and cistern immensely - far more than I do that of the more conventionally religious. Me, I follow the word of the Prophet Carlin: "I'm not an atheist or an agnostic. I'm an acrostic - the whole thing puzzles me." I have no idea what is really going on - I can only make some intuitive leaps and guesses and surmises about what seems to me to be going on, and to be content and comfortable in the Mystery, and to enjoy the humor in it all.

And that's where the late Dr. Wilson comes in. With brilliant logic and disarming, outrageous wit, he helped me see that it can be okay, comfortable, even desirable, to live in a "maybe state", not falling entirely for anyone else's BS (Belief System) and definitely not entirely for my own BS. None of us has any idea or way of knowing what the hell is Really going on, we can only hypothesize about it based on the highly subjective feedback provided by our nervous systems as filtered through early-life imprinting, cultural conditioning, media brainwashing, etc. Given this, we have no business telling others what they "ought to believe" or certainly not what God will do to them (or tell us to do to them) if they don't.

For me, beginning to learn to think like this was incredibly liberating. Mind you, I had spent some years in my young adulthood mired in fundy/evangelical Jesus-freak Christianity (one of the "strange experiences and unexpected reality tunnels" I mentioned above). After freeing myself from that, I ventured out into the spiritual landscape, exploring Celtic and Native American Shamanism, Sufism, Wicca and the Western Hermetic Tradition, investing some years if intensive study in the latter. I came to realize that, despite my denials, what I was seeking was not enlightenment, salvation, oneness with the Great Whatever, or whatever, but a simple comforting certainty about it all - the same need for certainty that fuels fundamentalism of all persuasions. The realizations I gained from RAW's talks and writings were very helpful in readjusting my perspective - my reality tunnel - about it all with humor, fearlessness, curiosity and compassion. Thus inspired, I delved into a study of Ericksonian language patterns, NLP, hypnosis and the magick and mechanics of language and belief. I have come to understand that beliefs can be harsh masters but good servants, provided they are given the right mixture of nurturing and discipline. Otherwise, they tend to pilfer the silver and raid the liquor cabinet. And, above all, The Whole Thing is far too important to take seriously.

I am looking forward to celebrating the good doctor in grand Discordian style on three different occasions this weekend, to lifting a tipple of uisca beatha (or two or three or...) to his memory, and to continuing to catapult the lasagna.

"Like what you like, enjoy what you enjoy, and don't take crap from anyone."
---Robert Anton Wilson, 01.18.1932 - 01.11.2007

www.rawilson.com/
robertantonwilson.blogspot.com/
impermanentpress.com/pages2/raw-tix.html