The Yoga of Integrity

An account of an illuminating intoxication

"Mind is the disease of semen" ~ Aleister Crowley

Mind is a free-form series of associations imprinted haphazardly and by chance, collected accidentally and compounded by the unexpected. Where is my autonomy??

A few years back I stayed a couple of weeks with some extened family. Prior to this I had been introduced to the world of Chaos Magick by a friend of mine, a 37 year old artist and veteran of the info-wars, who seemed to think that as I was heading in a warped enough direction to be a credit to the psychic agenda. I spent every after noon with her while I was at college discussing politics and philosophy and the finer points of brain change. I had already realised that I didn't quite belong to the ranks of the gullible, and was pissed off enough to wave my right to fear of demons and such like.

So, in the Summer of 2003, trying not so much to find my place in the world as other young men do, but to erase my place in the world, beset as I was by the severe fuckup of my childhood, I visited said extended family and was a little suprised to discover that they too had an (armchair) interest in Chaos, Leary, R.A. Wilson etc. At the time I was painfully aware of the fact that I was a walking mishap, and would rather destroy my self in the process of becoming something other than a product of my environment than submit to what, by most accounts, is an inevitability. It was dangerous ground indeed.

I spent the first week reading through RAWs "Cosmic Trigger" trilogy, with "Sex, Drugs and Magick" for desert, followed by an after dinner reading of Peter Carrolls "Liber Null and Psychonaut", and a wee sip of Ray Sherwins "The Book of Results" which I had borrowed from the aforementioned artist.

It is interesting for me to note that the year before this, in May of 2002, I had read George Orwells "1984" and immediatly followed it with Huxleys "Doors of Perception", "Heaven and Hell" and "A Brave New World". I was corrupted instantly, and found parallels everywhere in the daily life of my boarding school. Things I had seen before that had mildly disheartened me at worst became the nightmare visions of a sleeping world gone nuts on illusiory higher purposes .After 4 years of being a successful, model student I was expelled within two weeks for "wandering into the dark". Whatever that means.

As Karl Jung so brilliantly noted "enlightenment is not about playing with figures of light, but of making the darkness conscious. For this reason it is not popular".

So I found myself in Bournemouth during the fantasticlly hot summer of 2003, two jobs intersperesed with three hours of college a week behind me, a free agent. Corrupted again by the info of these new worlds that were already, below the surface of my endarkened consciousness, forming new haphazard associations. I had introduced the family memebers i was staying with to the latest psychedelc craze of the grow-your-own "Mushroom Kit", and in my second week, rife with magickal thinking, it was decided that we'd have a trip.

I can't remember how many shrooms I ate, but it was by the hand full. After an initial dose of 12 mushrooms, I must have eaten seven of these monsterous handfuls, minimum. The people I was with giggled a lot, played and in general distracted themselves. Aware that it wouldtake time for the trip to take hold, and that I'd mis its subtleties and nuances if I engage in the continual inane dialogue of my companions, I retired to my bedroom, and prepared a little sensory deprevation. If I fell asleep, the dreams at least would be good fun.

I turned off all the lights, stuck tissues paper in my ears and lay down, relaxing into my body and quitening my mind.

I awoke with a start, gasping, I dont know how long later. The room, despite having no lights, was glowing with a golden translucence, the walls seemed to be moving as if they were barely held together, and I could see every detail of its contents in this radience as its geometry began to become decidedly ambiguous. I tried to sit up only to find that my body had shrunk to the size of a babys, and when i tried to brace myself on the bed with my hands I saw that I had no fingers. I also was completly without any real thoughts, just observing this madness and moving in it. Now I wonder whether the image of being a baby without fingers represented a break down in conditioning, a bypass of the last 21 years to a point of pure non-identity.

I leant against the wall at the side of my bed, not able to think things through, not able to find a thought at all, just blank and breathing deeply due to the physical affects of the mushrooms rather than any conscious choice. I was all breath and translucence, loosely bound in the image of a new born.

Some time later, the "dark" room still glowing in its own light, i began to be able to label things again, very very briefly, perhaps only for an instant. In that instant I reached for my packet of tobacco next to the bed - my first conscious decision in what seemed like an eternity - and as I did it the whole damned world exploded! I couldn't reach the tobacco packet because it shot off into outer space like a roman candle, leaving a trail of a associations behind it, images of people, places, symbols, tableauxs of ideas and events, everything that made the universe known as tobacco. It was like watching a film in super slow motion, being aware of every single frame in minute detail, but having the reels of these images envelope my world at an explosive pace.

I tried to gather myself, became aware of the bong I had next to the tobacco, floating in space on a small square of what was once the floor, reached for the and the same thing happened. Then it took my body too, and suddenly I was nothing, hovering, observing my universe from a thousand feet, and all i saw was a series of wheels interlinking and spinning furiously, all my assocations and identities, thousands of "little I's" furiously going about their happenstantial, accidental existence as I looked emptily on.

During that trip I became savagly aware that for my whole life I had let this menagerie of me's dictate every decision I'd ever made, and create my world for me. I had never been in control, never been independent, never acted with an ounce of autonomy, I had simply been directed by this series of associations that a) I could not control, and b) I hadn't chosen.

Several years of anger and resentment followed, but hell, at least I wasn't doomed anymore. I began to change, to make decisions deliberatly, to become aware of the instant associations that made up "who I am" and was able, to some degree, to decide between them. Nevertheless I was disillusioned with what it meant to be human in a profoundly anti-social way, and lost a lot of friends. You win some, you lose some, eh. Suddenly I was fighting for the evolution of a doomed species, and I still didn't know why, so I had little time for friends as I began recreating my physical, emotional and concpetual intelligence. My social identity wouldhave to take a back seat for a while, as it appeared I had regressed to a larval stage in an attempt to grow-myself. First I would have to learn to fend for myself, and I did this with Kung Fu, my own living space and then a series of hard core jobs. It was only under the pressure of my survival that I became aware of my emotional self.

Timothy Leary once said that i t was every human beings responsibility, their fate in fact, to relive our collective evolutionary history, but I've never been sure whether he expected everyone to do that consciously!

Today, as I write this, I am still at base level. No one can argue with my ability to survive, as I have done this well. I am exceptionally it, dont take drugs, dont even watch TV (lowers your metabolism and brain function more than sleep, ya know), and I have collected some spectacular work references, worked with the best (as a Gardener I recenlty worked with the Gold Medal winners of this years Gardening Scotland). I've also saved the equivalent of a student loan for when I got to university next month. Go me! I'm proud of myself. And - BAM! - in comes my emotional evolution, Suddenly I'm aware of the work I need to do in order to relate to people.

As survival pressures introduced me to my emotional self,
So too does my emotional self introduce me to my conceptual intelligence, my ability to use maps and tools,
For what good is concpetual intellience if you can't relate to people?

To accomplish these deliberate developments in self I have paid a great deal of attention to the practice of being aware and deliberatly usings ones "Integrity Point", I device I picked up from Antero Alli. Its become a skill now, something I'm good with.

I had placed it behind getting fit, earning a financial safety net and working as hard as I could at my job. Now I'm nearly burnt out, however, my mission objectives all completed, and I have to reassign my integrity point to something else. Trepidation greets me as I face the uncertainty of yet another transition, but this is what I live for.

Integrity behind my continued battle with nicotine (a slight relapse this week after 7 weeks without anything),
And then wholeheartedly behind completing my course at university, which will necessitate the forming of relationships if I am to survive! (wheels within wheels).

I have burnt myself out in putting this integrity point behind too many things at once, and not giving myself space to appreciate the work that I have done. No longer taking drugs, beating addiction, saving and working and by all accounts being properly prepared for my next step, which is university.

Now its time to simplify.

I still dont know who I am, and I certainly hate being free, to quote Genesis P-Orridge in one of his latest songs.

I dont know where creative writing fits into my personal evolution, except that its something I'm compelled to do, and so is always with me.

Once more unto the breach!