The Guardian of the Gateway

On Good (Evil) Friday I had a bit of a ball as is proper, although I didn't dance as I should have - I remembered only later having read that explicitly public dancing on this day had been prohibited which is quite hilarious and reason enough to do it with a vengeance. Instead I listened to my favorite Good Friday song which is about the resurrection of Christ     (although in an alternate version here wandering around without his head), had two nice chicken steaks, and later some red wine while watching my certain sacred movie   once more.

On Saturday I went to this year's first big flea market, which is always a happy occasion when the season starts again, and I also met some friends there again. On the way home I still had to pass by at a bookstore because unfortunately I had to return the "Journey to Ixtlan" by Carlos Castaneda although I love the book - but after page 208 it suddenly ceased to make sense, which was no wonder because the next page had the number 177. All the pages up to 208 repeated and then it continued at 245. I was lucky to have ordered this one at the store because they readily took it back upon seeing this major defect and even returned the money to me for now. They re-ordered it for me too, but of course it's going to take a while again, I expect at least 2 or 3 weeks, so I'll have to read something else in the meantime.

The rest of the weekend was jut business as usual and I used the time (besides workout) for cleaning and hunting down all the Easter dust bunnies.

I'm getting a lot out of Castaneda's books and the teachings of the wise Indian shaman don Juan Matus, as I am also walking the Path of the Warrior - in so many ways. Most people doing sports like me are very different, which is probably why I've never made close friends with any of them. I think the main reason is that, like don Juan, I've always more or less lived in the presence of death. Don Juan says, Death is an adviser, reminding us that our time here is indeed very brief and that whatever we do we should it count. This is what I try to do best as I can, also when doing my workouts.
Death is who I will do battle with, but I've never seen Death as the enemy. I see Death as the guardian of the gateway to the next world, a world we can know nothing about, and the nature of which may well depend on how we have fared in this life. Death is the professor who will take your final exam, in a way, and determine what your next world will be, as there may be many. I accept that it is unknown but which means there are infinite possibilities.

Why is it that people can't see that what is unknown amounts to so tremendously much more than the tiny fraction of what is known?!

Death and the unknown are what most people don't want to think about though. But how can you move forward in life if you always stick with the known only and deny the inevitability of future transcendence? The answer is, not at all - you just won't move forward then. But apparently most people prefer this stagnation, out of fear and despair. I have been through fear and especially despair, but for very different reasons - I've despaired over the meaningless and less than mediocre existence they once offered me for a "life" and which they tried to make believe was the only possible way - when it was an absolutely impossible way.

And while I struggled to break free I would for years set all my hope in Death. I tried to force the guardian to open the gate for me to be free from this unacceptable existence. But I had not passed the assignment of this world, I couldn't leave yet... Those initial battles I had to go through were exceedingly grim, but eventually I would finally grow stronger and choose my own battles.
This world is so very much more than they tried to make believe... but they still keep trying.

Negative mass & wet bed sheets

This morning I was reading once more in one of my books about how the expansion of the universe first was found to be accelerating,in the late 90's, which led to the revival of Einstein's cosmological constant, and how unsettling and unbelievable the finding of the acceleration was to scientists around the world. It gave the appearance that the universe contained a negative amount of mass.

To me, these findings appear far less puzzling though. They're still interesting and fascinating, but after all, the physical universe is only a secondary phenomenon. It could turn out to be anything therefore - because in the end, matter will turn out to be just an illusion. An extremely persistent illusion for sure - especially at times when you're cold, or in some other ways miserable or in pain, as I was on this bitterly cold morning,struggling to get myself ready to leave for the gym.

I remembered how I once heard about an absolutely stupendous exercise performed by some Buddhist monks: They would go out to a lake side on a winter evening, and wearing only their underwear they would each drench a bed sheet in the water and wrap the wet sheet around their shoulders, and then in the freezing cold night they would just sit there by the lake side and dry the sheets with the heat of their bodies.
I have only heard about this story, I don't remember where, but I believe they can do this.I even have a pretty good idea as to how they might do it. I think they may be "visualizing" (it involves more than vision, of course) to be sitting under the glaring heat of a radiant desert sun instead, or something similar, and they have the mental power to have this visualized reality supersede the one outside.

Unfortunately, knowing how something may be done doesn't mean you can do it, and so I was still freezing miserably in my room. Only later after starting my workout I felt better as I was finally warming up a bit. I'm hoping to finally get a grip on these things soon, I think it would among other things also help me to deal with my physical problems, such as my intolerance to the brutally cold German climate.
No experiments with wet bed sheets anytime soon though!

Satan, the Self, and the Limits of Understanding

Our human Self is a subject much talked about not only in different interpretations of Satanism but in many other views of religion, philosophy, and psychology as well.
In relation to Satanism there are primarily two radically opposite views, whereby the one that states that Satan is the Self is obviously pseudo-Satanism - but I'm not intending to go into how offensive the obscenity started by LaVey is to any actual Satanist. (To bring it quickly to the point though, no one is obliged to believe in the existence of Satan, but those who don't simply must not call themselves "Satanists" then.)
On the other hand, among real Satanists I've often heard about the necessity of giving up one's self, a notion that reminds a lot of very different religions and philosophies such as most notably Buddhism or Hinduism and which appears pretty confusing since Satanism is supposed to liberate from all laws and is not exactly encouraging altruism or self-sacrifice for others. I found myself puzzled by it a good deal too, especially since elsewhere people are trying to find their self and are happy if they accomplish it. But I think the definition of the word "self" is key to the concept.
In other words, I think it's not really our Self which is meant to be given up here. The true Self is indeed something worth striving to discover but which many people fail to ever get really acquainted with. The thing to be given up, on the other hand, is not the self but an illusion, and this is a principle I've understood very well since my early childhood, even if for most of the time just intuitively (that is, subconsciously) rather than intellectually, and only in more recent years I came to rationalize it in order to understand my own actions and erratic behavior of my childhood.

I used to say that I was an alien from outer space. I knew it wasn't true; I did not really know why I maintained this story but only that I wished it to be true. I knew that people wouldn't believe me, but that didn't matter to me because there was nothing else they might possibly believe about me that I cared for. Because there was nothing in my life that I myself cared for, so let them as well believe I was crazy, it wouldn't matter anymore.
But although I felt myself forced by the circumstances of my miserable existence to behave in such ways, there was at least something right about the erratic things I did in order to cope: I rejected the things I was expected to accept, such as my family membership and the name I had been given, among other things. I was an alien who had accidentally ended up in the wrong body.

Of course, I no longer believe to be an alien from outer space, or rather, I'm no longer trying to believe it, since I was never able to successfully convince myself of my story back then, as stated above. The only thing I'm still convinced of is that no one but myself has the right to decide on a name to call me by, in particular none of the people who did, such as my abusive parents. But since I'm still in the lifelong process of discovering my true self I don't really know what to call myself; I've been through a couple of different names over time (although by far not with the ridiculous frequency at which certain other people I once knew used to change their names, such as "Zandor of the Many Names", a person I recently dreamed about, and this was never one of his real names but most likely a dream-hint at Anton Szandor LaVey whose preposterous ideas he came to accept), but by now I think it doesn't matter much and Diana isn't such a bad name even if millions of girls share the same name, and I'd never be able to come up with a name that really describes who I am anyway, and that might not even be desirable since only I myself really need to know that, if anyone. And after all, the sun shines just as bright no matter what you call it.

The lesson is rather to realize that it doesn't matter much, and to realize that as we are born into this world we are given a name, we are given a nationality, a citizenship, a cultural identity, and we are expected to assume a place within human society, and all this crap is then supposed to form our "identity". It is these things that we need to learn to give up - because they are not our "self", they are rather a sort of classification! What we need to learn is to become ourselves, to just be, without the above classifications - because these are things that are only temporary and that we are going to leave behind when our journey on Earth is over.

We all make mistakes in life, but all in all I'm happy with my choices. I tried to be a girl for a while, I mean to really live like one, but that was nothing for me. Then I tried to be a boy for a while - that also sucked completely. Both sucked completely! But for a teenager it's hard to disregard people's common views and to find a way of your own that no one offers to you. Nowadays I no longer try to be anything but myself, and if people have a problem with me being a girl who moves and acts much like a man then it's just like that: they have a problem. I don't, I solved the one I had.
I stumbled upon the quote lately that "we won't be happy if we achieve someone else's goals at someone else's terms." It's all too true!
I've disowned my family and the other "classifications", I'll never be what anyone else wants me to be! I chose to be a warrior.

Currently reading Journey to Ixtlan, I'm learning a lot from the old Indian shaman don Juan. A more complicated matter is the limits to understanding - and that is, to pretty much everything we regard under the term understanding. Don Juan mentioned that trying to understand is wrong in certain matters that go beyond our understanding. In order to make sense of the world, our first instance is feeling, then the next is understanding. He mentioned certain, unnamed, instances that go beyond understanding and that a person could possibly learn to handle.
I think this will have to do with the limitations of language, and for the purpose of understanding we invariably use language of some sort, even if in a wider sense, as to include mathematics or illustration. Even our dreams are filled with language and imagery.
Being extremely text-based in my own thinking - written text more so than spoken words since I've always used the former more than the latter throughout my life - I guess I'm having a hard time moving beyond this. Sometimes when I had trouble falling asleep I remembered how someone (in some dream forum?) advised to concentrate on images and block out words from one's mind in order to easier fall asleep - and then I'm lying there and finding myself unable to stop the words flooding through my mind. When I see a tree I think "tree" and so on, and can't help it...
In any case I'm very grateful for Castaneda's work, bringing me back on the right track in my life - and bringing life back into the world, into its rightful place, instead of denying its existence as the common, Western view tends to do.

I've often wondered about the quote that quantum physics is said to be so crazy or counterintuitive that "anyone who doesn't think it's totally crazy hasn't understood it." For years I had been secretly wondering if there was something I missed about quantum physics, and if I indeed hadn't really understood it. Because it never seemed crazy to me at all, I found it fascinating and mysterious, but never crazy. Apparently the "crazy" part is referring to the quantum superposition, as famously illustrated by the thought experiment of Schroedinger's Cat   which is simultaneously dead and alive until its state is observed, causing the wave function to collapse into either one state or the other, just as an individual photon in the double slit experiment   is in the superposition of being both a wave and a particle until being either observed or not observed while passing through the slits - in the former case passing through only one of them just as a proper particle ought to do, yet appearing to mysteriously pass through both slits simultaneously like a wave in case no one is looking.
I gather now that it must seem totally crazy when considered from a materialist perspective - and this is apparently the only bit I had missed: that most scientists, sadly, don't expect to discover anything completely new about the world - that is, when they do discover something new they will try to accommodate it in their same old idea of the world.
Just as don Juan said, "Why should the world be only the way you think it is? Who gave you the authority to say so?"

They expected matter to be ultimately made up of matter, because they're so ridiculously and tragically convinced that matter is all that exists.
I couldn't see the "craziness" of quantum physics because subconsciously I've always known that matter is not made of matter!

FIBO 2014, just hanging around

So yesterday was the great day and I went to the FIBO in Cologne.
But as you can see, all I've been doing was hanging around.

  

       

Upside down.

      

  And then hanging some more.

        

And then hanging on a rope, too.

        

One more time I'm turning the hourglass, but when it's running out I'm coming to reap your souls.

:D

Serpent Fire

I've rediscovered some of my old songs lately, in particular this one, it's one of my best. You should use those things you've been given, and I guess no one but me will ever sing them.

    

    

Yes, that's my handwriting. Posting it in this way may hopefully make it harder to steal, but first of all it looks so much better and more appropriate. The title and some initials are calligraphic but the rest is my natural writing. I'm so glad to be an autodidact and to have managed to evade formal schooling, I heard that many young people my age are no longer able to write in normal, cursive handwriting because they hardly ever write at all but only type, which I think is a shame because actual writing is a skill that ought to be preserved.
There are calligraphic type fonts but I view them as still inferior since such fonts are not meant to have each letter look exactly the same.

I may start writing again, songs and poetry that is, if and when I find the time. You should use what you've been given... and it's rarely good to do too much of only one thing, especially to one like me with so many different interests, but generally it will give you a better picture of the world as a whole if you try to learn or practice many different things. It's been good to learn about science. I remember chatting with a Facebook friend some good while ago - or possibly it was even still back on Myspace - and trying to explain to him about the double slit experiment in quantum physics, which I was puzzled to learn he had never heard about. I had the impression of him as being a rather bright person, with quite some wisdom of the Left Hand Path... and the next thing he asked me was to stop right there and first explain what a photon is. I was flummoxed! He was about my age or possibly slightly older, and I thought people learn about this stuff at school or wherever along the way - how am I to tell, as I haven't had any formal education beyond elementary school myself - I simply considered it common knowledge.

Well yes, so it's been good to learn about science and I don't intend to quit, but it seems I first had to be bluntly slammed in the head with its ignorance in order to see its shortcomings and that it's very far from being able to give a realistic and fairly complete picture of the world - namely with its stubborn dogmatism and arrogant but childish denial of the existence of everything beyond its narrow scope and interpretation. Always keep in mind it's just an interpretation, and subject to the current zeitgeist and periodical paradigm shifts.

I'm still following my nuclear science course with passionate interest, especially the video lectures. What I must admit to be missing out on though is much of the recommended reading although it's provided for free - the reason is that I simply hate reading long texts on screen. Short online articles are another thing, that's to me one of the main uses of the internet, after all, and sometimes when I have the time I even read only marginally educational material mainly for entertainment - such as those drug experience reports     on the highly recommendable Erowid     site.
But generally I prefer books made of paper even though some idiots who deem themselves so up-to-date have started calling them "dead-tree books" - I sure cherish trees very much, but then simply stop already printing all those tons of superfluous advertizing on paper to simply litter the streets with, that's where paper is being wasted! But not on books containing knowledge, truly valuable information, and inspiration - those are never a waste.
Considering how little money I have I spend relatively much on books. I don't mind used ones if they're in reasonably good condition. Sometimes that's not an option though when it's some latest science books or something only few people are interested in, such as my book about plutonium   - and I always have to order online since English language books are otherwise practically unavailable in Germany.
But I think I'll buy some more by Castaneda in the near future, I like his writing and his books are not hard to obtain, I got two from eBay.

Looking forward to FIBO (bodybuilding expo)

I may be a warrior and spiritual seeker, among other things - an currently also a student of nuclear science and reactor technology,with my online course also keeping me busy in the 5th week now - but sometimes I'm also just a girl. Even if an extraordinarily strong one who loves to show off her muscles. And so I've already been thinking about what to wear for the FIBO   this coming Saturday...

I'm gonna wear these leggings (the jeans look is only printed on, including the "holes"):

  

...and these shoes:

  

...yep, I love rocker bottoms. :D
The top part of the outfit I'm still debating about. 

A friend from the gym is coming along and taking me to Cologne by car, which would otherwise be a 2 hour bike ride (one way), so at least I can care less about the usually cold and very often rainy German weather.
We're sure gonna take pics!