One distinct possibility is that this evolution of consciousness really is the next step in large-scale human evolution – and just as there was one single moment in all of pre-history when one single ape came down out of the trees to begin the path of human evolution, so it could be that a few people are beginning to come down out of the skyscrapers to begin the path of evolution that will re-create us as citizens of ete

 Impossible?  Maybe.  If that’s what will make you sleep better.

          The problem with trying to put any of this into a format suitable for perusal by others is simply that the journey is so intimate and personal that I fear it will defy translation from my world-of-words into your world-of-words.  For in the end, the reality we attempt to share with one another is a reality comprised entirely of language – the agreed-upon sounds and symbols we make for the purpose of being able to communicate to one another that green is green and the purpose of a fire truck is to put out fires.  If we didn’t have such agreements based upon common concepts – agreements which form our consensual reality – our  world would be as unorganized and disconnected as the world of dogs or cats seems to our perceptions.  Language is what separates us from all other creatures, but it can be as much a prison and a destroyer if we fail to use it with impeccability.  We must be always willing to listen to the concepts conveyed by the words – the idea the speaker is trying to impart – instead of getting lost in the traditional meaning of the words themselves and engaging in games of semantics in a self-deceiving attempt to divert attention from the issue to the language.  Of all the traps I have witnessed in this ongoing journey, this is one of the most common and one of the most dangerous, which is why I stress it throughout these pages.

 For example, to even speak the word “god” conjures up a wide variety of reactions – from positive to negative – yet what I see or feel inside my own mind, within the confines of my own internal dialogue, is something entirely other.  To say “god” to a Christian invokes the notion of an intelligent, omniscient being, usually if not always male, a father-image to whom they pray and whom most of them fear, respect and love equally.  To most Christians, this is the only interpretation of that word possible, yet it is not necessarily what I think when I myself use the word.

And so our language is imprecise if we focus solely on the words.  If I say the same word to a pagan – if I asked, for example, “Do you believe in God?” – a true pagan’s response would probably be, “Which one?”  To the pagan, the word “god” conjures up images of many deities, and to the true pagan, no other interpretation of the word is possible.  This is the reality of paganism, just as it is the reality of Christianity to envision the father-God.  If I were to invoke the word “god” to a Buddhist, the monk might point to the earth or the sky or the tree and reply that the creative god-force is within every living thing, even within non-living things such as rocks, water, fire and air.  This is the reality of the Buddhist, the automatic point of view from which his world is created.

And though the word “god” might be used to invoke all these separate realities – the Christian, the pagan, the Buddhist – it is a different reality invoked within the minds of each person who hears the word.  And, in the end, each of these realities is as real as any of the others, and each is just as unreal.  It is a world of words.

   The same could be said for the color green.  When that word is invoked, some people will automatically envision a field of grass, others a dollar bill or even the old Mustang their father drove when they were six years old.  The idea of green remains the same, but how each of us interprets it varies widely.  There are, ultimately, very few absolutes within our world.  The only ones I have discovered thus far are earth, air, fire and water – the elements of creation itself.  I’m sure there are other absolutes in the vast universe, but for the sake of illustrating a point which I feel is absolutely necessary to understanding what will follow, I wanted to point out the imprecision of our language as it relates to how we view the world.  “God” and “green” will not mean the same thing to every person regardless of the fact that the same word might be used by default. 

If no other word exists to convey the idea of a creative-force existing within the universe, we tend to fall back on our existing dictionary instead of attempting to create new words to replace the old ones.  And, again, language is our prison as much as our freedom.  It needs to evolve just as we ourselves seek to evolve.  Before we can embrace evolution, we must undo the automatic programs running without our permission and even without our knowledge.

I mention these things so that when I use the word “god” or “reality” or “seventh sense” or any other non-absolute, I ask you to consider the concept.  If Orlando were to say to me, “You are god and devil,” my responsibility as a student is not to argue that idea from the standpoint of a Christian or a pagan or a Buddhist, but if I am truly dedicated to learning – if it is my intention to evolve my learning instead of attempting to impress the teacher with what I think I already know – it is then my responsibility to go beyond the words and into the non-verbal, translinguistic world of ideas, into the realm of individual, free thinking where the words themselves do not automatically trigger a response that will close my mind to any further learning.  In that world, words are only symbols.

For example, when I first encountered the idea that perhaps magick is as viable a tool to use in one’s life as a hammer or a screwdriver, I could only huff and sputter in disbelief at such a foolish notion.  “Magick?  This is the 20^th century!”  (At the time, it was 1994). “Magick is only fantasy!” I protested indignantly, believing Orlando to be some deluded simpleton.

It took almost a year for me to get past my own arrogance enough to see that this force we call magick not only exists, but it exists as an extension of the will, the creative god-force which is within each of us, and can affect the world with results no less real than those which could be affected by the hammer or the screwdriver.  Magick, then, is the outward manifestation of human will.

My life has been rich and full of wonder ever since – yet I would have deprived myself of that incredible awareness that life really is more than the sum of its chemical compositions if I had insisted on remaining firmly rooted in my human programming, if I had insisted on “knowing” that magick is only fantasy.

Reality is perception.  Perception is reality. And perception can be as limited or as expansive as we allow it to be.  But the first step is always going to be the decision to see beyond what we think we already know.  

Man once knew the earth was flat.  The science of the day could prove it; the church validated it; and so it was perceived and accepted as an absolute and all the world behaved accordingly.  It was only when one man at a time began to look beyond that absolute knowledge that the world could change – for the world can only change according to our perceptions.

 If we think we already know all there is to know, or even if we allow ourselves the dangerous luxury of believing all these questions will be answered on the far side of death, we are depriving ourselves of the most wonderful and expansive part of ourselves – our ability to create reality instead of merely existing within the static reality created by other men and women.  To open our perceptions –even if only the tiniest crack at first – frees us from the prison of the consensual reality.

And freeing our perceptions from pre-conceived notions is the first step toward evolution.

BACK to The Medicine Witch
FORWARD to The Message & the Messenger