Interesting times...

Interesting times. Ever since the LSD really. Something seems to have shifted. Joy, like I say, 98% present and at quite a high and lovely level too. Not too much bothering me. Stirrings within and without, shaping themselves up to break through into something, perhaps...

I had those longings to go away, to abandon everything. And then I did the I Ching, did that meditation that showed me I could just toss away all my money and be free from that. The longings subsided. I added a bit of common sense to the mix. And slowly Leeds became wonderful. Frequent and random meetings with young Christians asking me questions about life and not even being that converty. My squash friend Dan coming over with his girlfriend and me excitedly talking about iboga and all manner of things of Dan saying, you should be a sage. And then my dad weirdly one day during a visit to his guitar shop says apropos of nothing, are you a prophet? and talks about wanting to give everything up and become a tramp, his friend Trevor channeling my thoughts to another geezer in answer to various questions - better answers than I could have come up with. Plus many other things besides.

I start to think of all the things I could do. Sharing the techniques I've learned over the years. Creating a little hub/hubbub right here in Leeds. Sufi dancing and meditation. Maybe even wilderness solos and vision quests. Iboga ceremonies, ayahuasca. The voyager returning home with the treasure to share among his brethren. Sharing really is where it's all at. I can tell people enough that there's joy to found, that life is great and groovy and all you've ever heard from saints and mystics and hippies really is actually true after all - but what use is it if you can't give them the experience? That would be something. Something I've started to want to happen.

But maybe it's not something that can be given: maybe it's something they have to work for. But even a taste, a little smidgen of bliss - like, perhaps, what John Milton gave me that first night I met him in Mexico. Or the praying Catholics at the hot springs. Or Lindsay and his electric hugs and undeniable happiness. People see the peace, remark on it, say how laidback and sorted I appear to be - and that's nice - but what I'd really love is to give them an unquestionable hit of it in their boots, set them on the path to something. Maybe that's what I'm doing anyway. Who knows? But words...

I think of mad things. Starting 'The Church of Rory' and just opening up my flat like some sort of weird gathering place/shop in which people can wander by, sample a mind-opening book or have a conversation. On Sundays there's singing and soup and meditation and sharing. On other days there might just be me and one other soul as they lay wrapped in my tent undergoing iboga therapy while I sit and care for them. Perhaps even acid too - been investigating Silk Road - or ayuahasca or DPT. Cracking open the healing again. Lots of ideas. But not necessarily the balls, the brains, the internal/eternal 'go ahead' to do them.

How on Earth does one start these things? Seems a bit tricky to me: so I carry on just meeting casually, randomly, synchronistically, spontaneously and doing whatever seems the thing to do in the moment. The poor soul I met in the steam room at uni one day, lost and troubled and searching and for over an hour we chatted in there, and it could have been Mexico '99 all over again. Just because it's Leeds 2012 and the world is concrete and drizzly and grey doesn't mean there's no magic...

Meanwhile, my attempts to escape have been interesting too. I don't feel it so much anymore - all the above thoughts and my joy and love at the things that are happening here in the day-to-day - squash and refereeing and interactions and still living very much the student life - and there's also a sense that things are being taken care of. I did another I Ching about leaving my flat and I got 'The Well' with changing lines 2, 4 and 6. It basically seemed to point to being in one place - like, uh, a well - and simultaneously, yes, digging deep and striking water, putting down roots - like, uh, a tree - but also being that constant, consistent presence from which people may come and drink. Well, we'll see...

The other thing was - the big thing - while I still wrestling with that feeling that I ought to go somewhere, that I had things I needed to do away from this place, for me, and yet not having the first idea where I should go was - well, one morning a week or two back I woke up and had a vision. Like, it felt, a proper genuine Biblical-type one. I've only had one before. I wrote about that here. It was last year and I was in my bed in London when I woke up and saw, with my eyes open or closed, for quite a few minutes, a scene of high rooftops with distinctive attic-type windows. I wondered what it meant. I thought I happened among a meaning. But it was only a month or two later when I went to Germany to see Mother Meera that I realised it was the rooftops of the houses there. Going to Mother Meera's, naturally, was an important time. I was in transition and I felt seeing her would give me clues as to where to go next. The day I left hers I got the message through that I'd been granted a full fees bursary to do an MA at Leeds. Sending me home. Plonking me here at the uni where I now sit. For all manner of reason. Yeah, Mother sorts it out...

I sent her a letter a week or two back. Can't remember whether it was before or after the vision. Anyway, the vision, such as it was - it kind of felt also like a lucid dream, in that I knew where I was - in my bed - and I knew that I was awake, but that I was still 'dreaming' too, and could 'see' the dream with my eyes open or closed - was of me climbing the stairs in my dad's guitar shop, right to the top floor where I used to live nearly twenty years ago, and where I generally store my possessions when I go gadding off to one place or another. And then when I got there I saw in big letters the word ******* - which I sort of immediately understood to be the answer to my questions/prayers about where I should go, having a dim recollection of it being perhaps a city or a district out ****** way, perhaps. No conscious recollection, mind. Nowhere I can recall, even now in my wakeful state, having come across it before. But almost immediately I googled it and - yup, of course, the ******* of ***********...

And the rest of that - maybe seven or eight paragraphs - has been censored by the toss of a coin. Just don't feel right sharing that just yet. Instead, I posted some I Ching readings I did last week, in the name of completion, and mused further on the last one. Which means I shall be deleting this blog pretty soon. Ho hum. :-)