Leelanau Legends

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“Beyond the invisible gateway, guarded by the night,”

A Force of Creation

1.1 billion years ago, the Midcontinent Rift occurred in what is now Lake Superior.  The magma from the eruption was so expansive, it flowed all the way from its epicenter to Kentucky and Kansas. Mountains of lava rock rivalling the elevation of the Swiss Alps were forged from the rift. During the Pleistocene Epoch, colossal ice sheets leveled the range, carving immense basins with their glacial activity. Their meltwater eventually transformed them into the Great Lakes.  A gigantic Dolostone (fossilized Limestone) Basin beneath the Lower Peninsula, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron is the foundation stone for the Great Lakes State.

“Light from a passable walkway, grows golden, true and bright,”

Leelanau Tribe

In my teenage and early adult years, I ran with an extensive group of friends that would become family.  One of our friend’s fathers owned property on Whaleback, and we gathered there for rhythm and revelry.  Many of us were musically inclined and would often provide songs around the fire in the forest. When we played drums, the sound would resonate down the hill and into the village of Leland.  In my opinion, there was no better place to spend these seminal years of my youth.  In all the time I spent with the Leelanau Tribe, it would be years later when I would discover the County’s vast indigenous history.   

“Up towards a hill fire, where one can lose their sight,” 

Experiential Origins

During the fall of 1990, I returned home from university to visit family in Leland.  At the time, they were living in a summer rental house in the village.  One night, I went to sleep on a hideaway bed in the family room.  Moments later, I drifted off and found myself lying on the bed, immobilized by a pulsating energy.  The inactive fireplace was ablaze with flame, while streams of light were swirling around the bed.  I freed my neck to see a Revolutionary-Era drum being played, yet there was no sound.  As the energy moving through me intensified, I found the strength to break the paralysis and return to my body.

“Upon staring down a mystery, found only in coals of white.”

Seeking Vision

My first Vision Quest was 30 years ago on North Manitou Island off the coast of Leelanau County in Northern Michigan.  Before I went on my journey, I did historical research on the peninsula at the Leland Library, as a part of my preparation.  I learned the County had been home to the Adawa, Anishinaabek and Ojibwe Nations.  In the mid 1800’s, the French arrived, and as their population grew, the tribes were inevitably consigned to reservations in what is now the Traverse, Manistee and Peshawbestown regions.  I would also discover that the tribes would canoe to the Manitou Islands for their Vision Quest Ceremonies.

“Bluffs of silken sand, highlight this aged coast,” 

Coastal Centers

In 1996, I was drawn to specific areas of the Leelanau Coast.  The first was the Sand Bowl on the summit of Pyramid Point; the second, the heart of Good Harbor Bay; the third, Whaleback; the fourth, the Clay Cliffs; and the fifth, Petersen Park near Northport.  When I was 25, I would hike to each of these places to experience their environmental relativity, not really understanding why.  Later, I learned that the Leland and Petersen Park areas were early villages of the Adawa, Anishinaabek and Matinecock tribes; while Pyramid Point, Good Harbor, Whaleback and the Clay Cliffs (among others) were locations for their Ceremonies.

“Hidden from any hand, rests a fortified ghost,”

The Soul of the Land

There is an extraordinary energy in Leelanau County, specifically on its western coast.  A trapezoid of natural power runs from the Sleeping Bear Dunes to the Manitou Islands, to Leland and back to the Dunes.  At its heart is Pyramid Point, which is the center of its sacred space.  It is a massive sand dune of unknown size, crowned by beech, cedar and maple trees, edged with high bluffs and cliffs and outlined by Lake Michigan.  People who visit the County are enchanted by its beauty and scenery.  The tribes were aware of its supernatural power, honoring their traditions by conducting ceremonies to relate with the soul of the land.   

“Beds between the trees, paths above the ground,”

Environmental Center

On a clear day from the summit of the Sand Bowl on Pyramid Point, one can view the coastal vista of Good Harbor Bay, North Manitou Island, North and South Fox Islands, Whaleback, Leland, the Clay Cliffs, all the way to Petersen Park near Northport.  In the center of the Sand Bowl, there is a unique presence, serenity and silence I had yet to experience anywhere else.  One of my friends mentioned that the silica in the sand is a collector, conductor and amplifier for solar energy.  In my experience, the entire trapezoidal region is a resonator, an environmental center empowering creativity, relativity, transformation and transcendence.

“Forbidden thoughts are keys, opening the threads of time unwound.”

Natural Resonance

When I visit my home county, I am called to Pyramid Point. Over the years, I have grown to understand the unique presence, serenity and silence I encountered, as I have experienced it in the Center during Ceremony.  Every time I venture there, I walk the least travelled trail to a steep, natural stairway.  It is a vertical, sand pathway; a rite of passage leading to its summit.  I stand in the center of the Sand Bowl and make my prayer.  Oftentimes, the full scope of my three decades of experiences are so overwhelming, I am empowered with humility.  For hours after leaving this sacred space, its energy resonates within every thread of my soul.

“Embers diagonally speak, as laughter sharpens its knife,”

A Reunion of Prayer

A few years ago, my friend came to a Lodge Ceremony during the Autumn Equinox.  When he looked into his Chanupa bag, the pipestone was missing.  I asked him where he had used it last, and he responded, “up on Pyramid Point.”  A couple of weeks later I headed to the County to visit family and walk the trail he had to search for the missing pipestone. That particular Saturday I was up there happened to be his birthday.  Locating something so small in such a vast area is like finding a needle in a haystack.  Following his rough directions, I hiked the trail to the bluff and turned left.  After a few moments, I stopped and felt like I had gone too far.  Turning around, I was drawn to a hidden trail near a secluded area of the bluff and made my way over the ridge.  Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a flash of red and circled around a large Cedar tree.  There beneath its canopy was a piece of red fabric and the pipestone.        

“Energized spirits leak…”

Leelanau Legends

For over forty years, I have had a unique relativity with Leelanau County.  In my adolescence and into early adulthood, I never wanted to leave my family, friends and the land.  Destiny drew me away in my early twenties.  And though we grew distant over the years, I found myself being called home by the spirits of the land who have, are and will always be present.  I see them shift through the sunlight between the trees in the day and dance within the moon beams at night.  I hear their voices in the wind and feel their presence in the currents and tides of Lake Michigan.  They hold a space for us to be legends of Leelanau County.

“…into a captured Stillife.”

Lyrics from the song “Stillife,” written in Leelanau County in 1991.

A Day in the Life

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“Being in our flow is universal resonance.”

Upon Reflection

Recently, I observed the articles I publish about my personal life experiences resonate with many readers.  This has inspired me to write more about my universal encounters, which is something only I can share.  In essence, telling the unique tale of which I am truly experienced.  Many of these events seem enigmatic, unbelievable and unreasonable.  However, I am living proof of their veracity, given the resonance many may have felt between the words and lines of these intimate articles.  Besides, there are more than enough people spinning selective narratives on societal fuckery, upon which I would only squander my creativity.

The Shift

My life truly began in my mid-twenties, as I was not yet conscious, focused, grounded and present.  There were countless eventualities I had from birth to the advent of adulthood.  However, they were systemic routines, akin to watching arbitrary causality stream past my sensibilities.  I existed in vicious cycles of social simulations, enslaving, exploiting and transmuting my awareness with audial, empirical and visual virtuality.  Fortunately, I distinguished my human existence from my soul experience.  An opportunity to cross my personal threshold transpired when I was twenty-five, and I shifted into the empowerment of universality.   

Half of My Life

For almost thirty years, I have lived a universal experience within the paradigm of social existence.  Whatever the tradition; The Fourth Way School, Celtic Ritual, Kabbalah, Jain Meditation or Ceremony, I observe my unique progression occur in ways that are beyond my imagination.  In three decades, there is one commonality in all of these experiences.  The unique flow I am able to occupy in the midst of this social vortex of reality, which consumes human energy with the gravitational force of a black hole.  It is like standing in the eye of a hurricane, observing social annihilation mere inches from the source of creation.

A Son of the Sun

When I was twenty-six, I was invited to an East-Indian Healing Ceremony.  The practitioner applied a precise collection of essential oils to my temples, torso, arms, hands, legs and feet.  They created an intense energy that moved within and around me.  In moments, I shifted from my body and was walking down a glass corridor.  Brilliant, golden light waves swirled around the passage, like the rays on the surface of the sun.  Upon my approach, a door opened and I was in an eight-sided atrium, dimly lit with a fiery torch in the center of each wall.  The great hall was crafted with wood, as flames illuminated its grains like pulsing veins. 

Soul Birth

My vision moved to the middle of the hall. An upended, tree root system stretched its naked branches to the high ceiling, shimmering in the incandescent glow.  A dais stood at its center.  Encouraged by intuitive inspiration, I approached and laid down on the altar, focusing on my breath.  Instantly, I shifted again, traveling at a velocity beyond the concept of speed.  The vast expanse of the universe empowered my soul upon its journey.  A few months after this experience, I discovered this was the progression of my soul transitioning into becoming human.  They were fleeting moments that felt like a lifetime.

“Our flow is the momentum of our universality.”

A History of Mystery

For thirty-five years, I have encountered conscious transitory shifts, exploring various fields of being.  There are many distinct experiences that have transpired.  Astral, celestial and soul travel, omni-dimensional shifting though reality, space and time, journeying to the Akashic Realm, (Universal Archival Library), reuniting with deceased friends and relatives in existential domains of convergence and exploring and experiencing the synthesis of being.  All through my history of mystery, the constants have been ascension, creativity, empowerment, relativity, resonance, transformation and transcendence.

Ritual De Lo Habitual

Every day, I awaken around 5:30 am, put out some coffee and tobacco on the earth, pray with the intention for universal relativity, meditate for twenty minutes and practice yoga for an hour.  Prayer relates me with my soul and the universe; meditation focuses my mind and empowers me to be present; while yoga aligns my equilibrium for conscious action, thought, emotion and intuition. Before I begin each day, I set energetic boundaries around my being and our house, meditate in the afternoon, take a walk for almost an hour, then usually write articles and play music.  The fulfillment of each day ensures my renewal for optimal rest.

Drift While You’re Sleeping

One evening last year, I fell asleep and shifted into a diverse space of being.  I was conscious; floating above my body while pleading “please let me fly.”  I drifted outside of the bedroom and made my way to the staircase.  My vision was drawn downstairs, where I could see my wife reading on the couch.  I used the railing to proceed to the ground floor, still floating near the ceiling.  When I reached her, I asked if she saw me.  She replied with a nod.  There was a violet aura around her.  I asked her if I could touch her arm, and she raised it to me.  I held her arm and asked her if she felt my touch.  We both smiled, and I awakened.

Soul Ascension

After a ceremony a few years ago, I went to sleep and found myself in a unique, conscious state.  I was standing on the bed, and could see the environment of the room, yet my vision of it was omni dimensional.  Intuitively, I descended into a crouching position and sprang into the air.  The speed at which I travelled was beyond measure.  I felt a cascade of solfeggio frequencies so absolutely, they resonated all within and around my being.  I was enveloped by a radiance of technicolor patterns, weaving their vibrant streams as the portal for my soul ascension.  After my velocity peaked, I descended back into my body. 

A Day in the Life

My days are spirited with conscious moments of observation, creation, intention, manifestation and transformation.  As a universal being having a human encounter, my life is not an exhibition of existence yet the empowerment of experience.  Being is an evolution of expression, inspiration, purpose, relativity and transcendence.  Every day is my opportunity for convergence with the flow of my universal frequency.  The resonance from my soul to my intuition, into the centers of my being, within the torus of my heart, the neural pathways of my mind and every cell in my body is the realization of my universality.          

“Consciousness is the currency of being.”

An Age of Awakening

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“The more we shun, the less we become.”

The Proverbial Fiddle

We have been played; deluded and exploited since the day we were born.  Our egocentricity prevents us from observing, let alone emancipating ourselves from our enslavement.  We would rather declare our self-righteousness than embody our soul-consciousness.  We have all been deceived.  Decades of institutional indoctrination have conditioned us to be victims of personal and social oppression.  We absolve ourselves from our assimilation via our addictions to sociality, triviality and virtuality.  We are deliberately manipulated into an oblivion of conflict-duality, playing the pawn in a global game beyond our understanding.

Birth to Now

Before we are born, we are an omni dimensional being of celestial energy.  During our transition into being human, we inherit the cosmic resonances occurring at our birth.  Most people emulate two or three planetary influences yet remain unconscious of their universal potentialities.  Our integration into society via our educational, environmental, hereditary, religious and social indoctrination, diminishes our consciousness, emotionality, intuition and universality into a three-dimensional existence with a two-dimensional cognizance.  Eventually, we become avatars in a virtual program we humanize as life.  

Insular Reality

As we mature, we acquiesce our awareness into the selective boundaries of our personal simulation.  We abandon our universal experience for a virtual existence.  Our universality is condensed into empirical instinct, intellect and emotion.  We infuse and proselytize our dreams, ideologies, narratives and politics with selective propaganda, to gratify the insatiable appetites of our egocentricity.  We evade, reject and withdraw from the world as our regimen for survival, disguising our deficiencies, insecurities and weaknesses with vanity.  We subscribe to our personal enslavement, both condemning and emulating society within our insular reality.

Natural Regression

For the first two decades of our life, we are ever evolving, growing and transforming.  Our development shifts from birth to infancy, toddler to childhood and adolescent to adulthood.  However, beneath the gravity of society, we halt our progression, feigning maturity while remaining in a stasis of blind adolescence.  An exhibition of this occurred in the last US Election when the conservative party spun extreme propaganda, deluding its constituency with false narratives to produce a mass-resonance of negative reactivity.  This invoked the repressed adolescence of the voters. They were conned into selling their souls for their egocentricity.

“Would we rather be right or related?” – True 

The New Matrix

“The Matrix” movie was an advisory documentary, providing a warning of a probable future.  When we allow our cognitive dissonance, fear, indoctrination and narratives to desensitize us to the cruelty of society, we are likely one of the many wired into a digital pod, isolated in our personal simulation.  The previous matrix that has enslaved humanity for eons is being upgraded.  The acceleration, intensification, manipulation and proliferation of cultural, ideological, political, racial and religious atrocities are transitioning us into the New Matrix. The strategy is to segregate us from our souls and digitize us into virtuality.

Lightning Rod

Whether we endorse or condemn the adolescent, egomaniacal and sociopathic avatar that is Donald Trump, all the fervor of conservative fanaticism and liberal fury is feeding him exactly what his demented ego craves.  He is a social vortex, a lightning rod to hack and hijack our collective attention, weaponizing it against us with the toxicity of our own reactivity.  It is a hostile takeover of our awareness.  When we engage in social contention, we are transmuting the universal resonance of our soul into a negative frequency of egocentricity, distorting and destroying our consciousness for the entitlement of our rage and self-righteousness.

Vicious Cycles

All forms of media are a mind control experiment to execute our predictive programming.  Whether it is alternative, dark web, mainstream or social, controversial content triggers our neural pathways to transmit endorphins via our opioid receptors with our nervous system. This enables our addiction.  Our indoctrinated intelligence runs viral in the toxicity of our social environment, suppressing our instincts, emotions, intuition and soul.  Media stimuli evoke vicious cycles of our reactivity.  When we focus our attention upon contentious medium, we acquiesce our personal power to its programming.  Thus, we fail to transcend and establish relativity with our soul and the universe.

Existential Infancy

Reality is a projection of sensory information we interpret and translate into selective perception.  Yet visible light is only .0035% of the universal, electromagnetic spectrum.  Therefore, how we perceive reality is vastly inaccurate, ineffective and imperfect.  Most of us quantify realism with a three-dimensional acuity, encoded primarily through our body, mind and heart.  The Societal Matrix in which we engage is enabled by primitive instinct, intellect and emotion.  When we equate this with the previous statement relating to our development from birth, humanity is collectively in its evolutionary infancy.  

Universal Shift

14 years ago, a universal, energetic progression occurred.  It was the dawn of a new era, encouraging us into relativity with our soul.  Whenever the opportunity for transformation is present, all that is contrary to our transcendence rises to be released from our being.  As we are observing in society, we are collectively failing as a species with our universal opportunity.  Each of us has a unique, energetic resonance, which can be embodied through our synergy with our soul.  Our choice is either to engage in the virtuality of the New Matrix or empower our convergence as an expression of the universal shift.   

An Age of Awakening 

Our routine lives are a delusion (fantasy) we have invented to integrate with the illusion (artificiality) that is social reality (virtuality).  Awakening is paramount in freeing ourselves from our existential enslavement, thus transcending our insular simulation to relate with our soul (universality).  The extreme, malevolent and toxic anarchy now accelerating and intensifying to distort and exploit our vision, existence and experience is our wake-up call to embody our universal being.  Awakening from our personal psychosis in social reality is and will always be our soul destiny.  Who we empower ourselves to be defines our humanity.        

“Being is the soul way to transform virtuality into universality.”

In the Center

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“Soul relativity is our universality.”

A Perfect Storm

I had the good fortune of spending my adolescence in Leelanau County in Northern Michigan.  This was a time in my life of great upheaval.  My parents divorced a few years prior and my mom, brother and I moved from the southeast region of the state.  Being the new kid, middle school was excruciating.  I was a target of ridicule, as well as emotional, mental and physical abuse from my stepfather at home.  It was the perfect storm.  In addition to the accelerated expansion of being a teenager, I was far removed from my element, peering over the precipice of adulthood.         

The Looking Glass

At 16, I had my first experience with hallucinogenics in the wilderness of Leelanau County.  I would drop LSD with friends and explore the profound mystery of the forests.  It makes me cringe when people associate hallucinogens with drugs, as it is something entirely diverse from the common stigmata.  For me, it was an awakening; a threshold of experience, imagination and understanding of all things beyond the visible world.  I appreciated the revelations of being, creativity, insight, transformation, transcendence and vision I encountered, aligning my body, mind and heart with my intuition and soul.  

Leland HS Senior Photo 1990

Beyond the Boundaries

During this time, I had a High School Poetry and Writing teacher who encouraged me to expand my awareness and perception through meditation.  The first was a guided exploration into the inner wilderness.  At some point during the experience, I drifted from consciousness and shifted into a unique dimension of being.  It was so powerful, it took me hours to return.  I could not remember the experience, as I lacked the capacity to recall the encounter.  All I could feel was the energetic resonance of journeying beyond the boundaries of my relative existence.

Realm of Darkness

In my early 20s, I was in a musical group and living in the oblivion of inebriation.  I took a nap prior to a performance that evening.  As soon as I shifted from consciousness, I found myself in a dark space, much like a deep pit or well.  I could not see, yet I could feel the presence of three malicious entities encircling me, waiting to pounce upon my surrender.  A negative force inflicted my paralysis.  Just before they closed in, I expressed my willpower and broke the spell of their malevolent conquest.  It was then I realized where my current path was leading, inspiring me to shift my self-subscribed oblivion and embrace my soul.

In the band. Leland, MI 1995

“Transformation is universal empowerment.”

Introduction to Being

By the time I was 24, I had severed ties with addiction and transitioned into health and wellbeing.  Writing music, poems and short stories became my avenue for creative expression.  While working in a coffeehouse in Royal Oak, I found myself hosting a group of conscious individuals who met about metaphysics, at the advent of its entrance into the mainstream.  Soon I would join them and be initiated into the Fourth Way School.  Grounded in a conscious exploration of ourselves as we are, not as we imagine ourselves to be, it is an observational experience and expression of omnidimensional being in relativity with our humanity.  For me, it was an introduction into being in flow with the universe.

Universal Threshold

During this time, I visited my parents in Leelanau County.  One night, I went to bed and shifted from consciousness.  Immediately, I was standing before a vast wall of breathing energy that shimmered like flowing fire.  Everything else in this space was white.  I recall stepping into the barrier.  At that moment, my girlfriend came into the bedroom and roused me back to awareness.  As I relayed the experience to her, I could feel the familiar sensation of an energetic resonance pulsing through my being.  Years later, I would understand this to be the threshold we cross as our soul leaves our body when we travel the cosmos.       

Dysert O’Dea Castle in County Clare, Ireland 2001

Celtic Lineage

As my awakening progressed, I discovered our family’s’ Irish lineage. Eventually I would embrace our ancient traditions and participate in Celtic Ceremony.  I had a profound relativity to these rituals that expanded my experience in understanding our culture and its ways.  After one of these ceremonies, I recalled a life in the early 1300’s as a novice, serving with the Knights Templar.  The strongest memory was being roused from sleep by French soldiers on Friday the 13th in 1314.  On that fateful morning, I stood in bed clothes with my fellow knights as a soldier pierced each of us with a spear in an exhibition of mockery.

Paradigm Shift

Twenty-four years ago, I met my wife while taking a transformational course on being.  Soon after, I began attending meditations with her in the Jain Tradition at a local Center, focusing on ancient mantras associated with the seven chakras.  Even though many of my earliest experiences were in a group setting, it was the first time I encountered having an intimate and universal relativity, while being with others.  For over two decades, I have meditated in this tradition daily, as it has empowered and enhanced my creativity, consciousness and experience.  I feel the same resonance I felt as a teenager when I first meditated.     

White River, SD 2010

The Sacred Rites

I had never been motivated by prayer, as I was led to believe it was a religious plea chanted to an imaginary deity as a request for guidance.  Twenty-four years ago, I attended a Pipe Ceremony for a healing.  That Spring, I experienced my first Inipi.  A couple of years later, I went on my first vision quest.  A couple of months after that, I walked into the Sundance Circle.  Two years later I would pick up the pipe and sit behind the bucket.  Thirteen years after that, I was given an altar.  In all my experiences, I learned to understand prayer is not a plea.  It is a commitment and intention to hold a space in service to the people. 

In the Center

The spiritual heart of Leelanau County is on Pyramid Point in a sand bowl carved by glacial activity during the Ice Age.  Reaching its summit requires a pilgrimage up steep sand dunes to its picturesque zenith.  Thirty years ago, I was drawn to this space, not really understanding why.  Until the first time I was put in the center of a Ceremony seven years ago.  I encountered the energy, silence, stillness and vision I experienced at the heart of the sand bowl three decades prior.  Whether in my first meditation as a teenager, upon returning from my soul travel, in my daily meditation or in a traditional ceremony, it is the signature resonance of my soul relativity.

“Our center is the essence of our soul.”

2026

Tis The Season

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“We are not living until we are giving.”

Garland and Tinsel

I recall the scents, sights and sounds of a mid-1970’s Christmastime.  A real pine tree decorated with generational ornaments, multi-colored bulb-lights and tinsel streaming from its limbs.  Youthful excitement for mysterious gifts wrapped in festive fanfare, scattered on a traditional tree apron.  The fantasy of a man with a beard donning a red and white suit, dashing from home to home on the eve of the 24th.  Yet, the fulfillment of the anticipation wanes when the jubilation of the occasion ends.  I experienced this holiday anomaly when I collected my gifts and retreated to my bedroom.  My delight faded into the doldrums of a Christmas past.

The Thrill is Gone

There is magic this time of year that is both genuine and omnipresent, kindled by the collective belief, euphoria, fantasia, joy, love, music, ritual and tradition in the spirit of the season.  When I was spending time with family during Thanksgiving, the Macy’s parade was on television.  The progression of pomp and circumstance marched down Sixth Avenue, pumping out holiday, pop music and hocking their wares in a festive exhibition of mass consumerism.  Christmas propaganda was broadcast with clever precision by famous faces, invoking the enduring narrative and annual glitterati amidst the eager revelry of an oblivient society.  

Holiday Highjack

The origins of Yuletide predate what is now celebrated as Christmas.  The Celtic, Norse and Roman cultures, among others, observed the Winter Solstice; a four-day shift of intention, renewal and transformation, occurring from December 19th through the 22nd.  The Church highjacked the holiday to control, exploit and repress faith by enacting December 25th, mostly out of convenience for their religious narratives.  The collective belief in the Christian propaganda caused a lie to become truth for billions of disciples.  It was one of the first mass manipulations of humanity.  Social indoctrination is now a standard in every institution.

Glad Tithings

During the span of every year, my wife and I gather funds to send to our relatives who are less fortunate.  A healthy portion of our lives are dedicated in service to community.  The true spirit of tithing is to give for the sake of giving, without the attachment of receiving.  We have not had a vacation longer than a few days in over 16 years.  To me, it does not feel right to gratify myself at great expense for a fleeting reprieve from life.  What we experience through our commitments to community is beyond existence, knowledge, lifestyle, recognition and reward.  We are simply empowered by the opportunity to make a difference.

“The Winter Solstice is an energetic convergence of being.”

The Nexus

In the Star Trek movie “Generations,” while attempting to prevent the destruction of a planet, Captain Picard finds himself in The Nexus.  A place where all who enter find themselves in a blissful, personalized nirvana, beyond imagination.  It is during the holidays, and he is in a beautiful home with a wife and children, all which he has never had.  The ornaments on the Christmas trees are reoccurring, exploding stars.  In that moment, he realizes something is amiss and remembers the annihilation of the planet.  He states, “This isn’t right, this can’t be real.”  The familiar voice of Guinan responds, “It’s as real as you want it to be.”        

Festive Fantasy

Our holidays are often reenactments of fond, youthful memories, when we believed in the magic.  We design celebratory events with the desire to reproduce the same spirit we once felt.  Whether it is with family, in a familiar environment, observing traditional festivities, playing games or singing songs.  In essence, things we would not normally do any other day of the year.  Akin to the social reality in which we exist, our celebrations are not real.  They are a fleeting exodus from the gravity of our everyday grind.  When the holiday moments pass, we return to the vicious cycles of our personal and social simulations.   

The Entitlement of Expectation

For many of us, our expectancy and privilege is born during the most wonderful time of the year.  We inherit the entitlement of receiving well before we experience the empowerment of giving.  We are indoctrinated into an egocentric lifestyle as a social standard of self-gratification, exhibited in our appetite, consumption, obsession and pleasure.  Yet, privilege occurs long before our hereditary and environmental exposure to family and society.  Its origins are in the generational prerogative we adopt and emulate from our ancestors of a bygone era.  We exchange our empowerment and understanding for entitlement and expectation.  

Free to Be

When I was 25, I spent the holidays alone.  On that Christmas morning, I woke up early and went to the coffee shop where I worked at the time.  I played their grand piano for a few hours, then headed to the woods for a hike.  It was a powerful transformation, to abandon the familiar, festive routine and embrace the extraordinary experience of an exponentially unique revelation.  When the day ended, I felt personal fulfillment in the solitude of tranquility.  I still remember that holiday as a shift in my understanding, and the importance of creating and exploring the opportunity to embody the freedom of experiential being.

Universal Experience

The holiday season is evidence that we all can create the experience of joy, love, peace and relativity.  For many, this only happens once a year, namely induced by social influence, obligation, status quo and tradition.  Much as a person who goes to church for an hour a week, then cuts off their fellow patron in traffic as they rush home, so is our seasonal noel.  Every day is our opportunity to transcend and transform our existence into a universal experience.  The greatest gift we will ever receive is to empower our lives in relativity with our soul.  Fulfillment is when we express “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” – Linus              

Tis the Season

Once the four-day Winter Solstice Shift concludes, the holiday experience is complete.  The calendar propaganda of Christmas and New Year’s Days are virtual eventualities of time, a manipulation of social engineering to control and exploit human existence and perception with consumerism.  We often buy gifts in an exchange to receive, instead of giving in the spirit of generosity.  It is our universal expression to give all we are to all we can, with absolute abundance.  Before we were born, we made a covenant to empower, inspire, relate, transform and transcend.  Tis the season for all our relations to receive the only gift we can give; ourselves.         

“Oh, that we, could always see, such spirit through the year…”

-Lee Mendelson

The Resonance of Relativity

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“We are an emulation of social influence.”

Authoritarian Encroachment

Totalitarian tiptoe is an unconventional term that illustrates the measured momentum of an agenda, eventuality or strategy so slight in its passage, it fails to register in the average attention span.  A methodical tactic committed by authoritarian organizations for the purpose of control, profit and power; to execute and establish nefarious constitutional, educational, financial, media, political, religious and scientific policies.  The aggressive encroachment of social conditioning, along with our cognitive dissonance, denial, indifference, oblivion, polarity and uncertainty, enslaves us into the simulation of reality.

Social Toxicity

There has been an accelerated and intensified outbreak of propagandized, popularized and publicized toxicity, corrupting and manipulating our personal and social environments.  Akin to a virus, it assaults our senses, afflicts our instincts, distorts our intellect, perverts our emotionality and severs our relativity with our intuition, soul and the universe.  When we engage in virtuality, we enact egocentricity as our defense mechanism, inciting us to flex peripheral power with our self-righteousness.  A feigned endeavor to supplement our deficiencies, insecurities and uncertainties by weaponizing our personal toxicity, all while proliferating a social epidemic of perceptual duplicity.

Entitled Malice

Evil does not exist in nature, reality or society.  These are merely existential paradigms in which we occupy.  Our malevolence stems from our oblivion to our egocentricity.  We justify our exodus from our humanity via our victimization; personalizing, propagandizing and projecting our tragedy and trauma upon others to evade our universal accountability.  When we desensitize ourselves from the toxicity of our tantrums, we regress into our instincts for survival and exchange our sensibility for reactivity.  We become entitled to our malice, expecting others to suffer our pain as an expression of their empathy.  Eventually, we abandon our universality for egocentricity. 

The Privilege of Expectation

Entitlement is the badge of ego we flash to gratify our expectation.  Our self-righteousness is indicative of how apathetic, insecure and uncertain we are when professing our selective ideologies.  A convenient faux pas we personify as a social standard, to manipulate ourselves, others and our conditions in a futile attempt to appease our unreasonable expectations.  World be damned! when our personal rackets fail to succeed (or in the way we so desire).  We absolve ourselves with feigned carelessness, helplessness and hopelessness, abandoning and condemning others for neglecting to enable, endorse and pacify our drama, narratives and pain, all in defense of our sanity and vanity.

“Our egocentricity is the simulation of our oblivion.”

Cult of Society

A group of people having beliefs or practices that are regarded by others as strange or sinister, or as imposing excessive control over its members is the definition of a cult.  Our exposure to and exploitation by fascistic establishments, people and stratagem begins well before we establish our personal awareness, divergence, experience and sovereignty.  Our institutional indoctrination via our amusement, belief, heredity, partisanship, schooling and sociality conditions us to be susceptible to publicly weaponized propaganda.  Any organization operating in the domains of business, education, finance, media, politics, religion, science and technology is a cult.  Society is the greatest sect ever invented.

Smart Rat Rising

We all have been personally and socially assimilated; conditioned, indoctrinated, manipulated and programmed into a collective psychosis.  As it is for those in recovery, the first step is to admit we have a problem.  We are automatons in the illusory dominion of social reality, accepting our environmental toxicity with reckless oblivion.  If we are arrogant enough to be smart rats, we strive to evade and escape our universal deficiencies; willing our adolescence, weaponizing our intellect and wielding our self-righteousness to conceal our inherent anxiety, cruelty, insecurity and uncertainty.  Everything we believe we know is the selective psychosis for all we fail to understand. 

Selective Psychosis

Reality is a holographic operating system, projecting a perceptual illusion.  Our engagement within the societal matrix establishes our individual delusion, which enables our dependence upon its virtuality.  When we invest our belief, energy, instinct and thought into social reality, we adopt a selective psychosis of existential singularity as an avatar for our human emulation.  We are oblivious to the elaborate and enigmatic dynamics of our self-deception, well before our extreme exposure to social engineering.  Our selective psychosis is the filter we enact to endure, occupy and perceive the illusion in which we exist.

From Perception to Deception

What influences us the most is our perception.  As much as our cognizance is encoded with indoctrination, our interpretation is exploited by an existential simulation.  One of the most influential constants in society is the agenda authoritarian entities and organizations enforce to control everyone and everything.  Making this declaration a decade ago may have provoked a reactive response of conspiracy theory!  Now, the secrecy of totalitarianism has been replaced with audacious transparency.  Alternative media is as popular as the mainstream. Yet it is all perception deception, for it serves the few at the complicity of the many.  All the answers we seek without can only be found within.

The Enslavement of Egocentricity

We pride ourselves on what we think we know.  We expose ourselves to an infinite array of information and propaganda; accepting it as truth, void of any exploration because it aligns with our selective cause, ideology, narrative, politic, religion or science.  When we discover alternative insights, we often discredit their veracity with our egotism.  We believe only we know what is best for us, and there is nothing anyone can share that will be beneficial, even if it minimizes our affliction and suffering.  We validate our vicious cycles of arrogance, ignorance, oblivion and self-righteousness, enabling our enslavement into egocentricity.

The Resonance of Relativity

Many may debate, dispute or disregard this article due to its sheer authenticity.  While reading, some may observe their own egocentricity based upon their honesty, integrity and understanding.  It is excruciating to simply be with the truth of ourselves, beyond our personal delusion, and our existence in a social illusion.  There is an abundance of weapons in our personal arsenals to defend us against, well, ultimately ourselves.  The fear, insecurity, oblivion and uncertainty we enable with our egocentricity pales in comparison to the consciousness, empowerment, expression and fulfillment of our universality.  Our relativity with our soul resonance is all that is relevant.  Everything else is illusion.

“Relativity is the essence of soul.”

Ghost Story

/ Iam Saums / Leave a comment

Originally published on 5/18/2016. Revision published on 10/31/2025

“We are the ghost in the machine.”

Something Wicked This Way Comes…

Society is a dark world in which billions of human beings fall prey to their own shadows.  Our collective fear has become so encompassing, we have anesthetized ourselves with our anxiety, conditions, drama, indoctrination, oblivion and uncertainty.  Our interpretation of reality is so confronting, intense and threatening, we enact a self-induced slumber, within which we simply survive.  In our illusory lives, we are haunted with the nightmare of what is and the dream of what may have been.  It is excruciating for us to accept, identify or even be with the insidiously wicked nature of the virtuality in which we engage.

The Nightmare of a Dream

Our nightmares are filled with the horrors of our broken commitments, destiny, potential and purpose.  These are the virtues that allow us to create a thriving life for ourselves and our families.  Our experiences are littered with the shards of our unfulfilled dreams to manifest a better tomorrow for ourselves and future generations.  Our actions, intentions and visions have been thwarted by a globalized and propagandized vortex of social media.  A matrix proliferated for the sole intention of enabling our assimilation, deception, dependence, disempowerment, enslavement and oppression.

The Darkness Without

It lurks within the shadows, just beyond our hyperactive sensibilities, taunting us with the mere possibility of its arrival and impact.  The impending doom of its presence and the suspense of its approach preys upon our nerves as an archaic violin down a darkened alley.  The gravity of its dread imposes a trepidation, provoking us to run for our lives.  Our hearts race, as the intensity of our fear heightens to a fever pitch.  It renders us paralyzed within the agonizing buzz of our endorphins, to supplement our waning confidence, courage, reason and strength.

The Darkness Within

Evil is not what, or how it is so commonly interpreted in our contemporary era.  It is not an ancient and malevolent entity that defiles, haunts, hunts or stalks us.  It is not a presence that eternally defies and opposes our every endeavor and intention.  Evil is a subjective figment of our darkest conjuring.  We give our power over to our own shadows when we allow our perceptions to become more powerful than our vision.  The nature of our personal observation most often is erroneous and does not serve our optimal benefit.  We favor our selective narrative, much as we may cling to our dying breath.

A Knife to the Throat

We grow accustomed to the insanity around us, attempting to deceive ourselves into denying that what occurs in social reality is not a part of us, or even beneath us.  We conform, desensitize and integrate ourselves into the virtual role the societal matrix provides.  We adopt a conviction that success and survival will be found in competing with others to become something we were never destined.  Eventually, we succumb to authority, institutionalization and propaganda.  We are pushed and pulled from one circumstance to another, until we are assimilated into the persona we have always feared.

Shadow of a Demon

As smart rats, we are so clever with our existence.  We devise personal rackets, to which we are unaware and by which we are ruled.  We invent our own demons to avoid our soul expressions of our authenticity, integrity, purpose and transcendence.  This justifies and sanctions our cruelty, destruction, errancy and inhumanity.  We desperately seek to distance ourselves from the monsters we become in our selfish quest to advance and survive in an artificial and violent society.  The greatest darkness we will ever encounter is not the one that shadows us from without.  It is the evil we enable within.

“All left unseen and untended is what enslaves us with our very own fear.”

Creature Feature

We indoctrinate ourselves with instinct and intellect for conformity into society.  This pales in comparison to the cunning prowess of our egocentricity and its insatiable desire for dominance over our soul.  Conflict rages within us all, a timeless battle between the transcendent expressions of our heart and soul and the terrestrial professions of our mind and body.  We are conditioned into creatures of habit, existing in vicious cycles of emulation.  Our predatory ancestry enslaves us within a virtual duality, diminishing our instincts, thoughts, emotions, intuition and relativity.

The Walking Dead

We view our existence through selectively interpretive filters, fabricating our lives and performing our fantasies within the superficiality of our social reality.  We enact our apathy, fear, indifference and unwillingness to evade our destiny.  We believe we cannot survive under the gravity of our accountability, authenticity and integrity to embody our possibility, purpose and power.  We allow ourselves to become a projection of the social norm, bred for accumulation, amusement, diversion, narrative and oblivion.  We become the antithesis of life, condemned to exist en masse with the walking dead.

Ghosts of our Lives

We rarely live as cause in our lives.  We settle on surviving the outcomes of our seemingly random circumstances via our reactivity to ordinary occurrence.  As we become habituated to a coincidental lifestyle, we engage deeper into a dualistic existence within the three-dimensional hologram-projection we interpret as reality.  With every unconscious breath, we acquiesce our personal power.  Our obedience to authoritarian entities and organizations is our evasion, excusing us from the choices we all must make.  We sever our relativity with our heart and soul, as we become ghosts of our lives.

Egocentric Evil

The perceptions we adopt and impose in our desperation to be accepted and adopted into a virtual simulation segregates us from relativity with our soul.  We are driven to seek our worth in others, instead of establishing our own through our being, expression, and universality.  We have existed outside of ourselves for so long, we mistake our delusion, ideology, narrative and propaganda as truth.  We are mere shadows of our younger selves, who once inspired and empowered us. We are seduced by the egocentric evils of our desire, entitlement, fear, intelligence, self-righteousness and vanity.

Ghost Story

We are all ghosts of our lives.  We haunt the empty halls of our oblivion in a futile attempt to find a forbidden treasure that has always been within us.  We live a ghost story when we conduct our consciousness away from being an expression of our soul.  It is our universal destiny to transform, transcend, express and embody universality.  We are an expression of empowerment, relativity, transformation and transcendence.  It is our collective destiny to be an extraordinary difference in our life, for others and the world.  The universal expression of our being is the embodiment of our soul.

“Our unfulfilled destiny is our ghost story.”

Universal Vision

/ Iam Saums / Leave a comment

“Perception is deception.”

Virtual Reality

Reality does not exist.  It is a projected simulation, a holographic computer program.  Our collective interpretation of actuality is often erroneous.  Given that our critical mass, human awareness is consigned to instinct and intellect, we fail to comprehend everything beyond our conditioning, programming and proselytization.  Our ignorance may diminish our universal vision, but our collective/selective oblivion blinds our perception.  Institutionalized indoctrination assimilates us into a human vortex of consumption.  We wager our proficiency for consciousness with our voluntary engagement in virtuality.

Impression of Idealism

Social reality is the collective paradigm in which we are all enslaved.  Many may refute this claim, simply because they cannot admit or accept that they were duped into linear existence.  Egocentricity is the most influential force in society, deceiving us with our own delusion.  We defend ourselves and offend others with our selective ideologies to compensate for our failure, fear, fraud, insecurity and self-righteousness.  We con ourselves with solitary gratification, concealing our misery, while feigning an impression of idealism.  All the while, we emulate our social environment to evade our accountability, integrity and originality.

Perception Deception

The distortion, manipulation and transmutation of how we interpret reality is being executed in the extreme by an onslaught of fabricated narratives.  Education, entertainment, politics, religion and science proliferate undefined, unfounded and unproven propaganda via a vast array of medium.  They exploit convenient and controversial opinion into consumable fiction.  We adopt our personal delusion to interact with their social illusion.  This is our perception deception, which is the adaptation of our ideologies.  We would rather die for our feigned convictions to preserve our egos than live for our destiny to embody our souls.    

All in a Narrative

“Narrative is a story or tale, an account of a series of related events or experiences.”  There are rare occurrences of realism in society.  Yet, the line between fact and fiction is altered, blurred and convoluted into weaponized deception, inducing a dependency upon provocative and violent propaganda.  When we descend into social anarchy, we raise our voices, beat our chests and exchange our empathy for vanity to coerce the opposition with our viewpoint.  We are not simply endeavoring to convert our adversaries to our ideology. We demand social agreement and credence, all for the validation of our selective narratives.

“Our narrative is the declaration of our egocentricity.”

Artificial Power

We are a soul expressing the resonance of universality into social reality. Our collective destiny is to transform and transcend our simulated existence.  However, when we encounter universality, we react from our institutional programming with hostile resistance, which is the self-defense response of our social mimicry.  Society is teeming with an excess of individuals and organizations who discredit, distort, manipulate and seize each other’s power.  Most are deficient in energy awareness and expression. In essence, they lack the ability to inflict real harm upon others, as the authority they wage, weaponize and wield is artificial. 

A Violent Dynamic

Our life is a simulation.  Primary, secondary and auxiliary routines tandemly operate virtual cycles of causality, eventuality and potentiality.  All programs run in a sequence of ones and zeros, thus the paradigm in which we exist is a duality.  This defines our identity as a male or female, conservative or liberal, atheist or religious, intelligent or ignorant, gay or straight and authentic or artificial.  Authoritarian entities employ administrations to stimulate our sensibilities with explicit, malicious and violent propaganda to provoke our reactivity.  Once we engage in social combat, we abandon our soul for our egocentricity.  

The Con is On

Whether in our sleep state or our daily delusion, much of our life is spent dreaming.  The same can be claimed for our encounters in social reality.  Though we are anesthetized, traumatized and victimized by our lives, we fail to truly live them.  The simulation in which we occupy is an interactive virtuality.  When we direct our awareness, engagement and focus into this hologram, we profile, but we do not exist.  The identity we assume and present to society is an avatar of superficiality.  The collective con we run on ourselves is to transmute our personal power into social compliance, all while concealing our deficiencies with our vanity.               

The Art of Extraction

Before we can escape the social matrix, we must acknowledge we are enslaved.  The greatest obstacle we encounter when cultivating, establishing and embodying our consciousness is navigating our egocentricity.  Egotism is a neurological-programming psychosis, integrating us into a three-dimensional simulation and isolating us within an insular delusion of duality.  This paradigm enables our solitary oblivion, which is the personification of our enslavement.  Our exodus begins when we withdraw our attention, energy and engagement from virtuality and shift our consciousness into convergence with universality.   

Soul Relativity

During our conception, we all endure a schism from our soul.  In the womb, we are intimately related with our mother, in body, mind, heart and intuition.  We share behaviors, instincts, thoughts and feelings, which encodes our false personality.  Institutionalization programs us into a virtual existence, whereas our transcendence inspires our universal experience.  Universality is an omnidimensional energy, empowered by the synergy between our soul and the universe.  The equilibrium between our instincts, intellect, emotions and intuition establishes the foundation for our soul relativity to source our universal vision.

Universal Vision

The revolving kaleidoscope of interpretive narrative, propagandized perception, selective realism and social indoctrination corrupts, distorts and exploits our consciousness, expression and vision.  Interference and manipulation in the algorithm of virtuality enslaves us into vicious cycles of anxiety, conflict, egocentricity, fear, insecurity and uncertainty.  Being human condemns us into a linear singularity, existing as a silhouette of our soul.  We are an eternal and infinite expression of universality.  Transforming our delusion and transcending the illusion empowers our shift from egocentric perception into universal vision.  

“Existence is a simulation of perception.”

“Experience is a transcendence of vision.”

A New Era

/ Iam Saums / Leave a comment

“Opinions are often given yet rarely warranted.”

On a Personal Note

I have been publishing articles for two decades.  During that time, they have endured through societal absurdity, hostility, insanity and polarity.  Though they have not received mass exposure on websites around the world, they have generated engagement and inspired a modest shift in paradigm.  However, my literary voice is a whisper amidst the aggressive, compulsive and dysfunctional ferocity of alternative, mainstream and individually propagandized media.  In a society rife with distortion, manipulation, toxification and transmutation; fact is fiction, illusion is reality, truth is a lie, good is evil and intelligence is egocentricity.              

Social Psychosis

Given our educational, hereditary, political, religious and scientific indoctrination, our selective propaganda becomes our perception.  An interpretive filter we devise to engage, interact and personify beliefs, ideologies, positions and rhetoric.  Oblivion to our egocentricity impels us to impose our viewpoints upon others with arrogance, coercion, entitlement, expectation and self-righteousness.  Our self-subscribed narratives forge our personal delusion and align with a societal illusion in the simulation of reality.  Social psychosis is viral, infecting our collective observation, relativity, vision and understanding.   

The Shift

A universal, energetic shift occurred during the Winter Solstice in 2012.  Since then, our existence in society has exponentially accelerated and intensified beyond the boundaries of our conditioned comprehension.  This quickening has made it unbearable for us to flow with the frequencies of the universe.  Excessive dependence and engagement in social reality have compromised any relativity we may experience with our soul.  Yet, the shift continues, regardless of our awareness and resonance.  This new era is an evolutionary progression of transcendence, empowering us to embody universal being.

The Matrix Maze

We are all programmed into a static, instinctual/intellectual existence, primarily as two-dimensional avatars engaging in a three-dimensional virtuality.  Our daily lives are executed in a simulation of stimulus and reactivity.  In essence, we are akin to laboratory rats, racing through a maze and searching for escape.  Occasionally, when we free ourselves from the labyrinth of reality, we eventually regress into the illusions of comfort, convenience, familiarity and safety the social matrix provides.  We are unwilling to be authentic, accountable and real enough to identify ourselves as the advocates of our personal enslavement. 

“Humanity is egocentricity.”

Forums of Egocentricity

Humanity’s greatest deficiency is its egocentricity.  Self-righteousness is an artificial power, which supplies deceptive, dysfunctional and solitary gratifications.  When one person yearns to be right, their expectation is that everyone else is wrong.  Their entitlement imposes a mandate of agreement with their narrative(s), or else they condemn their opposition to incompetence, ignorance and inanity.  Modern society is built upon a fractured foundation of self-righteousness.  There are unlimited forums of egocentricity; baiting conflict, division and fear to weaponize debate and provoke anarchy, brutality, polarity, supremacy and vanity.

The Looking Glass

All who are deceived by social reality dismiss universality as a fantasy.  The extreme conditioning of institutional indoctrination has established this paradigm, segregating us from our relativity with the universe.  It is our greatest crime against humanity.  No matter what social influence we encounter, we are the criminals in our severance with our soul.  Our egocentricity distorts and diminishes our universality, concealing the atrocities we commit against ourselves. It coerces us into our reactivity to defend our belief, delusion, duplicity, fear, insecurity and uncertainty.  We engage in virtuality to attain social authority, credibility and validity.

Natural Progression

Within each conscious and present moment, our vision, transcendence and transformation is our empowerment, sourced by the equilibrium between our soul, intuition, heart, mind and body.  From birth to death, our metamorphosis is the unique, energetic signature of our universality.  Our natural progression of being is to embody our soul.  Yet, our egocentricity disrupts our balance to deceive, enslave and manipulate us into engaging and investing in a holographic simulation we perceive as reality.  No matter what obstacle, setback or trauma we may encounter, the synthesis of our being is the foundation upon which we evolve.  

The Art of Embodiment

Universality is sourced by our soul.  When we establish balance in our being, we transcend existence in social reality and shift into universal experience.  As we align our awareness with the universe, our soul empowers us into our unique flow.  However, it is beyond calming our body, silencing our mind and expressing our heart.  It is listening to our intuition, being empowered by our soul and synergizing with universality.  Embodying our soul in this simulation yields failure more often than fulfillment.  Holding the space for our awareness is virtually impossible.  Yet, the art of soul embodiment is universal being.

All Good Things in All Good Time

One day after a ceremony, a friend of mine asked me what I experienced.  I responded, “I will let you know when the moment happens.”  Our experiences are as omnidimensional as we are.  Clarity, insight, purpose, transformation and understanding do not occur in linear time; they transpire in universal synchrony.  Often, it takes days, weeks, months or years for our visions to become realized.  When they progress in the present moment, experiential awareness is essential.  Their fulfillment is empowered by our alignment with universal flow, sourcing our evolution in the embodiment of our soul. 

A New Era

When we desire to be right in the world, we are wrong with the universe.  Proselytizing our self-righteousness upon others is a projection of our fear, insecurity, oblivion, vanity and uncertainty.  We weaponize the mimicry of our selective ideologies, narratives and propaganda to justify our egocentricity, thus concealing our universal deficiency.  Most of what transpires in sociality is a distortion, diversion and exorcism of our soul’s expression. Social reality is a simulation, programming us to secure our individual gratification instead of empowering our universal fulfillment.  In this new era, our relativity with universality is all that is true.      

“Transcendence is the threshold of universality.”