The Law of Love

"Spiritually the earthly contracts do not have more validity than the one you want to give to them. I mean, nobody is bound to love anybody, nor to keep loyalty for the obligation of a marriage contract, nor for any other cause. What is really wrong is to trick the other person making him/her believe that there are some feelings which in reality do not exist. What is fair is to be honest with what one feels and to act in consequence. In the previous example, since the woman recognizes not to love her husband, the right thing is that she reveals it to him and that, consequently with it, finishes the loveless relationship for being able to live the relationship of feelings with the loved person without the need to hide.  There are people who know they are not in love with that one who they signed the marriage contract with, or the commitment to be a couple, and maintain the link for convenience, for necessity, for feeling of guilt or for fear of the reaction of others. We have already talked enough about it. On the other side, there are people who know who they love too, but for fear or comfort, they don’t fight to join with the beloved being, instead of that they prefer to repress or nullify their feelings to not suffer, and they get used to comfortable earthly relationships however they are not fulfilled with them, because they lack the essential, the mutual and corresponded affinity love. They live a life of appearance facing to the outside, and of emptiness and repressed suffering facing to the inside. Be honest with your feelings and make your life to be a reflection of your feelings. That’s how you can avoid unnecessary sufferings. Have the courage to fight for your feelings, because that is the only thing worth fighting for." - The Law of Love

I feel like I've been trying to find the words to explain this exact concept for years.  I've questioned monogamy and it's validity/feasibility but what I was really questioning was the standards to which we operate our romantic relationships. The core tool to use here is truth.  First recognizing your own truth, deep within, then braving to share this truth with others. 

"One has to be aware that true love is free and cannot be forced, it arises spontaneously and it is on that basis of the free and mutual spontaneous feeling where the union will be produced, without the need to exist any obligation or an effort to maintain it."

When we meditate we focus on being.  Being here, now, in our bodies, existing without want or judgment or force.  The surrender of acceptance.  I have come far in my journey to find center within myself. Now I'm on a mission to open myself up to experiences with others.  To share myself  without being held to it as an obligation. This is a vulnerable place, but a mission well worth engaging in.  It takes self awareness, communication and risk.  Maintaining autonomy has been more about remembering to focus on my own goals, needs and achievements.  An exciting interaction that makes you happy, perhaps makes you swoon, could bring sweeping emotions and it can be easy to fall into all the old traps.  The entire process is about breaking the mold, discarding the old patterns and social expectations. I have to navigate my internal compass of honoring my truth. Not everyone is going to understand, but they don't have to.  One of my top affirmations lately has been to "honor the process".  All is process, every action is practice, success is merely mile markers on an infinite road.

What the !?

I feel hopeful for the future...
Or is this just delusion?
I think I'm getting stronger...
Or is this just confusion?
My foresight becoming clearer
As I learn to trust my intuition
My moves become much bolder
As I don't need any permission
Learning how to co-create...
Without their need for competition
Rejoicing in small victories...
As I reduce my inhibition
Where do I go from here?
Is there a chance to reach my vision?
I recognize I'm not in control...
Of the circumstance or condition.
Yet I know I am capable
Of making a decision.

Raising the Jed eye

The plan for this plane is a planet, so let's play!

Today's affirmation

Working on yourself is the most important work you can undertake.

Conflict Resolution Experience #1

The greatest challenge in my recovery from PTSD is handling conflict. I am still passive and often prone to flee. Despite being aware that my response is my responsibility and should not rest on the manner of the other person, my chest tightens and the need to escape takes over all my thought processes.  A walk pushes oxygen through the system and provides a reprieve from the panic. I remind myself that I have complete control on how I handle a situation. So far this has functioned, but it requires the ability to take a break at a moment's notice. It requires that I abandon what I'm doing. In the future it may not be feasible. So I need to develop a shorter stabilization trick. A,way to bounce back in a near instant. It's hard to plan ahead for unknown situations. My best idea currently is to mentally list the Fibonacci sequence. This pattern consolidates attention to something beautiful and pleasing while bootstrapping a return to rational thought. I'm going to try to keep it on hand and see how it helps.

Skyview

As we ascended over Denver flat patterns of lakes and housing sprawled nearly treeless into the distance where the Rockies bordered the edge of the landscape like a video game Nintendo wall. From up here downtown Denver appeared as a cluster of monoliths, like a modern day metal Stonehenge. The clock of their lives revolving around business hours, beating to the rhythm of a city heart.
Then into the clouds over the Rockies, surging into the crown mandala of the region, leaving the obelisks of the city for the clouds and realms of imagination.

Cicada's Axiom and Focault's Pendulum

At the turn of February I was reading Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.  Something in the way they were building a puzzle of sorts reminded me of the Cicada 3301 puzzles my friends had shown me last fall on YouTube.  I decided to see if there was any news of a new puzzle, and found a link to this image: http://popfilesxuru7lsr.onion/~truth7/7111317192329.png  You'll need to use the Tor Browser to access it. I used to play cryptograph puzzles as a teenager and had some fun pulling a phrase out of the Morse Code:

A New species is emerging. Evolution is no longer guided by survival.
The Future is ours to choose and the singularity approaching.
Myriad Choices will me made, and utopia will usurp the world, 
as neurons designed into something new.

Then I came across a forum, where I found a link to the starting image for the puzzle which had this clue:
A Fludd approaches.
Chart the stars.A Chord of would WARMS My I

Opening the file in a word program provided a geographical coordinate and a link to the image I had came upon first.

The coordinate according to the forum goers was a payphone that had been removed from the Mojave Desert. (I couldn't help but think of the Mojave Wasteland of Fallout). The wikipedia for it listed an old phone number that allows for group chats, I hate being on the phone, so I decided to allow myself the ease of catching up with their help. There were tones and a list of numbers, which someone else decoded as:

FLUDD KILLS ALL BUT ROOTS
    WOLVES ARE FOXES FOXES ARE RAVENS THE HUNT DRAWS NEAR THOSE WHO CLAEM GOD HOOD SHOULD BE STRUCK DOWN BY
    THOSE DEEMED ORC WHEN KINGS RISE TRUMPETS WILL PLAY THE WORLD IS NOT YET FLOODED KEEP HUNTING   3301   

I have a feeling there are a couple errors here, but I have yet to go back and decode the numbers myself. Another person suggested the tones meant something, and until I came across a youtube video that may or may not have been relevent and recent it showed a tonal code that through music software came out as:  THE TRUTH IS LOST.  FIND IT.

I don't remember how I landed on the countdown page, it was the title of the png dot come.  That title was 7 prime numbers in a row starting at 7: 7111317192329.  Being fond prime numbers this enthralled me.  The countdown page was counting backwards from January 25th when I found it, and skimming the forum I used to dig into the initial puzzle they had all started before hand and theorized a time sensitive puzzle.  Though the date January 25th may be important.  Another user posted size details of an image that seemed to encode March 13, 2017 and the prime series 29 19 79 89 that came from multiplying the height and width in US inches. 

So from all these clues I went on an exploration.  Fludd designed and created a monochord instrument that is a physical representation of the harmonics of number, and the numbers of harmonics. Myriad is a company that creates programs which create and read music.  I'm guessing this is how the YouTube person decoded the tones.  Chart the stars at this point didn't correlate to anything I'd found yet.

I then searched for Wolf, Fox, Raven and found this folktale: http://members.home.nl/marcmarti/yugur/folktale/tale12a.htm
In it the Wolf is said to be the first brother, the Fox the second and the Raven the third. If we assign each of these numbers to the clue it then states:  one is two, two is three.
Searching for this phrase I found the  Axiom of Maria:  is a precept in alchemy: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth."

I also love alchemy, so I read up on this axiom, which got me reading Jung's take on it, which led me on a tangent of self guided study.  I enjoy the inspiration it brings to research and to find associations even if they aren't the ones I was supposed to find, especially if they aren't the ones I was supposed to find.  I was making my own "plan", exploring possibilities.  When I came back to the puzzle I realized that the wheel in the eye of the skull must relate to Chart the Stars, and the key lodged in the png must unlock some encoded message somewhere.

While I love math and puzzles, I'm not very well versed in encryption or privacy, my study of computer coded went as far as early 2000's HTML and then I shifted gears to studying art.  I felt that perhaps this was going to be my wall when it came to the Cicada puzzles, and perhaps part of the reason they put them out.  To push us to learn about online privacy and anonymity.  So I decided I'd look into some of these processes like PGP and TSSL.

Wanting to take a break from puzzle chasing I returned to my book.  Two pages in the characters began discussing Robert Fludd.  I laughed at the synchronicity.  The macrocosm and microcosm reflect each other.  Something proclaimed by gnostics everywhere; as above, so below. I finished the novel, finding multiple more references to Fludd.  I wondered about his unpublished work, and about references to him made by Pierre Grassendi which was not published widely. The book often returned to the idea of the fixed point which all revolves around that the pendulum shows us.  I think that fixed point is where we move both inward to, and outward toward when we meditate.  It's that well from which divine inspiration comes to the artist.  Everything is connected, and all is number.