The Dedicated Quest for Wisdom: Brother and Sisters

I was feeling much better last night and decided to take part in some Saturday night alcohol consumption. I haven't been drunk in so long that I can't remember the last time I went out drinking. It's been two months at least. Since alcohol is so incredibly expensive in Australia, people drink the cheap stuff. And wow.. the cheap stuff is gross.

The drink of choice is called goon. It's the type of boxed wine that comes in a bag with a nozzle on it. Goon tastes terrible and gives wretched hangovers due to the high amount of sugar. My goon experiences consist of one sip, immediately followed by a weird face... and that's it. No goon for me, thank you. I thought that they must call it goon because you get wasted and run around acting like a goon but apparently, the Aboriginals used to carry liquids in sacks called goons, much like the bag of wine once you pull it out of the box. There is some dispute about the origin of the term but that's not the point. The point is that goon sucks and that you shouldn't drink it. Danny had a goon night a few days back and was speaking in an English accent for an entire night. It was actually a surprisingly good accent and probably would have fooled someone who didn't know better. Goon usually leads to a significant increase in voice volume, chain smoking rollies, unexplained bruises and cuts, and occasionally, unspeakable regret. Danny was lucky to escape all of these except for loud volume and spontaneous change of foreign accents.

I've been continuing to read tarot cards for people and I've been making a lot of things out of hemp. In short, my transition to becoming a full on hippy is going quite well. I made a nifty bracelet for myself and am currently working on a choker type necklace for a friend with a stone embedded. I made a good connection with a very high energy woman named Denise. She is a Reiki master and is knowledgeable about lots of cool subjects, including crystals. She is hosting a crystal workshop in a few weeks, which I am going to try to attend. We traded a tarot card reading for a Reiki attunement. Danny had one a few days ago and wrote about it in his blog. She placed crystals on all my chakras and used more to form a grid around my body. At one point, she placed chimes down the center of my body and struck them in a pattern. It felt really strange, but good, and I could feel the energetic cleansing effect from them. After the session, I asked her which chakras were blocked. She said that my energy is flowing fairly free but the most work was required on my base chakra and my stomach chakra. I've been dealing with a little bit of stress trying to resolve some banking issues and pay back debts to Danny, which are base chakra issues. The stomach chakra issues were probably left over from when I went to the emergency room.

Oh ya, I forgot to mention that. The other night, I woke up in really intense pain. It felt like I was being stabbed in the stomach but I couldn't discern why or where the pain was coming from. It wasn't from organs and it wasn't from my muscles. In either case, I couldn't breathe or do much more than groan and writhe. I tried to vomit but couldn't and walked out to get help. Luckily I ran into Tay, who I love and is like a sister to me, and she helped me get to the hospital. They gave me a shot in the butt for the pain and within 30 minutes, it had gone down from level 9 or 10 pain to level 5 or 6. I was able to breathe and walk normally. After getting back to the Arts Factory, I decided there was no way I was sleeping on the ground that night and I grabbed my sleeping bag and went into a dorm to find an empty bed. I was successful and promptly passed out. I woke up to six German girls in bathing suits running around and giggling. They saw that I was awake and said "HI!!!" super enthusiastically. I said hello back, put my head back on the pillow and thought that this was the weirdest 12 hours I've had in a long time.

I felt absolutely fine the next day. No pain whatsoever. I have no idea what caused it and it didn't come back. Weird. I'm really thrown off by all the health issues that I've been having. I'm generally a very healthy person and seldom even get a cold. Perhaps it's just due to drinking different water, cooking in a communal kitchen with lots of germs, and sleeping on the ground every night. In contrast to my incidences of poor health, I've been living a very high energy lifestyle. Living the way I want to live and talking to all these amazing people is filling me with love and makes me feel like I did at Burning Man. Whereas I used to sleep a full night and wake up exhausted, I've been sleeping 6 hours or less and feeling fully rested. Whereas I used to eat three meals a day with snacks, I've been eating one small meal per day and feeling completely satiated. For example, it's 5pm at the time of this writing and all I have eaten today is one sushi roll. I'm not even slightly hungry. Some people might say this is unhealthy, Danny included, but my body doesn't require the same energy input from food when I'm in this state of mind. I've heard that the Buddha ate once per day and the amount he ate would hardly satisfy a bird. I've also heard of people fasting and living off the energy of the sun. Who's to say it's not possible. I haven't been consciously eating like this because of a goal or anything but it has been working out this way since I only eat when I'm hungry.

I have been having lots of really great interactions with women. Over the last couple of months, I have been abstaining from romantic involvements. I felt like I had some blockages that I needed to work out and that taking a break from romantic thought, action, etc would be a wise choice. I wanted to rid my mind of any thoughts of a sexual nature and rid my interactions of any sexual motives. The idea is to see all women as my sisters, mothers, and grandmothers and to take care of them accordingly. I have passed up several opportunities for romantic/sexual involvement over the last few months (which my friends think is weird) in lieu of my spiritual pursuits. I'm aware that a sexual balance is necessary and that the extreme of abstinence is not necessarily better than the extreme of promiscuity. Since taking on these attitudes, I have been receiving much more female attention. Women are very aware and intuitive and know when a person is coming from respect and when they are not. I have recently been allowing the possibility of romantic involvement (although not sexual just yet) back into my life and the interactions that I've been having have been so much more energetic, exciting, and invigorating than before. The power struggle between the sexes is often pushed by men and the moment we stop pushing the sexual issue on women, they are able to relax, open up, and trust. I feel this is what many women are really looking for. They want someone who they can trust and who makes them feel safe. With this absence of sexual motives, we can drop our expectations of each other and just interact, person to person. In the coming consciousness revolution, this gender battle will be a main issue to be addressed. Sex is a root desire and is one that is hard to unearth and control but it is one that men (and women) must tackle and master.

I can finally share some pictures with all of you now that I have the right adaptor for my camera.

This is the view from our hostel in Sydney.

Iguanas are running around everywhere!

Sydney University

This is a nice view of the Sydney Harbor Bridge on the left and the Opera House on the right.

This place looked a lot like Kipu Falls in Kauai! The falls were in the same place, the rock walls were in the same place, the creek exit, and even the rope swing! The water was quite murky and cold however.

This was Danny's goon night. Danny, Finch, Krechelle from Adelaide, and Dave from South Africa.

Me with Krechelle and Kerri, both from Adelaide. They invited me to Christmas in Adelaide and I might have to accept!

These two are from my Reiki attunement. Various types of crystals are on and around my chakras and if you look closely you might notice the crystal grid around my body.