Post-it notes from the land of the new age in which I will speak like you know what the hell I am talking about in order to initiate you into a specific discourse community, albeit in the digressive style of the relatively new and evolving literary form “the blog”.

As I mentioned yesterday was Wesak, the festival commemorating the enlightenment of the Buddha under the bohdi tree & named for the Wesak valley in Tibet. It’s a good day to get enlightened as the spiritual masters are thought to visit the earth and give a gift of what is needed - yesterday the light of wisdom was the gift; at least according to the interpreters of the event that I was (what was I) technical advisor for. We hosted a St. Louis based loosely Buddhist group (loosely as the syncretism with Christianity, Judaism, & Hinduism are profligate) for a live web broadcast from *Germany (as many scholars have noted, participation and initiation are key to understanding and interpretation). I had some nervous moments as I kept rechecking the configuration at our end to confirm that we had the link, there was just nothing coming across it. Ten to fifteen minutes after the event was supposed to start, our end came alive and the meditation went off without a hitch, the powers that be were very pleased. I was anointed
with sacred oil, offered sacred water to drink, but I am a meat/pork eater who should tithe more so I had to sit in the back for my own protection. Too much shakti can kick your karmic release into overdrive and make your life nearly unlivable – the much dreaded kundalini syndrome is also possible as the mercurial force of sexual/creative energy, which sleeps in most people like a serpent coiled around the base of the spine, burns its way up your spinal column, popping charkas on its assent like carnival balloons - all hell can break loose– in the words of George Feurstein and others, spiritual technology is nothing to mess around with, you need to be in good shape physically and mentally to handle the influx of grace.
After the meditation I was feeling like a battery left too long in the charger, post clean up of the room I went and ran a mile around the high school track in order to ground (a mile is three laps around a standard track right?). I am not to eat meat or drink alcohol for at least 24 hours post ritual or, “we cannot be held responsible for the consequences” so Angela and I went to Mai Lee for vegetarian fare. My golden tofu curry was quite edible. Light bulbs in my apartment kept blowing all night – so if I am carrying a charge, it’s no good for the electronics. I of course had strange and involving dreams – too strange to post really – and even if what we have is a placebo effect I do feel, how should I put it, like my personality has had a bath.



*1. What is it about Germany that draws mystics? It’s certainly a good language for philosophy and has a strong mystical tradition. The university of Vienna could be thought of as the birthplace of the new age movement – Martin Buber translating the Chaung Tzu and The Secret of the Golden Flower – Jung inspired by these translations to form his theories of synchronicity & the unconscious. German romanticism’s fascination with the orient leading to ideological transformations involving the rediscovery of the
pre-socratics, the Gnostics, the pagan traditions and ultimately leading to Karl running the St. Louis end of a web broadcast from Germany.