On DuQuette's Low Magick - or the temple that is a telephone booth

Over the weekend I finished reading Lon Milo DuQuette's wonderful 'Low Magick'. It is a refreshingly short book, a small compendium of autobiographical short stories on DuQuette's various magickal experiences. As the author states there might be more power in a well told short story than in a huge volume of ancient rites and prayers... So in between all your volumes of different Picatrix' versions, Grimoires, etc. this is exactly the type of treat your inner child loves to devour: a magickal version of Steve Jobs' famous 'stay hungry, stay foolish' line...

However, besides praising the book and encouraging you to spend ten bugs on it, there is one additional thing I want to point out about it. I actually wonder why DuQuette doesn't mention it anywhere himself? So let me bold enough to do it for him.

Since the early days of the Golden Dawn we have spent an awful lot of time in the West to confine the place of magick to a temple. Life outside the temple and life inside the temple are separated from each other like the entrance hall and the inner sanctum of a bank, the safe. While there is nothing wrong with an inner sanctum, for me there is definitely something wrong with a barren life outside the temple that lacks spirituality - as we just locked spirituality up in a magickal circle, behind magickal curtains in our magickal temple. 

While we learned to go into a telephone booth to dial up a spirit number, spirits don't really care from where we are calling them. To be perfectly honest: the dial cord in the phone booth is cut off from the telephone network since many years. It's just that we feel better shielded from the noise around us and confined in the surrounding of our nice red telephone booth. We feel ready and centered to make a call and we prefer to expect someone being on the other end of the (dead) line - rather than having spirits talking non-stop in our minds. At least we can put back the  receiver! 

Now, here is the interesting bit: It seems we do need some sort of line of demarcation that allows us to retreat back into the grounded earthiness of Malkuth. I guess most of us need to be able to shut the door of a temple, to hang up the receiver and to silence the spirit voices in our minds. If that is the whole function of a temple - to create a physical representation of an astral threshold, to be able to open and close a spirit door - well done and here is to a perfect magickal tool.

In his book 'Low Magick' DuQuette shares examples of experimenting with that spirit door. He wraps the magickal circle as a consecrated thread around his body, he invokes deities on a party and his father teaches him his first and most important magickal virtue: self-esteem and the fundamental faith in his power to determine his own fate.

In taking us on a journey through all these events that balance on the fence between physical and spirit reality, DuQuette is a master of teaching us how low that fence actually is and how easy it is to step over it and return safely afterwards. This particular worldview and skill - to effortlessly move forward and backward over the threshold of the realms of reality - isn't a competence Western Occultism is particularly well know for. Shamanism, on the other hand, is.

And this is the conclusion I wished the book pointed out more openly for dummies like me: DuQuette shares a wonderful vision of a place with us, of an inner attitude and approach that takes an essential quality of shamanism and reintroduces it to our Western lore. The ability to navigate between Tonal and Nagual from a single point of presence.

In this effort the book 'Low Magick' clearly joins forces with a whole current of recent publications that all strive to bring magick back into our lives. And to realize that the threshold of our temples is just that: a symbol of two different inner states. Both of them being open and available to us at any point during night or day, any nights or days of our lives.

Here is how another wonderful author, Josephine McCarthy puts it:

"Learning how to be open, to have thinner barriers around us without being eaten alive by every draining person and parasite teaches us to be able to flow through the worlds and be receptive to the slightest whisper from inner contacts while retaining our energetic health and integrity."

Josephine McCarthy, Magickal Knowledge, Vol.II, page 19

A Key Called Love... or a sigil for my evil demon

Let's start this with a warning. Maybe big bold letters can help: THIS POST IS A SIGIL FOR MY EVIL DEMON. He is bound into this text. Do not continue to read as reading this sigil might set him free... Well, not that my evil demon can do any harm to you; after all he is mine. But you know how demons are - they help each other out like real mates. And he might just figure where yours is kept locked inside? 

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One of the most fascinating results of my evocation of the Olympic Spirit of Hagith was her take on the interdependency of love and life. Love being a light that opens and life being the seed that is put inside. The simple, yet perplexing insight: nothing can receive life if it hasn't been opened by love before. 

Think that sounds cheesy? Well, let's consider this: life is a pretty general term. It is not the same as beauty, harmony or balance. Life includes all the nastiness and ugliness we normally don't tend to associate with it. Life is rainy days, depression and sickness - just as it is ice cream, sunshine and a walk in the park.  

So the key of love that Hagith provides opens all kinds of doors, irrespective of what has been kept inside... Still sounds too much like theory? Then let me share a story of a door that I had nailed shut for all the right reasons twenty years ago and which Hagith just decided to tear wide open...

When I first experienced the beauty and fulfillment of Tiphareth I was simply blown away by how quietly contempt and in love I could be with the world around me. At the same time, however, I realized that this brightness, this complete effortlessness, has an evil twin. A mirror face of the buddha-like smile that covered my face for many days after entering the realm of Tiphareth... Similarly, I realized that I wasn't exactly in a rush to hunt for this shadow and leave the beautiful sunshine in the garden of Tiphareth behind. 

So while I was sitting on my Tiphareth meadows for weeks in one long wonderful picnic, deep inside I knew that there was a gravel walk leading out of the park into a dirty suburb and to a run down door with a house number and a name on it... I even knew the house number and the name on the doorplate (see the Note at the end). Yet, I still was in no rush leaving my unfinished picnic, walking down the path and essentially spoil the entire day... First off I needed to achieve balance and stable connection to the forces of Tiphareth. There was still plenty of time left to go scouting in the suburbs afterwards...

Well, fast forward about a year: here comes Hagith. Suddenly I am standing in front of the run down door in that far away alley. I have no idea how I got here? The old door slams wide open: Inside is a room covered in ashes. All things are quiet and still inside. It is the living room of my parent's house. I am a child again, standing in the middle of the room and looking around me. This is the burial chamber of my past. I am right in the room I promised myself never to return to... I realize a part of me has been standing here since all these years: the same boy, the same clothes, the same haircut. The same bitter taste of sadness in my throat, the same profound disillusionment on my mind that life will never become for me what I knew it could be for others... It is incredibly quiet in the Pompeii house of my past. Surrounded by memories whose life I have drawn out and used to build up my future, surrounded by ghosts and furnitures made from ashes... I guess this is the place where my evil daimon lives.

Here is what Agrippa has to say about the nature of the evil daimon:

"As therefore there is given to every man a good spirit, so also there is given to every man an evil Diabolicall spirit, whereof each seeks an union with our spirit, and endeavours to attract it to it self, and to be mixed with it, as wine with water; the good indeed, through all good works conformable to it self, change us into Angels, by uniting us, as it is writ of John Baptist in Malachie: Behold I send mine Angel before thy face: of which transmutation, and union it is writ elsewhere; He which adheres to God is made one spirit with him. An evil spirit also by evil works, studies to make us conformable to it self, and to unite, as Christ saith of Judas, Have not I chosen twelve, & one of you is a devil?"

(Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, Book III, chapter XX) 

Well, I wish he had also called out this: My evil daimon is the spirit that never appears in full sight. He is the ugly part of me that everybody can see but I. He is the force that hinders, wears out and withers my ability to love and give. He is the strange gravitational force that holds me back when I need to speak, that closes my eyes when I need to see. He is the force that creates my armor of pride and the darkness inside. My evil daimon is the quiet usurper, he is the one who stands behind me, the voice that sounds like mine and the face I have never seen.  

At the same time, however, my evil daimon also is the force that allowed me to survive. By surrounding me like an armor of cold it sheltered what was kept inside. He didn't help exactly to escape from the room made of ashes, yet because of him I outlasted while I was caught inside. When things get so tough that I cannot allow love to help me anymore, my evil daimon is the last line of defense. He is the ugly truth and every touch of his leaves a stain. But I guess we all have been to places where we were willing to pay the price: By closing down all other resources, by slamming shut all doors, by embracing the counterforce of love, we can create a confined space of survival. A living grave, a shadow in the sun. 

The door to the room of ashes is wide open now. For the first time I can see my evil daimon. He has left the run down house, stepped out on the street, eyes wide open he is staring into the sun above the garden. The burning light pierces through his eyes, they burn and die down to ashes. My demon doesn't move, but keeps on standing and holds his face of ashes into the sun...

Suddenly I get it: every living thing has a right to be set free. Be it an evil demon or an angel, be it made of ashes or light. Hagith's love is blind.

    

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Note: When I prepared for the rite that took me through the veil of Paroketh and into Tiphareth I had worked with Agrippa's instructions on how to construct the name of your genius and evil daimon from your natal chart. You can download The Genius & Evil Demon Calculator on myoccultcircle.com for free. Any questions on how to use it, just send an email to acher300@me.com

    

PICATRIX - complete 1933 German version for free download

This is going to be a pretty short post... Actually, it simply is a link with a tiny bit of context. But what a link it is! 

The Picatrix (latin title of the original "Ġāyat al-ḥakīm wa aḥaqq al-natīǧatain bi-'l-taqdīm") is famous as being the mother of all grimoires. Its four books represent the major compendium of arabic sources on magic, astrology and talismans that has survived until today. The full arabic version emerged in the 10th or 11th century and was translated into Spanish in 1256. Starting from the middle ages the book was copied into countless manuscripts and started to spread its influence across Europe to finally become a major pillar of hermetic magic as we know it.

Unfortunately the book had been unavailable in print for many centuries. Only recently have we seen English translations by Christopher Warnock as well as Ourobouros Press - the first to emerge since the middle ages! However, since 1933 the book has been available in a rare German translation published by the Warburg Institute before WWII and translated by the German philosopher Heinrich Ritter (* 21. November 1791; † 3. Februar 1869).

The 1933 German translation of the Picatrix is one of the finest pearls of occult publishing ever to see the light of day. Not only was the translation done by a deeply dedicated scholar who has also published an encyclopedic history of philosophy in 12 volumes. Thus a person who was closely familiar with the historic context of the sources that fed the arabic version of the Picatrix. But also does it contain an enlightening introduction by H.Ritter of 39 pages plus a an attempt of a summary of the entire work by Martin Plessner (* 30. Dezember 1900; † 27. November 1973) in 17 pages. These two prefaces to the original source text might be the most precise and informed introductions to the philosophy and origins of hermetic and arabic magic ever to be published in the West.        

Well, and here is the good news: the entire German version of the Picatrix is available as a free PDF download of 522 pages at the digital collections of the Warburg institute. Here is the link: http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/pdf/FBH295P31zg.pdf 

Well, if this isn't making your day, or week or even entire year - I simply don't know what could?

Arbatel Experience - The Female Divine

Last week I performed the rite of Hagith; this week I continued with my personal therapy. I arrived at the session exhausted from a long day of work and had a few minutes to settle and calm down before my therapist arrived. As I was relaxing on the sofa, not doing anything but focussing on my body as it calmed down I thought back to my communion with Hagith. As I will explain in the full ritual account Hagith had shared a simple way of contacting her. And that's what I did sitting on the sofa... I opened the channel to her consciousness and allowed her force to flow freely into my sphere. Then my therapist arrived and we started the session... For a very long time I had pondered on a way to combine therapy and theurgy. Without being aware of it, suddenly I had discovered the beginning of a journey. Here is what happened.

Without a clear topic on my mind the session started to circle around my desire to form, mold and design the world around me. The pleasure I take from creating experiences for me and other people, to shape things and situations. This was starkly contrasted by my experiences when I wasn't able to follow this habit freely, e.g. meditating for several days and nights in the desert or being alone in a remote mountain forrest for a weekend. These situations presented some of my most fearful experiences in Magick - as there ceased to be a counterpart, a force or situation that presented itself as raw material as substance to be shaped. Sitting in the desert, silently, time passing by, covered in my own sweat, surrounded by sand and flies every form of resistance retreated and flinched. My hands were empty and neither echos nor images of my mind came back from the emptiness around me. I was losing myself, the boundaries that defined me, the skin of my body in the adamant silence and nothingness of time...

As I was sharing these experiences I something reminded me of the myth of Ishtar descending into the underworld to rescue her loved one: At the entrance of the underworld the gatekeeper refuses to let Ishtar in. Ishtar threatens him to break the gate and set the dead souls free to devour the living and thus unsettle the balance of the world of the living and the dead. The gatekeeper turns to Ereshkigal, the queen of the underworld, and she gives permission for Ishtar to enter, but "according to the ancient decree". This decree demands that Ishtar may pass through the seven gates of the underworld only if she sheds one element of her garment in front of each gate. And this is what Ishtar does... Once she passes through the final gate she has given up everything that defined her: 

• Her crown - her spiritual connection
• Her earrings - her intellectual mind
• Her necklace - her power to speak
• Her breastplate - her power to love
• Her hip girdle - her power to desire
• Her measuring rod - her power to act
• Her breechcloth - her power to reproduce

Ishtar is naked as she the enters before the throne of the underworld. She has lost everything that represented her identity, that allowed her to shape and form and participate in the experiences of the living. She has lost all connection to live. Nothing is left but her pure Gestalt, the essence of her being, a spark represented by her naked body.

I wonder if when a larva climbs on a tree, solidifies on a branch and dies - does it know that it is giving birth to something new? Is it aware that something is waiting to be set free from underneath its skin? Is it aware that what it considers itself has done its service and has now become the prison of something even more beautiful to emerge from it?

When I was sitting in the desert I was as naked as Ishtar and as dead as a grub on a tree. I had given up all my powers to shape and connect with life.  I had  retreated into complete isolation. I was full of fear like the sky at night full of wind - no boundaries left, nothing to distinct, nothing to define what was left of me. The gates of all my body, the gates of all my mind were wide open and everything I had kept inside had disappeared. I was an empty shell, covered in sweat and by flies. I guess that's the way a larva feels when it dies?

Here is what Hagith told me in the ritual: "I am life, but love is my tool that opens everything." Loving in the sense of Hagith is the ability to radically accept things as they are. To let go of the desire to change what already is perfect in itself. This kind of divine love is the ability to not desire to manifest yourself in the realm of someone else, but to open a space for something new to emerge. 

Being able to connect with this type of "love that opens" requires me to let go of the eternal game of shaping the world in my own image. It is the Adam within me that has to die. And all the names of the plants and animals of the world need to be washed away and crumble to dust, for life to take its own shape. That is the female divine. The force that opens but doesn't confine. The force that sows the seeds of life - rather than trying to force a shape on what grows from it. 

I cannot tell you how far understanding this maybe simple truth is from who I used to be before the rite of Hagith... 

This is the female divine. The force that opens and doesn't confine. 

Tree of Life Library #2 - THE RED LION

Well, with all the recommendations following the first book in the library we got a good stack of authors in our HOD bookshelf: Hermann Hesse, Jorge Luis Borges and Douglas R. Hofstadter to name a few. A big Thanks goes to Hilbert - for sure the most literate blogger I am humbly following... Time to explore another shelf! What about going back to square one and putting a recommendation on the shelf for Malkuth? I.e. a finding a good starting point for adventures and explorations into the realm of the elementary world. I guess any book on fundamental concentration, visualization, and meditation exercises could go here? But really I would love to explore the story-side of the Tree of Life in the library first. So which great stories come to your mind that introduce the secrets of Malkuth to Neophytes or Adepts alike? The one that jumps to mine immediately is this one... A book that has opened a lot of doors for me and reveals a glimpse from where we stand in Malkuth at the dark light of the 32nd Path...

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Maria Szepes (December 14, 1908 – September 3 2007) was a Hungarian author and adept. Her explorations into Hermetic philosophy and practice are unique and highly remarkable. Given the difficult period during which she started out as a hermetic writer - the post WWII and communist area in the 1940s - the comparison to Franz Bardon comes to mind immediately. During their lifetimes both undertook daring projects to publish full study and training programs into Hermetic Adepthood at a time when most of Europe lay in ruins and activity of most lodges had come to a stall... Wether Bardon and Szepes personally knew each other remains unconfirmed yet is highly likely. Maria Szepes most famous novel next to her Raguel saga is The Red Lion. Maria Szepes wrote the entire book in a secret hiding place during WWII. The struggle of the book coming to life continued when it was first published in 1946 under pseudonym and was immediately banned by the communist government. However, over time it saw reprints and translations into many languages and ultimately became a worldwide bestseller as a seminal novel on occult initiation. The plot-line of the book is straight forward: in the 16th century the feeble sun of a miller, Hans Burger kills to get hold of the elixir of life. He drinks from it and his consciousness becomes immortal - spanning a bridge over the many times his body dies and is reborn thereafter. Thus the book follows Burger on his journey through many incarnations - each one being the direct effect of his previous actions and the next small ascent on the long and thorny ladder to awakening. Never before has the slow development of human qualities, consciousness and occult ascent been described so vividly and clear. Reading this book is the closest thing to doing your own reincarnation therapy - and a wonderful story to be reminded of what it means if the serpent bites its tail.

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Arbatel Experience - some thoughts on ritual purification

Last Friday I performed the third rite in the Arbatel operation, the ritual of Hagith. It was another wonderful experience that taught me so much about magick, planetary spirits and my own shortcomings in dealing with both of them. While I am writing up the full account I thought it might be worthwhile sharing some general learnings that came with it? So here is a snippet on what this week's rite taught me on creating proper purifications in advance of any ritual...

(...) The key to any successful ritual preparation is to alter your state of consciousness in order to break through perceptive filters which normally inhibit direct experience of and communion with spirits. Therefore the term purification in this case refers to a period in advance of a rite that supports the breaking down of these filters or attachments to everyday life. Similar to most elements in the tradition of the Magickal Grimoires, the actual means to purify our state of mind and living are heavily influenced by a Jewish-Christian worldview. The standard procedures involve multiple weeks of e.g. fasting, cleansing, prayers and isolation.

I feel it’s important to point out, however, that the actual change brought forth by purifications happens in our hearts more than anywhere else. Whatever means we chose to purify our lifestyles, the real aim of the game is to change the state of our heart: Imagine we all had a compass in our hearts and the compass needle would normally be guided by our everyday affections, desires and fears. Then the purification rites are what replaces the magnetic field of our personal desires with a field of devotion to God or the spirits we summon. The foremost goal of purification rites is to change the intention of our hearts.

Martin Buber in his seminal introduction to the Legends of the Baal-Shem summarizes the four aspects of a purified life according to the Chasidim:

• Hitlawut: is the flare, it is the zeal of ecstasy. A flaming sword guards the path to the tree of life. It sputters on the touch of Hitlawut.
• Awoda: is devotion. If Hitlawut is the mystical feast, Awoda is the mystical sacrifice. All deeds bound into one and eternal life embedded into every action.
• Kavanah: is the mystery of a soul directed towards a single goal.
• Shiflut: is humbleness. It is the awareness of the uniqueness of each aspect of creation. It is the awareness that doesn’t compare two things but surrounds each of them with the love it deserves because of what it is alone.

Martin Buber’s wonderful introduction together with Aaron Leitch’s chapter on purification and prayer should suffice for anybody to get to the bottom of what purification rites in magickal rituals are all about. It might take a lifetime, however, to fully express and experience it in your own way. Or as Lou Reed put it: “Between thought and expression lies a lifetime.”

   

Alright, enough deviation. Here is what this has to do with my rite for Hagith: I really think my preparatory purification for this rite didn’t get close enough to what I am sharing above. Here is what it consisted of:

• Continued abstinence of meat, alcohol and cigarettes since the beginning of the Arbatel operation, i.e. August 2010
• Setting the day of the Hagith operation one week in advance and consciously focussing on the forthcoming ritual during every day of that week
• Dedicating the full day of the operation to the work, including several hours of preparatory work (e.g. creating the Lamen) and meditation
• Ritual cleansing, bath and meditation before the performance of the rite

Now, before I started to perform the ritual I thought this was a pretty solid approach to changing the intention of my heart. And it was. But I forgot about everything outside of it. When I cleaned and prepared my temple on the morning of that day I forgot to realize that the atmosphere in it was cold and damp from the long winter months during which it hadn't been used. I did realize a lot of large spiders and white cobwebs behind the black curtains - but here we are living on the countryside and I guess building a temple into an old barn will always come with these types of silent visitors. Yet, what I overlooked was that the presence of spiders and cobwebs should have pointed me to the astral state of my temple: the energy was low and there were certainly some astral cobwebs on the curtains. I should have purified it by burning menthol crystals and performed a ritual cleansing of the entire sacred space. Perform a ritual act to revive the energies sleeping in the astral patterns of the temple so that they would actively vibrate and resonate when I entered for the Hagith rite at night... I took this as a deep learning and hope not to repeat it too soon: as a magician it is just so easy to become overly focussed on ourselves and forget about the world we are living in. 

As always good old Martin Buber hit it right on when he quoted the Chasid wisdom: “Don’t look at yourself but look at the world around you.” (...)

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Well, I guess I should have listened more to this song in advance of the rite? Isn't Herman Dune the best artist on the entire planet - he even knows about purification of hearts!

Why I am full of shit - or Speaking the Truth #3

Like it or not, this is how this post sounds to me.

Okay, I just finished the book and there is one last thing to do to complete the experience. Anyone who has read 'Radical Honesty' knows what it is (just look at page 80 onwards): It is telling the truth about why I am writing this blog. Bluntly and without hiding any of the dirty little secrets that we so often try to gloss over by pointing at ethical, social or altruistic motivations. So here it is:

I am writing this blog to prove that I am smarter than all of you dumb-ass. I am writing this blog to create a trap for all your desire to admire, your dependency, your hunger for direction and lack of self-worthiness. I am writing this blog to exploit and to build my own self-esteem on the lack of yours. I am engaged in the worthless business of sharing bite-sized pieces of bullshit and putting lipstick on them and painting them in gold and silver to make them look like something that's worth 5min of your time. I am lost and at wits ends on how to live up to my own delusions of grandeur; that's why I have become an addict on recognition. And because all the recognition I get from my job, my wife, my friends, even my dog still isn't good enough and still doesn't satisfy my ever hungry ego I am begging all you strangers to look at my bullshit and pay me tribute by leaving comments or clicks on this page. I hide behind aspirations of egoless-ness and not taking money for the shit that I am sharing simply because deep down inside I know it's not worth a penny. Because I am a fake, a phony, a poser to life and magick. Get the paradox my crooked self is caught in? While I look down on you and people around me, I crave for recognition, I starve for attention. I would drink your blood any second if I knew it refreshed my own life-less piece of shit that I call a living... I am so afraid of the dark, to be alone, to be unrecognized, to vanish unperceived, to disappear from this world without having left a trace, without having changed anything. Because that's what my fucked up mind demands of me in order to have a right to live.

One of my finest hobbies is to imagine myself as a teacher. Oh, I know this hurts. But here we go: When I imagine myself as a teacher I am not a teacher of any special subject. I am a teacher of live. You come to me, enter into my house and disappear like a fish disappears in the cave of a moray. You sit down and I become the mirror of your broken life. In talking to me you start to re-energize like a flower in the sun. And once you leave my house all your faith is caught within me. I have become the egregore of your vision of a better life, the demon of your hopes and the living image of your journey to a better self. I am the teacher that inspires. Just to open a channel between our hearts through which I can suck life out of you. I don't give a shit about what happens next to you. As long as you are blinded by my sun and left speechless and quiet while we sit in front of each other in the moray cave that I call my mind.    

So here I am, caught in my ocean of ugliness. And once I die and fade away I can finally let all things go. I will disappear, fade away, fall to dust and make my ugly face and shadow disappear... And when I pass out there will be silence and I will rewake on the other side. I will be a new born and wander through the garden in sunshine. An Jesus or Buddha or Zoroaster will approach me and give me a warm welcome and long warm hug. And I pull the knife out that I had hidden in my throat and will stab him in the back and kill him in our embrace. And as he sinks down on the garden of eden I will have finally proved to myself that I don't need the love that I do need so desperately.

Well, I guess that's it. My little dirty truth about why I am writing this blog. 

And here is the thing: all of the above is utterly true. This is me. And at the same time I also truly care about all of you out there. I care about all the people around me and I so wish it was easier for us to let our fears and pains and delusions out and share what we keep inside. Each day I am shocked by the feebleness and powerlessness of our selves in face of the unspoken, hidden desires that actually drive our actions. And while I know that I am full of shit I still want to find a way to make a difference... While I know a moray lives in my heart, I know the only way to kill it is to act as if it wasn't there. Not to pay attention to it and keep my face in the sun rather than getting lost in shadows. 

I am also writing this blog because my life is truly beautiful. Because I feel blessed every day when I get up and see my beautiful wife and my dog. Because I could cry each time I smell coffee in the kitchen and we start another day of our wonderful life together. I had never thought I could lead such a happy live, my childhood certainly suggested something different... But it was all the people that I met that made the difference and allowed me to break free. And you know the real paradox: many of them carried dangerous animals in their hearts as well. I think I saw spiders in the heart of my teacher and I know there is a snake in the heart of my wife. But it doesn't matter. Their flaws and shortcomings do not cut short their ability to change my life for the better. My teacher didn't need to be flawless to teach me what I have learned. And I certainly love my wife for being flawed. Cause every time I see her shortcomings I am less afraid she might leave me one day for mine...

Here is what I have learned about myself and all of us: the truth changes. I am ugly and I am sacred at the same time. I am deeply flawed and divine at the same time. I am ashamed of what lives inside me. And still each day I keep feeding my evil demon. Because that is who I am. A human, a demon on my left shoulder, a guardian angel on my right. I am the one who is in between. I am the one that cannot be defined by what it is, because the truth changes.

So what's next? Nothing, said the Zen priest. Nothing comes ever next. Everything is here all the time.

Well, I guess we need to settle on the fact that none of us can ever be defined by what is deep inside of us. Because everything is there: morays and angels, the knife in my throat and the morning coffee at the table. So the thing that comes closest to defining us, to make a true statement about who we are, are the things we decide to act on. It's not what you are underneath, but what you do that defines you.

Actually, this last sentences isn't from me - the moray hates to admit this. But it is from Batman Begins. Here is to giving a shit on what's underneath and doing the best thing possible every moment, every day.