Advent of The Bunyip ~ musings about my son (repost)

Grandfather Dai had only three sons, but he had had countless daughters. Countless… because many of them had been drowned at birth in huge jars of urine kept as manure for the fields. In those days a Patriarch’s word was law. The Patriarch was the Progenitor – and the Progenitor held the lives of his progeny in his hands. Taking a daughter’s life was not regarded as murder. It was simply a means of ensuring fewer mouths to feed. ~ Dai Moong Yang (In Those Days, 1995)

Ahau's 13th day on earth

IN EARLY 1993 I spent a few weeks editing and retyping a collection of stories written by my maternal Aunt M.Y. (also known as Grace Lee) - but the significance of the lines quoted above didn’t fully register till 30 December 2012, during a long conversation I had with two healer-counselor friends, Heiko and Selina Niedermeyer, who have studied a wide range of emotional and psychospiritual healing modalities over a span of almost 20 years. They had recently completed a workshop with Bert Hellinger, founder of Systemic Family Constellation, which postulates that no soul enters into physical embodiment in isolation – it invariably enters through a complex soul cluster called the Family Constellation and therefore any healing process must always include an overview of the individual’s family dynamics.

Early blowpipe practice

In the course of our conversation, Selina mentioned that Bert Hellinger had discovered a nexus between murder in the suppressed family narrative (literally skeletons in the closet) and mental/emotional dysfunctionality. Apparently it is not uncommon for the souls of the murdered to be reborn within the murderer’s bloodline – but with characteristic disabilities like Down syndrome, autism or schizophrenia. The moment I heard this I had goosebumps. My sweet cousin in Singapore (the late Dr Dixie Tan) had two dysfunctional sons and two fairly normal daughters. My own brother Mike had been diagnosed with schizophrenia decades ago; and my only son Ahau, labeled autistic by some, was unlikely to ever interact “normally” with others because he was born with an unusual vocal cord that makes it difficult for him to simulate human speech.

Ahau at age 6 (pic by Emanar)

Our great-grandfather Dai, through sheer ignorance compounded with arrogance, had been instrumental to the murder of many newborn female babies. Perhaps the same number that had returned as dysfunctional males to haunt the bloodline like a family curse.

During a two-hour session I had with Heiko and Selina in the first week of January 2013, I conjured the spirit of my great-grandfather Dai. He had the haughty air of a typical Mandarin, scion of a rich land-owning clan, and it took him a while to even acknowledge that drowning newborn female infants was nothing less than murder.

His only defence was that he wasn’t the only one who practiced infanticide; it was fairly common in old China (and even in fairly recent times, many couples aborted female fetuses because the government’s one-child policy didn’t allow them another shot at conceiving a male heir). Finally, that impassive, inscrutable mask shattered and a few teardrops began to flow down his cheeks. He looked, for a moment, humbled.

A 10-year-old Bunyip

“Please ask forgiveness from the souls of those you thwarted from taking earthly incarnation, and then forgive yourself,” I told my great-grandfather’s spirit. When he slowly faded from view, I knew the family curse was finally broken. My only begotten son Ahau Ben would be the last in the bloodline to bear the karmic consequences of his forbears’ abysmal ignorance and self-serving cultural myopia.

After some initial hesitation I decided to share this story to illustrate how “the sins of the fathers” do get passed along the chromosomal track. I use the word “sin” in its original sense: in Middle English the word sinne was a term commonly used in archery to mean “missing the mark.” As a metaphor, missing the mark indicates poor aim, barking up the wrong tree, misreading the map of life, or possessing an entirely erroneous and distorted view of reality.

Humans who have yet to attain enlightenment tend to commit stupid, destructive acts as a result of a benighted perspective, usually inherited through parents and imbibed from their tribal and cultural milieu. A society that places a greater value on male offspring is likely to adhere unquestioningly to patriarchal attitudes that glorify skills in combat and the ability to “bring home the bacon.”

Amphibious Ahau by Dorota Nierzwicka

What happens, of course, is that such males end up in decision-making positions, bringing along their blinkered perspectives and prejudices. As military chiefs they will be constantly itching for the glory or martyrdom of warfare; and as corporate heads their ruthless ambition will blind them and harden their hearts to the wholesale desecration of the sacred landscape for illusory short-term profits and bigger bonuses.

However, life does not occur on a single plane. Almost every event or situation can be interpreted on many levels. Likewise the Advent of The Bunyip (a nickname I bestowed on Ahau Ben when he was a toddler, partly because of his amphibious nature (he loved playing in the bathtub and later the river); but mostly because he did seem to me a somewhat chimerical entity, a creature right out of fairy tales and long-forgotten legends.

Ahau was named after the Mayan starglyph for the Sun or Solar Christ. His second name Ben is inspired by the Mayan starglyph for Skywalker or Celestial Messenger. It so happens that the last King of Mu was reportedly named Ahau too. Not one to settle for the mundane, I delighted in creating a mythic context in which to locate Ahau’s entry into my life. I have written about this at length before, so I will say no more about the mystery of Ahau’s being (click on this link if you wish to read about it).

THERE IS ANOTHER possible explanation for the way Ahau turned out. He arrived at 2 in the morning of the 21st March, 1996, by Caesarean section at the Hospital Kuala Lumpur. I didn’t know till a bit later that the nurses had given him a hepatitis jab without first asking my permission. When they asked me to consent to a second follow-up jab, I expressed deep consternation that they would administer a vaccine to my child without first consulting me. Of course, I refused to grant permission for another jab, having learnt of the unholy alliance between the pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession that has made vaccinations enforceable by law.

Twenty years after Ahau’s birth a heated debate rages between pro- and anti-vaxxers with the main contention being that evidence linking vaccinations with autism has been systematically suppressed by vested interests – because once a vaccine is approved and becomes a routine medical procedure, vaccine manufacturers stand to rake in billions every year. Intuitively, I tend to be anti-vaccination because I generally feel a great deal more trustful of nature and the body’s immune system than of medical or any other species of science – especially since the bulk of it is fueled by corporate funding and private grants.

The possibility that it was a hepatitis jab that triggered my son’s autism has certainly crossed my mind many times. But as I can think of no way I can obtain irrefutable proof of this, it seems pointless to hold on to this suspicion.

Ahau is the way he is and those of us who know him well adore him exactly the way he is – even though it still strikes me as absurd that he should take advantage of everyone around him, recruiting us into his service, instead of taking more responsibility for himself. No doubt this can be attributed to the fact that his ancestors on my mother’s side were landed gentry (my aunt boasted that it took men on horseback 11 days to collect the rent) - all the males being archetypal spoilt brats - or perhaps Ahau’s sense of entitlement is due to his residual memory of having been an absolute monarch in a lost civilization called Mu.

22 September 2017

[First posted 25 September 2017, 20 March 2019, 21 March 2021, 22 March 2024, 22 March 2024 

& 17 November 2025]

Photographic Serendipity ~ Perfect Timing! (reprise)

[courtesy of Olivia de Haulleville. First posted 3 september 2012]

CONDITION CRITICAL BUT NOT SIRIUS ~ Cosmic Fact and Fiction by ANTARES

I can't believe this cosmic joke
I tried to break the news, 
It broke... (from ‘Mary Malone of Moscow' by Dr Strangely Strange)


If I didn't find it all so hideously funny, I'd die of exasperation and grief. What am I talking about? That four letter word, LIFE? Correct.

I'll tell you another joke. A funny thing happened to me on the way to Eternity. I got caught up in Time.

Entangled in History. Of course, in retrospect, I could honestly declare I did it deliberately, in full consciousness, of my own volition. Well, it sounded like an amusing digression at the time. The whole universe was abuzz with gossip about this bright bluegreen watery world called Gaia, Tellus, or Earth: third planet from Sol, a small star orbiting Sirius in the remote reaches of Galaxy 13, locally called the Milky Way. The food and sex were unutterably addictive - that's what all the guidebooks said.

Having been on assignment here for nearly 260,000 spins around the Sun, or 10 Galactic Years, I can confirm that. Now, 10 Galactic Years doesn't sound that long. But bear in mind it took only 5 Cosmic Days to get Earth's ecosystem tooled up and ready to receive the Zoo Program. And only in the last 11 minutes of the 6th Cosmic Day was the part simian creature called Homo saps released from the undersea labs and distributed over the land masses. Don't ask me how many Earth Years one Cosmic Day represents, I'm running low on zeroes.

Before I carry on (as I'm wont to do), let me explain a few important developments that have made this true life account possible. My dear friend Drunvalo Melchizedek recently arrived from the 13th Dimension with some really Mind Blowing Info (if you have access to the internet, key in "Drunvalo Melchizedek" for a summary of the exciting news from Headquarters). He revealed that our planet was digitized and frequency enhanced back in 1972, and that the experiment worked beyond everyone's wildest expectations. And so, in 1987, it was possible to announce the Harmonic Convergence, and the beginning of a new era of glasnost and perestroika (da, da, Gorby is part of the mission, even if he won't publicly admit it). After which it was no holds barred on previously classified information. You mean you didn't know there was an embargo on any intelligence that might cause the inhabitants of Earth to question the status quo?

Indeed there was, but the lid has been lifted at last. Who laid on this embargo, you might ask?

Your wicked stepfather did. Hold it a second, you say. You don't have a wicked stepfather, your mum and dad are alive and well and still happily married and living in Setapak. Listen, we're speaking metaphorically here. I personally know a few stepfathers who happen to be real sweeties. So let's not get too literal. That doesn't help when we're discussing really BIG issues.

Your real father, if the truth be known, was an Angel. More than that: he was an Archangel, one of the Elohim (that's Hebrew for "Sons of God"). These days we'd call him a Sirian (not Assyrian, mind you, but remember there are interesting clues to be found therein). A real wizard with gene splicing, your Father contributed his DNA to a long and tedious experiment involving a particularly receptive female specimen of modified primate, with whom he felt a passionate bond beyond the bounds of scientific duty. This superseded earlier humanoid breeding experiments conducted by the ruling council of Elohim, collectively called Yahweh. The results of these earlier attempts didn't survive very long because they lacked a sense of humor, which only comes from compassion.

Anyway, it gets rather technical, and I shall leave the sordid details to other storytellers. Suffice to say, it was a tricky and unauthorized experiment in hybridization that led to your Father's vilification for simply granting humanity the precious gift of Fire – Intellect, and its dangerous by products, Language, Reason, Self Awareness, Poetry, Humor, Free Will. Your mythologies have recorded this momentous event as the Promethean Revolt, the Eating of the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the Expulsion from the Garden, and the Departure of the Gods. If you were brought up on christian dogma, you may recall that the blame was put entirely on the Serpent and the overly adventurous feminine spirit of Eve, the Temptress, Mother of Evolution.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ring, we have Darwin's Evolutionists. Having split open the atom and found virtually nothing inside apart from some Strange and Fascinating Qualities, a few Quirks and Quarks, but no bearded patriarch icon, no uncanny likeness of Ayatollah Khomeini, John Paul II, or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh aka Osho or even Sun Myung Moon... they had to assume that all previous theories were based entirely on superstition - and therefore classifiable as Mystical Hogwash fit only for the backyard bonfire. Our unknown Father was renamed Hap Hazard, or Pure Chance, or Mr Random Factor.

It was very convenient to have a dad named Random Factor: his mad brother Max managed to make a killing in the cosmetics industry - making up for (or covering up) the fact that humanity was just an illegitimate Child of Fortune after all, a regular Ugly Duckling.

So what became of our real Father? What kind of Daddy was he? Nobody knows for sure, because he has yet to complete his memoirs and get them published. However, speculation is rife that the Elohim are by and large a quiet, contemplative breed - quite unaccustomed to the gooey melodrama of a hydrocarbon protein existence. It's possible that our Father might have regarded the experience of being immersed in a flesh and blood scenario as somewhat odious, and would thus have been inclined to remain aloof from it all, content to take a peek into the nursery from time to time. And if the situation warranted, he might occasionally expend some energy rearranging the furniture, so as to prevent the infant humanity from banging its head on sharp objects (like flaming tektites).

In any case the child didn’t seem too badly off in the day-to-day care of the hired help, those hardy hide-bound hench-humanoids from the planet Nibiru. Which, alas, led to the first instance of child molestation – but we won’t venture into this psychic quagmire just yet. A remarkably racy race, us humans.

You see, the idea of sexual reproduction was perfectly fine for zoomorphs – but for a highly intelligent and geometrically precise species to be so intimately involved in the messy viviparous process was altogether a different kettle of fish.

Eons ago, the Elohim weren’t at all an individualized race. They were a group intelligence emanating from the pineal gland of the Great One like rays of pure focused will. They knew no gender and lived only in Light – and therefore were unfamiliar with tactile sensations, sensuality, sexuality – and all their attendant pains and pleasures. Their encounter and entanglement with Earth’s carnal karma was for the most part a bewildering but immensely educational process, which is still unfolding just beyond the threshold of our perception. Little wonder, then, that over the eons, watching our microbic human cosmodrama unfold has become a favorite pastime of the Elohim, who have indeed grown pretty protective of their dense-bodied runt, the human being, formerly called the Adama (“clay-formed entity”).

Where does the wicked stepfather come in? Ah... this is how official history begins. With a systematic fudging of the books, a laborious tampering with the records, conducted by grim-souled clerics working under the orders of a new CEO – some whizkid flown in from Rigel Kent, Orion, who seemed to have an instinctive grasp of primate politics.

Some say there was protracted debate in the High Council of the Intergalactic Confederation as to the wisdom of allowing such an unpredictable turn of events to manifest. Others aver that the whole episode was unforeseen and unpreventable: an invasion from Deep Space, no less. Ships suddenly appearing over the horizon of Business-as-Usual, flying the Jolly Roger. Will we ever get a full account? Whoever organized the cover-up did a damn good job. Crystal data banks deactivated, cellular memory files erased, deleted, or grossly distorted. Collective amnesia. Total News Blackout in the War Zone. Direct all enquiries to the Information Retrieval Department. Fill in forms XYZ/123/Q/ABC. In triplicate, please.

This is the Martian Inquisition. Identification papers will be issued to all new arrivals. Gene encodement procedures to be strictly observed. Put it down in black and white. Now, let’s ignore the Grey areas. Reticulate and gridify all internodes. Seal the portals. Sign and deliver on command. By Order.

With the altering of our DNA circuitry, it was relatively easy for the new “owners” of Planet Earth to claim exclusive sovereignty and exercise parochial jurisdiction over the proliferating tribes of humans.

And so the Dark Lords – to employ an archaic term – declared themselves our legal Guardians and Trustees to our Further Evolution. They set up monolithic Institutions, established Priesthoods, introduced the Guild System, spurred the invention of Barbed Wire. Crime was identified and duly Punished. Judgement was passed and Decrees proclaimed. Statutes and statuary lined the public walkways.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t entirely a “bad’” thing, this sinister twist in the plot. It gave us the dynamic flux of Duality.  We became obsessed with concepts of Good and Evil, entered into the not-so-merry-go-round of vicious and virtuous circles. And, of course, it was invariably THEM that were Evil. WE were always the Goody-Two-Shoes.

Perhaps it’s time to stop calling our stepfather “wicked.” The fact that he has never learned to trust his children is his problem.

Perhaps the horror of history was our collective crucifixion on the cross of Materialism. The dense and claustrophobic spacetime continuum in which our immediate past has been lived is now at the point of revealing itself as a mandala of kaleidoscopic meaning and metamorphic beauty.

Our stepfather wasn’t really all that wicked. He was merely terrified of losing control.

Now, you may be wondering, where is the humor in all this?

Sit back for a moment and contemplate your perspective of reality. What are you doing “for a living”? Are you succeeding at your chic “lifestyle”? How often do you feel confused, helpless, caught in a permanent double-bind? Are you perpetually looking back over your shoulders, fearful that any moment you may be struck down by disaster, disease and/or death? Is that why you succumbed and bought “life insurance” last year? Is the Inland Revenue Department or your bank manager sending you messages in red ink? Are you worried about your performance at work, at play, and in bed? Have the trees in your garden been felled for a new access road?

Surely, surely these are matters of grave consequence. Why waste precious time time tuning into weird stations when you can keep that dial set at 99.3 FM? Time (reverb FX) Highway (reverb FX) Radio (digital delay)!

Hey, the laugh is on you. Everything is perfectly okay. Stay tuned, folks. We’ll be right back after this commercial break, with an exclusive interview, transmitted live from Andromeda, with....

The Man Who Sired Humanity! (Cool funky theme music.)


© Antares, 1996-2004-2020-2022-2023-2024

[Originally published in Journal One, May 1996. First posted 11 March 2020, reposted 4 November 2020, 15 May 2022, 14 May 2023 & 14 September 2024]

DEPROGRAM YOURSELF (IT'S EASY!)

GOD moves in mysterious ways, the sneaky bastard.

Did I push any buttons? Did someone gasp and call me “extremely rude” or even “blasphemous”? If you responded with a spontaneous guffaw, congratulations, you’re CLEAR! You’re not required to read this - except for the laughs.

Are some of you frowning? What’s bothering you? The word “bastard” or the word “sneaky” or the word “mysterious” or the much-abused three-letter word “God”? Or are you feeling indifferent? Because you worship some concept that goes by the name of Wakan Tanka or Hunab K’u or Ahuramazda or Allah or Avalokiteshvara or Arumugam or Subramanian or Brahma or Vishnu or Shiva or Krishna or Ishwara or Paramapurusha or Sugmad or Sangyang Licin or Sangyang Widi or Pater Omnipotens Aeternae Deus or Tua Pek Kong or Zeus or Caesar or Kaiser or Führer or Pharaoh or Jesus Christ or Buddha or Sai Baba or Babaji or Baal or Marduk or Yahweh or Waheguru or Ptah or Enki or Tiki or Miki or Moto or Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan or Tlaloc or Tezcatzlipoca or Odin or Votan or Dow Jones or Amex or Forex or GNP or Wang or Wong?

Wong moves in mysterious ways, the sneaky bastard.

Not quite the same somehow. But let’s take a good look at a few of these potentially troublesome words, beginning with bastard (bas’-tard) n. a child born out of wedlock; an impure, coarse brown refuse product of sugar-refining, used to color beer... (Old French bastard, from fils de bast, son of a pack-saddle). Well, forget about the brown sugar. It’s the “child born out of wedlock” definition that warrants our attention. Jeez, what a fuddy-duddy word “bastard” is! The truth is: anyone with parents feisty and free-spirited and passionate enough to enjoy a bit of societally unsanctioned coitus ought to be called “lucky.”


The way I see it, we are ALL immaculately conceived, regardless of who our parents happen to be - even if Dad came in the form of a dove or a black panther or pollen from outer space. Some women just happen to be kinky - but if the union is genetically sound, it will bear fruit.

Who on earth knows if God’s own parents (Mr & Mrs Prime Cause) were properly wed. Probably not. Which makes Him or Her or It the Bastard of Bastards. So we might as well delete the word “bastard” from the dictionary. No one’s going to miss it - except perhaps as a convenient swear word with no specific meaning.

How about sneaky? To creep around in a suspicious fashion, not wanting to be caught, preferring a degree of privacy? Well, if you had a thing about impregnating virgins, wouldn’t YOU be a master of sneakiness? The cat considers the mouse sneaky. But the mouse is only being careful: survival mechanism. In a safe, friendly environment nobody has to be sneaky.

As for mysterious: the word presents a problem only for obstinately logical types who mistrust anything empirically unprovable, anything in any way “mystical” (and therefore purely “subjective” and statistically unquantifiable under strict laboratory conditions). The rest of us find the mysterious rather alluring: a mystery seeks to be solved, especially if it arises from the mists of antiquity straight out of the realm of myth.

Now for the word God. Humans tend to fall into three broad categories: monotheists who insist on addressing the Supreme Being by just one name; pantheists (who prefer several names for the One and Only Holy Being; and atheists who don’t believe in taking anything on blind faith. Whichever category you think you feel most comfortable in, remember it’s all just names. When it comes down to essentials, the Absolute Tao - the virtually incomprehensible amazing and amusing miraculousness and magnificence of It All - is beyond names.

Calling God a “sneaky bastard” is really a term of endearment, indicating an affectionate intimacy, certainly not FEAR. Who wants to be feared? Only a horrible monster, to be sure. And God couldn’t possibly be as horrid as some folks make Him or Her or It out to be.


My daughters and I could never agree on the naming of our dogs. A black bitch I named Latipa they insisted on calling Smokey. The dog had no problem with any of this: she responded to whatever name we chose to call her, especially if food was involved. Even when “Latipa” evolved into “Tiparipati”, she still wagged her tail ecstatically when she heard any of her names. The point of the opening exercise was to demonstrate how easily we get entangled in semantic snares laid by our linguistic structures. I’m no antisemanticist, mind you, but I’m acutely aware of the limitations to clear perception caused by living exclusively in a reality defined and generated by language. How can one can escape from a mental prison constructed of word bricks? Recently I was re-reading Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig and found an illuminating passage (among many) which deserves attention:

Eskimos see sixteen different forms of ice which are as different to them as trees and shrubs are different to us. Hindus, on the other hand, use the same term for both ice and snow. Creek and Natchez Indians do not distinguish yellow from green. Similarly, Choctaw, Tunica, the Keresian Pueblo Indians and many other people make no terminological distinction between blue and green. The Hopis have no word for time.

Pirsig goes on to quote Edward Sapir:

The fact of the matter is that the 'real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group... Forms and significances which seem obvious to an outsider will be denied outright by those who carry out the patterns; outlines and implications that are perfectly clear to these may be absent to the eye of the onlooker.

Many seekers have tried STILLNESS and SILENCE as therapy, embarking on voluntary programs of non-action and non-verbalization for days or weeks or even twenty or thirty years. I must admit that I have never managed to shut my mouth up for more than 24 hours (due to laryngitis), and as for shutting up the mind - 24 minutes is something to brag about (and after the first 10 minutes, I may have dozed off). Yet I don’t doubt that Stillness and Silence are a powerful way to cut through the crud and crap of our sociocultural conditioning and achieve true seeing, feeling, and knowing.



If ever you have the opportunity - and the determination - to carry out such a program, you will be rewarded with the gift of direct perception: beyond words, beyond personal egoic constraints, and beyond preconceptions. Watch it, though: seeing the halo around your head, people might just laugh at you in their usual vulgar manner. And in that elevated state it would not be an appropriate response to say "Fuck you!”

No, you’d simply have to expand your heart chakra (the glowing dynamic energy field in the middle of your chest that pulses with unconditional love just like ET or popular pin-ups of Jesus) and cherish your detractors to death, resurrection, and ascension.

Take heart. There are MODERN ways to deprogram yourself. But most of these come with a price tag - especially in this “new age” of marketing when even the most arcane teachings of the ancient mystery schools have been streamlined, simplified, updated and cleverly packaged into painless seminars and workshops that run from a single weekend to over a week. Count on paying anything from $100 to $5,000 - but bear in mind that the costlier programs don’t necessarily “work better” than the more affordable ones; they just have slicker brochures and a more professionally organized planetary network.

I’m not about to endorse any specific deprogramming approach (“belief management technologies” is what a few of these systems call themselves) - though I would encourage you to go for it if you find yourself in urgent need of "ontological refocusing" and some quick positive reinforcement - and if you’re one of those who normally wouldn’t think twice about a $150 hair restyling exercise or an impulsive visit to an Italian boutique. For sure you’ll come out feeling as good as if you’d just bought yourself a $2,000 Zegna suit (I wouldn’t know, I’ve only ever worn a second-hand pair of fancy Italian shoes and driven a fourth-hand Alfa Romeo - but even those tiny indulgences perked me up considerably.)

Those who are too cheap to consider spending wads of cash on any sort of therapy - not even getting your car fitted with genuine eelskin upholstery or treating yourself to ten sessions in a samadhi tank - good stuff, you’re just like me! So you’ll just have to trust your native intuition and follow your nose (or gnose) wherever it leads you. I did. And I can promise you one thing - the universe always looks after one of its own, regardless of your bank balance or reputation. Don’t expect me to compress 50 years of private research into a 2500-word blogpost. I only want to drop enough hints to get you going - or at least confirm that you’re doing perfectly fine just the way you are. But did I hear someone ask:

What’s the purpose of “deprogramming” yourself?


Boy, do we really have to go all the way back to basics? Well, why not? It’s a pretty good place to start. When was the last time you sat back and said to yourself: “There MUST be more to life than the mind-numbing, soul-dehydrating daily routine I’m caught up in!”? Not too long ago, right? THIS IS A POSITIVE SIGN THAT YOU’VE BECOME A PASSIVE CONSUMER OF REALITY. Which means: you believe that there’s someone “out there” who’s running the whole show and who decides everyone else’s “destiny.”

Don’t feel too bad about it. Most of us probably feel this way most of the time. It’s really just a bad case of overprogramming you’ve got. We inherit two sets of “hardwired” beliefs from our parents - who got theirs from their parents and so on - and some of these beliefs work in our favor, and some used to but don’t anymore. Dig around your so-called subconscious and you’ll uncover a whole lot of rotting furniture and other junk that would make a beautiful bonfire in the backyard of your being. You don’t want all that “karmic baggage” impeding your further evolution. It’s a good idea to travel light if you want to reach insights you’ve never had before.

Approximately 95% of this “junk programming” serves as Inhibitions. Society doesn’t want you behaving too differently from your neighbors. In the Industrial Age it has been very convenient to keep entire populations happily and mindlessly conforming to statistical “norms.” It makes marketing all kinds of energy-depleting stuff a lot easier. If you’re someone who believes that everything is simply hunky-dory the way it is, it’s perfectly okay. On another level, you’re absolutely right. But be sure you’ve taken the cellophane wrapping off your Reality Sandwich before you sink your teeth into it.

Sooner or later everybody gets the urge to deprogram himself or herself. It’s inevitable. You can’t stop water from flowing just by throwing a heap of rubbish in the drains. Eventually a major downpour will occur, causing a huge flood that will blast away the debris and sweep it all out to the ocean (the “ultimate solution” as Frank Zappa called it). In a single glorious moment, your vital force will break through the layers of encrusted ego programming - and you’ll be absolutely perfectly okay, the way we were all intended to be. Meanwhile, I suggest you attempt this simple visualization:


Picture yourself in front of your computer. On the monitor screen is a series of icons....

(a) a stern-faced, white-bearded patriarch, looking like some kind of judge

(b) a voluptuous Venus emerging from the sea, stark naked

(c) a ferocious-looking martial-type in full military regalia

(d) a Dick Cheney clone in a dark suit sporting a red tie and a cold-blooded grimace

(e) a cherubic woolly-haired old lady with a merry twinkle in her eyes

(f) a grinning juju-man, black as the night sky, togged up like a Zulu chief

(g) a serene old sage blissed out in lotus posture

(h) a thick book full of incomprehensible utterances and sonorous exhortations

(i) a chubby child of three, smiling as in a cereal ad

(j) an extremely compassionate, white-robed, maternal figure smiling benignly upon you

(k) a brilliant ball of neon blue light, pulsating with vitality and intelligence

(l) a gruesome giant reptile, velociraptor or tyrannosaurus rex, ready to snap your head off

(m) a life-sized bust of Marx - Karl or Groucho

(n) a wild-haired scientist pointing at a flipchart covered with algebraic workings

(o) a dazzling, energetic/synergetic, everchanging, kaleidoscopic, mandala pattern that represents perfect geometric integrity

(p) a glossy poster of Elvis Presley, Bob Marley, Jim Morrison, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, James Dean, or the artist formerly known as Prince

(q) a monumental tree that seems to tower endlessly into the heavens

(r) a gargoyle-like stone statue weighing 850 tons

(s) a fairytale treasure chest overflowing with precious stones

(t) an archaic torture device with a pathetically bony and very nearly expired person nailed to it

(u) a flotilla of disc-shaped lifeforms radiating an other-worldly light

(v) a sleek seladang or cape buffalo, muscular torso glistening with sweat

(w) diamond-like galaxies orbiting one another eternally

(x) your grandparents in a formal portrait

(y) your favorite photo of yourself

(z) a bold question mark

NOW...Select your image of God. Move the mouse around till you find an icon you favor and click.


REALITY WILL IMMEDIATELY CONFORM TO WHICHEVER CONCEPT OF DIVINITY YOU CHOOSE!

If you later decide to alter your concept of God, you must first exit the current paradigm before repeating the procedure. You are free to change icons as often as you wish. Whichever icon you pick will prove completely valid.

If you clicked on the Question Mark, it means you’re always seeking new inputs and keeping your mind open, which is lovely.

If you clicked on your own image, that’s excellent too. But please remember at all times and places that there might be a couple billion other individuals on this planet who did exactly the same. So don’t get too bloody bigheaded.

This piece was written in 1996. It was published in JOURNAL ONE, and uploaded on this blog on 7 March 2007 at a time when I probably had no more than 50 readers a day. I reposted on 18 October 2013 & again on 9 October 2015 & 17 September 2019 with an enhanced layout because (i) it's still topical and relates to a recent piece I posted by Bob Wilson; (ii) I feel more humans have experienced a profound shift in perceptions since The Matrix was released in 1999 and (iii) I'm tired of saying the same old things about the same old stupid, irritating politicians, priests and panjandrums who stubbornly refuse to wise up, lighten up or resign and are just waiting to be unceremoniously booted out as soon as possible. Last repost 16 March 2022.