the theta state in 5d

"Time is merely a measurement of change," thought Bastante to himself as he studied his own 4d body.

He inhaled, and the diameter of his abdomen increased.

He exhaled, and the diameter of his abdomen decreased.

His 3d body expanded and contracted through a fourth, temporal, dimension.

He was 4d, and knew it.  He welcomed himself to the fourth dimension.

This was the great secret to living a happy life, Bastante firmly believed.  Now existed in four dimensions, and was observing itself from a fifth.  Being here now was far more demanding than any full-time job - it was a 24 hour endless experience of the miraculously divine.  He felt like he had the best job in the world, only he didn't make much money from it.  But he actually avoided money, since it seemed so exploitative.  So he did actually have the best job in the world, he realized.  He existed now, observing everything, aware of everything, noticing everything, feeling everything, watching it all change over and over again, watching the watcher change even, noticing patterns, observing karma, cultivating gratitude, learning of suffering, the greatest suffering of ignorance, and how to transcend all suffering.

Through meditation.  Bastante Solipsis Marquez was a dedicated meditator.

He sat and observed his own respiration.  Thoughts vanished,  Ego vanished, and God remained.
Observe your own respiration, dear reader, and allow every exhalation to be the emptying of the vessel that is your mind...

Time is Energy

Time is energy.

Bastante Solipsis Marquez knew it, and overstood Now to be the moment of power.

 Bastante lived in the now.  He was in love.

He loved life; he loved breathing in and out and moving around in a body.  He loved the sun coming up in the morning and the stars coming out at night.  He loved trees and the earth and most people and usually a good thing or two happened during the day that reminded him of the importance of loving others.

Attitude, breath, and posture.  These were the keys to success, he had decided.  The Buddha had said something along those lines, he knew; something about right thought, right speech, and right action.  They seemed to correlate, more or less.

Bastante had suffered much in life, as have we all, and after great debate he had decided to overlook it.  No fear, no hurt, no suffering.  There was only time, which was energy.  His work was to always face the now fearlessly and peacefully, with confidence, compassion, and cool.

Anticipation.  Bastante's task (as is ours, dear reader) was to face each day, each moment of now, with appreciation and anticipation.  We must believe that life is good and gets better, for the mind is a feedback loop in relationship with the cosmos.  Thoughts are things, and the thoughts we put out are the things we get back.

Bastante had grown up reading the Bible, but he had never overstood the part where Jesus comments :  "To those that have, more will be given, but to those that have not, even what they have will be taken away,"  until he heard of the Law of Attraction.  The Law of Attraction says that we get what we give:  Our mind is constantly churning out thoughts, and if our mind is constantly grateful for the depth of beauty, love, and interdependence found throughout human life then we continue to receive even more.  But if our mind is ungrateful, or even unaware, of the miracle of life then we receive no miracles in our lives.

Jesus could have said, "To those that feel they have, more will be given, but to those who feel they have not, even what they have will be taken away."  Thoughts are things, and these thought-things carry a gravitational charge, seeking a match.  Putting out good thought-things brings back good experiences, and putting out good thought-things that radiate gratitude for abundance brings back more abundance.

Bastante knew that Christian Conservatives would kill him if he ever tried to preach the gospel of the Law of Attraction.  Jesus had gotten himself killed for preaching it, among other things, apparently.  It seemed that nobody in power wants us to know that thoughts are things, because if we start mastering our thoughts, the market won't profit from endless craving anymore.

As it turns out, the market profits from selling remedies for suffering.  None of these remedies work, however.  Suffering still exists.  The only cure for suffering lies within our minds:  we must experience suffering with a positive and nonattached attitude, full of faith that life is good and gets better.  If we don't believe it, we have to fake it till we make it.  Bluff bluff bluff.  Even in the midst of great suffering, great agony, great hurt and the deepest of wounds being torn open, we must accept that life is good and gets better and appreciate the value of living through such powerful, transformative experiences.

The market cannot sell us a positive attitude, and with a positive attitude, it turns out we don't have that much use for the market.  Spiritual truth was bad for business, and preaching the truth got people killed.  Like Jesus.  So Bastante laid low.  He was like Hamlet, pretending to be a harmless goofball, looking for a way to end the tyranny of the Man.

Anyway, being confident, compassionate, and cool was easier said than done.  Bastante faked it constantly.  Training the mind was like training a mule, he knew, and success came only by being more consistent, more determined, and more stubborn than the mule.  Bastante's mind would rebel against this artificially induced positivity every chance it got, and leap violently into pits of victimhood, insecurity, and self-limitation.  It was an old habit that had served him well.

There was nothing to do but pull the mind out of the bad-thought-pit, against its will and in defiance of the very personality inhabiting it, and set it back on the path of gratitude, humility, and acceptance.  Like a bucking bronco the mind would fight - the ego itself would perish if its cherished negative behavior patterns were successfully discarded!

Yet Bastante saw these patterns as counterproductive, and worked diligently to eradicate these enshrined, self-sabotaging neuroses.  He witnessed his own personality change, as an ego perished and another was born, over and over again.  It was much like watching a cloud in the sky; one minute it looks like a spaceship, and the next minute it looks like an elephant doing a kegstand, then you blink and its some kind of birthday cake, and then...

I Am is always changing, for I Am is change.  I Am observes I Am just as water is poured into water.  Bastante knew himself to be an artificially constructed personality, self-created for purposes of categorization. He himself was beyond categorization; he was infinite.  He knew that this self-categorization was inherently artificial and ultimately limiting; the only thing about him that didn't change was his name.  And sometimes his smell.  And even they changed, too, occasionally.

But anyway.  It was time to go to work.  Bastante folded his legs, sat up straight, and began observing respiration sensations on the small patch of skin beneath the nostrils and above the upper lip.  Slowly, his mind quieted, became silent, and let go, and emptiness dawned like the Sun...

Bastante Solipsis Marquez remained addicted to samsara.  He remained addicted to samsara  because he wanted to live.

Bastante clung to life.  It was his most basic, primordial desire:  To live.  He survived, childishly and selfishly putting the needs of his ego before anyone else, and in surviving he cultivated a base defiance of that which challenged and threatened his survival.  His ego refused to let go of preconceived realities.

He grew egotistical.  That which challenged his ego felt personally threatening.  He could not bear surprises that shook the ground of his identity; who he believed himself to be.  He identified with self.

His very survival felt so tenuous; he did not know if he would live or die.  It made him paranoid, and frightened of death.

He did not know if he would exist or cease to exist; he felt terrified.  He saw his addiction to self and knew the Buddha had taught anatta, no-self.

He knew he needed to practice no-self.  He knew he was bad at it; having spent years grasping at self he saw how hard it was to unlearn bad habits.  He knew his self was not very bueno.

He wanted to kill the ego; the insecure bully who kept sabotoging his life was ruining all of his best chances at happiness.  He yearned to put a gun to his head but he knew better. He yearned to put a knife to his dreadlocks and thought about it long and hard.

It was so hard to create and so easy to destroy.  He did not want to destroy his ego, after all.  Wasn't there any other way?

The rainbow war

Bastante Solipsis Marquez was gallant.  He drove an old van across the vastness of the American West and grew dreadlocks.  That was how he liked it.

Sometimes he drove with ganja from California.  Sometimes he drove with peyote from Mexico.  Every now and then he would carry human cargo from one place to another.  Most of the time he drove with nothing at all.

He liked to drive.  It was like riding a great horse.  He would drive endlessly for days.  It suited him.  He was an anachronism, unsuited for office work or profiteering.

Bastante desired above all else to tear apart the past with his fingernails, to undo what had already been done and start over.  It was impossible, and he knew it.  So he languished in anguish.  He repeated patterns, noticing how history never repeated itself yet always seemed to rhyme.   He learned from his own karma, and grew disgusted with himself.  

Slowly, he matured.

Bastante had discovered his own past lives through acid, dmt, psychedelic mushrooms, and vipassana meditation.  He had seen his own past lives, and they were embarrassing.  He was embarrassed to be human.  He only felt comfortable around humble people.  People who felt good about themselves, people who believed that they deserved their humanness, left him feeling awkward and humiliated.  He shunned society.

Bastante practiced yoga, and meditated.  On good days he stayed sober, and the rest of the time he was stoned.  He spoke to the stone people, and hugged trees for the psychological benefits.  He had late romantic nights with the stars.  He found hot springs that no one else knew about, and never told anyone.  He loathed money, and depended on it.

Bastante loved life, and despised the chains he chose to carry.  He despised his own bad choices, and learned to live with his own sorry ass self.  Nothing ever worked but perpetual forgiveness - of his own deep flaws and everyone else's.  It was a sad state of affairs but then what else was new.  Got lemons?  Make lemonade.  Bastante drove across the west to keep from driving himself mad.

Bastante grew old learning to forgive himself, and then grew older learning how to outgrow bad habits.  He discovered his own pessimism, his own fatalistic and depressing outlook towards life.  He saw that his own failure as a family man, as a householder, a committed and responsible person looking out for something other than #1 in his life, was due largely to his own victim mentality.  'Poor me' Bastante couldn't help but get the short end of the stick.  He saw himself in the mirror, and it shocked him.  He grew outraged, and evolved.

'Poor me' Bastante decided to be brave, and accept responsibility.  It was terrifying, life-threatening even, but still a decided improvement over perpetual victimhood.  He was happy for taking the step.  But bravery had its own problems.  It was easier to be brave than it was to be cool.  Bastante set out to be brave and came back uptight.

He forgave himself.  Lots of brave movements end up uptight.  Look at the Republican party.  Or Israel, for crying out loud.  Bastante saw what was he was up against, and pondered his next steps.

He knew he needed to surf.  But he was in the frigging desert.  What to do?  He hatched a plan.

He would be brave.   But he would not be uptight.  He would be nonchalant, and optimistic, and good humored, and nonattached, and chivalrous, even.  He would find a cause, and devote himself to it.  but he would not get uptight over it.  He would be brave, and positive, and not take himself too seriously.  Bravery and positivity were actually the same thing, he realized.  Positivity was, and is,  the greatest bravery.  And so he chose to be positive, even as everything he held dear poised on the brink of annihilation.  He grew stoic, and confident.  Not because he felt either, but because he felt responsible for faking it.

And what does a mature, stoic, good-humored confidence look like?  Bastante found a word, and stuck with it.

Bastante Solipsis Marquez chose to be gallant.

What else could he do?  He led a romantic life, devoted to the philosophical ideal of hope.  
"There is a way," he would say to anyone who would listen, and after a long time he began to believe it.  Whether it was true or not didn't matter.  If he believed it, it would come to pass.

And he thought.  And he thought.  And he thought.

What would make the difference?  What would heal the suffering of the world?

Bastante rose one day and knew.  He saw the path.  He chose it, or it chose him.  The way was clear, and called him.  It was a wonderful marketing opportunity.

Bastante went into business promoting hemp dollars.  He became a hemp dollar promoter.  He saw the way forward before anyone else made it plain, and he led the way.

Much later he would be heralded as one of the great chiefs of the Rainbow War, but that was too far in the future for him to see, or care.   He simply chose his mission, and determined to fake it till he made it.

And that was all.  Surely, that would be enough for any man-

Bastante Solipsis Marquez was one of the great peace chiefs of the Rainbow War, but he didn't feel great or chiefy all that much.  Most of the time he fought cravings to smoke ganja and retire to the forest.  The forest was a rotten place to get laid but it was a great place to avoid the misery of modern civilization.


Bastante was not a fan of mainstream civilization.  The pollution, the ruination of the waters and the woods and the destruction of nature, the ignorant public, the propaganda, the lack of intelligence in social organization, the deliberate hijacking of innate human wisdom for the purposes of material power, the total absence of an empowered humanity... it made him somewhat nauseous if he thought about it too much. 


Bastante had stopped smoking ganja because it prompted him to retire from society.  He felt responsible for doing something about the situation, and smoking just encouraged him to walk away into the woods and let someone else deal with it. 


There was reason for positivity, he felt - the war was raging all around him and ganja was becoming legal.  This was reshaping the world, he knew, not because stoned people were going to foment social revolution but because the ganja plant would produce food, fuel, clothing, shelter, medicine, and recreation while healing mother earth.  This would happen under the rubric of
'being good for the economy'.  Jobs would be created, millions of jobs, and the labor intensive process of growing hemp would provide meaningful employment and right livelihood for entire populations around the world. 


And stoned people were fomenting revolution, after all, he thought with a smile.  Nonviolently, peacefully, with lots of dancing and singing, huge numbers of people were  walking away from the rat race and all its various hypocrisies in order to embrace a way of life which affirmed the sanctity of our planet and all life on it.  Before we ever vote with our pocketbook we vote with our attention and Bastante was watching the world turn its back on the money power of babylon in order to more fully represent and inhabit the world as it is meant to be.


None of the newspapers reported, it, of course.  the newspapers were owned by the money powers, and were consequently forbidden from reporting on the revolution against the money powers. 


Bastante wondered how it would all turn out.