Two weeks ago I got news that I had lost a friend and mentor. Actually, the mentor in my academic career: Shawn Arthur. I met him at a spiritually and psychologically difficult point in my life. He became a star around which I orbited for the next three years. We remained friends for a period thereafter, but those three years in particular were defining moments in my academic and Magickal life.

Somewhere along the way, however, I lost that Magick. I lost connection with Shawn. It wasn’t really a falling out, though there was an episode that precipitated a distancing. Nothing major. At the end of the day it was something I took too personally. He reached out during my first year teaching after he had moved about an hour away, but I was so caught up in my own BS, my own new journey of teaching, that I failed to reciprocate.

For the next twelve years I devoted myself to the material realm. To teaching about material reality: technology. The materialist side of myself was given full-reign over my day-to-day existence. Don’t get me wrong, Magick was not entirely gone, but it had been superseded by the more “important” and more “real” material world. Science and rationality were my new gods. There were aspects of my Magickal side that remained mostly unscathed, though admittedly diminished. For example: the concept of “reality-tunnels” and a line that I used in class all the time: “the map is not the territory.” The notion of different states of consciousness, of Magick, of spirituality, of Paganism, of walking through the world as if all were alive with animistic energy were “fun” reality-tunnels. The stories made the droll life of materialism more interesting. They imbued a sense of duty and kindness towards all life, towards all things. But at the end of the day, they were nothing more than fun stories. Playing make believe.

For a long time, and honestly to a certain extent still in this moment, I have considered the following as representative of my state of being:

Intellectually an Atheist
Philosophically a Buddhist
Emotionally a Pagan

What went unspoken, what was a given, was that the Intellect took precedent over all else. That the real “truth” is that there is no spirit, there is no “Magick,” there are no “real” gods and goddesses. All of that is nothing but stories we tell ourselves. At the end of the day, all is material. We are material beings in a material world following material laws. More than that, most of this is predetermined. Free will is but an illusion of control, our material “selves” are nothing but material processing at a lower level: neurons firing, chemical reactions, and so forth.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that this all came with a certain sense of arrogance. A holier-than-thou attitude that *I* understood this TRUTH, and that anyone who believed in fairy tales as anything more than just fun stories was delusional. I tried not to be a dick about it. There were times in my undergraduate life where I 100% was a dick about it, and I did not want to be like that. I’m sure I failed at times, but I genuinely was not looking to actively agitate others, not around this, at least. It was, nonetheless, an aspect of this mindset.

This mindset has largely been at the forefront of my being for the last twelve years (maybe even longer, nearly fifteen years). That all ended in just the last week. Or, rather, I feel the veneer peeling away piece by piece. There’s still some framework there, but I can hear the demolition gear warming up, ready to tear it all down. Here I find myself, in the midst of a transition. A transition that is tangible, that is “charged,” that feels like it’s crackling with energy. I’m trying to figure out and process why. Not purely from the “rational” perspective of explaining-away the feelings, but to understand. It feels like meeting back up with an old friend who I’ve not seen in ages, but with whom I immediately fall right back into conversation with as if no time has passed. There’s no fear here. There’s some trepidation, sure, but it’s mostly a sense of excitement. A positive anxiety. Truth be told, it’s something I’ve not felt in a very, very long time.

I brought this up in therapy yesterday with my EMDR therapist. I had not seen them for a month. I explained two things, two things I hope to return to in this piece (though I know not exactly where this piece is going…) The first was that I wondered if I might be in the midst of a manic episode. I’ll note that while depression, sometimes deep depression, has been a partner throughout most of my life, I’ve never (knowingly?) had a manic episode. I’ve had what I can only call mini/limited “psychotic breaks,” usually brought on by too much psychedelic use (and it’s been a looooong time, since I’ve done any of those), but never a manic episode. But, nonetheless, I wondered. I explained that I received news, out of the blue (although, I suppose can it really happen any other way?) of the untimely death of Shawn and his wife Karen. I explained, as I had explained to my AuDHD therapist a week and a half earlier, that I had not cried. I still have not cried. I came close to crying when speaking on the phone to my best and oldest friend a few days ago, but even then, no real tears, no actual crying. It was gone as quickly as it came on.

When Renee told me about their deaths I just stood there. I stared off into space. I didn’t move. No tears, no emotional reaction, just numbness and vacancy. I didn’t even say anything. I proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon/evening carving and sanding wood, working on a sculpture of Odin for my crow shrine. For some reason (I think I now know why), it felt like the “proper” thing to do. It felt like it was something that I needed to do. I listened to my favorite Warduna and Heilung songs on repeat, over and over and over again.

So, when I told my EMDR therapist that I wondered if I was having a manic episode, this was part of it. No crying?! What the fuck?! More than that, the past 4-5 days in particular have felt energetically charged. I was almost giddy at times in the early moments of my session. I explained that it felt like I was in the midst of a transition. I was reconnecting with aspects of my life and myself that I had let “go to weeds” for the last decade and a half. I made the analogy that it’s like the “spiritual/Magickal” part of myself was a garden I had built in my mind, but that when I started teaching I had left it unattended. It had become overgrown with weeds, it had become neglected. However, it felt like the soil itself was (is) still fertile and healthy, just waiting for new planting. It feels like I’m both consciously and unconsciously clearing out the weeds and preparing the soil for new life. I’m excited. Excited? What the actual fuck? My friend and mentor, someone who meant so much to me, someone who had such profound impacts on my life, yet who I let slip away because I’ve my own ineptitude in maintaining friendships had just died! I’ll never be able to talk with him ever again. Not in the material realm, at least. But I’m excited?!

Mania, right?

I don’t think so. Neither did my therapist. I’m curious to hear what my other therapist thinks of all this when I speak with them tomorrow.

So what the fuck is this?

I think it’s the process of reconnecting an old circuit.

In reminiscing about Shawn and the time I spent with him, I’ve been connecting with my younger self. With a part of myself that never really went away, but was merely abandoned, quieted, sometimes (often?) hidden for these last 15 or so years. I’ve been picking up books that I had read back then, I’ve been listening to music that was a key part of my life back then, I’ve been listening to podcasts with formative thinkers from that point in my life, thinkers who are deeply involved in Magick. In particular, Grant Morrison and Douglas Rushkoff.

This is not the place where I plan to get into the specifics here around Magick. But, this is the place where I want to recognize, to STATE, that this part of myself is reemerging from the ashes, or rather, from the long-neglected soil I cultivated so long ago. I’m in the process of clearing the weeds and trying to figure out what exactly I want to plant. I do want to plant something, that much I know. I do want that something to involve Magick, that much I also know. I do want to begin the process of shedding this self-centered, egotistical, holier-than-thou materialist attitude that I’ve been largely hiding behind for so many years. That I damn well know.

There’s a lot of excitement and energy in the air right now. I’m trying figure out how to harness it and provide some structure. Something else that I mentioned to my therapist yesterday was that it felt like my ADHD was just let loose, totally unbounded, ecstatic child-like feeling of wonder, wanting to do a bit of everything. I think that’s part of where the sense of mania comes in more than anything. It’s like my ADHD, my child-brain, has taken the wheel. I’ve described much of my experience with AuDHD as my Autism at the wheel, and my ADHD as the annoying backseat driver, constantly yapping away, changing the music every few seconds, and (very confidently) giving poor, sometimes straight-up incomprehensible directions.

While this is for another piece entirely, part of me wonders if there is some connection here to my conscious choice to begin unmasking my Autism. It’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about, reading about and listening to others’ experiences, and beginning to enact in my own life. I don’t know. Again, that’s a story for another time.

For now, however, I want to find a way to bound some of this energy. To harness it, to provide some direction and outlet, but to largely let it flow. I don’t want to “control” it, as that feels like going back to old habits of the last 15 years, but I do want to give it an outlet. I do want to openly embrace the Magick in my life and give it the attention that it deserves.

I know that I’m on the “right” path. I know that what I’m in the midst of right now and the way that I am handling it (such as the sheer amount of open-ended, reflective writing that I’ve been doing) is the direction that I should be headed. How do I know this? Synchronicities. They’ve been popping up repeatedly the last few days. Nothing major, but there have been a lot of them. Historically, in my life, this has tended to happen following potent psychedelic experiences, during times of increased practice in Magick, and during times when I feel like I’m on a “healthy” path in life. They’ve always felt like little winks from the universe, reminding me both to not take everything so fucking seriously, but also that I’m going with the flow more, or, in the words of Grant Morrison, “dancing with the Universe, because the Universe likes to dance.”

We’ll see. Right now, I’m returning to two particular grounding strategies for providing both a framework and structure, and an outlet for these energies: creative endeavors (wood carving, free-form writing, this website) and reacquainting myself with the 8-Circuit model of consciousness, which is a framework that always made a lot of intuitive sense to me. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on both of those in the near future.

In closing I simply wish to say this:

Thank you, Shawn. Thank you for all that you taught me. Thank you for your guidance, your wisdom, your keeping me in check. Thank you for sharing with me all your knowledge. For sharing your passion for learning and for teaching. Thank you for teaching me that I need not concern myself with what other people think RE: “alternative” beliefs, attitudes, and styles. Thank you for putting up with me for so many countless hours as I camped out in your office peppering you with questions, throwing ideas at you, picking your brain. Thank you for your support, your kindness, and your pushing me to go further in my studies. Thank you for saving my life. Not just metaphorically in helping me find my path during a very tumultuous time in my life, but for quite literally saving my life when you screamed for me to get out of the building as the roof above me was quite literally, and completely unbeknownst to me, falling apart around me at that Daoist Temple during the earthquake in Chengdu. Whether you knew it or not, you were a shining light in this world. An awkward, sometimes bumbling, definitely weird, but always genuine, kind, and empathetic shining light. I can only hope that I am able to carry even just a small piece of that light forward in my own life, for my own students. Thank you, Shawn.

I love you and I miss you.

Whatever will bewilder me
Whatever will bewilder me
And following our will and wind
We’ll ride the spiral to the end
And may just go where no one’s been
Spiral out, keep going
Spiral out, keep going
Spiral out, keep going…