What brought me to Portland Oregon seems to want to bring me back to the Bay Area. Before coming to Portland I was really into Shakti Gawain's books...beginning with Creative Visualization Shakti's Webpage and took to it very well. I felt like I was a kid who just proved the existance of Santa Claus...it worked just like magic. By not having a proper guide and hap-hazzardly working my way thru her books, I developed a strange approach to the practice which eventually led me in search of "deeper" practices. At one point thru syncronicity and mixed messages I noticed a reoccurance of the word Choas and the subtle feeling the term gave me everytime I thought of it. Thru some investigations at the City Lights bookstore in North Beach, I found an interesting book called Liber Kaos by Peter J. Carroll. It seemed as if the book found me rather than my finding it. I felt a surge of "something" when I picked it up and had a feeling things were going to become strange from that point forward. The next day I packed up and headed for Santa Cruz with my new book in sack. There I became absorbed in this seemingly more thourough practice. I liked the metaphors it gave...that Chaos is like a wave that swells, breaks, washes, pulls swells and breaks agin and agin. I felt a lifelong connection with the Pacific and its dynamics, along with the Moon and its influences....this book seemed to make sense in that regard....that generally people shy away from and run from Chaotic waves and try to live their lives in relative peace and calm. But this book suggested that we swim into the Chaos and come out surfing on its crest and that the rewards of doing so are sublime.

There were aspects of this book that felt somewhat uncomfortable and that were over my head... I just checked Peter's website and it reeks of an ancient black art... and aprt from the hokeyness of images of pan and wizards and pentagrams...I saw some intriguing stuff, like:
Enchantment: Making things happen by magic. Practical spell casting.
Divination: Finding things out by magic. Practical divination.
Magical Theory: How can it work, and how does it work? Practical meditation.
Evocation: Creating magical servitors. Practical ‘spirit’ manufacture.
Invocation: Accessing alternative states of consciousness. Practical psychonautics.
Magical Philosophy: The magical view of life. Practical meditation.
Illumination: Exploring your own path. Practical ritual.
My dabbling in these areas produced results and for the most part desired ones. I also attracted three individuals into my life who were into simular stuff...two witches and another magician. Santa Cruz can be a good place for attracting like minded individuals, my experience has been...The Bay Area in general, and from what I experienced...so is Hawaii... I have always seemed to be lacking in this ability here in Portland....

So needless to say...things got out of control and I really got batty. To get out of my head (as often I have done during stressfull times in life) I regurgetated my OCD tendencies and honed them into Numerology. After a month or two of counting and looking for the menaings behind the numbers I counted...I calmed down and tried for another round of embracing Chaos....in the meantime I am trying to recover from drug addiction and the magical arts were my higher power, it seemed.

I began to develope this interest in redefining my past and desired to contact an alternate self living in Portland and who was "on track" and even going to school. I wanted to bridge the two of us together.... so I packed my book and hopped greyhound for Portland, and in 5 months was attending PSU and living in my little clean and sober hotel room downtown, with my fedora and manual typewriter and oh what a quaint bohemic hobo I had become.....come winter I had thrown away that book (sorry peter) and picked back up on Shakti Gawain...but I felt cut off or blacked or what ever it was that to this day I generally feel here. I attempted suicide that first winter here. it was more a cry for help....and I have not had to go there since.

In 99 I became attracted to Lord Krsna....finally. I am able to find answers and gain insights now as to what I was going thru...though I still struggle to write about it from a Krsna Conscious perspective, aside from that I wanted mystic ability so I could lord it over my life and others. Yuck.

So now I am thinking to myself...Thank you Portland, for what you have given me....if anything, the devotees who have reminded me of a few basic truths....finding my beautiful sweet Hunnee Bunnee, Wendy (our 6th year wedding ann. was the 15th) and for helping me get my foot in the door at a university....I think I have gained what I can here and feel like I am not moving forward and am in a rut of sorts.... so once again I feel like I am about to take a dip in the Ocean of Chaos...surf's up..... I have nothing, materially speaking....and some matters I have to face that I ran from initially, that I want to take care of....and inturn will turn from the matters that I have been trying to deal with up here.

simply I want to return home to the Bay Area...it is just so typical that these changes always take place under really Chaotic conditions and would seem rather spontaneous to some...4 days ago I had no clue I would be leaving in the next couple of days...with the hope and faith that my poor wife will bring up the rear eventually and join me down there. I look at it all like an adventure....what the heck...I have been miserable for the most part anyway, and really have nothing to lose and a whole heck of a lot to gain. My experience has been that out of Chaos comes order...out of problems comes gifts and rewards... facing fears and challenges produces strength.....

So does anyone here relate to any of this? Have little new age-ish books changed your life profoundly from the moment you picked one up? Which? How? Does anyone else have a spontaneous nature and a tendency to embrace the Chaotic drive to just pick up and follow the sea and tides of energy, come what may?

I am just a good ol' hobo, trying to get home... The Southern Pacific or the Santa Fe... aw...ok...if it must be Greyhound...that'll do.... I am coming thru.

The stepping stones that brought me to settle on the Vedas...I bit off more than I could chew at one point... and swallow....and don't eat the shit sandwhich that some folks always want to offer.... shit sandwhiches tend to leave me feeling shitty.

I am eager to hear your thoughts, feelings, and experiences on the matter...

Radhe Syam!
Neal Carr
Cali-Boi

interesting read, i pretty much don't know what belief system or religion i'm gonna follow until i wake up in the morning and sometimes it changes throughout the day... even though i'm an avatar and folks look up to me to be some type of pillar holding up the cosmos, i'm entirely unfixed in my understandings

Sort of. My first pathway to bhakti was the books of Däniken and Nostradamus.
At that time I was very "Chaotic" in my worldview - I believed that at each of our steps, the universe around us changes according to unknown laws, and if we can decipher these laws, we can influence the future to our will. In the same time, I was fascinated with knowing the future beforehand - that's how I met with Nostradamus. Däniken, on the other hand, wrote about the past - and in one of his books, he mentioned a part of the Mahabharata, that well-known part which can be interpreted as a detonation of the atomic bomb:



After long thinking, seeing the lack of evidence, I refused the Dänikenian theory which proposed UFOs and an exterminated early earthly technical civilization - and since I didn't have other solution to the question on how can the writer of a thousands years old epic know about nuclear weaponry, I concluded that he must have been someone who knew the future - an Indian Nostradamus, if you want. From that minute, I wanted a Mahabharata.

And I got it for Christmas, and I read it ten times repeatedly (and of course, I tried to interpret it as to make it fit for today's political scene, to see if the world war comes). It didn't make too much sense, but I liked it. And there was Krishna. The character itself didn't seem too important to me, but I liked the sounding. And I still didn't find out the sense of the Mahabharata.

And then, I saw an ad which promised an "Indian Cultural Evening" course. I rushed there, hoping that there will be some useful information there. And it was the bhaktas who held the program. After a month, I joined Iskcon as a congregational member.

here is a travelling song with a reference to a movie about the seattle/portland region and dissasociating from that scene by getting on a greyhound bus.

mardis gras came and went
all my money has been spent
how am i gonnna pay the rent
sitting on my bed

oh get on the greyhound and ride away
live on birthday cake each day
tell your grandma you're okay
kiss her cheek and run away

me and my friends are so smart
we invented this new kind of art
who mistook this crap for genius
who is gonna hurt my feelings
we're not those kids sitting on the couch

oh people are shiny like a brand new book
but even your mother is a crook
and if you get a closer look
there's shit on every road you took

who made all these things for killing?
whose empty heart needs filling?
we're not those kids sitting on the couch

- by the moldy peaches.

that is so funny ...last monday tues and wednesday I spent an hour observing the kids sitting on the "Portland Couch"...Pioneer Square...and my wife and I have beeen living off of our anniversary cake the last few days....
cool-ness.....well, I am off to go and buy that greyhound ticket.

I love the funny coincidences. Let us chronicle them. Note the correspondance between you saying in your post that some folks want to offer you shit sandwiches and the song responding: if you get a closer look there's shit on every road you took! This group also have a song called Greyhound Bus:

"I ride the Greyhound bus, I ride it everywhere.
Oh how I count the ways. The answer lies within me.
Circles goes eternally, How can I find a saviour?
Cause noble to die for truth
It's holy to repair one's sin.
I ride the Greyhound bus, I ride it everywhere."

They also released a song in 2001 called New York City's like a Graveyard right before the twin towers crashed with the lyrics: All the tombstones sky scraping, New York City's like a cemetary, the yuppies are getting buried but then the twin towers crashed so they were forced to remove this song because it was offensive even though it was publically released just before they crashed! More morbid coincidence! Enjoy your trip, Happy Halloween.

Test

Another syncronicity for me regarding this trip is that on the Day I'll arrive in San Francisco, Shakti Gawain will be giving a class on Creative Visualization, there that night.

She's been living in Hawaii, from what I understand, so I think it is cool. Too bad it is through the Learning Annex and their classes cost a couple pretty pennies.

Maybe it is time for me to go and get a psyche eval.... I lasted four hours in San Francisco...had a nervous breakdown....and hopped a bus back "home". I thought I was going back "home"... it was an interesting trip.... an owl came smashing into the windshield, covering those in the front seat with glass shavings....I was in the back, cuddling with a stranger...she thought it was cute and did not want to wake me...what comes around goes around...on the trip back, the older biker chick woman kept snuggling against me...it was cute, so I did not wake her either.

for more on this check my Live Journal site here: Srijiva's LiveJornal.com entries