Spikey Things

Click on the spikey plant to make it bigger and spikier, it’s fun!

Interesting week, Sheryl and I have both had our moods and have been tested here and there. Also have had many positive things and really rewarding work with great clients. My photos continue to sell and Sheryl and I both continue to grow as artists as well as spiritual counselors and healers.

We both got emails recently from people who seem to hit the “send” button before they think things through. Sheryl wrote about hers already, but in a nutshell it involved an overzealous individual with poor manners and apparently a short attention span. They sent an email, back dated to July, had many earmarks of a hoax or a scam ( we get hoax emails now and then). Anyway it was sent to one of Sheryl’s best customers, and not even to Sheryl directly, but apparently it wasn’t a hoax. It was pretty disruptive; intended to disrupt Sheryl’s business near as I can tell. The letter demanded some sort of “compliance” within seven days or they threatened to turn the matter over to their legal department, and then they even named the attorney (who, by the way, did not send the email and probably doesn’t know that his named is being swung around like a little league baseball bat). The parts of the email that really stood out were:

A. They called it a “courtesy letter”.

B. It wasn’t a letter, it was a back dated email with garbled and incorrect information.

C. They called it “personal and confidential” matter when in fact it was about an alleged trademark infringement, and it was demanding immediate action that would require the involvement of third parties.

D. and finally: there was no infringement !

I think that “D” stood out the most, at least to Sheryl and I. Somebody stumbles drunkenly into your place of business, making threats and disrupting your livelihood, well, that’s not good. This, of course, is a metaphor, just in case anybody out there has trademarked “drunken stumbling”. Don’t sue me ‘bro.

I, on the other hand, got some nice comments and a very very polite email that I nonetheless didn’t like much. A guy telling me in the nicest way that I should be more careful about putting my opinions out on youtube. I ended up writing him back because near as I could tell he really misunderstood the video, so I asked him to watch it again and then write me again. He didn’t write back. Oh well. Also, youtube should be censored for any opinions you disagree with? Nah, I don’t think so.

In his letter he did a really good job of describing the experience of the numinous, and how the individual ego dissolves and experiences what he called “pure consciousness.” At that point the separation between the “I” and “God” if you will (nobody has trademarked that yet) is considered nonexistent. Hence people coming out of such an experience sometimes have difficulty putting it into words, sometimes have problems placing the experience into a context in their lives. It is decidedly not an ego trip, and i know i didn’t claim that it was. As far as I know, the individual ego collapses like a teardrop into the ocean when immersed in the mystical experience.

However: I did describe in the video that sometimes people get confused or change their lives immediately following such an event and the outcome isn’t always the most beneficial. Understand that the ego is a necessary part of a functioning psyche; it has a healthy instinct to rebuild itself. Sometimes, the ego attaches itself to the mystical experience in a mixed up way--- My critic didn’t think so. He wanted to claim that the mystical experience was a universal and was the same for everyone. Nope. We may all be one but we’re all different too.