thefractalis

[thefractalis]

Substance

In the following series of posts, number yet undetermined, I... * Explain what LSD (or Psilocybin) really does. * Contemplate on the similarity of affects shared between particular mental disorders and psychedelics. * Show you how you've kind of been on drugs/mind altering substances your whole life. * And surely more.

I think that if it was commonly understood in our society that mere micrograms can change the whole world then the world would be changed indeed. So much so that perhaps Tumblr wouldn't even exist and I wouldn't be talking here. Perhaps even the internet as we know it wouldn't exist.

If the understanding would transpire today? That's anyone's guess. The most authentic understanding comes through first hand experience. What would happen, then, if everyone was suddenly dosed acid right in this moment? I suspect it'd be nothing short of a world wide apocalypse in all ways. This word 'apocalypse', its original meaning translates to a manner of unveiling. Revelation. This definition has been lost to the confusion of contemporary attitudes and is almost always used in reference to the end of the world. I figure this is due to, a little ironically, the Book of Revelations from the Biblical canon.

Why both meanings of this word, then? For me, it'd 'simply' be another night of revelation for me if I were to be left to my own devices. There is absolutely nothing simple when it comes to LSD, though, and honestly I feel like it deserves a nickname because of that aspect of it. Commander Complexity sounds cool. Shorten it to Complex or something. Anyways...

In this wholly non-technical but effectively accurate diagram we see what a "normal train of thought" would roughly look like. Like an actual train, it's usually a straight track it traverses. At most deviance - still in the scope of normalcy - it's mildly curved. I cannot give you an example of how your thoughts are connected and how they associate with one another because everyone's headspace is unique. Even me, rubber band ball brain and all, I have my own default associations. The topic of music comes up, of course I'll first think of my favorite genres. Someone calls me, their caller ID summons the mental image of that person's appearance. Though the parts in my brain for recognizing language and the memory of someone's face are surely not at all adjacent and millions of neurons is what separates these two compartments, the memories of all those said neurons do not come into my consciousness when my eyes see a name on my phone and I imagine the person's face. These two things in my brain are seemingly disparate in almost every sense of the word, especially since all the connections that this one connection touches do not consciously register even while that flicker of electricity darts across so, so many neurons and dendrites. Clearly, though -- the memory of the language we use and the memory of my friend are very much connected.

I was tempted to use a picture of melted goo instead but it wouldn't have worked with the prior image. If someone ever tells you that acid melts your brain, though? They're right, in a metaphorical sense. The funny part is that you have to take enough of it in order to agree with those kinds of people. But let's finish with the train of thought comparisons. Again, we have a non-technical but effectively accurate representation of what happens in the brain, in the context of where trains of thought go, whilst under the influence of LSD. In a word: everywhere. This might sound like nothing but a bad thing at first, but note how your memory functions when "sober" - whatever you think that is for you. More on that later. Your short term moment to moment, perhaps we could call "present term memory", is remembering more than the exact Now that you are in. When this function of the present term memory fails, this is what we refer to as "losing one's train of thought", or at least "forgetting where you were going with that". This doesn't really happen to me/one when under a particular threshold of dose. If it happens any more frequently than it does otherwise in raw quantity and frequency, then the ratio of Lost Trains:Accounted For Trains is still very impressive. Your mind is much more active with this substance. You have many more trains. I find that I/one still has the same percentage of trains accounted for when under this threshold. (What that particular threshold is for me, I'd quite like to know, however for reasons unrelated is it very difficult to determine that) The trains themselves, though, are making many more stops as well. No matter how many stops there are, though, it's no more difficult to remember them all. So...that's all nice and well. Good to know, you think, or maybe bad to know, you think, if you have the rarefied wherewithal to withstand reading a post you disagree with. Wait, tolerating someone else's differing perspective and not throwing a fit in 2022? Madness, you mongrel! But we have to unpack the profound ramifications of a more philosophical bend before we really start to see why this is so fascinating to me and I hope is to you as well.

However, in spite of how collegiate level essay sounding my tone of text is at times, this is still a blog! Soooo I've had something a bit more personal on my mind concerning all of this as of late. It's not even the truly fascinating part to me. Maybe not, anyways. It's most definitely informed my perspective on what I think is the actual profound part; could it just be a projection, then? Who knows? I digress. I've alluded to it in prior posts, or perhaps said it outright? The healthcare system of America...for what it's worth...has diagnosed me with Schizoaffective Bipolar. This diagnosis did actually have some worth to me, though just about only the diagnosis itself was worth anything. The realm of conventional psychology, especially if embedded in the conventional healthcare system of America, is an institution for troubleshooting cogs in The Machine. Behavior and ways of thinking that impede one's ability to produce capital are identified as exactly that and the ultimate objective is fixing that. Of course, this isn't to say that any random counselor is consciously hoping you'd finally just shut the fuck up and go work a 9 to 5. I'm willing to bet, though, it's quite deeply programmed into their psyche that Human Beings must "earn a living" because the monstrous society we have today is a product of exactly that programming. The DSM is most certainly built on the same programming. Put the two together and it's just not exactly the recipe you're looking for when you're someone like me. Still, I'd even bothered with a diagnosis and a couple months of counseling at all because I'd been at quite a low point. It was a starting point, but my schizo ass went - shall we say - off track almost immediately. It was the studying of the actual science and pathology behind my idiosyncratic way of thinking and mood swings that gave me the true assistance. Sure, I'm no doctor, (although my favorite doctor - Doctor Jordan Peterson - has went on record saying he's tripped balls multiple times. why not imitate greatness?) but here's a fantastic tip for learning about anything: surround yourself in the literature, actively pursue whatever angles you can already understand, and then let your expanding salience on the topic guide you to higher angles of understanding. And the big thing about all this is that I realized I've effectively (though a lesser effect) been living with an acid brain for years before I even became intimate with acid. I imagine this would have started coinciding with the advent of my condition...because the condition is that...but I had multiple truly things wrong with me around the time of this onset and so it's hard to give any time frame with much certainty.

But this is where I now abruptly brake this train of thought and then break it over my knee. Consciously and knowing exactly why.

I was thinking, I could use another image to break up the text and so I hopped on over to Deviantart and searched LSD for a cool picture. The fourth recommended artist for this search has my middle initial and surname as their screen name, and their profile picture is a brain. This isn't the A.Igorithm fucking with me - that profile doesn't even have any art related to LSD and it shows up as a relevant profile on multiple devices. A powerful reminder that, yes, I don't care what the DSM has to say about it, the universe is talking to me. Maybe I should have been happy to admit that earlier. Maybe as early as two days after Fly Free, as it was in that day where I spotted a tattoo of a butterfly on someone I hadn't seen in a very long time, just like how I hadn't seen monarch butterflies in a very long time. Someone who was a great reminder of Hell; I had nothing against her at all however she was my first trainer for my first job back in the day and it was the worst kind of job that I never want to go back to (fast food). She had a little girl with her as well. Sweetest thing she is and I'm not even a kid person, but of course she was the sweetest thing because her name is Heaven and the butterfly woman even said she was a little slice of Heaven. ...I really need to eat and sleep on this. If you've been following along thus far in good faith, I hope you understand why I'm going to pause here for now. More to come soon.

#fractalis #oc #philosophy #spirituality #writing #hallucineugenics #mental health

[thefractalis]

The Softest Bed

I'm the kind of person to clean up litter when I see it. Sometimes, I even go around my neighborhood with garbage bag in hand and clean the place up. It's a poverty stricken neighborhood and, really, poverty stricken city on a whole. It's very low to the bottom of cost of living for my country which comes with its pros and cons. It means you need not concern yourself so much with work and labor and in general can pursue the life of the Human Being rather than the Human Doing. At the same time, the vast majority of people in the West have had their (sub)conscious programmed by society to believe that possession of fiat currency is in any way intrinsic - even correlated - to how rich and meaningful or impoverished and miserable they are.

"For ye have the poor always with you..."

~Matthew 26:11

It's a poverty of the mind, not finances.

For most of my life I have lived around what is considered the "poverty line" in my country. Sometimes above, sometimes below. When I reached the age to where I had enough of a brain to even psychologically dream of what "meaning" is, or at least feel it if not actually have it, I was pretty good at finding it. Though not truly conscious of it at that stage in my life, there was significant stretches of time where I would enter Csikszentmihalyi's/Nakamura's Flow State, feel proper contentedness for the day's endeavors, and have something to look forward to in following days which made sure I didn't sleep in longer than needed. A meaningful mixture of striving, satisfaction, wonder, and engrossment was at the very least keeping my serotonin in check. I no longer find most the topics of my childhood and initial adult years to be so meaningful, but this is only because I matured. Though I think that if I perhaps shunned them altogether now then that could be reflective I did not (unwittingly) ascertain semblances of meaning back then. I do not shun it. Piecing together the mythos of Bungie's Destiny was not at all wasted time; the creative leads of that studio have always been quite inspired. What was the wasted time, which at that point I was unable to cut away from the meaningfulness, was the video game addiction.

Kudos to them. Make an incredibly satisfying core gameplay loop to act as a hook into "initiation" to the higher mysteries. I see you, Jason Jones. I suspect at your age you're not rocking a samurai ponytail merely because you find it fashionable.

The unwitting submersion in Meaning from a very young age in constructed virtual worlds has been a cornerstone of my present lucid pursuit of higher Meaning, complete with all the lovely neurotransmitters one would hope for when they pursue The Path.

I digress (and I will again, worry not!) from our Softest Bed.

There have been times when people that my less compassionate side would call NPCs have deliberately littered right behind me, as soon as I turn a corner when I'm cleaning things up in my hood. In response to me, for the goal of being a complete fool? Or because it's so natural to them to do that they don't even think twice? When I find litter close to public trash cans, I think it's some of the latter. Sure, both instances are quite reflective of a "fool", but you see by now that I'm not the kind of person to gloss over things. I once asked a now evicted (thank God) neighbor why his family littered like they did, because one of that household would literally throw a bag of garbage from their car onto the curb almost every day. I even once taped signs to the sidewalk under the cover of night, chastising these people for their careless ways. There was more litter than usual there the next day, the very taped down signs removed. He told me it was the other people in the house. Well, that means the "chips are down", then, and whom picks them up? Not the people who are lowly, for they are not up and therefore cannot get the chips back up. It's the elevated ones whom have the responsibility to bend down and pick up the pieces...even if the responsibility thrust upon them was not born of their own fault. It's like some people are just determined to actively make their own life hell, either consciously or subconsciously. It's hard to have any compassion at all for people like that, especially when their methods of manifesting hell is countering your attempts of manifesting heaven. Still, I do have some compassion, as heaven won't be manifest without that compassion. I once made my own life a kind of hell through abject apathy for most of my life. (those virtual worlds hinting to me the very real magic of the physical world were the meaningful bits) Even if I wasn't so far gone as to sully Mother Nature, I still know what the suffocation of encroaching entropy does to the soul. How tightly it coils and binds, yet how easily it's dispersed by the smallest of sparks when all it takes is a spark to light a fuse, never mind the kindest souls fighting the good fight and kicking open doors of the house of shadows...the ones that aren't impossibly barred from the inside.

"The gates of hell are locked from the inside."

~C.S Lewis

So color me a little miffed, then, when on my usual walk around my town I come across a patch of field with all of this paper rubbish strewn about. Wouldn't be the first time someone decided that parks were for parking trash and it won't be the last time either. I've filled plenty of full sized garbage bags in this park before.

Just ridiculous, honestly. However much of an extrovert I am, man do I just hate people sometimes. Not the person. I'm not a people person, I'm a person person. As is the common sentiment, the masses are so foolish at times. Does the "wisdom of the masses" exist at all anymore? I highly doubt it.

I was frustrated enough to traipse on over there and, I don't know, just wallow in the frustration of the apathy? Shake my walking cane at the mess in anger?

Subconsciously understanding that not everything is always as it seems, alongside my conscious woes?

Perhaps. Because, oh, wait...

...It was just the cotton that's flown off of the cotton tree that was right next to the "mess". I was highly amused. Not only at my kneejerk reactions, but also how this yet again comes back to perspective. The importance of active perspective, of voluntary prospect, of going deeper.

Deeper into the serpent's interior.

This was another binary, of course. I first perceived a pocket of hell in my heaven, but then the heavy scales of my judgment were consumed by me putting my foot/tail in my mouth. Embarrassing judgment. Yet, I am my own sustenance and from myself I grow; a self made snake/man. I'm surely to die if I keep doing this...just like how the old me is dead.

Most people don't want to die. That's why they don't like to think like this. They think they can take a picture of themselves, freeze their identity and the happy feelings born from it, and laminate it in gloss. Gloss over it? The specular lighting bouncing off the laminated photo will indeed be over and gone one day and then we'll see things for how they really are.

How prepared are you going to be?

What does your death bed look like? How comfortable is the cot(t) that you lay on ?

Mine is made from the most luxurious fabric of them All. The fabric of reality. Spun from the cottons of the Tree of Life to make the All. The Softest Bed adrift in the Oceans of All. Woven into an endless series of strings to lay on. As endless as the multitudinous branches that reach up to Heaven and its myriad roots going and growing into and from Hell. (Could it be, that for every branch in Heaven, there must needs be a root in Hell?) My own string itself endless as well. Your own string just as endless. Everyone's. You have but one, though, which is what makes this life so complicated.

Not unlike the classic Etch a Sketch. If you're unfamiliar, if this was before your time, then the two knobs you see control which cardinal directions the one single line you're given will go. As though, you've put a pencil to paper to draw a picture, but you cannot lift up your pencil once you start -- and you have to start in the dead middle. You live with what happens. Good and bad. We all set out to make master pieces, but given the limitations, we're going to make mistakes. This is the picture of your perception. Your string.

These little toys are cheap. If they're even sold anymore, anyways. Certainly dollar store material. Anyone can afford one. Even the people in the poverty stricken neighborhoods. If only they could see they could make a master piece, no matter where they are or what quantity of things they have in the outer universe. All together, now, the endless series of endless strings is what coalesces into an analogue of the Gordian Knot. Put the knobs on the face of your whetstone. Carve the line into that cold hard reality and sharpen your sword to cut the knot. Solve the problem. Transmute the bad into good. See the paper rubbish as Life's cotton. Collapse the waveform favorably. And rest easy knowing that if you can't cut things down to size and turn that bad to good because of the mistakes in your Etch A Sketch causing mental blindspots? Everyone owns a sword; everyone owns an Etch A Sketch. Find your people. Find The Others. Strength in numbers...as long as the numbers are made of persons and not people.

Read that video's description.

#oc #writing #philosophy #fractalis #destiny the game #photography #spirituality

[thefractalis]

Our Knot

The Gordian Knot: impossibility, ineffability, infinity

The Sword: simplicity, comprehensible, finite.

Another example of paradox principle. Infinity and singularity. Binary. Still, not so simple.

For what sharpens the sword? The whetstone, spinning around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around.

The cold, hard, _dense_ bedrock of this life is what sharpens the blade sufficiently, all the way to a _monomolecular_ edge, to be sharp enough to cut that knot in one swing.

The infinite sharpens the singularity for the sake of being cut by it.

It begins at birth. A soul fresh from the womb sharpened enough to be able to collapse the waveform.

At first, knowing nothing. Not even that a slit or a wall is a slit or a wall. An empty perception but a perception all the same.

Growing, maturing, culturing then -- the one finds more than one perception -- more than one spot in where to slice the knot.

Growing, becoming more. Yet become sharper, and to sharpen an object is to refine it; an improvement by substraction.

We grow...with refinement.

Or do we grow...towards _re-findment?_

What is the purpose of life?

Theorizing the answer via induction within this context; the purpose of life is to grow into someone refined enough to re-find themselves in the knot of infinity through acquiring the wisdom in knowing how to cut it in any and every single place you can.

To be able to perceive as much as possible.

Maybe the ultimate question in this contemplation...

Can you see yourself in someone else? Can you relate to them?

#oc #writing #philosophy #spirituality #fractalis

[thefractalis]

Fly Free

Not long after I snapped this photo I stopped and was thankful for my little slice of Heaven here in my very dejected town, I appreciated a monarch butterfly that had crossed my path. I hadn't seen one in a long time. There's so very few butterflies around anymore. It's sad. Maybe "they" think their rape of nature and the slaying of our fauna will be enough to prevent the butterfly that caused the hurricane. That it will be enough to silence the Black Swan's call. Oh, they so wish, don't they? Even if the butterfly does not live to see the hurricane it causes, the Black Swan will still frolic freely in the eye of the storm.

They're known as events, these kinds of swans, but why can't they be a person? At least, why can't it be people? An event of sorts. An awakening in the hearts of masses that enables them to see the absolute beauty of a monarch butterfly perched on a dandelion, leisurely flexing its wings to and fro with a fluidity that makes for a catharsis for the eyes? I promise you, I was enamored for a proper minute, and was "sober" too.

There was nothing the butterfly needed from me. Nothing I could do for it besides disturb it, for it would not comprehend what I'd be doing if I attempted to handle it. Still, in spite of a void of reciprocal interaction from the either of us, I was happy I had time with it. I hope it felt peaceful in my presence, too. Though, butterflies and all insects are an intentional aspect of any ecosystem and without them we're worse off, as we have stewardship over the ecosystem and make use of all of it. I know, that butterfly has helped me in ways I cannot understand. Have I ever helped the butterfly, though?

And then I realized, my relation to most people I've ever met in my life -- and maybe everyone's relation to everyone else is like this -- is just like that spontaneous dynamic between the monarch and I. You cannot fathom the ways in which the stranger you pass on the side walk has affected your life, and you theirs. Moreover, can you _really_ help them? Could they comprehend your angle when you approach them with an observation on their gait, their ankles protruding too far outwards, indicating an undiagnosed ankle problem such as you yourself had? Can you even get it through to a known coworker that their mid day energy slump is due to their carb heavy lunch? The prior, perhaps thinking you’re weird for fixating on their feet. The latter, perhaps self-conscious of their health struggles and aren’t about to take your unsolicited advice. People are fragile...just like butterflies. They weren’t meant to be fragile and you know it. So you attempt to handle them, they’re still disturbed, and then the unseen butterfly of the mind flaps wings and conjures a storm in your heart and darkens your countenance with its clouds when all you wanted to do was help. Well, if you endeavor toward Agape, anyways. As I do. Though, when I try to explain those seven types of Greek love to people with relationship woes - here we go again - I’m pretentious and making light of their problems.

So then, I suppose, take it to my heart the words of Solomon: “Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?”

There is needed care but there is needless care as well. That Humanity has fallen how it has in this age? Tragic, but are you going to ruminate endlessly on that sorrow? I know we shouldn’t. It’s junk data for all intents and purposes. A wallpaper on your computer/the computer that is you. Always there, always known, remembered, but loses its significance in time if you just get on with things and open a program. It simply IS, now. Care for this is needless.

The care for the beauty of life, though, no matter how ignorant the persona over this life is? That’s needed. Because the hatred by “them” of that beauty is exactly what made Humanity fall so low...and what’s killed most the butterflies.

It’d become all so easy to become bitter and hateful if you ruminate on everything above.

❝𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐄𝐍𝐃. 𝐈 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐈 𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐏 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐈 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌! 𝐖𝐇𝐘 𝐖𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐌𝐄?!❞

I know why now...and there’s nothing I can do about it...and I am at peace. They’re not fragile like the butterfly after all; they’re fragile like the cocoon. Vulnerable because of its straitjacket like properties in the realm of the mind, for they still see darkness. They have not left the cocoon of needless care. And, by the looks of things, fewer and fewer people will be leaving their cocoon before the Tree of Life they’ve attached to is burnt down by cosmic arsons. I fear not. There are most certainly people out there who left the cocoon. Who now live in the light. I know some of them personally. A few, even, my own source of light when the world tries to tell me I can’t fly as free as the other monarchs.

Leave the chrysalis and join me in the fractalis.

We’ll flap and fly and frolic in fantastic fractaline phantasies without fear of the feverish phantasms fiending for our frowning faces.

Have you checked the extended forecast lately?

#fractalis #oc #philosophy #photography #spirituality #nature #Youtube #writing

[thefractalis]

Why am I here?

Why am I here?

That depends on what you mean by “here”. Maybe even “I”.

In a manner of speaking - and I have an odd way of speaking at times, you’ll come to find - I could be literally on your screen right now and I literally am on your screen right now. The same page, however, not quite. Because then we need to define “mean”. What do I mean? I barely know what I mean at all some days, truth be told. In fact as of late I’ve grown estranged to a couple friends and they cite one of my faults as always being “mean”. Condescending and pretentious as well. I don’t see it. I don’t see much these days and that’s not one of the things I see; why, I’m starting off this whole blog thing in the way that I have. I don’t think this is something to care much about though. For every uncultured mind I come across that almost breaks my hope in humanity, along comes someone just in the knick of time who will tell me they absolutely love my idea of making a sort of contemporary version of Philip K Dick’s Exegesis, but largely public and digital instead.

So that’s what it is then. “Why I’m here” has been rendered the way you meant it. I’m here to lobotomize myself onto a keyboard and dissolve neurons and dendrites back into this sea of data from whence they came, in hopes to give back to the world in my own way. In actual knowledge, though, that things will get very interesting henceforth.

If you bring out what you have within you, what you have will save you.

But if you do not have something within you to bring out, what you do not have will destroy you.

Should I be here?

When I logged onto Tumblr this evening to write a post, the very first post in my home feed was the actual impetus to make me post rather than initially banging out what NPCs may assume to be a Schizo-LARP into the aether. It is, however, not the best of manners to present yourself as though you’d just registered on a website for the sole sake of tearing someone down. Not that I have anything actually bad to say of the person and their blog, and I’m here to have some sort of presence in general. I’d not even be noticed anyways, not yet. I wonder how exactly it is that one makes connections here initially besides “notice me senpai!” reblogging and actual direct messages. Nobody’s going to be direct messaging me anytime soon, I feel -- except maybe the psych ward reminding me my that rambling like this does not constitute as out-patient counseling. Oh, maybe the failure to communicate with some people comes by my reluctance of using things like emoticons and acronyms. To be clear, then, the bit about the psych ward was a joke.

lol

I digress. My humor is hilarious and I know it. I also know by now that following The Signs leads me to such meaningful places (and it’s not because the places hate my mean mug!). To best answer the “should” part I’d actually need to answer the “why” part in the way that I would have rendered.

The Monad is paracasual.

Anyways, this is the post in question, and overall blog.

https://phlegathon.tumblr.com/post/684345875960627201/i-hate-myself-for-feeling-this-way

Well, Phlegathon, I hate that you feel that way too. I don’t hate you for feeling that way! In fact, I’d give you a hug if I could. But that you do feel such pain gives me a manner of second hand pain as well. It hurts me enough to be motivation to kickstart this blog of mine that I’d made to spread some light and love in the first place. Would I have made this post at all if not for yours? Hard to tell, though it pushed me from “meh” reluctance to “OH YEAH SYNCHRONICITY TIME LET’S GET IT.”

What are you doing -- what is anyone doing -- when they’re making these “web weaves”? Essentially, just rounding similarly themed things into a cute little collection within a palatable format. Earlier I alluded to criticism towards this post. It’s not that, actually. It’s just my own brand of sorrow, I think. One of the quotes in a post says “The love you feel for one person will never feel the same as love for another.” I think just about all emotions are nuanced like that. Even the very sadness you’ll feel will always be your own unique brand of sadness. There’s something about me that just doesn’t do negative emotions in a very identifiable way. Not even to myself sometimes. The post, and blog in general, just makes me feel things that I wish no one would’ve had to feel and things I wish no other people would feel. Frankly,

But.

It’s really strange to mince so many words over a post that simply happened to be first up in the home feed. I’ve also now had my daily meal, which was pretty carbohydrate heavy so it’s slowing my brain down now so that I can sleep. I feel like I need at least five thousand words more to accurately give one an “introduction” but then pages for that aren’t even on Tumblr anyways, huh? I just felt it logical to make post #1 (well #2 technically) be a glimpse into the mind of the writer of the blog itself.

#fractalis #oc #introduction

[thefractalis]

Current Art Credit

I'll try to remember to keep this current. Nobody likes credit ungiven.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhGgb1E3HpQ

#credit