Destruction.

I was watching videos of Charles Manson and Aileen Wuornos (an abused prostitute who killed seven men) and I knew that it was crucially important to relate to them on some level, to understand. Because if we say, "Ah, the dangerous people are all safely locked up!" then we are lying to ourselves, as a society. "I didn't kill anyone", insists Charles Manson, and he's right. "I didn't kill anyone", says George W. Bush, and he's right. Where is the blood? Does it rest on your hands? And if we act like the malignant things are to be ignored, shut away, not listened to-- this is so dangerous. We are asking to be deceived.

Evil men smile and wear suits. If you are being punished, then your crime was not flagrant enough. That's the only different. You forgot to cloak your crime in the robes of righteousness. If you had, you would have gotten away scot-free.

Those with autism, schizophrenia. Some people look at them and say that they babble, they make no sense, they are raving madmen. But those with insight, imagination, those who are willing to expand their minds-- of course they make sense! They are not inconsistent, they obey rules, even if those rules are obscure to others. For example, reading Bettleheim's "The Empty Fortress", I am so impressed and amazed at him and his institute's ability to use imagination, creativity, lateral thinking, compassion. The cries of the pained are often in code. Do we ignore them if they aren't immediately accessible? I fear the answer is yes.

If something is beyond you, you have two options. One is to ignore it and say that it is nonsense, or belittle the person or the opinion. The other option is to change yourself. Grow towards that which is beyond you, don't ignore it. If you do that, you'll be stuck in a little dark hole for the rest of your existence.

The phoenix. I realized, a little while ago, that there was something I had never considered-- namely, that the phoenix is not exactly happy to set itself on fire. One of the worst things has happened to the phoenix-myth-- namely, that is has become all too well-known. That is one way of making something invisible-- to show it to everyone.

No, the firebird is not happy or thrilled with the idea of setting itself on fire. As a matter of fact, this hurts. This had never occurred to me before. I had always taken it as a matter of course. But there came a time, writes Anais Nin, that the pain involved with remaining curled up became greater than the pain blah blah blah. Again, this quote is a marvelous example. If you want something to be stripped of all meaning, expose it to the light. It is only when something is unknown that it can be truly known. If something is hidden then it can be seen. If something is dark then you can see all of its edges and angles. True for me but not true for others.

If you are having problems in your personal life it is probably because you are not thinking like a god. As gods, what we envision casts its shadow on reality. This is why contradictory points of view are still valid. If you think there is a God, then in your life, it will come to be so. If you think there isn't, then it will not. This is why people are so hard to persuade away from their points of view-- their believing makes it so.

And what I wish to emphasize here is that it is not so objectively, but subjectively. If I believe my house is green, who are you to tell me differently? You cannot, if I have made my mind up. It is irrational, but the behaviors of human beings is nothing if not irrational.

So to return to an earlier point, realize (or at least pretend) that you are a god and life will begin to make more sense. Not God, not the Judeo-Christian boondoggle, but something a little older, like the Grecian gods. They were a little more forgiving, I think. Every one of your actions is irreproachably correct, imagine if that were true! There might as well be! A little dark house! There is nothing, nothing at all, that does not serve either life or death. As far as I'm concerned, that's true. One roughly as powerful as the other. Don't be afraid to destroy things! Rain hellfire and destruction, if you like! The crops were burned and the farmers lost their livelihood. They put the Hungarian on a burning, smoldering throne of iron, with a red-hot crown on his head and a scepter in his hand. His brother was cut into three pieces, right before his eyes. How to reconcile this with any code of ethics whatsoever? You cannot. The only explanation is that the dark and the light are present in all people. One will never win, the other will never lose, at least as far as human experience goes.

Having problems? Burn them to ashes in your eyes. Violence. Construction. Make children. The fallow fields, the fertile fields. Where Zeus lay with Hera, the grass sprung up, freshly green and sparkling with dew. If not for the machinations of Aphrodite, all would come to naught and the war of Ilium would rage until the end of time.