the timboucher experience

Last night at a Bluegrass show the Devil tried to balance my chakras. Actually, I don’t know what he was “trying” to do, but I didn’t like the looks of it when he walked up to me and started rubbing his hands and muttering something about having been “taught how to do this a long time ago.” From what I’d seen him do to several ladies out of the corner of my eye, it looked like he was going to put a hand on either side of my face and try to make me one of his followers. Minions is probably a better word.

I was talking about this at lunch today: I think what the Devil does to the guys is to try to intrude into their thoughts, and make his thoughts your thoughts. It’s the classic power of Temptation and it leads you into obsession and self-destruction. Not that he’s such a bad guy though. He’s just the (a) Devil and that’s just what he/they do. No big deal once you know how it works…

I put out my hand and told him that was all I would give him. He took it and I could feel the energy pulse there. He’s obviously got some tricks up his sleeve. When you become sensitive to these types of energies, it becomes easier and easier to spot and interact with others who have “it” as well.

He then told me something about how I was “very blocked” or clogged or something. I don’t remember the word. I think he either physically or mentally or maybe with his eyes seemed to indicate my throat chakra. Anyway, that was the impression that he left. I have had a small lingering cough for weeks, so maybe he’s right. It’s getting better though and I wasn’t about to have him fix it for me. Maybe that’s small-minded or fear-driven on my part.

But so what if it is.

I admitted that I had been feeling very clogged and then launched into a series of laughs and sighs while I sipped at my beer to indicate somehow the difficulties I had gone through over the past week and a half. For a moment it felt like he and I were commiserating. He said something about breathing, or taking it one breath at a time. And I agreed that this was all we could ever do. The Devil does have a certain wisdom, I guess. I mean, that’s the whole trick though. That’s how it starts. His “reasoning” seems sound, but the Power of God Most High™ just cuts through everything. It has no regard for logic or sound-reasoning. It cuts through all bullshit and says Come Follow Me At Any Cost™ and the cost is pretty high.

But the rewards are great too.

But you shouldn’t do it because of the rewards. Fact is, I don’t know why you should do it. You probably shouldn’t. It’s not worth it: having to die over and over again just to touch the Hem of His Garment™. Okay, I’m lying. But that’s only because I know telling you the Whole Truth won’t really work. So forget it.

I’ll tell you about magic powers I have been granted instead. But I want to preface it by saying that magic powers for the sake of magic powers are pretty much totally pointless. Or maybe they are not, but that’s how I look at it anyway. When I was a kid I remember dimly my parents talking about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit™. You could look them up, but they go something roughly like: prophecy, speaking of and understanding tongues (Pentecost), ability to discern and cast out devils and evil spirits, healing through laying on of hands, etc.

Sorcery, I think, could potentially be defined (as pointless as that is) as the pursuit of those powers for their own sake. What I have experienced instead is that these things occur naturally as an outgrowth of the terrible and beautiful pursuit of God’s Love. The Quest to See His Face. The Holy Grail, etc. Actually, it’s more like God pursues you though. Like your Heart is his Holy Grail and he chases you through the forest as you run and run. But that’s neither here nor there. When you stop trying to run (and even sometimes while you’re still running) is when you might experience some of these magical side-effects.

Some of them I have had access to for a few years. I don’t like to talk about it because I don’t want to sound like I am trying to “seem magical and spiritual” and shit. So I mostly just don’t talk about how I have spontaneously been able to “see” inside of people’s bodies as though it were a 3D hologram or something. I’ve seen sick and dangerous areas as glowing green blobs pulsing sickly in the darkness. I know somehow how to move energy within other people’s bodies along energy channels to unblock various problem areas.

Chakra balancing is pretty interesting too. I used to think chakras were just a metaphorical way of organizing information about the human body. I mean, they are that too. But then I started seeing them. Not with my eyes, exactly. It’s somehow a more truthful type of sight. I think the way it works is that you have things which DO EXIST. I think people have mostly given up nowadays on the notion that objective reality and truth exist. That’s stupid. Because they do. You can see them. Your heart’s the easiest way to do that. But I’m not talking about the heart-sight so much here. I’m talking about something different: shapes in the darkness.

My girlfriend’s heart chakra the other night looked like an elaborately cut gemstone. I saw lines and arcs radiating off around it too in patterns almost like juggling patterns (yeah, I have been juggling a lot living in a house full of circus people). The arcs spin off in different directions and sometimes look like flowers and sometimes like screen savers and sometimes like beautiful wings which reach out into the world.

I have a difficult time knowing how to influence these energy centers and channels within my own body though. I am mostly opaque to myself in that regard. Unless I get really high and then I can sometimes see and feel them and push things around. But it’s nowhere near what I can see and do on other people. I’ve mostly only ever done this type of work on a few people: girlfriends, a sibling and a close friend of mine. It’s all so intense and personal. I’ve thought about trying to “get into” this sort of thing as a line of work, but have difficulty imagining being able to do this for perfect strangers, for people who I don’t know and love deeply. But maybe the failing is mine, for not yet being able to love truly and deeply all those people who I come across. God knows I try, but it’s mostly easier just to shut down - especially as you become more and more sensitive. It’s a double-edged sword though, obviously, since that’s the time you should probably be sharing your gift most fully.

Because the thing about gifts - especially spiritual ones - is that they are NOT a gift for you. That is NOT the point. The point is that this gift has been given to YOU so that you may GIVE IT TO OTHERS. It’s not a gift if you’re not continuously giving it away. And the more you give it away, of course, the more it is given to you, and the more everyone has. It’s one of those kinds of gifts. The kind of mutual abundance and praise and thanksgiving and rejoicing. And that’s why I’m writing this today: is to re-engineer my behavioral patterns around this subject, in the hopes of allowing myself to give it away to others more freely and more bountifully, one step at a time, one person at a time.

• Don’t Be Google
• Bear in underwear
• Bear drinks 36 cans of beer and passes out
• Bill Clinton & the Mechanical Zombie Bear
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave