As you now know, totse is no more.  I assume the link to zoklet.net is still up; this community is growing rapidly and evolving.  I post there under my real name, Greyfox and moderate “Metaphysics”–the forum for religion–and “Paranormal”–the forum for, well, the paranormal.  In general, “Metaphysics” is more about theory, while “Paranormal” is more about practice.

Also, I still offer free psychic readings.

You saved my life, but that was just a start.
You taught me how to go through cruel to kind.
You healed the indignation in my heart
So savage, ‘fore it overthrew my mind.

Perhaps your most unique and trusty role
Is alpha dog in our eccentric pack.
In this you may not have great depth of soul,
But I know you’ll always have my back.

But long before the canid came the Cat,
Pussy-footing down the halls of time.
I followed you, as stealthy as a Rat,
Once more your lover, partnering in crime.

As so upon this consecrated day,
I thank you, dear, for showing me the Way.

Author’s notes:  English majors will recognize the poem as a classical Shakespearean sonnet, three quatrains and a couplet, iambic pentameter.  I got most of the free verse  poetry out of my system in college, one example of which got an Honorable mention in the Atlantic Monthly College Writing Competition (he added modestly).  To me, writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net.

It is quite personal and idiosyncratic.  The first quatrain has a Shakespearean allusion (I think), plus a reference to Jonathon Swift’s epitaph.  The second refers to our multi-species household– a dog, many  cats and  three domesticated primates–and Susu is the alpha animal, the pack leader for sure.  The third refers to one of our past lives–I hope she will say something about that.

In the couplet, “Way” is capitalized as a punning reference to the Tao.

People deeply engaged with the paranormal or metaphysics are sometimes viewed as dimwitted, deranged, or dishonest.  This is partly because some of us are in fact, dimwitted, deranged, or dishonest.  But there is more to it than that–largely, IMHO,  this is due to the way we use, and misuse, language.

Take jargon.  Every specialized field has its own.  For instance, if I say to a crystal worker that in my experience, calcite has similar vibratory properties to quartz, but at a lower octave, the person will know exactly what I mean–even if or he or she disagrees.  Someone who does not speak the language will think it is gibberish, not knowing that we use the word “vibrations” differently from someone talking about tuning forks.  Similarly, when I speak of shamanic soul retrieval, the word “soul” in that context means something quite different from the word “soul” in virtually every other context.  So why even use this jargon in the first place?  For the same reason that construction workers call a spade a spade,. and not “a manually operated tool for manifesting minor earthmoving operations”– brevity.  If there is an element of shibbolethness in this, well, so be it.

Much of what we say is more metaphor than fact, more poetry than prose.  “Vibrations” is one of those words so often misused and/or misunderstood.  No less an authority than Stephen Gaskin has stated this, in very plain and unmistakable terms.  But many of us speak as if there is really something vibrating, giving materialists the opening to challenge us to somehow measure those vibrations.  “Energy” is another.  When meditating, it is not unusual to feel  AS IF there are large amounts of energy being generated in the extremities.  This is illusory, a makyo–but many people in the field seem not to grok this, and continue to speak quite literally of manipulating energy.  On the other, hand, some people do seem to be able to manipulate “chi,” a sort of bodily energy.

Another problematic factor is that some of us are in ecstatic states when we write, and are literally out of our minds.   It shows. This is not new–read some of the writings of St. Teresa of Avila.  A more recent (and highly regarded, and bestselling) author comes to mind–Neale Donald Walsch.  I owe him a great debt of gratitude for the inspiration and insight I have gained from his writings, but sometimes he comes off sounding, well, on the verge of hysteria.  This tends not to convince the skeptic.

And take channeled material.   Please.  I have read a lot of it, from the Urantia Book, channeled back in the 1930s, to the slightly more recent Course in Miracles, to stuff published last year.  Much of it sounds–to me–pretentious, stilted, pompous, and almost opaque.  Years ago, when I first started being exposed to it, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and would ask my sweety to translate into standard English.  She did, and I’d be like “Oh–is that all there is to it?”  Most channeled material is pretty much in line with the Perennial Philosophy, the vast body of wisdom promulgated by the Vedas, Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, Sufi mystics, St. John of the Cross, George Fox,  Meister Eckhart,  Aldous Huxley, Deepak Chopra, and a host of modern writers and teachers.  Why it comes out sounding so odd and often off-putting, I don’t know.  Why some authors attribute this venerable and earthly wisdom to “eighth-density beings” from the planet Zarkon, I don’t know.

Finally, there is the simple but hard fact that words fail–the menu is not the meal, nor is the map the territory.  Verily was it written so long ago–”Those who know, do not speak”–not because they have been struck dumb, but because words are the language of the mind–feelings are the language of the soul.