Hex a'Gone : Six Ways to Break Old Spells and Be Part of a New Solution
“Dress for battle, even if all you carry is the sword of your spirit.”
From Jonathan Ray
It speaks volumes about this society that in the midst of a novel pandemic (which is, lucky for me, especially concentrated in my current home state of Arizona), the program installed in our young minds persists in driving us to work, spend, endless DO-ing, with no provisions for just BE-ing, which is what we actually need. Somewhere deep inside our minds we each have a horrible little man (definitely a man) with an ear-splitting bullhorn screaming that rest is a sin and we must constantly be producing sufficient content or labor to justify our existence. What a horrible lie that is, and a what a terrible approach to life as well. There is much indeed to be done, but in this moment our most vital work is not in the service to the economy or the state.
The thing about modern life is that it takes place almost entirely in the 4F Zone: fight, flight, freeze or faun. These terms are certainly not my idea, but correct as observed in my experience. In the presence of stress, now virtually constant, we have an alarm system that turns us into survival robots until we can evade perceived threats (and thanks to always-on “news" there are no shortage of those). Fighting we usually reserve for each other, a condition that is no doubt abused by those who know how. Flight keeps us from facing what we know is stealing our vitality. Freezing keeps us working in loops, unable to pursue alternatives that would liberate. Fauning keeps us bowing down to the darkness that eats our young. Stockholm syndrome reigns. Scared people cower and obey, spend when they're broke, and don't make trouble. Scared people grease the cogs of the arcane device we call regular life. All this misery to fill a stranger's coffers.
Take this literally or as a metaphor at your whim, but one way or another the structures we're born into feed like ticks to blood off the group trauma we are encouraged to perpetuate as “how things are." A lot of people want a violent revolution, but the Champagne Club will always have bigger guns on the payroll. Your local police department has picked up a lot of new toys that they're dying to try out on you, and like the Dead Kennedys warned you once upon a time, “their trigger finger wants an excuse." You fight, they jail or maim or kill you, they go to their friends in the legislature and make it harder and harder to fight back. The PATRIOT Act was a first draft. It goes on until the dead strip malls become gulags if we allow it. Why help them get the dystopia they've been salivating over for 70 years?
I propose instead that we drown out the 4F with 6D, or what I'm calling The Hex a'Gone. The six d's, by the way, are disrupt, disturb, discharge, divest, decolonize, diversify, and deprogram. Let's unpack these together.
Disrupt:
By now it's woefully apparent that these decrepit power structures we're meant to worship are not serving us. In fact they are mostly there to “service" each other, if you get my drift. As I write this, cities are burning in response to years and years of escalating unchecked police brutality. I can't say I'd advise anybody to go start a fire, but I sure get why one would. Funny thing, the cities that knew fire swiftly produced mug shots of the police with blood on their hands while similarly well known crimes in other cities remain unaddressed. How far it'll go nobody yet knows, but it serves to remind us: We are the majority, no longer silent. “We the people" are not some mythical citizens of old but the secret power of this nation and this world. We just forgot, secondary to a few hundred years of social conditioning and targeted efforts to make us the Divided States. The greatest fear of Adversary is that unity will happen through brave love rather than fear.
So show up. If you're going hard against the state, prepare accordingly. Revolutions of the past may not have always succeeded, but there is much to learn from the protests that did. Above all, protect yourself and each other. It's simple enough to find no-budget ways to protect your eyes, ears, airway and internal organs, so learn from your forebears. Dress for battle, even if all you carry is the sword of your spirit. Watch for agents provocateurs, for there always seems to be a cop or worse in protest drag on scene to smash a window and light a fire, justifying arrests and twisting the narrative into a knife in the back of noble effort (“See? They're lunatics! We HAD to gas/shoot/abduct them."). The state will always avoid the mirror. It prefers to misinform, distort, detain and discredit. This happened with the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, it happened at every large iteration of Occupy Wall Street, and it is happening now as I write this with Black Lives Matter protests. It will happen with whatever the next wave of this ongoing transfiguration process is. The “New World Order" is actually rather old, and it knows it is dying. The mortal throes will be spent trying to destroy the world waiting to be born before it has a chance to gestate. Vigilance and persistence are key. Scare them with your size and your refusal to be silent. Going back to “the way it always was," even if it ever had been, just isn't an option anymore.
Quarantine presented an opportunity to resist that didn't exist before. Almost everyone was stuck in 4F all day every day, grinding to survive, unable to imagine another way because there was never time to dream. Then came The Great Pause, and a little gap in The Grid for those who could to slip out and grab some monkey wrenches. But not everybody could be there. A lot of us were deemed “essential," given lip-service but not a raise or access to health care, and pushed out into hot zones. We saw images from the streets and cheered but other obligations exist. There's no need for yet more useless guilt. We can show up for each other in many places besides the streets. Here's a quick cheat code for life that I've learned: When you're feeling hollow, an act of random kindness can charge your battery like nothing else. In a world where selfishness is sold as the gospel, these little bursts of unconditional love are truly another form of revolution. There's a reason so many people have died for this simple message. Keep it alive through your good works, unseen but immeasurably valuable.
Disturb:
You'd think that with every month of 2020 feeling like a new chapter of the Book of Revelations, people might notice that things are no longer as they once seemed. The show goes on in Plato's Cave, but people are starting to leave the theater. The ragged old nightmare dressed up as a dream is losing its grip, but too slowly for my tastes. Somehow, a hell of a lot of people are still asleep, or at least hitting the cosmic snooze button. Maybe they can't hear the hooves of the Four Horsemen over their air pods, I don't know. Whether it's ignorance or arrogance, a startling number of people are literally shopping until they drop, refusing to wear a simple mask as if infection control were a conspiracy theory. These automatons are sending their neighbors to the hospital for another mask, the one connected to an electric lung. People are worshipping flags of all sorts, elevating them among the people who live under them. It is weird and it is disgusting, and once you can see it, the glasses don't come off.
For The Great Pause to meet its true potential we are going to have to shake and wake before this cake is baked. It is tempting to yell at the slumbering (m)asses. I have done my share of lashing out and feeling superior. I am slowly learning that is not people that stand in our way but patterns. Patterns of belief and resultant behavior, patterns of thought, patterns of obedience. Now, I can tell you from being a man of many tiny crusades that people don't hear until they're Here. Proselytizing (a 5 dollar word for guilt tripping strangers) didn't work when I was an Evangelical teenager, it didn't work when I went vegan in my 30s, and it doesn't work for anything ever, actually. Hang out, do your thing authentically, and wait for folks to cross your path when they're ready to hear a new story. You'll know the right moments when they arrive. It's nearly always the other person who starts these conversations, and that's why it works. Try to meet people where they are, but help them see the unlit parts of the path so they don't have to stay there. Help them navigate the wilderness you've already tread. Give them the space to get as angry as you did once, and help them move through that. It's really easy to forget that people can actually change, however adamant some may be to resist development. However critical I may be of the forces holding the species in a dark past indefinitely, however I may hiss and spit and curse, I know in my true heart that not one of us is more qualified to be part of the human experience than another. Not one of us is truly “less than." We all just take turns being the problem. Fortunately we also get our turns to help solve it.
Discharge:
The reason I bring up the above is that anger is so easy to become a slave of or a host for. This world is equal parts beautiful and infuriating if you're really looking at it. Rage can fuel, and sometimes you have to get pissed off to beat the blues, but fire consumes. Don't let your frustration at the outside world turn inward at your relationships with others or with the various aspects of yourself. The Great Infection relies upon your interior imbalance. Just as cancer and parasites adore an acidic body, Adversary thrives in self-destruction and self-abasement. You are, like every one of us, a sovereign spirit experiencing the material world in an incredible vehicle, but the world you arrived in was under a spell. You'd do well to lessen the hypnosis by finding gnosis: know yourself, then grow yourself. First, you've got to ground the incredible currents passing through you.
The age of the clockwork human is ending. The hive is dissolving. It's okay to be multidimensional, vast and complicated. You can be a revolutionary and also be the one who dusts the blinds, waters the plants and feeds the kids in every sense. That work is every bit as vital, its own kind of revolution. When what we build in our haste is abandoned, nature reclaims it. Peace grows where it is tended. Some part of each of us wants to see the machine destroyed, but if we are not doing the inside work, the outside will just grow back tougher and with more teeth. The true revolution is simultaneously in the street and in the heart, slow and gentle here while hard and fast and on fire elsewhere.
Of course you're angry, and that's holy in its way. Any real empath is boiling over at the sprawling insanity that has overtaken the Garden of Eden. We clutch the scythe, we look for the pitchfork, but there are other tools in the shed. Sometimes, it's time to compost, to plant, to water. The opposite of fight or flight is rest and digest. You deserve an island of calm in this maelstrom of change we're weathering, and if you can't find one, you can make one. One day at a time, one act at a time, one moment, one thought. Each fragment of infinity that you encounter is your sovereign right to claim and shape through your acts. Take your time, and take it back. Find somewhere just a bit wild, bare your feet, and make contact with the earth again. It waits beyond time for us to remember that we are part of it, and it loves to let us back in.
Try this little prayer on if you want to:
May I know peace
May I be free of pain
May I be free of fear
May my anger be productive
May my love be without price
May my works be of service
Broadcast a bit of kindness into the world, beginning with yourself. Take refuge in the tiny joys. Fill your cup first, and then pass it around.
Divest:
What is fed grows, and the food of this world is currency. Money is not inherently evil, but like everything humans touch it can be used for whatever intent is brought to it. Few have access to the boardrooms where global trends begin, but each of us has some share of supplying energy to the various available currents. Convenience, especially during quarantine, has made it seem like we have no choice but to support the huge chains that are adding to their billions by displacing the local competition. There's a certain man who shall not be named here but his company is named after a vital river (speaking of current). At this moment, people deemed “essential" are working for him side by side with infected people are can't afford to take the two week leave. They're working themselves as hard as the machines that will surely replace them as soon as Mr. Big can make that happen.
To support these people, we have to give less of our currency to their employer and companies with similar attitudes toward labor. We can each make simple but powerful sacrifices. Convenience comes at a much higher price than what you see on a website. Somebody is out there delivering these boxes in the heat and in hot zones. Somebody is packing those boxes with ephemeral bric-a-brac, racing a clock that determines their ability to keep a home and a full pantry. Somebody is assembling these products in a factory with suicide nets or some more literal prison. Somebody is dying for the oil that becomes the plastic. Somebody can't feel their hands on the assembly line. Somebody's ancestral home is now a mine for combat minerals. Somebody is selling their kids to a slaver to dig that mine. It's a dark world, but it's real. And it's a choice many millions make about a thousand times a year apiece.
Apartheid was shrugged off as unbeatable until people organized and took money out of South Africa. Let that moment be your teacher. These moats can be filled. These walls can be torn down. We can re-humanize each other, and it starts with making people more important than ease or profit. I am as guilty as anyone of feeding The Great Beast. We're all tired, we want things cheap and we want them now. We invoked this demon into existence and we can banish it. Let us all try, as able and at our own pace, to reverse the course as follows. The little sequence below is just one small way to get around working indirectly for the forces that cheapen and undermine our humanity.
Repair what you can. The Internet, while certainly rife with its own demons, is an incredible resource on how things work and how to fix them. If you prefer a more organic route, ask your grandparents.
Reuse what you can't repair. Recycling doesn't have to mean trusting your city to do the right thing with your soda cans. It also means repurpose. “Parts is parts," as they say. Build something wonderful from what would have been outright trash. Beats choking the land or the sea.
Reexamine your desire. Part of 4F living is being convinced every 45 seconds by targeted ads that we have imaginary needs. Give a questionable thing 3 days and if you still need it, move on to the next step.
Release what you do not need. Imagine how that money you've worked so hard for would serve you better sitting in savings, waiting to support your future self in dark days, rather than being blown on some impulse designed to satiate your engineered anxiety for five minutes. Let go of what isn't urgent. Do that two or three times a week and be amazed at what you can suddenly afford. This one's hard for me, but it works. Start small and watch it grow.
Research alternatives. Maybe that thing you want or need is available locally at some struggling local business, made with care and built to last. Maybe it's available secondhand, or lurking in the “free" classifieds. Wonder waits in thrift shops, and there are strangers longing to do a kindness. You won't know until you look. This little quest can uncover all kinds of magical connections right in your neighborhood. Re-enchant your world, and reclaim your share of magic.
Just one more thing, defund the damn police unless you want to live in every 80s science fiction movie at once. Your sheriff's department doesn't need spy drones, a tank, or truck-mounted sonic weapon, but it probably has them and you can actually check online. Whatever military runoff your local police have, it's not there to protect or serve YOU. Social programs, mental health outreach, and many other alternatives to “order" by coercion, incarceration and killing with impunity have been living on crumbs while the muscle of the malice machine absorbs millions.
Decolonize:
In the interest of full disclosure let it be know that I'm writing this from the position of white male and I know damn well the power that has given me. It's a position of privilege to sit here writing instead of fighting for survival and evading harm every day of my life. Yet, I am compelled, and I am finally allowing the fog of white guilt to part so that I can begin to embrace better uses for that privilege. My voice should not be more amplified than anyone's but if that happens, let it be of service to others.
I grew up in the Southeast United States in the 20th century, and I would love to tell you that the echoes of the prior centuries had faded but they rang as shrill as ever and still do. As my father used to say about his own hometown, “it's a good place to be FROM." There are pockets of awakening in the South, and it is foolish to dismiss the place as a lost cause. The fight must go on, and I may yet return to help that effort, but for now, I would simply say that ignorance is treatable but arrogance is a choice. I was fortunate enough to meet a variety of people who challenged the assumptions of the local culture in ways that could not be denied. I was so lucky to have friendships that made it impossible to believe the lies around me and made it simple for me: people are people, and people should be loved.
We love to tell ourselves that slavery is in the past. We love to tell ourselves that we don't see color, that racism is over, that sexism is over, that people are treated equally just because we can all get credit cards now. Crimes of hate are real. Sexual abuse goes on. Punishing of identity for its own sake goes on. To ignore all that and pretend to live on pedestals is delusion, and it is becoming harder and harder to ignore, thank God. To overlook the senseless venom that is brandished upon others is to devalue humanity. To dismiss these acts as artifacts of some distant barbarous past is to admit one has never experienced it directly. We owe it to each other to hear and tell the stories of lived pain and lived terror. We must also evade the trap of seeing others as one-dimensional victims, for this too is a cheapening, a reduction, a betrayal of the complex beings we all are. We must learn to see each other as more than “other." Unity is our salvation, not the false unity of some new friendly fascism but a cohesion chosen by each of us.
This world is a mirrored Russian doll, an infinite web of fractal reflections. Distortion multiplies and repeats the same story everywhere throughout geography and history. When one group is taught to see another as less human, the rift is filled with blood and pain for decades or centuries until repair is finally undertaken. Opportunities come around every generation to witness and address the horrors beneath the veneer. Guilt and admission are the beginning. Salvation and redemption come only after we reject the philosophies that have facilitated our mutual crimes. Each of us must look inside to find the forgotten resonances of our ancestors' delusions. They must be seen and accepted before they can be repaired and released. Just as each fragment of COVID-19 is protected by a tiny bubble of lipids, each hateful dehumanizing thought is cradled by centuries of normalization. Minds are cultured, just like viruses. Pop the little bubbles in your head, and let your heart's immune system take care of the rest.
Diversify:
If you find yourself in the midst of The Great Pause, you may find yourself anxious at lacking your former routine. Human nervous systems are subject to attenuation. You've heard of how sewer workers get used to smelling waste or how people in loud environments get used to communicating between the clamor around them. In the same way, we have all grown accustomed to living out our roles at the expense of our souls. Now that you're out of the loop, where are you? Can you hear yourself yet? Have you seen your face in this age of mirrors and masks?
Now is the time to do that work. Find the shriveled bits of yourself and water them. Follow your roots into the cellar and rediscover the treasures you have neglected. This section is short because only you know what you'll find there. My advice, regardless, is to open your heart to the selves on your shelves and invite them back into the sunlight of your kind attention. You have much to teach yourself, my friend, and much to teach us once you're re-acquainted. Your voice is in there, your work, your light. Please rescue it and share it with the class. We're all so much more than we have learned to pretend to be. No one knows you like you do, and if you don't yet, it's time to meet the only You there is.
Now that the din of The Progam is a little quieter, listen for that still small voice in the center of the mental maze. It knows what you came here for. Follow it as best you're able, and try to avoid the dead ends. We are living in a system that perpetuates learned helplessness, but it's a mirage, another option to select or reject. I suspect that a person living according to their genuine will is the most powerful sort of being in this world. If you want to find out if I'm right, get in there and discover who you are.
Deprogram:
All of the above can be more easily accomplished once you break the trance within your mind, that horrible magnetic pulse that comes dressed as our will. The Adversary's favorite costume is a facsimile of your face, but there's a part of yourself immune to illusions. From that part of yourself you can acquire eyes to see lies and ears to see fears. The Great Work begins by putting space between thoughts and the reflexes which become actions and consequences. It is a constant and exhausting practice, but with time, you will begin to understand that thoughts come to you rather than from you. You, my friend, are somewhere else. You experience mind, you experience physicality, but in your more extreme moments you have experienced a place beyond the senses. That is home. That is who you really are. Being human who is actually being requires waking from many, many dreams, and uncrossing yourself from many, many spells. Your brain is an incredible computing device, but it's full of mal-ware installed by forces that want our collective processing power for their own purposes. Consider an entire species, billions strong, with the capacity to dream things into the world. Now consider what could be done with that much power if it were hijacked. No need to wonder what it would be like, for we are living that right now. We are dreaming this world and living out that dream in our thoughts, words and deeds, but above all, with our obedience. We can dream another, and more to the point, you can dream your own.
So if you're feeling stuck in the collective quicksand, sick of doing what you're “supposed" to do, maybe it's time to find out what you're meant to do instead. Thank you for reading and thank you for helping in the Great Work. I'll see myself out. I hope you'll see yourself in.
JONATHAN RAY
Jonathan Ray is a writer, father, mystic, and musician working out of Tucson, Arizona. Driven to uncover, understand, and heal, he thinks of himself as a “conspiracy therapist.” Exploring the connections between the visible and the invisible and helping others to rediscover and empower the parts of themselves which have numb in our collective switch to survival mode is his life’s calling and the theme of his works. See more of his work at apocalypsefatigue.org, named for the stage between the revelations of the world’s woes and the inspiration to embody solutions through action. His podcast is Paradoxical Movements.