The personal revolution is far more difficult and is the first step in any revolution.
~~ Michael Franti

Quo Vadis?

I often get asked how it was that I came to edit Disinformation. On the surface, the story is pretty simple: cofounder Richard Metzger was once interviewed by R.U. Sirius for the Australian magazine 21.C: Scanning the Future. After the interview ran, 21.C's publisher/editor, Ashley Crawford, decided to put the Dark Lord of Disinformation and myself in contact, and we soon found that we were mutual fans of countercultural figures from Jello Biafra to Aleister Crowley. We had also both endured a traumatic childhood confrontation with evangelical Christianity that shaped our personal ethics and worldviews. When Metzger focused on his Disinfo Nation television series and other projects, he and publisher Gary Baddeley offered the editorial chair to me. Well, that was the surface story, anyway. This dog buried the bone deeper.

The deeper reason was that we wanted to create a forum for exploring different worldviews, a forum that would help its practitioners shift from a "self-limiting" episteme (such as corporatized consensus reality) to a more multidimensional way of experiencing the cosmos. We've profiled many cultural heretics and revolutionaries over the past 5 years. We've written about the different information and memes that these heretics and revolutionaries have uncovered. But we began to realize that something strange was occurring, as we kept exploring the online multiverse, something that no NASDAQ listing could begin to capture.

If you've been visiting us, then you may "know" what we mean. You will have been exposed (or should that be "infected"?) by information and memes that are not usually found in the mainstream media. Just as the Internet has changed your life forever, Metzger's life and my own have also been ch-ch-changed by firsthand encounters with explorers within rave, industrial and cyber-cultures. When we first met, we intuitively "recognized" these changes in one another.

A Winter Tale

These shifts-of-worldview are an ongoing process of self-evolution. Ten or eleven years ago I was an agnostic who bickered with my Anglican high-school but was enraptured (and affected) by the poetic symbolism and ritual trappings. Over the next ten years, I went through a hardcore Gurdjieffian phase, dabbled in LaVeyan Satanism, and wrote on everything from reality epistemologies to space migration. I got to interview some personal heroes, like J.G. Ballard and Terence McKenna. in an eighteen-month stint in the Temple of Set (my affiliation was for personal reasons, I don't advocate that you join any organization I mention or 'believe' any philosophe), I studied parapolitical analyses of fascism, the Russian Orthodox Christian and Sufi influences on the Gurdjieff Work, compiled a 600 book annotated research bibliography on cyberculture and postmodernism, considered several magical applications of memetic engineering, and accidently tapped into the Kali archetype/energies of Hindu Aghori practices. After a very Lovecraftian nervous breakdown in 1998 due to "analytic overload", I was thrown material by the "cult awareness" crowd. Which led to dialogues with Howard Bloom, Ken Wilber and the Spiral Dynamics community. What a trip.

These changes don't make me superior to anyone reading this column, just different. Like many people who try these techniques, I developed a Superiority Complex, which I struggled with for several years. I'm not perfect, and don't have the Venture Capitalist mantle to fund my plans for global domination. What I have gained is some stories of what it was like to survive the end of the 20th century, the Century of Identity Confusion, and some insights of what it might take to survive in the complex 21st century maelstrom.

The Century of Conscious Evolution

What I'll be exploring in this column is strategies and techniques for coping in an increasingly hyper-real, fragmenting, postmodern world. In his famous trial testimony (November 19, 1970), Charles Manson summed up the situation this way: "Helter Skelter is confusion. Confusion is coming down fast. If you don't see the confusion coming down fast around you, you can call it what you wish."

I'll be drawing upon my personal experiences with many different brain-change systems, and new areas of research like Memetics, Psycho-history, Spiral Dynamics, and various Left-Hand Path philosophies. If you've never heard of these fields - or find them daunting - don't worry. I'll try to explain them using clear, everyday examples. Where relevant, I'll be including exercises to try out, and references to books, films, music, and Internet sites that illustrate these principles. Nor is this a new idea: Aleister Crowley did something similar with his Magick Without Tears correspondence, and I 'stole' the column format from Don Webb's excellent Uncle Setnakt Sez series. I'm just adding my own riff to the cacophony.

Emancipate Yourself From Mental Slavery

It is important to remember that there is nothing compulsory in this column, and you are not asked to violate cherished beliefs, or to simply accept any of the ideas, people, or doctrines presented here. A healthy scepticism and a critical nature is crucial. And whether or not you call yourself a Black Magician, Thelemite, Gurdjieffian, Spiral Wizard, Grand Poobah of the MIB Lodge of the Illuminati or Arch-Skeptic, we all have similar goals: conscious evolution of the individual psyche. Preferably by non-drug means (I'll explain why in a subsequent column).

One of the frequent criticisms levelled at practitioners is that they are escaping reality by preferring to indulge in intellectual but unrewarding exercises. There is some truth in this, because much of occultism and various subcultures seek to explain the obscure by being more obscure. But if you apply the techniques and do the exercises in these columns, you will be changed. No one gets out of here the same.

Some of these changes in attitude and perspective can be pretty difficult and depressing to deal with at first. Normal, everyday problems and experiences are not escaped from, but must be dealt with directly. For example you might become aware of certain self-destructive behaviour within people. This can be inner-directed: you may realise that you acted inappropriately during a past relationship, and have to simply accept - and deal with - the probability that you will never have another chance to correct those mistakes. Or it can be directed outwards towards others: helplessly watching a friend slide into the oblivion of heroin addiction, unable to break the cycle.

Expect some hardships along the way, but if you can persevere, you will be a more complex, perceptive, and soulful person for the experience. You'll hopefully have a few tales of your own to tell others. Onwards . . .

Exercises and References:

1. The Charles Manson quote is from the excellent book The Manson File (New York: Amok Press, 1988), edited by Nikolas Schreck, who later wrote and directed the 1989 documentary Charles Manson Superstar.

2. One of the best introductory books on personal mutation is The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (New York: Penguin/Arkana, 1987). This is often used as the first book in Fourth Way and Gurdjieff Work groups.

3. Try the following exercise. Look at the second hand or the digital readout of seconds on your watch. Resolve that for the next five minutes you will use your will to pay full attention to every change on the second hand or digital readout on your watch and simultaneously being aware of your breathing, without thinking of anything else. If you cannot maintain constant awareness of this, what implications are there for you in the stress of everyday life? Try this exercise now.