“Into the Abyss” begins in January 1999; I had been in College since September, I was set free into an entirely new environment in which no one had any prior history of me, or 'story' of who I was. I had been ecstatic for the new adventure of living away from home and exploring a new territory. I had already been in a very manic period, since the summer of 1998, and by the end of winter had fallen headlong into the Saturnian pendulum swing of depression and angst and my external indulgences and debaucheries weighing like lead in my soul as I struggled to come to terms with the other pole of my being. It was 1999 that saw me through college and all its run-ins with authority, all the experimentation with mind altering substances and the dance with the demon of alcohol and the intensity of my wild self and having no real structure to tether the reigns. As the year progressed and became more and more unhinged, I lost all interest in school. Mostly I played basketball in the rec center for hours a day instead of going to classes, and spent my nights in a whirlwind of partying and seeking the mirror of self in all its forms. By the end of the school year, I knew I would not return, but also didn't want to go home. So I stayed in Greenville for the summer, as I came more and more unwound. Eventually, I left suddenly, and returned home, as I feared I was about to enter a chasm I could not escape from. (See 'Autobiographical Fractal Framework' in Volume 3 for the more fleshed out version.)
Once home I had more life and death encounters with the Dark Lord and the Mania and Madness that was following me, that I called the Madwoman's Whisper. I was spinning out of control.... and then I dove into the Abyss. (See "The Trip' at the end of the book). In one sense it saved me from complete obliteration and a fate worse than death. In another sense, I was completely dismembered, and my nervous system shattered by the weight of baring Eternity. It would become the task of the rest of my life, to unfold all that I experienced and Saw and Underwent. I would be given the decree to Embody the Promethian Flame of Inspiration and Awareness into the Fleshly Abode so fully that the Body ItSelf would be the Divine Vessel of Transfiguration and Life. Would I be capable of Grounding that incredible Current, into this vehicle?
Not yet. I had to undergo a complete re-wiring, which required me to Let Go of any semblance of a 'normal' reality. I was banished from the everyday participation of life, and pushed so far inside that I felt like I was simply witnessing everything around me in utter shock and dismay......all boundaries obliterated between I and Thou, Self and Other.
“The Pain of Purgatory” starts off in January 2000, struggling to come down to Earth, flailing in the supersensible realms, trying to reconcile my pulsating Awareness of AllThatls with the strange clumsy body and mind and nervous system I was operating in. I was essentially an ancient Being trapped in the body of an emotionally immature and manically arrogant and impatient human form. An utter crisis. I had the option of doing what I was witnessing in my Soul Brother, which is to attempt to fly further into the Promethian realms and Neptunian Boundaryless waters of ever-more mind altering substances in order to avoid the shock of dismemberment and loss of Ego and to incubate further the grandiose messianic consciousness that always finds us when we rip away the veil so completely before having the inner structures necessary to ground the current or to integrate the Enormity of It All At Once. Or I could take the opposite path. The path of Initiaton. The path of the Adept. The path of slowly finding all the shattered pieces of the Mirror and reMembering the Self Seam by Seem to Be.....like Osiris, I was Scattered and strung among the shadows and wraiths of Psyches Dream.
I chose the path of Initiation. Even back in college when I first had some very deep hyperspace experiences, It was not the 'product' I was interested in. It was the Process. The inhabiting consciously of my own Synaptic Song......I would attempt to Put Myself Back Together, to Gather the Trust and The Truth of the Mother......
I ended up in Jamaica in early 2000, for a month; It was filled with further initiation and ledges of the abyss. I made it out Alive, and was able because of my time there in the Liminal, to drop some of the rage and darkness that had bubbled to the surface after all boundaries had been shattered.
The thing with Ego Dissolution in a vessel unprepared, is that all of those traumas and Shades and demons now come to the surface, the protective mechanism that keeps them away til the capability of dealing with them constructively, is gone. So I had Lifetimes of baggage and ephemeral feelings and traumas and shame and dangers pouring out of my seams; I had no guidance, no support, no tether to cling to, except my ability to express through my art and writing, the battles and the neurosis and the near psychosis at times.
After returning from Jamaica, I was staying at my parents, in a small little room my dad had added on at some point, that you entered via a little ladder, through the floor. It was like a little prison cell, or a womb, whichever perspective you choose. Oh the metaphors. Now that I was out of the tropical sunshine, in shell-shock still, and having been trapped in my Mind for millions of years in the Trip Space, I was so desperately craving the touch of Human Flesh, of something stable and secure to tell me I was Real and Here and Alive, and not still trapped in the PrizmCell. I can remember crying so long and hard and fully that I thought what was left of my body would just disintegrate into thin air. I knew I was trapped in the tower but didn't know how to get out. On the outside I tried to play along with the game of reality but It must have been pretty unconvincing. I finally got a greyhound ticket to California, after some visions I had that made it pertinent that I go there to meet my Destiny. So June 13 l left on the bus, with almost nothing and about 100$ in my pocket, headed for the unknown once again. I was still 'tripping' after all that time, my consciousness in such a state that it was like swimming through the Codes and the Nodes of the program. I felt completely watched and protected and in tune with everything on an existential level, and yet was suffocated by an unbearable loneliness. As I arrived in my new Playground, | was back inside the Manic space, for another ride on the MerryGoRound. But I met my Tether there in SF, and I began to reWeave a sense of self, slowly. Living in dingy hostels and hotels and maneuvering through the underbelly....how my Plutonic Soul cherishes those experiences! There would be plenty more adventures and struggles to come, but the poetry after arriving in SF begins to take on a more cohesive feel and there is less frazzling and disillusionment.
This journey would continue and by mid December I was once again en route home to Va, for what ended up being a longer visit than planned....and in which Saturn's misery was revisited as I was cast back inside myself to make sense of all that had come before, and find a way forward into a next step on the ever-turning wheel.
The danger with peak experiences and being so focused in the spiritual realm is that one very easily imagines oneself to be far more evolved than one actually is, bypassing the dense human realm, the messy emotional and physical reality that is so insistent. When you are 20 and you have been inside the Center of the Spindle of the Core Processor and swam for millions of years through the SpaceTime field of Mind, bushwhacking oneself through the tangle of Synaptic Vines you are pretty sure you have it all figured out and that very grandiosity and megalomania which is so typical of psychonauts and explorers of hyperspace can force the human ego into a prison and dungeon of abuse and repression which comes out full force at unsuspecting moments. The fragmented and imbalanced emotional reality seeps out of barely stitched seams, an amorphous molasses that threatens to strangle the Puer who struggles to stay in flight above all those sticky human dramas and foibles...that morass of psychic gunk that gets stuck to the Soul as it tries to purify itself in the Flame. I used to read things about awakening and 'the Work' that said until the age of around 40 one had no real ability to truly ‘understand'. I balked at those insinuations....not I, I thought, in my youthful arrogance...they don't know where I Have Been, What I have Seen". It is endearing now, looking back at that Self... but the painful journey of those 20 odd years of Growing Down Into Self and Body, and Actually Activating and Embodying and Integrating, in the Flesh and the Heart, All that One Has StoodUnder Spiritually....and so easily perceived with Mind...is Sacred Testimony. We don the vestment of Life, then, no longer the Puer trying to escape in a frenzy of mania into the unmanifest, but patiently plodding along in a beautiful dance with Saturn, learning to build forms and creating Art from the journey of turning the Poison to Power. The Drama of the The Puer and Senex. No longer burning everything and everyone around one in an uncontainable Fire and Fury of restless angst, but tempering the Athanor to a flame that burns with a compassionate warmth and passion that feeds the life around one and makes things Grow in the Radiance of that Light.
The Journey of Embodiment...
'Welcome to the Jesters Playground", Everything Said.
The Fool who goes through the twists and turns and lives to learn, comes Full circle on the Wheel.......realizes that he is all the characters in the deck....uses the 64 hexagrams, the 64 squares on the chessboard, the 64 Codons of the Human DNA to Weave the Self Alive Again, in Time again, becomes the Jester....... and starts to Heal the Fracture.........of the Imagined Fall from Grace into Time and Space; The Loom ....
Charleen Johnston (From Linguistic Trickster Volume 5) available on Amazon
“Seaming is interwoven into everything I do….I consider myself a Patchworker of Dreams….I pull disparate parts together in new and playful ways, whether my base material be Fabric, Thoughts, Feelings, or Movements. I am Self Taught, a Self Taut InTensions of Multiple DiMensions playing with the poles of the Line, the Cycles of the Sine, the Twists of the Twine. When I create clothing or costumes, I almost always use reCycled materials. These pieces of clothing or fabrics hold the Stories of those who have Worn them or used them. I can feel these stories, they whisper to me, they scream at me, they want to be redeemed, reDeemed necessary and functional. Torn apart at the seams and merged with other Pieces of the dream, and reFashioned into a new expression. A more fun and unique, quirky, comfortable, playful and passionate arrangement. This process is not unlike the deeper mysteries of Spirit clothing itself in the garments of Body….The Soul is in the Seams….the Memories of the places in which we have Grown Together, Come Apart, Merge and DiVerge and play as inFinite Stars of the Dream. The 5 most basic elements of Fabrication are Scissors, Needle, Thread, Fabric, and the Self Who guides the Seams. The Fabric itself, is made up of Thread, and one could say that in taking the fractal deeper to source, the Loom is the higher octave of ‘fabric’. The Loom is the primordial structure on which the warp and weft of the the threads of Self are woven. That initial fabrication then becomes the malleable material in which we Play. But lets not go too deep quite yet.”
Just Let it Sink in They say Punctured Skin This way Rape thru Vein Attempts To stain deoxy Proxy Blood and brain Barriers
The more the merrier They say Needles needlessly Advance the game Phallic seething wet tip Insertion of the Program Bypassing moist lips That open To the fugue As the swoon subsides
The moon cradling new Tombs Inside biophysical Genocide
You’ve been BANned Body area network Scanned From the inside They don’t want your guns
They’re under your skin
All the flashy displays of protest Suddenly Refusing to be digital Currency
It’s all Current, See Electromantically managed Wet-Dream The marriage bed Of Optical Slavery
You’ve already signed up for this live-stream With every eyelid glued To the dumbscreen Pretending to Live Artificially implanted dreams
It’s all in place Already You see, The Panopticon scans The periphery Optical Delusion includes Wireless Rape And Insanity You Are The Tower Cellular Signals and SellYourSoul Sigils That Power The 6G.O.D LAN .D Of the Lost Codes of Atlantis Seeds From FrequentSeas Waving Partic(U)le(R) decrees
SkyNet Scalar Gods Smirking As they lurk within Human IP address skin-to-skin Contact Alien kith and kin DeOxyRiboh-my-god It’s already here….
A hive of nested ANNs The Drones scan the Field
Best learn How Now To Wield
Your own BioField
And Step Free from the Prizm Sentence Already decreed
BrainWash.Rinse.Repeat After me
“Defend your Ports ~Your Eyes and Pores~
Light Water Magnetism Is the Ground in which Your Sovereign I Is Born
Free
Birthed from the tangled Chords Of the Prizm Penitentiary Broken Vows from the Baptism Of Light and Fire As the Sacred Cow roasts Inside the wires Groping blindly In the heat of desire As Artificially inseminated humanity Struggles to breathe
It’s not that hard to believe Eyelids get heavy So easily
Neural cacophony lures minds to sleep No Myelin magic to redeem the breach Of these codes
Hijacked nodes in the cube
Dressing up Data as Mama As Mother Matter Mater Matrix Embroiled in the drama
Of Carbon VS Silicon The Beast of Bethlehem Left all alone Rises like yeast In the philosophers stone As the black goddess trudges east To meet the diamond body As graphene feast Of allotropes Dine on piezoelectric Skin and bone
You are Under Arrest Cardiac attack From the bioelectrically blessed Cop-outs In bullet proof vests
Step away from the Vehicle The BlueLight Beams Scream Incessantly
Just Breathe And release The tethers…. Your digital twin Lost in the ethers “
⚡️Oh the irony of swimming in an electricSea Of hectic memes and desperate screams Stepping into the trap that breeds A virtual prison of 1-2-3-a-B-c What I mean What I deem to be Imperative in this sterile fib Is unplugging from the falseCollective Masks that grasp the seed of inception Wrap minds in images meant for assimilation
This tribulation is scripted The prescription for complicity Is terrified ambiguity Masquerading as ingenuity In making it through this mess And somehow feeling blessed To have uploaded ones mind into a Hive Grateful that nature shall Survive To see her fruit trapped Zapped inside mapped out lives Homogenized and socialized into mediocrity
I saw this all in Aeons of Dreams Played it all out and rode the seams And still i'm slightly shocked At the rapidity Of the begging idiocy Demanding protection from the very blood We bleed That keeps us human Instead of a machine
The chessboard squares itself In 64 places The spaces between I Ching codon rings and DeoxyRiboNucleousity Drenched in disHarmonic frequency Quenching curiosity and breeding hypocrisy Oh what a world we meet When we lose ourselves to the SmartScreen And forget to walk on earth with our feet
You Are a Seed. Will you be Fallow? I Hug the wombMother who nurtures me And vow to remain her child that bleeds Vow to remain Wild like the weeds And stormy seas The dirty electricCity that rapes my genes Shall be one more take in one more scene the adventure is infinite And so are we
🔥🦂🔥:::WordsJustCameOutWrong:::🔥🦂🔥 (AfterFace of volume 6)
I like to say Words are Worlds......Words are also Wounds and Wounds are Worlds....and if we are perfectly honest, All Worlds are Wounds. And I am unraveling my World as I unravel my Wounds. I have been Wound so tightly around a core of Intensity, and overwhelming personal psychic interrogation for my entire life, that I have produced a ridiculous amount of Words in various forms, either to Cover over the Wounds or to Unwind the Covers. I am unsure which. A bit of both. But In diving back into the World Contained in this Tome of descent…..I have been reliving the emotions and confusions and I am emerging from this ritual as if from a Tomb. Yes, Words are Also Wombs.
My Words are often the result of entering the Portal of Some Other, either in the waking world or in the vast internal realms I inhabited. I have always lived mostly inwardly, with a rich and sometimes disastrous inner life. Some of these poems are written from the perspective of the many battling inner realities within me, with no mirror in the physical world. I have always been submerged in what I call 'Bleedthru-s of Other Lives'……Psychic fragments and scars and emotions from Characters I have played before in other timelines, seeping right through my seams. My inner realities have always been more solid and real than my outer reality. Some of the poems are written from my own witnessing of friends dramas etc, and writing from the perspective of the players in those games. Some are archetypal expulsions of raw material suffocating me endlessly. But most are mirrors of some outer reality. My protean obsessions and compulsions always dragging me one way or another. The repetition of the theme of Love and Pain and Misery and Darkness and bitterness. The depth of my own emotional life was never expressed to any person in those years, in fact, that theme has held for my whole life. I have always turned my psychic and emotional disintegration into Art. Not because I don't trust people. But, I believe, I learned way back then…and find it still true today…that most people do not feel as deeply. Are not so completely consumed by passing moods or inner landscapes and are not so tangibly sculpted like putty by their inner reality. Those who are, have left behind all the great Art and Writing and Inventions of our Collective World Stage. Or they have drowned themselves in addictions because there was no way to silence the Demon, and there was no leap from the abyss to follow the Daimon into Alchemy, instead of suffering the excesses that Demons love so much. Or they have been given any number of psychiatric labels and then pharmaceutically numbed out of life or locked away instead of facing the abyss head-on. Or they have simply, chosen Death head first.
"Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness / transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death-and I refuse suicide." (Albert Camus)
Mostly, people try to commiserate, if I actually let out some of the depth of what I am perceiving or feeling or living, or what I am making flesh. I have often responded, that if they felt and saw and bore what I bear, relentlessly, they would be, like me, forced to alchemize it in some way or to destroy themselves. The kind of charge, the voltage of energy I am talking about, constantly pressing in upon me, is not the kind of fire or electricity that can be safely tucked away behind a netflix series, or a bottle of wine, or endless shopping, or endless socializing, or even hobbies. It cannot be stored in a back room and allowed out when appropriate. It cannot just 'wait til a better time' to make itself known. If someone is able to 'basically get on with their life' by drowning out the voices in any number of ways, they are not in the heat of the kind of flames I am talking about here. One may say that it is the human condition. Yes, in many ways it is. But it is a particular condition that only some people choose to incarnate into here in the Playground. It is a particular wiring, a certain blueprint. And they either learn to dance with it, and create great beauty or alchemize it in some way, or they destroy themselves and others completely. I do not believe there is any middle ground. Not for this initiation. Nothing about this kind of intensity allows for a 'normal life'.
We don't know that when we are young, however. We think if we just condemn ourselves enough for our Inner Fire, we will eventually settle into some typical way of relating to Self, in a controllable world of other people doing people-y things. We think if we just stop doing A, B, or C, or if we just Try Harder to be setted and content within our skin, we will alter the program. If we just make up a bunch of rules for ourSelf and stick within them, or follow someone else's rules of virtue, we will be free. But I have learned over and over, that there is something innate to certain people that will never allow for that. There is an inner prod that has no care for our human proclivities or our body's limits. It will not let us rest. Every moment is lived in absolute Intensity, whether that be the heights of the Manias we find ourselves in, when the blood is quickened within and we are a tornado of exuberance and god-like arrogance behind a bright and radiant smile of possibility. Filled with endless ideas that stream out like a broken water pipe and saturating everything and everyone in the vicinity. Or when Icarus' waxen wings melt and he falls from the sky in a dramatic display of descent back to Saturn's humus, humbled by the tumble from the lofty perch of our own ideals and effulgence.
What else but absolute obsession can make a person spend hours upon hours upon hours of days upon days upon days upon weeks and months and years focused on bringing to life some particular little nuance of their perception and participation in AllOfit. The Daimon drives us. And not All of our Daimons are playing the same game. And I have, after 44 years in the Playground, found a way to dance with that realization. It no longer destroys me and everyone in its path. I know a great many people afraid of being hurt, in Love. I am bass ackwards. I am not afraid of being hurt. I am incredibly reluctant at this point, to allow another to be hurt by me. I saw these patterns even back to this earliest poetry and was aware of the various warring selves within me. The Fire warms but also burns. It lights up a room but also sucks all the oxygen out of the air. Not all things and beings can handle the heat and intensity of a Being who is able to exist only at full throttle. At least not in close proximity for any length of time.
I have learned to create vast amounts of Space for myself, and vast amounts of Time for myself, to make of my life a sanctuary where I am fully aware of my strengths and weaknesses, and thus able to now use my gifts in Service, and minimize any fallout from my own perpetual emotional instability....(which all things considering, is very mild compared to the bulk of the prior 30 years).
A testament, these 600+ poems are, to the desperate restlessness of an unfolding psyche, that could only vaguely intuit, at the time, what lay right around the corner. It was only one full year later that the major confrontation with Self and the dissolution of everything I had begun to believe was me, was to take place. (See Volume 5)
I see in these poems all the foreshadowings that came to delineate the myths of my life, in germinal form. I have simply unfolded the tapestry through time. And now, as a ritual release, and as a precursor to Drawing My Stories on the Skin of this World, these Words Made Flesh are the final recapitulation of a long Poetic journey that has led me to this point in time. And I am casting off the garments of the old life, again, this time to be born anew without carrying the weight of these juicy nuggets of my Living Experience screaming into my psyche constantly, to be birthed into Flesh. Word Made Flesh. So Blessed. This Journey.
"Every time I tried to tell you, the words just came out wrong, so I'll have to say I love you in a song"
I'll have to Spell it out in Rouge, the Red from the blood thatl bled as birthed myself anew
"There's something that I just gotta say, I knew you'd understand…...”
Charleen Johnston 3-6-2025
"Words are like pillows: if put correctly they ease pain."
Time Sculpts Space Into Tender soft Penis Warm Tired Worm Tenderized As a an Old Self Returns to innocence
prepares to receive new blood in new wombs as newborn babes with new soft worm, Warm germ in all beings
Til Shakti dances circles ‘Round Shivas slumber Forcing Him to reMember And the rising fu(h)ror Of Hard stone phallic pillar of eager thrust into a new dawn of being
Awakens
Full of Rapture And forces into full Stature
a Seeding Self
Aching to Penetrate The Mysteries Of The Primal Dark Her Who Holds the Stark Contrast Of His Force