So I find myself afraid today.

Being psychic during times of world conflict can have its ups and downs. As a consciously sensitive person, it's easy to get wrapped up in the intense feelings of others, and forget that they aren't really yours.

It was very interesting being part of a psychic community during the time before 9/11. See, people always say things like, "Well, why couldn't you psychic people have forseen something that major, and maybe saved some lives or something?" or, on a lighter note, "Why didn't Dionne Warwick's Psychic Friends Network warn her about her impending drug bust?"

To me, these questions are unanswerable, because they assume certain things about reality that I don't believe to be true. These questions assume that reality functions according to strict and simple rules of cause and effect. Kind of like a movie plot. Act I: Conflict develops. Act II: Suspense is generated. Act III: Protagonist does the right thing at the right time, and crisis is averted.

I don't see it this way. When I look at reality, I see a giant ocean of chaos. There are waves and currents and storms and whirlpools. It is not linear or finite in any way. Nothing is resolved in two hours, or two years, or . . . ever. There is no right or wrong or success or failure.

There is just the ocean.

Being psychic, to me, is about navigating the currents . . . not changing them. And I can only navigate for myself, for my own life. And watch others do it for themselves.

If Dionne Warwick gets herself into a "drug bust" current, no psychic or anyone else can help her. Because Dionne herself is a powerful spirit, and can effectively make every one of her Psychic Friends - every psychic in the world, in fact - completely blind to her habits of transporting illegal substances.

It's her drug bust to have. No one can reach into her life and take that drug bust from her.

And if a country gets itself into a "war" current, I really can't do anything about it.

We didn't see 9/11 coming . . . specifically. But we were very aware of the current. As a matter of fact, starting in mid-August of 2001, many of us started to fear very strongly that WE were going to be blown up. We thought someone was going to plant a bomb in our building in Berkeley, and that some of us would be killed. Also, people got physically ill and couldn't quite get well for weeks. (This is pretty unusual, because psychics as a rule are pretty darn healthy.)

We saw all the pain and destruction that was coming, we got wrapped up in it, we even let it affect our health and our bodies, and we forgot - or didn't even notice - that it wasn't really ours.

And what did we do about it? We did what we always do. We laughed. We went about our business. We played our games and did our spiritual work, and each of us navigated the currents for him or herself. That's what psychics do.

Today I'm sick and I feel afraid that something nasty is right around the corner. I feel like the boots of North Korean soldiers are stomping on my lower back, and I'm reminding myself that this pain and this fear are not mine.

I'm swimming in another direction.

It takes two to tango. War consumes all who have a willingness to fight, no matter what their goals or motives.

I am not a fighter. I'm a psychic and a healer.

I will not be consumed.

Musical theater, really, teaches all the secrets of the universe. There's a great lyric in the musical "Rent" that's very important to remember these days:

"The opposite of war isn't peace . . . it's CREATION!"

So fuck all this War & Peace noise.

Let's create.

So, friends and neighbors, I'll be off at a psychic convention all weekend.

Watch the news for something interesting over the next few days . . . big, strange things seem to happen when this many psychics get together.

That's probably just a coincidence, really. But, you know, one person's coincidence is another person's certainty.

On this day when War Was Supposed To Be Declared But Kind of Wasn't But Probably Will Be Very Soon . . .

I'd like to offer you my favorite Discordian parable, called "A Sermon on Ethics and Love":

One day Mal-2 asked the messenger spirit Saint Gulik to approach the Goddess and request Her presence for some desperate advice. Shortly afterwards the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?

"O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!"

WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.

"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

"But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it.''

OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left The Polyfather stranded alone with his species.

A tiny moment . . .

I'm dogsitting at my mom's house. I'm hungry. I crave a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I find four kinds of jam in the fridge, but no peanut butter. I look everywhere . . . cupboards, drawers, pantry . . . no peanut butter.

I give up my craving, and settle instead for some beef & vegetable soup. As it's heating up, I turn and notice a big jar of peanut butter, sitting in plain sight in the middle of the kitchen counter.

Now, in the days when I was less aware of how the universe works, I would have been frustrated by this. I would have criticized myself for being so stupid as to not notice the peanut butter in the first place. And because I couldn't possibly waste the soup once it was prepared, I would have eaten it bitterly, constantly aware that I had been forced to settle for my second-string food choice due to an unhappy string of random events that proved the universe was ultimately out to get me. Guilt, self-denial, self-criticism, pessimism, paranoia, anger at the world and at my own incompetence . . . all over a jar of peanut butter.

As a psychic, though, I get to see what's REALLY going on. I get to see that my body really wanted the warm, savory soup at that moment to help it stay healthy, not the oily semi-sweetness of the PB&J. The original craving was not in my own best interests. I didn't find the peanut butter, because finding the peanut butter was not the best thing for me at that moment.

To take it a step further . . . I have absolutely no proof in my reality that the peanut butter was even there before I started heating the soup. I wanted peanut butter . . . there was no peanut butter . . . now there's peanut butter. I created what I wanted out of thin air. And now I'll have a tasty, satisfying PB&J second course to follow my soup.

I can't say which story is more "objectively real" (whatever that means). But the "creating peanut butter from thin air" story is a lot more fun than the "I'm a stupid blind idiot" story. Given the choice to make, why would I choose the unpleasant option?

OK, so I was sitting at my desk yesterday, thinking, "Damn, I need some time to just catch up on my filing!" 'Cause I got this promotion and I'll be moving to a new desk and I want to leave things in good shape . . . (more about the promotion later) . . .

So this morning I get in to work, log on to the system . . . and find that we have been struck by a nationwide virus. We were instructed to shut down our computers until further notice. No resolution in sight . . .

So I have no choice but to file paper all day. Just like I wished for.

Be afraid of me. Be very afraid.

From an old X-Men comic book:

(Scene: A Crack Den)

"We're superheroes, Ororo, not God. We can save humanity from Doc Doom or Galactus - - but not from itself."

Word.

You know me . . . it's not like me to break a promise, or to disappear without explanation. I'm sorry! I had some demons to slay, and it took me longer than I expected.

I'm back, though. And I'm bearing gifts. Well, one gift in particular . . .

After talking about it for several months, I've finally launched my psychic website, Who's Your Psychic Daddy?

I made a new friend today . . .

Death.

Death has been an annoying constant in my existence lately. My dad died of sudden lung cancer about three and a half years ago. Then his mother died . . . a combination of age, disease, and sadness. Then an uncle-in-law died of a heart-attack right after Christmas last year. Most recently . . . just a few weeks ago . . . my uncle's mother died after a long round of suffering from the "frailties that flesh is heir to."

The men in my family seem not to live very long. My dad and my mom's dad died in their mid-fifties. My dad's dad died in his early sixties. It struck me recently - I don't quite know why - that if I follow suit, I actually passed "middle-age" a few years ago. At 32, I may be rapidly approaching the mile-marker of my life that says "Two-thirds done!"

Not that I plan to follow in the footsteps of my immediate gentic forbears. But still . . . sobering thought.

One of the advantages of being psychic is that concepts like Death don't have to be impersonal and coldly abstract. Like people have always done up until a few hundred years ago, I am capable of seeing Death as a person, as an individual.

And I decided today that's it's time to stop ignoring Death and wishing he would just go away. I sat down and told Death I was ready to have a chat.

At first, he looked like a big, scary blue ogre. He was violent and destructive, and it scared me to look at him.

But I kept looking, and I saw a certain twirl in the energy, a certain static-electricity blur . . . the spiritual signature of dishonesty, of a lie.

I said, "Oh, Death. You're such a victim of peer pressure. You look big and scary because that's how people expect you to look. But that's not how you really are, is it?"

Death was kind of surprised. I think it's been a while since anyone called him on the carpet like that. And then he changed.

First he changed into a beautiful black-haired woman (because I've been reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics, and in that series, that's how Death looks).

But then Death said, "Actually I'm not really male or female. I'm pretty androgynous." And then s/he settled into the form of a little elf with a sort of green glowing aura.

"You're like . . . you're like a leprechaun!" I said.

Death laughed. "I can be as big as I need to be. But I'm more powerful small. It's easier to be sneaky that way . . . to catch people when they're not looking."

We talked for a while. Turns out that Death is a fairly personable creature. Upbeat, good conversationalist. Slightly twisted sense of humor, but, you know, I'm down with that.

And Death is a pretty straight shooter. I asked about my own death, and Death said, "I'm brewing inside you right now. In certain genes you inherited. In a couple abnormal cells that are already replicating themselves. In tissues just starting to go rotten deep within you."

I told Death I didn't like that. "Don't get me wrong," I said. "I think you're pretty cool. It's nice getting to know you. You're a good guy." (I used masculine pronouns for convenience.) "But I don't like the fact that you're inside me."

Death then started to draw itself out of me . . . out of my heart, out of my bloodstream, out of my intestines and bones. His hands were like vaccum cleaners, sucking death out of my body. And he gathered up all the death he pulled out of me, and he put it in a sack.

"Look," he said. "It's been nice talking to you. No one really bothers to even say hi to me these days. I don't have many friends. Which I don't understand, because you know, I can give life if I want to! What is life, but the absence of me?"

Death laughed at its own joke.

"Let's make a deal," Death said. "Let's talk again soon. Let's be buds. And I'll keep my hands off until you're ready to go."

"Sounds good to me!"

I shook hands with Death. He picked up his sack and walked away.

"Hey," I called after him. "Just out of curiosity, what are you going to do with all the death in that sack?"

"Well," he said, "everyone has their own share of death. If you don't want yours . . . I know plenty of people who are looking for more than they were given."

Not quite sure what Death meant by that.

I'll have to ask next time we talk.

This afternoon, in the spirit world, I stood on the edge of a cliff . . .

And I could not tell if I was a spider or a fly.

And then I realized . . .

Both are entangled by the same web.

The other day, I was getting grumpy because the building I work in is now completely decorated for Christmas. I was grumbling about "blah blah commercialism blah blah holiday stress blah blah can't they even wait until after Thanksgiving blah blah."

And then the next morning, as I was riding up the escalator from the BART station, I looked up at the sky and saw God.

He was all big and glowy and smiling. (He's not really a "he," by the way. I just call him that.)

And I said, "Wassup God? I don't see you like this in the financial district very often."

And he said, "Well, they only invite me once a year." He pointed to the Christmas tree in the lobby of my building.

Ancient magic takes a long time to die. "Christmas Trees" were designed to be lightening rods for God.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Initiation is a moment . . . an internal moment.

Initiation is not something that can be bestowed upon you by anyone, human or god.

Initiation is like cresting the mountain and seeing for the first time the vastness of the world spread out below you . . . except that the vastness is YOU, the greatness and fullness of you.

The only way to reach that crest is to do a lot of hiking. A map helps, but reliable ones are not often found. Your inner compass is usually the most trustworty guide.

Of course, you can't live on the mountain peak. It doesn't have the necessary makings of a real life. And once you step down from it, you may not remember much of what that amazing panoramic view was like.

But you know that it's there . . . because you've seen it. You know that everything is within you: all the knowledge you need, all the truth you desire. It may take time and patience to locate the precise slice of wisdom that you require in order to navigate any particular life current. But after initiation, you never again need to look further than your own echoing depths for the keys to all mysteries.

You can recognize the initiated at a glance. They wander the streets bemused, and you can read the thought in their eyes: "I know that secret of the universe is lying around here somewhere . . . let's see . . . where did I put it?"

Anyone who tells you that they know what they are doing has not experienced true initiation.

Anyone who tells you that they know what you should be doing is trying to eat your brain. Run!

I love being a psychic. It's really cool. But you know, most people just don't get it. And that can be frustrating.

Most people, when they find out that you're a psychic, they want to know about the future. But here's the thing . . . the future is the absolutely least interesting thing a psychic could possibly look at. It's boring.

See, I have done psychic readings for literally hundreds of people. And here's what it comes down to . . . everyone's future is the same.

It goes like this: You're going to die. That's your future.

Between now and then, you'll be happy sometimes and you'll be sad sometimes. If you spend a little energy on things like getting to know yourself, focussing on your own health and well-being, and contemplating the bigger picture, there is a good chance you will spend a little more time happy than sad.

And that's it. That's all you really want or need to know.

Oh, sure, there's all the details. Will I meet the love of my life? What will happen next Tuesday? Will Aunt Edna recover from her illness?

But the thing is, that's what life is . . . discovering the details. That is perhaps the only pleasure we can always count on . . . the pleasure of watching things unfold. The thrill of surprise . . . even when the surprise isn't always pleasant.

If you really knew all the details of your future, knew without a shadow of a doubt what would happen and when . . . you'd probably need to kill yourself. Because really, what would be the point of living?

Oh, I know why people want to know the future. I've been there. We are afraid. We've suffered in the past, and we don't want to suffer again.

Tough luck. There is no human life free from suffering. Suffering is just our natural reaction to circumstances we aren't used to. So the only way to never suffer is to never change.

Some people would choose that path if they could . . . the path of the mummy, the wax statue, the cryogenically frozen corpse.

But you cannot be both dead and alive. And being afraid of life doesn't lead to peace.

Refusing to fear . . . refusing to run away from the existence you were born into . . . accepting the fact that life is both up and down . . . that is the secret to going through life with a big, fat grin on your face.

So if you ask me what your future is, I'll probably just laugh. And then I'll grab your hand, look you straight in the eye, and say:

"Let's find out."