My name is The Tengu, I like long walks in the park, piña coladas...

[The Tengu]

Hi my name is The Tengu. :rofl:

I am a friend of Naomi's and used to post on OccultForums, so some of you may recognize me from back in the day (like, a year ago).

I am interested in martial arts, implements of war, computers, gaming, and other fun stuff. I hate vegan parents that starve their babies, and I hate the news media and politicians.

I am a boring magician, as Naomi will tell you. I don't make cool pix or write long dissertations, and I rarely post more than a paragraph at a time. I'm kind of like the anime monk character that says like 3-5 lines per episode, and then goes off on a mystical tangent rant like once every other season.

Hopefully I will be posting more often since I have the time now.

Peace.

[m1thr0s]

lol...good to have you with us The Tengu! :D

m1thr0s

[MythMath]

Welcome, when's the next rant...?

[Radiant Star]

Hi The Tengu

Yes, I remember you.

Shall I book a ticket for the rant?

lol

Ricci

[Kain]

Hello The Tengu, good to have you here!

Kain

[Sibylle]

Hi, The Tengu, glad to see you here. I like piña coladas as well :)

[Apopheros]

Hi The Tengu!

What games do you play? Are you on World of Warcraft or other online games?

laters

[Naomi]

Anything that involves shooting things....Day of Defeat, Day of Defeat Source, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, +expansion packs, Doom 3, etc...some nights all I can hear is the faint sound of grenades exploding, sniper rifles, machine guns and his trusty grease gun going off from his bedroom, and Nazis shouting various things in german....

Then, as I'm deeply concentrating on some occult or tantric text, periodically I'll hear him yell over teamspeak "What the fuck is the matter with you people, move up and take that tower" "Fucking morons!"

I think the only other kind of game he plays is this Half-Life mod where you run around banging zombies over the head with a shovel.

He is anxiously awaiting the release of Team Fortress 2....where you can shoot people with other kinds of guns....and wear different outfits....

[The Tengu]

I'm saving up for my next rant. I want to make the next one good.

[BrotherM]

Hi The Tengu, welcome, haven't seen you since over a year!

BrotherM

[fr.novumorganum]

howders!

[Kain]

Anything that involves shooting things....Day of Defeat, Day of Defeat Source, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, +expansion packs, Doom 3, etc...some nights all I can hear is the faint sound of grenades exploding, sniper rifles, machine guns and his trusty grease gun going off from his bedroom, and Nazis shouting various things in german....

Then, as I'm deeply concentrating on some occult or tantric text, periodically I'll hear him yell over teamspeak "What the fuck is the matter with you people, move up and take that tower" "Fucking morons!"

I think the only other kind of game he plays is this Half-Life mod where you run around banging zombies over the head with a shovel.

He is anxiously awaiting the release of Team Fortress 2....where you can shoot people with other kinds of guns....and wear different outfits....This was perhaps the funniest post of yours I've read in years Naomi...lol...so literal and sincere yet the choice of words give it an incredibly humorous dimension...

Kain

[Dragon]

Funny...I have been known to sleaze around the dod gaming servers...I am known as-


The Bunny.


Welcome Tengu...have heard of you from afar...curious as to whom you are.


~D~

[Naomi]

This was perhaps the funniest post of yours I've read in years Naomi...lol...so literal and sincere yet the choice of words give it an incredibly humorous dimension...

Kain

...hahah great, the desired effect....

[Apopheros]

I'm saving up for my next rant. I want to make the next one good.

lol

I'm still playing Tribes 2 because I like how you can fly in this game...but mostly because I need a new computer + video card if I want to play the new games like Team Fortress 2 and the upcoming Quake Wars.


If anybody is playing World of Warcraft let me know.


GRENADA Take cover:rofl:

[Kuroyagi]

welcome The Tengu! :)

[The Tengu]

Been gone a long time. I'm back, standby.

[The Tengu]

Okay this is almost like introducing myself again, and a friend gave me the idea to post my recent experiences here so I thought that it was a GREAT concept.

This is a synopsis of the past two years of my life. Do not worry, I will not be doing any blogging here. I will be making posts as they are written.



This is just a story.

Several years ago I was a relatively successful network engineer and website developer. I was also heavily involved in Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, a martial arts system most notable for its inclusion of the only historically verifiable schools of Ninjutsu in existence. I was becoming spiritually awakened and my wife (Naomi) was instrumental in my spiritual advances. The Bujinkan was also a huge part of my spirituality.

I started my career in a small Georgia town and quickly made a name for myself in the area. I got a proposition from a very large xian company to take over their entire information technology division, and I pretty much named my price for the contract.

Once I got in the door I found that they had an internal power struggle going, and that one man was very very very eager to become the IT director. I already had inked my contract, so by using kyojitsu I manipulated the administration so that Mr. Eager Beaver was in charge of IT and I just did all the work. It was not hard, because I had already previously set up the servers, the routers, the switches... EVERYTHING!

So all I needed to do was maintain all of the systems behind the scenes and this other stooge was more than happy to take all the credit for it.

It was a totally sweet setup. I had no responsibilities. All of the stress, all of the meetings, all of the accountability fell on the “director” of Information Technology. I was officially the website developer, and I spent my mornings coding and my afternoons chatting online and playing video games. (Virtual desktops FTW!) I got paid twice as much as the “director” of IT. It was totally sweet, as far as boring office jobs go.

I was also eventually promoted to sandan (3rd degree black belt) in the Bujinkan, and I often taught classes when our sensei was not able to make it to the dojo. The Bujinkan was one of the most important parts of my life. It was my spiritual foundation as well as my primary method of meditation. The arts of the Bujinkan go back nearly a thousand years and are traced to famous Chinese generals and even a Chinese princess. The Bujinkan is a warrior tradition that is international (universal, really) in scope, and has strong roots in Buddhism and Shintoism. You begin each class with a sort of evocation and prayer, in which the Bujin (warrior gods) are invited to help you during your class. Some days they are there actively. Some days they are there passively. It depends on the flow of the class. You can feel when they are guiding your actions though, and their presence can be subtly felt by anyone in tune with god.

I was deep into the tradition of it all.

Things were going pretty good, except for the fact that living in that little bumfuck town sucked and Naomi absolutely hated living there so she convinced me to move to Memphis. I got a contract to work for the xian organization remotely, making almost what I made being on-site.

We bought a cute little house on a street that was about to experience a lot of gentrification. We got our kids enrolled in a great private school here. My sensei and Naomi encouraged me to continue my path in the Bujinkan and convinced me to try and start a Bujinkan school in Memphis.

I went to the two largest universities in the area, and there was no interest. I went to a large martial arts school here in town and was eventually able to speak to the head instructor, a sheriff deputy with the county. Basically he showed me that I was not ready for teaching on the level which everyone else thought I was. Now, Naomi really did not know much about Bujinkan Taijutsu, so how was she to know whether or not I was good enough? She kept encouraging me – painfully at this point – to keep going, or “GAMBATTE!” as Hatsumi Sensei (Bujinkan grandmaster) was fond of saying.

Well, after meeting this deputy and being shown first-hand that I just was not on the same level physically I really lost it. My ego was crushed, the same ego which was fooling me into thinking I was hot shit. I got deeply depressed. Nobody understood. How could they? This shit was my LIFE. I could not concentrate. I could not eat. I could not do anything without thinking about how much of a failure I was. I decided I was going to be a cop too, goddamnit! I was going to show everyone that MOTHERFUCKER I'M GOOD ENOUGH! My ego made a decision during this time that was actually amazingly in tune with my dharma.

See, I could not join the military. I'd be gone too long, and I'd be too far away. But in a way I felt that being a cop was even more perfect for me because I value the concept of community. I have been a member of the warrior caste for a long time, but I felt as though I was on the cusp of change. Most grizzled old warriors become holy priests in their old age, a microcosmic reflection of the larger picture.

So I started a rather worthless degree path, taking college classes for a criminal justice major. Things were going pretty well until I got fired from my job. Meanwhile I had found a small, very eclectic and eccentric Bujinkan training group in the Memphis area and began training with them. I was also making monthly drives to Jackson to train with a Bujinkan group over there.

I could not get hired anywhere in the IT field. I went to nine job interviews for technology firms, and nobody wanted to hire me. There is a new trend in tech hiring where the interviewers don't ask any technical questions... they ask you shit about your personality. I fucking hate these interviews. Basically they are seeing if they think you are “cool” enough for the position, and all these bitchy white chicks hated me.

Meanwhile, I got on public assistance so I could feed my family. I went from middle class to poor in about three months. Savings go fast.

So fuck it, I said. I'll get a job as a security guard. They hire ANYONE or so I thought. I could not get a job anywhere doing that either. I was told by the managers that I was overqualified for the position and they did not want to risk hiring me if I was just going to quit.

Naomi purchased a classic book by Ram Daas for me. Remember, Be Here Now (http://www.amazon.com/Remember-Here-Now-Ram-Dass/dp/0517543052) is a far-out hippy book about sloughing off the ego and becoming free from attachments. This book put me on the right path, and became a pivotal point in my life. Naomi has truly always been there for me when I needed her.

[MythMath]

Welcome back... :yes:

[Apopheros]

was about time...funny cause today i imagine myself writing on the boards telling
"how you were a goner" and "that we were through with you" ..

ya know, just to provoke you so that you might show yourself again, but eh guess who's back?..


lol glad to see you

[Dragon]

I remember Be Here Now. Caught me early in my development.

It kinda does that thing to you.

But please, do continue; you have my attention.


:eyebrow:

[m1thr0s]

early...yes. but it does have a certain staying power and managed to coin certain precepts not often found in other places...

good book to have on tap in any case.

m1

[The Tengu]

So I do get a job as a security guard after getting my armed guard certification and getting a word-of-mouth recommendation to a small security firm that handled ghetto apartment complexes. I work graveyard shift in some of the most drug and gang infested apartment complexes in a once-great area of Memphis. Meanwhile, Naomi is working a retail job that she does not really like. But we're surviving. We barely make the rent, insurance, and car payment each month. When I look back on things I am not really sure how we made it through, but it worked out. Oh yeah, we found a fucking great gothic club and we started going there two nights a week. I learned how to dance. That shit was so much fun until the club shut down. Naomi experimented with live-action roleplaying for a while (Vampire the Masquerade) and she had fun with that.

Spiritually, I am still off on my own tangent. Naomi is big into Goetic work, and she is still heavy into her traditional Native American spirituality as well. We did a lot of evocations in our garage.

I get another tech job interview lined up by a recruiter, this time for a xian hospital. I get to my interview fifteen minutes late. I sit down, and they start out by asking personality based questions! OMFG I hate these! So I was so sick of the stupid questioning that I said to myself, “FUCK THIS SHIT. Just answer however the fuck you want to get this stupid interview over quickly.” It went something like this:Boss: What is your biggest strength?
Tengu: I like to learn new things.

Boss: What is your biggest weakness?
Tengu: I procrastinate. I mean, I procrastinate a whole lot and I get things done on time, but at the last minute.

Boss: What was your biggest success?
Tengu: I took a job to take over an IT department and manipulated the management into keeping the current manager in charge, but made myself the web developer. So basically, I made twice as much money as the manager, but did less than half as much work as him.

Boss: What was your biggest failure?
Tengu: I had a job where we had a huge contract, and me and another guy blew it and we lost the contract. We didn't know what we were doing.

...and other inane questioning. Then they move on to the skills-based questions where I rate myself from 1 to 3 and explain myself for anything above 2.

Boss: Rate yourself on [bunch of software I've never heard of before]...
Tengu: One... one... one...

Boss: How fast do you type?
Tengu: Raw speed or, or corrected?
Boss: Corrected.
Tengu: 80 words per minute.

Boss: Rate yourself on Microsoft Word.
Tengu: Two.
Boss: Why two?
Tengu: I've written a lot of letters and stuff in Word, and I also had to use it when clients would send me data in Word and I had to put it from Word into Excel or Access, because clients like to use Word for everything except documents.

Boss: In your last job, did you use Microsoft Word?
Tengu: No.
Boss: What application did you use for documentation then?
Tengu: Pen and paper. Sometimes a pencil and paper. We didn't have computers in the security cars.

Boss: Rate yourself on Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Tengu: One.
Boss: ONE!?
Tengu: Yeah, I use Firefox.
Well it went on like that for a good while, and they shook my hand and dismissed me. As I walked down the hallway I watched as the manager looked over his shoulder at me and shook his head.

Naomi was waiting for me outside. I got in and she asked me how it went. I said it went terrible, just like all my other interviews.

The next day my recruiter calls me and says, “WOW, I don't know what you did, but he LOVED YOU!!! You start in a week!”

Office Space FTW!!!!

Meanwhile I've turned in my application for the Police Department, and have already passed the initial physical agility testing, and taken a 1,100 question multiple-choice test. It takes a long time to get hired, they say. Naomi quit her job since we had a scheduling problem with the children due to my new job.

So things keep going like this for a while at work, and me and Naomi are busy with you know, married-with-kids stuff at home. I am still training in the Bujinkan a few times a month. It brings me a lot of comfort.

Our kids are doing great, both of them are in school at this point and they are really progressing. I can see their little minds blossoming and it brings me a lot of joy.

[The Tengu]

Yeah, boring so far. It gets better.

[Apopheros]

ahhh...you're right, kids are everything. Looking to have a few of my own... as soon as I find the right one ;)
You have great gametes btw Tengu... 2 boys in a row is mint....

-->nothing like this gay fag cold smoke who cant have boys cause his gamets are too weak rofl
(hows the cold fagster? ...go ahead shitfuck, print as much shit as you want on me, but dont forget to tell your lawyer he can suck my big dick)

[The Tengu]

ahhh...you're right, kids are everything. Looking to have a few of my own... as soon as I find the right one ;)
You have great gametes btw Tengu... 2 boys in a row is mint....

-->nothing like this gay fag cold smoke who cant have boys cause his gamets are too weak rofl
(hows the cold fagster? ...go ahead shitfuck, print as much shit as you want on me, but dont forget to tell your lawyer he can suck my big dick)
Not sure who shitfuck is, but sounds like he really fucked up. :o_O:

[Apopheros]

man, i want more of naomi clips!!

[MythMath]

I'm confused... :confused:

[m1thr0s]

yeah...me too. let's try to keep this from being a private conversation, else it should just go to PM...I'm sure that was not The Tengu's intention.

besides which...I want to hear more of this tale! :cool:

m1

[The Tengu]

I must admit that time management is not one of my strong points. My timelines are kind of skewed as Naomi has reminded me.
__________________


Now, for the longest time Naomi was the Stay-At-Home Mom. Something she really hated since I rarely kept my end of the bargain with the domestic duties. I am sloppy, and my personal space is always cluttered. I was a bad husband. I had anger problems. I always wanted sex. I did not listen to my wife.

I did not appreciate Naomi.

This period of my life is very muddled. I had a period of intense training at my new job, which was the help desk for the largest hospital chain in the city. We were basically a technical support call center for six hospitals and countless clinics and doctors' offices. Everyone from the cafeteria lady (literally), to security guards, to the pastors, to the CEO would call with their computer problems. We had to support every version of Windows, every version of Office, computer-based medical charting, and to top it all off the networking was Novell running on top of Windows 2000, but a lot of our older stuff worked on Unix. It was a mess.

After that very intense initial period I had the opportunity to go to night shift. %30 more pay, %50 less work, a cool group of guys, but I slept all day and worked all night. During my coffee and lunch breaks I'd do pushups, situps, and sprints in the conference rooms.

It was not convenient. I had to cut back on my Bujinkan training during this time because... well. The group in Jackson's head instructor got addicted to cocaine, and the local training group trained during the day. I don't even know what I was doing spiritually at the time. I was mostly drained. If I had spare time, I wasted it on video games.

Naomi? Shit, I can't even remember. I just remember she was mad at me a lot.

I remember seeing Naomi on her computer a lot, and I felt like she was spending more time on the Internet than she was with the family. It was an unfair perception by me, but it was just one more thing that broke our relationship. It was not her actions that caused the problem. It was my attitude. My ego.

Naomi was just purusing her Path, and I was subconciously trying to drag her down to my level.

One morning I was in Wal-Mart shopping for raisin bran without high fructose corn syrup and gel pens I could use to write my security guard reports with (I was still part time security). I got a phone call. It was the police department. They gave me a conditional job offer, meaning that I kept the job as long as I could remain in the academy. I accepted, and put in my resignation at the hospital.

The academy started, and Naomi was pure fucking platinum. Each morning she would get the kids ready for school, take me to the academy, then take the kids to school. In the afternoon she would pick the kids up and then get me at the academy for the ride home. Every day.

For twenty one weeks.

TWENTY ONE WEEKS OF HELL. The academy is like junior college and boot camp put together. But unlike either, if you fuck up in the classroom you could end up doing PT for punishment, and if you fucked up in PT you could end up writing 3,000 word essays for punishment. We got a lot of punishment. I spent many consecutive nights awake writing 3000 word essays. I was physically and mentally exhausted. But Naomi was there, supporting me and the kids.

Five months later I graduated. A week later I was on the streets.

Huge learning curve here. Most police rookies are thrust into a completely different world. You can go from being the kid in a rich family to being assigned to a ward where the kids don't have fathers so they look up to Nasty Nardo and Soulja Boy as their male role models.

I found out that where I was assigned, average intelligence is very low. Violence is power, and power is money. I had culture shock. People tried to hurt me several times. I could write a whole different thread on my police stuff so I won't do it here.

Let's just say that during the first 4 months the training is very intense. I was being trained in the ghettos of the city ranked #1 in violent crime in the United States. And I was loving it.

Unfortunately, I had been focusing on materialistic things. A large portion of police training is focused on staying alive. YOU HAVE TO SURVIVE. I was stuck in the illusion of Maya. I found that I had a hard time relating to Naomi. Actually, I had a hard time relating to Naomi for a LONG time. I had just realized it at this time.

Naomi is a very spiritual person. While many people talk about such things as the weather, the economy, or sports during casual conversation... Naomi does not. Naomi will have a casual conversation about Satanism, or mutating your own DNA.

And overnight (for me, not her), I found out that we were no longer compatible. I was stuck rationalizing this fucking illusionary world. I could not contact my deities. I began to wonder if my spirituality was ever real at all. My ego had control of me again. My ego had me by the balls.

Meanwhile Naomi had a huge spiritual awakening. If we weren't compatible before... the holy fucking shit was about to hit the goddamn fan.

And it did.

[deviadah]

I could write a whole different thread on my police stuff so I won't do it here.
Yes I recall we talked a little police stuff a while back, and as a person who has little positive things to say regarding the concept of a police force it would be interesting to talk to someone who has been on the inside... don't hesitate to start such a thread.

I don't dislike something like a blind man, the other sides view is extremely important.

I have been known to change my mind!

:cool:

[Apopheros]

guys, open up a private forum for senior members where we can discuss the juicy stuff...

[m1thr0s]

could be you're missing the juice that's right in front of you Apopheros...in any case...I'd like to keep this topic on-topic.

There's a lot of layers to what The Tengu is laying out here.

m1

[Dragon]

Indeed.


:eyebrow:

[The Tengu]

I began my police training with the attitude that compassion, understanding, and empathy could be the foundation of everything I did. You know, the whole "protect and serve" thing that people idealize. That was to prove very difficult.

How far are you willing to take your compassion? As a police officer you have to enforce the laws; it's your duty. You swore an oath. An oath is a pledge of honor.

A somewhat "hypothetical" situation:

Let's say you arrest a woman for hitting a man with a brick, which will put him in the hospital with a concussion and possible loss of vision in one eye. She went out and smoked some crack with the guy and agreed to suck his cock for a couple crack rocks. But when it came time to pay, she grabbed a brick and smashed the fucker's eye in and ran. You caught her two streets over.

She's got 5 small kids at home, alone she says. Would you arrest someone who has kids at home by themselves? You have to enforce the laws that she broke. The bitch can't run around smashing guys' eyes in for crack rocks, right? Especially with the kids at home.

Whoa, wait. Why the fuck would she leave 5 kids at home by themselves, and then go out and do shit that is bad enough to get arrested? Okay now what?

Mommy is going to be in jail for at least 3 days now... Call Children Services to go get the kids? Okay... so now you're waiting 3 hours for Children Services to get the kids. Mommy is still going to jail. Meanwhile the kids are at home by themselves.

But what if you decided NOT to arrest mommy? Now cracked-out mommy is going home to her gaggle of kids after just smashing a dude's eye in for drugs. Oh, not to mention you could very well lose your job.

Wow, what would you do from a compassion standpoint? Do what's best for the kids, of course!

So you go through everything. You wait for Children Services to arrive so they can give temporary custody of the kids to their grandmother. You have to take the suspect in for interviewing. You also have to get the victims and witnesses interviewed. FINALLY, you make the 30 minute drive to the women's jail and spend another 30 minutes booking her. Start to finish, you are on this call for 6 hours.

Whew! Job well done, but now you've been at work 3 hours past the time you were supposed to get off. Well it was worth it. The kids are safe now.

Right?

A couple weeks later you make a domestic violence call at that woman's house. She's out of jail on bond. Worse than that, she got all of her kids from her mom's house! You are at her house again because she got high on crack, threatened her cousin with a knife, and started swinging it around in a room full of her kids.

So here you are, arresting her again. And you are doing it in front of the children, who don't understand anything other than the men with guns are taking their mommy away from them again. Now the children hate you, and you see their pain as you take their mother away kicking and screaming.

To the children you are doing this for, you have now become pure fucking evil.

Imagine doing this over. And over. And over.

I am doing what is RIGHT you tell yourself. And eventually it seems like you are the only one. The "system" is a revolving door.

When you decide to become the police, you learn that people do not like the police. Your friends will slowly disappear, because you are Big Brother now. Your family will not understand you, or why you frequently have to isolate yourself when you come home from work (you often have to come down from the adrenaline of being on edge all day). Everyone will want to hear your funny and entertaining stories about the idiots you come across, but NOBODY will want to hear your somber stories about children being mutilated by their mothers or women being gang raped by five thugs. Those are stories you have to keep inside.

It wears you down quickly. I was under a lot of stress. I was being trained on-the-spot, and it was a situation where I could lose my job and the 21 weeks of torture I spent in the academy would go down the drain...

Meanwhile Naomi had the biggest spiritual explosion I have ever seen. She was tranced out a lot. She was sensitive to all of the subtle cues of the universe. She was on a whole different level. I could not relate to her because she was living between worlds. I did not understand, but when I looked into her gorgeous deep brown eyes I could see that she was not "Naomi" as I knew her. Was I going crazy? Was she going crazy?

I got to the point where all I could see is what I could see with my eyes. I got to the intersection where I had to choose Faith Street, Agnostic Avenue, or Atheism Parkway.

My ego grabbed me and snatched the reins. It took Agnostic Avenue and quickly made the connecting street to Atheism Parkway.

I (ego) decided that I was sane, and all of this other spiritual crap was not real.

You see it everyday when you talk to people about ghosts or anything "supernatural" or whatnot. People say it's your eyes playing tricks on you. It's your psychology. Your mind is interpreting that which it does not understand. I bought into it, hook line and sinker.

So I did not understand Naomi at all. I thought she was a different person. We were not compatible in any way anymore. And I was tired of her "hallucinations" as I thought they were psychological and not REAL at all! I told her I did not believe her. I told her that I did not believe in the Spirit Realm anymore.

She said it was time for a divorce. I could not argue with her.

In less than a year, I went from performing invocations of tengu and Goetic evocations to being a rational atheist. A year and a half of this went on. I maintained my mentality of stone-cold Mr. Atheist HAND OF JUSTICE (yeah I took myself too seriously).

Despite all of this, Naomi continued to be a beautiful priestess of the highest caliber.

Domestically, we came to a compromise of sorts where we were able to co-habituate in the same household and care for our two children.

Our children are great. Our son is the most articulate child I have ever known, and his sense of humor is witty and timely. Our daughter is the quintessential loving crab who gets spoiled by her daddy. She is also psychic as hell.

Beautiful story: When our daughter was about three years old, Naomi and I were arguing very loudly. Our little girl calmly walked over to us, took Naomi by her right hand and took me by my left hand. She then clasped our hands together and walked off.

Because of my ego, I was going to split up our beautiful family... but my ego had me convinced that it was Naomi's fault.

[The Tengu]

So, that's my story up until two weeks ago.

I had been carrying a new Ram Daas book with me amongst all of my departmental paperwork. Slowly, I began to read it.

Then one night I was patrolling my ward and it felt like I was zipping through a liquid. I felt like I was slipping between what was there, disappearing, and then reappearing in another location.

Hm. Boy, that felt real. Was it? Hm.

[deviadah]

So, that's my story up until two weeks ago.
The way it is told reminds me a little of Philip K. Dick for some reason...

Could be a very nice film!

With an open ending of course... those are always the best!

:cool:

[m1thr0s]

I think there is a cultural myth that cops aren't a very *spiritual* bunch of folks...probably because their jobs would seem to nullify any such thing. It may even be true for some...for awhile...or a few others forever...but it has generally been my experience that the opposite is more the norm, whether conventional sorts of religion or magick and mysticism. It could just be that in the longrun, cops need all the help they can get, and they know it...

In any case, we need cops that have a higher sense of ethics than the *revolving-door* system of law can provide...

m1

[Dragon]

I have a blood brother. We were in the military together. I was his best man at his wedding, and I have protected his children under armed detail. He is a state trooper in Michigan. Early on he made a decision to not develop his naturally given talents of sight and energy manipulation in favor of his military, martial, and police training - seeing it not so much as a moral dilemma, as a conflicting of scheduling and time devotion. His martial arts training did bring out some of his universe given strengths though and eventually he found himself using his internal talents on the job.

He got comfortable with idea that he was "doing it" again without a lot of thought about the whys and wherefores. Using it as a tool, not a guidance system. The job provides the guidance for the job. Work within it or find another job is pretty much how it is in any slot, in any profession.

Whatever your personal philosophy leads you to do, either a cop, a husband, a monk or a snake oil salesman - the expanded awareness that you have can only enhance your decision making, within the parameters of your job or function of course, and bring you closer to being the best at that thing that you can be.

For yourself, and for others.

Thanks for sharing this about yourself, it probably isn't easy.

~D~

[The Tengu]

I have a blood brother. We were in the military together. I was his best man at his wedding, and I have protected his children under armed detail. He is a state trooper in Michigan. Early on he made a decision to not develop his naturally given talents of sight and energy manipulation in favor of his military, martial, and police training - seeing it not so much as a moral dilemma, as a conflicting of scheduling and time devotion. His martial arts training did bring out some of his universe given strengths though and eventually he found himself using his internal talents on the job.

He got comfortable with idea that he was "doing it" again without a lot of thought about the whys and wherefores. Using it as a tool, not a guidance system. The job provides the guidance for the job. Work within it or find another job is pretty much how it is in any slot, in any profession.

Whatever your personal philosophy leads you to do, either a cop, a husband, a monk or a snake oil salesman - the expanded awareness that you have can only enhance your decision making, within the parameters of your job or function of course, and bring you closer to being the best at that thing that you can be.

For yourself, and for others.

Thanks for sharing this about yourself, it probably isn't easy.

~D~
I did the same thing when I entered the academy. In one day there was only time for waking up, eating, brushing teeth, academy, eating, brushing teeth, sleep. I said I would come back to my spiritual life, but my ego used it as a chance to take over again.

And I lost my wife because of it.

[The Tengu]

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna has a conversation with Krishna about the war he is about to fight in. Arjuna looks out on the battlefield and sees everyone he does not want to kill. Friends and family are amongst his foes, and Arjuna throws his weapon on the ground and says, fuck it. I ain't gonna fight my family!

Krishna basically tells Arjuna that hey, you're going to die eventually -- even your precious family is gonna bite the dust. You have to go out there and perform your prescribed duty. Live righteously because each moment in your life could lead you closer to heaven. Fight the good fight, and have faith in me.

The whole time I was getting into this new career path I thought that I was following my dharma, which is partially true. The thing is, I was weighed down so heavily by my egotistic attachments that I was not actually being an effective individual. This was like Arjuna looking at the friends and family (attachments) he does not want to fight. Everything in life looked like a challenge that I had to overcome. Instead of going with the flow, I was trying to direct it.

I say I lost Naomi due to my actions or inactions. Of course, it was out of my hands anyway. I was always going to do the things I did to her which broke our marriage and hurt her feelings. Naomi was always going to leave me because of it.

It has been said that the warrior's path is one that must be traveled alone, as an individual. You can't very well be an individual if you are attached to others.

I can't understand a lot of what you guys post here, but it is interesting and this forum is full of subject matter experts.

I want to thank m1thr0s for putting the site up and maintaining it.

I look forward to learning from everyone.