Something I get confused about myself all the time - the meaning of life, the point, the Way, what I should be doing, what I should be working on. Because from time to time, day to day, moment to moment, it shifts - there's not one meaning of life, or even one path for effective action, but it's more typically dialectical, it is two opposing directions, alternating in an almost mystical rhythm; different stages, with different strategies.
 

For instance, the directive, from an old death metal song, to "Try to get inside, not through", "seize it as it opens up before you!" (- Entombed, "Wolverine Blues"), was my standard reason for not wearing sunglasses, opting for the richness of perception over tunneling gently through and ignoring the too-bright light. On the other hand, I read the Statutes of Mystery Metropolis, precepts suggested for all beings to keep in order to "cross the ocean of mundane realms", to try to get through, not inside, in other words. And I get confused about which principle I'm diving into, not exactly wondering whether or not to wear sunglasses, but for instance on Saturday morning, when the battle of visions for the weekend begins, excited visions of "stuff to do" on one side, versus the wisdom of the sleeping dog, and the Taoist vision that leads to that- casting off the mind's "excitement" and "stuff to do", to feel the calm weight of the universe on blood and mind, as the palm tree sways gently above my head.
 

Of course it comes down to a dialectic, like the dialectic between objectivity - cleaning the house, taking a shower, going to work - versus subjectivity - coming home, sitting in an easy chair, drinking wine, watching TV; individuality and dreaminess go in and out of style during the progression of our lives, alternating with a mechanistic, controlled form of sacrificing that subjectivity for the purpose of securing food and shelter, presumably, and so we learn limits to our subjectivity, as well as the limits to order - few of us take order to the level of the old-maid's room or the horse guard's stable, we don't typically let ourselves freeze into a moonscape of perfect order; we feel the need to re-assert individuality and subjectivity after some point in the gradual freezing.
 

This reassertion is not always planned, but more of an unplanned eruption, which we may just go with, or oppose with an imposition of order, trying to "get ahead" with self-denial. And so if we find ourselves rooting for the self-denial character, do we pledge infinite quiet and order for our own lives? Or how do we know when to spend the Way, to let it loose, perform spontaneous action? The sage is supposed to tell us, and I guess that's Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Great Pumpkin, and whatever other cartoon characters come out and tell us the time to celebrate has arrived, (if our regular human leaders can't come up with anything BUT 'go ahead and celebrate' all the time, with their "pursuit of happiness" and all);
 

The sage says there is a container out of which all kind of mysteries arise - the invisibility of demons, for instance, is said to arise from this wondrous container, along with the way more mundane overnight growth observable in plants, and even ourselves. They say some things are cyclical and can be predicted with a calendar; other things are "spontaneous", with no way to predict, and that these things must come from a wondrous container, the receptacle of stillness, which is what everybody is doing all night when all the spontaneous growth occurs - think of the mushrooms.
 

Different guides go to different lengths on when to spontaneously jump out of the receptacle of stillness and celebrate, or on how much, or even if ever to celebrate, in some ways. Some Taoist sects disallow the enjoyment of music; on the other hand, Protestantism is pretty liberal as far as enjoying the material world goes, just give the 10 percent to the church and whatever with the other 90; so when I was not only fasting in a Christian home, but trying to eat stuff without making it palatable, so as to not be able to enjoy any eating, my Christian brother in law objected, insisted God wanted me to "enjoy" the food. That's where I get confused a little.
 

And when I get confused I look to the heavens, not with a regular telescope, cause that just shows you the visible light, mostly stars in our own galaxy. No, I use the radio and X-Ray space-based telescopes available to us, like the Chandra and the Hubble spacecrafts, peering into "redshift" space, coming to us on wavelengths outside visible light. Yes it is this new world, only available to humanity over the past 25 year golden age of astrophysics, that I take for my bible, the book of red magic, of light and dark working together, the agakokakological world of yin and yang.
 

Oh how interesting humanity could become, if they would take this new geometry of nature as their blueprint! Let's no longer stare at all the little stars in our galaxy, but now think much bigger, with a galaxy representing a person. Our galaxy is a little quiescent thing spinning with a partner - "Alpha Centauri", or "M31", and a bunch of smaller galaxies surrounding us, all the seeds in the center of a cucumber, and our slice is kinda thin, but there are bigger galaxy clusters, the nearest super cluster to us being the Virgo Cluster, and at the center of a cluster like that there is one clear leader, the large central galaxy shines a bright light, two jets of light, out from the center. The central galaxy in great clusters teaches me how to align myself with the people around me, I try to be that central shaman, shining out to onto the community with seen and unseen light, pharmacist at the center of the circular apothecary,  harmonizing and regulating the circulation, raising and lowering the energies, to adjust them, resolving stagnancies and removing obstructions, breaking the darkness and getting rid of evils, responding to wrongdoers repentances, ferrying those who lost their way, safeguarding pregnancies and births, curing illnesses, nourishing roots, making the good weather return, making human beings be born and grow up, refining and ferrying ghosts and spirits, untying the hundreds of knots and giving blessings, supplementing the energies, assisting the righteous, and perfecting reality, summoning peace, extending blessings for the world - a heavenly doctor of important duties.
 

So there's the relativism of the dialectic of objectivity and subjectivity in life - is it "Das Tun Aller und Jeder" - the "doings of all and each", we are responsible for in our universal life, or is "drinking a man's own business", as the character on gunsmoke insisted yesterday, just wanting to ramble on in mystery and wonder. And yes, I get confused within the relativism, but then I am even more confused when I see a particular character at a particular task, and cast aside my relativism, seeing that this character is obviously doing the "right" thing, and what I get confused about is how I know that.
 

A quasar jet has direction, we root for it to go straight and as long as possible, and it usually eventually ends in what is called a "radio lobe", a crash, and explosion. It's like in football, the guy gets the ball and runs halfway across the TV screen with it, and we root for him to keep going in that clear direction, and then it almost always ends in a tackle, a "crash", a "radio lobe", or even if he gets to the end zone, he typically gives it a radio lobe anyway, and crashes the ball on the ground, radio lobe disintegrating in the mist of his victory dance.
 

So the jet has a direction, to go straight out, kenotic jet out of the body and into the spirit, quasar jet of kenosis that tunnels through the dark, crosses the mundane realms, beatific jet that minimizes the crash, doesn't get tackled, doesn't spike the ball, just stops running, sits down, and relaxes into a meditative gaze, jet beaming out in infinite enlightenment.
 

Should the jet try to get inside, not through? Entrain the ambient medium, as they say? Or "suffer" heavy metal enrichment, as the capitalists are always wont to do? Well, it does in the initial crash, stars lighting up on the shockwave front. A fun analogy for me, these two jets from the quasar heart and the "working surface" where the jet crash is beginning, where the lobe is being inflated from, is like the stuff I work on in my life. I adopted a "7 part working surface", where I took the "equation of state" for a galaxy - continuity, momentum, pressure, magnetic field, density, velocity, and velocity dispersion (this last is the measure of how much it deviates from the surrounding flow that controls the neighbors), and these are all the things a creature can focus on as he improves and extends his life force. And then after the initial working surface is blasted for a while, the jet progresses, breaks on through to the other side - after the quenching, the synaptic event -  leaving the working surface behind, and moving on to the next working surface, farther out - the hero stain in the treasure rain!
 

And as the jet makes this break for it, there is a dramatic effect on the world it leaves behind: at first, the single direction of the numinous jet is refuted by the turbulent nature of the radio lobe, the cosmic cloud of life and all its tangents, but when the jet moves on, the lobe it let behind becomes re-righted, like a world at the end of the book of revelation, like the people of a god who let his people be led by the devil for a spell, so that they would develop a more complex and beautiful "radio lobe", chaotic and unholy as far as the singleness of direction, but later to be re-justified, forgiven, now-educated prodigal son taken in, reconciled into the heart of god, jet of kenosis from life into the mystical kingdom of god, and so all the vectors in the radio lobe, going in every direction, get all of a sudden lined up, and point in one direction - the vertical component!
 

And so the absolute reappears after the time of relativism - the vertical component is clearly the guide. How beautiful, when the character in the lobe displays a being filled with the vertical component! The vertical component, like an inverted waterfall or thunderstorm on the inside of everything that lines up in the component - dozing on horseback, smoke from tea fires rises to the moon, a free tiger's eyes glisten with the mountain pool in the clear air near the peak; abandoned, the pure stream flows through the empty forest; while sleeping, lakes and oceans begin to boil. A mafic intrusion drives caldera unrest - uplift in the elliptical ring of the volcanic caldera. The inverted pail, full of water from the inverted storm, the storm of irrationality, the storm of sacrifice, springs leaks - "it's enough for today" - Water flows out for all, the disappearing mist of personality and action, and the storm rages on. The inverted waterfall drenches the stone plaza (at 5 Penn Plaza where I used to work, steam rising from artwork on the plaza), the storm of perfection has a direction that transcends everything; the inverted storm, the deep moon, The gun remains too wet to use in the storm of enlightenment. Filled by the storm of irrationality, they perform the religious action of ethical life. The inverted storm holds high the broken bowl - depth of the stillness, break of the wisp; the smashing thunderstorm of dissipation celebrates accumulation (the accumulation of time, the storm of sacrifice); the storm is present in the self-possessed act, otherwise it holds still, mass-dampening against the oncoming dark wind. The storm rises and the planet shines.
 

A circus tiger ending circuses, stopping the spinning eddies of time, of interest, of thought, of being, an empty circus wagon rotting 
in the desert symbolizing the meaning of life.
 

The vertical component observes, the vertical component works hard, has energy. The vertical component smiles. The vertical component  bifurcates into the midday sun, builds vertically, enemy of gravity (ytivarg); The vertical component climbs to the top of the  mountain. The vertical component sets the tiger free. The smashing thunderstorm of dissipation rises, celebrating the accumulation of  time. binding spells begin to break. Like a butteroil tiger, leaping in from redshift space, bursts of star formation on the turbulent  shockwave front at first are what they are, and later in time, a dark heart grows enlightened. Calmer, farther, a radio lobe goes 
quiet; a tiger's leap becomes a magical flight. aware of the storm, full of irrational stillness, irrational action, replacing the convection of passions in the radio lobe with the straight flow of the storm of sacrifice, furthering the quasar jet like a tiger dodging bullets; no crash, no radio lobe. Repose of the ideality, the restful, clear stream. Purpose of the quasar nucleus, final aim of the dark heart: striking outward infinitely in enlightenment. Full of irrationality, the dark heart leaps to enlightenment, act of 
magic; irrational, the magic storm of perfection and sacrifice is free to rage, glowing with stillness against the dark. The storm of dreams dissipates in the mist like a fish out of water. Calm, irrational, magic, the mist can be shamanic.
 

A quasar, at the center of the galaxy cluster, like a shaman at the center of an American city, generates this vertical component, and everything is in line with the furthering of the numinous jet from the dark heart of irrationality. There is usually just one quasar at the center of the community of galaxies, and the leader prosecutes the war of mystery, commander in chief of mystery metropolis, leader of the war of mystery, kicking ass, and taking no prisoners.
 

-Nepomuk Onderdonk