KO MPANY
An outside perspective. 001
Life: nature in motion Nature: the experience of the Natural [Self]
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without permission from the publishers. The magazine can assume no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or illustrations.
KOMPANY MAGAZINE ISSUE 001 EDITOR’S NOTE:
Foreign Kompany (founded in 2014) is an underground and developing network of artists and transformative thinkers based in a handful of cities across the country – from Oakland to New York City, we intend to bring a new imagination of the world into reality through the vehicle of unfiltered and unapologetic modes of self expression. In terms of this publication, at a very fundamental level, the purpose of this inaugural issue is to curate a selection of alternative, young, and dynamic perspectives on the human experience and society so as to introduce and publicize an ongoing discussion centered around creative methods of social resistance, activism, deviance, and subversion.
CONTENTS
KOMPANY GOODS
REBELLION
07
REAL RELIGION
15
UNILALIANISM
21
INSPIRED LIVING
29
THE MAN WITH NO...
40
COPING WITH DEATH
47
PARADISE RHAPSODY
58
HAPPINESS...
61
FOUNDERS Ellis Wilson Carter Wilson EDITORIAL TEAM Ellis Wilson (Editor In Chief) Carter Wilson Samuel Kronen KAIROS ART & DESIGN DIRECTOR Ellis Wilson PRODUCTION MANAGER Carter Wilson WRITERS Carter Wilson Ellis Wilson Samuel Kronen KAIROS CONTRIBUTORS KAIROS Carter Wilson Samuel Kronen Ellis Wilson Peter Schweikert PHOTOGRAPHY Ellis Wilson Carter Wilson INQUIRIES: kompanymagazine@gmail.com VISIT: foreignkompany.com
CARTER WILSON | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Seattle, Washington
REBELLION PART ONE by KAIROS
SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Oakland, California
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I have always believed that there is more, more to experience, more to do, more to accomplish, more to have. No, I am not greedy. I know when to say enough…for the most part. And I am very capable of sharing; in fact, it is one of my favorite things to do. But that has never stopped the hunger and search for something more - something more to this puzzle that requires me to work within a set of confines in order to be successful. I am a human being; I am not supposed to have confines – labels, rules, norms, culture, religion, all of that– they make me predictable, limit me, and cause me to continuously long for freedom. So, I search for more. Some of us find a little more to keep us sane through life – children, an excellent natural ability, passion for a career, etc – but most people get lost on the road by distractions and end up losing themselves trying to backtrack. Never backtrack! Time is a one-way street – even if you turn back to look, just for one second…your face gets smacked or you trip because you should’ve been looking forward. What limits so many from being able to look forward are confines that the majority of human societies inhabiting the world have built. While there is a lot to takeaway from these structures, which have been practiced and perfected over time, the consequences it has had on the masses cannot be ignored.
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Once we are conscious, ready to respond, with no fixed idea, with no prejudice, with no plan whatsoever about happens in the moment, we become our true and authentic selves. And that is what everyone needs more of – a natural flow of truth and authenticity – that is the freedom I long for, and it is very much possible to grasp. Within our thoughts and actions must ascend a quiet rebellion, not a revolution, a rebellion. There is a distinct difference. A revolution is the repudiation and replacement of an established government by the governed people. Rebellion is the open and organized defiance of any authority, control or tradition. To bring freedom -- freedom to be true, authentic, and natural --into the lives of seven billion people will require persistent rebels constantly rejecting established norms, cultures, religions, and rules over time. Resisting predicable behaviors, rejecting pre-conceived notions, and destroying labels levels the playing field. A rebellion towards natural, true, and authentic actions changes the mindset and structure of societies while uniting mankind in honesty, for all of us to develop, grow, and evolve as living beings.
“Within our thou must ascend a qu a revolution, a reb distinct dif
It starts with one thought, one action, and one person. Action and reaction means everything I do affects someone else, so spreading this to seven billion people is only a matter of time.
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SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Oakland, California
ughts and actions uiet rebellion, not bellion. There is a fference.”
I read a story once about a woman named Madame Blavatksy who was conscious of the moment and thus built a life of habits on the foundation of natural, true, and authentic thoughts and actions. Madame Blavatsky used to carry two bags in her hands. Either walking around the neighborhood for fresh air or traveling in a train, those two bags were always in her hands. Whenever she took the train, she would always throw something out of those bags onto the footpath outside of the train and often people would ask her: “Why do you keep doing this?” And she would laugh it off and say “This is just one of my life’s habits.” Pausing for a moment, she would watch other travelers consider this habit with confusion and slight judgment and then she would explain: “These are seasonal flower seeds. I may not come back on this route again,”—she was a world traveler—“but that does not matter. When the season comes and the flowers blossom, people who pass this way every day will see those flowers, those colors. They will not know me, but it will make them happy. Maybe a child will pluck a few to take home. Maybe lovers out for a stroll will stop and look, relishing the natural, true, and authentic beauty of the flower. It will make them smile, a contagious act that can flow freely. And that is the only thing that matters. I will be a part of their joy and the joy they spread to others.“
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KOMPANY GOODS
REAL
SHOT BY CARTER WILSON Renton, Washington
L RELIGION ACCESSING THE DEVINE By Samuel Kronen
Religion is surely a topic that has come to be rather distorted in modern culture. This isn’t necessarily a knock on the fundamental sentiments of religion, rather an acknowledgement of the manners through which they have been convoluted and obscured. We have lost touch with these foundational religious ideals, and because of this we come to be rather disjointed and disconnected as a society. Let’s get into the nuts and bolts of this issue, while perhaps alluding to the true essence of religion and the value it has the potential to induce. Why has religion been so distorted? This has occurred through the many mechanisms of authority. The hierarchy imposed by religious institutions works against the initial attitudes of the truly religious mind, such as charity, compassion, and empathy. Such attitudes cannot survive amidst the narrow and dogmatic practices of an authoritarian establishment. Where there is a fixation upon control, discipline, and restraint then ultimately there isn’t much room for openness and acceptance, and this is where the conflict arises. Religion has been systematized and contrived, and in that has lost its originality and authenticity. This happens any time an attitude or sentiment is systematized, propagated on a vast scale, organized; the door is hereby opened to the possibility of corruption. This is simply a propensity of human nature, in that when we group together we often become disconnected from truth. When we capitulate to a particular belief system, then the narrative of that belief system comes to take precedent over the truth.
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Religion is ultimately a subjective experience, which is to say it only really pertains on an individual level. Once we begin to group up, particularly on a global scale, then the subjective experience loses its meaning. It becomes about the collective, not the individual, and in that it becomes susceptible to being overtaken by various forms of tyranny. We succumb to “groupthink”, and thereby lose our autonomy. What is religion? The question then arises, what is any of this about in the first place? This is perhaps a bit trickier question to answer, the reason being all of the aforementioned distortions. The essence of religion is a subjective connection with the divine, that which is beyond the realm of space/time. This doesn’t necessarily imply a deity or a God-figure, rather simply that which we don’t understand, the unknown, the great mystery, that which is transcendent of life and death. All religious experience is based on this fundamental connection with something beyond oneself. Of course we remain as individual persons, though are at once in alignment with something much greater, something all-pervasive and all-extensive. We may be physically bound by time and space, yet are capable of living with a sense of the eternal. This is the benchmark quality of the religious mind; an inner sense of timelessness and formlessness. This is something the thinking mind is incapable of conjuring up. This sense of the divine does not arise through ideation and thoughtfulness, rather an alleviation of such qualities. It is only once we have stepped outside of the dimensions of thought, the properties of the mind, that we may abide in this sense. The original meaning of religion is “an accumulation of energies”, which very much speaks to the undertones of all holy sentiments.
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CARTER WILSON | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Seattle, Washington
To be aligned with that which is divine, to be connected with that which is beyond space and time, is to focus and thereby maximize the collective energies of the heart, mind, and spirit. This is the real essence of the religious mind; the optimizing of life energy. How might we access the divine? We access the divine through embodying the immediacy of felt experience. When the entirety of the energy of our awareness is directed upon the immediate present, that which arises in the here and now, then we come to connect with that which is beyond our rather limited sense of self. It is only when we cease to fixate on past and future movements, that which was and that which will be, that we come to evoke a sense of the divine. When we are in a state of total attention, a kind of subtle yet penetrating alertness, the present moment comes to be fully met, and herein we live with an abiding quality of sacredness. Real religion is then characterized by a kind of fusion with the present, a sense of being entirely integrated into the now. We may only know God when we have first come to elicit a deep connection with that which occurs in the immediate present, an alignment with experience as such. We need not seek out God as some kind of external resource, as something beyond ourselves, rather merely we ought to allow ourselves to see that God exists everlastingly within us. There is no separation. All we need really do to recognize this fact is give credence to the present moment, to the actuality of our own experience, for only here may we bring about this deep sense of wholeness and fulfillment that is truly the core of the all religion. It is said that the closest we may come to God is through silence, and surely this fact remains..
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JASON BRINK | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Portland, Oregon | March 2016
VISION HAS ALWAYS BEEN AN EXERCISE IN LANGUAGE.
UNILALIAN THE BIG PICTURE PART ONE by Ellis A. Wilson
The human narrative has arrived at an eschatological moment in the historical process, a transition colored by the crippling anxiety of civilizational suicide wherein life ultimately finds itself restrained by the boundaries of its own display, held hostage aboard the crashing train of symbolic relationality. Considering Leslie White’s (1949) contention regarding the symbol as “the basic unit of all human behavior and civilization�, those who have assumed a monopoly in the construction and management of the symbolic domain wield the understanding that within the theater of representation, the universe is no more than a linguistic construct, and infinitely stratified and malleable matrix of symbolization wherein the disempowered collective finds itself subjugated to the will of the semiotically proficient monopolists. When concerned with the consolidation of power, representation, within its diachrony, emerges as a predatory practice, a weaponized form of language intended to decieve its audience for the sake of mediating their relationship to the Natural [Self]. Through this mediation, domesticated individuals are deprived of any authentic relationship to themselves as they are conditioned to recognize and define themselves only in terms of how they appear in relation to the dominant social context. Suspended in context, our behavior is then alligned by symbolization as consciousness is subdued and arrested by the syntax of objectification. 21
NISM
ELLIS WILSON | SHOT BY CARTER WILSON 09
Symbolization projects and makes coherent a world view which is based on the manipulation of consciousness and dependent on the individual’s withdrawal from the primacy of being – it displays and brings into focus an objective reality, a conceptualization of a linear and successive universe which is comprised of fixed objects to be acted upon, measured, and possessed by a separate and self-determining subject. Larry Law (2007) comments on this display, writing that “even at its most liberal, it reveals a view of the world which has been objectified to such an extent that a subjective view of the world is incomprehensible to it”. Individual experience is generalized as subjectivity is conquered by the expansive empire of the display; all movement is stagnated as consciousness finds itself anchored by the profound weight of an exacerbated objectivity. Those of us who are familiar with situationist theory recognize this phenomenon as a reflection of the spectacle, what Guy Debord (1967) discussed as a “social relation between people that is mediated by images”. Here, reality is replaced by a selection of specialized mediations to be displayed to a shepherded assembly of alienated spectators via the hands of a disguised predator, for representation not only substitutes reality; it produces it and it this very productivity which testifies to the inherently deceptive and manipulative nature of the dominant social system. While lecturing about the taxonomy of illusion, Terence McKenna (1993) summarizes this dynamic by concluding that “there is no reality. There are only people who know this and people who don’t know this and are therefore being manipulated by the people who do know it! [audience laughter]” – this is among the highest forms of domination, the game of civilization and the very essence of linguistic warfare.
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KOMPANY GOODS SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Oakland, California
At every turn, individuals find themselves under subtle attack by psychological mutagens and ideological infections, by weaponized disinformation coupled with the ceaseless production of memetic reaffirmations and propaganda that coax us to become sedated consumers and idle spectators of a reality which is shown to us rather than created by us — this is how the game has always worked.
“THE SPECTATOR DOES NOT FEEL AT HOME ANYWHERE, BECAUSE THE SPECTACLE IS EVERYWHERE.” – GUY DEBORD, SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE, 1967
To hold the collective captive is no different than captivating an audience; in all its various forms – social media, news, entertainment, advertising – the public falls prey to the incessant empire of the spectacle, faces pressed against the cold glass of a reality which is articulated via the mouth of capitalist industry as they live a life of alienation, servitude, privation, depersonalization and neurosis. Colorful lights and images flash across their eyes, pupils dilated, as the world is reduced into that which is dictated by the grammar of commodity relations and maintained by an illusive authority — instead of life, we encounter an achingly tiresome and repetitive narrative laced in coercion, rife in frustration and saturated in quotidian details as all autonomy is stripped from the individual’s mind. Here, the mind is weakened, vulnerable to the molestation of symbology for symbolization denotes the assault of contextualization upon the Natural; thus, only within the confines of the authority’s manufactured context is life permitted to run its course. 24
“AS LONG AS OBJECTIVITY IMPAI THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF MOTIO THE MOVEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNE WILL REMAIN THE OBJECT OF SOCI ACTIVISM
NOAH SCHILLER | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Oakland, California
IRS ON; ESS IAL M.”
Here, contextualization reveals itself as a chief strategy for maintaining social control; it reveals itself as a key mechanism for domesticating consciousness. In the society of the spectacle, at any given moment you are both an audience member and a performer, dancing erratically upon the stage of the dominant social context while frantically reciting your script and fulfilling your social role(s) in front of a psychologically constructed mirror — as we become spectators of ourselves, life in turn becomes a rigid display, an aimless routine choreographed by the dictates of the established convention. On this, Sharon Gannon (1987) writes that “all forms of expression have become displays… actual experience in the moment is hardly allowed in the capitalist state – dis-play means NO-play, and it implies the stoppage of movement”. Thus, as long as objectivity impairs the consciousness of motion, the movement of consciousness will remain the object of social activism – in this, total revolution translates to the removal of the linguistic shackles which hold consciousness in place. Here, liberation has always been an exercise of the psyche – the essential revolution has always been that of consciousnness because consciousness has always been essentially revolutionary, moving beyond the boundaries of any fixed or objective understanding of the world. Unilalianism only seeks to exercise this essentiality. Unilalianism is not a single coherent theory — rather, it refers to a particular perspective derived from and intimately associated with critical anarchist philosophy, radical identity politics, situationist theory, and the enigmatic fruits of psychedelic shamanism. It is a 21st-century counter cultural inclination which advocates for the reanimation of the psychedelic func-
tion in regards to daily life, intending to deconstruct the individual’s attachment to spectacularized and objectified styles of interpersonal relation, yielding a redefinition (and subsequently a reimagination) of social life predicated on the disillusion of symbolic and artificial boundaries. ‘Uni’ (derived from the Latin unus, meaning “one”) and ‘lalia’ (derived from the ancient Greek laliá, denoting abnormal or disordered speech) hint at the defining characteristics of this movement, predicating its fundamental relationship to language. It is a movement produced by an implicit fixation on the invocation of a psychosocial renaissance — the rebirth and revolution of the psyche — for the sake of actualizing the total reclamation of the individual’s autonomy over consciousness. It is a strategy for resisting the hegemony of the symbolic and its estranged world of alienation, a guide for diluting the spectacular objectivity that has given rise to the overwhelming failures of civilized life. It is an escape route — a final offense against the empire of the commodity, against its logic, and against its modes of reification and abstraction. It is something that prefers to escape any static definition, for it is empowered by its lack of concrete tangibility — like the world around us, it is ever-changing, fluid, flexible, spontaneous, and novel. It is an audacious example of anti-authoritarianism expressed as an unapologetic stroke of individualism – peeling away the symbolic and linguistic layers that define and comprise our civility and our humanness, one experiences oneself for what it is — natural and alien in its unbound, unrestrained manifestation.This is revelation, the moment of apocalypse — derived from the Greek ‘apokaluptein’, meaning ‘to uncover’ — this is the total realization of the Natural. [to be continued]
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CARTER WILSON | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Seattle, Washington
KOMPANY GOODS
INSPIRED LIVING by Samuel Kronen
Inspiration is the very core of human existence. Without it, we drown in a pool of banality and absurdity. It is that which drives us towards higher novelty and ingenuity. It is our very ethos, that which propels us in the direction of consciousness expansion. Without inspiration, there would be no creation, no innovation, no positive change, and surely without these things our species would likely die off. To live an inspired life is then the highest order of human perception, which is why we felt it necessary to shed further light on this issue. Firstly, what is inspiration? Inspiration is our natural propensity towards growth. It is our intuitive proclivity to develop. It is the underlying motivation of the human enterprise, that which moves us upon greater awareness. Inspiration is not of the particular, rather it is of the whole, by which we mean it exists as such and not in regards to something specific. This is to say that it has no external purpose. We need not be “inspired to”, rather we need only be inspired per say. Inspiration exists in and of itself. It is entirely independent. To be aligned with this quality of inspiration is to actualize one’s deepest and fullest potential.
OCTOBER 2016 Shot by Ellis Wilson 31
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“The more deeply we observe ourselves, our attitudes, our inclinations, are movements, then the more inspired we invariably come to be.�
ARTHUR VU | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Seattle, Washington
Inspiration is our very nature. It is embedded in the very programming of the human being to be inspired, otherwise we would not be here. Inspiration is what brought us here, and surely it is also what is going to send us towards a beautiful future. So, how might we elicit inspiration? How might we remain inspired? Inspiration is predicated upon our direct experiencing of the present moment. To be in tune with the present moment, the now, the immediacy of felt experience, is to be inspired. Inspiration arises only in the here and now. Neither the future nor the past can bring about inspiration. We can only be inspired when we live fully in the present. Thought cannot implore one to be inspired. You cannot think your way into inspiration, for the moment you try to then you are no longer living in the present. When our thought processes are most active, we are then detached from the now. 35
To be inspired we need to be aligned with the present moment, and we come to be aligned with the present moment through self-observation, introspection, and internal reflection. The more deeply we observe ourselves, our attitudes, our inclinations, are movements, then the more inspired we invariably come to be. To know oneself is to live inspired. Inspiration is a product of self-knowledge, and thereby the deeper we inquire into our own inclinations then the more inspired we come to be. Self-understanding is the manner in which we best access the present moment. When we observe ourselves deeply we then step outside the paradigm of thought-oriented perception, the egoic mind, and herein we come fully upon the now. Self-observation is the key to triggering true inspiration because it dissolves the ego. Let’s go through this again so as to make it as clear as possible. Inspiration is absolutely crucial to en
hancing the quality of our lives as well as bringing about a better future for human beings, and we may only live inspired through stepping fully into the present moment. We come to live in the present through self-observation, which incorporates any method wherein we are objectively looking at our inner most workings. Self-Observation is inspiration. The inspired life is a one that is truly blessed. To live inspired is to live wholly and with love.
“To know oneself is to live inspired.�
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KOMPANY GOODS
ELLIS WILSON | SHOT BY CARTER WILSON Seattle, Washington
MIGUEL TORRIJOS | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Oakland, California
The Man With No Name Comes Home to Rest a short story by Carter Wilson
The weather was bawling. The sky opened wide and fell on its face as the season’s tears tumbled through an unremarkable town. The weeping wind whimpered and shook when a crack of thunder broke in the distance. The streets were empty except for a wandering man who wasn’t lost. He wore old shoes, black jeans, a sweater and a yellow trench-coat which hid his tremendous gut, but only slightly. The man didn’t carry a phone or a bag and his patience was short because he forgot his umbrella on the bus. He bowed his head to the storm. The man frowned as the wind licked his nose and lips. He was miserable. He hated the rain because he hated being wet. He especially hated how the wind made matters worse. It was only a quick walk from the bus stop but the man was drenched as he stomped up the steps of the house from the address on the napkin in his back pocket. His grubby fingers were sick and dripping when his hand engulfed the slick bronze knob of a longlocked door. He had no key but he was able to lurch the door open with his forearm somehow.
Nobody bothered with deadbolts around here. He looked over one of his massive shoulders again before he entered the house. He quickly shut the door and turned the deadbolt. The wind cried behind him. The man didn’t recognize the crude green floormat in the front room but he slid each of his dirty, enormous boots through the small square anyways. After he removed his shoes and socks he kneeled to roll up the legs of his jeans as he examined his barefeet. They were cold and disgusting and the man could feel them throbbing in his hand. He had traveled far so he wasn’t surprised, though he winced when the smell hit his nose. He grunted as he stood up and scanned the room. A light layer of dust covered the chocolate-colored hardwood floors and just about every other surface he could see. An uncomfortable cream colored couch with no pillows sat square in the middle of the room on top of a red rug with a brown coffee table in front of it. Three oddly shaped coasters were accidentally arranged around an old National
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Geographic magazine which stood out amongst the morose. There was a deserted desk to his left by the window that looked like the mess of a genius. Papers, pens, and books were arranged in an indescribable fashion but somehow, everything seemed to have its place. His gaze crept along the same wall the desk was on and he noticed the calendar was expired. His eyes narrowed. Portraits of nameless faces stared at the man from odd angles around the room. He did his best to avoid eye contact. The thunder clapped a bit closer than before and he trudged his way towards the bathroom down the hall. The faucet was leaking and there was a musty draft coming in through the window above the toilet. Outside, the rain continued its drumroll and the man was glad to be indoors. The mirror caught his attention and he became enraptured. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen one. He was a fundamentally strange looking person with an important look in his eye. His lips were almost as dry as his humor. He wore a bit of a scowl as his eyes splashed silently across the looking-glass. He tilted his chin slightly higher as he prepared for self-inspection. First, he studied his eyes.
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Then he squinted. The man lowered his chin and brought his face closer to the mirror until he was just a tongue’s lick away. His eyelashes were recently singed off. As he continued to scan his face in the mirror, he noticed a small something squirm its way free from the tangle of his beard. He blinked and squinted again. His face was caked in sweat and slime and the bridge of his nose was scraped raw. This was normal. The man had just returned from a field trip. He twisted the hot water to life and let his thoughts dissolve as he danced his fingers in the ivory basin of the sink. He was surprised the faucet worked. There was no soap so he scrubbed his hands with vigor as his mess splattered against the white. Eventually the man brought water to his face as he traced the space around his eyes. He smoothed the rough of his eyebrows with his knuckles before disrobing and starting the shower. The man seemed to be surprised the water warmed up as fast as it did. He felt most alive as the hot streams decorated his shapely frame in the small shower stall. Everything was suddenly worth it. The preparation, the trip itself, the journey back, the uncertainty of it all. For some reason the man found himself in this strange house and he asked no questions. The man didn’t get dressed after the shower. He saw no need. He crossed the hallway to a
CARTER WILSON | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Seattle, Washington
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fish-themed bedroom and he quickly sank into a quilted sea of hand-crafted cerulean. His body lay splayed, mouth agape, as if he were gasping for air in the waters of his comfort. Submerged, he rested until the morning. Years ago the man grew wary of alarms so he kept his blinds wide. When the shine shook him from his sleep, he could see dust dancing in the morning sunlight. The rain was over and he could only hear birds. Awake but still, the man possessed no questions and no answers. He closed his eyes as he savored this wordless moment of undefined experience. He let himself remain thoughtless as his dream from the previous night began to engulf the room in vivid detail. A smile wormed its way across his face as he returned to the scene he had left only moments ago. He was younger, or maybe older, alone on an ancient swingset. He could feel the rusty cold of the brown chains in his fists as he rose and fell back to earth. His legs were lighter than usual so he kicked higher. Slicing through the sky as velocity pulled his face apart, the man gushed with hysteria. He vomited laughter, uncontrollably gleeful as his eyes bulged and rolled backwards. At the right time, the man jumped from the apex and landed quietly back beneath his cerulean quilt.
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SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Seattle, Washington
ELLIS WILSON, HEKL THE MAD SCIENTIST, DJ CORNDOGG SHOT BY CARTER WILSON | AU RECORDING SESSION
COPING WITH DEATH HOW TO EMBRACE THE FORMLESS by Samuel Kronen
Death acts as the shadow of all existence. It is our deepest darkest afterthought. The fear and trembling of our collective soul. The murky underpinning of all human life. The notion of death elicits instability and chaos amidst the movement of consciousness. The sensory experience that accompanies death is drenched with terror, soaked in dread, bathed in panic. So, what is death, and why does it evoke this broad spectrum of pain and horror? Death is, in essence, the ‘off’ switch. It is the counterforce of the universe. It is the opposing frequency of all cosmic activity. Now, it is important to make clear the fact that without opposing frequencies, without polarity, nothing would exist at all. This is to say that life needs death. Death is integral to the universal cycle. If it wasn’t for the lining of non-existence, nothingness, then existence and somethingness wouldn’t happen.
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Mixed media, 2014, KAIROS
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It doesn’t work without death, to put it as simply as possible. The ship doesn’t stay afloat without the sea, as grim and mysterious as the sea may be. Death is the very fabric of existence. It is the formless essence that pervades the world of form. If this is the case, which surely it seems to be, then why is such suffering brought about by the very thought of death? We are attached to life. We have succumb to the fallacy that life and death are intrinsically separate, wherein the truth is quite the contrary. We mis-perceive death as being the end, when in actuality death is necessary in the continuation of life. To us, death represents oblivion. It symbolizes the apocalypse. We perceive it as such because death implies the dissolution of the ego, the ending of our sense of self. With death comes the ending of our memories, our thoughts, our feelings, our attitudes, our strife, our dreams, and moreover our experience in its totality. This is only problematic if we perceive all these things as being real, which surely they are not. Anything that is subject to change is not real in any absolute sense. There is nothing absolute about our sense of self.
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“We are attached to life. We have succumb to the fallacy that life and death are intrinsically separate, wherein the truth is quite the contrary.�
Mixed media, 2014, KAIROS
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Runni
acrylic finger Ellis A 2
ing Reds
c on canvas r painting A. Wilson 2017
COPING WITH DEATH There is no way that we may cope with death as long as we remain tied to this egoic mode of perception, this internal sense of identity. As long as we view our sensory experience as being intrinsically real, absolute truth, death will continue to haunt us. We may only cope with death through coming to be aligned with that which is transcendent. Until we see beyond the horizon of our own identity, until we come to see that the “my” “me” and “mine” are illusory, we cannot understand the true significance of death. We make peace with death through acquiescing to that which is beyond our sense of self. It is only when we acknowledge the fact that our experience is partial, that our identity does not encompass the entirety of reality, that we may move beyond the fear of death. When we see that life is a continual movement, something that is infinite and eternal, and moreover that we are participants in this vast field, then we become at ease with the notion of death. To master the fear of death is to master the love of life. So, it is not “your life”, it is simply life. It is not something you own, rather something that you are. To recognize this fully is to transcend death. Herein, death ceases to be a problem, for it is seen as a necessary aspect of the continuation of life. This is where we find peace.
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CARTER WIL$ON PARADISE RHAPSODY CARTERXWILSON.COM
CARTER WILSON | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Seattle, Washington
KOMPANY GOODS
PARADISE BY CARTER WILSON Routine is ruining me Reduced to a role designed to restrict my right to reality, I have no choice but to react in a way that may raise concern Call it self-preservation My reaction is appropriate as I find myself running on fumes for reasons I can’t relate to I’m a slave to my schedule, I’m chained to my shift I’m wasting time that I’ve come to realize was never mine to begin with In my moments of slight reprieve, I find resistance existing only in the act of non-doing I dig my heels, lock my knees, let my body crumble to the ground Routine is there to lurch me forward Routine exists despite me It doesn’t matter what I call it or how I feel about it I was born into it I was raised in it In some ways I’ve become it Routine is ruining me In some ways I’ve become it I was raised in it I was born into it It doesn’t matter what I call it or how I feel about it Routine exists despite me Routine is there to lurch me forward I dig my heels, lock my knees, let my body crumble to the ground In my moments of slight reprieve, I find resistance existing only in the act of non-doing I’m wasting time that I’ve come to realize was never mine to begin with I’m a slave to my schedule, I’m chained to my shift My reaction is appropriate as I find myself running on fumes for reasons I can’t relate to Call it self-preservation Reduced to a role designed to restrict my right to reality, I have no choice but to react in a way that may raise concern Routine is ruining me
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CARTER WILSON | SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Seattle, Washington
HAPPINESS VS FULFILLM
MOVING BEYOND THE CONDITIONAL MIN By Samuel Kronen
MENT:
ND
Although the American constitution is predicated most prominently upon “The Pursuit of Happiness”, it is rather rare that we inquire deeply into what truly is the essence of happiness and how specifically it ought to be pursued. Let’s do so, while also exploring the very nature of fulfillment and examining the ways in which we attempt to derive meaning in our lives. Traditionally, happiness is a measurement of the particular conditions of one’s life. When asked, “are you happy”, the general tendency is to regard the specific forms of one’s daily existence (one’s profession, one’s relationship, whether one is healthy or ill, etc.) in the context of the scale of pain and pleasure, rather than addressing the quality of one’s perception/state of being in and of itself. If we considered happiness in this light, in reference to the quality of our present moment rather than the everlastingly fluctuating “things” that seem to encompass our lives, then our perception would take on an entirely different frequency, and surely a substantially higher one. This is where we run into the distinction between happiness and fulfillment. As much as we don’t want to get caught up in semantics, it seems valuable to illuminate the difference between these two things. As we just alluded to, happiness is founded in the quality of the forms of one’s life. There is nothing particularly wrong with this. It is quite alright to make these kinds of appraisals, in fact it is in our very nature to do so, but the moment these measurements comes to take credence over our essential state of being then we invariably move into discontent and dejection. That which we are fundamentally, in the very depths of our being, which could perhaps be interpreted as our soul, is entirely immeasurable. There is an essential aspect of ourselves that is not hampered by that which is conditional, and it is in the acknowledging of this deeper nature and the aligning of oneself with this underlying self that elicits an abiding sense of fulfillment. SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Multnomah Falls, Oregon
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“When the soul is given an avenue to manifest, then an enduring quality of joy comes to be intrinsic to one’s daily life.”
SHOT BY ELLIS WILSON Multnomah Falls, Oregon
Fulfillment, then, is founded in the connection between one’s waking mind and the soul. When the soul is given an avenue to manifest, then an enduring quality of joy comes to be intrinsic to one’s daily life. Where there is an alignment with one’s truest nature and most authentic self there will invariably exist a deep sense of contentment that is not influenced or affected by the movement of time. This is where we want to be. Happiness is good. Fulfillment is better, and surely the two can flow side by side. In fact, they most often tend to. When we move from a foundation of deep inward fulfillment, a sense of peace, then we naturally and fluidly induce preferred conditions outwardly. This is the real “Law Of Attraction”. When we move beyond the conditional mind, which is to say when we dissolve our deep seeded proclivity to identify with form, we then open the door to the manifestation of our greatest potential. This is our highest calling.
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Artwork by Peter Schweikert Instagram: @shwykurt
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BEN DEVINE | KOMPANY GOODS
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