A Seagull Awakens. (Awakening to Ascension pt. 8)

Awakening.

Like waking up. That's what it means.

But, you could also call it, just, opening your eyes.

Or Leaving the Cave, if you want to get philosophical.

Some of you are going to read this as a trans allegory. That's ok. That works.

Some of you are going to compare it to the Matrix. See above, and well, that's kinda self referential.

Still, it's ok. It works.

Others, maybe the scene from Blade where the doctor learns what the world is really like, and the veil she had put over her own eyes was peeled back.

There's another way to look at it, entirely. Doing it on purpose. The vision quest, the psilocybin trip, the religious experience. The third eye gets opened and you see the world in a different light, maybe see realities you never knew existed.

Just like all of those, some people will call you delusional. Or, well, call me delusional, because I don't know if you're Awakened, or ever will be.

It's taken on new implications in modern society, of course, since 'woke' means aware of the systemic injustices and the other serious flaws in the society around us. Frankly, those are things every mage should have seen on their way to really waking up. But the rot goes deeper, and, unlike some of my compatriots, I'm not sure the fault can be laid at the feet of the Order of Reason, or the Technocracy as they are now called. They are way too new. Is it the vampires? Not the ones today. Maybe they pull a lot of strings and drag people down into the dark, but it's bigger than them. It's not the shapeshifters, or Pentex, or the Prometheans, or even the Mummies or the Beasts. Yes, Virginia, they are all real. Well. Sort of. As much as anything is.

I think it's just humanity. Plato showed us how people react to difficulty and to learning truth with his allegory of the Cave. It's at least that old. I think it's as old as people. And yeah, some of the vampires claim to be that old, or that their kind is that old, or their society. But that could be a great big game of telephone because I've only talked to one who talked to one who met one who sid his sire was descended from Cain kinda crap. There were probably vampires pretty early, but it seems to be a kind of common occurrence that happens in response to a bunch of different impeti: curses, messed up mummification rituals, you name it.

Yeah, yeah, I know, back on topic. My Awakening.

Call me Seagull. Like I said last time, that's not even my shadow name, but it'll do.

“What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. “

Morpheus, in the Matrix.

Well, brother, it was not a splinter. It was a fucking log in my eye like from the Bible. It hurt to look at this world, this fallen, broken world, and know, just know that it didn't have to be this way, that there could be wonder, and beauty, and plenty, and, ya know, magic. I wanted to believe so bad. I tried church after church, religion after religion, drug after drug. I tried shit you ain't heard of, I promise. Lucky I got brain cells left. I never became hacker though. Well, not till after I Awakened. And then, not with computers.

Humans feel like they should have a purpose. That's there's more to life than working like a slave in a cubicle or picking up other people's trash, or whatever, until you get too old to enjoy your life, or just die. They look for meaning. And there are so many answers.

For some folks, they are enough. Opiate of the masses: sometimes religion, sometimes booze, sometimes literal opium, or bread and circuses if ya wanna get Imperial. It numbs the pain enough to get by. But some of us are too sensitive, and we have to find a way to fix it.

“I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than to have to have a frontal lobotomy; different ways to ease the pain, the same...”

Randy Hanzlick, MD, in a song. Might have been quoting Dorothy Parker.

My point is, the feeling ain't new. We've been trying to numb the pain of living in world with too much pressure and not enough meaning since we discovered fire. Hell, according to the Greeks, that's where all the trouble started, because Prometheus got chained to a rock with his liver eaten every day, and the ret of us...well, we got Pandora's Box. Which was actually probably an Amphora. But remember what I said last time about allegories.

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
― Socrates (Probably)

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

But more to the point,

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
― Socrates (We think. Or Plato quoting Socrates. Who knows.)

Right there is the dichotomy. Our mind wants what it can never have. But...why can we never have it? And how can we even conceive of it, if it be not possible somehow, somewhere? And of course, it is.

The problem is, and always has been, people. Almost all of us just want to be happy and not worry. Peace and plenty. No hard decisions. But we also want equality, freedom, love.

And with most people asleep at the wheel, at least figuratively, we can't get there. Their own innate pessimism, their certainty of failure, makes it true, in a consensual reality. We can't because we think we can't, but on a macro level. Don't get me wrong, it works on the micro too.

“Do or do not, there is no try.”

“That's impossible!”

“And that is why you fail.”

Yoda and Luke. Also my teacher and me. And every other mage and apprentice in history probably.

See, the big chasm to leap over is the leap of faith. Of true faith. Of believing something so hard it becomes real even though the whole world believes it is impossible. And if everyone was Awakened, we'd be able, maybe, to convince enough people that peace, justice, and equality are all possible for it to work.

What Awakened me, in the end, was my own 'neurodivergence'. My strong sense of justice. My anger at an unfair world. My ability to see patterns. The way the lies piled on each other until the truth appeared in the pattern of the mess they made

Basically, the log popped out was I was squinting at this absolute bullshit world. Relampago, tun-wu, subitism. Sudden enlightenment. But like everything else, it was a sudden Eureka moment made up of a lifetime of clues. Like the way names are made of smaller names, and Arcana are made of those...

Of course it waited until I was fifty fucking years old and nearly burnt out. But hey.

“Argue for your limitations and they are yours.” Richard Bach, “Illusions.”

"Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right!" —Henry Ford.

“If you think the sky is a limit at all, you ain't been paying attention.” - Me.

Anyway, once you Awaken you are literally a new person, at least partially. And new people get new names. Not to mention the safeguards of having a bunch of names to obscure your True one, which you might not even know. So that's why Shadow Names.

Like Seagull.

Or Neo.

Or Morpheus.

Or Blade.

We aren't slaves to the system anymore, there is No Matrix, much less a damn spoon, and we are not going back.

The Hacking I do, if it isn't computers? Reality, sister. A little bit at a time. But the mission is the same as Neo. Wake everybody up, cuz as long as one person isn't free no one is.

Remember what I said about words being as powerful as magic? Well, really, what's the difference?

Everything worth doing takes Knowledge and Will. So learn, then do it.

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

― Muhammad Ali