Self-portrait circa 2015
I am sitting on the plane with an 11 hour flight ahead of me. Though I was well prepared for interrogation by immigration agents, my Canadian passport was stamped without a single question asked. I was relieved.
Honestly, my soul is grieving about leaving Spain. I will surely be inspired to put down my thoughts about this land in future logs. It was painful to part ways with old and recent friends I met yesterday at a farewell picnic at Retiro. Every time I move from a country, I feel my roots tear from the ground, and as I spent my last weeks in Germany the tearing was all the more sudden and harsh.
Parting ways with possessions that have sentimental value was also hard, but necessary. I had amassed a collection of "sacred objects" which required ceremonial disposal, but through my own folly I let time pass and was faced with the harsh reality that I would have to throw them into the garbage bin. Sacred objects cannot be left behind or given away, their significance would become corrupted.
So, this morning I stared at my sacred objects wondering how I could get myself to perform this emotionally difficult operation. Then it hit me: by documenting the object publicly, you are spreading its meaning to the noosphere. If one stores the soul of an object, the material part of it becomes insignificant! After committing to this I no longer felt attachment to them.
The reader might find some of the stories behind the objects strange, to say the least. When you lose your soul and go on a quest to recover it, you are faced with the most absurd trials, and for sure you question your own sanity. The soul is never recovered, it is formed anew by passing through the same stages that civilization itself has gone through, and these objects belong to the archaic, magical and mythical period of my personal quest.
These stages have been transcended, and I no longer seek shamanic or mythical training exercises (though I engage in them if they find me). The stages that follow (the theistic, the rational and the post-rational) are much more familiar to modern society, and the sacred objects one collects from them quite conspicuous. I would consider, for example, The Boolean Game to be a 'sacred object' because it came from a place of inner work. Fortunately digital sacred objects are easier to store and transfer than physical ones.
Since the stories are long, I will not have enough time in this flight to document all of it, I will complete my task as time allows. These objects I have already thrown away, and their soul is currently in the purgatory. It is by documenting them that they reach the heavens. Do souls in the purgatory ever reach hell? Only if they are disowned by their creator.