This gets a little vulgar, and I’m sorry. Probably not something you should feel obliged to read, but if you’re interested, by all means have a good time.

So the number of times I’ve actually been asked this is more than one but still less than five, and I figured I’d go ahead and address this publicly before it became something I got sick of answering and just sort of ignored.

Also, there was this article in the New York Times recently that Harper showed me, about what the things we search for on Google tell us about the basic insecurities of our fellow humans on the planet. I can’t stress this enough, read the article. It helps so much.

So this question was sort of a big deal for guys, the second most-asked question related to men’s sexual performance:

“How can I last longer during sex?”

Before we go any further, mini rant:

I personally suspect that most guys think they should be fucking like porn stars, and I know this is going to come as a HUGE shock to guys, but this is something you should know:

And this is going to hurt: not even pornos.

Most guys don’t last 30 minutes, and most partners don’t want them to. If you base your expectations for your performance on porn, you’re in for a bad time.

But if you really want to fuck like a guy in teh prons, study the things they do to last so long. Viagra’s a big deal to them. Also, treat fucking like a job. Do it several times a day (stamina comes from practice) every day on contrived sets thrown together in someone’s apartment with umbrella lights glaring on you, with people watching, critiquing, and giving you instructions in the background while you’re screwing a partner who’s fucked so many people they can’t even fake being interested in your tool that’s gone numb from sloshing around in a hole that’s been stretched by you and your tool and your co-workers’ tools for half-hour to forty-five minute fuck marathons. And there’s all kinds of drugs that hate brain cells to take.

The more you think about fucking like a porn star, the less interesting it seems, really.

BUT SERIOUSLY…

So if that’s not the problem, then keep going. Below are some actual things that have changed my personal performance in ways that are beneficial. I think this is actually some good advice, and if you email me asking about it, this is basically what I’m going to say. So don’t email me about it. Just read this.

I’m telling you things that work for me, because it’s something I’ve managed to overcome in the last few years.

This shit works for me, and it’s not hard to do.

These aren’t penetrating insights, and may seem anti-climactic, and yeah, that’s totally on purpose and entirely the point.

Ok, enough. On with the actual advice:

LOVE YOUR LOVER

I know this is a no brainer, but a major issue with stamina for me was that I wasn’t interested in my partner very much. That’s not ONLY because they hated me and blamed me for everything personally, or got on my nerves, or lied and cheated on me (so many times), though that does tend to make you care less about your lover’s satisfaction.

No, I was a selfish douche who was just in it for myself. Even the “wanting to last longer” thing was just so I could feel better about myself. It wasn’t about the partner, it was just me. I’d get started and get excited about how good it would feel, and fed on that until I was just totally into the orgasm.

Being with someone you love and actually care about changes things. You’re less nervous and more interested in the process. You’re not in a hurry. You’re into the shape of their jawline, the smell of their skin. The saltiness of their sweat. The flush of their cheeks. You learn what makes them get there, and the journey is awesome. You don’t mind taking breaks and getting over yourself while you minister to the brethren or sistren.

Be the kind of lover who loves their lover, and it makes a huge difference.

HAVE AN ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE

A drink helps relax you, and lets you take your time a bit more. It suppresses the CNS and lowers inhibitions. Don’t take too many shots, that gets to be a problem, but a shot a half hour or so before you’re making love is great for, ahem, some people. If drinks aren’t your thing, don’t drink ’em. It’s just something I’ve noticed.

BREATHE SLOWLY

Breathing slower makes you last longer. I don’t know why, but it’s true, and it works. Perhaps loving your lover helps you breathe more slowly, and being a little relaxed from a drink also makes you more relaxed and helps you breathe more slowly. Maybe that’s the secret, breath control. I don’t know for sure. These are just observations.

PRANA-FRICKIN’-YAMA

Ok, so this is the BIG SECRET that is probably the thing that’s actually helped me the most. And it’s totally about breath control, so that’s a good contender for being the thing that makes these things work. Because the secret of the sphere of Venus is that the entire universe is One spirit separated into many spirits so it can fuck itself all the time, and in every language ever the word for “spirit” is traced back to “breath.” But that’s probably just a coicidence.

I do pranayama like every day now because A:.A:. things, and there’s this thing Jason teaches in his book, Sex, Sorcery, and Spirit about throat and asshole locks. Mula Bandha is the asshole lock. Google it if you don’t know what I’m talking about, but Jason’s book is better about this than I will be for at least 30 years.Suffice it to ay, I incorporate the locks he describes into my practice. Mula Bandha is the key here. Basically you clench the muscles of your asshole (up to your nuts, not just the easy sphincter muscles) and hold it in rythm with your breathing.

I do pranayama using an app Harper Feist found called MySpiritTools on an iphone. It’s free and useful. We use the “Conscious Breathing” exercise. It’s got three phases that you can change the settings on. The way I have it configured on my phone is based on seven-second intervals:

• 3 minutes of two-stage breathing (just in and out); seven second inhalation, seven second exhalation.
• 3 minutes of thre-stage breathing (in, hold, out, repeat in); I exercise the throat and anal lock for the time I’m holding my breath.
• 10 minutes of four-stage breating (in, hold, out, hold, then in) for seven seconds each.

When it gets to the hold-your-breath phase of the conscious breathing part, I exercise the locks. I don’t know if that’s proper technique or whatever, but after 6 weeks of doing that every morning, your muscles get really strong. Use these muscles to control your orgasm. You just focus on Mula Bandha and steady deep breathing when you start to get close to orgasm, and it shifts things, and you last longer.

WHEN YOU’RE ABOUT TO CUM, DON’T

Seriously, pull out and squeeze that Mula Bandha lock hard. It’s like hitting a reset button on your approach to orgasm. It doesn’t always work, but the more you do it, the more often it does, and in no time you’re in control of your experiences.

I like the parts between getting started and orgasm best anyway. The actual orgasm part at the end is over too fast for my tastes, but the approach is just delicious, and making that last longer is totally worth it, if you’re me.

CONCLUSION

So none of this stuff is new news, I’m not teaching anything you can’t find on a google search, and Jason’s book is much more comprehensive than this article, but now that I’ve written it up I can send links to this instead of rewriting it every time.

Happy fucking!

V(=)IR

Have I not said, Ye are Gods?

I could change that, she thought. I could take away the drug action and make it harmless. But she sensed this would be an error. I’m within a rite of joining.

People are awesome. I like you all a whole lot.

Hermetics teaches that we’re all individual and unique manifestations of the Divine. Konx om Pax, it is written. Light in Extension. L.V.X. Lux, the Light of the True Cross. And that is very true. It’s why I get all shiny-eyed and gleeful when I ecstatically proclaim, Thou Art God! I am God, we are Gods! Living Gods!*

A lot of what I focus on in my writings and my efforts in this incarnation is related to reminding people that they themselves are, in fact, gods. That’s literally you reading this now. I want to reach out through the computer, grab you by your lapels (google it), stare directly and meaningful into the soul of your being and say, “You! You are GOD! Remember? Wake the fuck up!”

That’s how my Great Work looks, in a nut shell.** In case you were wondering why I do this stuff all the time.

So of course that’s nothing new. Jesus said it. Plato said it through Timaeus. Heraclitus said it before that. We say this shit because we see people suffering, and we want you to just … stahp! Snap out of it! Grow the heck up and make adult decisions based on an understanding that choice leads to experience and consequent enjoyment or suffering! Because you can, and you’re awesome! You can do better things, and enjoy a better life, if you want to!

And my focus is a lot about you, personally. Because I love you, and I want you to be happy. I really believe all that shit about us being gods, extensions of the same source, and I get that if we were all doing good, we’d all be happy, and it’s just that people forget you can do good sometimes and it might not seem great immediately, but then it turns out to be actually fucking great.

So I try hard to remind you you’re a god, with worth and value that is … worthy. And valuable. To you, but also to all of the rest of us. We need you to be cool, ffs. We need everyone to be cool.

Everyone.

And that’s what this post is actually about.*** It’s not about you, except inclusively. It’s about everyone else you interact with, and how you personally interact with them. Those “others.” You know, the other gods on the Earth.

Do you recognize them when you see them? I have a hard time in real life seeing the god in others. Because they’re assholes, unawakened lazy pink primate motherfuckers. I need a lot of work before I can bow to the god in others instead of honking at the dipshit standing in front of my car blocking my exit from the airport frantically gesticulating to his wife to just cut me off to come and get his entitled ass.

Is flipping the bird equivalent to “bowing to the god in others?” I sure hope so.

That’s Namaste, in Hindu, by the way, and it’s totally what it says, and if there’s a “fuck you” undercurrent to it, it’s probably a mystical secret only understood by stoned sufis. You probably already knew what Namaste means.

If not, here’s the Wiki explanation:

Namasté is spoken with a slight bow and hands pressed together, palms touching and fingers pointing upwards, thumbs close to the chest. This gesture is called Añjali Mudrā or Pranamasana.^[5] In Hinduism it means “I bow to the divine in you”.

I bow to the divine in you. That’s some bullshit, honestly. I have a hard enough time remembering my own divinity, and you know, slogging through your shit to get to your divinity on a personal basis is fucking hard.

Er.

Dammit, I’m really trying hard not to cuss as much, honest.

But here’s the thing: when I get you alone and we’re just talking, I see it. When we’re not trying to end the trip from hell as soon as possible by getting into a safe place with the one person on the planet we can admit to loving without it being weird. When we’re not just posting shit on facebook to make each other laugh and to show how cool we are. When we’re not cussing in blog posts to cover up how important this shit really is.

I had a great client today ask me for advice and a talisman to get what she wants out of life. She got how this all works, and she knows society would probably try to tell her she’s bad for going after what she really wants, and she had the courage to say what she wants anyway. And of course I helped her, because … Ok, we’ll talk about ethics for a sec.

This client was so cool. She wanted to be with a guy who’s in a relationship that’s bad for him. She doesn’t know if it will work out between the two of them, if they ever might have a chance to connect like a bulb and socket, all slowly screwing deeper and deeper until they can’t go any further and become, for the moment, a hot glowing thing that illuminates the world. She just knows she wants him. And that he wants her. And that he’s not happy now. And that everyone would be happier if they screwed. Her desires were pure, she wanted the god in him and the god in her to unite for a bit and to see what happened next.

That’s all we get, folks. It doesn’t get any better than that. And it’s perfect.

So here’s the thing.

When you start to see the god in other people, and recognise that thing with them that you have in common, you get what they need. What they want. What they’re after.

I think my “gift,” my “charisma” in this life is to see that in other people. I can spend five or ten minutes talking to you and know more about what you are after in life than you do. That’s why I want to go full time offering Hermetic consultations for a living. God-on-god therapy, you know? I grok people, and who they are, and what they want, and why that’s ok. I have an intrinsic understanding of the nature of the being that is you, the divine you.

I think that’s because I spent so much time learning to know myself, but … what do I know?

I recently had the opportunity to consider horses, and the “horse whisperer” phenomenon. Horses are huge, strong, and super intelligent manifestations of god. They are unique beings, from their smell to their hooves to their hearts. They love, they feel, and they understand in ways that are similar to, yet entirely different from human beings.

A horse whisperer is someone who can see to the heart of the horse, and see the divinity of that being, and commune with it in language it needs to hear, in the moment. They can put off their humanity enough to be the god who sees the god in the horse, the same god that is in all other aspects of existence, and to commune with it meaningfully in ways it can understand.

Can you imagine being treated that way? To feel the love, the sacrifice, the willingness to shrug off the differences, just for a moment so they can be with you in a way that makes you feel safe, valuable, worthy… Loved?

Makes you want to be a horse, huh?

People, all of us, are little sparks of the divine holed up in flesh suits with brains and emotions and autonomous reactionary protective circuits that have evolved to keep us alive. We feel things, and say things as a result that aren’t really cool. Useful, to an end, but robotic. Programmed, genetic, societal. Most of our lives we spend in that state, garbage in, garbage out. It takes something pretty special to knock us up and out of that realm of interacting with the world, to become mindful, aware, awake with another person. It takes intimacy, trust, love, and friendship. Camaraderie.

It’s rare, among people. We have these shells up that keep us separated from one another, a hardened lacquer of protective armor. A chitinous layer, a thick skin. It takes something special to get past that layer, to be the solvent that is necessary to open up a bit. Solvents are important in the Great Work.

You know that “I love you man!” moment people get to when they’re drunk? That’s the point at which their CNS is suppressed enough, and their inhibitions are lowered enough that they can say to people they care about, “Hey, I care about you, I appreciate you, and I am glad to get to hang out with you, because you’re cool, and that means something, coming from me.” It’s the moment when you can admit that your personal value of another person is meaningful, to yourself and to them. And it takes booze to do that. For a reason.

Ethanol is an amazing solvent. So is love. So are mystical exercises, and daily practices. Digging deep into the essence of you is the key to be able to appreciate that essence in others. shutting down the CNS, the inhibitions, the distractions and seeing the divine within you as the same divinity in others. The Great Work is a process that lets you get to that point and appreciate others. It helps you, and in turn it helps everyone else.

So whether you are a people whisperer, or are perhaps a people whisperer in training, or even a person in need of a people whisperer, the things we pursue are the solvent you need. Magical practice is all about that, ultimately. The knowledge of the self. The knowledge of God. The recognition of that and what it means in your life, and in the lives of everyone else.

That is the Great Work.

* And then people remind me that phrase was taken.

** Not a nut sack. Those look different. And I haven’t even made a dick joke yet.

*** My 10th grade English teacher, if he ever reads this, will probably think it’s the worst essay ever, introducing the thesis this late, but everything else was the hook, and the elaborateness of it will become apparent in a minute.

After COMPLETING all Seven Sphere courses, the students wanted to do a “Seven Spheres in Seven Days” thing. So we set it up and we’re doing it March 16th. People not in the original course student group have expressed interest in this kind of thing too, and while I’d love to add you all to the group of people who went through the course, that’s a problem.

First off, they paid money and went through a lot of drunken me explaining the mysteries of the spheres in ways that only a drunken magus can convey. They have become friends and understand each others’ issues. They are basically a coven of awesome planetary magicians. And introducing people to that who weren’t there isn’t fair to them, and taints the work.

At the same time, going through Seven Spheres in Seven Days is AWESOME and it changes everything, and everyone should do it at least once in their lives.*


SO, you are cordially invited to participate in a Seven Spheres in Seven Days event, beginning March 19th. I’ll still be in the previous Seven Spheres Course Members 7 days exercise, so what could possibly go wrong for me, eh?


Fuck it.


I’m setting up a FaceBook group:


https://www.facebook.com/groups/1595558160726419/

I expect you to have bought one of my books, so there’s no charge for this exercise. If you haven’t, buy it here:

Seven Spheres Book Orders

* Note, this isn’t “safe” and some people had terrible things happen to them immediately after, but then things got a lot better for most people still capable of posting to facebook. It’s not like we ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND how magic works, ffs.

For those of you who have bought my awesome book, Seven Spheres, and have actually been doing the Work, chances are that you’re going through some … exciting times. Sisters and brothers, I feel your pain. But it gets better, lots, and the trip itself is fun, after a while. Trust me. The chaotic phase of rapid change can be spooky, but hey, I get it. I totally get it.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been pumping plantary powers into my sphere, transforming my life and my self into something … else. I’ve been grabbing onto my power as a divine being in a material world, taking authority over my life and the things that happen in it, and learning how to be a good king, in a creative and productive way.

Iovis Maximus … WTF!?

I felt a lot like Tetsuo from Akira at times, overcome with this power that I couldn’t really control. There were great times, and weird times. It was not entirely unlike puberty, but at last things are starting to settle down. I feel like I’ve hit a point now in my practice where I can calmly approach the business of manifesting my life without the manic expansion in one sphere that happens when you conjure without balance.

And frankly it happened this week. This week has been one of those weeks where you can draw a definitive line in the sand as the end of everything that led up to this point, and the beginning of what comes next. In a lot of ways we can do that every day, but this was more clearly and undeniably one of those moments than usual.

In the last week, Harper and I bought a house in Minneappolis together, and we’re settling into our new lives. I received a full time offer of employment from my contract job. And I went through a week long spiritual retreat that culminated in receiving my formal initiation as a Neophyte into the A:.A:. last night.

For years, Jason Miller has been telling me about the usefulness of meditation, but I didn’t have the training, dedication, appreciation, or inclination to actually meditate daily. Thanks to the A:.A:. requirements, I’ve been sitting for fifteen minutes doing pranayama and fifteen minutes in asana and various meditations for the last few months. The results are undeniable. It really is just like it says in Magick in Theory and Practice. If you do it every day for three weeks, you’ll experience exactly what is described, and if you keep doing it, things will improve, exactly as described.

I don’t know if I can attribute the A:.A:. work with the coming together of everything and the feeling of calm preparedness I have now regarding my Spheres. I also have done a shit ton of magic on the regular for years. It could be that I fianlly have hit a level of integration where the vast cosmic powers I channel are finally in equilibrium. It could also be that the A:.A:. stuff came as a result of integrating the forces released in my initiations, I don’t know.

But I do know I am ready for what comes next. I’ve got the awesome physical foundation for the next fifteen years. I have books in process that will be going to the publisher soon. I have classes to run, and students to teach. I’m continuing in my advancement through the degrees of the OTO and the EGC. I’m hanging out with some of the greatest magicians of our time, and I’m having a blast.

So, for those who are going through the shit now, hang in there, get your head on straight, let go of trying to keep shit the same, and let your life go to hell so it can get better. You might feel like Tetsuo for a bit, but you’re getting experience and perspective, and wisdom.

You know…

Gnosis.

Rock it!

Hot

Well, tis the season for hot Venus lovin’!

Valentine’s day is coming up, and it’s the time of year when we turn our attentions to the sweeter aspects of life: romance, chocolates, flowers, and the aesthetics of beauty and of Love.

In honor of the upcoming holiday, I’m offering $70 off the Venus talismans from the Key of Solomon. Their descriptions and sample methods of use are provided below.

You must purchase them using the Buy Now button below in this blog post to get the discount.

Quantities are limited. I’m offering only seven Graceful Desires pentacles and seven Come to Me pentacles at this discounted price.

Note that it is highly unlikely that you will get these in time for Valentine’s Day, since I am posting so closely to the date. However, even if you did, like all magic, these would take time to work. Usually… Some people report results as soon as they place the order, but they might be suffering from confirmation bias. I don’t argue with them, but I don’t tell people to expect that kind of thing to happen every time. Most of the time it takes a couple weeks after doing the rite to see the results.

Ok, so here’s the purchase button to use to get the discount:

(Nota Bene: I’m not updating the price on my KoS pentacles page, so if you buy them from that page you won’t get the discount. Ain’t nobody got time updating codes and forgetting to update them back later. Use this button or pay more money.)

Sold Out

Pentacles of Venus:

2nd Pentacle of Venus: Graceful Desires – Shown to the right, it is the one I am selling for wealth and prosperity for folks with Jupiter issues in their natal charts. Description from the KoS: These pentacles are also proper for obtaining grace and honor, and for all things which belong unto Venus, and for accomplishing all thy desires herein.

4th Pentacle of Venus: Come to Me – Not shown, but really beautiful. This one I won’t make for just anyone, so far I’ve only made it for a root worker who convinced me she won’t abuse it TOO much, without good cause… like making a decent profit. Description from the KoS: It is of great power, since it compels the spirits of Venus to obey, and to force on the instant any person thou wishest to come unto thee.

Using the Talismans


I’ve developed a couple methods of working with the 4th Pentacle of Venus (Come to Me!) talismans, mostly because these are selling more than any others, of freaking course.

Method 1 is pretty simple, Method 2 is a little more Hermetic-Magic-ey.

Method 1:

Take a picture of the person you want to come to you, and place it on a table. Place the talisman over the image, with the 4th pentacle side (with the square design on it) facing up. Light seven green candles in a circle around the talisman and photo, and speak the names of the spirits (Achelia, Nogaliel, Nangariel, and Jocodia), and say “By your names and the seals of these Pentacles, I call you. Receive this offering of fire, and bring to me [Name of person], draw (her/him) to me, bring them to me in love and desire, let them have no rest until they contact me, bring them to me now.” Picture the person you want the whole time you’re saying this. Let the candles burn all the way out, if possible (I use tea-lite sized candles for this kind of thing because they burn out in a relatively short period of time). This method can take a couple of weeks to get the result. If you don’t have the result in a couple of weeks, do it again.

Hey Y’all!

So last weekend I tried to cram about 6 hours of awesome into about an hour and a half.

Shockingly, I failed.

BUT!

But I, like any awesome magician, learned from my mistakes and am rescheduling things appropriately. Instead of ONE lesson with three HUGE topics to cover, I’m making it into two, because fuck you, 10 pound bag, I’ll shove 12.5 pounds of shit into you anyway.

So for those who caught the “How the courses will work with Boring Tech Writer Consistency” and “Everything I’ve Ever Said Before about Hermetic Cosmologies for Fun and Profit,” you’ll have a chance to hear these two things AGAIN this afternoon at 12:00 pm Central.

Er, yeah, today.

AND all you folks who I forgot to send the email to with the time and dates, this is your chance to catch up too! I think I got it out to everyone about ten minutes ago.

BUT WAIT! There’s more!

I didn’t even make it to the conjuration rite of the Seven Spheres Course I had wanted to cover last week. So we’ll have ANOTHER presentation to cover that at 6:00 PM Central. You should have a link in your email to the course.

And then we’ll do Jupiter is Awesome on like, Tuesday night or Wednesday night or something. Probably in the afternoon or evening.

Watch for a schedule here later today!

Hi all! Kids are in town and I’m having a good time with them this week. I’ll be back and answering emails and makes no posts about seven soheres stuff soon! Thanks all for your support, and I will be getting to all the folks buying hours of my time ASAP to schedule your appointments!

Fundamentally, what I’ve always experienced as “The Christmas Spirit” is the feeling of celebration of life itself. Sostice is about that, the return of the Sun. Christmas is about that, the coming of the savior of the world. In the darkest of days, a glimmer of hope comes to remind us that Spring is around the corner, and to hang in there, the Holly King will fall, and the Oak King shall return to rule another season.

We exchange gifts to celebrate what we have, what we hope for, what is to come. We celebrate the things we can so-easily lose sight of in the darkest depths of winter, when the days are so short, and we are struggling to get through to daylight again.  We celebrate to remind us of the things we lost sight of in the daily bullshit of life. We are Scrooge, who has gotten cynical and needs the reminders and touchstones with bright joyful times of the past and present to avoid a grim and cold future.

That’s what the magic of the Christmas spirit is all about, and that is what was lacking this year in the HF-RO HQ Midwest Division.

Harper and I were talking the other day about how the Christmas Spirit hadn’t descended upon our house. It wasn’t that I was feeling un-cheerful, or un-grateful, or un-celebratory, quite the opposite, in fact. I am joyful and so very thankful for every wonderful aspect of my life. What’s missing this year isn’t the feelings of Joy at all.

What’s missing is the absence of this feeling the rest of the year.

We were talking about it again Christmas morning, and about what makes what we have so cool. Most of the things we do in our lives, we would do regardless of being in a relationship together. We have similar goals, goals that we have each spent a long time figuring out will make us happy. We have similar incomes, the results of our hard work, and the good fortune granted by our invisible friends. We have both been through enough of life to recognize the basic processes that need to be in place to have a happy life, and we do those things together, but not for each other; we would each do so individually, regardless of our relationship.

And that’s sort of the thing. Our relationship is based first on our own individual happiness. That’s a key piece we both realized after years of trying to do things with people who made us feel badly about ourselves. We both understand that if the things we do individually aren’t compatible, no amount of wishing, trying, or sacrificing on our parts will ever make the other person happy. In fact, we recognize that neither of us can make the other person happy. No one can make anyone feel anything. And neither of us are interested in making another person feel anything. We want to be appreciated, sure, but we want it to be honest. And if it’s not something the other person feels honestly, well, ok. They aren’t the reason we do what we do, we do it for us, and if the other person appreciates it, so much the better.

And we’ve been fortunate to find another person who appreciates the things we do, the work we’ve done, the accomplishments we’ve made, the beauty and joy of our lives, and how much better it is to merge them together. We express our gratitude and joy regularly, because we can. We don’t resent one another because we don’t sacrifice for one another; we don’t have to.

There are some tips and tricks we use to have a great relationship, it’s not like we don’t do any work to maintain what we have. We based our relationship on the same levels of communication and honesty that our friends in the Polyamory communities use, when they are successful. We had frequent checkpoints to touch base and see how each other were feeling in the first year or so. These days they happen a lot less often, but still pretty regularly. We discuss things that cause us to have feelings we don’t like, things that make us sad that happen, and we listen to each other without interrupting. We don’t defend ourselves, and we care about each other very much. We don’t expect the other person to change because of our feelings, but we trust each other to help us deal with the feelings in ways that are mutually beneficial.

So I was thinking today about how the “Christmas Spirit” is something we experience all year long, and how it’s the result of the recipe we have for our lives. We each tried the recipe with other people and it turned out badly, but basically our recipe is a good one, and I’d like to share what we do with you on this Christmas day, so that maybe part of our recipe will be something you can add to yours to increase your Joy all year long:

Be happy with yourselves. I’m not saying be at rest with how you are and make a bunch of excuses for your shitty behavior. If you don’t like who you are, if you are working against yourself for some reason, making choices that leave you unhappy, broke, or further away from your heart’s desire, then change yourself. It isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible either. Whatever you change, you’ll find you aren’t really changing yourself as much as you are revealing yourself, and it’s a process that never ends. But you should be happy with yourself when you’re alone. If you aren’t happy alone, you won’t be happy anywhere with anyone. This is a big part of the Great Work. Or maybe it’s just a side effect that I appreciate a lot because it’s such a huge difference in comparison to how I felt about myself for so long.

Have a good income. Make some money. A “good income” covers all your monthly bills with 25-30% left over for savings and fun stuff. If you make $1000 a month, you should spend no more than $750 on your monthly expenses. The rest should go to a savings account and for treating yourself well. The variables you can influence are your monthly income and your monthly expenses. Raise the income, lower the out-go, or both. Career training, educations, and certifications can help increase incomes, and there are a ton of resources available about budgeting that you can find in an afternoon on Google. But I’ve found that if you are saving 20% of your income and have 5% of it available for fun stuff, you’re going to have a steady financial experience that eliminates most of your stress in your life.

Be grateful. Being grateful is the natural result of having a low-stress life, I think. It’s also one of the keys to ceating one. We spend a lot of time paying our attention to things that we think, feel, and experience. What we pay our attention to in life grows. The more we think about things, the bigger they get in our lives. So if we pay attention to all the negative things more than the positive things, the negative things will keep growing bigger, and the positives will keep growing smaller. I’m not saying if you think positive, everything becomes positive at all. I’m saying if you give a little time each day in appreciation for the good things, you’ll start to see more of them, and they will grow larger and more influential in your life over time, and the negative things will shrink down to manageable portions. Having a good income helps.

These are the main things that seem to be the key ingredients for the recipe we use to have a joyful life all year round. We spent the time doing the work, and now we get to reap the rewards. We have goals we are working toward, and we are doing the Work now that will result in our desired outcome. We are physically heatlhy, mentally challenged, and romantically engaged with one another. We celebrate our lives, daily.

On Christmas we celebrated each other’s company with our family, opened presents, and had some really good lamb and pasqalina. An excellent time was had, and it was special and joyful in ways that we don’t get to celebrate every day, but it was entirely in keeping with the standard of joy in our lives.

Merry Christmas to all! And may your year be full of Cheer!

The unedited version is here, for your amusement. I might go through and make it better if it gets too silly at the end. I don’t really remember the last bits of what we talked about, besides just having a really good time.

I totally drank too much and had to take a nap.