Loba

I wouldn't do that. I used to smoke a lot of weed, daily, and so I was high all the time and some of the posts that I made in this state were not ones that I would have made sober. I also used to get very drunk, this was a problem for me for about three months earlier in the year that I managed to curtail, but I found each and every time I got drunk is when I would get surly or overtly rude. Any time I can think of where I was out of my mind with anger in a very obvious way, i.e. wall-of-text barrage of nonsensical rudeness, was due to being drunk and unable to handle how much I had. Now, I always cut it off at three drinks, no more. And these issues have not risen since. The last time I got drunk was when my dog was sick and I was stressing out about her, and the same symptom happened - delusional anger directed outwards. I snapped at someone on my journal for something that wasn't even important, or reflective of the reality of the circumstances, in an effort to curtail my anxiety about what was happening with my dog. If I were sober, this would not have happened. I left the forum for a month in embarrassment and then came back later, deleted the comments and moved on. But that was the last straw with my drinking, it let me see that I simply couldn't hold it together, no matter how much I wanted to and the negative effects - including hangover - were not worth the few hours of having a buzz. So, from my experiences, what this tells me is that, either high on drugs or drunk on alcohol, you cannot properly gauge how you're coming across to others in that state. Even with drugs that increase your consciousness, this removes your boundaries, which you need in order to interact with people normally. Aside from my experiences, we have had people occasionally post while high and their insights aren't as well developed as they would be if they had written them down in a notepad and then come back to them while sober to hash out any details, maybe write the sentences a bit more structurally sound. I mean, nothing is stopping you from sharing your insights that you get from tripping, but it would be better for you to do so offsite, create a rough draft, and then go over it sober, and then post it. On top of that, if you're high or tripping and interacting with people online, this can harsh your mellow, or they can interrupt your process. tl;dr - I've experienced posting while drunk and high and have witnessed other people posting while tripping and it never ends well - just write what you experience offsite, and then go over it while you are sober to see if it makes sense and then share it with us, easy peasy.

It's okay, I have made peace with it. Despite all of that, I don't have to work, so my life is pretty easy and calm - I live with family, so I am not alone. It could be so much worse, there are homeless people, sick people who have no one - I get to at least live life comfortably and safely and so I count my blessings for sure. As for you, let's see here. Some words for you - don't let the negativity of other people get to you so harshly. I know it's easier said than done, but the dating game is difficult for most normal people. It does take some work to find the right one. Try taking it as this: if a woman gives you a bad reaction, then it is a sign that she is absolutely not the one for you, and it is actually a blessing, because that reaction could come up later in life rather than sooner, it's so much better to get that stuff out of the way immediately. When you do find the right partner, you will be so glad for all the ones that didn't work out, because it will have allowed you to find who is best for you. Keep your heart open, don't let it become jaded. If you want a partner and some kids in the future, never close yourself off from that, you deserve to have a good life filled with things that make you happy.

Lol "voyager fetish" - that's probably one of Leo's fetishes tbh. As someone with odd sexual tastes, I personally think that it is a form of the soul's expression - that if it is your genuine orientation, that you are loving your partner in the same manner through these various actions. I don't think it is strictly a form of gratification, I think that we have energetic polarities and modes of expression that allow the right souls to find one another. This just tells me that this isn't what you find sexually appealing deep down inside, and that is perfectly okay, too. Kink isn't for everyone, some people just want to make love to their partner and connect in that way. But for those of us who are into kink, it is actually a very deeply spiritual process. First of all, to admit it, or to realize it about one's self takes a lot of self exploration, bravery and work. It often isn't that someone just knows what they want, they have to go on a journey, much like with self development or spiritual development. It's all tied together. With things like kink, it's also about having a level of trust with your partner. You're letting them into your world, basically, your imagination, your body, your desires, the things that make up some of the core of your personality and psychology. People that practice these things with a trusted partner are often able to connect in the same way that love making connects them, maybe even moreso on some levels. If someone is a sub, or a dom, they can go into states that are very spiritual and unify them in beautiful ways. The sub will go into a state that is almost like a high, where she submits to the pain, or whatever she is experiencing and the body produces chemicals that put her in an almost egoless, floaty-like state - while the dom gets a charge from the control and the intense focus that it takes to work through a scene together. They both work together, like yin and yang, each person becoming almost a cohesive unit, a beautiful dance, in how they orchestrate their act. Just like with vanilla sex, you have to know the person very well to unify with them like this, to the level that it takes, you almost predict one another's state and it becomes like its own little world in a way... and when they are done, there is aftercare, which is more vanilla. You snuggle, eat food, watch a movie, take a bath together, you know, basic couple stuff. When I move towards kink, and add it into my spiritual and personal development, it makes for a beautiful triad. I love synthesizing it all together. I think, being open and truthful about who you are at your deepest level is how you find the person you are meant to be with. The soul is meant to express this energy in a unique way, it's like the key to creativity, passion, happiness, all that good stuff. Sexual fantasies are important.

It depends. My situation might be different from other people. I have bipolar 1, autism, a bad heart and an autoimmune disease, I'm already 34 and I don't fully know when my time will be up. Probably in the middle of my life, if not sooner. I'm frequently sick with this. I also come from a background where healthy communication was not encouraged, and I am only partially healed from my childhood. I rarely ever leave the house, and am very codependent on people in a relationship setting. I can do friendships very well, and have had many very deep and loving friendships without problems, but when it comes to relationships, I am not able to accomplish this. The thing is, I respect people's time and energy, and their ability and willingness to go the extra mile for their partner. If I were a healthy person, who was a bit younger with more going for me, then this would be a different story. And if I were that healthy person, and I saw someone that I loved get involved with the current me with all these problems, I would be concerned for that partner. It would be too much for them, and I wouldn't be able to contribute in a healthy way that allowed for a properly functioning flow of give and take. If you are someone stuck in the take too much bin, even if you are a good person with good intentions, you can end up draining another person of their time, energy and resources. I would feel like garbage if I did that to someone who deserves a chance with a healthy, happy, vibrant individual. I'm also so sick most of the time, that I wouldn't be able to have sex very often, which is a deal breaker. Men need sex. My coping mechanism is to write stories of an alternative timeline where I am reborn into a healthier body in a different world. I find that working on this project helps me to work through fantasies that I couldn't try, eases any bitterness that I may have, and lets me feel a sense of creativity. I also believe in life after death. I think that when we die, we either become an orb of light and meet with our soul families and partner, or we move on to another plane of existence with a fresh start and can continue with our desires there. I've had a spiritual awakening where I met someone who told me that they were my partner, that I was "mutually curating" aspects of them, as they were with me, and it almost felt like I was caught in the spiritual net of a masculine presence that made up the background of the things in my life, just outside of spacetime and just beyond the narrative of my human life. Now for you, if you are a healthy person who is relatively young without too many mental problems and can offer something kind and genuine to another person, you wouldn't be in the same boat. You would be someone who is stepping out for other reasons. I literally cannot offer at this time what it would take to make another person happy - and respect people too much to put them through dealing with a chronically sick person with limited time. If you have a chance at building a happy life for yourself and there are no barriers that can't be fixed, like health and age, then you should go for it. What are your circumstances that are preventing you from finding a wife and starting a family? If that's too personal, just let me know.

I think what you need to do is work on having your own personal genuine awakening before getting into these texts. They are best used when you have a previous experience to go off of because they were written by man, and no one is infallible. Once you get into the territory of trying to apply these things before having your own understanding, then you can get stuck in belief systems that are hard to get out of. The best way to have an awakening is to just open up a notepad on your computer and start getting very personal and very honest about every aspect of your ego, whatever feels disingenuous, pathological or unhealthy - and don't judge it - just dissect it. After some time of doing this, look into new ways that you want to relate to the world. Some other ingredients that can help are to practice compassion for the collective suffering of mankind, to see this as a connecting energy it itself, that we all suffer to some degree and to offer love to those who suffer. You can do this by coming to understand the consequence of war, poverty, abuse, etc. Try looking people in the eyes and seeing that we are all connected. When you come across the fear of death, don't avoid it - look right into it, feel it fully and face it as best as you can without creating any ideas on what it means. Don't think of heaven or hell. Just focus on what is real right now, and allow your senses to permeate into everything that you do, fill yourself with appreciation for being alive. This is key - going through the fear of death, but not allowing any narrative to decide what your death will be. The reasoning for this recipe is that God is underneath your ego, all the things you have put over it, by finding new ways to relate you open your mind to new possibilities, when you come to understand the pain of mankind, you can see that we are all connected through love, and when you accept death as an unknown and get very present with it - this wipes your slate clean so that you can actually "see" God right behind all of this. When you find God, in whatever you see or feel, there will be an illuminating quality to it and your awakening will be tailored to just you. You will get personal insights that are just for your life. When we take these books and apply them to our lives without first witnessing God - it is like giving a name to someone that you do not yet know. You must get to know them first, in your own special way. My personal experiences and insights on the nature of heaven and hell - tread lightly with this - your personal experience will ALWAYS trump anything I say: There is an expanding nature to God, it forever moves forward just outside of time and space. When you have a revelation of God, it can feel like getting off of a spinning carnival ride, where everything still sightly feels like it is moving forward just a bit. You might feel connected to the Love of everyone and everything that ever was or will be - and there is an order to it, a plan, a divine symphony in how it orchestrates itself that is very genuine and welcoming. It is all connected through this one universal singularity of Love, everything, which lets me believe that hell is not a real thing. If this divine phenomena is creating everything with a plan in mind, then your actions would already be considered and would be taken into account as a part of the process. It is like a natural feedback loop where every action that you or everyone else takes contributes to this massive play, that the divine purpose of it is to eventually allow itself to awaken to the reality of itself, while also still getting to be You. So you get to be God, and yourself at the same time, the universe gets to watch all that it is through your vessel. Hell implies that mistakes are made. That people are sent here onto this planet to learn lessons with no guidance from a higher power and then punished when they do something wrong, and this goes against what I have experienced. If hell was real, then why is it that when I woke up, everyone who ever was was a part of this grand process? Not a single living creature was left out. Not a single action unaccounted for. Don't let the revelations of other people cloud what you can have for yourself, even what I write is just a pointer. Dig deep into your own psychology and try your best to awaken to what God has to say to you specifically, the individual, unique person. This was the big message that I got from God, was that each person has their own special path and process to get there - a person can kind of guide another individual, but it is up to them to remove the dirt from their lens. Some things that can help are the arts. Music, poetry, stories, things that can draw your consciousness forward instead of backwards, things that captivate your imagination. Once you have an awakening or two, then you are able to have an easier time picking apart these books without taking them on as dogma or personal belief. You can kind of read in between the lines to see what is really being said. Hope this helps in some way.

I always assumed it wasn't LOA that popular people get more critics, but simply because they are more well known and many people don't have a life - like celebrity gossip and such things, never been one to get on board with that to any great degree. I do agree with interconnection and from my awakenings understand this on a moderate level. The thing is, when you think of LOA in this sense, on a larger scale - that works, because it is including the entire human race and the actions that stem from one thing to the next, but when you start whittling it down to small scale things, like individuals thinking they can manifest very herculean endeavors, this starts to get into the territory of delusion. When I think about it how you have written it, what comes to mind is more like a feedback loop, which is a natural process in nature as well, and it's the fuel of evolution and consciousness itself. But when you start thinking of the individual - say, someone who has had to flee Ukraine into a neighboring country, they were given no choice, and they couldn't simply attract a different outcome, as we all work together as a species and the individual has less power than the collective. Or if you think of a young girl being sold off by her parents into the sex trade at 12, this person didn't bring this situation into their lives, they were powerless in that instance. If we use LOA and view it as more of the universal nature of things, where x affects y and so forth, I think one could gain more understanding of this through knowing about the nature of positive and negative feedback loops. But when people get into "well, I want to create this situation out of thin air, despite the entire human race having it's own agenda - you see where I'm going? I'm glad that you made this in mind with people who don't agree with LOA, I wouldn't say you manifested me here, but it does go to show that you have differing views in mind when making posts, which is a good thing in and of itself.

I had a hard time in school, too. From middle school until high school. I failed most of my classes, when I managed to do well, the teachers wouldn't see the work I did or they would say that it was too good, that I must have stolen it. I finally started to do work from home and got 6 months done in 2 months at home, and they lost the whole notebook and never told me that they did - just basically waited until I got my report card and none of the credits were there. I totally understand why students hate school. There's bullying, you're basically herded around like a cow, there are too many students in each classroom to get the attention you need, most teachers shouldn't actually be in that line of work and can be as big of bullies as the students themselves. My suggestion is this - finish your classes online. If it isn't the work, and it's just going to school itself, try doing it that way. You might have a much easier time. If that doesn't work, you could try you GED. That's what I ended up doing after my class teacher lost my work, she basically forced me to fail an entire grade and wouldn't fess up. I realized I was getting nowhere here, and that the system was not designed for a person such as myself. Later in life, as I started learning things on my own and developed a new curiosity for the world, I realized that the problem was that I can't learn via auditory - so teachers giving lectures did nothing for me. I need both reading and muscle memory combined to remember what I'm doing. Schools often don't have the skills to teach a student a better way of learning, the entire system is quite abusive, destroys your creativity, treats human beings as statistics, etc. If you can go at your own pace in the comfort of your own home doing online courses, you might have an easier time. Ask your school if they have that, or what resources they know of that can allow you to do this.

Honestly, if you don't know the girl very well and are not already in a relationship that is moving forward or a friendship, then I would just let it go. It's not disrespect, it's just the nature of human communication. People flake, people ghost, people have their own lives. They may not want to, or are able to answer some of your questions. When you put pressure or boundaries on someone you just met to do all these things for you, when they aren't even showing much interest to begin with, it's not going to get better for you. They'll just leave even quicker than they would have before. Dude, I'm gunna tell you something. Dating is hard. It takes a long time to find someone that you are mutually attracted to that ticks off all the boxes, and on top of that, developing healthy communication is a whole different realm. If I were in your shoes, I would do some study on how to build on healthy communication with people - not saying that you don't have that, I don't know you, but if you have good skills in this department, it is much easier to connect with women that might not initially give you a second glance. They aren't trying to disrespect you - disrespect is more like flat out calling you names, or treating you in a rude way - which could sometimes be indicative of them liking you depending on the circumstance, but usually if someone is giving you no emotional response - not even disrespect, this says that it's just not a compatible connection. Women generally have a decent radar for what they like and what they don't, and it isn't a visual thing, like it usually is for men. They can tell within a short period of time if you are someone that they want to get close to. If a woman wants to hold space for you, and get to know you, they will absolutely keep tabs on you, they will communicate with you, it will be pretty easy to tell once you start rapport. But if you're getting nothing at all, they aren't even disrespecting you, you're just literally not on the radar, you're as good as dead tbh. They don't think of you, they don't care. Women can forget someone they don't like in an instant, no problem. I would just focus on women who are showing you that they want to know you. Don't even stress it when women bail. It's in our nature not to be so forthright about these things, because we don't always know how men are going to take it. When I was in my early 20's, I let down guys just to have the strangest, most aggressive reactions and this sort of trained me into ghosting people because I don't want to deal with those sorts of things. So if you send bitter messages to these women, who are already not interested in the first place, they aren't going to come to you with understanding, they're just gunna block and move on. The dating game sucks. It's best not to take anything personally at all, because it isn't personal.

I used to do this when I was younger, I would check up on old friends and relationships - I think it becomes more of a habit than anything else. Like, seeing something hits a dopamine spike. I recently checked on some friends a few weeks ago after not doing it for years and it gave me such a bad feeling. I would just ween yourself off of the habit. What made me stop was that I felt like I was looking into someone's life when I didn't belong there. I mean, we would never reconnect, so what was the point in knowing what they were doing? None. I started to think about how I would feel if someone did that to me, it would weird me out a lot, and so I took how I would feel about that situation and applied it to them. People generally don't like being watched by folks that they are never going to have in their lives again, most people want to move on. When I stopped doing this, I became a much healthier and happier person. I was no longer worried about them doing better than me, comparing myself or still having any feelings. Now, I'll check up maybe once every three years, if that, for many of them, I probably never will again because I feel like such a dirty person for snooping. I have a tendency to be someone who can get very obsessive like that, and so I have to take extra precautions not to allow that to happen. I kind of have to force boundaries by putting myself in the shoes of the people that I am watching. I know that no one likes that shit, it's creepy, weird, obsessive and especially for women, it can really make them feel unsafe. We are given free access into people's lives through the internet like we have not had before, but we should try to take steps not to become obsessive or invasive, even if the options are there. This is what good, healthy people do. They let the people in their lives who have moved on finally get their closure. Life is like this, people come and go, we aren't always meant to stay in one another's lives forever, and I see this happen with a lot of people, where they try to hold onto people that they should have let go a long time ago and this not only makes you look pathetic in some instances, but also mentally unstable. I'm saying this as someone who, maybe five years ago used to chronically watch people's stuff just out of habit, it's not a good thing to do. It is unhealthy, I hope my words have allowed you to move on from this habit. Good luck.

I think he goes into states where he does a lot of psychedelics, and then makes posts like these. You can see the difference in how he writes, the quality of it when he is high vs. when he is not. I mean, it's probably not the best move if you're a semi-famous spiritual teacher who's trying to lead people towards a sense of balance/a great life and whatnot, but the fact of the matter is this, he isn't wrong, you know? Right-wing MAGA idiots do kind of suck. They're like literal parasites in this country. And for anyone with a decent ethical sense, it can be triggering and infuriating to see so many people fall into the trap of thinking that these people know what's best for the country. It's so glaringly obvious, that it's difficult not to want to just shout out, "You're a literal waste of space in every sense of the word and it makes me sad." Because it is sad, these people are destroying not only themselves, I mean, they don't vote for what's best for them, but they are destroying progress for millions of other people. So I see why Leo, who's entire "thing" is growth and progress, would be annoyed with people who are so against the human race moving forward, who are literally helping to facilitate our very extinction due to their own stupidity and greed. But it doesn't translate well when you have built up your image to not be someone who gets triggered about these things. Goes both ways. This stuff doesn't bother me, what bothers me is when he posts something like, "I got close to suicide" or something like that on a video, that worries me, because I value this community and if he is sick or dead, then this community will no longer exist. It's kind of like a selfish form of valuing someone. I get value from the space he allows for other people, and so I want him to be healthy and happy, but seeing as I don't know him personally and he has expressed a boundary multiple times over the years that he likes to have a bit of distance from his followers, I just let him do his own thing, unless the behaviour is really, really unusual, then I might speak up about it. But this is actually pretty normal for him, it seems. To get high on something, and either make an awakening video, or post a bunch of out of the blue blogs or weird pictures. My personal advice for him would be to wait until you're sober. Write it all up, sure, or take the picture, the video, etc, but just wait and see if you still agree with its vibe later on down the road. I say this as someone who used to smoke a lot of weed, or would sometimes browse the internet while drunk as a skunk - I don't do either anymore, but I would say things or do things that I would never say or do in a sober state, and it's like, once you do it, you can't really take it back - it's out there, or the pattern is set. And if you're a public figure and people have some weird expectation of you to behave in a certain way, sometimes it's not the worst thing in the world to entertain that for the sake of keeping your image clean. Expression is great, but if it comes at a cost, then it's best to put at least some personal boundaries on what you choose to show about yourself, and I don't think that if you're high that you'll know for certain where that boundary is - especially considering psychedelics remove those for you. Just my 2c. Take or leave.

Marriage - I think other people can get married if they want. Doesn't matter what sex, either. Straight, gay, trans, whatever. But for me personally, I like my freedom. I love the idea of pair bonding with someone, but not if it comes with a contract that prevents either one of us from ending it - if it doesn't work out in the long term. I view allowing other people the option to leave or stay to be very important. I want them to stay because they can choose to leave, not because there is a law preventing them, and that would cost a lot of money in order to remove. Divorce is expensive. I also don't like the idea that my partner has to get up in front of their entire family and say their vows, give me a kiss and some silly ring - that I will probably lose because I have a hard time holding onto jewelry - in order to prove to everyone that we know that our relationship is "legit". I hate that shit. Plus, rings to me, are uncomfortable. I like the idea of having my own personalized ceremony that means something special to me. I like the idea of a collaring ceremony, just for the couple, where the woman wears a thin gold or silver band around her neck that can be unlocked if the connection doesn't work anymore. It has the same spirit of marriage, but without the permanency and getting other people involved who have no business sticking their nose into my relationship. Plus, I have no emotional connection or desire for some big party or ceremony centered around just me - this is why I avoid birthdays as well - I like traditions where it is centered around everyone so that the focus isn't on my shit. That stuff weirds me out. Kids - Unless you are financially stable, genetically healthy and still viable, mentally sound, you and no one else should be bringing more people into this overpopulated world. The thing is, there is no ethical way to prevent stupid people from breeding. And in some cases, there is no access to contraceptives or sex education, or having large families is what is considered appropriate for that culture - but for people who have a choice in the matter and can think their options through, if you're not someone who has everything together in order to raise the best person possible, then you shouldn't be doing it. Life is rough. Children need the right circumstances to succeed in this world, to turn into healthy adults. We have enough dysfunction and genetically unsound people because evolution is no longer culling weaklings, so everyone is allowed to reproduce. But you can't ethically just force people to stop, either, so I don't know what the solution is for this, other than for people who can make intelligent choices for themselves, if they have the right morality, they will understand that we don't need more people on the planet. Unless your genes are so outstanding that actually creating another person would be a benefit to the human race, most people don't really need to be having kids. I have autism, bipolar, a bad heart and an autoimmune disease, plus I am in my mid-30's. I also, fortunately, don't really have the desire for children. None of these things deserve to be passed down to future generations. It seems cruel to have a child when they could end up having a mental disorder or disease that cuts their life. On top of that, I come from a dysfunctional family and am not fully healed from it. I get frustrated easily, I lack flexibility and I tend to worry about my needs first. I child absolutely deserves someone who is over these hurdles in life. It's fine to have these issues as a standalone, but once you add another dependent person into your world, if you can't give them the very best of you, how fucking fair is that? It's not. There are also many children in the world who would love to be adopted, who need a home, why aren't these valuable homes scooping these kids up? What is it that makes people think that their genetics are even worthy of creating the next generation of humans? My view is that until people start to actually think about these things, and take ethical approaches into who they are bringing into this crazy, underdeveloped and cold world, that we will eventually cause our own extinction. There won't be enough to go around. As it is, disaster in the next few generations for some of these poor and overpopulated countries is looming on the horizon. Just because it isn't here right now doesn't mean it won't be soon, and people seem to only think about what is happening for them right now and not about the future of mankind. On top of that, with what we have done to the planet, do we even deserve to go on as a species? What makes us more deserving than the animals that we destroy? We don't even care for our planet or our own species. Unless we can make changes to the way we do things, which I don't ever see happening, then I question the validity of humanity's right to even exist. Abortion - I am in the middle on this. I am pro-life in the sense, that if you can find a family for that baby who will adopt it, if you were just irresponsible and had the means to prevent the pregnancy from happening, that you should seek alternatives. There are a lot of families looking to adopt newborns. I had a friend in highschool who was too young to keep her baby and she did this. But I don't think that people should be banned from having abortions, even if I don't agree with them. Because I am not that person myself, I will never fully know what it is like to be in their shoes and so I don't have the right to tell them what they should be doing with their own body. There are also circumstances, like where the child would come out so disabled that the parent's life is essentially turned into that of a caretaker until they die, or where the mother could die if she keeps the child, to rape and incest and if you make laws preventing abortions from happening, then you're going to be killing people or forcing people to have children that they can't care for, or can't afford. When you make abortion laws, there will be dangerous underground abortions, women trying to do it on their own, or children being abandoned in odd places and you can only hope that someone finds them in time. There is a solution to this, that pro-lifers also, stupidly prevent from happening, which is allowing well funded and detailed sex education to youth in school, so that they understand their bodies, the ramifications of sex, how to prevent pregnancy and STD's, so they can make the right choice - and access to free contraceptives for any woman who needs them. When you give people the tools and the education to make proactive choices for themselves, most will take it, and this literally solves the abortion problem. Abortions would become a lot less common if education and contraceptives were made widely available. But what pro-lifers want to do is prevent people from getting the education they need, prevent them from getting the contraceptives to help them plan out their families, force them to keep the children, and then offer little to no help at all once these babies are born, and then you wonder why these children end up messed up when they are raised in poor households to mothers who never even wanted them in the first place. Can you imagine, being a child of a parent who didn't want you? That must be horrible.

I would never do something like this. You can't gauge compatibility from handing out a resume. The guy might look attractive, he might even call, but that feels like a recipe for accidentally inviting a weirdo into my life. Granted, to be completely honest, I have taken myself off the dating market permanently. I gave it a good month of thought, should I seek someone out in the future, or just remain single? And I've been single for so long, and have my own way of doing things, I love not having to follow in line with another person's plans, on top of that I'm getting older and I have some problems - both health and mental - that I feel would be disrespectful to ever bring into another person's life - that dating and relationships just don't seem like a feasible option. My views are that relationships should make life more connected and easier for a person and if I can't offer that to someone, then the loving thing to do would be to allow them to find someone who can do these things for them. But, assuming that I was actively looking - this would not be the way I would go about it. It takes me a little while to build attraction to someone, I need to get a general feel for their vibe, their essence, and this can take years. Any time I have randomly gone out of my way to allow a stranger into my life without any backstory into who they are, this has ended in incompatibility or abuse. Realistically, if I were to do everything over again, I would have dated my high school friend who had a crush on me back when I was young and started something with them. If I knew what I knew now. When you're young and flexible in life, it's easier to bring all the pieces together to build on something great, but as you get older, you get used to your routines and a certain way of life, it can be hard to change for someone even if you want to. Also, from what I know about guys, a woman handing a dating resume to them out in the open like that would be a turn off for many. Any time I have been the one to initiate a relationship, this has gone sour. Guys just do not like it when women try to take the lead in any way. They may say, "Oh yes, this makes things easier for us." But when you go and do that, it gives them the impression that you're desperate for them, and not that maybe you just kinda like them and want to speed things up. I've had warm connections go completely cold from taking that first step. It's best to let the guy decide who he is interested in, and allow him to chase you, the woman for a while until he "wins", for some reason this is what seems to make men happy. Nothing screams desperation more than handing out a literal job application to would-be suitors. It's taking the chase away from the guy, which makes a good chunk of what attracts them to you work. Also, when you hand out personal stuff like this to complete strangers, and then give them an open into your life, it allows abusers and predators to mold a personality to draw you into their web. You literally have no idea who you are approaching. Someone could go over your likes, your personality, your info, and try to recreate your dream person to lure you in, just to turn into a Jekyll and Hyde at the last minute. When you're too open with people right off the bat, without getting a feel for their character, this is a recipe for disaster on so many levels.

This is coming from someone who thinks that dog barks mean something extra special. Of course if you believe in something like that you don't want to hear someone else's experiences or to question if you're wrong. I'm telling you what happened to me when I got sucked into that nonsense, and what happens to people who use these things to try to create false narratives about their world. I mean, you could prove me wrong by offering a better explanation, but it seems to me like you want a safe echo chamber, which is fine, who doesn't want their reality to be mirrored in the way they prefer? Not really. You attracted someone who disagrees with your spiritual views, who has had experience with this line of thinking and that it did more harm than good. My intentions are pure - I don't want anyone to get stuck with this modality when it can backfire and create problems for people in the real world. When you look at LOA from the outside in, it looks like borderline narcissistic delusional fantasy land. And when you try to tell people that this stuff can really mess with you, and when you have experience to back it up, people who are too far gone don't want to see that. I observe people. Closely. I take note of not only what happens to people who get into this stuff, but the problems they have, the line of thinking they have, where it ultimately fits into their lives - and many of the people who get on board with this stuff are sick. And they get sicker when they add this to their worldviews. And when you try to point out flaws in this stuff, it's like, like any stubborn person who thinks they know better than you, they don't wanna hear it. Not much you can do about that, at that point the question begs - are people purposefully delusional? In some sense, probably yes. I mean, have you ever tried to tell a schizophrenic that their delusions are false? They get into a snit about it.

Yeah, I remember you getting into that a few years back, you must have gotten burned from it, too, and learned that there's probably more going on than LOA. What made me realize that LOA was fake was that there are people in the world who have little to no control over their lives. War refugees, victims of violence, women in the sex trafficking trade, people who deserve to have their dreams come true much more than someone like me and yet they are stuck in completely powerless positions in the world. If LOA was real, then the people who deserve it the most would be able to manifest the lives that they deserve. On top of this, my spiritual awakenings have never once pointed me towards the idea that LOA was a thing, in fact, when I added on things that I wanted for myself, it became a partition into the truth of God's nature. It was more like, you had to remove what you wanted, what you thought about yourself and the world and completely clean the slate and then whatever was left over from that was the awakening that you get. On top of that, these awakenings gave insight into a mixture of both free will and the lack thereof. One was given the illusion that they were doing things of their own volition, but it is all part of some grand plan outside of what most humans can access. So this tells me that the universe is going to grow in a way that it thinks is best for its purposes and less so what the individual wants for their own life. I did learn a lot about LOA, siddhis, and all that stuff and it's fun to use creatively, but if I were to get real honest with myself and throw out all the garbage and just focus on the purity of what I learned, it's that you kind of have to go through the things that you don't want, such as disease, poverty and death, and accept that, and then what remains under it all is the real deal. But adding onto "well I want this or this" like the world operated like a buffet or something, that's just adding on more hopes and ideals when that's exactly what you need to be working to get rid of to see what's in front of you. When I got into LOA hardcore, about a year and a half ago, it made me sick in the head. It made me think things about reality that weren't true. I would think everything was a "sign" of some sort and follow it like a puzzle, and I would create these grand narratives about what was happening to me, what I was bringing into my world, that ultimately fell apart when my disease progressed. It wasn't until I took a step back from all of that for about a year that I was able to untangle myself from it and to see reality clearly. I was able to hold onto my main awakenings, the ones where I actually found something genuine, and could see that there was a stark difference between a genuine awakening, where I removed my desires, and a psychotic awakening, where I was trying to control some sort of outcome. You literally can't control this stuff. Like the guy who thinks that dogs are barking to a certain frequency, that's a delusion. Dog barks are pretty random. They might have a few certain ways they bark that allow them to communicate with one another, but that isn't something from LOA, or some divine phenomenon. Animals just naturally have a small variant in how they vocalize, just enough to get basic intentions across. Once you start affixing certain meanings to things that aren't genuinely there, that's when you're swimming in dangerous mental waters, for sure. Tread carefully with this LOA stuff. Be sure that if you want to take it on, that you can drop it on a dime if it isn't working well for you, that you aren't basing a large portion of your life, your mental state, your beliefs on what is happening to you, on so called paranormal phenomenon. My advice is to approach spirituality from a less is more perspective, where you actively seek to remove desires for certain things, for certain situations happening in a particular way and get more used to just allowing what is naturally going to unfold, to happen in that manner. One could probably, if they are so inclined, vacillate between these two perspectives and see which one offers a more clear understanding of reality. I've noticed some people say, "Oh you're just not doing it right, and so and so." But most of these people still have not actively created for themselves the life that they want to the level that they are trying to manifest. It seems to be more like cherry picking, where certain things stand out, but don't ultimately move a person any closer, it just gives someone the illusion that they are making progress, like a hamster on a wheel. Like, that shit got me really fucking messed up. To the point where I was seeing "signs" everywhere, to where I was thinking really strange things were paranormal coincidences, and completely sidestepped perfectly normal phenomenon without looking into it to see if what I was experiencing was real or if I was just going crazy. You can literally build for yourself a narrative that seems so real, and so true and it can take you for the wildest of rides. Everything can line up in just the right way so that it's almost like divinity itself is feeding you that narrative, only for it to ultimately collapse under its own weight and you find yourself in a mental hospital trying to piece together some sense of genuine reality. Do not underestimate the mind's ability to create false realities. It can seem so real, you can fully convince yourself that you have more control than you do, and it can crumble right from under your feet in no time at all. This is how you end up with people who develop really strange belief systems. They can get very elaborate if a person has no way to test the validity of their reality, to the point where other people can get sucked into it as well. You can see the phenomena of how this works throughout human history. These stories can take on a life of their own if you don't set some boundaries down for how things are gunna work.

I don't believe in it personally. My experiences have lead me to believe there is already a plan in place in some form, and that it is selfish and ridiculous to assume that the universe moves all of that aside for little old you. People that get super into LOA, if you look closely enough at them, many have mental problems that lead them to believe that they are more powerful people than they really are, like schizophrenia, narcissism, psychopathy and the like. If you delve deep enough into the psychology of people like this, you find that for the most part, they don't attract what they're looking for beyond just more delusion. I like to use these concepts when creating stories, or if I am in a super unhealthy state of mind then I might be so stupid as to believe in the law of attraction, but as a much healthier person now, who actively chooses not to entertain illness of any form by cherry picking things that I think are happening to me, by making assumption about so-called signs and whatnot, I'm a much happier person. LOA - fun for fiction, not so helpful for dealing with the real world. I would say, go ask a survivor of war or extreme poverty what they think about the ability to manifest things into your life. It's kind of a kick in the face to anyone who lives in the world with extremely limited options. LOA is a first world phenomena, for sure. And kind of a borderline insulting one at that. Just my 2c, but if y'all wanna be delusional, have at it, no skin off my nose. Been there, done that. No thanks.

Just met you on a roof downtown Took shots until they kicked us out Just blinked and the sun went down I wish I could stick around Did twenty minutes really just go by? Part of me wants to miss my flight Maybe it's already over now So I'll keep runnin runnin to you The both of us had gotten home late the previous night and had to wake up early so that Matt could go to work. We sleepily rolled out of bed to start our routine. Bathe, dress, breakfast. When we were done, I climbed onto his wolf's back and he made his way through the now familiar neighborhood to Maya and Wyatt's. When we got there, we were brought inside and said our goodbyes, a hug and kiss, before Matt left on his own to resume work at the Broadview location. Wyatt had left earlier, as his main office in Heartford was on the other side of the city and it took longer to get there. When Matt left, Maya brought me over to her workspace in the corner of the livingroom and gave me a few supplies to start another project. "If you manage to keep with the pace you're at, I could perhaps use you as an artist's assistant in a few year's time." She told me. "It would be a way of paying me back for watching over you." "That sounds like a great idea, Maya!" I chimed. "I would love that." I sat down and took a small canvas that she had stacked up for me, and a book that contained instructions on how to create each brush stroke and began to study with her. As I worked on the wolf's anatomy, I had a few questions churning from my first encounter with Matt that had been on my mind for the past few days that I felt she could offer answers to. "So..." I started. "Do demons change forms sometimes... before or during... intercourse?" I added a perfect stroke for the eye and began to work my way to the muzzle, creating elegant little swirls for the nostrils of the nose. I thought of Matt's face. I thought of the time he caught me in his basement on his bridge at the waterfall and how it didn't feel that there was a man over me. "Oh, is this something you're thinking of trying?" Maya asked me and winked while taking a half-completed work of art and sitting down next to me. She reached over the table to grab a thin lined brush and some golden paint. "No, I was just curious about it, humans don't do these sorts of things... well, not the good ones anyways..." I responded. "I just wanted to know what your culture thought about it." "Sure." She stated plainly. "It's not uncommon. It can be a great way to bond with one another... you remain connected for a while." "Do you and Wyatt ever do that?" After finishing the muzzle, I began the single stroke that created the top of the head, the ears and the back. "Sometimes... If a cord has thinned out over the years, it can be a way to thicken it as well." I looked over at Maya to see her project. It was a pack of six wolves circling around a wild light boar. The wolves were baring their teeth and the terrified, fleeing boar had a set of glorious tusks. "That looks amazing!" I told her. "So, do you guys have other forms, or is it just men and wolves?" "We have three. Our demon form, which looks like a human. Our hunting form, which looks like a wolf, and sometimes when we are hunting a light bird, we will take the form of birds of prey. But the effort to catch light birds is generally not considered worth the energy. It takes a group to break down reality within a hunting room, and for an entire group to chase down a single light bird is hardly feasible, so we rarely use these forms. Some species of light bird flock together in migratory patterns, but with six demons flying around, going after them, we have learned there is no way to hunt in a unified manner and it just becomes a bundle of chaos, with birds flying in all sorts of directions and the men trying to keep track of the rest of the pack." Maya took a brush to her artwork and began to finish the legs and lower half of the hunting wolves. "Can you farm any of these animals?" "We farm some of them outside of the city. Mostly just light goats and chickens, for eggs, cheese, butter and milk. They don't require a lot of space or food to keep them. It's hard to bring the light back from source and so maintaining these farms is a delicate process. We would keep larger animals if we could." "What about dark oriented animals? Or the produce that you guys eat, that is dark oriented." "We gain no sustenance from dark oriented prey. There is no food value to them, nor is there food value to the produce that we use. It's strictly filler to add flavour and variety. Because our planet is created from a unified collective imagination, when we eat something that is dark oriented from our planet, we are essentially eating a piece of ourselves. The produce simply becomes a part of our miasma, but offers nothing in return. It would be like eating something from yourself that your own body produces. The light, however, is an energy source that we can use as fuel." "Do female wolves hunt or is it just the men?" "Just the men. They are faster and stronger, and are more connected to the yin chaos than females are. We have an equal workplace, where every demon has the option of contributing in any way that they choose, except for hunting. This is strictly male dominated. You need to have a license for it and you need to pass a test that you are a capable packmate. The reason being is that it takes precious energy to deconstruct the reality in the hunting room, to catch and make a kill, and only the fittest and most competent hunters are allowed access to the miasma where migratory prey frequents." Maya finished her artwork and stood up to get a good look at it from a distance before setting it on a designated shelf to dry. I had made my way to painting the paws of the wolf, and was having a hard time with the details. It would take me many tries before I managed to make another decent foot. I would paint over the mistake in red, wait a few minutes before retrying the golden calligraphy movement. "Maya?" I asked. "What does my cord look like? Is it a strong one?" "Well..." She admitted. "It fluctuates a bit more than the average cord, from what I've seen. At times it looks as though the both of you have a very strong connection, and then at other times it seems a bit thinner. It takes time to build a properly working lock and key. Years. I wouldn't worry about it, especially considering your differences. Just enjoy the process." "You're right. Thank you, Maya." She smiled at me and nodded, then went into her kitchen to bring us both something to eat. When she got back I had curled up on her couch and fallen asleep, making up for lost time from the previous night. When Matt arrived at the restaurant the first thing he had to manage was Sophia, who had gotten there a half an hour before him. She brought Matt into the back room, which still contained all of the items from the previous nights adventure sitting on the desktop. "What the fuck is this?" She asked. "What do you think it is?" He asked. "I can smell you in here!" Sophia glared, grabbing a stapler and tossing it at Matt's head, who casually ducked out of the way. "You brought someone in here and you fucked them on my desk, you fucking bastard!" "I fucking love my little gutter rats, Sophia..." Matt chuckled. "Could you blame me for that?" "What are you talking about?" Sophia was confused. "I like making them squeak, you know?" She started to catch onto what he was getting at. "You didn't!" Sophia was completely floored. "I did." Matt grinned at her, she was caught in his game. He walked over to the end of the room and picked up the stapler, placing it gently back on the desk. "So that's what that strange smell is! You went against neutrality!" Sophia, at this point, wasn't even upset. She was alarmed that he had done something that no other demon had managed to do. It wasn't normal. She didn't know how to react to him knowing that he had been with something completely foreign to her. "How?" She questioned, tossing the vegetable into the trash can next to her desk, and handing Matt the bowl, whisk, and bottle of oil. "Take this, I think these are yours..." "The Mother gave her to me." He explained, grabbing the items. "The cord was an accident. I didn't intend for it to happen, but it did and it's good, you know?" Matt looked her in the eyes, speaking in a serious tone. "Now, I uh, I'm telling you this as a warning Sophia... I don't want you snooping into my life, getting involved in any way with my partner, spreading this information around, or doing anything that is going to harm my connection. If you try, even once, I'm going to have you removed from my restaurant. You're done." "Once it gets out there, how will you save face?" She asked. "Look, Sophia... We got off on a bad start, you know?" Matt replied, easing his tone down a little while being completely honest and vulnerable with her. "I'm sorry that things didn't work out between us. It just wasn't the right connection. No demon would be the right connection. You, uh, you developed feelings for the one man who can't reciprocate and I'm sorry for that. I wanted to, you know? To have a partnership with someone of my own kind, but that's not what was in store for me. I know you took it personally when my lock didn't open for you. You're beautiful and any man would be lucky to have you, but that man isn't me and you shouldn't punish me for things that I can't control. Do you understand? I'm gunna head out, I wanna make sure my station is in good shape before my shift starts. It was nice talking with you..." Matt walked out of the office, gently closing the door behind him and leaving Sophia alone with her thoughts, and with the scent from the night before to remind her that Matt was not going to become a willing victim of her behaviour. Matt returned to his station and wiped everything down, took inventory of the meat in stock and checked all of his tools to make sure he had what he needed. When he was done with this, he sat down on a bar stool and waited for his day to start. Before long, everyone pooled in and the shift began. This day was very similar to the previous one. He worked on the stove, while order after order piled in, avoiding is co-workers during his breaks until the end of his shift. He cleaned up his area, let Sophia know that he was leaving, and headed back home on the passenger train with some leftovers to take for us to eat later in the evening. He picked me up from Maya and Wyatt's, brought us both home, made our meal and we sat in his dining space for a while. The food was, as usual, absolutely fantastic. It was a rare meal, considering that demon wolves don't hunt wild birds very often. A light pheasant that was cooked in fruits and various herbs, seasoned to absolute perfection. After dinner, I set my plate down on the table in front of the couch and decided now would be as good of a time as ever to discuss with him the events that took place on the day that we first met. "Matt, there have been some things running around in my head that I wanted to discuss with you..." I admitted to him. Matt turned around to look me square in the eyes. "What is it?" He asked, setting his empty plate down next to mine. "When I first met you, when I manifested all of that water in the sleep room down in the basement... I was... wondering..." I didn't know how to ask him the question. "When the door busted open and I ran out and... you caught me on the waterfall... you weren't in a man's form, were you? I couldn't really see, there was so much water coming down all around us. But I remember when you chased me through the house and I could hear you behind me, you didn't sound like a man." "Oh... I, uh, no... I wasn't." He looked at me with concern and confusion. "Would you like to discuss that night, is there something that's bothering you?" "Yeah. I... well... I spoke with Maya about this and she said that demons don't culturally have a problem with shifting forms, but for a human that's a very taboo thing to have experienced." I looked at the ground, rubbed my nose anxiously and then clasped my hands together. "In my human culture, things of that nature are rooted in deviancy and abuse." "Oh, I, uh... I... I didn't know." Matt confessed, slipping on his words. "I am so sorry for everything that happened that night... I'll tell you... well, um, you, you wanted me sexually and I didn't stop it... You reminded me so much of Violet before I knew anything about you. And when you poured out of the room like that, I... I was afraid that you would get away from me and I felt disrespected. Like, you'd opened something latent in me and then decided to fucking run away." He swallowed heavily, running a hand through his hair. "But I shouldn't have done what I did, you know? I didn't know that those five hundred years alone had gotten to me in that way. I would never willingly do something like that to you, I wasn't myself." He looked down to meet my eyes and reached over to take my face into his hand and brought it to match his gaze. "But such things aren't wrong here in regards to your concern. I'm not a mindless animal with the brain the size of a small fucking fruit. I am a demon man. You know? Everything is the same ingredient no matter what shape I'm in." Matt stood up and changed into his hunting form. When a demon does this, they revert back into the miasma that they are created from and they temporarily look like a ball of dark smoke. Then through manifestation, they rearrange their shape into either a humanoid demon or a black wolf. "You don't have to feel that you did something wrong because of my actions. And if um, if something like that ever came up and you did want to try it again in... that way... that would be okay, too, you know? Don't, don't feel wrong about yourself because of my shape, okay?" He gave me a strong look, with his deep blue wolf's eyes. "Reality isn't so black and white." I nodded, speaking softly, wanting to change the subject. "Okay... I feel reassured... also, Matt?" "Yes?" "I have another question..." "What's that?" "Well, you know how you said that you feed from the light and that I am representative of the light and you are of the dark, like yin and yang?" I asked. "Yeah?" "So why don't you eat me? Why am I not your food?" "Oh!" Matt laughed. "You are from a light source which is higher up in density, but as your soul is lowered back down into a heavily physical reality, you are given free will, thus you're grey oriented. Still grey; even here. And you remain grey for a few more densities. This, um, this density is right after your time on Earth, so you do lose your memories but you retain your emotions. Things kind of sluff off as you go through the different levels. If you, uh, if you were to continue on the band of souls back to your light source, you would be purified and given the memories of all of your previous lives. In which case you would then be light. You're technically a light oriented soul, but due to your place in the energetic hierarchy, you're not fully light right now. But, you are to me... I view you this way." "So... if I were higher up in this hierarchy then I would be a source of food for you?" "Yes. You would. But demon kind doesn't reach that level, we're a heavier energy." "What would you do to me? If I were your food?" Matt's eyes looked anxious. He didn't want to share with me his more aggressive demon side unless it was in a controlled environment. His hunting and his desire for killing and slaughtering the animals of the light were a part of him that he had hoped he could partition away from me forever. "Well..." He spoke honestly. "I would chase you down in a pack of six. Two on each side, and three in the front. We would circle you. You would hear our howls in the pitch black darkness, but you wouldn't be able to see a thing. At the right time, I would make the kill, you know? I would, uh, I would go right under your body and go for the neck. Grab you there... you would bleed out. I would drink from it as it spilled into my mouth. But I might still physically want you, too. If it were you, then I might... I would take your body sexually as I felt your life drain in my grip. And then when I was done with you and you were dead, I would take you into a special hunting room and chop you up with my packmates. I'd take my favourite portion of you... your heart... I'd, uh, I'd bring it home, add it to a pastry dish... and eat it. Still alone in my mansion without a partner, with just the taste of you in between my teeth and the memory of your body on my cock... You don't ever want to see that side of me... You wouldn't love me anymore, you know?" He turned back into a man and sat at the edge of the couch, tapping the ends of his fingers on his knees. I looked to see if he was joking. Not at all. "How do you know that I wouldn't love you anymore?" I inquired. "Could you stand it, to know how much I love it? To snuff out the light in between my jaws. Their little screams are music to my ears. Chasing them through the pitch black smoke. I live for it, it's such a thrill, you know? You would see that I'm not just your sweet partner, but something also intangibly violent underneath all of that." "I forget that in some ways we're very different... you look so much like a human..." I bit the inside of my lip. Things were getting heavy. "Yeah... we are. That can be a good thing, you know?" He smiled at me. "Humans are just as violent as demons." He continued. "But it's less choreographed; you repress it and pretend that it isn't a part of your psychology and so it finds itself manifesting in unruly ways. Your people deny your intrinsic nature and you suffer greatly for it." I agreed with him. "That's true... We don't even hunt things that are free, we enslave innocent creatures. There's no sport to it. Humans make things suffer in unimaginably horrible ways and then we pretend that we are good and decent. We deny that we've done harmful things to others and we ignore that part of humanity until it boils over. And then when it does we slaughter and enslave our own kind in the name of arbitrary purification from the hideous so-called other." I had more questions. "...Matt?" "Hmmn?" "Our orientations are like two trains in the night that almost collide in a brutal way, but they just miss each other and everything manages to stay on track." I mused. "Do you think you would ever show that side of yourself to me?" "I could... Someday... perhaps. In some certain way, when you're more open to it..." As I wondered what he meant by that, Matt thought of how I could accept him fully as a hunter and as a demon. If I would ever allow him to come up to me and to willingly place my neck into his open jaws and stay there until the nature of his body gave permission for me to separate from his need. What would that mean for him and for me, if that barrier could be broken and accepted, tamed and embraced? "My good girl, please let me devour you..." He thought to himself. "Give yourself to every part of me... don't run from me anymore. Don't feel any fear for who and what I am; for whatever shape I may choose to take...let's be devious in good spirit." He sighed. "In time... I'll warm you up to it I'm sure, and I'll convert you." "More questions..." I pressed on. "How do you view me? What do you think of me? This isn't a very even relationship. You're so much older than me and you know this society in and out. I'm just a stranger here." "I view you... as..." He sucked on his upper fang, and thoughtfully addressed me. "As a child in some sense. Ultimately innocent when to comes to the reality of things. And as a pet... I care for you and tend to you... You are my partner. My love. My obsession, my redemption, my passion... and my salvation... And I can be your rock because I have all of these years on you, but you must know that I'm still a broken man in some regards. It's going to take time for me to realize that you're here. That I have you. Truly, you know? That this is permanent. That this isn't a fleeting one-sided experience like it was with all the others." "Would it have been any human who could cord with you?" "Yes. And no." Matt admitted. "The Mother gave you to me for a reason, and I trust her judgement that destiny had a hand in this. It would have been anyone initially, if the lock opened for the right girl, and it's not always something that a demon can consciously control... it just happens. We meet someone, and it opens. But... if I had a lineup of every human's history that I've come across, I would have picked you out personally, you know?" "Why me?" "Because you were a wounded girl..." Matt spoke softly, almost inaudibly. "And your soldier is a wounded son." It’s no wonder you got demons Everything you did is coming... It’s no wonder you got demons I can’t help you if I’m weaker No wonder you’re so stubborn Nobody ever made you dig deeper No wonder you got demons Everything you ever did is coming back around No wonder... Nobody ever made you dig deeper No wonder... Sharpest swords Darkest softest wounds Hardened world Your soldiers are wounded sons

I like to look in places where muse has already struck, so old memories from childhood, old dreams, and if I can build something from that, that's great. I will also look for people that inspire me. I don't really want to invade their life or anything like that, but if they have a general persona that I find appealing, then I will gain a lot from that just through osmosis. I like to have a few of these inspiring people around to cycle through - one may have a general demeanor, one may be sexually interesting, one may have a talent that I want to understand better. I like to use sexuality as well, so if there's something I have not tried then this can be a vehicle for exploration. Music is great for this - just spending a few hours a day listening to inspiring music and going over some ideas is great. Basically, inspiration tends to just hit out of the blue, but you can kind of feel around for it in the dark by bringing things to you that you find appealing.

That's a good question. I used to not really be very into sex, only masturbating maybe once every other month, but in the past few weeks I've been feeling especially horny for some reason. It started around the time I got a cold, and I began to write my own world to imagine to cope with the effects of being sick - but the more I got into it, the more I visualized the character I was creating for myself, the more sexual I've become. This tells me that at least for women, sexuality goes hand in hand with creativity. Maybe for men, too, if they can learn to use it in that way. Now I feel sexual maybe every day, to every other day, and it's quite nice. I enjoy it. I remember, last year, I had gotten into a manic spell - which is what I'm on the lookout for right now as hyper sexuality can be a symptom of this coming on - and it felt like there were paranormal experiences tied in with my sexuality, like as I brought it up from the bottom to the top, it was like I had more understanding of what was happening just outside of reality. But whatever that was kind of co-mingled with my mental illness and I ended up really getting freaked out and having to go to the hospital. It felt like there was a living energy within me, as though it was kundalini perhaps. I was at the time interacting with Kali and my partner on the other side - but this could be delusion. It's still hard to know sometimes with these things. Sexuality, though, if you can harness it, I believe it can be a gift. I've been trying to be less repressive against myself and my desires and with this comes a plethora of new ideas that seem to hit me out of the blue everyday, but it's completely fueled by the desire not just for sex, but for the closeness and companionship that comes with it. It's something I've had to throw away as a real possibility due to illness, but being able to express it in a fantasy setting has been extremely healthy for me. I don't know if it is the same for men, but for me my sexual desire is linked closely with pair bonding with another person, really getting to know them very intimately and loving all of them and being loved in the same way, so perhaps the reason why sexual desire never ends isn't just because of hormones, but also because we are wired to want to share our most intimate selves with that of another. It's love. If love is the meaning of life, then sexuality can be a gateway to that. You're literally sharing your body with another person to make them happy, it's mutually gratifying pleasure. Through sex, you can actively say things to another person that you can't through words, your actions, your touch, how you hold them, how you give yourself to them, it can mean so much, and for a time it allows people to actually genuinely be one with another being. Just my 2c. But if you have an addiction to it, you could probably seek to cut back, like if it's making it so that the stimuli isn't as good - over indulgence, you know? Maybe, instead of just watching porn you could seek other avenues to express your sexuality?

Hey, I've been reading through this thread since its inception, and have been on the fence about whether or not I should respond, the reason being that despite my after-death experiences, I am still quite afraid of death and so it felt to me that reassuring another person about these things would come across as hypocritical. I've decided to tell you about my experiences to help ease your transition. So, I have an autoimmune disease - the doctors could not find an exact name for what was going on with me, but they came to the conclusion that it was autoimmune related, as well as an irregular heartbeat. About every year and a half to two years, it flares up again and it creates problems in an organ in my body, to my scalp, to just general all around sickness, to chronic fever and so forth. These episodes have caused me to work through a lot of death related anxiety, as I don't exactly know how much time I have or when this illness will strike something important, such as my heart. In 2016, when my illness first flared up, and was at its worst, I had to go through a period of extreme self introspection. I had not heard of spirituality around this time and knew nothing about God. But I wanted to be ready emotionally and mentally for what was to happen. So what I did, is I spent many grueling hours going over anything that seemed out of sync with who I wanted to be as a person, anything that seemed disingenuous, pathological or anxiety-producing, I looked into it all. By the time I got done with this, it was about three months into this project, the real issue - my death anxiety, surfaced. I realized that I had to actually face these fears head on, and I did. I had on a song with a beautiful picture of the mountains in blue mist, when I looked at this picture, I went through my fear instead of skirting around it - and I became very present in the current moment. As I looked over the detail of this image, I began to feel absolute appreciation for its beauty. In that moment, God appeared. It was just behind all of my fears and traumas that life had placed over me, and it was as clear as day, and it said to me, "I exist". It was as if I always knew it was there, but had just been blind to it. It was so pure, and loving and genuine. The awakening continued. I learned that God is evolving to bring to Earth its love and perfection, that evolution is moving through a series of various offshoots in order to maximize the potential for the universe to witness itself, while aware of itself through its creations. There is a plan for everything and everything is in its proper place, this includes all of the plants and animals on this planet, everything moves through a series of divine feedback loops in order to build upon this. We are like God's bloom, it's flower, to witness itself, and this can be done through love and through the arts. As the awakening continued, through the song below I was able to hear angels in the music. It was like everyone who ever lived, who currently lives, and who will live, animals included, were all praising me for making this discovery. They were all reaching towards some singularity that was made out of pure love in the very center, as if each soul was a partition of the whole, all connected, all perfectly placed. Nothing out of order, and that my entire life and the pain that I went through was designed to allow me to awaken to this truth. It felt like stepping off of a carnival ride, and you could still feel the movements of the ride despite not being on it anymore, as though time and space were forever moving forward, but that I had stepped away from this - and what I realized was that I was always there, my soul, my awareness had always been there, forever, and that there was no death and that there was no birth. There was just Now. It was like a chorus of angels were singing their praises for me. And then the awakening dissolved. Altogether, the whole thing lasted about a half an hour with a period of 2 hours afterglow. I've had many more awakenings, ones with different entities, I've met my soul family and partner from the other side, I've done some research here and there on near death experiences as well, and this is what people generally say when they pass on - this is what to expect: You will pass away, and your awareness will move out of your body from the top of your head. Some people see in 360 degrees. You will either immediately flow upwards into a tunnel that will move you into the light, or you will stay in a waiting room for a short period of time that is pitch dark, from there someone will either come get you, or you will eventually see the light grow larger and you will move into it and become one with it. Around this time, the light will either orchestrate your life review, previous family members might be there, or religious figures/deities, each after death experience is uniquely tailored to you, the individual. As you go through the after life review, you will see everything, like a hologram from start to finish, where you see not only your own actions, but those around you and how you influenced them. Some people go to heaven and remain there, and there are different descriptions of heaven, some people decide to return to earth - it is said that we have the free will to return, so we can choose to relax in the afterlife for a while. It is similar to earth in how it looks, but is more "transparent" in that it isn't physical, and you can manifest what you desire much easier. Some people say they go to a hell realm. There is a way out of this, anyone who has gotten stuck there prayed. They prayed either to the light, to Jesus or to God, and asked for forgiveness. These experiences are very rare, but if they happen, that's the way out of that space is to pray. My belief is that because we are connected to God, either as a partition or as the whole, that we have a say in what we want to create for ourselves in the next life. If I were in your shoes, which in some way I am due to my own chronic illness, I would go through the journey of self evaluation, and also of writing what you wish for yourself in the next life. What do you want to create? I believe that part of the reason that we are here on earth is to develop a desire for what we want in the next step of existence. That the struggles that we face, the hardships, are put there so that we have some polarity, so we can appreciate what we get in the next life. I am so sorry that you are going through this, no one deserves to die young. Just know, that - I wish I could give to you a transfer of my experiences - just know that there are good things waiting. It absolutely isn't the end when it comes to physical death. The prophecy is real. God exists. Life goes on. Love is true. There is a plan. It includes you. And you will understand and know more about your role here and there once you transition.

Oh, my tiny human At 05:08 you break me apart again The space-time continuum Buckles and bends around your every twist and turn I can barely remember Life before You came crashing in on that day Crazy, beautiful you Blind me like the dawn After ashes fell on Pompeii Crazy, beautiful you Matt and I had a few more days to ourselves before he started work. During this time, he went hunting with Wyatt and brought home some buffalo portions for us to enjoy. It took two teams to take it down and Wyatt was the one who made the kill. Matt came home with some ribs, sirloin and two ears to bake just for himself. He also signed a contract over a few drinks with Wyatt after the hunt that would allow the restaurant to be returned to him within six months. I had spent these days working through my trauma and felt ready to leave it all behind. The one thing that was bothering me was that I would never get to see my family again, and knowing that they were out there somewhere and that I was stuck here made me sad. But Matt's good company mostly made up for this and it was a joy to be around him. I had distanced myself from him physically, not wanting any more gifts from The Mother until I felt that I had worked through what she had given me, but we stayed connected emotionally and Matt had no problem giving me the space I asked for. When the morning of his first day came around, we got up very early to get ready. It was still almost pitch black outside. We had a bath together, ate breakfast and I got dressed, hiding myself in the jacket that I still had with me before making our way to Maya and Wyatt's. I rode on Matt's back as he zipped through the streets. Matt wanted to leave early enough so that most demons would still be asleep when he brought me outside. He didn't want anyone to see me, and raced towards Wyatt's as quickly as he could. When we got there, he knocked on the door and Maya opened it, greeting us and then quickly ushered the both of us inside. She showed me the layout of the house while Wyatt and Matt went over what his responsibilities would be for the day. Matt would be in the back kitchen, cooking up the meat orders, and would be doing this for a few months until transitioning to a managing position. Once they had gone over everything together, Matt came over to hug me goodbye before taking off down the street with Wyatt. The two made their way to the train station, where they took a passenger train into the city and got off on Locust on Broadview to start their day. Wyatt spent the morning getting Matt resituated, but he normally worked at the Heartford location. "Your house is beautiful." I told Maya, looking through her artwork and the light animal taxidermy. "Thank you dear." Maya chirped. "Is there anything I can get for you?" "No, but thank you. Matt and I had a big meal before we came. So how do you do this style of artwork?" I inquired. All of the art that she did had the theme of wolves hunting down light animals, and it looked like every line was done with calligraphy in mind. As though there was a technique for each line in the anatomy of these paintings that was done in the same way every time, and with a single graceful brush stroke. "Oh! This could be an interesting lesson for you." She told me. "Part of our demon culture is that we take hunting very seriously, as you must know by now." I nodded. "And we love to share stories of our kills through the visual arts. We also carry out instructions on how to hunt each animal through these pictures. I get a lot of commissions for hunting scenes and it makes up the bulk of my work." She continued to explain. "We have a style of artwork that we have perfected over hundreds of thousands of years. We have a single brush stroke for each part of the animal and for ourselves, and this commemorates the grace and fluid movements of both the hunter and the prey." She took down a small picture off of one of her shelves and handed it to me to inspect. It showed a tiny scene with a light deer running gracefully ahead of a pack of three wolves. The designs were very stylized and swirly. "We use red backgrounds with gold paint. You will see these colour combinations used a lot. The red represents the blood of The Mother and the gold reminds us that we are her chosen people." I thought back on the colour scheme that Matt had for his bedroom and on the food train as well, and could see the same theme being used in her livingroom. "I see. How interesting." I handed the picture back to Maya, who placed it back on her shelf. "So how have you been? With all of your memories returned?" Maya inquired. "Good. Very good..." I said, avoiding the subject, looking closely at the bust of a light deer. I found it interesting that they had no discernable features beyond their shimmering, radiant glow and their coal black eyes. It was like having a room full of animal-shaped lamps. They were very beautiful, with an almost porcelain-like smoothness. "You like these?" Maya asked me. "Wyatt hunted them... He likes to take the heads home when he finds especially beautiful specimens and has them mounted as trophies." "I love them. You have an amazing culture. I would love to learn more about it." "In time... Would you like to paint something with me? I can show you the proper brush strokes. You can take one home for Matt." "I would love that. Thank you." Maya went to collect her painting supplies and we sat down together and she spent the day showing me each motion for every anatomical portion of the wolf. After a few tries, I would paint over the canvas and practice again. After a few hours of this, I had a nice looking picture that I felt was worthy enough to give to my partner. As we worked together on our paintings, I asked Maya about Wyatt. "So how did you two meet?" "It was Matt who introduced us." She explained to me. "I was a frequent customer of their restaurant many years ago and finally I just had to know who the face was behind that fantastic food. It was Matt. We went on a date at my request, but, as you know about him, he wasn't attracted. So he set me up with Wyatt and we very quickly built a connection and the rest is history." "Oh wow, you and Matt dated?" I said, concentrating on painting my lines. I was having trouble with the single stroke that created the wolf's feet, there were a lot of twists and turns that you had to do with your hands to make it look like a detailed little paw. "Just the one date..." Maya reassured me. "I tried to set him up with clients, I meet a lot of people in my line of work, and it never worked for him. I couldn't understand why. Now I know. That looks good!" I had finally painted a decent looking paw. "Thanks!" When Matt and Wyatt got to the Broadview location, Wyatt brought Matt into the kitchen, fitted him with an apron, and gave him some gloves and a cap to cover his hair. "It's been a while, you know?" Matt mused, while putting on a glove. "Yeah." Wyatt said. "We kept everything the same. There's no use fixing something if it isn't broken. So, we start at noon, you'll work until ten and we close around nine. We spend the last hour cleaning up. Be sure to keep your station spotless before your shift is over. You know the drill, man." "Yeah. Gotcha." "This should give you about two hours to get everything set up. If you need time to go through everything, make sure it's to your liking, have at it, man." Wyatt left his friend in the kitchen and headed back out of the hallway, walking a bit further down to the back of the building to spend some time in the manager's office located in the far corner. This is generally where Sophia spent her time and it used to be Matt's office years ago, but Wyatt decided he would spend the day there and would put Sophia out in the kitchen for a day. He hoped that the two of them would get along until he was able to transfer her to another location. Matt walked around the kitchen, inspecting its cleanliness and making sure everything was pristine. The kitchen was a basic off white colour with a white stone tiled floor, and it was set up where each specialty cook had their own station with the correct tools for the types of food they made. The chefs would run about ten plates at a time, and the entire meal was cooked all at once at these different stations. There were five of them. One for meat, pastas, vegetables, desserts, and drinks. When a person ordered their meal, it would be printed out on six slips of paper. The cooks would each get one and they would clip it on a thin bar right above their stations for easy visual access. Every stove pit was numbered according to the correct table. When the dish was cooked, it would be rotated around the room to be plated and then set on a table in the center where it was given it's last identification tag for the waiters to come and take to the appropriate table. When the dish went around the room, the chef would call out, "Plate six, or plate three!" before passing it on. There were five chefs in the kitchen, two dishwashers and two assistants, who would gather up the supplies needed and distribute them to the appropriate station, pass out food slips, and put the plated meals in the center of the room to be taken to the customer. After walking around the kitchen and getting a feel for his environment, Matt went to his station. Station one. This is where the meat was cooked. He checked the kitchen's cooling cellar and found his designated shelves where different types of meat were organized according to species and cut and memorized where everything was. He went over all of his tools. Knives, spatulas, oils, seasonings, clay pans, and checked to make sure that the stove pits were fully cleaned out. When everything was organized to his liking, he took a bar stool and sat down to wait for the rest of the crew to arrive. Everyone spilled in, one by one. Matt only recognized two faces. Josh and Sophia. Josh was a smaller male demon, about 6.5 feet who sported a buzzcut and had full sleeve tattoos of traditional hunting scenes all across his arms. He ran the baking section of the restaurant and was very efficient. He could run many different types of dishes at once and was extremely valuable to the team. He was always an upbeat guy, with a loud, jovial laugh and a great sense of humour. Josh, upon seeing Matt, ran over to give his old boss a hug and tried to play catch up, but Matt wasn't interested in having any long conversations with anyone and gave Josh short, terse answers to any questions he had, especially pertaining to his opened lock. When everyone got there, Wyatt returned and introduced Matt to the team, explaining that he would be taking over this location soon and that he was the original owner. Everyone knew of him. He was famous. When Sophia saw Matt, she glared daggers, unable to keep her eyes off of him. He was someone that she never wanted to see again. And yet there he was, about ready to take over her job, and with an opened lock to boot! When noon hit, the kitchen came alive. Order after order spilled in and before long, Matt was working all ten of the stove pits, moving different pans higher or lower, turning the meat, stirring, and adding spices at just the right time. It almost looked like he was playing a complicated instrument with the way he ran the stove. He also kept two roasts and a meatloaf slow cooking in the oven below. Sophia straightened up her outfit and walked over to him, honing in on her prey. "Matt." She spat. Matt ignored her, not taking a second to look up from his cooking. "What are you doing back here?" Silence. "Matt. I'm speaking to you." "Cooking. That's what I'm doing here, you know? Plate four!" He called, sending over a steak to the next station. "I noticed that your lock was open..." She continued to instigate. "I feel sorry for the sad creature who ended up with you. Were you even able to get it up this time?" Silence. Matt stirred some sauce into a pan of square-cut light deer chunks before pouring the finished dish into a flat bowl. He sniffed in mild irritation. "I guess not..." She laughed to herself. "Still bringing those gutter rats home?" "Yeah..." Matt entertained her bullying. He noticed her key was still closed. "I fucking love gutter rats... Plate two!" He called, setting the deer chunks off to the side. "Figures." Sophia snorted. She got close and sniffed him to see if she could get an idea of who he was with. No scent. "Some things never change." "You know, Sophia." Matt said, sucking on an upper fang. He was starting to get annoyed with her. "It doesn't matter what you fucking say to me, what you fucking think about me, you know? In a few months I'm taking your fucking job. You can't even fucking fire me, now get the fuck out of my space. Plate nine!" She gave a quiet snarl and left him alone. Matt was already devising a way to get even. He was generally a well mannered guy but if you tried to bully him then he would often find ways of passive-aggressively sticking it to you. He didn't do this very often, but when he did, he usually won. Matt worked hard his first day. The restaurant was always packed and today was no exception. He spent his two breaks and lunch actively avoiding his co-workers, most of whom had been trying to get to know him, and completely ignored Sophia, who left him alone for the rest of the day but tried to let him know through many frustrated glances that she was not happy about his presence there. The fact that he had a cord and she didn't rubbed salt in her wounds. She both hated Matt and wanted him badly and he couldn't care less for her, so she felt the need to take him down a notch because she couldn't have what she felt she deserved. He had corded and she hadn't, and once one is created there's no turning back. And there wasn't a damned thing she could do about it. He was a taken man. When the day was over, Matt spent an hour cleaning up his station and then went to go put away his apron, gloves and cap in his locker in the break room before letting Wyatt know that he was finished with his shift. Matt calculated the time it would take to get back to Maya's and the time it would take to return to Broadview. He wanted to bring me here to have a tour while everything was closed before taking me home. Wyatt would leave around ten thirty. By the time he got back to Broadview with me, it would be around eleven thirty and no one would be left in the restaurant. Perfect. He left the building and sat down outside across the street to wait for the passenger train to take him back to the station right outside of town. As he waited, he stared at the large lake that the restaurant overlooked. Van Elluin Lake. The yang-oriented light source was positioned right over the water and illuminated a small portion of it. The city lights reflected in its surface like a mirror. Beautiful. The bodies of water in the demon world were as red as blood and were in fact considered to be the blood of The Mother herself. The passenger train arrived and stopped. Matt got on, sitting in front so that he could get off as quickly as possible. He felt good, but tired. He stared out of the window as city lights flashed by and was lost in thought. He didn't feel that the restaurant belonged to him anymore and it felt foreign to be working there. He wanted to come back later that evening and do some things that would make him feel as though the space still belonged to him. Matt had a territorial streak to him. It's one of the things that made him so good at manifesting new rooms in his mansion. To manifest a room, you need to command a sense of ownership over that space, and this was something that was instinctual to him. If he didn't feel that he owned a space that he felt rightfully belonged to him, he would take the appropriate steps to reclaim it. After twenty minutes, the train stopped right outside of the residential area. He got off, walked across the bridge and then turned into a wolf and made his way back to Maya's. He would just miss Wyatt coming home if he got there soon. And if he continued to run with me on his back instead of taking the train into the city, then he would get to Matt's Place by the time it was completely empty. Maya and I spent the day working on art and she showed me how demons cooked and manifested fire. By the time Matt got to her home, we had already worked on a few pictures and made two meals together. We sat on the couch talking, after having just washed the dishes, when we heard a knock at the door. I ran to the door to open it and Matt was there. "Matt!" I leapt into his arms and he hugged me tight. He smelled so good. Like first class food, sweat and grit. "Matt, Maya showed me how to make traditional artwork and taught me a few cooking techniques!" "Let me, uh, let me see what you made." I showed him the tiny canvas that depicted my first hunting wolf and he took it into his hand and gave it a serious look. "This is pretty good for a first try, you know?" "I used to draw sometimes back on Earth..." I told him. "I can see that." Matt looked over at Maya, who was still sitting on her couch, smiling at us. "Maya. Thank you. If you need anything at all you fucking let me know, we're gunna head out." "Of course." Maya said. "See you both tomorrow." I put on Maya's oversized jacket, and followed Matt out the door. "I'm ready!" Matt turned into a wolf and I climbed onto his back, wrapping my arms around his neck and digging my feet into his sides. "Before we go home, I thought I would, uh, take you to my place on Broadview. Give you a tour. If you wanna go, that is, you know? What do you say?" He threw the idea out, giving me a choice. I agreed to go with him. The taste of what I saw a few days ago while on the train left me hungry to know more about what his life outside of the house was like, and the city of Van Bien was so colourful and alive that I couldn't resist getting another chance to visit it. "Great!" He said, running off in the direction of the city. I clung onto him for dear life for about forty minutes before we got to Locust on Broadview. When he stopped, I noticed the lake that the restaurant overlooked. I had not seen it before as it was on the other side of the train when I had my tour. The blood red water looked kind of eerie and so I was eager to get inside. The building was a solid white, with equally white ivy-like vines growing all along its front and sides. The words "Matt's Place" were written in big, bold golden letters, but I couldn't read it as I still didn't understand their language. I recognized the aquarium that spanned from the very top of the front windows to the bottom. The restaurant was closed and everything was dark inside, but the tanks were still lit up and so you could kind of see the interior of the restaurant from the street. Matt turned into a man and placed his hand over a pad on the front door. "This recognizes your fingerprints." Matt explained. "Wyatt never changed it, so I've always had access to this place anytime I wanted, you know? Let's, uh, let's go inside..." "Okay!" I said. He opened the door and let me go in first. When I got inside I looked at the aquarium that spanned along the windows, through the entire the ceiling and over the train stop. The light fish were displayed in what looked like a miniature ecosystem. There was a set of stairs that went over the stop, so you could get from one side to the other. The restaurant held twenty booths, ten on each side, a well-stocked bar in the very front and a bunch of bar stools with a long wooden table all along the train stop next to the aquarium. The walls were painted in a dark mustard colour and the carpet was a deep maroon. The booths and barstools were brown, and looked to be made of a very comfortable leather-like material. Matt let me walk around the dining area and gawk at the fish displays before showing me the kitchen. When we got there, he explained to me the process of working the kitchen and let me explore all of the different stations. He showed me the cooling cellar and pointed out the various types of food that were in it. When we were done there, Matt brought me further down the hallway and right into the manager's room that Sophia was currently using. "This is going to be my office in a few months." He said. The room had an aquarium that spanned along two sides, from the top of the windows to the bottom, and you could see the lake off in the distance in the front, and the lights coming from the closest building in the other. When the fish swam around, it made them look like they were little residents of the city. "Could you sit up here, please?" Matt asked, motioning towards a large, sturdy desk in the middle of the room. I did as he asked and hopped up, sitting on a bunch of Sophia's paperwork in the process. He moved the desk chair off to the side and then pulled me close to the edge, opening each leg and putting his body in the middle. He leaned down to passionately kiss me and pressed his groin into mine. "I want you to wait right here, okay? I'll be back in a minute... If you could, um, if you could please remove your clothes for me?" I agreed and Matt left the room for a few minutes. While he was gone I unbuttoned the jacket, slid off my dress and underwear and unbuckled my sandals. He returned with a few items from the kitchen. Some bottled oil, a bowl of small ice cubes, a whisk, a hand towel and a smooth white vegetable that looked a lot like a carrot. "Thank you, my good girl..." He said, taking note of my nudity. Matt set the items down in an orderly fashion on the desk and then positioned himself in between my legs again. He opened my lips and grazed a finger across my bead for a few minutes before flicking it into my body. Wet. Very wet. "I want to try something new tonight." He took his thumb and circled my butthole. "Is that okay with you? I'll be very gentle..." "Okay..." I said softly, covering my mouth with my hands. "But if it hurts too much you'll need to stop." Matt nodded and asked me to sit up so that he could tie the towel over my eyes. He didn't want The Mother to make an appearance. Tonight was going to be for him. He folded the towel and wrapped it, tying it in the back. After he did this, I leaned back down again and opened my legs for him. "What are all these things you've brought?" I asked. "Oh, these, uh, these are my tools..." He said, rubbing my inner thigh and taking a whisk, twirling it into my folds until my legs twitched and I squeaked from the overstimulation. "Too much? Let's try this..." He took an ice cube and rubbed it over my bead and then pushed it in and out of me. I began to writhe around. He did this until the tiny cube melted from my warmth, and then took the carrot-shaped vegetable and coated it liberally in oil before gently inserting it into my ass. He see-sawed the smooth vegetable back and forth as it stretched me open while he rubbed me at the same time. The sensation of being slowly filled was mildly painful, but the pleasure that came from his skillful fingers cancelled this out. He pulled the vegetable all the way out and slid it in again and repeated this until he felt that I would be able to accommodate him. Matt removed it, still glistening with oil, and set it on the table next to the whisk right on top of Sophia's papers. He unzipped his jeans, pulled down his boxers and rubbed some more oil across his hardened length before sliding it into me, all the while slowly circling my little ball of flesh with another ice cube. I tried to relax as I felt his slick head easily pop in. I tensed up for a moment and he stopped and waited until I was ready before slowly rocking until it was all the way in. He stayed like this for a few moments, enjoying the unique tight sensation, and took the ice cube, dragging it up my navel to one of my breasts and circled it around until my nipple was hard. When the ice cube fully melted, he started to thrust. I could feel the entirety of him as he slid in and out of my body, rubbing my bead with his thumb until I came. He continued a soft, slow and steady pace, drawing out orgasm after orgasm for about twenty minutes. When he felt close he pulled out, just in time to spurt his liquid all over my stomach, while getting some in my hair and on my face. A few stray splatters of cum found their way onto Sophia's precious work documents. Matt took his hand to wring out everything that had collected on the tip of his head and then rubbed it into my inner thigh like a lotion before taking the rest of it and rubbing it all the way into my skin until there was nothing left but the strong scent of him. "Thank you..." He whispered. He pulled up his boxers and zipped jeans, lifted me up and removed the towel from my eyes before collecting my jacket, dress, underwear and shoes. "You can put these on later, let's um, let's go to the bar. I wanna have a drink and a smoke and then we can bounce." The desk used to belong to Matt and he remembered leaving some things in it. He put his hand under a secret compartment in the desk, manifested the appropriate space and then pulled out the demon equivalent of a cigarette, which was made from a plant leaf called 'mishwin', that when smoked made you relaxed and mildly high. Due to everything being made from a unified collective imagination, and only being partially physical, things didn't deteriorate and the cigarette was as good now as it was five-hundred years ago. He closed the compartment and lead me out of the room, but not before taking a quick and satisfied look at what he'd done to Sophia's work space. He left the glistening vegetable, the bottle of oil, the whisk, towel, and bowl of melting ice cubes sitting in disarray on top of the various, now scattered documents. The room smelled strongly of his sex and resting on some of Sophia's bank statements were three thick smatterings of cum. Matt grinned and shut the door behind him. Wyatt would be at the Heartford location tomorrow and she would return to work the next day with the room completely filled with his scent. She would have to spend the day working in there and he had complete deniability. Matt finally felt that he was reclaiming his space. Matt ushered me back through the hallway to the dining area and asked me to sit on a bar stool until he finished his cigarette and drink. I sat down, with the backdrop of the fish behind me next to the lit up human-like mermaid display. The light from the aquarium softly illuminated my body. Matt sighed and took a good look. He had the mermaids commissioned when he met Violet, but didn't stick around long enough to appreciate them. He went into the bar and pulled out a few ingredients and made himself a cocktail, then hopped over the counter and sat with his drink. Matt manifested a small flame at the tip of his finger and lit his cigarette, smoked it and enjoyed his drink, staring at me the whole time. He didn't take his gaze off of me even once. I gently swayed the bar stool from side to side with the tip of my toe, and shyly looked back at him and into his intense, glowing cat's eyes. Seeing his human lit up in his restaurant next to the aquarium statues gave him a sense of ownership. This was his place. Matt's Place. When he got to the end of his cigarette, he put it out under the counter and tossed it into an ashtray, then took a quick swig of his drink before hopping off the counter to hand me my clothes. "Here..." I took them and put them on. "Let's go." We left the building, and when we got outside he turned back into a wolf and bent down to let me climb up onto him. "Do you need to lock it?" I asked. "No, no one can get in." He replied. "You know, let's take the long route home tonight." "Okay." He instantly took off, circling around a wide path on the edge of the lake as I tightly held onto him, my face resting against his fur and feeling the anatomy of his form as he ran. I peered out at the blood red waters and the light source off in the distance shining bright over the surface and thought of the spirit of Maya's art. Matt was as elegant as one of her paintings. I leaned forward to whisper into his ear. "I love you..." You've got the devil in your eyes You went and took me by surprise Say what you wanna say I won't go back If you wanna hit the road then let's go then Let's just go and see the world and just show them What it really means to live life golden Yeah we're golden, baby girl we're golden They about to see us shine 'cause we're golden They can never break us down 'cause we're golden They about to see us glow 'cause we're golden

I guess it's a stereotypical day for someone like me Without a nine-to-five job or an uni degree To be caught up in the trappings of the industry Show me the locked doors, I find another use for the key And you'll see I'm well aware of certain things that can destroy a man like me But with that said give me one more, higher Another one to take the sting away I am happy on my own, so here I'll stay Save your lovin' arms for a rainy day Matt jumped down the steps from his front door in one giant leap before turning into his wolf form and raced off to Maya and Wyatt's. He had a few different emotions churning around. On the one hand he was very happy to have had our morning together. I had taken the right initiative to maintain eye contact with him and to let him know that I loved him, and this made him feel special and energetically reinvigorated. On the other hand, he understood that I was in pain emotionally and didn't know what he could do to fix this for me beyond giving me the extra space that I asked for. He could see that my life was becoming a bit more resolved now that I had my memories back, but he wanted to see me happy and thriving and not stuck in the past. He was filled with a renewed sense of purpose at the prospect of returning to work, and stopped for a moment to let out a loud, passionate, "Awooooo!" of joy before continuing on his way to his friend's house, taking long graceful strides as he made his way through the neighborhood streets. When he got to Maya and Wyatt's he turned back into a man, quickly hopped up their steps and knocked on the door three times, with a wide eyed, eager expression plastered on his face. Wyatt answered moments later. "Matt! Hey buddy. It's a bit early in the week for hunting, what's up?" "Hey, can I come in? I wanted to have a chat with you, and, uh, maybe Maya if she's home..." Wyatt moved away from the door and indicated with his hand that it was okay to come in. Matt stepped inside and walked into their livingroom, which was filled with Maya's artwork depicting hunting scenes in golden calligraphy styled strokes and taxidermy busts of various light animals that Wyatt had commissioned. Their livingroom had the common dark red and mustard colour scheme that demons used and their couch and two brown chairs were covered in woven blankets and scattered with little decorative pillows. The floor was a dark wood and had a large hide from a light buffalo that rested in the middle of the room. There were pictures and canvases everywhere that held Maya's completed and incomplete works of art on them. The lighting of the room was very warm and the overall feel of the house gave off a comfortable, lived-in impression. "What do you want to talk about, man?" Wyatt asked. He noticed that his friend seemed to be in good spirits today. "You thirsty? Want anything to drink?" "No, I uh, I'm good." Matt made his way over to the couch and sat down in between a bunch of blankets and pillows, tossing some of them aside. "I wanted to let you know that I'm gunna take you up on your offer. I'd like to come back to work." Hearing this left Wyatt beaming. "Really? That's fantastic news, Matt." When Matt left the house, I decided to take the time to go over my life once more and to try to get used to my new body. I took the large framed mirror that he had on his dresser and propped it up on his bed, using one of the feather pillows to keep it steady. I took the other pillow and held it close to my chest for comfort and stared at my reflection in the mirror for a long time. Just a week ago I was a human being, a middle aged woman in an average looking body with an average looking face. Now I look like a teenager again and absolutely nothing like I used to. And yet Matt said this is the real me. The form taken each time in between my life and death cycles. I leaned in to inspect my face. No pores, no blackheads, not even a single wrinkle. My blonde hair was perfect. Shiny, with soft, bouncy curls. No body hair, flawless skin, a gazelle-like body, and a perfectly symmetrical angelic little face... "If I looked like this while I was alive I probably wouldn't have killed myself." I said jokingly. I had always wanted to be a beautiful woman and I missed my youth when I lost it, but now that I was sitting here in this new form, it felt very foreign to me. Like someone else was looking back from the mirror's reflection and it made me feel uneasy. "My name is Annie..." I reminded myself. "And I died. My name is Annie. And I died. My name is Annie. And I'm dead. Hello, new me..." I pressed my forehead to the mirror. "You will have to get used to seeing out of these eyes." I gripped the pillow tightly as a few stray tears escaped. I repeated some of what Matt had told me the night before. "You were born in Arizona. You had a mother, a father, a brother. You were sick. Very sick. If it wasn't from suicide, it would have been something else. You were lost. You had no choice. And now you're here, in a completely different world with people that you don't understand and you have a new boyfriend. And your soul is stuck within his. Forever. And he knows everything about you. Every embarrassing moment, every flaw, every insecurity. And he still loves you... you're loved. Isn't that weird?" Maya, upon hearing Matt's voice, came out of the couple's bedroom to greet him. "Is that Matt?" She was dressed in a white kimono and had braided her hair into spirals pinned on the sides of her head. She wore black lipstick and matching nail polish. "This is unexpected. So how did Annie enjoy our little trip last night?" She came over to sit next to him on the couch, moving some of the pillows to make a space for herself. "You know, I'm not sure. When I brought her home I told her about her past life and The Mother gave her all her memories back this morning. We uh, we had sex again and she popped up in my eye while we were going at it, you know?" Matt ran an anxious hand through his messy hair. "She, uh, she wants some space to work through it..." "Oh no..." Maya placed a hand over her mouth. "Is she okay?" "Yeah, she is doing better, but I'm sure I'll find out more when I get home, you know? I uh, I came here to discuss some things with you both." Matt continued. "He wants to come back to work!" Wyatt interrupted. "I can get you set up in a few days, man. You can start in the back and we'll move you up to management in a few months. If everything works out and you feel ready for it, then I'll hand everything back to you in six months tops. We'll get a contract ready. By the way, Sophia's the manager now, but I can relocate her to the Mington location. She isn't doing well with Broadview, I think there's too much traffic." "Fuck. Sophia's still working there?" Matt sniffed. Sophia was one of Matt's very first sexual encounters. She was a very beautiful demon woman with a tantalizingly perfect hourglass figure, but she had a terrible personality to go with it. She really liked the idea of cording with Matt, especially because of his wealth and social status within the city. When they tried to have sex he couldn't keep an erection and, feeling completely embarrassed about the whole ordeal, he decided to end the night early. She took it personally and told everyone who worked in the restaurant that he wasn't well endowed and that he would never make another woman happy, and often publicly degraded him to cope with her own irritation that nothing ever panned out between the two of them. Before Matt quit his job, he had admitted to a few colleagues that he had brought a human home and that he was caring for her. Violet. He mentioned that he was developing feelings for her. Upon hearing this, in a fit of jealous rage, Sophia spread rumours throughout the three restaurants that he had a fetish for "gutter rats". Matt was actually a very attractive prospect to a lot of demon women but not finding them sexually appealing, he rarely took notice and had a string of broken hearts that, for the most part, he was completely oblivious to. He knew that when he went back to work, she would give him hell for being in the position to eventually take over her job. "Fuck that bitch." He muttered under his breath. Wyatt chuckled. "I know Matt." Wyatt knew about Sophia's temperament. "It's going to be okay, man. It's just a few months with her." Matt looked at the ground and sucked on his upper fang in irritation. "Matt, I am so happy for you." Maya piped up. "What made you change your mind?" "Well... I have someone now. And I love her. So... I feel fucking good, you know, Maya?" The two of them smiled at one another. Despite being Wyatt's wife, Maya absolutely adored Matt and wanted to see him happy. Before she met Wyatt, she was very interested in Matt and they had gone on a date together but he didn't feel a connection so he introduced her to Wyatt, thinking that they would be a better match. And he was right. Weeks later, they had a cord between them. She was always trying to find ways to bring him out of his shell and to help him facilitate a connection with someone. After he had found a partner for her, she had wanted to return the favour. Hearing this news was music to her ears. "She's waiting at the house for me. So I don't wanna stay here too long. But I have a favour to ask of you." "What's that?" "My house isn't safe to leave a human alone in. Could I, uh, could I bring her by in the morning before I head to work to stay with you, Maya? I can't just leave her in my room all day. It won't be forever. It's just until I can figure something else out." "Matt, of course!" Maya exclaimed. "I can teach her about demon culture while you're away. We'll have a great time." "I don't like the idea of a human staying in my home..." Wyatt intervened. "But if it will get you back into the kitchen, then this is fine. Temporarily." He added. "Be sure to bathe before you come." "Thanks Wyatt." Matt reached out to shake his hand. "I appreciate this so much, you know? But I gotta get going now. I just wanted to discuss this with you both and see if we could all get on the same page." Matt stood up. "I'll see you in a few days to go hunting, man, and maybe we can write up that contract afterwards. Go over everything. And then you can set a date on when you want me to start. Sound good?" "Yes. And Matt? I have something I made yesterday. Light deer roasts with mingfruit jelly marinade. I want you to take some of this and share it with your human. We'll see who's the better cook now, man." Wyatt gave a cheeky smile and left to get the roasts. He returned a few minutes later with a bag that contained the wrapped up meat. Matt thanked them both graciously and left the house with the bag of food in his hands. Once outside, he put the bag handles in his mouth, transformed into a wolf and made his way back up the hill. I went over my life in great detail, contemplating and speaking out loud in the mirror to my renewed image. I thought about all of the spiritual awakenings that I had while alive and how they had left subtle clues for me that this would be my fate. I had always felt that there was someone meant for me, just outside of reach and somewhere beyond the constrains of my designated reality. I wanted to speak to The Mother and to thank her for what she had done for me. I addressed her directly, "Hi..." I said sheepishly, looking at my reflection. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I wanted to thank you for Matt. He's a really wonderful person and I am so glad to have him. I also wanted to thank you for giving me back my history..." I held tightly onto the pillow and gently rocked from side to side. I was feeling anxious to be communicating with her. "I don't think I could have managed here without my memories." "You have created a beautiful world. Your people are very lovely... I don't know much about their culture or their traditions, but their cities are stunning and their food is delicious. Everyone on Earth equates demons to being these evil monsters. I had no idea that they could be normal, loving and so understanding. Just like human beings can. If it weren't for Matt's eyes, I would forget that he is a demon and not a human! We are so similar in a lot of ways..." I continued. "This connection between us feels right. It feels natural and easy. I'm happy, and so grateful that you picked me out to be with your wonderful son. I just thought I should let you know that." I didn't know what else to say to her and decided to end it on that note. I curled up into Matt's red velvet blanket to take a long nap. I had been oversleeping a lot in this new world. A large part of it was due to the stress of these changes coming at me all at once. There was so much to take in and I didn't know how to process it without getting a lot of extra rest. When Matt got home, he quietly moved the mirror back onto his dresser and then went to the kitchen to cook the light deer for us to have for dinner. He let me sleep in peace for a few more hours until the early evening hit. He came back into the room with a dinner tray and gently woke me up, asking me to sit with him on the rooftop again. I agreed and we both curled up together to enjoy Wyatt's meal while watching the stars twinkle and the souls move through the band in the sky. Matt told me about the discussion he had with his friends and his plans for me. I let him know that I was coming to an active resolution with my history and passively mentioned to him that I thought he was the better cook. Upon hearing this news, he took my face into his hand and rubbed a soft thumb across my cheek. "Good girl..." Say, say, my playmate Won't you lay hands on me Mirror my malady Transfer my tragedy? Got a curse I cannot lift Shines when the sunset shifts When the moon is round and full Gotta bust that box, gotta gut that fish My mind's aflame We could jet in a stolen car But I bet we wouldn't get too far Before the transformation takes And blood lust tanks and Crave gets slaked My mind has changed My body's frame, but, God, I like it My heart's aflame My body's strained, but, God, I like it

If there is an apocalypse, they'll survive... for a time, they'll just die slower than the rest of us. Which, in it's own right is also a well deserved fate for people like this. Slow death. With rotting corpses and meat everywhere. Even in places you wouldn't expect like in the washer or on a few rooftops. But then when resources start dwindling, the tiny armies won't be able to keep going and they'll fight amongst themselves or maybe even off the billionaires for access to the luxury bunkers. Then more corpses and meat. What a dream... I mean... what a terrible, terrible tragedy.

I dunno, I think this whole raising your consciousness, doing this, doing that, blah blah is old news. Everyone keeps adding these rules they need to follow for themselves to maintain a high state of consciousness. Be around people, or don't be around people. Personally, as a super introvert, I can tell you that it isn't fun not being around others, but like Leo pointed out to another person here, I am inept to the max so it is what it is, but I find that your body feels better, your emotional state is more regulated, you have an easier time maintaining a sense of reality and of sanity if you have people around you and you socialize to some degree. We are pack animals for a reason, you know? We aren't meant to go off into the wild all alone without anyone else. I think a nice balance is where it's at. I wish I knew how to socialize a little more because when I have it, it's nice and when I don't, it sucks. Everything in moderation. I once spent seven years in near complete isolation, just going out to get groceries once a week and to spend time with family once a week and that's it, and it literally drove me batshit crazy, by the tail end of that seven years was up, I was crying nearly every day, I didn't take care of myself and I just wanted to die, I was paranoid from not having other people to mirror a sense of cohesive reality - humans are not built to avoid their own kind. We need each other. Just my 2c. Now I live with family and I have had no psychotic delusions, I feel more integrated with the rest of the world, I'm not scared for my life nearly every day. That's another thing, when you are on your own and you have no one, your mind knows that it can't completely survive without a group and so your body lowkey produces cortisol 24/7. It takes a special kind of person to be able to isolate themselves from the world and come out unscathed. Most humans need a group. I am for the camp that in this world, you need a little bit of it, at least, to be a happy person. Maybe not immersing yourself in it everyday, but throwing society out the window is a bad idea.

You got a fast car I want a ticket to anywhere Maybe we make a deal Maybe together we can get somewhere Any place is better Starting from zero, got nothing to lose Maybe we'll make something Me, myself, I got nothing to prove So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk City lights lay out before us And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone This is part of an ongoing (poorly written) story - please see the previous page to start. I followed Matt into the kitchen and sat on the counter to watch him make our breakfast. He took out some supplies from the cooling cellar. Flour, light eggs, milk, cream and butter made from a light goat, baking powder, sugar, and mingfruit extract. He set them all on the counter and got a few bowls, a whisk, some spoons, a spatula, and a clay pan. I observed him whisk some cream in a bowl while I swung my feet back and forth at the edge of the countertop. "So why did you leave your restaurants in the first place?" I inquired. He seemed to really love to cook and he was good at it. I couldn't see why he would want to quit. "It's a long story." He said, adding some sugar and mingfruit extract to the cream before whisking it again. "It's because of a girl. Like you." "A girl like me?" I watched him take a taste of the whipped cream, and then add more extract. "Yeah. Um, like I said, it's a long story. But, uh, I'll tell you... So, demons are brought into the world with the purpose of having a special connection with someone, you know?" He looked at me. "A partner. A lover. But first, we build ourselves up. We spend a long time cultivating ourselves before we bond to another person. Everyone has a place in this society, and because we live forever we are given a lot of time to figure out what that is, and to develop it into something great. And uh, I always wanted to do this. Cook. You know? I figured that portion of my life out pretty early on. I fucking love to hunt, and I fucking love to cook. And I got good. Really good. Me and Wyatt. Together. We were a team." I listened closely as he set aside the whipped cream and began to mix the other ingredients into a batter. One by one, he poured each ingredient into the flour and stirred them together as he spoke to me. "At first, I thought I was a normal guy, you know? I had everything going for me. My life was in order. Wyatt eventually found Maya and I thought I would find someone in time, but it never happened. And uh, I tried. I tried to open my lock and I, uh, heh... I couldn't, I couldn't even get it up half the time. I didn't know why. I thought something in me was broken, you know? Maya kept bringing me new women, and I'd play along. I'd go on dates with them. But nothing came of it." He turned on the stove, greased the clay pan with butter, waited until it heated up and then poured four small round cakes onto it, and flipped them over every so often. "I felt depressed, you know? But I kept up appearances... for a while. To make everyone happy, to fit in... and then, um, on my way home one night I noticed a human girl wandering around the city and she looked so lost. I couldn't just leave her there, so I brought her home with me. Her name was Violet." "Violet?" "Yeah. She, uh, she looked a lot like you... A little older, a little taller, but very similar. I never did get her history, though. She stayed with me for about a month and I took care of her. I fed her, clothed her, I taught her about my world... and my life... and... and I felt something, you know? For fucking once. I, uh, I think it's the frailty, you know?" He took the first batch off the pan and made four more. "It makes me feel good. To be needed. But then I got a revelation one night from the creator that she would be brought back to the band of souls in the sky and I was told to bring her up to my rooftop so that she could be collected and returned to her rightful home. And I did... I hugged her right before the light took her away... She turned into an orb of light right in my arms and floated off into the sky. Back to the band. I uh, I watched her leave until I couldn't see her anymore and the next day I quit my job and gave everything to Wyatt." I felt a tinge of jealousy learning that I wasn't Matt's very first love, but swallowed these emotions and continued to listen to his story. It was fascinating to learn this about him, despite my possessiveness. He poured four more cakes into the pan and began to cook them. "I realized that they always return to where they're supposed to be going. That, uh, that you can't connect with one the way that a demon connects with its own kind, you know? So I gave up. I helped more souls as I found them. But they always left. I kinda figured my love would always be a one-sided thing. But then you came along, and it happened for me. There's a cord connecting us. And so now, I uh, I wanna go back to work. And I want to hunt for you and take care of you. I can live like a normal fucking person now, you know?" He removed the last of the cooked cakes and set them on a plate with the others, and then took a spoon and put a line of cream in the middle of each one before rolling them up. After he plated them, he poured two cups of juice and set them on a tray. "Let's go to the library. You wanted some time to think and I have some research I want to do." I hopped off the counter and followed him back to the wire room, where we took a set of stairs down to the library. When we got there, he brought the tray over to the table in the middle of the two plush chairs in the corner and we sat down to eat together. "You don't have to feel jealous, you know?" Matt said, taking a cake and biting into half of it. "What, no, I'm not jealous!" I lied. "I could tell." He replied, still chewing his food. "We have a cord. You can't hide that shit from me." I swallowed heavily, and took a small bite off of one of the cakes. It had a light, fluffy texture and a sweet flavour, while the cream in the middle was rich, buttery and fruity. Mingfruit tastes similarly to fresh blueberry jam. They were absolutely delicious. "Okay, I am. But I know that it's not a big deal..." I admitted to him. "I just wanted to be your first one." "You are." He stated plainly. "Waking up to something that you desire for yourself isn't the same thing as actually cording with another person, you know? One is still based on a fantasy and the other is, uh, it's a genuine connection. We demons, we don't take these things lightly. Once this happens, that's it. It's done. There is no other one. It's just you." He licked his fingers and took gigantic mouthfuls from his cakes. He wanted to finish quickly so that he could get started with his research. He was interested in learning more about The Mother's influence and to try to trace why this connection happened to us. I let it go and worked on my own breakfast. I found Matt to be a very understanding person. Matt set his dishes down on the tray, got up and wandered through certain sections of the library, picking out a book here and there, and then placing it back when he was done. He would pace back and forth from one isle to the next while he read, his eyes darting from side to side as he finished a page within twenty seconds. Demons are able to absorb and remember everything that they read. They're lightening fast learners and can get through a book in no time at all. I sat in the chair and thought about my life. All of my memories. From the time I was little until the time I died. I thought about what being alive felt like and I thought about how it felt to die from an overdose. I thought about the fear that I had in my last moments and the sense of regret for what I had done and I remembered how I felt when I realized that there was no turning back. I thought about how it felt to be lifted out of my body by The Mother, and how she held me closely to her before dropping me off here. I looked up at Matt. He was running a hand through his messy hair and one of his little fangs had gotten caught on his lower lip while he was frenetically pacing from one side of the library to the other. Snaggletooth. He gave me a quick glance before returning to his book. "I found something." He announced. "What is it?" I asked. "What's this symbol?" He walked over and showed it to me. It was a yin-yang. "That's a yin-yang. I don't know much about them. They spin into one another... darkness moves into light, and light into darkness. Masculine and feminine energies. Balance. That's all I know." "Yin and yang! I see, now." Matt recognized these words and had a good understanding of how these energies worked together. "I know all about that. I didn't know you humans knew about energetic polarity... Hey, that's like us, you know? I move into you and you move into me. Like a rotation, a circle." I nodded, but didn't understand what he was getting at. "So..." He continued. "So, maybe that's the reason for all of this. Maybe these two orientations are meant to come together? Light and dark." I started to see where he was coming from. "So you guys don't use this symbol?" I asked him. "No." He shook his head. "Maybe this is how things are unified, you know? That light and dark is supposed to meet together, to blend... it's destiny. What do you think?" "This could be possible... seeing what The Mother has done for us... but I really don't know..." "Fair enough. We'll keep looking. How are you doing?" "Just thinking about my life. I want to go over it, accept what happened and then move on." "That sounds good." "Matt, can you tell me anything more about The Mother?" Matt set his book down on the table and sat in the chair next to me. "Sure. What do you want to know?" "Anything that you can think of that I might not already know." "Okay... well, let's see. I was, I was, uh, born from her. I don't really remember her... Every year about four new souls are created from her energy. She made this planet around this particular light source to offer her people sustenance. When we, uh, started forming, we were just smoke in the miasma. No bodies, just consciousness, you know? But as more of us were born, we began to create a collective reality and we developed physical bodies. They aren't physical in the same way that a human body is, they're created from a collective imagination. Her energy runs through all of us, connecting us all together. That's why eye contact is so important. We can see The Mother's love for us. We, um, we are the first race that she made from her love - the Womb of Life - that ended up creating a balanced society. It's the reason that connection and partnership is so important here, it keeps reality solid, structured, and without it we would dissolve back into the miasma." I stared at him, wide-eyed, taking it all in. "Her energy is chaotic and violent, and so most of her creations destroy themselves or they feed on light sources from grey-oriented planets such as yours and cause world-wide disasters for your people socially and culturally. They, uh, they do it through memetics. Part of the reason that humans are unable to move forward is due to the influence of her rogue offspring. But The Mother herself, she is beautiful, untamable, like the lightening reflected off of a tornado, you know? She's one of the deities that yin-oriented creations meet at the end of their lives, if they have a life span. Being connected to her love, and having a body created from a unified consensus reality, we don't age and, uh, we don't die. The exception to this rule are demons who were forcefully uncorded early on in our history. If a demon loses the cord to its partner, then it will without a doubt go off somewhere to kill itself. If you lose that, you don't get it back and the whole point of being alive for us is to have it, you know?" I was starting to understand the gravity of what this connection between us meant to him. Not being able to pair bond was a matter of life and death for them. "The Mother gave us the lock and key system so that we, uh, we could share her love and maintain a sense of reality. The creator made The Mother from love, and The Mother made us from love. If a demon doesn't have this connection, then he loses a part of himself as well as a part of his society, his mental health and his vitality." I nodded thoughtfully. "We stay neutral, and this neutrality is what keeps us from becoming overwhelmed by her chaos. So instead, our darkness is reflected in the animals that we hunt. We need to do it. It's pure instinct. We inherited a part of her ruthless nature, and hunting and killing what we eat is how we express this portion of ourselves. We have to feed regularly from the light, that's why food is so important in our culture. It's, uh, it's why I wanted to be a chef. I wanted to share the light with others, and to satisfy them. I wanted to use my killing nature for something good and to make things that helped other people feel good, you know?" I reached over to take his hand into mine. "That's all I know about The Mother. And, you know, apparently she is a part of your world, too, but that's news to me. Is that enough?" "Yes, thank you, I appreciate this information..." I smiled at him. "Are we done in here, Matt?" I asked, not wanting to stay in the library anymore. "Yeah. Let's go take a bath. We fucking stink." He said while fondly reflecting on the morning we had. "Then I wanna get ahold of Maya. I think I have a solution. She works from home. She's an artist, you know? I could bring you over to Wyatt's place in the morning before work. They live a bit lower on the hill and so their house isn't a large as mine, and it isn't structured through manifestation. You'll be safe there, you know? And, I uh, I'm gunna talk to Wyatt about returning to the kitchen..." We both got up, headed back into his room to have a bath and then he left me there for the afternoon to go visit Maya and Wyatt. I stayed there with my thoughts to keep me company, while I traced my entire life from start to finish. I thought about The Mother and the influence that she had on my life while alive. Matt was right. It really did feel like she brought us together through destiny. "The Mother" All along the Western front People line up to receive She got the power in her hand To shock you like you won't believe Saw her in the Amazon With the voltage running through her skin Standing there with nothing on She gonna teach me how to swim I said, "ooh, girl Shock me like an electric eel Baby girl Turn me on with your electric feel" I said, "ooh girl Shock me like an electric eel Baby girl Turn me on with your electric feel" All along the Eastern shore Put your circuits in the sea This is what the world is for Making electricity You can feel it in your mind Oh, you can do it all the time Plug it in, change the world You are my electric girl

I still haven't heard any rebuttal against the reasonable idea that we need to be studying the most deranged and corrupt in order to prevent them from ever developing in the first place. When you kill them right off the bat, how do you learn from them? It's just sweeping a problem under the rug. We still don't fully know how to prevent people like this from being created, it needs to be figured out. I mean, aren't there drugs out there that can sedate people to the level where they're mostly harmless? If someone is so violent that they are fashioning weapons out of spoons, destroying the lives of their caretakers, I feel that there are probably medical interventions that can be put into place, just like you would do for anyone with a severe mental illness. And if someone is that violent, we need to be looking to see if they have brain damage as well. Also, if we are going by dangerousness and abuse, then severely disabled people can also be extremely dangerous, and yes, sometimes even malicious to caretakers. They are also a burden on the system, but it would be absolutely reprehensible to harm them in any way. I just can't see the justification for killing other people, no matter what they have done, if there are facilities that we can place them in and medications that we can give them to calm them down.