We go where we feel that we fit in.
We go to fit into wherever we feel we are part of the scene, or want to be part of the scene; ought to be there.
There are definitely one or two people here who do not want to talk about spirits and alcohol and all of that good stuff - because for them it ain't so good!
It takes them to the edge, and then they go over the top.
At the same time we have to realize that almost since whenever it was way back in ancient history, god-only-knows-where - maybe Persia, maybe somewhere else - alcohol was already employed as a means of opening doors to the deep mind, and even from then it was acknowledged that 'the way is steep, the path narrow, and the risks of falling off the edge ever present with the seeker at every step.'
And, as the classic Chinese vertical scroll calligraphy says: '...What is there at the top is fairly ordinary, the temple itself not so austere, the monks not particularly holy, and it is even that the steps up turned out to be not that many and not that difficult to climb after all.'
So it says...
LOL
However, 'when viewed at from below -.'
How is it that all the religious systems seem to think we all get to drink wine in the Gardens of the Paradise of Heaven, when we cannot do it and get away with it here in the mortal world?
So okay people are not that great on self-control in the face of the massive visceral forces of strong wine and powerful experiences.
I do not consciously know where people reading here 'are at' in their lives - I could guess but it's not the same as someone individually telling you directly what they want to say, if they even want to say anything at all, about what they feel about how life is proceeding and progressing for them right now.
When I personally look back in my own life I find that there were at least one or two instances very early on in which I felt that I was doing something at odds to the way everyone else wanted to go - and that it did feel as if it was 'socially if not wrong, then distinctly contrarian.'
An instance was being one of hardly three official members plus the Club President at a University 'Film Club.'
Happens to be that the Club President - Colm Blake - was also the chief of our (literally was this too btw) Oxford Union Debating Society's associate membership group for our far-way region in this part of the world. The main person in the local society who actually debated at Oxford was who turned out to later on become the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia -, Kim Beazley.
So there I was, late into the evenings watching Roman Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers (or Pardon Me But Your Teeth Are In My Neck), sometimes no one else in the small cinema - knowing and also sensing and feeling that this was not what people thought we smart people should have been doing when the Law Books in theory at least, ought to have beckoned.
Being somewhere 'wrong,' doing something 'wrong.' And knowing it.
Look - you do not know what is there in the 'for-money' texts that we link to here regularly.
What is in there is the same kind of thing. It's 'wrong.'
Some people will certainly think it is sinister.
Society won't like what you are reading, most people will hate it, most will not even understand it - even at the same time as we have made it clear that these things are some of the ways that we raise funds for the Autistic Employment Project being run from out of the Joint Primary School Campus here in Western Australia.
Worthy cause? Doesn't matter. No one much cares. The texts are sinister.
But you might, if you 'went there' - to the texts in question - find yourself with this sensation of a chill going up and down the back of your neck: not supposed to see this, definitely not supposed to believe any of it, definitely not supposed to be changing your life on account of anything you have seen in there...
Who would possibly believe, in any case, that this is from where 'the door' is actually being opened?
The door. That door.
Virtually empty dark cinema. No one else there. They all have too much 'important' stuff to be about. 'They' meaning the rest of the world.
What I hope for you though is for you to be able to sit in your favorite coffee spot (or wine bar), with your eReader or other 'device,' whatever one that is, and read, just read - knowing though that you are doing something truly meaningful while everyone else is 'working hard' doing all the right things.
The metaphor of turning water into wine is not just any simple metaphor.
For one thing, the wine that was 'made' in that story was not some cheap table wine for everyday use - the wine stewards declared it to be the best wine.
And those people were not just some ordinary wedding party officials and guests - this was an event at whose attendance was this guy, whose uncle was called by the same name as the family of Cleopatra and who owned a mansion in Egypt. Well this is like me saying I stayed at my uncle's mansion in London, and that my uncle's name was 'Windsor.' LOL
These wine stewards knew what 'the best wine' meant.
A great wine is at first instantly enjoyable. And then it becomes pleasurable.
But one does have to have a feel for when it becomes the case to say to one's self 'I'll keep these moments now for the next occasion.' Or abuse the beauty of the experience and just decide to indulge on to the subsequent points of severing consciousness of the world, things around you, much of the past in your immediate memory, but also dulling and distorting your senses themselves so that not much can be relied on to be relaying truthful experiences to you.
A great wine, the best wine -, takes care and a long time to make. Molecule by molecule it has gained in strength, nutrients, sugars, flavor, color, texture, form.
How came it to be that even a god, was able to 'suddenly' in nothing but a moment, imbue the miraculous wine with all of the time, that goes into the making of a grand wine in our standard human reality.
Because it cannot be that the wine stewards mistook the wine they tasted for something which would have had to have undergone much growth and development and the forming and constructing of dimension - but which in the 'miraculous reality' of the case in question, was simply nothing more than the frivolity of a genie's blink.
We cannot reduce great miracles to nothing more than frivolity.
To arrive at the destination, means that you acknowledge the great moment -, and the moment's greatness.
If you keep reading in here, in these pages, you will find out for one thing, the way to attain the company of great wine supper partners.
But it will be a miracle, and moreover will even seem like a miracle.