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brezsny
October 2009 
Play with Food, Let Imagination Fly & Beauty & Truth Labs
Posted on Dec 10th, 2008
by 
Joy Bringer
Joy Bringer
from Free Will Astrology and Rob Brezsny
Ancient Hawaiian poets used to gather together to compose poems by
committee. Someone would suggest a line, and the others would either
nix it or refine it. Can you imagine a similar miracle occurring among the
raging artistic egos of Western culture? Even for us share-and-share-alike
Libertarian Socialists here at the Beauty and Truth Lab, it can sometimes
be hard to drop our attachment to being inviolably special.
As a favor to pronoia, however -- as proof of our devotion to the joy of
undoing our fixations -- we decided to enlist one of our crazy wisdom
heroes, Hakim Bey, to commit a collaboration with us. Of course he was
too busy to satisfy our request, so we decided simply to take matters
into our own hands. We lifted one of his published works, stripped it
down, and used it as the skeleton for our own musings.
The essay below amounts to an odd kind of plagiarism, then. Very few of
our words are repeats of his, but his thought process is the underpinning.
Think of it as a palimpsest.
PRONOIAC MAGIC
by Rob Brezsny and the Beauty and Truth Lab under the influence and
inspiration of Hakim Bey
THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY. Pity the educated cynics who refuse to
enjoy the fun, choosing instead to remain faithful to their numb logical
anguish.
THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY. Mourn for the humorless devotees who
refuse to join in the raucous unpredictable game so that they might feed
their spiritual greed, pretzeled up motionless on prayer mats with the
torment of grave meditations.
THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY. Have compassion for the imagination-
dead heroes who cling so tightly to the masks they've forged for
themselves that they're dead to the delight of molting.
PRONOIAC MAGIC is the daily cultivation of playfully altered states of
awareness for the purpose of accomplishing practical miracles.
PRONOIAC MAGIC begins with your hunger for ingenious beauty and ever-
fresh truth. It thrives and ripens as you discover that everything you
behold is bursting with conscious intelligence.
PRONOIAC MAGIC is not about reading auras or divining past lives. It's not
the corrupt shamanism of teachers who soar adeptly through astral
realms but treat the people in their daily lives badly. Goddess forbid that
PRONOIAC MAGIC might be confused with the dry lust for supernatural
power and a godlike ego offered through certain occult schools. If it's
elitist hocus-pocus you want, go for the real thing -- political power, the
accumulation of financial wealth, or becoming one of the media mind-
controllers.
Your perceptions gradually open under the quiet, steady, friendly shock of
PRONOIAC MAGIC. As they do, they kill off your false will and banish your
artificial self.
Real PRONOIAC MAGIC breaks holes in the consensual hallucination called
"reality," allowing you to escape to your lost home. It metamorphoses the
place where you actually live, right here and now -- wild, messy heaven
brought kicking and screaming with delight into this eternally virgin planet
Earth. Here amazement is normal; sudden mutations -- actual
transformations of things you've never before been able to change -- are
possible.
As a pronoiac magician, you prove the taboo truth that all of reality is
inherently designed to bring about our liberation. Best of all, you do it not
only for yourself. The enhanced perceptions you enjoy, the altered states
you craft, are not just for your own use in the silence of your selfish
needs. As a pronoiac magician, you yearn to awaken the gift in other
people, to expand the intoxication through benevolent contagion.
PRONOIAC MAGIC: Let it spread. May it multiply. Unleash it and unmask it
-- not just in exotic once-in-a-blue-moon dreams, but in the throb of the
simple dramas you live from day to day.
Everything in the universe is alive with playful intelligence and wants to
improvise with us.
Ancient Hawaiian poets used to gather together to compose poems by
committee. Someone would suggest a line, and the others would either
nix it or refine it. Can you imagine a similar miracle occurring among the
raging artistic egos of Western culture? Even for us share-and-share-alike
Libertarian Socialists here at the Beauty and Truth Lab, it can sometimes
be hard to drop our attachment to being inviolably special.
As a favor to pronoia, however -- as proof of our devotion to the joy of
undoing our fixations -- we decided to enlist one of our crazy wisdom
heroes, Hakim Bey, to commit a collaboration with us. Of course he was
too busy to satisfy our request, so we decided simply to take matters
into our own hands. We lifted one of his published works, stripped it
down, and used it as the skeleton for our own musings.
The essay below amounts to an odd kind of plagiarism, then. Very few of
our words are repeats of his, but his thought process is the underpinning.
Think of it as a palimpsest.
PRONOIAC MAGIC
by Rob Brezsny and the Beauty and Truth Lab under the influence and
inspiration of Hakim Bey
THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY. Pity the educated cynics who refuse to
enjoy the fun, choosing instead to remain faithful to their numb logical
anguish.
THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY. Mourn for the humorless devotees who
refuse to join in the raucous unpredictable game so that they might feed
their spiritual greed, pretzeled up motionless on prayer mats with the
torment of grave meditations.
THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY. Have compassion for the imagination-
dead heroes who cling so tightly to the masks they've forged for
themselves that they're dead to the delight of molting.
PRONOIAC MAGIC is the daily cultivation of playfully altered states of
awareness for the purpose of accomplishing practical miracles.
PRONOIAC MAGIC begins with your hunger for ingenious beauty and ever-
fresh truth. It thrives and ripens as you discover that everything you
behold is bursting with conscious intelligence.
PRONOIAC MAGIC is not about reading auras or divining past lives. It's not
the corrupt shamanism of teachers who soar adeptly through astral
realms but treat the people in their daily lives badly. Goddess forbid that
PRONOIAC MAGIC might be confused with the dry lust for supernatural
power and a godlike ego offered through certain occult schools. If it's
elitist hocus-pocus you want, go for the real thing -- political power, the
accumulation of financial wealth, or becoming one of the media mind-
controllers.
Your perceptions gradually open under the quiet, steady, friendly shock of
PRONOIAC MAGIC. As they do, they kill off your false will and banish your
artificial self.
Real PRONOIAC MAGIC breaks holes in the consensual hallucination called
"reality," allowing you to escape to your lost home. It metamorphoses the
place where you actually live, right here and now -- wild, messy heaven
brought kicking and screaming with delight into this eternally virgin planet
Earth. Here amazement is normal; sudden mutations -- actual
transformations of things you've never before been able to change -- are
possible.
As a pronoiac magician, you prove the taboo truth that all of reality is
inherently designed to bring about our liberation. Best of all, you do it not
only for yourself. The enhanced perceptions you enjoy, the altered states
you craft, are not just for your own use in the silence of your selfish
needs. As a pronoiac magician, you yearn to awaken the gift in other
people, to expand the intoxication through benevolent contagion.
PRONOIAC MAGIC: Let it spread. May it multiply. Unleash it and unmask it
-- not just in exotic once-in-a-blue-moon dreams, but in the throb of the
simple dramas you live from day to day.
Everything in the universe is alive with playful intelligence and wants to
improvise with us.
How about we start by letting our imagination play & we use food as a start? :)
BananaSmiling
Access: Public
Absolutely!
And adding:
PLay: The Movement of Love
PLus subsequent article from AQAL Journal to put it resonsibly into a comprehensive framework:):)
Albert,
This Pure Play Mastery in expression and action. Thank you for sharing and thus expanding the possibilities and horizons for play and more! I am still following all the leads from the article, web site and messages and the play gets way better.
Just imagine when all our work and life morphs in the play that it is? Danke! D:)
This will be the ultimate way. Even beyond what Tom Peters described in his wonderful book RE-IMAGINE. Thanks Darina for pointing to work of Rob Brezsny. His chapter about imagination is worth Gold.
Deeply emerging from moment to moment..illuminating pur passion as much as modes of silence, contemplation and vita activa, knowing and mystery, adventure and purposeful strategy.
Have a playful time:)
Albert