bookofmirrors | Stolen from savage

INTIMATE PRONOIA THERAPY
excerpted from PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia

1. Celebrate Unhappy Hour at least once a month. During this ritual blowout, you have license to complain and rant about everything that's driving you crazy. Get a sympathetic listener to be your receptacle or deliver your blast straight into the mirror. If you prefer, write it all down. One way or another, grouse nonstop about your secret shame, raw sorrow, unspeakable guilt, and unnerving twists of destiny. Feel free to unleash guttural moans or rueful cackles.

If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties you of psychic toxins. Pronoia will then have a chance to flourish as you luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions.

2. Describe a past event when you let yourself wander to the edge of unreasonable joy. Then imagine a future adventure that might once again bring you there.

3. If you’ve ever watched The Simpsons TV show, you’ve probably heard Homer Simpson’s favorite toast. “To alcohol,” he proclaims, “the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” My own salute is different. “To the Divine Trickster sometimes known as God,” I say, “the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” Compose a prayer in which you simultaneously curse and thank the Primal Source.

4. The English language is in a state of rapid ferment. New words are barging into the dictionary at an unprecedented rate, even as old familiars fall into disuse. There’s one exception to this trend: profanity. Hoary favorites like “fuck,” “shit,” and “asshole” have gained an acceptance unthinkable 30 years ago, but fresh curse words are rarely coined.

At the Beauty and Truth Laboratory, we find the overused classics inadequate for expressing our ever-evolving rage at injustice and ugliness. Furthermore, as deadening clichés, they don’t satisfy the pronoiac mandate to use language with sonorous precision.

There’s another problem. Anger has become one of the trendiest emotions of all. In moderation it can be a righteous force for constructive change. But its hackneyed omnipresence means the vast majority of its outbreaks are trivial. The paucity of colorful obscenities is aggravated by an abundance of frivolous wrath.

How can you purge the clichéd wrath that dilutes the useful, inspired stuff? One good method is to make fun of it by expressing it bigger than life. Try this. Go alone to a place where it’s safe to feel blind rage. Envision a person or deity you love to hate, then unleash the following mantra 15 times in the most vulgar tones possible: “You miasmic heap of shaved-off cemetery warts. You curdled slosh of rotting fracas-spawned opinions. You mangled preen of politicians’ tongue scabs. You brackish tripe of experts’ ego tinkles. You fragile crap of orphaned tyrants. You demented cluster of fickle weasel vows.”

Now how about if you get to work helping us coin a new generation of profanities? For more inspiration, see “New Curse Words”.

5. Feminist writer Elizabeth Hilts redeemed the misogynist word “bitch” in her book Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch. Gays proudly appropriated the previously derogatory word “queer” to describe themselves, thereby celebrating their outré power. In this tradition, the Beauty and Truth Laboratory proposes to reclaim the curse, “Go fuck yourself,” turning it into a sincere wish that the person to whom it is addressed will indulge in life-affirming, self-administered pleasure to the point of rapture.

Now go fuck yourself.

6. ”Americans live inside their own private echo chambers,” says syndicated writer Matt Zoller Seitz, “endlessly revisiting things they already know they like and avoiding exposure to anything new and different.” Your assignment is to ask yourself if you fit Seitz’s description, and then—if you do—to escape your private echo chamber. So for instance, if you’re a tattooed pagan performance artist, attend a rodeo or NASCAR race; if you’re a Christian Girl Scout leader, listen to Ani DiFranco or Radiohead, or read Noam Chomsky’s radical critiques of American foreign policy. If you’re an atheistic intellectual, take a workshop in ecstatic Sufi dancing or a class in Buddhist meditation.

7. Kick your own ass 22 times a day for the next 22 days. There’s no single right way to perform this exercise, so experiment. My favorite technique is to jump off the ground with both feet and snap my heels forcefully backwards against the target area.

8. Qabalist teacher Ann Davies told a story about a U.S. Army general negotiating with a cannibal chief in New Guinea during World War II. The general wanted the chief to rally his tribe to help American troops fight the Japanese. The chief refused, calling the Americans immoral. The general was shocked. “We are not immoral!” he protested. “The Japanese are immoral!” The cannibal chief replied, “The Japanese and Americans are equally immoral. You both kill far more people than you can eat.”

Using this tale as your impetus, describe how parts of your own moral code are not rooted in an absolute standard of what’s good and evil, but rather bound by the idiosyncrasies of your culture and historical era.

9. In 752 A.D., the Japanese Empress Koken wrote a lyrical poem in praise of the eupatorium plant, whose leaves turn a vivid shade of yellow in summer. Recently, scientists demonstrated that the lovely foliage of the eupatorium is caused by a disease virus. In my view, this shouldn't diminish our appreciation of either the poem or the plant. Beauty often forms in response to a wound. Give examples from your own life.

10. Cancer cells are constantly developing in our bodies. Luckily, our immune systems routinely kill them off. Similarly, our minds always harbor pockets of crazy-making misconceptions and faulty imprints. They usually don’t rise up and render us insane thanks to the psychic versions of our immune systems.

How can you stay strong in your ability to fight off sickness and madness? You know the drill: Eat healthy food, sleep well, get physical exercise, minimize stress, give and receive love. But as an aspiring pronoiac, you have at your disposal other actions that can provide powerful boosts to your immune system. Here are examples:

Scheme to put yourself in the path of beautiful landscapes, buildings, art, and creatures.

Exercise your imagination regularly. Get in the habit of feeding your mind’s eye images that fill you with wonder and vitality.

Eliminate uhs, you knows, I means, and other junk words from your speech. Avoid saying things you don’t really mean and haven’t thought out. Stop yourself when tempted to make scornful assertions about people.

Every night before you fall asleep, review the day's activities in your mind's eye. As if watching a movie about yourself, try to be calmly objective as you observe your memories from the previous 16 hours. Be especially alert for moments when you strayed from your purpose and didn't live up to your highest standards.

With a companion, sit in front of a turned-off TV as you make up a pronoiac story that features tricky benevolence, scintillating harmony, and amusing redemption. Speak this tale aloud or write it down.

Take on an additional job title, beautifier. Put it on your business card and do something every day to cultivate your skill. If you’re a people person, bring grace and intrigue into your conversations; ask unexpected questions that provoke original thoughts. If you’re an artist, leave samples of your finest work in public places. If you’re a psychologist or sociologist, point out the institutions and relationships that are working really well. Whatever you do best, be alert for how you can refine it and offer it up to those who’ll benefit from it.

If you’re going through a phase when you feel you have nothing especially beautiful to offer, or if you think it would be self-indulgent to inject your own aesthetic into shared environments, turn for help to great artists and thinkers. Sneak O’Keeffe or Chagall prints onto unadorned walls in public places, for instance. Memorize poems by Rilke and Hafiz, and slip them into your conversations when appropriate. Program your cell phone so that its ring is Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater in C Minor. Scrawl passages from Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk on the walls of public lavatories.

11. Write an essay on “What I Swear I’ll Never Do Again as Long as I Live—Unless I Can Get Away With It Next Time.”

12. Take off your mask. You say you’re not wearing a mask? But you are. The muscles of your face are so accustomed to displaying your familiar emotions, they’ve gotten stuck. Raw new emotions are aching to show themselves, but can’t dislodge the incumbents.

Start an exercise program. Gaze into the mirror and make hundreds of rubbery faces. Loosen and tone your muscles. Flush those ancient expressions.

13. Many concepts we use to interpret our experience originated in books written by people who are long gone. That’s why philosopher Norman O. Brown (who died in 2002) says in his book Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis, “The bondage to books compels us not to see with our own eyes; compels us to see with the eyes of the dead, with dead eyes. There is a hex on us, the authority of the past; and to exorcise these ghosts is the great work of magical self-liberation.”

Melville Davisson Post (who died in 1930) echoes the theme in his book Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries. “It is the dead who govern. Look how they work their will upon us! Who have made the laws? The dead! Who have made the customs that we obey and that form and shape our lives? The dead! All the writers, when they would give weight and authority to their opinions, quote the dead. Our lives follow grooves that the dead have run out with their thumbnails!”

Whose dead eyes do you see with? What would it be like to see the world without them?

14. Create or obtain a symbol of your most inconsolable pain. Mail it to us at the Beauty and Truth Laboratory. We will conduct a ritual of purification during which we will burn that symbol to ash as we pray for your relief. While this may not eradicate your anguish entirely, we’re confident it will provide a tangible healing that you’ll feel the benefits of within a month. Send a representation of what hurts you most to Angst Incinerator, P.O. Box 150628, San Rafael, CA 94915.

15. Charles Darwin said the “survival of the fittest” is a central factor in the process of evolution. What exactly did he mean by that? He makes it clear in his book, The Origin of Species: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.”

What would you have to do to make yourself supremely fit according to Darwin’s definition?

16. ”Watch out for the dark side of your own idealism and of your moral sense,” says Howard Bloom. “Both come from our arsenal of natural instincts. And both easily degenerate into an excuse for attacks on others. When our righteous indignation breathes the flames of anger against a ‘villain,’ we all too often become a fang in nature's scheme of tooth and claw.” What's the dark side of your idealism and morality?

17. ”Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” So begins Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield. Buy a blank book and write that sentence at the top of page one.

18. Thank you for not smoking while communing with this subliminal prod. Thank you as well for not burping, drooling, picking your nose, getting drunk, spilling food on yourself, thinking nasty thoughts about anyone, and letting your mind leap from undisciplined ideas to out-of-control feelings like a mean monkey on amphetamines. All such behaviors would interfere with your ability to register on deep subconscious levels the meaning of this subliminal prod, which is: Sometimes you’ve got to be a bit of an asshole in order to avoid getting burned by the ass-souls. Do you agree? Provide evidence pro or con.

19. Computer programmer Garry Hamilton articulated the following “Game Rules” on his website. Give examples of how they have worked in your life.

1. If the game is rigged so you can’t win, find another game or invent your own. 2. If you’re not winning because you don’t know the rules, learn the rules. 3. If you know the rules but aren’t willing to follow them, there’s either something wrong with the game or you need to change something in yourself. 4. Don’t play the game in a half-baked way. Either get all the way in or all the way out. 5. It shouldn’t be necessary for others to lose in order for you to win. If others have to lose, re-evaluate the game’s goals.

20. Here’s the catch about pronoia: Life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it, but it doesn’t necessarily give you exactly what you want, exactly when you want it. Talk about the differences between what you want and what you need.

21. Write a letter to the person you’ll be one year from today. Tell this Future You that you’ve taken a vow to accomplish three feats by then. Say why these feats are more important to you than anything else. Describe them. Brainstorm about what you’ll do to make them happen. Draw pictures or make collages that capture your excitement about them.

and "Pronoia Therapy For Beginners" (some of the above is repeated):

PRONOIA THERAPY FOR BEGINNERS
1. During an intense half-hour rant, complain and whine about everything that pains you. Get a sympathetic listener to be your receptacle if possible, or simply deliver your blast straight into the mirror. Having emptied all your psychic toxins in one neat ritual spew, you'll be able to luxuriate in rosy moods and relaxed visions for a while.

2. Locate or create a symbol of your own pain. Mail it to us at the Angst Incineration Crew, P.O. Box 150628, San Rafael, CA 94915, USA. We will then conduct a sacred ritual of purification during which we will burn that symbol to ash. While this may not banish your suffering entirely, it will provide a substantial amelioration which you will be able to feel the benefits of within a month.

3. Eat a pinch of dirt while affirming that you are ready to kill off one of your outworn shticks -- some idea or formula that has worked for you in the past but has now become a parody of itself.

4. Using crayons, paints, scissors, glue, collage materials or any other materials, create a piece of large-denomination paper money, good for making a payment on your karmic debt.

5. Kick your own ass 22 times.

6. Brag about yourself nonstop for 10 minutes. Record it so you can listen back to it later.

7. Perform a senseless act of altruism, for instance by giving an anonymous gift or providing some beauty or healing to a person who cannot do you any favors in return.

8. Deliver a concentrated stream of praise about someone, either to that person herself or to anyone who will listen. Extra credit: Force yourself to think a kind and loving thought about someone you don't like or from whom you feel alienated.

9. Conjure up an imaginary friend and have an intimate conversation with him and her for at least 15 minutes.

10. Build an altar devoted to beauty, truth, and love in one of the ugliest places you know.

11. With a companion, watch a blank TV while making up a pronoiac story featuring plot twists that are rife with happiness, redemption, and good times -- yet not boring. You may either speak this tale aloud or write it down.

12. Compose and perform a ceremony in which you get married to yourself.

13. While making love, imagine that your physical pleasure is a carrier wave for a spiritual blessing which you beam in the direction of some person you know who needs a supercharged boost.