Avatarism Presents: The Re-Emergence of Personal Mythos

This is an amazing article by Wesley Thoricatha that was posted on ignite.me. It outlines the connections between Avatarism, transformational festivals and our ability to change ourselves through consciousness. 

Enjoy!

“Coyote,” by Bryan Tedrick, an interactive Burning Man art installation. 
Image courtesy of Bryantedrick.com

““We can become the stars of our own lives, instead of the downtrodden victims of life. Change the script, change the movie. Write your life. Speak the words. Hear your voice as the will of the living god manifest in action. I am here to create beauty, I am here to give healing, I am here to collect the mysteries of life, I am here to manifest, realize, and love, I am here to give myself back into the spring.” ”

— – Alexander Polinsky, founder of Avatarism

Where do your dreams and visions come from? How about your daily behaviors, or the story of your life?  If you are like most people, these come from a variety of sources, some of them beloved and intimate, others banal, practical, and seemingly beyond our control. But what if your daily actions, your regular behaviors, your life story, and the very way you see yourself all came from a unified, sacred narrative that weaves through every aspect of your life? This is the gem that awaits those who take the reigns of their own story and cultivate a radically creative life through personal mythology.

Intuitive Art

One of the most direct ways we express ourselves as humans in through art, yet the art world, like many areas of our culture, suffers largely from commercialization and myopic trendiness. But beyond the walls of institutionalized art and patiently outlasting the latest trends persists a mode of expression that has been present since the brush of our oldest ancestors first touched a cave wall. Intuitive art, which encompasses outsider art, visionary art, and art brut, celebrates artists whose process is largely untamed by formal art training or the status quo. It is art motivated by a unique personal vision and the passionate compulsion to manifest it in reality, often in seclusion and without any thought of how it might be received by critics. It utilizes symbols and materials that map out the artist’s inner landscape, resulting in a transformational journey captured on canvas where the artist is both the subject and object of their art. Intuitive art carries the energetic imprint of personal metamorphosis as inner visions are honored and given form, not for fame or money, but for the process of expression itself. This realm of art is not closed to an elite or educated few; it is open to all, and it’s a powerful way to start expressing the story of your inner world.

When people adorn themselves with intricate costumes that takes months of preparation and work, are we seeing them out of their element, or in a rare authentic moment? 

Burning Man

Arguably the greatest intuitive art gallery in the world is the one that appears every year in the Black Rock desert at the Burning Man festival, as tens of thousands of (mostly self-taught) people create everything from art installations to mutant vehicles to fantastical costumes. Be the person you always wanted to be, dress the way you’ve always wanted to dress, assume the identity of any character you’ve ever wanted to become. This is the invitation that burn events offer, and while much of it is whimsical, any authentic, boundary-expanding leap of self-expression carries with it a profound impression that leaves participants with experiences that stick with them their whole lives. The reason the popular greeting “Welcome home!” is so often heard is that people are returning home to their original selves, with the permission and encouragement to create their reality and be exactly who they’ve always wanted to be. This is personal mythology at its essence, and in action on a huge scale.

Avatarism

So you begin to make intuitive art in your spare time, and you attend burn events, but these actions remain in the margins of your life – a special retreat, rather than the norm. How do you integrate personal mythos into your daily life? One exciting answer to that question is a new movement called Avatarism. Alexander Polinsky, with a big dose of inspiration from his experiences at Burning Man, coined the term Avatarism as a way to live one’s life with inspired levels of continuous conscious creation.

In essence, Avatarism is the practice of seeing yourself as an avatar, a character in the game of Life, and it invites you to take creative control of your own self-definitions and intentionally develop the traits, connections, and skills that you most want for yourself – just as if you were playing a video game or a pen-and-paper role-playing game. It is a methodology for self-actualization and self improvement, and offers a practical means to formulate and keep track of your goals through the use of a character sheet which lists both your current abilities and your future vision for yourself. As goals are met, they are added to the sheet and new directions are mapped out. As top-level athletes, business executives, self-help gurus, and cavemen painting game on cave walls knew, positive visualization can have an enormous influence in our lives and help us attain goals we set for ourselves. In this way, Avatarism is taking powerful ancient wisdom and translating it into the language of the video game generation, not just for manifesting specific changes, but to write the story of our entire lives in a way that comes from our most epic visions.

Personal Mythology

Mythology is not simply some quaint or antiquated form of fantastic storytelling; it is the tapestry of cultural, spiritual, and personal belief that together makes up the way we understand and interact with the world. Creating art from the soul, radically expressing yourself at transformational festivals, and bringing the magic of personal mythos into your life through avatarism are all exciting ways to embrace personal mythology and become the person we’ve always wanted to be… and have always secretly been.

So, what is your story?

Avatarism is an inquiry into the nature of character itself. An open source game/philosophy for conscious character creation

For a Free Avatarism Character Sheet Kit go to: http://www.avatarism.net/#embody

Like Avatarism on Fscebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Avatarism

#Transformational #superheroWorkshop

#Embody #Uplevel #Uphold

#ForeverEndeavor

Avatarism Presents: The Land OF 10,000 Temples

90% of the people living in Thailand are Buddhist. When they call this place the land of 10,000 temples they are not joking. Around practically every corner and down every alley there are beautiful temples which house unbelievably beautiful Iconography of Buddha in his many permutations. Still more temples reside next to those temples that celebrate his many disciples. On my recent trip to Bangkok and Changmai I encountered friendly buddhist monks who spoke to me frankly about the most popular religion of Thailand.

I asked one young monk in orange robes at temple Wat Cheddi Luang if there was a God? He smiled and said simply, “no.” I asked him, “is Buddha a God?” Again he smiled and said, “no.” Looking around at all the Golden Buddha’s, paintings of Buddhas, and shrines to Buddha it was confusing to me as a Westerner to think that buddha was not their God. So I asked another young monk, “Who is the Buddha?” He smiled (I was becoming accustomed to seeing this smile whenever I asked a question) he said “Buddha is the best possible teacher.” So all these temples and monuments were not because of some supposed higher power or untouchable god, all this was for a great teacher….the greatest teacher! 

I began to understand the power of this idea as I went from temple to temple and sat in front of golden Buddhas, hundred foot tall Buddhas, and even thousands of tiny Buddhas laid out in perfect lines sitting in the shadow of one giant Buddha. When you find the best possible teacher you want to be reminded of him or her as much as possible to keep that teaching alive within yourself. As I travelled, I started to notice that every business, every public place, and even taxis and tuk tuks (three wheeled motorcycle taxis) had mini shrines in prominent places. The idea of this “best possible teacher,” started to become real to me.

Just being in the presence of a great figure from history or sitting with a person who has attained some mastery will give you a measure of that greatness to take away and use for yourself. At very least it gives psychic access to that idea and you may choose to enrich yourself with it, or not. To let it become part of you , or not.

We all start from somewhere. Our parents ideals and faults, the movies we watched as kids, our second grade teacher etc. These are the first building blocks to our character. If we never progress past these basic ideas then there may be a kind of self imposed ignorance that sets in and it may be completely invisible to the carrier of such simplistic ideals leading to a spiritual short sightedness or a small mindedness. 

The more we let in, the bigger we get. Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary both has marvelous ideas on this. To widen the reality tunnel, to mock up a better case scenario is the birthright of every human. To embody whatever the hell you want to and to let it become you is the most outrageous trip you can take. Who says you-are-you anyway? Who says you can’t decide to embody a great teacher? Who says you can’t become a superhero or a master of some difficult skill?

Only other monkeys with pin-hole sized reality tunnels, that’s who.

This is the idea of embodiment, and it is one of the central concepts in Avatarism. To know that greatness is yours for the taking. To know that you need only to embody that greatness in the slightest to begin to understand it’s power… and when you understand it… you are more free to become it. 

Embodiment is the magic that I speak of and write about most. It’s a mixture of acting, role playing, and self programming. The fact that you may not really believe you can do it, isn’t a problem. The fact that you may not be a wizard or a fairy or a person of greatness is a feature not a bug allowing you to drop the whole thing and deal in a more simplistic way with the things of life, if need be. 

The important thing is to begin to embody, to consciously create your character, to seek that which is best for you, to up level, and to see others on this road and uphold them. 

I experienced this when I was a child and had the fortune to meet the great Jim Henson. I stood before him and he treated me as an equal. I can say honestly that I was never the same after that experience. For the 7 year old me, the creator of the muppets was the best possible teacher. After sitting in front of so many beautiful statues of the Buddha where he is depicted as calm, serene, peaceful, and in a state of easy pleasure I can say that I have been changed By this experience as well.

Who is your best possible teacher or teachers? Who can you call yogi or trusted friend or refuge? I have had many teachers and I hope I will have many more. To be reverent enough to find your heroes in the world, to seek them out, to worship them, but yet have enough irreverence to know that you may have what they have….that is also at the core of Avatarism.

We are collections of memories, instances and experiences that either glance off us, horrify us, or up level us….(sometimes a bit of all three.)
We may seek to up level or character on the real world platform and so play a better game moment to moment day today year-to-year.

Avatarism is an inquiry into the nature of character itself. An open source game/philosophy for conscious character creation

For a Free Avatarism Character Sheet Kit go to: http://www.avatarism.net/#embody

Like Avatarism on Fscebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Avatarism

#Transformational #superheroWorkshop

#Embody #Uplevel #Uphold

#ForeverEndeavor

Avatarism Presents: A Lesson In Swahili

Avatarism presents a lesson in Swahili

“kushangaza mchuzi,” is the direct Swahili translation of………..

AWESOME SAUCE!!!!!!!

So say it twenty times and memorize it, then go to an african restaraunt and order chicken mafe (pronounced maa-fae), taste the delicious peanut and tomato sauce, look your waiter in the eye, leap up off your seat,  and say KUSHANGAZA MCHUZI, while rhythmically pumping your fists in the air every time you chew. 

That is all. 

Be livin’ it

iRev. Alexander Polinsky

Avatarism is an inquiry into the nature of character itself. An open source game/philosophy for conscious character creation

For a Free Avatarism Character Sheet Kit go to: http://www.avatarism.net/#embody

Like Avatarism on Fscebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Avatarism

#Transformational #superheroWorkshop

#Embody #Uplevel #Uphold

#ForeverEndeavor

Avatarism presents: “Radical Unconditional Love”, by Thom Thumb

A Challenge of Radical Unconditional Love

by Thom Thumb on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at 2:01am ·

One of my favorite tricks when playing hide and seek is to pick a spot where I can see the seeker.  Then as soon as they go off to look I hide in the place that they counted.  Humans rarely look closely in places they have already labeled in their minds as fruitless.  In this way I think we have hidden our most precious treasure.  We hid our road to nirvana in the last place we would think to look for it… Right under our noses!  It is hidden within most songs.  It is the basis for every major spiritual lineage and creative exploration.  

Why then is this idea called love so slippery? It certainly has to do with our words.. Tricksy things are words.  Have we perhaps diluted the potency and the meaning of the word love with our overuse of it?  I am sure many of us take for granted that the definition we have latched onto of love is complete, (at least as far as ourselves are concerned).  As we know, whenever you think something is satisfactory or complete you stagnate your growth in that realm. But truly it has now come to mean a plethora of different things to a great many people.  The definitions I have found in dictionaries use words such as affection, devotion, attachment, admiration and attraction.  This is what Wikipedia has to say about it; “"Love" may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros, to the emotional closeness of familial love, to the platonic love that defines friendship, or to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love, or to a concept of love that encompasses all of those feelings. This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.”

My spiritual cocoon is bursting and it all started with my ambitious redefinition of love.  A definition that ties together all of love’s aspects and forges a way of life.  For this purpose I will call it “radical unconditional love”.  I have a natural aversion to definitions of love as something selfless.  Without the self to be conscious of it existing it becomes a mute point. Yet I believe our definition of self can be as limitless as our definition of love.  Limitlessness is one of the main qualities of my definition of love.  I have yet to see an end to the amount of love that can be generated with a willingness to do so. As far as I can tell we draw from an infinite well.  Radical unconditional love begins with radical acceptance and I believe we have been intuitively evolving in that direction as a species.  There was a time when slavery was a widely embraced way of life. We have  mostly grown out of that time.  Yet still we value some living things over others and value living things over “inanimate things”.  We put limits on who or what we are capable of loving, choosing to define some entities as being on another team.  But everything in existence is on the same team or more precisely, we are the same team.  So without further ado, here is my current iteration of my definition of love:

“A boundless and ever-growing need to become aware of blissful oneness through creative interaction.”

Allow me to elaborate:  Most religion’s god(s) have this similar aspect: ~Creator(s)~  Creation in perhaps every culture is revered as divine or sacred.  Our amazing abilities to create both physically and intellectually are all powered by an act of love and as far as I can tell, what these acts of love can create is limitless.   When a person loves another person they are drawn to interact with them because of a deep need to become one either through physical union or through enthusiastic co-creation.  Sometimes all of the above.  The same thing goes for loving an object or an idea.  The great Carl Jung once said,

“The creation of something new comes not from the intellect but from the play instinct acting from inner necessity.  The creative mind plays with the object it loves.” 

The exploration of another entity’s perspective is a remembering of that aspect of your greater cosmic self!  We are an infinite entity viewing itself expanding from one perspective node in the sphere.  Perhaps enlightenment is being able to witness it all unfolding from an integrated and unified vision of all the perspectives simultaneously.  Likely it is more of a grand, blissful feeling awareness than a viewing.

  I believe the key to grokking radical unconditional love lies in the question; “Is there a motive?”  If you are interacting with something, be it person, plant, or inanimate object for a reason, than you have strayed away from the highest vibration of radical unconditional love.  What does a baby do, for instance, when it comes in contact with something beautiful it has yet to interact with yet such as a shiny marble on the floor?  It smells it, it shakes it, it rubs it on it’s face, it tastes it.  It is a fascinating exploration of interaction birthed from inner necessity.  Most “adults” only engage in this kind of limitless visceral exploration during private sexual interactions and sometimes not even then. The baby would behave the same way if the marble were a piece of cat poop.

True love lies within this place of unconditional fascination.  It is the irresistible gravity that pulls us to connect and become one with all that is. Play for it’s own sake is the language of love.  This existence is an excruciatingly beautiful playground.   We are infinitely more vast than our beliefs and dispositions.  We are children of a diving formula.  Matrix comes from the latin Mater, which means mother.  Pattern comes from the Latin Pater, which means Father.  Waves of sound; Waves of light; Pulses of universal chi… These are our ancestors.  We are a magnum opus of energy’s eternal and permeating diversity. When we set limits on our expressions of love and methods of exploration, let us take care to do so like we are consciously playing a game.  A game where all roads lead to victory despite our best efforts.  Let us do this with exuberant curiosity and the conscious compassion of unattachment to the designs of any specific path. Our treasure map to enlightenment is hidden within all of us and all we have to do is listen to our loving essence.  Our judgements, our labels, our motives are all camouflage… The built in challenges that spice up existence and make it a story.  The challenges that make samadhi a prize worth winning. I believe that this state of unconditional, genuine wonder love can be cultivated…

And so I issue forth these 3 challenges to all my other perspectives ~

I challenge you to be silent for one day, only witnessing, listening, breathing and turning up the knobs on how much you love everything you see and experience!

I challenge you to pick something you find distasteful, whether it be a food, person or place and engage it with full intention to take it in without labels or judgements and love it more than you did when you began!

The final thing I ask refrains from being an equal appreciation of everything… I challenge you to boldly and radically embrace the ecstatic  bliss of everything you see today as if you were “falling in love” with your other self.

If you have read this far than thank you family!  I am truly blessed to have you and have gargantuan gratitude for your curiosity and care of my words.  I will leave you with a gift of this poem, which was inspired by these thoughts…

Falling in love?  Haha, This is a remembering!

A blissful expansion, an ego dismembering,

An acceptance of self, containing all forms of wealth,

A flow only found in surrendering…

And surrender I will to meadow and hill,

To sun, cloud, moon, rain and snow,

Surrender I will To park and landfill,To lover, to friend, and to foe,

I’ll surrender to pleasure,I’ll surrender to pain,

I’ll surrender to things most find trite or mundane,

I’ll surrender to breath and laughter and song,

I’ll surrender to whatever dance comes along,

I’ll surrender to objects and small silly games,

I’ll surrender to babbling things without names,

I’ll surrender to shaking out traumas of old,

Till all limits dissolve and begin to lose hold,

I’ll sink into all like a big wave coming home,

To the ocean born of that most glorious ohm,

What once were boundaries, now redefine as connections,

Till eternity’s voice rings out to my far off sections,

Till this “falling in love” we typically have for just one,

Explodes from within like a large dying sun,

And rains down upon every speck in existence,

A fire that blends time and obliterates distance!

Avatarism is an inquiry into the nature of character itself. An open source game/philosophy for conscious character creation

For a Free Avatarism Character Sheet Kit go to: http://www.avatarism.net/#embody

Like Avatarism on Fscebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Avatarism

#Transformational #superheroWorkshop

#Embody #Uplevel #Uphold

#ForeverEndeavor

Photo courtesy of the transcendent Amanda Sage

Avatarism Presents.... Psychic Gnome Society

Say hello to the Psychic Gnome Society. If you have ever wondered what it is like inside the mind of god, here is a clue. Watch and enjoy.

“Original, mind blowing, and vastly unique, their work is part of an ongoing experiment to bring never before seen graphics and interfaces into reality through the medium of light and sound.”

Avatarism is an inquiry into the nature of character itself. An open source game/philosophy for conscious character creation

For a Free Avatarism Character Sheet Kit go to: http://www.avatarism.net/#embody

Like Avatarism on Fscebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Avatarism

#Transformational #superheroWorkshop

#Embody #Uplevel #Uphold

#ForeverEndeavor

Avatarism presents, The daily word. “Sparklepants”

The awesome Ms. Em has set the daily word at “Sparklepants” This is to be used as a moniker for one’s loves, friends, and co-inspirators. 

A few suggestions……

Generic greeting   “Hey sparklepants!”

At the office          "Great presentation Mr. Sparklepants"

For a cop               “ Step out of the car, Sparklepants”

in the church         “ blessed are the sparklepants”

at the factory         “ it’ll be ready when sparklepants here, get around to it.”

Avatarism is an inquiry into the nature of character itself. An open source game/philosophy for conscious character creation

For a Free Avatarism Character Sheet Kit go to: http://www.avatarism.net/#embody

Like Avatarism on Fscebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Avatarism

#Transformational #superheroWorkshop

#Embody #Uplevel #Uphold

#ForeverEndeavor

Avatarism presents, “Death by Sparkles”

Greetings all!

Adey Bell, an Avatarism corrospondent in Southern Oregon writes a brief piece on what can happen if you are, become, or plan to embody a sparkly avatar. “Sparkly” refers to the quality of brilliance and magnetism that comes from a person who is living within their ideal scene for themselves. Happy, productive, self directed, radically self reliant, or just damn fulfilled in their life.

This can create the situation where others see you as the ideal for themselves, either as a mate, or as a role model and that can land you fans, lovers, and even enemies.

The culture of personal transformation that is contained in the game of Avatarism is the doorway for some of us. Others would rather hold tight to what they have, and become rigid. They risk breakdown due to the degrading effect of time and the erosion of all things.

“Transformation is cultivation”-iRev

Best to have a culture of transformation in place to deal with the inevetable life changes ahead. We have a huge job! The people on earth need to wake up to our connection to the earth, the cosmos, and each other. Some just aren’t ready.  Let’s be kind to the mundanes and encourage them. But recognize the dangers! If they spit venom in your face, “shields up,” and get out of there. We have a mission to save the world! No time for evil D-bags! 

Excelsior!

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Death by Sparkles

 By Adey Bell

Being Brilliant and Integrity can mean:

-people you love may give you shit because you’re happy
-you may loose “friends” because you’re living your dream
-you may constantly confront people everywhere you go because you shine
-you can be ignored, embraced, then destroyed
-you may be ridiculed, written off or laughed at because you believe all the world is love and you live that truth. In the face of what seems to be opposite, you still have the courage to be love
-you may feel utterly alone when those who have lost their faith try to persuade you that yours is in vein.
-you may blast someone who’s tone level isn’t ready to receive yours, and in all good intentions, obliterate their ego, resulting in an awkward interaction where you don’t “see” each other even tho you’re standing in front of them….

it takes courage to be in authentic truth with what is. it takes self mastery to know what your truth is in any given moment, it takes maturity to take inventory of the situation and act accordingly

it’s not pretty
but it’s beautiful

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Be well, be beautiful, be fearless, be free,

Be love.

Alexander Polinsky

Avatarism is an inquiry into the nature of character itself. An open source game/philosophy for conscious character creation

For a Free Avatarism Character Sheet Kit go to: http://www.avatarism.net/#embody

Like Avatarism on Fscebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Avatarism

#Transformational #superheroWorkshop

#Embody #Uplevel #Uphold

#ForeverEndeavor