WORLD AIDS DAY 2015

I was diagnosed HIV+ 25 years ago in September 1990. I had full blown AIDS from 1995-8, my CD4 count dropping to 3 and almost dying from PCP and KS lesions that spread into my lungs and throat. I responded to approaching death by diving deeply into a search for a purpose to life, soon awed by what I found in paganism, buddhism and other paths, I surrendered my atheistic mindset before the great mystery of our incarnation, which our modern secular rationalist materialist culture largely discourages us from probing. I found that the keys to heaven, to liberation and enlightenment are indeed within, though it often takes something as dramatic as a terminal illness, or addiction, to make us turn away from the never ending stream of external stimulation that comes our way and face what is inside us.

HIV lead me to the path of SOUL HEALING, it showed me that HEALING IS VITAL.  Healing involves un-learning the nonsense we have filled our minds with and developing an understanding of ourselves on many levels. There is nothing more fundamental to human life than the search for who we are. Once religion dictated the answers to us and science tends to do the same. Capitalist consumer culture has provided us with the means to easily fill our lives with other fascinations and ignore the question all together. Things are however changing, as more people are taking steps to think for themselves, and are experiencing their spiritual nature through rituals, medicine plants, meditation, yoga, reiki etc. Yet gay life is in another crisis, this time it is an epidemic of irresponsible chemically fuelled sexual behaviours among gay men leading to breakdowns, infections, addictions. Increasing numbers of gay men are pushing themselves to the edge.. an edge not so dissimilar from AIDS, except release through death is less likely and no medication is going to save the day. The reasons for the rapid arrival of this situation are much discussed – but generally the root cause – THAT WE ARE ALL ON A SEARCH FOR THE TRUE SELF, FOR TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCE THAT GIVES US A TASTE OF THE POTENTIAL IN OUR SOUL – is overlooked. Self-Knowledge is what we all seek, though mostly we have no idea that that is what is going on. Nor do we know that there are easier ways to come to self knowledge. Gay culture could turn this crisis around before it gets out of hand by putting the soul at the centre of things. Now that beautiful gym or yoga sculpted bodies are so prevalent, it is surely time to ask how can we look after our souls better? Because a horny physique .. and a shining soul… is a lot sexier than a hot body with an intoxicated, self-hating, spiritually unaware man inside it.

I AWOKE TO LIFE THROUGH DEATH

WOKE UP TO SPIRITUALITY THROUGH SEXUALITY

DISCOVERED LOVE CAUSES US TO EVOLVE

REALISED IN ETERNITY WE NEVER GET OLD

Physicists say it, mystics have always said it, ravers take drugs to feel it –

EVERYTHING IS ENERGY

MOVING, CHANGING CONSTANTLY

WE HUMANS ARE ITS CHANNELS- CONDUITS

WE CREATE THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

WE HAVE NOT YET UNDERSTOOD HOW POWERFUL WE ARE

Like children we have enjoyed our toys

Unaware for a long time that we were destroying the planet that enables us to live, using up its resources and wiping out many of its inhabitants

Like madmen we have developed technologies that we can use to destroy ourselves

NOT REALISING WE ARE ALL ONE,

WE COMPETE, WE FIGHT, WE DESTROY

Ignoring the strongest impulse in us –

TO LIVE IN PEACE, TO LOVE, TO CELEBRATE,

How many on earth now want to continue to live the old dramas of conflict?

The earth is in crisis. Time is running out

Voices of peace and compassion must become stronger than those of conflict and hate

OR IT MAY BE TOO LATE

Gay men shag as the world collapses, unaware that we are the healers, the peacemakers, spiritual-SHAMANIC souls who have evolved beyond religious regulation in order to bring transcendence to the world, and that we are needed for the love, joy, creativity and passion we bring to the planet and because there is power in our love making – spiritual power, that was once honoured and respected by many native peoples the world over, and is still remembered today by some.  We also seem obsessed with our masculinity, though it is from the feminine within us that half of our magic comes.  More attention to our connection to the feminine might help balance the insatiable search for drugged up man-love that so many seem to be stuck in.

Many queer people love to get high, to love intensely, to explore sexual extremes. Our voyages into ecstasy are openings to our spiritual nature, with the potential to reveal to us the multidimensional, vibrational reality we are part of. Because of the attitudes of religion most of us do not choose to explore the spiritual urges we find on our sexually charged, often chemically enhanced bliss trips, but if we look beyond the limited scope of the commercially driven gay scene there is an ever increasing rainbow of avenues for us to explore and express who we are. Gay liberation is only 5 decades old, our collective culture has yet to fully evolve. We are big on passion and play but short on compassion and prayer. But we are a spiritual people, finding our way in a world that has denied us for too long, and our journey of liberation is ongoing.

That world is sick and it needs our healing gifts.

This is the calling of the twenty first century queer: to learn to unite the body and soul, the genders within ourselves, the sexual and the spiritual and find the healing role we are here to play in the human family.

HEALING IS VITAL

www.albionfaeries.org.uk

www.queerspirit.net

www.folleterre.org