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If a PF game were set on Earth I wonder what regional feats would be available for Florida characters.

Alligator Skin: Gain +1 natural armor bonus and fire resist 5 from years of baking your skin in the FL sun.

Improved Bug Digestion: Gain a +4 morale bonus on Fort saves made to resist dying after eating large quantities of bugs.

Crazy Driver: You gain a +4 insight bonus on Drive checks made to cause accidents.

Cannibal: You gain a bite attack that deals 1d4 plus Strength modifier piercing damage, which you can make an attack with at your full base attack bonus in addition to your normal full attack.

Old and Senile: Requirements: Age 60+. You gain a +4 bonus on Will saves against mind-affecting effects (because you've lost your mind....)

CHAPTER 7: A YEAR OLDER AND WISER
I made a personal breakthrough a few weeks ago. Some would say I became aware, or that my third eye had opened, or that I’d had a religious experience, or that I had transcended my ego and achieved understanding of the path to enlightenment. But I prefer to call it a personal breakthrough. I wish I could write that it was through hours of meditation and prayer, but I have been very lax in those practices over the last year. I suppose one could say that my subconscious mind was meditating, or praying, or figuring things out all along as my conscious mind bothered with the daily routine of going to work, coming home and being a husband and father, going to sleep for eight hours, and repeating each day for the past year.

But the honest truth is that I took the shortcut. I drank two bottles of cough syrup containing around 600 mg of DXM Hbr as the only active ingredient (didn’t want an extreme amount of anti-inflammatory or expectorant chemicals in my body). The resultant psychedelic trip stripped away my ego, to the point where I laid down on the couch and began to imagine that I might have taken too much syrup, and that I might die or have a complete psychotic break. I neither died, nor had a complete psychotic break, but I truly felt for the first time in my life the feeling of not being stuck in myself and not caring that much about the fact.

My ego was operational to the point that I would get up to use the bathroom, walking in the characteristic robotic lurch that accompanies dissociation with one’s proprioceptor nerves, or drink a bottle of water, but the occasional anxiety regarding dying or going insane was quelled by an insistent sense of peace and contentment. I literally could have died happy, or gone happily insane, knowing that everything is nonetheless perfect, and as it should be, for without my ego, I had no fear of death, insanity, or loneliness. With two bottles of cough syrup in my belly, I didn’t much care about being afraid of anything.
In fact, I didn’t much care about a lot of things in a very empowering way. I could tell that I would be hungry if I had my ego up and running, but I did not hunger. I saw attractive women, but I did not feel lust for them. I realized that I was at that moment capable of enduring seconds, minutes, and hours of waiting, or toiling, or exercising, because I was immune to boredom. Every second was filled with a sense of infinite and eternal peace and contentment, and time became far less important to me.

I realized that without my ego in the way, I didn’t mind working at my job, even if it was a very busy day. I didn’t mind taking out the garbage, or picking up dog poo, or playing make-believe with my children, or making my wife feel loved and special, or texting my mother to tell her I love her, et cetera. In fact, I felt like singing Zippity Doo-Dah while doing all of those things. It was a eureka moment for me, something so simple, so seemingly insignificant that it doesn’t even exist, that ego was the cause of suffering, and lack of ego, to whatever degree it can be attained by a living creature, is the cause of bliss, which feels pretty damned good.

As it turns out, it really is better to give than to receive. What sounds like a mouthful of unhelpful spiritual mumbo-jumbo to the average soul wrapped up in the thick gauze of distractions presented by life’s mundane details turns out to be sound advice. It’s just hard to see it through the grime of ego. The very same urge that impels me to acquire, and to covet, and to abuse, when reversed, impels me to give, to make happy wishes for others, and to make good use of whatever presents itself. When I let go of my expectations, and let go of my preconceptions, I am free to experience truth and purity. When I cease to feel anger at being slighted, because I have surrendered my ego, I create peace in my environment.

Enlightenment equals dissolution of ego. Therefore, death is the ultimate enlightenment, and the ultimate bliss. The ultimate bliss is oblivion. When this is realized, it is senseless to fear death, loss, loneliness, or even fear itself. The one thing that we try our hardest to hang onto is the one thing that limits us the most, and the thing we fear most is the thing that brings the greatest sense of peace and satisfaction.

So, how has this psychedelic revelation impacted my life? I have never been happier than I am now. Being happy produces a wonderful kind of magic in the world around you. I told Sarah that the lasagna she made for my sister-in-law’s birthday party was delicious, and so was the bread she baked from scratch, and what was the result? Over the past few weeks, she has baked Sadie’s birthday cake, several pizzas, cookies, and made several other delicious meals for me. I smile at the people I meet at restaurants, grocery stores, et cetera, and (usually) they smile back at me. I play with my children, and enjoy it. (My favorite thing to do now is duel against Sophia and Sadie with foam rubber swords. I’m raising a pair of badass warrior-maidens!) Until now, I was never the kind of guy who danced at clubs or parties, but I am now, occasionally to my wife’s embarrassment.

I love Sarah, and now she can feel it, and has been responding to it. Instead of focusing my energy and capabilities on pleasing myself, I am focusing it on leading my family in our collective pursuit of happiness, and we are all happier and more confident for it. My joy has sent ripples out into the world. Everyone in my immediate family seems to like “the new Solomon” a lot, even if they have expressed concerns about whether it might actually be “the manic Solomon” they like so much, and they all seem a bit happier with themselves from my perspective. My friends and co-workers have felt the ripples, and our bonds have grown stronger in a short time. I would like for the ripples to grow into waves that wash across every shore, so that you can feel it too.

I have not used recreational drugs of any kind since this final trip. I found what I had been looking for, and I realize now that I don’t need to be anesthetized to be happy any more. If you have been in the same boat, I hope that reading these words can help you to make the same break for freedom. Throw off the chains and be free. Be happy.

CHAPTER 6: AN IDEAL SOCIETY
Society is like a great machine, and we are its components. When all of a machine’s components are in good working order, the whole machine is in good working order. Likewise, if everyone who makes up society were to keep the Five Obligations, we would live in an ideal society. There would be no cause for war, no need for social services, no need for law enforcement, or prisons, or armies. There would be no need for bombs or missiles. Rifles would be used only for the fun of target shooting, or hunting to feed oneself and one’s family. No one would starve to death, or die from lack of medical attention, or be left to fend for themselves during natural disasters. Parents wouldn’t be afraid to let their children play outside unsupervised, and there would be no need for locks on doors. Everyone would take pride in doing their part, and no one would try to take advantage of the charity and goodness of their neighbors.

In an ideal society, leaders would be elected based on merit, rather than social position and wealth. The politicians wouldn’t just be bored rich people that want to buy power over everyone else; they would be trained professionals that want to be of service to society—scholars and scientists, honest business owners and managers, and other people with training and experience in leading others. The mentality of today’s politicians and dictators comes straight from Machiavelli’s Il Principe (The Prince), and Sun-Tzu’s Art of War—anyone who has watched the debates of U.S. presidential candidates, or their advertisements, knows what I’m talking about.

Sadly, the reason negative campaigns are so prevalent is because that’s apparently what works. Everybody has some kind of character flaw or skeleton in the closet, so to speak, and if you run for any kind of political office, your opponents will try to bury you with whatever they can discover. Who is to blame for this rather pathetic state of American politics? The fault lies directly with Americans. We elect these power-hungry clowns, and apparently, we are more motivated by loathing than by admiration. We are looking for the lesser evil, and basically ignoring the good. We are voting against rather than for.

Until the opportunity to run for political office is no longer limited to people with no more credentials than being born into a wealthy family, Americans will be led by rich, greedy megalomaniacs, who will pander to our worst natures, sling mud at each other, and tell any lie necessary to gain their positions of power.

Limited terms for all political offices would go a long way toward culling unworthy leaders. As it stands now, the president can serve no more than two four-year terms; members of the Senate can serve unlimited six-year terms; members of the House of Representatives can serve unlimited two-year terms; and members of Congress and the Supreme Court have no term limits at all. Some of our wiser forefathers, including Thomas Jefferson, were in favor of limiting tenure, “to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress”. Without term limits, we are governed by a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy) masquerading as a democracy.

Also, at some point along the course of history, we began paying politicians excessive salaries while they are in office, and excessive pensions after they retire from office. I understand that being a politician is a full-time job, and I agree that it should be compensated, but the compensation shouldn’t be so much that it encourages interest from those addicted to accumulating wealth and power—we want our leaders to be motivated by a sincere desire to serve society, not by greed and vanity. The current state of the U.S. economy, and the country’s ever-growing national debt, is a sure sign that our leaders, and by extension, we the people, have not been managing our money responsibly. Our leaders, and too many of our citizens, spend like foolish teenagers with a credit card that has no limit, burying our country under an insurmountable mountain of debt that is already beginning to crush us.

Changing society begins with each individual. If each member of a society fulfills the Five Obligations to the best of their ability, the society will be a fair, just, and beautiful society to live in. Unfortunately, there are a great many people who regularly fail to fulfill the Five Obligations, yet who still feel entitled to the benefits of society. People like this are like a cement block chained to a swimmer’s ankle, and are quickly ruining society. There have always been selfish and lazy people content to abuse the generosity and trust of their hard-working fellows, but it seems to me that the concentration of such parasitic individuals in the population has greatly increased after my grandparents’ generation. Maybe it was the excesses of the 1960s that laid the groundwork for a decrease in personal responsibility.

Let me make it clear that I acknowledge the need for public welfare and social security, but only for those who are not capable of providing for themselves—those with physical or mental handicaps, orphans (and children who might as well be orphans due to negligent parents), the elderly, et cetera. Charity is a part of the Second Obligation, to be compassionate. Churches rely upon tithes and donations from their congregations, and a good church with a generous congregation usually directs a portion of this income to charity, feeding and clothing, and even housing those in need. I applaud the efforts of any organization that engages in this kind of charity, yet I can’t help feeling that if the majority of that income weren’t spent on the salaries of clergy and other employees, maintenance of church buildings, and especially many of the absurd extravagances of the modern mega-churches, a great many more needy people could be fed, clothed, and housed.

Obviously, we do not live in an ideal world, we do not have ideal societies, and I think it safe to say that we never will. Nonetheless, if we strive to fulfill the Five Obligations, and encourage others to do so as well, we will shift society in the right direction, inch by inch. Just as every cell of an organism’s body must cooperate with the other cells to fulfill its purpose, so must every member of a society cooperate and fulfill their individual purpose to contribute to the advancement of humanity toward our collective purpose. What is your individual purpose in life? Only you can determine that. What is our collective purpose? To strive ever closer to the ideal society by promoting respect, compassion, responsibility, honesty, and gratitude.

CHAPTER 5: HEALTH AND WELLNESS
As a licensed neuromuscular massage therapist, and especially as an instructor of related courses, I have studied anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, pathology, and other sciences relating to human health and wellness, and have taught these subjects to students for the last few years, necessitating that I know what I’m talking about. As any teacher knows, you learn a lot more about a subject if you have to teach it to others. (Many healthcare professionals learned what they needed to learn to graduate and pass their licensing exams, and then forgot everything they don’t use frequently in the course of their practice; an instructor of healthcare professionals has his or her memory refreshed every semester.) In the state where I live, licensed massage therapists must renew their license every two years, and in addition to paying the Department of Health a substantial fee to issue a new license, must complete 24 hours of continuing education, a third of which consists of courses on laws and ethics, awareness of communicable diseases, and medical malpractice prevention, and the balance can be any of a myriad of hands-on seminars taught at massage therapy schools.

My point is that I am qualified to give advice on general health and wellness, even if prescribing medications and diagnosing conditions are outside of my scope of practice. What follows will contain nothing in the way of prescribing medication or diagnosing conditions, but it will contain a general prescription for health and wellness, in the form of friendly advice.

If we examine previous generations of humanity, we will find that the further back we go, the tougher our predecessors were. Pre-industrial folk were healthier and fitter than we are. Our grandparents were tougher in their prime than we are, in many ways, because they worked harder (on farms, or in mines, or factories, et cetera) than the average person in an industrial society works (at desks); and folk of the medieval era were far tougher than our grandparents; and folk of the Bronze Age were hardier still; and folk of Neolithic times must have been unstoppable. Why is this so? Because the further back in history we go, the tougher one had to be in order to survive. What if we had to chase our food over miles of tundra, or climb a tree to get to it, or run away from bees to get something sweet, instead of hopping in the car and driving to a store where it’s all prepackaged for us? What if we ate more plant-based foods, less meats, and no refined sugars or processed foods? What if the meat we did eat was leaner because it ate healthy food itself and got plenty of exercise (running away from us), instead of living its life in a cage, being fed steroids and crap? We would all be fit, and have beautifully-chiseled bodies. We would all be athletic, far fewer of us would be fat, fewer of us would die of cancers, heart disease, or other lifestyle-associated diseases, and our teeth would stay strong and white for far longer.

At this point, you might think that the fact that the average human lifespan has steadily increased throughout the ages disproves my statement that previous generations were fitter and healthier than most people of today, but you must factor in the relative advances in medicine. If a man of the Middle Ages who contracted pneumonia could have received antibiotics at a sanitized hospital, instead of having his blood drained out by the same guy who cuts his hair and gives him a shave (barbers were the surgeons of that time), I am sure he would have outlived most modern men, and enjoyed a better quality of life for longer, to boot.

There is a correlation between the difficulties of one’s environment and one’s physical fitness. Our primitive ancestors, and those who still live as hunter-gatherers today, were the fittest of humans because they had to be. It was never harder to survive in the world than it was then. We rose to the top of the food chain by our wits and with tools, not by being the strongest brutes in the animal world, and there is fossil evidence that humans often fell prey to the other predators of the world, or even had the tables turned on them by their own prey. They died early from trauma, or diseases for which there was no cure at the time, and probably not from heart disease, which has been the chief cause of death in people of the present age. They died of infected wounds because they didn’t have hydrogen peroxide or antibiotics, or from starvation. Who knows how long hunter-gatherers would have lived if they’d had the wonders of modern medicine instead of blizzards, sabertooth tigers, and rival tribes trying to kill them over resources? More and more people are living past a century these days, thanks largely to advances in medical treatments, combined with active lifestyle, good diet, and the luck of getting good genes.

So, the formula for physical health is a simple equation. Physical exercise plus good nutrition equals good health. I know it is far easier to say, “Just exercise for an hour every day, eat more fruits and vegetables and less meats and high-cholesterol foods, and drink plenty of water,” than it is to do. Getting fit requires discipline and persistence (again, the most important factor in success at any endeavor). It requires having faith in yourself that you can become healthier. Be kind to yourself, and don’t berate or hate yourself if you fail to exercise one day, and gobble down a quart of ice-cream instead.

Don’t let a temporary failure become a permanent one. Pick yourself up and keep on trying. It is a mathematical certainty (barring some hormonal or other medical reason otherwise) that if you improve your eating habits and increase your exercise, you will lose fat, gain lean muscle, and live longer. In fact, I suggest that you allow yourself one day every week where you don’t have to exercise (unless you like to, which often happens once you’ve been doing it for a few weeks or months), and you can eat anything you want (in moderate quantities, of course). If you eat right, and exercise an hour or more six days out of the week, you will get fit and healthy, even if a day of splurging and being lazy is factored in.

Another simple factor to health and longevity that we of the Western World often overlook is deep breathing. In China, many people practice deep breathing exercises, combined with movements designed to promote strength, balance, mobility, and inner peace. Tai-chi is becoming a popular form of exercise here in the West, as more and more classes are being offered at gyms and health clubs, martial arts schools, and elsewhere. Tai-chi is a specific type of chi-gong—that is, an exercise designed to cultivate one’s chi (or qi, ki, prana, lifeforce, et cetera) through movement and deep, controlled breathing.

Chi, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is the energy that flows through everything, living and nonliving. It has basically the same definition I gave earlier for God—the underlying matrix of energy of which everything is a part. Practitioners of the martial arts have been known to do some pretty unbelievable things with chi—breaking bricks with parts of their body, absorbing attacks that would break an unconditioned person’s bones, or leaping over a ping-pong table; I have witnessed all of those feats personally during my time training in Chinese kung-fu, for three years at a school, and thereafter on my own to this day. (By the way, the guy who jumped over the ping-pong table was a 60-year-old Chinese grandmaster.)

My recommendation is that anyone interested in incorporating deep breathing exercises into their health regimen read a book or two about chi-gong, or better yet, enroll in a class or find a private instructor. Yoga is another excellent exercise that involves controlled deep breathing combined with movement to cultivate chi (which is called prana by the yogis of India), and it is generally not hard to find yoga classes at the gym or health club.

Of course, not everyone has the means or opportunity to take fitness classes, or even purchase a book. Nonetheless, if all you did was take at least fifteen or twenty minutes a few times each day to sit in a quiet place and breathe at full capacity (meaning to fill your lungs deeply), I assure you that you would reap definite health benefits. Most people who have a sedentary lifestyle (no exercise, desk job, et cetera) only fill the upper halves of their lungs, if that. Athletes, those who work construction or other physically strenuous jobs, and those who exercise are generally the only people who ever breathe deeply, and unless they counteract the benefits by smoking cigarettes (or too much pot), they generally have better lung capacity and general fitness than those who rarely exercise.

The wonderful truth is, anyone can become fit for free. You don’t need treadmills as long as there are public parks or other places where you can safely walk, run, or bicycle. You need even less space to do push-ups and crunches (which do work, despite what some guy trying to sell you the latest fad workout or machine on TV might say). All you need for pull-ups or chin-ups is an overhead bar, or even a sturdy tree branch. I do chin-ups, overhand and underhand, using the crossbar of a football goalpost at the local public park (I have to jump to reach it, of course—I’m only six-feet-one-inch). Where there is a will, there is a way. You have to say to yourself, “You can, and you will,” in a loving but stern way.

Finally, as regards physical health, I cannot stress the importance of drinking enough clean water each day. The optimum amount depends on the individual’s body size and composition, activity level, and other external factors, such as climate. A good general rule is eight to ten tall glasses of water throughout the day—not all at once. If you are of average size, exercise regularly and/or live in a hot or arid climate, a gallon of water throughout the day is probably not too much. The important thing to remember is not to drink too much, as you can harm yourself by throwing your electrolyte levels out of balance, and not to drink too little, as you can become dehydrated.

I know what it feels like to live in a weak, obese body, and I know what it feels like to live in a strong, lean body, and I can say without hesitation that the fitter I am, the happier I am. Thirteen years ago, on the day of Sarah’s and my wedding, I weighed 280-some pounds, and I look at bit like a young Santa Claus wearing a tuxedo in our wedding pictures (I had a beard then). Not more than a year after we were married, I began to train in kung-fu at a local school. The sifu (usually translated as teacher or master) also taught tai-chi, but having grown up watching action movies, I was keen to learn how to be a living weapon myself. It might seem contradictory, but I have always preferred peaceful solutions to conflicts, while simultaneously admiring the martial arts—kung-fu, karate, classical fencing, archery, marksmanship, et cetera.

As my training progressed, I began to understand that true martial art is a way of life, a means to gain fitness, discipline, confidence, and so much more than just the ability to kick butt and look cool doing it. I also began to shed fat and gain muscle rather quickly, dropping to about 240 pounds after about six months. After three years of training at the school, I was maintaining a good, fit body weight of about 220 pounds, with a body mass index of about 15% body fat. I was obviously fit by then, and felt 200% better than I did three years before.

When I began training in kung-fu, I could not keep up with the other students, because I was out of shape. In fact, on the very first day, during the warm up, I gave Sifu a bit of a scare. We were practicing kicks, which is done repetitively at the sifu’s count, and is a fine cardio-vascular exercise that also improves balance, flexibility, and reaction time. After about a minute, my heart was thudding like it was going to burst out of my chest, and I was gasping for air. I felt dizzy, like I might black out, after about two minutes. I staggered over to the nearest wall and leaned against it. Sifu looked worried, and told me to sit down and catch my breath. He was probably thinking, “Oh, Buddha! Please don’t let this fat white guy die in my school!” I sat down, but still felt that I might pass out, so I sprawled out flat on my back, still huffing and puffing. At the time, he was quite concerned that I might have a heart attack, but Sifu loved telling that story later, half ribbing me, and half pointing out how training in kung-fu had made me so much fitter, stronger, faster, and more agile than I was then. It was kind of a humorous before-and-after story he liked to tell.

My point in telling you this is that I had to go at my own pace, and so does everyone else who wants to be successful. If you weigh 280 pounds, most of it fat, you will not be able to run, or even jog, when you first start exercising—it would be bad for your joints at that weight, for one, and you would simply become exhausted after only a few minutes. At that point, you might very well think that getting fit is simply beyond your capabilities and quit trying. This is where so many of us fail—believing the voice of doubt that tries to tell us, “You can’t”.

Start off walking as quickly as you can (without hurting yourself, of course)—the goal is to quicken your heart-rate and deepen your breathing naturally, at a pace you can sustain for at least forty minutes or so. When this becomes easy, start adding intervals of jogging—walk five minutes, then jog five minutes, a total of four repetitions, or more if you can. When that becomes easy, start jogging for forty minutes. When that becomes easy, add intervals of running—sprint in short bursts, slowing to a jog or a walk when you need to catch your breath. When that’s too easy, increase the duration of the sprints to a minute, et cetera. I couldn’t do more than a few good push-ups when I first began training, so I just did a few good push-ups, as quickly as I could do them, not as quickly as everyone else could do them.

Strength comes gradually, like any other skill or capacity that we might practice. The goal is muscle fatigue, which is pretty much a built-in limiter—once a muscle is fatigued, you won’t get much more out of it, no matter how hard you try. Building and maintaining a healthy muscular system might be one of the most important factors in preventing the undesired effects of aging, because at about middle age, we start to lose muscle mass at a depressing rate unless we train our muscles regularly to maintain them.

Another good reason to add muscle mass is that doing so burns off fat—the calories required to maintain muscle are significant, so you actually get to eat more (healthy foods, of course) and still lose fat. Don’t be discouraged if you are eating better, exercising regularly, and aren’t losing weight, because the chances are great that you actually are losing fat-weight, but are replacing it with lean muscle. Let your appearance in the mirror, the way your clothes fit, and the increased respect from others around you be your scale.

It is a sad but true fact that obese people are discriminated against in most societies. I have experienced this first hand. I was chubby in elementary school and middle school, slimmed down in high school for a few years, and then began packing on the fat again in my early twenties. During the times when I was obese, I usually had a few good friends, but was never very popular. I was a “nice guy”, or a “big teddy-bear” to the girls, never “hot”. I was occasionally teased for being fat. When I slimmed down in high school, I finally began to get some attention from girls, and even other guys seemed to regard me more highly.

Whether it makes any logical sense or not, people tend to give lean people more respect than they do fat people, just as tall people seem to be respected more than short people. It likely has to do with natural selection—the tall lean guy was a much better hunter than the short fat guy. As hard as early humans had to struggle not to starve, a fat person would have been extremely rare, but if there were such individuals, it would have been hard for others in their tribal communities not to suspect that they were eating more than their fair share of the tribe’s precious food. It is not unconceivable that we evolved to regard such behavior as tantamount to murdering the rest of the tribe during the long, hard years of Ice Age hunger, when having enough food was a daily, life-or-death matter.

Once agriculture began to provide surplus food, and far fewer people starved to death, obesity was downgraded from a capital offence to one of the “Seven Deadly Sins” (gluttony, specifically)—still pretty serious, but we’ll let God punish the fat bastard instead of exiling him or beating him with clubs. These days, being obese is usually not considered bad enough to send you to a fiery Hell for eternity (if it is, there are going to be a lot of disillusioned Christians at the Great Barbeque In The Earth), but it is still enough to get you passed over for jobs, promotions, dates, et cetera. If you are obese, don’t hate yourself for it, first of all. You deserve to love yourself, and to be loved by others, regardless of size or shape. But love yourself enough to find the strength to lose some weight, because it is healthier, and because the odds are great that you will feel better, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

If you were wondering why I am writing about getting physically fit in a book about philosophy and spirituality, it is because of this: a healthy mind, and a healthy spirit, require a healthy body. Practitioners of holistic medicine treat the “whole person”, rather than the person’s symptoms. It really does little good to prescribe a medication to mask a problem, other than provide temporary relief, perhaps. In fact, it can often add other symptoms to the list; if you’ve ever seen a TV ad for a drug, then you know that the list of possible side effects rattled off at the end can be far worse than the problem the drug is supposed to “fix”. Far better is to discover the cause of the symptoms, and effect a change that actually cures the problem.

A disorder does not exist by itself; it is a part of a whole person, and likely affects that person’s mind and spirit as much as it does their body. According to holistic medicine, wellness can be pictured as an equilateral triangle, with the three points representing the three aspects of wellness—a healthy body, a healthy mind, and a healthy spirit. Your body, literally, is a temple for God, and should be treated as such. It must be cleaned, and fed good things, and given enough rest, and it must do that for which it was designed by nature (exertion) regularly, or it falls into ruin. If you keep your temple well, the mind and spirit that dwell within it will flourish; if you allow your body to become weak and soft, so will your mind and spirit be.

The very act of strengthening your body will also strengthen your mind and spirit, as you become more disciplined, more focused, and more capable in all areas of your life. Let your mind be the master of your body, not the other way around. Your brain is the boss over all the other parts of the body, and it can be trained to make the body do almost superhuman things. I once read about a boy who had an inoperable brain tumor. Since it was inoperable, the surgeons and doctors could do nothing for him. So, someone (I can’t recall whether it was a hypnotherapist, or just some enlightened soul) instructed the boy, who loved playing video games, to visualize the tumor in his brain as an asteroid, being blasted into tiny pieces by spaceships with lasers. The boy apparently spent a significant amount of time each day visualizing his brain tumor being blasted away, and his symptoms—migraines, et cetera—began to improve, until they disappeared entirely. On taking a CT scan of the boy’s brain, no tumor could be found. His mind gave the order, and his body obeyed in a way modern science just doesn’t fully understand yet. This is an extreme example of mind over matter, but there are countless others, just as extreme, that I won’t regale you with here. Let me make this point again—the mind is capable of far more than most of us use it for. You will need to call upon its power when your body feels weak.

Enough has been said here about the physical aspect of wellness. Most literate folks of the modern era are well aware of what to do if they want to be fit—the age-old, tried-and-true, doesn’t-come-in-a-pill combination of diet and exercise. As for the mind, there are many ways, in addition to making sure it has enough nutrition and oxygen, to strengthen it. Just working out crossword puzzles has been shown to forestall senility. Learning a new language is said to be one of the best exercises you can do for your brain.

Just like a muscle, if you don’t use it, your brain will atrophy in a sense. Read books. Spend time socializing when you can. Listen to the experiences of others, and learn something from them. I have learned so much by having conversations with older people, and even with younger people. Age does not necessarily equate to wisdom, but it certainly helps increase the odds. (Nonetheless, we still have the saying, “No fool like an old fool,” and also the saying, “Out of the mouths of babes”, proving that wisdom is not as dependent on age as your elders would like you to think.)

Because your mind is such a powerful thing, it can be either your best friend or your worst enemy, and often both throughout the day. If your mind has somehow been trained to experience reality as difficult, frightening, and full of disappointment, it can be very hard to break free of that. If you have been dealt a bad hand in terms of mental health, it can be even harder still. Mental disorders—schizophrenia, depression, addiction, compulsions, et cetera—require diligent treatment, which might include medication, therapy, exercise, and in some cases, hospitalization. A sound mind is nurtured by a sound body, so good nutrition, adequate sleep, and regular exercise should be the foundation of any treatment plan, whether the illness is physical, mental, or emotional (most illnesses impact all three to some degree).

I have some first-hand experience with mental illness. As I have mentioned, I have been diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, and prescribed various antidepressants by a medical doctor who specializes in psychiatry and addiction treatment. I am admittedly an addict, my drugs of choice being marijuana and psilocybin (when it’s in season, of course). These mental handicaps have provided additional challenge in my life, and have been my downfall in most cases where I have failed. My bipolarity, before it was diagnosed and treated, led me to feel such apathy that I failed to get a college degree, failed to find gainful employment for several periods of my life, and failed to apply what I recognized as great potential to do almost anything I wanted to do. I might be a famous musician and composer today, if I hadn’t been born with the added challenge of wonky neurotransmitters.

I should mention, in the interest of fairness, that the manic aspect of my bipolarity often did give me a significant drive to create, and a lot of the music I wrote in my twenties was written in a feverish manic state. Many of history’s finest artists, poets, composers, and writers suffered for their art, so to speak. I have read certain books and studies that linked the artistic temperament with bipolar disorders. So, to be fair, my bipolarity has been both a curse and a blessing. It is what it is, really, and whether it is a curse or a blessing is more or less subjective.

My use of marijuana has also been a mixed bag (no pun intended). I cannot deny that it has caused me to be complacent when I might have been more successful in life; that it has contributed to my struggling with maintaining a healthy body (I am more prone to bronchitis when I smoke regularly, and it is hard not to get fat when you embark on an endless cycle of smoking, getting the “munchies” and pigging out, and smoking again to ease the discomfort of overeating, repeated every three or four hours); and that my psychological dependence on it has caused me to lie to my loved ones, spend money my family needed for other expenses, and otherwise scrape and grovel before my sticky green master in a way most unbecoming of a man. It is the greatest source of stress in my marriage, and might yet be the catalyst for a divorce.

On the other hand, when I smoke pot, I am content. The world is still the same, but it bothers me a lot less. I am more patient, because I am at peace. I am interested, inspired, and more ready to move and work and be fully in the world, albeit buffered by the cozy armor of a pot buzz. My need—seemingly my only need—to be content is satisfied, and I am cheerfully at your service. When I am tripping on mushrooms, it’s even greater—I am filled not only with peace and contentment, but with almost achingly beautiful glory, and humor, and a feeling of being eternal, at home, in communion with God. I might have lived my whole life and died without ever knowing those wonderful, transcendental feelings if I’d never ingested entheogens. The wisdom of eternity is contained in a variety of growing things, and it has always been there, waiting for those who seek it. Again, I am not encouraging the use of drugs—I am merely recounting my experience and giving my opinion.

Using entheogens to increase one’s wisdom is a time-honored tradition, going back to prehistoric times. There are numerous benign plants and fungi that can open your mind and spirit to God. But there are other substances that will just as surely pull you down into a Hell on Earth. Opiates and opioids stand out at the top of my list, because I was foolish enough to have dabbled with them, and very nearly destroyed myself. I already described my own descent in the first chapter of this book. Now let me tell you about what a friend of mine has done to himself with opioids. I will call him Mark.

Mark has a big heart. He is a trusting, good-natured guy. He is intelligent, and articulate, but it seems that he is also somewhat naïve and short-sighted. I don’t know how he began using oxycodone recreationally, but I knew that he was doing it for several months before my arrest for possession of marijuana and paraphernalia at the end of 2010. He was my contact to get oxycodone once I was prevented from smoking pot by having to pass urine tests—a decision I made that still boggles my mind to this day, because I knew better.

When one begins using opiates or opioids, a little bit goes a long way in the beginning. A single 50-mg oxycodone pill would be enough to leave most people feeling pretty blissful throughout the day. I started out taking half of one in the morning, and another after work, and would be high all day. But before long, one-a-day becomes two-a-day, and then three-a-day, and in a pretty short time (a matter of months), a user is crushing and snorting two or three just to get out of bed in the morning. Recently, Mark told me he was using about 15 pills each day. At a current street value of about $20.00, that’s a $300.00-per-day habit. Mark doesn’t make enough money to support that kind of habit with his modest job, so he did what so many addicts do—he began to deal in order to pay for his own supply. The other options are even less savory—robbery, burglary, lying and stealing from loved ones, et cetera.

Once my probation was over, and I had endured the last agonizing detox from oxycodone, I distanced myself from Mark in the interest of self-preservation. I have a family and other obligations to society, and I couldn’t allow my friendship with Mark to put my sobriety from opioids in jeopardy. We met in massage therapy school, and still take our continuing education courses together, or occasionally have lunch, but it is obvious that Mark is on a path that he might never return from, and it is a path that I cannot follow him on. In fact, Mark has already gotten himself into deep trouble.

Apparently, for several months, he had been shipping thousands of dollars-worth of pills to an associate in a “dry” state (lots of junkies, but very little junk) using Federal Express. His associate would then distribute the pills and send him a check, out of which Mark would pay himself and purchase more pills to be shipped. Mark had gone from being just a user to being a distributor, and over state lines, no less. When I first heard that he was doing this, I urged him to be careful, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before he made a mistake and got caught.

His first mistake was ever taking that first pill. But he made a whole lot of other mistakes after that, including using his own debit card on two occasions to pay for shipping pills, and using his own cell phone to make calls regarding packages. Even though he used a false name and address each time he shipped off a package, he still linked himself with the crime by using his own debit card and cell phone. Federal Express probably even recorded his voice during his most recent calls, especially since his most recent calls were placed to try to find out what happened to the last package he sent—it was never received by his out-of-state associate, because it was seized by law enforcement.
Mark most likely has a warrant out for his arrest now, on charges of distributing a controlled substance across state lines.

The U.S. Federal government is making examples of pill users and dealers right now, handing out harsh sentences. Mark is not the kind of person who belongs in prison, but he will most likely be sentenced to spend some time there. The fact that he has no prior offenses on his record might gain him some leniency, but he is almost certain to go to prison for several years. When I last saw him, he was in a state of barely-controlled panic, trying to decide what to do. Should he run? That would only make things worse, probably. Should he come up with a good story and get a lawyer? The story he ran by me sounded pretty weak to me, although an effective lawyer might be able to sell it. Should he tell his parents the truth, get a good lawyer, and face the music? He probably won’t have much of a choice, in the end. He made poor choices, which led to even poorer choices, and now it seems that Mark has run out of rope, and has hung himself, so to speak. The consequences of his actions have caught up to him, and are about to crush him like an avalanche. I could only advise him to stay as calm as possible, weigh his options very carefully, and be sure not to do anything to compound his situation (like resisting arrest or running away). I wanted to tell him not to cry when he got to prison, but I didn’t think he was in the right frame of mind to appreciate gallows humor at the time.

Going to prison for any length of time is bad enough, not to mention the impact a criminal conviction has on the rest of a person’s life, in terms of finding employment, getting a bank loan, buying or renting a house, et cetera. But having to withdraw from a 15-pills-per-day habit while in prison adds a whole new fevered pitch to the suffering my friend will likely have to endure. Perhaps he will be fortunate enough to be prescribed medications to ease his withdraw from opioids, but it is just as likely that they will simply monitor his vital signs occasionally and let him ride it out cold turkey in his cell. I cannot imagine a more brutal way to withdraw. Even in the comfort of one’s home, or a hospital, withdrawing from a drug on which you have become physically and psychologically dependent is a slow, agonizing, and often dangerous process.

Let me paint a picture with my words. The first day or two after an addict’s last dose of an opiate or opioid, the sense of discomfort and unease gradually increases, likely to the point where the combination of physical and mental agitation prevents sleep and has the addict seriously contemplating options for procuring more to escape from his or her suffering. Every fiber of one’s being is agitated with restlessness, or aches with a deep, dull ache. It is almost like having influenza, except with the flu, you can escape the torment by sleeping. When you are withdrawing, every second lasts a second too long. Days three or four are usually when the suffering reaches its peak. Many addicts have sincerely stated that they would rather be dead than going through withdrawal, and it usually takes several days before the will to live returns.

The most common symptoms include prolonged insomnia (I didn’t sleep at all for the first five days each time I withdrew from opioids, not even with over-the-counter sleeping aids), diarrhea, gastrointestinal cramping, muscle spasms, restless limbs (preventing you from falling asleep at night, which you so desperately want to do), feelings of abject depression, loneliness, and anxiety, heart palpitations, trembling, excessive sweating, chills, fever, muscular and skeletal aches, and intense cravings for the substance from which one is withdrawing.

People withdrawing cold turkey have suffered heart attacks, seizures, and other dangerous medical complications, so it is not really something one should try to do without medical support. Even after the worst physical symptoms of withdrawal begin to subside, the feeling of being disconnected from reality often affects the withdrawing person for many days afterward, making it more difficult to focus, concentrate, or feel at peace. Some have reported not quite feeling right for months or even years after withdrawing from heavy drug use. It is little wonder that more often than not, a person who has been addicted to opiates or opioids will relapse, often just a few days into trying to withdraw.

How could Mark, a young man with such a bright future, blessed by nature with abundant gifts, come to so ignoble an end? Because he became enslaved by his own mind, body, and spirit, by becoming addicted to opioids. Unless you have been living under a rock until just now, you will have been told by now to stay away from opioids and other addictive substances. I will tell you again, because if you came away from reading this book with nothing else but this—to never, ever take that first pill, or snort that first line, or shoot that first dose—I will feel that I have imparted something supremely valuable. If my experience, and the experience of my friend, causes even one reader not to try opiates or opioids recreationally, I will consider this book a great success.

For the sake of your wellbeing, I urge you, find another path. With opiates and their derivatives, what at first seems like the path to bliss soon becomes the path to Hell. I have tread upon that path myself, and was fortunate enough to be able to pause at the edge of the pit and look down, to see the inescapable hell I was creating for myself and those who loved me, and to save myself at the last minute. I stepped away from pills, and away from the pit of Hell, a luxury that many damned souls have not been afforded.

Spiritual health, like physical and mental health, is an integral part of wellness. What good is a strong body and mind without a strong spirit? Strengthening body and mind are straightforward enough, but how does one exercise the spirit? Indirectly, one exercises spirit when one exercises body and mind, of course, and always keep that concept at the heart of your quest for wellness. One point of the triangle follows from another, in a synergetic cycle that has no beginning and no end. A healthy body both comes from and creates a healthy mind and a healthy spirit. Likewise, illness in one brings illness to all. This is the reason that the Buddhist monks of Shaolin Temple in China practice kung-fu. (Well, that, and because when they first began training in kung-fu, the riches of their temple were popular targets for armed bandits, a problem that no doubt decreased as the renown of the monks as peerless warriors increased.)

According to the traditional lore, a Buddhist monk from India, known as Damo to the Chinese, visited the monks of Shaolin Temple, noted their general lack of fitness (which made them ill-suited to long periods of meditation, impacting their spiritual fitness as well), and instructed them in a series of exercises inspired by the movements of various animals. This was the birth of Chinese kung-fu, a practice that would hone the Shaolin monks into the very embodiment of physical prowess, and make them more than capable of handling armed bandits with only their bodies as weapons (though they also train in a great variety of traditional weapons, too).

Strengthen your body and your mind, and your spirit will follow. But there are ways to directly exercise your spirit, and I have mentioned some of them already. The ones I will recommend to all are meditation, and practicing happiness. As I have already mentioned, meditation or prayer—they are interchangeable for this purpose, and depend only upon the individual’s preferences and cultural inclinations—is the primary exercise for your spirit or soul. It is the time you spend exercising your awareness of God, and your part in the greater framework that is God. It will yield to you definite benefits if you persist in meditating and/or praying every day. Do it at night before you sleep, and in the morning before you rise, and at any time throughout the day that you feel inclined and have the opportunity.

Practice feeling happy, as you would practice any other skill—the more you practice, the easier it becomes, and the happier you will truly feel. Practice thinking positive thoughts, saying positive things, and associating with positive people. Practice smiling at strangers (in a friendly, non-creepy way—practice in the mirror, if you must), even if few reciprocate and many even scowl or look at you like you’re crazy. Take stock of the blessings in your life. Let yourself feel love for others. These are the good things in life, and now can be the best time of your life. Now can be the Golden Years. I urge you to let it be so. Above all else, strive to fulfill the Five Obligations, and your spirit will grow strong.

CHAPTER 4: CHALLENGES
We are often distressed by challenges—obstacles to our desires, unforeseen accidents, the manifestation of our fears, et cetera. But I have reflected a lot on challenge, and have been much challenged in my life, and I feel that being challenged is what keeps us interested in life. Imagine your life without any challenges to struggle with. Heaven, you might think. I would bet, however, that it wouldn’t take long for boredom to set in, once you had reached the limits of your imagination. Suppose you died and went to Heaven, and found it to be as described by the traditional religions—a place where you have nothing to fear, no obstacles to your desires, no chance of suffering in any way. Unless we are given an unlimited capacity for enjoying the same old things over and over for eternity, I propose that it wouldn’t take long for you to miss good old war-torn, plague-infested, challenge-laden Earth, and it wouldn’t be long after that before you would begin to wish for oblivion. An afterlife where you get everything you want all the time would turn us into a bunch of spoiled brats, first of all, and then a bunch of bored spoiled brats, followed by a bunch of spoiled brats who might well suspect that they are in Hell. In such a “Heaven”, there is no courage (what’s to fear?), there is no triumph (what’s to triumph over?), and there are no adventures to thrill you (what’s an adventure without danger and intrigue?). It would be like playing a game you know you can’t lose—not very fun.

My ideal Heaven would be a place that is constantly undergoing changes, filled with adventures to have, dangers to escape, problems to solve, chances to lose as well as chances to win, goals to strive for—challenges. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? To me, all that I could want in a Heaven is already all around me. You can have Heaven or Hell, right here on Earth—the choice is yours.

Embracing challenge, rather than dreading it, is generally a matter of one’s attitude, or point of view. Some folks say that the glass is half empty; some say it’s half full; and some say the glass is twice the size it needs to be. These points of view are often deeply-ingrained personality traits, such that it can be very difficult for some people to let go of anxiety (especially if it is due to a problem with neurotransmitters), anger, fear, hatred, and other negative emotional responses.

I have a colleague who always leaps to the worst possible conclusion, assumes that everything that doesn’t go her way is someone’s fault, spreads rumors and “talks trash” about others behind their backs, and otherwise focuses on the negative aspects of everything in life. She is plagued with many physical manifestations of this mental and emotional attitude—migraines, heart palpitations, muscle and joint aches, et cetera. Obviously, some of her physical maladies might have more to do with an objective reality, like arthritis, or a genetic predisposition to migraines or heart palpitations, but there can be no doubt that she makes everything worse for herself by thinking the way she thinks about things. I will generally point out the positives (and I’m the bipolar guy!), which probably annoys her, but I feel compelled to try to help her break out of a mindset that is clearly making her unhappy.

The happiest people in the world are those who have a positive attitude. When something doesn’t go their way, they may be disappointed, but they let it go and don’t look for someone to blame. When faced with a challenge, they see an opportunity to succeed, rather than an opportunity to fail. When they overcome a challenge, they feel a sense of accomplishment that increases their happiness, rather than feeling sorry for themselves for having had to struggle. They believe in their abilities, rather than feeling that they can’t do anything to help themselves. They are the movers and shakers, the people who bring excellent things into existence, the ones who make the world a brighter place.

Happiness is very like a muscle. It must be exercised or it will atrophy. Use it or lose it. You must pursue happiness every day. Practice being happy like you would practice any other skill. Master it as you would master an art. Make yourself think of the things that make you happy. When a negative thought enters your mind, replace it with a positive thought. When you are afraid of something that might happen, remind yourself that it might not happen (usually, the things we fear most never do happen). Banish the darkness in your mind and spirit with light. When you feel anger, make yourself act with patience. When you feel hatred, remember that you hate yourself when you hate others, and soften your heart. When someone harms you in some way, forgive them for your own sake as well as for theirs. Do all of these things, and I promise you will find true happiness, and you will see in every challenge an opportunity for triumph and empowerment, rather than a reason to fear.

CHAPTER 3: LOVE and RELATIONSHIPS
As should be obvious from my introduction, I have struggled in my relationship with my wife, and am far from perfect. My wife and I will soon be seeking out the expert advice of a professional marriage counselor, in an attempt to nurse our wounded marriage back to health before it is too late. I am by no means a relationship expert, but I have been in several romantic relationships in my adult life, and have been married to my wife for over thirteen years so far. Having contemplated love and relationships for some time now, and having benefitted from the wisdom of others regarding the subject, I feel that I can pass on some sound advice.

To a certain point, love, like any other emotion, is a chemical reaction produced by your brain in obeisance to a biological imperative to procreate. This chemical reaction can be deliciously intoxicating, and can fill us with such an array of intense feelings, that it has been the subject of what must be well over half of all the songs ever written. But eventually, the chemicals wear off, and at that point, love becomes a choice. We have little or no choice regarding who we are physically attracted to. (How can some people seriously argue that being gay or lesbian is a personal choice? I know beyond all doubt that my attraction to women is not a choice I make, but an inborn inclination. I could no more choose to be gay than I could choose to be Asian. I suspect it’s just harder these days to justify hating someone for something that they can’t control.)

Eventually, our physical attraction wanes, and we are left with a choice—to love, or not to love.
Ideally, by the time the chemicals have worn off, you will have fallen in love with your mate’s loveable qualities. A good mate makes the choice easier and clearer. Even in the best relationship, each person will discover qualities in the other person that they dislike or even loathe. This is where many a divorce has its origin. This is also the moment when your love is tested. Is your love greater than your frustrations? Does your love have the strength and substance to survive life’s hardships, or will it dissolve at the first argument?

If your mate acts in accordance with the Five Obligations, though they might still have plenty of annoying habits or quirks, you will be hard-pressed to find any real fault in them. If this is the case, I strongly recommend that you also strive to keep the Five Obligations, and regard the maintenance of your union as a priority to be addressed every day. If your mate is a good and worthy person, make the choice to love them completely, in spite of their flaws. If you truly believe that your spouse deserves to be loved, give them the love they deserve by giving them the love they would like to receive. Trying to love another unique individual in the way you would like to be loved is not as effective as learning what makes that individual feel loved and doing that to the best of your ability.

If your mate regularly fails to keep any of the Five Obligations, perhaps they are not ready to be in a loving relationship. In this case, you must make the often painful choice to part ways, so you can continue your search for a worthy mate, and they can learn how to be one. This is easier said than done, of course. Human emotion and psychology is complex and varies widely. The same chemicals that attracted you to the unworthy other in the beginning might keep you enthralled and trapped in a bad relationship. Low self-esteem and negative conditioning might do the same, and on a more practical level, familial and financial obligations might prevent you from leaving the relationship, particularly if you are raising children together.

All of us have weaknesses, and for some of us, that weakness is to allow ourselves to be abused or taken advantage of. If you doubt this, watch a few episodes of The Doctor Phil Show, or Cops. If you are a chronic victim, it is your responsibility to be smarter than your brain chemistry, smarter than your self-esteem issues, smarter than your emotional response. You must be ready to start ignoring the many loud, panicky voices of self-doubt, desperation, fear of loneliness, et cetera, and start listening to the calm, wise voice that is trying to tell you that you deserve better. Don’t allow yourself to be a prisoner in a cell of your own choosing.

If you truly want to love and be loved, and you put forth the effort in finding the right person, you will find love. Keeping it depends on both of you working hard at it. Keep the Five Obligations, and your respect and admiration for each other will fan the flames of your love. Realize that the grass is not greener on the other side, and if it is, you should water your own grass. Don’t let boredom, temptation, or the stresses of life lead you astray if you are fortunate enough to have found a worthy other. Don’t let yourself fall into the trap of making the same mistakes in an endless series of short-lived relationships, no matter how compelled you are to do so by conditioning and environment. Make a choice to love and be loved.

Lasting love requires patience, empathy, forgiveness at times, and perseverance. (Perseverance might be the most important quality for success in any endeavor, actually.) Let go of resentment. Don’t hold grudges. Remember and learn from the past, but don’t become mired in it. Rather, focus your energy on the present moment, and lay the groundwork for a beautiful future.

Throughout human history, it has been typical to model so much of our behavior on that of our parents. Boys grow up and treat their wives the same way their fathers treated their mothers, and girls grow up and treat their husbands the same way their mothers treated their fathers. A young girl who grows up watching her father abuse her mother is more likely to endure abuse in her own relationships, just as a young boy who finds out that his father is unfaithful to his mother is more likely to view this behavior as acceptable when he becomes a man. If a father loves his daughter, and wants her to be loved by a good man someday, he must be the kind of man he wants for his daughter. He must love her mother, and be a good example of what a man should be. If a mother loves her son, and wants him to find love with a good woman someday, she must be good to his father, and love him as she hopes a woman will someday love her son. If your parents were mean to each other, if they were petty, or cruel, or held grudges, or lied to each other, or were unfaithful to each other, you have a greater challenge to overcome in having a good relationship, because you must be stronger than your conditioning. Believe that it is in your power to change, and do it. You will be the hero of your descendants, though none may ever realize it.

CHAPTER 2: THE FIVE OBLIGATIONS
The Ten Commandments are a perfectly fine (if somewhat redundant) moral code, especially for those who believe in the God of Abraham (Jews, Christians, Moslems, and their derivative sects). For those who do not, or for those who would prefer a shorter list to remember, I propose Five Obligations. These are, I believe, the natural obligations of a moral human being.

1—Honor God: This obligation means to remember that God is in everything, including every living creature. Have respect for the world you live in, for your fellow creatures, and for yourself, and this alone will guide you to moral choices in life. This obligation applies even to atheists, for we are bound to one another in society and in nature, and we are obliged to respect each other regardless of creed. (If there was a God and a Heaven in the traditional sense, it would be ironic justice if God accorded the greatest reward to those who did not believe but were good nonetheless, with no expectation of reward or fear of punishment.)

2—Be Compassionate: We are all in the same boat. Every single one of us—every single living thing—is born, lives for a fleeting moment, and dies in an eternal cycle. By necessity, we must often compete with each other to survive, but we are most successful when we cooperate. If we remember that we are all one, all a part of the same infinite and eternal energy that is God, it is easier to be compassionate. We are obliged to relieve suffering if it is within our power to do so. We are obliged to protect those weaker than ourselves. Kill or harm only if it is necessary—to save your own life or another’s, or when hunting to feed yourself or another. Hunting for sport, however ingrained it may be in one’s culture, is an atrocity that should be finally abolished, just as slavery was abolished in America after the Civil War. Shoot skeets or other nonliving targets if you want to be a good marksman.

3—Be Responsible: Responsibility is the flipside of compassion. We are obliged to be compassionate and help our fellows when they are in need, but when we are the one in need, it is our natural obligation to do everything within our power to provide our own needs. Marcus Aurelius said it best: “A man should stand upright, not be held upright.” If you are sound of mind and body, you can find employment, however humble it may be, and support yourself and your dependents. Do not abuse the compassion of others. If you are rolling up to the grocery store in a new car, wearing designer clothes, and you pay for your groceries with government aid, you are breaking this obligation, and not holding up your end of the social contract. If you have graduated from college, but still live in your parents’ house, you are dropping the ball, my friend. Do not be a human parasite, feeding on your hardworking fellows without giving anything in return.

4—Be Honest: Keep your word. Do not commit fraud. Do not lie. Deal fairly in business and in all of your transactions with others. (Admittedly, I myself have broken this obligation on many occasions, and one might reasonably dismiss me as a hypocrite; but the truth is, I am guilty of breaking all of these obligations in one way or another, and I am certain that most of us have at one time or another. The Five Obligations are not always easy to fulfill, but each of us must strive with all of our willpower to keep them as best we can, accepting that we will occasionally fail, if we wish to find true bliss.)

5—Be Grateful: No matter how difficult, painful, or depressing your life may be, there is someone, somewhere, who has it worse. Consider that when you were conceived, millions of other potential people were not conceived. Perhaps one of them would have cured cancer, or invented something that would change the world for the better. The odds are great that one of them would have contributed something great to the world, so we have the obligation to be grateful for the chance to exist, and to try to be of service in whatever way we can. We have a duty to make the most of an opportunity that, if you really think about the odds, is akin to winning the lottery.

If you keep these Five Obligations to the best of your ability, you will never have reason to regret your actions. Your self-esteem and your appreciation for life will increase. You will be respected and appreciated by others, and you will feel the joy and fulfillment that can only come from altruism. Altruism is the kindest and most generative form of selfishness, because in pleasing and helping others, and feeling their gratitude, you are indulging in life’s sweetest pleasure. You create around you joy and happiness, and cease to hunger for the feeling of taking for yourself, promoting only yourself, and suffering the inevitable pains and sorrows that accompany the human ego.

Others around you are starving from focusing on their own egos, and probably you find yourself hungry as well, if you are reading books such as this. When you lose your appetite for taking and taking, and realize that making others feel worse than you do is a very ineffective way to make yourself feel better, you can begin to truly satisfy your ego. You will sate your hunger by feeding the hungry. You will find warmth by giving it to those who are cold. You will be loved by those who you love.

A moral code such as the Five Obligations is the foundation of morality, but it is only the bare bones. The finer points of morality and philosophy have been the subjects of many great books, and study of such works will put muscle on the bones, so to speak. I recommend studying the following literature, but as you do, try to strike a balance between a critical eye and an open mind. Truly measure the messages contained in these works against your reason and your instinct. Don’t take my word, or anyone else’s. Read and listen to the interpretations and opinions of others, but form your own opinions only after careful thought and honest scrutiny.

The Bible: And other scriptures of established religions—Torah, Quran, et cetera. Truly examine what these books, all considered the foundations of the One True Faith by their respective religions, teach about morality. If you do so, you will find much truth, wisdom and moral guidance, but you will also notice jarring contradictions of morality, instances where so-called heroes of the Bible engaged in genocide, infanticide, misogyny, plunder, deception, and other atrocities because God commanded it. Decide for yourself whether any of these ancient holy books is the inspired word of an all-wise God, or if they are all simply the words of men in positions of authority by no more merit than their birth or ambitions. I believe they are all a mix of divine and human inspiration.

Classical Mythology: This is not the title of a specific book (it’s probably the title of dozens of books, actually), but rather a subject to study. Read the myths of pagan cultures. There is a wealth of wonderful tales, and much wisdom to be found. Compare the stories and miracles to those of The Bible. You will notice many similarities in the stories, and if you pry deeply enough, you will discover how much our current religions have merely recycled older myths and concepts.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Marcus Aurelius may have been the most moral and ethical of all the ancient Roman Emperors. His Meditations are a sort of personal journal of his thoughts, kept during his campaign against northern barbarian tribes. Here you will find the wisdom of the ancient Greek stoics, distilled through the keen mind of a man who was humble in spite of his lofty station. His observations delineate a philosophy of honor and duty applicable to everyone, from humble slave to mighty emperor.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins: This book was the final nail in the coffin of my belief in a personal deity as described by existing religion. I had been actively suspending my disbelief for years, perhaps even from the first day of Sunday school, but upon finishing The God Delusion, I was finally able to admit my disbelief, and accept what I had always believed under the surface—that there really is no omnipotent, omniscient, anthropomorphic being controlling reality; there is no pearly-gated heaven in the clouds where the good are fitted with wings and handed harps after they die; and there is no fiery hell where demons and devils torture the evil after they die. When I hear of a particularly evil deed, I often wish that there was a hell for the perpetrator to burn in, but in fact, justice is a human concept, and it is up to humans to enforce it. It is up to us to reward the good and punish the evil.

CHAPTER 1: DEFINITIONS
Before I go any further, I should define several concepts that I will explore in this book as I understand them; concepts which are universal, and yet have very different meanings for different people. These concepts can only be defined in a subjective way, no matter what preachers, politicians, professors, or your parents try to tell you.

GOD
This is the hardest concept to define. In some ways, it is far easier to recognize what God is not than it is to recognize what God is. If you want someone else’s definition of God, there is no lack of people who will happily give you one, and now I must include myself in their number. God, like everything else in the universe, is energy. On a subatomic level, even the hardest matter is mostly empty space filled with a matrix of energy in the form of protons, neutrons, electrons, and even smaller divisions of reality which science has yet to discover and name. Everything—everything—is composed of essentially the same thing, and that thing can be called God. Therefore, I am God. But so are you, and so is every other person, including (brace yourself) the people whom you dislike! All things, animate or inanimate, living or dead, visible or invisible, are ultimately a manifestation of the energy that is God.

God is not your personal miracle-worker, and will not alter the laws of nature or physics on your behalf, no matter how much you pray or tithe. God is neither a He nor a She, because God is not an animal or a person, nor even an individual entity as we generally understand the concept. Every animal, person, plant—every living thing—is akin to a sensory organ for God, experiencing reality and interpreting it in a limited nervous system, within a limited span of time, inside the infinitely larger framework of eternity. We are like players in a game, and God is the game. When our bodies perish, we no longer exist as individual personalities, but we realize who or what we really are—One infinite and eternal soul, perpetually being born, dying, and being reborn again in new generations of life, forever forgetting that we are all One. We are all God.

If this is true, should we continue to worship a God that is essentially energy? Yes, just as we should continue to love ourselves and our loved ones, because we are all manifestations of this energy, and the world is indeed filled with glories and praiseworthy wonders—for those who seek them out. We need not go on a quest to far places in search of these glories and wonders. We need only take the time to be mindful of them, for they are nearer than we often notice. Any parent who has held a child close, any owner of a pet who has felt true interspecies kinship, and felt that love has experienced that which is worthy of worship. Love, beauty, compassion, creativity, wisdom—these things are the elements of God that are worthy of worship. But these things cannot exist without hate, ugliness, cruelty, destruction, and ignorance, all of which are also encompassed within God.

GOOD and EVIL
To me (and I daresay to most people), “good” defines my preferences rather than a universal standard of morality; and “evil” defines that which I dislike. For example, to some people (myself included), any kind of love is good, regardless of whom loves who; but to other people, homosexual love is evil, and will be punished by God. As another example, severing a young girl’s clitoris is evil in my opinion, yet the practice is common among certain tribal cultures even today, and presumably, those who practice it believe they are doing a good deed for their daughters, saving them from the “sin” of ever enjoying sexual pleasure. Yet another example—I consider adultery evil, but I consider stoning someone to death for committing adultery to be far more evil; however, in many Islamic societies, it would be considered evil to suffer an adulterer to live (though often, it is only the woman who loses her life), and a blot on the honor of the adulterer’s family, a sentiment that one can find in the Old Testament.

Because the continuous process of natural selection has mostly favored teamwork and kinship, we have evolved to think of those things which promote our welfare, and the welfare of society in general, as good. If I am altruistic, it benefits me as much (possibly more in some cases) as it benefits the subject of my altruism—I have demonstrated to my fellows that my existence promotes their existence, thereby gaining their support and favor, which sooner or later will promote my existence. Humans are not the only species which exhibit altruism, and I suspect that, like humans, those animals are instinctively shoring up their own chances of survival in a dangerous world by promoting cooperation and mutual assistance.

We are rewarded with a rush of endorphins when we are altruistic—it makes us feel good. This could be simply a result of natural selection—creatures that had the genetic traits related to altruism survived to pass on their genes because they banded together, took care of each other, loved each other, and helped each other survive; creatures lacking those traits had to survive on their own, and often perished alone before passing on their selfish genes. So it is today, so it has always been, and so it will always be. But could there be something deeper and more spiritual behind altruism than simply genetics and natural selection? And could there be an equally deeper and more spiritual cause for evil? Some believe in demons and devils, but personally, I think we need not invent fantastic scapegoats to blame our antisocial behaviors on.

To most people, killing someone is an evil act, yet we amend this rule with many circumstances or conditions under which killing is perfectly acceptable, even good. If someone breaks into my home and tries to harm my family, I assure you that I wouldn’t hesitate to use whatever force was necessary to prevent it, including lethal force. While I might feel pity or remorse for taking a life, I would not consider myself evil for doing so. When nations go to war, their young citizens are sent to kill the enemy, and generally, there are a lot of killings. But we never refer to killing in the course of a war as “murder”, or “evil”. To do so would be counter to the objectives of those waging the war. Thus, throughout human history, killing thy neighbor has been widely regarded as evil, but killing thousands of people in the neighboring country when your ruler demands it has been regarded as glorious and good. It would seem that by some definitions, “good” is whatever will keep the current powers-that-be on their seats of power, and “evil” is whatever those powers-that-be fear would be detrimental to their agenda.

In my opinion, whether an action or thought is good or evil depends greatly on intent. The popular saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions is meaningless noise to me. If you intend to help me, but unintentionally harm me, I will not consider you to have acted in an evil manner; in fact, I would like to think that I would find the wisdom to express gratitude for your good intentions, no matter how disastrous the result was for me in the end. Likewise, if you are trying to harm me, but accidentally help me instead, I certainly won’t consider you any less evil for failing to deliver on your evil intentions, no matter how much I benefit from your actions.

So, is God “good”, or “evil”? God is everything, so yes, and yes. The concept of duality is possibly prehistoric. The Chinese call it yin and yang, and it essentially boils down to the fact that everything is a combination of opposites, and that nothing can exist without its opposite. Up cannot exist without down; light cannot exist without darkness; hot cannot exist without cold; joy cannot exist without sorrow; and good cannot exist without evil. More precisely, preferences cannot exist without their opposite. What pleasure can be felt by winning a game you know you can’t lose? The pursuit of happiness is what keeps us interested in life, and when we achieve an object of our pursuit, we are satisfied only for a fleeting moment before we must take up pursuit of some other symbol of happiness.

If God were only good (in effect, if God only allowed what humans liked to happen), children would never die of brain cancer, starvation wouldn’t exist, murders and rapes wouldn’t happen, et cetera. But these things do happen, and they happen indiscriminately. In this way, God is the ultimate judge, the ultimate referee, unbiased, unwavering in impartiality, unwilling and unable to break the laws of reality. But these very same laws of reality have allowed all living creatures to arise from nature, and blessed them with a staggering variety of gifts with which to survive and pursue happiness.

Good and evil are opposite ends of the same moral spectrum. They are the opposite sides of the same thing. The collective sum of our intentions, most of which lies near the center of this spectrum, is the collective Will of God. For the optimum expression of divinity, this infinite and eternal Will must lie in balance, and I suspect that it does, as do all things. There must exist in all of existence an equal measure of light and darkness, joy and sorrow, life and death, and so it is with good and evil.

LIFE and DEATH
A game is a good analogy for life. There are rules we must all obey, whether we like them or not. How we play the game is entirely up to us (albeit influenced by preset factors such as genetics and environment). In fact, even the object of the game is up to us. Each of us must decide for ourselves how to win the game. But ultimately, whether we win or lose the game of life, there will be another game to play, and another after that, until the end of time, and the point of the game might just be to play it and have fun, as is the case with most games.

Another analogy is a play or movie in which we all play a role. The stage is reality, and God is the writer, producer, and director, but the script is very unconventional, and the actors must do a lot of improvising. Sooner or later, we all play out our final scene in a given role. Then we are assigned a new role and return to the stage to act it out. Life is a never-ending production, and it receives mixed reviews, but it is just exactly as it should be—it’s the only way it could be, in fact.

That which animates us and makes us alive is energy, which cannot be destroyed, only changed. The energy of which we are composed is ever changing. The cells that compose our bodies are always dying, but new cells are born to replace them, such that in time, your body is a completely different body than it was before. On a subatomic level, the energy that composes everything is doing something similar. The energy that once gave life to dinosaurs now flows through us, and will someday take a new form.

Should we mourn for our temporary roles? Should we fear the end of life? Most people are very attached to the role they are currently playing, and the thought of their final scene in that role can bring dread or sadness. Further, we become very attached to the other characters onstage around us, and we grieve their passing. But the actor lives on, and plays a new role in a new life, and will continue to do so forever. Even if our stage is destroyed in some cosmic catastrophe, reality is infinite, and there are an unlimited number of stages on which to play. Statistically, the odds of life flourishing on other planets are virtually guaranteed, especially if space is infinite, and the rest of it more or less conforms to the same laws extant in our universe. In fact, if the number of worlds is infinite, then the number of habitable worlds is likely infinite, and the number of inhabited worlds is also likely infinite.

As we are all a part of God, and God is infinite and eternal, we are also infinite and eternal in a sense. Our current bodies and egos might exist in a finite space, and perish together after a limited duration, but our true self is God, or an extension of God, and is immortal. Death is a transmutation, not an end. As a caterpillar ends one life, it begins a new life as a butterfly, and so it is with all life. The birth and death of a mortal body is like buying, and later selling, a car. You drive it for a while, and when it’s time, you trade it in for a new one. It doesn’t make much sense to become too attached to anything in life, including life itself, because everything will one day shed its current form for a new form, and become something else. I’m not suggesting total detachment from life, nor do I believe that such a denial of our human nature is possible. These fleshy vehicles we get around in have needs, just as any other machine does, and we must operate them within their limitations. But we must also remember that what is now is subject to change at any moment, and we must be prepared to accept those changes as they come.

To be accurate, life and death do have their objective meanings, of course, and I believe everyone more or less agrees on what they are. But the experience of life and death is subjective. It is unique for each and every fragment of God that dons a mortal body and lives out a life. God experiences an infinite number of subjective experiences, an infinite number of lives, simultaneously, and throughout eternity. An infinite number of universes expand and contract, as if breathing, throughout eternity, and life has always, and will always, find a place to take root. This is the will of God—to exist, to be, to live; everything else is just details.

This is why we have an inborn will to live, and a fear of death. If we examine human behavior, we find that nearly everything we do or think is motivated by the will to live and the fear of death. Even a suicidal person wants to choose the time, place, and method of their death, and will obey the body’s instincts to survive until the moment they choose to die. The things which bring us the greatest pleasure are those things which promote life—eating, sleeping, having sex, accumulating personal power, and for some thrill-seekers, defying death. The things which bring us the greatest pain are those things which destroy life—sickness, injury, lack of sex, helplessness, and for those thrill-seekers, boredom. Life is all the more pleasurable, and all the more precious, because of death.

MEDITATION and PRAYER
If God isn’t a suspiciously-Zeus-like bearded guy on a throne in the sky who telepathically receives every prayer and arbitrarily answers some and ignores others, what would be the point of praying at all? And why do so many people believe their prayers have been answered? Because praying does work, and so does meditation. When we pray, we are speaking to the God within us, and focusing our energy toward the fulfillment of our prayers. We are mentally and spiritually preparing to physically alter our reality. And sometimes, a coincidence makes it seem like some intelligent divinity has directly answered a specific prayer—I pray for help selling my house, and a buyer suddenly appears (who has also been focusing on finding a house for sale, and would have bought my house whether I prayed for it or not); or I narrowly avoid a potentially-fatal car accident after praying for divine protection (because everything happened just right by chance, or I managed to react quickly enough).

Prayer bolsters our courage, prepares us for the hardships of life, centers us, and helps us to remember what is most important in our lives. Meditation has been proven to do the same thing, focusing the mind and teaching one how to relax—something many people have difficulty doing. Prayer and meditation is the same thing, to me. It is a skill that must be practiced to receive the benefits. Peace, happiness, love, compassion, patience—all must be exercised like muscles or atrophy sets in. The more we exercise a skill, the easier it becomes, and the greater the benefits we receive.

Each night as I lay in bed before falling asleep, I practice meditating. With my eyes closed, I focus only on my breathing, thinking only of inhaling and exhaling. I consciously and methodically let go of tension in my body, relaxing the hands and feet, arms and legs, pelvis and trunk, neck and head, until I am no longer aware of my body and its various sensations. (As a massage therapist, I am conscious of the fact that there are many people with chronic pain from injuries, degenerative diseases, et cetera, and I am aware of the difficulties such a person faces in getting comfortable enough to meditate in this fashion, but for such a person, the benefit of practicing meditation is all the greater, as meditation has been shown to help manage pain.) I do my best to keep my focus on my breathing, letting go of thoughts as quickly as they form—there is plenty of time the rest of the day to think, and worry, and plan. Of course, my subconscious mind is still at work, and this is fine. Meditation, prayer, and sleep allow the subconscious to do what it’s supposed to do, unhindered by our often disorganized conscious thinking, which sometimes only gets in the way.

At other times throughout my day, I meditate in another way—I reflect on my life, on my actions, and on my thoughts, much as a professional athlete might review footage of a game, analyzing what I did well, what could have been done better, and what I would like to do differently in the future. We must examine ourselves in this way regularly if we are to realize our full potentials. We must come to know ourselves, to know our own strengths and weaknesses, and to love ourselves if we are to improve. If we love ourselves, and if we have taken care of ourselves, we are in a position to love others, and take care of them when they need it. That having been said, everyone has a sacred duty to become strong and grow into a self-sufficient person, as much as it is within their power to do so. Granted, unfortunate circumstances and handicaps can make this more difficult for some to do, but even the weakest person can contribute something to the world, even if it is only to make others stronger. All of us have our part to play, no matter how insignificant it might sometimes feel, and to shirk responsibilities we know we are capable of fulfilling is simply laziness and deficiency of character.

SUPERNATURAL
Nothing that occurs within nature can be supernatural. If it occurred, then it must be as natural as anything else that exists. We think of “unnatural” products, or “manufactured” products, as being something outside of nature, because we erroneously think of ourselves as being outside of nature. We are animals capable of marvelous sophistication, but we are still a part of this world. We arose from the same protoplasm that every other living thing arose from. Our constructs are no less natural than an anthill, a bird’s nest, or a beaver’s dam. Thus, if ghosts exist, they are as much a part of nature as the living. It is my belief that ghosts are like a psychic echo that can be perceived under the right conditions by sensitive individuals. Such an individual is like a radar dish that is able to capture and interpret the perpetual psychic signal resonating in a “haunted” location.

And what of angels, devils, demons, fairies, genies, vampires, werewolves, et cetera? These are the attempts of ancient minds to make sense of natural phenomena, or give names and faces to nameless, faceless fears. Could there be intelligent beings of great benevolence or great malice, hiding among us and meddling in our daily lives? It would be arrogant and erroneous to dismiss it as impossible, however unlikely it may seem. Even more likely is that, given the vast spectrum of forms life could take throughout the infinite worlds of reality, beings of such intellect and complexity that we might as well regard them as divine do exist, somewhere in reality. Perhaps contact with just such a being or beings inspired our primitive mythologies, as is suggested in the ancient astronaut theories.

No definitive proof of any of the phenomena we generally consider “supernatural” or “paranormal” has ever been produced, but there is a great wealth of anecdotal evidence. The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it doesn’t prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the experience was what it seemed to be. A person who believes they are having an encounter with a ghost, fairy, demon, et cetera, could possibly be encountering such an entity, but it is also possible (and a lot more probable) that they are mistaken (a speck of dust reflecting the moonlight might seem like a will-o’-wisp, a reenactment society at play on a foggy battlefield might seem to be spectral soldiers, et cetera), or hallucinating (not everyone has to traipse through cow fields or pay a dealer for such an experience—sleep deprivation, mental disorders, prescribed medications, and other factors can cause a person to hallucinate), or the victim of a hoax.

The vast majority of psychics, mediums, and faith healers will not submit to a scientific test of their supposed powers, or will have convenient excuses as to why the effects could not be repeated under scrutiny, because they are charlatans. Of course, there are some rare accounts of apparently earnest individuals who have submitted to such tests, and were not found to be faking their abilities, or at least, those conducting the experiments were unable to find proof of fakery. Because of these rare cases, I am inclined to believe that the human brain is capable of so much more than we generally use it for, and that science has only scratched the surface of our reality. The fact that a placebo often works as well as or better than the drug the patient believes they are taking is proof of the power of belief. Likewise, people who believe they have been cursed have been known to drop dead of heart attacks brought on by the stress and fear of believing they were cursed.

In every case of demonic possession I have ever read about, the victim was religious, and the possessing entity was specific to their particular belief system (for example, Moslems are typically possessed by djinn, while possessed Christians sometimes give the name of a demon or devil from medieval demonology, such as Belial, Beelzebub, or even a former pagan deity demoted to devil status by the early church, such as Lilith or Astarte—female goddesses were popular targets of the extremely misogynous churchmen of old). Why do we never hear of atheists or agnostics becoming possessed? Could it be that the true cause of possession is belief in possession? Why do we never hear of anyone except people who believe in voodoo being turned into zombies? Because if a nonbeliever survived the process (which involves having “zombie dust”—containing neurotoxins from the puffer fish, among other ingredients—blown in your face, and then being buried alive while in a paralyzed and catatonic state, before being exhumed by the witch-doctor), they would angrily dust themselves off and leave, and would probably press charges against the witch-doctor who almost killed them by trying to turn them into a zombie.

These examples of the power of belief demonstrate the reality of “mind over matter”—that the brain, in its incredible complexity, is capable of far more than it is commonly used for, and can effect objective and subjective changes in reality. Given this fact, it is not difficult for me to admit the possibility of what we commonly call “psychic” or “paranormal” abilities—telepathy, remote viewing, dowsing, et cetera. If time is as Albert Einstein theorized, precognition (the ability to see into the future) even becomes a possibility. (Einstein posited that time is like another dimension that we can only perceive in a linear fashion, and that the future already exists—we just can’t perceive anything except the present, though we can remember the past, and make predictions about the future. Could there be a part of our brain that, if it were more developed, would allow us glimpses of the future, or a possible future?)

I suppose I could post it here in parts . . . .

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

INTRODUCTION
My name is Solomon. I am 38 years old at the time I am writing this book. I am a white man, a citizen of the U.S., a husband, a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend, a teacher, and a student. I have worked many humble jobs—busboy at several restaurants, newspaper delivery, carwash, factory work, customer service at a small beach resort, frame carpentry, pizza delivery, and whatever else I may have forgotten. In 2002, I enrolled at a respected school of massage therapy, and graduated with a set of skills I could make a modest living with. For the last eight years, I have been employed at a chiropractic clinic as a massage therapist, and for the last few years, I have also taught courses at massage schools.

I was born into a Catholic family, attended a Catholic school (whereat I received a decent education, but was also subject to indoctrination that was deeply ingrained for many years), and attended Catholic church until I graduated high school and began courses at the local community college. (It’s not that I had stopped believing in God, Jesus, angels, devils, et cetera; I simply became absorbed in my education—scholarly and otherwise—and was no longer required to attend mass by my mother.) Gradually, as I read and studied, and was exposed to science, history, and other religious paths, my belief in the doctrines of Catholicism and Christianity eroded, leaving only a longing for a True God and transcendence. This has been a key aspect of my personality for as long as I can remember—a longing for a spiritual peace and truth to help me accept and make meaning out of life—and that will be the main subject of this book.

I majored in music, and excelled as a singer (initially a tenor, my voice darkened a few years into my studies, no doubt in part due to the fact that I had begun to smoke marijuana regularly, and I began training as a baritone). I also became enamored with composing my own music, once I had enough music theory instruction to begin writing down what I heard in my head, and had thought that my legacy was to be a respected composer of film scores, symphonies, operas, et cetera. Alas, I lacked the necessary discipline and motivation to finish my education, and after I had either dropped or failed college algebra for the second or third (maybe fourth?) time, the costs to try again became prohibitive and I dropped out altogether, having spent seven or eight years and several thousand dollars to become a decent musician and composer who worked a series of crappy, low-paying jobs.

I met my wife, Sarah, at community college. She was also a musician, and was an excellent soprano and jazz singer. We were friends for a couple of years before we began dating in 1995, and we married in 1998. Sarah has always been honest, intelligent, polite, and dependable, but she has also always been opinionated, and is plagued with obesity (she hates exercise and loves carbs), anxiety, low self-esteem, and a fear of not being in control of everything. I love her very much, but I have never felt the intense passion for her that most (if not all) women dream of having in their relationships. I respect, even admire her; I care for her feelings and well-being; I try each day (with more or less success) to be a better husband and father; but there is a lack of emotional connection and romantic attraction that I believe came about due to several factors—the years of little resentments that have built up; the stresses of raising children and staying financially afloat; my own loss of self-respect from having lied to her about smoking pot on so many occasions; her loss of respect for and trust in me for having lied to her; and the fact that both of us are frequently too stubborn and prideful (in spite of all our faults) to take the high road. Under such conditions, affection withers like a flower during a drought, until it dies altogether.

Sarah resents me because I have lied to her about my use of mind-altering substances (chiefly marijuana, but I have also occasionally used other drugs—LSD, MDMA, psilocybin mushrooms, alcohol, cocaine, and opiates). I have spent excessive amounts of money on marijuana, and lied about it. I have lied about quitting, sneaking out of the house to smoke. I have been caught in lies. I am more ashamed of these lies and misdeeds than of any other thing I have ever done in my life to date. I acknowledge that I am a marijuana addict, but I honestly believe that the benefits I have personally received from smoking it outweighed the negative effects on my well-being. It is not having used these substances that I am ashamed of—I am ashamed of lying to my wife and other family members, and of being a source of anxiety for them. I am trying to accept that those I most love will probably never fully trust me again, and I have earned that mistrust.

She also resents that she had to pursue me at the beginning of our relationship, and that I have never felt the level of romantic passion for her that she felt in the beginning for me. She can sense that lack, of course, though I have always told her that I love her (and meant it). I know that she wants that passion, and I am sorry that I haven’t been able to give it to her. We have discussed divorce on several occasions over the last thirteen years, but the fact that we have children together, not to mention financial obligations we can barely afford together, let alone divorced, have kept us trapped in a marriage that hasn’t really been a happy one for too long now.

For my part, I resent Sarah for not accepting me for who I am, and restricting her love for me with conditions and ultimatums (quit smoking pot or leave); for changing into a different person over the years of our marriage (when we were dating, she also smoked pot, and on a few occasions took LSD or mushrooms, but after we married, she quit using mind-altering substances—except for the rare imbibing of alcoholic drinks—and expected me to “grow up” and do the same); for not making any effort to lose weight (I recognize that she feels helpless to do this, but she has never really tried, in spite of being fully aware of the effects being obese can have on one’s health); for frequently accusing me of not doing my share of work and not earning enough income (which, granted, has been true at times); and for often treating me like I am her disobedient child (which, granted, I have occasionally earned with childish behavior).

The lights of our lives are our two daughters, Sophia (born in 2004) and Sadie (born in 2011). I like to believe that we are good parents, despite the obvious dislike we feel for each other lately, and we both regard being parents as the most important jobs we will ever have. Unfortunately, Sophia is bright enough and sensitive enough to feel the tension and resentment between Sarah and I, and we can see signs of anxiety in her that we know must be caused in part by our failing relationship. It breaks my heart to think of the effect a divorce would have on our children, as well as on our extended family. My parents are still married, in spite of having come close to splitting on probably more than one occasion, and the same is true of Sarah’s parents. Our grandparents stayed married until death parted them, and so far, our parents have also managed to stay together, so a divorce would seem even more so a failure, to us and to our families. Chiefly, I am afraid that the example we are showing Sophia and Sadie might someday contribute to them having skewed expectations of what a relationship ought to be, resulting in their having equally unfulfilling relationships.

I have always been a philosopher. I spend a lot of time in my own head, analyzing objective and subjective experiences, and seeking a meaning for life and reality. What is reality? Why is reality? How do I fit in? What am I supposed to be doing here, if anything? Is the world we experience through our physical senses all that there is, or are there deeper layers and deeper purposes to discover? Has reality always existed, or was it created with intention by an intelligent designer? In the beginning, was it a “Big Bang”, or the will of a god or gods that made our universe? And if God exists, is He (or She, or It, or They) anything at all like the entities described in holy books and mythologies? Or is God something completely different? Certainly, I can no longer suspend my disbelief in God as described in the many mutually exclusive religions that all claim to be the only true path (and yet, have all proven fallible and subject to corruption, politics, and the wills of overly ambitious men). Therefore, I have endeavored to reconcile logic and objective truth with my own spiritual and subjective feelings, and to discover what I truly believe in by carefully and honestly investigating my own subjective world as well as the objective world we all live in.

Unwilling to deceive myself, even if the truth I find turns out to be a disappointment, I must put my greatest faith in reason, logic, and proven fact. These principals must take precedence over subjective feelings of a spiritual nature, which could simply be misinformation, misinterpretation, or wishful thinking. Most people are more apt to believe in something if it appeals to some need they have—a need to believe that death is not the end of a person’s existence; or a need to believe that there is a benevolent God in whose almighty hands we can lay our hopes, fears, and responsibilities, and who will ultimately enforce our human ideas of justice; or a need to believe in karma—that the “Good” will be rewarded, and the “Evil” will be punished. I do not want to fall into the trap of believing in something only because I really want it to be true. That said, I will not ignore intuitions and feelings of a spiritual nature, because I believe that there are other ways of knowing, other ways of revealing truth that are inherent and instinctual in all living creatures, and that it would be foolish of me to leave these ways unexamined.

Perhaps my lifelong search for spiritual happiness is a symptom of whatever mental or emotional abnormality afflicts me, causing me to feel at times depressed and apathetic, at other times restless and dissatisfied, and infrequently, mildly manic. I have been diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, formerly known as manic-depression, but I sometimes suspect that I might have other issues, such as attention deficit disorder, or some other problem of faulty neurotransmitters or receptors thereof. I take daily medications to control my disorder, but I often wonder about the efficacy and long-term downsides to medicating with pharmaceuticals, and how doing so is any better than medicating with marijuana, which has always relieved my depression. It would seem to be a choice between loss of appetite, loss of libido, occasional insomnia, and feeling “jittery” on the one hand, or mild respiratory aggravation and a tendency to eat more snacks on the other.

I have no doubt that my use of marijuana was originally motivated by my quest for truth and enlightenment, and certainly that motivation was, and still is, driving my occasional use of hallucinogens. Many cultures throughout human history have used hallucinogens to commune with their gods, spirits, and ancestors, whether it was with mushrooms, roots, peyote buttons, or some other naturally-occurring hallucinogen. These drugs are sometimes referred to as entheogens—literally, a substance that brings God within. My use of these substances has provided me with countless hours of fun and mirth, to be sure. But more importantly, I sincerely feel that my consciousness has been expanded and altered in a positive way, and this is what drives me to creep around wooded pastures each summer in search of psilocybin mushrooms.

To me, the mushroom season (roughly late June to early October where I live) is akin to a holy season, and each trip (generally no more frequent than weekly or bi-weekly) is a sacred communion. Communion with what, exactly, I cannot be sure, but many people who have ingested hallucinogens have reported similar “religious” experiences, feeling that they have communed in some metaphysical way with something greater than themselves, something full of wisdom and benevolence.
Of course, others have reported nightmarishly bad trips, either from taking improperly-formulated LSD, or from taking hallucinogens while they were not mentally and emotionally prepared, or were in an unsuitable setting (school, work, Thanksgiving dinner, et cetera). Typically, such a bad trip will be a person’s last trip, but sometimes this is not the case. After all, it could be argued that we learn as much (if not more) about ourselves and the world from difficult or unpleasant experiences as we do from easier or pleasant experiences, and even a bad trip was likely “bad” because the tripper didn’t like the insights revealed. Nevertheless, they were likely to be insights from which one could still learn and grow.

I also have no doubt that my use of drugs is self-medication for my feelings of restlessness, boredom, unhappiness, lack of motivation, et cetera. In some way, I must admit that when I get high, I am trying to escape from myself. I am relying on a crutch to prop me up in difficult times, to pacify me when I feel restless or irritated, to bring a measure of contentment, to act as a buffer between the struggles of life and my reactions to them. I am anesthetizing myself when I get high, and trying to free myself from my own ego for a time. I have taken prescribed antidepressants for over a decade now, and have had to change or add medications a few times since then. I have also received counseling from doctors who are experts in psychiatry and addiction, and have attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings. None of these efforts have relieved my particular disorders as much as exercising regularly and smoking marijuana have.

At this point, someone reading this book might dismiss me as an addict justifying my use with typical addict excuses, or dismiss this book as a pro-drugs manifesto. I am not trying to make excuses for my use of drugs; I am explaining my use of drugs. I never have, and never will, try to influence any other person to use drugs. However, I do not feel compelled to justify my own use, because I don’t feel that it is wrong to do. Who on Earth doesn’t rely on one crutch or another to weather the storms of life? Some use food, some use exercise, many use the fictions of television, movies, or books, and still many more use religious faith or a bracing philosophy. All of these things are crutches, and can be taken to dangerous extremes, just as much as getting high or drunk, or using the internet to game or watch porn, or any other less socially-accepted means of coping with an often ugly world.

If you do not have any imperfections, and you rely on no crutches to get through life, congratulations on being far superior to most human beings. But if you are like most people, you rely on some kind of crutch, even if it is not readily apparent to you. The key to happiness, according to Aristotle, is moderation. If your crutch is harming you or those around you, it’s definitely a problem that needs to be addressed. Otherwise, I’ll rely on my crutch, you rely on your crutch, and we’ll both hobble through the world as best we can, each respecting the other’s individual freedoms and difficulties.

My use of drugs to self-medicate has brought me close to destruction on a few occasions, and it would be dishonest of me not to address those occasions. In December of 2010, I was arrested on two misdemeanor charges of possession—one for a few grams of marijuana, the other for the pipe with which I was smoking it. Facing loss of freedom, loss of employment, and loss of respect from mainstream society, I opted to complete a pre-trial intervention program in exchange for having the charges dropped, in which I submitted to monthly drug tests, received a drug evaluation, and served 25 hours of community service.

During the four months of my probation, I abstained from smoking marijuana so I could pass the drug tests, but I didn’t spend that time completely sober. Instead, I made a choice that could very easily have dragged me and those I love most down into a hell of my own making: I began using prescription narcotics, purchased from a street dealer, who was in turn supplied by a “pill-mill” doctor. (Oxycodone is an opioid, and doesn’t show up as an opiate on standard urine tests—a special, more expensive test is given if you are busted for having opioids without a prescription, but not if you were busted for marijuana or cocaine, or anything else that isn’t an opiate or opioid and can be detected by the standard test.) In my desperation to grab hold of a substitute crutch, I tried to convince myself that I would be able to use opioids moderately until my probation ended and I could return to my relatively benign drug of choice. Predictably, my dependence quickly outgrew my budget, and I began to lie and steal to fuel my habit. I lied to my family about expenditures, accepted cash from my parents under false pretenses, and I lied to myself repeatedly.

On two occasions during my probation, I attempted to quit opioids “cold turkey”, and each time, I was so “dope-sick” that I missed almost a whole week of work. Those sleepless, agonizing nights and days of withdrawal helped to open my eyes to what I was doing to myself and my loved ones. During the last few days of my probation, I was taking as many as six 50-mg oxycodone pills per day, and had progressed from swallowing them to crushing them into a fine powder and snorting them. When my probation ended, I promptly bought a bag of marijuana and used it to ease my final detoxification from the opioids. That week was possibly the worst of my life to date, but it was also the moment of my salvation from the monster I had been devolving into. I recognized my opportunity for liberation at the time, and in a way, I embraced my suffering and tried to commit it to memory, lest my brain someday try to trick me again into thinking I can use opioids moderately.

I feel very fortunate that I have not used opiates or opioids for almost a year-and-a-half as of this writing, and have not felt any great compulsion to do so. I do not suffer the cravings many former opiate users report feeling even years after their last “fix”, but I have an idea of what that is like, because I experience mental cravings for marijuana if I go for too long without. During the periods of my life in which I abstained from smoking pot for more than a few weeks, I would have distressing dreams about succumbing to those cravings and getting stoned. These dreams are apparently common among addicts that give up their addiction, and I have heard that they can persist for many years.

My reason for relating these decidedly unflattering truths about myself is to demonstrate my humility, which I feel is important in anyone who would aspire to guiding others on a spiritual path. I am just as baffled, frightened, and vulnerable to the pitfalls of being human as any other person. If you seek guidance from a perfect, infallible spiritual leader, you are setting yourself up for either delusion or disappointment, because such a person does not exist, and if a person claims to be such, they are trying to fool you. The world is full to bursting with cults and their charismatic (and usually fraudulent) leaders. The biggest, wealthiest cults are not referred to as cults—we call them religions—but make no mistake about their origins as cults led by men claiming to be divine and infallible. Sleight of hand and the tricks of the magician’s trade, applied to the credulous, superstitious minds of pre-industrial societies (such as those in which the major world religions had their beginnings), would go far in promoting claims of divinity, and sadly, it still works on a lot of people today who are educated enough to know better.

I am not a spiritual leader, and I am certainly no more divine than any other living creature. I am not some self-righteous guru or evangelist trying to get my grubby mitts on your cash, while condemning you for being a sinner. I am not perfect by far, and I’m wrong more often than I’d like to admit. But I have experienced, inquired, and contemplated much, and will continue to do so until I die (and possibly longer). I invite whoever wishes to join me on my spiritual journey to do so, and I will endeavor to be an honest and compassionate travelling companion.

This is a 32-page guide to happiness from "an anonymous stranger", who would appreciate feedback.

Nothing herein is intended to offend, and at the very least, hopefully it will provide some amusement to whosoever takes the time to read it.

I ... I feel like ... singing!

I'd like to trade this tuxedo in for a larger one, please.

Okay, Conan Jr, that's it! Two minutes in time out!

Could you please keep it down? I'm reading the Hunger Games.

Want to play chess?

Do purple pants make Hulk look fat?

Waaaaa!!! Hulk bite tongue!!!

Hulk am a woman in love,

and Hulk do anything,
to get you into Hulk world
and hold you within
it's a right Hulk defend,
over and over again......

LOL!

Also, didn't they make an Alf cartoon?

Punky Brewster (with Glomer)
Ghost Busters (with Slimer?)
G-Force (Defenders of Universe I think it's also called?)

Thundercats (recently rebooted)
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
Thundaar the barbarian (I'm gonna make a half-orc barb named Ookla!)
Spaaaaaaace Ghooooooooosssssttttt!!!!
Biiiiiiiird Man!

I don't really see a problem. The prime adventuring career is really that of the young. It's that time of life where you make your metoric ascend to the plateau you'll occupy in middle age.

Agreed. Many heroes of literature and mythology were young adults. Many Olympic athletes are in their teens.

Thanks, all. FWIW, I ruled that he could drop from the ceiling as a free action, but did provoke a couple AoOs (from 3 witches) on exiting the "square" 5 ft above the floor. If it reoccurs, I'll likely rule as a few of you suggested.

Yesterday in my game, a ninja wearing slippers of spiderclimbing, fighting a number of foes in a narrow but high hallway, wanted to jump onto the ceiling over their heads and drop down into an empty square in their midst, and then make an attack on one of them.

It's my understanding that distance jumped counts as squares of movement, so the ninja, with speed 30 ft., jumped 20 feet onto ceiling, leaving him with 10 feet of movement left in a single move action.

Falling prone or dropping something is usually a free action, but in this case, the ninja was not falling prone, he was landing on his feet. Could he still make an attack in that round, even though he fell further than 10 feet? Or would that be a double move?

Our heroes sealed the fate of Malkyron, the Wizard of Witchfire Mountain, bringing his tragic tale to an end at last. Narwhal having deduced the location of the Wizard's phylactery after contemplating the results of a few commune spells--hidden in a secret compartment above the peak of the Wizard's personal sanctuary--Grymalkin and Alinanader ascended via fly spell and slippers of spider climbing, respectively, and Grymalkin disintegrated the peak, revealing the phylactery, which Alinander snatched and tossed down to Samhain Aqualung Tull, who promptly stomped and head-butted it to smithereens. So ended the Wizard of Witchfire Mountain.

Returning to Castle Zaoldyeck, the heroes celebrated with a great feast, attended by Sparrow, the guards, Springblossom, and nearly all of the baron's subjects, and recuperated from their adventures.

Later, having returned to Istivin at the Marchioness' request, the heroes were hailed as such and awarded great honors. Baron Zaoldyeck was retitled Count Zaoldyeck, and his barony was doubled in size, becoming the County of Zaoldyeck, when the Marchioness granted him the adjoining lands of an heirless baron who died during the retaking of Sterich; this added land was renamed the Barony of Ezra, and granted by Count Zaoldyeck to his adventuring companion, Ezra of Pelor, hereafter Baron Ezra.

Statues representing the heroes would soon stand in the hall of heroes in Krelont Keep, alongside likenesses of such worthies as Frush O'Suggill, Fonkin Hoddypeak, Redmod Dumple, and Beek Gwenders of Croodle! Likewise, statues of our heroes would soon stand ever vigilant in Qualtaine Square, to remind the people of Istivin of their brave deeds.

Grymalkin declared himself the new Wizard of Witchfire Mountain, and hired heralds to announce his offer to rent luxury apartments wherein one would never age; he eagerly anticipates the "glorious mountains of treasure" to be heaped upon him by aging royalty and nobility.

As for Alinander and Dernik, their masters lauded their brave service in making Sterich a much safer (and more boring) realm. Knowing the thirst for adventure that burns in their young squires' hearts, Lords Hoddypeak and Dumple lost no time in sending them again to fight the forces of evil, this time in the Yatil Mountains, where it is whispered that Iggwilv has returned to retake her former kingdom!

Word of Iggwilv's return and the horrors plaguing the lands adjacent to the Yatils reached our heroes in Istivin in the form of a letter forwarded to them from a young but powerful wizard and sage named Varysia McCandles, heralding her imminent arrival in Istivin to request their aid in combating the dire evils threatening the Flanaess from the north. Though Count Zaoldyeck, Baron Ezra, and the new Wizard of Witchfire Mountain had obligations and ventures that bound them to Sterich, Narwhal was ever ready to wander as befits a true cleric of Fharlanghn, and Marvin the Mighty felt compelled to use his potent witchcraft to oppose the black witchcraft of Iggwilv. Hearing that Alinander and Dernik would venture north with this wizard Varysia, Narwhal and Marvin declared their intention to join them and aid in their fight to free the lands around the Yatils from the curse of Iggwilv!

At a feast in Istivin celebrating the heroes' victory over the Azure Prince and the Wizard of Witchfire Mountain, the heroes met Varysia McCandles, who invited them to join her in an expedition to the Yatils to strike against Iggwilv and her witch cult. At the same feast, two other seasoned adventurers also offered their assistance in the venture--one a disciplined and deadly young monk named Serpico, who had taken vows of silence, and fasting, and communicated with the heroes by writing notes; the other a powerful, boisterous young cleric of Kord, Skoarn Vardriksson, who had adventured across the Flanaess from the frigid land of the Snow Barbarians. These two, seemingly complete opposites, had both come to Sterich to lend their aid against the Azure Prince, Wizard of Witchfire Mountain, and other enemies, only to find the victory had already been won by our heroes; therefore, they would join these worthy adventurers in their quest to break Iggwilv's hold over the lands around the Yatils! (See Return to the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth on these boards.)

DM's note: At the completion of the WoWM campaign, our heroes have gone from 1st level to 12th level, taking almost a year of real-world time, and somewhere around 15 sessions of about 6 hrs each.

Not yet ready to retire, most of our heroes will continue their adventures in a Return to the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, which will be chronicled in the campaign journal of the same name!

Tuning in, and always ae eager fool for Greyhawk material. Keep going!

Leomund's Hairy Chest wrote:

Unfortunately, the true coup-de-gras has finally been delivered:

BTW, it's "coup de grâce". "Coup de gras" translates to "grease hit", like someone beaten to death with a slice of lard. Awful way to die... :)

Thanks, Smarnil! You might be interested in checking out the Wizard of Witchfire Mountain journal, as it is set in the March of Sterich in GH.

Death by lard would indeed be awful, and probably take a long time! :)

An old terror has returned to plague the lands that border the forbidding Yatil Mountains! The folk of Perrenland, Highfolk, Ket, and Bissel have begun to whisper with fear that Iggwilv the Archmage has returned to the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth to reestablish her old kingdom! The first signs were a sudden rash of ill omens observed throughout those realms bordering the Yatils; then came the withering of crops, the curdling of milk, and other signs of black witchcraft; and finally, the return of Iggwilv was heralded in the capitals of the afflicted realms by black-robed witches, who delivered a dire ultimatum--accept Iggwilv as queen and goddess, or suffer drought, pestilence, and plague!

And so began the dreadful drought that has afflicted the lands bordering the Yatils for the last four months. Rats and vermin infest the cities and towns, spreading disease and draining granaries, pantries, and larders. A plague of locusts devoured what was left of the withered crops, and famine was soon felt in the afflicted lands--livestock were lost daily to starvation, and predators deprived of their usual prey.

Already reeling from the news of Iggwilv's return and the effects of her black coven's craft, the lands were to suffer even worse fates:

After the stalwart folk of the afflicted lands had resisted Iggwilv's demands for two months, a gargantuan red dragon began to ravage the countryside, burning the dead groves and causing wildfires to race across the lands. Virtually overnight, the capitals filled with refugees, and the countryside was abandoned. Many folk have fled to safer lands, and as word of the evils affecting the lands has spread far and wide, trade to those lands has ground to a halt, all but delivering the coup-de-gras to the doomed lands.

Unfortunately, the true coup-de-gras has finally been delivered:

Demons have begun to stalk the crowded streets of the cities, torturing and killing in wanton raids until they are driven off by the mightiest clerics, wizards, and other adventurers in residence. The subjugation of the afflicted lands has already begun--Ket and Perrenland have submitted to Iggwilv, and an exodus from those realms has begun, but many who try to flee are captured by Iggwilv's monstrous minions and publicly tortured to death. It seems that a second reign of Iggwilv the Witch-Queen is at hand!

Although the previous narrative fails to mention it, two heroic warriors joined the heroes on their last few forays into the Ice Fortress of the Azure Prince: Alinander Silverelm (grey elf ranger, deadly archer, and henchman of elven lord Fonkin Hoddypeak); and Dernik Stonehammer (waraxe-wielding dwarf fighter, henchman of dwarven lord Redmod Dumple). These two, ever bickering as elves and dwarves are wont to, have proven doughty companions, and have been accepted into the heroes' band.

After the penultimate foray into the Ice Fortress, as the heroes were resting at Zaoldyeck Keep, Alinander and Dernik were instructed via silver raven to reconnoiter Witchfire Mountain, and to confirm or deny reports that the Wizard's army was gathering at the foot of the mountain. Bidding their new companions farewell, the elf and dwarf left to undertake this mission.

The rest of the heroes journeyed once more to the Ice Fortress, as described above. As they were journeying to the Ice Fortress (saving teleports for escape if need be), Alinander and Dernik observed (from a safe distance) that the reports were true--about 1,000 goblinoids (600 goblins, 300 hobgoblins, and 100 bugbears) were camped on the central foothills, near the winding road that led up to the mines and doors of the Wizard's fortress; to the north, werewolves wrestled and paced, bored with waiting on further commands from their liege; and to the south, in the gloom outside of the goblins' and werewolves' campfires, crouched pale-skinned vampire spawn and ghouls, their hunger for blood and flesh growing.

The elf and dwarf hurried back to Zaoldyeck Keep, after reporting via silver raven to their masters. As the keep came into their sight, they noticed an alarming sight near Springblossom's oak--a black coach and a cage on a cart, both yoked to pairs of skeletal horses! A robed man sat in the driver seat of the coach, and a cloaked and armored man was reclining in the cage, while a third cloaked man paced about, hand resting on the hilt of a black greatsword. Dernik waited while Alinander crept closer to spy on these strange folk camped by Springblossom's oak. Getting a closer look at the strangers, Alinander felt sure that they were minions of evil, for the unholy symbol of Vecna hung on a chain around the caged man's neck. Thinking no one had noticed him, he turned to creep away, but was most unsettled when the robed man in the coach driver seat spoke to him, saying, "The goodly Baron Zaoldyeck is not home, elf, if that is who you seek." Giving no reply, Alinander crept back to Dernik and reported. Checking in at the keep, they learned that the three strangers had sought entry, but were turned away by Sparrow (the red-haired former bandit-leader who captained Zaoldyeck Keep in Killua's absence).

Knowing the others had left to return to the Ice Fortress, elf and dwarf mounted fast horses and pushed them to exhaustion, letting them go free at the foot of the mountain pass that led to the Ice Fortress. The other heroes cautiously explored the rest of the fortress and killed off the last of the Azure Prince's minions, as Alinander and Dernik climbed as quickly as their legs and endurance would allow (Alinander occasionally having to carry Dernik piggy-back-style, or toss him over a ravine to take shortcuts), and only a few rounds into the other heroes' climactic battle with the Azure Prince, they caught up and joined the fight.

The Azure Prince, hoping to quickly eliminate spellcasters, drew a hail of blows from the fighters of the group as he tried to teleport to where Grymalkin stood (after the wizard's chain lightning failed to harm the gelugon), spelling his doom. He tried to teleport away, but a shadowy figure that had materialized almost unnoticed (a few sharp-eyed heroes spotted it) prevented it with a dimensional anchor. The devilish form emerged from the shadows--it was a tall, handsome, red-skinned devil with black horns, bat-like wings, and the finest garments--laughed mockingly at the Azure Prince, saying, "Foolish gelugon! Did you really think you could escape from me?" Gasping in uncharacteristic horror, the Azure Prince tried to flee, but was cornered when the newly arrived devil teleported to block his escape. Grymalkin, recognizing the archdevil Mephistopheles himself, stuttered his name fearfully to his companions, and retreated behind Alinander. Alinander finished the Azure Prince with a volley of arrows, and Mephistopheles trapped the gelugon's essence in a soul gem, chuckling with evil pleasure. So ended the evil reign of the Azure Prince.

The foolhardy Samhain, seeing an archdevil at the end of the hall leading into the throneroom, charged to strike at Mephistopheles, but Dernik tackled him, preventing his suicidal assault. Thanking the mortals for helping him apprehend the Azure Prince, Mephistopheles tossed a crimson bag of holding (type I) containing ten diamonds worth 10,000 gp each--the 100,000 gp bounty placed on the Azure Prince by the archdevil--at the heroes and departed in a black cloud stinking of brimstone.

After the shock of meeting an archdevil wore off, the heroes turned their attentions to the still-beating Heart of Thrym, source of the strange glacier, the Davish River, and the unnatural winter that was slowly spreading across Sterich. The heroes knew from previous consultations with Algorthas the Seer that there were two ways to destroy the Heart of Thrym--cast it into an active volcano (which would cause an eruption), or impale it with a magical flaming weapon. On hearing Ezra remind the heroes of this, Samhain channeled the fires of Pelor into his greatsword, which began to glow red-hot and burst into flames. Before anyone could stop him or get to a safe distance, Samhain plunged his flaming sword into the heart, destroying it, but also causing an explosion of icy shards and bloodfreezing winds that lacerated and frosted the heroes. Fortunately, all were hardy enough (or evasive enough) to survive the blast.

Within the ribcage of Thrym, where the Heart once rested, lay an ice-glazed steel chest and several sacks. After scraping away the ice, the heroes opened the chest and found a fortune in magical tomes and manuals that increased either a physical or mental ability in the reader, one of each of six known types! Also within the chest were a magical headband that increased the wearer's wisdom and charisma, and a belt that increased strength and constitution. The sacks contained thousands of gold, silver, and copper coins. After judiciously dividing this fortune in treasure, the heroes departed the Ice Fortress and returned to Zaoldyeck Keep.

Warned by Alinander and Dernik, the heroes expected to find the three mysterious strangers camped by Springblossom's oak. Instead, they saw a gleaming iron golem standing still beside the tree! As they approached cautiously, Springblossom emerged from her oak and waved them closer. She explained that the iron golem was a gift from the Wizard of Witchfire Mountain to Baron Zaoldyeck, and that its last order from the Wizard was to protect Springblossom until the baron returned, and to thereafter obey the baron's every command. She told them that the Wizard had visited with her briefly, waiting until the golem arrived at the keep (it moved slower than the skeleton-horse-drawn coach and cage), and then bidding her farewell for what she instinctively knew would be the last time.

Sending out their silver raven to inform Captain O'Suggill of the Azure Prince's fall and the Wizard's gathering army, our heroes then spent six days at the keep, reading the magical tomes and otherwise increasing their power. Meanwhile, having received their messages, Captain O'Suggill marshalled the Sterish army, Fonkin Hoddypeak marshalled the elves of Oytwood, and Redmod Dumple marshalled the dwarves of the Jotens, and all began marching to rendezvous at Witchfire Mountain and crush the Wizard's evil army. It would be nearly a week of marching for the three armies, so the heroes ventured to Witchfire Mountain a few hours ahead of the armies.

Using illusion magic, Alinander and Ezra disguised themselves as drow and approached first the goblinoids (who seemed not to know why the Wizard had called them to the foot of the mountain), and then the werewolves. Ezra recognized Garm the Hunter among them, and Alinander recognized Garm as the pacing man with the black greatsword who had been camped near the oak. Using guile and claiming to be messengers announcing the aid of Lolth in the Wizard's cause, the two were able to learn from Garm that the Wizard had sequestered himself in the uppermost level of his mountain fortress. As they returned to where the others were waiting, Garm transformed into a wolf and raced up the winding path to report the "drow" messengers and relay their vow of aid.

Noting a great valve at the top of the winding mountainside road, which was within the dancing blue "witchfire" wreathing the mountain peak, the heroes first tried to teleport to the valve. On arriving at the top of the road before the valve, they were wracked with lightning! Quickly retreating down the road and out of the deadly electricity field that gave the mountain its name, the heroes entered a lower level of the fortress via an open passageway.

At the end of the passageway stood a pair of glyph-warded bronze doors, behind which the sound of unison chanting could be heard. Ezra and Alinander opened the doors, expecting blast glyphs they could nimbly evade, narrowly avoiding being blinded by the glyphs of blinding! Beyond was a temple of Vecna, in which a high priest (the Vecnite from the cage!) and high priestess led four lesser priests in chanting the mysteries of Vecna. The mighty heroes made quick work of these evil men and women, and took captive the high priestess, whom they forced to guide them up through the fortress' maze-like passageways to the Wizard's sanctum.

The high priestess led them up a series of inclining corridors and stairways until they came to a chamber filled with pillars. The high priestess told the heroes that the Wizard had forbidden anyone except himself and his chief lieutenants to go any further. The chamber of pillars was in fact a series of deadly traps--guillotines, crushing blocks, spears, and even magical effects awaited the hapless victim who passed between the wrong pair of pillars in each row. Tossing coins proved not to trigger the traps, and as the cautious Ezra, Grymalkin, and other more cerebral adventurers puzzled over how to bypass the traps, Dernik grew impatient and charged through, narrowly avoiding most of the traps, and being only scathed by a spring-loaded blade before arriving on the far side to chide the cowardice of the others. Finally, Grymalkin used a few scrolls of dimension door he'd purchased the last time they were in Istivin to transport the rest of the heroes safely past the deadly chamber of pillars.

After wandering (the high priestess truly could guide them no further) and ignoring disturbing dungeon sounds from behind several doors along the way, the heroes discovered a laboratory where the wondrous properties of Witchfire Mountain had been studied by the Wizard--raw meats, goblin corpses, rounds of cheese, loafs of bread, and jugs of milk, all as fresh as the day they were produced, were labeled with dates going as far back as nearly 50 years! Apparently, nothing decayed within the peak of the mountain. Was this the secret of the Wizard's longevity? Or was it something more sinister, as the heroes feared?

Passing through the laboratory, they came at last to a great audience chamber, overlooked by a balcony at the far end, to which a pair of stairs ascended, where a pair of doors stood open. On the balcony stood the Wizard and his chief lieutenant, Garm the Hunter. Below the balcony, within a binding protective circle, stood a terrible demon--a glabrezu bound by the Wizard, who encouraged the heroes to kill the "miserable Wizard". What followed was a conflicting effort by the heroes--Garm descended the stairs, transforming to hybrid wolf-man to answer Samhain's challenge of a duel to the death. Killua moved to the stairs (giving the demon wide berth), hoping to negotiate a peaceful surrender from the Wizard. Alinander, torn between two favored enemies (undead--for he felt certain the Wizard was a lich--and evil outsiders), decided to dispatch the demon first, and riddled it with arrows. Narwhal caught the demon in a blade barrier, and the battle was fully on! Seeing his friends attack the demon, Samhain abandoned his duel with Garm to attack the demon. Seeing their intent, the Wizard quickly dispatched half of the party while they were busy with Garm and the demon--he stunned Samhain with a powerword stun, killed Narwhal with a finger of death, and dominated Killua, ordering him to subdue his friends. Unable to resist, Killua began to make his way to Samhain to grapple him. The demon fell under Alinander's continued assault. After killing Garm, Dernik raced to the balcony to confront the Wizard, but the Wizard trapped him in a forcecage. Now, only Grymalkin, Ezra, Alinander, and Marvin could freely act, and it seemed that the Wizard would triumph!

Seeing his opportunity to be the hero, Grymalkin cast a disintegrate at the forcecage, freeing Dernik, who then carved the Wizard to pieces as Alinander riddled him with arrows. The Wizard fell under their assault, and the heroes stood victorious! Marvin was able to raise Narwhal with one of the cleric's own scrolls (making a lucky Use Magic Device check), and Narwhal restored his lost power with his scrolls of greater restoration. Now, they must locate the Wizard's phylactery before he returns to wreak further havoc!

As our heroes explored deeper into the Ice Fortress of the Azure Prince, they were ambushed by a force of ice trolls, frost giants, and a cryohydra, making quick work of the monsters with force of arms and spells. Proceeding, the heroes encountered and slew more of Skakkakalash's half-dragon yeti offspring, and discovered the nursery, where the half-eaten corpses of female yetis chained to the icy walls attested to their grisly fate. They also found further progress blocked by an immense door of ice, with four crystals of different colors inset in its surface.

Four levers with colored crystals inset in the ice above them had been discovered scattered throughout the maze-like Ice Fortress, but the heroes had decided not to touch them until they had cleared out all monsters. After having killed all of the Azure Prince's monstrous minions on this level, the heroes began their search for an upper level reported to them earlier by their hobgoblin captive. Now was the time to try pulling the levers.

As each lever was pulled, the crystal above it began to glow. After pulling the fourth lever, the heroes hurried to the great ice door, finding it now open, and the four crystals in its face lit like the crystals above the levers. Beyond the door lay a corridor with a side passage that led to another nursery, now containing only half-eaten female yeti corpses and old fragments of half-dragon eggshells.

Continuing down the newly opened corridor, our heroes found what they were seeking--a great spiral stair of ice ascending to the upper level. On reaching the top of the stairs, the heroes were confronted by bearded devil guards, which they dispatched skillfully. Now they would explore the upper level in search of the Azure Prince. They encountered another group of frost giants in one of the larger chambers, and slaughtered them in short order. They also discovered several more levers with crystals above them. As before, they left the levers alone at first.

They found the lair of the Erinyes, guarded by more bearded devils. After a brief battle, the heroes sent all of the devils back to the Nine Hells of Baator, and looted the treasures found in the erinyes' lair.

In another chamber, they found a planetar angel bound with magical chains enchanted to prevent his escape via magic. The heroes freed the angel, and he urged them to remain where they stood until he returned. After a brief wait, the angel returned with magical gifts from Celestia for his brave rescuers. Thanking them again, the angel then departed back to Celestia.

In another chamber, they discovered a shocking sight--the dryad Springblossom lay weeping on the ice before her uprooted oak tree! The Azure Prince had taken her hostage to keep the Wizard of Witchfire Mountain at bay. She lay trembling and pale, but her beautiful face lit up at the sight of the heroes who had returned her magic comb to her. With superhuman strength granted by their magic belts, Killua and Samhain, aided by the others, hauled Springblossoms oak through the two levels of the Ice Fortress, and made a grueling, slow-going trek back to Zaoldyeck Keep, where Killua ordered his men to dig a pit and replant the oak. Springblossom would thereafter dwell under the protection of Baron Zaoldyeck. After a night's rest, our heroes returned to the Ice Fortress.

After clearing most of the chambers in the upper level and coming to another great door of ice with crystals set in it, our heroes returned to the chambers with levers and pulled them all. Returning quickly to the door, they found it open, and saw within the court of the Azure Prince, a throne room with a raised dais, and an icy river flowing through a trench from the north to the south, where it spilled through a narrow fissure to become the Davish River. Its source was a titanic skeleton lying half buried in ice at the north end of the chamber, and specifically, from a large, ice-blue heart that pumped the icy water out with every reverberating heartbeat--they had found the bones and still-beating heart of the fallen frost giant god Thrym! The source of the Davish, the strange glacier, and the bitter winter that plagued Sterich was indeed the Heart of Thrym, now a potent artifact.

But what drew their immediate attention was sitting on the great throne of ice upon the dais--the Azure Prince, a towering gelugon with azure designs on his white chitinous exoskeleton, clutching a great scepter topped with a glowing blue crystal. The battle to follow might determine the fate of Sterich, and perhaps all of the Flanaess! Will our mighty heroes have the power to defeat their long-sought foe? Only time (and dice rolls) will tell!

Being from the Southwest, I intend to hire undocumented laborers from Meh-hee-koh to handle all my GMing duties. For a case of beer and about $100, I can even replace all my players.

I wonder what it would cost to replace my minis with illegal immigrants armed with boffers and dressed as orcs?

LOL! If I were an illegal immigrant, I'd rather pretend to be an orc all day than pick oranges or clean hotel rooms.

Go ahead, ladies, give me a feel. Soft and silky, right?

Didn't notice the reference to familiars and animal companions companions in my first reading. I think we'll still be seeing Dread Companions for familiars and special mounts who are really quite loyal but also quite evil. They will work towards a masters unspoken desires and protect the master at all costs. Druids and rangers will be receiving normal animal companions. As mentioned above I'm think about what to do with Dread Eidolons.

That was one of the fun things about Ravenloft for PCs with pets (well, maybe not fun for the PC with the pet LOL), and an interesting potential plot device for the GM to use.

If nothing else, the GM can instill a sense of unease and paranoia (which imo really makes for a good Ravenloft game) by having animal companions, mounts, etc. act in a more sinister (if not rebellious) fashion.

I will be treating it in pretty much the same way as the 3.5 material. As such I won't go into much detail on it in the pdf and refer to the 3.5 handbook.

Beasties get a will save at a -2 when summoned to break free of control. Calling leaves an outsider stuck. No templates on what you summon so just dire rats not fiendish ones and only from the domain you are in. Elementals are always dread elementals and you are free to summon creatures of the mist descriptor. So some modified summon lists might be needed.

Sounds good!

Regarding familiars, animal companions, and especially summoned monsters, are you planning to implement any kind of risk that these creatures might turn on their masters/summoners, as in the old 2e Ravenloft? Just curious. It could either add alot of coolness or alot of player whinery ...

Can Barbarians have oil of mage armor like monks.

Mr. Fishy likes rubbing oil on Mr. Fishy's chest, gives Mr. Fishy +4 on his AC.

How does Mr. Fishy accomplish this with those little flippers? :)

Leomund's Hairy Chest would require copious amounts of such an oil, so as to avoid painful hair-pulling.

Shar Tahl wrote:

Has this one been converted to 3.5 at all? Sounds like a fun one. I was a bit too young when it came out to be gaming, so I missed out!

It shouldnt be that hard to convert it yourself. A little time consuming, maybe. I am doing that with the 'Against the Giants'. It should be fun. Its gonna need much work though. One area has like 50 trolls in one room, a hydra in the next, and a dozen or so fire giants next to that. That area will need some revision work, I think.

You could use the d20 Future SRD (found under d20 Modern SRD) for some of the weapons, armor, and other gear found in the "dungeon". There are also rules for generating robots.

I am not generally a fan of mixing sci-fi with classic fantasy, but I must admit that Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was a fun module. Have fun storming the spaceship!

I must say, Ravingdork, from reading your other posts, that you are good at thinking outside the box with spells. (I'm especially thinking of your MMM thread, which could be the seed for a cool adventure.)

About cantrips, though, I would err on the side of conservative regarding what they can be used for, just for the sake of game balance.

Pretty sweet! I always thought Ravenloft was a cool setting. It would be great to see WoC do something with it, or let a PP do something with it again.