Seeking Actually-Playing Characters!

Some thoughts on why I'm motivated to write out my life philosophy right now.

Howdy Kumquats!

Many of my friends are in a similar pickle right now—feeling unsure about what path to take with life, career, love, moving, etc. Everyone is trying to “figure it out.” While the pandemic was the source of confusion, stress and isolation, the silver lining was having a break from the bullshit. We had the space to remember what really matters and process how much wasn’t working. None of us wants to go back to the old rat race but the pressure cooker of ridiculously inflated price-of-everything right now, is causing a lot of fear.

Fear is a mojo killer. Being afraid for your survival, combined with the inability to see any obvious options, makes going back to the old way very enticing. It can even seem like the “only” option. I just don’t believe that sacrificing our joy is the move right now. Maximizing joy is how you relax, it’s how you achieve health, it magnetizes others to you, it radiates and electrifies the world with fun and possibility!

If you believe we live in an animate world that is alive and responding to us every second, and that our thoughts effect our surroundings, as I do, then how could you ever trade your joy away? Nothing good can come of it. What if the big shift right we are being asked to make right now is to make our joy important and be willing to defend it? It’s not a luxury, not something you do when you have time— it’s the most essential thing that makes you leap out of bed every morning and gives shape to your existence.

The world may not be stable for a long time. Are you willing to wait for some imagined future to experience joy or can you train yourself to find it right now? Can you do that moment to moment and then day to day and then year to year?

I know I can.

This is a very important moment for us all. In the process of change, there comes a point you will be tested and shaken, you will be tempted by the old ways but you must ground yourself down into the emerging you, having total faith that the world you actually want is coming. In the immortal words of Doe Low da Pilotman, “don’t be rocked back to sleep.”

We have to make these roots deep in ourselves first, then it will pick up momentum in the culture.

As an artist, this is what I’ve done my entire adult life: used my imagination to envision a better world and then hand-make a version of that world with whoever says yes, with whatever materials are available. In this way, an inspiration moves to idea to embodiment. We become it.

There is NEVER a good, convenient, easy time to do the new thing. There is the only the imperfect present where you are right now. I don’t believe in waiting. To paraphrase Chaos Magician, Gordon White, the spell has already begun when you have the first thought, it doesn’t start when you do the ritual.

There is no better time, place, people or location than right here, right now.

I suppose my goal is a selfish one. The reason that it feels urgent to write my life philosophy now is because I want more people around who have broken free from the over-culture and have done the work to know, grow and love themselves to the edges, the depths and back again. I want more wise, bad ass, real deal freedom-fighters living technicolor lives who can show me how to be more me. And I am here to show you how to be more you and to fucking stop apologizing, qualifying, contextualizing or explaining it. More folk wisdom for you— people often say on their death beds that it’s not the things they did that they regret, it’s all the things they didn’t do. How much longer are you going to wait?

I need more Actually-Playing Characters in the world. I’m tired of posers, people pleasers, punishers, trolls, victims, haters, sad sacks, damaged goods, apologists, door mats, and weaklings. The world I am enticing you to enter is not for pussies. And yes, I have a pussy, love mine, think all pussies are great and still don’t mind using that word as an insult because I grew up that way, so fuck off. I’m tired of self censorship and hesitation too. Fuck all that nonsense. I am making a world that adores complexity and nuance. Mistakes are the only way you grow and growth is painful. The sooner you befriend the pain and learn to love the sensations of stretching yourself into new forms, the sooner you become an Actually-Playing Character in your own life.

When you know yourself, you understand what activates or depletes your passion, intellect, emotions and physical body. Knowing yourself requires on-going communication between your body-mind-spirit. It means you have experienced your darkness and your light and choose to live in the light. When you have been tested and tempered enough by life, your integrity and character deepens and fleshes out into your very being, your essence— you become a more colorful and more fragrant flower. This is co-creation. You are the creation.

These are the values that are worth building a life on.

If you attempt to build a life with any of your old bullshit, or any of the extractive, greedy patterns of the old over-culture, which was / is a bleak place that has been trying to enslave and kill us, then you will recreate the same world. You can’t bake even a little bit of bullshit into the new pie and expect it to taste like anything else. Those old feelings, thoughts and impulses have to be replaced and made into new habits that always taste great, that can feed you for a lifetime.

Thanks to Carl Jung, we know that whatever shadow-y intention within yourself that you have not befriended and learned the tools to have a life-long communication with— that destructive part of you will continue to rampage through your life and the world. Similarly, whatever pisses you off the most, is the thing you have to face in yourself, or it will persist. This is shadow integration, also called “uniting your will” in magic, which requires understanding what your unconscious self desires and also how to best translate those desires in the conscious world.

Some of the questions I’m seeking to answer are—

• How the fuck do start having more fun already?

• What if there’s nothing dark, wrong or fucked up about your shadow or negative emotions at all?

• What if your “shadow” is also your inner child who is really just your immortal, timeless soul, which is itself a tiny spark of Divine Source?

• What if these fragmented parts of yourself all want the same thing— for you to be fully you in this lifetime, endlessly refine your awesomeness and do more of what you love because you love it?

• What if we just suck at being ourselves because it’s been conditioned and beaten out of us by every single aspect of the over-culture?

• What if there is a better way of seeing and being that we can strengthen like a muscle?

• What if everything changes when we learn how to navigate from our deepest place of love?

• What if embodying love also means that we have to stand up to bullies and not take anymore shit from haters?

• Can we give ourselves the freedom to even IMAGINE (let alone embody) how it would feel to spend our days doing what we love cause we love it?

• What happens if we love the process of going after our dreams just as much as we love having our dreams come true?

• What if we only learn the hard way?

• What if pain makes us stronger, more articulate and more awesome?

• What if the whole messy process of making your life into an expression of you is more fun than any product, achievement or object that you get out of it?

• What if we made the quality of our lives more important than anything else?

• What if this is moment when our society decides which way we go?

You can’t plant new seeds in the old soil and grow something different. Your soil has to change. That is culture. That is what the role of the artist is— to make the culture. You do that work by “turning shit to gold” over and over again. Everything is an opportunity, when you are strong enough to stay the course, be yourself and find out what happens.

Now, not everyone is an artist, but everyone can learn to think like one a little bit.

Just because you can cook, doesn’t mean it’s your life calling to be a chef…

Just because you love lingerie, it doesn’t make you Madonna.

It happens to be my life purpose / calling / compulsion / passion to be an artist. I can’t not be an artist, it’s how I do everything. I have refined it through decades of study of the greats, application of ideas, trial and error, and walking my talk in the world, even when it makes people hate me or try to ruin my life. Perhaps you will never quit your day job and do your art full time, but maybe you’ll learn to see through a new lens and get some tips and tricks to apply to your life that give you the courage to be more you.

As the 12-step saying goes, take the best, forget the rest. But please, use the best ideas to TAKE ACTION, don’t just keep this stuff in your head. I can hand you the keys, but you have to use them.

Here’s how it works: inspiration is Divine, it’s the first spark of an idea, it arrives in your gut. Then you use your imagination to explore the idea in your head. It’s usually a good idea to write / draw the idea next. Then you bring the inspired-idea, that you massaged with imagination and refined with words and images, into form. Everything is a co-creation or collaboration between time, place, people, skills, influences, lineages and materials. Inspiration and ideas will both die if they are only confined to your mind. You must give them expression, or they will go to someone else. These ideas want to be born through us, and you can learn to be a channel for them.

If you don’t have the good fortune to have me as a coach right now to whisper encouragement in your ear and serve you a weekly wisdom sandwich, being part of the premium membership is the next best thing.

That’s the place I’m going to tell you how I do it— how I united my fractured parts and why it’s so important to endeavor to live the most colorful, delightful, endlessly amusing life possible.

Now is not the time to give up.

Now is not the time to give in.

Now is the time to make a new map, build the best boat you can, using only the best materials available right now and start paddling.

This concludes your free weekly Tiger Style Love School transmission.

I’ll see the rest of you over in the Tiger Club tomorrow.

This is Trixie Little, signing off.