Bottled fresh from my sparkling stream of consciousness and raging river of reflections, this is the beginning of Bentime-Stories.com, where I start with my experiences as a lost boy of the Peter Pan generation.
The Peter Pan Generation | MILLENNIALS
The first generation with "extended adolescence" also known as "emerging adulthood." This is a period between 18-25 where we are no longer traditional adolescents, but also not young adults. It is the first transitional period away from the familiar educational institution setting we have come to know so well--a time where we must ultimately become the sailor of our dreams to find our own sparkle in the sea of stars within the dark night sky of adulthood.
EDUCATION | LEISURE | TRAVEL | CAREER SATISFACTION
Millennials. Generation Y. Who are we? First off, we are the most educated generation that has existed. It is no surprise that we are also "notorious job-hoppers" in search for career satisfaction with deeper meaning, purpose, and intrinsic rewards, rather than immediately signing our lives away to safe corporate America. We also embrace this idea that it's not all about the money and materialism. Instead, we try to find the right work-life balance with increased values for leisure and civic engagement, as well as travel. We focus on travel experiences, volunteering, entrepreneurship, leisure, and happy hour moments to create a better balance for our happiness and satisfaction with non-material things. It sounds perfect, right? So why wasn't I happy after doing all of these things?
CULTURE | social isolation | hyperconnectivity | emptiness
Work-life balance isn't just between work, education, travel and leisure. There's also culture, society, family, friends, and community. In addition to being the most educated generation, we are also the most culturally diverse generation. When we combine this abundance of diversity with modern transient urban communities, we don't necessarily make the time to try to understand each unique personal story outside our own lives and worldview. Enter the age of hyperconnectivity with technology, dating apps and social media that speed up our lives even more; we begin to desire instant gratification from likes, followers, and swipes which require very minimal social input--making us increasingly connected, but alone. As we internalize these values in digital reality, we enhance existing U.S. national ideals that sanction individuality and self-reliance which make us further derive our happiness from personal achievements: wealth, career, self-image, and consumerism. In the end, we invest less time into learning about other people--ultimately drifting apart in the 21st century, with collapsing communities.
NEVERLAND | ESCAPISM
We learn to arrange our lives around loneliness and unhappiness without actually appreciating or understanding it. Instead, we embrace escapism. When we aren't drowning ourselves in business, volunteering, entrepreneurship and romance, we embrace a form of transformative dark adult play: hook-ups, sex, happy hour culture, drugs, concerts, leisure, festivals, the rise of EDM, and raves that promote a sense of Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect (PLUR)--things that fill the void of collapsing American (USA) communities, shrinking family size, and increasing social isolation, which are further jeopardized for minority groups struggling with cultural anchorage, assimilation, identity, and a strong sense belonging. As a minority millennial, I tried drowning myself in business, volunteering, entrepreneurship, happy hour culture, concerts, and clubs, but they didn't fill the void. I found myself struggling with an additional jeopardy of gender identity and sexual orientation as a feminine gay male; popular notions of dating in millennial hook up culture, particularly those in the gay community seemed inextricably linked with racial lookism and dark play aspects of adulthood: involving high disease, intoxicating night life, small social investment, and a lack of intimacy. I tried to fit into this community, but felt more uncomfortable and unhappy each time. I kept entering this toxic cycle of desire as a double minority who internalized--but at the same time was marginalized by--racial lookism. In the true spirit of the Peter Pan Generation, I decided to plan the ultimate escape. I flew to The Land of Smiles (Thailand), Never Neverland, and Narnia (Australasia) thinking that I would be able to fill myself up with happiness and freedom. I ended up becoming more dissatisfied, psychoculturally dislocated, and confused. Neverland wasn't what I expected, and I wondered where I would end up when I stopped escaping? If I was unhappy at the place I escaped to and from, where would I be happy? Where was happiness? Who was I when I wasn't escaping? What was I really escaping from? What's the point of it all if we're always escaping? I didn't know.
loneliness |dissatisfaction
I gathered all of these adventure travel moments, but they didn't make me any happier than before; they didn't make me feel whole. I didn't know what to think anymore. If traveling, adventure, and leisure couldn't bring me happiness, what would? I had already put together a 10 year career plan in a profession that I was passionate about, but career satisfaction didn't seem to remove the emptiness either. I was alone on this trip. Was that the reason I was unhappy? I was conflicted. My heart (emotions) said yes, but my conscious brain knew that I was in charge of my own happiness. I sought out friends and tried to find someone who truly understood me, but grew murderous with dissatisfaction as no one could truly know the things I wanted and connect with me in a complete harmonious convergence.
No destination, place, career, or person could make me happy. I was lost and alone.
bhava-tanha | sankhara dukkha
Everything that constituted my notions of happiness fell apart. I realized that, even though millennials move away from materialism, we collect and consumerize non-material experiences (volunteering, happy hour, Vegas, parties, and travels) to fill ourselves up with happiness. The mentality is "the more experiences you have, the better." I always felt like I needed to measure up with other millennials, to exhibit "happiness" by these arbitrary measurements we had internalized. I embarked on my #BennVoyage, partially for personal growth, but mostly with disillusioned hopes of wanderlust experiences filling me up with happiness. They were great experiences, but everything I indulged in left me further dissatisfied. Once I completed something, I wanted more, specifically something new, something that could give me that sense of wonder again; happiness seemed to be trapped in the glorious future, leaving me with diminishing appreciation for the current moment. I felt stuck in this cycle of desire with deeply internalized cravings for new experiences. I would later understand these as sankhara dukkha (subtle dissatisfaction) and bhava-tanha (crave for being/experience), but in the current moment, I felt empty.
I was a lost boy fooling myself that I was Peter Pan, but I couldn't fly. I didn't have faith in myself or others. I lost trust in myself and others. All I had was pixie dust. Pixie dust is like our personal accomplishments. They aren't bad. They give us confidence and improve our self-image with a sparkle that adds a nice finishing touch so that we don't feel too helpless and worthless. But, when all we have is pixie dust and personal achievements, we only focus on ourselves and lose sight of what makes us fly. We forget what makes life worth while--sharing happy moments and meaningful connections with others. We need something larger than ourselves.
HAPPINESS|SELF-AWARENESS| SELF-TRANSCENDENCE | SELFLESSNESS
Rather than finding happiness, I found loneliness, emptiness, existential bewilderment, dislocation, shadows, memories and dreams, which brought me to the gates of spirituality where I reflected and contemplated about life, identity, and past experiences. Eventually, I discovered the art of compassion and spiritual solitude within a Buddhist framework which helped me cultivate happiness, creativity, imagination, and more--leading me to create Bentime-Stories.com to further reflect and share my thoughts through social media.
I didn't find the happiness I was looking for in Neverland, but I discovered true and real happiness which is often an intricate and messy process. I decided to write stories because they help me remember the challenging processes as opposed to the finished products of success which are frequently disillusioned and overexposed on social media and in the short interactions with people. My stories allow me to capture the art of happiness which will always be a little unpleasant in each new, changing and uncertain moment. Even though I realized it once, it doesn't mean I will easily realize it in other future moments that may be filled with confusion, miscommunication, misunderstandings, fear, anger, and resentment. The purpose is not to repress, suppress, deny, shame, guilt, or exacerbate these feelings, but know that they will happen because of things beyond our control. The stories remind me to let these experiences flow so I don't don't cling onto negative energy, act impetuously or behave aggressively. It's an ongoing journey of realization.
I believe that happiness grows when we can understand our inner self as well as others. It is crucial that we do both intrapersonal and interpersonal connections. Our inner selves and people are not goals to be won, because we can never finish developing a quality connection with ourselves or others. This is a huge challenge for me and I think it resonates with other Millennials as well because we are so focused on personal achievements and understanding happiness as something that we control by achieving more. It is true that happiness is an inside job; it is in our hands. However, happiness is not a collection of completed things, moments, or experiences. It is an internal fountain that never stops flowing, changing, and growing. It is in us and it is in other people. With each completion of another Bentime story, I think I'm finished learning about myself and others. However, we are never finished telling stories, and we are never finished learning because the world is always changing. We are always changing. Society is always changing. Culture is always changing. You are always changing. We can't just fill ourselves up with money, moments, and travel experiences. We need people. We need connectedness. We need community. Something larger than ourselves. Therefore, we need to understand others and the changing world around us.
Using Social Media for Social Good
Most of us are quick to blame social media for our loneliness and unhappiness, promoting anti-social media agendas and hatred for hyperconnectivity with slogans like social media is NOT real life. However, this is done without understanding the larger context of the problem which is manifested in our society, community, nation, culture and therefore in our own individual behaviors. The truth is, social media is very much like our lives. It is a manifestation of our culture and society which has focused on personal achievements by promoting independence at the cost of a social isolation epidemic as well as a forgotten understanding of true and real happiness. Social media is not the problem. We don't need to remove ourselves from it. It is maladaptive to try to blame something and go back to a simpler time.
Let me remind you of a more familiar social issue. Candy. Fast food. Obesity. When we go on diets, do they solve anything? No. Diets don't work. A digital detox or a digital diet is the same. It may help us become more aware of our problems, but it's not going to solve our problems which are embedded in society and culture. If we have an eating problem, dieting and restriction is not necessarily the most beneficial way to fix it. We need to nourish our bodies with correct nutrition. This requires an understanding of nutrients and food, not just a rejection and scorn of fatty foods and sweets. If we don't truly know why we are having an eating problem, we will hate our cravings and we will hate our bodies. We will never solve anything. We need to find a balance that works for us--one built on a deeper understanding that will take time. Know the body. Love the body. Guide the body.
It's not what we want. It's how we want.
This is the same with happiness, loneliness, and the mind. If we don't understand why we have attachment and intrapersonal challenges (which I did) and don't take the time to learn about our minds to figure out why we hate loneliness and are continuously feeling bitter, resentful, or dissatisfied on social media and with others, we will never solve anything. I had moments on this trip where I wanted to leave social media because it was making me dissatisfied. However, I knew this wasn't an appropriate solution because it would be running away from my problems in addition to painfully severing my deep appreciation for social media that was built through the years because it helped me stay connected with others. Connecting with people has always been my passion. Likewise, social media has also been a deep passion of mine. Undoing my appreciation for social media, would also lower my appreciation for people and their moments as well as my passion for connectedness. It took a while to find the right solution, but here it is-- Bentime Stories
Be Smart Millennials. Use that degree!
ANTHROPOLOGY | GERONTOLOGY | PUBLIC HEALTH | COMMUNITY HEALTH SCIENCES
We know that a career never fully utilizes the things we learned in college; the application of our knowledge is up to us! Use it or lose it! In an economic world, especially in America where Money is the Anthem of Success, we consistently have a strong emphasis on Business, Accounting, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. These fields, in themselves, are not bad; we should not scorn them or remove their importance from society. However, I believe we desperately need to understand others and society in the context of culture. It is good that millennials are discovering the importance for social science, humanities, philosophies, and the arts, but we must be proactive in applying this knowledge! I had a deep appreciation for my fields in Anthropology, Gerontology, and Community Health, but I didn't know how to fully use them. Without others knowing the importance of social science, I started to forget too! In our adult world full of money, finance, travel, career, family, friends, and leisure, I had forgotten community, culture, social connectedness, and happiness. We don't really see the correlations between social sciences and these broader social aspects of life because they aren't as clear and direct as the associations found in physical sciences or mathematics. That doesn't mean social problems don't exist. The very reason we can not easily find connections is the same reason we need to spend more time to try to understand our challenges. The loss of appreciation for these fields contributes to the reality of a fragmented society that is full of cultural conflict and everyday misunderstandings stemmed from forgetting the art of compassion, embracing social isolation, and ignoring loneliness. In the process, we have lost our true understanding of raw and real happiness which is always right here in the moment.
In addition to capturing the struggling spirit in the Peter Pan Generation, I hope that these BenTime stories will help us revive our appreciation for the humanities, social sciences, and arts.
These BenTime stories allow me to combine knowledge from teachers and leaders in the fields of social science, humanities, and arts with my own familiarity and background in Anthropology, Gerontology, and Community Health Science to creatively apply frameworks and theories that help shed light to our challenges. In light of these growing social, cultural, and community challenges, I believe that we are in dire need of these social sciences now more than ever to understand culture, diversity, adulthood, aging, society, technology, and community health.
Bentime-Stories.com: A space for creating, dreaming, imagining, and psychoanalyzing.
Although I found loneliness as opposed to "happiness" in Never Neverland, it allowed me to create a space (Bentime-Stories.com) where I could dream, imagine, reflect, and contemplate on things that I couldn't see. Things that were not material. Things that were frequently overlooked in our daily lives.
“Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Culture | identity | spirituality
Culture, identity, and spirituality are invisible to the eye because they can only be understood through (1) mindful acceptance and altruism, (2) empathy, and (3) compassion for others, ultimately uniting the other and the self in peace and harmony. This contemplative space (Bentime-Stories.com) allows me to deepen my passions for Anthropology, Sociobehavioral Sciences, and Philosophy to increase my understandings of humanity, human nature, the human experience, the human mind, and the human condition.
CREATIVITY | DREAMS | IMAGINATION | PSYCHODYNAMICS
During my time in Never Neverland, I slowly developed new passions for Transpersonal Psychology, Depth Psychology, Analytical Psychology, Psychodynamics, East-West Psychology, and Ecopsychology which are all revealed in my Bentime stories. Another common theme among all of my stories is also art, pop culture, Disney, cartoons, animations, and the Media because these are major sources of creativity and imagination for me.
"Creativity is intelligence having fun." - Albert Einstein
We become oriented to intelligence through education as a linear trajectory to success, money, and wealth--making us forget the art of creativity, and imagination. I like to think of imagination as philosophy, spirituality, and psychology playing, dancing, singing, drawing, and dreaming in harmony and equanimity. While the economy and hard sciences are important for innovation and success, I also find them materially reductive, compromising the free, whole, and dynamic nature of sentience and life. This is also evident in analytical psychology and the process of individuation.
"A process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious are brought into consciousness (e.g., by means of dreams, active imagination, or free association) to be assimilated into the whole personality." - C.G. Jung
"Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional." -Walt Disney
Cellular senescence is inevitable, but losing imagination and creativity is optional. I believe Disney is explaining the psychospiritual and sociocultural phenomenon where we become oriented to wealth, career, finance, and responsibility in adulthood in a manner that seems mutually exclusive to the inner child, creativity, art, and imagination. I find this increasingly common in America and Consumerist societies, where the economy, materialism, money, status, power, and success have overtaken humanity, culture, identity, and spirituality.
" There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination."
- Alan Watts
Upon departure from The Land of Smiles, The Wonderful World of Oz, The Land of the Wild Things, and Never Neverland, I gained a greater clarity for my experiences, paving the way for the creation of more Bentime Stories to shed more light on the darker aspects of life, identity, and the mind.
THE LAND OF SMILES
" Now you see the world is full of temptations.... They're the wrong things that seem right at the time... but... uh... even though the right things may seem wrong sometimes, or sometimes the wrong things... may be right at the wrong time, or visa versa." - Jiminy Cricket
After traveling through the land of smiles, I felt like I was on Pleasure Island in Pinocchio. I had exposed myself to temptations and indulgences, later understanding them as sensory cravings (kama-tanha). They left me further dissatisfied with life, ultimately driving me to seek out non-material experiences in Oz instead (bhava-tanha) that still made me dissatisfied. During this part of the trip, I also became more sensitized to social media and the need for deeper stories behind "happy" and "smiling" Instagram/Facebook pictures and Snapchat stories.
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF OZ
"Home is a place we all must find, child. It's not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we're always home, anywhere." -Glinda the Good Betch
After calling 6 different places "home," I began to realize the illusion of home as a mental state of awareness and being. The notion of home is cultivated when there is a greater awareness of the self through mindfulness and compassion. Home can be anywhere with a strengthened diamond mind that is aware of the chaos, unfamiliarity, and the beauty of transformation. This is Vajrasattva.
THE LAND OF THE WILD THINGS
"Feeling misunderstood at home and at school, mischievous Max sails across the sea and escapes to the land of the wild things, majestic and sometimes fierce creatures. They allow max to become their leader, and he promises to create a kingdom where everyone will be 'happy.' However Max soon finds that being king is not easy and that, even being with the wild things, there is something missing... "
I felt like Max during this #BennVoyage. The wild things represent our inner selves, covered up with notions of being an adult-- projecting strong and majestic images of self-reliance and individualism with wealth, career, and personal achievements that cover up the reality of social isolation, loneliness, and vulnerability. Both Max and the wild things seek happiness as perfect and fixed end states. Max runs away to find the perfect family and friends who can always understand him; and the wild things want the perfect leader to remove their fears and loneliness. This is our conditioned existence as wild things searching for everlasting comfort, belonging, and happiness. In fact, Max promises to keep out all of the sadness with a sadness shield, trying to appear majestic and brave. In reality, Max was "lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all." Without an understanding that nothing lasts forever, and that there is no perfect person/place to fully understand us and remove loneliness and fear, we see others, our environment, and goods as extensions of ourselves to fill our self-indulgent desires. The wild things continuously eat their kings because they are not as "happy" as they expected. This notion of conditioned happiness (absence of suffering) must be understood as impermanent; this type of "happiness is not always the best way to be happy" because it makes us grow more dissatisfied with the true nature of reality and our emotions which are not fixed in a constant state of bliss, but rather a dynamic flux.
"Inside all of us is hope. Inside all of us is fear. Inside all of us is adventure. Inside all of us is a wild thing."
This wild thing is consistent with the impermanent nature of reality (anicca) 🙏🏻☸🙌🏼. Bringing more attention to it will help us to realize that real happiness lies in that which never comes nor goes, but simply is.
NEVER NEVERLAND
"You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you. That's where I'll be waiting."
Neverland (Australia) is more than just a geographic place; it is a state of mind. I never said goodbye to Neverland (Australia), because "saying goodbye means going away, and going away means forgetting." I took a "peace" of Neverland with me, a red and blue striped sailboat of spiritual solitude tattooed on my left wrist (where I normally wear a watch). It is a reminder for the illusion of duality, loneliness, and emptiness--all of which, helped me discover Neverland, a place unbound by time. For me, remembering Neverland is cultivating Nirvanna, and the individuation process of transformation to wholeness in Jungian Psychology whereby the personal and collective unconscious are brought into consciousness through dreams, active imagination, and free association. This is the space I hope to create with Bentime-Stories.com, a space where I can remember Neverland and continue sailing through my sparkling stream of consciousness to shed more light the darker aspects of life. Unlike Peter Pan, we can not remove our shadows (the dark side of our personality: dark both because it tends to consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses like sexual lust, power strivings, selfishness, greed, envy, anger or rage, and due to its unenlightened nature, completely obscured from consciousness).
"Life is composed of light and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows" -Walt Disney
Despite the shadow's function as a reservoir for human darkness--or perhaps because of this-- it is the seat of creativity.
After being so deeply influenced and awakened by Zen Buddhism, I decided to travel to its birthplace in The Land of the Rising Sun and became reborn with the radiating cosmic energy of life from Amaterasu and Vairocana. I spent the (Z)end of my #BennVoyage sailing the Tokyo DisneySea during the Crystal Year of Wishes, particularly thinking reflecting on this first Bentime Story while riding Sinbad's Storybook Voyage and listening to the Compass of (My) Heart.
DisneySea
We the members of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers (S.E.A.) herewith establish explorers' landing in order to promote the sharing of nautical and scientific knowledge for world exploration. "
I felt so connected to DisneySea, both on (1) a philosophical level at S.E.A. as well as (2) an Aesthetic-Imaginative-Metaphorical level at Sea.
At DisneyS.E.A Level (Society of Explorers and Adventurers): Physically I had traveled to different lands, psychologically I had ventured into the depths of my mind, and spiritually, I had explored the broader aspects of the cosmos within the unique hearts of every culture--religion and philosophy. It seems as though my (school) year outside of the normative U.S. institutional systems of education and corporate America led to the most intuitive and enlightening learning of all whereby I discovered the invisible and essential aspects of human life: humanity, culture, society, identity, and happiness--things I never found in our society exclusively founded on the scientific method and reductionism from the Age of Enlightenment. In other words, I had my own internal Age of Spiritual Enlightenment fueled by Reason and Religion, rather than separating them into mutually exclusive things. In particular, Buddhism introduced me to the middle-way philosophy and I tried to carry that with me during the psychic voyage on the spiritual sea and mental explorations into the cosmic galaxy of the mind.
At DisneySea Level I began this journey lost at sea. Eventually I began to appreciate the art of sailing with a greater awareness for my sailboat of spiritual solitude and its cultural anchors--ultimately leading me to discover my true north and (intra)personal compass(ion). With these navigation instruments, I began to embrace the winds of uncertainty, and flow with the torrents of dissatisfaction. I began to understand that life was essentially like the sea; it has its own energy and current. It is important to find agency, but unwise to spend our days constantly sailing against the waves, storms, and winds--trying to tame and own the sea. A skilled sailor is one with the sea: that is the art of sailing, happiness, suffering, and life. Sailing the DisneySea with a Starlight Pass alone, was symbolic of the dark journey of solitude in my psyche that began at the gates of loneliness on this solo trip as an extremely extroverted extrovert with insecure attachment issues. It wasn't easy, but neither is the sea. I spent a while sailing through the blues of my conscious sky until it transformed into the darkness of the unconscious night where I met my introverted and lonely shadow. We were adversaries at first, but we learned how to be friends--two sides of the same coin. With my shadow, I began to venture deeper into the darkness of the night into the outer space of the personal unconscious and found forgotten memories along the way, twinkling starlight. I slowly realized that the lights from the stars--like memories--were from the past. The starlight we see and memories we recall are no longer in this moment. Both reach the conscious realm of visibility and clarity (light) years after their original occurrences (moments/events/reactions). Nostalgia is looking at the stars with the naked eye, but individuation goes in depth(psychology) to the more distant memories-beyond the outer space into the sparkling milky way of the human mind and radiating energy of the cosmos.
the compass of your heart on sinbad's storybook voyage
⛵️"Lift your sails to the heavens and fly on the 🌀breeze. 🚤Steer straight toward the horizon--and seek brand new seas! Life's awaiting you out there, and if you sail true, you may find a priceless treasure waiting too! ✨💎 🌊Tides may turn you and toss you, and ⛈storms may arise! Harm may stand in the path where your destiny lies! Just reach out for a friend when you’re lost and astray--Let the compass of your heart show you the way! As the 🌬winds of your fortune propel you along, always steer to the right or you'll drift to the wrong. (THOUGH I FEEL THIS LINE ABOUT RIGHT & WRONG IS TOO DEONTOLOGICAL 🙅🏻 WORKING AGAINST NONDUALISM☸☯ & COMPASSION💟, SO I REPHRASE IT: STEER INTO THE DARKNESS OF NIGHT & YOU WILL GROW STRONG) Help all those who need helping, no matter their size, for the compass of your heart leads to your prize! Life is the greatest adventure! There is no map, there's no chart! But if you seek life's great treasure, follow the compass of your heart! More than gems, more than gold, one (compassionate) deed's worth more than wealth untold..." 🙏🏼🌌☸ -Allen Menken & Glen Slater
My last boat ride of the first #BennVoyage was on Sinbad's Storybook Voyage. Throughout the whole ride, the song "Compass of Your Heart" was played. It was in Japanese, so I didn't actually understand any words on the ride, but still felt a creative, imaginative, and psychospiritual connection to it; something about the ride resonated with me and my emotions. I felt like it captured the vibes from my #BennVoyage ,especially the journey in my mind as reflected on Bentime Stories📖🌌. After looking up the lyrics, I can't believe how similar they sound to my own extended metaphor about sailing, solitude, life, suffering, loneliness, compassion, impermanence, and happiness i the bio section of Bentime-Stories.com which I wrote months earlier. From my personal Zen Perspective, the compass of your heart is a mahakaruna melody of great (compass)ion.
the crystal year of wishes & philosopher's stone
It was DisneySeas 15th Anniversary, marking the transmutation from wood (5), tin (10) to (15) crystals! Each main character had a crystal symbolizing a jewel of life. Mickey has a Clear Crystal (wishes coming true), Minnie has a Red Crystal (Love), Donald Duck has a Blue Crystal (Friendship), Goofy has a Green Crystal (Energy), Daisy has a Purple Crystal (Joy), Chip N Dale have Yellow Crystals (Fun), Pluto has an Orange Crystal (Smiles), and Duffy/Shellie/May/Gelatoni have Light Green Crystals (Luck).
My ticket had a dark green crystal and this is in line with my metaphors for discovering the cosmic energy of life and nature in Japan! However, psychospiritually, Upon realizing and becoming one with the stars in the night sky and cosmos, I began to realize my own starlike nature psychosomatically, remembering that we all come from stardust, a form of dependent origination (pratityasamutpada). I harnessed the psychic energy from my inner stardust to transmute my own magical crystal, a philosopher's stone. This was also symbolic of my journey into depth psychology with the alchemical mind from Carl Jung. The ingredients for my philosopher's stone - magic crystal: The Mahayana heart of compassion (mahakaruna) and the Zen Diamond/Thunderbolt Mind (Vajrasattva). It was more than Mickey's Clear Crystal of Wishes coming true. My wishes did not come true in the sense of gratification for desires and childhood dreams, but rather becoming true to oneself in the most individual way to understand desires, thereby shedding light on dissatisfaction, suffering, and unhappiness. The energy does not light up the whole darkness, but rather exists within the darkness like a form of equanimity (Upekkha). The existence within darkness creates a kaleidoscopic effect between light and dark (nondualism), giving the crystal unparalleled fire, sparkle, and brilliance. I further developed this temporary inseparable connection with the stars of the unconscious night, allowing my conscious sky to become noctilucent, a meteorological phenomenon of bright light during the darkest hours, much like equanimity (upekkha) in the mind. I had sailed beyond the second star to the right and straight on 'till morning to The Land of the Rising Sun, where I discovered the beautiful rays of life from Amaterasu, understanding my own magic crystal in a new Shinto light, another face of its multi-faceted diamond nature--illuminating another path of insight into the heart of reality: the Kami Way home with Makoto No Kokoro, another face of the mindful heart jewel and philosopher's stone. With the brilliance, fire, and sparkle from my magic crystal philosopher's stone, I began to understand my desire for "genetic celebrity traits" without suppressing the inner child raised in the illusive socioecologic context of American Racial Lookism. Instead of hating this internalized reflection of our Western sociocultural values, I transmuted the poisonous Lookism into a passion for Aesthetics: the philosophy of art, beauty, and taste beyond physical attractiveness. I also began to awaken from my hopeless romanticism without undoing its foundation in my life; I transmuted my own love as passion for life reflected in American Transcendentalism and Astronomy, awakening an endless pool of curiosity, inspiration, and appreciation for nature, flowers, plants, fruit, trees, celestial bodies, the cosmos, stars, and space. The transmutation of a philosopher's stone in the alchemical mind is dynamic and infinite because it is synergistic with the expansion of the Universe, impermanence of existence, evolution of Nature, and innovation of Society and Culture; it does not exist as one fixed permanent state of purity. It exists with the chaos and is brilliantly realized simultaneously in equanimity. It is created from the shadows of human darkness which resemble the nothingness, emptiness of outer space and the universe.