how i fucked fate and ate my own karma
by
captain mission

winter 2017 found me holed up in the temple of anissa, screaming snow had sealed me from any chance of leaving until the season changed and spring began melting the ice.
the snow was fierce, i hated it. blizzard whiteout, that snow blindness was eating up hope. the fucking irony was i only turned up for an overnight stay, just to grab some artefact for the bastards at the black museum. 
the pilot said, 'sure mission, we will be in and out, those monks hate visitors.'
even then 1000ft above the mountains in unimaginable turbulence i knew we were never quite going to make it. this was a one way trip. i wished the pilot would shut the fuck up and focus on the big black cloud looming over us, but instead he just chatted away gibbering about some girl he had fucked in chicago. 
i was clutching the chute and trying not to throw up when the storm swallowed us up.
i don't know what happened to the pilot, no doubt he faced death blabbering about his one night stand. me i clutched what i thought was the chute and fell out from the hatch at the mercy of the renegade winds. only the chute was an inflatable raft. somehow as i was tossed around i pulled a cord and it inflated, so consequently when i hit the snow at the side of the mountain i not only had a soft landing i had a sledge that carried me down until i sailed over an edge, once again glided through hard falling whiteout and landed in the grounds of the forbidden temple. the raft stopped at the feet of the holy one. i know this now because he told me, but at the time i couldn't see anything except whiteness. no doubt the raft had saved my life. i was laying flat upon my back and oriented myself so i was on all fours crawling on solid ground until one of my hands felt what appeared to be a foot. 
the holy one grabbed my arm and led me inside.
they fed me hot teas and herbs, gave me some strange paste to eat. they bathed me and took care of the cuts and abrasions. i think i must have broken a rib as my chest hurt with every breath, so i lay down and slept for a thousand years.
later i found out i was in anissa, at least the pilot had got me here i thought wondering what had become of him. last time i saw him he was falling out the front of the aircraft sucked up into the storm.
i asked the monk who was sitting near me. he said in broken english, 'no one else here. only you.'
the holy one made certain i was healed, sure i could have used some painkillers but they did a good job with their plants brews and tibetan bowl sound baths. i could feel the vibrations in my broken rib, my organs, and blood vessels.
no-one knew the age of the holy one, he only made an appearance once a day, he would drink tea and talk to some people then he would retreat to his rooms. from the monks i came to understand he was ancient, a man who had transcended space and time, his name was lam they told me, but additional information was not forthcoming.
gradually as my vision was restored i caught glimpses of lam, he was a child, dressed in robes. it was hard to make out details on his face but his eyes were bright and far to big.
my restoration was due to one monk who went by the name of iggy pop. i don't quite know how he adopted iggy's name but it was quite amusing. he would often hum iggy pop tunes to me under his breath and as my strength returned i would join him and sing the words. our fave was 'neighbourhood threat' but we did good harmonies on 'turn blue.'
iggy or monk pop as i liked to call him poured me a tea, and i asked him about the holy one, dali lam.
'what's that cat's story man. he's tiny, a dwarf or something?'
'not dwarf,' monk pop shook his head, 'he is the holy one.'
although i attempted to get more information about dali lam monk pop kept suspiciously quiet.
later i asked monk pop about the artefact and pulled out the papers from my jacket pocket. 
monk pop looked at me seriously, 'you know what this is?' he asked all seriously.
'fuck, it's just a piece of paper man, it don't mean nothing. just burn it for all i care.'
he looked at me curiously.
'i don't care. the black museum can go fuck themselves. cutthroats and gangsters anyway, i hear they are into some weird voodoo and black magick shit. sending me out here in the middle of nowhere. fuck them all.'
the winter was severe. it froze everything except my blood. my blood seemed to burn with an intensity i had never felt. i don't know if it was the high altitude or the tea but i felt good, warm with an inner glow and alert. monk pop gave me some lessons on meditation and i took to it well. he gave me mantras and chants that i practiced and found offered me insights into not just my own thought processes but some of these sounds had an effect upon my exterior world. once i found myself in a deep chant, a vibration so powerful when i opened my eyes and found i was sitting cross legged about an inch from the floor.
another meditation took me back through time and i saw myself being born. only i was not just watching myself, i was experiencing the whole process. the journey out from my mothers womb. i saw past lives, rebirths and deaths, all played out like an immersive film, but as real as it gets.
monk pop was surprised at how quickly i was learning all these techniques, he was also encouraging, he took me down to the library and showed me a collection of hand written parchments. some were ancient, most were even older.
unfortunately i could not read or understand the language, sanskrit, but other parchments were covered in drawings and symbols i took to be astrological. one used the motif of dragons and i was particularly drawn to a picture that looked a lot like the earth from space surrounded by a black dragon. not only was it beautiful and intricate but it seemed powerful and significant.
monk pop said it was magick and symbolised when and how magic came to earth.
eons ago earth was a beautiful paradise, an eden of lush life forms, rich and diverse. all at peace, everything in harmony. but then the red dragon came to earth from space. it made fire and burnt all things of beauty causing chaos and fear. then as the scorched earth clung to life the white dragon came and ate the red dragon and life once more bloomed in harmony. but eons later the last dragon, the black dragon came. but it was so black no one could see it, only feel it. the great beast wrapped itself inside the earth and slept, but it's power radiated out and gave the earth its magick.'
impressive story, groovy pictures. i dug these lord of the tibetan ring tales. 
we ascended the spiral stairs and left the dragon charts alone. we sung 'china girl' as we climbed, not the bowie version.
gradually my anger at being stranded and abandoned, thanks black museum, abated i began to feel something else, a kind of stillness, a peace. in fact the bare stones and the snow and ice reduced everything down to basic fundamentals. sometimes when i ventured above ground i would gaze out at the mountains and their peaks, i would soak in the strange wilderness and let it overwhelm me, these places were said to have demons and i could see why, they were awe inspiring and powerful. nature at it's extreme untouched pristine and raw had a certain majesty. it was also dangerous and unpredictable and sometimes t's slow moving geology would move fast and swallow you up.
every afternoon i would catch glimpses of the holy one. he was so small, i couldn't quite get my head around it so one day i asked if i could meet him. 
monk pop smiled, his eyes alight, 'it is forbidden.'
what could i do, my hosts had saved my life, i could only respect their wishes.
monk pop had been in the temple since birth, he said the female monks live amongst them as equals but are often indistinguishable from the males, he pointed at two robed monks walking out of a doorway, 'see those are two females.'


routines became rituals, the day was spent in deep meditation and contemplation. but for me i seemed to be drawn down towards the library and the ancient dragons. i spent many nights down there in the candle lit chamber gazing through the many books, images and symbolic charts. despite my lack of language skills and any real idea on linguistics i did discover some patterns and similarities which i cross referenced with monk pop. 
he smiled, 'beyond my pay grade,' he whispered.
the dragons were representations of energies, forces that had come to earth or perhaps manifested upon earth to the decedents of these monks. the dragons were sexual in nature, it represented sexual energy or some form of powerful spiritual energy, it was complex and difficult to distinguish between the two but my intuition was focused and acute with ambiguity as all magick tends to be. the red being primordial in nature, one could call that raw sexual energy, wild and unbounded, the white being a more conscious controlled power perhaps love but the black dragon, the magical one was difficult to decipher in terms of magick.

under the forbidden temple was a vast network of catacombs, they sprawled out into the mountains and reached in all directions. monk pop had informed me most of the tunnels had been unexplored for generations and only dali lam really knew the complete network. he spoke of monks who had gone missing down there and never returned. 
sometimes i took myself along a corridor with a few candles and some string to guide me back but i never got very far, the candles burnt out, the string ran out or i just got spooked.

four months into the white out i was down in the library reading what may be an astrological or alchemical formula, but the chances are it could have been a recipe for cheesecake for all i really knew. however there were certain fascinating aspects to the diagram.
'it's certainly not a recipe for cheesecake captain mission.'
i turned around to see dali lam standing there alone. his face was concealed under a large hood but his eyes were clear and they were not quite human although somewhat asian in appearance they were elongated and blacker than anything i had ever seen. dali lam was an alien. a grey i guess if we must think in terms of classifications but whatever termanology alien was most accurate. his massive forehead now revealed as he pulled down the hood.
'yes, yes, i am not from here mission, please get over the shock and lets discuss philosophical matters.'
'i'm sorry, it is a slight shock. it's just i never once suspected you would be...er not from here.'
'not human, you mean.'
'yes, not human.'
he smiled, 'we are all made from stars.'
i nodded, at least that was fundamentally true. something we had in common. he moved towards me, and looked at the table where all the charts were laid out sprawled across the stone surface. his long fingers moved them around and into some sort of oblique cohesion. again he spoke without speaking, some sort of telepathic projection.
'you are curious and have decoded much of the meaning in these charts with intuition but the real clue was not the representation of the dragon but the one of...'
...'the earth.' i finished for him.
'yes, these charts are eons old, way before mankind had any knowledge of the curvature of the earth. you were focused on the mythical but the clue lay in the science. these maps are indeed seeped in mystery, they were drawn by myself when i came here but they are in my own symbolic terminology, from my world. the dragons represent an aeon and you are correct to identify this with energy. some cultures see them as consciousness but you saw a sexual force. where i come from we see everything in sexual energy, all life is sexual in nature and it is the primal force that drives all living things. the red dragon symbolises this indeed but you ascribe love to the white dragon, whereas for us it is control. love under will. love although is indeed a by- product for us it is a dimension we cannot comprehend in the way you humans do. for humans it is ever present and real. my race don't have anything quite like it but we wanted it, so we came here and attempted to understand it. we do understand it but it is not possible for us to feel it. our needs are different, you have love we have control over our sexual natures. my race left me here after i made contact with a human you may have heard of, his name is mr. crowley.'
'alister crowley. yes i know of him, i have read much of his works.' suddenly it dawned upon me, crowley had completed a ritual where he had made contact with an alien intelligence, lam. he had even drawn pictures of him and it was apparently the first ever drawing of a grey alien in western societies although anthropologists and archeologists had also found cultures that had cave representations of lam.
'how old are you?'
'in your time i am thousands and thousands of years old, in my time i am just old. i have seen much of your planet and it interests me, which is why i chose to stay. occasionally i made contact with individuals and groups, some human brains are able to comprehend me without to much trauma so i need to be somewhat selective when i are contact. i came at period i call a nexus event, the shift from one aeon into another. the man, crowley was a herald however he misunderstood much of my intentions and communications. 
'it was probably the smack.'
'no it was his ego, thus i relocated to a society with out the same ego issues.'
'anissa, the forbidden temple.'
'it's only forbidden due to its topography, but the monks are very well practiced in a certain form of vajrayana we call kalachakra.' 
he reached out with his long spindly fingers and spread a sheet of parchment over the dragons. slowly unfurling it for me.
'all the monks here are buddhas, they have attained enlightenment, escaped suffering and their rebirth into this particular life was chosen specifically for you captain mission.'
i laughed.
then i saw lam was serious. so i stopped and tried to look serious.
'lam, you better explain what you mean.'
he pointed to the image, it was wheel like, psychedelia  wheels within wheels beautiful colours, purples, deep crimsons and rich blue tones, bright vibrant reds, a psychedelic kaleidoscope and as i looked i saw two forms within the art, two beings joined as one. this was not obvious, it took a while to make out and sometimes my concentration lost focus but my meditation practice was helpful in connecting to the images.
another chart showed what was an intricate mandala, and as i gazed into the mandala it immediatly absorbed me completely, i was sucked into it. 
i could feel my brain changing, certain neural nets creating faster than my thoughts could travel and new pathways expanding into unknown areas. i saw time streams and an explosion of memory in reverse.  partly patterned on my meditations but mostly new flashes of insight and understanding. as i stood there i heard chanting, the monks had entered and had begun some sort of ritual. lam hovered before me, a faint glow around him. the cycles of time were split into two  spinning wheels, two godlike beings, the wheel of external time, the internal one and then through the mandala the extraordinary unknown one. forbidden to mortals this last cycle, it was the karmic 'mechanism' of rebirth. the monks were practicing a tantra called anuttarayoga tantra which were graded practices through levels of unknowable time cycles, potentiality. they had escaped time itself, they could reincarnate anywhere, in any point along a time continuum. lam had taught them how to travel through space and time, escape even death and rebirth. it was incredible, my head began to feel lighter and i noticed my body glowing. the mandela was a star i gravitated towards, all dimensions shifted away and although i could hear the chanting monks, i could not see anything but the shining path towards the huge mandala and the strange entities that they were made from. i opened my arms embracing death, life and the doorway between, my head flung back chest out as i passed through into the iris between worlds. 

you can never escape time only its limits, the confusion it brings, the instinctive attachment we develop to it that give birth to karma, that renders us at times mercy, also known as fate. as i passed through the kalacharkra lams voice whispered inside my own expanded mind, 'liberation is our only mission captain mission.'
i thought i heard monk pop singing 'here come's success' in the distance echoing in snow capped mountains... 
...born into snow blindness i felt the strange soft ice around me, the whiteout of a savage elemental force ripping into my skin and burning my cheeks. spots of red drips ran down my face, splattered onto the snow in immaculate explosions, a trail of debris behind me i laughed and howled and maybe i danced, for i remembered death is nothing but forgetting. 

in the strange frozen landscape i looked beyond the falling blizzard and up towards the forbidden temple of anissia.

later i woke up in the military hospital in the autonomous region, someone had hooked me up to a drip and as i sat up on the uncomfortable bed asking the nurse if she had heard of the forbidden temple. she insisted i was found in the wreckage of a light aircraft wandering around snow-blind and with a broken rib and a few cuts and bruises. she said there was no temple there and no one knew of anything like anissa. 
the black museum didn't take long to track me down, their men in black paid me a visit at the hostel i was staying at two weeks after the hospital had discharged me. we ordered drinks at a coffee shop yaks milk and freshly ground coffee, the men wore their back suits and trench coats. hid behind their wrap around ray bans as i explained i had not been able to locate anissa or the artefact. they looked at me and laughed, 'you're a fool mission, you are the artefact.'