User:Digital witchdoctor

I think it is only fair to explain that Digital Witchdoctor and Mahalo / Mike Mahalo are one and the same. However, there is a reason for this split identity, since my 7 years of experiencing Human Design.

Like most people, my Human Design chart has split energy, two distinct islands, it just happened that as a child, the intellectual side was spotted by the UK government at 11 years old, the 11plus IQ test, and indeed, I am a member of British Mensa, high IQ, MA Cantab, blah blah blah.

All that never brought me much happiness, on the contrary, intelligence alienated others and led me to so many wrong decisions, that it was a huge relief to try Human Design, and develop another side of me. My Human Design chart says, make decisions with my guts, grunt my decisions, feel them, visceral decisions only.

At some point, the online name, the nom de plume, I had used for many years, Digital Witchdoctor... actually I found that name as a student at Cambridge, listening to the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, a joke about Digital Watches, and my own study of anthropology which starts with Witchcraft Among the Azande. Digital Witdhdoctor, it was first a title for a song, then a band, then my online name in the Human Design forum, and a pen name for a couple of books, and albums, and so on. The more I delved into my gut decisions, suddenly I wanted to put that intellectuality totally behind me. And the Digital Witchdoctor name had become ridiculous, I had blurted too much on the Human Design Forum, even as my second marriage collapsed, and personal details were spilling into my posts online. I stopped feeling comfortable as Digital Witchdoctor.

I began using the name Mahalo first of all to sign my paintings. It is a sacred and spiritual sound, and was present during my Near Death Experience in 1989 in Maui, Hawaii. Gradually this name came to symbolise the change from head on a stick intellectual, to real person.

I am truly surprised by my decision to bring out the old puppet again. As Mike Mahalo, (www.mahalo.com was of course taken, and nobody wanted to let go of calling me Mike, so I slipped into Mike Mahalo after some initial reluctance), I created a bumbling visceral attempt, in the way I generally now live, to present Human Design to wikipedia. I think I made an arse of myself, and do you know it hurt. I still think the humiliation was incorrect, against the wikipedia guidelines, unusually motivated, and unfair. That "sacral" part of me left wikipedia, possibly for ever. A day or so later, I created a new login, the old identity, Digital Witchdoctor, surprise surprise, and suddenly, my words were different, I did not need to bumble and just stepped back into old academic ways again. I suppose it is time now to join all this together into one whole being, better for the journeys I have made.

I already totally turned my back on academia in 1980, when I nearly got a first at Cambridge after doing no work for three years, playing in every band, there were just 2 bass players in the whole university at the time... and just 2 weeks before the exam I did a U turn, did some hard work, and pissed and crapped stupid pathetic unoriginal cardboard trash onto that exam paper, page after page, it stank so much. And was exactly what the academics wanted. Crap. I was so disgusted, I never got to continue my journey as an academic, which was and maybe still is my natural path in life. I do miss that level of debate and contact.

I sense that somewhere on wikipedia are the people I never met, the friends I did not get the chance to make, people who care about ideas and who experience great pleasure in ideas and precision. However, I cannot support the emptiness of just being academic without the depths that I journeyed to find, the visceral and unspoken depths of my own life, the solid paths that most people walk on this planet which are not troubled by the strange ways of too much conceptualising and fuss.

It is extraordinary, there are no words, to express this new phase in me, and it happened here, this strange decision that I felt was correct, to start a wikipedia entry on human design. I know the pattern now, so well. My guts guide me, not for what others deem successful or normal, but for my own survival and joy. The day I posted that entry, I felt immense release and joy. I hope that others here realise, it is not about the ideas and concepts, at all, it is truly about how you feel.

My best wishes to you, whoever you are, and thank you for reading this and I am sure, the subtle experience of reading this has slightly altered you, and me.

Mahalo