Looking Glass World

Normalcy Bias VS Sanity

2012-01-10T11:50:00.000-08:00

There's something that's being bothering me for quite a while that I never could account for until recently. It's the fact that people don't seem to remember anything. Have you noticed this?
Here are some examples.
1. In 1972, one person with an ordinary job could support a family of five. Twenty years later, in 1992, that had become unrealistic. Today, most households, even those with two incomes, are accumulating credit-card debt to cover their basic living costs. The generation now coming of age can't afford to leave their parents' homes, and many are staying in school just to buy time. We also have the phenomenon of "working homeless", that is: people with jobs who can't afford a home.
And yet, we believe that the economy is cyclical. We believe that the down-turns are followed by recoveries. I haven't seen a real recovery yet. What I've seen is 3 steps back, then 1 step forward. do that 3 times and you've gone back 6 steps. that isn't a cycle; it's a downward spiral. Next stop: austerity. (You should look up the meaning of austerity if you don't know it.) Notice how no one is asking how long this austerity will last. I'm guessing, until the sovereign debt goes down. So, never.
2. Chem-trails.
They weren't there 30 years ago, I promise. And we did have planes back then.
3. Computers.
PCs were invented in the '70s but you had to be able to program them yourself. According to Wiki, in 1981 an "attractively priced" PC sold for 1,795. US dollars. So, few could afford one. I got my first PC in 1990, a rebuilt, second hand one. It had a monochrome monitor, and ran in DOS. That's only 21 years ago, and PCs have transformed our lives completely.
4. Privacy.
When I was a kid, my parents would say to us, "go outside and play." So we did, and we'd be gone for hours. Our parents didn't know where we were or what we were doing, and that was normal. I loved the freedom and privacy I had as a child. Today, if you dared to do that, someone might call the police and you might have trouble getting your child back. Now, children expect to be watched 24/7. I think that's sad. We used to value our privacy. Now we believe if we're not doing anything wrong, we shouldn't object to being watched. Tell that to the Bilderbergers, I say.
5. Food.
I can remember when fruit-scented soap didn't smell more edible than actual fruit. I remember when tomatoes tasted like something. I remember when egg yolks were bright yellow and chickens were not obese. And I remember when there were no such thing as safety seals. We just assumed our food and medicines were safe. Imagine that!
6. Mass drugging.
It's difficult to find out how many people are on some sort of mood-stabilisers, like antidepressants or anti anxiety meds, but I'd guess its at least 20%. Why do so many people now need drugs in order to function in society? We're even drugging our children now in huge numbers. We don't seem to care what its doing to their developing minds and bodies. My heart goes out to those kids. We're destroying their futures, just to avoid admitting that everything is not OK. I had ODD when I was a child, still do. Thankfully, they didn't have a cure for it back then, or I wouldn't be talking to you today. Something to think about perhaps. The sad truth is, the people who are being drugged, and the ones sprawled on sidewalks, stoned out of their minds, are some of the sanest of us. They're the ones who couldn't adjust to crazy-world.

Hopeful this snapshot of "now and then" proves that the last forty years have been a time of great and accelerating change. I can remember it, and I'm hardly the oldest person on the planet.

Something is ruining our memories. I'm going to make a case that the culprit is normalcy bias. I looked up normalcy bias on the internet, and the only definition I found, repeated in several places, was, in my opinion, unsatisfactory. So let me propose a more useful definition of normalcy bias:
"A bias in favour of normalcy".
Normalcy means: a state of being that is typical.
Bias means: unfairly prejudiced, for or against.
So normalcy bias should be defined as: unfairly prejudiced in favour of a state of being that is typical. I know that's not official, but I want to talk about bias in favour of normalcy and I don't know what else to call it other than normalcy bias.

Our ability to foresee the future depends on our ability to remember the past. If we could remember anything, we'd know where we're headed. If we could remember our own pasts, we'd realise we've been lied to. Normalcy bias works both ways in time. It impairs memory, as much as it does foresight. It is definitely not based on previous experience or it's lack. If it were, then normalcy bias should lead us to expect massive and accelerating change, and continuously worsening quality of life, since that is what we've actually experienced, right? But we don't. We expect an endless and unchanging repetition of the perceived present. Why is that? And if normalcy bias isn't based on past experience, what is it based on?

Well, I think there is a direct and inverse relationship between sanity and normalcy bias. For the sake of clarity I'm going to define sanity as: a mental state, free of erroneous belief. If you are sane, you believe what is true and not what isn't. An individual or a society that bases it's values and behavior on erroneous beliefs is insane. The farther a society strays from sanity, the stronger normalcy bias becomes. Because, if it's norms were based on true beliefs (sanity), then bias would not be needed to maintain them.
Given the actual state of the world, I think its safe to say our civilisation is insane. I propose that normalcy bias is a psychological defence against the realisation of this very unpleasant fact. None of us should assume that we are sane, given the fact that we were raised in an insane society. All hope isn't lost though. If we could face our predicament, we could start to become sane. Insanity is caused by erroneous beliefs, so the way back to sanity is to start challenging those beliefs. One of our best tools for doing that is memory. Have the forecasts that were based on our normative beliefs been proven accurate? If you believe there will be a full economic recovery, is that expectation supported by your past experience? If not, you must either question your normative belief or forget your past.
Its not an easy choice, I know. Any step towards sanity is a step away from normalcy. We are hard-wired to want to belong. I miss feeling that way, even though I never really have. That's part of being human. But, the more people who find the courage to take those steps toward sanity, the easier it will become. Those who have already begun are here to support you, no questions asked. If we don't do this work of becoming sane, we will destroy ourselves and most won't realise what we're doing until its too late. On the other hand, if we choose to, we could make sanity the new normal.

Jehovah's Witnesses Say The Darnedest Things

2011-12-09T20:17:00.000-08:00

My first video blog:

A Suggested Demand For The Occupation

2011-10-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

It is not for me to say what the demands of the Occupy movement should consist of. But if it was up to me, this is what I would say.

To the mainstream media, acting governments, and TPTB,
You say you want to know what the occupiers' demands are. Fair enough. Here is one:
We demand that you respect the rule of law, and apply it fairly. The following persons stand accused of crimes against humanity and numerous other sickening transgressions: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, Benjamin Netanyahu, Stephen Harper, Queen Elizabeth II, Henry Kissenger, Joseph Ratinger (aka, Pope Benedict XVI). The evidence against these persons is more than sufficient to convict them. We demand that they be arrested and prosecuted. They must be tried publicly and by jury. This is not a complete list, but you can start with these, and more names will follow. This is not the sum of our demands. Honouring this demand will not end the occupation. However, if you fail to honour it, we will not disperse willingly, or consider any other solutions that you propose.
~~Yours~~
Ours sincerely,
Humanity.

A Message to the Occupy Movement

2011-10-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

I would like to ask the Occupy protesters, "Who are you trying to influence?" It's not a rhetorical question. I hope it's not your governments. They are working for the 1%. They knew you didn't want them to give all your money to the IBCS (international banking crime syndicate). They knew, but they didn't care, because they don't work for you. They work for them. Surely their actions have proved this. Your governments have also used violent force to suppress your protests. By their actions, they have made their true loyalty abundantly clear. They couldn't address your grievances without condemning themselves, so it isn't going to happen.

I hope you're not pleading your case to a criminal justice system. The judges and prosecutors were appointed by your governments to serve their common masters. They have made it very clear that the 1% are above the rule of law. The 1% brazenly admit their crimes in public, in print and on camera, and nothing happens. The inexcusable inaction on the part of prosecutors and judges has made them directly complicit in these crimes. Don't expect any of this to change from within.

I really, really hope you're not appealing to the 1%, because they truly don't give a shit about you.

None of these groups can fix what is wrong because their survival depends on preventing it from being fixed. Any solution they offer is a trick. Don't even speak to them. There is only one source of power that can respond to your legitimate demands, and that is the 99%. The message has to be intended for us, not them. We need to talk to each other. We need to decide what is important and valuable to us, and then work out how we are going to act on that.

If there is an award category for "worst invention of the year", it should go to the "human microphone". What a terrible idea! Why would you do that? Whoever came up with this is working for the enemy (or might as well be).

First of all, it sounds awful. It ruins the flow of spoken communication, making its content difficult to follow. Everything takes at least twice as long to say and, it's just plain creepy. I can't be the only one who finds it extremely unpleasant.

So what if there's a bylaw against using microphones without a permit? I'm pretty sure the Occupiers are already violating several other bylaws. I suppose the police could battle their way to the microphone and try to take it, but not without it being widely viewed on You-tube. The movements could organise a microphone replacement fund if necessary.

It shouldn't just be assumed that amplification is needed, or even good. Is it really preferable that a single voice should be heard by everyone at the same time? Consider that all other conversation is made difficult, if not impossible. Might it not be better to have multiple speakers' places, conveniently spaced so as not to overlap? Natural consensus is best achieved through dialogue, in small scale discussions. People should mill around and talk to one another, consider many different ideas. There is time for that. And consensus should take some time to develop if it's going to be wise consensus.

Know Your Enemy (part 1)

2011-10-11T15:31:00.000-07:00

These protests sweeping the globe today, what are they about? I've heard a number of different answers. Some say it's the greedy bankers, some the corporations, or the corrupt government officials, or the monetary system, and these are all part of the problem. There is a more basic culprit, though. Failure to address this underlying cause will, in time, nullify any other gains. It always has before.

Essentially, our enemy is the tyrant. A tyrant is one who rules others by force, or the threat of force. You can't fight tyranny by opposing it. The only way to be free of tyrants is to remove the conditions that support their existence. The existence of the tyrant depends on that of the slave. They are two sides of the same coin. Neither can be without the other. It is a mistake to believe that the tyrant is guilty and the slave blameless. Living under tyrannical rule doesn't make you a slave; your willing cooperation does.

If we wish to be free of tyrants, we must cease to be slaves. It's the only thing that will serve. It should be our foremost concern as individuals. If you have lived your whole life under the rule of tyrants, your mind is full to brimming with slave-programming. You need to become aware of it in order to remove it. The following are descriptions of slave-programs, which you may, or may not, be conscious of.

Money:

One justification for money is: "Those who contribute most to society should receive commensurate rewards." I refuted this belief on the grounds of morality in "The Way of the Gift". It is also an example of slave-programming in that it disguises awareness of the socio-economic injustice of the tyrant/slave relationship. In practice, it is very, and increasingly, unlikely that you can ever become wealthy enough to comfortably stop earning an income. The main way you become rich is to have rich parents, or marry a rich person. Alternatively, you could be a genius, or a psychopath, or the winner of a lottery or a large legal settlement. None of these is within your control, and even if acheived, your wealth would be peanuts compared with that of the top tyrants on this planet. And it is frankly insane to argue that anyone's contribution is that much more valuable than anyone else's.

Another belief that justifies money is: "People won't work unless they have to. People won't do anything beyond what's barely necessary without "incentives". That belief is also slave-programming. It is very widely believed because it appears to be true within any society based on a tyrant/slave dynamic. Most people can recall instances where irresponsible members of a group became a drain on the others, causing resentment and disharmony. If you train a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, it does not logically follow that it is in the nature of dogs to salivate when they hear a bell. If you condition a human being to out-source responsibility to an external authority, which you must do with slaves, he will behave irresponsibly. That doesn't mean all humans are naturally like that. Sovereign human beings, meaning those who choose to be neither slaves or tyrants, are aware of their responsibilties as well as their rights. (Too bad libertarians aren't.) The effect of this programming is to get the slave to believe he needs the tyrant.

To be continued.

Summer? What Summer?

2011-08-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

This so-called summer has been the worst I can remember. Ever. Chris has started calling it "sum-week" because we've only had that many warm (not hot, mind you) days. Global warming, my ass! These pictures were taken in mid-April:

This is Port Hardy. Snow is normally rare here in the winter.
By the middle of August, the blackberries are usually ripe to bursting. Here they are as of today:

Every time we do have a sunny day, we get this:

See how they spread:

WTF! And less than an hour later, we've got this:

This happens all the time. It's not like Port Hardy has a big, busy airport. It is puny. It can't even accommodate a jet. Yesterday, Chris saw chemtrails in the sky at 5:00 AM. It was still dark. I find it hard to believe that commercial flights out of Port Hardy would start so early. This sucks.

Stars In Our "I"s?

2011-08-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

"Every man and every woman is a star."
- "The Book of The Law", by Aleister Crowley.

Visual metaphor: Imagine an opaque, hollow sphere, it's surface covered with billions of holes of various size and distribution. The holes are not static. They open and close and move around. There is a single source of light. This light is everywhere and goes on forever, outside the sphere.

This image came to me years ago, as a way of visualising the identity of the One and the many. The light represents infinite awareness, or the One, (God by my definition). As the light, or awareness, passes through the holes of the sphere, it perceives itself in the form of all the other light-emitting holes. In this way, the One becomes the many. Each of the holes provides a unique perspective on the whole. The light passing through a hole corresponds to the experience of individuality.

Today, I was pondering what stars are, not so much physically, but in the sense of energy and awareness, which are probably the same thing. It occured to me that the above visual metaphor could be taken in an interesting new direction. The sphere's interior, when viewed through a hole, would look exactly like a clear night sky. (Please note that this is a symbolising, right-brain exercise and I am not suggesting that we really live in a physical hollow sphere.) Maybe the stars we see, are our real bodies, and this world, as well as the forms we appear to inhabit, are virtual simulations. Perhaps the entire simulation is generated by one star, the one we call Sol. Maybe this is not the only simulation we, as stars, participate in. Maybe our star-selves can visit any or all of the star-generated virtual worlds...

All I Ask

2011-08-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

Looking the other way is harder than it used to be. The fascist, psychopathic pedophiles who rule the world don't even bother to hide their crimes any more. On the other hand, they probably feel pretty secure in the knowledge that most people would rather not see them. This refusal to see is no different from the attitude of the German people who failed to notice the Nazis' attempted genocide, or the woman who looked the other way while her husband was fucking the kids. The psychological maneuver known as denial isn't the same as total ignorance. Denial is when we avert our eyes to avoid acknowledging what we know. It is a form of consent.

A close relative of mine is like this. I asked her why. She said, "I don't want to know this stuff because there's nothing I can do about it". I suspect her answer is very typical. What these human ostriches don't seem to understand is: if everybody knew what was going on, it couldn't. That's all I would ask of any one. Just see. You don't have to martyr yourself. That wouldn't help anyway. It would just deplete our collective strength. It's true, one person alone can't free the world from the clutches of the control system. (That's a good thing actually.) But...

One person can free their own mind. One person can make a choice to withdraw their loyalty to the system, to refuse to lift a finger to defend it, to stop policing their fellow humans on it's behalf. One person can psychologically prepare themselves to let it go. One person can stop parroting MSM propaganda and start telling the truth in public. One person can choose to become a responsible and sovereign being, an adult in a meaningful sense. One person can begin to imagine a better way.

No one else can do these things for you. Only you can. When enough of us do, things will change for the better. TPTB could never rule us through force alone. Of course, the first and absolutely necessary step in solving any problem, is seeing that there is a problem and figuring out what it is. It is up to the individual to face the need for change. In a very real way, only you can save the world.

There is reason for hope. People resort to denial because it is too painful for them to give conscious consent. That means, if they knew the truth, they couldn't willingly serve the control system anymore. That's why they avert their eyes. It's not because they haven't got a conscience; it's because they still do. Yes, it hurts when you realise what foul abominations your ignorance has made you party to, past and present. I know it hurts your pride to have to admit that you have been, and still are, enslaved. But your willingness to face that pain is the sole thing that can end the horror show.

There is something you can do, something only you can do. You can look and you can see. Then you can search your own heart and make an inner choice. Please, please, please. It's all I ask.
In Lak'ech.

ETs & Genetic Engineering

2011-07-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

I haven't paid much attention to the question of ETs until recently. It's just a subject where too little is definitely known, including whether or not the entities in question are really coming from outer space. There is also a huge amount of disinformation and wild speculation on the topic. It is impossible to rely on the testimony of whistle-blowers. Some are certainly lying and others may have been unknowingly fed wrong information. It just makes my head hurt. So I've chosen to devote my attention to more promising areas of investigation.

My position on the subject of ETs is necessarily vague, but here it is. Something is definitely going on. Our species is being interfered with by something that isn't human. It's behavior is secretive and dishonest. The powers that be on this planet are controlled by, or acting in collusion with it. (I favour the theory that what we call "ETs" are one of the many agencies of the Archons, but not synonymous with them.) Whatever it is, it wants us to either disregard it completely, or believe that it is an advanced extraterrestrial species. It's this last aspect that's gotten my attention recently.

I don't have television. TV is the most dangerous form of mind-control ever conceived, not least because it is believed to be harmless. Even people who know better than that, overestimate their own immunity. After only a few minutes of TV viewing, the brain begins producing mainly Alpha waves. You, the viewer, are now in a highly suggestible state, similar to a hypnotic trance. While in that condition, you are given programmes to watch. As an aside, have you ever wondered why they are called "programmes". The actual definition of the word "programme" is: a plan or list. "Programmes" should properly refer to the schedule of shows, not the shows themselves. It's actually confusing to call the shows "programmes". The modern use of that word, to refer to the shows, is itself a subliminal suggestion. Think about it. The producers of TV shows (and even more so, the ads) have access to psychological research far in advance of mainstream knowledge. This research is not in the mainstream because much of it is military, and therefore secret, and the rest is privately paid for by corporations and advertising firms, and therefore proprietary. The sheer amount of money spent on such research should make you think twice about watching TV.

OK, it might seem like I've gone way off topic. What does TV have to do with the "ET" agenda? Well, it makes sense to me that whatever beliefs and attitudes TPTB want to encourage in society will be reflected in the TV programming. In fact, they'd be crazy to pass up such a powerful tool. That being the case, knowing what TPTB want you to think can be very useful in predicting their intended direction. Which brings me back to "ETs". Since I don't have TV, I mainly glean my info about it from people who do. I especially take notice of shows that everyone is watching and talking about. Case in point: The History Channel's "Ancient Aliens".

This show is two entire seasons featuring six one-hour episodes. Wow! "Ancient Aliens" is now in continuous rerun mode and available for free on the Internet. Hmmm. I've only watched three episodes of the first season, but an ideological agenda is already clearly visible. It is suspiciously similar to the narrative advanced by Zecharia Sitchin and many of the channelled entities claiming to represent "The Galactic Federation", not to mention the Yahwist religions. It's a creationist/salvationist narrative, and seeing it pushed so hard by the MSM does nothing to ease my suspicions about it.

I have a big problem with the idea that the ETs, or gods, or whatever, created us. It's only a small step from there to, "they own us". If we assume that TPTB are taking their direction from these entities, one would expect their beliefs and attitudes towards genetic engineering to be fairly similar. If we look at the genetic engineering that is currently and openly being done, we find that no life-forms have ever been created from scratch. It's all mixing and manipulating what was already there. Yet, the "new" organisms so produced, are being patented and are considered by law to be the property of whoever owns the patent. The developers of these GMOs are unanimous in their assertion that their alterations are an improvement. I suppose they've got a point, if the only criteria being used is corporate profit. When these points are considered, doesn't it make you wonder if the "ETs" think along the same lines?

I prefer "fucked with", but in their minds, they may have "created" us. Do you trust that their intervention was an improvement? Or, isn't it more likely that the alterations they made were of benefit only to themselves? Evidence of highly advanced prehistoric civilisations would appear to refute the idea that our would-be creator gods originally found us in a condition much like that of chimpanzees. And then there's the fact that we, as a species have been systematically driven to the brink of insane, suicidal destruction by the very same entities who are now proposing to save us from our evil selves. I can hardly imagine anything more abusive and dis empowering. I wouldn't want to be saved by such beings, any more than I would want to be saved by the Yahwist's Jesus.

Update, 22/07/11.
After I posted this yesterday, I watched the 4th episode of Ancient Aliens. It was focused on speculations about the "why" of ET visitation. A lot of material was presented, but it's relevance was never established. The majority of it had no real connection to aliens at all. Most importantly, no plausible reasons were suggested. Some reasons were proposed; they just weren't plausible. One was: they came to mine gold but they didn't want to do it themselves, so they genetically engineered a slave race (us). Really? They could manage interstellar travel, but they couldn't build robots? Then there was the theory that the ETs came all this way to have sex with us because Earth women are so irresistibly hot. Hmm, maybe burqas are a good idea after all. There was no mention of what I consider the most likely motive: the vampirism of consciousness. They are mind-parasites who feed on fear.

I have a hard time understanding why, if there are ETs out there, we aren't being contacted by any benevolent ones. If we're under some sort of quarantine, shouldn't we have been spared the predations of hostile ETs as well? Also, one would expect that civilisations advanced enough for interstellar travel would be predominantly, if not exclusively benevolent, since any who weren't would probably have destroyed themselves before they ever made it into space.

In Defense of Charlie Veitch AND 911 Truth

2011-07-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

So, one of the darlings of the truth movement has switched sides. Charlie Veitch of the Love Police has publicly renounced his belief that 911 was an inside job after spending a few hours with experts representing the official narative, courtesy of the BBC. I'm sure it's only a coincidence that he was pre emptively arrested and held in police custody only a few weeks ago in connection with the royal nuptials. He spoke to Adam Davis and Max Igan in this series of videos. It's disturbing, to say the least.

Charlie makes some bizarre and self-contradictory statements in the second video segment, at about 7 minutes. When Adam asks him to account for the speed of his mental conversion, Charlie responds that he has to "stand by what he believes, currently believes". Then, in the next breath, he points out that beliefs are dangerous and says he no longer believes in belief. He also claims that his former conspiratorial view was based on nothing but belief. Yet, in the absence of positive proof supporting his new view of 911, he's just swapped one set of indefensible beliefs for another. So why the 180? Why not just say that he doesn't know what happened? We don't get to find out because Charlie changes the subject and starts comparing the truth movement to a cult. Something stinks.

Something smells like decomposing fish. What the hell is it? Oh, of course, it's the BBC. This is definitely the most interesting aspect of the story in my opinion. Charlie admits that he's "going to get in trouble" for mentioning the BBC's involvement. Nothing sinister, they just wanted it to be a "nice surprise". He tries to distance himself from the BBC by stating that they contracted another company to produce the show. The BBC are still the ones who conceived and are paying for it. So, this other (nameless) company contacts Charlie, invites him to participate in the show, and Charlie agrees, even though he knows it will be a hit piece. Next, this company (who aren't the BBC) foot the bill to fly Charlie to America and take him on a guided tour of the WTC site in New York, the Pennsylvania crash site, Washington DC, and Baltimore, but not the Pentagon or NORAD. He can't tell us what they said that changed his mind because "it would spoil the fun".

I listened to the whole interview twice, and the only new pieces of information Charlie offers are as follows:

1. Charlie says he now believes WTC 7 collapsed into it's own footprint at free-fall speed because chunks of concrete and steel hit the basement, partially hollowing it out, and then the building fell into the hole. How did debris hit the basement? Oh, never mind.

2. The reason there is so little debris at the Shanksville, PA crash site is because the plane hit an abandoned mine shaft and the debris got embedded up to 40 feet underground. Other pieces, including the engine, "shot into the forest".

3. Charlie doesn't think powerful people would risk getting caught, because of the awful consequences they would face. Seriously? They get caught doing horrible crimes all the time and are never held to account. At worst they have to sacrifice a few of their minions.

4. Charlie says that there are 1,500 architects and engineers who publicly state that controlled demolition was responsible for the WTC collapses, and since there are approximately 1.7 million architects and engineers in the USA, that means 99.9% believe the official explanation. What?! No it doesn't. It just means that very few professionals in those fields are prepared to risk their reputations and careers in defense of the truth. We don't actually know the true opinions of the remaining 99.9%.

5. Charlie says he doesn't now think a false flag was necessary to justify the invasion of Afganistan, and later, Iraq. The PNAC group thought otherwise, as Charlie well knows.

I find it extremely hard to believe that such flimsy explanations could account for Charlie's massive cognitive dissonance and belief-transplant. I'd say there's a very high probability that Charlie Veitch was threatened. If so, he deserves our sympathetic understanding. We should not condemn his actions. Why should he sacrifice himself, or those he loves, to protect the beliefs of people who can't be bothered to think for themselves? I wouldn't. The evidence we already have refutes the official story. What Charlie Veitch believes, or says he believes, is truly irrelevant. If the 911 truth movement stands or falls according to the belief system of Charlie Veitch, or anyone else, then it really is a joke. Adam raises the concern, probably shared by many, that Charlie's about-face will discourage people from looking into the events of 911. I very much doubt that. Anyone who still hasn't questioned the official story, isn't open to doing so.

For me, it hasn't changed anything. I don't believe the official story because it's provably bullshit. I remember 911. I was suspicious right away because, in the week prior to the attack, while channel-surfing, I came across two programmes dedicated to Osama Bin Laden. One was "America's Most Wanted" and I think the other was "Biography". I thought it was odd at the time because I'd never heard of the man before, and then, only days later, America was attacked and Osama Bin Laden was immediately blamed, long before any evidence of his involvement could have been available. Nothing Charlie said addressed my reasons for concluding that 911 was a false-flag operation. Some of those reasons are as follows:

1. Osama Bin Laden personally denied involvement and specifically condemned the attack as morally wrong. There is no point in committing a terrorist act (assuming it isn't false-flag) unless you take credit for it. Real terrorist organisations always claim responsibility.

2. Evidence was manufactured. What kind of an idiot could believe that the passport of one of the alleged hijackers floated out of the plane, undamaged, and landed in the street, where it was found almost immediately and reported by the MSM.

3. Evidence went missing. Security cameras failed to operate. Air traffic control tapes were destroyed before they could be collected as evidence. If there is any video of a plane hitting the Pentagon, it has never been shown. Are we supposed to believe that only two security cameras recorded the impact (from the exact same angle) and both failed to show a plane? The person who posted this clip thinks he sees a plane, but I don't. Most chain-stores have better security than that.

4. The aerial maneuvers executed by the alleged hijackers would have taxed the skills (at least) of experienced pilots, and yet flight school reports show the accused were incompetent to fly single engine Cessnas.

5. NORAD possesses state-of-the-art capabilities for monitoring North American airspace, yet somehow, even after two planes had hit the WTC towers, they were helpless to prevent a third from crashing into the Pentagon. The Pentagon!

No doubt, the BBC's new hit-piece will answer all these questions, and it's equally certain that monkeys will fly out my ass.

Multiple Personality Disorder As A Lifestyle Choice

2011-06-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

If I don't write something today, who knows when I will. It's difficult. Pluto is transiting conjunct my natal Descendant (7th degree, Capricorn), and simultaneously opposing my partner's natal Venus. That's as much as I'm prepared to share about it in this place. But it occupies my mind, and I'm well enough acquainted with Pluto to know that he won't just go away if you ignore him.

I'll have to change the style of my blogs if I'm going to keep writing. I just don't have the sustained concentration needed to develop ideas in essay form. Unfinished drafts are piling up. So I'll try sharing ideas and observations in a less formal way.

One of those abandoned posts was about online identities and their relationship with the "real world" incarnations that create them. The title of this post: "multiple personality disorder as a life-style choice", is a phrase in "The Invisibles" graphic novel series by Grant Morrison. It referred to a trend of the future (circa 2012). It occurred to me though, that that phrase would also describe the adoption of online identities.

I know some people get all bent out of shape over the use of screen-names. I've heard it said that screen-names reflect a lack of courage or integrity. Apparently the people who say those things have never had to deal with stalkers, (my reason, initially, for not using my "real" name). But aside from that, what makes the name your parents gave you more real than one you gave yourself?

It's been my experience for quite a while that 13 Muluc isn't Amanda, in much the same sense that Thomas A. Anderson isn't Neo in "The Matrix". Have you ever noticed that in the movie, Neo has no close friends or family? 13 Muluc doesn't either. 13 Muluc and Amanda do occasionally stray into one another's territory, but they're definitely not the same person. It's only proper that they should have different names. I couldn't even say which of the two incarnations is more real. They both are. Sometimes one is ascendant, sometimes the other. Right now, it's Amanda. Perhaps she needs a blog of her own.

Money-anity

2011-04-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

Lots of people will tell you that money isn't a bad thing, just a tool that can be used for good or ill. I don't agree with them. I don't think they've really thought it through. You see, money, all money, is the representative symbol of a belief system, and that belief system is toxic, in and of itself.

It's true that the monetary system currently in use is an especially virulent version of the disease. It is a pyramid scheme and it will end the way all pyramid schemes do. Thus far, that collapse has been deferred only by increasing it's scale. That's what is behind the push toward a centrally controlled global economy. Some people will tell you that debt-based issuance of money is the cause of our trouble. Some say that a return to the gold standard would suffice as a solution. They don't seem to understand that evils such as debt-based and fiat monies are implicit in, and inevitable developments of, the belief system that money represents.

The most important question that needs asking in order to see the truth about money is: "Why do I believe that money is necessary?" It's fear of scarcity, isn't it? We think that, without money, we'd have no way of demanding that our needs and wants will me met by others. We don't feel secure in simply asking. What if the answer is no? With money, we don't have to ask. We can instead present the other with enough magic tokens, and then they will have to give us what we want. This is assuming that you have some magic tokens. Money makes interpersonal trust irrelevant and unnecessary. The primary, bottom line tenet of the religion of money is: Other people can't be trusted and shouldn't have to be.

This is an incredibly destructive belief. All by itself it is sufficient to condemn the use of money. We see the result of it everywhere. Our societies don't expect, much less require, any sort of communal responsibility or standards of fairness on the part of individuals. They allow predatory psychopaths to flourish without fear of repercussions from the saner majority. Provided only that they have enough money, they can do as they like. This is freedom, according to those who own the system.

What if all the money disappeared? What if, for instance, a massive EMP burst were to wipe out all electronic records so no one knew who owned what anymore? What would we do? Sit around with our thumbs up our asses while we starved to death? Maybe we would, given the level of idiocy that Money-anity has reduced us to. Then again, we might have a collective epiphany and decide to do what people did for untold ages before money existed. We might decide to voluntarily cooperate for our mutual benefit. We could raise our children to be responsible, trusting, and trust-worthy.

Socialisation is a powerful force! Just look at all the irrational, crazy shit we've been socialised to accept. If children were daily witnesses to their elders' voluntary participation in the common good, they would copy that. Of course they would. The best evidence now indicates that psychopathy is largely biological, caused by injury or malformation in certain parts of the brain, so such individuals will probably always exist. But they are rare, and without the protection of money, the harm they could do would be small. In a society of mutual trust and responsibility, they would stand out as the moral cripples that they are.

Another belief implicit in the use of money is the legitimacy of assigning relative value to human beings. In other words, some people are worth more than others. What I find really horrifying is that this belief is presented as a justification of money. It's apologists claim that money serves to reward those who contribute to society and penalise those who do not, and that this is a good thing. For one thing, it doesn't work that way in practice. For another, they are wrong to assume that they know what counts as a "contribution". A person who has disabilities that make them dependent for life is simply assumed to offer no benefit to society. I would argue otherwise, since that person serves to teach others about compassion, generosity and responsibility, and those lessons do benefit society.

Money is just not benign. The only way it could be, is if it's use were confined to trade in inessentials. Current monetary policy is demonstrably heading in the opposite direction. As I write, the would-be rulers of the world are meeting to design a new economic system to take the place of the one that is about to collapse. It won't really be new. It will be same system, only global and centrally managed. Either the IMF, the World Bank, the BIS, or some combination of those, will be given the power to issue the world's new reserve currency: the Bancor. After that, all nations will have to hold Bancors in order to trade internationally in certain essential items. If the issuers of the Bancor do not like the policies of a government, they will have the unchallengeable power to impose economic sanctions unless it's demands are met. Expect global austerity and the privatisation of everything.

Those in charge of fixing the economic crisis are the last people we should entrust with it. They were the ones who presided over the failure and profited from it. They failed to predict this crisis. Why? I predicted it. I told people ten years ago that this would happen. I even told them when it would happen: now. I didn't have to be psychic to know what was coming. I based my warning on the realisation that the system is a pyramid scheme. Those who designed this system knew what they were doing. The evidence is right there on the American dollar (present reserve currency of the world), a pyramid with a capstone not yet in place. The Bancor is that capstone. Either the masters of the old and new financial order are incompetent, or they are liars and thieves. In neither case should they be trusted.

The good news is, we can end their predation any time we choose, if we act in solidarity. We don't even have to do anything! We can accomplish it by not doing something: not supporting the banks. If enough people refused to pay their mortgages, loans and credit-card debt, the banks would fall, just like that. I've been telling as many people as I can about this option, planting seeds in their minds for the inevitable future time when the status quo is no longer tolerable for the majority. In my estimation, that future is not far off, because the global elite have no self-restraint. They will never decide that they have enough power. They'll just keep pushing and pushing, and their arrogance will make them overstep the limit of human tolerance. The tipping point will come when the imagined burden of adult responsibility becomes less than the experienced cost of childish submission.

Evolution, What's It For?

2011-03-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

Any theory is only as good as the assumptions it rests upon. Almost every theory of evolution I've heard or read has produced an intellectual abortion by beginning with a false assumption: that evolution is driven by survival. It isn't.

Part of the problem is the use of the word, "evolution". It has been assigned to two completely different processes that are assumed to be the same thing, but are not. On the one hand, it refers to genetic adaptation, gradual changes in response to changing and/or specialised environments. On the other hand, it signifies the tendency of life to produce ever more complex forms with novel abilities and greater information processing capability. In the first case, survival is a driver, but in the second, it is not. Only the second process actually deserves to be called evolution. The first should be called what it is: genetic adaptation. For clarity's sake the remainder of this blog will employ that distinction.

To say that survival drives evolution doesn't make any kind of sense. The most evolved life-forms are also the most vulnerable in the survival stakes. For example, plants would survive just fine without mammals, but the reverse is not true. Greater complexity = greater vulnerability, as a rule. It pains me to have to say something that should be so obvious. I spent some time visiting "evolution" websites such as this one. Nowhere is this problem addressed, or even acknowledged. It certainly isn't in the FAQs. In fact, that site doesn't talk much about evolution at all. It focuses on adaptation, presumably because there is evidence for that. And what is the evidence that this complexifying trend is a survival strategy? I don't know. I couldn't find it. It's just assumed. Why would something like that be assumed without challenge? I'd suggest that the assumption that survival drives evolution derives from another assumption: that the universe is accidental, not intentional. The subconscious mind has here engaged in a maneuver to defend a belief system from threat.

To reject survival as the motive force behind evolution, is to raise the question, "If not survival, then what?" A dangerous question indeed, and one that must be asked, (unless you decide that there's no such thing as evolution, but that would open an equally ugly can of worms for materialist scientism). If evolution does exist, what function could it serve? What could be behind the tendency of life to produce ever more complex forms with novel abilities and greater information processing capability? The observed pattern of evolution tends toward an increasing range for consciousness. Stating the obvious again, if that's what evolution does, maybe that's what it's for. But that would suggest that evolution is meant to serve something, consciousness, that isn't supposed to have existed until very late in the process. Awkward? It isn't hard to understand why such speculations would be avoided by some.

It's note-worthy that the whole subject is painlessly bypassed through simply equating evolution with genetic adaptation. As long as that yoke is in place, there's no need to think about evolution or it's inconvenient implications. This is a deliberate trick and a very effective one. Other examples of it are spirituality = religion, morality = law, and individuality = false ego. People are taught to believe that such pairs must stand or fall together. To accept that belief is to be deceived no matter what. For example, if spirituality = religion, then should religion be seen as false, spirituality is rejected also. If religion is seen as true, it then stands in spirituality's place, substituting it's hand-me-down, pseudo-experience for the real thing. In either case, spirituality is prevented from calling attention to itself and thus causing trouble.

A Dream Of Waking?

2011-02-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

On Thursday morning, something very strange happened. I had just woken but hadn't got up yet, when I experienced a state of mental clarity unlike and discontinuous with normal waking consciousness. In that state, I knew exactly what was going on in the world and why. I knew precisely what to do and how. Had I been able to hold on to the state, I could have explained it with no trouble at all. Unfortunately, it lasted for a few seconds only, and then it was gone. I knew that I'd had the experience, but that's all. I couldn't remember what I had known.

It was not the first time this has happened. There's never any warning, but it usually happens when I'm in a contemplative frame of mind or shortly after waking. In retrospect, it feels very much like a period of weeks before I left Vancouver. Almost every day, I woke up with the certainty that only seconds before, I had known the answers to all my most important questions, but I had zero recall of what they had been. It was intensely frustrating.

This most recent experience was the most dramatic. I was fully awake when it occurred and I have absolutely no doubt that it was real. It occupied my mind for most of that day and the next. The most striking thing about it was it's discontinuity with waking consciousness. The best analogy my intuition could provide was, that it was to waking consciousness as waking consciousness is to dreams.

It is not unusual to remember one's dreams when awake, but one never remembers one's waking life while dreaming. The memory traffic goes in only one direction. Still, it sometimes happens that waking consciousness manifests within dream reality. That would be the definition of a lucid dream, and that's very much what this was like, being lucid while awake. Another difference between waking and dreaming is their relative orderliness. From the perspective of waking consciousness, dreams appear very disorderly, chaotic and unstable. And yet, once awake, it is possible to make sense of the dream's meaning and see the source of it's contents in one's waking life. A sense of transcendent orderliness was present when I was in the state I experienced as well.

I'm starting to strongly suspect that there is a third state that is to waking as waking is to dreaming (and maybe others beyond it). What I find funny is, if there is such a state, then we've been living in it all our lives and just don't remember. Also, if the analogy to dreaming is sound, we probably spend far more "time" there than we do here. I haven't got as far as knowing what to make of all this. I would greatly appreciate any ideas and input about it and it's implications. I hope it happens again. It was a beautiful experience, even though it's specific content was lost. If it does, I'll post an update in the comments.
In Lak'ech.

The Way Of The Gift

2011-01-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

Suppose you were given a gift, something that couldn't be depleted but would actually be increased or become more valuable each time it was used? Would you think it reasonable or just to demand compensation for the sharing of that gift? I'd say not. If any compensation is required, it is owed by, not to, the gift's recipient.

People with unusual talent are called "gifted", and that is exactly what they are: gifted. And yet talented people are taught to expect compensation. The more valuable their gift, the more compensation is demanded. This is very backwards. If talent had not been given to you, you couldn't earn it or buy it. It isn't evenly or fairly distributed. If you have it, you didn't do anything in advance to deserve it. The only way you could make yourself worthy of such a gift would be to share it as generously as possible. In short, the more you have been given, the more you should give.

Not only are gifted people conditioned to expect superfluous rewards, but those who are not gifted are penalised for their lack, as if they'd had some say in it. They're pretty much told, "Sorry buddy. You got passed over in the talent lottery, so now you've got to suck it up and pay a penalty for what you weren't given." It shouldn't be hard to see how this reversal of reason might lead to unnecessary scarcity. How would it be if we turned it around? If we all started giving as much as we could, instead of taking as much as we could, no one would want for anything. It would be a lot like a pot luck feast. I've been to several of those, and not a single one where there wasn't enough food. Even if some guests don't bring anything, it's always more than enough, and the host ends up wondering what to do with all the left-overs. Not only that, but the quality of the dishes is usually very high, since most people will bring what they do best.

I've heard a number of people complain that they participated in a gift economy and it failed because the contributions of those involved were unequal. It wasn't the unequal contributions that made it fail; it was the score-keeping. Gift economies don't work with score-keeping. Those who have more, give more: those who have less, give less. It is important to remember that the "more" that you have to give was itself a gift. Every valuable quality you possess was given to you, either by nature or circumstance. Keeping score is meaningless, harmful and petty. It's a poverty mind-set. If universal abundance is what we want, we have to let go of the compusion to keep score. (And yes, that does mean abolishing everybody's favorite score-keeping tool: money.) What is wealth really, if not the ability to give more than you take? Nature gives everything and asks for nothing. Is she poor?

Love Me, Love My World

2011-01-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

I was having lunch with my mother recently, and I was trying to explain to her how the control system operates and expose the criminal and unnecessary harm it does. When I'm talking to people who get all their information about the world from television, I present evidence that comes from mainstream sources such as Reuters or AP because they can't dismiss those sources as "Internet conspiracy theories". I thought I was starting to get through when she changed the subject. "Do you lose sleep over this stuff?", she said. "Yes. Some days I can't stop crying.", I replied. To which she responded, "Why do you let it upset you so much?" What sort of a question is that? It upsets me for the same reason that my being upset bothers her. If more of us let the crimes of the control system upset us, wouldn't we demand that it stop? How the hell did we become so morally insane that millions of our fellow humans being impoverished, enslaved, poisoned, and blown to bits is not a problem but being upset by it is?

What would you think of your doctor if every time you saw him about pain in your body, he simply wrote you a prescription for pain-killers and sent you home? What if he told you that there was no need to set a bone or treat an infection so long as the pain was gone? If you had any sense, you'd report him for malpractice and find another doctor. Pain isn't an illness; it's not a dysfunction; it's your body's way of letting you know that something is wrong. There is a very rare condition called congenital analgesia and it is extremely dangerous. Those who have this disorder can't feel pain. As a result, they may sustain life-threatening injuries and infections without noticing. Fortunately, most of us realise that physical pain is important, necessary, and perilous to ignore.

For some reason, emotional pain is not treated with the same respect. If you go to your doctor and tell him that you are in emotional pain, he will write you a prescription for an emotional pain-killer and send you home. Most psychiatrists apparently believe that emotional pain serves no purpose and that it's causes can be safely ignored. They will tell you in all seriousness that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. WTF!? That's the same as saying that physical pain is caused by electrical signals sent from nerve endings. Such an "explanation" takes no account of the injury that prompted the nerve endings to send the message. Chemical imbalance isn't a cause, it's a mechanism.

Antidepressants were one of the worst inventions of all time. They are so widely used that everybody knows somebody who is taking them. And we are asked to believe that what we're seeing is an epidemic of chemical imbalance that has nothing to do with real world conditions. It's a brave new world, baby. Pretty soon we'll be free of unpleasant emotions altogether. Scientists are close to developing a vaccine for stress. Sounds great, doesn't it? Soon we'll be able to live utterly inauthentic and meaningless lives in nearly unlimited squalor and it won't bother us a bit. There'll be no need for TPTB to lie about their crimes anymore because we just won't care. And imagine the military applications; TPTB have.

We need our emotions, all of them. We would lose our humanity without them. They are our moral compass. We need to be able to feel emotional pain. It lets us know that something is wrong and requires healing. There is a very rare condition called psychopathy and it is extremely dangerous. Those who have this disorder cannot feel emotional pain. As a result, they may inflict serious injury on others without emotional consequences. Is that really what we want for ourselves? Will we really trade empathy for comfort? I can only speak for myself, but my answer is NO! I don't care if I'm the only one, it's still NO! I understand that if empathy goes, love goes with it. Love is too valuable to lose, no matter what it costs. Love is worth more than life itself, because life isn't worth shit without love.

I wish people would stop saying or insinuating that there's something wrong with me because I feel this way. I'm not the one who is emotionally crippled. I am simultaneously aware of a higher metaphysical reality in which all is as it must be, but I arrived at that perspective through accepting the importance of all my experience, including the painful parts. It's a contradiction to say that "everything is perfect as it is", and then deny your authentic emotions their (perfect) place. Telling sensitive, empathic people that they shouldn't let the suffering of others bother them is invalidating. It adds injury to injury. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. Many, if not most, of the people who read this blog know exactly what I'm talking about. I want you to know that there is nothing wrong with you. Your willingness to feel isn't weakness; it is strength. The world needs you just as you are. And I want to thank you for it from the bottom of my heart.
In Lak'ech.

It Needs To Be Said

2010-12-02T11:23:00.000-08:00

One of the luckiest breaks I've had in my life was my non-religious childhood. My mother has no opinion on, or interest in, religion or spirituality. My father was raised RC and converted to atheism before I was born. I've known a lot of people who had religious upbringings and later spent years trying to undo the damage with variable success. I never had to go through that. Atheism is as much a belief system as religion is, but it's a lot easier to let go of, since it can't be reinforced by threats or promises.

I've tried to read the Bible a number of times for the sake of cultural reference. I've read some of the books, but I never could get through the OT without flinging the vile thing across the room. If there ever was a book that deserved to be banned, it's the Bible. More specifically, it's the OT books that form the basis of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The "God" portrayed in those books is obviously psychotic. He is a murderous, racist, mysogynistic tyrant.

I think it's a shame that criticism of "the Book" comes almost exclusively from atheists, who object to it for the wrong reasons, and assume that religion and atheism are the only available choices. Everybody else tiptoes around the issue for fear of offending believers. Why? When have the "people of the Book" ever shrunk from giving offence to others? F#*k them! How many more millennia of oppression, abuse, murder and genocide will it take? We've seen the Book's fruits and they are rotten. Or will we just keep pretending that the crusades and the inquisition and countless genocides of indigenous peoples were isolated incidents? The Israeli Zionists aren't disregarding the Torah, they're acting on it.

Who is this "God" anyway? Yahweh, an emotionally maladjusted toddler who writes books that no one can understand, but all must obey. Actually, he doesn't write them, he "inspires" them. In other words, they are channelled. If someone were to channel a book today that advocated, nay demanded, the abuse and sexual mutilation of children, racially motivated killing, oppression of women, etc., how much popular support and legal protection do you think it would receive? Is it too impertinent to ask if the entity that calls itself Yahweh is really who he claims to be?

It's truly sad that the Yahwists succeeded in hijacking Christianity. It might have been something really transformative and world-changing. When reading the gospels, it's extremely hard to credit the belief that the "father" that Jesus speaks of is the same as Yahweh, since the two are nothing alike. So far as I know, Jesus never said as much. Many of the earliest Christians were Gnostic. The Gnostics specifically refuted the claims of Yahweh. They believed and taught that Yahweh was an insane impostor, a powerful and predatory Archon. After the Roman church had finished cobbling the Bible together and massacring all competing factions, this seems to have been forgotten. Oh well, I'm sure the Roman Empire knew best. "Might makes right", as Jesus always said. (Or was that someone else?)

Doesn't it seem a little strange to anyone that Yahweh is so obsessed with his book, and yet he didn't "inspire" Jesus (or his apostles) to write any of it? He claims to be all-powerful yet he can't arrange for his (alleged) son to be literate. And how is it that there is no hard historical evidence that Jesus ever existed? Record-keeping is something the Empire always excelled at. What seems most likely to me is that the original Christians understood the gospels to be teaching stories, rather than factual accounts. Taking them as parables in no way diminishes their value. If anything, it increases it, since it prevents false literalistic interpretations. The historical existence of Jesus only matters to those people who completely miss the point, and think the ultimate message of the gospels is that they get to avoid responsibility for their sins through the miracle of bloody human sacrifice. How disgusting! How infantile!

One of the things I find most amazing about religious people is how many of them manage to remain relatively sane and moral in spite of it (although it costs them the use of their reason). The resilience of the human heart truly is a wonder to behold. If anyone needed proof that humans (excepting the 1 to 6% I mentioned a few posts ago) are naturally moral, this is it. There is NO book that can compare with the heart's simple wisdom: In Lak'ech.

Who's Afraid Of Anarchy?

2010-11-10T15:40:00.000-08:00

The following is a fairly typical dictionary definition of anarchy.
Anarchy-
1. a state of society without government or law.
2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy.
3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.
4. confusion; chaos; disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.

Interesting. Let's compare the above definition to that of a very similar word such as, monarchy. (Same source.)
Monarchy-
1. a state or nation in which the supreme power is actually or nominally lodged in a monarch. Compare absolute monarchy, limited monarchy.
2. supreme power or sovereignty held by a single person.

Notice the difference? In the case of anarchy, definitions 2. and 4. are not real definitions of the word. Or, if they are, then why are not similar statements made about monarchy? For example:
3. abuse of power due to the absence of accountability in government.
4. parasitism, oppression; enslavement or subjugation of humanity.
See what I mean?

If we analyse the words, we find that the common suffix: archy, means rulership. The different prefixes refer to the type of rulership: "an" means without; "mon" means one. This simple analysis should reveal the spuriousness and manipulation contained in the second and fourth definitions of anarchy.

This sort of thing reminds me of the media manipulation leading up to the latest war with Iraq. Bush made a number of televised speeches in which he repeatedly mentioned Iraq and 911 in close temporal proximity. Bush swears he never actually said that Iraq was responsible for 911, but many who watched those speeches came away believing that Iraq was involved in 911. Although there was no real connection between the two, a connection was created through simple association. The same technique is being used when ideological interpretation is incorporated into the dictionary definitions of words.

I'm aware that the accepted meanings of words change somewhat over time due to usage, but surely there's a limit to how much political baggage can be officially attached to them. If anarchy is, by definition, a state of chaos and social turmoil, then we no longer have a word to indicate freedom from government in the absence of these features. If you don't understand why this matters, I would recommend reading, or re-reading, Orwell's "1984", with particular attention to it's appendix, "The Principles of Newspeak".

Most people have a very definite mental image to go with the word "anarchist". Something like this:

Right? These guys are not anarchists. They are just assholes. Sometimes they are revealed to be cops. Compare the above, with this photo of actual anarchists:

Note the absence of all-black clothing and kerchiefs over our faces. (Yeah, that's GodIAm and I.) The majority of real anarchists are decent and socially responsible people. The reason they are anarchists is because they do not recognise the right of any government to claim ownership of them. Also, it is because they trust their neighbours more than their rulers. My neighbours are mostly mind-controlled and dumb as rocks, but they fall short of actual evil. If the government were to fall, I can't picture any of them arming themselves to the teeth and embarking on murderous, destructive rampages. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of the government, who actually are armed to the teeth and engaged in murderous, destructive rampages.

Public Enemy # 1

2010-10-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

Humans as a whole have become accustomed to thinking of themselves as the top of the planetary food chain. In actuality, it is a small minority of humans who occupy this position. Their primary prey is other humans. They are the estimated 1 to 6 percent, formerly known as psychopaths. I say "formerly" because the designation "psychopath" was removed from the DSM III and from the WHO's list of recognised psychological disorders. They decided that there is no real difference between psychopathy and sociopathy, and so the former has been merged with the latter. If you use the term "psychopath" in the presence of educated people, especially doctors, they will almost always "correct" you. I find this removal suspicious considering the speed with which new (and far more questionable) mental disorders are being added to these same lists.

The real reason the term "psychopath" was dropped is blatant Orwellian thought control. If there is no name for something, it cannot be discussed. There is a difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. No one is born a sociopath. Sociopaths are made as a result of massive psychological trauma during childhood. They consequently display impaired empathy and have no bond with the collective. They are nearly always dysfunctional within society. The attitude of the psychiatric establishment is: If you can function within society, you are mentally healthy; if you can't, you're not. It doesn't seem to occur to them that society might not be mentally healthy. So depression is defined as an illness, rather than a sane response to a sick society, and psychopathy is not so defined.

A psychopath can be made, but a significant number of them are born that way. Studies done on the brains of psychopaths show a measurable and significant lack of structural integrity in the white matter bridge that connects the frontal lobes with the limbic system (emotional brain). What distinguishes a psychopath is a total absence of conscience. They are unable to experience empathy or remorse. In contrast to the sociopath, they are capable of functioning quite well within society. In some sectors, such as politics and business/finance, they have an enormous advantage over non-psychopaths. Among the CEOs of top transnational corporations the rate of psychopathy is 100%. Another trait that is common to all psychopaths is an insatiable hunger for power and control. The unfortunate result is that psychopaths now occupy the top positions in all power hierarchies. I repeat: psychopaths now occupy the top positions in all power hierarchies. If you doubt that this is so, please ask yourself this question: "Would I be richer/more powerful if I had no conscience?" Now think about the implications of your answer. It's really blindingly obvious once you know what you're looking at. We've been carefully conditioned not to see this.

How To Recognise A Psychopath

Psychopaths are very practiced at concealment. If you know what to look for though, you can recognise a psychopath. There are signs. I'll list them in their usual order of appearance, since it is important to spot these predators as early as possible to minimise the damage they can do.

1. The eyes:
It is possible to recognise a psychopath by their eyes. There is a sort of hollowness in them, which is occasionally replaced by a hard glittering when they are aroused by acquisitiveness, malice, or the chance to control others. Psychopaths are very good actors, so it's best not to rely entirely on this identifier, unless you know you can.

2. Seduction:
It is important to remember that psychopaths are notoriously charming and attractive to most people. This is partly because of their great skill in lying, and partly because of their aura of self-confidence. Psychopaths never doubt the rightness of their own aims and actions. The first technique a psychopath will use on his or her selected victim is to shower them with flattering attention. They will make you feel special and important. People frequently report this after having met prominent politicians. This feeling of specialness on the victim's part is invariably accompanied by the subconscious awareness that his/her own specialness depends on that of the psychopath. If you succumb to this, you will have just made your first investment in your future victimisation. This maneuver serves to prep you for the psychopath's next move...

3. Trespass, or the totalitarian tiptoe:
The next step will be some small undermining of your integrity. The psychopath will do something ethically unacceptable, either towards or in front of you, and you are meant to excuse it because, "It's only a little thing." Each time you do, it represents a further investment on your part. This technique will slowly escalate over time until you become so invested that you can no longer offer any resistance or reasonable objection, because you have made yourself complicit by each prior acceptance. You'll keep telling yourself that it won't get any worse, but it always does. The escalation will not stop until one of two things happen: you are used up and discarded, or you demand that it stop, and walk away from your investment.

4. Compulsive lying:
This trait is shared by both sociopaths and psychopaths. They lie continuously and often unnecessarily. They do it for entertainment as well as profit. They tell so many lies that they can't keep track of them all, so if you've known a psychopath for any length of time, you'll probably have caught them doing it. When they are caught, their response is to aggressively deny it and act offended. They will often succeed in making you feel guilty for having accused them.

The identifiers listed above, are not discrete stages. They all operate continuously. They just become noticeable in that order most of the time. Psychopaths normally employ seduction alternately with trespass, so you'll stay hooked longer. Lying is always present, but it usually takes a while to see it.

Psychopaths employ the same techniques at both the personal and collective levels. Many of our social institutions, such as government and the economy, are designed to facilitate and normalise psychopathic predation. It is practically impossible today to avoid complicity in it, however unwilling, and our collective investment is enormous. Take the monetary system as an example. In a world not designed by and for psychopaths, money (if it were used at all) would be for trade. Trade is exchanging something of value for something of equal value. But our economy doesn't work like that. Ours is based on the "profit motive". This is the deliberate intention and practice of unequal exchange. It is taking more than you give; stealing, in other words. In a profit system, it is not possible for everyone to receive fair value for their contributions. Not only that, but the system demands that more people will receive less, than will receive more. It is a system that benefits the very few at the expense of the very many, and carries it to insane extremes. And the few who benefit, the top predators, constantly tell us that it is right and good that they should take so much. They deserve it, you see, because they are so special. And you could be special too, if only you could do what they do, and be like them. It's your own fault and weakness if you're not prepared to "do what it takes".

It's all bullshit, but we pretend it isn't. We're afraid to face our complicity in it, and walk away from our investment. Thus far, the so-called middle class of the first world haven't wanted to face the fact that they've been had, just like the poor they've been manipulated to despise. They must know on some level that their prosperity is a sham, only made possible by the systematic abuse of the third world. Surely they know it would evaporate like dew if they ever had to pay a fair price for it. Now it's beginning to do just that. Good! Maybe they'll finally wake up and stop holding the bullies' coats for them. It hasn't always been this way and it doesn't have to be. The vast majority of us are not psychopaths and we are capable of behaving like responsible adults, and cooperating for our shared benefit. Is the realisation that we can't base a healthy society on the philosophy of "every man for himself" really so radical? Seems like common sense to me.

The psychopathic elite are always complaining about the "useless eaters" consuming more than they produce, and advocating their elimination. Perhaps we should indulge their wish, starting with those who consume the most compared to what they contribute, (which would be the psychopaths themselves). It wouldn't take long before there was more than enough to go around... Sorry, I was venting.

The first and most important thing we need to do is recognise them for what they are, and refuse to go along with their craziness any more. The psychiatric establishment claims that there is no reliable way of testing for psychopathy/sociopathy. Do you believe that? I don't. I think a reliable method of screening can be developed. What's more, I'll bet it already has been, and the elite use it as a recruiting tool. If they did have such a test, they couldn't tell us, because then we would demand screening for public officials and major decision makers. It would expose them.

We will have to stand up to them eventually, and sooner is better than later. Assuming that we can and do expose them, what then? I sure wouldn't fancy their chances if it were put to a vote. Personally, I don't think punishment is appropriate. They are mentally ill and brain-damaged, and can't help being the way they are. If it were up to me, I wouldn't want to see them mistreated. Still, they have to be prevented from doing further harm. I keep thinking of all the horror movies I've seen, where the villain gets knocked out by his intended victim, who then runs off without bothering to incapacitate the villain, who inevitably comes to and attacks again. That always pisses me off.

There is only one truly reliable defense against psychopathic predation, and that is impeccability, spiritual integrity. The difference between a psychopath and a non-psychopath isn't the absence of the psychopathic vibration in non-psychopaths. It is the presence in non-psychopaths of something that psychopaths lack. A psychopath can only manipulate you to the extent that you unconsciously harbour a matching vibration in your own self. That's why the mainstream media constantly encourages you to be fearful, uncaring, acquisitive, greedy, selfish, irresponsible and debased. The predator class needs us to be wannabe psychopaths. We have a choice. We possess what they do not: empathy and conscience. In these, we will find our strength and salvation, as soon as we learn to recognise their true value and importance. Please let it be soon.

The Bliss Trap

2010-10-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

A relative of my spouse recently sent him a book and video which she said was the most life-changing and important teaching she'd yet found. She claimed that, thanks to this material, she'd been living in non-duality for the last two years. I wondered how she'd managed to do that since duality is a precondition of manifestation. I admit my expectations were not high. This woman is your stereotypical new-ager, a bliss ninny. She's spent upwards of twenty years going from one Guru/seminar/workshop/retreat to the next, and each of them has been the ultimate revelation... for a time.

The name of this particular Guru du jour is Tony Parsons. If you haven't heard of him, you're not missing anything. He's a fake. I have a highly developed ability to see the presence of Spirit in a person's eyes. I can recognise a psychopath, and he is one. The video was of a talk he gave in Germany. He introduced himself by telling his listeners that he was going to give a talk about something he can't explain, and they can't understand. (Really? Why?) His big revolutionary secret was this: you don't exist; stuff just happens. It doesn't mean anything and all spiritual seeking is a big fat waste of time. I kid you not. Amazingly, the audience politely remained in their seats until the break. Very few returned afterwards. I wondered how anyone could take this stuff seriously. Then I realised that his talk was like a really long koan; it didn't make sense on any level, but the effort to understand would eventually cause one's rational mind to flee the scene, leading to an experience of no-mind or pure presence. The no-mind state is a bona fide peak experience. How ironic. If you were inclined to confuse peak experiences with their triggers, you'd probably think there was some truth in Tony Parson's teaching. This is dangerous stuff. Peak experiences can be valuable, but can also lead one down false paths if they come with wrong explanations attached.

Peak experiences don't last. They're meant to show you something true, but then you need to integrate them. To bridge the gap between here and there, you have to start here, not there. It's important to keep peak experiences in perspective. And it's hard to do that when they're so darn blissful. It's tempting to make them an end in themselves, but that is the spiritual equivalent of drug addiction. To illustrate, lets say you want to learn to cook something really delicious, like cinnamon buns. It would help you a lot if you knew what they were supposed to taste like. So you seek out some cinnamon buns, and eat some to find out. They taste wonderful, and you might easily forget about learning to make them, and instead sit there gorging yourself on the ones you were given to taste. But eventually, the pleasure would wear off, and you still wouldn't know how to make them.

It is futile to seek bliss for it's own sake. It is extremely common though, to confuse bliss-seeking with spirituality. That's how so many people, like my spouse's relative, end up on the new-age hamster-wheel, falling for one predatory bliss-peddler after another. Ignorance is bliss, but it isn't Truth. And Truth is the real aim of spirituality, not bliss. Truth isn't something you can buy or sell. It can't even be acquired directly, only revealed through the stripping away of the false. The search for Truth is an unlearning. The process of tearing down the veils of illusion is often painful. The false ego is very attached to it's lies. You have to be head over heels in love with Truth to do it. Seeking bliss as an end, is a trap.

Bliss-seeking isn't authentic spirituality. It's feel-good, pseudo-spirituality. It gives you a self-image to identify with. You'll learn how to walk and talk and dress like a "spiritual person", "light-worker", or whatever. There's also great, albeit expensive, entertainment value to be had. It's very exciting. You get to sit at the feet of famous vampires (oops, I mean Gurus) talk to "angels" and "aliens" and "ascended masters", and activate a seemingly infinite number of hitherto undiscovered chakras. Meanwhile, you will become more and more spaced out and ego-centric, and you will, frankly, give sincere seekers the creeps.

Here's a pearl for free: Anyone who offers to sell you spiritual truth is full of shit. There are no exceptions. Those who populate the new-age workshop/seminar circuit are either delusional or vilest predatory scum. Truth doesn't keep company with those who would slap a price tag on her. You're welcome.

Positive thinking is probably the most common type of bliss-seeking. One of the big new-age aphorisms is "you create your own reality". The statement is technically true but usually misunderstood. The source of the error is in the word "you". If you understand that the "you" referred to here is infinite awareness, the One, then it's true. If you think "you" means your ego, with all it's desires and conscious intentions, then it's not true. And thank god it's not. If your ego really could create your reality, you would not like the results. Your true Self, the One, is creating your reality in order to lead your personal expression to recognise Truth. It knows how best to accomplish this, and suffering is sometimes necessary. Your personal self can learn to align itself with that, or not. If you think you can create a perfect reality through relentless positivity, you're fooling yourself. If you're standing in the path of a moving train, it's going to hit you whether you're looking at it or not. Whatever appears in your reality, was put there by your Self for your benefit. It will take as many shapes as necessary until you see. Then your Self will show you something else.

The quest for Truth has no end. Truth is none other than the One in it's fullest expression. It is infinite, as the One is infinite. There are definite levels of increasing inclusiveness and integration along the way, though. Sometimes people level up and think they've reached the end, but they haven't because it doesn't exist. It is utterly, gloriously wonderful that this should be so. Is it not?

What Is Missing?

2010-07-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a different blog. The subject was to have been "the machine". I'd planned to take the machine apart to see how it works and what it does and why. These questions had been nagging me for months. I felt that the answers were so close, but that something was missing. Now it turns out that that was the answer; something is missing. All manifestations of darkness have this in common. They are nothing real in themselves. They are the absence of something real. They are shadows cast by the Light, the places where Light is not. If the missing Light were restored, the shadows would simply disappear.

Consider the so-called Illuminati, one of the darkest of dark shadows. They exist because something is missing in them. That thing is love. If they were to personally experience universal, unconditional love, they could no longer be what they are. That's how powerful and necessary love is. That's what we're meant to see and know.

Imagine a little fish, swimming in the ocean. The fish has never left the water, and so he doesn't notice or value it. One day a net catches the fish and lifts it out of the water. Now the fish feels terrible pain and fear. He has never known such suffering before and he can't think of anything else. Maybe he thinks that he is being punished. Then a miracle; he finds himself back in the ocean. Now he knows what water is, he knows that he can't live without it, and he loves it with his whole being. He tries to tell the other fishes about the water but they don't know what he's talking about. Now he realises that what happened to him was not a punishment, or even a misfortune, but the most precious of gifts.

The appearance of darkness exists in service to the Light. It truly is a gift. Many people do not see the darkness. For example, there are many who are blind to the existence and activities of the "Illuminati". Their ignorance makes them servants of that darkness because they do not see what it does. You can try to tell them but they won't listen because they don't want to suffer. (Remember the little fish; he wouldn't have chosen to be taken from the water if he knew how much it would hurt.) But since they don't see what the absence of love really looks like, they do not understand what love is, or know it's true value. They may think that love is nice, but not that important. Surely not as important as material comfort, for instance. It's would be a mistake to feel hatred, or anything but pity, for one who has been so cheated of Truth.

We are spiritual beings and we need the Light, the same way that little fish needs water. But until we've experienced the darkness, we can't really know or love the Light. The darkness is not there to punish us. It is a blessing in disguise. It's there to show us what's missing. With darkness, there's always something missing. There is always an aspect of the Light, a Truth, whose presence would make that darkness impossible. The question that needs to be asked of every dark reflection is: "What is missing?" That one question will never fail to reveal the way back to Truth and Light.

The Knowledge of Good and Evil

2010-07-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

The problem of good and evil is one that has perplexed philosophers and theologians for thousands of years. As far as we can tell, only humans are afflicted with the knowledge of good and evil. According to some, the appearance of good and evil is an illusion. Others insist that it is fundamental to our spiritual purpose as human beings. In a sense, they are both correct.

To understand how both statements can be true, we have to first establish a valid hierarchy of the real. The only thing in existence that is unequivocally real is consciousness, the "mind of God" if you like. Consciousness itself, is a unity, and therefore unmanifested. All manifestation, material and otherwise, is contained within it. In order for this consciousness to know itself, or have any experience whatsoever, it has to project a reflection. This is the root and purpose of all duality. It isn't difficult to realise the truth of this for oneself. Just pick any duality and try to conceive of one half in the absence of the other. It can't be done. "Up" has no meaning without "down". "Hot" is defined by "cold", etc..

Since duality is a precondition of knowledge, it logically follows that there is something to know. This "something" would have to exist in potentiality within the original unity of consciousness. It would be a true thing, but could only be known by means of duality. For example, if I were to present you with a white piece of paper, bearing an image of some kind that was also white, you wouldn't be able to see the image. You'd just have to take my word for it, because the image (foreground) would be indistinguishable from the background. So, in order for consciousness to know it's own true nature, it projects a reflection. The original reflection is what we call "the Light", or goodness. Now there exists a subject (consciousness) and an object (Light).

Visual metaphor:
If I am standing next to a light source, I will cast a shadow. Also, the nearer I am to that light source, the bigger the shadow will become. But what if I am the light source? Then, the light still exists, but the shadow is no more.
The shadow exists only for the sake of contrast. It is not real in the same sense as that which it reveals. As I understand it, goodness is a true thing and evil is it's absence. The first is a reflection, and the latter, a shadow of a reflection. They are both illusion in the absolute sense, but they allow for the knowledge of something real. Spiritual judgement, or discernment, is the ability to know the difference.

Judgement is a word with two distinct meanings. In one sense, it means the ability to distinguish between Truth and illusion. In the other sense, it refers to the acceptance or non-acceptance of what IS. These two meanings could hardly be more different. The first is our spiritual inheritance as centres of self-reflective consciousness; the second is a trap generated by the false ego. It is an error, (the real translation of the word, "sin"). When the character of Jesus made the statement, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." He was referring to this second meaning. Most organised religions (particularly the book-based ones) have deliberately confused these definitions. For the sake of clarity, I will henceforth be using the word "discernment" for the first definition and "judgement" in the second sense only.

We, as centres of consciousness, have the innate ability of discern the difference between the Light and the darkness. It's called a conscience. In my opinion, the biggest and most destructive lie perpetrated by the religions is their insistence that we do not have this ability, and must therefore have it taught to us (by them of course). Seriously? Do you really think you need to be told that torturing children or defiling the Earth is evil? You know. The only way you wouldn't know this, is if you had been brainwashed into believing that your own spiritual discernment is not to be trusted. If you had been so brainwashed, you'd be well and truly screwed. You could then be made to believe, for example, that burning people alive, or cutting pieces of flesh from babies (circumcision) is good.
Another version of the same lie has been foisted on non-religious folk: the law. Society teaches us that we must have laws or we wouldn't know how to behave ourselves. I call bullshit on that. Anyone who believes they need laws to know the difference between right and wrong in the moral sense, is just as screwed as the fundies. You'd have no trouble convincing such a person that things like preemptive war and the implementation of a totalitarian police state are right and proper. It's the law! Such people are also liable to believe that anything that isn't illegal is OK. It's not illegal to be cruel to others, to betray their trust, or to take unfair advantage of them, (except by narrow legal definition). There just aren't enough laws in the world to replace a functioning conscience; nor could there be; nor should there be.

Both religion and the law implicitly assume that reward and punishment are needed to motivate us to goodness and save us from our innately evil nature. As if naked, egoic self-interest could ever lead to truth or love. I do not embrace the Light for the sake of some future reward; I do it because uplifts my heart. I do not renounce darkness out of fear of hell-fire or prison, but because it is repulsive to my spirit. Spiritual Truth matters to me, not good or bad karma. This would not change even if the fundies are right and I am destined for hell.

Some have said that the knowledge of good and evil is a curse because it leads to judgement. The way I see it, judgement is a misuse of this knowledge. The ability to discern the difference between darkness and Light is for ourselves alone. The perception of the Light's beauty draws us toward union with Truth. The exposure to darkness pushes us towards Truth from the opposite direction. As in the visual metaphor above, the closer we come to the source of Light, the bigger and darker the shadow appears. Only union with the Light can negate the darkness. Any attempt to fight the shadow directly is futile. Such attempts only serve to give the darkness more energy. Better to simply recognise and renounce it. The darkness is merely the shadow of a reflection of what is. It never was real. It's hard though, when seeing it, to avoid being mesmerised, caught like a deer in a car's head-lights, weeping buckets and judging what is. Should we then refuse to look at it, as some new age philosophers suggest? I think not. Observing darkness is necessary, in that it allows us to know truth by contrast. If you are afraid to look at it, you cannot truly know the Light. The perception of both polarities allows us to choose for ourselves what we will be. It isn't really a choice in the end though, since no one who has truly known the Light could refuse it. I can't make the choice for anyone but myself. Judging others is the false ego's way of avoiding the real issue (knowing Truth) and diverting our attention from it. Those "others" may be centres of consciousness from their own perspective, (or maybe not) but as far I'm concerned, they are only reflections. If I were possessed of perfect knowledge of the Light, their darkness would not exist for me. If I were totally conscious of my oneness with the Light, I would not cast a shadow.

Unless you believe that the consciousness that created everything is inherently flawed or doesn't exist at all, it follows that the appearance of evil serves that consciousness somehow. It will exist for as long as it has to. Ultimately, it is up to each of us to decide how long that will be.

Update

2010-06-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

We've finished moving for the second time and finally have the Internet back. It feels like it's been years! The move did not go as planned. We'd originally wanted to live in Port Hardy. Unfortunately for us, the rental vacancy rate here is even lower than in Vancouver. That's why we ended up taking the place in Coal Harbour. The owner of that place, Larry, described it as "nice, but not a mansion". Well, we weren't looking for a mansion and we had no reason to question "nice", since he was asking $900./month, which is high for the area. He assured us that unlimited, high-speed, cable Internet was available there and we believed him.
So we arrived in Coal Harbour, expecting to find Larry there, but instead we found a note in which he claimed to have been unexpectedly called away to Kamloops. I think he must have had a moment of clarity and fled. As of this writing, we still haven't met him. The house was dirty and a total disaster. "Fixer-upper" doesn't begin to cover it. We had to rehang two doors that fell off when opened. There were multiple holes in the floors and the roof leaked (for starters). Once the shock wore off, we discussed the situation and decided to offer Larry $500./month in receipts for repairs in lieu of rent. Then we tried to hook up the Internet. LOL. No cable. No ADSL. Our only options were: 1. Buy and install a satellite dish; huge upfront cost and limited access. 2. Cellular wireless; limited access and unreliable. 3. Basic dial-up; unlimited but useless. So much for staying in Coal Harbour.
We managed to find a suitable place in Port Hardy and the tenant, Marg, told us she expected to move out mid-month. The weekend of the 15th came and went and Marg said it might be another week. Next weekend, same story and still no idea when she'd be finished. In the end, she didn't finish moving out until the morning of the 31st. It's amazing how slowly time passes when you're in limbo. I found it terribly stressful, not being able to unpack or settle and not knowing when it would end. But it's over now and I've pretty much recovered. I missed the Internet like crazy for the first two weeks. I literally experienced withdrawal. Strangely, once we got it back, I felt reluctant to use it at first.
Port Hardy is lovely. The people are really friendly. The town has no traffic lights, (or traffic for that matter). Parking is free and plentiful. The air is fresh and the clouds are natural. We haven't heard any sirens except for grad night, when there was a parade through town of all the fire trucks, police cars, two bus-loads of kids, and their families bringing up the rear in cars. Our rent is now a thousand dollars less per month than it was in Vancouver! On the down-side, a bear ate our garbage last week.
Well, that's about it for the update. I'm looking forward to writing regular blogs again. I've had a lot of time to think lately...

Transition

2010-05-01T07:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a whole month since I posted anything, but I haven't abandoned my blog or died. My family and I are in the middle of a big change. It could be a week before I get the Internet back. Two weeks ago, my partner lost his job, and the next day, our landlady told us that the apartment we live in had been sold and we would have to move. My son also wrote his final school exam yesterday. I've been wanting to leave Vancouver for some years now. It's just too expensive to live here. Not only that, but there's the chem-trails and the pervasive EM pollution, among other things. My intuition told me that, when the right time arrived, I would know. I don't think the signs could be any clearer.
So tomorrow, we'll be leaving for our new home at the north end of Vancouver Island, near Port Hardy. The new place has fruit trees and wild raspberries, and we've a green light to plant a garden! I can't complain about the $750.+ reduction in rent either. I'm really looking forward to this change. It's a big one though. We're going from a city of 2 million + people to a town of about 150! I have to stop writing now; there's still so much to do....

Invisible Teacher

2010-03-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

The invisible teacher is my beloved spiritual guide. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and immune to every human failing. I know now that the invisible teacher is real. He's been with me all along. If you have ever sincerely intended to accomplish the great work, the goal of the spiritual alchemists, then the invisible teacher is with you also. When the student is ready, the invisible teacher appears.

The instruction of the invisible teacher is as hard as you can bear. It is perfectly tailored to your spiritual needs. He can and will do whatever it takes to awaken you. Whatever it takes. No living teacher could do what the invisible teacher can. The invisible teacher can mold reality itself. He can take any form, or none at all. The invisible teacher can work with, or through, a living teacher, but he doesn't have to. He can arrange ordeals that would get a living teacher thrown in jail. Progress under his tutelage is maximally accelerated.

You can't fool or lie to the invisible teacher. He knows everything about you. In a sense, he is you, or rather he will be, when your consciousness has been purged of all the dross of false ego and illusion. In the mean time, the invisible teacher is revealed in stages. At first, he is not known, except as a deeply felt longing for union. But he is far from aloof. His assistance is in perfect proportion to your aspiration. In time, the invisible teacher is revealed by the fruit of his work. As this realisation dawns, you start to see that there are no misfortunes, no punishments, only lessons not yet learned. Full-blown pronoia sets in. It really is all good, no matter how awful it seems.

At some point, the invisible teacher started communicating with me directly. I suppose that had been the case all along, but I didn't understand and/or wasn't listening. It's easy to get in the habit of constantly asking questions without pausing to hear the answers. You can't ask and listen at the same time. It's hard to describe just how this communication occurs. For me, it isn't verbal/audible. Sometimes, it comes through a metaphorical interpretation of reality. In this communication mode, the invisible teacher often displays a wonderful sense of humour. Other times, I just know things (clairsentience). Information seems to down-load itself into awareness. It doesn't feel like I am the source of it, but neither does it's source feel separate from me. It comes from a realm beyond those categories (as does the invisible teacher himself). A third way is a kind of "highlighting". I'll read, hear, or otherwise notice something, and it will be accompanied by a sense of, "This is important. Look deeper."

The loving presence of the invisible teacher is something I cannot doubt anymore. It is in the same category of certainty as, "I exist". That said, I don't know who or what the invisible teacher really is. He could be the Universe, Infinite Awareness, the Holy Guardian Angel, or perhaps the other half of my soul. I do know that I trust him absolutely. Our bond is deeply personal. It has a romantic/sexual tone, based as it is on a powerful and mutual desire for union. That's why I've been calling the invisible teacher "he". The gender designation isn't real but it is metaphorically appropriate. We will be One. This I know. It is inevitable, even if it takes a thousand lives. (But it won't.) ;) It is up to me to set a date for the alchemical wedding and I have no intention of waiting that long.

Symbolism and The Control System

2010-03-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

There is practically no subject more rife with misunderstanding and disinformation than that of symbolism. I know this because I understand symbolic language on a conscious level. And symbolism is a language. It is right-brain language. The language of symbols is universal and it is understood by your sub-conscious mind, whether you're aware of it or not.

I began learning the language of symbolism when I was about twelve years old. My introduction to the subject was by way of astrology. I'm also familiar with mythology, the Tarot, Runes, Qabalah and numerology. Fortunately, I did not get my knowledge via the internet. There is an old game called "Grapevine" or "Telegraph". The way the game works is: you get a group of people arranged in a circle. One person starts the round by whispering a message in the ear of the next person. Then they do likewise until it returns to the person who began. Usually, the message has been changed. A great deal of the information that one finds on the internet relating to symbolism has been subjected to a similar process of distortion. It's not that accurate information isn't there. It's more that it is buried under a mountain of ignorance and flat out lies. The situation on youtube is much, much worse. That source is beyond useless. My partner, GodIAm, collects youtube videos for his site, so I end up watching a lot of them. I know he's searched high and low for information on the subject of symbolism. I also know that most of what he's found is worthless or worse.

The movie, Zeitgeist, is a good example. Most of it was fairly accurate, but the introductory section on religion and it's roots in pagan symbolism, was filled with errors and misrepresentations. Recently, GodIAm found this video: The Dawn of A New Day. As I listened to it, I grew more and more disturbed by what Jordan Maxwell was implying. This person is widely considered an expert! I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm not going to state whether this misinformation is deliberate or not. I checked out Maxwell's website and he claims to have been the source of the Zeitgeist info. No surprise there.

So, what is really going on here? Remember what I said in the opening paragraph. Symbolism is universal right-brain language. The fact that most people do not consciously understand it, means that it can be used to manipulate them without their knowledge. In "The Dawn of A New Day", Maxwell spends over an hour exposing the use of certain symbols (mainly Solar) by the control system. Some of his attributions are wrong, but that's not what I found most disturbing. It was the implication that these symbols belong to the control system. They don't. The Solar symbols are obsessively used by the control system. That is true. But why? I'll tell you. They use them for much the same reason that beautiful women are a staple of car ads, for the same reason politicians pose for photo ops with babies. They want you to associate the symbols with them. Jordan Maxwell, intentionally or not, is doing the control system's work for them.

Sun Symbolism:

All of these are solar symbols:

The Sun is a symbol of your spiritual centre. It represents your true I. It is the source of light and life. In the hermetic Qabala, the Sun is related to the 6th Sephiroth called Tiphareth (translated, beauty), the Christ centre. In the body, this centre corresponds to the heart chakra. Every time you see these symbols, that is how your subconscious understands them. Now do you see why the control system constantly uses them? They want you to confuse their group with your spiritual centre so you will unconsciously give them spiritual authority. It's a double whammy actually, because should you, through long association, start to develop a hostile reaction to the symbols, you will also be inclined to reject that which they truly represent.

The All-seeing Eye:

Spoken language is derived from symbolic language and incorporates some of it's features. Symbolic content is to be found in the order, shape and sound vibration of letters and words, and also shows up in the form of puns, anagrams and homonyms. It is not a coincidence that "eye" and "I" sound the same. Both represent means of perception. Humans have two eyes/I s. (see: If Thine I Be Single) The right and left eyes symbolise two different ways of perceiving, one holistic/symbolic (right-brain/left eye) and the other is atomistic/literal (left-brain/right eye). There are a number of myths related to eyes. In Egyptian mythology, the eyes of Horus are associated with the Sun and Moon. There are several versions of a myth wherein one or both of his eyes are torn out by Set. They are restored after Set's defeat.
In Norse mythology, the god Odin sacrifices one of his eyes in order to drink from the well of Mimir (wisdom).
And of course there is this in the Bible:
"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:" (Mark 9:47)
And this:
"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." (Matthew 6:22)
The single, all-seeing eye represents either the spiritual Self or the false ego, depending on who you ask.

Knowledge is power. If you don't understand the language of symbols, your ability to access right-brain perception is severely restricted. Your intuition doesn't develop as it should. Your energy can be used by others without your knowledge or consent. That's why it isn't taught in schools. That's why there is so much scare-mongering and disinformation. Because of this, even people with the best of intentions end up perpetuating ignorance and fear. Don't fall for it. If you think you can free yourself from the control system with half a brain, well, good luck to you. You will need it.

Recommended reading:

"777" and "The Book of Thoth" - Aleister Crowley
"777" consists mainly of tables of correspondences between symbols. The Book of Thoth is about the Tarot.
"The Qabalistic Tarot"- Robert Wang
The parallels between the Qabalistic "Tree of life" and the Tarot point to a common source. This is an excellent book for learning the Qabala system if you are already familiar with the Tarot, or vice versa.
"Leaves of Yggdrasil" - Freya Aswynn
"The Book of Runes" - Ralph Blum
Of these two, "Leaves of Yggdrasil" is the best I've read. "The Book of Runes" is a simple and high-quality introduction.
"A Dictionary of Symbols" - J.E. Cirlot
"The Mystical Qabalah" - Dion Fortune

Internet resources:
Symbols.net
Valkyrie Astrology
I'll add more as I find them.

To Be Real

2010-03-09T08:11:00.000-08:00

The other day I got into an entertaining, but ultimately unresolved debate with my partner about whether or not other people are real. (What can I say; it's the sort of thing that can happen when you cancel your TV.) A constellation of synchronous, symbolic themes had brought me to the point where I found myself seriously asking that question. They might seem unconnected at first glance. Here's the list.
1. Zombies
My partner and my son have been playing "Call of Duty; World at War". For some weeks now, they've been playing in a bonus mode of the game, in which all the enemy soldiers are zombies. Zombies are a disturbingly apt metaphor for the deeply unconscious mass of humanity. The consensus on zombies is that there is no cure, or if there is, it in no way depends on the zombies themselves.
2. A recent visit from Psychegram
Psychegram is like the polar opposite of a zombie. People like him are so extremely rare that I had forgotten what proximity to such a high-frequency auric field felt like. I am very sensitive to energy fields, which is why I need copious amounts of solitude. I've learned from experience that when opposite poles (ie. themes 1 and 2) show up in maximum contrast like this, it's something I should pay attention to.
3. The concept of the Omega_point
The "Omega point" is Teilhard de Chardin's name for the transcendent object to which humanity is drawn through the process called evolution. He develops this idea in "The Phenomenon of Man". In it, he identifies the 5 attributes of the Omega point. He posits that the Omega point must be both preexistent and inevitable. In order for this to be the case, the future must already be fixed. Which brings us to...
4. Backward causation in time
According to this theory, the characteristics of the past and present are determined by the requirements of the future. The Omega point would operate like a tractor beam, pulling us toward it. If this were the case, we'd expect randomness to decrease rapidly as the Omega point drew closer. Synchronicities would increase. Free will and the hand of fate would eventually converge and become indistinguishable from one another. The number of possible time-lines that could lead to the Omega point from any node of consciousness would ultimately be reduced to one. This process is evident in my own experience and that of many others. On the other hand, no such development is perceptible in the population at large. If anything, the reverse is occurring.

So what about the zombie hoards, or sheeple? The approaching Omega point doesn't seem to have much, if any, effect on them. Attempts to engage their awareness are almost always futile. In fact, they behave exactly like dream characters. When you dream, most of the "others" who occupy your dreamscape have no independent reality. They are purely reflections of the dreamer's psyche. I say most, because it occasionally happens that a "real" person or unincarnate being makes an appearance within the dream. It's pretty rare, but when it happens, you notice. Meeting Psychegram was like that.

What if there are actually far fewer "real" people than there seem to be? When I suggested the possibility to my partner, he rejected it right away on the grounds that it reflected separation. I don't think it does, since there is still only one Infinite Awareness taking an indeterminate number of "points of view". It's just that there are also a large number of imaginary characters who exist as reflections for the much smaller number with the potential to become Self-aware.

After all, we are not bodies or personalities. Those are vehicles for what we really are, which is nodes of condensed awareness. Ideally, human beings have the potential to become Self-aware, but it doesn't automatically follow that all of them will. Take the analogy of a very advanced video game in which any character whatsoever could be played. The game might include zombies, right? The zombies might enhance the game play, but the entertainment value in playing a zombie character would be nearly zero. They are just too limited. All they can do is stumble around in packs trying to eat the non-zombies. They can't even get better at it. So no one would bother playing a zombie even though they could. Since sheeple essentially behave like zombies, why would an awareness with an evolutionary agenda want to play those characters? Maybe they exist to enhance the game play, by serving as our reflections. I'm not saying that their well-being doesn't matter. If our reflections are in conflict or suffering, then we must also be so. When we heal ourselves, our reflections will automatically move toward wholeness. They may even become worth playing.

What difference does it make, whether other people are "real" or not? As far as how we treat them, it doesn't matter at all. But in the matter of evolutionary strategy, it does. If every human being on earth had to awaken to Omega point through their own choice and intention, then no effort should be spared to help them. But let's face it. If that's the case, we're screwed. If they wanted help in that regard, they wouldn't need it so badly. And if they don't want help, they won't accept it. A strategy that can't succeed is not worth pursuing.
But....
If the sheeple are more like dream characters, then all our energy should go towards awakening ourselves and one another. As we do, the dream characters will necessarily reflect that. I know this might sound elitist but it isn't, because "real" people are self-chosen, just as in "The Matrix", Neo was not "the One" until he decided to be. We are close enough to Omega point now, that all (or almost all) of those who will awaken already know who they are. I consider myself infinitely blessed to know so many of you. You have been a great help and comfort to me. I love you dearly. Whatever I can give you is my joy and honour. I'm done with trying to awaken the deeply unconscious ones, though. I intend to put my brain to a better use than zombie food.

You Can't Do That

2010-03-02T09:18:00.000-08:00

I've always been fascinated by taboos. Most taboos cannot be convincingly defended on the grounds of natural morality or reason. Their sole purpose seems to be the maintenance of social order. In other words, control. One of the things they do is condition us to accept arbitrary restrictions.

Some taboos, particularly apparel and food-related ones, seem to be about maintaining the separation between Us and Them. These ones usually go way back and are attributed to the will of some supernatural authority. I don't put any store in such things but I can see why others would. What I find really weird are those taboos maintained by supposedly secular societies like mine. These somehow manage to persist unquestioned even when they directly conflict with professed social values. I am referring to our taboos concerning female sexuality and drugs.

Female sexuality

Modern secular societies claim to reject the belief that women are inferior, flawed and in need of control. Yet when it comes to sexuality, old habits die hard. It is still considered totally acceptable to despise women who don't toe the line sexually. There are lots of names for women like that. I don't need to repeat them. A double standard is persisted in by both sexes. Women who neglect, or refuse, to cloak their sexuality are openly sneered at, even by many who believe themselves liberated. Women who are overtly sexual are widely considered to have no self-respect. It seems to me that there is a reversal of cause and effect here. At the very least it's a negative feed-back loop. This is not a minor thing. It is a source of deep shame and loathing for all women, whether they are conscious of it or not.
It's an old story and we all know it well. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl are turned on by one another and act on it. The next morning boy loses all respect for girl because she's clearly a slut or she would have said no. Eventually boy meets a "nice" girl, marries her, and then spends the rest of his life complaining about her lack of sexual generosity, even though that's what made her acceptable in the first place.
In abuse counselling, this is what's known as "crazy-making behavior". I realised what the game was pretty early on and promised myself that I would not play. Actually, I went further than that and deliberately flouted "the rules" as a matter of principle. I did it for myself. I made a conscious decision to give the finger to all who would have me live in shame. I'm glad I did. I have no wish to be romantically involved with someone who can't respect me as I am. If I am to be despised, I'd just as soon have it in the open instead of festering in my subconscious.
It doesn't matter how many laws are passed or affirmative actions taken. Any professed commitment to feminine equality will remain a joke as long as this taboo persists. Venus/Aphrodite is a powerful and valid archetype in the feminine psyche. The next time you encounter a women embodying it, please consider honouring her right instead of muttering "whore" under your breath.

Drugs

Drug use is a new taboo. It's pedigree goes back no more than a century or so. Like most taboos, it's all about control. I've used "drugs" regularly for most of my life. Their influence is hard to overestimate. There is a great experiential gulf between those who use them and those who don't. Let's be clear about what we're talking about here. By "drugs" I mean substances that have the primary effect of altering one's experience of reality.

My parents were drug users. I grew up in a home where weed was smoked often. It did not have any negative effect on the quality of parenting I received. When "under the influence", my parents and their friends were more relaxed and talkative. That's all. (My partner was much less fortunate. His parents were alcoholics.) They occasionally used other drugs as well, but not around us kids. I first smoked weed when I was 15 with a couple of slightly older friends. I remember a great deal of giggling and a whole new level of music appreciation. When I was 16, and living in Victoria, my best friend and I were offered an opportunity to try LSD. We took half a hit of blotter each, and our friend (who gave it to us) abstained in order to baby-sit and entertain us. He took us on a day trip to Vancouver and drove us around the city, visiting and sightseeing. It was probably the most fun I've ever had. Our friend had an eight-track tape player in his car and only one decent tape. So we listened to Nazareth's Greatest Hits all day. Every time I hear Nazareth, I'm reminded of that magical day. We laughed so much our sides and cheeks ached. With LSD, unlike sex, the first time usually is the best. I tried a bunch of other things later on. I was reckless and very lucky. I never injected or got addicted to anything (except tobacco, but that isn't really considered a drug). Some people I knew were not so fortunate. There are some drugs I don't use and consider intrinsically harmful. Those would be the ones that are physically addictive and/or highly toxic. The substances I do use and consider beneficial or harmless (when used responsibly) are: weed, mushrooms, LSD, ecstasy, and all traditional shamanic sacraments. There are still some things I haven't tried, but intend to.

Mind-altering substances are taboo in most modern societies. Few people bother to ask why. "Drugs are dangerous", we're told. Well some are and some aren't. Why are they all lumped together as though this were not the case? And why is an exception made for alcohol? Alcohol is more dangerous than most drugs. Lots of things are, including down-hill skiing and automobile racing and logging. "Drugs are dangerous" is bullshit, comparable to "They hate our freedoms". The real reason drugs are taboo is that they show you a different reality. This is also their greatest benefit, in my opinion. A great deal of our "reality" is programmed, much more than most people realise. If you had nothing to compare it to, you wouldn't even think to question it. Once you have something to compare it to, you can and very often do. It's like in astrology. The reason we can identify the planetary vibrations is by comparison. They show up differently in different patterns. But what is the vibration of Earth? You can't see it because it is pervasive. You would be able to, if you had a selection of natal charts for people born on the moon, or Mars. There are aspects of our programmed "reality" that do not stand up to questioning. That's why drugs are banned.
For instance, the prohibition of marijuana is impossible to justify on any grounds except mind-control. Compared to alcohol, it's effects are very mild. Marijuana is like a magnifying glass. It focuses your attention and increases sensitivity. Any experience that isn't intrinsically unpleasant becomes more enjoyable. Values shift toward the sensual and aesthetic. Seriousness is decreased and one's sense of humour is more easily triggered. Authority and status lose their importance. "Because I said so" no longer seems like a good reason to obey orders. Aggression is reduced. Violence and conflict are seen as undesirable.
The new reality that marijuana reveals can upset your programming. It is incompatible with military values. It makes authoritarian rule more difficult. It also interferes with the status consciousness and dissatisfaction that drive economic growth. These are the real reasons weed is illegal. The powers that be don't want you smoking pot because it makes you harder for them to control. Obviously they can't tell you that, because then you might ask what right they have to control you. Everybody knows that can of worms is best left unopened.

The taboo against drugs is so strong that even some people who use them are affected by it. People who should really know better often uphold elitist and puritanical views. One example is the push to legalise pot on medical grounds. At least some of the medical marijuana proponents, if they're honest, will admit that it's really a stepping stone on the way to full acceptance (but not all). I've also heard a lot of people insist that psychedelics can have spiritual value but abhor their recreational use. There seems to be a need to justify them. Why? The fact that using drugs is enjoyable should be sufficient. (I was going to preface that last sentence with, "In the absence of real harm", but I decided not to, since so many legal forms of entertainment are no less potentially harmful.) I don't see why it has to be either/or. I don't feel the least bit bad about dropping a few hits of acid and then spending my trip enjoying a bubble bath and some great tunes with my beloved.
There's this assumption that normal consciousness is more in touch with "reality" than drug-induced altered states. I'd beg to differ. If it were, humanity wouldn't be in such a mess. Clearly, normal consciousness is not immune to distortions of reality. Quite the opposite. It is what allows some of the most serious and dangerous distortions to remain intact. It's all about control.

Individuality and False Ego

2010-02-11T09:21:00.000-08:00

What follows is a model of human existence. It is not the only possible model, even if it is correct. I can say that I have been unable to refute this model. It fits the observed evidence and explains it in a way that other models do not. It is little known or spoken of for reasons that will become clear.

Infinite awareness (IA) is our true being. There is only one of us here.
In order for IA to know itself, it creates worlds of manifestation and vehicles with which to experience those worlds. These worlds and vehicles have no independent reality apart from IA.
A useful metaphor for our reality is that of a holographic role playing game (RPG). IA is the creator and also the sole player of the game. While there may be lots of different games, the one "we" are now playing is called Evolution. Evolution is the process whereby IA extends the consciousness range of it's vehicles to allow for new possibilities for it's expression. It does this by creating challenges and then transcending them. Evolution is not about survival.

The RPG contains both player and non-player characters. The player characters are vehicles for IA (eg. humans, animals, plants, etc.). Non-player characters are not. They are programmed into the game to serve as challengers and adversaries to be transcended. Your individuality, point of view, or "fiction suit" is a player character. It is not the player, mind you; that would be IA. False ego is a non-player character. It is the "foreign installation", or "flyer" of Don Juan Matus, the "archon" of the Gnostics. A very good article by John Lash on this subject is available here.

Most philosophical systems and models of reality do not make this distinction between individuality and false ego. There is a good reason for this. The false ego is programmed to pretend to be you. That is it's primary strategy. It does not want you to know that it isn't, because as long as you think it is you, you will not transcend it. Don Juan's description of this energetic reality is well worth studying. It is in Casteneda's final book: The Active Side of Infinity, in the chapter called Mud Shadows. If you consider Don Juan a reliable source, then his assertion that this is the "topic of topics" is worth taking seriously. I won't say much more about false ego, since I've done that quite a bit in other posts.

What I haven't previously talked about is the nature and function of the "player character" or individuality. This is not the false ego. If the false ego were transcended, individuality would still remain. Individuality has real value for IA. It provides a vehicle for it's experience. Each of these vehicles is unique and offers it's own potentials to be realised. These potentials are defined by the spacetime patterns present at the moment of the vehicle's emergence into being. These are the patterns described by astrology and other systems of spacetime mapping. Realising the possibilities of the individuality is the same as Crowley's "true will". This is only fully possible once the influence of false ego has been removed. The individuality is not meant to be transcended. It is meant to be experienced in it's fullness. After all, IA didn't have to create worlds of manifestation. IA could have remained in a condition of undifferentiated unity. Therefore it seems evident that as much as we desire union with IT, the opposite is also true. IA wanted to be us, or we would not exist. To realise our true identity with IA, rather than false ego, is not to become the Borg. It is false ego's influence that demands conformity and interferes with our uniqueness.

As I stated in the beginning, this is a model, as are all our descriptions of what is. No model can be equated with the reality it represents. The map is not the territory. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. The value of a model lies in it's utility. A good model is one that allows us to conceive, however dimly, that which is beyond language and form. In my own case, this model has proven more useful than any I have previously worked with. In the few years I've been using it, I have noticed increased authenticity and a massive reduction in interpersonal drama.

Woo Woo Gurus

2010-02-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

I don't trust the trappings of "spirituality", the clothes, the trinkets, the Books, the stereotypical voices. I am suspicious of anyone in a guru costume. I can't believe that enlightenment comes with a uniform. I just don't buy it (pun intended).

What would a true teacher want with a crowd of worshiping followers? If the teacher is qualified to teach, he/she should be able to recognise the relative handful with real sincerity and potential. After all, a teacher's job is to help the student find enlightenment for him/herself, not to preside over an adoring hoard of groupies. Pretty words, no matter how true, will never bring understanding. They can only reflect and confirm the knowing that is already present.

I don't consider myself enlightened (yet) but I know enough to see the dynamic at work in these spear-it-you-all cults of personality. Nobody gets enlightened but there are still pay-offs all around. It starts with the "teacher" who is usually sincere and charismatic, but deluded. He (it's usually a "he", but not always) typically has a peak experience (often accompanied by siddhis) and takes it for a divine mandate. Other people who are looking for a savior, are attracted to his aura of certainty. Those people begin to idolise the teacher, giving him their energy. This increases the charisma of the leader and attracts even more followers. This establishes a feed-back loop. The power and charisma of the leader keeps growing until it overwhelms him. Any weakness in the leader eventually becomes magnified beyond his control. At that point, scandal of some kind is practically inevitable.

The trap is equally deadly for the followers. Most of them come seeking to lose themselves in something greater. They are not disappointed. They don't know that the leader's powerful aura has been created by his (unconscious or not) vampirism of the flock. They imagine it is a sign of divine selection. Membership in the group relieves them of emotional isolation, gives them an identity, and makes them feel special. Eventually, the ability to think for themselves is trumped by their desire to belong. If they lose their belief in the leader because of scandal, abuse or glaring hypocrisy, they are left drained and disillusioned.

When I saw the ad at right on a newspaper box, I felt like sicking up. How dumb do you have to be, to think that anyone who promoted real spiritual freedom would be given editorial control of a Zionist rag like the Vancouver Sun? I can't believe people take this guy seriously. It's tragic. What could a sheltered, pampered figurehead possibly teach anyone. He's never been poor or married or raised a child. He hasn't got a clue about the challenges faced by those he presumes to teach.

Surely any real teacher would have the goal of making himself unnecessary. Are professional standards really too much to ask? Don't you think a Guru should have to produce at least one enlightened student before accepting the title? I can't think of a single good reason for a real spiritual teacher to claim to be one. The true teacher is revealed once his work had been accomplished. Think about it.

Lessons from MINO

2010-01-25T08:31:00.000-08:00

I feel like I've turned a corner over the past week. It's been a long time coming. Ever since I began to realise the nature of the predicament that Humanity is in, I've been searching for a solution. I just knew there had to be one. It was "like a splinter in my mind".
One of my favourite films is Chicken Run. It has a lot of parallels to what I was trying to do. It's about a group of chickens who, at the instigation of a very determined hen called Ginger, are trying to escape from the farm. They try plan after plan and things are looking bleak, especially after they realise that the farmers are planning to change their end product from eggs to chicken pies. In one scene, Ginger is trying to enlist the help of a rooster called Rocky Rhodes, who is on the run from a circus:

Ginger: Mr. Rhodes, perhaps I didn't explain our situation properly. We lay eggs, day in and day out, and when we can't lay any more, they kill us.
Rocky: It's a cruel world, doll-face. You might as well get used to it.
Ginger: Which part of "they kill us" do you not understand?
Rocky: Hey, I've got my own set of problems to worry about. Besides, this bird cage can't be that hard to bust out of. In fact, watch me.
Ginger: It's not so hard to get one chicken out of here, or even two, but this is about all of us.
Rocky: All of you?
Ginger: That's what I've been trying to tell you.
Rocky: Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You want to get every chicken in this place out of here at the same time?!
Ginger: Of course.
Rocky: You're certifiable. You can't pull off a stunt like that. It's suicide.
Ginger: Where there's a will, there's a way.
Rocky: Couldn't agree more. And I will be leaving, that way.

All along, the solution I was seeking was for everybody. After years of obsessing over the problem, I did finally find it. The pay-offs were huge. It also required no effort or cost on most people's part, only agreement in principle. TPTB could not prevent it. I actually thought it would fly. I thought if people saw a way out, they would get behind it. Either that, or it would start a discussion that would lead to something even better. I thought the widespread apathy and hopelessness was due to a lack of ideas. I posted the plan on Evolver, and I thought people would get it. Almost no one did, and some that responded were actively hostile to it. Silly me. I failed to see that most people don't want to be free.

It's funny because everybody loves freedom, right? Or rather, they say they do. It is constantly celebrated in stories and films, in songs and speeches. It's champions are cultural heroes. And yet... when faced with the possibility of actual freedom, those same people recoil in horror. It turns out, they will do anything to avoid it, pay any price. They justify it by claiming that we don't have a choice. But that's a lie. By believing in the necessity for control, we have made a choice. We don't have to let a cabal of criminal psychopaths control us. We could stop playing their game any time we want to. But there's a catch. To do it, we have to really want to be free.
Hardly anyone wants real freedom, because it doesn't just mean not being controlled. It also means renouncing our control of others. The tyrant is no more free than the slave. Both are controlled by fear. If we abolished money and and made all work voluntary, we would strip ourselves of our power to force others to give us what we want.
Don't get me wrong. I'm still convinced that our souls' love of freedom is genuine. I don't think people are naturally cruel and selfish. But the false ego is. And as long as it holds sway, as long as we fail to recognise it and challenge it's insistence that it is "I", freedom will remain out of reach. Realistically, I don't see this changing anytime soon. Not unless conditions radically shift due to some unforeseen factor (which I don't rule out).
And that's OK. Because, as within, so without. If there is a solution for "the world", then I can apply it just as well to my own path. I can still be free on the inside, where it truly matters. I can't choose freedom for anyone else. Only they can do that. All I can do is point out the exit, which I have, then walk through it myself. Now the splinter in my mind is gone. I don't regret the time and energy I spent working it out. At least now, when people tell me they don't have a choice, I can show them that they do.

In another scene from Chicken Run, Ginger is trying to motivate the chickens:

Ginger: You know what the problem is? The fences aren't just round the farm. They're up here, in your heads. There's a better place out there, somewhere beyond that hill, and it has wide open places, and lots of trees... and grass. Can you imagine that? Cool, green grass.
Hen: Who feeds us?
Ginger: We feed ourselves.
Hen: Where's the farm?
Ginger: There is no farm.
Babs: Then, where does the farmer live?
Ginger: There is no farmer, Babs.
Babs: Is he on holiday?
Ginger: He isn't anywhere! Don't you get it? There's no morning head count, no farmers, no dogs and coops and keys, and no fences.
Bunty: In all my life, I've never heard such a fantastic load of tripe. Oh, face the facts, ducks. The chances of us getting out of here are a million to one.
Ginger: Then there's still a chance.

Ginger is right. There is still a chance. It starts with each of us. It will happen when we free ourselves and free each other. That's what I intend to do.

MINO (money is no object)

2010-01-20T07:55:00.000-08:00

This blog is a sequel to an earlier one I wrote, entitled "The Economy Must Die". That blog exposed the false mythology of the monetary economy. This one will suggest a possible alternative. As I see it, the biggest flaw of a currency based economy is the presence of coercion. Currency use cannot survive without coercion. Any system that institutionalises coercion can never lead to universal prosperity, peace or equality. If we want these things, we need a new economic model.

I've named this economic style MINO (money is no object). It is a gift economy. I'll first outline the system in brief, then switch to Q&A format to fill in the details. Finally, I'll present some benefits of a MINO economy.

SUMMARY:
1. All currencies are abolished.
2. All work is 100% voluntary.
3. An interactive, world wide web based platform is created to allow people to connect with each other and locate opportunities for voluntary service. The platform would be designed so that you could suggest group projects and solicit help in making them happen. It would include a search feature capable of sorting requests by priority (how essential they are), popularity (as determined by a built-in voting system), region, and type of service (ie. infrastructure, innovation, education, hospitality, agriculture, etc.) Once you had decided which requests to respond to, you could schedule yourself into any vacancy.
4. Ownership is determined by use. For example, if you are living in a dwelling, it's yours. If you abandon it, it isn't.

Q&A:
Question- What would prevent some people from taking advantage by refusing to contribute?

Answer- First of all, this question is based on the assumption that there would be a labour shortage. In fact, adopting the MINO system would represent the largest lay-off in the history of the world. A short list of occupations that would disappear completely would include: banking and credit, stock market trading, billing, sales, insurance, cashiers, real estate, and taxation. MINO would also massively reduce the need for:
1. Health care. The number 1 cause of illness is stress. Other major factors are poor food quality and poverty. The MINO system would eventually eliminate these causes.
2. Policing. Most crime is undertaken solely for profit, ie. theft, fraud, extortion, prostitution, human trafficking, and environmental destruction. The purpose of police should be restricted to preventing coercive abuse of the vulnerable.
3. Advertising. Most of the energy presently devoted to advertising is aimed at manufacturing want for the sake of profit. MINO would reduce advertising to the promotion of group projects.
4. Manufacturing. Manufacturing for profit leads to poor quality goods, wasteful, destructive use of resources, and planned obsolescence. Also, many of the items are neither needed nor truly wanted.
5. War. Regardless of the reasons officially given, wars are almost always fought for profit.
This list is incomplete but substantial. There would be no labour shortage. There would be many things we'd want to change if money were no object, so we'd be busier in the beginning than later on. It's impossible to say what the average service contribution would be, but I would guess about five hours per week or less, and falling over time.

Question- What would motivate people to volunteer for the least pleasant jobs in the absence of money?

Answer- Gratitude would replace financial incentive. In the absence of money, generosity would become the main source of social status. Consider the person who picks up your garbage. Have you ever felt grateful to him/her for his/her service? You probably never have because he/she is receiving a pay cheque. What if he/she was doing it voluntarily? In that case, I expect you would feel very differently. The jobs that are least intrinsically fulfilling would carry the most honour in a MINO economy. I've mostly worked in the hospitality area (cooking, serving, bar tending). The main drawback of that type of work, aside from sore feet and exhaustion due to overwork, is disrespect and mistreatment from customers. If the people I was serving knew that my service was a gift, I doubt that would happen. If I were doing it for 10 hours per week or less, and voluntarily, it wouldn't even feel like work. It would be fun, like hosting a party. This is work I would definitely volunteer for. I'd also make a point of occasionally scheduling myself for one of the grottier jobs because I think it's only fair that I should.

Question- What about scarcity? If demand exceeds supply, and the difference can't be remedied, who gets access?

Answer- This should be determined by each community and case-by-case. For necessities, it would probably be best to ration and/or ask for help from other regions. For non-essentials, raffling might be preferable. In either case, it would be an improvement over the current system where the same people (those with the most money) always have priority access.

I'm sure there are plenty of other questions about MINO. If you think of any, please use the comments area and I, or whoever else wants to, can try to answer.

Benefits of a MINO economy:
1. Quality:
If money is no object, there is no reason to produce poor quality goods and services.
2. Sustainability:
Improvements in quality will reduce waste. Sustainability and quality are intimately connected and profit is the enemy of both. Take food for example. Small, organic farms produce better quality food and can more easily be made fully sustainable. A great number of people dream of such a pastoral lifestyle. The only barrier they now face is financial.
3. Education: This will be one of the main growth areas in a MINO economy. Everyone will have a lot more free time, and the opportunity to share and acquire knowledge and training will be available to all.
4. Social harmony and connection: The MINO system replaces competition with cooperation. MINO also inspires gratitude towards others. When all work is voluntary, it isn't taken for granted, and appreciation is intrinsically fulfilling.
5. Improved health and longevity: When people lead fulfilling lives, free of anxiety, and with strong positive connections to their communities, they are happier and more relaxed. This has huge physical and mental health benefits. Throw in better food and a healthier environment, and throw out the profit motive in medicine, and see what happens.
6. Research and innovation: Imagine if quality, sustainability and social benefit, instead of profit, determined which research and technology received support. Things like free, clean energy and consciousness technologies would advance very quickly. Weapons development would receive little or no public enthusiasm, and so would decline. In the absence of the profit motive, knowledge would be shared instead hoarded.
7. An end to animal cruelty: The only reason to mistreat animals is because it's cheaper that caring for them with compassion.

Why should we not adopt such a system as MINO? All it would demand of us is maturity and trust in one another. If you need coercion in order to function in a socially responsible manner, you have no right to call yourself an adult. Surely being a mature adult means you don't need to be told what to do. If we adopted a MINO economy, or something like it, we could build a civilisation worthy of the name. The timing for this could not be better. In many countries, the average age of the population is rising. This is a problem in a monetary economy, but an advantage in a MINO system, since education and skills training will be some of the biggest growth areas. The monetary economy is likely to catastrophically collapse in the near future. If we start preparing to transition now, we could avoid a great deal of suffering. Every crisis is also an opportunity. We have only to rise to it. What if money were no object? Just imagine.....

Synesthesia

2010-01-11T07:58:00.000-08:00

There is a fascinating "condition" known as synesthesia. Basically, it is where information from one sense, such as hearing, is automatically reiterated by another sense, such as sight. According to the linked article, prevalence of synesthesia is estimated at 1 in 23 people. This is based on self-selection so it's likely higher than that. Studies show that the sensory correlations are not random.

"It was once assumed that synesthetic experiences were entirely different from
synesthete to synesthete, but recent research has shown that there are
underlying similarities that can be observed when large numbers of synesthetes
are examined together. For example, sound-color synesthetes, as a group, tend to
see lighter colors for higher sounds[20] and grapheme-color synesthetes, as a
group, share significant preferences for the color of each letter (e.g., A tends
to be red; O tends to be white or black; S tends to be yellow etc."

The phenomenon of synesthesia isn't that odd if you know that our experienced reality is really the brain's interpretation of a field of pure information made of vibration. Our senses don't perceive different things, but the same "thing" differently interpreted.
Ceremonial magick techniques make use of this by employing artificial synesthetic stimulation. Equivalent images, colours, shapes, numbers, scents and sounds are used to focus consciousness on a specific vibration. Advertising and propaganda use these also. So does Fung Shiu.

As far as I can tell, synesthesia research has only examined the relationship between "physical" senses. I think it also includes much of what we call extrasensory perception. Abilities like clairaudience, psychometry and clairvoyance all manifest through physical senses. Many people are able to see auras and yet the aura is a non-physical energy field. I started wondering about this because when I look at photos or video of certain people (people like Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Kissenger, and most other serial killers) they appear so obviously wrong. Their faces are cruel and insanity glitters behind their eyes. I couldn't stop asking myself how anyone could trust them. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I couldn't be seeing the same thing they're seeing. How common is this? I think it is very common, but most of us take our subtle perceptions for granted if they've always been there.

Some other common examples of subtle/physical synethesia:
Auditory- When listening to a piece of music played with emotion, it isn't unusual to "hear" what the artist was feeling. How can one hear an emotion?
Olfactory- It is a well known fact that certain scents produce emotional responses. It's partly associative but not entirely, since some smells have consistent effects. When I am asked how I knew that my partner was the "right one", smell was the deciding factor. That might sound riddiculous but it's true. It isn't just that he smells glorious. I've smelled glorious before. He smells right, and I can't explain it better than that. I can't even describe the smell itself, since it's not like anything else. I left my previous lover because his smell changed. About a year into the relationship, he started smelling like creamed corn. I'm not a picky eater and I could count the things I won't eat on the fingers of one hand. Creamed corn is one of them. I felt bad about having to do that because he is a lovely person and he didn't understand at all. Honestly, I don't know if this is a subtle/physical cross-over or simple hypersensitivity or both combined.
Tactile- This one is often experienced as "the sense of being stared at". The etheric body responds to touch even when there is no physical contact. Healing touch and some martial arts utilise non-physical touch.

All this would suggest that the distinction between physical senses lies in the mode of perceiving rather that the stimulus itself. Also the line between sensory and extrasensory is more conventional than real. It certainly makes me wonder how different the "worlds" we individually inhabit really are.

I Am Not A Conspiracy Theorist

2009-12-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

How do you feel when you hear the words "conspiracy theorist"? If it is being applied to you, you probably feel dismissed and belittled. If to someone else, you might, even in spite of yourself, think "crazy", "paranoid", "credulous". It's not an accident. Next time you hear those words used in the MSM, listen to the inflection. Can you hear the snearing disgust? It sounds like that "N" word in the mouth of a KKKer. So I am not a conspiracy theorist. I'm just someone who is tired of being lied to. I prefer to be called a truther. My peers are members of the truth movement. I am an optimist, but optimism and denial are two different things. Of course conspiracy exists. What defines conspiracy?
1. More than one person is involved.
2. It is organised.
3. It is secret.
All these defining characteristics are met by TPTB (the powers that be). Take the Bilderberg Group (please), as one of many examples. For years, the MSM denied it's existence. Anyone who mentioned Bilderberg was ridiculed and labelled a conspiracy theorist. Keep in mind that powerful members of the MSM are known to attend. Fortunately, the level of security required for these meetings is impossible to hide. Now the MSM admits that these gatherings do take place. They never admitted lying about it, they just changed their story. Now they assure us that, even though these super-rich and powerful people demand (and get) absolute secrecy while they plan the future of our world, it is nothing to worry about. Completely harmless, and anyone who doubts that is a crazy conspiracy theorist. So your leaders (elected or not) are meeting with representatives of big money power, they are afraid of anyone finding out what is discussed, but you should trust them.
It's not a theory. Anyone who looks at the evidence with an open mind quickly realises this. I've yet to meet anyone who saw the conspiracy and then later decided it was all nonsense after all. Some people do avert their eyes but always because they don't like the way this knowledge makes them feel. They say it's "too negative", NOT that it's false. I have to say, I think this attitude is irresponsible. If your house were burning down with you in it, you'd do yourself no favours by refusing to notice.
There is a fine line between realism and paranoia and we are each responsible for staying on the right side of it. There is disinfo out there. Yes there is. It exists for two main reasons.
1. To discredit and sow doubt in the minds of those who would rather not know the truth. If you are inclined to all-or-nothing, blanket acceptance or rejection, your awareness can be neutralised. It's necessary to be discriminating.
2. To distract us from our real predicament by projecting even worse into the future. It's amazing what people will accept as long as they think it could be worse. It is important from the conspirators' point of view to keep you in fear. People who are not in fear are impossible to control, and no one fears the present. So new, future bogeys must be invented. Some of these would be too risky for TPTB to implement and gain too little. There's really very little left to fear and much to do.
I'm old enough to know that if you told people 30 years ago, what today would be like, you would have been dismissed as way too negative. Most people's standards of living have fallen dramatically. There are countless new restrictions and impositions. First world countries are under massive and growing surveillance. There is no more free press. Governments and regulatory bodies do the will of moneyed interests, not yours. That last sentence is so important. TPTB are ORGANISED. What they want is what we get. None of these changes are by accident, and they are not what most people want.

News flash: The NWO will not be announced on TV. If it ever were, it would be too late to do anything about it. This is good because it's not too late. We are not helpless. It's easy to feel that way, overwhelmed and powerless. It's true, we can't fight them. They have far better weapons. But we can expose them. If enough people just noticed what is going on, it couldn't. We don't even need to fight it, just admit it to ourselves and each other. For a start, let's reject the conspiracy theorist label. I'm a truther. How about you?

Can You Spot The Difference?

2009-12-21T12:23:00.000-08:00

Religion and spirituality, it seems that these two always go together, like peanut butter and jam. You would think they were synonymous. No wonder people are so confused. The two actually have so little in common that they could as easily be seen as opposites. They do share one common feature. They are both ways of responding to the desire for union. We are spiritual beings and so we have this impulse. If I were to suggest a short definition of spirituality it would be this: the process of merging oneself with, by surrendering to, a greater unity, AKA God, AKA Infinite Awareness, AKA Truth. No one can know the path of another. It is a journey, not a guided tour.

It is possible to temporarily sate this desire for union through substitutes. Falling in love is one way. One might also identify with one's nationality or cultural group or even a sports team. We take such pleasure in these things because they allow us to transcend our little ego selves. These are easily seen as substitutions for the ultimate and true Oneness that is the guiding star of the mystic. Religion falls into the same category as these other sops and distractions. It pretends to be what it is not. It claims to deliver what it serves to distract from and prevent.

Occasionally, genuine spiritual seekers will make use of a religion as a mythical narrative to assist their understanding. There is almost no end to the number of stories that could serve this purpose and religious stories aren't really special. Unless these mystics are very discrete, they fall afoul of their own religious authorities in the process. Priests do not approve of this sort of thing. Religions are threatened by any real spiritual progress on the part of their followers. That's because religions are not spiritual paths. They are belief/control systems. Examining and questioning one's beliefs is an essential, important part of any true spiritual path and religions can't have that. It would undermine their power and authority.

You can always spot a religion by it's focus on rewards and punishments, the old carrot and stick. Sometimes it's heaven or hell, sometimes karmic boons or debts. All that is required is belief and obedience. I find such threats and promises inappropriate and offensive. Is union with the divine not considered enough of a prize? Is the experience of separation from It not painful enough?

Morality is whatever the religious authorities tell you it is. You're not supposed to develop the ability to determine it for yourself. You are not qualified. Never mind what you know in your heart. Religion actually destroys our ability to be truly moral by demanding that we choose against what we know to be true. Once again an important aspect of spiritual growth is headed off at the pass. Every time I hear that phrase, religion and spirituality, I have to suppress my gag reflex.

Another case of misrepresentation exists with regards to science. There is confusion always between science and scientism. Again, we have a belief system masquerading as a path to truth. I've actually heard, on more than one occasion, the statement: "As a scientist, I believe...". Real science is an open-minded method of discovery. There is no a priori reason for it to restrict itself to the physical. It's early representatives simply agreed to do so to avoid stepping on religion's toes (for obvious reasons). Scientism is defined by it's belief that matter is the primary reality. There is no evidence that this is so, and plenty to refute it. Refusing to admit the existence of anomalous facts in order to defend one's beliefs is not science. It's pretty much the same as religion. Ironically, this is why religion and scientism will never agree. Science and spirituality already do.

The Future is Now

2009-11-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

One would have to be extremely naive to think that TPTB are not using disinformation techniques to confuse and manipulate those who are trying to expose them. If your bullshit detector is still functioning, you know this. The form of disinfo that is most easily recognised is false information coming from "leaks" who are double agents, or perhaps researchers whose real loyalty is to the control system. There are also subtler forms that are more difficult to see.

I've recently noticed a form of disinformation that consists of getting people to fear what has already occurred. The control system derives a double benefit from this technique. The first benefit consists of being able to prolong a state of fear indefinitely. Once the worst has already happened, fear goes away. Someone who has a terminal illness is no longer afraid of getting sick. A person who's just gone bankrupt is free of the fear of loss. David Icke doesn't worry about being laughed at. Once something has happened, we forget about fear and start thinking about solutions. Certainly, TPTB would want to prevent this. The second benefit of this technique is that it blinds it's victims to their true condition. No one is more truly a slave than one who believes himself free.

For example, there is much information currently circulating about electronic mind-control. I'm not saying the information is false. I don't believe it is false. However, RFID implants, HAARP technology, etc., are the icing on a cake that has already been baked and served. The fact is, those who know about such things are in no real danger from them. I would never allow myself to be chipped and if I heard a voice in my head telling me to "obey", I'd know it wasn't God. The only people for whom these things are a threat are already mind-controlled. The ultimate electronic mind-control device has been in widespread use for several decades. It's called television.

After you've been watching TV for a surprisingly short period of time, your brain starts producing Alpha waves instead of the Beta waves of normal consciousness. You are actually in a hypnotic trance. Then you receive your programs. What you see on TV is controlled by a tiny handful of super-wealthy sociopaths. There is rarely any need for these individuals to directly control the programming. They simply hire underlings who share their point of view. And those underlings hire similar ones, and so on. Sometimes somebody steps out of line, but they are swiftly dealt with (Rosie O'Donnell) and serve as examples for the rest.

TV is full of personalities and content that normalise stupidity, venality, materialism, paranoia and cringing deference to authority. The point is to give the impression that everybody else is like this, so you should be too if you want to fit in and be normal. It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Worst of all are the news programs. The news carries very little, if any, factual information. What there is, is carefully chosen and molded for a desired effect. Most of the content consists of telling you what you should believe, do and buy. All "debate" is circumscribed. It is widely assumed that most research in the field of psychology is pure science or therapeutics. Not so. The vast majority is devoted to advertising and propaganda. We're talking billions, if not trillions of dollars. And all this money was not spent in vain.

TV is the perfect mind-control technology because it is addictive. Once you start watching it, it's very hard to stop. You keep watching even though there's "nothing on". No one has to force you to. People will spend ridiculous amounts of their own money for the privilege. At least some of TV's addictive potential results from commands in the programming. "Stay tuned!" "Don't go away." The most amazing thing, and surely the most wonderful from the point of view of the control system, is that no one seems to notice or care about any of this. If you try to warn people, they just laugh. They don't believe it. Everyone thinks they are immune, but no one really is. TV is what makes all the other assaults on our humanity possible and ultimately, inevitable. The bad news is that electronic mind-control is already here. The good news is that electronic mind-control is already here. We can now stop worrying and start focusing on solutions.

Suggestions for fighting electronic mind-control:
1. Stop watching TV.
-It's not as hard as you think. Just call up the cable company and cancel your service. Sadly, will power isn't usually enough. If you have kids, do it for their sake.
2. Warn others.
-Here are some helpful resources: How Television Affects Your Brain Chemistry, Mind-control Your Thoughts Are Not Your Own, TV Mind-control For Dummies, TV Is Mind-control, The Hypnotic Effects of Television, The Mass Effect, Effects Of TV on the Brain
3. Cultivate a pitying expression for other people whose conversation revolves around TV programs.
-Those who are most affected by TV brainwashing are also very sensitive to the opinions of others. You can help them by refusing to validate their addiction. You could even tell them flat out that you choose not to engage in a co-dependent relationship. Humour always works better than preaching.

The Mind Killer

2009-11-23T08:03:00.000-08:00

There is fear, and then there is fear. English is funny that way. I am constantly amazed at the way English manages to have so many words and yet be so frustratingly imprecise. Consider words like "love", "God", "soul", "self", "ego", etc. All have so many different meanings that we can't even coherently discuss them without first agreeing on a definition. If this time-consuming step is omitted, our conversations become incoherent and circular. English doesn't seem to have been designed for thinking about immaterial realities. Maybe that's why the control system prefers it.

"Fear" is yet another example of an overburdened word. In one sense it refers to an instinctive function: the "fight or flight" response. This is animal fear. The statement, "fear is your friend" relates to this definition. This is the kind of fear that helps you survive. It mobilises your resources in response to real threats. This kind of fear makes you hyper-alert and responsive. If we act on this natural type of fear, it quickly subsides. If we don't, or can't, the result is stress.

A second definition refers to egoic fear. Animals never experience this unless they are socially bonded with humans. Worry, dread and shame are examples of egoic fear. This kind of fear is not your friend. The statement, "fear is the opposite of love," relates to this definition. The easiest way to spot the difference is by noticing the effects. Egoic fear is characterised by mental confusion and paralysis. It is far more likely to get you killed than help you survive. Acting on egoic fear doesn't make it go away, it only makes it stronger. From here on, in this post, I'm going to be using the second definition.
Some pertinent questions spring to mind. Where does this fear come from? What is it's purpose? How can it be dealt with? I'm going to suggest answers to all of these. If anyone has alternative explanations, I sincerely welcome them. Normally, I go out of my way to qualify my statements to avoid implying certainty when I'm discussing a theory. Please be on notice that I intend to drop this policy for the sake of brevity. However, what I'm about to say is still theory. It remains open to being revised or disproved.
1. Where does fear come from?
Humans exist in symbiotic relationship with parasitic entities. They hide their presence from us by pretending to be us. They refer to themselves as "I" and they are what I've been calling "false ego", or sometimes just "ego". (I'm aware that the word "ego" also refers to one's individuality, but I'm not using it in that sense.) Fear could be called the aura of the parasite. It is it's natural vibrational state. The entity derives all it's energy from the awareness of it's host. It feeds itself by inducing it's host to attend to it's vibration and give it their energy. The more it succeeds in doing this, the stronger it becomes.
2. What is fear's purpose?
From the perspective of the entity, the purpose of fear is to generate a food source. From the perspective of the human host, it is to provide us with an challenge. We can make a useful analogy with a computer game. The game provides the player with an opponent and the point is to overcome the opponent and win the game. In the process we develop knowledge and powers that we didn't have before. The opponent is designed and programmed to try to beat you in whatever way it can. A really good game adversary will even have the ability to learn from what you do, and adapt it's strategy to yours. The entities behave in exactly this way. Understanding this allows one to play to win without resenting the adversary.
3. How can it be dealt with?
The number one strategy of the entity is inducing you to identify with it. So the most effective counter-strategy is disidentification. This is easier once you learn to spot the difference between a natural fear response (fight or flight) and that caused by the entity's presence. When you sense the presence of fear, ask yourself how it feels. Does it sharpen you up, make you hyper-alert and ready for action? If the answer is no, you are dealing with the entity. The entity will try to trick you by providing you with a "hook" to hang it's fear on. It knows that humans will instinctively try to make sense of their experience. We want the fear to have a reason and we're not that picky about what it is. This is how irrational prejudices and phobias are born. Realise that the fear is not yours. The presence of fear is an indication that the entity feels threatened and/or hungry. It means you're winning the game. It helps to remind yourself of this.
The above counter-strategy will be effective if you can also refrain from getting angry and resentful. Angry resentment is very close to fear in a vibrational sense. So it's important to remember that your adversary is only doing what it was designed and programmed to do. It isn't connected to Source like you are. The entities are like the agents in "The Matrix", semi-sentient programs. You are the one who agreed to play the game and you were given an opponent worthy of your potential. Do you really want to play with an opponent who just lets you win and doesn't even try to beat you?
One other thing. Be patient. You're not going to win every skirmish. Anyone who's been lucky enough to learn chess from a master knows, you almost never win... at first. If you ever want to be as good as your opponent, you'll have to put up with getting beat over and over and over again. It's the same with video games. No one expects to succeed on the first try. That's just the way it is, and that's the way we wanted it. So try not to get discouraged by an initial lack of success. Ability comes from practice and every failure has a lesson to teach.

Bad Dreams

2009-11-19T10:03:00.000-08:00

I keep coming across people who believe that Jose Arguelles' Dreamspell calendar is the sacred calendar of the Maya. It's not. The Mayan sacred calendar is a continuously repeating cycle of 260 days, called the Tzolkin. The Quiche Maya of Guatemala have kept the count accurately to this day. This has been confirmed by independent correlation with historical texts. The Tzolkin is an important part of the Maya's spiritual heritage. I have greatly benefited from their wisdom. It angers me to see their traditions abused.

Then along comes Arguelles, who claims to be the reincarnation of a priest called Pacal Votan. He invents his own calendar system, the Dreamspell, and claims that it is Mayan and that it is symbolically meaningful. It isn't. He utilises the Tzolkin glyphs and assigns them meanings that are recognisably derived from traditional sources. This has resulted in massive confusion. I don't have a problem with Arguelles inventing a new calendar. I do have a problem with his theft and misuse of the Tzolkin symbols. I really have tried to cut him some slack and not condemn his actions unfairly. But it is undeniable that he has profited from the misrepresentation of an indigenous sacred tradition and the credulity of a bunch of new age flakes. He has failed, if he even tried, to rectify the situation.

Intuitively, I sense that the Dreamspell is actually harmful in a vibrational sense. It carries and manifests the energy of it's inventor's egomania. This energy affects those who follow and promote it. Followers of the Dreamspell often become very attached to their "galactic signatures", to the point where they are willing to defend it over the true sacred cycle. It seems to have acquired some sort of vibrational power from the mental energy of it's followers. This accumulated power holds those who use it in a deviant egoic pattern. If you have been sucked into this vortex, I would strongly recommend that you withdraw your energy from it. There is no shame in having been lied to, only in defending the lie after it has been exposed.

Links:
The Hidden Agenda of the Dreamspell calendar
The Key to Dreamspell
The Mayan Tzolkin Count Or The Dreamspell
How and Why Was Arguelles Dreamspell Calendar Invented?

Global Asylum

2009-11-16T08:12:00.000-08:00

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

I know what you're all probably thinking. How does 13 Muluc manage to be so totally sane? LOL. Seriously though, don't we all think we're the sanest person on the planet, or at least in the top 10? The sad truth is that almost no one really is. I'm not. Nor are you. There are probably a few enlightened beings floating around who are. Maybe we could have been sane, if things had been different. As it is, the best we can hope for is to be moving in the right general direction. In practice, it is more useful to think of sanity as a continuum, rather than a category. At least then we can avoid the trap of prematurely congratulating ourselves.
The trouble is, insanity is contagious. If you are insane, your kids are nearly certainly going to be insane as well. Not only that, but their craziness is going to resemble or compliment your own. In this way, whole civilisations can go mad and hardly anyone notices.
It's a pickle because, if you live in an insane society, any progress towards sanity renders you maladaptive. It doesn't matter who is nuttier than who as far as quality of life is concerned. Most parents want their children to have a good and comfortable life. Naturally, they see it as their duty to drive their children insane in the socially approved manner. All kinds of help and encouragement are available to this end. The current form of collective madness has been growing and spreading for at least 3,000 years. It's means of transmission has been thoroughly developed and institutionalised. It now needs very little effort to maintain. All you have to do is keep your head down and follow the herd.

The system is effective but not perfect. Sometimes procedures are incorrectly followed and you end up with the wrong kind of crazy. This isn't really a problem for the system, since these unfortunates serve as cautionary tales for the majority. I know a few people like this. One is called Gerard. I knew him when he used to be fairly normal. In his mid thirties he became schizophrenic. Like most people, he believes things that can't possibly be true. The difference is that he can't get anyone to agree with him. I used to have coffee with him fairly often when I lived in the Davie Village area. He would always show me pieces of costume jewelery that he found in the trash. He always insisted that they were extremely valuable. I recall one ring in particular. According to Gerard, it was a ten carat diamond, set in platinum, and dating from ancient Egypt. There's no point in arguing about it. He claims to be an expert on such things. As an ironic aside, I recently met a well-known gold prospector from the Yukon. He mentioned in conversation that he had lost a solid gold nugget ring. He said that, if someone were to find it in a dumpster, they probably wouldn't know what it was worth. I hope Gerard finds it.
I know another man named Chucky. He is convinced that he is the illegitimate love child of Queen Elizabeth II. I told him that he was way too good-looking to be descended from those freaks, but his conviction is unshakable. Chucky is a really sweet guy, and remarkably lucid on most other topics. He could probably pass for normal if he'd lose the overflowing shopping cart and stop smiling so much. But he can't seem to help bringing up the subject of his parentage in any conversation lasting more than a few minutes.
Normal people usually avoid guys like Gerard and Chucky. They are seen as dangerous and unpredictable, possibly contagious. In reality, they're no less predictable than most people, on their own terms. Most schizophrenics aren't dangerous, far less so than sociopaths. Yet sociopaths make up the majority of world leaders and power brokers, and no one bats an eye. On closer inspection, fixed and irrational beliefs are the norm rather than the exception. How is it possible for people to believe in democracy, when we all know that governments are controlled by those with the most money? How can anyone believe the official story of 911, when there is such a mountain of evidence against it? Are these not examples of fixed and irrational beliefs? Are those who subscribe to them any more open to reason? The hell they are. The one and only difference is consensus. No wonder the schizophrenic is so feared and unpopular.
And then there's us, the ones who've figured out that we're living in an asylum and want out. We've learned to recognise one another without attracting too much unwanted attention from the other inmates. We've given up on the Doctors. They're not there to heal anyone. They just want to manage our symptoms so they can stay in charge. The exits have been locked and mislabelled. But we will find them. We will pick their locks or break them down. And one day soon, we will breathe the air of sanity and freedom. Oh yeah, and we're also going to leave the door open when we leave.

Faith

2009-10-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

"Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd."
William Blake.

Faith is a powerful thing. Spiritual growth beyond a certain point would be impossible without it. You know if you have it, but it's hard to define. According to my dictionary and a selection of philosophers and theologians, it is practically synonymous with belief. For me, faith means something else. Since it is the only word I have for this something, I want to try to redeem it from this inaccurate association.
Belief will happily masquerade as faith, but it is not faith. It is especially wrong to apply the word to specific beliefs, such as religious dogmas. All beliefs are of the mind. Faith is of the heart. Faith is the mother of courage, the antidote to fear. Faith is the power that ignites the heart of a star. It is a guide and a shield. It is widely agreed that faith cannot stand alone. It must have some object. For myself, there is only one object worthy of faith, and that is Truth itself. Many say that Love is the highest ideal. They are not wrong, but Truth also covers Love, if Love be true. It is easy enough to believe in a false love, conditional, grasping, enslaving "love". If this be the case, only Truth can reveal it. Having made Truth the object of faith, the error of confusing faith with belief is obvious. In the pursuit of Truth, doubt become good and necessary. Every belief is a phantom, blocking one's view. One who refuses to doubt, ie. the "true believer", has no real faith. Paradox. Gotta love it.

The decision to put my faith in Truth means that Truth is worth more to me than any lie, no matter how comforting that lie. I am aware that my limited human consciousness is incapable of ever grasping Truth in it's wholeness. That's okay since my human consciousness is really an aspect of a greater unity that can and does know it. It is it. Even if I can't fully know it, I certainly can increase my knowledge and understanding of it. It seems the only way to do this is to expose every lie and see what remains. As the grime of falseness is washed away, Truth is gradually revealed. The entire process is an unlearning. It might be nice if Truth could be taught, but it can't. There is no such thing as spiritual teaching. Words have no power to teach, only to reflect. They can only be understood by one who already knows. Actually, religions are the enemies of Truth, because they are purveyers of belief. They lie when they call themselves "faiths".

Lost In Translation (part 2)

2009-10-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

Each evolutionary advance involves acquiring a new kind of language. The new linguistic form has it's roots in, overlaps and transcends those that preceded it. A more advanced type of language is incomprehensible to a less advanced one. I have often felt frustrated by the fact that "history" begins after our last major evolution, the invention of writing. If only we could remember what happened then, maybe we could make sense of where we are now. I don't think it is a coincidence that the "world" coming to a close in 2012, according to the long count calendar, began in 3114 BC. This is right in the middle of the time period when writing began to appear all over the world. Prior to this time, there was no history. The spoken accounts that were recorded shortly after that transition sound like myths. We are told that humans were taught writing by "gods". I don't think they were being deliberately mysterious or lying. I think they lacked the language to describe what had happened. It's interesting that remote viewers and precognitive claim to be unable to see past 2012. If that date corresponds to the acquisition of a new type of language, we wouldn't be able to understand it from where we are now.

From our current standpoint, we can only speculate about the actual experience of an earlier linguistic stage. Each child passes through these stages, but within the context of a literate society, so exact parallels cannot be drawn. It is a pretty safe guess that preliterate humans did not have our modern sense of individuality. The archaeological evidence shows that they lacked any awareness of social status and were very peaceful. Imperialism and war did not exist. So they probably didn't make a clear distinction between themselves and their social context. Prior to written language, people would have had no way of understanding their own psyches. I suspect that most psychic content was externalised. The "gods" of preliterate people may have been ETs, or not, but they were identified with what are now known as archetypes. The characteristics assigned to them were very consistent, even equivalent, in widely separated cultures. After the invention of writing, the "gods" were gradually internalised.

Our experience of time seems to be undergoing a similar process. The language of sensation knows nothing of time. Everything happens now. There is no past or future. Spoken language allows for a vague awareness of past and future, but precise chronology is still absent. Preliterate people don't seem to have cared when or in what order anything happened. Even after the introduction of writing, but before widespread literacy, this is still in evidence. Artwork of the medieval period depicts biblical scenes that represent the clothing and architecture of the period in which it was produced. There is no attempt at historical accuracy. Nowadays, we would consider it bizarre in the extreme to represent J.C. and the apostles in modern dress. After literacy, time becomes more and more specific. We experience it as an objective, linear progression and are able to locate ourselves precisely within it. We've taken the measurement of time to it's extreme limits. We now employ timelines that go back to the big bang itself, and scales of time measurement too small to even experience directly. Time and space are a matched set, and sure enough, spacial awareness has developed in parallel. Modern spacial measurement ranges from light years to the scale of the electron. Spacetime has now been fully externalised, just as the "gods" were at an earlier stage.

The acquisition and development of linguistic forms is symbolically reflected in brain development. Each of us passes through all these stages. Newborn babies are restricted to the language of sensation, which is processed by the R-complex and limbic system. The next brain structure to come online is the right brain. The mind of a toddler is wholly subjective. Preliterate children are highly imaginative and make little distinction between "fantasy" and "reality". Symbolic language has it's roots in right brain cognition, but it is little developed at this stage. It expresses itself through art. (No language is ever fully lost, but continues to evolve alongside newer forms.) With written language, the abilities of the left brain are accessed and begin to dominate awareness. Note the phonetic and visual similarity between the words "literate" and "literal". Left brain language is binary. It's the same as computer language, 0s and 1s, either-or, A-not A. Left brain cognition manifests the inner/outer split. It creates a dual world, divided into subjective and objective realities. This perception is reinforced by the conventions of verbal language, especially by our use of pronouns. It is now common to experience ourselves as totally separate from the world, in it but not of it. The inner/outer split results in a distortion of perception. This limitation can only be overcome by integrating the functions of the twin lobes. This occurs through the agency of the corpus callosum, possibly in concert with some other structure.

The symbol associated with the Ajna chakra, or Third Eye, looks like this:
This image could been seen as the left and right brain hemispheres, united by a third structure. Full activation of this energy center results in clairvoyance and telepathic ability. This could constitute the transcendence (internalisation) of spacetime.

The language we use both reflects and conditions our experience of "reality". More and more, I find myself fumbling around with a language that is unwieldy and insufficient to describe my experience. The trouble lies mainly with the inner/outer split that it assumes. I looked up the word "objective" in my dictionary and found this definition: existing independently of mind, or individual perception. There was a time when that statement would not have made me laugh. It perfectly sums up the limitations of binary language. It reflects a belief that no longer holds sway for me.

Once upon a time, everyone considered religious texts to be literally true. Now, a significant number of people are able to understand them metaphorically. Once this transition has occurred, the former conception appears ridiculous, laughable. The texts themselves are carriers of information. The information (interesting word that, in-formation) is real. Interpreting it metaphorically doesn't make it unreal. If anything, it it makes it more real because it is more correctly understood. Many people, myself included, are undergoing a similar transition with regards to "objective reality". We are beginning to realise that a metaphorical interpretation of it is more appropriate than a literal one. The "outer" world is increasingly seen as a reflection, a magic mirror. The separation of inner and outer is an illusion. In fact, they are one reality, seen from two perspectives. As the functions of the brain hemispheres become unified, verbal language, with it's binary bias, can no longer represent our experienced reality. I have to constantly resist the urge to place all references to "objective" reality in quotation marks, to indicate their metaphorical status.

How can I be sure that what I'm experiencing isn't just my personal descent into insanity? I'm fully aware that, to someone still trapped in binary language, I must sound totally nuts. That can't be helped. However, I'm also pretty certain that plenty of other people know exactly what I'm trying to say, and are having just as much trouble expressing it. I know this because I'm learning to read the "signs". Probably the most obvious of these signs is the explosion of synchronistic experience. Synchronicity is the experienced unification of inner meaning and outer reflection. Even if the meaning is not understood, it is always felt to be present. I see synchronicity as an early sign of left/right brain integration. When "objective" reality is perceived to be reflected and symbolic in the same way that dream reality is, other signs of this shift become visible. I see our technologies as external reflections of inner developments. The invention and rise of the Internet is one of these. There are indications of the development of an inner Internet (Hypernet?). On the plane of physical reality, our brains may be responding to the ubiquitous presence of information-carrying waves by learning to access them directly. I've noticed (and I'm not the only one who has) that I am increasingly able to access a field of information that spontaneously "downloads" knowledge. I don't know how or why, but the information appears to be time specific. Everyone who can link with this Hypernet is getting very similar information more or less simultaneously. I think the Hypernet is connected to the phenomenon of viral synchronicity. Some synchronistic experiences are related to themes that spread like wildfire. An example of this is the 11:11 time prompt. It's hard to remember just when it started (late '90s I think), but huge numbers of people started to notice it without any direct contact with each other. I still recall my amazement when I first googled 11:11 and realised how widespread it was. Anyone who has been paying attention to synchromystic themes knows that this sort of viral spread is far from uncommon. I think it very likely that 11:11, as well as other viral synchs and the crop-circle glyphs may be untranslatable "words" in a future, trans verbal language. This emerging linguistic form will allow for a massive increase in information processing. It is absolutely no exaggeration to say that, once this new form of language has been learned, our reality, our "world", will be utterly transformed. In a surprisingly short time, no one will remember what our present world was like.

Lost In Translation (part 1)

2009-09-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about language and how it conditions consciousness. I've also been thinking about evolution, what it is and how it works. I've come to the conclusion that the story of evolution is the story of language. I'm using the word language in a broad sense to mean: a medium or carrier of information. Evolution has nothing to do with survival. If it did, we would have to rate humans as one of the least evolved species on Earth. Cockroaches, amoeba, and bacteria are all better at surviving than we are. No, evolution is about the capacity to acquire, transmit and utilise information.

The language common to most living things is that of sensation. Our senses allow us to receive and transmit information. When you sit and converse with a friend across your kitchen table, it isn't just words being used. You are seeing your friend's posture, expressions and gestures. You are hearing the tone, emphasis, volume and rhythm of his voice. Through your sense of smell, you are picking up subtle chemical signals that tell you about his health and emotional state. If he touches you, you would know even more. So if the two of you just sat there holding hands, you would be communicating.

Speech is actually a hybrid of sensational and verbal language. The language of sensation is confined to percepts. Spoken language allows for information of a new and expanded type. It incorporates concepts. With speech, we can convey information about things not present within the field of sensation. Speech lets us partially transcend time and space. We can talk about what was, and is no more. We can make plans. We can pass on messages though intermediaries. We can make up and tell stories. We can name the objects of our experience. The names are still tied to sensation though. They have a real vibrational connection to the realities they represent. That's why the sound of equivalent words from unconnected languages are often very similar. The subconscious mind cannot distinguish between words that sound the same. For this reason, the word "want" should not be used in affirmations or magick (unless you want want).

Writing leaves sensation in the dust. Written language allows for another expansion of information. It further transcends the limitations of time and space. Language is intimately tied to our perception of time. I'll come back to that. Now we can read the exact words of someone long dead or thousands of miles away. The invention of writing marks the beginning of history, as compared to myth. Most of the institutions of civilisation and all of our advanced technologies were made possible by written language. Philosophies and ideologies also depended on this development for their existence. It is nearly impossible to overstate the effect of writing on consciousness.

The development of written language has been problematic in a number of ways. It has made it possible to lie to ourselves and each other. Just try lying to your dog. Our heavy reliance on it has impaired our ability to understand the language of sensation. So, while it permits access to new kinds of information, our sensational awareness has atrophied and been greatly reduced. This sensory disconnect has also resulted in our confusing of words with the things they refer to. We tend to think we know the objects of experience because we know their names. As a result, we really don't know them at all. In the graphic novel series, "The Invisibles, Entropy In The UK" by Grant Morrison (thanks again, Ben), one of the Invisibles is given a drug called Key 17. It forces his mind to perceive any written words to be literal reality. Written language actually does have this effect on our minds. The difference is one of degree. For example, almost everybody knows that the day/night cycle is due to the revolution of the Earth, not the movement of the Sun. However, that is not what we experience. Now consider how we describe it. We say, "the Sun rises" "the Sun sets". How different would our perception be if we said, "I approach the Sun" "I move away from the Sun". And what about those objects of experience that have no names? George Orwell, in "1984", describes a "development" of verbal language called "Newspeak". The purpose of Newspeak was to reduce the ability of people to think, by shrinking the vocabulary they could access.

Written language relies heavily on left-brain cognition. A parallel type of language that is utilised by the right-brain is symbolism. There is a large area of overlap between verbal and symbolic language. Poetry, fictional writing and films, cultural references, and unfortunately, advertising, occupy this area. Whereas speech is derived directly from the sense of hearing, and writing (while read with the eyes) is phonetic (therefore still based on sound), symbolism is mostly visual. Sound occupies a lower frequency range than light, so we would expect symbolic language to be capable of carrying far more concentrated information than verbal language, and so it is. A picture is worth a thousand words. I used to work as a professional diviner. I read Tarot cards, Runes and astrological charts. All these are symbolic languages. Understanding the meaning of the symbols was the easy part; translation was often a problem. In many cases, the gulf could only be partially bridged by relying on metaphors and stories, word pictures. I know for a fact that symbolic language allows one to entertain concepts for which there are no words. If sensational language is pre-verbal, symbolism is, to some extent, trans-verbal. It allows for much greater connectedness of ideas. Words are confined to carrying relatively specific and finite information; but the realities that symbols refer to are like vast webs that branch out and spread , combining and interacting with other symbolic realities. Mathematics is a symbolic language. It is not fully translatable into words.

To be continued...

Something

2009-09-23T18:00:00.000-07:00

My life has been pretty chaotic lately. Externally, the building where I live is undergoing extensive repairs to it's foundation. It's been jack hammers, concrete drills and skill saws 12 hours a day, since mid-July. It's supposed to be over by the end of November (fingers crossed). It's been difficult to think clearly, much less write. The outer world is of course a reflection of the inner. The two are like a Rossetta stone, the same information in different "languages". My consciousness has been undergoing a corresponding foundational reorganisation. More on that in a bit....

Reverse-engineering the Apocalypse

2009-08-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I entertain myself by envisioning scenarios in which the light triumphs over the darkness. I imagine different ways it might play out. The time we are living in has been prophesied about for thousands of years. It is forecasted to be beyond "interesting". Intuitively, I sense that it's resolution will have to do with a certain myth relating to prophesy. There are several versions of this myth from many different times and places. It goes like this:
1. A prophesy is made.
2. Someone hears the prophesy who wishes that it not be fulfilled.
3. That person takes action to prevent the predicted fate.
4. The attempt to thwart the prophesy is the means by which it is fulfilled.

One example of this myth is the story of the servant who meets Death in the Baghdad market place. He sees Death gesturing at him. The servant panics, runs home, and begs his master to lend him his horse so he can ride far away to Samarra. Later, the master visits the market himself and also sees Death. He asks Death why he had frightened his servant. Death replies that he didn't mean to frighten the man. He was just surprised to see the servant in the market when he knew they had an appointment later in Samarra.
The myth of Oedipus follows this pattern also, as do the biblical stories of the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod, and of the events surrounding the early life of Moses. The fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty contains elements of this as well.
What these stories and others are really about is fate. Fate is a concept that has fallen out of favour in modern times. I suspect this is related to the suppression of the feminine in our culture (fate is always female in mythology). It is my understanding that fate does exist. Not everything is fated, but some things are. I consider it a protective fail-safe that ensures that events planned by the universal intelligence or by the soul prior to incarnation will occur. If fate did not exist, there could be no prophesy. In some cases the reverse is also true. In the above stories, we see how prophesy acts as fate's servant, ensuring it's fulfillment. Fate cannot be tricked; it foresees all.
There are parallels to this in our present situation. We are scheduled for a planetary rebirth, an evolutionary leap. This is fate, so it's going to happen no matter what. There are certain factions on the planet who are doing their very best to make sure this doesn't happen. My intuition tells me that their own actions will help to bring about the shift. I suspect they will go too far and expose themselves. It may be they've already done so. This ties in with the literal meaning of "apocalypse" which is "revealing". What would happen if the Illuminati were caught on video doing something so shockingly heinous that it could not be suppressed or explained away? Perhaps a really devastating security breach at a Bilderberg gathering? Videotape evidence of the pedophilia parties attended by the rich and powerful? Or maybe the ET presence and long time cover-up becomes irrefutable fact? My partner, God I Am, thinks it will be the swine flu plan that will back-fire and bring them down. The possibilities are legion. Their arrogance has already made them careless and they have plenty of rope with which to hang themselves. I'm putting my money on fate.

"Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "2012"...

2009-08-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

In order to make sense of the 2012 phenomena, it helps to understand how we construct our experience of reality. The dream state offers useful parallels. In the dreaming state, we construct a personal symbolic world. This world is a reflection of our inner reality. The subconscious mind represents our inner state as an external world and even peoples it with "others", who are really aspects of ourselves. In this way, the subconscious allows us to process information that we have trouble making conscious.

In some ways, waking life is similar. It is a mistake to assume that the world we perceive is the same as what actually exists. It is our mind's interpretation of vibrational signals. Not all of these signals are accessible to our senses, since they lie outside the frequency range that our senses can access. The mind also edits the signals it receives. It does this to avoid information overload and to maintain our fixed beliefs. This editing can result in serious distortions of objective reality. Like the dream state, the waking state reflects inner content by means of symbolism. It does this on both personal and collective levels. We experience this as synchronicity, fateful encounters, accidents or illness arising from psycho-emotional conflict, mind over matter, etc.. 2012 is a symbolic attractor, thrown up by the collective subconscious. The specific date does not matter in the way you might think. It's purpose is to make conscious what we have repressed and provide us with a collective focal point. There is a clue to this realisation in the suspiciously long list of potential or expected catastrophes in our near future:
Economic collapse
Overpopulation
Environmental degradation
Nuclear war
Peak oil
Unintended results of technology, such as health problems due to GMOs and EMF pollution, run-away nanotechnology, LHC black holes, ionospheric disruption due to HAARP
Climate change
World-wide revolution/social collapse
NWO global fascism
Earth changes, such as earthquakes, tsunamis and floods, super-volcano eruptions
Mass extinction
Plague
Impact from space objects
Massive solar flares
Pole shift
Radiation burst from galactic center
Singularity
Armageddon
Return of, or invasion by negative ETs
Many are also predicting more positive, but still enormous changes:
Evolution of our species
Planetary ascension
Positive ET contact.
All of these scenarios represent big changes. Their convergence on this time is no coincidence. All of us are sensing, either subconsciously or intuitively, that everything is about to change. We know in our guts that transformation is both inevitable and necessary. Different individuals perceive these changes in whatever way corresponds to their inner feelings about this change. Some are afraid of what is coming and feel helpless in the face of it. Of these people, some envision disaster and some take refuge in denial. Others understand the necessity of change. Of these, some are optimistic about our ability to respond, but others feel despair. In the next few paragraphs, I look more closely at these different attitudes.

Many envision the approaching changes as catastrophes beyond their control. If you are anticipating the literal "end of the world", it is because you refuse to admit the necessity for inner transformation. You are projecting it outside yourself as a way of refusing responsibility. I wish I could say that your attitude is harmless, but it isn't. You are contributing to the fear vibration. This makes positive change more difficult for us all. Those who respond in this way are often attached to the status quo. Those who own and control the main-stream media fall into this group. That's why 2012 is always presented in a fearful, negative way on TV and in movies. The Mayan prophesy does not predict the end of the world, but the end of a world. Main-stream accounts never mention the fact that this "world" began in 3114 BC. So what is ending and/or being transformed, is what began then. The fact that the forces of stagnation and tyranny view 2012 as a disaster, should be cause for optimism.

Some who are not prepared to accept responsibility for change, respond with denial. "Nothing will happen", they say. Some go so far as to insist that our near future will be much the same as today. This is the sole impossible scenario. Change is the only constant in this universe. You would have to be amnesiac, or very young, to not see that huge changes have already occurred over the recent past, and that change is accelerating. Most who subscribe to this view don't believe that nothing will change, but that nothing fundamental will change. However, if nothing fundamental changes, there will be consequences. These consequences are not far off and they will be the cause of major changes. We are rapidly approaching the natural limits of both natural resources and the planet's ability to absorb our pollution and abuse. On the economic front, collapse is immanent. The system has intrinsic flaws that render it unsustainable. You cannot have continuous growth on a finite planet. The system is also based on debt which can never be repaid. Up till now, the result has been a rapidly widening income gap as all the real wealth in the world is sucked to the top. This cannot continue without total social disintegration. This has been happening for some time already and is very close to boiling point. The only way to temporarily fend off total failure of the system, will be to give power to create global currency to the IMF or the Bank for International Settlements. Please research the policies and past behavior of these organisations. If they are given this power, things will change dramatically. Unless you are very well positioned financially and lack all compassion for your fellow humans, you will not like the results. Our economic system has other, deeper flaws. They are philosophical rather than structural. These involve distortion of value, as well as a perversion of the purpose of society and individual persons. These flaws will lead to social tension. Those who are charged with "maintaining order" will continue to remove and violate basic rights and freedoms. Either global fascism or the fall of the present system is inevitable in the near future. Also, in case you missed the news coverage, a global pandemic is expected to occur this fall and winter. It is predicted to result in millions of deaths. It will affect your world. Make no mistake. This is your future if "nothing happens".

Some of us do accept responsibility for our situation. We see the necessity for change. We know that surface changes will not be enough. It is going to take a revisioning of our purpose, individually and collectively. Old and discredited paradigms of reality must fall and be replaced with truer conceptions. We are commited to this work because we know what is at stake. It is nothing less than the evolution or devolution (possibly extinction) of our species. It is a species with nearly infinite potential for greatness.

Sadly, many of those who accept responsibility for where we are, don't believe they can do anything about it. They sit on the fence. "I can't do anything by myself, little me. I'll wait and see what everybody else does." Most of these people believe that 2012 is something that will happen to them, or not. If this is what you are thinking, the following is going to sound harsh but you need to hear it. The German people, during WWII, refused to see what they prefered not to see. Some of them did see, but closed their hearts to their fellow humans. Do you think they should have acted differently? What would they have needed to do, to put a stop to the Nazi insanity? In the end, they were not prepared to do what they knew was right. Why? Because nobody else did. They are no different from you. Your inner intention and commitment affect everybody else. Check your experience. Have you ever been part of a group that has gathered for the purpose of sharing and raising consciousness? You feel different. Things seem possible, that didn't before. The sooner individual members of humanity commit to evolution, the sooner our insanity can end. At some point, this group will get off the fence together. This will be felt all over the world.

Some are afraid to hope, for fear of disappointment or failure. Do you think that if you commit to voluntary evolution, you will expend your energy with no guarantee of reward? You are caught in illusion. It is not "your" energy that needs expending. It is love, that needs to flow through an open heart. The experience of being a channel for this flow is a far greater reward than any other. From this perspective, giving and receiving are one. When you open your heart, there will be some sadness as well. You will feel with the many who suffer. When this happens, remember; your willingness to feel this is what will end it. Before you fall in love, you don't know if it will work. You could be badly hurt. Do you then never love because you might be disappointed? You might, but that would be pathetic. No, usually you take a chance because the possibilities are so compelling. What stands to be gained or lost by all of us, in the near future, is far more than a happy or failed love affair. If we don't even try, we will certainly fail. That would be pathetic.

2012 stands as a strange attractor in our near future. Listen to your intuition. It's not about what will happen. It's about what you will choose.

The seeds have fallen from heaven,

and sleep in the earth,

waiting for spring.

Free Will

2009-08-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

What is free will? Some say it defines a human being. Others claim it is an illusion. The more I think about it, the more I realise that everything depends on the definition of a human being. In other words, we must first know what we mean by "I". In earlier posts, I have written about the two "I"s: If Thine I Be Single and Is It I? To sum up, my observations have led me to conclude that there are two distinct entities that refer to themselves as "I". One is the spiritual Self and the other is the (false) ego.
The aims and characteristics of these two are so contradictory that they can't both be "I". One of them must be an illusion or an impostor. Both have their philosophical defenders. The camp that claims that the ego is the real I, are the Social Darwinists, behaviorists, etc.. These people insist that all our thinking and behavior is predictable if the causes are known. They refer to the ego's characteristics (such as greed, aggression, etc.) as "human nature". The spiritual Self is claimed to be imaginary, a psychological defence against the fear of death, or a way to cope with suffering.

Those taking the other view, that the spiritual Self is the true "I", are the spiritual teachers, mystics, shamans, etc. They base their assertion on direct personal experience. It is impossible to offer proof to one who has not had this experience, and yet it's truth is undeniable to one who has. In general, this group has not done an adequate job of accounting for the ego's existence, except to say that it allows for "free will". In "Is It I?"(see link above), I examined the predation theory. This theory is based on a particular interpretation of Gnostic teachings as well as "the topic of topics" according to the Yaqui sorcerer, Don Juan. This constitutes a better model of the observed facts than any other I have come across.

An assumption is often made that free will has something to do with choice. I think this is an illusion and a red herring. The appearance of choice is a result of flawed perception. From the point of view of the Self, there are no choices to be made. The Self doesn't need to weigh it's options. It doesn't need to think or make plans. It simply acts according to it's nature, which is Love. The false ego seems to make lots of choices, but they are not really choices, they are calculations and strategies. It's "choice" will always be a result of it's programmed beliefs. Someone who knew what these beliefs were would be able to predict it's "choice" every time. It simply acts according to it's nature, which is Fear. So it's not about choice, it's about awareness.

The false ego doesn't even want to be free. It wants to be in control. Being in control is not the same as being free because the controller is bound to that which he controls. Control is the opposite of freedom. The ego can never be free in an absolute sense. This is because it is defined by it's separateness. From it's point of view, it is only free to the extent that it is in control as opposed to being controlled. In the world of the ego, coercion is a given. So from the ego's perspective, "free will" can only mean the freedom to control, which is oxymoronic nonsense.

An analysis of freedom and coercion would be incomplete without including the subject of money. One of the accepted definitions of "free" is "not costing money".
Anything valued in monetary terms is not free because it can be owned. Also it's value becomes both relative and finite. If a person is valued in monetary terms, he is not free. He becomes a commodity to be bought and sold. This might seem like stating the obvious but it (if it's truth is clearly seen), has serious implications for "civilisation" as we know it. Money is, and can only be, a technology of coercion. To attempt to build a just and moral society based on money is akin to trying to bake a cake with a hammer.

Freedom can only exist for the Self. From it's point of view, it is absolutely free, always has been, always will be. Because it is all that is, there is nothing that could control it and nothing that it must control. It is what is, regardless of whether it is known. So it isn't a matter of the Self gaining freedom, it is already free. It is a matter of the Self knowing what freedom is. In order for anything to be known, contrast is required. The true thing must cast a shadow, that which is not, in order for it to know what is. The ego is this shadow. The process doesn't end here. There is an experience beyond knowledge, called understanding. At the point of understanding, the shadow is seen to be illusion and it's function is complete. Those who have realised enlightenment confirm this. For them, the ego is no more.
On the basis of all the above and on my own certainty that the Self is the true "I", "free will" should be defined as: the Self acting according to it's nature (which is Love), to realise it's possibilities and know itself. When we realise this we will free ourselves and each other. We will know that "I want you to be free" means the same thing as "I love you".

Let's Pretend...

2009-07-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

Phillip K. Dick holds a special place within the science fiction genre. He is deservedly celebrated for his mastery of the "mind-fuck". If you are a fan of his writing, you are someone who enjoys having their mind fucked good and proper. I am one of these people and I know that some of my readers share this inclination. I dedicate this post to you and to Mr. Dick.
There are some ideas that the mind tip-toes away from without really looking at them. There is a sense that such ideas are too dangerous to formulate, much less entertain. They might upset our foundational assumptions and put our sanity in peril. But these sorts of ideas are the ones that expose the lies we tell ourselves. And what is sanity anyhow? I've decided that only one who is enlightened is sane. Apart from that, it's only relative. Then it becomes a matter of how coherently you can function. If your foundational assumptions are flawed, the answer is: not very. How would we know if we never checked? If the Truth is what is sought, it can withstand all questions. In fact, it demands them. This is why aspirants to gnosis will go out of their way to entertain "dangerous" ideas, questions and possibilities. That's why we take entheogens. That's why we love movies like "The Matrix" and novels like those of P.K. Dick.
So, without further ado, I will proceed to share this contribution to the honourable tradition of mind-fuckery. This idea had been skirting the edges of my consciousness for some time and I had dismissed it. Quickly. Today I was discussing the control system's plans for the world with my partner. He said what I had so often said and thought myself. "How can they, with all their knowledge, not know that their aims are impossible to reach? Unless...." (at this point I had to finish the sentence) ..."They know that they are serving Infinite Awareness and they are consciously fulfilling their role, which is to wake us up by reflecting our blindness back to us as starkly as necessary." In order to do this consciously and without faltering, they would have to be fully enlightened. My partner felt that this possibility was plenty weird enough to be getting on with. He's going to write about it on his blog as well. I had to go a bit further. "What if it's not just the elite?", I said. "What if everyone who seems to be deeply unconscious is actually already enlightened and they are all perfectly playing their parts in order to test the few who are still actively seeking?" That would mean that it is only those of us "on the path" who have still to awaken. It is we who are the slow ones. When we do awaken fully, all the "others" will remove their masks and take a bow. If this were true, (and I'm not saying it is) we might perceive our task as a whole lot simpler. Perception affects experience. Therefore, regardless of it's truth, it is useful.
The conscious adoption of random beliefs for the purpose of shifting one's experience of reality is the very heart of Magick. Peter J. Carroll, in "Liber Kaos" refers to it as "sleight of mind". It is this aspect of the idea that I found so fascinating. Later, when we went for a walk, I pretended it was true. I imagined that all the people I saw were spiritual masters in disguise. Some of them deserve Oscars! It produced in me an exhilaration and wonder that I cannot really describe. You'd have to try it. As an exercise in consciousness it is pure gold. I want to stress that there is no necessity of committing to this belief (or any other) in order to make use of it. In fact, I'm intuitively certain that it would be a mistake to do so.

The "Economy" Must Die

2009-07-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

The Aztecs engaged in the practice of sacrificing humans to the Sun god. Most people today would consider this barbaric, but the Aztecs had nothing on us. At least the Sun is real, and necessary to all life on this planet. We practice human sacrifice also. The "god" to which we offer up our victims is called the "economy". In contrast to the Sun god, the "economy" is an invented abstraction. When it comes to scale of carnage the Aztecs again, lag far behind. Consider the thousands who starve to death daily for want of little pieces of paper and metal, worth nothing but what we believe they are worth. And let's not forget all the other sacrificial victims who have perished in banker-engineered wars. How could the "economy" have survived without them? Then there are those who for various reasons, are not economically productive. They are kicked to the gutter, considered human garbage. We treat murderers better than that. I guarantee you that, if and when, some future civilisation unearths the debris of our own, they will conclude that the "economy" was our god. How embarrassing. How shameful!
If you look up the word "economy" in the dictionary, it simply means "management of resources". In this sense there is nothing wrong with it. In practice, and as commonly used, it means something else: the monetary economy. Henceforth, when I use the word, it will be in this modern, perverted sense.
Every time I hear the mainstream media, or anybody else, talk about saving the economy, I feel like I'm going to hurl. Why should we want to save it? It's sick. What has it done for us, that we should want to save it? It has turned us into slaves and whores. It has robbed us of our freedom and our self-respect. It has turned this beautiful, bountiful planet into a prison with paper bars. How do we not see this? Could it be that we are members of a mind-control cult so pervasive as to be invisible? It certainly has all the characteristics of a cult, including myths, dogmatic unquestioning belief, and vicious punishment of heretics. There is no shame in having been brain-washed, only in consciously choosing to remain so. Let's examine the mythology, and see if it holds up.
Myth #1: The economy is an efficient means of managing resources.
No, it isn't. The economy thrives on waste. Planned obsolescence is an obvious example. It is not economically profitable to make things that last. The economy demands that "goods" be produced as cheaply as possible and last a very short time so as to keep "consumers" consuming and feed the profit machine. Another example of this fallacy is "manufactured want". Goods are produced that no one really has any use for, then we waste human time and creativity on advertising to make people want them. The economy is incredibly wasteful of human energy. Most of the work that people do, doesn't need doing. "Primitive" societies that lack our labour-saving technologies, devote far less time to work that we do. It is sad to see brilliant creative people, who would love to share their gifts, working as tele-marketers and factory slaves.
Myth #2: The economy is the driver of innovation and progress.
Wrong again. These things are the result of human creativity and curiosity. The economy has interfered with progress whenever it has threatened vested interests. There is no need for us to still be using fossil fuels, for example. Free energy technology exists, but is not made available because it is free. Likewise, medical advances are suppressed to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical industry. Up-to-date discoveries in the fields of physics and biology are not mentioned in grade-school science classes. This is not because they are hard to understand, but because their paradigm-shattering implications threaten vested interests. Need I go on? Another way that the economy has hurt progress is by making us stupid. The brain develops as it is used. Survival needs are taken care of by the R-complex, the reptilian brain. This is it's oldest and least evolved part. The economy, through it's insistence that everyone (except the elite) earn the right to exist, causes us to overuse this part of the brain. Scientific research has shown that a foetus whose mother experiences survival anxiety develops an enlarged R-complex and a shrunken prefrontal cortex. I suspect this is the explanation for social conditions in areas where poverty is most prevalent. In our modern technological society, we have the means to sustainably feed, house and educate everyone on this planet. The only reason we don't is because it would hurt the economy. If people didn't have to worry about surviving, who would staff the third world sweat-shops?
Myth #3: Economic growth will lead to greater prosperity for all.
Um, no. Within the economy, the more scarce something is (including money), the more valuable. That is called "supply and demand". These are presented as natural forces. They're not. In order to maximise profit, both are manipulated. "Surplus" food-stuffs are dumped rather than distributed in order to keep prices high. Through advertising, wants are created (where none existed) in order to increase demand. In Vancouver, at least 15% of housing sits empty because it is "investment property" while hundreds are homeless. Low unemployment leads to inflation, so it is deliberately maintained at a level that suits the hoarders of capital. This level is called the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) by economists. This is the reason central banks raise and lower interest rates. There must be losers as well as winners so the rats will keep running, faster and faster. Also, because of the pyramidal structure of the economy, there must be a lot more losers than winners.
Myth #4: The economy is the best/only way of organising society.
Not so. Society is organised through communication. If money were to disappear tomorrow, we would not suddenly forget how to speak and write. People would still be capable of organising for common purpose. Everything that wants and needs doing would still get done. People are naturally social and cooperative. Most of us want to contribute something for the benefit of others. The challenge would not be in getting things done but in finding ways to occupy ourselves once all the unnecessary labour ends. Those who are not able to be "productive" do not represent a burden to anyone but rather an opportunity for caring and generosity. "Organising", in the context of this myth, really means managing (as in slaves or livestock). It means forcing others to do what they would otherwise refuse to do.
Myth #5: Money is simply a means of facilitating exchange. It reflects intrinsic value.
I was curious about how and why money came to exist. I assumed, as do most people, that it evolved to expedite trade. When I did some research, I discovered that it was actually created for the purpose of paying tribute. It allowed the rulers to amass and store more wealth than they could in a grain-based economy. In other words, it was created to facilitate hoarding by the wealthy and powerful. This is still it's primary purpose. If money reflected intrinsic value, goods and services would be traded for those of equal value. If this were the case, there would be no such thing as "profit". Profit is the result of fraudulently or coercively trading something of lesser for something of higher value. Profit is theft. It should hardly need stating that not everything with value can be commodified. This obvious fact is increasingly sneared at or overlooked.
Myth #6: Economic activity = democracy = freedom.
This is a particularly nasty lie, as it plays on noble instincts to deliver just the opposite. The economy does not promote democracy (as officially defined, "government of the people for the people"). It concentrates power in the hands of the very few. When was the last time your government defended the interests of the people over those of the elite? Exactly. This is not the result of corruption, but the result intended from the beginning. The monetary economy was invented by the rulers to control the ruled. I have deliberately chosen not to make a distinction between capitalism and communism, since both are monetary economic systems and both are coercive and enslaving. One is secretly, and the other openly so. That is the only real difference. This false polarity has proved very useful for the controllers, since we would all prefer to believe we are free. This also allows for circumscribed debate, which never addresses the real issues.
To return to the Aztec parallel, it should be pointed out that most of those people believed that what they were doing was right and necessary. Their priests and rulers told them so. When the promised results failed to materialise, their solution was... more of the same. Some of them must have known that what they were doing was cruel and insane but they didn't see any alternative. Sound familiar? This brought about the end of their civilisation. Somebody should have said something.
There are alternatives to the monetary economy. The natives of this region (Pacific North-West) had a gift economy until it was outlawed by the European colonialists. The movie, Zeitgeist Addendum proposes a resource based economy. There are other possibilities as well. Actually, almost everyone has had the experience of a non-monetary economy. We call it "the family". What will be fundamentally required is awareness, vision, maturity and cooperation. It's going to be up to us. We will have to trust each other and ourselves. The psychopaths who are running the show don't want to change. The first thing we need to do is wake up and stop supporting the insanity. The rest might be easier that we think.

Note: This essay might seem to include excessive use of quotation marks. In many cases I am employing them to indicate abuse of language. This is one of the hall-marks of mind-control, that words and phrases are used in ways that reverse or pervert their proper meaning.

Thoughts on Synchromysticism

2009-07-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

I find Synchromysticism fascinating because it possesses features that are utterly novel and and unique. It truly reflects the mood of this modern era in which we live and yet is a reversal of it. I am referring to our age's banality, it's obsessive focus on the trivial and meaningless. It reminds me of the yin/yang symbol which depicts the extreme of one pole spontaneously flipping into it's opposite. The subject matter it employs is usually pop culture, eg. TV, comics, movies, advertising. This might appear to reduce it's value for consciousness development, yet it does not. As an exercise in awareness, it is comparable to mindfulness meditation. As I see it, the subject matter and interpretation is less important that the act of noticing symbolic connections. This practice trains the mind to remain awake. I think it can lead to greater levels of awareness by developing the habit of paying attention and seeing patterns in what is attended to.
The people involved in developing this field are mostly young and technologically inclined. They have spent most of their lives in a culture of over-stimulation. I am in awe of the way Synchromysticism has succeeded in integrating this noisy confusion and turning it to the service of awareness. In this sense it has parallels with the study of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, which has been called a "filing system for the mind". Any type of information may be sorted in this way, from the mundane to the profound, and symbolic connections begin to develop between them. The capacity to attend to information in this way will lead to conscious contact with the intuitive mind.
In the study of the Tree, a student would usually begin with the more abstract interpretations and work towards the concrete. Synchromysticism seems to reverse this order. I do not see this as negative. It is to be expected that the level of interpretation will vary according to understanding. For example, in a Tarot reading, the appearance of the five of wands might indicate an argument, a psychological conflict, or an spiritual ordeal. The determining factor would be the plane of inquiry. Thus a "spiritual" interpretation is not necessarily more correct than a mundane one. It is the recognition of the "note" rather than the "octave" that is important. Ultimately, through this process, ALL is seen to be an expression of the One.
The main stumbling block of symbolic mysticism, is literalness. This error is just as common among traditional symbolistists, when an absolute distinction is made between spirit and matter. In Reality, no such division exists. I have come across the idea, although rarely, within the Synchromystic community, that the "Illuminati" are implanting all of this symbolism deliberately. I think this assumes far too much intelligence (and power) on their part. It does happen, but not as often as these few imagine. Most of the time it is an expression of the fractal nature of the "reality hologram". So while the symbols associated with the Illuminati do reveal their intentions, they are as unconscious of this as most people.
Should any readers be unfamiliar with, and curious about, the phenomena of Synchromysticism, here are a few links to prominent sites:
The Blob
The Secret Sun
CentrePortal
These sites carry links to many others.

Do Ya Wanna Grow Up?

2009-06-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be a "grown-up"? I started asking people this question the other day. It quickly became clear that very few have seriously thought about this. Almost everyone felt adulthood to be a burden to some degree. The differences were mainly of degree of acceptance. Surprisingly, no one considered it a purely chronological event. In other words, reaching the age of majority does not automatically make you a "grown-up". Although most people I talked to were surprised to be asked such a question, all were eager to discuss the subject once broached. Responses fell into two main categories.
The quickest responders said something along the lines of, "I'm not a grown-up. I'll never grow up!" Interesting, age was no indicator of this attitude. These people associated growing up with capitulation to conformity and the end of laughter. They refuse to let play turn to drudgery and growth to stagnation. Their childhoods tended to be curtailed or unsatisfactory in some way. The adults in their lives were not positively perceived, as a rule. They also had some experience of being outcast from society. Personally, I am more sympathetic to this view.
Those who did consider themselves "grown-ups" were slower to reply. All these mentioned responsibility to others, usually family. Those without family ties felt a responsibility to their social roles. They expressed a wistful nostalgia for childhood, lacking in the other group. Their conception of adulthood was also tied to externalities, such as appearance, and specific milestones, like becoming a parent or building a career. They were generally more conservative. As children, they were more likely to look up to adults.
I, who am naturally introspective and have had more time to think about it, proposed another definition. When presented with it, everyone I spoke to thought it appropriate. It is likely that this agreement reflects the culture of the Cascadian region, where I am. To me, being a grown-up means not needing to be told what to do. It means I have the emotional maturity and experience to make my own decisions, based on actual requirements instead of inflexible rules. I think this instinctive claim to sovereignty underlies both the conservative aversion to government interference and the liberal philosophy of tolerance. I wish the former would be more willing to extend this freedom of self-determination to others and the latter would realise that responsibility can't be legislated.
Sadly, the way our civilisation is set up discourages (or even forbids) this sort of personal sovereignty. Our religions demand infantile obedience. Our economic systems in particular, are rooted in a coercive "stick and carrot" mentality that assumes our inability to regulate ourselves. We are encouraged to believe that chaos would ensue if we didn't have some authority figure standing over us with a whip in one hand and a big bag of toys in the other. The opposite is true. A proliferation of rules and regulations in every area of our lives denies us the right to ever make responsible choices for ourselves. Our ability to self-determine atrophies from lack of use. As a result, we remain forever childish. We are rendered unable to trust ourselves or each other. All this is no accident, and a dream-come-true for the control system. Is it any wonder that most of us consider being a "grown-up" such a drag?

The Flowering

2009-06-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

Humanity's current operating system has become obsolete. It is now clear that, if we continue to use it, we will become extinct. The old paradigm has certain flaws that render it vulnerable to corruption. At this point in time, the corruption is so advanced that the system is about to fail. Everybody knows it deep down, but most are still in denial since they don't yet see an alternative. A rapidly growing number of self-referent and visionary people are now in the process of installing a more advanced program. If all goes well, it should be up and running within 3-5 years.
The new paradigm isn't really new. It appears and reappears throughout history. For this reason, it has been called the Perennial Philosophy. It is the core understanding of mystics in all traditions. It is the reality paradigm that corresponds to and stems from Gnosis. The founders of all religions knew it, but the religions themselves are hostile to it since it means the end of their control. It flowered during the Renaissance in Europe when philosophers, theologians, mathematicians and artists of different places and cultures came together and pooled their knowledge. The invention of the printing press helped it to spread. Legacies of this period include Humanism, the Tarot, the Qabalah and Hermeticism. The movement was suppressed by the Catholic church by means of the Inquisition. The Inquisition was the attempted murder of an idea, a noocide. I say "attempted" because it could not be destroyed, only driven underground.
The thing I find most wonderful about this new/old understanding, is that it is arrived at independently by those who reject received reality, and set out to discover it for themselves. These are people who refuse to believe anything just because somebody (or everybody) else says it is so. And yet, they all come to the same realisations. This is the nature of Gnosis, that it is discovered rather than learned. It makes use of any tradition or none. The printing press of the Renaissance finds it's reflection in the Internet of today. So, for the first time in centuries, we have a model of existence derived from reality instead of imposed upon it.
For this reason, it has natural coherence, which the old paradigm lacks. Coherence is an amplifying factor. Because of this, the Perennial Philosophy will soon become more powerful than the imposed beliefs of the control system. The control system had coherence of a sort, but it was an artificial coherence. It has required a great deal of energy to maintain and, as it's instability increases, it will need much more. The new paradigm has been selected by evolution since it will allow humanity to thrive and grow, whereas the old can lead only to extinction.
I know this is happening because I can feel it. The tipping point has already been reached. The sense of anxiety that was present only six months ago has gone and been replaced by joyful anticipation. Many others have sensed this as well. In the words of John Lennon, "You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one."

Welcome To The Real World

2009-06-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one." - Albert Einstein
One of the major flaws in old paradigm thought is it's literalness. This gives rise to the fantasy of the "real world". There is no such thing. To borrow Aleister Crowley's metaphor, it is "as if some one had seriously maintained that a cat was a creature constructed by placing the letters C.A.T. in that order". This is analogous to the mistake of imagining the physical world to be reality itself.
What we actually experience is a symbolic representation of a transcendent reality. This reality has no solid form, but it does have meaningful information. The illusion of physicality exists for illustrative purposes. The details of how we represent that information to ourselves may vary without changing the meaningful content. For example, it is an energetic fact that human beings serve as the food of a vampirising force. This force has been experienced as extraterrestrial reptilians, the ego, the demiurge, the Illuminati, Satan, the R-system of the brain, archons, fliers, etc. The old paradigm would insist that these can't all be right. Within the new paradigm, they can and are.
We cannot hope to understand reality while confusing symbols with their meaning. We already apply this realisation to the dream state. Few people take their dreams literally. The forms of the dream are understood to be symbolic even though they seem quite real and solid to the dreaming self. The exception to this is the lucid dream. Sometimes, we become aware of dreaming while in the dream. The last time this happened to me, I'd been having a lovely dream in which I was running. I did not notice a cliff edge that was hidden by long grass and I ran right over the edge. I fell a long way down and I fully expected to die when I hit the ground. Instead, I landed softly on the sand of a beach and was completely unharmed. The shock of this caused me to become lucid. I suspect that most lucid dreams start this way, with some shockingly anomalous occurrence that compels the dreamer to question the reality of the dream.
There are direct parallels of these invitations to lucidity in waking life. UFOs, miracles, synchronicity, fire-walking, the 11:11, and crop circles (see Neil Kramer's post on The Cleaver "The Beautiful Paradox") all fall into this category of phenomena. As Neil Kramer rightly points out, to focus on the physical aspects and causes of these things is to miss the point. These are wake-up calls. I have very recently been delighted to discover a field of knowledge called Synchromysticism that is based in this view of reality. This term, coined by Jake Kotze, is defined by him as "the art of realising meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance". It is possible to interpret the "real world" as though it were a dream, with the same illuminating result.
The inherent insanity of literalness is most obvious in religious fundamentalism. It doesn't matter what religion it is. Those of us who are relatively sane would feel sorry for these people if they weren't so destructive. Fundamentalism not only misses the message, but usually reverses it completely. Ironically, science, that megalithic bastion of literalism, is being overturned by it's own findings. Open-minded physicists and biologists are beginning to twig to the fact that matter is a projection of consciousness, a fractal hologram.
Brain science is helpful in understanding the error in perception. We have become overly dependent on left-brain thinking. The left-brain is just like a computer. It's job is to receive, store and manipulate data. It lacks the ability to understand anything. The task of interpreting the data belongs to the right-brain which employs symbol, myth and metaphor to create meaning. This is the reason that spiritual teachers so often use parable and poetry to present their knowledge. These speak directly to the right-brain, assuming it is functional. The ability of the right-brain to do it's job has been impaired by our education system's obsessive focus on data collection and retrieval.
Fortunately, Infinite Awareness has it's own agenda. I doubt if we could screw it up, even if we wanted to. It will accomplish it's purpose as us and through us. It has already begun.
I came across this the other day: Timothy Freke Bath 2005 Absolutely One-derful!

If Thine I Be Single

2009-05-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

People are at war with themselves. This is true of almost everyone. There is a good reason for this; it's because there are two of you. One is your spiritual being (Self) and the other is the ego. Both refer to themselves as "I", and both issue directives. When you choose to follow the Self, the ego pitches a fit. If the ego is obeyed, the Self withdraws. Unconflicted existence requires that only one of these two "I"s prevail. Either choice results in greater effectiveness.
Choosing the ego is more common, and I think this is what the control system means by "illumination". This choice results in the pure psychopath, and this kind of person is undeniably effective. He has an enormous advantage over those who are still in conflict because he operates without restraint from the Self. This path is more common but not less difficult. The banishment of the Self requires some pretty horrific conditioning and the control system has spent centuries perfecting the process.
If the ego is abandoned and Self is chosen, the result is known as spiritual mastery or sainthood. This is less often achieved, and part of the reason is that most of us don't know that a choice is required. We are led to believe that compromise is not only possible, but preferable. The control system encourages this belief, as it provides them with an ineffective populous that they can easily control. They also use every means at their disposal to feed our egos, making them harder to overcome. These means include the media, the economy, social prejudice, materialist science, and the education system. They have given us religions that teach us to worship the Self-realised Ones instead of following their example. The suppression of the feminine is part of this strategy also.
The control system sees that the unrestrained ego is more powerful than the ego/Self duality, so they think they have chosen well. They may think they are going to win total control over this planet but they have made a fatal miscalculation. Their mistake relates to power. The ego is unconnected to Source and therefore dependent upon external sources of power. The only power it has is what it can steal, and it can only use power that matches it's own vibration, eg. fear, avarice, depression, lust, hatred, etc. The Self, on the other hand, has it's own, infinite power source. The Self is connected to this source of power through the heart chakra. It is the Love vibration and it is limited only by the openness of the heart center. It can't ever run out and it can manifest miracles. When we connect to and channel this power, we rob the ego of it's food. If the ego is not fed, it is weakened, and eventually departs or dies.
The Love vibration is key to the overthrow of the control system. Because it is unlimited, it can poured out indiscriminately to all. As it is absorbed by those who can use it, it multiplies and grows exponentially. It won't be on the six o'clock news, but this is already beginning to occur. Those who are sensitive to energy can feel it. The wholly ego-driven, who are unable to use this power, are becoming increasingly unstable and in many cases, physically ill. This is a very good sign and nothing to worry about. If things seem to be going haywire right now, we should see this as a healing crisis. A new world is being born.
Will the real "I" please stand up.

The Pool of Tears

2009-05-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

I want to talk about depression and it's relationship with spirituality. This is something I have extensive personal experience with. I was first diagnosed with clinical depression at the age of 17. I was placed on meds and within a few months I felt better... for a while. A few years later I was back in black and this cycle repeated a total of four times. The fourth time I was put on a newer drug, Zoloft. Instead of getting better, this time it got worse and, in desperation, I took an overdose. I didn't really want to die; I just wanted the pain to stop. I discovered later on that this class of drugs is known to cause this kind of reaction. The depression returned one more time in 1998. This time I decided not to take the pills but to try to understand and resolve whatever was behind it. I think I was too exhausted to struggle anymore and I just gave up fighting it. Instead I dove for the bottom to see what was there. What I found was... nothing. The depression had all along been caused by the struggle to avoid feeling pain. This was the end of depression for me and I somehow knew it. It did not stop me from feeling emotional pain, but the pain could come and go without creating the spiral into despair. It is this despair spiral that defines depression and not the sadness on which it feeds.

Our society makes a terrible mistake in viewing depression as a disease, rather than an opportunity for self-knowledge. Most doctors believe it is caused by an imbalance of brain chemistry. This imbalance is only it's physical, symptomatic counterpart, not it's cause. It is caused by the awareness and rejection of sadness, whether our own or that of others. Antidepressants only reinforce this rejection of legitimate emotion. Sadness is actually a comparatively sane response for a sensitive, compassionate person, given the amount of suffering in the world today. In effect we have chosen to treat compassion as a disease. It is estimated that about 20 % of the population (mostly women) have been "treated" for depression. You'd think that, if that many people were so unhappy with the way things are that they can no longer function, we would change the way things are. It makes you wonder, if these "brave new drugs" hadn't been invented, whether the revolution might already have happened.

Once the transition from resistance to acceptance has occured, we are in a position to examine our feelings and trace them to their source. We find that there are other layers to this onion. Now it is seen that our own pain is really the ego's pain, for the Infinite Awareness cannot be hurt, only our self-image can, and this self-image is the ego. The ego's cunning is a wonder to behold. There could be no more worthy adversary. It's next trick involves displacing it's resistance onto the pain of others. In this way it maintains separation by passing judgement on the chosen experience of another. (There really are no "others". All are incarnations of the One.)It is difficult to see this as a manifestation of ego because it seems like the very opposite of that. If we see another in pain, we may believe that if we don't feel pain also, we don't care. Now we may feel guilt. But wait. If you look back to your times of greatest suffering, you most often find that those trials deepened your experience and brought wisdom. If you could go back and spare yourself the experience, would you? I definitely would not.

Occasionally a trouble shared is a trouble halved. In these situations, empathy is called for. But most of the time, trouble shared is only trouble doubled. This is very much the case when one learns of the control system and the horrors it visits upon the innocent. This knowledge can break your heart. In these cases you weaken yourself without helping the other, and the ego (as well as the control system) gets an all-you-can-eat buffet. It would be better to send the other person your love and strength instead. Isn't this what you would want for yourself? Incidentally, both the ego and the control system are unable to process the Love frequency. The more of this energy you can channel through you, the more you undermine both these forces.

In Lak'ech.

A Place to Call Home

2009-05-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

Each person who sets out in search of Truth does so for their own reasons. In my case it was about finding my home, the place where I belong. I spent the first twenty years of this life moving around British Columbia. I went to thirteen different schools and the longest I spent in one place was two and a half years in Victoria. There was no opportunity to grow attached to places or people and I didn't want to anyway. It would have made it harder to leave. When I was 12 my family broke up and my parents moved to separate cities. All this rootlessness set the stage perfectly for what was to come. In "Through the Looking Glass", Alice leaves the looking glass house and sets off toward a hill in the garden, but each time she finds herself back at the house.

"It's no use talking about it," Alice said, looking up at the house and pretending it was arguing with her. "I'm not going in again yet. I know I should have to get back through the looking glass again -- back into the old room --- and there'd be an end of all my adventures!"
So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once more down the path, determined to keep straight on till she got to the hill. For a few minutes all went on well, and she was just saying "I really shall do it this time ---" when the path gave a sudden twist and shook itself (as she described it afterwards), and the next moment she found herself actually walking in at the door.
"Oh, it's too bad!" she cried. "I never saw such a house for getting in the way! Never!"

On Alice's next attempt, she comes upon some talking flowers. During their conversation, she spots the Red Queen.

"I think I'll go and meet her," said Alice, for, though the flowers were interesting enough, she felt that it would be far grander to have a talk with a real Queen.
"You can't possibly do that," said the Rose: "I should advise you to walk the other way."
This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off at once towards the Red Queen. To her surprise she lost sight of her in a moment, and found herself walking in at the front-door again.
A little provoked, she drew back, and, after looking everywhere for the Queen (whom she spied out at last, a long way off), she thought she would try the plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction.
It succeeded beautifully. She had not been walking a minute before she found herself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the hill she had been so long aiming at.

This is such a perfect description of the search for the heart's desire. As long as it is sought "out there", it only recedes further. The external world is a mirage, ever shifting, never reached. Home is truly "where the heart is". It is to be found within the still center, the only permanent thing. Paradoxically, the search for home, the place where I belong, has involved leaving behind everything that normally provides security, accepting no substitutes. Places, people, tradition, beliefs, even personality all pass away. This is freedom. This is my home. It is nowhere... and everywhere.

Adventures With the Tzolkin

2009-05-06T13:07:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago, I read "The Mayan Factor" by Jose Arguelles. Up until this time I had never deeply considered the inner and inherent aspects of time. I was pretty excited. "Ooh look, a brand new rabbit hole!" While most of the buzz around Mayan time-keeping has focused on the end of the long count, I found I was more attracted to the Tzolkin. So I set out to find as much information about it as I could. This turned out to be... not much. I decided the way to proceed was to do my own research and let the calendar be the teacher. Many years ago I had painted a Tree of Life, incorporating my knowledge of symbols, colour and geometry. This took a good nine months or more to complete and taught me more about the hermetic qabalah than I could have imagined. The designing and execution served as a kind of meditation. I planned something similar with the Tzolkin. I decided to paint two sets of cards, twenty day sign cards and thirteen numbered ones. The stacks would sit side by side on business card stands and each day the front cards would move to the back (as in the photo). It seemed best to begin with Imix (the first day sign), and paint the cards on their proper days. I consulted my tables to find out when I could begin, and it turned out to be only three days away. Not only that, but it would be 1 Imix. I took this as a good omen. The first thing I noticed was an increase in energy, or maybe the energy was always there but I had not been aware of it's presence. In "Time and the Technosphere" Jose Arguelles wrote about the deadening effects of artificial, inorganic calendar systems. I was able to confirm this for myself. I should mention that Arguelles' proposed 13 moon Dreamspell calendar is not the Tzolkin, although he does use it's day signs and symbols. I don't know why he chose to do this. Another result of following the Tzolkin was an increase in experiences of synchronicity. Some of these were related to the timing of this project. For instance, I was curious about when my Tzolkin birthday would occur in the solar year. It turned out to be the day of my solar return. This synchronisation with the solar round occurs only once every 42 years/59 Tzolkin cycles. I am referring here to the true solar year, which is 365.241 days (not the Gregorian year of 365.25 days). This may point toward the fractal nature of time. If I had not begun this project when I did, I would certainly have missed this. Another notable coincidence was the end of this first Tzolkin cycle 13 Ahau, on the winter solstice. As I started to familiarise myself with the energies of the days, I began to notice that some were easy and pleasant for me (Cimi, Lamat, Chuen) while others were more challenging (Imix, Muluc, Cauac). The difficult days have become more managable as I've learned to adjust to their nature. If you know it's going to rain, you can plan to stay home or bring an umbrella. Another thing I did was compile a data base of the Tzolkin birthdates of family, friends and well-known people in order to reveal shared characteristics. I could only use people familiar to me so my sample base is small (142). In spite of this, there were some striking coincidences. My father married twice and both his partners were born on 10 Caban. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were both born on 9 Ben. Elvis Presley and Mick Jagger were both born on 2 Lamat. Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler were both born on 9 Oc. Joe Walsh, Bob Dylan and Van Morrison are all 3 Cib. There is a preponderence of powerful vocal artists born on Imix days (Rob Halford:4, Marianne Faithful:7, Robert Plant and Aretha Franklin:9, and Etta James and Janis Joplin:10). I can confidently assert that the Tzolkin is describing something real. I've found the Tzolkin easier to follow than the Gregorian calendar. I often don't know what the Gregorian date is but I always know the Tzolkin date and I have never lost count. I've never been good at routines, so this is something. The experience of making my own calendar was invaluable and I recommend it. However, a very similar one can be purchased here: http://mayanmajix.com/market_F1.html

If I Were You...

2009-05-05T09:48:00.000-07:00

What if we are all the reincarnations of each other? What if this were the true meaning of Karma? If my actions affect you, I will experience those effects in another life... yours. People who have near-death experiences often tell of reliving their lives, not only from their own perspective, but also from the point of view of those they have touched. Most teachings on reincarnation that I've seen seem to preserve the idea of separation and to be bound to linear time. This might be more manageable for the concrete mind but it can only be truth from the perspective of the ego. From the point of view of our true Self, Infinite Awareness (IA), we are One. The experience of progressive development can be accounted for by vibrational resonance. The incarnate personality that answers to my name is not really me at all. It is a particular vibrational pattern, like a musical chord. The vibration is held in place on the physical plane by the DNA codes. I AM not this vibration; I AM the One who experiences it. In theory, I could recall any incarnation that is, was or will be. In practice I only recall those with vibrational resonance. When a "past life" is recalled, it invariably has a meaningful connection to this one. Some of the incarnations of IA manifest archetypal content. They are the heroes and heroines of history, the saints and monsters. Their lives become myths. They are meta-vibrations, simple notes, as opposed to chords. The "memories" of these lives are accessible to many because they resonate with the more complex vibrations. I AM the reincarnation of Hitler. I AM the reincarnation of Buddha. I have forgotten and I have remembered. In Lak'ech. (Mayan greeting, translation: "I am another you.")

A Disease Model of Evil

2009-04-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

In order to support the idea of innate evil we would have to accept the existence of evil babies. Now, horror movies aside, I have have yet to come across an evil baby and I don't know anyone else who has either. This being the case, evil must arise due to environmental factors. The damage occurs mainly in childhood. No sane person would hold the child responsible for this. But at some point, our tolerance for the victimized child gives way to moral condemnation, yet the line between these is never defined except in law, where it is unarguably arbitrary. Some would object that since all "evil" people are victims of other "evil" people, this cannot be used as an excuse since no one could ever be judged or punished. Of course this assumes that judging and punishing have moral legitimacy. I don't consider this a reasonable assumption. I am not saying we should do nothing about it. However, our focus should be on harm reduction, not punishment. This is where the disease model of evil becomes appropriate. Evil is an acquired dysfunction of awareness, and an acquired dysfunction is, by definition, disease. We also know that it spreads by contagion. Let's say two people are exposed to a virus and one gets sick while the other does not. We would consider it unhelpful and silly to condemn and punish the ill one, (actually, when bubonic plague was ravaging Europe, many did respond in this way and it made things much worse). We would instead treat the illness and, if necessary, impose a quarantine to prevent the spread of infection. We would study it's causes and take steps to reduce them. One of these causes is the idea that we are unworthy, that we must earn the right to exist. Our economic systems and most religions promote and rely for their existence on this poisonous fallacy. It is so pervasive that it is rarely questioned. It is the source of racism, elitism, slavery, eugenics, poverty, sexism, etc. In truth, all are infinitely worthy of existence. No person is more valuable than another. How can it be otherwise if we are ultimately One?

Is It I?

2009-04-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

Several months ago, I woke up with a word in my mind. The word was "Archon". I had no idea what it meant but I sensed that it was important. So I did an internet search on the word. After a bit of looking around I found this: http://www.metahistory.org/CCandGnosis.php . It seems that Archon is a Gnostic term for non-human entities that attach themselves to humans. They fear discovery and avoid detection by disguising their thoughts as our own. The author of the above article, John Lash, points to similarities between Archons and entities descibed to Carlos Castaneda by his teacher, a Yaqui sorceror called Don Juan. In Castaneda's book, "The Active Side of Infinity", Don Juan called them "flyers" and he had this to say,

You have arrived, by your effort alone, to what the shamans of ancient Mexico called the topic of topics. I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico.

There is an explanation which is the simplest explanation in the world. They took over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops. Therefore, their food is always available to them.

Well, you haven’t heart it all yet. Wait a bit longer and see how you feel. I’m going to subject you to a blitz. That is, I’m going to subject your mind to tremendous onslaughts, and you cannot get up and leave because you’re caught. Not because I’m holding you prisoner, but because something in you will prevent you from leaving, while another part of you is going to go truthfully berserk. So brace yourself!

I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradiction between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behavior. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal.

In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous maneuver; stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous maneuver from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators’ mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now.

I know that even though you have never suffered hunger you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its maneuver is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear.

Sorcerers see infant human beings as strange, luminous balls of energy, covered from the top to the bottom with a glowing coat, something like a plastic cover that is adjusted tightly over their cocoon of energy. That glowing coat of awareness is what the predators consume, and when a human being reaches adulthood, all that is left of that glowing coat of awareness is a narrow fringe that goes from the ground to the top of the toes. That fringe permits mankind to continue living, but only barely.

To my knowledge, man is the only species that has the glowing coat of awareness outside that luminous cocoon. Therefore, he became easy prey for an awareness of a different order, such as the heavy awareness of the predator.

This narrow fringe of awareness is the epicenter of self-reflection, where man is irremediably caught. By playing on our self-reflection, which is the only point of awareness left to us, the predators create flares of awareness that they proceed to consume in a ruthless, predatory fashion. They give us inane problems that force those flares of awareness to rise, and in this manner they keep us alive in order to them to be fed with the energetic flare of our pseudoconcerns.

There’s nothing that you and I can do about it. All we can do is discipline ourselves to the point where they will not touch us. How can you ask your fellow men to go through those rigors of discipline? They’ll laugh and make fun of you, and the more aggressive ones will beat the crap out of you. And not so much because they don’t believe it. Down in the depths of every human being, there’s an ancestral, visceral knowledge about the predators’ existence.

Whenever doubts plague you to a dangerous point, do something pragmatic about it. Turn off the light. Pierce the darkness; find out what you can see.

You saw the fleeting shadows against the trees, that’s pretty good. I’d like you to see them inside this room. You’re not seeing anything. You’re just merely catching fleeting images. You have enough energy for that.

The sorcerers of ancient Mexico saw the predator. They called it the flyer because it leaps through the air. It is not a pretty sight. It is a big shadow, impenetrably dark, a black shadow that jumps through the air. Then, it lands flat on the ground. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when it made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man.

What I’m saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He’s an average piece of meat. There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.

This predator, which, of course, is an inorganic being, is not altogether invisible to us, as other inorganic beings are, I think as children we do see it and decide it’s so horrific that we don’t want to think about it. Children, of course, could insist on focusing on the sight, but everybody else around them dissuades them from doing so.

I agree with Mr. Lash's suggestion that the Archons and flyers are two descriptions of the same thing but not with his proposal that they are the Grey and Reptilian aliens. I think what is being described is the ego. This would fit with the doctrine of world ages, an idea represented in many different times and places. We are told that the cycle begins with a golden age and proceeds through ages of decreasing duration and increasing corruption. When the last age is complete, the golden age returns. This had always seemed strange to me, that maximum corruption should suddenly turn to enlightened awareness. But it does make sense if the Archons/flyers come and go from this planet. It would be in their nature to eventually destroy their host so, in order to survive, they would need to be migratory. If so, the golden age would be the period between departure and return. After the return, it would take a long time to start to see their effects, since the belief systems and social structures that support them would not exist, and would have to be built anew. I am not saying this is the way things are, but it is a model that merits serious consideration since it does agree with the available data. Both the Gnostics and Don Juan insist that the entities can be repelled, although not easily. According to Don Juan,

Discipline is the only deterrent. But by discipline I don’t mean harsh routines. I don’t mean waking up every morning at five-thirty and throwing cold water on yourself until you’re blue. Sorcerers understand discipline as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are not included in our expectations. For them, discipline is an art: the art of facing infinity without flinching, not because they are strong and tough but because they are filled with awe.

Sorcerers say that discipline makes the glowing coat of awareness unpalatable to the flyer. The result is that the predators become bewildered. An inedible glowing coat of awareness is not part of their cognition, I suppose. After being bewildered, they don’t have any recourse other than refraining from continuing their nefarious task.

If the predators don’t eat our glowing coat of awareness for a while, it’ll keep on glowing. Simplifying this matter to the extreme, I can say that sorcerers, by means of their discipline, push the predators away long enough to allow their glowing coat of awareness to grow beyond the level of the toes. Once it goes beyond the level of the toes, it grows back to its natural size. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico used to say that the glowing coat of awareness is like a tree. If it is not pruned, it grows to its natural size and volume. As awareness reaches levels higher than the toes, tremendous maneuvers of perception become a matter of course.

The grand trick of those sorcerers of ancient times was to burden the flyers’ mind with discipline. They found out that if they taxed the flyers’ mind with inner silence, the foreign installation would flee, giving to any one of the practitioners involved in this maneuver the total certainty of the mind’s foreign origin. The foreign installation comes back, I assure you, but not as strong, and a process begins in which the fleeing of the flyers’ mind becomes routine, until one day it flees permanently.

The Gnostics recommended recognition and disidentification. This is also the widely prescribed cure for ego. I don't want to give the impression that I am questioning the right of these beings to exist. Our relationship with them may well be symbiotic, as they allow us to experience things that we would not otherwise experience. It may be that we will one day develop immunity so they will cease to come here. In closing, I want to include a youtube link that seems to support the above. It consists of an analysis of the movie "Revolver". There are three parts. "Releasing the Ego" I'd love to hear what readers have to say about this. I've noticed that when I or others try to comment, an error message appears. If I just try again, it always works.

Mirror, Mirror

2009-04-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

What is the ego? What are it's characteristics? What does it do? Let's have a look. The ego's most obvious trait is probably it's isolation. It always considers itself apart from it's natural context. It defines itself through comparison with some "other". The ego tries to empower itself by undermining others. If the ego had a choice between abundance for all, or of abundance for itself accompanied by scarcity for others, it would choose the latter. It is always afraid. It tries to assuage it's fear by controlling as much as possible. The ego creates beliefs about itself, which it will cling to and defend (to the death if necessary). It seeks confirmation of it's beliefs by insisting on their universality. Any challenge to it's self-image is attacked or ridiculed or suppressed. It's own desires, no matter how extravagant, take precedence over the greater good. If it acts with apparent generosity, this is only to enhance it's image and it expects applause as well as indebtedness. The ego is extremely cunning and tricky but too infantile to be really intelligent. If it could look at itself honestly, it would see that it carries the seeds of it's own destruction. This is what lies at the root of it's fear. The ego is incapable of love. When we see the ego for what it is, we can begin to question it's pronouncements and demands. We start to realise that the ego cannot be reformed but must be overthrown. At first we try to fight it, but it only grows stronger. This is because the ego thrives on our resistance. The only thing that seems to work is to refuse to take it seriously and stop feeding it. When we learn not to identify with it or its beliefs we can instead experience our unity with all that is.
Now for the punchline. Reread the above, and for each instance of "the ego", substitute any of the following: the corporation, organised religion, the Illuminati conspiracy, the government. The outer world is a reflexion of our inner state. When we recognise the ego for what it is and overcome it's domination, it's external reflexions must also fall.

What Time is It?

2009-04-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

Words are only symbols of ideas. If ideas were people, words would be their names. Someone might know your name, but that doesn't mean they know you. It is easy to assume that if we know a word, we understand the idea it refers to. Often, we assume too much. Case in point: Time. Time and space exist as a continuum. Together, they are the warp and woof of third dimensional experience. Our culture recognises space as having various aspects. It is experienced in both quantitative and qualitative terms. We can think of space as distance to be measured. We also see it as having variety. A mountain is different to a valley or an ocean or outer space. If we have developed the ability to perceive energy directly, we can also speak of a "spirit of place". Feng shui deals with this aspect of space. For some reason, time is widely considered to be quantitative only. We think of it as uniform and featureless. But, if time and space are complimentary, each should find reflection in the other. Ancient civilisations, who left us great monuments and proofs of their advanced knowledge, had a fuller understanding of time. The ancient Greeks honoured two gods of time. Chronos represented quantitative time, duration and sequence. Kairos embodied time's quality, the spirit of the moment. Their ancestors had analysed and mapped time's landscapes. This knowledge was passed on in the form of astrology. The ancient Maya developed a science of Kairos also. We know this is so since the sacred Tzolkin calendar of 260 days pertained specifically to human time. These people were not primitive or ignorant. Some of their technologies were well in advance of our own. Those who dismiss astrology out of hand, and even some astrologers, imagine that the stars and planets have some direct effect on earthly events. Those who are more informed understand the relationship to be synchronous rather than causative. Synchronicity is the calling card of Kairos. The experience of synchronicity indicates attunement to Kairos. The facination with the 2012 end date of the Mayan long count is at least partly due to a subconscious awareness of Kairos. Many are sensing that this is the time of our tranformation. It should be not be seen as something that will happen to us, but as an auspicious window of opportunity to be grasped. Pardoxically, our tranformation is inevitable in the same sense that Neo, in "The Matrix" was never going to choose the blue pill.

Human Nature

2009-04-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

I keep coming across this idea that human nature is the source of our destuctive behavior. Could this be false? The evidence usually offered is the assertion that animals don't behave the way we do, that they are free of "evil". I don't buy this. If you take an animal and you cage, torture and humiliate it for years on end, it will turn bad every time. Our "civilisation" does this to every one of us. Our failure to notice this is understandable. A young child who is abused assumes at first that all children live this way. It is only when the child aquires wider knowledge of other families that she sees her situation as it is. Our human family has yet to reach this point so we take the abuse for granted and blame ourselves. We invent mythologies to justify it. The fact that humans turn bad only some of the time should tell us what "human nature" truly is.

A thought on morality

2009-04-06T13:16:00.000-07:00

All morality can be reduced to just this: remember who you are, and act accordingly. This is also a good definition of sanity.

A Spiriuality of Unbelief

2009-04-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

I reject the idea that spiritual development has any necessary connection with belief. I would even assert that belief interferes with both spiritual awareness and intelligence. Theories and working hypotheses are preferable because they are open to revision or rejection. Beliefs are not. This is important because of the nature of reality and the way the mind works. Our minds create the world we experience. No one (that I know of) has seen reality as it is. There is no "real world" as we normally experience it. There is only vibration. Our senses are vibrational receivers. These receivers pick up the vibration (eg. sound, light, etc.) and pass it on to the subconscious mind for interpretation. A great deal of editing takes place during interpretation. Many things get left out, to avoid information overload and also to maintain the integrity of our belief systems. This can cause serious problems if our foundational beliefs are wrong, because all new information must agree with what we already believe. If not, it will be ignored by the subconscious or create cognitive dissonance. For example, if our reality paradigm would be threatened by reason, then reason will not be available to us. This explains the intense, obstinate stupidity of religious fundamentalists. Believers in materialistic scientism do the same thing when faced with evidence of psi phenomena. There is very solid scientific evidence that psi phenomena, such as telepathy, exist. The brave souls who carried out these experiments expected their results to be resisted by established "science". As a precaution, they made sure that their protocols met a higher standard than is normally required. It didn't help. The scientific establishment ignored and ostracised them in order to preserve their beliefs. Why is it so hard for us to say those three little words; "I DON'T KNOW"? I allow myself the freedom to learn when I admit that I don't know. So much for the devastating effect of belief on intellect. What about spirituality? I would have to be blind to my own lived experience to accept that I am only a fluky result of materiality and chance. Meaning would have no place in such a reality and yet I experience meaning. So, if I am not an accident of matter, what am I? The only answer that makes sense is that I am pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is beyond space/time, so there can be only one. This is how I conceive of God. I can picture God as like a diamond of infinite size and my personal existence as one of an infinite number of facets. Although the facets are unique and distinguishable from one another, they are ultimately aspects of the diamond and cannot be separated from it. This conception and it's implications lead to a far more fulfilling way of being and relating. No belief is required for this.