"Sustainable living" as a green meme has recently caught like wildfire to the last bleeding shreds of Gaia's womb tomb anomaly. There seems to be no question or debate that green living is absolutely the way to go if we intend on saving the planet and sustaining life (or what's left of it). The question remains: if to live is to love, and to love is to let go, might some non-attachment be necessary while trying to save planet Earth?
If we as a species cannot achieve sustainable love, then I don't want to be on this planet: trees or no trees, ice-caps or no ice-caps. Humans are so mind-blowingly destructive towards one another, and I'm not even talking about our blaringly obvious incompetent and imperialist government waging wars on oil-rich Middle-Eastern countries. The kind of destruction I speak of is the subtle emotional destruction we wage on our most intimate partners and acquaintances, which is hugely indicative that our ideas about love need some serious adjusting before the planet can even think about beginning to heal itself. Earth has a mind of its own outside of human consciousness.
None of us are immune to the pitfalls of so-called love. We have been saturated with mass-media depictions of romantic love and monogamy myths- as if one person could cut out our sexual desire for other erotic options and assure us some kind of emotional security blanket. Such teaching is derived more from shame and fear over one's desires rather than being indicative of true love. Some people who have gone the polyamorous route forget that the word by definition means multiple loves, not necessarily multiple sex partners. If sexual activity is a natural extension of this love, then so be it and let's explore all the multifarious ways to be sexual with each other, intercourse not mandatory.
Intimacy, honesty, personal responsibility, self-knowledge, love, cooperation, and the mutual respect for boundaries are paramount if we stand a chance at achieving sustainable love. Too much karma is exchanged during sexual intercourse to warrant continued casual sex without a solid basis of friendship an acceptable meme for conscious beings unless one doesn't mind unintentionally swallowing someone's etheric load. Who wants to be carrying around someone's karmic burden when you just wanted an innocent orgasm? The length of the relationship determines how much karma is exchanged, and the shorter the exchange, the easier it is to dispel the karma. It sounds like too much work and wasted energy if you ask me. We have bigger tasks to focus on than getting caught-up in sticky erotic entanglements that don't have the bigger picture of our life paths in mind. Let us free erotic agents bask in nurturing sexual energy without getting too off-track. There's a lot of work to do right now. A huge part of that work involves re-learning how to love each other on romantic and sexual terms of our own choosing.
Previous generations didn't leave a great example of how to love each other in ways that make any sense to us now. Most of us have grown up with terrible examples of how to love- modern family dynamics being strained by a lack of communication and inability to cope with the fact that most of us our not hard-wired to fall into white picket fence fantasies where Mommy & Daddy live happily ever after. Nor are most of us cut out to be genitally focused swingers who are okay getting it on with whomever whenever. Jealousy is nasty bug, and one most of us aren't acquainted in dealing with constructively. In the generation that came before us, the script by and large was one of a stoic and bread-winning father or male partner: responsible, stern, and dominating. However, he left much for his female partner to be desired emotionally. The woman often played the martyr or victim in these types of arrangements, in parallel to the giant martyr the earth is making of herself in order to accommodate an out-of-control patriarchy, including dominating styles of loving. The masculine has run amok on this planet. We are past the point of blaming either gender as the cause.
The quintessential woman of the past played emotional manager in the relationship (she often still does), sifting through feelings for both partners, perhaps even experiencing feelings for her male partner since society has deemed it unacceptable for a man to feel vulnerable. She often winds up hating him for his inability to do her emotions any justice and punishes him for it or stays silent about her resentment because she doesn't want to lose him. Attachment breeds resentment which is actually internalized anger. The only emotion men were taught was acceptable was anger. Women often feel victimized by outward displays of anger while their emotional concerns are all but completely ignored. Does anyone else see the warped feedback loop playing itself on echo as one gender's position justifies the other's position and nothing is learned but more relational trauma?
Let a giant swathe of amnesty salve the romantic and sexual wounds of people who unintentionally succumb to warped psycho-sexual and romantic scripts by no other fault than they don't know any better and are doing the best they can with the information given to them. These individuals- of which I have been one- are not so much to blame as is a society that beats the ability to feel and be vulnerable out of men from an early age, forcing them to take their aggressions out in more forceful ways or to not recognize their emotions at all. A society that says a man's worth is measured in money and that a woman's worth is measured by good looks and lady-like behavior. A society in which co-dependent romance is considered idea. Overly attached love claims to be true love. If you think you have completely transcended these scripts, I dare you to take an honest look at the mirror of your programmed history. Of course, society is made up of individuals, and now it is each individual's responsibility to learn how to love. Men must learn to open their hearts and communicate better, developing a right-brained intuitive capacity for intimacy and cooperative togetherness. Women must learn to override their programmed victim script while maintaining the ability to be receptive. Women need to re-learn how to be emotionally independent (though inherently we are all interdependent). We also need to learn how to communicate beyond the "I don't want to hurt him" or "he needs to be punished" polarity. It's called empowered yin, and unfortunately, most women and men lack it.
In more homophobic societies such as America and the Middle East (I love grouping those two cunt trees together), there is great work to be done in clearing mens' root chakra or the less elegantly deemed anus. Gay mens' natural sense of femininity and receptivity has been demonized by the male heterosexual community and has energetically blocked the root chakra of most heterosexual men. As the one opening of sexual receiving as opposed to giving, the anus is the key to mens' feminine receptivity from both a physical and psycho-sexual perspective. To most mens' minds, an open root chakra would peg them as gay and incur insult from their male friends. It doesn't matter if they're exploring their bottom with a woman; the very reference that they might want to explore their bottom at all raises a red flag that questions their very masculinity. Female partners who shame their men for wanting to explore this area only make the matter worse. "I don't want a gay man!" they say, defending the overly macho disposition that in other areas of the relationship they may demonize. The average hetero root chakra is now a storage bin for fears, sexual shame, homophobia, and survival issues. Wonder why men are so obsessed with money?
There exists an energetic blockage to pleasure and energy flow in mens' prostate gland for fear of being seen as gay. It's no wonder that prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancerous death in American men. The prostate gland is the male equivalent to the goddess or g-spot in women. Self-actualizing men can do themselves a great service by overriding their programmed sense of fear and non-receptivity by taking the time to clear the blocks in their root chakra through the study of tantra- or any method of sexual healing. Female partners can do their male partners a great service by helping him clear and give pleasure to his root chakra and prostate gland in a safe container of love, support, healing, and empathy. Margot Anand's Sexual Energy Ecstasy is a great place to start if the route of sexual healing and empowerment appeals to you as a route to personal liberation. The root and sacral chakras are the basic centers of our kundalini life force and the building blocks of our enlightenment. There is no hope for opening up the higher centers until the base and sacral chakras are cleared. It's like expecting the branches of the tree of life to grow without first planting its roots in fertile and procreative soil. Try growing a tree in polluted soil and see how healthy the fruit is!
Women must strengthen their wills (solar plexus) and clear any imbalances in their base and sacral chakras as well. The first two chakras in women are the microcosm of universal creation; the power of these chakras when balanced and cleared should not be demonized. The resulting desire becomes the basis of tantric union and relationship between all of life's material and non-material manifestations, a profound appreciation for the matrix of 3rd dimensional creation while providing a basis for union in higher dimensions. Both men and women need to take the introspective effort to understand, develop, and strengthen their own feminine power. Through the balancing of opposites and the re-birth of the repressed feminine that has destroyed the Earth, men and women will develop an angelic androgynous nature making them whole and balanced unto themselves. What basis for true union as equals is there if we are not first balanced within ourselves?
Sex and gender roles don't even take into account the trauma and outright toxicity that a lot of us have been exposed to growing up in the dark age of so-called civilization. I myself have been challenged in learning to live in an internal environment that supports sustainable love as I grew up in an environment of consistent physical and emotional danger. My real father was a drug-dealing philosopher eventually murdered at the expense of finding fake enlightenment through methamphetamines- the most instant means available to him- while exposing me to home-alone burglaries and nights of wondering where daddy was and what he was doing.
When my dad got shot in the head and was left to rot in the desert, I had a step-father to take my real dad's place. Unluckily, he was a rageaholic with no emotional boundaries whose unexpected outbursts I was exposed to on a consistent basis while making strange sexually verbal come-ons about how he'd be my boyfriend if he was younger. Throughout my adolescence from 12 to when I moved out at 20, he drilled into my head the idea that if I had just talked to my real dad, I could have saved him from being murdered. Such ignorance and carelessness on his part engendered the belief that I am an emotional, if not a physical murderer of sorts. I had a guilt complex larger than a blue whale's cock.
Such warped conditioning with the primary male-caretakers in my life was bound to effect my way of dealing with men in ways I could not have foreseen. In my early adulthood, I have been co-dependent, guilt-complexed, sexually vampiric, and an emotionally destructive martyr- revelling in opportunities when my lover screwed up so I could drill into them how truly useless they were to me. In the process of transformation, my neuro-linguistic alchemical mold-to gold has turned co-dependence into interdependence, guilt into personal responsibility, and martyrdumb into admitted vulnerability that seeks protective men. More often than not I sublimate my need to destroy by fighting art battles and destroying memes while providing an emotionally destructive shadow self a playpin in the consensual world of S&M as a dominatrix. The dark maggots of my psyche occasionally get caught in a present synapse from where there temporarily seems no escape but the imagined slate of death to wipe away all conditioned memory. I await the affection of a lover as a doomed woman would her executioner's blade. I remind myself that this feeling too shall pass and to not be overly identified with my innate doom response. Emotions and thoughts are so fleeting in this infinitely recursive hall of mirrors found ad infinitum in my beloved's reflection.
The storybook nightmare of early adolescent tragedies led me towards more intense and less obvious aspects of divinity and love as I awoke to my spiritual calling. The Hindu Goddess of destruction, Kali began to make herself known in my dreams. On my altar where I practiced magic stood a Kali painting that my ex-husband had painted for me. Magic gave me a feeling of empowerment that I had so lacked as a youth. As I began to put my attention on ways to extract myself from the dead hand of history- both on a macro and microcosmic level- the universe gave me exactly what I needed to heal.
One night, I left a candle unattended on my altar. The gorgeous flame of the fire licked up the sparkling gold, glitter, black and blue Kali, burning her to a Kali-fried crisp that nearly burnt my apartment down with it, leaving a smoke angel on the wall where once she stood with her scythe. The image of Kali that my husband had painted for me completely burnt through and left ashes of our attachment to each other with an empty frame. A fireball jumped over the carpet and destroyed a comforter that I had bought with a misogynistic ex-boyfriend. The ashes wafted over the dirty mirror of time as a voodoo quantum portal opened and left my mind agape at what kind of warped rabbit hole had just opened. A month later I wound up in bed with my dead father's namesake William IV. William IV was the name of my real father (number and all).
On the wall of William's bedroom was an ash mark left by an unattended candle that a ghost had wrenched from its metal candleabra and wafted against the wall. William didn't believe in ghosts, but distinctly heard voices and saw shadows that literally bent the metal of the candlestick holder, as if proving to him the ghost's existence. I saw the ash mark on a night I was partying with some girlfriends and synchronistically wandered over to his place next door. In his bedroom, I immediately recognized the ashen burn as the mark of Kali. William revealed a tattooed "IV" on his wrist while we lay in bed together, and I knew that this was where the portal had led me. William IV opened up a portal of grief I had never dealt with when my father was murdered. The two William IVs even looked similar with similar personality traits and shared Ayn Rand as their favorite author. In the midst of my newly enflamed year-long grief, my then husband and I ended our marriage. I left my husband for my dead father's namesake.
For awhile I thought I was dating my real father's ghost. You can imagine how that might have freaked out my new boyfriend, whose house I would drive to in the middle of the night to cry the loss of my dad in his arms. We provided each other sensual and emotional comfort. To add to the warped stinkronistic ghost story, my new beloved's nickname was "Zombie." I play the queen of the zombies in his movie where I sing alien opera to Mozart's Requiem recorded in his mother's closet who couldn't accept it when he came out of the closet and revealed himself as bisexual. Reality truly is stranger than fiction.
Right before I met William, he had disavowed women as a sexual option. I assisted in helping save William's sexuality with women utilizing black tantra (in my mind I was saving my real dad and releasing the karmic burden of feeling like I should have saved him the first time around), while he showed me that sometimes people fight and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are evil psycho-erotic killers. If they are psycho-erotic killers and femme fatales, that's cool too! (whereas before I would feel guilty about being an emotional killer since that role was so closely linked to guilt over my father's murder). I also cleared out my guilt complex internally dictating that I needed to save men in order to keep them from sexually harming or otherwise vamping women. That script was taught to me by my step-dad.
William IV held space for a few of my major freak-outs when I literally gestalted (permit the word's use as a verb) that he- or my step-dad's psycho-erotic reflection as seen in him- would attack me in my peak moments of sexual vulnerability. Through William's stoic non-reactivity (a quality that I had previously judged in other lovers) and our mutual pheremonal chemistry, I acquired an orgasmic capacity that I didn't think possible with more passionate men who I did not trust not to emotionally attack me. These men also never turned up the chemical heat of my own internal sexual barometer, though I'd wind up in long-term relationships with them. In retrospect, it seemed as though I was sexually punishing myself and ensuring my eventual sexual martyrdom at their hands. This gift of orgasm (hallelujiah!) with William IV- whose weight bench bore an Irish cross and rosary with my name- has lasted with male partners even after William and I broke up and became creative collaborators and friends instead. William was the first lover I had who showed me that I could be a femme fatale and continually chop off my lover's false heads and negative ego if they are willing to come back a better man for the slashing.
During my own near death experience a year after my and William's affair the first time around, my real father's ghost actually did come to visit me. At the time- I was playing out ad infinitum my betrayal complex with men. William (the young alive version) came back to me after complications from burst ovarian cysts left me a bleeding corpse of a woman who had seen way too much for her 27 years. Though he made some signs of trying to take care of me, he couldn't or wouldn't deal with me this time around for more than a month. This was not the time to give me a false sense of hope. The sense of betrayal burned like a stake in my heart. When my real dad's ghost actually did show up one night in the midst of angelic visions and suicidal fantasies, he sensed my insecurity at being able to feel his presence, and responded telepathically, "you have a gift." I was surprised to hear myself say to him, "How the f**k could you leave me?" and then burst into a torrent of tears while he sat next to me. He told me that he had sent William into my life to help me sort out my complex and that he would not be rectified until I was rectified. This was not an easy psychological fix. I still see 12:20 on the clock whenever I am obsessively addicting on a lover. 12-20 was my real father's birthday. Every day is my death day if I'm lucky- death to the encumbering scripts of the past that give birth to my present erotic free will. Will-I-Am.
I truly thought if I spoke to anyone about some of the stuff I was seeing, hearing, and thinking during my near-death trip, that I would be locked up in a mental institution and that they finally would destroy my mind. Believe me, this is not far-out thinking considering our culture's current response to psychological malaise and Western medicine's inability to deal with indigo children and starseeds. Fortunately, I found a psychic clairvoyant for a therapist, an acupuncturist, homeopathist, and an Arcturian healer, who quickly penetrated to the core of what was happening. With one session, my Arcturian healer cleared my six year struggle with candida. My female organs were harbinging chronic yeast infections and systemic malaise as a form of sexual protection, having been date raped years prior due to very poor boundaries on either end of another train-wrecked love affair. Until I cleared my martyr-attack complex on all dimensions (I also fell prey to a non-embodied 4th dimensional succubus), I kept on attracting lovers to whom I always played the victim, justifying my need for physical sexual armor to keep men away.
The angelic opening to other dimensions through nearly dying was worth the intensity of all I experienced and everything I learned. I am humbled by the intensity and all-encompassing nature of spirit's love for me. Death and resurrection have brought such sweet surrender to the moment-by-moment intensity of romantic love, whether it lasts for a year or just for a week. How often is romantic love supposed to fan the fire of existence anyway? Once a week? Twice a month? Every day for a year then not at all? I have no idea. What I do know is the inherent immortality of all souls and that when people die, they become angels who look over us from the other side. During my near-death spell, everyone began to look like an angel, a strange side-effect that restored my faith in humanity's ability to ascend. I visited the Valhalla cemetery on one of my morbid self-therapeutic jaunts through the land of the dead and heard a ghost named Ted tell me, "Appreciate your loved ones while they're alive." Most dead people have many regrets- all except the children and babies who seem to retain their angelic nature. I could feel that in the childhood part of the cemetery.
As one might imagine, preservation in the form of sustainability is not something that makes much sense to me. Creation and destruction, sex, death, and art, are where my consciousness largely prevails. It was Vishnu who came to me in a dream and said that preservation would find a way into my life through the laws of reason as they pertained to enlightenement's rationality. I often hope for something to give me a sense of stability; certainly it is not the materialistic aims of 3rd dimensional reality. I hope that the source of some emotional stability might be sustainable love, knowing full well that love is the essential ingredient to be able to hold the necessary frequency to live in the 5th dimension to which enlightened souls are ascending.
The Native Americans won- not because they lived- but because they ascended to the light and now reside as 5th dimensional beings of love and space holders for the earth's bounty to be realized by all those who truly love her. Death does not mean defeat, though the white race who took their place would have us think otherwise. Let us not be fooled by the multiple layers of illusion posing as power. Love truly does conquer all. Those who rape the Earth now will be re-located to other planes of existence that are less evolved after they die. The Earth has made a conscious decision to shift dimensions; that shift does not support cosmic vampires. Ascended masters, angels, and enlightened E.T.s are ensuring that our planet is protected with love.
On my road to self-discovering sustainable love, I am learning that the love for universal principles must be greater than the love for individuals who start to deviate from those principles one holds most dear. Forgiveness and compassion for those stuck in the dark of conditioned responses becomes the crucial medicine to override the default victim script dominant in our love relationships. Love never means compromising one's own values to accommodate a lack of integrity because one is attached to the object of their affections. Principles don't necessarily make cozy bedfellows, but they certainly leave one with a clear conscience! By holding close to our values, we attract other people in line with those values. We continue to swim in the infinite tidepool of the beloved's reflections past the necessary break-ups and ego-deaths along the way that often force us to part ways with our companions who we no longer see eye-to-eye. Loyalty between good friends has always provided my own heart a more lasting love remedy, whereas romance seems so fleetingly inundated with sex, death, and the fire of passion that eventually burns me and my beloved back to the void from whence we came.
Sometimes we need to take stock of what kind of accumulated emotional and sexual baggage we have collected and work on getting rid of as much baggage as we can before we are able to attract a partner who will not keep us spinning in self-induced trauma. Who on the road to self-actualization cannot say that they learned incredibly valuable lessons from all of their major romantic partners despite the suffering (or even because of it)? The realizations from those partnerships are immortal, even if the relationship is not.
Sustainable love has nothing to do with the kind of lock and chain romantic scripts we all had hoped would work. Sorry to burst that over-worn illusion if that's what the title of this article seemed to profer. There is no getting around the inevitable void that leaves us existentially isolated agents with temporary earthly companions, even if they are lasting friends or lovers immortally bound by dharmic mission and universal love. Love these days seems to be as complex as quantum physics, and equally as difficult to figure out!
After I graduated from my post break-up resentments and grief over my ex-husband and both William IVs, a huge amount of creative energy was liberated- energy that my partners and I would previously dump into our endless drama. I needed to forgive both of them and understand their points of view so that I might have compassion for the hurt engendered on either end. With my husband, the intensity of our passion (both the positive and negative) equated in our minds to the depth of our love. I realized in retrospect how life-negating the drama that passed for passion was and how I needed to cut the cords with my own over-identification to romantic tragedy in order to not be constantly dragging my emotional intestines behind me.
My ex-husband admitted to me afterwards that I had pretty much been his main art project while he and I were together, and I was living under the illusion that I needed a single male placeholder in my life to keep me grounded and take the place of my dad. In the wake of grieving my real dad, for the first time in my life, I'm able to accept the stream of love and lovers who course through my life without trying to control the shape or course of the river. We as a species have a lot to learn about not controlling love. The surrender that comes in the wake of giving up control is testament to our ability to keep on loving despite the challenges with which we are faced that may tell us it is not safe to love someone. We must use our individual wills to harness the shadow of our doubt in love without letting doubt be the driver of our erotic and romantic automobiles. Most of us have our doubts about whether true love is possible. That does not need to be the guiding factor in determining whether or not surrendering to someone is a wise idea. The heart must guide where the mind finds only stop signs. If the heart says yes, have trust that you will learn from this person what you need in order to become a more integrated individual while slip sliding in the grace of love's unadulterated reflection. We learn so much about the nature of our own wills by relating to others.
A relationship metaphorically gives birth to an etheric child and affects everyone who comes into contact with that child. No physical procreation is required in order to give birth to new life as seen through the eyes of love. I am often inspired by spending time with a loving couple, even if I don't have a romantic partner at the time. I allow myself to be moved by the outpouring of love these two people have for each other that is literally extending its boundaries and inviting others to take part. How can this kind of love not heal the cracks in the Earth through extension? In a tantric world view, everything is interconnected and in relationship to everything else. The love we create in our intimate relationships will naturally filter over into other projects, including elevating consciousness and saving the earth. If we do not value this basic interconnectedness of our human companions, what hope do we have in saving the biggest lover of them all in the form of an 8,000 mile diameter globe floating in outerspace?
Sustainable love seems to have more to do with deprogramming (making die) relational scripts in one's inner environment as opposed to fixing or changing people in one's external environment in a vain attempt to make up for the hole in one's soul or gain some false sense of security in someone else's reflection. I would be remiss if I did not mention my observation that a lot of peoples' sexual and emotional shame and guilt gets inverted and projected onto the whole sustainable living trip as a messianic complex, with there being only "one" way to save the world and everyone else buying fossil fuels and eating meat doomed to hell in a really long line at Walmart. "Saving" one's lover seems to be the warped mirror parallel of the false promise messiahs promote that saving anyone is possible. We may act as catalysts for another person to choose to save themselves through the attention and devotion of our love, but that is all.
If our liberation resides in non-attachment to ALL areas of life, we must at least entertain the notion that the things and people we hold most precious in life- including our Earth- are the things we must let go of in order to truly be free. Real love cannot be destroyed, only temporarily tarnished. There is caution to be had in the tendency to become attached to saving the world or seeing our partners as karmic burdens to effectively manage in the process of ascension. The propogation of the human species posing as a mission to save the planet for love of future generations is questionable at best. Perhaps homo-sapiens are not the last stop of living organisms this world will see in order to evolve according to her own principles- without our tinkering. The shape of our surrender and trust in grace for what's to come will carve out the necessary niches for evolution to occur. If we really do love the Earth, let the love for her bounty and beauty be the guiding force in saving her and not selfish anthrocentricism and survivalism.
Strangely, when we put our attention on deprogramming ourselves instead of holding on to love or life, the environment around us seems to rearrange itself in a way to support the kind of reprogramming that comes from the void of one's non-expectant emotional landscape. We begin to attract people who align with our most deeply cherished intentions and values. We accept the death of our so-called love and planet as we would a caterpillar who consumes a leaf with no apologies. The rose of immortality will arise if only we are willing to water the fertile soil of our own graves with hope and laughter for what's to come. Death is not real. And somehow, as peak oil mounts with love's entropic heat-death, our passions will all be turned inwards towards the eternal flame of imagination that guides each one of us to shape the world's reality according to our own wills. The barrier between thought and reality is disappearing in Earths' dimensional 4th to 5th dimensional shift. Anything is possible.
When I first began my study of magick, almost thirty years ago, I was fascinated and bewildered by the numerous, often conflicting, systems for cataloging entities. Every school of thought and every religion offered a pantheon of entities, avatars, teachers, and earthly representatives. There were catalogs filled with icons, pantheons crowded with gods and goddesses, angels organized in hierarchies more complex than government offices, and demons lined up behind their bigger, badder brethren. Even the most ostensibly monotheistic religions still had lists of saints, prophets, teachers, legendary characters, and further subdivisions of their One True, yet nonetheless divisible, God.
All these systems were fascinating, of course, and I spent many days, weeks, months and years focused upon exploring them. I studied Jung's Man and His Symbols, pored over Crowley's 777, spread tarot cards on my living room floor, tossed coins among the piles of tarot cards, and created magic marker enneagrams, veves, and hieroglyphs. I soon found that a few of these entities had the ability to affect me in surprising ways. Some I found I was inexplicably drawn to – I wrote short stories and created tarot cards for the god Pan for many years, performed rituals involving Aleister Crowley's triumvirate of Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit and placed candy, rum and cigars on altars for Voodoo loas, for instance. Similarly some entities repelled me--although most simply did not touch me in any immediately significant way. But ultimately my question about all of these was, "Why this stuff?" The teaching was that these entities were symbols, archetypes from the collective unconscious--from a Platonic dreamworld in which the proper shapes of all things were stored.
I'm fine with the idea that our unconscious minds intersect someplace and that we share the common implicit information that is the world beyond our immediate awareness. It makes sense to me on a very practical level – that everything in the universe influences everything else, no matter how slightly or significantly and that information about everything is available everywhere, if we have the ability to decode it. That still doesn't offer an answer as to how we came up with this particular stuff from among all the potential shapes and forms, gods, angels, demons and symbols of the unperceived world. What is it about that memetic complex that we call a god that makes it a god? How was this stuff first derived? I wanted to understand the nature of the gods and goddesses from books and esoteric lore that I had come to love – ultimately, I wanted to find a pantheon within my own life and experience.
After some years of contemplating this issue of the origin of archetypes, I decided that the emphasis on the "stuff" was only half the equation. The stuff – the names, shapes, clothing and bedroom habits of the gods – represents the content, the collection of ideas and perceptions that we circle in a metaphysical Venn diagram to delineate exactly what constitutes a particular entity. The answer to my question lay as much within the circle as in the hand that pushes the pen to draw it – or rather in the mind that guides that hand.
The question became, "What is it about a particular collection of stuff that fires off the part of my brain that recognizes it as something meaningful?" What makes the character of Ganesh recognizable to worshipers as a god, for instance? It's a more complex question than it might appear on the surface.
The first level to be peeled back deals with how we recognize anything as conscious, as something with which we can communicate. An intuitive Turing Test performed by the unconsciousness mind seems to immediately categorize things into "conscious entity" and "inanimate lump." We look at each other and, hopefully, we recognize one another as human and conscious and at least reasonably intelligent. Some very simple visual patterns, for instance, seem to fire off this sense of recognition – a smiley face, have-a-nice day symbol is recognizable to us as a human face; a South Park cartoon character can be identified with--for a half hour at a time--as a conscious entity with the ability to communicate, make decisions, and act-- however stupidly--upon the world.
Linguistic patterns also seem to have a similar ability to reveal the conscious state of an entity. A sentence formed with proper syntax suggests that its writer or speaker is possessed of some measure of intelligence. Based on such unconscious intuitions, we recognize writers as conscious entities when we read their well-formed sentences. We recognize other humans as such when we communicate with each other in text environments such as Internet forums. And we even recognize fictional characters as entities for whom we might predict behavior and sympathize. (What would Captain Kirk do?) There are many behavioral patterns and cues that help us to, unconsciously, tell the difference between a conscious entity and a brick of cheese.
This all made much more sense to me when I came across the concept of mirror neurons. These are physical structures in the brain which enable us to build predictive models of intelligence or consciousness. In effect, mirror neurons build models of entities and use our own consciousness as computing power to run those models. We look at another person and we a) recognize them as another person, and b) try them on for size to some degree. This suggests that mirror neurons are not only the operative force behind empathy, sympathy, and most forms of communication, but may also explain some of the phenomena involving gods and demons with which I was struggling to understand.
Imagine that you can see yourself, or hear yourself, or feel yourself, as if observing another person. Make it like looking at a movie or a picture of yourself. If you are better at hearing or feeling, then hear yourself talking or making sounds, or feel where your presence would be. *
Imagine that this other self that you are observing is in a place that is very comfortable and very, very relaxing. It's not necessary to see, hear or feel the place, just keep your attention on this other self. *
Watch, listen, and/or feel as this other self becomes more and more relaxed, more and more comfortable, and exhibits the effects of relaxation: softer muscles, different posture, different facial expression, and so forth. *
Make changes to the structure of the image (but not the content):
1. 1.
Make the image larger or smaller 2.
Make the colors brighter or more muted 3.
Emphasize the foreground as opposed to the background, and vice versa 4.
Make the sounds or speech louder or quieter (if the emphasis is on hearing rather than seeing) 5.
Speed up and slow down the action (works for all senses) 6.
Move the image closer or farther away (works for all senses) 7.
Give the image a soft glow or sparkles
*
Notice any changes to your state as you experiment with these changes.
The above exercise deals not just with our ability to recognize entity-hood in our dealings with external stuff, but also with the things that we imagine, the dissociated images and entities that we create in our minds. The very (im)material that gods, demons, and imaginary friends are made from. Also notice how subtle changes in the form and quality of our internal image have the ability to change our response to the entity. Different configurations affect our consciousness in different ways. Making the representation larger or smaller, brighter or dimmer, etc., will often continue the process of making us more or less relaxed. Hopefully you found a configuration that was wonderfully relaxing.
Although the above excersise was about our self-image, it gives us a start towards finding clues to the anatomy of entities of any kind. And even better, we may notice some direct connections between the anatomy of an entity and our own states of consciousness.
Let's consider for a moment our criteria for recognizing something as god or goddess, demon or angel. There are, generally, two major magical operations that involve these critters: invocation and evocation. Invocation is the drawing into oneself of a quality or entity; evocation is the externalization of a quality or entity. In a traditional invocation of Hermes, we might visit a temple of Hermes and contemplate his image, or recite a descriptive poem in his honor, or create a magick circle and bring into it only those things of Hermetic nature, so that we might become more Hermetic ourselves. In a traditional evocation we might summon a Goetic spirit into a triangle and question it about what would make life better for us or constrain it to perform some task for us to that same end. We perform these operations quite naturally in daily life, outside the context of magick or mysticism. When we are inspired by another person or a work of art, that is a kind of invocation. When we imagine conversations with people who aren't present, or attempt to verbally convince our computer connection to go faster, we are engaging in mild forms of evocation.
Let's say that, for the purposes of this discussion, our entities become useful when we can use them to perform invocation and evocation willfully and with well-defined intent. An entity suitable for invocation could, ideally, change you in some desired way by contemplating the entity and drawing it into yourself. An entity suitable for evocation would be able to impart information or perform tasks according to your will. In our Meta-Magical explorations, we hope to discover entities in relation to our own states and our consciousness, rather than necessarily learning some previous explorer's version of a pantheon. (And when we all do this, perhaps we'll find that we have many of these entities in common.)
As in the preceding exercise, we begin with an image of the self. Our hypothesis here is that a self image is the very essence of entity-recognition. It is our basic reference point for consciousness and can also help to reveal our own innate pantheons, the entities who already inhabit our world of consciousness. To change that image from our human self to that of a god, we have to tweak the parameters in order for that image (or voice or feeling) to rise to the level of something useful in invocation or evocation, something with the potential to change us through interaction.
Instant God(dess):
*
Decide on a quality that you either have and would like to enhance, or one that you don't have and would like to acquire. For instance, creativity, compassion, patience, strength, assertiveness, financial skill, adaptability, understanding, concentration, flexibility, love, sex appeal, or whatever you decide upon. Make sure this quality is a positive one, that is, it is one that stands on its own and is not expressed as a lack of something else (for instance, "reduced stress" might be expressed here as "relaxation", "no more bad luck" might be expressed for these purposes as "good luck" and so on). *
Breathe and banish. Imagine a circle around yourself, at about the diameter of your spread arms. Sit or stand in the center of that circle. Fill your lungs completely, with a slow, even inhalation. As you inhale, allow your attention to expand to fill the circle. As you exhale, slowly, evenly, and completely, allow your attention to contract to a single point in the center of your chest. Repeat at least three times. *
Create a dissociated image of yourself (an image, voice or feeling of you as if perceived by another person or in a recording), standing or sitting. Eliminate background and any accessories, objects, props, and so on that might be in your image, so that the image is just you. *
Begin to adjust the physiology of the imagined person to include more and more of your desired quality. Pay attention to and adjust facial expression, posture, breathing, movements, skin tone, muscle usage and anything else that might pertain. *
Adjust the structure of the image (submodalities) for greater impact. Experiment with image size, color depth and quality, image location, and special effects such as glows, sparkles, shimmers. Take each of these to its greatest intensity – for instance, the image could be increased to much greater than life-size. If this image were a god of that particular quality, how would these submodalities manifest? Just how big, bright, loud, strong and sparkly is a god(dess) of x? *
Begin to add in extra features and aspects from other humans, from animals, machines as appropriate to a god(dess) of this quality. For instance, if cunning and strength are useful to this entity, give it some qualities of a tiger or other animal that might represent those qualities (head, body, teeth, eyes, whatever). If enhanced intelligence or processing speed is important, then maybe a computer chip or having a computer as an accessory might work. Take as much time as is necessary to test out some of these qualities. Notice which ones feel the best and keep them. Have fun with this and make your image fantastic. *
Adjust physiology to account for the additions. If you added a computer chip to the brain, how would that be reflected in facial expression, breathing, posture, etc.?
*
Contemplate the image for at least 30 seconds.Pull the image into the circle with you and draw it into you. Wear it like clothing, wrap it around you, let it interpenetrate your body and mind. Let your own body, posture, breathing, facial expression, etc. reflect what you saw in this image. Let the memories of this (future) self who has already resolved this basic need be your memories. Breathe and banish. Be open to thoughts, epiphanies, and suggestions from your unconscious mind that may occur throughout the day as a result of this practice. *
*
This exercise and the early one are offered here for demonstration purposes, to give some practical experience of the relationship between entities and consciousness. For the most part, entities produced or contacted in this way are personal ones, not necessarily god or goddess archetypes familiar to us from the astral storehouse of sacred images. However, sometimes they do rise to that level and first-time practitioners occasionally find themselves face-to-face with deities who offer names and abilities drawn from known pantheons and belief systems. *
The exercises demonstrate an extremely stripped-down and basic mode of working. There are endless modifications and enhancements to these processes of deriving personal pantheons from our unconscious minds. At some point, they become much more than simple demonstrations of a point – but I'll leave that, for now, to your own imagination and experience... *
(...And before you're off to read the next article, I'll just note that to fully understand the point that this piece dances around, no matter how well you think you get it on an intellectual level, it is most likely necessary to actually perform the experiments. You have to look through the microscope and adjust the focus before you really know what a micro-organism is like. And it likewise helps to change the focus of your mind before you really understand the nature of the entities all around us, including gods, goddesses, demons, angels, imaginary friends, ideologies, corporations, schools of art, mass movements and those mysterious bipeds we call "human.")
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God."
In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."
The Assemblies of God, which claims nearly 3 million members, is one of the biggest Pentecostal groups in the U.S. Unlike most other Christians — including most evangelicals — Pentecostals believe in "baptism in the Holy Spirit." That can manifest itself through speaking in tongues, modern-day prophesy and faith healing.
in other words... crazy dumb bitch on the loose! wooo
RNC 8 Charged as Terrorists Under State Patriot Act
Ramsey County Charges RNC 8 Under State Patriot Act, Alleges Acts of Terrorism
In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector, face up to 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty.
Affidavits released by law enforcement which were filed in support of the search warrants used in raids over the weekend, and used to support probable cause for the arrest warrants, are based on paid, confidential informants who infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provacateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence.
"These charges are an effort to equate publicly stated plans to blockade traffic and disrupt the RNC as being the same as acts of terrorism. This both trivializes real violence and attempts to place the stated political views of the Defendants on trial," said Bruce Nestor, President of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. "The charges represent an abuse of the criminal justice system and seek to intimidate any person organizing large scale public demonstrations potentially involving civil disobedience, he said."
The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally have engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. The complaints list all of alleged violations of law during the last few days of the RNC -- other than violations of human rights carried out by law enforcement -- and seeks to hold the 8 defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals. None of the defendants have any prior criminal history involving acts of violence. Searches conducted in connection with the raids failed to turn up any physical evidence to support the allegations of organized attacks on law enforcement. Although claiming probable cause to believe that gunpowder, acids, and assembled incendiary devices would be found, no such items were seized by police. As a result, police sought to claim that the seizure of common household items such as glass bottles, charcoal lighter, nails, a rusty machete, and two hatchets, supported the allegations of the confidential informants. "Police found what they claim was a single plastic shield, a rusty machete, and two hatchets used in Minnesota to split wood. This doesn't amount to evidence of an organized insurrection, particularly when over 3,500 police are present in the Twin Cities, armed with assault rifles, concussion grenades, chemical weapons and full riot gear," said Nestor. In addition, the National Lawyers Guild has previously pointed out how law enforcement has fabricated evidence such as the claims that urine was seized which demonstrators intended to throw at police.
The last time such charges were brought under Minnesota law was in 1918, when Matt Moilen and others organizing labor unions for the International Workers of the World on the Iron Range were charged with "criminal syndicalism." The convictions, based on allegations that workers had advocated or taught acts of violence, including acts only damaging to property, were upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court. In the light of history, these convictions are widely seen as unjust and a product of political trials. The National Lawyers Guild condemns the charges filed in this case against the above 8 defendants and urges the Ramsey County Attorney to drop all charges of conspiracy in this matter.
Bruce Nestor, President Minnesota Chapter of National Lawyers Guild 3547 Cedar Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55407
As of today, September 2, practically all of the predictions in our most recent feature, "What to Expect from the Conventions." have been borne out by reality. Despite millions of dollars of security, thousands of riot police and national guardsmen, and a dramatic series of preemptive raids and arrests, authorities were powerless to prevent massive direct action from disrupting St. Paul during yesterday's Republican National Convention. The day began with hard blockades all around downtown and several different marches, including a black bloc that destroyed police cars and corporate property. A full nine hours of street conflicts ensued, involving a broad diversity of participants and tactics.
At both the DNC and RNC, anarchists showed themselves to have seized the initiative to determine the character of street demonstrations. The US anarchist movement has survived several years of repression and attempted co-optation, proving that the upsurge associated with the anti-globalization era was not a flash in the pan: if anything, we are stronger today than ten years ago.
Pepperspray Productions journalist Joseph La Sac released Pepperspray Productions journalist Lamert Rochfort is being charged with felony riot.
Below is an email sent from their home office in Seattle.
________________________________________ Randy Rowland, from PepperSpray Productions, here. Instead of sending you an announcement about a screening, this email is unusual for us, it is a call for help.
Two PepperSpray collective members, Lambert Rochfort and Joe LaSac, on assignment in St Paul covering the protests associated with the Republican National Convention, were both arrested on Sunday while covering the story. Both are still being held without charges or an opportunity to go before a judge.
Lambert was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful citizens who were surrounded by cops and all arrested. Joe was arrested about the same time as Amy Goodman and two other journalists from "Democracy Now!" were arrested. In fact if you watch the footage of Amy Goodman standing in handcuffs, the fellow sitting on the ground at her feet is Joe.
Lambert and Joe had covered the DNC in Denver, and were in St Paul to cover the protests. They both had their cameras with them when arrested and were clearly doing nothing illegal, just trying to get the story that corporate media tends to overlook. There have been several other attacks on journalists there, including a raid on an indymedia hospitality center, and a raid on the house of a group that documents police brutality. It goes without saying that there is no freedom of the press if reporters are jailed for covering the story.
We want our people released without charges, and we want our equipment back. If you value indymedia and the role of independent journalists--and I know you do, or you wouldn't be on our announcement list--then please take some or all of the following actions to secure the timely release of these PepperSpray videographers.
If you are in the St Paul area or can ask those you know who are in that area, please join the 24 hour vigil at the Ramsey County Jail, 425 Grove St. , St Paul (24 hour vigil)
Please call some or all of the following numbers, demanding that our reporters be freed:
Chris Coleman, St. Paul Mayor: 651.266. 8510 or Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman's office at 651-266-8535 Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0) Ramsey County Sheriff: 651.487. 5149
Here are the names and numbers of St Paul City Council people to call as well: Melvin Carter - Ward 1 - 651- 266-8610 Dan Thune - Ward 2 - 651-266-8620 Pat Harris - Ward 3 - 651-266-8630 Russ Stark - Ward 4 - 651-26-8640 Lee Helgen - Ward 5 - 651-266-8520 Dan Bostrom - Ward 6 - 651-266-8660 Cathy Lantree - Ward 7 - 651-266-8670
PepperSpray Productions is an all-volunteer independent media collective based in Seattle, WA. Among other things, we produce a weekly access TV show called "Indymedia Presents" which airs on 20 channels, from Seattle to New York, including in St. Paul and Minneapolis.
