#culture Archives - Page 2 of 5 - Sapience: The Moment Is Now

October 22, 2022November 10, 2022

Free to Choose

“*The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.*”
― **Gregory David Roberts,** Shantaram

In the second episode of Shantaram, available on AppleTV, Lin steps out of his friend Prabaker’s tent in one of Bombay’s sprawling slums. He looks around at all the people in the bustling slum who are looking at him and wonders if they are afraid of him and hate him. He knows he doesn’t belong there, but fate has put him there.

Thinking to himself, he says something like this: “It is what people know about themselves that make them afraid of you.“

In A World…

I rewound and watch this moment again. I was not expecting a nugget of wisdom in this drama. But, there it was…something real, something true, something very pertinent to the world we live in now. Today, no matter where you live, we live in a world….

…where MAGA Republicans think all Democrats are evil beings who drink the blood of children. This belief makes liberals and Democrats not really human. If they aren’t really human, then that makes it all right to kill them, all of them.

“Oh? You don’t believe me?”

Listen to this man right here. He’s the man with the littlest Wiennie of them all. The man in the middle touting hate, lies, deception, stories of separation, fear, and division. He’s Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon Swears Revenge On His Democratic Enemies After Being Sentenced To Prison — Politicus Media; 10.2K subscribers

This little man, Trump’s Rasputin, knows that a democracy divided is easy to control. And he wants to control everything. Look at his beady eyes and scrubby stubble. He’s a tormented man doing everything to create confusion, chaos, and destruction so he can rise as a Christ for a world of sinners. If you have not seen CNN’s special report Divided We Fall, it is time to watch it.

CNN SPECIAL REPORT: **STEVE BANNON, DIVIDED WE FALL** Reported by Drew Griffin

“Oh — you don’t trust CNN?“

“You say it’s the radical left touting Joe Biden’s radical agenda…and before that it was Hillary….and before that it was Obama…and before and before…”

How far back should we go with the blame game and ‘I don’t trust you‘ contest? To Adam and Eve? Is it really that nasty little snake who started it all?

If you’re playing this game, you have already swallowed the Red Pill, and it’s working its toxic poison deep inside of you. It’s a poison that makes you deeply afraid of others and deeply afraid of your own shadow. And, you probably should be deeply afraid of your own shadow.

That is what Lin is aware of while standing alone in the slum of Bombay. That sneaky shadow that lives inside all of us casting its evil intensions and desires onto everyone else, except for you.

If you are playing this game, you have joined the ranks of people who violently participate in the denial of diversity. You do this to legitimize your own violent fear of anyone who doesn’t walk like you, talk like you, look like you, act like you, or think like you. You secretly believe and harbor a wish to bring into being a world that obeys and worships you.

The dirty little secret is hidden deep inside of you is a greedy, little, bloodthirsty thing who rages and whines about inflicting pain and suffering onto others. You want to do this so that you can enjoy your comforts and privileges. You need to do this because how would you know you are enjoying comforts and privileges unless others are suffering?

When you get called out on your racism, homophobia, antisemitism, and racism, you rage. You rage against the radical liberals who are merely pointing out your evil shadow. But, you don’t want to see the evil inside of you. So you build a wall. It’s a really tall wall that is made from the seething anger and rage boiling inside of you. If anyone gets too near, it burns like a living fire.

‘God damn it!’ if anyone is going to penetrate you inner wall and see that howling, wounded, frighten, greedy thing that lives inside of you.

That thing…. that scoundrel, that fiend, rascal, rogue, fraudster, trickster, beast, son of a bitch, deviant thing, loser, weirdo, cry baby, stupid brutal bastard, and bully. But guess what? So am I, and so is everyone else you know. We all have this evil thing living inside of us.

It never goes away. It bubbles and boils and burns inside us all. It pursues and terrorizes us in our dreams. Lin says, “A dream is when a wish and fear come together. A nightmare is when they are the same thing.”

Remaining ignorant of your evil being merely locks it inside of you where it is hidden behind the carefully constructed idea of yourself (your persona: the role you play in your community and for your family). It is your personal internal prison cell behind the giant wall that you built to conceal your evil being. You built the wall so well, most of the time you can’t even see your evil being locked inside your mental prison cell with you.

This thing inside of you is relentless and torments you night and day. In an act of utter desperation, you spew it out onto others and shout in a voice dripping with rage and fury:

“There! There is the boogeyman!

There is the Devil!

There is the Evil Thing that must be annihilated!”

Or, if the other person (the boogeyman) was once part of your exclusive club of people who know the Truth and what is really going on, you might shout:

“Hang Mike Pence!!”

In a world where Putin calls the people of Ukraine Nazis. Never mind he is the one acting like the Nazi. He is the one full of hate. He is the one who has driven out close to a million Russian men because they don’t want to fight in his barbaric, poorly equipped, and pretty bad army. He is losing. So he resorts to lies and double downs on stupid while waging his limp, impotent Nuclear Weiner.

Do not be fooled by Putin’s weak, victim-based, impotent hysterics! He is exactly the type of man who would push the button.

In a world where Iran’s Moral Police beat up and kill young women simply for wearing their hijab too loosely. But it is themselves they are really policing. They are afraid that if they see a single strand of hair sticking out from a hijab, their Limp Weak Weiner will grow. And if this happens, they are afraid they’ll lose control and turn into the Devils they know themselves to really be deep, deep down inside. This corrupt and bankrupt regime has already killed 272 young people and beaten and/or tortured 1,110 others.

In each world outlined above, each man’s rigid, inflexible thinking and bullshit is camouflage for the shitty little men they really are. They lust after power and cluster together helping each other hold onto power and control in their stinking palaces riddled with long, long corridors of terror.

Maps of Hate

This is what the corruption is and this is what it does to human beings. It is a kind of moral bankruptcy. It takes root inside individuals who find each other and clump together in groups that try to take control in order to enforce their style and way of thinking. If they do get control, they quickly create systems that exclude diversity and impose their way of doing things in brutal ways meant to terrorize everyone else into compliance. When a government becomes populated by such individuals, it turns into a structural system of terror bent on brutalizing anyone who is not exactly like them.

There are three main mappable categories of this deadly psychic virus: Dictators, Terror Groups, and Hate Groups. But the corruption lives inside everyone and is readily expressed in every day transactions. You see it in families, in workplaces, in schools, between friends and lovers. It thrives in ignorance and lack of self-awareness. It particularly loves to reside inside narcissists!

Dictators of the World

This is a comprehensive, up-to-date list of the world's current dictators and authoritarian regimes. In 2022, there are 57 dictatorships in the world. We define a dictator as the ruler of a land rated “Not Free” by the Freedom House in their annual survey of freedom. See the interactive map and photos below or click to visit the current dictators category.

Of course, the dictators of the world will point to all the yellow areas of this map and claim, “There! There is the evil capitalists who are draining the world of resources and polluting our planet!”

They are not entirely wrong, expect they think in black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. They split the world into opposite halves. Then, they step inside the Good Bubble, created entirely inside their mind and spew out their pent-up boiling hate, vengeance, and destructive tendencies on everyone else. They never take responsibility for themselves. They are the consummate victim, and always the hero in their narcissistic story. And so, it is in this way that we (the human race) will split the planet into two unreconcilable halves and all die together in a seething puddle of hate.

Terror Groups

One step behind dictators and authoritarian rulers of the world are terror groups such as Boko Haram, ISIS, and Taliban (which actually managed to retake control of Afghanistan bumping them back up to the dictator map above). The map below shows terror groups around the world and provides a list of largest terrorist groups worldwide.

These are groups of people who twist words and religions to bolster their brutal causes. They are mostly stateless centers of terror who are trying to grab some land and people who they can crush and ruin.

Overall Terrorism Index Score: GTI is a composite measure made up of four indicators: incidents, fatalities, injuries and property damage. To measure the impact of terrorism, a five year weighted average is applied.

Hate Groups

One step behind terror groups are hate groups. Rather than centering their brutal activities in one spot or country, hate groups operate like a distributed network that hock, sell, and propagate hate. It is easier than ever to breed hate with the advent of the Internet and people who live their lives online.

Hate groups traffick outrage and outlandish accusations designed to divide the world into Us and Them, into people you can trust and people you can’t trust. Hate groups are insidious and invade peoples minds like a drug. Once you become addicted to hate, it is an addiction that is harder to kick than heroin. It is a poison to your mind that is more destructive than Meth. Hate literally changes the neural pathways of your brain.

The following images are from Jigsaw, an incredible website that helps you visualize hate.

**Red Pilling:** Signalling allegiance to a group or ideology often becomes an all-consuming project for extremists. Even once an extremist has been formally admitted into a group or online forum of extremists, formers described the need to prove themselves as “down for the cause” or “white enough” by committing more and more time and energy. This performance of dedication often escalates in a competitive fashion, resulting in hate speech and violence.

**Red Pilling**: The rise of informal white supremacist communities online over the last 20 years has made it easier to find, join, and become radicalized into white supremacist groups. Whereas groups in the past might have recruited at white power rock shows or amenable bars, online radicalization no longer requires this investment of in-person time and physical vetting. Today a person can spend hours online moving through increasingly radical content and discussion forums. The immersive nature of these online forums and communities can create a “new normal” that contradicts offline social norms28. This also means younger children and teens, who could not be recruited at bars or white power concerts in the past, can more easily join white supremacist groups at impressionable ages. One former interviewed had entered a white supremacist forum at age 13 and, drawn to the provocative memes and secretive chat forums, had adopted national socialist beliefs by 15. By 18, he was part of a neo-Nazi terrorist organization proscribed in the UK.

Formal and informal extremist groups often coexist online, playing complementary roles

White supremacy is a globally networked movement

Another excellent mapping project is the Hate-Map using real time data of hate events to create a map that shows hotspots and how hate is growing worldwide.

Interactive Hate Map | You need to go to the site embedded in the Hate Map, but as you zoom into an area, the number of incidences increases in the the places that appear white in the map above this one.

The Hate Map is populated with data submitted both by our internal researchers, the public and our network of volunteers. This data largely stems from publicly available news-sources and consolidations of information from other public data-sets and records. Existing records are however often limited in scope and fail to give a comprehensive picture of the global activities of the far right ranging from spread of propaganda and low-level activities through major terrorist incidents.

All data in the Hate Map is verified and quality controlled by internal researchers who are experts on far right extremism and experienced in the field of open source intelligence (OSINT) building on public sources and providing verifiable documentation before it is made available in our public-facing database and dashboard. Our researchers take great care to verify sources where there might exist any doubt. Links to external sources are provided for all our database entries in order to ensure that the public further can verify any incident independently.

Our dataset is cross referenced against the work of other institutions and organizations mapping the far right in order to ensure as comprehensive a picture of the global situation of the far right as possible, in keeping with the highest academic standards.

The Hate Map is a living document and both recent and historic events are added and verified on a daily basis. -- The Hate-Map

The Playbook

Regardless of if you are a dictator; an authoritarian ruler; a leader or member of a terror group; a leader or member of a hate group; a narcissistic boss, sibling, friend, or parent, you play from the same dirty handbook. That book repeats one mantra over and over, which is to inflict as much pain, terror, and suffering on your enemy (which is anyone who does not agree with you) while constantly claiming to be the victim. And if you can’t win that way, then you have the right to destroy everything.

This attitude, belief system, behavior is all a big cover up of who you really are. It is a smoke screen and distraction because deep, deep down inside yourself you feel inferior, impotent, dithering, confused, frighten, and like a limp Weiner. That’s why you run around the world hurting everyone else. If you can’t have it your way, then you want to be the first to destroy it!

Looking at these map, it is pretty clear we are not doing very well as species. No wonder we are not paying attention to Climate Change. Perhaps we won’t need to after all. The way things are going we will blow ourselves up before nature cleans us off the surface of the planet with climate disasters that are only getting bigger and more deadlier by the year… and this trend is only going bigger and badder not the other way.

Perhaps we all better stop, take a deep breathe, and listen to the Whale Songs again. The ones Vermont biologist Roger Payne captured and brought to us in the 1970s!

Songs Of The Humpback Whale – by Dr. Roger Payne
Gordon Snyder; 494 subscribers

Yetzer Harah

I realized this thing Lin said in the second episode of Shantaram is part of the puzzle of the Yetzer Harah.

I first heard about the Yetzer Harah while listening to Alan Watts lectures who describes it like this:

So, in Hebrew theology incidentally. That there is a thing called the yetzer harah. And in the beginning of time when God created Adam he implanted in him the yetzer hara and the yetzer hara means that wayward spirit. He put something funny in man so that man would be a little odd and it was a result of the yetzer hara that Adam was tempted by Eve who was tempted by the serpent to eat that famous fruit. And, but the Hebrew believes that everything that God created is good. Including the Yetzer Hara. Because if it hadn’t been for the yetzer hara, there would have nothing ever happened. Everybody would have obeyed God and God would have said well this is kind of a bore.

Now that you see, you can’t you can’t just get up to someone and say disobey me, because if they do there are varying you. See that’s a double bind. Say to somebody disobey me but God is much more subtle than that. He didn’t tell Adam to disobey he told him to obey.

But suddenly he put this yetzer hara thing in like that so that, God would say well I’m not responsible. For this thing’s going to happen on its own because what everybody wants is something to happen on its own. And everybody wants that.

Because you see, this sensation of being you. This curious lonely center of awkward sensitivity, subject to the most peculiar feelings and pains and anxieties and all that sort of thing all that. Is an essential prerequisite for feeling something else. These two experiences go together. -- 2.4.9 Way Beyond Seeking Part 2; Alan Watts Organization

In short, the Yetzer Harah is why we do evil things, why we fear people we don’t know, why we wage wars, why we cheat each other… pretty much why we are living in the mess we made of the world today.

Shantaram tells the story of how Lin made a mess of his life (surely guided by his inner Yetzer Harah that tempted him into making a lot of bad choices that landed him in prison). Then, Lin makes a courageous choice, escapes from prison, and gets a second chance to live his life, which he is messing up again–gosh darn it!

I’m only on episode 2…so Lin is probably going to embark on different mistakes. And I bet he is going to grow from these mistakes because Lin demonstrates the capacity to reflect on his new situation and past mistakes, which pushing open the door of the prison cell inside your head, just a little bit, but if you look…there is vast and beautiful field of wisdom beyond your prison cell behind your wall of ignorance.

Is wisdom perhaps the reason God implanted the Yetzer Harah into man at the very beginning?

I suppose we will never know because clearly we are going to kill each other long before we can collectively learn how to embrace diversity and celebrate life in all its many facets and ways of being in the world.

Images For Archetypal Animations

Feature Archetypal Animation

Alice In Wonderland Clip Alice Falls Into a Rabbit Hole 2010 HD

Shop Alice Falling Down The Rabbit Hole Designs in Fabric

Music: Down the Rabbit Hole: Emma Wallace [1] Rabbit Hole 2:02

Second Archetypal Animation

I was searching for exactly what Lin said to himself when he woke up the first morning in his friends tent in the Bombay slum. I could not find it, but I found a lot of other great quotes from Gregory David Roberts who is the author of Shantarm. So, I have sprinkled these in between the credits of where I found the images for this animation.

“Civilisation, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Fear dries a man’s mouth, and hate strangles him. That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.” ― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love; the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing; the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

Charlie Hunnam And Shubham Saraf Tell Us About How The Spirit Of Chaos (And One Drunken Night) Fueled ‘Shantaram’

“While I was chained to a wall and being tortured, I realized, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

“The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,’ he said. ‘It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men – it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone – the noblest man alive or the most wicked – has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

“It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

Charlie Hunnam Fell In Love With India While Working On ‘Shantaram’ But Also Fell Severely Ill!

“There’s a truth deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabhakar told it to me, just as I’m telling it to you now.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

“Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

“Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

**Inde. Bombay ou Mumbai, il faut choisir son**

Music: Shantaram (Chapter Four)Various Artists [1] Aeternum 9:16 [2] Inner Fire – Yuriy from Russia Remix 9:15

October 2, 2022October 4, 2022

UFOs No…But Unexplained Inner Phenomena, Yes!

Who doesn’t like UFOs?!

Think Close Encounters of the Third Kind:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (2/8) Movie CLIP – Chasing the UFOs (1977) HD
261,453 views, Oct 7, 2012

Or ET:

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (2/10) Movie CLIP – Getting Drunk (1982) HD
4,391,816 views, May 27, 2011

But Are They Real?

David Kestenbaum of This American Life says: U-F-No!

Not long ago, in an extremely rare moment of bipartisan unity, Republicans and Democrats came together to discuss UFOs, now called unexplained aerial phenomena or UAPs by the military. It is the first Congressional meeting on the topic since 1969.

Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray, left, and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie speak Tuesday during a House Intelligence, Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee hearing on “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” on Capitol Hill in Washington. *Alex Brandon/AP* — Image from NPR Report on Congress UFO Hearing

David listened into the hearing along with Mick West.

Mick West is a British science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. He is the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, and he investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs. Wikipedia

This short episode of This American Life is a curation of their discussion of the Congressional Hearing while they listened to military officials present a report to Congress that includes about 400 incidents, which is up from 143 assessed in a report released about a year ago.

Mick explained a lot of the unexplained aerial phenomena as camera artifacts such as these:

Scott W. Bray, the deputy director of Naval intelligence, told lawmakers there is no evidence of aliens, and they still haven’t uncovered anything “nonterrestrial in origin,” although there remain incidents they can’t explain.

That Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Real

Despite lacking physical evidence that proves the reality of UFOs (other than other explanations such as camera artifacts, mylar balloons, and contrails) that does not mean there isn’t something very real going on. Indeed, this unexplained phenomena is as old as man’s ability to articulate his experiences to others. What makes humans extraordinary on this planet is our shared ability to perceive and share physical reality through words, symbols, and ideas. Human beings also share the ability to perceive and make sense of inner realities. Indeed, mankind’s most spectacular ideas and inventions originate from this inner dimension of being.

Carl Jung is best known for his theories of the human subconscious and the idea he termed the Collective Unconscious. Through his practice as a psychiatrist, he came to believe humanity shares a subconscious mind that stores the memories of all human beings, dead and alive, that are available to us through images, visions, dreams, and other phenomena humans experience, especially at times of stress, trauma, life and death.

The notion of collective consciousness was put forward by Carl Gustav Jung (Image: Lightspring/Shutterstock) — Image from: Carl Jung and the Concept of Collective Consciousness

Jung wrote a book about UFO and paranormal phenomenon. Here are two summaries of this book:

While Jung is known mainly for his theories on the nature of the unconscious mind, he did have an interest in the paranormal. In this essay, Jung applies his analytical skills to the UFO phenomenon. Rather than assuming that the modern prevalence of UFO sightings are due to extraterrestrial craft, Jung reserves judgment on their origin & connects UFOs with archetypal imagery, concluding that they have become a "living myth." This essay is intriguing in its methodology & implications as to the nature of UFOs & their relation to the human psyche. -- GoodReads: Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies

In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets.... Even people who would never have thought that a religious problem could be a serious matter that concerned them personally are beginning to ask themselves fundamental questions. Under these circumstances it would not be at all surprising if those sections of the community who ask themselves nothing were visited by `visions,' by a widespread myth seriously believed in by some and rejected as absurd by others.--C. G. Jung, in Flying Saucers Jung's primary concern in Flying Saucers is not with the reality or unreality of UFOs but with their psychic aspect. Rather than speculate about their possible nature and extraterrestrial origin as alleged spacecraft, he asks what it may signify that these phenomena, whether real or imagined, are seen in such numbers just at a time when humankind is menaced as never before in history. The UFOs represent, in Jung's phrase, a modern myth. -- GoogleBooks Summary

Jung maintained throughout his life that man’s inner life, dreams, images, visions is real and carries a reality, a gravity that can be felt in our lives each and every day.

Sources for Images Above: Myth CraftsCarl Jung and UFOs: Ancient Alien Art – Myth Crafts; Brill[PDF] Judaism and the UFO; with Emphasis on the Vision of Ezekiel; Cambridge University PressTrauma, flying saucers and the art of Ionel Talpazan | Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences | Cambridge Core; Saatchi ArtUFO 0361, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 40x50cm Painting by Marc Jung | Saatchi Art; GoodreadsOwlseyes (O’Porto, Portugal)’s review of Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies; Princeton University PressFlying Saucers | Princeton University Press

Reality Is Strange | We Need Inner Astronauts Now More Than Ever

Perhaps we need more inner astronauts willing and able to go where no man has gone before, equipped with abilities to chart our inner space, just as we do our outer space. Indeed, inner space may be far vaster than the universe, which may be a little phenomena of this vast inner space that we do not understand very much at all.

In a time of so much crisis, we need to learn how to better articulate inner weather and dangerous patterns just as we have learned to watch and predict weather patterns and identify dangerous patterns such as Hurricane Ian.

There have been many dangerous and horrible natural disasters this year, including devastating floods in Pakistan, acute heat waves and historically lower water levels in rivers throughout Europe, and increasingly bigger and deadlier fires worldwide (see 2022 International Wildfires: As of Sept. 8, the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) estimates that within European Union countries, between 2 million acres and 2.1 million acres have burned).

There is also dangerous and deadly inner weather that is sweeping the world. It travels on currents of propaganda, misinformation, lies, and conspiracy myths. Hurricane Putin is meaning the entire world with his threats of nukes, sabotaging his own pipeline (a play he used to get into power when he had apartment buildings blown up and blamed it on Chechen separatists), and the death, destruction, and torture of Ukrainians. His maniacal invasion of Ukraine rides on his strangle hold on power in Russia allowing him to infect and propagate a collective homicidal psychosis among his people. His and other strong arm actors in our world are distracting us and contributing to our collective failure to mitigate climate change while we still can.

Can you tell which pictures that are Putin’s hurricane of devastation and death and which are Ian?

Images above from: Sky NewsUkraine war: Images taken by Sky News team reveal devastating aftermath of war | World News | Sky News; Tampa Bay TimesAbsolute devastation’: Hurricane Ian decimates Fort Myers Beach; ABC NewsWhat’s the cost of damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure amid Russia’s invasion? – ABC News Visit; The Sun DailyRescue efforts continue as Florida takes stock of Hurricane Ian devastation; BBCUkraine war: Images reveal scale of destruction in Mariupol – BBC News; The News-PressAerial video shows devastation on Fort Myers Beach after Hurricane IanWatch… on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022; USNews.comRussian Carnage, Destruction Revealed in Newly Liberated Ukrainian Territory; southernminn.comIan lashes South Carolina as Florida surveys devastation | State | southernminn.com; University of Nevada, RenoUkraine, horror of the past, terror to the future | University of Nevada, Ren; Charisma NewsSharks in the Streets, Houses Floating Away as Ian Leaves Mass Devastation — Charisma NewsVisit; Common DreamsCivilians ‘Paying the Highest Price’ for ‘Utter Devastation’ of Ukraine: UN Official; Independent.ieIn pictures: Hurricane Ian causes devastation as it swamps parts of Florida – Independent.ie

Charting A New Future

I think Future Islands nailed the idea of unidentified phenomena, either being external or internal, in their beautiful song Like the Moon:

Future Islands – Like the Moon
6,667,533 views

Without better abilities to navigate our inner spaces, we will probably destroy our planet and ourselves right along with it.

First Archetypal Image

Child Road Spaceship Photomontage Ufo Kid Girl | warppppp5 | Waschi Washborne • Age 60 • Essen/Germany • Member since Dec. 15, 2020

Second Archetypal Image

Ufo Abduction Fantasy Bicycle Child Baby Alien | 0fjd125gk87 | Deutschland • Member since Sept. 3, 2013

Third Archetypal Image

Fantasy Landscape Spaceship Ufo Hover | KELLEPICS | Stefan Keller • Deutschland / Germany • Member since March 22, 2017 • #274

Fourth Archetypal Image

Wald Nature Frau Flower Photomontage | warppppp5 | Waschi Washborne • Age 60 • Essen/Germany • Member since Dec. 15, 2020

Fifth Archetypal Image

Water Drops Waterdrop Liquid Jumping Up Drop | Inactive account – ID 4924546

Sixth Archetypal Image

Ballet Water Drop Frau Ballerina Liquid | warppppp5 | Waschi Washborne • Age 60 • Essen/Germany • Member since Dec. 15, 2020

Seventh Archetypal Image

Earth Ufo World Globe Landscape Country Template | pixel2013 | S. Hermann / F. Richter • Germany • Member since April 9, 2016

Music for Archetypal Animation:

Vagina Obscura & Other Shameful Mysteries

The Shameful Vagina

Several days ago, I heard Rachel E. Gross interviewed on the The Takeaway about her new book “Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage.” Melissa Harris-Perry, the host, introduces Rachel saying:

Rachel's new book looks at the historical dis, miss, and lack of information about the bodies of people with vaginas, which includes women, trans men, intersex people, and non-binary people. In the introduction to her book, Rachel describes conversations she had with multiple scientists who tried to explain why we understand so much less about female anatomy and vaginas compared to male anatomy and penises.

Interesting things Rachel says about vaginas:

"When pressed, he and others acknowledged that this discrepancy at its heart is due to sexism within science and who is actually doing the investigating. For most of history, women, especially women of color, trans women, and women who are sexual minorities have been excluded from the supposedly universal endeavor. As I reported this book, it became clear to me that the two problems were inseparable. The marginalization of women's bodies from science is largely due to the marginalization of women from science."

"A huge theme in this book is that you only see what you expect to see and you can't see what you aren't looking for. That mostly comes up when we're talking about these older, usually male anatomists who are looking at female bodies and expecting to see something. They expected the female body to be reproductive, to be mostly about the uterus. To not really have that big a capacity for pleasure or for active dynamic processes going on."

"What they illustrated was very passive, a hole or a cave. The word vagina actually means a sheath, which suggests that its main role is to house a penis, which it is not. There definitely is a reimagining going on by a lot of new scientists and you can see that in the art throughout the book. Every chapter opens with an illustration that really looks at these organs in a new way. Usually, one that is active, dynamic, and resilient."

"Unfortunately, the idea of shame has really impacted the way that science, medicine, and people with this anatomy have viewed the "female body." There's a really strong pattern going back to Hippocrates of anatomists really insisting on naming these body parts after shame, especially the clitoris and the vulva. Hippocrates called all the genitals the shame parts, essentially, but that continued. Every time a French anatomist would, ''discover" the clitoris, he would name it the shame part."

"Even today you have words like Scham Lippin in German, which means the shame lips and refers to the labia. You have pudendum, which is an anatomical term that's hopefully being phased out, but it means the parts for which you should be ashamed. Again, it refers to only the vulva. Shame has really attached itself to the female genitals in particular, and that has affected the way science is done. There is a hesitancy of looking directly at this part of the body. There is a tendency to associate it with danger, sexuality in a negative light, the threat of pregnancy and STDs and disease."

"It's really blocked us from looking at the incredibly unexpected and expansive things that this system is doing. The ovaries are producing hormones that support body-wide health from bone health to heart health, to brain health. The uterus is one of the most regenerative organs in the body, and when it's not pregnant, just going through monthly menstruation, it's ushering stem cells and immune cells to heal this wound painlessly, it's creating new blood vessels and it's doing this every month on cue, and it probably has a lot to teach us about regenerative medicine in general but having looked at these organs with themes like shame and only reproduction in mind has really narrowed the view."

The female body has long been shamed by modern civilizations and many religions for centuries. Rachel says it has been colonized with the same imperial brutality inflicted on native peoples and the land worldwide. I think this is shameful: Man’s capacity to inflict brutality upon his fellow human beings and all life.

The Shame of Being a Sexual Being

Around the same time, I heard The TakeAway, I also listened to a lecture by Alan Watts about Repressed Sex. I never know where Synchronistic Stories are going to lead me, but this one seemed important.

Alan Watts artfully captures our confusion and shame around sex. Above is the video with his lecture and below is a transcript of it if you prefer to read. I’ll let you make your own connections, if you’re interested.

Transcript from video with time markings:

0:08 min Because naturally when you love someone 0:10 very much indeed in the enthusiasm and 0:13 ardor of youth you say things that are 0:18 hardly logical or rational you stand up 0:24 before an altar and you say my darling 0:25 my sweetheart my perfect pet I adore you 0:28 so much that I will live with you 0:30 forever and ever until death do us part 0:32 and that’s the way you feel at the time 0:36 in rather similar mood ancient peoples 0:40 would hail their kings and say O king 0:42 live forever obviously this was not 0:45 literally meant they were just wishing 0:48 him a long life but to live forever no 0:50 sir no mortal does that so the trouble 0:56 was you see that when certain kinds of 0:59 extravagant poetic expressions got in 1:04 the hands of people like Agustin and 1:06 Tertullian who were rather influenced by 1:10 Roman literalness they wrote it into the 1:13 law books and so this amazing situation 1:19 came about but we still have not fully 1:22 explored the subtlety of it let us 1:27 consider certain periods when this 1:31 attitude of PrudeISM towards sexuality 1:34 was in us in an ascendancy nearest to 1:38 our times is the bourgeois revolution 1:42 you might call it in Victorian England 1:45 and the United States we all say 1:48 Victorian as an adjective to indicate 1:51 grundyISM extreme monogamy a definite 1:59 disgust for all things sexual and yet 2:04 when we really go into the history of 2:07 the Victorian period we find that it was 2:10 an extremely luscious 2:12 EPOC one has only to look at the 2:17 lushness the victorian furniture he 2:20 realized that chairs are disguised women 2:26 that the way even piano legs are shaped 2:30 when this kind of thing is throughout 2:33 Victorian art forms and the conduct of 2:37 the British aristocracy during that 2:39 period record description people like 2:45 Freud and Havelaar Kellis made certain 2:49 mistake yeah they said about the church 2:57 and about religion in general that it 2:59 was nothing but a form of sublimated sex 3:04 they said these people for curious 3:06 reasons suppressed sex and therefore it 3:09 becomes a very powerful force for them 3:14 you must remember of course that they 3:16 worked on a hydraulic analogy of human 3:18 psychology that they liken it all to a 3:21 river if you dammed it up that would 3:23 burst it down he doesn’t actually follow 3:26 that human psychology is hydraulic but 3:29 this is the metaphor they used now they 3:31 said the church has repressed sex but 3:34 actually if you look at its symbolism it 3:37 is nothing but an expression of sex 3:40 everything is reduced to libido as the 3:43 fundamental reality and the church 3:49 replied “It’s nothing of the kind we deny 3:52 this we think that this reduction of 3:55 everything for sex is just a way of 3:57 attacking holy things and on the 4:01 contrary we would say that people who 4:03 are fascinated with sex and make it 4:05 their God are replete are repressing 4:06 religion 4:11 now the problem in this debate everybody 4:13 missed the boat the church should have 4:18 been in a position to say to Freud well 4:20 of course 4:21 thank you very much ah yes indeed our 4:25 symbolism is sexual, the steeples on our 4:28 churches the vesicle shaped windows and 4:36 of suffer addict shields on which we put 4:39 images of the crucifix or the Virgin 4:42 Mother of God these are all quite 4:45 plainly sexual, but you see the sexual 4:49 biology in its term reveals the 4:53 mysteries of the universe; sex is not 4:56 mere sex sex is a holy thing and is one 5:04 of the most marvelous revelations of the 5:06 divine but imagine the church just 5:11 couldn’t say that if you look at Tibetan 5:16 Buddhist iconography they’re images or 5:20 you look in Hindu temples you will find 5:23 things that Europeans and Americans have 5:27 never been able to understand here are 5:30 images of Buddhas and of the gods 5:33 engaged in amazing diversions with their 5:37 female counterparts and everybody thinks 5:40 it needs a kind of dirty sculptures now 5:43 they are nothing of the kind they are 5:47 saying to the people who look at them 5:51 the play of man and woman is on that 5:57 level on the level of biology a 6:00 reflection of the fundamental play of 6:02 the cosmos the play of the positive and 6:06 negative principles of the light and the 6:08 dark of the mental and the material they 6:13 all play together and 6:17 the function of sexual play is not 6:22 merely the survival and utilitarian 6:24 function of reproducing the species as 6:27 it is among animals to a very large 6:29 extent what peculiarly distinguishes 6:33 human sexuality is that it brings the 6:38 partners closer and closer to each other 6:42 in an intense state of United feeling in 6:46 other words it is a sacrament the output 6:48 and visible sign of an inward and 6:50 spiritual grace bringing about love and 6:54 so if that is peculiar to human beings 6:58 it is perfect nonsense to degrade human 7:02 sexuality by saying it should only be 7:04 carried on in the way that the animals 7:06 do theirs because they have not yet as 7:11 it were evolved to the place where sex 7:13 is the sacramental expression of man and 7:19 woman’s love and this love in that sense 7:23 is a kind of enthusiasm which means a 7:27 being possessed by the Divine falling in 7:32 love although considered by practical 7:35 people to be a sort of madness is 7:38 actually the same sort of thing as the 7:40 mystical vision a grace and in its light 7:48 we see people in their divine aspect 7:54 when as the song says every little 7:57 breeze 7:58 whispers Louise there is a sort of 8:02 extraordinary state of mystical 8:05 intoxication in which the ideal woman 8:10 has become the goddess which is from one 8:17 point of view what every woman is if you 8:20 see her with the scales of your eyes and 8:24 likewise every man 8:28 seen with the scales of her eyes so what 8:38 happened then 8:38 as a result of this historical situation 8:40 was mutual name-calling between the 8:45 proponents of religion and the 8:47 proponents of scientific naturalism such 8:51 as Freud and Havelock Ellis and in our 8:57 own times Albert Ellis and people of 9:02 that kind they’ve never got together 9:06 because they’ve never understood 9:10 neither the church nor the opponents of 9:13 the church have clearly understood that 9:15 the secret or unconscious motivation of 9:18: sexual repression is to make it all the 9:20: more interesting and on the other side 9:26: it has not been clearly understood that 9:28: the sexual biology and all that goes 9:38: with it is a figuring forth on the level 9:47: of biology of what the whole universe is 9:50: about ecstatic clay so as a result there 10:04: has been a kind of compromise 10:07: today in ecclesiastical circles sex is 10:11: being damned with faint praise people 10:18: are saying after all yes sex was made by 10:20: God and we should remember the Jewish 10:22: point of view and it is perhaps for 10:27 something more than reproduction to 10:29 bring about the cementing of the 10:31 marriage ties between husband and wife 10:33 but 10:37 still in practice it remains the 10:42 frightening taboo on the other hand the 10:50 opposition to Christian prudery goes 10:54 overboard and always moves in the 11:00 direction of total license you see 11:04 what’s going on as a contest between the 11:06 people who want the skirts pulled down 11:08 to the floor the people want them pulled 11:10 up to the neck and you you know you’ve 11:14 got to draw the line somewhere but the 11:17 play between these forces is where are 11:19 we going to draw it well that’s very 11:21 exciting provide neither side wins 11:24 I mean imagine what it would be like if 11:28 the libertarians won and they took over 11:31 the church so that on Wednesday evenings 11:34 the young Presbyterian group would meet 11:37 for prayer through sex every child would 11:45 go to the school physician for a course 11:47 in hygienics and they would have 11:49 classes and that have plastic models and 11:51 all the children would do it in class 11:52 very clean hygienic circumstances all 11:56 sprayed with rubbing alcohol it’ll be 11:58 fun imagine how boring it would all 12:00 become so you see the people who say no 12:05 modesty is important have something 12:07 right about but they mustn’t be allowed 12:10 to get away with it but they mustn’t be 12:13 obliterated see life works that way 12:17 let’s take an entirely different analogy 12:19 let’s take a given biological group a 12:22 species we’ll call a it has a natural 12:26 enemy B now one day a gets furious at 12:31 the natural enemy B and says let’s 12:33 obliterate it and they gather their 12:35 forces and they knock out their natural 12:36 enemy well suddenly after a while they 12:41 begin to get weak they get over 12:43 populated there’s nobody around to eat 12:45 up their surplus creatures and they 12:47 don’t have to keep their muscles tensed 12:49 against 12:50 any enemy and they begin to fall apart 12:52 because they destroyed their enemy what 12:55 they should do is cultivate the enemy 12:57 that’s the real meaning of love your 12:58 enemy there is such a thing as a beloved 13:01 enemy and if you don’t have a beloved 13:07 enemy in other words if the Flies and 13:10 the spiders don’t go together you’re 13:12 going to be too many spiders or too many 13:13 flies and these balances are keep the 13:17 course of nature going well it’s exactly 13:19 the same thing as between the Libertarians 13:21 and the Prudes they need each other and 13:25 you should thank if you’ve got a prudish 13:28 father and mother you should be very 13:31 grateful to them for having made sex so 13:33 interesting 13:41 so don’t defy them completely don’t go 13:43 around campus with placards bearing 13:45 four-letter words because that’s going 13:50 to spoil the show that every generation 13:53 must react to the one before you see to 13:56 keep this tension going and it is by 14:00 this tension this play of the opposites 14:03 that we have the love that makes the 14:05 world go round.

The Shame of Being a Conscious Being

**Primal Split** | Music: You Are Not My Mother
The Ultimate Fantasy Playlist, Various Artists
[1] Mad Head Voices 2:35

The third synchronistic thread I encountered is the Primal Split. This is the moment an infant becomes aware that he or she is a separate being from the mother. This is the beginning of a complicated cascade of emotions and conflicts that spark the awakening of ego-consciousness and symbolic thought, if the infant makes it to the other side of this split. If the infant navigates this crossing successfully, there is a moment of shame that must to be dealt with on the journey in becoming a fully conscious being.

I was doing research on the Primal Split for the book I am writing and realized its connection to Rachel E. Gross’ book and Alan Watts’ lecture. I also discovered this amazing performance art exhibit about the Primal Split created by Oya Damla.

Following is background on Melanie Klien and Oya Damla along with a fascinating theory of knowledge that is very much related to the Primal Split, shame, and how we come to know who and what we know as human beings. Again, I’ll let you make your own connections.

Melanie Klien & The Primal Split

Melanie Klein was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested that pre-verbal existential anxiety in infancy catalyzed the formation of the unconscious, resulting in the unconscious splitting of the world into good and bad idealizations. In her theory, how the child resolves that split depends on the constitution of the child and the character of nurturing the child experiences; the quality of resolution can inform the presence, absence, and/or type of distresses a person experiences later in life.[1] -- Wiki

Child analysis[edit]

While Freud's ideas concerning children mostly came from working with adult patients, Klein was innovative in working directly with children, often as young as two years old. Klein saw children's play as their primary mode of emotional communication. While observing children as they played with toys such as dolls, animals, plasticine or pencils and paper, Klein documented their activities and interactions. She then attempted to interpret the unconscious meaning behind their play. Following Freud, she emphasized the significant role that parental figures played in the child's fantasy life and concluded that the timing of Freud's Oedipus complex was incorrect. Contradicting Freud, she proposed that the superego was present from birth.

After exploring ultra-aggressive fantasies of hate, envy, and greed in very young and disturbed children, Melanie Klein proposed a model of the human psyche that linked significant oscillations of state, with the postulated Eros or Thanatos pulsations. She named the state of the mind in which the sustaining principle of life dominates the depressive position. A depressive position is the understanding that good and evil things are one. The fears and worries about the fate of the people destroyed in the child's fantasy are all in the latter. The child tries to repair his mother through phantasm and behavior therapy, overcoming his depression and anxiety. He employs phantasies representing love and restoration to restore the others he destroyed. Morality is based on the standpoint of depression. Klein named it the depressive position because the efforts to restore the integrity of the damaged object are accompanied by depression and despair. After all, the child doubts whether it can fix everything it hurts. Many consider this to be her most significant contribution to psychoanalytic philosophy. She later developed her ideas about an earlier developmental psychological state corresponding to the disintegrating tendency of life, which she called the paranoid-schizoid position.^[6] Klein coined the term "paranoid-schizoid defense" to emphasize how the child's worries manifest as persecution fantasies and how he defends himself against persecution by separating. The paranoid-schizoid position develops at birth is a common psychotic condition.

Klein's insistence on regarding aggression as an important force in its own right when analyzing children brought her into conflict with Freud's daughter Anna Freud, who was one of the other prominent child psychotherapists in continental Europe but who moved to London in 1938 where Klein had been working for several years. Many controversies arose from this conflict, and these are often referred to as the controversial discussions. Battles were played out between the two sides, each presenting scientific papers, working out their respective positions and where they differed, during war-time Britain. A compromise was eventually reached whereby three distinct training groups were formed within the British Psychoanalytical Society, with Anna Freud's influence remaining largely predominant in the US. -- Wiki

Oya Damla‘s Performance of the Primal Split

Check out Oya’s website for more about her beautiful interpretation of the moment of the Primal Split. The images of the Second Archetypal Animation come from photos she shares of this performance. She also shares original sound track for this performance. To hear this, you need to go to her site. It is well worth your time if this topic interests you.

Sex, Kids, and The Theory of O

With the birth of consciousness, humans enter a new realm of being. In this realm, knowledge and truth are incredibly important because they help us navigation through the world of symbols, which we use to navigate through our lives. Truth and knowledge especially matter in the corrosive vat of anti-truth and anti-knowledge. Our modern age is full of false prophets touting false truths and false knowledge, in short, they are full of shit and hocking lots of lies to enrich themselves or to exert control over other peoples minds.

I write about truth and knowledge in my story and encountered one of the most fascinating theories of how humans come to obtain knowledge or lose it. It is Bion’s Theory of O. Here is a bit of his theory. It is complicated. I’ll let you make your own connections if it interests you.

BION’S “TRANSFORMATION IN ‘O’

**BION’S EPISTEMOLOGICAL ODYSSEY INTO THE “DEEP AND FORMLESS INFINITE”**

by James S. Grotstein

INTRODUCTION

"Bion, who was to become the awesome explorer of the "deep and formless infinite" of the psyche, first immersed himself in the theories of Freud and Klein and then gradually developed a revolutionary metapsychological metatheory for psychoanalysis. Bion incurred the criticism of his colleagues by daring to investigate faith, spirituality, religion, mysticism, metaphysics, and fetal mental life. His concepts of transformations in L(ove), H(ate), and K(nowledge), as well as ofintuitionistic and subjective science[Transformations in "0" (Ultimate Truth, Absolute Reality)], constitute an objective and numinous psychoanalytic epistemology."

"Bion was preoccupied with the concept of ultimate reality and absolute truth and reoriented psychoanalytic metapsychology into a theory ofthinkingandmeta-thinking aboutemotions. He distinguished the "thoughts-without-a-thinker" from the mind that had to develop in order to think them. I believe that his concept of"intuitionistic thinking"also presumes the presence of a more profound aspect of that mind: Not only did a mind develop to harvest the "thoughts without a thinker," but another aspect of the mind had to originate these "unthought thoughts." I believe that Bion came to a realization that true "thinking" ("dream work alpha" along the dimensions of "L, H, and K") is an unconscious -- if notpreconscious -- act and that what we normally term "thinking" (application of the ordinate and abscissa of the "Grid") is really"after-thinking."

"By realigning psychoanalysis with metaphysics and ontology (existentialism), Bion perforated the mystique of ontic "objectivity" implicit to logical-positivistic, deterministic science and revealed its own unsuspected mythology--itsabsolute dependence on sense data. Applying his concept ofreversible perspective,he found myths, both collective and personal, to be themselves "scientific deductive systems" in their own right (Bion, 1992). Mostly, Bion founded a new mystical science of psychoanalysis, a numinous discipline based on theabandonment of memory, desire, and understanding. To Bion, mysticism is "seeing things as they truly are -- without disguise" (personal communication). He was preoccupied with the question of how we know what we know."

"In this contribution I emphasize my understanding of Bion as theintuitionistic epistemologist, the"emotional mathematician"(Bion, 1965), the "mystical scientist" (Bion, 1970), the intrepid voyager into the deep and formless infinite, "O." I suggest that a "Transcendent Position" is implied by Bion's conception of "O," the latter of which overarches"nameless dread," beta elements, the "thing-in-themselves," the noumenon, "absolute truth," "ultimate reality," and "reverence and awe." -- From BION'S "TRANSFORMATION IN 'O' by James S. Grotstein

Trump Endorsed QAnon Because He’s Stuck:

On the other side of O is Q. That little mark on the right side of Q is the sign of the corruption of thought and descent into lies. It is the sign of anti-truth, propaganda, and infantile rage.

It is the sign that a person is stuck in the paranoid-schizoid position. These individuals have split the world into the Good Mother (all that is good) and the Bad Mother (all that is bad), and they have stepped into the good bubble and seek to destroy all that is bad failing to realize it is all one, everything is connected. The Good Mother and Bad Mother are the same Mother. The Good Reality and Bad Reality are the same Reality. Destroy one and you destroy All. This is indeed a shameful place humanity has allowed itself to fall into basically because we are afraid of who we really are.

See Juliette Kayyem‘s story in The Atlantic. Trump is an outsized purveyor of propaganda and lies. So is Putin. We will pay with our precious world if humanity continues to close its eyes to the danger these liars and the threat they pose to everyone and existence itself. For the human beings who buy their lies and false truths, they give up their individuality to become part of a psychological monster bent on destroying the Bad Mother…never understanding that the Good Mother and Bad Mother are One.

"For a man who believes in nothing, has no coherent ideology or value system except his own continuing relevance, obsesses over conspiracies, and subsists on grievance and anger, Donald Trump took a long time to fully embrace QAnon. For some time, the former president has been flirting with the cult—which believes, among other preposterous things, that Democrats are part of a global child-sex-trafficking ring that Trump will ultimately defeat. But lately, that courtship has turned into a consummated marriage, as Trump incorporated QAnon tropes into an Ohio rally and started spreading them on his social-media service.  -- About the author: Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary for homeland security under President Barack Obama, is the faculty chair of the homeland-security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters." -- The Atlantic by  Juliette Kayyem

Trump never found his mother. He never reconciled the Good Mother with the Bad Mother. He is permanently stuck in the paranoid-schizoid position. He is a permanent infant; a raging toddler, and so too is any one who paints the world in absolutes, in black and white , in this and only this is good: everyone else is bad. We will end the world if we remain hostages to such infantile men such as Trump and Putin. Any human being stuck in the authoritarian position is playing the Confidence Man game, which is a ruse for being a permanent paranoid infant. These are mad men leading us collectively straight to Hell.

Trump and his infantile, paranoid comrades are shameful.

The End of Shame

Burying A Queen | Queen Elizabeth II

The final synchronistic thread that struck me is the death and burial of Queen Elizabeth II. Death is definitely the end of shame. It is the end of a journey through life. It is the end of that person’s story, of what that person came to understand, to know, to feel, to treasure or despise, to love, to cherish, to hate, and how they reconciled differences and conflicts. How we navigate our lives, everything we come to know and loves, comes to an inevitable end with death.

Alan Watts is absolutely right, the church is full of symbolism about sex. The steeples and naves of Christian churches are ripe with human sexuality, which is the most awesome act of creativity we are capable of as living beings. And so it is in death we end our journey through life and we are returned the womb, the tomb, from which we came.

This is what I wrote in reflecting about the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

For anyone who has lost a loved one, the ceremony of the burial of Queen Elizabeth II was poignant and full of rich symbolism and pageantry.  There are many who mourn her passing, and there are many who say the time for royals is over.  But, we as the people of Earth have never needed the symbolic role that Queen Elizabeth II played for more than 70 years more urgently.

We are crumbling under the weight of modern inconveniences, complexities, and confusion.  We are losing our inner rudder, our collective moral compass. When we as the people of Earth can no longer unite under a common cause, let suppose this is the continuation of a habitual planet conducive for life, then we will simply rip apart the fabric of society necessary to met the challenges of this century.

Queen Elizabeth II played a role. She knew she was a symbol of stability, of hope, of continuity and the ability of her people to endure the tough times as well as enjoy the good times. Lacking such role models, symbols of strength, virtue, and compassion, it is easy to fall prey to our own thoughts of competition, revenge, vengeance, hate.  No, she was not perfect, no human being is or ever will be and much was left undone in the wake of British imperialism. But, she showed a path, a better way, and we the Good People of Earth should take heed.

There are terrible problems ahead of us. Nuclear destruction has never been closer with the savage craze of Putin. This is such a man capable of pushing the button, so is Trump. And if nuclear war doesn't get us, then the global food crisis Putin has unleashed with his vengeful war will kill millions beyond the hundreds of thousands he has already killed with his insane war. And, he is creating the ultimate distraction preventing the world at the very moment it has a chance to mitigate the worst effects of Climate Change. There is only 8 years left.  We are the people who will leave this great task left undone, so the future of life on Earth certainly hangs on the thinnest thread yet.

It is truly a time to take stock and act as we have never done collectively as a species before.

Feature Archetypal Animation:

Images for First Archetypal Animation:

Gross was asked to sketch out some basic ideas for each chapter for the illustrator, Armando Veve, who did opening chapter illustrations for each chapter. “The result was very fun, and developing the final illustrations was super collaborative,” Gross says. Rachel Gross — The Open Notebook

Image: Armando Veve via W. W. Norton & Company —

‘Vagina Obscura’ Demystifies Female Anatomy | There’s a reason women know so little about our own bodies.‘ — New York Times

Image: Rachel Gross Portait by Monique Jacques — Open Notebook

Contessa 39.5” Wide Velvet Wingback Chair

Church Steeple Spire Charleston South Carolina | marygasaway | Mary Gasaway • Age 63 • Fletcher/United States • Member since April 26, 2014

Church Religion Architecture Christianity | Inactive account – ID 652234

Nave Cathedral Interior Church Arches | PublicDomainArchive | English • Member since May 21, 2014

Music for First Archetypal Animation:

WATTSWAVE VI: The Web of Life 2 | Akira The Don | [17] She Loves Me 6:02

Second Archetypal Animation

Images for Second Archetypal Animation

Image from Oya Damla‘s Performance of the *Primal Split*

Be sure to visit Oya Damla‘s website and listen to her original music for this provoking art she has made about the Primal Split.

Music for Second Archetypal Animation:

You Are Not My Mother
The Ultimate Fantasy PlaylistVarious Artists
[1] Mad Head Voices 2:35

July 2, 2022July 2, 2022

Unites All of Creation with Dust

Lesson from the Tao Te Ching

Microsoft Word – Tao Te Ching – trans. by J.H.. McDonald

Ancient Wisdom | Modern Images & Music

Chapter 4 | Tao Te Ching

The Tao is like an empty container:
it can never be emptied and can never be filled.
Infinitely deep, it is the source of all things.
It dulls the sharp, unties the knotted,
shades the lighted, and unites all of creation with dust.

It is hidden but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it .
It is older than the concept of God.

Previous Chapters | Tao Te Ching

https://www.sapience2112.com/emptying-minds-filling-bellies/

The blog is about Chapter 3 of the Tao Te Ching | Emptying Minds…Filling Bellies

Acting Without Doing Anything

The blog is about Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching | Acting Without Doing Anything

https://www.sapience2112.com/what-is-your-source-of-energy/

The blog is about Chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching | What Is Your Source of Engery?

https://www.sapience2112.com/hate-arises-rainbows-become/

This blog is about Pratītyasamutpāda, which states that all dharmas (phenomena) arise in dependence upon other dharmas: “if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist” …

Relevant Topics & Events to the Tao\Now

Reproductive Coercion is an American Cornerstone

Slaves, J. J. Smith’s Plantation, South Carolina, 1862
( The J. Paul Getty Museum / Wikimedia Commons )

Conservatives have long invoked the specter of the 1857 Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott vs. Sandford in their fight against abortion rights, likening embryos and fetuses to slaves with no due process. Progressives now, too, are drawing parallels between the stripping of rights from people who may get pregnant and the infamous majority opinion penned by then-Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote, "a Black man has no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Missing from this historic analogy, however, are the experiences of Black women, whose enslavement and forced reproduction was fundamental to America's rise. We speak with Dr. Deborah Gray White, Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, about this not-so-distant history and the possibilities it holds for all American women.

My take away: In the wake of Roe vs Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court, Deborah Gray White was watching the dystopian story the Handmaid’s Tale with her daughter who said, “Oh my God, we’re becoming this!” Deborah replied, “We already are this. America has used black and brown women as reproductive commodities since its founding. What’s changing is now white women are getting closer to becoming commodities again.”

Alok Vaid-Menon Defies Definition

Portrait of Alok Vaid-Menon
( Celeste Sloman ) | From The Take Away

Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender non-conforming writer and performer who grew up in Texas to Indian immigrant parents. They use their creativity and platform to explore themes of gender, race, trauma and belonging, advocating and bringing visibility to the trans community. We speak with Alok about their work and advocacy, and what they learned from their aunt, Urvashi Vaid, the beloved LGBTQ rights activist who spent more than a decade working for equality at the National LGBTQ Task Force.

My take away from this amazing interview: The gender non-conforming community is showing the world how to love during a time of great division, growing hate, tremendous suffering, and huge oceans of human anxiety.

The definition of a constitutional right

SAMUEL CORUM/AFP via Getty Images | From 1A

The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that established a constitutional right to abortion. The decision could lead to abortion bans in half of U.S. states.

In response, states like California are moving to amend their constitutions to include abortion rights. Now, citizens and lawmakers are thinking about what defines a constitutional right and how different interpretations of the constitutions affect those rights.

We talk about changing the Constitution and what comes next after the reversal of Roe.

This conversation is part of our Remaking America collaboration with six public radio stations around the country. Remaking America is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

My take away: I loved listening to Olatunde Johnson, professor at Columbia University School of Law | The United States Constitution was made by a bunch of slave owning, patriarchal, misogynistic pale males. It is ludicrous to think we cannot update or change it as our society changes and grows. This is what overturning Roe vs Wade is about. This is what Jan. 6, 2021 is about. It is about a bunch of people who want to live 18th Century lives in the 21st Century.

Sources of Feature Image

Glass Containers Glass Empty Clean Transparent | ha11ok | Hungary • Member since Dec. 17, 2015

Rock Tower Top Tufa Rock Formations Erosion | Hans | Hans Braxmeier • Neu-Ulm/Deutschland • Member since Nov. 24, 20

Vine Tendril Embrace Green Noose Grapevine Knot | stevepb | Steve Buissinne • Age 73 • Sedgefield/South Africa • Member since June 4, 2014

Light Architecture Shades Church Pillars Baroque | davidosta | David Osta • Age 44 • Ansoain/España • Member since April 19, 2020

Ngc 2818 Planetary Nebula Constellation Pyxis | WikiImages | Deutsch • Member since Dec. 13, 2011

Shiva The Hindu God Shiva India Rishikesh | InspiredImages | UK • Member since Sept. 27, 2013

Music: Remixes, Vol. 2 | Various Artists [1] Wenkweur – Advanced Suite Remix 5:04 [2] Multidimensional Bong – Advanced Suite Remix 7:45

June 22, 2022June 22, 2022

Hate Arises… Rainbows Become…

Pride Parade in DC

On June 11, 2022, the Washington, DC 2022 Capital Pride Parade began with full regalia and ceremony followed by rowdydow fun and celebration. This is the first of four videos from this day.

Into A Rainbow | Washington, DC Pride Parade 2022
10 views, Premiered Jun 13, 2022

For the video, I wrote this:

Today was like walking into a rainbow. After more than 2 years due to COVID, the WDC Pride Parade of 2022 took place in an embrace of joy and celebration. It was one big mass of human exuberant celebration. Such a different energy than the Trump rallies that twisted and deformed into the raging, dangerous mob of Jan. 6, 2021.

I filmed one of the earlier Trump rallies, and I filmed one of the Black Lives Matter marches after the murder of George Floyd. The paranoia and double-standard of the Trump years faded to a distant unpleasant memory in the embrace of so many people celebrating differences, diversity, and inclusiveness.

What kind of world do we want?

Do we want one that is angry, overly righteous, mostly white men who want to control women's bodies and turn America into a desolate land of mediocrity and conformity?

Or do we want one that celebrates diversity, lifts up inclusivity, and makes space for everyone to shine their truth and colors as they feel them?

I choose the rainbow hands down over The Divine Republic of Gilead as depicted in Canadian author Margaret Atwood futuristic dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale that feels more and more possible each passing day, especially since the Trump years that made hate great again in America.

Hate is not what makes us a great nation: Love is what makes us great and moments like this Parade are more important than ever, especially with the plotters of Jan. 6 still scheming how to turn America into a totalitarian state like Russia...

I suppose so we could exterminate the world in a mutual annihilation of scapegoats because that is what cheap, cowardly, hate filled people do...blame everyone else for their problems and who they really are inside.

This is the inspiration for this blog: the idea of diversity and the mutual arising of opposite things in the world because on this same day, 31 members from the group Patriot Front were arrested in Idaho.

Pride Parade in Idaho

Thirty-one men, faces covered with masks and carrying baseball bats stood packed in the back of a U-Haul like illegal immigrants sneaking into the state. The truck was heading to the Pride Parade in the city of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Their purpose was to start a riot.

Police said the men came from at least 10 states. They are members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front, previously known as the white nationalist hate group Vanguard America. It rebranded itself after a neo-fascist was photographed holding their shield just before he ran his car into a crowd of people, killing Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, VA.

Interview with Mother of One of the Men Arrested

Earlier this week, a mother of one of the men arrested gave an interview with Sara Sidner.

Hate Arises… Rainbows Become…

She says her son’s hateful ideology sickens her after he was arrested with alleged Patriot Front group. She tells Sara that: “He’s trading Compromise for Hate, and this is not how I raised my son.” (Click underline text to see interview with Sara Sidner).

Report About Who Patriot Front Is

What we know about Patriot Front and its origins
132,051 views, Jun 14, 2022

From the video above: When "a little army" of men with shields and other riot gear was spotted near a Pride parade in Idaho on Saturday, authorities soon linked the men to a relatively new White nationalist group and charged them with conspiracy to riot. Most of the men arrested had logos on their hats "consistent with the Patriot Front group," and some had other clothing associated with the White supremacist group, Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said. CNN’s Sara Sidner reports

This Same Hate Perpetuates Racism & Wars

This is the same hate that fuels racism and perpetuates continuing inequalities and brutality against black and brown people in the United States. Slavery is barbaric, and so too is racism. Americans went to war and died over ending slavery in America. This war began on April 12, 1861 and lasted until April 9, 1865. In the end, more than 620,000 men were dead, roughly 2% of the U.S .population.

However, this is far less dead than the number of men, women, and children who died being transported from Africa to America, who died as slaves from violence and mistreatment, and who have died since emancipation due to the continuing violent beliefs and hate embraced by white supremacy.

Black Live Matter March

Black Lives Matter
111 views, Jun 8, 2020

Photos From Gettysburg National Military Park

Photos from Gettysburg, PA — “Often referred to as the “High Water Mark of the Rebellion”, Gettysburg was the Civil War’s bloodiest battle and was also the inspiration for President Abraham Lincoln’s immortal “Gettysburg Address”. — National Park Service

Emancipation Proclamation & Juneteeth

Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. It was the most ambitious push of General Robert E. Lee into the North. Each side fought fiercely. This battle turned out to be the turning point of the war. It is also the inspiration for President Abraham Lincoln’s immortal Gettysburg Address.

Word of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans finally reached Texas on June 19, 1865 where people were still being held as slaves. More than 150 years later, Juneteenth has finally been made a federal holiday commemorating and remembering the legacy of slavery and the emancipation of slaves in America.

Yet, this horrible battle still rages in the hearts and minds of far too many white Americans still to this very day. Hate still has a home in America.

Photos From Gettysburg National Military Park

One of Trump’s Rallies After Losing the 2020 Election

Cacophony — The Beautiful Humans of Earth
127 views, Premiered Nov 14, 2020

A Call To All Humans Who Value Freedom and Democracy

Help Ukraine | Calling All People Who Value Freedom in the World
44 views, Premiered Feb 27, 2022

This Arises… That Becomes

I finally came to understand the idea of This Arises… That Becomes… from a lecture Alan Watts gave.

Alan Watts – Interdependent origination
3,739 views, May 1, 2015

Pratītyasamutpāda

It is the basic principle of dependent origination as described by Buddha. In Buddhist doctrines, it is called Pratītyasamutpāda.

Pratītyasamutpāda consists of two terms:

Pratītya: "having depended."^[26] The term appears in the Vedas and Upanishads^{[note 2]} in the sense of "confirmation, dependence, acknowledge origin".^[27][28] The Sanskrit root of the word is prati* whose forms appear more extensively in the Vedic literature, and it means "to go towards, go back, come back, to approach" with the connotation of "observe, learn, convince oneself of the truth of anything, be certain of, believe, give credence, recognize". In other contexts, a related term pratiti* means "going towards, approaching, insight into anything".^[28]

Samutpāda: "arising",^[26] "rise, production, origin"^[29] In Vedic literature, it means "spring up together, arise, come to pass, occur, effect, form, produce, originate".^[30]

Pratītyasamutpāda has been translated into English as dependent origination, dependent arising, interdependent co-arising, conditioned arising, and conditioned genesis.^{[31][16][note 3]}

Jeffrey Hopkins notes that terms synonymous to pratītyasamutpāda are apekṣhasamutpāda and prāpyasamutpāda.^[37]
 -- Wiki

Photos from DC Pride Parade — June 11, 2022

The term may also refer to the twelve nidānas, Pali: dvādasanidānāni, Sanskrit: dvādaśanidānāni, from dvāvaśa ("twelve") + nidānāni (plural of "nidāna", "cause, motivation, link").^{[quote 2]}Generally speaking, in the Mahayana tradition, pratityasamutpada (Sanskrit) is used to refer to the general principle of interdependent causation, whereas in the Theravada tradition, paticcasamuppāda (Pali) is used to refer to the twelve nidānas.
 -- Wiki

Dependent origination is a philosophically complex concept, subject to a large variety of explanations and interpretations. As the interpretations often involve specific aspects of dependent origination, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive to each other.
 -- Wiki

One interpretation (which I feel is closest to what Alan Watts refers to in his talk) regards this doctrine…

...as describing the arising of mental processes and the resultant notion of "I" and "mine" that leads to grasping and suffering.^[8][9] Several modern western scholars argue that there are inconsistencies in the list of twelve links, and regard it to be a later synthesis of several older lists and elements, some of which can be traced to the Vedas.^{[9][10][11][12][13][5]}
 -- Wiki

Rocks of Ignorance & Rainbow Flags

In other words, we only know inclusivity and love in comparison to callousness and hate. Like a river diverted by a rock–some water flows to the right, some flows to the left. The rock in the river is an idea, a symbol of reality, but it is not reality. Indeed, all words, all thoughts, all ideas are poor substitutes to what is really going on in life.

What should be noted is that both streams flowing around the rock are of the same river of being. They are only being briefly divided and diverted by a rock of thought that got lodged in the river of being.

Maybe, One Day

Another way of looking at this idea is that inclusivity and love are the polar opposites of callousness and hate. Although opposites, both qualities and ways of being in the world go together just as a magnet has a North and South pole. If you chop a magnet in half, there is still a North Pole and a South Pole because a magnet is one cohesive whole thing.

Since I choose to support rainbows and Pride Parades, I stand on this side of our polarized America. It is a conscious choice to flow in the stream of being that includes rainbows and diversity. And it means I am making a conscious choice to embrace all sorts of people and their differences as well as recognize how similar we are because deep, deep down I believe what Alan Watts says that we are the fabric of existence itself.

Maybe one day, we can let go of our rocks of ignorance that we cling to for security and comfort. By letting go, we can grow as a species. And if we grow, we might be able to really feel one day our oneness with each other and all life on this planet. When rocks of thought due appear in our river of being, we can better navigate the currents of division driving us apart and pushing the entire world to a tipping point that we may not recover from due to a mutual massacre of scape goats.

Maybe one day we will know we are all part of the stream of humanity no matter our skin color, sexual preference, our religious beliefs. It has always been this way. It is only when we cling to our rocks of thoughts and rocks of ignorance, which if we are constantly anxious, nervous, angry, and afraid–we are clinging to an idea, which is one of these rocks dividing us and causing so much suffering and pain in the world.

Let go and flow!

One Day | Yellowstone

One Day — Yellowstone
77 views, Jul 26, 2020

One Day Lyrics

Sometimes I lay under the moon
And thank God I’m breathin’
Then I pray, “Don’t take me soon
‘Cause I am here for a reason.”Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know some day it’ll all turn around becauseAll my life I’ve been waitin’ for
I’ve been prayin’ for
For the people to say
That we don’t wanna fight no more
There’ll be no more war
And our children will playOne day, one day, one day, oh
One day, one day, one day, ohIt’s not about win or lose, ’cause we all lose
When they feed on the souls of the innocent
Blood-drenched pavement
Keep on movin’ though the waters stay ragin’In this maze
You can lose your way, your way
It might drive you crazy but
Don’t let it faze you, no way, no way!Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know some day it’ll all turn around becauseAll my life I’ve been waitin’ for
I’ve been prayin’ for
For the people to say
That we don’t wanna fight no more
There’ll be no more war
And our children will playOne day, one day, one day, oh
One day, one day, one day, ohOne day this all will change, treat people the same
Stop with the violence, down with the hate
One day we’ll all be free, and proud to be
Under the same sun, singin’ songs of freedom likeWhy-ohh! (One day, one day) why-oh, oh, oh!
Why-ohh! (One day, one day) why-oh, oh, oh!All my life I’ve been waitin’ for
I’ve been prayin’ for
For the people to say
That we don’t wanna fight no more
There’ll be no more war
And our children will playOne day, one day, one day, oh
One day, one day, one day, oh
— Lyrics from One Day by Matisyahu

Sources for Feature Image

War Destruc tion Despair Fear Helplessness Sorrow | Alexas_Fotos | Alexa • Steh über den Dingen/und finde DEINEN Weg • Member since Jan. 6, 2015 • #25

Plant Sprout Dicotyledon Life Growing Seedling | lanailic | English • Member since Feb. 6, 2014

Rainbow Beautiful Devon Nature Sun Sunset Sky | PublicDomainPictures | English • Member since Dec. 11, 2010

Family Love Rainbow Boy Child Chromatic Colorful | GDJ | Gordon Johnson • USA • Member since June 3, 2015 • #2

Music: Celebrate Diversity, PFS

A Few Other Things

Deeper Into A Rainbow | Second Video of DC Pride Parade

Deeper Into A Rainbow | June 11, 2022
4 views, Premiered 29 minutes ago

Music: Hot Foot (Groovy, Groovy) — Chico Mann [as featured on iPhone!] and Roof Down — Daniel Health [as featured on iPhone, music for the soul!]

Series: Have You Been Outside Today?

Photos/Videos/Editing: Me

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The intersection of gay rights, racism, and white supremacy continue intersecting through time. Will we ever grow up as a species to embrace and hold all of who we are as human beings? Or will we simply continue to label, divide, and conquer each other with hate and despair? See Hate Arises… Rainbows Become… to explore more on these ideas.

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For other blogs on being human, see:

https://www.sapience2112.com/what-is-your-source-of-energy/

What is Your Source of Energy – 5/2/22

https://www.sapience2112.com/stop-ignorant-men-from-starting-wars/

Kindly Let Me Help You or You’ll Drown

https://www.sapience2112.com/ukraine-letters-to-the-world-of-free-men-and-women/

Ukraine Letters | Four Letters to the World of Free Men and Women: Letter to the Ukrainian People; Letter to the Free World; Letter to Russian people; Letter to Americans

Walk Through Time | Gettysburg National Military Park

Walk Through Time | Gettysburg National Military Park | May 23, 2022

Music: Airtime — Justin Hori [as featured on iPhone, music that gets you moving!]

Series: Have You Been Outside Today?

Photos/videos/editing: Me

**** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****

We stopped at Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania on our way up for our daughter’s graduation from Middlebury College in Vermont. It was late in the day, cloudy with a little drizzle–perfect weather to walk the roughly 6000 acres of historical pasture and woodlands where Union and Confederate soldiers met in General Robert E. Lee’s second and most ambitious invasion of the North.

It was the “High Water Mark of the Rebellion”, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, and the inspiration for President Abraham Lincoln’s immortal “Gettysburg Address”.

My husband found a monument dedicated to the 13th and 16th Vermont regiments. From their forward position, the nearly 1,500 men of these regiments poured devastating point-blank fire into the enemy ranks. They inflicted terrible casualties and ravaged the Confederate flank. The battle that was going in favor of the Confederate side began to slip. The Vermonters helped turn the tide of the battle and because of this win, turn the tide of the war itself. It would turn out that we were staying in a valley from where one of these regiments came from in Vermont.

Today, in 2022, it seems like the battle that took place on July 1, 1863, occurred so long ago and that the wounds inflicted from a country being torn apart by different ideas and ideals of how to live a good and just life would be long healed. The pictures of the wildflowers and wildlife are a testament to time and nature’s ability to regenerate.

However, the human heart and soul seems to still be torn and hurt. There are people alive today ready to do damage and tear apart America’s delicate democracy. There are people willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get more than they deserve or inflict their own will on the will of the people. Democracy isn’t easy. It requires compromise, and word that seems to have disappeared from American political and culture vocabulary. It does not require every share the exact same beliefs or values, but it does require tolerance and willingness to learn about the beliefs and values of people who are different from oneself. It requires curiosity and a basic agreement of facts and shared reality.

Will America be able to keep this fragile flower of self-governance in the face of a Republican Party that prefers to stick to loyal tests rather than truth, in the aftermath of Jan. 6, in the ongoing disenfranchisement and brutality to African Americans and any people with a darker skin tone, in the double standard that it is OK to regulate a woman’s body, but it is not alright to regulate guns?

“Every day, on average, 316 people in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides and suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, and police intervention.” — Team ENOUGH

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released updated official mortality data that showed 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the United States in 2020 — a new peak.” — Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States; May 19, 2022, N Engl J Med 2022; 386:1955-1956; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2201761

“Guns have become the leading cause of death for American kids. early two-thirds of the 4,368 U.S. children up to age 19 who were killed by guns in 2020 were homicide victims, per the CDC. Motor vehicle crashes, formerly the leading cause of death for kids one and older, killed nearly 4,000 children.” — Axios

If you are upset by these statistics, by politics, by anything that gets you shouting at your TV or computer screen. It is time to get outside. If you find yourself getting enraged by a rainbow flag celebrating Pride Month or want to join the next raiding party of the Capitol, why not try going to a place like Gettysburg? Walk the park rather than drive. Let yourself sink into the blood-soaked earth where flowers now grow and birds once again sing. Talk to the park rangers, read about what happened, feel yourself being transported back to that time when the sound of gun fire and exploding canon balls rang continuously like a speeding train.

War is bloody. Conflict kills. There are other ways to solve conflict arising from diversity. We have one of those ways. It is called Democracy.

The people of Ukraine are fighting fiercely for this way of organizing society. They are showing us what it means and takes to defend freedom, liberty, and justice for all against a brutal, totalitarian regime; a regime that lies to its people, that exterminates anyone who becomes a threat to it, that concentrates wealth and power among a very few.

In America today, it seems we are choosing whether to stay a democracy, which means making room for tolerance and compromise again. Or will we choose to become a dictatorial regime (like Russia) where lies and distortions are used to whip up dissent and division so that truth, justice, and liberty for all becomes a distant dream.

Stay Human! Go outside today and hug another living being!

May 22, 2022May 22, 2022

Acting Without Doing Anything

Lesson from the Tao Te Ching

Microsoft Word – Tao Te Ching – trans. by J.H.. McDonald

Ancient wisdom blended with modern images and music.

Chapter 2

When people see things as beautiful, ugliness is created.
When people see things as good, evil is created.

First Stanza & Archetypal Animation

***When people see things as beautiful, ugliness is created…*** | **Music**: ***The Beauty in Ugly*** – Ugly Betty Version | Jason Mraz

Being and non-being produce each other. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short define each other. High and low oppose each other. Fore and aft follow each other.

Second Stanza & Archetypal Animation

***Being and non-being produce each other. Difficult and easy complement each other… |*** **Music**: High And Low by Andreas S. Möhle

Therefore the Master
can act without doing anything
and teach without saying a word.
Things come her way and she does not stop them; things leave and she lets them go.
She has without possessing,
and acts without any expectations.
When her work is done, she takes no credit.
That is why it will last forever.

Third Stanza & Archetypal Animation

Therefore the Master
can act without doing anything
and teach without saying a word… | **Music**: The Giver | Livingston

For Chapter 1, see What Is Your Source of Energy?

https://www.sapience2112.com/what-is-your-source-of-energy/

Feature Archetypal Animation

Wall House Art Graffiti Elephant Decoration Home | RichardMc | Richard Mcall • Ireland/UK/Thailand • Member since Jan. 1, 2016

Rajasthan Camel Safari Trekking Evening Dusk | RichardMc | Richard Mcall • Ireland/UK/Thailand • Member since Jan. 1, 2016

Cobra Snake Reptile Basket Danger Serpent | RichardMc | Richard Mcall • Ireland/UK/Thailand • Member since Jan. 1, 2016

Art Painting Lady Woman Girl Head Shoulders | RichardMc | Richard Mcall • Ireland/UK/Thailand • Member since Jan. 1, 2016

Large Bronze Head Pietrasanta Plaza Italy | RichardMc | Richard Mcall • Ireland/UK/Thailand • Member since Jan. 1, 2016

Body Painting Makeup Cosplay Portrait Dark | Vic_B | press 👍 and ⭐ • Moscow/Россия • Member since Aug. 30, 2017 • #12

Bulb Idea Fantasy Lighthouse Art Birds Beach | Vic_B | press 👍 and ⭐ • Moscow/Россия • Member since Aug. 30, 2017 • #12

Fantasy Space Stars Universe Starry Sky Galaxy | Willgard | Willgard Krause • Age 59 • Lutherstadt Wittenberg/Deutschland • Member since Feb. 25, 2017 • #449

Music: Time | Mr.Kitty | [15] Child of the Earth

First Archetypal Animation

Dandelion Seeds Dew Dewdrops Droplets Weed Plant | InspiredImages | UK • Member since Sept. 27, 2013

Art Portrait People Old Antique Retro Mirrors | SarahRichterArt | Sarah Richter • Deutsch • Member since Oct. 21, 2015

The Ugly Duchess Painting Portrait Quentin Metsys | Zephirx | Pascal • Age 23 • Germany • Member since Dec. 17, 2020

Girl With A Pearl Earring Painting Portrait | Zephirx | Pascal • Age 23 • Germany • Member since Dec. 17, 2020

Environmental Protection Environment The Atmosphere | Inactive account – ID 81349

Clown All-In-One Character Fun Evil Bad | isabellaquintana | Isabella Quintana • Cali/Colombia • Member since Sept. 22, 2014

Music: The Beauty in Ugly – Ugly Betty Version | Jason Mraz

Second Archetypal Animation

Woman Yoga Pose Wellness Well-Being Meditate | Pexels | English • Member since March 26, 2016

Star Child Star Children Angels Meditation Unity | PapaOsmosis | Anthony • United States • Member since Oct. 4, 2016

Maze Labyrinth Solution Lost Problem Challenge | qimono |Arek Socha • Stockholm/Sweden • Member since Jan. 27, 2016

Giraffe Animal Mammal Tree Long-Legged Long-Necked | HowardWilks | English • Member since March 31, 2017

Danbo Nyangbo Figure Doll Gray-Scale Loneliness | IraEm | M K • Ch/Korea • Member since Feb. 3, 2014

Storm Sea Lightning Ship Adventure Ominous | ChadoNihi | Alexandr • Age 29 • Cambridge/UK • Member since Dec. 8, 2014

New York Sea City Skyline Buildings Cityscape | Pexels | English • Member since March 26, 2016

Music: High And Low by Andreas S. Möhle

Third Archetypal Animation

Hip Hop Dance Girl Woman Young Lifestyle Artistic | ArtTower | Brigitte Werner • Age 68 • Canim Lake/Canada • Member since June 15, 2012 • #72

Waters Move Flow Action People Rope Waterfall | Dieterich01 | Lothar Dieterich • Age 62 • Germering/Deutschland • Member since June 26, 2016

Colorful Five Fingers Kid Fingers Playful Rating | yohoprashant | Prashant Sharma • Age 37 • Bhaktapur/Nepal • Member since Feb. 22, 2018

Girl Cat Moon Wall Melancholy Sad Alone Romantic | Tumisu | Tumisu, please consider ☕ Thank you! 🤗 • English • Member since Feb. 3, 2014

Child Girl Winter Snow Face Fairy Tale | Pezibear | Petra • Österreich • Member since Oct. 22, 2014 • #82

Hand Gift Bouquet Love Congratulate Give Flowers | klimkin | svklimkin • Age 45 • Moscow/Russia • Member since Aug. 13, 2015

Fantasy Galaxy Universe Stars Cosmos Night | JuliusH | Julius H. • Age 69 • Niedersachsen/Deutschland 🇪🇺 • Member since Dec. 4, 2016 • #165

Music: The Giver | Livingston

May 2, 2022May 2, 2022

What Is Your Source of Energy?

Lessons from the Tao Te Ching

— Written by Lao-Tzu — trans. by J.H.. McDonald

Laozi and Mozi

The Tao Te Ching was written around 400 BCE by Laozi (also written as Lao Tzu). He is the founder of Taoism, which is one of the philosophies flourishing during the time in China known as the time of The Hundred Schools of Thought, which thrived from the 6th century BCE to 221 BCE.

According to Mozi, another of China’s great philosophers born c. 470 BCE and died to c. 391 BCE, the achievement of social goals necessitates the unity of thought and action by the people and their rulers. His political philosophy bears a resemblance to divine-rule monarchy: the population ought always to obey its leaders, as its leaders ought always follow the will of heaven.

He is the first major intellectual to rival Confucius, founding the school of Mohism during this period of The Hundred Schools of Thought. His teaching have been summed up into 10 theses that have since been extensively argued. His most famous these is that of:

Jian’ai: This is the injunction that one ought to be concerned for the welfare of people in a spirit of “impartial concern” (jian’ai) that does not make distinctions between self and other, associates and strangers, a doctrine often described more simplistically as “universal love.” -- Encyclopedia of Philosophy

It would not be long before how well the leaders of the people would (or could) follow the will of heaven would be tested.

The Rise of Strongmen and Ruthless Rulers

Qin Shi Huang is the second of the Ruthless Rulers I highlight in my book Sapience: The Moment is Now (not yet published, but soon).

He is the first of the feudal kings of China to conquer all of the Warring States in 221 BCE, which included six dynasties, to create the Qin Dynasty. These territories include most of what we consider modern China today. Upon doing this, he declared himself the first emperor of China and assumed a title implying he possessed divine powers. He begins his rule by persecuting monks and philosophers, which cumulates in the burning of the books and termination of the Hundred Schools of Thought.

Qin Shi Huang, portrait in 18th century album *Lidai diwang xiang*. Artist unknown.

"Beginning in 213 BCE, all classic works of the Hundred Schools of Thought — except those from Li Ssu's own school of philosophy known as legalism — were subject to book burning. "Qin Shi Huang burned the other histories out of fear that they undermined his legitimacy, and wrote his own history books. -- History of Information

It is a pattern that has repeated itself over and over and over again since the first Ruthless Ruler walked the Earth. The inability of the people to tolerate diverse groups of thoughts seems to lie at the heart of how and why Ruthless Rulers rise to power.

And yet walking alongside Ruthless Rulers are men and women of rich intellectual mastery and wisdom such as Mozi and Confucius, Plato and Aristotle, Laozi and Zhuangzi who are only a few of individuals who have delved deeply into the human psyche and wrestled with the unknowable.

More than any time in our collective history, we need so many more people to take the plunge and do the same. To wrestled with the monsters that live inside all of us. We need groups of people in greater numbers than ever before to contemplate, debate, mutter and muster greater understanding for the tremendous diversity of thoughts, ideas, and philosophies we are capable of conceiving and creating into reality using nothing more than our minds to imagine something different than nature would have previously allowed to exist. We must work and stretch our minds far beyond the simple ploys Strongmen use to generate arguments and embed slogans into minds meant to bend the into little boxes that are easy to control and use like disposable commodities.

This is what Strongmen do, as they endlessly dream of becoming the next great Ruthless Ruler.

We see it playing out again, right here, right now, in our own countries wherever they are as the tide of intolerance, bigotry, racism, nationalism, patriotism, partisanism sweep strongmen into powerful positions–Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Rodrigo Duterte, Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping, Putin, and formerly Trump.

They use righteous ideas and righteous talk like jack hammers that steadily chip away at the unity of thought and action Mozi talked about centuries ago as essential for collective good of all. When their speech doesn’t flame the right pit of emotion and opposition arises, they use violence (if they can get away with it) to silence those who don’t agree with them.

Images from the bottom to the top:

This is the year of the political strongman | They are busy retelling history as a way of rekindling past glories and reviving old grievances
The strange allure of the strongman leader | Authoritarians and autocrats continue to flourish despite a long parade of inadequacy. Can liberal democracy strike back? By Jeremy Cliffe
The Age of the Strongman by Gideon Rachman review — how Putin gets away with murder | Autocrats threaten global democracy, says this lucid book — but their time may be up, considers Roger Boyes
The Age of The Strongman by Gideon Rachman review – a rogues gallery of autocrats | Putin is the archetype and role model for a generation of hardline populist leaders, from Bolsonaro to Trump
The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World | From Putin, Trump, and Bolsonaro to Erdoğan, Orbán, and Xi, an intimate look at the rise of strongman leaders around the world.
THE AGE OF THE STRONGMAN –– How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy around the World
The Age of the Strongman by Gideon Rachman review — from Putin to Xi and Trump | It’s alarming how many modern strongmen began life as moderates
The Age of the Strongman | How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World

What Will We Do?

Will we let ourselves be torn to pieces by ideas and thoughts flung about by Strongmen and Ruthless Ruler? It always ends the same way. They reign with terror tearing down and destroying anything good and wholesome a country or group of people has managed to achieve, turning on those who turn against them, annihilating anyone or anything who dares to question them. They tell their followers they have been sent here on a divine mission, they have been sent by God, or indeed, they are God and everyone must bend down before them.

It is for this reason I will highlight parts of Laozi’s book written so many centuries earlier. A man who was believed by the people to be a god and worshipped, though I suspect Laozi would have tolerated this as a bit foolish…he knew he was a man with faults and foibles…that is what his teachings are about navigating the stream we call ourselves full of faults and foibles, wisdom and knowledge, danger and destruction. He advocated the middle way. His system of thinking would serve modern men and women well right now in the dangerous tides we ourselves have created and now must swim.

Here is his first chapter of his masterpiece of thinking animated with modern images and music from our time now.

Chapter 1 — Tao Te Ching

First Archetypal Animation & Stanza

The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name.

***The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao…*** | **Music**: Tao of Healing Dean Evenson — *Pond Reflecting Stars*

Second Archetypal Animation & Stanza

The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of creation.

Third Archetypal Animation & Stanza

Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.

Fourth Archetypal Animation & Stanza (also Feature Animation)

Yet mystery and reality emerge from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness born from darkness. The beginning of all understanding.

Addition Relevant Resources

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.
The most certain way to succeed is always
to try just one more time.” — Thomas A. Edison

Hernan Diaz’s anticipated novel ‘Trust’ probes the illusion of money — and the truth

Scott Simon talks with Hernan Diaz about his novel, “Trust.” It tells the story of a New York tycoon who takes advantage of the 1929 crash, and his attempts to rewrite and control his own story. In this interview, Diaz tells Scott that power is the ability to bend reality and shape what others perceive as real. Power imposes someone else’s reality onto others. Wealth and money (and the desire to get more money) does this to people. They burn with the desire to have more of that kind of power over others. Great fortunes create a reality in and of themselves that others are eager to have a part or piece of.

Images from: The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It; Trust by Hernan Diaz; Power Wealth Classics; Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World

What Leadership Looks Like | Ted Radio Hour

From workplaces to schools to national governments, leaders everywhere are being called on to solve complex problems with humility and bravery. This hour, we consider what it takes to be a leader.  Guests include executive coach Patrice Gordon, organizational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, and educator Shabana Basij-Rasikh.

I found the first interview particularly compelling as the speaker relates our ancient programming to have strong men leading a tribe or clan. These were times when groups were small and all members knew the integrity of every other member and whether they could be trusted or not. However, as our small bands and groups of people surviving together against vast and overwhelming odds have grown into vast civilizations, the qualities of a good ruler have shifted tremendously.

A good ruler today does not act on gut instinct, as would have been the right thing to do 10,000 years ago. A good ruler today actually must go against gut instinct to grasp the greater complexities of our modern realities and make more calculated, incremental moves that benefits all members of the collective, even those who are against the leader. But as people electing who to rule us, we are still vastly informed by our own gut instincts and emotions choosing ruler who we feel we could have beer with rather than rulers who could stare down the missile silo of a narcissist idiot threatening to use nuclear weapons on the world.

Images from: What Leadership Looks Like | Ted Radio Hour; Trump may tweet better. But nobody rides an ICBM like Putin; Russia nuclear threat: Putin’s deadly underwater nuke which can devastate US targets; Russia warns that it will see any missile launched at its territory as a nuclear attack; Russia has ‘unstoppable’ supersonic nuclear missile that cannot be traced by Western defence systems, says Putin; Vladimir Putin’s 4,000mph nuke can reach Britain in 13 MINUTES – and it CANNOT be stopped

What lovely, reassuring smile Putin has on that last picture!

The New Gilded Age | Throughline

“The World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos, Switzerland, 2019 – an exclusive event where the world’s richest and most powerful people get together to solve the world’s problems. I was there when David Attenborough, you know, was showing his new film. The Garden of Eden is no more. Beautiful – you know, absolutely beautiful, stunning footage of how we’re wrecking the planet. And people were literally crying while they were seeing it. And I was thinking, but, guys, you arrived here in your private jets.”

Images from: File:World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2005a.jpg; World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020; ‘Garden of Eden is no more’, Sir David Attenborough tells Davos; Prince William turns interviewer in Davos appearance with Attenborough; Too much money is bad; May 23, 1937: The Death Of The Ultimate Oil Man; The First Battle for Oil in Norway: The Long Arm of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil; The Ultimate List of Corporate Philanthropy Benefits and How To Achieve Them; The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills; The Self-Help Myth: How Philanthropy Fails to Alleviate Poverty; Were the Titans of the Gilded Age “Robber Barons” or “Entrepreneurial Industrialists”?; Gilded Age Blog; Up To a Point: Robber Barons Make Way For Robber Nerds; The Modern Robber Barons; Ludlow Massacre; On This Day April 20, 1914: Remembering the Ludlow Massacre; Ludlow Massacre: PBS;

Why Russia’s military appears to be struggling in Ukraine

Aired May 1, 2022 on Heard on All Things Considered

Why does Russia's massive and powerful military force continue to struggle against a smaller, less well-equipped opponent? Journalist David Volodzko wrote about this in a recent piece in The Daily Beast titled "The Embarrassing Truth Behind Putin's War Failures." He says the Russians appear not to have internalized the lessons they could have learned during other conflicts, particularly the civil war in Syria, where Russia backed the government of dictator Bashar al-Assad. -- MICHEL MARTIN, HOST

The problem is, in April 2021, I believe, the company that makes the Azart and its owner, Leonid Reiman, who's the former minister of communications, came under investigation for fraud. They had evidently been using cheap Chinese parts. This led to a bunch of problems, including the batteries didn't really work that well. So they've had to switch instead, and they're largely using mobile phones and things of that nature. And this is just one example of how corruption has left Putin and his army out in the open, in a sense, and exposed. -- DAVID VOLODZKO

I think that we all have overestimated Russia's military capabilities. And, I would add, I think that Putin did, too. One point that I make in the piece is that Moscow recently purged 150 Federal Security Service agents, and they sent the head of the FSB's fifth service, which handles counterinsurgency ops in Ukraine, to Lefortovo Prison. Now, there's a couple different theories as to why, and I'm inclined to go with the official explanation on this one, which is that Beseda lied to the state and stole funds. -- DAVID VOLODZKO

So again, as with the radio communications issue, we see corruption coming back to bite Russia. And as a consequence of that, Putin may have gone in on bad intel, thinking that the Ukrainians were going to be waiting with flowers instead of Bandera smoothies - which is, you know, Ukraine's version of a Molotov cocktail - and going in with bad gear, thinking that he had the best and the latest. And so as much as we fell for this idea of Russia being much more powerful than they are, much more capable than they are, Putin fell for that himself. -- DAVID VOLODZKO

Ridley Road | Masterpiece Theater

`Ridley Road' is the story of the 62 Group, a collection of anti-fascists who stood up against the rising neo-Nazi movement in Britain after World War Two, based on Jo Bloom's book of the same name, released in 2014. In the summer of 1962, twenty-year-old Vivien Epstein, a Jewish hairdresser from Manchester, arrives in London following the death of her father. Alone in the world, she is looking for Jack Fox, a man she had a brief but intense love affair with some months before. Her search leads her into the fight against resurgent fascism in East London, where members of the Jewish community are taking to the streets, in and around Ridley Road. -- Google Knowledge Panel

Note: This is 1962 this movies is about; just 17 years after Nazi Germany almost successfully invaded England.

Images from: Ridley Road; Ridley Road review – fascism thriller resonates in our current dark age; What is Ridley Road About?; Ridley Road: Viewers are all doing the same thing after episode two of the BBC drama; Ridley Road review – fascism thriller resonates in our current dark age

Archetypal Animations

First Archetypal Animation

Buddha Yoga Meditation Relax Welfare Buddhism | PatrizioYoga | Patrizio • Italia • Member since March 21, 2018

Fantasy Transcendence Composing Magic Gold | KELLEPICS | Stefan Keller • Deutschland / Germany • Member since March 22, 2017 • #240

Matrix Communication Software Pc Virus Computer | geralt | Gerd Altmann • Freiburg/Deutschland • Member since Sept. 15, 2012 • #13

Music: Tao of Healing Dean Evenson [1] Gentle Season 6:46 [2] Clouds on Mountain 7:30 [3] Pond Reflecting Stars 6:14

Second Archetypal Animation

Astronaut Astronomy Satellite Moon Future | PIRO4D | PIRO • Heidelberg/Deutschland • Member since June 7, 2016

Background Stationery Guestbook Heaven Moon Swans | pixel2013 | S. Hermann & F. Richter • Germany • Member since April 9, 2016

Woman Mother Nature The Excitement Creation Birth | Ka_Nia | Katarzyna Micińska • Age 42 • Częstochowa/Polska • Member since Sept. 25, 2017

Fantasy Dark Gothic Goth Surreal Ethereal | darksouls1 | Enrique Meseguer • Age 49 • Madrid/España • Member since March 9, 2016 • #812

Music: The Other Side of Darkness36 [1] Take Me by the Hand 9:42[2] Spinning Around 5:11[3] To Start Again 4:28[4] Shelter 3:09[5] Ripples 3:57[6] Past Self 5:12 [7] Guide Me Home (One Misstep) 4:53

Third Archetypal Animation

Portrait Look Red Scarf Mystery Hidden Eyes | lanamorphose | pamela laporte • Age 36 • limoges/france • Member since March 5, 2017

Fantasy Surreal Mask Wall Eye Mysticism Girl | KELLEPICS | Stefan Keller • Deutschland / Germany • Member since March 22, 2017 • #240

War Ukraine Landscape Girl Emotion Destruction | KELLEPICS | Stefan Keller • Deutschland / Germany • Member since March 22, 2017 • #240

Surreal Eye Fantasy Mysterious Halloween | blende12 | Gerhard G. • Deutschland • Member since March 25, 2014 • #149

Dove Of Peace Flag Symbol World Peace Ukraine | blende12 | Gerhard G. • Deutschland • Member since March 25, 2014 • #149

Music: Freed From Desire | Strange Fruits Music[1] Freed From Desire 2:24

Fourth Archetypal Animation & Feature Animation

Hands Water Wash Color Source Hand Background | drfuenteshernandez | Manuel Darío Fuentes Hernández • Age 27 • Guantánamo/Cuba • Member since Jan. 19, 2018

Nature Source Fountain Water Reflection Trees | Antranias | Manfred Antranias Zimmer • Chiemgau/Germany • Member since Aug. 27, 2013

Alive Energy Divine Body-Mind Mind-Body Faith | johnhain | John Hain • Age 72 • Carmel/United States • Member since July 24, 2014

Woman Waterfall Naked Landscape Mountain | Mysticsartdesign | Mystic Art Design • Deutsch • Member since July 3, 201

Library Heaven Birds Mystical Clouds Sun | Mysticsartdesign | Mystic Art Design • Deutsch • Member since July 3, 201

Music: Source of Energy | Clear Conscience[1] Source of Energy 2:30

July 12, 2021July 12, 2021

How to Feel Better and Create A More Beautiful World

The Storytelling Species: Makers & Players of Reality Bubbles

In the previous pieces of the Storytelling Species Series, we have explored how individual attitudes, beliefs, and thinking styles can influences our individual perceptions of reality. We also looked at how stories can influence our understanding of reality (inner and outer). We even explored how stories can become shared narratives that serve as foundational building blocks of our great civilizations and complicated societies. We also looked at how other kind of stories (e.g., conspiracy myths) can pull us together and shred our shared reality. These types of stories are carefully crafted narratives created by people craving attention and power and such people make up stories designed to tear us apart and make us distrust each other. They do this because in a civilization that is in a state of chaos and distrust, it is much easier to carve out a group of people who they can manipulate and control.

Each and every person alive today contributes to the quality of our shared reality–at local levels, at national levels, and at global levels. It all begins with our individual understanding of reality (our inner world), which is contributed to our shared reality (our outer world) through our thoughts, words, and deeds (conscious and unconscious), through our feelings (conscious and unconscious), and through our sensations, specifically, what we pay attention to and what we ignore. We also contribute to our individual and shared reality through our instinctual and intuitive responses to what happens to us as we journey through space and time.

Many of us know thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition as components of psychological tests like the Myers-Briggs Personality Type. Finding out what our default psychological operating system is can help us navigate the world better such as figuring out what kind of job or career we might be good at doing or happiest doing. Most of us consider this knowledge not much more important than knowing what our astrological sign is. But I suggest this knowledge is critical to understand not only how to navigate the outer world, but also how to navigate our inner world (the hidden world inside of us).

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One of the most tragic aspects of being a modern human today is an all out denial of the reality of one’s inner world. Denying the reality of our inner world denies us the ability to navigate it. We must know our inner world in the same way we know the physical world (the outer world). We must know where the dangerous areas are inside of ourselves and why they are dangerous. We must know where the safe and nurturing areas are inside ourselves and how to navigate between these hidden places. Without this inner knowledge, we can feel lost, anxious, and fearful in the world.

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Conversation with the Bubble Maker on How to Make An Awesome Batch of Bubbles

This is what crystalized for me the day I met the bubble maker. The quality of our individual batch of consciousness is how we know and understand our outer (physical) world as well as our inner world (hidden world). The quality of our stream of consciousness can be greatly influenced by how we employ our thinking style, or how much we allow our feeling style to help us understand the world around us. The quality of our consciousness can be increased or decreased by the degree of sensation information we pay attention to (e.g., who is around us, how are we feeling around them) as well as the degree to which we are aware of how we are responding to people and things around us (i.e., are we acting unconsciously, in an instinctual way to people and things around us). When we react unconsciously, this impacts how much intuition we can access in the moment.

Our individual batch of consciousness is constantly changing for it needs to be dynamically balanced moment by moment with what remains unconscious inside of us. Many of us who have grown up in modern Western society are taught from very young ages to deny the reality of our inner world. We were taught to do this to survive the ways in which power is wielded in our super-huge, mega system of consciousness. We have evolved these systems of being because they have been super successful strategies to survive in an unpredictable and complicated world. These systems have allowed human beings to dominate the outer world.

When we deny the reality of our inner worlds, we do not to stick out, we do not individuate (i.e., we do not become a singular and unique human being as we were meant to be). We do not grow up to become the person only we can be. By not being unique and different we fit nicely inside our system of consciousness that values sameness (i.e., people and things that are readily replaceable within the system). By being the same as everyone else, we do not draw undo attention to ourselves by individuals who are more powerful than us and who could do us harm. Especially if our uniqueness and difference threatens their view of reality or if our uniqueness threaten’s their power (watch out then!).

When we become a target of a more powerful person, it is bad. We all know this. So most of us go along with the system because it is easier, and we can have comfortable enough life doing so. If we play it right, we can even possibly grow to have more power in the system too. However, do not delude yourself that if you become a person with power that you are immune to the corrupting force of power. Power corrupts and corrupts completely. It takes a great deal of consciousness to withstand the corrupting force of power. This can only be done by balancing power with honesty and humility. Since most of us lack awareness of our inner worlds, it is rare to find powerful people who can balance power with honesty and humility. It is also rare because our current system of consciousness does not reward individuals for doing this.

In addition to being very vulnerable to the corrupting forces of power, when we do not know our inner world, our physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being is greatly diminished. We become victims to our own unconsciousness, which condemns us to a life of ignorance that can incur terrible damage to our psyche. This damage is readily visible to other people because unconscious people are much more likely to participate in spontaneous acts of violence that they inflict on “other” people because they have projected that part of themself on the “other”, refusing to see it lives inside them and it is themself they are destroying.

If you think our current system of consciousness stinks and needs to change, the only lasting way to change the system is to change yourself. You change yourself by knowing more about yourself inside and out, which means understanding your inner/hidden world is real and has a reality that impacts you in powerful and significant ways. Doing this can be painful for it means going into the darkness of your soul and finding your inner divide.

If you are human, you have an inner divide. It is what allows us to be conscious. It becomes dangerous for us and other when we remain ignorant of this inner divide because this is how our unconsciousness flows into the world (our shared reality). When it does, all sorts of mischief and mayhem happens. So, if you are serious about creating a more beautiful world, get busy getting to know what is living inside of you–the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is only by knowing all of one’s self that a person can balance the oppositional powers always moving and flowing inside of us. It takes an equal and opposite force inside of us to balance a powerful force. When we remain unconscious of the psychological forces inside of us, we weld power in lopsided and destructive ways that hurt us and hurt others.

Recipe for Making a Better Batch of Reality Bubble Mix

Step1: Finding the Right Balance Between the Stories Rising Inside of You and the Ones Swirling All Around You, Especially the Ones You Choose to Eat

The Bubble Maker

On this day, I biked to the Big Wheel at National Harbor in Maryland, going across the Woodrow Wilson bridge. On some days when I cross this bridge when the wind is blowing it feels like flying. It was on my way back after this wonderful ride that I meet this extraordinary woman making gorgeous giant bubbles.

The Bubble Maker — Photo by Bebe

Earlier that day, I wished I had asked a group of men who were practicing a dance with scarfs that they waved above their heads if I could film them. The dance was so beautiful, even though I thought it was quite feminine for men to be dancing with scarfs. But I was too scared to ask them. Then, on my way home, I saw two construction workers horse playing after work. One held his hands up like a boxer looking for a good punch on his friend. His friend waved his t-shirt at him to distract his friend from landing a good punch. They were laughing…that’s how I knew they were playing around. And then, I knew what the men dancing with scarfs were doing–it was a highly ritualized war dance!

So, when I saw the Bubble Maker, I said to myself… ‘I’m not going to let this one by!’ I asked her and she said yes. We had such an amazing conversation as I filmed her making beautiful bubbles. She told me this batch bubble making solution was not her best batch. She explained each bubble mixture is a little different. Some batches make bubbles better than others, so she was struggling with this one. Despite this, she was a master bubble maker, and I got many beautiful shots of giant bubbles. It was magical in every sense of the word.

Step 2: Synthesize, ferment, and transmute your flow of consciousness.

Bubbles of Consciousness

As I watched her, I thought about a conversation I was having with my good friends in Germany about how the human mind is capable of crafting and believing such fantastic versions of reality. I began to think of these bizarre versions of reality were like bubbles created by the mind. Thus, the idea of Reality Bubbles popped into my mind. Some mind bubbles are very stable and last for a long time. Other Reality Bubbles are inherently unstable and pop almost as soon as they leave our minds. Most Alternative Reality Bubbles will pop soon after leaving the mind because the Rock of Reality is very hard.

I imagined the human mind is like the wand the woman making bubbles was holding in the park. With our minds, we make bubbles of reality that we put out into the world, which are visible through our thoughts, words, and actions. Consciousness is like the bubble making mixture in the bucket. As human beings, we channel and distill consciousness continually as it flows through us as experienced by our circumstances, station in life, visions, and dreams (sometimes nightmares). The consciousness contained inside of us is used to generate ideas that inform our individual actions. Thus, the quality of our individual consciousness determines the strength of the mixture used to manufacture the ideas we put out into the world through our Wand of Mind. It is the same wand every human being uses to put out bubbles of reality into the world, but the mixture of consciousness used can be vastly between humans.

Step 3: Explore, discover, repair, and revive your inner landscapes.

Reviving Our Lost Inner Landscapes

This mixture also forms our inner landscapes, mind-scapes. These inner landscapes are illuminated by the light of our conscious understanding. This is how we come to know who we are. This inner light of consciousness is what we inherited when we stepped across the threshold of consciousness many thousands of years ago. Despite all this time, this part of our consciousness is the smallest part of us. Vast amounts of every human mind remains cloaked under the darkness of inner unconsciousness.

But this is what we are here to do–to explore, discover, and claim inner landscapes by illuminating them with the light of our awaken consciousness. The more unconsciousness contained inside your mind, the less stable your inner landscapes will be as well as the bubbles of reality you manufacture with your mind and put into the world through your actions.

This is why it is important to see more of who were are as a human being, which always includes good and bad parts of ourselves. To make stable bubbles that are able to last through time, we need to maintain dynamic balances between good and bad elements existing inside of us and flowing all around us all of the time. We get glimpses of these cloaked areas through thoughts, dreams, and visions. But more often we become aware of our unconsciousness because we get triggered by the unconscious content living inside of us. They pop up just like instincts pop into action due to environmental stimuli that spurs an animal into action. When an animal acts based upon their instincts, nature has already worked out the dynamic balances over billions and billions of years evolution.

However, as newly awaken conscious beings, we have a lot to understand and work out dynamic sustainable balances. This is hard work and it is far easier to revert back to simpler ways of seeing the world such as black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, and then choose one side or the other side to rally along side. But, ultimately all opposites are inseparable because inside goes with outside, up goes with down, light goes with night. Every opposite is inseparable from its other side just like the other side of a coin. You can cut off the other side, but it is still there…the coin is simply thinner… and that is exactly what we do when we split reality and exist in only one side–we make it smaller. Another serious problem of existing only on onside or the other side of the Coin of Reality is a fatal lopsidedness will result. Living in our huge human collectives with lots of technology can delay the consequences of this fatal lopsidedness, but not forever… that is the Gift of Reality… it will always flow towards balance in the end, and as you are carried in this flow, you will hit the Rocks of Reality along the way.

So, think about your thoughts and how they are turn into actions in the world, which shape and create our shared reality.

Promo for It Came From Inside — Drawn and created by Bebe

I know this is all pretty abstract, but perhaps you will read the story I am writing about this when I finally finish it (Sapience: The Moment is Now). For now, I continue to make these mini movies to help me feel grounded to the Earth and connected to all the beautiful life around me and inside of me. By appreciating the beauty of Earth, I am able to continue gathering inner strength to pull back the projections I have put out into the world. As I pull them back, I find my inner reservoir of consciousness is replenished, which helps me endure.

Projecting our consciousness out into the world is perfectly natural because we cannot see ourselves when we are first born into the world unless we look in a mirror. That is what projections do. They allow us to see ourselves through others.

The trick is seeing: “Oh – that is me!” And, reclaiming that part of ourself that has been temporally lost into the world as a project. This is your power. This is all in my book… but I still must find deeper calm to write again since the latest calamity befell me and my family.

Step 4: Be here, now, that is all we ever have… everything we know, do, feel, become is wrapped in the now.

It is up to each of us to find critical inner balances between the self of the present and the self of the future. It is simply the price of being a conscious creature, and so, it must be navigated. At times, it can be very hard navigating between the needs, desires, fears, and fantasies of present self with the concerns and needs of future self, but that is what we are called to do a conscious human beings who have the gift of knowing.

Following are some of the activities I do that have helped me navigate my inner divide, which exists inside every human being. Often, it comes down to calming down my self-talk (the thing we call thinking and prize so much as modern human beings). Alan Watts often says that thinking is a good servant but a bad master. This is a fundamental teaching of Buddhism that the Western trained mind has a very hard time understanding.

Nature Heals

Nature helps us see ourselves in balance with everything else. Being outside, we can step outside of our minds and open us to other ways of knowing and understanding ourself in relationship to everyone and everything else. But to do this, one must be willing to slow down and look! I’ve made a series of nature videos throughout the months of lockdown and social distancing due to the global pandemic, which required individuals to put the well-being and health of others ahead of themselves–that is why we were asked to wear masks and keep distances, not because we were being controlled by evil politicians and scientists. My goodness the stories circulating on the Internet are so creative and more entertaining in conspiracy myths than a Marvel movie. I would ask those flocking to such narratives, what is it inside of you that these stories are activating? If a story you read makes your blood pressure rise, your heart beat faster, your anger increase, who is trying to manipulate you to their point of view? Instead, go outside. Let your own inner truth rise. If you are holding your inner split in balance, you will feel peace, you will feel confidence, you will feel in control and trust yourself to know who is telling you porky (aka bullshit) and who is telling you something real (be it good or bad). Life is complicated. Nature is complicated. We are constantly surrounded by complications and need each other to understand and navigate a complicated world as we travel inside very complicated collectives (i.e., our super-huge civilizations). To see the full nature series, click here: Have You Been Outside Today?

Have You Been Outside Today Series

HiddenBrain

dog with brown faux fur headband — Photo by Gilberto Reyes on Pexels.com

Description: Think about the resolutions you made this year: to quit smoking, eat better, or get more exercise. If you’re like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. That’s because change is hard. Behavioral scientist Katy Milkman explains how we can use our minds to do what’s good for us.

Towards the end, Katy says, “So often we don’t understand the forces of opposition inside of us, such as the desires of present me (I want to eat that ice cream now) and the consequences of future me (I’ll have to deal with the extra load of calories and fat that might be bad for my weight, cholesterol, mood).” Through out the episode, she gives plenty of examples where her present me created problems for her future me. She said she found it far more productive to approach these situations as an engineering problem rather than falling back to judgemental self-talk (also known as thinking). To do this, a person needs to recognize the forces of opposition operating inside themself, such as Seinfeld’s conflict between Night Guy and Morning Guy and Day Guy. between present self and future self honestly and fully without judging them as lazy, no good, stupid, or anything else one has been told by family members, friends, and culture about the behavior.

Seinfeld – Night Guy, Morning Guy, Day Guy

Basically, my take away from Katy’s presentation is that anything that trips us up and subverts us from achieving our long-term goals is human. It is normal. And, it can be handled by understanding the inner conflict and engineering simple work arounds. To do this, we need to see the forces at work honestly and fully without judging them (e.g., I’m a lazy, no good, stupid *#$). Often we internalize negative self talk because we have been told this by family, friends, and our culture. It is easy to label and judge. It is much harder to see our internal conflict, which in an inner spilt due to being a consciousness creature, honestly and to accept it as part of one’s self that must be loved and nurtured just as much as the parts of ourself that are heralded as good traits (e.g., over-achieving guy or gal, bringing home the bacon guy or gal, or anything else we or others label as desirable behaviors).

Alan Watts

Ra’s Playlist of Alan Watts — Ra is an AI helping one of the characters in Sapience understand how to transform human consciousness on a scale never before achieved. Stay tuned, you will meet Ra soon in Book 1.

Watts often liked to ask in his lectures: “Why don’t you know what you want?”

“First, you don’t know what want because you haven’t thought about it or you’ve only thought superficially about it. Then when you somebody forces him to think about it and go through and say yeah I think I’d like this, I think I like that, I think I’d like the other as the middle stage. Then you get beyond that say: “Is that what I really want? The end news day, now I don’t think that’s it. I might be satisfied with it for a while and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it, but it’s not really what I want.”

“Why don’t you really know what you want two reasons that you don’t really know what you’re not number one you have it.”

“Number two, you don’t know yourself because you never can. The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge, just as a knife doesn’t cut itself, fire doesn’t burn itself, light doesn’t illumine itself. It’s always an endless mystery to itself.”

“I don’t know.”

“And this I don’t know, other than the infinite interior of the Spirit, this I don’t know is the same thing as I love, I let go and I don’t try to force or control. It’s the same thing as humility, and so the Upanishads say, “If you think that you understand brahmin, you do not understand it and have yet to be instructed further.”

“If you know that you do not understand it (dharma), then you truly understand for the brahmin is unknown to those who know it and known to those who know it. And the principle is that anytime you as it were voluntarily let up control, in other words cease to cling to yourself, you have an access of power because you’re wasting energy all the time and self-efense trying to manage things trying to force things to perform (the way you think things ought to be–like Rush H. Limbaugh–lol!). The moment you stop doing that that wasted energy is available. Therefore, you are in that sense having that energy available. You are one with the Divine Principle. You have the energy.”

“When you’re trying however to act as if you were God–that is to say you don’t trust anybody and you’re the dictator and you have to keep everybody in line–you lose the divine because what you’re doing is simply defending yourself. So then the principle is the more you give it away, the more it comes back. Now, you say I don’t have the courage to give it away I’m afraid. And you can only overcome this by realizing you better give it away because there’s no way of holdings onto it.”

Alan Watts Chillstep – We’re All One | This is the lecture set to music which the above quotes come…

Haunted and the Edge

Lloyd’s Haunted & the Edge Playlist

The haunted and the edge offer much in understanding our inner realities better, but they are often taboo and little understood. This is a playlist created by the Last DJ of Earth who is trying to save survivors of Earth after a global catastrophe. He hacks Multinational satellites to broadcast his musical sermons, working day and night to bring down Earth’s new overlords–the ones who worship money. Consciousness is the key. The Sapience Series tells the tale. Follow Sapience: The Moment is Now for when Book 1 is available.

You are beautiful. You are vital to this now. So, take care of yourself. Stay safe, stay well, and find some time to cultivate your beautiful patch of consciousness for it connects you to me and to all of life and the natural world! This is how we create a more beautiful world by seeing the beauty in each other, even when we disagree about things.

May 12, 2021May 14, 2021

Sisyphus — The Living Myth of Now

Sometime last fall, while biking, the word Sisyphus popped into my mind. I did not know what it meant. I knew it was familiar, but I could not remember why. It’s a weird word. Not a word you hear on a daily basis, not even a word you hear on a decade basis, unless perhaps you are a scholar. But, it kept popping into my mind randomly at least a dozen times or more into the beginning of 2021.

I Was Just Looking for Something Good to Watch

I was looking for a new series to watch on Netflix. I’d finished a score of good series, and then hit a patch of bad ones. I wanted something good…something I could sink into and get lost inside. I was looking for something like the shows I had recently finished watching such as:

Outlander

Outlander: I never read Diana Gabaldon‘s books, but once I started watching this series, I was hooked. I was trying to find a replacement for Masterpiece’s Poldark series based on Winston Graham’s books, which is absolutely amazing. And when I saw Ronald D. Moore was producing this series, I was intrigued because his last big hit series was the updated Battlestar Galactica series, a TV drama I loved immensely in the 70s, and Caprica (this tells the tale of how that fictional human civilization fell by showing how the Cylon androids took over their worlds, but then it got abruptly and cruelly canceled before the whole story could be told).

Outlander does not disappoint from the very first episode onward. Its characters are complexed, nuanced, and compelling. The series does not rush the story, reveals each character honestly and humanely, and tells the tale in a captivating, mysterious way. Each season builds upon the last one. The characters grow as the times change around them. The difficulties and battles feel real and vital. Each character has layers of complexities that influence their choices and actions, just like real people do, making the story relatable; indeed, a symbol that transforms the complexities encountered in novel and unexpected ways. And isn’t that what you are really hungry for when you sit down to watch a story?

OUTLANDER – Season 1 Trailer | 5,355,359 views • Aug 6, 2015

His Dark Materials

His Dark Materials: I never read Pullman’s novels but I loved the Golden Compass, which was made for the big screen in 2007. However, due to the financial crisis of 2008/2009, the next parts of this series never materialized. Then in 2019, HBO teamed up with BBC to reimagine this fantastic tale for the smaller screen/TV. They did an amazing job translating a complicated story to the screen. I found it believable, compelling, and thrilling. The characters are complicated. You think you’ve pegged one as evil and then realize later critical nuances that force you to reconsider your views. They mystery of the story is revealed slowly and unevenly, so you have to guess or imagine for yourself why this or that happened. Each new character has something new to offer in understanding the whole story. The special effects add to the story rather than overly dominate it.

His Dark Materials: Season 1 | Official Trailer | HBO | 7,892,118 views • Oct 3, 2019

I love this scene where the researcher and scholar Mary talks to Dust, then she realizes the Dust itself are the Angels. (From His Dark Materials | Season 2, episode 4. The Tower of Angels).

His Dark Materials – Mary talks to Dust (Angels) | 26,773 views • Nov 30, 2020

She asks: “Angels are creatures made up of shadow matter of dust?”

The Mysterious Something answers: “Yes.”

Mary further inquires: “And shadow matter is what we call spirit?”

The Mysterious Something replies: “From what we are, spirit, from what we do, matter. Matter and spirit are one.”

Mary asks: “You’ve always been there?”

The Mysterious Something says: “Making, stimulating, guiding.”

Mary queries: “So does that mean angels have intervened in human evolution?”

The Mysterious Something answers: “Yes.”

Mary asks: “But why?”

The Mysterious Something says plainly: “Vengeance.”

Now, I wonder what that means? I didn’t find out in Season 2, so waiting for Season 3. But after that exchange, Mary starts working with the I Ching–which is our world’s equivalent to the Golden Compass from Lyra’s world. Because of Mary, I got the I Ching for my birthday and learned to read the yarrow straws. I supposed that now I too am talking to the angels.

I use good TV drama like a support system, especially during this year of COVID where social distancing has put so many of us into isolation to extremes. My own Indra’s Network was already partially destroyed and broken. The connections I still maintained with friends and family were sorely stretched by time and distance. They were incredibly nourishing when time and attention permitted, but these moments were punctuated by long bouts of silence and little to no meaningful interactions with people who care.

Good stories, powerful dramas are ways I have found that soothe and nourish my soul, especially during times when kindness and caring human contact is in short supply.

Liz Cheney

As I was working on this blog, Liz Cheney spoke before Congress on the eve before the impending vote tomorrow (5/12/21) to remove her from her leadership position as the 3rd most powerful Republican Leader in the House. Republicans are doing this to her because she took a stand not to support Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. She named Trump as the chief sower of doubt in the hearts and minds of Americans.

The Dark Force

By the way, the I Ching says doubt is the Dark Force. Now, who is being a superhero here in the United States on this very day of May 12, 2021? Who is growing the fabric of time and space rather than ripping it to tiny shards of broken light?

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

The Tibetan Book of the Dead warns the soul of a dying individual not to follow the illusionary images and lights they have created inside of themselves and then projected into the world around them. They did this because they did not understood their true Self in life. They did not descend and understand their true identity as a space-time being. They did not understand the meaning and purpose of life. Death is a time thats unravels the net of confused pain each individual becomes entangled within throughout the course of their life on Earth. To not do so, condemns the eternal soul to return again and again and again–sometimes (perhaps often) as a lesser being in order to learn the lessons not mastered in the life before. This returning can occur again and again for the world of rock and buildings and money and power is like water–it continually flows, dissolving everything in time.

Those who use the power of the Dark Force may indeed achieve tremendous riches, success, and power on Earth. However, all this will turn to dust and scatter into nothingness at the time of death. Nothing here is permanent. At death, we lose everything. Nothing that we thought is real is real. If we don’t let go of everything we have clung to in life, the tiny light of consciousness every human being is born into at the beginning of their life will be born into another painful life, again and again and again.

Those who peddle in doubt and fear can live 10 billion, million lives, each one diminishing his/her original source of light until there is nothing left of that light.

Leonard Cohen narrated a beautiful documentary about the practices and wisdom contained and known within the Buddhist tradition. It is elegant knowledge, beautiful knowledge. It shows how we can grow as space-time beings, as we are suppose to grow, rather than collapsing into smaller and smaller living beings.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1994) – Narrated by Leonard Cohen | 90,513 views • Oct 28, 2019

“People make hell realms out of their own anger. They make worlds out of passions, out of envy or complacency. We project our emotional states, and then believe it is the real world. But no matter what, everyone longs for compassion. Everyone wishes to be awake. So the best thing is to develop genuine compassion for all living beings and for ourselves too. And our compassion should extend beyond our friends and family and the people we like. It must extend to all people and to all living beings.” — From Documentary about The Tibetan Book of the Dead

This is how to wake up as a living conscious being.

The OA

The OA: This series is a mind-bending SyFy fantasy that often leaves viewers with more questions than answers. Word has it this is one of the reasons this show was cancelled after season 2 when 5 seasons were planned. Apparently the average viewer does not have the attention span or interests to dabble in complexity–perhaps this is the inevitable end to Carmel Marvel storytelling–everything has to be blunt, not complex, and nothing left to the imagination, much less to dabble with moral ambiguity. I loved this series. I guess I drank the Kool-aide and became part of its cult following late. And I agree with 110% with Brit Marling that storytelling in America has become not as good as it could or should be.

The OA | official trailer (2016) Netflix | 53,112 views •Dec 13, 2016

When the show was cancelled, one viewer went outside of Netflix’s headquarters and held an 8 day hunger strike. Refinery29 interviewed her and wrote a compelling article about why she did this.

"Emperial Young is on day eight of a hunger strike. It’s not over the burning of the Amazon, or gun violence, or the latest controversial move by the current Commander-in-Chief. Young, 35, wants Netflix to renew The OA for a third season — and she’s willing to go to extreme lengths of what she calls “internal violence” to make it happen.

“We are living in a time where it seems that things are going to go very badly,” explains Young in front of the Netflix building in Hollywood, where she has been protesting since August 15 and hunger striking since August 19. “The response to that has been ‘Okay, we’re going to make darker, grittier television.’ But in times of darkness, light is most important, and The OA is filled with light. We need something to let us know, ‘Yes, we can do something,’ because all the media around us is telling us that these are dark, grim times and there is nothing you can do about it.”

Created by Brit Marling and creative partner Zal Batmanglij, The OA tells the story of Prairie (Marling), a blind woman who returns after years in captivity with her sight restored. Season 1 of the series mostly exists within the narrative that Prairie tells a group of soon-to-be friends about her time in captivity and before it, in which she transcended time and space and found herself in alternate dimensions. Along the way, the show tackles themes of trauma, and of the importance of a human connection amongst it. Young isn’t wrong about The OA being different: There’s a hopefulness to The OA that is unmatched by more gritty prestige TV offerings like The Handmaid’s Tale, Westworld, even Game of Thrones.

Learning about this woman, Brit Marling and Zal Batmangli came and brought her water. Afterward, Brit posted this about her reaction to OA’s cancellation and how storytelling in America has become not as good as it could or should be.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Brit Marling (@britmarling)

The series was conceived by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, and they began working on the concept in December 2012.

This is no small thing that Emperial Young and Brit Marling are drawing our attention to in this protest and post, particularly this part: “… the role of storytelling and its fate inside late capitalism’s push toward consolidation and economies of scale.” This is a post about Sisyphus: Is Late Capitalism and its push towards consolidation and economies of scale perhaps not the rock Sisyphus not pushing up the mountain getting it to the top after great effort only to have it fall back down to the bottom again and again and again.

Invisible City

Invisible City (Brazil): This is a new Brazilian fantasy that is streaming on Netflik television series created by Carlos Saldanha that is based on a story co-developed by the screenwriters and best-selling authors Raphael Draccon and Carolina Munhóz. It is in Portuguese, so you have to read subtitles if you are only an English speaker. I was born in Brazil and once knew Portuguese, but have forgotten all of it. I loved listening to the characters speaking in Portuguese. It felt familiar and lovely. It is a musical language and the music in this series is alive and vibrant. I soon forgot I was reading subtitles and got lost in the rich and depth of storytelling unfolding through this complex, invigorating story. The characters are treated with dignity and respect. The puzzle of the drama unfolds in surprising reveals that add depth to the story and bring this mysterious world into vivid view.

Invisible City Official trailer (HD) Season 1 (2021) | 86,811 views • Feb 5, 2021

Glitch

Glitch (Australian): This is an older series that begins with a bang when a police officer and a doctor face an emotionally charged mystery as seven local residents inexplicably return from the dead. It is three seasons long, and the first two open up so many innovative ideas and possibilities, but season 3 falls flat on its face and destroys all the wonder and the miracle being explored, in my opinion. I am glad I watched it because I learned what I do not want to do as I write my tale.

Glitch Season 1 | Trailer | Now On Netflix | 753,177 views • Feb 23, 2016

I was so bothered by how they ended this series, I went on online to see if others were too and found this great blog: Old Ain’t Dead | Reviews of movies and TV focused on women … specifically Season 3 (so if you intend to watch Glitch, save this site for later because there are definitely spoilers, including my comment there).

Image from Virginia DeBolt‘s blog site: Old Ain’t Dead | Review of Glitch, Season 3

Carmel Marvel Syndrome

When it comes to science fiction and fantasy, I have come to realize I am picky, and not all are the same. In fact in the United States, we are suffering from what I have come to term the Carmel Marvel Syndrome. It is a widespread a syndrome that is dumbing down how stories are being told in books and reimagined on screens. The good-bad divide in Carmel Marvel stories is stark, uncreative, and boring. Nothing is left in-between–you are either the good guy or girl or you’re the bad one. The bad ones almost always lose in the end, but you get there in terribly unimaginative, brutal, evil ways…as the good guy or gal finally finds a morsel of moral or spiritual strength and prevails. Romance is reduced to uninspiring sex scenes that clearly come from basal fantasies of pale males.

What bothers me most is Carmel Marvel storytelling is that they are not honest to the characters. They tend to stripe away their complexity and humanity and force them to do things against their character’s moral underpinnings. Yes, imagined characters have moral underpinnings, they are real and must strive for meaning, purpose and dignity too. I am not going to explain this now, but Carmel Marvel stories like to put their characters into highly contrived situations that they would never do unless forced to by their bored and uninspired creators. They are put into these situations purely for entertainment reasons, which really translates to money. Because Carmel Marvel producers and creators hope for billions and billions of viewers–and they think only highly fantasized modern gladiators well do this. After watching such a sickly story, nothing sticks or stays in the psyche or soul from the story. That is because there is nothing real there. There is nothing nearing the human experience of meaning, truth, reality, or wonder. Everyone knows these types of stories are junk food for the soul. They are cheap imitation of images meant to trick, deceive, and fill you up with a whole lot of nothing, just like if you ate only Carmel candy for all your daily nutrient requirements.

Then I Stumbled onto Something Spectacular: Sisyphus

So let’s get back to that word Sisyphus that kept popping into my mind.

After being disappointed by another Carmel Marvel HBO series, I switched back to Netflix to hunt for a new series to watch. That’s when a 2021 Netflix out of South Korea caught my eye. It was called Sisyphus! Normally, I would have put it on my To Watch Later list since it required reading subtitles again. But because of the synchronicity, I thought what the heck, go for it!

I loved it! And I discovered that I love the Korean way of telling stories!!!!

Sisyphus | Official Trailer | Netflix [ENG SUB] | 1,028,877 views • Feb 9, 2021

The fabric of this story is rich woven with little bits of gold and silver throughout the 16 episodes. Each one takes the viewer on a journey, revealing a little bit more in surprising ways that adds depth to each character, even the evil ones. The villains have backstories that are as complex as the heroes. Villains and heroes alike are treated honestly and no high tech short cuts are used to substitute good storytelling. Throughout the 16 episodes, the viewer enters a journey (a world) that grows more and more complex as you go: you grow as the characters grow.

Sisyphus masters the art of subtle storytelling. This is a subject I briefly touched upon early in my blogging efforts in a blog questioning if Collective Transformation Possible. In it I talk about the Black Magician and the White Magician and their roles in our human psyche. I drew them while listening to a Chinese business-financial scholar talk about Trump’s power play back in 2018 with China on trade. (It’s didn’t end well by the way… this power play Trump tried… for Americans or for Trump who placed the livelihood of hundreds of small soybean and other farmers in jeopardy.)

ipMsMPXYSn+mGdxpvt3aSA — Notebook drawing Yin-Yang by Bébé

Dr. Peter Chen pointed out Western ideas of negotiation are quite different from Eastern ideas. He said in Chinese, the most similar word they have to negotiation is tánpàn, which means talking and judging. For the Chinese, it is considered the dark side of economics with the East preferring to focus on conversation when working out deals. However, there are huge differences in how conversation is conducted by a Western diplomat versus an Eastern diplomat. By Eastern standards, Westerners are considered low-context communicators (i.e., direct and forceful, which can be considered very rude by Eastern standards). Eastern culture dictates a much more high-context style of communication, which is reserved, relies more on body language, and is based on relationships.

Is Collective Transformation Possible?

The Black Magician and the White Magician

This why I loved Sisyphus. They tell this story using a much more high-context style of storytelling. I also love listening to the actors speak Korean. Every word they utter is full of meaning, purpose, and emotion. The tone and way a word is said is more important than the word itself. You understand a song by how the singer sings it, so too with Eastern languages. They are full of images, meaning, context, and emotion. And isn’t that what we are really craving in watching or reading a story? Deep meaning and purpose? Sure, lots of people will say they just want to escape into something entertaining… but if you discover something about yourself and others while doing so, isn’t that a whole lot better. Stuff that stick to you and makes you a better individual… helps you grow as a conscious living being?!

The Archetype of Meaning

Even though we deny how powerful and essential good storytelling is in Western culture, we are starving for good, wholesome, spirituous stories that fed our souls as well as our fractured, confused minds. Stories that awaken sleeping spirits needed to defeat doubt: the force that splinters our psyche and traps us in endless delusions and illusions that only make us smaller, meaner, and contribute to the demise of all life on Earth.

A new friend I’ve made during runs with Pumper (another mom of dogs and kids) recommended another Korean Netflix show called Crash Landing on You. I didn’t think I would like it better than Sisyphus, but I love it even more. The depth of each character grows and spills out in unexpected ways in each episode. And don’t miss the little peaks at the very end after you think the episode has concluded. Not always, but often, they show you something not shown earlier. It is often something that fills in a gap and fills out the depth of the character–how they are thinking, perceiving, and acting in the world. How they are transforming through time and space.

Crash Landing on You | Official Trailer #1 | Netflix [ENG SUB] | 2,327,897 views • Nov 29, 2019

My friend Fabian Navin has just posted something very insightful about why I loved this show. The Facebook embedding is not working, so I am copying below what Fabian has posted (go to his site above to see more of his posts):

*Warriorhood in Marriage and Relationship* Conscious fighting is a great help in relationships between men and women. Jung said, “American marriages are the saddest in the whole world, because the man does all his fighting at the office.”

When a man and a woman are standing toe-to-toe arguing, what is it that the man wants? Often he does not know. He wants the conflict to end because he is afraid, because he doesn’t know how to fight, because he “doesn’t believe in fighting,” because he never saw his mother and father fight in a fruitful way, because his boundaries are so poorly maintained that every sword thrust penetrates to the very center of his chest, which is tender and fearful. When shouts of rage come out of the man, it means that his warriors have not been able to protect his chest; the lances have already entered, and it is too late.

Michael Meade has suggested that both marital partners begin by identifying the weapons that have come down through their family lines. Perhaps the woman has inherited the short dagger, used unexpectedly, and the spiked mace, which she swings down late in the argument onto the foot soldier’s head. The husband may have inherited a broad sword, which he swings when frightened in large indiscriminate circles; it says “never” and “always.” “You always talk like your mother.” He might add the slender witticism spear to that.

Some people also use the “doorway lance.” When the argument is over, and the woman, let’s say, is about to go to work, the man says: “By the way,” and the lance pins her to the doorframe.

Man and wife might say which weapons he or she plans to use in the particular fight coming up. During such preliminary conversations the man’s warrior and woman’s warrior are welcomed in the house and honored. A good fight gets things clear, and I think women long to fight and be with men who know how to fight well.

When both use their weapons unconsciously or without naming them, both man and woman stumble into the battle, and when it is over the two interior children can be badly wounded. The adult warrior inside both men and women, when trained, can receive a blow without sulking or collapsing, knows how to fight for limited goals, keeps the rules of combat in mind, and in general is able to keep the fighting clean and to establish limits.

Marie-Louise von Franz once told a story about a woman friend. “This woman had gone through several marriages. Each marriage would go well until an argument came. Then she would throw a fit, and say damaging things. The terrible quarrels would continue, and finally the man would leave. One day we heard she had found a new husband, and we said, ‘Oh-oh, here it goes again.’ But something else happened. A few weeks after the honeymoon, the same old quarrel arrived and she brought out her poison and said terrible things. The husband turned pale, but to her surprise, said nothing, and left the room. She found him upstairs packing his bags. ‘What are you doing?’ she said. I know,’ he said, ‘that I am supposed to act like a man now and shout and hit you, but I am not that sort of man. I will not allow anyone to talk to me in the way you have, and I am leaving.’ She was astounded. She asked him not to leave, and he didn’t. The marriage is still going on.”

This story is not perfect. If a woman has a fair argument, it is not right for the man to leave; he should stay and fight. But von Franz’s use of the word fit implies that her friend had a habit of going over the line into possession. Her fits belonged metaphorically to Kali’s realm, rather than to the human realm. Men cross that line often as well. The inner warrior can tell a person when the partner is on this side of the human line, and when on the other side.

Marion Woodman remarks in The Ravaged Bridegroom, “Anger comes from the personal level, rage from an archetypal core. . . . The rage in both sexes comes out of centuries of abuse.

If it is taken into relationships, it destroys. Attacking each other in a state of possession has nothing to do with liberation.” The interior warrior in both men and women can help them to fight on the human plane. If men and women have only soldiers or shamed children inside, they will have to settle for damaging battles constantly. ~Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men

I am totally hooked now on the Korean way of telling stories!!

The stories we tell can liberate us or chain us to the rock we must push up the mountain of life only to watch it fall back down, again and again and again, like poor old Sisyphus. Who do you want to be in life? How are you going to become the best version of yourself, a better person than you have been so far? How will you grow you fragile light of consciousness and help others do the same?

April 21, 2021April 22, 2021

Blood & Bringing Into Being a Kinder, Better World

On a recent Saturday afternoon, I was working on my story while listening to NPR, as is my habit. I remember perking up and paying attention when This American Life introduced the subject of this episode: Bloody Feelings — Stories about the Power of Blood. The stories were not at all what I was expecting from the title.

Bloody Feeling — Stories about the Power of Blood | This American Life

Act 1 was about Adele who she described herself as “the worst phlebotomist in the whole hospital.” She was a physical therapist until the Coronavirus gripped the country. With all her physical therapy sessions cancelled, she was not needed there. But what the hospital really needed was more people to do blood draws. I loved her story.

Act 2 is about the discovery of 30 century-old postcards written in old Yiddish by a distant family member challenges David Kestenbaum’s ideas about the unimportance of blood ties.

Act 3 is about a Shakespeare theater production that involved a lot of blood that was a little too real for the audience and what befell everyone.

Act 4 is about fibroids and a uterus that gets turned into a play titled: There’s No ‘Us’ in Uterus. Oh, Wait…

Act 5 is about a broken heart… no, not a love sick broken heart… a heart that required open heart surgery.

Walk In The Woods

While I enjoyed these stories, I wasn’t bowled over by them as other stories I’ve heard, although the color red stuck in my mind. I finished what I was doing and got my pup ready to go for a trot. This is our pandemic routine. Pumper loves our trots, especially when we see other dogs! I am pretty sure that she thinks all dogs exist on Earth to play with her. She plays well with all dogs no matter their size or temperament, adapting herself to whoever she mets for an instant playdate.

So, when we caught sight of big dog ahead of us, it was Pumper’s mission to catch up with them. They were walking fast, but Pumper was pulling me faster. Eventually, we caught up and found out the big dog was a Great Pyrenees–-Poodle mix– a Pyrepoo! It was the first one we’d ever met, and it was only 7 months old but already twice as big as Pumpernickel (now 15 months). I was admiring all the similarities between the two dogs who got along splendidly together. The owner of the Pyrepoo just told me how the Great Pyrenees were guard dogs of a flock not herders. And I just told her my dog was a Pyrepitt (she’s actually many more dogs mixed in but the Great Pyreness and Pitt Bull are the most dominate) when a Pitt Bull came upon us.

The guy walking the Pitt looked a bit anxious, but neither I nor the owner of the Pyrepoo took alarm. As he passed us with the Pitt on a super short leash, the Pyrepoo pup went over to say hello. This is common doggie custom to greet all new incoming dogs with a sniff. But no sooner had the pup approached the Pitt to sniff when he yelped in pain. The Pitt had bite him and would not let go. Both owners tried desperately to pry the Pitt’s jaws open. Pumper and I stood stunned and helpless watching what was happening before us.

Finally, the Pitt released its grip and Pyrepoo pulled back to a safe distance. I was relieved to see his nose was not the part bitten, but blood dripped from his lower lip. There was also blood in the Pitt’s mouth, and blood on the hands of both owners. It turned out the man was helping his sister with her dog and apparently didn’t know the Pitt’s temperament. The whole thing was terrible. I helped flag down a Kleenex for the owner of the Pyrepoo, then they were off to the vet get stitches. I felt so bad because had we not stopped them to say hello, they would have missed the Pitt Bull.

The synchronicity of the moment was duly noted. I have learned to pay attention to such moments when I recognize them. There is usually more going on that needs to be understood, but I had no idea what. Ruminating on blood was something I did not do, really at all… perhaps due to cultural programming.

Brooklyn Center — Then & Now

The next day, another terrible synchronicity occurred when Daunte Wright was fatally shot in Brooklyn Center, MN during a ‘routine’ traffic stop. The shooting occurred hardly more than 10 miles from where George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. And it happened right in the middle of the trial of Chauvin, which had just completed its second week of heart wrenching testimony about George Floyd’s final moments, his life, and lost potential and presence in the lives of all who loved him. It was painful to absorb. And then, another young black man lost his life at the hands of a police officer in Minnesota.

What to Know About the Trial of Derek Chauvin | NYT: Last Updated April 16, 2021, 12:31 p.m. ET

Police fatally shoot man, 20, in suburban Minneapolis, sparking protests | Washington Post: April 12, 2021 at 3:52 a.m. EDT

These deaths hit close to home because I grew up in North Minneapolis. I know where George Floyd died and where Daunte Wright was shot. I could walk to Brooklyn Center from where I lived. I often went to the old Brookdale Mall in Brooklyn Center because that’s where you went with your friends in high school (well, maybe that’s where the nerdy kids went). It was a place we could go to feel young and free.

I remember meeting my girlfriends at Rocky Rococos, then walking around the Brookdale Mall. We mostly just walked and talked, dreaming about our futures. None of us had much money to spend, but every once in a while, one of us would buy something special there. I remember hunting for prom dresses there with my friends and buying one even though I didn’t have a date and did not go to my high school prom. But I wanted a picture in a prom dress…lol. Looking back at these moments, they were times we were pretending to be all grown up, and the Brookdale Mall was the perfect backdrop to step into our fantasy lives.

Back in its day, the Brookdale Mall was part of cutting edge suburban social architecture being one of 5 malls opening around downtown Minneapolis to provide the perfect place to go for suburban housewives and families who needed ordinary household supplies, furniture, school supplies and clothes–whatever was needed for a suburban household. They were knows as the Dales and included Brookdale (Brooklyn Center), Rosedale (Roseville), Ridgedale (Minnetonka), and Southdale (Edina). Brookdale first opened in 1962 and grew in stages. A lovely blog called Abandoned Retail recounts the rise and fall of the Dales surrounding Minneapolis, specifically the Brookdale Mall.

When I was growing up, I never considered the privilege my white skin afforded me as I walked around places like the Brookdale Mall or drove to it myself after getting my driver’s license. I never thought about how the dreams I entertained or how the gallivants with my friends at the mall were carefully packaged in specific ways designed to make us believe we each had a chance to become Cinderella and to find our Prince Charming.

The Old Brookdale Mall that used to be in Brooklyn Center, MN — Where Your Dreams Could Come Ture

From the Strib’s archives: A trip back in time to Brookdale | StarTribune: MARCH 13, 2015 — 7:49AM

It would take decades before I realized how fatal the childhood fairytale fantasies I reveled in were. How they obscured brutal realities embedded throughout American society, inherited from its long history of slavery and institutionalized racism. Places like the old Brookdale Mall sold the white suburban fantasy to white Americans, but it was an artificial, super sugary coating trying to cover up the cruel realities faced by black and brown people every single day.

I have never feared for my life being pulled over for a traffic violation. I never felt watched by workers at stores who worried I might steal something. I know now my friends and I got get out of jail free cards simply for being white. This was not so for my friends and classmates who were brown and black who were losing their lives for making the very same mistakes I had made.

Policing & Justice in the United States of America

How Policing Works in the Suburbs | 1A | WAMU

Image from 1A (WAMU) | A woman holds up a portrait of George Floyd as people gather outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Description of this episode: Last summer, millions across the country took to the streets to protest police violence. Now, against the backdrop of the trial of Derek Chauvin, criticism of the criminal justice system in America is once again under scrutiny. Recent shootings of Black men by police officers in the suburbs, including in Kenosha, Wisconsin and Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, have attracted new attention to the changing demographics of the suburbs and the tactics police use there.

We recommend this thread from researcher Will Stancil, who is one of our guests for this conversation:

Suburbs get a tiny fraction of the attention that major cities do, but they're really becoming the hub of civil rights conflict in America https://t.co/fXXjtK8GHy
— Will Stancil (@whstancil) April 12, 2021

From 1A | WAMU | April 19, 2021

And conditions are often different for people in wealthy, white suburbs. From a piece called “The Case For Defunding Police Is In Our Affluent White Suburbs” in Mel Magazine:

Homicides, robberies, rapes and other violent crimes happen disproportionately in poor minority communities. Crime rates have been falling across the country for the last 30 years — it’s statistically the safest era to be an American. But Black and brown people, especially those in inner-city communities, are victimized by crime that’s practically unseen in whiter, more affluent suburbs.

Those suburbs aren’t safe and clean and orderly because they’re white and wealthy. White, wealthy suburbs are safe because they benefit from two world-shifting factors: 1) the police harass less and solve more serious crimes; and 2) there’s significant funding for municipal and social services, whether that’s schools or health-care facilities or simply park space.

How are police and local officials responding to changing demographics in the suburbs? Have police been able to answer calls for justice from local residents?

We’re talking about how policing works in the suburbs.

Chicago Police Killing of Adam Toledo Brings Police Violence Against Latinos Back in Focus | The Takeaway | WNYCStudios |

Image from **The Takeaway** | WNYCStudios | April 19, 2021

Description of this story: What happened to the 13-year-old at the hands of police draws national reaction after police release footage showing Toledo had his hands up before he was gunned down.

Throughline: Policing in America

Image I made for Throughline’s Powerful Podcast on Policing in America

Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an epidemic. As the trial of Derek Chauvin plays out, it's a truth and a trauma many people in the US and around the world are again witnessing first hand. But this tension between African American communities and the police has existed for centuries. This week, the origins of policing in the United States and how those origins put violent control of Black Americans at the heart of the system.

Ayanna Pressley Reintroduces Bill To Address Disproportionate Punishment Of Black Girls In Schools

Image from Here and Now | WBUR | April 19, 2021 — Rep. Ayanna Pressley (Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)

Description: Black girls are suspended six to seven times more than white girls in schools across the U.S. Now, Rep. Ayanna Pressley is reintroducing a bill that aims to disrupt the school-to-confinement pipeline.

Here & Now’s Tonya Mosley speaks with Rep. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, about the bill to address the disproportionate punishment of girls of color in schools.

This segment aired on April 19, 2021.

State Rep. John Thompson Pushes For Police Reform In Minnesota

Description: Minnesota state Rep. John Thompson was an activist who joined the legislature in 2020 hoping to be more effective in the push for police reform and accountability.

He reflects on how impactful it’s been so far and how his community is grappling with this moment.

This segment aired on April 19, 2021.

The Future of Policing in America | The Takeaway | Series of Five Stories

Images from **The Takeaway** series on Policing in America

Description: Recently, The Takeaway convened five of those voices, across law enforcement, advocacy, and academia, and asked them to come together to talk about the way forward. What is the future of policing in America? In our ongoing coverage, we tackle what’s broken in today’s system and what it would take to fix it.

April 20, 2021 — Today Was A Monumental Day, But We Are Not Done

PBS NewsHour full episode, Apr. 20, 2021 | Derek Chauvin Guilty on All Counts

Wow — I did not expect this verdict today. What a relief. It is one step in the right direction towards justice, but there is still a long ways to go and a lot of work to do to transform as a people, a society, a nation that values the lives of all its people–black, white, Asian, indigenous, immigrant, religious, non-religious–whoever you are, you belong in a society that treats everyone with dignity and respect and justice.

Black Lives Matter | Filmed June 2020 on Black Lives Plaza in Washington, DC

Today Was A Moonwalk Day | April 20, 2021 | I shot these pictures just before the verdict was announced in the trial for justice for George Floyd today. This is dedicated to George Floyd and his family and loved ones.

Mother of Grief — Remembering 2020 | Excerpt about the Impact of Coronavirus and Racism in America | Mother of Grief video is a journey through art and music remembering some of the events that reshaped our shared reality over the past year spanning roughly Feb. 2020 to Feb. 2021.

In this excerpt, the base video credits go to The Power of Street Art Under COVID (aired on PBS 7/7/20) — https://www.pbs.org/video/the-power-of-street-art-under-covid-tg7su0/ Photos from the Black Lives Matter march were taken by me during a march in Washington, DC in June 2020 seeking justice for George Floyd and so many more black and brown people killed by police in the United States.

This clips ends with a little girl dancing on the Black Lives Matter mural painted on the WDC street leading to the White House with a street musician singing justice, justice. Yesterday, George Floyd’s family got justice with guilty verdicts handed down to the police officer who murder him on May 25, 2020.

To read more about the full length video (Mother of Grief — Remembering 2020), go to: https://www.sapience2112.com/2021/03/20/mother-of-grief-remembering-2020/

We Are a Nation of Beautiful People and Each & Every One Is Precious, If We Could Just Learn to See

The United States of America is at another inflection point; a time of reckoning of cultural precepts obscured and hidden through false politeness and talk of freedom for all, but with harden attitudes and deep brutality and injustices baked into our systems, our stories, and our brains. To change deeply ingrained attitudes, actions, and behavior, they need to be made visible. Even when they are made visible, they need to be reckoned with honestly by each individual in which they exist.

Perhaps that is why my attention got drawn to blood and its brutalities just before another police officer killed another precious soul in my hometown. Just the word blood conjures up violent, brutal images. But it also heralds new life (though any mother will tell you labor is hard and painful work). To do the work necessary to transform collective reality requires lots of individuals doing the hard work of self-development. A good place to begin is how we are programmed by our culture. For a modern man or woman, this gets complicated fast because modern society frequently requires belonging to lots of groups with each possessing its own unique culture that exerts an influence an individual’s mind space. This is important because it is here in this invisible space of mind where our values, beliefs, and attitudes are formed. These then inform our actions in the world, which create our collective reality.

Honor Culture

Shankar Vedantam explored recently how culture and the cultural narratives we carry around inside of us influences our individual attitudes and actions in a podcast called Made of Honor. He introduces this episode saying, “Stories help us make sense of the world, and can even help us to heal from trauma. They also shape our cultural narratives, for better and for worse.” His guest speaker, Ryan Brown, begins with a story from his childhood where he finds himself along with his boyhood friends flying down a dark country road with no headlights on, no seatbelts, no helmets. The car was driven by a friend but appeal to him to go slower only goaded him to go faster. It was a moment Ryan believed he and his friends would die. It was also a moment that led Ryan to become a psychologist at Rice University in Texas.

Ryan Brown now understands why his fried refused to slow down nor apologize later for his reckless behavior. His friend was following a cultural script based on honor culture. “Honor cultures are societies that put the defensive reputation [of the group] at the center of social life and make that defense one of the highest priorities people have.” It is a culture that encourage excessive risk-taking behavior to show how brave and tough a person is, especially males in the culture. Doing so is a way to build and solidify one’s reputation in the society. In an Honor Culture, if your honor is threatened, you never back down, especially as a man, then you can only double-down and never show an ounce of weakness.

Ryan tells how his ancestry traces back to Southern Scotland that is steeped in the values and beliefs of Honor Culture. Residue of Honor Culture have been brought over from Scotland, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and many other immigrant groups that had these beliefs. These attitudes and values took root and grew strong in the Southern colonies, even when the United States had not been born yet. And they continued to flourish when the Southern colonies transformed into the Southern states, and then they pushed West.

Ryan says (12:39): “And so if you think about westerns, if you think about Western movies or Western history, there are always rough and tumble guys with names that sounded kind of Scottish, a McTavish McDonald, McDougal, Graham, et cetera. And that’s not an accident. So even today, even though most people in the us in the South, I don’t think of themselves as byproducts of Scottish history. You can still see this cultural residue in some fairly powerful patterns of, of social life, that social scientists, many others, including myself, have documented over the last 20 years.”

Over the past 20 years, Ryan and his colleagues have documented a strong connection between Honor Culture and Military Valor. This is a positive trait of this culture but there is a dark side too because honor cultures can get trapped in endless cycle of violence where retribution for dishonor is followed by retribution upon retribution of escalating violence. Honor cultures are found all over the world in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and also found in black and brown communities in the U.S. Honor culture is particularly prevalent in states like Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas. The names of towns and businesses even reflect honor culture such as a little country town in Texas called Cut and Shoot. But, naming places is only one small example of how honor culture shapes the lives of millions of people.

Honor cultures tend to take the stance: “That’s not my people. That’s not my family. That’s not my community.” Such a mental stances discourages individuals to reflect on situations that arise that end in conflict, even violence, and these cultures do not cultivate empathy, kindness, and compassion. These qualities are considered signs of weakness. If you lose your honor in an Honor Culture, you lose your value, your standing, your reputation and never get it back. Honor cultures tend to have a veneer of extreme politeness, but violence bubbles below and can break out at the slightest perceived slight. For instance, a simple insult in an honor culture can rapidly escalate into a violence.

Gender roles tend to be highly rigid as well in Honor Cultures with Ryan saying (29:59), “If you’re a real man in an honor culture, then that means you’ve built a reputation as someone who’s strong, tough, brave, loyal, and utterly intolerant of disrespect. If you’re a woman in an honor culture and your considered a good woman and honorable woman, that means that you’ve lived up to the social standards that say you should be loyal to family, especially loyal to your husband and sexually pure.“

In a complicated country such as the US, honor cultures have effects on how politics play out (47:55) “And what to spend a few minutes talking about the role of honor culture in politics. You’re a list of States where there is a strong honor. Culture include South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee and States that don’t include Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Minnesota. It’s hard not to see a division there between, you know, a prototypical red States and prototypical blue States, Republican States and democratic States, right?“

April Sometimes Brings More Than Showers

A Partial List of Mass Shootings in the United States in 2021 — The shootings never stopped during the coronavirus pandemic, they just became less public, researchers say. | The New York Times — April 16, 2021

Honor Culture explains a lot, but it’s not the only influence shaping individual attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. There are many factors shaping who we are as individuals. Circumstances such as social status, economic status, rural or urban dweller, religious community all exert tremendous influences on individuals. To be a modern human living in a highly technological society requires belonging to many systems and groups that all have unique cultures all exerting expectations and limitations on individuals. In short, modern humans live in very complicated worlds, made so by us. Although living in groups has proven to be an undeniably successful strategy to survive, there is a price and there is a dark side. The eruption of violence seems to be a deadly cost of living in huge groups.

As I did research for this blog, I came across an article about how April 14 to April 20 is historically a Bad Week for violent or disastrous events to occur. I will not speculate why bad things seem to cycle in patterns or occur in series, but here is a partial accounting of this week through time:

April 19, 1995: Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in downtown Oklahoma City on
April 19, 1993: a 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, TX ended in a devastating fire that killed more than 50 people, including children
April 20, 1999: the Columbine shooting occurred that left 12 students dead and 21 injured happened
April 16, 2007: the Virginia Tech shooting killed 32 people and wounded 17 others
April 14, 1912: the Titanic sank
April 18, 1906: the most deadly earthquake in U.S, history hit San Francisco.

To see more of the dreadful events that occurred during this week, see the article by AFRO: April 14 to April 20: An Historically Bad ‘Week That Was’ (4/19/13)

In the Aftermath of Violence & Disasters

Regardless of the type of violence or disaster, the aftermath is trauma, which leaves deep, lasting scars on the inside of people.

Grieving Parents Share Pain of Losing Daughter in Mass Shooting | WYC Studios | April 19, 2021

Description of story: Sandy and Lonnie Phillips lost their daughter Jessica Redfield Ghawi during the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado.

How Gun Violence Affects American Children | 1A | WAMU | April 14, 2021

Playground Image from 1A (WAMU) | How Gun Violence Affects American Children | April 14, 2021 | John Woodrow Cox’s new book is “Children Under Fire: An American Crisis.”Scott Olson/Getty Images

Regardless of whether violence is because of honor culture, racism, or the growing disease gripping the United States of America of mass shooting, it leaves a on survivors too. One group, impacted more than most, is hardly ever heard. Millions of children around the country are affected by gun violence every year. Whether it’s sitting through safety and violence prevention programs in school, losing a friend or loved one, or being a victim themselves, this brand of cruelty has an effect on the young.

1A talks with author John Woodrow Cox who shares powerful stories from young victims–and looks at what their experience can tell us about preventing further harm, both physical and mental.

Healing After Chauvin Murder Conviction: Is It Possible? | Here and Now | WBUR | April 21, 2021

Image of London Williams bursting into tears on April 20, 2021, in Washington, after hearing that former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd from Here & Now (Jacquelyn Martin/AP) | Other Photos I took or from NPR podcast series on White Lies

Here & Now talked to racial trauma therapist Resmaa Menakem in this interview. He brought up something terribly important in the wake of the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin in George Floyd’s death almost one year ago. Menakem says what Chauvin did was not only traumatic but meant to inflict terror in the community as well. He says (which has been said by many others as well in the past 24 hours) that “— guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter — is not justice, but rather accountability. It took uninterrupted, uncut video evidence to prove what people of color have been saying for decades about the police.” He said, “This particular video, compared to other taped incidents of police violence against Black Americans, represented white body supremacy so clearly that people could not dismiss it anymore. [But] still, there are significant swaths of people who don’t believe there are innocent Black and Brown people who are profiled and unfairly targeted by police.“

I know such people. I know what Menakem says is true about white people in particular.

Menakem further states that “there’s pain in not being believed, and also trauma from racialized gaslighting — a form of psychological manipulation that white bodies in the U.S. have done to Black, Brown and Indigenous people for centuries.“

I’ve experienced gaslighting, and I know people who still suffer from the pain and trauma of being gaslighted by people they depended on who gaslighted them instead of took care of and nurtured them. Mencken is right to point this out. It is tremendously painful and highly effective at tearing apart the fabric that sustains us all. A gaslighter is a person who makes other people feel like they are the one who is going crazy. They are insidious, crafty, deceitful people.

Gaslight (1944) – You Think I’m Insane Scene (5/8) | Movieclips | “You Think I’m Insane“: After becoming hysterical at a friend’s house Paula (Ingrid Bergman), Gregory (Charles Boyer) shares his frustrations with her.

“If a white body says something and then a body of culture says something else, what ends up happening is that the white body is always given the benefit of the doubt,” Menakem says. “So throughout the trial and verdict, people of color held onto hope for accountability on one hand while on the other hand, knew “white bodies will never admit that this system is feral.”

It is feral. The United States of America has a completely lopsided, feral system. And because of all the sugar coated, fluffy fantasies white kids get fed in their youth combined with being instilled with you’ve got to be somebody, white people are left with very little inner resources to see and deal with the truth. It is much easier to pretend not to see how brutal, how feral, how sick our culture really is.

Healing is possible, Menakem assures. He ends saying we need to start by turning towards each other and seeing other other rather than away from each other. This is powerful advice.

Lots of Human Beings, Lots of Disasters

Human beings seem particularly prone to creating circumstances that end in disaster:

Coronavirus disaster (A Pandemic Update: The Variant and the Vaccine Rollout, 24 Hours Inside a Brooklyn Hospital: An Update, Evicted During the Pandemic)
Climate disasters (The Sunday Read: ‘A Mother and Daughter at the End’: Last 2 White Rhinos on Earth)
Political disasters (‘I Thought I Was Going to Die’: A Capitol Police Officer Recounts Jan. 6, A Conspiracy Theory Is Proved Wrong, ‘What Kind of Message Is That?’: How Republicans See the Attack on the Capitol, How They Stormed Congress, Liz Cheney vs. Marjorie Taylor Greene, The End of Democracy in Myanmar, Aleksei Navalny and the Future of Russia),
Economic disasters (The $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Plan),
Social disasters (The Agony of Pandemic Parenting — A single mother in Spokane, WA opens up about what it’s really like to raise a child over the past year and Odessa Odessa, Part 3: The Band Bus Quarantine and A Nursing Home’s First Day Out of Lockdown, ‘Please, Give Me Back My Daughter’, Trump Shut the Door on Migrants. Will Biden Open It?, ‘Who Replaces Me?’: An Update — a black police officer in Flint, MI reflects on what it now means to be part of the force in his hometown),
Media/social media disasters (The Legacy of Rush Limbaugh, The $2.7 Billion Case Against Fox News, Should Facebook Be Broken Up?),
Infrastructure disasters (The Blackout in Texas).

You get the idea. Now, how do we get out of cycles of violence and disaster (mostly human made)? How do we recover and get to a place where something better can take root and grow?

Spirit Blood

Alongside Our Red Blood Cells is Another Kind of Blood — **Consciousness** — It Allows Us to Synthesize & Decide How To Use It

Something else flows alongside the red blood cells in our bodies. It is not something that is visible, but it can be felt. This invisible substance (or perhaps force) is essential to sustain our inner spaces and to maintain a healthy state of mind. Each and every human being is born with this invisible force flowing through them just like blood flows through them. Because we are human, we are aware of this force and this awareness allows us to channel it and to alter instinctual responses and urges before acting on them. Human beings can suppress instinctual responses. They can amplify them, and they can transform them into something else entirely. Carl Jung called this ability consciousness, or perhaps it is spirit blood.

It is through our choices and how we alter instinctual responses before acting on them that our collective reality is created. Eastern traditions, religions, and philosophies call this power Karma, which is simply the recognition that every action creates a reaction, a consequence.

This all ascends quickly into the realm of spiritual and metaphysic concerns, which is a realm most often regulated to religions to grapple with the nebulous inner spaces where thoughts, attitudes, and bias materialize into action.

I was raised Lutheran, but during the time of my father’s death, I found my childhood religion negated the realities of powerful synchronicities that occurred and inner experiences my father and I experienced during the 10 days he lived beyond the moment he should have died. I have written about his previously, so will not do so again here.

Instead, I would like to highlight something that my friend Ali Raza Saleem posted, which caught my eye during the time my attention was focused on blood. My friend is a neuroscientist and scholar of Jung and posted the following:

Qalb (Faculty of Heart) and Lataif e Sitta

The faculty of heart (Qalb) is the faculty of the Spirit, not the biological pumping heart when we refer Qalb in terms of spirituality. The nerves associated with heart are primarily concerned with pumping of the heart, conveying signals to muscles, as well as sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system to control the pace of heart beat.

Faculty of Heart, spiritually speaking, isn’t tied strictly to ’emotional aspects’. Brain has designated centers for emotional perception and the affects are mediated through signals to the body including changing contraction and pace of the heart, bodily sensations, fight or flight mechanisms etc.

Faculty of Heart is the faculty of immaterial Rooh (Spirit) that along with other faculties (lataif) ‘feels’ Love, Suffering of the other Soul, Compassion, Benevolence, Bliss, Tranquility (itmenaan), Gratitude, Spiritual longing and Joy of Union with Beloved, Divine Beauty and Majesty etc, and blocked by Greed, Anger, Arrogance, Bukhl (stinginess), Hasad (Jealousy), Bughaz (spitefulness), malice, malevolence etc stemming from unpurified Lower Nafs (Ego). The emotions resulting from gratification or failure of gratification of lower Nafs (Ego) are also more of bodily/’brainy’ in nature. But in a loose sense, speaking poetically, heart can be said as preceptor of emotions in general as their ‘Affect’ is ‘felt’ at the heart.

The immaterial lataif including Qalb (heart) have specific locations on the body (metaphysically superimposed on various organs like heart as in the case of Qalb) as described in Lataif e Sitta, where the virtues associated with them are experienced spiritually.

He further sent me this graphic.

From Ali Raza Saleem | The Productive Muslim Company

And he explained:

For a Sufi his body is in service (submission) to Divine Will helping him fullfil the tasks for nourishment of the Spirit/Soul.

The terms in this diagram maybe used in different meanings compared to the ones used in Psychology like the term Self here have meanings different to what we use in Psychology. This article further explains the model and the meaning of terms used in this diagram.

I know so little about Muslim teachings and wisdom, but I find everything Ali Raza Saleem shared extremely helpful in understanding the workings of the Invisible Self. These are the parts not visible to others unless we share them through words or actions. I have also been reading The Philosophy of the I Ching by Carol Anthony and have found her writing also very illuminating about the Invisible Self. Beginning on page 35, she writes:

“People who can hear within are called psychic, but, in truth, we all have this ability; it is simply suppressed in most of us. Through inner listening we can also become aware of other people’s conscious thoughts. Our superior self listens and looks, but does not speak. What we receive from the inner world that we perceive and know as intuition comes from inside and apart from ourselves, just as what we see of the outer world is outside and apart from ourselves. What we hear within comes from the teacher, the same Sage who speaks through the I Ching. It knows the way and comes to help. We can only hear it when we maintain emptiness, innocence, and receptivity. When we jump to conclusions because of fear and impatience, we can’t hear the quiet suggestions of the Sage within.“

“When we say a thing ‘comes totally out of the blue,’ this is an intuitive ways of saying that we are helped by the Sage. We say ‘out of the blue,’ because our words have the clarity of the sky and come from nowhere. What we say is what needs to be said and is perfectly appropriate. Innocence and emptiness make it possible; we are noticeably free of emotional attachment and our words come in the vernacular of the moment; everyone understands and agrees. when this happens we are always a bit surprised. The fact is, we are not in possession of such moments, although we make them happen through being in a complementary relationship with the Creative Power. This we can do only through cultivating our superior man within.“

This makes me thinks how each of us is a living work of art constantly in progress and transformation. As living works of art, we are both artist and the art. We choose the colors, patterns, subject, and background–and by so doing, we live them, we feel them, we see them, we know them. The canvas is our mind. And we develop our art of being by listening and learning how to regain our innocence and inner emptiness that allows us to be open and receptive to every moment we met. This is how we can transform ourselves, and by doing so, transform the world.

In A World…

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Hate Groups

The Playbook

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