Changing the Debate

Differences are good.

I want to change the words we use. The words "centricism" and "less partisanship", for example. To me, they imply that dissent and debate are not welcome. "Extreme" and "extremism" are other codewords of disparagement and rejection of differences. I don't even like "compromise" because that implies to many people that they must give away some principle or preference. I want to have different words, like collaborate, cooperate.


I don't like "centricism" and "less partisanship" for another reason--they imply opposites, duality, opposition, control, conflict. For example, I come from a position that says one cannot be extreme in applying the substance and prinicples of our Constitution. All interests, majority, minority, and individual are protected and reflected there. There is no center in the Constitution. There is no party in the Constitution. It is either within the substance and principles of the Constitution, or it is not. Liberty is another example. My liberty ends where your's begins, yet collaboratively we can both have it. As long as we apply oppositional constructs, or say that the center is a place of no opposition (which is a canard and false), we imply that differing views are illegitimate. I've had enough of that, thank you.

Your mileage may differ.

To the Friends of Democracy:

Things have changed, completely and utterly, and we can feel it. It is utterly unfamiliar so we fear it. The Egyptians, it is said, have crossed the barrier of fear. We have to cross our own barriers of fear to understand and welcome this change.

How can we support Mubarak and support freedom and democracy at the same time? Yes, for a long time, the alternative was perceived to be worse. Now, we have an alternative that is infinitely better. What we can see here is self-directedness, self determination and an aware populace that is down with leaders, down with dictators, down with authority, and down with fundamentalism--in sum, a self directed majority that is not looking towards any doctrine, authority or leader to tell them what to feel, believe, do and think.

We fear this. We don’t understand. The people in our institutions, our “leaders” fear this and do not understand it. We are given questions by our media that are framed in words with conventional meanings and imply the answers that we are used to. Deep in our guts, we know what we are hearing just does not fit, anymore.

Here’s the new gig. The movements in the North African, Middle East and Central Asia world (NAMECA) are completely self generated and organic. Its shape is and ideation is self-deterministic. This is a completely ad hoc movement--"ad hoc" meaning from itself. Yes, there will need to be people to perform certain functions. In a truely independent way, each person knows what is needed and does it. It will not be about power, but about being an advocate for the individual, and each individual filling a need she or he perceives in others that needs to be filled. It is a cooperative movement based on mutual respect and representative of all portions of society.

The "we" that allowed Anwar Sadat to run Egypt in the 1970's was the same group that put Hosni Mubarak in power, and kept him there. Meanwhile, the People of Egypt kept looking for some shepherd to lead them, just as all peoples have in this era. As long as "we" are incapable and unwilling to lead ourselves, we need and want shepherds. This is the fundamental similarity between us and the people of the Middle East, up to this point. Here is where the people of Egypt have diverged from the West, today. And here is where we recognize we are going, too.

In our philosophy and culture, we are always given the dialectic questions: How do we differentiate between personal and collective consciousness and values, and is it possible to coalesce them? How do we balance the rights of the individual with the security and stability provided by the collective? What are the rights of the individual? What does the individual owe the collective? How does the individual know he is “right” (correct, moral)? How does an individual know that his rights are being protected by that security and stability that the leaders of the collective promise to provide? And since we live in a philosophy of dialectic, of duality, we rely on some sort of authority to tell us the answer, even if it is just mob, majority rule.

What inhibits our resolution of this dialectic? It is our innate belief in “A does not equal ~A”, the Law of Non-Contradiction. It is the Hegelian and Aristotelian belief in the construct of reality as a dialectic. It is not an "either/or" reality. It is an either/or construct of language. It is the belief in duplicity, in irreconcilable duality. We cannot fathom that reality is both, at the same time. We just cannot understand at the moment that what we are seeing in Egypt is a continuous connection of all individuals acting in cooperation to benefit their own interests, without pitting the individual against individual or pitting the individual against the collective. And this is so whether we are objectively aware of it, or not. Contrary to our beliefs, the world is not a zero sum game.

The interviewers on Al Jazeera and in the US media keep asking the same questions and implying the same answers: Who is organizing the protests? Who is providing the food and water? Who is giving them their marching orders? Who is cleaning up the waste? Who is providing and organizing the security? Who is driving the rock throwers? What we can’t get our minds around, what we cannot accept, because of our preconceived answers, is EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM.

I keep hearing and reading that the people of Egypt and the Middle East at large have no history of democracy, no history of self rule. I hear that they have had many opportunities to set choose democracy and have failed. This is narrow, and is not true.

The people of NAMECA have had the same opportunities of self determination as the West, and sometimes they’ve taken advantage of them, and sometimes they have not. Since the beginning, through ancient times, Roman times, Persian and Mongol times, the Ottoman Empire, through colonialization, through the turmoil of the 20th century, they have had one leader after another, secular and religious. Sometimes these leaders were imposed upon them from outside; and sometimes they rose up from their own generation. Their own leaders that they looked to betrayed them and became their lords. Even in Turkey today, they have the same sort of republican oligarchy that we have in the West.

Today, they have the same history we had in 1776 of self and republican rule. They have more. They are as closely related to the Greeks as we are, intellectually, and philosophically. They have had republics in their world just as we have had. For 500 years they preserved western culture while we lived in the Dark Ages. While we burned our libraries they preserved theirs. They have all of the history we have, plus some.

They have largely been educated in Western universities. To say the people in Egypt or anywhere else have no history of self-rule is ignorant, and the refusal to recognize their capacity for self rule is arrogant, patronistic, and willfully blind.

Since we and they are aware that much of NAMECA has been run since colonial times by the West and its different factions, there are certain conditions and attitudes that we and they have. NAMECA was run for centuries by patronistic authority of secular and religious doctrines, and always subject to some leader as authority. And the previous attitudes and beliefs have become nested within the Western ways. Because of three millennia of this, it is hard to fathom that this rebellion is not being organized and orchestrated by some "force" of leaders of some kind. But it is. That is where we are stuck, in the idea of leaders telling us what to do, what to think, their promise of security, jobs, stability. Mr. Mubarak’s speech on January 31, 2011, was termed almost exclusively as his duty to hold on for the sake of “stability and security”. The leaders of Israel and the United States are thinking almost exclusively in this way. This is what we all are used to. The idea of self-directedness is completely foreign to all of us. Not only do we not understand what is going on, we have an even greater paucity of imagination as to what to do.

I perfectly understand the fear of the unknown in the common man. Certainly, this is a part of the pro-Mubarak sentiments and legitimate protests. It's part of the fear in the US and its public, as well. Fear and lack of understanding are where we have always come from in our reactions. This is how we have created our reality for 3000 years. This is coming to an end and we just cannot grasp why. We just have to cross the barrier of fear, as the Egyptians are doing.

What the people in Tahrir Square are saying is "We have had enough! We don't need leaders. We don't need the old definitions. We don't need the old political parties. We don't need authoritative, fundamentalist religions. We can do quite well by ourselves. See what we are doing now!"

People all over are saying that Egypt, North African, and Middle Eastern problems were their own creations. And, I would agree to the extent they create their own reality. And the West has influenced those creations as well. Rehashing and answering history is not too much of my concern, because we have been doing that for 2000 years and where and what has that gotten us in the meantime? What I want to concentrate on is today. What are we doing today? Today, are we going to put up with the past? Are we going to live in the past and its grudges and enmities? Or, are we going to determine for ourselves what we are going to do, what we are going to think and believe and feel, and who our leaders will be, today? This attitude scares the East, Middle East, and the West. It scares Israel, it scares Hamas. It scares any power or person that obtains her, his or its legitimacy from the past. The past is what it is. Today is not the past. The Present is our point of power.

Economics Lesson

There's an email going around that I've received that keeps economics simple.  It's true as far as it goes, which isn't very far.  I've added another layer to show what happens when the status quo changes, which it ALWAYS does.

It's a slow day in a little East Texas town. The sun is beating down, and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.....

On this particular day a rich tourist from back east is driving through town. He stops at the motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

As soon as the man walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.
The guy at the Farmer's Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.

The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything.. No one earned anything.

However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today.

That was how we all did business prior to 2007, when the price of gasoline went up.

Now, imagine this little change:

The rich tourist is now a banker, who had obtained a loan of $1000 to fund his bank. The banker loaned $200 to the innkeeper to add a room to his inn. The innkeeper paid $100 to the contractor to build the room, and the remainder was the $100 he owed the contractor, which was the $100 that circulates in the story. This worked fine before 2007 because in a year, the contractor was paid from the receipts of the inn's business. The banker did this 4 times, leaving only $200 to operate his bank and cover the 10% capital requirement set by law. He was supposed to get 6% percent interest on the $800 he loaned out, which is of little matter when you see what happens, next.

In 2007, the price of gas went up. Everyone deducted $10.50 from the amount they were given by the previous person. 5 X $10.50 = $52.50 leaving $47.50 to pay the banker when the note became due. No one could afford to travel because of the higher price of gas, so the other $100 was not paid, either. The note went into default, and the bank had to foreclose and sell the inn at auction. Multiply all the numbers by 2,000,000 (except for the price of gas). That number is conservative and arbitrarily set just for fun in this argument. Because 2,000,000 properties were foreclosed upon, the value of the collateral was cut by a third.

And now you know why we are in deep shit.

(And I won't make your brain really fuzzy by adding in the 4 times each loan was sold to a security maker at Lehman's, Golden Sachs, and Merrill Lynch, the insurance against default that was funded and underwritten (promised to pay) by AIG, and all the loans it took to buy the securities created by these investment houses to fund this scheme, PLUS the insurance against default that was purchased to cover these third and fourth layer loans.  Not to mention the fact that every one of these securities was considered good collateral by the Reserve banks all over the world to secure additional loans to the commercial and retail bankers to give out more loans.  The eye's glaze over.)

Some Practical Effects of Being Self-Directed, and Change in the World

THESIS:

Let's take an issue commonly discussed and see how Self-Directedness might have some effects.  We live in a world, currently, where everything has a political slant.  We are shifting from an authoritarian perspective to a self-directed perspective.  Most of us are still relying on government to fulfill some parts of our everyday desires.  Politics is a belief system that we use to decide who gets what from the limited supply that government can provide.  In that, politics becomes a duel between the advocates of different political viewpoints over who has control of the output into the media and other objective mass information systems, e.g. Is global warming man made from our technology, or is it a cyclical function of the Earth and our Sun? The viewers are seen to have no choice at all. No thought by the viewer is sought, nor deemed necessary. It's just a numbers game.

Well, I can tell you, gradually, this isn't going to work anymore. The internet is one reason. And another is that we ALWAYS make choices, subconsciously or consciously. Our subconscious is much more connected via our inner senses to other individuals than our conscious. And further, our subconscious is not so easily subvertable. Our conscious can be numbed, and can manifest in automatic responses. Our subconscious WILL not be. It may put up with the conscious robot, but it may not. I'm thinking that the mass subconscious composed of all the individual subconsciouses communicating together, will not put up with this much longer. We are getting bored with the same old dramas.

QUESTION:

"From a purely personal perspective, I agree completely. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of outward evidence of this - at least not yet. There are a few folks out there not "putting up with it", but for the most part it just seems we live in a world of zombies & sheeple -now more than ever. So... I'd be curious to know when you think this change will come, and how. It's one of those things I truly want-to-believe, but every day I am disappointed."

RESPONSE:

Maybe you and I are seeing the same things, but interpreting and perceiving them differently. Nothing right or wrong with that. *smiles*

When it "will" happen is now, from two different perspectives. The first is from the "ever-present-now", where everything is happening at once. That's too flippant to be useful in they way I'm understanding your question. The second is it is happening now, the "now" being the present date, and linear time extending back a few decades and extending into the most likely future.

Most of what I'm seeing in relation to tiring of their beliefs is manifested in my perception as many, many people acting out their beliefs (social, political, religious, scientific, sexual and relationships, to name a few) to their logical ends. For example, Islamo-fascism is one example, a very easy one. This religion is very stark, very black and white, and its metaphors are meant to be taken very literally. The logical conclusion of which the total absolutism--God is great. There is no God but Allah. If there is anyone that doesn't agree, conquer him, convert him, and if he doesn't convert, enslave him, tax him, or kill him. No grey areas there. People are killing each other, infidel and fellow muslims, for no other reason than they celebrate or don't celebrate the right holidays. Many thousands of people are disengaging (dying), because this is something of which they will not put, and they don't see they have any other choice in fulfilling their values. Without value fulfillment, humans shall disengage, and experience somewhere else.

In the West, we are carrying our beliefs out their extremes, too. It started with the extreme individualism of the '60's, when people challenged and attempted to eliminate the beliefs they'd grown up with, that had served their fathers' fathers for generations. What they found, the Timothy Learies, the McKennas, the Castanedas, was that physical existence of the individual and the mass in the physical, and the environments we create, are wholly dependent upon our beliefs. Without any beliefs about our perceptions whatsoever, we burn from the fire within and go experience elsewhere, like Don Juan and his party. Nothing wrong with that, either.

Today, we are realizing that we won't be eliminating beliefs, because that's not possible if we are to continue creating and experiencing this physical dimension. We are instead experimenting with them. It's kind of like Dexter's sister's constant question, "OOOOO! What does this button do?" Button meaning belief. (Dexter's Laboratory is a kids cartoon my kids and I watch. It's very fruitful for deep discussions, believe it or not. LOL) Every time she presses a button, something explodes. We are doing this constantly. It's in every news cast: Take for example, smoking--Some mayor says we're gonna ban it from every restaurant. "No" cry the smokers and the people who say they are for choice. "What about my choice not to be around smoke or pay for the physical effects?" cry the puritans and the social welfarists.

Let's parse the belief systems in that one action and debate, and you may see what I mean:

"Some mayor (politics) says we're gonna ban (law) it from every restaurant (food/health/medicine, economics). "No" cry the smokers (health/medicine, science) and the people who say they are for choice (beliefs that distort what free will really is). "What about my choice (ditto) not to be around (relationships) smoke (health/medicine) or pay for the physical effects(science, economics, politics, and victimhood)?" cry the puritans (religion) and the social welfarists (politics, economics, religion)." And every belief in that scenario implies the judgment of right and wrong, the belief system of "duplicity".

People get polarized in their positions, manufacture absolutes in their perceptions, and create conflict. Conflict brings our beliefs into relief. I can guarantee you that in every conflict there is at least one person that has made one or more beliefs into absolutes. In relief, things are more visible. Change the light, and different details are observed. That's the whole point of this exercise in our present now. The "game" we live in is being raised to light and examined in detail, replayed in slow motion, from different angles, with color commentary in our dreams, individually and en masse. Those that are aware of this will teach the rest. All in this present now are participating in some form and to some extent. If not so choosing, they'll disengage.

Why on earth are we doing this? And, what's the result that may occur? Why is because, as I said earlier, we are tired of batting these same dead mice around, but we can't seem to stop. Insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results. So, we are examining what we are doing. In this, we are bringing to light all our beliefs, creating absolutes out of them, seeing how each one works, when, and for what, and how they don't work, in all their aspects. How shall we change the results if we don't know what we are doing?

If we are successful at discovering what we are doing, and have examined most of our beliefs and most of their many aspects, perhaps we'll learn where the power of beliefs really lies--within us. The power lies within us, not the dead mouse. Having already learned that without beliefs we won't have our attentions in this physical dimension, thanks to the pioneers before us, and having learned how to use the tools in the beliefs toolbox, maybe, perhaps, we'll accept them. Which means, we'll use them without judgment of right or wrong; they are just things to choose from.

For heaven's sake, and hell no we won't have a utopia. What fun is there in that? LOL! Consciousness thrives on drama. Drama is one of the ways consciousness explores itself. It's just that our games will be played with conscious intent. We'll be able to sit on the bench for a minute and watch the game, at any time. Sure there will be cheaters, and stupid refs, and morons in the cheap seats throwing batteries and insults. That's all part of the game, too. *smiles*

I have trust and hope because I've dreamed with people from one of our possible futures where/when beliefs are accepted. Yes, we have alternate futures. Nothing is set in stone, because we have free will. But, in at least one of them, we have learned to accept our beliefs and use them intentionally. Disappointments are sure to happen. We have expectations, and disappointments are frustrated expectations. Nothing wrong with that. Now if the same expectations are getting frustrated, maybe we could examine them and figure out where they are coming from. If we are so choosing.

TRUST YOURSELF--YOU CREATED THIS

How do I trust myself when what I’m experiencing at the moment is not what I want, and what I’ve experienced in the past has been bad, and the future is scarey when I even think about it at all?

It is not easy to genuinely apply a trusting attitude when we have no idea how to accomplish what we want. I'm there a lot of the time. I'm new at this, and my understanding is fresh. For what its worth to you, I found a way around this conundrum that goes something like this--

Things are what they are in the present now. Accepting that Truth is hard but essential. Wishing I were somewhere else, doing something else, with a different set of circumstances is not helpful, mainly because the Present is My Point of Power. All things happen from here. Accepting things as they are means that they are perfect in the present now. I may not agree with them. I may not like them. But things are perfect the way they are because there is no other NOW that exists–nothing exists but Right Now. So, now is Perfect, and what ever I did to create it was rendered perfectly or NOW wouldn't exist. So, doubting the Present Now is futile, and persisting in doing that borders on being stupid, in my opinion. I'm stupid quite often! Hahaha! The absence of doubt is Trust. And there you have it--Trust.

Everything else proceeds via an expanding set of probabilities from the Present Now. To resolve those probabilities requires that I figure out what I'm doing, thinking and feeling now. Figuring out that nothing exists but the Present was easy. It's just logic. This part is real hard, and trusting myself out away from the present now is much harder to do. Gradually, I'm noticing more of my doings, and not just the objective doings. I generally know what I'm thinking; I'm pretty good at that. I'm gradually understanding more of my emotional language (this is very hard for me), and my other feelings, impressions and impulses haven't ever been that difficult for me to notice and understand. All this can be quite confusing, though, and overwhelming. Sometimes you just have to say, "What the F---!" and just do it. Ask forgiveness later, if necessary. Or laugh and say, "See? I didn't ask permission, and things turned out grand! Any questions?" Hahaha!

It all starts with Now.

I hope that helps. If not, try something else until you find what works!

Self-Directedness

The idea that we have the power to direct our own lives without relying on authority, mass opinion, or the expertise of others to tell us what we should do.  It is the practice of knowing ourselves, consciously creating our own reality, and being responsible for what we think, do and feel, especially for our own happiness. It does not mean independence, separation, that we do not attempt to understand others, or have empathy with them. It does not mean we use others for our own satisfaction. It means that we do not look to authorities to tell us what to do, what to think, what to feel; it means that we look inward for these things, because only we are responsible for those.  It's time for the human species to grow up and leave the house.

Raven Mail

In the searing sun, half way up in its journey to zenith, we arrived at the place of the ancestors, Chaco Canyon. The two short spirit ones in the Red Rocket Car (the MazdaSpeed3 that shot us here) are wide eyed with the intensity of the place, forgetting so soon their essence, and being reminded of the same in those same instants.

We stop at the Outpost of the Present Now, a/k/a the Ranger Station, to pay our respects to the gods of mammon, offering our electronic coin symbolized by the plastic in my wallet. Ambulating to the rocket where the elixir of life in the desert was stored, water, we had thirty minutes before the tour of the great kiva started. We walked to the start of the trail to a "lesser" kiva, and I noticed the remains of Raven on the ground. It was waiting for us, welcoming us in its post mortem sigil of what was and what remains. We didn’t have time for that path, and we weren’t ready for the message of Raven, just yet. Besides, Heyoka sat under an awning, humming that anti-melody that the simple-minded hum, as if to say, “Put it back. It’ll be here waiting.”

The names of the buildings matter not. They remind me of our own office campuses, built of interlocking sandstone. The largest 300 feet wide, their exterior walls were so smooth that they shine like obsidian glass. Time makes waves in what were once straight walls, reminding me of Schrodinger’s Equation. We discount our ancestors’ sophistication, as if to fool ourselves that we’ll be different with our manifestations, somehow more permanent. I trust we’ll understand that consciousness is eternal, no thing lasts forever.

The tour of the great kiva was enlightening, words of interpretation and science, speaking of coincidences that are not. The Sun is higher now, singing our hair peaking out of our hats. We drive the Rocket Car across the River That Was to another set of buildings. We walk among the ruins gingerly peeking at the foundations, as if we were looking for our own belongings after a tornado. It was a slow tornado that took a thousand years to blow down these walls. I half expect to find torn photos of grandparents, a child’s toy, and a broken toilet, which is the only thing capable of withstanding the broken wind of a millennium.

We find a restored communal kiva. The wind echos with the sound of drumming so deep you can’t hear it, thunder so distant that you can only feel it through your feet. I realize what these kivas are by the sound holes in the walls–drums. Ninety feet across, these drums were beaten by boys and men to sound the voices of Spirit that could build mountains of stone twelve thousand miles to the west, in a desert not much different in its vibrating silence.

Lunch of trail mix, “Poptarts” and water refreshes us. We celebrate Zenith in the shade.

Back at the Outpost of the Present Now, we gather in more interpretations of coincidences that are not. We see moving pictures of interpretations of the blood descendants of the Chaco People, and peruse the library of more interpretations, casseroles of beliefs written on paper, bound into books. We buy trinkets from the Priestesses of Mammon, blood descendants of the Chaco People and the nomad peoples who trade and raid them.

It’s "time".

We refill our containers of the Desert Elixir, Water, and we find the Raven’s sigil still clinging to the ground against the winds of time, still waiting for us at the trailhead. Heyoke’s gone. Now I gather up the sigil again, and feel the body of Spirit tingling in my hand. It still has bits of flesh attached to it that the ants have not found. I smell her blood at the same time her mate kronks his greeting from his gyre above the cliffs standing over us. Ravens mate for life. Humans don’t, but sometimes.

"It’s frikken hot," I say. My Spirit Children agree. We walk up the path to the last campus we’ll visit that day. When I head up the wrong way around the complex, widdershins, my son says, "Dad, that’s the wrong way."

"I know what I’m doing, Joe," I say against the blast of the desert furnace. I’m thinking of going backward in time. Spirit moves in mysterious ways, I’m fixing to tell him, in just the right place. In what remains of a room, looking to the south, across the metroplex of a thousand years ago, and a billion dreams away, I have us all remove our hats so that the pain of the same sun from so long ago will sear down to our numb hearts past our minds. We have to bow low to get through the door, forcing respect and acceptance of beliefs we’ve forgotten. We stand on a porch with a chest high wall, the wind parching our eyeballs like tomatoes in a convection oven.

I bless our selves as worthy of the ancestors. I scatter tobacco to the wind that seems to blow in eight different directions. How propitious I think with a smile.

"Greetings and thanks to our ancestors. I appreciate all that is here, and all that you’ve taught us today. We give tobacco in respect for your hospitality in allowing us in your houses from so long ago. We thank you for teaching us as much about ourselves as about you. There is no separation between us. The Sun that sees you, sees us. All the beliefs of a thousand years are interpretations of the same essence, manifested in a billion ways, all different but all of the same. It doesn’t matter if we are Christian, atheist, Buddhist, Hopi, Muslim, Jew, or Hindu. This gathering place of our ancestors echoes with the greetings and halloos of blood from the Inuit to the Inca, the Vikings to the Chinese. This place belongs to The People, and to no person, and to every one of us, individually. For if there are no individuals, there are no Peoples. If there are no differences, there is no sameness. We are all the same essence, and we are all different. This is a place where differences were gathered together, and reconciled, and Spirit swirled out again to create anew. We thank you Spirits for allowing us to be here with you."

We then closed our eyes and smelled the desert wind, breathing the same dust our ancestors did, filtering their skin, and food, and life through our noses, and leaving our own for those that follow us.

"Now it is time to receive Raven’s message." And we leave the Porch of Gratitude, for the place higher up, where we can almost fly with Raven’s Husband.

Continuing widdershins around back on the cliff side of the foundations, we come to the northwestern corner, the highest tower left. I took Raven’s body out of my pocket, broke it into three pieces, giving one each to Katy and Joe. I held mine into the wind and said,

“I give thanks to Brother and Sister Raven for this gift of her body. We hear her message from the other side, (voice changing to Raven’s) and from up in the wind, that we are all brothers and sisters. There is no separation. We may be on opposite sides of the Veil. We may be of different tribes, kingdoms and faiths. We are all connected as I am connected to my spouse whose remains flutter in your hands. Go now and give parts of Her that still is to those you find, remind them that they are not separated from you and each other, and to pass the feathers to the next person they see with the same message.”

Silence.

Then Joe says, “Look! I see Raven!”

Over the cliff, half a mile away overlooking the trailhead, gyred Brother Raven on his gymbol.

“Dad, I hadn’t seen him before until you finished his message to us.”

“Well, Joe,” I said. “Now you are paying attention. Raven speaks to you as he does to me, to all of us. Now, people are coming up the trail. It’s time to pass along Raven’s Mail.”

With that, we saw a couple coming around the other side of the foundations, peeking in storage kivas, looking for old photographs, too.

“Halloo! You guys’ll probably think the sun has gotten to me, but I have a message from Raven for you.” The woman took the feathers as I continued.

“Y’all might even think this is gross,” referring to the slightly odiferous clump of feathers in her hand.

“No,” she said, smiling, allowing me to finish.

“Raven says to give parts of his spouse that still is to those you find, remind them that they are not separated from you and each other, and to pass the feathers to the next person they see with the same message.”

The couple smiled, the man shook my hand strongly, looking me in the eye, and I wished them a great day.

My spirit children, somewhat stunted by the city’s ways in lack of trust, are now shocked beyond description by Da’s weird boldness. Surely he’s become possessed by Buddha, the Heyoke, or the sun. I chuckled because I knew I wasn’t done yet. We headed back down the trail, meeting an elderly couple just arrived in this Metroplex of the Ancestors. I hailed them, and then read their fortunes, “You will soon meet someone who will give you a Raven’s feather to remind you that we are all connected. Take it and pass it on to the next people you meet, with the same message.”

I shook the man’s hand, which was trembling, and I couldn’t tell if it was from palsy, because he thought I was crazy, or if he was already stressed from the heat. I wished his wife and him a beautiful day, and walked back down the hill. Katy was still silent.

Joe said, “Wait. I want to see if they do get the feather.”

I said, “Joe, trust in Spirit. The exchange will happen, but you’ll only see it if you don’t look at the people. Trust them.”

“Daddy?” Katy asked. I said, “Whatty?” as I always respond.

“I think I finally get what you’ve been saying for so long, “ she said. A tear came to my eye as I said, “Excellent!”

And we headed down the path, back to the Outpost of the Present Now, to continue our journey. We will always have Raven’s Mail in the inboxes of our memories.

Copyright October 2007, Todd W. Deatherage

INTENSITY

Sometimes I miss you
The roundness of your face
The energy beams from your eyes
The child-like intensity of your smile

Connections just happen if we allow them to
Why does the belief in chains bind
When they are of our own belief that they have to
Accepting is allowing is loving

I can imagine you softly whispering in my ear
The tingle of your touch on my skin
You don’t know you do this
At least not in the front of your mind

Still, it’s not enough to feel you inside me
Or elst why manifest in the physical
I cry longing for your touch on my hand
Sometimes I miss you touching me.

July 30, 2007

July 30, 2007

I have a luscious, varied, highly creative life, many lives, going on inside my head. One would think, if I could and did express them, that I was schizophrenic. In my dreams, I share the many lives of my other focuses of essence. I bore so easily in my days, because my inner lives are so much more dramatic. Yet, I cannot stand drama in my objective life. It is too distracting from what is going on inside my head.

Sometimes when I’m discounting myself, I think if people knew what was going on, if they even had some inkling what I did in there, that they would judge me as mendicant and lazy, an airhead out of touch with reality, in need of some good drugs or on some bad ones, and not attentive enough to “real life” and the people I share it with. This is discounting of my self. I resist the counter response of “You’re just jealous.”

As rich as my inner life is, I crave objective interaction with others. I want to hear what they have to say. The vicarious sharing of their dramas fascinates me, as long as I do not have to participate, too. I long for the sharing of my thoughts and conceptions. I love the beauty of my thoughts and feelings. I appreciate the beauty of others’ thoughts. I gather their expressions of their feelings like so many molted feathers on the ground. Amazed that someone would slough off diamonds, these feathers of feelings I gather as if they were the ones on my knick-knack shelf. The little spontaneous gifts I treasure. And better still I look up at the birds, these people, as they grow new millions of beautiful feelings with which they fly.

She said last night, “No one gets us like we get us. We are so rare we have to stick together.” I had to agree with my friend with only a nod of my head. That is all I could do, to nod with the millions of un-objectively expressed feelings and thoughts that make their homes inside her and me. It is near impossible to express that silent flooding energy that passes between us. I sent her a message of electrons, “I sit here writing, sharing the beautiful aloneness with you, not wanting to shatter it with objective expression.” I know she will read it, and sigh with her wan smile, and become more intensely engrossed in her aloneness, making it even more colorful and iridescent.

White lightning flashes on the northeastern horizon viewed through my sliding glass door. Footsteps of my heavy neighbor thump the air and my bottom through the floor, like echoes of the thunder too distant to hear. I think of practical things I could be doing, like paying bills, and entering numbers and payees in my electronic checkbook register. My hands grow bored with the plodding scribbling of my thoughts. I pause…

…and wonder if I feel like writing anymore, which slows my thoughts and keeps them earth-bound.

Where Did I Go On Vacation?

Across West Texas to Cloudcroft, NM, to a reunion with friends. To Chaco Canyon, NM, to a reunion with Spirit and other lives. To the Arches National Monument, UT, for a reunion with Nature and what we create. To Salt Lake City for a family reunion. Across central Colorado to reunite with my past, then home for a reunion with Home and Work.

*smiles*

Destiny

There's no destiny to manifest. Everything exists as choice in the moment, our perception of linear fate not with standing.

The kids and I had a wonderful trip to Chaco Canyon last week. More later when I have time to write it down.

Unity and Difference

It’s desirable for me to find disagreement with others, sometimes, because it sharpens my understanding of myself, what I’m thinking, doing and feeling, if I’m paying attention, and not just trying to be "right". I don’t have to be "right", I just want to be.

Difference–it’s what lets consciousness expand so it can turn around on itself and see what it is. Difference is what creates individuals. There is no "mass" without individuals. In most creation stories, first there was one. There was no mass, just an individual personality, undifferentiated "oneness". Then there was "other" and one, which makes two. They were individuals, and there became "together" and "separate" with conscious awareness of one and two and ONE, simultaneously. There was no separation, only different points of view. Then there became MANY, and still there was no separation, only infinite points of view upon the Oneness, the ALL THAT IS.

In the view of oneness, there was individual, the primacy of the individual, the One, and of the Individual One of many. ESSENCially, there was no difference, no separation, no aloneness, only differing focuses, infinite universes in the ALL THAT IS, glorious rambunctious creation–the Universe giving birth to itself. Now, there are many myths about how this physical reality was created, and all of them have one characteristic in the blueprint, which is separation. Essence decided to experience "aloneness". In its wisdom, it created this game with a feeling of separation, because the effectiveness of the game depends on the single-minded absorption in it. Essence still knows there is no separation, but now its focuses forgot for the purposes of the game that IT IS A GAME.

There are some 6 billion focuses, i.e., "Humans" on this earth at any one "time", and all are different points of view, and each has a differing understanding of who and what it is. This is ESSENTial for the game, this differing understanding, because differing understanding is what creates the differing points of view, in other words the differing creations of experience for Essence to be knowing itself. There is no good or bad in this. There is no judgment of right or wrong. There is discernment of difference, and thereby the choosing of experiences for each focus’s intent, and this intent is the theme of that focus for the flow and set of experiences intended to further that intent, if you’ll pardon the repetitive alliteration. My understanding is different from yours, times six billion. In our forgetting, our belief in separation, we "understand" aloneness, and together we feel the Oneness, if we pay attention. Essence of consciousness doesn’t forget. It understands. It knows there is no separation, yet it can feel the separation we feel and that is part of the intent of Essence in this physical universe, to experience that aloneness.

We’ve gotten bored with this, and we are in the present now, times 6 billion degrees of understanding, realizing that there is no separation. Bit by 6 billionths of essential bits, we are "understanding" who we are. Looking at it from the WHOLE we see the mass moving in more of common direction and forget that the mass is composed of individuals. We are in this together, and always have been, and that’s where the mass consciousness comes from, in my opinion. On the other hand, the mass consciousness is not an entity. It is not some monolithic but amoeba-like energy blob. I see it as the river or flow of all our consciousnesses moving. Sometimes it moves in one direction, and sometimes it flows out like a giant flood with many riverlets of intent and understanding and awareness. But consciousness turning back on itself still sees its own individuality, its own identity. It feels its connection with the mass simultaneously with its feeling and knowing of its own identity. For identity once created, once realized, never dies; it’s never absorbed back into the mass. It never melts into its constituent links of consciousness. It is, and continues.

Coming back to where I started, the ALL THAT IS, is one and many, E PLURIBUS UNUM. The individual has primacy because that is what IS. The ALL IS; for there to be ALL, there must be many ONEs. There must be individuals to have a mass, or there is no mass of any THING. These individuals never die, they never are melted into the pot of molten consciousness. They may disperse, but they always know WHO they are.

In this, it’s not about whether you or I are right or wrong. There is only our differing points of view, of equal value and validity, and that my dear, is my point. *smiles* Your mileage and understanding may differ, see?

A New Race of Gods

Jane Roberts in PSYCHIC POLITICS wrote:

What boldness, to create a new race of the gods, glorifying individuality,seeing each as a unique personification-not sterile righteous lords sending down condemnations and handing out impossible edicts, but gods saying "Life is good. That's why we're alive, and alive in you!"

We need father, mother, grandfather, grandmother gods, niece and nephew gods, aunt and uncle gods-boisterous joyful divine families, mating among themselves and with us,singing of the beauty of the lovebed, appreciating the moments formed like solitary jewels from the vast necklace of infinity…

The Book of the Gods- I'd like to write that, and The Book of the Universe,in which people-gods or god-people rise from nonphysical to physical life because they want to,because they dreamed in their solitary godhoods of green grasses and soft flesh
and yearned to be born as men and women; flinging their godness into bodies joyfully, recklessly, come what may.

A Missive to a Fairy

Dearest Twig:

Your smile brings light to my day and love in my dreams. Awake with a smile fresh from some dream lost in the forests of my nocturnal wanderings, I know that you’ve passed through, hidden but recognized.

You must have sprouted up like a mushroom out of the swaddling moss of some arboreal paradise, found by cottagers of the kindest sort and raised human. Our elfin cousins vanished long ago, because we didn’t believe in ourselves, so we ceased believing in them. When I met you, I believed in elves and fairies again.



I wonder if you can understand human speech. If you do, you’ve doubtless heard how amazing we think you are. I’ve seen people of all ages stop and stare, enchanted senseless by you. I’m embarrassed to say that I drink from that cup, also. When children come away from you, I’ve asked them what you said. And they’ll tell me in great detail what the conversation was. I then ask, "Did you see her lips move?" And some will forthrightly say, "No." "I thought not," respond I. What more do you do that we humans have forgotten the method? What more do you know that we would remember if we noticed?


I still have the red feather that you accidentally on purpose dropped in my path.

I imagine where you are, and wonder how you got there. What roads do you progress upon? What manner of carriage do you ride? How do you go unnoticed by the travelers that pass along side you near? Where do you lay your head when you rest? What fortunate cushion cradles you when you dream with your father and mother among the royal court of the Fairies?

You are evidence I present myself with of the knowing that your kind still walks this earth. On some other earth your kind has dwelt for many years waiting for us to recognize who we are, and thus recognize you. I look forward to those days when we gather together as the extended family we are. I anticipate with magik the magik you bring back to us, that we be reminded of the magikal beings we are. Until then, I hold a place for you in my heart.

I’ve heard and read that once a human’s heart has been touched by a fairy it will never be the same, lost in some fantasy land never to be heard from again. I think this is the fear of not knowing who we are that instigates this. But I know there is some truth to it, for I am indeed lost to the normal human insularity and separation. My heart glows with your finger prints; my inner ears ring with your flutes. I hear your tinkling foot steps even in the bustling human cities of chaos, and I turn to locate the sound believing absolutely that you are there. Invisible, you just don’t match the vibration that is familiar to my eyes. I trust my senses and my inner voice, because I can smell the humus of your birth and feel your energy exciting my blood and bones. I am not disappointed.

One fine day, we’ll meet yet again. Perhaps it’s the day that the elves and humans greet each other with kisses and hugs in a giant reunion. Perhaps it will be a private meeting, with knowing glances, an exchange of feathers, while all about us know not a wit of the agenda of our meeting. Until then and always forever know that there are no conditions, reservations, or expectations. There is sufficiently a knowing appreciation in allowing our energy and choices. In this, there is no separation between our divinity. In between and amongst there is only love.

For the divine in me sees the divine in you–Namaste’

Hawkfeather/
Todd

Climate Change

I think that the affectingness of climate change is more important than it is in itself. It's not the effects of climate change that will affect us, it is how we let it affect us. On the other side of the circle, we are affecting climate change on a much deeper level than what we put into the air and water. The climate changes. It has done so throughout linear time. It has damn near wiped us out several times over. But, WE create it, as we create all of nature, continuously. We do this from a much broader and deeper focus of attention than the attention required to drive our SUV's with our feet on the gas pedals. We put our energy into the atmosphere in a direct way, and the climate reflects that back at us to show us what we are doing energetcally. We mistake that for carbon dioxide, cow flatulence, and a more active sun cycle, and put the cart before the horse.

It's not the carbon in the air that is our challenge; it's what we focus on, the awareness of that, and the resistance to being aware and to be accepting of that. In my opinion, both the White Man's religion and the Native American religions are incorrect. We are neither superior to nature nor its creation. Nature is the manifestation of our collective consciousness. In that, it is both our reflection and collective identity, in part.

In other words, climate change comes from the reverse side of the circle; the side we can't see; the other side of the sheet of paper. It comes from the motive source of the finger that having writ, moves on.

We are remembering that we are not separate from nature any more than we are separate from Essence. We just believe we are separate from both.

The Belief Systems of Healing

The belief systems I have about healing have to do with both ancient and modern "healing" practices. In this, we have to "fix" something "wrong", internally, externally, or spiritually. It comes from our veil of separation that is a core blueprint of our reality. It's a "necessary" belief with which we've constructed reality so that we are able to experience in isolation the creation of our reality. This has been morphed into a sort of "illness" that we have to become "whole again", that our separation was and is some sort of error on our part. I envision a "time" when the separation was a temporary point of view that we could shift from when we wanted to step out of the exercise for a bit. Instead, now we believe it to be permanent unless until we "heal" and become "whole". And then we formed all sorts of methods, processes, beliefs in religions and sciences with which we fix ourselves or find some healer to "fix us" using these methods, processes, religions and sciences.

I'm not saying this is wrong, nor that these beliefs are not "real" for they are very valid and existential, and REAL. Also, they are not absolute truths. The really real truth is that we are and never were "separated". Separation is only a point of view that is narrow and narrows our perception and limits our creativity. The purpose of this was valid; yet, we've exprienced about as much as we can stand of this. We are bored with it. We are growing tired of having our creativity stifled, and tired of experiencing the same things over and over again. This fatigue with separation is now a part of us individually and as a species. Many of us are checking out, and not remanifesting in the future from now. Those that want and will continute to remanifest in the future are changing our perception to one of wholeness and with a relatively lessor amount of separation. An example of this are the modern shaman or spiritualist. For some others like me, we experience and remember our dream creations as experiences and valid and memorized as much as our walking life. This reality is changing, and I envision it to result in a physical reality much like it was when the DreamWalkers created this reality wherein we will be DreamWalkers, too, only with a lot more experience.

In the context of our current belief systems, we will be "healed". Only then, we'll know that there was never any healing needed. There will be a broader awareness, a change in point of view to a "range of view", so to speak. We will be able to see where we've been, where we are, and the places and times we could be, almost simultaneously, like in the amount of time it takes us to turn our heads to view a different part of the room we are in. It will be more like the feeling I get when I'm driving in awareness of traffic, or like when I'm sharp and on the kenjutsu mat or soccer field. We'll know where everyone is and what they are doing without having to look with our eyes. We'll just feel where we are and what we are doing in the past, present and future. We'll be able to narrow our focus to just one point of view, but we won't forget we are not separated from ourselves the past, present or future and all the probable alternates thereof.

In the acceptance of our current belief systems of "healing" we'll have the choice to know that healing is not necessary, just a process we can undergo if we want. Otherwise, we'll be aware of our wholeness and our range of perception.

Not Here

There's courage involved if you want to become truth.

There is a broken-open place in a lover.

Where are those qualities of bravery and sharp compassion in this group?

What's the use of old and frozen thought?

I wanta howling hurt.

This is not a treasury where gold is stored, this is for copper.

We alchemists look for talent that can heat up and change.

Lukewarm won't do.

Half-hearted holding back,well-enough getting by?

Not here.

Rumi

"The Soul of Rumi," Coleman Barks

Self-Trust

Over my last six years, one issue has been paramount, and that is self-trust. I can't tell you how many times I ripped my own heart out. It took me six years to realize the reason my beloved Annie died the way she did (a Jack Russell Terrier closer to me than any being of fur and four feet that there ever was) and all the personal drama I've been through since. Then, I did realize that it was about trusting myself, that her death and all the rest was to teach myself to trust my own creations--I shall not betray myself. It ain't possible.

Learn to trust yourself. You can start by trusting your creations, all of them. It's all you and reflections of you. It's not self-importance. Self-importance is part of the belief of duplicity--the you v. the not you; right and wrong, good and bad. It may take a sudden epiphany. It may take 6 years. It may take the rest of your life. I can't say when. Just trust yourself and your creations, and all the ripping heartache becomes a dance of compassion with yourself.

MSM Arrogance

Would somebody in the press please point out to me the place in the Constitution or federal or State law where it says that the government MUST put out a press release or a 30-second announcement for significant news items? I think that the guys and gals in the press, MSM or blog-world, are suffering from over-weaning arrogance. It showed in technicolor in yesterday's news conference. The media acts if the failure to disclose this event as soon as it happened was illegal. And, I am not sorry to say, it is not.

You won't find any dispute from me that you have the right to print and say what you want if you can discover it, with some restrictions on the margins, and on certain information that may not be legally disclosed. And, you certainly have the right to print and talk about VP Cheney's hunting accident. But, you don't have the right to a press release the moment it happened.

Would it have been more politically astute to run a press release Saturday? Perhaps, yes, when one considers the arrogance and greedy appetites of a nest of baby magpies. In the end, I assert that the only damage done was to the pride and prejudice of the reporters and their editors, who indignantly cried and whined like a playpen full of spoiled brat toddlers.

Grow up. You'll get your bottles when they are ready.

Forbidden Images

There’s a prohibition in the Qu’ran from creating images of the Prophet Mohammed, for the reason that it’s thought that they would inspire idol worship instead of veneration for the Prophet and worship of God. It’s not a good idea to mistake the symbol for the thing in existence.

So, the furor over the derisive cartoons published in Denmark lampooning the Prophet raises a question–How is it that since it is forbidden to create and worship an image of the Prophet it is okay to be offended by an image of the Prophet? How is it permissible to kill people and break things in offense taken from a depiction of an image of the Prophet that one is not permitted to worship in the first place?

If anyone wants to get a little more understanding about what radical fundimentalism is about see: http://tinyurl.com/d12dm