April
2007
4/02/07 -
I saw the new movie "The Last Mimzy" this afternoon. What an incredible movie in regards to the potential of children, touching on the subtleties of having to watch what they say and do around adults, wanting their privacy and often not getting it, being told what to do, and having to go to school and going through that imprisonment and all that goes with it. While these things aren't so obvious, nor is it what the story was about per say, I could see it, since I am aware of this. While the movie is based around some high tech from the future, it still requires very adept and conscious children to be open minded enough to see it for what it is and to engage it and be creative with it. You have to see it to appreciate what I am talking about. It touches on a lot of things that aren't mainstream. Oddly enough, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd wrote a song for the movie that ties in some of his other songs from Pink Floyd days, and it was such an incredible song to hear as the movie ended and then scrolled through the credits. There was the line from his The Wall album, "Is there anybody in there," that grabbed my attention, and for me this touched on how I see most people who are disconnected in the world, with their facades, masks, and walls preventing the authentic self from radiating out; is there anybody in there, or is there anybody authentic beyond the facades, masks, and walls...an amazing song.
It's hard to put into words and its been almost three hours since I saw the movie, and I am still in a very deep meditative state, a stillness that takes my breath away literally. There is something wanting to present itself and I am making space to allow that. I am sure tonight's dream journeying will lead to some necessary shifts. This has been happening a lot these last few weeks. It just seems to keep ratcheting up the expansiveness of consciousness within.
I was deeply touched at different times throughout the movie, as realizations washed over me, so I was in a very quiet, reflective space. After the movie was over, I was sort of in a deep space, reflecting on what had transpired for me. As I walked out through the mall, I suddenly saw things differently, could see the challenges of those who don't know that they don't know they are asleep, acting totally for the most part from their cultural software programs. I got outside and approached the bus stop and spotted this young child sitting and asking the father for some gum. The child's hair was very short with pierced ears with spherical studs. I couldn't tell if the child was male or female, and I guess as I bring this up, it touches on this whole gender stereotypical thinking we have been taught, in terms of identifying, classifying, and judging who a person is and ultimately should be. How absurd this is, since beyond the body is a soul, that most have never seen, nor even conversed with, and they are so brainwashed into believing what others tell them is truth about spirit. Needless to say, I just observed and at some point I realized the child was female, but she was just so incredibly alive and present. She sat there, angelic, and totally herself as authentic as can be. I listened to her ask her father to let her open up the gum wrapper, which he wound up doing himself, and she was a bit upset about this. Do we do this to our friends or our partners? No! There is a control dynamic that goes on between adult and child that becomes more expansive as the child wants to become more autonomous. When she got upset and told him off, he wound up scolding her. Again, that power thing over a smaller person or weaker person (physically) .
I decided to go sit down on the bench next to her to bring my positive energy into the dynamics to shift the father's negative energies. Ironically he was a smoker and was smoking during this. I sat down and was going through my back pack to get my wallet out. I had this strong sense that I was being watched by her. Given that most people get sort of upset if you talk to their children, I didn't really engage her, but then I felt her touching the side of my coat. I looked over and she was looking right at me as if she could see right through me. I know she could see who I was as a spirit. So, I said hello to her and we spoke a little, her asking my name. At this point her father got involved and I decided to push the usual limits, after he began to tell his daughter to tell her name, and to ask the other woman there her name and then to tell her age.
I think parents have this innate discomfort of these powerful beings, there stillness, their incredible brilliance, and they have to start training them to be like they are in order to feel comfortable in their own self made prison. And you know, most don't even know they are imprisoned. It has been going on for so long that they don't see their limitations, only seeing the limitations as the borders of where they are allowed to engage life. All of us talked a bit until the bus came. I said good bye to everyone and waved to the young child named Juniper.
People have no clue about what it is like being a child. We don't question our own childhood because it is so deeply buried. If we were to spend some time going back and investigating, we would uncover some significant realizations; namely that we were conscious. During the Fall, while doing journeying, my guides were directing me with very specific tasks meant to uncover long lost awareness. One of the first things they had me do was to go back and look at all the earliest memories I have on up to the present. I was told to take who I am now and to put myself into those memories as if that was who I was all along. I did this for about four hours the first time and was hit with this tremendous realization that I was conscious. What I am saying here is as adults when someone punches us or frightens us or manipulates us or shames us or ostracizes us, we know what that feels like. It is not an event exclusively for adults alone. When I was dragged into the store room by my kindergarten teacher for not stopping my play, and smacked repeatedly on my buttocks, I felt the same way at sixteen, when my father made me lay over his knees and began beating my buttocks with his hands. There is no difference in age when this occurs. We have been made to think that children are lesser than human because they aren't adults. It is amazing how parents who hit children, then have the audacity to tell them to stop crying or they'll give them something to cry about. This is what we are unconscious about, this dysfunction that delineates a child as unimportant and needing discipline, correction, and proper education to form them.
Think of your time growing up in school and the bullies or the special in crowds, the humiliation, the name calling, being picked on, being ostracized. Recall having to sit day after day for hours, having to ask for permission to go to the bathroom, to eat, to talk. Imagine being your adult self in that small body during those times and suddenly you know longer have the right to do anything. What you watch on TV, what you want to read, where you want to go, what clothes you would like to have, what you want to eat out, the list is endless. But, as you go through all these aspects of your growing up years, you begin to realize how stifling, traumatizing, damaging, and limiting it was. These sensitive spiritual beings came here to assist us and look what was done to them, look what is done to them. Males come into the world and are usually circumcised with no pain killers, and strapped down to a board, while some unconscious being takes a metal cap and inserts it over the head of the child's penis, then lays the foreskin over the cap and proceeds to slice off this very sensitive skin that has lots of nerve endings in it. Imagine having that done as an adult, being strapped down and having no choice what so ever. The reasons given for circumcision have no validity other than to break down a child's consciousness so that it becomes obedient and docile. Breaking the child's will is what most of religion has been about and somewhere along the line, there were those who knew about this and perpetuated this as some right of passage. The only right of passage it fulfills is to break the will of the child. The same goes for those young females who are held down by supposed loved one's and have their clitoris gouged out. Both of these acts are sado-masochistic actions. There is no unconditional love involved in this. This idea of needing to mark a male child as a particular religion or to ensure a female child is kept a virgin for a male later on is much like what cowboys do to steer and horses, burning their mark into them to show who owns them.
There is an incredible amount of realizations to be had for going back and looking over even the smallest aspects of your growing up years, because then you begin to see how this affected your adult years as well. To say that this is sobering is an understatement. I think I was in shock for quite awhile as I began to wade through the years, the experiences, the situations I found myself in with no other recourse. There are many who "think" that going into the past is a waste of time, but I can assure you that is the ego mechanism making sure you don't go there. It knows if you do that its gig is up. Setting aside an hour or two regularly to do this can be of great value. You begin to realize that as children we were quite aware. One begins to see that young children know how to love better than most adults do. They are also totally aware of sexual feelings and acting on them until adults shut that down, usually with pain and punishment, along with a big dose of shame and guilt. It's no wonder adults are neurotic and repressed about the full spectrum of their sexuality; and by sexuality I include both homosexual and heterosexual desire. There is no such thing as a heterosexual or homosexual, because the terms didn't exist until the 1800's. No one can be a desire, they can only experience it, and having one's sexuality restricted, most assuredly affects who we express ourselves as. It's no wonder we have such a homophobic society that expends considerable time, money, and energy policing everyone else's sexual preferences. Imagine being whomever you wish to express yourself sexually as a spiritual being from within and being forced into one way only. And for those who profess to be heterosexual, I would ask you to imagine what it would be like for you to suddenly be forced to focus only on homosexual desire, when in fact you were wanting heterosexual desire. This idea that soul/spirit is the same as our gender is a misnomer; there is no basis or facts that substantiate this as true. In fact, humans have made spirit into their own image, which has caused more problems than this writing can even begin to touch on.
As children, rules are enforced about crying, feelings, emotions, intuition, sensitivity, boundaries or lack thereof, and a host of other dominating mindsets. We are forced into obedience about what truths are acceptable, what the cultural biases/rules are, and a host of other political, religious, and economic rules meant to bind a child into ignorance to ensure their blind obedience as adults. It is well known that if you can do this when a child is young, they can be programmed to think and act in approved culturally sanctioned ways. It is also known that if you can stifle teen rebellion, then one can be assured that they will succumb to the cultural programming with little questioning and for the most part complete obedience in general. This information has been around for awhile. But, most will dismiss it as ridiculous or not in alignment with their belief systems. And guess what, they are correct in that mindset, because that is what they were taught to do, dismiss anything that would call into question what they were forced to obey as children and teens. In effect, children grow up being policed and in turn as adults they begin to self-police themselves. Getting back to our authentic self can be quite the challenge, but the rewards are greater than you could imagine, for without your authenticity, you are nothing more than a facade, mask, wall. We are like an actor who has forgotten they took on a role to survive as a child and are still playing that role.
We are headed towards a huge shift in consciousness and this sabotaging and uprooting of the child is going to alter the very mindscape of our existence. Imagine a child/soul incarnating on this planet and being able to unfold into what the soul has in mind versus the darkness of ego driven adults. These children are not blank slates, nor do they need to be trained by us. They are souls with a vastness to them that I believe truly frightens most adults, otherwise, why would they need to control them so much. These children are not dogs or animals to be owned, controlled, leashed, or locked up in a pen, backyard, or in schools that dumb them down into submission. They are souls and are so incredibly powerful that if you were to begin to understand the implications, it would reduce one to a bumbling idiot. There is a war going on against higher consciousness and it has been going on for a long time and fortunately it is coming to an end shortly. We have this idea that has been enculturated into us that we live only this life and if we don't follow the rules we're damned for eternity in hell. If you look around you will notice we are already living in hell; shame, guilt, fear, anger, hatred, violence... We have been lied to about soul and spirit. We are eternal beings at our core; every single one of us. The only Armageddon going on is the one inside our minds between the light and dark. There is where hell exists, when we deny the powerful light we are.
As children we were not big enough to follow the light within and were forced on a daily basis to focus on the external world. We systematically had our attention drawn away from the inner to focus exclusively on the external world, which over time caused us to forget the inner dimensions of spirit. We were meant to exist in both realms simultaneously, but we came from the spiritual realm, so this is our main platform of existence. It's not that the left brain or linear process is invalid, its just not better than or greater than our spiritual half. Those who say this takes us back to the times of the Church dominating over the State, are erroneous in their thinking, because even back during those times, it was nothing more than the same thing today; ego domination. The Church, that is to say those who held the reigns of power then, were not interested in Spirit, nor were they interested in higher states of consciousness, nor were they interested in unconditional love, compassion, or caring for their fellow human kind. While it is true that further down the chain of command there were those who cared, they were too often brain washed into limited belief systems that distorted their mindsets.
An example of this
would be those who treated their slaves decently. How absurd, because slavery
has nothing to do with spirit, only human's ego. The poor and down trodden were
nothing more than cash cows. When you begin to look beyond the dogma and look at
the actions of those at the top, you begin to see the insanity of those who
profess to know best for us about spiritual matters. The only person who knows
what is best for each person, is that authentic being that lies deep within our
being. The Church is like a plague that feeds off the unsuspecting, much like a
virus does off a host. Those who exist at the top and those who are ignorant
enough to obediently preaching the Church's dogmatic dysfunction, are criminals
at best. To deny spirit and teach others to find spirit in some external space
is the greatest lie perpetuated upon human kind. If anyone is evil, it is those
who preach this lie, it is those who feed off the unsuspecting, it is those who
use shame, guilt, and fear to imprison humans, that are the damned.
Good night! 11:11pm
4/16/07 - The other day I was resting, and this realization arose in my consciousness, that as a children, most of us knew our parents were insane; meaning they were dysfunctional, of which I consider a form of insanity, of which I consider most of the world's cultures. This is not something my family alone bears. Dysfunction in the form of insanity has been pulsing through generations going back to the fall of human kind. And I don't consider the Bible an accurate account of what this fall was about. At best the "good book" is a metaphorical paradox of a journey into inner areas so far lost to human kind that in a large part has caused this dysfunction, this schism in our psyches both collectively as well as individually.
This realization opened up within me to understand that my parents were just as shut down then as they are now. Coming here as a soul, we were conscious of the fact that they were disconnected and we loved them unconditionally. The ramifications of what unconditional love is far removed from the level of our consciousness, that most have no idea what that means, let alone what it feels like. I awoke in a lucid dream recently of a memory of when I was two and awoke to the remembrance of why I came to this plane of existence and the remembrance of this and the feeling of it was so powerful that all I could do was lay there and sob. The willingness to come here, to shut down one's consciousness in order to serve an insane society crippled by dysfunction/trauma. While this seems absurd, I can assure you it is not. Look around at the young and notice how they are.
They are not crippled and living in boxes like most of us are. They love unconditionally, which means they do not judge at all. Even when you begin to traumatize them, they still come back to love you, time and time again. It takes a lot to break a child's will, just like it does an animals. And even then they still come back, because it is the deepest essence of our being to love unconditionally. This is not to say that it is pleasant; it is not at all. As each year progresses, we are forced more and more into taking on the cultural software of how we are supposed to be based on external rules. We are forced to stop listening to our inner guidance, our inner connection to higher self/spirit/source. At best we retain a minuscule amount of a connection to source, for if we didn't we would not still exist here on this plane. When we try to act on our inner guidance we are stopped physically time and time again, trained just like animals are to obey the masters, until we are broken in just as animals are. Our natural will is broken and then retrained to obey the external rules.
There is more to this, since children are small, they are helpless in the sense of not having cultural knowledge of how to acquire food, shelter, clothing, and protection. From this dependency arises the necessity to obey in order to get our basic needs met. There is rarely no choice in this. Children learn to do what is necessary to protect themselves. They begin to acquire the mask, facades, and walls that are part of their particular cultural software/dysfunction. Think of cultural software as survival software for all humans on planet Earth, of which we are all hardwired for. After considerable time and repetition of behaviors we learn to do what is expected by habit, which then form our beliefs. Doing what is expected thus becomes our being. We do not question anymore because we have no choice, since limited belief systems are closed systems, the paradigm keeps out any other information, facts, experiences that would call into question what is believed. Thus we have an entire planet of mostly unconscious people going about doing things without even questioning it, with a select few having some awareness of what is going on and using it to hold control over others to dominate and live off of them in.
Part of this process is delusion and denial, where we feign that our parents and other adults around us care about us. In affect we have taken on the delusion that we are the problem and they are right, that if we can just be more like them, then we will be good enough. And, to make matters worse, we have stopped looking internally, with a sign at its borders that says, "keep out." In 1999 I was doing some journeying and stumbled upon an inner image of a space where such a sign was erected. At the time I had no idea what the hell that meant, and it has taken all this time for me to finally get it this past year. The ramifications of this are immense and require a gentleness with oneself in terms of coming to terms with this and finding ones way back to reclaiming the forbidden land. I am reminded of the "forbidden city" in China, and perhaps there is more to that than a mere physical place.
Wholeness resides
in this place and part of dysfunction is to detain and stop others from entering
this territory. In effect, there is a war on consciousness that has been going
on for many centuries, of which the dark oversees. It is funny to watch
dysfunctional people work diligently to stop others from being functional. This
is called peer pressure and is a very powerful force and energy, of which
includes the first two chakras in our body. More can be read about this in
Caroline Myss's book, "Anatomy Of Spirit."
There is this fantasy we have all created that in the early days everything was "wonderful." Our current fantasy has been that everything in the world is wonderful and that the other over there who isn't like us is the problem. Oddly enough, when one begins to learn about culture via cultural anthropology classes, books, direct experiences, then one begins to realize that others see things differently as well. The irony or blindness of this is most see the other as "wrong," when in fact it is just different. Given that most cultures come from different geographical locations impinged upon by weather, climates, resources, then one has to come to the awareness that others in those places will have gone about figuring out works best for them as they evolved, much as we have evolved.
We must also understand that we so called Americans are mixed bunch of humans who have migrated to the U.S. over a period of time, coming from different regions, bringing different ways of being. With this co-migration, came a lot of clashing of wills over "the right way," of doing things. Each group had/has their own self/group-created cultural software that basically runs their way of being. This software runs unconscious in all of us. We are for the most part unconscious of this effect on our consciousness, which means we don't know that we don't know. Dysfunction is part of this process; we don't know that we don't. When you watch people doing all the terrible things they do to others, you have to understand they are totally unconscious to what they are doing. Authentic self is not in charge and has not been for some time.
Human beings do
not become dysfunctional over night. This process occurs over time and in
increments and is a slow process of impinging one's will upon another will. In
this case it begins in childhood, where we have no say, no rights, and no one to
protect us from the onslaught of dysfunction. At first children are left alone
to play so to speak, but then they begin to reach the age of wanting to be
autonomous and it is here that the dysfunction begins to mold the child into
what the parents dysfunction or cultural software dictates. Dysfunction arises
from trauma and most all trauma arises from childhood at the hands of adults.
4/17/07 -
"Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
- James Baldwin
I had some walls get toppled today, unblocking feelings that went back to my early days. There's this idea that all we have to do is take a pill and everything is fine. The process doesn't work that way. It takes a lot of time, effort, and energy to block away feelings, emotions, and awareness. It's like a work of art that takes years and decades, and there are times when some traumatic event can cause a cave-in that takes a long time to dig from. Just when I think I have gotten to a place where the sailing will be clear and sunny permanently, it suddenly blows into a hurricane or stormy weather. I got hit with something in dream time, and maybe it was just a metaphor or perhaps not. I was nauseous for two days, feeling like I was going to vomit, and all I could do was sleep. On the third day, it began to lessen a lot, and talking to my friend Janet helped me to realize some things, one of them pertaining to what I wrote about yesterday, of which I need to post a piece from a book that alludes to what I was talking about, of which I found after writing the 4/16 post.
My Conversation with Janet really opened me up to levels I have been on with journeying. Today, I still felt that way, but suddenly the energetic blocks I had been feeling from the heart down to the root chakra were beginning to flow, but there was something else going on. I kept sitting with it, but had no words for it. I was reading a fiction story where the characters were similar to people I used to know that triggered feelings and emotions within myself. In the afternoon, the Sun came out, and I grabbed my camera and decided to get out and go for a walk to see if I could understand what was coming up.
I found myself avoiding looking at people, in fact, I found myself annoyed with them, of not wanting anything to do with them. I'd had this happen in San Francisco one day, after getting dirty looks from passerby's, from listening to an inner voice that told me to give $20 to a homeless elder woman sleeping inside the doorway at Nordstrom's. (Paper I Wrote)
I am opening up to new levels of feeling how shut down everyone is, how unfriendly, cold, aloof, angry, hateful, and it is difficult feeling all that negative energy. I am having to learn how to open up my heart chakra more, and let go so as to allow more of the higher energies flow through. In doing this, then one moves into higher energies of compassion; easier said than done. I felt like I was hit by a Tsunami wave today after I got back from my walk. I felt detached, as if I was floating somewhere else observing and yet I was sitting in my chair looking out the window for a long time. Overwhelmed would be a good word here, just too much realizations and the awareness of it just sort of shut me down to a level I could accommodate. I was there for an hour or two at least, then made myself get up and go out to get something to eat. My dinner companions were the drug addicts/alcoholics outside my window who exist in their own little world, with no authentic soul shining through at all; empty shells so to speak. It's a sobering thing to watch and I guess that is why the many don't. They don't want to know, because they don't want to look inside themselves at their own pain and suffering.
So, here I am reading this story some more and if it doesn't trigger some more feelings and emotions, and am I ever upset, a veritable roller coaster ride of emotions. The story gets to a part where two best friends come together, after one comes looking for him, because the other disappeared. I'm noticing that I'm really upset about this and knowing it is a lot more than I should be for this story. And it dawns on me that this is about a friend I had, a best friend, who just upped and walked out of my life, because he couldn't handle the truth, nor handle the peer pressure of so called friends and parents. And suddenly, I'm realizing I'd gone numb back then, and just shut all my feelings and emotions down. I've been working on them over the last seven years, but these were the core one's, the one's that I'd protected, that were the one's that cared about this person. I had to sit with them for awhile. And at the same time, I realized the same thing applied to my ignorant father, who I'd loved as a child, but which became exceedingly difficult to do as the years went on, from behaviors that were anything but unconditional. How is it that so many just walk away, or walk out, or end something, just because they are uncomfortable? Who said being vulnerable was easy? Especially so in a culture that is so out of touch with reality, so insane, so dysfunctional, so void of emotions and feelings. There is no way we are going to get back to our early enlightened state by avoiding the problems.
There are no shortcuts, no quick cure pills, no easy way out, no getting someone else to do our work for us. And while this may seem harsh and or unbearable to do, it is even worse to begin to realize how barren we have been living a lie; how difficult it has been maintaining the illusion, avoiding the truth, avoiding anyone who might remind us of the lie we live. That is far more unbearable once you have realized it, made the awareness of it conscious and then there is no more choice to make, it becomes this obsession so to speak to get to the heart of the matter, to be able to let go completely of the burden. And there is the joy, and bliss, and ecstasy that begin to return to ones conscious self, and you begin to see with new eyes. And it's worth every penny to get there. And here's another and, and I have to face more of my feelings at the sorrow of my loss. But loss is part of the journey and understanding why the loss occurred and where it takes you is of value, though it may not seem like it at the time, and there is most definitely anger, resentment, animosity, but there is more to it than just those fickle things, something much more profound that they distract us from knowing and feeling; that is the gift. And my writing about what the gift is cannot be written in words, cannot be adequately expressed intellectually and there in lies the rub with ego and that is why it is buried and how it got buried. Having the direct experience will tell you, will show you, will make you understand how absurd, how ridiculous the whole ego thing is, how pathetic, how empty it truly is.
I had this friend and I felt a great deal for this friend and he is gone. and from that loss, I learned a great deal about myself that I hadn't realized before, could not know until I had a loss comparable to the loss of my father a long time ago. And how ironic I chose someone who was so much like him in a lot of ways, and this is/was true of other friends I had/have, of which much has changed and remains unresolved. And my resolve to continue on to higher ground is not going to stop because it gets painful or uncomfortable or that I might lose something, because the only thing worth having is ones true authentic self, which also offers an even greater gift of reconnecting us to spirit. And I will tell you, this inner connection can be felt like an opening in the chest, as an energetic portal opening where one feels the presence of spirit, and it is a homecoming, a realization that this is why we have felt empty for so long, and it most assuredly brings sobs as you suddenly realize the feelings of having lost this long ago.
And I can see why I was tired and slept for two solid days, because it has been exhausting suppressing those feelings at bay. And now I am free to feel them and let them go, able to move forward and find other authentic people who are willing to stay and be with their own feelings and emotions and who are willing to face their own demons and live authentically. There is no more going back and living the past into the future. The past has no value now that I am completely conscious of old patterns, beliefs, and limitations. They are totally worthless, as are the reasons for them in the first place. Those reasons served a purpose as a child, but as an adult they were killing me and that is why so many people are miserable walking zombies, who are unfriendly, angry, cold, aloof, etc...
I'm tired and I'm going to bed. 1:25am
4/30/07 - 10:37pm -
I received this
article from an email I subscribe to from FPIC, Foreign Policy in Focus,
called a think tank with out walls, which is a project of the International
Relations Center. The article touches on the U.S. debt, how bad it is, and yet
the U.S. government dictate to other countries on bad spending habits and
forcing others to abide by their strict guidelines, all the while ignoring their
own debt problem. It ties into the article from yesterday, Blueprint For a
Prison Planet, pointing out the total lack of concern for all the issues going
on, as if those at the top are aware of something else or don't seem to
concerned for what the outcomes will be. Then again, the rich have always been
cushioned from major upheavals throughout time. Read it if you are so inclined:
http://shermanbuck.com/america_the_exceptional.html
You may say, "what's the point." Well maybe the point is to wake out of your stupor of "everything is fine!" It's not fine, its not ok, but what you can do is stop deluding yourself and start owning your authentic self. Now that is powerful stuff, more so than the power that others acquire in their delusion, for it is externally based power. If you have others supporting you or if you have the masses following you, then you are powerful; it comes down to either having power or not having power in that particular game. In authentic self, this is the only true power, a power connected to spirit, one that allows you to know for sure where you stand, being able to see between the lines, to know when you are being lied too, know when you are doing what is right for you, knowing you cannot be controlled. If you think that is mediocre, then realize your ego is thinking for your heart. Stop listening to that silly fear based noise inside your head and pay attention to what your heart is saying. It knows the way through all the walls and closed doors, and can even see in the dark, not to mention you can live with yourself without fear, shame or guilt and no being unconscious of stuff...
We learn to set aside our authentic self as children to learn the rules of culture that are forced upon us. In his book, "Playing by Heart," O. Fred Donaldson describes this process which he calls the Duchess' Game:
'The
Duchess' Game is a way of being and acting based on the Duchess's Law from Alice
in Wonderland which states, "the more
there is of mine, the less there is of yours." The Duchess's Game is an
antagonistic encounter in which we succeed by defeating an opponent. This
"game" can be cynically expressed in a slightly different manner as
The Three Laws of Thermodynamics quoted by Dennis Overbye:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't get out of the game.
In this zero-sum game, everything including life itself can be won,
lost, possessed and awarded. It can be played anywhere and anytime, with balls,
guns, and words and on sports fields, corporate boardrooms, political arenas,
international battlefields, family living rooms, freeways, schoolrooms and
playgrounds.
The
Duchess's Game is a shared value system between people who need a symbolically
and externally constituted sense of self worth-contest-and a society, which by
granting it to them, reduces them to playthings. The game is sustained by a
socio-economic, educational, and political philosophy, organized groups and a
code of contest ethics. This adversary system is accepted, in part, because it
has been an integral part of society for a very long time. So long, in fact,
that people both as individuals and as groups cannot conceive of any other way
of interacting. Throughout our history we have used one form of contest such as
the courts to try to remedy the failures of another contest system, such as
elections. We fundamentally believe in the efficacy of contests to cure social,
economic and educational problems. But one form of cancer does not cure another;
instead the patient now has two forms of cancer.'
Touch
the Future visionaries share a deep respect for the
limitless capacity of children to love and to learn. They are pioneers in the
fields of human development, conscious conception, pregnancy, birth, bonding,
the brain, peak performance, learning, imagination, intelligence, original play,
parenting and more. Each is a treasure for you to discover and enjoy.
You will find a rich preview of each interview or essay along with pdf files of the complete transcript. Full transcripts may range from three to twenty pages or more.
James W. Prescott
"The
Origins of Love and Violence"
4/30/07 - 11:05pm -
Here's a portion of an article written by Nick Sandberg entitled, "Blueprint For a Prison Planet." The author has written on numerous subjects pertaining to consciousness, the bible, Gnosticism, and Qabala. Of other interest is The Role of Entheogens in the Creation of The Bible and The Two Towers Fall - Awakening to the Fourth Dimension.
I chose to post
this portion of his article because it pertains to the process that shuts down
children, of which I have been discussing recently. There are many psychologists
and other professionals who write about this, but Nick's piece succinctly
touches on the whole spectrum of events in a way that really helps see the
bigger picture.
Conditioning
Conditioning is the means by which our reaction to traumatic events can be put to use to cause us to permanently alter our natural behaviour. Parents usually condition their children by giving them affection when their behaviour is deemed "good" and withholding affection when it is deemed "bad." They do this because the overwhelming majority of cultural influences they are exposed to tell them it must be done or we will not grow up to be "civilised" human beings. The action of conditioning, when it first occurs, will cause the mind to repress - to block awareness of what it was that happened. This will reoccur the first few times the action of conditioning, for instance, slapping, occurs. Then the mind will learn. It will learn that, in order to avoid being slapped in future, it must undertake the change in behaviour required. However, in order for conditioning to take place, the memory and pain associated with the original act of conditioning must remain repressed within, blocked from our awareness.
The intention of
the mind, in blocking our awareness of events and repressing any associated
emotions, is to protect us from emotional damage in our formative years. Each
time something happens around us that in any way reminds our subconscious mind
of a repressed memory, we receive a little burst of anxiety as repressed
emotions begin to be processed. As repressed memories build up, whole areas of
natural thinking and behaviour thus begin to become painful to us. The mind
deals with this by learning subconsciously to avoid situations that remind it of
repressed memories; and it is this "need to avoid" that allows the
conditioned mind to be so easily controlled. By creating a culture in which
repressed pain is not released from the system but, instead, can merely be
avoided through social conformity, Western populations become emotionally
dependent on their culture to feel secure. They can easily be directed to both
do work and follow a lifestyle that slowly draws the planet under centralized
control.
One means by which
nearly all Westerners learn to avoid contact with repressed emotions is through
the development of a "persona." The persona is essentially a shield, a
face that one can present to the world, behind which one can interact with
society free from the risk of experiencing repressed pain. A consequence of
developing this shield is that we, as children, start to learn to mask our true
needs behind symbolic needs. We naturally crave deep love and affection but many
learn not to seek it directly for fear of re-experiencing the pain that results
when it is denied. Instead, many of us grow up learning to crave things that
merely symbolize what we truly want, things like material possessions, personal
power, sensual pleasures, and fame.
Material possessions symbolize love because we learn that our parents show us love by giving us things.
Personal power
symbolizes love because it represents freedom of expression, the withholding of
which was used to condition us. Sensual pleasures symbolize love because we
associate intimacy with love. Fame symbolizes love because we associate
adoration with love. All these cravings are for things that symbolically
represent what we truly need but are not the actual need itself. Because the
true needs are not being met, the pleasure experienced proves only temporary and
the craving for more symbols of love quickly returns. This is the true root of
the universal problem of greed. The child chasing mere symbols of its true wants
becomes the adult doing the same. We thus grow up driven to seek out things that
merely symbolize what we actually want, and so never experience lasting
satisfaction. When we don't comprehend the root of our behaviour, we simply
assume that we don't have enough and strive for more.
Our school years are a time when we should be opening up emotionally, learning about the world and understanding what it means to be alive. Instead, most people's experience of school is that of being subjected to a rigorous indoctrination process while immersed in an emotionally repressive environment. An atmosphere of inhibition and abuse pervades, and fear of ridicule from our peer group causes us to spend most of our time hiding our true feelings and directing our energy into maintaining face.
Our shield, our persona, is maintained by self-esteem. Experiencing a feeling of security within the peer group is vital if the persona is to be held in place. To experience embarrassment in front of one's peers will instantly expose the individual to deeply painful repressed emotions, and thus is something to be avoided at all costs. One result of this is a corruption of our innate need to understand the nature of our world. For, from now on, whether or not we accept what we learn as being true will depend not only on whether it makes sense but also on whether we feel that believing it might pose a threat to our place within the peer group. We thus become dependent on our beliefs not only to help us understand the world but also to help maintain our persona. It is natural therefore that we soon develop a deep nee