The battleground is the mind. Myth & Man explores how unexamined psyches get hijacked — by social media, propaganda, autocrats, and the shadows we refuse to face. This category uncovers the traps and sinkholes of the dark psyche while offering tools to build stronger inner architecture through mythic story, humor, meditation, shadow work, and psychological resilience.
The oracle is an ancient role that a wise woman or wise man played in society. Ancient man understood balance is essential, but finding the right balance can be tricky, especially when confronted with lots of divergent opinions, ideas, gossip, agitprop, spin, hype, propaganda, indoctrination, misinformation and disinformation on top of more spin.
In today’s modern world, life is even more chaotic and nerve wracking. This is why finding peace and quiet to dream is more important than ever before, and thus the inspiration for this plush, comfy comforter and its simple words of inspiration to invite delight into the night.
“I am an Oracle. Didn’t you hear? My wisdom’s like magic… … mystic and clear. I’ll lead you to places… … free from pain, fear, and hate. So, ask me your questions… And dream into being your destiny tonight!”
— by Deborah
Oracle Collection
The oracle collection is a reminder wisdom lies inside of all of us. And it is closer than we think. Wisdom’s light is soft, gentle like the moonlight that makes night a magical time. To hear our inner oracle, we must find outer calm and tranquility, even during the worst of times or the hardest trails life throws to us. This is not easy to do when one is feeling pain, fear, or hate. The oracle helps to soothes away the blocking feelings and traumas, so we can all find our way to our inner pool of peace and tranquility where our wisdom waits to rise like a full prescient moon.
The oracle is part of my book: Sapience: The Moment Is Now. It is an archetype, which is an idea developed by Carl Jung around the turn of the 20th Century to talk about how people use consciousness. Being self-aware and thinking are things we do every day, but rarely do we think about how we do it. Jung proposed there are body parts for the mind just as there are body parts for our bodies. Archetypes are the body parts of the mind. To visualized this, the colorful women-harps. If you look closely, the woman and harp are one entity.
Rainbow Women
I created these lovely rainbow women and harps for a blog I wrote about consciousness and arches of consciousness. I used Genolve via Midjourney to create rainbow arches of consciousness that the AI displayed to me as women and musical instruments playing the chords of consciousness inside of us. This is what the AI imagined, and I really liked it. One of the cues I gave to the AI was arches of consciousness, which is short for archetypes or an idea.
If you are interested in consciousness and archetypes, they are thoroughly explored in my book as well—Sapience: The Moment Is Now (on Amazon).
Merch& Book
These are just a few of the Oracle Collection items available now on Etsy at The Quip Collection
Paperback Live: April 24, 2024 | Hardcover and Kindle available soon! | Available on Amazon
How do we, the Good People of Earth, stop the needless death and destruction happening to people who are victims of hate and rage, war, greed, victims of famine (manmade and natural), and Climate Change? How can we stop ourselves from slipping irrevocably into a collective fate, a future coming for us sooner than we think is possible, a future very soon, we, the Good People of Earth, can no longer resist, no longer fight, no longer change? How can we, the People of Earth, avert our fate and reach for our destiny?
This is a story about fate vs destiny. Moment is caught in a web of fate being created for her now. Fate is a one-sided thing. Fate is sharp and judgmental. Fate is searing, unforgiving and stinging. Fate does not care if you are old or young, innocent or guilty, happy or sad, rich or poor, powerful or weak. Fate is fueled by fear, rage, and hate. Fate happens when you least expect it to, a lot like death. Fate is our collective fall over the Climate Cliff.
Destiny is a two-sided thing. Destiny is hard, and it is soft. Destiny is grueling and also infinitely effortless. Destiny will make you mad, and it will make you sane. Destiny will make you scream and shout and stomp it all out in hopeless impotence, and it will give you everlasting peace. Destiny requires endurance and inner fortitude. There is nothing easy about destiny. It is a choice that must be seen from both sides and endured with patience, tolerance, and acceptance to what it shows you. Destiny is fueled by awe, wonder, reverence, and honest self-reflection. Destiny is the beginning of wisdom.
What will you choose? Every person is voting. Do we begin our long journey back from perdition, a place we made all by ourselves. Or do we fall, returning to the silence from which we came? The moment is now to choose something different because now is the only place of creation.
Perspective from 2026: The Rage That Clarified Everything
What has unfolded since this was written in 2022 has not quieted the rage—it has clarified it.
What once felt like scattered abuses of power now reveals itself as a pattern: a system where wealth insulates behavior, where influence distorts truth, and where consequences bend around those who believe themselves untouchable. The second Trump administration did not create this reality—it exposed it in sharper relief. Corruption, manipulation, and cruelty were not hidden—they were normalized, reframed, even celebrated in certain circles as strength.
The role of billionaire backers has come into clearer focus. The gap between those who live within the law and those who seem to operate above it has widened into something undeniable. The continued surfacing of details tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s network—his ranch, his connections, the culture of entitlement surrounding extreme wealth—has forced an uncomfortable reckoning. Whether every claim is proven or not, the broader truth has landed: there exists a class of people who, for too long, have behaved as if human lives, bodies, and futures were assets to be shaped, controlled, or discarded.
History echoes here in disturbing ways. The obsession with control, perfection, legacy—these are not new impulses. They trace back to some of humanity’s darkest chapters, including attempts to engineer a “master race.” That kind of thinking never disappears; it mutates, modernizes, hides behind money, technology, and influence.
And so the rage grows.
But rage without awareness is a weapon that turns inward—or worse, is redirected outward by those who benefit from chaos.
We saw this in the young man who attempted to assassinate Trump and members of his cabinet at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. His rage was real. It came from somewhere understandable. But the act itself—had it succeeded—would not have dismantled power. It would have fortified it. It would have created a martyr, unified a fracturing movement, and unleashed consequences that would almost certainly have fallen hardest on Black and brown communities already carrying disproportionate risk.
This is the trap.
Unconscious rage is predictable. It is exploitable. It strengthens the very systems it seeks to destroy.
We are seeing similar miscalculations on the global stage. Impulsive displays of force—like reckless military actions—do not always weaken adversaries. They can unify them. They can turn fractures into solidarity. They can hand strategic advantage to those who know how to apply pressure patiently—economically, psychologically, asymmetrically. In a world where information warfare and narrative control are as powerful as weapons, ignorance is no longer passive—it is dangerous.
So where does that leave us?
Right where this piece began—but with higher stakes.
Rage is still not wrong.
But now, more than ever, it must be conscious.
That is why movements like May Day and coordinated national strikes matter. They redirect energy away from spectacle and toward leverage. They apply pressure where it is actually felt—economically, structurally, politically. They refuse the script of violence and instead disrupt the systems that depend on compliance.
Because the truth is simple, even if it is uncomfortable:
The powerful do not fear outrage. They fear organized, sustained, intelligent action.
If rage is the fire, then consciousness is the forge.
Without it, everything burns.
With it, something can be built.
Introduction from 2022: The Grief of Rage
I wrote this piece about one year ago after years of being bullied by egotistical bosses and a broken capitalist system. Anyone who is being brutalized (physically, psychologically, or spiritually) by someone who holds power over you takes unbelievable amounts of inner strength, courage, and perseverance to endure. Feeling rage is never wrong. However, choosing how to express rage can cross social, cultural, and moral boundaries that exist for very good reasons.
I believe rage is something building up all over the world for many reasons such as being bullied by popular kids at school, bullied by a boss at work, bullied by governmental systems designed to enforce huge inequalities baked deep into its operating systems long ago, or bullied by another country who seek to control a people or a place through violence carried out withimpunity.
It doesn’t matter where or how superior power is used to control another human being such use of force is humiliating and is meant to put someone else down. A person on the receiving end of this sort of abuse is suppose to feel fear, sadness, anger, and rage. It is part of the abuse. It is a form of social torture.
If you find yourself in a place of rage, you are right to feel it. Do not try to suppress your rage or run from it. Turn around and face it dead on. Only this way can you choose how to express this rage. It is energy. It has to flow. It will flow whether you are conscious of it or not.
How a persons deals with how rage flow depends on many factors such as family, culture, social groups, emotional maturity, personality, mental health, social structure, and so many other factors. But it is only with conscious awareness that you can capture your rage and choose a better path of action versus a more destructive path.
Rage is going to flow consciously or unconsciously. You begin to heal and regain your strength and dignity when you are conscious of your rage, when you feel your rage, when you own your rage. By doing this, you can use your rage to get to a better place like a sailor who uses the wind to get to where he wants to be rather than letting the wind blow you somewhere you don’t want to be.
Note: Rage can be manufactured, especially in these times. Let’s call this Fake Rage. It is artificially induced into people’s minds by other people seeking to manipulate public sentiment for their own purposes. This is not the kind of rage I am referring to in this blog.
The Grief of Rage: Sacrifice to the Squirrel Gods— A Creative Way to Channel Rage
The Grief of Rage: Sacrifice to the Squirrel Gods | Channeling Rage | Deborah Wunderman Deborah Wunderman (61 subscribers) — Please like and subscribe to my YouTube because I blog there too 😉 95 views • Premiered Nov 29, 2021 Music: High Noon — Patrick Warren [as featured in iMovie for iPhones, music that gets you ready for What’s coming next!]
Thanksgiving… what a wonderful time to get together with family and friends and share our collective blessings, and oh how precious, after a year and a half of not being able to get together due to a global pandemic!
But, Thanksgiving, oh how aggravating, antagonizing, and infuriating it can be to get together with precisely the people who know how to get under your skin. The one’s who know how to rip off the fragile psychological Band-Aid you’ve managed to put over the bubbling hot well of pain, torment, and psychological abuse inflicted on you by people who are supposed to love and support you (friends or family), but instead they get their kicks inflicting emotional pain and psychological torture at your expense.
Since inflicting pain and torture back on them is not the karmic path you want to take, nor may you have the opportunity to tell them just how horrible and monstrous they have become as defectively amoral human beings… something like June was finally able to do when she confronted Serena Waterford in her prison cell in Season 4, Episode 7 of the Handmaid’s Tale. The part where she screams in her face ‘Do You Understand Me’:
The Grief of Rage: The Handmaids Tale Season 4 Episode 7 — June and Serena ‘Do You Understand Me’ |Television Fanatic Television Fanatic (3.9K subscribers) | 525,282 views May 26, 2021 |
If you don’t have this outlet to express your anger and rage at their moral deficiencies and extremely flawed character traits that are hurting you, then try a sacrifice to the squirrel gods!
t’s what our ancestors used to do long, long ago. We think it’s kind of silly and not what a modern person should be doing… but this is another ploy by your tormentors to keep you feeling horrible. They don’t want you to find your voice, your power.
You can’t let go of your rage any more than you can hold onto it.
The only thing you can do is to try to remove the inner obstructions that are hanging you up as you try to navigate through this blistering inner torrent that is moving through you like a river of rage searing its way through your soul.
That is what sacrifices where for long, long ago. They were never for some god sitting up on high making judgements over us all. They were for us… to help us navigate inner rivers of rage so that we do not become the monsters who are tormenting us and causing so much destruction not only in our lives but the shared reality of everyone.
So make a sacrifice…use your creativity to make your voodoo doll, your effigy of your tormentors. Project all their dangerous energies and damaged soul into your talisman and set it out as an offering to any animal spirit you choose–it could be ravens, wolves, or squirrels.
It is so satisfying…and when you feel this satisfaction inside, you have removed an impediment to your rage because it needs to flow, it’s part of your power and you need all parts of your power…the good, the bad, and the ugly… to heal and grow into the individual you want (and know) you are, which is not a monster like your tormentors but a healer and conscious decision maker of your destiny.
The Grief of Rage: Evolving Rage— Storytelling Is Powerful in Helping to Transform Rage
One year later, my rage has not gone away but it has evolved. Margret Atwood is a genesis in capturing the evolution of rage… the kind I’m talking about above. Season 5, episode 10 is absolutely awesome and Billie Eilish’s song dead on! Go Margret, go June, go Serena! Maybe there is hope!
The Grief of Rage: Serena and June Train Scene | The Handmaid’s Tale S5E10 Ending | Samet Turgut Samet Turgut (1.31K subscribers) | Serena and June Train Scene | Video Clip: The Handmaid’s Tale S5E10 Ending Music: Billie Eilish – bury a friend The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 finale ending
It is a few days after Halloween, and monsters seem to fit the season and the times we live in right now.
A few days before Halloween, I heard an interview on It’s Been A Minute called Our Undying Cultural Obsession with Vampires. And this got me thinking about monsters and how they are made.
It is she who said monsters are made. Think Frankenstein, definitely constructed by a human.
And we do this all the time…in our heads simply repeating the stories we tell ourselves that create indelible images, which we then project onto the world we live in. Or better said, the world we wish we lived in.
Monsters Are Made:The Planet We Made
Monsters Are Made: Cover of Time Magazine : The Planet We Made — The Planet We Need — Social Sculpture…How We Can All Participate in Protecting and Seeing Earth Anew — Artwork by Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson is an Icelandic–Danishartist known for sculptured and large-scale installation art that employ elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. He designed the cover of Time this month to highlight our collective climate crisis that will affect and impact everyone on Earth. Rich or poor, everyone will pay a huge price for further dithering and delaying on taking immediate action Now.
Olafur tells Time to create the effect on TIME’s cover, he employed a technique called after imaging. By following the instructions on the cover, when the page changes, your eyes re-imagine our overheated planet in the healthy vibrant greens and blues we, the human race, were born into and began our journey as a species through time.
Monsters Are Made:The Monsters We Make
This same elusive after imaging takes place inside our minds. The images that get stored inside our minds are created by the stories we tell ourselves and the images we consume as ordinary citizens.
These images, let’s call them cultural images, are stored in our minds as belief systems. Beliefs are vastly more complicated images than the one created by Olafur Eliasson for the cover of TIME. However, compared to reality, beliefs are pathetic and paltry.
Belief systems tend to leave far more outside (the evil other) than inside (the person who sees the the world like you do). All of us adopt and cultivate belief systems. They help us know who we can trust. And, they help us survive by acting as short cuts to reality.
By popping your beliefs into a situation, you can just get down to action. Or really reaction to a situation because beliefs allow you to skip the work of hard thinking, critical analysis, and feeling into what you are actually experiencing.
Systems of belief are informed by the families we grow up in, the cultures we live in, and the religions we participate in (or do not participate in). Systems of belief are further evolved and informed by friends, peers, teachers, clubs, politics, and media, among many other sources.
Whether you accept the stories and images imparted to you through these systems, whether you believe them or you don’t believe them, beliefs about how the world is or isn’t are formed and held in the mind very much like the phantom image Olafur Eliasson created on the cover of TIME.
Each and every belief are things you have choose to accept, to believe, and to store in your head. You choose to believe the things you think are true or what you don’t believe or believe to be not true, regardless of whether they are empirically true or not true.
Once you commit to a belief (in other words you swallow an idea hook, line, and sinker), it creates an indelible image of how the world is, which gets overlay onto everything you do and everyone around you. Very much like the elusive image Olafur Eliasson made for the November 2022 cover of TIME. You put them there, and then you project them on the world.
Beliefs are more likes wishes, fears, and desires. They accord with more how we want the world to be rather than how it really is. Our wish/fear/wants live inside our minds and are projected on the world every moment of our lives. They hoover and cling to everything and everyone we come into contact with like a ghostly aura. Depending on what our projected system of beliefs tells us we should believe about a person or a thing that comes into our narrow bandwidth of focused conscious attention, aligns our actions and behavior in the world.
This rather simple ability has oversized implications–some good, some bad. It is an ability that we take for granted as human beings. Our ability to create systems of beliefs is a form of ignorance (ig–nor–ance, what we choose not to see) and it has gotten the better of us. It is what allows us to turn ordinary human beings into monsters or our world into a wasteland.
Kendra R. Parker explains our creation of and fascination with monsters this way:
When Dracula appeared in the 19th century, there was all of this fear, the English were preoccupied with borders, boundaries and nationalism. Between like 1881 and 1900 there was an increase in the number of non-English Jewish people. There was this xenophobia, this fear of Jewish people, this sort of threat of external colonization. And so these fears about the threatening outsider, who is going to come in and disturb the national pure body, finds its way into Bram Stoker's Dracula.
And if we come to the United States in 1898, we have newspaper images popping up out of North Carolina that depict Black men as vampires because there was this fear of Black men. There's this fear of black men being in politics and so that if you got black political power, then they're going to take over and destroy white women and all of that. And so you've got all of this propaganda.
And there are two images in particular. One is called "The Vampire that Hovers Over North Carolina." It appears in 1898, and it's a Black male vampire coming out of a ballot box. And there's another image that same time period in North Carolina where you got vampires coming out of the grave to vote and they're Black. And so there's this fear that if you let these monsters vote, they will take over and destroy our way of life.
When we use our system of beliefs to turn other human beings into monsters, it is ourselves who become the monster. When hate becomes our fuel, then the transformation is complete. The monster has been made.
It is a way of being in the world that leads to Hell. It is the path of destruction, of mayhem, and of death.
It is a way of being in the world that may begin by being suspicious, distrustful, and skeptical. But it can quickly eclipse who you think you are and make you into a person who takes pleasure in being cynical, ghoulish, grisly, and grotesque.
Such a journey is often summed up by the popular phrase —Take The Red Pill. This means a person that falls down a rabbit hole. They start out innocently following juicy breadcrumbs of gossip and plausibly outrageous happens that grow ever more implausible. But once you get hooked on these toxic breadcrumbs carefully left behind by Master Manipulators who are experts in making the implausible sound plausible. Indeed, the Truth that you are willing to die for.
Accused Pelosi Attacker Told Police He Was On A ‘Suicide Mission’
Monsters Are Made:How To Make of a Monster
Step 1) Chop the world into absolutely good and absolutely evil, then choose a role to play in this absolute drama (it goes without saying that whatever side you play on… that is the righteous side, the good guys, the side that is going to slay absolute evil)
Step 2) Select a Mask for the role you will play in the absolute drama to rid the world of absolute evil (make sure you are the Super Hero of your story and everyone else is the bad guy)
Step 3) Strap Your Mask Tightly To Your Face So It Doesn’t Slip or Fall Off (you don’t want anyone to see you are merely human like the people and other living beings you are dehumanizing)
Step 4) Cut Up Bits and Pieces from the World and Other Stories, Then Mash Them Into Your Mask So You Become Unrecognizable Like Camouflage (it doesn’t matter if the bits and pieces make sense anymore, you are creating your super hero version of yourself!)
Step 5) Add Lots of Layers to Your Mask, Be Sure to Use Lots of Devilish Deceit and Deception, More Camouflage to Help You Better Play Your Role (God forbid anyone recognize that you’re really human behind your Fake Persona)
Step 6) Distort, Deform, and Mangle Your Mask to Create Fantastic New Levels of Distractions and Illusions, Even More Camouflage… Fighting Evil Isn’t for Sissies (this will draw others to you — your followers, your zombie army)
Step 7) Forget You Are Wearing A Mask: Now You Are A Monster
Monsters Are Made:Image From: Metaflesh by Evan J. Peterson
I have not read this book, Metaflesh. But, the image of the cover is captivating. To me, it perfectly captures how we can turn ourselves into monsters using any system of belief, any one at all. In the land of make believe, nothing is sacred. Once we slip down a rabbit holes inside our minds, the inner Hellish landscape allows us to endlessly violently project onto others what we cannot admit to ourselves that we are.
This is a book review of Metaflesh from where I got the image:
Metaflesh is written by Evan J. Peterson, author of The PrEP Diaries: A Safe(r) Sex Memoir and DragStar!, the world’s first drag performer role-playing game. Metaflesh is a book of verse and prose from the point of view of Frankenstein’s Monster. The reflections are inspired not only by Mary Shelley’s seminal work (double entendre fully intended) but also by the pop culture descendants of her novel. Sources include a wide variety of Frankenstein/mad scientist movies and song lyrics. The book also contains themes of Jewish folklore, queer culture, camp, and a lot of David Cronenberg-style body horror. The book covers the gamut of the Monster’s experiences through over a century of movies and songs, and portrays the Monster as both gender-fluid and a sort of chimerical film critic, reviewing portrayals of their self through lyric poetry and flash fiction.
This is an ingenious book of metafiction. Just as Dr. Frankenstein cut up different people and stitched the bits together, Peterson cut up and reassembled his sources, turning them into something greater than the sum of their parts. Borrowing from William S. Burroughs cut-up technique, he splices together Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with F.T. Marinetti’s Manifesto del Futurismo (Futurist Manifesto) and with J. G. Ballard’s essay, “Why I want to F*ck Ronald Reagan.” He apostrophizes the sexually explicit films of avant-garde queer Canadian creator Bruce LaBruce and doesn’t forget to include General Mills’ Frankenberry breakfast cereal or select lines from Mommy Dearest and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The combined imagery of classical Greek mythology, white supremacy, drag queens, Judaism, and zombie erotica do not merge into a hot mess but meld together into a deliciously readable book.
This literary retrospective is sad, funny, quirky, surgically precise, and captivating. I was never bored and didn’t skip through parts. I tore through my first reading at speed and have been taking my time through subsequent readings. The only spot which slows me down, pulling me to a frowning halt, is a simile in the poem, “His Name is In Me”: “gross as the tallest savage.” Although I’m aware that white supremacist imagery is intentionally used throughout the book—punching up, not down—the use of the word “savage” feels out of place here. It is a racial slur used against Black and Indigenous peoples and stands out awkwardly in a poem strongly based in Judaic imagery. If it is a slur used against Jews, I am unaware, but this is my only quibble with the entire book. -- Book Review: Metaflesh by Evan J. Peterson
Monsters Are Made:Someone OnceTold Me
Someone once told me that my blog The StoryTelling Species Series was just a story. He really just wanted to put it down and elevate himself because we were having a very strong disagreement about COVID. I knew he was wrong, but could not explain to him why he was so wrong then.
Now I can. I knew it is the stories we tell ourselves that make us into heroes or villains, good or evil, saints or monsters. Now I know how it happens inside our minds.
Given how susceptible we are to believe our own stories and lies about ourselves, it is best to give all other people the benefit of the doubt and trust they are not the monster you are afraid of… the one that lives inside of you. It is best just be human and to recognize that we have a little bit of good and a little bit of bad inside of us.
It is when we hang onto the evil inside of us and refuse to let go of it that we make ourselves into monsters and turn Earth into Hell. Trust that reality is far more interesting than the stories we tell ourselves about our selves and others.
Trust that you belong here and now with everyone else and that together we can heal ourselves. This is something we can only do together. And if we heal, Earth heals and our burning hot planet may once again shine in its brilliant, beautiful, life sustaining blues and greens!
UFOs No… But Unexplained Inner Phenomena, Yes: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (2/8) Movie CLIP – Chasing the UFOs (1977) HD 261,453 views, Oct 7, 2012
Or ET:
UFOs No… But Unexplained Inner Phenomena, Yes: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (2/10) Movie CLIP – Getting Drunk (1982) HD 4,391,816 views, May 27, 2011
UFOs No… But Unexplained Inner Phenomena, Yes: But Are They Real?
Not long ago, in an extremely rare moment of bipartisan unity, Republicans and Democrats came together to discuss UFOs, now called unexplained aerial phenomena or UAPs by the military. It is the first Congressional meeting on the topic since 1969.
UFOs No… But Unexplained Inner Phenomena, Yes: Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray, left, and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie speak Tuesday during a House Intelligence, Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee hearing on “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” on Capitol Hill in Washington. Alex Brandon/AP — Image from NPR Report on Congress UFO Hearing
David listened into the hearing along with Mick West.
Mick West is a British science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. He is the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, and he investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs. Wikipedia
This short episode of This American Life is a curation of their discussion of the Congressional Hearing while they listened to military officials present a report to Congress that includes about 400 incidents, which is up from 143 assessed in a report released about a year ago.
Mick explained a lot of the unexplained aerial phenomena as camera artifacts such as these:
Scott W. Bray, the deputy director of Naval intelligence, told lawmakers there is no evidence of aliens, and they still haven’t uncovered anything “nonterrestrial in origin,” although there remain incidents they can’t explain.
UFOs No… But Unexplained Inner Phenomena, Yes: That Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Real
Despite lacking physical evidence that proves the reality of UFOs (other than other explanations such as camera artifacts, mylar balloons, and contrails) that does not mean there isn’t something very real going on. Indeed, this unexplained phenomena is as old as man’s ability to articulate his experiences to others. What makes humans extraordinary on this planet is our shared ability to perceive and share physical reality through words, symbols, and ideas. Human beings also share the ability to perceive and make sense of inner realities. Indeed, mankind’s most spectacular ideas and inventions originate from this inner dimension of being.
Carl Jung is best known for his theories of the human subconscious and the idea he termed the Collective Unconscious. Through his practice as a psychiatrist, he came to believe humanity shares a subconscious mind that stores the memories of all human beings, dead and alive, that are available to us through images, visions, dreams, and other phenomena humans experience, especially at times of stress, trauma, life and death.
UFOs No… But Unexplained Inner Phenomena, Yes: The notion of collective consciousness was put forward by Carl Gustav Jung (Image: Lightspring/Shutterstock) — Image from: Carl Jung and the Concept of Collective Consciousness
Jung wrote a book about UFO and paranormal phenomenon. Here are two summaries of this book:
While Jung is known mainly for his theories on the nature of the unconscious mind, he did have an interest in the paranormal. In this essay, Jung applies his analytical skills to the UFO phenomenon. Rather than assuming that the modern prevalence of UFO sightings are due to extraterrestrial craft, Jung reserves judgment on their origin & connects UFOs with archetypal imagery, concluding that they have become a "living myth." This essay is intriguing in its methodology & implications as to the nature of UFOs & their relation to the human psyche. -- GoodReads: Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies
In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets.... Even people who would never have thought that a religious problem could be a serious matter that concerned them personally are beginning to ask themselves fundamental questions. Under these circumstances it would not be at all surprising if those sections of the community who ask themselves nothing were visited by `visions,' by a widespread myth seriously believed in by some and rejected as absurd by others.--C. G. Jung, in Flying Saucers Jung's primary concern in Flying Saucers is not with the reality or unreality of UFOs but with their psychic aspect. Rather than speculate about their possible nature and extraterrestrial origin as alleged spacecraft, he asks what it may signify that these phenomena, whether real or imagined, are seen in such numbers just at a time when humankind is menaced as never before in history. The UFOs represent, in Jung's phrase, a modern myth. -- GoogleBooks Summary
Jung maintained throughout his life that man’s inner life, dreams, images, visions is real and carries a reality, a gravity that can be felt in our lives each and every day.
UFOs No… But Unexplained Inner Phenomena, Yes: Reality Is Strange | We Need Inner Astronauts Now More Than Ever
Perhaps we need more inner astronauts willing and able to go where no man has gone before, equipped with abilities to chart our inner space, just as we do our outer space. Indeed, inner space may be far vaster than the universe, which may be a little phenomena of this vast inner space that we do not understand very much at all.
In a time of so much crisis, we need to learn how to better articulate inner weather and dangerous patterns just as we have learned to watch and predict weather patterns and identify dangerous patterns such as Hurricane Ian.
There have been many dangerous and horrible natural disasters this year, including devastating floods in Pakistan, acute heat waves and historically lower water levels in rivers throughout Europe, and increasingly bigger and deadlier fires worldwide (see 2022 International Wildfires: As of Sept. 8, the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) estimates that within European Union countries, between 2 million acres and 2.1 million acres have burned).
There is also dangerous and deadly inner weather that is sweeping the world. It travels on currents of propaganda, misinformation, lies, and conspiracy myths. Hurricane Putin is meaning the entire world with his threats of nukes, sabotaging his own pipeline (a play he used to get into power when he had apartment buildings blown up and blamed it on Chechen separatists), and the death, destruction, and torture of Ukrainians. His maniacal invasion of Ukraine rides on his strangle hold on power in Russia allowing him to infect and propagate a collective homicidal psychosis among his people. His and other strong arm actors in our world are distracting us and contributing to our collective failure to mitigate climate change while we still can.
Can you tell which pictures that are Putin’s hurricane of devastation and death and which are Ian?
Your answer is unique and utterly up to you based on your attitudes, beliefs, upbringing, and current circumstances. At first, as I searched for images of what Satan’s sister might look like, I had no idea of what I might be looking for.
I wondered whether she should look ugly like a wicked witch, gender neutral, or bewitchingly beautiful.
I stumbled upon Félicien Rops (a Belgian artists who lived between 1833 – 1898) finding his uncanny image of Satan. I found it on a poetry website and immediately thought–sure this could be what Satan’s sister looks like–sinister, sterile, and scary.
I felt I was definitely on the right track, but sought a clearer image. As I searched for one, I stumbled upon Pyramid Girl. I knew at once this was a better rendering of Satan’s sister. She is beguilingly beautiful and utterly alien at the same time–a spine-chilling duality exists about her.
Satan’s Sister, Santa Claus & the AntiChrist: Pyramid Girl
Then, I found another Pyramid Head Woman in a field. This was the next line of my poem, which sealed the deal this was the image I was searching for.
I have never encountered Pyramid Woman before, but obviously she is well-known by others and depicted as a victim and an invincible warrior. I felt this duality was another key aspect to be embodied by Satan’s sister. I found two more images embodying these qualities created by an artist at the Stan Winston School of Character Art. Here I learned her apron is made of human skin, very creepy indeed and a perfect outfit for Satan’s sister.
The last image used in the archetypal animation just grabbed me. I suppose it is all the gold and skeletons. Satan’s sister would certainly be involved in collecting the dead. She would also be a devilish seductress–beautiful and scary at once.
So this is the process for how the first archetypal animation was created.
What does it mean?
That is something for you to fill in.
During his life, Carl Jung came to understand all human beings share common archetypal patterns of behavior and belief as demonstrated through customs, rituals, and myths. Certain recognizable psychological patterns and images appear over and over again between cultures and times. They live deep inside the psyche of all human beings and contain collective memories that pop into action when of specific circumstances and situations are encountered. They act much like instincts do, but archetypal patterns are more like instincts altered by consciousness.
Jung described archetypes as empty templates ready to be filled by the psychic forces triggered into action by external events. These invisible templates provide imprints of all the possibilities and consequences of choices and actions triggered by the situation.
The music for this archetypal image provides vital context and background like a fantastic fabric for space-time beings to experience things. This music is fabulous, providing texture, vibrance, and life to the image. It is Moon Runner by Dance With the Dead.
In creating this image, my search took me into the realm of mythic goddesses. It did not take long to understand many of the goddesses associated with death carry the blade of time with them. Death is inevitable as a mortal being and the goddesses associated with death embody this reality.
The Goddess Kali is the Divine Mother in Hinduism and known to be fierce and cause destruction of all evils, including ignorance. She is considered to be the master of death, time and change. When I found this image of Morrighan, my search focused in on the Celtic and Nordic goddesses of death.
Satan’s Sister, Santa Claus & the AntiChrist: Morrighan — Celtic Goddess of Death
“Morrighan is also known as Phantom queen or Morrigu. In Irish mythology, she is known as the Goddess of Death, who is associated with mainly war, battle, and death. She is also famous because of her foretelling death in the battle. Because of her association with war and battles, she is also known as a great warrior who determines which warriors walk off the battlefield.” — 21 Gods & Goddesses of Destruction, Death & Underworld
Hel is another goddess of death rising from the myths of the Nordic peoples.
Satan’s Sister, Santa Claus & the AntiChrist: Hel — The Norse Goddess of Death
“She is the ruler of the underworld and death. She is the daughter of Loki and Angrboda. Her appearance is pretty hard to explain, but it is half blue and half flesh-colored with some gloomy texture downside. She has a hall called Eljudnir, and it is a strong belief in Norse Mythology that it is the hall where mortals go who do not die in battle but of natural causes or sickness.” — 21 Gods & Goddesses of Destruction, Death & Underworld
This is another compelling rendering of Hel drawn by LeneMa7991.
Satan’s Sister, Santa Claus & the AntiChrist: Germanic Gods: HEL goddess of death
And this is another depiction of Morrigan that I found on the website of The Druid Way.
Another goddess of death I found was Delire. She is not the goddess of Death in general, but instead the goddess of the Fallen, much like the valkyries of Norse mythology.
Satan’s Sister, Santa Claus & the AntiChrist: Delire | “You have served well soldier. It’s time to retire.”
Back to the Eastern Mind
The last element of the archetypal animation is the music, which circles us back to the eastern mind and the wisdom of the upanishads that are treatises on Brahman-knowledge, which is knowledge of Ultimate Hidden Reality. I chose the song Al Bid-Aya by Jedi Mind Tricks from their album The Bridge and the Abyss. It is haunting and beautiful and utterly perfect for this topic if you listen to their official video of this song.
Al Bid-Aya | 122,715 views, Jun 21, 2018
Third Archetypal Image:
Why is Santa’s Glögg spiked?
For the third archetypal image, I baffled myself with its own imagery. Why is Santa popping into this otherwise dark and haunting poem? And why is Satan’s sister spiking his holiday Glögg with the broken up bits of sinners?
Perhaps Santa is serving somewhat like a cosmic hero of goodness and good cheer. He has so much of it, he is able to consume dangerous amounts of collective sin down to the dregs on behalf of all of us to ease our misery and allow for a time of good cheer. This though made me think of Dumbledore who drank the poisoned water so Harry could destroy a ‘horcrux’–a thing of great evil that if not destroyed would led to the downfall of everyone they know and love.
This last archetypal animation is the most elusive to take accounting of for it veers straight into the Christmas season–a time when many people make a considerable effort to show a spirit of good cheer and collective good will. Why? Because it is a time when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus; however, as an excellent Washington Post article points out, ‘Dec. 25 is not the date mentioned in the Bible as the day of Jesus’s birth; the Bible is actually silent on the day or the time of year when Mary was said to have given birth to him in Bethlehem. The earliest Christians did not celebrate his birth.‘
This article further states the first celebration of Jesus’ birth took place ‘around 200 A.D. — to have taken place on Jan. 6. Why? Nobody knows, but it may have been the result of “a calculation based on an assumed date of crucifixion of April 6 coupled with the ancient belief that prophets died on the same day as their conception,” according to religionfacts.com.’
It was moved to December 25 to piggy back on pagan celebrations (such as “The Golden Bough”) that occurred during this time. Especially as practiced by the fierce and wild tribes of northern Europe–the Celtics, the Norses, and many other germanic tribes who celebrated the shortest day of the year, which signaled the return of light to their barren and frigid northern lands.
Good Olde St. Nick
Christmas underwent a further transformation with the elevation of St. Nicholas as a patron saint of Christmas. He was a real man, a Bishop, who lived in the fourth century in a place called Myra in Asia Minor (now called Turkey). He was known for helping the poor and giving secret gifts to people who needed it.
Christmas took another dramatic turn with the popularization of Santa Claus as the legendary man who encircles the world in one night flying in his sleigh to give good boys and girls around the world presents and delights. Holiday specials such as Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town, which showed the transformation of the real man St. Nicholas into the superhero Christmas giver of cheer and goodwill worldwide.
Santa Claus Is Coming!
It is a delightful Christmas story. One I watched every year as a child for Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without Frosty, Rudolph, and Santa Claus!
Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town — The Full Movie | 7,476,556 views
So what is up with this spiking Santa’s tea with the broken up bits of sinners, obviously people who were not on Santa’s Good List to get toys and presents at Christmas time.
Santa and Dumbledore
Is this image referring to the self-sacrificing ability of some individuals who are capable of far more good deeds than the rest of us to ease our burden for a time?
This idea reminded me of Dumbledore drinking the poison water so Harry could destroy another ‘horcrux’. Perhaps Santa and Dumbledore represent a certain type of individual, or better yet, these characters are archetypes of a powerful curative force that lives inside of us and allows a human being to endure pain and suffering, even unto death, for the good of others.
This seemed to be on the right trail and so the images I found included these.
Satan’s Sister, Santa Claus & the AntiChrist: Image from Freepik: Santa having a drink
This definitely could be Santa enjoying a holiday Glögg left out for him. Then, images of Dumbledore to establish the connection between the two.
And of course Dumbledore drinking the poison, which turns out to be the most important image and article of everything explored here.
Satan’s Sister, Santa Claus & the AntiChrist: Image from: Division and Disloyalty: Ignoring Our Friends’ Wishes – and Our Own | Featured image: Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) suffers in excruciating pain in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) as he swallows the harmful potion he made himself drink. ‘This potion might paralyse me, might make me forget why I’m here, might cause me so much pain I beg for relief. You are not to indulge these requests. It’s your job, Harry, to make sure I keep on drinking this potion, even if you have to force it down my throat.’ Like Dumbledore, we make promises which we go on to contradict, creating fascinating ethical dilemmas for those around us. (Warner Bros. Pictures)
This article, Division and Disloyalty: Ignoring Our Friends’ Wishes — and Our Own that was written by James Clark Ross and published 21 April 2020, is what my psyche was trying to convey to me as I assembled the final animation for this very short and not very good poem. He writes:
We like to think of ourselves as unified agents. With apparent clarity, we take ownership of who we are and the decisions we make. But we are misled. Clarity assumes consensus; and, underneath ‘ourselves’, motivations divide us. Of our conscious thoughts, we form beliefs which immediately retreat, dematerialise, or mutate beyond recognition into new tokens. Of our unconscious desires, feelings pass by and vanish, having never really existed. Who we are—what we believe and what we desire—is unstable, uncertain, and transient. This is troubling. For how can we be sure that one part of ourselves persists through time? We can only claim who we are on unsteady ground. More, are we in conflict? If we don’t coordinate our motivations with unity, disloyalty will always be within us: we will always be fighting ourselves. Who will your friends side with? Welcome to a lesson on division and disloyalty.
Clark is getting at the division raging inside of ourselves. Jung also spoke of this inner divide saying:
“The greatest sin is to be unconscious.”
— C.G. Jung quotes from Quotefancy.com
Our world is very complicated and most of us are taught to operate in it like very small, spoiled children. We are taught to not question the system but to go to work at nine, come home at 6, squeeze all the housework, time with children, spouse or friends into 4 or 5 hours, go to sleep, wake up and do it again. Why? So we can be good consumers for the system that we must depend upon to sustain us or else we can’t go on.
But should we really want to go on? Is our current system of a modern life really so great? Is it so glorious and so out-of-this-world that we are willing to commit to most of our adult life to being good and obedient consumers? Is that what we really want?
Alan Watts often posed this question, what do you really want? Do we really want to play the social games of who is the boss, who can have more and who should have less, going to work at places that are mind numbing and super boring only to get laid off when we get too old or its not convenient (Nomadland captures this reality brilliantly).
The final element of this archetypal animation, a musical piece with a diabolical edge –the Evil Christmas Carols.
Frosty’s Death March | 179 viewsOct 28, 2015
The Third Archetype: The AntiChrist
This Archetype does not become apparent for another 5 years, but it is rising even in the Now of this time… in the sleeping fog of the MAGA movement… in the dim brains of Trump, Miller, Musk, Vought, RFK Jr., and the rest of the bunch of bumpkins that will rush into the Presidential Office of the United States of America to speed up and usher in the final collapse of the American Empire, and quite possibly the world.
Reflecting from the Advantage of Five Years into the Future: Satan’s Sister, Santa Claus & the AntiChrist: Reflections on Now Needs to Be Updated As Follows:
As of late April 2026, the second Trump administration has been defined by escalation, spectacle, vengeance politics, and a governing style rooted in dominance rather than stability. Domestically, it has intensified deportations, expanded loyalty-based purges of institutions, weaponized investigations against critics, and governed through constant emergency framing. Internationally, it has plunged the United States into a widening confrontation with Iran, triggering global economic shockwaves and renewed fears of a broader Middle East war.
Estimated Human Cost to Date (Based on Public Reporting / Incomplete Figures)
Because wartime numbers are always contested, these should be framed as conservative estimates:
Immigrants / asylum seekers harmed by detention, deportation, denial of entry, family separation, and unsafe removals: difficult to quantify directly; humanitarian groups typically measure this in injuries, disappearances, suicides, and preventable deaths rather than one total number. Likely dozens to hundreds across systems over time, though official counts remain opaque.
U.S. citizens killed or endangered through conflict escalation: no comprehensive verified total yet publicly consolidated, but military personnel casualties and contractor deaths are possible in the Iran theater.
People on boats / naval conflict casualties: reports tied to the Hormuz crisis cite at least one vessel sunk with 104 Iranian sailors killed and others captured/interdicted.
Iran War total deaths (military + civilian): no definitive official figure yet, but with sustained strikes since late February, regional analysts would likely place deaths in the hundreds to low thousands when counting combatants, infrastructure strikes, and indirect casualties.
If Trump Refuses to Resolve the Conflict & the Strait of Hormuz Remains Closed
If the Strait remains partially or fully blocked, the consequences could be severe:
1. Global Oil Shock
Roughly a major share of global seaborne oil passes through Hormuz. Prolonged disruption would likely mean:
Sharp fuel price spikes
Inflation returning worldwide
Airline, shipping, trucking disruptions
Food price increases
2. Recession Risk
Europe and Asia would absorb major supply shocks. Fragile economies could tip into recession.
3. Expanded War
Iran-aligned groups in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewhere could widen attacks. U.S. retaliation could spread the war across multiple fronts.
4. American Political Blowback
If gas prices surge and body bags return, domestic support could erode quickly.
5. Strategic Decline
A superpower that creates crises but cannot solve them appears weaker, not stronger.
The Archetype of the AntiChrist
The AntiChrist archetype is not merely a religious villain. Psychologically and symbolically, it represents:
False salvation through ego
Power masquerading as truth
Spectacle replacing substance
Worship of image over moral reality
Division presented as redemption
The demand that followers abandon conscience for loyalty
It is the inversion of the sacred: using sacred language while serving domination.
How Trump Identifies With It Symbolically
Trump’s public behavior repeatedly leans into messianic imagery:
posting himself in saintly or Christ-like iconography
presenting himself as the only savior
demanding personal loyalty over law
attacking moral authorities when they challenge him
turning grievance into gospel
Recent reports also describe symbolic conflict with the Pope and continued use of self-exalting imagery in public messaging.
Trump Jesus
Closing Analysis
Santa Claus gives gifts without asking loyalty in return. Satan tempts openly. But the AntiChrist archetype is more dangerous because it comes smiling, wrapped in promises, cloaked in righteousness, demanding applause while emptying the soul of truth. Our age is not threatened merely by villains—it is threatened by performers mistaken for saviors.
“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.” ―Lao Tzu
There are so many problems in the world; huge, convoluted, intricate, life and death problems that have no easy answers or solutions. If you are listening to someone who is saying: “I KNOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD.” This person has no clue what is wrong or what to do about it.
Humanity in its broadest sense is floating once again on a vast and mighty Sea of Uncertainty. For some (and I am only talking about the individual level, not the collective), the uncertainty is no less than life or death. For others, they can only watch as a helpless observers to the multiple crises unfolding and must bear witness to the individual and collective descent of humanity, doing whatever they can to help, no matter how small the action may seem. For still others, this moment fills them with fear and they run away and deny the realities of this moment, preferring to hide their light of consciousness under a bushel. The worst among us, are using this moment and their light of consciousness to misled, misdirect, confuse, and frighten others so they may benefit and profit from the disorientation, confusion, and mayhem touching everyone’s life right now (e.g., this might mean they cultivate a flock of admirers who hang on your every word; they sow seeds deceit to gain money, power, status; or they indulge their criminal instinct certain no one will notice in all the chaos).
An illustration of the parable, together with the parable of the Growing Seed, which follows it in Mark chapter 4 (Source: Wikipedia)
"And no man, when he hath lighted a lamp, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but putteth it on a stand, that they that enter in may see the light. For nothing is hid, that shall not be made manifest; nor [anything] secret, that shall not be known and come to light. Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he thinketh he hath."— Luke 8:16-18, King James Version
Crisis and complexity is not new to us as human beings. We have always been a species who had to find a way to survive through crisis and calamity. Long ago, such fate was visited upon us as a species by nature. More recently, we create the fate we must survive be it culturally, socially, politically, or any thing that calls upon our membership to the human race. It is not possible to be alive today without wearing both hats: that of an individual and that of a member of a collective.
Today, witness the shambalic pull out of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
PBS NewsHour West live episode, Aug. 19, 2021 | The Fall of Afghanistan
The destructive earthquake in Haiti:
Haitians left homeless by 7.2 magnitude earthquake now brace for storm
The brutal, heartless War in Yemem and the death toll of children.
Stalked by death: How rising food insecurity is killing war-torn Yemen’s children
The desperate journey immigrants from around the world make across the Darien Gap.
How U.S. immigration policy affects fate of migrants braving the deadly Darien Gap
Anti vaxxers fueling the Delta variant’s death toll, even among children.
Vaccine, mask opponents are fueling the delta variant’s death toll. Will incentives help?
I have left many tragedies out. But if you are a human of goodwill and good conscious, you know what I have left out. Again, I am focusing on the actions and consequents or non-actions and consequents of individuals, not collectives (of which we are all members of one kind or another; the actions/consequents or non-actions/consequents of collectives are an entirely different order).
Because I am human and because I am enraged by the tremendous amount of misinformation spread by anti vaxxers, I am going to pick on the anti vaxxers for a moment to illustrate something critical in understanding the Secrets of the Golden Flower and Diamond Body.
I have had a glimpse into their world, and I have seen them congratulating each other for getting kicked off social media platforms when the spread misinformation. I see them admitting to each other how they choose not to get vaccinated nor wear a mask and then just pretend in crowds they are vaccinated–taking a don’t ask, don’t tell approach to what they view as an unjust infringement of their individual liberties. I see them celebrating sickness and their body’s ability to fight off anything. I see them comparing mask mandates to Hitler’s Germany. I hear them proclaiming if they resist, they will rise up on the other side of this as the people who are going to bring in a more beautiful world or the people who are going to overthrown totalitarianism in all its manifestations or the people who will be the new Super Athletes of the world (a echo of Hitler’s Super Race myth). I hear them crying fowl that they might not be allowed into bars, restaurants, gyms, workplaces, or even to donate an organ if they cannot prove they’ve had the vaccine.
Have they not seen the suffering of individuals crossing the Darien Gap? Have they not seen the children dying in Yemen because they don’t have food? And there are many children in the mighty Untied States suffering from food shortages too–where is their attention and empathy for striving children anywhere in the world. Or for the plight of the people in Haiti who 6 days later still lack medical equipment, food, water, or help of any kind! Or the millions of people left stranded in Afghanistan after Western powers left (primarily my country: the U.S.) leaving them to the mercy of a brutal, barbaric, backwards, twisted regime that hunt and kill people based on a warped and twisted worldview and religious interpretation filled with hate, especially against women and girls or men who choose to believe different than they do.
Apparently, they have not. They have been too focused on their own fears (real or not) that their rights are being trampled on and the world is going to be ruled by Hitler’s once again.
I have also caught a glimpse into some who are promoting some of the most stubborn and kooky anti-COVID theories. Among some of the staunchest anti-vaxxers, you will hear how society is sick and going to die now. These messages send their followers into pure panic to the point some are digging bunkers and preparing for the end of the world. I know some who are doing this.
Many of the farthest out narratives draw upon religious symbolism and language such as expressed by Catholic Cardinal Burke, who recently was put on a ventilator due to the disease he denied existed. Just in December of 2020, he preached about forces, totalitarian in nature, determined to rule over us .
Where I have seen some of the most infantile responses to COVID-19 is inside the Facebook bubble that I got sorted into. It is a group of people who are passionate about Climate Change. They are people who want to change the system in order to bring in a new, better, more beautiful world. Who could argue this is wrong, expect COVID-19 has revealed to me that there is a long and very dark shadow carefully hidden underneath many of my duly sorted Facebook men and women good intentions to save the world (and I count myself among those concealing a dark shadow).
I know for a fact that I suffer from the same unconscious desire to save the world, and I hide the same shadow underneath all my flowery virtue-isms. I am not that guy standing in the creek, facing down the alligators while holding a log for others to walk safely across. I am a slow learner and it has been hard to accept I can’t do a damn thing about the world, expect possible try to live my own life with a little joy and attention to those I love, and possibly cultivate a little more High Virtue actions by accepting all of who I am.
I know that most of my vexation and annoyance at the selfish and immature behavior of the anti vaxxer crowd is a sign I am not fully become conscious of my own annoying, naive, and stupid behavior. Nor have I fully forgiven myself for the foolish, puerile behavior I have become conscious of.
Alan Watts also says further that when one sets out upon the path of self-development, all the debtors suddenly appear seeking payment for your past karma (karma is nothing more than action and all action (or non-action) has a consequence).
Alan Watts ~ Becoming Free Of Past Karma | 577,631 views; May 20, 2020
“It is believed generally in India that when a person sets out on the way of liberation his first problem is to become free from his past karma. The popular theory of karma the word that literally means action or doing in Sanskrit. So that when we say that something that happens to you is your karma it’s like saying in english it’s your own doing. But in in popular Indian belief karma is a sort of built-in moral law or a law of retribution such that all the bad things you do and all the good things you do have consequences which you have to inherit. And so long as karmic energy remains (all the bad things you do and all the good things you do) you have to work it out and what the sage endeavors to do is a kind of action which in Sanskrit is called: nishkama karma nishkama. This means without passion or without attachment.” — Alan Watts
The Taoist Way – Alan Watts Chillstep Mix | 186,070 views; Dec 3, 2020
“Now when the time comes that you start to get out of the chain of karma all the creditors that you have start presenting themselves for payment. In other words a person who begins say to study yoga is felt that he will suddenly get sick or that his children will die or that he’ll lose his money or all sorts of catastrophes will occur because uh the karmic debt is being cleared up and uh it there’s in no hurry to be cleared up if you’re just living along like anybody. But if you embark on the spiritual life a certain hurry occurs and therefore since this is known uh it’s rather discouraging to start these things. The christian way of saying the same thing is that if you plan to be to change your life shall we say to turn over a new leaf you mustn’t let the devil know.” — Alan Watts (around minute 23)
I foolishly got into a debate about which perspective was right regarding COVID–is it a lie or is it really happening. It was a futile discussion for if I had truly learned anything from listening to hours and hours of Alan Watts via YouTube, I would have simply accepted this position as part of the great happening we are all apart of… and yet, sometimes, I find myself separating from Watts universal, masterful perspective and descending into questioning… but why?
In the course of this rather rancorous discussion, we found we agreed on relative realities and I shared my series on bubble realities.
The Storytelling Species: Makers and Players of Reality (Part 1 of 6)
However, that was about all we agreed upon. After a lengthy illness from which I have still not recovered, I found considerable criticism of my thinking. It is futile to engage in further thought of our ongoing disagreement, but one negative assessment must be addressed. My dialogue partner said: “A story is just a story.”
Well this is true if you are perceiving and arguing simply from the physical realm of reality that we all live in. This includes bodies and bridges, cities and towns, trees and skyscrapers– you get the picture. This is not true when you are perceiving and working from the non-physical world. The dimension where the Diamond Body exists.
In this realm of being, nothing is concrete or enduring. Here, we are confronted with the very best that dwells inside of us and is part of our psyche and developing personality. And, here, we are also confronted with the very darkest, destructive, may I say, evil parts of ourself. Every human being on the planet has a good and bad side. Without these poles, consciousness as we know and understand it would not be possible.
To live together in harmonious groups of people and not tear each others heads off, human beings had to build internal ramparts to protect the individual from out-of-control collective action and to protect the collective from out-of-controlled individual action. We call individual action that is not in accord with the harmony of the collective criminal behavior.
Stories are one of the most important ways societies build and maintain these inner ramparts that protect individual and collective from catastrophe action. When these powerful inner forces begin to crash over and break down the social ramparts carefully constructed over centuries, some of man’s most destructive instincts are let loose. For some of us, this brings death.
Carl Jung was well aware of the dangers that come from inside a perfectly normal man and a perfectly respectable woman, even child. Here are several case Jung handled during his career that helped him understand what is happening the psyche of human beings–the realm of the Diamond Body.
The Symbolic Life | Carl Jung Depth Psychology | Image for blog by Mr. Purrington | 9.7.20
That’s about all I am going to say about current events, anti vaxxers, clearing karma, and the Diamond Body for now. I may turn this into another series. I would just like to point you to the work of Richard Wilhelm who wrote The Secret of the Golden Flower in 1931. He work proved pivotal to Jung’s work on human psychology and psyche, and Jung and Watts were close friends. Watts often drew on the understandings he obtained through long conversations with Jung before Carl Jung died in the early sixties. Sadly, Watts, though much younger, would die himself in the early seventies.
We have been here before as a species on the brink of unrecoverable disaster. If we are luck, we will find a way forward together (as we have done before) and have another opportunity to pull ourselves back from the brink of extinction. Or, as Alan Watts, loved to say, “Perhaps we are that species who does itself in in interesting ways.”
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
The original German edition of The Secret of the Golden Flower, of which the following is the authorized English translation, appeared first in the autumn of 1929. On March 1st, 1930, Richard Wilhelm died. In May, 1930, memorial services in his honour were held in Munich, and Jung was asked to deliver the principal address. The latter finds an appropriate place in the English version, 1 which is published a year or more after the co-author's death. The address will be welcomed, not only for what it tells the reader of Wilhelm, but for the further light it throws on the standpoint of the East.
The relation of the West to Eastern thought is a highly paradoxical and confusing one. On the one side, as Jung points out, the East creeps in among us by the back door of the unconscious, and strongly influences us in perverted forms, and on the other we repel it with violent prejudice as concerned with a fine-spun metaphysics that is poisonous to the scientific mind.
If anyone is in doubt as to how far the East influences us in secret ways, let him but briefly investigate the fields covered to-day by what is called "occult thought ". Millions of people are included in these movements and Eastern ideas dominate all of them. Since there is nowhere any sign of a psychological understanding of the phenomena on which the ideas are based, they undergo a complete twisting and are a real menace in our world.
A partial, realization of what is going on in this direction, together with the Westerner's native ignorance and mistrust of the world of inner experience, build up the prejudice against the reality of Eastern wisdom. When the wisdom of the Chinese is laid before a Westerner, he is very likely to ask with a sceptical lift of the brows why such profound wisdom did not save China from its present horrors. Of course, he does not stop to think that the Chinese asks with an equal skepticism why the much boasted scientific knowledge of the West, not to mention its equally boasted Christian ethics, did not save it from a World War. But as a matter of fact, present conditions in China do not invalidate Chinese wisdom, nor does the Great War prove the futility of science. In both cases we are dealing with the negative sides of the principles under which East and West live, and it has not yet been given, either to individuals or to nations, to manage the vices of their virtues. Mastery of the inner world, with a relative contempt for the outer, must inevitably lead to great catastrophes. Mastery of the outer world, to the exclusion of the inner, delivers us over to the daemonic forces of the latter and keeps us barbaric despite all outward forms of culture. The solution cannot be found either in deriding Eastern spirituality as impotent, or by mistrusting science as a destroyer of humanity. We have to see that the spirit must lean on science as its guide in the world of reality, and that science must turn to the spirit for the meaning
of life.
This is the point of view established in The Secret of the Golden Flower. Through the combined efforts of Wilhelm and Jung we have for the first time a way of understanding and appreciating Eastern wisdom, which satisfies all sides of our minds. It has been taken out of metaphysics and placed in psychological
experience. We approach it with an entirely new tool, and are protected from the perversions the East undergoes at the hands of the cult-mongersof the West. At the same time, its meaning for us is greatly deepened when we know that, despite the gulf separating us from the East, we follow exactly similar paths when once we give heed to the inner world.
But this book not only gives us a new approach to the East, it also strengthens the point of view evolving in the West with respect to the psyche. The reshaping of values in progress to-day forces the modern man out of a nursery-world of collective traditions into an adult's world of individual choice. He knows that his choice and his fate now turn upon his understanding of himself. Much has been taught him in recent years about the hitherto unsuspected elements in his psyche, but the emphasis is all too often on the static side alone, so that he finds himself possessed of little more than an inventory of contents, the nature of which serves to burden him with a sense of weariness rather than to spur him on to master the problems that confront him. Yet it is precisely the need of understanding himself in terms of change and renewal, which most grips the imagination of modern man. Having seen the world of matter disappear before his scientific eye and reappear as a world of energy, he comes to ask himself a bold question ; does he not contain within his psyche a store of unexplored forces, which, if rightly understood, would give him a new vision of himself and help safeguard the future for him ? In this book his question is answered from two widely different sources, an ancient Chinese yoga system and analytical psychology. Stripped of its archaic setting, The Secret of the Golden Flower is the secret of the powers of growth latent in the psyche, and these same powers as they reveal themselves in the minds of Western men also form the theme of Jung's commentary.
In the commentary he has shown the profound psychological development resulting from the right relationship to the forces within the psyche.
In the German edition Jung's commentary comes first, followed by Wilhelm's exposition of the text, and then by the text itself. At the author's request, the order has been changed so that his commentary follows the text.
The Chinese words in this edition are in the Anglicized form. For making the necessary transcriptions, I am indebted to Mr. Arthur VValey, and to Colonel Egerton of Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. The latter has been kind enough to give his personal attention to the editing of my manuscript.
As a possible aid in keeping in mind the relationships between the various Chinese concepts such as ksing-ming, kuei-shcn, etc., I have added two summaries, one written and one diagrammatic.
Fortunately for me, I have made this translation under the supervision of Dr. Jung, and to that fact, and to the further aid I have received from Mrs. Jung, I owe any success I may have had in meeting the difficulties presented.
It has also been my privilege to have the completed manuscript read and criticized by Dr. Erla Rodakiewicz, and for her invaluable
assistance I am deeply grateful.
1 See Appendix, p. 139. | Cary F. Baynes. Zurich, March, J 931.
May we find peace, understanding, and love among all humans once again.
The Storytelling Species: Makers & Players of Reality Bubbles (Continued)
How Being Outside Helped Me Observe Better Mind Stories that Helped Me Repair My Lost and Little Boat Cast Adrift on an Endless Sea of Unconsciousness.
Exercising Outside& How It Helped MeShift to We
ComE to Terms with COVID-19 & Make CRITICAL Internal Adjustments
I started bike riding outside for exercise after my gym closed down due to a national lockdown mandated after the Coronavirus began spreading in the community during March (however, hindsight shows it probably was spreading in the community much earlier). When my gym reopened in June, I went back only to discover they were allowing people tonot wear maskswhile exercising. I was shocked and thought this was extremely short-sighted. But then, I think they knew this because they made me sign a document saying I would not sue them if I contracted COVID-19 at the gym.
Howbeit, I believe I already contracted COVID at the gym in March before the lockdown was issued; before we knew what was coming for us. I blame this ignorance, this lack of information of the American people, solely on the Trump administration who withheld it because they believed it would disrupt be bad for the economy and this would be bad for Trump’s re-election. This strategic withholding of information would prove to be fatal for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Indeed, it was a homicidal decision Trump made and has repeatedly doubled down believing it would help him get re-elected to deny reality. But, the only thing it did was needlessly increase the spread of this virus because Trump politicized it by calling it a fake Democratic ploy, by refusing to wear a mask, and by holding giant rallies where people crammed together, most not wearing masks (creating a Coronavirus’ dream domain) and telling his beautiful supporters coming to see him: ‘it’s nothing, it’s like the flu, one day: like a miracle, it will go away.’
And, Bob Woodward tells us in Trump’s own words that he knew it was a deadly airborne pathogen and he knew this in January. Woodward reveals this in his book, Rage, and backs it up with recorded interviews with Trump who often called Woodward to tell him things going on at the White House. We also know what Trump was telling the American people in January, February, and March when this pathogen could have been contained, but Trump lost interest sometime in April and swung the doors wide open in May never looking back, rather telling Woodward ominously in August: “Nothing more could have been done.”
It didn’t go away as Trump promised. One confirmed case turned into 2, that turned in 4, that turned into 8, then 16, then 32, and then 64, then 128, then 256… that turned into 13.6 million (this is how many confirmed cases of Coronavirus there are as I write this blog at the end of November 2020). And this is just the United States. Of these people who got infected, 293,000+ beloved souls have died (12/11/20). And around the world, the global infection is much higher: 69.8 million people have been infected with 1.59 million people succumbing to this deadly new disease.
And, I believe the infection and death rates are undercounts. So do many scientists and doctors because at the beginning of the pandemic we didn’t know what to look for, we didn’t have tests, and we were not told how it really spreads–through the air, just breathing. For my own possibly undiagnosed early case, my symptoms felt the worse on a Sunday night. It was very early March 2020. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and went to bed at 6 pm, which is unusually early for me. After that I’ve experienced continuing fatigue; foggy head and dizziness; sharp headaches upon waking up for no apparent reason; a feeling of restriction in my lungs when I try to take a deep breath, especially while bike riding; sometimes a usual heart rate; extreme pain in joints that sometimes makes me stop in my tracks; and slight cough. The symptoms come and go. Because of how mild the initial symptoms were, I did not seek treatment or a test (which was not available at that time even if I wanted one), nor did I quarantine or wear a mask or do any of the things we do now because I, along with everyone else, didn’t know how deadly this virus was for 1 to 2% of those who got infected (a number 10+ times more deadlier than the flu). Due to this, I have been paying close attention to people and the doctors trying to help them who are suffering with long lasting affects of COVID-19; something being called long-haul syndrome.
Also, I think someone died at my gym because of the criminal withholding of information by the Trump administration. It was a cleaning woman; an individual I’d known for over a decade. She did not know English well, but she was very kind and a hard worker. I learned from a woman who exercised around the same time and we talked regularly. She asked me if I knew this cleaning woman had died. I was shocked. I did not know. She told me she had died in January after a sudden and unexpected illness. She was not that old, but she was Hispanic and had endured many hardships. Also, she could not work from home (not that we even knew we should do this at that time last year).
Regardless of possibly already having contracted COVID at my gym, I have not returned to it, opting to stay outdoors, even in the extreme heat of summer and now the cold of winter. (Here is an article studying reinfection rates from COVID-19.) Following are some of the discoveries I made inside myself because of making this choice to stay outside. A decision to change long held routines I did not think I could survive without, but come to find that I could and this change was making me stronger inside.
He Landed on My Finger & Would Not Fly Away — Photo by Bebe
Internal Change 1: Shifting from Me to We
Seeing More of Me Helped Me See More of We
At first, my commitment to exercise outside was entirely selfish aimed at keeping me and my family safe. But as I remained outdoors, something began to shift and transform inside of me. I could feel myself slowing down and disengaging from the deeply embedded routines of my cultural programming: all those things I had been told I needed to do to be a good person and contribute to my society. But really, these were the things demanded by the economy, and I had to learn them in order to survive as a person privileged enough to be born as a citizen of this country.
I had learned the rules and played by them for a long, long time. But I had fatal flaws for the system of consciousness within which I must survive. I probably learned them from my father. Moral attributes such as when I see something that is not fair or hurting someone else, to speak up about it and take action if possible. But, this is not always appreciated in Western-based society. There are things that happened in this system that one is supposed to ignore. If I spoke up about these things, I was punished, especially in the corporate world like speaking up about a boss who is doing something unethical, even illegal. For these things, I was duly punished. It didn’t matter if I was working in a healthcare setting, a nonprofit setting, or a for-profit setting. The unstated rule was: if you don’t have power, shut and go along with the group think, the tide of that system, its workplace culture. Every workplace, educational system, and community has a culture–slight differences and preferences different than the bigger collective within which they exist–things that make each smaller system different and unique just like individuals are.
The last time I spoke up about such things, I was duly punished by the CEO who required absolute fidelity to her will. Because I had advocated for myself, I was fired for being with my father during the 10 days he lived after his heart attack. This happened a year and a half before COVID hit, but it left me deeply traumatized for just 3 years earlier, I was thrown off the corporate ship of the organization I had been working for 6 years because I had done the same, advocating for myself by calling out deceptive and unethical behaviors of individuals who needed a scapegoat or to do work that went in circles, billable work but work that milked the system. (See Fresh Air interview from 2017 with Novelist John Le Carré Reflects On His Own ‘Legacy’ Of Spying and from 2018 with Novelist John Le Carré Reflects On His Own ‘Legacy’ Of Spying who talks about fraudulent and unethical systems, including working for his own father who asked him to conduct criminal work on his behalf.)
Also, two more important remembrances of le Carré and what made him the astounding man he was capable of deep insights into what drives human character include the following remembrance of Robert Harris:
“John le Carré, master of the spy thriller, has died at the age of 89. (…) In 2004, he told NPR’s Robert Siegel that “the one thing that marks most writers is the condition of unhappiness and alienation. I went to my first boarding school at the age of five, and I think it just drove me in upon myself and made the fictitious world the real one for me, that the imaginative world was a refuge that I could retreat to when life became incomprehensible.”
And, “When he was sent away at the age of five — because his mother had left him, abandoned him — his brother was also at another school. And on a Sunday, so lonely, they used to get on a train and meet in a field midway between the two of them and just hold one another, he said. His eyes welled up with tears as he was describing this story, and I remember thinking, “ah, well, that’s why you’re always writing novels about betrayal. And that’s why you feel so angry, quite often, about society and the British establishment.” It all went back, I think, to the trauma of his childhood, which he indicated.”
The cruelties that are an integral part of our modern economic realities are palpable, especially for individuals forced to exist on the lower rungs of the existing system of commerce. For people trapped on the lower levels of Western society, day-to-day reality is stark and sharp, particularly if they try to better their lot in life. For people who exist on higher levels of the current system of consciousness establish to keep the bodies holding the light of consciousness alive but enslaved for the use of others who have gobbled up resources, power, and control, there are modest advantages. But, the greatest advantages are reserved for the few at the very top and for anyone below them, there is an automatic amnestic inflicted on humans trying to exist on the lower levels, but not the lowest. This effect makes them ignorant of what is happening to people on any level of being below them. It takes a lot of inner energy to grow beyond this amnesia effect baked into the higher rungs of our dominate system of consciousness. To fit into this system and receive any benefits from it, an individual must remain ignorant or risk being knocked off the rung they are standing on and trying to exist. In this system, ignorance is rewarded by the collective. Intelligence growth of consciousness is punished by throwing the daring ones off the lopsided superstructure created by Westernized systems of thinking and being in the world. Because this system has gobble up most of the resources of Earth, getting thrown off it can mean physical death.
With the arrival of COVID-19, millions and millions of people are experiencing the cruel realities of the systems they are trying to exist inside. It’s not their fault they have lost their jobs. This is a novel virus running its course through the human race. It’s not their employer’s fault either for letting them go–many small to mid-size businesses are facing extinction themselves due to the massive economic crisis created by this global disaster. It’s not even the fault of our fearless leaders. This is because each and every one of them is playing a well-defined role inside our system of consciousness: the one we choose long, long ago to exist inside as individuals. (See Weaving Reality — So Many Humans, So Many Versions of Reality & How Did We Get Here?, go down to: ‘How To Make A Slave’ Author On The Advice That Changed His Writing Career, and then down to Alan Watts for what I mean by this.)
Divergence on Why Cruel Systems of Consciousness Evolved
Long ago, when humans were confronted with deadly realities abounding in the natural world, people found it tremendously advantageous to belong to a collective (i.e., family group, clan, tribe, dynasty, empire, nation). A breathtaking amount of groups emerged around the world over vast amounts of time that grew into thriving cultures and civilizations. Many ways of life have risen and fallen since humanity stepped into itself most sacred ability of all human abilities and this is living in a state of consciousness defined as a state of knowing that one knows. To accommodate this state of knowing, humans devised collective states of consciousness. This would be systems that organized conscious states of being into complex orders and arrangements that benefited the entire group. Heretofore, no collective system of consciousness has achieved perfection. And thus it falls upon the individual to struggle forward in imperfect systems of consciousness to try to help the collectivized systems of being conscious in the world evolve. There have been vastly wiser and more compassionate collectives that have existed in the world. Some still exist now. But most have been devoured by Western Civilization, which dominates the collective world order of consciousness on Earth today. It has distilled and achieved incredible heights of knowledge and understanding about this world as it has evolved. But it has also demonstrated incredibly cruel, brutal, and heinous capacities. Just like individuals, collectives exist with expansive reservoirs of unconsciousness. If this unconsciousness is artificially left in the dark and not allowed to be distilled, refined, processed, and synthesized by individuals using their individual light of consciousness, an imbalance can grow that can warp the trajectory of the entire system of consciousness towards a destructive course.
So, this is where our leaders find themselves now. They are embedded an ever evolving system of consciousness that has become warped and each are playing rigidly defined roles that have grown out of this system and have been played out many times before. In a sense, they are stuck in deep rivulets of being that have been carved out inside the system over vast amounts of time. These rivulets as patterns of thought, of behavior, and of action–each something that has been performed many times before in the earlier existence of this system. When an individual steps into a collective role, they activate powerful reservoirs of inner mental energy that has been poured into that role by all the members of they system. The outer manifestations of a high ranking collective role are fairly obvious. A CEO oversees all the operations of a corporation, a boss oversees the employees under him, a President or King oversees a nation. What we have forgotten a Modern people is that when an individual steps into a collective role, they also activate and have access to inner psychic-mental energy that all members of the society have contributed to the role. This energy is invisible, but it is powerful for it holds power over the hearts and minds of the members of the clan or civilization. Some individuals in powerful collective roles play despicable character. Others play more benevolent parts within the system. All jiggle and jive for power. When one side becomes too powerful, it can lock all roles into rigid, entrenched patterns of behavior that if left unbalanced will grow hopelessly lopsided: a condition, that if not corrected, will lead to system collapse (i.e., the system of consciousness will devour itself).
Because I have suffered cruelty inflicted by the economic and social systems dictating our shared collective reality, I have become more sensitive to the suffering of others who have long suffered the inequalities and brutalities of our current system of being conscious. It is something that I have been waking up to over decades, but this year was supercharged with the barbaric murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. My hometown in Minneapolis. I know the architecture of that city. I know its streets, its ways, its movements, its pulse and its rhythms. I felt its pain along with hundreds and thousands of individuals bearing accurate witness to this heinous, barbarous, savage reality of our modern western system of life. (See After Math: The Magical Calculus of Consciousness, Introduction about bearing accurate, insight provided by Barry Kort.)
This murderous, brutal collective reality has been normalized and thrust back into the mainstream of American society, especially in the last 4 years by the Trump Administration. >>has cumulated in a recognition that I was born into and have grown out of the cultural bowl that has given rise to the MAGA movement. I do not like or support this movement or Trump in any way; however, when I went down to film the first MAGA rally after Trump lost the 2020 election, I recognize myself in the people I was filming. I grew up in this culture. I could pass for a MAGA supporter and move within its currents easily and without being questioned until I opened my mouth and stated my opinions and beliefs. Only then would I be labeled other.
Individual Storytelling — Shifting from Me to We: Cacophony — The Beautiful Humans of Earth
Still working on..
(see Black & Brown Live Matter) dramatically pulled my attention from my own inner suffering to be an accurate witness to this collective injustice Western Civilization has been conducting for centuries (See After Math: The Magical Calculus of Consciousness, Introduction about bearing accurate, an insight of Barry Kort).
I confronted for advocating for myself and others. I had been punished in other systems of work for not going along with the crooked warp of those who had power over me. So all this punishment meted out by the system that demanded blind obedience left me crushed with unbearable feelings of abandonment, failure, disillusionment, and despair. And so with the arrival of Corona, I had to find ways to replace the last two routines keeping me sane: going to the gym and going to the pool. Being outdoors made the most sense to me, even in the heat, rain, wind, and now cold. I found I could adapt. I began noticing all the life around me, and as I did, I felt less anxious and less depressed and more connected to life. This allowed a sense of belonging to slip back into my devastated inner world.
This feeling of consecutiveness extended beyond myself, my family, and what I was noticing. It extended to everyone and from here it was an easy jump to understand wearing a mask and maintaining social distance were easy actions I could take to contribute to a better shared reality for all of us, especially vulnerable individuals (like the cleaning lady who probably died of Corona at my gym). And after spending those 10 days with dad, I knew how hard the doctors and nurses work to save people. So, this is something I could do to help them. I also kept myself informed by listening to trusted sources of information. To me, a trusted source is a scientist, a doctor, or an individual who is deeply involved in the subject (an expert) being discussed (see Resilience Resources: Weaving Reality — So Many Humans, So Many Versions of Reality & How Did We Get Here?; go down to: The Highly Involved vs The Not So Highly Involved).
This year in particular, I have been shocked by how many of ‘my friends’ have discarded science as elitist hogwash and labeled experts as evil beings who are out to murder all of humanity, preferring to believe in and peddle stories of alternative realities. I will return to this in a little bit, but first, I will talk about how going slower helped me survive 2020.
I realized after I published this blog, it was a draft that had been incorporated into another post. Please forgive my error. Here are links to the full series:
The Storytelling Species: Makers & Players of Reality Bubbles
Storytelling Species Series
In the previous pieces of the Storytelling Species Series, we have explored how individual attitudes, beliefs, and thinking styles can influences our individual perceptions of reality. We also looked at how stories can influence our understanding of reality (inner and outer). We even explored how stories can become shared narratives that serve as foundational building blocks of our great civilizations and complicated societies. We also looked at how other kind of stories (e.g., conspiracy myths) can pull us together and shred our shared reality. These types of stories are carefully crafted narratives created by people craving attention and power and such people make up stories designed to tear us apart and make us distrust each other. They do this because in a civilization that is in a state of chaos and distrust, it is much easier to carve out a group of people who they can manipulate and control.
Each and every person alive today contributes to the quality of our shared reality–at local levels, at national levels, and at global levels. It all begins with our individual understanding of reality (our inner world), which is contributed to our shared reality (our outer world) through our thoughts, words, and deeds (conscious and unconscious), through our feelings (conscious and unconscious), and through our sensations, specifically, what we pay attentiontoand what we ignore. We also contribute to our individual and shared reality through our instinctual and intuitive responses to what happens to us as we journey through space and time.
Many of us know thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition as components of psychological tests like the Myers-Briggs Personality Type. Finding out what our default psychological operating system is can help us navigate the world better such as figuring out what kind of job or career we might be good at doing or happiest doing. Most of us consider this knowledge not much more important than knowing what our astrological sign is. But I suggest this knowledge is critical to understand not only how to navigate the outer world, but also how to navigate our inner world (the hidden world inside of us).
How to Feel Better and Create A More Beautiful World By Telling Better Stories
One of the most tragic aspects of being a modern human today is an all out denial of the reality of one’s inner world. Denying the reality of our inner world denies us the ability to navigate it. We must know our inner world in the same way we know the physical world (the outer world). We must know where the dangerous areas are inside of ourselves and why they are dangerous. We must know where the safe and nurturing areas are inside ourselves and how to navigate between these hidden places. Without this inner knowledge, we can feel lost, anxious, and fearful in the world.
Conversation with the Bubble Maker on How to Make An Awesome Batch of Bubbles
This is what crystalized for me the day I met the bubble maker. The quality of our individual batch of consciousness is how we know and understand our outer (physical) world as well as our inner world (hidden world). The quality of our stream of consciousness can be greatly influenced by how we employ our thinking style, or how much we allow our feeling style to help us understand the world around us. The quality of our consciousness can be increased or decreased by the degree of sensation information we pay attention to (e.g., who is around us, how are we feeling around them) as well as the degree to which we are aware of how we are responding to people and things around us (i.e., are we acting unconsciously, in an instinctual way to people and things around us). When we react unconsciously, this impacts how much intuition we can access in the moment.
Our individual batch of consciousness is constantly changing for it needs to be dynamically balanced moment by moment with what remains unconscious inside of us. Many of us who have grown up in modern Western society are taught from very young ages to deny the reality of our inner world. We were taught to do this to survive the ways in which power is wielded in our super-huge, mega system of consciousness. We have evolved these systems of being because they have been super successful strategies to survive in an unpredictable and complicated world. These systems have allowed human beings to dominate the outer world.
When we deny the reality of our inner worlds, we do not to stick out, we do not individuate (i.e., we do not become a singular and unique human being as we were meant to be). We do not grow up to become the person only we can be. By not being unique and different we fit nicely inside our system of consciousness that values sameness (i.e., people and things that are readily replaceable within the system). By being the same as everyone else, we do not draw undo attention to ourselves by individuals who are more powerful than us and who could do us harm. Especially if our uniqueness and difference threatens their view of reality or if our uniqueness threaten’s their power (watch out then!).
When we become a target of a more powerful person, it is bad. We all know this. So most of us go along with the system because it is easier, and we can have comfortable enough life doing so. If we play it right, we can even possibly grow to have more power in the system too. However, do not delude yourself that if you become a person with power that you are immune to the corrupting force of power. Power corrupts and corrupts completely. It takes a great deal of consciousness to withstand the corrupting force of power. This can only be done by balancing power with honesty and humility. Since most of us lack awareness of our inner worlds, it is rare to find powerful people who can balance power with honesty and humility. It is also rare because our current system of consciousness does not reward individuals for doing this.
In addition to being very vulnerable to the corrupting forces of power, when we do not know our inner world, our physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being is greatly diminished. We become victims to our own unconsciousness, which condemns us to a life of ignorance that can incur terrible damage to our psyche. This damage is readily visible to other people because unconscious people are much more likely to participate in spontaneous acts of violence that they inflict on “other” people because they have projected that part of themself on the “other”, refusing to see it lives inside them and it is themself they are destroying.
If you think our current system of consciousness stinks and needs to change, the only lasting way to change the system is to change yourself. You change yourself by knowing more about yourself inside and out, which means understanding your inner/hidden world is real and has a reality that impacts you in powerful and significant ways. Doing this can be painful for it means going into the darkness of your soul and finding your inner divide.
If you are human, you have an inner divide. It is what allows us to be conscious. It becomes dangerous for us and other when we remain ignorant of this inner divide because this is how our unconsciousness flows into the world (our shared reality). When it does, all sorts of mischief and mayhem happens. So, if you are serious about creating a more beautiful world, get busy getting to know what is living inside of you–the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is only by knowing all of one’s self that a person can balance the oppositional powers always moving and flowing inside of us. It takes an equal and opposite force inside of us to balance a powerful force. When we remain unconscious of the psychological forces inside of us, we weld power in lopsided and destructive ways that hurt us and hurt others.
Recipe for Making a Better Batch of Reality Bubble Mix
Step1: Finding the Right Balance Between the Stories Rising Inside of You and the Ones Swirling All Around You, Especially the Ones You Choose to Eat
The Bubble Maker
On this day, I biked to the Big Wheel at National Harbor in Maryland, going across the Woodrow Wilson bridge. On some days when I cross this bridge when the wind is blowing it feels like flying. It was on my way back after this wonderful ride that I meet this extraordinary woman making gorgeous giant bubbles.
How to Feel Better and Create A More Beautiful World By Telling Better Stories: The Bubble Maker — Photo by Bebe
Earlier that day, I wished I had asked a group of men who were practicing a dance with scarfs that they waved above their heads if I could film them. The dance was so beautiful, even though I thought it was quite feminine for men to be dancing with scarfs. But I was too scared to ask them. Then, on my way home, I saw two construction workers horse playing after work. One held his hands up like a boxer looking for a good punch on his friend. His friend waved his t-shirt at him to distract his friend from landing a good punch. They were laughing…that’s how I knew they were playing around. And then, I knew what the men dancing with scarfs were doing–it was a highly ritualized war dance!
So, when I saw the Bubble Maker, I said to myself… ‘I’m not going to let this one by!’ I asked her and she said yes. We had such an amazing conversation as I filmed her making beautiful bubbles. She told me this batch bubble making solution was not her best batch. She explained each bubble mixture is a little different. Some batches make bubbles better than others, so she was struggling with this one. Despite this, she was a master bubble maker, and I got many beautiful shots of giant bubbles. It was magical in every sense of the word.
Step 2: Synthesize, ferment, and transmute your flow of consciousness.
Bubbles of Consciousness
As I watched her, I thought about a conversation I was having with my good friends in Germany about how the human mind is capable of crafting and believing such fantastic versions of reality. I began to think of these bizarre versions of reality were like bubbles created by the mind. Thus, the idea of Reality Bubbles popped into my mind. Some mind bubbles are very stable and last for a long time. Other Reality Bubbles are inherently unstable and pop almost as soon as they leave our minds. Most Alternative Reality Bubbles will pop soon after leaving the mind because the Rock of Reality is very hard.
How to Feel Better and Create A More Beautiful World By Telling Better Stories Venus-DiVinci-Kundalini — Drawn by Bebe
I imagined the human mind is like the wand the woman making bubbles was holding in the park. With our minds, we make bubbles of reality that we put out into the world, which are visible through our thoughts, words, and actions. Consciousness is like the bubble making mixture in the bucket. As human beings, we channel and distill consciousness continually as it flows through us as experienced by our circumstances, station in life, visions, and dreams (sometimes nightmares). The consciousness contained inside of us is used to generate ideas that inform our individual actions. Thus, the quality of our individual consciousness determines the strength of the mixture used to manufacture the ideas we put out into the world through our Wand of Mind. It is the same wand every human being uses to put out bubbles of reality into the world, but the mixture of consciousness used can be vastly between humans.
How to Feel Better and Create A More Beautiful World By Telling Better Stories The Big Wheel — Photo by Bebe
Step 3: Explore, discover, repair, and revive your inner landscapes.
Reviving Our Lost Inner Landscapes
This mixture also forms our inner landscapes, mind-scapes. These inner landscapes are illuminated by the light of our conscious understanding. This is how we come to know who we are. This inner light of consciousness is what we inherited when we stepped across the threshold of consciousness many thousands of years ago. Despite all this time, this part of our consciousness is the smallest part of us. Vast amounts of every human mind remains cloaked under the darkness of inner unconsciousness.
But this is what we are here to do–to explore, discover, and claim inner landscapes by illuminating them with the light of our awaken consciousness. The more unconsciousness contained inside your mind, the less stable your inner landscapes will be as well as the bubbles of reality you manufacture with your mind and put into the world through your actions.
This is why it is important to see more of who were are as a human being, which always includes good and bad parts of ourselves. To make stable bubbles that are able to last through time, we need to maintain dynamic balances between good and bad elements existing inside of us and flowing all around us all of the time. We get glimpses of these cloaked areas through thoughts, dreams, and visions. But more often we become aware of our unconsciousness because we get triggered by the unconscious content living inside of us. They pop up just like instincts pop into action due to environmental stimuli that spurs an animal into action. When an animal acts based upon their instincts, nature has already worked out the dynamic balances over billions and billions of years evolution.
However, as newly awaken conscious beings, we have a lot to understand and work out dynamic sustainable balances. This is hard work and it is far easier to revert back to simpler ways of seeing the world such as black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, and then choose one side or the other side to rally along side. But, ultimately all opposites are inseparable because inside goes with outside, up goes with down, light goes with night. Every opposite is inseparable from its other side just like the other side of a coin. You can cut off the other side, but it is still there…the coin is simply thinner… and that is exactly what we do when we split reality and exist in only one side–we make it smaller. Another serious problem of existing only on onside or the other side of the Coin of Realityis a fatal lopsidedness will result. Living in our huge human collectives with lots of technology can delay the consequences of this fatal lopsidedness, but not forever… that is the Gift of Reality… it will always flow towards balance in the end, and as you are carried in this flow, you will hit the Rocks of Reality along the way.
So, think about your thoughts and how they are turn into actions in the world, which shape and create our shared reality.
Promo for It Came From Inside — Drawn and created by Bebe
I know this is all pretty abstract, but perhaps you will read the story I am writing about this when I finally finish it (Sapience: The Moment is Now). For now, I continue to make these mini movies to help me feel grounded to the Earth and connected to all the beautiful life around me and inside of me. By appreciating the beauty of Earth, I am able to continue gathering inner strength to pull back the projections I have put out into the world. As I pull them back, I find my inner reservoir of consciousness is replenished, which helps me endure.
Projecting our consciousness out into the world is perfectly natural because we cannot see ourselves when we are first born into the world unless we look in a mirror. That is what projections do. They allow us to see ourselves through others.
The trick is seeing: “Oh – that is me!” And, reclaiming that part of ourself that has been temporally lost into the world as a project. This is your power. This is all in my book… but I still must find deeper calm to write again since the latest calamity befell me and my family.
Step 4: Be here, now, that is all we ever have… everything we know, do, feel, become is wrapped in the now.
It is up to each of us to find critical inner balances between the self of the present and the self of the future. It is simply the price of being a conscious creature, and so, it must be navigated. At times, it can be very hard navigating between the needs, desires, fears, and fantasies of present self with the concerns and needs of future self, but that is what we are called to do a conscious human beings who have the gift of knowing.
Following are some of the activities I do that have helped me navigate my inner divide, which exists inside every human being. Often, it comes down to calming down my self-talk (the thing we call thinking and prize so much as modern human beings). Alan Watts often says that thinking is a good servant but a bad master. This is a fundamental teaching of Buddhism that the Western trained mind has a very hard time understanding.
Nature Heals
Nature helps us see ourselves in balance with everything else. Being outside, we can step outside of our minds and open us to other ways of knowing and understanding ourself in relationship to everyone and everything else. But to do this, one must be willing to slow down and look! I’ve made a series of nature videos throughout the months of lockdown and social distancing due to the global pandemic, which required individuals to put the well-being and health of others ahead of themselves–that is why we were asked to wear masks and keep distances, not because we were being controlled by evil politicians and scientists. My goodness the stories circulating on the Internet are so creative and more entertaining in conspiracy myths than a Marvel movie. I would ask those flocking to such narratives, what is it inside of you that these stories are activating? If a story you read makes your blood pressure rise, your heart beat faster, your anger increase, who is trying to manipulate you to their point of view? Instead, go outside. Let your own inner truth rise. If you are holding your inner split in balance, you will feel peace, you will feel confidence, you will feel in control and trust yourself to know who is telling you porky (aka bullshit) and who is telling you something real (be it good or bad). Life is complicated. Nature is complicated. We are constantly surrounded by complications and need each other to understand and navigate a complicated world as we travel inside very complicated collectives (i.e., our super-huge civilizations). To see the full nature series, click here: Have You Been Outside Today?
Have You Been Outside Today Series
HiddenBrain
How to Feel Better and Create A More Beautiful World By Telling Better Stories Photo by Gilberto Reyes on Pexels.com
Description: Think about the resolutions you made this year: to quit smoking, eat better, or get more exercise. If you’re like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. That’s because change is hard. Behavioral scientist Katy Milkman explains how we can use our minds to do what’s good for us.
Towards the end, Katy says, “So often we don’t understand the forces of opposition inside of us, such as the desires of present me (I want to eat that ice cream now) and the consequences of future me (I’ll have to deal with the extra load of calories and fat that might be bad for my weight, cholesterol, mood).” Through out the episode, she gives plenty of examples where her present me created problems for her future me. She said she found it far more productive to approach these situations as an engineering problem rather than falling back to judgemental self-talk (also known as thinking). To do this, a person needs to recognize the forces of opposition operating inside themself, such as Seinfeld’s conflict between Night Guy and Morning Guy and Day Guy. between present self and future self honestly and fully without judging them as lazy, no good, stupid, or anything else one has been told by family members, friends, and culture about the behavior.
How to Feel Better and Create A More Beautiful World By Telling Better Stories Seinfeld – Night Guy, Morning Guy, Day Guy
Basically, my take away from Katy’s presentation is that anything that trips us up and subverts us from achieving our long-term goals is human. It is normal. And, it can be handled by understanding the inner conflict and engineering simple work arounds. To do this, we need to see the forces at work honestly and fully without judging them (e.g., I’m a lazy, no good, stupid *#$). Often we internalize negative self talk because we have been told this by family, friends, and our culture. It is easy to label and judge. It is much harder to see our internal conflict, which in an inner spilt due to being a consciousness creature, honestly and to accept it as part of one’s self that must be loved and nurtured just as much as the parts of ourself that are heralded as good traits (e.g., over-achieving guy or gal, bringing home the bacon guy or gal, or anything else we or others label as desirable behaviors).
Alan Watts
Ra’s Playlist of Alan Watts — Ra is an AI helping one of the characters in Sapience understand how to transform human consciousness on a scale never before achieved. Stay tuned, you will meet Ra soon in Book 1.
Watts often liked to ask in his lectures: “Why don’t you know what you want?”
“First, you don’t know what want because you haven’t thought about it or you’ve only thought superficially about it. Then when you somebody forces him to think about it and go through and say yeah I think I’d like this, I think I like that, I think I’d like the other as the middle stage. Then you get beyond that say: “Is that what I really want? The end news day, now I don’t think that’s it. I might be satisfied with it for a while and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it, but it’s not really what I want.”
“Why don’t you really know what you want two reasons that you don’t really know what you’re not number one you have it.”
“Number two, you don’t know yourself because you never can. The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge, just as a knife doesn’t cut itself, fire doesn’t burn itself, light doesn’t illumine itself. It’s always an endless mystery to itself.”
“I don’t know.”
“And this I don’t know, other than the infinite interior of the Spirit, this I don’t know is the same thing as I love, I let go and I don’t try to force or control. It’s the same thing as humility, and so the Upanishads say, “If you think that you understand brahmin, you do not understand it and have yet to be instructed further.”
“If you know that you do not understand it (dharma), then you truly understand for the brahmin is unknown to those who know it and known to those who know it. And the principle is that anytime you as it were voluntarily let up control, in other words cease to cling to yourself, you have an access of power because you’re wasting energy all the time and self-efense trying to manage things trying to force things to perform (the way you think things ought to be–like Rush H. Limbaugh–lol!). The moment you stop doing that that wasted energy is available. Therefore, you are in that sense having that energy available. You are one with the Divine Principle. You have the energy.”
“When you’re trying however to act as if you were God–that is to say you don’t trust anybody and you’re the dictatorand you have to keep everybody in line–you lose the divine because what you’re doing is simply defending yourself. So then the principle is the more you give it away, the more it comes back. Now, you say I don’t have the courage to give it away I’m afraid. And you can only overcome this by realizing you better give it away because there’s no way of holdings onto it.”
How to Feel Better and Create A More Beautiful World By Telling Better Stories Alan Watts Chillstep – We’re All One | This is the lecture set to music which the above quotes come…
Haunted and the Edge
Lloyd’s Haunted & the Edge Playlist
The haunted and the edge offer much in understanding our inner realities better, but they are often taboo and little understood. This is a playlist created by the Last DJ of Earth who is trying to save survivors of Earth after a global catastrophe. He hacks Multinational satellites to broadcast his musical sermons, working day and night to bring down Earth’s new overlords–the ones who worship money. Consciousness is the key. The Sapience Series tells the tale. Follow Sapience: The Moment is Now for when Book 1 is available.
You are beautiful. You are vital to this now. So, take care of yourself. Stay safe, stay well, and find some time to cultivate your beautiful patch of consciousness for it connects you to me and to all of life and the natural world! This is how we create a more beautiful world by seeing the beauty in each other, even when we disagree about things.
Sometime last fall, while biking, the word Sisyphus popped into my mind. I did not know what it meant. I knew it was familiar, but I could not remember why. It’s a weird word. Not a word you hear on a daily basis, not even a word you hear on a decade basis, unless perhaps you are a scholar. But, it kept popping into my mind randomly at least a dozen times or more into the beginning of 2021.
I Was Just Looking for Something Good to Watch
I was looking for a new series to watch on Netflix. I’d finished a score of good series, and then hit a patch of bad ones. I wanted something good…something I could sink into and get lost inside. I was looking for something like the shows I had recently finished watching such as:
Outlander
Outlander: I never read Diana Gabaldon‘s books, but once I started watching this series, I was hooked. I was trying to find a replacement for Masterpiece’s Poldarkseries based on Winston Graham’s books, which is absolutely amazing. And when I saw Ronald D. Moore was producing this series, I was intrigued because his last big hit series was the updated Battlestar Galacticaseries, a TV drama I loved immensely in the 70s, and Caprica(this tells the tale of how that fictional human civilization fell by showing how the Cylon androids took over their worlds, but then it got abruptly and cruelly canceled before the whole story could be told).
Outlander does not disappoint from the very first episode onward. Its characters are complexed, nuanced, and compelling. The series does not rush the story, reveals each character honestly and humanely, and tells the tale in a captivating, mysterious way. Each season builds upon the last one. The characters grow as the times change around them. The difficulties and battles feel real and vital. Each character has layers of complexities that influence their choices and actions, just like real people do, making the story relatable; indeed, a symbol that transforms the complexities encountered in novel and unexpected ways. And isn’t that what you are really hungry for when you sit down to watch a story?
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: OUTLANDER – Season 1 Trailer | 5,355,359 views • Aug 6, 2015
His Dark Materials
His Dark Materials: I never read Pullman’s novels but I loved the Golden Compass, which was made for the big screen in 2007. However, due to the financial crisis of 2008/2009, the next parts of this series never materialized. Then in 2019, HBO teamed up with BBC to reimagine this fantastic tale for the smaller screen/TV. They did an amazing job translating a complicated story to the screen. I found it believable, compelling, and thrilling. The characters are complicated. You think you’ve pegged one as evil and then realize later critical nuances that force you to reconsider your views. They mystery of the story is revealed slowly and unevenly, so you have to guess or imagine for yourself why this or that happened. Each new character has something new to offer in understanding the whole story. The special effects add to the story rather than overly dominate it.
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: His Dark Materials: Season 1 | Official Trailer | HBO | 7,892,118 views • Oct 3, 2019
I love this scene where the researcher and scholar Mary talks to Dust, then she realizes the Dust itself are the Angels. (From His Dark Materials | Season 2, episode 4. The Tower of Angels).
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: His Dark Materials – Mary talks to Dust (Angels) | 26,773 views • Nov 30, 2020
She asks: “Angels are creatures made up of shadow matter of dust?”
The Mysterious Something answers: “Yes.”
Mary further inquires: “And shadow matter is what we call spirit?”
The Mysterious Something replies: “From what we are, spirit, from what we do, matter. Matter and spirit are one.”
Mary asks: “You’ve always been there?”
The Mysterious Something says: “Making, stimulating, guiding.”
Mary queries: “So does that mean angels have intervened in human evolution?”
The Mysterious Something answers: “Yes.”
Mary asks: “But why?”
The Mysterious Something says plainly: “Vengeance.”
Now, I wonder what that means? I didn’t find out in Season 2, so waiting for Season 3. But after that exchange, Mary starts working with the I Ching–which is our world’s equivalent to the Golden Compass from Lyra’s world. Because of Mary, I got the I Ching for my birthday and learned to read the yarrow straws. I supposed that now I too am talking to the angels.
I use good TV drama like a support system, especially during this year of COVID where social distancing has put so many of us into isolation to extremes. My own Indra’s Network was already partially destroyed and broken. The connections I still maintained with friends and family were sorely stretched by time and distance. They were incredibly nourishing when time and attention permitted, but these moments were punctuated by long bouts of silence and little to no meaningful interactions with people who care.
Good stories, powerful dramas are ways I have found that soothe and nourish my soul, especially during times when kindness and caring human contact is in short supply.
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now
Liz Cheney
As I was working on this blog, Liz Cheney spoke before Congress on the eve before the impending vote tomorrow (5/12/21) to remove her from her leadership position as the 3rd most powerful Republican Leader in the House. Republicans are doing this to her because she took a stand not to support Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. She named Trump as the chief sower of doubt in the hearts and minds of Americans.
The Dark Force
By the way, the I Ching says doubt is the Dark Force. Now, who is being a superhero here in the United States on this very day of May 12, 2021? Who is growing the fabric of time and space rather than ripping it to tiny shards of broken light?
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: Doubt — The Dark Force (Animation by Genolve)
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
The Tibetan Book of the Dead warns the soul of a dying individual not to follow the illusionary images and lights they have created inside of themselves and then projected into the world around them. They did this because they did not understood their true Self in life. They did not descend and understand their true identity as a space-time being. They did not understand the meaning and purpose of life. Death is a time thats unravels the net of confused pain each individual becomes entangled within throughout the course of their life on Earth. To not do so, condemns the eternal soul to return again and again and again–sometimes (perhaps often) as a lesser being in order to learn the lessons not mastered in the life before. This returning can occur again and again for the world of rock and buildings and money and power is like water–it continually flows, dissolving everything in time.
Those who use the power of the Dark Force may indeed achieve tremendous riches, success, and power on Earth. However, all this will turn to dust and scatter into nothingness at the time of death. Nothing here is permanent. At death, we lose everything. Nothing that we thought is real is real. If we don’t let go of everything we have clung to in life, the tiny light of consciousness every human being is born into at the beginning of their life will be born into another painful life, again and again and again.
Those who peddle in doubt and fear can live 10 billion, million lives, each one diminishing his/her original source of light until there is nothing left of that light.
Leonard Cohen narrated a beautiful documentary about the practices and wisdom contained and known within the Buddhist tradition. It is elegant knowledge, beautiful knowledge. It shows how we can grow as space-time beings, as we are suppose to grow, rather than collapsing into smaller and smaller living beings.
“People make hell realms out of their own anger. They make worlds out of passions, out of envy or complacency. We project our emotional states, and then believe it is the real world. But no matter what, everyone longs for compassion. Everyone wishes to be awake. So the best thing is to develop genuine compassion for all living beings and for ourselves too. And our compassion should extend beyond our friends and family and the people we like. It must extend to all people and to all living beings.” — From Documentary about The Tibetan Book of the Dead
This is how to wake up as a living conscious being.
The OA
The OA: This series is a mind-bending SyFy fantasy that often leaves viewers with more questions than answers. Word has it this is one of the reasons this show was cancelled after season 2 when 5 seasons were planned. Apparently the average viewer does not have the attention span or interests to dabble in complexity–perhaps this is the inevitable end to Carmel Marvel storytelling–everything has to be blunt, not complex, and nothing left to the imagination, much less to dabble with moral ambiguity. I loved this series. I guess I drank the Kool-aide and became part of its cult following late. And I agree with 110% with Brit Marling that storytelling in America has become not as good as it could or should be.
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: The OA | official trailer (2016) Netflix | 53,112 views •Dec 13, 2016
When the show was cancelled, one viewer went outside of Netflix’s headquarters and held an 8 day hunger strike. Refinery29 interviewed her and wrote a compelling article about why she did this.
“We are living in a time where it seems that things are going to go very badly,” explains Young in front of the Netflix building in Hollywood, where she has been protesting since August 15 and hunger striking since August 19. “The response to that has been ‘Okay, we’re going to make darker, grittier television.’ But in times of darkness, light is most important, and The OA is filled with light. We need something to let us know, ‘Yes, we can do something,’ because all the media around us is telling us that these are dark, grim times and there is nothing you can do about it.”
Created by Brit Marling and creative partner Zal Batmanglij, The OA tells the story of Prairie (Marling), a blind woman who returns after years in captivity with her sight restored. Season 1 of the series mostly exists within the narrative that Prairie tells a group of soon-to-be friends about her time in captivity and before it, in which she transcended time and space and found herself in alternate dimensions. Along the way, the show tackles themes of trauma, and of the importance of a human connection amongst it. Young isn’t wrong about The OA being different: There’s a hopefulness to The OA that is unmatched by more gritty prestige TV offerings like The Handmaid’s Tale, Westworld, even Game of Thrones.
Learning about this woman, Brit Marling and Zal Batmangli came and brought her water. Afterward, Brit posted this about her reaction to OA’s cancellation and how storytelling in America has become not as good as it could or should be.
This is no small thing that Emperial Young and Brit Marling are drawing our attention to in this protest and post, particularly this part: “… the role of storytelling and its fate inside late capitalism’s push toward consolidation and economies of scale.” This is a post about Sisyphus: Is Late Capitalism and its push towards consolidation and economies of scale perhaps not the rock Sisyphus not pushing up the mountain getting it to the top after great effort only to have it fall back down to the bottom again and again and again.
Invisible City
Invisible City (Brazil): This is a new Brazilian fantasy that is streaming on Netflik television series created by Carlos Saldanha that is based on a story co-developed by the screenwriters and best-selling authors Raphael Draccon and Carolina Munhóz. It is in Portuguese, so you have to read subtitles if you are only an English speaker. I was born in Brazil and once knew Portuguese, but have forgotten all of it. I loved listening to the characters speaking in Portuguese. It felt familiar and lovely. It is a musical language and the music in this series is alive and vibrant. I soon forgot I was reading subtitles and got lost in the rich and depth of storytelling unfolding through this complex, invigorating story. The characters are treated with dignity and respect. The puzzle of the drama unfolds in surprising reveals that add depth to the story and bring this mysterious world into vivid view.
Glitch
Glitch (Australian): This is an older series that begins with a bang when a police officer and a doctor face an emotionally charged mystery as seven local residents inexplicably return from the dead. It is three seasons long, and the first two open up so many innovative ideas and possibilities, but season 3 falls flat on its face and destroys all the wonder and the miracle being explored, in my opinion. I am glad I watched it because I learned what I do not want to do as I write my tale.
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: Glitch Season 1 | Trailer | Now On Netflix | 753,177 views • Feb 23, 2016
I was so bothered by how they ended this series, I went on online to see if others were too and found this great blog: Old Ain’t Dead | Reviews of movies and TV focused on women … specifically Season 3 (so if you intend to watch Glitch, save this site for later because there are definitely spoilers, including my comment there).
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: Image from Virginia DeBolt‘s blog site: Old Ain’t Dead | Review of Glitch, Season 3
Carmel Marvel Syndrome
When it comes to science fiction and fantasy, I have come to realize I am picky, and not all are the same. In fact in the United States, we are suffering from what I have come to term the Carmel Marvel Syndrome. It is a widespread a syndrome that is dumbing down how stories are being told in books and reimagined on screens. The good-bad divide in Carmel Marvel stories is stark, uncreative, and boring. Nothing is left in-between–you are either the good guy or girl or you’re the bad one. The bad ones almost always lose in the end, but you get there in terribly unimaginative, brutal, evil ways…as the good guy or gal finally finds a morsel of moral or spiritual strength and prevails. Romance is reduced to uninspiring sex scenes that clearly come from basal fantasies of pale males.
What bothers me most is Carmel Marvel storytelling is that they are not honest to the characters. They tend to stripe away their complexity and humanity and force them to do things against their character’s moral underpinnings. Yes, imagined characters have moral underpinnings, they are real and must strive for meaning, purpose and dignity too. I am not going to explain this now, but Carmel Marvel stories like to put their characters into highly contrived situations that they would never do unless forced to by their bored and uninspired creators. They are put into these situations purely for entertainment reasons, which really translates to money. Because Carmel Marvel producers and creators hope for billions and billions of viewers–and they think only highly fantasized modern gladiators well do this. After watching such a sickly story, nothing sticks or stays in the psyche or soul from the story. That is because there is nothing real there. There is nothing nearing the human experience of meaning, truth, reality, or wonder. Everyone knows these types of stories are junk food for the soul. They are cheap imitation of images meant to trick, deceive, and fill you up with a whole lot of nothing, just like if you ate only Carmel candy for all your daily nutrient requirements.
So let’s get back to that word Sisyphus that kept popping into my mind.
After being disappointed by another Carmel Marvel HBO series, I switched back to Netflix to hunt for a new series to watch. That’s when a 2021 Netflix out of South Korea caught my eye. It was called Sisyphus! Normally, I would have put it on my To Watch Later list since it required reading subtitles again. But because of the synchronicity, I thought what the heck, go for it!
I loved it! And I discovered that I love the Korean way of telling stories!!!!
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: Sisyphus | Official Trailer | Netflix [ENG SUB] | 1,028,877 views • Feb 9, 2021
The fabric of this story is rich woven with little bits of gold and silver throughout the 16 episodes. Each one takes the viewer on a journey, revealing a little bit more in surprising ways that adds depth to each character, even the evil ones. The villains have backstories that are as complex as the heroes. Villains and heroes alike are treated honestly and no high tech short cuts are used to substitute good storytelling. Throughout the 16 episodes, the viewer enters a journey (a world) that grows more and more complex as you go: you grow as the characters grow.
Sisyphus masters the art of subtle storytelling. This is a subject I briefly touched upon early in my blogging efforts in a blog questioning if Collective Transformation Possible. In it I talk about the Black Magician and the White Magician and their roles in our human psyche. I drew them while listening to a Chinese business-financial scholar talk about Trump’s power play back in 2018 with China on trade. (It’s didn’t end well by the way… this power play Trump tried… for Americans or for Trump who placed the livelihood of hundreds of small soybean and other farmers in jeopardy.)
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: Notebook drawing Yin-Yang by Bébé
Dr. Peter Chen pointed out Western ideas of negotiation are quite different from Eastern ideas. He said in Chinese, the most similar word they have to negotiation is tánpàn, which means talking and judging. For the Chinese, it is considered the dark side of economics with the East preferring to focus on conversation when working out deals. However, there are huge differences in how conversation is conducted by a Western diplomat versus an Eastern diplomat. By Eastern standards, Westerners are considered low-context communicators (i.e., direct and forceful, which can be considered very rude by Eastern standards). Eastern culture dictates a much more high-context style of communication, which is reserved, relies more on body language, and is based on relationships.
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: The Black Magician and the White Magician
This why I loved Sisyphus. They tell this story using a much more high-context style of storytelling. I also love listening to the actors speak Korean. Every word they utter is full of meaning, purpose, and emotion. The tone and way a word is said is more important than the word itself. You understand a song by how the singer sings it, so too with Eastern languages. They are full of images, meaning, context, and emotion. And isn’t that what we are really craving in watching or reading a story? Deep meaning and purpose? Sure, lots of people will say they just want to escape into something entertaining… but if you discover something about yourself and others while doing so, isn’t that a whole lot better. Stuff that stick to you and makes you a better individual… helps you grow as a conscious living being?!
Even though we deny how powerful and essential good storytelling is in Western culture, we are starving for good, wholesome, spirituous stories that fed our souls as well as our fractured, confused minds. Stories that awaken sleeping spirits needed to defeat doubt: the force that splinters our psyche and traps us in endless delusions and illusions that only make us smaller, meaner, and contribute to the demise of all life on Earth.
A new friend I’ve made during runs with Pumper (another mom of dogs and kids) recommended another Korean Netflix show called Crash Landing on You. I didn’t think I would like it better than Sisyphus, but I love it even more. The depth of each character grows and spills out in unexpected ways in each episode. And don’t miss the little peaks at the very end after you think the episode has concluded. Not always, but often, they show you something not shown earlier. It is often something that fills in a gap and fills out the depth of the character–how they are thinking, perceiving, and acting in the world. How they are transforming through time and space.
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: Crash Landing on You | Official Trailer #1 | Netflix [ENG SUB] | 2,327,897 views • Nov 29, 2019
My friend Fabian Navin has just posted something very insightful about why I loved this show. The Facebook embedding is not working, so I am copying below what Fabian has posted (go to his site above to see more of his posts):
*Warriorhood in Marriage and Relationship* Conscious fighting is a great help in relationships between men and women. Jung said, “American marriages are the saddest in the whole world, because the man does all his fighting at the office.”
When a man and a woman are standing toe-to-toe arguing, what is it that the man wants? Often he does not know. He wants the conflict to end because he is afraid, because he doesn’t know how to fight, because he “doesn’t believe in fighting,” because he never saw his mother and father fight in a fruitful way, because his boundaries are so poorly maintained that every sword thrust penetrates to the very center of his chest, which is tender and fearful. When shouts of rage come out of the man, it means that his warriors have not been able to protect his chest; the lances have already entered, and it is too late.
Michael Meade has suggested that both marital partners begin by identifying the weapons that have come down through their family lines. Perhaps the woman has inherited the short dagger, used unexpectedly, and the spiked mace, which she swings down late in the argument onto the foot soldier’s head. The husband may have inherited a broad sword, which he swings when frightened in large indiscriminate circles; it says “never” and “always.” “You always talk like your mother.” He might add the slender witticism spear to that.
Some people also use the “doorway lance.” When the argument is over, and the woman, let’s say, is about to go to work, the man says: “By the way,” and the lance pins her to the doorframe.
Man and wife might say which weapons he or she plans to use in the particular fight coming up. During such preliminary conversations the man’s warrior and woman’s warrior are welcomed in the house and honored. A good fight gets things clear, and I think women long to fight and be with men who know how to fight well.
When both use their weapons unconsciously or without naming them, both man and woman stumble into the battle, and when it is over the two interior children can be badly wounded. The adult warrior inside both men and women, when trained, can receive a blow without sulking or collapsing, knows how to fight for limited goals, keeps the rules of combat in mind, and in general is able to keep the fighting clean and to establish limits.
Marie-Louise von Franz once told a story about a woman friend. “This woman had gone through several marriages. Each marriage would go well until an argument came. Then she would throw a fit, and say damaging things. The terrible quarrels would continue, and finally the man would leave. One day we heard she had found a new husband, and we said, ‘Oh-oh, here it goes again.’ But something else happened. A few weeks after the honeymoon, the same old quarrel arrived and she brought out her poison and said terrible things. The husband turned pale, but to her surprise, said nothing, and left the room. She found him upstairs packing his bags. ‘What are you doing?’ she said. I know,’ he said, ‘that I am supposed to act like a man now and shout and hit you, but I am not that sort of man. I will not allow anyone to talk to me in the way you have, and I am leaving.’ She was astounded. She asked him not to leave, and he didn’t. The marriage is still going on.”
This story is not perfect. If a woman has a fair argument, it is not right for the man to leave; he should stay and fight. But von Franz’s use of the word fit implies that her friend had a habit of going over the line into possession. Her fits belonged metaphorically to Kali’s realm, rather than to the human realm. Men cross that line often as well. The inner warrior can tell a person when the partner is on this side of the human line, and when on the other side.
Marion Woodman remarks in The Ravaged Bridegroom, “Anger comes from the personal level, rage from an archetypal core. . . . The rage in both sexes comes out of centuries of abuse.
If it is taken into relationships, it destroys. Attacking each other in a state of possession has nothing to do with liberation.” The interior warrior in both men and women can help them to fight on the human plane. If men and women have only soldiers or shamed children inside, they will have to settle for damaging battles constantly. ~Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now: From Fabian Navin | May 13, 2021
I am totally hooked now on the Korean way of telling stories!!
Sisyphus: The Living Myth of Now
The stories we tell can liberate us or chain us to the rock we must push up the mountain of life only to watch it fall back down, again and again and again, like poor old Sisyphus. Who do you want to be in life? How are you going to become the best version of yourself, a better person than you have been so far? How will you grow you fragile light of consciousness and help others do the same?
How Being Outside Helped Me Observe Better Mind Stories that Helped Me Repair My Lost and Little Boat Cast Adrift on an Endless Sea of Unconsciousness.
