This Conscious Planet Thinks and Reacts

Ever since the Harvey Frankenstein story broke almost 3 weeks ago, it has pretty much sucked the energy out of other topics. Trust me folks, this is just the tip of the tippiest tip tip tip of the iceberg, just yesterday Papa George Bush had to publicly apologize for groping an actress and I’m sure many pervy male actors, producers and directors who have had a long-time reputation like Harvey’s are all waiting for the other shoe to drop. Bring it on I say, nothing would make me happier than to see the dross and detritus of humanity like these types disappear completely and never be heard from again.

Anyway I kind of wanted to bring some attention to something I think serious light-workers need to think about and hopefully direct some much-needed attention towards. Because of Harvey-gate, many people have forgotten about what Trump was going on about before the Weinstein story broke; namely nuclear war with North Korea.

Trump and Kim Jong Un comparing wee-wees

I honestly thought we were past this juvenile, nuclear my-weewee-is-bigger-than-your-weewee BS after the Cold War ended but I guess not given that the world now has some serious mentally unstable, juvenile delinquents  back in power like Trump, Kim Jong Un in North Korea and Rodrigo Duterte in the Phillipines.

Before I go into what I think might possibly be some truly catastrophic scenarios, let me back up a bit so you have an idea of where I am going with all of this.

That the Earth is alive and has points of power is a forgone conclusion. The amateur archeologist Alfred Watkins made a startling discovery in 1922. He discovered that many old churches, pagan sites and landmarks in the English countryside were aligned along straight lines which he called “ley lines”.

The famous St. Michael line cutting across Southern England.

Watkins re-discovered something which earlier pagan and ancient civilizations knew all along, that the planet is alive and has energy meridians crisscrossing all over, in much the same way the human body has energy meridians  and acu-points for specific organs and ailments in Chinese acupuncture theory. In some ways, the earths ley lines are like the nervous system of the human body.

The ancient Australian Aborigines called them the “Songlines”…

An energetic map of the Song Lines of Australia by Aborigine David Banggal Mowaljarlai.

The ancient Chinese called them “Dragon Lines”…

A dragon lines map of Japan

and the old Celts called them “Fairy Paths”.

The stone tracks of Carnac, France

Interestingly, many of the world’s natural and man-made sacred sites, pilgrimage routes, holy shrines, wells and mountains are located on these energy meridians and ley lines. These are places of power, where the energy is usually more powerful, of a higher frequency, where people very often under specific conditions usually have experiences (sometimes of a spiritual nature, sometimes not) which transform them completely.

Some of the Earth’s ley lines and the sacred sites on them.

As in acupuncture, specific acupuncture points on the human body are related to energy meridians for certain ailments or organs (i.e liver, heart, depression, addiction). Likewise, many of these ley lines and sacred sites are aligned and related to specific spiritual issues and ailments. Some places are closely related to throat chakra issues (i.e using your voice, singing, speaking your truth), others are more related to the solar plexus (i.e fear, survival, listening to your gut).

Sanscreed Holy Well, Ireland

Just as you don’t stimulate an acupuncture point for liver problems if you have depression or you don’t take medication for high blood pressure when you have acne, likewise stimulate a ley line in a bad way, you are bound to get some serious blow-back.

 

Just like how the body reacts if it is under duress or stress, either long term or sudden, the Earth does as well. Nothing stays in isolation for long.

There was a video of Cherokee Elder  and survivalist Grandfather Willy Whitefeather that used to be on Youtube a few years ago but it has since disappeared. In it, he described that every time the United States did a giant military offensive or bombed any given place in Iraq or Afghanistan in the early days of the War on Terrorism, there was almost an immediate natural disaster hitting the United States whether it was Hurricane Katrina or something else, not long afterwards.  Tit for tat. The closest video I could find where Willy talks about these things is this one.

I’ll be very honest. I don’t do predictions. I don’t have that gift and I do not consider myself a psychic though I can be very intuitive when I put my focus and intellect to work. This is just my gut feeling and I could be completely wrong and I really hope I am.

Areas directly affected by Yellowstone.

If that idiot Trump decides to go nuclear whether its against North Korea or Iran or Russia and drops an atomic hydrogen or neutron bomb, I have a sick feeling that the super-volcano in Yellowstone OR the San Andreas fault OR the Cascade Mountain range in California (Mount Shasta), Oregon (Mount Hood) and Washington States (Mount St. Helen’s and Mount Rainier) are going to wake up. Recent months have seen an uptick of activity at all these places, small little blips letting us know they are awake, far from asleep. If they want to howl in pain, they will. The scenarios afterwards are just too horrible to contemplate but if any of you are curious, the blowing  up of a super-volcano has the same, exact effects of nuclear winter. Prolonged cloud coverage around the world, little to no plant  growth, no crops, no food, serious water contamination.

The Native Elders have not been talking about this because I’m guessing most of them are probably in deep prayer and ceremony to offset something like this. The Hopi had prophecies around a Gourd of Ashes falling from the sky which they believe referred to the bombing of Hiroshima. I don’t bring this up to scare people, I’m not into fear porn but I do think people should be forewarned and understand what the situation is and do what they can to offset this madness. Do whatever you have to do or whatever you can. Pray. Meditate. Do ceremony. Share. Direct your attention so that Trump DOESN’T do this. Ever. The guy can’t think properly so we might as well think for him and direct it in a good way.

Am I right in saying this?

 

Into The Maelstrom

“Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up.”

– Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Apologies Shifters for not writing very much. It just seems that almost everyday now, another level of outrageousness is being unleashed on all of us that it makes me wonder if I can even keep up and write about it any meaningful way of what’s happening in the world and by correspondence, on the subtler plains.

I’m going to just be honest but it would seem that everything is a mess. I knew things were going to get ugly and degenerate with Agent Orange Baby Fists as president but I wasn’t expecting it to happen so quickly and barely 2 weeks into his presidency. It’s almost impossible to focus on anything else, even up here in Canada because of the influence and centrality the US has on the international order.

Agent Orange Baby Fists now has his name on this rink. Central Park, looking south.

I spent a week in New York City by myself and came back a few days ago. Rates are cheap right now given it’s the low season, they were practically giving rooms away at 5 star hotels so I decided to take advantage of it. This wasn’t really a Trump trip or anything of the sort, but like I wrote earlier, there’s no escaping him. New Yorkers and Manhattanites are a very tough breed but practically every soul I encountered there was beyond disgusted at what’s happened and the direction that country is going in.  I mean they know Agent Orange Baby Fists the best, he comes from the same town and they’ve lived with his obnoxiousness for years. I had one conversation with an amazing  Wicca/Pagan witch where she pointed out to me that Agent Orange Baby Fists’ team seem to be all reincarnated Nazis. They couldn’t pull through with their plans the last time and now they’re going to make sure they do everything they can and of course instead of Jews, the Muslims will be the new canary in the coalmine. You have to remember that in Nazi Germany, Hitler didn’t only go after the Jews, but also homosexuals, gypsies (the Roma), people of color, intellectuals and professors who disagreed with Nazi ideology. I can totally see that happening with this current crew.

Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda.
Has this dude reincarnated as….

….this dude? Steve Bannon

One night I happened to be in Greenwich Village and the sound of thousands cheering brought me to Washington Square Park with a full pro-immigrant, pro-Muslim, anti-Trump  demonstration in full swing with everyone under the Sun in attendance, black, white, brown, yellow, straight, LGBTQ.

I was literally right up against the right pillar of the arch.

The night after the Executive Order banning Muslims from specific countries was issued,  I happened to go for some curry take-out at a place frequented by Pakistani and Bangladeshi cab drivers, all of whom , who normally are a cheerful bunch, were in a sombre mood and quite worried what the future would hold for them.

Yup, it’s like this all the time now outside of Trump Tower

Another afternoon, I happened to be strolling down 5th Avenue and needed to use the ladies room. Trump Tower was in front of me and from the street I could see a Starbucks inside so I figured there had to be a restroom inside. After walking by SWAT-team members with machine guns and uzis, having to put my purse through a detection machine, I  walked around a bit to take in Trump Tower and it is by far, the ugliest, tackiest, energetically most terrible place in NYC.

When I popped in, it was as dead as it is in this photo.

The over-the-top pink marble everywhere, rose-tinted gold mirrors everywhere, brass finishings. Even the people at the Starbucks  cafe  on the second floor looked depressed. The cafe downstairs was cheap-looking and empty. You had a lot of waiters and hostesses standing around trying to look busy or lure in tourists. I don’t know why but there were quite a number of Chinese and Japanese female tourists with head curlers still in their hair.  I went to powder my nose and left. I have no idea what kind of an insecure loser you’d have to be to want to live in such a garish architectural abortion.

There wasn’t even any escape in Central Park. One rare, sunny and unusually warm afternoon, I was munching on a sandwich while sitting on the warm rocks in Central Park South, and admiring the skyline when I suddenly see an ice rink and a zamboni clearing up the ice both with ‘TRUMP” displayed prominently. It completely ruined the moment.

The rink is behind these rocks.

An then the worst part was coming back home and hearing about the Quebec City mosque shootings. Agent Orange’s presidency might have something to do with it but racism and intolerance have been a long-time feature in Quebec politics and Quebec society. I know because I’ve experienced it firsthand while growing up. There is a certain strain of Quebecois (certainly NOT all) who really, are nothing more than the French-speaking equivalent of Southern redneck Klansmen in the US. Same xenophobia, same level of cultural ignorance, same level of white supremacy and entitlement, same level of fear that the planet will no longer be the Anglo, American, Western European man’s domain but that it’s going to get very, very colorful very soon with Slavs, Asians, Chinese, Indians and women, all of whom are on the ascendancy.

But there were other moments of grace. Mostly spontaneous encounters with people on the street, bus or subway, random deep conversations about what’s happening. To me this is the most beautiful thing of what has happened: People finally GET IT that they have no choice now but to work together and fight together to look out for one another, because if they don’t, they could be next. Jews are lending their synagogues to Muslims to pray in. I saw a huge contingent of the LGBTQ community come out in force about the Muslim ban. People who normally never speak to each other are now coming out of the woodwork to defend each other and are talking to each other. Everyone knows who the common enemy is. And this is just after week 2.

I don’t have the gift of prophecy but if this is what’s happened in just 2-3 weeks and the population’s energy is frothing and churning like a maelstrom like this, there is no way in God’s Good Earth that Agent Orange Baby Fists will complete his term as president. *Something* will go down, either impeachment or an assassination attempt, I think. People generally can’t live under than level of constant stress for very long before someone or something eventually breaks down and there are always weirdos and unstable types around.

The question to be asked at that point is what will replace it? I don’t think we can go back to how things were. The age of neoliberalism and capitalism is drawing to a close and the people who are forcing this change are the young because they’ve been left out in the cold and they’re not drinking the capitalism Kool-Aid anymore.

This is where we’re going to need the dreams and ideas of fools, poets, writers, thinkers, artists, anarchists and the marginalized. If you look at the history of human progression, good ideas almost always start off in the margins, in the fringes of society and once they move to the center and capture the public imagination, they suddenly become policy or reality. For instance, basic guaranteed income started as an idea in anarchist circles because, to paraphrase Professor Chomsky, people should not need to rent themselves out in order to live, and now several countries are seriously thinking of implementing it.

To that I say, dream big, people, dream.

Building Walls, Building Bridges and Ghosts of the White House

The week we have all been dreading has finally arrived. The Orange Warthog takes office this Friday. Truthfully, I don’t think he’s all that smart in terms of decision-making. I don’t even think the guy knows his ass from his armpit about basic civics. I think it’s going to be another presidency like George W. Bush’s where the actual president does absolutely nothing but his coterie of Machiavellian advisors around him will run the show. I also think there’s something called the Deep State which will run the show. That’s the part of the government that no one really knows about, deeply embedded actors who make sure that things like the military-industrial complex, the intelligence community and business keep going no matter what. Piss off Deep State actors and they’ll get rid of you.

I’ve recently just finished watching all 12 episodes of  Oliver Stone’s “The Untold History of the United States” since it’s on Netflix (most of the episodes are on Youtube as well). If you have a couple of rainy Sundays in a row and nothing to do, it is definitely worth a watch. Just excellent documentary film-making and little known factoids about American history this past century which hardly any history class will teach you. In light of this series, I’m sure there is a Deep State at work. They are the exact same interests that kept Bernie Sanders out, will try to ensure that Bernie and the progressives do not take control of the Democratic Party and will either assassinate or impeach Trump if he goes too far. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again. They killed JFK and they did it to an almost forgotten icon of American progressive thought, Henry A. Wallace.

Henry A. Wallace, 33rd Vice President of the US, should have been President.

I had no idea who Wallace was until I watched the series but after I did and did some more reading about him, I was floored.

Henry A. Wallace was President Roosevelt’s vice-president. A trained agro-economist from Iowa, his father was Secretary of the Department of Agriculture under President Calvin Coolidge’s cabinet. Wallace went on to come up with new varieties of blight-resistant corn and poultry and eventually run the same office as his father. Wallace saw what the Great Depression was doing to people in the country and was obsessed with farmers being able to produce food to feed everyone.  He saw to it that food prices deliberately stayed low. When FDR tapped him as to be his VP during his third administration at the height of World War II, Wallace was wildly popular all over the world. Fluent in Spanish, he was received as royalty in South America. As a child, one of the first African-American scientists, George Washington Carver, stayed with the family and befriended Wallace and taught him all about genetics in botany. After that he was a lifelong advocate of civil rights 40 years before it became a reality and had no time for racists or bigots since he knew racism was a form of ignorance. He hated colonialism and imperialism and felt that the people of Asia, Africa and South America deserved to chart their own future. He was for equal pay for women, a national health care system which covered everyone and supported unions. Even Josef Stalin had huge respect for the man. In fact Wallace was loved by just about everyone except Big Business and Winston Churchill.

The Conservative South hated Wallace because he refused to look at the black man as inferior and wanted to dialogue with the Russians instead of demonizing them. Business interests hated him because he was on the left. Wallace gained the hatred of Winston Churchill  when he gave his “Century of the Common Man” speech and decried imperialism, something which Churchill would not give up. One of Churchill’s non-negotiables for WWII was that the British Empire must continue and the trading and shipping routes from Britain’s colonies in Asia and Africa as well as oil from Persia had to be safeguarded and defended at all costs.

By Roosevelt’s third term, Wallace’s popularity was unprecedented among common folks and voters, but he was equally despised by Democratic Party bosses. When Roosevelt was up for election for an unheard of fourth term, DNC bosses manipulated the DNC convention so that a feeble, ill-experienced puppet like Harry Truman got the VP nomination instead and that Wallace was blocked out under the most extraordinary and blatant of circumstances. When FDR died a few weeks later, Truman became president and among other things, dropped the bomb on Japan when Japan was ready to surrender anyway. One of the biggest “What if’s?” of American history is what if Henry Wallace had become president instead? Maybe there would not have been an atom bomb, maybe no Cold War, civil rights may have happened sooner. We’ll never know. The establishment narrative has practically wiped him and his endeavors away from the history books.

Wallace in 1962, with his chickens.

There’s another side to the Henry Wallace story which fascinates me. He was a polymath with a myriad of interests, constantly solving problems and asking questions but the man was also mystically inclined. He had a deep and profound interest in religion and all forms of spirituality and mysticism with the ultimate question of mankind’s evolution, not unlike Sri Aurobindo and his writings on man’s ultimate destiny. He read up on Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Theosophy. Wallace was very good friends with Russian mystical painter Nicholas Roerich.

“Elijah the Prophet” by Nicholas Roerich

In fact it was Wallace who had sent Roerich to Central Asia and the Himalayas to look for resistant, hearty strains of grass to bring back and study for planting in arid areas in the US.  It was Wallace, under advice from Roerich, who convinced FDR to place the Seal of the Freemasons on the American dollar bill, the pyramid with the all-seeing eye. Wallace’s friendship with Roerich was ultimately used against him as well politically. Wallace died in 1965 but as recently as 2005, when his son died, it seems that the Wallace family tradition of looking after the land and pushing the boundaries of inquiry still continued.

When I look at what happened to Henry Wallace in 1944, I realize that what happened to Bernie Sanders in 2016 was just history repeating itself. Big Business and the Deep State would rather see a population starve itself to death, die from lack of medicine, drink poisoned water, shoot each other, become dumbed-down than lose even a single penny in profits.  The nation-state as we know it is a corporation and their job is to make money. They don’t give a shit about its citizens except knowing how productive they are so they can make money off of them. So it basically means it is up to us to look after ourselves and each other.(<–that’s why I have anarchist leanings).

Dude, do it!

For years, there have been stories circulating that the White House is haunted and houses several spirits and poltergeists. There have been sightings and encounters with Abraham Lincoln (Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands apparently fainted and a stark-naked Winston Churchill dropped his towel). A black cat apparition is usually seen before disaster and the last sighting was before President Kennedy was killed. Even Michelle Obama has gone on the record to say that she’s experienced something there. I don’t know if The Orange Warthog (TOW) will actually have an office there, which he works out of regularly, but it would seem Ivanka and her idiot husband Jared Kushner will. I only hope that the ghosts of past presidents haunt them or at the very least scare the living daylights out of them. That would be kind of great.

The wall separating Gaza.

A wall went up in Berlin and came down in 1989. TOW  wants to build a wall along Mexico, like Israel has along Gaza. FDR had Japanese-Americans rounded up and put into internment camps. TOW wants a registry of Muslims. The era of Walls is behind us, we should be building bridges instead. The earth  and the cosmos is pushing to go in one direction of Unity and these feeble-minded politicians are intent in going in the opposite direction of separation.  The cosmos will win out eventually.

Energy in Flux and on the Precipice

I’m guessing everyone is pretty much waiting for 2016 to be over and done with? I know I am. I should have taken David Bowie’s death within the first 10 days of 2016 as an omen of how the year was going to turn out…
I don’t think anyone could have accurately predicted with any semblance of confidence what was going to happen this past year. (Remember waaayyy back when we all assumed the 2016 American election was going to be an inevitable showdown between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush? Ha ha!)

Remember in “The Lord of the Rings” how Sauron and the forces of darkness were slowly taking over Middle Earth, yet there were a few islands of safety left, like The Shire, the Elvish kingdoms of Rivendell and Lothlorien? Increasingly, like Sauron’s minions, it seems our world is also succumbing to the darker impulses of humanity.

Fear, greed and ignorance will do that to you. Right-wing movements and totalitarian governments are on the rise from Europe to India to Turkey. The United States of America elected in the United Snakes of America. The ugly spectre of racial intolerance and bigotry has raised its head again. Everyone in the UK and Europe going nuts over Brexit.

Don’t get me wrong, Canada has its problems too. Justin Trudeau has made a massive weapons sale to the bat-shit craziest country on Earth, Saudi Arabia. When the oil wars subside and the water wars begin (and that is definitely coming down the pipeline, bet on it), Canada, Russia, Argentina, Chile and Scandinavia, because of all our snow and fresh-water lakes, will of course be the world’s water super-powers. Conflict will come here eventually too. Even so, boring old Canada seems to feel like one of those few islands of safety and rationality for the moment.

Fights broke out at Trump rallies all the time, usually along racial lines.

I cannot remember a time when it felt like the energy and ethos of the times was in such dramatic flux. And so polarized. Right against Left. White against Black. Rich against the poor and middle class. David Icke has said that the years 2016-2020/21 will be the defining years of which path humanity will take, either an Orwellian nightmare or a chance to renew itself completely. The Irish mystic Lorna Byrne has said that in her visions, the forces of good and evil are gathering in the spiritual world and a superficial look at the world around us would seem to verify that claim. (David, if you read this, I know you’re going to be in Dublin in 2017 –  I would LOVE to see you and Lorna sit down for a chat and exchange notes.)

When you have such a conservative magazine like The Economist doing a parody of the Tarot cards for their cover, then you know something strange is up.

Reading through some of the websites of the alternative news community  and research communities and you quickly realize no one really, truly knows what we’re headed towards only that the ground is shifting under our feet constantly and it’s really hard to hold on to anything solid. Almost daily, there seems to be some level of craziness taking place somewhere like this past week’s assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey.

 

I don’t want to make light of what happened but did this guy watch Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” before doing this? (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

On a deeper level, maybe that is the whole point. That we shouldn’t be holding on to anything anymore and be able to stand on our own, from within our own strength, figuratively speaking. That the chalkboard is being deliberately being wiped clean and we have been given a chance to create what we want to see and not what someone else tells us to see. It is an empowering place to be in but can also be a terrifying one if you’re not used to it or ready for it.  It just feels like we’re all on some kind of precipice.

I hope all of you have a safe time with family and friends celebrating whatever it is you chose to celebrate, whether it is/was Yule, Christmas, Hanukkah, Happy Turkey Dinner Day, Kwanzaa or New Year’s, in whatever way you chose to celebrate. Thank you to those readers who continue to read this strange blog of mine. It always surprises me that people are interested in anything I have to say or write.

Onward and upward.

EER

P.S
To anyone who may be interested on the topic of the cultural appropriation of yoga, bullshit spirituality  and similar issues, on Monday, December 26th at 4pm Eastern Standard Time, I will be on Montreal’s Southeast Asian community’s radio station Radio Humsafar discussing these topics. Tune in, online and maybe even call in!

David Icke, Obelisks and New York City

The healing garden of The Cloisters museum

Sorry Shifters, in getting this out to you so late, I got back from New York City a few days ago and needed some time to process the many things I saw and experienced there. Sit back, relax, make yourself a cup of tea because this will be a long one.

First off, like I had indicated in earlier posts, my primary reason for heading down to NYC was to see David Icke in the Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn. If you watch the video below, you’ll see me in the audience in the front row in a bright orange hoodie at 1:37 to 2:00

I already knew much of what Icke was saying since I’d watched dozens of his videos on Youtube over the years but what I found particularly interesting was maybe the last 3 hours of his 12 hour show (it started at 10am and he got off the stage at 10:15pm) , where he goes into what the end game of a micro-chipped population really means as well as what the ending of this Kali Yuga means coinciding with the Truth Vibrations as we head off into the next age. Great stuff. I met some lovely people in the audience as well and even got to chat with his son Gareth Icke who was really pleasant (and super-tall as is David’s other son, Jaime). The next day, I met up with a fellow blogger which was wonderful. I’m glad I went.

I’ve been to NYC many times before but they were usually short stays, a few days here or a couple of hours there between flights but this time I took a full week to really take in the city, its various neighbourhoods and investigate the spiritual hot-spots of probably the most concrete city on Earth.

Manhattan island’s various neighbourhoods

Much has already been written about haunted New York, the secret clubs, the creepy organizations based there and even some of the buildings which have sordid and storied pasts like The Dakota or the San Remo. Those are the creepy, bad places and most of them are located in either mid-town Manhattan (which is tourist central and probably the most psychically polluted part of the island) , the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side and of course down town where the Financial District and Wall Street is.

The twin-towered San Remo building as seen from Central Park. Tons of celebrities live there. Bono lives in and owns the top three floors of one tower and apparently Demi Moore has tried to sell her part of her tower for a reported $75 million dollars.

Walking around, you can’t help but feel the power, see the wealth and flat out energy of the city. You’ll feel it particularly as you walk along 5th Avenue, across the street from Central Park in what I call billionaire row and what the guidebooks call Museum Mile.

The Fifth Avenue apartments across the street from Central Park East. Everyone from Jackie Kennedy to Aristotle Onassis to the Rothschilds have lived here.

The apartments in that particular area house folks like the Rothschilds, mysterious neo-con billionaire Bruce Kovner and Michael Bloomberg. Walk further south and you hit the Plaza Hotel. I remember the flags out front used to be the American, Canadian, United Kingdom and maybe French flags. Now its China, India and Saudi Arabia which should tell you plenty about who is buying up real estate in NYC and who are the biggest spenders there.

The Plaza Hotel, across the street from Central Park South

Then you hit Rockefeller Centre, the famous statue of Atlas with the world on his back, the British Empire Building (huh? I thought that was long gone)  and then the uber-luxury stores and jewellery stores,  all the playthings of the incredibly rich. The further you get from the park, the denser, the crazier and busier everything gets.

The Titan god, Atlas holding the world up.

Truthfully, I didn’t pay very much attention to this part of Manhattan. From a spiritual point of view, if you want to experience and feel something pure and real, you have to head up to the northern reaches of Manhattan island, particularly around Morningside Heights and Fort Tyron/Fort George/Inwood.

The last time I was in NY, I had missed out in seeing the stained glass windows from Canterbury Cathedral in the UK at a special exhibition by the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts‘ “other” campus, called The Cloisters. The Cloisers is basically a recreated monastery which John D. Rockefeller had dismantled from other monasteries in France and Spain  and recreated brick by brick in Fort Tyron Park. It houses the Met’s collection of medieval and religious art.

I wanted to see the recreated healing herb gardens with 99 plants which the Emperor Charlemagne ordered planted for their medicinal properties, and look at the Unicorn Tapestries but what I wasn’t ready for was the details in the capitals of the columns. You have to remember all this was done by hand and its all in stone. Complicated scenes of demons and angels, tons of symbolism and vivid imagery.

Dozens of them at the Cloisters and each one is different

The second thing I wasn’t prepared for was Fort Tyron Park itself. Perched high on the northern end of Manhattan island, come at sunset and you’ll have amazing views of the Hudson River and the Palisades.

Yes, this is Manhattan island. And that’s New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson River.

I however was on a bit of reconnaissance mission to Fort Tyron Park. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.  (his father Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. designed Central Park and Montreal’s Mont Royal Park)  and Frederick Todd (with whom I have a strange connection to which I will write about in a forth-coming post) , this is by far the “cleanest” place on the island from an energetic point of view. The exposed granite rock and cliffs which have been incorporated into the park itself has a lot to do with it. More on granite later.

The other neighbourhood, Morningside Heights, in the north-west corner of Central Park, houses several places of note.

First you have, St. John the Divine Cathedral, which is supposedly the biggest Gothic cathedral in the world (and is still unfinished). When you walk inside, trust me, you’ll feel its size.

Named after St. John the Divine also known as John the Beloved, who wrote the Book of Revelations in the Bible.

Second, the wonderful W 111th Steet People’s Garden which if you walk around slowly, you’ll see some very interesting spiritual art and statues among its bushes and trees. I spent a delightful afternoon here, eating my lunch on a bench underneath the shadow of a gigantic oak tree with the soaring spires in front of me (if you want dessert and coffee or tea, don’t miss the fantastic Hungarian Pastry Shop across the street).

The show-stopper is no doubt the strange Peace Fountain. First of all it has no water, so it shouldn’t be called a fountain (but what do I know?). It depicts and angel and demon in the grip of a fight while the Sun, Moon and Cosmos looks on. Basically Good vs. Evil.

Very bizarre.

Another place of note in Morningside Heights is the Nicholas Roerich Museum. I’ve highlighted Roerich’s art work several times already,  he was a Russian mystic, based his paintings on the spiritual myths and realities of the lands he travelled which included  India, China, Tibet, Mongolia, Central Asia, Siberia and Russia and was one of the architects for the Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments in times of war and conflict. It is one thing to see his paintings in books and online but nothing can prepare you in seeing them up close and personal. They are VERY powerful. Roerich was very clued in.

Order of Rigden Jyepo, Nicholas Roerich 1933. I bought a magnet of this at the museum and its on my fridge now.

Alright. Granite.

The ancient Egyptians essentially built most of their monuments, temples, statues and sarcophagi  in granite. It is a rock which is VERY hard and given the arid climate of Egypt, does not wear down easily over time, even when exposed to the elements. I’ve read in some esoteric literature that granite also holds and amplifies energy.

Colossal granite head of Amenhotep III at the British Museum.

When I read “Swimming with the Whale” a book about the teachings of Cypriot mystic Daskalos, he said that the Egyptians had placed spells into the granite walls of the pyramid chambers themselves and when initiates stayed in these chambers during initiation trails and ceremonies, under the right conditions, certain spirits would come out to test them. They were not necessarily benevolent either. There was even an episode when Napoleon, during his invasion of Egypt, decided to stay in the chamber overnight, but something gave him such a fright that he fled very quickly afterwards and refused to talk about what had happened to him for the rest of his life. Dolores Cannon has said the same thing in some of her talks and readings. The modern Irish mystic and angelologist Lorna Byrne experienced the same thing in NYC City’s Met museum at the re-created Temple of Dendur.

The Temple of Dendur at the Met Museum

Lorna in fact said that the “neter”, the spirit of the Temple of Dendur came forward to her and told her it that it was very sad and wanted to go home. When I visited the Temple and walked through the Egyptian antiquities at the Met museum a few days later, saw all the sarcophagi, the graves of formers kings, queens, and noblemen have been dug up and placed under glass for ugly tourists with fat knees to gawk at, or ignore completely, things which had been buried for the dead for a reason, I just felt overwhelming sadness as well. Death isn’t something we should gawk at. It’s something private. The Museum’s position is that these things are brought out for us to learn from but I didn’t see a lot of learning. I saw lots of people taking silly selfies and not even reading the information placards beside each artefact. On a more conspiratorial note, I’m almost certain some of these artefacts are being used by American secret societies in ceremony and ritual since many members of these groups sits on the board of directors, regents etc. of the Museum.

The Egyptian obelisk and the Met Museum. The traiangular bit is the Robert Lehman Collection.

Walk behind the Met Museum and you see that the Robert Lehman Collection wing from certain angles, looks like a glass pyramid. (Another famous museum, Paris’s Louvre Museum also has a glass pyramid outside.) 100 feet away from this, in the back, you’ll encounter a 3000 year old Egyptian granite obelisk in near perfect condition  right in the middle of Central Park.

The New York obelisk before its recent clean-up.

When I got there, there was a meditation group sitting in a circle beside it and doing meditation and chanting. They left an hour later and I was left alone with it. The matching twin to NY’s obelisk sits in London near the Thames.

The obelisks in New York and London are actually a matching pair from Heliopolis, Egypt.

Another Egyptian obelisk stands in Paris, near the Place de la Concorde. Yet another Egyptian obelisk stands in Istanbul’s Hippodrome in the historical Sultanahmet district. There are 13 Egyptian obelisks in Rome alone. The Washington Monument in DC is also a giant obelisk not an Egyptian one, but a hallowed out structure. Cities which can’t get a real obelisk then try to create fake ones like the McGill Tower Building in Montreal.

And what is this supposed to be?

New York, London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul. Either currently or formerly imperial cities. Centers of power and finance.  All have Egyptian obelisks? I find that mighty strange. Many other folks have made the connection between obelisks and architecture and power already, particularly with respect to Freemasons. I’m not going to go into that. Rather, to go back to Icke’s work for a moment. he talks about this reality hack, this fake matrix by archons. If that is so, I’m almost positive these obelisks are “power pins” holding the thing down kind of like those pegs you use to drive into the ground to keep your tent in place.

Obelisks are the esoteric equivalent of these pegs.

No wonder the spirits of these monuments and temples are sad. They are being used.

Twilight of the Old Gods – Part I

“The world system we inhabit came about due to a mistake.”
– The Gospel of Phillip, Nag Hammadi Scrolls, Codex II, 3:75.5

“Mother Earth was blasted by a searing dry wind. To human eyes it would have looked as if the mist was being churned up by a typhoon, but mystic vision detects something like a human form hidden in the storm – a long-boned giant, hooded, with scaly white skin and red eyes. The darkness was the spirit of Saturn. He was armed with a scythe and he swooped down, pressing himself on top of Mother Earth with black delight. “Don’t be afraid. Let me just…lie on you.”  Did he want to make love to her? Or was his only desire to squeeze the life out of her? There was an ambiguity to his deeds that would leave a scar, a chasm in the deep structure of the cosmos….To Saturn it seemed as if her reserves were limitless, as if she were absorbing all his strength, draining him. But the irony was that for her part she began to fear she couldn’t hang on much longer either. It felt to her as if she had nothing left, that he was the stronger. he was succeeding in suffocating all the life out of her, and if he did, she knew the consequences: there would never be life anywhere in the universe. It would forever be a place of the shifting dead matter…”
– “The Sacred History”, Mark Booth

I’ve just finished up an amazing read, namely John Lamb Lash’s “Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief”.

Fantastic read.

For those of you who follow certain strains of Gnosticism, some of David Icke’s work or just have an interest in secret/forbidden teachings or understanding the origins of belief among Abrahamic traditions… Folks, this is the mystical jack-pot you’ve been waiting for (my apologies to readers, who like political, current events types of posts, it’s totally cool if you sit this one out because this is going to get VERY esoteric).

I’ll first outline what Lamb Lash writes in the lost Gnostic myths on our origins, most of it based on the Nag Hammadi library, then I’ll point out where it differs in discourse and some of the deeper implications of it along with parallel teachings in other traditions. The implications are immense and probably worth at least another five books, but I’ll only hit what came to me very quickly.

Quick back step – After the Councils of Carthage and Rome, the Christian Bible (and by extension, church dogma) is officially “closed”, meaning you cannot add to the Bible canon anymore even if versions of some of those old Bible stories are suddenly found, with better clarity, better explanation and in some cases even render some of those old interpretations as just plain wrong. So when you have epic archaeological finds like the Nag Hammadi Library or the Dead Sea Scrolls, often containing alternate versions of events and lessons in the “official” Bible or Torah and written at the same time as the events of those two books, even if what they say is legit, it’s not considered canon and cannot be considered part of “official” Christianity or Judaism. The implications also spill over into Islam since Islam echos the same stories very often. More importantly, the implications spill over into everything around us in the world today.

The Nag Hammadi library was found not far from this area, which isn’t far from the Saint Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai Desert, Egypt.

OK, here’s the Gnostic origin myth in mystical terms, as found in The Nag Hammadi scrolls (which BTW also includes intriguing stuff like the Gospel of Phillip, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, and a chapter called “On the Origin of the World”). I’m simplifying it here immensely.

1) A singularity arises out of Cosmic Intelligence, the Pleroma

2) From the Pleroma, 2 figureheads emerge, Thelete (Divine Intention) and Sophia (Divine Wisdom)

3) A cosmic “She” decides to come into Being from the dream world (or the world of forms as Plato would say – Lamb Lash’s book refers to her as Gaia Sophia).

4) Fascinated and completely absorbed in the passionate process of her own becoming and dreaming, Sophia unilaterally, without a counterpart, watches her own creation and without realizing it, has broken one Cosmic law, that creation needs to happen in twos, not ones.

5) While Gaia Sophia “forms” herself in the material 3-D dimension as planet Earth, she inadvertently causes a ripple effect between the dimensions over which she has no control and did not anticipate in happening

6) In this disturbance, parasitic beings, called Archons (or demons, bad spirits, ghouls if you prefer) are created and they gather around a false god called the Demiurge, who falsely believes he’s the creator of all. This demented god then proceeds to create atomic matter from mist and empty spaces.

Image from Crystallinks.com

7) Sophia undergoes her process of materialization as planet Earth. Sophia is the prime mover, the Primal Creatress, boundless creativity, originality, fecundity, fertility. The planet Earth is inadvertently caught within the false, inorganic, synthetic system or matrix of the Demiurge, NOT the Pleroma, the real origin. Sophia calls out the Demiurge as the fake that he is and that Beings who come from the Pleroma (which includes human souls) are more intelligent than the Archons.

Detail of Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. His version of God.
“A jealous and avenging God is the LORD; The LORD is avenging and wrathful. The LORD takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies.” (Bible, Nahum 1:2) —> This doesn’t sound like a really nice entity, does it?

8) The Demiurge and the Archons are copycats, pale imitators, leeches…However, they are very good at stealing and copying from others or causing such disruption/distraction, that no good creative work gets done. They are a jealous, covetous, cunning and constantly hungry lot. They always want more, it’s never enough.

9) Just as the Archons then start to feed off of Sophia, from the moment of her completion, deep in the Pleroma another Being, the Aeon Christos, hears her cry for help and at the very last second, before Sophia is overtaken completely, Aeon Christos, the Sun itself, shows up, with his healing and life-giving warmth.

10) Sophia is saved but stranded and isolated from the Pleroma. Unfortunately, the Archons and Demiurge matrix are still here as well and have tricked everyone into lies and falsehood and stories from the word “Go”.

11) Humanity’s awakening is thus intimately tied with Sophia’s fate. Humanity’s triple challenge is finding their evolutionary niche, staying clear of Archons and their interference and defining its role in Sophia’s ongoing evolution.

Lash Lamb’s book goes into substantial detail about what I just wrote but he also points out how many of the origin stories in places like the Bible and Koran also retold this story using certain elements and changing others (i.e Garden of Eden—> Sophia, Serpent—>Archons,  A jealous “God”–> Demiurge, etc.). What I find VERY interesting is that if you begin to look at this on a symbolic level, a lot of myths from other religions start to add up.

It’s a shame that more people don’t know about these alternate visions and that so much of Gnostic lore has either been eradicated over time through political and religious forces or forgotten about completely had it not been for once-in-a-lifetime discoveries like the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls. It would force a re-telling and change the narrative in so many other areas of human life as well.

Divine Masculine AND Divine Feminine. There’s just no other way, folks.

For one, it would acknowledge the primacy of the female force in creation. Much of the misogyny and patriarchy that we live with around us in today’s world, whether it’s the higher pay men receive, the right-wing politicians telling women what they can and can’t do with their own bodies, men-only clergy or honour killings in places like Pakistan is a direct result of the undermining of the importance of the female. If that had been there from Day 1, I think the world would look very different from what it is today.

Secondly, I think it would fine-tune people’s judgement-making abilities because they would be able to “see” things very clearly without any, if I may say, Archon-like influence. Like I had written earlier, Archons are parasites, copy-cats and insatiable in their hunger. If you look at some versions of capitalism, it’s ALL about clawing your way to the top, rugged individualism, making as much money as possible and even when you have $10 million, you then want $20 million. You have a great spouse and kids yet you also go looking around for an affair.

How much more do you need?

Instead of being grateful for today and what you have right now and realizing that tomorrow isn’t a promise, you worry and then worry some more about planning your life down to the upteenth detail for your life 30 years from now. Instead of valuing friendships and relationships, we place value on stuff. We bulldoze virgin forests and trees, put up ugly condo developments in place and then insert fake plastic plants and trees around them to make them livable and less-sterile. We feed our stomachs and other appetites and completely overlook feeding our souls, our true selves.

Fake topiaries and bushes. I’m seeing more and more of these outside apartment buildings and downtown outdoor restaurants all the time these days.

Who the fuck is telling us that all this phoniness is real “life”?
The old stories have to go, people need to wake up from the collective haze they live under, mostly induced by false myths, false ideals and false ideologies.

Francisco de Goya’s famous painting of “Saturn devouring his Son”

If any of you are familiar with Greek mythology, Cronus (who became Saturn in Roman mythology) was the leader of the Titans, descendants of Uranus the sky god, and Gaia the Earth. Prophecy had told him, one of his sons would overthrow him, like Cronus himself had once done to his own father. To prevent this, Cronus ate his children but then Zeus was born and quickly switched at birth and he ended up overthrowing Cronus and the other Titans and establishing the reign of the Olympians. Like Zeus, I think we’re going to be asked to overthrow our version of “Cronus”, myths we have lived with for far too long because the real truth was deliberately kept from us and in doing so, also keeps us powerless.

More to come…

6 Ways We Can Re-Boot

A few random things have to go if we’re going to all go forward in any meaningful way.

1) Petro-dollars have to become a thing of the past. 

Go away.

Seriously. Because if petro-dollars go, that means annoying assholes like the Royal House of Saud will finally come down. Saudi Arabia only gets preferential treatment because it sells much-needed oil to Western democracies and that’s why it gets a seat on the UN Human Rights Council (what a fucking joke, the country with the highest amount of executions and beheadings, a royal family with literally thousands of members who act like douchebags where ever they go, keep women as sex slaves in their compounds and when women do protest, they get whipped.)

Carlos Latuff on Saudi’s seat on the UN Human Rights Council.

I could go on and on about why everybody hates Saudi Arabians, how they were virtually penniless Bedouins before the discovery of oil, how they could only make money from Hajj pilgrims before petro-dollars, how within progressive, educated Muslim circles, in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Bosnia, Albania, central Asia and Palestine, “Saudi” is a code word for a lecherous sex pervert, of how these same petro-dollars is funding Saudi Arabia to spread Wahhabism, a radical form of Islam which was once a marginal movement and only located in Saudi Arabia and now it’s being exported everywhere at the expense of pluralistic, more open-minded forms of Islam (i.e Asian Islam, European Islam, Central Asian Islam). No thank you. End petro-dollars and maybe the alternative, renewable sources of energy (and its associated economy) may finally have a chance as well as giving millions of Muslims a chance to re-examine and reform their religion in a more progressive direction without fear of any form of retribution from Saudi Wahhabi psychos.

2) The world needs to change its eating habits

If you’ve never read any of Michael Pollan’s books or watched his videos, take some time out to do so. I first read Pollan’s books about 10 years ago and since then, he’s been featured on just about every documentary that talks about the food industry, GMOs and anything related. Basically what Pollan is saying is that the disease epidemic we’ve finding ourselves in, especially around obesity and diabetes, have direct correlations to processed food. The amount of ready-made and/or fast food we buy and eat, convenience-food people stock up on in super-markets either because they’re too lazy or too ignorant to cook, all of it is taking its toll on us. Bottom line: Eat whatever you want as long as YOU make it from scratch. If it has ingredients your grand-parents or great-grandparents wouldn’t recognize, don’t eat it (i.e fruit roll ups, heavy processed foodstuffs, carbonated drinks etc.). Learn to enjoy cooking.

I quite frankly find it meditative to chop veggies, scour vintage and thrift shops and find amazing discontinued cookware brands or beautiful dinnerware and glassware which I can then put to use.

Luminarc of France once made these wine glasses specifically for Alsatian or Riesling wines. They have long been discontinued and you can only find them on ebay or thrift shops once in a while.

Food still has a way of bringing people together and creating a sense of community. Usually when I invite friends over to dinner, I try out recipes for my slow-cooker like African Peanut Stew, Beef Bourguignon, Punjabi Lamb Shanks or Butter Chicken. I come home from work, pick up a baguette for a roasted garlic spread,  a bottle of wine, fix up a salad  and you’re ready to entertain.

3) Make an effort and go along with the Global Awakening

David Icke has been saying in the past 10 years or so that the years 2016, 2017 and 2018 are the pivotal years which will determine the path planet Earth and humanity will take. Do we end up in a world which to paraphrase George Orwell, is a boot stamping on a human face forever, or one in which the citizenry and population are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and brimming over with awareness, emotional intelligence, freedom and personal empowerment and keep banksters, corporations and elected officials in their place. It’s your choice. It can happen at the ballot box, whether you check off names like “Bernie Sanders” or “Jeremy Corbyn”, or if you decide to join activist groups in your community to make energy providers more accountable and halt the deployment of smart meters, the spraying of chem-trails or becoming a gonzo journalist. Film everything weird happening around you, or record incriminating conversations even if it’s on your phone, upload it on the internet and let the world know how corrupt some elected officials and their henchmen are. You can do all that kind of stuff anonymously now. In that case, I’m a big fan of exposing assholes.

4) Be an anti-consumerist. 

Stop buying crap you don’t need just because you saw a TV commercial for it or because all your friends are buying it. Even stupid magazines like “Real Simple are full of it since they’re basically encouraging you to buy even more stuff.

Save your money and invest in having experiences instead. Renew your passport or apply for one if you never had one. Get out of your comfort zone and go to a country where no one speaks your language. Bonus: Many of these countries are super-cheap and your Western currency will take you further along. Sign up for classes which interest you (cooking, stain-glass making, making mosaics, knitting, beer-making etc.) instead of hanging out in bar or online dating sites like OK Stupid if you want to meet new, interesting quality folks. Go to speaking events or lectures of famous writers or activists if they show up in your neck of the woods.

From davidicke.com

For instance, Ickey is on some kind of world tour in 2016, I already bought my ticket for the New York City gig since I’m not sure he can make it to Canada. I’m also waiting for George Galloway, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Seymour Hersch to show up in Montreal. Corporations are only powerful because of the money YOU give THEM. Stop giving them your dollars and falling for the hype and spin and they’re suddenly vulnerable. Look at McDonald’s, changing consumer tastes now mean that they’re practically on their knees.

5) We need to Re-Examine our Collective Past and Accept it and Come to Terms with it.

Gobelki Tepe is a bit of a time capsule since the entire site was deliberately buried and was therefore left untouched from later historical periods.

I have been a huge fan and supporter of the works of alternative history researcher Graham Hancock for years now. Graham’s latest “Magicians of the Gods” is quite the bombshell, if you don’t have time to read it or watch and listen to this 3 hour talk he recently gave on the Joe Rogan Show, here it is in a quick nutshell. The Earth has been subjected to cataclysm after cataclysm during its billions of years of history. Most of it is NOT recorded because it predates human life (i.e the meteor which hit the Yucatan peninsula millions of years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs).  With the discovery of pristine megalithic sites like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, it looks like our human civilization is much older than we thought. Hancock shows that the most recent meteorite hit it may have been as recently as 12 000 years ago, which would jive with stories about the Great Flood, the disappearance of Atlantis and Mu and many other “myths” and legends around the world. He also shows why North America was never the site of any “great” primary civilization like Egypt or Babylon or India or China, mostly because it was North America which got hit by these meteorites most often, and the very sudden and violent Earth changes, wiped out everything in its way, time after time. Whatever survivors there were, were lucky enough to live on afterwards.

This is not entirely correct.

I personally believe Hancock’s hypothesis is correct. If he is, all of human history needs to be rewritten and we’re going to have to accept that new narrative, even if it pisses off academia and the powers that be who want you to believe only their version of history.

6) Get Real with Yourself

I belong to the school of thought that sometimes you just have to get yourself out of your own way. There are way too many people who are walking around broken and unhealed in some way. That brokenness comes out in strange and unexpected ways, like anger, denial, projection, depression or even personality disorders like Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. There is no shame in admitting you might need some help along the way sometime. There are therapists out there now, that don’t prescribe meds that mess with your brain chemistry, that follow spiritual paths of their own and use mostly talking as a form of therapy. Shop around until you find the right one, just don’t take the first therapist which you cross paths with. I’m not talking about psycho-babble either. I’m talking about realizing certain patterns or certain types of people seem to be following you or are in your life constantly and putting an end to these unhealthy patterns once and for all. That realization comes from you and only you. Patterns like having friends who constantly back-stab you or finding yourself only getting the attention of members of the opposite sex who are already taken or always finding yourself in jobs with a boss who is psychologically abusive. The only common denominator is you. The outside world won’t ever change unless your inside world changes first. That’s a given.

I know a lot of people in the progressive and New Age community are leery of therapists and think that by just doing yoga, or becoming vegan, or constantly praying or having organite in the house, or “not having a problem” is enough or that they alone can solve their own problems without anyone’s help when they’re not even trained professionals themselves. It’s not and it won’t. Sometimes you need that extra pair of unbiased eyes and ears to help you get out of the forest.

The Non-Negotiables

Watch this video, pay particular attention to the QUALITY of the souls here, not the dogma and theology involved:

Honestly, people like the anchorites described here freak me out (in a good way).  India has a long, long tradition of wandering fakirs, hermits and sadhus which I’m sure many of you have heard of or seen if you’ve ever visited India.

Sadhus in Nepal

Likewise Tibet also has a long tradition of yogis, monks or nuns going into seclusion for long-term meditation. Fewer and fewer of them exist with each passing year and the sad part is as they go, so do the teachings as well, since much of their insight is not based on dogma and jargon but rather direct experience.

However, I had no idea that anchorite monks and nuns still existed in the Orthodox world. Whenever I hear about such pure souls like these, it makes me wonder how they can still exist in this age of globalization, instant gratification, nuclear bombs and digital communication. How they can literally devote their entire life to contemplate and attempt to understand the Infinite in solitude and in remoteness.

Modern-day hermit, The Man Who Quit Money, Daniel Suelo, living in the wilds of the Utah canyons around Moab.

It got me wondering about the nature of genuine spiritual seeking and I’m pretty sure there are different levels of it. In my opinion, the demarcation line is, without question,  the market economy. I know I’ve gotten flack for this in past blog posts but you simply cannot mix spirit with money. I firmly believe that. It was what was taught to me by my first teacher back in Cappadocia as well as the Native Elders I spent time with in Canada and the US. If you do, it won’t last for very long and there’s always inevitably some blow-back. But the very fact that it doesn’t last long should also signal right away the level of authenticity and genuineness involved. It’s like fast-food for the soul. It satiates the hunger for like a minute but the hunger comes back even stronger than ever after a while.

A million Thai kids meditating at the Phra Dhammakaya Temple.

Sure, you can sell your abilities, do tarot readings, astrology readings, psychic channelings, yoga classes which emphasize stretching instead of hard-core Vedanta, books based on your insights if you’ve got an aptitude and talent for it or suggest donations for services rendered, but I don’t think you can sell genuine and authentic teachings which usually come from very deep, painful and hard-won experiences and you certainly can’t sell such intensely personal experiences. They either happen to you or they don’t. You either get it or you don’t. When I watch the people who yell the loudest, “Why not?”, I can almost guarantee you’re probably dealing with someone who can’t even imagine a life which exists outside of the capitalist market economy. Yes, I get it, we have to eat, but we’re not just animals trying to eke out a life. I think we’re more than that.

Anarchist thinker and writer Jacques Ellul, elucidated perfectly in his many books why anarchism is the only political and economic model which allows man to become truly human. If you don’t have  time to read his books, there’s a lot of videos worth checking out on Youtube.

This isn’t going to be an anti-capitalist rant. My own anarchist inclinations and sympathies are pretty evident to those of you who have been reading this blog for a while now. Maybe I’ll write in another blog post why I’m an anarchist, but I really do think anarchy is the only system we’ve got which acknowledges human beings as creatures with spiritual and social potentials to be fulfilled, not just economic ones. Minds far greater than mine have already written about how radical a philosophy capitalism is and how in its extreme forms eats up everything in sight, all resources, water, land, air, human beings, bodies, life, love, sex, food, shelter, everything and the obsession of infinite growth, infinite productivity and infinite profits eventually starts cannibalizing on itself. We’re already seeing it happen. When a society enters that stage, life and society becomes unbelievably coarse and human life isn’t worth a hill of beans.

The thing with authentic spirituality is that it leads you away from this world, from an existence which is based on a material, mathematically deterministic Cartesian model towards something which very often cannot be quantified and pinned down. Capitalism is its purest form, engulfs you even deeper into the material and physical. There’s literally no room for the soul there. Therein lies the conflict.

Sure, there are many things which money can’t buy, but have you ever noticed they’re usually the first qualities to be missing in a person who is so utterly engulfed in the material, they don’t even “see” what they’re lacking? The lack of manners, character, decency, class, integrity and moral fortitude? Unfortunately, these types are everywhere.

Ultimately, it is about what is negotiable and what is non-negotiable in your own life and your own spiritual journey. The only thing I can add is that when it comes to matters of the spirit, there are some things which are non-negotiable, no matter how you cut it.

Old Wine in New Bottles

 

“Magic is the science and practice of influence. If objects or beings have a positive influence on the world around them, we call this white magic, and if they disrupt, disturb or destroy, we call this black magic. In that sense we can consider everything as magic: gestures, words, looks, sounds, colors, geometrical shapes, and so on. And the same goes for animals, plants and minerals: inasmuch as they have an effect on beings, attracting or repelling them, healing them or making them ill, they have magical power.
When we look at the sun, the stars, mountains or lakes, we can feel the effect and the influence they have on us. And to a certain extent, we influence them as well. And because everything in the universe influences everything else, magic is everywhere. When you understand this and endeavor to think, feel and act positively, you will become a white mage.”

– Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

As per Aivanhov’s quote above, some serious black magic went down in Paris. I’m not going to dwell on what happened too much; already websites, conspiracy researchers, political pundits the world over are in overdrive right now, analyzing what happened, by whom and why. I’ll leave it to them to pick up the breadcrumb trail.

I will only say this; usually if you follow the money trail and ask those kinds of questions like “Who paid for those guns?” “Who is funding ISIS?”, “Where is the cash really coming from to pay for their training and hardware?”, “Who is paying ISIS fighters?”, it’ll probably get you further along in solving these mysteries. but it would seem black market forensic accounting and finance are not nearly sexy enough to pursue (or perhaps too blatantly exposing?) than pointing fingers and fueling xenophobia and stressing out an already stressed-out situation in order to gain some political capital. I just don’t think those questions are being followed up on aggressively enough.

I know Vladimir Putin is currently being demonized in the West and like all politicians of course, he has his own agenda, but I think both he and the amazing Australian independent journalist, John Pilger, pretty much nailed it, in the video below and in this article, respectively.

Do a little math, pay attention to history and it’s not hard to figure out that the American invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan and eventually of Syria (if they get what they want) is what opened this Pandora’s Box of craziness. I don’t blame Bush Jr. I know he was am almost positive he was comatose most of the time he was in office anyway and was played as a puppet.

(L to R) Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney

The real thugs were Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, both of whom are obsessed with American Grand Strategy and Imperialism, and both of whom seem to be missing in action now. (Rumsfeld I understand is now buying up all the real estate he can in super-New Agey and super-liberal, Taos, New Mexico. When I was there, a buddy of mine told me Rumsfeld is positively despised in the community and he has to wear a mask when he goes skiing in the mountains there so no one can recognize him since everybody gives him stinky eye all the time. And Cheney…I don’t think he’s human. I think he’s like the robot in the “Terminator” films, he has iced-cold liquid mercury running in his veins which keeps him alive.)

And here’s Dick!

There’s a serious story here somewhere, probably a hot-mess soup involving weapons manufacturers, arms dealers, the military industrial complex, the heroin and opium trade in central Afghanistan, off-shore accounts, international banking cartels, American Grand Strategy, intelligence agencies like the CIA, MI6 and Mossad, oil money, lecherous Saudis and paid Western politicians. Like penicillin bacterium growing on my window sill, I don’t know the dirty details, the various relationships  and I certainly can’t see it but I’m sure it’s there. Germs are all alike – you can’t see them but you’ll eventually see the symptoms of the disease they all trigger. You just gotta know what you’re seeing isn’t a cause by itself by a symptom of something far deeper.

A back covered in chicken pox. Caused by the initial infection with varicella zoster virus (VZV)

Spiritual teachings the world over stress the unity of everything, how everything is interconnected in the web of life. I have no doubt the same rule applies on the darker side of existence as well.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave…

I’m going to end this with a bit of a white magick trick. I was discussing this a few nights ago with a friend that there are times, I’m sure we have all felt, when we prayed, meditated and pleaded with the Un-i-verse to please give us a sign, any sign, that something or someone has heard us and instead, there’s absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Dead silence. We wait and wait and nothing shows up or happens.

However, the second you make a move in the right direction, you make a difficult but right decision, you say something right and true even if you are scared everyone will hate you for it, you move towards the truth even if all the chips are down and you’re terrified, the strangest thing is going to happen to you. Out of nowhere, you’re going to feel strength returning, you’re going to feel something “warm” for lack of a better word, you’re gong to feel a lightness in your limbs which wasn’t there before, which will keep propelling you forward. That’s your sign. It begins with that feeling but if you keep going along that path, you’re going to start to feel Presences around you, the good kind, you’re going to lose the fear, you’re going to start living second by second. And that’s real Magic. Use it well.

 

Short-cutting Reality

I was at an after-work event last night, specifically at an oyster bar, the kind of super-hip Old Montreal joint full of beautiful people who never seem to work but have lots of money, which operates as a supper club,  serves expensive dinners  until 11 pm and then all the tables are cleared and it becomes a super-exclusive hard-to-get-into-club. I don’t normally hang out at these kinds of establishments anymore, unlike in my late teens and early 20s when I was clubbing and hanging out at all-night raves or going to gay bars to listen to alternative and industrial EBM music  like Nitzer Ebb, 808 State and Meat Beat Manifesto and dance the night away with friends. I was only there because I’m actually an Elite reviewer on Yelp! and it was an event I was invited to join. And I love slurping on fresh, briny oysters.

When I eyed the crowd who were populating this place, it was largely middle-aged graying men, executives who work in the local gaming and tech industry and women in their early 20s in super-tight clothing and immobile, plastic cleavages, on a Wednesday night, no less. Pretty obvious what’s happening here. I don’t judge, I just sit back, relax and watch the comedy of manners which is about to take place. I look at it as a transactional, sexual marketplace. People put their goods out in display and other people place their bids, all with the aid of libations and snacks, agreements are reached and off they go. Some bids are too low, some goods are not up to par, it’s basically the same story with different actors. I doubt there’s any love here. I doubt that’s what they even want. There’s no feeling here, it’s just mechanical sex. Maybe one of these girls will end up with a sugar-daddy or one of these men will end up with a young trophy wife. Good for them if that’s what they want and get.

Work your wallet old boy! Work your ass off lady!

I’ve had this discussion now with several male friends who are in their late 30s and 40s, how their sexual partners these days, usually women in their 20s, how the sex basically feels “plastic” or “fake”. How hardcore porn, and given how ubiquitous it is, has basically made girls feel they have to perform like the girls in porn these days. Everything from anal bleaching, to Brazilian waxes, to clitoral enlargement or reduction, to plastic surgery on their inner labias (and apparently one of *THE* most painful plastic surgeries out there) and breasts just to get the “right look” to begin with. One of these friends told me that sex now feels like a show and that he feels like he’s not with a real person but a “plastic sex doll who knows how to moan properly, acts like there’s an invisible camera in the room which she is performing for and isn’t really paying any attention to me and there’s no real satisfaction in it. All you want to do is get her to leave as quickly as possible once it’s over” (<—- real quote).

How’s it going Lady? A fake life-sized Chinese sex doll.

Personally, I just have to shrug my shoulders. Like I wrote earlier, I think the whole thing is a giant comedy. I think people forget a real connection to another human being oftentimes takes a real investment of time and emotion, if you’re not willing to put it in, don’t expect to get much out of it.

 

It’s just falling into line within a larger pattern in the world where everything is being reduced into a culture of shortcuts. People want satisfying sex on a physical, emotional and physiological level, yet don’t want a relationship or even a friendship for that matter. They want a gourmet meal without the hours of preparation and knowing proper cooking techniques but they just want to pull it out of a microwave or buy it ready-made or have a catering company do their dinner party (as a foodie and someone who loves to cook, where’s the fun in that?).

Make THIS Beef Mac’n Cheese. I’ve actually received random marriage proposals at potluck dinner parties when I’ve made this in the past.

I see this in the workplace too. Kids graduate from university, have zero experience, zero professional acumen, zero life experience or street smarts yet expect to start off at $60 000/year just because that is what they feel they are worth. Unfortunately, it’s exactly these talkers who get into companies who schmooze the HR department and never do a shred of real work and ruin departments with their incompetence while they leap-frog to other opportunities.

Same thing in spirituality. We all know about the Sunday Christian or the Ramadan Muslim, people who act like jerks and idiots during the rest of the week or year, yet when Sunday or Ramadan comes around, suddenly because they showed up in church or they fasted, it’s absolved them of all their previous dumbfuckery. People read a New Age best-seller or two, decide to take up yoga or tarot cards and are now suddenly “spiritual” while they cheat on their spouses or lie to their friends.

 

They want instant wisdom and insight without ever having to go through those (usually painful) life experiences which could have afforded them that wisdom and insight. In short, people want the rewards without having to actually work for it.

Shortcuts and life-hacks are great when you’re trying to figure out a travel itinerary or how to organize your linen closet.  I highly doubt  that the same principles will hold when it comes to your emotional and spiritual (and sexual) reality.

Do your “job”, put the hours in and you’ll eventually get there. I’m not saying that miracles don’t happen like winning the lottery or meeting someone and knowing within 10 minutes that they will play an important part of your life, but generally slow and steady (and genuine, I’d add)  always wins the race.

”Gaslighting” Reality

As some of you know, I’m quite a film buff and especially enjoy watching old movies or indie movies from the festival circuit. It’s quite easy here in Montreal especially to catch up on films, given the kind of publicly funded resources we have.

Recently, I have been reading up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) because of some counseling work I’m helping out with. I was actually quite floored by several books and websites which categorically stated that many malignant narcissists and people with NPD often employ a tactic called “gaslighting”.

Charles Boyer (Gregory) and Ingrid Bergman (Paula)

The term was coined after the well-known 1944 classic film “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. In the film Bergman, plays Paula, a former opera singer who saw the death of her opera-singing aunt by an unidentified jewel thief who had strangled her and then fled the scene. Traumatized by the event in London, Paula relocates to Italy as a teenager and undergoes opera training there to only fall in love and fall under the spell of her older Hungarian piano teacher, Gregory Anton, who it turns out, is none other that the murderous jewel thief himself. Assuming a new name, he gets into Paula’s good books, marries her and convinces her to move back into the old London house. His aim is of course to find the aunt’s priceless jewels which are hidden somewhere in the attic. Little by little, he starts to make Paula go crazy. Placing things in her purse when she’s not looking, removing paintings off the wall and then making her believe that she did it (when she did not), putting words in her mouth and generally isolating the woman socially from anyone and everyone else so he can carry his plans out uninterrupted and unsuspected.

The ultimate aim of gaslighting is of course make the intended person start to question their own sanity and sense of reality and it is a technique which not only narcissists, but people who emotionally or psychologically abuse others use regularly from their bag of tricks. The person becomes super vulnerable and then is open to suggestion for all sorts of things which they normally would never fall for.

Folks, I think to a certain degree, we’ve all been gaslighted.

I mean, to a certain degree we’ve all fallen for certain myths or stories, which served to undermine us as individuals and empowers who ever made up the story or the myth because it serves their purpose. Politicians, economists, business marketers are all to blame.  Do you really need Coca Cola to live? No, you need water.

Cassel Pink Diamond ring, .79 carats, you can have this for a mere $1.3 million dollars at M.S Rau Antiques in Louisiana

A small example would be the myth of the value of diamonds and the extravagant costs of engagement rings nowadays and what they symbolize. I always thought they were bit of a joke. I wasn’t wrong. The whole damn thing is a marketing myth perpetuated by the DeBeers Corporation. When celebrity magazines write stories about Jennifer Aniston’s ring and people being dumb enough to actually fall for it or care or reality TV bridezillas only talk about the ring for 20 minutes…well, all I see at that point is someone so caught up in an illusion that you probably can’t even have a decent, meaningful conversation about anything with them

I don’t think you should be going there, dude.

Another area I’m seeing gaslighting is the idea of the “happy long term marriage”, particularly those perpetuated by dishonest spouses.  I’m watching this Ashley Madison leak scandal literally with a wry smile on my face. While I feel bad for those persons whose names and emails were used in creating bogus profiles, I don’t have very much sympathy for those very real cheating husbands (95% of the users of Ashley Madison are male) who signed up for the service and now have proven paid accounts with their credit cards with Ashley Madison.

What the hackers who stole the Ashley Madison data had to say.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the 4chan/b/ board since the hackers there have been working with the leaked data and just waiting for the big, well-known names to start spilling out along with the non-famous ones like some neighbor on my street or former high school teacher.

Already there’s intense speculation about the kinds of powerful names we may find and some articles are going so far as saying that this leak will pull apart the fabric of society as we know it. 

Goddess Shakthi. In Hindu lore, she is the cause. She is also known as Maya, the supreme illusion. The world is itself an illusion. Nothing is forever. The only reality is the presence of Cosmic Intelligence within all beings, small, medium or large.

To that I say, good. It’s about time.

Prophecy, New Age writers  and even some religious texts say that the veil of deception and ignorance is thinning and will one day disappear completely. That there will come a day, where a person will not even be able to lie because that’s how clearly we’ll be able to see through each other. Some New Agers go so far as to say we will become crystalline beings but I don’t take that literally. It’s a symbolic interpretation of what’s to come. Hindus and Buddhists call this veil Maya, Theosophists call it the unveiling of Isis (the goddess, not the terrorist group, though that would be good too). I say the gaslighting has to stop. The myths have to stop. The stories have to stop. The lies have to stop.

Because to be perfectly frank with you, the ones who want to continue with the lies, I think, like the Ashley Madison story shows, are going to be exposed, one way or another. What’s great about not lying is that you never have to remember anything, You may not get ahead in business or in politics, but your mind and your heart stays clear and to me, that’s more than enough.

 

When Lines get Crossed

“The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard.  People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.”
― Edwin H. Friedman

This quote came from the opening of this week’s podcast from Maxwell Igan If there is one podcast I look forward to each week, it is Max’s. Max is probably the closest, most modern Western version we have these days of a real Elder or what people in India would call a “Baba” – a male Elder with quite a level of insight and wisdom which he expresses quite eloquently and also practices what he preaches. Not that he would want the distinction, he’s way too grounded and cool to ever let any of it go to his head. (If only he was a yoga teacher as well – I know that’s wishful thinking on my part but that would be the equivalent of Frank Zappa instructing yoga which would totally rock IMHO!)

Max Igan, Aussie Baba

It’s not just politics which Max covers in his weekly hour-long stream of consciousness podcasts – there’s genuine, insightful wisdom touching on topics as varied as how to be a better custodian of Mother Nature to how we can be better citizens to ourselves and each other. If you have an hour to spare at home while you’re fixing your car or watering your plants, it totally worth your while to have his podcasts playing in the background instead of the usual drivel you get on mainstream radio these days or listening to motivational tapes from the likes of Wayne Dyer or Tony Robbins – all nice and fluffy sounding but with very little substance or “meat”.

I bring Max up because his opening quote in his last podcast hit a bit close to home for me.  I’ve recently started a Meetup discussion group to bring many of this topics which I blog about into the real world and have moderated a few meetings already. By and large, the folks have been very nice, all different backgrounds but it has really brought it to the forefront the fact that there are many, many, many solo spiritual seekers and people whose eyes have been opened to what a scam the whole system has become, who have had genuine spiritual experiences, who are sick and tired of the New Age and/or organized religion bullshit, all operating and working alone in their own way, in their own time, without wanting to join any movement or follow one particular teacher but yet also want to discuss their experiences either to share or for personal verification with others who may have had similar experiences or insights. It’s always comforting to hear that you’re not alone.

Someone on their soapbox, pontificating to the world

One thing I have always noticed as I have written elsewhere, is that invariably there is always one person who shows up to monopolize the conversation because they like the sound of their own voice and try using the group as a platform for their own interests. This happened during the last meeting and I basically had to bite my tongue from pointing out what they were doing without being rude. But then I realized something – this person really didn’t “see” what they were doing and even if I did mention something, they still wouldn’t get it and would probably take it very personally.

Lines getting seriously crossed.

Increasingly however, this sort of thing happens all the time. Lines getting crossed, people not listening properly, people not “hearing” each other properly, explaining something to someone who will never understand what you’re trying to say because they are not and never will be on the same frequency as you and also don’t want to hear what you might have to say, which then causes all sorts of problems further down the line.

Communication breakdown is not just a Led Zeppelin song.

How do explain what the ocean is to the snake that has always lived in a desert? How do you explain the color violet to a person who was born blind? How do you explain whatever sort of pain you may have experienced to someone who doesn’t have a clue to your own emotional landscape and experiences or the context of your life?

One of my buddies is a researcher and activist who focuses on human trafficking  in the sex industry. She pointed it out to me and until she said it, I never really “got it” that women primarily can feel close to a man via emotional bonding, while men primarily can feel close to a woman via sex…and the emotional bonding part may or may not come later. Not always of course, I’m seriously generalizing.   Don’t get me wrong – this is a bit more complicated than “Men are From Mars and Women are From Venus” – but it does go a long, long way in helping some men understand that unless a woman feels safe with him and trusts him to some degree first, he probably won’t get sex that easily despite what glamorous TV shows and porn would otherwise indicate. Likewise, a guy may not open up to a woman completely and let her understand him unless the relationship has become physical and pheromones have been shared. So in the case of emotionally and spiritually immature relationships, instead of explicitly telling each other what they really need and want, everyone just manipulates each other or plays mind/power games in the hopes of getting what they want. Fun, huh?

Part of this shift that’s happening is that people are waking up, people are looking for ways to share, people are all hoping for a better world, but before that happens at the global level, it has to be local first. Before it is local, it has to be personal. Fundamentally, we all have to start becoming better communicators and listeners with ourselves and with those around us. Not easy but it is a crucial step we all have to take.

Shakti is the Agent of All Change

Shakti Mother Goddess

 

Shakti , meaning “Power” or “empowerment,” is the primordial cosmic energy and represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire universe in Hinduism. Shakti is the concept, or personification, of divine feminine creative power, sometimes referred to as ‘The Great Divine Mother‘ in Hinduism. On the earthly plane, Shakti most actively manifests through female embodiment and creativity/fertility, though it is also present in males in its potential, unmanifest form.

Not only is Shakti responsible for creation, it is also the agent of all change. Shakti is cosmic existence as well as liberation, its most significant form being the Kundalini Shakti, a mysterious psycho-spiritual force.Shakti exists in a state of svātantrya, dependence on no one, being interdependent with the entire universe.

– Wikipedia

I really don’t like writing up these posts about violence against women, but this latest drama involving the airing of the documentary “India’s Daughter” on BBC and many other countries around the world this Sunday as a part of International Women’s Day and how this documentary has now been banned in India, I feel I have to write something.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days, the documentary is a look at the circumstances and the characters involved in the brutal rape and disembowelment of 23 year old medical student Jyoti Singh on a Delhi bus by 6 men on December 16, 2012. The day after, women, men, students and all sorts of other Indian citizens hit the streets in the hundreds of thousands for weeks to protest against the violence towards women in Indian society, how the police are in on it, the judges, the lawyers, in fact the entire establishment.

I don’t want to outline the case too much since it’s been written to death in millions of articles right now along with the dumbfuck comments of one of the rapists, Mukesh Singh. The documentary keeps being uploaded and taken down off of Youtube constantly even after over 1 million views in a single day.

Typical Indian film posters – many of them are painted.

What I do want to discuss is the mentality behind why this violence occurs in Indian culture and society. For many outsiders, India is the ultimate paradox. A successful democracy, which is coming into its own in a global village and economy. High tech industry in Bangalore, booming tourism, yoga ashrams, a country which graduates more engineers per year than the entire population of the middle-class of France, a fast-growing middle class which now wants a piece of the good life, more often than not copying their counterparts in suburban America, malls, designer clothes, expensive vacations, high-tech gizmos and gated-communities.

A Typical gated community outside of Bangalore which looks a lot like San Jose, California. Check out the servants weeding the lawn.

What many people fail to see or really understand is the sheer size, diversity and complexity of this country of 1.2 BILLION persons. 50% of this 1.2 billion live in poverty, that comes out to about 600 million people living on less than $2 a day in a slum and doing whatever they can to make it through the day. I’ve had friends of mine who told me that visiting India for them was like visiting another planet completely. There were things about Europe, Japan and the Middle East they could relate to but once they got to India, it was like absolutely EVERYTHING was completely different, from the colors, to the traffic, to the Bollywood painted film posters. It was like an assault on all their senses all the time. Some of them loved it and some of them positively hated it and couldn’t wait to leave. 

 

Last night, the CBC radio ran an interview with lawyer and president of India’s Supreme Court Bar Association, Dushyant Dave  about why the film has been banned in India. Remember this dude is supposed to be educated, well-read and one would hope, open-minded to the status of women in India. I just kept shaking my head the whole time because every single one of his responses to the journalist’s intelligent questions, were so, SO typical of the old guard of Indian men, men who run the law, the police, business, and society that if the establishment thinks this way, it’s the thinking which has to be challenged radically and changed in time.

 

What mentality am I talking about? 

Oh, it goes something like this….

 

1. India has no problem at all. What problem?

2. If it has a problem . It is no body else’s business

3. Everybody else has this problem. Everybody else also has other problems. Why don’t you talk about talk about those instead?

4. Why are you saying this is a problem? This is part of our 5000 year old culture. Our culture is unique and we don’t share the same values and culture as you in the West.

5. We knew the answer to all our problems in the Vedic age.

6. Even if we have this problem , it is not our fault.

7. We cannot accept any of the solution that have been shown to work elsewhere in other parts of the world. India is a 5000 year old civilization. We know better than you.

8. Even if we have this problem it is much better than what it was before.

9. Perhaps we have this problem but it is none of your business.

10. It will affect our tourism, our reputation , don’t talk about this. We are now an “investment destination” for global interests. If people think India is unsafe, we will lose tourist dollars and investment dollars! So please shut up!

11. This is a conspiracy by the West to demean India , to target India.

12. Some men who are poor and uneducated in India are dumb they will consider the rapist as a hero so you must ban this documentary or else there will be many copycats.

13. People of India will be traumatized by the truth that is revealed. Better to keep their minds protected in their cocoons.

14. You are a racist!

15. You anti-national!

16. You are anti-Indian!

17. India hater!

18: Sex is taboo and a shameful topic. We never discuss these issues openly. Never.

I’ve always believed that the problem is that there are many, many men in India and in this world who don’t want to look at women as equally valuable members of the same human family. They just don’t and they will use whatever they can to justify keeping a woman in her place. It could be religion, “culture”, rape, physical violence, emotional, psychological or sexual abuse. Anything just to scare the girl, intimidate her and make sure she does what she is programmed to do.

People may say that this is just a problem in the developing world or among crazy Muslim jihadists. Bullshit. I remember watching the 1970s film “The Stepford Wives” and thinking to myself that really besides cosmetic and superficial differences, the same old story of a “woman’s place” seems to be the same the world over.

As for me, I too was expected to follow the same path of all dutiful Indian-Bengali daughters. Have an arranged marriage to a good Muslim boy from a good, educated family, ideally a doctor or an engineer while I became a chartered accountant. Go back to Bangladesh and India every year to see our families there. Maybe pop out 2 kids and take them to Disneyland and road trips to the Grand Canyon and weekend trips to the outlet centers. In fact all my female cousins who are older than I am, took that route. One of them lives very comfortably in a gated community in Florida with a traditional PhD biochemist husband who I can only say physically reminds me of Animal from The Muppet Show.

Animal

I was the first one to rebel and said “No” and boy did I ever get it. My dad was at a loss and had no idea what to do. My mother had passed on when I was 7 and any other female ally I could possibly have within the family were nonexistent because they took the route I didn’t want. I even heard one asshole uncle tell my dad “Why don’t you beat her?” which my dad then used as an opportunity to tell him to screw off. Dad finally let it go and now he’s sees and understands what a real bunch of cretins certain men in the world are and doesn’t blame me for resisting.

The Age of Aquarius is not going to happen fully unless one half of humanity looks upon the other half of humanity as an equal and valued partner.

People go on about the oncoming Age of Aquarius and how the Golden Age is coming but what drives me nuts about many of the conspiracy theory sites, new age sites and so forth is how many of them don’t even see that jack-all is going to happen as long as women are  not valued as equal members of the same human family. Some of them, like Henry Makow even think that feminism and giving “women too many rights” is a conspiracy theory used to destabilize the family, for women to stop having babies and make sure that the New World Order has its way. Here, they lose me completely. That’s not the point either.

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I don’t see anything conspiratorial about women being valued as an equal human being and being conferred the same rights, freedoms, privileges and same amount of respect. But I’m reminded of a line I once read, that women define and ultimately guide the society they live in, not men. The way women go will be the way that society will eventually go.

[Note: I initially had a quote here from Yogi Bhajan but given the allegations of rape and abuse now surrounding this “guru”, I have removed it.]

What “Pleasure Principle”?

Another girl in this world was getting on a bus to go home got raped, burned and dumped in a roadside ditch.

Typical Turkish dolmus

Ozgecan Aslan, a Turkish psychology student got on a dolmus, a shared mini-bus, on her way home from her university in Adana to Mersin. After her friend got off the dolmus, she was left alone with the driver. When he stopped the dolmus to rape her, she fought back by pepper-spraying him. He then apparently stabbed her and hit on the head, knocking her out. His father and friend then helped him burn her body to get rid of the evidence and dumped her in a dried river bed in a forested area.

There have been the usual protest marches and arrests in the wake of this incident as women across Turkey have protested. Some people are pointing fingers at the political culture of Turkey these days. Erdogan despite making Turkey very wealthy this last decade, is also a sympathizer of very conservative strains of Islam, where women should wear head coverings, women should not have sex outside of marriage, and a woman’s sexuality and freedom are controlled and dictated by men, either her husband, her father or her brother.

Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond both 16 at the time of the crime, were convicted in juvenile court for the rape of a minor in the Steubenville High School rape case.

Some people say the problem is Islam. I don’t think so because like the rapes in Hindu India the past two years have shown or the latest statistics of rape on American college campuses, it’s not religion which is the problem, it’s the culture and to get even more specific, it is the way women are viewed and perceived as, as agencies for male utility, I think.

There is an insidious campaign of violence taking place against women around the world. It’s not just the usual suspects of stupid trust fund frat boys, religious authorities and out-of-touch police officers but also includes famous celebrities, billionaires and even university philosophy professors.

Hugo Schwyzer = Douche bag

In some ways, as much as I hate saying this, I’m not surprised why male violence against women has suddenly become more pronounced. It’s a backlash. Women now outnumber men on many college campuses. They are the ones getting advanced degrees, becoming professionals, making their own money and doing as they wish. That’s fantastic but for lack of a better word, I think it also makes many less-confident men feel “useless” and that’s where a lot of the rage is stemming from.

From Stats Canada.

I think many of these types of men feel like they have lost control of the situation and don’t know how to deal with it. Just look at Henry Makow’s site and it’s enough to make you lose your lunch. If you are a man, and your whole life, and before that your father, grandfather, great-grandfather, your nation, your culture, your religion, your world told you, promised you that you are better, you are stronger, you can get anything you want, anytime you want, women are there to serve you, you start to internalize this message. Repetition is a powerful form of indoctrination.

Two Japanese women shopping together

This “problem” is so bad in traditional Japan that young Japanese female professionals are putting off marriage and children, continue to live at home with their parents and spend all their money on high-end clothes, purses and vacations instead of marrying some goon who they have to serve hand and foot on. The Japanese government went so far as to call these women “spoiled girls” and how this behavior is destabilizing Japanese society with their unusually low birth rate and the Japanese are now considering the unthinkable…allowing immigration just to keep their economy growing.

When outside reality doesn’t jive with your internalized reality or internal dialogue, it usually causes a very uncomfortable feeling called cognitive dissonance and that’s when usually something goes “Pop!”. For example, It’s when a sexually starved guy living in some one-donkey village his whole life who watches hard-core porn constantly, then assumes women really act like this all the time and can do all those things if you say the right words to her or corner her into that situation.

It is when a guy realizes the woman he lives with no longer loves him because he treated her so badly that she leaves him and she falls in love with someone else, that he feels it is his right to beat the living hell out of her and if not her, treat any other woman who even reminds him of her, like garbage. There are countless examples out there.

Women’s number one killers are usually domestic partners.

I had mentioned male utility earlier on, that men can usually look on women as something of use to them, someone who performs a function for them (I am aware that women also unfortunately do the same thing to men as well).

I sometimes wonder if men AND women even know how to begin to perceive of themselves beyond those old “roles” or labels of mother, wife, husband, father, lover, fuck-buddy, cook, house-cleaner  or whatever and just learn to BE. I think part of the problem is language itself and how associated memes and images are attached to certain words play out in our mind.

Mom from the 1950s. This is not coming back, anytime soon and you’d better get used to it.

When I read the word “mother” a certain imprinted image shows up in my mind along with associated behaviors of what’s “normal” and “not normal” for a “mother” and I might forget to look at the unique individual behind the word. A clichéd meme takes over the actual individual and it is because of this, I think, it is going to take an ungodly amount of work, brutal honesty, self-reflection and psychic energy for all of us, particularly men,  to willingly deprogram our baggage and expectations on each other and change those memes.

Meanwhile, while the women of Asia Minor are showing up strength, the women in the “West” are exposing their sexual and psychic vulnerabilities en mass it would seem. “Fifty Shades of Grey” (FSOG) made over $90 million dollars at the box office this past weekend even while the film itself is complete shite.

Scene from FSOG, from Youtube.

I have nothing against erotica or BDSM by itself, especially if it concerns consenting adults, then that’s their own business what they do in the privacy of their own lives. A key part of BDSM is the power play between partners, who is dominant, who is submissive and FSOG plays again on the cliché of a dominant, powerful male (Christian Grey is a billionaire industrialist) exerting control and power over a submissive female student, hapless to his whims and desires (and money). The fact that these books and film are so popular I think exposes the women who fall for this fantasy of something deeply troubling on a psychic level. It’s about giving your power and your control away to someone else to make you happy (or get you off), even if it is on a physical level. People in the BDSM community might then say that’s when the trust comes in. I don’t know.

A “sub” waiting for the “dom”

Personally, I don’t get it. The best sex is usually when there is a strong presence of mutuality involved (which is why I think simultaneous, mutual orgasm is the Holy Grail of trashy romance novels). I don’t find anything remotely arousing about playing a limp, pleading rag doll to some He-Man sex machine or vice versa.

Chris Hedges wrote a brilliant piece over on Truthdig! about what porn says about us, about what the violence involved does to women in the industry as well as other women in the real world, and how there really is a pornographic industrial complex at work. The pleasure principle is actually negligible and counts for peanuts.

“There are few people on the left who grasp the immense danger of allowing pornography to replace intimacy, sex and love. Much of the left believes that pornography is about free speech, as if it is unacceptable to financially exploit and physically abuse a woman in a sweatshop in China but acceptable to do so on the set of a porn film, as if torture is wrong in Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were sexually humiliated and abused as if they were on a porn set, but permissible on commercial porn sites. A new wave of feminists, who have betrayed the iconic work of radicals such as Andrea Dworkin, defends porn as a form of sexual liberation and self-empowerment. These “feminists,”… are stunted products of neo-liberalism and postmodernism. Feminism, for them, is no longer about the liberation of women who are oppressed; it is defined by a handful of women who are successful, powerful and wealthy—or, as in the case of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” able to snag a rich and powerful man. A woman wrote the “Fifty Shades” book, as well as the screenplay. A woman directed the film. A woman studio head bought the movie. This collusion by women is part of the internalization of oppression and sexual violence that have their roots in porn. Dworkin understood. She wrote that “the new pornography is a vast graveyard where the Left has gone to die. The Left cannot have its whores and its politics too.”

Gail Dines, along with a handful of others including Jensen, fearlessly decry a culture that is as depraved as Caligula’s Rome.

“The porn industry has hijacked the sexuality of an entire culture and is laying waste to a whole generation of boys,” she warned. “And when you lay waste to a generation of boys, you lay waste to a generation of girls.”

“When you fight porn you fight global capitalism,” she said. “The venture capitalists, the banks, the credit card companies are all in this feeding chain. This is why you never see anti-porn stories. The media is implicated. It is financially in bed with these companies. Porn is part of this. Porn tells us we have nothing left as human beings—boundaries, integrity, desire, creativity and authenticity. Women are reduced to three orifices and two hands. Porn is woven into the corporate destruction of intimacy and connectedness, and this includes connectedness to the earth. If we were a society where we were whole, connected human beings in real communities, then we would not be able to look at porn. We would not be able to watch another human being tortured.””

One image I found rather galvanizing about Ozgecan’s funeral was when the Turkish women refused to back down from the threats from the imams and carried her coffin in a show of solidarity and sisterhood. Normally in a Muslim funeral, it is men who carry the coffin and go to the grave site for burial. These women refused to back down and took the role into their own hands. It might just be a small symbol but it’s usually symbols which back up ideas which go on to transform the world in good time.

The women of Turkey and Ozgecan’s funeral coffin.

Astrology for February 2015 – It’s all about Extraction, Healing and The Truth

My favorite wise astrologer Carl Boudreau posted his February 2015 astrological outlook yesterday. I’m not going to re-post in full what he wrote because I’d like to encourage people to visit his website but there are a few choice quotes which I can automatically see as relevant with respect to what’s happening in the world right now.

“Even so, I think in recent years and months, these influences have been foregrounded and kicked into high gear. And what we are seeing in the Saturn Sagittarius ingress chart is a further escalation. It could be rough until we’re all broken in on these new vibes at these new levels. We might be hearing things we never wanted to hear from people we never expected to hear them from…..In essence, the these influences will be triggering very deep and sometimes very painful mental and emotional releases. Aside from the inevitable psychological and spiritual challenges, these releases will be accompanied by conflicts in our personal and professional relationships. The energies at work in this chart will take us much closer to the root causes of the difficulties in our lives and in the world at large. We will no longer be willing to tolerate the injustice or conceal the discomfort it causes us. We will be compelled to speak or act, unable and unwilling to control our desire for change. We will all feel the need to renegotiate the terms of our relationships, person by person, situation by situation, relationship by relationship. In each case, imbalances large and small will be corrected. We will make literally trillions of large and small changes to our relationships and at a fairly profound psychological and spiritual level. These immense numbers of small changes will send seismic shocks through the world’s social, economic and political systems in the next couple of years. We speak of destructive and constructive aspects. These might best be thought of as re-shaping”

The pedophile sex scandal which continues to rock the British Establishment is something which just won’t go away. Everyone thought it was bad enough when all the dirt about Jimmy Saville came out but it looks like he was just the proverbial tip of the iceberg and the web that’s been woven is far, far bigger and more underground than anyone initially thought or guessed. It involves former Home Secretary Leon Brittan who “lost” the crucial dossier and file which named names who (conveniently) died two weeks ago from cancer (which no one heard he had until he died). It also involves convicted billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and through him, his various pals which include high-profile names like Prince Andrew of England, Bill Clinton and famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

L-R, Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew of Britain

I’m not going to write up too much about that since there are now literally thousands of articles about this story online. Go over to David Icke’s headlines page and there is something practically everyday which he posts from UK newspapers and such. However I would like to point out what these stories really show up about power structures which exist and what it means spiritually for all of us.

Whether you want to admit it or not, there is a ruling elite in this world. They don’t like people like me and you. They never have and they never will. We’re just workers, cogs in the greater wheel and equally disposable. They keep to themselves and protect each other’s interests if need be. It’s been like that since the time of the pharaohs, kings, and now with the kings of finance and business. These people also think that the earth can go to hell in a hell basket, with water shortages, food riots and even nuclear war and it’s all A-OK since they will manage to hide themselves away in underground bunkers and similar structures. Even then, I’m not convinced they are entirely safe.

Design of underground bunkers which are supposedly good enough to withstand the Apocalypse

 

Prophecy after prophecy, from widely divergent cultures and sources all basically say the same thing about the predicted earth changes and the changes to global society we are facing down: that even if the transition is tough, rough and ugly, not one hair will fall from those who are true, kind and compassionate and keep their faith alive.

These elites are anything but kind, compassionate or honest. Their behavior shows up as much especially when the secretive things they do come out to light as it always eventually does.  I liken them to infectious sores on society. But like an infectious sore, you have to allow the pus to form before you can drain the sore so that healing can take place properly. The poison has to be extracted first. Likewise, we also have our own vices and shortcomings, little poisons we also need to learn to extract from ourselves, our relationships, our world. It’s not easy and sometimes it’s painful, but it has to be done if we are to go forward.

The Diversity Card

As per my last post, I have been very busy with other projects which is why I have not been writing much at all. Even though I still watch what’s happening everywhere, even if the intent to write is there, the energy isn’t. The thing with starting your own business, you’re always told how much insane amounts of hard work is involved but until you actually start getting your hands dirty, you don’t realize how EXHAUSTING it really is. You’re constantly researching, networking, constantly meeting new contacts, following up and starting the process, over and over again. The thing with networking, it’s like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it gets but at times, some aspects of it can eerily parallel with what is happening in the larger world.

Case in point: The diversity issue (or lack thereof) which this year’s Oscar race has sparked (not helped of course by actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s ill-informed, unfortunate use of words which practically caused a media melt-down).

Ben, don’t worry about it. It’s all good.

Now, the superficial, flighty side of me only pays attention to things like the Oscars as a fluffy distraction. They are just films after all, here today and forgotten about by next year. However the blatant lack of diversity and opportunities for persons of color or other minorities in the entertainment business and film-making industry as a whole has always rankled my nerves. Do any of you remember the show “Romper Room”? I used to watch it as a kid and I remember with sadness when the host would call out names of the kids she saw through the Magic Mirror at the end of the show. I knew I had one of those names which would never be called out.

I don’t understand why we’re living in a world which accepts a 5th re-boot of the Spiderman or Batman franchises in as many years but doesn’t see anything wrong in the lack of mainstream films, actors, narratives or stories focusing on, empowered and strong women,

“Thelma and Louise” – 1991

persons from the LGBT community,

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert- 1994

Australian Aborigines,

Rabbit-Proof Fence- 2002

Muslims,

I think the last Muslim to ever be nominated in an acting category was Omar Sharif for “Dr. Zhivago”, where he played a Russian

Asians,

Haign S. Ngor won an Oscar back in 1984 for “The Killing Fields”

or Native Americans

Dances with Wolves – 1990

Personally, I’ll watch “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” or “Thelma and Louise” any day over “Die Hard”.

If anything, whenever Hollywood  does cast someone “ethnic”, it’s usually a form of tokenism, at best, and always some kind of secondary or tertiary role, never a main one. At worst, it’s just plain ignorance and racism. Hollywood also has a long and ugly history of using “brown face” and similar devices in films.

The actress Merle Oberon was half-Indian but she was always depicted as “exotic”.

Jean Simmons donned brown face to play an Indian girl in “Black Narcissus”.

So did Hugh Griffith in “Ben Hur” to play an Arab sheikh.

Sir Alec Guinness donned brown face to play an Arab king in “Lawrence of Arabia” and a Hindu Brahmin priest in “A Passage to India”.

And who can ever forget the most embarrassing example of all, Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese man in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”?

The leaked Sony emails also showed up how truly bigoted and racist many Hollywood execs and studio heads are. So is anyone surprised that when persons of color are cast, they are usually portrayed according to negative stereotypes which reflect their worldview (evil, scummy Arab Muslims  in “American Sniper” or dysfunctional African-American families like in “Precious”) instead of being portrayed in a more positive, empowering or sympathetic light?

You can’t pay me enough money to go see this movie voluntarily.

Instead practically every year, there always some “coming of age” film about another white, quirky, awkward teenager from some affluent suburb with divorced parents or has issues around sex (“Juno”, “Thumbsucker”, “The Kings of Summer”, “Youth in Revolt“).

Michael Cera in “Youth in Revolt”

Every 10 years or so, there’s always a film which belongs to, what I call the “Idiot-Savant” genre. Again, usually white, male, misunderstood geniuses with challenging personalities or life circumstances due to their mental condition and/or intelligence (“Charly”in the 1960s, “Rain Man” in the 1980s, “Shine” in the 1990s, “A Beautiful Mind” in the 2000s, “The Theory of Everything”and “The Imitation Game” this year alone).

Not to minimize the Holocaust but there has been many Hollywood films on that atrocity or related to it over the years (“Schindler’s List”,“The Reader”, “Life is Beautiful”, “The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas” right off the top of my head) When it comes to other genocides I can only think of two, “Hotel Rwanda” about what happened in Rwanda and maybe “Ararat” about the Armenian genocide in 1915. I have yet to see something about what happened in East Pakistan in 1971, Cambodia in 1975, Algeria in 1954, Hispaniola in 1492 and many, many others.

I would love to see a Hollywood and a viewing public that sees and can accept a manly hunk like Idris Elba go toe-to-toe for leading-man roles with other equally manly hunks like Clive Owen or Mylène Jampanoï  becoming a Bond girl as easily as Denise Richards.

I think it should go to Idris or Clive.

It’s not just film.  Activism around diversity, for the moment, is happening in the margins but it is inching closer and closer to the mainstream. I see this in the corporate world now and particularly in my networking discussions. Corporate culture has always been very strict, regimented, formal, conservative and about keeping the status quo. If you’re 1) male 2) white and 3) tall, you’ve basically got it made and you’ll more easily be considered for leadership and managerial positions. However, if you’re female, ethnic and petite (like me for instance) you have to work doubly hard to even get a chance to get your foot in the door, let alone an interview. Industrial psychologists call it the mirroring effect. The gist of it being that you will probably hire and consider people who are most like you first because that’s your comfort zone and it takes a huge amount of work to really see your own inherent racial biases clearly and work against them, which most managers either don’t have the time nor interest to do.

It’s a shame really that so many people don’t get it or don’t want to get it. I’ve already written why even in nature and in ecosystems, diversity is usually key to ensuring long-term survival of certain species and the ecosystem itself. Homogeneity is a dangerous place to be in for extended periods of time. I’m of the persuasion that the closer human systems come closer to mimicking natural ecosystems, the better off we’ll all be. That goes for the corporate world and the film industry as well.

Don’t believe me?

Watch this and really pay attention to what Ted Carns is saying in between his lines about disposability and setting an example to others.

The Power of The Small

Whenever something is wrong, it means something is too big. If the stars in the sky or the atoms of uranium disintegrate in spontaneous explosion, it is not because their substance has lost its balance. It is because matter has attempted to expand beyond the impassable barriers set to every accumulation. Their mass has become too big. If the human body becomes diseased, it is,  as in cancer, because a cell, or a group of cells, has begun to outgrow its allotted narrow limits. And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutality, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because human beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations, have been welded into over-concentrated social units such as mobs, unions, cartels, or great powers.” 

– Leopold Kohr, “The Breakdown of Nations”

What Professor Kohr warned us of 50 years ago has now, I think, come to pass or at the very least, it’s a symptom of what I’ve been noticing lately on a number of different fronts. Kohr was one of the fathers of the “small is beautiful” movement and increasingly this idea isn’t just applicable to nation-states (which should be abolished anyway IMHO), mega-states, empires, mega-cities  and mega regional trading blocs (i.e EU, AU and the possible North America Union which some folks have been warning and talking about for years) but to banking, corporations, our consumption patterns, our energetic footprint, the waste we produce and yes, even ourselves. 

 

Black Friday was a couple of weeks ago and what once started as a strictly American phenomena has now unfortunately spilled over into Canada and the UK. Just watching the clips of mobs of people rushing into stores, attacking each other and even in several cases, killing each other, for a bunch of crappy , cheap stuff is enough to make even the most jaded person’s stomach turn. It’s easy to say and point out that this only happens in the lower rungs of society at places like Wal-Mart or Tesco but I’ve observed this mob-like vulture attitude among well-heeled women in upscale department stores as well. Boxing Day is another day I barely venture out for  – I try to do all my shopping online now just to avoid crowds. It just makes me wonder what the hell has happened to us? Are we in some kind of collective haze or coma where we can only feel alive by over-consumption?  Have mega-box stores and shopping complexes become our new temples?

(BTW Here’s a small trick for some of you stylish fashionista or frugal types:  I usually do my homework to figure out what I REALLY need.  Scour the secondhand and thrift shops  to see if there’s a model or copy there (You would be very surprised to find out what people get rid of these days – Last year I  scored a brand-spanking new Le Creuset enameled Dutch oven, the kind that lasts lifetimes, with the sticker still on it. Retail $400. I got it for $5. ). I then go long in advance, to stores, boutiques and such for stuff that I really need, pretend I’m going to buy something, try on the models of jeans or sweaters I want, to get my perfect size, take note of the brand, manufacturer, name and model of items, take pictures on my phone,  feign regret to the sales girl that nothing fits, read product user  reviews at places like Consumer Reports, Amazon or Makeupalley.com and then go on ebay, etsy or the outnet and buy it or something very similar usually at a much, MUCH cheaper price. It’s my way of sticking it to “the man” and it works like a charm every time  😀 )

These are seriously taking off now. Though I’m not sure how you can swing it if you’re raising a family.

There is also the tiny home movement which I think is just fabulous. It gets rid of mortgages, frees people up from debt and forces a truly minimalist lifestyle where instead of being preoccupied with finances and keeping up with the Jones, you can now put your attention towards things that matter.  I really don’t understand why on earth anyone would need a McMansion. Honestly, what do you do with 3 living rooms???? 

I think the urban agriculture and community sponsored agricultural (CSA) are also a part of that trend. Instead of giant farms run by evil multinational conglomerates like Monsanto, producing GMO crops, it’s a movement towards growing and eating locally, making better use of our urban spaces and land, teaching people especially kids, where food really comes from and eating better quality, nutrient-dense food.

 

Speaking of food, I also think many of our illnesses comes from our diets. I just finished reading Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s blockbuster best-seller “The China Study” and I think he makes an extremely compelling argument. Simply put, our affluence is literally killing us, particularly our meat-based protein and dairy consumption. We’re eating too much of the wrong foods. He compared the diets of Americans to the Chinese and guess what? They hardly have the same incidences of illness, including cancer, heart disease, obesity, Alzheimer’s,  immune system illnesses and  nervous system illnesses as we do. Dr. Campbell basically outlines the benefits of a largely vegan diet but his 80-10-5-5 rule is just as effective (80% fruits and vegetables, 10% grains, 5% meat-based protein, 5% plant-based protein).

If you seriously want to transform your life in an easy way, you cannot beat making Mason Jar Salads. I make these kinds of salads every Sunday now and they keep the whole week in the fridge. Talk about an easy take-to-work lunch! (Photo from organizeyourselfskinny.com)

Banksters complain that the banks are “too big to fail” and to some degree they are right. Bureaucratically bloated organizations like central banks often are. When you place all your eggs in one basket and if the basket falls, there go all your eggs. I know in light of the 2008 financial crisis, lots of people started taking their money out of banks and such and placed it in spots like farmer’s credit unions and cooperatives. I think it’s a smart move. Instead of having giant transnational banks, tying up everyone’s cash, small community-based financial institutions are probably going to end up giving you better service and more stability in the long-run.

JC cleaning a leper.

 

Spiritually, if there are any traditions which champions the cause of the small, I would say it’s Taoism and the very early Christian Church. Early Christianity was actually quite revolutionary and subversive  in face of the giant Roman Empire. It was about working with the poor and disenfranchised. I mean you read about old JC and who did he hang out with? Lepers, prostitutes, the disabled, the poor and the sick.  It’s something which bloated organizations like the Vatican, the (very rich) Episcopal/Anglican Church  and some of these strange and extremely wealthy  American denominations like Foursquare International (which many CIA members are a part of) need to think about.

 

Taoism also worked along similar principles. It originally championed the causes of the elderly, the poor, women and children in face of the warlords who ruled ancient Confucian China. However even in its practices and teachings,  Taoism was always about realizing that in  becoming smaller, you become stronger and wiser. It’s teachings are full of anecdotes to get this idea across like the virtues of being a small, flexible blade of grass instead on an ancient, giant old tree. The blade of grass makes it through the storm untouched but the rigid tree doesn’t. 

 

I’m going to close off with a quote from Benjamin Hoff’s Taoist classic, “The Te of Piglet”

“It is very hard to be brave,” said Piglet, sniffing slightly, “when you’re only a Very Small Animal.” 
Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said: “It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in the adventure before us.” 

Dis-Imagination and De-Schooling Zones

“Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question. ”

– Ivan Illich in “De-schooling Society”

I’ve always been a bit of an eclectic.
I think it might have started in high-school. I was somehow “saved’ by my older cousins who were about 7-8 years older than me and thanks to them, when I was 7, I was listening to David Bowie, T-Rex, Roxy Music, ELO and AC/DC. By the time I was 11, I was listening to U2 (long before the “Joshua Tree” and before Bono became a pompous ass) and by the time I entered my teen years and the hellish suburban kids I had to go to high school with who were busy listening to Madonna and New Kids on the Block, I was already knee-deep into what was then considered, “underground and alternative” musical acts like The Smiths, Bauhaus, New Order and of course Depeche Mode.

1980s Boy Band, New Kids on the Block (please kill me now)

This spilled over into everything else. In my 15-year-old mind, I figured if what was considered “popular” in music was such crap, and alternative music was so much better, then this principle had to hold in other spheres of human creativity and endeavor like film, literature, news outlets, books, writers, politics, fashion, design, art etc. In hindsight, I was right. So whenever I hear someone contemporary cite an intellectual, or a book or an idea which is either forgotten about, retired, out of fashion, out of print, hard-to-find or long-dead, I’m suddenly fascinated and want to know more.

Hermes silk scarves START at $500 each. Each season they make a limited number of each design which are usually pretty cool plus they literally never go out of style. This one commemorating Quebec is now a collector’s item. Good luck ever finding one on the cheap.

Maybe it’s because they aren’t as accessible or as ubiquitous as Kim Kardashian’s ass, but growing up the geek that I was (and am) I always found that thinkers of yore sometimes said the best truths simply and didn’t need every social media site and gizmo under the sun to say it. Quite often they also had great ideas and solutions to problems which no one knew about nor heard about but for whatever reason, everyone these days, particularly young people feel the need to re-invent the wheel when there are hundreds of ideas around which with a little research, reading, understanding, maybe some tweaking and implementation would be just enough to get us to the next stepping stone. (Wouldn’t it be great if someone somewhere created a bank of ideas so that people know where to look for this stuff the world over?).

I also do think there is something sinister at work. When a public intellectual is *too* good, if their ideas are *too* amazing and more importantly may actually work in real life, they are quite often deemed as “dangerous”. I do think The Powers That Be are very good at marginalizing them, demonizing them, silencing them and making their work hard to find and forgotten so that the public remain in ignorance. The thought police didn’t end with George Orwell folks. Look at the treatment of original, intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein and you’ll see what I mean.

The term “inverted totalitarianism”  is used to describe what the government of the US (and its allies I would also add) is on its way to becoming if they haven’t already. The gist of it is this: inverted totalitarianism is described as a system where corporations have corrupted and subverted democracy and where economics trumps politics. In inverted totalitarianism, every natural resource and every living being is commodified and exploited to collapse as the citizenry are lulled and manipulated into surrendering their liberties and their participation in government through excess consumerism and sensationalism.

Chris Hedges recently sat down with retired professor Sheldon Wolin . It’s an 8 part interview and clocks in at 3 hours. Still, it’s probably one of the most illuminating and important discussions of modern Western political history about WHY everything is wrong nowadays I’ve seen in a long, long time. If you want to add some new brain cells, it is well worth a watch.

In the past 2 decades, particularly in North America, more funding has shifted towards faculties of Management, Business, Law, Dentistry and Medicine and why universities left and right are downsizing or outright getting rid of things like Arts (history, anthropology, philosophy, classics), Social Sciences, Liberal Arts and Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, etc. The academy was once a place where you went to get an education and broaden your horizons. Now, it’s a place where you go to get a skill-set. Simplistically, an education meant gaining knowledge (and maybe if you’re lucky, some wisdom) for the sake of gaining knowledge and building up on that so that our knowledge base would expand and grow. A skill-set is something which is usually marketable and used to serve the market economy, like data. It has become corporatized. 

Cultural Studies professor Henry Giroux explains it beautifully above. He finally had enough of it in the States and left Penn State and made the move up to Canada. If you want to learn something new or read groovy books your professor never mentioned, you basically have no choice these days except to go out there and read them on your own. To paraphrase Giroux, schools (and all formal institutions I’d add) have now become “dis-imagination zones”.
Quick example: How many of you ever heard of Ivan Illich or Jacques Ellul? Have you ever read them? Did any of your teachers or profs ever mention them? Do you know anything about them?
Don’t feel bad because I didn’t either.

Jacques Ellul – Technology Critic. Historian. Sociologist
Theologian of Hope. Ethicist. Activist

I recently came across those names thanks to some interviews I watched of film maker and former monk Godfrey Reggio, who did the Qatsi film trilogy (Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi ). Upon further investigation and reading, I was gobsmacked. Both Ivan Illich and Jacques Ellul were deeply influenced by Christian theology and spirituality but eventually left them behind to become social thinkers and theorists. Jacques Ellul became a big-time Christian anarchist thinker while Illich became a very influential social thinker in leftist circles, particularly in Latin America.

Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich in particular fascinates me. A full-on polymath and polyglot who lived the life of a wandering ascetic monk, fluent in 10 languages (including Ancient Greek and Latin) and wrote in 4 of them, Illich wrote on topics as varied as education to medicine to law and was described by some as “an archaeologist of ideas”. The central theme in all his writings was basically “How do we make things better and how do we make them work, keeping in mind the human element here?” As a former priest, he never lost sight of the spiritual element to these questions. His obituary in The Guardian sums it up including the fact that, like Noam Chomsky these days, he was a bit of a “problematic” public intellectual in his day to the establishment especially to his higher-ups at the Vatican.

Illich at CIDOC

He’s mostly remembered for his books, ” Deschooling Society“, “Tools for Conviviality“, “Medical Nemesis“, “The Right to Useful Unemployment and its Professional Enemies“, “Celebration of Awareness” as well as establishing the Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC) in Mexico. From 1961 – 1976, CIDOC attracted quite a number of intellectuals from all over the world particularly those who were leftist or anarchist in leaning a sort of anti-university. It became a good place to exchange ideas. Too good in fact. With CIA input and the Vatican, it was eventually shut down (of course). The gist of all of Illich’s work was that by dissecting institutions and analyzing how they have been corrupted, we can come to understand why institutions like medicine and education have a tendency to operate and work in ways which are opposite to their original purpose and therefore become counter-productive. Once you understand why something doesn’t work, you then know what NOT TO DO.

For those of you who like to read, are in activist circles or just simply like to think about how to build a better mouse-trap, the likes of Illich, Ellul, Giroux and Wolin are a godsend.
In some ways I’m glad I DIDN’T read them in school. To have done so probably would have defeated the purpose of their writings anyway.

The Mess of Identity

 

In the last few weeks, I have been beginning to see some extremely encouraging signs of change, even incremental, small ones, in the way public discourse and conversations are taking place.

First of all I am extremely pleased that American comedian Bill Maher has finally been exposed as the Islamophobe that he is and that it took not only a well-respected academic like Professor Reza Aslan to do it….

but a Hollywood actor like Ben Affleck as well…

Yup.

I admit, I used to like Maher, particularly the way he lampooned the ultra right-wing nut jobs in the US but his racism and all-too-obvious dislike of all Muslims became very clear over time. (I remember watching an episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” when Nobel Peace Prize winner and the father of microcredit, Dr. Muhammad Yunus was on the show. Maher was condescending, rude and made snide remarks which Yunus did not catch, but the rest of the panel did. It was painful to watch)

Aslan and Affleck were trying to point out that “Islam” is not some homogenous, monolithic entity which is bloodthirsty all the way through and that a few bad apples is not representative of the whole barrel.  Maher (and that annoying pseudo-intellectual poser Sam Harris) don’t seem to understand how culture differentiates Islam from region to region.

This Turkish woman is Muslim but that doesn’t mean that she dresses or acts or lives like Muslim women in Saudi Arabia….

…like these women.

A Muslim in Bangladesh will be very different from a Muslim in Turkey, Pakistan or a Muslim in Saudi Arabia. It’s like comparing hard-core Opus Dei Catholics in Spain to say Catholics in Ireland, Mexico, Poland or Catholics in rural Quebec. Their expressions of faith will be very different from place to place, in large part due to culture. Maher does have a few Muslim friends, namely Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, two Muslim “spokespersons” who experienced the worst aspects of Islam themselves (via the fatwa in Rushdie’s case and female genital mutilation in Hirsi Ali’s case) but they only reinforce his opinion of what a bunch of savages most Muslims are deep down inside. The backlash against Maher and his ilk, mostly from non-Muslims has been surprising and encouraging. I didn’t expect that.

The problem isn’t just Maher and Harris. Those two are examples of the “acceptable” forms of racism rampant among Western liberals and progressives and right now, Islamophobia is quite acceptable. It’s the poster-child of “good” racism.

A few weeks ago Henrik Palmgren of Sweden’s Red Ice Radio, a show I normally listen to from time to time because of the interesting guests Henrik is usually able to score, had an interview with David Icke and it was really disappointing to say the least. Palmgren was baiting Icke over issues of race, immigration, multiculturalism, the legacy of colonialism and cultural purity. It’s painfully obvious to anyone who wants to hear it. Icke, to his credit, walked right over that pool of quick-sand and I have a strong feeling he knew what was going on and saw right through it. (Thumbs up, David!).

We just had Canadian Thanksgiving this past weekend while Americans had Columbus Day, or as many American cities and states are increasingly adopting in place, Indigenous People’s Day . That would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. When I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, it was still (good) cowboys and (bad) Indians, like in John Wayne movies. Now it’s in people’s faces right on mainstream network TV. John Oliver and RT especially killed it.

This is the kind of image of “Cowboys and Indians” I was exposed to while growing up…

Identity politics can get super messy, super quickly. I understand how people can get passionate or have very strong feelings about these issues. I mean I don’t consider myself a practicing “good” Muslim Indian Bengali-Canadian by any stretch of the imagination (if that were the case I would have never discovered the joys of sipping iced-cold vodka martinis), but I can’t help but feel angry or step up and say something when I see the carnage in Gaza and the media blaming it on “Muslim extremists” or have my blood boil over when I see how Muslim men abuse vulnerable girls in England or keep dozen of wives as prisoner sex-slaves in Saudi Arabia. I also get angry when I observe the media coverage over a spoiled, white American college girl who ends up doing something stupid while on holiday versus the long-standing incarceration of an innocent, eloquent black dissident and writer like Mumia Abu Jamal.

Mr. Badassery himself, Mumia Abu Jamal

I don’t think it’s so much about identifying yourself as “this” or “that”. Yes, our differences are worth celebrating and understanding, it’s what makes us all different and unique and interesting to each other. It gives life spice and flavor. Sometimes it goes wrong and you get cultural appropriation. Sometimes it goes right and you get a wonderful new mix of ideas and culture creating something completely original and beautiful. From a spiritual point of view, it might mean I’m Bengali Canadian in the here and now. I might end up Swedish and male in the next round or maybe I was an Austrian Jew in the last round. Who knows? Who cares? That’s not the issue. It’s really about making the conscious decision to walk in someone else’s shoes for even a minute and base our actions on that.

I’m going to close off with something Mumia Abu Jamal wrote and which Professor Noam Chomsky recently read out loud for a documentary about Mumia (from 14:50 in the video below) . I think it perfectly sums up our commonalities over our differences.

“In truth, none of us are whole, as in “finished”, for we are all beings who are still in the process of “Becoming”. We are trying to live in the midst of struggle against forces that try, daily, to confine, constrain and restrict our being. In a sense, these forces are as powerful, relentless and invisible as gravity. There but not “there”. Dig me? So we seek to heal in a place that is profoundly unhealthy; consumerism, patriarchy, white-supremacy and inquisitiveness are things that grip us all. We are all fish, swimming in that proverbial dead sea of materialism, seeking fresh water where we can wash our gills. Our challenge, it seems to me, is to be, or become, sensitive, feeling and loving beings, who seek to better the environment into which we were born. Speaking of liberal clichés, we must “Make it Better”, and it is that very doing, that becomes a part of our being, for we join in our hearts, minds and mouths and our bodies, in the struggles of those unfree amongst us. In a real sense, we become them. I think that was the life message of folks like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and why we remember and revere them. We felt them. And Martin gave up the ghost for garbage men in Memphis. Malcolm reached out to brothers in the Arab and African worlds and became a part of them. In many ways, they redefined who *we* were and became a part of us, through their impact on our lives and our consciousness.”

Saying “NO” is Always an Option

 

I’ve been watching this story about shooter Elliott Rodger closely. What I find particularly interesting is that this young man’s neurosis and mental health issues have been documented online and are still there for the world to see. Go over to his YouTube channel and try watching some of his videos without cringing – it’s practically impossible especially when you have someone talking to the camera and saying out loud things like “I’m magnificent” or “I’m so beautiful, how can these sluts not love me, it’s not fair. I’m a supreme gentleman”.

How come no one saw this coming when it’s clear he suffered from alienation, depression and probably Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Much has already been written up online about his misogyny, his mental health issues, his involvement with “Men’s Rights Movement” forums, and how misogyny has been woven into the general culture, how some men feel entitled to the bodies of women at any time, any place, any how and the many, many insidious forms it can take.
What I would like to focus on is that I think there are many factors at fault here. Yes, the general cultural milieu we live in IS violent but to some extent I think many women have also internalized it and THAT needs to change.

There are many Elliot Rodgers out there and while I am in no way trying to downplay what happened in California, things like that are a fact of everyday life in other parts of the world. On a visit to my aunt and cousins place in Bangladesh during my teen years, I remember my cousins enthusiastically introduced me, their “Canadian cousin” to all their friends and one friend in particular I still remember very well. She was quite a beautiful girl if you were to look at her profile from her left side, but after seeing her entire face, you would have gasped. Half her face had been practically burned away by battery acid.

Not my cousin’s friend. Ayesha Akter was attacked by a distant grandfather. Acid attacks were quite frequent in Bangladesh, usually due to rebuffed marriage proposals, affairs, or financial problems.

The story was that a local boy wanted to marry her (Bangladesh at that time was very, very socially conservative, no pre-marital sex whatsoever, no dating, if you’re interested in someone to hook up with, you have to marry them, arranged marriages were the norm, which is why girls were often married off at a very young age) but she wasn’t interested. Since the rejection or rebuff was not something he could deal with in such a patriarchal culture, he and his friend conspired together, broke into her home in the middle of the night and threw the battery acid on her face while she slept. He figured if he couldn’t have her, no one else could either. It was quite an epidemic for a while and finally when the government of Bangladesh finally criminalized the act with severe penalties, did the practice finally abate somewhat.

Protesting against domestic violence in Turkey.

People often ask me why I didn’t stay on in Turkey and marry there given that Turkey is known for attracting thousands of women every year because of the availability of very handsome and willing men. The reason is that something like 40% of women in Turkey face domestic abuse. I had enough Turkish female friends there who were social workers tell me as much, that I would have been used for my Canadian passport and citizenship and then discarded. There was no way I was going to get involved and take that risk.

Part of the problem of why violence against women continues is that there often isn’t enough support to fund services like women’s shelters and training programs.

Now, some of you might say that Bangladesh and Turkey are Muslim countries, that’s part and parcel of Islam. Look at those assholes in Boko Haram in Nigeria or Female Genital Mutilation in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance. That’s just not true. I have a friend who worked as a police officer in Sydney, Australia and domestic abuse is quite prevalent there as well among the Anglo-Aussies. I have another friend here in Montreal who, for a time worked as a 9-1-1 operator and dispatcher and the calls for domestic abuse came in from all quarters and the Number 1 category of domestic abuse incidents actually came from a White male/Asian female partnerships. When I did my stint as a spiritual caregiver in Washington, DC, I saw many, many cases of brutal domestic abuse in the trauma bay among African-American women. Mind you, these are anecdotal examples but it shows how widespread the problem is.

I had a wonderful economics professor in college, originally from the western tribal areas of Pakistan, close to Peshawar. She did her MA and PhD at the London School of Economics, was a devout Muslim, mother and wife, she was also quite a feminist. I used to have long conversations in her office about why men, not just Muslim men, but many men abuse women. Her reply was that those men who brutalize and abuse women, deep down are scared, they’re scared of the day when women realize, that they don’t need these men as much as these men need the women. They’re afraid of being outed as needy, incompetent and therefore “weak”. It drives them crazy to see a woman who is free to make her own choices and doesn’t need or want anyone (i.e him) so the only way they can take back control of the situation is through violence to reinforce that message that the woman is “owned” and under control. Another part of the problem is that women in some cultures, are conditioned to treat their sons like some sort of prince, that the focus of attention within families is always the son, not the daughter (hence female infanticide in places like China and India) but if mothers were to shift or adjust their attitudes just a little, it would go a long way towards enforcing attitudes of gender equality and fostering respect towards girls.

Two Turkish boys dressed up in faux-royal finery for their circumcision ceremony.

Much of what I see in spiritual literature is about saying “Yes” to life and living our truth. While I don’t disagree with that, I also think part of saying “Yes” to life also means saying “NO” loudly and clearly and without any fear of blowback when the occasion calls for it. To otherwise muffle our voices ultimately holds us all back.

When Life is Up For Sale

ATTENTION: NSFW and some disturbing content below and links. For mature readers only.

As I wrote earlier, I’ve been on a film kick lately. I’m usually attracted to stuff which explores metaphysical themes anyway so I struggled with writing this blog post and whether to publish it or not. I then decided, that as disturbing, ugly and painful as some aspects may be, in the end, the message is too important to pass up.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini was a bit of a genius polymath. A writer, journalist, art critic, poet, painter, actor, novelist, philosopher, intellectual, political commentator, and finally, film maker and director, there was not much on the creative side of culture he did not study or work in. More than a little ahead of his time, Pasolini often stumped or enraged the critics of his day and nearly 40 years after his death, people are just starting to understand him and his work with a deeper appreciation, mostly because for his uncanny foresight and prescience of the world to come.

Film poster of “The Canterbury Tales”

 

Pasolini had made a trio of films called the Trilogy of Life, which included “Decameron”(1971), “The Canterbury Tales”(1972) and “The Flower of the 1001 Nights”(1974) which in themselves were bawdy, lusty but joyful depictions of human sexuality. There is a joy and playfulness in the Trilogy which is pretty obvious to anyone who takes the time to watch them. Pasolini was no prude. He was openly gay in a time and culture when that was socially unacceptable and no doubt that bled into his work.

Criterion Collections DVD jacket cover for “Salo”

His next and final film was the mother lode.
In 1975, Pasolini did Salò, (or The 120 Days of Sodom), based of course, on the notorious book by the Marquis de Sade. Only Pasolini changed the setting completely and placed it in the final days of Fascist Italy in the 1940s. (Before I go any further, I should warn anyone who wants to watch this film or take it lightly that this is a VERY disturbing film, and not in a slasher-horror film kind of way. Even if  nothing is real in the film and props and fakes were used, the content is very troubling. You have to be very, very , very strong to watch it and should weaker, more delicate souls watch this, it will affect you on a subconscious level so you’ve been warned and need to take personal responsibility if you decide to watch it.)

The 4 aristocrats, representing Royalty, Clergy, Law, and Political Leadership

The film instantly was banned in practically every country in the world because of its graphic depictions of sexual mutilation, sadism, mental and physical torture and coprophagia. It remains banned in Malaysia and Singapore even now. There’s not much to the plot, only in Republic of Salò, the Fascist-occupied part of Italy, in 1944, four wealthy men of power, the Duke (Royalty), the Bishop (Religion/Clergy), the Magistrate (the Law), and the President (the Leader/Executive), agree to marry each other’s daughters as the first step in a debauched ritual. They recruit four teenage boys to act as guards and four young soldiers (called “studs), who are chosen because of their large physical genital endowments. They then kidnap nine young men and nine young women and take them to a palace near Salò. Accompanying them are four middle-aged prostitutes, also collaborators, who recount arousing stories for the men of power, who, in turn, sadistically exploit their victims.

The four older prostitutes.

The story depicts some of the 120 days at the palace, during which the four men come up with even more abhorrent tortures and humiliations for their own pleasure. The film follows four different segments inspired by Dante’s Inferno, the Anti-Inferno, the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit and the Circle of Blood. I am not going to recount what happens in the film, you can read that elsewhere, but rather focus on what the film and it’s aftermath really shows up.

The kidnapped, at right.

Reader, this film will break your heart and your shake your will to live.
I had to force myself to watch it through and had a good cry afterwards but as horrific as the scenes and actions are, there is a method to the madness here and I understand what Pasolini was trying to warn us of. Pasolini understood what market forces ultimately do to human beings, human souls and human bodies. When life becomes commoditized to market forces, that’s when the real torture begins. When you lose respect for life and look at it as a commodity, you lose your ability to feel any empathy and start treating others as objects to your own whims and inclinations – and the results often do end up becoming horrific.

Various contestants from the reality TV show, “The Swan” where candidates showed up for extreme plastic surgery and surgical makeovers.

Pasolini saw the writing on the wall back in 1975, before globalization really took hold of the world, before drug cartels controlled economies and before Banksters, Royalty, Religion, Law and Political Leaders hoodwinked the public to pay for their gross ineptitude and greedy appetites. He understood and saw all too clearly what the final outcome was going to be and started to ring the warning bell in the most brutal, urgent way possible. Unfortunately, he paid the price for it with his life. Shortly after production wrapped, Pasolini was brutally murdered in what many suspect was a Mafia hit. He was run over by a car, several times in a row, and pictures of his mangled, crushed body were published in the newspapers, shocking the Italian public even more. Somehow man and myth became one.

Matching gold toilet and bidet, from the Dubai Boat Show. Does anyone really need this?

 

The antithesis of “Salo”, a film which argues very well against this materialism, I think is “A Canterbury Tale” (1944) by the dynamic duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Set in wartime England, and like Geoffrey Chaucer’s original story of a group of eccentric pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral, it follows three young people: British Army Sergeant Peter Gibbs, US Army Sergeant Bob Johnson (played by real-life Sergeant John Sweet), and a land girl, Miss Alison Smith.

(L toR) Sergeant Bob Johnson, Alison Smith and Sargent Peter Gibbs

The group arrive at the railway station in a small Kent town of Chillingbourne, near Canterbury, late on night. Peter has been stationed at a nearby Army camp, Alison is due to start working on a farm in the area, and Bob left the train by mistake, hearing the announcement “next stop Canterbury” and thinking he was in Canterbury. As they leave the station together, Alison is attacked by a mysterious assailant in uniform who pours glue on her hair, before escaping. The remainder of the film is about the three of them sleuthing to find out who is”The Glue Man”.

That’s just the plot. It’s also a meditation on why nature has to be protected at all costs, the true cost of war and technology in human terms, the joy of childhood innocence and that miracles do happen. Chaucer’s pilgrims travelled to Canterbury to “receive a blessing, or to do penance”.  It’s really at the end which brings the film to a glorious, spiritual conclusion where each of them receives a blessing. (If you’re feeling lost or adrift, watch “A Canterbury Tale”.  It will help you find your bearings. )

The film also highlights The Pilgrims Way, an often-forgotten walking pilgrimage route which still runs through the English countryside ending at Canterbury Cathedral, and not unlike Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. The route is actually far older than the medieval pilgrimage route we know it as today and dates back to the Iron Age. (Quite often people doing the Pilgrim’s Way looking for blessings, end up doing penance and those looking to do penance end up with blessings. In other words, the route is some sort of karmic balancer and that is why I strongly suspect there’s a very powerful and still-pure ley line along that route.)

Map of The Pilgrim’s Way.

Powell and Pressburger may have made the film in 1944, far earlier than Pasolini’s film, but I’ll leave you with the words of Sergeant John Sweet who played Sergeant Bob Johnson in the film. Sweet died in 2011 but he gave an interview in 2001 which is on the Criterion DVD of the film, when he returned to Canterbury for the first time after 57 odd years.

“When I say heads raised in the film, I do mean the spiritual, I mean that very much. This is about the human spirit. Indeed. I realized it yesterday. I saw it …clearly on the film, but I’m a little older and I know a little more than I did when I was 27… And today we’re hungry for this, without knowing how to move on it. …We’re hungry for something… For meaning. We’re talking about meaning… And we’re all short of it. We’re all trying to get it from science or from technology or…or mobile phones. And that’s… that’s silliness. There’s no spirituality in it or in the internet or facts or mobile phones…. It’s a poor, poor substitute for the spirit.”

The Dismantling Has Started

Hope many of you Shifters rode out the Cardinal Grand Cross in an OK fashion?

 

I have not been writing lately since I’ve been busy with another project and it kinda requires much of my attention. That’s not to say that I haven’t noticed a couple of things happening which I think merits a good pointing out.

Many of you may be saying, “What’s the big deal about the Grand Cross? – nothing happened.” I would respectfully beg to differ. I think something DID happen, albeit not in a hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-baseball-bat kind of obvious way.

First off, I would like to point out the basic energy of the Grand Cross was about getting rid of the old mousetrap because it doesn’t work anymore. Regardless if bankers, politicians, money or power or any other sort of “interest” was/is invested in keeping the old in place. If it’s broken, throw it out.

Secondly, powerful institutions like banks, corporations even nation-states just don’t fall apart overnight and in an instant even if some of us wish it was that easy. (It took at least a week for the Berlin Wall to fall and it only did so when the security apparatus of the East German Stasi fell apart and Erich Honecker pretty much lost all legitimacy. This is KEY).

Remember the story of the Little Dutch Boy?

I believe in the little-crack-in-the-dike theory. Tiny cracks appear and if not plugged quickly, cracks get bigger and bigger and before you know it, it just breaks apart. We’re starting to see the little cracks. Why? Because before the big starts to fall apart, it always starts with the small first and that leads to a cumulative effect which then affects the big.

Case in point:  Conspiracy websites and researchers for YEARS have been saying that Hollywood, the film industry, sports industry and the entertainment industry at large runs on sex cartels, racism and unaccounted power and privilege. That’s nothing new. It’s been going on since the casting couch was first invented. However, the magnitude of what they have been saying  is quite correct.

Hollywood director Bryan Singer, director of such films as the X-Men franchise has been outed as a bit of a sexual predator who preys on younger, vulnerable men. I’m not going to mention the lurid details here but Gawker and the Hollywood Reporter has all the juice should you want to read up on it.

And now the big story is LA Clipper’s owner, bona-fide douchebag/wanker, Donald Sterling and the racist remarks he made which were caught on tape by his former “mistress” Vanessa Stiviano (who incidentally is half Latina, half African-American).

V.Stiviano (left) and her former sugar-daddy Donald Sterling (right). Girl, where the hell is your dignity? What the hell were you thinking hooking up with him????!!!! No amount of cash is worth it!

They have since gone viral and the NBA along with many African-American basketball players, past and present, are calling for Sterling to leave the NBA and sell the team and just go away.

As gross and horrible as the Bryan Singers and the Donald Sterlings of the world are, my question is if people knew these guys were doing these sorts of things and carrying these sorts of attitudes for years (Sterling has a history of discrimination with his rental units and real estate in LA), how come no one said anything, publicly stood up to them or challenged their power when there was ample evidence of their wrong-doing?

To me, the bigger picture of what’s wrong here is how such atrocious behaviour and attitudes can go on, unchallenged and uncontested, with most people just looking the other way and a business-as-usual attitude which keeps those very systems of power and privilege in place.

Ummm….no it’s not.

The personal is the powerful. The personal becomes institutional.  If enough people in the same institution/industry etc.  share the same personal attitudes, that become the institutional and dominant culture to the detriment of everyone else who DON’T share those values or attitudes.

Do you honestly think banksters and politicians WANT to see women, blacks, Asians, homosexuals, queer join their ranks?

See, I think the cases of Singer and Sterling represent the small cracks. They’ve set a precedent of sorts especially these days since racism is so politically incorrect and unacceptable and diversity is the name of the game now. Rape and any sort of sexual misconduct in the absence of consent is just plain wrong no matter how you cut it. I was initially psyched to go see the new X-men film since it was filmed last summer here in Montreal,  and many of the cast members trained at my yoga studio but now, I have no interest whatsoever to add a single penny to Bryan Singer’s coffers.

The entertainment industry needs to stop glorifying bigots like John Wayne. (Besides, he was a crappy actor.)

I have a feeling more and more people will be less hesitant in the future to speak out now in those industries.  I think all the douchebags have to be outed (and I hope they are). Whether it is bigoted team owners, soccer players, crazy comedians or actors. No exceptions. There’s always a domino-effect to these things. Once it happens to one industry, it eventually hits others as well.

There is a solar eclipse tomorrow though no one except maybe a handful of people in Tasmania and Antarctica will see it. Astrologers seem to be divided on the importance of it but I still think it’s a powerful time for intention-setting.

Do what you gotta do.

The Law of Exchange

“Tell yourself that all human beings are your brothers and sisters, and if you learn to accept them, with their weaknesses, their shortcomings and the difficulties they create for you, you will attract the benevolence and support of heavenly beings.  Never be like those people who turn away from others on the pretext that they are inferior.  Such ignorant people do not know that when they do this they are transgressing the law of exchange and that, as a consequence, the divine world will refuse to make exchanges with them.  It is up to each one of us to find out how to establish true contact with others.  May scientists be happy to give their knowledge and the wise to give their light, and may those who receive them be delighted to have been taught and enlightened.  May the strong be happy to support the weak and the rich to help the poor, and may the weak and the poor be grateful to feel they have been helped.  All those who refuse to allow their wealth to circulate, in whatever sphere, are like stagnant water. They will never discover the meaning of life, for life can only be found in free circulation and exchanges. Just because people are different from you, it doesn’t mean you have the right to mistreat them or ignore them. You will do better to try to understand them.  In this way you will be establishing a good habit, which will then protect you from many dangers. You meet people who think they are so important.  They think they don’t have to make any effort for little ants. But maybe one day they will find themselves, like in fairy stories, having to sort thousands of grains of wheat, barley or rice in a few hours, and then they will be very pleased when the ‘ants’ come to their aid. Or else they will be bound tightly hand and foot, and a little mouse will start gnawing at the rope to set them free. 

Lucy noticing the mice gnawing away the ropes around Aslan at the Stone Table in an animated version of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”

You will say, ‘But those are fables, fairy stories for children!’ If you like… The mice and the ants represent those people you mix with that you tend to look down on.  But who knows?  Perhaps those people you were able to show some respect, because they deserved it, will one day come to your rescue. There are invisible beings who can come down to help us, and if you want them to pay you a visit and to stay, you must prepare the right conditions in yourself.  Yes, never forget that divine beings are always ready to visit you and that they seek a place to dwell in your heart, soul and spirit, so they may work and bring you their riches.  It is only people’s negligence and lack of appreciation for their presence and help that keeps these entities away. They are fully aware that human beings are imperfect, weak and silly, and yet they excuse them and do not let this stop them. On the contrary, they say: ‘Oh, what a state the poor things are in, they need help!’ But if they see that people do not appreciate what they bring, they leave. Not because they need to be respected or thanked, no, but because they know that ingratitude prevents people from profiting from the blessings they are offered.

– Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

I am, in small degrees , a supernaturalist.

That probably doesn’t jive with a lot of people (and that’s cool) but I do firmly believe that all that we can see, hear, touch, smell and taste is not all that there is (Is it just me but isn’t it strange that 4 of our 5 senses are centered around the head? Are there others in other parts of the body and they are just dormant?).

Mycobacteria in your tummy

There’s much more, we just haven’t been able to quantify or record these things mostly because the instruments, physics and mathematics just aren’t there yet. It’s all relative. I mean if you were to go up to a feudal serf in medieval France and show him a picture of a what a real microbe or virus looks like and explain to him that it is living underneath his fingernails or on his skin when he doesn’t take a bath after six months, he’d probably run screaming off to the local church official and have you burned alive. That microbe may not have been something which anyone could see, quantify or touch back then, but it doesn’t change that it was still there. Thankfully, germ theory changed a lot of things. That’s what I mean by relativity.

No. Just no.

Likewise, I do think, like what Aivanhov suggests, there are lifeforms which populate this universe way beyond us. Mostly good, some bad but because I think evil has its limitations, the more benevolent forces are far more advanced in form and expression. I’m not talking about Ascended Masters bullshit and all the crap many New Agers sprout. I don’t think they are in a form we can even relate to except perhaps in flashes of insight, sudden intuition and those all-too-rare moments of pure transcendence or grace. However, if the quote is true and they are indeed ready to help us, it also means we have to hold up our end of the law of exchange as well.

Greek Orthodox icon of Seven Archangels. From left to right: Jegudiel, Gabriel, Selaphiel, Michael, Uriel, Raphael, Barachiel. Beneath are representations of Cherubim (blue) and Seraphim (red).

I think what is stopping so many people to practice that law of exchange is 1) Fear, fear that if they give anything away, they will never have anything to show for it  and 2) Greed. We are living in a world culture which is largely predicated on class-warfare and with the “Haves” displaying a horrific culture of entitlement. Too many people thinking that if they display any form of kindness, decency, gentleness or compassion, there will be less of it to go around to them.

This culture of entitlement has many, many expressions. From an impossible diva like Jennifer Lopez who has it written into contracts with the hired help that they are not to make eye-contact with her at any time to Generation Y college grads who get upset that they may have to work on a project which requires a longer attention span, of say a mouse.

Moll girls at play. From Vice.com

I recently read about the phenomena of the “moll girls” in Australia over at Vice. It’s mostly girls, usually in their early 20s, mostly from upper middle class to upper class backgrounds acting like thuggish boys. I mean binge drinking, fighting with each other physically, even fighting with boys as a gang, sleeping around randomly as a form of “empowerment” usually at clubs and bars. Generally acting very boorish and vulgar and throwing a fit at even the hint they may not get what (or who)  they want in the next 10 seconds.

The original “Queen of Mean”, Leona Helmsley

Whenever I watch people who give off that “I’m Entitled to do Anything I Want” vibe, I always detect fierce anger underneath…as well as deep hurt. Somehow, somewhere along the line, something damaged them. I’m not justifying that behaviour but I do think it’s a scar that they carry around and it manifests in other ways

A typical group of socialites as featured in New York Social Diary.

When I used to work at non-profits, many of the charity fundraising events were chaired by local socialites and I have to say, they are easily the rudest, bitchiest, most self-absorbed and neurotic women I’ve ever come across. Many of their husbands were captains of industry so they were, in short, bored, flaky trophy wives. They used to treat us at the non-profits like we were their domestic help and would often get away with it unless you said something and put them in their place. I don’t think many of them were happily married or for that matter were even in love with their husbands (most of their husbands were really old and not particularly attractive…). I think because in some ways, they were disempowered in some areas of their lives, they tried to exert extra power in other areas to compensate.

The wedding of Jackie Kennedy to Aristotle Onassis. The two Kennedy kids, Caroline and JKF Jr. don’t look very happy, do they?

It was rumored that Jackie Kennedy, when she married Aristotle Onassis, one of the stipulations  was that she was required to have sex with him 3 times a day at anytime he wanted and she would have an expense account which allowed her to spend $10 000 – $15 000 a day at high-end New York department stores on anything she wanted. Do the math.

Thanks but no thanks, I’d rather be happy, unhindered, minding my own business and free to see, experience and receive the magic this world and life has to offer.

 

Towards an Integrity-Based Civilization

Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger

John Pilger belongs to a rare breed of journalists and documentary filmmakers who, whenever they do something new, it’s worth giving up a couple of hours of your time to just drop everything and go read or watch their latest offering because you’ll learn much more in those hours than you ever will watching the news or reading the newspaper. Pilger is one, the BBC’s Adam Curtis (i.e The Power of Nightmares, The Century of Self)  is another as is the CBC’s McKenna brothers, Terence and Brian (i.e The Valour and the Horror, Big Sugar,  The Secret History of 9/11).

CBC’s Brian McKenna

Pilger’s latest article in the Guardian is about on how increasingly, Australian Aboriginal children continue to be forcefully taken away from their mothers. We’d like to think that Native and First Nations/Aboriginal people’s horrible history of assimilation, genocide, targeted killing, sexual and physical abuse in residential schools is exactly that, history,  but it would seem, it is still going on albeit, under a different name of social engineering and “social work”.

It coincides with another, similar story which is ongoing here in Canada as well. That eight hundred (800) First Nation’s women have gone missing . There has hardly been any press coverage about this story, most media outlets won’t talk about but would rather talk ad nauseum about interest rates.

Our idiot Prime Minister Stephen Harper has done exactly jack-all about it even though there have been repeated calls for a serious inquiry into this. The RCMP keep talking about inquiries and ongoing investigations but I don’t think anything will come of it. I can’t help but shake the feeling that these are targeted killings and targeted abductions. It is a mindset which follows, “Wipe out the women and they can’t breed anymore”. If there aren’t anymore Native or Aboriginal people to deal with then the land claims and the claims to the resources on those lands will forever be secure and no one will ever put up a fight.

Native groups have been protesting the development of the Alberta oil sands and tar sands, something which Canada can profit from in the billions…

I am not a member of any of the First Nation’s tribes but I spent several years doing sweat lodges with Mohawk Elders, and spent time with Hopi Elders Grandfather Martin Gashweseoma and Grandfather Neil as well as attending Grandfather William Commanda‘s annual summer gathering up at the Kitigan Zibi reservation. One of my lodge brothers is a former Sun Dancer who now conducts men’s healing circles in the UK. He was gifted with the lodge teachings from Grandfather Frank Settee. Another Elder gifted me with an Eagle Feather which I work with and guard closely.

In short, I learnt a lot. I learned about animal medicines, the teachings of the Medicine Wheel, how Mother Earth teaches us. I learned a helluva lot more with my time with these Elders and their teachings and doing the serious spiritual work that I needed to do in those sweats than I ever would reading all the books by Eckhart Tolle or any of the Oprah Winfrey set. None of that would have been possible if those communities completely ceased to exist. One thing they always told me, was that the teachings must continue. Always.

People go on about “spiritual writers” and retreats and seminars and what not. I honestly think 99.99% are full of shit. They’re too busy building up their brand-name and making money to give two cents to your spiritual evolution and well-being. And so I say to those of you who are serious about this, just drop the gang of them. They don’t care about you. They only want your attention so long as they can make money off of you.  It’s not just the Oprah set, or the immature teachers you see in newspapers, but it’s also the bullshit Godmen and Godwomen of India and increasingly, the plastic credit-card shamans of South America.

Gabrielle Bernstein (and Oprah) another New Age shyster

The one thing that really comes across about real Elders and wisdom keepers is that they are like rocks. They sit still, they say nothing but see all and understand all. They belong to that school of thought where you can see and hear a lot more the longer you keep your mouth shut.

Spend enough time with them and their sense of integrity eventually rubs off on you and you begin to see the world like they do. Some people might say that we accord too much importance to Native and Aboriginal people, but I think their teachings are now more important than ever.

This isn’t meant to be a racial diatribe but rather a quick exposition of some teachings. If you examine the Medicine Wheel, you’ll see that the 4 cardinal directions have 4 colors, 4 races, 4 elements associated with them. The White Race is associated with Fire. They are keepers of Fire and are responsible for the Fire teachings. That also explains why everything they create has fire in it (i.e electricity, nuclear, thermal, hydroelectric power) and why they are so good with invention and technology.

The Red Race is associated with Earth. They are responsible for the Earth teachings, about working with the Earth (i.e farming) and how to read the Earth.  (Yellow Race is associated with Air, Black Race with Water).

The Fire teachings have outrun all the other teachings. Get too much fire and it scorches everything in its path. The thing is, the other three elements don’t stay quiet for very long because everything in Nature always tries to go back to balance. Its balance, not ours.

That landslide which happened in Washington State is Mother Earth trying to say something. How many people will listen? The same can be said for earthquakes and volcanoes. Storms, tornadoes and twisters fall under Air Teachings. Floods, typhoons and hurricanes fall under Water Teachings.

Aerial shot of the Washington mudslide

Part of Western civilization’s push in scientific endeavors and development is following something called evidence-based inquiry and research.  I think the time for that is drawing to a close. Now we need to push towards an integrity-based civilization.

I’ll leave you with the words and teaching of the late Sioux Elder, Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman. If you can, watch the whole series.