Wednesday, March 23, 2011

folk stories

when i was little girl i was told an old ukrainian folk story which keeps coming to mind these last few days. it was about an exasperated husband. his wife, who he loved muchly, was beautiful and fine in all respects, save one. she was an incurable gossip. not in the malicious sense of gossip in the modern world, but in the old world way of simply repeating as if for truth any word that came her way. she seemed to have no control over this weakness of character and it began to weigh on her husband and affect their quality of life. because of his superior wisdom, he knew it would be fruitless to reproach her directly or to forbid the behaviour. such tactics could only give her weakness more power. so he instead devised an elaborate plan to walk her through to a cure.

one day he hastened to her and spoke of wonders that she really must come at once to see. he walked her to the woods and in the clearing stood a tree covered in sparkling fish, the riverbanks were shored up by loaves of freshly baked bread, a road was paved with salted meat, things of this nature. improbable circumstances carefully staged to defy the rational and tempt the tongue that needs must wag. he took her to half a dozen such enchanted spots in the forest before extracting a promise from her that under no circumstances must she repeat to others what she'd seen. of course, though she tried her best, the momentum of her habit was stronger than her resolve to do her husband's bidding and within no time at all she had rationalized for herself why she should at least tell her most trusted friend of these miracle occurrences.

suffice it to say the story spread like wildfire through the village and quickly word returned to her husband that the secret was out. he then took great delight to show to all the villagers that there was were no fish on the trees, or bread on the banks, or paving stones of salami and reproached the villagers for believing his wife, known to be gullible enough to repeat anything she'd heard. shaming her in this manner he also broke the spell of her unconsciousness. and while she cried a few tears knowing she would never again be taken seriously or have recourse to the gossiping that she compulsively enjoyed, she was not so shrewish as to fail to recognize the sage love and harnessing her mate had gifted her with. and since no one would believe a word she thenceforth said, her habit could atrophy from the shock of a forced closure. the story ended with her husband sweetly teasing his chastised but now awake "little dumpling," and, putting his arms around her, smiling to himself with satisfaction, he took his victory and his transformed/reborn woman with scalded red cheeks and the beginnings of her own shy smile, home.

as einstein said, problems are rarely solved at the same level they play out on. the most intractable human conflicts often have to be seen and understood from a higher, more encompassing perspective. the sleepwalkers have to be lured into productive traps that bring the exact contours of their coma-drama to light. this would also be the spirit behind the maxim of giving someone just enough rope to hang themselves. the idea isn't to cause harm to the person or to behave callously, but to take a gamble, to gift them with the chance to see their own hand in their misfortunes. and the gamble has a charisma, for if it comes into a person's life at the wrong time, they'll only be able to twist from it a confirmation of the world's wounding unfairness, but if it comes at a time of ripeness, the opportunity for self-reckoning and more conscious moving forward is singular and blessed.

at root we all secretly want to be caught out and spared our blindness. we all want to stop projecting our invisible-to-us and therefore subradar actions onto others. no one really wants to persist in blaming outer agents for behaviour and interpretations that in truth solely exist in our own neurotic minds, that come into unfortunate manifestation by our own naive willfulness. and so these traps and stagings of hide-and-seek, benign neglect or tactical abandonments may take off a little flesh and strip us of a little dignity but in the confrontation with the unconscious, if wakefulness is the outcome, a little flesh and a token humiliation is a small price to pay.

when you love someone that you can see for plain is caught in a madness, you can't make it better by waving a magic wand, or telling them what their problem is. transformation is a more cagey and slippery fish. recalling the parable, to end hunger, you don't hand out fish for nothing, you teach their cultivation and harvesting. so to, you can't do the work of hunting down the most productive consciousness and or somatopsychospiritual healing for someone else. they have to do the muck work, they have to take the pains and em-bare-ass-ments, and pull themselves up onto the shore of firmer, clearer visioning. all that a lover of the earth can do is hold space for this and pray for the best outcome possible. and on very rare and beautiful occasions, the one who makes the wish is ably matched by one strong and finally ready enough to actually realize it, no matter how many stumbles and failures and setbacks they meet with along the way.

viva la vida. life is in the spit.

epigenetic influence

"Whereas the genome was once believed to almost exclusively determine our inheritance, it is now widely accepted that epigenetic influences, especially those occurring in the womb, affect and sometimes even override gene expression at all levels and thereby modify brain development (Gottlied, 1998; Harper, 2005; Keller, 2000; Lickliter and Honeycutt, 2003; Natanielsz, 1999; Petronis, 2001). The maternal environment affects immune function, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer risk (Nathanielsz, 1999; Pteronis, 2001) and even gross physical appearance in some cases (Gottlieb, 1998); it has also been shown to have an especially powerful influence on brain development and behaviour, and may even be considered a source of speciation (Lickliter and Honeycutt, 2003). What is critical from the standpoint of human brain evolution is that maternal effects are trans-generational in that, for example, a mother with high dopamine levels can prenatally pass those levels on to her children and, in turn, they to their children (Harper, 2005; Lickliter and Honeycutt, 2003; Nathanielsz, 1999)."

excerpted from "The Dopamingeric Mind in Human Evolution and History" by Fred Previc

so much for genome-determinists!

"The dramatic expansion and increasing functional importance of dopamine systems in the human brain occurred over a long period of time, only partially paralleled by the changes in our physical appearance, and the dopamine rise continued long after our common genetic lineage. For those who believe that the great intelligence of humans relative to the rest of the primate world requires an exalted evolutionary progression, this theory is highly disappointing in that:

1. there is no positing of specific genetic mutations for language or other advanced intellectual functions;
2. no importance is ascribed to the changes in cranial size and shape; and
3. most of our intelligence is regarded as a by-product of physiological adaptation, diet and population pressures.

This theory is, however, consistent with a number of crucial facts, including:

1. the lack of a causal relationship between brain size and intelligence;
2. the tenuous relevance of the human genome to intelligence;
3. the importance of dopamine to our advanced intellect;
4. the specific expansion of the dopamine-rich striatum and cerebral cortex relative to the rest of the brain in humans as compared to chimpanzees (Rapoport, 1990);
5. the known effects of diet and physiology on dopamine function;
6. the sub-Saharan origins of humanity; and
7. the >100,000 year gap between the establishment of the modern human anatomy and genome and the appearance of a variety of cultural artifacts associated with a distinctly modern human intellect.

This theory merges genetic, epigenetic and cultural factors and blends the African gradualistic theory of McBrearty and Brooks (2000) with the general intellectual explosion posited by Mithen (1996), but with his European locus of the intellectual "Big Bang" now placed at an earlier juncture in Southern Africa. In addition, this theory clearly explains why cognitive abilities like language, religion, art, advanced tool-making, mining, long-distance exchange etc. did not emerge as separate genetic selections but rather depended on a more fundamental increase in cognitive potential as expressed in enhanced working memory, cognitive flexibility, spatial and temporal distance (off-line thinking), mental speed, and creativity that could only be found in a brain rich in dopamine (see also Wynn and Coolidge, 2004). Finally, this theory dispels the notion that the evolution of advanced human intelligence was critically dependent on the capacity for speech, since the latter was present at least 200,000 years ago in the first anatomically modern humans and probably another 100,000 or 200,000 years before that in archaic humans (Arensburg et al., 1990), without leading to any dramatic intellectual advances.

By highlighting the epigenetic inheritance of dopaminergic activity, this scenario shows why the emergence of the dopaminergic mind was not associated with a unique, immutable genetic process but rather one that continued to advance long past the establishment of our common genome and anatomy."


excerpted from "The Dopaminergic Mind in Human Evolution and History" by Fred Previc

Sunday, March 20, 2011

melanie reinhart on chiron

"There can be an obvious 'unhealable wound' depicted by Chiron's placement, a situation that we cannot escape from although we may try to and which provides grist to the mill of our 'soul-work' for many years. Just as in the myth, however, there is potential resolution and release. Very often this revolves around accepting the unacceptable, the unfair, the incomprehensible; it may mean stopping trying to figure things out and fix them, but instead to simply allow ourselves to be with the experience.

Chiron can also depict a brilliance, something which stands out and defines a person. It can show where we behave or feel like an outsider, a maverick or wanderer, where we resist being tied down, where the constraints of society weigh heavily. There is a wildness, a freshness, a volatility of energy, a certain instability where we can go to extremes. It can also be like 'blind spot' where something is obvious to everyone but ourselves. Psychologically, it could be said that Chiron symbolises part of us that has been split off. It has become dissociated because of trauma or suffering, or simply through a lack of understanding or language to process an experience. Transits act like the classic shamanic process of 'soul retrieval' where that which has been outcast, seeks to return."
"There is a Gift in every Wound,
a blessing in every crisis,
a light in every darkness,
love in every emotion,
a silver lining on every cloud,
a lesson in every experience,
a Service in every part of Creation."

"Healing is the gradual awakening
to the perfection
of your life."


(Chiron, channeled by Martin Lass)

supermoon fallout

Surely there is a window from heart to heart:

they are not separate and far from each other.

Two earthenware lamps are not joined,

but their light is mingled as it moves.

No lover seeks union without the beloved seeking;

but the love of lovers makes the body thin as a bowstring,

while the love of loved ones makes them comely and plump.

When the lightning of love for the beloved

has shot into this heart, know that there is love in that heart.

When love for God has been doubled in your heart,

there is no doubt that God has love for you.

[Rumi]

the difference between people-shoppers and lovers of the earth is simple for even the tortuously complicated mind. people-shoppers are on the prowl for unmodified, platonic specimens, cells untouched by the poison and vagaries of this imperfect dirt of existence. they look to be transported into the high ideals of beauty, grace and lightness of spirit as evidence of the more noble refrains of which the human coil is capable. they find complexity, darkness, and turbulence unattractive and to be avoided for it mars the grecian marble arches of the refined world under which they wish to make dance. lovers of the earth, however, want to know abject manifestation for what it is and in its fullest possible expression. they see the darkness in every light and the light in every darkness. they can behold the beauty in a florette of a crushed and partially decomposed paper cup surfacing in the filth of old snow. they marvel at the sinew of neurotic inner wrestling and the quiet bell curve of its ultimate neutralizing. they can digest the poignancy of a reaching that never quite makes its mark. they can love the grain of age scarifications and trouble on the brow, occasion to take in freely and deeply both the sulphuric smell of street people and the pulchritude of a rose garden. they know them by their shifting contexts, as mere flecks of duality looking for the dutiful middle-holding that turns both faces to unspeakable jewels.

lovers of the earth do not look to the seed that has just cracked under the garish wetting of the seasons as it tentatively sends its pale, thin scouts thru darkest gravitysoil towards a sun it hardly knows, and complain that it resembles not the lush tomato plant that grew to advantage the year before. they do not pull up the shoots and stamp on the earth that birthed it, exasperating that its but a scrawny, malformed, barren imposer. the lovers of earth alight with the eyes of patience and kindness on any signs of struggle and marvel at the bother of biognosis in action, the lionlambforms who work to bridge the floating sun and the fertile peat of our collective deadweight sheddings.

the pupa is easily judged and rejected for not yet having emerged into its butterfly body by the very agents and elixirs that could hasten its transformation. such ironic unfairness is the strict but firm teacher of ages, for in nature the transformations are self-directed for those who bear the seeds of greatness. the babes are abandoned and left to drift down the river of chance. the birds early tossed from the nest either die or become the strongest fliers. but we humans have our extended period of vulnerability post-womb that haunts us and impels us into relatedness, and as it should be. otherwise differentiation of sex and species would be but an empty play serving no purpose. i spoke recently with a friend who marveled to me the greatness he felt able to achieve with the essential presence of his mate who loves him without reservation. "without my wife, more than half my accomplishments would never come to be. knowing she loves me i can bear the doubts and challenges of the world with an infinite supply of strength that i draw on her account. just knowing she's there for me, can step into my way of looking at things, sometimes commiserating, sometimes drawing me away from my subjective, it all makes me strong in a way i could never unlock when i was doing my own thing."

there are no clear categories to people. we are all assortments of ever-shifting prominences. sometimes we are people-shoppers, looking for the best deal, the features we idolize at the lowest price with some guarantee of road worthiness for our investment. and sometimes we are lovers of the earth where the heartland borders run beyond any knowable circumference to embrace and take in the post-dual cartography beyond black and white and good and evil.

yet, as i am learning, the secret of nature is that the emboldening and fortification of conjugation is available to the singleton as well. for while the lover without is a nice fact to sometimes get your hands on, the inner inamorata is always waiting for our reach to union. even the diner, sitting alone at table, can't be distinguished from the lovers necking in the corner. activities within the heart can't be seen by science eyes or judged for merit by the appraisals of practical fellows.
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dream: 20 mar 2011: on a bench i sit and i have to keep my eyes closed. a boy comes and we kiss passionately and for a while but i know the agreement is that he will flee to mask his identity before i open my eyes, which is exactly what comes to pass.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

clear the clouds

resist disaster chic and those who prey on sensationalistic escalations. you can't outrun a radiation cloud, nor can you make a home immune from fallout with plastic wrap and duct tape, elbowing for resources at the stores like crazed me-firsters.

prepare your body for the changes, reflect on what the thyroid does and what this shift might presage in terms of metabolic evolution, new global energy formats and collective opportunities...

Monday, March 14, 2011

wise advisory from david wolfe

"In light of the meltdown of Fukushima: How to protect yourself and your thyroid against radiation: kelp, ginseng, ashwaganda (recently found to regrow nerves), chlorella, zeolites, fulvic acid, nascent iodine, reishi mushroom, sea salt (also salty miso), botanical (plant-derived) or lipo- vitamin C, magnesium (chlorophyll), selenium (brazil nuts), coconut butter, Megahydrate, Crystal Energy. Spread the word."

NaturalNews has also posted some good tips re: iodine, and for those out on the west coast where there's a run on this supplement amid fears of an approaching radiation cloud, Adams offers some solid tips for where to get supply. be proactive. here's the link... http://www.naturalnews.com/031708_iodine_radiation.html

Thursday, March 10, 2011

inconvenient truths

if you have to play an exaggerated fragment of self to curry favour or enchant, its better to throw the game by coming out in wholeness. at least then you'll have your wholeness and a real possibility of moving forward, rather than being fixed in the shards of pleasing behaviour and subtle illusioneering...

the situation as it is

"In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude."

[CG Jung Collected Works, 10, para 325]


"Rahangri then put his question: 'What is the difference between dream and reality? And in dream I include all forms of waking vision.' The poet was surprised, but the inquiry was much to his taste. He replied: 'There is no ultimate difference, for they intermingle, reflect each other, are dependent on each other, cannot exist singly, derive from the same source; each is both illusory and real, and neither is real without the other.'"

[Maurice Collis: The Mystery of Dead Lovers]

Saturday, March 5, 2011

the art of sudden awakening

A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concepts of heaven and hell. But the monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout - I can't waste my time with the likes of you!"

His very honour attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled, "I could kill you for your impertinence!"

"That," the monk calmly replied, "is hell."

Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight.

"And that," said the monk, "is heaven."


[excerpted from Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman]

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

eye of the spirit in nature

"Archetypally, (the) eyes of death are implacable and profound, seeing an immediate is-ness that finds pretense, ideals, even individuality and relatedness, irrelevant. They also hold and enable the mystery of a radically different, precultural mode of perception. They perceive with an objectivity like that of nature itself and our dreams, boring into the soul to find the naked truth, to see reality beneath all its myriad forms and the illusions and defenses it displays.

"Western science once aspired to such vision. But we humans do not have such objective eyes. We can see only limited and relative, indeterminate truths. We and our subjectivity are part of the reality we seek to see. The eyes (of the chthonic goddesses) see from and embody the starkness of the abyss that takes all back, reduces the dancing, playing maya of the (above-ground) goddess to inert matter and stops life on earth.

"These eyes obviate the patterns and ideals of habitual and collective rational consciousness - the way we see in linguistic confines, trapped within conceptual spaces* that form the world of differentiated appearances. They pierce through and get down to the substance of preverbal reality itself. They see, also, through collective standards that are false to life as it is. Thus they destroy identification with animus ideals. They make possible a perception of reality without the distortions and preconceptions of superego. This means seeing, not what might be good or bad, but what exists before judgement, which is always messy and full of affect and of the preverbal precepts of the near senses (touch, smell, taste). This implies not caring first and foremost about relatedness to an outer other, nor to a collective gestalt or imperative. Seeing this way - which is initially so frightening because it cannot be validated by the collective - can provide what Logos consciousness fears as mere chaos, with the possibilities of a totally fresh perception, a new pattern, a creative perspective, a never ending exploration.

"Such seeing is radical and dangerously innovative, but not necessarily evil unless unbalanced and therefore static and partial. It feels monstrous and ugly and even petrifying to the non-initiate. For it shears us of our defenses and entails a sacrifice of easy collective understandings and of the hopes and expectations of looking good and safely belonging. It is crude, chaotic, surprising, giving a view of the ground below ethics and aesthetics and the opposites themselves. It is the instinctual eye - an eye of the spirit in nature. This is the vision that Ereshkigal and Kali and the Gorgon bring to the initiate. It is the meaning of the vision of the terrible guardian head at Siva's temples. It is awful, and yet bestows a refined perception of reality to those who can bear it. This is the wisdom of the dark feminine that Psyche could not yet sustain - the knowledge she was to bring to Aphrodite, the Greek Inanna, to make her beautiful and eternal. Psyche saw it briefly and fell unconscious, for that age was not ready for such knowledge. Now we need to know this vision, for we are already working with its subtle energies in astro- and atomic physics.

"Psychologically, this mode of seeing, this knowledge, implies that destruction and transformation into something even radically new are part of the cycle of reality. Such knowledge is hard to endure. We try to pretty it up, cover, avoid. But knowing this basic reality permits a woman to give up trying to be agreeable to parental and animus imperatives and ideals. It is like hitting rock bottom, from where they are irrelevant. It relativizes all principles, and opens a woman to the paradoxes involved in living with the Self.

"This cool, objective eye is one basis of feminine evaluation. It does not get deceived by responsible performance or willed achievement, but finds the ineluctable facts in process, the panoply of emotional vectors that give each moment life, and that pass as others crowd into the present, leaving the individual at the mercy of time and processes over which one has little control, but in which one may find a grounding if one can reverence change itself and find one's own way to move with it. Such vision is transpersonal and a power that can protect - so Athena, 'gorgopis' (bright-eyed) and owl-eyed, wore the Gorgon's eyes on her shield."


[excerpted from
Descent to the Goddess by Sylvia Brinton Perera]

*see Antonio T. de Nicolas,
Meditations through the Rig-Veda: Four Dimensional Man, p. 24

nature is a whore

the fecund feminine principle, statistically liable to wounding and degradation in these culminating, dissociative times, retreats into high arctic tundras. she locks down the heart and guards with talons of hyper-cerebral defensiveness. as an adaptive response this makes sense and sometimes brings its own satisfactions, but it's no way to live in the long term.

fortune-favoured of late with the right visionary experiences, drop-ins of intuitive flashes and attendant synchronies, i've been able to finally see for truth this hangover programming of diseased patriarchy still preying on my freedom and potential happiness. we've been raised to disown the gynolatric powers and put on exclusively androlatric garb, the very culture is steeped in these amputative poisons. the particularly afflicted make matters worst, surrounding themselves with especially noxious agents who further the malignment of not only the womanly powers but prevent the inseminating harness of positive masculinity from coming to the fore as righteous consort.

"Constricted, the joy of the feminine has been denigrated as mere frivolity; her joyful lust demeaned as whorishness, or sentimentalized and maternalized; her vitality bound into duty and obedience. This devaluation produced ungrounded daughters of the patriarchy, their feminine strength and passion split off, their dreams and ideals in the unobtainable heavens, maintained grandly with a spirit false to the instinctual patterns symbolized by the queen of heaven and earth."
[Sylvia Brinton-Perera]

any man who looks at a woman as a matter-of-course liar, as suspect, as faithless for having interests and variabilities, as a quanta that must behave, toe the line, suppress her inquiries, tone down her intensity and pump up her body parts, who seeks to dispossess her need of venture and social intercourse with colleagues and friends, who views her assets and charms as things to be guarded for personal aggrandizement instead of let loose for her enjoyment, satisfaction, and life's general pollination, who fancies he can control her personal habits, judge her lifestyle practices, or tame her of her attunement to the cycles of dark and light in nature, is, in particular, a patent artifact of my past.

and while i have an interest in investigating the wounds that have led men to adopt these attitudes toward the feminine, (and women towards themselves), it's not my job anymore to attend these questions or attempt their transformation within the privacy of my personal life. reaching this point of differentiation has been a lifelong journey and not one that i take lightly. in return, crossing this bridge has delivered the most beautiful passion into my life, perfect in its comportment and arrangement, and more fulfilling and stimulative than anything i ever imagined possible. corset-free, it makes no demands of me. it just allows, encourages, and lets me be in my realm to do as i please. heaven.