a note to the wise

Dear Friends,

Two thousand years ago Marcus Aurelius wrote:
"Our anger or annoyance are more detrimental to us than the things themselves which anger or annoy us".

Most of the time, you will find this to be true. Negativity strengthens the ego, but it weakens you. It prevents true intelligence from arising and dealing with situations and people. When you recognize its futility and harmfulness, it begins to subside. You can then face and accept situations and people as they are, without this unnecessary inner baggage. This is the beginning of wisdom in action.

With love,
Eckhart Tolle

on the recent new moon in aquarius

[excerpted from Robert Wilkinson's AQUARIUS PAPERS]

The next 4 weeks is a time to fulfill your understanding of things, and see clearly what needs repair or reconstruction. We can all understand the need for new standards to admire and newer, more "perfect" ways to secure a better life. Keep establishing new connections, new emergent possibilities, and let go of any lurking ambivalence as you stand at yet another "portal of initiation." Here we are reintroduced to a whole new way to do our Being which involves walking on into the unknown. While some of this may seem like an ordeal, it's the logical result of what you claimed in 2005 that set up the new initiatives of 2010-2011.

Keep attuning to the invisible world, open to the larger field of light/life we all share, and find humor in a lot of the changes. The atmosphere may be "cool and dry," but there will also be some form of "cosmic visitation" that can electrify our lives and leave us in awe of how perfect Spirit works its magic. Take care of details, work or rework the plan, see what fits where, and renounce old roles while searching for a new effectiveness in your world. Find a fresh point of view uncontaminated by social or mental preconceptions, and allow your imagination to be guided by Spirit into a "vibrant simplicity."

...

Keep finding clear visions, information, and communications, and then figure out how to act to make those real or relevant to your emergent life. Find what your mind thinks it needs to make clear decisions, follow through in practical actions, and then feel what must be felt, experience what must be experienced, and get clear about what you're feeling so that you can find even newer views and understanding.

So get new information, new understanding, and new views of what's possible in the future that helps you separate from the past. Then do what must be done with decisiveness so you can experience your emergent life with new feelings. Venus in Pisces with Jupiter in Taurus can make our lives much more tender and compassionate, so take the chance to feel deeper than before now, and you could become more universal and non-separate in the process.

Mars and Saturn are both on the threshold of going stationary retrograde. Saturn will retrace the final 8 degrees of Libra, so the next few months we'll be taking a new look at lessons we've been moving into since October. Mars will move back to early Virgo, so expect slowdowns and returns or renewals wherever you have Virgo, Aries, and Scorpio.

There are hard turns coming through easy understanding, so keep it simple, accept rewards when offered, see the broader context of your mission, and promote efficiency. This time can help us "cut to the chase," see the openings resulting from the "liberating ordeals" of August 2011, and be our "sculptor self."

Curb pessimism, think outside the box, and cultivate your spiritual rapport with others. If appropriate, study, read, and write, or at the very least, get a grip on your mind and speech, but without rigidity or narrow thoughts dominating the process.

Follow through, remember that some limitations are more boon than bondage since they help us focus our potency, exchange ideas to further fellowships, and figure out what you really venerate rather than the old social roles that squashed your individuality. There is a tremendous liberation and new ways of being an individual promised by this Lunation, so think, decide, and then feel with an eye to getting in shape for the stable harmonious future to come that's been promised by what we've cared for this past Autumn.

We've been through two "cosmic visitations" and two revelations of a new way of being that renders our old patterns obsolete. Welcome to the third "cosmic visitation" that will complete your understanding of the larger rhythms swirling around us. More rewards and harvests to come through mid-March!

[read Robert Wilkinson's full article here]

the role of detachment in self-realization

adversarial dynamics are key to developing not just awareness of self but the power to transform limits into new gates to unbroken horizons. during times of interpersonal conflict, an able-ness to resist the temptation to counter-offensives, retaliation and revenge-schemes is the arena within which real detachment can be practiced.

only when you can take the lash of outright slander and not flinch, not even feel the stroke in its harm intention, only then does one have the chance to exercise this potent skill of practical magic. feigning detachment when circumstances permit, or as a pretense masking a more chronic indifference and lack of engagement with reality, these might con one into thinking a sort of personal liberation has been attained. unfortunately these are the sorts of false consolations that verily lead to the brittle and smug self-assurance which prevents the deconstruction and shedding of old skins and distorted lenses.

the art of war sagely advises that one should never completely humiliate or strip down the dignities of the adversary if peace, security, and non-violence are core aims. sometimes, when the opponent is powerful in their reach but impossibly mesmerized by self-justifying perceptions, a temporary theater must be constructed to lead the opponent into the delusion most suited to maintaining the ego's cherished immunity, protecting it from inconvenient truths.

this means elevating your resonances above the level where the conflict chooses to play, turning the other cheek, and failing to actively obstruct anyone's dissembling and falsehood schemes. instead, the holy trickster empowers the opponent with what appears to be an inevitable and assured endgame victory. thusly distracted by their own unchecked certitudes, the easiest disengagement is to be had, for you've left them as you've found them. in their drama. because other people are not your business. meanwhile the hardest practice of all, not returning fire with fire, poison with poison, or passing on exponentially increasing pain and karma, has been faced, engaged, and profited from. this is the road less travelled where you will always find kin, the hunters everywhere of wisdom, love and freedom.

Until you've found pain, you won't reach the cure
Until you've given up life, you won't unite with
the supreme soul
Until you've found fire inside yourself, like the Friend,
You won't reach the spring of life.
Rumi ♥

equations may guide but they may also mislead...

wherever you have distortion, you'll find a compensation. its a law that operates in the plastic-fantastic structural world, within the play of informational substances in the blood, even in our psychology. the trick is to never assume simple equations like 'this always equals that.' while there are generals, its the idiosyncratic particulars that point to the inner argument that even the self in distress can't articulate or see for plain...

irrational rules

the net dynamic between unconscious and conscious centers is of an irrational, non-deterministic nature. things that don't make sense according to causal laws or probability trends, things which bypass reason and impact at the level of numen are the things which transform the hard fist of inner noise and self-hypnotism. thusly no matter how intractable a complex seems, no matter how tempting to apply the heat of even more analysis, in a startling reduction the following mantra always applies... 'your only problem is that you think you have a problem...'

the thing about the affects

we're conditioned to find them one way but they partake of duality just like we do. there is a healthy, righteous and lovely side to anger just like there's a base expression of it. the interpretation and spin are ours to own. anger simply shows up in the drag we insist it wears, but its pliable enough to show a different face anytime we like.

talking cures in isolation

the talking cure guilds have had to acknowledge of late the abysmal success rates achieved among the more intractable psychological problems, a reflection of their limited, dogmatic contents and rather lacking methods for therapist self-assessment and skill development. the injection of consciousness and language itself seems to defeat the quest for illumination and change. i'm starting to believe you really have to get your hands on a person to help break through structural amnesias and distortion zones.

and there's a fantastic safety mechanism involved. it can only work if the appropriate bodyworker with the right tools matches up with a person ready to deconstruct their old patterns and explore new ones. thusly, though it can feel like someone is 'working on you,' the client still has to take an active role in the experience and as much responsibility as the worker. you can't really say the same of a talking cure scenario. you can unintentionally mislead your therapist far afield from the critical understandings that might aid you, but the body under an awake hand cannot lie.

the science delusion

finally.... serious counterargument apropos the fixed madness of whitecoat scientific dogma, the articles of faith that have so curtailed progress and enlightenment... trade in old robes of rationalist fancy which by definition must exclude inconvenient facts for more comprehensive models that demand new paradigms and ways of looking... exciting! bravo rupert!

you can order an advance copy prior to the May 2012 US/Canada release through this UK purveyor...

Jung on wholeness

"Wholeness is represented by the family, and its components are still projected upon the members of the family and personified by them. But this state is dangerous for the adult because regressive: it denotes a splitting of personality which primitive man experiences as the perilous 'loss of soul.'

In the break-up the personal components that have been integrated with such pains are once more sucked into the outside world. The individual loses his guilt and exchanges it for infantile innocence; once more he can blame the wicked father for this and the unloving mother for that, and all the time he is caught in this inescapable causal nexus like a fly in a spider's web, without noticing that he has lost his moral freedom.

But no matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. Only a fool is interested in other people's guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart." [Psychology and Alchemy]

bates eye method in a nutshell

a good practicum for understanding sight
but also a non-local metaphor for how to best navigate the world of experience...

Bates Method in a Nutshell
The Basics of Better Eyesight: Instructions on how to improve your vision with simple eye exercises and visual habits

Written by Alex Eulenberg in 1995, based on Better Eyesight Without Glasses by William H. Bates (New York: Henry Holt, 1981), Chapter 24, "Fundamental Principles of Treatment", pp. 193-200. Last revision, May 18, 2009.

The means to better vision is through relaxing the eyes. Rest makes vision better, strain or effort makes vision worse. There are several ways to rest the eyes.

Close your eyes. While doing this, think of something agreeable.

Cover your eyes. Called "palming". If you cover your eyes so as to exclude all light, the eyes will be able to achieve a greater degree of relaxation. Cover both eyes with the palms of your hands, your fingers crossed on your forehead. Note: in order to be successful, you must be able to relax while palming. Some people cannot do this, and palming becomes counterproductive. The blacker the field you see, the more relaxed you are. But if you "try" to see black, this may cause more strain. Don't try to see black: it is better to imagine a concrete, familiar object or scene.

Observe the swing of things. As you move your gaze from one point to another, things seen should move in the opposite direction. For example, if you look at the upper left corner of the letter "H" and then shift your gaze to the lower left corner, the "H" should appear to move, or "swing" up. If it doesn't, this is a sign of strain. There are a variety of exercises to practice the swing. You can gently swing your whole body to the left and to the right, and watch a distant tree swing to the right and to the left, you can move just your head, or just your eyes. The better the vision, the shorter the swing can be made to be.

Use your imagination. By seeing things with your mind's eye, and remember them in precise detail, you increase your ability to see actual objects better. The perfect memory of any sensation can be produced only when one is free of strain. It also helps, when practicing with a test card, to imagine that the part of a letter that one is looking at is blacker than the rest of the letter, or to imagine a small letter within a small black spot of a letter. In this way you direct your mind to appreciating finer and finer detail.

Catch those flashes. When your eyes finally achieve a state of relaxation through swinging or palming, you will see a "clear flash"; paradoxically, the sight of everything in focus is such a surprise that it causes strain, and the blur returns. So before the clear picture blurs out, close your eyes and remember the image in its full sharpness and clarity.

Keep your vision centered. When you regard an object, only one small part should be seen best. This is because only the center of the retina -- the fovea -- has the best vision for detail. Farther away from the fovea, the retinal receptors get progressively less able to pick up fine detail. Therefore, trying to catch all the detail with all of your retina at once causes strain because it cannot be done! To be able to see all the details of an image, put each detail into the center of your visual field, where it can be seen best, one at a time. Allow each detail to become less clear as you move away from it and center in on the next detail.

Enjoy the sun. Get out into the open and enjoy every sunny day. It is especially relaxing and stimulating to the eyes if you close your eyes and let the sun shine onto your lids as you sway back and forth.

Practice with a test card. Keep an eye chart on the wall. To practice, stand from 10 to 20 feet away, and read the smallest line that you can without straining. Then look at one of the letters on that line and close your eyes. Remember that letter -- go over every detail in your mind; shift from part to part, from curve to corner and so on. When you open your eyes, you will see not only that letter better, but also the one below it. If you find yourself staring at the letters, which results in the line becoming blurred as soon as it comes into focus, it is best to close the eyes before this can happen. When you open them, shift to another letter on the same line. If you close your eyes for each letter, you will become able to read the whole line. Practice every day for five minutes or more and keep a record of your progress.

McLuhan on being an amateur

"My education was of the most ordinary description, consisting of little more than the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic at a common day school. My hours out of school were passed at home and in the streets." Michael Faraday, who had little mathematics and no formal schooling beyond the primary grades, is celebrated as an experimenter who discovered the induction of electricity. He was one of the great founders of modern physics. It is generally acknowledged that Faraday's ignorance of mathematics contributed to his inspiration, that it compelled him to develop a simple, nonmathematical concept when he looked for an explanation of his electrical and magnetic phenomena. Faraday had two qualities that more than made up for his lack of education: fantastic intuition and independence and originality of mind.

Professionalism is environmental. Amateurism is anti-environmental. Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the groundrules of the environment. The groundrules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serve as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware. The "expert" is the man who stays put.

"There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago." [Robert Oppenheimer]

biomimicry

‎"Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example.

"The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival."

[excerpted from Janine Benyus' Biomimicry Institute website]

uranus-pluto and material energy

"The Uranus-Pluto conjunction of 1705-16 coincided with the invention of the steam engine and the discovery of the use of coal for iron-smelting furnaces that began the Industrial Revolution and the age of steam, iron, and coal. The following conjunction of 1845-56 coincided with the discovery of petroleum oil as a fuel, a discovery that began the petroleum age whose cultural, ecological, and geopolitical consequences are still unfolding. And the following opposition of 1896-1907 coincided with the birth of the nuclear age with the discovery of radioactivity in uranium, the isolation of radium and polonium, and Einstein's E = mc2 formulation." [Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche]

reactor-free medical isotopes developed

always good to hear report of ongoing disentanglements between manufacturers of weapons-grade uranium and western medicine. isotopes are used to deliver radiation to direct targets from inside the body as opposed to getting radiated from the outside. unfortunately, the truth that there's no good use for radiation (or nuclear weaponry industries dressed in energy industry garb) is rarely reported...

"Medical isotopes could be made without a nuclear reactor"
Canadian researchers are racing to perfect a safe, clean, inexpensive and reliable method for making isotopes used in medical-imaging and diagnostic procedures.

piriformis or SI joint pain?

interestingly, the piriformis not only stabilizes the femur, its the key muscle responsible for the lateral rotation of the hip joint, meaning it's the muscle that allows us to open the groin and make ourselves vulnerable. i say interesting, because of how chronic we, the western population as a statistical pool, go into rigid spasm, locking down the front by seizing up in the back instead... humans. looking one way while doing another since, um, forever...

here's the best discussion i've come across on the guiding features that distinguish SI joint pain from piriformis entrapment of the sciatic... Piriformis or SI Joint Pain? by a Certified Advanced Rolfer...

on the uranus-pluto cycle

"The powerful wave of feeling that overcame the Legislative Assembly in July 1792 at the height of the democratic period of the Revolution, when the deputies suddenly surrendered their antagonisms and commenced embracing and kissing each other in tears of deep emotion, and that swept through Paris generally in 1792 had its counterparts in such events as the San Francisco Summer of Love in 1967 or the Woodstock music festival in 1969." [Cosmos and Psyche: Richard Tarnas]

URANUS-PLUTO decades: "repeated outbursts of mass emotions of great intensity; whether violent or libidinous, the dominant archetypal complex in each of these periods seemed to constellate sudden sustained outbursts of nonspecific emotional intensity and elemental power that informed and compelled human activity and experience on a mass scale." [ibid]

as above

Light Show In The Sky For October-November 2011
by Robert Wilkinson

Right now we have a great light show in the evening skies!

Mercury and Venus are both evening stars at this time of the year, and will be for several weeks to come. You can see Venus very clearly for the next few weeks just after sunset. At the same time, just below it you can see Mercury. The distance between the two will close between now and early November, when they will seem like "twinned stars" in the sunset sky.

Jupiter is about to become very bright as a "morning star" over the next month due to where it is relative to the Sun. It will be particularly bright in the Eastern sky at sunset during the coming New Moon on October 26-27, just as it will be every day through the time of the Moon conjunct Jupiter during the 19 Taurus-Scorpio Full Moon on November 10-11.

Very early risers will see reddish Mars in the Eastern skies from about 2:15 to 5 am from now through December. As the months roll on, Mars will be more elevated in the Eastern sky as the weeks move on, and by December Saturn will also be a "morning star" on the Eastern horizon beginning around 5 am.

All these times must be adjusted toward a couple of hours earlier in the Southern Hemisphere, since the Sun rises very early there in November and December. Anyway, a few things to keep in mind during the periods just before sunrise and just after sunset over the next few weeks. Enjoy the celestial light show!!

© Copyright 2011 Robert Wilkinson

distorted thinking (book excerpt)

15 STYLES OF DISTORTED THINKING

1) Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them, while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. A single detail may be picked out, and the whole event becomes colored by this detail. When you pull negative things out of context, isolated from all the good experiences around you, you make them larger and more awful than they really are.

2) Polarized Thinking: The hallmark of this distortion is an insistence on dichotomous choices. Things are black and white, good or bad. You tend to perceive everything at the extremes, with very little room for middle ground. The greatest danger in polarized thinking is its impact on how you judge yourself. For example, you have to be perfect or you're a failure.

3) Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again. 'Always' and 'never' are cues that this style of thinking is being utilized. This distortion can lead to a restricted life, as you avoid future failures based on the single incident or event.

4) Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling towards you. Mind reading depends on a process called projection. You imagine that people feel the same way you do and react to things the same way you do. Therefore, you don't watch or listen carefully enough to notice that they are actually different. Mind readers jump to conclusions that are true for them, without checking whether they are true for the other person.

5) Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start "what if's." What if that happens to me? What if tragedy strikes? There are no limits to a really fertile catastrophic imagination. An underlying catalyst for this style of thinking is that you do not trust in yourself and your capacity to adapt to change.

6) Personalization: This is the tendency to relate everything around you to yourself. For example, thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc. The underlying assumption is that your worth is in question. You are therefore continually forced to test your value as a person by measuring yourself against others. If you come out better, you get a moment's relief. If you come up short, you feel diminished. The basic thinking error is that you interpret each experience, each conversation, each look as a cue to your worth and value.

7) Control Fallacies: There are two ways you can distort your sense of power and control. If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. Feeling externally controlled keeps you stuck. You don't believe you can really affect the basic shape of your life, let alone make any difference in the world. The truth of the matter is that we are constantly making decisions, and every decisions affects our lives. On the other hand, the fallacy of internal control leaves you exhausted as you attempt to fill the needs of everyone around you, and feel responsible in doing so (and guilty when you cannot).

8) Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what's fair, but other people won't agree with you. Fairness is so conveniently defined, so temptingly self-serving, that each person gets locked into his or her own point of view. It is tempting to make assumptions about how things would change if people were only fair or really valued you. But the other person hardly ever sees it that way, and you end up causing yourself a lot of pain and an ever-growing resentment.

9) Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem. Blaming often involves making someone else responsible for choices and decisions that are actually our own responsibility. In blame systems, you deny your right (and responsibility) to assert your needs, say no, or go elsewhere for what you want.

10) Shoulds: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you, and you feel guilty if you violate the rules. The rules are right and indisputable and, as a result, you are often in the position of judging and finding fault (in yourself and in others). Cue words indicating the presence of this distortion are should, ought, and must.

11) Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true - automatically. If you feel stupid or boring, then you must be stupid and boring. If you feel guilty, then you must have done something wrong. The problem with emotional reasoning is that our emotions interact and correlate with our thinking process. Therefore, if you have distorted thoughts and beliefs, your emotions will reflect these distortions.

12) Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them. The truth is the only person you can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself. The underlying assumption of this thinking style is that your happiness depends on the actions of others. Your happiness actually depends on the thousands of large and small choices you make in your life.

13) Global Labeling: You generalize one or two qualities (in yourself or others) into a negative global judgement. Global labeling ignores all contrary evidence, creating a view of the world that can be stereotyped and one-dimensional. Labeling yourself can have a negative and insidious impact upon your self-esteem; while labeling others can lead to snap-judgments, relationship problems, and prejudice.

14) Being Right: You feel continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness. Having to be 'right' often makes you hard of hearing. You aren't interested in the possible veracity of a differing opinion, only in defending your own. Being right becomes more important than an honest and caring relationship.

15) Heaven's Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You feel bitter when the reward doesn't come as expected. The problem is that while you are always doing the 'right thing,' if your heart really isn't in it, you are physically and emotionally depleting yourself.

*excerpted from THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS by McKay, Davis, and Fanning. New Harbinger, 1981. These styles of thinking (or cognitive distortions) were gleaned from the work of several authors, including Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and David Burns, among others.

THE BEAUTY OF TOTALITY, by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

"Ultimate goodness is connected with the notion of ultimate joy without comparison to suffering. Out of that joy we begin to experience, visually, the beauty of the blue sky; the beauty of a red rose; the beauty of a white chrysanthemum; the beauty of chattering brooks; the beauty of the openness of the ocean, where sky and land meet; the beauty of sweet and sour; the beauty of music, high pitches and low; the beauty of experiencing warmth on our bodies; the beauty of cool air, which creates natural refreshment; the beauty of eating a meal when we feel hungry; the beauty of drinking water when we feel thirsty; the beauty of learning more things when we feel that we are not learned enough. I don’t want to paint a pleasure-oriented picture alone. There is also the beauty of your schoolmaster pinching you on the cheek, the beauty of being too hot on a midsummer’s day; the beauty of being too cold in the middle of winter—the beauty of pain as well as the beauty of pleasure."

"... it has been thought better to change the traditional title. LUST implies not only strength, but the joy of strength exercised. It is vigor, and the rapture of vigor. There is in this card a divine drunkenness or ecstasy. The woman is shown as more than a little drunk, and more than a little mad; and the lion also is aflame with lust. This signifies that the type of energy described is that of the primitive, creative order; its is completely independent of the criticism of reason. This card portrays the will of the Aeon." [Aleister Crowley]

"The difference between Crowley's LUST card and the traditional STRENGTH card can be illustrated by two formulas: that of St. George killing the Dragon, and that of Beauty and the Beast. In the STRENGTH card, St. George kills the dragon to save the damsel in distress, thus the woman and the beast are kept separate, and the woman is mild and powerless. In the LUST card, the woman herself falls in love with the Beast, and while in some versions of the tale the Beast becomes a man due to her love, in others the woman becomes a Beast as well. Thus, LUST relates more to the acceptance of the bestial lust and vigor for life, rather than the denial and destruction of its primal force." [Kim Huggens]

summary of the archetypes

the human ordeal of consciousness and willful achievement, well put by Robert Wilkinson in this summation, "Life energy is initiated in Aries, substantiated in Taurus, explored in Gemini, grounded in Cancer, renewed and creatively expressed in Leo, refined and ordered in Virgo, balanced in Libra, purified in Scorpio, expanded in Sagittarius, organized in Capricorn, solidified into a vision in Aquarius, and ended/perpetuated in Pisces."

mistress knowledge

biting off more than one can chew can be an endearing quality, except when the struggling chomper's a polemicist who's proving inflexible of the changes or recantations required by mistress knowledge, someone apparently unaffected by the evolving and starker clarity of self evident counter report.

a better man bows to the fullest complexion possible on his subject, a lesser one digs heels in on old decisions and biases, making a mockery of any system of investigation's ability to grapple with inconvenient facts. tut tut.

here's a link to the article,
and below a reply from James DeMeo, PhD,
Director, Orgone Biophysical Research Lab, Ashland, Oregon

ADVENTURES IN THE ORGASMATRON
How the Sexual Revolution Came to America
By Christopher Turner
Illustrated. 532 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $35.
REVIEWED BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

In the classic confessional memoir “The God That Failed,” Arthur Koestler describes some of the characters who made up the constituency of his Communist Party group in Berlin in the early 1930s:

“Among other members of our cell, I remember Dr. Wilhelm Reich. He . . . had just published a book called ‘The Function of the Orgasm,’ in which he had expounded the theory that the sexual frustration of the proletariat caused a thwarting of its political consciousness; only through a full, uninhibited release of the sexual urge could the working class realize its revolutionary potentialities and historic mission; the whole thing was less cockeyed than it sounds.”

Pausing briefly to ask oneself how the word “cockeyed” translates into Berlin vernacular, one next inquires how the theory could have been more preposterous than at first appeared. Apart from his life of tireless and sensational debauchery, Koestler himself was famous for hitching his wagon to various movements of the paranormal and the extrasensory; he might have been expected to give Reich’s oddball theories a try even as both men spun off from the dying planet of Soviet Communism. But what is extraordinary is the number of apparently level and careful people who, in pursuit of the better and bigger orgasm, were prepared to lower themselves into Reich’s jerry-built “orgone box” and await blissful developments. One is not so surprised to read of the enthusiasm of try-anything-once artists like Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, William Burroughs and Norman Mailer. But how must Albert Einstein have felt, while engaged on his two weeks of study of orgone properties? (He did at least conclude that the “box” was an insult to the laws of physics.) Did Saul Bellow not succumb to the queasy feeling that he might be looking like a sap?

... read the full book review here and below a reply to this article from James DeMeo ...

What a shame that you did not personally investigate Dr. Wilhelm Reich's biophysical work, before accepting at face value what the non-scientist faux-literary and travel-book author Christopher Turner, has pronounced in his deeply flawed and biased "Adventures in the Orgasmatron". The title alone should have given you some pause. But it is fashionable these days to always laugh at the poor sot in the stocks, whomever it might be, against whom we can throw all our emotional crap, like the Muslims throw stones at the Devil-pillar in Mecca. Everyone then feels so much better. Was that you?

To inform: I've investigated Reich's biophysical work over decades, including his orgone energy accumulator, and can personally report (and have done so in many published articles and books) that his findings are both sound and reproducible. Review these, for example:
http://www.waterjournal.org/volume-3/demeo
http://www.orgonelab.org/DeMeoEdgeScience.pdf
http://www.orgonelab.org/DeMeoToTSubtleEnergies.pdf

I'm not alone in that regard, of having replicated Reich's biophysics. Do you even know the published literature on this issue? Does any of that matter to you? Or must one have a big name, and big publisher sponsor an ad campaign and reviews for the Times to get your attention? Do you know anything about the history of scientific discovery, and repression? How the “mainstream” always goes with the reactionary pogroms against new discovery?

Turner surely knows the evidence in favor of Reich's biophysics -- he attended scientific conferences where such information was presented – which shatters his central thesis of "Reich the Crackpot". He deliberately does not mention any of it. He also fabricates a deceit against Reich, through a faux guilt-by-association with every kind of sexually-twisted example from the late 20th Century – also ignoring Reich’s frequent denouncements of the same.

You once wrote a book about Orwell, noting with accuracy something he said: "Lies of Omission are the worst kind of lie". Precisely because the ignorant won't even know they are being led into dangerous waters. That pretty much defines the Turner book, as well as what you just did, lending your otherwise good name towards yet another public auto-da-fe abuse of Reich's corpse.

Reich's work is a testament to the dangers of book-burning – I note, you said nothing about that. You might review my article "New Information on the Persecution and Death of Wilhelm Reich" to see how it wasn't the old "McCarthites" who engineered his death in prison, and the book-burning, but rather liberal-left-atheist Reds of various hues, including members of two notable Soviet spy rings. You can damn well read the article to learn the details. Here:
http://www.orgonelab.org/ReichPersecution.htm

This is doubly regrettable for you personally, because the orgone accumulator has a notable capacity to often (but not always) shrink tumors, reduce the physical pains associated with cancer, and stimulate a return of appetite, energy and vitality to those withering away, depending upon how far it has gone.

I'd always considered you a man of principle and decency, but this time you've gone way off the rails. If you can center yourself, and not merely react to my strong words, you might ask, just what is going on, and why, that people are so exercised after 50+ years after Reich's death, that they want not only to blame the worst aspects of the New Left sexual rebellion on him, but to also make yet another merciless round of "analysis" (eg, defamatory sex-smears and jokes) about the orgone accumulator -- which in spite of what the AMA or FDA might proclaim, is an authentic scientific and curative device!

Regards,

James DeMeo, PhD
Director, Orgone Biophysical Research Lab
Ashland, Oregon, USA

PS. For my several scientific books on this and related subjects, do an Amazon.com search on my name.

AURUM by Edward C. Whitmont, M.D.

excerpted from PSYCHE AND SUBSTANCE
GOLD is the metal of the sun. For untold ages, it has held fascination for mankind. Gold has been the "royal" metal furnishing the king's solar halos: their crowns. Universally it is a symbol of imperishable value. Even when gold no longer supplies the actual coinage it nevertheless continues to represent the basic standard of currency. Evidently the collective psyche harbours an unconscious awareness of a supreme symbolic significance inherent in gold.

In Hermetic tradition gold is held to be part of a cosmic "functional" triad comprised of sun, heart and gold as corresponding, synonymous entities. It is noteworthy that the sun rhythmically "pulses" in a way that is analogous to the heart. It contracts and expands about .002% of its diameter (or about 3K) in approximately two hours and forty minutes.

For alchemy gold represented the solar principle and the highest goal of spiritual transformation. ("Our gold is not the gold of the vulgar" was an alchemical saying.) Astrologically, the solar principle stands for the life will in the individuating human consciousness, the sense of self-value, honesty, responsibility, pride, willpower, vital strength and the capacity to exert control, all vested in the heart.

Among many Indian tribes the rising sun was greeted by breathing upon one's hand and offering one's breath to it as the source of life. In a more gruesome ritual, the Aztecs would tear out the living heart of their sacrificial victims, preferably prisoners of war or nobles, and hold it up as an offering to its "father" the sun.

These traditions bear witness to the deeply felt correspondence between the substance of gold, the sun and the sun-like organ, the heart. It is interesting in this connection that the center and source of consciousness as well as the life will were traditionally associated with the heart, the organ of feeling, rather than the brain.

Astrologically, our consciousness is seen as anchored in the two "lights," the assertive "greater light" the sun and the receptive "lesser light" the moon. Both are polarized by their "antagonist" Saturn, the principle of limitation, who rules the metal lead and the bony skeleton which defines and limits our existence in time and space. Under Saturn's influence the sun becomes "black," the sol niger of alchemy, representing decay, depression and death. Hence the goal of the alchemical opus was the transmutation of earthbound Saturnian stuff, of lead, into spiritual essence, into gold.

The sun is the center of our universe. But like human consciousness and human will, the sun is still subordinate to a higher center, the center of the galaxy which, according to newest observations, is a black hole: a mysterious entity in which time, space and substance as we know them are vitiated. Thus, the solar principle expresses also the problem of human individuality, balanced and polarized between life and death, between the dark mystery of the transcendent "center" above and the Saturnian limitation below, to both of which our light of consciousness and sense of individual life are subordinate.

As focal points of consciousness the sun and moon also rule our chief sensory orientations - the outgoing sun ruling the outer-oriented attitudes of smell (associated with Muladhara, the basic Saturnian earth chakra) and of vision. ("Were not the eye to sun akin, how could we ever behold the light?" -Goethe.) Hence gold affects heart and circulation, the bony skeleton (ruled by Saturn), eyes and nose. Correspondingly, the receptive moon rules the inner-oriented gesture of hearing; hence the moon, like permeable and receptive Calc. carb., Phosphor or Pulsatilla, has a greater affinity to the ears.

The pathology of Gold fits personalities of a serious, over-responsible and depressive character.

The solar types are would-be rulers, "kings," that feel actively responsible for the destinies of their "subjects" and for the burdens they themselves have assumed.

Usually, they are active and intrinsically strong people who feel they bear heavy responsibilities often experienced as overwhelming. Their pathology expresses the tension between their sense of responsibility, their will and felt call to control people and circumstances, as over the existential limitations they encounter.

Physically they tend to be ruddy, dark-complexioned, plethoric, active and strong, sometimes heavy-set. Or, the other side of the spectrum: oldish-looking, low-spirited "overwhelmed" children, often boys with atrophy of the testicles.

Responsible fathers or heads of families, (regardless of whether they happen to be males or female), effective business and executive types with strong willpower, they occupy highly responsible functions, and like the mythological Atlas who had to carry the weight of the whole globe on his shoulders, they frequently carry more than they can. Burdened by an often over-scrupulous conscience that overshoots the mark, and inclined to take matters too seriously, they tend to see predominantly the dark side of problems and of life. (Impressively enough, this is also a symptom of disturbed physical vision: seeing only the lower half of objects.)

They have a hard time tolerating contradiction. Yet they do not show their anger or worries, do not say much and tend to withdraw into solitude.

But swallowing rather than expressing their emotions intensifies inner as well as outer tensions, eventually to the point of explosive breakdown. To these situations they respond with self-criticisms, self-accusations, and heavy, often unjustified, feelings of guilt, worthlessness and self-condemnation.

Readily overwhelmed by a load that feels or actually is too heavy for them, they are given to anxiety and restlessness about trifles, about the future and about their health. They tend to feel neglected and deserted and become silently brooding, show aversion to other people including even their immediate kin, and tend to isolate themselves.

Ultimately this may lead to hopeless despondency, depression and despair, emotionally no less than physically (despair about pain), to a loathing of life and suicidal tendencies. Often these types may be found among seemingly strong and silent people who suddenly commit suicide.

Noise bothers them, but the solar types are uniquely sensitive and made to feel organically better from music. (Kent's repertory lists only Aurum and Tarantula under this rubric.)

Apparently, music conveys solar light and life strength. We are reminded of the Biblical image of King Saul having lost his connection with God and in deep depression: "... and whenever the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand; so Saul was refreshed and was well and the evil spirit departed from him." (1 Samuel: 16, 23)

Apollo, the Greek sun god, is also a musician. Traditionally, from the sun issues the "harmony of the spheres," and Goethe opens his individuation drama Faust with the archangel's intoning:

"The sun sounds forth in ancient fashion
In brother sphere's competing song."

Like sun-kings, the Gold types feel oppressed mentally and physically when hemmed in. They have to be on the move and feel better by walking around.

Clinically, the Gold scope includes also ailments from anger, fright, contradiction and disappointed affection and unhappy love.

The aggravations at night, in the winter, in cold weather, as well as from heat, the desire for open air and improvement from bathing fit well with the solar pathology.

Strongly rooted in a sense of ego, Gold types have a great tolerance of alcohol and may drink a lot, but not like Phosphor in a search for easy ecstasy. Instead Gold types drink in order to temporarily lighten the burden of their worries and responsibilities. Yet, in extreme cases the addictive outcome is the same. On the other hand, like Phosphor the carrier of light, Aurum the solar principle and Sulphur the carrier of sol-sun are anidotal to, as well as in their pathology generating a susceptibility to, consciousness-lowering drug dependency.

reclaim somatic ground

if you can't afford psychotherapy and need to defrag, just stand naked in front of a fulllength mirror for more than a few minutes. the judgements and the assessment of body parts quiets down if you stand in that reckoning gaze with the self for long enough. then, as if by magic, the soft motherly animal forces of the earth start to rise in your perceptions and you startle to see your own body as a gentle beautiful flower full of light and story, just like every other body out there.

this kind of shift in the way we experience ourselves would take such stress off of our interfacing. we withhold so much of our own energies hating our bodies, it makes us weak and ineffectual. there's no benefit to be had, neither darwinian nor epigenetic, from self-hatred.

artwork by Arrington de Dionysos