Here’s a sampling of standout year-end review shows from non-U.S. corporate news sources:
Hope you all have a happy new year!
2013 in Review
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Author Archives: Reid Mukai
Sun’s Magnetic Field About to Complete Its Reversal
Approximately every 11 years, the magnetic field of the sun switches its polarity. This usually occurs during the part of the sun’s cycle known as the Solar Maximum. During the last solar magnetic field reversal in 2003, there were 17 major solar flare eruptions within three weeks including the record setting X-28 flare. In the current cycle the sun has so far had unusually low levels of activity, the weakest in at least 100 years. Since scientists have only been studying solar activity since the 1700s, we don’t know for sure how unusual the current pattern is relative to longer time spans, what it means, or what to expect next.
This video from NASA explains some of the cosmic effects expected to occur:
Inner Alchemy: A Bridge Between Worlds
At Waking Times, Chris Bourne offers insights on the role of inner alchemy in the integration of an emerging “new world” and new paradigms to the reality of day-to-day life. He describes how the tactile, empathic, diplomatic aspect of the soul, by “intuiting and feeling the flow of ‘rightness’ in any given situation, yet molding and blending it into this material world”, can enable one to acknowledge and honor the subjective truth of others without compromising one’s integrity.
Inner alchemy, as Bourne defines it, is driven by spiritual awakening and resultant realization that our current world is out of balance with nature and out of synch with the natural flow of the universe. This leads to a compulsion to ‘be the change’ and involves “expressing your truth in every moment, not just with words, but in every physical, emotional and mental action that you take.” In other words, “Right Action”: action which is aligned with the universal flow. Among the indicators of “rightness” of one’s actions, he lists the following:
- They confront, challenge and break down the ego within you and within others with whom you’re engaged.
- Actions in rightness ultimately lead to an inner sense of expandedness, connection and openness, once you’ve broken through any tightness or resistance to expressing your truth.
- When aligned with the flow, you tend to observe supportive synchronicity as the universe clicks into place around you.
- When you’re in “Rightness”, it just feels right. It’s like being in love. No one can tell you if you’re in love. There’s no logic to it. You just know.
- A choice made in rightness will feel like destiny.
Bourne describes the process of realignment towards right action as not so much about making specific choices (though it can lead to right choices) but finding and expressing lost aspects of one’s true nature or soul. This is easier said than done because it often puts one at odds with “the matrix”, a powerful social construct which influences and manipulates everything within it through the establishment and enforcement of rules, norms and beliefs, control of resources and isolation from the natural flow of life.
The struggle to manifest truth (working in opposition to social and economic pressure from the matrix to prevent the success of such efforts) can be aided by what Bourne calls “soul ray harmonics”, or frequencies of consciousness. On one side of the spectrum are “catalysts”, which are harmonics to “shake things up”: to change, unravel, unwind and metamorphosize. On the other side are “empaths” which he defines as “souls who can absolutely and unconditionally accept life as it is without judging. They can witness and feel the truth at the core of all behaviour – no matter how distorted – and not need to change it. They are that energy that helps play out a distortion so that others ultimately want to change, all of their own accord.” Knowing where one is on the spectrum can help to clarify and become aware of the nature of one’s interactions and the impact they have on others (which is necessary for one’s personal evolution).
The specific type of harmonic that Bourne feels is most useful for our current situation is what he calls “Ray 4”: the inner diplomat which empathises and influences, accepts unconditionally but also catalyses, also known as the ‘Bridge between Worlds’. To help become better attuned to this harmonic or frequency, he offers the following guidelines:
- Firstly acknowledge that you’re here to influence and change the nature of reality. You’re not supposed to be cooped up in a box. Even if people around you react with projection towards you, fear and anger, recognise it is their own distortion they’re activating – otherwise they’d be able to calmly accept you as you are. As you realise this in your mind, feel a waterfall of flowing calmness descend around your expression of truth.
- Secondly, in order to facilitate the greatest amount of positive change, there needs to be open doorways through the density of the field, that may touch something deep within another. In other words, whilst we stand our ground, we must recognise and honour the truth in another. Even if you notice their’s is a lower vibrational truth, it is still their truth and real to them. If you’re given to influence, you won’t get anywhere by riding roughshod over them.
- Catalysing and therefore unwinding means first working to recognise the ‘ancient light’ at the core of a distortion. So all actions have begun with an authentic exploration of reality by the soul. It’s just that the ego then distorted the purity. So first work to find the truth at the core of their distortion and honour this with them. Then help them see the higher truth. If you’ve done it accurately, they’ll be on your side and much more open to change.
- Recognize that the stream will always find different pathways back to the ocean. If you try one approach and it doesn’t work or if you then feel disconnected because you couldn’t fully honour the flow, work not to judge yourself for it. Benevolence doesn’t blame you! Instead keep softening into the place you are now at, pausing to reconnect again.
- Compromise but don’t ever compromise the soul. Yes it may seem like an impossible paradox. But it is not. How can you make your truth the most understandable, the most reasonable, the most tactile, the most accessible and without any extra energy? If you can do this, you’ll find you don’t have to compromise your truth. Increasingly you’ll be accepted.
- Don’t tell others what you know to be their truth (this can be a big button pusher!). Instead work to facilitate an increase in realisation by asking an empowering question. One that is open ended, one that causes them to explore and feel for themselves.
- Accept that sometimes you will be in a minority of one. It does not make your truth untruth. Know and accept when it is time to stand your ground, come what May. This will always test your level of trust in the divine. So be it. Take it as an opportunity to evolve and grow.
Bourne follows this with a reminder to question whether one’s actions are driven by the soul or ego and concludes with an inspiring message:
Whether we fully know it or not, we’re living in two worlds at the moment. The higher paradigm is to be found infusing this lower world, working to transform it. Those who are already carrying the light, will frequently find it challenging. The old world values are so used to living in the shadows and fear the light. There’s a clinging to the easy-to-understand, in-the-box expediency and soft comfort. There’s a strong dependence on the crutch of old behaviours.
Despite this, there comes a point where you simply cannot compromise your soul a moment longer. You realise the illusion and that the only real purpose of life is the expression of you. In mastering the Ray 4 Diplomat – an interwoven aspect of your soul – it means you can still be living and breathing the higher realm, whilst acting in this one. It means you can stay in the truth.
In so doing, not only does your awakened life become more manageable, you become a powerful facilitator.
You become a bridge between the worlds.
Saturday Matinee: F for Fake
Via Dangerous Minds:
If you’ve seen Orson Welles’ late period quasi-documentary F for Fake
At the time Welles met up with Elmyr in the early 70s, he was living in Ibiza and had been the subject of Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time written by notorious “biographer” Clifford Irving, who himself figures prominently in the film. During the course of filming F for Fake, Irving (who was later portrayed by Richard Gere in The Hoax), was serendipitously revealed to have forged his own “autobiography” of Howard Hughes (not to mention Hughes’ signature). The resulting film, an essay on the authorship of “truth” in art, is a dazzling, intellectuality challenging masterpiece that can never quite decide if it’s a fake documentary about a fake painter of fake masterpieces who himself was the subject of a fake biographer… or what it is. (It’s no wonder that Robert Anton Wilson was such a fan of F for Fake
F or Fake also calls into question the nature of “genius”: If Elmyr’s forgeries were good enough to pass off as Picasso or Modigliani’s work, or even to hang in museums under the assumption that they were the work of these masters, wouldn’t Elmyr’s genius be of equal or even nearly equal value to theirs? (Worth noting that it was ego that got in the way of Elmyr’s scam at several points in his life: He was often left apoplectic at hearing how much crooked art dealers were making from his paintings!)
De Hory’s former bodyguard and driver, Mark Forgy, has kept Elmyr’s archive since his suicide in December 1976. In recent years Mr. Forgy has been trying to make more sense of Elmyr’s odd life. From the New York Times:
“I’m so far down the rabbit hole,” Ms. Marvin said in a recent phone interview, “I’m just not going to rest until I find out who this man is.”
A few weeks ago, she and Mr. Forgy traveled to western France and unrolled a dozen de Hory paintings that had been discovered in a farmhouse’s attic. In Budapest, they found birth records, dated 1906, for Elemer Albert Hoffmann, son of Adolf and Iren. No one knows when Elemer upgraded his name, or how he financed art studies in Munich and Paris before moving to New York in 1947.
He claimed that his father was a Roman Catholic and a diplomat, but the Budapest ledgers list Adolf as a Jewish merchant. The Nazis killed his entire family, Mr. de Hory said. But a cousin named Istvan Hont visited the artist’s villa on Ibiza, where Mr. Forgy was working at various times as a chauffeur, secretary and gardener. Mr. Hont, it turns out, was the forger’s brother.
Mr. Forgy knew that his boss copied masterpieces but did not much question their life on Ibiza, in which they kept company with celebrities like Marlene Dietrich and Ursula Andress. “I accepted the amazing with a nonchalance,” Mr. Forgy said in a recent phone interview. Mr. de Hory was the focus of Orson Welles’s 1974 documentary “F for Fake,” and Clifford Irving breathlessly titled his book “Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time.”
After Mr. de Hory’s suicide, Mr. Forgy returned to Minnesota. “I went into deep seclusion” working as a night watchman and house restorer, he said. He held onto the papers and paintings. “I have schlepped them around endlessly,” he said. “The walls here in the house look like the Pitti Palace in Florence.”
His wife, Alice Doll, encouraged him in recent years to examine the stacks of false passports, Hungarian correspondence and Swiss arrest reports. Ms. Marvin contacted him last year. She had helped organize a show about faked and stolen art at the National Museum of Crime & Punishment in Washington, including a portrait of a pensive brunette by Mr. de Hory imitating Modigliani.
The researchers are now raising money for the documentary, developing an exhibition for the Budapest Art Fair in November and preparing to interview a nonagenarian de Hory cousin in Germany. They also plan to send paintings for lab analysis. “We’re trying to create a forensics footprint of his work,” Ms. Marvin said.
They already know that Mr. de Hory tore blank pages out of old books for sketching paper and bought paintings at flea markets to scrape and recycle the canvases. His fakes have become collectibles. Last fall, at a Bonhams auction in England, a buyer paid more than $700 for a seascape of crowded sailboats, with a forged Raoul Dufy signature on the front and “Elmyr” on the back.
Watch the full film on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/s?query=f%20for%20fake
Key and Peele
Being without cable, I occasionally miss out on television’s rare quality offerings. Comedy Central’s Key and Peele seem to be one example, but I’ve been able to catch up through YouTube. These are a few of my favorite skits out of the many I’ve seen so far:
Snowden’s Christmas Message to the World
Yesterday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gave an “Alternative Christmas Message” on Britain’s Channel 4 television. It was short and concise, yet more substantial and important than a typical State of the Union Address. Though he makes the connection to Orwell’s 1984 that many of us have already made, it’s still a message more people need to become aware of or be reminded of. It’s also a call to action that all freedom loving people can rally behind regardless of nationality and political ideology.
This is the full transcript followed by the unedited video:
Hi, and Merry Christmas. I’m honored to have the chance to speak with you and your family this year.
Recently, we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do.
Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book—microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us—are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go.
Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves—an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem, because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.
The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together, we can find a better balance. End mass surveillance. And remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.
For everyone out there listening, thank you, and Merry Christmas.
Christmas Grab Bag
Alison Nastasi reports on some of the more interesting ways Christmas is observed in cultures around the world at Flavorwire.com: http://flavorwire.com/428646/strange-christmas-traditions-around-the-world/view-all/
At Truth Jihad, host Kevin Barrett interviews Ethan Indigo Smith about the Christmas Conspiracy:
A sampling of Smith’s provocative thoughts on Christmas can be found here: http://news-beacon-ireland.info/?p=15247
Daily Kos recently did a post on the background of one of my favorite Christmas songs, “Christmas in the Trenches“, while a Fanpop.com article from last year delivered a devastating take-down of one of my least favorite Christmas songs, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?“.
Consolidation of media ownership + corporate propaganda = (rather unsettling) comedy gold:
The Onion looks back at It’s a Wonderful Life:
A hilarious but deeply cynical Rankin/Bass-style musical number (NSFW):
Hope you all have a happy Wednesday!
