Something Is Happening

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By William Hawes

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE, but you don’t know what it is: Do you? No one knows, really, as this something is still evolving. As we look back to 2016, though, it is abundantly clear that history has awoken from its slumber. We’ve had a couple events in the West last year: Brexit and Trump.

Politically-charged, dynamic events (as Alain Badiou might define them) have been rare in the West since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the USSR. Capitalism made it seem as if neoliberalism was winning in the 1990s, even as the US wantonly murdered in Iraq and took perverse pleasure in helping to dismember Yugoslavia, among other things.

In fact, one could argue there have only been four notable Western political events in the post-Cold War era: the 9/11 attacks, the 2003 protests against the Iraq War, the 2008 banking crisis and following protest movements of 2011 (Occupy and 15-M Movement), and the populist, anger-driven aforementioned events of 2016.

You see, authentic, spontaneous political events (in the form of uprisings or popular revolts against the elite) are a no-no in the West. History is supposed to have ended, remember? Max Weber called this the Iron Cage, and for good reason.

Now, though, the meaninglessness and rootlessness of our lives trapped inside the cage have become too obvious to ignore, for most of us. As each day passes, our political discourse glosses over how lazy, ignorant, mean-spirited, and numb our society has become. We import luxuries from all over the globe, but can’t be bothered to cook or grow our own food, assemble our own electronics, expand renewable energy projects, provide clean water to inner cities, organize high-speed transport, or educate our youth without drowning them in debt, etc.

So, many have lashed out against the system, and our more vulnerable members of society, in anger, defiance, out of sheer ignorance. Could it be because, deep down, we know how helpless, sheltered, and out-of-touch our society is, compared to the rest of the world? What are the root causes of this disintegration of public discourse?

One cause is our utter dependency on the capitalist system to clothe, feed, and shelter us. What we used to inherit from our mothers and fathers, important agricultural knowledge, artisanal and cultural wisdom, a sense of place and belonging, have all been traded in for money, the privilege to be exploited by capitalism, toiling in jobs that alienate us from ourselves, families, the Earth. Paper bills and electronic bank accounts are a pitiful substitute for self-reliance. This loss, this grief, isn’t allowed to be expressed in public. Logical positivism tells us that progress will prevail, the future will be better than the past, and anyone who thinks otherwise must be some sort of Luddite.

Since real income has fallen and social services have been slashed in the last 40-plus years, many have seen their loved ones’ lives cut short (lack of access to health care and quality food and produce, air and water pollution), their dreams defiled (steady jobs gone, factories shuttered), their entertainment homogenized and dangerous (sports mania has become normalized, “Go Team!”, alcohol, painkiller, and opiate addiction is rampant), their hopes for the future shattered (community and public space swallowed by corporations).

There are those, as well, still too plugged into the system (both Trump and Clinton voters), too attached to their gadgets, to the hum of their slave-labor appliances, to the glow emanating from their screens. They will cry incessantly about the turning away of Muslims from flights, but there is only silence for the millions killed abroad by the US war machine. Mainstream liberals are just as likely as the meanest, most selfish conservatives to fall prey to emotional pleas, demagoguery, and pathetic attempts to see themselves as victims in this Age of Anger.

The urge to resort to the myth of a righteous, homogenous, “pure” social group, to denigrate the other, is strong in such dire, despondent situations. In America, though, material poverty cannot be said to be the only, or even the main causal factor, behind this return of nativism and tribalism. Rather, it is undoubtedly a spiritual malaise that has swept over the West. Ever since the rise of the Industrial Revolution, it has been technology which has provided the underlying weltanschauung for our culture. Sprouting from this, an inhuman and Earth-destroying morality has formed. Jacques Ellul explains:

“A principal characteristic of technique … is its refusal to tolerate moral judgments. It is absolutely independent of them and eliminates them from its domain. Technique never observes the distinction between moral and immoral use. It tends on the contrary, to create a completely independent technical morality.” (1)

Thus, Western society, through the use of mass-produced electronics and disseminated in what some call our “Information Age”, has now seemingly accelerated the pace of change and ecological destruction beyond the scope of any group or nation which could possibly control it. We are then confronted with the thought that only an economic collapse or series of natural disasters could possibly provide the impetus for revolutionary change to occur. This only leaves us feeling helpless, depressed, and passive in the face of government oppression and capitalist exploitation.

Not only that, but capitalism has quite literally dulled our senses and disconnected us from our source of being, planet Earth. Don’t believe me? Read this amazing paper on how Polynesian wayfinders discovered islands thousands of miles apart without any modern technology. This is part of what Morris Berman means by Coming to our Senses. To re-establish our unity with nature, the Western notion of an ego-driven, domineering and reductionist search for truth, meaning, and creativity must be thrown out. Here, Berman invokes Simone Weil:

“‘decreate’ yourself in order to create the work, as God (Weil says) diminished Himself in order to create the world. It would be more accurate to say that you don’t create the work, but rather you step out of the way and let it happen.” (2)

This isn’t really discussed among wide swaths of leftists, the social-justice crowd, or with mainstream liberals. It’s anathema to a materialistic, dead world where freedom has been traded for comforting lies, money has been substituted for the ability to provide for ourselves and our communities, and the abundance and resiliency (truly a miracle!) of the Earth is taken for granted as we chase our next fix for consumer goods, our next chance for drugs or gadgets to dim our perception.

What you’re not supposed to say in public, of course, is that our world is falling apart, and we are doing nothing to stop it. The reactions are too raw, the reality too grim, even as we know, for example, that 10% or more of the total species on Earth will be gone by 2050.

Yet we can do something: there is an opening now in political discourse which has been previously denied to us. The Republican and Democratic parties have thoroughly delegitimized themselves by offering up Trump and Clinton as their figureheads: these were widely considered the most widely disliked candidates in recent memory, if not the history of our republic. There is room for Libertarians, Greens, and Socialists to gain power: yet only if they avoid their own regrettable sectarianism, organize, and promote an inclusive, broad-based platform.

To do so, citizens will have to gain some perspective on their lives. A slow pace of life needs to be seen as a virtue, not a sin: many on the right and left are quick to denounce the hedonism of the jet-setting, parasitic globalists, the Davos men; yet refuse to see their own lifestyles and actions as smaller examples of such outlandish consumption.

If we are open to life and our environment as part of a greater whole, an unfathomable mystery, we can refuse our culture’s siren songs of death, misery, and destruction. While modern technology can be useful if reined in by an Earth-conscious, responsible morality, some things are better left unknown, undiscovered, if it risks destroying the Earth in order to find the answer. Rather than running a cost/benefit analysis to determine the land’s worth, some aspects of the planet and the universe are better Left Sacred.

Also, acknowledging our mortality, and accepting the basic fact that death could come for you at any moment, can liberate our souls and propel them to unimaginable heights. Joe Crookston explains this quite well:

“And then when I turn dry and brown
I’ll lay me down to rest
I’ll turn myself around again
As part of an eagle’s nest
And when that eagle learns to fly
I’ll flutter from that tree
I’ll turn myself around again
As part of the mystery”

Notes:
1.) Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Vintage Books, 1964. p. 97.
2.) Berman, Morris. Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West. Simon & Schuster, 1989. p. 337

William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and environmental issues. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, The World Financial Review, Gods & Radicals, and Counterpunch. He is author of the ebook Planetary Vision: Essays on Freedom and Empire. You can reach him at wilhawes@gmail.com

Courage and Free Speech

Posted on February 14, 2017 by Reid Mukai

Throughout human history there have been individuals who have been ready to risk everything for their beliefs

By Timothy Garton Ash

Source: aeon

‘Nothing is more difficult,’ wrote the German political essayist Kurt Tucholsky in 1921, ‘and nothing requires more character, than to find yourself in open contradiction to your time and loudly to say: No.’ First of all, it is intellectually and psychologically difficult to step outside the received wisdom of your time and place. What has been called ‘the normative power of the given’ persuades us that what we see all around us, what everyone else seems to regard as normal, is in some sense also an ethical norm.

Numerous studies in behavioural psychology show how our individual conviction of what is true or right quails before the massed pressure of our peers. We are, as Mark Twain observed, ‘discreet sheep’. This is what John Stuart Mill picked up when he wrote in On Liberty (1859); that the same causes that make someone a churchman in London would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Beijing. The same truth is gloriously captured in the humorous song ‘The Reluctant Cannibal’ (1960) by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, in which a young cannibal revolts against the settled wisdom of his elders and declares that ‘eating people is wrong’. At the end of the song, one of the elders exclaims, to huge belly laughs all round: ‘Why, you might just as well go around saying: “Don’t fight people!”’ Then he and his colleagues cry in unison: ‘Ridiculous!’

Yet norms change even within a single lifetime, especially as we live longer. So as elderly disc jockeys are arrested for sexual harassment or abuse back in the 1960s, we should be uncomfortably aware that some other activity that people regard as fairly normal now might be viewed as aberrant and abhorrent 50 years hence.

To step outside the established wisdom of your time and place is difficult enough; openly to stand against it is more demanding still. In Freedom for the Thought that We Hate (2007), his fine book on the First Amendment tradition in the United States, Anthony Lewis quotes a 1927 opinion by the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, which Lewis says ‘many regard as the greatest judicial statement of the case for freedom of speech’.

The passage Lewis quotes begins: ‘Those who won our independence… believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.’ This is magnificent, although it also illustrates the somewhat self-referential, even self-reverential, character of the modern First Amendment tradition.

Lewis cites Brandeis, who credits this thought to the 18th-century founders of the US. But those founders would have been well aware that they got it straight from Pericles’ funeral oration during the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century BCE, as reported – if not invented, or at least much improved upon – by Thucydides. ‘For you now,’ Thucydides’ Pericles admonishes his ancient Athenian audience, after praising the heroic dead, ‘it remains to rival what they have done and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy’s onset.’

More directly, the US tradition of courage in the defence of free speech draws on the heritage of the 17th-century English. People such as John Lilburne, for example. In 1638, while still in his early 20s, Lilburne was found guilty by the Star Chamber court of helping to smuggle into England a tract against bishops that had been printed in the Low Countries. He was tied to the back of a cart on a hot summer’s day and unremittingly whipped as he walked with a bare back all the way from the eastern end of Fleet Street to Westminster Palace Yard. One bystander reckoned that he received some 500 blows that, since the executioner wielded a three-thronged whip, made 1,500 stripes.

Lilburne’s untreated shoulders ‘swelled almost as big as a penny loafe with the bruses of the knotted Cords’, and he was then made to stand for two hours in the pillory in Palace Yard. Here, in spite of his wounds and the burning sunshine, he began loudly to tell his story and to rail against bishops. The crowd was reportedly delighted. After half an hour, there came ‘a fat lawyer’ – ah, plus ça change – who bid him stop. The man whom the people of London had already dubbed ‘Free-Born John’ refused to shut up. He was then gagged so roughly that blood spurted from his mouth. Undeterred, he thrust his hands into his pockets and scattered dissident pamphlets to the crowd. No other means of expression being left to him, Free-Born John then stamped his feet until the two hours were up.

As an Englishman, I find particular inspiration in the example of Free-Born John, and those of all our other free-born Johns: John Milton, John Wilkes, John Stuart Mill (and George Orwell, a free-born John in all but name). More broadly, there is no reason to understate, let alone to deny, a specifically Western tradition of courage in the advancement of free speech, one that can be traced from ancient Athens, through England, France and a host of other European countries, to the US, Canada and all the liberal democracies of today’s wider West. But it would be quite wrong to suggest that this habit of the heart is confined to the West. In fact, there have been rather few examples of such sturdy defiance in England in recent times, while we find them in other countries and cultures.

Consider, for instance, the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Liu was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment in 2009 for ‘subverting state power’. Both his written response to the charges against him and his final speech in court are, like many of his earlier writings, lucid and courageous affirmations of the central importance of free speech. He definitely does not draw only on Western traditions. For example, in his book No Enemies, No Hatred (2012), he quotes a traditional Chinese 24-character injunction: ‘Say all you know, in every detail; a speaker is blameless, because listeners can think; if the words are true, make your corrections; if they are not, just take note.’

After paying a moving tribute to his wife (‘Armed with your love, dear one, I can face the sentence that I’m about to receive with peace in my heart’), Liu looks forward to the day ‘when our country will be a land of free expression: a country where the words of each citizen will get equal respect, a country where different values, ideas, beliefs and political views can compete with one another even as they peacefully coexist’. The judge cut him short in court before he had finished speaking, but free-born Xiaobo, like free-born John, still got his message out. In his planned peroration, Liu wrote: ‘I hope that I will be the last victim in China’s long record of treating words as crimes. Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.’

Liu was by this time famous, and that great speech made him more so. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. But perhaps the most inspiring examples of all come from people who are not famous at all: so-called ordinary people doing extraordinary things. People such as the Hamburg shipyard worker who, at the launch of a naval training vessel in 1936, refused to join all those around him in making the Hitler salute. The photograph only achieved wide circulation on the internet more than 60 years later. There he stands amid a forest of outstretched arms, with both his own firmly folded across his chest, a portrait of stubborn worker’s pride. His name was August Landmesser. He had been a Nazi party member but was later expelled from the party for marrying a Jewish woman, and then imprisoned for ‘dishonouring the race’. After his release, he was drafted to fight in the Second World War and never returned.

Again, such moments are emphatically not confined to the West. During the Arab Spring of 2011, a ‘day of rage’ was proclaimed by dissidents in Saudi Arabia. Faced with a massive police presence at the appointed location in the country’s capital Riyadh, almost nobody showed up. But one man, a strongly built, black-haired teacher called Khaled al-Johani, suddenly approached a group of foreign reporters. ‘We need to speak freely,’ he cried, with an explosion of pent-up passion. ‘No one must curb our freedom of expression.’ A BBC Arabic service film clip, which you can watch on YouTube, shows a tall secret policeman, in white robes, headdress and dark glasses, looming in the background as he snoops on al-Johani’s speech. A little further away, armed police mutter into their walkie-talkies. ‘What will happen to you now?’ asks one of the reporters, as they escort the teacher back to his car. ‘They will send me to prison,’ al-Johani says, adding ironically: ‘and I will be happy.’ He was subsequently condemned to 18 months’ imprisonment.

In many places, we can find monuments to the Unknown Soldier, but we should also erect them to the Unknown Speaker.

Saturday Matinee: HyperNormalisation

Posted on February 4, 2017 by Reid Mukai

From the BBC’s Adam Curtis blog:

We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks. And those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed – they have no idea what to do.

This film is the epic story of how we got to this strange place. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening – but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them.

It shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West – not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves – have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us we accept it as normal.

HyperNormalisation

The film has been made specially for iplayer – and is a giant narrative spanning forty years, with an extraordinary cast of characters. They include the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, the early performance artists in New York, President Putin, intelligent machines, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers – and the extraordinary untold story of the rise, fall, rise again, and finally the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi.

All these stories are woven together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created. Part of it was done by those in power – politicians, financiers and technological utopians. Rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, they retreated. And instead constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang onto power

But it wasn’t just those in power. This strange world was built by all of us. We all went along with it because the simplicity was reassuring. And that included the left and the radicals who thought they were attacking the system. The film shows how they too retreated into this make-believe world – which is why their opposition today has no effect, and nothing ever changes.

But there is another world outside. And the film shows dramatically how it is beginning to pierce through into our simplified bubble. Forces that politicians tried to forget and bury forty years ago – that were then left to fester and mutate – but which are now turning on us with a vengeful fury.

10 Signs Of Our Global Awakening

Posted on January 26, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Paul A. Philips

Source: Activist Post

Since time immemorial, under the ruling thumb of the world’s dark overlords, humanity has been hacked, stymied, suppressed and coerced into submission through mind-controlling, soul-destroying atrocities. Those unable to see that just about every subject under the sun is a deception and how their family and friends are affected don’t yet realize the extent to which the dark overlords have us snugly stitched up.

However, alternative media sources tell us that people are awakening exponentially to the realization that they’re being stitched up and in the swathe of these awakened souls, more and more are playing their dutiful part in enlightening others.

So, here are 10 signs of our global mass awakening.

1. The fall and further fall of the mainstream media

Trust in the mainstream media has fallen to an all-time low and continues to plummet. Much of this has to do with an increasingly aware and disgruntled public: More and more people are able to discern a mainstream media totally lacking in integrity, thanks to the rising popularity of the independent/alternative media exposing the dishonesty.

Unlike the alternative/independent sources, the servile corporate-controlled mainstream media has been a highly effective tool used to manipulate the consensus reality of the masses for a number of powerful individuals having political and financial self-interests. A number of us know we have seen attempts by these elitist individuals controlling the mainstream media to thwart the rising popularity of the independent/alternative media through false, baseless accusations of ‘fake news.’ Indeed, it’s an attempt to discredit because it exposes the truth about the elite and reveals their hidden agendas….

Essentially, the unjust ‘fake news’ labelling of the independent/alternative media has backfired on the manipulators: Instead of achieving censorship it has given rise to further increasing support for the alternative/independent media, while the mainstream media has taken an even bigger fall. As many of us know, the real fake news exists in the mainstream media with its propaganda and mind control…

Given that these 2 paradigms cannot live side by side each other, which one will win the information war?

Besides the mainstream media, worldwide, an increasingly aware public show a growing distrust for Big Government and Big Business institutions from multiple polls.

The distrust and unpopularity implicitly expressed by the public on these crooked institutions with their resident crooks mainly come from the truth revelations put out by the alternative/independent media.

Further, this is what happens when Big Government and Big Business not only ignores the people’s voice in decision making, but also demonizes their dissension and public opinion, which only serves to fuel the public’s uprising.

3. Marches against Monsanto have intensified

There couldn’t be a better example of the public’s growing distrust in Big Business than Monsanto. As the years roll by marches against Monsanto from people of many different backgrounds all over the world have risen significantly and don’t look to be cooling down….

Although there are signs of Monsanto clawing back, in recent years earnings have plummeted. The earnings drop for the biotech company suggests a growing public disdain for their GM seeds as more and more people realize the dangers of GMO and its glyphosate herbicide.

More and more realize that Monsanto are out to patent, own and control every seed in the world. This threatens the destruction and diversity of every natural God-given seed….

4. Increasing health awareness

Although still very popular, people’s awareness of the dangers of fast food has increased, as indicated by recent erratic share prices in some of the major fast food corporations who’ve had to pull out all marketing stops to claw back on fallen share prices.

Reports indicate that last year people have shown more interest than ever in organic non-GMO healthier food options. Besides how these choices affect health, people’s increased interest and awareness has extended into concerns over the environment, animals and the workers involved in food production.

5. Increasing recognition of disinformation

People are increasingly seeing right through those various media sources with their dogmatic unhealthy skeptics, shills, trolls, pseudo-debunkers, controlled opposition agents, biasing, filtering and in-your-face lies intended to sell you the spin of disinformation to keep you ignorant, deceived and helplessly anesthetized in the matrix control system…

6. Increasing support for social media

The social media outlet has greatly contributed to our awakening. It has indeed provided a unique and effective platform for the people’s voice. No wonder the mainstream media and elitists are unpopular: It has allowed us to spread the word on subjects such as PizzaGate and the Clinton conspiracies….

Along with the alternative/independent media, the explosive interest in the social media outlet has not only changed our views but also continues to redefine journalism and how information is shared. How this is redefining media is a subject for another piece.

Simple to say we’re in a golden age of alternative/independent and social media which has contributed greatly to our global awakening.

7. Changing viewpoint towards the ‘Conspiracy Theorist’

Another blatant indicator confirming our awakening is a change in how the term ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ is now generally viewed.

Used frequently over the years in mainstream media the term ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ was invented in the ’60s by the CIA (Crooks In Action). It has been used as a cover up to discredit those aware of the facts on how the dark overlords and their associates have been involved in criminal activity….

No longer generally viewed as a label to slap on crazy kooks believing Richard Nixon was a werewolf… etc… Conspiracy Theory has become more generally viewed as either conspiracy fact or at least something worth investigating rather than flatly dismissing.

For more on this see: 9 Indisputable Truths about “Conspiracy Theorists”

8. Increasing attempts to shut us up

Our global mass awakening has got the dark overlords greatly concerned as they question the effectiveness of their control systems over us. How can they deal with our awakening in growing overwhelming numbers?

Desperately, in cahoots with their associates, they’re throwing everything at us ranging from the grossly suppressive, the extremely petty, the violent and the ridiculous to try to shut us up and deny our self-expression, keep us mentally, spiritually and physically enslaved in the matrix controlling system.

9. Awakening through unknown/unforeseen processes

Our awakening goes beyond the specific and measurable: We cannot simply quantify our awakening: There are circumstances occurring on a spiritual level that go beyond our limited understanding. Such as, for example, claims have been made recently of energetic emissions from our galactic centre that could affect our spirituality and transform us….

10. Rise in local meet-up groups

As already mentioned, the Internet and social media has indeed been great for exchanging information to wake people up but what if these set ups become censored? Further, large groups, virtual or real, run the risk of infiltration for dumbing down and deliberate disinformation.

So the solution lies (in part) in the forming of local community-based in-person groups to cultivate the resistance and humanity; and local meet-up group numbers are already growing.

In conclusion

Will our mass awakening to the deception produce a turnaround — a world that makes a difference for everyone? A world where there are no predators, no controlling hierarchy, no blood-sucking vampiric slave-drivers at the top ruling the numerous enslaved at the bottom… no more fight for self-sufficiency because it’s already been achieved in the communities… etc.

It is up to us all to play our part.

You can read more from Paul A. Philips at his site NewParadigm.ws, where this article first appeared.

Freedom Begins Within: From the Authoritarian Self to the Liberated Self

Posted on January 15, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Gary ‘Z’ McGee

Source: Waking Times

“If people base their identity on identifying with authority, freedom causes anxiety. They must then conceal the victim in themselves by resorting to violence against others.” ~Arno Gruen

Freedom is both the easiest thing to gain and the hardest thing to hold onto. We can courageously declare ourselves free in one breath, while in the next breath meekly kowtow to authority. It’s like an Orwellian doublespeak somersaulting through our heads: freedom is debt-slavery, freedom is obeying orders, freedom is paying taxes against our will, freedom is keeping our mouth shut when a cop speaks, freedom is forcing our will onto others, freedom is codependence on an unhealthy authoritarian state. Really?!

Cognitive dissonance is our ego’s saving grace. We convince ourselves we are free, even when we’re not, so that our pride isn’t harmed. We convince ourselves we are free so as to maintain our comfort zones. We convince ourselves we are free because if we’re not free then our existence is null. In the end, freedom becomes a cliché concept we toss around inside of the very box we’re trying so desperately to think outside of.

When it comes down to it, liberty begins within. It begins by first admitting that we must free ourselves from our inner tyrant before we can give birth to our inner liberator. It begins by digging deep and ousting the king trying to rule, decommissioning the commissioner trying to micromanage, and banishing the warden trying to keep order. It begins by not talking like rigid authoritarians to ourselves.

Let’s break it down…

Authoritarian Self-Speak

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We live in an age of hyper-conformity. It goes widely unrecognized because it has become the rigid “reality” that modern culture indoctrinates into its members. It’s even considered admirable somehow to be “well-adjusted to a sick society.” Of course, our cognitive dissonance usually prevents us from admitting that such is the case. This is because we are primarily psychosocial animals who create a pleasing-to-others false self in order to alleviate the deep-seeded fear of being hurt or abandoned by others. Which is fine if one lives in a healthy culture. Not so fine if one lives in a profoundly unhealthy, unsustainable, authoritarian culture such as the cultures dominating the world today.

So what does a psychosocial animal that’s raised in an authoritarian culture do? Well, they speak to themselves in an authoritarian voice for one. Their inner tyrant is constantly pushing its authoritarian agenda, keeping the rebellious liberator at bay, lest he rise up and ruin the comfort zone or cultural malaise that has kept the inner tyrant safe and secure within the social milieu for so long.

So even if self-liberation is the goal, the inner tyrant rises up and barks in its best drill sergeant voice, “Stop dreaming, there’s no such thing as freedom,” or “Shut up and obey like everybody else,” or “You’re not worthy of freedom, what makes you so special?” or “This is just the way things are, deal with it,” or “Don’t rock the boat, it’s easier that way.”

The problem with this is that the majority of us cannot distinguish the indoctrinated authoritarian voice from the voice of our own free will, and we then confuse it for our own free will. Out of confusion and fear, we give into the inculcation. We remain authoritarian unto ourselves. We go with the flow, even though the flow is clearly poisonous.

Ironically, the cure for authoritarianism is self-authority, or free will. The key to the cultural prison is realizing that we’re all at once our own prisoner as well as our own warden. Our inner conflict between indoctrinated authoritarian and rebellious liberator is precisely what keeps us unfree. But there is no conflict, really. We imprison ourselves with our own commanding words. We’re always free. Our free will has only to take authority back from our inner authoritarian, by using words infused with free choice, in order to turn the tables on the psychosocial dynamic.

Instead of listening to the commands and authoritarian orders dictated by our inner warden or king, we speak to ourselves in a way that the freedom of choice is clearly paramount. And suddenly we’re able to ask ourselves, as Rumi did, “Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?”

Liberated Self-Overcoming

“The revolution begins at home. If you overthrow yourself again and again, you might earn the right to overthrow the rest of us.” ~Rob Brezsny

So what happens when we begin to base our identity on self-authority rather than on identifying with an outside authority? What happens when freedom of choice becomes paramount, despite our inner authoritarian? Freedom no longer causes anxiety, in this case, because we have liberated ourselves into further freedom. Indeed, we have become Liberty itself. By simply changing our self-speak from a commanding (certain) voice to a voluntary (questioning) voice, we change the paradigm. We become less rigid and more flexible. We become less invulnerable and more vulnerable. We become less fearful and more courageous. We gain authority over authoritarianism, including our own. In short: we take back our own power.

Instead of commands, we issue options: “I can do whatever I want, like break the law or not break the law,” or “I don’t have to pay my taxes if I don’t think it’s necessary,” or “I can live whatever life I feel like living, as a statist or as an anarchist, but I choose to live like an anarchist,” or “I am free to do what I want, and I am choosing dangerous freedom over comfortable safety.” As Robert A. Heinlein said, “I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

Also, instead of getting all wrapped up in answers, we are more capable of surrendering to ruthless questioning: “Why do I think the state is immoral, or not?,” or “Would I really rather be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie?,” or “How might I be suffering from cognitive dissonance or any number of cognitive biases and fallacies?,” or “How has my cultural conditioning affected the way I relate to the world?,” or “Do I have the courage to choose truth and speak out against deception?,” or “How can I take personal responsibility for becoming more ethical than the society I grew up in?,” The answers to these questions have the potential to launch our fledging liberation into further, more robust, liberation.

When we free ourselves into further freedom, we allow ourselves to grow. We allow our comfort zones to stretch. We become psychosocially, politically, and spiritually more flexible. We give ourselves permission to authentically live. In short: We blossom into a state of self-overcoming.

Self-overcoming is a Nietzschean concept of transcending ones given standards and values and creating something new out of the ashes of the old. It’s the constant adaptation and improvisation of the self in regards to the world. When we are self-overcoming, we’re too busy flourishing to be bothered with attaching ourselves to a particular state of being. We are shedding, and thus individuating, our “pleasing-to-others” skin. We’re surrendering to growth, to flexibility, to adaptability, and to moral plasticity. The result is a psychosocial animal becoming a freedom unto itself.

A liberated self-overcomer is truly a force to be reckoned with. No authority can command it, not even self-authority, because the liberated self-overcomer is constantly changing. It’s already adapting to, and overcoming, the slings and arrows of vicissitude, whether from the state, from others, or from the self. Indeed, a liberated self-overcomer is Transformation incarnate.

In the end, authoritarianism dissolves into futility under the crushing wave of the liberated self-overcomer. All authoritarian self-speak gets muted under the blaring harmony of self-overcoming. Commands melt into cartoons. Rigid certitude softens into flexible sincerity. Inner freedom becomes outer freedom. The inner voice of the liberated self-overcomer is both self-interrogating and voluntary, thus liberating the overcomer into further liberation, which ultimately leads to the liberation of others. For the liberated self-overcomer, the authoritarian culture has lost its stranglehold. Authentic reconditioning of the cultural conditioning is at hand. For, as Carl Jung declared, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

Hybrid Landscapes – From Posthistoric to Posthuman

Posted on December 26, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Reality Sandwich

The collective psyche seems to be in the grip of a powerful archetypal dynamic in which the long-alienated modern mind is breaking through, out of the contractions of its birth process, out of what Blake called its “mind-forg’d manacles,” to rediscover its intimate relationship with nature and the larger cosmos.
Richard Tarnas

Reality, it seems, has been deregulated, and nothing is business as usual anymore….as ancient mapmakers used to mark on the watery unknown, “Here be dragons”
Erik Davis

Here be dragons, indeed. Our human exploration is swinging through a momentum that includes knowledge of the finer forces at work within the cosmos, which includes how we experiment in our interactions with not only the environment but also our bodies. In this article I will explore these themes, looking at memes of meta-programming to post-body scenarios – all in the framework of a human search along the sacred path of understanding our very selves.

American writer Philip K. Dick is famous mostly for his science-fiction books that question the nature and validity of our reality-matrix. In “The Android and the Human,” a speech that Dick gave in the early 1970s, he spoke about this blurring of the boundaries between body and environment:

[O]ur environment, and I mean our man-made world of machines, artificial constructs, computers, electronic systems, interlinking homeostatic components – all of this is in fact beginning more and more to possess what the earnest psychologists fear the primitive sees in his environment: animation. In a very real sense our environment is becoming alive, or at least quasi-alive, and in ways specifically and fundamentally analogous to ourselves.1

The human-body-environment is increasingly being reconfigured as a site for a new magical animism, as distinct from the previous archaic notion of animism. Writer-philosopher Erik Davis has referred to this as a sort of ‘techno-animism’ whereby we give life to our technologies based on our imaginations.2 This new configuration is no longer anymore about technologies and us, but rather our technological bodies that now inhabit our ‘techno-imaginal’ realm. The body is becoming back into vogue as a site for experience and experimentation, as a vessel that interacts, intercedes, and interprets the sacred-mystical reality-matrix that encloses us. As modern quantum science has now aptly demonstrated, we do not inhabit a subject-object type of us-and-it world.^[1] All materiality is enmeshed within a quantum entangled universe, and our bodies are somatically communicating with this energy field simultaneously.

Much of the western spiritual (Gnostic) mystical practice is interpreted as a somatically felt experience. The body is the instrument that receives and grounds the experience, whether it be in terms of the ‘great flash’, ‘illuminating light’ or the ‘bodily rush.’ The body is the human instrument for attracting and centralizing (receiving, transcribing, and sometimes transferring) the developmental energy. There are many ‘bodies’ in spiritual-mystic traditions, including the etheric, the spiritual, the ecstatic, the subtle, the higher, and others, so that the purely physical-material body is recognized as the densest and least mobile of them all. As cultural historian Morris Berman has noted, the body in history has always been a site/sight of focus.3 It has helped define the experience of the Self/Other, the Outer/Inner, and to be a material vessel for the spiritual impulse. Our earlier ancestors, who exhibited more of an animist relationship to the world, saw less distinction between the physical body and its environment. The rise of the philosophy of dualism and the mind-body split, which was supported by the mechanistic worldview, saw our modern societies further strengthen the mind/body rift. This was publicly endorsed by Orthodox/organized religions that have been quick to spurn and even demonize the body. Many so-called ‘modern’ societies around the world have, at one time or another, attempted to suppress the power and expression of the human body. The body has always been a site for the convergence of power and control. Perhaps no one in recent times has done more to expose this body-power relationship than the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault.^[2] Foucault has deconstructed, in the body of work that he refers to as a critical history of modernity, how the body has been fought over as a site of power. The physical body is a location of resistance against the establishment; it is a fixed place where an individual can be located, found, and held accountable. If we cannot escape from our bodies then, it seems, we are forever within the system. The body-in-system has always been taken to represent the form of something, as a socially tangible entity. We have bodies in terms of social institutions, such as the body politic, or the social body, the scientific body, the medical body, or the body of an organization, etc. The once sacred site of the body, which was the vessel for somatic spiritual experiences, has become the subject of control and suppression.

In Gnostic terms the body’s site of power has been referred to as those of the ‘sleepers’ and ‘wakers.’ The ‘sleepers’ being those whose conscious self has yet to break through the layers of the body’s social conditioning. The spiritual-somatic experience has been seen as a threat to hierarchical societies because it exists beyond their bounds of power. This is one reason why ecstatic experiences – whether through spiritual or other means – have been suppressed, outlawed, and discredited by religions and mainstream institutions alike. Ecstatic experiences that can break down human thinking patterns and conditioning structures are unnerving for institutions of social-political power. How can you control, regulate, and discipline a body/energy/experience that has no physical location? Such intangible forces, such as the power of baraka,^[3] is positively infectious and beyond bounds. As Berman notes,

The goal of the Church (any church) is to obtain a monopoly on this vibratory experience, to channel it into its own symbol system, when the truth is that the somatic response is not the exclusive property of any given religious leader or particular set of symbols. 4

The spiritual-occult renaissance of the 20th century strove to rejuvenate and strengthen the presence of the somatic experience. This intangible flow of spiritual blessing, grace, and power is also a resurging undercurrent in the sacred revival.

In more recent times there has been an increasing focus on what is termed the innate consciousness (of the body), and which has been revealed through such techniques as muscle testing. It is innate because it is inborn (born in and of the body), and it is instinctual. Somatic consciousness then is another word for our intuitive intelligence. As I discussed in a previous book,^[4] many of those now being born into the world are displaying a stronger sense of intuitive intelligence. However, in our modern haste we have, in the words of French philosopher Bruno Latour, never really been modern at all since we continue to exist in an anthropological matrix where nature and culture cannot be neatly divided. As Latour points out, this matrix is composed of hybrids where natural/cultural, real/imagined, and subject/object merge. Moreover, this hybridity is being further enforced and coalesced through genetic engineering, implants, virtual reality, and NBIC sciences (Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology and Cognitive science). Latour is right in saying that humanity has never exited from what he refers to as our pre-modern ancestors’ world. We are, and always have been, a hybrid of body-mind-environment. Yet unlike Latour, I contest that we are modern – or rather we are past the post of post-modern, in how we are merging our lives into a new hybrid fusion.

Our ancestors made no such division between nature and society because their state of consciousness did not allow them to – they simply did not perceive it. However, the state of human consciousness today is far different in its capability and lucidity to perceive and acknowledge the relationship with our external world. Saying this, of course, in our development ‘to be modern’ we left behind the sacred component of perceiving just how entangled our reality truly is. Yet the succeeding ‘post-modern’ stage then worked on breaking down these ‘perceptions of containment.’ As William Irwin Thompson says,

The project of Modernism was to expel preindustrial magic and mysticism and stabilize consciousness in materialism, but the projects of postmodernism have broken down the walls that once contained us in a solidly materialistic and confidently middle class worldview. 5

This breakdown has now moved into a more advanced stage with the advent of the internet and digital technologies. We have now entered what Thompson refers to as the ‘astral plane, a bardo realm, in which everything is out there at once, a technologized form of the collective unconscious…a place where the physical body is either dead or absent.’ 6

Thompson prefers to view this technologized-bardo realm, where the physical body is either dead or absent, not as post-modern but as postcivilization – or even posthistoric.7 We are in a new phase of planetary culture where we are no longer simply reacting to emerging technologies, but rather our evolving state of consciousness is drawing forth these new technologies. In other words, it is as if new technologies come into being in accordance with shifting states of human consciousness. Like a good magician, we are pulling new technological innovations out of the hat of our collective consciousness – archetypes into manifestation. Whereas modernity was about ‘coming to our senses’ in a rather conservative way, the posts we have passed now – whether they be modern, civilization, or historic – are about shifting beyond our senses. As one well-placed commentator put it,

The human being’s organism is producing a new complex of organs in response to such a need. In this age of the transcending of time and space, the complex of organs is concerned with the transcending of time and space. What ordinary people regard as sporadic and occasional bursts of telepathic or prophetic power are…nothing less than the first stirrings of these same organs.8

As a new historical phase unfolds within the human species – as part of a shift toward a planetary civilization – it appears that new needs are pushing out – or birthing – novel organs or faculties within the human being.

This brings to mind the Richard Tarnas quote that headed up this article, where he stated that the once alienated (read ‘sacred’) mind is now breaking through, as if in a birth process, out of what Blake called its “mind-forg’d manacles,” to ‘rediscover its intimate relationship with nature and the larger cosmos.’ Note that Tarnas said ‘rediscover,’ suggesting it is a recovery, a revival, and not a new birth. The sacred revival of which I speak is literally carving out a new topography for itself.

Hybrid Landscapes

Our millennial era is still trying to decide how to define and view the physical biological body. At this stage the landscape is literally littered with a thousand voices, all howling ‘for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.’^[5] Some voices see the human body as a hindrance upon the evolutionary journey toward an immortal society that is destined for the stellar neighbourhood. Others view it as a field for experimentation; to tinker and adapt toward a genetically modified hybrid. There are still others who see the body as a site to blur the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds. And then there are those voices who view the biological body as undergoing its own intrinsic in-built modification, or upgrade, through a self-adapting nervous system, programmed by emerging DNA programs hitherto latent.

In the latter part of the 20th century we had a wave of trends that all converged upon the body-mind-spirit matrix. These streams included the physical (bodily) research fields of cybernetics, computer programming, and artificial intelligence. These streams then interwove with the mind-spirit tropes of psychedelic experimentation (LSD, peyote, etc), mystical philosophies (Gurdjieff, Castaneda, etc) and transcendental movements. You would literally need a whole book dedicated to this topic alone to even begin to make a credible dent into this yellow brick road bricolage of body-mind-spirit convergences. Just to give a slight taste from the tip of the iceberg I will ever so briefly mention how the computer metaphor gave rise to notions of programming – and meta-programming – the human body as a biocomputer. This image was reinforced by Dr. John C. Lilly’s bookProgramming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer that described some of his experiments on human consciousness and human-dolphin communication. Meta-programming became a core theme of the writings of Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson who produced such works as Exo-Psychology: A Manual on the Use of the Human Nervous System According to the Instructions of the Manufacturers and Prometheus Rising respectively. Both these works discuss an eight-circuit model of consciousness that is part of a path in neurological evolution. Both authors, Leary especially, took it upon themselves to evolve a philosophy stating that the future evolution of human civilization was encoded in our DNA. Hence, the new sacred technology is our nervous system itself, and our DNA is already hard-wired for evolutionary mutation. Similarly, running through some of these streams were the ideas of Caucasian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff who spoke of the human being in terms of a ‘man-machine’ that was asleep to life and could be triggered into wakeful activation. Leary, as if in Gurdjieffian overtones, would call for humanity to ‘wake up, mutate, and ascend.’9 The new sacred magic had mutated into practices (rituals) to reprogram the apparatus that receives, according to the authors, our biofields as well as human consciousness; namely, DNA. Interestingly, recent advances in quantum biology have outlined how DNA emits biophotons that produces a coherent biological field that may be susceptible to impact and influence (read ‘reprogramming’ here).10^[6]

Whether or not the new game in town was actively to epigenetically re-program the DNA through a fusion of transcendental and/or psychedelic practices, it was very much about work on oneself. Gurdjieff’s program of study – called The Fourth Way – was a kind of blend of Eastern dervish yoga with western scientism. As Gurdjieff famously proclaimed – Take the understanding of the East and the knowledge of the West and then seek. This blend of eastern understanding and western knowledge became known amongst its adherents simply as The Work. The western melting pot of sacred angst and survivalist spirituality saw an emergence of similar tropes such as E.J. Gold’s The Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus. The western playing field in the second half of the 20th century was open to the new Great Game – and it involved inner spaces and the body-mind matrix. Robert S. de Ropp aptly called it the Master Game in his book Master Game: Pathways to Higher Consciousness Beyond the Drug Experience. For a sense of what was bubbling up around this Master Game sacred revival, in the US especially, one needs to understand a history of the Esalen Institute, co-founded by Michael Murphy and Richard Price on the Californian shores.^[7] An excellent, if exhaustive, study of the body-mind matrix based upon the fizzy, fired-up tropes of the time is Michael Murphy’s Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature. These explorations, however, were all based upon expanding and amplifying the potentials of our current human biological body-mind. That was before the computer trope really got going – and science-fiction became research grant.

The rise of the robots literally happened after the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence (AI), in the summer of 1956, announced the beginning of the AI field. College campuses and defence departments suddenly began the earnest journey along the stony research road that finally spawned the controversial concept of consciousness upload. One of the more vocal supporters of this ‘mind-in-machine’ notion is robotics researcher Hans Moravec. Moravec, whose books include Mind Children and Robot, outlines a future where the human mind can be uploaded as a precursor to full artificial intelligence. Similarly, cognitive scientist Marvin Minksy (who was one of the 1956 gang who coined the AI field) espoused a philosophy that saw no fundamental difference between humans and machines – as put forward in such works as his Society of Mind. Artificial Intelligence is uncannily consistent with the Christian belief in resurrection and immortality – does this make AI research into a sacred, god-like enterprise? It does make us wonder. Historian of technology David F. Noble notes also that the AI project is imbued with its own trajectory of transcendence:

The thinking machine was not, then, an embodiment of what was specifically human, but of what was specifically divine about humans – the immortal mind…the immortal mind could evolve independently into ever higher forms of artificial life, reunited at last with its origin, the mind of God.11

Other streams have been quick to spring up around this fertile theme, including several futurist movements and their manifestos. These have included, but not limited to, the Upwingers (F. M. Esfandiary), Extropians, Transhumanists; and then later came the high-profile members that announced the Technological Singularity.

F.M. Esfandiary’s ‘Upwingers Manifesto’ (by now Esfandiary was known as FM-2030) announced in the 1970s our glorious moment in human evolution. According to their manifesto:

We UpWingers are resigned to nothing. We consider no human problems irreversible – no goals unattain-able. For the first time in history we have the ability, the resources, the genius to resolve ALL our age-old problems. Attain ALL our boldest visions.^[8]

Similarly, in the 1980s Max Moore and Natasha Vita-More expounded on Extropian principles which later came to be formulated as: Perpetual Progress; Self-Transformation; Practical Optimism; Intelligent Technology; Self-Direction; and Rational Thinking. And for the Moores, Intelligent Technology meant ‘Applying science and technology creatively and courageously to transcend “natural” but harmful, confining qualities derived from our biological heritage, culture, and environment.’ ^[9] The Transhumanist movement is still going strong and is not definable to any one particular group, although Humanity Plus (H+) is one of its most recognized institutions. There are streams and sub-groups under the transhumanist umbrella, and yet they all share a similar goal in viewing the human condition as being open to transformation through the use of sophisticated technologies. In other words, the goal is to give humanity a technological upgrade to its current bodily and mental capacities.

From Gurdjieff’s ‘man-machine,’ to Moravec and Minsky, to Max and Natasha Vita-More and Ray Kurzweil, the list goes on. And recently we have had the call for a new speciation along the homo sapiens evolutionary line – into Homo evolutis. In their TED talk and subsequent book Homo Evolutis Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans present how we have already gone through twenty-five speciation events before arriving at our current species. Enriquez and Gullans consider it an anomaly to think that no other humanoid will ever evolve; and so they ask the question – ‘what would the next human species look like?’ They say that ‘We are transitioning from a hominid that is conscious of its environment into one that drastically shapes its own evolution…We are entering a period of hypernatural evolution…Homo evolutis.’12 This brings us back again to Latour’s concept of the anthropological matrix where nature and culture is mixed together without clear boundaries. With the NBIC sciences of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science we are meshing our genetic and cultural DNA. We are 3-D printing buildings as well as human body parts. We are now as a species consciously and deliberately experimenting, shaping, and morphing our environments, as well as journeying and mapping our inner spaces. We are the inhabitants and psychonauts of hybrid landscapes. And yet why should all this be part of an observation on the sacred revival? Because this transmutation of the human condition is what we, as a sentient sapien species, have always been doing.

Our early ancestors were obsessed with the transmutation of the human body-mind as far back as 35,000 years ago. The existence of rock paintings of therianthropes (shape-shifting forms from human to animal) that date back 35,000 years are speculated to be the early origins of human religious traditions. The symbolic paintings and drawings on cave walls and traces of ancient rituals which appear throughout the Palaeolithic era display a ‘primitive’ people in touch with the unseen realm. They display a fascination with a creative world beyond that of the human reality-matrix. These numerous examples of sacred, ritualistic art show how early humans were communing with a transcendental realm which modern humans have never stopped attempting to access. Noted anthropologist David Lewis-Williams has built a theory which explains how the people of the Upper Palaeolithic era harnessed altered states of consciousness to fashion their society, and used such imagery as a means of establishing and defining social relationships.13 The rock art of shape-shifting therianthropes also suggests a ‘primitive’ spiritual belief in the human soul as being connected to that of an animal or another being. Here we have a clear indication of our early ancestors creating sacred ritual around the transmutation and transcending of the human body-mind matrix. And this, in a nutshell, is part of the wisdom stream of shamanism.

It appears then that the human body-mind matrix has always, since earliest known cultural records, been a site for practicing sacred transcendentalism not far off from current transhumanist notions. As a species ‘in-transmutation’ we are increasingly having out-of-body experiences that meld cosmic consciousness with cultural artefacts. From the published out-of-body flights of Robert Monroe^[10] to the rise in channelled texts and audio, we have passed beyond our senses into a totally different multifaceted realm. We are not wanderers in an anthropological matrix but waves and particles in a holographic field where each flash and speck contains and reflects the whole. Enmeshed and entangled within this field-matrix we are akin to the famous Buddhist Indra’s Net analogy:

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net that has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in all dimensions, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.14

We are also reflections of ourselves in other universes as our reality-matrix bends and curves throughout countless cosmic contortions. According to physicist Paul Davis we co-exist alongside countless billions of other universes ‘some almost identical to ours, others wildly different, inhabited by myriads or near carbon-copies of ourselves in a gigantic, multifoliate reality of parallel worlds.’15 We no longer know what it means to live in a dualistic subject/object type of world. Our dualistic prison walls have disintegrated around us like a simulacrum or, in more popular parlance, like a rebooting video game.

We have already passed the post into a posthistoric era. Almost everything is up for grabs, which makes this era one of spectacular possibilities as well as gravest dangers. It would appear to any off-world observer that we are in the midst of a western slipstream of creative nihilism that is creeping its way around the fringes of tech-geekism and apocryphal-apocalyptic mysticism that says Take Nothing for Granted! As the ancient mapmakers used to scribe over unknown watery territories, Here be dragons – and here indeed they be, like lounging lizards waiting to lick at our heels. These are adventurous times as we innovate with outer form, and forge ahead into the inner spaces of essence. These are the features that adorn the sacred – the multifaceted faces of the body-mind-nature matrix that weaves the cosmic with the social, and which collapses the wave of duality. Lifepass the post is where we experiment with ourselves, as a species, and as a vessel of consciousness. And this, if done in a right relationship within our reality-matrix, is at its core a sacred art. Our cultural canvas is a palimpsest upon which new fictions and artefacts are engraved. And these fictions are the channels through which the sacred revival is raising its head and smiling the seven rays of emanation.

1 Cited in Davis, Erik (1998) Techgnosis: myth, magic and mysticism in the age of information. New York, Three Rivers Press, p187

2 Davis, Erik (1998) Techgnosis: myth, magic and mysticism in the age of information. New York, Three Rivers Press

3 Berman, Morris (1990) Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West. New York, HarperCollins.

4 Berman, Morris (1990) Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West. New York, HarperCollins, p146

5 Thompson, William Irwin (1998) Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness. New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, p307

6 Thompson, William Irwin (1998) Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness. New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, p307

7 Thompson, William Irwin (1998) Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness. New York, St. Martin’s Griffin.

8 Shah, I. (1982) The Sufis. London: Octagon, p54

9 Leary, Timothy (1988) Info-Psychology. New Mexico, New Falcon Publications.

10 Ho, Mae-Wan (1998) The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms. Singapore, World Scientific.

11 Noble, David F. (1999) The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. London, Penguin, p148-9

12 Enriquez, Juan and Gullans, Steve (2011) Homo Evolutis. TED Books – ebook only.

13 Lewis-Williams, David (2004) The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. London, Thames & Hudson.

14Cited in Davis, Erik (1998) Techgnosis: myth, magic and mysticism in the age of information. New York, Three Rivers Press, p319

15 Cited in Thompson, William Irwin (1998) Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness. New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, p217

[1] See Dawn of the Akashic Age: New Consciousness, Quantum Resonance, and the Future of the World by Ervin Laszlo and Kingsley L. Dennis

[2] See especially Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.

[3] Baraka, a prominent concept in Islamic mysticism, refers to a flow of grace and spiritual power that can be transmitted.

[4] See The Phoenix Generation: A New Era of Connection, Compassion, and Consciousness

[5] Taken from part 1 of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl

[6] See also Dennis, Kingsley L. (2010) ‘Quantum Consciousness: Reconciling Science and Spirituality Toward Our Evolutionary Future(s)’, World Futures, 66: 7, 511 — 524

[7] See Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal

[8] http://transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/more/upwingers/

[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20131015142449/http://extropy.org/principles.htm

[10] See https://www.monroeinstitute.org/

Being Our Experience

Posted on December 11, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Iam Saums with contributions from Zen Gardner

Source: ZenGardner.com

“Until we choose our own experience of life, we will never truly live.”

Common Thread:

There are over six billion unique interpretations of life in the three-dimensional construct we experience as reality. Although human beings have the popular inclination to gravitate toward a common one to which we are bound, our true vision and nature is remarkably multiplicit. We inevitably subject ourselves to inner and peripheral conditioning to toe the line of reality. We become social echoes for an engineered existence that is distorted, elusive, obscure and unconscious. Our desire for social amusement, comfort, identity, purpose and security significantly outweighs our quest to fulfill our being, creativity, destiny, love and truth.

Foundation of Illusion:

We are programmed to believe that our intelligence is the sole benefactor of our survival. Our insatiable fascination with ourselves and our place in the world distracts us from all that is sacred. Eventually, we exchange our passion to live with an addiction to buy. Our genuine experiences that empower and enrich us are superseded by virtual events recorded on a sales receipt. The measure of our fulfillment is in the quantity of our entertainment instead of the quality of our experience. Society turns on a worthless dime, promising a wealth of abundance, happiness and meaning, though rarely ever delivers.

Wired for Reason:

We are multi-dimensional beings with eternal possibilities and infinite potential. Our indoctrination into the complex principles and structures of the standard reality conditions, hypnotizes and manipulates us into the human imprisonment of instinct, reaction and survival. We are akin to a clipper ship with unfastened sails, bouncing upon the social seas of happenstance. Our body and brain is our hardware and our software is a two-dimensional program of instinct and intellect. We are dependent upon and obliviously tethered to knowledge and logic, conditioned to be simulations in a paradigm of thought, threat and fear.

Playing the Angles:

All of us are brainwashed and spellbound by the multi-faceted filters of our own perceptions. We are frequently presented with opportunities to choose how we behold our experience of life. Most of us view the world through an elaborate tapestry of our analysis, fears, judgements, and wants. Rarely do we observe the world as it truly is. We see it the way we would like it to be. We live from these personal fantasies and push the agendas of our positions in the pursuit of making the common reality ever more comfortable, compliant or convenient to our own desires. We engage with an illusion of what is instead of its authenticity.

The World We Enable:

Our personal power is in our creativity, compassion, consciousness, love and transformation. Yet, we express it most often with our drama, judgement, opinion and outrage. It isn’t that we are purely oblivious to our truth and purpose. We are products of the societal ethics to which we eagerly acquiesce. It seems easier to abandon our own unique experience, existence and perception as an inauthentic and noble sacrifice instead of claiming and living the life only we were meant. We are so powerful as human beings. Yet, we commit to killing our lives everyday with our denial, disinterest, doubt and obedience to the enslavement of reality.

“Lay down your right. Lay down your wrong. Lay down the lie. To which you belong.”

The Human God:

The human invention of God we accept and are expected to believe is primarily one of judgement, vengeance and wrath. It is the fear beyond the myth that captivates our allegiance. The intoxication of this false power seduces us into emulation and imitation. Though we often fail to see the most glaring truth of this “divine” influence. The raw power of our unattended ego imposes an experience and perception of cynicism, resignation and ridicule for anything that is not of our own clever design. We adopt a defense of disapproval, drama, opinion and rumor rather than be present to the possibilities of acceptance, compassion and understanding.

Vital Signs:

The medical field identifies the vitality of our existence by taking our pulse, analyzing our response to stimuli, observing our breath in different areas of our body and listening to our heart. When we meet these basic criteria, we are given a label of health and an acknowledgment of life. Yet, the true measurement of living is found in our potential, expression and willingness to make a difference. The true meaning of life is to serve others as much or more than ourselves for the sake of service. When we choose to exercise this opportunity, we instantly transform our experience into one of community, purpose and possibility.

In Purpose:

Most of us live our lives in the absence of purpose. We have a tendency to throw havoc to the wind and see what returns to us. More often than not very little does, at least to our desire. Unfortunately, purpose isn’t primarily exercised let alone existent in our society. The very nature of reality does not support or sustain the extraordinary. Our personal focus depends solely upon the what, how and why of our experience. These are the crucial elements of our potential to empower our lives. When we bring purpose to every facet of our experience, we express creativity, consciousness, enlightenment and transformation.

The Truth of False Power:

Each one of us has our own unique experience of life defined by our choices, the focus of our energy, the perception(s) we embrace and the destiny we fulfill. There is no one else in this world that could or should degrade, discredit, judge or question the authenticity, intent, meaning, and worth of our experiences. All who do simply endeavor to conceal or protect their own fears, inadequacies, insecurities and weaknesses. We have been raised in a social environment of defense that is of great peril to the coincidental targets of our expression. The force of the false power we project upon others ultimately diminishes the truth of our own.

Being Our Experience:

There is nothing more significant in our life than who we are being. In a reality where being-ness has been swept under the proverbial rug of contemporary society, it is truly the only saving grace for the present and future of all. Who we are being creates, expresses and sustains the quality of our commitment. Our vision, empowerment, purpose and stand inspires how we truly live our lives. Of us it requires our creativity, confidence, courage and trust to manifest our greatest experience. Only through us will the power of our experience transcend the boundaries of reality and society and transform the world.

“The greatest experiences we will ever have are the ones we choose to create.”

Seeking the True Path

Posted on November 27, 2016 by Reid Mukai

Cartoon by Loren Fishman. See more of his work at https://humoresquecartoons.com

Robert J. Burrowes

One of the more subtle manifestations of the intimate link between
(unconscious) human emotions and behaviour is illustrated by the simple
concept of choice and how this is so often reduced to a dichotomy
between two bad options. In such circumstances, most people choose
whatever they consider to be ‘the lesser evil’.

But how often are there only two options, even if they appear ‘good’ and
‘bad’? Frankly, I cannot think of one circumstance in which my choices
are limited to two, however good or bad they appear to be.

Why does this belief in just two options arise?

When we are born, our evolutionary inheritance includes a phenomenally
powerful capacity to feel a complex range of emotions. However, because
what sociologists refer to as ‘socialization’ (a process by which babies
and children are supposedly taught the ways of their society) is
actually a process of terrorizing babies and children into suppressing
their awareness of these emotions so that they can be forced to conform
to societal ‘norms’ (no matter how dysfunctional), the disastrous
outcomes of ‘socialization’ are obscured. If you wish to read more about
the terrorization of children, you can do so in ‘Why Violence?‘ and
‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice‘.

This terrorizing of babies and children takes many forms but one of the
most common ways it occurs is through simply telling a child what they
must do under threat of punishment for non-compliance which all parents,
teachers, religious figures and other adults do routinely. This
imperative to obey will always run counter to the child’s own Self-will.
Why is this? Because every single human baby is genetically programmed
to follow their own Self-will, not to obey the will of another.

This individual Self-will is generated by the integrated sense of how to
behave in response to the mental and physical feedback – including
feelings, thoughts, memory, conscience, sensory perception (sight,
smell, sound, touch, taste), truth register, intuition… – which each
person receives and which their mind processes and integrates to
crystallise the precisely appropriate behaviour in any given
circumstance.

But once a child is routinely terrorized into submitting to the will of
another – no matter how benign either the person giving the instruction
or the instruction itself – they lose trust and faith in their own
capacity to decide on a course of action and undertake it powerfully.
They are now adrift without clear internal guidance and, as they grow
up, they are now readily vulnerable to the ‘persuasion’ of others
whether it be the opinion of someone else, the advice of an ‘expert’ or
the inanity of an advertisement for a commercial product.

Adrift from their own unique and powerful internal mental processor –
with its emotional, intellectual, sensory, intuitive, memory, conscience
and other components – they are the victim of their own fear of being
disobedient, wrong, in the minority, isolated … if they follow their own
Self-will.

Unconsciously, the child feels trapped. They are terrified to do what
they want without permission (which is routinely denied) but
unconsciously angry about this (because they have been scared out of
being openly angry at their parents and teachers) which usually
manifests as something powerless such as resentment.

What does the child do in this circumstance? Obey the parent/teacher or
attempt to follow their own Self-will and risk (and probably receive)
punishment for doing so? What is the ‘good’ option here? Or is the child
faced with a choice between two evils and must try to choose the
‘lesser’ one? In the words of Anita McKone: ‘It feels like you must
either put up with abuse or die.’

Routine abuse of the child in this manner by their parents, teachers and
other adults throughout their early life leaves virtually all adults
with an unconscious belief that life is a series of choices between
‘lesser evils’ with an occasional ‘good’ choice allowed in limited
circumstances. We might choose our meal, the color and style of our
clothing, what film to watch and other such trivia. But what of anything
important? No way!

Most people end up believing that there are only ever two choices on
anything that matters and neither is particularly desirable.
Unconsciously, they feel trapped and it makes no sense when they are
told that they have many options from which to choose. This is not their
experience and it just feels untrue. They will endlessly choose the
lesser evil of two bad options on virtually everything that matters in
their life and accept the trinket ‘goods’ they are allowed to choose,
such as the nature of their hairstyle.

Long before adulthood, the child accepts a lifepath of conformity to the
most mundane human existence imaginable: school, work, the occasional
holiday, illness and death. A life never lived.

In essence, the terrorized child, now an adult, never looks beyond the
choices given, even when both are ‘bad’ or one is trivially ‘good’.

Most people have no sense of their own Self-will in the profound sense,
no faith in where this Self-will might take them if followed and, if
they could/can feel it, no courage to do what their Self-will tells
them.

The tragedy of virtually every human life is that they never seek out
what was taken from them as a child: the Self-will that would guide them
unerringly to seek out and become everything they were born to be. They
are so full of fear, self-hatred and powerlessness as a result of the
violence they suffered as a child, that they endlessly settle for ‘the
lesser evil’ on anything important and settle for trinkets in the form
of ‘good’: the choice of ice-cream flavour, the color of their socks,
the novel to read, the holiday destination.

Is there a way out? Yes, but it requires you to feel your fear, anger,
sadness and other feelings at what has happened to you until you are
powerful enough to reject both/all ‘bad’ options and to refuse the
trinkets that parody ‘good’. And to ask ‘What do I want?’ It is only by
consciously and deliberately rejecting all ‘lesser evil’ options that
the magnificent array of incredible opportunities which you have never
contemplated/discovered will open before you to choose as you wish.

And that is why it is so difficult. You must have the courage to cut
off, without the option of turning back, all options that do not give
you what you need. This is because what matters is not whether you get
what you need in the short term, but whether you live your truth, no
matter how difficult this might be in the immediate sense.

It is the fear of burning all bridges that holds us back because, as a
child, we were too scared to walk out on those who told us, one way or
another, that we had no choice but to suffer their abuse or die.

But the more bridges you burn, the more magnificent will be the vista of
undreamt opportunities that will open before you. And you will wonder
why you never considered/saw them before. Imagine if everyone had the
courage to burn the bridges of fear and to set out on their own unique
path.

And to experience the sheer joy of living powerfully in every moment of
their life.

But our own personal effort does not need to exclude the possibility of
making it easier for others in future too. So if you would like to
participate in the ongoing effort to create a world in which living
powerfully is more possible for each of us, you are welcome to consider
signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World‘.

If people are not afraid of violence, they are genuinely free to seek
their true path.

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ His email address is flametree@riseup.netand his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford
Victoria 3460
Australia
Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

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