The Nature of Reality and How Humans Separated from It: In the Tenth Prasad the Planetmates Tell of Being-Awareness-Bliss and How Humans Became Controllers and Killers Instead (updated)

When Early Humans Began Killing Planetmates and Eating Flesh, Soon They Were Killing Each Other: The Nature of Existence and How Humans Became So Complacent About Taking Life

The Great Reveal from the Planetmates, The Tenth Prasad: Being-Awareness-Bliss and Human’s Descent Into Savagery

Planetmates Release The Tenth Prasad

You first began your fearful, deluded controlling when you added Planetmate flesh to your former vegetarian diet

Pig was First Consciousness at The Tenth Prasad.

"Your descent into aggression and savagery started here, because when you learned how to kill fellow Planetmates...it was not too long before you began to be able to kill each other."

The Tenth Prasad – Becoming Controlling, Becoming Killers

Rather than the natural state of being, awareness, and bliss, your state of omnipresent fear caused you to be ever more unable to accept the gifts of life and survival on Nature’s terms, which were uncertain, but on the other hand, adventurous and surprising. It is the state we enjoy and find blissful and playful and always interesting. Your fear made you unable to bear the uncertain state. So, being impatient, and therefore unwilling to receive sustenance and nurturing on Nature’s timetable, you first began taking control of when you would be nourished by adding planetmate flesh to your former vegetarian diet.

Your descent into aggression and savagery started here, because when you learned how to kill fellow planetmates, which had not been in your nature prior to the prematurity trauma and your constant adult state of tension, it was not too long before you began to be able to kill each other. Continuing to lose faith in the reality of divine perfection, love, and nurturing, which all other planetmates know without doubt, you thought you needed to compete over resources and sometimes to kill your own to keep from starving, or to keep from being killed. The first was your delusion, the second was your delusion made real among yourselves.

Video Commentary by SillyMickel Adzema

What follows is a video of a reading of The Tenth Prasad, as received from The Planetmates, with additional explanation, context, and some commentary by SillyMickel Adzema.

The Tenth Prasad from The Planetmates: Part One – Faith vs. Fear, Playful vs. Predictable

The issues highlighted in the commentary relate to that of the blissful existence of the Planetmates based on absolute faith in the goodness of Existence contrasted with the fearful one of humans based on mistrust, and of the adventurous, playful lives of the Planetmates compared to the striving for predictability and certainty of humans.

The Tenth Prasad from The Planetmates: Part Two – Descent Into Savagery Begins

This next video is a continuation of the commentary of The Tenth Prasad, as received from The Planetmates. The issues highlighted in this commentary relate to the descent into savagery that began with the switch from a completely vegetarian diet to one that included planetmate flesh and involved hunting and killing. Very importantly this led to the ability to be able to kill other humans as well. This momentous development—its significance and consequences—is elaborated upon.

Audio Commentary by SillyMickel Adzema

“The Tenth Prasad” Part One – Faith vs. Fear, Playful vs. Predictable – the audiocast

The link above takes you to the audio-only version of Part One of my commentary on The Tenth Prasad, exactly as is in the video. Click on the link to go to the the audio site, or you can listen to it here using the audio player below.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=lwbwkkhdnf
Image of The 10th Prasad. “The Great Reveal” By The Planetmates: Pt 1 – Faith Vs. Fear, Playful Vs. Predictable

“The Tenth Prasad” Part Two – Descent Into Savagery Begins – the audiocast

The link above takes you to the audio-only version of Part Two of my commentary on The Tenth Prasad, exactly as is in the video. Click on the link to go to the the audio site, or you can listen to it here using the audio player below.

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=dyzxnwkzdp
Image of Commentary On The 10th Prasad Continued: Descent Into Savagery Begins, By Silly Mickel Adzema

Paraphrase/Elaboration of The Tenth Prasad — by SillyMickel Adzema

More and more your lives were a contrast to our own. While you were consumed with fear and because of that seeking to control events, we have a doubtless faith in the rightness of events and a playful attitude toward the unfolding of events. The natural state of all beings and as far as we can tell the nature of Reality Itself, is Being, Awareness, Bliss. That is to say, all Existence is Beingness. It is all conscious. In your terms you might say that all of Reality is one Being or one Life Form. You can think of it that way, if you wish. The point to grasp is that there is no place where consciousness is not. Even that which you think of as the inanimate Universe is life in a form you simply are unable to perceive. It is beingness. What you call things, and physical, are aspects of Being.

But beyond that all of Reality is Aware. That is to say, it is cognizant of Itself as being conscious. It knows it is part of a greater whole and that it exists in relation to various parts, interacting with them. Indeed, there are as many types of awarenesses as there are possibilities for finding whole and integrated patterns, functioning as a unit, in the Universe. There are as many awarenesses as there are complete systems. Put it this way, your Earth is a system. It is aware of Itself as part of It All and in comparison to and interaction with other planets and celestial beings and forces. Viruses and bacteria and cells that exist in your body are Aware. They have the equivalent of lived “lives” and know they are part of a larger whole and they know of their existence at least in relation to beings alike to them — other cells, bacteria, viruses, and things on that level. Your kidneys and other organs are beings in themselves, interacting in awareness with each other; your nations are a consciousness aware of its participation in a whole and interacting with parts like itself. You of course know you are parts of many larger realities — nation, planet, family, city. Each whole pattern is a configuration of Spirit, in some form or other. And these patterns are overlapping, interacting, and infinite in number. There are an infinite number of “stories” therefore … there are as many as there are integrated, whole patterns … of anything … in the Universe, able to act as a unit, thus creating itself, and interact with other units of its kind, which create the boundaries between beings … however temporary and arbitrary. [Footnote 1]

But is there a problem with that? Does that sound hard or difficult for some reason? You see, here you already have your controlling mania seeping in to cloud your perception. For you cannot comprehend such infinite complexity of existence, for you cannot help but feel someone must manage each one of those systems of awareness. You see everything as needing to be put together, made to operate, and requiring control to keep it functioning properly. You do not have a clue that perfect synchronicity and functioning are the fundamental things of Reality and that your controlling or managing of anything is, in fact, like throwing a monkey wrench into these perfect workings, not aiding or assisting them. Reality is not built up from inanimate, separate objects; it is broken down or diminished from Perfection Itself and Totality … of harmony and synchronicity. Which leads to the next quality of Existence.

All beingness existing, all existence being beingness, all beingness being awareness, and all awareness being conscious of its perfect relation to all and everything and the perfection of the It All, the Universe’s nature is perceived by all beings as Beauty, and the Nature of Experience that is the Universe is Bliss. Indeed, this was your birthright as well. In some of your spiritual awarenesses, you are still able to sense and to know of Reality as being this way. But you struggle, for the most part, blind to this sort of Beauty.

Following from that, all Reality being Bliss — and there being no darkness and light to struggle with each other — there are no dire consequences for any action in the Universe. Hence every action, event, and drama of the Universe is play. Indeed, that is the way we view our existences, our lives — as being play and with no dire consequence whichever way it goes. Hence, we can risk more, in this play; we can be full of play … playful. And part of that play — a part that enhances that play — is the uncertainty of life and its unpredictability. We exist in time, which is another way of saying, we have parts of Reality, parts of our play, that we hide from ourselves so that when we come across them they can contribute to our enjoyment. Inherent in unpredictability is surprise — which can be pleasant or unpleasant. But because perfection is the Nature of It All at some level, we know that unpleasant is simply a part of something larger that is a greater pleasant — Indeed the variability, contrast, and unpredictability of life are what create the Beauty, as we are able to see it. All aspects of life, as they unfold, therefore, are conducive to greater and greater wonder and awe. When not caught up in the drama of the play — and its fluctuations of pleasant-unpleasant, light-dark — we live in such awestruck wonder.

However, your state of ominipresent fear caused you to lose faith in the goodness of Nature/ the Divine as it is. You became increasingly fearful of what would happen in any future time and so spent your time seeking to determine that future through fervid controlling activities in the present, which consumed both your consciousness and became your lived Existence. You turned the play and uncertainty of life into drudgery, for uncertainty being a cause for fear and anxiety, you would need to work incessantly in all present time to store up against so as to fend off any imagined unpleasant in future time. Present time was for you anxious — filled as it was for you with incomplete remnants of past early experience which constantly inserted itself into and colored all your experience. So to contemplate uncertainty about the outcome of events, about the future and what it would hold, in addition to that anxiety, was increasingly more than you could bear, or were willing to take on. The anxious backdrop of your lives, carried through life from your beginnings into it, combined with what we consider the spice of unpredictability, which leads to a feeling of adventurous engagement in life for us, was instead for you a reminder of the pain of birth and its overwhelming sensations — too much at once to bear — and the pain of waiting for satisfaction of needs as an infant. You naturally do not want to be reminded of those feelings, so you began the process of separating yourself from your present experience … putting it out of your mind, becoming less than your self. The feeling that resulted from the combination of past pain coming through in the present and present uncertainty is what you call impatience. It is something you do not and did not want to feel, so you would separate from it, splitting your mind, and so would have no or less feeling rather than an unpleasant one. Sometimes you call that feeling of nothing, caused by your separation from the present, boredom. Believe me, it is something we never feel as life to us is always entrancing, adventurous, surprising, and engaging … at any rate, it is always interesting … never boring.

To repeat, life is uncertain because we do not know the future consequences of our present actions, but we see that as part of the joyous adventure, whereas that fact causes you dread. So our natural state is one of being, awareness, and bliss, and our lives are surprising, playful, and always interesting; whereas yours became one of impatience, defiance toward Nature/ the Divine in all its forms, and set toward fighting imaginary threats in a state of fervid, obsessive controlling of things inside and around you. Our blissful existence, based on absolute faith in the goodness of Existence contrasts with your fearful existence based on mistrust. Our adventurous playful lives are starkly different from your lives of constant working to make life predictable and certain, in the future, through controlling-type activities, in the present.

Now, what came with that impatience and the controlling activities was the unwillingness to accept your sustenance and nurturing on Nature’s terms and on Her timetable. This had the most dire consequences. For with this controlling, wrought of fear, came your propensities for killing and the descent into the savage beings which increasingly became the trait that most characterized and defined what is human.

Impatient with the divine timetable for the satisfaction of needs, in particular, hunger, and more cut off from the felt experience of life … becoming more insensitive to it and to the consequences of your actions … allowed you to begin supplementing your mostly vegetarian diets with planetmate flesh. You could observe other beings in Nature killing and eating each other. It was natural that in your first actions emanating from your anxiety about satisfaction of needs, you would begin doing the same. This lifestyle included hunting … and killing.

In your first reactions to your early pain you had ritual, next you would kill.

The basic needs of physical existence, like sustenance, food, we accept as gifts from God; your crazed state caused you to seek to control this aspect of existence, to make it less certain. Your first attempt to do that involved your adding Planetmate flesh to your former, exclusively vegetarian, diet. You had been happy accepting God’s varied and often surprising gifts through foraging, but now you began what you called “hunting,” as well. This began your descent into aggression and savagery.”

Prior to your prematurity trauma it had not been in your nature to kill, let alone eat, flesh that resembled your own — those that you call “animals.” But with your lives of increasing tension and as your continued loss of touch with Real Existence diminished and your lives lived in your substitute world of monochromatic ghostly symbols expanded, you became insensitive enough to the spilling of blood to make life and death decisions over fellow Planetmates. After that, it was not long before you were intruding on God’s domain by making these decisions about each other, as well.

You first began to kill each other out of your fear that there would not be enough sustenance for all — what you call “competition over resources.”
Planetmates know without doubt that they are interwoven with and therefore infinitely loved and sustained by a God who is perfect in His care and nurturing of us in every way, even the tiniest and most insignificant.

So your fear of dying through lack of sustenance was your delusion wrought of your crazed, increasingly ghostly existence.

But as more of you believed it, you created the very real threat of being killed, for that reason, by one of your own kind. So, out of your delusion of scarcity of resources, you created the reality that you would need to kill in order to keep from being killed.

 

Footnote

1.  Re: Being/Awareness: from Voices of the First Day, p. 49. “ ‘With your mentality, these tall buildings are the result of the dreams and plans of architects, engineers, and builders. But the Aborigine also sees that the stones and bricks themselves have an inner potential — a dreaming to become a structure.’ As much as the builders dreamed and projected the building, so too did the stones dream and project the minds, hands, and activities of the builders.” (and so on from there) … “Why is it not possible … that the essence of consciousness is within the stone.”

Continue with The Great Reveal from the Planetmates, The Eleventh Prasad: “Agrarian Revolution” – Interference in Flora Empire

Return to The Great Reveal from the Planetmates, The Ninth Prasad: Eden and the Fall … Harmony with Nature, Early Humans, Foragers

To Read the Entire Book … on-line, free at this time … Go to The Great Reveal from The Planetmates

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War, Evil Queens, Mind Control, and the “Unwashed: The Psychotic Acting Out of Feelings—Rooted in Unconscious Uncomfortable Memories—in Insane Societies.

“Bad Blood” — Acting Out Prenatal Feelings of Sickening … Earliest Roots of War, Psychosis, Racism, Xenophobia, Elitism, Homophobia … and Medicine 

Wounded Deer and Centaurs, Chapter Nine: “Bad Blood” – Poisoned, Infected

“Bad Blood” – Poisoned, Infected … Prenatal Roots of Paranoia, Sado-Masochism, Alien Mind Control, and the Evil Queen

Imprints for Paranoia, Sado-Masochism, and the Wicked Witch in Poisoned, Infected, “Bad Blood” Aspects of Fetal Oxygen Hunger

There are three parts to this pain around fetal malnutrition, which defines us as humans and creates what we think of as “human nature” and most often as being genetic, but it is not. We’ve been dealing with the first part — deprivation … we fear there is not enough oxygen/resources coming to us to keep us alive. Another part has to do with the toxic quality of the environment we experience, which we’ll get to soon.

Bad Blood

But the one I want to deal with next is the second aspect aspect of oxygen starvation in the late stages of gestation. It has to do with our assessment of the “air”—the oxygen and nutrients—we do get.

We’re Getting Some Blood

As just discussed, we carry an underlying panic that our supply will end at any moment, but we are getting some oxygen from the blood that comes to us, however reduced its flow. It is the contrast from what we knew that is alarming. Imagine blood that is free- and easy-flowing, rich and bright red with oxygen.

But Is It Bad Blood?

Now, imagine blood that is more trickling than gushing, more depleted of resources—oxygen and nutrients—tainted, darker, barely able to sustain one’s life…. The first was our experience of earlier womb life; the second the way it gradually began being perceived.

To be clear, we can’t actually see our blood flow as a fetus, of course. This is meant to be an analogy giving you an idea of the difference in the feeling experience of the fetus in this changing situation. It must be close enough to what it actually was like, since out of it we form images and symbols in later life with these differing characteristics, as I will continue to show.

“Iron Poor Blood”

So we began feeling poisoned, polluted, decrepit, diseased. Our situation in the womb had portents of death and seemed a dire threat if it were to continue. We received blood sufficient to keep us alive, obviously, but it was felt to be degraded, to be “bad blood.” We began feeling that what we were getting was insufficient, even poisoned. The blood that comes is not only barely sufficient to keep oneself as a fetus alive…or certainly it feels that way…but it is tainted, impure…or certainly it feels that way. And one feels not just deprived but attacked.

“Don’t Feed Me That Bullcrap!”

So, the second aspect of fetal malnutrition and the third of prenatal discomfort is the feeling of being forcefed something noxious and deadly. We feel we are being poisoned or infected by what we take in through our breathing or eating. What is coming into us is sour and unhealthy. This is of course related to the previous feeling constellation discussed wherein we fear we are not going to get enough oxygen and so want “pure” blood. But this has to do with our feelings about the blood we do get—it is tainted, not pure. In the one you can’t get something you need, you are deprived (panic). In this aspect of it, you get something but it seems intentionally polluted to harm you (paranoia). Earlier I compared this to the difference between being starved for affection as a child versus receiving unwanted attention as in being sexually or physically abused.

Fractals, Abuse, Sadism/Masochism

The reason this can be seen so clearly at a later time of life is because these feeling constellations are fractals of each other: They occur in the same pattern again and again at different times of our lives exactly because of our tendency to re-create unerringly the discomfort we could not face originally (primally). The original formulation of this pattern in the womb sets up that we will act out on both sides of tendencies to deprive others of affection, as well as to subtly and unconsciously push others away. And because of the other aspect of it, we will also force unwanted attention on others and will assault them, as well as being unable to avoid such attacks. Traditionally, this last has been discussed under the headings of sadism and masochism.

Having dealt with the deprivation/greed aspect of this in previous sections, in this section and the next we will look at the poisoned and infected feelings and their sadistic/masochistic outgrowths. Unraveling this complex at its primal roots in the womb, we expose some fascinating revelations.

How “Bad Blood” Manifests in Our Thinking

In Psychosis—Food, Aliens, and Tin Foil

Though not the most common, I must start with the most obvious adult manifestation of this—the curious notion among paranoid psychotics and some obsessive-compulsives that they are being or are in danger of being poisoned. Certainly through the food they eat, but this also manifests as the idea that “alien” thoughts are being inserted into their minds/brains. I’ve seen walking neurotics (borderline psychotics) strolling around with wire pyramid or tinfoil hats to prevent this infection from above.

We have to wonder how much of conspiracy theory is itself skewed by this constellation in concocting the existence of forces that spy on us and influence our actions from behind the moon (behind the placenta) or some other unseen place. This is what happens when big thoughts are channeled through sorry states of mind.

In Collective Dreams—Myth, Fairy Tale, and the Evil Queen

We express this idea in our myths and fairy tales, of course—for they are the collective “dreams” we share that are given rise to by our unconscious dynamics. A salient example is Snow White. Consider her name, and remember the part about the purity of blood and children, which was felt to be the earlier situation in the womb. In the same consideration of blissful BPM I experiences occurring prior to late stage, BPM II, discomforts, notice that Snow White enjoys an earlier, idyllic time living in communion with planetmates in the forest. She was supposed to be killed (aborted) by the huntsman (god figure), but he falls in love with her and lets her go, telling her to hide. She finds a tiny cottage (blissful womb), where she is aided by and lives in harmony with seven dwarves. The dwarves, as well as the planetmates, represent the forces of Nature aiding exquisitely perfect growth in the early stages of gestation in the womb.

But then, BPM II style, her wicked stepmother wants to poison her, but even notice how.

First the “evil queen” (mother symbol) wants to kill her by crushing her. She ties her tight with stay-laces. Remember that being compressed and crowded was the very first and most obvious aspect of late stage gestation discomfort.

And then begins the poisoning attempts: The evil queen tries to kill Snow White by brushing her hair with a poisoned comb. So, what does this mean? Well, our hair is thousands of tiny filaments that emanate out from our bodies, just as in the womb we have tiny filaments extending from our bodies—arteries and veins—which connect us to our mothers (evil queen). The wicked stepmother poisoning her by combing her hair is saying she is being poisoned through these filaments of arteries extending from her.

Next, the evil queen wishes to get the girl to eat a poisoned apple. Apple, as the ultimate symbol of food, nutrition in Western culture…it was an apple that was eaten in Eden, for example.

Now, why? Remember that a red apple is the same color as blood. So a poisoned apple represents the bad blood in the womb with its poor or “poisoned” nutrients…being given to one by one’s mother.

Notice that here as in many fairy tales it is a stepmother…in others it might be a wicked aunt or witch…that does the bad stuff. It has to be a stepmother or aunt, for we wish to preserve the idea that a “good mother” still exists. So we separate out an idea of a bad part of her, just as we come up with the idea of a bad god…a Satan…who is responsible for all the bad things that a good God would not be…thus preserving the idea of a good God/ good daddy here.

But there’s more. She fainted when she was tightly laced, and collapsed again after being brushed with the poisoned comb. But when finally poisoned she falls into a stupor and appears dead. Obviously she represents a prenate struggling with the “groggy” and lethargic feelings associated with being trapped, stifled, and poisoned/ drugged … in modern times, sometimes having ingested actual drugs or toxins from smoking or alcohol through the placenta (poisoned through those tiny “hairs” of arteries).

And appearing dead, she is placed in a coffin. Womb symbol, anyone?

How “Bad Blood” Manifests In Our Doing

Having looked at how this early experience of blood degradation is manifest in our thoughts, madness, and creative product, let’s look into some really important, major act outs of this prenatal mental framework for construing things. This brings us to the ways we act out these crazy ideas, emanating from early experiences, in major ways as cultures, as societies, and even as nations.

“We Don’t Want Your Kind Around Here!” … Acting Out Prenatal Feelings of Sickening – “Bad Blood” – in Racism, Xenophobia, Elitism, Homophobia … and Medicine

“Don’t Want Your Kind Around Here!” Prenatal Imprints for Xenophobia, Racism, Medicine, and More

How “Bad Blood” Manifests in Our Actions

This brings us to the psychotic acting out of these thoughts and feelings—rooted in unconscious discomforts and repressed memory patterns—by insane societies.

Bloody Games—War

In this aspect of fetal discomfort, a reduced blood flow to the placenta is experienced as a build up of carbon dioxide and toxins, since they are not removed as efficiently as they were before. Lloyd deMause explains how this womb situation is universally expressed among humans as a fear of being “poisoned” by “bad blood.” He has found that feelings of being trapped and at the same time “infused” with bad blood or toxic energies of some sort precede the outbreak of all wars.

For these wars are the unconscious way humans try to “break free” from these uncomfortable feelings, which are for the most part just early unresolved memories from our beginnings in life. We see “bad blood” as coming from the enemy; We see the enemy as an attacking many-headed monster “encroaching” on the “home”land … a threatening multi-veined placenta, aging and filled with toxins, “filth.” So we wish to attack and destroy the enemy—this placental “monster”—so we can “breathe free” again and escape their “poisonous filth.” (See BPM IV)

How We Act Out “Bad Blood” – Xenophobia, Blood Letting, Smoking

The perfect example, however, is the xenophobia that resulted in the Nazis treatment of the Jews around the time of World War II. I have already pointed out how these walking psychotics injected poisonous gas into Jews in gas chambers out of these prenatal feelings, which they framed in adult thoughts of being themselves infected with tainted money from these Jews. Let us now look at other act outs of this.

Racism, Xenophobia, Classism, Elitism, Homophobia, Intolerance—We Don’t Want “Your Kind” Around Here! Keeping Racial “Lines” “Pure,” Keeping Out “the Unwashed,” Affecting the Gene “Pool”

This is the basis of racism … blacks are pollutants, as are Jews. They want to take away our purity—our pure children…blood libel; our women’s pure virtue. And so we need to dress in white, indicating “pure” blood, to defend against these incursions (the Ku Klux Klan) of “bad blood.”

These feelings of being “sickened” at the end of our womb existence are the root of all xenophobia with its creation always of a toxic Other which cannot be allowed to infect the virtue and purity of people of “our blood.”

We see it in intolerance of others of all kinds. A few days ago, on May 21st, 2012, a Baptist preacher from the South made headlines everywhere by announcing from the pulpit that all gays and lesbians should be “rounded up,” placed in an “enclosure,” surrounded by an “electrified fence.” He imagined they could have food air dropped to them until they died (obviously an insufficient…oxygen starvation…or poisoned…bad blood…amount.) At this point, I don’t believe I need to unravel the prenatal qualities of the morass his mind was thinking in.

And why all this? His exact words are, because “It makes me pukin’ sick!” what homosexuals do. Need I say more? [Footnote 1]

But this thinking is found in classism as well, where royalty calls itself “blue bloods” and only allows marriage between others of its class—from one’s own nation or another, interestingly—and will not allow its “blood” to be mixed with the polluted blood of the masses and “riff raff.”

University intellectuals have a more “refined” take on this primal disgust: They set up barriers to academic entrance in order to “keep out the unwashed,” without a clue they are coming across like scared fetuses inside a virtual womb (academia) trying to protect their continuing flow of blood (money).

This fetal malnutrition gives rise to bigoted ideas of keeping racial lines “pure.” It insists upon no mixing of the races … or ethnicities…for fear of affecting the gene “pool” (pool of blood), but it is always described in terms of “blood” that will be mixed, tainted, polluted, made impure, or degraded. Can you see how these are all instances of fear of encroachment by another from which one senses a threat of pollution and in conjunction which one feels suffocated, made helpless, unable to move freely?

Blood Letting

For a long time in Western culture, it was thought that when one got sick that one had “bad blood” coursing through one’s system. The idea was that by bleeding a person one would rid the body of some of this impure blood and the person would get better. This bloodletting was employed for hundreds of years in the face of the evidence to the contrary wherein folks got paler and sicker from this “treatment.” But such is the power of these sorry thoughts rooted in unconscious dynamics.

Smoking Itself

I’ve already mentioned how we re-create the atmospheric imbalance of oxygen—carbon dioxide in the womb through burning stuff. The smoking of tobacco and other vegetation I likened to our pushes and pulls to re-create the bad air. But in ingesting this air into one’s lungs, we have a most perfect example of the drive to re-create the uncomfortable feeling of ingestion of “bad blood,” in this case, inhaling, bad air. With all rationality set aside, we are compelled to poison, infect ourselves again and again with bad air (bad blood). Again, of such depth is the grooves of the imprint created in our prenatal times and along whose lines we make our self-destructive decisions.

How We Make It Worse

(“Give Us, Oh Lord”) Our Daily Toxins—Drugs, Food Additives, Polluted Air

How we add to this today…how we make it worse: smoking and drinking, taking drugs. We create and imbibe toxins in our food, our air…through the medications we use… The whole idea behind “medicine” is that a toxin (all drugs are) administered in a tiny amount will alter our blood flow in just the exact way to affect some currently felt experience of our blood being bad (sickness).

And in doing these things we reinforce the bad blood experience of fetal malnutrition the fetus will experience out of its being human. We insure we will pass along our bad blood experience to the next generation…we will multiply it even. For the mother’s ingestion of these compounds into her system—smoke, drugs, food additives, air toxins, water pollutants—are felt as receiving bad blood by the fetus, even worse than it would be otherwise just from pressure on the arteries restricting blood flow. Again we create that which we need to resolve, only this time it is the unborn child who will be “infected” with the bad blood and need to face these feelings later in life, again and again.

How We Make it True, Create It

Food Pollution/Genetic Engineering and Propaganda

I can’t leave this without pointing out that, as in environmental pollution and in political oppression, it is all not just a figment of a past memory, as there are those of us acting out this feeling complex by coming up with such odd creations that end up polluting the food of others (as in the tainted food coming out of corporations like Monsanto, with its Frankensteinian concoctions) and that seek to inject alien ideas in others to make us do things we would ordinarily not do—whether that is to buy some unnecessary thing to fatten the wallets of these others (advertising) or to surrender one’s self interest or hand over one’s power and rationality of thought to these others for their political ends (propaganda…in America, Fox News).

Continue with Prenatal Revulsion and Loss of the “Golden Age”: Creeped Out in the Womb, The Itches We Cannot Scratch, and the Deepest Roots of OCD, Bigotry, and Holocaust

Return to Prenatal Hunger Games and “Blood Wars”: The Fetal Fight About “Pure Blood” We Act Out in Politics, War, and Oppression … Class War, Culture War, Revolution….

Footnote

1. Pastor Worley’s actual words were

Of our president getting up and saying it was all right for two women to marry, for two men to marry, I tell you right now, I was disappointed bad. But I’ll tell you right there, it’s as sorry as you can get. The Bible’s agin’ it, God’s agin’ it, I’m agin’ it, and if you’ve got any sense, you’re agin’ it.

I had way, I figured a way out, a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers, but I couldn’t get it passed through Congress. Build a great big large fence, 100..50 or 100 miles long. Put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. And have that fence electrified ’til they can’t get out. And feed ‘em. And you know what? In a few years they’ll die out. Do you know why? They can`t reproduce.

If a man ever has a young ‘un, praise god it’ll be the first one. All of these… It’s just as well…I’m gonna preach the hell out of all of them. Hey I’ll tell you right now. I ain’t gonna vote for a baby killer and a homosexual lover!

You said, ‘Did you mean to say that?’ You’d better believe I did!

God have mercy it makes me puking sick to think about…I don’t even know whether you ought to say this in the pulpit or not. Could you imagine kissing some man? My god I love you fellas, but not that much.

Continue with Prenatal Revulsion and Loss of the “Golden Age”: Creeped Out in the Womb, The Itches We Cannot Scratch, and the Deepest Roots of OCD, Bigotry, and Holocaust

Return to Prenatal Hunger Games and “Blood Wars”: The Fetal Fight About “Pure Blood” We Act Out in Politics, War, and Oppression … Class War, Culture War, Revolution….

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We’ve Fallen and We Can’t Get Up: Like Chiron, We Need to Take Inside Us the “Sins” of Promethean Fathers to Stop Millennial Cycles of Suffering

We Are the Centaurs, My Friends: We Are the Necessary Heroes for Deluded Promethean “Fathers,” Open the Jar, Pandora, and Why the Gods Are LOL

Wounded Deer and Centaurs, Chapter Seven: Return of the Centaur and How We Look to the Gods

Enter the Centaur: Wherein Lies Real Hope – Sixties and Millennial Generations Are Shamans for Deluded Promethean “Fathers” 

Blind Hope vs. Real Hope … Chiron Is Martyr for The Sins of the Fathers

Prometheus Brought Us Blind Hopes

Another aspect of this is that Prometheus is said to have “caused blind hopes to live in the hearts of men.” Indeed, we are also now seeing how blind was our reliance on technology and the vaunted but vain “rational mind”—which has now been seen to be a rationalizing mind.

For we realize this self-congratulatory thinking has been keeping out uncomfortable truths and building illusory, manic Atman projects of escape from the consequences of our actions. None of which, we are now finding out, are capable of working.

Enter the Centaur: Real Hopes – Chiron

But to jump ahead. There is hope in the Prometheus myth as well. There is shown a way forward for humanity, which at this particular time in history appears to have been prophetic. For Prometheus is saved from his sufferings by the Centaur, Chiron. Chiron sacrifices himself—Christ-like—taking on Prometheus’s suffering and dying in his stead.

Return to The Centaur

Earthy, Sensual, Noble

The Centaur — half human, half animal — does not, like Icarus, paste on wings and try to separate from groundedness in the Earth. No. Centaur qualities are earthy, sensual, sexual. They embrace the noble qualities of the horse … reminding us that as primal beings, early humans, we were noble humans … as they say, a bit ethnocentrically, “noble savages.” We once stood, sure-footed and tall, and we walked confidently upon the Earth, knowing we belonged here.

Wounded Healers, Shamans, Gardeners of Consciousness, Poets … Brave and Foolhardy Journeyers Into the Unapproved and Hidden

Traditionally associated with intoxicants and with the bacchanalian, centaurs can see into other realities, nonordinary ones. They are open to altered states of consciousness. They are not averse to looking into their deeper natures, their “undersides,” their unconscious; that is how they came to be one with Nature in the first place.

Indeed, Chiron is also known as the wounded healer and is associated with the shamanic. Being, like Chiron, healers, centaurs are skilled in both physical and mental health. Thus they are wholistic and psychotherapeutical. They are philosophical. Plato was one. Walt Whitman was one. They are poetic.

Mystics, Scapegoats, Natural … A-mused and A-musing Not Deluded and A-mazed

They are scapegoated, like Chiron was, for the sins of society, and in modern times they have scornfully been referred to as “hippies” and “beatniks” — but they include the bohemian types of all times. Being rooted in a more fundamental nature or reality they are mystic. Jesus was one. Following a “different drummer,” as it were, they are the Wayseers.

Connected to the real source of truth in Nature and the Divine, they are in touch with their muse … and are both a-mused and a-musing…but they are not into the maze of culture, the matrix, they are not fooled or a-mazed.

The Centaur is completely in tune with her and his planetmate-nature, the Divine and Natural order—as in the Jungian and mystic understandings of individuation as being a re-uniting with a fundamental and earlier reality — returning home, humble and prodigal-son like.

The Opposite of Ordinary Folks…Who Build Stairways to Heaven and Towers to Their Vanity

This is the opposite of most folks who spend their lives seeking to vainly build stairways to heaven, Towers of Babel to the divine, to be muscular Nietzchian supermen, or to struggle up Wilberian ladder-style paths for imaginary achievements and to an understandably elusive “enlightenment.”

We Are the Centaurs, My Friends

This self-sacrificing tendency in humans I will be talking about at length at the end of this book where I point out how we need to stop acting out and begin taking back the projections we make onto the Unknown and thereby stop the Promethean cycles of suffering going on for millennia.  We need to, like Chiron, take upon ourselves the “sins of the fathers.” As Tom Waits sang it, “I’m gonna take the sins of my father (mother, brother, sister), down to the pond…I’m gonna wash them.”

Exactly that. We must make the heroic sacrifice of taking inside ourselves those perennial urges to act out on others what was done to us. In environmental terms we must make the sacrifices of lowering our standard of living and cutting back on the lavish appetites and lazy indulgences fed by excessive technology, cultural trinkets, and superfluous commercialism, which other generations were allowed to take to the limits of their times. For if we do not, then there will be very little left for future generations—assuming there’ll be any.

These cultural “achievements” — wrought of burning of fossil fuels, release of fiery energy from the atom, and despoiling of natural resources — all of them in some way rooted in the theft of fire long ago, which started it all, must be let go of. We must refrain from being driven by these addictions and substitutes for actual felt experience, take the “fire” within instead of burning it up without. So in physical terms we must bring those excessive urges home within ourselves and ground them in Nature, bring them back into our physical bodies, we must be Centaurs. And within our bodies experience the discomfort of such a monumental millennial turnabout.

So, no. This is not easy or comfortable.

No. Not easy or comfortable.

Real Hope Lies in Pandora’s Jar and Return of the Centaur … Since the Last Time Was 1961, It’s None Too Soon 

Open the Jar, Pandora, and Return of The Centaur … Wherein Lies Real Hope

Open the Jar, Pandora

In psychological terms, real change lies in peering deep into the Pandora’s jar of the unconscious to recover the real hope that is there. Remember, Zeus punished humanity for Prometheus’s theft by sending Pandora. Pandora opened the jar she was told never to look into—another broken law of the Divine, like that of Eve and Prometheus—and out came all the ailments that now plague humankind. It is said Pandora tried to close it but “it was too late.” Still, the legend tells us what was left inside was hope.

I don’t think you have a better description of the way most folks, including most psychologists, handle the discomfort of early pain: They can’t help but be affected by it…some of it does “leak out.” But they expend all kinds of efforts toward bottling it up as much as possible, suppressing, repressing, using all kinds of defenses—including what mainstream psychotherapists call “healthy” ones.

Well, There’s No Sense Going Half Way!

Yet I can tell you as a primal therapist, breathworker, and primal person that is the exact wrong thing to do. From the perspective of deep experiential psychotherapy and Holotropic Breathwork  one must open the “jar” all the way up. One must surrender to the discomfort within—not acting it out but acting it in…or rather, surrendering to the feelings that come up and expressing them (opening the jar wide).

The jar is the personal unconscious, and what we find is that the only answer to all these troubles is to look deeply into them; for when we do we find the real hope that lies beneath the pain. Or as I have phrased it, there comes a time when one feels through the “negative grids” (the “pain grids”) to the “positive grids” (the “joy grids”). Therein is the hope.

What we find is that when one has faced and integrated perinatal pain, then the blissful experiences from earlier in womb time opens up. In Grof’s terms referred to earlier in this book, when one allows oneself to experience the depression of BPM II (constricted womb) and the tribulations of BPM III (birth itself), then one is open to the euphoria of BPM I (early womb experience). Rather than seeing through a veil of perinatal negativity and illusion and acting out from the unreal self or ego, one is getting closer to one’s real self as a positive, truly creative being, .

This is not a fleeting experience, for it allows a completely new perception on one’s life, vastly different from what one normally thinks. One has access to positive patterns laid down at earlier and more fundamental times in one’s life. One can build a life that works, for once. One can make choices that trigger one into happiness, not ones that are self-destructive and conducive to unhappiness.

This is true in therapy and on the spiritual path but also in ordinary life. For any time one confronts or looks deeply into one’s discomforts there is a time when there is release from it, there is a time when one is in a better place for having faced it. As the Tao symbol indicates, there is a seed of light in the depths of darkness.

Additionally I can tell you that opening up even more to the reality of consciousness, as opposed to constructing egoic “castles in the sky,” leads to uncovering the “spiritual grids” beyond even the “positive grids.” That is when we go beyond even hope to actual redemption, re-union with estranged divinity, faith, empathy, love, and finally compassion. And that is when we as Centaurs go from being just wounded and suffering to being, like Chiron, healers…and caring teachers.

So, for centaurs, for those who take this path, it is more depressive than aggressive. And up to the euphoric culmination I described above, it is painful and ongoing as well, just as Chiron’s wound was incurable and tormenting. These become the shamans and wounded healers, like Chiron, throwing themselves into the fire, rather than shooting fire all about themselves at others. Centauric folks take on the suffering lest they end up being like all those before them who sheepishly and selfishly passed the burden down.

Return of the Centaur

In another part of this book I point out how there are, beginning with the Sixties, now generations who are doing just that—working out these pains, not acting them out.

I just recently delineated the way these primal pains are emerging and how they are being worked through, not acted out, in younger generations and in alternative, rock music, and therapeutic cultures for a number of decades now.

Finally, in a related work of mine, Culture War, Class War, I have written how the Sixties Generation is a centaur generation and how the millennial generation is continuing that tradition. I’ve pointed out Sixties folk are centauric in standing upon (sitting upon) the achievements of previous generations but also reversing the perverse Promethean human direction by reuniting with our rootedness in Nature.

Chiron Return…Every Fifty-One Years

This humble and correct primal returning has been done, is continuing to be done, and will keep on being done as the Sixties generation continues working out its power struggle at the top, but now aided by a Millennial generation—comprised mainly of their daughters and sons — who are rather centaur-like themselves … as this book and the related works continue to show.

And who, because of this, following different stars grounded in realities both deeper and higher, they boldly confront their societies, bringing about change, creating rapid evolution, revolution; and in doing this they have already created an Arab Spring and an Occupy Wall Street movement. They will bring about profound change in that they are opposed to the powers that be, just as their parents were opposed to the “establishment” of their day and created a “counter” culture.

The Chiron cycle is fifty-one years, meaning the last time we had energies like we do now in 2012 was in 1961. If you lived through or know about that decade, you know that 1961 through 1971 were among the most transformative, progressive, and revolutionary years in the history of the world…and it indeed was a worldwide phenomenon. Considering the dire developments and challenges being laid at our feet, as this book has been laying them out…and requiring as much social but personal change as well…the centaurs couldn’t have returned any too soon.

How We Look to the Gods and Prometheus Redux … Building More Nukes and Drilling More Holes – Icarus Keeps Flapping and the Gods Can’t Stop Laughing

View From the Heavens and Prometheus Redux … Icarus Is Flapping and the Gods Are Laughing as We Build Nukes and Drill Holes

Prometheus Redux

Before leaving Prometheus for good, let us consider some other interesting aspects of its rendering that provide insight into this book’s exploration of the deepest psychological—perinatal—roots of our apocalypse now:

There are four legends of the Prometheus myth—all of them are reflected, coincidentally, in themes in this and its related books, Culture War, Class War and The Great Reveal. They are

According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.

“Betraying the secrets of gods to men” includes the biggest divine prerogative—dominion over death. Also, this implies that humans were given the forbidden knowledge which humans are incapable of controlling, which I dealt with at length in a previous section, using as modern examples our stirring up the forces of the atom and the secrets of the DNA.

According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

One of the results of Promethean hubris was control of Nature but therein also detachment from Nature. As I have been showing, our birth pain led us to the Promethean mistake of fire and meat. Both of these contribute to what I have called the thingification of humans, especially in modern/postmodern times. By that I mean our extraordinary pain coming into the world and then in general in life causes us to split off from the feelings in our bodies. We objectify all of Nature: We remove all its feeling and spiritual components and leave Things as the only reality, including ourselves and other humans. We “thingify” our babies; and as adults we embrace thingification (repression, detachment, estrangement, suppression, alienation) as a way of defending against this pain.

According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.

This separation from the pain creates the personal unconscious. But as a species, we have created a collective unconscious—what I have called the Unapproved and Hidden of all cultures. And as I have said, the truth became increasingly invisible over time…our real nature, what we did, and the true cost of our estrangement became ever more buried, obscure…eventually unknowable.

According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

This refers to what happens when we face these uncomfortable truths and resolve them. Ultimately we leave behind these dramas when we have dealt with them so much they no longer have any charge for us… in other words, they become boring… we “weary.” The patterns are still there, but they contain no charge for us.

So the first legend asserts that we are damaged and pained as karmic retribution for our defiance of Nature. And in these last three legends we have the ways we have reacted to the Promethean wound within us: ”We become unfeeling, detached, rock-like. We become one with our defenses, thingified.

The second says that we repress this information and it becomes increasingly hidden (“forgotten”) as our species has “evolved,” but also individually, as we get older in life. This is generally what is done with the Promethean wound of birth pain. The third says that some of us face and deal with the wounds. Eventually they are gone beyond, truly gone beyond, as eventually all the charge on them disappears, they have no more control over us or pull on us, as we just naturally weary of them…they dissipate.

There remains the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.^[28]

Finally, inexplicable substratum of truth is a pretty damn good description of the Unapproved and Hidden … also known as the Collective Unconscious… But in my rendering of it—dealing with our species unconscious, not just personal, “racial,” societal, or cultural—it contains much more than Jung imagined and because of that reverses many of the interpretations and meanings arising from it from what the Jungians, Joseph Campbell, or Freud understood.

Finally – Futility… The Gods Are Laughing at Us

One final message can be taken from these ancient minings of unconscious Truth which is also a commentary on our current mainstream reactions to the dire developments which are now reaching an apocalyptic peak:

Icarus Flapping – LOL

In the Icarus myth, “Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms.” I don’t think there is a better image for the way we look in our actions in the face of apocalypse. The gods, aliens, Titans, angels, and the planetmates must be laughing their asses off at the sight of humans continued “flapping” about with ever more technology, pushing ever forward into the face of doom and apocalypse—the sun, the fire for Icarus—even as the Earth below us continues to fail, disintegrate, get polluted and poisoned, and no longer support our continued hubris.

We’re Falling and We Can’t Get Up

Oh, yes, we’ve started the Icarus fall…our wings of technology are “melting”—literally in the case of Fukushima—but ever faster we “flap”—seeking to build more nuclear plants, hiding from the populace the extinction level events that are happening RIGHT NOW at Fukushima, seeking to drill ever more even with the BP spill clear as can be in the rear view mirror, lining the Koch Brothers pockets in touting the benefits of coal as an energy source, melting the rocks around natural gas so that our tap water catches fire and poisons folks who drink it, and so much more. So, yes, even more furiously we flap, the harder for every increase in our fall.

We furiously pick up litter as our organs rot from radiation poisoning. Oh, yes, we’ll die. But where we fall it will be tidy. We register voters and sign petitions as our organs rot from radiation poisoning. Oh, yes, we’ll die. But we’ll all be able to vote.  [Footnote 1]

View From the Edge

We’ve had a long journey through the world of ancient myths and prehistory in delving into the way our prenatal state of oxygen insufficiency has pushed us to make fire and polluted environments attractive to us. We’ve seen how these early pushes have set us apart from all other species and placed us on an inexorable slide—which we in good time embraced and claimed as a goal and achievement even—to the edge of an apocalyptic abyss.

Next we look at how this unconscious state of an Oliver Twist style of oxygen deprivation affects us politically and socially…no matter any conscious or moral rearranging of “furniture” on the decks of our individual Titanics.

Continue with Prenatal Hunger Games and “Blood Wars”: The Fetal Fight About “Pure Blood” We Act Out in Politics, War, and Oppression … Class War, Culture War, Revolution….

Return to Will “Progress of Man” Be Humanity’s Epitaph? Apocalyptic Foretellings Hidden in Myth and a Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Ecocide

Footnote

1.  Every time I look at this, It looks worse than I thought. This one makes me think there’s no way any of us will survive this. And if we do, then our children won’t. It’s that bad. And what pisses me off is that progressives want to poo-poo this.

Continue with Prenatal Hunger Games and “Blood Wars”: The Fetal Fight About “Pure Blood” We Act Out in Politics, War, and Oppression … Class War, Culture War, Revolution….

Return to Will “Progress of Man” Be Humanity’s Epitaph? Apocalyptic Foretellings Hidden in Myth and a Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Ecocide

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Prenatal Imprints of “Human Nature”: Four Programs of Human Personality Are Written Into Us in the Womb

Four Earliest Roots of War, Bigotry, Capitalism, and Pollution: Blueprints of Human Nature and Prenatal Personalities … Profound Sculpting of Who We Are Occurs at a Time We Cannot See

Wounded Deer and Centaurs, Chapter Four: Prenatal Imprints of Our Unnatural Self

The Perinatal Pulls of Pollution: Air Pollution and Fetal Oxygen Starvation

Increased Carbon Dioxide, But Also Decreased Oxygen

One overlooked, but hugely pervasive perinatal element of these strange days is connected to the increasing carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere called “the greenhouse effect” which occurs alongside the curiously overlooked yet necessarily corresponding decreases in oxygen levels. There is increasingly less oxygen as we use it up burning carbon-based fossil fuels and making carbon dioxide. [Footnote 1]

We have more carbon dioxide for that reason and also because we are stupidly destroying the Earth’s mechanisms for turning that carbon dioxide back into oxygen…forests and ocean plankton, for example. This increased carbon dioxide is called “the greenhouse effect.” While this has been looked at from the perspective of it creating global warming and climate change, there are even stronger corporate (profit-motivated) as well as personal psychological reasons why we do not look at its most immediate effect on humans—the amount of oxygen we get from the air we breathe. We will steal at least a brief glance into some psychological reasons now and while we are at it uncover rich veins of understanding of and possible solutions for not only our current environmental problems but certain political and social dilemmas which we will find are operating dialectically with them. For there are provocative and profound influences from our experiences in the late stages of our womb life on the kaleidoscope of our current postmodern lives.

Air Pollution Bring Up in Us Uncomfortable Feelings From Our Births

For the increased carbon dioxide and reduced oxygen of the globe is analogous to the situation of “fetal malnutrition,” described by Briend and DeMause, that occurs prior to birth, and which is the basis for DeMause’s explanation of poisonous placenta symbolism. Keep in mind in particular that we experience this reduction in oxygen and increase in carbon dioxide in the form of air pollution, which is most pronounced in larger cities. [Footnote 2]

The Perinatal Pushes on Human Nature

Bipedalism Causes Birth Pain

But let’s back up a bit and put this in context. Because humans stand upright—are bipedal—in the latest stages of gestation/pregnancy the weight of the fetus, now nearly at its largest, presses upon the arteries feeding the placenta and bringing oxygen to the unborn child. Of course this is most pronounced when the mother is standing, as the fetus weighs down upon arteries between itself and the bones of the pelvis. Reduced blood and oxygen means the fetus is not getting as much oxygen as it wants and could use. The fetus cannot gasp for breath but one can imagine it having a similar feeling…recall the sensation of holding one’s breath under water.

Birth Pain Makes Humans Out of Planetmates

This is an uncomfortable situation for the fetus which goes on for a long time and gives rise to many of our adult feelings of claustrophobia and entrapment, depression, no-exit hopelessness.This is one of those specific birth traumas we humans have acquired because of becoming bipedal that other species, our planetmates, do not have. It makes us different and sets us apart from all other species in ways that are not often positive or beneficial, however human. It is something that is crucial to the understandings I bring forth in my book, The Great Reveal (See “Bipedalism and Birth Pain“).

Four Blueprints of Human Consciousness Are Written in the Womb

Looking more closely at it, there are four major feeling constellations involved in this late gestation discomfort. They, along with other imprints from our prenatal and perinatal experiences, are integral parts of the foundation of our humanness—that part which is normally called “human nature” and is considered to have a basis that is genetic only.

These Aspects of Late Gestation Pain—Crowded, Gasping, Poisoned, Dirty —Are Important Molds For Human Nature, Which Scientists Have Heretofore Naively Labeled Genetic

It is a joke to think that just because a trait exists in humans at the time of birth that it is rooted in our DNA alone. That thinking is as archaic as flat earth theories became after the heliocentric revolution. For there are a full nine months of individual experience prior to birth that, being the earliest influences on all experiences and perceptions after them, are far more important in determining who we become and how we act later on than anything that happens to us after birth, even if it also occurs to us early on, as in infancy or childhood. It is wholesale naïve and rather quaint that esteemed scientists and intelligent lay folk would subscribe to the idea that just because one cannot see something happening with one’s eyes, it doesn’t have observable consequences. By that reasoning, we would never attribute causation to molecular events and would have no science of chemistry.

So, no, there are profound imprints on the way we think, view and interpret our experience, view the world, and act in relation to ourselves, others, and the world, which are stamped upon our psyche by our earliest experiences. For now let us look at the provocative and profound influences from our experiences in the late stages of our womb life. They are especially deep and far-reaching molds for all later experience because they are, in general, the most painful, uncomfortable, and overwhelming experiences we have in the entire first nine months of our physical existence.

Four Blueprints of “Human Nature”

These imprints on our psyche caused by uncomfortable experiences in late gestation that are molds for and roots of a great deal of the later experience and behavior of humans can be put in four categories:

Crowded … “Back Off!”

First, we experience crowded, restricted conditions in the womb as we get larger and no longer enjoy the blissful uninhibited freedom of the previous time of our short lives.

I discussed in a previous section how we manifest this through overpopulation and then react to or run away from those feelings through activities like swimming and dancing. For now, suffice it to say we act this out as nations through wars in general (pushing back “lines” of the enemy), especially wars of “expansion.” Environmentally, we feel the need to push back and pave over Nature all we can. We’ll get more into these sorts of things soon.

Stifled… Gasping … “They’re Sucking the Very ‘Life Blood’ Out of Us!”

Second, because of pressure on arteries we experience a reduced blood flow and get less oxygen, therefore we experience “stuffiness,” suffocating feelings, feelings of need, want, and lack…and deprivation.

Later in life as individuals we are driven to gobbling up more resources than we need—greed. As nations we are compelled to exploit resources from those conquered territories we “expanded” into—colonialism and imperialism. It is fascinating how we act this out on both sides of class war and revolution also; that part is coming up soon. For now I just want to give you an idea of the critical importance of the understandings just ahead.

Disgusted… Poisoned … “Don’t Feed Me That Bullcrap!”

Third, the blood we do receive is not as good as it was, so we feel what we do get is “poisonous”…deficient, unhealthy, harmful…even deadly and threatening as in the feeling we might be being poisoned to death. It is “bad blood.” This sounds like the deprivation/gasping feelings, but though it is related it has a different quality: The difference is between gasping for breath as in being held under water and feeling one will die for lack of oxygen, versus being in a gas chamber and feeling that the air we breathe is foul, unhealthy, smelly…and is deadly because of its toxicity. They are considerably different in that in one we feel we will die for lack of resources—the outside is withholding something we need. In the other the outside very much is impinging on one but in a bad way; it is forcing itself on us, and it is felt as an assault.

This crops up later…these feelings have fractals at all levels…as the difference between a child being hurt because he or she is ignored, abandoned, unloved, or left alone versus a child getting “attention” but in the form of assault, abuse, violence, sexual assault. The first is a lack of something; the other is an unwanted getting of the opposite of what one wants/needs. It is the difference between being “starved” for knowledge and being “fed” propaganda, not the “pure” truth.

An interesting aside and look forward into what is coming up is that it is because the Nazis in particular were so caught up in this kind of “bad blood” matrix of feelings in the policies they carried out that they even created the manner of death for Jews that they did—gas chambers. In other words, because they felt the “blood” (money) they were receiving was “poisoned” (tainted, manipulated) by the Jews, it made the most perfect sense then, when it occurred to them, to fight back against these sources of “tainted blood” (Jews) by forcing “tainted blood” into them also, until they died (gas chambers). [Footnote 3]

Irritated… Dirty … “Eeew!”

Fourth, there are feelings caused by the fact that the decreased blood flow caused by pressure on the arteries providing blood to the placenta means that there will be reduced efficiency in removing the byproducts of oxygen combustion by the fetus. These are waste products or toxins of the biochemical process of food conversion into energy that are normally removed by the blood through the veins…to be expelled eventually one way or another back into the environment.

So there will be a backflow caused by the reduced blood flow, and the fetus experiences a buildup of toxins…think stuck in a traffic jam and breathing in the exhausts of all the vehicles around…any wonder road rage? The prenate feels increased “yuckiness” in its environment that is greater than anything experienced previously. Oh, the garbage man still comes to take out the trash…but think of it as the garbage man coming less often and one still puts out the garbage just as frequently. Imagine how one feels watching from one’s window as it piles up on the sidewalk. Perhaps you lived in New York during the huge garbage strike; you’d have an even better idea.

So, finally, there is the pain and discomfort of being surrounded by these toxins, forced to live in an environment that is felt to be dirty, “creepy,” ugly, toxic, threatening, filthy, slimy, yucky. And again this is related to the previous feeling complex but is different. For one can be forced to take in something noxious, or one can be immersed in something that is painful or uncomfortable like a bath that is too hot. In other words, this pain is on the surface of the body, not being forced inside, like the other.

How this noxious environment feels to the fetus can be that of irritation, uncomfortable heat, burning, and feelings of threat to one’s survival—thus alarm and panic—which those outside “impositions” bring up in a fetus. Historically this has been acted out on Jews and witches: They were placed like wood in heaps and burned to get rid of them as the threat they were felt to be. As in the gas chamber example, they perpetrated on the victim the sort of suffering the murderers felt was actually coming at them…witches and Jews were seen as a source of burning…if nothing else in that they could be responsible for one burning forever in hell.

And parts of this complex later on can be those of annoyance, yuckiness, being continually distracted by sensations (ADD), creepiness, dirtiness.

We feel bugged, irritated. We overkill pests and overclean our houses, using an abundance of toxic “product” which only adds to the overall toxicity of our environment. This is the perinatal underpinnings of what Freud called anal compulsion. It actually leads to us employing strict toilet-training, if you think about it.

We feel “imposed on” by others, especially “visitors” who come to our “house.” We feel surrounded by “dirty” hippies… Jews… blacks… immigrants…. You name it.

Roots of War, Bigotry, Pollution….

These feeling complexes sculpted by our early, uniquely human, prenatal discomfort and pain mold our politics, shape our wars and conflicts, determine how we treat the environment, and color how we see and treat each other. We will now deal with each of these in turn and discuss the way we act them out as adults politically, environmentally, and interpersonally.

Crowdedness, Packed Together “Like Sardines”

Can’t Move Freely – “Back Off!”…Cast Out of Heaven, Driven Out of Eden

The primary thing fetuses experience in the final stages of gestation is compression, crowdedness. We can no longer move in an uninhibited way. As we get increasingly larger, the womb seems to press in us, as prenates, from all sides, restricting our movements, suppressing our freedom. It “won’t let us do what we want to do.” I discussed this the previous chapter and how we manifest it through overpopulation.

This is quite a contrast, ever more stark and blatant as we get closer to actual birth, to the earlier euphoric feelings of all the rest of our lives at that point—that is to say, the previous seven-eight months of our lives since conception. This oppression from an an overwhelming and pervasive Other is shockingly different from the unrestrained movement of the not long ago, with its gravity-free ecstasy, and blissful unity with an Everything which was not at all threatening but just the opposite: supremely helpful, nurturing, and kind in the most perfect way. We remember the previous “golden age” and its easy, “heavenly” existence. This new existence feels like we have been driven out of Eden, cast out of heaven, and now must struggle and earn survival through the “sweat of one’s brow.”

Reactions – Swimming, Dancing, Mosh Pits, Religious Fantasy

I mentioned previously how our activities like gymnastics, flying, and skydiving are reactions to these uncomfortable feelings; they are attempts to run away from this discomfort as we continue to re-experience it as adults. I explored how we re-create and re-stimulate those blissful feelings in us through adult experiences of weightlessness, swimming, dancing, surfing, hot tubbing. I need to add loving sexuality to that—particularly in its re-stimulating blissful memories of re-union with an Other who is all-accepting, all-embracing, and eminently kind. I have explored how we seek resolution of these uncomfortable feelings through mosh pit “rebirthing” and warm water “rebirthing.” I need to add to that the seduction of the experience of being religiously “reborn.” [Footnote 4]

I wish to add now, since it becomes especially relevant to what follows from here on, the specifically environmental and especially political aspects and act outs of these early uncomfortable feelings.

Politically, As Nations – Wars of “Expansion”

Politically, as adults we feel we need to push back “lines” of the enemy, to fight off “oppression” (compression), to go to war. We act this out as nations through wars of “expansion” and through “conquering” of new territories…through imperialism. We are always pushing back lines of encroachment from some “enemy”…creating and then railing against the opposition on these “front lines.”

We re-create the switch we experienced in the womb from easy existence to struggle and discomfort by “spoiling” our peace and going to war. No, it is not smart; but it is what we are driven to do because of these patterns from our earliest experience.

The point of knowing all this…the reason why I am writing this and sharing this information…is because knowledge of these irrational tendencies is the most important and necessary step in discontinuing them. We can only have hope for our children in going beyond these tendencies in us of tens of thousands of years and longer through actually facing and coming to terms with the absurdity of our “normal human” pursuits…like war.

Environmentally – “We Paved Paradise; Put Up a Parking Lot”

We act out these same feelings just as illogically and self-destructively in our behavior in regards to the environment. Remember that, as prenates, the “environment” then was felt to be encroaching and blocking our easy movement. So, with these feelings now deeply ingrained in us as something we call “human nature” we hack back at actual Nature and push it all away to “make room”…excessive room…for ourselves…while conversely we make sure we will continue to re-stimulate these feelings through overpopulation, city life, dense and crowded neighborhoods, and traffic jams. [Footnote 5]

We put ourselves in human zoos and struggle with our neighbors over “boundary lines” and where fences should actually be placed…we gather on freeways with their traffic jams and experience “road rage” at the same time as fighting back against the feelings these situations create through inane environmental undertakings: We remove and destroy all trees to make an empty space, though we add trees after the fact. Doesn’t that strike you as a bit queer?

Environmentally, we destroy forests, we pave over Nature so that we can have huge houses and lawns (the bigger the better…we want more “womb”) and speed around (the faster and more nimbly the better) uninhibitedly in our cars (auto-mobile…free moving self…part of self capable of moving freely)… we cut off others in traffic and feel trapped (encroached upon, constrained or suppressed) by drivers that cut us off and don’t let us “in” (move freely)…thus road rage

Conversely, we take solace in speeding (though we risk tickets) and we take pleasure in watching racing and race car drivers and stunt drivers; also airplane and jet stunts and air shows and fighter pilots and jets.

Next: Our Repetitive Struggles to “Breathe Free”

We will continue looking at the ways we act out our early imprints and how we can actually stop continuing this self-destruction which has now reached an apocalyptic peak. But now let’s turn to another terrifying feeling we carry over in us from that hellish time as prenates, which we act out, politically and environmentally, in disastrous ways. We look now at the horrifying feelings of oxygen starvation—gasping, suffocating, and feeling stifled—and the crazy things we do to “breathe free” again.

“Please, Sir, Might I Have Some More?”—The Psychological and Economic Repercussions of Fetal Malnutrition

There are four important qualities of pain involved in late stage gestation. One has to do with being crowded and unable to move freely. The other three come under the category of fetal malnutrition: (1) You get less oxygen because of the reduced blood flow in late pregnancy; you experience lack of abundance and feelings of deprivation, impoverishment, “starvation.” (2) With the reduction of blood, you get a reduction in nutrients and insufficient removal of toxins so that the blood coming into and flowing through you is not felt to be as “pure”; you experience being poisoned, “infected”…prenatal “disgust.” (3) Finally, you experience a buildup of toxins in your placental environment as the reduced blood flow does not remove toxins as efficiently as it previously did; you feel irritated, bugged, “dirty”…prenatally imposed upon by the outside world.

Oxygen Starvation

So there’s crowdedness in the late stages of womb life, increasing up to the time of actual birth. But there’s the experience directly related to the fetal malnutrition—the increased pressure on arteries to the placenta which reduces blood flow hence the amount of oxygen the prenate receives—that occurs at that time. One feels “pressured” and “overwhelmed” as one becomes larger in the womb; but one also experiences not getting enough oxygen—the simmering panic of near drowning.

We Feel Recurrently Pressured, Overwhelmed, and Panicked

So there’s not moving; but there is also suffocation of sorts…they are related, but very different experiential constellations, both of which profoundly affect how humans will see their lives ever after … both experiences skewing our ability to ever see reality accurately—clear and “unfiltered.” Because of the distinctly different experiences humans have coming into the world—caused by our uprightness, our bipedalism—we are, unlike any other species, riddled with bouts of feeling “pressured” by events, “overwhelmed” by circumstances, and panicked by thoughts of suffocating for lack of vital resources—food, air, land, water, touch, interpersonal contact, tribal/societal belongingness.

The Struggles We Create to “Breathe Free”

We spend much of our lives struggling to “breathe freely,” to “get on top of things,” to “get out from under,” to “be ahead of the pack,” because of this time in late gestation when we felt stifled and in danger of dying lest our oxygen/blood supply be completely “dried up.” We cannot enjoy the blessings of the moment, for we are forever looking forward, fending off and steeling ourselves for possible unpleasantness in the future.

The lesson to be taken from this is not that our early life mirrors our adult, “real” lives. Something more important is being said: Having our lives suffused with these feelings is not necessary, and the perceptions and deductions one makes from them are not instructive … they are wrong interpretations of what is going on; they are “unreal” … when we once again experience them as adults.

These feelings are rooted in forgotten memories, imprints we carry from early experience, and they are not rooted in actual circumstances. Sure, we create a reality that matches these feelings, but the feelings are there first. And if we had less of these feelings, we would less often create situations that mirrored them.

Gasping

The feeling we carry with us, below the surface in life, is of not being able to breathe, to get enough air…as I have said it is like the discomfort we feel holding our breath under water. We have a simmering panic of “drowning”…of our oxygen supply being “cut off”…which is kept constantly in check.

As adults our experience is colored through with that feeling in ways so subtle we can no longer tease it out even if we wanted to…that is, unless we go through deep experiential psychotherapy, wherein we discover this to be the case. But the vast majority of us live our lives with a barely-kept-in-check panic that we will at some point be cut off from something that we need to survive—food, water, air, other people…and their concomitants—land, transportation, money, family, and so on.

The Oliver Twist Economies We Insist On…”Please, Sir, May I Have Some More?”

We act out these fears through excessive control of and storage of all these resources and through controlling and sycophantic behavior toward others in order to try to ensure a steady supply of vital resources.

Prenatal Feudalism

Yet even as we wrap up so much of our time and energy in these pursuits, we make sure we will feel no relief from their underlying uncomfortable feelings…as in every other of these feelings, we both seek relief from them and at the same time create the circumstances that give rise to them. In early economic systems, such as a “strong man” economy and feudalism, there is a simplified framework of control-conformity, dominance-sycophancy.

Prenatal Capitalism

But in “evolved” economic systems, we make certain we will not feel relief from the threat of lack (oxygen starvation/ fetal malnutrition): For we insist on a “dog eat dog” competitive system like capitalism, with its underlying Dickensian threat of an Oliver Twist state of deprivation—We get enough to survive, but it is not free and easy and leaves us always a little starved, wanting “some more.” We find all kinds of rationalizations for not adopting a more prosperous, more egalitarian, more cooperative, less competitive, and less stressful economic style as exemplified by socialism, for example.

Prenatal Socialism

Of course, there are societies who have done this historically — many indigenous cultures operate harmoniously this way; and there are societies and cultures that are attempting to create such a workable harmonious system today. But there are reasons why we refrain from wholesale adoption of such easier existences and why we insist on our economic struggles not being alleviated. For to adopt a cooperative socialist framework for meeting our actual needs would be akin to re-creating the earlier style of existence in the womb that was easy and free…the one that was Edenal…in harmony with Reality and Nature.

We’re the Ones Who Block a Return to Eden

That would be smart, of course. But as always we insist on our pains; we are forever doomed to creating situations that confront us with their reality unless or until we actually face and resolve them . So, while we are capable of living in more enlightened styles, we are for the most part going to ensure our existence in a state of struggle…we are the ones who put the angels to guard the gates of Eden.

Coming Up, Why We Steal Fire

In the next chapter we will look more closely at how we re-create our early pain in one specific area that has dire significance today, for it concerns what we are doing to our atmosphere. We are driven to want to suffocate ourselves, and we will see how this is rooted in our particular human beginnings, making us the one and only species on the entire planet that is so enamored of making fire. For from the earliest campfires to the nuclear power plants of today, humans are seen to like to burn things. What we discover is there are reasons, deeply rooted in our psyche, that would make us the penultimate Prometheans of Earth.

Continue with Global Oxygen Loss, Fire, and Prenatal Oxygen Hunger: Why Humans Are So Big on Burning, So Reckless About Polluting … Why We’re Globally Suffocating Ourselves

Return to The Primal Screen: The Doors of Perception Stormed and The Perinatal Rising — A Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life

Footnotes

1. This obvious though insistently overlooked fact has scientific support, of course:

According to a study conducted by scientists from the Scripps Institute there is less oxygen in the atmosphere today than there used to be. The ongoing study, which accumulated and interpreted data from NOAA monitoring stations all over the world, has been running from 1989 to the present. It monitored both the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the decline in oxygen. The conclusion of that 20 year study is that, as carbon dioxide (produced primarily by burning fossil fuels) accumulates in the atmosphere, available oxygen is decreasing.

Carbon dioxide seems to be almost the total focus of attention in the climate change model as it exists today. After reviewing the results of this study and talking with Dr. Ralph Keeling (one of the lead scientists on the study), it seemed to me that the consequences of atmospheric oxygen depletion should be included in any discussion of atmospheric change….

Read more: “Atmospheric Oxygen Levels Fall as Carbon Dioxide Rises” http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/atmospheric-oxygen-levels-fall-as-carbon/#ixzz1ru2460V8

2. A. Briend, “Fetal Malnutrition: The Price of Upright Posture?” British Medical Journal 2 (1979): 317-319.

3. It would be interesting to find out what in particular was the cause of such inordinate fixation on this aspect of early prenatal pain…. For example, did Germans have more of this kind of pain as fetuses because German women did much more standing…being hard workers, perhaps…in the late stages of pregnancy than others? Such are the kinds of things that can make such differences.

And if women doing standing work right up to the time of birth correlates with excessive fetal malnutrition, what of women in primitive agrarian cultures working—in the fields or wherever—until practically the time of birth? Does this have anything to do with the increase in war and conflicts we observe in agrarian cultures over nomadic ones?… is there a corresponding increase in psychosis, ritual, and superstition…scapegoating and sacrifice…as, for example, with the Mayan and pre-Colombian New World cultures? No doubt there are many factors involved in these things, but are these prenatal contributing factors some important overlooked ones? If so, how important?

4. I differentiate between legitimate attempts at birth pain resolution—primal therapy, holotropic and other breathwork, water and breath “rebirthing”/vivation, and mosh pit “rebirthing”—from false ones like being religiously “reborn” or otherwise experiencing a “second birth” as in some social initiation. In the first instances, there are continual attempts to resolve something that needs such attention and in fact can never be fully resolved. In the second instance, there are actual feelings of rebirth, when one is religiously reborn; it is true. I know. I experienced it as my first experience of rebirth forty-four years ago.

The problem with religious “rebirth” has to do with this idea of trying to recapture ever afterward what is essentially a one-time experience and yet taking steps to insure no further such experiences or transformations will occur. One loses the feeling, feels “sinful” again (see upcoming posts on the BPM II elements of “bad blood” and “dirtiness” or review the overview of this in this chapter) and because one has barely touched it, let alone resolved the pain, needs “saving” over and over again, futilely. The fact that is not really resolved is proven in that the proponents of religious rebirth need to convert others to the experience in order for them to feel they have achieved it; this would not be necessary if one had. Further, the other components of birth pain seem to be more, not less, prevalent after religious “rebirth.” One feels “sinful,” “dirty,” and that others are “dirty,” “defiled,” “filthy,” “unwashed,” “toxic,” “impure,” and more. Again see upcoming chapters for details.

So it is not that religious experiences of being “reborn” are not legitimate and part of a psyche seeking healing and growth. It is that the experience is hung on to, looked back on; one is stuck in it. One says Christ will do it for one (He has died for one’s sins), so one does not have to experience the discomfort of facing these pains and discomforts from the womb oneself. The experience is institutionalized and never experienced again, though one surrounds oneself with true believers affirming the opposite, along with this idea that one does not have to suffer again…Christ has done it for one; or one can confess sins and the priest will take care of it…and so one is distracted from the discomfort that precedes any more growing or being born or transformed any further. As I like to say about such glancing experiences of real truth: Yes, it’s legit. But don’t make a fucking religion out of it.

Worst of all, the institution or social group takes over and restructures one’s self along the lines that will benefit it, not oneself, so one is not reborn into one’s real self but into an inauthentic fabrication benefiting some manipulative social group—Marines, evangelical group, secret society, ethnic group, or simply the normal adult neurosis of one’s culture.

5. As concerns creating the situations that bring up these early discomforts, as in unconsciously being drawn to create traffic jams, notice as I have, when you’re driving, how often folks will have two or more lines to go to, in traffic especially but sometimes in retail establishments as well, and will line up behind each other in one line, foregoing the empty ones. Not everybody does that; but explain the ones creating that line…what is driving them to act like lemmings and feel restrained when they could have it easier? This is not restricted to queues however, as we will see it is a metaphor for human irrationality rooted in these imprints.

Continue with Global Oxygen Loss, Fire, and Prenatal Oxygen Hunger: Why Humans Are So Big on Burning, So Reckless About Polluting … Why We’re Globally Suffocating Ourselves

Return to The Primal Screen: The Doors of Perception Stormed and The Perinatal Rising — A Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life

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The Perinatal Veil: Dangling Above an Abyss and Everyday Rebirthing — The Perinatal Predilections of Everyperson

The Primal Screen: The Doors of Perception Stormed and The Perinatal Rising — A Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life

Wounded Deer and Centaurs, Chapter Three: Twenty-First Century and Its Discontents—The Primal Screen

Dangling Above an Abyss

Beyond the entertainment media, it seems perinatal themes and elements are showing up everywhere else in our surrounding environment and culture. The scenery of our everyday reality consists of pollution of our air, water, and food; threat of death “at any moment,” caused by the knowledge of the power of nuclear weapons; fantasies of apocalypse of all kinds, magnified, perhaps, by the ending of one millennium and the approach of the end of the Mayan calende—including fundamentalist Christian imaginings of an end to human civilization in an apocalyptic “rapture”; New Age fantasies of ecological, spiritual, and social utopias; and so on.

First, let us consider a few of the most blatantly birth-related of the events around us.

The Primal Screen: Aliens … Ooooooooooo … Sca-ry….

Alien abduction stories, while a relatively recent addition to our cultural landscape, are unusual in the rapidity with which they have gained cultural currency and are telling in the extreme fascination the public has with them. They have catapulted more than one show—The X Files being the prime example, of course—to cult-like status. The photo here is a scene after the abduction of Fox Mulder, one of The X-Files main characters.

Fetal Aliens

Yet Alvin Lawson has pointed out how alien abduction stories are replete with perinatal elements: passing through walls, umbilical beams of connection to the “mother ship”—the placenta—either fetal-looking aliens or aliens whose eyes are most prominent and the lower parts of their faces undistinguished—similar to the way a newborn might see an obstetrician wearing a medical mask.

Then of course there are the elements of being medically probed, measured, samples taken from one, and being swooshed from one place to another with no say on one’s part—all remarkably like the experience of a newborn, right out of the womb. [Footnote 1]

Pretty Much

While I do not think that the “alien abduction” phenomenon is just derivative of birth, as Lawson does, I do believe that we perceive these events through a veil of birth trauma, the likes of which the world has never known. My position is explained in the article, “Alien Abductors: Angelic Midwives or Hounds From Hell?“

Mouth Suctioning…”Oh, What Pretty Teeth You Have, My Alien”

An interesting development in the alien face is the “shoved down the throat” thing going on. Similar to the “Jacob’s Ladder” kind of vegetable thrusting out, which was described in the last chapter, it was popularized greatly in the movie, “Alien.”

As a neonate we cannot see the mouths of the masked attendants at our birth. In a traumatic situation, whatever is hidden is more feared than what can be seen. As in anything else, onto the unknown we can project the most magnified versions of our fears. When these images arise in us, then, it makes sense that if the mouth is shown it might be even more frightening than that above the mouth.

So in modern times, for the first time in history, we see something going on where these feelings are symbolized as a ferocious mouth coming out of the mouth. The fact that it appears like something that would gag reveals that this image contains elements of the trauma around ungentle mouth suctioning or clearing as well as the reveal of what might be under the mask of the seeming attacker, the obstetrician. Add lots of teeth and you have the perinatal vagina dentata as well, symbolizing the trauma occurring at birth, when actually emerging from the mother.

The Perinatal Veil: Rock Concerts (For some, ditto)

Lawson has also described perinatal elements in rock concerts. [Footnote 2]

Mosh Wombs

Keep in mind that rock music popularity and concert rituals are world-wide phenomena. Youth from nearly all countries are involved in rock culture. Among other things, Lawson, in his article, refers to placental guitars, umbilical mikes, and youths jumping into mosh pits. Mosh pits suggest birth feelings in that they simulate the crushing in the womb.

At birth our consciousness is filled with the feeling of flesh all around. The world is crushing, heaving, rollicking, bouncing flesh everywhere. During a non-cesarean birth one struggles and moves through this flesh to reach space, air, light…freedom. We re-create this pattern of struggle in order to reach the light, or freedom and space, throughout life. It is obvious that mosh pits are attractive, appealing places to re-create the danger of birth alongside the hope of being “held up,” uplifted, and reborn.

The Doors of Perception…Stormed

We could also mention the loud music, fireworks, and flashing and bright explosions of light at these concerts as perinatal in that they re-create the assault of sensation that occurs to the newly emerged fetus—an assault which in one’s mind is like unto a bomb exploding.

The rock groups and their lyrics themselves are often blatantly perinatal. The most obvious example of this was the group, Nirvana, who came out with a CD titled “In Utero.” The fact that the leader of the group, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide is a strong indication of his closeness and access to his perinatal trauma…as I will soon explain.

Pacifiers, Trolls, and Collective Rebirth

Turning from rock, we see perinatal BPM III elements in the scenery of our everyday lives evident in the rising incidence of violence by children at ever younger ages.

In Europe, as pointed out by Mayr and Boederl, it appears a collective regression to the perinatal is going on, especially among the youth. [Footnote 3]

Collective Navel-Gazing

The forms this “regression” has taken include the surprising popularity of a pop song, sung by a very young child, expressing the difficulties of being a baby; the wearing of baby pacifiers as ornaments as a powerful fashion fad; and being enamored of troll-like dolls, which, according to the authors indicate a “regression to the womb.”

I would say a progression to the womb, by the way….I will soon explain why.

Overpopulation Bring Up in Us Uncomfortable Claustrophobic Feelings From Our Births

We have no-exit, claustrophobic BPM II elements manifesting in the crushing populations in major cities throughout the world. In the later stages of our womb lives, we are increasingly compressed with flesh all around. It is a time of ever more compression, constriction, restriction of movement, suppression of freedom, and suffering, which seems unending. However uncomfortable, we are compelled to manifest similar situations in our later adult lives, as in creating our crowded cities. We then find ourselves triggered into feelings like the ones we had back then.

Though it is irrational to draw suffering to oneself, it makes psychic sense in that consciousness seeks to integrate that which was overwhelming at the time. Think of this as a memory of a dire threat to one’s life that a part of ourselves remembers and tries to remove as a threat to our well-being by drawing it to ourselves repeatedly in life until we have managed to accept it—deal with it, perceive it differently than being a threat—so that we can go beyond it.

For the psyche’s main goal is to grow and heal itself, We see this intention of consciousness manifest in observing the body that Consciousness creates and which we see, which does exactly that growing and healing throughout life. Consciousness seeks, always, greater consciousness. Consciousness seeks unity.

Earlier we looked into how we do that seeking of psychological healing at rock concerts and with their mosh pits, in particular.

So we unconsciously create situations in life that make us feel like we once did but could not deal with at the time. And these feelings of course are uncomfortable…why else could we not deal with them originally? This does not mean that by bringing suffering to us we solve it and accept it. We would not be bringing it repeatedly to us if we successfully got beyond it.

No, we create suffering such as overpopulation because we are NOT dealing with, accepting, resolving, facing the memories that are making us continually manifest situations that should remind us…but don’t. The fact that some people are facing these issues or are on the verge of doing so—those Wounded Deer and Centaurs—is the hopeful message of this work. For this trend is auspicious for solving the biggest problems of all on Earth—those huge environmental and geopolitical woes that are threatening to do us all in. But I digress. Stay tuned, though.

We Manifest the Opposite of Crushing Populations Also — Floating Fantasies and Experiences

BPM I and “Birth” Day Parties

We also manifest the opposite of crushing, claustrophobic feelings for perinatal reasons. Remember that in the early stages of our womb lives, described as BPM I states, we are surrounded by flesh as well but it is not constricting. It is blissful and euphoric. No doubt we create our parties and festivals out of our desires to re-experience such wonderful, comforting feelings. In this situation, one moves freely, with people (flesh) at a comfortable distance. Ideally one wishes to be the “life of the party,” in other words, the reason everyone else is there and the person around which everything else revolves. For such is the case in the early stages of life inside one’s mother, in general. Everything that was going on then around one’s embryonal and fetal selves, biologically speaking for sure, was about oneself; but more: It was about one’s overall happiness and well-being. As they say, It doesn’t get any better than this.

It is understandable that we would create “birth” days and bring people to gather around us at “birth” day parties. Certainly our births were fraught with discomfort and trauma. But we did make it out. And birthdays and their parties are ways we try to remind ourselves that life is not always the discomfort and struggle of birth or the aloneness, separateness immediately after birth—BPM IV—but can be the blissful love surround of unity with one’s mother in the early womb state. We try to cover over the struggles and alienation of life—which we are pushed to unconsciously manifest in our lives because of traumas around the process of coming into the world—with reminders of the most pleasurable time of our lives, our early womb existence—which we intentionally wish to bring about again.

BPM I and Dancing

People go to dance halls to surround themselves with writhing flesh in a way that they themselves can still move freely and well, even acrobatically they’d like to think. We want the freedom of blissful, perfect movement. Perfection and precise movement is sought, along with bliss, for our experience was of a process of biological perfection; precise and perfect beyond anything we would later experience.

It is even better if it defies gravity, as our experience in the womb seemed to. Gymnastics and break dancing are perfect recreations of blissful womb experience. We can move euphorically in three-dimensional space, overcoming the constraints of gravity. This is exactly our experience in early womb life. We both do these activities and are fascinated by others performing them because of early memories of perfection and weightlessness.

BPM I and Weightlessness

Since our early life is felt as weightless, it is also the reason we are enamored of the gravityless experience in space. Not only does our media replay depictions of space walks and astronauts in floating zero-gravity environments, but we are attracted to and seek to re-experience this. I remember a reality show where the participants were rewarded with a weightless experience caused by an aircraft descending from high in the stratosphere at such a speed as to create it.

BPM I and Floating

Plus, we sky-dive. And if we do not, we view with awe and appreciation via the media the videos of the most acrobatic and gravity defying stunts performed in descent by sky-divers. We have created machines where we on the ground can force air up strongly enough so we can experience floating in the air above it similar to sky diving.

I cannot leave the topic of floating without pointing to the most obvious and frequent activity of humans to re-create the weightless experience of BPM I—swimming. Being in water simulates the gravity-free state of our earliest life. It is one of the commonest activities of humans. It is also no coincidence that for a time in the Seventies and Eighties it was popular to try to re-create birth, perinatal experiences by doing warm water “rebirthing” in hot tubs. The water was often made to be body temperature. And, by the way, it did stimulate these early memories in a powerful—though perhaps not optimal—way.

Even our depictions of release from the constraints of physical existence are viewed through this BPM I veil of blissful weightlessnes—whether it is the evangelical Christian idea of “the rapture” or my own depiction of transcendence via a Jacob’s Ladder style of transformation of human consciousness.

The Human Nature That Is Not

Having looked at the the most obvious perinatal propensities of the postmodern person in this chapter, let us go deeper. In the next chapter we look at how imprints from our early life in the womb affect us in many of the currently dire activities we are engaged in, for example, environmental destruction, war, capitalism, and imperialism. We discover that there are prenatal imprints for all these activities, which we normally ascribe to being rooted in our human nature—depicted as one of insatiable acquisition, violence and competitiveness, and desire to control and dominate. The fact that we find that they are in fact not part of our nature but are instead products of some personality forming experiences—however early those experiential events may be—is auspicious in the extreme. In looking at the prenatal blueprints for our self-destructive “human nature,” we learn why we do the things we do and realize we are not doomed to continuing to do them.

Continue with Four Earliest Roots of War, Bigotry, Capitalism, and Pollution: Blueprints of Human Nature and Prenatal Personalities … Profound Sculpting of Who We Are Occurs at a Time We Cannot See

Return to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Being Born … Playing Now, in Theaters Near You!

Footnotes

1. Alvin H. Lawson, “UFO abductions or birth memories?” Fate, 38(3) March 1985, pp. 68-80; and Alvin H. Lawson, “Perinatal imagery in UFO abduction reports.” In T. Verny (ed.): Pre- and Perinatal Psychology: An Introduction. Human Sciences Press, New York, 1987.

2. Alvin H. Lawson, “Placental Guitars, Umbilical Mikes, and the Maternal Rock-Beat: Birth Fantasies and Rock Music Videos.” The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (1994): 335-353.

3. Daniela F. Mayr & Artur R. Boelderl, “The Pacifier Craze: Collective Regression in Europe.” The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (1993): 143-156.

Continue with Four Earliest Roots of War, Bigotry, Capitalism, and Pollution: Blueprints of Human Nature and Prenatal Personalities … Profound Sculpting of Who We Are Occurs at a Time We Cannot See

Return to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Being Born … Playing Now, in Theaters Near You!

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“Don’t Despair. There Are Others Doing It With You, and We’re Here, Too”: Ritual As Shadow Experience, Part Eight — Always Are We Helping You

Sins of the Father and Cosmic Encouragement: What Real and Unritualized Spiritual Experience Looks Like — “But Always Are We Here Helping.”

I wish now to provide another example of real, unritualized spiritual experience … this time from my own life. What these experiences—that of my wife and myself—have in common are these things: (1) they were spontaneous occurrences … in no way planned, anticipated, or orchestrated by self or other; (2) they were growthful … they led to greater awareness, positive change, and in my case I can say for certainty, life transformation; (3) they came about in ways that had a supernatural quality about them, that is, transcending what is thought to be laws of nature or physics, and (4) they were experienced as a gift … a “blessing” — that is, the recipients did not feel they earned or deserved them.
So, the first quality of these experiences corresponds to my referring to them as unritualized; the next three, together, to why I put them in the category of spiritual.

Keeping those characteristics in mind, let us look at what I experienced one night in 1980, which I would remember ever afterward as perhaps the most unusual experience of my life but certainly the most transformative. It is not that I was not already looking in the direction this experience opened to me; it is not that I did not already have the beliefs or values it embodied; it is not that I was completely unaware of the kinds of things about us and our history that it clarified. No, I was fully prepared to receive what I got; spiritual experiences don’t make you something other than what you are … they facilitate you in becoming more of what you are already. So it is that I was confirmed in a path, I was given a profound direction for a lifetime, I was given … shown actually … knowledge about our history and our situation that was beyond anything anyone could know through normal channels of scholarship and research. And I was given reassurance and a promise of support and assistance in my life’s path.

So you might say it was more like an initiation. But unlike normal societal initiations that indoctrinate one into the roles of society and culture, this one initiated me on a singular spiritual path. So it is more like what a Native American might get on a vision quest. The other thing that comes to mind is the word confirmation. Brought up Catholic I once received a sacrament of confirmation. It involved a ritual that I can barely remember anything about. One becomes “confirmed” in the faith. Well this experience was not ritualized yet it definitely confirmed me on a path and with a set of beliefs and way of thinking about things that has stayed with me throughout the thirty-two years since it happened. Also, it is something I can remember in detail, as though it happened days ago … quite unlike the ritual “confirmation” I received at the age of … it was such a nonevent I can’t even remember my age at the time … about 13 or 14.

So let me share my story of my spontaneous, unritualized spiritual experience. First I wish to give you its context. 

A Cosmic Slap on the Back

In the course of my own struggling to change, in primal therapy, I was at a particular place in 1980 where I was very much in despair at the immensity of the task of changing the programming that was dragging me down, that was keeping me from being the full human being — happy, fulfilled, fearless, and doing what I was meant to do in life — that I could see lying there in potential and that I could only sometimes be. It was therefore an encouragement to me when I had the experience that follows — like receiving a cosmic slap on the back, a gift from the Universe, and it helped me through that time. But I am convinced this experience has relevance also for all who are working hard at growing beyond their limited selves. I feel it might especially be of use to someone in a similarly hopeless-seeming place.

For these reasons I wish to share this experience. You can do with it whatever you like.

Before relating what happened, I want to say that although some might be tempted to call this experience a fantasy or a dream, it certainly did not feel that way to me at the time. I cannot doubt that an unusual thing happened to me, which was unlike anything else that I’d experienced prior to it or since. It was related to certain experiences I was having in my primaling but was very different from “having feelings.” I was not under the influence of any drugs, nor had I been previous to the incident. I had one beer that night.

One other note: I will leave the determination of who the “she” and the “we” were in the experience to the interpretation of the reader. I certainly don’t know for sure who she and they were, though I have my ideas — all of them highly positive. Also, the following, except for some minor editing, is exactly the way I wrote it the morning following the experience.

Journal Entry of June 28, 1980:

I was lying in bed last night with Maddie. Couldn’t sleep, air conditioner too loud. Suddenly I was aware of all this energy coursing through my body. Was really scaring me. My body zinging, intense ringing (buzzing?) in my ears, rushes flowing through me. Was scared I was going crazy, would hurt Maddie, would become possessed or something, etc. Tried focusing on my third eye so as to control it like I did in Portland.

That may have helped some, but I could sense, and was scared of, other “presences” in the room. I thought I heard a woman’s voice behind me over my left shoulder and that scared me. Without realizing the transition, I found myself projected into this panorama of history and a woman’s voice was narrating.

She described how once there had lived “noble” beings. I could see vast and colorful panoramas of peoples exuding “nobility” and “integrity” (for want of better words to describe what they were like). They walked and paraded before me and were all around me.

Then the woman explained that the peoples degenerated and, as if in demonstration, I began seeing battles and wars played out before my eyes. I was in the midst of them!

However, I was still aware that I was in my body lying on my bed, because I could feel myself against it. Even so I was afraid that I would begin taking on the bodies of participants in the battles and would feel pain like they were obviously feeling. This feeling was especially strong when I was in the midst of the convergence of two groups of warring parties (their garb reminded me of Israelites or people of Biblical times or something). The group I was facing were going at each other with hatchets and I was afraid of becoming a participant and possibly feeling an ax chunking into my neck or skull. But although it was happening all around me, nobody in the crowd noticed me; it was as if I wasn’t there. In fact at one point I believe they actually may have passed through me!

This scene passed, along with other dramas, and it was explained to me that now it was time for a regeneration of peoples on this “plane[?]” to regain their former “nobility[?],” “integrity[?]” (again for lack of better words).

Still feeling that I was conscious, i.e., knowing that it was all happening to me while I was really lying in bed; I let myself walk through many landscapes and terrains, which I felt I could easily have lived in at one time and which I felt had all existed at some time or place or did now exist somewhere in the world or Universe. I walked through small shack towns. I remember a small group of bedraggled people huddled together in one. There were many kinds of pastoral settings also: some beautiful with rolling, lush hills, and some not as beautiful — rocky terrain, etc. All seemed to be viable habitats for different people. I had the thought that these may have been places/lives that I had lived in at one time.

Certain places brought up bad feelings in me, foreboding, scared feelings. In fact it can be said that the whole time it was happening I was scared about the experience. I feared meeting some dangerous and evil entity or being stuck in an undesirable place. When I was in one particular environ/habitat that wasn’t very pleasant, I remembered something that Seth had said about consciously altering and changing his environment. In line with that I decided to stop believing in the one that I was in and see what happened.

What happened was that environment went away and then there was a blank grayness as I waited for a new scene to appear. I continued to be aware that I was in a trancelike state and that I had a body lying in bed. I would at times vaguely return to the feeling in my body and would feel myself on my back, hands and arms outstretched, mattress against my back, in a very deep state of relaxation and suspended animation which had a feeling of heaviness or deadness about it. My body didn’t need to move and it was perfectly comfortable.

I could hear the air conditioner running, also, and even Maddie’s breathing next to me. Several times, I don’t remember exactly when, Maddie had reached over and put her arm around me, both times only for an instant, before she rolled back away from me. Neither of the times did it disturb the deep state that I was in or cause me to rise at all out of it. I simply felt warm and good towards her at the affection she was showing me. I even had the thought that, considering the fact that she only did it for a moment before turning away, that somehow she knew what was going on, in some deeper, nonconscious part of herself, and was reassuring or encouraging me.

Anyway, I was securely very deep and felt that I wasn’t going to be suddenly disturbed from it unless, perhaps, I let it. But I really didn’t want to do that. I was rather scared and apprehensive most of the time, as mentioned, but, more importantly, it was all so damned interesting!

There is no doubt that I was thoroughly enjoying the color, the panorama, the expanse and freedom of consciousness, the fact that I was experiencing something important and that I had never experienced before, so that I dearly wanted to stay there despite the fear.

Sometime after the gray place, I believe it was, I was aware of some kind of light far off in the distance that I could travel to if I liked. At around that time I could hear Maddie saying to somebody (about my body in bed): “Is he moving at all? Is he breathing? Do you think he’s dead?” and so on. I remember thinking to myself how silly that sounded and that “No, I’m not dead, I’m just in this deep trance and everything.” But then suddenly I began to wonder if maybe I was dead! It had all been so strange that maybe I had actually died in my sleep!

At that point I recalled the accounts I’d heard and read about of people dying and not knowing they were dead, how they would often hang around and watch other people’s reaction to their death (and this could go on for days). I remembered how Steve had once told me something to the extent that if that should happen that one shouldn’t get carried away and fascinated by the after-death state but that one should “get down on one’s knees” (figuratively speaking) and search out the source and the presence of God. Thinking that was perhaps when I actually looked around and saw the light.

At any rate, I found myself wondering if I wanted to be dead. This place was certainly an interesting one, even with the apprehensions. And it sure seemed to be a change (so far, anyway) from the constant struggling to survive and grow. But I also felt that there were just so many loose ends left unresolved in my life. There were so many areas that I’d made good progress in but had not yet taken to completion. My love for Maddie (next to me), which was only just beginning, came to my mind as an example.

And so I decided to find out if I was dead or not, both to know if I should go heading for the light (if I was) or to reassure Maddie (if I wasn’t). I determined to get into my body and, with an effort and strain, I forced myself up from the depths, forcing my body to move and sit up. I was mildly surprised to find that I was able to do this, bringing myself into physicality and into a half-sitting position. In this position I looked over to see Maddie sleeping next to me, I could hear the air conditioner whining, and so forth. I realized then that she hadn’t “physically” been sitting over me, talking about me, but I also felt that some part of her must have. (We used to have this thing when we slept together that often we would feel like we had been communicating with each other on some kind of subconscious level the whole night long. We wouldn’t ever remember all that we had said but we would often both remark about it the next morning).

Realizing that I wasn’t dead, I lay back down and let myself drift back into the deepness. All I remember, after this point, is talking to Maddie, probably about what had happened to me, explaining it to her, though I’m not sure that was all of it. Also I remember at least one other time, maybe two, forcing myself to waking consciousness to see if Maddie was awake (as if in an experiment), because it really seemed that we were actually, physically awake and talking to each other. I thought we were lying in bed physically talking. It was hard to believe it when I forced myself awake only to find her lying beside me asleep.

After that there were some actual dreams, quite different from what had been going on earlier. I fell into sleeping and dreamed of being in my Grandmother’s home. I remember reading a book, sitting in a chair in her kitchen. There were other people there also; they were sitting in the same kind of straight-backed, none-too-comfortable wooden chairs.

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I remember that early on, when I was doing all the traveling and stuff, that I didn’t know how I’d possibly remember all the experiences that happened to me and all the things that I saw and learned. It seemed like a lot of time was crammed into that short period. I remembered hoping just that I would retain as much of it as I could, especially hoping that I wouldn’t just blot it all out as it felt important.

Don’t Despair, There Are Others Doing It With You, and We’re Here, Too

I feel like the meaning of the part about the regeneration of the peoples on this plane was an answer to my despair at working on getting through my feelings. It’s like it was saying: “Sure it’s hard! What you’re talking about is the reversal of hundreds of generations of degenerate and violent habit, custom, and activity. But we’re talking about changing that also, and you’re not the only one working at it. There are many others in your time period struggling to do it just like you.”

And the feeling that left me with was/is “So don’t despair. There are others like you doing it, and we’re (out here) helping you too.”

Sins of The Father

Now, having conveyed what I wrote the morning after the experience, I wish to add that regardless of how you may wish to label the preceding experience, it remains one whose message has stayed with me through all the intervening years — thirty-two of them in fact. It is a message that has rung true and helped me through other difficult spaces. Indeed, I still reflect on it and can’t help believing there is a lot to it. Consider:  Generation after generation of Western culture has engaged — with little awareness of the consequences — in passing down their personal pain and trauma, in some form or other, onto their offspring.  And they in turn dump it on theirs.  We know that child abusers were themselves abused as children; but this is just a very blatant example of how the pattern operates.  On and on and back through into hazy unrecorded history this situation has existed; this vicious cycle has perpetuated itself.

But many of us in these extraordinary times, and goaded on by the specter of global catastrophe, for one thing are saying:  “Let it end with me!”; “Let us not continue this madness any further!”  Attempting to break the cycle of “kill and be killed,” of hurting and then inflicting hurt, attempting to halt the prevailing insanity, we make the Gandhian effort to take the energy into ourselves, to change ourselves lest we, also, be like the generation before — forever passing on the insane legacy.

So why should we think this would be easy?!  We are trying to bring to an end, in our single lifetimes, the accumulated results of untold generations of our ancestors dumping their pain and insanity onto their descendants.

But Always Are We Here Helping

So of course it’s hard!  And for me to realize this fact allows me to accept it.  That is, it allows me to accept this task and to take up my place in the ranks of those arrayed in the purpose of undoing the craziness rather than to turn away in despair at the immensity of the task or to quaver in paralysis before it.

This experience has also provided me with a wonderful outlook on the people around me.  I look around to the many people who are working spiritually to change themselves and this crazy world — who are serving, mending, and healing others and themselves.  In doing so I have this sense of brother/sisterhood — that we are all engaged in an immense undertaking . . . that we are synergizing our energies in an endeavor which is not merely crucial, it is imperative . . . not just for our personal growth, for our personal satisfaction or well-being — although that’s not to be discounted — it is necessary for the very survival of this planet.

I feel that if this task had been easier it would have been done long ago by well-intentioned ancestors.  Indeed, it may only be because the survival of this planet is now at stake that substantial numbers of us have at this point, finally, accepted the challenge.

Many of us are aware of the seeming intractability of the situation we face — both personally and globally.  But what I feel now is not so much the despair at the difficulty of the task but rather, because of what I was taught through this experience, I feel a sense of belongingness, cosmic belongingness, if you will . . . a sense that I’m not alone.  I feel that many others are working at this same thing in this day and age.  Our combined energies — along with the energies of the Universe that are working with us — together constitute an incredible force.  Confronted with the enterprise we have before us, this force may just be sufficient to do on this planet what has never been done before here (as far as we know).

So to all who occasionally despair, I can only repeat, “Sure it’s hard, but always are we here helping you.”

Continue with Vision Quests, UFO Abductions, Brainwashings, and Boot Camps: Ritual As Shadow, Part Nine — Initiation, Authentic and Inauthentic

Return to “You Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free” … What Real and Unritualized Spiritual Experience Looks Like

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Sure It’s Hard! But Always Are We Here Helping You,” Part Two: A Cosmic Slap. We Were Once Noble Humans and Now Is Time for Our Regeneration, They Said

A Cosmic Slap: I Was Told “Once There Lived “Noble” Beings” and Now Is the Time for a Regeneration of Peoples to Regain What We Lost.

Summary of “Sure It’s Hard But Always Are We Here Helping You”: This details the spiritual experience I had in 1980 which set me on this path to help the planet and the planetmates. I was shown by certain entities the path of our devolution as a species, thousands of years ago, and was told that we need to turn this around immediately. I was told that there were many others at work right now doing the same thing, so I need never despair, at the immensity of the task. Most importantly, I was told that we are receiving help… always…in our efforts. I was led to believe that these higher powers, of which we are yet to know, are fully engaged in our endeavor on this planet and assisting us at every turn.

What most of us have discovered is that the path to bliss leads sometimes through despair and hopelessness. As Hesse (1965) described it in Demian: the bird, in pecking his way out of his shell, must destroy a world before discovering a new one. No, it is not often pleasant to confront some of the darkest things within ourselves, as we must do if we are not to continually project them onto others and onto the world around us.

A Cosmic Slap on the Back

At any rate, in the course of my own struggling to change, in primal therapy, I was at a particular place in 1980 where I was very much in despair at the immensity of the task of changing the programming that was dragging me down — that was keeping me from being the full human being that I could see lying there in potential. It was therefore an encouragement to me when I had the experience that follows — like receiving a cosmic slap on the back, a gift from the Universe, and it helped me through that time. But I am convinced this experience has relevance also for all who are working hard at growing beyond their limited selves. I feel it might especially be of use to someone in a similarly hopeless-seeming place.

For these reasons I wish to share this experience. You can do with it whatever you like.

Before relating what happened, I want to say that although some might be tempted to call this experience a fantasy or a dream, it certainly did not feel that way to me at the time. I can not doubt that an unusual thing happened to me, which was unlike anything else that I’d experienced prior to it or since. It was related to certain experiences I was having in my primaling but was very different from “having feelings.” I was not under the influence of any drugs, nor had I been previous to the incident. I had one beer that night.

One other note: I will also leave the determination of who the “she” and the “we” were in the experience to the interpretation of the reader. I certainly don’t know for sure who she and they were, though I have my ideas — all of them highly positive. Also, the following, except for some minor editing, is exactly the way I wrote it the morning following the experience.

Journal Entry of June 28, 1980:

I was lying in bed last night with Maddie. Couldn’t sleep, air conditioner too loud. Suddenly I was aware of all this energy coursing through my body. Was really scaring me. My body zinging, intense ringing (buzzing?) in my ears, rushes flowing through me. Was scared I was going crazy, would hurt Maddie, would become possessed or something, etc. Tried focusing on my third eye so as to control it like I did in Portland.

That may have helped some, but I could sense, and was scared of, other “presences” in the room. I thought I heard a woman’s voice behind me over my left shoulder and that scared me. Without realizing the transition, I found myself projected into this panorama of history and a woman’s voice was narrating.

She described how once there had lived “noble” beings. I could see vast and colorful panoramas of peoples exuding “nobility” and “integrity” (for want of better words to describe what they were like). They walked and paraded before me and were all around me.

Then the woman explained that the peoples degenerated and, as if in demonstration, I began seeing battles and wars played out before my eyes. I was in the midst of them!

However, I was still aware that I was in my body lying on my bed, because I could feel myself against it. Even so I was afraid that I would begin taking on the bodies of participants in the battles and would feel pain like they were obviously feeling. This feeling was especially strong when I was in the midst of the convergence of two groups of warring parties (their garb reminded me of Israelites or people of Biblical times or something). The group I was facing were going at each other with hatchets and I was afraid of becoming a participant and possibly feeling an ax chunking into my neck or skull. But although it was happening all around me, nobody in the crowd noticed me; it was as if I wasn’t there. In fact at one point I believe they actually may have passed through me!

This scene passed, along with other dramas, and it was explained to me that now it was time for a regeneration of peoples on this “plane[?]” to regain their former “nobility[?],” “integrity[?]” (again for lack of better words).

Still feeling that I was conscious, i.e., knowing that it was all happening to me while I was really lying in bed; I let myself walk through many landscapes and terrains, which I felt I could easily have lived in at one time and which I felt had all existed at some time or place or did now exist somewhere in the world or Universe. I walked through small shack towns. I remember a small group of bedraggled people huddled together in one. There were many kinds of pastoral settings also: some beautiful with rolling, lush hills, and some not as beautiful — rocky terrain, etc. All seemed to be viable habitats for different people. I had the thought that these may have been places/lives that I had lived in at one time…. [For the full text of the journal entry see Footnote 1]

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Don’t Despair, There Are Others Doing It With You, and We’re Here, Too

I feel like the meaning of the part about the regeneration of the peoples on this plane was an answer to my despair at working on getting through my feelings. It’s like it was saying: “Sure it’s hard! What you’re talking about is the reversal of hundreds of generations of degenerate and violent habit, custom, and activity. But we’re talking about changing that also, and you’re not the only one working at it. There are many others in your time period struggling to do it just like you.”

And the feeling that left me with was/is “So don’t despair. There are others like you doing it, and we’re (out here) helping you too.”

Continue with The Sins of the Fathers: I have This Sense of Brother/ Sisterhood — That We Are Engaged in an Immense Undertaking … Necessary for the Survival of This Planet.

Return to For Earth’s Sake, Get Real Already: “Sure It’s Hard! But Always Are We Here Helping You,” Part One

Footnote

1. Journal Entry Complete. Just as it was written over thirty years ago. For those interested in hearing the entire experience:

Journal Entry of June 28, 1980:

I was lying in bed last night with Maddie. Couldn’t sleep, air conditioner too loud. Suddenly I was aware of all this energy coursing through my body. Was really scaring me. My body zinging, intense ringing (buzzing?) in my ears, rushes flowing through me. Was scared I was going crazy, would hurt Maddie, would become possessed or something, etc. Tried focusing on my third eye so as to control it like I did in Portland.

That may have helped some, but I could sense, and was scared of, other “presences” in the room. I thought I heard a woman’s voice behind me over my left shoulder and that scared me. Without realizing the transition, I found myself projected into this panorama of history and a woman’s voice was narrating.

She described how once there had lived “noble” beings. I could see vast and colorful panoramas of peoples exuding “nobility” and “integrity” (for want of better words to describe what they were like). They walked and paraded before me and were all around me. Then the woman explained that the peoples degenerated and, as if in demonstration, I began seeing battles and wars played out before my eyes. I was in the midst of them!

However, I was still aware that I was in my body lying on my bed, because I could feel myself against it. Even so I was afraid that I would begin taking on the bodies of participants in the battles and would feel pain like they were obviously feeling. This feeling was especially strong when I was in the midst of the convergence of two groups of warring parties (their garb reminded me of Israelites or people of Biblical times or something). The group I was facing were going at each other with hatchets and I was afraid of becoming a participant and possibly feeling an ax chunking into my neck or skull. But although it was happening all around me, nobody in the crowd noticed me; it was as if I wasn’t there. In fact at one point I believe they actually may have passed through me!

This scene passed, along with other dramas, and it was explained to me that now it was time for a regeneration of peoples on this “plane[?]” to regain their former “nobility[?],” “integrity[?]” (again for lack of better words).

Still feeling that I was conscious, i.e., knowing that it was all happening to me while I was really lying in bed; I let myself walk through many landscapes and terrains, which I felt I could easily have lived in at one time and which I felt had all existed at some time or place or did now exist somewhere in the world or Universe. I walked through small shack towns. I remember a small group of bedraggled people huddled together in one. There were many kinds of pastoral settings also: some beautiful with rolling, lush hills, and some not as beautiful — rocky terrain, etc. All seemed to be viable habitats for different people. I had the thought that these may have been places/lives that I had lived in at one time.

Certain places brought up bad feelings in me, foreboding, scared feelings. In fact it can be said that the whole time it was happening I was scared about the experience. I feared meeting some dangerous and evil entity or being stuck in an undesirable place. When I was in one particular environ/habitat that wasn’t very pleasant, I remembered something that Seth had said about consciously altering and changing his environment. In line with that I decided to stop believing in the one that I was in and see what happened.

What happened was that environment went away and then there was a blank grayness as I waited for a new scene to appear. I continued to be aware that I was in a trancelike state and that I had a body lying in bed. I would at times vaguely return to the feeling in my body and would feel myself on my back, hands and arms outstretched, mattress against my back, in a very deep state of relaxation and suspended animation which had a feeling of heaviness or deadness about it. My body didn’t need to move and it was perfectly comfortable.

I could hear the air conditioner running, also, and even Maddie’s breathing next to me. Several times, I don’t remember exactly when, Maddie had reached over and put her arm around me, both times only for an instant, before she rolled back away from me. Neither of the times did it disturb the deep state that I was in or cause me to rise at all out of it. I simply felt warm and good towards her at the affection she was showing me. I even had the thought that, considering the fact that she only did it for a moment before turning away, that somehow she knew what was going on, in some deeper, nonconscious part of herself, and was reassuring or encouraging me.

Anyway, I was securely very deep and felt that I wasn’t going to be suddenly disturbed from it unless, perhaps, I let it. But I really didn’t want to do that. I was rather scared and apprehensive most of the time, as mentioned, but, more importantly, it was all so damned interesting! There is no doubt that I was thoroughly enjoying the color, the panorama, the expanse and freedom of consciousness, the fact that I was experiencing something important and that I had never experienced before, so that I dearly wanted to stay there despite the fear.

Sometime after the gray place, I believe it was, I was aware of some kind of light far off in the distance that I could travel to if I liked. At around that time I could hear Maddie saying to somebody (about my body in bed): “Is he moving at all? Is he breathing? Do you think he’s dead?” and so on. I remember thinking to myself how silly that sounded and that “No, I’m not dead, I’m just in this deep trance and everything.” But then suddenly I began to wonder if maybe I was dead! It had all been so strange that maybe I had actually died in my sleep!

At that point I recalled the accounts I’d heard and read about of people dying and not knowing they were dead, how they would often hang around and watch other people’s reaction to their death (and this could go on for days). I remembered how Steve had once told me something to the extent that if that should happen that one shouldn’t get carried away and fascinated by the after-death state but that one should “get down on one’s knees” (figuratively speaking) and search out the source and the presence of God. Thinking that was perhaps when I actually looked around and saw the light.

At any rate, I found myself wondering if I wanted to be dead. This place was certainly an interesting one, even with the apprehensions. And it sure seemed to be a change (so far, anyway) from the constant struggling to survive and grow. But I also felt that there were just so many loose ends left unresolved in my life. There were so many areas that I’d made good progress in but had not yet taken to completion. My love for Maddie (next to me), which was only just beginning, came to my mind as an example.

And so I decided to find out if I was dead or not, both to know if I should go heading for the light (if I was) or to reassure Maddie (if I wasn’t). I determined to get into my body and, with an effort and strain, I forced myself up from the depths, forcing my body to move and sit up. I was mildly surprised to find that I was able to do this, bringing myself into physicality and into a half-sitting position. In this position I looked over to see Maddie sleeping next to me, I could hear the air conditioner whining, and so forth. I realized then that she hadn’t “physically” been sitting over me, talking about me, but I also felt that some part of her must have. (We used to have this thing when we slept together that often we would feel like we had been communicating with each other on some kind of subconscious level the whole night long. We wouldn’t ever remember all that we had said but we would often both remark about it the next morning).

Realizing that I wasn’t dead, I lay back down and let myself drift back into the deepness. All I remember, after this point, is talking to Maddie, probably about what had happened to me, explaining it to her, though I’m not sure that was all of it. Also I remember at least one other time, maybe two, forcing myself to waking consciousness to see if Maddie was awake (as if in an experiment), because it really seemed that we were actually, physically awake and talking to each other. I thought we were lying in bed physically talking. It was hard to believe it when I forced myself awake only to find her lying beside me asleep.

After that there were some actual dreams, quite different from what had been going on earlier. I fell into sleeping and dreamed of being in my Grandmother’s home. I remember reading a book, sitting in a chair in her kitchen. There were other people there also; they were sitting in the same kind of straight-backed, none-too-comfortable wooden chairs.

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I remember that early on, when I was doing all the traveling and stuff, that I didn’t know how I’d possibly remember all the experiences that happened to me and all the things that I saw and learned. It seemed like a lot of time was crammed into that short period. I remembered hoping just that I would retain as much of it as I could, especially hoping that I wouldn’t just blot it all out as it felt important.

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I feel like the meaning of the part about the regeneration of the peoples on this plane was an answer to my despair at working on getting through my feelings. It’s like it was saying: “Sure it’s hard! What you’re talking about is the reversal of hundreds of generations of degenerate and violent habit, custom, and activity. But we’re talking about changing that also, and you’re not the only one working at it. There are many others in your time period struggling to do it just like you.”

And the feeling that left me with was/is “So don’t despair. There are others like you doing it, and we’re (out here) helping you too.“

Continue with The Sins of the Fathers: I have This Sense of Brother/ Sisterhood — That We Are Engaged in an Immense Undertaking … Necessary for the Survival of This Planet.

Return to For Earth’s Sake, Get Real Already: “Sure It’s Hard! But Always Are We Here Helping You,” Part One

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“Sure It’s Hard! But Always Are We Here Helping You,” Part One: The Spiritual Quest, For Earth’s Sake!

For Earth’s Sake, Get Real Already: “Sure It’s Hard! But Always Are We Here Helping You,” Part One

Summary of “Sure It’s Hard But Always Are We Here Helping You”: This details the spiritual experience I had in 1980 which set me on this path to help the planet and the planetmates. I was shown by certain entities the path of our devolution as a species, thousands of years ago, and was told that we need to turn this around immediately. I was told that there were many others at work right now doing the same thing, so I need never despair, at the immensity of the task. Most importantly, I was told that we are receiving help… always…in our efforts. I was led to believe that these higher powers, of which we are yet to know, are fully engaged in our endeavor on this planet and assisting us at every turn.

The Spiritual Quest, For Earth’s Sake!

If ritual is a substitute for real spiritual experience, what does real spiritual experience look like? What follows is an example of a spontaneous, unritualized spiritual experience. But first let me put it in its context.

We Must Do What Has Never Been Done Before.

It is no surprise that the anti-nuclear and environmental movements have joined forces with the spiritual/human potential ones. For as Ken Keyes (1982) points out in The Hundredth Monkey, the threat of nuclear disaster (we need also mention global environmental destruction) is a challenge to all of us . . . a challenge to go beyond the “us vs. them” kind of consciousness which has led us to the brink of catastrophe. As many of us know, we must raise our consciousness in a way that has not been demanded of humankind, as near as we can determine, on this planet ever before.

But Many of Us ARE Now Working to Get Beyond “Eye for an Eye” Thinking.

Now, many people have been working hard to do just that. Many of us have been working on ourselves to break free from those patterns of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” or, what it comes down to eventually, those patterns of “kill and be killed.” We’ve been doing it in many different ways.

As for myself, I have been involved in spiritual pursuits since 1968, especially meditation. As well, I have been intensively working on unraveling my negative patterns through the powerful experiential modalities of primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork beginning back in 1972. These, especially primal therapy, have been my ways of dealing with the particular negative conditioning into which I was “raised” and which keeps me stuck in behaviors and feelings that too often undermine my efforts to live a fully spiritual and loving life.

However, we all have our ways of trying to grow beyond that kind of negative programming. It is important to recognize that each of us is working in that same direction however we go about it. What I would like to share is an experience that happened to me while I was in the midst of trying to root out some of my conditioning. I believe that it may be helpful to others in their own struggling “heavenward.”

Sure It’s Hard

As most of us have come to realize who have been on this path for a while . . . who have been working at changing ourselves for a while . . . it is no easy task to change those very deep grids or programs. Rather, we discover that it requires a lot of work, dedication, and time.

The Task Is Immense for Our Point of Departure Is a Psychotic Culture.

The psychiatrist Theodore Isaac Rubin (1983), in his book on relationships titled One to One, points out that the divisive competitiveness and us-versus-them striving that we see predominating around us in Western culture is learned. He writes, “We compete, we fight wars, we are compulsively concerned about our hierarchical position relative to the next person, because we learn to be so through a psychotic culture passed on from one generation to the next” (p. 184).

The point is that this is where we are coming from. Our point of departure is a psychotic culture or, as Erich Fromm (1955) put it, an “insane society.” Many of us are trying to reverse this violent and crazy trend, but it is understandable that it would be hard to make a 180-degree turn in orientation — from aggression to peace, from competition to cooperation, from fear to love. Therefore, our culture is gradually coming to the realization that we are involved in a difficult process, and understandably so. Our culture is starting to realize the immensity of the task we are undertaking in trying to change our inherited and deleterious patterns.

“To Think That It Is Easy Is Probably To Be an Impostor.”

For example, Herb Goldberg (1983), a psychologist, points out in his book, The New Male-Female Relationship, especially in his section on “Transitions,” that to think that it is easy is probably to be an impostor (p. 134). He asserts that the people who are really making the changes in male-female relationships and becoming fuller human beings, you can expect, are struggling to do so . . . that it is a difficult process and takes time. In fact, Goldberg discusses at length his contention that real growth takes a lot of time and struggle, whereas “pseudo-growth” is the only kind of growing that occurs “overnight” and easily. (pp. 134-141)

So not only does it take time, but we discover that it is hardly ever pleasurable. What most of us have discovered is that the path to bliss leads sometimes through despair and hopelessness. As Hesse (1965) described it in Demian: the bird, in pecking his way out of his shell, must destroy a world before discovering a new one. No, it is not often pleasant to confront some of the darkest things within ourselves, as we must do if we are not to continually project them onto others and onto the world around us.

Continue with A Cosmic Slap: I Was Told “Once There Lived “Noble” Beings” and Now Is the Time for a Regeneration of Peoples to Regain What We Lost.

Return to Wounded Healers, Heroes, and the Group Mind: The Universe Bears Up and Rewards with Renewed Life Those who Voluntarily Sacrifice Themselves for All

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“We Ain’t Born Typical”: A Closer Look at the “Human Nature” Pushing Us to Humanicide – The Perinatal Unconscious

Apocalypse – No! Chapter Seven:
“We Ain’t Born Typical””

Apocalypse, Human Nature, and the Perinatal Imprint: “We Are a Fever … We Ain’t Born Typical”

“Perinatal” = “Surrounding Birth”

“We Are a Fever”

How are we to characterize these strangest of days and the current unprecedented global condition? As I have said, they are driven by what I call an emerging perinatal unconscious. As The Kills sang it, most aptly, “We ain’t born typical.” [Footnote 1]

Perinatal Unconscious

Why perinatal? First, let us remind ourselves that perinatal means, literally, “surrounding birth.” As a one-time university instructor of pre- and perinatal psychology and as an editor of a professional journal concerned with perinatal psychology— as well as a psychohistorian, let me explain what might be considered elements of a perinatal unconscious. [Footnote 2]

Unconscious Matrices = “Human Nature”

The elements I will describe are near universally accepted among perinatal psychologists as unconscious forces, factors, matrices that exist in us all as a result of a human birth that is unique, by comparison to all other species, in its degree of trauma and hence of its impact or imprint on what we might call—dare I say the word—our “human nature.”

These perinatal elements have come to our understanding through the efforts of both the inner explorations of experiential pioneers into the perinatal, as well as the hard empirical work of pre- and perinatal researchers. I might also point out that I, myself, have forty years of experiential exploration into these perinatal elements, in addition to my scholarly work and research in this field. My experiences confirm, in my own mind, their absolute validity, as well as validating for myself the theoretical constructs put forth by others to describe and explain them.

Pre- and Perinatal Psychology, Experiential Voyagers

Be that as it may, these perinatal elements in the unconscious have been described most thoroughly be three figures in particular: Stanislav Grof, Arthur Janov, and Lloyd deMause. It might help, also, to keep in mind that entire new fields of pre- and perinatal psychology, primal psychology, and to some extent, transpersonal psychology have grown up around the existence of these perinatal factors. Entire modalities of healing tap in to and are based on the existence of this perinatal unconscious, including primal therapy, holotropic breathwork, and rebirthing, to name just the few that I happen to be trained in. These unconscious perinatal elements have, at this point, been confirmed by thousands of researchers and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of experiential voyagers into the perinatal unconscious.

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“The Perinatal Unconscious“
– audiocast by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this chapter, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=rfrhsmtjnm
Apocalypse, or New Dawn? Chapter 2: “The Perinatal Unconscious” by SillyMickel Adzema

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Elements of Birth Experience

Based upon all this, then, let us look at some of the elements, in general, that characterize this perinatal unconscious.

Perinatal Matrix ~ Societal Matrix

Stanislav Grof describes basic perinatal matrices (BPMs)—in other words, typical experiential constellations related to our births. These happen to be very much akin to deMause’s perinatal schema, with some slight differences in emphasis, and more elaboration on the part of Grof. So let us use Grof’s schema as a basis. [Footnote 3]

All Needs Met . . . With Luck – Matrix 1

Grof’s Basic Perinatal Matrix I, or BPM I, involves the experiences and feelings related to the sometimes, or at least relatively, undisturbed prenatal period. The prenatal period is that time in the womb sometimes characterized by feelings of peace, complete relaxation, and a feeling of all needs met, or “oceanic bliss.”

BPM I corresponds to deMause’s societal periods of “prosperity and progress,” which he claims are accompanied by feelings and fears of being “soft” and “feminine” — understandably here, for in BPM I, that is, prenatally, the fetus is largely identified with his or her mother and is very much “soft,” i.e., undefended.

Since the time in the womb may also be disturbed by toxic substances that the mother ingests—drugs, chemical additives, and so on—as well as by disturbing emotions that the mother experiences, which release stress hormones into the mother’s bloodstream, which then cross the placental barrier and affect the fetus, BPM I is also sometimes characterized as feelings of being surrounded by a polluted environment and being forced to ingest noxious substances, toxins, and poisons, which sickens the fetus.

No-Exit Despair – Matrix 2

In Grof’s schema, BPM I is followed by BPM II—that is, Basic Perinatal Matrix II—which are experiences and feelings related to the time of “no exit” in the womb and claustrophobic -like feelings occurring to nearly all humans in the late stages of pregnancy and especially with the onset of labor, when the cervix is not yet dilated. Since there does not seem to be any “light at the end of the tunnel”—metaphorically speaking—it is characterized by feelings of depression, guilt, despair, and blame, and a characterization of oneself as being in the position of “the victim.”

It is very much like DeMause’s period of collective feelings of entrapment, strangulation, suffocation, and poisonous placenta, which he has found to precede the actual outbreak of war or other violence. [Footnote 3]

Birth Wars – Matrix 3

This of course is followed by BPM III (Basic Perinatal Matrix III), which involves feelings and experiences of all-encompassing struggle and is related to the time of one’s actual birth. Characterized also by intense feelings of aggression and sexual excess—in the position, now, of “the aggressor”—it is related directly, in DeMause’s schema, to a time of actual war.

Hallelujah! . . (I think. . . . ) – Matrix 4

Basic Perinatal Matrix IV (BPM IV) follows this; it corresponds to the time of emergence from the womb during the birth process and is characterized by feelings of victory, release, exultation.

But also sometimes, after that initial relief of depression — when the struggle does not bring the expected rewards, as when, during modern obstetrical births, the neonate is harshly treated and then taken away from the mother, disallowing the bonding which should occur, naturally, immediately after birth.

In my own experience, the exultation and relief of release was replaced suddenly by feelings of being assaulted by the attendants at my birth (which of course they thought of as “attending” to me) as they went about roughly removing mucous from my mouth; prematurely cutting my umbilical cord to leave me struggling for breath; scrubbing, weighing, measuring, and otherwise probing me; and wrapping me like a tamale and taking me away from all I had previously known…i.e., my mother. This felt like ritual abuse to me, and I have often likened it, after the intense period of compression and crushing before birth, to a situation of “going from the frying pan into the fire.”

At any rate, this experience of actual emergence or birth coincides, societally, with deMause’s period of the ending of a war.

Heaven and Hell

In summary, we have euphoric, oceanic, blissful feelings, sometimes feelings of being poisoned or being in a toxic or polluted environment; followed by crushing, no-exit, depression, claustrophobia, compression, strangulation, suffocation, and being force-fed by a poisonous placenta; followed by struggle, violence, war scenarios, birth/death fantasies, sexual excess; and finally release, triumph, feeling of renewal or rebirth and a new golden age, but also possibly of being abandoned, tortured, ritually sacrificed, probed medically, and assaulted by sensations. These are some of the elements that characterize the experience of the perinatal unconscious.

For Dreaming Out Loud! Projecting the Perinatal Zeitgeist

In the next chapter, Perinatal Media, we will take a look at how these elements have erupted into our collective dreams in recent history. By this I mean, we will see how our artists and creative people have projected them into the media, movies, and TV–in which we all participate–and how our fascination with them, because these artists are reflecting things that exist deep inside of ourselves as well, has caused them to grow, creating the dominant underlying zeitgeist of our time.

Continue with Apocalypse No! Chapter Eight:
The Perinatal Media

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Six:
Strange Days

Footnotes

1. Chapter titled with appreciation and admiration to The Kills for their recording, U R A Fever. The lyrics go, “I am a fever, you are a fever, we ain’t born typical….” and so on. The music video produced is similarly brilliant. Together, it is a production bordering on genius. The video contains levels of meaning that are only obvious on subsequent viewings. I reproduce it for the second time in this book, above in this chapter, for the convenience of the reader.

Lyrics – U.R.A. Fever – The Kills

Walk you to the counter
What do you got to offer
Pick you out a solder
Look at you forever

Walk you to the water
Your eyes like a casino
We ain’t born typical

Find a piece of silver
Pretty as a diagram
And go down to the Rio

Put it in my left hand
Put it in a fruit machine
Everyone’s a winner
Laughing like a seagull

You are a fever
You are a fever
You ain’t born typical

You are a fever
You are a fever
You ain’t born typical

Living in a suitcase
Meet a clown, fall in love
went down to have you over

Going ’round a break up
Take you to a jukebox
That’s the situation
Pick you out a number
And that’s our arrangement

Dancing on the legs of a new-born pony
Left right left right
Keep it up son

Go ahead and have her
Go ahead and leave her
You only ever had her
When you were a fever

I am a fever
I am a fever
I ain’t born typical

I am a fever
I am a fever
I ain’t born typical

We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical

We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical

We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical

We are a fever
We are a fever
We ain’t born typical

2. In the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Newsletter I was applauded for being the first person in the United States to teach the subject of pre- and perinatal psychology at the university level and—as it was said, remarkably—for doing it while still a student. I did this at Sonoma State University, in Rohnert Park, California, in the years 1994 and 1995, beginning while I was a graduate student there.

My graduate thesis became the book, Falls From Grace: Spiritual and Philosophical Perspectives of Prenatal and Primal Experience, which is listed in Wikipedia as a reference under the topic of prenatal and perinatal psychology.

Subsequently, I became the editor of the professional journal, Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology, formerly published by the International Primal Association. Much of the contents of its issues were later posted to my website, Primal Spirit, where they can still be viewed.

I have had my writings published in The Journal of Psychohistory, including some that later became part of this book. In fact, I presented the material of this book originally at an Institute for Psychohistory Association convention; and its earliest publications were in The Journal of Psychohistory under the title, “”The Scenery of Healing: Commentary On DeMause’s ‘Restaging Prenatal and Birth Trauma’s in War and Social Violence’”” 23/4, 395-405.

These are among my many credentials in this field of pre- and perinatal psychology, where I have studied and trained from 1972 till this day.

3. Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. New York: Viking Press, 1975; LSD Psychotherapy. Pomona, CA: Hunter House, 1980; Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985; The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988; The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

4. Lloyd deMause, “Restaging Early Traumas in War and Social Violence.” The Journal of Psychohistory 23 (1995): 344-391. (Reprinted, with permission, on the Primal Spirit website as “Restaging Prenatal and Birth Traumas in War and Social Violence“)

Continue with Apocalypse No! Chapter Eight:
The Perinatal Media

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Six:
Strange Days

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Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life, Part Twenty-Three: Prenatal Irritation/Revulsion Imprints Us for Intolerance of Others, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders, and Super-Tidy Homes … “Don’t Bug Me!”

“Don’t Bug Me!” … Culture Wars, Hating Hippies, and Having Obsessively Clean Homes, But Tolerating Pollution – Prenatal Irritation/Revulsion. 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 23

How We Act This Out—Politically and Environmentally

To review, in the womb (1) we are surrounded by toxins—they threaten us…our lives, our “purity”..they irritate us. (2) We can’t get rid of poisons that build up in the environment around us…like a prenatal environmental pollution…we can’t eliminate wastes as efficiently.

The first aspect of this — surrounding and threatening — relates to how we act this out in our homes, communities, and social environments — that is, with other people; it has to do with intolerance. The second—buildup of waste—concerns how we act this out with our general, our planetary environment, with environmental pollution. Let us take them in turn.

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We Are at War With Our Personal Environment

First, (1) we are surrounded by toxins—they threaten us in our homes and communities.

Obsessive-Compulsive Cleanliness…Severe Tidiness

The environment around us is always felt to be unclean, polluted. We can’t seem to ever get it clean enough. Any dirt or untidiness reminiscent of our time of built up toxins in the womb sends us into a flurry of activity to fight it off, lest we ever feel that way again.

We use chemical cleaners and anti-bacterial agents to fight off imaginary threats, which we call viral and bacterial, but in doing so insure we will actually live in a toxic chemical environment.

We will tolerate pollutants in the air we breathe and the water we drink—after all that merely re-creates the “bad blood” we once experienced—but we will not abide litter or dirty streets. In fact, we see these pollutants projected on the people in our cities, and so we want to “clean up the streets.”

“Don’t Bug Me, Man.”

We felt “bugged” in the womb, for we were irritated. We cannot abide any creepy crawly bug-like things around us for they remind us of those “itches we cannot scratch”—that prenatal skin irritation. We over-eliminate spiders and insects from our environments in a way so far beyond what is necessary. We are blind to how they are part of our essential ecosystem.

I don’t like mosquitoes any more than the next person, but I can see that alongside an all-out war on all creepy crawlies we have seen a disappearance of bees, essential for our food production…maybe related, probably not.

We Will Not Be “Bugged”

My point is that the vast majority of insects are harmless to us and not even bothersome. Yet, let some tiny insect into a suburban home, and you would think that it had been invaded by a SWAT team. This is hilarious from the perspective of someone who has done some primal work and so is not so “bugged” by the appearance of an insect, or of being a part of its roadway to wherever, or by noticing how some have used our bar-b-que items for temporary landing places or short-lived insect airports. Notice the reaction of some people when an ant or some other insect is observed kiting across a picnic table if you think I’m exaggerating.

We are at war with anything that reminds us of those irritating times; we do not want to be “bugged.” And if we are, it can send some of us into a fury…or a terror. I have one friend who was once invaded by fleas. She is now terrified of them. I’ve had similar experiences with fleas—don’t get me wrong, I do bomb them, when they get to a certain point where they might get out of control. But I’ve been in the same environments with this person, as has my wife, and this person’s terror is extraordinary for the situation.

I believe these kinds of phobia—and there are many examples of this fear of insects that could be used—are rooted in this trauma of being irritated in the womb. For it is an uncomfortable situation that went on for an incredibly long time for an extremely young human (a fetus) who had little, if any, sense of time and so of the possible ending of discomfort.

We Are at Culture War With Elements in Society That Remind Us of This Time

To continue, (1) We are surrounded by toxins. They threaten us…our lives, our “purity”..they irritate us.

“Dirty” Hippies and Other “Irritating People”

But it is not just bugs that bug us. We project this primal irritation on others. They bug us, are irritating. Sometimes they are; but sometimes simply the sight of them stimulates our unconscious irritations. We see them sometimes as “unwashed” and thus irritating. Some folks say other folks are “scum” or “vermin”; or they use similar terms indicating a revolting dirtiness—vile, immoral.

We hate anyone and anything that seems to be on the other side of this war against ickiness. We create culture wars and put those other people on the other side—they are hippies, immigrants, minorities—always they are described as “filthy” and “dirty,” which indicates we are seeing them through a veil of perinatal revulsion.

.

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Politically – These Poisons Surround Us

There are these poisonous elements (immigrants, communists, socialists, Hollywood ideas, teachers, educators, union organizers, activists, “hippies,” beatniks, unemployed, riff raff) who are destroying our “pure” way of life (way of life = blood stream with lots of bright oxygenated blood), and “these influences” are all about us and surrounding us. And we fight back against this toxic encroachment like little supermen fighting for some version of the pristine past…for “truth, justice…and the American way!”

But There Was a “Golden Age” Before Them

Politically, we scapegoat minorities, gays, immigrants, Jews, Hispanics, hippies, gypsies, witches, as being pollutants to our purity of race, blood. We look out at others as being those “unwashed masses.” This implies we have a time of purity from the past (the Fifties in America, for example), when only our pure blood existed and life was easy. And we want to get back to it. In late gestation discomfort, most of us as prenates actually do have a memory of an earlier time of pristine perfection, harmony, and bliss—BPM I—early womb life.

But, now, these impure things insert themselves into our lives and disgust us…bad blood. But they also surround us…with their filth. In actuality, however, we are merely acting out a time of increasing carbon dioxide, chemical, and waste matter buildup in the late stages of gestation. It is this incursion we are endlessly and futilely fighting off.

Continue with “Get Away From Me, Bum!” … Replaying a Prenatal Narrative, We Create “Filthy” Others and Blame Them for Loss of Our “Golden Age.” 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 24

Return to The Itch We Cannot Scratch … Imprinted to Tattoo, Body Pierce, and Sun-Bathe in Prenatal Irritation/Revulsion. 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 22

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