“You can reconcile with Nature through … acknowledging your equality with and not superiority over Creation.”

 

“You have this claim of high morality.… Yet where is your morality as concerns the most basic fundamental thing about life: whether it goes on or ceases?”

 

 

The Planetmates reveal hubris, fear, redemption, and reconciliation with Nature: “You can reconcile with Nature through … acknowledging your equality with and not superiority over Creation.”

 

Hubris and Fear … In Striving for a Forever Light It Is You Who Have Created the Darkness

 

“From all we have said, it should be clear you need redemption. For you have created horror here in Reality, to match your imaginings, that is of a nearly perfect wrongness. This is the blackest of nights that you would bring down upon yourself, but it is made that much worse in that you would, in your insanity, pull all of Creation, all living things not you, as well into this hell you have created … this utter darkness.

 

 

“So you need to redeem yourselves by reconciling with that Creation, which you so arrogantly threaten. It is arrogant, because you give nary a thought to that which you do. You have this claim of high morality — another vanity you have blessed upon yourself in rationalizing your inferiority and wrong-gettedness. Yet where is your morality as concerns the most basic fundamental thing about life: whether it goes on or ceases? You have laws that tell you, “Though shalt not kill.” Once again, it is clear you tell yourself these things and put them on high to rein yourselves in from doing that which you in particular are inclined to do. For you are not just suffering ape but also killing ape. You would bring down your entire species — committing a most unprecedented humanicide — but participate in the ending of all other species as well — commit an ecocide.

 

 

“So, how exactly does such a killing species reconcile with a Creation in which everything in it has become its enemy, including itself? Since all that you have done that has caused you to stray from the path of life involves a state of ignoring what you were doing, an ignore-ance, and a rationalization of it, it is of course that which must be undone. You can reconcile with Nature through facing your hubris, acknowledging your equality with and not superiority over Creation, and looking at the wreckage you have made of Creation through that ignore-ance, which is part of that thing of yours of straining to reach a forever happiness, while putting out of mind the hardship and pain emanating all about from that deluded effort.

 

“How will this help, let alone save you … or us? Does it not make sense that in reversing the wrong-gettedness that has resulted in this horror you might begin to dispel that horror? But more than that. For out of your over-developed fear and your magnified pain you have done monumental things that have created this infinite wrong. We can tell you that you have the same capacity to right this wrong out of that same fear and pain. You have that same capacity for monumental achievements for the good of yourself as well as all of Creation, out of that capacity for fear and pain, as you have shown for monumental achievements for evil. Your fear and pain can catapult the most magnificent of “live,” just as it has driven its opposite, the ultimate of “evil.”

 

 

“What you need to do to redeem yourselves is to face the horror you have created and to embrace your capacity for fear — this would be an actual fear, for a change, not an imagined one. Allowing yourself to have the fear that is natural in these circumstances we are in will motivate the most magnificent of efforts for good. You think this is simple and obvious and that you are already doing it. This is part of that dimming of awareness you do that creates the veil of ignorance that allows you to be so self-defeating and destructive.

 

 

“For this simple thing you do not do. We would not need to alert you as we are doing if you were. No, in your fevered mania to run from darkness, pain, and suffering, you hide from yourselves the consequences of your actions. You block out from your vision the results. If you see them, you act the little child caught red-handed: “It’s not me!” you say, having been able to suppress even the shame your wrong-doingness should bring.

 

 

“You see guilt and shame to be unpleasant emotions and wish to discard them, yet they are the source for your salvation. It is in this way that you indeed have an Original Sin. You have a basic wrong-gettedness and a way of acting against all Reality (God) and Nature — which is the definition of “sin.” Yet, you would wish to deny this because it is not comfortable — again reaching for that forever light, which creates the greatest dark.

 

 

“You have made discomfort an evil and view fear as something to be extinguished. You say, “Love is letting go of fear,” when it is exactly that love that moves you to face your fear! It is only because you love that you will permit any discomfort of yourselves in order to keep another from suffering. And that includes the discomfort of fear!”

 

 

[Pt 1 of 32nd Prasad — Redemption. More coming….

 

To see the entire book, to which this will be added eventually (book is two-thirds updated), go to http://mladzema.wordpress.com/the-great-reveal-book-6/ …

 

Planetmates: The Great Reveal is now available in print and e-book format.  at Amazon 

 

at http://www.amazon.com/Planetmates-Great-Reveal-Return-Grace/dp/1496083326/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399084684&sr=1-1&keywords=michael+adzema

 

Falls from Grace: The Devolution and Revolution of Consciousness — Michael’s latest book — is now available in print and e-book formats.

 

at http://www.amazon.com/Falls-Grace-Devolution-Revolution-Consciousness/dp/1499297998/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1400787010&sr=1-3 

To purchase any of Michael Adzema’s books, available in print and e-book formats, go to Michael Adzema’s books at Amazon.To purchase a signed copy of any of my books, email me at sillymickel@gmail.com … Discount for blog subscribers.

 

Invite you to join me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sillymickel

 

friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

“Having left Edenal Nature, you built an artificial reality … using any materials available … including children, women, conforming underlings, and your captive brother-sister planetmates … to distract you from the hole in your being.”

On family, culture, truth, controlling and “raising” children … Latest from the Planetmates: “You did just as much ‘family farming’ between the walls of your homes as you did in your fields”

 

”As it turns out, then, far from having discernment — let alone actual concern — in regard to the living, your ways of creation — that is, manipulation, training, and control — for the animate beings of the world became simply a little different than for inanimate things. You do not take a plow to them like you do earth — though your genital mutilation is close. Your “sculpting knife” or “paint brush” for planetmates and your children are methods of coercion, training, enforced obedience, and the like. You use the satisfaction of physical needs like food, rest, and sleep … and in more recent times, approval … as your “carrots.” You use the “stick” of physical, mental, and emotional abuse; of punishments of all kind, including deprivation, incarceration, even tying up or chaining … and in more recent times, disapproval.

”You do not hit them with a hammer like you would in fashioning a tool, Instead you scold and bellow them into the shape you want. And while you might not use a mallet, you often hit, spank, whip, and beat them so their actions, their behavior, will issue forth along the lines and in the manner that would be pleasing and useful to you.

”You do not pile them like logs as you do when you are building your cabins; nor do you arrange and position them like the rooms and contents of your home. But you orchestrate their placement in your house, nonetheless — storing them where they will fit in your houses and sometimes stacking them in beds one upon the other. Likewise, you enforce the posture and positioning of their physical frames: They will “stand up straight”; they will not “slouch”; they must not cross their legs and must keep both feet flat on the floor; they must “sit up straight at the table,” “not move around too much,” not “play with their food,”; and they must be silent — seen but not heard.

”Further controlling their physical positioning in your lives, you determine their comings and goings and their activities at nearly every moment of the day. You dress, adorn, and groom them to reflect you, no different than the way you furnish and decorate your rooms as an expression of your preferences and personalities. You put what you want into their minds — calling it “education” — along with their bodies. So, in a sense you do arrange them in such a pattern as suits your mental image of the perfect house, home, and family.

”And the “colors” of your palette — in the “creation” or “raising” of your offspring — cover the entire spectrum from caring and benign to hateful and cruel. Indeed you often stray into the dark colors of torture in your crazed obsession to determine the outcomes of everything.

”So it is that just as you plant, tend, and raise vegetative beings for your dinner use, you view other more animate beings in the same light and wish to “raise” us, but also your children, as well. Increasingly, ever since your agrarian-sedentary fall from Nature — you did just as much “family farming” between the walls of your homes as you did in your fields. They were one and the same to you. You did as much to create an artificial social reality — in particular, in the family — to suit yourself; as you worked to remake the physical world in the image of your desires. Having left behind a real Edenal existence in Nature, you were pushed ever — feeling, but never acknowledging your loss — to build up around you, using any materials available … and that included your conforming underlings, your women, your children, and your captive brother-and-sister planetmates, us … a substitute world of distracting, however fleeting, pleasures by which to occupy your mind from knowing of the hole in your being, with that loss.

”So in them — your private kingdoms, as you say “a man’s home is his castle” — you placed yourself on high and sought to have everything below you, to have it subdued, and looking your way for direction or in its utility. Indeed, in your personal fiefdoms, you would have it that you replace God Himself in the creation of your own pathetic reflections of personal “Edens,” in which everything in sight has its reason for existing as being you.

”So culture skews the truth of you, making of you something different, and unreal, in all of Nature. You know you are different, but you rationalize that as more evidence that you are superior. You are wrong; however there is no need to belabor the different ways in which you are different and wrong-getted and the different things that you completely misconstrue. We have said already much about your conceptualizations of materialism, superiority over Nature, and “goodness”; and it should be clear the dire consequences which at the present have sprung from them. You would bring down the entire planet in an egoic orgasm of destruction and self-annihilation. Concerning the other reckless mistruths of you, any of you of a fair mind have already had other examples of them occur to you. In peeling back the blanket of your wrong-gettedness, a world of darkness and ignorance is revealed.

“And to be honest, the results of all your different Ego “projects” — your vanities and presumptions — appear fairly silly to the rest of us. More than that, they appear pathetic and, ultimately, moronic. Compared to the truth of the All That Is — which we are part of, more than just “knowing” — the productions of your fevered minds are random, temporal, and rootless. Without seeking to unravel each and every one of them and shine light on their insubstantiality — a tedious, long, and circuitous undertaking … and more appealing to your intellectuals than to any of us — we can assert that each of them over-complicate the understanding of Existence. No doubt that over-complication serves best to hide their lack of true foundation, their wrongness. You stand amazed by the profound and intricate sight of your magnificent unreality. It is hard — as hard as it is to leave the “matrix” — to question the foundations of your beliefs, while your eyes sparkle in reflection of the fascinating electronic array … and your every thought supports itself on the jetsam of stupefied minds….”

[Pt 2 of 28th Prasad — Family. More coming…  ]

To see the entire book, to which this will be added eventually (book is two-thirds updated), go to  http://mladzema.wordpress.com/the-great-reveal-book-6/ …

Planetmates: The Great Reveal  is also available in print and e-book format.  at https://www.createspace.com/4691119

and at Amazon at

http://www.amazon.com/Planetmates-Great-Reveal-Return-Grace/dp/1496083326/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399084684&sr=1-1&keywords=michael+adzema

Falls from Grace: The Devolution and Revolution of Consciousness – Michael’s latest book – is also now available in print and e-book formats.

at http://www.amazon.com/Falls-Grace-Devolution-Revolution-Consciousness/dp/1499297998/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1400787010&sr=1-3 

To purchase any of Michael Adzema’s books, available in print and e-book formats, go to Michael Adzema’s books at Amazon. 

Those who want signed copies of any of my books, email me directly … sillymickel@gmail.com … Discount for blog subscribers.

Invite you to join me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sillymickel 

friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

The Cycle of All Events, the Evolution of Parenting, and Auspicious Collective Regressions: Being Crazy in an Insane World Might Mean You’re the Sane One

What’s Involved in Stopping War and Ecocide and the Necessary Mess of Transformation: Hard to Believe, But We’re Getting Saner

Chapter Nine: Regressions in the Service of Society — Messy Healing

There Is a Cycle to All Events … The Spiral Dance, Why We Can’t Get No Satisfaction, and Where There Is Real Hope

The Spiral Dance – The Cycle of All Events: Wedded to Rebirthing Rituals, the Inevitability of Disappointment, and Where There is Real Hope

Wedded to Rebirthing Rituals

At the point when the perinatal unconscious arises, individuals — and collectively, society — have the choice to turn toward the emergence of these feelings or to turn away from them.

In turning toward these feelings we embrace, feel, and if we go deeply enough into that, we relive the roots of them and resolve them finally.

In turning away from them we shun them, act them out, and are enslaved by them…thus we act unconsciously, trance-like, zombie-like.

If we face these inner forces—we call that feeling them…in this instance, feeling through or reliving one’s birth—we integrate them and heal the underlying trauma, the perinatal trauma.

Or the individual and society can avoid this going within—as depicted in the peace symbol—and can choose instead to act them out, which is the peace symbol upside down—the Satan symbol, the pentagram.

In acting them out, one distracts oneself from the uncomfortable feelings, which though not focused on, are still there. One tries to be “strong” in the face of feelings but one is actually driven and directed by them—they “take over one’s mind.” This is the source of the idea of spirit possession and in general of the idea that a devil or Satan can take over one’s soul.

So in running from our feelings we are captured and enslaved by them, we are forced to act them out in ways we would not otherwise choose which are negative to horrible but in all cases self-sabotaging. Of course war is the most horrible, most self-sabotaging, greatest, and most all-consuming form of such acting-out…the greatest struggle.

Humans are characterized by a particular kind of birth process. It is a coming into being that is traumatic and which is related to our distinction of standing upright and thereby decreasing the pelvic opening as well as suffocating the fetus prior to birth. The fact is that because of this “distinction” we are destined to go through periods of rebirthing purificatory rituals, whether for good or ill. [Footnote 1]

For we are psychologically wedded to reliving that which we could not fully experience at the time because of the overwhelming quality of pain associated with it.

A “Spiral Dance”

These rebirthing rituals we are doomed to repeat, one way or the other. We are going to act out this primal pain—this birth trauma—in an unending cycle of feelings having these components

• Periods of feelings of expansion
• Closedness or entrapment, guilt, and depression
• Aggression
• Release

Then back around again.

In winning the “war” or having the success or achievement, there begins the same cycle of expansion followed by entrapment. Losing the war…the struggle, the battle…is akin to death, even if there is no death. There is numbness and repression…akin to a kind of “limbo”…before life can begin anew. A reconception is necessary.

The Pattern of Our First Nine Months Imprints Us For Our Entire Human Lives

The reemergence of hope in individuals and societies is biologically equivalent to conception. And following this reconceiving, there is a similar cycle of reemerging strength—akin to the expansion that follows winning. Then there is continuing depression or overarching gloom and helplessness feelings coupled with revenge feelings and blame as individuals and societies stew in the vessel of indecision, inaction, and doubt. This is quite like the closedness and guilt which follows achievement-success-victory. Note, however, that the revenge and blame feelings here are aspects of the BPM II matrix, just as is closedness and guilt.

Can’t Get No Satisfaction

And then the cycle is the same again. Specifically, there is aggression against the oppressor (War and revolution both see the foe as an oppressor, even if one is actually the one who is the aggressor.) What follows upon fighting is release or “death”; and so on around. The “happily ever after” that inspires such battle truly only exists in fantasies and fairy tales. Prosperity and feelings of success are unfortunately doomed, on this physical plane of existence, to be short-lived.

Where There Is Real Hope

It would seem we are fated to never be happy, for long. But progress is possible; herein lies our only real choice in the entire scenario. For we either work through these cycles in some deep psychologically transformative way that helps us deal with and pass beyond the difficult and painful parts of the cycle as well as helps to fade the imprints’ potency in determining our behavior or we are doomed to act them out in the external world in ways that we are blindly unaware are not congruent with the actual facts of our circumstances and are harmful to ourselves and others around us.

We are fated to experience these cycles of birth, and we will either act them out disastrously or we find ways of dealing with them inside of ourselves in some way—and some ways are better than others for doing this—so that we can have some inner distance from these patterns and therefore some conscious ability or choice around our actions when these pushes and pulls arise.

Railing Against the Darkness: The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of Reason, Progress Requires Regress, and Healing Is Nothing if Not Messy

Railing Against the Darkness, The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of Reason, and Social Progress Requires Regression

The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of “Reason”

What we absolutely don’t have, yet arrogantly think we do, is the ability—through will or reason alone—to choose light over darkness, to replace these inner veils of distortion with clarity of thought and perception and hence of positive behavior and actions while in the midst of them. Trying to reason with and to obtain truly desired outcomes is about as possible as trying to reason with a lizard and convince it to conform to one’s wishes for its behavior. For good reason: Indeed our rational mind is as split off from the “reptilian brain” inside us within which these imprints circulate and from which they arise as are we from the consciousness of a gila monster.

What We Call “Reason” Is Largely Just Rationalization

This impotence of intellectual understanding in the face of these patterns of self-destruction occurs because these schemas are rooted in memories existing in an emotional and entirely dissociated part of the brain, which is hardly touched by neocortical admonishing of any kind. As deMause correctly points out,

[The fetus’s] “early experiences have been found to be recorded in a separate early neural network—a dissociated emotional memory system centering in the amygdala, quite distinct from the declarative memory system centering in the hippocampus that is established in later childhood.” [Footnote 2]

Disclaiming these cycles, which inevitably pass through darkness, and reliance on “will-power” to change one’s patterns, which includes self-sabotage, has been exposed in its impotence in modern times. We see as evidence the growing acknowledgment of the ineffectiveness and, indeed, counter-effectiveness of psychoanalysis. [Footnote 3]

Railing Against the Darkness

So the question begging to be asked is “What do we do about it?” What do we do about these pernicious cycles?

And when these elements erupt in society in harmless, possibly healing ways, how do we view them? Do we, as Mayr and Boelderl do in their article, “The Pacifier Craze: Collective Regression in Europe,” decry the regression…as if by disclaiming it we could somehow keep the cycle from happening? [Footnote 4]

Mayr and Boelderl write, for example, that the situation of collective regression in Europe “strikes us as being high-explosive [sic] and bitter enough.” [Footnote 5]

In another place they exclaim, “What is horrible about this insight [about the increasing collective regression in Europe] is the additional observation that regression is becoming still more radical.” [Footnote 6]

This response of railing against the “Darkness” is a Freudian response. Yet it is not even a neo-Freudian one, since regression in the service of the ego—which began to be seen as ever more important by neo-Freudians—is not acknowledged, let alone considered.

Social Progress Requires Regression

That regression in the service of the ego is not considered is confirmed by Mayr and Boelderl in their statement that “[R]egression by definition is a process of repression and a defense mechanism.” [Footnote 7]

These are surprising words, in light of the concept of regression in the service of the ego and awareness of the clinically based evolution of psychotherapeutic theory since Freud’s original postulations, over a half-century ago.

They are even more awry if one considers the universal, cross-cultural, implementation by societies of rebirthing rituals to handle the same kinds of forces we are confronted with. The anthropological literature is rife with these accounts.

Further, Grof has meticulously shown that regularly going into altered states of consciousness where one confronts this material is a prime function of cultures, and it occurs nearly universally although it is woefully lacking in Western culture for the most part.

Moreover, these words by Mayr and Boelderl indicate a conflict with or ignorance of the fact that deMause’s theory of evolution of historical change requires regression on the part of parents, while parenting their children, as the primary “engine” of sociopsychological progress.

For deMause writes,

“[T]he ultimate source of all historical change is psychogenesis, the lawful change in childrearing modes occurring through generational pressure…. Psychogenesis depends upon the ability of parents and surrogates to regress to the psychic age of their children and work through the anxieties of that age better the second time than in their own childhood.” (op. cit., 1982, p. 135, emphasis mine.)

But this mistake by these two social scientists would not be all that important if it was not the perfect example of the kind of uninformed attitude we have, generally speaking, in Western societies about these forces. This attitude is reinforced by a Judeo-Christian tradition of specialness and scapegoating in the West. It is a pervasive feeling about these things; specifically it, itself, is the actual defense. While this is a widespread reaction to our inner realities it is far from science, and even further from the truth or reality about these things.

“Stop It!” … Yeah, That’s Gonna Work

At any rate, if we adopt this Western, Judeo-Christian, Freudian tactic of decrying the darkness, we are as effective in derailing the cycle of violence and war as Freudians are in what amounts to admonishing their clients to “stop it!” when it comes to their neurotic self-sabotaging.

For people cannot will themselves to merely stop their cycles of neurotic self-sabotage and self-destruction, which are the individual manifestations/ acting out of their birth traumas. As mentioned these directors of action operate out of a different part of the psyche, and brain, than one’s conscious willing part. They are simply not accessible, so hardly amenable, to rational or willful input. And changing one’s thoughts to affect them is about as helpful as rearranging the furniture on the deck of the Titanic.

Being Crazy in an Insane World Might Mean You’re the Sane One: Auspicious Collective Regressions

People Who Have It All Figured Out Are the Ones to Watch Out For … Emotional “Sickness” Might Indicate More “Wellness”

Regression in the Service of the Ego

With the exposure of the ineffectiveness of the Freudian tactic of intellectual understanding has come the Freudian movement’s disintegration into schools advocating various other strategies for change.

These schools/strategies include the psychiatric—the use of drugs; the neo-Freudians who acknowledge and use regression in the service of the ego and abreaction; the humanistic-existential approaches, stressing the “experiential”; and the Jungians and neo-Jungians, who would seek the resolution of these cycles in their inner archetypal acting out, resulting in an eventual rootedness of the ego in a higher Self (a spiritual center) beyond or transcending the cycles. [Footnote 8]

Other approaches include the bulk of the spiritual, new-age, or transpersonal means that are flourishing these days. These alternative paths basically differ from all others in their belief that one can simply bypass these perinatal pulls and pushes and go directly to the Light or the Self by dismissing the birth cycles, or the Darkness or Shadow, through affirming the Light, meditating the Darkness out or the Light in, changing one’s thoughts, creating one’s reality, and various combinations of these.

Finally, these newer schools and strategies for healing include those of what might be called experiential psychotherapy, which includes primal therapy, holotropic breathwork, some forms of (experiential) meditation (Vipassana meditation, for example), Reichian and bioenergetic approaches, some forms of hypnotherapy—experiential ones—ones that involve reliving traumas—and virtually all the techniques, treatments, and correctives that are espoused in the field of pre- and perinatal psychology.

The point is that from a good number of these other-than-Freudian perspectives—and all of those that acknowledge the importance of regression in the service of the ego—and from the perspective of the entire field of experiential psychotherapy, the answer to the cycles of violence, war, and death-rebirth is to stop the acting out, not by simply intellectually decrying it—as if one can actually talk oneself out of one’s inner fears and one’s Darkness/Shadow—but by reliving those cycles of violence at their origins…their primal roots. In the case of perinatal forces, those forces from “the dark side,” this is accomplished by reliving the violence of birth, a perinatal trauma that is thoroughly and masterfully delineated by Grof and deMause. [Footnote 9]

Auspicious Collective Regressions

But from this perspective of experiential psychotherapy—one completely congruent with and grateful of deMause’s contributions in psychohistory as well—regression, in Europe, or elsewhere, is not seen as something to decry, disclaim, be horrified of, or be seen as dangerous but is seen as an opportunity. Regression is certainly not seen as a form of defense but as the opposite of that. Regression is part of a process of diminishing one’s defenses against one’s internal reality of pain and trauma.

Thus, examples of blatant collective regression as in Europe—more so to the extent they are relived, released, and integrated—are entirely auspicious for the eventual elimination of war as a collective device of acting out—defending against—the painful feelings coming from one’s personal history which one carries around, all unknowingly, and which pervade, in one way or another, in forms subtle and not so subtle, every moment of one’s consciousness in the present.

From this experiential psychotherapeutic perspective, we have a different feeling about developments like those that Mayr and Boelderl describe as collective regression in Europe and Lawson describes as occurring at rock concerts. [Footnote 10]

From a more enlightened viewpoint these cultural phenomena should have us, if not dancing in the streets, at least hopeful of a gradual decrease in the use of war and violence. Why? It is because the youth who display this “regression” so blatantly were brought up by an “advanced” form of child-rearing than that of previous generations, that they have fewer defenses, fewer layers of obfuscation covering up their unconscious psychodynamics; consequently the regression is seen more clearly in their behavior. [Footnote 11]

Unflinching Belief Related to Total Dissociation

Why is this important? DeMause points out that people do go to war, and that prior to it their perinatal dynamics come to the fore, as evidenced by perinatal-laden words and images in the media and in leaders’ speeches used to describe the situation and its dynamics. Thus, our leaders take us into war, they act out their perinatal dynamics…and we in following them act out ours…in such gruesomely overt ways because these dynamics are so hidden, repressed, and overlaid with defenses that the conscious mind has absolutely no access to, and hence insight into, them as being part of one’s unconscious dynamics.

Consequently the conscious mind is completely able to convince itself that those dynamics are actual, real, and doubtless parts of the situation and therefore require an actual, real, and extreme response. The amount of resolve required to act out war can only be wrought of an unflinching belief in the rightness, the absolute correctness of one’s perspective of the situation and therefore of that extreme course of response. And that can only be brought about by a total dissociation from one’s perinatal traumas, and a complete and utter projection of it on the outside—the enemy, to be specific.

Blatant “Sickness” Related to Being Real

The contrary is also true: When there does not exist that total and complete dissociation of the perinatal trauma—when it is, as in Europe and rock concerts currently, closer to the surface, less defended against, less repressed and, hence, more blatant—it is more accessible to consciousness and less likely to be acted out in the extreme as in war. Instead it is more likely to be acted out in less extreme forms, such as jumping into mosh pits, carrying pacifiers, listening to baby tunes about the, very real, difficulties of being a baby, and so on.

Finally, it is more likely to be actually allowed to emerge in consciousness and be relived, and thereby “healed”…and gone beyond, to be replaced by something more benign and more socially constructive, and thus to be removed forever as a motivation to war or violence. This is the auspicious view of the developments described by Mayr and Boelderl. [Footnote 12]

Janov was the first to point out that a permanent resolution of underlying trauma initially entailed an aggravation of symptoms and symbolic acting out. That is to say, the underlying dynamics become more blatant and apparent in behavior. [Footnote 13]

Janov was also the first to note that the acting-out and overt neurotic was closer to being “real,” and therefore really sane, than his or her highly functioning and “normal,” but repressed, rigidly defended, and unfeeling neighbor. [Footnote 14]

The Most Evolved Parenting … Boomers and Millennials … and The Cyclical Nature of History: I Know It’s Hard to Believe But We’ve Been Getting Saner

Thanks to You We’re Getting Saner: The Most Evolved Parenting … Boomers and Millennials … and The Cyclical Nature of History

Evolution of Parenting – We’ve Been Getting Saner

Finally, the correctness of the view that being “crazy” in an insane world might be more sane has been borne out in recent history. DeMause describes an evolution of parenting from ancient times to the present which involved ever decreasing psychosis and violence and increasing caring and consciousness of the needs of children. He connects this decrease in violent child caring to ever decreasing violence and psychotic acting out in societies.

DeMause labels the most common modern parenting mode the socializing mode. Short of the quite recent helping mode—which only really rose to prominence in the last three decades—the socializing mode is the most advanced and most humane.

Lest there be any confusion, I wish to point out that my own theoretical understanding differs from deMause’s in one important respect. While I agree with his evolution of child-rearing over the course of civilization and within recorded time, I believe he is wrong about prehistory and what primal peoples were like and the kind of child-caring they engaged in. He depicts prehistoric societies as psychotically oblivious of the needs of children, engaging in, first, infanticidal; then, second, abandoning; then, third, ambivalent modes of child-rearing. Whereas it seems to me the overwhelming evidence and increasing numbers of anthropologists point to a natural “organic” child-caring being employed in the the mists of the past quite a bit more “advanced” than even many modes employed today.

I believe the change from the loving parenting we see in many primal peoples and in Nature among many of our planetmates to the infanticidal, abandoning, and ambivalent modes he has described for early historic cultures is a product of that ever increasing control of Nature that went into full gear with the agrarian revolution, some ten to twenty-five thousand years ago. So, I am saying that brutal parenting was a consequence of “civilization” and was at its worst at the beginnings of recorded time.

But I agree we have been gradually evolving to better modes of child-caring over the history of civilization to the most sane and psychologically beneficial modes employed in recent decades, which, you might want to note, are very much like the modes of the earliest humans. I describe why and how we lost our connection with Nature and loving ways of parenting—how we left “Eden”—in my book and blog “The Great Reveal.”

The Cycles of Time

I believe my understanding shows once again how much of what modern folks thought of “development”—including it being linear and increasing from “darkness” to “light” with ourselves always at the top (conveniently)—is wrong and merely part of an anthropocentric bias and an ethnocentric heritage. For more and more, as we lay down those blinders to reality, we notice the evidence of the cyclical nature of everything—from our lives (ashes to ashes) to the physical Universe’s expansion and contraction, to the vibrations at the subatomic level, the waves in the sea, the turning of the Earth and the revolutions of the solar systems, and I contend now also, the so-called “history” of our species on Earth. This is the thoroughly postmodern idea that human time is also cyclical, with over and again peoples returning to earlier halcyon times only to “fall” away from them.

The Worst of Times Quality of Current Events

This idea of time as cyclical not linear is in keeping with Eastern philosophies, as well as indigenous ones. Hindu thinking currently has us at the depths of the Kali Yuga, the worst part of the cycle right now, with matters to be reversed very soon and the best of times just ahead. And, as I have been describing in my books Falls from Grace and Primal Renaissance and will be directly pointing out in my upcoming book, Primal Return, we are currently seeing a most necessary return to a more harmonious way of being and a more natural self. And with it, requiring it, to some extent preceding it, we are evolving to the most advanced mode of loving parenting.

The “Best of Times” Nature of Our Parenting

Psychohistorian Glenn Davis, following deMause, analyzed the most advanced form of child-caring short of the most recent helping mode—the psychogenic parenting mode deMause termed socializing—and found that it comprised four submodes. In order, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century and each one a more “evolved” and humane one than the previous one, they are the submodes of psychic control, aggressive training, vigorous guidance, and delegated release. [Footnote 15]

Oh, Be-HAVE. WWII Generation … Received Aggressive-Training and Vigorous-Guidance Parenting

Davis concluded that in America the Vietnam War was perpetrated by individuals belonging almost entirely to the aggressive-training and vigorous-guidance psychoclasses. [Footnote 16]

Questioning Authority and Oneself Is Good. Boomers … Received Delegated Release Parenting

Yet the Vietnam War was brought to an end largely as a result of the efforts of an antiwar movement whose largest component was a Sixties youth brought up under a more advanced delegated-release child-caring mode. [Footnote 17]

The delegated release mode, which resulted in the phenomenon of Sixties youth and the counterculture, is the most “advanced” mode short of the helping mode.

“Let’s Collaborate” – Millennials. Received the Most Advanced Parenting – Helping … “We Just Want You to Be Happy.”

The helping mode is the child-caring mode employed widely by the Sixties generation for their children, the Millennial Generation, also known as Generation Y. So, a helping mode of parenting was enjoyed by the children of a delegated-release psychoclass, the Boomers. Sixties youth are seen, psychologically, to have the most the most “advanced” ego structures short of their children taught within a helping mode. [Footnote 18]

What’s Involved in Stopping War and Ecocide – Peace Is Painful: But Better Psychotic Than Warring

Ending War and Humanicide—Peace Is Worth its Price of Suffering: Better “Emotionally Disturbed” Than “Healthily” Fighting in War

Walking In Another’s Moccasins

It is obvious that these Sixties youth did not have the same unflinching and unqualified belief in the absolute rightness of their country’s position in Vietnam as did many of their parents. This is obviously the case in a psychoclass of youth chanting a generational mantra, “Question authority!” and whose more extreme members would at times even go over to the perspective of seeing the war from the eyes of the “enemy,” the Other.

As I mentioned earlier, among the Sixties Generation we saw Jane Fonda’s journey to Hanoi, the waving of North Vietnamese flags by protesters, and the carrying of little red books on the sayings of Chairman Mao. These are obvious indicators that the generation as a whole was open to seeing the war from the North Vietnamese perspective: That is, as a conflict perpetrated by a foreign nation that was hypocritical in its espousal of democracy in that it prevented democratic elections that would have without doubt elected Ho Chi Minh and instead it installed a puppet-ruler in the South, making Vietnam a virtual colony of the United States. From this perspective, the Vietnam War was for the Vietnamese as much a war for independence as the American Revolution was for the U.S.

This is just an example of how there are two sides to every issue and how an attempt at empathy or “walking in The Other’s moccasins”—made possible by a closeness to a perinatal unconscious that is also an opposite perspective than that of the conscious mind—can lead, at the minimum, to the reluctance necessary to prevent engaging in at least the most blatant and horrific forms of violence…against others, but consider also, against Nature.

The Perinatal Generation

At any rate, is there evidence that this undermining of the self-righteous position necessary for the instigation and carrying out of war and ecocide—this ability to see at least somewhat from The Other’s perspective and not just one’s own—is in truth correlated with a closeness to perinatal dynamics, a closeness to the unconscious for that generation of youth, those of the Sixties? The answer: Absolutely yes!

As mentioned in a previous part, sociologist Kenneth Keniston did psychological studies of members of the Sixties Generation.

He was inspired to do so through his noticing that he was seeing something really unusual and radically different in these youth than what he had ever seen. This led to his fascination with discovering what made them so different. And he documented his findings in two books—The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society and Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth. Roughly speaking he chose to study the unconscious dynamics of both the “alienated-hippie” and the “activist” sectors, respectively, of that generation. [Footnote 19]

Blushing Troll-Handlers

At the risk of repeating myself, I wish to remind the reader that a reading of his books—keeping in mind that Keniston knew nothing of perinatal dynamics at that time, and few people did, for that matter—reveals a degree of perinatal imagery, fantasy, and acting out—especially among “the uncommitted”—enough to make a troll-handling, pacifier-wearing, mosh-pit jumping youth of today to blush! [Footnote 20]

Self-Analysis and Psychological-Mindedness

Because of this peculiar perinatal access, I don’t believe it is any coincidence that Keniston also found an unusual amount of inner reflection—questioning oneself—alongside the more well known questioning authority. This he labeled “overexamined life” for the alienated sector and “psychological mindedness” for the activists.

Better Emotionally Disturbed Than “Healthily” Engaging in War

So, being close to one’s perinatal imprints, being less defended against one’s inner unconscious painful memories, leads to one being able to question not just oneself—and therefore to be a catalyst to personal growth and a quest for truth—but also the actions of one’s society. It is a counterbalance to our tendency to act out in violence to others as in war and to Nature as in ecocide. It means people will suffer more inner turmoil and pain, will feel more psychologically “disturbed,” and will be less likely to take it out on others, will be less likely to make others or the environment “pay” for what happened to them.

Let us contrast that with its opposite. DeMause writes,

Hitler’s projection of his fears…into Jews and foreigners helped him avoid a psychotic breakdown and enabled him to function during his later life, as long as others shared his delusion of poisonous enemies.

Therefore acting out collectively, as in war, can prevent a psychotic breakdown in certain individuals.

Better Psychotic Than Waging War

But when the consequences of acting out one’s birth trauma, collectively, is millions of people—including oneself—dead, not to mention the uncountably large loss of material and personal resources, it is clear that by comparison a psychotic breakdown is a more benign alternative for either the individual or the society in which that or those individuals act.

Similarly, not providing the outlet of war as a collective birth ritual…oftentimes, for the soldier involved, euphemistically called a “rite of passage”…would allow the genuine neurotic breakdowns, the collapse of people’s defenses, and their opening up to their underlying perinatal dynamics. Thus accessed, they can be healed, or in the least they would prevent the kind of unflinching belief or self-righteousness required for war and violence.

Some folks might even be motivationally paralyzed—receiving information from the unconscious that contradicts and undermines the stance and beliefs of their conscious ego. But when that egoistic stance is slanted, commonly, towards war, violence, selfishness and greed and corresponding environmental apathy, then better one would be indecisive, overwhelmed, and doing nothing.

The Price of Emotional Pain Is Minuscule Compared to That of War

Yet it is true that this neurotic breakdown, of at least a small amount, on the scale of society would result in the kind of collective regressions that Mayr and Boelderl, and Lawson describe. That is, the cause of peace, of the saving of human lives, requires that people pay the price of encountering their primal pain.

By all measures, this peace price is minuscule. It is even more worth it when you take into account the fact that many people, after initially “breaking down” for lack of a collective…and highly destructive…act-out like war/aggression, will actually succeed in reconstructing a self more in line with reality, through the dynamics and means categorized under the term regression in the service of the ego, desccribed above. Regardless of professional help…which would be nice but is not always available or practical…some people just find a way.

Continue with Chapter Ten: Where There Is Hope, Cultural Rebirthing

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Eight:
Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence

Footnotes

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

2. DeMause, op. cit., 1995, p. 12, emphasis in original.

3. See, for example, Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, trans. by Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, especially “Vantage Point 1990,” pp. vii-ix.

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

5. Ibid., p. 144.

6. Ibid., p. 148, emphasis mine.

7. Ibid., pp. 149-150.

8. Regarding the “experiential,” I should make clear that this approach is, from the perspective of the experiential psychotherapeutic approach I will be describing shortly, actually the superficial symbolic acting out of these underlying and powerful cycles in a way that is only a little less impotent than the Freudians.

9. DeMause, op. cit., 1995.

10. 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.

11. Mayr and Boelderl claim quite wrongly and quite strangely—as if to make the facts not conflict with DeMause’s psychogenic theory, or as if to cover up some hole in their analysis—that those caught up in the pacifier craze were raised under the intrusive and socializing parenting modes (op. cit., 1993, p. 145) and yet, in 1992, were between the ages of 15 and 30 (Ibid., p. 143). This is hard to understand because these youth would have been born between the years 1962 and 1977 in advanced Western countries of mostly Western Europe—Italy, Germany, Austria, all of Europe, and even the U.S. (Ibid.).

However, the intrusive and socializing modes are associated, by DeMause, with the eighteenth century and the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, respectively, in the Western world (DeMause, op. cit., 1982, p. 62). On the other hand, the helping mode begins mid-twentieth century in the Western world (Ibid., p. 63).

The conclusion from this is that these youth, described by Mayr and Boelderl, would have been greatly influenced by the helping mode. They would be expected, at least, to have received the most advanced methods of child-caring overall in the world at this time—considering DeMause’s theory—since they are the most recent progeny of the Western world!

Indeed, if these cannot be considered products of the helping mode, who can be? In order for Mayr and Boelderl to dispute this and claim they were exceptions to the rule and were raised under intrusive and socializing modes, they would have had to do a study demonstrating this, or at least cite one done. And this they do not do.

12. Michael D. Adzema, “Reunion With the Positive (Self), Part 1: The Other Half of ‘The Cure.’” Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology 1(2): 72-85. Reprinted on the Primal Spirit site.

13. Arthur Janov, The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis. New York: Dell, 1970.

14. Ibid.

15. Glenn Davis, Childhood and History in America. New York: The Psychohistory Press, 1976.

16. Ibid., especially Ch. 7, “The Great Society and the Youth Revolt,” and p. 240.

17. Ibid.

18.Ibid., p. 241.

19. Kenneth Keniston, The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society. New York: Dell, 1965; Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968.

20.While these aspects of youth are laid out by Keniston, a fuller delineation of these dynamics are to be seen in my work-in-progress, tentatively titled The Once and Current Generation: “Regression,” Mysticism, and “My Generation.” [Stay tuned.]

Continue with Chapter Ten: Where There Is Hope, Cultural Rebirthing

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Eight:
Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence

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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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Rebirthing Rituals, Part Two: Railing Against the Darkness, The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of Reason, and Social Progress Requires Regression

Railing Against the Darkness: The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of Reason, Progress Requires Regress, and Healing Is Nothing if Not Messy

The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of “Reason”

What we absolutely don’t have, yet arrogantly think we do, is the ability—through will or reason alone—to choose light over darkness, to replace these inner veils of distortion with clarity of thought and perception and hence of positive behavior and actions while in the midst of them. Trying to reason with and to obtain truly desired outcomes is about as possible as trying to reason with a lizard and convince it to conform to one’s wishes for its behavior. For good reason: Indeed our rational mind is as split off from the “reptilian brain” inside us within which these imprints circulate and from which they arise as are we from the consciousness of a gila monster.

What We Call “Reason” Is Largely Just Rationalization

This impotence of intellectual understanding in the face of these patterns of self-destruction occurs because these schemas are rooted in memories existing in an emotional and entirely dissociated part of the brain, which is hardly touched by neocortical admonishing of any kind. As deMause correctly points out,

[The fetus’s] “early experiences have been found to be recorded in a separate early neural network—a dissociated emotional memory system centering in the amygdala, quite distinct from the declarative memory system centering in the hippocampus that is established in later childhood.” [Footnote 1]

Disclaiming these cycles, which inevitably pass through darkness, and reliance on “will-power” to change one’s patterns, which includes self-sabotage, has been exposed in its impotence in modern times. We see as evidence the growing acknowledgment of the ineffectiveness and, indeed, counter-effectiveness of psychoanalysis. [Footnote 2]

Railing Against the Darkness

So the question begging to be asked is “What do we do about it?” What do we do about these pernicious cycles?

And when these elements erupt in society in harmless, possibly healing ways, how do we view them? Do we, as Mayr and Boelderl do in their article, “The Pacifier Craze: Collective Regression in Europe,” decry the regression…as if by disclaiming it we could somehow keep the cycle from happening? [Footnote 3]

Mayr and Boelderl write, for example, that the situation of collective regression in Europe “strikes us as being high-explosive [sic] and bitter enough.” [Footnote 4]

In another place they exclaim, “What is horrible about this insight [about the increasing collective regression in Europe] is the additional observation that regression is becoming still more radical.” [Footnote 5]

This response of railing against the “Darkness” is a Freudian response. Yet it is not even a neo-Freudian one, since regression in the service of the ego—which began to be seen as ever more important by neo-Freudians—is not acknowledged, let alone considered.

Social Progress Requires Regression

That regression in the service of the ego is not considered is confirmed by Mayr and Boelderl in their statement that “[R]egression by definition is a process of repression and a defense mechanism.” [Footnote 6]

These are surprising words, in light of the concept of regression in the service of the ego and awareness of the clinically based evolution of psychotherapeutic theory since Freud’s original postulations, over a half-century ago.

They are even more awry if one considers the universal, cross-cultural, implementation by societies of rebirthing rituals to handle the same kinds of forces we are confronted with. The anthropological literature is rife with these accounts.

Further, Grof has meticulously shown that regularly going into altered states of consciousness where one confronts this material is a prime function of cultures, and it occurs nearly universally although it is woefully lacking in Western culture for the most part.

Moreover, these words by Mayr and Boelderl indicate a conflict with or ignorance of the fact that deMause’s theory of evolution of historical change requires regression on the part of parents, while parenting their children, as the primary “engine” of sociopsychological progress.

For deMause writes,

“[T]he ultimate source of all historical change is psychogenesis, the lawful change in childrearing modes occurring through generational pressure…. Psychogenesis depends upon the ability of parents and surrogates to regress to the psychic age of their children and work through the anxieties of that age better the second time than in their own childhood.” (op. cit., 1982, p. 135, emphasis mine.)

But this mistake by these two social scientists would not be all that important if it was not the perfect example of the kind of uninformed attitude we have, generally speaking, in Western societies about these forces. This attitude is reinforced by a Judeo-Christian tradition of specialness and scapegoating in the West. It is a pervasive feeling about these things; specifically it, itself, is the actual defense. While this is a widespread reaction to our inner realities it is far from science, and even further from the truth or reality about these things.

“Stop It!” … Yeah, That’s Gonna Work

At any rate, if we adopt this Western, Judeo-Christian, Freudian tactic of decrying the darkness, we are as effective in derailing the cycle of violence and war as Freudians are in what amounts to admonishing their clients to “stop it!” when it comes to their neurotic self-sabotaging.

For people cannot will themselves to merely stop their cycles of neurotic self-sabotage and self-destruction, which are the individual manifestations/ acting out of their birth traumas. As mentioned these directors of action operate out of a different part of the psyche, and brain, than one’s conscious willing part. They are simply not accessible, so hardly amenable, to rational or willful input. And changing one’s thoughts to affect them is about as helpful as rearranging the furniture on the deck of the Titanic.

Continue with Being Crazy in an Insane World Might Mean You’re the Sane One: Rebirthing Rituals, Part Three – Auspicious Collective Regressions

Return to Rebirthing Rituals, Part One: There Is a Cycle to All Events … The Spiral Dance, Why We Can’t Get No Satisfaction, and Where There Is Real Hope

Footnotes

1. DeMause, op. cit., 1995, p. 12, emphasis in original.

2. See, for example, Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, trans. by Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, especially “Vantage Point 1990,” pp. vii-ix.

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

3. Ibid., p. 144.

5. Ibid., p. 148, emphasis mine.

6. Ibid., pp. 149-150.

Continue with Being Crazy in an Insane World Might Mean You’re the Sane One: Rebirthing Rituals, Part Three – Auspicious Collective Regressions

Return to Rebirthing Rituals, Part One: There Is a Cycle to All Events … The Spiral Dance, Why We Can’t Get No Satisfaction, and Where There Is Real Hope

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The Spiral Dance – The Cycle of All Events: Wedded to Rebirthing Rituals, the Inevitability of Disappointment, and Where There is Real Hope

Rebirthing Rituals, Part One: There Is a Cycle to All Events … The Spiral Dance, Why We Can’t Get No Satisfaction, and Where There Is Real Hope

Wedded to Rebirthing Rituals

At the point when the perinatal unconscious arises, individuals — and collectively, society — have the choice to turn toward the emergence of these feelings or to turn away from them.

In turning toward these feelings we embrace, feel, and if we go deeply enough into that, we relive the roots of them and resolve them finally.

In turning away from them we shun them, act them out, and are enslaved by them…thus we act unconsciously, trance-like, zombie-like.

If we face these inner forces—we call that feeling them…in this instance, feeling through or reliving one’s birth—we integrate them and heal the underlying trauma, the perinatal trauma.

Or the individual and society can avoid this going within—as depicted in the peace symbol—and can choose instead to act them out, which is the peace symbol upside down—the Satan symbol, the pentagram.

In acting them out, one distracts oneself from the uncomfortable feelings, which though not focused on, are still there. One tries to be “strong” in the face of feelings but one is actually driven and directed by them—they “take over one’s mind.” This is the source of the idea of spirit possession and in general of the idea that a devil or Satan can take over one’s soul.

So in running from our feelings we are captured and enslaved by them, we are forced to act them out in ways we would not otherwise choose which are negative to horrible but in all cases self-sabotaging. Of course war is the most horrible, most self-sabotaging, greatest, and most all-consuming form of such acting-out…the greatest struggle.

Humans are characterized by a particular kind of birth process. It is a coming into being that is traumatic and which is related to our distinction of standing upright and thereby decreasing the pelvic opening as well as suffocating the fetus prior to birth. The fact is that because of this “distinction” we are destined to go through periods of rebirthing purificatory rituals, whether for good or ill. [Footnote 1]

For we are psychologically wedded to reliving that which we could not fully experience at the time because of the overwhelming quality of pain associated with it.

.

.

A “Spiral Dance”

These rebirthing rituals we are doomed to repeat, one way or the other. We are going to act out this primal pain—this birth trauma—in an unending cycle of feelings having these components

• Periods of feelings of expansion
• Closedness or entrapment, guilt, and depression
• Aggression
• Release

Then back around again.

In winning the “war” or having the success or achievement, there begins the same cycle of expansion followed by entrapment. Losing the war…the struggle, the battle…is akin to death, even if there is no death. There is numbness and repression…akin to a kind of “limbo”…before life can begin anew. A reconception is necessary.

The Pattern of Our First Nine Months Imprints Us For Our Entire Human Lives

The reemergence of hope in individuals and societies is biologically equivalent to conception. And following this reconceiving, there is a similar cycle of reemerging strength—akin to the expansion that follows winning. Then there is continuing depression or overarching gloom and helplessness feelings coupled with revenge feelings and blame as individuals and societies stew in the vessel of indecision, inaction, and doubt. This is quite like the closedness and guilt which follows achievement-success-victory. Note, however, that the revenge and blame feelings here are aspects of the BPM II matrix, just as is closedness and guilt.

Can’t Get No Satisfaction

And then the cycle is the same again. Specifically, there is aggression against the oppressor (War and revolution both see the foe as an oppressor, even if one is actually the one who is the aggressor.) What follows upon fighting is release or “death”; and so on around. The “happily ever after” that inspires such battle truly only exists in fantasies and fairy tales. Prosperity and feelings of success are unfortunately doomed, on this physical plane of existence, to be short-lived.

Where There Is Real Hope

It would seem we are fated to never be happy, for long. But progress is possible; herein lies our only real choice in the entire scenario. For we either work through these cycles in some deep psychologically transformative way that helps us deal with and pass beyond the difficult and painful parts of the cycle as well as helps to fade the imprints’ potency in determining our behavior or we are doomed to act them out in the external world in ways that we are blindly unaware are not congruent with the actual facts of our circumstances and are harmful to ourselves and others around us.

We are fated to experience these cycles of birth, and we will either act them out disastrously or we find ways of dealing with them inside of ourselves in some way—and some ways are better than others for doing this—so that we can have some inner distance from these patterns and therefore some conscious ability or choice around our actions when these pushes and pulls arise.

The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of “Reason”

What we absolutely don’t have, yet arrogantly think we do, is the ability—through will or reason alone—to choose light over darkness, to replace these inner veils of distortion with clarity of thought and perception and hence of positive behavior and actions while in the midst of them. Trying to reason with and to obtain truly desired outcomes is about as possible as trying to reason with a lizard and convince it to conform to one’s wishes for its behavior. For good reason: Indeed our rational mind is as split off from the “reptilian brain” inside us within which these imprints circulate and from which they arise as are we from the consciousness of a gila monster.

Footnotes

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

Continue with Railing Against the Darkness: The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of Reason, Progress Requires Regress, and Healing Is Nothing if Not Messy

Return to Can You Handle Happiness? What to Do – We Get By With a Little Help, from Our Nature … Stand in the Place Where You Are

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To Reconcile with Nature You Need Humility and to Stop Projecting Your Unreal Malevolence Onto the Universe, Say Planetmates: Part 1 of The 32nd Prasad, Human Redemption — Facing Darkness

Hubris and Fear … In Striving for a Forever Light It Is You Who Have Created the Darkness: Part 1 of the 32nd Prasad from the Planetmates, Human Redemption—Facing Darkness

The Great Reveal, Chapter Forty: The Thirty-Second Prasad. Human Redemption—Facing Darkness: Your Evil Can Catapult Your Redemption, Say Planetmates.

Planetmates Release the Thirty-Second Prasad

Planetmates tell us we need redemption for having manifested the horror in reality that we have in our minds. We need to reconcile with Nature. What we need to do to redeem ourselves is to face the horror we have created and allow ourselves to fear. They say running from our fear has caused the problem. They tell us how we can do that, and they inform us of the things we do in our minds that keep us from doing what is necessary, but is also the greatest good and easy to do.

Swan is first consciousness at the Thirty-Second Prasad.

The Thirty-Second Prasad: Human Redemption – Facing Darkness

“Only by turning toward the darkest of nights…can you discern the brightest of brights that lies at its center…. This we need you to do for the sake of all”

For you have damned yourself in what you have done, and you are pulling all of Nature on this planet in with you. So you need the saving and the reconciliation with Nature implied in redemption. For that, you need face and embrace your plight. You need look into the darkness you have created.

Only by turning toward the darkest of nights that you have pulled over us can you discern the brightest of brights that lies at its center. Your evil is capable of catapulting the greatest of good. This we need you to do for the sake of all. But the most important thing is that in this way lies your salvation.

Part One of Paraphrase/ Elaboration of “The Thirty-Second Prasad”: Human Redemption—Facing Darkness

From all we have said, it should be clear you need redemption. For you have created horror here in Reality, to match your imaginings, that is of a nearly perfect wrongness. This is the blackest of nights that you would bring down upon yourself, but it is made that much worse in that you would, in your insanity, pull all of Creation, all living things not you, as well into this hell you have created…this utter darkness.

So you need to redeem yourselves by reconciling with that Creation, which you so arrogantly threaten. It is arrogant, because you give nary a thought to that which you do. You have this claim of high morality—another vanity you have blessed upon yourself in rationalizing your inferiority and wrong-gettedness. Yet where is your morality as concerns the most basic fundamental thing about life: whether it goes on or ceases? You have laws that tell you, “Though Shalt not Kill.” Once again, it is clear you tell yourself these things and put them on high to rein yourselves in from doing that which you in particular are inclined to do. For you are not just suffering ape but also killing ape. You would bring down your entire species—committing a most unprecedented humanicide—but participate in the ending of all other species as well—commit an ecocide.

So, how exactly does such a killing species reconcile with a Creation in which everything in it has become its enemy, including itself? Since all that you have done that has caused you to stray from the path of life involves a state of ignoring what you were doing, an ignore-ance, and a rationalization of it, it is of course that which must be undone. You can reconcile with Nature through facing your hubris, acknowledging your equality with and not superiority over Creation, and looking at the wreckage you have made of Creation through that ignore-ance, which is part of that thing of yours of straining to reach a forever happiness, while putting out of mind the hardship and pain emanating all about from that deluded effort.

How will this help, let alone save you…or us? Does it not make sense that in reversing the wrong-gettedness that has resulted in this horror you might begin to dispel that horror? But more than that. For out of your over-developed fear and your magnified pain you have done monumental things that have created this infinite wrong. We can tell you that you have the same capacity to right this wrong out of that same fear and pain. You have that same capacity for monumental achievements for the good of yourself as well as all of Creation, out of that capacity for fear and pain, as you have shown for monumental achievements for evil. Your fear and pain can catapult the most magnificent of “live,” just as it has driven its opposite, the ultimate of “evil.”

What you need to do to redeem yourselves is to face the horror you have created and your capacity for fear—this would be an actual fear, for a change, not an imagined one. Allowing yourself to have the fear that is natural in these circumstances we are in will motivate the most magnificent of efforts for good. You think this is simple and obvious and that you are already doing it. This is part of that dimming of awareness you do that creates the veil of ignorance that allows you to be so self-defeating and destructive.

For this simple thing you do not do. We would not need to alert you as we are doing if you were. No, in your fevered mania to run from darkness, pain, and suffering, you hide from yourselves the consequences of your actions. You block out from your vision the results. If you see them, you act the little child caught red-handed: “It’s not me”!” you say, having been able to suppress even the shame your wrong-doingness should bring.

You see guilt and shame to be unpleasant emotions and wish to discard them, yet they are the source for your salvation. It is in this way that you indeed have an Original Sin. You have a basic wrong-gettedness and a way of acting against all Reality (God) and Nature—which is the definition of “sin.” Yet, you would wish to deny this because it is not comfortable—again reaching for that forever light, which creates the greatest dark.

You have made discomfort an evil and view fear as something to be extinguished. You say, “Love is letting go of fear,” when it is exactly that love that moves you to face your fear! It is only because you love that you will permit any discomfort of yourselves in order to keep another from suffering. And that includes the discomfort of fear!

For this reason of making fear a wrong instead of the guiding hand of Providence it is, you have created substances — pharmaceuticals you call them, drugs both legal and illegal—which allow you to not feel fear or pain. Yet it is just that—fear and pain in amounts not overwhelming—which propels the good you do. It is only because of that early trauma that you think such a thing as overwhelming fear and pain even exists. It assumes a malevolent Universe—one that would allow you to suffer—and even constantly push it on you if you resisted—in an amount you cannot handle or for a period that would actually be interminable. You need to remove this malevolence from the All That Is by realizing that it is only a figment of a uniquely human consciousness, not part of Existence itself. Being not part of Existence it is possible to live without it, as indeed us planetmates do.

Continued with All We Are Saying Is Give the Universe a Chance … Darkness Creates the Very Light to Dispel It: Part Two of 32nd Prasad from Planetmates, Human Redemption — Facing Darkness

Return to The Great Reveal, Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Thirtieth-First Prasad. Light and Darkness, Happiness and Pain: Planetmates say human pain is greater than theirs

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Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life, Part Fourteen: Blind Hope vs. Real Hope … Chiron Is Martyr for The Sins of the Fathers

Enter the Centaur: Wherein Lies Real Hope – Sixties and Millennial Generations Are Shamans for Deluded Promethean “Fathers”: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 14

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.

Continue with Real Hope Lies in Pandora’s Jar and Return of the Centaur … Since the Last Time Was 1961, It’s None Too Soon: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 15

Return to A Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Apocalypse … Prometheus Made us “Civilized” … And Doomed: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 13

No. Not easy or comfortable.

Continue with Real Hope Lies in Pandora’s Jar and Return of the Centaur…Since the Last Time Was 1961, It’s None Too Soon: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 15

Return to A Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Apocalypse … Prometheus Made us “Civilized” … And Doomed: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 13

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The Prasads — “Blessings” from Planetmates — point to a major overview of us humans extending over an incredibly long time: The Great Reveal, The Prasads Begin

The Great Reveal – Arranged by the Planetmates for the benefit of humans on the eve of the biggest challenge ever to face humans or even the planet at any time of its existence

The Prasads Begin – 1st Through 12th Prasad:
The Great Reveal, Chapters Nine thru Twenty – Links

The Great Reveal, Chapter Nine: The First Prasad – “Unapproved and Hidden”

Just released, here’s the latest. The Great Reveal–arranged by the Planetmates for the benefit of humans on the eve of the biggest challenge ever to face humans or even the planet at any time of its existence–is being released in snippets.

I received this; they call it “The First Prasad,” so no doubt there will be more to follow. Stay tuned. I’ll continue to update here with whatever I find out, as soon as I find out.

“We thought it would help if…the one and only constant…was the hole in their understanding of the the Nature of All”

DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMANS

There were always those of you, many from even the past, whose names and words you would know; these trailblazers into truth’s jungles, these gardeners of consciousness….

More – Ch 9 First Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Ten: The Second Prasad – Truth Become Invisible

“Real hope” and “challenge” are the words I am hearing most often, as I seek to position myself closer and closer.

The Missives are arriving randomly-timed but with regularity. We could be on the verge of something big. The Prasads so far seem to point to some major overview of us humans extending over an incredibly long time, not to mention the possibilities that arise from this first ever category of a “species” for a source. Anything can happen but the indications are that it is to our benefit; Prasad is the Sanskrit word for a blessing from a saint or a divine being.

I’ll stay on top of this. I’ll make sure whatever I get, whatever it says, I will post. Of this, I make my solemn vow. It’s beginning to feel that I should make that sort of commitment, lest I should be tempted to shy from parts that I, myself, might want to slant or overlook. It’s guaranteed that something this big isn’t going to be all complimentary; but it must also be said that I’ve received assurances that while shining a bright light, the Missives are far more positive than they are critical….

More – Ch 10 Second Prasad

***

The Great Reveal, Chapter Eleven: The Third Prasad – Humans Only Half Ready for Life at Birth

Over 25,000 years Have Humans of All Cultures at All Times Been Immunized From Even an Inkling of the Unapproved and Hidden

Human’s Planetmates pull off the greatest reveal of all time: Over 25,000 years have humans of all cultures at all times been immunized from even an inkling of the Unapproved and Hidden. This refusal (fear) to know the deepest truths of all has been a big part of why it is humans who can do so much against even their own interests. But with all lives in the balance, they are no longer allowed their ignorance. The Truth ends up being something humans would fear: It shows the lie to all human’s vanity. But it also reveals the most wonderful truth that could ever, ever be even imagined….

More – Ch 11 Third Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Twelve: The Fourth Prasad – Origins of Ego – Human Superiority a Defense Against Actual Inferiority Relative to Planetmates (Animal Kingdom)

Swan was First Consciousness at The Fourth Prasad.

"[T]his superiority defense against the underlying inferiority feelings is built up increasingly to beat back into the Unapproved and Hidden the nagging reality of your confused, unsteady consciousness."

BEING HALF-BORN CREATES INFERIORITY FEELINGS. HUMANS EVERYWHERE REPRESS THIS DISCOMFORT THROUGH INFLATION OF SELF AND AN OVERWEENING SUPERIORITY APART FROM AND AGAINST ALL OTHER BEINGS AS WELL AS THE ALL-THAT-IS, OR NATURE-GOD ITSELF. HUMAN DIFFERENCES, E.G., LANGUAGE, ARE TOUTED AS PROOF OF SUPERIORITY, NOT FLAWED SUBSTITUTES FOR DIRECT COMMUNICATION.

This peculiar trait of being half born is nowhere, among humans, seen to be of any consequence. When noted, it is spun as evidence supporting your belief in your superiority over all others.

But the belief itself was a spawn of that difference of being not ready at birth, dependent and vulnerable, and therefore owing one’s very life to the sufficient ministrations of fully growns….

More – Ch 12 Fourth Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Thirteen: The Fifth Prasad – Your “Wordism,” A Word Cave Prison

PlanetMates tell us “Your Wordism–is an aberration causing you to never really hear or understand each other.”

This is highly reminiscent of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” imho. Especially, “your minds — suffused and distracted with a non-stop stream of non-sensical repetitions of word symbols – imprison and isolate you in a world of swirling mental “bookmarks” of reality, tagged to, but only dimly reflective of What’s Real, and keeping you blind to the wondrous reality itself in which other beings live in clarity of purpose and life meaning, and with direct intra- and interspecies and inter-entity communication….”

More – Ch 13 Fifth Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Fourteen: The Sixth Prasad – Ego as Opiate

Twisted Unwholesome Roots, Wrong-gettedness

Below is the entire text of what I received. Oh, yes. I’m sure everyone will just love the hell out of what the planetmates are saying now!! (ha ha ha!!!)

Fox was First Consciousness at The Sixth Prasad.

"This mitigation [of your lack, your scar] is accomplished through the creation of an alien consciousness construct which serves to both separate humans from the realization of your lack...also it serves as an alternate but OPPOSITE construction of self—opposite from the truth of your nature...."

So instead of the truth that, for reasons unknown, you were unfortunate enough to be deprived of the full and perfect nurturing of a near perfect divine Nature, as other species are, until they are ready to be in flesh… instead of the obvious truth — obvious to all other species — that this prematurity leaves a scar of hurt and rejection, for starters; but also, helplessness and hopelessness, second; and third, that this occurs right at the beginning of known flesh existence so as to create the very unusually twisted unwholesome roots of humans….

More – Ch 14 Sixth Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Fifteen: The Seventh Prasad – Becoming Human, Bipedalism Caused Birth Pain

Ego, Water Foraging, Standing, Bipedalism, Narrow Pelvis, 20-Month Gestation, Pain

Turtle Is First Consciousness at The Seventh Prasad.

“[T]he caretakers ... parents ... become both the models and the delivery systems for this diminishment and perfect wrongness of Consciousness.”

Instrumental in creating this Ego are the caretakers, the fully growns, often but not always the parents, especially the mother initially. The fully growns become both the models and the delivery systems for this diminishment and perfect wrongness of Consciousness.

Of course, humans were not humans for millions of years; your predecessors were Planetmates and Earth Citizens like us. There came a time when small groups of your forebears, living near swamps and oceans and gathering their food in the shallow waters, spent long periods of time in that water….

More – Ch 15 Seventh Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Sixteen: The Eighth Prasad. Straying from Nature – Prosperity Won Out Over Happiness for Early Humans

So giving birth prematurely and bipedalism had survival advantages….

Survival won out over healthy, happy newborns and relatively pain-free births.

Leopard was First Consciousness at The Eighth Prasad.

"It is at the point when narrow pelvises, nine-month gestations, birth pain and trauma for mothers and newborns, and dependency on caregivers for survival for the first few years of life became the norm that you began to be separate from all other Earth Citizens and began the process of becoming human."

All these factors acted on each other for millions of years: Wide-pelvis mothers giving birth to healthy, twenty-month gestated newborns vied against the economic pressures for females to give birth earlier and become more productive as a forager sooner as well as to be bipedal and be able to carry more with the hands and….

More – Ch 16 Eighth Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Seventeen: The Ninth Prasad – Eden and the Fall…Harmony with Nature, Early Humans, Foragers

Harmony with Nature, Early Humans, Foragers

Toad was First Consciousness at The Ninth Prasad.

"[T]his long tranquil time was destined to end...the gap between natural functioning and twisted, backwards human functioning widened."

For a very long period these early humans lived in harmony with Nature as foragers and nomads and as non-savage Earth Citizens. Your earliest ancestors did not even eat Earth Citizen flesh; while even some Planetmates do that.

But this long tranquil time was destined to end. As gestations became shorter and more time was needed in the dependent state before the newborn could function much for itself, the gap between natural functioning and twisted, backwards human functioning widened….

More – Ch 17 Ninth Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Eighteen: The Tenth Prasad. Descent Into Savagery Begins…Becoming Controlling, Becoming Killers

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."

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….

More – Ch 18 Tenth Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Nineteen: The Eleventh Prasad. “Agrarian Revolution” – Interference in Flora Empire

Interference..in Nature..you decided to extend control over the Flora Empire of Earth Citizens

Goat was First Consciousness at The Eleventh Prasad.

"[Y]ou next expressed your impatience with the divine flow by controlling the vegetarian side of your food resources by instigating horticulture."

Once you started hunting planetmates for food and killing your own out of fear of scarcity of resources, the next step towards ever more control of what Nature/the Divine provide naturally was facilitated. In terms of the well-being of planetmates, the planet, and the survival of humans, this was the direst development.

Borne of increasing lack of faith in Divine Providence, you next expressed your impatience with the divine flow by controlling the vegetarian side of your food resources by instigating horticulture. Through horticulture you extended your control — we would say interference….

More – Ch 19 Eleventh Prasad

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The Great Reveal, Chapter Twenty: The Twelfth Prasad. Husbandry and Sedentary Ways – Enslavement of Earth Citizens

Planetmates plucked from Nature’s perfect blueprint, set to your ends, driven by your brains crazed from early trauma.

Cow was First Consciousness at The Twelfth Prasad.

"[Y]our control of both Flora and Fauna in this way required the most drastic change in your way of life—one that would be the sole root of the apocalypse that we see looming before us all."

Incidentally, it was not long after this “conquering” of the Flora Empire that you began to extend your control over some Planetmates in exactly the same way. You captured, enslaved, and set their life cycles to fit yours. The who, what, when, where, and how of their lives were plucked from Nature’s perfect blueprint and set to your ends—the ends driven by your fear, obsession to control…

More – Ch 20 Twelfth Prasad

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Let Go, Let God – You Can’t Imagine Darkness Away. Part Four of 33rd and Final Prasad from Planetmates — Something Wonderful

You Can’t Imagine Darkness Away—Let Go, Let God. Part Four of Elaboration of The Thirty-Third Prasad. “Something Wonderful Is Going to Happen”

[Y]ou may be one of those many who do know of our planetary emergency and are spending much time trying to imagine a light to dispel the darkness or conjure up a greater light to overcome it. You may not know that those actions are only continuing in the non-productive denial the rest of your species is engaging in, for they are just another version of running away, motivated still by fear (of fear) and not by the love that comes from actually letting the fear and discomfort into consciousness, into your felt experience….

It is only the greatest of arrogance—that thing that you do, you do so well—continuing, to think that you could have better ideas as to the Ultimate Good—and thereby orchestrate the rest of the Universe along lines to produce it—than is had by what is the Ultimate Good by definition…along with It being infinitely compassionate, all-knowing, all-merciful, and all-forgiving…even of your sorry behinds, you need to know….

[I]n giving up the impossible task of trying to remove discomfort or darkness from your life and accepting that you should let the inevitable pain and darkness inform and teach you, your actions can be infinitely more worthwhile, for others as well as yourselves. This simple change can lead to greater and greater faith, but it also leads, increasingly so, to more capacity to manifest actual good in life. Evil, when faced, can catapult the greatest of good.

Part Four of Paraphrase/ Elaboration of “The Thirty-Third Prasad”: You Can’t Imagine Darkness Away

It may also be that you are one who, in order to do what you undoubtedly will do, needed to hear something being told here. Perhaps it is just that you had no support whatsoever around you for the idea that it was the right thing to turn to embrace your darkness—your fears and discomfort; chances are that you have been told the opposite. But, additionally, you may be one of those many who do know of our planetary emergency and are spending much time trying to imagine a light to dispel the darkness or conjure up a greater light to overcome it. You may not know that those actions are only continuing in the non-productive denial the rest of your species is engaging in, for they are just another version of running away, motivated still by fear (of fear) and not by the love that comes from actually letting the fear and discomfort into consciousness, into your felt experience.

Attempting to pray, meditate, or imagine away the darkness is another way of not seeing, of staying in ignore-ance, and is motivated by the same fear of fear. Fear drives the vanity of prayer. It continues the idea that, if not malevolent, the All That Is is at least not very helpful unless cajoled. It reinforces the delusion of your separation from Nature and Divine Providence for in straining to pressure the Divine Other into acting in accordance with one’s wishes or entreaties, one has to forget that one is not separate but is part of That Which Is, and in any instance, to forget that the All That Is is more knowledgeable and compassionate—being Everything as well as infinite Love—than one’s deluded and singular, dimly lit self. It is only the greatest of arrogance—that thing that you do, you do so well—continuing, to think that you could have better ideas as to the Ultimate Good—and thereby orchestrate the rest of the Universe along lines to produce it—than is had by what is the Ultimate Good by definition…along with It being infinitely compassionate, all-knowing, all-merciful, and all-forgiving…even of your sorry behinds, you need to know.

At any rate, if you are such a person—having the most righteous intention but simply going about it the wrong way, because you are without doubt surrounded by so much fear and distortion of all kinds covering up the correct way—what we are telling you here can be of the utmost significance and help to you.

For if you are like that, you can now entertain the thought that not only is it alright to let the darkness arise in you—and by that I mean no more than allow yourself to feel these emotions you have made wrong—but that it is the good and necessary thing to do. And in checking out that possibility, your efforts for good can be magnified magnificently. For like the climber struggling inch by inch up the cliff face, you can do so much more and receive great relief if you were to know you did not have to reach the precipice through struggling away from below, but could let yourself fall, to find that there has always been, not just a safety net there, but a trampoline…or that you are attached to a bungee cord…and that in either case you find yourself going—with great ease and relief—much further and more directly where you need to go by trying less hard, to turn from darkness, not more strenuously, to keep from seeing it. In this case, such knowing as this can be the most essential and powerful catalyst. For in giving up the impossible task of trying to remove discomfort or darkness from your life and accepting that you should let the inevitable pain and darkness inform and teach you, your actions can be infinitely more worthwhile, for others as well as yourselves. This simple change can lead to greater and greater faith, but it also leads, increasingly so, to more capacity to manifest actual good in life. Evil, when faced, can catapult the greatest of good.

The Thirty-Third Prasad: Something Wonderful to Happen

In not choosing you have actually chosen your demise. We have come to remind you, to pluck your memory, to wake you, and to warn you. The rest is up to you, and we will all feel the results of your indecision quite soon if you do not heed us.

However, if you choose to be noble planetmates again and join with Nature in its defense, we will continue on in greater alliance together. The Earthly adventure can continue virtually without end. For in this case, something wonderful is going to happen. (final prasad)

Continue with Our Family in Nature and Jacob’s Ladder. Part Five of 33rd and Final Prasad from Planetmates — Something Wonderful

Return to You Have Always Known…. This is just a reminder. Part Three of 33rd and Final Prasad from Planetmates — Something Wonderful

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Part Four of Paraphrase/ Elaboration of “The Thirty-Third Prasad”: You Can’t Imagine Darkness Away…Fear Drives the Vanity of Prayer