Karen Armstrong on Religion as Unknowing

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.




In this wonderful lecture, Karen Armstrong tackles the big questions and determines that there are no answers -- not if you're doing it right. As I wrote yesterday, embracing unknowing is a key to dismantling oppressive hierarchy and abuses of power. And willingness to embrace mystery is the pathway to God.

What is God? The former nun recalls the answer she learnt in catechism: "God is the supreme spirit who alone exists of himself and is infinite in all perfections." That answer, while far too heady for an eight year old, is still too limiting to be meaningful. Instead Armstrong turns to the teachings of Maimonides, Avicenna, and Thomas Aquinas whose thoughts on the matter she paraphrases.

God is not the supreme spirit. God is not the supreme being. God is not a being at all. God is being itself.

What is religion? Again, there is no simple answer according to Armstrong. Religious experience shouldn't be definable. It should defy explanation.

In the pre-modern world, good theology was meant to tip you into a moment of transcendence and silence where you realized that you'd gone beyond the reach of words and concepts. Because our minds are tuned to transcendence.

Time Monk Clif High on Release Language Waves

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

According to Clif High we are, indeed, in a prolonged release language period as predicted. Here he characterizes that language as being indicative of the breakdown of the societal hierarchy. This little lecture is long on pontification and short on specifics in terms as to how these changes are showing up in the linguistic data. However, it's an interesting exercise and I certainly would like to believe it's true that this is what's occurring. If you had asked me in the 80s and 90s what I thought the near future held, you would have heard me say that it would be the breakdown of the patriarchal, hierarchical structure and the reemergence of more matriarchal patterns. There were certain astrological precursors which I was following in the 90s, specifically a grand cross in 1999 that I was observing very closely -- and experientially -- that was predicted by some astrologers as initiating the breakdown of the most entrenched and hidebound institutions. (Something about how it impacted Taurus. Bear with me. I'm not an astrologer.) Anyway, that is precisely what occurred throughout the aughts, and began in earnest following 9/11. So, according to High, we've reached a certain threshold or critical mass point in this process and that is what the release language is all about. And, as discussed, he previously pointed to the Kony 2012 phenomenon as an indicator.

There is much that jibes with my perceptions in this particular rumination of High's, which is certainly not always the case. I do not buy into his paranoid fear of Masons and the like, but then I never do.

I am absolutely with him on the importance of "unknowing." I've been been pushing for a Socratic "I know that I don't know" model for a very long time. I absolutely agree with him that the desire for certitude leads ultimately to abuses of power. This is something I contemplated a great deal when I was blogging the James Ray sweat lodge trial and what High posits as the dangers of cults of personality was exemplified about perfectly in that tragedy.

Cafe

Buy From Art.com

Around the Web, Around the World

"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Shamanism and Healing from Trauma

The ancients understood that soul loss could occur as a result of trauma, warfare, sorcery, accidents, or abuse. So simple and deep was this understanding that soul retrieval was often the place to start the healing process. Today, soul retrieval is often the last resort when nothing else succeeds and the individual is desperate to clear the energy of a past trauma before they lose everything that they hold dear in life. Uncleared trauma becomes a chronic trigger for our fight or flight fear response, creating a host of real physical diseases and pains. Uncleared trauma shapes our outlook on life in a way that leads to inaccurate decision-making, addiction, mental unwellness, and self-destructive behaviors that wear at our most intimate relationships and destroy our connection to our true self. But what is trauma really? And why are we so resistant today to giving our selves what we need to heal the traumatic events of our lives? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt as she explores a variety of ways shamanic healing effectively repairs what is set asunder in trauma and the rich variety of effective clearing work offered today to restore the body and soul to unity and wholeness.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

Earthquakes and Earth Weirdness

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The earth seems to be shaking, rattling, and rolling in both explained an unexplained ways with increasing frequency. A week of major earthquakes -- Mexico (7.4), Chile (7.1), Fiji (5.1), Japan (5.2), Australia (5.6), Turkey (5.2), Russia (5.3) Indonesia (6.2) New Guinea (6.6), etc. -- while not thoroughly surprising in the wake of recent solar storms, is concerning all the same. If I lived in a seismic area, like say California, I'd be really on edge.

Stranger than the quakes are new reports of the metallic, rattling sounds that have been the subject of discussion for some time. Posted above is a Dreamland interview with Linda Moulton Howe who has a very detailed report on an off-the-charts sound experience in Wisconsin and something very similar in Georgia. Howe interviewed city administrator Lisa Kuss who gave a very thorough rundown on everything that was not the cause of the extremely loud booming and banging noises that had rattled residents in their shoes. But after methodically discounting every possibility from earthquakes to water systems to mining to military activity, Kuss did a complete turnaround at a local meeting and blamed a 1.5 earthquake some 30 miles away. It is a laughable suggestion. But it sounds like the price tag for the research into the phenomenon was getting a tad high, which could explain the urgency to put the matter to rest.

I learned this morning that there was 3.1 quake not 40 miles from me last night. I felt and heard nothing. To put it another way, if a 1.5 quake could cause days of ongoing sounds like trains colliding, as one resident described it, the state of California would be unlivable for the continuous racket.

Paul Levy on the Collective Shadow

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I've referenced Tibetan Buddhist and healer Paul Levy before -- notably in my review of The Secret. Levy's essays are available on his site Awaken in the Dream and in his book The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis. In his newest book Wetiko, Levy continues to explore the projected shadow as a collective phenomenon and the Native American mythical embodiment of it known as wetiko to the Cree. Years ago, I watched a movie called Wendigo, another Algonquian name for the same phenomenon. It's a haunting film that brilliantly captures the sense of doom we experience at those times when life is turned upside down leaving us at the mercy of an unfolding fate that seems to have its own agenda. As Levy explains, we actually animate this darkness run amok from our suppressed shadow. The more in denial of our shadow we are, the more inevitably we will confront it as a seemingly alien entity in our reflective world.

One of the things that struck me in this Red Ice Radio interview is Levy's anecdote about a New Age bookstore that wanted him to appear but not talk about all that shadow stuff. They wanted it to be "positive." It put me in mind of another author who dared to write about the painful side of spiritual growth; Rabbi Yonassan Gershom who wrote about Holocaust reincarnates.  Said Gershom:

Then in 1984 I was invited to speak on Jewish mysticism at the annual Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship (SFF) retreat at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. SFF is an eclectic group of spiritually oriented people who are interested in psychic phenomena, and most believe in reincarnation. Here, I thought, would be a receptive audience for these case histories that I had been gathering. So I suggested "Cases of Holocaust Reincarnation" as my topic.

I was turned down flat. The SFF representative explained that the theme of the retreat would be "I Am the Light," and they wanted to focus on uplifting, positive material because that's what people expected. The Holocaust was just too heavy and depressing, and might upset people, even if I were talking about reincarnation. Couldn't I do something more inspiring, like a Sabbath liturgy?

This relentless focus on the upbeat and cheerful is not just naive. It's dangerous -- something I've written about ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And as Levy has been explaining brilliantly for years, it can unleash terrors beyond our conscious imagining.

Reflections on the Vernal Equinox

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

First Robins of... um... February

This year I'm just finding the first day of spring a little weird. Mainly because we had no discernible winter and it's been spring for weeks. March has been marked by temps as high as the mid '80s, high humidity, and the need for air conditioning. The flowering trees in our neighborhood are in full bloom. My daughter has been running around in her summer clothes for weeks and merrily snapping pictures of flowers and birds.

As the cherry blossoms in the nation's capital are hitting a bizarrely early peak, school was closed in Flagstaff Arizona because of a blizzard that also closed parts of the interstate. Marine Corps friends of ours in the Southern California desert have also been having snow this week. Weird, weird, weird.

Hyacinth Blossoms ~ Early March

Cafe

Buy From Art.com

Around the Web, Around the World

"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

A Field's Guide to Shamanism with Colleen Deatsman

"Shamans cannot undertake personal healing, action in the world, and service to the community using only their personal life-fore energy; they must harness the more powerful energies of nature, spirit and the nonordinary worlds," explains our guest, Colleen Deatsman. "To practice shamanism in modern culture and our own home environment, we need only wake up to our awareness of self, nature, life-force energy, and spirit and reap the rich experience available to us in each moment." Join host, Christina Pratt, and the author of The Hollow Bone: A Field Guide to Shamanism as we explore self-healing, the unintentional things we do to disempower it, and how we can better support others in their own self-healing. Colleen has explored health, well-being and shamanic practice for 25 years and is the author of five books. She is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?

This week's guest:
Colleen Deatsman

Colleen Deatsman has been exploring health and wellness, self-healing, personal growth, spiritual development, and shamanic practice for over 25 years, earning a wide array of degrees, certifications, and licenses for numerous healing forms. She is the author of five books including The Hollow Bone: A Field Guide to Shamanism and Seeing in the Dark: Claim your own Shamanic Power Now and in the Coming Age. She offers trainings, workshops, and online classes in shamanism which can all be found through her website.

As a healer, Colleen knows from personal experience what it is like to be devastatingly ill, fatigued, depressed, frustrated, and lost. For ten years, Colleen was one of the hopeless who suffered from a chronic illness that traditional medicine could not effectively treat. Determined to live life fully again, she embarked on a journey of self-healing and spiritual awakening that led to complete recovery and a comprehensive program that benefits all who follow it.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

Unholy Water: Atheists Get Religion in Florida

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

As I said here, when atheists started "de-baptizing" people, atheism has a become a religion.

It's finally happened. Atheism has become a religion. Let's see... a formalized group ritual utilizing symbolic objects to affect a transformational process. Yep. It's a religion.

And now we have a full on sectarian conflict in Polk County, Florida. It's literally a battle over symbolism and how that symbolism will shape a stretch of highway as an atheist group made a public display of washing away the anointing oil placed there by a local church.

"I find it absolutely ludicrous that the atheists who say they don't believe in God have to erase something that they don't believe in," [Associate Pastor Glen] Copple told FoxNews.com.

On that, I have to agree with the pastor. It strikes me as more than a little odd that atheists are tackling something head on that they consider to be imaginary. And that they're, once again, doing so in such a ritualized context.

Graham Hancock on Plant Teacher Ayahuasca

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

A typically excellent interview with the always informative Graham Hancock. He shares some of his personal experience with ayahuasca. He argues that there is nothing lazy, let alone recreational, about working with mind altering substances in a shamanic context. On the contrary, he explains. It's very "hard work" taking ayahuasca, looking at your life with the help of this brutally honest plant teacher, and integrating the lessons into your life. But he believes the rewards and life transforming results are well worth it.

Time Monk Clif High: Kony 2012 is IT

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

"The power of social media is clearly demonstrated in the reception for a film about an African war criminal named Joseph Crony." ~ Geraldo Rivera (Did he misspeak or was that a Freudian slip?)

Clif High thinks the Kony 2012 video fulfills for the release language prediction for March onward.

Now, in the background, slowly, with only self sustaining word of mouth, on a human2human level, the KONY 2012 movie and campaign is moving so far past viral as to constitute a new definition of this as a planetary experience.

. . .

It is my thinking now, that sometime late this afternoon pacific coast north america time zone, the KONY 2012 movie will have been watched by that final human that will be required and the whole context of the planet will begin changing as the shift into release language dominates from this point forward. It will happen before your eyes, and though many will be too blind to see it for months, it will already be engaging some of us by this evening. 

This combinoric effect is what occurs when enough humans put enough intent into the same context...it changes that context. In this case, the context is the common consensus reality in which the entrenched elite rule with their psycopathic minions.

Cafe

Buy From Art.com

Around the Web, Around the World

"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Planting the Seeds of Your Soul's Purpose

Our soul's purpose lives in our body, deep within the root of our being where we carry our piece of the original spark of life. Like bulbs in the ground and buds on the trees, that spark of your soul's purpose wants to rise up and out of you, blossoming into an expression of your unique gifts given to the world. The irritation and restless energy that we feel in the springtime is more than cabin fever and a lust for newness. It is the energy of the Inner Dreamer waking to dream true and instead finding the need to detoxify the winter's crop of old energies, ideas, and beliefs. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares a shamanic practice for planting the seeds of your Soul's Purpose as an Earth Ritual for spring. For our seeds to take root and blossom we must prepare the soil. This requires bringing in the nutrients of our essence energies and aligning with the things we know we cannot live without. It also involves fertilizing the soil with the release of aspects of our self that no longer serve us or have been outmoded by our growth. And most important of all, we must plant the right seeds, the seeds that resonate with our authentic true nature.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

Cafe

Buy From Art.com

Around the Web, Around the World

"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Have Shaman's Sickness, Initiation and The Calling

"Shaman's sickness," refers to the specific, physical and/or mental illness that results when spirit chooses a new shamanic candidate and possesses the candidate or takes his/her soul into the spirit world. The sickness does not respond to normal treatment, nor does it progress like a normal illness. It may advance and retreat without reason and defy our understanding of how similar symptoms normally function in the body. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how the shaman's sickness appeared traditionally and the many ways it presents in our time. This illness is cured only when the one stricken surrenders to the will of spirit, faces his or her fear of death and cures that personal madness or illness. The individual forges working relationships with their helping spirits and gains shamanic power in the process only when they find meaning in the crisis and his or her own cure. As a result of this passage, the individual can work with the fears and madness in others having now crossed that emotional and psychological territory within the self.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

The Freedom to Control Other People

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan weighed in this weekend on the wholly manufactured debate over freedom of religion. This, if you'll recall, is the Rick Santorum endorsed version of "absolute" separation of church and state that would allow religious affiliated, but non-religious organizations such as hospitals and colleges, to deny birth control coverage under their insurance plans.

"We're not trying to impose our teachings on anybody," said Dolan in his 45-minute speech to a packed auditorium of about 1,000 people. "We're simply saying, don't impose your teaching upon us and make us do as a church what we find unconscionable to do."

The statement borders on the Orwellian. Of course they're imposing their teachings on people. They're imposing them on numerous students and employees -- many of whom aren't even Catholic -- by not allowing them to use their health benefits in a manner consistent with medical advise and their own conscience.

What I find most confounding about the religious leaders and congressmen demanding "religious freedom" to exempt employers from allowing coverage of birth control is that they seem incapable of seeing the irony. It seems perfectly reasonable to them to demand as their own freedom the right to control other people.

Internet Shutdown and Other Time Monks Related Concerns

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Web Bot Forum Roundtable Discussion of Data Gap

As discussed, this month is when the web bots are predicted to hit the hard wall of the "data gap," or "discontinuity." To be clear, Clif High does not pretend to know what causes the data gap. But reports going back to some of the earliest web bot runs have shown that in this time period, the ability of the web bots to gather data would start to drop off dramatically and, over the course of about a year, disappear. Jules from Web Bot Forum posted an overview here.

Since the early years of the webbots, Clif High has seen a discontinuity or data gap in the webbots long term forecasting. As we get closer, the discontinuity has come into clear view starting in March 2012 yet for all intense [sic] and purposes, the discontinuity still remains a mystery. During this period the data grows holes which make forecasting impossible. Forecasting correctly and incorrectly is one thing, but what could happen that makes the data impossible to forecast?

Data gap is also something of a misnomer, according to High, who has more recently said that the reemergence of a small amount of data gathering capability was actually forecast due to a programming error. What we're actually looking at is a data stoppage.

Sorry, no. You misunderstand. Data gap is a 'natural' phenomenon. The recurrance of data after 5/2013 is the processing artifact.

The gap effect has already started in modelspace and simply is totally complete by 6.2013.
Also do not know what causes the gap. But at least now we know it is not a gap so much as a winding down and stoppage So unknown effects now are gradually (over 2011 into 2013) causing the stoppage of data. This *may* be good news in the sense that this pattern *would* fit a degradation of the internet.
clif