Month: January 2017

What can be said? Fear is a reality of human existence. In a few instances it may help us in life by waking us out of a complacent stupor. On the other hand, there is a fear that is very insidious. Daily, it steals a part of our soul. It is the fear that separates—the fear of the unknown.

The fear of the unknown is the fear of death as well as a fear of life, which creates a sense of powerlessness within us. This may lead to dysfunctional behaviors that give rise to an illusionary impression of power. Fear-based belief systems thrive in such a cultural environment as ours. Terrorism is ever present in people’s minds, and this fear drives people to accept the erosion of their freedoms, and to accept unjust religious and greed-based war. This type of fear enlarges people’s unhealthy egos, as their minds need a secure sense of safety, security, and power.

Fear is the opposite of divine universal love. It will keep us from our bliss and an awakened heart. It sees the world as a dangerous place, recognizing not the earthly paradise that is truly laid out before us. Fear, in its innermost recesses, generates greed and the desire for materialistic accumulation. It is the breeding ground for external power and the abuses that go with that power. It is the curse, but then again, the salvation of humanity, as it has the potential to wake us out of the illusionary sleep of separation. When we let go of fear and the unknown, we let go of separation; the veil is lifted and we see and know oneness of self and others. Our light has evolved.

However, there is one important aspect of Love and Fear. It is not a dualistic either – or; one or the other. Within each human they blend together. The key to life is balance—percentage. Even an awakened person still maintains a bit of fear. But the greater aspect of their being is oneness or love. This is an example of radical nondualist consciousness.

Trump’s Wall is a great example of separation and playing on people’s fear. And is the Wall to keep people out or keep people in?

All over this great earth people are experiencing immeasurable fear. This is due to the ever accelerating present world-wide conditions: natural catastrophes, wars, rumors of wars, global-warming, terrorism, the fear of terrorism, disease, depression and the list can go on and on. For many people, these happenings are ever present—a sad reality of life. For others who have not yet been touched by these events, the fear and the dread, of what the future may bring, is still within the fore-front of their consciousness.

For the ruling humanity and their institutions to stay on a devastating path of ecological ruin, materialistic gain and religious conflict will only result in cataclysmic destruction of the earth and its creatures. Not total destruction, mind you, but it will still be a world left “barren” of resources and beauty where our children’s children, and their children, will suffer greatly. All of this is caused by power-driven, greedy-unhealthy-egocentric elites and their capitalistic and religious patriarchal institutions.

Pure and very simply, capitalistic practices and their political cronies, as well as the religious beliefs of stewardship of nature, destroy the bio-sphere of earth. There is no concern for the welfare of the earth and its creatures if they threaten the bottom-line.

The world is a mess. The so-called compassionate foundations of the world are not addressing the cause of the problem. The ones that need to be stopped; the ones “pushing people” into the dark depths of despair by the present currents of life are capitalistic beliefs and practices, the lack of true democracy, and the inequality propagated by the institutional, political and religious elites—and their paradigms of Institutionalized Hierarchal Religion, Capitalism and “Capocracy.”[i]  They are the ones that need to be stopped and their harmful paradigms destroyed. If you agree with me; keep marching, protest, organize and vote in the mid-term elections of 2018.

[i] In today’s world, democracy is not true and pure inclusive democracy but what I call ‘Capocracy’ or Capitalistic-Democracy. Corporations have taken over America and the democracy on which the United States was founded.

U.S. is now a “’flawed democracy’ instead of the ‘full democracy’ ranking it’s held previously, citing the declining trust in government as the cause. The downgrade now puts the U.S. at 21 in international rankings, below Japan and tied with Italy. In terms of rankings, the top three scores went to Norway, Iceland and Sweden.” (Travis Fedschun, US no longer a ‘full democracy,’ report claims, January 25, 2017, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/25/us-no-longer-full-democracy-report-claims.html)

Philosophically[i] and practically, it makes sense that “the Earth is female, reflecting the consonance between nature’s fecundity and the fertility of women.”[ii] Millennia ago, the earth as divine Mother was acknowledged and honored as truth. This was a time when a human’s consciousness was one of partnership with nature, not one of domination. This predominator mind recognized “our oneness with all of nature”[iii] and “was far advanced beyond today’s environmentally destructive ideology.”[iv] Both men and women worked together in equality and partnership for the well-being of society and the community.

As the wheel of time turned, things changed, and not for the better—for humanity or for the earth. The goddess traditions were gradually replaced with a paradigm of male domination in all areas of life. The serpent honored by the earth-based religions as a symbol of wisdom, prophecy, and death and rebirth was slowly transformed into an image of evilness by the Jewish scribes’ editing of Moses’s oral teachings and traditions and by the liars of Pauline Christianity. According to Riane Eisler’s The Chalice & the Blade, “the vilification of the serpent and the association of women with evil were a means of discrediting the Goddess.”[v]

It is a fact of history that the earth and women have lived under male domination for thousands of years and have suffered, emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually, the consequences of this domination. If you dominate women, you feel entitled to dominate the earth, as the earth, or nature, symbolizes the feminine. If the religious dualistic paradigms of the day put forth and endorse the belief that men are superior to woman and rule the earth and all its creatures, the gate of hell on earth flies open to social, economic, and ecological servitude, abuse, death, and destruction by justifying any patterns of behavior toward the dominated. One of the primary means of domination is control of wealth, bodies, reproductive health, and sexual activity.

The church, the mosque, and the temple have all relegated females and the earth to a lesser status in regard to the rules and authority of males— the mandate that is supposedly God-given. Under this mandate, the rape of the earth, overseen by the patriarchal, capitalist religious or industrial czars, is acceptable—all approved by their god of power and greed.[vi] What subconscious message does this mandate give to males?

There are multitudes of examples of the male-dominated religions controlling, or is it dominating, women’s bodies, reproductive health, and sexual activity. These range from the covering of the head or female body in Islam[vii] to the condemnation of birth control as a sin by the Catholic Church. These examples even extend to the founding and subsequent history of Iceland.

The Land of Fire and Ice was founded by the Norse in the ninth century after the courageous Norse pagan purists left Norway to escape from the Christian tide that was overwhelming other pagan cultures and religions. In their new homeland, their freedom of body, mind, and spirit only survived about two hundred years until their Althing, the oldest surviving parliamentary institution in the world, declared Christianity the religion of Iceland. As a concession to the Norse pagans, their beliefs and practices were allowed to go underground. The point of this is that before the church took over Iceland, men and women were equals in society. The primary crime was blood feud. After the church established its dysfunctional beliefs, women were regarded as inferior to men, and the most frequent crime—incest! Men now owned all women’s bodies.

[i] This is excerpted from Do You Like Jesus—Not the Church?

[ii] Brian Leigh Molyneaux, The Sacred Earth, 10.

[iii] Riane Eisler, The Chalice & the Blade, 75.

[iv] Ibid., 75.

[v] Ibid., 89.

[vi] “According to a new report by Rainforest Action Network the banking sector is a major source of climate disruption, perpetuating the reliance on dirty energy sources and enabling polluters. The report states that despite

the fact that the insurance industry has identified climate change as a significant risk of loss, banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase continue to invest in polluting energy industries like coal at the expense of renewables like wind and solar.

“The big banks will do whatever the big banks need to do to turn a profit. And that usually comes at the greatest cost to middle class lives and livelihoods. In that respect Hurricane Sandy is a little like the foreclosure crisis: both were created by Wall Street and in both Wall Street has somehow managed to escape accountability” (Jessica Pieklo, “How the Big Banks Helped Cause Hurricane Sandy,” November 1, 2012, http://www.care2.com/causes/how-the-big-banks-helped-cause-hurricane-sandy.html).

[vii] “Australia’s most prominent Islamic cleric vowed Thursday to stand strong against widespread outrage over his description of women who don’t wear head scarves as ‘uncovered meat’ who invite rape” (Rohan Sullivan, “Rape Comment by Islamic Cleric Stirs Up a Storm,” Seattle Times, October 27, 2006, A15).

Following segments are excerpted from Return of the Feathered Serpent and Return of a Green Philosophy.

As a thirty-year old, I sat in a darken theater with possibly only three other movie-goers. And then the opening crawl: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….” It’s hard to put into words, but what followed vibrated a deep feeling within my soul. Almost forty years later, we have Rouge One, which is the lead up to the storyline of the original Star Wars.

And I must say it had the feeling of the original, I loved it. Since there are supposedly no Jedi around outside of Vader, the manner in which they handled the concept of The Force was very interesting. Throughout the movie, Chirrut, the blind warrior monk, kept chanting the mantra: “I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.” At the very end as he realizes his death is imminent, he slightly switches the wording: “the Force is with me, and I am one with the Force.” I was very impressed with this demonstration of a technique to work with awakening the Force through chant. Except, I would have slightly changed the mantra to—“I am one with the Force; the Force is within me and surrounds me.” This gives a better indication of the Force.

So what is the Force?

To the ancient Maya the Force was known as ch’ulel (soul-force of the Universe). It is believed to be the single, dynamic sacred force or energy that is the unifying totality of all things—a universal life-force. It’s in constant movement eternally self-generating and self-regenerating while encompassing and interpenetrating the whole cosmos. It is immanent and at the same time, transcendent:

“Ch’ulel is the word for the inner soul or holiness that resides in all living things, in powerful objects, in sacred places, and in the many energy-laden objects in the Maya world.”[i]

Is the Force magic?

Yes and no; the indigenous power workers, who I have apprenticed with over the decades, never referred to their powers as magic. The reason: in truth, the power exhibited is not out of the ordinary; it is ordinary; it is flowing through all things. To the Norse, it is Óðinn’s unseen power of creation—seiðr. The difference is that the majority of people do not have the radical nondualistic consciousness, power, or strength of heart and mind to access it. But it is there—just feel the force of a storm or observe the beauty of a flower.

This power or “The Force”—the term George Lucas coined in in his Star Wars movies—is the single, dynamic, sacred power or energy that is the unifying totality of all things—a universal life force. It’s in constant movement, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating while encompassing and interpenetrating the whole cosmos. It is immanent and at the same time transcendent. This “Force” is only accessible through direct personal experience and must be awakened. There are seven aspects to this power, which I explain in Return of a Green Philosophy.

This power on a personal level is the inner heat generated by the shaman. Interesting enough, the feeling is one of icy fire. The first time I experienced it coursing through my body, I thought I was having a heart attack. This is the power of creation as witnessed by the Norse creation myth of the blending of fire and ice.

[i] David Freidel, Linda Schele, Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos, 433.

The following is excerpted from Return of a Green Philosophy.

The majority of people believe that luck is nothing more than chance. If you’re a Christian, not only do you believe in chance but also grace, which is “a Christian theological term denoting divine gifts without which human salvation would be impossible.”[i] Both of these beliefs are external to us and out of our control. They are not dependent on our hearts, our minds, or our spirits. With these beliefs, there is no need to strengthen our mind and spirit or awaken our heart.

These beliefs are not Norse-Germanic. Being lucky or unlucky is not chance but a reflection of us, a reflection of our minds. Accordingly, “the inner state of a man in luck is described in Icelandic as a whole mind, heill hugr, which of course comprises wisdom as well as goodwill and affection. The man of whole mind is true to his kin and his friends, stern to his enemies, and easy to get on with, when lesser men come seeking aid. His redes are really good gifts to the receiver—whole redes, in Icelandic heil ráð.”[ii]

The ancient word rede means “counsel, advice.” It goes hand in hand with luck. It “is a perfect illustration of Teutonic psychology. When given to others, it means counsel; when applied to the luck working within the mind, it means wisdom, or a good plan, and from an ethical point of view, just and honest thoughts. But the word naturally includes the idea of success, which accompanies wise and upright devising, and on the other hand power and authority, which are the working of a sound will.”[iii] Likewise, “a redeless man is weakened by lack of will, lack of power, and lack of self-assertion.”[iv]

Words and actions reflect a person’s luck. A person who continuously lies or tells half-truths would be known to have unluck and recognized as a niðing. This person lacks honor and courage with the connotation of being a villain.

It makes sense then that a strong and powerful mind and a strong will—in other words, luck—are under Þórr’s guidance as protector of humanity and the earth. Once again, we see how the attributes of Þórr may guide us and assist us in overcoming our struggles of life. A mind that is powerful and resolute with total focus, intent, and will, without any extraneous chattering or mind-talk is developed through the practice of becoming one with nature. This ability is cultivated through participation mystique. This is a knowing of the things of life and their inherent mysteries through the experience of the mundane as well as the spiritual. Participation mystique may be as simple as sitting alone under a tree and listening to the sounds of nature and our own hearts, or as complex as dawn bathing in a stream. Additional practices and actions may include such things as fasting and exposure to the elements. When I lived on the coast of Maine, every time there was a Nor’easter, I ran to the edge of the ocean cliffs and experienced through all my senses, absorbed through my whole body, the power of the storm—one with the essence and force of Þórr’s power. Participation mystique is essential and will result in a transformation of consciousness—and magic happens. When we are one with nature, we may elicit acts that others may view as miraculous, such as calming or calling the wind.

However, the present-day technology of smartphones and social media is a hindrance to a strong mind and these abilities. If need be, it would be best to use both sparingly. A strong mind is a mind of luck—a Norse mind, where there is no separation between the soul and the body. This is just not human bodies but all bodies—stones, trees, animals, and so forth. In other words, a strong mind is a consciousness of unity or radical nonduality.

[i] Jonathan Z. Smith, The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion, 392.

[ii] Vilhelm Grönbech, The Culture of the Teutons, 90.

[iii] Ibid., 89.

[iv] Ibid., 90.