The Spiritual Origins of Santa Claus

I decided to do this piece because my daughter is at the age where the whole tale is crumbling, and this is never a pleasant thing for kids. It isn’t cool that we lie to our kids in this way in the name of, “Aww, but it’s Christmas… what is childhood without all the bullshit we spin around them all year with bunnies and eggs, flying reindeer and pissed off pumpkins that all have no connection to anything whatsoever, no compelling morality tale nor awakening message? You’re an awful parent if you deprive them of all that!” Well, there are many cultures that don’t spin all these larks for their kids, because children are quite capable of spinning a world of wonder around themselves without our help, in fact, they’re infinitely better at it.

I want my daughter to know what the Santa myth stands for, what “gifts” were brought, why, by whom and finally: what’s in it for her.

In our culture, we’ve always kind of wondered how the heck Santa is connected to Christmas other than the fact that he brings gifts. Most of us were lead to believe that Santa Claus is a child-friendly version of Saint Nicholas – we even call him St. Nick occasionally. Although Santa became a mutt of sorts over time, including a bit of St. Nick (from Sinterklaas, the original and current European version), the actual origin of Santa is much more interesting, way before St Nick was a glint in his mama’s eye.

It all begins with a mushroom. Yes. A mushroom. Did you expect it to begin with something man made? Then you’re not thinking far back enough. Humanity’s first interactions were with earthly things.

The name of the mushroom is Amanita muscaria, also called Fly Agaric.

Muscaria is a psychotropic, causing visions and altered states. It is also toxic, and must be handled in a particular manner so as to get the psychedelic effects without the toxic ones. You may have heard of the word “shaman”, which is a word from the Tungus-speaking people of Siberia, to connote a religious specialist.(1)  The Tungusic are Russian indigenous people who live in the arctic circle (north pole) and they are reindeer herders – I shit you not. (2)

A shaman dealt with the mushrooms, as both a safety practice and as part of the spirituality of the people. In fact, often the shaman would eat the mushrooms and then the people would drink the shaman’s urine – this way, the shaman acted as a filter, because the psychedelic effects remain intact but the toxicity is eradicated.(3)

Another way to decrease toxicity is to dry the mushrooms completely. The mushrooms would be harvested in late Autumn and strung up around the hearth-fire to dry in preparation for the winter solstice. (4)

The home of those in the cold north, such as Siberia, was, and is, often a “yurt”, which is similar to a tee-pee.

In some shamanic rituals, such as the initiation of shamans in Buryatia, a tree will actually be erected inside the (yurt) … passing through the smoke hole (in the roof)… in some … the shaman literally climbs the tree; in others … the shaman drums at the base and only ascends with his spiritual being. As the shaman ascends the tree in his ecstatic state, he describes his journey to the upper world. Also, even in the absence of an actual turge tree, the shaman will still travel to other worlds after exiting through the smoke hole, often after his spirit has metamorphosed into a bird.

Travel to the upper world requires the ability to fly, and shamans often change themselves into birds in order to make the journey. They may also ride upon a flying deer or horse. (5)

The shaman would collect the mushrooms in a bag and deliver them to families, who would then often hang them in socks around the fireplace to dry – the mushrooms would be ready to share their revelatory gifts in the morning of the solstice.

Amanita Muscaria grows only beneath a Christmas tree (coniferous/pine tree) in a symbiotic, non-parasitic relationship with the roots of the tree. (6) It used to be thought to be the fruit of the tree.

Finding these vivid red and white gifts beneath the Christmas tree was a treat indeed!

Especially for reindeer, who absolutely loved them. After eating some, they would prance around and some have said that is where the idea they could fly came from. There is more evidence however that the whole flying thing comes from a blend of two facts, one is that under the influence of Muscaria there are several common visions: things appearing much bigger or smaller than they really are; faeries and gnomes and other beings; and flying – either flying one’s self or seeing other things flying. This is how many would see the shaman fly off on his reindeer sleigh after his special visit. Muscaria’s other name, Fly Agaric is said to be called that because it is used as pesticide for flies, but it is useless at this apparently, and the moniker refers to the visions. (7)

Here are some tripped out reindeer courtesy of BBC’s Weird Animals:

Altogether, that is a very tight connection to our Christmas, and that is either a wild coincidence or is what actually makes the whole Christmas Santa story intelligible. Without this history, the tale stands for nothing, goes nowhere and is inexplicable mish mash.

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There are those who don’t like this connection, and the best argument against it we currently have is oft repeated from the wiki page, and here it is:

Historian Ronald Hutton has since disputed the connection; he noted reindeer spirits did not appear in Siberian mythology, shamans did not travel by sleigh, nor did they wear red and white, or climb out of smoke holes in yurt roofs. Finally, American awareness of Siberian shamanism postdated the appearance of much of the folklore around Santa.(8)

I have researched all those claims and what I found was:

• Reindeer were very important to the Siberians, they even put antlers on their headdresses to symbolise the protector spirit of the reindeer. (9)
• Shamans did travel by sleigh, in fact many people did… and still do.
• Shamans did wear red and white, but not exclusively.
• Shamans did climb in and out of yurt holes. A “hole” was special in their religion, seeing it as an entry point to another dimension. See quote above for more info on the yurt hole regarding trees.

Hutton’s final claim that awareness of Siberian shamanism came after the evolution of our Santa claus is irrelevant. Things have evolved without public knowledge regularly, including ancient historical memes in current symbology and ritual. The Christmas tree and the date 25th December are both pagan in origin (utilised initially to appeal to the pagans of the time)(*).  Although given a cursory nod by apologists today, for the last 2000 years most Christians did not have awareness of those pagan origins. The majority awareness does not necessarily precede the appropriation. He has used a logical fallacy.

Every point he makes to dispel the Muscaria-Santa-Christmas connection is false… but it would be a logical fallacy on my behalf to say that means it is necessarily true. However, you’ve seen some of the history now… what do you think?

The dress of Santa is his most distinguishing feature (when not on a reindeer sleigh with a sack full of presents) that seems to be where we have refined him over time. Some Siberian shamans do have the red and white of the Muscaria, such as the shaman with the mushrooms in this picture:

We need to slip over to the west a little bit, just as our myths did, to get to the next phase of the evolution of Santa – to the God Odin in Scandinavia. It seems he took a little ‘shroom himself:

Odin’s (8 legged) steed was capable of bearing him through the air and to and from the land of the dead. (10)

And…

Santa Claus, a jolly old fat man with a long white beard who is said to distribute presents to good children on Christmas Eve, is largely based on Odin, merged with the Christian legend of Saint Nicholas of Myra. Christmas itself and most of its traditions in Germanic countries derive from the pagan winter solstice holiday Yule…

… children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw, or sugar, near the chimney for Odin’s flying horse, Sleipnir, to eat. Odin would then reward those children for their kindness by replacing Sleipnir’s food with gifts or candy. This practice, she claims, survived in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands after the adoption of Christianity and became associated with Saint Nicholas as a result of the process of Christianization and can be still seen in the modern practice of the hanging of stockings at the chimney in some homes. (11)

And if you still doubt, here is a picture of Odin:

I noticed that Santa and garden gnomes look identical and after a quick google I found that in Sweden the word for both is the same – tomte. With the gnome as a strong visual during a Muscaria experience, I find that interesting but I can’t really consolidate it.

And of course, we have faeries, often seen in the visuals, and often found in children’s literature hanging about Muscaria.

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The evolution to the Santa we know from the Odin point on is generally known (or easy to find). So I’d like to step back a little instead, back into the relevance of the original reasons for the mushrooms that started all this. For openers, a controversial painting of Adam and Eve called Fresco at Abbaye de Plaincourault, which resides in Mérigny, France.  It was used as evidence that the forbidden fruit was the fruit of the Christmas tree:

Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality

There are many examples of mushrooms in historical religious iconography. (12)  Soma (“body”, or “soul”; Hindu equivalent of Eucharist) is a ritual plant eaten/drunk to become “one with God”; it has evidence to suggest it is Muscaria although scholarly debate continues… but it is certainly a psychosomatic substance.  Apparently the only religion that can’t be traced to a psychedelic root is Buddhism.  The works of John Allegro are interesting food for thought.

It makes sense that most religions were founded on psychedelic experiences because our culture is usually very similar to other cultures when we trace back to our own roots – and cultures that have not strayed too far from humanity’s roots still use entheogenic plants. Entheogens “generate the God within” (en = in, within; theo = God, divine; gen = create, generate). Examples are Amazonian tribes with ayahuasca and native Americans with peyote.

These ideas freak most westerners out, even the open minded ones because we can’t imagine a time when such substances were so commonly accepted. Perhaps a reminder that not so long ago cocaine was in Coca Cola and heroin was given to babies to help them sleep is in order. Cocaine was in common usage as was opium until the last century. Alcohol has been illegal at various times. Marijuana is currently under review in the United States and we could safely bet that it will eventually become legal again. That’s the way of things… they change.   That we once used psychedelic plants in religious ritual and for general awakening purposes is not a big deal, nor is it a stretch of the imagination.

What bites is that powerful others have control over these changes, not us – after all, these things are plants, and we have basic human rights to all the plants our planet comes furnished with – risks included. Humans have always worked it out as long as force (for or against) is not involved.  As soon as force (law) is involved, suddenly it is like a fat person on a diet: we lust for, lie for, cheat for and overindulge on that which is forbidden.

Those who have had an entheogen describe it as a religious or spiritual experience, almost universally. Particularly those that contain the DMT molecule, although not necessarily (Muscaria does not contain DMT). DMT is a substance found naturally in the human body, and no other purpose has been considered for it except “extra sensory” incidents, such as near death experiences (perhaps naturally increased to help the transition to the Other Side) and spontaneous, inexplicable mystical experiences. Inducing such experiences seems to be encouraged by nature (or the Creator, whichever you prefer), considering just how many plants contain DMT (thousands)! (13)

Only people who have not experienced an entheogen deny the implications or the reality of the experience. They are busy in their studies writing essays against the testimonies and rejecting them as hallucinations… without any experience to do so. Like near-death experiences, the reports are often that the experience feels more real than life, like it is waking up, and life is the dream.

In a 2009 interview with Examiner.com, Dr Rick Strassman described the effects on participants in a study of volunteers injected with DMT:

“Subjectively, the most interesting results were that high doses of DMT seemed to allow the consciousness of our volunteers to enter into non-corporeal, free-standing, independent realms of existence inhabited by beings of light who oftentimes were expecting the volunteers, and with whom the volunteers interacted.” (14)

It is also released when we go to sleep. This means we break the law every night because DMT is schedule-1 under the Controlled Substances Act. The powers that be certainly wouldn’t want us accessing that kind of mind opening experience, now would they?

Perhaps certain… groups…  already know.

Entheogens are said to “lift the veil”. There are many dimensions to life and the universe, and quantum mechanics seems to be smacking up against that very issue. It seems a human body is given particular sensory limitations so as to function on this plane, so ordinarily only extenuating circumstances would allow for most of us to see, hear or sense anything beyond what anyone else can. There is a ceiling, a limit, and science is now suggesting that it may simply be chemical in nature.

We are expecting a big hole or doorway, something like a black hole, and we jump through it to another place; or that aliens or other-dimensional beings will come down from the sky – much like we believe that’s where God is: “up there somewhere”. Yet, it seems to be all right here inside each of us, we are part of the universe and we are the universe – you are looking for God, yet you are God. No wonder we never find It.

The scriptures never said, “God is everything… except you.” You were included.  Entheogenic experiences seem to suggest that you were much more than merely included.

Removing the limitations, lifting the veil, is perhaps nothing like hallucination and everything like “expansion of the senses”. Entheogens show you that, and unless you’ve seen it yourself, you can only speculate.

Mushrooms are the reason for the season!

Mind expansion, becoming as one with Christ, or as the scripture says in Genesis of the fruit of the “tree of knowledge”:

For God knows that as soon as you eat it, then your eyes shall be

opened, and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil. (15)

Christmas = Christ’s mass or eucharist (taking of the soma/body/soul)

Does this mean we give our children a magic mushroom trip for Christmas?  Uh, no.  Christmas has been watered down to a holiday almost solely for children (except for some eggnog and a few office parties which are thrown in for adults), but I think that is because it seems too much of a fairy tale for adults.  We’re left to make it about Jesus’ birth or a family get together if we aren’t Christian.  Considering that nowhere in the bible does it reference the 25th having anything to do with Jesus’ birth, then that takes a kind of “la la la I can’t hear you” ignorance that many of us simply can’t partake in, Christian or nay.

Bring meaning back to Christmas.  Christmas is the birth of the christ within, KRST(16) (17) (18) (19), and in our culture this is symbolised by Jesus – you can be Christian to do this, or not.  Jesus was pretty clear that he wants you to wake up, so … wake up.  He gave you the map, and the internet has made it so there are almost no esoteric “secrets” left, they’re all out there now – we can ALL be mystics, with the true inner knowledge that the Vatican and others would rather we didn’t have.

Failing that, there are always psychedelics to open our minds with a WHAM and shamans only too happy to wake us all the heck up by guiding the experience safely.  Hellish journeys are often reported, of course.  The type of journey you experience is much like life – your thoughts determine your reality.  There is something to learn in all of it.

What do Christmas psychedelic experiences have to teach us?  The same as all the psychedelic experiences… in the words of those who know:

“We are all one.”

“I was the universe and everything in it.”

“Love.  Nothing but shining, drop-to-my-knees-in-tears Love.”

“Light.  Golden-white brilliant light.”

“I’ll never been the same, everything has changed.”

“I was swimming in an ocean of oneness with all beings in a way I cannot effectively find words for.”

“A snake curled around my legs, up my body, and stared me in the face… all my fears looked right back at me.”

“I flew through the void.”

“Peace surrounded me, I’d never felt such peace and joy… I never wanted to leave that space.”

Merry Christmas.

References:

(1) http://www.shamana.co.uk/siberian_shamanism/index.html

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evenks

(3) http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/recreationaldrugs/amanita.htm

(4) http://www.northofthemoon.com/2009/01/old-yule-5-lord-of-yule.html

(5) http://www.tengerism.org/cosmology.html

(6) http://www.arkive.org/fly-agaric/amanita-muscaria/#text=Habitat

(7) http://www.sacredearth.com/ethnobotany/plantprofiles/flyagaric.php

(8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria

(9) History of Cartography, Volume 2 By G. Malcolm Lewis

(10) http://www.helium.com/items/696803-how-the-steed-of-odin-has-shaped-other-religions

(11) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin

(12)  http://www.metahistory.org/psychonautics/Eadwine/EadwinePsalter.php

(13) http://www.scribd.com/doc/21501655/Biochemistry-Project-DMT

(14) http://www.examiner.com/near-death-experiences-in-national/dr-rick-strassman-interview-dmt-and-near-death-experiences-shed-light-on-spirit-brain-relationship

(15) http://bible.cc/genesis/3-5.htm

(16) http://atheistandagnostic.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/which-came-first-krst-or-christ/

(17) http://www.egyptcx.netfirms.com/soul_amenta_no14.htm

(18) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_in_comparative_mythology

(19) http://www.timothyfreke.com/

(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianised_calendar

Government-Free: Babies Hold the Key

I dont fully understand the anarchist. our most basic unit (a family) has some structures that tend to make it a govt. Without a set of rules to go by then what is acceptable and what is not? Without a form of govt then who enforces what is considered acceptable by the unit?
I tend to believe govt should be strongest and most powerful the closest it is to the people and should loose strength the further it moves away from the people. A community should handle the needs of the people as it is most closely associated with those people. By time you get to a body as far removed as the UN it should have little or no power. Maybe if nations where kept weak then they wouldnt be so ready to go to war.
Im hoping our elections here are a pull back of power the govt has taken from the people. The ruling class in the last 2 years took a normal market correction and turned it into a crisis and thereby not only hurt this country but the economy’s of many other countries. No govt should be that powerful.

D. Thacker

I understand your points.  I don’t think anyone can call what America was in for a “normal market correction” though.  The patsy, regardless which party line s/he towed, was going to take a big, ugly fall.  I’m not American, just married to one, so I’m not a democrat or loyal to any political bent but I do agree with those who say the fall was inevitable.  How could it not be?  America went to war… America invaded several countries this decade… that alone causes a depression, if history is anything to go by.  When thought of statistically, logically and historically, America has fared extraordinarily well considering how much money they have shelled out in military bullshit.  There is nothing normal about war, and it is devastating on all levels especially financially, including the invading country… just ask Germany.

I do agree, though, with what you say about gov’t powers, when it is thought of in terms we know community to be – based in agriculture, structure, hierarchies, etc.  Most of us have never lived in any other kind of society, so therefore cannot even create in our minds an alternative.  I’d like to run down that road for a minute, starting with a quote I found while googling this info:

Children (as Liedloff saw in the indigenous societies in the Amazon) were always touched and always treated with complete confidence, but were never pampered. They got what they needed without ever being told what to do and parents never expressed anger towards them. Every step children took was of their own will and motivation. She refers to this as instinctual parenting. That is something primal. Her realizations are rather universal… But civilized living is anti-primal. Children must be broken and must learn to obey orders from the start or they may never be of use. To become a part of the machine, we must start from birth. We must learn very early the need for efficiency. And what’s more efficient than complete standardization? Liedloff saw that a baby is taken immediately from the womb into the arms of its mother. She’s the first thing the child will see. It hears the familiar heart beat and feels the heat of bodies. She saw births in the hospital where children are taken in sterile hands, measured, weighed, and set alone to learn the most central message of civilization: infinite need. What it eventually gets is a pathetic substitute for being held: bottles of formula, mechanical love, noise, and the loneliness and boredom of the crib. It cries for distant parents who are eager to ensure their independence and gets more attention from soft fabric than warm skin. It learns the importance of compromise. Confident and fulfilled children are not efficient machines. Everything must be done to undermine them. But the psychological pain goes deeper than this. It begins at conception. It takes in the anger, hate, love and fear of its mother in a world of compromise and the misery of not being efficient enough. We are assured that children are not thinking even if the religious say that they are full beings crafted by god. They’re just lower on the social ladder. We are told not to listen to the senses. Words are more important. Science can prove it. With this divine knowledge, we can continue to inflict the original trauma without consequence. And even better, we can take no fault for children with homicidal and suicidal tendencies. Chemical imbalances, chemical solutions. We breed the killers and they are increasingly efficient. Green Anarchy – Sticks and Stones and Nursing Homes

There is a reason I bang on about instinctual, primitive, connected parenting… because the way people parent ultimately affects my world and everyone in it, because each of us as parents is the caretaker of a future adult.

If we inflict foundational harm upon our children in deep psychological ways, then we will pay a price, we have paid a price.  When we compromise our child’s emotional well being for an immediate desire (or “need” as we prefer to call it), by putting them in child care too early, not holding them frequently, isolation sleep, “crying it out” to sleep, punishing emotions (like tears or anger), shaming, slapping, yelling… well, the list is long – when we do this, it is easier for now, and we may even get compliance or a good night’s sleep depending on the immediate goal, but the long term sacrifice is a well rounded child.

Hurt people hurt people, and since we have all been hurt, we all continue to hurt others, and we hurt our kids and pass the baton down.  Have you ever considered how a person might parent if they were never damaged as a child themselves?  If they were the “ideal” balanced human being, filled with light and love?  Perhaps our birthright, if we follow our instincts instead of our ego and the latest advice?  I’m not sure if there is such a person out there, but I know that there are those who are much closer to that than the western human being, and at least one such tribe is living in the Amazon basin.

It is important how we treat our babies from birth onward.  Be it circumcision, lack of skin on skin contact or the many other things we inflict on our babies, people in our culture have a traumatic entrance to life.  We are so deep in this indoctrination, most people I speak to about this have not even considered it before… we take it all for granted because we can’t remember any of it ourselves.

Something has gone terribly wrong with our society and we are out of our minds if we think we can heal it without considering how we treat our infants, and by extension, each other.

I don’t think anarchy is tenable.  Perhaps it is, depending on the definition… and I like to think anything is possible.  I am not saying I don’t believe in hierarchy, soft hierarchy.  I just don’t believe gov’t works – but then, “works” is a subjective term.  If I am a Bush relation or a fearful, compliant middle class white collar, well crap, gov’t works brilliantly!

Being governed is all our ancestors have ever known for thousands of years, and such embedding is all but impossible to reconsider.

Government relies on force and punishment.  Since you mentioned family, I should mention I do not do either of those things as a parent, and don’t believe they are necessary.  In fact, I know they are not necessary, because of families like mine and whole cultures.

People often told me my plans as a parent would not work, because children need to be led, punished, disciplined, controlled, or at the very least guided.  I call bullshit.  And I have evidence on my side… evidence for love and against tyranny.

When I hear it extrapolated into whole communities that we need to punish, force, dictate (“lead”), threaten… I can’t help but wonder if they are also wrong about that.  People are hopelessly wrong about human nature in general.  We underestimate not only our children, but ourselves, and our fellow beings.

What do we have gov’t for?  What do we have all these rules and laws for?  For safety and security?  The crime rate in countries with strong governance and tight laws, such as the USA, can be comparable to that of countries with civil unrest!  The sense of security is all but missing, fear is rampant, health is flailing, freedom is a memory and people are overworked and trapped.  But hey, they get to vote so YAY, hail government.

Ok, I know most agree with all that and think that a change in gov’t is the answer… I say: deluded much?  But I understand the attraction to being dragged into political games, and it doesn’t help that we are afraid of being the only one left standing on a soap box, that “a gov’t will be chosen, so I should at least have a say which one it is”… playing the game is the only option we’ve been given.  And that is why it is important to think outside the GIVEN information.

The fear is real that if we take back our freedoms and reject most of gov’t then we will have to fight for our lives – all of us, not just the handful that live in dodgy neighbourhoods, such it is currently.  People believe the strong will take everything and the weak will starve and so on and so forth… and secretly, most of us believe we are weak, so this picture does not appeal.  However, I suggest a look around you… who has most of everything anyway?  Is it you?  Is it even anyone you’ve met in your life?   I’d expect the next point brought up would be that yes, I guess we do have to struggle to get by, and most of our resources are controlled and used by a very tiny minority but at least we haven’t been treated like slaves, at least we aren’t tortured or have our towns burned to the ground; we’ll sacrifice some freedoms to be free of the worst potential.

At this point I’d like to take a moment on the word “slave”.  I see it defined as a person owned, deprived the right to payment and unable to quit work.

We have a sense of free will, because no one can technically force us to work, but what happens when we stop working?  We will lose everything, and unless we get charity, we will die from lack of shelter and food.  The free will idea is a total illusion.

For those lucky or privileged, we are able to choose our poison, and get weekends off.  Good’nuff.

In countries like Australia, they have more of a sense of free will.  A mother is paid over $1800 a month to stay at home with her children until they are 6 years old.  Socially, that resembles a family much more… however, hand to mouth is no way to live.  The money is barely enough for rent and food.  Plus, you have to contract yourself very heavily to the gov’t for the hand outs, they now know more about you than you do.

If the planet was still covered in food trees, then perhaps being out of work wouldn’t be so scary… feeling hungry, go out foraging.  But we’ve paved everything, so that’s out.  If the planet was still covered in greenery, we could fashion a shelter… but we’ve paved everything, so that’s out.  If it isn’t paved, it’s owned by someone else.  When we scale it right back to ABSOLUTE FREEDOM, it becomes blindingly obvious that those living in the jungles are the only ones who have any clue what that is.

The “want of something more” is our culture’s branding through childhood, the aching need to have, to be, to DO, so much so that the mere thought of simply playing like children in earth’s gardens without TV and museums scares the shit out of every single one of my friends and family.

There are cultures dotted around the globe that do not have gov’t, or anything like it.  They are self governing.  Alas, we can’t just take a note pad and have a round table with these people to extract their system blueprints, because it is very little to do with structure and there is no system.  Actually, it’s a little like looking for God… it ain’t “out there” in a system or a book, it is within the people and the environment, it is completely organic, and built into the way they move and think … it is the totality.  To isolate or separate parts of the whole destroys the whole.  Like God, if you can describe it, that’s not it.

We need to start in the cradle, by throwing the cradle away and then holding more, loving more, listening more while they cry in our patient arms, being more present.  The link between infancy and politics is not acknowledged, yet it is definitely cause and effect.  How can it not be?  We stopped listening to our instincts and started treating our most receptive sponges like inconveniences to run from as often as possible, confusing their biological instincts so much they become attached to comfort objects (aw, ain’t it cute?) and learn not to cry or rage, then we stick all these angry people together in a school yard… and we wonder why people are broken and bruised.  Broken and bruised people have no place in gov’t, but we have no other choice – we’re all broken and bruised.

There was a story told by Jean Leidloff in her book.  First, it is important to know that babies in this tribe rarely cried, they were compliant and happy and could play by a fire or a cliff safely.  They are extraordinary, and they turn into extraordinary adults who have no word for “work”, because there is no distinction between work and play, it’s all just life.  Women walking to the river to bathe, tossing babies to each other, laughing, playing, collecting and cooking; men running around like boys in a robin hood movie; they give and take fluidly, no one feels fearful, they have complete autonomy and no one expects apologies because no one assumes fault… it’s magnificent.

So comfortable in their naked bodies, comfortable with touch, just the way eden may have been before we tore things apart and built new things in an effort to understand… SCIENCE we called it (science means “knowledge”) and then we separated concepts and events into “good” or “bad”, right and wrong, and the duality was born.  A myth was written to capture this moment when we crossed from wild paradise to caged fear: “eating from the tree of knowledge” or the tree of “good and evil”.   It’s a story at the beginning of a very famous book I once read.

Well, in Leidloff’s story, there was a little boy who was taken from the jungle to America for a couple of years.  When he came back, he was just like a western child – snitty, seemingly uncomfortable in his own skin, whiney, cried often, had tantrums, wanted more, gave little… we know that child, we’ve met that child, we WERE that child!  He eventually healed.  No one pandered to him, but no one reigned him in.  He was given unconditional trust, and although he initially abused that trust, he healed.

People in these kinds of cultures don’t need govt because they aren’t expanding and don’t need to make a bunch of decisions.  They live simply and symbiotically with each other and earth.  They don’t ask for permission from anyone or seek a law book.  Children included.

Soon, they will all be gone.  There were millions of them, now there are thousands of them.  We are killing them for various reasons: our diseases, our pollution, our moralising attitudes, for openers.  Our fear has us wondering how they deal with the danger, what about health care??  Our progress has given us surgery and pharmaceuticals, guns and steel… what would we do without them, surely they have some small place in the world??

The state of my culture is such that we would need guided leadership for some time if we decided to work towards minimal governance.  I do think it should be a goal though, because this merry go round is headed to hell.  There is TOO much invasion from the gov’t.  They only need do 1% of what they currently do.  America has the most prisoners in the world, and the most cops.  They are over policed.  Our culture allows the gov’t into our bedrooms by legislating sex and morality, it allows it in our backyards by legislating plants… PLANTS!!  There is nowhere gov’t has not raped and plundered our rights and freedoms.  Religion and the morality brigade have been instrumental in this.  ”Taking offense” being at the top of the list… when we started applying laws to victimless acts, we fell down the slippery slope.

I’m not sure if I’m an anarchist yet, they say it doesn’t work.  Yet, gov’t doesn’t work either.  So it’s not really a good point of comparison is it.

A bird born caged will know a kind of joy.  It may have an uncomfortable sense of wrongness and want of “something more”, but it has never known freedom… and as long as it never sees a bird in the wild, it will be satisfied with “all it has ever known”.  In fact, most caged birds set free will die, and many fly back to the cage.  It is not long ago that people referred to wild humans as “savages” and we still compare that lifestyle to “living like an animal”.  But it is the only way we were meant to live, because we are animals.  We are mammals, named so because we have mammary glands to breast feed and yet even that has been all but eliminated and the breast sexualised.  We are not thriving in this caged environment.

Unprecedented Temperatures My Ass – here’s the NOAA data

You should first know that I have a unique view of the climate issue.  I question the validity of the conclusions drawn by those on the side of the anthropogenic (man-made) warming theory (AGW).

However, I believe all fossil fuel mining should be stopped, immediately.

Not capped, not taxed, not traded, not reduced, not replaced.  CEASED.  That’s how to deal with a crisis, by the way.  Taxes are not usually how we deal with a life shattering crisis, it is how we deal with consumption, want and greed.  Remember to factor that into your equations.

There is a false assumption that if you are against the AGW theory then you are either paid by an oil company or you must think fossil fuel is a great idea.  Rubbish.  Fossil fuel is poison, the carbon dioxide it releases has nothing on benzene, formaldehyde and the many other ways it is polluting our planet.  The mining itself is destroying cultures and the planet.

I bought the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle of an AGW world ending crisis wholesale, because I’m a passionate greenie.  I didn’t just buy the idea, I bought 50 acres of mountain land and figured well, perhaps if the tides rise it will acquire an ocean view.  I am eternally grateful I bought that land, it has changed my life.  But I no longer buy the current dogma as it has been given to the twits we call politicians.

That’s not to say I reject it.  I just don’t buy anything completely anymore.  I recommend this approach, as I’ve found one only ends up the fool if one sticks rigidly to one side of something like one has any clue what is going on.  We don’t.  Now I have questions.  And it is from the perspective of someone who has seen both sides of this issue that I can share an oft-needed perspective on it.

If either an oil company OR a vested interest “green” company wants to pay me for my thoughts, hey, by all means, let me know and I’ll open a bank account.  Seriously.  But currently, I am not supported by any company.

The idea that only those opposed to AGW have vested interests is naive.  And naivety is not cute in adults.  This new era in energy sourcing in our history is about who is going to lose (miners, oil companies, et al) but more importantly it is about who is going to gain (environmental organisations, green fuel, et al).  And the gains are in the trillions of dollars.  This is the new oil strike, so it is no surprise that the original oilers, the Rockefellers, back the AGW agenda, as do oil companies (surprise surprise?).

If I had five cents for every time someone ignored the complete science of planetary climatology on the basis of “oh looky here, he was once paid by Shell!!” I’d be rolling in at least three bucks by now.  I’ve learned that it is at this point I close the discussion as respectfully as possible because I’m dealing with someone who is shut off from information that challenges their paradigm.  Talking to such people is like talking to a wall, only less civilised because walls don’t insist I’m an irresponsible moron who should stop asking questions, bow down before the flawless scientists and suck down the media sermon with ketchup.  And God bless them all because they are passionate greenies just like me, and lo, not everyone had the advantage of an upbringing as laden in science as mine was.

Those with the biggest vested interests currently reside within the AGW movement, including the scientists behind all the data our politicians use to make global decisions; the scientists rely on global warming being a man-made problem or they’re out of a very lucrative, highly respected job.

For more information on why I recommend going off the grid, boycotting all external energy sources and releasing your need for babysitting from governments click here. (if that isn’t a link, the page isn’t done yet).

Let’s Look At the Facts…

The temperature data we have been given all start around the date of 1880.  This is an example of cherry picking a start date.  Cherry picking a date allows us to show evidence in favour of our own agenda without actually lying.

It is a very common thing to do.  It can be found in all areas inside and outside of science to make a point and it is also very simple.  Just find an area on a chart that goes up, or down, depending on the point you’re trying to make, and use that excerpt of the data.  Most of the time, it is a kind of “zooming in”, and the only way to beat this method of data massaging is to zoom OUT, to get the bigger picture.

The following is a chart we all know and love.  It is taken straight from the NASA chart page, and if you click the graph, you will go to that page.  If you do that, be sure to take notice of the fact that almost all the charts start at 1880 and those that don’t, only zoom in further to a more recent date.

NASA Temperature Data

That chart can be confirmed on most mainstream sites including wikipedia.

wiki temperature record

Look at the charts above.  There are two sharp increases on the graph.  The first is between 1920 and 1940, the second is between 1980 and 2000.  Both of 20 year lengths.  Both of the same increment (2 points).

If one is paying attention (a rarity indeed) one will squint askance and beg the question: What caused the 1920 warming?  I’ve asked several people this exact question and the answers are always quite reaching and some are outright ridiculous and this is because there is no answer that furthers the carbon dioxide theory.

Apparently I was not alone in spotting this inconsistency:

Abstract:
We provide an analysis of Greenland temperature records to compare the current (1995-2005) warming period with the previous (1920-1930) Greenland warming. We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995 – 2005.

… a similar increase and at a faster rate occurred during the early part of the 20th century (1920 to 1930) when carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases could not be a cause. The Greenland warming of 1920 to 1930 demonstrates that a high concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is not a necessary condition for a period of warming to arise.

This is an excerpt from Greenland warming of 1920–1930 and 1995–2005, Petr Chylek, M. K. Dubey, G. Lesins, 2006.  Cited at NASA amongst others.

More data comments can be found at the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Zooming Out – DOWN with Cherry Picking

The following charts are based on data of the central Greenland ice core from the NOAA.  Charts have been made like this with the data, such as those on wattsupwiththat.com and Richard A Muller’s site, and the following ones are from the Watt’s site however I am currently making up my own charts as I don’t want the source to interfere (and no, I don’t know nor do I care if either of those two sites are paid by NASA or the gov’t or an oil company or an environmental agency or Satan himself – it is the data that is important, focus people, focus).  The data can be confirmed with NOAA.

This next chart is occasionally used and it shows the “hockey stick”, which is the slang used to describe the sudden upswing of temperatures towards 2000:

Hockey Stick 1400

It becomes clear why the date 1880 was picked as the start date, as there was an embarrassingly steep rise just after 1800 which hits a convenient plateau at 1880, and the NASA charts after that are what we were given.  So now the same question is even more interesting, “what caused the sudden rise in temperatures from 1830 to 1880?

Apparently this increase is due to human carbon emissions.  Yet, carbon emissions started back around 1880.  The population of the entire world was about 1.5 billion and there were around 600 cars on the road.  You know, 1880, with the corsets and horses and buggies and absence of plumbing - that 1880.  Now, there are approximately 6.8 billion people and 900 million cars on the road.  The increase in industrial emissions is similar.

For something that was only really beginning, that is a very sharp increase.  One would expect it would instead gradually increase as carbon emissions and industrialisation increased.

Here are a couple more graphs, zooming out even further:

Temperature History from 800AD

WOW.  Those people in the 10th century have some explaining to do!  Somehow “they” managed to “cause” pretty intense global warming.  Neither the speed of warming, nor the height of the current temperature is unprecedented.  In fact, on this next chart you will see there is nothing very warm about it at all; we seem to be on the cooler end of the global history.

Here’s an image worth examining:

Carbon dioxide has been blamed entirely for the recent increase in temperatures.  Not just CO2, but specifically human emissions of CO2 in the form of fossil fuel use.  Aside from the fact that those playing this tune must think we are complete idiots and will cling to anything to bring large corporations to justice, there is absolutely no evidence for this.  None.

Correlation is not evidence of cause.

It is all based on this equation:

CO2 is a greenhouse gas + CO2 is increasing + global temp is increasing = CO2 caused the increased temp

Be careful of such logical fallacies, they can be tricky.  What appears to make sense does not stand up to scrutiny.  In this case it is Confusing Cause and Effect.  The man-made global warming formula is much the same as this one:

smoking causes cancer + ten people have cancer + all ten people smoke = smoking caused the cancer in all ten people

Or more simply:

CO2 has increased

Temperature has increased

Therefore, CO2 caused the temperature increase.

To highlight the problem more vividly, how does this sound:

Ten people have cancer

All ten eat carrots

Therefore, the cancer was caused by carrots.

The fact that smoking has been shown to cause cancer makes the first conclusion I made sound reasonable and likely and the majority may leave it at that, overlooking something important.  What if all ten people were working together in an area polluted with radiation?  Stubbornly sticking to what appears to be the “logical” cause based on what limited information we have, destroys all hope of finding the real cause.

Hence, to question such a fallacy in the current political climate (no pun intended) is not only sound, it is essential.

Here is an interesting page on the NOAA Paleoclimatology that shows another possible cause of the problems we face on Earth today.  If warming is natural, cyclic or in some other way not a major threat (even if it is natural that doesn’t automatically mean it isn’t a threat, by the way) then we may make things worse if we treat the global issue as though there was one cause and one solution.

For instance, our agricultural practices have done the most damage to our planet.  They cause droughts and drying lands and dysbiosis through monoculture (large areas of single species plants) and messing with the natural landscape.  Bio fuels will only further this problem by destroying miles and miles of indigenous land and people to plant monocrops (corn and the other proposed ethanol fuel sources).

But… “as long as it’s not carbon” right?

Back From the Brink – How Australia’s Landscape Can be Saved is a book I recommend by an Aussie bloke who rescues one of the harshest landscapes on the planet, turning it from uninhabitable desert wasteland into a lush paradise.  While doing so he decreases termites and returns the soil from its dry, acid conditions.  This alone is enough to question the given reasons for our landscape changes.  Since when does warm = dry?  Some of the greenest, lushest places on Earth are the hottest – Northern Australia, the Amazon… surely we aren’t going to fall for the idea that any one thing, temp, CO2, etc, is causing the landscape shifts we have experienced?  Next they’ll find a way to convince us that warming is what caused the streams to become polluted.

There are many ways we went wrong and turned the paradise of Earth with her pristine food sources and crystalline water veins into a garbage dump with sewerage veins.

People ask me how, as a greenie, I keep trying to draw attention to this issue, isn’t it better to cut down on carbon emissions?  Well, of course we need to do that.  But that is not what is being planned, and it certainly shouldn’t be done at the expense of the planet and her people, that would defeat the purpose.  If we knee jerk react to this, we will make more mistakes and the cost will be great.

This page focused on one area: the idea that the current temperature is unprecedented and a threat of cataclysm.

CO2 rises after the temperature rises.  Worth mentioning, don’t you think?  I have found only one AGW advocate that addresses this (ineffectively), or any of the other issues with CO2.

Blaming large corporations is not the answer, for we are ALL to blame and need to change our OWN ways.  We need to stop focusing on how companies operate because not only has history shown this does not create change, but if we simply stop paying them (ie, for the energy they sell) they will shrivel like a picked flower.  You have the ultimate power, as the consumer.  Take responsibility.

Be aware the proposed “solutions”, such as biofuel and hydroelectricity will impact this planet and people in ways that are not being discussed openly.  Particularly for the indigenous.  For example, the proposed flooding of virgin indigenous land for hydroelectricity, displacing thousands+ of indigenous people.

And failing ALL of that, should you still be shaking your head and refuse to contemplate alternatives, consider the mere fact is they expect you to accept that carbon dioxide has caused the complex issues our planet faces today.  It’s laughable.  Even looking at the greenhouse effect, CO2 is about 2% contributer to it, humanity is about a 10% or less contributer to that 2%, making a total of some tiny percentage of contribution.

Possible?  Of course.  Probable?  Hmm, not convincing enough.  Definite?  Not even close.

Burqa Ban – Using Oppression to Beat Oppression?

I don’t do anything religiously, especially religion; hell, I can’t even have the same breakfast two days in a row without getting antsy… but I do believe in freedom.  I take a pure stance on freedom… in a room full of extreme freedom lovin’ hippies, I’d be the radical one.

I probably don’t believe in anything you do in a spiritual sense and I probably do a lot of debating about your beliefs and in all fairness I possibly have absolutely no respect for your beliefs… but you are not your beliefs, and I will argue to the end for your right to believe what you do; for your right to religious freedom.

So when I heard people are calling for a ban of the burqa here in Oz, one eyebrow raised reflexively.  For starters the word “ban” makes me twitch; despite the intentions and the rhetoric that there is freedom in security, I’ve yet to see something “banned” that resulted in more freedom instead of less.

I have been lead to believe this ban is already in place in at least one country (France), and apparently there are several altruistic reasons for the idea.  Reasons such as our overall security and to stop the oppression of Muslim women.

They must think our brains are made of putty… either that or theyare made of putty.  These days I’m starting to think the latter.

You may be shocked to learn that Muslim women actually believe in their religion just as much as the men do.  I don’t like the blatant inequality any more than any other non-Muslim woman but I don’t think force is the answer.  Inequality is a facet of all the major religions to different degrees… we’d have to start splitting hairs if we’re going down that road.  Why stop at apparel?

When we ban, we remove choice.

The women (generally, cos hey, I read Princess, too)  want to be wearing the burka, they feel exposed without it.

We all have our boundaries.  We are all comfortable exposing ourselves to a certain point and then it’s a no-go any further than that.  I read a funny report from a guy who visited a Muslim country and when he walked into an area of breastfeeding women, they saw him and freaked, rushing to cover their… faces.

In our culture, a breast is quite shocking in polite society even if it is being used for its original job of feeding a small person.  So right there is a boundary difference… and yet we have the gall to say our boundary is the right one, and they are wrong.  Western arrogance hasn’t abated much since medieval prejudice, that is clear.  Not that the rest of the world is free of such arrogance, but we’ve been stripping them apart for that already – time to pull the log out of our own eye.

In some cultures, breasts and genitalia are not a big deal.  Nakedness isn’t so much celebrated as, “eh, whatever” in some parts of the world.  We tell them to cover up.  We’re telling Muslim women to uncover.  We want everyone to be juuuuuust so, just like us, because we are right, and everyone else is wrong.  ”Myes dear, you must cover yourself from the upper thighs to the upper chest or you will be shamed… oh and keep your face uncovered, or you will be shamed… and sexiness before the age of 18 – shamed… and sexiness after the age of 40 – shamed…”  etcetera ad nauseum, Western Social Policing 101.

Goddamn we’re a bunch of hypocritical judgmental moralising snivelers, aren’t we??  Even now, even today, after all those movies and speeches of the 20th century we’re still doing the same thing but we’re so stuck in our idea of right and wrong we can’t even see we’re still doing it.  ALL of us, in some way, are judging and moralising and we tell each other it’s ok because we’re in the majority.

What if, when you visited or lived in a particular place, you had to remove all your clothing… ALL of it, or you were arrested.  Clothing has been “banned” here.  Remember, this is in your best interests, because women in certain cultures wear no clothing, so are obviously more free than you are.  This ban is for your freedoms, you are oppressed by your clothing wearing culture and we are going fix that problem for you by force.

Do you see what is wrong with this idea?  Can you for one second put yourself in the shoes of the “other”?  If we could learn to be the “other”, no matter where or what or who, rational decisions could be made.  So far, we keep making decisions and banning things and making rules and laws and carrying on like fruitcakes without thinking outside of our own boundaries.

We find sexy that which is hidden, mysterious.  Some cultures find the neck sexy, so they hide it and only bring it out for their sexual partner.  Some hide the sexual organs themselves, but the rest of the body is open including the breasts and buttocks.  In our culture, breasts are hidden and hey, guess what happened… breasts became “sexy” – and this isn’t a given, it isn’t the way it is in cultures where breasts are out swingin’ freely.  Muslim women save all of it, even the wrists are sensual if exposed, the face is the sexiest part of all and the hair a mass of adrenaline producing wowness.  Just like us and bare breasts, it has become like a law – and Muslim men don’t hide their wrists… but remember men in our culture don’t hide their breasts either.

Wanna fight for equality?  Learn to recognise it in yourself first.  See the ways you keep inequality alive in your own culture, in your own house.  When you sneer and judge (women showing cleavage, Britney Spears’ panty-less predicaments, boobs on gasp-shock-horror public television…) could you be shitting in your own nest… tying the noose around your own freedoms?

Bans and laws and rules do not give you freedom.  Don’t confuse security with freedom.  If you live in a small box where your food is brought to you and you cannot move very far… sure, you might have more security, but you’re in prison.  Like caged animals we have been trained to not just accept this oppressive “security”, we demand it, and we demand more of it.  If someone is hurt by a pole, we ban poles.  Or, if we’re American, we also sue the pole maker.

Don’t forget the litmus test:  if you are not doing something out of Love, you are doing it out of fear.

Did anyone else watch those bombs decimate Baghdad in 2003 and think, “Uhh, can someone tell me how this has anything to do with freedom?”

Invading = freedom

killing = freedom

banning = freedom

Who are they trying to kid?  Don’t be one of them, we need more clear thinkers, people taking action from a place of Love, not fear.

You don’t bomb, invade or ban with Love, ya just don’t.  You do those things out of fear.  If you want to “help” a Muslim woman, here’s a place to start: meet one.  Have the courtesy to ask her if she wants your “salvation”.

Hands Off Iran

This was not written by me.

I can’t help but notice the increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric on the internet of late.  I think the likely candidate for this aggressive stance may be Iran.  I keep hearing how they are getting nuclear this and atomic that.  My question is this, “So what?”

Many countries have nuclear weapons, and the United States has actually used them against innocent civilians, twice.  Iran’s only war of recent date has been against Iraq, which was fomented by the United States.  Nations should uphold and embody the principal of innocent until proven guilty.  The theory of a “preemptive strike” would not hold up in a court of law if I decided to act unilaterally against my neighbor, nor should it. The same holds true for countries.

Every country should be allowed to do as they see fit until they directly interfere with another country.  Until such time, they should be allowed to enjoy the freedoms and liberties we expect and demand.  It is not our responsibility to interfere with the method of governance of any other country.  When their citizens have had enough, they will change things for themselves.

I’ve noticed that a lot of news coverage has been spent on the proposed mosque near ground zero, instead of the Indian-made car that runs on compressed air.  Again my question is, “So what?”  Until there is a full, complete and transparent investigation of the events of September 11, 2001, I, for one, shall reserve judgement against Islam.  Please don’t forget that the government that guaranteed us that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, is the same government that condemned Muslims for the events of September 11th.

They were wrong about Iraqi weapons, could they also have been wrong about the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks?  Is it at least possible?  If you say, “No,” I implore you to dig a little deeper into the story.  Check out Architects, Firefighters, et. al., For Truth.  A whole lot of highly educated and reputable professionals have come forward to say that the events of September 11 could not have happened the way we are being told.  Could those in government at the time have had another motivation for war, etc., than protecting American interests and security?  Until we have some hard facts, I think we should hold our judgement and demand proof.  Especially about Iran.

Lets face facts, we’ve had enough wars and enough deaths.  Iran hasn’t done anything that America has done, i.e., develop nuclear weapons and use them against civilian targets.  Iran should only be held accountable when they actually have something to be held to account for.  Until such time, please join me in the refrain, “Hands Off Iran.”

Peace be upon you,

John Gabens

P.s.  I am not a Muslim, Christian, Jew or anything else.  I am a citizen of Earth, and my spiritual beliefs are my personal business.  I know love is the answer, regardless of the question.

Look different... have different beliefs... but all love the same... and all connected at the core.

The Shift

There is a global shift, a global awakening. Finding peace isn’t just for a handful of scantily clad bearded workaholics sitting in a cave anymore – it is for all of us. We can no longer deny the illusion of life; quantum physics has shown we don’t actually exist in the manner we thought, and uh, we aren’t actually even here. Um. Well. Yes. What to do with all of that?

We banter topics around that only a decades ago would have relegated us to the status of the under-medicated. We meditate and do yoga and those things alone were for stinky weirdo hippy freaks not too long ago, remember? How soon we forget.

We’re opening. We’re ripening.

After I had my first glimpse of my true nature I wondered what happened to it, where it went. I had trouble articulating it to others as I struggled with the overwhelming truth of it, what I saw – it changes us forever, and yet we remain the same. How do I grasp that, forever, how do I hold on to it and work it into my life?

I don’t, that’s the painful fact. It is always there, I cannot get it or hold it, I can only reveal it behind the layers of bullshit my ego puts in front of it. I had to search deeply, confronting-ly and TRUTHFULLY within myself: what do I want more, everything I know to be true, all that I have and all that I want? Or do I want freedom? For freedom is here in the blink of an eye if I allow it. Just SSSHHHHH!

I wish I could tell the world that what they seek is right here, right now. Freedom is here. Bliss is here. Choice is here. Salvation is here. I have the deepest urge to awaken my fellow beings, it comes before all other things I wish for them, because with awakening comes everything else. If I could, I would tell the world to wake up, to stop their juicy deeply rooted stories and see what lies beneath. Even for just a moment, drop it.Create a new story, or continue the ones you have but please, open your eye and see the story for what it is. I love, I am love. You are love, dance with giddy joy!

That’s what I’d say… if I could.

Your Spirit is not here to learn

There is a common belief among people on a spiritual path that our spirits are here to learn. There is no doubt that there are many layers or dimensions to existence, things only certain drugs, states of mind or awareness can even glimpse. However, at the very core of all of it is the one simple, pure unchangeable truth, and that is the oneness, God, spirit, love… the many names and attempts to nail it into a concept. This magnificent awesomeness is who we are at the very core. And it needs no lessons, it needs no upgrades, it is not here to learn… this I promise you.

 

We are not here to grow spiritually, our spirits already know everything. Our persona, our ego, our identity, whatever you call who you identify as – that entity learns.

 

I remember what it was like to hear such things and resonate with it but basically dismiss it because it had not altered me, I had not tasted it. Gnosis is the only way, and I don’t mean in a religiously Gnostic way, but in the core meaning of the word “to know”. Contrary to popular opinion there is only one way to know something and that is to experience it. Based on that, there are very few things we can say we actually KNOW. And even then, when examined many of those things turn out to be based on little more than air.

 

For instance, I used to know that objects, including me, are solid. They are not. All matter consists of particles and waves, not a lick of anything solid in anything anywhere. So much for knowing that.

 

That spirit is here to learn lessons seems a childish and convenient way of seeing things. Similar things are God personified with qualities like anger and judgment, and enlightenment seen as a floating state of an almost inhuman quality with the answers to all the universal questions and imbued with an unapproachable presence and softly spoken voice and no sadness or joy (that all sounds more like a high dose of Zoloft to me).

The possibility that we are here simply because we like it here seems impossible to the minds of the many.  We come up with all kinds of reasons, and every religion has its reasons why we are here and this includes the spiritual movement.

 

Certain doctors, especially cardiac doctors, have reported on the near death experience phenomenon. That is a whole subject on its own but for the purposes of this post I can share that when people come back from death they say the same thing when asked why they turned away from the beauty, bliss and love they saw on the other side: Because this is life! Life, this body, is an extraordinary experience! Life allows me to touch, to love, to cry, to scream, to taste…

 

Or to quote The Matrix:

 

You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy, and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realise? Ignorance is bliss.

~Cypher.

Denial vs Letting Go

The mind is an incredible thing. Psychology tells me it is multi-layered, that it contains filters through which we sieve our perceptions and experiences and it certainly feels like that. There are disorders of mind with labels like depression, multiple personalities, anxiety, schizophrenia. I have to pay respects to the complexity of mind.

To come out of the victim-sleep of one who is thrust about by emotions as though they come from somewhere other than one’s self – and really, WHERE else would that be? – is to initially confront the fact of my emotional choices frequently. Years ago, when I first initiated this process, I had limited or no self-realisation. I had the concept of it, I felt I knew what it was and where, however hindsight showed me I was right… but also wrong.

Nothing replaces gnosis, which means knowing, experience. This meant that although there is power in choosing how I feel and respond, it is very easy to slip into a kind of denial, or aversion, of unwanted feelings which is different to letting go of them, different to the awesome discovery of the truth of them and then having them fade naturally.

A person is subject to denial only when she is still completely in the mind. In this way, it certainly is a “choice” how I feel because choosing is a function of mind.  A function of mind which has tremendous value, and saved my life once. But it is limited.

What is denial? Denial is choosing a different story. It is turning my back on a story and a feeling out of aversion; it is not a letting-go.

The story is what creates the emotion. Emotion does not exist on its own. This is part of the “create your own reality” we hear knocked about by modern gurus. Choosing a different story may, for some length of time, allow me to focus on a different emotion. That has value of only a limited scope, a kind of emergency stop gap. Most people use it as a permanent way of emotion avoidance and this only sets them up for an eventual fall. It is like performing continual little denials, glossing over things, putting on a happy face, getting by – it all takes so much energy.

Seven years ago I had post-natal depression, bordering on psychosis. I was suicidal and unable to fully function and had a new baby to care for at the same time. Such is the insult of PND, we can’t even wallow in our grief and anxiety like other depression allows. A psych prescribed medication but I refused and instead researched and read self-help and spiritual awakening books (none of which helped at the time).

After a year or so, I started having panic attacks. Out of nowhere this horrendous doom and terror would creep over me – I could be walking down the street or making a tea and WHAM. I would sweat, my ordinarily rock steady body would start shaking, I would pant, and start looking around for an escape, a literal or emotional escape, anything to stop it. Twenty-four hours a day I could actually feel my adrenals working, literally just under my rib cage, drip feeding me with stress chemicals.  It felt completely beyond my control, I felt prisoner to this whole sordid ordeal with no parole in sight.

I was sent to a week-long silence retreat and it saved my life, in more ways than just literally. There was one outstanding reason for this: it was where I received my introduction to choice. Even with my limited self-realisation I implemented this massive mental shift into the self-mastery of choice. It was part of the retreat, this lesson in choice, it wasn’t any kind of divine hand that came down with a scroll or anything. It had just never occurred to me that I was choosing how I felt. And honestly? Given a different time and place, I may have been highly offended at the suggestion because HECK, I was SUFFERING dammit, WHY would I CHOOSE to feel this way??! Etcetera and so forth.

Had I been closed, skeptical, cynical or the many other things that have held me back in the past, I would have argued with the idea, and walked away still suffering. Instead, I stopped the story, the thoughts, I just STOPPED for a minute, long enough that I was hit with a massive shift in awareness… and I made a different choice.

I came away from that experience changed in some small but permanent way. My depression, which was severe on the clinical scale, was gone, completely gone, and in its wake only an understanding of such pain and suffering (which has been a very useful understanding).

Of course I forgot how to choose for the most part after that. Fell back to sleep, you could say.  I dropped back into victim mode but this time in an ordinary everyday way, not a psychotic way.

Ultimately, thinking about the mind is like looking at your own eye. Without some kind of reflective aspect, using the obstacle to navigate the obstacle has inherent and obvious flaws. It has been only while resting in the truth of my being that I have been able to see the whole universe, and my self, splayed out before me with any clarity.

If denial is turning my back on a fear then letting go is embracing it.

Transference: Catch the Feeling

I’ve known feelings are contagious since I was at least a teenager. My mood affects others, and the closer someone is to me, the more they are affected. And vice versa. This has caused a funny issue lately. I’ve appeared moody to others recently, and this is because I am partly shifted out of victim mode and partly still stuck in it. Sadness, anger, fear and other “negative” emotions appear within me unchecked, as they used to, but now there comes a point where I make a conscious choice whether to continue the emotion or let it go. When I sink deep into the emotion and stop the story around it, inevitably the energy of the feeling dissipates and disappears. This leaves me in peace and with calm and easy joy.

To others, this just looks like perpetual PMS. The issue this creates is that my nearest and dearest are on this ebb and flow with me, unbeknownst to them. I feel like a puppet master. I stomp around in crankyville and eventually, my husband is reacting in that same energy space and if given enough time, so are my children. I move out of crankyness, and they’re still stuck in it. Some more time in my joyful energy and they move out of it with me. And the cycle goes on.

Years ago I read a book by David Snarch called Passionate Marriage and I hold much respect for his important work. In it he discusses differentiation. He says it is a key to a successful relationship, to be able to be in your partner’s space and not take on his/her moods. It sounds logical, which these days automatically causes me to squint with suspicion because logic relies on the mind, and the mind is subject to boundaries.

On closer inspection it begs the question, if transference is unnatural then why does it come so naturally? If energy is not meant to jump from one particle, atom, organism to the next then it wouldn’t. But it does. At the same time, that does not mean it is meant to be, just that it doesn’t automatically mean it isn’t meant to be. And those were a lot of double negatives right there.

I am half of the happiest highly functioning relationship I’ve ever known in real life (I’ve seen some amazing relationships in movies, I must admit), and we have transference and very little differentiation. Is it a part of the magic, or part of the imperfection? Can’t be sure. I do know that if I am sad, it’s nicer when those I love are not quick with a joke and instead seem mournful and concerned.

I think we are most comfortable when others mirror us. It helps solidify our reality, allows us to perpetuate our story which perpetuates our emotions. However, I am not sure it is necessary to actually feel the emotion the other person is feeling, but to approach it from a place of compassion. Compassion for me often meant searching my soul files for experiences that matched what the person was feeling so I could catch their wavelength. Now, I see that it does not necessarily mean suffering with, but is an awareness of their suffering.

The Zen of Childhood

I said to my daughter, who was six at the time, “Look, I know you’re upset about this change of plans, but we can work something out,” to which she replied, “I’m choosing to be angry at the moment. Now I am going to go to my room and slam the door behind me.”

This level of self-awareness blows most adults off the charts.

Worshipping the Finger

I read the bible from time to time. I read many religious manuscripts actually. I like to listen to what those proficient in self-mastery are trying to tell us about ourselves. Yet, Christians worship Jesus, and for the most part seem to completely overlook his message. Really, his magical awakening story – it isn’t subtle.  The authors didn’t hide it, they were pretty clear.

Jesus’ awakening message is identical to Buddha’s. Their life stories are different, but their message is the same. Even though the powers that be absolutely butchered the scriptures when they chose which ones to keep and which ones to reject, the message remains.

Jesus and Buddha are pointing to who we really are, to the oneness of existence, to the illusion this “reality” is, and to what is beneath this deep layer of ego and wanting. Heaven, Nirvana, freedom from suffering, eternal Love… etcetera and so forth, it’s all right there.

I try to make sure I am worshipping the message, not the finger that is pointing to the message. What good is worshipping the ultimate good boy? What good? How does that help this world, how does it help awaken us? How does it help Jesus for that matter? Masters are humble folk, they’ll live without my worship. They’ll be much happier knowing I heard them and that I’m on the path than they would ever be with me staying miserable and prostrating to an image of which I have no direct understanding.

What would Jesus do? He’d wake up, that’s what he’d do. How do I know “what Jesus would do”?  Because he bloody well did it.

Choosing Anger

The deeper I go into self inquiry, the more the twine unravels and the more surprises I find.  It is interesting that they were right when they said we are attached to our dramas, to our suffering.

I’ve done my share of personal growth reading – God bless Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer – literally hundreds of books and authors I admit.  I can’t claim ignorance to the idea of negative attachments but like most of those I know and have ever heard of, I had not had experience in it, I had to go on faith.  I’m not a fan of faith, I prefer to get sticky in the goo of things.

I was feeling pissy again.  I know I was overreacting to everyone and everything, I was dramatising and acting out.  I know this.  I know I was modeling Gorf only knows what to my children about how to deal with unsavoury situations.  So when I found myself with a few seconds to contemplate and inquire, I remembered the many times in this journey since learning the truth of emotions – this is a choice… I can choose something else… I am suffering and making others suffer and I can stop this right now… so why didn’t I?

Because I wanted to be feeling exactly what I was feeling.  It was a type of enjoyable.  More shocks to my system on that realisation.  I was now face to face with the truth of my reality, of my choices, with no one to blame.  I carried on being pissy for a while longer and then dropped it.  Later that night I thought about my revelation, as simple as it was it was profound at the same time.  The implications, the depth, there was nowhere in my life this information did not touch.

I thought about circumstances I had gone through, horrendous situations and predicaments, and saw that throughout all of them, bar none, I could have avoided suffering, almost entirely.  For suffering happens for a moment: the moment you are in pain, the slash of the knife, the slap of the face, the loss, humiliation, rape, childbirth, abuse… they are but moments and in those moments, the suffering may exist – the jury was still out on that – but only for those moments.  No longer.  Yet how long we play those moments over and over in our heads.  How long we suffer, unnecessarily.

I thought of my son falling and scraping his knee.  One day, he jumps up and runs off, the next, a lesser fall is a big drama that has him crying in my arms for a long long time.  Why the difference?  He is learning to suffer, to replay in his head, to dramatise and see it in his mind and alter it in some way.  He will eventually subconsciously choose which sufferings he likes, and cling to them.  “Attach”, as the Buddhists say.  I ask him, “Are you upset because it still hurts or because you keep remembering your fall?” even though I know he will just cry louder as an answer.

How odd.  I chose to remain suffering, I chose to stay angry knowing the illusion emotion is.  I had no excuse, I wasn’t as trapped in the illusion as I used to be.  This awesome choice, we all have it.  At any moment, I can choose to soar with bliss and peace.

The Substancelessness of Emotion

I was “having a moment”, uh, you know… cranky, irritated and pissy. I could give you the reasons why but really, what pisses me off might turn you on, and that’s the illusory fact of emotion – emotion relies on a story to stay alive. My story of woe may be your story of a day in paradise so the triggers are irrelevant. I was frowning and crashing pans around while getting the potatoes out of the oven; I thundered through dinner and then sat in a pile of self indulgent pissyness outside while my son had his post dinner toddlerish frolic. This small window of not-much-to-do gave me time to inquire.

I’m shitty, I’m irritated and it’s XYZ’s fault, if only they’d blah blah blah. I chose that moment to STOP the thoughts, the self talk, and dive, head first, into the emotion, into the chaos of it.

The thoughts were actually keeping me distant from the emotion, that was my first whammy. No one told me to expect that. I’m on my own, I realised. I’m discovering this for myself.

Without the thoughts about why I was pissy, I had no choice but to BE pissy, to truly sit and experience pissy. Not act it out. Not repress it. Not express it. Just experience it.

From early childhood until the age of 35 I didn’t feel or express anger very much.  I had it bottled into me by parents, out of love and concern, who did not like to see anger or sadness in their children. It hurts to see your children hurting, and the unchecked feedback is to stop them, not realising that they aren’t stopping the emotion, just the expression of it.  If only it was as easy as “hey, stop being angry”, then we’d all be free!  We kid ourselves with our children, thinking that when we make them stop crying or yelling we’ve healed them.  HA!  Mass cultural self delusion.

The birth of my children had lessons for me, my son’s appearance brought with it lessons in rage.  Woah boy, and wasn’t that fun.  Rage is different to anger, I found, but with the same foundation.  That’s the price you pay for a lifetime of suppressed anger.

I felt fear of anger, I felt I would lose control and maybe even hurt someone… so the fear kept me from really feeling it and instead “acting” it, as we all do. And I am gooooood. I have a great huffy face, and have perfected the door slam.

I chose to know this feeling for once. At first, I felt like I was sinking into it, and I literally felt it physically, moving upwards from my stomach, lurching, so I sank deeper into it, I was ready, “C’mon!” I said, “let’s DO this, mother fUCKer!” and I’m sitting there and this feeling is shaking along and…

… holy bananas, I had to FORCE myself to stay irritated.

Without the thoughts about the people who were “causing” my irritation, without any of the thoughts around it, the irritation DID NOT EXIST.

The emotion required the thoughts to exist. As I grappled with this I fumbled around looking for the pissyness, I conjured mental images to trigger it again but it was too late, my mind had been shifted slightly off kilter.

Wind affects the tree, but wind is not the tree; when the wind stops, the tree goes on.

I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. Like a lunatic I’m sitting there giggling away at the simplicity, the nearness, and at the pureness of emptiness; I was empty of fabricated emotion and this left only joy. A kind of joy, and I long for a decent English word to describe it. My son toddled over and giggled and put his head in my lap, needing no explanation. Adults in the vicinity, not so much; but how can I tell them? WHAT can I tell them? And I started laughing again.

Remember to Wake Up

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The hardest part of confronting my preconceived ideas is remembering to. It reminds me of when I quit biting my nails. Driving in the car with my mother at age 17, I was on her case about her smoking cigarettes… again. Poor woman, I had little concept of acceptance in my teens.  I thought “change for the better” meant “everyone but me.”

This day, mum said something different. She asked, “What’s that in your mouth?” I told her biting nails was nothing like smoking; for starters, it wasn’t going to kill me. She said addiction is addiction and gave me a challenge: if I quit, she’d quit. So I quit, and she didn’t for another 10 years. I digress, my point being, when I was quitting I found the hardest part was remembering not to bite my nails; fighting the urge to bite my nails was easy in comparison. So habitual was it that it was a part of me, I did it without thought. I bit away half my arm before I’d think CRAP, I’m not supposed to be doing this anymore. So I put polish on my nails. That was enough to create a slight shift in how my nails felt, triggering my mind when I started to nibble, and the rest was a cinch.

That is how it is at the beginning of emotional awakening. The way I think and my reactions to the world around me are so deeply a part of me that for years I feared that to stop “being me”, well, who would I be?

When I first heard this idea about ego and personality it was from a Buddhist perspective. I dug the message that my emotions and reactions were a choice, that they are not actually who I am, but how I choose to be in a given moment. Yet, I struggled with it, I doubted it, it made little sense really. I didn’t know what to do with the information either. Men meditated in caves for decades to achieve such knowing. The books and religions and psychobabble made the whole thing sound so complex and frightening and like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – a big deal. I didn’t understand that you don’t sell books with only one page in them so writers plump it out. This only serves to confuse the rest of us though.

The depths to which my judgments run is still a shock to me. Unexamined ideas on how the world and her people should operate. I was driving down the road with my family near my own house and saw some teenagers skateboarding. Each one had his pants down his ass at different levels, one kid had no underwear on at all and his whole butt was showing. Something stopped me from the knee jerk reaction of commenting loudly at the ridiculous current fashions to the rest of my family and us all having a giggle at his unknown expense.

In that instant I thought it, I checked myself, I examined my thoughts. I said to myself that in many cultures, people don’t wear anything at all, so why am I judging some ass crack? I don’t even personally care about ass crack, in fact, I like ass crack.  I’ve been conditioned to judge ass crack.

Just a simple moment of clarity, not even worth sharing on a blog really, but there it is anyway. Because it IS in the simple things, the little things, for that is where we live. We live in a running commentary of little things, punctuated by occasional big things. If I save my personal examinations for only the big things, I will overlook the majority of my illusions and habits.