LIKE WILD HORSES

I’ve been listening to pundits left and right (literally) as the presidential campaign boils into rising steam. I’ll admit that I’ve never taken so much interest in what is going on politically in the country before this presidential election year. If there is a positive to be gleaned from this current piece of history in the making, it is that it is capturing the attention of America and the rest of the world. What happens to America, happens to the world, in one way or another. We humans can unwittingly be seduced into the role of “useful idiot,” even though we do our best to be informed. But it’s hard to be informed when the news is trying to pull us in one direction or the other with carefully selected content. Real neutrality is virtually impossible for humans, although we would like to think that some news media are less compromised by support from one side or the other.

Among the complications to sorting reality from the weeds of propaganda choking our info garden, is the difficulty of sorting weeds from flowers. Some of the weeds look surprisingly good at the beginning. They sprout toward the sky, robust and green, put down deep sturdy roots and don’t reveal their true character until they fail to produce flowers or fruit. They may have a noxious odor, as well. By that time, it may require huge efforts to remove the weeds which are all amazingly prolific and manage to look healthy even in a drought year.

I am talking about political seduction. It talks magically infused words chosen to lure us into an altered state of unconsciousness and it always tells us what we want to hear. Wide awake consciousness would end the power game, and maybe, just maybe remove the gaming mentality. I won’t pretend that I’m indifferent about the current political game or supremely conscious. I am rooting over one team over the other, but I don’t for a minute think anyone has a complete solution to what ails Turtle Island (America) or the rest of the world.

I lean toward liberal although I’m beginning to hate all political tags.  I’m not a purist and have lately been feeling that something isn’t right (no pun intended) about placing myself in any political box with worn catchphrases that have drifted from their original meaning. This includes oversimplified phrases loved by the news feeds and political speech writers. We take most of these tags for granted without exploring if there is real meaning behind them.

What about balance? What if conservative interests and liberal concerns are not adversaries but terms describing two aspects of all organic processes. Two days ago, I noticed that I felt a bit ill when listening to one of the many political commentaries on YouTube. Then the light switch clicked on, and I realized that I didn’t want to be identified as a socialist, capitalist, liberal or conservative. In fact, I didn’t want to be identified by any catchphrase. I drew a deep breath and felt my stomach relax. Both Socialism and Capitalism are dangerous when defended against real life consequences. Abstract concepts erase humanity and block the blood flow to the brain. But here are some thoughts that have been swimming in my mind for some time.  

In the Declaration of Independence, we have the  backbone of America that politicians have been gnawing on since it was written.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

There have been dissenters from the beginning because it is somewhat incomplete in its interpretation of equal.

From Wikipedia:

The phrase "all men are created equal" has received criticism from elitists and traditional conservatives. For instance, Richard M. Weaver writing in one of the cornerstone works of traditional conservatism, Ideas Have Consequences (1948), paraphrased a 19th-century writer in writing that "no man was ever created free and no two men [were] ever created equal". He continues: "The comity of peoples in groups large or small rests not upon this chimerical notion of equality but upon fraternity, a concept which long antedates it in history because it goes immeasurably deeper in human sentiment. The ancient feeling of brotherhood carries obligations of which equality knows nothing. It calls for respect and protection, for brotherhood is status in family, and family is by nature hierarchical. (for family, one could substitute tribe.)

It is obvious that not all people are created equal in all ways. I’m sure our founding fathers recognized that some are tall, some short, some fat and some lean in addition to having different levels of intelligence, personal drive and moral fortitude. Our social and genetic qualities differ greatly. Women aren’t even mentioned but they were half the population and children had yet to achieve their rights within society. In many ways we must grow into equal rights. However, I believe that the founding fathers intended equality to be the right to be or become all that one has the inherent capacity to be or become. Alas, background, personal history, and education have much to do with the results. Equality in this sense, is an ideal to pursue. Power mongers attempt to keep those who are low on the social totem pole where they are and argue that they shouldn’t move from that position. Some infer that god put them there. Now and then, “god” flips the pole.

The hidden self-serving distortion of equality was largely unexpected when the Founding Father’s signed the Constitution. They were not thinking of their native next-door neighbors who preceded them by thousands of years and the many peoples who would eventually arrive on the eastern shores in ships from all the nations of Europe. They couldn’t have known about the western shores still hidden from their concept of America, nor the arrival of Asians. Certainly, they weren’t thinking of the African’s who were already here, as well as the ones who would soon arrive against their will.

We are not one people. The melting pot is a fiction. We are an exotic stew in the making. There are still various pods of culture that arrived with their own ideas of how to live the American dream while maintaining their original cultural identity. This is an aspect of inequality that has added great genius and depth to our stew pot as well as some flavors that have not blended well—perhaps because they haven’t had time as yet to blend their flavor.

Because our Declaration of Independence was written by Western European men with 18^th Century ideas of the Enlightenment and the inspiration of the French Revolution, there is an inherent cultural favoritism written in. This involves too many facets of perception to be reduced to right or left. All men are created with equal rights to be all they can be and to evolve into more than they are now. I believe that evolution is continuous. In that sense, we are created equal.

Both Socialism and Capitalism sound well when the theories are presented in a one sided claim by their defenders and both can be dangerous when unchecked by the complexities of real life. Not surprisingly their apologists see the positive side and the negative side is discovered later by those living within their unchecked application.

Today I’m feeling angry that the politicians and their theorists want to put us all in pens of right, left, socialist or capitalist, fascist or any other political coral. While it isn’t easy to maintain balance on the thin, unfamiliar middle line, you don’t have to hate or be hated (well, that last is probably not true). I’ve been listening to intelligent speakers critical of socialism and I agree with much of what they say about it’s extremes that work better in theory than practice, but why would I want to accept the abstract extremes of any ideology. Rugged individualism, extreme independence, intolerance of those with different lifestyles and a hostile approach to anyone near the border of what one regards as one’s personal truth becomes extremely dangerous. It is as out of balance as its opposite of unachievable political correctness, no personal or social borders, and the rejection of all judgements and assertions.

I’m tired of dumping people in a right or left bin and ignoring the uncertainties, paradoxes and diversities of real life on this planet. There is no absolute right and wrong position in the real world (except sometimes in hindsight) and yet both the left and right attempt to box us into a world of absolutes. This has always troubled me. Because it makes theories and political slogans more important than people.

When I was in Junior High (Middle School now), the walk to school was a mile and a quarter and I played mental games to fill the time. One of my favorites was to argue in defense of an idea or situation halfway home and then spend the other half of the walk arguing against the same premise. It taught me a lot about how malleable the perception of truth can be.  

There are no absolute right systems or wrong systems in the human world, and yet both left and right attempt to see the world in black or white. Of course, no one identifies themselves or their fellow believers as black unless they have somehow turned the opposites inside out like black magicians.

Christianity has also become polarized within and polarized in the perception of the outside world and yet now and again, a teaching in the Bible comes through unblighted by numbing layers of dogma accrued in the last 2000 years. When it tells us, we are all born in sin, it is customarily misunderstood. To sin means to miss the mark like a marksman with a shaky hand.  Of course, we are all sinners to some extent since we do not have absolute aim on the target of right and wrong as mortal beings. We would have to see and understand all that has ever been and all that will be in the future to achieve absolute knowledge and wisdom. That is, we would have to be Masters of the Universe like God.

Murder, rape, and pillage are wrong, but they also take on subtle and abstract forms that are cunningly concealed. While the Ten Commandments are a simple outline of what one will not do if motivated by love and honor, they don’t cover the subtleties of love and honor. You only get that in the graduate course to wisdom. Our problems take us down the wrong lane whether right or left (dear God, I hate those generalizations) when we assume, we know it all and our interpretation is unassailable.

Like a wild horse being herded by a helicopter, I’ve decided to take a sharp turn back at the approach to those right or left pens that we are herded into the way those unfortunate horses are herded into pens by choppers in the sky. They don’t know they can’t outrun that horrible noisy machine following them from the sky, but the noise stops when they are penned in and can’t move anymore. A false safety. They will learn the truth when they catch their breath and try to escape. Like wild horses, we can naively find ourselves in a coral to be used for someone else’s agenda.

Why are wild horses such an archetypal symbol of freedom and evoke nostalgia of something wild and free that is lost? They were once our slaves and now live their lives without us and in a reversal of roles, humans feel wistful envy for these creatures who have escaped enslavement. Are we to be trapped or choose to follow our own inherent organization as tribal beings who value and help each other as relatives?  As the Lakota say, “they are all our relations”. It would be so comforting if politics wasn’t played like a ball game or war and people really sought the best for everyone.

We are only stable when we aren’t running from fear and desperation. America is an incredibly young country and still has a lot of adolescent hubris. Perhaps we have flown too close to the sun with our wax secured wings and are due for a crash to solid earth. I hope not yet. I’m not wise or strong enough to welcome any collapse of our seeming safety from the wars, revolutions, horrible dictators and famines older societies have experienced. Maybe there is a transformation into real stability and power on the other side of the test, but I’ll admit I’m not excited about the possibility of a great fall.

When I was a teenager, my entire world came apart and everything I had believed to be real or important appeared to disintegrate. My prayers bounced off the ceiling and hit me in the head. All my dreams and hopes were dashed, and no one wanted to help me. They only wanted to return me to where I had been, and where they still were, which for me no longer existed. For many years, I felt myself plunging down a bottomless black hole. However, I now see that I had to start over in an updated reality and the old one had to die first. It took many years, and now I know it is a lifelong process which I now appreciate in peace and gratitude.

Our country, and for that matter much of the world, is flying high with waxed wings and is losing altitude. One election can change the immediate situation for a time, but we are going to crash eventually because we are not in a realistic relationship with each other, and certainly we are pouring poison on our Mother Earth. Our current president is emotionally and spiritually empty and sucks power from the escapist desperation of many people for his own aggrandizement. The fall is coming. I don’t know if the election of a different president is enough to suspend the fall. I hope so, but I don’t think one presidential change can stop the progression of our immature fantasies of endless protection from our own immaturity as a society.

The Earth is trying to cleanse itself of our abuse and no one politician is going to fix it. There are increasingly powerful storms in some places and drought in other places. The sea waters are rising and many countries including ours, depend on port cities. Humans reflect the dissatisfaction in their desperate acts. Many people are not emotionally, mentally, or spiritually equipped to act with wisdom and decorum, and they will respond irrationally out of fear.  Money is a human invention and has been elevated above the planet and its inhabitants, including us. That is pure madness and no one person will cure the delusion. However, one person can exacerbate the speed and impact of our fall from the sky and increase the depth of the fall. If only we could look to a higher truth that like it or not, we are all related and will experience pan-systemic problems, even if some of us are billionaires, or plan to escape to Mars. Do they ever consider that Mars may be in a desert condition now because its former inhabitants did what we are doing now?  

 

MOVING ON

This morning I stood in the cool morning air gazing at the weeping willow which I have been trying to save from drought this summer, then suddenly I was in another time and place like a double exposure. This experience is not new but I’m curious about the trigger. The location isn’t important. The place of this morning’s intrusion was my old home on Upper Ranchitos. There was no weeping willow at that location and in fact, everything, except the light and time of day was different. Nevertheless, I became for a few minutes the person I was 16 years ago.  I don’t want to be that person again. It was a difficult time, and that person was several steps back from the person I am now. Was this confrontation with the past a marker, reminder, or a connecter?

These flashes from the past are not just memories. In fact, they are fragments of life that I have no conscious reason to remember. They are totally mundane snapshots of a previous time, place, and state of mind. Time traveling is usually presented as a far more dramatic and life-changing event. And why that time and place now? A few days ago, I was suddenly in the backyard of my childhood home in Denver, in my late teens. What triggers these pieces of the past that are suddenly layered over the present?

These memories are quite different than the usual facts and pictures that the mind presents in a faded and remote manner like old photos. They are complete in every way except for the actual location of the time. It is as if the current location is experienced now by the person I was at a time in the past.

West View Last Night

The few weeks externally dominated by the Corona Virus have been more reflective than usual. Our life doesn’t change very much externally since we are retired. We go to the grocery store and the post office. When we have friends visiting, we go to one of the restaurants open to outside seating and as it is summer, we would sit outside anyway.  Most of the day I do chores and work at keeping my outdoor garden alive. It is a very dry summer, and while the clouds gather every afternoon, they tease, flirt, then

pass on.

When the social isolation began, I thought it would be a time when I could get things done around the house and artistically that I don’t normally have the time or will for. But it has been the opposite. Although I’m actually busy, I have neglected painting and writing. I haven’t done anything in the last month to make more room in the garage so that we could paint. I’ve been feeling a bit confused and guilty of losing focus. Then It occurred to me that instead of focus, I needed to allow thoughts and feelings to move and mix at random. The past experiences are aligning themselves outside my ego consciousness. There are changes coming that my higher self perceives, and the familiar habits are out of date.

Yes, I could have been writing or painting, or maybe clearing out the garage, but my internal slave driver has been placed in lockdown, and it isn’t just me. The world beyond my own little world must also be undergoing preparation for some major changes. During this Pandemic there are the obvious changes; businesses that will not be able to reopen, changes in relationships as jobs move home and children can’t go to school, shopping habits are changing, the list could go on and on, above all the loss of lives and lifestyles, disrupted plans for the future and all the things we took for granted a few months ago. Life will never be as it would have been if the pandemic had never existed. 

Things change, our lives move toward an end whether we like it or not. But endings are also preparation for beginnings. It’s what we do with the potential beginning that matters, although the ability to recognize a beginning isn’t guaranteed. Transcending the small self is the key to graduating from constant repetition and that often requires an experience that knocks us off the rails. Perhaps that is what the virus is doing on multiple levels. 

I look back at my “failures.”  So many goals ended in futile struggles, heartbreaking disappointment, defeat, and self-doubt. Nothing seemed to work except the boring things I did between attempts to “follow my bliss”, to use Joseph Campbell’s words. However, judgments are usually based on our perception rather than reality. Or, more accurately; there are qualities of meaning that lay hidden beneath our obvious pursuits. The higher self sometimes has a completely different outlook than the little ego struggling against the demands of the tough teacher called life. The longer I’m on this planet and this third level (3D) school, the more amazed I am by how little I know of the hidden agendas of being on this spaceship called Earth. 

The long list of things I’ve struggled passionately with great dedication to accomplish but failed at for one reason or another, sometimes because of bad timing, running out of funds, some crisis or another, etc. were in fact not failures. I often fell into despair, believed I must be cursed, and eventually picked myself up and started again only to walk into another wall by my own judgment.  But those failures and heartbreaks have borne fruit although not as I intended. The higher self has its own agenda. It was grooming and instructing for qualities and a way of being that I could not possibly understand during the times of failure and frustration. The true value and meaning were hidden in plain sight by desires and expectations blinded me to a different kind of value. I didn’t have “eyes to see or ears to hear” Proverbs 20:12, an old Bible verse that has meaning at many depths. What I couldn’t know in my younger years was the concealed multi-dimensional education behind my pursuits. I explored horsemanship, music, dance, art, psychology, history, anthropology, comparative religion to name a few, and now I see that nothing was in vain or a failure, and all were related in a way that I couldn’t see back then, even though I never became an adept or gained a degree in any of those pursuits.

Those selves that rise out of the past and overlay the present are never far away. They need to catch up and find their current place in an ever-changing identity.

I used to feel inferior to the artists, writers, creative scholars, and performers that I admired. Now they please and stimulate me but I have no need to envy them or grieve because I missed my chance. I am grateful for the beauty, insight, and stimulus they instill but recognize that I have more than enough to do in following the path I’ve been given. all that I need is being revealed step by step and outward success is of optional importance on this earth journey. 

 Each endeavor is infused with many layers of depth. Judging the success or failure of an endeavor depends upon the quality of outcome, and the wisdom of the one who is judging. Value and thus success does change with perception and experience. Streaming from the source will connect one with open eyes to the multi-faceted world (hidden in plain sight) of beauty, light, and power. That was always the true goal however shrouded under social judgments and ego desires. Whether we are main arteries or tiny capillaries of many sizes and locations throughout the cosmic body we occupy, preparing to carry the golden fluid of experience throughout the world, we are all connected.

nature and experience dictate. I notice myself one day off balance another with aches and pains and then a day when I feel like my thirty-year-old self.  Even our cat, Shadow is surprising us with new behaviors. She has discovered the hunter in herself this past week. Although I have mixed feelings about it, I can’t deny a major evolution in her personality. This week she caught three young rabbits, a mouse, and this morning a lizard. She is very self-pleased and carries herself like a tiger, with self-confidence oozing in every stride and through her gaze. I used to call her a woosy cat. Now in her seventh year, she becomes a hunter and brings her catches into the house as her contribution. 

Unfortunately, I have a lizard and a mouse running wild somewhere in the house but thankfully managed to catch one of the rabbits before it was fatally damaged and sent it on its way outside. I suppose this is her housecat response to the unknown future. Or, perhaps she senses the need to be more proactive. We each respond to the incoming changes as we can.

WAITING IT OUT

Sunday:

The Corona Virus is the big surprise of the New Year. I’m not shocked that many ignore it as something that isn’t supposed to happen in our modern world, and I’m not shocked that it has tweaked the conspiracy theorists. Humans usually try to confine the uncontrollable unknown in a mental corral they feel familiar with and thus falsely believe they have some control over. However, there is now a lot of time to fill in the small space of this little adobe home while I look out the window toward the great sky beyond our neighbor’s house.

Something must knock the habitually adjusted everyday mind off its rails to make space for the brilliance of the higher mind. Any shock will do, but the quality of the results depend on the developmental level of the mind in question. Here we enter unexplored depths and paradoxes. While some minds soar upwards, others fall through the decaying floor of an outdated structure into a dank underworld. Wars generate much creativity. This is a sad reality; many of our highest and deepest mind stretches are infused with mental adrenaline induced by fear and competition.

An emotional/physical crisis, if profound enough can thrust one beyond the gates of known reality and call in the angels but beware they can be both the light and dark kind. A new world becomes visible from a stratospheric perspective by those who don’t go mad. It is not necessarily emotional stability that saves one from madness. There are other minds for other dimensions that lie dormant until they are called forth by the failure of ordinary operations. We don’t know why some are endowed with the strength to travel mentally and spiritually into unknown dimensions and others are not. Some, for whatever reason are equipped with a lamp that can light a path through dense forests and dark nights while others become lost in fear and confusion.

Sending Prayers Over the Moon

I’ve been speculating: are we unsuspecting diffused holograms of God, to be activated when some event thrusts us into mindless emptiness—knocked into a space we could not have imagined? Fear alone is not enough and usually evokes the dark angels who have a ready-made sales pitch for the false god of the moment. Perhaps emptiness is precisely necessary for enlightenment. Anything else is dense electrical interference that brings a confusingly mixed signal. Do we activate awareness of our essence by shattered explanations? So many creation stories involve vivified mud. The image of the Golem comes to mind. But the Golem issues from shadow powers soiled by the lesser mind, the one with dark motives in place of enlightenment. I have always seen black magic as the use of higher powers for lower ends.

Monday:

Red and Blue do not exist for the color blind, but that does not mean that they are not real. Culture unites and gives a collective approach to perception, yet it also blinds us to the things it inevitably leaves out. It is not easy to see something you never thought of or don’t believe exists. However, as soon as you see it, due to some event that has interfered with your habits of perception, its almost impossible to imagine that not everyone else sees it. This goes equally for thinking outside the social box, political box or even the scientific box. From time to time, some event, even if it is experienced by only one person is so powerful that it breaks through the collective skin and after that the skin seems thinner to another and another until more burst through or until it becomes more flexible.

There are religious people for whom the church is a comforting container decorated in only the colors they are habituated to perceive. There are others who see colors in the full range and for whom the church walls have become opaque blinders. They are regarded as heretics by those of restricted perception. In truth we all have limits to our perception, even as the limits have expanded at various times. perception of let us say, blue, red and yellow yet still falls short of comprehending that there are lines leading to infinite perception along the color spectrum.

It becomes more complicated as the human herd instinct becomes entangled with one's perception thus the need to belong in a club. True holiness is always a distant goal, yet humans are want to seek it as an image projected on some tribal hero of legend. However, even the tribal legends must eventually be seen with extended color perception to retain their power.

Tuesday:

There is always great life and death tension between the confinement and safety of belonging and the compulsion to evolve and grow. These Dynamic opposites are a part of nature that is in continuous interface. They are not enemies but natural elements of evolving creation. Religions and political parties carry on as if only one is good and the others evil, but neither will ever die or be permanently overcome by the other. The icons of God morph but never die and the whole in holy is forever becoming. Identification with the past even if masquerading in a favorite fantasy of an imagined future will always be challenged by the real Lords of creation. Those who try to protect God may find that they are in denial and will be buried in the waves of creation.

However, in some ways the past is as real as the present in the face of eternity. Thus, important pieces of knowledge lost in the past are often just the ticket to the future. Perhaps its best not to think in terms of time and just use whatever works best. In the meantime, which is the constant time, PQ has Tina Turner and Rod Stewart on Netflix and I'm compelled to dance with them. Staying busy has been no problem for me. I’ve been painting new work, tweaking old paintings and doing ballet bar exercises. Oh yes, I’m also writing. I have to go now, PQ has Dwight Yoakam on, Mr. tight jeans. I have a great collection of classical records, especially piano concertos, I may try to introduce PQ to classical music. This indulgence in music of the past is pulling us forward and that is the mystery of time. Now Paul Simon is coming on.

DEMOCRACY OR CAPITALISM: WHICH ONE ARE WE?

Listening to Michael Moore talk on YouTube this morning about Trump’s leadership style I realized that America is operating on an unconscious two-party system that has much greater power than the acknowledged two parties. While he essentially said that Trump is a caricature of the narcissistic CEO in his manner of running the country, I realized that our entire country is based on an unconscious internal dissonance. Of course, the opposites in life are the source of movement and change but they are destructive rather than creative if there is no attempt to resolve them by moving to a higher resolution.

Our government has been idealistically if frequently not functionally based on democratic values. As a nation, we are also in an adolescent state of development and think in unresolved opposites of black and white. Our pioneering spirit is also very extroverted and not inclined to self-reflection. A high IQ is valued over a sensitive and intuitive heart. Perhaps, on a side this is the reason there is so much heart disease even among those who eat right and exercise regularly. Our culture is not kind to the body which is often seen as another part of nature that must be conquered and exploited. But the body is not just a complex machine. In fact, the comparison of body and machine is an unwittingly reversal of the reality that machines are fashioned after various body functions to enhance their innate functions with greater speed and power. There are, of course those who would replace us all with machines and others who are terrified that we will be replaced with machines. Neither thinks in terms of a soul and its emotional responses in association with well being. The mind is more than a mechanical calculator and even science is beginning to recognize that the body in both heart and muscle has an intelligence of its own separate from brain cognition.

The democracy we assume seems to be a thin layer of paint covering a voracious oligarchy. The hungry wolf has been scratching at the door of the Capital for a long time. Trump is raising much consternation because he invited the wolf in without rationalizing or attempting to hide it. In this sense, he is a different kind of politician because he exaggerates this act as leader and makes no attempt to hide it.

Does unfettered capitalism truthfully result in a better way of life. It is supposed to encourage creativity and increased quality, but while encouraging competition it also encourages greed and exploitation. How are we to enable the good aspects of competition while controlling self-serving greed. We must approach capitalism with a sense of relatedness, or it becomes exploitation.

In the 19th century the Darwinian concept of natural selection of the fittest as a justification for exploitation of the poor by the wealthy became embedded in the capitalistic system. Socialism was judged as a reversal of the natural order and the sure way to breed a weak society. I suppose the subject must be how to encourage creativity and healthy competition without going to a self-destructive extreme. Somehow, head (literally capital) and heart must be balanced.

The current scare about the Corona virus outbreak brings the imbalance of self service and communal membership into direct confrontation by threatening to shut down businesses and jobs, the circulatory system of our world economy and therefore society. The virus isn’t political. As an act of nature, it is pushing the reality of global membership in our face. The individual is also a member of a society and society is made up of individuals. One cannot exist very long in denial of that reality.

The ultimate fear seems to be the end of the world as we know it, and this is the fear, as they say in Washington, “on both sides of the aisle”. However, creation is a continuous process and the entrance and exit signs exist on the same wall. The difference depends on whether you’re coming in or going out. The end of one world is always approaching as another is coming in. As individuals we always have the choice of celebrating or mourning. I usually mourn and then celebrate, but everyone has their own sequence. Nature doesn’t care because its always in process. If you have a superior ability you can benefit the world but if you attempt to hold your place forever you will become a disease.

I’ll use the concept of God as an intelligence principle in the cosmos that includes all functions of the creative/destructive/re-creative process. In the astrological model there is creative fire, nurturing water, solidifying earth and distributing air and they are all in constant interaction, but we humans usually don’t notice when “the times they are a changin”. Carl Jung said, “...fundamental problems cannot be solved, only outgrown”. Belonging and competition are always in conflict. Creation is a process of finding a resolution on a higher level. The breakdown in a system reveals its weaknesses. The world in balance is always a tight rope walk. Eventually there will be a fall and the people of the world will go on by getting up and trying again or recognizing that someone else must walk the rope.

On a seemingly unrelated and possibly trivial note, I have been watching YouTube videos of the current generation of professional dancers. As a child, my first desire was to be a dancer. I was not allowed to dance because of my parent’s religious restrictions and thus began lessons hopelessly late  in my twenties. However, in my usual style, I went in for total immersion for several years. I got to see the Bolshoi Ballet with Maya Plisetskaya, Balanchine’s New York City Ballet and The Royal Ballet with Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev. Now comparing that generation with the current generation (also on YouTube), the virtuoso techniques of that past generation have been absorbed and transcended by the current generation. Someday, the current generation will have taken certain steps and postures to an absurd level, (some have almost arrived there now) and there will be a reaction back to classicism. And so our planet spins and the poles continually wobble.

January 2020, I AM A TRIBE DANCING AROUND THE FIRE

 Tired winter snow melts and refreezes outside. Its only January yet time seems to be creeping at the imperceptible but deceptive speed of ancient glaciers. That’s okay, I needed to be in this frozen retreat from the outside world right now. PQ has the impeachment trials on TV droning in the background and history in motion it seems part of the winter weather that hasn’t penetrated to my hideout.  In fact, it resembles the furniture, books on the shelf and pictures on the wall, just background stuff. Any conclusion will probably be as deceptive in shape as an object half hidden beneath the snow.

Instead of digging myself out of the winter drabs I’ve gone deeper inward and arrived at an unexpected family reunion with some relatives I didn’t know I had. I have a Mercurial nature, as Mercury is the ruler of my Gemini Sun. I think most of the time I keep this fact subtle. However, with so much rare introspective time available, I’ve been exploring the different parts I once identified as me—many were almost erased from conscious memory. It resembles a family reunion but more revealing. These mini-selves all work for a common Tribal Boss directing from behind a curtain and has just now emerged from hiding, or perhaps I was just not looking.

I first met this hidden director when I started writing my life story a few months ago. I’m not sure why I did that. It began one day when it came to my attention that many pivotal events, characters and locations from the past were fading like old clothes. This led to the discovery that my personal memory was filtered according to whatever seemed important at the time and this brought up the question; why? Also, what important things have I lost from the past that I might find useful now? I didn’t have the insight to notice this when I started writing the story. As I continued along the backwards trail, I found much more than evaporating memories. Writing an autobiography sounds like an act of vanity and is certainly hard work, but in truth it is an ego deflator if you are being honest. However, if you drill deep it will bring up the things you didn’t know about yourself.

Much to my surprise, I discovered this invisible Tribal Boss overseeing the different selves who ruled distinct segments of my lives, and this boss appears to represent the final picture. It reminds me of a high-flying drone recording the whole journey from an elevated perspective. The motivation to review everything that happened before now came about because that boss had decided the tribe of me was losing some important parts along the way. I see this guiding overseer in a masculine sense although I’m not sure why. Perhaps he is my animus in the Jungian sense, but that title is too small. This guy is much wiser because he is guiding the part of me outside of time—the whole loop. All beginnings and endings. This one hides behind riddles, camouflages and my own habituated expectations in plain sight while overseeing all the alternate selves and tries to guide the various Mes to the crucial experiences of life that will take the to the agreed upon destination. However, my ability to cooperate is always limited by ground vision that sees only as far as the next curve in the trail. I’m sure this boss doesn’t have it easy trying to guide me.

For one thing, I used to be extreme and obsessive about any goal I pursued. In hindsight, and from an increasingly temperate perspective I recognize that the obsessiveness was an attempt to overcome the fear that whatever I pursued I didn’t deserve and probably wouldn’t be allowed to achieve. There are too many of these unrequited loves for a full list right now, but I’m aware that my life is divided into time segments defined around these pursuits. A limited list of these passions is dancer, horsewoman, artist, anthropologist, psychotherapist, pianist, ethno-musicologist, astrologer and back to dancer. Now I’m in my seventies and understand that I’m not going to be a master of any of those pursuits. 

Perhaps I was supposed to explore each partial self for a season so that I would understand the various perspectives in the tribe of me. The spirit dancer moves rhythmically in time and space among them all and it is now revealing itself as the invisible guide that I followed with blind intuition. My greatest accomplishment isn’t expressed in any outward form but in my fascination with where the next turn in the trail would lead. 

When I was much younger, I felt abandoned in a dangerous world hostile to my kind. I believed myself exiled to a place that would forever be beyond the bounds and out of notice to other humans. I dreamed and envisioned the kind of wise guide who might find me lost in the dense woods, and teach me how to navigate the trails back to the human world and who would share secret knowledge and powers to offer others experiencing the same alienation from the normal human world. While staying alive in hurricane force winds, dodging flying objects or starving for heart food, the miraculous helper was guiding the tribe of me all along.

There is also a scribe who has been recording the whole trip under the guidance of The Big Boss, I’ll call it my Higher Self.

BEAUTY

Beauty arises from the spirit realm! Beauty is the essence of life. It should always come before utility. We humans have reversed the natural order. This is especially true of those whose close ancestors had a puritanical background. Utility should always support beauty because beauty lifts us to the divine. The opposite is a travesty of nature.  Artists, unless they are operating in support of utility, which is the realm of money, hold little respect or understanding from mainstream society, which is motivated by money, its acquisition and exchange abilities. Beauty is regarded as an indulgence, a candy rewarded for a good trick, or even as an undeserved treat.

This is a strange distortion of the natural order.  One cannot eat money, make it beautiful or shelter under it. This is even more true in the digital age. Now, money passes from place to plate without being seen.  It is just an abstract number in the cloud.  My husband is old school and likes to carry physical bills in his pocket. He does not feel money unless he can hold it physically.  Of course, wealth has gradually become more abstract over the millennia. It was once, cattle, sheep and edible fruits and grains. Then it became gold and silver coins, or jewelry made of the same with the addition of precious stones. However, these still came from the earth and were valued as gifts from our life source, Mother Earth.

I used to take a bus to and from work in downtown Denver. I was not happy in my job although it was the only job in my work history that met all my expenses. There is a key to concealed slavery in that statement. Because my energy was drained at the end of the day, I would get off the bus at the first stop alongside Denver’s City Park.  I would then walk the last mile toward home across the park beneath the blue sky with the delicious moist softness of green grass beneath my aching feet. It gave me plenty of time to watch the free wildlife in the park, squirrels scampering about and birds flying from tree to tree, or the ducks and geese noisily waddling to and from the lake. There were also a few cottontail rabbits moving silently and almost invisibly among the bushes. The incarcerated animals lived in the large zoo to the left. I would sometimes howl at the wolves or make other animal sounds in the few animal languages I knew, to send sympathy to fellow prisoners and would often get replies, perhaps about our common situation.

Rio Grande Angel balancing high and low.
 

My external circumstance seemed different, but not really. Although they lived in cages and pens and I lived in a house and appeared to be free to come and go, it wasn’t genuine freedom. I had to buy my food and shelter and to buy it, I had to work at a job that I didn’t like nor ethically approve of that in addition wore my energy too thin to effectively practice the things I genuinely valued.  This wasn’t true of all my fellow workers at the company. Many were ambitious young people who felt privileged to make enough money to have a large house, a high-end automobile, a boat, and plenty of toys to take on vacation. And of course, vacation could be a trip to another continent.  But a chain is a chain whether it’s made of lead or gold and both are heavy. When the price of oil dropped drastically, many of them lost their jobs and the golden chains fell off.  Unfortunately, that didn’t mean they were free of the ‘system’. Their 4.0 grades in university gave them their competitive edge in the rat race, but it didn’t prepare them for the sudden drop in lifestyle.  Many never recovered.  It was a bitter lesson about the invisible puppeteer behind the stage.

Perhaps, the magnetic power of the word, “free” so seductively used in advertisements, is not exclusively a lure to the greedy. Perhaps, it is also a magnetic hope that appeals to our wild self and suggests an uplifting remedy for relentless demands.  Are we like mules who yearn to graze in a live green pasture in the evening after the harness is removed? Freedom is dished out in small increments, an oxymoron for sure. Human mules are often so programmed by their relentless invisible drivers that they are unable to adapt to freedom.

I wonder if the tremendous desire to acquire things, especially expensive things, is propelled by the lack of genuine beauty and satisfaction in a life driven by the need to make as much money as possible.  What is the reward for giving one’s life over to the race to the top or is is there only an empty promise like the proverbial carrot on a stick, tempting the donkey to work endlessly for a reward it will never reach.

The only enslaved animals are the ones enslaved by humans who are themselves enslaved to a system of their own invention or at least participation. If we remembered beauty it would all change. Utility should support real beauty rather than the sham of beauty, a kind of plastic knock-off that we accept as the best we deserve. Nature is a perfect guide, yet we are trying to drain her of all her magic instead of accepting her power as our own birthright and beauty as her essence.

The Navajo Nation considers beauty the source of goodness, power and knowledge. Of course, this isn’t mere prettiness which is beauty light, nor glamour. Both are the lure of confused hunger for relief and a pleasant stimulation brought on as respite for an abused soul.  

The Navajo/Diné traditional prayer is called “The Beauty Way” in Diné—the Navajo name for their nation—Here it is translated into English, and in Diné

In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again

Hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shitsijí’ hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shikéédéé hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo
T’áá altso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’

On her website Marti Beddow shares this description of Hózhó the beauty way, written by Jen Wolfe on October 19, 2014 in Southwest Legends:

    "Since large chunks of Arizona and New Mexico, and part of Utah, make up the Navajo Nation (the Reservation or the Rez), the Native American presence is strong in the Southwest. Perhaps the most important word and concept in the belief system of the Navajo people is hózhó. Unfortunately, it is not a word that translates well into modern English. Simply put, however, it means to be in balance and beauty with the world. It is about health, long life, happiness, wisdom, knowledge, harmony, with both the mundane and the divine. It means a traditional Navajo person is continually restoring, finding, and practicing balance in his or her daily life.

     The Navajo believe that when a person no longer in harmony with the world, they fall ill or begin to act like the biligana (the white man or one who struggles). A ceremony called the Blessing Way will rid the Navajo of the evil wind that has taken over them and return them to hózhó. The ritual is lengthy (several days or more) and requires an hataali (medicine man or shaman) who is able to remember all the songs and sand paintings required to complete the ritual. The ritual itself tells the story of the Navajo as they came forth from the third world and what their guardian spirits taught them about living in the fourth world. It is designed to attract the power of the holy people. In short, if completed correctly, it will reconnect the Navajo individual with their past, their heritage and the beauty all around them.

 The concept of hózhó sounds simple, but it isn’t. For instance, while other Native American tribes pray for rain during a drought, the Navajo hold ceremonies to put them in balance and harmony with the drought.

This morning I leaned over to pick something up on the ground and had a sudden spasm in my back. This is always a sure sign that I’m under some kind of stress that hasn’t been resolved. Then when PQ woke up this morning (very late, I may add) he had a very bad cold and could hardly speak. After this I recognized that I was negligent of an important principle—harmony with life.  We have been very busy this past three weeks and had some wonderful meetings with new and old friends. In addition, PQ has been more successful with his art.  All this was more than welcome but we also had some bad news in the form of an expensive decision concerning our automobile.  It is the first new car I ever owned, and although it has over 170,000 miles and 10 years on it, I still see it as my new car. How time flies when you don’t pay attention. We must decide whether to have some very expensive repairs done, or trade it in for a new vehicle.  Either of these options will create a major economic challenge despite recent success.  Thus, the back spasm.

Then I remembered beauty and faith. Our life has never worked by plan but by the natural rhythm of the spiritual matrix of life. The interplay between positive and negative forces are the foundation of knowledge based on experience and the natural world. A dark background makes a dramatic contrast for beauty.  Believing in beauty as the nature of balance illuminates imbalance. I walked outside this morning with Shadow our cat, looked at the wonderful products of spring, the splendid clarity of the Taos sky and realized there is only now and faith in the constantly dynamic beauty of creation in process.