tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39735483018268330312024-03-14T04:47:28.108-07:00Lita Dreaminghttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2nPKmDL2-jc/SwSrxbVVF7I/AAAAAAAAABc/k_9r7px666Y/S660/litabanner2.jpgAdelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.comBlogger197125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-47941681558554646192023-03-04T08:46:00.024-08:002023-04-01T06:41:56.660-07:00For God's Sake<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIUBgvml4SFl_AFpC5d1knaxnL7Qd-VL_unQOhSAXoiCrvV9MbyfkJGvti_ESOmmeN3MFJw47BeRzJzP5QUgERl3A5V4GzFQdXaYXYN_0RSwLT5BkJ3Wow1c_pOTDsOcTP9sKVs6-SzOIzk8fUBjp4vZ2hzVhfmKZ0FZs5Axep0ri93mNY9NJE0c8G9A/s800/Meditate.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIUBgvml4SFl_AFpC5d1knaxnL7Qd-VL_unQOhSAXoiCrvV9MbyfkJGvti_ESOmmeN3MFJw47BeRzJzP5QUgERl3A5V4GzFQdXaYXYN_0RSwLT5BkJ3Wow1c_pOTDsOcTP9sKVs6-SzOIzk8fUBjp4vZ2hzVhfmKZ0FZs5Axep0ri93mNY9NJE0c8G9A/w200-h200/Meditate.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Remember when we were all horrified at how the Iranian "Morality" police treated women?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Mahsa Amini was killed last September in Tehran for not wearing the proper attire the proper way.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Well, how about the white supremacist Christian police we're dealing with in the USA?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">They are fucking bent on putting American women in equal position to the Iranian women. c</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">ontrolled, body and soul.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">First, a stupid misogynist Mississippi law with God quoted as the source and authority, topples the hard-won protection of Roe v Wade. Now, an oral medication, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/medication-abortion-pill-texas-judge-f2ffc6fca3ad4b8cd8171eef65a9c29e">mifepristone</a>, that has been safely used by countless women for twenty years, FDA approved, with a better safety track record than Viagra, is being challenged inTexas, to be tried before a self-declared patriarchal judge.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">The ruling is a slam dunk, then it will be sent to the Supreme Court.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">The morality police super judgies will again do what they were hired to do; s</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">ubjugate women to patriarchal rule.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How dare these contemptuous men and the proverbial token woman of patriarchy put American women in chains again? Based on what? What they say God the Father wants of us, to protect fetuses and treat women like cattle? Breeding cows who have no moral or legal agency if they get pregnant and don't want to breed? We need the calves, so the cows are expendable. As long as we have enough calves, the cows outgrow their usefulness and can be fed on. </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Where do we see this? In every religious autocracy around the globe. Women have no agency under law, are considered spiritually inferior and culpable and some men get to decide, usually ugly, mean old ones masquerading as authority with not a spiritual bone in their bodies.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;">We need to stop this! My dream of <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2011/08/howling-mary.html">Mary Howling</a> at the corruption of religion comes to me front and center. </span><span style="font-size: medium;">This is stuff to howl about. People and pundits are discussing a threat to our democracy. Let's be clear, whether you call it white supremacy, which it is, or the ugliest misogyny, woman hating, which it is, it is totalitarian patriarchy. It isn't the way it's always been, but it's been this way for far too long. We, men, women and self-identifying persons, have the opportunity to change things up for good.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We can stand up to the brainwashing forces of these religious patriarchs who are trying to turn back women's freedom and fight for every American person's right, regardless of class or culture, to govern her/their own body. It is corrupt beyond belief to use people's vulnerable need for a faith in what lies beyond death as a weapon of control and oppression over women.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Patriarchy is a corrupt nightmare; it has built male power over women around the world for about 6,000 years. It has justified a hierarchical power system of class and privilege that destroys community; it breeds misogyny, racism and cruelty. Do we realize what a brief respite women attained in the US from the moral and legal restrictions of patriarchal religions? Roe v Wade liberated us in 1973 from male intervention in choices we make about our bodies. Women have been legally independent of American state and church intervention in their reproductive lives for FIFTY YEARS! And now, we're back; Christian patriarchal men and their women allies are gloating. Eve is back under Adam's thumb, so God, who was pissed at both of them, is mollified. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span>Thank goddess for Jesus, he's the strongest ancient Feminist I know; remember do as my momma says? The macho code, then or now, doesn't allow for the obvious respect women so deserve and </span><a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-cover-of-rolling-stone.html">Jesus gave them.</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Please don't think getting to where we got (which now we're not) was a matter of committees and meetings. It was a tooth and nail struggle against the smug bastards who think God is swinging their dicks for them. And guess who we're dealing with still? Patriarchal men and women using religion to bind and burn women, once again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Yet, I am so grateful for the <a href="https://www.feministgiant.com">amazing women </a>all over the world and <a href="https://www.aafront.org">in the US </a> today, leading the Feminist clarion call to get off our asses and refuse to let religion enslave us again. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The incredible miracle of birth is all on women; we were asked to do this humanitarian service through our physical bodies by Love, and apparently, we said yes. There came a time that some men filled with jealousy and greed decided to topple women's power and subject them through cruelty and religion to their own wills and advantages. That's when the shit began to go seriously downhill. Patriarchy was and is a failed experiment from the get go because of the utter imbalance in the natural order of things that it defies. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;">Patriarchy is a cracking antique social paradigm that always polarizes and then raises one opposite against the other, male/female, white/colored, rich/poor. Patriarchy is always a pyramid and He's on top, in the hereafter and in the here and now. As much as patriarchy has succeeded in ruling the globe, it is desperately failing millions and millions of earthlings everywhere. Wars and insatiable greed for material gains that will evaporate the minute death knocks, what absurdity; yet, here we are doing this insanity again and again. </span><span style="font-size: medium;">These war-god, woman-hating and slave making religions have brought us six thousand years of unnecessary human misery, yet we want to cling to beliefs that don't serve us. The definition of insanity, don't we all know, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b><i>Why don't we change god up a little? </i></b> Does divinity really have to be your daddy? Why not let divinity be bigger than that? Why don't we examine our own being; are we our bodies? Or do we exist, after death and in our dreams in spirit form? Render unto the physical what belongs in the physical; divinity is an open book which we each get to read about in our own hearts, minds and dreams; and in Love. Love is god; there's no room for all this ugliness. It's purely patriarchal and we can change that because patriarchy is a system that abuses the majority of us, using young men as cannon fodder for insane wars or dehumanizing young women as sex toys and baby machines 24/7. But it's about the way we think, which rules the way that we behave.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">You don't have to leave anything good about your religion behind; just don't commit hate, misogyny and racism in the name of your god. I am positive that divinity doesn't want women to suffer because of the gift they have; a woman is a whole autonomous spirit, just like a man, just like any person, regardless of how they identify in the physical. Reproductive justice is for everyone. It's easy to tell true Christians, Jesus lovers, from the bullshit ones. Jesus loved, trusted and respected women and would never deny a woman her own authority. He probably died for standing up for them in the bleak patriarchy in which he lived. It's not about detaching from the core of your beliefs; it is about detaching from the money-making false prophets of patriarchy who want to control women and peoples of color or gender difference. Men can be feminists, the way white people can not be racists, by continuously realizing what we've inherited from so much institutionalized indoctrination over the years and figuring out together how we fix this.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">For one, we can change our own hearts, look within ourselves for what we truly know, from our own waking and dreaming lives, Love Is The Answer. We are the channel for this universal truth to manifest. We are all spiritual beings having a physical existence, which is temporary and material. We are eternal, anyone who has experienced a lucid dream, an Out of Body Experience or a Near Death Experience knows what it is to be out of the physical and conscious of our existence still. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;"><span>Divinity does not demand that women suffer or allow man to "lord" it over her. That was clearly some assholes' idea of how to have power over women.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;">We don't need to return to any external worship of our own human projections; we can turn within to the divinity that dwells in our hearts and speaks to us in dreams. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-19212174588288269962022-06-15T09:59:00.004-07:002022-07-01T12:35:55.679-07:00What Will It Take?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi22FgTr4B2HFhAa4_RYbloitPkDsLT3jDMgX1KEwgaaGUO96XkMSKfCuhWiUpQyIkG9DnHFGDV_UvRqUGZJ-bVIf9WW2FvAgI16Yd2ltIeQbZNZmkq5Gti6TlgFfafzu-SEfrvwqi8Wf7LP4vhmFRxaHps59sw2Aa7ADD2EDe_UN41tTUxn5oti9OAfg/s480/Heart.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi22FgTr4B2HFhAa4_RYbloitPkDsLT3jDMgX1KEwgaaGUO96XkMSKfCuhWiUpQyIkG9DnHFGDV_UvRqUGZJ-bVIf9WW2FvAgI16Yd2ltIeQbZNZmkq5Gti6TlgFfafzu-SEfrvwqi8Wf7LP4vhmFRxaHps59sw2Aa7ADD2EDe_UN41tTUxn5oti9OAfg/s320/Heart.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: Cambria;">A dear friend, in the midst of a political discussion recently, opined that he thought civil war might be a reality in the not distant future.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">This chilled me to the bone for it’s potential to materialize. Unless?</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Of course we were numb at the news of yet another flipped out male youth with the power of guns way bigger than any bit of consciousness he possesses, murdering little children in cold blood, like it was a video game.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Now comes the avalanche of opining by our “men” in charge about whether or not we should at last take responsibility as a society for our attitudes towards guns and the perpetual harm they do to us as a collective, a society. In patriarchy, a gun is a symbol of manhood, no? What would Freud say?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I have many times<a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2018/10/lets-try-another-approach.html"> here </a>tried to put in perspective an understanding of patriarchy that underscores its basic structure as a thinking model, not a gender model. Not all men are patriarchal and not all women aren’t patriarchal. We live in a 6 thousand year old repressive and abusive paradigm that is psychically fueled by religion. Six thousand years may sound like a long time; it’s a small fraction of the time civilizations have existed on this planet.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">When you believe in a male god, you call Him/He all the time, it gels an image in your mind that will guide your beliefs, perceptions and your choices as a person. The patriarchal god is extremely controlling of his “children” the human race; his superiority warrants all sorts of cruelty and misogyny. The stories told about this sky god in the patriarchal religious texts spin myriad tales of inflicting pain and suffering on humanity in the name of this god. In the OT, Abraham barely misses having to slice his son’s throat to prove to this insane god his loyalty; in the NT, this insane god does it himself, sacrifices his only son to justify and meliorate his own petty peeve with humanity.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">These are beliefs; there are ways to know that God/Goddess/Spirit is Love in your own daily/nightly experience. Our world is desperate for a paradigm that isn’t greedy and unkind, like the patriarchal paradigms that are always demanding blood and sacrifice and elevating one gender and race above all others. Because they are beliefs, however ingrained in us since baptism, they are not real. When our hearts crack open and we love, not Hollywood or gender specific love, but the Love that is the real deity in our universe, the Love we can touch in each other and in our dreams, the Love that when we open to it, is our ultimate destiny, our ultimate bliss. You don’t have to believe me or anyone else about this; it’s in you and you can experience it yourself, especially if you <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-power-of-your-dreaming-mind.html">pay attention to your dreams.<o:p></o:p></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p><a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-power-of-your-dreaming-mind.html"> </a></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I look to dreaming as a possible avenue to reshaping our paradigm enough for us to act, to save, our home, this beautiful planet, and ourselves here in the physical. We have a sacred responsibility to pass on the most love and the most beauty we can to our children. Instead, our patriarchal paradigms flay our souls from our bodies and demand we place the most precious aspect of our human existence in the hands of greedy, misogynist men who enforce what we shalt and shalt not do.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We need to be having a different human experience on the planet. One that indigenous American teachers, like Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of <u><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17465709-braiding-sweetgrass">Braiding Sweetgrass,</a></u> speak of today. Spirit is one energy we all experience, including animals and all that is life on this planet. Patriarchal authoritarian pyramid models of “governance” are classic all over the world. At the bottom of those global patriarchal pyramids are children, women and non-dominant patriarchal races. At the moment, white males seem to be in charge, followed closely by other despotic male autocrats around the globe.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I have also <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2021/04/about-time.html">many times</a> described these rules as enforced by a frame of mind and a blind allegiance to shit that doesn’t make sense. The most toxic enforcer of this patriarchal thinking is our so-called “religions” that propose to all and sundry that the supreme ultimate invisible deity is some old fart with a beard. To him all men bow and in return, this super daddy bestows on men the right to do whatever they want to women, like deny them full personhood or health care under the law, the same as men.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I have many times said <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2021/08/a-new-heaven-for-new-earth.html">that this shit isn’t as old as you might think,</a> given the scale of time that humanity has managed amazing civilizations on this planet that weren’t patriarchal. We have been taught a very skewed history; we can’t see before the 6 thousand years of this patriarchal paradigm. Our written history is not the whole story of humanity on this beautiful planet. Things are not, as many think, “always was and always will be”.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I<a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2010/06/in-between.html"> have many times </a>pointed to the facts taught to us by modern physics and metaphysics that reality isn’t matter, it’s energy, and that the “observer” (any conscious person) can influence the outcome of how this energy takes shape. I think of “The Secret” and manifesting your ego driven needs as the McDonalds’ version of this universal law. The version that counts, that you take with you beyond your physical death, is the evolution of your awareness. Our divinity is part of who we are; we are not born defective and in need of patriarchal daddy intervention in order to qualify for social acceptability. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Under the patriarchal paradigms we are asked to uphold, there is no room for trust in our own spiritual awareness. It's simple. We are spiritual beings having a physical existence. We don’t need to believe in anything in particular, we need to be who we came here to be. We have a spiritual connection to soul, self or however you name your connection to your eternal existence. We live in two realities at once, the temporal physical and the eternal spiritual. We know this when we track our dreams frequently with respect and curiosity. <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-dream-connection-and-pope.html">Dreams are a bridge</a> between our waking and spiritual selves.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Our “after” life depends <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-rainbow-bridge-between-now-and.html">on our choices now.</a> Christianity, Islam and Judaism espouse choices that warp our organic spirituality into twisted shame, penitence and servitude and can be especially lethal for women. By the way, as I’ve said so many times, <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-cover-of-rolling-stone.html">Jesus, </a>did not put up with patriarchal bullshit and it got him killed. The fact that patriarchs decided to take his story and run with the Messiah angle is a continuing source of irritation to him, I’ll bet.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">A paradigm like the toxic one we are seeing disintegrate before us is not invincible; at least not in the ways that matter. Each person that calls bullshit and starts to educate themselves in ways to be more loving to others and to themselves tears a thread from this malicious web that has frozen us in such discord.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">No one person, of any gender, will turn this tide of destruction, but each person that refuses to participate in it, each person who opens to new, unimagined possibilities for our survival, each person who learns how to love, each person who participates in any way towards a collective solution, is saving not only themselves, but others, too.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">On a time line of human reality, “you are here”. The expansion of our experience can draw on what was before this disaster of a paradigm, but it is up to each of us, however we identify sexually, to help create a paradigm that is fueled by the energy of the universe, Love, which, to materialize, we ourselves must embody.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">This means daring to embody the energy of divinity, of Love, in any way you can. Sing, dance, play music, laugh a lot, be kind, patient, giving; all those great things and do them in a way that brings joy to your life.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I don’t know what will happen. What will it take to turn this tide of hate and division that so many patriarchal zombies are manifesting around the world, including, in the USA. I do know that however grisly it gets, we still survive this consciousness beyond the physical body, as proven by dream research, to name one avenue you can explore.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Taking this into consideration, it’s important for each of us to ask ourselves what we are here to learn and what we are here to do. Anything each of the 7 billion of us does in Love for others and for ourselves will help tip these crazy scales. Also, if we are to give up the psychic poison of patriarchal religions, <a href="http://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2014/09/in-dreams-we-learn-to-fly.html">we need an alternative. </a> Any time we make a connection to spirit dreaming or meditating or walking in nature with heart open, we are experiencing our soul selves. There are so many ways to experience the reality of Love. We can let go of the fear-based paradigm and embrace the one that is with us always, our organic spiritual connection so evident in life. We have nothing to prove and plenty to do. Each person’s contribution is important. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">May it be so.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-7540535194681216582022-01-24T15:33:00.002-08:002022-01-24T15:33:37.354-08:00 King Kong and Soul Recovery<p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-size: 16pt;"><tbody><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 16pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4PAbVkBzxKa6MeAyq-P6zcnMIy6D2IO08XsHxydIAdSW3cOK69ziazzEfrRiYVAKryt5tjhDYM1PB-vy9coadcHYUZ3dbJXmYp7NkcVdby6mXYHvOvjMSQpq4MY9Z33xd-JdhTJqd1Jw5phbobiefne0DOGxlUYRg1-GIpHBKrsA-YO8Sab5rFlg2_A=s480" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="480" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4PAbVkBzxKa6MeAyq-P6zcnMIy6D2IO08XsHxydIAdSW3cOK69ziazzEfrRiYVAKryt5tjhDYM1PB-vy9coadcHYUZ3dbJXmYp7NkcVdby6mXYHvOvjMSQpq4MY9Z33xd-JdhTJqd1Jw5phbobiefne0DOGxlUYRg1-GIpHBKrsA-YO8Sab5rFlg2_A=s320" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I recently wrote <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-power-of-dream-symbol.html">here</a> about my encounter with King Kong in my dreaming.</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: medium;"> I was talking about how amazing dream symbols are, how they morph and dance in our dreams, sometimes thrilling, sometimes terrorizing us into attention.</span></p></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">When we trust our dreams to be out for our own good, we know that even the most unwelcome dreams might hold healing for our battered souls. Why are our souls battered; soul's run on pure love energy and in our might-makes-right patriarchal world, some souls find love energy too scarce for their survival. Psychiatry calls it </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span>dissociation, when overwhelming trauma causes some aspect of ourselves to split from our awareness; </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">many </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">ancient and indigenous cultures call it soul loss. As we are often unconscious of this happening, perhaps because it was in our childhood, we don't realize that actions we take from the habit of protecting ourselves the only way we could in the trauma moment, are now not so effective in serving us well.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When my partner was hit by a car many years ago, in the moments before impact, he saw it coming and told me he heard a voice in his head say, "I don't want to be here for this"; that caused him to rise up on the balls of his feet, as if to jump. That movement probably saved his life; he was thrown and battered instead of crushed under the heavy car. He's worse for wear, but mostly fine now. That story illustrates for me what is common in crisis and trauma, we seek any escape we can, if not in a physical realm, then in a psychic one.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Dreams have the power to give us healing symbols. A friend of mine asked me after my last King Kong post what this symbol teaches me? I told her I'd let her know when I found out. Using a dream symbol begins with recording the dream so you can return to it to refresh the story in your mind. Dream Re-entry, as Robert Moss teaches it or Active Imagination, as Jung conceived it, are valuable ways to fathom a dream.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Dreams are the right brain's domain; imagination is the engine of our creativity. When we approach dreams with creativity and imagination instead of logic and analysis, ("what does it mean?) we get results that benefit our healing. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Re-entry is often incredibly healing; it's also greatly entertaining. </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">(I like to re-enter a dream I choose before I go to sleep or when I wake up in the middle of the night; for me it's a great way to fall asleep already dreaming.)</span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> I let my imagination spin the story my dream began into one where I am able to feel safe and capable of using the myriad options dreams allow to save myself in the dream story and gain the gifts this dream offers. I can fly to safety, talk to any character or object and bring into the story whomever, whatever I choose to assist me, to help me feel safe or keep me good company.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span>My quest to understand Kong's part in my dreams begins with me re-entering the dream with the help of new characters I create to support me. My plan is to get Kong to a huge wild life sanctuary and the freedom he deserves and to begin developing our friendship. </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Over many re-entries over many days, I befriend Kong and find him a willing guardian and protector of not just me, but of the little kid me who suffered trauma and could now use some love and understanding from her big sister, me.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In dreams time is literally immaterial so I can readily get back to that little sad, confused girl and help her gain a sense of safety, support and guidance that my sincerely loving parents didn't know how to provide. How? By creating a story with her in it where she feels safe and she gets to do things that make her wildly happy, which in turn reminds me of what makes me happy now. It's a win-win. Whatever confidence and self-love she gains in the process is a transfusion of soul for me now.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span>Robert Moss developed the practice of soul recovery in Active Dreaming; it differs from the shamanic tradition of soul retrieval in that it doesn't necessitate a shaman's help; </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">the dreamer has the power of being both the healer and the healed, as Robert puts it, to be their own shaman.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> It also doesn't presume a cultural cosmology; it uses a dream as a gateway to where, when and what must be done for the good of the dreamer. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span>I've found this practice to work at a profound level, not just for my soul healing, but for many dreamers with whom I've shared these wonderfully creative ways of doing dream play. </span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span>I suggest that a person who has suffered severe trauma and is experiencing terrifying nightmares not attempt to go it alone; I hope they can find a </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">compassionate </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">professional counselor to hold the physical space with them and guide them while they bravely work to heal. </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Many others of us have been knocked around in ways that damage but don't cripple us. Unfortunately, we sometimes push the wounds out of consciousness and don't face the pain in our day to day, busy waking ego lives. Dreams seem to know when we need a particular aspect of our personal unconscious to heal if we're to live our best lives. They are not above using monsters to get our attention, but if we pay attention, they can become gentler and often, extremely funny. </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: large;">If we take the time to get to know our dreams through the stories and symbols they offer us, we develop ways to heal spiritually, at our soul level. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span>My initial way of honoring this dream was to look up the story of the making of King Kong with all its subsequent cinematic iterations. The original story is so obviously a white male's fantasy, where women exist with a defined sexualized role in the margins of the action, usually as victims to be saved, and people of different race and culture can be caricatured and equally marginalized. Of course, Nature can also be conquered by man, and Kong must die to prove the white male hero's power. The height of irony is delivered at the end:</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> Kong has been catapulted off the Empire State Building by military planes and lies dead in the street. The big shot producer whose hubris is responsible for the mayhem, destruction and unnecessary death of Kong, intones sadly, "Beauty killed the Beast."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Yeah, and Eve ate the apple.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So it behooves Beauty, the archetypal feminine, to also free herself from whatever chains this bullshit patriarchal paradigm has inflicted on her psyche and rescue Beast from the insanity that motivates patriarchal thinkers and leads them to bring us all to the brink of physical extinction. We will all continue existence in other forms, of course, but I sure hope the misogynist racist folk in the world don't get any more beautiful planets to fuck up.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As for me, I see great promise for us in embracing our dream experiences and wisdom. Once we discover that some things can be addressed on the inside, in our inner worlds, and that our inner worlds that we travel in dreams are as real as are our waking physical worlds, perhaps we'll gain the resource, the magic key, that tips the scales back into balance. If we must die trying, then at least we can live somewhere, after this physical life, away from ignorant racist misogynists. We get to choose. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The more of us can use our dreams to heal ourselves and help others to heal, the more the scales tip on the side of hope. When we know that spirituality doesn't have to be earned because it's organic to us and that we are connected to soul/spirit through dreaming, we are free to explore both waking and dreaming realities with more awareness, compassion and courage. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;">Photo </span><a href="https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-gorilla-image4887362" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #063d98; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">4887362</a><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;"> </span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;">/</span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;"> </span><a href="https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/king.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #063d98; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">King</a><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;"> </span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;">©</span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;"> </span><a href="https://www.dreamstime.com/qing02051981_info" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #063d98; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Han Cheng Tan</a><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;"> </span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;">|</span><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;"> </span><a href="https://www.dreamstime.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #063d98; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Dreamstime.com</a></span></span></p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-35526543780291969302022-01-17T08:10:00.004-08:002022-08-02T13:38:45.133-07:00A Perspective on Time That Dreaming and Age Has Taught Me
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSoFQgI9xB4-FREDyY6SG_3mgu1dv4ThzVd8yNARUF1pYKIkymfRm_A9B5SjOLwMQOvNWi_VqYuFIagRJgXLqteRV83agpGxkZoKxRFPsxhpPeAZgin4tZvWxM6pGhSD030EQtg-s7v_gU98KXnCivl4vEM4-TAmgD7MgFCUL1ZyI7dS1m3QAmwYeYuw=s800" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="800" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSoFQgI9xB4-FREDyY6SG_3mgu1dv4ThzVd8yNARUF1pYKIkymfRm_A9B5SjOLwMQOvNWi_VqYuFIagRJgXLqteRV83agpGxkZoKxRFPsxhpPeAZgin4tZvWxM6pGhSD030EQtg-s7v_gU98KXnCivl4vEM4-TAmgD7MgFCUL1ZyI7dS1m3QAmwYeYuw=s320" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">My mom had the best Cuban sayings that she would pepper in the wisdom she gave us. One of my all time favorites is, “Mas sabe el diablo por viejo que por ser diablo.” The devil knows more because he’s old than because he’s the devil. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I was talking with a dear friend about young people contemplating suicide in our country and how it is epidemic. It’s so distressing to witness, let alone to live that sad reality as a parent or guardian. When we’re very young, perhaps we don’t see time as changing all things as easily as we do when we’re older. Our passion for whatever we deem to be our sorrows is overwhelming. We can’t speak it and it seems it will never go away or get better.</span></div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">What is causing our youth to suffer so poignantly? We need to listen to them and then do something to alleviate that suffering. How can we better open our hearts to the young? How can we open our ears and hearts and help?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Listening is a tremendous skill to develop. One way to develop your listening skills is to listen to your dreams. You would think something so simple and so beneficial would be taught in every home and school to our children, that we’d be telling them, here’s a simple way to connect with your inner life, your organic spirituality. Here’s what you do to understand what you’re doing in your dreams and what indeed, you can do. Your wildest dreams, your most passionate desires can come true in dreams and perhaps, as they do, so they will in your waking reality. Fear is power in your dreams; you can learn to do much to create what you want in dreaming, despite the obstacles.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">However, we aren’t “in control” in dreaming, we are hyper aware spirit beings with super powers, but those powers come from powers greater than ourselves. Above all, dreaming has taught me that Love is the greatest power in the dream worlds. That it should also reign in our hearts here on this beautiful struggling planet, I can only dream.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Why don’t we teach our children to dream well now? Dreaming can help them rely on themselves as eternal spiritual beings, living for a purpose unique to each of them. Since it wasn’t taught to us, we adults need to learn how to dream first and how to live our best dreams, as Robert Moss puts it. Doing so can help us get our creativity back and change the things that need to be changed so that our kids don’t have to feel so overwhelmed. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Only Love guides without asking for anything but love back. God is not a man or a woman; that’s how we may manifest in the physical, but we are energy connected in every way to the source, Love. All the confusion and constraints are man-made, literally. Patriarchy has truly set a barrier to people feeling good about themselves and their sexual expression, an iron curtain in the psyche. Sexuality belongs to the physical; spirituality is formless. There are no genitals in the afterlife unless you want them, of course. It’s not God the Father or God the Mother. It’s Love. Simple. Love.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Living a spiritual life has nothing to do with joining some denomination of patriarchal religion and goose-stepping to whatever they tell you to do. Living a spiritual life is paying attention to your constant connection to spirit, to Love. Participating in your dream life is a way of participating in your spiritual life while living your physical one, as best you can.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">What is the perspective on time that dreaming has taught me? There is no “time” in my dreaming experience; dreams can take me back, spotlight the present or fly me forward to what’s coming on the river of temporal events in the physical. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">"Old" is another construct of the physical world. Living a long life of dream exploration and waking experience can lend much needed perspective to any life; especially, the perspective that the end is a new beginning, one in which we can be intentional about creating. Once I die, I will continue my work in the service of expanding dream awareness, in myself and in others. Perhaps, I'll volunteer for dream bringer duties, part time.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I also plan to surf the tunnel of an amazing ocean wave unafraid and many other things, as well. I once had a beautiful dream that presented itself as a gateway through death’s transition, if I should want it. Yes, I want it and am gifted to have it. If I can, I will enter that landscape and be guided as I was in my dream. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Once we really listen to the way dreams speak to us and what they consider important (it’s rarely our egos), we can let go of the self torture we’ve been taught or terrorized into making our belief system. We can begin to experience our spirituality organically, not on a merit system. As William Buhlman, master teacher of the OBE experience says, the first thing we need to let go of in order to experience our authentic dream/energy bodies is to examine our conscious and unconscious learned beliefs and let go of them in favor of direct, experiential exploration of our uber-real inner worlds.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">May we listen and learn from our dreams so that we can help our wonderful young people survive the fake world and find strength in their spirits to do what they were called to do in the physical.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p></div></div>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-36470933832414072532021-09-16T15:58:00.004-07:002022-03-02T17:44:39.192-08:00The Power of a Dream Symbol<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaMGcpfs2z6skFgz8kM7vYj-9JnKzP5A5hgPFVyCIDeOIMc5icFdWKO7mkn2iRxZRV1hbqEwWgHkKH64Bh6ZnxvpYq4-6-Vy2eLSDR39qrTW8f_J9Hq727M27ie_1g_0oME76ySH4AIUh6/s840/90.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="840" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaMGcpfs2z6skFgz8kM7vYj-9JnKzP5A5hgPFVyCIDeOIMc5icFdWKO7mkn2iRxZRV1hbqEwWgHkKH64Bh6ZnxvpYq4-6-Vy2eLSDR39qrTW8f_J9Hq727M27ie_1g_0oME76ySH4AIUh6/w400-h225/90.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">In a <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2011/06/dream-humor.html">previous post,</a> I told you about a delightful gorilla dream as an example of how fun and funny animal dreams can be.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">I didn’t fear that gorilla, but when he came back as King Kong, well then; it’s time to take stock.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">When we have a dream practice, which means we pay attention to our dreams, record them, at least some of the time, and ponder them often, we recognize the power of a dream symbol. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">If my dream symbol grows from personal dream energy to the archetypal size of King Kong, it is an important story my dream is telling me. This means I go on the trail of this symbol, what Robert Moss refers to as "dream </span><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">archeology</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">." First I search through my own dream recollections and written records. In King Kong's case, this is the third instance of this energy in my dreams in the past decade. I print out each dream and add it to my journal now because whatever this dream is signaling with this symbol, it holds healing energy available to me now. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The challenge is to ponder the symbol a dream has presented for quite a while and in many ways until I have a felt sense of what the dream is saying, if not an intellectual explanation of its meaning. It’s not that dreams are never obvious. I’ve had many dreams that were decidedly unsubtle and quite verbally direct, but that’s not the way of dreams generally. Understanding them can be like playing charades or Pictionary. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><i>Given the fact that many of the great Aesclepian temples of ancient Greece had amphitheaters for performance of plays and that the temples were places where people seeking healing came to petition the god, Aesclapius, for a healing dream, perhaps those ancient actors in Greece performed people’s dreams. Was dream theater the catalyst for modern theater?</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Dream language is definitely the language of pictures not of words. According to an early pioneer of modern dream studies, Dr. Ann Faraday, it’s no coincidence that our earliest ancestors communicated through drawings, some of which are magically still extant on cave walls like those of Lascaux, in France. She also points out how most all of us, as children, loved to draw and tell stories from our drawings. Pictorial, symbolic language is inborn in us; perhaps because it’s the language of our dreams and we are never apart from our dreaming selves.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">To honor this dream symbol that has so forcefully called on my attention, I begin by asking various questions. What is the context of each dream adventure? Is the location familiar, unfamiliar? What is my dream self doing and feeling; am I happy about where she’s at? Who else is in my dream? What is my relationship to each character in the dream, and in waking life, if I know them? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">Another step to open the gift a dream is offering me is </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">sharing my dream with other trusted dreamers.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">A dream friend is one who honors the dream as yours but can also put her/himself in your dream shoes and give you their associations and feeling responses.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> In Active Dreaming's Lightning Dreaming process, that </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">feedback is always offered without personal projection onto the dreamer by using the preface, "If this were my dream..." </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Whether I share my dream in that way or not, I’m going to have fun exploring what I can find on the internet. I’m not looking for the “meaning” of gorilla or King Kong in my searches. I’m letting serendipity lead and just checking out various references like the King Kong movies and movie reviews for starters.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Wow, what an archetypal patriarchal white man shadow King Kong turns out to be! Far out! My dreams are not playing; they are posing an important challenge for me and I am excited to give it my best effort.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2022/01/king-kong-and-soul-recovery.html">In another post,</a> I’ll share what this symbol teaches me, but for now, I want to share with you this understanding of the vitality of dream symbols for personal and spiritual growth, as well as for good fun. May your dreams shine a path through the darkness. May we become strong enough dreamers to bring about a healing future for all and for our Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">May it be so.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-21988319490173755682021-08-06T07:18:00.008-07:002021-08-06T07:25:02.318-07:00A New Heaven For A New Earth<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhup_zb0YHZkydrFBgJIUn6Tc5tBRTFI8i2MFGjf_lzkwIwQqRDxRtIqC_Bm7IfikJMERiZsigcZtxV4D9HSX4S-kq0qhCTTKZLfonjNSguCFbVHPIm5Mb0L_vi7ws8nWcFgfRR7ai_XdFn/s2048/NH1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1241" data-original-width="2048" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhup_zb0YHZkydrFBgJIUn6Tc5tBRTFI8i2MFGjf_lzkwIwQqRDxRtIqC_Bm7IfikJMERiZsigcZtxV4D9HSX4S-kq0qhCTTKZLfonjNSguCFbVHPIm5Mb0L_vi7ws8nWcFgfRR7ai_XdFn/w320-h194/NH1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">I’ve been thinking about toxic masculinity, with questions like, what exactly are the proud boys proud of?</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">Then I researched them and came away sickened and soul-chilled.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">Basically they are proud of being white supremacists, incredibly racist but equally, decidedly misogynist.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">This is what bothers me so greatly about our public discourse, </span><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">or lack thereof,</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> at the moment. What is destroying us is a psychic paradigm at its core. As people believe, so they do. As they do, our shared physical reality is manifested by the consensus will of the many. </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">But it’s a paradigm!</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Another way to say it is it’s a set of beliefs made into law, not natural law, like gravity, decreed by men in charge.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Patriarchy is big and scary in its manifestation here on earth. At least three quarters of our beautiful earth is plagued by patriarchal rule exercising various degrees of repression of women, minorities, animals and the planet itself. Around the world, women suffer untold indignities and cruelty based on the patriarchal laws that rule them and the men who so gladly enforce them. In our own country, we are close to losing our reproductive rights as women, therefore, our equality and autonomy as citizens of this particular patriarchy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Patriarchy is based on the supremacy of one gender over the other. It is about 6 thousand years old, not coincidently, as old as Creationists say the earth is old. Religion is the psychic enforcement of the patriarchal paradigm for society. Patriarchal religions are all based on tomes declared sacred texts and absolute law by the patriarchs who wrote them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Once patriarchy succeeded in subjugating women, it was natural for the toxic credos of might and cruelty, empowered by divine justification, to turn to the next conquest, men and women of lesser power and might around the world. Slavery is based on the patriarchal paradigm that power deserves rewards; what’s yours is mine if I can take it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The other day I was at a party hosted by dear friends. I was talking to their lovely young college graduate son about this and that. Something came up in our conversing that put me at a crossroads quite familiar to me; do I go there or not? Going there means using the P word to describe how I view our social situation; the P word is patriarchy. See, I know that word is going to be met with some form of dismissal; sure enough he repeated it, and smirked. He felt that summed up his opinion of the topic. He isn’t a wise-ass guy or disrespectful. He’s a lovely young man; it’s just knee-jerk conditioning we have all endured.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Patriarchy’s credos are chilling; its history is one horrific blood bath after another. We’re indoctrinated to think this is the only way that people have ever existed on this planet, which is complete bullshit. Archeological and other scientific investigations have dispelled the blinkered views that patriarchs prefer. Is it a coincidence that proud boys and their fraternities like to be called patriots? They’re patriarchal patriots who don’t want to see the good old days of racism and misogyny vanish and themselves out of power.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">There are multitudes of armed to the teeth last defenders of a dying paradigm in our country. It is the most painful reality I must acknowledge daily; an army of disgruntled white men with dangerous weapons</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> is seething in righteous rage, ready to protect these collapsing paradigms, male supremacy and white supremacy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Yet, it is each individual that cements this ludicrous paradigm into reality by accepting the absurd imbalance between sexes, races and classes as god ordained and by having anything to do with a divinity who would ordain such a thing. Love is the manifestation of divinity; all else is a false god and a lie.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">There are also multitudes of people deeply committed to Love as the ultimate spirituality. I hold on to the knowledge that spirituality has a much longer shelf life than violent man-made paradigms like patriarchy. I chose to be born into this time, this place, in a physical lifetime to learn what I need to learn and to do what I can do. I will be exiting at some point back to the spiritual path I have followed for eons. I know my life after this life will be pleasant and interesting because my ability to create my reality will, as it is in dreams, be much easier than it is in the physical. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">We create our realities, individually and collectively. Modern dream studies have left us with little doubt. Anyone, who like myself, has pursued a dream practice for years has learned this certainty from experience. So it would seem that a person who has created for his or herself a reality of hate, division and fear is likely to continue that path after death. No thanks. With the bigger picture in mind, I choose Love.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Most of the men I know have no conscious interest in subjugating the women in their lives; most women I know respect women and love their men and children. What is less apparent to all of us, because it’s like the air that we breathe, is that we live in an old patriarchal paradigm. When we continue to diagnose our problems in isms and separate them one from another, we don’t see that it’s all one piece. Nature, that’s us, cannot be divided and conquered because nobody wins. The extreme psychic imbalance that patriarchy has caused is at the heart of every crisis we face. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Our unconscious devotion to the paradigm into which we have been indoctrinated hampers our metamorphosis into the most awesome human beings we can be. The paradigm we adhere to because God the Father says to is one of divisiveness; he alone is the one true it; my way or hell is patriarchal religions’ bottom line. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">If you’ve read the gospels you might ask yourself what would Jesus think of today’s proud boys? Based on where and to whom he was born, he certainly was not Caucasian, European or “white” and he championed women while living in an utterly archaic patriarchy. I wonder if breaking all those taboos about menstruating women and women hearing teachings about the Torah contributed to his enemies, Jewish and Roman patriarchs, conspiring to crucify him? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Jesus’ teachings do not fit in with the rigid patriarchal constructs that were built into the world’s major religions, including Christianity. Jesus was about finding spirituality within; religion is about relying on external authorities and their dictates to tell us what our spirituality is or should be, all the while, relieving us of the responsibility of finding out ourselves. Remember the money lenders Jesus kicked out of the temple? What would he think of these rich ass pastors with their super churches, TV shows and constant hustle?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">We are plagued world wide, not only by a physical coronavirus, but ironically, also by a mental virus. The vitriol and threats that are building from militant terrorists like the proud boys around the country is a sign of how desperately patriarchs want to hang on to their power.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">But the counter weapon isn’t a bigger machine gun; it’s a change of heart and a change of mind. It’s opening to a new possibility for a world that is wonderful in it’s magnificence and deserves to be respected. It’s recognizing that the trappings of genitals and skin color are a thing of the physical world we’re living in together. They don’t mean anything outside of the experience that spirit is having in that body. Why would I choose to judge another spirit’s journey; that only diverts and stunts my own.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The difficulty people have in making that change, however, is that we aren’t offered much in the way of an alternative to God the Father religions. The numerous stories of goddess cultures before patriarchy were repressed and silenced; history is the story told by the conqueror, not what actually happened. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">But our spirituality, our soul’s longing, is a natural flow in our psyches; we long for a vessel to express it. Embracing and including the Feminine Divine as God equal to the Masculine Divine is a good way to bring some balance to the modern psyche that has been drenched in penis worship for so long; but god/goddess is just a metaphor for what we intuit is beyond our physical senses, what lies in dimensions beyond this one.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Dreams can open our inner organic god/goddess given paths to all the divine knowledge we need to get by on this beautiful earth. The First peoples of the world knew and practiced this inner searching, but our modern awareness is focused externally almost perpetually, except when we sleep. When we stop ignoring our dreams, we begin the inner journey Home. When we live our best dreams, we bring to the world the healing all of us here so desperately need. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-66630807234044031582021-07-22T09:02:00.001-07:002021-07-24T10:34:33.610-07:00<p> <span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">Big Dreams Can Carry You a Lifetime</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrvnUa3U9vGyuigu_0CVTzOaaghK3Pkf4LaWB3Q8f0qdya581GfohhXK34jMKbrqrAfNQsKMUCP-ySzZ7MOazkhtvXsY1cjlGW_g4M2RQGUk-z7mepZoTJgeUw8Vjwtdc1Oopy8SjCMc5c/s480/dreamstime_xs_140249178.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrvnUa3U9vGyuigu_0CVTzOaaghK3Pkf4LaWB3Q8f0qdya581GfohhXK34jMKbrqrAfNQsKMUCP-ySzZ7MOazkhtvXsY1cjlGW_g4M2RQGUk-z7mepZoTJgeUw8Vjwtdc1Oopy8SjCMc5c/w320-h213/dreamstime_xs_140249178.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Today I was unpacking and storing groceries in my kitchen when I came across a rubber band, a small one, the size maybe of a communion wafer. I didn’t want to keep it, but lately it seems insane that we just throw things in garbage cans and expect them to go away and cause no harm. Most things we throw away on a daily basis cause the overload of waste we’re seeing around the world and a dire threat to ecological life on the planet.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I’ve also been listening to the spectacularly beautiful audio book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, “<i>Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants”.</i> If you’re not mindful of the planet before her book, you can’t help but fall a little bit more in love with nature after reading it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Now, I’m standing there with this rubber band thinking I can’t toss it, as is, because what if an animal suffers harm from it? I’ll cut it I think.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">When I cut the rubber band, a powerful image from a Big Dream swims into consciousness.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I titled the dream “Howling Mary” ( I’ve written about it many times on this blog; </span><a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2011/08/howling-mary.html" style="font-size: 16pt;">here’s a link</a><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> to the original.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The last scene in that amazingly prophetic dream from my Senior year in college is of me having, in desperation at Mary’s distress, snatched the consecrated chalice from a priest who was about to give communion and began to serve each worshiper myself. When I had first snatched the chalice and looked in, I was horrified to see writhing worms, but as I steadfastly began to hand them out to each outstretched hand, they were rubber bands. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">In an earlier post I described how poignant the dream still was for me, how I hear Mary howling and understand now, decades later, why she howls. I was writing about what happened to CBS 60 Minutes correspondent, Lara Logan while covering the Arab Spring demonstrations in Egypt, in February of 2011. If you don’t know, <i><a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2017/08/stretch-to-contain-dream-motto.html">here’s the full story,</a> </i>so now you know.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Why is Mary Howling? The huge imbalance, injustice and under- championed status of women in patriarchies all over this current world, the one that is imploding of its own greed and wrong-heartedness, is causing more and more suffering. She's mad as hell and won't take it any more.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Now, looking at this rubber band I cut in two, trying to figure out how best responsibly to dispose of it, the gestalt hits me; yes, Mary is howling about how women are treated AND She is howling about how the Earth, Her Body, is treated under world-wide patriarchal rule. Of course She is! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The Feminine Divine was banished along with a long list of human attributes deemed “feminine”. Inner-knowing or intuition, compassion, forgiveness, sexuality, the spirit in the physical in favor of an other worldly cerebral spiritual and of course, women </span><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">themselves</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> were banned from full equality in the eyes of religion and the law. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">From this first enslavement of half of humanity to the will of the penis gender, it flowed that enslaving whole peoples the ruling male class deemed lesser was also justified by their toxic paradigm.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The first peoples of North America were one group viewed by the uber-patriarchal colonizing settlers as weak and stupid because they respected the earth and saw Spirit in all things. Patriarchies operate under a might makes right paradigm that allows for ever more horrific displays of cruelty and brutality. Patriarchal thinking also places great emphasis on knowledge as power but undervalues wisdom and understanding. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The Feminine Divine Archetype is the repository for banished wisdom, understanding and psychic experience. Direct personal access to an individual’s inner world was dammed and diverted by patriarchal religions which forced us to look at all divinity as Male and in command. The Good News is that you can't stop humanity from dreaming and you can't stop dreams from revealing our personal and collective truths. No wonder we've been taught to ignore rather than how to understand dreams. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Mary is truly pissed and fed up with this needless suffering! All it takes is each one of us to let go. Let go of the tons of bullshit that we’ve been taught. Let go of any idea that undervalues all human beings as one and the same. We’re all eternal beings having a human existence for a purpose known only to each.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Let go of the absurd anthropomorphizing of divinity. Recognize that the grand Mystery behind this amazing existence is much bigger than our puny projections. Recognize also that the prevalent projection of one sex on divinity is a power play that gained purchase in humanity and has lasted some 6 thousand years; a comparatively small fraction of our </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">history on this planet.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Unfortunately, the result is a dying planet and endless grief for all beings on it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Dreams are calling many souls to a new awareness that is desperately needed in order to heal from the psychic trance patriarchy, especially its religions, induce. </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">What is amazing to me once again is the power of a dream that is so very old; for an image in that dream to come alive to me in meaning so many years later is awe inspiring.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">And for that image to teach me a lesson, for that dream to keep on schooling and sustaining me so many years later is deeply comforting.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">My dreams are my best teachers.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-56146228583079904722021-05-03T13:02:00.002-07:002021-05-03T13:07:34.272-07:00Honor Your Mother<p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJTdJwU8h_RYwxVCBdLVfN0JbLuHwZheUq48pUctmwoaS_FDHVkeYF5N_4aRyminAO70XV9xRGWYa1F3vK66ozipClaNiH7NPPT-2rGxLEycCZwxNQqgkXNJyhEvQsQ6HPtUscpYObRUqv/s1000/motherrock1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJTdJwU8h_RYwxVCBdLVfN0JbLuHwZheUq48pUctmwoaS_FDHVkeYF5N_4aRyminAO70XV9xRGWYa1F3vK66ozipClaNiH7NPPT-2rGxLEycCZwxNQqgkXNJyhEvQsQ6HPtUscpYObRUqv/s320/motherrock1.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br /><span style="color: #800180;">In 2014 I was asked to give a homily for a wonderful Unitarian Universalist community on the Centennial Celebration of Mother's Day. Sharing it with you for Mother's Day</span></i><p></p><p>Today is Mother’s Day, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you about Mother. Actually, today in particular is the centennial of Mother’s Day in the US, first declared officially as the second Sunday in May by Pres. Woodrow Wilson in 1914.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This holiday, which probably has its roots in ancient Mother Goddess Spring festivals of Greece and Rome, was championed in the US by Anna Jarvis, who beginning in 1905, campaigned vigorously to establish a day where each family would honor their personal mothers in a special way at home and with church services.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately, it took no time at all for the holiday to become so commercialized that she actually spent the rest of her life fighting to have the holiday removed from the official national roster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks, Hallmark.</p><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">What Anna Jarvis wanted was that on Mother’s Day we be reminded to celebrate the unconditional love, sacrifice, untiring care and selfless devotion of our personal mothers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To give thanks to our mothers for having the courage to give birth to us, and thanks to every woman who after taking on that heroic biological task, in the majority of cases, did her very best to take on the moral/spiritual task of nurturing her children, as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Moving from the personal to the collective, on this centennial of our national celebration of Mother’s Day, I’d like to invite you to remember with me not the personal mother of our own experience, but the archetypal mother of our collective experience as a human race, the Great Mother, the Feminine Divine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">At the very core of our collective psyche as a human race on this beautiful, bountiful planet is the Great Mother, known throughout antiquity and across indigenous cultures as the Creator of all that is. Thanks to the work of exceptional scholars like archeologist Marija Gimbutas, we know that: “The Goddess is the most potent and persistent feature in the archeological records of the ancient world, a symbol of the unity of life in nature and the personification of all that was sacred and mysterious on earth.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I was completely delighted to learn that Unitarian Universalists have for many years offered a very sophisticated curriculum about the ancient and indigenous Goddesses from history and diverse cultures, “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven”. I was going to spend some time with you sharing slides of many of these pre-historic and multi-cultural images of the goddess, until I realized I’d be preaching to the choir, many of you already know about HER.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Whether God as Mother is a familiar concept or a new one to you today, I’d like to invite all of us to reflect on the status of the Divine Feminine in our psyches, both personally and collectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because for the last five thousand years or so, She has been persecuted, obscured, neglected and finally banished. This has had dire consequences for humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The elevation of the masculine to exclusive divine status and the denigration of the feminine to subservient and inferior status has grave implications for our personal psychic health, whether we are male or female, for our cultures and for the well being of our endangered planet.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Wisdom of the Feminine, personified in the many forms of the goddess, is essentially the understanding that Divine Light is not separate from creation, but inherent in creation, embodied and birthed over and over again by women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For ancient peoples, woman was the matrix of creation, both literally and metaphysically. Moreover, to ancient and indigenous peoples even today, the Earth is our Mother, alive, sentient and interactive with our every thought, word and deed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are part of a physical and mystical web of life that is inter-dependent and inter-connected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">History is the story as told by the conqueror and the stories we have learned are about the triumph of the masculine sky gods, giving birth without women, from Adam’s rib, the head of Zeus or even the spoken word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Patriarchal mythologies have divorced divinity from nature, exhorting conquering, dominating and exploitive ideologies that have brought us to the very brink of our own annihilation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has placed divinity outside of matter and reduced matter to a mechanical science, devoid of soul. All ancient and indigenous peoples even today know this is a grave error. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">But today, we are in the midst of a spiritual revolution. Enlightenedl teachers from all over the world, across cultures and disciplines are pointing to a new/old paradigm for understanding our world and our purpose in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From subatomic physics to new metaphysics we are hearing that we are essentially energy; we are spiritual beings participating in a physical manifestation and each of us has chosen this manifestation with a purpose in mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today’s spiritual teachers point to the need to bring balance back into our psyches by once again honoring the Feminine aspects of Divinity and recognizing the sacredness of the Earth as the embodiment of the Feminine Divine.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">They’re telling us that our world is in serious trouble and at the root of what ails us is the terrible psychic imbalance caused by the inflation of masculine principles and the devaluation of the feminine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Chinese Taoist philosophy, these principles are known as the Yin, the Feminine and the Yang, the Masculine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taoism teaches that these opposites are in a continual dance, an ebb and flow that results in balance; neither is superior or inferior, each has its time and its purpose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When one becomes too pronounced, the entire system is thrown out of balance to the detriment of the whole.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mother’s Day is a fine time to consider what the consequences of shutting the Feminine out of divinity are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recently wrote <a href="http://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-cover-of-rolling-stone.html">here</a> about the new, celebrated Pope Francis who has firmly stated that he won’t consider finally ordaining women as priests, although he is very concerned about their level of poverty and exploitation in the world.<span style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="color: #333333;">But it’s a Catch22; the majority of the world's poor are women because women have no status in patriarchal government, patriarchal religion nor as the Divine Archetype. In patriarchy men rule, make all the decisions concerning women and children and God looks like one of them. In patriarchal paradigms, woman's power is stripped from her</span> and to the degree that it’s justified by “the image of god” her situation can’t and won’t change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’ve only to look at the status and experience of women in the most orthodox patriarchal cultures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Jimmy Carter recently put it:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">To change the status of women, we have to change the paradigm that devalues women by excluding the Feminine from divinity. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This work begins at the level of the individual psyche, as psychiatrist Carl Jung taught.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fate of humanity, he said, hangs by a thread, and that thread is the psyche.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the mystical poet, William Blake, wrote, “mind forged manacles” imprison us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we believe at our deepest unconscious level is what really drives our behavior.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Like most of you, I grew up with the psychic imprint of God as male, God as Father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus, though his teachings espoused rather feminine values, was also a male representation of the divine and all his earthly ministers, up until the mid 1980s, were male, as well. As an on again, off again Catholic, Mother Mary did factor in, but definitely as an obedient helpmate, not a divine equal to His Holiness, Father God, and always a Virgin, despite marriage and motherhood, because another artificial separation of this paradigm is sexuality from the sacred.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I first met the Great Mother in a dream when I was 21, way before I knew anything about Her in waking reality. She came to me as “Howling Mary”; I talk about this <a href="http://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2011/08/howling-mary.html">dream here. </a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I woke from seeing Mary howling in anger and pain, heart pounding and completely baffled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t know then the value of recording my dreams, but I’ve never forgotten this one. It was a Big Dream with a Big Message for my life that proved prophetic. In a manner I’ve come to recognize from following my dreams, my waking life unfolded in a series of one meaningful coincidence after another, until the Great Mother embodied in my Psyche, out of the shadows and into the Divine Light. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Though my original plan was to go to graduate school to study literature, I went to seminary instead, campaigned to be ordained a priest in the catholic church and when I realized that wouldn’t happen, despite the many other denominations opening the ministry to women, I abandoned Catholicism for psychotherapy and Women’s Spirituality and came full circle to marry my love of HER to my love of dreaming, where I first met Her. From my perspective today, I see what Mary was howling about. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">On this day of Honoring the Mother, I invite all of us to examine our paradigms, our deeply held, knee jerk beliefs inherited from our parents, family systems, cultures and belief systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knowing about the Queen of Heaven is an intellectual exercise; healing the Wounded Archetypal Feminine, the Anima and the Feminine relegated to Shadow is the soul-searching challenge of our time that each of us has to accomplish individually. Recovering a reverence for the earth and all life based on a deep, intuitive understanding of our Oneness with Gaia is the test we face.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">But we can’t create the new order we need using the old logic that got us into the mess we’re in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to use the principles we’ve been told are inferior, heart, intuition and instinct.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Here’s an example of what I mean; close your eyes and imagine a prehistoric time, cave people, cave man, cave woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How do they relate to one another? Is it hard to dispel the caricature of the caveman with the club, dragging the cave woman by the hair, dominating her way back then?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At an intellectual level, we know it’s not politically correct, but is it a knee-jerk visual?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can we imagine a pre-historic culture where women were revered for their personal magic?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A culture that deduced the Creator of humanity from observing the creator of the personal world, a culture that finds no problem in revering a Divine Mother as ultimate Creator?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this culture, people exercise their talents for the good of the group; knowing that sticking together and loving one another is the way to survive?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, and a people who are constantly in and out of psychic experience, one to whom dreaming and dream adventures meld seamlessly with waking and waking adventures?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A culture far more advanced in spiritual practices than we are today.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">We are plagued by the tunnel vision of interpreting all of history, at least 40 thousand years back, through the lens of the last six thousand years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have a patriarchal, war obsessed mindset that tells us it always had to be this way; human nature is naturally contentious, greedy and selfish, anything else is wishful thinking.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Amazonian and Mayan shamans teach that “the world is as you dream it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We create the realities we live through our communal expectations. We created this paradigm when we banished the Sacred Feminine, and in order to break free of its unconscious hold on our psyche, we need to re-instate the Great Mother as she is embodied in the earth and in all feminine characteristics we have devalued.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Here’s another example of how knee jerk our denial of the Feminine Divine can be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I taught theology in an all girls’ RC high school, back when there were enough progressive religious communities, especially among nuns, to allow me to teach a course I called, “Christian Feminism.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the first day of class, I asked the students; “Is God male or female?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were prepared, and gave me the bonafide answer from the catechism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> "</span>God is neither, God is Spirit."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> "</span>Fine", I said, "In this classroom, for this semester, when we pray, we’re going to say, Our Mother, and when we refer to God, we’ll use the feminine pronoun, She."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were horrified; "We can’t do that!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> "</span>Why?" I asked; "Because God is Father," they replied. The masculine divine has been imprinted in our psyches, both personally and collectively; it’s hard to reshape that image. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Until we heal our personal psyche, we can’t heal the collective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until we heal the collective, we remain alienated from the resources we need to create balance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s the good news as taught by Llewellyn Vaughan Lee, a contemporary Sufi master who wrote “The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“The mystery of the divine feminine speaks to us from within her creation. She is not a distant god in heaven, but a presence that is here with us, needing our response. She is the divine returning to claim her creation, the real wonder of what it means to be alive. We have forgotten her, just as we have forgotten so much of what is sacred, and yet she is always part of us. But now she needs to be known again, not just as a myth, as a spiritual image, but as something that belongs to the blood and the breath. She can awaken us to an expectancy in the air, to an ancient memory coming alive in a new way. She can help us to give birth to the divine that is within us, to the oneness that is all around us. She can help us to remember our real nature.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">How do we reconnect with the Feminine Divine?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turn off the TV and step out into Nature. Listen deeply to what you hear within you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Be still and know that She is Divine, alive in the beauty of the simplest flower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Follow the counsel of your heart over your head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Listen to your dreams, your own organic spirituality, your connection to revelation and trust that you are part of the One, you are not separate and you are not Alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I wish you all a very blessed Divine Mother’s Day.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-29728752501902331802021-04-30T06:13:00.002-07:002021-05-11T09:31:24.932-07:00Words and Reality<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUmF6UncYEa1qhHlSadE1XOd_BqAvjC-f6fBwU6exL9IgirtTAigLFa0KRoop0yFiC8fLs7n7cxt_wuTNHm_xwwbTcjFcdGO9P1jaV2J2ZUFGvB7b1OJKazczt_Zj4YHAUfwazNyO1Zymc/s2048/FullMoonApril21.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1569" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUmF6UncYEa1qhHlSadE1XOd_BqAvjC-f6fBwU6exL9IgirtTAigLFa0KRoop0yFiC8fLs7n7cxt_wuTNHm_xwwbTcjFcdGO9P1jaV2J2ZUFGvB7b1OJKazczt_Zj4YHAUfwazNyO1Zymc/s320/FullMoonApril21.jpg" /></a></div><br />Words. We give them a lot of weight; they prop up the paradigms that shape our reality. We are given words to believe in, creeds, and we do. And because we believe in words, we act our worst, towards others and even towards ourselves. We theologize the words that bind us; the Word is made Flesh. <p></p><p>Reality. Should you base your definition of what is on words or on your experience? Quantum physics assures us that we can't define reality using our five senses alone because what seems solid isn't, what appears to stand still is in constant motion. Physicists' experiments have proven that much, though they can't explain it yet, not even to themselves.</p><p>The most precious gift over 50 years of personal and professional dream exploration has given me is the certainty that I can use my dreaming to find my center, to test my beliefs and to find my way home when I die. There is so much power in being able to know what is true and what is right because you've lived it and not because someone tells you what to live. </p><p>Words can be so damaging, especially when they are used to mislead and indoctrinate. For instance, "Stop the Steal." You know where those words led. "Qanon", "deep state", we are awash in trigger words, words that bring out the worst we're capable of, hate and violence. What is the basis of these words? Who is speaking them and to what end? </p><p>Experience is different than belief. I recognize I play a part in shaping my reality with my thoughts, words and deeds, so I want to make my experience as pleasant as possible, for myself and for others. There's much anger, vitriol and hate in the speakers of these trigger words. If I were to immerse myself in their headset, I'd be creating a dark experience for myself. I'd rather create the best I can experience. What is the best we can experience as humans? Love, joy, bliss? What words evoke these feelings? </p><p>The most important aspect of reality is that we shape it, consciously or unconsciously. Once you fully experience the non physical aspect of your consciousness that wakes in dreaming, and once you see how easily you can take control of your existence in dreaming, you know waking reality is just as easily, if far more slowly, shaped. Connecting to the dreaming aspect of existence puts perspective on beliefs. </p><p>A new trigger word in Foxland USA is "woke". It's being used, like "cancel culture" was, in the most un-awake ways possible; I have to laugh. As a dreamer, I can safely claim a woke experience is what you get when you have a dreaming practice. One disclaimer, though, if your dreams are nothing but painful at the moment, I would suggest you get reliable help from a counselor you can trust. Many of life's traumas can leave our psyche so wounded that we can't get through it alone. But if you have only the garden variety neurosis born of what patriarchal culture has wrought, your dreams can be a good road to real "wokeness".</p><p>Let our words contribute to the manifestation of a wonderful reality, both in the waking and in the dream worlds. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-2070605477396341552021-04-23T07:54:00.007-07:002021-04-23T09:20:47.826-07:00About Time<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilkRJMT42C8L-0N9n56rh3NCFyixsNstAyHzrr47F1ODovWFU1k7UB-1LJJGUu3AlHxTG2eQXzqKeSJEFwZ7P3gYUMexZzopwCr29KvhHgp-iCjC0-PytR6SUC98dng4zuqHL1O_AKJ1uQ/s2968/ShineLove.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="977" data-original-width="2968" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilkRJMT42C8L-0N9n56rh3NCFyixsNstAyHzrr47F1ODovWFU1k7UB-1LJJGUu3AlHxTG2eQXzqKeSJEFwZ7P3gYUMexZzopwCr29KvhHgp-iCjC0-PytR6SUC98dng4zuqHL1O_AKJ1uQ/s320/ShineLove.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">It’s been a while since I’ve felt I had something I wanted to say, about dreams, about healing the wounded feminine, about smashing patriarchy. I firmly believe the patriarchy can be dismantled because it’s just a state of mind projected by the collective waking dream.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;">Unfortunately, judging by the current 85 percent of the global population following patriarchal religions under male dominion, god the Father, God the Son, we’re not waking up anytime soon.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt;"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">What can I possibly say I ask myself? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">What I’ve always said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">L.I.T.A. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Love is the answer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Love is the only cosmic force there is that can get our collective ass out of the monolithic sling that is six thousand years of Father Knows Best.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Despite the everyday shootings, despite the despicable men in leadership around the world, with their stone cold hearts, allowing, encouraging and perpetrating atrocities on humanity daily, there is a growing recognition in people worldwide that love is the only force that can save humanity from itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">What love has over patriarchal power is that love endures beyond the moment of death and accompanies us through our journeys in the afterlife, hooking us up with people we love and who love us that have already crossed death.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">As long as love accompanies me, fear can be overcome. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Can hate be overcome? I don’t know. I don’t know if the toxic level of male driven, father god condoned misbehavior on the part of so many can be righted. Will the patriarchs give up their power willingly? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I once had some wonderful dreams I titled Galactic Journey #1 and # 2.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">In them I concede to uniformed guards questioning me that I am visiting here, actually, and will be glad to return from whence I’ve come. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I see the dream worlds as gateways and windows to “from whence I come” and to "where I shall return.” For that reason, I’m deeply committed to teaching about dreaming as organic spirituality. Organic because it’s innate in each of us. We all dream, despite the dismissal of the importance of dreaming in the prevalent paradigm of western culture.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I’m fond of saying that patriarchal religion is to spirituality what patriarchal pornography is to sexuality. Spirituality and sexuality are the two libido drives Jung identified as the psychic motivational forces that propel human actions. Patriarchal religions discourage or forbid, depending on how stringent the particular culture, individual spirituality based on one’s own lived experience or independent sexuality based on how good it feels when not demonized psychologically.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">We can come to real truths by paying attention to our dreaming at the same time that we are paying attention, “being mindful” in our waking lives. </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The best thing about dreams is that you can answer many questions of importance to your waking and spiritual life for yourself. You find friends, teachers and guides in dreams. You are assured by the ones who love you and have died before you, that you are never, ever alone or separated when love is the bond.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Since hate, anger and fear are also potent energies, I think they might live on, too, but not for those who love. Like attracts like; the rules of the non-physical aren’t rules, they’re energy. If our energy is malevolent, we will continue in malevolence. Malevolence is not a happy place to spend eternity, especially if you get a taste of your own medicine, which is likely.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">How do I know? I’ve been respecting my dreams for some 50 years. I’ve been learning what other dream explorers teach for all that time. Dreaming is an art form like any other, it takes effort and practice, but it pays off big and quickly becomes a delight.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">So, in the face of everything that must be done, in the face of all the ugliness in the physical environment we share, there is a reason we each are in it at present, that we are each alive. It’s not one reason and one reason alone; it’s up to each person to open their hearts and discover it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I ask myself, what have I learned in my life that I will take with me past death, and what can I do, now, while I’m still here? When I’m dead, I know from dreaming that I can create my exit. I know from dreaming that the laws of the non-physical are all about intent, awareness and will. Above all, they are all about love. And I know from dreaming the experience of true bliss, the wisdom of the soul, the pure light of love, that there's not much to fear of death.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">I want to do what I can to activate love in myself and in anyone else who graces my path in life. I want you to do what you can in the same way. Talk about an epidemic. What has hate become? Why are so many people dying violently at the hands of angry guys with guns blazing? Why is there so much self-righteous anger? Because the collective dream we’re living is deeply unbalanced; it threatens all that is good and natural.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The way I see it, I somehow volunteered to staff, for however long, the Love squad on this planet now, when it seems quite on the edge of implosion. I came because the answers are simple, even if the odds against enough people opening to this simplicity seem insurmountable. I came because I will, at some point be going back, when I die, and then I can apply what I’ve learned here working with the Love squads on other dimensions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">It’s a work in progress, as it is for you. Maybe the 100<sup>th</sup>monkey is a real thing; if enough of us speak out for a liberty that transcends those tired old paradigms, maybe we can make it the new normal. Homo sapiens have been around, conservatively for over 200,000 thousand years; what’s a mere 6,000? We can do this; we can dream a new dream; one we want to see come true.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">And if our efforts seem futile in this life, there’s more life to come after death. We’ll be able to use the heart we’ve gained from our physical experiences to live the life we love where physical roadblocks to living our best selves do not exist. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Meanwhile, dreaming the ordinary little dream and the prophetic, lucid or OBE get us beyond our ego driven physical obsessions, to seeing the bigger picture, the spiritual beings we are and always will be.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">May we all do whatever we can to strengthen our hearts and follow through with our spiritual goals so that we leave this physical dimension better by whatever scale we can, little or big. Making a difference, or even just making the effort, in the service of Love brings us to a much better place after death. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">May we all follow Love and may Love follow each of us.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-50406670747673912162020-10-30T12:10:00.003-07:002020-10-30T12:10:25.379-07:00The Rainbow Bridge Between Now and Forever<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6__jkQgYtuRHVsKFWpK-6geedT-fEPBsBl3yrePYuMyhNFLkg-YeD7uFxL9fPXLWauSk5jmTmzpDfM3pKp5F3wHkqYHvNV-zLJtEUL8gg3nUuGuRnnUPbLmEioIF8BiM2RR5X2IYEh3rB/s2048/Rainbowbridge1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1636" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6__jkQgYtuRHVsKFWpK-6geedT-fEPBsBl3yrePYuMyhNFLkg-YeD7uFxL9fPXLWauSk5jmTmzpDfM3pKp5F3wHkqYHvNV-zLJtEUL8gg3nUuGuRnnUPbLmEioIF8BiM2RR5X2IYEh3rB/w256-h320/Rainbowbridge1.jpg" width="256" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><br />This is the perfect time of year to speak of death and of the departed.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Yet we dare not speak of death and of the departed, at least not directly, honestly and unafraid.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Growing up, I can count on the fingers of one hand the very few times I was physically disciplined by either of my parents. Once, when I was a very little girl, perhaps five, a neighborhood child fell off his bike and broke his arm. When the doctor left his house, my mom and I went to check up on him and his folks. Walking back home I was thinking of how I’d seen the boy lying sedated in his bed. I turned to my mom and said quietly, I thought he was dead. SLAP! across the mouth; I was too stunned to cry. My mom had never hit me, but with the slap came the clear message, we do not speak of death.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">What is your personal myth about death?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">We’ll go to heaven? Whose heaven? There are three patriarchal, militant religions in our reality right now that will fight to the death for the right to claim their heaven is the only heaven, their Father God is the only God. Which are you cheering for? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">I don’t think we need religion. In fact, I think, especially for women, these religions are a detriment. It is mind bending to think that a Justice of the US Supreme court would, in private, by the code of her “faith” have to ask her husband permission for anything. Justice Amy Coney Barrett is not just a Catholic, she belongs to a fringe group of the Catholic church, “People of Praise” that requires this of women based on St. Paul’s chestnut, man is head of woman as Christ is head of the church. Go figure; I doubt, based on his teachings, that the real Jesus would have much to do with many so-called Christian churches. The Roman Catholics still won’t let women be priests, their official representatives of the “Lord” to the people. Incredibly, it’s because women don’t have a penis and Jesus did, though they swear he didn’t use it for anything except peeing. In contrast, in the Gospels, Jesus was constantly breaking patriarchal laws in favor of women’s equality. He is my favorite Feminist.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">The Orthodox branch of Judaism has a long history of controlling women; these soul numbing mores are poignantly depicted in movies like “A Price Above Rubies” or the current Netflix special, Unorthodox. Some Hasidic women shave their heads, part of a code of modesty that requires them to cover up, so as not to tempt the men. Although this story has gotten old in some religions, the chastity of women paradigm is very much alive and well in all three patriarchal superpower religions. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">In radical Islam, men who martyr themselves in their battle against the infidels will have access to 72 willing nubile virgins in the afterlife.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Apparently, in their macho heaven, virgins are currency, as above, so below.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Yes, these are extreme examples of the intractability of patriarchal religious rule, but THEY EXIST! They exist NOW! And they are one of the forces that is destroying humanity. Tell me, what is climate change denial based on? Why are so many wanna be Christian soldiers so itchy for a righteous civil war in our beloved America? Can’t wait for Armageddon and the rapture; certain of their just reward? Abortion is murder but god doesn’t mind you trying out those excellent lethal weapons on non-believers.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Patriarchal religions deal out death and destruction, when they’re strong, they're aligned with the state. People adhere to them because they don’t have an alternative that will fulfill their spiritual needs. Any form of internal reflection, meditating, self-reflection and especially dreaming, can connect anyone to their spiritual core, their inner reality. It’s important because that inner reality is the one we experience at death and after. As Jesus put it, the kingdom of god is within.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">At this time of year, many ancient indigenous peoples celebrated the turning of the Wheel of LIFE to the cycle of DEATH, because death is equally part of our experience. We come into the physical through birth and we exit the physical through death, still the same SPIRITUAL BEING ready to move on.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">I’ve written this message in different ways often in my posts, but now is the time to say it again. Religion is not your friend. The more you give your autonomous will over to someone else’s restrictions, without first consulting your own experiences and your own intuition, the more you lose your organic connection to your own spirituality.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Religion is a vast patriarchal mind fuck that has had us in it’s grip for millennia; but before religion was spirituality, innate, organic and a birth right. Religion is the driving rational of war and cruelty. Look where we are now! </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">I marvel that people don’t more readily see behind the OZ to the manipulators of this Father God image religions have created.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Of course, without some deep personal connection to the spiritual realms, it is hard to free ourselves from this psychic tyranny.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> But that connection is innate in each of us, a snooze, a dream away.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Each of us knows that LOVE is the supreme force in the universe. Religions talk God is Love, but rarely do they walk that talk. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">I’m saying Love is God. Love is the physics that drives all creation.The simplest way to connect to spirit is to think, feel and act from Love. It helps to focus on your heart, to open your heart to your mental, emotional and spiritual truths.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">There are revolutionary discoveries happening about our experience of death and the afterlife in the field of Medicine, in the study of Physics and in the exploration of Dreaming.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Why not tune in; explore for yourself?</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">You can start tonight when you go to sleep.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Have you never had a dream about a loved one who died? It’s the number one subject of the many dreams I hear from students, friends and family. What you believe about these dreams can make a huge difference in your attitude towards death and the dead. To simply dismiss them as weird or spooky but unreal can shut a door that opens to your own soul. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Our culture has taught us to fear and caricature death and to cling to external codes fashioned to sell us safeguards against our fears that at best are useless and at worst, inflame our fears and fuel our misconceptions. Why is Halloween always about ghouls and blood and fear? That’s not how it was for our pre-patriarchal Pagan ancestors, who without TV or internet to distract them, may have lived more connected to their inner realities. Honoring the dead was an act of loving remembering.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Our ancestors valued dreaming far more than we do. Dreaming is our built in rainbow bridge to the dimensions we may travel after death, to the places our beloved departed travel now. Our dear departed visit us and we go visit them. They show us how they’re doing, ask us for what they may need and give us comfort and advice. Our relationship to those we love who cross over does not die; it transforms into a long distance, dream-facilitated bond that continues to grow and change. Of course it’s heart wrenching to be physically without the person who has crossed and it’s not the same, but it is something. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Dreaming with our departed allows us to stay connected to those we still love; I know from my own experience, that the communication is valuable to me on many different levels. The beauty of it is that you can test this knowledge out for yourself. There’s nothing to believe. There are wonderful teachers available that with their books or classes can help you understand your dreams, but only you live in your dreaming mind. The rainbow bridge is a connection only you can make for yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-78596392912435109302020-09-22T11:47:00.009-07:002020-09-24T06:33:49.409-07:00<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOlxl00wTQC7G54OrkIBkaZoT4W5LtYrqHcrrVerA7T5_ATuuF7Ftf5NDz6xlndveeZfA7TJofi1uP45pxDvdvv3U7-88rhCJPZwtSPNkStRPTjdiqFOpCV6IsAIo0a1r8f0JWGrxXsj8t/s1358/1024px-Frederic_Leighton_-_The_Return_of_Persephone_%25281891%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1358" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOlxl00wTQC7G54OrkIBkaZoT4W5LtYrqHcrrVerA7T5_ATuuF7Ftf5NDz6xlndveeZfA7TJofi1uP45pxDvdvv3U7-88rhCJPZwtSPNkStRPTjdiqFOpCV6IsAIo0a1r8f0JWGrxXsj8t/w243-h320/1024px-Frederic_Leighton_-_The_Return_of_Persephone_%25281891%2529.jpg" width="243" /></a></div><p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><b>The Autumn Equinox: A Time to Honor our Daughters for their Courage<o:p></o:p></b></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">As the ancient Greeks first told it, Persephone volunteered to go shepherd the dead in the underworld out of her deep compassion for the suffering of those lost souls. A young woman with a passion and a mission is an unstoppable force. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">So Demeter, mother of all living beings and of Persephone, herself, relented and said yes, she may go, but only 6 months at a time because she would miss her beloved daughter too much to let her go full time. Persephone promised to take a break from Queen of Death duties for half the year and return, along with Spring and Summer, because Mamma Earth is so happy to have her back that she blooms and flowers and perpetuates all sorts of joy in life. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">On the Autumn Equinox though, Persephone, also known as Kore, goes back down and Mamma Demeter loses her vibrant energy and goes inward, to her dreams, where she can keep in touch with Persephone in that other realm.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">You may have heard that Persephone was raped and abducted by Hades, the Unseen, the underworld god of Death, also called Pluto, giver of wealth, who forced her to be his sex slave and queen and would have kept her there unhappily forever. In this later myth, Zeus, his older brother and king, is alarmed by the power of Demeter’s wrath over Hades' violation of her daughter. Knowing Mother Earth could destroy all living things with just her basic elements, Wind, Fire, Water and Earth, he bargains with his hairy underworld twin to release Persephone. Hades relented to his brother’s nagging, but tricks Persephone with pomegranate seeds so she has to come back, year after year, for half the year, in the season of death and decay. This version is the patriarchal retelling of the original Greek myth of the seasons; can you spot the patriarchal alterations?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">September is a bittersweet turning inward time of year in the northern hemisphere; starting with the Fall Equinox the light of day dims, moon through moon, to All Hallow’s Eve until the Winter Solstice. I like to think of it as the Season of the Witch.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The Witch is an archetypal symbol of woman’s power. Patriarchy has created a charicariture of this ancient archetype, regularly trotted out at Halloween and in fairy tales. She’s ugly, old, scary and evil. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Yet witch burning was a real thing in patriarchal European history for centuries! Somehow, that is one patriarchal genocide that we never learned about in school books. In the history of patriarchal regimes, religious or secular, perhaps millions of women and a smaller percentage of men, were tortured and brutally, cruelly murdered for having their own beliefs. The crime was called heresy; failure to believe what must be believed by law. So, if as a woman, you were raised with wise understanding of herbal healing, passed down through your family, and now some priests, cum doctors, are telling you what you may or may not believe, what you may or may not practice, you might be inclined to tell them to go fornicate themselves. Sanctioned by church and state law, church henchmen retaliated with such cruel devices for torture and murder that it must make Jesus weep, still.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">If you took a survey today, in most places around the world, among most populations, few people have any awareness that there was so much death, pain and destruction, wreaked by the church and state, in order to vanquish women’s place and authority in culture. The European witch burnings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance never invoke the horror that the German Holocaust or American Slavery rightly invoke; yet, the male created and male executed persecution of women in all walks of life, based on spurious religious justifications and totalitarian rule, is just as historical, just as monumentally widespread and just as deeply tragic. Why don’t we know about it? <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Let’s remember that the young Persephone of the compassionate heart acted of her own accord when she chose to lighten the struggle of the lost dead and help them find the light. It took courage, self-sacrifice and vision to do what she did, and in gratitude the dead called her their Queen.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It took courage for Demeter, her doting mother, to let her go. Her gift to her daughter was to continue to love her, even as she let her go. No guilt, obligation or pressure on her daughter to live out a script she herself might have chosen for her. Instead she grieves her own loss, but support’s her daughter’s mission.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The death of our beloved Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg reminds me that now is the time to support young women, older women, women of color, all women who want to make a difference and help us end this dry, dusty, deadly era of patriarchy.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We are spiritual beings having a physical experience on a tremendously challenging physical plane of existence. As spiritual beings, we live beyond the expiration date of our physical expressions of consciousness. Gender doesn’t matter. Skin color doesn’t matter, neither does ethnicity. Spirit isn’t physical and doesn’t just express itself that way, so why limit ourselves so drastically while we’re in these earth suits?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In my dream of Persephone’s descent, she is the warrior princess who refuses to allow injustice to exist on her watch. Persephone is the patron saint of real women; she doesn’t give a fig or a pomegranate about anything others think. She does what she feels in her heart is right. When she returns from her mission, she reunites with Demeter, her loving and supportive mother. They share the secrets of above and below, life and death. They’re a team.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I see so many strong, wise and brave young women coming into their own in the social justice movement happening now. I see so many mature women taking the challenge to offer better service and better leadership to the American people, from VP to federal and state legislatures. I see so many older women claiming their power, owning the role of Crone and continuing the good fight for women’s rights. Despite all we’ve been through or will go through, women are stronger now than ever. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Think of how much Persephone can teach us.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Shout out to all the incredible young women, moms, sisters and crones who are standing up to power, <o:p></o:p></p><p> </p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-16927144659057563272020-08-10T12:13:00.005-07:002020-08-11T06:11:22.639-07:00In Gratitude to the Storm<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzrRF6MSE_uJl1dAMfAynpfZgnm_sr_r5tBU9bwUS0QSKoT9wmBhVTwjGyWfbIYrwKuOEOYyYeAv_vpLp2qdGsfbJSin-tEW9qElRTkYktlNfkHRsd58q6EtqU8aPZSGHXns8HNsU29bp_/s2048/CalmAS.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1363" data-original-width="2048" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzrRF6MSE_uJl1dAMfAynpfZgnm_sr_r5tBU9bwUS0QSKoT9wmBhVTwjGyWfbIYrwKuOEOYyYeAv_vpLp2qdGsfbJSin-tEW9qElRTkYktlNfkHRsd58q6EtqU8aPZSGHXns8HNsU29bp_/w491-h325/CalmAS.jpg" title="The Calm After the Storm, August 4, 2020" width="491" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Calm After the Storm, August 4, 2020 AC</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>When a force of nature happens to us, there's no question who is boss, who is calling the shots. Try as we might, the force of nature is mightier than man. That's the bad news; the good news is the same, but seen from a different perspective. To know that nature is boss is ancient wisdom; to think we are superior beings to all other aspects of life on earth is a hallmark of patriarchal madness.<p></p><p>Respect for nature is respect for something grander than ourselves; if we forget that, nature has ways of correcting our mistakes. There's no arguing with the storm. Isaias swept through the northeast this week hitting many states unaccustomed to tropical storm fury. This storm was a wind event for many communities in CT and Wow; they call the wind Mariah! The force and the howling were top notch thrilling, but the number of trees toppled, the power lines they snapped and the subsequent widespread power outage experienced by people throughout the state makes me take special notice of how delicate our way of life is. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqM3PaPGoqoVlYI1e8nuwAPjF7yaI4oyJXBN6ss39_vIF1zvxQqxoIhX7_RmWSAjUvzyNuVyeTQsVsItWxPzix4HyQ9CIZYKeG3rJo88RCnUJSUI4mIt5EgQKcDulz1THMIMa0ns2KPS_p/s2048/Ebroadway.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqM3PaPGoqoVlYI1e8nuwAPjF7yaI4oyJXBN6ss39_vIF1zvxQqxoIhX7_RmWSAjUvzyNuVyeTQsVsItWxPzix4HyQ9CIZYKeG3rJo88RCnUJSUI4mIt5EgQKcDulz1THMIMa0ns2KPS_p/s640/Ebroadway.jpg" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>Our infrastructure is fragile; there are things that could strengthen our infrastructure and cultural practices, if we had the collective, global will, to make them happen. Ask the great climate activist, Greta Thunberg; we could turn things around to sustainable co-existence with our planet and fellow beings if there were those in leadership who would make those changes happen and if all of us acted individually to change our life styles. Since patriarchy has taught us that the earth is for the taking, subdue and conquer it; we're in this very real pickle with nature.</p><p>How do we grow a global will to cease and desist the abuse of natural resources? I can start by cleaning up my personal beliefs and extending the change in my perspective to the collective beliefs I hold. How is this nightmare, this contemporary madness which is held up by the projected beliefs of so many people, brought to a good conclusion, not dystopia? Jung predicted that the survival of human kind was in the healing of the human psyche, personally and collectively. We must banish the ancient demons created by patriarchs to cower the soul's independence and claim our own connections to a divinity far greater and kinder than ourselves.</p><p>We can learn from our ancient ancestors to see ourselves as part of nature. The more we respect our physical existence and our spiritual existence, the two halves that make us whole, the more we can respect nature and turn our horrible habits that are unsustainable, to good habits that enhance individual wellbeing and collective wellbeing - humans, animals, Earth. </p><p>But that's not patriarchal mentality, which is a tycoon mentality, a cigar chomping, mucho, macho mentality. Look at world leaders; who stands out to you as self-important and cruel? Before we can get back to a relationship with our surroundings that isn't greedy and self-serving, and worst of all, lacking in human compassion, we need to rid ourselves personally of the notions that blind us to our part in it all. As a joke I remember from my childhood says: "Remember, in an avalanche, no one snowflake feels responsible".</p><p>But everyone is responsible to the degree that they are able, to connect with the spiritual truths we're here to learn: <b>We are all One</b> and <b>Love Is The Answer</b>. Patriarchal religions and patriarchal regimes are not very loving, Patriarchies promote the brutality of might makes right, so systems of physical and psychological control exist under the auspices of legitimate "government" and "religious" institutions through which we are all governed and educated and brainwashed. </p><p>The good news is that, as spiritual beings connected to our true spiritual guidance through dreaming, we are our own spiritual authorities. I say that thinking of Jesus telling the pharisees off, the religious leaders of his day. By whose authority the patriarchs ask him, do you say these things about God? Jesus answers, by my own. To be connected to our spiritual existence that is co-existing with us in the physical is to have no need of organized religion of any stripe.</p><p>Especially any religion governed solely by old patriarchs, mostly old white patriarchs, like the Vatican, the Catholic Church, for example. In the 21st century, in America, women are still denied ordination to Roman Catholic priesthood; and it's not like we haven't been asking for ordination for centuries. Even today, with all our technology and science, our collective psyche around the world allows for this prohibition to exist and persist. A vast percentage of "Christendom" around the globe is Roman Catholic. People continue to support this avenue of patriarchal rule, to allow that teaching to fill the pathways to our soul with obstacles. Religion is guilt with different holidays, is another joke I enjoy sharing. </p><p>The beliefs promulgated by "churches" have long continued to inculcate self-hating beliefs in our psyches. For instance, the doctrine of original sin: Fancy believing that the Divine makes arbitrary lines in the sand that require brutality and banishment to enforce and are more important than love and forgiveness! Imagine believing that of the two genders, the one that actually gives birth to us, is seen as lesser, inferior and to blame for all our moral problems! She who must be controlled. Patriarchies promote this misogynist mythology; we get taught it so young that many adhere to it blindly. Who is Eve or Pandora to you?</p><p>What does religion give us? A certainty of safety after death? A reason to love ourselves, others and the Divine? Dreaming gives us that without demanding that we march to another's rules. Some of the rules Catholicism teaches are down right awful, as are those in the other two big patriarchal religions, Islam and Judaism. I remember when it was a mortal sin to eat meat on Fridays? Not a mortal sin to eat meat, that might have done us all more good, but a mortal sin to eat meat on Fridays. One would go to Hell if one did that and didn't confess to a priest and do the proper penance. Then, the Vatican decided that the mortal sin of eating meat on Friday was to be treated as a venial sin now. My question was, what happens to everybody already in Hell for eating meat on Friday? Do they make an announcement in Hell; "Ok, everybody here for eating meat on Friday line up on the left, you're getting out."</p><p>Ridiculous. Look to the way religion treats women, look to how we see God as the Father or Son only; no women allowed in the divine boys club. No Mother Goddess; how is that possible? Patriarchal religions justify all kinds of control over women and peoples not wielding the patriarchal power at the moment. Slavery, a tool of patriarchy, is experienced both by women and men of races subjugated by the ruling patriarchs. Witness the contemporary global "sex trade" or women's lack of rights in regimes like Saudi Arabia, where, even today, women are imprisoned and tortured for demanding autonomy. </p><p>White patriarchal supremacist racial hatred fuels intolerance, injustice and violence in countries like the USA where Americans are being called to choose how to treat each other and to decide what kind of a society we are to be. In the 21st century, we must demand justice for citizens regardless of their pigmentation or cultural background. Racism is a disease of the soul, as well as a disease of the society, a weapon promulgated for thousands of years of patriarchy. The brutality that past white patriarchal societies inflicted on black and brown peoples is beyond belief, but more unbelievable is it's persistence in power today. We have a government that wants to roll back the rights that Blacks, Latinos, and Women have earned these past decades with our blood, sweat and tears. First degree patriarchs are installed in our highest offices trying to suppress the growth of the last fifty years in gender and race relations. </p><p>Americans have a small window of opportunity, this upcoming presedential election, to restore this train wreck of a collective reality to a track where we can build the good and dissolve the evil. Personally, culturally and collectively, we are responsible for the reality our existence is on this planet. We need a very different way of doing things; we need saner beliefs about ourselves, each other and the "afterlife." I put afterlife in quotes because it's more accurate, if you're connected to the spiritual aspect of your life through dreaming, meditation or other positive avenues, to say that you experience it now, parallel to your own life. It's the <b><i>AlsoLife,</i></b> the <i><b>Right Beside Me Life</b></i>. if I choose to develop my inner life, the one I find in dreaming, meditation and mindfulness, and see it as important to me as anything in my waking life. The inner life is the one I'm going to inhabit when I die. Here is important, but not to the exclusion of there. It's not either or; it's <b><i>Both And.</i></b></p><p>I'm very grateful that the hardships I endured during Isaiah were both relatively brief and easily remedied this time. I'm also grateful for the lessons the storm brought about what's really important. Sometimes the lessons aren't available due to the devastation of a storm or other natural event; sometimes they are fatal. Not this time, but how can we learn to be more responsible citizens of this planet? </p><p>Gratitude to the spirit behind nature for what she gives and using her gifts responsibly would go a long way to changing some of the things we so desperately need to change. Also, electing leaders we can be grateful for instead of subject to; ones who lead not by coercion and deceit but with heart and soul. Leaders of both genders and all cultures and backgrounds that represent we the diverse people, and who govern in collective and responsible ways. </p><p>We are born spiritual as well as physical beings; we are all body and soul. Each of us can go within through our dreaming, with gratitude to the organic spirituality we're born with, to find the connections we always have to the divine. May your dreams comfort you and help you grow. May we learn to be co-habitants with all life on earth. May we save our own day, individually and collectively. May we find joy in living every dimension of our existence on earth. May patriarchy fall from the weight of it's own falsehood. May love rule in collaboration and never by force. May we dream a better reality for ourselves and our future generations. May we have hope and practice kindness. May we dream strong.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-53814955727132564972020-06-02T10:05:00.001-07:002020-08-02T06:56:22.647-07:00Peace or Patriarchal Dicks?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">I heard<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/story/relax-george-floyds-brother-condemns-violent-protesters-70987476" style="color: purple;">Robin Roberts interview</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>George Floyd’s brother, Terrence, on GMA yesterday, along with Rev. Kevin McCall, the moral support of the Floyd family in this personal tragedy and national maelstrom. In the midst of all the rage, sadness and fear that the death of George Floyd has inspired among citizens of all races and creeds in this country, he spoke about the person who died, who George Floyd was and what he stood for. Kudos to these amazing men, Terrence Floyd and Kevin McCall, for their courage in asking us to recognize the values of the man who was murdered. George Floyd, we learn from his grieving brother, is about Peace. What would he want? What they all in the family want, a peaceful call for justice, for unity, for love and for change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">In that interview, I also heard George Floyd described as a motivator; a life-long friend says he was always there for him, to inspire him, to keep going. All the good people whose lives have been marred by police brutality deserve the justice this country is supposed to stand for! If the system fails one of us, it will eventually fail us all. It needs to be clearly illegal for anyone in domestic law enforcement to harass, harm or kill a civilian without checks and balances on such actions. The public is not the enemy. We are citizens, not consumers; we are people, and together we are the community that government and law enforcement serves because we elected them to serve us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">I want to emphasize, that the really bad people in the police departments of this country give the many, many good people who are cops a bad name and a hard time doing their true job. When my partner and I produced “<b><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxtd4dmTwA1ECv_ddjtZsw" style="color: purple;">We the Children</a></i></b>” a documentary about violence in the lives of inner city children in 1994, we interviewed many Bridgeport police officers, including the chief at the time. They were brilliant champions of their community where many of them were born and raised. We have deep respect for police officers who understand their role as peace makers, as well as peace keepers. We worked with people at every spoke of the community wheel and always came away inspired by the caring and capable work being done in community for the sake of community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">The question is will the “system” continue to protect the guilty and guilt the innocent? At the moment, it look like things could change, especially if we each speak out as the Floyd family requests, powerfully, but with love in our hearts and seeking a creative, peaceful means to the justice we want to see in the end. Because, as they said, we’ve been down this road before, the road of violent rioting and hate, the road of destruction and war; it never helps. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">Many of us, of all skin tones, are fed up with the irresponsible deployment of bullies into police work. Remember the Stanley Kubrick movie,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Clockwork Orange</i>? As much as I hated the film, it seemed prophetic at the time. Is the irony of the horrible murderous teenage protagonists in the end “reformed” into cops totally lost to our cultural psyche? We can’t allow cops to be bullies, they must be wise and discenrning public servants. More importantly, our presidents can’t be bullies, either. As I heard the Floyd family urge today on the news, please vote and get these bullies and misogynist racists fired from our public offices. The misogynist label is one I added; as Abigail Adams unsuccessfully urged her husband hundreds of years ago, let’s not forget the women. Elect people who really care about people and community, not the lying bags of shit waving bibles, guns and dicks and proclaiming themselves the real Americans.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">I want to emphasize that all this tragedy is out of control patriarchy around the globe. We need to pull the plug on our habits of mind that put so much power into the hands of such evil men. The world is full of despicable male dictators wagging their inflated penis at each other and threatening us all with war, famine, assault and destruction. Not a cheery picture; but there is a cheery note to be struck; we are at a crossroads. What every single one of us chooses to do matters. We are creating the energy to either build a new dream for America, one that truly values both genders and all races equally, or return to the old, dead dream of the greedy rich, whose lust for money and power leaves no room in their hearts for love and compassion. America has had her share of tycoons and robber barons; they are often accorded more respect and given more power than is wise for the public good. We’re in one of those bad news moments now. What we can do about that is work to change it before it gets worse. I know it seems like it can't get much worse, but it can. Look around the globe, it can.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">Jung said that the psyche, the soul of humanity, is the thread on which our survival as a species hangs. A universal by-product of the patriarchal paradigm is rage, especially among men, but it seems that anger is the go to emotion across the land, from mild annoyance to murderous rage. Our leaders stoke that emotion, along with fear, to play us the way they want, to divide us. Worse, there's an element of out of control rage and wild west gun lust on all sides of the racial divides. We live in an age where the wrong people, and they are all mostly males, rule the roost, whether in government, religion or the many underground cultures, like the vast criminal shadow empires patriarchy supports. In patriarchal think mode, violence is the go to solution to any problem. Those who adhere to that paradigm as a justification for their violent actions are patriarchal dicks. If majority rule is in the hands of patriarchal dicks, how do we, the peace loving people, like the grieving individuals in Floyd’s family, get the change we want? We want it now and we want it peacefully. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">I’d love to see real change. We can’t get rid of patriarchal violent, hating mentalities in leadership if we don’t start at the top and get rid of patriarchal religion. The majority of people around the world believe in One All Powerful, All Demanding, All Male God. They gladly go to war and sacrifice whatever to their tyrannical god, and the stronger their allegiance to Him, the worse the lot of women under their rule. As Christians, we’re encouraged to believe in a Father/Son/Holy Ghost, a Divinity Trinity, an all Male and One Bird power triumvirate. However, before this sorry ass patriarchal mucho macho order became the pattern of society, all peoples revered Goddesses and our Earth was the focus of our spirituality. All life is sacred not in the way male governments claim, in order to have legal control of women’s wombs, but all life is sacred because that's how the sacred expresses itself, from the smallest insect to the largest star. I’d like to see us topple the mind forged manacles we call religion and live a spirituality based on love, respect and mutual acceptance. I’d like to see our governments fully diversified in race and gender and our priorities focused on compassionate rehabilitation of faulty systems. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">What is peaceful justice? For me it’s writing what I think and sharing it. For me it’s also daring to dream, along with the Floyd family, that if everyone leans in on this one, and in the name of all black lives so unjustly marred by racial hatred, we all, in our own way, our own space, work to build a bond of peace that speaks truth to power. So far, we do have the right to organize and the right to vote; there’s a big election coming up where we can shake the governmental pyramid and prove that our democracy can work peacefully.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">I dare to dream that we can get these dry hearted old men out of office. When I hear the president of this land champion violence like he’s at a WWE match, it makes me angry and sad. Can we unseat this man from his throne? I don’t know; how did he get in there in the first place? Can we please elect wise leaders and also, can we please do the best each of us can to eradicate hate, accept our mutual humanity and act human to each other? Can we let our hearts be schooled in community sharing and caring?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">Who do I want to lead us? Who has a right to set the tone for this confrontation with institutionalized racial injustice? Not the mucho macho set of any color. How does tearing down your neighborhood help anybody? It lets off steam and gets you free stuff, but are you caring about George Floyd? I don’t know what each person should do with their anger; but I’m tired of spiritless men going in with guns blazing, blighting innocent lives in the name of justice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">I want people like those who think as George Floyd thought to lead our culture. Let’s motivate each other to be way better human beings, to give a fuck about each other based on our common humanity, not our color or our sex. To ask ourselves how skin color or genitals can possibly determine anything important? To ask ourselves how a supreme being who created us in sexual compliments be really only one of those sexes? Doesn’t that hint of some heavy duty tamporing with the facts of life? Spiritual laws are written in our DNA not in patriarchal propaganda tomes written and decimated by violent woman hating conquerors thousands of years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">So, when I think of divinity, I think of the unquestionably powerful energy of Love. In Love as compassion and in any true manifestation of that Energy, there is God/Goddess. Patriarchy loves to portray that Love is weak, just like they portray that Woman is weak and definitely not God, but there’s hope, Jesus was a feminist. He was also a rebel; definitely not a patriarch. I wouldn’t call Jesus god, but I’ve always thought he was a stellar example of manhood and humanity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">For a divine example of femalehood, I had to peek behind Mother Mary’s skirts to find the true ancient Mother, in all her fecund sexuality. Religion is guilt with different holidays; spirituality is organic to us and most easily connected to through our dreaming. Of course God is Mother Energy as well as Father Energy, but isn’t it much easier to skip the complexities of other dimensional understanding and just say God is always Love; if it’s not Love, it’s not God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">Let’s dream big. Let’s dream about being a people in America who know ourselves to be a patchwork of everything and who benefit equally by our differences and our commitment to fixing things together. Our country has a golden opportunity to be a community of diversity united by the universal Law of Love, as un-patriarchal as you can get. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">And please, let’s keep this one date with destiny this Fall and get the fascist, racist, misogynist leaders that have infested public office like unfettered cockroaches out and replace them with kind-hearted and wise leaders. Don’t underestimate the damage these hypocrites holding up bibles and praising the Lord they don’t really worship, since their god is Money, can do to our spiritual psyches. How can any real follower of Jesus, which is the whole point of Christianity, support these hateful clowns? Let’s dream of a voting public who watches and sees what is done, not what is said, and who will get our country back on the Peace train and out from the clutches of so many patriarchal dicks,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-58112101538780437132020-04-29T09:13:00.002-07:002020-05-01T04:41:46.912-07:00Dream Birthday Presents<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria";">I’m always attentive to my dreams around my birthday because they’re often a great gift to me.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria";"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria";"> This year, I feel awed by how perfect for me my present is.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There may be some people on the planet that don’t know we’re experiencing a global pandemic that has changed the face of modern life for almost all, but without a doubt, most of us, around the world, know some heavy shit has hit the fan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How does it make us feel? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How does it make us act?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here’s my birthday dream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;">Bridge Tunnel Up Through the Fog<o:p></o:p></span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;">April 29, 2020<o:p></o:p></span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;">I’m driving my car; I’m alone. There are many cars on the road, like an exodus or a rush hour.<o:p></o:p></span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;">I’m nervous to be in this situation, but have no choice. I must stay calm, despite the congested traffic, which I hate, and keep going. <o:p></o:p></span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;">Then, as we enter the huge tunnel an intense blanket of Fog rolls in, obscuring the car lights right in front of me. Everyone is going very slowly, no one can see.<o:p></o:p></span></b></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>I look to the side and see that there’s a banister, like a hand-rail made of wood that you’d see on a grand staircase. There are small running lights along it. I open my window and reach out and hold it. As we’re crawling forward through the fog, I know that as long as I use the rail for anchoring and guidance, I’ll make it out of this fog and bridge tunnel safely.</b></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Even as I wrote my dream out, first long-hand, then typing it, I could feel gratitude and awe welling up in me as I made the connections to my life that the symbols and the experience is offering me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What’s equally wonderful is that I didn’t remember any dream at first; it came to me as I sat down to my laptop midmorning. Sometimes a dream will do that, appear later in the day, perhaps starting with a scene unfolding in memory or a symbol synchronistically jumping out to me from my waking environment. This one came back like a fog would roll in; it was the fog that first drew me to unravel the rest of the story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As I let myself feel the actual dampness and sense of isolation in a crowd my dream fog brought with it, I became aware of some of the dream’s wisdom for me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What better metaphor for our experience in this pandemic; a fog has rolled in, obscuring everyone’s path, making it feel like though we’re all in this together, we’re also isolated and on our own. Each person is responsible for steering their own vehicle to safety, but what each person does can jeopardize someone else’s chances of survival; we want to make it through to the light at the end of the tunnel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How many people see the handrail and take it? What would your handrail be? Mine, of course, is dreaming. I know, and my birthday dream is assuring me, that as long as I open the window to my inner resources, the ones that really count when things are dire, I will make it to where I need to go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What is your handrail? If it's your religion, I hope you’re not letting yourself be filled with fear by the myriad of false prophets trading on your soul. I went for a birthday walk to the end of my street where the beach begins down a long flight of stairs. I was wearing a mask and keeping my distance. There are two lovely benches, conveniently over six feet apart, where you can watch all things beach world from above. A woman comes and sits on the other bench; she’s not wearing a mask.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">She initiates a conversation and I follow it with her. She shares her fears about the virus and how people aren’t keeping distance. I had to point out the irony of her not wearing a mask. She wasn’t offended and perhaps will begin wearing one now, but what she said that most floored me was what she imparted in a lowered voice, as if confiding a deep secret: “You might think I’m crazy but I really believe this is a punishment from God for…” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I couldn’t even let her finish, though I can guess what she thinks God’s thunderbolts are for; I exclaimed, “Oh, no. God doesn’t punish; how does Love punish? God is Love; Love is God. This shit that’s happening here is a result of how badly we’ve mismanaged our existence on the planet. It’s a problem we’ve created over centuries of ignorance and a problem we’ve got to use our best resources to solve. She looked at me, at first startled, and then visibly relieved. It was obvious that God Is Love, or as I like to put it, Love Is The Answer, was what she really wanted to feel; the truth always feels right. We chatted pleasantly a little longer and then I turned to go home. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When I opened the window in my dream and took hold of the banister, two things were clear to me: It’s still up to me to drive myself through this fog, taking care that I don’t hurt others in the process; and if I look for it, support is always available. Any religion that presents god as vengeful, uptight and mean is not a religion to trust. Jesus taught two simple truths: God is Love; God is Within</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It really doesn’t matter what metaphor your wrap your god/goddess in; what matters is that you can directly experience your spirituality by relating closely to your dreams. Religion might be nice for creating community, but unscrupulous men and women know they can profit off of people’s fears. Check out Kenneth Copeland on YouTube exorcising the coronavirus, spitting all over the place, ill advised behavior for sure, and claiming he can banish the pandemic; don’t forget to send him money, though.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The gift of dreaming is that it connects you, organically, to your spiritual source. Yes, for you it may be Jesus and for me it might be the Great Mother, but it really has no Shape, Name or simple Form that we can identify. It's Way bigger than any of us puny humans, so busy mucking things up on earth, can imagine. One thing for sure; it is <b>Love.</b> It is <b>Compassion</b>. If this doesn’t come through; it’s fake news.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I hope my dream might invite you to open your own window on dreaming and find for yourself the irrefutable guidance that can not only save your life but also make it so much more worth living. </span> <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Birthday cake image thanks to Wikipedia</i></div>
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Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-22838837272380773762019-12-26T13:28:00.001-08:002019-12-27T08:53:03.006-08:00The Wheel of Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">A dear friend just experienced her daddy’s passing on Christmas day. This post is a tribute to her and her father. It’s also a response to the constant reminder that on the wheel of time, death has a place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">For me, what inspires courage and brings me solace is knowing that even if our physical bodies cease to function, the spirit we experience now, the one we call the I, never ceases to exist. Consciousness persists to experience itself, even after physical death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">We don’t die, anymore than a butterfly dies when it ceases to be a caterpillar. Contrary to conventional teachings, we can communicate with those who have crossed over before us. The main channel of communication after death is dreaming. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">We’re lucky enough to live in a time when science is taking life after death seriously, due in part to the number of verifiable NDEs (Near Death Experience) reported by both medical specialists and patients who have the experiences. There’s also the growing body of work on sleep, dreaming, lucid dreaming and OBEs (Out of Body Experiences) that explodes outdated views on life after death. Personal experience can put us in a position to re-examine our old religious beliefs and materialistic myths. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Modern physics is a new science that goes beyond materialistic dogma, just as contemporary spirituality goes beyond patriarchal religions. Dreaming is something anyone can do; once a person learns to dialogue with their own dreams, a bridge beyond the physical is revealed. In fact, there are a great variety of psychic dream experiences that, with a little knowledge and effort, most dreamers can test drive for themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">As a dream teacher, by far the most common dream people describe to me is about someone who has crossed over. I love validating their dream connection and honoring those amazing stories of loved one who’ve crossed over. So many times, people are told to dismiss these dreams as wish fulfillment fantasies, though most people intuitively know their dream is uncanny. I love seeing the relief and amazement in so many people’s eyes when we speak of their dreams of the departed as something real and important.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Dreams are an organic rainbow bridge between these two realities; they are life and death. Each of us has access to so much more than material reality in the dream realms. One thing for sure, our loved ones who’ve crossed over speak to us in dreams. We can nurture that communication as much as we want by always paying attention to our dreams. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Our loved ones still love us and know that we have the tougher road here in the contemporary material world, with its political insanities and wars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Our loved ones still want to help us. They also have their own affairs to look after; there is a point that we might want to let them go on. But grief is a state of being that must be honored. When we lose a loved one; there is no way around, only through the grief. I’ve found dreams guide us through the grieving and recovery process, in part by granting us access still to our beloved. Relationships can continue and they can evolve. I’ve grown to understand many things about my parents, and about myself, because we continue to know each other in the dream realms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Through dream teachings, I’ve come to better understand the importance of forgiveness. What would we do if we couldn’t reach out to those who’ve crossed and ask for or give our forgiveness? We would be consumed with unresolvable remorse and regret. Dreams help us understand that death is not an end to the connection. Death leaves a huge physical vacuum in our lives and that hurts, but dreams open a window we can explore to a new kind of connection, one that can bring us the consolation we need to keep healing from our pain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">The other day, a friend told me a beautiful dream she had days before her beloved mother’s death. In it her father, who had predeceased her mother by many years, was hustling her mother out of a cab in a city where they used to live. My friend wondered at the dream and was saddened by it somewhat, but when we spoke of it, I could see in her eyes and hear in her “ahhh” that the dream’s importance just knocked on the door of her consciousness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Many people are drawn to see a medium when they lose a loved one. I’m not attracted to this option, though I do respect the psychic virtuosos among us. But, as Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet of the 20<sup>th</sup>century wrote, each of us is capable of psychic understanding if we pursue it in the laboratory of our dreams. I don’t fault anyone who seeks the guidance of a psychic to connect with a loved one, but I wonder that people aren’t more interested in learning how to connect to those they love themselves. Dreams are a bridge to the afterlife; they give us experiences of both sides. If we each pay attention and develop our own dream practice, we don’t need mediums to mediate our personal connections to our departed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">I thank my dreams for messages they’ve brought from my mom and dad, for how they’ve helped each of us, on both sides of the divide, grow in love and compassion. I thank dreams for keeping me connected to this essential part of my life, my relationship to those I loved and lost from this temporal dimension. Dreaming isn’t the only way to connect to our beloved departed, but in my estimation, dreams are the most organic. We’ve born dreaming and dreaming we’ll exit, if we’re lucky.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">In the meantime, I’m alive. Knowing what dreams have taught me about life and death helps shape my waking existence. Ecclesiastes said we came naked into this world and naked we’ll return. We can’t take any material thing with us; what we do take with us is what we’ve become through our own actions on earth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">According to the celebrated expert on OBEs, William Buhlman, outside of the physical dimensions, like attracts like quite readily. Think of the power of attraction on steroids. My motto is if you don’t want to be spending your next existence on another plane living with assholes, then just don’t be one now. Endeavor to learn how to choose the essential and dismiss the not important. I choose love so that Love is where I land when I cross over; it’s simple. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Religion purports to offer guarantees about our “salvation” if we pony up with whatever is required. They claim God is Love, but stack the deck for themselves, the rich male patriarchs, and psychologically handicap the rest of us with guilt, sin and other bull-crap. We don’t need religion to feel ok about the afterlife. It’s not that God is love; it’s that Love is god. Love is an energy that’s vital to life, not an anthropomorphic projection that looks just like the guys in charge. Choose Love and Love will guide you when you cross and help you find you’re way. Choose violence and hate and that might be your heaven when you cross; it’s a choice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">There’s no judgment; we learn while we’re in the physical and we continue to learn, grow and understand after we’ve left the physical. Consciousness evolves; hallelujah! We can help ourselves along if we break out of the mesmerizing herd and smell the dreamy coffee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">The right practice and attitude towards dreaming can open important psychic channels. The importance of dreaming doesn’t just belong on a psychiatrist’s couch; dreams belong in our daily lives. Dream sharing in families and among friends can be wonderful fun, and dreams can bring us great personal gifts of understanding and guidance. And, so importantly, dreams can help us heal from the grief of loss; they can help us stay connected to everyone our hearts have embraced, even after death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Dreams can give us the courage to live from our hearts, to follow our best dreams and to triumph over our fears. I wish everyone bright and powerful dreams in 2020 and all of us, the courage to make our best dreams come true for the good of all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">May it be so.</span></div>
Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-25012338784846596972019-08-18T15:41:00.001-07:002019-08-19T06:50:20.866-07:00In a Time of Shock, There's Awe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwr9YzHHrcpm7UPcGKNxtWpG2HiNwMoiF7orM2pDfihxlhSArRyg3yOq1HYVrEkcnZrZN8x8jjpSVKv7fwosHu5I_xnO-_OQ3vqQCBHdnT0Sjx5F3PZHKa6P8DGX3KFGjHRYcfEb2GpnZW/s1600/Shock%2526Awe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1189" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwr9YzHHrcpm7UPcGKNxtWpG2HiNwMoiF7orM2pDfihxlhSArRyg3yOq1HYVrEkcnZrZN8x8jjpSVKv7fwosHu5I_xnO-_OQ3vqQCBHdnT0Sjx5F3PZHKa6P8DGX3KFGjHRYcfEb2GpnZW/s320/Shock%2526Awe.jpg" width="238" /></a></div>
I've been a long time pondering if there's anything left to say. One after another collective shock wave hits the news. Misguided hate filled males opening up with their beloved guns and decimating an innocent group of people; for why? Leaders inciting that hate so they can get elected and continue their multinational bid for total patriarchal control over everything and everyone, at the expense of the very planet, without which, they too shall die. The rollercoaster ride of economic survival. I can go on and on, but for what?<br />
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Giving a great deal of attention and energy to the shit that's regularly hitting the collective fan around the world makes me tense and fearful if I don't also take time to give attention to what's happening in my inner dream worlds. Pondering this, I see that, there's the rub. If I focus on fear and dread, despite that what's actually happening in my personal life now is positive, I not only create a mighty stress in my own physical body, I contribute to the collective stress that surrounds me. Eckhart Tolle's work is brilliant in making a case to average people for that old meditational chestnut:<br />
BE HERE NOW.<br />
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Most of our fear is based on our internal drama and dialogue, despite what's actually happening in our surroundings now. Fears about what might happen if such and such happens can keep us awake at night time and again. One remedy I always prescribe is when you wake up at night and know you might have trouble getting back to sleep, treat that time as an opportunity to enter any dream that comes to mind and consider it play time. I often will play with a particular dream for months because of a character, place or experience I want to develop further in my story telling mind. It may or may not get you back to sleep, though it often does, and it beats the hell out of worrying thoughts and their consequences.<br />
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My dream practice has helped me keep a foot in the temporal earth world and in other dimensions in the eternal worlds of dreaming, which is where the AWE comes in. Dreaming is organic spirituality; it's our birthright bridge to the eternal without the dusty layers of dogmatic oppression patriarchal religions add to our burden on our journey home. We each have a reason for being on planet physical earth; we each have something to offer and something to learn. Mind control religions entrap us in unnecessary suffering and privation. A God/Goddess who has nothing to fear doesn't need anything from us. Divine love isn't based on need. It is simply What Is. There is no need to limit or define it; there is every need to experience it. Dreams are a door to that experience; a direct life line to the Awe in life that keeps us living, hoping and loving.<br />
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Throughout life, my dreams have companioned me in a way that has guided, taught and entertained me. I turn to my dreams for answers and for experiences beyond the dull and dreaded in my life. I'm schooled morally by my dreams way beyond the shalts and shalt nots of Nobodaddy tenets. I know the unconditional love of the Divine through my dreams; it can take so many forms and act in so many wonderful ways, as some of our ancestors knew. Locking the Divine in exclusively Male Form is the most damaging psychic wound inflicted on us by patriarchal codes. We project on to the Divine in metaphors and similes; god is like this or goddess is like that. But, knowing Divine Love in dreams is to know it never keeps just one form; you know you're in the presence of Divine Love by the Awe you feel Sometimes it takes on surprising forms, but it doesn't have physical form because, ultimately like us, it's not physical. <br />
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In a time of so much shock the awe of inner exploration is a salve for the soul. A dream practice isn't a place to hide from the world, but it can be a spiritual retreat zone. A resource I can draw on, at times of trouble or trepidation or just for a break and a change of attitude. It matters whether I choose to live in shock or in awe. Depending on where you are physically in the world, like in religious totalitarian states like Saudi Arabia, especially if you're a woman, like Loujain al-Hathloul, you may not have an easy choice. Choosing spiritual freedom can be dangerous when patriarchy uses its brutality to enforce their choice on us. But, for those of us who can make that choice relatively easily, once we heal our own psyche from the damage so much brainwashing has done, we can help others to find their own healing and perhaps, together, keep this world going.<br />
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Jung's fans know his teachings about our need to heal the individual and the collective psyche; he said the fate of man hangs on a thread, and that thread is the human psyche. What does that mean? We've got to become conscious of our choices and what fuels them at an unconscious level. Fear is a primal human emotion that's easy to use for mind games. Patriarchy loves using fear to control people's behavior and, historically, has done so in fantastic feats of cruelty.<br />
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Every time I review the dark periods of our history some of us call the Burning Times, basically where it was legitimate to brutalize and torture women into submission to the patriarchal yoke of servitude, my stomach gives a familiar lurch. This is all too real. Ms. Loujain al-Hathloul, held in captivity for a year and a half and counting for her feminist campaign to drive and to change the many other petty restrictions of her basic human freedoms under the patriarchal domination of modern Saudi Arabia. These restrictions, which in such a theocracy is also the rule of law, are mostly based on religious imperatives. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/loujain-al-hathloul-deny-torture-video-saudi-arabia-brother-sister-a9057046.html">Loujain was recently offered her freedom</a> on the condition that she lie about everything they've done to her; tortures like those of the burning times. She is still in Saudi prison. When will we <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2019/04/free-her.html">free Her? </a><br />
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Healing the human psyche is about acknowledging that we know shit about so many things, but most of all about the exact experience of life after life and about the Divine. That Which Is is vast and contains all us multitudes, so how can it be as simple as one story, one myth? Why should we fight each other about what It should be when we're all going to experience it for what it is eventually? Why don't we <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2017/11/dream-spirituality-divine-in-21st.html">take the opportunity our dreams offer</a> us to learn more about those ultimate questions for ourselves?<br />
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Of course, the most convenient way to control someone is psychically. Get them to buy into a particular story, especially when they're young, and they'll do what you tell them to do. As soon as we are born, we're baptized and cathechismed till the cows come home. I often think when a parent says to me, I'll send them to church, synagogue, mosque whatever now and when he/she becomes an adult, he/she can decide for him/herself. But it doesn't work that way! Once our little imaginations are denied freedom and instilled with fear, it's not all that easy to shake.<br />
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What we believe to be true is our reality. Patriarchal dogmas in all big 3 religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as in other male elevating spiritual practices, including Buddhism, have convenient stories about why women are bad and why everyone needs to tow a certain line in order to safely transition to the other side.<br />
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They're not even that good, as stories go. So, I'm to believe that the Divine is so super pissed off at a couple of newly minted Homo sapiens, male and female, for eating an apple, or even for wanting to know Good/Evil so they can choose for themselves? I'm to believe that the very Life Force, the Light, the overpowering certainty of Love that I've known in dreaming so many times, not only condemned all future generations but blamed the woman, especially? <br />
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And the stories go on, all in the service of why no-one, especially women, should question this male structured mental, emotional and social paradigm that is still grinding along, on an inexorable track to planetary destruction. As I told my dad in a dream once, patriarchy has been one blood bath after another. <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-paradigm-shift-revolution-from-within.html">But it doesn't have to continue this way. </a><br />
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Dreams are bridges to self-discovery and to social healing; dreams call on each of us to own our spiritual health as well as our mental and physical health. Dreams call us to lead a life that acknowledges our own responsibility for our own path. They call on us to live bravely because, in the end, literally in the end, there is nothing to fear.<br />
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The myth of original sin is fabricated to prepare the human psyche for other fear based strictures religions love to impose. Once you fear God and HIS minions, you'll do what they tell you to do, whether it's to your own benefit or the benefit of your beloved ones is irrelevant because your thought allegiance has been won over.<br />
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But if you're not afraid of God/the Divine in any way, your life is an adventure in the physical; you live on the continuum of other adventures you've experienced on other planes or in other times. Past lives are frequently remembered in dreams. You can know some of what you'll experience after death because you've already experienced it through dreaming. It's the awe of these encounters with the divine that eclipses all fear and all doubt. There is nothing to fear, but fear itself.<br />
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The only thing that makes sense to me these days is for each of us to do whatever we can, say whatever we can, in the most loving way, to take down the wall of fear that's being steadily reconstructed before our eyes, always looking inward for guidance and advice from dreams and holding hands with fellow/sister dreamers with the purpose of healing ourselves and the planet from the wrathful, wrongful paradigms that keep us in this dismal cycle of doom.<br />
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There is no original sin, it's the same thing over and over; why? Because we're adhering to the same paradigms of rigid Father oriented, male dominated insanity that created this problem in the first place. Come on, just listen to that ignorant congressman King from Iowa wondering if he would be alive but for the wise forbearance for rape and incest in human history; tell me that's not messed up!<br />
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That guy thinks he's a good, god-fearing Christian and there's no doubt he serves the patriarchal idol of god he and others constructed so it would be okay to think that super fucked up way. Women don't even figure into the equation. But the Jesus he supposedly follows championed a woman's right to equal treatment and opportunity again and again in the gospels. <a href="https://www.godswordtowomen.org/feminist.htm">Jesus was a feminist</a>.<br />
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I can live in shock that we've actually elected patriarchal one dimensional puppets like King, (and worse than him, too) or I can live in awe that at least I was born into a time and live in a place where I can challenge patriarchy because of what I know to be true. Practice love and look to dreams; that's what I know to be true.<br />
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<br />Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-27215249346919833732019-04-30T08:47:00.002-07:002019-06-24T17:01:26.419-07:00FREE HER!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5RBeSobwy6-nPw4F0ir91TdOXwlACYs3h-CrsyxmD0NGIHLgW7fZw_GqD0LAd-Ci6xbIydlYeKZOzAOwk_n67h2xtyUAEbCrRY6ZPa63K1NnvrhKuqt071W2KSK4CKi5Ewz4WKYrQWkEe/s1600/368fc5681342c9cc047532da1d192b1db271b83e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="481" data-original-width="770" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5RBeSobwy6-nPw4F0ir91TdOXwlACYs3h-CrsyxmD0NGIHLgW7fZw_GqD0LAd-Ci6xbIydlYeKZOzAOwk_n67h2xtyUAEbCrRY6ZPa63K1NnvrhKuqt071W2KSK4CKi5Ewz4WKYrQWkEe/s320/368fc5681342c9cc047532da1d192b1db271b83e.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I just <a href="https://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/30/04/2019/Qatari-cheque-for-his-sister-is-fake-Saudi-activist%E2%80%99s-brother">read </a>that <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2019/04/saudi-arabia-or-patriarchal-nightmare.html">Loujain al-Hathloul </a>is also, while tortured and imprisoned, cyberbullied by the Saudi regime on Twitter, but thanks to her brother, Walid al-Hathloul, twitter world is fast debunking their fake story. <br />
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I wish Loujain's plight didn't remind me so deja vu of the European Inquisition, the witch trials of several hundred years of patriarchy on steroids known as the Middle Ages and Renaissance. After years of feminism in America, (don't forget, men are feminists, too) I thought we were done with women's inequality. Yet, misogyny is growing around the world. Apparently, we're not done making it clear that God is not the Father, as in a Male Supreme Deity that makes the laws and puts the men in charge of enforcing them. It's not clear yet that we, Women, are not men's property by divine default. We hold up half the sky.<br />
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We are not slaves. Some women are born into the strictest patriarchal regimes, others are born into recently turned mild-mannered patriarchies of modern western countries (although, scarily, even these seem to be regressing badly at the moment). Either way, we are spirit in female bodies as men are spirit in male bodies. The absurd extremes of male and female gendering all over the patriarchal world are so unnecessary, so distracting, so harmful to our essential journey on this planet.<br />
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Look at the state we're in. Who has been making the rules for the last 5 or 6 millennia? How have half the human race fared (faired) under these regimes? Today, women are either tits and ass to exploit or baby machines to harness and control for men's sake; that's the patriarchal dichotomy of women, the Virgin and the Whore. We are spirit in a physical body. We are here for a purpose of our own choosing, just like anyone incarnate as a man.<br />
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It's possible for us to envision and dream a much better world than the one we're rolling with at the moment. How would I go about my dream of a much better world? Step one; bring the patriarchal nobodaddies, in myth and politics, down to size. Raise the Feminine Divine in our Consciousness to equal status with the Male Divine. They are partners, creating together, even though, (as was obvious to our ancestors living before the darkness of patriarchy), She's the one Who gives Life, so she's got just a wee bit more juju than Dad. Patriarchy teaches us to think in dualities and in oppositions. We can think creatively. We can reason with our hearts, not just our heads, to create a world we want for ourselves and for our children for many more generations to come.<br />
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Synchronicity is when the world of matter reflects the world of the psyche; that's how Jung, the author of that term for this phenomena, explains it. Like a powerful dream, a powerful synchronicity in waking life can help keep me on course; they can be profoundly encouraging to the spirit.<br />
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The night I wrote my previous post about Loujain and other Saudi women imprisoned and tortured for their audacity to challenge the absurd constraints of the male regime, I went in search, among my journals, for a dream I remembered that echoed this misogynist <span style="font-family: inherit;">waking life event. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My journals are all labeled with the year on their spine, but strangely, I unknowingly picked the wrong journal from a decade later than the year I intended. In it, I searched through the appropriate month and day, but was puzzled when I couldn't find the dream I wanted. As I'm turning the pages, I'm stopped in my tracks by </span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">this fragment of a dream from 9 years ago that I don't remember ever dreaming:</span></div>
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<span style="color: red;">FREE HER!<br />Somehow I'm helping make sure a woman prisoner is released.</span></div>
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The way I see synchronicity, this is a kindly numinous pat on the shoulder. "Yeah, girl, you go on behalf of a sister in need; your Mama is right here with you."<br />
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Cooperation. Compassion. Justice of the Heart.<br />
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Imagine what wonderful changes we could make if Love were our only religion and each one of us does the best we can to help, not control, one another.<br />
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Thank goodness for troubadours like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLN4IO0hWgc">Michael Franti </a>who help me keep the perspective I need.<br />
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This World is so Fucked up (But I Ain't Ever Giving up on It)</div>
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<span data-ved="2ahUKEwiso6rKqYPjAhVCmeAKHW_kASMQ2kooATAAegQICxAE"><a data-ved="2ahUKEwiso6rKqYPjAhVCmeAKHW_kASMQMTAAegQICxAF" href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Michael+Franti+%26+Spearhead&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgVuLSz9U3MMyyME43XMQq5ZuZnJGYmqPgVpSYV5KpoKYQXJCaWJSRmpgCAPj6fegrAAAA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiso6rKqYPjAhVCmeAKHW_kASMQMTAAegQICxAF" style="color: #660099; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Michael Franti & Spearhead</a></span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">Let me tell you 'bout the situation goin' on</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Up inside my head today</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">My mind is runnin' round in circles</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Tryna make sense of the people</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Who are runnin' everything today</span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">All these politicians tweetin'</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Got their message on repeat and</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Try dividin' us with fear and the hate</span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">Whey-ey-ey</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I wish I could find a better way to say this</span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">This world is so fucked up</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">But I ain't never givin' up on it</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Never givin' up on it</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Never givin' up on it</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">This world is so fucked up</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">But I ain't never givin' up on it</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Never givin' up on it</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Never givin' up</span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">Whey-ey-ey</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I wish I could find a better way to say this</span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">We ain't askin' for money</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">We just wanna make change</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">We do it for all of the people who need it</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">'Cause they got a voice and a name</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I can't believe how we livin' today</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I got</span><span class="arsnrd">… </span></div>
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<br />Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-24675105407752801602019-04-25T17:14:00.001-07:002019-04-25T17:14:39.045-07:00Saudi Arabia or Patriarchal Nightmare?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0vqyxkt7n3CQKZhZkPqpdfdMKzp238gRRQlacI1Ped_B5xQzJLJPGWA_GBXeCPEXXAPHnkBDba0Yzz0UJl7-IvJ9UNv-bITzEC4lzAnporJdJjXlWP8RqBxeibri7w6-C4wyZ9yM7AU9a/s1600/Loujain_Alhathloul.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="903" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0vqyxkt7n3CQKZhZkPqpdfdMKzp238gRRQlacI1Ped_B5xQzJLJPGWA_GBXeCPEXXAPHnkBDba0Yzz0UJl7-IvJ9UNv-bITzEC4lzAnporJdJjXlWP8RqBxeibri7w6-C4wyZ9yM7AU9a/s320/Loujain_Alhathloul.jpg" width="283" /></a></div>
How many times have I told you about Howling Mary? How many times have I explained <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2017/08/stretch-to-contain-dream-motto.html">why she howls?</a><br />
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I hear Her in my bones, down to the marrow of my soul when I think of the the courageous Saudi women activists who helped lift the driving ban for their sisters in Saudi Arabia (SA) but despite the change in law now allowing women to drive (but do they?), were detained for a year now without charges. What's way worse is that there are many accounts of these women being tortured and sexually tormented; do you know that the <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/torture-used-on-women-in-history/katia-kleyman?page=2">witch trials of the terrible Inquisition p</a>eriod of patriarchy treated women the same way?<br />
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Do you know that women were heckled, beaten, arrested, imprisoned and tortured (force fed, among other things) for having the audacity to claim the right to vote and even to use contraception to avoid pregnancy in this here US of A just one century ago? Read what <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/margaret-sanger">Margaret Sanger </a>went through to get the diaphragm legalized or what the many suffragette activists endured, here and in countries around Europe.<br />
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Do women in western countries consider themselves safe from this kind of state sanctioned personal control? Think of Kamala Harris's question; name one law that legislates any part of the male anatomy or his sexual freedom. Please don't say rape; rape is not a sexual crime. It's a crime of violence and denigration of women; misogyny on steroids. Despite western woman's relative freedom; in the US, she's about to be put back in the Father Know's Best box. If a woman can't choose whether or not to be pregnant, if she can be pregnant and obliged to give birth whether she wants to or not, then she is not an equal citizen with a man in this country or in any country.<br />
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Mary is Howling because she is sick of the destruction and needless pain caused by patriarchal bullies around the world. She is calling all who value the many gifts woman brings with her to the earth and in her partnership with man to stand up and say no more! No more corruption! No more belief in false deities that give anyone with a dick a huge advantage over their partner sex turned handmaid. <br />
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That Which Is, that which we can come to know experientially over our entire lives through our inner senses and our dreams, is above all kind, above all loving, above all, loves to laugh. The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless, said Dorothy Sayers, author of the beloved Lord Peter Wimsey detective series. We are spirit; after we shed this physical bag of bones, it makes no never mind which bag we were wearing. We are called on to be kind, to be loving and to be joyous regardless of our physical exterior.<br />
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I plan to <a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent-actions/urgent-action-update-women-activists-on-trial-saudi-arabia-ua-105-18/">contribute my voice</a> to the cause of Loujain, Iman, Aziza, Samar, Nassima and the other women so unjustly and irreverently treated by the self appointed guardians of their good, the male elite of SA. I also want to know what officials in our government plan to do to address this unspeakable human rights violation. I hope you'll join me in dreaming a world were Mary's voice can again be heard singing in joy, not howling in pain.<br />
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<br />Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-60719123635964726852019-04-19T12:09:00.001-07:002019-04-21T09:17:25.736-07:00The Bulldog and His Patriarchy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLiLjrHLCkeSfN7eD9jqivyehhPmRWwRFFF-Iv6Qg2hAvsfuPCvG-bDDKdWmQWw7_RSz36F7dHEobRGaDnGxNxwdCa6YKKDuh1YXNL6gUFXnXVFmLY22bhOpS77fTQ6j9mNRLJOOADFcZE/s1600/Circle_of_James_Ward_%25281769-1859%2529_British._A_Bull_Baiting_Scene.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="750" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLiLjrHLCkeSfN7eD9jqivyehhPmRWwRFFF-Iv6Qg2hAvsfuPCvG-bDDKdWmQWw7_RSz36F7dHEobRGaDnGxNxwdCa6YKKDuh1YXNL6gUFXnXVFmLY22bhOpS77fTQ6j9mNRLJOOADFcZE/s320/Circle_of_James_Ward_%25281769-1859%2529_British._A_Bull_Baiting_Scene.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I mentioned in my previous<a href="http://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2019/04/hey-bulldog.html"> post </a>what fun dream archeology can be; I'm still on the trail of the bulldog. Here's an interesting bit I found in Wikipedia:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><i>Bulldogs have a longstanding association with </i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt; text-decoration: none;">English culture</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;">, as the BBC wrote: "to many the Bulldog is a national icon, symbolizing pluck and determination."</span><sup><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;">[6]</span></span></sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> During World War II, Bulldogs were often likened to Prime Minister </span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt; text-decoration: none;">Winston Churchill</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> and his defiance of </span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt; text-decoration: none;">Nazi Germany</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;">.</span><sup><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldog#cite_note-National_symbol-7"><span style="color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;">[7]</span></a></span></sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> When the </span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt; text-decoration: none;">English settled in the Americas</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;">, their Bulldogs came with them. </span></i><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Interesting, it's definitely an English breed, but when I re-enter and check these ideas out with the bulldog in my dream, he wants me to explore further. With a further search, I found that the reason they're called bulldogs is because back in the male fraternity of Medieval and Renaissance England, this hapless dog was bred for the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">sole (souless) purpose of watching it gore or be gored by a bull who was maddened beforehand by pepper blown up it's nose. It was the male sport of the day.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">I digress here, but it reminds me of the story going around in my neck of the woods about people, some say the very coaches on the team, of an upscale township that shall remain nameless, (although it made the GoodWeek/BadWeek section of this week's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Week">Week Magazine)</a>, confronted with the cold reality that their kid's playing field was too wet to </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">allow the scheduled games to commence, made the bold and mystifying decision to soak the field in gasoline and set it on fire so as to dry the field and allow the games to go on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">What planet are these people from? How did 20 adults come to a decision so misguided and ill-advised? Yes, the field was destroyed, just for starters. My neighbor and I were talking; he's well versed in school sports cultures, having followed his daughters teams as they grew up. We shake our heads and ask each other, how was this the decision of so many adults?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">Do you see where I'm going with this? How was bull baiting and bear baiting the decision of so many, so called, Christian adults? </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">It's patriarchy. The bulldog was bred as a symbol and a sacrifice to patriarchal insanity. We treat patriarchy as if it's the only option we have for organizing a culture, <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2018/10/lets-try-another-approach.html">when it's not</a>. Patriarchy isn't all of human history; it's a small distorted fraction. Homo sapiens (a rather ironic label for humanity as we know it, coined by an 18th century Swiss botanist) has been around for hundreds of thousands of years; <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2014/05/mothers-day-homily-at-muus.html">"</a></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2014/05/mothers-day-homily-at-muus.html">Thanks to the work of exceptional scholars like archeologist Marija Gimbutas, we know that: “The Goddess is the most potent and persistent feature in the archeological records of the ancient world, a symbol of the unity of life in nature and the personification of all that was sacred and mysterious on earth.”</a></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">Patriarchy is only some 6,000 years old! It's dualistic, focused on differences and competition; whoever pisses the farthest sets the rules for right and wrong, and uses all manner of cruelty, violence and inhumanity to enforce them. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">How can such cruelty to animals be allowed? Well, it was a sanctioned male sport until one of the first laws against cruelty to animals was passed in the mid 19th century. In patriarchy, male sports help develop the future generation of soldiers and keep the win/lose, either or mentality sharp for when war is declared. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">One of the characteristics of my dream bulldog is that he would occasionally roll his eyes, which made him look insane; then he'd resume a direct look and return to his doggie nature. His crazy eye roll got me to pondering about the insanity of the bulldog as mascot for the patriarchal story. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">We've learned little about pre-patriarchal cultures in our history classes because history is the story the conqueror writes. In the last century, many vistas have been opened and explored. Women have done their own scholarship and found that the male establishment's explanation of ancient artifacts and cultures has been tainted with patriarchal projection on to the ancient past, mansplaining cultures who were nothing like patriarchy in structure and function.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;"> "</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Goddess worshiping cultures weren’t necessarily matriarchal, they were, as Riane Eisler brilliantly presents in </span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" style="color: #999999; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-decoration: none;"><span id="goog_922388465"></span>The Chalice and the Blade<span id="goog_922388466"></span></a><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">, cooperative societies."</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">Ancient cultures existed that were perhaps far in advance of our own on many levels, like in using what we now call <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-power-of-your-dreaming-mind.html">psi skills.</a> This internal authority of the hoi polloi was frowned upon during the brutal RC Inquisition, so we've come to be raised knowing little, discounting or sometimes fearing our dreaming.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">The patriarchal paradigms reign with fear, exist in hierarchies of human worth, denigrate half the human race with misogynist rules and thinking, can only think in good/bad dualism and project their own self important image, an anthropomorphized male deity who hates women for their lack of obedience and submission, on to the Male Only Divine.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">Ancient cultures weren't patriarchal. Whatever they were before patriarchy took over with the sword, they were very interesting people, our ancestors. And beyond a doubt, women were respected and the Goddess was revered for the gifts She gives humanity. Goddess paradigms don't need the idea of duality, they practice the idea of the dance of life, where each person, male or female, does their best, according to what they desire to do.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">But I digress, yet again. As an animus figure, Jung would have a field day with my bulldog in this dream; that's what I'm doing, too. Just like there's a wounded Feminine Divine archetype in the patriarchal paradigm, one that Jung acknowledged, there's a wounded Male Divine archetype, too. Actually, and fittingly so, today is the day of the international celebration of that wounding, Good Friday.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">Patriarchal gods are constantly demanding sacrifice; ask Isaac how he felt about his dad's religious beliefs that almost got him killed. Patriarchal theology is the psychic arm for the hostile takeover of ancient spiritualities that payed great tribute to the Feminine Divine. It's easy to see how patriarchy claimed as their super power, the power to deal death. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">The Goddess is the direct giver of life. Goddess cultures saw death as part of the cycle of a soul's journey, not an end but a new beginning. Many ancient burial sites suggest that care was taken at the body's burial to provide the soul the wherewithal to travel on. But Fear of </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">Death is the supreme ultimate bogart in our cultural patriarchal closet; there are so many ways to mess up and the patriarchal god that rules on one's eternal continuance is demanding and hard to please.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">So perhaps, as we all resurrect our way back home naturally, and quite organically, we can see in Jesus' sacrifice, not a necessary adherence to his father's terms of forgiveness for the human race, but a willing warrior for Love, who dared all by defying the strict patriarchal religion into which he was born, and paid the ultimate price to be a truly non-patriarchal man and a model for healing the wounded Male architype, the wounded Animus. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="font-size: 14.000000953674316px;">For me, this is the day that launched my fascination with dreams, synchronicity and imagination; I call it <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2012/04/crocodile-friday.html">Crocodile Friday.</a></span></span><br />
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Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-22739275976564359162019-04-12T08:04:00.001-07:002019-06-25T10:26:45.075-07:00Hey Bulldog<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVCenyuzKjfBmI3OJJcG9df8f1Uk7323T4lS_4A0k_jVwep9h7YTVRt-vZ1DhvkKsohsvkjMs64kY8TVJwIMKatX2e0LWyBX70Zz_hM5bZTrQ1OsjNVCxFF8XRS0zFnks-quOD5tXTTRga/s1600/HeyBulldog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1096" data-original-width="1600" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVCenyuzKjfBmI3OJJcG9df8f1Uk7323T4lS_4A0k_jVwep9h7YTVRt-vZ1DhvkKsohsvkjMs64kY8TVJwIMKatX2e0LWyBX70Zz_hM5bZTrQ1OsjNVCxFF8XRS0zFnks-quOD5tXTTRga/s320/HeyBulldog.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">fittingly enough,<br />
this lovely fella is on the wine label of a wine called <b>Paxis</b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Dreams have thrilled me with revelations for so many years that I put nothing past them. Yesterday’s dream is this kind of wonderful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">A dream is so often quirky and odd, even just a fragment of a dream. I’ve wished out loud that I could collect a nickel every time someone says to me about a dream, “it was so weird.” Add a little frisson of fear or just<a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2009/12/icky-dreams.html"> ickiness</a>, and you’ve got a gold mine for <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-do-dreams-mean.html">dream exploration</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">The revelatory meaning of a dream starts to unfold as I’m writing it down. First, I rehearse it in my head, re-living my dream ego's experience visually so I get the best memory of it possible. Then I record it, either by writing it down manually or dictating it to my email via iphone, later to be printed out for my journal. Either way, the act of recording helps the dream come into the waking world where it’s gifts can manifest. Plus, it helps the dream story stick in my head for further pondering. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">It's when I’m pondering the dream story in my head or re-reading it in my journal entry, that the “aha” moments come, sometime fast and furious, like puzzle pieces falling into place. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Understanding is more than a left brain “explanation” of what the dream might mean. Dreams work at every level of our consciousness, from the visceral to the sublime, to unlock the existential mysteries of our being. </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">It makes me catch my breath in wonder.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Oh, I get the bulldog in this dream, big time. I've seen him before. And I get the little girl, too. It’s about more than interpretation. I’ve been given a dream key to unlock a door in my psyche. I can walk through that door using dream play practices I've learned and teach; Jung called it “active imagination” and Robert Moss calls it <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2017/08/reflection-on-tanyas-dream-in-npr.html">“dream re-entry.”</a> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">My dream, <b><i>The Little Girl and the Bulldog </i></b>is a treasure map for new territories to explore and new soul-healing to be found. </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">What I want to share with you about this dream is that after all these years, my dreams keep me on my toes. They are continually</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">evolving my understanding, revealing to me the meaning and purpose of my physical existence with firm kindness and deep humor.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> This is what makes a dream practice so worthwhile; as they do for me, they can do for you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">When I write down a dream, whether it seems like a big one or not, I give myself time to “get” it. Often, what I might have dismissed as a nothing dream, just a fragment, is actually a powerful gift to me, one I would have missed if I </span><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">hadn't</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> paid attention. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">In this dream, I meet two characters in a dreamscape that </span><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">echoes</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> a particular time and a particular physical location from my life story. The place is so familiar, but there are differences. These differences and all the details of the dream give me an entry point for exploring my dream further. </span></span><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16pt;">Then there's the relationship </span><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">I can develop</span><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16pt;"> with these characters. I may recognize feelings and retrieve memories by talking to them; they may tell me things my soul needs to hear.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Jung recommend pondering a dream, mulling it over while walking or resting, or as I've found, even standing in line at the bank</span><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">. (Dream pondering is not a practice I'd recommend while driving machinery of any kind.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">When pondering, I keep the dream with me as I go about my day. Sometimes a dream has the psychic energy to stay with me much longer, unfolding it’s meaning in lazy magic like a butterfly emerging it's cocoon. Some dreams have <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2017/08/stretch-to-contain-dream-motto.html">the power </a></span><span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;"><a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2017/08/stretch-to-contain-dream-motto.html">to stay with me always.</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Another tool for a dream practice is what Jung called “amplification” and Robert Moss calls <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2015/08/dream-archeology-ancient-wisdom-for.html">“dream archeology.” </a>Exploring the internet for clues to associations I have with this dream led me to John Lennon and his inspired poem of a song: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vbJQ-MrKo">Hey Bulldog</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">The Beatles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Sheepdog, standing in the rain<br />Bullfrog, doing it again<br />Some kind of happiness is<br />Measured out in miles<br />What makes you think you're<br />Something special when you smile<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Childlike no one understands<br />Jackknife in your sweaty hands<br />Some kind of innocence is<br />Measured out in years<br />You don't know what it's like<br />To listen to your fears<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">You can talk to me<br />You can talk to me<br />You can talk to me<br />If you're lonely, you can talk to me<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Big man (yeah) walking in the park<br />Wigwam frightened of the dark<br />Some kind of solitude is<br />Measured out in you<br />You think you know me, but you haven't got a clue.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">You can talk to me<br />You can talk to me<br />You can talk to me<br />If you're lonely, you can talk to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Hey hey<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Roar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Hey, bulldog (hey bulldog)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Woof<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Hey,…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Dreams are marvels of revelation; they open channels for our personal empowerment and give us the courage to live life authentically. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Life is more interesting for dreaming. It's our organic spirituality; we're born dreaming and dreaming we'll cross the threshold to life beyond physical death. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-44172304824627867872019-01-25T19:07:00.002-08:002019-01-25T19:07:33.067-08:00Change: the Inside Out of It<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've written about my monumental dream, <a href="https://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2011/08/howling-mary.html">Howling Mary </a>many times, but I return to Her again and again. Why was Mary howling? That was the question I asked myself as a bright, young 21 year old woman woken from this vivid, puzzling dream. But, as a mature woman, yes, I think now I know.<br />
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Still, that dream is my ballast. I promised Her in that dream that I would do whatever I could to help, and here I am, still with that promise in mind. It's about changing our deepest most ingrained beliefs, not an easy thing to do. But those beliefs have us in a world of pain. That's why She's howling.<br />
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As a human race, for the last six thousand years or so, we have been gripped by a psychic paradigm that disrupts the fundamental balance of opposites in life to a degree that it's killing us. What we have called evolution is devolution. Look at the dictates we march to; who are the authors? Who dictates by majority? Is there balance in a male dominated world? As a woman, I'm appalled at the number of unhinged patriarchal, misogynist monster leaders around the world today holding sway, Russia, China, N.Korea, USA. These lunatics have our very lives in balance, and yet, they can.<br />
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Why? Because we have core beliefs that make us vulnerable to Big Daddy dictators; God the Father paradigms that have us by the short hairs. Psychically, we are programmed from birth to believe that we're unworthy little wretches saved from our original sin, our ancestor's faux pas, only by the ultimate sacrifice of God crucifying his only Son. I say that's why Mary's howling; it was her son that false god crucified. <br />
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I know that our connection to spirit is the only thing that can save us from the hottest hells on earth; but that connection has been hijacked by patriarchal religions. We are born tethered to Spirit, to Goodness, to Love. We revisit Home often in our dreams; we are not here without support. We came from Home and Home we'll return, but we can go Home anytime we want, when we learn to use the natural access to our spirit realms that dreams grant us.<br />
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Of course, if you never pay attention to your dreams they're gibberish, especially if you've been told all your life, like most of us have, that they are illusory, immaterial, and irrelevant. It's just a dream. But, when you start noticing, you start taking yourself to another level of existence. The waking world is just one aspect of each person's reality; the dream world is just as real. Dream realities do require certain awareness; if you go to a foreign culture, it's best to learn the language and customs in advance of your travels so you know how to navigate the experiences you'll have.<br />
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Dreaming has it's own physics that differs from material reality; that's what's so great about it. What you can't do waking, you can do dreaming. And sometimes, the accomplishments in the dream world undergird new accomplishments in the waking world. It is a balance, a wholistic way of going from one day/night to the next. <br />
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The Good News is that we can change things, one of us at a time, from the inside out. In an avalanche, no one snowflake feels responsible. As each of us takes responsibility for connecting directly to soul, through the indigenous inside track of dreaming, we take responsibility, one by one, then in groups, until we turn this around. And even if we don't manage it; we'll cross over on the side of things we choose. <br />
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Sea change.Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-26981200988143521562019-01-14T17:45:00.001-08:002019-01-14T17:46:44.062-08:00The Most Important Thing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Many people shrink in dismay at having to spend family time at a funeral or wedding; I've mentioned before that I'm lucky. As diverse a bunch as Chirino's are, we tend to stick together. Our glue is love.<br />
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I just returned from a memorial for my friend and sis-in-law's brother in my high school home town. What I experienced is that, despite our sometimes day and night view points, we have each other's backs. Love does that. You can believe that I am immensely grateful and appreciative of that reality in my life.<br />
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Still, these differences I mention can be like day and night; like living only in the waking world and never in the dreaming worlds, living as if only waking experiences matter. Why has the art of dreaming been so diminished in our culture?<br />
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A short while ago I was at the wake of a friend's mother. The preacher was a lovely young man who suggested in his eulogy, with existential Christian honesty, that he didn't know what happens after death, nobody knows. He goes on to offer the promise that faith in the death and resurrection of that amazing man, Jesus Christ, whom we must worship according to a rigorous set of precepts, depending on religious denomination, is the only road to a happy eternity.<br />
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And Jesus knows, I say this with no irony intended. Jesus is amazing, especially as a divine son, derived of this colossal six millennia long patriarchal cultural myth we've been living on this beautiful, endangered planet earth. Thank goddess for the example he set while he was with us. Too bad the patriarchy that killed him found ways to use his legacy to their own gain. Following Jesus is pretty simple; Love Is The Answer. Following patriarchal religious 'biceps' leads nowhere good.<br />
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The joke Jim and I share about that particular memorial is that when the preacher proclaimed that nobody knows about life after death, (think Monty Python, "The Life of Brian") I could barely contain myself from raising my hand and saying, "I do".<br />
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Anybody who pays attention to her/his dreaming life, and brings the same attention to her/his waking life, can tell you the same thing; consciousness is much greater than the brain. Anyone who has had an NDE, OBE or lucid dream encounter with the numinous knows that there is more to heaven and earth, Horatio, than has been admitted in patriarchal theocracies.<br />
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The most important thing each of us has is our own spirit; we are connected to our spirit home through our dreams on a daily basis. It's another perspective. It helps me live twice as long because I live my dreams as well as my waking experiences. The best symbol to embody this wisdom I know is the Yin/Yang, the great Balance. That is who we are: Spirit/Physical. It's not opposites that are either/or; it is compliments that are best in equilibrium, in a constant dance of balance. The relationship between Yin and Yang is the dance of Life. Living aware of our waking and dream experiences is a reflection of this equilibrium.<br />
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The most important thing is to stop putting mommy/daddy responsibility on whatever Mystery it is that makes us tick and take responsibility for using the tools we are each born with to solve the problems that confront us here in the physical. In other words, as Ecclesssiastes aptly stated, "Naked I'm born into this world, and naked I will depart." You take nothing from the physical, but you can develop so much understanding to take with you! There is always help available in a dream practice. <br />
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I've found my way to so many soul answers in dreaming, very few in listening unquestioningly to others. I've also found so much in books, or film, or art or dance. I see my task to live from the heart and do as much as I can for myself and others, in balance. But one very important thing is to pay attention to my dreams and to respect that the dreams of others can only truly be interpreted by the dreamer, her or himself.<br />
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So, while maybe some of my tribe wants to fine dine, I want to hear about people's dreams. Does that mean I don't enjoy fine dining with them? Of course I do; it's awesome food shared in love. But I also enjoy how we talk about things more intimately in person and how my topics never fail to come up, eventually.<br />
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"My dreams are weird; I don't dream except sometimes." So are everyone's dreams weird from the perspective of waking paradigms. When you look through the lens of dreaming as an experience, however, you recognize that the laws of the physical may not apply in many dream scenarios. And as I love to say when someone tells me they can't remember their dreams, "Well, do you want to?"<br />
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It's the new year. We're in a shit-load of confusion. As former president, Barack Obama, suggests, what are you going to do about it? We feel small, powerless to alter the big picture, but if the big picture includes our own journeys through this life and on into others, in other dimensions, then perhaps we can brave up and do whatever we can, however insignificant we deem it to be, to help make it better for others, as well as for ourselves, before we inevitably move on.<br />
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The art of dreaming always involves a correlation to the art of living a waking life; it's up to each of us to create the lives on both sides, the spiritual and the physical, that we truly want. I say the spiritual first because without a spiritual anchor, we tend to seriously drift on the oceans of existence.<br />
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However, if we let ourselves be tethered with fear and inhibitions, hate and hopelessness, we'll miss our opportunity this time around to contribute something useful to the expansion of the spirit in the physical and the salvation of this planet. Religions barter in salvation, but when I say salvation, I mean in the physical sense, as in survival rather than extinction on this beautiful planet Earth. Otherwise, I don't have much to fear, and I devote a lot of my time to understanding my spiritual existence, because my dreams are a window to my soul.<br />
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The most important thing is that we are eternal beings, because we are, not because we have to earn it. We also have nothing to fear but for the damage we can do to ourselves in self-hate. A social/psychological paradigm that includes original despicableness (sin) is not a good place, psychically, from which to live. <br />
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You will die. I will die. What we believe about death will color everything we do in life. Dreaming is our spiritual companion all of our lives long. We're not born into ignorance, abandoned by our inner resources and beholding to some mercurial male deity. We're born eternal; we probably asked to be here. We are responsible for everything we do; we have a connection to spirit, that which we are, that cannot be broken.<br />
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<br />Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-2710085483534159072018-12-30T14:00:00.004-08:002018-12-30T14:02:00.296-08:00A Toast to Something New this Year!<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wikipedia: New Year's Day</td></tr>
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Here are some of my new year's resolutions; I don't usually make them, but these seemed right:<br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->I forgive everyone everything. I saw a meme on Instagram yesterday that I liked, I forgive<o:p></o:p></div>
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not because I like them or trust them, but so I can move on. Moving on is about softening my heart towards others and myself. Living with a hard heart is not for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->I will use every opportunity to spread my core message, Love Is The Answer.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">What is the question? How do we survive so much darkness and stand for the Light? Well, if this Reality is only one side of the coin of existence; it's not just what happens when we're awake that matters. Perhaps, as in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kin-Ata-Are-Waiting-You-ebook/dp/B004DEPH16/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546207161&sr=8-1&keywords=the+kin+of+ata+are+waiting+for+you%2C+by+dorothy+bryant">"The Kin of Ata are Waiting For You",</a> learning a dream practice, a mindfulness practice and practicing kindness will tilt the scales the way we want them to go. </span></div>
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I propose a toast to collectively dreaming something New, or at least, something we haven't tried in a long time. </div>
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Imagine... <o:p></o:p></div>
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You may say that I'm a dreamer; thanks so much, then, for reading my blog. </div>
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Every blessing and bright dreams for 2019.</div>
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-->Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3973548301826833031.post-1487554080507911952018-12-20T04:36:00.000-08:002019-06-25T05:45:51.305-07:00Baby, It's Old Outside<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha7aqaeK1-7PqCjJJmlawv0mieXlI0KtF1OkzKGpYGVEKeuLZL1EMhmlK_2enERhwQahmLGFaoQa7ajfsMkU3-WA5uS8GKhAV2bz6QMT72s3socKUDP68oi3ZpcbboGvuis_u2mS1x2mmO/s1600/OldManWinter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1474" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha7aqaeK1-7PqCjJJmlawv0mieXlI0KtF1OkzKGpYGVEKeuLZL1EMhmlK_2enERhwQahmLGFaoQa7ajfsMkU3-WA5uS8GKhAV2bz6QMT72s3socKUDP68oi3ZpcbboGvuis_u2mS1x2mmO/s320/OldManWinter.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old Man Winter - Wikimedia Commons</td></tr>
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Lately, I’m hearing the song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” all the time, everywhere. It’s America’s favorite Christmas carol right now. Why? Controversy. What’s the controversy? Whose is the controversy?</div>
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Should the song be banned because the wolfish guy is cajoling the ingénue to stay the night? We’d be doing a shitload of banning if predatory and deprecatory language towards women in entertainment were at issue. <o:p></o:p></div>
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For me, it rings back to the burning of the bra media era; some women, for street theater, burned bras and the media chose to emphasize that about the upswell (no pun intended but noted) of Feminism in the 60s and 70s. It’s a media old boys network trick; focus on the ridiculous and soon the threatening will go away. Real change is threatening; trivializing that which threatens real change is a good way to make it go away again. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The MeToo movement has apparently unnerved too many nerves and here we go again; let’s focus on the ridiculous. A song from the 40’s is the height of controversy over whether the movement has gone too far? Oh, please, grow up and let’s talk about what matters.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Why, in the 21<sup>st</sup>century, in which space travel will become an ordinary possibility, are so many women beaten, raped and denigrated on a daily basis all over the world? Why do so many of us have horror stories about men behaving badly, injuring us on physical and psychological levels? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Patriarchal religious laws around the world constrain women and inflict unnecessary hardships or even cruelties on women. They can’t drive or they have to be invisible in the society. They are the cause of men’s misdeeds. Can you believe that shit!<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve been incredibly lucky in the men department. My dad, brother and husband are examples of men who are kind people, so are many of my male friends. I, as a woman, also endeavor to be first and foremost, a kind person. But, I too have my “MeToo” stories, experiences with men I could have done without. Multitudes of women have stories of lewd verbal or physical attacks from men; some of us have escaped with a sober sense of how much worse it could have been, some of us are not that lucky and know the worst.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This song would not have ruffled the air waves without producers deciding it’s a good story, a kind of push-back to the extremes of not allowing boys to be boys anymore. Just like, burning your bra, how ridiculous these women are, you see.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What are the real issues? Relationships between men and women need to be balanced by mutual respect, always. It’s the same as the golden rule; "do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Not rocket science. If you don’t want to be grabbed by your private parts by a total stranger, or worse, by someone you trusted, then don’t condone in anyway, someone else being so assaulted, either in real life or in entertainment fiction. If you don’t want to be intimidated by a bully into doing or being something that you’re not, then don’t intimidate and bully anyone, in any relationship, ever.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Attitudes have to change and then the songs we like will reflect who we are. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I understand that it’s scary to see powerful men in high positions fall under the scrutiny of how they treat women. Look at the morning news shows, so interesting how close to the media’s heart this issue has hit. That’s real change. What’s the message; no matter how rich, how bossy or how big your man parts are, you do not ever have permission to grab me by the pussy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps, even individual #1 will someday get that message.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Adelita Chirinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05210924775343133374noreply@blogger.com0