FREE HER!

I just read that Loujain al-Hathloul 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 waking life event. 

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 this fragment of a dream from 9 years ago that I don't remember ever dreaming:

FREE HER!
Somehow I'm helping make sure a woman prisoner is released.

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."

 Cooperation.  Compassion.  Justice of the Heart.

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.

Thank goodness for troubadours like Michael Franti who help me keep the perspective I need.

This World is so Fucked up (But I Ain't Ever Giving up on It)

Michael Franti & Spearhead

Let me tell you 'bout the situation goin' on
Up inside my head today
My mind is runnin' round in circles
Tryna make sense of the people
Who are runnin' everything today

All these politicians tweetin'
Got their message on repeat and
Try dividin' us with fear and the hate

Whey-ey-ey
I wish I could find a better way to say this

This world is so fucked up
But I ain't never givin' up on it
Never givin' up on it
Never givin' up on it
This world is so fucked up
But I ain't never givin' up on it
Never givin' up on it
Never givin' up

Whey-ey-ey
I wish I could find a better way to say this

We ain't askin' for money
We just wanna make change
We do it for all of the people who need it
'Cause they got a voice and a name
I can't believe how we livin' today
I got… 

Source: Musixmatch

Saudi Arabia or Patriarchal Nightmare?

How many times have I told you about Howling Mary?  How many times have I explained why she howls?

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 witch trials of the terrible Inquisition period of patriarchy treated women the same way?

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 Margaret Sanger went through to get the diaphragm legalized or what the many suffragette activists endured, here and in countries around Europe.

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.

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.

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.

I plan to contribute my voice 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.

The Bulldog and His Patriarchy

I mentioned in my previous post what fun dream archeology can be; I'm still on the trail of the bulldog.  Here's an interesting bit I found in Wikipedia:

Bulldogs have a longstanding association with 
English culture, as the BBC wrote: "to many the Bulldog is a national icon, symbolizing pluck and determination."^[6] During World War II, Bulldogs were often likened to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his defiance of Nazi Germany.^[7] When the English settled in the Americas, their Bulldogs came with them. 

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 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.

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 Week Magazine), confronted with the cold reality that their kid's playing field was too wet to 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.

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?

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?  

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, when it's not.  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; "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.”

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.  

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.  

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. 


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. "Goddess worshiping cultures weren’t necessarily matriarchal, they were, as Riane Eisler brilliantly presents in The Chalice and the Blade, cooperative societies." 

Ancient cultures existed that were perhaps far in advance of our own on many levels, like in using what we now call psi skills.  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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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 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.

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.  

For me, this is the day that launched my fascination with dreams, synchronicity and imagination; I call it Crocodile Friday.

Hey Bulldog

fittingly enough,
 this lovely fella is on the wine label of a wine called Paxis

Dreams have thrilled me with revelations for so many years that I put nothing past them.  Yesterday’s dream is this kind of wonderful.

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 ickiness, and you’ve got a gold mine for dream exploration.

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.  

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.  

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. It makes me catch my breath in wonder.

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 “dream re-entry.”  

My dream, The Little Girl and the Bulldog is a treasure map for new territories to explore and new soul-healing to be found. 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  evolving my understanding, revealing to me the meaning and purpose of my physical existence with firm kindness and deep humor.  This is what makes a dream practice so worthwhile; as they do for me, they can do for you.

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 hadn't paid attention.  

In this dream, I meet two characters in a dreamscape that echoes 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.  Then there's the relationship I can develop with these characters.  I may recognize feelings and retrieve memories by talking to them; they may tell me things my soul needs to hear. 

Jung recommend pondering a dream, mulling it over while walking or resting, or as I've found, even standing in line at the bank. (Dream pondering is not a practice I'd recommend while driving machinery of any kind.) 

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 the power to stay with me always.

Another tool for a dream practice is what Jung called “amplification” and Robert Moss calls “dream archeology.” Exploring the internet for clues to associations I have with this dream led me to John Lennon and his inspired poem of a song: 

Hey Bulldog

The Beatles

Sheepdog, standing in the rain
Bullfrog, doing it again
Some kind of happiness is
Measured out in miles
What makes you think you're
Something special when you smile

Childlike no one understands
Jackknife in your sweaty hands
Some kind of innocence is
Measured out in years
You don't know what it's like
To listen to your fears

You can talk to me
You can talk to me
You can talk to me
If you're lonely, you can talk to me

Big man (yeah) walking in the park
Wigwam frightened of the dark
Some kind of solitude is
Measured out in you
You think you know me, but you haven't got a clue.

You can talk to me
You can talk to me
You can talk to me
If you're lonely, you can talk to me

Hey hey

Roar

Hey, bulldog (hey bulldog)

Woof

Hey,…

Dreams are marvels of revelation; they open channels for  our personal empowerment and give us the courage to live life authentically.  

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.