The Rainbow Bridge Between Now and Forever

This is the perfect time of year to speak of death and of the departed.  Yet we dare not speak of death and of the departed, at least not directly, honestly and unafraid.

 

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.

 

What is your personal myth about death?

 

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?  

 

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.

 

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.  In radical Islam, men who martyr themselves in their battle against the infidels will have access to 72 willing nubile virgins in the afterlife.  Apparently, in their macho heaven, virgins are currency, as above, so below. 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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! I marvel that people don’t more readily see behind the OZ to the manipulators of this Father God image religions have created.  Of course, without some deep personal connection to the spiritual realms, it is hard to free ourselves from this psychic tyranny. But that connection is innate in each of us, a snooze, a dream away.

 

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.  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. 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.  Why not tune in; explore for yourself?  You can start tonight when you go to sleep.

 

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.  

 

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.

 

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. 

 

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.

 

 

The Autumn Equinox: A Time to Honor our Daughters for their Courage

 

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. 

 

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.  

 

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.

 

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?

 

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.

 

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.  

 

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.

 

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?  

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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?

 

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.

 

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. 

 

Think of how much Persephone can teach us.

 

Shout out to all the incredible young women, moms, sisters and crones who are standing up to power, 

 

In Gratitude to the Storm

The Calm After the Storm, August 4, 2020    AC

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.  

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".

But everyone is responsible to the degree that they are able, to connect with the spiritual truths we're here to learn: We are all One and Love Is The Answer.  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. 

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.

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.  

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?

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."

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.  

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.  

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 AlsoLife, the Right Beside Me Life. 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 Both And.

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?  

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.  

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.

 

Peace or Patriarchal Dicks?

I heard Robin Roberts interview 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.

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.

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 “We the Children” 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.

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. 

Many of us, of all skin tones, are fed up with the irresponsible deployment of bullies into police work.  Remember the Stanley Kubrick movie, Clockwork Orange?  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.

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.

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. 

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.  

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.  

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,

Dream Birthday Presents

I’m always attentive to my dreams around my birthday because they’re often a great gift to me.  This year, I feel awed by how perfect for me my present is.

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.

How does it make us feel? 

How does it make us act?

Here’s my birthday dream.

Bridge Tunnel Up Through the Fog

April 29, 2020

I’m driving my car; I’m alone.  There are many cars on the road, like an exodus or a rush hour.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…” 

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.  

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

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.

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 Love.  It is Compassion.  If this doesn’t come through; it’s fake news.

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.                                                                  

Birthday cake image thanks to Wikipedia