Fly Free; You Are Forever

In the aftermath of the waking dream that has many of us stunned, saddened and fearful, it's hard to find that silver lining.  Many of us in the consciousness/spirituality movement feel it's very important to stay positive, because despair leads to emotional catatonia, which literally gets us nowhere.

In my last post, I mentioned how one of the things that seems apparent is that we won't have a leader to turn to, so we'll need to do it ourselves, for each other and with each other.  Do what?  Make sure Love trumps hate.

Obviously that won't be easy, but the hard things seldom are.  For myself, I'm choosing the areas I most want to champion and commit my energy there, while supporting others in their endeavors to move human consciousness beyond the stagnant mental swamp of this dying patriarchal system and its death generating values.

For me, the women's movement has received a huge wake up call; too many women, white women it seems, voted for a misogynist and put their own civil liberties, their daughters' and their grand daughters in jeopardy.  Why?  Brainwashed, that's why.

That's the title song by George Harrison on his posthumously released album:

Brainwashed in our childhood
Brainwashed by the school
Brainwashed by our teachers
And brainwashed by all their rules
Brainwashed by our leaders
By our Kings and Queens
Brainwashed in the open
And brainwashed behind the scenes

God God God
A voice cries in the wilderness
God God God
It was on the longest night
God God God
An eternity of darkness
God God God
Someone turned out the spiritual light

Patriarchy is a 5-6 thousand year old paradigm that has forced humanity into this perilous period of self-destruction.  It takes many forms on the planet, physically, monarchies that are inherited or hierarchical legislative structures that are to various degrees elected, but psychologically it takes one common form.  God is male, so the male is the only suitable representative of his rule in the physical. This belief is manifest to varying degrees of severity, depending on where in the world we find ourselves.  But very few societies extant give equal voice to the Feminine Divine.  This denial of half of who we are, within and without, has created the dark paradigm, the collective dream, we're living on this physical plane.  I spoke about this in my Mother's Day Homily a few years ago in more detail.

The good news, as I've mentioned before, is that we humans have been here much longer than the patriarchal age and have experienced peaceful coexistence and egalitarian organization of societies. The myth of it's always been like this is part of the patriarchal, apocalyptic narrative.  Are the myths of Eden hinted at in this bleak story echoes of the paradise we indeed lost when god was not the war tyrant father and all that was life was the Mother? 

The challenge of the times we're in is doable; it depends on one person at a time learning to free herself/himself from the mind-forged manacles that make us conform to values that are religious rather than spiritual, exclusive rather than holistic.  The choice isn't religion or atheism; it's dogma versus experience. The realm of God/goddess is within and the path is always open to us, especially through our dreaming.  Paying attention to our dreams, our organic spirituality, can free us from the religious strictures and lies that cloud our judgments and harden our hearts with fear.

We are forever because we're spiritual beings in this present physical existence.  We've been here before and we've been elsewhere in the multi-universe, as well.  We don't have to earn our way into heaven because heaven is inside us - as is hell, if we choose it.

The question for each of us is, why am I here now?  What do I need to learn and what am I here to contribute?

A world out of whack is a world of imbalance; many teachers in the consciousness/spirituality movements of today believe that the Feminine Divine must be returned to equal status with the Male Deity that's been Ramboing us to perdition these past several millennia. The influence of the Feminine is key to achieving balance; the goddesses that all our earth centered ancestors revered informed our moral codes very differently.  Goddess respecting cultures embodied a very different paradigm, a very different consensus reality. 

We need to melt down this hateful paradigm that's imprisoned the human imagination for so long and fly free.  Patriarchal religions control through fear and coercion, just like patriarchal governments or patriarchal family structures.  But no one can control our inner freedom.

The spiritual movement of this dark patriarchal age is brighter than it has ever been, thanks to so much passionate research and writing in the last century.  Material science and metaphysical science are partners in the current conversation on what constitutes "reality."  We can take heart in that.

There is no doubt in my mind that as Jesus put it, you can't put new wine into old skins; the new skin we need to grow, to rebirth, regenerate and renew our existence on this planet is a psychic one.  We need to act as if our spiritual being is just as important as the ego being of our waking reality. It's not either/or, it's both/and, especially when the shit hits the fan.  We need to examine our beliefs, where and how we got them and whether they serve our deepest values.  We need to tune into our dream lives because that's where we find the help we need, custom tailored to our own soul, not mass produced, mass distributed and controlled by patriarchs for their own profit.

As Robert Moss teaches; "We are born to fly, and in dreams we discover that the soul has wings."

Religious Terrorism: It's Time for Change

Religious terrorism is the worst aspect of the six millennia reign of patriarchy we’ve endured on this good earth.  A ferociously violent and anally righteous invisible patriarch sits atop an invisible throne in an invisible kingdom and dictates all that should happen here on earth.  His self appointed representatives command his docile minions and are justified in anything they do in His Name.  Religions are constantly fighting for more control of secular government; that was one of the prime motivators of Church and State separation for our “founding fathers.”  Theocracies are repressive and dangerous; recall the Christian Inquisition of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance.

As last week's tragedy in Paris underscores, we live in a world where this energy has intensified, grown more dangerous and more prevalent than it has been for a while.  But there’s no difference between the atrocities committed in the name of one religion that claims absolute truth and power and another.  The worlds big three patriarchal religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity are like a three-headed dog tearing global civilization to pieces.  There are also, as Eckhart Tolle has pointed out, secular religions like the Communist State; just as bloody, just as macho just as destructive of the spirit.

I'm tired of it.  Men running around screaming at each other about their gods and their demons and then resorting to the bloodiest means possible to prove their way is right, to carry out their Big Bad God’s will.  I say “men” because, despite the existence of women in the flock of each religion, they're to more or less degrees barred from decision-making power. The more radical and the more extremist the positions in any of the big three father run religions, the worst the position a woman is in if she’s born into the culture.  She’ll have fewer independent rights, many social and legal constrictions and increased danger of victimization, physical or psychological.  I don’t think I have to belabor the point that having to live a life determined for me by fathers, brothers and husbands would greatly suck.  There are wonderful men in these misogynist systems, of course;  in my life, I’ve been blessed in all three categories.  This, however, compares to the fact that there are wonderful white people in a racist society; the paradigm is still skewed in favor of being white, or in patriarchy, of being male.

In my estimation, spiritual transformation that leads to freedom from religious tyranny is a key avenue for bringing about the changes the world needs.  As outside, so within; if we’re captive to toxic psychic belief systems that fill us with self-loathing, anger and hate, then we can’t change how that psychic reality imprints the world around us.  Beliefs like: we’re born unworthy and full of “original” sin, we are perpetual sinners, god was so mad only the death of his one-of-a-kind son could make him relent his peeve, god hates women and gay people, god will get you if you don’t do what his appointed perps, er, priests and prophets, tell you to do, god hates pleasure…etc.,etc, etc.

While some haven’t noticed, there have been rich sea changes in the psychic paradigms of our time. They remain somewhat marginal, but the strength of revelations presented in the words of so many wonderful contemporary spiritual teachers today is fueling the energy of transformation to what I hope will be the tipping point in my lifetime.

For one, Feminism, often seen as a political movement, was critical to cracking the stained glass ceiling of patriarchal religions.  Thanks to Mary Daly's "Beyond God the Father", the return of feminine divinity, the return to earth centered, mother respecting spiritual practices that our ancestors created in the beginning, will go some way to defusing the time bomb that arrogant male theocracies are perpetuating for our planet with their self-fulfilling apocalyptic prophecies. Not long ago, while accepting a European award that was also bestowed simultaneously on two women, the Dali Lama quipped that Western women will save the world.  Why?  Because besides the usual gifts women have to offer, we have the freedom to develop and exercise our influence in our cultures, and hopefully, beyond them.  Despite ignorance and entrenched machismo in our religions, we have the freedom to exert a greater influence on changing those paradigms. I agree with the DL;  women, men and children who focus on our worlds' problems with their hearts; who know themselves to be spiritual beings having a temporary physical experience and thus keep in touch with their eternal spiritual lives by interacting with their dreaming, can heal this planet.

More challenges to our narrow and literal patriarchal paradigms about who we are and the nature of reality are coming from many of the “sciences” like Quantum Physics, Integrative Medicine and Psychiatry.  And, of course, there’s spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle putting our egoic insanity into straightforward, non-dogmatic perspective.  So the good news is that we’re living a transformation at this moment.  At the same time that we’re experiencing the urgent need created by outer collective insanities, we’re awakening to our individual organic spiritual existence in ways that exclude the need for religious structures that bind us to self-defeating paradigms.  Each person that throws off the yokes of religious psychic domination without tossing the baby out with the bath water, that is, without thinking dualistically, either you accept a religious paradigm or declare yourself a non-believer in “god”, is helping to envision the brave new world we can dream into being, if we want it.

We don’t need to follow a religion; we are immortal.  It’s built in, like a heart, brain and lungs; we have a soul, spirit, self, psyche. There are moments in life, ecstatic or extreme, when the borders between the physical and the non-physical are naturally transparent and we have a direct experience of the divine.  Each time we fall asleep and dream, or meditate or trance, we have access to personal experience of what lies beyond this physical lifetime. We can answer our most important questions for ourselves; we don’t need to let ourselves be manipulated into believing we have to join a religious cult to ensure our safe passage.  On the contrary, it would be unwise to adopt any attitude that has us vibrating in fear, hate, righteous judgment or reactionary violence because in the thought responsive realities of the astral planes, we might perpetuate that environment for ourselves.

In my view, it’s paramount that more and more people make a viable organic spiritual connection for themselves and throw off the religious yokes on our psyche.  I dream that freedom of religion will transform to freedom from religion, so religious terrorism no longer exists.  

As John Lennon says:  

Imagine there are no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

                                 And the world will be as one

If we can imagine it and dream it consistently, we can make it so.  You may say I'm a dreamer; may I say you're one, too?

Dreaming the Future - Si Se Puede

In my town,  a gentleman of means, very active in the Republican party, who happens to own a billboard on a very main drag in town, posted a political message that I consider  inflamatory, defamatory and untrue.  I’m told he owns the signage under personal property license so, he can post what he wants there.  Well, I’m all for freedom of speech. 

I can get mad, but that's a lot of energy I'm giving to the dark side. Searching for peace, I realize that Now, more than ever, it’s important to dream, not just a personal dream, but a dream for the community.  When I let my heart feel the deep divide in our collective consciousness at this moment, I feel anxiety, dismay, bewilderment and anger. When I exercise my imagination to dream a better future outcome,  I feel hopeful and I'm encouraged to act to make that dream a reality.

The dream I have for America in this election  is that the person who cares most for all of the people of our nation be elected President .  In my dream,  I also see a Congress filled with intelligent, committed public servants who care deeply and compassionately for all the people of our country, regardless of wealth,  and who will make decisions that respect and empower  every person.  I also see leaders who will take responsibility  for safeguarding our planet Earth for the benefit of at least seven future generations, as our Native American ancestors taught.   I dream a future where we respect Nature as Gaia, living Consciousness,  who not only depends on us, but more profoundly, on Whom we depend completely.

I see citizens of this country making the effort to be truly informed.  We base our opinions on the public record of those who serve us, not on slogans thrown out by political marketers with no basis in fact. In addition, we consider much more than the economy when we weigh the qualifications of our leaders.  As they say, you can’t take it with you.

In my dream, we know that there are key human rights protected by the Constitution  that are deeply  at stake in this election.  While the right to free speech is one of them, so is the right to freedom of religion (and from religion).

In my dream, women of all religious affiliations realize that Father doesn't know best.  Who says that god is male and woman must obey Him? The Book of Mormom? The Bible? The Koran?  The Vatican?  (I’ll give you one big HINT; they don’t call these patriarchal religions for nothing).  In my America - the one just down the road in a couple of months - woman is still free to choose her conscience in all matters related to her own body.  We know that abortion is a RELIGIOUS issue, not a political one.  To allow one religious group to legislate morality is to demolish the most basic freedom a human being can hope for, the right to choose and pursue their own spiritual truth according to their own conscience.   Only patriarchal religions seek incessantly to control women and restrict their voice and power in the body politic; in my dream we know that an American Taliban like government is one to avoid and we will not vote for patriarchal religious fanaticism in any stripe.

 

In my dream of America,  post the 2012 elections,  I see that many,  many people  have come together to solve our problems in a heartfelt way.  We don’t dismiss each other with empty labels, as if life is one big football game.  We value our amazing diversity of race, culture, gender and beliefs, so we create social structures that work for everybody.  We are a spiritual and conscious culture,  excited by the revelations of this new age where science and spirituality meet, where dreams prove their power to each one of us and we each connect in our own way with our Consciousness of Divinity.   We have access to other worlds, other dimensions of reality through our dreams, we don’t fear the unknown, we explore it.  

Even if we still struggle to feed, clothe and educate  ourselves and our communities, we don’t fear destruction or lack. We want less and create our own plenty with cooperation and imagination. Will there still be greedy, selfish people?  Perhaps, but we don’t call them smart business people and uphold their realities for them; we help them to lay down that heavy burden and walk into a consciousness that is spiritual as well as material. 

In my future America, voters, the majority of us, have embraced a path with heart, not just on the coasts, but all through the land.     There is a new Consciousness about life and death and we're not afraid. Teachers like Eckhart Tolle. Caroline Casey and Robert Moss are gaining ever growing popularity among us.  We are investing in much more than our economy, we are growing our spirit.

For the next two months, I’ll be busy expanding this dream because I need to believe in what I value most, the power of Love, and not allow myself to be prematurely dismayed.  So I invite all  you wonderful citizens of this great land to dream a piece of this dream and do what you can to make it a reality.

May all the Goodness that guides the great universe lend us teachers, guardians  and companions in this soul quest to dream a communal dream we can wake up to post elections.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”  (I do hope John Lennon is one of our guides, doing what he can to fuel this dream from his side of existence now - maybe that’s why he’s been back in my night dreams lately.)