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.  

Change: the Inside Out of It

I've written about my monumental dream, Howling Mary 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sea change.

The Most Important Thing

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.

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.

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?

 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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Toast to Something New this Year!

Wikipedia: New Year's Day

Here are some of my new year's resolutions; I don't usually make them, but these seemed right:

1.    I forgive everyone everything. I saw a meme on Instagram yesterday that I liked, I forgive

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.

2.    I will educate myself about everything I want to know.  How lucky am I that I can immediately research any question that occurs to me?  How fortunate that there are communication tools available to me that I can use much better, farther and wider than I do now.  I'm having a blast learning Instagram, for example.

3.    I will be my own walking experiment. Does consciousness survive death? Yes, many medical experts agree. For me, it also transcends waking life daily through dreaming, allowing us a frequent glimpse into afterlife environments we may want to check out more thoroughly, later, when we're there. Also, through dreaming, we can maintain contact with  those who are outside this dimension already through death.

4.    I will transcend my persona and keep my ego ear to my higher self. I'm listening to a lot of Jungian thinking and loving every minute of it.  He was an explorer who opened countless doors to future speculation.  That future is NOW.  The present is what counts; it's our opportunity, through more Self awareness and mindfulness, to fuel the change we want to see. 

5.    I will make it easier on myself and on all who need my help, to transition between the waking  and dreaming realms.  I'll write as many helpful articles about dreaming as I can, teach classes when I can and I will pay attention to my dreams, past, present and future.

6.    I will use every opportunity to spread my core message, Love Is The Answer.    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 "The Kin of Ata are Waiting For You",  learning a dream practice, a mindfulness practice and practicing kindness will tilt the scales the way we want them to go.  

I propose a toast to collectively dreaming something New, or at least, something we haven't tried in a long time.  

Imagine... 

You may say that I'm a dreamer; thanks so much, then, for reading my blog.  

Every blessing and bright dreams for 2019.

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Baby, It's Old Outside

Old Man Winter - Wikimedia Commons

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?

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.  

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.  

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.

Why, in the 21^stcentury, 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?  

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!

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.

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.

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.

Attitudes have to change and then the songs we like will reflect who we are.  

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.  

Perhaps, even individual #1 will someday get that message.

Let's Try Another Approach

I have the privilege of loving my native culture, Cuban everything, and yet being grateful for living in a land all my life where I was able to study and have an independent spirit.  I came of age with The Feminine Mystique, but even before that, both my parents nourished my dreams and helped me pursue whatever path I chose.  I grew up a free thinker and a challenger of what seems to me absurd.

I remember, at about 7,  living in NJ, pondering the Catholic class teaching that God would punish me if I stepped out of line, especially if I didn't swallow whatever story I was told. As a kid, it seemed to me: Well, God is Good.  My dad is good.  I would never fear my father's reaction to anything I did. His very intelligent sense of humor seldom let him get angry at me.  My dad taught me kindness and understanding as a way to relate to others and he taught me the value of humor in gaining perspective.

Here's an example I particularly love.  At 18, a freshman in college, I'm home for a weekend.  I'm telling my folks about my first semester and how I met this lovely Black guy who seems fun to get to know.  My mother stiffens in her Spanish roots and says; "Pues, no se te ocure traer un Negro aqui que mates a tu padre." (Don't even think of bringing a Black man here, you'll kill your father.)  Now my dad is sitting right there with us.  I look at him, then I turn to her and say: "De algo se tiene que morir." (He's got to die from something.) I will forever love the memory of my dad totally cracking up, laughing.  My mom was not pleased, but we thought it was so funny.

When I ask myself how a supposedly loving father god can sacrifice to gory and early death, his only son, I can only say that the story supports a patriarchal paradigm in which the mother gives birth, but it's the father who makes the decisions and they usually involve bloody sacrifice.

That never made sense to me.  My dad would have said, no; if a sacrifice is demanded, take me.  I asked myself at that early age, and all the way to the present, how can that be a god of Love?  It's love with strings, love you earn by pleasing others and serving the rules.  There are a zillion things in the big three patriarchal theologies that a person can do to piss the patriarchal god off, and women seem to get blamed and punished for most of it.  The patriarchal gods do not ooze love, no matter how you spin it.

With once exception, ironically enough, the young man who died on the cross, Jesus, (who was sacrificed to appease the Father) taught the most direct road to unconditional divine love that western Christian patriarchal civilizations have to offer. If you stick to his teachings, how can you have hate, war and greed?  How can you have disdain for women; Jesus was a feminist.  How can you have white supremacy; Jesus wasn't white.  How can you be an asshole; Jesus was kind.

Divine Love just is; it finds a way through most things and endures.  It doesn't use fear, force, shame and coercion to exact allegiance.  For millennia before the "his-torical" rise of patriarchies, cultures celebrated the Goddess as the creator of all things.  It's patriarchal thinking that splits us into dualities and calls it reason; goddess religions weren't the flip side of god religions.  A divine paradigm that honors the feminine doesn't dishonor the masculine; perhaps there was a greater awareness that what ultimately matters is spirit.  What feeds ones spirit is not what one feeds ones body, although one does feed the other.  If our ancestors were more aware of themselves as spiritual beings, perhaps there was a common social paradigm based more on a circle than on a pyramid, cooperation as opposed to conquer.

Yet, history is the story told by the conqueror, a spectacular example of this was just set by the US Senate recently.  Despite three accusers and his own bad behavior under oath, including perjury, the light shines on the chosen patriarchal son who will carry the torch of righteousness to the highest court in the land.

Patriarchy is the paradigm where any male of any color, rules over women of their own race. It also includes a hierarchy of supremacy based on race.  At this patriarchal juncture in time, the white race believes itself dominant, and the white male bastion of patriarchy in America are trying to set American women's personal power back a few centuries.  We've had it better than most, but the paradigm they are trying to tighten around us is going to hurt, unless we can change things.

To change this paradigm, we don't have to flip it so that women do what men would do, matriarchy is the patriarchy's idea of ancient goddess religions.  Thanks to the work of excellent archeological scholars in the last century, we know goddess cultures did not promote the same psycho/cultural paradigms we endure today enslaving our bodies, minds and souls.

We live in a time of expanding spiritual consciousness that has it's sister parallel in quantum physics.  Science and spirituality today are opening doors to mind boggling possibilities.  Dreaming is the door I most enjoy exploring, but the fields of exploration beyond the border of patriarchal sanctions are as intriguing as they are numerous.

One example is in medicine;  Functional and Alternative practices that are mainstream now offer paths to healing that include spiritual concerns. As beings of light living in physical bodies, female or male, we survive way beyond this particular physical manifestation we're living in a body right now.  We don't have to earn salvation, we don't need saving to begin with. We've been taught that because the first humans disobeyed the divine, we are born in "sin."  This is one of the doctrines that gives patriarchies the psychic reins to rule us, but it's a made up story.

Spirituality isn't a club the way religion is; spirituality is awareness of the multi-level nature of existence in the physical.  For example, by day we live in waking consciousness, by night we live in dreaming consciousness.  Paying attention to both is breaking from the paradigm that only waking consciousness matters.

Breaking through our own false beliefs is part of a responsible spiritual journey.  If your beliefs justify you judging others and considering yourself superior, let alone entitling you to limit another's freedom, you are deluded in your thinking by a myth that doesn't support Love.  If you think that it's ok for men to tell women what to do, for God to be only male, you have bought the story and drank the Kool Aid.

There is no divine right granted to males to limit the life choices of women, and there is no divine right granted to the white race to dominate and limit the wellbeing of other races. If we are, by nature, spirit residing in matter, immortal in a way that is beyond what any of the paradigms used to indoctrinate us suggest, then it behooves us to find out more and stop giving power to these toxic paradigms.

Religion dominates at a psychological level, the state dominates at a physical level through force.  When those two branches of patriarchy align themselves completely, wielding the law of force and psychological brainwashing, human beings do not do well.  People get hurt, we lose our personal freedoms and choices and we lose our spirit, individually and collectively.

The big three patriarchal religions love to champion men and shame women; the double speak they use to explain the rightness of this is mind boggling.  They want us to believe that "sin" is a blemish on our existence, by sin they mean whatever they want.  They've distorted our natural inclinations with taboos on our sexuality, creating a morality that usually ends up burdening women in the extreme, but that involves so much distortion of the human spirit that we end up with atrocities like the rate of child abuse in the Catholic Church, the church of eunuchs for Christ.

And what's the myth underpinning this mess?  God is a male patriarch, in the big three mainstream religions, he has no partner in the Feminine Divine; in fact, he takes a dim view of women, projecting all sexuality on them, as if it doesn't take two to tango.  Men are just duped by women, so they should beware.  Adam should never have listened to Eve because she listens to the serpent.

From there the story deteriorates into the God who demands obedience and is willing to use shock and awe to enforce his rule.  If my dad was so much better than that at parenting with love, how can God be anything less?  My God was always Love, could take a joke and worked with you, on your behalf.
Unfortunately, after more than 6,000 years of patriarchy, that's not the experience of so many growing up, but fortunately, things can change, if we believe they can.

Love is love, it's a practice, not a doctrine.  If I've known so many human beings capable of such great love, how can God be any less?  In fact, Love is always urging us to be our very best selves.

Love doesn't include treating any other living being as less valuable than me based on supremacy and force.  I join William Blake in bemoaning war and it's cost to the young male gender.  But patriarchy is the culture of war.  If it's the form of social organization practiced world wide, the world order, there will be wars.  It's obvious what has to change.

Once you live in more than this world order, once you trust death and your own living path to it, once you believe in the power of Love to teach the way, in dreams and synchronicities and just plain human experience, you need a broader, happier paradigm to walk with spirit on this earth.  Once we practice Love, each as much as possible, there won't be any need to follow absurd dictums that are detrimental to both the female and male psyche, not to mention the psyches of our children.

There is no superior race or gender, there is only the human spirit. We probably, as spirit, have lived in both female and male bodies on this planet.  The path Of Love never follows bitterness, anger and hate.  The path never follows condemnation, subjugation and force.  Ask Jesus; what would he say?

Patriarchal religions suck.  They are destroying the world.  The multi-national cadre in power right now is worrisome in so many ways, but at their root, they really don't like or respect women.  Example after example are blatant around the world, but the glaring moment right now is a bunch of old white geezers denying American women reproductive freedoms in the USA, the land of the free, especially the land of freedom from religious dogma ruling all.  Sen. Kamala Harris's question to the Republican nominee for the SC says it all; "Can you think of any law giving the government power to regulate a man's body?"

I don't want these wizened old patriarchs making rules that limit the freedom of women in my country.   I don't accept their newspeak justifications.  They can't plant the flag of theocracy, proclaiming what everyone must do to please Almighty God.   Patriarchy is government by patriarchal mysogynists hell bent on controlling women and the surest way is to get God, the Father, to do it.   Without the Feminine Divine, women are not equal in the culture; the more constricted women's role is in a culture, the more overbearing the patriarchal God, especially where her life choices are concerned, like her freedom of sexual and reproductive choice.  Patriarchy is a very unhealthy organizing social principle.

The good news is that it's a paradigm, thus, it is possible to change our individual and collective minds and thereby, change the paradigm.

Same for planting the flag of privilege over others.  We all came in the same spiritual nappies, we each manifested in an assortment of races, gender and places, but we'll all dissolve into somewhere else.  Just like we all do so in dreams, regularly.  There are so many wonderful mysteries that go so far beyond the dogma and the rigid rules, why should we waste another minute in fear and doubt?

No one is in charge of me and I'm not in charge of anyone.  I love to help, as does anyone who practices  Love, but I'm also here to learn, to grow and to promote dreaming.  I"m responsible for the state of my soul, just as for the health of my body and mind.  I must do what I can for myself, especially my spiritual security, and for others, too.  Another teaching of all the great mystics is that we are all one in spirit; if spirit is eternal, perhaps it's what enlivens everything, as native Americans taught.

The Fall of the patriarchy would solve a lot of problems.  I see the passion in women speaking out and stepping up more and more, everyday and it makes me dream that patriarchy may just fade away, lacking any sense, any rhyme or reason for continuing to be the way we do things.  Women and men of spirit and character, with love and compassion, can figure out ways to bring things around.

And if we don't succeed in our own lifetimes, there will probably be even greater opportunities to help once we've crossed; it doesn't end.  What we choose to create, we can create, here "as it is in heaven."