What dreames may come?
The Witch of Portobello:on a spiritual quest/for love/for truth/but was the world ready for her revelations?
Last night, I started watching The Experimental Witch Videos
"I believe @keithpp explains better than my page _The Experimental Witch,_" stated by Paulo Coelho on twitter 24 hours before the Rome premier of the film he inspired to be created through new media.
Also this evening, I discovered Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian @ the Criminology Institute of the Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian Hebrew University of Jerusalem... whose fields of interest include: women, law and social control; women, the military, and violence; rights and identity of children and women in areas of conflict; and policing family violence.
Checkpoints and Counter Spaces
Indeed, we are living in crucial times... Neda Agha Soltan's family have continued to make clear accusations that Iranian gov't security forces are solely to blame for the death of their daughter
And in my continuing to feel the even more recent absence of yet another particularly enigmatic & ethereal being whom I felt like I never knew as well as I had wished (I was often too shy to talk with her, even though we certainly danced at the same times, and both contributed to the construction of many of the same sacred spaces), I have to wonder if there is more that I can take away from this experience... other than to cherish every moment with the people whom I love, as if it were our last? Our LA & Austin extended family communities were finally able to celebrate the life of Andrea Burden, this past weekend. And Lucent Dossier posted another heartfelt tribute to her, entitled "Be Kinder..."
This is a sentiment which always leads me to contemplate PKD's cyber-gnostic philosophy of compassion:
"It's not what you look like, or what planet you were born on. It's how kind you are."
Paulo Coelho often references that "God has a masculine and a feminine face, rigor and compassion." This is a common theme in esoteric doctrines throughout human experience. Although many dominant religions have forgotten about the divine feminine, she is beginning to reveal herself again!
However, at the same time that I am embracing the cosmos with love, I am also returning to the rigors of discipline in my daily life... I seem to get more out of my life when I not only honor the cosmic bliss of the eternal now, but also celebrate the ceremonies of the ancients!
So, on that dark note, here's a deep lecture about the philosophy of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning author, Ernest Becker... from Professor Sheldon Solomon, for which he suggests a mash-up title, "The Structure of Evil: History is a Nightmare from Which I am Trying to Awaken."
You can also read the entire transcript, but here's a profound summary of one or two of Becker's main points that I feel is particularly pertinent to this discussion:
"All right, well his argument is as follows, as articulated in the _Escape from Evil_ book. What he says is, 'Look, no matter how powerful and convincing your culture is, it is ultimately a symbol. All cultural constructs are symbolic, they’re human creations; however, death is a very real, physical phenomenon.' And the point that Becker makes very simply is that no symbol, regardless of its power or potency, will ever be sufficient to overcome the physical reality of death. It’s like mixing apples and oranges.
Consequently, and I’ve got to degenerate into some psychoanalytical language, which is probably okay for some, less so for others, what Becker says, again borrowing from William James, he says, 'You know what, therefore no matter how good your culture is or how much you believe in it, there’s always going to be some residual anxiety about death.' And you’re not aware of that, he claims, because that anxiety is repressed.
And then, using Freud’s ideas, what Becker says is that repressed anxiety is projected onto another group of individuals, either inside or outside of your culture, that you designate as the all-encompassing repository of evil, the eradication of which would make life on Earth as it is in heaven. He calls them scapegoats, and I think we’re familiar with them; they’re either in-house or external ones. Either way, Becker says, we’ve got a problem; either you run into people that are different and that’s a problem, or you declare somebody to be different and that’s a problem. Because what Becker then goes on to do, borrowing very heavily from some sociologists that we’re very fond of, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann in a book called _The Social Construction of Reality,_ what Becker does following Berger and Luckmann is to talk about the psychological processes that are instigated when people encounter others who do not share their beliefs, or encounter somebody who they have designated as different."
Regarding this scenario, I have always been a proponent of libertine philosophy in one form or another... and I particularly enjoy Frank Herbert's maxim known as the sign of profound accord:
"We are here to remove a primary weapon from the hands of disputant religions. That weapon--the claim to possession of the one and only revelation."
To conclude, I must offer one more quote from Prof. Solomon's lecture:
"Becker also insists that there’s got to be a religious dimension to any serious effort to improve the human condition. He basically said, 'You know what, there’s no way that we’re going to get out of this without dabbling in religion broadly defined.' One of my favorite Becker quotes in The Denial of Death is that 'Psychology can only take you so far, at which time it drops you directly on the doorstep of religion.'
Well what does he mean by that? His point very simply is that every one of us, whether we liked it or not, just to get up in the morning we have to believe things about reality. Every one of us has beliefs about reality. They may be religious, they may be secular, but every one of us has beliefs about reality. And if we’re honest with ourselves, there’s no way that those beliefs about reality can ever be unambiguously confirmed."
In my first reading of The Denial of Death, 20-odd years ago; I confirmed that there is something extremely valuable in ritually re-enacting the heroic stories of our ancestors (what Joseph Campbell would have referred to as ceremonial celebrations of The Monomyth) that seem to in some way account for some sort of need in this unconscious/a-rational/spiritual facet of our existence... journeying down into the underworld and up into the divine realms, or simply going outside & beyond our normal experience in order to bring back some sort of gnosis that can benefit ourselves & our people (whether or not they are ready for it, like in Plato's allegory of the cave)... and in fact, I would like to even suggest that the ultimate myths are those which benefit ALL people... for whatever different lives we may lead, we all have one thing in common... "When we have shuffle'd off this mortall coile"
In this vein, I have always been fascinated with shadow-work... whether by one microcosmic way or another macrocosmic way (however devolved)?!!! So, perhaps it's no wonder that I am curious about things like Terror management theory?
And if you prefer the graphic novel (aka "comic") medium... check out "Reapy: The Littlest Harbinger of Death!"
Last night, I started watching The Experimental Witch Videos
"I believe @keithpp explains better than my page _The Experimental Witch,_" stated by Paulo Coelho on twitter 24 hours before the Rome premier of the film he inspired to be created through new media.
Also this evening, I discovered Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian @ the Criminology Institute of the Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian Hebrew University of Jerusalem... whose fields of interest include: women, law and social control; women, the military, and violence; rights and identity of children and women in areas of conflict; and policing family violence.
Checkpoints and Counter Spaces
Indeed, we are living in crucial times... Neda Agha Soltan's family have continued to make clear accusations that Iranian gov't security forces are solely to blame for the death of their daughter
And in my continuing to feel the even more recent absence of yet another particularly enigmatic & ethereal being whom I felt like I never knew as well as I had wished (I was often too shy to talk with her, even though we certainly danced at the same times, and both contributed to the construction of many of the same sacred spaces), I have to wonder if there is more that I can take away from this experience... other than to cherish every moment with the people whom I love, as if it were our last? Our LA & Austin extended family communities were finally able to celebrate the life of Andrea Burden, this past weekend. And Lucent Dossier posted another heartfelt tribute to her, entitled "Be Kinder..."
This is a sentiment which always leads me to contemplate PKD's cyber-gnostic philosophy of compassion:
"It's not what you look like, or what planet you were born on. It's how kind you are."
Paulo Coelho often references that "God has a masculine and a feminine face, rigor and compassion." This is a common theme in esoteric doctrines throughout human experience. Although many dominant religions have forgotten about the divine feminine, she is beginning to reveal herself again!
However, at the same time that I am embracing the cosmos with love, I am also returning to the rigors of discipline in my daily life... I seem to get more out of my life when I not only honor the cosmic bliss of the eternal now, but also celebrate the ceremonies of the ancients!
So, on that dark note, here's a deep lecture about the philosophy of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning author, Ernest Becker... from Professor Sheldon Solomon, for which he suggests a mash-up title, "The Structure of Evil: History is a Nightmare from Which I am Trying to Awaken."
Click to viewYou can also read the entire transcript, but here's a profound summary of one or two of Becker's main points that I feel is particularly pertinent to this discussion:
"All right, well his argument is as follows, as articulated in the _Escape from Evil_ book. What he says is, 'Look, no matter how powerful and convincing your culture is, it is ultimately a symbol. All cultural constructs are symbolic, they’re human creations; however, death is a very real, physical phenomenon.' And the point that Becker makes very simply is that no symbol, regardless of its power or potency, will ever be sufficient to overcome the physical reality of death. It’s like mixing apples and oranges.
Consequently, and I’ve got to degenerate into some psychoanalytical language, which is probably okay for some, less so for others, what Becker says, again borrowing from William James, he says, 'You know what, therefore no matter how good your culture is or how much you believe in it, there’s always going to be some residual anxiety about death.' And you’re not aware of that, he claims, because that anxiety is repressed.
And then, using Freud’s ideas, what Becker says is that repressed anxiety is projected onto another group of individuals, either inside or outside of your culture, that you designate as the all-encompassing repository of evil, the eradication of which would make life on Earth as it is in heaven. He calls them scapegoats, and I think we’re familiar with them; they’re either in-house or external ones. Either way, Becker says, we’ve got a problem; either you run into people that are different and that’s a problem, or you declare somebody to be different and that’s a problem. Because what Becker then goes on to do, borrowing very heavily from some sociologists that we’re very fond of, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann in a book called _The Social Construction of Reality,_ what Becker does following Berger and Luckmann is to talk about the psychological processes that are instigated when people encounter others who do not share their beliefs, or encounter somebody who they have designated as different."
Regarding this scenario, I have always been a proponent of libertine philosophy in one form or another... and I particularly enjoy Frank Herbert's maxim known as the sign of profound accord:
"We are here to remove a primary weapon from the hands of disputant religions. That weapon--the claim to possession of the one and only revelation."
To conclude, I must offer one more quote from Prof. Solomon's lecture:
"Becker also insists that there’s got to be a religious dimension to any serious effort to improve the human condition. He basically said, 'You know what, there’s no way that we’re going to get out of this without dabbling in religion broadly defined.' One of my favorite Becker quotes in The Denial of Death is that 'Psychology can only take you so far, at which time it drops you directly on the doorstep of religion.'
Well what does he mean by that? His point very simply is that every one of us, whether we liked it or not, just to get up in the morning we have to believe things about reality. Every one of us has beliefs about reality. They may be religious, they may be secular, but every one of us has beliefs about reality. And if we’re honest with ourselves, there’s no way that those beliefs about reality can ever be unambiguously confirmed."
In my first reading of The Denial of Death, 20-odd years ago; I confirmed that there is something extremely valuable in ritually re-enacting the heroic stories of our ancestors (what Joseph Campbell would have referred to as ceremonial celebrations of The Monomyth) that seem to in some way account for some sort of need in this unconscious/a-rational/spiritual facet of our existence... journeying down into the underworld and up into the divine realms, or simply going outside & beyond our normal experience in order to bring back some sort of gnosis that can benefit ourselves & our people (whether or not they are ready for it, like in Plato's allegory of the cave)... and in fact, I would like to even suggest that the ultimate myths are those which benefit ALL people... for whatever different lives we may lead, we all have one thing in common... "When we have shuffle'd off this mortall coile"
In this vein, I have always been fascinated with shadow-work... whether by one microcosmic way or another macrocosmic way (however devolved)?!!! So, perhaps it's no wonder that I am curious about things like Terror management theory?
And if you prefer the graphic novel (aka "comic") medium... check out "Reapy: The Littlest Harbinger of Death!"