How to Put Your Good Anger to Use Pt. 3

posted in: General Thought (Tags: , , )
posted by WilliamPatrickCorgan

02.04.10 5:43 pm

Being responsible to yourself in a healthy way is probably one of the most difficult things to master in life. If you give too much of yourself away to others to the extent that you drain your own batteries, you find that there is little energy left for your own peace of mind. If you become selfish and devote most of your efforts to taking care of only you, you become isolated and miss out on the best parts of life. Nature provides us with some clues as to the proper balance, as the plant and animal kingdom work together to achieve maximum profit for all involved. And where there isn’t that healthy partnering, there is plenty of evidence of adaptation.

The other day I was sitting near the ocean on some deep black rocks that had been formed where molten lava had met the sea, a snapshot of a collision from who knows how many millions of years back. I was enjoying sitting on my little isthmus where, out of the corner of my eye, I detected a little movement. It was a crab about the size of my hand moving along the sea line. He was almost impossible to spot when he moved, because he was the exact color of the rock. On his back were some markings that looked like the shield of an ancient African warrior. He was invisible, but, if you saw him, he looked fierce.

If you have ever found a dead crab along the shore and picked it up, it is surprising how light they are. Their weight is all in their aggressive life force.

In part 2, I made reference to the local cultures that surround us, drawing the simple parallel that conformity is death, because it allows systems of power to enslave us in predictable patterns of behavior. This, in turn, makes us weak, because we are cut off from the internal voicing that tells us we deserve more than what is so readily handed to us. I identify that voice from within as a little sliver of God consciousness trying to be heard.

If you are reading this, chances are you have a laptop or a nice home computer. Chances are you aren’t living under a bridge. I’m going to assume you have some form of power, because, at the very least, you’ve demonstrated the power to click on this website and read.

Let me tell you, there is more power in that than you know. Most propaganda these days comes through the eyes. Have you noticed there aren’t as many parades as there used to be? No need, when there can be a parade of absolute junk placed in front of you daily to keep you medicated and placated.

If you draw a line of frustration from within yourself to the very top of what ails you, for example, a company that is polluting your air, or a runaway government, that line must pass through the smaller culture around you that says that it is ok. They say ok through saying nothing. The more we think that leaving a comment on a blog is protest, the more we play right into the hands of those that hold the strings.

I respect anyone with an opinion who wants to play by the basic rules of moral decency. I, too, used to believe in the idea that I could profit from attacking someone or something. From time to time, I will still mouth off, but, honestly, it has never gotten me anywhere. If I say anything these days, it is probably because I can’t resist gloating when hypocrites get their karma bill in the mail. Hopefully, I will grow out of that soon as well.

So far, in pts. 1, 2, and 3 of this little series, I have talked a lot about a state of mind, but have offered little in the way of action. That is because the proper state of mind is the majority of the action that must take place.

So, let me illustrate a simple beginning to what kind of action I am talking about, coming from a holistic state of mind. I will go back to the coffeehouse, and our happy ‘laptop’ couple drinking their drinks like two peas in a self-absorbed pod. For the sake of dignity, I will skip over what band they are probably currently listening to because it makes them feel smart. As I said, I hope to grow out of my need to illustrate even that minor point. But I jest…

Ok, so, you walk in and spot this happy pair, and you feel angry. Some would say, “What is worth getting angry about? Just mind your own business and move on, blah blah.” I’ve heard all that junk for years about how I should just worry about myself, and I’m not so perfect, and who am I to judge, blah blah.

You see, I have to understand that it is these two, sitting right next to me, that are fucking me up good. Now, is it just these two? No. There are many more of them from whence they came. They must mass produce them in a factory somewhere. But yes, these two, sitting right next to me while I sip my iced green tea, are fucking me. They may not realize it, but they might as well be hacking into me with whips.

If you have made it this far, I commend you! Thank you for giving this a chance to be understood; these are hard points to make, and it took me a long time to figure them out for myself. So, let me take a small step back and say this: my anger against this couple is not personal. I don’t want to hurt them, slander them, or anything of the sort. I wish that they were not enslaved to systems that are hurting them. My anger comes from the fact that their subservience to a false god is making it almost impossible for me to be free, to live as happy as possible.

So, first and foremost, there is a spiritual lesson here, the lesson of detachment, proper detachment. I can not look at this couple as my enemy. I can not see them as anything but the divine beings that they are. First, I must serve God and His understanding above my limited mortal one. So, sitting there watching them, I am not thinking to myself, “I hope they die.” Rather, I am thinking compassionately, “I hope they live.”

You can spot conformity a mile away. It is pretty rare to see a saint walking around in khaki pants. But, let’s just say this couple is cooler than that. They go to art galleries, and they don’t just order any drink, they get theirs custom made. Heck, they even blog! My anger comes from the fact that they are not free. My anger comes from the fact that they have sold themselves on a loving union based in their own reflection. My anger comes from the fact that, by thinking they are free because they choose one candidate over another, they made a choice. My anger comes from the fact that the pills they take at night to help them sleep are shortening years off their life, not to mention running poison into the groundwater. The list is endless.

I am furious, because, deep down, they don’t really want to know! They donate after one disaster far, far away, while ignoring the disaster that lives just down the road from them. You know, the people who don’t have laptops who live under the bridge.  Why can’t we care about everyone equally?

Yes, you gotta get mad at the people who don’t want to see clearly. You gotta allow yourself to feel that indignation for how a thousand little surrenders make it impossible to affect any real change. Look around you and see that nothing is going to change as long as the majority doesn’t mind that we are not only living in the End Times, but that we are all making sure we each get a starring role. But I jest again…

Haeckel Prosobranchia

How to Put Your Good Anger to Use Pt. 2

posted in: General Thought (Tags: , , , )
posted by WilliamPatrickCorgan

02.02.10 10:50 pm

If you were born a peace-loving person, or if you have been the victim of violence yourself, you may find that accessing a deeper, honorable rage within yourself is not the easiest thing to do. Should you access it, you may also find that sustaining that anger beyond its initial fire is also not a simple matter. We all have causes that touch us personally, issues that are easy to get worked up about. But, often times, in identifying singular issues, we miss the bigger, holistic picture of how we can be bought off our indignation by tailor-made promises instead of junking those systems that hurt all of us. These systems of power are what we need to address, because part of their construction is to either strip us of our power or ask us politely to hand it over.

In pt 1 of this series, I targeted the easy marks of the government and the media as places to start, but, working from within to without, let’s start a little smaller and identify those issues that are within closer reach. To refer to the neighborhoods we grew up in, or the social circles we hang out in currently, I’ll just use the general word ‘culture’. I hope you’ll get my drift in the way that I use it. Here is an example:

You walk into your local coffeehouse. You see a couple sitting together, both on their laptops. He is drinking a double frappe mochaccino with a shot of espresso, and she is having a green tea. They are dressed exactly as you would expect them to be dressed.

They represent part of your culture, whether you want them to or not, or whether or not that is you sitting there with your loved one – so yes, the culture that you encounter in your immediate vicinity. Is that couple worth getting angry about? And what does it matter what they do, how they act, and what they drink?

The easy answer is that it doesn’t matter. It will be tricky to show you though why those things are worth getting angry about. Take for example your family. Unlike me, many people are close to and get along fairly well with their family, and wouldn’t have many bones to pick with their cousins or siblings other than little things not even worth mentioning. If you have been raised well, what would be worth getting angry about with them?

So, for your immediate culture, we’ll identify your local world: the coffeehouse, your family and friends, the neighborhood where you live, that sort of thing. And, just to be clear, I am not talking only about the straight world; I am also referring to alternative cultures and lifestyles, whether you hang out with punk rockers or goths or whatever. Whatever culture you find yourself in, that is what I am talking about – those immediate places and faces that you can touch and can touch you. The question becomes, “If I like where I live, like my surroundings, my dog, and my local coffeehouse, and my mom, and the school I grew up in, what does any of that have to do with being angry?”

Unfortunately, they are all part of the problem, and I can say that, pretty readily knowing that there are some exceptions. Whether they understand it or not, or whether you can easily see what I am saying or not, all these things mentioned are part of the smaller ends of the system that feed the larger systems that hover over us with control.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you get mad at your cousin for eating processed food and listening to some horrible award-winning band that he has spoon fed. Is it his fault that he is contributing to the demise of civilization?

Ok, I’m joking here, but I am only trying to illustrate the point that you must honestly identify those things around you that are not only hurting the people you love and the area you grew up in or the area you now call home, because they are also helping to feed something much larger that is hurting you.

Going back to the cousin who eats genetically-modified, corn syrup-laced doughnuts because, even though he knows they are bad for him, he “likes the taste.” Should any responsibility be assigned to him? The answer is yes. Being willing to see how the culture around you is contributing to what is wrong right now can help righteously sustain your anger, because it is hurting those near and dear to you.

So, without much doubt, the culture close to you is hurting you, hurting itself, and aiding and abetting systems that enslave us. And that should make you quite angry indeed. Conformity to anything means someone else is pulling the strings, and all they have to do is find the right string to pull. There is nothing Love-based in manipulation. Love has nothing to do with how someone convinces you to buy something, or eat something without telling you that it is going to help destroy your kidney. These are not little crimes against humanity, but one big fraud against humanity.

They, whoever they are, need us, whoever we are, to believe that we aren’t worth much at all. And they seem to be doing a very good job.

Haeckel Prosobranchia

How to Put Your Good Anger to Use Pt. 1

posted in: General Thought (Tags: , , , )
posted by WilliamPatrickCorgan

02.01.10 1:37 pm

All change starts from within. The sooner you recognize that you are ten times more likely to affect change from within than projected without, you can relax your focus on where it really needs to be grounded. You are the instrument of change. All of us, every single one of us, and every cell we are composed of, is holy. I can say this with confidence, because all consciousness is imbued with God, by God, of God. In this, we are given levels of free will to experience and learn.

So how does an idea like ’self-righteous anger’ apply to big thoughts like Love and Anger (the good kind of anger, for an explanation of SRA as I define it, please see the previous post)? Love, by its very mandate, is righteous; it IS the right by which we exist. Anger has its just moments, although they are far and few between. There are moments in time, however, that call for strong decisions to be made, where we as a human race are to be called to work together to really take on injustice in many ways.

There is always talk about how problems need to be solved – by the government, by the media, by celebrities through the media – yet, ironically, many of these problems never get solved. So, step one I am asking you to take is to take this leap of faith with me: these problems don’t get solved because there are many that benefit from them not being solved! Let that sink in for a second. Think about it: if everyone on Earth decided to tackle hunger, it would be solved within a year or so. That’s a fact. IF, IF everyone wanted it solved. That’s a big IF.

Those kinds of ideas invite instant questions, as they should. But the fact remains, if we collectively wanted to solve those problems, we could. But, deep down, we must face how we contribute or, even better, look the other way on these issues. I don’t say that because I think you should feel guilty. I say it because I think we should feel truth, we should experience truth.

Now, this is not some kind of lame ‘people have the power’ type speech. People don’t have the power. Yes, you read me right: people don’t have the power, because they have given it away, long before you and I were born. Given it away for security or convenience, but yes, the power has been given away, so this is to talk about how to reclaim it. After all, you can certainly begin to reclaim your power. That choice you can make.

So, I’m going to ask this question to myself: how does one begin by applying the right kind of anger within?

Well, that’s a little tricky, because, done from the wrong place, it turns into guilt or shame or self-abuse. You have to start by identifying that which is yours and that which isn’t. Things that are not ‘yours’ involve ideas given to you by your family or culture, barbs wrapped in implied commitments or obligations. Try to let go of every idea you have picked up along the way.

If you can kind of do that, even just a little, you’ll see that what’s left is what you think of yourself, as you are, to yourself. If you are harsh in your assessment, try to be kind so that the point I am circling around can be made.

If you can find this spot within yourself that says, “I matter, my life is an opportunity, I don’t want to waste it, I want to know what God wants from me,” that is soil this seed can grow from. Your seed can easily grow into, “I don’t like what I see, injustice in this world offends me, I will not stand for being lied too.” The anger is not to be applied to you. Instead, the anger is to come from you from the fresh spring of your right to positively and actively shape your world.

You have a right to be angry. Identify that right, and the decisions that can be made afterward will be rooted in the Divine Right for Peace.

St. Philomena Catholic Church

One Against The Temple

posted in: General Thought (Tags: , , )
posted by WilliamPatrickCorgan

01.29.10 5:46 pm

I have been mulling for a while now a concept I’ll call ’self-righteous anger’, and I’ll do my best to explain what I mean by it.

There are many forms of anger, and, for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say most of them are bad, especially if they lead to any form violence, be it a mentality that leads to the attack of another, or even to that of self-harm. Anger usually shows a lack of control, and, if you are lucky enough to read sometimes the comments people leave after some tragedy has befallen an individual, you’ll know there is plenty of the wrong kind of anger to go around.

The earthquake in Haiti has invariably led to unfortunate public comments that reveal a true lack of empathy by some in our society to the plight of others. But massive human displacement is an easy idea to sympathize with and understand when you have so many helpless against the seemingly benign force of nature. The width of that situation against the bad apples who use it to politicize their racist eugenics is easy to spot.

Harder to identify, but no less insidious, is the anger of entitlement. The right by one to throw stones against the positive goals of the group without taking any personal responsibility for how they might help impact the whole of society. The Internet is a wonderful tool for entitlement, for anyone can do or say anything without much responsibility at all, including what I’m doing here. Standing on this digital soapbox is mostly free. I say ‘mostly’, because not all of what I say goes unaccounted for. Contribution to the whole requires risk most don’t want to take.

Anger, generally speaking, says “I have a right! You owe me! How dare you?! Who are you to tell me?!” There are a few situations in life where one does earn the right to be downright angry, and it makes sense to let the hurt come up with adrenaline so that those emotions can be put in the proper context. But self-righteous anger is different, and that’s why I have gone to great lengths to present it here. I hope that my thoughts on it reach you in the way I intend.

Now, I’m no expert on the Bible. In fact, I’ve barely read it at all. I consider the Aquarian Gospels of Jesus the Christ a more reliable source, and, if you are curious, check that book out if you have a chance. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, I’m no biblical scholar, but I do have a few stories from it that I truly love. My very favorite is when Jesus goes to the temple and confronts the people selling things outside of it. He knocks over their tables, whips them, and drives them out. He tells them (sorry Jesus, I’m paraphrasing), “This is a Holy place, you have no right here.”

The way I have always interpreted this story is that there is a time where that kind of raw, righteous anger is justified. Now, I’m not talking about violence, because Lord knows I cannot differentiate between good and bad violence. But I have sat on the mountain for awhile to think this over, and I do think I can speak on the right kind of anger versus the wrong kind. So, simply said, I think it is time to get really pissed off.

Let’s say you accept the basic premise that I’m suggesting, that it is a time in the culture of man to get genuinely angry about the world around us. That it is time to get furious at the way things are going. That it is the right moment to go to the temples and holy places we hold dear, and throw out the forces and entities that plague us. Let’s say you are a-ok with the premise that there are things right-fucking-now to get angry about.

Alright, then what? How does this manifest itself into action? What are some proper, holistic steps to take in life that involve self-righteous anger? I promise to outline 5 steps of civil disobedience – a course of action made manifest – that we all can start considering to display our inner Holy tough guy. I’ll outline these 5 ideas one at a time, and suggest why they might make some kind of sense to take against the darkness.

Life Labyrinthitis

posted in: Contributed Posts (Tags: , , )
posted by Ve Magni

01.28.10 1:11 pm

I just moved back to Los Angeles from Berlin a few days ago, and I’m
experiencing what I call life vertigo: that swimmy, disoriented
feeling we feel in response to a change of conditions like a big move,
changing or losing a job, death of a loved one, divorce, or other
drastic changes. Over the course of my move, my perception of time has
been bizarre, I’ve acquired countless bruises from repeatedly walking
into stationary objects, some simple everyday tasks are comically
outsmarting me, and I can’t seem to keep more than one thought going
in my head at a time. In spite of all this, I’ve managed to get a lot
done in a few days, and am soldiering forth to establish my life
again.

However, as I drove on the freeway today in what was probably the most
incredible rainstorm I’ve ever seen in LA, I occasionally felt
overwhelming pangs of panic in my chest. My heart felt like it was
about to explode, and parts of my brain were screaming at each other
that something horrible was happening. The rain was epic, but this
feeling of panic was not precipitated (no pun intended) by any events
in particular, or by a lack of bad weather driving experience, and so
I felt that I was having an irrational physiological response to a
sudden change of conditions, the rain and flooded streets, layered
upon another rather large sudden change of conditions, moving across
the world; my mental conduit for properly interpreting the changes in
my environment was inflamed.

All of this got me thinking about the physiological causes of vertigo,
like labyrinthitis, or inflammation of the inner ear. The name stuck
out as a fantastic metaphor: we navigate through the labyrinth of
life, feeling as if we know where we’re going only to find sometimes
that we don’t recognize where we are and can’t see how we got there,
and so we feel disoriented and panicked because we can’t tell which is
the right direction. What I find really interesting about
labyrinthitis is that the prolonged vertigo associated with it can
directly cause anxiety, panic attacks and even depression because of
the brain’s chronic misinterpretation of sensory input, i.e.
perceiving physical danger where there is none.

A common treatment for labyritnthitis-related anxiety and depression
is the same as clinical anxiety and depression, which is to prescribe
anti-depressives. I’m not proposing this as a commentary on depression
medication in general, but it seems a bit strange to treat depression
resulting from a physiological condition the same as emotional
depression, and I think that’s telling of our symptom-obsessed culture
(and the industries that encourage it).

The problem with only addressing symptoms is that we sometimes don’t
look deeply enough past the symptoms, whether emotional or physical,
to see what is causing them in order to find a real solution, and can
end up covering deep wounds with band-aids. That might mean treating
the symptoms of chronic vertigo while the cause worsens, or in my
case, it might mean treating the panic I felt on the freeway without
addressing the deeper anxiety from moving across the world, or even
more deeply, why that move provokes so much anxiety in the first
place.

Generally, it’s been shown that people who feel that their condition
is out of their control are less likely to improve than those who try
to have some positive control, and it’s as true for life vertigo as it
is for medical vertigo. A patient who doesn’t believe that they can be
helped is no better off than a panicked driver who lets go of the
steering wheel or a weary job hunter who doesn’t submit a resume; if
we want to get through it, we have to try. For me, that meant
looking past the panic, taking deep breaths and calming myself down so
that I could navigate through the rain safely, keeping in mind that my
body was overreacting due to deeper causes. And for all of us, it
means not letting the overwhelming feelings from the changes in our
lives take control of our perceptions so that we can navigate forward
through the labyrinth of life, even when we’re not entirely sure which
direction forward is.

Power and Perception

posted in: Contributed Posts
posted by Charlotte

01.14.10 1:52 pm

When I think of the Native American elder I walked with for so many years, I often see an Eagle. On many levels, he reminded me of this magnificient bird. I have a picture of him holding an eagle. When I first looked at the picture I was stunned at the resemblance between the two of them. It must have shown on my face because he smiled and said “My brother”. Other times, when thinking of him, I see the Sacred Pipe. Both of these images are symbols of Power.

If asked which of these images, Eagle and Pipe, represent power, modern man would often say “the eagle”. He knows that the eagle has flown before many powerful armies. It is the symbol of power on earth and in the skies. In the Pipe he may see an image of a culture conquered and almost destroyed by the eagle.

They are flip sides of the same power. The pipe is a way to bring self, the earth and the Great Mystery together. The Pipe is a way of life. A road to take. Much the same way these two images imply different sides of power, so do the male and female sides of humanity depict different sides of the same power.

We have lost our way, as a culture, in the understanding of power. Wehave confused brute strength with power. To be female is to be weak. Women are listed as minorities, entitled to special benefits by the government. Even though the census shows there are more women than men in this country. Even though stats show women out live men. Even though these and other facts are in place, the mind set the government reflects that of the nation. Women are the weaker sex.

Would you think a dime wasn’t worth ten cents if, when you put it on the table, tails came up instead of heads? It’s the same purchasing power no matter how it falls. We, as women, are the flip side of the same power. Or they are, depending how you see the dime.

Moon Time, or the Menses has been distorted through the ages of male oriented power. There is actually a pill now to enable women to have only 4 periods a year. It seems as if everything that makes us female needs be erased, hidden or shamed. Ceremony and ritual were invented, so to speak, to connect men to the Natural World. Women, by their nature, are already connected. The tides, the moon, the planets, the sun, the seasons are reflected in the body and mind of women. Men, without ceremony, would be robots. Women on their Moon Time are forbidden to attend any ceremony in which the Sacred Pipe is used. Because the ancients understood the true power of this time in the women. It can overcome the greatest ceremonial leader almost every time. Traditional women understood this power. I’ve witnessed Sun Dancers dropping like flies because women misunderstood their own power. They were insulted and angered by the fact that they could not attend ceremony, using the mind set of the day to assume they were being dubbed “lesser than”, when in fact, their power was being acknowledge and honored. So they thought no one would know and attended anyway. They were always found out and asked to leave. Sometimes escorted out.

The time of woman is the Dark Moon, or what we call now the “New Moon”. How frightening are nights of no moonlight to the men? Even Julius Caesar spoke of the fear of a moonless night. It has been known for ages and feared. Why, is the question. Why is a moonless night so frightening? It is the absence of the Female. To the untrained eye, the absence of the Whole. Imbalance. Men see this as un-natural. Women understand the time of going inward, reflection: metamorphosis. A time of renewal and understanding of past events and a strengthening to go forward toward new events with a more understanding eye, mind and heart. It is a time for women to gather power. Women Power.

The time of Woman is returning. It is the subtle prophesy of 2012. Whether you follow the Mayan prophesy, the newly discovered papers of Nostradamus, or the Hopi or the Ghost Dance, you should be able to see the Time of Female Power is about to commence. It will be the time of change and renewal. We are ushering in the time of the true Global Family and it is the time of perfected woman. (Not to be confused with Hollywood and Madison Avenue’s depiction of perfection) Perfected Woman knows Power and Prayer are what keep her family safe and fed and in Peace. She knows both sides of the coin and honors the difference. She honors her sons and her daughters as equals in her eyes and in her heart. She understands that their differences are what makes the world go round, keeps the race going and brings balance to Earth as it is in Heaven.

Women are, by their very nature, vehicles of renewal and change. The Earth is being renewed. It will be a difficult time but also a necessary time. Who knows better than woman that it is the trials of labor that brings forth new life and after suffering those trials often goes back and does it again. The hope and promise of new life are powerful motivators.

Women, I won’t presume to tell you what your roll will be in this new Era. I will only ask that you begin now to respect and truly understand who you are and of what you are capable. Begin to understand and respect this Moon Time gift, whether you are just coming into it, are living through it, or have come years away from it. Try, in the days ahead, to understand what woman is. Think of the “ages” of women. Reflect on all this power mystery. It lives in you and is the basis of the new Era.
Power and Prayer.
The Eagle and The Pipe.
Two sides of the same coin.

Remembered Worlds

posted in: Contributed Posts (Tags: , , , )
posted by Ve Magni

01.07.10 4:58 pm

I watched Avatar this past weekend, and it got me thinking about the
fantasy worlds created from human imagination, like Avatar’s Pandora,
the world of wizards in Harry Potter, and the comic book universes of
superheroes. What I’ve come to wonder as a lover of science fiction
and fantasy stories is whether these worlds might be created out of
lingering subconscious memories of past incarnations somewhere other
than Earth.

There have been studies of past and between life regressions where
several people have independently given very similar accounts of
incarnations upon other planets, and have described strong opinions of
spirits about the different planets on which they have lived. Is it
possible that some of the fantastical things created by what we
believe is our imagination might be faint recollections, or even
nostalgic longings for these other worlds?

The theory gleaned from past and between life regressions is that when
a spirit inhabits a new human on Earth, the person should start out
with no conscious memory of where they come from, or any detailed
awareness of the nature of the spiritual universe or any past
incarnations. However sometimes, especially as we grow into our adult
maturity, we start to feel a nagging sensation that maybe we come from
a place much warmer, brighter, and more loving, and that feeling can
consume us if we don’t feel connected to or motivated by our lives on
Earth, with all of its hardship and suffering. For some people, this
feeling can even lead them to commit suicide to escape a life on
Earth.

Likewise, we can start to feel more connected to fantasy worlds than
we do to the “real” world. Some people feel so connected to a fantasy
world that they start living as if they really are a vampire, a
wizard, or a member of Starfleet. People might just call them geeks,
but what if they are channeling memories shared in our collective
consciousness of these other worlds on which our spirits have
previously incarnated?

If there are worlds out there on which we have superpowers, magical
powers, or any other abilities that we don’t have here, that could
help explain our human race’s compulsive obsession with acquiring
power, and why for some people, no amount of power on Earth will ever
be enough to satisfy them; if what they really want is to once again
be able to fly, breathe underwater, connect psychically with animals,
or shoot lightning bolts from their eyes, then mere money and material
possessions won’t compensate for their limitations.

The idea of superior worlds or superpowers is so ubiquitous among
humans’ creativity, and so many people feel such a strong connection
to these fantasy worlds, it makes me think that maybe we didn’t just
invent them from nothing. It would be amazing to find out after my
spirit moves on that Superman’s home planet of Krypton and Avatar’s
Pandora were based on real planets, and that somewhere in the
universe, we really do use magic wands on a daily basis.

Even if those worlds are created from our deepest memories, while we
are here on Earth, they are just fantasy. Obsessing about what we
can’t do won’t help us learn what is possible. Committing to who and
where we are right now will help us feel more at ease on this crazy
rock. But if those other worlds are real, I wonder what memories about
our lives here are recalled, and what the fantasy world of Earth as
seen through the eyes of an alien would look like. What are the most
amazing and special things about being a human on Earth that we will
long for after we are gone?

Norman Rockwell - A Drum for Tommy

Christmas Memories

posted in: General Thought (Tags: , , , )
posted by WilliamPatrickCorgan

12.18.09 11:55 am

The date that marks the birth of Jesus Christ was once a pagan holiday celebrated in Babylon as The Feast of The Son of Isis. Drinking, carousing, and gift giving were part of the holiday, and as you can see clearly, not much has changed through the years! I wish I could say that all my Christmas memories have been wonderful, but I can offer that almost all of them have been important to me. If I took the time, I could probably chart out where I have been on Christmas day for my entire life.

The first few Christmases would have been spent with my mother and father and their parents. I remember a visit from Santa during that time to our basement apartment. I asked my father recently who that was in the red suit, and he said he couldn’t remember. I still like to believe it was my maternal grandfather in the outfit, whether it was or not. After my parents split, I was with my great grandmother for a spell. Then my step-mother’s family came into the picture, and, for many years, I had 4 Christmases: one at my dad’s mother’s, one at my step-mom’s mother’s, one at my maternal grandmother’s, and one with my mom. It was a great way to get lots and lots of presents.

When I became a young adult, whoever I was in a relationship with became part of my holiday cavalcade of driving to and fro. It seemed that half the day on Christmas was spent in the car listening to yuletide classics on the radio. Christmas is best for me when you don’t have to go far, and you get to eat like a prince, and have a wonderfully warm, mellow day. I am quite sensitive, however, to any situation that doesn’t make the whole day of Christmas special. I still very much believe in the healing miracle of the day, and that will never change.

Writing about my holiday past on a website devoted to a change of consciousness seems a little strange, even to me, but I realize as I type this out that, as always, there is a beautiful intention to the way Spirit works on us when we allow ourselves to be guided. The way I come to write many of these posts is by letting myself be still, and just listening, allowing The Voice of Spirit to guide me to a place of revelation. I don’t feel I faithfully complete every task handed to me, but I am always willing to try if I allow my heart to be open enough. I find, sitting here, that I am sensitive writing about Christmas, because, for one thing, I worry that, in some way, by honoring my familial traditions, I may seem to not be honoring yours (if they happen to be different). I hope that you know if you come in contact with what I am, writing that I love, that the holiday season celebrates in my eyes all the people of the Earth, no matter what their belief system. I see the day of Christmas as a day of unification, because, in my experience, it has been the most effective day for bringing a peace to the planet, if only for a moment.

In addition to that, I try not to get too personal on this website for obvious reasons, the reasons of which are that I don’t want to turn the intention here into anything that steers it away from its stated goal of being about healing through discussing practical ways of Mind-Body-Spirit integration. Spirit says sometimes that you have to get a little messy to make your point, so it is OK, but I did want to share that I am doing my best to walk the tightrope wire between what is sacred and what easily becomes profane.

Partially because of the success of this website, I am now about to begin writing a book that is tentatively titled God is Everywhere From Here to There (for the curious, the title of the book preceded the formation of the website, hence the name of the website!). I have already made arrangements to put the book out with St. Martin’s Press, and I can say I am thrilled to be working with them. The book is going to be a spiritual memoir about how this boy named William came to find God, or, vice versa, how God came to find William. I can honestly say that my intention is to write a book that touches deeply on my life in a way that very few people know about, and I am excited by that, but also a bit intimidated. If you have ever wondered how I came to be so mercurial, reactionary, silly, or spiritually open, then this book will provide insight into that. It will be a huge undertaking for me, and might require at times for me to focus more on writing the book than on these posts, and also make choices about when to work on music full-time. It is a very exciting time to be alive on this planet, and I am very humbled to be part of the conversation.

Thank you for visiting EFHTT.com these past few months. I am going to take a few weeks break while I continue to set a new course for the website, and give you all a break from my well-intended diatribes! That is my gift to you for Christmas!! And yes, that would be a Christmas joke meant for all.

God Bless everyone, please have a very safe holiday. I will see you, feel you, know you all a little better in the New Year! Let’s hope that in 2010 we can start meeting in person and do some really important work together.

Wait for the Birthday Girl, Don’t Whistle, Bless You

posted in: Contributed Posts (Tags: , , )
posted by Ve Magni

12.17.09 4:52 pm

There are a lot of different social conventions by which we measure each others’ agreeability, some of which may seem obvious to us, although a bit random to an outsider. A recent incident got me thinking about social indexicality, the signs and signals we give that indicate who and where we are in relation to one another. Indexicality is a general term for signs that indicate state or causality (ie, smoke is an index of fire). Socially, we can make strong judgments about a person’s overall character based on small individual signs and of what those signs are indications.

The incident was this: one of my students made a special birthday cake for me this past weekend and brought it to the club where we perform so we could all enjoy it after a late show. The group sat together with the cake, waiting for me to finish working to begin eating. As I was just about to join them, I heard the group telling one girl to wait for me, but she said that she didn’t want to wait any more, and so took the first piece of my birthday cake. I was a bit baffled, because it seems like such an obvious social agreement that the person whose birthday it is should at the very least be there before the cake is eaten, which is what the rest of the group tried to tell her. By itself, it’s not a very big deal, but from the perspective of social indexicality, does an action like that indicate a deeper character state?

I’ve been on both sides of the question, having worked and lived in several other cultures. You could call culture shock “indexical shock”. Many years ago, I worked with a group of Russian women who had a lot of superstitions and traditions of which I was oblivious. One day I really upset them by absentmindedly whistling, because they had a very strong superstition about whistling in the workplace—something about blowing money away from the business — which they considered extremely rude. They were also very adamant about everyone frequently knocking on wood (or your head, if no wood was available—I still do this sometimes!).

Living in Germany, it’s been difficult to not judge people as individuals for the culture’s lack of similar social indexicality to mine—for example, I’m used to the indexical of “if you hold the door for other people, then that means you are a nice person.” Berliners don’t generally hold doors, nor do they engage in many other pleasantries that many Americans find essential for whatever we consider to be civilized coexistence. Feeling that judgment against a large group of people is very alienating, though, and can become a persistent subconscious preoccupation.

Some of our American indexicals include things that baffle many
Europeans, like our compulsion to extend invitations out of politeness without actually wanting to fulfill them and our general will to over-consume as a sign of prosperity. One English-culture convention I don’t understand is that we’re still compelled to say “bless you” when people sneeze out of sheer politeness or fear that someone will think we don’t care, despite the fact that the action is based on thousand year old superstitions in which no one actually believes any more.
Sneezing, in itself, is not an event that warrants any reverence, yet it’s a popular notion in our culture that if a person doesn’t say
“bless you” after someone else’s sneeze, then that person is being rude.

None of the actual conventions are the point, of course, because whether or not something is considered the “right” way to behave is entirely relative to the culture and the subject of endless debate.
Essentially, it comes down to what we respect as individuals; a convention becomes a convention because enough people agree with it that it becomes the standard indexical of fill-in-the-blank: nice, rude, generous, hygienic, considerate, selfish, etc.

So how much can we know based on indexicals? Is it appropriate to judge based on a person’s agreement or lack thereof with popular cultural conventions? I think it is valid in a lot of ways, because it helps us feel relaxed to know we are surrounded by people who value the same characteristics that we do, and we can’t very well go around asking people, “Hey, are you nice or are you rude?” We need some sign that indicates in a way we understand that a person possesses these qualities in a way in which we sympathize.

However, there is a difference between social agreement of indexicals and social conformity. Indexicals, as indicators of character traits, are more intuitive, or at the very least associative on a deeper psychological level. But if we’re consciously agreeing to a convention like saying “bless you” without actually respecting its validity as an indicator of character, which I have done and still do sometimes, much to my own dismay, then that is where the action stops being an indexical of individual character and becomes a sacrifice to conformity. Whether or not that sacrifice is worth making is up to you.

I recommend thinking about what you do and do not respect as indexical indicators of character versus blindly accepted cultural traditions.
As we go through the major changes expected over the next few years, this could help us feel more relaxed with each other and in general.
Personally, I do support the indexical of “if you wait for the birthday girl, then you are considerate”, but I firmly resolve to stop saying, “bless you” when people sneeze. Why not say, “bless you” because
I mean it instead? That seems much nicer.

Christmas Tree Lot at Jennings Lawn & Garden - 1955

Happy Holidaze

posted in: General Thought (Tags: , , , , )
posted by WilliamPatrickCorgan

12.17.09 12:23 pm

I am a very late starter when it comes to getting fully invested in the holiday spirit. Perhaps it is my over-reaction to the commercialism inherent in the season, or maybe it happens that, by being a bit of a purist about symbols, I miss out on some of the standard traditions, because I have made it my tradition to wait till the spirit hits me in full. With only a few days to go, I can honestly say I find myself still waiting for the personal epiphany that is now absolutely necessary that sends me into a mad shopping-tree trimming-yuletide singing-tear wiping under the mistletoe lover of all mankind.

If I was to chart the inner currents of how the ‘Happy Holidays’ works on my system, I would venture to say that it usually provokes 3 general reactions in me: grandiosity, sentimentality, and depression. Grandiosity, because it is a time to mark big dreams and bury stubborn grudges; sentimentality, because it easily evokes times past and hope for times ahead; and depression, because it is very rare that the ideal picture of harmony in my world that sits nestled in my head comes to be true. When the New Year begins, I generally feel a sense of relief along the lines of, “Whew, that was nice, but I am glad that it’s over!”

It shocks me that common symbols of the holidays have become tools of further division in certain hands, but I guess it makes sense when we witness consistent evidence, day after day, that almost nothing stands to be left alone as sacred anymore. I am not sure how the Christmas tree has become offensive to some people, and maybe there is a sinister message somewhere back in the tangled lights and carefully hung ornaments that I am missing. I know that trying to find working strands of lights each Christmas can bring out the worst in me.

One lesson I have learned these past few holidays is that it doesn’t matter how the traditions shake out in form, as long as you let God in enough to guide you to the holiness of the right moment. By traditions, I am referring to all of your family gathered around one table for a beautiful meal, presents being exchanged, the house nicely decorated, and so on. I have, in the past, foregone presents and family and the decorations, only to have the whole point of the holidays put on my heart in a way that will last me the whole year.

It has been in those still moments when I have found myself not getting the idealized holiday that I wanted so bad that I have most understood the true spirit of the season, which, to me, is to sit at one’s table and be a peaceful child of God, to commune with others in humble reflection of a deeper sense of purpose, to honor all who you have come in contact with along your journey, and to commit to Love as your guide.