Friday, January 21, 2011

Seeking Alchemical Fire, Dreaming the New Sun Into Being - Two Letters In Response to Recent Dreams Shared



No arms! No arms!




I've been to hell and back!




I'll play it on an Acetylene Fiddle
!




With a thousand tongues of metal



I'll flaunt it like a gypsy's skirt!



A thousand voiced chorus calls out :



A million suns will harm!



But two suns shall crown my new world!




Unfurling fire streams from my forehead.



This is my last kiss, Elis,** to the orphan-blue world,



"The last gold of expired stars."**



Its twin, the new one, is here.




Over there.




Pull, O pull my finger.



** see the poem by Georg Trakl below this essay




- Norman Nightingale,


"Mastodon Dream Streams Surround-Sound God-Fire Falling Down",

fromThe Cathected Poems of Norman Nightingale.
Unexpurgated Edition. Chapbook.
Cortical Canticle Press,2008.
Out of print.



*****



Piled with a hundred burdens...the wise Zarathustra!

You sought the heaviest burden, and found yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche


Preliminary word - the three dreams: In a recent dream group I host twice a month three of the dreamers presented their dreams; in brief:

1) a large and growing atomic bomb called the "Fat Boy" must be dealt with by the dreamer who cannot deal with it alone, he finds official help who disassemble the outer shell of the bomb, arrive at the core of the bomb, a silver flat rectangle of impenetrable metal which they then launch from earth into space, the bomb core explodes into a new sun in the solar system,

2) a woman seeks the Alchemical Fire which she knows is secretly kept by small groups or by individuals around the world, she contacts a famous chef who is a Fire-keeper, his highly exclusive restaurant has only 12 chairs, the chef makes a reservation for the dreamer and her husband (there are more details important to the dream but this is the essential "skin of it")

3) the front door to the male dreamer's apartment is barred by a metal rod installed by the landlord to prevent the dreamer's entrance after the dreamer has taken exams at a university, he enters a side door, finds his room is very damaged and is still "soaking wet" from storms, the windows broken; soaked by the dripping water in the room, he removes his clothes entirely but for a tee-shirt, he investigates other apartments to see if they have similar damage and is discovered by others to be naked, is pursued by a growing raucous crowd, he decides to accept the dangerous situation he is in and to act humorously rather than as a "shameful flasher" to which the crowd responds with laughter and gaiety, lightly spanking his bare ass with badminton rackets as he trots...the dreamer has another dream where he must rent his bedroom out to "four "anal" women" as an office, the women are very controlling and particular about their space and office equipment, the dreamer needs to use a computer/printer and is given permission by one of the women but it is hard to use the equipment.

Whereas the latter dream is not necessarily apocalyptic (except to the dreamer, although the landlord, the Lord of the Land, can have an archetypal significance, and the room of the dreamer has been severely damaged by a violent storm force, or by the landlord, or both) the other two have apocalyptic imagery chief of which are of the "unusual Fire". The latter dream has the dreamer shifting his attitude toward the dangerous situation he's in and in so doing shifts the attitude of the crowd toward his nakedness. In discussing this shift of attitude the (not)Goethe quote was mentioned (see directly below) as the attitude shift can illustrate what the quote indicates.

It was the dreamer of the Fat Boy Bomb/New Sun dream who mentioned the quote and emailed it to fellow dreamers after the dream group:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."

Click here for an informative essay about the quote which apparently is a very, very loose translation of Goethe from his play, Faust:

http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html


****************************

Letter One

"Faust opens the New Testament and says [the ever growing in size, and growling/whimpering insistent black poodle near by]:

"I must look at the original [Biblical text of the Gospel of John 1:1] without delay and see if I can render it honestly in my beloved German. He opens the volume and begins.

"The text reads: In the beginning was the word. But stop. What about this? I can't rate the word nearly as high as that. I'll have to translate it some other way. Unless I'm mistaken, the true reading is: In the beginning was the mind. But let's not hurry with the first line. Can it be the mind that creates the world? Sure we ought to read: In the beginning was the energy. But no sooner do I write this than something tells me not to stop there. And now I see the light and set down confidently:

In the beginning was the act."


Warthe (me, in inflated professorial effete form) follows this with, "The only magic is practical magic...take action, act by act...see how the universe responds and then respond back....act by act." Note that Warthe does not heed these words as oft as might be efficacious but that entity oft called "the universe" (made up of matter and "spirit" or spiritualized matter) responds to our non-action/non-response...so might as well act/respond. H.R. Heinneman, existential philosopher, has rewritten Rene Descartes, "Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am) to what I like much better, Respondeo ergo sum (I respond therefore I am). He says we are creatures of response, that there is an "appeal" (a call) in Existence Itself (the universe) which seeks to be heeded, born witnessed to by conscious creatures (homo sapiens) and responded to. Witness means literally "with-ness"...relating/relationship...Martin Buber helpfully might come in here in his statement that there are two kinds of relationships in the existence, "I and Thou" and "I and It"...one is subjective (I and Thou) and the other is objective (I and It)...we need both to bear witness and respond to the appeal (call) of Existence for response/relating...to relate to the Universe and "all within it" as a Thou makes one conscious with conscience of one's acts within and toward/with the Universe and it's thous...with the I/It relation information is gathered, parsed, digested, intellectualized, codified which is, too, an essential relation to Existence. Respondeo-ers and Existence needs both...we don't know if Existence "witnesses" and responds as we humans do but it does appear to interact (perhaps more from the I/It relation since Existence is beyond the personal (includes it as but one of myriad expressions), it is transpersonal.

An act is a response which premises a responder...Existence...Universe in particular forms...


“A mood of universal destruction and renewal has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the KAIROS - The Right Moment - for a “metamorphosis of the gods”, of the fundamental principles and symbols... So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the modern human.”
-C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

"Kairos is the ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment), it signifies a time in between, a moment of undetermined period of time in which something special happens." --from The Threshing Floor Radio Show-August 17, 2009 -Randy Maugans, Mystery #3: Time

"K
airos is the passing moment in which something happens as the time unfolds...it is a small window of becoming and opportunity. One of the origins of the word comes from shepherds watching the stars. As the night progresses and the stars turn in the sky, they appear to rise and then fall against the horizon. The moment when a star has reached its apogee and appears to change direction from ascending to descending is its kairos." --
Corrigall, J, Payne, H, Wilkinson, H (eds), About A Body, 2006: pg. 201



*********

Greetings Pilgrims and Poodles
(reference to Mephistopheles as a growing to monstrous-sized black dog in Faustus, Goethe's powerful play). As I write this I am listening to Bach's magnificent, Easter Oratorio, fitting music to be musing upon your recent dreams...I began this the night after dream group...and now, Friday, am still at it...forgive the verbosity but this is more for me, probably, that for patient thee...since starting this I have received the synchronistic email with a link to a Huffington Post article on two suns being seen in the sky in 2012, the ending of Betelgeuse, going nova as are we all...paradoxically, archetypally, Nova means "new" in Latin, and (disturbingly?), nova also means "food" in Hopi. Marco's proto-star is named Fat Boy, food and fat go together so Marco's nova-star, it's new light is food, new light, new values to nurture the souls and society of humankind? If ye wish, continue on here and indulge, perhaps incrementally, upon some of my musings...or not. But the Goethe quote (above and re-quoted below) is the main point of sending all this...the rest is commentary and nova fluff, sans chipotle...

Rereading parts of Edinger's good book, Goethe's Faust, Notes for a Jungian Commentary, about the play, lectures he gave with a Jungian perspective, I found this great quote above (and repeated below) from said play when after the black dog, the large poodle which is Mephistopheles, the Satanic manifestation of power, the anti-Christ, has shown up...Faustus describes the dog as it swells and grows to be more "like a hippopotamus. Eyes of fire and dreadful jaws." "The dog is eros, libido, striving, desire," Edinger says, and continues:

"..."it was Faust's "striving," longing acted upon, that brought about his redemption. "He who strives and ever strives, him we can redeem." Indeed, the central theme of Faust is "longing"--desire, love, Eros--in a word libido [libido for Jung is different from Freud...Freud uses libido specifically for sexual drive, Jung expands libido to include sexual drives but also is life force impelled/compelled/propelled toward some "object" seeking a return to stasis."

"And yet the dog/libido image is also the Philosopher's Stone, the goal of alchemical transformation...the black dog serves as an entrance into the underworld, but also serves as guide and familiar spirit, the dark aspect of the Greater Personality [a term Jung uses to describe the Self , the totality of the Psyche which we can never fully know, from and within which the self, little "s", is derived and gives greater expression to]."

So Faust begins to hear this exquisite lofty music with great longing and wants to give himself completely over to the spiritual sublimity of these higher longings and yet the black dog whines and growls distracting him from his aims for higher spiritual awareness..."Poodle, stop your whining and growling. There's no place for these animal noises beside the lofty music that I hear within me. We know that if people don't understand a thing they ridicule it, they complain about the good and the beautiful because it embarrassed them. Is the dog going to follow suit?"

"The dog is here equated with vulgar, collective man, a typical shadow figure for a pedantic professor (Faust) with intellectual and aesthetic pretensions. Faust tried to protect himself from the "animal noises" by turning to the New Testament."


This quote from the play follows the above and it is this quote which I most want to share with you all for it couches all the effort showing up, of late, in group dreams where great effort must be taken, such as, deal with the Fat Boy Atom Bomb, Al's rocky path he must run and eventually bike upon with great attentiveness, patience, presence and effort, Matty's striving after the alchemical "fire keepers", Nat's attempts while naked to get back into his apartment, to work on computers which are overly tended to by the anal women, etc....

Faust opens the New Testament and says:

"I must look at the original without delay and see if I can render it honestly in my beloved German. He opens the volume and begins.

"The text reads: In the beginning was the word. But stop. What about this? I can't rate the word nearly as high as that. I'll have to translate it some other way. Unless I'm mistaken, the true reading is: In the beginning was the mind. But let's not hurry with the first line. Can it be the mind that creates the world? Sure we ought to read: In the beginning was the energy. But no sooner do I write this than something tells me not to stop there. And now I see the light and set down confidently: In the beginning was the act."

Read this authentic Goethe quote (above and repeated just below) with the one Marco sent out which is attributed to Goethe but is not actually his (says Marco) and you may understand that (not)Goethe quote, too, requires that Goethean/Faustian "act," effort and, viz Warthe, response (I/Thou & I/It)...in other words there is an underlying "drive"/impulse beneath consciousness, some originating energy motivating first then all actions or somehow, eternally always/already IS regardless of chronos/time and development/evolution in time propelled by that originating "in the beginning was the act" presuming an "actor" of some sort though it may not be quite a thingy thing but a meta-thing, quanta/squanta/mas adelante (more forward)...so examine the drive/impulse within/beneath the thought which requires an act/response...to merely make mental notes and thoughts and affirm or think is apparently not enough...in the beginning (the underlying foundational dynamic) is the act from which the thought manifests...and then creates outwardly...

In kaballah, the god beyond god, the no-thing which precedes all thingy existence even as though, the Unknowable for some non-reason feels a compulsion, a thought, an emotion (all which are not) and decides to create the universe...Ain Soph (that god beyond all comprehension/apprehension completely outside time and space) had to create a womby space, which is a contraction within it's no-selfness, called Tzim Tzum, in order to even bring primal materiality into existence so that the "pots of Creation/Multiverse" could be thrown/formed into being...

Faust's "in the beginning was the act" perhaps partakes of this kaballistic "dreaming" around cosmogyny (how no thing became some thing...Existence formation and ongoing reformation and evolution).

Edinger says of this "in the beginning was the act":

"This is a key passage. Faust here reverses the direction and goal of the collective Western psyche from heaven > to > earth. With this revolutionary conclusion, the translation of John, the most "spiritual"" of the gospels of course could not proceed. If Faust is to opt for action he must deal with that manifestation of earthly matters, the poodle-Mephistopheles [the Gospel of John begins with "In the beginning was the Word (translated logos) and the Word was with God and the Word was God." John says that Jesus the Christ is that very Word become "flesh and dwelt among us. This is significant to Faust because the Poodle is none other than that very opposite of the Word Christ...it is the dark aspect of every word/act...thus Jung says that all archetypes (which are building blocks of creation/consciousness) have two sides and all gradations in between of good and evil, light and dark, of pastel to primary colors, etc."]."

This underscores what I said in dream group the other night that shadow, evil, "shit" is not changed by "positive thinking" and "affirmations", emphasizing only the positive/good while
(delusionally) eliminating/eradicating/denying the negative/evil; wholeness partakes of both so itis actually a growing capacity to sustain a holdness for, and enduring, the dynamic tension of the opposites which leads to ongoing/ongrowing consciousness and literally created worlds...the shadow is transformed (re-valued, which is what the word "re-deemed" means, by the 'Mephistopheles' route, the Faust/alchemical root of recognizing (ultimately) that the shadow (power/cunning, etc), the shit, is/are the very stuff from which the gold is derived, the Philosopher's Stone...Christianity (and not only Christianity) has not succeeded in healing the split between good and evil, between spirit and nature, mind and instincts, between the Word and the Act but has, rather, widened the chasm of the split...

Edinger says that, as with the Gospels and New Testament, so goes Faust/Goethe, "The Christian split between heaven and hell persists and Mephistopheles [the anti-Christ, Satan, the darker brother of Christ, matter, Nature, evil] has not been clearly incorporated into the divine totality (the "godhead" or "god-image" of the West)."

The ongoing owning of our own "darkness", it's confrontation and difficult integration/transformation (turn shit to gold by putting shadow to consciously "good uses"), is what alchemy and alchemical symbolism point to. The New Age does what Christianity does, splits off into Light, Good, and denies the evil, the dark which forces evil more deeply into the unconscious which therefore gets projected upon the outer world onto persons, things, places, activities, thoughts (kinds of thoughts), etc...and by identifying only with the Light then others must carry the shadow for those Light-identified one...gurus, spiritual teachers, Science of Mind gurus, therapists, healers, counselors must be in touch with the Mephistopheles within, the Black Dog, the Power Devil (Jung's characterization of the Devil) Christ encountered just after his ministry began and he went to fast for 40 days and nights in the desert...the 3 temptations were temptations of misuse/abuse/hubris of Power). If folks don't own their shadow especially in the helping professions from politicians to preachers to physicians to priests, etc., then the followers, or some of them, carry that shadow and will be scapegoated. I know this one first hand from a long association to a spiritually identified program as well as a young man at a Christian college/community.

The disassembling of the Fat Boy bomb alludes, I think, to psycho-analysis or similar persistent awareness work, to depth psychology/therapy, to painstaking, patient psychological work which disassembles complexes which in so doing makes one aware of the archetypes within them and then one can have a conscious relationship to the archetypes as opposed to being mugged by them...just as the Black Dog/Poodle grows the more Faust tries to be "spiritual," to rise over, to remain above the instinctual, the material fray of power, opposites, aggression, etc., so also in tandem with this dissociation from Reality the "Fat Boy shadow bomb" in us all grows to dangerous proportions...fortunately, Marco's dream reveals resources, those people who are able to untie ("analysis" means untie), breakdown, disassemble the sheaths to get to the silver metal core which is then launched into space to explode into a new sun/star which light from it returns to earth, a new light, a new sun/value...

This core in the Fat Boy is the Self, is a god-image, is that most-valued Value within matter, Nature, shadow, and Celestial Fire (the Sacred Fire of alchemy outside of time and space), Consciousness (the experts in Marco's dream who disassemble the outer carapace of the bomb, who create and fire the rocket, represent consciousness, knowledge, know how, expertise) arrives newly in the new star, the new sun, a new orientation which is what the apocalypse (literally meaning "revelation") brings, not just blind chaotic destruction but a conscious disassembling of the old outworn once-was-central-Value, but brings about ultimately a renaissance of culture with revivifying new values...this "Fire" (as in Mary's dream, too) is dangerous (it is none other than alchemy's Celestial Fire) and it is not for the unconscious masses (which we all are for in their hands would be great danger as it would most likely be put to destructive hubristic purposes (thus the Fat Boy bomb image depicts that already present danger of hubristic misuse of such Fire by the Power Devil unleashed upon the world collectively)...

This "Fire" requires experts, those who put in the effort to confront, own, deal with and integrate the shadow, power, cunning, etc. Goethe is working this in the Faustus play. Goethe is trying to do what alchemy seeks to do, to integrate the split between good and evil which Christianity did not do (not to fault for who among us has succeeded?! anywhere in the world...). The New Age (a Puer movement if ever there was one, born of baby boomers still suspended in long adolescence, and eschewing the Senex, ground control to major tom, "reality as it is" orientation) and Science of Mind (ditto last parenthetical) thinks it has done so by a "slight of mind/hand" by simply denying evil and its power as only "the diminishing of good" (which blasphemes and mocks Buchenwald, Guernica, Hiroshima, etc)...this view only feeds "the Fat Boy", the Black Poodle with "the large jaws and teeth"...it dooms others to carry the darkness which is denied and disowned by the Light Ones, the John 1:1 ones, the "super spiritual", this is inflation to Mephistophelean degrees and feeds the shadow helping it to grow. I believe it was Winston Churchill who said astutely of Neville Chamberlain who met with Hitler before Hitler made his horrific first move to world domination and the murder of millions, Neville being charmed by Hitler when they met, Churchill said, "He has no imagination for evil." The New Age and Sci/mind and similar "schools" of though refuse to even imagine evil and in so doing undo their slight of hand dismissal of evil by their very fear of putting energy into a "bad thought" else it will come true. OY.

Just as in Nat's dream where he"owns" his nakedness differently and thus transforms the way the crowd responds to his and their own nakedness, we each must do the equivalent...as we personally consciously own and integrate the disowned and consigned-to-the-devil parts of ourselves we can shift the collective poco a poco (little by little)...this is done person by person, each doing their own work (and not their guru's, their "spiritual teacher's" shadow work, which is often the unwritten job description for followers of such types...

...an example from my own life...I began to study with a spiritual teacher/channeler upon whom I had naively projected much good "spiritual" powers and attributes...almost instantly my dreams cast this teacher, and her teachings/channeled-so-called "information", as a Nazi (NOT SEE, "see no evil") with a deeply psychopathic core...I obviously had to look at my own self to identify such within myself, my Jungian analyst would not have any avoidance of this, and began a long untying and extricating of what was mine from the projected upon teacher); BUT I was invested in my projections upon the spiritual teacher at the beginning who, in retrospect I can clearly see, pulled and depended upon such projections psychologically and financially...only years later with ongoing shadow work did I begin to see that these earliest dreams were dead accurate...AND I still had to own my own version of the psychopathic "guru" and charlatan within, it was/is my own piece of the shadow to chew and integrate...I try to remember the first words to me from a kaballah teacher when we had our first lesson:
"Don't believe anything you hear in here." )

Matty's dream is directly referent to alchemy and partakes of much of what I've written already above, the Faustian "gamble"/risk of Power, the need for integration of shadow, the small group of people consciously doing this; the "12 seated small restaurants" around the world exist, exclusive, with a master chef (cooking is alchemical symbolism) who prepares the Messianic Meal of Leviathan (the shadow of God, the dark side of God revealed to Job in the Book of Job)...this is no cause for inflation for it means the Self has selected/chosen some to do the Faustian work of dealing with the devil! and the dark side of Power/God and Existence...who in their "right minds" would sign up for this? It is a terrible thing to be a chosen one...great suffering is involved...but it is meaningful suffering as it leads eventually to integration, individuation, new values, new culture, a new star (which means a new central Value) since the old star (which orients us) is diminishing and cannot integrate/hold what needs to be integrated/held which will occur in the kairos of the new star (see the above quotes re: Kairos)...Kairos is the Greek term which means "falling star"...it is used by St. Paul at the beginning of the new star of Christianity which was "falling" to earth at the beginning of the Piscean aeon...Jung quotes Paul and says that we are living in a time of kairos as the old star/sun fades and the new sun/star explodes newly (in Marco's dream!!!!) and expands for the next 2000 years in the Aquarian aeon which will be forced to tackle what Goethe/Faust is writing of...none other than a transformation of God (God always represents the central creative Value and Orientation) which has only begun and which is alluded to in the Book of Job, the New Testament with similar imagery showing up in other religions...Jung's radical premise is that as we confront our own shadow we are confronting God's shadow, a sliver of it, in ourselves...as we chew the sinewy shitty meal to be eaten and assimilate/integrate we change not only ourselves, our culture, but also our "god"...

In the Book of Revelation there is a passage much spoken of, of the Great Whore/Harlot riding a 7 headed beast during the Apocalypse (means "revelation")...she holds a Golden Chalice and drinks from it...within this chalice is the "filthy rejecta" of humanity and human culture...all eating imagery is assimilation imagery...the Great Whore is a transformational vessel Herself who does not reject the "filthy rejecta" of humans and human culture but actually drink/eats it all in order to integrate, assimilate and transform the old gods, the old values, into newer, nova-er, more conscious ones. As a Jungian analyst said to me of this passage (regarding this passage in Edinger's apocalypse book), "It means, Warren, that those who were rejected and denied value in the aeon of the Fish (Pisces), the gays, the blacks, the dark ones, the whores, the feminine, and more will be included and accepted in the new religion, in the "new god-image", which will be a god of all those who are sexually and otherly different). This god will also have more shadow integration, the Leviathan aspect more consciously present and in concert with the Light side in the god-image having been integrated more by individuals integrating their own pieces of darkness which is the darkness of God....

I could go on and have gone on too much already...if nothing else, meditate upon Faust's (Goethe's) words re: "in the beginning was the act" which, of course, has layers...from simple "Take action" layers to what is the thrust/purpose of the impulse/act and just "what" is driving the act...thus Goethe and others also speaking of Logos/Word/Mind (some foundational/archetypal structure of consciousness which is indeed energy, etc.).

Now I'll act by stopping all this!!

We are shadow-working for the New Star/Sun, the new Supreme Value, which is hinted at...


In flames,


Woethe


Letter Two

Preliminary words before the further letter response. Upon reading the first letter a colleague questioned whether such apocalyptic dreams herald the literal "end of the world." My response in brief is: who can know such things until the end is literally upon us. Trying not to be glib about this as the apocalypse has gripped human culture via media, movies, and religious and anti-religious movements.

For my longer response response read on:


...Most predictions from indigenous cultures (according to a mythic astrologer friend, mythic astrology seeking to be more that of ancient pre-modern astroologers; "modern" astrology, so-called, is about 2000 years old!!) are based on stars in the sky, stellar events which were/are/will be out of human control but for blood sacrifices, etc. Given New Age bloodless souls the sacrifices to be made are those of intellect, alas. Any blood they shed will be made of pureed beets and guar gum.

W., the mythic astrologer, is brilliant on all this "end times/2012 Mayan-and-other-ancient calender stuff...modern astrology came into being (more or less 2000 years ago) with more sophisticated mathematics (yes, Virginia, the ZERO was invented! and by the Arabs!!) and laying the sky out in grids and linearity...suddenly from spiral "web of life" senses of interrelatedness in time/space unmeasured but noticed from observations, mathematics cut the world and space and time of mythic/pre-modern cultures (more spaciousness and timelessness) into segments, lines, discriminate chunks/pieces...and then the end of time (inevitably) had to be calculated via math, stars, and synchronistic events (dreams and outer event)...time in the ancient world doesn't exist as it does for us moderns (2000/2500 years old)...and the end of our world, our civilized world so-called as we know it started (Jung writes of this in one of his last books, Aion) started with the time of the second fish...meaning the 2000 year old Piscean eras first fish was that of Christ and the second fish swimming in the opposite direction began toward 1000 years B.C (post c.e) beginning the "anti-Christ" fish period of science, philosophy, alchemy, sped up mightily in the man-centered Renaissance and zoomed ahead 200 years ago to what we have now...in other words, we're already in the apocalypse and have been for 1000 years and it's speeding up in the past 400 years and past 200 years especially...the apocalypse is a dramatic shift in values, in civilizations' cosmologies which means the old ones which were once valid and descriptive of consciousness of their time recede, fade, diminish and are absorbed and built upon by the new Value reflecting and encouraging the new consciousness evolving (it is presumed) toward greater refinement and innovation...

Since the Sun is the God of our solar system (and thus the center of the universe/LIFE for us) another Sun is being born, a new center, a new value in our solar system...Marco's dream, for all of the sobering personal work that must be efforted on his part with help from others, is
a collective dream of apocalypse and can and must be interpreted archetypally (too)...whether Marco personally, and whether human groups collectively, like it or not, a BIG change has truly pivoted on the downward slide of the Meaning Star moving past it's apogee in the night sky and beginning it's "fall" down toward the horizon's new dawn...there is a new sun, a new Key Value, a new "god-image" "dawning, it has been and is not upon us...2001, A Space Odyssey hints at it greatly...planetarily, consciousness of just "ourselves alone" as a species will shift to a more universal awareness of our participation in the web of life of the universe...this is, indeed, the end of the world as we know it...

Edinger's book on the apocalypse speaks of apocalypse as an archetype...I have to remind myself that archetypes are living symbols, active dynamic energies distinctly formed...so the apocalypse (which partakes of death/rebirth symbolism) is an activated archetype which has been activated ongoingly since homo simians became homo lumens/homo sapiens...meaning, self-aware which brought life and death into conscious focus. Now, at the end of the Piscean aeon which has been happening since the second fish, and rapidly now into the Water Bearer time, with global communication/technology, rockets, H-bombs, information explosion and uneasy co-mingling of cultures and DNA (including theological DNA of "local deities" (and ALL DEITIES ARE LOCAL), we, the human collective WE, must shift out of the old local deity/sun/values and into another one that's "falling" to earth, incarnating, coagulating and bringing with it reorganizational chaos until order begins to emerge...the tendency is to anally cling to the old ways, values, deities, etc. and resist or outright war with those stellar forces "invading" consciousness (all those UFO's and aliens books and movies are about). Jung's book on UFO's examines these "mandalas of the skies"...since a mandala is a symbol of wholeness from the Self for the self these "saucers/aliens" are yet to be integrated as they are only now just "landing" in human consciousness, the task of which now and future humans is to integrate the "new sun", the new light from the new sun/new value, the "aliens")...ancient humans have always known this was coming else they, too, would not have drawn images of strange creatures and stars and mandalas on cave walls, petroglyphs, etc.

What is coming is NEW CONSCIOUSNESS, a NEW CULTURE (and it won't look like the blissy-ninny, namaste-ing hippie/New Age souls giving their "received" (by way of Best Sellers and channelers and Hollywood movies) versions. Embarrassing, truly. "The best minds of my generation driven by madness..." is indeed true. All are shaken by this overload of information/access to world cultures, their religions, cosmologies, etc. as run through their "local cosmological grids". As is more than appropriate and actually should be expected, and not to excuse any of this but why would planes be flying into World Trade Towers, Christians be buying guns while donning sheets to fight their way to some mountain top to wait for Christ's return (while kicking some pagan booty at the same time "in the name of the returning Palestinian "local deity")...but see?

we have signs clearly of the new value and culture in Mathew Fox's "Cosmic Christ" (substitute Buddha, Maitreya, Edgar, Beulah)...some cosmic arrival of self with Self, of earth with galactic center point, and some ongoing growing sense that we are not alone in the universe and never were..."there is Something we know not what doing we know not what" but it is doing it! Sir Eddington's words. We have a sense, an intuition, we have "signs and wonders" and our mathematics are probably closer to what is dawning here which has always been here, Cosmic Pattern/Force/Source which is the sense of senses and beyond senses...

But modern/post-moderns no real sense and understanding of symbols and metaphors (for what is "meta" for, anyway?)...modern/post-moderns are piss poor in distinguishing a symbol for a sign and are primitive geniuses at reducing symbols to signs...and this is why the times are very dangerous, because even secular atheists are fundamentalists when it comes to reducing a symbol to a sign or, like primal cultures, concretizing a symbol (if I dreamed that their is a new sun coming there will literally be a new sun coming). Our spiritual poverty, meaning our paucity in terms of intelligent conscious relating to symbols--living realities/energies--is why the Fundamentalists, the New Age and the New Atheist churches are filling up...all are churches of either the reduction of symbols to signs, the concrete interpretation of symbols to literal correlative things (though their are synchronistic events and manifestations which are activated by the archetype of the apocalypse), or both. Rare are the individuals who relate consciously to the archetypes, to symbols...Jung helps tremendously and will not yet be assimilated but will be in the future...

Marco's dream is prescribing the "cure" for what ails apocalyptic souls gone to seed from too much leisure, partying, gathering of gelt, cyber and other toys...effort, work, having to take conscious actions for one's redemption instead of waiting for it/he/she/God to show up and wipe ample and amplifying arse, powder it, attach a big gramper (a Pamper for adults) and sending it back to television, netflix, ipods, computer games, et. al, to be big king babies like Nero and "fiddle while" the apocalypse comes down upon gullible and empty heads. It is easy to be unconscious for that is where we mostly live even when awake...but to be awake, to be conscious is hard work. Marco's dream can be, of course, and should be worked for personal transformations but it is apocalyptic and therefore can be interpreted as a collective dream. Both are helpful. But whether Marco and the human collective likes it or not, the dream says he/we/they is/are going to have to work for his/their salvation (a meaningful transformation of consciousness), both inner and outer work IS his/our salvation, his/our redemption (re-deem means re-value, value again)...he interprets the dream as a death dream. He/we wishes/wish!!! Real death to us/Marco would mean having to work on confronting our shadows personally and collectively and have done with "cotton candy" versions sacred rituals from profound world religions with all the predictable attendant "god talk" and "spiritual tourettes" insisted upon being spoken so that one is a confirmed (and safe to be around) member of the local deity tribe. Death is too easy a way out. Individuation (intellect active and intact) is hard and meaningful work. Collectively we can remain a spoiled king babies, refuse to work the shadow and thus make all our "healing" work and therapy sessions and dream groups and "spiritual ugga bugga" group work mere shallow narcissistic entertainments and distractions while the world burns (welcome to the New Age)...I suffer from my own diagnosis...and must effort all the more for kind fate has made sure that I must literally work in outer life as well as inner. As must we all.

In the beginning was the Act.

OY!!!

To quote Allen Ginsberg from his poem, A Supermarket In California, "I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel."


Now to the fiddle!

Woethe


**A poem by Georg Trakl

To the Boy Elis

Elis, when the blackbird calls in the black woods,
This is your decline.
Your lips drink the coolness of the blue rock-spring.

Cease, when your forehead bleeds quietly
Ancient legends
And dark interpretations of the flight of birds.

But with gentle steps you walk into the night,
That hangs full of purple grapes,
And you move the arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thorn bush tinges,
Where your moon-like eyes are.
O, how long, Elis, have you been dead.

Your body is a hyacinth,
Into which a monk dips his waxy fingers.
Our silence is a black cavern,

From which a soft animal steps at times
And slowly lowers heavy eyelids.
On your temples black dew drips,

The last gold of expired stars.


Sunday, January 16, 2011

Alchemical Passes for Father and Son - Turning Thighs to Diamonds

FIRST PASS - The Flying-Away Boy

Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son
shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? - Matthew 7: 9


No blame shall stain us now, father.

Mars in you still storms the makeshift diamond.
Each base of cardboard weighted with stone
is still our house; a bat, a ball and mitt, hard rules
of the game, were meant to undo my lust for dark
heaven shunning shining girls.

The heavy ball you hit to me is never caught,
a floppy glove always falls from a hesitant hand.
I was reaching for god then - it's not your fault -
a lavender boy early befriended by crows,
already resigned to what was given and what
was to come, a softball between the eyes,
your attempt to guide me toward those
diamond thighs which you often repeated,
'were everywhere waiting.'

I blinked before you, head down, focused on 'Lion's Teeth'**.
I was your hard mystery, and soft, not so fast for I was fat
and could not round the bases quick. I was your inherited
meek, a burden to shake into a sliding man furious for home.

At four I plucked wild strawberries you pointed to,
all authority and accidental grace, revealing much,
still dew wet, sticky to the touch, opening sourness
deserving my frown. You laughed at my dawning smile
for their sweetness slowly yielded, a surprise gift for what
would always unite us, your fear that I would suffer, too,
your fate, untended desire gone to wildness brought
low beneath branches, slow embrace of cradle-gentle boughs
entangling legs and light between the greater shadows,
and shadows shall win the day. In them my yearning
grew yet, remained for that of edges, what is beyond
them, or beneath, for planets arcing and comets rare,
trailing lovers to come but meteors, not the appointed
stars of permanence allowed to some men's hands,
and never to the fallen.

Grounding balls is the only thing to do so I did,
repeatedly. Still, these essential things were caught
for our mostly wasted days of practice,

wild sweetness is a stolen base,

the tongue is an untended garden.

There is a burning that soft hands can know

which shall finally run some headlong for

an inherited circle home at the end,

a latter-day glad son gathering berries from shadows.


**Dandelion

SECOND PASS - Glad Son Gathered

Turning Thighs to Diamonds - Alchemical Passes for Father and Son

Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son
shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? - Matthew 7: 9


*


No blame shall stain us now, father.

Mars in you still storms the makeshift diamond.

Each base of cardboard weighted with stone is still our house.

A bat, a ball and mitt, hard rules of the game,

the heavy ball you hit to me is never caught.

A floppy glove always falls from a hesitant hand.


**


A lavender boy early
befriended by crows

A softball between
the eyes guides

Diamond thighs
everywhere waiting


***


But before you, head down,
focused on 'Lion's Teeth'**,
I am a hard mystery,

and soft, not so fast for I
am fat and cannot round
the bases quick.

I, your inherited meek,
am a burden to shake
into a sliding man
furious for home.


*****


I pluck wild strawberries,
You, all authority and
accidental grace, reveal too much,
dew wet, still sticky to the touch.

Opening sourness deserves a frown.
Sweetness slowly yields
surprise for what always
unites father/son -

untended desire
gone to wildness
brought low
beneath branches,

slow embrace of
cradle-gentle boughs
entangling legs and
light between the
greater shadows.

And shadows shall win the day.


******


Planets arc
and comets rare
trail lovers.

Meteors are
not appointed
permanent stars
allowed to some
men's hands,

and never to the fallen

caught for mostly
wasted days.


*******


That wild sweetness is a stolen base.

That the tongue is an untended garden.

That there is a burning soft hands can know.


********


Finally runs something headlong

sliding for home inheriting

circles latter-day.


Glad sons (are)

berries from

shadows gathered.



**Dandelion

THIRD PASS - Stealing Home


Wild strawberries,
all authority and
accidental grace,
reveal too much,
dew wet, still sticky
to the touch.

Opening sourness
deserves a frown.
Sweetness slowly
yields surprise for
what always unites -

untended desire
gone to wildness
brought low
beneath branches,

slow embrace of
cradle boughs,

entangled legs
and light.

And shadows shall win the day.


That wild sweetness is a stolen base.

That the tongue is an untended garden.

That there is a burning soft hands can know.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Turning Thighs to Diamonds - Alchemical Passes For Father and Son

Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son
shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? - Matthew 7: 9

*

No blame shall stain us now, father.

Mars in you still storms the makeshift diamond.

Each base of cardboard weighted with stone is still our house.

A bat, a ball and mitt, hard rules of the game,

the heavy ball you hit to me is never caught.

A floppy glove always falls from a hesitant hand.

**

A lavender boy early
befriended by crows,
a softball between
the eyes guides
diamond thighs
everywhere waiting.

But before you, head down,
focused on 'Lion's Teeth'**,
I am a hard mystery,

and soft, not so fast for I
am fat and cannot round
the bases quick.

I, your inherited meek,
am a burden to shake
into a sliding man
furious for home.

***

I pluck wild strawberries,
You, all authority and
accidental grace, reveal too much,
dew wet, still sticky to the touch.

Opening sourness deserves a frown.
Their sweetness slowly yields
surprise for what always unites
father/son -

untended desire
gone to wildness
brought low
beneath branches,

slow embrace of
cradle-gentle boughs
entangling legs and
light between the
greater shadows,

and shadows shall win the day.

****

Planets arc
and comets
rare trail lovers.

Meteors are
not appointed
permanent stars
allowed to some
men's hands,

and never to the fallen
caught for mostly
wasted days.

****

That wild sweetness is a stolen base,

That the tongue is an untended garden.

There is a burning soft hands can know.

*****

Finally runs something headlong

sliding for home

inheriting circles latter-day.


Glad sons (are)

berries from

shadows gathered.



**Dandelion

Monday, January 10, 2011

Razing Arizona - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Dear Reader,

Little did I know that when I published the following two paragraphs in my essay in the last LFLG Newsletter that in less than one month the words are now more urgently resonant and true than ever before. I had been compelled to write the essay by a feeling of urgency from within and have learned to obey such compulsions rather than as I have done for too many years preferring a "false peace and going with the flow" and "not make waves" while all the while said passivity was mightily contributing to problems and issues usually projected upon convenient "others". I wrote last month:

"Each individual must confront the reptilian tendencies within themselves, their primitive agendas and intentions, rather than take them to "spiritual theater" make-up and costume departments, dressing them in angelic robes, wiping arses with sweet holy unguents and intoxicating perfumes (cosmetics-are-us, super ego in the raw). One must, like Job in the Book of Job, see the chthonic backside of not only self, but of one's personal and collective local deity. Jung's as yet to be assimilated much less understood insight that in integrating our own opposites, we are integrating those of our gods, directs us to do our own inner work ongoingly (one is never done with shadow). Doing so is more likely to create authentic cultural change than all the extroverted, proclaimed "righteous" acts in the polis enacted, of course, "for our own good." To repeat, in order to stress, the problem of evil is not resolved by identity with either side of the opposites, but by tolerating the tension between the opposites, viz. the image of Christ in the middle of the vertical and horizontal poles of the cross depicts this suspension and meaningful suffering which leads to the reconciling third image of resurrection which is not an ascension into all good and Light but an assent to carry both consciously."


At the turn of this New Year I had already begun to compose an essay on "time poverty" for this current issue but the recent violence in Arizona with the murder of 6 people and more injured, including Congress Woman Giffords, begs to be addressed as it screams of the worst kind of poverty, moral/spiritual poverty of individuals and the polis, the social collective, that means you and me, every citizen of the land. Please assume that in what is written below in immediate visceral response to news of the violence I include myself in my call to national contrition, not that it will be done at all nationally, even marginally. And contrition is only the first part of an ongoing process of acknowledgment of and wrestling with our individual and collective shadow --yes, Virginia, there is a collective shadow--leading to some assimilation and integration, or at least a capacity to make more conscious use of shadow energies turned to good purposes and uses. Thankfully, as Jungian analyst, Zen Buddhist and poet John Tarrant says, "Graceless things grow lovely with good uses." There is hope for us all. At least there is for me.

The views and spews expressed here and below are my own and not necessarily those of my patient colleagues who generously indulge me.
I begin below with a brief message written (to a friend who has a personal friend who is related to Giffords) one day after the violence as the hypocrisy of culpable politicians inevitably postures and expostulates forth to nauseating degree, as predictable as sunset, the ensuing darkness and willful unconsciousness. And then my initial message written just after hearing the news reports of the murders.


January 9

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished. - Romeo and Juliet

We live in an "age of psychopathy" and this news of the Kansas Baptists "prophets" viz Flannery O'Connor's title, a quote from the Bible, "the violent bear it away" [see more on this in the second part below] sadistically adds more unneeded evidence of just how very deeply in the populace this psychopathy truly is. [The Huffington Post published an account of planned picketing at the funerals of the six citizens who were murdered in Tuscon. These "prophets" celebrate these deaths as their God's punishment for their perceived violations of God's law. The violent indeed bear it away...but bear not their own misdeeds and violence...psychopathy, indeed, as demonstrated in "pathological Christianity"].

"As go the people, so go their gods. As go their gods, so go the people."

Will we ever hear a politician publicly confess their guilt in fomenting/contributing to what has happened in Arizona (and elsewhere) or by silently allowing the "vitriol" to spread? Instead, we now hear those very politicians who call for putting political opponents in gun "cross hairs", for constituents "to be armed and dangerous," for watering Liberty's tree with human blood, for sanctimonious citizens to consider taking up "Second Amendment" solutions, etc. all now loudly decrying and expressing outrage--twitter by twitter, o the inanity of Evil--at what has happened, so many Pontius Pilates proclaiming their innocence as they verbally wash their hands while their words helped to spill literal blood.

We have yet to hear "I'm sorry," from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and a host of affiliated politicians in need of expressing public repentance, and these are past leaders whose ill-advised and obfuscating leadership has yet to be accounted for legally. We have not heard "I'm sorry" enough from our current leaders, red and blue and shades between, for having the power to direct public debate and the style of that debate and failing so miserably. And we have yet to hear nationally any repentance or truth telling but for a few, the brave sheriff speaking the truth in Arizona calling out politicians and media personalities and their sponsors which actively foment via violent hateful rhetoric the swelling atmosphere and now crescendo of violence throughout the land while many of the nation's citizenry sit in numbed desensitization to violent speech acts, even violent acts, tacitly or actively sponsored by inflated political and media self-appointed or voted for or employed "prophets."

The notorious Kansas Baptist congregation is but one tiny group amongst the many larger corporately sponsored groups of politics and media who display 24/7 the most outrageous self-righteous, Bible verse and flag-draped rhetoric inciting Wealthy White Brahmans, Babbling Bachmans and Belligerent Bubbas with calls for arms and "repent (meaning "get with their program/agenda/worldview) or else. To hear Michelle Bachman call upon her constituents to "be armed and dangerous" for a political issue may be meant metaphorically but such rhetoric has real concrete leading instruction (as in "leading the witness") within it with consequent interpretations leading to consequential harmful violent speech acts. We now reel from a literal catastrophic consequence of so-called "freedom of speech," "free press," and "Liberty," now all reduced to Orwellian confusion techniques creating the growing atmosphere of incivility to be found haranguing on many an American town and city street corner at "Mind Fuck and Divine."

Would that I now hear a politician echo these words from "Romeo and Juliet" as two innocents lay dead due to political--red and blue differences turned to hatred, Capulet verses Montague poison, a grieving Prince publicly repents speaking thusly for us all:

Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.



January 8, 2010 6 pm

"Go warn the children of god of the terrible speed of mercy".

"From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away." Matthew 11:12.

It comes as no surprise to me that this violence took place in Arizona where an organized state governmental violence is taking place against terminally ill people in need of transplants, against non-white immigrants, legal and illegal, against ethnic groups whose languages are taught in school along with English...I hold John McCain (picker of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate in the last election, a violent, unconscious woman) and Governor Brewer, a "drugstore, truck-driving," animus-possessed hostile white woman (reference to Joan Baez's famous protest song about then Governor Ronald Reagan, "He's a drug store, truck driving man, he's the head of the Ku klux clan, when summer comes rolling around we'll be lucky to get out of town"),, the rabid, gun toting Tea Party, Boehner, Bachman, Angle, Barber, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck and, alas, scores of other Republicans and their media affiliates responsible for this act of violence encouraged and nurtured by irresponsible ugly displays--Boehner's "Hell no we can't" tantrum before the nation and world, and "You lie!" SC Republican Joe Wilson shouts at the President of the United States during the State of the Union address), speeches and governmental legislative acts such as Governor Brewer of Arizona's self-righteous bullying of the dis-empowered, scapegoated and rejected represented by immigrants, children, non-whites, the terminally ill all under the excuse of "no money" and "national security". Let's all watch just how quickly money will appear to make the state and the nation "look good" to appear as if something substantial and equal to a soul contrition and transformation is taking place within the American psyche. Literally just days, if not hours, away, I'm sure, we'll have to endure the speeches and moral opprobrium and sanctimonious displays of "repentance" flavor while the ongoing entropy of national soucontinues .

Reread my newsletter/blogspot essay (go to the blogspot essay for the dream: http://falconwarren.blogspot.com/2010/12/of-toxic-oneness-and-god-of-gators.html) from last month about blue and red states and the dream of a man in the 1960's about red and blue wine to be drunk together by opposing political parties...the dream ends in a broken glass signifying a violent break, even if of one glass, the uniting drink is not drunk with the drinkers and the audience not being able to get to the sacred ritual of the holy Eucharist, the body and blood of the living, dying, resurrecting god-man, a symbol of divine conjoined and assimilation of opposites. The real coniunctio that this ritual signifies could not be gotten to due to the willful unconsciousness going on on the stage between the red and the blue AND going on in the audience, as well.

This violent act takes place not even one week in to the Republican reign in the House and this is no accident but coincident with this "beginning" in the nation. Now watching Gov. Brewer give her statement where she expresses shock and sorrow with apparently not a glimmer of a pang of an idea that her political statements and acts along with others have created the climate where this lone gunman enacts their barely hidden call to violence against a Democrat, a woman, and constituents and the curious near here...I feel tremendous umbrage at her shock, her sorrow as she is in part responsible for it, along with others, Tea Partiers who show up at political events with guns, wearing tee-shirts stating, "the tree of Liberty must sometimes be watered by blood"...well, here it is...blood flooding into a now monstrous Liberty Tree...Orwell-ian distortion of words, "Liberty, Freedom," turned into a mangled, anarchistic poisonous masquerade of the words. Freedom is apparently for some rarified, sanctimonious few zealots who wield their perceived "absolute sword of truth" as they not only see it but demand that others see as do the and must bend to their will which is, of course, "the will of "We the People" and Godamighty Hisself." OY!

I have just finished reading Flannery O'Connor's disturbingly accurate novel, The Violent Bear It Away. O'Connor exposes the violence of not only our Western God-image but also in the culture and individuals who deem themselves prophets who are directly in touch with and lead by this violent Deity. The violence in Arizona in frightening tandem with reading this novel is frighteningly sobering and finds me more than willing to drop to my knees in contrition for my own bearing of dark violent Deity and that of my "Twittering" unconscious fellow citizens and their chosen leaders. Had I any power at all I would call for a "Day of National Contrition" where all citizens and their chosen leaders would bend the knee, own and confess to shadow for themselves, for others and their terrible deities, sacred and secular.

My own murderous anger is aroused by this act carried out on behalf of "the violently self-righteous"...the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence because it must be consciously born by each man and woman, it must be owned and suffered and if done so then humiliation and humility cannot tarry too long...what is this "terrible speed of mercy" which seems to contradict itself in the saying of it, terrible, mercy, the opposites outright. How is mercy terrible...what is terrible about mercy? To the violent mercy is a terrible thing for it taketh away their identity with the wrathful deity...and mercy is is turned on its head preferring the dead "sinner" to confirm the saintly violent's legitimacy.

"Gods, stand up for bastards." - Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

The "bastards" are the immigrants, the queers, the poor, the blacks, browns, aliens forced "down to size and place", the elderly, the sick, the "other religious" or the "not-relgious," women, orphans, widows, despised and rejected, the denied of compensation and health-care, educational reach, and a fair chance to claim space, "raisins in the sun", indeed.

Wikipedia's explanation of O'Connor's novel sums it up soberingly, the difficult human condition of being caught between the animal (unconscious) and deity (consciousness), where the irony of violence (animal) being consciously put to so-called "divine" (conscious) purposes:

"The title is taken from a verse of the Douay Bible: "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away." Matthew 11:12...."There are various explanations for the use of this passage as a title, the most accepted being that violence constantly attacks God and heaven, and that only those violent with the love of God can bear it away...an equally powerful act of violent love for God, bears the previous wrong away...The importance of passion is linked with the power of religion...The idea that everything that destroys also creates is evident as well...Everything that destroys, redeems'."

I haven't the time here to take apart the above summary for it's dark psychological truth and the pathological deity and it's followers bearing out the shadow side of an archetypal power. This pathologically spit deity (good and evil are powerful opposites in deity itself...Jung has written much of this to great controversy and protest by theologians of all religions) impacts the worshipers similarly in that they identify with the deity and therefore become the deity in all it's terrible power and truth, passion and violence. Passion as we know is not rational. It is irrational, it is feeling and when ungrounded in reason becomes a "god unto itself", out of balance and, yes, alas, deadly.

Brewer, McCain, Boehner, et. ick al, will all be mooing loudly within hours now, with outcry and rage against what has happened and refuse to see how they have created the climate for this lone gunman (if he is indeed alone) who "violently bears it away", carries their violence and my/our violence out for them. None, however, are absolved. We all carry our violent, self-righteous selves-as-semi/hemi/demi-deities, and we must must must carry them as consciously as possible.

Apocalypse in Revelations bears all the above out. Christ, the sacrificial "pure" Lamb of God is slain violently by a Pure Father God. Our sins are violently "born away". In Revelations Christ returns no longer as the Lamb of God but as the Ram of God to reap vengeance violently upon the unjust, the Satanic. As are our deities so goes ourselves. The psyche is composed of all these attributions of opposites and only hard earnest work consciously done with humility and humiliation may contribute to having a wholing affect upon ourselves, upon society and, importantly, upon our Violent As Yet To Be Fully Conscious God.

Now to bend to the hard work ahead by first bending the knee.

Mea culpa mea culpa maxiam mea culpa.