Curious God, Infinite Poignancy, and the Nature of Divinity: Funny God, Part Four — The Universe Is Experience, Life is a Disneyland

Cosmic Giggling, Human Darkness, and Happy Times Waking from Nightmares: God Has Fun, Becoming Human Was Her Supreme Act … of Recklessness

Funny God, Part Four:
God Is Experience. Life is a Disneyland

Part Four of Facebook…. Funny…. God(dess?)…. Experience

One Consciousness was hardly just The Big Grey Cloud

The point is…when you are God…and you’ve had so many lifetimes…you know, tripping out as an animal and everything and knowing your sense of Reality and everything…and knowing that it’s like a movie…but don’t you think…I mean don’t ya think at some point….

I mean, after all you’re God, and you know there’s nothing, nothing, nothing that could ever harm you…or harm anyone. Nothing…nobody ever gets harmed. And everybody always gets loved, and it can’t help but happen always that way. It can’t help but happen always that way because there’s nothing outside of that Truth-Awareness-Bliss-Love. There’s nothing outside of that, right?

[“That’s right.”]

Okay, so, um, so, don’t you think He might…that God might, y’know, like, aaah, geez…

I’m going to, I’m gonna edge my way into this….

Alright first of all, when I went up there…One Consciousness was hardly just The Big Grey Cloud, or something, y’know? Nooo. It was very real! I’m talkin about a guy singin Joan Osborne, y’know, dancing and laughin and giving hash! I mean could it be more, well not physical, ’cause it wasn’t physical, but, man, did we? We didn’t sit there on our thumbs and be shy!

[“it was quite an experience….”]

What is more alive for someone who’s nothing but good?

It was quite an experience! And that’s the whole friggin point is that, well, would anybody crave?… Why would anybody crave… and you don’t have to say, oh, a lonely person, is praying, and all….No! We all crave what? TO BE ALIVE! MORE ALIVE!! And what is more alive for someone who’s nothing but good?

Hopeful sadness? Seriously?

Well, fer Chrissakes! He’ll be…being more alive means putting a frame around that goodness to give it a kind of a fuckin, y’know, a contrast so it can be more beautiful! Think of all of the things that happen in life out of pain, and the things that we all, uh, pull ourselves to, like I said, the poignancy…. Would there be such a feeling, would there ever be poignancy if there wasn’t like hopeless sadness? If we had hopeful sadness, we’d never even have the experience of poignancy. Don’t you see, that only by forgetting who we are…

[“yea.”]

Can we really…all though it’s scary as hell…but the thing is, we all…live through it!

[“yea”]

What Do You Call God When He’s Bunji-jumping?
Answer: Human

Y’know? It’s kind of like when you’re jumping off of a…like with bunjee cords, off of a bridge…. And you’re sure you’re gonna die. But you’ve been convinced that, y’know, all the materials, all the equipment is safe, sound, and everything.

And what do you do? Having complete faith in, the people doing it, and, the materials and the strength of the material…you do it even though you think you’re sure you’re gonna die! You have all the fears in the world. It’s you doing peek-a-boo again. Only you’re trying to prove to yourself, that God will be always there to catch you.

[“Right!”]

And you do prove it to yourself. You see?

[“Right.”]

But the only thing is, we as God do it one better….

We forget…that the rope is good.

[“yea.”]

Forgetting

We forget, and we just throw ourselves off….

[“yea.”]

And, we throw ourselves off, hoping…knowing! knowing that at some point we will remember, before we die, because there…you’re never gonna die…. So we know we’re going to succeed. And we also know, that we are going to experience things that we will never ever…that we have never experienced before…. We may never want to experience again.

I don’t know, man…. I don’t know enough about this to know if it becomes an acquired taste. I don’t even think that that would be very healthy, yaknowhatimean?

Acquired taste?

No! An acquired taste for experience, perhaps, for extreme experience, perhaps. But y’know an acquired taste for like, y’know, like evil or for darkness, I mean that could be, ummm, I dunno, creepy….

But, I don’t know… I don’t know, I really don’t.

[“Ok, by experiencing, y’know, even these so-called horrible things, so to speak. By really being rooted in them and experiencing them, kind of knowing them, doesn’t that mean that when you have the opposite of an experience of love and bliss it’s all the more, y’know, wonderful, it’s all the more of the deep experience cause you have the deep experience of the other which contrasts…”]

Well, that was…. Thank you for the point that I didn’t elaborate on but I just started… that’s the point of, as I said, the metaphor of you having a blackness…

Icon Clasting

A blackness? No. I gotta stop trying to fit words on it for the word is an an icon. There’s the icon! Thanks for ‘clasting that icon, ok?

[“Yea.”]

Y’know, you really clasted that icon…blackness…because after all, it’s not light and darkness that we’re wanting to contrast….

[“No.”]

Experience Is God, God Is Experience

It’s experiences, feelings…and they are harder to fit words on or to picture, so we use analogies like light, dark, but they are icons that need to be removed for us to think clearly again. It is experience, individual experience, that we as God want to contrast so as to manifest it all more wonderfully, more poignantly, in its happy and sad “flavors,” its good and bad experiences of existence.

We Don’t Know Good Till We Know Bad

For we don’t know how good we are as God! until we know how bad we are as God, but not knowing it. Y’see?

We…it’s like you said…. And it makes for the most PERFECT, PEEK-A-BOO, EXPERIENCE…OF ALL!

Life – like one long peek (a-boo)

And that’s what I’m getting at…is that it’s all about peek-a-boo…only…it’s like, life is like, one long peek….

And God teaches peak-a-boo game to everyone. Why? Because no matter how many lifetimes it takes, no matter how much time passes in which that shield is up, and we do not see Momma, or God’s face, so to speak….

The point is, is there such a thing as a short or a long time for returning to God, remembering our true nature as God? No! If it’s longer we are able to magnify the magnificence of the drama, expanding its flavors of experience and poignancy. If it’s shorter…we’ll have happiness and bliss, the experience: “Wow, ok… Now I remember! Wow! That was a trip! I would not have believed it!” We’ll have that sooner but either way is magnificent.

That was a trip!

And when we remember…. Y’know, how many people come back from harrowing experiences and say, “Wow, that was a trip…I’m just glad I survived it!” But they’re glad they lived through it! They’re glad to have had it. They said, it was, like, “Wow! I really woke up to life, during that!” Y’know it’s like, “I may have almost died, but I never felt so much alive!”

Heaven Slickers – Nothing But Peek-a-boo

In fact, y’know, some people pick up on this. There was a movie. It was called, of all things, “City Slickers”! And it was pointing out the dead lives that people live in the city. And then they were speculating at the end…”Hey! We almost got killed, we almost got shot, we got robbed, we almost got left in the desert, and then it was storm…bu bu bu….” But they’re all so happy about the whole thing. For they left the city and went out into greater feelingness, and they felt more alive than they ever felt in their life because they had finally experienced something that scared the pants outa them. And it was all a peek-a-boo!

It turned out to be a peek-a-boo, for the fact that it was going to all end up being great had to be hidden from them the whole time or it wouldn’t have had such an incredible ending; it wouldn’t have been, ultimately, so wonderful, so poignant with pleasure.

And like they, when we take this adventure of human existence, we have to do it honestly.

So they, you see, didn’t know! They couldn’t allow themselves to know. They were under the illusion they were going to be taken care of on the whole trip. They did not know that they were going to experience pain and all that stuff.

[“Right.”]

Had to have faith

So they had to just have faith. They just had to have faith and persevere. And so therefore they won, at the end.

What Knowledge Needs

Now, you see, as I was starting to ask, if we are somehow the thing that we create as an experiment in truth, or, as an experiment, in returning to truth…there’s no, like, good or bad; there’s no a’s, b’s, c’s…. It’s like… we’re all God, and all experiences are all, like, well that’s all there is, is the accumulation of experience. That’s all there is, is like, experience, ’cause knowledge is already knowledge. The only thing that knowledge needs, that could ever be better, is the addition of experience.

[“That’s right. Cause through experience, what happens? We share. And that’s where the Love comes in.”]

Where the Poignancy Comes In

That’s where the poignancy comes in, that’s where the drama comes in, that’s where the fun of the game comes in. And it’s more than that. Because, in an infinite Universe, with an Infinite God, can you not imagine that there would be an infinite number of experiences, too? And so that there would always be something that hadn’t been tried?

[“Right, and so we don’t have to live here forever because…”]

No, what I’m saying is that…I don’t like to say God is still learning…It’s not like God is still learning. It’s…God is all-knowing…God is all creation. But God knows all this, but what kind of life would it be where there wasn’t some kind of newness or growth?

[“Yea.”]

Keep on Cosmic Giggling

So you might think of it as, the game…the only game that God can play in which, which has such high drama and everything like that, and in which, all, y’know, at times, all the different, all these different things are created, and all these different beings are created, and they all went through different experiences.

Human Darkness. LMAO. God’s Nature

But the one that’s human, is where you could create the darkness, that will allow you to have the biggest, whooping, howling, like I said, God’s nature, and ours, is laughter. Y’know. And that’s what He wants.

That’s why He created us, because there’s beauty, and all that, in all the rest of creation. But it’s only through becoming less than Himself, becoming us, and totally forgetting…that when He remembers…when He/She remembers…that She can go, “Wow!!!! THAT was FUN!!!”

(From an Advert in Heaven:) Human-Land – Fun, New Amusement Park

I mean, look it, come on, we are God, what did we create…amusement parks? Right? What do amusement parks do? Lot of peek-a-boo, don’t they?

[“scare the hell out of you…”]

“There’s the, there’s the roller-coaster…oh, it’s going up, it’s going…aaa-ooo-ahaooo!!!! I’m gonna die!!!” Oh. Nobody dies gonna die.

Why we insist on haunting houses

But, there’s more obvious ones. How bout like that haunted house thing…where it’s like do-de-do-de-do-de-do… oh, you got…oh, you’re in a…oh it’s like, oh, you’re in a haunted house, like “oh, these things they go, oh my god, y’know, oooohh!! Nooo!”

And then it’s like, and then what? It’s like it’s all over and you walk out and it’s sunshine, it’s Disneyland, and people are eating cotton candy… It’s like, “Holy fuck!”

You see. But you see you have to really believe it for it to be so much fun, and it’s like, unless you, if you go in there knowing it’s an amusement park, well, it’s not so much fun!

Fun times waking from nightmares

It’s an in-cre-di-ble fun. It’s like the most fun, it’s like when you, you ever have a dream that was sooo horrible…that you were sooo glad it was a dream when you woke up?

[“Oh, yea!”]

Tae kwon horror movie – new, fun spiritual practice

Yea, that’s a taste of it, too. How about…and of course this is not exactly forgetting…but like, y’know, we have a taste of it every time we go to a horror movie, why would we even invent them? We have a horror movie because we are practicing that thing of being, having faith that the thing that we’re seeing…it’s actually a practice…a spiritual practice…of seeing horror, but not giving it strength, not giving it reality. Y’know?

It’s only people who give these things reality who actually act them out! And so therefore, they are, in acting them out, experiencing things.

[“Yea.”]

But, y’know, at some point we want to go back.

[“Yea.”]

The Dream Is Over.

So that’s why we talk about…there’s no high or low, there’s no good or bad. Y’know, it’s like, it’s just that, I know I think some of us, when we’re talking like this? We’re tired of it, and we want to go back. We’re ready, we’re ready to understand, to remember again.

[“Yea.”]

Liquid Memories

I mean, after all, didn’t I have a peek-a-boo? I mean, come on. I was scared shitless. You guys think, I mean, I’m so kind to you now and everything. You guys didn’t think that when I was melting, fer God’s sake…that I wasn’t out of my fucking brain scared?

No pain, no gain –> No form, no fear

But then you know what? When I was water? I told you, it was like the most relaxing massage. It was almost like you lose your form, you lose your fear.

[“Oh, yea.”]

It was like, wow, and then, y’know, being taken into mouth. S’like, “Hey, Muff, I always love you, man…this is so awesome of you! Wow, how great is that, man? You takin’ me inside of you? That’s so wonderful. Thanks a lot, man!”

In Heaven There Is No…

I mean, you could not believe it, there was no such thing as an unhappy experience. And, you look all over and, you couldn’t find it!

And then when I went up to heaven? Holy cow! There’s God, my best friend in the world. I mean, like, y’know?

Uncertainty wakes up zombies

And, I mean, uh, God, y’know, no stodgy, y’know, no stodgy, uh, y’know statue love-Jesus looking God, y’know? No icon, man. This is the most opposite of an icon, it’s the most, as we’ve been saying…. It’s the unexpected that creates real experience. If you know it, if you expect it, it is just a trance state.

So…so, I’ll thank you for killing me.

[“Yea,” chuckling. “Right, yea.”]

“Hey, thanks for that death I wasn’t expecting!”

But you know what? Heh, I thank you, thank you for killing me but I also thank me for being you and for, and as God, for knowing that I would learn that killing isn’t possible for God. That’s the only way I would know. So thanks for that wonderful gift and, uh,

You know, I feel like, uh, and uh, y’know, you guys, I’m sorry that uh you guys didn’t have an experience of it, because I know it’s harder just from the head.

Being God in Spite of You

But y’know it’s a, it’s all Love, y’know? It’s all Love that we give each other because, y’know, in spite of ourselves, we can’t help but be God.

Spite your nose off your face

There’s another, there’s another verse to the song we used to sing, “In spite of ourselves, we’re gonna end up a sittin on a rainbow… Against all odds, yea, we’re the big door prize…” There’s the knowledge, there. “We’re gonna spite our noses right off of our faces…”

That’s true. That’s God speaking, y’see? “Won’t be nothing but big ol’ hearts dancing in our eyes.” Nothing but Love. And that’s THE TRUTH.

[“that is the truth. And boy I think you’re …. The experience of death and what is beyond that because we can’t change experience and it’s like the….. the tragedy, the….. Seeing how cruel people can be….”]

Easily ungrateful = human

You see you’re already forgetting. You see? It’s harder when you just have it in your mind because you’ve forgotten that you were grateful for all those experiences at some point in your life.

[“I am. That’s what I know is that I am, that’s what I was thinking a while back…is that the sum total..those of us who’ve given been given so-called hellacious experiences? We can be even doubly thankful, because without all that we wouldn’t be learning so much, as Baba says, for, you know, for Liberation.….”]

Long Peek-a-boo .. Increase Pain, Increase Motivation

Yea, you might say it’s kinda like a very long peek-a-boo experience, where the face of God is hidden makes you want more and more and more and strive more and more and more, and uh…. Well, it’s actually true, y’know, we take any kind of experience of pain. You increase the pain, you increase the motivation.

[“Yea.”]

Sorry to hear about your animal-killing toejam

Y’know, it’s like, uh, and that’s the thing that’s beautiful about it is that…It’s like, you know you’re God, when you can say you’ve got chronic fatigue, you’ve got flatulence disease, you’ve got up-the-wazoo in-yer…you’ve got all kinds of…phlegm cancer, y’know? Or you’ve got a really bad toejam that’s cancerous and uh killing off your animals… I mean, y’know, uh, y’knowwhatImsayin.

[“And so finish you’re point, you were really, what? So then you’d really be thankful, for these experiences, because you’ll be super-sensitized to the opposite to the nth degree and really grok being blissful…”]

I’m seein, I’m seein’ that you can say, “I can’t handle it.” You can say… Well, what we usually say is, “I won’t be able to handle it.” Y’see? How often do we say “I can’t handle it?” We say, “I won’t be able to handle it.”

What God Gives Me… That’s Faith

And, y’know, even, it’s common knowledge, it’s one of those truths that people are starting to pick up on a lot that have a lot of experience, like alcoholics? Who’ve had a lot, who’ve had a lot of negative, painful experiences and so on? And yet they’re the ones who say. They are the ones who say, after going through that hell, and I’ve gone through it. They’re the ones who are saying, “God only gives me that which I can accept… God only gives me that which I am able to handle at any particular time.” Now, that’s faith.

An interesting experience, anyway

Now it makes it sound like, “Oooh, I bet we’re as cool…I’m gonna be handling this, man.” Yea, but as God. The part of us that’s God, it’s kind of like eating an anchovy. Y’know? It’s like you’re going, “God! This tastes like shit, man! But you know, it is the more I chew on it…it’s a more interesting experience than I’ve had for quite a while, y’know?” And then we’re all, then: “Hell I might even try caviar or some…y’know, fish eggs, yknowhatimsay.”

It’s just something different.

[“Yea.”]

Something different.

[“That’s right.”]

Infinity of Experience – Infinite God

And in an infinity of experience, why can’t there be an infinity, don’t you see? that…When does God stop growing? When does God stop growing? Why does there ever have to be an end?

Why does there ever have to be an end?

[“…end for human life…”]

No, I’m saying when does God stop growing? Cause I’m saying that God is all knowledge.

[“Yea.”]

But He’s infinitely experiencing, and He has for all time. So, with an infinity of experiences, there’s always going to be newness.

[“Yea.”]

And yet, He’s been doing it for all time. So how fascinating is that?

[“Wow.”]

God Would Not Want a King Midas Curse.

So, it’s like the only way I could ever imagine that kind of sameness being exciting…. Think about it. Here’s the only way. Try to think of that kind of sameness being exciting. In any other way. Like, for example, oh you’ve had so many experiences and never run out of them… No. Then there’d be sameness, and they would be all the same, and one day would be like the other and it would be kind of like… what was it, uh…Oh, King Midas who had the golden touch, y’know? Got everything he wanted, everything was perfect. But he couldn’t enjoy any of it, because it was just all the same.

No hash for you!

Y’know, I don’t know if God makes hashish brownies for everybody, y’know? I mean, I don’t know.

Curious God

But you know, I doubt it. Because, knowing God, it’s all about, why wouldn’t He try that? Why wouldn’t He do that? Who wouldn’t? Cause that’s another thing, We are God…so aren’t we all curious to know…and don’t we really only get our knowing, really, through experience?

Infinite Poignancy

So like it’s so beautiful that I can’t even imagine that there is like infinite numbers of poignant dramas…infinite numbers of horrors and heroines and tragic figures and heroic figures and demonic and evil people and, y’know, there’s all of the characters; and they’re all God. And it’s like this is the way in which God continues not just, y’know, experiencing Himself, but experiences Himself as multiple…y’see?

God Has Fun.

So, y’know? Kinda like being in that play again. Only He knows He’s God…He knows He’s God but He’s playing all these parts. And He has fun.

[“Yea, he has fun, because His supreme act of Love is the fact that He allows us totally to forget, so He can really be into the experience…”]

God’s supreme act…of recklessness

That’s not a supreme act of Love, that’s a supreme act of just pure recklessness on His part….

[chuckles]

But no, it’s just like, there is no faith, He has… It’s not faith, when it’s knowledge. He knows that there can be no harm. It’s kind of like jumping off that bunjee cord, except that as soon as you fall off the bridge, you get amnesia. Theeeeen what happens?

Four Falls From Grace … And Back Again

And God knows it’s gonna happen. God knows that in the process of coming to Earth, He’s gonna go through four falls from grace, until He’s gonna end up to be as dumb as a dipstick.

[“Right.”]

Y’know? And then He’s gonna have to go back from being dumb as a dipstick, and in the process of it, it’s got all the most wonderful things, experiences…more wonderful than animals can experience, because it’s all done in total forgetfulness that it is not real and that everything is just fine even when it doesn’t seem to be.

So ultimately, peek-a-boo: It’s all been magnificent.

Death to everyone – makes it fun.

What does Will Oldham say? He says, “Death to everyone, is gonna come… And that’s what makes hosin’ fun.”

It’s because of the fear, ultimately that fear of death, which there is no need for actually, but which provides the edge, spice…the beauty, poignancy to life. It’s what makes it fun, and so much more perfect in our forgetting for a time that it is just a game we are playing for our own, as God, amusement and the manifesting of beauty in existence.

An edge of pleasure. Multiple flavors.

It’s because of that fear that there is an edge of pleasure to life as well…….. Because through pleasure we escape even the possibility, the threat, of remembering, which multiplies even more the “flavors” (experiences) of existence. Regardless of the fact that pleasure extends our time in forgetfulness, for the amount of time it takes to remember our nature as divinity is totally irrelevant. It does not matter. It is poignantly perfect and beautiful any way it goes, ultimately.

[“Right.”]

Continue with Funny God, Epilogue: The Earth Really Loves Us

Return to The Purpose of the Human Form and the Poignancy of It All: Funny God, Part Three — Pain and Peek-a-Boo

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“God Gets Me Stoned, Digs Joan Osborne… Don’t Be So Judgmental, He Says”

The link, above, takes you to a shorter, out-take, audio clipped from the complete–90 minute–version of “Funny Fantasy Becomes….” This clip focuses on the early on, comedic material on its own, without the later spiritual-philosophical soliloquy that is in the complete audio. Click on the link above to go to the audio site…or on the audio player below to listen to it here:(Link) View more God Sound Clips and Silly Mickel’s Mystic Crystal Revelations Sound Clips

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Facebook Funny Revelations and the Mind’s True Liberation

“Funny Fantasy Becomes Hilarious Meeting with God
Who Reveals All Reasons behind Existence, God, Living Things;
So Much More Wonderful Than Ever Imagined by Humans;
and Sadly because Humans Are Not Yet Capable
of Even Imagining Such Love and Goodness”

– Comedic, Philosophical Monologue by SillyMickel Adzema

For the audio monologue of the entire Facebook… Funny… God(dess)… Experience click above for the link to the audio site…. or below on the audio player to listen to it here….

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=yhfjdvcghq
Image of Funny Fantasy Turns Hilarious Meeting with God Who Reveals All Reasons behind Existence God Living Things So Much More Wonderful Than Ever Imagined by Humans and Sadly because Humans Are Not Yet C

Continue with Funny God, Epilogue: The Earth Really Loves Us

Return to The Purpose of the Human Form and the Poignancy of It All: Funny God, Part Three — Pain and Peek-a-Boo

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People Look Awfully Silly Kissing Their Chains. How Is It Supposedly Rational Progressives Can Believe in Satanic Reptiles?

Free Your Mind, Your Ass Will Follow: Paranoia and Progressives — Fear Makes Right Wing Fools Out of Even the Most Intelligent of Us.

Check this out. These quotes were shared today on Facebook and liked by sixteen progressive friends of mine.

“If the Devil finds a Man idle, he’ll set him at Work…” ( J. Kelly, in Scottish Proverbs, 1721)
“An idle brain is the devil’s workshop…” (H. G. Bohn, Hand Book of Proverbs, 1855)
” The devil tempts all, but the idle man tempts the devil…” (Kurdish/Arab/Turkish proverb)

So. What is it with progressives … many of whom are atheists … who don’t believe in God but DO believe in a devil!?

What is it, progressives can’t accept anything good? only see their own shadow? are merely paranoid?

It is not just the quotes above. I have for years detected much paranoia on the left—much of it warranted, I grant you—but erupting in florid supernatural fantasies of a dark nature.

So I don’t just mean “the devil” in a classical sense: as Satan, and such. For do progressives who believe in the Illuminati, Satanic rituals of Masonics, reptilian people in government or spying on us from behind the moon not realize how much they sound like Church Lady?

Remember when your mother used to scare you into behaving by telling you “the boogeyman will get you”?

How is it some folks, no matter their intelligence, still operate at such a childish level?

It doesn’t speak well of progressives. I hope there are lots of other ones who aren’t so paranoid. I feel out of water around supposedly enlightened folks who are taken in by such right wing religious propaganda.

Fear is one thing intelligence cannot seem to budge. Maybe that is why only crying—that is, feeling one’s feelings—works to free one from insanity. I can tell you this as a trained primal therapist and holotropic breathwork facilitator of many decades experience.

There is no devil. There is only fear of devil. And that has been put into humans to control them for as long as there has been civilization by those who have more. (See The Great Reveal, Chapter Twenty-Five: The Seventeenth Prasad. Nascent Class War 20,000 BC and The Great Reveal, Chapter One: Recalling the Riotous, Exciting First Days.)

Does it not occur to any of the progressives who have liked the quotes above that all three quotes are used to keep people compliant and working hard as slaves … obedient and docile as sheep … for the benefit of the Overlords … of all times? Liking the quotes above is like being enamored of one’s chains.

Does it not occur to anyone how the same rationale is used today by the 1% to keep people down and from being able to fight back or revolt? Drive them into poverty, instill in them the value of hard work, and leave them no time to think. That way they will never awake to their servitude or if they do will be too tired and beaten down to do anything about it.

I mean, you can kiss and cuddle with your chains, as in falling for the self-flagellating quotes above. But realize you are looking awfully silly doing it.

Continue with We Are All Turks Today and The Tao of Funny God: Why Turkey and What Andy Kaufman and the Turkish and Occupy Protesters Teach Us

Return to The Great Reveal Epilogue, Part Fourteen – Four Falls from Grace … And Back Again: Becoming Human Is Love’s Supreme Act of Recklessness, and Death to Everyone … Makes It Fun

Notes

1. How can progressives believe in one supernatural being (devil) if you make fun of those who believe in another one (God).

Or, putting it another way … if you’re going to go believing in supernatural fantasies, why in hell would you choose the most horrible one imaginable to believe in?

… which makes it more a psychological problem, it seems to me.

2. Illuminati Theory — Racism Cloaked?

Like and share this if you are proud to be “illuminati.” What’s happening is vile and racist.

Illuminati Theory — Racism Cloaked?

Do an image search on Google for Illuminati Members. You will find 90% or more are pictures of blacks. No rich folks, except one liberal one.

Listen up, if you’re just tired of the right wing blaming “hippies” for everything that’s wrong with the country for the last fifty years….

Listen up, if you want to help stem the tide of this modern witch-hunting … if you want to help block the slide into a time of modern inquisitions where people with enlightened views are scapegoated and “burned at the stake” to divert from the crimes of the modern “aristocracy”….

Uneducated people tend to include any educated people in that term, *illuminati*. They think everything they don’t understand is “illuminati” and is against them. They call anything above what they were taught as “gobbledygook” and attack the messengers. They don’t go after the real rich people who are running the world. It is part of that cultural division the filthy rich create to distract folks from the class war that is going on against them.

Notice who’s left out in this chart. Any fundamentalist or evangelical religion or tea party groups. Notice it is only liberals who are targeted, whether in religion or education.

Notice who’s left out, John Birch Society, KKK,….

Notice who’s left out. ANY huge multinational corporation, ANY energy giants who are destroying this planet, ANY right wing political organization … or NRA, ANY rich folk or Koch Brothers, et al.

Notice who’s targeted: Labor unions, new age groups, any religion other than fundamentalist christian, peace groups, environmental groups, and “Esalen” (these idiots don’t even know that Esalen was only an important part of the new age fifty years ago and no longer is), and Unitarians!

Included in this are attacks on any better parenting organizations, anything that might improve the self-esteem of ordinary folks, anything that might alleviate the conditions of overpopulation and squalor in which many people live. They want to keep us down, demoralized, and unable to fight back.

And if we do fight back, they have the most gullible of us going after those of our own who have dared to rise above our stations and would wish to reach a hand back to do the same for our brothers and sisters.

This has a long history. If you look into illuminati you will see they are what the Renaissance folks were called, the revolutionaries who founded America, and the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution. Union organizers. The Knights Templar, who were murdered across Europe on Friday the 13th by the Catholic Church, any educated Catholics such as Jesuits. Any liberal christian branch.

This new stuff is just part of the age old effort of the aristocracy in collusion with the Catholic Church to divert attention away from themselves and keep themselves from being overthrown by getting the uneducated to be at war with those of them who might be trying to improve their lots.

Us liberals-feminists-unionists-new-agers-free-thinkers-environmentalists they are calling “illuminati” now. In the past we were called “witches” and “heretics” and burned at the stake and tortured mercilessly.

I am an environmentalist, a feminist, a liberal, a new ager, a hippie, someone who went to and facilitated at places like Esalen, and a believer in world peace. Call me “illuminati” and I will wear the badge proudly….

Included in this are attacks on any better parenting organizations, anything that might improve the self-esteem of ordinary folks, anything that might alleviate the conditions of overpopulation and squalor in which many people live. They want to keep us down, demoralized, and unable to fight back.

And if we do fight back, they have the most gullible of us going after those of our own who have dared to rise above our stations and would wish to reach a hand back to do the same for our brothers and sisters.

it just occurred to me these folks, tea party types or those who don’t know any better among progressives, would be like the house “blacks” (to avoid the N word) of the South … siding with their enslavers against any outsiders or “uppity” blacks.

My friend Ka’t Pleiadean Mandu said, “Well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black. I came across a youtube video where they were trying to tell us that reptilians and pleiadeans were the same. Bahahaha.”

Yes, that is exactly the kind of ignorance I’m talking about. Reptilians and pleiadeans the same. It’s just paranoia, where everything is a threat that they don’t understand.

what I am saying is that these people who think they are “awakened” because they have swallowed this drivel are being led by the nose to their slaughter.

These rich folks take away people’s real self-esteem and then play on the egotism that results. Telling them they are “awakened” for being duped is part of the way these uneducated are “played.”

Religion is a great tool for it does both of those things I was talking about above: It drives people’s self-esteem into the dirt and then lifts their egoism to a high point once they go along with the drivel. Their “being saved” is as much a way to play them like violins as “being awakened” is for this group above.

Addendum: it was posted on an Occupy page … which is *very* disturbing.

It just conceptualizes the things I’ve been told on many pages/groups, and read in articles all over the internet.

I’ve personally been called “illuminati” many times for not having traditional christian religious views. Yeah, me. living on social security.

The parts of the chart that actually include rich people and the Vatican is how the right uses some of the truth to get people to going along with their wishes and against their own. Alex Jones is a good example of that. There is plenty of truth in conspiracy theories, but notice above how it is being used to go against unions. Yeah, big tool of rich people … trade unions. See what I mean? The best propaganda is that which frames the truth in a way which they can use it to entice and enslave.

This chart, if you look at it, is an attack on all kinds of free-thinkers and searchers. it is an encouragement for people to live in the comfort of their ignorance … and fears … and basically feel good in the righteousness of their servitude.

I think that these things are the “screens” they put up to hide behind. The enemies are right in front of us. We shouldn’t be wasting our time on “mythical” ones … it is too easy for folks to be manipulated that way … cause then they can say ANYthing! And they have already shown, with their use of Glen Beck, Alex Jones et al, to use plenty of righteous sounding ego-placating misinformation to seed the collective mind into its current confusion.

Paul Theriault responded, “I have to agree. I remember one time someone said to me, when they were in obvious psychiatric danger, that they wouldn’t go see a psychologist or psychiatrist, as they all were members of the illuminati.

It also excludes a lot of concepts from serious evaluation because all contrary evidence is assumed to be an illuminati plant.

I remember some telling me once that baking soda cured cancer and the illuminati suppressed the evidence. That’s just plain not true.”

I responded to Paul, It is stuff like that which I’ve heard over the years and has built up in me to motivate me to do this post today. It is sad. This stuff borders on the psychotic … and some of it is….

Paul Theriault well, a fair amount of conspiracy theory is probably generated by people with schizophrenia. At least from what I can tell via their interviews. Not to mention the shoddy reporting.

Michael Adzema hmmm. i was suspecting that myself. I have a stepson who *is* schizophrenic. And this stuff sounded at times like the *kind* of stuff he would say.

there are *real* problems and *real* evil. Fitting them into a Christian mythical structure linked to a particular religion’s theology does not help us see them and fix them … and KEEPS us from doing anything about them.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I have heard that we couldn’t do anything about such-and-such because it was all part of God’s or Lucifer’s “plan.” *sigh*

If I have any intention, though, it is to bring light to false stories that are very, very dangerous. At one time, over the course of 300 years, 30 million women were horribly tortured and then burned alive for having views like we hold. And it looks like America is heading in that direction again …

On the flip side, this is the grandest time to be alive. The most important time in recorded history. All threads are coming together now, from all times and places, and we are in the center … getting to be a part, participate, choose, have a role and an effect….

yes, “a great passion play” … for sure

Bob Conway said on this:

While it surely is true that some wealthy and powerful people conspire to keep their wealth and power and indeed acquire more of it at our expense, the scope and breadth of the paranoia with which some other people approach that simple fact is truly astounding. They’ll lump just about anybody with whose views they disagree in with their enemies and call them “Illuminati” or “New World Order” or something and blame them for everything bad in the world. Such conspiracy theorists pose a great danger to all of us, including themselves.

And –

Neo-McCarthyism is what it is. 60 years ago there was a “Commie” lurking under every bed. Now the paranoid right insists that the “Illuminati” are hiding under your bed with a fleet of black helicopters coming to take away your Bible and your guns and put you in a FEMA camp after implanting a RFID chip in your neck and polluting your precious bodily fluids with fluoridated water.

I would add –

It was said that the only ones who are interested in denying conspiracy theories are the perpetrators of the conspiracies … which set off in me this response:

Seriously? You don’t think people who want to know the truth might also have an interest in denying that conspiracies *that* don’t exist … don’t exist? Not all conspiracy theories are valid. That is a recipe for the psychosis we see on FB … where some people actually think the world is hollow … and there’s some big effing illuminati coverup of that …. and that Nazis live in Antartica … dominator reptiles live on the moon and Sandy Hook never happened!!

Look, I am convinced 911 was an inside job and JFK was killed by powerful people in our government as well. But, Jesus! What bothers me is the free rein that has given for nuts to come up with all kinds of things out of thin air … aided and abetted and “seeded” by the likes of Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Alex Jones and the like … who we *really* should be looking at if we want to find evil conspirators…. imho….

3. This is why New World Order and Illuminati stuff is bullshit and is right-wing propaganda. It is rooted in the anti-communism of the 50s and the John Birch Society; and it is vehemently anti-progressive.

From the group description at We Are Change:

“During the 20th century, many statesmen, such as Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill, used the term “new world order” to refer to a new period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power after World War I and World War II. They all saw these periods as opportunities to implement idealistic or liberal proposals for global governance only in the sense of new collective efforts to identify, understand, or address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve.

These proposals led to the creation of international organizations, such as the United Nations and NATO, and international regimes, such as the Bretton Woods system and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which were calculated both to maintain a balance of power as well as regularize cooperation between nations, in order to achieve a peaceful phase of capitalism. These creations in particular and internationalism in general, however, would always be criticized and opposed by the American Old Right on isolationist grounds and by New Right on benevolent imperalist grounds.

In the aftermath of the two World Wars, progressives welcomed these new international organizations and regimes but argued they suffered from a democratic deficit and therefore were inadequate to not only prevent another global war but also foster global justice. Thus, activists around the globe formed a world federalist movement bent on creating a “real” new world order. A number of Fabian socialist intellectuals, such as British writer H. G. Wells in the 1940s, appropriated and redefined the term “new world order” as a synonym for the establishment of a full-fledged secular, social democratic world government.

During the Red Scare of 1947–1957, conspiracy theorists of the American secular and Christian right increasingly embraced and mongered unfounded fears of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Jews being the driving force behind an “international communist conspiracy”. The threat of world communism in the form of a state atheistic and bureaucratic collectivist world government, demonized as a “Red Menace”, therefore became the main focus of apocalyptic millenarian conspiracism.

In the 1960s, producerist groups like the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby disseminated a great deal of right-wing conspiracy theories focused on the United Nations as the vehicle “internationalists” would use to create the “One World Government”, and contributed to a conservative movement for United States withdrawal from the U.N. American writer Mary M. Davison, in her 1966 booklet The Profound Revolution, traced the alleged New World Order conspiracy to the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System in 1913 by international bankers, who she claimed later formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921 as the shadow government. At the time the booklet was published, “international bankers” would have been interpreted by many readers as a reference to a postulated “international Jewish banking conspiracy” masterminded by the Rothschilds.

Claiming that the term “New World Order” is used by a secretive elite dedicated to the destruction of all national sovereignties, American producerist writer Gary Allen, in his 1971 book None Dare Call It Conspiracy, 1974 book Rockefeller: Campaigning for the New World Order and 1987 book Say “No!” to the New World Order, articulated the anti-globalist theme of much current right-wing conspiracism in the U.S.. Thus, after the fall of communism in the early 1990s, the main demonized scapegoat of the American far right shifted seamlessly from crypto-communists who plotted on behalf of the Red Menace to globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order. The relatively painless nature of the shift was due to growing right-wing opposition to the globalization of capitalism but also in part to the basic underlying apocalyptic millenarian paradigm, which fed the Cold War and the witch-hunts of the McCarthy period.”

So, if you are an illuminati theorist seeing illuminati under every bed, know you are in the great tradition of McCarthyites who saw communists under every bed, Nazis who saw Jews as the perpetrators of all their problems, the Vatican who saw heretics behind every free thought, and the people of the middle ages, who saw witches behind every expression of happiness or pleasure … and killed them.

Enjoying the company you’re keeping?

4. i’m not afraid of being culled by the government. i’m afraid of psychotic NWO fanatics seeing illuminati under every bed just like they once saw communists in the 50s and witches in the middle ages. this illuminati stuff is bullshit, but worse it is dangerous psychosis. people have already died because of believing this bullshit. people have been killed!!

Laughner, the guy who killed all those people, including children and shot Gabrielle Giffords through the brain, in Arizona, was all pumped up on this Alex Jones nonsense. I’m more afraid of stupid conspiracy nuts than i am any “elite” or government.

Herne Webber: We could use a One World Government by, of and for the people, one that is Anarchistic, granting local rule, with overarching Ideals of Socialism and Green to protect human and civil rights, as well as the environment. It is amazing to me the number of Progressives who nevertheless fall for Right wing propaganda, such as the Illuminati, the lizard aliens, etc..

Michael Adzema: exactly, Herne. nice to hear your voice of clarity on this. i get so tired of coming up against the propaganda and misinformation of people who then claim to have the “true knowledge” and to be “awakened” when the words they speak come from the minds of the Koch Brothers and those like them. For example, these people have no clue of the connections between the Koch Brothers and Ron Paul/Alex Jones/Glenn Beck. You’d think that Glenn Beck thanking the “Koch Brothers for this information” on his show would be a hint, but nooooo … and they think others are the sheeple. ha!

Michael Adzema mccarthyism not much different than the illuminati madness of today, except it was worse than what we are seeing right now. but it is where I fear we are heading. and the right will have us by the noses again, progressives herded like the sheeple they claim not to be… delusional….

what scares me is i see those super rich using their money to seed misinformation into the movement. i see people adopting anti-environmental stances saying that they have been “awakened.” Being against the UN’s Agenda 21, for example. And I say, you’re not awakened, you’re being played like a violin to help the Koch Brothers trash the economy. that kind of awakening is stupid. but people, especially young folks, will know (or be told) one thing and think they know everything.

right wingers have always hated the United Nations because it is the one of the most powerful impediments corporations have to doing whatever they want. you go against the UN and you are sweet music to the Koch Brothers, the polluters, and those that want to make you consumer slaves. it is right-wing mythology rooted all the way back in middle age witch hunting and conservative catholic ideology that went against the ideas of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment.

5. Here’s more proof of what I am saying. it is anti-semitic, anti-environmentalist and anti-United Nations, and nowhere does it target corporations, like folks think it does. Its roots are in the inquisition that put down heretics and women in the middle ages. Do people realize that in backing NWO/illuminati conspiracy they are acting like modern inquisitors and modern McCarthyites? Do they realize that they are speaking the lines of the John Birch Society? Does any of them know what that means? Does anyone care? Here’s more proof:.

“HELLO, I AM EVELYN DE ROTHSCHILD!…>- My Family is the Richest Family of the World!…- We Own the US Fed, the Bank of America, and Entire World’s Banking System!…- We are the Bankers of the Royal Familiy and of the Vatican!…- We Financied Democracy, Communism and Nazism Also!…- We Financied the American Revolution!… But We Were Also Commissioned by Royal Inglish Familiy to Put Down the American Revolution!…- We Financied the French Revolution!- We Financied the Communist Revolution in Russia!…- We Destroyed the State of Palestine to Create Israel!…- We Were Behind 9/11 and Resulting Wars!…- We Control Obama, Democratics, Republicans and the US Governement and State!… – We Own the Associated Press and Reuters and Control Everything in Your Media.- We Are the Hereditary Supreme Chiefs of Almost the Entire World Freemasonry!…- We Are the Hereditary Supreme Rabbis of Almost all of the World’s Jewish People!…- We All Worship Lucifer – Satan the Devil ! Our True God!…- We Are New World Order and Plan to Enslave the Entire Human Population, Killing 90% and We Will Do It Legally Through the United Nations!…”

The above is from some propaganda that was being passed around on “illuminati”/jew-hating groups on FB. If you believe that nonsense, then you won’t have any trouble with what else is being tossed around – that the Rothschilds owns 72% of the wealth in the world and 500 trillion dollars. If you can believe that ANYone can without being seen own 72% of all wealth and 500 trillion dollars, then i’m not surprised you could believe in reptiles peaking at us from behind the moon. btw, how much for the green cheese you have for sale?

the fact that folks seeing illuminati everywhere are also attacking personal spirituality is an indication that these things go back to conservative Catholic tyranny of the middle ages, where they had inquisitions for the “illuminati” of their day … calling them witches and heretics. 30 million killed over a 300 year period. only it is conservative Christian dogma and evangelism that is behind this modern day witch-hunting. never again!!

in the book None Dare Call it Conspiracy, theses “elites” are said to be behind unions, feminists, hippies, etc….. everything but evangelical religion and the right. When the opposite is true. The point is NWO and conspiracy nuts are being seeded with right wing propaganda and are taking it out on their brothers in the left. The real elites have, with this NWO stuff and through the Alex Jones and Glenn Becks of the world, got progressives looking under beds instead of at rich folks.

6. It is this typical illuminati bullshit about Rothschilds and freemasons and Jews that led to the holocaust and the rise of Nazism. And you NWO theorists think you are *fighting* fascism!? You are being led down the blood-soaked path, actually. I quote:

“Antisemitic conspiracy theories

Antisemitism has, from the Middle Ages, frequently taken on characteristics of conspiracy theory. Antisemitic canards continue to circulate. In medieval Europe it was widely believed that Jews poisoned wells, had killed Jesus, and consumed the blood of Christians in their rituals (despite the fact that human and animal blood are not kosher).

In the second half of the 19th century conspiracists claimed that Jews and/or Freemasons were plotting to establish control over the world. The most famous text alleging the existence of this Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A more modern manifestation of such ideas is the myth of a Zionist Occupation Government.

Various conspiracy theories have been advanced regarding Jews and banking,[32] including the myth that world banking is dominated by the Rothschild family,[33] that Jews control Wall Street,[33] and that Jews control the U.S. Federal Reserve System.[34] A related myth is that Jews control Hollywood or the news media.[35][36]

Most Holocaust denial claims imply, or openly state, that the Holocaust is a hoax arising out of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other peoples,[37] and to justify the creation of the State of Israel. For this reason, Holocaust denial is generally considered to be an antisemitic[38] conspiracy theory.[39]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories

7. illuminati conspiracy stuff is basically Nazism I’m finding out. though I’m not jewish, I’ve just been called jew-this and jew-that and that wikipedia is jewkipedia and etc etc etc in an “illuminati” group. So, though everyone might think it is true, it is because the Nazis and fascists have taken over in this country and are determining what people think. that’s why. add to that the dumbing down of America.

It is something we need to fight…. certainly not be part of….

read the rest of it. they want to include socialists, marxists, revolutionaries, hippies, all renaissance thinkers…. my generation saw through all this when they came out with the book None Dare Call it Conspiracy, which was a way the right wing tried to blame hippies for all that was wrong and make the changes in society part of a communist conspiracy. but generations have come after us who have been duped.

So, this is the kind of stuff that the Nazis did. This NWO stuff is the same stuff that led to the rounding up of the Jews. That’s how dangerous this is.

What the Germans believed prior to the Jewish roundup WAS this NWO bullshit about Jews controlling the world through their banks? THIS CONSPIRACY STUFF LED TO THE HOLOCAUST

And in the same way as the Nazis directed attention away from themselves by targeting the Jews as scapegoats, these same kinds of people are targeting hippies, feminists, unions, and environmentalists as illuminati.

The problem is that folks think like I that there is an elite of rich people. While what these NWO folks are targeting is YOU as some elite. Look at the chart above. And read my comment about it.

8. i don’t disagree with anything anyone says about the rich folks controlling things and there being dire threats right now. Shit! I’ve written four books trying to rally folks about this in the last two years alone!!

the problem is that there’s so much truth in all of what they are saying in conspiracy circles …. and then they turn around and say hippies, new-agers, communists, feminists, hollywood, unions, etc. etc. are the ones responsible. they’ve been doing this since the 60s. None Dare Call It Conspiracy came out in the early 70s and we saw right then how they were tying in the entire counterculture of my generation with some bullshit communist plot to take over the world. i still hear to this day that the Rockefellers are responsible for making me a hippie. how stupid!!!

as if hippies are the center of the financial engines for the world. lmao!!

While New World Order and illuminati junkies go around thinking they’re clever in divining the intentions behind world events, they are blind to the 50% die-off of species in the next 20 to 50 years, the irradiating of the planet, the massacre and brutality of tyrants against their own people, and the fact that we are on an ecocidal and humanicidal brink, looking at the possibility of the end of all life on this planet in our lifetimes, from any one or combination of many environmental assaults. I say that the prospect of aliens-reptiles-illuminati is a comforting fantasy for those who do not want to look at our real problems.

As one of my friends put it, “I would love to be able to buy into that whole NWO/conspiracy crap, which is probably comforting? Well, it enables believers to divorce themselves from any sort of responsibility.

I added that it is typical scapegoating. finding imaginary things to blame has two sides, as you are indicating. the one is misdirection of focus on a false target. the other is having that focus not on oneself. that is plain and simple the function of scapegoating as a tool in society. How many people who are finding illuminati and Rothschilds behind everything are doing anything to save our precious planet? I haven’t found one who is. they are too busy denying climate change at the behest of the Koch Brothers and other polluters…. sheeple

i said there is no illuminati. i’m the first to point out there is lots of problems and evil. you show me one illuminati. I’ll show you some real Koch Brothers. it is insanity. take it or leave it.

Jung talked a lot about the Shadow … as well as the collective unconscious. Folks who do not look at their own “dirty laundry” within see darkness behind every rock outside of themselves. Also, my experience with these folks in general, and too many politicos on both sides of the spectrum, is that they are very disinclined to look at themselves and have very little self-awareness (much more for the right than the left, of course). They tend to pooh-pooh psychology, calling it “psychobabble” … sound familiar? And they tend to see and act in the outside world their own inner conflicts from their families of origin.My point is there is evil in the world. But those who do not look at their own darkness are liable to end up tilting at the *wrong* windmills outside themselves.Don’t get me wrong, I understand folks resisting this. It is far more terrifying to find out the boogey-man doesn’t exist. Because that means that if you still think there is one, you’re one sick puppy…..

i don’t disagree with anything you say folks say about a rich elite controlling the world. And that’s the problem. there’s so much truth in it all …. and then they turn around and say hippies, new-agers, communists, feminists, hollywood, unions, etc. etc. are the ones responsible. they’ve been doing this since the 60s. None Dare Call It Conspiracy came out in the early 70s and we saw right then how they were tying in the entire counterculture of my generation with some bullshit communist plot to take over the world. i still hear to this day that the Rockefellers are responsible for making me a hippie. how stupid!!!

as if hippies are the center of the financial engines for the world. lmao!!

The Matrix is a great movie. i’ve seen it several times and enjoyed it. it makes for a poor substitute for reality, however.

Indeed, my impression from a lot of these folks is that they are confusing reality with movies..

9. The problem i have with criticizing Obama is the crowd of assholes i end up in when i do that. i am angrier at this right wing NWO bullshit and propaganda that targets environmentalists (like me), hippies (like me), union folks (like me), and feminists (like me), than I am at Obama. I see the Koch Brothers hand behind a lot of this and so I wonder at the criticism I read about Obama. i don’t know what to believe of it anymore. Read the article and you might do the same.

there is plenty of blame that is due Obama. But the problem with paranoids is they end up being lousy prophets. I’m still waiting for the “certain” invasion of Nicaragua that my progressive friends said was coming while Reagan was in power. the U.S. didn’t need to invade Nicarauga, that is true. But my “progressive” friends did not see that … blinded by the certainty of their paranoia. They were predicting this invasion after the other elements were known.

The story above is another example. I saw an article today predicting just the opposite: that the case for the Keystone pipeline finally fell like a house of cards and that Obama will not ok it.

I’m angry, too, and want better from my own side. But my anger has not yet made me stupid enough to help my opponents in trying to bring down those on my side … including myself!

I’ve already seen this movie. Back in the 70s with Carter. I regret very much not defending him against the mass of innuendo and misinformation that ended up bringing Ray-gun into power and ending progress in America. This is not my first rodeo. I refuse this time to help the forces of evil, even when I am discouraged and frustrated at the competence or pace of progress of those who represent my interests.

I finally voted for Carter, but i went to an Anderson function and toyed with the idea of supporting him. I lost hope in Carter and didn’t defend him after a while … the exact way i’m feeling about Obama of late, and am today trying to change. But, we had no idea how much worse it could get.

i think that is what we have to keep in mind now: how much worse it can get still if we do not fight back against the filth of innuendo and lies that are raining upon is in progressive circles..

the right uses any weakness on our side to attack and make gains. they seed doubt and misinformation to feed those weaknesses. they insert their lies into any cracks in our alliance. thus, they have made gains continuously over the last 40 years.

the point is that Obama is not evil he is he simply lacking in being bold. That is a huge difference from his enemies.

As a psychotherapist, I understand him psychologically. We should have known when he was trying to get us to see that we could be a united country not split into red and blue states that, while it sounded good, it was delusional. He was acting out his childhood wish to bring his parents together. And the way he tries to placate the Republicans. it is clear he wants to please daddy and is acting out of all kinds of unconscious pain of his dad leaving him.

Hell, Obama is not my generation: We, who faced down authority, who spoke truth to power. He was born in the first wave of folks that the right wingers created to counter us: the yuppies.

So, Obama is between two worlds: his black liberal views and his yuppie white collegiate ones.

But there are no leaders that don’t have their psychological drawbacks … as we see from the leftist leader of Brazil right now.

Jung also talked a lot about the Shadow … as well as the collective unconscious. Folks who do not look at their own “dirty laundry” within see darkness behind every rock outside of themselves. Also, my experience with these folks in general, and too many politicos on both sides of the spectrum, is that they are very disinclined to look at themselves and have very little self-awareness (much more for the right than the left, of course). They tend to pooh-pooh psychology, calling it “psychobabble” … sound familiar? And they tend to see and act in the outside world their own inner conflicts from their families of origin.
My point is there is evil in the world. But those who do not look at their own darkness are liable to end up tilting at the *wrong* windmills outside themselves.

they were the ones in college and investment firms during Reagan’s presidency, and statistics show they were crucial in Reagan winning both times…. NOT my generation.
I saw the way the filthy rich changed the universities in 71 and 72 so there would never be a free thinking generation again. i was there. we saw documents. we fought it by trying to hire the professors they were firing with our own “quarters” and have them conduct classes on the lawns outside the classrooms….

People are wont to criticize Obama using the quote from Edmund Burke: “All that’s necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” ….

They never tell you what he said next: “But if you really want to speed evil along, join with it and kick the hesitant good men in the teeth.”

10. I’ve been asked if I know about “The Georgia Guidestones.

The answer is that of course i do. i agree with them. who could disagree with working to bring us to a population growth that would have our planet survive? what kind of paranoid idiots thinks that this means someone wants to kill people?

Have these right-wingers throwing this stuff around as propaganda done anything to limit population growth? No! they are too busy killing abortion doctors.

Would these folks bring a child into the world if it meant the death of the child, themselves and all of their friends? …. well, yes, they are that stupid. So i retract the question.

Do the people who are terrified of The Georgia Guidestones know about Planned Parenthood is what i want to know.

it tells you a lot about the mindsets of people when the only way that even occurs to them as a way of solving the population problem of the planet is to kill people.

So I’m with Yoko Ono and all those other environmentalist “hippies” who think it is a good idea to save the planet and to do that we need to stop overpopulating the Earth by putting restraint on the number of people we bring in here.

10. As for seeing some kind of NWO conspiracy behind the aspirations for revolution of the peoples of the world, especially those in the Middle East … to those people who see the need to piss on the heartfelt aspirations and dearly paid for advances of those countries, I say, you keep seeing people behind every aspiration for freedom in the world. go ahead. meanwhile tyrants butcher their own people.

As for myself, I’m with the Libyan, Turkish, Brazilian, Egyptian, and Syrian people. Assad is a murderer of 100,000 men, women, and children. do lives not figure into your complex mental machinations of geopolitical intrigue and conspiracy theory?

In particular about Syria, i don’t know what to believe anymore. i was involved in both Libya and Syria … it was all part of a globalrevolution. then as soon as we gave them the help that saved Libya from the slaughter, the progressives suddenly started saying Gaddafi was a good guy. i still have friends in Libya and Syria. I trust their instincts for revolution and yearnings for democracy far more than back-stabbing Western intellectual progressives who are never satisfied and people die because of their infantile petulance.

Bottom line is I don’t believe anything anymore. but i do know who is evil and who is not. being a psychotherapist for 40 years helps that. and when people start sounding like Glenn Beck, Fox News, or infowars, i consider them deluded.

But in general, I get past all the intellectualization and spin by putting things in human terms. This I find especially helpful when looking at the Middle East. As so:

When 33 million out of 84 million population come out in the street to redress something, it is the will of the people when it gets redressed. (Egypt)

Also, when a leader of a country kills 100,000 of his own people to stay in power, that leader is not expressing the will of the people, no matter what geopolitical alakazam is proposed to defend it. (Syria)

It’s easy for me: the one with the most people on their side and least suffering and murder deserves to win, in my book.

11. The Illuminati Threat? Yea, and I’ve got some “rich” teachers, union folk, and college-educated who are out to get you, too.

Based upon what I read, the article below, about the Illuminati:

(1) Where do I join?

(2) The people who would oppose such an organization sound like they would be tea-baggers, Beck-aloytes

(3) I don’t think they would let Bush be a member (c’mon! Eastern spirituality and Enlightenment philosophy!!! … Bush!? He’d only get a C on the entrance exam if he did try, and that would hardly be “illumined” enough)

(3) Yes, this stuff has been around. It is called the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Age of Enlightenment

(4) Its principles would have been responsible for the American Revolution and the French Revolution. I only hope that OWS is so inspired

(5) It WOULD be the kind of thing that would be hated by the Catholic Church and they WOULD spread lies throughout the ages to misinform on it, to attribute their own vile agenda TO IT, and to link it with Satan, and thus reverse the blame that should go to them.

(6) It sounds like they would lump the entire New Age movement and all its thought – Jungian, Gnostic, human potential, etc. – into it

(7) Sounds like they were the original “dirty hippies” (and so I would have been one)

(8) when it comes to standing with Roosevelt, Obama, Clinton, George Washington, Marxism, and Benjamin Franklin or standing against them with assorted Bible-thumpers and the Catholic Church, I’d be with Benjamin Franklin’s group. In fact, I was sent on my quest for truth at the liberal arts college that Ben Franklin founded (Franklin and Marshall College) which had such a tradition of scholastic inquiry until the Seventies when it was taken over by the Right-Wing who hated the anti-war protesters that were coming out of it and it was turned into a career mill instead.

So (9) MAYBE I AM ONE and don’t know it!

(Damn. If I could find a 10th, I’d have a new article: “10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Illuminati But Would Never Hear About in the Right-Wing (Propaganda) Media” #ahI’mtoobusyalready)

http://www.examiner.com/progressive-in-new-orleans/tales-from-the-crypt-is-the-illuminati-real

Some more thoughts.. (maybe the #10 hehe) –

Bart Boeckholt – I can tell you first hand that the free masons have been, and are involved in many great things including the founding of this great nation.

Michael Adzema – You just triggered a fascinating thought in me, Bart. Is not the Free Masons like the first unions? And so, is not this anti-illuminati crap like the first tea-bagger kind of rhetoric?

Bart Boeckholt – The Free masons were indeed a guild of operative Masons in ancient times.

Michael Adzema – We hear the same rhetoric today against smart folks. pin-heads, Northeast liberals. The right-wing has apparently always used this tactic: keep people dumb (in the past it was the Catholic Church) today they have purged the campuses of liberal arts then, (2) rile up the uneducated people this creates against the more educated of them — thus pitting one part of the 99% against another part — and this leaves the 1% untouched and just watching and enjoying the show … the culture war created.

The anti-union bashing is just another way, like the one against the educated, to pit slightly better off 99% ers against those who would be jealous of that and leaves the ones in power (the Catholic Church of the past and the 1%, the filthy rich, of today) untouched.

Tales from the Crypt: Is the Illuminati Real?

From http://www.examiner.com/progressive-in-new-orleans/tales-from-the-crypt-is-the-illuminati-real

Original article at http://sillymickel.blogspot.com/2011/11/based-upon-what-i-read-article-below.html

12. Big Lies…Big Ones!

We listen in as local TV anchors Dave and Katie recall the amazing day, a month previous, when the world changed drastically forever, practically overnight. They replay the TV news highlights of those incredible few days when miraculously the world’s human population was released from the Biggest Lie of all time, in fact the longest lasting—25,000 years in fact.
But the world changed because it was the most hideous lie. It had made humans miserable throughout their lives and caused them to be terrified to live, terrified of acting or even speaking. And after such a life of paralyzing terror, at death’s door, it caused untold trillions of humans to be freaked out of their gourd and to go nearly insanely brain scramblingly, nose drippingly mad as they approached the threshold.

God Will Punish You Forever in Hell…Stiiiiiilll, He Loves You!

The Big Lie, the incredibly long cover-up?

It turns out that some quite insanely controlling and pompously superior types had long ago concocted the idea of Hell—this place of endless and unbearable suffering that would last for all time. And then as the ultimate in mind scrambling irrationality, attributed its existence to God, who was also claimed to be all-loving and all-merciful.

A Wildly Successful Mind-Fuck

So it was the biggest, stupidest, and meanest mind-fuck of all time, concocted to keep people so terrified they would be easily manipulated by the controlling Meanies.

But it succeeded wildly beyond all expectations in that it could not definitely be disproved. And with the penalty of not believing in it so unbelievably huger than any person’s worst nightmare magnified times infinity, it held fast in people’s minds for 25,000 years with barely a soul ever courageous enough in that time to speak up and say what a rotten crazy notion it was…. [Keep Reading – Breaking News — Hell Doesn’t Exist: Good—God! Hell—No! … the Comedy]

Continue with We Are All Turks Today and The Tao of Funny God: Why Turkey and What Andy Kaufman and the Turkish and Occupy Protesters Teach Us

Return to The Great Reveal Epilogue, Part Fourteen – Four Falls from Grace … And Back Again: Becoming Human Is Love’s Supreme Act of Recklessness, and Death to Everyone … Makes It Fun

Invite you to join me on Twitter:
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The Purpose of the Human Form and the Poignancy of It All: Funny God, Part Three — Pain and Peek-a-Boo

Becoming Human Is God’s Trippiest Game … Why We Create Hell and Satan

Part Three of Facebook…. Funny…. God(dess?)…. Experience

So, there you have it. Pain is the teacher. But it’s not pain that’s being imposed, or, you remember, is punishment. In fact, we’re the dumb asses that are pickin’ pain. God didn’t ever pick pain for us, except to bring us back to happiness and that’s what I’m getting at…God is so good, it’s amazing that…well, no, it’s not so amazing because, as you’ll see, it’s all perfect.

Horror Comes from What’s Kept in Darkness

Anyway, let me get back to what I was saying. I was saying that it just occurred to me about that whole lewdness thing that there is a kind of a universal that what’s ever kept in the darkness, is, well…the darkness is where we project all the things inside that we don’t know yet. And that’s where all the horror comes from, ok? It’s basically from darkness.

Training in faith, in not fearing

And, like I said, y’know, even in peek-a-boo that’s the case. But later, it’s God that teaches us, right? And basically, what we’re trying to be taught, in peek-a-boo with God, is not to fear, that when something is not in plain sight, basically not to project our own inner horrors on what always comes down to being no-thing…no thing at all!

The Purpose of the Human Form

The darkness makes a wonderful screen for projecting imaginary, truly mental, and fleeting as thought non-realities.

It is the reason for choosing the human form…in fact…. That is, to be completely ignorant of your identity with divinity. To be utterly ignorant of your identity with divinity is the purpose of the human form.

Well…to throw yourself, completely, into such a darkness, with the foreknowledge that God is good, and that you will always be in His, Her presence…. In fact you will be literally moving and thinking in total God immersion, and the only difference between people will be the degree to which they know that, or don’t.

Becoming human is God’s trippiest game.

So it is the trippiest game that God plays. Imagine, just imagine…it would be like any of us throwing ourselves onto another planet with complete total amnesia. And the game would not even be known to be a game! I mean you don’t know it’s a game, you just show up! That’s what’s so much different from us and the animals.

So, but, God plays this game…and we as God choose it because it is the most fraught with…well, let us say…let us simply call it peek-a-boo. By that I mean it is the most fraught with totally and sincerely believing the most horrible and hideous and terrifying things which can happen, because of that total amnesia…that lack of any link to truth.

Life Is a Dark Screen

Life is come into and without any remembrance of our true nature, right? Now, life is essentially, then, a dark screen! Because we have no sense of our true nature. It’s essentially a dark screen upon which anything can be found! Wow!

So the human form has its purpose in being a kind of a…well…the human form has its purpose in kinda being a purging. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it, but just like a projecting out, so that it could be seen, of all the things that one would conceive as a unique divine actor.

Animals remember it is just a movie, unlike us.

But when in the presence of the divine or even, say, taking on an animal or other form where there is never that total amnesia only the kind of pretend that an actor has when performing a role in a play. See that’s what, that’s what theirs is. They always remember, so they’re always pretending…even when it’s like something horrible that’s in the script. And they never confuse the role with their own true essence.

How Can God Be Devilish?

So it is only us humans that can conceive the incredible horror and act out the most hideous things that can occur. How could God act devilish and murderous unless He allowed Himself? Think about it.

And I know you’re saying, why would God want to act devilish and murderous? Ok, alright, maybe I’m ahead of myself, but just hold that thought.

How ’bout if He allowed Himself to forget?

But say there was a reason. And I know you think there’s no reason—God is good, blah blah blah lightness and light and all that but just check, check this out now.

How could God act devilish and murderous if He needed to, unless He allowed Himself, willingly, to totally forget who He was. You still don’t get it. I see.

Well, for starters, let’s remember that there is no such thing as death, ok? It’s another impossibility. When you know the truth, there’s no such thing as death, it’s an utter impossibility. For God is All, and always existing, and all things that seem to be actual things and therefore separate are actually only variations on the One and Only Reality…I won’t even say thing or form, for they are illusions, too. Illusory props of the game.

It’s all so simple when you know. But knowing requires seeing or apprehending accurately. And the point of this game as humans is that it is impossible, as we are filled with the illusory. Totally wiping the God consciousness of knowledge, of its foundation, source, whatever, allows a kind of vacuum into which anything can crawl, in which anything can respond…in which the most obvious untruths are allowed to dominate the play of the game as if they were more than just the smoke they are.

It Is the Greatest Adventure

So it is the greatest adventure, fraught with the greatest possibilities of extreme fear, terror, and so on.

Still, aren’t getting it? In this…just listen…in this way God, who is not darkness, creates darkness. Now why would He want to do that?

Alright, first of all remember, that the darkness He creates is only fake darkness. Remember that. Remember peek-a-boo? The baby’s alarmed…but he was wrong. Ok?

And I think I’m gonna, I think I’m gonna tell you a little bit more. But if you think, if you’re starting to get that, you’re starting to get it.

God Playing Peek-a-Boo with Himself

So you see He creates…He cannot possibly be darkness, but in this way He does create it. Now, you ask, why would He do that? I’ll get to that. It’s kind of allowing a game of peek-a-boo in which one does not recognize one’s mother even when she’s in plain sight. So imagine the baby’s cries and traumas then. Imagine: mommy’s not there, mommy’s there, and the baby still thinks mommy’s not there!

So, it is this total amnesia that creates the possibility of not even knowing that.—not knowing God is actually there—impossible to be anywhere else—even even when not seen. This amnesia creates the possibilities of even more extreme, oh, how can I say, more intense pain. The baby becomes totally convinced that indeed momma is gone forever…and that he is totally alone, and must live without love…so surely he will die.

Indeed this does describe the state of many a human when in a state of total forgetfulness if you think about it. For, staring directly into the face of God, so to speak, he can be so overcome with fear as to only see the unique attributes that he, as God, has decided to adopt for this particular game of being in the world.

Alright, maybe that’s not really clear.

It was in front of you the whole time!

What I’m saying is this total amnesia unique to humans allows for the possibility, unlike any other game, where such fear can be held, that you can totally forget the face of God even when it’s right in front of you. The source of comfort is right in front of you, and all you can see is yourself.

And by that I mean, not you as God, but you as the unique creation that you created yourself as to try an experiment, y’know. Cause every, every living thing is an experiment in creation…and so it’s those little things, things that make us different, that might be the only thing we’d see. So that’s another part of it.

So, it’s such a fascinating game. For it allows darkness and hideousness, and war…murder…torture!…all that we abhor…that we abhor it is a sign that we are finding some roots in our true nature which is light and goodness. Still wondering why, huh?

Why We Create Hell and Satan

Ok, just a little more slack. This game even allows the creation of a belief in the opposite of truth…truth being no thing, except goodness, light, and bliss. It allows that humans, in their forgetfulness, and in their fear, existing without a glimmer of real truth, to conjure the opposite! So, a hell is concocted, and even an opposite of God, a Satan.

Rx for game of humanness: Take equal parts emptiness and stupidity…

So we’ve got a game that has components…I know it’s not all coming together, but it will…we’ve got a game that has components of total emptiness, and utter royal stupidity, which allows a belief that death is both an end to life and that it is painful. Don’t we believe that? Well, that’s not the truth, but that’s what we come to believe. Hey! That’s what we come to believe coming into human form.

Add a belief in a death…

Think of it. We got a game that has components of total emptiness and utter royal stupidity which allows a belief that death is both an end of life, and that it is painful. And that it is terrifyingly real, and terrifying because there is that darkness beyond it which…aaaaas usual!…all the yet unprojected interesting details of this temporary creation of God, this ego, can be viewed like on a movie screen. And lacking the fundamental truth that it is just a movie, well the parameters of this game allow for the most terrifying, most extreme feelings of any kind that is possible. Still not getting it, eh?

Asking, why would God do and make such a hideous possibility? Ok, well, for a second remember that, just like the baby, no matter what its fears, is lovingly taken care of by its mother. So the fears and all the darkness are only experiences…they’re just feelings. That means that they are not permanent, having no substance or foundation—like the reality of truth-awareness-bliss does…that reality is not gonna change—experiences, feelings are fleeting, impermanent, ultimately not real.

If God is all there is, and He can’t be on His side, who can?

For example, if your cat was to lodge itself under a porch, which if it stayed there it would die, would you hesitate to drag that cat out no matter how much it screamed and hollered and said, “oh yer…I’m in pain and everything”? Cause you knew you were taking care of that cat. You would do it. Well, let me just say that that’s kind of, kinda like the way sometimes we have to be treated by God. Because, well, actually to our credit we’ve chosen quite an adventure…and God loves God…and so we love ourselves and we’re gonna help ourselves out.

But sometimes we choose such an adventure that, uh, y’know…well…how can I say it? There’s no wrong adventures. It’s…there’s such…well let me just continue. Anyway, it’ll all come together, it’s like…[sigh]

The darkness, that the baby feels, whatever…the feeling of loss, it’s not permanent, it has no substance or foundation. The only substance out there that is true is that of Truth-Awareness-Bliss. These other things are fleeting. And, we don’t remember it now in human form, but most of Time of the timelessness of the Now, in which we exist—except for like going off on adventures like this in which we create time—we spend in that Truth-Awareness-Bliss.

And I’ll tell ya, I mean, from what… I mean, I can’t claim to have attained what, let’s say, the “residents” there have got. But I sure…it was the happiest time in my life. And I was all Truth-Awareness-Bliss…and, fucking laughin on your ass funniness…. I mean, I swear to God, this is the big surprise to me, that’s, that God is one…there would be no comedy I don’t think if there wasn’t a God…I think yea this particular gift, this particular creation…anyway…

The Poignancy of It All

Anyway, I’m surprised no one’s getting an inkling of the beauty, or you might see the perfect poignancy of such a game. There are so many other ways to describe its exquisiteness. I’ve got it. I will use your own truth to bring you to an appreciation of this.

Ok, you’re all God…pretending not to be. And you’re doing a heck of game today, by the way. It sure as hell reminds me again of the darkness we humans create here out of nothing as my frustration is of that. He!

But I have this secret that actually allows me to enjoy that frustration. Want a hint? A little hint that it is all in peek-a-boo, ok? Remembering that…all of it…not just a technique…remembering peek-a-boo, all of it, not just a technique, but the thing that humans always overlook, because it is actually God, and is the only thing that can be God…

In peek-a-boo…ok…alright…just continue…just continue listening….

This Is the Way, the Teacher, and the Path.

There is no physical world that exists. There are no words that are anything but a way to block out the vision of essence. But there is one thing, one thing always that exists, is always present, that contains everything, and that is everything, and is also the teacher, the path, the way…the way back to remembering…the way out of the darkness…the fear…or any of the more adventurous aspects of reality.

Did you notice I said adventurous, not negative, painful, or hard? Are you getting the notion? Let’s go back to that you are God. So therefore what you experience is always going to steer you to understanding. Did it not become clear from what I was saying just before this that thing, that thing which is overlooked in peek-a-boo, which is God? Did anybody get the…”

Forgetting where you put yourself

Yes! Anna! You got it. The experience of the baby is overlooked.

Yea. Notice! Anna, that you as a mother of three, having had many experiences yourself of seeing a baby in all kinds of states of feeling and experiencing the various experiential flavors that this game affords, you were tuned in to what is actually just the most obvious thing in the game, hell! It is actually amazing that our human amnesia could leave out the essence of existence as we were blinded by these physical things. Are you following this?

These physical things, which are only projections, not eternal, and certainly not real. For they depend on the perception of the seer for their existence! And there it is again—perception. Another clue! Hope you’re getting it.

Ok, enough of this tugging on your umbilical cords to yourselves as God for one day. Ok? This is not failure, for not getting it. So no need…for those looks…for there is no such thing as failure. And that’s part of the point, too. And all roads, everything that I’m saying leads to one and only one thing.

But before I spill the beans…and I’m going to…whether you get it or not…. Now, enough of this, you know, seeing if you can come to it now…. You will, in time.

Anyway, I just, before I spill the beans, I just thought of something funny. And have we already forgotten that God’s essential nature and that which we humans alone share with Him is that ability to laugh? Laughter. Wow. Like I said, all roads lead there…to God.

Let’s ‘Clast a Few Icons

Back to my little game for you though. Let us say we see what happens if we take…rather than trying to bring to awareness through gentle tugging at things you know inside but are not ready to remember…Let’s try instead a simple but effective way. I love iconoclasm.

Plato’s Cave

What’s an icon? It’s a piece of God that is described. Right? And now described is no longer seen. Now, what’s described is no longer seen, just the icons. Think about that.

Words, icons, the physical world

Well, there are all kinds of icons that we accept as totally real. And all of them block out reality…and cause you to not see the reality you are immersed in, as instead your mind thinks it lives in a world of reflections of your true nature. These reflections are called words, icons, and even the physical world.

What they all have in common is their ability to block out your perception of your true nature as God. What they also have in common is their ability to reveal your truth, when, in seeking God, you consciously decide to remove them from your perception. And what did I say they were? Words, icons, and the physical world.

Words = “monkey mind”

Some of that might be more obvious than others. We talk about words, the “monkey mind,” stuff like that. And you think well if you got rid of that maybe you’d be able to see God? He! But it’s the same thing—icons, the physical world…it’s the same thing as words.

Ok, alright…a road leading home. Oh well, sorry for the delay. You see, I only just myself caught this simple vision and I’m still in awe of the superb perfection of this game.

In Spite of Yourself

And thanks to you all for that, by the way [chuckles]. It’s a damn good thing (hu!)…It’s a damn good thing that all the fears you humans have about good and evil and your preoccupations with justice, innocence, and so on are just delusions. And by the way does it not occur to you that your seeming negative action toward me was the greatest gift I could possibly receive? But, you see, in spite of yourself you acted as God that you are. Hope you’re getting a little closer….

I’m just trying to return the favor a little. Well, this is my attempt at a little gift. Here’s my attempt to gift a little to you.

Unity is Reality, So…

We’ve all heard it said now innumerable times what the nature of God and Reality is. Ok? You can say it out whenever it occurs to you…I mean whoever wants to say it…I mean we have come so far as to know, somehow, that Reality is One. Alright? We all say Unity is what is Reality. Right?

We do service because…

Well the other ways we attempt to experience…there I go, again!…attempt to experience (there I go again) Unity is through service. In serving the unfortunate we invariably feel our heart—there’s another icon that we should dispense with I mean really…well maybe another time…. Let’s not do it all right now. We say it opens up, the heart opens up. Ok?

But what I’m saying is, the sense of Unity that we are trying to achieve, what we describe as where we’re headed, and the Ultimate Reality of it all, is always described aaaass One. Correct? And can anybody give me the other word for the other way that God is described, outside of being One.

[“Love?” is heard in response]

Does God Bore You? Ok, How About Truth?

Love. That’s pretty good. That is pretty good, because that is actually closer to the truth than what…. Closer. But not quite. It is Love…. It’s also hate…in a strange way…. But, uh, I’m backtracking to say that, so I’m going to just let you say He’s hate, but He’s hate, as us, having allowed Himself to completely forget. So He’s not hate…He’s not hate. It’s just an experience that a part of Him has wanted…is having.

I’m starting to, I’m starting to spill the beans here aren’t I? Oh, I hope I… well… if that slipped out, if you get it, that’s fine.

But anyway, what I’m saying is that…. Does this not sound familiar? You ever heard the word…Universal Consciousness…Universal Consciousness…we have One Consciousness? Didja ever think what the hell that means? “One Consciousness!”

The Cloud of Boring Sameness

We don’t think of it as conscience, right? Course some people do. They mistake the two and they just can’t get that out of their mind. So that’s a problem right there, but, huh? Consciousness…What do we think of it, how do we picture consciousness? Can you see consciousness? So how do you picture it? Like some gigantic cloud, right?

[Someone says, “y’don’t picture it…”]

But, it’s like some gigantic…empty thing, right? Am I right?

[“uh uh…”]

Well you just said you don’t picture it.

[“You don’t picture it. It’s just Total Awareness, it doesn’t have a form.”]

It’s Total Awareness, uh huh. It doesn’t have a form….

[“As you say, it’s no thing…”]

That’s true. But so you’re picturing it aaaas? Light? Er, something? Total Awareness?

[“I can’t really picture it. I can’t….”]

I know, I know but I can. And you could, so simply. Because it is the biggest..secret…of all, that is so obvious that you wanta die when you fucking understand it….

[“It’s Experience…that’s what God is.”]

Well, what would experience be? Don’t you see you hit it but you didn’t understand what you hit?

First of all I said I like being an iconoclast. Why do I like being an iconoclast? I just gave you an indication that this idea of Consciousness…which is like, yea, we all see it as being somehow…well, you can’t see it, right? Like you just said, right? It’s all some kind of an amorphous, like gigantic mind that’s invisible, you know, and creates colorful things…but it’s really just basically like a big, big grey sameness, maybe.

Well it sounds pretty goddamn boring! And thinking of it that way has really hurt a lot of people, y’know when, they’re, you know, when they want to become more of this Consciousness? I know I had a problem with that part.

But I’ll tell you…. You compare that One Consciousness, ok? with… That One Consciousness that we imagine with….

Is God nothing or no-thing?

Put it this way: How many people have you seen…sitting for hours and hours and hours trying to have like nothing in their brain!?

Y’know? Nothing in their brain!? That’s what they’re thinking is GOD!

[chuckling, “yea.”]

Why Don’t We Stop Crucifying Christ Already…

He’s actually a nice guy.

Or do they think God’s gonna show up in a nice pixie, er, elf uniform or something? No they’re not. WHATEVER THEY’RE PICTURING IS GODDAMN BORING! Look what they did to Christ! He was a funny guy! I know! I met Him up there! He’s still hanging out there. He likes to shoot pool and crap, I mean, I dunno. Ah, He’s older than me, what can I say?

So…we see all these people and they’re trying to empty their minds. And yet did Christ try to empty His mind? Did He? In fact if you think about Christ’s life, what we know most about it is suffering…right?

[“uh huh”]

What a rip-off!

And, we say He suffered for us…so that we don’t have to.

Wooow. What a bunch of hooey. Because, that would be like saying God became God so that He could prevent us from becoming God.

[“Ha, yea!…really!”]

Because actually…

[“That’s such a rip off” chuckling]

It’s such a rip off, it’s like He’s gonna feel, He’s gets to feel and we don’t… y’know?…

 

Continue with Curious God, Infinite Poignancy, and the Nature of Divinity: Funny God, Part Four — The Universe Is Experience, Life is a Disneyland

Return to Facebook Funny Revelations and the Mind’s True Liberation: Funny God, Part Two — Human Fear and the Absolute Earliest Preschool

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Facebook Funny Revelations and the Mind’s True Liberation

“Funny Fantasy Becomes Hilarious Meeting with God
Who Reveals All Reasons behind Existence, God, Living Things;
So Much More Wonderful Than Ever Imagined by Humans;
and Sadly because Humans Are Not Yet Capable
of Even Imagining Such Love and Goodness”

– Comedic, Philosophical Monologue by SillyMickel Adzema

For the audio monologue of the entire Facebook… Funny… God(dess)… Experience click above for the link to the audio site…. or below on the audio player to listen to it here….

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Continue with Curious God, Infinite Poignancy, and the Nature of Divinity: Funny God, Part Four — The Universe Is Experience, Life is a Disneyland

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Loving Warriors and Silly Heroes: The Necessary Hero Dances Above Dissonance, Lightens Up in the Face of Stress, and Sees Divinity Not Demons Behind It All

Play Cards with Your Dragons: The New Hero’s Cycle Involves Surrender Not Struggle, Sacrifice Not Slaying, Compassion Not “Toughness,” and Silliness Not Stoicism

Apocalypse – No! Chapter Thirteen: Peaceful Warriors and Silly Heroes

You Just Can’t Slay a Volcano: The Necessary Hero Uses Surrender, not Struggle … For Why Would You Not Be Borne Up by a Universe That Is You

We Need Compassionate Warriors, Not Fighters: It’s Not Enough Just to Slay Dragons, We Need to Jump Into Volcanoes

Volcano-Jumping: A Different Heroic Response

This different kind of heroic response—which characterizes the perinatal arena and is sorely needed at this time in history—is exemplified in another contemporary movie of cult status. We will deal with it in some detail to bring out the elements of the kind of hero that is now required to stop the cycles of destruction that have currently driven us to the abyss…to the very edge of a “volcano.”

In “Joe Versus the Volcano,” the main character, played by Tom Hanks, is given a heroic task. But unlike a typical hero’s cycle task which stereotypically involves the slaying of a fire-spewing dragon, Joe is asked to give up his life by jumping into a fire-erupting volcano.

The connection between volcano and dragon is that at the second-line or psychodynamic level the fire-spewing aspects of the perinatal, which might be compared to a volcano, can be seen as “embodied” or reduced in the form of a dragon. In the same way, the volcanic energy of perinatal feelings is initially embodied in easier-to-face and “dragonized” psychodynamic, second-line, or childhood traumas and feelings.

You Just Can’t Slay a Volcano

But what may seem to work at the second-line or psychodynamic level—the conquering or slaying of negative feelings…and notice that I said “seem”—has no place at all at the perinatal. For here the pain energy is overwhelming and pervasive. Thus the difference is analogous to that between facing the energy of a dragon and facing that of a volcano.

The Heroes We Need – The New Hero’s Cycle

First Anima, Then Community

Keep in mind that this movie shows Joe, earlier on, going through all the major stages of the hero’s cycle—the retreat from mundane reality, the sailing off into a new and exotic realm of existence and adventure.

It even depicts a typical “dragon slaying”—the hero’s conquering of inner fears and risking of one’s life for another that results in the uniting with anima energy–the saving of the damsel. So earlier on there is a dealing with psychodynamic energy, just as in “Nothing but Trouble” Chevy Chase deals with psychodynamic material and enacts a dragon slaying by risking his life to rescue Demi Moore from a giant chopping machine. But, also similarly, this results in the opening up of another level, requiring a completely different—indeed, opposite—response. Thus, in “Joe Vs. the Volcano,” Joe is asked to give up his life to save an entire community, not merely to risk his life to rescue his anima, his feeling self.

Risking It All

The ensuing plot has interesting elements as it shows Joe having to decide whether to sacrifice his newly won relationship with his anima ally for the benefit of an entire—but anonymous—community. This demonstrates that at a progressed level of the spiritual process—that having to do with one’s inter-connection with the larger community of living things, not just one’s personal unconscious—one must risk even one’s newly regained creativity, inner child playfulness, and personal feelings, i.e., one’s anima.

But in telling fashion, in order to make the higher “community” sacrifice the anima elements that have been let go of, symbolized by Meg Ryan as the anima damsel, end up going with Joe to his chosen fate and are borne up, renewed, along with him.

Borne Up by a Beneficent Universe

On Joe’s part, the climax shows the same quality of a beneficent Universe aiding a true and dharmic heart. Joe (with his anima) face what they think is death. Instead they find themselves “borne up” by the volcano, not consumed; and they are deposited (reborn) in a typical perinatal watery surround—the ocean, symbolizing therefore a spiritual birth. This is a perfect depiction of how surrender, not “heroic” resistance, is done and why it needs to be done currently, as I have been pointing out.

“Away From the Things of Man”

In the end, the main characters are floating in the middle of a wide open sea—signifying the immensity of potentiality that is now open, and facing a gigantic moon on the horizon—symbolizing the beneficent nature of the Universe to which they are opening, that is, it is beautiful and lit with possibilities.

They are seen sitting on only their luggage—symbolizing the “stripped down” nature of the self, that is, stripped of ego trappings of status, vainglory, defenses, and so on. Their final comment at the very end of the film is that they do not know where they’ll end up but only that it will be “away from the things of man”—indicating their desire to never go back to the drama of ego and its puerile catacomb pathways of darkened experience.

The Universe Is You

We see then that in this movie, like “Nothing but Trouble,” the heroic response required is surrender, not resistance or control, and that the response from the Universe is cooperative and helpful, and hardly antagonistic as was feared, especially at earlier levels.

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This is in keeping with the discovery at the perinatal, which borders it on the transpersonal, that in fact the Universe, not only is not antagonistic, not only is beneficent and helpful, but in fact is no different from oneself, indeed is oneself…and one begins to wonder why one would ever expect not to be borne up by a Universe that is now seen as inextricably united with one’s Self.

Note

While the interpretation of Joe Versus the Volcano presented in the video below – Joe vs. the Volcano: Losing my Soul, Part One – is annoyingly suffused with theological terminology – hell, devil – and suffers from the paranoia that happens lacking a perinatal or even a Jungian understanding, it does succeed on a more superficial level of basic insight. It does get the highly metaphorical and philosophical import of the film and picks up on major themes of the movie. It strikes me as having the problem of just understanding religion while knowing nothing about psychology. And it suffers, as I’ve put it elsewhere, from the problem of projecting one’s perinatal underbelly onto the Universe or of funneling revelation through the filter of personal pain.

Silly Heroes and Evolution in Attitudes to the Perinatal: The Necessary Hero Jives with the Monsters, Dances Above the Dissonance, and Is Ever Aware of Divinity Everywhere

What the World Needs Now … Is Loving Warriors and Silly Heroes: Jiving with Your Monsters, Dancing Above the Dissonance, and The Universality of Divinity Remembered

Responses to the Perinatal

Returning now to “Nothing But Trouble,” an aspect of it that has significance for dealing with perinatal issues is the way different characters are shown responding to the embodiment of arbitrary justice, the judge. In the wonderfully Kafkaesque courtroom scenes, we see several different types of people—representing different responses to unconscious material—hauled before the judge. The musicians, signifying artists, creative people; the hedonistic criminals; and the main characters, representing average people, each present distinct attitudes, which are responded to differently by the representative of the unconscious, the judge.

Jiving With Your Monsters

The musicians are able to create rhythm and flow. Therefore they are able to get through the experience unharmed. Indeed, they are even able to elicit a response from the judge—getting him to join in. In this way we see how creative people can actually use perinatal material and get it to cooperate for desired ends. We might consider how this relates to the writing of “Nothing but Trouble” itself.

Peter and Dan Aykroyd, in creating this movie, are, like the musicians in the movie, getting the unconscious to “play along,” to create something beyond what either the writer or the unconscious could accomplish separately. Much of what is interesting in art is done this way: The deeper fear-evoking material is allowed to come in and enrich, enliven, freshen with new ideas and perspectives, stimulate, and invigorate the creative production.

Beware the Tar Baby

On the other hand, the arrogant banker contends with evil, and, like Brer Rabbit with tar baby, gets stuck.

Notice also that the really contentious ones—the alcoholic drug-using criminal hedonists—are completely lost. Thus the two extremes, as well as the average person are depicted.

Lighten Up!

But the truly striking element that indicates an advanced way of dealing with the perinatal material is shown in the genre of the movie itself. As a comedy, it shows a non-attached and transcendent approach. Chevy Chase and Demi Moore, especially Chevy Chase, show an aloofness and silly playfulness in the face of horror and death that has spiritual implications. Like a Tibetan mystic, Chase refuses to get sucked in to the involved drama confronting him. Like a Christian saint about to be martyred, he jokes, teases, and gets silly with the instruments of horror and evil. Similarly, Demi Moore humors and plays cards with her would-be monsters.

Silly Heroes

Standing within the Witness higher self, they are able to take the entire situation lightly—acting and reacting in the moment to each unique situation as it presents itself. One moment Chevy Chase is confronting his own demise, the next moment he is in a love scene. He alternates a frightful encounter with relaxing and smoking a cigar.
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If we want to know what real and transcended behavior is, we might do well to get our hints in the depictions of unattached playfulness — as presented by modern Western actors like Bill Murray, Demi Moore, Tom Hanks, Chevy Chase, Robin Williams, Bruce Willis, and Jim Carey—rather than in the repressively calmed not-with-it-ness—not-witness—that is sometimes mistaken for spiritual attainment.

Darkening Down

Incidentally, this element of humor shows an entirely different way of dealing with the perinatal than most other movies that deal with this kind of material. The movie, “Brazil,” is a good example of this difference. Not only is “Brazil” cast in an eerie, somber, and tragically hopeless and futile air—indicating that one’s response here is to “believe in” the reality of such material—but the only escape in this movie is in a purely conceptual, fantasy way.

The main character cannot face the horror ultimately. He flips out into a reassuring dream sequence brimming with BPM I and BPM IV imagery. Interestingly, reflecting the pattern of progression of our expressions in feeling therapies, the dream includes a BPM III scenario to get him to those later bucolic realms.

But in “Brazil” these are only daydreams. This fact shows a refusal to face this perinatal material or to surrender to it. Rather, in fantasy, one overcomes the horror. It is as if one continues using familiar ego techniques—hero’s journey methods, dragon-slaying methods—for dealing with material on a deeper level where they no longer work—where they are in fact counterproductive.

Thus, these techniques can only succeed in dreaming. Terry Gilliam, the creator of “Brazil,” shows us that the hero, in reality, is doomed.

However, one might interpret the main character’s escape into fantasy as a victory over evil forces. That the ending lends itself so readily to such an interpretation is a telling indictment of the state of progress of some of us in dealing with perinatal material. Apparently, there are those so lost that the only success possible seems to be in insanity or death.

Evolution In Attitudes to the Perinatal?

However, in “Nothing but Trouble,” the main characters do face and deal with all the material. Sometimes they fight it; sometimes run from it; sometimes play with it; sometimes joke, tease, spar, or get silly with it; sometimes are swallowed by it and carried along…but always they are creatively facing and dealing with it. This different air about and attitude towards the perinatal material can be said to be an advance from the earlier movie, “Brazil,” representing perhaps a progression of our collective consciousness in our attitudes and manner of dealing with the perinatal.

Dancing Above the Dissonance

Such a prospect is, indeed, the auspicious legacy of such a creative project. Though it is doubtful they did so consciously, the Aykroyd brothers and the producers of “Nothing But Trouble” deserve our gratitude for their efforts in lighting forward our collective reality endeavor.

Beyond that, we can take hope in the possibility that Western culture may be rising itself, however minimally at first, above the dramas of light and darkness that have plagued it for so long. The Manichean tendency can lead only to ever-spiraling cycles of resistance and assault. Yet we are seeing currently, not only an erosion of defiantly uni-dimensional ego perspectives, not only a movement toward facing and dealing with our inner darkness, but an integration of opposing forces, a dancing above the leela—the play—of light and dark.

The Universality of Divinity Remembered

The perennial understanding of the universality of divinity, both within and without us, in the lowest as well as the highest of places, is the bright at the center of the perinatal bedlam about us. We are guided as well by this gleaming, a rising moon of promise and possibilities.

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Fourteen:
To Move the World – A Race Against Time

Return to Apocalypse – No! Chapter Twelve: Atman Projects Versus Surrender Solutions

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Facebook Funny Revelations and the Mind’s True Liberation: Funny God, Part Two — Human Fear and the Absolute Earliest Preschool

You Ain’t Lived Till You’ve Melted and Why We Don’t See Hyenas at Comedy Clubs

Funny God, Part Two:
Human Fear and The Absolute Earliest Preschool

Part Two of Facebook…. Funny…. God(dess?)…. Experience

Meanwhile, Over in the Muslim Section….

And besides, over in the Muslim section, the part with the dozens and dozens of women for every suicide…or is it, actually, as much as seventy-six virgins to one guy? Anyway, I remember it was a lot, whatever it was. It was lots, plenty, and believe me, I was watching. And it didn’t take long for that whole thing to become normal.

Magical elves

I mean the women had plenty of time to themselves. [chuckles] Yea, I guess they would…they’d have plenty of time to themselves. And they seemed as natural in their nakedness among the forests of heavens as magical elves or something. There was nothing weird about it.

 

But I know you’re gonna owe me for this big time, because there’s two big questions on your minds. I know. Who wouldn’t be thinking these things? [continued after audio]

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And the title, for the link:

“Funny Fantasy Becomes Hilarious Meeting with God
Who Reveals All Reasons behind Existence, God, Living Things;
So Much More Wonderful Than Ever Imagined by Humans;
and Sadly because Humans Are Not Yet Capable
of Even Imagining Such Love and Goodness”
– Comedic, Philosophical Monologue by SillyMickel Adzema

For the audio monologue of this part click above for the link to the audio site…. or below on the audio player to listen to it here….

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=yhfjdvcghq
Image of Funny Fantasy Turns Hilarious Meeting with God Who Reveals All Reasons behind Existence God Living Things So Much More Wonderful Than Ever Imagined by Humans and Sadly because Humans Are Not Yet C

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You Ain’t Lived Till You’ve Melted.

Now, I’m gonna think of how you can pay me back for gettin’ me melted, drunk down like a saucer of milk, and dead. I’m just realizing how much power I have here.

For starters, since you’ve never melted or the rest, and…boy, can I milk those events: Like, you’ve never had that experience, so I could be like “ooooh, the hell, the horror, the pain…you’ve never knooown.”

Sorry. I’m already boring myself. I can’t pretend that way just to get extra guilt or chips outa you because ooh…that’s too much work, because…ohhh, I hate to say it…. You ain’t lived till you’ve melted. You think a deep tissue massage is relaxing? Well you ain’t lived till you’ve actually had a meltdown in front of one of your friends. Hahaha.

And I’ll be damned if I can make like being devoured by my cat…well…was like “Jaawws! Oooh nooo, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh… ” No. I’m sorry. He.

I really love my cat, is all I can say.

So, good for me, and good for you because I’ll just tell you, and you could eat your hearts out for jealousy…how’s that?

Let’s just say that being licked up by a cat…well I’m reluctant to say, but well let’s just say that we all have certain pleasurable experiences…that involve, well, let’s say, being licked! And, uh…well bein’ taken in the mouth of another, y’know? Well, I guess I more than hinted there, didn’t I? Well how else can I say it?

But I got it all over you guys ’cause well, you can feel pleasure in certain sex acts involving the mouth and parts of your lovers’ bodies, as you know what I’m talking about… Well, you don’t know the meaning of exquisite pleasure until it is aaall of you…not a part…that is lovingly taken in…

I’m not into beastiality or something…don’t get me wrong…but I really love my cat, is all I can say, I mean….

And dying…

Inside her…or his…warm cozy belly was just some kind of bliss…I’m tellin ya…it’s….

I get the feeling once you’re out of your bodily state…well maybe it’s because the ego goes but, but, though I knew, I knew I was gone for the world, I couldn’t have been more pleased at my fortune…ok I’ll let ya off the hook…. Eehh, I’guess it’s that God influence, y’know?

Oh, I’m just to kind for my own good, and, well, like God told me in Oregon, “Well, that’s what Jesus’d do.” So ok I won’t torture you any longer.

The Questions

I know I haven’t addressed the two questions in your mind…er, actually…three. I know what they are. I know what you’re all thinking so don’t deny it! Come on!

Naked God

You’re thinking, “What does God look like naked?” right? Shew.. I knew it… I know it, I know you guys, I mean, well… just…I’ll tell you…just about anybody, well I’ll, I’ll tell you, but whatever you’re expecting, I’m sure I’m going to be a disappointment for you.

Nope, God is not a downy-covered Ken doll.

So… No, he wasn’t covered in downy feathers and all Ken-doll parts or anything that an evangelical would imagine. Remember, it’s only here that we think of nakedness as shameful. You gotta dig this. This is the guy who designed, sculpted our form… You think He’s ever had the thought that He made something nau-ghty…

Or I can tell you that a little time with Him and you’d realize or you’d think, at least, that one of the reasons…if not The Big One…how would I know?…for creating us is…well it just occurred to me that…I may have just realized why they say we were made in God’s image…because, y’know, by now, no doubt we’ve realized we are the dumbest animal on this planet….

And destructive? murderous, and totally uncaring of the other species and their fates…

As we head for the armageddon that only dumb humans could imagine to set up.

Why We’re Not So Special, Yet Still Made in God’s Image

But not for now…that’s not the thing I want to get at, just to say that our… since we know that our supposed intelligence is a disease, ok? Actually it’s our ego and sense of superiority and specialness…but our supposed superior intellect is often named as what makes us different and what makes us in the image of God. Am I not right about that?

I mean, that’s what you always hear. “We’re different from the animals cause we, y’know, we got brains, or….”Well, this won’t go over very big with the academics and such but…breaking news, folks…our words don’t make us superior…they make us inferior…to all the other species…who know, without having to struggle with symbols that are easily misinterpreted.

Their language is not language, so much as it is mind-sharing. And that can all be conveyed in a precise, precise look…sometimes a smell…or just a howl…across the forest. You think that the information contained in such things could be only rudimentary…hardly! He!

You’ve got it all wrong. Alright, let’s say we’re like the typewriters…laboriously trying to make ourselves understood to each other…and ourselfs…. Well, what we lost with our separation and ego—y’know, which come with our separation—is the kind of abilities that, as analogy, we see in computers.

Now, think of that…think of the size of a computer chip…tiny…size of a penny or something…and then the amount of information it can convey, process, et cetera….wow! Remember, it is small!

Now our egotism just does not let us see that the natural biological perfection of all things—each of which is God having the fun of manifesting Him- Herself in that form, and simultaneously in all others…. I mean, that’s His thing, y’know…. And, and since these creatures are still aware…as aware as when we go to a movie and still realize that it is not real, and that our real existence is elsewhere….

Well, check it out: All of Nature, except for our sorry asses, have the sense of watching a drama, but none of it is all that scary. They even dig the scary parts as a thrill, just the way you might enjoy a horror flick.

And of course, they have, without trying, without trying, the knowledge that needs communicating, whenever…and that knowledge they know, so it’s not all that common that a need to communicate it arises.

Sorry bout that…but I had to dispense with that, because…you’re not going to believe the one and only way that we are like God, and it’s a damn fine thing that there is something. Because after all the rest of your ego being busted, you’re glad to have…you do have a special link with that source of Love.

What is it? You can’t…can’t you guess? Remember back to my earliest experiences with God?

Let’s put it this way, God so loved the world, God felt so much compassion for the ways we humans managed to fuck up, and even to reject all His blessings…even the pain that he gave us as our greatest gift…which is like wisdom gift-wrapped in something to hide its nature until we accept it and opened it, to find the gift of wisdom which brings with it always ever more release from the fear that we have chosen….

Well, God, to hear Him tell it, was even as surprised, as an All-Knowingness can be, that we would be so fearful…that when He wanted to show us how there was never anything to be afraid of, and that fear was an imaginary creation of ours….

Well, let’s put it this way, He not only inspired the billions of human mothers to play the peek-a-boo game with their children…y’know Mom’s not there, the baby has this imaginary, horrifying fear that Mom is gone, disappeared, never to return.

Then suddenly her face appears from nowhere. How does the baby feel and react, react to it? Well, now the baby’s downright gleeful…& beside her- or himself, can’t even contain her or his joy, claps its hands, laughs, and giggles…. And, yes, I’m getting to it….

It’s our laughter….

It’s our laughter.

You might ask yourself why are we the only ones that laugh? And this is where it got really freakin interesting, and really heavy…. And I was glad that we had the laughter….

Notice, now, I was with God…and I had the best time of my life…. But then I was with God! And if you’re with God, what is it that you would never ever have, that is such a pain in the ass to have in life?

Fear. Of course there’s no fear…you’re with God!

Why you don’t see hyenas at comedy clubs.

Anyway, so it’s our laughter. Animals don’t have laughter…because…well, I’m gonna have to do a little favor for you guys like you did for me… I’m gonna have to string you a little bit along…. Course you were pretty crude the way you did it…. melting me, I mean…though it was lots of fun, y’know…I’m sorry…. I only wish I could do it for you guys…. Anyway, I don’t have a petition or nothing, but, um…

I’ll just say this about animals (a) they don’t laugh, and (b) they always have a sense that they’re one with God…. So they always have part of them knowing that they are, like, just playing an act.

So, well, if you felt one with God and thought of life’s dramas as a kind of play, would you have fear? Not a lot, would you? If you knew it was like the movie I was talking about? OK, but now…. Here’s the big reveal…but I’m gonna let it out slowly cause it’s complicated but it’s sooo fucking simple when you see it. See….

The Absolute Earliest Preschool

And a lot of it comes back to that peek-a-boo. God, you see, provided the inspiration for that game. There was a reason why He thought it was so important, and it’s hard to find a mother-child who has not experienced it…though I doubt any mother ever consciously knew why she was doing it except that it was fun and gave so much pleas-ure! Remember that word.The same with God, just as God inspired mothers to play peek-a-boo to train children to not trust their fears as being real….

Even….

Even to set up in us the next step, where when we are fearful, we might have the expectation, expectation…and it would be righteous…that soon the clouds will part, the sun will shine…but even more than that… you see? Like that training is: At first you’re fearful but after a while you expect Mother to be there all the time…if you have enough experience of it. That’s a big hint. For, you see, it’s training for God’s training later in life now…let’s put it this way:

Pain is God playing peek-a-boo with us.

I know it’s going to be hard to take, but

Pain is God playing peek-a-boo with us.

And I know you have so many, so many ideas or remembrances of pain. And I’m sure you think you remember pain. But I’ll tell you a thing or two…let’s put it this way,

He uses it to guide us from danger…and toward our true path.

Of course, that’s one thing we know, right? We know that when things aren’t going right…sometimes the car breaks down or we break our ankle…. How many times have we found out that was the perfect thing? That it was God that was helping us out, derailing our plans, because we weren’t supposed to be doing something? You know? We’ve all reached that point, right? Where we know that we are being guided by God, through some of these bad experiences, right? So, you got that part, right? Can I get a “right” from somebody?

Oh, Acey, you’re so stoned, I swear to God…. Je-sus, sasquatch…you do more bellowing I swear to God when you’re masturbating than…ooooh, god…never mind. Anyway….

And you shouldn’t put yourself down now that much now…I’m trying not to be judgmental, you should give yourself more credit for being smart, sasquatch… Now let’s everybody else stop laughing, ok? But I was there, alright?

Ok, so, just as God inspired mothers to train people to not trust their fears as being reality, He even set up the next step where we are… The next step is, when we are fearful we might have the expectation, and it would be true, that soon the clouds would part, and everything would be fine.So, for pain, God is playing peek-a-boo with us…He uses it to guide us from danger toward our true path…

Of course we bitch and complain when we don’t get what we want, when misfortune brings down our cherished fantasies…and sure it’s painful. But I doubt there is any of you who haven’t many, many times given a little…or sometimes it requires more time…we look back at what we had intended and what we were guided to instead, and said, “Thank God I’m not in charge of my life… If Ida gotten my way, well, hell, what a stupid idea that ended up being. God sure must love me to sustain and teach and guide me…in spite of myself.” But of course there’s much more to it, than that.

God, what’s that, Peter?

You say I forgot something, something I…I shoulda known? Too much of the blah blah blah, you say, and…you already know this stuff? Wow, you must have some kinda cell phone to the divine I never…. Oh yea, you’re living in Hawaii now. Yea, I remember. Our last phone conversation you were saying something about the vegetation. Wow. Whatever vegetation you’re liking over there it hasn’t touched…er touched your, let’s say, your bluntness. That’s ok, though. Just give me the facts, you say. What does God look like naked? OK.

Ok, Peter. Ok, I guess I gotta spell it out for you. Well, let’s say that, first, what I saw was God the way I was meant to see Him. Stop it, guys. I’m sure that God has an infinite number of appearances just as He appears in the entire Universe as Everything That Is, both living and non-living, right?

Ok, I’ll get to the point, What does God look like naked?

Well, like everything and like nothing.

Knock it off! I’m trying to give you real stuff here. Like He looks like everything and like nothing…that’s the true answer, because the question is irrelevant.

But what did God look like naked to me? Well, that is a question. But I told you you’d be disappointed.

First of all, like I said, with no consciousness of nakedness being anything but as natural as, and just as overlooked as the way animals look. They’re also naked. But how often do you think what any of them look like in detail or, y’know, you’re not thinking about…they’re not attracting your attention just cause they only have fur on them.

So first of all it was not something that I would think to note, y’know, what He looked like. But I can say my recollection is that God, naked, looked not much different than myself in the mirror, naked, and again just as uninteresting. Told you I’d be a disappointment for you there.

Fetishing and fearing what’s hidden.

But I think you’ll like the answer I have to your other question. Yes, I know, specially you, Peter. I’m sure you got your mind on those multitude of virgins, ha!

Well this was pretty interesting from what I could make out…and I don’t mean in any prurient sense. For like I said, well maybe I didn’t say it yet this way, so I will. It’s just that it reminds me of the lack of interest in nudity when there is no, when there is no shame. It all seems so clear from here.

It’s almost like there was a universal point where, that which attracts inordinate interest, and even fixation, or even fetish, is always that which has been concealed. Well, where I was, there was no darkness. No hidden truth, let alone agendas. So with everything at hand, or, “at thought,” to be more precise, you’re freed from the wondering, worrying, the interest, the fixation, the curiosity…let alone the fear, uncertainty, of terror, horror, all of which arise out of the things that are hidden, that are concealed, that are in darkness.

Remember peek-a-boo? It is the way that mothers teach their babies…by putting something in darkness, putting something out of view. That creates the trauma, right? But it’s how babies are taught to not fear….

Oh… you too, sasquatch? You’re still thinking about those virgins too, huh? Okay, I will jump ahead to that, but I…I’ll jump ahead to that, because, it’s pretty good. And, uh, I think this will still make sense in the same order…pretty much, yea.

All we are saying, is give God a chance.

Well, it’s quite funny actually because, you see, well…. only humans could come up with something as horrible as like a hell. ONLY humans. I mean, come on, God could never come up with something like that, but…and I’ll get into why later, but it’s just…let’s just put it that way, there’s no hell. Just take my word for it, you’ll understand later.

So, there’s no hell, but does that mean everybody goes to heaven? Now, not quite, exactly, you see? Because, well, let’s see…would heaven be getting what you ask for…or you think it would be getting what God—who knows everything—knows…you…want?

See? It’s a little trickier now, isn’t it? Now, think about those suicide bombers. Yeaa. Seventy-six virgins, they got their wishes, right?

“What were we thinking?!”

But you didn’t see what I saw. I mean, I didn’t see…. I mean, it was heaven and everything…there was no darkness…. But so you wanta see some draggin’ bedraggled scraggly-assed mother-blankin’ tired lil, lil…I swear to God. What were they thin-king…asking for seventy-six virgins?!

I mean…my God! What does it take to realize that you can’t handle that many?! It’d kill you! So, you know, it was kind of funny. I mean think of it! I mean, you know…I don’t know if God’s laughing at that because that might be judgmental…but it’s kinda like…it’s like, well, He’s just being kind, he gave them what they wanted. And you know what, He does that for all of us…you see?

He does that for all of us and that’s what I meant about the pain being His blessing to us. Because He might protect us from making bad mistakes through pain or something like that, but then the other thing is that He lets us go through with it… and find out…on our own…what a bad and dumb idea that was.

Continue with The Purpose of the Human Form and the Poignancy of It All: Funny God, Part Three — Pain and Peek-a-Boo

Return to Funny God, Part One: SillyMickel Melts for God’s Crops and Revelations

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Facebook Funny Revelations and the Mind’s True Liberation

And the title, for the link:

“Funny Fantasy Becomes Hilarious Meeting with God
Who Reveals All Reasons behind Existence, God, Living Things;
So Much More Wonderful Than Ever Imagined by Humans;
and Sadly because Humans Are Not Yet Capable
of Even Imagining Such Love and Goodness”

– Comedic, Philosophical Monologue by SillyMickel Adzema

For the audio monologue of this part click above for the link to the audio site…. or below on the audio player to listen to it here….

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=yhfjdvcghq
Image of Funny Fantasy Turns Hilarious Meeting with God Who Reveals All Reasons behind Existence God Living Things So Much More Wonderful Than Ever Imagined by Humans and Sadly because Humans Are Not Yet C

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Continue with The Purpose of the Human Form and the Poignancy of It All: Funny God, Part Three — Pain and Peek-a-Boo

Return to Funny God, Part One: SillyMickel Melts for God’s Crops and Revelations

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Breaking News — Hell Doesn’t Exist: Good—God! Hell—No! … the Comedy

Hell Does Not Exist: Jesus Ignored, God Misunderstood, An All-Loving God Maligned…. But The Great Reveal Has Begun!

Good – God. Hell – No.

This performance of comedic supposing is played for you by SillyMickel Adzema and his wife, Mary Lynn Adzema. They reenact the roles of the TV anchors Katie and Dave on one of the most memorable days in all of history, occurring not long ago at all.

Big Lies…Big Ones!

We listen in as local TV anchors Dave and Katie recall the amazing day, not quite a month ago, when the world changed drastically forever, practically overnight. They replay the TV news highlights of those incredible few days when miraculously the world’s human population was released from the Biggest Lie of all time, in fact the longest lasting—25,000 years in fact.

But the world changed because it was the most hideous lie. It had made humans miserable throughout their lives and caused them to be terrified to live, terrified of acting or even speaking. And after such a life of paralyzing terror, at death’s door, it caused untold trillions of humans to be freaked out of their gourd and to go nearly insanely brain scramblingly, nose drippingly mad as they approached the threshold.

God Will Punish You Forever in Hell…Stiiiiiilll, He Loves You!

The Big Lie, the incredibly long cover-up?

It turns out that some quite insanely controlling and pompously superior types had long ago concocted the idea of Hell—this place of endless and unbearable suffering that would last for all time. And then as the ultimate in mind scrambling irrationality, attributed its existence to God, who was also claimed to be all-loving and all-merciful.

And if that did not make any sense, they further compounded the insanity by claiming that if that didn’t make sense to you it was because you were a sinful—thus likely to suffer forever unbearably–person who expected that God had to make sense to you, and thus you placed yourself slightly higher than dirt in your self-esteem, which was the huge sin of hubris, or thinking that you were capable of rational thinking.

A Wildly Successful Mind-Fuck

So it was the biggest, stupidest, and meanest mind fuck of all time, concocted to keep people so terrified that they would be easily manipulated by the controlling Meanies.

But it succeeded wildly beyond all expectations in that it could not definitely be disproved. And with the penalty of not believing in it so unbelievably huger than any person’s worst nightmare magnified times infinity, it held fast in people’s minds for 25,000 years with barely a soul ever courageous enough in that time to speak up and say what a rotten crazy notion it was.

Nor could people dare to realize how it didn’t coincide with ANY concept of God at all. For this insanity to be true, God would not be God, but would be the worst most evil human imaginable, times infinity, again, which doesn’t make that being a God but, well, even Satan comes across as kinder by comparison.

So Dave and Katie replay the highlights: the outpouring into the streets in every city of the world, the people—some crazed, others furious, others gleeful. It was the most emotional day in recorded history…and the world changed.

Listen in as that day is brought back to life through the observations of the TV anchors and their reporters in the streets bringing in-your-face observations and interviews with shocked, emotionally overflowing street demonstrators.

They reenact the roles of the TV anchors Katie and Dave as the first report of The Big Reveal breaks on TV. In this clip the news is first being announced. The first reports are coming in: There is talk of pandemonium in the streets and throughout cities large and small throughout the World.

You hear Dave’s transparent inability even to say the news; you hear the street reporter openly discussing his confusion about even being on the job among the heaving masses—which, with all the heavy drinking and drug taking that ensued upon the announcement, was in some parts rather more “heavin'” than others,as the street reporter remarks; and you hear the early comments from people on the streets.

This is the kind of wacky headline theology that we only wish could occur. But when it does, the changes in normal behaviors are drastic, as it seems everyone’s mask is tossed away, and people, worldwide, for the first time are faced with the idea of who they REALLY are and what they REALLY want to do…for this news is the equivalent of releasing all the people on Earth from a prison simultaneously, with added tumult caused by the sudden awakening by most to a never before considered reality: that before the Big Reveal they had ACTUALLY BEEN in a kind of a prison.

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“The Great Reveal: Recalling the Riotous, Exciting First Days”
– Comedic Re-enactment by SillyMickel and Mary Lynn Adzema

For the audio skit of this chapter click above for the link to the audio site…. or below on the audio player to listen to it here….

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xjbqmdxmgn
Image of The Great Reveal: Recalling the Riotous, Exciting First Days – Comedic Re-enactment by SillyMickel and Mary Lynn Adzema

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The Skit…The Big Day Recalled

“This is SillyMickel Adzema and I’ve got some news that’s been coming out. And I’m going to turn you over to the reporters on TV right now. And you can hear for yourself. I think it’s pretty amazing what’s been going on….”

Dave, in studio: Thank’s SillyMickel. What’s going on is that the…well…Jesus ignored, God misunderstood, an all-loving God maligned…but the Great Reveal has begun!

Katie, in studio: A God of all-encompassing and Infinite Love, beyond any human’s ability to even imagine exists.

Dave: Imagine that.

Katie: He is closer now than any other time, something wonderful is going to happen.

Dave: Something wonderful’s going to happen?

Well, yes, Katie, it’s hard to believe…our world changing soooo fast.

Katie: To put it all in context, we review how it all began …. Not even a month has passed….

Dave: Yea. it seems like the time before is ancient history…now. But we think back to those broadcasts:

Dave reporting from the studio a month earlier: Breaking news…..obvious truths discovered – despite 25,000 year cover-up, slander, and pervasive, omnipresent, persistent misinformation…Big Lies..big lies, big ones…and a propaganda campaign ta beat the boo…I’m tellin ya….

Katie: A virtual matrix of religiosity….

Dave: Virtual…yea….

Katie: Pompously substituting Itself for reality and truth.

Dave: How could ya…do…I’m sorry…I’m not supposed to be uh, I’m not supposed to be o-pin-ing right now..but…I gotta tell ya…Who woulda believed it…I mean, HELL doesn’t exist! For thousands of years people lived of fear of death and worse…and it’s all a big SHAM…. I mean…I’m sorry, I’m a little, I’m a little upset y’know, Katie, I mean, I mean, y’know, I m..y’o…. I’S BROUGHT UP CATHOLIC!…. I’m…I shouldn’t get personal here…be professional….

THE BIG REVEAL…the big reveal…this is the big reveal…. God is good, and all merciful ends up not just being HAPPY talk! To comfort us before death and then eternal lifenot just happy talk!? in fiery hell of suffering…. He! It ends up being

Katie: The Big Reveal — Turns out God is actually GOOD, real good, all-good, and certainly gooder than any human can imagine.

Dave: Yea, s’gotta be gooder than all those things that they put on commercials that say are good good good good good…. I mean, we’re talkin not just good we’re talkin bout…I m..w..can we say good? We’re sayin…well’p y’know…. Hey, didn’t the word God come from good or good come from God…never mind…anyway…. There just isn’t a word to explain good…y’know…as good as that God is….

Anyway, investigation into cover-up reveals that source of idea of Hell is actually tight-assed controlling compulsives who, well, well…not so good!

And that, 25,000 year campaign to control others by scar-in the crap out of them with a totally concocted and, well, most horr-ible frightening idea ever to exist…is actually the product of very sick humans! Wleegh.

Katie: Reporters rushed to record reaction on the street…. What are ya hearing out there, Dave?

Studio Dave: (whispering) Y’better ask him again, I mean I don’t think he can hear ya there, Katie.

Katie: Hey, Dave, whatareya hearin out there on the street!?

Street Reporter Dave: Wa’ll, Katie…. Katie, wha, ‘mean…Katie!… Things are nuts! I mean, people!… I thought I saw a-mok in I-raq…well I-raq’s a-mok, got no truck, with this here amok! I mean it…. I’m not worried bout no suicide bomb-ers, but, well, I just never…too comfortable in a loony bin…and it seems that’s what the world is now, Katie… I mean [singing] “What the wo-o-rld is no-ow is….” What the hell’s a matter wit me!?

Katie: Dave, did ya get to talk to any of the people?

Street Reporter Dave: Oh, yea yea yea…my job…. OK!… I mean, well shit yea…I mean, w’ll fuck it, there ain’t…. well, hell…. What the fuck am I trying not ta swear for!? Whaddya gonna do? Burn me? Haha

Katie: Dave, Dave, are you Ok, ya sound sick, or uh…. How long’ve you been awake? Are you OK?

Street Reporter Dave: Well, I don’t know, I’mean…I didn’t even know if I wantd ta come ta work, I mean, awanlosmy…yea, hell! That made me scared outa my banana…made me come to this stupid fuckin job! Thas wh…wll..there’s no hell! An I dono wha I’m doin here….

And, I’ve had some help…. I mean, y’know mean, y’know y’don’t know what your doin…. I’m a guy…y’know…I’mean…whad im a gonna do…and so…Yea, I’ve had a few of this, and that, nd…. Whadya gonna do, Katie, fire me, burn me…whadaya gonna do, huh?

Katie: Dave geta fuckin hold of yerself!

Street Reporter Dave: Wu!?

Katie: Ya gotta goddamn job ta do!

Street Reporter Dave: Oh, geez!

Katie: And I sure as hell want my paycheck. Hell’s a big freakin lie…but…money ain’t!

Street Reporter Dave: [under his breath] Ho! smell you, hu

Katie: So, SHAPE up, or I’m sendin your ex out ta do the job

Street Reporter Dave: [like he’d been hit] Hoe’t! ye, KA-tie, oh GEEZ-us…ah! [thumps his chest] Ya had ta bring er in…oh!… Hell hath no fu-ry, I…w’ i o know…guess at don apply no more now does it?….

O-oh, Katie, I see what’s da sweet ex-terior…I see whats under that now….

O-k, ya got me by the short hair don’t ya…oh, never mind…. Al-right, well…. Yeh, I’ve been among the freakin heav-in masses, nd—some of em a little more heavin too—i stay away from those crowds—

ah got some footage…I sent some of it back…well, I’ll give ya some more right now, well, actually, he!… Yer kinda sexy when your mad, y’know, we ah i never seen ya like that before in o…s’got my boner.. a..thing…ba bong a bom a bom a

Katie: Hey, drunk, just get the job done!

Street Reporter Dave: Whoe…!

Katie: And don’t say another word!

Street Reporter Dave: Scuse me uh!! …

Katie: Got it?

Street Reporter Dave: Hey-ey, sugarpants, he-ey…Ka-tie!

Katie: Watch it!

Street Reporter Dave: Ok, okay, okay, seyereelfuckatear [mumbling] Oh bo-oy.[mumbling] ah! Ka. [mumbling, gathering himself]…ok!…

So! You look like the real man about the fuckin laboratory there…what’s your reaction to this great reveal there, uh, kid?

Kid: How could I be such a du-fus!?

Woman on the street: Well, of course, that’s true, how could we not see it?

Another street woman: How could they do that to us, the limey bastards?!

Street Reporter Dave: Wa’ll I cin see your pissed, God’nly’knows how much time you spent pushin out babies in your lifetime…y’ne, he! [under his breath] ‘cause ya sure look the worse for wear, uh…. did I say that?..um..well..ah….

How bout you, sir, you look ripe as hell ta give me some bright little twitter comment, ah…aren’t you ah, aren’t ya now?

Man on Street: Wow, humans are real dumb fucks!

Another street woman: Un-believable. It was right in front of us the entire time!

Another street man: Well, I knew it…(chuckling)…but no-body would believe me. i’me, How can God be both good…and also more capable of evil than even the most twist-ed human? Hehe In fact, more evil than all of the evil of all humans who’ve ever lived combined? He, y’know what I find so amazing is that people believed that extremely sick, twisted view…never catching a whif…hehe…of its absurdity in this in-cred-i-bly lo-o-ng ti-ime. Shows how really terrified people really are on the inside….

Katie: Just breakin in to report that last quote was from someone who hates twitter.

Studio Dave: Wha d’fuck…ya’o w’mee…how dyou know that, Katie? [under his breath:] wow, they got some good people up there….

Katie: More coming, folks. We’ll keep you abreast of all the new developments on this channel so stay tuned! You don’t want to miss a thing of these world..shaking..developments!

[long pause]

Studio Dave: [like waking up] Whe uh, mmph [mumbling] akay, uh…my phu, uh….

LATEST Developments on discovery of the obvious about God and the overnight revision of and now near u-niversally accepted…scientific start-ing premise on human species…. Apparently it’s been a world wide thing…a-round the world…lick-it-ey-split timing!…[under his breath] Ga oly knows…how ey talka thmslvs uh…diffrnt time zones, uh, y’losa, losa thr connection thr uh think er…

Katie: [quietly] Well, guess we lost our connection, er

Studio Dave: Uh, kill er time, uh, Katie, just kill time, uh, sing one of yer songs uh, yknowame…one of yer swee-e-t songs!

Katie: [coyly] he he, hu uh, uh…

Studio Dave: Ga head…ya oh, g-ead, uhoh

Katie: he uh [shyly]

Studio Dave: ALL-right, Katie, all right, all right. We’ll let cha go…he he [whispering to Katie:] ya a to, go he…[insistently:] Go ‘head, sing a song!

[long pause]

We ul eh…uhhh…Ye…uh…w…LATEST developments on the obvious about God…and the overnight revision of now near-ly u-niversally accepted scientific premise on human species as…. “bunch of real dumb shits” and “seriously brain-twisted from birth”…. Those are quotes…those uh, those er…those are quotes….

Latest reveal! Includes God not just good…er, uh, real-ly, real-ly, real-ly to the infinite power good!… also that God is in-cred-ib-ly amazingly fantastically [under breath:] to the infinite power…. FUN-ny…. Actually hilarious… a “real riot”…quite the crackup….

Reports coming out saying, uh, He/She is infinitely fun to hang out with, nothing comparing to it, “you laugh your ass off!” is the quotes I’m hearin….and un-self-consciously silly beyond belief, beyond imagining…. Whew!!… aah….

Yea just like you, Katie, a real riot…and uh…yneh…SO MUCH so that reports are, “You won’t die laughing, because…he he…well, turns out…you can’t…uh, die, that is…but you’ll probably laugh so hard tears will be streaming down your cheeks…and uh…if so inclined, you may end up literally r-o-f-l-m-a-o…OR…r-o-f-l-o-ul…el uh ul…r-o-f-l-o-augh…. I, eh, ah…I always hada problem wit that, y’know, ever since, uh, ever since uh college, y’knowhaIme…. Why’dunt you say it, uh, KA-tie!

Katie: R-O-F-L-M-A-O…or…R-O-F-L-O-L

Studio Dave: Er, gad gadam er…gad dam er ex-er-cu-shun er uh art-tic-u-la-shun whadafuck er they called…art-tic-u-la-shun classes er something like that?… Any, way…. They’ll cut that out later….

[long pause]

WELL, not, ya oh…. r-o-f-l-m-a… well not literally for the “ass off” uh…hehu….but certainly for the “rolling on the floor”…huhu…and “good chance you’ll pee your pants” is what we’re hearing. Oh, uh, geez-uz…er uh we…. It turns out He/She is really, to the infinite. power good and is not offended that I just said tha…like so much so we question why we mentioned that, uh, y’know?

anywayu OK, AND more coming on this channel on these great developments, eh, right, Katie?

Katie: Ri-ight!

Studio Dave: Ok, so stay tuned and uh we’ll letcha know as more developments in the BIG reveal um, uh…(smack)…people are a jumpin outa buildings…uh…they’re sayin, uh “where the hell’s the hell?” and uh “If you can’t say ‘what the hell’ anymore…what the hell!” and uh

That’s some pretty weird, uh, suicide stuff, man, but y’know…

We’re hearin some stuff about some…we’re hearin some stuff about some things over the valley….some real-ly weird kinda, weird kinda cloud formations…and…I don’t know…I been hearin like teleportation and uh…ris-ing…er some…uh…I don’t know…I think maybe my producer…my producer’s had something in his uh…something in his drink cause this doesn’t make…this doesn’t make any sense…but uh…that’s all…I’m just readin it folks…it’s just a…something about over in the valley, and uh…we know that people a been jumpin outa buildings and uh, um, this other thing….

Ok, a’ll jest, uh…clouds. Y’know, uh, over the valley, and uh…kinda, even from afar, something about a…uh ris-ing uh…peo-ple? And uh, and uh, something coming outa the clouds… hehe…forget I said that folks, I’m ashamed, he…no I’m not ashamed…there’s no hell…. Ok! uh…so fuck yu all…hahahe…. Oh righ na…i my lose my job o’er that… SOR-ry! Eh, uh…I’ll be professional now. ok? [whispers to Katie]

OK, uh…till next time this has been uh…Dave, and Katie…giving you yer Great Reveal…wrap-up!…for the day!

G’night, Katie!

Katie: Good night, Dave.

Studio Dave: [normal voice] Whataya doin after the show, there, anyway?

Katie: Going out with some of the gals.

Dave: [scoffing] out wi some of the gals, hmph….I got a better idea, hu y’no

Katie: Hehe

Dave: Hu-hu!?

Katie: He he.

Dave: Hoo hoo

Katies: Hehe

Dave: Hey! I been known to…eh, y’know…I mean…I…I can provide references, eh, uh…y’know..uh….

Katie: He he. I’m sure you do….

Dave: All right, alright, aarrriiigghh….uhhh…aaarrhhiii

Katie: I’m sure you do…sure you got all kinds of chick out there just waitin for ya

Dave: ALLL RIIGGHHH…all riiighhh [sounding out Katie’s voice]

Katie: Just waitin for ya

Dave: Ah, yea, yea, yea… sarcasm will…

Katie: Have a good evening.

Dave: Yea, bye, bye, bye, Katie…I’ll try ya again tomorrow…

Katie: And don’t so brea…

Dave: [sounding over] I’LL TRY YA again tomorrow.

Katie: He he.

Dave: Good night.

Katie: Good , good night, Dave.

Dave: [under his breath] uuh-kay….

Continue with Funny God, Part One: SillyMickel Melts for God’s Crops and Revelations

Return to We Are All Turks Today and The Tao of Funny God: Why Turkey and What Andy Kaufman and the Turkish and Occupy Protesters Teach Us

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“The Great Reveal: Recalling the Riotous, Exciting First Days” – Comedic Re-enactment by SillyMickel and Mary Lynn Adzema

For the audio skit of this chapter click above for the link to the audio site…. or below on the audio player to listen to it here….

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=xjbqmdxmgn
Image of The Great Reveal: Recalling the Riotous, Exciting First Days – Comedic Re-enactment by SillyMickel and Mary Lynn Adzema

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“Breaking News: Hell Doesn’t Exist; God Is Really, Really Good!!!”

For a shorter clip 8-minute video-audio clip, cut from the larger 17-minute one of “Recalling Riotous, Exciting…” titled “Breaking News: Hell Doesn’t Exist; God Is Really, Really Good!!!” containing the heart of the skit….

Continue with Funny God, Part One: SillyMickel Melts for God’s Crops and Revelations

Return to We Are All Turks Today and The Tao of Funny God: Why Turkey and What Andy Kaufman and the Turkish and Occupy Protesters Teach Us

Invite you to join me on Twitter:
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What’s Involved in Stopping War and Ecocide and the Necessary Mess of Transformation: Hard to Believe, But We’re Getting Saner

The Cycle of All Events, the Evolution of Parenting, and Auspicious Collective Regressions: Being Crazy in an Insane World Might Mean You’re the Sane One

Chapter Nine: Regressions in the Service of Society — Messy Healing

There Is a Cycle to All Events … The Spiral Dance, Why We Can’t Get No Satisfaction, and Where There Is Real Hope

The Spiral Dance – The Cycle of All Events: Wedded to Rebirthing Rituals, the Inevitability of Disappointment, and Where There is Real Hope

Wedded to Rebirthing Rituals

At the point when the perinatal unconscious arises, individuals — and collectively, society — have the choice to turn toward the emergence of these feelings or to turn away from them.

In turning toward these feelings we embrace, feel, and if we go deeply enough into that, we relive the roots of them and resolve them finally.

In turning away from them we shun them, act them out, and are enslaved by them…thus we act unconsciously, trance-like, zombie-like.

If we face these inner forces—we call that feeling them…in this instance, feeling through or reliving one’s birth—we integrate them and heal the underlying trauma, the perinatal trauma.

Or the individual and society can avoid this going within—as depicted in the peace symbol—and can choose instead to act them out, which is the peace symbol upside down—the Satan symbol, the pentagram.

In acting them out, one distracts oneself from the uncomfortable feelings, which though not focused on, are still there. One tries to be “strong” in the face of feelings but one is actually driven and directed by them—they “take over one’s mind.” This is the source of the idea of spirit possession and in general of the idea that a devil or Satan can take over one’s soul.

So in running from our feelings we are captured and enslaved by them, we are forced to act them out in ways we would not otherwise choose which are negative to horrible but in all cases self-sabotaging. Of course war is the most horrible, most self-sabotaging, greatest, and most all-consuming form of such acting-out…the greatest struggle.

Humans are characterized by a particular kind of birth process. It is a coming into being that is traumatic and which is related to our distinction of standing upright and thereby decreasing the pelvic opening as well as suffocating the fetus prior to birth. The fact is that because of this “distinction” we are destined to go through periods of rebirthing purificatory rituals, whether for good or ill. [Footnote 1]

For we are psychologically wedded to reliving that which we could not fully experience at the time because of the overwhelming quality of pain associated with it.

A “Spiral Dance”

These rebirthing rituals we are doomed to repeat, one way or the other. We are going to act out this primal pain—this birth trauma—in an unending cycle of feelings having these components

• Periods of feelings of expansion
• Closedness or entrapment, guilt, and depression
• Aggression
• Release

Then back around again.

In winning the “war” or having the success or achievement, there begins the same cycle of expansion followed by entrapment. Losing the war…the struggle, the battle…is akin to death, even if there is no death. There is numbness and repression…akin to a kind of “limbo”…before life can begin anew. A reconception is necessary.

The Pattern of Our First Nine Months Imprints Us For Our Entire Human Lives

The reemergence of hope in individuals and societies is biologically equivalent to conception. And following this reconceiving, there is a similar cycle of reemerging strength—akin to the expansion that follows winning. Then there is continuing depression or overarching gloom and helplessness feelings coupled with revenge feelings and blame as individuals and societies stew in the vessel of indecision, inaction, and doubt. This is quite like the closedness and guilt which follows achievement-success-victory. Note, however, that the revenge and blame feelings here are aspects of the BPM II matrix, just as is closedness and guilt.

Can’t Get No Satisfaction

And then the cycle is the same again. Specifically, there is aggression against the oppressor (War and revolution both see the foe as an oppressor, even if one is actually the one who is the aggressor.) What follows upon fighting is release or “death”; and so on around. The “happily ever after” that inspires such battle truly only exists in fantasies and fairy tales. Prosperity and feelings of success are unfortunately doomed, on this physical plane of existence, to be short-lived.

Where There Is Real Hope

It would seem we are fated to never be happy, for long. But progress is possible; herein lies our only real choice in the entire scenario. For we either work through these cycles in some deep psychologically transformative way that helps us deal with and pass beyond the difficult and painful parts of the cycle as well as helps to fade the imprints’ potency in determining our behavior or we are doomed to act them out in the external world in ways that we are blindly unaware are not congruent with the actual facts of our circumstances and are harmful to ourselves and others around us.

We are fated to experience these cycles of birth, and we will either act them out disastrously or we find ways of dealing with them inside of ourselves in some way—and some ways are better than others for doing this—so that we can have some inner distance from these patterns and therefore some conscious ability or choice around our actions when these pushes and pulls arise.

Railing Against the Darkness: The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of Reason, Progress Requires Regress, and Healing Is Nothing if Not Messy

Railing Against the Darkness, The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of Reason, and Social Progress Requires Regression

The Vanity of Will, The Impotence of “Reason”

What we absolutely don’t have, yet arrogantly think we do, is the ability—through will or reason alone—to choose light over darkness, to replace these inner veils of distortion with clarity of thought and perception and hence of positive behavior and actions while in the midst of them. Trying to reason with and to obtain truly desired outcomes is about as possible as trying to reason with a lizard and convince it to conform to one’s wishes for its behavior. For good reason: Indeed our rational mind is as split off from the “reptilian brain” inside us within which these imprints circulate and from which they arise as are we from the consciousness of a gila monster.

What We Call “Reason” Is Largely Just Rationalization

This impotence of intellectual understanding in the face of these patterns of self-destruction occurs because these schemas are rooted in memories existing in an emotional and entirely dissociated part of the brain, which is hardly touched by neocortical admonishing of any kind. As deMause correctly points out,

[The fetus’s] “early experiences have been found to be recorded in a separate early neural network—a dissociated emotional memory system centering in the amygdala, quite distinct from the declarative memory system centering in the hippocampus that is established in later childhood.” [Footnote 2]

Disclaiming these cycles, which inevitably pass through darkness, and reliance on “will-power” to change one’s patterns, which includes self-sabotage, has been exposed in its impotence in modern times. We see as evidence the growing acknowledgment of the ineffectiveness and, indeed, counter-effectiveness of psychoanalysis. [Footnote 3]

Railing Against the Darkness

So the question begging to be asked is “What do we do about it?” What do we do about these pernicious cycles?

And when these elements erupt in society in harmless, possibly healing ways, how do we view them? Do we, as Mayr and Boelderl do in their article, “The Pacifier Craze: Collective Regression in Europe,” decry the regression…as if by disclaiming it we could somehow keep the cycle from happening? [Footnote 4]

Mayr and Boelderl write, for example, that the situation of collective regression in Europe “strikes us as being high-explosive [sic] and bitter enough.” [Footnote 5]

In another place they exclaim, “What is horrible about this insight [about the increasing collective regression in Europe] is the additional observation that regression is becoming still more radical.” [Footnote 6]

This response of railing against the “Darkness” is a Freudian response. Yet it is not even a neo-Freudian one, since regression in the service of the ego—which began to be seen as ever more important by neo-Freudians—is not acknowledged, let alone considered.

Social Progress Requires Regression

That regression in the service of the ego is not considered is confirmed by Mayr and Boelderl in their statement that “[R]egression by definition is a process of repression and a defense mechanism.” [Footnote 7]

These are surprising words, in light of the concept of regression in the service of the ego and awareness of the clinically based evolution of psychotherapeutic theory since Freud’s original postulations, over a half-century ago.

They are even more awry if one considers the universal, cross-cultural, implementation by societies of rebirthing rituals to handle the same kinds of forces we are confronted with. The anthropological literature is rife with these accounts.

Further, Grof has meticulously shown that regularly going into altered states of consciousness where one confronts this material is a prime function of cultures, and it occurs nearly universally although it is woefully lacking in Western culture for the most part.

Moreover, these words by Mayr and Boelderl indicate a conflict with or ignorance of the fact that deMause’s theory of evolution of historical change requires regression on the part of parents, while parenting their children, as the primary “engine” of sociopsychological progress.

For deMause writes,

“[T]he ultimate source of all historical change is psychogenesis, the lawful change in childrearing modes occurring through generational pressure…. Psychogenesis depends upon the ability of parents and surrogates to regress to the psychic age of their children and work through the anxieties of that age better the second time than in their own childhood.” (op. cit., 1982, p. 135, emphasis mine.)

But this mistake by these two social scientists would not be all that important if it was not the perfect example of the kind of uninformed attitude we have, generally speaking, in Western societies about these forces. This attitude is reinforced by a Judeo-Christian tradition of specialness and scapegoating in the West. It is a pervasive feeling about these things; specifically it, itself, is the actual defense. While this is a widespread reaction to our inner realities it is far from science, and even further from the truth or reality about these things.

“Stop It!” … Yeah, That’s Gonna Work

At any rate, if we adopt this Western, Judeo-Christian, Freudian tactic of decrying the darkness, we are as effective in derailing the cycle of violence and war as Freudians are in what amounts to admonishing their clients to “stop it!” when it comes to their neurotic self-sabotaging.

For people cannot will themselves to merely stop their cycles of neurotic self-sabotage and self-destruction, which are the individual manifestations/ acting out of their birth traumas. As mentioned these directors of action operate out of a different part of the psyche, and brain, than one’s conscious willing part. They are simply not accessible, so hardly amenable, to rational or willful input. And changing one’s thoughts to affect them is about as helpful as rearranging the furniture on the deck of the Titanic.

Being Crazy in an Insane World Might Mean You’re the Sane One: Auspicious Collective Regressions

People Who Have It All Figured Out Are the Ones to Watch Out For … Emotional “Sickness” Might Indicate More “Wellness”

Regression in the Service of the Ego

With the exposure of the ineffectiveness of the Freudian tactic of intellectual understanding has come the Freudian movement’s disintegration into schools advocating various other strategies for change.

These schools/strategies include the psychiatric—the use of drugs; the neo-Freudians who acknowledge and use regression in the service of the ego and abreaction; the humanistic-existential approaches, stressing the “experiential”; and the Jungians and neo-Jungians, who would seek the resolution of these cycles in their inner archetypal acting out, resulting in an eventual rootedness of the ego in a higher Self (a spiritual center) beyond or transcending the cycles. [Footnote 8]

Other approaches include the bulk of the spiritual, new-age, or transpersonal means that are flourishing these days. These alternative paths basically differ from all others in their belief that one can simply bypass these perinatal pulls and pushes and go directly to the Light or the Self by dismissing the birth cycles, or the Darkness or Shadow, through affirming the Light, meditating the Darkness out or the Light in, changing one’s thoughts, creating one’s reality, and various combinations of these.

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Finally, these newer schools and strategies for healing include those of what might be called experiential psychotherapy, which includes primal therapy, holotropic breathwork, some forms of (experiential) meditation (Vipassana meditation, for example), Reichian and bioenergetic approaches, some forms of hypnotherapy—experiential ones—ones that involve reliving traumas—and virtually all the techniques, treatments, and correctives that are espoused in the field of pre- and perinatal psychology.

The point is that from a good number of these other-than-Freudian perspectives—and all of those that acknowledge the importance of regression in the service of the ego—and from the perspective of the entire field of experiential psychotherapy, the answer to the cycles of violence, war, and death-rebirth is to stop the acting out, not by simply intellectually decrying it—as if one can actually talk oneself out of one’s inner fears and one’s Darkness/Shadow—but by reliving those cycles of violence at their origins…their primal roots. In the case of perinatal forces, those forces from “the dark side,” this is accomplished by reliving the violence of birth, a perinatal trauma that is thoroughly and masterfully delineated by Grof and deMause. [Footnote 9]

Auspicious Collective Regressions

But from this perspective of experiential psychotherapy—one completely congruent with and grateful of deMause’s contributions in psychohistory as well—regression, in Europe, or elsewhere, is not seen as something to decry, disclaim, be horrified of, or be seen as dangerous but is seen as an opportunity. Regression is certainly not seen as a form of defense but as the opposite of that. Regression is part of a process of diminishing one’s defenses against one’s internal reality of pain and trauma.

Thus, examples of blatant collective regression as in Europe—more so to the extent they are relived, released, and integrated—are entirely auspicious for the eventual elimination of war as a collective device of acting out—defending against—the painful feelings coming from one’s personal history which one carries around, all unknowingly, and which pervade, in one way or another, in forms subtle and not so subtle, every moment of one’s consciousness in the present.

From this experiential psychotherapeutic perspective, we have a different feeling about developments like those that Mayr and Boelderl describe as collective regression in Europe and Lawson describes as occurring at rock concerts. [Footnote 10]

From a more enlightened viewpoint these cultural phenomena should have us, if not dancing in the streets, at least hopeful of a gradual decrease in the use of war and violence. Why? It is because the youth who display this “regression” so blatantly were brought up by an “advanced” form of child-rearing than that of previous generations, that they have fewer defenses, fewer layers of obfuscation covering up their unconscious psychodynamics; consequently the regression is seen more clearly in their behavior. [Footnote 11]

Unflinching Belief Related to Total Dissociation

Why is this important? DeMause points out that people do go to war, and that prior to it their perinatal dynamics come to the fore, as evidenced by perinatal-laden words and images in the media and in leaders’ speeches used to describe the situation and its dynamics. Thus, our leaders take us into war, they act out their perinatal dynamics…and we in following them act out ours…in such gruesomely overt ways because these dynamics are so hidden, repressed, and overlaid with defenses that the conscious mind has absolutely no access to, and hence insight into, them as being part of one’s unconscious dynamics.

Consequently the conscious mind is completely able to convince itself that those dynamics are actual, real, and doubtless parts of the situation and therefore require an actual, real, and extreme response. The amount of resolve required to act out war can only be wrought of an unflinching belief in the rightness, the absolute correctness of one’s perspective of the situation and therefore of that extreme course of response. And that can only be brought about by a total dissociation from one’s perinatal traumas, and a complete and utter projection of it on the outside—the enemy, to be specific.

Blatant “Sickness” Related to Being Real

The contrary is also true: When there does not exist that total and complete dissociation of the perinatal trauma—when it is, as in Europe and rock concerts currently, closer to the surface, less defended against, less repressed and, hence, more blatant—it is more accessible to consciousness and less likely to be acted out in the extreme as in war. Instead it is more likely to be acted out in less extreme forms, such as jumping into mosh pits, carrying pacifiers, listening to baby tunes about the, very real, difficulties of being a baby, and so on.

Finally, it is more likely to be actually allowed to emerge in consciousness and be relived, and thereby “healed”…and gone beyond, to be replaced by something more benign and more socially constructive, and thus to be removed forever as a motivation to war or violence. This is the auspicious view of the developments described by Mayr and Boelderl. [Footnote 12]

Janov was the first to point out that a permanent resolution of underlying trauma initially entailed an aggravation of symptoms and symbolic acting out. That is to say, the underlying dynamics become more blatant and apparent in behavior. [Footnote 13]

Janov was also the first to note that the acting-out and overt neurotic was closer to being “real,” and therefore really sane, than his or her highly functioning and “normal,” but repressed, rigidly defended, and unfeeling neighbor. [Footnote 14]

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The Most Evolved Parenting … Boomers and Millennials … and The Cyclical Nature of History: I Know It’s Hard to Believe But We’ve Been Getting Saner

Thanks to You We’re Getting Saner: The Most Evolved Parenting … Boomers and Millennials … and The Cyclical Nature of History

Evolution of Parenting – We’ve Been Getting Saner

Finally, the correctness of the view that being “crazy” in an insane world might be more sane has been borne out in recent history. DeMause describes an evolution of parenting from ancient times to the present which involved ever decreasing psychosis and violence and increasing caring and consciousness of the needs of children. He connects this decrease in violent child caring to ever decreasing violence and psychotic acting out in societies.

DeMause labels the most common modern parenting mode the socializing mode. Short of the quite recent helping mode—which only really rose to prominence in the last three decades—the socializing mode is the most advanced and most humane.

Lest there be any confusion, I wish to point out that my own theoretical understanding differs from deMause’s in one important respect. While I agree with his evolution of child-rearing over the course of civilization and within recorded time, I believe he is wrong about prehistory and what primal peoples were like and the kind of child-caring they engaged in. He depicts prehistoric societies as psychotically oblivious of the needs of children, engaging in, first, infanticidal; then, second, abandoning; then, third, ambivalent modes of child-rearing. Whereas it seems to me the overwhelming evidence and increasing numbers of anthropologists point to a natural “organic” child-caring being employed in the the mists of the past quite a bit more “advanced” than even many modes employed today.

I believe the change from the loving parenting we see in many primal peoples and in Nature among many of our planetmates to the infanticidal, abandoning, and ambivalent modes he has described for early historic cultures is a product of that ever increasing control of Nature that went into full gear with the agrarian revolution, some ten to twenty-five thousand years ago. So, I am saying that brutal parenting was a consequence of “civilization” and was at its worst at the beginnings of recorded time.

But I agree we have been gradually evolving to better modes of child-caring over the history of civilization to the most sane and psychologically beneficial modes employed in recent decades, which, you might want to note, are very much like the modes of the earliest humans. I describe why and how we lost our connection with Nature and loving ways of parenting—how we left “Eden”—in my book and blog “The Great Reveal.”

The Cycles of Time

I believe my understanding shows once again how much of what modern folks thought of “development”—including it being linear and increasing from “darkness” to “light” with ourselves always at the top (conveniently)—is wrong and merely part of an anthropocentric bias and an ethnocentric heritage. For more and more, as we lay down those blinders to reality, we notice the evidence of the cyclical nature of everything—from our lives (ashes to ashes) to the physical Universe’s expansion and contraction, to the vibrations at the subatomic level, the waves in the sea, the turning of the Earth and the revolutions of the solar systems, and I contend now also, the so-called “history” of our species on Earth. This is the thoroughly postmodern idea that human time is also cyclical, with over and again peoples returning to earlier halcyon times only to “fall” away from them.

The Worst of Times Quality of Current Events

This idea of time as cyclical not linear is in keeping with Eastern philosophies, as well as indigenous ones. Hindu thinking currently has us at the depths of the Kali Yuga, the worst part of the cycle right now, with matters to be reversed very soon and the best of times just ahead. And, as I have been describing in my books Falls from Grace and Primal Renaissance and will be directly pointing out in my upcoming book, Primal Return, we are currently seeing a most necessary return to a more harmonious way of being and a more natural self. And with it, requiring it, to some extent preceding it, we are evolving to the most advanced mode of loving parenting.

The “Best of Times” Nature of Our Parenting

Psychohistorian Glenn Davis, following deMause, analyzed the most advanced form of child-caring short of the most recent helping mode—the psychogenic parenting mode deMause termed socializing—and found that it comprised four submodes. In order, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century and each one a more “evolved” and humane one than the previous one, they are the submodes of psychic control, aggressive training, vigorous guidance, and delegated release. [Footnote 15]

Oh, Be-HAVE. WWII Generation … Received Aggressive-Training and Vigorous-Guidance Parenting

Davis concluded that in America the Vietnam War was perpetrated by individuals belonging almost entirely to the aggressive-training and vigorous-guidance psychoclasses. [Footnote 16]

Questioning Authority and Oneself Is Good. Boomers … Received Delegated Release Parenting

Yet the Vietnam War was brought to an end largely as a result of the efforts of an antiwar movement whose largest component was a Sixties youth brought up under a more advanced delegated-release child-caring mode. [Footnote 17]

The delegated release mode, which resulted in the phenomenon of Sixties youth and the counterculture, is the most “advanced” mode short of the helping mode.

“Let’s Collaborate” – Millennials. Received the Most Advanced Parenting – Helping … “We Just Want You to Be Happy.”

The helping mode is the child-caring mode employed widely by the Sixties generation for their children, the Millennial Generation, also known as Generation Y. So, a helping mode of parenting was enjoyed by the children of a delegated-release psychoclass, the Boomers. Sixties youth are seen, psychologically, to have the most the most “advanced” ego structures short of their children taught within a helping mode. [Footnote 18]

What’s Involved in Stopping War and Ecocide – Peace Is Painful: But Better Psychotic Than Warring

Ending War and Humanicide—Peace Is Worth its Price of Suffering: Better “Emotionally Disturbed” Than “Healthily” Fighting in War

Walking In Another’s Moccasins

It is obvious that these Sixties youth did not have the same unflinching and unqualified belief in the absolute rightness of their country’s position in Vietnam as did many of their parents. This is obviously the case in a psychoclass of youth chanting a generational mantra, “Question authority!” and whose more extreme members would at times even go over to the perspective of seeing the war from the eyes of the “enemy,” the Other.

As I mentioned earlier, among the Sixties Generation we saw Jane Fonda’s journey to Hanoi, the waving of North Vietnamese flags by protesters, and the carrying of little red books on the sayings of Chairman Mao. These are obvious indicators that the generation as a whole was open to seeing the war from the North Vietnamese perspective: That is, as a conflict perpetrated by a foreign nation that was hypocritical in its espousal of democracy in that it prevented democratic elections that would have without doubt elected Ho Chi Minh and instead it installed a puppet-ruler in the South, making Vietnam a virtual colony of the United States. From this perspective, the Vietnam War was for the Vietnamese as much a war for independence as the American Revolution was for the U.S.

This is just an example of how there are two sides to every issue and how an attempt at empathy or “walking in The Other’s moccasins”—made possible by a closeness to a perinatal unconscious that is also an opposite perspective than that of the conscious mind—can lead, at the minimum, to the reluctance necessary to prevent engaging in at least the most blatant and horrific forms of violence…against others, but consider also, against Nature.

The Perinatal Generation

At any rate, is there evidence that this undermining of the self-righteous position necessary for the instigation and carrying out of war and ecocide—this ability to see at least somewhat from The Other’s perspective and not just one’s own—is in truth correlated with a closeness to perinatal dynamics, a closeness to the unconscious for that generation of youth, those of the Sixties? The answer: Absolutely yes!

As mentioned in a previous part, sociologist Kenneth Keniston did psychological studies of members of the Sixties Generation.

He was inspired to do so through his noticing that he was seeing something really unusual and radically different in these youth than what he had ever seen. This led to his fascination with discovering what made them so different. And he documented his findings in two books—The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society and Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth. Roughly speaking he chose to study the unconscious dynamics of both the “alienated-hippie” and the “activist” sectors, respectively, of that generation. [Footnote 19]

Blushing Troll-Handlers

At the risk of repeating myself, I wish to remind the reader that a reading of his books—keeping in mind that Keniston knew nothing of perinatal dynamics at that time, and few people did, for that matter—reveals a degree of perinatal imagery, fantasy, and acting out—especially among “the uncommitted”—enough to make a troll-handling, pacifier-wearing, mosh-pit jumping youth of today to blush! [Footnote 20]

Self-Analysis and Psychological-Mindedness

Because of this peculiar perinatal access, I don’t believe it is any coincidence that Keniston also found an unusual amount of inner reflection—questioning oneself—alongside the more well known questioning authority. This he labeled “overexamined life” for the alienated sector and “psychological mindedness” for the activists.

Better Emotionally Disturbed Than “Healthily” Engaging in War

So, being close to one’s perinatal imprints, being less defended against one’s inner unconscious painful memories, leads to one being able to question not just oneself—and therefore to be a catalyst to personal growth and a quest for truth—but also the actions of one’s society. It is a counterbalance to our tendency to act out in violence to others as in war and to Nature as in ecocide. It means people will suffer more inner turmoil and pain, will feel more psychologically “disturbed,” and will be less likely to take it out on others, will be less likely to make others or the environment “pay” for what happened to them.

Let us contrast that with its opposite. DeMause writes,

Hitler’s projection of his fears…into Jews and foreigners helped him avoid a psychotic breakdown and enabled him to function during his later life, as long as others shared his delusion of poisonous enemies.

Therefore acting out collectively, as in war, can prevent a psychotic breakdown in certain individuals.

Better Psychotic Than Waging War

But when the consequences of acting out one’s birth trauma, collectively, is millions of people—including oneself—dead, not to mention the uncountably large loss of material and personal resources, it is clear that by comparison a psychotic breakdown is a more benign alternative for either the individual or the society in which that or those individuals act.

Similarly, not providing the outlet of war as a collective birth ritual…oftentimes, for the soldier involved, euphemistically called a “rite of passage”…would allow the genuine neurotic breakdowns, the collapse of people’s defenses, and their opening up to their underlying perinatal dynamics. Thus accessed, they can be healed, or in the least they would prevent the kind of unflinching belief or self-righteousness required for war and violence.

Some folks might even be motivationally paralyzed—receiving information from the unconscious that contradicts and undermines the stance and beliefs of their conscious ego. But when that egoistic stance is slanted, commonly, towards war, violence, selfishness and greed and corresponding environmental apathy, then better one would be indecisive, overwhelmed, and doing nothing.

The Price of Emotional Pain Is Minuscule Compared to That of War

Yet it is true that this neurotic breakdown, of at least a small amount, on the scale of society would result in the kind of collective regressions that Mayr and Boelderl, and Lawson describe. That is, the cause of peace, of the saving of human lives, requires that people pay the price of encountering their primal pain.

By all measures, this peace price is minuscule. It is even more worth it when you take into account the fact that many people, after initially “breaking down” for lack of a collective…and highly destructive…act-out like war/aggression, will actually succeed in reconstructing a self more in line with reality, through the dynamics and means categorized under the term regression in the service of the ego, desccribed above. Regardless of professional help…which would be nice but is not always available or practical…some people just find a way.

Continue with Chapter Ten: Where There Is Hope, Cultural Rebirthing

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Eight:
Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence

Footnotes

1. A. Briend, “Fetal Malnutrition: The Price of Upright Posture?” British Medical Journal 2 (1979): 317-319.

2. DeMause, op. cit., 1995, p. 12, emphasis in original.

3. See, for example, Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, trans. by Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, especially “Vantage Point 1990,” pp. vii-ix.

4. Daniela F. Mayr & Artur R. Boelderl, “The Pacifier Craze: Collective Regression in Europe.” The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (1993): 143-156.

5. Ibid., p. 144.

6. Ibid., p. 148, emphasis mine.

7. Ibid., pp. 149-150.

8. Regarding the “experiential,” I should make clear that this approach is, from the perspective of the experiential psychotherapeutic approach I will be describing shortly, actually the superficial symbolic acting out of these underlying and powerful cycles in a way that is only a little less impotent than the Freudians.

9. DeMause, op. cit., 1995.

10. Alvin H. Lawson, “Placental Guitars, Umbilical Mikes, and the Maternal Rock-Beat: Birth Fantasies and Rock Music Videos.” The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (1994): 335-353.

11. Mayr and Boelderl claim quite wrongly and quite strangely—as if to make the facts not conflict with DeMause’s psychogenic theory, or as if to cover up some hole in their analysis—that those caught up in the pacifier craze were raised under the intrusive and socializing parenting modes (op. cit., 1993, p. 145) and yet, in 1992, were between the ages of 15 and 30 (Ibid., p. 143). This is hard to understand because these youth would have been born between the years 1962 and 1977 in advanced Western countries of mostly Western Europe—Italy, Germany, Austria, all of Europe, and even the U.S. (Ibid.).

However, the intrusive and socializing modes are associated, by DeMause, with the eighteenth century and the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, respectively, in the Western world (DeMause, op. cit., 1982, p. 62). On the other hand, the helping mode begins mid-twentieth century in the Western world (Ibid., p. 63).

The conclusion from this is that these youth, described by Mayr and Boelderl, would have been greatly influenced by the helping mode. They would be expected, at least, to have received the most advanced methods of child-caring overall in the world at this time—considering DeMause’s theory—since they are the most recent progeny of the Western world!

Indeed, if these cannot be considered products of the helping mode, who can be? In order for Mayr and Boelderl to dispute this and claim they were exceptions to the rule and were raised under intrusive and socializing modes, they would have had to do a study demonstrating this, or at least cite one done. And this they do not do.

12. Michael D. Adzema, “Reunion With the Positive (Self), Part 1: The Other Half of ‘The Cure.’” Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology 1(2): 72-85. Reprinted on the Primal Spirit site.

13. Arthur Janov, The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis. New York: Dell, 1970.

14. Ibid.

15. Glenn Davis, Childhood and History in America. New York: The Psychohistory Press, 1976.

16. Ibid., especially Ch. 7, “The Great Society and the Youth Revolt,” and p. 240.

17. Ibid.

18.Ibid., p. 241.

19. Kenneth Keniston, The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society. New York: Dell, 1965; Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968.

20.While these aspects of youth are laid out by Keniston, a fuller delineation of these dynamics are to be seen in my work-in-progress, tentatively titled The Once and Current Generation: “Regression,” Mysticism, and “My Generation.” [Stay tuned.]

Continue with Chapter Ten: Where There Is Hope, Cultural Rebirthing

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Eight:
Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence

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Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence: What Say We Leave a Planet For Our Offspring? And Can You Handle Happiness?

Cycles of War, Cycles of Birth … What Can Be Done: Changing the Patterns of Millennia Requires Learning That Feeling Good Is Not Bad

Apocalypse No! Chapter Eight:
Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence

Men Would Rather Be Manly Than Alive and What Say We Leave a Planet for Our Offspring?

Why We Invite War, Allow Fascism, and Pollute: Our Coming Into the World Makes Us Want to Leave It

The question posed at the end of the last chapter was whether we had opened the door to an unimaginable armageddon or were experiencing the birth pangs of a massive consciousness transformation and subsequent Earth rebirth. Are we going to self-destruct, bringing death to the entire planet along with us, or will we become good citizens of this planet and our species continue on?

What Say We Leave a Planet For Our Offspring?

Most folks would think there would be only one answer to that question desired by virtually all humans. But in previous chapters, especially Apocalypse Emergency, Chapter Five: Death Wish – Thanatos Walking, I showed how, and why, that common-sense notion would, amazingly, be wrong: We saw how there is a huge percentage of our human Earth citizens, and a part of all of us, that wants to “throw in the towel.” This has always been true of humans, but it is of critical importance only now.

But I will assume anyone reading this will at least consciously be wanting our vital question to be answered in the affirmative. You know as well as I that the folks on the other side of this question are doing vastly different things right now than us and are nowhere to be found around here.

How Do We “Like” Life?

So the next thing to be addressed is how we might change our fortunes and live. Since continuing on is not just of matter of deciding it—voting “like” on it or checking its box—as we saw in Chapter Five: Death Wish, how can we get around this part of ourselves and our population that wants to do us all in? We need to know how to derail our perpetual cycles of war and violence. We need know how to quit bringing pollution and suffering on us. We have to know how we can stop our secret desire to take comfort in failure, how to “unlike” self-sabotage on our inner “profile.”

How Do We “Unlike” Fascism?

I have written a great deal on this question, including an entire book in 2011 on the way we act out this masochistic tendency politically and culturally by taking comfort in totalitarianism and embracing fascism. [Footnote 1]

For our purposes presently I will focus on the element of it all that is critical to answering our question. So we first need to look into the place from which emanates our dilemma. I showed that this bugaboo is our Will to Death.

Our Coming Into This World Makes Us Want to Leave It

Now we need to get more specific on this negative inclination of ours. As we have seen this Will to Death arises from human’s unique-among-all-species primal pain rooted in our singular way of coming into the world, our unique human birth.

We Need Look Deeper

We need to look deeper into the elements of that part of ourselves that would have us take us all down. We need inquire into that tendency of ours to choose pollution over health, tyranny over freedom, war over peace, enslavement over autonomy, violence over pacifism, oppression over liberty, misery over happiness. We must derail the cycles of war, violence, and fascism. We must know how to “like” happiness.

We Need Know Where Exactly to Focus Our Efforts to Be Successful

To do so, we must separate the skeins of this inner entanglement and shed light into this darkness within. We need to know specifically, precisely where to place the lever of effort we will apply to truly move the world, to derail it from its current acceleration into oblivion.

So we look now into the elements of that perinatal unconscious manifesting currently as a will to die on the grandest scale imaginable.

Cycles of War, Cycles of Birth

We find there are two researchers who are particularly relevant to our understanding of the elements of the perinatal unconscious in a way as to avert collective, worldwide disaster. These are Stanislav Grof and Lloyd DeMause. [Footnote 2]

Men Would Rather Be “Manly” Than…Alive…

DeMause writes,

[T]he group-fantasy shared prior to wars expresses the nation’s deep feeling that the increase in pleasure brought about by the prosperity and progress that usually precede wars “pollutes” the national blood-stream with sinful excess, making men “soft” and feminine”—a frightful condition that can only be cleansed by a blood-shedding purification. [Footnote 2]

Men are more terrified of appearing “feminine” than of losing their lives. Why we invite war.

DeMause is saying we go forever into war because after a while peace makes men feel guilty, “sinful.” Men have uncomfortable, even shameful…homophobic…feelings of being “soft” or “feminine” when their lives are good. So men choose the “purifying,” masculinizing ritual of war to fight off these feelings. Nothing distracts one from looking inward better than a “good, old-fashioned” life-or-death struggle, and war is the most all-encompassing of them.

Men are more terrified of appearing “soft” than having the boot of totalitarianism on their neck. Why we allow fascism.

What DeMause says about bringing war upon us can be said also about allowing fascism, inviting totalitarianism. For whether we are fighting enemies of another nation or struggling to survive against oppression at home, we are involved in a daily struggle. Secret to us, we feel better being engaged in a dramatic battle, though it brings us suffering and misery.

We simply can’t hack peace for very long. We feel guilty, for some reason, lolling on the beach. You ever notice how at the end of your vacation time, you are anxious for it to be over and to get back to work? That feeling—that one where we feel…guilty?…uncomfortable…tense?…unfulfilled?…(you tell me)—that’s it. That’s the one I’m talking about.

It happens the same way collectively after we have experienced a “vacation” of national peace—for example, in the Nineties when we were prosperous and mostly peaceful under Clinton. At the end of it, with Bush, we ended up getting the misery and struggle many in America were driven to want, though no one would ever admit that.

A quick aside. The fact that the majority of Americans actually didn’t vote for Bush and so tried to choose happiness over struggle is a source of hope for us in all this. That’s a hint of what’s coming.

Cycles of Birth, Cycles of War … The Four “Colors” of the Perinatal Veils and Why Women Fear Fatness and Men Fear Femininity

Four Kinds of Early Experience Color Our Adult Experience in Four Distinct Ways … Cycles of Birth and War

Four Kinds of Experiences in Our First Nine Months Imprint Us for Four Feeling “Flavors” as Adults

But for now, let us get back to this opening provided us. We can make better use of deMause’s insight on the birth feelings that take us into war using Stanislav Grof’s delineation of this birth unconscious of ours. Let us review as described earlier and further stipulate on them: Grof explains we are moved as adults by four specific kinds of drives emanating from our earliest experiences. These specific tendencies in us relate to four different times in the birth process which involve four radically different kinds of experiences.

Grof uses the term, basic perinatal matrices (BPMs), to refer to these four aspects of our inner urges. I will describe them here and refer to them along with DeMause’s cycles of social-historical violence and war to pull apart the roots of our current apocalyptic dilemma. [Footnote 3]

Our Tendency to Always Screw Up a Good Thing, BPM I

The first of Grof’s aspects of our unconscious he terms Basic Perinatal Matrix I, BPM I for short.

Prosperity and Progress Equal Feeling “Soft” and “Feminine”

Grof’s BPM I is sometimes described as “oceanic bliss” and involves the experiences and feelings related to the relatively undisturbed prenatal period. On the social, macrocosmic level, it is the period described in the quote by deMause above in which there is a period of “prosperity and progress” and feelings of being “soft” and “feminine.”

The strong connection between individual experience (personal psychology) and collective realities (social-historical events and elements) is patent here since in BPM I experience the individual is still in the mother’s womb and to some extent shares her identity, which is of course feminine. Being unborn and not having gone through the “toughening” experiences of birth and later trauma, which predominantly create one’s defenses, the individual is also “soft,” in other words, undefended.

“No Pain, No Gain,” Hell, Satan, and Poisonous Placenta; BPM II

“No-Exit” Claustrophobia

To further review Grof’s schema and its relation to deMause’s cycles of war, I want to remind you that BPM II is related on the individual level to the time near the end of pregnancy when the fetus is no longer rocking blissfully on the waves of oceanic bliss but is trapped in an ever more confining womb. As the fetus grows in size, the suffering becomes greater; no doubt this is the source of the common-sense belief that growing has to involve suffering, for example, “No pain, no gain.” At any rate, the feelings are those of claustrophobia and “no exit.”

There is heavy non-agitated depression here, since there appears to be no hope, no change in the situation that would indicate a way out of the suffering. Indeed, this period continues practically right up to the time of birth, ending only when the cervix becomes dilated and, experientially speaking, there appears suddenly to be a “light at the end of the tunnel” and therefore hope.

Where the Hell We Get the Idea of Hell

However, up until that time there are feelings of being totally unempowered, completely in the hands of an entity—the womb—that imposes a horrifying reality that appears to be unending and eternal. Herein we have the psychological roots of notions of hell and Satan. Feelings associated with this state include despair, victimization, blame, and guilt.

“You’ll Wallow in Your Shit, and You’ll Think You’re Happy.” – Kurt Cobain, from the Song, “Sad”

As birth comes nearer, “fetal malnutrition” increases, since the neonate’s increasing size and weight press down on and constrict the blood vessels that carry blood to and from the placenta, when the mother is standing. The decreased blood supply means a reduction of life-giving oxygen as well as the buildup of toxins that would otherwise be taken away by a normal blood flow. So feelings of suffocation as well as skin irritation and other feelings of wallowing in waste matter—deemed poisonous placenta by deMause—increase. [Footnote 4]

“You’re Really in a Laundry Room.” – Kurt Cobain, from the Song, “Sad”

As I have said previously, deMause has found that these feelings exist to an extraordinary degree in a society and its leaders prior to its engaging in a war. Similarly, they precede, and obviously can be held to be accountable for, individual acts of violence—including everything from murder and rape to unfortunately all-too-common and ordinary spousal and child abuse in the household, and of course everything in between.

Bloody War, Bloody Birth — BPM III

BPM III is birth. Its social analogue is war or violent assault. Feelings that accompany this state on both the individual and societal level include rage and intense aggressiveness, all-encompassing struggle, and sexual excess.

Nothing’s Ever Good Enough, BPM IV

BPM IV relates to the time of actually coming out of the womb and the post-natal period. On the societal level it is the ending of a war.

“Busting Out All Over”

Feelings of expansiveness, release, exultation, coming finally out into the light and/or being “on top” of things, and victory are feelings associated with this matrix, whether in the individual birth or the collective war cycle.

As I said the societal analogue to BPM IV, or actually being born, is a war’s end. It is no coincidence that in triumph or peace, the two-finger peace symbol is used. What better way to signal we have come from constriction into openness, specifically through the vise of a mother’s cervix, out from between two legs. As John Lennon so aptly put it, using the peace sign frequently, “War is over (if we want it).”

Mission Accomplished … Not!

Interestingly, just as in recent times harsh modern obstetrical practices and the removal of the baby from the mother can leave lifetime feelings of success not bringing with it the expected rewards and thus a post-accomplishment sort of depression, so also the ending of successful wars sometimes also leaves a society with a sort of letdown. For example, the euphoria following George H. W. Bush’s Gulf War—which catapulted his approval ratings into the ninety percent range in 1991—was followed, only a year later, by the increasing agony of a recession and Bush’s defeat at the polls.

Cycles of Birth, Cycles of War

All of this is to say that in society, as in the womb, a period of uninterrupted and relatively undisturbed feelings of growth leads to feelings of depression—being too “soft” and “feminine,” but also “too fat” in the womb and, therefore, extremely constricted and compressed.

Why Women Fear Becoming Fat and Men Fear Appearing “Feminine”

Another way of saying this: feelings of expansion are followed by a fear of entrapment. And I agree wholeheartedly with deMause in saying that it happens this way in a nation’s cycle of feelings because it happened that way to us prior to and during our births. We have these patterns of feelings as collective groups of individuals because our first experience of expansion was followed by extreme depression, guilt, despair, and then struggle and something bloodily akin to war—our actual births.

What to Do to Stop War and Violence: Changing the Patterns of Millennia Requires Learning That Feeling Good Is Not Bad

To Derail War and Violence, Replace Self-Sabotaging With Self-Actualizing … We Can No Longer Afford Our Delusional Ways

What Can Be Done?

So knowing this, how can we use it? In previous chapters, I explained how and why we see the dynamics of this perinatal unconscious, not coincidentally right now, on the ascendance, just at the time when it is crucial we deal with it to survive. I called this an emerging perinatal unconscious, and I went into detail about why it is happening now, what it means, and how we should take advantage of the opportunity it brings that could aid us in our current dilemma.

For now, I need only remind that is imperative we face these unconscious forces instead of turning away from and thereby insuring our continued ignorance of them and helpless acting out of them.

So, how do we consciously participate in these drives, not merely be driven by them?

Lloyd DeMause, in his article, “Restaging of Early Traumas in War and Social Violence,” printed in the spring 1996 issue of The Journal of Psychohistory, called for kinder and gentler birthing and child-caring practices to mitigate the ferocity of these forces within humans and help us avoid an otherwise inevitable planetary disaster. He was restating what other pre- and perinatal psychologists…I am one, by the way…including Thomas Verny and Stanislav Grof assert. [Footnote 5]

However, I believe we need to go further than that. I, along with Grof, call for a larger awareness of and efforts in the direction of healing these perinatal elements in the consciousness and unconscious of those already alive right now. For unless we act to heal the people currently inhabiting this planet, we might not leave a planet that babies can be born into!…let alone people to conceive and give birth to them. Healing the perinatal traumas can be accomplished through, at this point, thoroughly tested and effective techniques of experiential regression and emotional release.

But it is impossible for everyone to take advantage of these techniques, especially in the short time we have to make the changes. But something short of that ideal may be sufficient to stave off otherwise inevitable doom.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Finding the Weakest Spot

Of course only time will tell what will be the result of this emerging perinatal unconscious for our species.

Real, not blindly delusional, action is required.

But to get an idea of what we might hope for, given a readiness to actually do something about this, I offer a perspective. This understanding requires we remember some critical aspects of the cartography of the psyche described above. Looking into them we might begin to see where are the openings allowing for realistic action to be taken to bring about true, not just blindly delusional, change for our species.

We can no longer afford otherwise.

For our purposes here, the most important part of the cycle is BPM I. Societies, according to deMause, go through these cycles of war and peace and have been doing so for as long as we know. But we can no longer afford these wars, as World War I and World War II have shown—with each one being an increase in our ability to destroy and to commit atrocities. We cannot afford to have a World War III as that most likely would end life on our planet.

Indeed, as I’ve been pointing out, we cannot even afford the less extreme forms of acting out of perinatal trauma that we have been doing in our poisoning of the earth and air, global overpopulation, and the ongoing regional wars to give just a few of many examples I could have used. These things, along with many other current quite insane tendencies of ours, have the capacity to end our species and possibly all life on this planet.

Feeling Good Is Not Bad

So the cycle of societal perinatal acting out must be stopped. And the most obvious place to derail the insidious cycle is at the point of societal prosperity and progress. Feeling soft, undefended, and feminine are, rationally speaking, not things to be alarmed about.

Quite to the contrary, it is rational that prosperity should make people feel good. It is rational that feeling soft should be a source of contentment, sensitivity, and intimacy with others. It makes sense that men should have no shame about feeling feminine because that only means that they have access to sensitive and nurturing feelings that are a source of joy, “color,” and fulfillment in life.

Changing the Patterns of Millennia

But how do we do this? How do we convince people that feeling good is not bad? For these unconscious forces, these cycles of violence, have been pulling our strings for at least tens of thousands of years. How can we change such an engrained pattern?

Chasing the Mirages of the Future

Well, again, we get our leads from the experiences of individuals undergoing experiential psychotherapy.

“It’s never enough.”

For individuals also, if they are to heal themselves, have to learn how to appreciate success and to stop sabotaging themselves in the myriad of ways they do. Individuals act out their mini-cycles of “war” in their struggles to achieve. And people are driven to struggle to achieve because they cannot be pleased with what they have.

Relating back to deMause’s societal schema, people cannot simply enjoy their “prosperity.” People cannot stop to smell the roses occasionally. We cannot count our blessings and feel contented with what we have. Nor can we enjoy the natural pleasure of being alive in the moment.

“Wrong…It IS enough.”

No, instead what characterizes we humans—for the most part because of our having birth trauma—is a persistent drive to always have more than we do. We find that every accomplishment or success is short lived, with inexplicable depression following it. For each new attainment does not bring the expected (unconscious) rewards and leads us almost immediately to a new struggle, a new accomplishment to be sought.

Humans are driven to chasing mirages of better times somewhere off in the future, and we fail to live in the present. We feel unsatisfied with what we have and are continually deluded that some new possession, accomplishment, or love “conquest” will bring with it the missing happiness.

Becoming Self-Actualizing Instead of Self-Sabotaging

When people are aware of the way they unconsciously sabotage their happiness, they sometimes seek help. And if they seek help in the experiential psychotherapies, they are enabled to work through their birth trauma so that they are no longer driven out of the moment, with its pleasure and pain, into an imagined but never attainable pleasureful and happy future.

Learning that it is enough

So people derail their cycles of drivenness and their tendencies to sabotage their successes by learning to enjoy their “prosperity,” even if it is the simple pleasure of being alive. And when they act to add to that pleasantness, they do so, not out of drivenness, but out of feelings of flow and the simple joys of acting and actualizing one’s tendencies, talents, and desires. They become self-actualizing instead of self-sabotaging.

Can You Handle Happiness? What to Do – We Get By With a Little Help, from Our Nature … Stand in the Place Where You Are

A Hierarchy of Healing … Becoming Human Beings (Not Doings): Removing the Hood from Homophobes, A Hard Rain, and Stand

OK, knowing this, one might ask if I am suggesting that to save our species everyone needs to get into experiential therapy. While that would be nice, it is not practical.

But I believe it is not necessary either. There is an element of that societal period of prosperity that can be used and focused on in order to make the societal change of pattern, the societal derailing of the tendency to self-sabotage through war-making.

Getting By, With a Little Help From Our Nature

And that element is this: During times of prosperity, when one is less engaged in a struggle to survive, we find that one’s body will naturally try to heal itself of unresolved and somatically imprinted trauma by bringing into consciousness the repressed traumatic memories needing resolution.

Hierarchy of Healing

This occurs in a manner similar to that of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Basically, one’s needs to “grow emotionally”…i.e., clear away the unresolved trauma…can only come to the fore when one’s physical survival needs are relatively taken care of. And arise they unerringly do, given any opportunity to do so.

“Don’t just do something, STAND there!”

However, when these traumatic memories come up seeking resolution, they, also unerringly, bring with them the associated feelings of depression, unease, and pain. But because these feelings are anything but pleasant, to their detriment most people seek to avoid these feelings through addictions and other forms of “acting-out” behavior. So addictions and acting-out behavior emerge after periods of relative stability precisely because that stability allows unresolved feelings an opening for emergence and a possibility of resolution and healing.

Allowing Our Society to Be Honestly, Blatantly “Sick”

So there you have it; that is the crux. The period of societal prosperity can be maintained and added to if that society refuses to run away from the negative feelings that come up with success. As I have said, one needs to get “sicker” in order to get really well.

“Stand in the Place Where You Are … Just Stand.”

Societally, we need to allow the social, formerly repressed, “sicknesses,” negativities, and the pain that comes with them to arise and be socially worked out, to be hashed out, rather than to escape them by resorting to scapegoating enemies and waging war against them. [Footnote 6]

Are We Doing This?

But can societies do this? Are they doing this?

Apparently Not

It does not seem so at the moment. For we have extreme acting out going on from Tea Party type elements. The homophobia that characterizes them is an indicator of the degree to which they are fearful of that feeling of being “soft” and “feminine,” I mentioned.

But Then Again…

However there is a pattern in change that things can not really change until the negative slide has “hit bottom.” These negative forces cannot be gone beyond until they have wasted themselves in desperate acts. At this time also, positive forces are strengthening in the wings, burnishing their skills, tempering their character and nobility, fully capable when the time comes to take over. There are so many examples of this in social and individual histories, but not to get bogged down, I will mention one powerful one—Nelson Mandela. You can take it from there.

The more common thing to mention about change is that prior to a major paradigm shift, the forces on the decline always wage a fierce, desperate battle…a bloody retreat, a burning of the fields, near suicidal and totally reckless forays.

We see people do this, too, just before they are about to change. We see people who self-destruct being the ones whose last desperate battle before awareness can dawn being something that takes their life and perhaps others with them.

We currently can point to Gaddafi, Assad, and other tyrants. We can observe reckless tea-baggers willing, as in the debt ceiling clash, to bring down the country for ideals that, however rationalized and spun, are at their roots as simple and crude as jealousy—of those smarter and more capable; hatred—of minorities, the poor, the “dirty,” the “slobs,” the “lazy”…basically all the scapegoats society allows them to vent the rage of their inner fears and hurt on; and homophobia—that fear of being “soft,” feminine, unmasculine, and being willing to kill or be killed rather than to let oneself be seen that way.

Homophobes Don’t Fear Homosexuals … They Fear What’s Inside Themselves

Before continuing, one big misconception around that last point needs clearing up: homophobia is at base not fear/hatred of homosexuals, it is terror/hatred of the “feminine” and “softness” inside of the man himself who is homophobic. And this is the result of tens of thousands of years of “civilization,” still continuing, in which men are threatened with disapproval, ostracism, ridicule, attack, or worse for not repressing their softer sides down to the level of the norm of their group.

Boys Learn They Must Be Less Alive to Survive

Boys learn they must constrict their potentials and diminish themselves to that which coincides with—and does not threaten—the older males in their group or face severe punishment. Boys learn the consequences for not becoming less than they could be are severe, often from their own fathers.

Girls Learn They Must Feel Less Pleasure to Be Liked

And by the way, something similar goes on with young girls and the reduction of their potentials. We see a blatant example of this in the practice of cliterectomy—also called female genital mutilation—in some cultures. In this practice the older women—mother and aunts usually—are responsible for this brutal and extremely painful and bloody attack. It tells little girls they will have no pleasure more than that which was allowed the older women, themselves, in that patriarchal world. So girls must diminish themselves in order to not be hated and ostracized by the women of the group, who, already having been diminished, would be jealous of someone being allowed to have what they have not. This is an exact mirror image of the process that goes on in the diminution of the personalities—the potentials—of young boys.

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

Now to continue: So seeing so much of this pathos, hate, and bitter fear and anger is hopeful for us to be near the end of the cycle. Certainly it could get worse. But I personally don’t see how we could go much further on this path to oblivion without going past the point of no return. Perhaps we are not meant to succeed. Perhaps we are doomed. But I know in my own life, and that is the only true basis anyone can have for knowing how things really work, that, without fail, every seeming “loss of ground” was a prelude to an even bigger “advance.”

As Jung said, we need to take two steps backward to make a big leap forward. That is the way individuals are. And societies and populations are just collections of individuals. As the Tao symbol depicts, the seed of light is in the depths of darkness. So we can hold on to that, for one thing.

So Let Us See. A Scenery of Healing?

With these considerations in mind, the next chapter will evaluate our current social-cultural scenery for our prospects. In Rebirthing Rituals – The Sometimes Messy Scenery of Healing—we will look for any indications that this standing firm in the face of the rising up of the repressed social Shadow—allowing the pain of it and facing it foursquare, hashing it out—is to be found in the current social arena.

If we can find this being done, we may allow ourselves at least the hope for a change in consciousness radical enough to save us from extinction. On the contrary, if we find little or no evidence for this kind of auspicious, fruitful healing activity, we might as well consider ourselves doomed.

Continue with Apocalypse No! Chapter Nine: Regressions in the Service of Society — Messy Healing

Return to Apocalypse No, Chapter Seven: Through Gaia’s Eyes – Nature Balances HerSelf

Footnotes

1. The book mentioned was posted online in two places in August, 2011: Culture War and Culture War, Class War.

2. Lloyd deMause, “Restaging of Early Traumas in War and Social Violence.” The Journal of Psychohistory 23 (1995): 2. Reprinted with permission on the Primal Spirit site.

Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. New York: Viking Press, 1975; LSD Psychotherapy. Pomona, CA: Hunter House, 1980; Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985; The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988; The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

3. I explain this in more detail in Chapter Seven: We Ain’t Born Typical under the heading “Elements of Birth Experience.”

4. “You’ll wallow in the shit and you’ll think you’re happy” and “You’re really in a laundry room” from, and with appreciation to, Kurt Cobain. These are lyrics in his song, “Sad.” The video and lyrics are reproduced again here for your convenience:

Nirvana – “Sad” (also “Sappy” and “Verse Chorus Verse”) – Lyrics

And if you save yourself You will make him happy He’ll keep you in a jar And you’ll think you’re happy He’ll give you breathing holes Then you’ll think you’re happy He’ll cover you with grass And you’ll think you’re happy Now You’re really in a laundry room, You’re really in a laundry room Conclusion came to you, oh And if you cut yourself You will think you’re happy He’ll keep you in a jar Then you’ll make him happy He’ll give you breathing holes Then you’ll think you’re happy He’ll cover you with grass Then you’ll think you’re happy Now You’re really in a laundry room, You’re really in a laundry room Conclusion came to you, oh (x2) And if you fool yourself You will make him happy He’ll keep you in a jar And you’ll think you’re happy He’ll give you breathing holes Then you will seem happy You’ll wallow in your shit Then you’ll think you’re happy Now You’re really in a laundry room (x3) Conclusion came to you, oh Alternate lyrics: And if you kill yourself You will make him happy

5. Lloyd deMause, “Restaging of Early Traumas in War and Social Violence.” The Journal of Psychohistory 23 (1995): 2. Reprinted with permission on the Primal Spirit site.

Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. New York: Viking Press, 1975; LSD Psychotherapy. Pomona, CA: Hunter House, 1980; Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985; The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988; The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

6. “Stand in the place where you are…just stand” from and with appreciation to R.E.M. While it seems no one understood the group’s huge initial release, “Stand,” it is quite meaningful in the current context. A video and lyrics are included here for your consideration:

R.E.M. – “Stand” … lyrics

Stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction
Wonder why you haven’t before
Now stand in the place where you work
Now face West
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven’t before
If you are confused check with the sun
Carry a compass to help you along
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
[repeat 1st verse]
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Season is calling
[repeat 1st verse]
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling
Listen to reason
Reason is calling
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
So Stand (stand)
Now face North
Think about direction, wonder why you haven’t before
Now stand (stand)
Now face West
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven’t
[repeat 1st verse]
Stand in the place where you are (Now face North)
Stand in the place where you are (Now face West)
Your feet are going to be on the ground (Stand in the place where you are)
Your head is there to move you around, so stand.

Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence – Audiocasts

“Part 1; What Say We Leave a Planet for Our Offspring?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=pffbztrfkv

“Part 2; Can You Handle Happiness (And the Pain That Comes With It)?” – the audio by SillyMickel Adzema

For the author’s reading, with elaboration, of this part, click on the link to the audio site above or click the audio player here:

http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=syglfhsvld

Continue with Apocalypse No! Chapter Nine: Regressions in the Service of Society — Messy Healing

Return to Apocalypse No, Chapter Seven: Through Gaia’s Eyes – Nature Balances HerSelf

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Everything You “Know” About Life You Learned as a Fetus: Foundations of Myth and Mind and my Personal Involvement with This Research into Our Actual “Human Nature”

Your Map of Reality Was Written in the Womb: Falls from Grace, Chapter One — Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

Prenatal and perinatal psychology is the field that deals with the effects of events occurring prior to (prenatal) and surrounding (perinatal) the time of birth upon later life and personality. An ever increasing amount though certainly not all of the information we have about these periods of our lives and their effects is derived through the later and vivid remembering of these events in a phenomenon known as re-experience. Correspondingly, the two most frequently asked questions about this relatively new field, put by those initially encountering it, are those concerning the specific meanings of the terms perinatal and re-experience.

At the outset, I wish to present an explanation of these two terms and of my unique personal relation to this topic as well as some of my background in exploring it. I will follow this with an historical overview of the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology, which will reveal the key concepts and understandings employed throughout this book.

Re-Experience and Reliving

For over forty years, beginning in 1972 when I was a senior undergraduate in college, I have been involved both personally and professionally in a comprehensive investigation into the phenomenon of re-experience. Also called reliving, this phenomenon is reported to consist of a full somato-cognitive remembering of previous events in a person’s life. Reliving involves experiential but also observable and measurable components, such as brain wave changes, characteristic physiological and neurological changes, and typical observable body movements.

This phenomenon can occur, to varying degrees, in many consciousness-altering modalities—including hypnosis, LSD psychotherapy, primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork; to a considerable degree in re-evaluation co-counseling and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder; and, occasionally and spontaneously, even in mainstream forms of psychotherapy, counseling, and “growth seminars.”

Re-experience is a more vivid and more completely somatic catharsis than what has been described in psychotherapy in terms of abreaction. It is in such contrast to normal abreaction that when these seemingly bizarre yet healing events have spontaneously erupted in traditional or mainstream Western contexts they have usually been mistakenly labeled psychotic, been intervened upon, and then aborted—via drugs and other highly coercive measures—by the attending therapeutic authorities.

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However, with an increasing appreciation for their therapeutic value, these events are gradually becoming understood and accepted in therapeutic contexts and thus allowed to complete themselves and to instruct the participants and observers in their meanings. Therefore, they appear to represent something new in our culture in terms of both a way of approaching knowledge and in terms of the kinds of information that are discovered (Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1971; Lake 1966/1986; Noble, 1993; Stettbacher, 1992).

My Relationship to the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

My interest in the phenomenon of reliving began forty-four years ago at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate there I was most inspired by a course in religious studies titled “Religious and Psychological Approaches To Self-Understanding.” I was so inspired by the course that I constructed my major around its topic and initially even used the same title for my program’s name. This major in “self-understanding” would lead me, in a few years, to a profound interest in and exploration of primal therapy, as presented by Arthur Janov (1970) in his much-publicized book, The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis.

By 1972, I had completed all but the one final semester for a B.A. That semester was to include the cumulative project—required of such a Special Studies (individually structured) major. However, since my project would focus on primal therapy and one of primal therapy’s basic premises is that knowledge cannot really be known except through experience, I could not in good conscience turn in a project describing primal therapy without first experiencing it. Consequently I withdrew from college, for what was supposed to be only a semester, with the intention of “going through” primal therapy and then returning to school to write my cumulative project on it. In those days, the entire process of primal therapy was reputed to take only three to six months.

But a lot was unknown about that modality in those early days. As it turned out, I would not return to school to complete that final project until 1978—at which point I had five years’ experience of primal therapy behind me and was living in Denver, Colorado.

In addition to these experiences, I have amassed a broad array of other experience and training over the years that have contributed to my understanding of re-experience and of this field in general. Besides my two decades and more of primal therapy … both formally and in “the buddy system” … I have received training as a primal therapist. I am also a trained rebirther, having explored that modality since 1986. I have been experientially exploring the modality of holotropic breathwork since 1987 and did training with Stanislav and Christina Grof in that technique.

Finally, I have been facilitating people in their journeys into deep inner primal and holotropic states since 1975. I’ve given individual sessions in all three modalities of primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork. And with my wife, Mary Lynn Adzema, I conducted three day workshops in something we called primal breathwork. I’ve conducted two-day group workshops in this modality at conferences, which were attended by as many as sixty experiencers at a time.

Thus, I have experience in my own process in these modalities; but in addition I have facilitated for others on many occasions, and at times, it was my main profession—though most of my life I have spent in writing, teaching, and research.

Pre- and Perinatal Re-Experience

Re-experience of birth and of the events immediately prior to and after birth are termed perinatal—from the Greek, literally “surrounding birth.” It has been widely described at this point by a number of authors but is most closely associated with the work of Stanislav Grof, Arthur Janov, and Frank Lake.

However, one significant and as yet little explored or understood phenomenon, arising also from the modalities mentioned, is that of prenatal re-experience. In this case, the experiencer reports … and observationally appears to be … experiencing events that happened en utero, sometimes going back as far as sperm, egg, and zygote states (Buchheimer 1987; Farrant 1987; Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1983; Lake 1981, 1982; Larimore 1990a, 1990b; Larimore & Farrant, 1995).

These reports of remembering experiences that occurred before birth are at such variance with Western professional and popular paradigms that they are met with near-universal incredulity and, too often, premature dismissal. Yet the evidence from the mounting numbers of experiential reports and empirical studies attests that something which is at least unique and interesting is going on here.

Nevertheless, much of this prenatal information is thus far unformulated, untheorized, and unintegrated into a coherent structure for making sense of these experiences. This book will go a long way toward doing just that—making sense of prenatal experiences and exploring the implications and prospects of the knowledge gleaned from this fascinating new area of research and which arises from the vision that an exposure to this material induces.

The present work represents an attempt to bring this new information concerning our origins and our earliest experiences into such a coherent structure. After the initial overview of the field to be presented in this chapter, I deepen that review of the current understanding and findings in this area in making a case, in Chapter Two, for the legitimacy of prenatal spirituality.

First, let us take a closer look at what we know about the time before and around birth and what it means for us throughout our lives.

Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field—Early Theorists: Psychoanalysis and Birth

Sigmund Freud — Birth as Prototype for All Anxiety

While Freud (1927) disregarded major effects of birth on personality, he still saw the birth experience as the prototype of all later anxiety. His overall disregard of birth, however, was largely influenced by the belief—although discredited (see Chamberlain, 1988), still common in mainstream psychology and medicine today—that a newborn does not possess the neurological capacity for consciousness at birth.

Otto Rank — Psychoanalysis, Birth Trauma, Foundations of Personality and Some Myth, Separation Anxiety

Other early psychoanalysts disagreed with Freud on this. Otto Rank is the most notable of these. Following Freud’s basic psychoanalytic reasoning for personality patterns in early infancy, he asserted basic patterns of experience and ideas that are rooted in even earlier experience. Rank (1929) claimed the deepest, most fundamental patterns of these personality constructs originated at the time of birth, which Freud thought was not possible. Based upon the dream, fantasy, and other patterns of associations arising in his patients in psychoanalysis, Rank postulated a birth trauma, which he saw as a critical event in laying down in each of us particular patterns of thinking, motivation, and emotion for the rest of our lives. Notable among these prototypes was a feeling of a paradise once known but somehow lost, a separation anxiety caused by the separation at birth, and a resulting futile and lifelong struggle to re-unite with that golden age and that early beloved because of a desire to return to the womb.

Nandor Fodor — Dreamwork, Birth and Prenatal Processing and Relivings, Prenatal Origins of Consciousness and Trauma

Also a psychoanalyst, Nandor Fodor (1949) focused on the reflections of birth and prenatal material in dreams. He also designed interventions in therapy to release the negative effects of birth and to process prenatal memories. He was the first to mention actual relivings of birth, in which veridical memories were recovered. He agreed with Rank on many points, but he stressed the origins of consciousness and of trauma being in the prenatal period.

Donald W. Winnicott — First Primal Therapist? Birth Relivings, Importance of Birth—Negative Imprints but Positive Effects, Too

Another psychoanalyst, and pediatrician as well, Winnicott (1958) also held that birth is remembered and is important. He insisted that the birth trauma is real, but he disagreed with Rank and Fodor that it is always traumatic. He suggested that a normal, nontraumatic, birth has many positive benefits, particularly for ego development. Still, he contended that traumatic birth is permanently etched in memory and leaves a lifetime psychological scar. Winnicott (1958) also suggested the possibility of prenatal trauma.

He has been called the first primal therapist in that he described the first birth primals—actual observable relivings of birth—spontaneously occurring by some of his patients during their sessions with him. Thus he was beginning the trend beyond mere talking association or dream analysis as ways of accessing and integrating this material.

Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field — Later Research and Theorists: Hypnosis, Primal Therapy, and Birth

David Cheek and Leslie LeCron — Hypnosis, Birth Memories and Imprints on Personality and Relation to Psychiatric Disorders

Cheek and LeCron (1968) used hypnosis to retrieve early memories in their patients. They discovered that memories earlier than what they expected, going back to birth, were possible. Importantly, a relief of symptoms seemed to follow from the re-experience of these birth memories. They came to the conclusion that a birth imprint occurs, which is induced by the extreme stress of that time and is resistant to fading from later experience. Further they asserted that this imprint could be the cause of a wide spectrum of psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders.

Leslie Feher — Psychoanalysis, Birth, Cutting of Umbilical Cord, Separation Trauma

Leslie Feher (1980) sought to extend the Freudian tradition farther back into areas that, she asserts, were until only recently unknowable. Thus, she describes a natal theory and therapy that includes experiences of cutting the umbilical cord, birth, and even prebirth. In fact, she considers the cutting of the umbilical cord to be central in her theory of trauma, calling it the “crisis umbilicus,” and echoes Fodor in claiming that it is the true origin of the castration fears made so much of in psychoanalysis. This is so because, according to Feher, the cord and placenta is an object of security and is considered by the fetus to be part of him- or herself. Thus, this cutting represents a supreme threat in being a separation from a total life support system, a major organ, a part of oneself. In these ways, she also brings forward for renewed appreciation Rank’s speculations on the element of separation trauma as a crucial element of the birth trauma.

Arthur Janov — Primal Therapy, Traumas of Birth and Early Life and Healing Them, Empirical Foundations and Neurophysiology of Early Events and Healing

Perhaps the major theorist and popularizer of the phenomenon of re-experience (which he termed primaling), Janov was reluctant to acknowledge the pervasiveness of pre- and perinatal re-experience and trauma. Yet when he did, it was in a major work on birth trauma, which remains as a touchstone in the field in its depth and detail. Imprints: The Lifelong Effects of the Birth Experience, published in 1983, among other things places birth as the determining factor in creating basic personality constructs, called sympathetic and parasympathetic, which roughly coincide with the more common terms introversion and extroversion.

This work is more empirical and neurophysiologically rooted than most in the field. While the book is recognized in the field, Janov and his work have not gotten anywhere near the respect and attention that they deserve. He remains the unfortunate kicking-boy of a movement that is itself scapegoated by the academy and the larger scientific community.

Thomas Verny — Primal Therapy, Birth, Especially Womb Life and Relation to Personality … Prenatal Mother-Infant Bonding

The actual stimulus for a new field of pre- and perinatal psychology and the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health—APPPAH was Thomas Verny’s (1981) The Secret Life of the Unborn Child. His work brought together a good deal of the new empirical research that had opened the doors to us on the events in the womb. While himself a practitioner of “holistic primal therapy,” he integrated the accumulating data from the phenomenon of re-experience with the new information from the more traditional, “objective,” scientific research into the prenatal—made possible by the latest advances in technology.

One of his conclusions from this combination of lines of inquiry was that “birth and prenatal experiences form the foundations of human personality” (1981, p. 118). His other conclusions center around the importance of intrauterine bonding in that his research strongly suggests that the prenate, via pathways hormonal and unknown, picks up on the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of the mother. More importantly, he asserted, the imprint of these factors on the fetus predetermines the later mother-child relationship. He emphasized that positive thoughts and feelings toward the fetus—”maternal love”—acts to cushion the new individual against the normal stresses and unavoidable harshness inherent in birth and early infancy. Yet all of this cannot be completely avoided. “Birth is like death to the newborn,” writes Verny (1984, p. 48).

David Chamberlain — Hypnosis, Confirmed Validity of Birth Memories

David Chamberlain (1988), for many years the president of APPPAH (the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health), has further substantiated the claim of consciousness at birth and the accuracy of pre- and perinatal memory in the phenomenon of re-experience. He reported one study he did in which he compared hypnotically retrieved memories of birth from mother and child and found an astonishing degree of conformity in their responses. Of note was the degree of inner consistency and originality in these memories as reported by the former neonate. They often contained technical details of the delivery and labor unlike what would be expected of the medically unsophisticated, a perceptive critique of the way the birth was handled, and other details of the event that could not have been known through normal conscious channels.

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Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field — Later Theorists: Societal Implications, Psychohistory, Birth and Prenatal

Lloyd deMause — Psychohistory, Prenatal and Poisonous Placenta, Sociohistorical Implications of Gestational and Birth Events

Lloyd deMause (1982, 1987) was instrumental in establishing the new interdisciplinary field of psychohistory. In his study of historical happenings he discovered that stages in the progression of events related to stages in the progression of gestation and birth … which stages happened to correspond, by the way, remarkably well with Stanislav Grof‘s four stages of birth, his Basic Perinatal Matrices.

He found that natal imagery especially predominates in societies during times of crisis and war, when national purpose and state of affairs are construed as a need to escape or break free from an enclosing and constricting force. He also noted the suffering fetus and the poisonous placenta as sources of these later metaphors and imagery. In fact, in studying the imagery in the national media of various countries he has been able to predict political, social, and economic events such as wars and invasions, recessions, and political downfalls.

His work begins to look at the prenatal influences and imprints and how they related to macrocosmic issues of politics, history, social movements, and issues of war and peace.

Later Theorists — Dream Analysis

Francis Mott — Conception and Gestational Basis of Myth, Archetype, all Patterns of Macrocosmic and Microcosmic Realities and the Nature of Reality, Devolutional Model of Development

Francis Mott’s work is less well known even by this field’s standards, yet it is undeniably impressive. Mott’s (1960, 1964) major contribution lies in his focusing on basic patterns of mind and cosmos that correlate with prenatal feelings and states. He traced consciousness back to events around conception and saw these events as instituting patterns affecting all later experience and conceptual constructions. Through dream analysis he elicited these “configurations,” and he demonstrated their manifestation as seemingly universal archetypes in myths and universal human assumptions about the nature of reality.

In fact, through his study of womb and conception patterns he claimed to have discovered patterns that underlie and unite all of reality at all levels of manifestation—astronomical, social, personal, cellular, and even nuclear. While this may seem rather grandiose, his work was highly regarded and admired by Carl Jung.

Mott also carried forward the intimations of earlier prenatal theoreticians, notably Rank and Fodor, on the gestational basis of archetypes. While he does not address or seek to discredit the range of, supposedly genetic, archetypes postulated by Jung, his work is highly suggestive of an experiential, specifically, pre- and perinatal, as opposed to genetic basis for many of these.

Denial and Incest Taboo

Mott (1960) also helped us to understand why if these prenatal memories are possible they are not more prevalent by suggesting denial is necessary in order to protect against incestuous feelings that might arise around feelings remembered from being inside one’s mother.

Devolutional Model of Consciousness Development

Finally, he made the postulation—hugely relevant to the theme of this work—that our original expanded capacity to feel is diminished, as he says, “divided,” by experience not increased by it. The idea is that there is a reduction in awareness as a result of early traumatic events, beginning around conception and then on, and not the buildup of consciousness and feeling that we assume from the mechanistic paradigm that sees consciousness as a byproduct of increasing physical, specifically brain, activity during our early years. (See, for example, The Doors of Perception: Each of Us Is Potentially Mind At Large… When Perception Is Cleansed, All Kinds of Nonordinary Things Happen and Occupy Science … A Call for a Scientific Awakening: In Tossing Away Our Species Blinders, We Approach a Truth Far Beyond Science.)

Later Theorists — Breathwork

Stanislav Grof — Breathwork, LSD, Birth and Prenatal, Myth and Archetype, Spiritual and Consciousness

A pioneer in this prenatal area is Stanislav Grof (1976, 1980, 1985, 1990, to name a few). His many works, providing a framework for conceptualizing perinatal and transpersonal experiences, are a profound and useful starting point for an investigation into this area.

In his use of LSD beginning in 1956 for psychotherapy, called psycholytic therapy, he discovered four levels of experience of the unconscious: the sensory, the biographical, the perinatal, and the transpersonal. He noted a tendency for growth and healing to occur in a progressive way through these levels. The sensory band is the level of expanded sensory awareness and is usually initially encountered by participants. The biographical band is the realm of the personal unconscious wherein unintegrated and traumatic memories and material from childhood and one’s personal history are retrieved, often relived, and integrated. The perinatal level of experience usually follows after dealing with the biographical material and involves the remembering, re-experiencing, and integrating of material that is related to the time prior to and surrounding birth. The transpersonal band, the level of spiritual experience, is usually reached after dealing with the other three levels.

Four Modes of Experiencing—the Basic Perinatal Matrices

Grof has also delineated four matrices of experience, four general experiential constructs, which he called basic perinatal matrices (BPMs). He discovered that experiences at all levels of the unconscious often group themselves in four general ways that are roughly related to the four stages of birth. Thus, Basic Perinatal Matrix I (BPM I) is related to the generally blissful or “oceanic” feelings that often characterize the fetus’s state in the womb in early and middle pregnancy. BPM II is characterized by “no exit,” hellish feelings that are related to the situation of the fetus in late pregnancy when the confines of the womb become ever more apparent but there is as yet no indication of any possibility of relief. BPM III relates to the birth process itself, the birth struggle, which is still characterized by feelings of compression and suffering but in which there is movement and change and thus hope of relief through struggle. If BPM II can be compared to hell, where there is no hope, BPM III is more like purgatory. Finally, BPM IV relates to the actual entry into the world, the termination of the birthing process, and is characterized by feelings of triumph, relief, and high, even manic, elation.

In his descriptions of the levels of experience and the matrices of perinatal experience, Grof has provided useful maps of the unconscious and experience in nonordinary states, which have incredible heuristic value in our understanding of cross-cultural religious and spiritual experience, psychopathology, personal growth, and consciousness and personality in general. And they have been utilized successfully in providing a context and guide for many tens of thousands of participants in his psycholytic and holotropic therapies.

However, while Grof is exhaustive in his descriptions of fetal and perinatal experience, he says less about the earlier experiences in the womb—the first trimester—and even less about conception and the experiences of sperm and egg—what is known as cellular consciousness. Still, this area is beginning to be discussed among his followers. And through his current nondrug modality, called holotropic breathwork, people are accessing these areas and beginning to give word to them (e.g., Carter, 1993).

Frank Lake—Breathwork, First Trimester, Early Experience as Foundation for Myths

Frank Lake, though less well-known again, has probably been the premier theoretician on the topic of prenatal events during the first three months of gestation. Just prior to his death in the early eighties, he wrote a culmination of his thirty-year investigation into pre- and perinatal influence in two works titled Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling and The First Trimester. In these works he goes beyond his other works (for example, 1966) in placing the roots of all later experience, and in particular, distress, at the first three months of physical existence.

Lake began his investigation of re-experience in 1954. Like Stanislav Grof, he did this using LSD, initially, in the psycholytic therapy that was being developed at that time to facilitate therapeutic abreaction. Later he, again like Grof, developed a nondrug modality to accomplish the same thing. His method of “primal therapy” employed a type of fast breathing—again, like Grof’s later technique—to access theta-wave brain levels, which are levels of consciousness that he saw as crucial to accessing and integrating these memories.

His thirty-year research led him to the realization of the importance of ever earlier experience. Thus his earlier stress on the importance of birth gave way to his later emphasis on the first trimester in 1981 (Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling) and in 1982 (The First Trimester).

He stressed the maternal-fetal distress syndrome, beginning at around implantation, as a major time of trauma. He also described a blastocystic stage of relative bliss just prior to that.

His one other major disagreement with Grof was his belief that the mythological and symbolical elements described by Grof were a product of LSD and that the first trimester events were the actual roots of much of such symbolism and supposed transpersonal/mythological scenarios (1981, p. 35).

Later Theorists — Myth and Sacred Text/Mysticism

S. Giora Shoham — Devolutional Model of Development, Falls from Grace

While not strictly a pre- and perinatal psychologist, I include this too little-known theoretician and criminologist because of the close relationship and influence his work has had upon my own work regarding these Falls from Grace. Falls from Grace and other devolutional models of consciousness postulate that during life and over time, beginning at conception, we actually are reduced in consciousness and awareness, not increased in it, and it corresponds to a “brain as reducing valve” theory of consciousness. (Again, See The Doors of Perception and Occupy Science.)

While I initially constructed and wrote down my devolutional theory of consciousness—Falls from Grace—without the benefit of Shoham’s work, upon discovering it I could not help but be both confirmed and reinspired by the astounding resonance his understanding has with my own.

Shoham (1979, 1990) starts his devolutional model in the womb and carries it through birth, weaning, and the oedipal periods of development. Though, as I delineate in Part Two, I disagree with his model by beginning mine at the creation of sperm and egg—as does other devolutional theorists like Francis Mott and David Wasdell—in virtually all other major instances his model corresponds to my own if one simply … in keeping with a normal trend in child development in general as it begins to integrate the new pre- and perinatal evidence … places everything back a little farther in time—in this case, specifically, one stage back.

Later Prenatal Psychology Theorists — Cellular Memory and Conception, Foundations of Myth and Personality, Spirituality and Soul

Lietaert Peerbolte — Conception and Cellular Memory, Soul, Spirituality

Peerbolte (1954) was one of the earliest theorists to relate spirituality to conception and sperm/egg dynamics. In addition to claiming that a regression to conception is the inevitable result of all prenatal states, he traced the sense of “I” — the “I-function” — back to the egg, existing even in the mother’s ovaries. He further postulated that the spiritual self was invisibly present within the field of attraction between the egg and the sperm. Correspondingly, he was the first to point out that the existence of conception, preconception, and even ovulation symbolism in dreams indicates the existence of a soul. For, he asked, what mind records these events otherwise?

I wrote the article, “A Primal Perspective on Spirituality,” which later became the next chapter in this book before I knew about Peerbolte’s work. Yet, once again the conclusions I came to, especially about the existence of soul being established by the fact of these memories and especially those at the cellular levels of sperm and egg existence, are very much in line with his.

Michael C. Irving — Primal Therapy, Birth, Sperm, Egg, Myth, Dragon Symbolism, Prehistoric Cult and Ritual

Michael C. Irving is a primal therapist whose contributions include his relation of these earliest events from sperm and egg through the birth experience to fundamental mythological motifs and images across cultures. The originator of a way of interpretation that he calls natalism, he has brought together a host of artistic and artifactual images from a wide range of time periods and cultures which relate, with an astonishing degree of accuracy, to actual pre- and perinatal events.

In particular, he has traced the universal serpent/dragon motifs and mythology to birth and sperm experience, noting, among other things, that the serpent/dragon shape represents the birth canal or tunnel, that the fire-spewing characteristics of dragons relate to consuming pain, and that the constricting characteristics of snakes correspond to the constriction of the birth canal. Of great interest is his deduction that the widely prevalent snake and dragon cults, which were especially popular in prehistory, indicate an attempt to deal with such unfinished birth trauma material as we are only now, in modern times, rediscovering the importance of doing.

Graham Farrant — Primal Therapy; Sperm, Egg, Cellular Consciousness; Soul and Spirituality

Graham Farrant (1987; Buchheimer 1987), a psychiatrist and primal therapist from Australia, is probably the most influential and well-known of those discussing the phenomena that occur at the earliest times of our lives. In addition to echoing Frank Lake in describing fetal, implantation, and blastocyst feelings, he has been able to elicit and describe sperm and egg imprints. He has found trauma from these earliest events to influence lifelong patterns of personality and behavior. He produced a notable video in which segments from the widely acclaimed movie “The Miracle of Life,” which shows actual footage of gamete and zygote events, are juxtaposed via a split-screen with actual footage of a person reliving the exact same events in primal therapy, which occurred before such cellular events were ever able to be seen and recorded. The effect is astounding in the detail in which the relivings replicate the actual cellular happenings.

In addition to his emphasis on cellular consciousness, Farrant has stressed the spiritual aspects of these earliest events. He relates incidents of spiritual trauma at the cellular level in which the individual splits off from Divinity—thus setting up a lifelong feeling of loss and yearning and a desire to return to Unity and the Divine.

Paul Brenner — Sperm, Egg, Cellular Consciousness and Biological Foundations of Myths

Paul Brenner (1991), a biologist and obstetrician, has been presenting at conferences and in workshops on the idea of the biological foundations of myth. For example, he relates basic biological, cellular events to biblical events described in Genesis.

He also relates male and female adult behavior to basic patterns of sperm and egg behavior and to events prior to and surrounding conception. He has said that male and female behavior are just sperm and egg activity grown up!

Elizabeth Noble — Cellular Consciousness and Spirituality, Empirical Underpinnings

Elizabeth Noble (1993) is an educator in the field of pregnancy and childbirth and is a student of Farrant’s. She published a comprehensive overview of this new field, titled Primal Connections, in which she doesn’t hesitate to stress the issues of cellular consciousness and the spirituality that appears to coincide with the re-experience of these earliest events. She provides empirical and theoretical avenues for understanding how memory can occur at such early times. Some of these are consistent with mainstream physicalist science while others coincide with the cutting-edge, new-paradigm discoveries in fields such as biology, physics, and neuroscience.

David Wasdell — Sperm/Egg and First Trimester Imprints, Devolutional Model of Development, Social and Historical Implications

One of the more recent theoreticians in this area is David Wasdell. Wasdell’s (1979, 1985a, 1985b, 1990) major contribution lies in his relating these earliest events to social and cultural patterns. He describes a process of devolution of consciousness beginning at around conception and proceeding through other reductions caused by traumas at implantation, in the womb, and at birth.

Most importantly, he delineates how the result of this diminution of potentiality is projected outwards into the problems and crises of violence, wars, and the mediocrity of modern personality on the scale of the masses and the macrocosms of the group, society, and global events.

In describing the problems of “normality” as rooted in a deprivational and deformational series of traumas from our earliest biological history, Wasdell emphasizes that this gives us the possibility to change that tragic social and personality outcome by focusing on the prevention and healing of such traumas. Thus, he holds out the vision of a new person and new society as an outcome of the efforts directed at the earliest laying down of human experience.

The Importance of the Intrauterine for Understanding Our Times and the Goal of This Book

Despite this long legacy of work and thought in this pre- and perinatal area, much of it, especially the prenatal, remains ignored by mainstream psychology and is largely unavailable to the public. Within the field itself, in addition, the prenatal information, in relation to the more widely accepted and circulated perinatal evidence, seems to be analogous to Otto Rank’s (1929) ideas of birth trauma were to Sigmund Freud’s concerning early infancy in that they are cast under an extra cloud of suspicion and disbelief and disregarded accordingly. Yet, like Rank’s findings also, their main problem may lie with unfamiliarity and prejudice rather than validity or scientific viability; and these findings, like his were, may end up harkening the outlines of future endeavors and being confirmed by subsequent research.

Thus, I believe that this prenatal area in particular is ripe for reaping what it can teach us about what is human, about “human nature.”

Therefore, this book will put forth the possible relationship between our earliest ontogenetic experiences as humans and the structure of human consciousness and stages of human “development.”

I build a model that seeks an initial formulation of this information, teasing out its implications, and integrating it with relevant thinking and theoretical perspectives in anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and others.

However, before proceeding, it seems important to establish this pursuit within the logical-empirical framework that validates it. To do this, let us now turn to the re-experience movement I am most familiar with and feel to be the most important, primal therapy, and discuss its relation to the phenomenon of prenatal re-experience and spirituality.

Continue with How Valid Are Spiritual Experiences? Psychedelic Research and Deep Experiential Psychotherapy Have Intensified the Exploration of Spiritual Aspects of the Unconscious

Return to Falls from Grace, Introduction — The Radical Rational View of Us and It: “Normal” Truth Is Convenient Truth … and Is Anything But True

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We Are a Fever, Part Two — The Evidence That Life’s Blueprint Is Written at Birth: Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology Overview — Early Theorists, Psychoanalysis, and Birth

The Template for All You Think Was Created at Birth: Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field — Early Theorists, Psychoanalysis, and Birth

Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field—Early Theorists: Psychoanalysis and Birth

Sigmund Freud — Birth as Prototype for All Anxiety

While Freud (1927) disregarded major effects of birth on personality, he still saw the birth experience as the prototype of all later anxiety. His overall disregard of birth, however, was largely influenced by the belief—although discredited (see Chamberlain, 1988), still common in mainstream psychology and medicine today—that a newborn does not possess the neurological capacity for consciousness at birth.

Otto Rank — Psychoanalysis, Birth Trauma, Foundations of Personality and Some Myth, Separation Anxiety

Other early psychoanalysts disagreed with Freud on this. Otto Rank is the most notable of these. Following Freud’s basic psychoanalytic reasoning for personality patterns in early infancy, he asserted basic patterns of experience and ideas that are rooted in even earlier experience. Rank (1929) claimed the deepest, most fundamental patterns of these personality constructs originated at the time of birth, which Freud thought was not possible. Based upon the dream, fantasy, and other patterns of associations arising in his patients in psychoanalysis, Rank postulated a birth trauma, which he saw as a critical event in laying down in each of us particular patterns of thinking, motivation, and emotion for the rest of our lives. Notable among these prototypes was a feeling of a paradise once known but somehow lost, a separation anxiety caused by the separation at birth, and a resulting futile and lifelong struggle to re-unite with that golden age and that early beloved because of a desire to return to the womb.

Nandor Fodor — Dreamwork, Birth and Prenatal Processing and Relivings, Prenatal Origins of Consciousness and Trauma

Also a psychoanalyst, Fodor (1949) focused on the reflections of birth and prenatal material in dreams. He also designed interventions in therapy to release the negative effects of birth and to process prenatal memories. He was the first to mention actual relivings of birth, in which veridical memories were recovered. He agreed with Rank on many points, but he stressed the origins of consciousness and of trauma being in the prenatal period.

Donald W. Winnicott — First Primal Therapist? Birth Relivings, Importance of Birth—Negative Imprints but Positive Effects, Too 

Another psychoanalyst, and pediatrician as well, Winnicott (1958) also held that birth is remembered and is important. He insisted that the birth trauma is real, but he disagreed with Rank and Fodor that it is always traumatic. He suggested that a normal, nontraumatic, birth has many positive benefits, particularly for ego development. Still, he contended that traumatic birth is permanently etched in memory and leaves a lifetime psychological scar. Winnicott (1958) also suggested the possibility of prenatal trauma.

He has been called the first primal therapist in that he described the first birth primals—actual observable relivings of birth—spontaneously occurring by some of his patients during their sessions with him. Thus he was beginning the trend beyond mere talking association or dream analysis as ways of accessing and integrating this material.

Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field — Later Research and Theorists: Hypnosis, Primal Therapy, and Birth

David Cheek and Leslie LeCron — Hypnosis, Birth Memories and Imprints on Personality and Relation to Psychiatric Disorders

Cheek and LeCron (1968) used hypnosis to retrieve early memories in their patients. They discovered that memories earlier than what they expected, going back to birth, were possible. Importantly, a relief of symptoms seemed to follow from the re-experience of these birth memories. They came to the conclusion that a birth imprint occurs, which is induced by the extreme stress of that time and is resistant to fading from later experience. Further they asserted that this imprint could be the cause of a wide spectrum of psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders.

Leslie Feher — Psychoanalysis, Birth, Cutting of Umbilical Cord, Separation Trauma

Feher (1980) sought to extend the Freudian tradition farther back into areas that, she asserts, were until only recently unknowable. Thus, she describes a natal theory and therapy that includes experiences of cutting the umbilical cord, birth, and even prebirth. In fact, she considers the cutting of the umbilical cord to be central in her theory of trauma, calling it the “crisis umbilicus,” and echoes Fodor in claiming that it is the true origin of the castration fears made so much of in psychoanalysis. This is so because, according to Feher, the cord and placenta is an object of security and is considered by the fetus to be part of him- or herself. Thus, this cutting represents a supreme threat in being a separation from a total life support system, a major organ, a part of oneself. In these ways, she also brings forward for renewed appreciation Rank’s speculations on the element of separation trauma as a crucial element of the birth trauma.

Arthur Janov — Primal Therapy, Traumas of Birth and Early Life and Healing Them, Empirical Foundations and Neurophysiology of Early Events and Healing 

Perhaps the major theorist and popularizer of the phenomenon of re-experience (which he termed primaling), Janov was reluctant to acknowledge the pervasiveness of pre- and perinatal re-experience and trauma. Yet when he did, it was in a major work on birth trauma, which remains as a touchstone in the field in its depth and detail. Imprints: The Lifelong Effects of the Birth Experience, published in 1983, among other things places birth as the determining factor in creating basic personality constructs, called sympathetic and parasympathetic, which roughly coincide with the more common terms introversion and extroversion.

This work is more empirical and neurophysiologically rooted than most in the field. While the book is recognized in the field, Janov and his work have not gotten anywhere near the respect and attention that they deserve. He remains the unfortunate kicking-boy of a movement that is itself scapegoated by the academy and the larger scientific community.

Thomas Verny — Primal Therapy, Birth, Especially Womb Life and Relation to Personality … Prenatal Mother-Infant Bonding 

The actual stimulus for a new field of pre- and perinatal psychology and the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health—APPPAH was Thomas Verny’s (1981) The Secret Life of the Unborn Child. His work brought together a good deal of the new empirical research that had opened the doors to us on the events in the womb. While himself a practitioner of “holistic primal therapy,” he integrated the accumulating data from the phenomenon of re-experience with the new information from the more traditional, “objective,” scientific research into the prenatal—made possible by the latest advances in technology.

One of his conclusions from this combination of lines of inquiry was that “birth and prenatal experiences form the foundations of human personality” (1981, p. 118). His other conclusions center around the importance of intrauterine bonding in that his research strongly suggests that the prenate, via pathways hormonal and unknown, picks up on the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of the mother. More importantly, he asserted, the imprint of these factors on the fetus predetermines the later mother-child relationship. He emphasized that positive thoughts and feelings toward the fetus—”maternal love”—acts to cushion the new individual against the normal stresses and unavoidable harshness inherent in birth and early infancy. Yet all of this cannot be completely avoided. “Birth is like death to the newborn,” writes Verny (1984, p. 48).

David Chamberlain — Hypnosis, Confirmed Validity of Birth Memories 

David Chamberlain (1988), for many years the president of APPPAH, has further substantiated the claim of consciousness at birth and the accuracy of pre- and perinatal memory in the phenomenon of re-experience. He reported one study he did in which he compared hypnotically retrieved memories of birth from mother and child and found an astonishing degree of conformity in their responses. Of note was the degree of inner consistency and originality in these memories as reported by the former neonate. They often contained technical details of the delivery and labor unlike what would be expected of the medically unsophisticated, a perceptive critique of the way the birth was handled, and other details of the event that could not have been known through normal conscious channels.

Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field — Later Theorists: Societal Implications, Psychohistory, Birth and Prenatal

Lloyd deMause — Psychohistory, Prenatal and Poisonous Placenta, Sociohistorical Implications of Gestational and Birth Events 

Lloyd deMause (1982, 1987) was instrumental in establishing the new interdisciplinary field of psychohistory. In his study of historical happenings he discovered that stages in the progression of events related to stages in the progression of gestation and birth … which stages happened to correspond, by the way, remarkably well with Stanislav Grof‘s four stages of birth, his Basic Perinatal Matrices, as we shall see.

He found that natal imagery especially predominates in societies during times of crisis and war, when national purpose and state of affairs are construed as a need to escape or break free from an enclosing and constricting force. He also noted the suffering fetus and the poisonous placenta as sources of these later metaphors and imagery. In fact, in studying the imagery in the national media of various countries he has been able to predict political, social, and economic events such as wars and invasions, recessions, and political downfalls.

His work begins to look at the prenatal influences and imprints and how they related to macrocosmic issues of politics, history, social movements, and issues of war and peace. His work is extremely relevant to the issues of this book and we will be returning to him again and again in this work.

Continue with Everything You “Know” About Religion You Learned as a Fetus: We Are a Fever, Part Three — Later Prenatal Psychology Theorists — Breathwork, Myth, and Consciousness

Return to We Are a Fever, Part One: Perinatal Psychology, the Phenomenon of Re-Experience, and my Personal Involvement with This Research into Our Actual “Human Nature”

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