Just Released, March 2020. *Who to Be: Identity, Authenticity, and Crisis* (2020) by Michael Adzema

*Who To Be: Identity, Authenticity, & Crisis* by Michael Adzema has just been released at Amazon

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What does one do in a postmodern, complex, multicultural world in which the options are so numerous and enticing as to paralyze one’s actions? How does one live a good life, a fulfilling life? What actions, commitments, careers, causes, service are most likely to return happiness?

These are questions we all need to address in our youth, yet throughout our lives as well. They come out again specifically during mid-life, and particularly in the mid-life crisis.

One can have access to the entire Universe; but while in Form, one not just *should* but has actually come here to do some aspect or part of that, only. One has one’s dharma, one’s duty arisen out of who one is, and not anyone else’s. This is called one’s *atmadharma*.

It is good, in fact imperative, to open oneself to all kinds of potentials. But if one does not express it, does not bring it out, positively, creatively — and in a fulfilling and socially satisfying way… like a tree does in taking the nutrients it pulls out of the soil to manifest in leaves and blossoms and limbs — one is like a drowned plant, underwater in a swamp … unfulfilled, depressed, unhappy.

At best, one is in an oar-less rowboat, directionless and drifting, in the middle of an infinite sea.This peek into immersion in the Cosmic Soup is instructive. It says something about the spiritual process, the primal process, and the Identity processes of life … especially in the places where they all overlap.

Sample chapters are currently available to read and download at these links:

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* ”The Crisis of Humanity & the New Hero’s & Heroine’s Cycles” … Preface of *Who to Be: Identity, Authenticity, and Crisis* (2020) by Michael Adzema. Free. Downloadable chapter.*

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Our Global Multiculturalism Directs Us to the Roots of Our Beings as Foundation for Answering the Primary Concern of Human Life, “Who to Be?”

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*“Civilization and the Travesty of Morals” … Chapter 9 of *Who to Be: Identity, Authenticity, and Crisis* (2020) by Michael Adzema. Free. Downloadable chapter.*

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Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Uncivilized “Civilized” Man

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To order print or digital copies, go to *Who to Be: Identity, Authenticity, and Crisis* at Amazon or to Michael Adzema at Amazon 

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Invite you to

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join me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sillymickel

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friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel
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Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickeladzema/

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For any of the 13 of Michael Adzema’s works currently in print go to Michael Adzema’s Author’s Page at Amazon

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God’s “glory”? … “You’re still fucking peasants as far as i can see.” — John Lennon

God’s *glory*? … or human fear and peasantry 

“We used to say that God did things for His own glory … that he manifested in form to glorify Himself in creation. But that is a lame word — *glory*. It’s like peasants giving the reasons for what kings do. Peasants who, thinking of royalty as being almost different beings from them, higher ones, don’t understand what their motives really are … especially when those rulers are being capricious and needlessly harmful, murderous … but they feel they’d better suck up to “the man.” It’s a nice sounding and flattering word that doesn’t really mean anything and can be applied to cover everything….”

– from “Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation”

http://www.amazon.com/Funny-God-Minds-Liberation-Return/dp/1499504845/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.facebook.com/notes/michael-adzema/we-have-learned-that-god-is-not-separate-from-us-is-not-punishing-and-hardly-car/10152582167133138

#consciousness #spirituality #glory #God #peasants #follow #tsu #kings #awakening #suckuptotheman

“There are always those, those who have conformed and submitted, who view any who leave the fold as thinking too much of themselves….”

“There are always those, those who have conformed and submitted, who view any who leave the fold as thinking too much of themselves. These conformists have thrown away their pride, self-respect, and mission in life in hopes of being applauded and approved by the very ones, the ones above them, who’ve denigrated them. They sure as hell don’t like seeing any who have escaped that.”

“…these sycophants have repressed their own urges, upon the directions of others, so they can’t stand seeing anyone freer … having the fun … the pleasure … that they can’t have … that they have denied themselves.”

“SillyMickel calls them kitty-drowners and butterfly-mashers.”

“For these people hate the good, they can’t stand to see it, they must crush it to conform to how they had to crush the beauty inside themselves.”

– from “Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation” http://www.amazon.com/Funny-God-Return-Grace-Book-ebook/dp/B00UV83F7Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441217959&sr=1-1&keywords=michael+adzema

#conformity #spirituality #sycophant #oppression #kentstate #follow #tsu #activist #awakening #occupy

Hunger Games: Prenatal Oxygen Hunger and Its Political Imprints – Greed, Oppression, Sycophancy, Class War, Revolution: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 17

Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life, Part Seventeen: Fetal Malnutrition and Politics: Prenatal Roots of Greed, Sycophancy, Class War, and Revolution

Prenatal Roots of War

In a previous section I mentioned how our human tendency to warring has its roots in the uncomfortable crowdedness we experience in the late stages of gestation—a pain and trauma that stays with us for life and drives us to act it out in trying to push back lines and make more room (womb) for ourselves in many areas of our lives, including politically. I said our psychological state preceding wars, in line with deMause’s work in this area, is akin to feeling stifled and wanting to “breathe free.”

Hunger Games – War and Aggression

Can’t Move

So of course our aggressions against others are connected to the long period of difficult immovability in the womb, but we can already see it is related to the reduction of oxygen at that time as well.

Looking into the feelings of latent oxygen panic rooted in fetal oxygen hunger, we see it has many more political implications, even, than war and aggressions toward others over space…over lines and perimeters and rooted in the feelings of being hemmed in—that constellation of “crowded” feelings I’ve previously teased out.

Can’t Breathe

In the “gasping” or oxygen deprivation trauma of late stage gestation, we can’t get enough oxygen, we feel suffocated…suppressed, stifled, repressed, oppressed. It is out of these feelings carried over and restimulated again and again as adults that we create class wars, revolution, and culture wars. For we feel there to be an oppressive force inhibiting our self-expression, keeping us from “breathing freely.”

Hunger Games—Greed and Oppression

But more: On the other side of those panicky feelings of suffocation we are driven to gobbling up more resources than we need—greed. We experienced oxygen poverty in the womb, so poverty and reductions in finances feel stifling and suffocating. It is less desirable to not have money, of course. My point is that this prospect drives us to overreact and build our lives around major act outs of it, as so:

Suppression, Oppression, “Sucking” From

(1) Being politically oppressed, we feel we can’t move freely (the crowded feeling), but, interestingly, we feel we can’t “breathe freely.” We act this out on both sides of class war and revolution: One side always feels this lack because it has roots in the unconscious and cannot be satisfied and so over overcompensates and in doing so “sucks” up all possible resources (oxygen) from those lower on the totem pole…it “suppresses” the “masses”…it “sucks from” the masses.

Liberals hearts may “bleed” but not conservatives. For releasing blood is losing oxygen and conservatives have a prenatal “knowing” that you need every smidgen you can get to survive. You may even go so far as to try to “squeeze blood from a stone” (the aging placenta).

Sycophancy, Conformity, “Sucking Up”

(2) From another side of this discomfort we have a prenatal sycophancy showing itself. Conforming underlings, in a country’s economic array, act out their prenatal oxygen panic by investing all their energy in “sucking up” to those above them … seeking to insure a steady supply of resources (money, oxygen) by sucking from the rich stream (blood stream) of money “circulating” among those on rungs above them on the economic ladder.

Suffocation, Starvation, Being “Sucked” From

(3) And the other component in this political triangle—those poor and working class directly opposed to the greedy forces “sucking up” from the masses—feels this suppression as suffocation, starvation, and stifling unto death. So it wants to “overthrow” or “throw off” the forces weighing down upon and suppressing/suffocating them.

Basically, if you’re not “sucking” resources (oxygen) from below, you are either “sucking up” to those above you or being “sucked from” and wanting to “overthrow” them to “breathe more freely.”

Hunger Games—Freedom and Revolutionaries

Injustice, Inequity, Struggle – Throwing Off

This does not mean that revolutionary forces are act outs of early trauma and not real. It does not mean that oppression does not actually exist; it does not mean that struggles for economic justice are overcompensations. No. It is no more true that these are unreal than that struggles to save the environment are act outs. For we must remember that the prenatal forces drive us to actually manifest conditions that re-create our womb states. And just as we are driven to despoil our air and waters as act outs of our fetal malnutrition, so also our fetal oxygen panic causes us to create situations of dire inequity by pushing unnecessary greedy acts creating gross economic injustice. And these greedy forces are aided in their suppression by their sycophantic underlings, driven by their underlying panic of resource loss. Between the two, they are able to create human societies of economic inequality, suppression, and oppression which mirror the conditions of resource lack in the womb for the majority of folks throughout history and virtually everyone on the planet in these strange days.

Free Speech – Stifled, Inspire, Expire, Express…To Breathe Free

Interesting aspects of this oppression-revolution dynamic rooted in the fetal dynamic is the focus on free speech: The one side wants to suppress expression (expiration—release of air) of inspiration (to inspire—to take in air), thus directly slowing down the masses’ political equivalent of breathing, “stifling” its expression (its ability to “breathe out”). The revolutionary side of this wants the opposite: Folks want freedom of speech. They want to be able to speak freely (breathe freely), to be inspired (take in air or spirit), and to express this uninhibitedly (expire, let air out). These same dynamics apply to freedom of religion as well.

The oppressed masses feel they are deprived, can’t get enough of what they need (oxygen), want to “breathe freely,” and so need to assert self-expression, to expire (express) one’s inspiration freely as part of that “struggle.”

Hunger Games—Sycophancy and Conservatism

Reactionary and Conservative Thinking = Prenatal Conformity – Don’t Move Too Much, Don’t Stand Out, Maybe You’ll Get More (Oxygen)

But the basic dynamic is about resources: One side out of oxygen panic wants to suck up resources from everywhere around and wants to keep those resources from others. And the other side wants to take theirs back. And that third part is the conforming fetus hoping to get more resources from “above”…to “suck up”…by not moving too much, by staying compliant with outside forces, by not being too obvious or “standing out,” and if moving to do so only in ways remembered as safe…strictly prescribed, ritualistic ways.

For our prenatal memory tells us that doing so is the way of getting a little more in the way of resources (oxygen). We experienced that by not struggling, by not moving around too much…and further complicating and constricting the blood flow through the arteries to the placenta (the bank)…more oxygen (money) seemed to flow. Also, by not moving too much, by “conserving” our energy, “holding our breath” as it were, we might be able to survive…that being too “radical” and free risked death.

Hunger Games—Culture War

Oppressors Orchestrate a Panicked Population for Their Profits

One final aspect to this prenatal dynamic acted out politically is the culture war that comes of it: The greedy forces manipulate the latent panic of the masses in order to suck more resources by telling each segment of the masses that another sector of the population is actually the part that is sucking all their resources, stealing all their benefits and money (oxygen). So we have the creation of minorities and scapegoats out of this interplay. But the reason it happens unerringly in societies is because it works so well. And it works so well because the forces of manipulation are orchestrating powerful drives and forces within the masses—tendencies of people born of desperation and panic, which have roots in the earliest months of one’s individual existence.

Next: Hunger Games—Human Rights and Racism

More Mass Manipulation Around Bigotry and Anti-Semitism … Vampires and Blood Libel, Too

In the next section we look more deeply into this manipulation of the masses, this scapegoating of minorities. We see how racism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism are themselves constructed out of prenatal pushes and pulls. We find out why we look at others the way we do, so that our errant ideas can be further used against us by the greedy ones. And we stumble upon the underpinnings of some of the most curious of human concoctions of thought—as in the ideas of vampires and blood libel.

Continue with Hunger Games – Vampires and Culture Wars … Fetal Roots of Racism, Bigotry, Anti-Semitism … Blood Libel: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 18

Return to How We Look to the Gods and Prometheus Redux … Building More Nukes and Drilling More Holes – Icarus Keeps Flapping and the Gods Can’t Stop Laughing: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 16

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