The Goddess and the Sixth Extinction

From his reading and research of the Gnostic/Telestai texts, John Lash (metahistory.org) puts forward the proposition that the goddess Sophia/Gaia attempted, as a divine experiment, to introduce or bring to manifestation the anthropos - archetype of man - nine times previous to this creation. Each of the nine cases resulted in self-destruction of the species, and possibly the planetary environment-matrix (including accompanying species) in which they were imbedded. 
Strangely [coincidence-theory!], this corresponds to the Hindu (Vaishnava) cosmology of 9 previous worlds threatened with (self/demonic)-destruction, and 'saved/preserved' by an entity called an 'avatar'. In both systems, our world is the 10th creation, and the Hindus await the coming Kalki avatar. The gnostic story is quite different, however.

Lash, of course, considers the Earth to be a living, conscious, sentient being - our Planetary Animal Mother, and is appalled at the predominant references in our contemporary languages to a 'dead rock floating in space'. My own direct experiences and studies tend to agree with that assessment. As far as both the Gnostic and Hindu stories go, I have to say, still, I don't know shit. But I'm open to these facets of our mysterious creation, being that humans know but a miniscule portion of the living world surrounding us, let alone the true history of this world. Vedic and aboriginal oral histories and natural sciences are about the best we got to go on, nevertheless.

I'm actually writing this because many will not check Lash's latest posts, or find them hard to follow (with all the digressions). They are HERE. And because he has posed a question, perhaps not for answering but for examination, which I find both interesting and possibly crucial. I will get back to that after a digression. 

An article published in the British Independent, titled Animal Extinction - The Greatest Threat to Mankind states the following: "We now understand that the majority of life on Earth has never been - and will never be - known to us. In a staggering forecast, [biologist Edward] Wilson predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by 2100." 
"A poll by the American Museum of Natural History finds that seven in 10 biologists believe that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, a more serious environmental problem than even its contributor, global warming; and that the dangers of mass extinction are woefully underestimated by almost everyone outside science." 
Oh, hey, it's probably just another one of those commie pinko Illuminati disinfo psy-ops, like anthropogenic climate change, overpopulation, vegetarianism, imagined chemtrails, imagined rapes, psychopathy, false memories, and the like...go back to choosing your favorite political party/candidate (and don't forget to vote). 
"All these disappearing species are part of a fragile membrane of organisms wrapped around the Earth so thinly, writes Wilson, that it 'cannot be seen edgewise from a space shuttle, yet so internally complex that most species composing it remain undiscovered'. We owe everything to this membrane of life. Literally everything. The air we breathe. The food we eat. The materials of our homes, clothes, books, computers, medicines. Goods and services that we can't even imagine we'll someday need will come from species we have yet to identify....The living membrane we so recklessly destroy is existence itself."

As we daily read the wildlife/biodiversity blogs, we see who the politicians and 'outdoorsmen' are making war on, with every bit of determination as the blood-for-oil freaks. 
"...the big, scary animals that frightened us in childhood, and still do, are the fierce guardians of biodiversity. Without wolves, wolverines, grizzlies, black bears, mountain lions and jaguars, wild populations shift toward the herbivores, who proceed to eat plants into extinction, taking birds, bees, reptiles, amphibians and rodents with them. A tenet of ecology states that the world is green because carnivores eat herbivores. Yet the big carnivores continue to die out because we fear and hunt them and because they need more room than we preserve and connect. Male wolverines, for instance, can possess home ranges of 600 sq miles. Translated, Greater London would have room for only one."
Re: this "6th Great Extinction" - "an analysis published in Nature showed that it takes 10 million years before biological diversity even begins to approach what existed before a die-off". 
Factoids: The World Conservation Union's Red List is a database measuring the global status of Earth's 1.5 million scientifically named species.  Of the 40,168 species that the 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union have assessed, one in four mammals, one in eight birds, one in three amphibians, one in three conifers and other gymnosperms are at risk of extinction. The peril faced by other classes of organisms is less thoroughly analysed, but fully 40 per cent of the examined species of planet earth are in danger, including perhaps 51 per cent of reptiles, 52 per cent of insects, and 73 per cent of flowering plants.

I know that's unquestionably too much information, especially before turning in for the night (or before breakfast). But I have lately been reflecting deeply on two things. One, the depth of obliviousness of the nature of our human-animalness, and, two, how inconceivably different/other is each species (and, equally, each individual of a species). Even with all the new 'scientific' papers emerging about animal sentience and emotionality, we (as a species) are light years away from having a clue about the reality of the inner lives of 'the others'. They are like inhabitants of different planets to us at this point in time, and we have no agreed-upon facility or technology to communicate. The point of this that we are f**king ANIMALS, for f**ks sake! So, it could not possibly be that this has always been the case in our past. I know this by long-term observing of various wild and domestic animals, and their interactions both within and without their species. And I also trust the word of indigenous historians and griots.

Back to the Lash question/examination. The story goes that Sophia, with the 10th attempt, (unintentionally?) transformed into the material body of Gaia herself, which was a different feature this time around. In any case, the intention was to mitigate, or prevent, the self-destructive tendency of evil/Wetiko-disease to grow to predominate over the peace-loving, empathetic, natural-balancing qualities of the embodied anthropos - the humans. The way this was envisioned to work was to be through the intimate, conscious interactions with the other species. So Lash is asking for reflection on the question/idea of WHY this didn't come about. What went 'wrong'? I guess, in other words, what happened to effect the disconnect from the rest of the animal nations, and when, where? This, I think, is the essence of what Lash is calling the ongoing, necessary "divine correction" that we are called upon to participate in. How can we access that crucial piece which surely is in our DNA?

There are other discussions in those "navigator briefings", including what's termed "moral anarchy" - 'anarchy' being defined as 'without-Archons' - that made me grin. But that and other interesting subjects can be explored if one is interested on the website.

Here's maybe something relevant, and ridiculously cute:
Belarus Soldier and Squirrel       

Ok, while I'm doing 'cute', check this photo taken by one of Visible's readers -

Not sure if I posted this before. I think not, though I have posted other vids of Abida Parveen. This one is worth seeing, both for the exquisite music, but especially for the footage of the audience. They are Pakistani humans of all ages showing up in the hundreds to hear this magnificent spiritual music/poetry. They are another group we are supposed to hate and fear. See what you think. 
I Saw My Beloved in All I Saw    
The link has the lyrics in English.       

A Little Help From the Devic Realm

Whew! Yo, feeling hot these days? I'm feeling like I'm back in India, where you can barely manage to stay in your body, feed yourself and pour buckets of water on yourself and the floor all day. I haven't been able to concentrate on projects during the days, but do try to keep appointments and commitments, and do some work into the late hours. Here in northern NM we've been getting some good monsoon action on a regular basis, every day or two, and even a slight hint of fall, but we're still in the high 90s every day. Crops are doing extremely well locally, unlike much of the country. Interesting that much of the drought is hitting areas of concentrated GMO mega-farms. I tend to think that we may be seeing effects of elementals working on various planes and places, even though we barely acknowledge their existence any more in conversations and writings, even in the 'alternative' and 'awakened' circles. [Cue Gore Vidal: "The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism."]

I was visited by relatives over the weekend, and given a box of old letters and photographs and items, many 70 years old. Many revelations ensued on examining the contents, images and words never shown nor spoken before I left home and all family to pursue 'my destiny'. I was deeply moved by seeing my parents, young and in love, and their super cool rustic log-and-stone cabin in the high desert where I was conceived. I was weirded out seeing some of the assholes that made my childhood disturbing and incomprehensible. 
But, I really broke down upon seeing two photos of myself and my first dog. Brought home as a puppy when I was 4-5, she was my best friend for 10-11 years. When my dad passed away, I became so distraught, spaced out, overwhelmed by new responsibilities at age 14 that I completely neglected my loyal dog friend. She was eventually taken in by a neighbor, even more shit came down in my life, and she just disappeared from my awareness amidst the traumas and turmoil. I have felt, and carried, guilt over that for 50 years, and seeing her photo just broke the dam. At least I can put her up on my altar now, along with my other lovely familiars, and honor her spirit in the eternal present. 

I have written about some teachers and gurus, and I want to continue with that before I'm done here with this earthly plane. But, another aspect of this that I need to get off my chest is the reality of non-human teachers. This is the kind of shit that drives even animal-rights activists and animal-biology scholars crazy some of the time, though there is a growing minority that has no problem with it.

Vrindavan

One of my trips to India was a two-year study financed by a huge fellowship. I applied and was one of 5 recipients in the country for this prized award. I had a 9 year old feline buddy, very bonded, and there was no one close to care for him. His name was the Hindi word for 'messenger'. So I loaded him up and carried him on the plane, and the crew even let him sit on my lap (this was the 80s). That trip I lived very well, with all the amenities. He lived with me in Varanasi and the Himalayas, and became a well-known curiosity among the locals and a friend of all the musicians, masters and students. (He had been sleeping next to drums and veenas and singers since a kitten anyway.)

Varanasi

Then, back in the US, he traveled in the van for some time as we both adjusted to the culture-shock. At some point it became apparent that it was time for him to go, as certain events had taken a toll on his health. I did my best to keep him comfortable and safe, with medicines to ease his pain, and the day approached. Though very infirm, I carried him into my friend's house, and when we were alone he suddenly stood up and rose to his full height and put his head against my forehead and held it there. He spoke into my mind that he was grateful that I had taken him to India, that we had been together many times in many forms in many lifetimes, that he was a very advanced shamanic teacher, and that I was to take this understanding he was passing to me and manifest it into work with other animals and in passing on awareness of non-human sentience to other humans. 'Blown away' doesn't come close to describing my state afterwards. He passed during the night next to me in the van, and was buried under a tree in the forest in Washington state. 

In the early 90s I was 'kennel manager' for the town/county animal shelter for 3 years. We tried our best to hold animals way way beyond the proscribed time. One mama dog just stole our hearts, but wasn't getting adopted for months. So, what to do? I took her home. I hadn't had a dog since my childhood. She understood I had saved her life, and became fiercely loyal and protective. She was given the name of an Indian goddess. I was later to be living on the road a lot, in between roofs, and she traveled well and enjoyed the musician-companion life. After a few years, just before another extended trip from NM to Cali for gigging and work, she got ill, but seemed to recover. We hit the road, and bummed around Cali in the car, her sleeping nights in the car while I crashed at friends' places, and she kept all my instruments and stuff safe from thieves roaming the streets in San Fran for many weeks. As my couple months were coming to a close, and we would soon head back to the next assignment in NM, I noticed that her energy was starting to really wane. I took her to a vet, but they weren't thorough, and anyway I only had one more recording session to do and we could get back to my vet friend in NM soon. The session finally got done, and as I jumped in the car, I saw that something was seriously wrong. I headed right out onto the freeway, pedal to the metal, going east, praying. I drove through the night and got to Bakersfield at dawn, where I pulled into a vet clinic parking lot. I brought her in as the vet unlocked the door. Some tests were done, and I was told that her liver was destroyed, probably from anti-freeze. Then it hit me. My asshole neighbor's car had been leaking in front of my house back in NM and I kept telling him to fix it, but he kept blowing it off.

What this incredible dog had done for me was serve and protect me while we lived in the car for two months, while her liver was completely shot and she was suffering intensely, knowing that I needed her guardianship, and when she finally understood that her job was finished and I would be going home, she let herself be relieved from that duty and allow nature to take its course. I carried her back to the car and we began our last journey. I sang to her at the top of my voice for a hundred miles, and when we pulled off on a dirt road for a piss-stop, with compassion for my sorrow and torment, she left her body as I turned away for a moment. I always stop there on my way across the desert for a moment of remembrance, and her ravaged body was placed on a mountain-top in the Mojave. From her I was given perhaps my most profound teaching on seva, selfless service.
You could say that shit like this just comes from imagination and anthropomorphism. That is, until you get the fierce grace to witness and experience the reality and power of our animal allies in the proper state of receptivity. 

It is the same with the elementals, the kachinas, the devas. They still want to return to the state of being our allies, our servants, our teachers. We knew them once, and they await our call and invitation, our invocation. Some have been doing that for some time now, and maybe a trust has been regained. I don't think we were ever the ones who made war on the devas, but their, and the Mother's, pain and trauma has been enormous, so we need to really get clear and be clear on this matter. Our fierce and uncompromising support and love is both the key and our only hope. This is also the process that will deal with the wetiko problem. Not to minimize it, by any means, the wetiko problem is not just a human-predation phenomenon, and maybe it never was. The whole web of life has long been under attack. It just was not readily apparent in the local focus of the tribal and pastoral societies, but it should be obvious now what we're up against. It's a war, a multi-dimensional one, whether we view it in spiritual terms, temporal terms, or don't want to see it at all. One example is the situation of the Sea Shepherd Society now being involved in the African rhino protection - with former special-forces warriors armed with night-vision goggles, drones with infrared video tracking as well as automatic rifles - hunting down endangered-species poachers. That's a big step up from petitions and protest signs, and probably just the tip of the iceberg of what's coming.

As a footnote, you may or may not know that, as the Japan dolphin-killing season is set to begin on Sept. 1st, there is a group of islands 100 kms south of Tokyo whose inhabitants have declared full citizenship to the dolphins in their waters surrounding them - Japanese Island of Toshima. They are spreading the word to the rest of the country. It's time.          

One Awesome Day, 2012

9th August, 2012  Link

Have you ever read a horoscope that said "someone out of your past will show up"? I didn't read that, but I had a double whammy today. Sure, it's a personal thing, but it is so bizarre it seems worth sharing.

I have a long-lost first cousin (40 years+?) who was quite close in my childhood, greatly admired, a few years older. Being an only child, I looked up to him as a big brother, who once even loaned me his Jaguar for a week during high school. I dragged him to see the Jazz Crusaders, the original Staple Singers, flamenco and other groups in the 60s. Then we drifted off into separate worlds, as usually happens. He was of the only side of my 'family' that didn't disown me in those days. Still, we lost touch, both of us traveling internationally and around the US, living life in different universes.

He caught up with me last year via another cousin, and sent an email. Finally, this summer he and his girlfriend are working as rangers and guides at an Anasazi site in the southwest, and he took a few days off to come see me. He had been writing me that he had a box of 'stuff' from my mother who passed in '82, and he had kept it for me for 30 years! So I've just started reading my own letters from India in the 60s, and a whole bunch of other fascinating material, including photos.

Me at age 6

But, what's bizarre is that he came with his lady-friend whom he had mentioned had spent some time in India in the 60s too. My cousin knows practically nothing of my travels and studies, just a few anecdotes over the years. So we meet in the plaza in town, he introduces her, we talk for a bit, and I asked her where she went in India. She says "Ayodhya". I say, "oh really? I went there once for a couple weeks". She says "oh really, why?". I answer that "I went to visit a drum master/swami who was teaching some American students". Her jaw dropped to the floor and she replied "Swami Pagaldas was my teacher/guru for 6 years!!" She said my name, I said her name, and we both looked at each other dumbstruck.

Passport 1968

She was the ONLY female non-Indian who seriously studied my instrument - pakhawaj/mridang - ever. I had stayed in her house in Ayodhya, learned from her teacher for a couple weeks, had tried to search her out for 40 years, and gave up hope of ever finding out what became of her. And she's my long-lost cousin's girlfriend!  We're talkin 7 billion to one odds here...ok, 3.5 billion. We had practiced together, ate together, drank 'bhang' made by Swamiji and sat all night in the Shiva temple on Shivaratri (my first). All her guru-bhais (from Pagaldas) died prematurely in the mid-80s except for one (who I re-found 3 years ago - by running into his sister, whom I'd never met, in the woods on Maui!!!).

Pagaldas (L) & ZM Dagar (R)

Mridangacharya Swami Pagaldas ('servant of the craziness'') was the greatest living repository of the ancient Sanskrit drum poetry tradition. He may have been the greatest who ever lived, as far as we know. The drum poetry consists of thousands of invocations, descriptions, celebrations, etc. of all the deities and mythologies of India in the form of both spoken and played rhythmic compositions. These have been handed down for centuries, nay millenia. I only possess a few, and they are only given to the very advanced students, and are the most difficult to execute correctly. One Hanuman composition actually took me 5 years to master, so you get the idea.

So, some kind of crazy grace and serendipity has brought me together with a guru-bahin (sister) who I had no idea was even alive. Makes me wonder if this is part of the timewave or something that happens to people very late in life or, hell, just beats the shit outta me...?? Another thing is that, reading my own letters, I see that I was saying exactly the same things 40 years ago that I write about now. Same words, same shit, different decade; war on the environment, war on culture. And I'm still talkin' "crazy talk". It could be depressing, but with this over-the-top synchronicity it feels like something else is blowing in the wind, something unknown, undefinable, unimaginable. Maybe something wondrous? 

Simply Living

A short post today, primarily to feature a couple of videos that pretty much sum up the essence of what I have attempted to convey on this blog, on a personal level and a shared universal  vision of human harmonization with the sacredness of life in its many forms of infinite beauty. 
I remember John Lash recently speaking of receiving, from Gaia, a possible future epitaph for humanity - "Perished by the failure to observe beauty". I hope these small offerings leave you touched by the beauty you hear and see. And may we all give ourselves time to observe the many awe-inspiring encounters of sundara appearing daily in the rest of our time here. Om Satyam Shivam Sundaram.

Probably 15 years ago I had the pleasure of hearing and meeting the Scottish brother Dick Gaughan at a small venue in Albuquerque. We shared some tobacco during the break and spoke of sacred musics of the world, and it was a simple roots-grounded one-heart appreciation of our shared love of the real music. He's now also in his 60s, and this is a newer song penned by him....lyrics follow. 
   

The days and the hours swiftly turn into seasons
The weeks and the months quickly turn into years
The present is coloured by memories of childhood
Of heartache and happiness laughter and tears

I've flown and I've driven long miles by the million
Through desert and forest and high mountain range
Through pastures of plenty and dark city byways
A life on the move in boat, car and train

Thirty five years of singing and playing
Thirty five years of life on the road
Laughing at tyrants and spitting at despots
I've danced in the footsteps of men like Tom Joad

They've called me an outlaw they've called me a dreamer
They said I would change as I aged and grew old
That the memory would fade of the things I had lived
through
That the flash fire of youth would slowly turn cold

But I raise up my glass and drink deep of its flame
To those who have gone who were links in the chain
And I give my soul's promise I give my heart's pledge
To outlaws and dreamers and life at the edge

So here's to the vision that binds us together
That tears down the walls that would keep us apart
And here's to the future where dreams will be honoured
And the fierce flame of freedom that burns in our
hearts

The fire is still burning the future's still calling
To follow the dream till the end of my days
Wishing's for fools but dreams are for outlaws
Laughter's for lovers and tears for the brave

I raise up my glass and drink deep of its flame
To those who have gone who were links in the chain
And I give my soul's promise I give my heart's pledge
To outlaws and dreamers and life at the edge

And this following video, the reason for this posting, I found referenced on John Lash's website. It hardly requires any comment, but I would simply add that elsewhere Kevin Richardson states unequivocally that it all happens through total attention on intuition, a lesson learned through experience. 

 

Looking forward to throwing down some Orissa tribal rhythms in a solo performance with fire puja next Friday night at the 3-day Tribal Vision Festival  - "ceremony/music/dance/art/sustainability", featuring Paul Stamets and cast of thousands.

It's really very simple

  

The Surreal Work of the Kali Yuga - UPDATE

Kailash Om

UPDATE:....On a previous post regarding the SURREAL Animal Rights/Web Investigations into the Canada Cannibal, and the "stellar" police misprision non-investigation. I refer you to this exclusive exposé link at DANGEROUS MINDS.   
I would have to say that the earthly temporal manifestations of the divine leela have gone pretty far over into the surreal category at this point, and certainly exceeding my own weirdest entheogenic future-visions of my early out-of-time explorations. Back then, there seemed to be an undetermined open-endedness, a wealth of possibilities, directions, resolutions. In these times, isolation is intensified, in every outing in these environs, by the distinct repeated impression that what is surreal to me is simply accepted(?) as normal for pretty much everyone around, both 'asleep' and 'awake'. But, in two months I have had a face-to-face true reality check-in with another human only once since my close friend left on his journey, and that was in conjunction with a student music lesson. (If the teaching goes good, a sacred window can be opened where the rasa of Adbhutam - wonderment/awe - blows in and transmissions happen spontaneously in the form of gestures and glances, and you drop into a place where the topic is all-inclusive…) But that isolation trend has been consistent for some years now, not exactly new. I used to be fairly adept at steering conversations away from bullshit, but, for one, I'm tired, and second, most in my age-group are seemingly shell-shocked or have a white-knuckled death-grip on illusion-maintenance.  Maybe it's because I've been surrounded by lazy humans for too long, who haven't been at the work they should have been? That's part of it, but also can't deny my own laziness. Maybe I 'should' have gotten out more? It's hard to be 'elder-ly', goddamnit! You do what you can to keep the melancholy at bay. 

Apparently, if you have your shit together in certain areas, you don't actually have to 'do' anything…more like stopping 'doing' is the general idea. Then you get made aware of things like grace, synchronicities, appearances of 'open windows', revelations of one's true desires, and such. I've never been apprised of any technique to call that in, but have met some individuals with a unique magnetic field that seems to attract a lot of that. (They all did the work.) Some fairly interesting hits have been recently coming in my direction, though I'm very reticent to grasp hold of the idea of a 'trend'. I do need to cross some big threshold into a different reality here, and that feeling of being damn near out of patience is non-stop. Hell, that's why my bro hit the road and crossed the border, gettin' the fuck outta Dodge.

Synchronicity, for me, isn't always wonder-full and awe-inspiring, and sometimes it's downright sorrowful and tragic -  the Karunyam rasa. Karunyam also invokes compassion too, of course, but it doesn't spare the grief.
But I've had both of those two types of so-called 'emotional empowerments' manifest in synchronous ways recently. Just noticing and observing.
 
I was looking at videos to rent and picked out a story of a Mississippi bluesman, and a minute later an old friend, a local master blues-guitarist who I'd not seen in a couple years, was standing next to me. He handed me a film called "Throw Down Your Heart", saying "this is the shit for you, my man". He couldn't have been more right on. Made in 2008, it follows banjo master Bela Fleck on his journey to bring the banjo back to Africa, it's place of origin. Specifically, Uganda, Tanzania, Gambia, and Mali.
I could only find Hulu versions with annoying commercials searching for "watch online for free" sites, so I encourage readers to rent and watch, including the 'extra' out-take extended tracks. It's a hell of an inspiring film, and great to watch Fleck gradually drop into the African vibe as he throws himself into the unknown through his many musical encounters. It's heavy, too, considering the dual ways to interpret the idea of "throwing down your heart"….but that's to be discovered in watching. This film precisely depicts what music is really about in the latter days of the Kali Yuga. That was the awe-rasa synchronicity. Here are 3 clips up on YouTube from the film:
And with the extraordinary Oumou Sangare - (been listening to her cassettes for 25 years):
 

Another synchronistic film-related event (karuna rasa):
I rented newly released "The Hunter", starring Willem Dafoe (met him last year), not knowing much about the plot. Back home, opened an email entitled "A Glimpse of What We've Lost: 10 Extinct Animals in Photos". The first photo displayed was of the Thylacine (Tasmanian 'tiger'). Well, holy shit, that is the very animal on which the film is centered. 

 
The film is pretty well done, filmed in Tasmania, billed as an intense 'thriller', little violence though nor any animal abuse involved. But be forewarned: it is a very tragic and disturbing film with the lead character hired by an evil POS biotech corporation to 'get' the last surviving individual of the species for DNA marketing purposes. Wetiko qualities are readily displayed. In the end, Dafoe's character chooses a shocking, desperate, redeeming(?) action.

I have been despairing that my best (consistent) student had moved away, but yesterday acquired a new student via Skype. O...K...grace. This is a new experiment for me, but seemingly worth trying. Others have been increasingly contacting me over last couple years to do this, so, while this tech is still around I figure I may as well take advantage. It's free, too, so…may as well spread what the wetikos hate.

Still trying to ward off the melancholy on a daily basis.
I take some comfort from being made aware that, due to the work of Jill Robinson and her dedicated local allies, over 1000 Chinese doctors (DOMs) at 8th Shanghai International Forum of Infection Control have pledged to not use/prescribe Moon Bear bile products. (Rhinos next!!) She has been rescuing bears in Asia since 1994 (close to 400 now), and has the website AnimalsAsia as well as many YouTubes, including lovely tours of sanctuaries established throughout Asia. She is a true major world-class front-line heroine who deserves all support and resources possible. Up there with Capt. Paul Watson - who, btw, is now on the run in hiding from the Japanese whaling and shark-finning mafias. Wetikos are getting pissed.
A very heart-rending vid here of the rescued and now sanctuaried bear, Oliver, who survived 30 FUCKING YEARS caged.
 

This shit is impossible to get one's mind around. We're in a fucked up matrix of which there are no words to even get close to defining. The wetikos are frothing at the mouth for more and more of the same. Its what they do, and feed on. That's why I try to repeatedly banish despair as it arises - just to deprive them of a few snacks. Not from me, you extermination-deserving lifeless archontic pieces of fecal matter!
"Have a nice day!"

Talking Grief and Joy, Words of Power and Silence

I honor and respect the power and magic of the written and spoken word ('in the beginning'), but also tend to be geared more to sound vibration for it's true primacy (primal Aum), and that probably connects to my having been drawn to instrumental music, rhythm, and mantra-based vocal traditions. It did not surprise me to find an infinitely deepening pathway to inner discovery in a lifetime of exposure to more and more layers and levels of sublime subtlety and power there. But that is a path experienced by only a privileged few, and a privilege it is, accompanied by great gratitude. 

But we inhabit a world not so tuned to pure sound (Nada) and silence, but more to ideas written and spoken. And I'm in that matrix as much as everyone else. I'm also not 'a writer', in the artist/professional sense. But it is a curious contemplation to me about the 'process'. The only process I know involves certain steps: becoming aware of the 'calling' of the moment (of mental/emotional freedom), listening to the vibrational spectrum of the drone, matching the precise harmonics and overtones of my instrument at every point till I feel the merging in my body (shanti), and then becoming aware of what the instrument 'wishes to say' in relation to the moment and environment. 
I have no idea if there are similar or completely different processes involved in the art of 'wordsmithing', storytelling, and oration. My own processes can be either instantaneous or drawn out, and maybe that is the case in the latter practices. I don't know. But in this life I have experienced occasions where the power of both written and spoken word have reached comparable depths as those of musical expression. These have all involved spiritual/emotional/empathic dimensions, and have come from 'unknown' teachers, friends, poets, writers, orators and mystics living and dead, and those would include Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir, Trudell, Prechtel, MLK, Ramana, and a number of others - all of whom have entered into the 'bhav' and channeled timeless truths. What was said stays with me, becomes part of my 'remembrance', and I return there to heal my tribulations. 

I bring this up because, for one, this is the blog world and I have been minimally involved as well as much enjoying others' expressions, but also because I have more and more recently become bored with the spiritual and temporal superficiality of many of the popular contributions. There are a few exceptions, and those ladies know of whom I refer. I read for spiritual insight, tracking collective emotional 'weather', and for deep research into the forces and motivations of our adversaries as well as updates on the guerrilla successes against the wetiko institutions. I have neither the time nor interest in following either doom-predictions or external-salvation-hopeyness, nor narcissistic cooler-than-thou wanna-be sage and hip western cultural icons. I guess I'm just stuck with my artistic authenticity values extending to all realms. And 'deep' seems to be a matter of personal perspective. I've never gotten over the shock of realizing how little western man is satisfied with, as well as the tendency to claim expertise in subjects which one has not been deeply, genuinely immersed in. I really don't want to go there now, so I'll say no more.

Speaking of hopeyness, I appreciated the below-linked transcript of a sermon given last Sunday in Austin by Robert Jensen, which came from a site I subscribe to. Good on him for speaking the spiritual truth in a Christian church. I consider this to be a small example of right use of the spoken word ('vak'=siddhi of speech).
Hope Is For The Lazy: The Challenge Of Our Dead World

"Nature does not negotiate."

"Avoiding reality because it is harsh is not a winning strategy."

"There may, in fact, not be a winning strategy available to us at this point in history. But we have an obligation to assess the strategies available, and work at the ones that make the most sense. That is how we make a credible claim to being human. We don't become fully human through winning. We embrace our humanity by acting out of our deepest moral principles to care for each other and care for the larger living world, even if failure is likely, even if failure is inevitable."

He quotes Wendell Berry - “You can't know who you are if you don't know where you are.”

"To be truly hopeful is to risk irrelevance when engaged in polite conversation in mainstream America. Irrelevance, in these situations, is a virtue. Our chance of saving ourselves depends on enough people willing to be irrelevant soon enough."

He also quotes James Baldwin - "[we] must remember, however powerful the many who would rather forget, that life is the only touchstone and that life is dangerous, and that without the joyful acceptance of this danger, there can never be any safety for anyone, ever, anywhere." 

"The two, grief and joy, are not mutually exclusive but, in fact, rely on each other, and define the human condition."

Well, irrelevance is a pretty familiar feeling for me these days, even though I'm able to avoid 'polite conversation' most of the time. Maintaining a retreat status with sound, silence, and a nourishing natural environment works well and keeps my focus off stress, preferring the words and expressions of the masters. Reading and viewing some archival films of a genuine master, intimately connected to the natural world, I came upon unknown details of an astonishing story. It relates to the sage Ramana Maharshi of Arunachala, South India. The story itself is the relationship he had for many years with the cow "Lakshmi". (There's even a book called "The Life of Lakshmi the Cow".) Lakshmi (name of goddess of abundance) was given to him in 1926 and became a visibly ardent devotee engaging in daily conversations with the master, demonstrating full sentience, informing him of her needs and joys, insisting he be the first to welcome each new calf (often on his birthday), attending daily meals with devotees, insisting he be the first to enter her new shed/quarters and bless the foundation ceremony, always facing his room/window, and many other marvelous episodes which continued for decades. Ramana also had deep connection with deer, peacock, crow, dog, etc, many of  whom have their samadhi/tombs on his ashram grounds and are kept up to this day. Lakshmi's passing in 1948 was attended to by Ramana in the manner afforded to a mahatma, as he personally guided her over into ultimate liberation (videhamukti), accompanied by tears of grief and joy. There is much more in the details, which can be read at the Ramana blog.

"It is not true that birth as a man is necessarily the highest, and that one must attain realisation only from being a man. Even an animal can attain Self-realisation."

So, there you have it, read it and weep. Life is stranger than any of us know, and places like India are not just 'other cultures' but other all-inclusive realities, worlds within our world which include unknown truths (as well as supreme lies and frauds). We have been tragically discouraged from outer, as well as inner, exploration in our wetiko-controlled delusional system, and it's nearly infected the whole planet. 

To wind up this 'word' post, I leave you with this short talk of exceptional words of power - 
Philip Wollen: Animals Should Be Off the Menu 
[Full debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNED7GJLY7I&feature=relmfu]

Wetikos to the Fore, Again

Well, we've covered the Wetiko problem here and in quite a few other locations. We know it's an old and well known 'disease' in both indigenous and modern industrial 'civilizations', and its study and exposure has been greatly beneficial to many normal people's ability to penetrate the multiple layers of our situation in these times. I've been checking the mounting number of Wetiko-zombie-cannibal stories appearing in msm and alt sites. It's been making me remember how, decades ago even, we wondered if, and when, these types of things might get 'triggered' by the controlling mind-fuckers as they 'switched on' the 'sleepers'. 'A Peasant' recently said, "definitely it has a lot of angles with the MK ultra sleepers, the social engineering, predictive programming, vaccine solution, etc.", and that about sums it up. More than that, we mostly don't know.
But there is a back story aspect to one of the cases that has not gotten any US coverage. It concerns the Montreal/Toronto suitcase dude, the gay porn star spook-like freak.  It has been covered by Canadian press in Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, etc. and was linked to on the Animal Liberation Front website.
Apparently, the psycho posted animal-killing videos on YouTube in 2010 and started a world-wide effort to track him down amongst the AR activist communities - 2 years ago! "They notified humane societies and police departments in Toronto and Montreal, posted rewards, spent countless hours poring over videos and photos for clues, established a thick dossier on Magnotta, and identified fake Internet personas that seemed to be leaving false trails to confuse the people pursuing him....By January of 2011, after frantic online searching, animal lovers tentatively had identified Magnotta as the suspect. They meticulously compared photos that Magnotta posted of himself, identifying jewelry and furnishings that appeared in both, until they were certain they had found the right guy.....in December 2011, he posted two more [animal-killing] videos....They posted images of him around the Internet, and on bulletin boards in the real world....On the Facebook group where they shared photos, member after member fretted that he would move on to human victims....'In essence we need police help but the police won't act upon anything, that we are aware of, until we can determine where the videos were created and/or where the videos were uploaded from. YouTube won't release IP information until notified by the police.' In a statement, the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reported that after being informed of the allegations in February, 2011, they reached out to Toronto Police, the FBI, the RCMP, the Quebec Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Montreal police."
Today, after over two years, there is now an international manhunt and Interpol warrants out for this Wetiko (PTB psycho-drone?) who likes to use 3-name-combo aliases. The rest of this is just another fairly familiar story, isn't it? It also should be noted that the dude posted a bunch of the typical racist stuff on Stormfront, the neo-nazi website. ('They' really have the programming protocol down cold, don't they?)
John Lash relates a story from an Inuit elder about their way of dealing with the "Fat-Stealer/Wetikos" - they invariably meet with an unfortunate hunting accident and don't return from the outing. He says everyone knows what the problem is and what needs to be done, and societies cannot tolerate their presence. In this way the harmony and security of the tribe was preserved.
And, but, here in upside-down world we have Communication Management Units for empathetic animal people. Communication management - kind of takes your breath away, doesn't it? Can't have people communicating what is obvious to everyone, now can we? Anyway, as pointed out numerous times, AR people are "the most dangerous terrorists", even though no animals or humans have been harmed or killed - EVER.
It should be obvious now that 'civilization', not withstanding all the 'benefits', has been fostered and designed by and for the Wetikos over many millenia, and they are nervously toasting their 'victory' at this moment.

At a deeper shamanic perception level, we know the mystic reality is that this beautiful world, at the atomic level, consists of a vast emptiness. All the diamonds, emeralds, pearls, sapphires, gold and silver are as ephemeral as all the bodies of sentient beings and indeed the entire earth herself. And every particle of creation is equally a jewel unto itself. We reside in Manidvipa. Graham Hancock spoke recently about the problem of our perception modes being limited to (1) 'alert, problem-solving consciousness', and (2) the kind of zone-out inebriated consciousness; those options are how most of humanity rolls.  He laments the long-term war on natural entheogenic plant use as well as other altered-state-inducing practices such as drumming and dancing which have proved beneficial for thousands of years in keeping human societies balanced in relation to the rest of the natural world. He posits that the "demonization and persecution of altered states is denying our next vital evolutionary step", and "the expansion of our consciousness is the essence of what it is to be human". And points to the deeper root of the problem imposed on us that "we are not allowed to be sovereign over our own consciousness".  A clear definition of absolute insanity.

On a related note, there is an extremely fascinating couple of (very long) essays on the subject of 'Carno-Locavorism' (and the politics of killing animals) - the new diet craze espoused by various groups which includes the 'Paleo' diet and other 'meat-protein'-based practices, also 'eating local', plant/animal sentience arguments, and a host of related subjects closely examined in a critique of Lierre Keith's book Vegetarian Myth. Very informative and a heated debate with Derrick Jensen weighing in on many important aspects of our current population-and-food dilemma. Maybe it's just me, but I see the Wetiko problem, true sovereignty, and relations to animals and the natural world all being related and vital subjects to contemplate, in a creative manner of course.
Blood and Soil
More on "Persons" and the Politics of Killing Animals


Time for video -
2012 Dhrupad Mela, February (Shivaratri) in Varanasi. This has been an annual feature since the 70s, started by my original guru, Pt. Amarnath Mishra, on his property on the Ganges River.
Performers are: Pt. Prem Kumar Mallick and son - vocals; Pt. Manik Munde - pakhawaj (drum). [Personal note: I toured Germany with Prem Kumar in '99, most fun ever! Manik-bhai is my only other surviving guru-bhai from Amarnathji - awesome!]