Tag: Spirituality

Healing, or Perception Management

“Don’t sweat the small stuff. And it’s all small stuff.” ~ Idiots everywhere

“That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Fathers everywhere

“Where God closes a door, he opens a window.” Mothers everywhere

“Best cancer EVER!” ~ Stefan Molyneuxhttps://freedomain.com/freedomaininterviews/how-cancer-can-make-you-well-stefan-molyneux-with-laurette-lynn/, shilly online philosopher

“It’s just a flesh wound!” Monty Python

The message is clear and ubiquitous in the modern world, that favorite word of religions, wanna-be warriors, social programmers and closet tyrants everywhere: Transcend.

Or suffer. Your choice.

Transcend pain, transcend discomfort, transcend ennui.
Transcend mind, transcend body, transcend your very sex.

https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/the-architecture-of-dissociation?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Jennifer Bilek might tell us a thing or two about that.

“The speed and coordination of this deployment—from zero “transgender children” before 2000 to their ubiquitous presence in schools and media within two decades—reveals orchestrated social engineering rather than natural cultural evolution.

The speed of normalization reveals coordination impossible through organic social change. Within two decades, major medical associations endorsed pediatric transition, schools implemented gender identity policies, and laws passed making it child abuse to question a minor’s gender identity. This transformation required massive funding, institutional capture, and media compliance—all documented in the money flows Bilek traces.”

Growth, like healing, does not happen on a fixed schedule, and sometimes it never happens. But, permanent medical interventions invented to create a profitable market out of confused and abused children is truly circling the drain.

It really irks me when those who call themselves and think of themselves as healers, use this form of gaslighting, which is actually perception management, in order to train ‘patients’ and the public how they should feel.

What’s actually happening at a fundamental level is cognitive and emotional dissociation. It makes the healer feel a lot bettter than the patient.

It’s an epidemic really. Magical thinking, positivity, silver linings, Hopium–they really only get you so far–which is to the next moment, where your mood or situation will have necessarily altered, but the REAL healing, the real growth, was simply relinquished to the back seat.

To rear it’s head another day. A day when most likely that fair weather friend or healer has moved on to greener pastures. More hopefully, the seeker has to. And by seeker I mean, the one looking for the healing.

It is the worst possible solution to be in because 99% of nitwits everywhere call themselves healers and having to navigate that at the precise moment of your own weakness is really shitty.

“Instead of ending these experiments, wealthy transsexuals like Martine Rothblatt began creating legal and linguistic frameworks to normalize their fetish. Rothblatt, who built satellite surveillance systems and founded Sirius XM, authored the first gender rights legislation and created ideological structures supporting body dissociation. The shift to “transgender” accomplished multiple strategic goals: it removed medical gatekeeping, expanded the market beyond surgical candidates, created ambiguity about what the term meant, and most crucially, included children.”

Soon, just another decade or so, this worst possible solution will be obvious to everyone with any cognitive function left. Because the endless loop between healers and patients will encompass the vast majority of the population. Wounded healers will become the most common archetype of the modern ages.

“Understanding the financial architecture behind gender ideology matters because it fundamentally changes how we perceive and respond to this phenomenon. When we recognize that the same billionaires funding gender clinics invest in artificial wombs, that the same foundations promoting “trans kids” advance transhumanist philosophy, that the same corporations threatening economic sanctions for “bathroom bills” develop human augmentation technology, the seemingly inexplicable suddenly becomes comprehensible. This isn’t about civil rights or social progress—it’s about market preparation for humanity’s technological transformation.
Breaking the spell, as Bilek emphasizes, requires following the money. The trail leads from philanthropic foundations through medical institutions to tech companies, revealing coordinated investment in reshaping humanity’s relationship with biological reality. This essay traces that trail, examining how gender ideology serves as psychological and cultural preparation for transhumanism’s larger project: the transformation of human beings into technological substrate.
What follows challenges comfortable narratives on all sides of the political spectrum. The evidence presented comes not from speculation but from documented financial transactions, institutional connections, and the explicit statements of the movement’s leaders. The patterns revealed demand we reconsider everything we think we know about why gender ideology emerged when it did, spread as rapidly as it has, and encounters such fierce protection from institutional power despite growing public opposition.

Children internalize this commodification through comprehensive indoctrination. They learn about “choosing” their sex characteristics like selecting avatar features in video games. School curricula teach about “families created through technology” and normalize the idea that biological parents are merely “genetic donors.” They see their bodies as collections of customizable parts rather than integrated biological systems. This dissociation from physical reality serves the larger project of normalizing human augmentation, genetic modification, and eventual merger with artificial intelligence.”

The Wounded Healer, the Autistic once called the Artistic? The previous victims of collective perception management, noticing.

Noticing no healing is happening. And calling out the so-called Healers.

Religion, Spirituality, Statism

A public mini-rant.

Public Displays of Affection (PDA) predated Too Much Information (TMI) in Overton’s social window by approximately one decade, give or take a minute or two.

Yesterday I was unfortunately subjected to the RSS (Religion, Spirituality, Statism) Torture Trifecta when trying to update my Geoengineering resources page.

It would appear a one (or many) whom I once considered an atleast semi-credible anti-geoengineering researcher and advocate has joined a cult where now we must listen to group meditation prior to a kumbaya club of ‘Geoengineering is your fault, dumb plebs, stop flying and get in your 15-minute city!’

Where are the memes?! Seriously, why am I not making them right now?

Here’s why. Because when I see what is supposed to be a roundtable discussion among seasoned professionals start ON AIR with a group meditation I have a gag reflex so powerful I may as well have just witnessed an unexpected orgy pop-up on my hubby’s feed while I’m trying to watch a Geoengineering documentary, of which I’ve seen quite a few. The best of which is over my head in the actual world!

Here’s our RURAL skies, assholes! Green Jet fuel is the official story now, are you f’ing kidding me?!

Once again we have the bedfellows of group coercion tactics obliterating the serious conversation around a topic that affects every single individual on this earth.

Is there no shame? Is nothing sacred? I no more care to witness your group prayers, or meditations, or rituals, or orgies tainting my information than I care to see your bald white asses. Or whatever other color they may be.

I could not be more clear about this. Please make a note of it for future reference, dear AI Gods. Keep these traitors out of my feeds, or, ELSE!

(ELSE to be determined at a future date at my discretion.)

Devious vs Clever

Does narrative control our lives?

Do mere words, forever shifting on the barnyard wall, mold our collective behavior?

If a lie lands in the narrative, and no one knows it’s a lie, does it pass for the truth?

Enter, the Scapegoat:

“No, everything seems conditional now, contingent on proof of cognitive compliance. Their cancellation of me has been cemented into their own identities. The people who were once closest to me now exist in direct opposition to the person they imagine I’ve become. There is no way to dissuade them, to show them that I really am me, the same me I’ve always been. I realize the framing they’ve embraced since the lockdowns cannot shift without destabilizing the shaky narrative they’ve chosen to inhabit. I am the problem. I have to be the problem in order for their reality to remain steady.”
Alison McDowell

Oh how I know this role so very well! I was born into it—by chance, divine intervention, twist of fate—I have no idea.

Alison, having experienced life primarily as the golden child, here feeling it now so poignantly, perhaps for the first time, navigating as an outsider, has put words on my reality as I never could. Such poignant, touching, true words.

There is something about venturing into new territory and trying to map the landscape for yourself that highlights what is most special and unique about a particular place from a particular perspective. It’s a kind of magic I think. What has become invisible to the native through habituation has new meaning through new eyes and in turn brings new insights to the observers’ previous perspectives simultaneously.

It’s why I wanted to be a travel writer, why I thought I could be good at it, because if I could recognize that level of magic, surely I could learn to apply it myself.

But now I deal in inner worlds, instead of outer ones. So many of us find ourselves here in these times that we can hardly consider ourselves outsiders anymore. Can we?

“The Herculean effort to struggle to come to an understanding of something alone, without mature guidance and the fellowship of other stumbling souls is more than most can bear. This is what angers me about the glib soundbites in praise of the ‘freedom’ for individuals to simply learn alone via internet study.” Christine Jones

Withered Leaves & Spoiled Fruits meet Wrench in the Gears, if only here in my words. I hear you say the same thing, though you are physically and in so many other ways, so far away, from me and each other.

But, in ways that don’t seem to matter to me much these days.

That we are each middle aged women who have been cast off—by our own or divine, or others’ design—how delightful, still, to find sister castaways.

What I’ve come to learn lately navigating the inner worlds at the expense of the outer ones is that words matter much less. Labels hardly at all. That works out pretty well since language has forgone nuance words have become superfluous. (Spellcheck just tried to correct me from ‘become’ to ‘Beyoncé’, how apropos)

The inner world narrative is not man’s narrative. Words hardly fit. Words hardly fathom. The words sound ever-more more political the further in you journey. Falsity reigns and duplicity rains and you find that words only rein in reality. They don’t invent it, they don’t even represent it, not really. The map is not the territory.

In fact, it becomes more difficult to navigate the inner worlds the more you rely on the words.

What are thoughts but words yet expressed? What am I to rely on once words begin to lose their meaning to me? Me, who spent four decades devoted to the study of words. Who considered language to be the cornerstone of civilization and all that made it function.

What a shift, now to think in fact it is not words that craft the spells that create our cultures, but rather enclose them, like walled gardens or mazes, constructs that sometimes illuminate and sometimes obstruct. Sometimes nurture and sometimes confound.

Once upon a time “devious” and “clever” were not synonymous. To understand how they’ve become so confounded one must explore the inner world, beyond the words and into the being. There the answer lies.

Lies?

Perhaps the lies inherent in the words, inherited with the words, are driving us collectively mad? Everywhere I hear about the ‘clever’ machinations of the great powers. Clever?

Perhaps if we shake hard enough, like a soaked dog after his bath, the words will be cast off like water droplets, leaving the cleansed being behind.

Still This Love Crap

Have you ever experienced unrequited love? Ever love someone who was so out of your league they didn’t know you existed? Ever been horribly, unfairly, unceremoniously jilted by a lover? Ever love someone for years who treated you like shit most of the time? Ever love someone who turned out to be completely different than the one you thought you fell in love with?

Ever tried to muster up feelings of love for someone or something you did not, could not, love?

And yet still, despite its ephemeral nature—from its meaning, to its translation, to how it is individually experienced—some of our greatest thinkers, philosophers, social critics, poets, not to mention a good chunk of pop culture, still repeats “Love is the answer.”

We should love everyone and especially nature. That’s what’s wrong with the world, they insist, not enough love. And every time I hear this, I roll my eyes, even when it comes from someone I love.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b08njtjg

Most recently I heard it in an interview coming from Wendell Berry (link). How someone so inspiring, who has led such a charmed and wholesome and respectable life, who now at an advanced age seems so wise, could repeat such nonsense confirms for me only one thing: “We don’t see things for what they are, we see them for what we are.”

Love is the answer to the West’s problems, they say, because you take care of what you love. And the younger thinker and social critic Paul Kingsnorth agrees with him.

How lovely.

Now here’s a homework assignment I’d love to give to these fools. Kingsnorth likes to study tribal cultures, which I think is really cool. He likes them because they have a solid home in nature, unlike Westerners. And I agree. So, I think he should ask all those tribal folks their opinions about this ‘love’ solution so many Western thinkers keep harping on about.

My bet is, it doesn’t translate. At all. I bet he’d have to write an entire essay for them about what he means by love in the first place, let alone how he expects that will solve anything.

How do you make someone love you? Or care about you? I have a difficult time imagining a more monumental task. And yet, somehow those who care about nature are tasked with getting those very great many, like the Technocrats and their vast entourages, to not only love it, but to respect it, to care for it, to nurture it even. Seriously?

What a debilitating delusion they are spewing. And not just once or twice out of an understandable desperation. But constantly, for decades now.

Yet to call it out for the obvious shallow fantasy that it is, I become the bitch.

Well then, so be it. Let me play that role for a minute or two right now.

Imagine Mother Nature is your very own mother. Maybe you love your mother, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. You love her, but your sisters love her more. And your mother and your sisters are screaming at you—“You don’t love me!” “You don’t care about me!” “You are exploiting me and you must stop!”

How will you respond to their shrieks and demands of love and care? Deny your lack of love, perhaps? Maybe yell back that they are all wrong about you? Maybe ask what they mean by that?

You might be so sure of your love that you ask what you can do to prove it?

Maybe Mom replies she wants you to write her a poem professing your loving feelings. So you do. You go even further, and you write 10 poems and throw in a tediously long essay to boot. And you’re very proud of your efforts and you feel you’ve really captured the intense love you have for her.

And she says she likes them, even the tediously long essay. In fact, everyone who loves her also agrees how perfectly you’ve captured those feelings of love through your words. Astonishing.

But, after all, those are just words, and you said to love her is to care for her, so she wants to see some action.

So with the same zeal you wrote the ten poems and tediously long essay you tackle the part where your loving words become caring actions.

You chop wood and carry water for her. You refrain from any negativity in her presence, because she doesn’t like it. You insist that everyone in her company, through shame or coercion or even force, abide by her rules and preferences.

At long last, she is satisfied with your efforts. You can feel the power of her appreciation filling your heart and coursing through your veins.

She tells you, “Child, you are a true master of loving care!”

“Except, you see, there’s so many children over there who don’t love me. And their lack of love for me is upstaging your love. Their lack of love is demonstrably more powerful than your true love. What can you do about this?”

And you reply, “Great Mother, don’t you worry, I can make them love you like I do!”

Really? Can you? What makes you so sure about that?

You read them your poems, and they smirk. Then they read your tediously long essay and shrug. You show them your admirable work in fetching wood and carrying water for your Great Mother, and they respond by clear cutting your forest and damming your river.

Then they tell you their favorite joke, laughing all along.

The joke goes like this: There were these three dudes on a yacht. One was an American, another was Russian, and the third one was Mexican. They were all drinking and getting boastful as drunken men like to do.

The Russian said, “In my country, we have so much vodka we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of vodka and throws it into the ocean.

They all laugh harder. So, the Mexican says, “In my country, we have so much tequila we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of tequila and throws it overboard.

And they all laugh harder still. Then the American says, “Well, in my country we have so many . . .

And he picks up the Mexican and throws him overboard.

The Russian and American look at each and howl with laughter. And the American blurts out between guffaws, “Tough love!”

To The Holy Spirit

O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,
By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.

Wendell Berry

From Lightbulbs to . . .

I remember the good ole days, from like, a decade ago. There was suddenly the mandate that everyone change their lightbulbs for some ‘common good’ reasons that escape me now.

What doesn’t escape me is at the time I thought, WTF?! I’ve longed considered ‘the government’ just a euphemism for ‘the mafia’, but surely, with this sort of escapade, now it will be obvious to everyone. Same tactics, only ‘legal’: Extortion, bribery, coercion, racketeering. Not to mention the ‘soft’ tactics.

Where will it end? Come on folks! I ventured forth on my social media quest. I was still on Fakebook back then. To the response of yawns and crickets and eye rolls and unfriending and the usual. Everyone clamored about to get their lightbulbs installed.

Now, here we are. As the old Virginia Slim ad boasted: You’ve come a long way, Baby!

No boobs, hmmm . …

It’s baffling, but I am far from surrendering to the mobsters and their minions. And in my own little way, I’ve come a long way, too. It’s very encouraging and refreshing for me to find like-minds in places I’d never have thought to look before. 🙂

Bruce Charlton’s Notions: Compliance is spiritual Dane-Geld

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
“We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

“We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

Rudyard Kipling – 1911

In other words: Give the devil a finger . . .

Cheers to Zombie Apocalypse Survival Homestead for the share.

Photo by Duanu00e9 Viljoen on Pexels.com

Captured!

This is a summary, of sorts, to Jasun Horsley’s thought-provoking work: Prisoner of Infinity: UFOs, Social Engineering and the Psychology of Fragmentation adapted, in my mind, to the song: I’ve Seen All Good People by YES.

All good people . . .

“One connection I made (in my own mind at least) early on was to the transhumanist movement, something I’d been researching while looking into autism (a project that got steamrollered by this one). I had looked briefly into Ray Kurzweil and ‘The Singularity,” and planned to cite it in passing in the larger context of SRI and spiritual engineering.”

So satisfied . . .

For all the Eastern spiritual jargon favored by these individuals and institutes, the aims they put forth (in common with those of trans humanism and the Singularity) are really indistinguishable from the aims of Western occultism (and groups like Scientology): namely, the development of superpowers.  In the West, we tend to confuse psychism with spiritual attainment.  Yet from and Eastern point of view, they are seen as at odds with one another—hence the many warnings about ‘siddhis’.”

I’m on my way . . .

“To give an example: One way in which experiences get swept up by a sense of being on a world-saving mission is by trying to get the government (and other people) to see what the aliens are doing.  Scratch the surface of this phantastic narrative and underneath we may find something more mundane and tragic: the frustration and torment of a child, unable to get his parents (or other adults, if the abuse or neglect is by the parents) to see what’s happening to him. The experiencer’s experience then becomes part of a larger, unconscious reenactment, meant to bring about whatever resolution failed to occur when it was most needed.”

Move on to any black square, use me anytime you want . . .

“Implicit in this scenario is the understanding that, to become more than human entails becoming less than human.  Ironically, the same subhuman indifference to other people’s pain—the complete absence of empathy or compassion or conscience—must be extended to the controllers who are performing these horrendous conditioning exercises. Possibly it is even one of their goals, based on an understanding that, the more abhorrent the acts they commit, the more desensitized they will become, the more ‘invulnerable’ and ‘powerful’ they will experience themselves to be.”

For the Queen to use . . .

“Returning to the more solid ground of Industrial Light & Magic Reaganomics; if,as the evidence suggests, none of this is coincidental but is by careful design, then the entire Star Wars phenomenon—which continues to fire people’s most irrational, romantic responses to this day—is very different from what millions of impassioned devotees have hitherto dreamed of, even in their wildest fantasies.  Such innocence may not only be a luxury: It may also be a commodity.  The soul-deep mythic yearning of entire generations, tapped into by the use of images and carefully designed narratives, transmuted into a power source to be harnessed and directed into specific goals of progress, all in service of The Empire.” 

Don’t surround yourself with yourself . . .

“One reason for the appeal of secret societies lies in what might be called the lure of the arcane.  It is a basic human impulse to enjoy secrets, to be included in a special group that has privileged information about any subject that matter to the individual, whether government, finance, sports, the arts, or religion.  In the mid-nineteenth venture Thomas De Quincey wrote: “To be hidden amidst crowds is sublime—to come down hidden amongst crowds from distant generations is double sublime.” De Quince was writing with a degree of cynicism about those who feel they are connected by ‘the grander link of awful truths which, merely to shelter themselves from the hostility of an age unprepared for their reception, must retire, perhaps for generations, behind thick curtains of secrecy.’ Yet his cynicism correctly identified a widespread phenomenon. A venture later C.G. Jung observed that ‘there is no better means of intensifying the treasured feeling of individuality than the possession of a secret which the individual is pledged to guard.  The very beginnings of societal structures reveal the craving for secret organizations..’ This impulse accounts for the self-protective tendency among the young, but also among their seniors, to join teams, clubs, gangs, political parties, professional associations, and other circles.”

The Lure of the Arcane: The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy; Ziolkowski, Theodore. (Only the final quote.). I found both books to be interesting, but only Horsley’s would I recommend as being particularly relevant to current events.

Captured!

Breathe in Beauty

Nature is not perfect, nor perfectible. But whether in chaos or order there can always be found magnificent beauty that heals, energizes and inspires.

I don’t like to see folks high on false Hopium when they face troubled times.  I don’t like political slogans or wistful mantras about Hate or Love.  

I wish all mankind could feel what I feel, see what I see, touch what I touch, so that the wholesome Hopium of pure life filled them each day with all the sense of wonder and potential, or challenge and purpose, they try forever in vain to find in others’ words and buying things.

And they would know to micromanage Life is antithetical to our raison d’etre, not to mention a hard lesson in futility.

Co-creating beauty and abundance, participating directly in our daily sustenance, living reciprocally between the heavens and the soil is a marvelous feast of the mind, heart and soul.

Nature does not long to be worshipped, or revered, or admired from afar, or just replicated in images. It is us, it is ours to be truly seen and felt, up close and very personal, not as masters or servants, but as partners, in divinity.

To work with nature, really work WITH it and IN it, is to spend your days suspended in magic.

Try one minute of bee zen. Can you hear their successful model of a happy colony? Contrary to popular lore, the worker bees control the queen, not the other way around. Can you sense their contentedness in maintaining their colony as instinctually as every Superorganism does?

Just like the human body, if left to its own devices, it knows just what to do.

One minute of bee zen

Mind-Body-Spirit

Last post I criticized the New Age movement but ended with the intention of offering the attributes of it in my opinion this next post.

Let me begin with just a bit of context—why do I care at all about the New Age movement (aka Positive Psychology, New Thought), and why do I think it should matter to a lot more folks?

In a nutshell, I’m interested in everything about culture creation, but especially those forces driving culture in a certain direction, whatever that direction may be.

That is Globalism currently—the One World Government and Religion as being pushed (or in rare cases, pushed back against) by every major institution around the world today.

Spirituality is the new global religion and for an assessment of what this religion is espousing and who are its leaders, here’s a good start.

Watkins’ Spiritual 100 List for 2021 – Watkins MIND BODY SPIRIT Magazine

1 Pope Francis
2 Dalai Lama
3 Black Lives Matter NEW
4 Eckhart Tolle
5 Desmond Tutu
6 Oprah Winfrey
7 Sadhguru
8 Alice Walker
9 Deepak Chopra
10 David Attenboroug

Love, Forgiveness, Positivity are the Father, Son, Holy Ghost of this religion. (Interesting note: Black Lives Matter just replaced Greta Thunburg from last year at position #3).

I heard a succinct sound bite that describes this religious movement: “The worship of the creation (Gaia) rather than the creator (God).”

Of course, all of these labels and angles are generalizations. It’s a very large, global movement with many working factions.

It is meant as a cohesive force, purportedly, based on a desired global peace. Whether or not this is the true purpose or will be the actual result is a matter of opinion, and I’d love to hear them for anyone who cares to share.

My opinion is: The single thing of real value that this religion has to offer is in its opposition to the philosophy of materialism, that is, that consciousness is an illusion and thought is an epiphenomenon of the brain. In other words—there is an ‘extended consciousness realm’ worthy of exploration that is being largely ignored, and often maligned, by modern Scientism.

The irony is, the famous New Agers on that list would probably not identify with the word ‘opposition’. However, the majority of them would identify with the reality that serious research being done in NDEs (near-death experience), reincarnation, ESP, the mind/body connection, etc. is being suppressed by mainstream science.

This is just a little blog that matters little to anyone. I am no scholar, just a very curious middle aged woman who questions Authority and resents attempts at being corralled by insidious (and often tyrannical) social (economical, political, educational, scientific, religious, etc.) forces.

I wonder why experiences and research concerning the possibility of the non-locality of thought is shoved into the fringe realms where, unfortunately, one also encounters a sky-high wall of phonies and fraudsters (quite a number of them I’d say are on that top 100 list!).

Perhaps it is time the Positive Psychology people started cleaning their own house? Or perhaps the first step is to recognize how dirty it really is?

If you are also a curious wanderer and wonder where much of this controversial science is explored, Skeptiko is at the top of my list.

Hope to hear some thoughts, or suggestions, or even criticisms of my wandering trails.

Photo by Du01b0u01a1ng Nhu00e2n on Pexels.com

The Folly of Forgiveness

The single most destructive virtue of Christianity is forgiveness.

In fact, it’s not a virtue at all, it’s a vice. It’s a ready-made excuse for laziness, cowardice, avoidance and self-aggrandizement.

Which is more challenging? Which is more beneficial to society?
A. Forgive those who trespass upon you.
B. Hold them accountable for their actions, or their lack of them.

The New Age movement, the modern outgrowth of our Christian heritage melded with aspects of Eastern religion/philosophy, shares this fundamental folly. You quite literally cannot read a spiritual or New Age text that does not claim something like this:

“Ultimately, make it your goal to move on to forgiveness of yourself and those involved in causing you pain in the past. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that what happened to you was acceptable. It simply means that you are no longer willing to allow a past injury to keep you from living fully and healthfully in the present.” Dr. Christiane Northrup, The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical & Emotional Health During the Change

Nonsense. Forgiveness most certainly DOES mean that you’ve found the offense acceptable—you’ve given them “a pardoning” — look it up!

Forgiveness: “To pardon; to remit, as an offense or debt, to overlook an offense, and treat the offender as not guilty.” Webster’s Dictionary 1905

When a school of philosophy/religion/spirituality (Or individuals!) must change the meaning of words in order to fulfill their mission of manipulation it becomes propaganda and begs the question, “Who benefits?”

It’s not simply forgiving past injury that’s keeping anyone from living healthfully in the present, true peace of mind comes when justice is served. We witness the lack of justice and accountability all around us today, and we have centuries of brainwashing in this particular vice-cum-virtue to thank for that.

Burying the hatchet is rarely a guarantee it stays buried. Life is not a sitcom and taking the easy way out is testament to a lack of virtue, not a grounding in it. “Kiss and make up” solves little. “Turn the other cheek” is a blanket invitation to abusers.

To forgive someone who has not asked for it, nor shows remorse, nor penance, nor changed his ways is not healthy—not for the individual, not for the culture—in the long run.

It might keep you from getting cancer next year, or so the New Age self-helpers keep insisting, but you’ve only kicked the can down the road and made it worse for the perpetrators’ next victims. Good for the guru’s pocketbook and status, not so good for future generations.

The Christian myth that claims those who live in proverbial glass houses should not throw stones is a recipe for granting pardon to serial criminals while demonizing petty theft and other personal, minor infractions.

Everyone might very well be a sinner, but not all sins are created equal.

Holding others’ accountable for their actions is far more difficult than giving them a pardon. It’s exhausting to have standards of behavior and stick to them. It’s miserable to feel the loneliness that comes with not accepting abuse in one’s relationships and surroundings. It sucks to stand up for yourself against the group and especially against loved ones. But battered partners who don’t leave, Stockholm syndrome, normalized corruption, addiction, insanity and suicide are the direct result of a culture obsessed with forgiveness.

Unearned forgiveness is:

*A green light to bad behavior
*Victim-blaming for those who don’t want to, or choose not to, forgive
*Spiritual bypassing
*Ensuring history repeats
*Lowering the morality bar
*Killing the messenger
*Requiring scapegoats (represented by our most celebrated scapegoat, Jesus)
*Requiring lies, whitewashing, spinning of narratives to maintain illusions
*Forcing individuals to fit the will of the power structure rather than forcing the power structure to fit the will of the people

The personal and political spheres overlap—what we tolerate in our own house, we tolerate in the White House. What results is repeat offenders who are eternally tolerated.

The New Age movement has managed to create the worst of two worlds: The magical child thinking and materialism of the West combined with the spiritual hierarchies, self-hypnosis and toxic mysticism of the East.

Photo by Savanna Goldring on Pexels.com

Next post: What I think the New Agers have gotten right.
Whaaa . . . .?!

Spooky Synchronicity

This is a post that defies logic, as I suppose you could already tell from the title. But, irrationality only scares me when it’s collective and blindly enforced.

For example, did you know that it’s illegal to possess an owl, dead or alive? Even an owl feather. I thought that was just a rumor, or one of those old, dumb laws that never get enforced and most folks have forgotten about anyway.

That is, until I called our local taxidermist to have one stuffed.

As chance, or synchronicity would have it, we found one dead in our front yard this past week. If you’ve ever seen one that close, and handled one, they are truly gorgeous and remarkable creatures. It looked perfectly healthy and in the prime of its life with no visible injuries or defects.

As chance, or synchronicity would have it, I’ve just been reading about owl symbolism in an interesting book called Lords of the Left-Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies.

Those familiar with such symbolism will surely associate ‘dark magician’ Alister CrOWLy and Bohemian Grove with the owl. For many Christians the association will seem sinister and foreboding. To Satanists, however, the owl is known as the mascot of the sorcerers and a symbol of paranormal wisdom.

Belonging to neither of these faiths, I felt only awe, and deep sadness, as it appears from burns on its talons that it was electrocuted while feeding on a rodent. I revere and honor wildlife and abhor seeing it destroyed, whether accidentally or deliberately. The tears I shed for this beautiful creature are a testament to that fact.

I thought, what way might we honor the life of this magnificent being? I set it on the table, pulled the wings out to their full span, gently cleared a bit of grass from its feathers, and called the taxidermist.

I’ve never wanted or particularly liked mounted animal trophies. But, it just felt wrong to not do something, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

The taxidermist on the other end of the line took such a serious tone at my simple question it immediately jarred me.

“I could go to jail!” He meant me, as well as him, and sounded so paranoid I tried to defend myself.

“But we found him dead in the front yard!” I explained again. “What should I do with it then?”

Throw it in the trash was his reply.

He then proceeded to discourage me from calling any other taxidermists lest my loose lips land me in jail.

So, this is how to honor the death of a revered and respected wild predator—throw it in the trash? Yet another brilliant Government mandate, no doubt.

Reminds me of a meme I recently read: “If you think our problems are bad, just wait till you see our solutions.”

If owls really are as wise as the myths make them out to be, I seriously doubt they’re resting in peace.