ideal ideas

Knowing, not being
entails letting all matter
become energy



I am very interested in learning about the backstories, the more primitive ways of figuring out answers to life's demands on a material plane. I am working on a story involving people cast out from their society into a more primitive environment who learn to recast their lives. Since I am a pampered city type, I can only imagine.



Lose religion, find or define religion, weigh in on "Religion v. Spirituality" or weigh the angels dancing on the head of a pin -- kind of like a Rorschach or TAT: "what does religion mean to me?" I run a Yahoo group (Seers and Seekers) to which I often send articles I find on the web related to meta-philosophy and its children. The idea is not to dazzle 'em with authoritative verbiage, but to put it out there as yet another permutation of world view and visions.

How do people live when religion doesn't matter? How do people live when they have devised social strictures made up of things not called "religion" but which prescribe rights proscribe wrongs and dictate behaviors based on some precept of values? Religion is about community much more than it is about some kind of spiritual realm. If we lived in a state of mutual respect, compassion, and awareness it wouldn't matter what our individual mythologies and rituals might be any more than any other private lifestyle choices (and it harm none, of course).


Don't eat things that may harm you. The biblical injunctions were written in a time when there was a lot less medical knowledge, but certain correlations had been made. These were not LAWS for all time because they were RIGHT. They were laws for that time to help people to be healthy and productive.




I see this a the real point. We live on a planet, not a programmable paradise. The real reasons to be concerned about how we use energy relate directly to our own well-being, health, true economics taking in the costs to well-being which naturally includes the well-being of our environment, and care in the use of resources. "Global warming" whether caused by nature, man, a combination of influences, or "God's hand" is only relevant in terms of finding better ways to live as planetary inhabitants.

It is not up to us to "end it all." All never ends. It is up to us to become more and more what is best in us. It is not so much following rules, Golden or otherwise, as incorporating understanding, manifesting glory/beauty/compassion. There are always consequences. Moving into greater awareness gives more options.


It is not that we are reflections, but each cells in the infinite body.


As for the micro, so for the macro, cycles within cycles
Winding down, starving for energy
obese on empty calories
breaking into categories without soul
expecting salvation
when all along
it is your own back yard




I had been thinking about the fate/free will debate in terms of studying astrology. Of course (as above, so below) there are a vast amount of influences over which we individuals have no reasonable means of control. The free will comes in when we can be aware enough of the influences, yet make an act of will within that sphere of limitations.

The thing is astrology reflects all the intricacy of the universe of influences always in play. Therefore, you can use astrology effectively to understand, just as you can use any starting point or language to work towards making sense of that which so easily overwhelms. In reality, every body dies. In reality there are pointless interactions of forces (or to our ability to discern) that result in outcomes which we label "tragedy." If we want to make sense of these often random events, the best I have found to do is work through the collective unconscious through art. Sometimes there are answers, if we are ready to find them.

Sun opposite Uranus is a natural iconoclast. Sun in Capricorn tends to conservatism (the old-fashioned kind: "use it up; wear it out"); Mars in Aquarius tends toward working for an ideal of equality and freedom. I was born to question authority and look for better ways to be human.



I had that Saturn-Uranus opp. on my nodes and trine/sextile my Venus (conjunct Ceres). I have been wondering what to expect (from Uranus?) and am now noticing what appears to be a newly emerging relationship with my art, my attitudes toward relationship and values, both a deepening and an awakening.

I was just remarking to myself tonight that the reason poets are so often associated with alcoholism is that we need that barrier against the pain and anxiety from hyper emotional sensitivity, which is also our stock in trade.

I feel like I am getting more into the world of that liminality which manifests as art. For me it is a good escape and productive channel. I am processing (have been for several years now) a lot of Chironic and Plutonic material, delving into my depths and panning for gold. Alchemical.

As to the suicidal poet thing, been there/done that. It didn't help. I have a theory that I reawakened into a parallel universe in which my situation was subtly worse. For some goddessawful reason I apparently am supposed to deal with all this hyper feeling by spinning it into poetry, and work out my mission of promoting creativity.

I think sometimes for those suicidal poets it was a matter of seeing the sublime and being dumped back out into reality too many times.
Or maybe the alchemy didn't pan out.

That land of liminality
moves from fog and shadows
into profound clarity
as I am more honest, more true



Economics is no more a science than political science is. They may try to organize ideas into theories to test for truth, but the variables are far too varied.


After WW2 GIs came home to the GI Bill which gave them money for education and homes. During the war many people had given up luxuries and made do for the war effort. Back to normalcy, we revved up the economy. Prior to the US involvement in WW2 there was a worldwide depression based more on social than "real" issues, though there were such exacerbations as the drought (which I have seen attributed to bad environmental planning). People wanted to work. There was plenty of work to be done. What was needed was organization to put people into projects and get everybody paid. I keep waiting, impatiently, for all these pro-capitalist anti-government interference entrepreneurs to fix the mess, but don't see anybody actually trying.

What no one also seems to be addressing is the fictional nature of finance. We act like "money" has finite well-defined value thus that it is an actual barrier to spending. We can of course define our currency however we like. This is not inflation/deflation -- those are concepts of the marketplace, not some background condition.


There are plenty of good banks, local community banks and credit unions that never were involved in any of the mess created by those who thought themselves too big to fail. I have said all along that rather than go into that whole bailout fiasco, Congress (US lawmakers) should have told the owners of the toxic securities to sell them at bargain basement prices to the local banks who would then be in a position to renegotiate the loans behind them. Instead of this massive bailout we could have merely given government backed guarantees to these small banks and tax breaks for the business losses of the big ones.

Perhaps there will come from this mess a new world order, not of hierarchy but of creativity.

Excuse me for thinking that economics is about more than he with the most toys wins. Most of us who work for a living work for poor people more than we work for the wealthy, in that poor people still need those goods and services they do manage to buy and are therefore regular customers. The actual point of the marketplace is trade; wealth is a side effect.

Incorporating a business is meant to be to limit personal liability for the debts of the enterprise. It was just plain foolish for the Sup. Ct. to say corporations are people. It is even more foolish to grow and grow without regard to where you are going other than "up." It is the height of foolishness to think you can grow an economy by paying people less than is reasonable to be an active part of the economy, to have a huge gap between wealthy and working classes such that each sees the other as a class and not individuals.

Liberalism" is a political theory based on the rights of individual freedom trumping the authority of government. This includes individual freedom from having to kowtow to big corporate interests. It isn't corporations that create wealth. They are legal fictions, unable to create anything. Wealth is created when work gets sold/traded. Otherwise, those pieces of paper, computer tallies, the full faith and credit of the US government, or whatever you think is "wealth" is only futile wishing.

All the entrepreneurship in the world will not create wealth without customers to buy the product. The customers, especially for basic goods and services, are often poor. We are working for our customers, no matter who is our employer. Not being fully aware of the true nature of economics is what gets us into these messes.




You are not required to do or feel anything for people whom you do not honor nor respect (or anyone else for that matter). People come from different situations with different baseline abilities and different coping abilities. It doesn't mean that someone is "mentally ill" because they do not have whatever it takes -- money, friends, knowledge, health, luck -- to have a "successful" life. It doesn't make them particularly deserving or undeserving. Please, though, don't worry about "enabling" behaviors of lifestyles of which you disapprove. It wasn't your enabling that put them there.





We all have moods, which should be respected. A great many creative people are "bipolar" according to rules of diagnosis. For some people it is natural to get surges of energy, go full into a creative binge, then crash! go through a fallow interval as energies unconsciously recreate. In a world that does not respect our individual and biological natures, we are pressured to be "on" when we feel "off" or to recede when we feel ready to burst with excitement.



We can be miraculously self-healing when we focus our energy. Our bodies want to be healthy, and are made to heal. Often it is a matter of encouraging this healing process.




Why not stop disease-modeling any and every behavioral complex and find the kind of lifestyle/work/relationships that work for you as the unique person you are? Get off the meds. Do active meditation (dance is ideal); eat healthily; find someone you can confide in without judgment and confide (also be open to listening to them); find an artistic outlet that makes you feel free.
Acting out is behavior of desperation, not mental instability. The child needs appropriate (a p p r o p r i a t e) attention.






It's not the religion. It's the culture. Mohammed's Islam was respectful of all. But don't tell me we respect women as a culture, or that Christian men don't abuse and kill.



don't forget the gypsies, homosexuals, protestors, and any other "minority" group -- the Nazi persecution was hardly all about the Jews. It was about domination.



If you think about it, a good deal of what is totally screwed up in our world today finds its poisoned roots in colonialism and the mentality of "Western" superiority.



We will win when we get out and leave Iraq to the Iraqis.



It is absolutely appropriate for the Republicans to dig into this bill and point out what they don't like, come up with possible alternatives, debate. That is their job as members of Congress, or out here on the street their jobs as members of a democracy. What puts me way out of wanting to negotiate in good faith is their misusing this time for talking points, talking trash, and talking without making sense.

This silly posturing is only making the congressional Republicans quickly irrelevant.
The congressional Republicans are showing themselves to be poor losers, acting in bad faith, and stupid to boot (in the classic definition of stupidity being acting in ways that are both bad for others and bad for the actor). The new President metaphorically opens his hand in a gesture of friendship, and they slap him in the face, slapping the faces thereby as well of all the of the American people who support this President or at least wish him and thereby us well. It could in fact well seem like these representatives of the Grand Old Party of Old White Men are rearing back racists -- or is that the message they really are trying to send to their constituents?



I keep wondering, whenever I hear of groups dedicated to one cause or another, money dedicated to solving some crisis or improving lives, careers dedicated to helping others cope with poverty or disease or genocidal neighbors or environmental degradation, why the world in aggregate never seems to become that better place so many seem to be working for.



When I was young I used fear as a motivator. I thought if I jumped in to the center of what I feared, it would have no power over me. I don't know if that was courage. I think of courage as the kind of overcoming of fear due to a higher, more personally valuable, purpose or goal. Sometimes that takes the form of dramatic rescues or not letting a powerful group shout down the truth. Sometimes it's stepping back from an endeavor to find a better method. Sometimes it's starting a project that seems doomed to failure or ridicule. The point is focusing on that desirable outcome strongly enough to make fear just a part of the background noise.



Expecting a burst of inspiration, Liola maniacally clipped the feathers from her caged song birds, the tail from the neighbor's cat, then thought to seek out the children.


We think, therefore we philosophize



Those who act up all-consumingly concerned about the unborn or gush over motherhood as if it were the epitome of human achievement are in some ideal fantasyland. They ignore the very real needs of real children and the immense responsibility and pitfalls of motherhood especially for the unprepared or overwhelmed. As it stands everyone I am aware of carries scars from their childhood that to a greater or lesser extent seriously limit their lives. Call me crazy, but I do believe quality of life matters.



I daydream/nightdream let the movies play out, talk with the characters, look at them as stories I am reading or people I am wondering about. Music in the background helps to let the dreaming move along, as does meditative dance. I get to know my characters and the situations in which they are moving to the point that they are real within my mind. I let my mind wander off path, until something tells me I am on to an effective phrasing. Then I write.



There are many roads to the psychedelic experience. It's about finding those parts of your mind. Many do this regularly with ecstatic dance.