The Astrology of February 2013

This post is dedicated to all those people committed to change in our world.

February is the tipping point which will move us all forward.

Remember to be kind to each other while we do this!

Reblog: The Astrology of December 2012

 

This is Carl’s big end of the Mayan Calendar video, sort of. December’s vibes place the individual in the midst of a profoundly transformative field. After all the crisis and drama of recent years, the responsibility for bringing change fall squarely on the shoulders of individuals, who must, now, take responsibility for wrestling the world around them into more acceptable shape.

This will be a more complicated process than you might think,because individuals themselves are the focus of profound and powerful transformative energies. People will be working toward a greater understanding of who they are and what they really want, even as they try to transform the world they find themselves in.

The beginning of a lengthy and strenuous process.

A more polished, written version of this analysis will be available on Carl’s blog on or around December 1st. The link to Carl’s blog is on my blogroll.

“The Archetypal Scapegoat” – Part Six: “The Gift of the Exile”

 

 

To @npowerhq

 

 

Dear ‘Executive’ Sirs,  (for I doubt you have many women in your higher echelons)

 

Re: Breach of Contract

 

This afternoon, I went to top up the existing credit on my pre-payment gas meter.  When I attempted to do so, I received the message “battery fail”. It meant that my gas central heating stopped working, even though I have already paid for gas I need to use. It snowed here overnight, so the weather is cold. I do understand that there are those at the top who really couldn’t give a toss whether poor people are cold but whilst I can still afford it, my gas account remains a contractual agreement with you. Replacing batteries in gas meters forms part of your contractual responsibilities to me because, without a battery, you cannot supply the gas I have already paid for.

 

When it came to contact you about this, I discovered that if I were wealthy-enough to operate a land-line, you would provide free calls to sort out your breach of contract. I am not wealthy-enough – the poor depend on mobile phones or call boxes. For those of you who have never been poor, you may not have noticed that, since BT privatisation, there are far fewer public phone boxes than there used to be. The closest one to me is on open hillside. Did I mention that it snowed last night?

 

Those of us without landlines have to use mobile phones. Did you know that (how very convenient for the mobile phone companies)? Some of us down here at the poor end on the social scale afford to pay monthly tariffs in order to get the free calls you mention. Others, like me, can only afford to use pay-as-you-go. When I rang your mobile number to inform you of your breach of contract, I was told the waiting time was 30 minutes plus. My neighbour, who had exactly the same problem only a few days ago, confirmed that all their free-call allocation had been used up trying to get either you or one like you to sort out your breach of contract. Batteries have a known ‘shelf-life’ so replacing them ought to form part of your regular maintenance. I might wonder what kind of business you are if you don’t have that kind of schedule because, without it, it begins to look as if you don’t give a shit about your poor customers at all. I tried to phone your ‘help-line’ later and my mobile used up all my carefully saved credit before I was able to talk to someone. I can’t afford to top-up again for a week. Supposing I have another emergency? But then you don’t appear to care about my kind of custom at all, do you?

 

At present, judging by your business practices, I have to conclude that your answer is No. Did you know that the government of this country treats poor people the same way by not providing free-call numbers for mobile phone users? Yet everything must be done by phone. Given how little people are living on now – especially after your most recent price rise – this all seems rather cruel. I’ve been subject to a lot of cruelty over the past few years and it causes PTSD flashbacks. It’s one of the reasons I am poor and on benefits. I am hoping to return to work but your business practices do not help. Despite the fact that you already have my money and it is you who are in breach of contract, I am the one who is cold, further impoverished and inconvenienced. Please understand that I ‘might’ be inclined to be more forgiving if you paid your full taxes but, if you are anything like the mobile phone companies, you probably don’t. Had you chosen to invest those tax savings in providing regular maintenance to your prepayment meters, that might have gone in your favour too – but I suspect you don’t do that either. I am also right in thinking that those of us with prepayment meters – which enable us to budget the pittance we receive – are charged more than those who pay by other methods? Don’t we pay for this maintenance then? Are we really such inconvenient customers that it’s Ok for you to charge me more, take my money in advance and only turn up to honour your contract after you’ve messed us around?

 

By the way – this is being written whilst I’m waiting for your engineer to turn up. The night sky is clear – it’s going to be another cold one. Unless it snows again, of course. There are people with no homes out there tonight and some who can’t afford food or warmth, so I count myself fortunate in comparison. When I look at those less fortunate than me and then I look at you, you’ll have to forgive me if I am a little frosty. There is this matter of your breach of contract. The more I consider what appears to be going on here, the more I’m starting to believe your behaviour is intentional, especially if I’m right about the regular maintenance issue. Given your general behaviour so far, I’ll be lucky if your engineer turns up at all even thought I was told I might have to wait up to four hours. That was three and a half hours ago. My pessimism is beginning to have some grounding in fact.

 

 

In order to require you to comply with your contract, I had to go out to the public phone and call from there. The phone-box itself is subject to open-fell weather. I had to wait over fifteen minutes before I actually got to speak to another human being. You are extremely fortunate that the woman at your call centre was both professional and as humane as your service allows. She took time to listen to how upset I was and how angry I felt at being treated this way. She did a good job but also had to require me to phone your company again – from the cold public phone box (no credit left, remember? Can’t afford more for a week?)– because I hadn’t complied with your rules! The account was in my landlady’s agent’s name and it should have been in mine. You require me to do business with you by phone yet you discriminate against me because I am poor and can only use mobile or the far fewer public phones. At the same time, you fail to maintain your supply to me.

 

Let’s give you one more reason to write off me off – just so we are all being honest around here. I’m a desister – a woman found guilty of wounding with intent and threatening to kill a police officer (1st offence age 48). I know exactly what it is like to be treated as if I have no worth and the only responsible thing I could do for society was die. I’ll tell you one thing. The system isn’t permitted to kill prisoners and when they try, however directly or indirectly, they can be shown to have broken the rules. The reason you won’t write me off, however, is that I got very good at spotting exactly where the ghost in the machine was lurking, especially in prison.

 

The reason I believe you intentionally discriminate against the poor is the ring-back service you don’t provide on mobile lines. You provide that service elsewhere – your call centre told me so. You breach your contract with me at every level. I will be looking to change to an ethical supplier who can meet my needs as far as prepayment is concerned. There was a doorstepper here this week offering that kind of service, except the more I think about that, the more I suspect it might have been a con. There seem to be a lot of such types in your business, don’t there?

 

You’d think, given that there are so many of us poor these days, what with our numbers increasing and all, that there’d be some successful kind of business made out of treating the poor fairly. Perhaps some of us might fund a few start-ups on the compensation we receive from you for the way you have been treating us. I’ve a mind to get those taxes out of you one way or another.

 

And I apologise for the disjointedness of this – I’m normally fairly eloquent (or so I’ve been told) – but I’m cold and experiencing the kind of ‘shock’ that comes with realising just how badly I’m being abused. When I was in prison, this was the time the formal complaints began flying. A lot got sorted when I reached officers and governors who knew, without being told, that you don’t treat prisoners like this. If you do, women die and men riot. My complaints were always aimed at seeking to head off the latter when I could see it happening. I wasn’t always successful and I have seen both outcomes manifest during my imprisonment – although it was YOs who ‘rioted’ in my case.  As a desister, I am no longer permitted to bystand, comply or consent to unlawful conditions once they can be proven unlawful. I have a social responsibility to oppose anything corrupt because it kills people and hurts others. You are actively discriminating against the poor in general and me in particular by subjecting me to hurt and suffering through neglect of whatever contractual duty applies between us – and if you decide you weren’t doing it to me, then you were doing it to my landlady’s agent and my landlady. It’s called a crime at my end of the social spectrum and I think it might well be a crime at your end too.

 

There’s no point in going through your complaints procedures because you’ve fixed them so they fail. There’ll be someone out there with evidence to prove it; if not, more. There are more like me – experiencing unmaintained service problems, experiencing total loss of paid-for service, denied equal communication access and being charged more for the privilege – which has to break some law and well as leaving you in breach of your contract to me.

 

I’m going to circulate this on the social media because I don’t think I’m alone in this – I just happen to be the one who can see stuff, make connections other people might miss and put it down in my own words. There’ll be things in this other people will recognise – whoever they are – but mainly, we’ll  all be poor or getting poorer. I want to know if I can sue you, npower, for this and whether there’s anyone amongst my legal follows who’d be willing to help, pro-bono for now but going for enough costs to create start-up legal aid social enterprises. God knows, we need them if we are to straighten this behaviour out.  I have smaller plans for a desistance-for-women social enterprise project needs funding plus I want to float the idea of a Police Social Enterprise that goes after tax evaders. Could my claim for compensation be for social gain – I’m not allowed to do personal gain as a desister. Can I do that to you, npower, because God knows I want to!.

 

I’m going to have to trust that society will see me alright – let them decide. I’d certainly like to be able to pay my landlady her full rent instead of her having to take the hit of my housing benefit cap. She prefers having me as a tenant and is willing to take the loss. I don’t think she should have to. I’m willing to work but I can’t if I keep getting hits like this one – as I sit here in the cold, waiting for your engineer to turn up. I feel punished for your failures.

 

There is one good thing about this kind of shock – it means I wobble all over the place. The one thing that keeps me steady is my focus on you. It doesn’t seem to matter what perspective my wobble gives me, I seem to be seeing the same thing. Even if everyone can’t follow everything, there are going to be some that will. The people who are seeing the same thing I am and just needed someone else’s story to confirm what they were suspecting themselves. I’m hoping that those who are ready to do something about this might pass it around. Is there a likely lawyer out there who thinks I might have a case because there’s definitely something wrong with me at the moment? I’m not usually like this. Am I?

 

As for you, npower executives. Is there really anything left to say?

 

Yours

 

Dee Wilde Walker

 

 

PS

Your four-hour promise has just been broken.

 

PPS

 

Anyone else having this problem?

“The Archetypal Scapegoat” – Part Four: The Goat that Escapes

Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Tommaso Cassai Masaccio

Before I embark upon the story of the second goat within the Scapegoat archetype or complex, I would like to briefly revisit the first one – the goat that dies. When I wrote about it here, I used a highly sensitive example that could easily have caused offence to all those involved in the events I described. I offer my sincere apologies to anyone who felt uncomfortable with it as a result. What I was attempting to do – albeit badly – was raise awareness of the very powerful spiritual component within unfolding events. Nevertheless, I would invite readers to explore some of the strikingly beautiful creative responses from the community directly affected that I have reblogged here, here and here.

From within a community that was feeling undervalued and attacked, have emerged poets and dreamers, volunteering time and effort to enable the sacred aspects needed to ensure that two women’s deaths did not pass unnoticed or dishonoured. It would have been a very hard heart indeed that remained unmoved by the response of both the police nationally and the city of Greater Manchester to the funerals of PC’s Hughes and Bone. If ever there was an example of ‘sacrifice as pharmakon’ or healing agent, this was surely it. It serves as a reminder of our best in the face of the worst humanity can sink to. It is important to remember that, within the ancient ritual, the souls of the sacrificed are rewarded with immediate union with god. For those who remain behind, such events are the reminder and memory of what is finest within us, the human face of the divine spirit within, which are not just measured by our living but by our dying as well. For the community as a whole, all failings on my part have been more than compensated for by the work of those more closely involved. In this instance, I am very grateful for their corrections to my mistakes.

Nevertheless, my exploration of the scapegoat is not yet complete. We still have the second goat to study – the one who is exiled. Given the examples I have been using for this series, it is interesting to note that Andrew Mitchell, instigator of “GateGate”, appears to have exiled himself from the political debates of his party’s conference. This has greater significance because his constituency is in Birmingham, where the Conservative Party conference is being held. It would seem as if he has become an exiled goat – a mild example of what happens to a sin carrier for the community.

The exiled goat is the most familiar aspect of the scapegoat ritual in modern times and our personal response to its emergence says far more about us than we might feel comfortable with. In a world whose perceptions are dualistic, this is the issue of ‘right’ (the high priest) and ‘wrong’ (the exiled goat). When this kind of separation is occurs within a community, it is inevitable that we will be applying such divisions to our own internal selves too. We make judgmental decisions about which bits of us are acceptable or not. Many of us exile aspects of our personalities we dislike to our unconscious in our attempts to fit it with our society. We fool ourselves into believing that the problem of sin is somehow ‘out there’ by failing to acknowledge or respect our own dark side. It is worth remembering that within an ego-level psyche, when we occupy our own personal moral high-ground, whatever we may think or feel about others, is almost certainly something within ourselves too. This is why we know it so well when we point our fingers at others and can recognise it for what it is. We are talking about our true selves when our ego becomes ‘high priest’. The only time this may not hold true is at a social conscience level. This is where we can openly acknowledge both our dark and light aspects whilst working in the interests of our wider community – these are the kinds of ‘special’ aspects of difference associated with the scapegoated exile.

Where the sacrificed goat speaks to ‘unholy’ divisions within the community, the exiled goat speaks to our attitude towards ‘difference’ both personally and collectively. There is always going to be a quality of difference within each one of us simply because we all have the potential to be unique individuals. This quality of individual difference means that, regardless of how we try, at some point we are all likely to have an experience of becoming the exiled goat.

There are many reasons why an individual might find themselves in the role of the exiled goat. Within the archetypes we find the voluntary (Jesus) and involuntary (Orestes); sinners (Oedipus) and innocents (Orpheus); and we find those for whom this is a vocation – the sin-eaters, like the Aztec goddess, Tlazolteutl. In all cases, the individual involved will be marked out by some personal difference, identified by the collective as ‘undesirable’, about which the ‘exile’ can do little or nothing because it is who they are. These are the vital differences within us, within the archetype, that are capable of carrying the sins of an entire community – the exiled goat doesn’t bear its own sins alone into the wilderness, it carries everyone’s.  There is something about these differences that are ‘bigger’ than the individual and capable of bearing far more than just the guilt of personal ‘transgression’.

So what might we look for as ‘different’ enough to be able to bear the weight of collective ‘sin’ of scapegoating? The following are common markers:-

Royalty

Amongst archetypal scapegoats, many are royal in some form or another. It’s a difference that marks the individual out as special or ‘above’ the commons.  In a psychological setting, this can be termed ‘grandiosity’ when viewed negatively or it might be an emerging of social conscience within an individual desiring to give to the greater ‘good’ of the community. To act on such beliefs inevitably sets an individual apart from the collective in the same way as royalty is perceived as ‘outside’ the general whole. Both archetypal and historical examples exist of the royal sacrifice and/or exile deemed to be necessary for greater social good. This is difference as specialness.

 Physical Differences

Many archetypal scapegoats have physical differences that mark them out as ‘special’. For example, the name Oedipus actually means ‘swollen foot’ which, in addition to his royalty, marks him out as dissimilar. Others, like Jesus during the crucifixion, are maimed. Scapegoats may be ugly or deformed in some way and this particular aspect comes into very clear focus when we consider how the scapegoat complex plays out at the collective level. People of physical ‘otherness’ often become targets of collective persecution.

 Foreign

Many individuals who find themselves scapegoated, either in archetype or reality, are perceived as foreign in their difference or specialness. This applies to equally to groups if ‘difference’ within a greater society and it is not hard to name examples who have experienced this, whether it be Jews of the past or Muslims in the present.

 Magical

Within the archetype, individuals may be perceived as having magical powers. For example, Orpheus’s music was regarded as so exquisitely beautiful it caused trees and stones to weep. Jesus could heal the blind and raise the dead. A scapegoat may have a mysterious talent that can be perceived as a gift in a stable environment but which transforms into a threat during a crisis. When the community faces a catastrophe, such individuals may find themselves blamed and hunted down for the same talents, skills or gifts previously regarded as blessings.

 “Mad”

This feature of scapegoating comes from psychological differences where individual perception is seen to be so different from the norm as to be regarded as madness. This is the role of holy fool who is, in some cultures, regarded as sacred and the madness as ‘god-inflicted’. Sometimes the individual may be genuinely insane; at other times, they may simply be guilty of holding a different viewpoint from that of the scapegoating collective.

Outlaw

“The scapegoat in myth may also be an outlaw whose crime has turned the wrath of the gods against the community. The scapegoat is the one who has committed, or is believed to have committed, the murder, the theft, the rape, the breach of social taboos. But the motive behind the crime is never simple…

The crimes of this kind of scapegoat figure are different from ordinary garden variety crimes. These crimes challenge some universal authority, breaking collective law yet at the same time fulfilling a secret collective need. The scapegoat may enact the crime which all of us long to commit, which on the most profound level is the crime of individuality. The mythic outlaw is often an individual who defies the stagnant or unjust rules of society or the gods, and he or she is punished by those laws at the same time as being secretly admired and envied by the very people who have invoked the punishment.”

(From “The Dark of the Soul” by Liz Greene: CPA Press 2003; ISBN: 978-1-900869-28-7)

 

These are the qualities likely to be found within those who are individually ‘marked out’ for attention when scapegoating moves within both the collective conscious and unconscious. When it erupts as a collective social complex, this ‘marking’ takes on the ominous destructiveness of ethnic or other ‘special’ cleansing. This form of scapegoating becomes the sacrificing/exiling of entire groups which, unfortunately, has become all too familiar. Groups likely to be subject to scapegoating persecution frequently fall into the following categories: race; religion; class; sexuality; gender; and “non-human”, like animals or the environment. We can begin to get a sense of what community values are by looking at those who are sacrificed or exiled. For example, if a society routinely scapegoats black people, Muslims, the differently-abled, the poor, the mad, non-heterosexuals, women and nature, these provide very precise measures of what it does value. Using recent examples, it’s possible to perceive the outline of the offended god demanding appeasement as probably white, maybe Christian, physically perfect, rich, ‘sane’, misogynistic, heterosexually male and disconnected from nature.  As humans, we are inevitably going to fall short of such measures which means, especially within the scapegoat complex, that as one ‘difference’ is sacrificed or exiled, other individual differences emerge to be subject to the same. The complex morphs into wholesale collective xenophobic attrition capable of exterminating whole communities and peoples.

Having identified those individuals or groups likely to carry the scapegoat archetype when a community experiences a crisis, it is vital to look at what sins are being exiled.

“The reason the goat is exiled is not because the community doesn’t like goats. It is because the community has offended God, and the exile is carrying that which has caused offence. This goat bears not only the pain of alienation from the community, but also the pain of alienation from its spiritual source.” (ibid)

 In addition, it is important is to explore how the individual exile responds to their situation. Some may choose to reject the exiling community:

“The exiled goat may… turn its back on the collective. The anger may be too great, and personal pride may also be involved. The exiled goat may say, “I don’t need them anyway. In fact, I am going to do everything in my power to sabotage and destroy the collective which has rejected me…” The exiled goat can become an anarchist and a revolutionary. It is the lone gunman, the social outcast who consciously chooses the role of outlaw. In its most extreme form, it is Charles Manson, who gleefully accepts the projection of the collective shadow and says, “Since you will condemn me whatever I am or do, I may as well do what I have been accused of, and justify your condemnation of me.” That response provides a form of power and a feeling of being special, and this can compensate for the humiliation of rejection. Such exiled goats are necessary to a community which is unconscious of its own sins, because they carry the collective shadow.” (ibid)

This is the realm of the terrorist whom having, either individually or collectively, experienced the terrors of rejection and exile, returns to visit this shadow upon the community who perpetrated the expulsion. This is particularly true when the ‘unconscious’ high priest mercilessly heaps communal sins upon individuals or groups who are subsequently destroyed or exiled through blame, thereby avoiding conscious responsibility for their own sins. It creates a vicious circle. As the ‘sin’ is hidden within the unconsciousness of the community itself, no amount of projection,  sacrifice or exile can resolve the ‘loss of connection to the divine’ and the failure requires more ‘high priests’ to relentlessly seek out new victims to blame. The ultimate result leads to an ‘empty world’ as one difference after another is sacrificed on the altar of this insatiable, blood-thirsty ‘god’ until the whole community is dead. Sadly, we do not need to look far for real-life examples of this being acted out in the world at the present time.

There are other choices available to an exiled scapegoat. They might refuse revenge but reject the community by choosing to remain in exile. A third option is the role of pharmakon – the exiled goat as healer. This is the goat who not only who escapes death thereby becoming ‘the one who lives’, albeit in exile, it is also the goat who returns from the wilderness seeking to win back the acceptance of the rejecting community through service to others.

It is this particular scapegoat, ‘the one who returns’, which is the subject of my next piece.

The Archetypal Scapegoat – 1

The Archetypal Scapegoat – 2

The Archetypal Scapegoat – 3

On the experience of Envy

Source: unknown

A couple of days ago, a very good friend of mine was honest enough to tell me she envied my ability to write. She has my deep gratitude for her honesty and personal insight. It took me years in therapy to even begin to understand the emotion, let alone talk about it, and my friend has opened the door to this piece.

It’s taken me many years to get to the stage where I can write in this way. The testing grounds of prison, where the language of communication is intensely basic, stripped away a lot of verbiage from my skill or so my mother tells me. I’ve become more direct and to the point. It’s good to have this kind of feedback because although I know my own internal landscape has altered beyond recognition, it’s hard to know how this translates into my impact upon those around me. My friend’s generosity helped me understand a common experience I seem to have these days – other people’s silence – and it’s helped remember what it was like when I started learning about my own capacity for envy.

A lot of my therapeutic training was done in groups and I well remember the excruciating silences that would descend upon us when envy was trying to make itself understood. From my perspective, it used to seem as though everyone else knew what they were about and I was the stupid laggard. In retrospect, it’s likely that all my travelling companions felt the same way but, at the time, I was certain I was alone. My trainers were exceptional women and I yearned to have their skill and awareness but doubted if that could ever be the case. Nevertheless, I was making the attempt because the goal was so enticing.

During that period, the process of learning was, in a word, foul. Although I knew I desired the skills they possessed, my journey to attaining them for myself was strewn with resentments, bitterness and my own deep sense of inadequacy. Inadequacy is a horrible experience because it makes me feel so vulnerable. I can see now how it was the spur to learn; to overcome the problem and move beyond it but, at the time, it felt like a pointless exercise. My ‘trainee’ believed it was never going to be possible to become like my trainers and, from one angle, I was absolutely right. We can never be anyone else but ourselves. Our individuality is the only basic material we have to work with. The months and years of learning about envy meant I was brought face to face with this. The only person I could ever be was me and my internal opinion of this ‘me’ scored very low on my list of valuables. All in all, I was a very envious woman.

Therapeutic learning about envy is the painful exploration of our deepest levels of inadequacy. This may sound very masochistic and, in some ways, it is until we understand the purpose of the journey. Uncovering these deep layers enables us to discover what we believe about ourselves. This is important because many beliefs cannot withstand the light of exploration simply because they are false. In addition, feelings of inadequacy are actually the seeds of growth. Until we are aware of these, we cannot do anything about them and they remain, lurking deep within our unconscious, affecting our perceptions, attitudes and actions. As I struggled through the experience, I learned that there really were places where I was inadequate but I also learned there were other places where, despite my self-perception, I was very skilled indeed which came as something of a shock. Somewhere along the line, I had learned to despise or devalue my own natural gifts.

It was at this point that the lesson ‘flipped over’. No longer was I discovering my bitter, dark inadequacies; I was learning about the experience of being envied. Although it may sound strange, this was actually more difficult than the first stage. When we are deep in the depths of our own ‘dark matter’, we have some ability to control our experience but we lose this when we encounter the same in others. We all find ourselves at the mercy of other people’s perceptions regardless of who we are. If these are fuelled by unconscious inadequacy, then we get to experience what it is to be envied. Speaking personally, without therapeutic insight,  it has little to recommend it.

Understanding that we can be envied is the start of appreciating that we have talents or qualities that are admirable. It challenges the internal perception of inadequacy, even if we disagree with our admirers. It also confronts our own indolence. Feeling inadequate can be the perfect excuse for not moving, developing or growing. We discover we are not as useless as we had believed and in that awareness, we are faced with our personal responsibility to act on this knowledge. With good support, we can evolve beyond the life we have confined ourselves to and become truly adult. If, however, it is our experience to be envied, then the opposite occurs.

When I discovered that I could be envied, many of the personal experiences I had been unable to explain suddenly fell into place. The bullying I had experienced at school during my childhood suddenly made sense. The naked hatred I had been subjected to on occasions became understandable and my own envious behaviour could be seen in context. When we are the subject of another’s envy, we stop being able to grow at all because the destructive energies we are attracting make it all but impossible. For me, this was the key to understanding why I believed so much of my internal landscape had little or no value and why, when I did find something worthwhile, I would often overdo it and get myself into trouble. If our internal themes are based on experiences of being envied, especially when we are young, then we are likely to unconsciously choose behaviour that reinforces these notions. We go looking for that which confirms what we think we know about ourselves.

There are so many numerous, painful tales about the consequences of being envied that I’m disinclined to add to them here. What I will say is that, in my experience, it has the impact of a nuclear explosion within my internal landscape. There is always a moment where everything I thought I knew about myself is razed to the ground and left in ruins, nor is there any comfort or compassion within reach that might ameliorate the experience. Protests, appeals for kindness, tears and agony make no impact upon envious attackers who regard such expressions as justification for their behaviour. The force of the attack renders the envied vulnerable and helpless by removing all protection which is followed up with unrelenting aggression devoid of mercy or forgiveness. Envy attacks our very being and there is nothing we can do about it. When I came to understand this, I could appreciate how my knowledge of self had been rendered so inadequate. As the object of such attacks, we are always going to be inadequate to prevent it because that is the dynamic of the envious attack itself. We cannot change the envier because they don’t want to be changed; they believe themselves to be entirely justified in what they are doing. Nothing we think, say or do is going to make one iota of difference.

During an envious attack, the balance of polarity is severed. The healthy knowledge that we are all both adequate and inadequate is split apart, creating schizoid perceptions and behaviours. Outwardly, the envier justifies claiming the whole ground of adequacy by maintaining that the envied is wholly inadequate and lacking in any redeeming features whatsoever. In the language of emotional literacy, however,  the internal experience flips this observation because, in truth, an envious attack can only have its roots in deep feelings of inadequacy and the envied has to possess qualities that are likely to be regarded as ‘more than adequate’.  The natural balance of Nature reasserts itself, even if it is done within the different dimensions of our conscious and unconscious selves.

Resolving the terrible consequences of envy is a very difficult task. It involves a two-pronged approach. With those who are subject to being envied, this will probably involve supporting the individual in recognising that the attacks are unreasoned and therefore, because they are so destructive, can be shown to be so. It may also include work to empower the envied to recognise their innate talents and develop them further. Working with the envier – which assumes consent – is frequently a case of dealing with facts to begin with. The talent they admire in others, and wish they could possess for their own, needs to be examined closely. For example: such talents are often the result of very hard work. They don’t spring, fully formed, from the envied but are the result of actualised potential. Does the envier want to do the work to achieve this ability? If they do, then the object of their envy is a waymarker for their own personal growth. If they don’t, then the exploration turns to what they do want and how that might be achieved. Human life is limited by the boundaries of birth and death so, realistically, we cannot develop every talent and are forced to choose between them. Bearing in mind that the healthy polarity of envy is gratitude, we can have feelings of envy about another’s talent whilst taking responsibility for our life choices. For example: I have a life-long envy of anyone who can play the piano but I have chosen to develop different skills and have declined to do the necessary work to become a pianist myself. These days, I still feel the yearning but because I walk a different path, I can be deeply grateful to those pianists manifesting their talents for my enjoyment. In developing my own skills, I can appreciate the level of dedicated commitment to the long haul of ‘practice, practice, practice’ required to truly manifest the best a human being is capable of. A fully realised skill is an object of awe and wonder but it is not the end of the process.

‘Healthy’ envy marks the entrance to the world of human struggle and endeavour. If we envy, it shows us what we truly desire and where we need to strive. If we are envied, it shines a light on qualities we may not have known we had. It is the paradoxical experience of adequacy and inadequacy and is probably our deepest experience of human vulnerability and its power. Where envy becomes most toxic is when we reject awareness; refuse the effort it takes to develop our talent; decline any personal responsibility for our attitudes or behaviour; and indulge ourselves in the worst humanity capable of. On the map of undifferentiated human consciousness, this is the place marked “Here be monsters”, yet as the light of awareness shines in, the very same spot can also be named “The Birthplace of Heroes”.

In closing, I return to my envious friend who only needed a gentle reminder of the content of her feelings. Without her honesty, this piece could never have been written, so how can I not be grateful? Those who find this helpful for their own journey can be grateful too for she has been the source of light in this very dark subject. Between us – the envier and the envied – we have become joint creators in new conversations about what it is to be human.

Jeni – thank you so much for the gift of your truth. If you ever choose to write down your own version of this experience (and would like it published), let me know. I’d be delighted to post it here.

The Politics of Integrity

In a highly polarised society where opposites co-exist – ‘the rich man in his castle, the poor man at the gate’ – to strive to be balanced is probably the most subversive human adventure of all.

To observe and detail how a society gets caught up in the politics of envy, the balanced individual needs to seek out and experience each polarity that exists within it. Dualism demands there is an opposite to envy. So what on earth could it be? We can be deeply grateful to the rather cranky and argumentative psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein, for her work in identifying it.

The opposite of envy is gratitude.

If envy is the negative human expression of perceived scarcity and how we respond to it, the polar opposite will have to contain the positive human expression of perceived abundance. In this dynamic, perception is the key that holds our power to choose how we handle these natural experiences. The dance between scarcity and abundance is normal for Planet Earth, with her ages and seasons in constant flux and all our human stories, myths and legends reflect this. As human beings, we are subject to these changes whether we like it or not and any personal or individual power resides solely in how we respond.

We live on a planet that is in the throes of a Life-Death-Life transition. For those of us in Western Society, we are moving from an experience of abundance to an experience of deep scarcity. In the natural cycles, this is normal because it opens the doors for the next cycle of growth or Life. Some things die back in order to make way for the new. This brings unexpected changes as we learn to live with loss, often of aspects or people we hold very dear to us. For those who survive it, the Death cycle teaches us the value of grief by tipping us into the underworld of human experience and forcing us to make choices about how we will live in the future. Freud describes this as Eros and Thanatos – the choice between life and death. What is important here is that life is represented by the god of Love; Eros.

It is not smooth sailing on quiet seas that teaches us about who we are. We only really get to know ourselves well by enduring the storms and tempests of human experience. Death removes the flesh from our existence and introduces us to the bones of our inner selves. It is at these depths that we learn about the choices we make.

In ‘The Politics of Envy’, I explore the negative polarity of loss and scarcity when unexplored personal choices are rooted in envy. Without doubt, this is the underworld of Thanatos where there is no hiding the depths to which humanity can sink. In the realm of envy, the choice is death but this is not the only region in Hades. In therapeutic terms, laying bare the bones of envy serves a very important purpose because it moves the client firmly into the realm of personal choice. Do we cling to our egos or do we move on?

The key question to ask is “What is good about this experience?” In other words, what can we feel grateful for?

Bear in mind that, in a dualistic reality, the glass is always half full/empty.  If we can only perceive emptiness, we remain caught in the jaws of egotistical envy because any possibility for creativity (fullness) is denied. When we start seeing the opposite polarity the emptiness remains because it forms part of the reality of loss but we add something new – potential. We can deepen this potential by intensifying the experience through the perception of gratitude. That’s the theory, anyway! In practice, it can be much harder. What I can say is that it is worth the effort.

The cycle of Life-Death-Life is intensely painful and is frequently the cause of significant suffering, especially at the nadir. It is a paradoxical question, asking what might be good about this and my own past reactions have often been filled with astonished and enraged indignation! These are normal human responses to the shocks associated with deep and irrevocable loss that leave us feeling powerless. We are victims of circumstance as well as our own choices and the notion that we could find something to be grateful for in all of it produces outrage. This is a totally, beautifully normal and healthy part of human experience. The grieving process always contains rage because this is the emotion that moves us forward through the darkness. These feelings are how we explore the underworld that exists within each of us. They cause us to look around to see what is left after everything has died. By hunting down even the smallest seeds of gratitude, we are laying the foundations for return and rebirth. We are choosing life; not the old life but a new one based on the wisdom we have gathered through our underworld journey.

These archetypal processes apply to the whole of humanity and they have been very well documented by the likes of Joseph Campbell and Clarissa Pinkola-Estes. The purpose is to teach us the demands of the well-springs of human potential. They come with a price-tag because their wisdom can only be unlocked via repeated personal journeys through the underworld.

In my own experience, the seeds of gratitude come through acts of kindness and generosity between ourselves and our perception of the world. It is a momentous act of personal kindness towards reality  when we choose to relinquish our egotistical need for personal control, cease to envy and learn to become grateful for our journey through the travails and triumphs of life. In a world petrified by the politics of envy, this is an act of true power that cannot be equalled simply because it can only be achieved through the unique personal choice of an evolving human being. The new energies emerge as choice piles upon personal choice. From the underworld, we can see all those who literally sacrificed their own lives so we could learn how to do this. From the depths, we can see those who choose to be kind when cruelty was available to them too. Within the darkest places of the human psyche, we encounter fellow travellers who share their nuggets of wisdom, enabling us to take the next step on our return journey to a new way of living. We learn to share ourselves. We learn we have something valuable to share when we do this. We learn that there are better ways of living than those we thought we knew. But, for me, there is one lesson that stands head and shoulders above the rest.

The journey through loss, rage and envy teaches us who we are and topples us into the experience of grief. When we encounter deep grief, we meet our natural instincts face to face. Grief is the journey of pain and suffering but it is also the landscape of our capacity for Love. The deeper our ability to feel pain, the deeper our direct experience of Love itself because it is the only power in the universe that can make this journey and live. This is the deepest knowledge of all and it is the wisdom of the Spirit.

I share a very deep empathy with atheists because what is being rejected, in Spiritual terms, are the religious constructs of envy which refuse personal experience of the underworld whilst applying its strictures to others. Nevertheless, within the core beliefs of every religion dwell fundamental spiritual truths about the human experience of Life itself. Not for nothing does Jesus teach that the only way to enter the experience of Heaven is by being born again. It is not a pretty theory; it is blisteringly hard practice. Not for nothing does Islam require Ramadan because it is a repeated experiential teaching in the power of scarcity. Not for nothing does the Buddha teach that the path through Life is found through the balance of Light and Dark. These are lessons in Love itself and they teach us gratitude for the wonder of Life itself.

Where I part with company of atheists resides in the issue of Life after Death. That anything so fine, so precious, so infinitely valuable as these lessons in the fundamental experience of the healthy human spirit-under-fire could be discarded at the point of physical death simply goes against the Laws of Nature. Nature is not wasteful. To imagine Nature casually discarding something so extraordinarily important beggars belief and falsifies perception. Given that perception dwells at the heart of human politics, to deny the essence of the healthy human spirit is to choose the path of envy. To perceive this miracle of humanity is to be grateful for Life itself in all its forms and is how we contribute towards and align ourselves with creative manifestation. This is the process of rebirth and it always has a spiritual component because the dynamic can’t function without it. The atheists can argue about this all they want but the evidence is already in. History is littered with examples of this too.

The process of collective rebirth is as inclusive as the politics of envy is exclusive. When we experience the depths of our being, we stop caring about labels and start seeking the essence. It doesn’t matter what someone is, we want to know who they are. Do I care if someone is an atheist? Not in the least! They are teaching themselves something that only they can learn in their own unique way. Do I mind about some of the hardships I’ve experienced? Of course I do! They are my precious teachers and my most intuitive guides. Am I better or worse than another? How the hell do I know! I aim to be equal because that’s all that’s left me if I am to appreciate what I’ve learned in my gratitude for Life.

Within the politics of envy, I am an unwanted exile which points to the possibility that I, amongst many others, am envied by the rich. Within this paradigm, what on earth could the rich perceive as a quality in me that could never exist in them?

Perhaps it is in the simple grace of finding it within ourselves to be grateful for who we are and not just what we have.

“Grounding In Fact”: the responsible adult in public UK life

“The Empress” by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
©Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, 2004-2010.
All rights reserved

As some of you are already aware, I have been posting evidence of censorship on my twitter account. Because this is also occurring to others, it might cross your mind that making a big song-and-dance about what is happening to me is, in some way, egotistical or self-seeking. The only way to be certain, one way or another is to examine my reasoning.

So here are my reasons for saying that censoring me might place society at some sort of risk. I say this because I have found myself in this kind of situation before and the consequences were not pretty.

Those who know me personally, whether neighbours or cyber-friends, are aware I have a criminal conviction for violence. I am not going to go into the details here but suffice it to say that censorship formed a central role in the circumstances leading up to my conviction. My conviction has consequences that will never lapse in this lifetime. My society has laid very strict rules upon my behaviour and if I fail to comply, I can be prosecuted again and would probably receive a very hefty sentence. The public found themselves at risk from me the last time I was censored. As a matter of Public Protection and speaking as a responsible adult, when someone with a criminal conviction like mine finds themselves in the same situation that contributed to their crime, it is right for society to become concerned. This is why I am making a big fuss about what is occurring on twitter.

The reason people know about my conviction is because I tell them – just as I keep telling you. I’ve been told this is a dangerous activity and have, I suspect, been recalled to prison for doing so by the probation service. If, however, I am seeking to redeem myself to the society I live in now then I believe openness and honesty are absolutely vital. If I am to successfully redeem myself, as a responsible adult, I must contribute to the protection of my community by identifying potential threats to public safety. If, within my community, there is someone once regarded as so dangerous only solitary confinement was considered secure enough and who now finds themselves censored in public, then this needs to be reported to the proper authorities as a matter of public protection – even if that person is me. There can be NO exceptions; not in a lawful society.

So, as a part of my desire to contribute to a lawful society, I am reporting myself to my local Police Public Protection officers. This might seem a very dangerous thing to do, especially in the light of my second criminal conviction – my threat to kill a police officer. Yet I find myself having little fear of doing so and here’s why.

The process of redemption is an absolute constant in a sinner’s life. It requires honesty and truthfulness. It requires courage in the face of exclusion, derision and abuse. It requires a very high standard of behaviour and it requires me to be humble in the face of my many failings. The crimes I committed have to be paid for and whilst I may have served my sentence, my commitment to my continuing redemption has to remain unrelenting. If my society believes I need to be censored, then I had better deal with it now just as I dealt with my offences a few years back.

Since my release, my contact with my local police has been minimal and as I get on well with my current neighbours, I doubt if I have given any cause for alarm. When I was on probation it was a different story. What I can be certain of is that I apologised to almost every police officer who dealt with me. Those who didn’t get a face-to-face apology can find my written apology in the files of the police board. In a lawful society, I should have no fear of the police and in my present community, I don’t. The local police have been magnificent with me. Their faults have been so minor as to be totally eclipsed by the magnanimity, kindness, humour, compassion and genuine interest of those I have met. Their capacity to deal with my eccentricities is second to none and, if they think about it, my posting something like this on the net will come as no surprise because I am nothing if not surprising. I’ve surprised a lot of people and shocked even more.

The issue of my twitter censorship may not bother the local police officers who know me but it bothers me because I find myself anxious about my relationship with them. One of the features of both my convictions was that of corruption in public office and it included the local police. All my attempts to resolve matters through established procedures failed as the direct result of unlawful orders being issued to police officers. I knew they were unlawful and the police officer I threatened to kill knew it too. The reason I threatened to kill him was because he didn’t act on that knowledge – I was too far gone, in mental health terms, to be able to see that he may have been prevented from acting. If that is the case, then I repeat the apology I made in open court. As my local police are fully aware, as part of my own redemption, I am not permitted to comply with orders I believe to be unlawful even if I bear a heavy cost for doing so. I would really rather not have to do it again but will, if needs must.

If my twitter censorship is lawful, then I believe an efficient public sector would have informed my local public protection police given the criminal convictions I so openly declare. They should know about it. This post is an insurance policy. If my local police don’t know about it, then I am ensuring that they do as a recovering criminal concerned about public protection. So I’m reporting myself to them. All I am asking them to do is make note of the situation. If they want to do any more than that, that’s none of my business unless they need me to go formal. But here is the reason why I regard this as an insurance policy.

Because I believe that my twitter censorship is unlawful, I’m going to carry on testing and reporting the results. In other words, I am liable to become a public nuisance. Whilst there are those who have no problem with this and encourage me to continue, those who act unlawfully will have to start taking further steps to shut me up… just like they did before. Given my prior experience, I would expect the following to happen.  Because I will not be acting unlawfully, by a law I recognise, there will be some other attempt to criminalise me. If this occurs, it will have to be done via orders issued to my local police. If those orders are fundamentally unlawful, then I believe any public official has a duty to refuse to comply with them. If I am legally correct, then this is written into each person’s Contract of Employment, as I’m certain the local Police Federation branch can confirm. The only time public officials are permitted to act unlawfully is if they are gathering evidence of abuse in public office.

So, I say this to my local police. If you decide you need evidence of abuses in public office, then please come and get me with whatever the abusers have come up with now. Please ensure all paperwork is complete and up to date – the examination of such documents in court meant I was able to achieve a ‘Not-Guilty’ verdict to the charge of ‘Attempted Murder’. Please understand that I will be acting in my own defence, so you are asked to treat me as both perpetrator and legal representative. You can expect to be working with a friendly defendant and an experienced legal-eagle. You can expect me to think and behave, respectfully, outside the box you find yourselves in. You may be asked to answer questions from my nominated legal colleagues in any or all matters you are being ordered to prosecute. Since I am demonstrably trustworthy and reliable, you will not hold me in custody nor will you seek to curtail my on-line activities. You are welcome to monitor them. You will ensure that the matter is placed in the hands of a competent prosecutor at the CPS and that I am kept fully informed as my recognised legal representative.

As my legal representative, I ask my local police to appoint the most efficient, competent officers to the matter and that each one of them is ordered to report any ‘unofficial’ or ‘off-the-record’ conversations that occur outside the team, regardless of who that person is. Sometimes an investigation finds itself impeded by psychological subversion from someone close to the individual. If the ‘subverted’ are known to be otherwise reliable people, then how they were subverted needs to be examined. Please understand that the intentional dissemination of falsehoods is an attempt to pervert the course of justice. As an aside, I want to say here how grateful I am that my local community has so many competent women in public positions. Even if I never claim on this policy, I’m guessing that one or two of my ‘demands’ may be giving them ideas about what it means to act lawfully.

Speaking as a former shop steward, I have no problem with management when they do their job properly. If, however, they choose to become problematic, I have a tendency to reflect that.  When there is collective agreement between public employers, their managers and staff, we are all working for the benefit of the whole. When that benefit is authentically held in public trust, not private corruption, the accrued power for transformative change is extended to the community as a whole. This is not a political matter at all; it begins with a woman’s lawful public concern that, I think, ought to become a community’s legal concern. When these matters are given due professional consideration this might contribute to resolving some of local and national problems. My Law begins with a woman’s law – the International Declaration of Human Rights – as mothered into creation by Eleanor Roosevelt. As a woman who is seeking to demonstrate my social responsibility, my legal basis begins there as a human being. As an Employment Law professional, I recognise a public contract as binding upon those professionals who undertake public duty. I undertake the same responsibility as my chosen public duty along the road of personal redemption. This is what I offer to my community when I undertake my understanding of public duty. It may not be some people’s idea of what public duty is but, well, I make up my own mind on this subject.

Those of us who stand in the line of fire as a public duty – and I have only ever made a nuisance of myself on behalf of and at the request of others – become very skilled at what we do. The excellent relationship I have been allowed to create in reality with my local officials tells me that I am dealing with some very experienced people. The measure is their ability to formally undertake their duty, however difficult, whilst retaining compassion and the capacity to behave in a merciful manner when called upon to do so by their conscience. This is emotional intelligence coupled with behavioural and intellectual respect. I don’t need to prove it because you have already proved it to yourselves.

By putting myself on formal report, at least in my own mind, I can begin to pull my legal case together in such a way that issues of public protection come high on the collective agenda. The last time I had to do this I think I did a fairly good job. I got a free education in psychiatric and criminal justice – seven years of unbroken study counts as a Doctorate of Law in my book.

It is my professional opinion that the censorship I am experiencing on twitter is criminal for the reason that it seeks to pervert the course of lawful justice, insofar as it appears to interfere with accurate public psychiatric and forensic observations of persons in public office. It is fair to presume accuracy because it has resulted in a need to silence me, by person(s) unknown, in an organised manner within a public forum. If my local police haven’t been informed of this, then it is fair to presume that the action is unlawful – I am, after all, a known criminal. In a lawful society, this information ought to have been passed to those whose concern for public protection is as great, if not greater, than mine. If some won’t take responsibility for their actions in this matter, it falls to me to do so as a matter of public interest.

The behaviour I hope to be manifesting by my actions is intended to provide a training model that supplies workable standards and measures of someone capable of shouldering responsibilities in public life. My legal view is that when it is manifestly plain to competent people that an individual is unfit to undertake public responsibility by reason of apparent corruption or incompetence, it is necessary to suspend them from duty whilst the matter is investigated thoroughly. If corruption is proven on a balance of evidence and reasonable suspicion, they must be removed from public office forthwith and with immediate effect because they pose an immediate danger to the community. There are all kinds of existing laws that enable such decisions should they need to be properly enforced on the grounds of mental incapacity to distinguish belief from reality. I don’t understand why they are not being applied already as any action to achieve this can only be deemed legal after the fact. In addition, the evidence is certainly in to show that those who fail to act in accordance with the law are liable to be held legally accountable at a later date.

There is, however, another way of dealing with this entirely. I could, for example, ask my local police whether they see any crime in what I am reporting to them. If they do and it is something they believe to be in the public interest to act upon, then perhaps the same competent prosecutor from the CPS could take a long legal look at what crimes may need investigating here and, with guidance from my legal colleagues, write up my formal complaint accordingly. A legal-eagle sees the whole landscape but may miss important details. I have to be aware of my limitations as well as respect what my community already knows. Since they continue to surprise me with their imagination, I defer to their greater knowledge both respectfully and happily. And as this is a matter of public interest, I will ensure that my Councillor and MP are informed as a matter of courtesy.

My ‘public duty and responsibility’ may be self-appointed but, on balance, I think I prefer living within a community that has someone like me in it. Frankly, I am not willing to live in a world that doesn’t want me here.

That’s my choice. Now you have a choice. Live in a world that seems to think, by hook or by crook, it ought to be sustained long past its sell-by date, or to start living to create a better world by lawfully challenging those who are presently issuing unlawful orders.

The Diamonds of Darkness

“The Tower” ©Stephanie Pui-Mun Law http://www.shadowscapes.com.

 

The very best form of learning is experiential because the lesson is taught on many different dimensions. It follows that the very best teachers work experientially. The thing to remember is that that the lessons come from life itself. They arise from our aliveness and the only difference between the teacher and the student is the teacher has more experience.

Yesterday, some friends helped create such a lesson. You can find it here. As an example of the Gestalt Cycle, it is perfect – I have excluded an interruption that, in my opinion, sought to introject a ‘solution’ that did not fit the problem. I left it out because I’m tired and bored with the interrupters and to make a song-and-dance about such individuals is to divert attention from where it is needed. They are unneeded distractions. I have also excluded someone who supported me on the facts about financial poverty within the system we all find ourselves in. I’m grateful for their support but for this to work effectively I need to stand alone at the moment. We need to be able to see my mistakes and supporters can veil this aspect if we are not careful. This is a lesson. I am a teacher. I believe my lesson’s aim is to support the impoverished but if they can’t see where I’ve fucked up then we can’t correct my errors. In truth, both of those I’ve left out belong in the wider story – they are as much a part of the Gestalt as the participants but I don’t know them as well as the central characters.

This is a recapitulation of what occurred now that my personal Gestalt Cycle has completed itself. It was my Cycle so I’m discussing it from what I can see – how it interfaces with the other participants will be for them to decide.

The main charactors are my Egyptian friend, my Lightworker friend, an old Guardianista friend and me.

The teaching Cycle began an out-pouring of Self from my Egyptian friend. If I have my facts straight, nag0ul took such an active role in his country’s ‘Arab Spring’ that he was arrested and detained at one point. Certainly, now, he is under 24 hour surveillance in a country that is ruled by a military that sees no problem in killing its citizens when they protest, supported by lawyers that permits them to get away with murder. No-one in the Egyptian hierarchy has been brought to account for the deaths of protesters and it looks like no-one will. So, my Egyptian friend knows he is facing retribution of some sort whatever hue of government takes power. Therefore, his initial outpouring is totally understandable.

I stopped trying to interrupt his Cycle of Experience (none of us are exempt from this mistake!) when I remembered my own outpourings whilst I was a prisoner. He was in a place of deep transformation where existing internal psychic structures collapse and he describes this process extremely well. From my own experience, this is a deeply painful process of disappointment and there is really nothing anyone can do except keep them company. It is a long and hard fall from Hope to Despair, and it takes just about everything we believe in with it. In the Tarot, this is the card of the Tower. In Astrology, this is the action of Pluto.

This Fall takes us over the boundary of Death. It may not result in physical death, although it can and it may not be our own death that triggers the process. If we live, what dies are the assumptions we have structured out lives upon and someone in the throes of the Fall can take our own assumptions with them.

As my Egyptian friend ‘fell’, and with my own grief triggered by Father’s Day, the pain I was holding became too much. Politically and personally, I am close to ground zero at present and aware that I may be facing a move to its epicentre. This is not a new experience for me. My Father’s death initiated my own ‘first fall’ and subsequent events collapsed my life until I was transformed into an undesirable, unemployable exile in my own country. Whilst my experiences are my own and cannot be compared with nag0ul’s, the pattern of energy is the same. A fall from Life to Death holds the same archetype wherever it is played out and the results are the ashes of despair. Those bearing witness are liable to feel fear of their own fall, especially if they have not experienced this for themselves.

What is most important to remember here is that, like the Phoenix, ashes are not the end of the story. The collapsing structures represent outdated power; when the Tower is dust, so energy previously locked within is freed to create in new ways… but only if the environment allows it. The energy of Pluto is Life-Death-Life – it does not end with death.

My first experience of Death was also my first experience of Grief. Grief is a trauma. As the roots of the Greek word for trauma suggest – grief pierces our ego-structures and breaks our heart open to greater Love. It has to be Love because only that power can cause us to grieve when it is ‘gone’. A deep wound to Love creates intense vulnerability which can only be healed with kindness, patience, compassion, understanding and time, as anyone who has experienced grief will tell you. The problem grieving people have is that we live in a world where all those qualities are in very short supply. So when vulnerable people are subjected to cruelty, impatience, heartlessness, deliberate incomprehension and no time, it will trigger feelings of deep rage. This is what occurred with the Arab Spring. This is what is occurring elsewhere across our planet.

Frequently, those experiencing this process transform into activists. We see the ‘wrong’ and start to do something about it. Our choices and actions begin to create new structures within us, just as the Plutonic energy intends. However, those of us who have become activists over the past few years are constantly facing an opposition hell-bent on keeping us imprisoned within their old and collapsing paradigms. To my eyes, they appear criminally insane and my own rage at this situation erupted into the Twittersphere, triggered by grief and activated by my friend’s despair.

This is a powerful dynamic of an energy seeking to evolve. My new friend, Adam, mistook it to begin with until I was able to explain what was occurring using the Laws of Grief. The first Law of Grief is Respect. If the energies being expressed by the mourner are fundamentally healthy, then they demand respect, even if their appearance is initially alarming or disturbing. If witnesses cannot offer respect, they are likely to be shot down by the emerging Rage – as one person was by me. On the other hand, if respect is established – as it was with Adam – then the rage can begin a second transformation into Passion. Rage is no longer required because the energy is being heard. What emerges is the information needed to build new and healthy structures from the ashes of the old. This process is apparent in my personal Storify.

It is these new energies that Activists seek to support and develop. My passionate rage was rooted in the relentless attacks these individuals can be subject to, both collectively and individually. Whilst I might agree that new energies, if still ‘infected’ by old memes, may need to be continually dismantled until we arrive at a healthy structure there comes a point when it is plain that the destructive forces being applied are downright malevolent. So whilst I may have been enabled to move out of the Death-stage yesterday, I am under no illusions that the political forces in my country won’t attempt to send me back there. In my own Self, I am certain I’d prefer to be dead than to consent to this. The suicide levels in the West suggest that I am not alone in this. That this suits the NWO is beyond any doubt because they would be acting to prevent this if it didn’t – instead they are heaping more of the same upon those they purport to ‘govern’. The System is waging war on its own people. Activists understand this and do something about it but they are not superhuman. We need to remember and give to the grieving what they need to evolve. Sitting back and doing little or nothing is to deprive them of support when it is needed most. Support can be as little as a retweet or as much as your heart prompts you to give.

One aspect of my Gestalt Cycle was the issue of financial poverty. In a world filled with envy, this subject becomes booby-trapped, so I make no claims to be ‘right’ with this aspect. I will simply say what I see.  What needs to be remembered here is that the vast majority of Activists are financially impoverished. What they achieve is done with so few material resources that the shaman-in-me starts talking about miracles. Those who benefit from their actions are frequently poor too. The question that always arises in me is “what might they be able to achieve if they actually did have resources?” This is then tempered with Sufi wisdom that teaches when financial assistance is absent, people find out what they are genuinely capable of in a spiritual sense. Clear answers elude me and I have to fall back to trusting that the greater Power of Love knows what it is about far better than I do and I surrender.

This story is still unfolding. In my experience, each time we are felled by the pressures of the old and have to walk through our own darkness, we collect diamonds of wisdom along the way. These are the diamonds I collected yesterday. In sharing them, I hope they may inspire new activists and resources for existing ones, however those resources might manifest. The only thing I can be certain of is that the other participants in my story will know things I don’t either because I’ve made a mistake or I’ve misunderstood what I am looking at. But I will only find out by sharing what I know.

If any of these diamonds are useful to you, please help yourself.

#EtherSec #TangoDown The Guardian and how covert censorship works

 

“The Guardian” newspaper is a part of my personal and social heritage as someone who was raised a socialist. It never really was a socialist paper – more soft liberal – but for the intelligentsia who couldn’t bring themselves to read “The Morning Star”, the Graundiad was a passable choice. Not anymore.

To read the Guardian now is to understand that there are some very fine journalists working there. They report stuff like this – in good detail and fine attention. I have no doubt that there are many good and fine people working for the paper too. I have no argument with them. My argument is with whoever is making the decisions that other staff have to carry out.

I have an ‘old’ account with the Grauniad (bearing in mind I have only been ‘back’ on the net for a year or so). Today I logged on to take part in this:-

My late father would have been tickled to bits with my score, especially if I could tell him that on some questions I guessed when I didn’t know. Even I was pleased with how I did and I am my worst critic. So the Guardian comment beneath my score prompted this reply:-

But there was something interesting I noticed. It prompted me to post a tweet to people I trusted. I’m very grateful for this reply:-

This is not the Guardian website I knew less than a year ago, let alone the paper my family paid good money for for over more than forty years.

There is a rule I need to apply to myself here – Do not criticise without proposing a solution. Because I prefer people to make up their own minds and use their own imagination, I make no proposals. I will simply share this because I have already acted.

On twitter, I’m called a global Citizen – I accept that responsibility. I am called a friend – I accept that privilege. I continue to call myself a shaman in the face of derision and oblivion curses because I’m still here after all their attempts to destroy me. And I’ve just been given a job by people who set very high standards. I am posting this for them only because I prefer to be elected rather than chosen. Otherwise , I am honoured and seek to comfirm my worth and their opinion. I know the importance of being valued (see last paragraph). You can find us here #ATL.

I never want to let down those who choose or trust me because that kind of respect is so hard-won and it comes only from those who work hard to be honest. We need to value each other for who we are, especially when we are different. The Guardian used to do that for everyone but it appears to have suffered a failure of courage – no comments on a Comment Cartoon anymore? Cartoonists getting too close to the bone to allow people to speak?

So I say this because I believe it falls under the law of “Fair comment”.

The Guardian newspaper is corrupt at the top but not neccessarily in the middle 😉

Sue me!

When Rage Becomes Passion – I’m back on a ‘Roll’ again!

When rage first surfaces, in ourselves or in others, it frequently arrives ‘undifferentiated’. Since this particular rage is deeply Female, this is a rage that is part #AppallingPMT #RagingScold  #TheFaceOfKali #TheUntamedShrew and a whole bundle of other descriptions that pretty much describe the same thing. What we need to remember, when this happens to us either as actor or participant, is that the Feminine Voice you are hearing/seeing/experiencing belongs to a woman who has been subjected to prolonged abuse of every conceivable description and a good deal more that good men can’t conceive of unless they are involved with Law enforcement. If you give an erupting woman as much space as she needs, she will eventually do something that will break your heart open to the deepest compassion. You will have an experience of deep empathy.

This empathic experience will mean that you find yourself sharing the experience of deep rage yourself. There is no need to fear this. All that matters is that your rage is trusted and respected for what it is, particularly when you find yourself being unreasonable or being accused of being unreasonable. Passion has Her Own Reason; remember this.

One of my Passions is a passion for Good Law. I see no good law occurring at the ‘top’ in my county and I am watching their corruption trying to seep into the valley of my home. I am sick to the back teeth of their lies and cruelty. I think a large part of our Parliament is psychopathic or under psychopathic influence and they are in full gear to head us into a very English form of the Third Reich. Scotland and Wales have already bailed out. If I have anything to do with it, the neglected North of England will tell Westminster to take a hike too if things don’t change. Our society is sick enough as it is – we don’t need to get any sicker.

I want to say to our trade unions that it’s time to cut the Labour arm off – it’s rotten to the core and has already threatened your members by its inaction and lack of parliamentary support. That’s called ‘gross misconduct’ and is a sackable offence. I’d like you to consider looking around for some of our radical liberals – the kind that, if elected, would renationalise everything starting with the banks. Let them stand as Independents, so they can’t be ‘whipped’. The public services belong to the public – it’s time we took what is ours back from this #AxisOfGreed. We could tell the one percent that they’ve had their feed and, in the light of their behaviour, there’s no compensation unless the workers at the bottom speak up for the people at the top. That ought to sort the swans from the geese.

You see, once we move beyond our first explosion,  the deep passion, the deep rage we found in ourselves or saw in another, does become ‘unreasonable’ in the face of ‘insanity’. Deep rage and deep Passion have their own reasons and those reasons belong to the Law. This is the deep Passion of the overturned money-lenders tables. The Passion that fired the Prophet and it is the Passion of the Feminine. This is the Fury of the Mother protecting her young. It is the Con-Dar. This is an Honourable Fury against a foe that has declared open warfare on the women of this planet.

Remember those who told you that you were being unreasonable? Those people are the problem. We are on a war footing and the weapon we use is the force of Good Law, whether that law be medical, military or civilian. The test of insanity is denying there is a problem when it is plain to those who are qualifiedly sane that there is an extremely serious problem and the source is the denier themselves. Under such circumstances, I would doubt that many of our senior politicians are actually fit to stand trial for their genocidal policies.

When the old ways are corrupted, our rage cuts through the crap and gets to the quick of the matter. No, what I say won’t be comfortable for some people to hear but, hey, we are all in this together and war changes everything. We have a pissed-off military. We have a pissed-off police force. We have pissed-off prison officers. These people – the good ones – are not folk it is wise to piss off. We’ve had our public services too long to stand by and watch these carpet-baggers steal from us again. No, our services are not perfect but then neither are you. One thing I can guarantee you, however, is that whatever privatised service these #Reptiles have in mind for us will be a whole lot worse. I don’t have a problem with staff being paid a decent wage or having a good pension – my problem is that I think everyone else should have it too. Perhaps some people need reminding that selfish behaviour is anti-social. And anyone who thinks everyone ought to be the same is going to have a major problem with me now because I am who I am and want no part of any society that can’t accommodate that.

I’m tired of being told I have no worth. I’m tired that my limited means come through a system that hates me and I’m sick to the back teeth of those who have the power to do something about it allowing this obscenity we are being forced to live to continue.

If we are at war – and it certainly looks as though the British Government and its Institutions have declared war on the British people (Wales and Scotland need to deal with their versions of this). I believe that might be called Treason which, if my memory of Good Law serves me, is a crime that might still be punishable by death.

Men reading this who are having trouble getting to grips with understanding this are invited to talk to intelligent women friends. Go have a look at who is being singled out for ‘Special Treatment’ in this War on Women. And finally, because I am sick of this behaviour from some of you, you can get off your egos and help us by organising. You can stick your hand in your pocket and make a contribution, especially if you’ve been fiddling your taxes. Who do we really trust with money – our money? I want a Women’s Bank – the evidence is overwhelming that when good women are helped, the whole society improves. Didn’t you realise that’s why they hate us? We are the living proof of their lies. That’s why they war on us! Gentlemen, this is no way to treat a Goddess or Her Daughters and we are furious.

Good men do not stand by and do nothing when there’s a war on.