This ain't your Coprporate media

With the several internet Digg-Led revolts of the past several days, I feel obliged to comment.

Here is the story about ABC's bungling of Leaving Ron Paul off their poll
Here is the story about the DRM hex code revolt

In both cases, companies vastly underestimate the ability of the Netroots to organize quickly and decisively.

For those unfamiliar with who Ron Paul is, he is a libertarian who is strongly against government or corporate control of information or infringement upon civil liberties, and here is a comment from one of his supporters. I laughed very hard, yet was also heartened as I realized how silly abcnews looks compared to such witty and strident supporters. This comment was in response to a claim that a single person may be responsible for gaming their poll and causing Ron Paul to win:

[ Ok. ok, I confess. I'm solely responsible for all the internet hype Ron Paul has been receiving. Sorry I deceived everyone and made them think Americans were tired of watching their country be run into the ground by thieves, pimps, and war criminals. I'm sorry I went behind the mainstream media's back and created so much hype for a candidate that actually loves his country, thereby subverting the authority of our tireless mainstream news services, who toil ceaselessly to bring us the most up to date and relevant information about John Edwards $400 haircut. I'm sorry for fooling the elites into thinking Americans had hijacked their own democracy via the internet. You folks at ABC News have been doing such a good job the past 6 years. How could I do such a thing? I'm truly sorry.
Posted by:
mweber02 11:16 PM

Again, it's clear that the internet has given people the ability to quickly conduct very large demonstrations via the internet. Organizations that conduct censorship effectively declare war on this group of people, and it's a war that they simply cannot win. The media is losing it's ability to control information about candidates, and the internet crowd is loving it.
As people contemplate their freedom and ability to, as an individual, have as much or even more influence than a corporation, in a way they contemplate the indomitably and indivisibility of their spiritual nature, and strive towards the one, especially when the candidates they support are such libertarians (Ron Paul and Obama are the Internet's darling candidates. Obama has advocated releasing the Debates under an open-source license and advocates liberty in other ways. Ron Paul is a strident libertarian.)

As Above, so Below

I have a desire to express several things today. I'm going to start with a quote from the Gospel Of Thomas, for those familiar, it's a book found in the Nag Hammadi Library that was a Gospel that may have been contemporary with Mark.

" Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.

For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised.]"

His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"

Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed.""

I have often lamented the fact that I am not "psychic". Until I realize something, which can essentially be described by this verse. Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden will be disclosed to you. I know that everyone has purposes in life. People have certain conflicts within their psyche. They project these conflicts unto the outside world. A person who becomes aware of their own life will realize them. Questions, why do I always get obstacles when looking for a job, why does a certain type of situation keep appearing before me again and again?
Those who do not understand the spiritual nature of life have more difficulty coming to grips with them. When you realize that conflicts are subjective projections of your psyche into the outside world, and that metaphysical, meaningful patterns are everywhere, that the universe is alive, and if you understand the following quotations from the gospel of Thomas.

"Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].""

"Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

The kingdom of god is within you and without you. As Above, So below. Brahman is Atman.

You need to make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner. Make below like above and above like below.

Brahman is Atman. Make no distinction between the world outside of you and the world inside of you. Existentialism, the philosophy of modern desperation over their belief in a meaningless, chaotic, dead universe, pits you as alone in the universe and yourself meaningless. The opposite is true. The world is absolutely teeming with meaning, meaning goes deeper than things themselves. Your subjective experience of the world is a mirror of what is inside of you; yet the world itself is not simply of you. If is rather, the collective subjective conciousness of all mankind, for all mankind is god, co-creators, yet any one is indeed the whole, for god is indivisible just like each soul is indivisible.

The loving of the world, the loving of yourself, the respect for the beauty even of pain, and faith, not because simple disbelief in a book will damn you to hell, but because god is loving and all-pervading, and he can provide the eternal spring of love and spirit to his subjects. The most important commandment is to love your neighbors like yourself, for, as a Veda points out, truly, your neighbor IS yourself. Love is exponential in awakening others, each action as well is indivisible for it's effect on the world,

For indeed, all is one.

Aquarius, the Internet, and Power to the People

Let me go out on a limb here and say that for anyone who is interested in to any degree politics, that internet is an amazing, powerful, pervading entity. I have had a renewed appreciation for this fact by going to this website www.techpresident.com, which publishes a live graph of the number of myspace friends, eventful demands, youtube subscribers, and other statistics of each candidate.

I'm easily amused sometimes, and it's become a little hypnotic to see the graphs change every couple of hours. Of particular interest is the meteoric rise of previously obscure Barack Obama, and the formidable internet presence of the largely ignored Ron Paul.

Yep, it's the Aquarian age.Now, I've often advocated astrology as an awesome, powerful metaphor, and even for those who don't believe in Astrology per se, need not deprive their hungry right brains of the powerful psychological and societal metaphors present in it. Art students may not realize that astrological symbols are present throughout art ever since ancient times, all the way through the renaissance. And the reason is obvious: Astrology is a system, a lens through which to view the world.

If all of the information of the world, psychology, and people's personalities are pure light white, astrology is a prism through which we can see it's core components: color. We see how colors mix to make different colors, and how all colors can then combine again to form white. Even a relatively crude device like a TV can display a wealth of information by combining a few of these basic colors. Same with the world.
So, without assuming whether or not astrology "works", we can take the sign of Aquarius and come up with a multitude of powerful descriptors for what is happening now in the world. I'm going to seperate Aquarius into it's component aspects: Element, Quality, and sequentiality, and use them to build the sign of aquarius.

Aquarius is an air sign. Air signs are concerned with knowledge, communication, ideas, and objectivity. Aquarius is a fixed sign. Cardinal signs are concerned with incarnation of energies, and patience. It is association with crystalization. Aquarius is a transpersonal sign. The people of it often appear as an enigma, because they are more societal than person.
Connecting these things gives us an crystallizing sign of objectivity and society. It opposes the sign of Leo, who is associated with monarchy, and famous people. Aquarius is associated with democracy and the everyman.

And, if you open your mind, you should realize what is occurring now in the world is well described in this way. The internet is indeed taking power out of the hands of the few and giving it to the many. People are watched constantly, there are fewer secrets anymore. We live in an age of technology, and of the universality of knowledge. The world is interconnected now as well, and quickly injustice in the world is becoming realized and discouraged throughout the world.
The internet, perhaps the paragon of Aquarius, brings all things out. All people are equal in the eyes of the internet. The words of the lowliest blogger are equal to that of the most famous politician, both render as html text just the same, and people increasingly don't care how fancy your site is, there's a rise in minimalism.

The words "All men are created equal" was not a religious statement, it was a social statement, a natural statement. It was always true, but only now is this statement being realized.

Science and Life

I have realized, finally, a single, deeply fundamental difference between the purely "scientific" existentialism that we live today; and the religious lives that our ancestors have lived for thousands of years.
In the book I'm reading, "Secrets of the Jaguar", the earth is considered to be alive. Everything on earth is just as well alive, the classical elements, even various objects such as sand are themselves alive. Many who studied astrology were also convinced that the planets were themselves alive. Today, we need to remove from our minds the way we treat something as being a "god". Polytheism and paganism has for years been considered satanic. What many don't realize is that indeed many of what we consider "polytheistic" religions were actually more accurately defined as "henotheistic". The Hindu Upanishads, reserved for the initiated, stipulates a clear, deep belief in a single, all-powerful god, with the other gods simply being a part of all creation. The early mayans are also believed to have held a similar view. Either way, it is useful to understand that many of them, having believed that all things had consciousness, felt that it was obvious that the planets themselves would influence humans beings. Modern theorists clarify this by speaking of an aether, and consciousness units comprising the very fabric of space.
However, mainstream science, in deep contrast to the view that everything is alive, essentially believes that everything is dead. It needs no explanation that they do not believe that the planets, elements, or earth are alive, but in a sense, they imply that humans themselves are not alive. The basic view is that humans are merely a "biochemical machine", with the implication that we are basically robots and devoid of any meaningful notion of conciousness or free will.
I beg to differ, in my belief that all is alive, and at some level, all is one.

A meditation on art and symbols

Now, I have just read the introduction to a book called "The Secret Zodiac" The hidden art in mediaval astrology by Fred Gettings, and was inspired by how well and clearly the author speaks that I feel I must paraphrase him.

First, a word about history. I find it of absolutely no surprise that so many people do not like history. As presented and know in it's current form, History is the dry restatement of facts about actual events that occurred in our past, with the focus being on the accuracy of the findings.
Now, I understand that it is excellent that we attempt to create an accurate record of history and civilizations, for the purpose of archiving, but, to anyone who's not a historian, history itself would seem to offer nothing than the opportunity to impress others at dinner parties, or avoid looking stupid.
For, we rarely look into what the people themselves felt, believed, and knew. We rarely attempt to put ourselves in their place and feel what they were feeling.

Personally, as much as I have liked music and occasionally literature, art never appealed to me. I always felt that I could look at it for one second, and understand it and register it in memory, and that there was little else. When we look at Art nowadays, the focus seems to be on literature about art, and memorizing what other people have interpreted the meanings of art.

Unfortunately, by doing this, we effectively ...kill... the symbolism itself. For example, in a dream, the symbol of a heart may have a different meaning to each person, ranging from dread to intrigue.
Art in the past was always mean to be experienced, to feel the art and escape into it like a dream. Nearly all pre-renassaince art had a specific spiritual purpose in mind. Art comes from the soul and is meant to be experienced by the soul, anything less is a demotion.

Furthermore, the form of Christianity which has fallen upon us has been complicit in the death of these symbols. For a very long time, any mention of the polytheistic gods, their stories, of astrology of occult symbols could have easily gotten you hung or burnt. Even this century, the idea that all the occult is satanic, has continued, and this fear has kept us from honestly interpreting them, for we feel that any association with them would necessitates the devil having an influence on us.
Now, the VERY recent rise of old pagan religions, has perhaps brought about the re-emergence of the origonal meanings, and maybe even a flicker of the powerful emotional charge they contained.
We as a society, may not live much longer until we begin to feed our own spirit; so exiled by schizophrenic, materialistic, modern society, that it's rebirth is all but assured.

A reflection on my purpose for writing

This post is about my purpose for why I write.
I have found, as many have, that writing allows one to help crystalize the ideas that they have. I've spent most of my life, reading, observing, "dreaming", trying to make sense of the deeper meanings of existence. With each new thing I learn, It becomes incorporated into me, somewhere in the back of my mind. Sometimes I have trouble recalling everything and putting it together, synthesizing it. I write in order to force me to put things into words, and again, try crystallizing them into my memory.
I kind of doubt anyone is actually reading these, and, if so, Likely, none of you know who I am. I sort of prefer it that way; sort of how I've always been.
I write, to make more direct meaning of the experiences of my life, perhaps. For now, I'm writing about what I learn from facts and philosophical observations, but, recognizing how everyone has deep conflicts, the resolving or understanding for which, is their purpose for living, perhaps if I find one valuable enough, I will write about it.

Perhaps my life purpose is even to discover that life is simply to be lived. I know that many others live their lives simply living, and their purpose is to ponder the deeper meanings.

Such is life's contradictions. Edison's ideas came from trial and error, and he brings us such quotes as "genius is 95% perspiration, 5% inspiration". Nikola Tesla, on the other hand, could design things in his brain and knew if it would work. Another example, newton saw life as a clock with everything in order and working, with set laws, with contrast to the fluidity of einstein's genious, and his famous love of imagination.

This, the complex nature of the human psyche, the awkwardness with which we move amongst eachother, and amongst our own psyche, must be quite a tale and experience for our souls to know, if all those who write about OBE's and Astral Travel, are indeed not charlatans.

As long as we live in the world we do today, where our earth's resources are being depleted quickly, and have such weapons, as to cause our current state precarious, I shall speculate as to whether we humans can rise above. Capitalism, and corporations, in their own way, are like human conciousness. Highly efficient, corporations depend on constant growth without which they cannot survive in their current state. Unfortunately earth's resources are limited.
Conciousness, as far as we use to learn, and get jobs, in many western societies, has come at the price of the unconcious, our dreams and symbols, and our connection to nature and god, without which, we will perhaps die, for in an existentialist belief there would be no reason to live.
Corporations will die if not sustainably connected to the earth. Humans will die if the conciousness and unconciousness is not united and our collective schizophrenia healed.

I may sound glum, but In fact I am highly optimistic that we will live in society that is harmonious for our minds, and where nature is integrated tightly with society, in fact, my cousin has had recurring dreams of such a society for nearly his entire life.

But, I also believe that our psyches may face a collective "dark night of the soul" before we get to that, and perhaps we should all begin to excersize our free will and fight our remaining demons.
And we need to recognize that there are deeper things than ourselves; yet each is a part of all and is capable of effecting it.

I'l do what I can, and those who believe in the spiritual nature of life as do I, need to connect. "Science" itself remains resoundly atheist although perhaps even a majority of scientists believe in some higher meaning of life.

Peace and truth to each of you

Jung...

A few days ago, on a sort of whim, I have been having the desire to acquire knowledges of various kinds, first, the history channel's show on the dark ages, greeks has interested me, which perhaps brought back something that was always on the edge of my conciousness but never thoroughly explored, mythology, and how it relates to astrology, and the deep meanings of either.
So, on a whim I checked out a book on Norse Mythology, and a book on Jungian psychology, which I had always considered one of the most logical approaches of the unconciousness I'd ever seen, and has influenced me deeply, many being revisted many times, each time my understanding helping me more with it.
Now I'm up late and night having read a bit on Jung, and hoping to not forget a few things I've read. The first, being about anima/animus. The idea is that males have an anima in them, representing all the parts of them that are repressed, and different. An introvert's anima is extroverted, a prude's anima is deviant, ect. It represents all of the parts of that we wish to be, that perhaps we need to develop. It is the opposite of us, whose purposes are often revealed to us through our dreams.
The other, newer Idea I've had is how it relates of Jung's archetypes, a concept I always had trouble with, but now I understand it a bit better. One may think of ants, creatures who's parents did not teach them the ways of being an ant, or a bee, who is able to tell other bees the location of flowers through a complex dance. These things are instinctual, not taught.
Humans, having perhaps developed from apes, clearly has many deeper instincts, as related to survival. One may then think of the development of "conciousness", that ability to be aware of oneself, to think, to recognize onself as a seperate entity, as the first divorcing of the basic instincts to survive. One who grows crops and raises animals no longer needs to listen to or feel nature as the animals do, or seek move away from a storm if one has a sturdy dwelling.
Now, one should then think of mythology. For a long time, when christians persecuted the pagan religions, one who worshiped the gods was simply worshiping false Idols, or the devil. No body considered that the gods had any deeper meaning beyond that. In fact, the followers of the pagan religions could scarcely tell you that this story symbolized rebirth, or destruction of evil, or anything like that. People, lacking such a rational perspective, perhaps did'nt need an interpretation in order for them to intuitively understand the meanings behind them.
Jung writes of two stories. One, of a little girl who draws a complex series of dreams that are very old, obscure, and with deep meanings. Another, of a tribe who each morning spit on their hands and hold them out to the sun.
The girl did not come up with the stories on her own, they must have sprang from somewhere. The tribe, when asked of the meaning behind their rituals, could not answer. Yung felt it obvious that each morning they offered a piece of their soul to god.
It appears the man has practiced such deeply symbolic myths long before he could rationalize them, Indeed perhaps rational thought hampers their creation.
I think, that perhaps modern humanity is coming upon this realization...
1. First let me point to the growing acceptance that there can be no single "correct" religion, in the sense that followers of all other religions are doomed to hell,
2. That religion and mythology itself, such a primitive and powerful driver of all of humanity and it's unconcious symbols, is far from worthless.

The result of these forces are varied and many. First, there is a return to many pagan religions, with Wicca a growing and powerful force. Similarly, there has started to again be a few followers of the roman and greek gods, who hold ceremonies once again in the parthenon, and some people also are returning to the old norse gods. Rennasance writers also took to looking at these ancient myths as a source of inspiration; indeed the deepest and most ancient struggles of mankind would be the source for all writing that moves us with emotion.

One must wonder, indeed, if the overpowering conciousness we've developed, supressing our unconcious, and often the messages of our dreams, will ever come to an apex, that our unconcious, completely overwhelmed and marginalized, will leave our concious self with no nature, no source of life or energy for which to sustain ourselves with.

Indeed it appears as if the tree of knowledge which humans have bit from, our conciousness, is starting to overwhelm our roots and intuition.

Or, maybe the tree of life remains as strong, and remains dormant, ready to propel us, with the tree of knowledge, to a greater plane, where the unconcious, and the newly developed consciousness, can coexist, and therefore allow us to direct lifeforce with form, an ability currently only known by the masters of old.