#Western Psychology Integration

[buddhistinsightsjourney]

Buddhist Philosophy and Western Psychology Integration, Both emphasize reducing suffering, promoting personal development, and fostering mindfulness and compassion.

Buddhist practices like meditation and the Eightfold Path parallel Western psychological techniques such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Integrating these approaches can enhance mental well-being, addressing issues like depression, stress, and anxiety by cultivating positive thoughts and behaviors.

[astraystayyh]

We recently learned in our media class about the four indicators that reveal a country's use of propaganda to justify its actions/build a national and international consensus over its stance. This is exactly what Israel is doing now. Please read this to learn more about the Israeli propaganda (with sources) :

i. Establishing a distinct "us" versus "them"/"the others" divide: The Israeli media has been actively engaged in crafting a narrative that portrays Palestinians as sub-humans and animals, that deserve to be killed, butchered, and deprived of essential resources such as water, electricity and fuel. This dehumanizing narrative serves to rationalize the grave atrocities committed against Palestinians, reducing them to mere statistics, rather than acknowledging them as fellow human beings who have the right to be protected as well.

A recent example of this dehumanization (that encompasses children as well) is Israel's Prime Minister's words in a now-deleted tweet, on Oct 16, stating: "This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle."

This is also a common practice in Western media as a whole. In the context of conflict, the choice of words plays a significant role: Israelis are often described as "killed," and Palestinians are referred to as having "died" (example of BBC). The distinction can be seen as a way to omit Israeli responsibility, portraying the deaths of nearly 10,000 Palestinians as a result of circumstances beyond its control, rather than the outcome of deliberate and targeted actions.

ii. Use of emotion instead of logic: a stark example would be the whole international outrage that was first sparked due to the false claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies. This fake news was confidently shared by U.S. President Joe Biden, who later admitted that he had never actually seen any pictures of such events, neither did anyone in the IDF because there was never any instance of 40 beheaded babies (source) (also trust me if Israel did have any pictures of killed children they would not hesitate to share it)

CNN journalist who first shared this fake news has later apologized for being "misled." (which isn't the case that was a conscious choice of the news agency but that's another conversation)

Israel knew what it was doing by sharing this particular false information, they knew that the simple imagery of such a horrifying notion, even without concrete proof, would be a strategic tool to garner international support through emotional manipulation.

They are still trying to use emotion when it comes to children particularly to sway the public opinion : Israeli government spokesman has shared images of "fallen teeth of burnt children." This post has been debunked by dentists, pointing out many contradictions in the pics that conclude that these are props and not the teeth of actual children found in rubbles. (source)

(Meanwhile, there are factual documented videos and pictures of dead Palestinian kids and babies, decapitated, injured beyond belief, tangible proof of the war crimes Israel commits and yet the public outrage isn't the same, because Israel has already established that Palestinians are lesser people)

iii. Attempting to Influence Both Elites and Ordinary Citizens: In addition to their efforts to secure international support from world leaders, Israel has employed a multifaceted approach by spreading advertisements that regular civilians view. These ads serve to rationalize their actions, and they are strategically placed ahead of unrelated programming, including children's shows or games.

This tactic aims to integrate their ideology into various aspects of our lives, in order to promote their agenda and inundate us with recurrent pro-Israel messages. This strategy capitalizes on the psychological principle that the mind tends to retain information it encounters most frequently. (a more detailed video explanation)

iv. media manipulation tactics : For example, the night before Israel bombed the Baptist hospital in Gaza killing more than 1000 people, BBC published an article with the headline "Does Hamas build tunnels under schools and hospitals?" giving way to a "justification" for the heinous, war crime act that is bombing a hospital, under the guise of targeting Hamas hidden bases.

The use of the Israel-Gaza war as a headline for the news leads us to believe that this is a war with two equal (or slightly disproportionate) parties who are both able to defend themselves. Whereas this is a genocide led by Israel (a powerful military with international backing by the world's most powerful nations- U.S, U.K, France, Germany.. to cite a few) and CIVILIANS. Because those are the people that Israel is targeting, by bombing hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, refugee camps.

It is a genocide, an ethnical cleansing, an attempt to eradicate entire families, then to relocate the survivors out of Gaza, making it impossible for them to reclaim their land, and resulting in a total takeover of Palestine by Israel.

Another manipulation example (because there are so many) is the first and most prominent question that many Western journalists ask their guests: "Do you condemn the attacks of Hamas on Oct 7?"

This question completely disregards the root of this entire conflict, which is the 75-year ongoing colonization of Palestine. By omitting all the previous crimes against Palestinians that led to the attack (the killings, the wrongful imprisonments, the torture, the stealing of land…) these 'journalists' actively manipulate the public opinion, portraying the Hamas attack as unprovoked, when you cannot possibly expect a colonization to have 0 resistance.

And an honorable mention to the zionists who are trying to morph the anti-Israel stance into an anti-Jew one. This isn't about religion, I've said this once and I will say it again, Jews around the world are condemning the actions of their government. Just recently, Jews were arrested in NYC for standing against Israel. (source)

This is a humanitarian cause. We're humans, this is the one denominator factor that unites all. We read about previous genocides in history. We wondered how people could support the killings of innocent people, men and women, and children and babies. It is happening right now again, and media propaganda plays a significant role in shaping public perceptions.

I couldn't include everything here but please, I urge you to use your critical thinking. Don't believe everything the media tells you, and this is coming from a graduated journalist. We learn about propaganda and how to counter it, which also means we learn about how to manufacture it.

So don't be gullible, boycott the companies who support Israel (mainly HP, Siemens, AXA, Puma, Israeli fruits and vegetables, Sodastream, Ahava, Sabra. check BDS for more information) and urge your governments to support the ceasefire. We have a voice and we should use it, even if we're uncomfortable, even if we're scared. Do it. By staying silent you become complicit in genocide.

[greens-spilled-tea]

I think a lot of people tend to forget that many of the things that people associate with specific mental health disorders are actually normal and commonly experienced by most people at least at some point in their life. Many people hallucinate when on a lack of sleep or under the influence of drugs and that doesn't necessarily mean they have schizophrenia, many people lack focus sometimes and that doesn't mean they have ADHD, many people experience dissociation every once in a while and that doesn't mean they have a dissociative disorder. It only becomes a disorder when these things are pervasive enough or otherwise interrupts someone's daily life enough to cause distress and/or impairment. And so in the same way, I think it also would stand that someone experiencing having "multiple selves" would also be within normal expectations.

Plus, why do we think that having only a singular sense of self and identity is the default, anyways? Is that really so true around the world, or is that more of a societal norm pushed on us based on the culture we grew up in? Even in modern western psychology do we often examine the human psyche through the lens of there being more than one actor at play: Freud's concepts of the id/ego/supergo, and Jung's exploration of archetypes including the shadow archetype, being just a few examples of such.

I dunno, it just feels like a lot of people take common assumptions as facts. Even the Theory of Structural Dissociation starts at the assumption that most people experience themselves as a singular integrated self. I think people actually often overlook that when they talk about the ToSD, as they believe that integration into a singular self is proven by the existence of the ToSD when in fact the ToSD does the opposite where it assumes the singular integrated self to be true. How, then, could you actually use the ToSD to prove that people integrated into a singular self when it starts with that as an assumption? That's what we call circular reasoning.

Anyways. Just some 1am ramblings from me.

[so-true-overdue]

Ah, the delicate art of deception, Russia’s enduring magnum opus. In a world awash with superficial ephemera and algorithm-driven hysteria, it has emerged as a master puppeteer, manipulating the strings of disinformation to sow discord in the vulnerable Western psyche. The battlefield of choice? Social media platforms, of course—those gloriously fertile grounds where any unverified tweet or video clip can blossom into the viral infection of modern civilization.

Through meticulously crafted disinformation campaigns, Russia has weaponized truth, distorting it beyond recognition and serving it on a platter to the unsuspecting masses who consume it with insatiable gullibility. The irony is, while most of the Western world fancies itself intellectually superior, the very same platforms they created to exchange cat memes have now become tools of psychological warfare. And why wouldn’t they? What better way to dismantle a society than by first unraveling its understanding of objective reality?

Enter the antidote: verifiable journalism. Yes, that relic of an era when facts were sacrosanct and not merely alternative options on a drop-down menu. Only through rigorous, investigative journalism can we fortify the crumbling ramparts of reason against the onslaught of misinformation. In an age where everyone with a smartphone fancies themselves a beacon of truth, the numinous—a word traditionally reserved for spiritual transcendence—takes on new significance. It is through the sacred, almost mystical reverence for truth that we might reconnect with an epistemological certainty. The numinous, in this case, isn’t found in the divine but in the sheer act of seeking verifiable, unadulterated information—an endeavor that feels increasingly like an act of faith itself.

Yet, the dissonance remains palpable. Instead of scrolling through rigorously researched articles, many remain transfixed by whatever ideological poison is peddled by the latest bot, leaving the defenses of reason to rot. Because, after all, who needs journalistic integrity when you have a meme to confirm your worldview?

In this grim theater of cognitive warfare, it is not weapons but narratives that determine the victor. And unless we are willing to hold up verifiable journalism as the last bastion of intellectual integrity, the West may find itself losing more than just a few online arguments. It could lose the very essence of reality itself.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Published: Jul 13, 2023

As experienced professionals involved in direct care for the rapidly growing numbers of gender-diverse youth, the evaluation of medical evidence or both, we were surprised by the Endocrine Society’s claims about the state of evidence for gender-affirming care for youth (Letters, July 5). Stephen Hammes, president of the Endocrine Society, writes, “More than 2,000 studies published since 1975 form a clear picture: Gender-affirming care improves the well-being of transgender and gender-diverse people and reduces the risk of suicide.” This claim is not supported by the best available evidence.

Every systematic review of evidence to date, including one published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, has found the evidence for mental-health benefits of hormonal interventions for minors to be of low or very low certainty. By contrast, the risks are significant and include sterility, lifelong dependence on medication and the anguish of regret. For this reason, more and more European countries and international professional organizations now recommend psychotherapy rather than hormones and surgeries as the first line of treatment for gender-dysphoric youth.

Dr. Hammes’s claim that gender transition reduces suicides is contradicted by every systematic review, including the review published by the Endocrine Society, which states, “We could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” There is no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide-prevention measure.

The politicization of transgender healthcare in the U.S. is unfortunate. The way to combat it is for medical societies to align their recommendations with the best available evidence—rather than exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the risks.

This letter is signed by 21 clinicians and researchers from nine countries.

FINLAND Prof. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, M.D., Ph.D. Tampere University Laura Takala, M.D., Ph.D. Chief Psychiatrist, Alkupsykiatria Clinic

UNITED KINGDOM Prof. Richard Byng, M.B.B.Ch., Ph.D. University of Plymouth Anna Hutchinson, D.Clin.Psych. Clinical psychologist, The Integrated Psychology Clinic Anastassis Spiliadis, Ph.D.(c) Director, ICF Consultations

SWEDEN Angela Sämfjord, M.D. Senior consultant, Sahlgrenska University Hospital Sven Román, M.D. Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist

NORWAY Anne Wæhre, M.D., Ph.D. Senior consultant, Oslo University Hospital

BELGIUM Em. Prof. Patrik Vankrunkelsven, M.D. Ph.D. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Honorary senator Sophie Dechêne, M.R.C.Psych. Child and adolescent psychiatrist Beryl Koener, M.D., Ph.D. Child and adolescent psychiatrist

FRANCE Prof. Celine Masson, Ph.D. Picardy Jules Verne University Psychologist, Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants Co-director, Observatory La Petite Sirène Caroline Eliacheff, M.D. Child and adolescent psychiatrist Co-director, Observatory La Petite Sirène Em. Prof. Maurice Berger, M.D. Ph.D. Child psychiatrist

SWITZERLAND Daniel Halpérin, M.D. Pediatrician

SOUTH AFRICA Prof. Reitze Rodseth, Ph.D. University of Kwazulu-Natal Janet Giddy, M.B.Ch.B., M.P.H. Family physician and public-health expert Allan Donkin, M.B.Ch.B. Family physician

UNITED STATES Clin. Prof. Stephen B. Levine, M.D. Case Western Reserve University Clin. Prof. William Malone, M.D. Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine Director, Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine Prof. Patrick K. Hunter, M.D. Florida State University Pediatrician and bioethicist

Transgenderism has been highly politicized—on both sides. There are those who will justify any hormonal-replacement intervention for any young person who may have been identified as possibly having gender dysphoria. This is dangerous, as probably only a minority of those so identified truly qualify for this diagnosis. On the other hand, there are those who wouldn’t accept any hormonal intervention, regardless of the specifics of the individual patients.

Endocrinologists aren’t psychiatrists. We aren’t the ones who can identify gender-dysphoric individuals. The point isn’t to open the floodgates and offer an often-irreversible treatment to all people who may have issues with their sexuality, but to determine who would truly benefit from it.

Jesus L. Penabad, M.D. Tarpon Springs, Fla.

[ Via: https://archive.today/IRShy ]

==

The gender lobotomists just got called out.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

A recent study (sorry, some stuff I can only find in Hebrew, this is one of those articles) shows 83% of Israeli kids are experiencing psychological distress since Oct 7. Among the kids of the south, (the area which was hit the worst, and where even communities that were not massacred by Hamas, were evacuated following this massive invasion), the percentage is even higher, 93%. An important note is that the study sampled both Jewish and Arab kids based on the size of these populations (Arabs make up 21% of Israeli citizens).

The IDF published aerial footage of Hamas stealing humanitarian aid from regular Gazans, and beating them up. If there's a blog that claims to be sharing pro-Palestinian info, but doesn't share this kind of news, they're not really pro-Palestinian, they're just exploiting Palestinians as an excuse to be anti-Israel.

The leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is believed to have escaped from the northern Gaza City to the south, to Khan Younis, in a medical convoy. Just take in the cynical use of medical and humanitarian protections, to do anything which would prolong the fighting, no matter how many Palestinian lives it would cost. I'm trying hard to remember any other (real) liberation movement that was directly responsible for the deaths of so many of the people it seeked to liberate...

Five Israeli soldiers were pronounced dead yesterday, four were killed in Gaza, while one was badly wounded on Oct 7, and after over two months in hospital, passed away. The number of Israeli soldiers killed in the fighting in Gaza so far is 97. Up until number, the bloodiest battle Israel has had to wage in Gaza since withdrawing from it, was operation Protective Edge in 2014, with 70 Israeli soldiers killed.

The Palestinian Authority's Prime Minister said, when discussing plans for Gaza after the end of the war, that Hamas is an integral part of the Palestinian mosaic, and that dismantling Hamas is unacceptable to the Palestinian Authority.

Yesterday, an American base in Iraq was attacked by Hezbollah forces. You absolutely should ask yourself why the terrorist organization calling itself the "defender of Lebanon" has units in Iraq, and how is attacking American forces there helping Lebanon. Just a side note, Iran funds Hezbollah.

Also yesterday, the Yemenite terrorist group known as the Houthis announced that instead of going after Israeli ships only, they will target any ship that is headed for Israel through one of the most important naval routes in the world, and which is Israel's only connection to the far east. Essentially, it means they're placing Israel under a naval blockade. I'm looking forward to people condemning Yemen for occupying Israel. Just a side note, Iran funds the Houthis.

Today, it was published that in Cyprus, two Iranian political refugees, who entered the country with a fake passport, were arrested for collecting intel to carry out a terrorist attack against Israelis there. Just a side note, these refugees were in touch with Iran's political militarized force, IRGC. Stop me when you notice a theme here...

On the first even of Hanukkah, 138 hanukkiot were lit at the Kotel (the Western wall), one for each hostage. Since then, two of the hostages have been confirmed as murdered.

Following the Congress hearing where three presidents of prestigious universities couldn't explicitly say that a call for the genocide of the Jewish people constitutes bullying and harassment, UPenn's president resigned. That's good, but I wanna point out that, as their answers were obviously coordinated, down to repeating the exact same terms, there is no difference between UPenn's president and the ones of Harvard and MIT. They all need to go home. And the universities still have the burden of proof that this will be more than a cosmetic change in leadership.

I watched a TV interview with two married Israeli Harvard professors, who recounted how they went out and celebrated when Claudine Gay was elected as their university's president, and now they've chosen to leave Harvard and the US, to return to Israel, because the campus has become an environment that's just too toxic. I think if the amount of Jews who are moving to Israel, while the country is in a state of war, isn't a wake up call for the west, then nothing will be.

On the left is 25 years old Gal Eizenkott, the son of Israel's former Chief of Staff, and current minister, who is a part of the war cabinet, Gadi Eizenkott. I wrote about Gal in previous daily updates. Something I can add is that his father happened to be in an IDF command center, when they got the news of the incident in which Gal was killed. It took several minutes for the info to arrive at the command center, that one of those soldiers injured mortally was Gadi's son.

On the right is 19 years old Maor Cohen Eizenkott. Maor is Gal's cousin, and was a soccer player. He was killed a day after Gal, when an explosive device planted in a Gaza mosque blew up. Maor was buried today. May his memory be a blessing.

This is 53 years old Eitan Levi.

He was a taxi driver, who on Oct 7 took a lady to one of the kibbutzim on the border of Gaza. On his way back, he called his sister, telling her about the rocket barrages into Israel, and that he was scared. She stayed with him on the line as he was driving back from the south of Israel, but then he was stopped, his sister heard Arabic, shouts of "Allahu Akbar" and shots. Later, his phone was detected in Gaza, and he was considered kidnapped. Then Hamas released a video of its terrorists abusing a body. It was beyond recognition, but based on some accessories, the army finally determined it was Eitan, that he had been murdered on Oct 7, and it was his body that was kidnapped to Gaza. His sister watched the vid, but as the body is unrecognizable, she said in an interview, "He's the only family I have in this world. We don't even have a body to sit Shiva for. Until such time, I'm going to keep hoping he's alive, kidnapped and just injured."

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[awellboiledicicle]

Think humans in Palia have emotional regulation issues for the first like year?

Because it's hard to know how to act when your whole everything suddenly doesn't have much to go on outside of vague impressions of feelings about things you don't remember.

Which, honestly, is probably why humans in Kilima just kinda do whatever. Majiri probably just assume humans are Like that until it occurs to some scholar that there's probably just as much psychological distress in a human as a Majiri having memory loss and displacement. Which I feel soon becomes the standard assumption for interacting with humans for people in the know-- assume you're talking to the most barely keeping it together person possible and go from there.

Which is also probably why humans integrating into Palian society are given so much leeway re: knowing customs etc. Because a lot of trauma and stress responses would quickly get wrapped into "that's just how humans are".

I imagine if memory came back, it'd be very disjointed in how it did so--if it ever does and it isn't your brain trying desperately to make shit up to feel normal.

Imagine being a human and having super strong aversions to things and not knowing why, but after like 3 years you get a super strong nightmare about some terrible thing that happened and you're faced with "am i remembering, or am i processing my current emotions?"

Like i know my character Mo would be deeply uncomfortable being called a fire kind and wouldn't know why being likened to a wildfire for their passion makes a pit form in their stomach-- until a campfire gets out of hand in the woods and they freeze for a second before flashing back to orange skies and raining ash. People crying as everything they've ever known is destroyed, huddling in a field and trying to keep children calm. Because they're heavily based on me and I get a very specific way about wildfires because the western half of the USA and Canada just kinda goes up in flames literally every year and its a gamble if you'll need to flee your home any given week in the summer.

But we also don't know if the missing memories are amnesia or just... you were 3d printed and imprinted with enough knowledge to be an adult that wouldn't starve to death instantly.

Which means our characters could be having wild flashbacks and weird sense memories creep up on them out of nowhere, or experience frustration that there's legitimately nothing to remember.

Thoughts.

[aeth-eris]

Astrology Study Guide

This study guide aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of astrology, its diverse applications, and its impact on various aspects of life, culture, and society. Basic Astrology Concepts:

Zodiac Signs and Meanings

Planetary Movements and Retrogrades

Elements and Modalities

book rec :

"The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need" by Joanna Martine Woolfolk

Natal Chart Interpretation:

Understanding the Houses

Significance of Planetary Placements

Importance of Aspects

book rec :

"Astrology for the Soul" by Jan Spiller

"The Inner Sky" by Steven Forrest

Astrological Techniques:

Transits and Progressions

Solar and Lunar Returns

Synastry and Composite Charts

book rec :

"Planets in Transit" by Robert Hand

"Predictive Astrology: The Eagle and the Lark" by Bernadette Brady

Advanced Astrological Concepts:

Asteroids and Chiron

Midpoints and Harmonics

Planetary Nodes and Part of Fortune

book rec :

"Chiron and the Healing Journey" by Melanie Reinhart

"The Combination of Stellar Influences" by Reinhold Ebertin

Astrological Practices:

Chart Calculation and Drawing

Interpretation and Analysis Techniques

Application in Personal and Professional Settings

book rec :

"The Professional Astrologer" by Oner Doser

"The Astrology Podcast" by Chris Brennan

Historical Astrology:

Evolution of Astrological Practices

Cultural and Historical Significance

Influence of Astrology on Society and Culture

book rec :

"A History of Western Astrology" by S. J. Tester

"Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune" by Chris Brennan

Ethics and Responsibility in Astrology:

Confidentiality and Trustworthiness

Maintaining Professionalism and Boundaries

Empowering Clients and Practitioners

book rec :

"The Ethics of Caring" by Kylea Taylor

"Astrology, Psychology, and the Four Elements" by Stephen Arroyo

Astrology and Psychology:

Psychological Astrology Principles

Use of Astrology in Counseling and Therapy

Integrating Astrological Insight into Self-Discovery

book rec :

"Astrology for the Soul" by Jan Spiller

"The Astrology of Fate" by Liz Greene

Astrology and Predictive Techniques:

Timing Events with Transits and Progressions

Forecasting Techniques and Tools

Preparing for Potential Challenges and Opportunities

book rec :

"The Art of Predictive Astrology" by Carol Rushman

"Solar Arcs" by Noel Tyl

Astrology in Modern Context:

Popularity and Relevance in Contemporary Culture

Astrology in Media and Entertainment

Social and Online Astrological Communities

book rec :

"Astrology, Karma & Transformation" by Stephen Arroyo

"The Astrology of You and Me" by Gary Goldschneider

Helpful sites/apps :

astro.com

astromatrix.org / astromatrix app

Pattern app

Co-star app

[talonabraxas]

Science and the Rainbow Body

We have looked at some aspects of what modern biophysics, biophotonics, phonics (sound), and neurology can bring to our understanding of the Light Body. And the anatomical discovery of the microscopic primo vascular system and fascial tissue give us new perspectives on tsas, nadis, meridians, and the body’s energy channels in general. But at some point science is left in the dust. It cannot keep up with ancient esoteric knowledge, cooked for millennia in the crucible of direct inner experience, not intellectual theories. This particularly refers to the science of the Five Elements, and the loss and distortion of this knowledge in Western intellectual culture, medicine, and religion.

That massive misstep began long ago. While ancient Greece is taken to be the fount of our Western scientific tradition, it is also where materialism took hold fiercely, relegating scientists to the study of physical objects, functions, and ever smaller components. It’s only now, thousands of years later, that physics—and a good dose of Eastern spirituality—promise a revived view of a living, conscious universe. In nature, and in the realm of biology, it is grids of information-energy that rule supreme. Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen could not abide the idea of five intangible formative forces and downgraded the elements into gloppy fluids sloshing about in the spaces of the body. To be fair, this was in response to the Egyptian and Babylonian perspective, held for thousands of years, of the elements as deities. Empedocles famously called these deities “roots,” turning them into a proprietary system and establishing his place in history. But the notion of a space element, already an integral part of Pythagorean knowledge adopted from Egypt and Babylon a century before, was out in the cold. This left us with the fantasy of hydraulic fluids running the body (the humoral theory), which would pervade European and Middle Eastern thought right into the modern era—tainting astrology, alchemy, and reflected in the truncated four-part psychology of Jung, Keirsey, and Myers-Briggs. But while this artifact of materialistic thinking affected a hundred generations of beings, the true knowledge of elemental forces has remained intact, preserved in Tibetan Buddhism, Indian Shaivism, Sufic healing, and the Western gnostic lineages. That is a good thing, since they play a central role in the development of the Rainbow or Light Body. That is as it should be, since it is not myth that we are composed, mind and body, of five dynamic patterns of meaning and manifestation.

In the process of creation, of manifestation, the higher is separated from the lower: gravity and levity, roots and fruits, sky and earth. Now, we reverse the process, climbing back toward union. But a simple reversion to the primordial state, to a pure unity of warm consciousness incomprehensible to our dull intellect would miss the point. Our journey as an embodied five-elemental being is not just a movement within an illusion of time and space where “nothing actually happens.” The return is everything, and in many ways the fulfillment of creation itself. It is the ouroboros, the snake that devours its own tail, the completion of the circle, which is itself empty and contains everything.

This elemental transformation process is commonly portrayed in Tibetan thangkas and repeated in almost every ritual. Within a human skull cup we visualize five kinds of meat (forbidden foods, according to Brahmanical literature) and five kinds of bodily fluids. Their specific names are not important for this discussion, but they represent the Five Elements in their female and male aspects. This mishmash is the sum of our physical existence. Here is biology; here is embodiment; here is incarnation—being in the flesh. But here is the possibility of the birth of a new, non-material form as a vehicle for a renewed consciousness. These elements will be cooked and transformed into wisdom nectar, due to the magical addition of Om Ah Hung. In Tibetan, these three syllables represent form, energy, and consciousness, although I prefer G. I. Gurdjieff’s more colorful nomenclature of “Holy Denying, Holy Affirming, and Holy Reconciling.”

The reason for this transformative possibility in the first place is that the Five Elements exist within us in a multi-layered context. We contain the five material elements, but also the five original, pure Wisdom Elements, the cosmic spark as it were. The Hindu tradition describes five koshas or levels of existence, from gross to subtle, from bioenergetic to pure consciousness. The Buddhist world speaks of three bodies or kaya in a similar spectrum. The Kabbalah describes five worlds in a descending chain of existence. Whether we count in threes, fives, or beyond, the problem remains—how to unite the lower and the higher to create something altogether new. Traditionally, we perceive each of the Vajrayana chakras as the center of gravity of one of the elements—but containing an inner structure of five subelements. And so we have elements within elements waiting to be impregnated with divine radiance and to ascend to their true potential.

Cooking the elements

Down in the depths of our viscera, in the dark recess of the pelvic container, is a secret bindu, an energetic sphere, a “bubble” of immense import. The yogin or yogini will have long prepared, through visualization, mantra recitation, focused meditation, and the gathering of blessings, creative forces, and the richness of material, planetary, biological, and spiritual energies. Prolonged purifications have taken place, readying for this moment. Now, in this most secret of places, the alchemical process, the gestation of a new Light Body begins. Conception took place long ago, in different forms of initiations, meetings with the guru, or even a direct download from transcendent sources. Now the quickening begins, the “cooking” process. As in our visualized skull cup of animals and fluids, we ignite the fire in the belly and fan it with the reversed turbulence of our “downward descending wind.” The digestive and liver fire is harnessed, and winds are drawn down and held in the vase of the belly. The anus and lower doors are drawn up and sealed. As the sub-navel furnace blazes, the Earth mandala in the belly dissolves and is drawn upward by a natural osmosis, the force of levity, of ionic attraction, in the oldest dance in the universe.

Spiral dynamics

In this “mating” process, the flame rises up to melt the Wisdom Elements dwelling in the head. This inner heat or tummo process involves spiral energies. The heavenly father energies move clockwise, always. The earthly mother energies move in an anti-clockwise spiral, always. This is clearly seen in the way that a mantra circles within the heart, depending on whether one is self-visualized as a male or female yidam or deity form. The male mantra circles to the right and the female mantra always circles to the left (from the perspective of your own body’s orientation). Spiraling down, the flow moves through the chakras producing the “four joys.” But it spirally ascends to the head again, thrusting through the chakras with another more intense effulgence of innate bliss and the experience of pure awareness (or emptiness, as it is misleadingly called).

By this process, each element in its lower or biological state is transformed, united with and blended with its wisdom form. But what is very surprising here is that, in the Vajrayana tradition, the story somehow ends. We rest in this new state of unfabricated being-knowing, merging it with various aspects of mundane existence, including arising thoughts and feelings and experiences. All is painted with a new brush. The “doors of perception” are cleansed in a utopian brave new world of consciousness.

Beginning, not ending

But the journey is far from over. What has been described above in traditional terms involves a massive movement within the water-based electron grid of cells and interstitial tissue. It is a volcanic eruption and lava flow of the packets of massed biophotons from the cerebrospinal fluid and brain’s ventricles. We have every reason to understand that photons are the vehicles of consciousness—or that consciousness is an intrinsic quality of photons. And we have clear indications that the structured water in cells, tissues, and blood is the electron-source of prana or lūng itself. As a result of this co-mingling of side-to-side, front-to-back, and finally top-and-bottom, the Light Body begins to form in earnest. Each of the elemental chakras is now part of the Rainbow anatomy containing a mandala of subelements brimming with pristine Wisdom Element force. Channels, energy, and consciousness—tsa, lūng, and tiglé—are all benefactors of the primary template of all things: the Five Elements known as Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space.

Rainbow Body by Talon Abraxas

Rainbow Body by Talon Abraxas

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Ruth Wisse

Hamas recently beat the competition with a demonstration of savagery unlike the earlier improvised pogroms in Europe to which it has been compared. October’s slaughters were plotted with crucial input from Gazans employed in Israeli homes they had scouted and mapped for the purpose, making this the first military campaign designed to culminate in acts of beheading, torture, and rape of predetermined victims. As attempts to destroy Israel through conventional warfare had only made Israel militarily stronger, the new tactics aimed at destroying the Jews’ will to remain among antagonists sworn never to leave them in peace. More than to intimidate, these attacks were made to demoralize.

Survivor-witnesses describe new refinements of psychological warfare. Hamas murdered parents and children in each other’s presence so as to sharpen the survivors’ agony. They took hostages—not, as others do, for eventual exchange—but to taunt the country with images of prisoners’ suffering, and fear that many would never be returned. Every Jewish value—respect for women, honoring the human being who was made in the image of God—was gleefully defiled.

As for the Jews living in nearby Gaza, many of them self-described Jewish “peaceniks,” they had prided themselves on the medical help and hospitality they extended to their Gazan neighbors, persuaded that cooperation was obviously to everyone’s benefit. The terrorists exploited the Jews’ desire for peace as a means of entrapment and further opportunity for torment. By attacking on a Jewish holiday and a secular festival, they intended to destroy the Israelis’ joy in life. Anyone reading Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s exhilarating book about the collective strengths that constitute The Genius of Israel will recognize how Hamas turned precisely those virtues into weapons of torture to tear the Jewish people apart.

October’s slaughters were plotted with crucial input from Gazans employed in Israeli homes they had scouted and mapped for the purpose, making this the first military campaign designed to culminate in acts of beheading, torture, and rape of predetermined victims.

Nor does this exhaust their inventiveness. The Arabs’ strategy of martyring generations of their own people in the cause of eliminating Israel dates back to the 1947 refusal of Arab leaders to accept the partition of Palestine into two states—in order to keep Arabs perpetually homeless. Arabs were to remain permanently displaced as evidence of Israel’s “occupation” while Israel integrated the over 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands and granted participatory citizenship to over 2 million Arabs who chose to remain in its boundaries.

Taking this tactic of martyring their fellow Arabs to a new level, Hamas turned Gaza into suicide central. Above ground, residents were allowed to conduct a quasi-normal life, knowing that, below ground, every school, every hospital, and many private homes were booby-trapped for the Israelis whom their leaders would lure into their cities. The IDF continues to uncover a tremendous amount of infrastructure built over years, confirming Hamas’ intention of invading and killing Israelis en masse. In the words of one of its soldiers “[It] is clear they expected us to arrive and laid plans to exact a cost in the form of IDF casualties.” The attack of Oct. 7 had to be monstrous enough to provoke Israel into full-scale war in the hope of rescuing the hostages and destroying the terrorists—a plan that would also ensure the collateral death of as many Gazans as possible to attract Western sympathy.

[darkmaga-returns]

By Brian C. Joondeph

World War III is well underway, both conventional wars, as in NATO versus Russia via Ukraine, and the US playing both sides of a battle between Israel and Iran and their proxies. There is also a psychological war underway.

This is the war against the First Amendment in America and the longstanding Western concept of freedom of speech in many other countries. Misinformation and disinformation are the new enemies, concepts known only in the eyes of the beholder.

One man’s disinformation is another man’s speaking truth to power. Who is the referee? We, the people, or the administrative state?

This is a multifaceted war, including all things COVID, vaccinations, election integrity, crime statistics, illegal immigration, and the Earth’s climate. I want to focus on climate change, once known as global warming.

[shamandrummer]

Initiation into Shamanism

Shamanic initiation is a rite of passage, connecting the apprentice shaman intimately to Spirit. It is probably the most powerful and least understood of all forms of spiritual awakening. It is not achieved by having mastered a body of knowledge or having completed some long-term training program. Though it may be set in motion by an apprentice's human teachers as part of an ordered training process, authentic initiation can only be conveyed by the spirits themselves. Ultimately, shamanic initiation takes place between the initiate and the spirit world. It is the spirits who choose and make the shaman.

The most frequent and most genuine manner of shamanic initiation is that of crisis, often involving psychological and physical suffering. The encounter with illness, suffering, and death not only opens the world of the spirits to the shaman, it also provides an experiential ground for the healing work that the shaman will later be doing. Election can also occur through heredity, signs at birth, a proclivity or gift that is recognized in childhood, through a realization arising in the course of a ceremonial event, or in the experience of a vision quest.

Shamanic initiation is typically the final step in becoming a shamanic healer, a process that is facilitated by the aspirant's shamanic teachers as part of a training regimen. However, initiation may also be spontaneous, set in motion by Spirit's intervention into the initiate's life. To be initiated by a helping spirit forever transforms your life. For the uninitiated, this can be problematic to say the least. They may have no clear idea of what is happening to them, and may find themselves overwhelmed by fear of their nonordinary experience.

The Dismemberment Journey

Initiation into shamanhood often involves the visionary experience of symbolic dismemberment--the experience of being taken apart, devoured, or torn to pieces. In a classic dismemberment journey, the apprentice witnesses their own body being torn apart and perhaps completely destroyed. The apprentice dies a symbolic death and is then restored and brought back to life, whole and empowered. At its deepest level, the dismemberment experience dismantles our old identity. It is a powerful death-and-rebirth process. The experience of being stripped layer by layer, down to bare bones forces us to examine the bare essence of what we truly are.

Anthropologist Felicitas Goodman, the modern discoverer of Ecstatic Body Postures, notes that Siberian shamans considered dismemberment to be an essential phase of initiation for healers. Goodman researched and explored ritual body postures as a means to achieve a bodily induced trance experience and discovered that this archetype appears to be universal. In her trance work with Westerners, those who experienced spontaneous dismemberment visions were invariably destined to become various kinds of healers.

Completing this restorative rite is precisely the task of the shaman. As Joan Halifax explains in her book Shamanic Voices, "The shaman is a healed healer who has retrieved the broken pieces of his or her body and psyche and, through a personal rite of transformation, has integrated many planes of life experience: the body and the spirit, the ordinary and nonordinary, the individual and the community, nature and supernature, the mythic and the historical, the past, the present and the future." The cure for dismemberment is remembering who we actually are. As Halifax puts it, "To bring back to an original state that which was in primordial times whole and is now broken and dismembered is not only an act of unification, but also a divine remembrance of a time when a complete reality existed."(1)

Shamanic initiation functions as a transformer--it causes a radical change in the initiate forever. An initiation marks a transition into a new way of being in the world. It informs us about the mystery of life and death. According to noted shamanic teacher and author Sandra Ingerman, "Initiation is the death, dismembering, and dissolving of old forms, structures, and ways of life. And I have come to understand that true initiation is allowing Spirit to sing into creation the new forms and new creations. Allowing Spirit to sing formlessness into form creates a new evolution of consciousness."(2)

Shamanic initiation is complicated, profound and nothing short of life-altering--in the best possible way. While it may not be easy, it will improve your life for the better with patience, trial and error, and the passage of time. If you find yourself in one, all you can do is trust the process, hang on tight, and get ready for a newly awakened life.

Global Dismemberment

There is so much more to discover and explore about shamanic initiations and the deep spiritual knowledge held in Indigenous cultures. Now that the present world-age during which all human civilization developed is ending, it might be time to pay more attention to the experience of those whose world has already ended: Indigenous peoples. Depending on how you count them, there may be up to three hundred million Indigenous people still on the planet. Most are survivors of colonialism. The genocide of the Indigenous peoples was the beginning of the modern world for Europeans, but the former remain as veritable end of the world experts. Models for restoring our relationship with the earth exist in the cultures of Indigenous peoples, whose values and skills have enabled them to survive centuries of invasion and exploitation.

From an Indigenous perspective, the global climate and ecological crisis represents a mass shamanic dismemberment--the experience of being taken apart, devoured, or torn to pieces on a global scale, allowing for a shift of awareness and transformation of collective consciousness. The acceleration of planetary crises can either provoke a planetary awakening and a shift into a regenerative planetary culture based on shamanic wisdom and sustainable principles, or a destruction of human civilization in its current form, and perhaps extinction for our species. We are all responsible, for better or worse.

As the global upheaval intensifies, our interest in shamanism represents an attempt to retrieve and include a part of our inner and outer lives that technology and civilization has consistently denied, suppressed, or destroyed since the advent of agriculture. The cultural imprinting of hierarchical, agriculturally based societies leaves the individual outside the realm of personal spiritual experience. Any sense of the Great Mystery is beyond the individual's grasp. In the contemporary world, where our rites of passage for young men mean going to war, in a world where social turmoil and environmental disaster induce fear, anxiety and despair, the way of the shaman, the one who is a master of the initiatic crisis, might well be of great value for all of us.

Joan Halifax, Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives (Penguin, 1991), pp. 18-22.

Sandra Ingerman. "Messages from Sandra Ingerman." Transmutation News (Mar. 2011): https://www.sandraingerman.com/transmutation-news/english/english-2011/page/2/.

[madamlaydebug]

On this day, remembering James Baldwin

Happy Heavenly Birthday to the profound, brilliant author and activist Mr. James Arthur Baldwin!

James Arthur Baldwin was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.

Baldwin's essays, such as the collection Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America, and their inevitable if unnameable tensions.

Some Baldwin essays are book-length, for instance The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976).

His novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration of not only blacks, but also gay men—depicting as well some internalized impediments to such individuals' quest for acceptance—namely in his second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956), written well before gay equality was widely espoused in America.

Baldwin's best-known novel is his first, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).

SOCIAL & POLITICAL ACTIVISM:

He wrote about the movement, Baldwin aligned himself with the ideals of the Congress of Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC). In 1963 he conducted a lecture tour of the South for CORE, traveling to locations like Durham and Greensboro, North Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana. During the tour, he lectured to students, white liberals, and anyone else listening about his racial ideology, an ideological position between the "muscular approach" of Malcolm X and the nonviolent program of Martin Luther King Jr..

By the Spring of 1963, Baldwin had become so much a spokesman for the Civil Rights Movement that for its May 17 issue on the turmoil in Birmingham, Alabama, Time magazine put James Baldwin on the cover. "There is not another writer," said Time, "who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment in North and South."

[haggishlyhagging]

It is a question of finding the right model. We are born into a world in which sexual possibilities are narrowly circumscribed: Cinderella, Snow-white, Sleeping Beauty; O, Claire, Anne; romantic love and marriage; Adam and Eve, the Virgin Mary. These models are the substantive message of this culture—they define psychological sets and patterns of social interaction which, in our adult personae, we live out. We function inside the socioreligious scenario of right and wrong, good and bad, licit and illicit, legal and illegal, all saturated with shame and guilt. We are programmed by the culture as surely as rats are programmed to make the arduous way through the scientist's maze, and that programming operates on every level of choice and action. For example, we have seen how the romantic ethos is related to the way women dress and cosmeticize their bodies and how that behavior regulates the literal physical mobility of women. Take any aspect of behavior and one can find the source of the programmed response in the cultural structure. Western man's obsessive concern with metaphysical and political freedom is almost laughable in this context.

Depth psychologists consider man the center of his world—his psyche is the primary universe which governs, very directly, the secondary universe, distinct from him, of nature; philosophers consider man, in the fragmented, highly overrated part called intellect, the center of the natural world, indeed its only significant member; artists consider man, isolated in his creative function, the center of the creative process, of the canvas, of the poem, an engineer of the culture; politicians consider man, represented by his sociopolitical organization and its armies, the center of whatever planetary power might be relevant and meaningful; religionists consider God a surrogate man, created precisely in man's image, only more so, to be father to the human family. The notion of man as a part of the natural world, integrated into it, in form as distinct (no more so) as the tarantula, in function as important (no more so) as the honey bee or tree, is in eclipse, and that eclipse extends not over a decade, or over a century, but over the whole of written history. The arrogance which informs man's relation with nature (simply, he is superior to it) is precisely the same arrogance which informs his relationship with woman (simply, he is superior to her). Here we see the full equation: woman = carnality = nature. The separation of man from nature, man placing himself over and above it, is directly responsible for the current ecological situation which may lead to the extinction of many forms of life, including human life. Man has treated nature much as he has treated woman: with rape, plunder, violence. The phenomenological world is characterized by its diversity, the complexity and mutuality of its interactions, and man's only chance for survival in that world consists of finding the proper relationship to it.

-Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating

[lboogie1906]

James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was a novelist, playwright, and activist. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son, explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century North America. Some of his essays are book-length, including The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and The Devil Finds Work. An unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, was expanded and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award-nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro. One of his novels, If Beale Street Could Talk, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning dramatic film.

His novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration of not only African Americans but Gay and bisexual men while depicting some internalized obstacles to such individuals’ quests for acceptance. Such dynamics are prominent in his second novel, Giovanni’s Room, well before the Gay Liberation Movement.

His influence on other writers has been profound: Toni Morrison edited the Library of America’s first two volumes of his fiction and essays: Early Novels & Stories and Collected Essays. A third volume, Later Novels, was edited by Darryl Pinckney, who had delivered a talk on him in February 2013 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of The New York Review of Books, during which he stated: “No other Black writer I’d read was as literary as Baldwin in his early essays, not even Ralph Ellison. There is something wild in the beauty of Baldwin’s sentences and the cool of his tone, something improbable, too, this meeting of Henry James, the Bible, and Harlem.”

One of his richest short stories, “Sonny’s Blues,” appears in many anthologies of short fiction used in introductory college literature classes. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[hypotheticalpeople]

girl who has developed a synthetic metatheory to place a wide diversity of theories and models into one single framework on the basis of a "spectrum of consciousness" from archaic consciousness to ultimate spirit, presented as a developmental model. the model is based on development stages as described in structural developmental stage theories; various psychic and supernatural experiences; and models of spiritual development. her AQAL (All Quadrants All Levels) model, extends this with a grid with four quadrants (interior-exterior, individual-collective), synthesizing various theories and models of individual psychological and spiritual development, of collective mutations of consciousness, and of levels or holons of neurological functioning and societal organisation, in a metatheory in which all academic disciplines and every form of knowledge and experience fit together. her framework consists of four fundamental concepts and a rest-category: four quadrants (interior-exterior, individual-collective), several levels and lines of development, several states of consciousness, and "types", topics which don't fit into these four concepts. it is one of the most comprehensive approaches to reality, a metatheory in which all academic disciplines and every form of knowledge and experience fit together coherently. "levels" are the stages of development, from pre-personal through personal to transpersonal. "lines" are lines of development, the several domains of development, which may process uneven, with several stages of development in place at the various domains. "states" are states of consciousness; persons may have a terminal experience of a higher developmental stage. "types" is a rest-category, for phenomena which don't fit in the other four concepts. the individual building blocks of her model are holons, which means means that every entity and concept is both an entity on its own, and a hierarchical part of a larger whole. holons form natural "holarchies", like Russian dolls, where a whole is a part of another whole, in turn part of another whole, and so on. in order for an account of the Kosmos to be complete, it must include each of these five categories. only such an account can be accurately called "integral," and AQAL is one suggested architecture of the Kosmos. her framework has a four-quadrant grid with two axes, namely "interior-exterior," akin to the subjective-objective distinction, and "individual-collective." the left side (interior) mirrors the individual development from structural stage theory, and the collective mutations of consciousness from Gebser. the right side describes levels of neurological functioning and societal organisation. she uses this grid to categorize the perspectives of various theories and scholars: interior individual perspective (upper-left quadrant) describes individual psychological development, as described in structural stage theory, focusing on "I"; interior plural perspective (lower-left) describes collective mutations in consciousness, as in Gebser's theory, focusing on "We"; exterior individual perspective (upper-right) describes the physical (neurological) correlates of consciousness, from atoms through the nerve-system to the neo-cortex, focusing on observable behaviour, "It"; exterior plural perspective (lower-right) describes the organisational levels of society (i.e. a plurality of people) as functional entities seen from outside, e.g. "They." each of the four approaches has a valid perspective to offer. the subjective emotional pain of a person who suffers a tragedy is one perspective; the social statistics about such tragedies are different perspectives on the same matter. all are needed for real appreciation of a matter. all four perspectives offer complementary, rather than contradictory, perspectives. it is possible for all to be correct, and all are necessary for a complete account of human existence. each by itself offers only a partial view of reality. modern western society has a pathological focus on the exterior or objective perspective. such perspectives value that which can be externally measured and tested in a laboratory, but tend to deny or marginalize the left sides (subjectivity, individual experience, feelings, values) as unproven or having no meaning. this is a fundamental cause of society's malaise, and the situation resulting from such perspectives is "flatland". the model is topped with formless awareness, "the simple feeling of being," which is equated with a range of "ultimates" from a variety of eastern traditions. this formless awareness transcends the phenomenal world, which is ultimately only an appearance of some transcendental reality. the AQAL categories—quadrants, lines, levels, states, and types—describe the relative truth of the two truths doctrine of Buddhism