Hank Wesselman: THE TRANSFORMATIONAL PERSPECTIVE (1)

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

 THE TRANSFORMATIONAL PERSPECTIVE (1)

AN EMERGING WORLDVIEW

By Hank Wesselman

 The Invitation

On a bright autumn day in New Mexico, in October of 2002, I crossed trails with Dr. John Mack at an international conference on altered states of consciousness at which both he and I were offering keynote presentations. John had read several of my unusual books and over dinner one evening, he asked me if I would consider contributing an essay to the Primacy of Consciousness Project that he was co-chairing with Trish Pfeiffer. When I responded with interest, John began to talk about the project’s epicenter – how the world might be transfigured as the public at large becomes increasingly aware that consciousness, not matter, is the ultimate reality and thus the ground of all being.

As I listened, my thoughts turned toward those parts of my life spent working as an anthropologist among the tribal peoples of Africa, for it was out there, among the indigenous traditionals, that I had first stumbled upon this perspective more than thirty-five years before. It was expressed differently, of course, but it was always there, right at the core of their worldview—the perception that the multi-leveled field of the dream is the real world; that we human beings are actually dreaming twenty-fours hours a day; and that the everyday physical world came into being in response to the dream, not visa-versa. These assertions were always accompanied by a conviction, strongly-held, that the dream world is minded, that it is consciousness itself, alive, intelligent, and power-filled, infusing everything that emanates from it with awareness, vitality, and life force.

Continue reading Hank Wesselman: THE TRANSFORMATIONAL PERSPECTIVE (1)

The Elephant

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

It is clear enough that America is broke.

It is equally clear that our country desperately needs public investment in so many neglected areas — housing, infrastructure, health care, you name it.

Is equally clear that government has grown to be an all-encompassing monster, threatening our rights and devouring our substance.

Most depressingly clear is that no one in public life is willing to mention
the elephant in the living room. Why are we broke? Why are so many crucial needs going unaddressed? Why has government grown to such threatening, overwhelming proportions?

The answer is simple and obvious, but politically unpalatable. War, and the preparation for war. In a word, the costs of empire.

Our so-called defense budget is nearly as large as that of the entire rest of the world combined! There is no conceivable national interest that could require 5% of the world to equal the armaments of the other 95%. Those costs become necessary only when you attempt to police the world, when, in short, you consider yourself a hyperpower, and bankrupt yourself in the process of trying to live up to your own paranoid fantasies.

War, it has been said, is the health of the state. The state, it has been
said, is the enemy of the citizen. I accept both those propositions. So when you are broke and when you are deprived of your rights in the name of security, put the responsibility where it belongs — on military commitments disproportionate to our strength, and on imperial ambitions inconsistent with free republican government. Ultimately, either the empire will win or the Republic will win, but we can’t have both.

Think about this, the next time you hear politicians dancing around the
question of why we are broke and insecure.

And all the saints…

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

I had a dispute once with an Episcopalian woman, who told me in some disdain that Protestants don’t have saints. Eventually I thought to ask her why so many Episcopalian and Anglican churches were named St. John’s, or St. Paul’s, or St. Mark’s, etc., but I never got a straight answer to that question. I think she considered the apostles to be in a class by themselves, so that although they were called saints, it was an honorific, something like calling someone a Kentucky colonel. In this I may not be doing her justice, but in any case, it is clear that she was acting from the not uncommon Protestant assumption that Catholics, as Catholics, are superstitious idiots.

(I don’t know why it is, but I continually find myself defending aspects of the Catholic Church in conversation with people who don’t have any experience of what they’re talking about. My own Catholic boyhood has always served as a useful window into a world that I could not otherwise understand emotionally. Maybe this is why I came in to a Catholic family.)

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Mr. Lincoln

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

I have been dismayed to watch the progressive assault on Abraham Lincolns life, morals, policies, and legacy. More than dismayed, I have been angered, because I have felt a deep connection to this amazing man since I first read of him so many decades ago. The more I learn, the more admirable he seems. As Carl Sandburg said, as soft as velvet, as hard as steel. And we owe to him, as much as to any other single individual, the preservation not only of a political entity called the United States, but the principle that ordinary individuals are capable of governing themselves, which would have been seriously challenged, had the United States broken up in the 1860s. Add to that legacy the final solution to the problem of how to remove slavery from the national conscience and the national economy, and you have a lifes work that ought to be, and until relatively recently was, beyond the reach of slander and detraction.

But slander apparently is an irresistible impulse in people. Being of themselves reproached by the existence of so much excellence, perhaps they feel compelled to pull it down, to say that the excellence really didnt exist, that it was all public relations and hero worship. Perhaps it never occurs to them that hero worship proceeds from the perception that some people transcend themselves and their limitations to become heroes. If the tide is again turning, and people again are beginning to see how much we owe Mr. Lincoln, I will be glad.

Why Lincoln Still Matters

By Matthew Carey
CNN

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Two hundred years after his birth in a log cabin in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln continues to fascinate.

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Robert Clarke’s cure, part two

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Jung’s Individuation Process

by Robert Clarke

The individuation process involves the expansion of the human personality with archetypal material flowing through from the collective unconscious in dreams. In other words, we may grow as personalities with whatever we experience of the outer world, but true individuation requires the assimilation also of material from the “Otherworld”, as the ancient Egyptians called it. If the individuation process goes to the highest spiritual levels, the Sacred Marriage of God and the World Soul may occur, while from the human angle the initiate may become a prophet of God, or a true priest. He may come to speak to the outer world on behalf of the inner or Otherworld, which is why Moses is the “mouthpiece” of God, and Jesus the “mediator” between Man and God.

Continue reading Robert Clarke’s cure, part two

Austrian firm hires by the stars

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

From this morning’s Schwartzreport.

Stephan Schwartz comments: “What struck me about this was not the New Age ha ha implicit in this piece but the fact that a company whose entire business is based on accurate statistics says it has such statistics supporting this claim, and is willing to act on them.”

We Only Employ Workers Born Under Specific Star Signs, Says Insurance Company
Mail (U.K.)

SALZBERG, Austria — A row has broken out in Austria after a company tried to recruit workers born under certain star signs.

The Salzburg insurance company posted an advert in major newspapers seeking employees for sales and management that were born under certain constellations, claiming statistics indicated that they were the best workers.

‘We are looking for people over 20 for part-time jobs in sales and management with the following star signs: Capricorn, Taurus, Aquarius, Aries and Leo,’ read the ad that appeared over the weekend.

It was followed by a wave of protests from equality groups and led to an investigation by the country’s anti-discrimination authorities.

The company is, however, sticking to its guns and a spokesman explained that the move was based on statistical research rather than superstition.

‘A statistical study indicated that almost all of our best employees across Austria have one of the five star signs.

‘We only decided to continue with that system and hire the best workers,’ the spokesman said.

An investigation by Austrian authorities showed that there was nothing illegal in choosing the employees according to their star signs, as there was no discrimination according to existing laws about gender, age, racial and other equality.

A spokeswoman for the employee’s association of Salzburg told local TV: ‘When an employer considers star signs and says: “I want to only hire Pisces, for an example, it must be assumed that within this group of people born under the sign of Pisces there are old and young people, women and women etc.

‘It does appear like a certain limitation, but it is not discrimination.’

Mr. Lincoln speaks to us of our time

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

I have been writing a column for the online monthly magazine The Meta Arts for a couple of years now. On the morning of the first, to my surprise I found that my column was featured on the home page, rather than only in its usual spot. That’s a first, and I’m very pleased. I hope you will be interested. Mr. Lincoln, speaking to us about our lives.

http://www.themetaarts.com/