By Tai Carmen

“As an artist, I think delusion is the greatest gift that you can bear.” ~ Lady Gaga 

You’re not supposed to take pop music seriously. By definition, it is fluff; pure sugar. But sugar, sweet and insubstantial as it is, can be a dangerous thing.

Music is a powerful force. And pop music holds great influence over the masses. It’s worth noticing, then, what kind of messages are being broadcast to our minds via the pop music industry.

As the slew of buzzing conspiracy sites can attest, there has been a distinct and disturbing trend in the music imagery of the past several years, which propagate the glamorization of mind control themes.

Whether it’s Lady Gaga portraying an insane asylums through a high fashion lens in “Marry the Night,” or Britney Spears posing as a laboratory marionette with tubes coming out of her bandaged fingers in “Hold it Against Me,” pop stars are all pumping out the same recycled slew of mind control themes.

Many people may not realize that the practice of trauma-based mind control has a chilling history in the US: in the 1950′s and 60′s the CIA conducted covert and illegal experiments on unwitting citizens, now declassified and known as project MK ULTRA.

If you’re not familiar with this subject, be prepared to discover a disturbing facet of American history. The image below is shocking–it’s the only photographic image I can find online from the MK Ultra files, most of which were destroyed–but I offer it under due consideration to substantiate the argument that conspiracy theories of trauma-based mind control are not so far fetched.

The published evidence indicates that Project MK ULTRA was a government-funded operation created with the goal of studying various methods of mind control, using the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.

Project MK ULTRA was first brought to public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission.

Although the CIA insists that MK ULTRA-type experiments have been abandoned, 14-year CIA veteran Victor Marchetti has stated in various interviews that the CIA routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and that CIA mind control research continues. In a 1977 interview, Marchetti called the CIA claim that MK ULTRA was abandoned a ‘cover story.’  (Source)

So why does the fashion and music industry glamorize these atrocities? The question, complete with spooky implication, remains. But that such themes recur with bizarre and increasing regularity, should be of interest, not just to conspiracy buffs, but to every thinking citizen.

According to experts, one of the consequences of trauma-based mind control is the creation of several different personalities, called alter egos. This deliberate compartmentalization and fragmentation of the whole person allows for more control over the subject/victim: one alter ego, for instance, could hide something from another. So, in theory, a “dark” alter ego could be created to carry out actions distasteful to the dominant personality.

Considering this, it’s odd to note how many celebrity recording artists have publicly discussed their “alters” as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“This alter ego takes over when I am on stage. She is really wild and daring and a much more impulsive performer than I am. Her name is Britannia. When I am her I feel I can take on the world, normally I am pretty shy.” ~ Britney Spears

“Slim Shady is just the evil thoughts that come into my head, things I shouldn’t be thinking about.” ~ Eminem

“I had to separate the two because Mary is nice, you know, intelligent. Brook-Lynn is crazy and ignorant and she don’t care.” ~ Mary J. Blithe

“I have someone else that takes over when it’s time for me to work and when I’m on stage, this alter ego that I’ve created that kind of protects me and who I really am. When I’m onstage I’m aggressive and strong and not afraid of my sexuality. The tone of my voice gets different, and I’m fearless. I’m just a different person.” ~ Beyonce

The Beyonce/Sasha Fierce phenomenon has been particularly driven home, as can be experienced during this odd footage glamorizing the splitting of personalties, shown at a Beyonce concert.

Notice the two Beyonces are quite obviously divided into “pure/innocent/good” Beyonce and “sexy/corrupt/dark/bad-in-a-good-way” Beyonce. Obviously, the former is portrayed as a goody-two-shoes and a wimp, and the vixen wins our favor with her superior, fierce fashion and high-powered queenly self-possession. We can hardly help but feel our sympathies allied with the dark Beyonce, aka Sasha Fierce. But who is Sasha Fierce?

“Many years ago,” Beyonce explained to the press, “I named my alter ego Sasha and it’s something that stuck. So when I was trying to decide the title of my album. I realized it had two different sounds. One represented who I really am and one sounded like my alter ego, so I decided to split it into two. Because I feel like Sasha is a big treat for my fans. It’s definitely exciting being able to have an excuse to be so over the top.”

Anyone with knowledge of psychology knows that splitting the personality into “good” and “bad” is an unhealthy coping mechanism.

“Splitting can be seen as a developmental stage and as a defense mechanism. In psychoanalysis, there are the concepts of splitting of the self as well as splitting of the ego. This stems from existential insecurity, or instability of one’s self-concept. The borderline personality is not able to integrate the good and bad images of both self and others, so that people who suffer from borderline personality disorder have a bad representation which dominates the good representation.” (Source.)

As humans we have both positive and negative impulses. We should foster self-acceptance and positive action, not internal division. To promote compartmentalizing, rather than integrating, these conflicting inner aspects is to advocate a problematic road.

“What I feel onstage,” says Beyonce, “I don’t feel anywhere else. It’s an out-of-body experience. I created my stage persona … so that when I go home, I don’t have to think about what it is I do. Sasha isn’t me. The people around me know who I really am.”

It seems odd for the singer to describe wanting to “forget what it is she does,” like she is some kind of sex worker. Not to mention the feeling of being outside her body while channeling a personality, which she has described in interviews as “someone I wouldn’t want to meet on the street,” sounds notably dissociative.

I won’t get into the whole demonic possession thread, but hey, it’s understandable why some folks would go there. Beyonce went from the girl next door to a vixen sporting satanic goat skull imagery overnight. Now Beyonce has told presss: ”Sasha is done. I killed her.”

These sound more like the words of a troubled teen than a world-renowned performer in her thirties. And troubled teens everywhere are hanging on her every word.

Nicki Minaj, known for her brash style, multiple wigs and personalities, describes her alter ego “Roman Zolanksi” as, “a crazy boy who lives in me and says the things that I don’t want to say. He was born just a few months ago. I think he was born out of rage. He was conceived in rage. So he bashes everyone. He threatens to beat people and he’s violent.”

The interviewer, of course, treats all of this like it’s perfectly normal and even funny, despite Nicki’s strangely expressionless delivery: “That must be nice,” he says off camera, “to have, like, an ignorent loud mouth so you can just sort of blame every–” Nicki Interjects: “He wants to be blamed. I don’t want to blame him. I ask him to leave. But he can’t. He’s here for a reason. People have brought him out. People conjured him up and now he won’t leave.“

(Just disregard all the sensationalist text added to the video below; I couldn’t find  a clip of the interview without it.)

The fact that she concludes another interview by snarling demonically and proclaiming that “anybody who ever doubted Roman is going down in a coffin” is seen by the world as harmless theatre. More recently she has been quoted as saying that Roman is her favorite of all her different personalities because  “everybody else started to like Roman, so he became my favorite.”

In a recent interview with Ryan Seacrest, Minaj details creepily:  ”He wanted to show that not only is he amazing, but he’s never going to be exorcised, even when they throw holy water on him, he still rises above.”

That the scratchy-voiced singer chanting “Take your medication, Roman! Take a long vacation, Roman!” while handcuffed to an upright table, electroshock -style, and surrounded by hooded figures has been touted by the press as a “show stealer” at the recent Grammy Awards ceremony shows the sad state of pop music today. (She has called the performance “Roman’s coming out party.”) That she is shouting “Stop! Get me out of here!” in the beginning of the performance is emblematic of a troubling trend.

Electroshock therapy imagery is everywhere these days. It’s hard to find a Lady Gaga video without it. She skirts the issue in “Yoü and I,” a video fraught with mind control imagery and multiple selves, including Gaga’s recent alter ego, a greasy Italian dude she calls “Jo Calterdone.” In interviews she says the video is about “the crazy things people will do for love.” She explains the weird scenes in the barn, when her lover straps her down by the wrists and ankles to an upright table, as being about her “mad scientist boyfriend turning her into a mermaid.”

But throwing in fanciful ideas like mermaids doesn’t change the undeniably disturbing nature of being strapped down in a barn and experimented on; adding the fact that the mad scientist is supposed to be her character’s boyfriend only ups the creep factor.

And why is the version of Gaga narrating the conclusion wearing weird straps and wires on her jaw like it’s the latest trend?

You might recognize this look from the earlier MK ULTRA image (echoed quite directly in the image of Gaga at the top of this post.) But this video is about the crazy things we do for love, right?

The shock pop star’s video “Marry the Night” starts out in a Girl Interrupted-style insane asylum, where Lady Gaga is being wheeled in on a gurney in post-surgical garb after apparently having had her spine removed. The voice over notes:

“When I look back on my life, it’s not that I don’t want to see things exactly as they happened. It’s just that I prefer to remember them in an artistic way. And truthfully, the lie of it all is much more honest because I invented it. Clinical psychology tells us arguably that trauma is the ultimate killer. Memories are not recycled like atoms and particles in quantum physics. They can be lost forever. It’s sort of like my past is an unfinished painting and as the artist of that painting I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again. It’s not that I’ve been dishonest, it’s just that I loath reality.”

Later, looking wearily up at her nurse, a traumatized-looking Gaga says she is going to be a star, because she has “nothing left to lose.”

“See the girl to your left?” she asks the viewer as the nurses wheel her into a spooky psychiatric ward of half-naked, tranced out, trouble women…”She ordered gummy bears and a knife a couple hours ago. They only gave her the gummy bears. I wish they’d only given me the gummy bears.”

Gaga has told press that the video is intended for ‘art to imitate life’ and depict her journey to stardom. For those wondering what left Gaga so traumatized on that journey, MTV.com has the artist’s official answer: ” The video is a metaphor for how she felt when she was dropped from her first record label, Island Def Jam, before landing at her current home at Interscope.”

A statement that leaves us wondering exactly what that transition from Def Jam to Interscope entailed!

(click to read Part 2)

By Tai Carmen

“As artists we’re highly sensitive people, and this machine around us, this so-called ‘music industry,’ is such a demonic thing. It’s sacrifices people’s lives and their essences at the drop of a dime … I had a manager once say to me, ‘ You know you’re worth more money dead than alive.”’ ~Chaka Khan

An in-depth analysis of mind-control themes in contemporary pop music (see last week’s Mind Control in the Music Industry ~ Part 1) would be incomplete without addressing Metropolis. Written and directed by German expressionist Fritz Lang in 1927, the cult classic is set in a futuristic urban dystopia.

The story highlights the struggle between two distinct classes, the wealthy rulers who designed the city and the oppressed, mechanized workers who live underground — without whom the elite’s metropolis could not be sustained.

Freder, the son of the city’s creator, becomes entranced with a young woman, the charismatic, angelic Maria.

Though the restless workers are pressing for revolt, Maria acts as a people’s prophet, advocating peace. She entreats them to remain patient, promising that God will send a mediator to channel communication between the divided classes.

However, Maria is abducted by Joh Frederson (city creator and father of Freder,) along with his accomplice, the mad scientist, Rotwang. The two men take her to a black magic laboratory and hook her up to a machine which steals her likeness.

Using a fusion of satanic ritual and Tesla-esque technology, Rotwang has created a “machine man” whom he considers “the man of the future.” The archaic android has the faculty to assume the physical appearance of any person Rotwang programs it to imitate.

Employing this technology, the two men create a false Maria. At the end of the procedure, the simulated Maria looks exactly like the beautiful young woman after which she has been modeled. But beneath the deceptively soft-looking skin lies a cold, programmed machine.

The false Maria is then set loose on the worker city to incite riots and discredit the movement started by the real Maria.

The chaos is generated by an erotic dance performance by the false Maria in a red light district club. Posing as the Whore of Babylon astride a multi-headed beast, the machine-Maria inspires lust, madness, rage and violence to break out among the men.

In the end, Fredor becomes the mediator between the ruling and the working classes (though he can hardly be considered neutral, what with his father owning the city!) Yet the film closes with the feel-good caption: “the mediator between the head and hands must be the heart.”

Metropolis is a stunning visual odyssey, a technical marvel. Widely and deservedly considered a masterpiece.

Like any work of art, the film can be interpreted in multiple ways and on multiple levels.

Clearly the head in the closing epitaph is supposed to represent the elite, framing them as the brains, and the hands represent the workers, the brawny means by which the visions of “the head” are carried out. But what does the heart symbolize to the film’s creators?

Metropolis was co-written by Fritz Lang with his wife, Thea von Harbou. Though she would go on to become a passionate member of the Nazi party, the Jewish Lang held democratic political views, having no Nazi affiliations beyond the fact that Hitler famously admired the film.

Some conspiracy sites (check out Vigilent Citizen’s “Occult Symbolism in Metropolis”) have suggested that the film is a statement made by the elite for the elite, and that the mediator symbolizes the media, which has become increasingly controlled by the same six corporations – in other words, a small handful of wealthy, elite individuals.

Whatever Fritz Lang’s intended cinematic message, the film sparks interesting speculations. For instance, note that the tool used by the elite (represented by mad scientist Rotwang and city creator, Joh Frederson) to manipulate the masses was a woman dancing erotically.

Could control of the masses be as simple as sex?

Certainly, though it is rare, the CIA has publicly admitted to infiltrating the media.

Also interesting, the visage of false Maria is often imitated by today’s pop stars, who make common practice of paying tribute to Metroplis, specifically Rotwang’s creation.

The message behind the woman as robot is similar to the message behind the woman as doll — another theme that shows up constantly in today’s videos and popular music symbology. The visual cue subtly but firmly dictates: she is not in control of herself. She is programmable.

Often, with doll and robot imagery, comes a motif of missing limbs.

An internet culture has been built around the regularity with which these images recur in the pop mythos. Theories that pop stars are mere puppets for higher powers wishing to impart agenda-driven messages abound.

“The idea behind Illuminati involvement in the careers of popular music icons,” notes conspiracy site Parkalert Press, “revolves around the central concept that as new artists, athletes, and personalities arrive on the scene, there is a system in place where certain people are handpicked to go on to a further calling.”

“Pop icons are influential,” continues Parkalert Press, ”especially on young people, and their everyday movements attract the attention of millions.  That’s why the theory exists that the Illuminati embraces them,’enlightens’ them, if you will, and then supports them, further adding to their success.

“In return, these people cooperate by showing their appreciation for how they got where they are through permeating their music, videos, interviews, books, and everyday actions with Illuminati-based symbolism, imagery, and terminology.”

Could the rise in mental health disorders today be exacerbated by the bipolar and dissociative themes in pop music today? It could be a self-feeding cycle.

Is the recurring imagery simply a case of mental health issues being common in artists and performers?

Many believe the relentless plentitude of symbols point in a more sinister direction. Monarch Programming is a specific kind of trauma-based mind control which many speculate may be rampant in the entertainment industry, what with the plethora of butterfly imagery abound.

Cathy O’Brien is an outspoken activist spreading awareness about the phenomenon of trauma-based mind control. In her exposé Trance Formation of America she details her life as a Monarch Slave.

Also known as Marionette Programming, this dark brand of psychological warfare originated in Nazi Germany. After the allies won WWII, a slew of Nazi scientists, doctors and psychiatrists were brought over to the US — ostensibly so the enemy didn’t have access to their sinister skills. But then guess who did?

Out of this infamous influx of mad Rotwangs, MK ULTRA was born: a covert, illegal human experimentation program run by the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence. According to whistleblowers like Cathy O’Brien, Project Monarch is an outgrowth of that program, designed to artificially induce MPD and DID in victims as a means of control, creating Manchurian candidate types to do their bidding; whether it be sex slavery or assassination. The conspiracy theory line of reasoning goes … why not pop stars, too?

Rosanne Bar has publicly asserted that her Multiple Personality Disorder was “deliberately induced by the CIA [...] after they brought all the Nazis over from Germany to run the American Psychiatric Association.”

When Larry King, with whom she is interviewing, expresses disbelief, Roseanne sticks to her story: “I’m telling you the truth. It is all mind control and all kinds of things to invent people with multiple personalities.”

“So you have been captured by Nazis?” ribs Larry King, still not taking her seriously. Roseanne responds, “Well, in a way, I believe the government has implanted some kind of a chip into my head.”

Posts on her blog and repeated appearances at mind control survivor conferences affirm that her comments to Larry were no joke.

It may, too, simply be that today’s performers are voicing the public’s own semi-subliminal sensation of existing in what is essentially a mind control environment.

We are spoon-fed what to believe by advertisers. Traumatized on a daily basis by the violence in the news. Forced to compartmentalize in order to function, perhaps by wearing a fashionable article of clothing and conveniently blocking out the conditions of the sweatshop workers who produced it. Or by eating a fast food chicken sandwich, while avoiding thinking about the crowded, unsanitary conditions of the chickens; those rows upon rows of dirty cages. And who among us does not feel they have multiple selves living within them?

Men and women alike are dehumanized, reduced to faceless consumers.

Women are objectified, many brainwashed into taking up the values of their oppressors, objectifying themselves and promoting self-objectifying to others.

In a previous post, “The Mad Cult of the World,” I compare the socialization process to cult indoctrination. The similarities are actually quite noteworthy.

Perhaps it makes sense for us to collectively express mind control themes through our chosen cultural archetypes.

“The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.” ~ Terence McKenna 

The creative spark — that incandescent flash of insight known as a breakthrough — is known for being unpredictable, elusive and mysterious. Yet over the past few decades, cognitive psychologists have been studying the various neurological processes behind creativity.

Research led by Mark Beeman and John Kounios has identified where the flash of insight comes from when a creative problem has been solved.

“In the seconds before the insight appears,” explains Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, “a brain area called the superior anterior temporal gyrus (aSTG) exhibits a sharp spike in activity. This region, located on the surface of the right hemisphere, excels at drawing together distantly related information, which is precisely what’s needed when working on a hard creative problem.”

Michael Michalko, author of Creative Thinkering, agrees: “Creativity comes from observing the relationships between objects and making metaphorical-analogical connections [...]

“If one particular style of thought stands out about creative genius, it is the ability to make juxtapositions between dissimilar subjects. Call it a facility to connect the unconnected that enables them to see things to which others are blind.

“Leonardo da Vinci forced a relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone hitting water. This enabled him to make the connection that sound travels in waves.”

Researchers of brain function have found that certain factors increase the likelihood of receiving an insight. For instance, subjects exposed to a short comedic video boosted creative solution performance by 20%.

Interestingly, studies conducted at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that drunk test subjects given word problems outperformed their sober peers by 30%!

The insight puzzles given were ‘remote associates,’ in which a person is asked to find an additional word that goes with a triad of words. For example:

Pine Crab Sauce 

(the answer is below the picture)

(The answer is “apple” — pineapple, crabapple, applesauce.)

Why would subjects exposed to comedy score higher than peers not treated with a laugh? The same reason drunk subjects outperformed their sober peers.

“The answer,” according to Lehrer “involves the surprising advantage of not paying attention. [...] We might be focused, but we’re probably focused on the wrong answer.”

Creative blocks occur when the logical left hemisphere of the brain has reached an impasse with its linear, systematic approach; interrupting its frustrated obsession with the wrong questions can free up the right hemisphere to supply the essential fresh connection. Relaxation helps.

“This research,” expounds Lehrer, “explains why so many major breakthroughs happen in the unlikeliest of places, whether it’s Archimedes in the bathtub or the physicist Richard Feynman scribbling equations in a strip club, as he was known to do. It reveals the wisdom of Google putting ping-pong tables in the lobby and confirms the practical benefits of daydreaming. As Einstein once declared, ‘Creativity is the residue of time wasted.’”

 So next time you’re hitting your head against the wall of some creative problem, give the left brain a break and take a shower, play a game, drink a beer, watch a comedy video, take a nap or take yourself on a walk.

Studies show, this is a bona fide part of the creative process! The insight hiding in the superior anterior temporal gyrus of the brain needs a chance to offer its fresh connection.

“If you’re trying to be more creative,” concludes Lehrer, “one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed. Steve Jobs famously declared that ‘creativity is just connecting things.’ Mr. Jobs argued that the best inventors seek out ‘diverse experiences,’ collecting lots of dots that they later link together.

“Instead of developing a narrow specialization, they study, say, calligraphy (as Mr. Jobs famously did) or hang out with friends in different fields. Because they don’t know where the answer will come from, they are willing to look for the answer everywhere.”

“Original ideas,” agrees Michael Michalko, “inevitably are created by conceptually blending subjects from different universes into something new.”

By Tai Carmen

That men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things.

~ Lord Alfred Tennyson 

The Spring Equinox – when the sun lines up with the earth’s equator — is rich with rituals of renewal, and marks the first day of Spring for those who live in the Northern Hemisphere.

There are two days each year when the daytime and nighttime hours are approximately equal — each being 12 hours long. One occurs between March 19 and 21 (the Spring or Vernal Equinox) and the other in September. These dates have strong ties to religious celebrations throughout the world.

“The Christian Easter is destined to fall roughly around the same time as the Pagan Easter [vernal equinox] due to its association to the Judaic Passover [marking the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage] which is also fixed by the lunar cycle,” Andy Paciorek explains in Strange Lands.

“Both festivals could be said to reflect new life, either Christ’s return from the dead or the blossom and birth of Spring. So it was not much of a stretch for the ascending Christian Church to merge both festivals. This is known as ‘assimilation’ and was a habit frequently employed in those times … to ease and encourage rather than force the conversion of heathens. ”

The modern English term Easter can be traced back to the ancient pagan goddess, Ēostre  for whom the German month of April is named. Eostre represents the sunrise, springtime, fertility, and new life, as do her symbols — hares and eggs. Hares because of their plentiful reproductive capacity, and eggs because all life starts with an egg. And so the tradition of eggs and rabbits as symbols of Easter is rooted in emblems of European folklore.

“The Easter Bunny is not actually a ‘bunny’ or rabbit at all, but is actually a hare,” details Andy Paciorek. “The hare was the sacred animal of Eostre (or Oestra or Ostera), the ancient Teutonic Goddess of the Spring Moon. At the time of the vernal equinox (March or April) the hares are famed for going ‘mad’…”

“The association of rabbits, hares, and the moon can be found in numerous cultures the world over,” notes Terri Windig in “The Symbolism of Rabbits and Hares,“ ”ranging from Japan to Mexico, from Indonesia to the British Isles. Whereas in Western folklore we refer to the ‘Man in the Moon,’ the ‘Hare (or Rabbit) in the Moon’ is a more familiar symbol in other societies.

“In Chinese folklore, female hares conceive through the touch of the full moon’s light (without the need of impregnation by the male), or by crossing water by moonlight, or licking moonlight from a male hare’s fur. Figures of hares or white rabbits are commonly found at Chinese Moon Festivals, where they represent longevity, fertility, and the feminine power of yin.“

In Iran the Spring Equinox is celebrated with Nowruz — known as “the Persian new year” and meaning “new day.”

As with Passover, house cleaning is a part of the preparation, stemming from the old belief that cleanliness helps keep evil away (quite sensible.)  On the day of Nowruz everyone dons new clothes and families visit one another. Along with other symbolic items, such as sprouted barley representing rebirth, painted eggs signifying fertility and abundance are prominent in Nowruz traditions.

Hindus celebrate the Spring festival of Holi, known as the Festival of Colors, at the end of the winter season, on the last full moon day of the lunar month (February/March).

Marked by bright colors evoking springtime and fresh life, Holi has roots in Hindu mythology associated with good triumphing over evil. Social caste taboos are relaxed, joy and mischief are encouraged, and no one expects polite behavior. The rich and the poor, the young and the old, women and men all celebrate in the streets together, dousing one another with water and colored dyes.

“Taking the superstitions and rituals of the spring festivals as psychological symbols, we can appreciate the importance of personal renewal,” muses Jonathan Young in his article “Symbolism of Spring.”

“Putting on new clothing could represent the possibility of developing a new aspect of identity or finding a fresh sense of purpose. Spring might well be the appropriate moment to don new clothes, in a figurative sense, and claim an underused side of ourselves. A personal ritual for this month could be deciding what crops we want to develop in our lives so that we have a flourishing summer ahead.”

In Winter, we cocoon. We hibernate; dream. Symbolically, in Winter we gestate, go inward — a metaphorical death. In Spring, new life sprouts forth from the dormant earth and we are reminded of our own capacity to bloom.

What bulbs have been dreaming in the dark earth of your subconscious? What behaviors do you want to shed like winter runoff? What creative, personal or spiritual fruits would you like to bare in the upcoming year?

By Tai Carmen

“Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“Those who would sacrifice essential liberty to obtain security deserve neither and will lose both.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” ~Thomas Jefferson

Ironically, America’s War on Terror has become a source of terror itself. Terrorism, as defined by Webster’s Dictionary, is “the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion.”

It is a definition upon which much depends, considering that as of December 31st 2011 the United States government has codified into law the ability to indefinitely detain US citizens suspected of terrorist involvement without trial, a provision to the National Defense Authorization Act that gives US military the power to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operations on US soil .

This effectively means that, in theory, if the US government wanted me gone, I could be taken from my home via military force and detained indefinitely. Under the 2012 provision of the National Defense Authority Act, all they would have to do is call me a terrorist suspect — no proof needed, no rights enforced — and just like that, I could disappear. Legally.

President Obama admits to having “serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists,” noting that the fact that he “supports this bill as a whole” does not mean that he “agrees with everything in it.” (Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.)

In the same statement, the president goes on to contradict direct lines from the controversial Act, assuring us that “administration [ ...] will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law” (italics mine.) 

Apart from the fact that the president’s use of the word “interpret” acknowledges the room for flexible reading of the NDAA, and setting aside the fact that Mr. Obama has made other promises he did not keep — for instance, the termination of Guantanamo Bay  — his statement only applies to his administration.

As Senator Bernie Sanders asserts: ”The legislation could give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial.”

I should note that Obama has made some effort to improve the controversial aspects of this bill, though the essential problems remain (see comments section.)

“In a country famous for the belief that one is innocent until proven guilty,” observes Alton Lu in the Huffington Post, “this is an upsetting change that is being foisted upon the American people with many unaware of what it means.” He continues:

“The Fourth Amendment grants liberty from unreasonable seizures, while the Sixth guarantees every U.S. citizen a trial in front of a jury. No matter what supporters of the bill might have said about the provisions being misunderstood, the simple fact is that it is unconstitutional.”

For an exhaustive yet readable breakdown of the NDAA, I recommend Glenn Greenwald’s article “Three Myths About the National Defense Authorization Act.”

The War on Terror has been bad news for civil liberties from the beginning, starting with Bush Jr.’s Patriot Act – which made it legal for the FBI to spy on Americans and search telephone, email, and financial records without a court order.

The Act also contained provisions allowing for the indefinite detention of any alien whom the Attorney General believed may cause a terrorist act. And now, with the new provisions added to the NDAA, this will apply to US citizens as well.

The very fact that I am able to criticize this new act, and post critical tongue-in-cheek pseudo-propaganda political cartoons is a testament to the America I cherish. I don’t want to lose that America.

Yet the fact that I am wondering if tags from this blog post could possibly land my name on some FBI worker’s hard drive is cause for serious concern.

Currently, the legal definition of a terrorist is defined by “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” However:

“Controversy centers on the loose definition of key words in the bill,” relates The Guardian‘s Paul Harris. In particular, vague terms like “associated forces” have many wondering exactly what constitutes a terrorist tie. Harris notes that “civil rights experts have said the lack of precise definition leaves [the NDAA] open to massive potential abuse.”

Because of this, many fear the provision could extend to journalists, authors, peaceful activists and academics. For writer and political consultant, Naomi Wolf, fear of the NDAA’s vague wording has already effected her ability to do her job as a journalist:

“My understanding of the bill has forced me to decline to meet with certain newsworthy individuals, [to report] on facts and stories that I otherwise believe are newsworthy, and contribute to a healthy national discourse – for no other reason than to avoid potential repercussions under the bill.”

Among others, she sites declining to interview controversial internet activist Julian Assange of the international whistleblower site, Wiki-leaks, because of statements made by high-level United States officials regarding their views of Assange as a terrorist (Joe Biden has called him a “high-tech terrorist”.)

Unfortunately, America is not above guilt by association witch hunts.

My paternal grandparents were both blacklisted for a decade from working in Hollywood (which was their livelihood) during the McCarthy Era Red Scare, simply for running in a circle of actors and artists, some of whom had communist ties — though my grandparents themselves did not. The nail in the coffin happened when my grandmother, an activist and humanitarian, gave a speech for the Red Cross at a podium at which, hours later, a communist speech was delivered by a person totally unrelated to her.

Even though my grandfather, Eddie, was a war hero who had volunteered to serve his country, he and his wife, Margo, were interrogated by the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and officially barred from working in Hollywood. Overnight they became unemployable pariahs. People became afraid to associate with them, lest they invite the same fate upon themselves, and like other blacklist victims, they became public faces for people’s fear: when the newly married couple stepped out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on their wedding day, people spit on Margo’s white dress in the street.

They were forced to create a Vaudeville-style husband and wife act, performing in night clubs across the country until the ban was lifted, almost a decade later.

Witch hunts of a far more brutal caliber have happened, to be sure. Yet these people had done nothing wrong and they were put on Kafkaesque trial by the US government for no good reason. I’ve read the transcripts. They’re chilling: pummeled with leading questions and manipulative interrogations, suddenly held accountable for every casual comment they ever made and forced to justify their choices — in friends, in social clubs — to total strangers.

And that was before the information age.

How can America thrive when freedom — the very force that made her special — is vanishing one Patriot Act, one National Defense Authorization Act, at a time?

Then there’s the  anti-protesting law (officially, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011) challenging Americans’ constitutional right to assembly, the freedom of the individual to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests. Up until now, the freedom to assemble has been recognized as a human right in America.

“The House of Representatives approved a bill that outlaws protests in instances where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it [...] That means disruptive activity, to whichever court has to consider it, will be a federal offense under the act.” “ (Source)

This literally means that booing presidential candidates could land you in jail.

At least  SOPA – which would allow the government to effectively “shut down” websites – didn’t pass. Yet.

With acts like the NDAA and the anti-protest law passing, I’m frankly surprised.

The National Defense Authorization Act has been strongly opposed by the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, and The Center for Constitutional Rights.

To find out what you can do to fight for American liberty, and to discover coalitions in your area, visit The People’s Campaign for the Constitution (www.constitutioncampaign.org)

Stay informed and write your local representatives, urging them to take this incredibly important issue to the Supreme Court — which is our only hope at a repeal. As Forbes‘ Erik Kain notes: “people concerned with civil liberties should begin to walk away from the old left-right dichotomy entirely and focus on electing civil libertarians to congress.” If our civil liberties vanish, the social issues close to our hearts will become moot points.

Ironically, America’s War on Terror has become a source of terror itself.

As Erik Kain observes: ”Each time we allow our fear to undermine our freedom we concede to the very terrorists we hope to defeat.” But fear is not the only obstacle; apathy, denial, self-absorption and laziness are our greatest enemies. In a country rich with unprecedented privilege, opportunity and freedom, we have frankly become complacent; even cocky. We feel that it will never touch us. But it already has. And, unchecked, the threat will only continue to advance, like a shadow across the land.

International readers, what does our situation look like from the outside? And what’s your situation like at home?

American readers, if you choose one issue to become active on this year, make it this one. Civil liberties are the bedrock of our nation. Without them, we lose everything.

“The warm, the richly colored, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday. How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing every one was! [...] Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.”

~ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

You may soon be able to get a prescription for falling in love.

A team of Oxford researchers are working on a pill to recreate the feeling of being in the honeymoon stage. They aim to accomplish this by combining pheromones, testosterone (to up sex drive,) Oxytocin and Vasopressin — naturally occurring “bonding chemicals” produced by the body at the early stages of a relationship — CRH (a hormone that induces the fear of separation) and Entactogens, a “feel good” drug similar to MDMA.

There you have it folks, the recipe for love: one part sex, another part bonding, mix in the fear of separation and some ecstasy. Or so the Oxford research team is hoping.

While the love pill might seem to many like the absurd and even chilling culmination of a cultural trajectory best left to science fiction, others wonder if perhaps it might not have some therapeutic effect.

Take for instance the success researchers have had with treating Post Traumatic Shock with MDMA (known for its street name, ecstasy.) According to Science Daily, “participants treated with a combination of MDMA and psychotherapy saw clinically and statistically significant improvements in their PTSD — over 80% of the trial group no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, stipulated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV-TR) following the trial, compared to only 25% of the placebo group. In addition, all three subjects who reported being unable to work due to PTSD were able to return to work following treatment with MDMA.”

Likewise, psychologists like Harvard researcher Richard Doblin have long been interested in the empathy enhancing effects of MDMA for possible use in marriage counseling. Though the 1986 criminalization of the drug has hampered such investigation, there has been renewed interest on this front in the past few years.

The theory goes that breakthroughs in communication and emotional vulnerability could be stimulated by this kind of neurochemical enhancement in a therapy situation.

But where do we draw the line when tinkering with brain chemistry? Is happiness more important than authenticity? Judging from the statistics — one in ten Americans is currently taking antidepressants — it would appear the answer for many is yes.

In their paper, Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage: The Chemicals Between Us, the scientists researching the new love pill suggest:

“Even if love were not authentic, authenticity is not an overriding or exclusive value. People can trade a degree of authenticity for other values in their lives.”

And somewhere Aldous Huxley is rolling over in his grave.

Huxley penned the classic and increasingly prophetic dystopian novel, Brave New World, in 1931, about a future society imprisoned by their own addiction to escapism. A key medium of escape: soma, a drug of the future masses.

Huxley creates the vision of an overmedicated society, wherein, as author Neil Postman puts it: people have “come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

In comparing Huxley’s Brave New World with the famous dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell, Postman notes:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

“Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.”

The propagandized phrase “A gram is better than a damn” floats around Huxley’s world and people routinely check out for “holidays” via pharmaceutical enhancement:

“I don’t understand anything,” she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. “Nothing. Least of all,” she continued in another tone “why you don’t take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You’d forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you’d be jolly. So jolly.” (Brave New World.)

Of course, people have been hawking love potions for time immemorial, and it hasn’t worked yet. But with science on their side, today’s researchers might be the first to create a true love drug.

There is something about seeing the same thing — the face of your beloved, for instance — over and over again, which creates a kind of automatic pilot of the mind. It seems that often the more we see something, the less we see it. Consciously grounding oneself in the moment can help. But to create a way to see our partners with fresh eyes could indeed have a revitalizing effect on stalled relationships.

Still, the Huxlian implications have this author wondering what kind of pain could be repressed, what kind of problems ignored, with the help of such a pill. We touch fire, it hurts, we withdraw our hand. What would happen if we anesthetized that hand? We might wind up playing with fire until our hand fell off.

Take this metaphor to the emotional level. Pain is our body’s natural warning mechanism, telling us that something is wrong, indicating a need for change. If we simply synthetically engineer our chemicals to send us messages that everything is wonderful when, in reality, it is not, the danger of losing touch with one’s natural sense of truth — for choosing self-deception over needed change — seems great.

And if a feeling of connection can be artificially induced, what true breakthroughs — which would require, perhaps, facing unpleasant truths — could remain unplumbed in a relationship? To me, it seems like a recipe for arresting growth, both in the individual and the relationship.

But in a society where many people would rather be happy than authentic, and most women would rather look young than real — there could be a true market for the love pill.

My authenticity, and all the feelings which go along with it, is important to me. My feelings, both good and bad, guide me like a compass, and tell me when I’m languishing in some un-constructive headspace or circumstance by increasing emotional pain, like a warning. Like most artists — and I’d wager to guess, most people — I have my ups and downs. But my “downs” mean something to me, as much as my “ups.” Coming through a bad time, I always feel like I have managed to change something awry in myself or my life. Something I wouldn’t have been forced to address if I had synthetically induced the sensation of feeling better.

I know these statements are considered controversial by some. When I suggested in The Politics of Normalcy that the dominance and commonplace usage of anti-anxiety medication in today’s culture was perhaps depriving us of the important philosophical journey of facing our existential angst head-on, I received a deluge of comments — some hostile — suggesting that I simply didn’t understand what it was like for those seriously crippled by anxiety.

It’s a personal choice for each, certainly. But my (admittedly self-assigned) job here at Parallax is to investigate cultural trends and their implication across the wider historical backdrop of mankind’s journey, and the truth is, these pharmaceutical developments are incredibly new. It’s only prudent to discuss all angles.

I don’t mean to imply that taking medication is equivalent to a lobotomy. Obviously, a slight boost in serotonin doesn’t change a person’s essential values. But the whole idea that we are chemically “fixing” a problem when we “normalize” a person’s neurochemistry contains language which, to me, is a red flag. What is normal? Someone who is happy working nine hours a day? Interesting. Who does that equation benefit?

Could it be the machine of society? That Prozac makes for happy worker bees, while discontent citizens brew rebellion?

My concern is that in a future where love and happiness can both be artificially induced, we make ourselves incredibly vulnerable to becoming a society like Huxley’s Brave New World. The subliminal message seems to be: Why change your life when you can just change your chemistry? Why change the world when you can just change how you feel about it?

What do you think?

“There is a vast difference between looking and seeing.”~ Ernest W. Watson

“No wonder once the art of seeing is lost, Meaning is lost, and all life seems ever more meaningless.” ~ Frederick Franck

“Our whole business in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.” ~ Saint Augustine

Every one of us has had a moment where ordinary life becomes shot through with clarity, intense presence and visual potency. A person, animal or perhaps a plant — a scene of startling beauty or realness — seems to take on a luminous inner source and for a moment all of life feels that much closer, more charged and meaningful.

It can be said that in those moments one is seeing through the lens or the eye of the soul.

The concept of the third eye appears in a wide gamut of mystical traditions, including Hinduism, Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Jewish and Christian mysticism. The third eye — also known as the blue pearl, the inner eye, and the sixth, or ajna, chakra — is traditionally associated with psychic experiences, divine seeing and the higher visionary realm.

It has been called a gateway that leads to inner realms, and other worlds; a personal vortex.

The pineal gland – a small endocrine gland nestled between the two hemispheres of the brain — is considered by many to be the physical counterpart to the spiritual third eye. Up until 1958, when Aaron Lerner discovered that the rice-grain-sized gland transformed serotonin into melatonin and regulated wake/sleep patterns, it had been regarded by the scientific community as very likely vestigial.

French philosopher Renee Descartes called the pineal “the seat of the soul,” postulating that the gland interacted in some way between the eyes and the brain, acting as the chief interpreter of vision…an idea developed  hundreds of years before by the father of the Scientific Method, the ancient Greek physician Herophilos. Through his pioneering anatomical dissections, Herophilos theorized that the pineal glad was an interfacing organ that gained man access to the spiritual worlds.

This theory is compatible with the ancient Eastern belief, from Hindus to Taoists, that the luminous sphere witnessed in the inner eye region is in fact the same tunnel through which the human soul exits the body.

If you want to develop your third eye vision, you can do so by taking a few moments out when you are calm and relaxed, closing your eyes and focusing your attention within, specifically towards the spot between your brows. It’s not so much that this is where the blue pearl will appear, but it’s a generally conducive place to focus.

The undulating sparks which can sometimes be seen behind closed lids, or in total darkness, are called phosphenes – characterized by seeing light when no light is actually hitting the retina. Keep focusing on the third eye region whenever you have a few minutes to dedicate to the exercise. You don’t have to sit crossed legged on a mat to meditate — the bath is also a nice, low pressure environment to go within.

You will slowly begin to make out a distinct spherical shape in the center of your vision — perhaps a blue or violet impression. Don’t strain, just casually return to this practice when you feel like it. Over time the indigo color will become more distinct and you may begin to have some interesting experiences.

Happy travels in inner space!

*For practical application, further details and the author’s anecdotal experiences, see comments section (under title).

Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. ~ Carl Sagan 

We are stardust ~ billion year old carbon. We are golden ~ caught in the devil’s bargain. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. ~ Joni Mitchell

Long before man went to the moon, he looked up at the stars and pondered his place in the cosmos.

Many a soul has looked up to the shimmering panorama of the night sky and felt a kinship, perhaps with a certain star or constellation. Many experience a sense of longing, as if some key to their existence might be hidden there.

It’s not just a poetic line. In a very real way we are made of stardust.

All the elements necessary to create life — carbon, nitrogen, iron, to name a few–were first forged in the nuclear furnace of a stellar explosion. And so every atom in the human body came, originally, from a dying star, propelled outward into the universe.

Countless books, movies, songs and legends reflect our sense of kinship with these burning bodies of celestial light, so seemingly different from our own bodies of flesh and bone…From radio hits about being “all made of stars” to Native American oral traditions, which describe human origins and helpers from the heavens.

In the past century, we have witnessed a renaissance of human thought, now aided by the information age. At the same time, we have seen an incredible amount of bloodshed and suffering. Is it getting better or getting worse? Apocalyptic prophesies abound. But so does talk of an awakening.

Over the past half century, connected with this idea of awakening, the terms “Starseed,” “Starborn,” and “Star Children” have become a part of the fringe cultural dialogue.

The idea has formed within this multi-generational conversation that some souls are “not from here.” Many mystically inclined would argue that none of us are spiritually “from here,” and the starseed concept is compatible with this idea. The theory goes that these souls, the starseeds, have incarnated more often in other solar systems; that earth is not their home planet.

According to Scott Mandleker, Ph.D., author of From Elsewhere: Being ET in America, recurring themes among starseed identified individuals include feeling alien to contemporary human culture; disconnection from, and even disgust with, accepted norms…a deep spiritual longing and the sense that, not only is there more to life than meets the eye, but they have a mission to fulfill. Many have had extra-dimensional or ESP encounters, which have affirmed their sense of differentness and sensitivity.

There is usually a strong connection with nature and the stars, an interest in space, science fiction, other worlds, ancient cultures, environmentalism and human potential…perhaps even homesickness for a place they’ve never known in this life.

Many starseeds feel they have chosen to forget their other worldly origins in order to grow up on human terms and blend into the culture — though most feel the intention was to eventually “wake up” to their true calling as paradigm-pushers and ‘spiritual beings having a human experience,’ (as the Pierre Teilhard de Chardin quote goes.)

Though in some rare cases, starseeds feel they’ve been exiled to earth, the majority feel their intergalactic mission stems from the compassionate desire to help nudge humanity onto the path of its destined awakening.

Starseeds, without fail, intuit the civilizations from which they’ve come have moved beyond earth’s current state of divisive turmoil into a phase beyond war, disconnection and bloodshed. For this reason, starseeds invariably find themselves looking to serve humanity, choosing vocations which center around healing, teaching, human potential, the arts, environmental assistance and social outreach.

Most feel their own path of awakening, their spiritual journey, is of utmost importance in order to truly live the new paradigm they wish to exemplify.

Though the stuff of science fiction, and many would say wishful thinking, the phenomenon has been felt by so many isolated individuals, unprompted  – only later to be united by a website, a conversation, or a book — that it truly deserves some investigation by the open minded among us. And it could be science fiction itself is a product of productive starseed types, exploring inner worlds which lead them inevitably to worlds beyond their own.

The most common take on this intuitive knowledge is that these interstellar souls have come as artists, visionaries, dreamers and pioneers of thought to assist in humanity’s impending rebirth, to act as midwives through the inevitable labor pains.

Psychedelic icon Timothy Leary may have been the first to use the word “Starseed” in his short work, “Starseed: Transmissions from Folsom Prison.” 

He penned “Starseeed” while serving time on charges of marijuana possession, for which he was issued a 95 year sentence — an unheard of amount of time for the crime committed. While officially held on drug charges, at the hearing the judge remarked: ”If he is allowed to travel freely, he will speak publicly and spread his ideas.” (Jesse Walker, “The Acid Guru’s Long Strange Trip.”)

President Richard Nixon had earlier labeled Leary “the most dangerous man in America.” (“Tim Leary, Pied Piper of Psychedelic 60′s.”) To have the president of the United States call a pacifist author-philosopher by this title should tell you something about the repressive state of affairs in which free thinkers find themselves.

Yet the irrepressible psychedelic spiritualist continued his work from jail, writing in 1973:

“This signal is being transmitted from a cell in Folsom Prison, which is the Black Hole of American society [...] Some cosmologists suggest that Black Holes [...] may be passageways to another universe, just as the manholes in Paris lead to a world beneath the street. Well, the maximum security prision is a fine place from which to scane the universe [...]

“Out here, beyond good and evil, one sees America in pain, injured nervous systems propelling robot-bodies in repitiuous, aimless motion along paths labeled rights and wrong…”

Yet Leary remained fiery with optimism:

“The entire universe is gently, rhythmically, joyously vibrating. Cosmic intercourse. This is a message of hope and interstellar love from the Black Hole. Irrepressible optimism. Yes, it is true that repressive pessimists now control planetary politics. This is a larval phase.”

At this time, Leary had begun receiving what he believed were telepathic messages from outer space, presumably the genesis for “Starseed.” He began to see man’s true means of spiritual transcendence as coming from the stars:

“[...].certainly the anticipation of ‘saucers’ transporting humanoid bodies is naive. It is more likely that extra-planetary contact will be received by the instrument which was designed over three and a half billion years ago to pick up electro-magnetic vibrations. The human nervous system itself [...]

“This message of neurological resonance can be censored, imprisoned but cannot be crushed because it comes from within, from the DNA nucleus inside each cell, from the evolving nervous system. The Higher Intelligence has already stepped on planet earth and its script is writ within our bodies, emerging in every generation.” (  Click this link to read the full piece online.)

(He did end up getting an early release, after five years, and resumed his energetic career, this time with emphasis on man’s place within the cosmos.)

To take the Starseed Test, click here! (Normally, I don’t put much stock in these, but this is a good one, composed by licensed psychologist and writer, Scott Mandleker, author of From Elsewhere: Being ET in America, which we’ll examine in the next installment of the Parallax starseed series.)

Part 2 of Starseeds, Cosmic Consciousness and the Galactic Generations to come soon! 

If you haven’t read Part 1 ~ CLICK HERE 

 “The whole universe exists inside you. Ask all from yourself.” ~Rumi

“And we, we who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, we have begun at least to wonder about our origins — star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth, and perhaps throughout the cosmos.” ~ Carl Sagan, Cosmos: Who Speaks For Earth

Ken Carey had been off the grid for a decade, living a simple farm life in harmony with nature, when, in a state of high fever, he penned the slim classic Starseed Transmissions in 1978. Carey’s description of the experience proceeding his dictation echoes the transpersonal state of transcendent awareness long reported by mystics:

“Everything that touched my senses, every nuance of sound and light, every object in the room felt as intimate to me as the lungs through which I breathed, as inseparable, as personal. Insights did not come as flashes but as things I had always known, truths so obvious it was hard to believe I could have forgotten them.” (The Starseed Transmissions, introduction, 1995 edition.)

The narrator identifies itself as a force that “comes from the Presence where there is no time but the eternal now,” describing itself as a member of a race of spirit beings who have been evolving alongside humanity in a parallel universe of non-form:

“We are you, yourself, in the distant past and distant future. We are you as you were, would have been and still are, had you not fallen from your original state of grace.”

The angelic messenger from the stars describes this falling from grace, not as moral corruption, but as the state of fear and disconnection humans entered as they became lost in the” materializing process,” forgetful of their spiritual counterparts and interconnected origins. In effect, the book purports to be a voice from the realm where our spirits wait, calling us home.

The narrator describes a state of harmonious connectivity in which humanity would flourish:

“In the fallen state of consciousness, each human being functions in disregard of the song of Life that is going on in others. There is no harmony, no direction, no arrangement. You are like the random notes of an orchestra before the conductor unifies the instruments in symphony. The Grand Conductor is calling everyone to attention, calling now to remembrance of unity and purpose, reminding all that the time has come to stop tuning separate instruments and begin to accept the direction of One who understands the whole. 

“As you begin to pay attention to the direction of the Conductor within, you will begin to play to the rhythm of the Planetary Symphony, harmonizing with the others of your species and with all of life.” (Ken Carey’s, Starseed Transmissions.)

In many ways, Ken Carey’s Starseed Transmissions echoes Timothy Leary’s “Starseed: Transmissions from Folsem Prison,” published five years prior. Obviously, the names are similar, though it is unclear whether Carey had ever read Leary’s piece. It seems unlikely that Carey would have been exposed to Leary’s short, pamphlet-like work, as Carey was undergoing a decade long media fast on a farm in rural Missouri at the time of writing Starseed.

The central theme of both starseed works is that humanity’s destiny lies in the stars. Both imagine a future galactic human, evolved past our current point, who would ascend into the heavens and begin what both texts describe as our true quest…An image we see appearing even earlier, in 1968, in the last scene of Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

So according to Ken Carey’s angelic/extraterrestrial messenger, we are all Starseeds. We all have other worldly origins and the homesickness we feel is spiritual in nature, a longing for divine reconnection.

The primary criticisms lobbied against starseed-identified individuals is that it is escapist, and originates out of the desire to feel special. Though many starseeds keep their thoughts about their identity to themselves for that very reason, there are many who build elaborate sites detailing rank, home-world histories, etc.

Usually those who get into details of hierarchical order describe a “Galactic Federation of Light,” the “Galactic Council” or  “The Ashtar Command.” Many channelers claim to be in touch with beings from other planets in our solar system, describing a leader named Sunat Kumara – details about which a surprising number of people agree. Personally, I don’t relate with these very specific renderings — but perhaps those people who do, have reason to do so.

Scott Mandelker, Ph.D. author of From Elsewhere: Being ET in America, notes ”… I found that within the group of people who recognized themselves as cosmic visitors were individuals both clear and confused, humble and grandiose, active in service or passive in self absorption. Like any other group of people, I found all types – yet those who I considered a bit off-balance did not detract from the genuine reality of extraterrestrial incarnation. Even ET souls are not perfectly enlightened — and even less so when they take human form!”

Yet many “men and women…never spoke about being from such and such planet, unless somebody directly asked them. They had no need to impress anyone with rank or title… They made no big deal about being different; they were too busy teaching, writing, healing, counseling, creating, planning and organizing activities that might be of benefit totheir community.” (SOURCE)

Lately, ET culture has gone so mainstream that Katy Perry is singing pop songs about alien abduction: In “E.T.” she describes the ambiguity, fear and romantic draw surrounding this newest of cultural obsessions: “You’re so hypnotizing/Could you be the devil?/Could you be an angel?…”

The chorus is particularly troubling: ”Kiss me, kiss me/Infect me with your love and/Fill me with your poison/Take me, take me/Wanna be a victim/Ready for abduction…”

While most likely just a sign that the fringe-dweller’s sci-fi fascination has reached mainstream status and is currently “on the collective mind,” many find the weird romanticization of abduction propaganda-esque.

Predator/prey imagery, featuring wild carnivores chasing and consuming defenseless herbivores, are spliced in among eroticized alien-human relations, resulting in Perry appearing, in the last scene, with goat-legs. She is also notably featured as a romanticized Gray alien being flung through the far reaches of the cosmos, imploring Kanye West, playing an alien, to “take her, infect her with his poison, abduct her,” etc.

Perhaps the somewhat grotesque portrayal of cosmic themes in videos like Perry’s is due, less to nefarious connections, and more to the inevitable sensationalism and debasement of consumer-based production.

However, imagery like this, combined with the perceived onslaught of alien invasion films in the past decade, have many wondering if they are being brainwashed or desensitized in preparation for a coming ET event. There are numerous online sites dedicated to keeping an eye on the progress of this theory.

It is possible that both the creepy, conspiracy “alien agenda” angle and the love-based-starseed-in-service-to-the-planet slant are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps the love-based starseeds have come in special numbers at this time as a line of defense. But it’s easy to get lost in labyrinthian conspiracy theories…

Panning back from this micro-focus, we see that it is not so odd that we should be culturally obsessed with our identities in relation to the larger galactic picture…

We are the first waves of humans, that we know of, to have come of age in an era where space travel is a natural part of life, and images of our place in the universe, via Hubble Telescope photography, is available for everyone to see.

Whether or not you believe the surrounding mythos, it seems significant that sites like www.starseed.net has 7000 + members; www.ashtarcommandcrew.net boasts a community of over 10,000 members! The shared goals of those identifying with this burgeoning movement of cosmic consciousness is consistently transformational in nature. All feel innately within the core of their being that we live in a time of great change, great potential and certainly, also, danger — though it is the possibility upon which most choose to focus their energies.

People associated with transformational culture invariably feel that they have a mission to be of service to the planet at this time. Inevitably there is a call towards compassion, justice, harmony, community, freedom, self-expression, environmental awareness, personal growth, the presence of the divine within all things and the connectedness of all humanity. Whether these worthy goals are fulfilled, or remain intentions only, the inspiration behind them seems culturally progressive.

Whether these galactic generations feel the affinities they do because their souls are truly extraterrestrial, or because the stark gap between their ideals and the reality of the world makes them feel alien to modern culture, seems less important than the fact that this is a genuine, far-reaching movement with apparently positive ideals.

In many ways cosmic language has replaced religious terminology. People will say “one with the Universe” in the same way that they used to say “one with God;” terms like “universal love” replace phrases like “God’s love.” This is just semantics. Understandably, many in the cosmic generations feel the word God has been abused in the name of unloving principals. In these cases, secular language feels more fresh and personal, but it is no less mystical a statement to assert one’s connection with the universe, particularly when most mystical traditions agree that God is within all.

On a personal note, as a child  I had never heard of of”star children” or “starseeds,” yet I felt instinctively that I was from elsewhere and that I was on a mission. I also saw a UFO as a child, in broad daylight; a slim silver disc, which appeared not horizontal but upright and emitted a beautiful rainbow contrail. The sighting was serendipitous, as I only saw it fly over my head because I had slipped on a rock. I’ve had other paranormal experiences throughout my life — clairvoyance, seeing energy and auras. So in light of this, I do find this subject — which I can easily imagine seeming totally “out there” for many people — fascinating.

Whatever the details, we find ourselves now in a unique position: the first series of human generations to grow up knowing what our galaxy looks like; knowing there are more  galaxies than grains of sand in all the worlds beaches, and as many possible worlds. We feel ourselves in the growing pains of transforming from what humans have been, to all we seek to become.

 *Parallax Give-Away: make a comment on this post (click on “comments” under the title) and  win a copy  of Ken Carey’s Starseed Transmissions. (Names of all who comment will be placed in a drawing, one name selected.)

“The night sea journey takes you back to your primordial self, not the heroic self that burns out and falls to judgment, but to your original self, yourself as a sea of possibility, your greater and deeper being.” ~ Thomas Moor 

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” ~ Carl Jung

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth” ~  Pema Chödrön

So named after St. John of the Cross’ classic religious poem of the same title, the dark night of the soul is described by seekers of all mystical traditions as an important stage of the quest for deeper knowledge — as unavoidable as confronting the dragon who guards the treasure in every mythic hero’s story.

“The mythological goal of the dragon fight is almost always the virgin, the captive, or more generally, the ‘treasure hard to attain.’ This image of the vulnerable, beautiful, and enchanting woman, guarded by and captive of a menacing monster gives us a picture of the inner core of the personality and its surrounding defenses,” relates Donald Kalsched in Myth & Psyche.

The maiden or treasure on the other side of the dragon symbolize our own inner wealth or spirit, awaiting reunion with the conscious mind, guarded by the ego and shadow-side aspects of the personality.

“Only one who has risked the fight with the dragon,” notes the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, “and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the ‘treasure hard to attain’. . . . he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby gained himself.”

In myth and life alike, when the seeker first sets out upon the path, it is often not by choice but by necessity. To live in denial of the call simply becomes unbearable. Many times transformation is triggered by a crisis of meaning, forcing a reassessment of values and priorities.

Increased awareness shines a light on dark corners of the personality and/or the world at large. So the dark night period is really a sign that transformation is occurring — the labor pains of personal rebirth.

If processed, all who have undergone the dark night of the soul agree that it is ultimately a doorway to deeper awareness and understanding. On the other side awaits a more authentic self and a broader concept of the world. But in the meantime the false constructs and denied aspects of self become increasingly uncomfortable, even painful, giving the impression that something awful is happening, when, in fact, this period can be seen as nature’s way of encouraging regeneration — as a snake’s partly shed skin irks and itches him until he rubs the husk off entirely.

Because of his powerful ability to shed old layers of himslef, mystical traditions the world over associate the snake with transformation and regeneration.

Jesus had his forty days in the desert, Jonah his time in the belly of the whale. In Star Wars, when  Luke Skywalker asks Yoda what he will encounter in his first test, the mini master replies: “Only what you take with you.”

“Everyone carries a shadow,” Jung wrote, “and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” In other words, the more we deny it, the more power the shadow self has over us.

“The Shadow is an archetype—a universal motif or image built in to all human beings. You can no more get rid of this inner Shadow than you can avoid casting an outer shadow when you’re in sunlight. For most of us, that creates a problem, because the Shadow appears as the sum total of the weakest, most flawed, inferior or even disgusting parts of yourself. It’s everything you don’t wish to be, but fear that you are.” (“The Tools” by Phil Stutz.)

When one is experiencing a dark night of the soul, one inevitably comes face to face with one’s shadow side.

“Most of us do not take these situations as teachings,” says Zen monk and author Pema Chödrön. “We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape — all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.”

Continues Chödrön,”It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately trying to fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.” By spaciousness, Chödron means the vast calm available to us in the “inner space” of turning inward in meditation and conscious presence. (For more on third eye meditations and inner space travel see “The Art of Seeing: Third Eye Perception and the Mystical Gaze”).

“It takes a long time to learn to listen to the still, small voice within,” notes Psychology Today writer Wendy Lustbader. ”We tend to seek direction outside ourselves, while our soul’s language is drowned out by the commotion of day-to-day doings, all the external strivings that distract us.

“It is possible to lose awareness of this inner voice for years and to be carried along by the force of society’s dictates and other people’s conceptions of a worthy life. At any point in the lifespan, suffering makes our need to hear what is within acute.”

“We see our Shadow as a source of  humiliation that we try to hide—usually through some kind of perfectionism,” explains Phil Stutz. ”The counter-intuitive truth is that when we reveal the Shadow… its nature changes. It becomes a source of creativity and confidence.”

This is because it has been noted by students of the psyche, and Jung in particular, that, as psychologist Ken Page puts it: ”Our deepest wounds surround our greatest gifts.” Continues Page, “Cervantes said that reading a translation is like viewing a tapestry from the back. That’s what it’s like when we try to understand our deepest struggles without honoring the gifts that fuel them.”

“Core gifts are not the same as talents or skills,” continues Page. “In fact, until we understand them, they often feel like shameful weaknesses, or as parts of ourselves too vulnerable to expose.” He gives examples of a client who feels she is “too much,” whose core gift is passion. Another who feels he is “not enough,” whose core gift is humility.

“Yet [these vulnerable parts of ourselves] are where our soul lives…” Page observes. “But gifts aren’t hall-passes to happiness. They get us into trouble again and again. We become most defensive-or most naïve-around them. They challenge us and the people we care about. They ask more of us than we want to give. And we can be devastated when we feel them betrayed or rejected…”

“Since the heat of our core is so hard to handle,” details Page, “we protect ourselves by moving further out from the center. Each ring outward represents a more airbrushed version of ourselves. Each makes us feel safer, puts us at less risk of embarrassment, failure, and rejection. Yet, each ring outward also moves us one step further from our soul, our authenticity, and our sense of meaning…

“So, most of us set up shop at a point where we are close enough to be warmed by our gifts, but far enough away that we do not get burned by their fire. We create safer versions of ourselves to enable us to get through our lives without having to face the existential risk of our core.” (“How Our Insecurities Can Reveal Our Deepest Gifts”).

Considering these angles, it becomes easier to see how the symbolic dragon of the shadow side protects our greatest riches, and how shining a light on our darkness is one time-tested way to liberate the luminous gold of our authentic self.

The only way out is through. Once we begin to see the value in our shadow aspects and dark night periods — whether it’s a dark night day, month or year — we can learn to stop resisting the discomfort and surrender to the process, to view it as an initiation, a transition. If we view every aspect of the journey as sacred, we are better able to glean its gifts, for behind the dark night awaits a silver dawn.

Tai Carmen

“Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end. Our divided, schizophrenic worldview, with no mythology adequate to coordinate our conscious and unconscious — that is what is coming to an end.” ~ Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That

“If there is an Armegeddon it is within each of us.” ~ Robert Ghost Wolf

I write on the eve of the Mayan Apocalypse, Dec 21^st 2012 — a date they are calling “the most anticipated date in history,” which has been gaining power and momentum in the collective mythic imagination for literally decades.

2012 has become a cultural phenomenon, far exceeding any basis in Mayan history, expressing, rather, our own collective sense of dread — that we are heading for destruction, and change of a radical nature is needed if we are to survive.

Archeologist, anthropologist and author Michael D. Coe was perhaps the first to put forth an apocalyptic interpretations of the ancient Mayan codices, writing in his 1966 book The Maya:

“There is a suggestion … that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th [b'ak'tun]. Thus … our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December 2012] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion.”

Since then, apocalyptic prophecies have proliferated exponentially, leading up to the fervor of the 2012 phenomenon. The film industry has capitalized off this fear/trend with a mounting plethora of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic movies. Post-apocalyptic video games like Fallout abound. New Age bookstores are exploding with 2012 material. Youtube features a veritable frenzy of 2012 videos…

Yet actual modern day Maya and Mayan scholars insist that the end of the ancient calender simply signifies the end of an era, known as the thirteen ba’kt’un (each ba’kt’un being equivalent to 394.26 years.) It is the end of an age of man, what the Maya called the fourth world.

Ricardo Cajas, president of the Colectivo de Organizaciones Indígenas de Guatemala, states that the date does not represent an end of humanity, but of a new cycle, which “supposes changes in human consciousness.”

According to a diverse group of indigenous peoples’ creation myths, from Mexico to New Zealand, there have been three failed worlds before our current age (could these legends refer to lost continents such as Plato’s Atlantis?).

The Hindus believe that earth goes through four world  cycles, or ages of man, which repeat indefinitely. Most interpreters of Hindu scriptures believe that earth is currently in a Kali Yuga cycle,  a dark time marked by destruction and degeneration in human values, known as “the age of the demon” or the “age of vice.” Eventually, the Kali Yuga will evolve into three more cycles, each one improving, until we reach a Golden Age.

“We Hopi believe that the human race has passed through three different worlds and life ways since the beginning,” details Hopi Elder Dan Evehema. “At the end of each prior world, human life has been purified or punished by the Great Spirit, or Massau, due mainly to corruption, greed and turning away from the Great Spirit’s teachings. The last great destruction was the flood which destroyed all but a few faithful ones who asked and received a permission from the Great Spirit to live with Him in this new land.”

According to Chief Evehema, the famous rock inscribed with Hopi hieroglyphs (Hopi Prophecy Rock) foretold both world wars and indicates an upcoming time of choice, where humankind will be offered a choice between the path of the heart and the path of the intellect and materialism.

“Modern man is out of balance because he lives in a left-brain dominated society,” asserts the Hopi elder, “leading to imbalance and conflict, and ultimately to destruction.”

We find ourselves in a runaway culture of technological advancement, where authentic human connection –to the earth and one another — threatens to be left behind. Isolation and distraction abound. As Daniel Pinchbeck, author of Breaking Open the Head, says, “We live in a culture where everything tastes good but nothing satisfies.”

Violent outbursts, like the recent tragic Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and the stabbing of 20 school children in China – bizarrely, on the same day – create a disquieting atmosphere of building tension and mounting darkness. It’s as though we are experiencing a dark night of the world soul.

“A dark night of the soul,” writes Erin Reese in her post of the same name, ”primarily occurs when the old self-image is ready to go. This is the outdated identification of who you think you are – the ego structure. When the self-image becomes calcified in any way, a dark night of the soul comes rumbling in like storm clouds.” (For more, check out Parallax’s Navigating the Dark Night of the Soul.)

Astrologically Pluto and Uranus have been, and continue to be, influential.

“The effect of Uranus is to shatter old outworn forms so as to allow new life to be born. Pluto is the Lord of the Underworld in the Roman archetypal pantheon. In traditional astrology Pluto represents the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. In the Egyptian pantheon Pluto is Osiris, the God of Regeneration; Uranus is Wadjet, the Great Awakener. The long lasting square between these two astrological giants [during 2012 and for the next few years] suggests that we have only just begun our journey of incredible transformation and change.”(Astrological Insights.) 

“Uranus represents change, invention, revolution, and higher awareness,” details astrologer Jamie Partridge. ”It’s effect is shocking, unpredictable, and erratic. Pluto represents globalization, destruction, transformation, and renewal.  It’s effect is grinding, ruthless and extreme. Both of these planets are distinctly non-personal and emotionless, yet their effect is dramatic and deeply felt. The square is the most challenging of the planetary aspects, representing tests and challenges. It’s effect is stressful and frustrating.”

I wouldn’t include an astrological analysis if I hadn’t felt the truth of these interpretations in my own life. So many people in my life tell me they feel it too: that 2012 was one of their most intense, full years. Many have had very hard years, while others have had intensely wonderful years. Most of us have had a mixed bag of extreme highs and lows. Few people found 2012 to be “just another year.”

For many, a pressure is building. The need to burn away all that is false (a trait associated with Pluto.) Many I speak with seem to be going through an emotional-spiritual purge or some kind of shadow work at the moment. I think many of us feel innately that it’s a good time to purify and detoxify (look for tips on this in future posts!). Many feel pushed to their limit and filled with a desire to restructure their life. Old behaviors which no longer serve us are becoming increasingly uncomfortable. I realize this doesn’t apply to everyone, but it strikes me as significant that so many people I know are experiencing one or all of these things right now — more than usual, it seems.

And so the 2012 phenomenon, the so-called Mayan Apocalypse, can be seen as an expression of our personal and collective discomfort with old existing structures and outmoded patterns of behavior. When Dec. 21st comes and goes and the world remains in all it’s chaos, we will be left with the anti-climatic but significant realization that there is no escaping ourselves.

Let’s die to the past through this inner apocalypse  – harness the intense energy of this time  and use it for personal rebirth and transformation. We are collectively craving it. But it can only start with each of us, individually, and it can only take place in the present, right now.

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language 
And next year’s words await another voice.” ~ T.S. Elliot

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” ~  Edith Lovejoy Pierce

The New Year inspires me. Unlike birthdays, after which I don’t usually feel any different, a new year — a new set of numbers radiating new possibility – does feel different to me. Mostly because I will it to.

I like being able to section off my years. To mark this phase “done” and turn a new page, ask myself “what do I know I need to do differently this year?” The new year is an incredibly useful psychological device to inspire one to actualize the answer.

I don’t know about you, but 2012 was perhaps my fullest year to date. A year of personal growth to be sure! I’m hoping to put those lessons to good use in 2013.

One of my resolutions is to write a weekly post. Hopefully I’ll be relatively consistent in publishing a new post every Sunday evening, though that may vary a little.

I’m also going to start including a new feature, interviewing inspiring figures I know. Our first guest is going to be the creator of Cosmic American Dream Support, Rachael Rice.

What was 2012 like for you? What are your thoughts on this moment of history in which we find ourselves? What topics do you want to hear more about on Parallax? I want to hear from you! Just saying “hi” is fine as well!

Every commenter will be entered in my Parallax New Years Give Away!  (Each name will be written on a piece of paper and placed in a bowl, from which I will draw the lucky recipients, blindfolded, of course…must let destiny choose.) This year there will be two winners; one will receive a personalized copy of my poetry book, Pollen…

And the other will receive a copy of the fantastic and inspiring novel, The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You.

I so appreciate every encouraging comment, and I am honored and humbled to know you are reading.

In this oftentimes dark world we have only each other to remind one another of the light within each of us — and to fan that inner fire as best we can.

I’ve been calling 2013 the year of the dream, partly because it’s a near-rhyme that has a nice ring to it, but also because I truly feel this is a time ripe with possibility.

This can be the year we actualize those inner visions we’ve been processing and brewing… If we choose.

On on,

~TC

By Tai Carmen

Rachael Rice is an Oklahoma-born, Vermont-bred dream coach, artist, digital media maven, teacher and dreamcatcher maker —  featured in the likes of People Magazine– living in Portland, Oregon. We met at an event offering free workshops for women — I was leading a poetry workshop and she was teaching a class on making dreamcatchers. Her creations and creative spirit alike are inspiring to behold.

Rachael, I’ve been calling 2013 the year of the dream. I saw the other day on your Facebook page that you’ve coined the same term! Dream actualization is in the air! Transformative culture is on the rise. What are your thoughts on this moment of history in which we find ourselves and the role of the dreamer in the modern age? 

Well I think it’s some pretty intense karma to be alive now. I mean, now we really know about the consequences of our actions: how unlimited growth doesn’t work in a closed system like Earth, how coal and combustion engines make polar bears grip their tiny ice shards. We have more awareness than ever of the scope of human suffering — AND potential.

I choose to put all my energy into working with others who are building whatever is coming next. I don’t get real upset about politics because I don’t think the answers to the world’s problems are going to come from the government (although it would benefit greatly I think from a presence of women commensurate in proportion to its electorate) — I think the answers to the world’s problems will come from creatives: artists, dreamers, song-singers, and the like.

Can you tell us more about Cosmic American Dream Support?

So I began to notice that I’d sit down with someone to talk about her website, and we’d end up talking about whether or not she wanted kids, or the fact that she really wanted to forgive her sister, or quit her day job and be a writer. So the conversation about branding quickly turned to the Big Dream, what we want out of life, and I found that I was pretty good at using the online branding process to help clients achieve more clarity about what they really wanted to be doing. Now I have a group of women that I coach in what I’m calling Dream School: A Solopreneur Salon for Creatives. We get together and use various tools — everything from smudge sticks  to Danielle Laporte’s Desire Map to Seth Godin’s blog to Tara Gentile‘s writing about money to Pixie Campbell‘s SouLodge animal wisdom teachings. It’s a very spiritual, very practical approach to running a business as a creative person.

Can you give us more insight into the traditional uses of dreamcatchers, as well as what they mean to you?

Well the dreamcatcher originated with the Ojibwa Nation and were often used above a child’s cradle, as a mobile to capture and filter out the bad dreams (there are various iterations of this theme). The Pan-Indian movement of the 60′s and 70′s saw the dreamcatcher popularized as a uniting image, and it has certainly become quite commercialized and appropriated by white girls like me since then. I grew up in a time when “multiculturalism” was part of arts education and I learned to make them in Oklahoma, much as you would learn to make snowshoes or Ukrainian eggs.

Then I became a public school art teacher and explored all manner of indigenous and non-western art and craft. Now there’s a lot more mindfulness (or there should be) around cultural appropriation so I understand it’s tricky to create art inspired by Native American imagery. The spiritual nature of the objects I create exists only as an expression of what I think is beautiful, I claim no heritage other than the space occupied by my own heart. They are not marketed as sacred objects (though they are to me, but so is my guitar). I use mostly salvaged materials, and as much as possible I source my feathers from happy birds on farms. I donate to the Native American Youth and Family Association of Portland, as a token of thanks.

What advice would you give to people trying to break through issues of anxiety, depression, creative stagnation and/or self-doubt?

I share this issue. I would call it a spiritual assignment. I’ve had some serious trauma in life that has resulted in the need for clinical support. I do believe in therapy (I’m a fan of the alphabet soup evidence-based therapies like CBT, DBT, and especially ACT). But therapy is like food, you have to try a lot of it to find out what you like. And some of us need medication, as over-prescribed as it is. Prozac is my friend. I haven’t tried ayahuasca yet but certainly psychedelic drugs have influenced my capacity to wonder.

I love 12-Step work, because of its accountability, and its helpfulness in dismantling egoic narcissism. You don’t have to believe in God(s) to have a higher power, you know? I adore the work of Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hahn, Eckart Tolle and all those folks talking about the nature of the soul. I think body centered practices like EFT tapping, yoga, and other healing modalities can get to places that talk-based therapies can’t reach. You know, none of these approaches work unless you’re really willing to be very, very VERY uncomfortable. And a lot of people aren’t. They’re very attached to their stories about themselves, their Pain Bodies, the narratives imposed upon them by the operating system downloaded into their bodies by their DNA, their parents, their society.

My advice is to stay away from alcohol and read about Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. Get a sense of the Observer Self that’s there all the time, no matter how you’re feeling. Cultivate gratitude. Every single day. We have every modern convenience, every imaginable advantage. If you don’t believe me, go turn your water on and off. There is no excuse to not have a life that is meaningful and rewarding, full of connection and service.

We over-emphasize the mind in our culture. We think it’s important to not have negative thoughts a lot. Well, some of us were programmed to have a lot of negative thoughts. That’s not such a big deal. The sun will become a red giant and in 10,000 years none of it will matter, you don’t have to take your negative thoughts and feelings so seriously. Pay attention to the activities that make time fly by, to the things that give your life meaning. And choose behaviors that align with those things, no matter what your mind may be doing. This will often be really uncomfortable. It’s the yoga of the development. But the amazing thing is that, if you choose different behaviors, you’ll have different feelings!

Try to view all your relationships as assignments from your soul. Entertain the possibility that your soul chose this body, and these circumstances, at this time, to best learn how to be at home in your own heart.

You’ve described yourself as a “living, breathing dream catcher.” I love this idea. Can you describe for us how others might achieve this?

Figure out how you want to feel (specifically, not just generically) and identify actions that create those feelings. Like, I want to feel expanded, inspired, abundant, divinely feminine, and useful. I can’t feel that way and have a normal day job. But other people can.

My new thing is to buy the coffee of the person behind me in a drive-through, especially if I’m feeling particularly contracted around money. It shifts everything for me, and I get to drive away before they can even thank me! Awesome!! Abundance is a feeling, and I have plenty. Pay attention to how your body feels in reaction to your environment. To the food you eat. To the conversations you have. If you’re unsure of your soul’s purpose, try to help others in some way. Be of service. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Surround yourself with people who make you feel more like yourself. I spend 80% of my time alone, and that’s ok. I’m sensitive. Always be asking, “why do I want this?” And notice, right in this moment, you are safe.

Is there a particular philosophy by which you live your life?

I dig engaged Buddhism. I think it’s important to know the land we walk on, to re-indigenize ourselves: where my water comes from, what plants are edible, who was here before me, from which direction to storms blow in. I believe in forgiveness.

What would you say is your number one inspiration?

The natural world. Or Lady Gaga. It’s a toss-up.

www.rachaelrice.com

By Tai Carmen

“We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid of the darkness. We trust that the moon shall guide us. We are determining the future at this very moment. We know that the heart is the philosopher’s stone. Our music is our alchemy.” ~ Saul Williams

Shrouded in mystery and steeped in mysticism, Alchemy is the art and science of transformation. The multi-leveled, symbol-rich philosophy of the ages functions both on an exoteric (practical) and esoteric (spiritual) level.

At its most literal, alchemy was the chemical quest to create the Philosopher’s stone—a legendary substance derived from a series of laboratory processes, known as the The Magnum Opus, The Great Work, or simply The Art. The Philosopher’s Stone was said to be the agent of gold transmutation, and the key ingredient in the creation of the fabled elixir of life, said to heal all diseases, induce longevity and even immortality.

Yet it’s clear from the ancient sacred texts, known as the Corpus Hermeticum—upon which alchemy’s Hermetic principals are based—that gold transmutation is but the tip of the iceberg, as well as a symbolic teaching, of what is essentially a philosophical and mystical tradition. The Philosopher’s Stone can be, and often is, viewed metaphorically.

“[T]he Stone is a symbol of  incorruptible wisdom achieved by uniting both rational, intellectual thinking (masculine, right brain activity) with our intuitive knowing of the heart  (feminine, left brain activity).” (Alchemy & The Philosopher’s Stone.)

“Alchemy posits that all things in the universe originate with the materia prima (First Matter),” notes P.T. Mistlberger in his essay “Psycho-Spiritual Alchemy.“

“The idea of the ‘primal material’ was developed by Aristotle and refers to the idea that there is a primordial matter that lies behind all forms, but that is itself invisible. It is the womb of creation, the field of pure potentiality, but it only gains existence, in the strictest sense, when given form.

“In the alchemical process, the primal material is that which remains when something has been reduced to its essence and can be reduced no further. Psychologically, this is a potent symbol for the inner process of transformation in which we regularly arrive at ‘core realizations’ that cannot be deconstructed further, but that themselves become the ground for successfully moving forward in life—‘integrating’ as we evolve.”

Certainly such high-level claims as gold transmutation and immortality elixirs made alchemy ripe for abuse from charlatans. Its cryptic language and oblique symbolism only aided sham-peddling swindlers with the perfect smoke screen behind which to operate mysteriously.

Fraudulent claims drove The Art into disrepute—Dante reserves a special place in his Inferno for alchemists—and the modern materialist mind is often quick to disparage alchemy as an arcane jumble of smoke and mirrors hogwash. Though it is considered a protoscience for modern chemistry due to its establishment of basic chemical procedures (the most notable being distillation), its discovery of phosphorus, antimony and bismuth, and preparation of nitric, hydrochloric and sulphuric acid.

The real “gold,” however, seems to lie in the deeper, spiritual heritage of Alchemy. The mystical truths preserved in its archetypal imagery and symbolism still serve as an allegorical map for seekers today.

“Only through discovering alchemy,” notes pioneering Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, “have I clearly understood that the unconscious is a process and that ego’s rapport with the unconscious and his contents initiates an evolution, more precisely, a real metamorphosis of the psyche.”

While the imagery associated with alchemy can be bafflingly surreal and even disturbing, every detail holds symbolic meaning that becomes coherent when viewed through an allegorical lens.

The 7 Stages (or Operations) of Alchemy give insight into many of these symbols. The system is thought to be based largely on the ancient text, The Emerald Tablet of Hermes—the jewel in the crown of the Corpus Hermeticum. The first translation dates back to the 13th century, though its origin is suspected to go as far back as the 2nd century or older.

The 7 Stages, undertaken with the goal of the Philosopher’s Stone (both literal and metaphorical), are as follows:

1.Calcination. (“Its father is the sun.” ~ The Emerald Tablet of Hermes)

Chemically, this initial stage involves heating the substance over an open flame and burning away the first layer of impurities.

“Psychologically,” remarks Dennis William Hauk, an Internationally recognized expert on alchemy research, “this is the destruction of the ego and our attachment to material possessions. Calcination is usually a natural humbling process as we are gradually assaulted and overcome by the trials and tribulations of life, though it can be a deliberate surrender of our inherent hubris [igniting] the fire of introspection and self-evaluation.”

“In spiritual symbolism, this stage is sometimes humorously referred to as ‘cooking’ or ‘baking’ (and in fact the prime symbol of this stage is fire),” observes P.T. Mistlberger in “Psycho-Spiritual Alchemy.“

Spiritually, Adam McClean points out in his essay Birds in Alchemy, “the nigredo indicates the initial stages of the alchemist’s encounter with his inner space, through withdrawing from the outer world of the senses in meditation, and entering what is initially the dark inner world of the soul,”

Symbolized by crows, ravens, toads, sculls and skeletons—as well as the alchemist in his own burning flask or cauldron—philosophically, this stage represents the breaking down of old structures. Called the nigredo, or “blackening,” Calcination involved putrefaction and decomposition of the alchemical substances—a ”trial by fire” that psychologists often equate with the Dark Night of the Soul, the death of old aspects of the self and confrontation with the shadow within.

“Chemically,” Hauk tells us, ”it is the recombination of the saved elements from Separation into a new substance…”

“Psychologically, it is empowerment of our true selves, the union of both the masculine and feminine sides of our personalities into a new belief system or an intuitive state of consciousness. The alchemists referred to it as the Lesser Stone, and after it is achieved, the adept is able to clearly discern what needs to be done to achieve lasting enlightenment, which is union with the Overself. Often, synchronicities begin to occur that confirm the alchemist is on the right track.”

The divided self, often represented by a king and queen, now purified and healed—is reunited, producing filius philosophorum, or “the philosopher’s child,” a magical, hermaphroditic babe, representing the reborn, integrated self.

“Esoteric alchemy proposes,” Mistlberger elaborates, “that what is left if the first three stages of calcination, dissolution, and separation have been properly undergone is a state wherein we can more clearly mediate between our ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’.

“In this sense ‘soul’ refers to our embodied spirit, the part of our essential nature that is fully on Earth, and ‘spirit’ refers to our most rarefied connection with the divine, transcendental Source. These two are sometimes categorized as the divine feminine (soul) and the divine masculine (spirit). The combining of the two is the essence of inner tantra, a sacred marriage of spiritual opposites.”

The integration of the active, “impregnating” principal of divine spirit is often depicted as the masculine sun, or Sol, while the receptive principal of the body receiving that spirit infusion is represented by the feminine moon, or Luna. Below these aspects integrate via the symbolic sexual union of Sol and Luna.

“In conjunction, fears melt,” adds Nephtalia Leba in her essay “Alchemical Transformation.“ ”The old scripts that played in our head that said we ‘must’ or we ‘should’ are quieter, if not gone. There is more joy now. We begin to see the world more clearly. The acts we do choose to engage in – even the mundane acts – take on a greater delight.”

5. Fermentation (“Separate the Earth from Fire, the subtle from the gross, gently and with great Ingenuity.”)

Chemically, Fermentation is the growth of a ferment (bacteria) in organic solutions, such as occurs in the fermenting of grapes to make wine.

“Fermentation,” Hauk tells us, “is a two-step process that begins with the Putrefaction of the hermaphroditic ‘child’ from the Conjunction, resulting in its death and resurrection to a new level of being.

“The Fermentation phase then begins with the introduction of new life into the product of Conjunction to strengthen it and insure its survival.”

Like the first “nigredo” stage of Calcination, the Fermentation phase has been associated with the Dark Night of the Soul psychologically.

“Here, we undergo a type of rebirth,” observes Mistlberger, ”resulting from the deep willingness to let go of all elements of [ourselves] that no longer serve our spiritual evolution. This marks the true beginning of inner initiation, of entry into a ‘higher’ life in which our best destiny has a chance to unfold.”

This stage is often associated with the peacock due its reported accompaniment of multi-colored visions upon completion, known as “the peacock’s tail.”

6. Distillation (“It rises from Earth to Heaven and descends again to Earth, thereby combining within Itself the powers of both the Above and the Below.”)

Chemically this stage involves the boiling and condensation of the fermented solution to increase its purity, such as takes place in the distilling of wine to make brandy.

“Psychologically,” Mistlberger details, “distillation represents a further purification process, being about an ongoing process of integrating our spiritual realizations with our daily lives—dealing with seeming mundane things with integrity, being as impeccable in our lives as we can be, and not using the inner work as a means by which to escape the world…

“…At this stage remaining impurities, hidden as ‘shadow’ elements in the mind, are flushed out and released, crucial if they are not to surface later on (a phenomena that can be seen to occur when a reputed saint, sage, or wise person, operating from a relatively advanced level of self-realization, appears to have a fall from grace).”

Mistlberger tells us that a common alchemical symbol for this stage is the Green Lion devouring the sun, suggesting “a robust triumph and an embracing of a limitless source of energy.”

7. Coagulation (“Thus will you obtain the Glory of the Whole Universe. All Obscurity will be clear to you. This is the greatest Force of all powers, because it overcomes every Subtle thing and penetrates every Solid thing.” )

“The end result,” concludes Mistlberger, “is the Philosopher’s Stone, also sometimes called the Androgyne, and is often symbolized by the Phoenix, the bird that has arisen from the ashes.

“This is closely connected to the idea of the Resurrection Body of mystical Christianity, or the Rainbow Body of Tibetan Buddhism, which includes the esoteric idea of the ability to navigate all possible levels (dimensions) of reality, without loss of consciousness.

“It is the form of the illumined and fully transformed human, in which matter has been spiritualized, or the spiritual has fully entered the material. Heaven and Earth seen as one, or as the Buddhists say, nirvana (the absolute, or formless) is samsara (the world of form). At this end stage, whatever we set eyes on we see the divine, as we have come to realize our own full divinity.”

Below, an alchemical woodcut depicts the Stone as eternally youthful and fully integrated. He controls the forces of duality and fends off any materialistic advances on his unified Soul and Spirit

“In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself.

 “The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This ‘feed-back’ process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia.” ~ Carl Jung

T’ai Carmen

“Cease trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be Revelation”. ~ Eileen Caddy

“The only real valuable thing is intuition”. ~ Albert Einstein

Studies and anecdotes alike suggest that we have ways of gaining information beyond that which is readily available to our conscious mind. The word intuition comes from the Latin word intueri, which translates as to look inside or to contemplate.

Psychology Today relates an experiment wherein the subject is shown images which are either calming or agitating (an image of a lake, an image of a spider…) The order is randomly generated in the moment by a computer.

Electrodes that measure tiny changes in skin resistance are attached to two fingers on the subject’s left hand; plus, a third that monitors blood flow. Consistent with other test subjects, the body does not react to calming images, but does show response to the agitating ones. In this groundbreaking experiment, researchers discovered that the subject’s body reacts to the agitating image a fraction of a second before the image has been randomly generated.

I’ll give that a minute to sink in.

Implications of nonlinear time aside—which are, in themselves, awe-inspiring—this study suggests concrete proof that “gut reactions” are a genuine function of human processing.

“Today, cognitive science is revealing a fascinating unconscious mind that Freud never told us about,” notes David G. Myers in The Powers & Perils of Intuition. “Thinking occurs not onstage but offstage, out of sight. Studies of automatic processing, subliminal priming, implicit memory, heuristics, right-brain processing, instant emotions, nonverbal communication and creativity unveil our intuitive capacities. Thinking, memory and attitude operate on two levels: the conscious/deliberate and the unconscious/automatic. ‘Dual processing,’ researchers call it. We know more than we know we know.”

“The scientific evidence is now stronger than ever for commonly reported experiences such as telepathy (mind-to-mind communication), clairvoyance (information received from a distant place) and precognition (information received from a distant time),” observes psychologist Dean Radin. “Studies suggest that we have ways of gaining information that bypass the ordinary senses.”

This acknowledgement extends even to the United States Navy, who, The New York Times reports, has started a program to investigate how members of the military can be trained to improve their intuitive ability during combat and other missions.

“The idea for the project comes in large part from the testimony of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan who have reported an unexplained feeling of danger just before they encountered an enemy attack or ran into an improvised explosive device, Navy scientists said.

“’Research in human pattern recognition and decision-making suggest that there is a ‘sixth sense’ through which humans can detect and act on unique patterns without consciously and intentionally analyzing them,” the Office of Naval Research said in an announcement late last month,” citing numerous peer-reviewed studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

The New York Times notes that people often “confuse” the concept of intuition with the supernatural—though many intuitive types would more likely call this a difference in perspective.

Whatever your personal beliefs as to the source of intuition, its existence is embraced by the world’s most celebrated thinkers. In Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man, William Hermanns shares a conversation with the man whose name is literally a synonym for genius:

“Einstein nodded: he was a good listener. After a pause he said, ‘The cosmic man must be restored, the whole man who is made in the image and likeness of the arch-force, which you may call God. This man thinks with his heart and not with party dogma. As I’ve explained before, there is an order in the universe – a cosmic order – and humans have the possibility of understanding these laws.’

“Einstein leaned back in his chair; so did I, putting my writing pad on my knees. He added, ‘I have no doubt that the allies will win the war.’ I smiled, ‘Oh, you are my prophet again. ‘Prophet or not,’ he scratched his head, ‘what I say is more often felt through intuition than thought through intellect.’” (Einstien’s Intuition.)

It’s important, however, to remain discerning, and not to assume that every strong feeling we receive is operating on some higher, interconnected plane.

As David G. Myers points out in The Powers & Perils of Intuition, “The history of science tells story after story of challenges to human intuition. To our ancestors, the sun’s daily travels had at least two plausible explanations: Either the sun was circling Earth, or Earth was spinning while the sun stood still. Intuition preferred the first explanation. Galileo’s scientific observations demanded the second.”

It’s also possible to confuse the strong emotion of desire (wishful thinking) with the strong feeling of a potential “gut reaction.” We must always check our guts—and analyze our motives—first and foremost for self-deception.

“The first principle,” said Einstein’s fellow physicist, Richard Feynman, “is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

“Nobody can dictate my behavior,” said Diana, Princess of Wales, in her last interview before her fatal accident. “I work through instinct, and instinct is my best counselor.”

“Does this mean we should ignore our hunches or intuitions?” asks Denise Cummins Ph.D in “Good Thinking.”

“Not necessarily. According to Dr. Daniel Kahneman, decisions are the output of two processes, a fast intuition- or emotion-based process and a slower, deliberative one. To Kahneman, intuitive activities are very similar to perceptual activities, such as seeing and hearing.

“Ask yourself this: When you glimpse something out of the corner of your eye, what do you normally do next? You probably direct your attention to the new stimulus, allowing your visual system to process it in more detail. As it turns out, that is probably the best way to think about the role of intuition in decision-making: Your gut reaction tells you this particular choice deserves further deliberation.”

Cummins also sites an experiment by Dr. Michel Tuan Pham of Columbia Business School, which asked people to make a number of future predictions, from box office success to presidential elections. The findings indicated that people did better in fields with which they already had some knowledge. But also, those who believed in their ability more, made more accurate predictions. This was dubbed “the emotional oracle effect.”

So how to cultivate your intuition? For one, start listening to that still, small voice. Like a muscle, it benefits from excercise. Make feeling-based predictions privately to yourself, which can be proven later. This way you can begin to get an idea of what your most successful hunches felt like in their nascent stages—as well as build confidence and trust in your abilities, thereby employing the benefits of that documented “emotional oracle effect.”

Remember, the subliminal self operates on a far subtler level than we may be used to paying attention to or even noticing.

Meditation—simply giving yourself time to cultivate inner stillness—helps quiet the mind and open receptivity to subconscious knowledge.

Paying attention to how your body responds to certain situations or people can tell you a lot.

Visualization exercises can be helpful as well. They give the subconscious mind a device with which it can present you with communication from its arsenal of symbolic wisdom.

Try imagining yourself in a beautiful, calming natural environment. Take the time to really bring the sights and sounds of your inner space to life. Once this has been achieved, take a little more time simply to enjoy your creation.

Then imagine a treasure chest in this scene. Ask a question. In your mind’s eye, walk over to the chest and open it. The subconscious will present you with an answering image. It may be clear or obscure symbolism, but more often than not you will find the image that appears carries metaphorical weight and is not random.

Have fun tapping into that buried treasure!

By T’ai Carmen

“No one man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

“To be nobody but myself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me somebody else—means to fight the hardest battle any human can fight, and never stop fighting. ~ e.e. cummings

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” – C.G. Jung

In 1944  Helen Deutsch—notably, the first psychoanalyst to specialize in women’s psychology—coined the term the “as if” self.

This concept was expanded upon and called the “false self“ by D. W. Wincott  in 1960. ”Other people’s expectations can become of overriding importance,” Wincott noted, “overlaying or contradicting the original sense of self, the one connected to the very roots of one’s being.” (Our Need for Others.)

The idea of a false personality construct being distinct from one’s essential, authentic nature dates back over 3000 years: in the  Bahgavad Gita, Ego (or Ahamkara) is described as the body-identified sense of self which is disconnected from the true soul.

“According to the Gita,” notes Ramnath Subramanian ”there is a fundamental difference between ‘real’ ego and what it defines as the ‘false’ ego. Real ego is our very essence, the consciousness that makes us aware and awake to reality. The false ego is a false identity crafted to preserve the sense of being the most significant and the most important all the time. In short, it is a narcissistic search for being loved, validated and appreciated.(“The Bhagavad Gita and the Problem of the Ego,” Huffington Post.)“

The Bhagavad Gita asserts that the Ahamkara (ego) must be removed for true fulfillment to be achieved.

“We all need an ability to mask or control our baser emotions so that we don’t blurt them out inappropriately where they can get us into trouble,” explains Dr. Tain Dayton in “Creating a False Self: Learning to Live a Lie.” “The real danger lies not in creating a mask or false self, we all do that somewhat. The danger lies in mistaking the false or idealized self for the true self.

“A false self because it is an unconscious defense, can stifle the growth of a conscious, authentic self. It’s the false self that strategizes and develops strength, confidence and acceptance. And the true, conscious self gets suffocated and sent into hiding.”

One surefire  way to distinguish one’s core center from the egoic personality structure or false self is meditation, in which we cultivate what has been called “the witnessing self.” Meditation asks the practitioner to become conscious of when one is thinking, which really just means becoming aware of when one is talking to oneself internally. 

In our everyday Western life, a constant inner monologue  for us has become like breathing. We identify with our thoughts to the point where the statement “I am not my thoughts,” however factually correct, feels somewhat radical when taken to heart.

Yet the meditation practitioner soon finds moments, however fleeting, when the inner dialogue is stilled and mental silence is achieved. Anyone who has ever experienced this will tell you that this moment feels very much like making contact with one’s true being—which, according to mystical traditions the world over, it is.

“Based on the philosophy of [the ancient Hindu texts] the Upanishads,” details Neera Kashyap in “Personal Growth & The Witnessing Mind,” [we are taught] that if we could witness our thoughts and emotions, we would discover that what is witnessed is not our essential nature, but an ever-changing flux of our mind’s desires and tendencies.

“By practicing witness consciousness, we can distance ourselves from our chameleon-like mental tendencies. [This way] we observe our world, but simultaneously also absorb the detachment, power and impartiality of our anchor, the witnessing mind.

“Anchored, we observe,” continues Neera. “Anchored, we inquire into the origins of our thoughts and emotions, and the problems that arise from them. Anchored, we see them rise, take form, and ultimately merge into the witness. The thoughts, emotions, and problems are transformed, by their mergence in the silence and peace of the witness.”

“There are two birds, two sweet friends, who dwell on the self-same tree. One eats the fruits of the tree, and the other looks on in silence.”

“This verse from the Upanishad,” notes Neera Kashyap, ”sums up the secret of abiding happiness, in our lives. We enjoy the fullness of life, yet simultaneously witness this participation silently. This seems essential, when we consider the next verse of this Upanishad, in which the imagery is further developed.

“The active bird is overcome by sadness at her unceasing and unwise partaking of life. However, when she beholds on the same tree the eternal power and glory of the other bird, the witnessing spirit, she is freed from sorrow. For she sees that between herself and the other bird, there is a fundamental identity.”

Wincott prescribed what he called “play”—anything that brings out spontaneous aliveness, from art to sports to meaningful conversation—as a way to revive contact with the authentic self.

There is no doubt that self-acceptance is also key.

“When we’re self-accepting,” elaborates Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. in “Evolution of the Self, “we’re able to embrace all facets of ourselves—not just the positive, more ‘esteem-able’ parts. As such, self-acceptance is unconditional, free of any qualification.

“We can recognize our weaknesses, limitations, and foibles, but this awareness in no way interferes with our ability to fully accept ourselves…Perhaps more than anything else, cultivating self-acceptance requires that we develop more self-compassion.”

It can be hard in a world that values success, perfection and positivity to accept our failures, flaws and darkness, but ultimately, in order to touch the authenticity within ourselves we seek—ironically!—-accepting the aspects of ourselves which we like least is the first step to unleashing that part we like best.

What are your thoughts on authenticity, identity and the false self?

By Tai Carmen

“Why do we describe a distraught person as being ‘beside himself’? Because the ancients believed that soul and body could part, and that under great emotional stress the soul would actually leave the body. When this happened a person was ‘beside himself.’” ~ Dictionary of Word Origins

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” ~ Jesus (Matthew 16:26)

Part I

Our language is rife with references to what has traditionally been described by shamanic cultures as ‘soul loss’ — “Nobody’s home,” we might say of an empty-eyed co-worker. Or, in a funk ourselves: “I feel like a part of me is missing.” Popular songs site it casually — I don’t know where my soul is / I don’t know where my home is (Nelly Furtado, “I’m Like A Bird”).

Yet, these expressions are so common, we often use them as descriptors without fully investigating their implication.

“Many of us today don’t feel totally whole, don’t feel as if we are all here,” relates Sandra Ingerman in her book Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self. 

“Few of us live as fully as we could. When we become aware of this, we want to recover the intensity of life, and the intimacy, that we once enjoyed…We want to come home more fully to ourselves and to the people we love.”

Many turn to the shamanic arts for language and methodology which address our collective angst with a soulfulness lacking in modern lexicon.

“The re-emergence in the late twentieth century of shamanism — with its lively and concrete notion of soul — seems to be a response to a very depressing cultural reality,” notes Jungian analyst John Ryan Haule. ”In the past six or seven hundred years we have undergone a consciousness-shift of 180 degrees. Formerly soul was our primary reality. Now we have only a body and a rational ego.

“The material conditions of our lives have improved immeasurably, but we’ve lost the imaginal and transcendent scope that belongs to the reality of soul. In a situation like this, it is often the depressives among us who are the most realistic regarding the impoverishment of our human existence.” (“Depression & Soul-Loss.”)

According to modern writers on the ancient subject, soul loss accounts for depression, anxiety, a sense of alienation, incompleteness and disconnection, a feeling of being “spaced out,” or “sleepwalking” through life.  Extreme cases include coma, psychosis, fugue states and dissociative identity disorders. 

Interestingly, the concept that a vital aspect of the self flees or retreats during experiences of extreme pain or disturbance is an idea shared by shamanism and psychotherapy alike. Psychotherapy calls it “disassociation,” shamanism calls it “soul loss.” The purpose in both cases is self-protection.

Modern shamanic healers explain that we all lose bits and pieces of our soul, or vital essence, as we go through life.

The cause doesn’t have to be something as monumental as an accident or as extreme as abuse. It can be as simple as a small child’s sensitivity to her parents’ psychic tension or continued arguing. Little by little, parts of ourselves withdraw and become seemingly lost to us.

Rejected elements of the personality are banished from conscious awareness — Jung’s concept of the psyche’s ”Shadow” aspect. This is done unconsciously, to ease the cognitive dissonance of harboring seemingly conflicting or ambiguous feelings; what modern psychology calls “compartmentalization” and repression. 

Denied aspects — such as repressed sadness, anger, inner child or libidinous impulses — are effectively exiled. But they do not disappear. They continue to exist “underground,” as it were, in the subterranean caves of the psyche, causing emotional alienation, discomfort and disconnection from self.

The good news is that excavation of these buried aspects — and a renewal of their accompanying vital forces  — is always possible, and the focus of psychotherapy and shamanic healing alike.

“An aspect of the infinite soul fleeing under duress is a state everyone has at some point experienced, regardless of terminology or ideology applied,” comments Kelley Harrell in her Huffington Post article, “The New Treatise on Soul Retrieval.”

The most common approach of neo-shamans is to echo the ancient model of shaman-as-guide in the netherworlds of psyche/non-ordinary reality. As pioneering anthropologist Mircea Eliade wrote in his now classic text “Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy”:

“Only the shaman can undertake a cure of this kind. For only he ‘sees’ the spirits and knows how to exorcise them; only he recognizes that the soul has fled, and is able to overtake it, in ecstasy, and return it to its body….Everything that concerns the soul and its adventure, here on earth and in the beyond, is the exclusive province of the shaman.”

However! A fascinating synthesis between psychotherapy and shamanic soul retrieval has been in the works over the past several decades.

“Upon his return from studying with teachers in India, Australia, and South America, shaman Ross Bishop transformed the Soul Retrieval process into a method that could be embraced by the Western mind and heart by making a simple shift in the roles of Shaman and client,” relates psychotherapist, author and soul retrieval practitioner Selena Whittle.

“In this contemporary method of Soul Retrieval, the essential elements of the process are the same.  There is a shamanic journey into the inner world where the wounded part of the self is identified, healed and brought back; however, the client does the work and is guided by the Shaman. The client takes the shamanic journey. The client identifies the part of the self that is wounded. The client builds a relationship with that part of the self, heals it, then brings it back for integration.

“The Shaman guides the client every step of the way, helping the client navigate the internal world of the psyche, guiding the client in the potent words or actions that are needed to build the relationship with the fragmented aspect of the self, to heal it and to bring it back. The shamanic journey becomes a shared experience, the Soul Retrieval a shared healing intervention.”

For more information on how to perform these inner excavations yourself Ross Bishop’s “Healing the Shadow” details the process. Both Selena Whittle and Ross Bishop  offer in-person and phone-based sessions.

But let me initiate you right here and now into a simple yet profound method, which you can practice in the comfort of your home.

Part II

1. Create your inner sanctum. 

This could be anything from an ornate temple to a simple spot by a running brook. The important part is that the setting has identifiable features, which can be recreated, and that the space makes you feel empowered, centered, safe and calm. Mentally construct as many details — sights, sounds and smells — as possible. Lie back, get comfortable and spend some time really making your inner sanctuary come to life behind closed eyes. (*The bath, with some low light, candles, calming scents and salts, is an excellent place to do soul work.)

2. Call in the missing soul part.

Decide which aspect you are going to reach out to before settling in by first looking at the problem areas in your life. For example, if you are having issues with anxiety, call in “the one who feels anxious.” If you are dealing with addiction, call in “the one who is addicted.”

If you are a visual person, the rejected aspect will likely take form in your mind’s eye.  If you are not, you may simply get a feeling or “thought package” of insight — though visualization is encouraged with this particular method.

3. Reach out, reassure, & connect.

Remember, these inner aspects are in hiding because they have been wounded, ridiculed, banished, frightened. They are like scared children — who have not developed beyond the age at which they fled — and must be reached out to accordingly. So its important to project a sense of deep compassion towards them if you’re to inspire their trust.

Tell them you wish to discuss their unmet needs.

These rejected aspects, which you may have deemed bad, difficult, or unacceptable, actually have legitimate needs, which — as they are not being met by you, their guardian — are being substituted with unhealthy behavior. The coping mechanism employed by the exiled aspect, however far from your ideal, is truly its best effort with the tools at hand.

As Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran said: “when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.” (“On Good and Evil.”)

Explain mentally to your exiled aspect that you are here to increase communication between their awareness and your conscious personality. Remind them you both have the same goal of wellbeing and wholeness, because ultimately, you are one being. Any sense of isolation and disconnection has been a fear-driven illusion based on pain and misunderstanding. Now you are calling home your missing parts. If they have felt unloved, give them the love they crave. You have all the power. Use it.

4. Test for authenticity.

These injured aspects have a long history of feeling unsafe in the presence of the too often accusatory and judgmental conscious mind. As a result, they will often cloak themselves in guarded energy, which can have a menacing impression. This is not the true aspect, but a self-protective mask.

Like any vulnerable creature attempting to seem stronger than it feels, this protective presentation may take the form of something frightening. Practitioners refer to this as “entity” presence, which denotes fear-based energy that isn’t yours but is being used by the wounded inner aspect like armor.

This same goal can be achieved by the inner aspect through opposite means, by presenting an overly “goody-two-shoes” image (“See? I’m perfectly fine. Not hurt at all.”)

So it is necessary to gently test and question the initial appearance of the invited aspect by asking if it is an entity. In your sacred space the aspect can not lie. Even if it says “No” with its mouth, it’s shape may shift or the eyes may flicker, telling a different story and betraying its true nature.

It should be noted that simply because an image is disturbing does not automatically make it false “entity” energy. It can just as easily be the symbolic representation of the feeling-state of the soul part—it may feel, and thus present as, bruised, starved, beaten-up or neglected.

Keep probing its authenticity gently until you feel it has lain down its defenses and actually offered its true, vulnerable self at which point reach out and initiate a compassionate dialogue. A good place to start is by asking how you can help.

If the answer is simple and true, you know it’s the soul part speaking. If the reply is too convoluted or complex, it’s an entity-energy defense, or your cerebral analysis kicking in; start over and await the answer without assumption, projecting compassion. 

5. Identify Source of Disconnection, Correct Misunderstanding

Once assured of the fragmented aspect’s authenticity, ask it to show you at what age it became separated. It may show you a particular scene or instance. Ask how this situation made the soul part feel. What was the message it received? Usually, something in the “Not good enough” category will surface. As with small children who blame themselves for their parents’ divorce or general unhappiness, the impression of unworthiness will invariably be based on a misinterpretation of events. With compassion, correct this misunderstanding. The fragmented aspect needs to hear it is worthy of love. Bring it home by embracing this exiled aspect of yourself; give it the love and acceptance it has been hereto denied.

6. Stay connected afterwards.

The goal is to continue the newly forged relationship beyond your inner journey into your everyday life, eventually forming a full integration between the formerly exiled piece and your conscious awareness. Check in with the newly rediscovered aspect throughout the days following your journey. How does he or she feel? Are you meeting the needs discussed with more awareness?

What makes this method different from, and often more effective than, regular “talk therapy” is the willingness to surrender conscious mind constructs to the wild and telling symbolism of the subconscious. In this way cerebral analysis is transcended and the beating heart of true experience touched.

What may read as hokey can be extremely powerful in a real-time, step by step process. After all, these are the parts of self from which we are always running, from whose pain we so often seek distraction. Giving them back their voice, and gracing their needs with our attention, can be a life-changing integration.

Ultimately, whether you regard this excercise as symbolic or literal doesn’t matter. As French poet Baudelaire said, this world is a “forest of symbols.”

The inner fragmentation experienced by so many in this modern time mirrors the compartmentalization tendencies of society itself.

“The natural environment is treated as if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different interest groups. The fragmented view is further extended to society which is split into different nations, races, religious and political groups. The belief that all these fragments — in ourselves, in our environment and in our society — are really separate can be seen as the essential reason for the present series of social, ecological and cultural crisis.” ~ Fritjof Capra, (The Tao of Physics)

In a so-called civilized world, which so often dismisses the idea of soul and then complains of feeling empty, soul retrieval — reclaiming personal wholeness — is a heroic act.

By: Tai Carmen

“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” ~ Marcel Proust 

“The only journey is the one within”. ~ Rainer Marie Rilke

The turn of another year inspires reflection on what has come before.

When I first started Parallax three years ago, I didn’t know what the theme would be. I wasn’t sure if anyone would care about the topics that interested me, or indeed, if I had anything interesting to say. I had only a vague feeling—a multitude of disconnected puzzle pieces floating around inside me, like dots begging to be connected.

I had one focal point, and it became the source of my first entry: “The Role of the Dreamer & the Falseness of Civilization,” inspired by a stop light. I realized how automatic my response had been upon seeing the amber traffic light turn red: foot on break, like a trained animal. Then the light changed to green and without conscious thought my foot obediently pressed upon the gas.

In that moment, I wondered what else I had been conditioned to accept that had become automatic—even intimate—to my functioning, which was the product of some external system. I saw that my experience with the traffic light—my unconscious conditioning—was a metaphor for society at large.

The blog soon became my shared in-process journey connecting the dots, many of which (of course!) remain unconnected. Yet, a picture emerges…

I began to see a coherence to the topics, which at first seemed merely a loose, eclectic collection of curiosity-driven investigations.

A theme began to crystallize. I realized I was trying to mentally pan back—to accurately perceive a reality, which I had witnessed for so many years that I had ceased to truly see it. Familiarity seems to breed a kind of trance state of assumptions. I began to attempt to deconstruct society as I knew it—imagining what our world would like like to an alien observer (“The Mad Cult of the World”) with no preconceived notions. This excercise was a tremendous eye-opener for me.

What I saw was a well oiled machine. An (apparently) self-perpetuating system of control, with built-in reinforcements & viscous cycles so as to appear both inescapable & desirable.

I observed how conformity & consumer-based lifestyles that feed the system—and increase people’s wage-slave circumstance with debt & emotional dependence on external status—are marketed & reinforced constantly from every angle (“Invisible Architects,““The Engineering of Human Desire,” “Mind Control in the Music Industry,” “The Perversion of the American Dream”)…

How our natural instinctual herd mentality & desire for acceptance (“The Mythology of Conformity: Totem & Taboo“) is exploited by marketing to create a climate of uniformity (“The Politics of Normalcy“), where independent thought that jeopardizes the status quo (“Polarity & Paradox”) is not given a widespread platform of expression.

I began to realize that my feelings of alienation within mainstream society were not necessarily indications of personal failing, but perhaps symptomatic of a larger imbalance within the system.

As Krishnamurti says, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society” (“The Outsider” ).

I became convinced that positive social change, in fact, could only come from an outsider, because only someone looking in from the outside could see the problems for what they were (“The Outsider As Visionary”, “The Art of Madness”).

 I became interested in the idea of personal authenticity (“Authenticity & The False Self”) as the path towards true self-knowledge, beyond social conditioning. For I believe we can only incite true social change—contribute positively to society— when we have processed our own shadows (“Navigating the Dark Night of the Soul,”) and begun to piece together our true selves, which have been fragmented by a compartmentalized system (“Soul Retrieval”). 

As I became more conscious of my personal journey (“The Modern Vision Quest,” “The Question of Reality, “The Human Soul & The Floating Man,” “The Art of Seeing,”) I began to explore my own thoughts, feelings & direct experiences with reality. The further down the rabbit hole I went, the more the dots seemed to connect. And it felt different to come to these ideas in a visceral way—through personal gnosis—than through reading the ideas of other minds. I only used their works to substantiate my own discoveries, and offer what I hoped would be interesting background to the topics which most compelled me.

As I wrote on these subjects, I received—wonder of wonders!—a positive response from readers (you guys!), which reflected back to me that I was actually speaking to subjects which were not just in my heart, on my mind, alone, but were also meaningful to others. I actually acquired readers at all, which itself is both humbling & thrilling.

Your feedback is what keeps this blog going. To know I am not dropping letters into a well but actually contributing to the collective conversation has shown me that these subjects, which at first seemed so disconnected, are truly on our collective mind—and truly form a cohesive picture.

The idea put forth by British Zen philosopher Alan Watts in the 60s that “[We] are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself,” later re-popularized in the 80s by American astrophysicist Carl Sagan—”We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”—was actually first developed in its modern form by 18th century German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Hegel contended that Spirit was at first unconscious of Itself. (Hegel’s use of “Spirit” is a translation of the German word “Geist,” a nonreligious term, not comparable to our English word for “God,” but a neutral term, mingled with the idea of “transpersonal mind” & “essence”.) He called this stage of unconscious Spirit the Thesis stage.

At one point,  Spirit-exploring-itself-through-Man became conscious of existing.

The self-aware man looked around (or Spirit looked around through Man’s eyes) seeing himself and others—others who might be similar to him, but were not him. And the newly self-aware man defined himself through this negation. In short, he knew himself in part by what he wasn’t: the other. He looked at the world and saw many, a multi-facetted prism. He saw division. Those who were not him were perceived as foreign, alien, other—often, too, inevitably, as “enemy.”

This was Antithesis stage.

Eventually, as man’s time on the planet progressed, a few, rare introspective humans—specifically, for Hegel, the philosopher—became aware of the interconnectivity of all life-forms (“Connectivity Through Form”), at which point he perceived Self in Other (a hallmark throughout all mystical literature of enlightenment) and became self-realized. The prism revealed itself to be—while multi-faceted in appearance—in essence, a single diamond.

This was the Synthesis stage—where thesis & antithesis, two apparent opposites, merged & integrated to form a more complete truth.

I believe we are currently experiencing the growing pains of collectively & individually moving—shifting—into a Thesis stage of existence (“Transformation, Destruction & The Inner Apocalypse“). That is where my studies thus far have lead me.  (“Starseeds, Cosmic Consciousness & The Galactic Generations,” “Stardust Contemplating Stardust: Inner Space & The Science of Illumination”).

There are many fighting this emerging connectivity. But there are an increasing number straining towards it. Some, only half-consciously, as I was when I first began this blog—driven only by a vague sense of discontent & yearning. As Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix: “Something is wrong with this world, you’ve known it all your life, you don’t know what it is. It’s like a splinter in your mind … driving you mad.”

Still others, aware & awake through their own process of trail, error & self-discovery, are fighting for the cause: of reverence for life & planetary harmony.

The Fear Culture of the media news may tell you otherwise, but I—perhaps you, and so many others—are beginning to tear down the facade like a paper sky and see it for what it is: the attempts of a system under threat to maintain control through division, traumatization & uncertainty.

I perceive this as a time—intense & trying as it may be—of integration for many. We are all connecting the dots. Feeling more connected to one another, across space & time, even while we may still experience major bouts of isolation…we see that we are not alone in our strange (or not so strange) thoughts & visions. If through the advancement of technology alone.

We are a mere Google search away from learning, for example, that the long-dead Hegel’s complete life philosophy beautifully articulates that intuition we could not quite put to words; or perhaps that blogger you’ve never met, but read sometimes, has been mulling over the same insights you’ve been contemplating on your journey.

And it is a journey. (“Alchemy: An Allegorical Map for the Transmutation of Consciousness.“) No doubt about it. Complete with dragons to slay, puzzles to solve & dark forests in which we must, by virtue of necessity, learn to generate our own inner light to illuminate the path ahead.

We are heroes and heroines scaling Dark Nights of the Soul like mountains … swimming rivers of sorrow, where we reach dry land of revelation & new strength. Each trial, an initiation, each passage, a threshold into new insight, if we continue to search for the lesson, for the center, for the truth. Nothing is wasted. We can use it all.

Happy 2014, fellow journeyers! I would love to know what you think about all this! All comments on this first post of the new year—as has become Parallax tradition!—will be entered into a drawing, the winner of which will receive my current heart-compass book-companion,  “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…And It’s All Small Stuff,” By Richard Carlson, Ph. D: a slim inspirational little easy-read manual for transcending postmodern angst and tapping into inner peace.

Here’s to the journey, fellow travelers.

On on!

TC

By: Tai Carmen

Part 1

“All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.” ~ Jack Kerouac

“Yet it is in our idelness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.” ~ Virginia Woolf

“Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.” ~ Sigmund Freud

Bewildering, inspiring, sometimes horrifying, embarrassing, or just plain surreal—dreams have the power to recreate the rules of reality & transport us to places where we can fly, shift from one place to another instantaneously, converse with loved ones, long dead; or people we have never met. In a dream, a person can be simultaneously themselves & someone else.

These ever-shifting, quicksilver landscapes of the subconscious have fascinated humankind for time immemorial.

Dreams have been given mystical & personal significance throughout the world’s spiritual traditions for centuries—from the Bible to the Quran. A revered part of almost all indigenous cultures—from traditional African to Native American beliefs— the concept of dreams & “dreamtime” is particularly central to traditional Australian Aboriginal cosmology.

While initially considered divine messages from God or the spirits, the Greeks were the first to propose that dreams came from within—many a mystic would not see the difference.

Plato beat Freud by thousands of years, being the first to propose that dreams were expressions of the dreamer’s hidden desires.

Jung felt his contemporary’s focus was too narrow & contributed the idea of the collective unconscious—a universal pooling of archetypal figures or personified ideas, such as The Wise Old Man (which, incidentally, according to Jung, is the archetype that represents the collective unconscious.)

Most modern students of dream interpretation agree that, while certain symbols & their accompanying implication are universal—such as stormy seas indicating a sense of emotional turmoil in the dreamer’s waking life—the most important aspect of decoding a dream’s meaning lies in the personal significance of the symbol to the dreamer.

For instance, a serpent appearing in the dream of someone who likes snakes, or owns a snake, or considers snakes symbols of life force & personal power, (as is propagated by Hindu mythology, among others) will necessarily interpret a snake dream differently than a person who fears snakes or has a strong Judeo-Christian background, in which the snake is a classic symbol of evil.

(To extend this metaphor further, a snake owner with a strong Judeo-Christian background can determine the snake’s significance in their dream by assessing how the snake made them feel.) 

The idea that the dreamer’s relationship to the symbols in question is the most important aspect of dream analysis was first proposed (in our known cannon of history) by diviner Artenidorus two thousand years ago, who wrote the first known book on dream interpretation.

In order to understand what dreams are, we must first dig a little into the idea of human awareness & its compartmentalization.

While the psyche is obviously made up of many layers, it can arguably be reduced to two basic components: the conscious & the unconscious mind—an intuitive, even self-evident idea. Though popularly connected with pioneering Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the term “unconscious” was actually coined by 18th-century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling—later introduced into English by the poet & essayist Samual Taylor Coleridge. Developed by Freud, expanded upon by the trailblazing Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, the conscious/subconscious split is the basis for all modern psychology.

The conscious mind, as the name implies, contains all the memories, feelings & beliefs—preferences, desires & fantasies— that we can easily draw into our awareness; essentially, what we “know” (or, if you prefer, “what we know we know.”)

The unconscious mind, by contrast, is composed of the remaining  psychic terrain, of which we’re not consciously aware—all the feelings, desires & experiences we did not know how to process or reconcile with our lives, buried & hidden from ourselves until we are equipped to deal with them.

(The idea that we can hide knowledge from ourselves—like alcoholics hiding bottles throughout the house & then forgetting where they are—is one of the most fascinating aspects of psychology & the conscious/subconscious split.)

Not everything in the subconscious is emotionally charged. It also contains simple data deemed meaningless by the conscious mind, but non the less retained.

You could call these exiled & forgotten fragments “what we don’t know we know” (in some cases, too, “what we don’t want to know”). There is wisdom here, like buried treasure, along with the ghosts.

For instance, a person in a relationship with someone who is overly controlling might dream they are being suffocated. Later, after the relationship has ended & the dreamer has admitted the truth of the unhealthy dynamic to themselves, they can deduce the dream’s meaning. But if this reality was not acknowledged consciously at the time of the dream, then it will appear a meaningless night terror.

Freud famously likened the conscious mind to the tip of an iceberg & the unconscious to the vast hidden depth beneath the visible top.

For, like the hidden yet far vaster depth of the submerged half of an iceberg, the subconscious still exerts power over the conscious mind’s choices—no less powerful for its lack of “conscious” awareness, in fact, more so. The brain’s influential but hidden “shadow government,” if you will

This is one of the reasons why dream analysis can be an important part of personal development; dreams reveal the raw nature of the rejected, unprocessed aspects of our psyches & their accompanying life experiences. They also reveal the buried gems, creative talents & powers—like treasure at the bottom of the sea.

Dreaming is commonly described as the way the subconscious communicates with the conscious mind. Through dreamwork we can become more conscious of the lenses through which we view the world & better see which are serving us & which may need some polishing.

Why do we say that dreams are symbolic?

A symbol represents, stands for, or suggests an idea, visual image, belief, action, or person.  Since we are not “really” doing the things in our dreams, but experiencing images & sounds as if they were real, the visual & audio cues “stand for” their real-life counterparts. This is one level.

The deeper level is that the subconscious mind is not a logical, tame beast that communicates neatly in language. It is a primal aspect, emotionally charged, which speaks in the symbolic universal tongue of images. It is the wild jungle-forest aspect of our psychic terrain which has not been colonized & farmed by the socially conditioned conscious mind.

So the unconscious uses symbolic language to express itself—presenting images & scenarios that may represents or suggest things or ideas beyond the thing itself. For example, a red rose symbolizing romantic love.

Jung popularized the now mainstream wisdom, “Everyone in the dream is you.” But many dream scholars, including myself, believe that there are many different types of dreams.

Different characters in the dream may in fact represent different aspects of the dreamer’s self. But it is equally possible that they represent actual people or circumstances in the person’s life.

Go to PART 2 to read about common dream types, famous dreamers & how the course of history has been altered by dreams.

By Tai Carmen

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. ~Plutarch

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams. ~Elias Canetti

The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium. ~ Carl Jung

[CLICK HERE TO READ ~ PART 1]  A fascinating number of scientific discoveries, inventions & creative breakthroughs have been made via dreams. 

Those who dismiss their nocturnal inner journeys as meaningless mental meanderings may not know the extent to which dreams have assisted the progress of humanity, examples that bolster the weight of dream interpretation as a study. 

Influential 19th Century chemist August Kekule, for example, discovered the empirical formula for benzene when, dozing in a chair, his subconscious presented him with an image of a snake biting its own tail. Startled, he jumped up & worked out the mathematics of the molecule—which we now know has a ring rather than a long string structure, as previously thought. 

Dante reported that the entire story of The Divine Comedy was revealed to him in a dream. Even more fascinating, when part of the manuscript was lost after his death, his son Jocoso recovered the manuscript after his father showed him where to look in a dream.

Nobel Prize winning 20th century physicist Neils Bohr developed the model of the atom from a dream. After working on many different designs, which weren’t quite right, he dreamed of sitting on the sun with all the planets whizzing around him. When he woke up, he knew that the sun symbolized the nucleus & the solar system represented the electrons. This was the model for which he had been searching. Further testing proved his hypothesis correct.

Paul McCartney dreamed the melody for “Yesterday.“

Nobel Prize winning medical scientist Frederick G Banting, who discovered the insulin-link with diabetes & developed our modern treatment of the disease, went to sleep frustrated one night, after a long day of working on the problem, & woke up having dreamed the experiment he needed to confirm his theories.

The inventor of the sewing machine, Elias Howe, found the defining concept of his design in a dream that he was being hunted by cannibals & thrown into a pot. He kept trying to climb out, but the natives kept pushing him back in with their sharp spears. When he awoke, terrified, he went back over the dream in his mind & realized that each spear had sported a hole at the tip, just like a long needle. All at once, he saw that this was the solution to his problem. (Lisa Shea, “Famous Inspirational Dreams.”)

“Father of Neuroscience,” Otto Loewi discovered the secret of nerve impulses from not one, but two dreams:

“In the early 20s, [Leowi] was working on how nerves transmit impulses…night and day with little result. Then one night he fell asleep and had a vivid dream. He scrawled down some notes but was unable to read them the next morning. Frustrated, he waited until the next night. Again, he had a vivid dream, showing him the style of experiment that would help him in his nerve transmission work. Sure enough, he went immediately to his lab to try the experiment. It worked, and as a result, Otto Loewi was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize for Medicine.” (Lisa Shea’s “Famous Dream Inspirations”.)

Clearly there is a level of useable insight to be found in dreams—the implications for the hidden wisdom of the subconscious are huge!

It’s worth noting that all of these “discovery dreams” involve symbolism, decoding & the following of an intuitive hunch regarding interpretation…

Kekule dreamed of an ouroboros & applied the image to his work. Bohrs dreamed of a solar system & applied it to the atom.

Dream theorists agree, there are different levels of dreams in terms of their depth of insight. Often, dreams which carry important messages feel & appear more vivid than your run-of-the-mill nightly jumbles.

They often simply feel significant.

Author & dream scholar Theresa Cheung notes: “Although different types of dreams can blend and merge, modern dream researchers tend to break dream types into one of the following categories.” 

Amplifying dreams put a magnifying lens up to certain life situations or attitudes.

Cathartic Dreams ”evoke extremely emotional reactions, when the unconscious is urging us to relieve pent-up feelings we may feel unable to express in waking life. For example, you may find yourself bursting into tears on a packed commuter train in your dream.” (“The Dream Dictionary From A to Z.”)

Daily-Processign Dreams are factual dreams in which you “go over and over things that happened during the day, especially those that were repetitive or forced you to concentrate for long periods. These kinds of dreams don’t tend to be laden with meaning, and most dream theorists think of them as bits and pieces of information your brain is processing.” (“The Dream Dictionary From A to Z.”)

Dreams of Childhood may reflect a childhood dynamic which hasn’t been worked out yet and requires a resolution,” notes Cheung. Although it can also simply represent a touchstone of extreme familiarity; even a place where your inner child lives.

False Awakening Dreams occur when you dream you’ve woken up, but in fact are still dreaming—particularly trippy from a philosophical standpoint.

If you can appear to wake while still dreaming, it’s logical to assume there is the possibility that even now, when you think you exist in waking reality, further states of awakened awareness might yet exist.

“It is thought,” details Thereasa Cheung, “that many reported sightings of ghosts are caused by false awakening, which occurs when you are actually asleep but are convinced in your dream state that you are awake.”

This bleeds into the so-called “old hag syndrome,” characterized by one’s mental awareness coming out of the sleep state before one’s physical body has fully woken up, creating physical paralysis (and sometimes a pressure on the chest) often attributed to ghosts and alien abductions. Though sleep researchers have identified it as a physiological phenomenon.

Inspirational Dreams contain creative seeds and ideas for the dreamer. Many great works of music, literature and art have been conceived in the dream state. William Blake reportedly found much inspiration for his visionary epic poems in dreams. Mary Shelley dreamed the premise for Frankenstein.

Lucid Dreams, perhaps the most exciting category, describe the circumstance of realizing you are dreaming while you are dreaming. Once you become aware that you are dreaming, you can start to determine the course of your dream with your mental focus. Whenever I realize I am dreaming, I try to fly. It usually works with a few jumps and some active willing of my dreamself off the ground.  

Methods vary for increasing lucid dream activity. One way, which has worked for me at times, is to periodically ask yourself throughout your waking day if you are dreaming; this sets the pattern up in your mind to ask the question, and eventually your subconscious will ask it of your dreaming self.

In The Art of Dreaming the Yaqui seer Don Juan instructs Carlos Castaneda that when you can look at your own hands in a dream, then you will realize you are dreaming and be able to control the course of your dream’s content.

I have not personally had luck with the hand method.

The best way to increase one’s likelihood of lucid dreaming, in my experience, is to simply focus on your dream life. By spending the first few minutes of your morning mentally going over dream recall, and jotting a few notes in a dream journal, you will start a process of increased awareness surrounding your dreams, which, in my experience, often culminates in lucid dreaming.

Nightmares, of course, are dreams which cause us extreme distress. It is not uncommon to dream of being chased or pursued by a malevolent person or being…While nightmares typically reflect an anxiety or sense of helplessness in waking life, they are also a natural and healthy way for our minds to process and explore fears without actually jeopardizing our safety.   

Night Terrors are nightmares which occur during the deepest level of sleep (stage four) from which we awaken without memory of the dream’s content, yet having a lingering feeling of dread.

Physiological Dreams reflect the state of your body, from the simple pursuit of water in a dream when you are, in real life, thirsty, to the more profound reflection of physical needs or conditions. Problem Solving Dreams occur sometimes when we are mulling over a problem and receive the solution presented in some form during ensuing sleep, as did our previously sited great inventors

Wish Fulfillment Dreams are simply an expression of one’s desires…usually the ones not given full expression in waking life.

Sexual Dreams of course are common, sometimes a source of embarrassment. But sex can be symbolic of intimacy in dreams…according to dream analysts, dreaming of sex with an unlikely partner can often be read symbolically as a desire to be closer with the person, or to integrate ideas they represent into your life. Cheung notes that sometimes a certain person will show up in a sexual context in one’s dreams simply to get our attention.

Precognitive dreams, as one might expect, reveal glimpses into future potentials, only confirmable after the fact. These do, indeed, seem to occur, if rarely. President Lincoln had a precognitive dream foretelling his own assassination.

In Lincoln’s own words: “…There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing [...] I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully…

“‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers “The President” was his answer; “he was killed by an assassin!” Then came a loud burst of grief form the crowd, which awoke me from my dream.” (Famous Dreams.)

This was apparently a recurring dream for Lincoln, one he had again the night before he was assasinated.

In conclusion, when attempting to decode a dream, it is best to ask yourself: how does this situation make me feel? What does this person, animal, place or action represent to me? 

Does it seem to be a simple processing dream, or did it have a deeper charge, worth examining?

Part 3 will explore the concept of aboriginal dreamtime as well as further explore the phenomenon of lucid dreaming!