1984: The Eternal Return

Shameful piece of social engineering of young people, at a primary school just down the road. Get 'em young, get 'em young.

And last week saw the strike by children about climate change. In one respect, I suppose, it's great that some kids are concerned about the world they live in. But unfortunately it's once more a socially-engineered concern. By a system that's 'taught' them how climate change is as much a fact as the sun rising every morning. By a system that whisks these young people away from the world of children prematurely. Ejected from that world of magic, mystery, exploration, of real learning for the soul. Young, impressionable beings thrust into the careworn, nuts-and-bolts, fretful world that is modern mainstream adulthood. No place for 'soul development', for the inspired and inspiring daemon to have its say and its way.

As might be expected, comrade Nicola Sturgeon tweeted her solidarity with the kids on climate change. Good on you, Nicola.

Climate change. What do these children actually want? To be released from worry, I guess. For politicians to do more about climate change is what they say. But what? It's one of the light-bulb moments in that little clip from Jordan Peterson on the subject I linked to recently. He points out the obvious: even if runaway climate change is a reality, what are you going to do about it? Nobody has a clue in truth. All the 'solutions' are no solution at all; they will make next-to-no difference. They are merely cosmetic jobs with socio-political motives, emanating from unsavoury mindsets.

From what I can make out, real solutions could involve wiping out China, India, and the USA. That will dramatically reduce carbon emissions, which are apparently the source of all evil. Not a big vote-winner, however. Other than that, I am at a loss. Just like everybody else.

As for the kids, there is good news. From what I can see, there are some who succumb pretty much completely to the social engineering, to the narrative about life that's spewed out to them. There are others, though, and plenty of them, who never go completely under. There is something in them which remains apart from the crappy, fear-and-panic, hopelessness-inducing conditioning. We could call it their soul, their daemon, their inner self, their genius. But it is something beautiful to behold, shining through and beyond the muck and mire that's heaped upon them. While social engineering fails to get to this, those young people are still in with a chance....

     

Tomorrow is Another Big Day

Part One: Strange Days Again

Strange days have found us/ Strange days have tracked us down.

Thanks Jim. Actually, I still miss you; wish you were around. I'd like to know what you made of it all nowadays: what you saw.

Jim Morrison. Poet, mystic, musician. Sex god, drunken oaf. Literate, coherent, obnoxious, senseless. Charming, vulgar, old before his time.

Jim Morrison: a great adventure gone hideously wrong, his soul aborted. A life sated in twenty years and seven, nothing left to achieve here. Call it a day and start anew.

Strange days indeed. Today's strange days. Good? Don't know. Bad? Can't say. Strange. For sure.

Mind you, has there ever been a time when life has not appeared strange? Morrison was singing about those strange days fifty years ago. Now those days certainly seemed strange enough. It felt as if we were on the cusp of a global revolution in consciousness, the world about to be turned upside down and inside out.

Or imagine living through the first half of the twentieth century in western Europe. Two World Wars, manifold millions of ordinary folk killed, just like that. Isn't that a bit weird? Inconceivable. Inconceivably awful.

And today? Well there are those who contend we are living in critically bad times. The creeping forces of globalism, of soul destruction by imposed uniformity continue their slimy march. White genocide in Europe, we are told. The sinister totalitarianism of political correctness in its excess. The persistent assault on freedom of speech from many directions, from many people and organisations in high places. The ever-more hideous and ludicrous lies, distortions, and half truths churned out by the propaganda machine that is mainstream media. Come back 1984: you are paradise in comparison to all this.

And then there are those who claim we are living in critically good times. Change is afoot: big change, irreversible change. You won't find it in the mainstream media, for obvious reasons. But Empire, New World Order, call it what you will, is on its last legs. Despite its desperate and nefarious tactics, it's not getting everything its own way. It's not working any more, falling apart at the seams. Those with goodness in their heart are beginning to win. There are people who see this. Neil Kramer believes it is happening, in the USA at least. The world is on fire. A new dawn is coming, just over there on the horizon.

As for me, I just don't know. To be honest, I sometimes feel a bit out of all that these days. Both points of view may be right, simultaneously. I just can't say.

Part Two: Default Setting

Barely a day passes, it would seem, without the activities of 'mainstream media' becoming more ludicrous. To be more specific, to be dealing in distortions, half-truths, quarter truths, untruths, bias, prejudice, selective reporting, lying through omission. And others that elude me at this moment, no doubt.

This tendency, to push a particular agenda, or at least a certain way of looking at the world and what it consists of, has been long in evidence. But the transparency, blatancy, of the matter has really come to the fore in recent times. You don't need to have a PhD in detective work to see it happening.

I come across the sentiment at regular intervals, every time a particularly obvious example comes to light: 'Surely this will be the tipping point; surely this is the piece of reporting mendaciousness that will bring everyone to their senses, and bring the whole rotten edifice tumbling down.' One day it may well happen - and it is a process undoubtedly gaining momentum as I write. But to understand why the dishonourable carnival still limps along despite it all, we need to be cognisant of the default setting.

I used to have a friend with whom I would talk about, among other more gratifying topics, 'the news'. Typically, my friend would regale me with details of the world and its affairs such as he had gleaned from the BBC, the Telegraph, and the rest. There would ensue a conversation in which this view would be steadily deconstructed, and he would see most clearly how things are not always as they seem, or as they may be presented. We would go our separate ways, to return to discussion a couple of weeks later. In the intervening period, he appeared to have forgotten everything we had agreed upon previously, and had gone back to his original position. This happened a fair number of times, until I realised and accepted that he wasn't going to change. After every conversation, he would return to his default setting.

All of us have a default setting. It is typically pretty rigid, but it is not set in stone, and it can be moved. An important facet of 'spiritual life' is to become acquainted with this default setting, then begin to shift it, loosen it up, dissolve it eventually. It is where we feel at home, where things are familiar and we do not feel threatened. It may not feel very nice, we may not even like it, but it's where we feel secure. It's our own version of reality.

So it takes more than just seeing that the BBC news is biased and selective to really effect a change in world view. Large numbers of people see something, only to return to their familiar, fantasy default. Better that than to find your whole world turned upside down. Wilful ignorance, really. So the received version of the world as transmitted by mainstream media weighs in with a big advantage to begin with. Only the brave will transgress its dictates. And hence the slow pace of change; until now, that is.

Part Three: Outrage

Yes, outrage. Or sometimes the absence of it.

One of the more important topics of 'real news' to be around nowadays concerns freedom of speech and its erosion; which translates online into censorship of the internet. It's a subject that has featured on Pale Green Vortex increasingly frequently as time has moved on.

Something which seems to me so basic, concerning a most precious and beautiful a freedom, does not evoke the same response in everyone. I have sometimes wondered why, and surmise that it is to do with the default setting. You see, if your default setting exists completely within the box of conformity and conventionality, if you don't have a truly original bone in your body, then you will fail to see what the fuss is about. To you, it has no relevance, holds no import. There are those who do not need freedom of speech; they will never flex it anyhow.

And then there's outrage. Look all over the place - and not just in 'alternative news media': I have seen concerns voiced sincerely and coherently in comments on Daily Telegraph articles. The internet, and how the Big Dudes of social media - primarily Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube -are methodically nibbling away at what can and cannot be expressed through their channels. So long as what you have to say falls within the orbit of political correctness and the programmes of the ruling political elites you are OK. But step outside that, and they'll increasingly be after your head.

I personally get pissed off every time I read about such a move. Yet at the same time, we have to admit that this surprise and outrage is very naïve. I mean, these are enormous multinational companies, which come with everything that enormous multinational companies normally come with. Did anybody think that Facebook and Twitter would be in the vanguard of the revolution? That they would turn out to be totally impartial mirrors of whatever anybody wished to say or report?

The Golden Age of the internet was probably 5-10 years ago. Now it is up to those who really care, those with fire in their belly, to establish proper alternatives, real forums of freedom. How's it going to work out? Well, that's another 'Don't know'.

Part Four: Avatar

And now for something slightly different; though its relevance should become apparent as we proceed.

Let's talk avatars. The more traditional meaning of 'avatar', and the one with which I have been cognisant for many years, is as an incarnation of a deity or similar: goddess, Buddha etc. The term crops up, as far as I am aware, most frequently within Hindu traditions, especially with regard to the avatars of Vishnu. Ten of these are enumerated, and we eagerly await the coming of Kalki, the tenth and final one. The appearance of Kalki will herald the end of Kali Yuga, our current Age of Darkness.

Subsidiary meanings have sprouted from this root definition. Today, an avatar does not need to literally be an incarnation of a deity, but can be the embodiment of a particular philosophy, or of a world view, the weltanshauung as it's termed in German thought. In the film 'Avatar', it refers to the embodiment of human consciousness into a N'avi lookalike (the blue people). And in the world of computer games, of which I know nothing, an avatar is apparently your character in a game.

So why have avatars turned up here, in this article? Well, you see, as an example, there are people alive on this planet who consider Donald Trump to be an avatar. Literally an incarnation of a great god; or someone put here by other dimensional beings, in order to work through him; or embodying a philosophy, a message we might say. 'Trump-as-avatar' people tend not to pay overmuch attention to the details of every policy or decision that he makes; that is not the point. To them, Donald embodies something which transcends all that. The true spirit of America, maybe: proud, independent, resourceful, individualistic, enterprising. Great destroyer of the globalist-elitist nightmare of mediocrity embodied in modern times by the likes of Obama and the Clintons. Everything that mainstream politics has been in the process of eroding for several decades. He embodies, therefore, the spirit of constructive chaos, unpredictability, a trickster-cum-joker figure.

People who continue to rage against Trump as if he is the only nasty person in western politics clearly don't get it. Unfortunately, some of these people have become so far removed from the mythical, magical, archetypal aspects to life, have fallen so completely for the nuts-and-bolts version of reality, that they fail to see myth when it is staring them straight in the face.

Life is not just nuts and bolts, however anyone might protest the opposite. And at this point a more extreme, and arguably bizarre, example of avatar-as-embodiment-of-the-age comes to mind. We are heading into dangerous territory, walking on dodgy ground. Hold onto your helmets or go and eat doughnuts. You have been warned.....

To start with: Miguel Serrano. I first came across Serrano a couple of years ago while researching alchemy, opposites, and Jung. You know, the sort of stuff that sometimes gets me going. In one article I read, there were a few quotes from Miguel which  resonated and were highly relevant to the themes that were preoccupying me at the time. I discovered that Serrano had produced a book in which he recounts his meetings with both Jung and Herman Hesse near the end of their lives. It is a short and poetic document, and I felt a rare 'mystical sensitivity' perfume the pages of Serrano's writing.

I followed the paper trail. Two more books of Serrano's: El/Ella; Nos, Book of the Resurrection. These two, both, also seemed to be expressions of a mind that was truly steeped in mystical experience. And from a person able to communicate something of his inner experience in a way that was rare indeed.

Follow the paper trail further; and this is where it got a little uncomfortable. Not only was Serrano a man of  unusual mystical sensibilities; he was also, I discovered, one of the leading lights in what is sometimes referred to as 'Esoteric Nazism'. In this offbeat little corner of human endeavour, Adolf Hitler is regarded as an avatar, no less. A man to stand up and fight for the pride and nobility of the white Germanic/Aryan peoples, against the tide of hostility and mediocrity threatening to destroy it forever. Not what we have come to normally think.

It's the play of dualities at work again. It's the name of the game in this world, continuing unabated as a consequence of most people's blind ignorance of its internal dynamic. Any position will inevitably throw up its opposite. And the more extreme the pole, the more extreme its opposite will be. Action, reaction. We bounce from here to there, then back again; thus goes on 'the world'.

From my cursory understanding of world history, I would say that the notion of Hitler as avatar, saviour, whatever, is something that is perfectly understandable (which is entirely different from 'justifiable'). After the First World War came to its inglorious end in 1918, it was kind-of decided that it was all the fault of Germany, and the German nation should be made to suffer accordingly. This seems to be the substance of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The German nation was duly punished, forced to give up much territory, pay enormous reparations, and generally endure imposed hardship for its sins. Such treatment of a proud people, who incidentally had contributed enormously to all that we call western culture and civilisation, was not going to be taken on the chin forever. So when a bizarrely charismatic somebody turned up offering hope, promising to return pride to the maltreated and mistreated, even emphasising their uniqueness, it's hardly surprising that he went down a treat. And the rest, as they say, is certainly history....

There are those who claim that it was all planned anyway, as part of a longer-term strategy for German wipeout. That World War One wouldn't be sufficient so, using the principle of extreme dualism, that nation would be defeated and shamed still further. Total humiliation would throw up extreme hubris, and a good excuse to have another go at them.And the process continues to the day, with mass immigration of incompatible peoples, for example.

I offer no personal comment. I am in no position to do so. I don't know. As the months and the years pass, there are more and more things that I simply don't know. And I sit increasingly comfortably with that unknowingness. But the 'Trump and Hitler as avatars' theme is so far off the map of current mainstream political correctness that it gains fascination for that alone. This is my own play of opposites, between the dictates of sickly modern mainstream and the bizarre out on the edge. The one throws up the other. This at least I do in the light of awareness.

As for Serrano, I would prefer it if he hadn't been an esoteric Nazi. It would make me feel more comfortable reading his mystical literature. I do see how he arrived at this point, but can't go along with the path he follows: his mysticism he takes too literally, translating too readily mythical reality into literal reality. Conjecture easily takes on the guise of fact. It is all too simple to devise complete philosophies from mystical experience and theory, but it is a dangerous thing to do. In my book, the deadly game of opposites throws up no great heroes in the grisly debacles of twentieth century European history.

The world manifests in stark inconsistency. So be it; let us sit with it. Actually, there is no choice.  

Images: Strange Days album cover
             Kalki avatar (apparently)
               

   

               

An Ontological Spin in the Vortex

Part One

Who are we? Where do we come from? What are we doing here anyway? And what about the differences? The real differences (this is the bit that some people don't like)? Differences in...… consciousness?...… quality? I find myself currently, and atypically, assailed by such questions. Questions which can never have a definitive answer, aside from on a purely personal level, maybe.

I may have written before about a dear old friend who, when in a certain mood, would talk about 'we humans', as if we were a homogeneous bunch. And while in that same frame of mind, he would assert that 'we are all trying to achieve the same thing; all headed in the same direction.' And how irritating I ended up finding it. I would dearly have loved to agree with my friend and his fantasy of homogeneity but, despite myself, I have ended up with a far more fractured view of human life.

What I cannot help myself seeing is this. It's expressed in ridiculous generalisation and imprecision. The borders are far from clear, and many people will straddle more than one of my categories. Nevertheless....

Here on planet Earth there is a minority of people who seem properly 'wise', possessed of a sense of knowingness; or if not quite dripping wisdom, they are still firmly walking a path of 'awakening'. Then there is the vast majority of people. Most folk, in my experience, are fairly good-hearted, overall well-intentioned. Many are, in fact, capable of extraordinary feats of selflessness. At the same time, they are prone to what in Buddhism is termed 'avidya': ignorance or, less politely, stupidity. As a result, they are all too easily duped, deceived, manipulated. They lack discernment, courageous facing of the bare bones of existence. Their good-heartedness can be easily used against them, diverted into erroneous and damaging ways, as described in the previous post. They are easy meat for our final category.

This is the other minority. The nasty, the malevolent; the bad seeds. Many people find it hard to accept the existence of the bad seeds. While it seems fine to assent to a minority of wise ones, the prospect of a minority of people with real dark intent and cunning fills many people with a sense of unease, discomfort. They would rather not know. This in itself - the denial of the truly negative pole - affords great protection to our ne'er-do-wells.

Part Two

OK. So what makes me 'me'? And what makes you 'you'? Simultaneously the same yet irrevocably different.

Modern discussion - and at this point I am in danger of falling asleep straight into my cup of coffee - revolves around 'nature versus nurture'. It's your genes or your upbringing; or most likely some combination of the two. As a description sometimes pretending to be an explanation, I find this totally crap. It's a dichotomy placed before us, to stare at open-jawed, blinded by the narrowest of sciences. And it's a false dichotomy, tailor-made to confine the unimaginative, uncreative minds of many people in a tiny box.

It is my contention that 'nature or nurture' bears little resemblance to reality. Real reality, full-on reality. Instead, it is primarily a reflection of the scientific-materialist worldview which prevails in the modern west. It is what a materialistic, philosophically nihilistic, culture might be expected to come up with. In fact, it represents all that that culture has got. Any other possibilities are automatically off-limits, given the assumptions inherent in this worldview: superstitious assumptions such as 'the brain produces consciousness'; 'nothing survives after the physical body dies'; 'there is nothing beyond what we can currently measure'.

In 'The Soul's Code', archetypal psychologist James Hillman takes a leap in the direction of greater reality. While not denying the existence of nature and nurture, he maintains that this is inadequate in describing the way humans behave. He posits a third vital ingredient in the 'Who am I?' soup. At times he refers to it as our 'calling'. We turn up on planet Earth, not as a blank slate, but with our aim, direction, fulfilment, already in place. We arrive as little acorns, he says, and our fulfilment in life is to allow those acorns to grow into mighty, beautiful oaks. Note that the oak is already 'contained' within the acorn. Fate is with us from the beginning. Do we possess the courage to do whatever is needed for that little acorn to properly grow? This is one of our big challenges in life.

Hillman is not one to dwell on metaphysical unknowables, such as how it all came to pass in the first place. But his 'acorn theory' resonates personally. In my earliest memories, I am already 'me': I sense at age five that I shall not be doing as the majority of people are doing; and I feel a sense of purpose, of things to be done.

Part Three

We are unique. We are different. We come with something already fully formed. We are not 'equal', in the sense of being the same.

The differences. Ah, the differences. And the contradictions: as Don Juan says, between man the engineer - brilliant-, and the stupidity of much of his thinking and ideation. Orthodox modern thought shies away from these topics, or sets out to deny their existence altogether. Not all are, or have been, so fearful, however, in the face of the high-level strangeness that is human beings and their inexplicable ways. Particularly the inexplicable ways of the bad seeds.

I have gathered together here a few notions that have been put forward in some effort to face this topic of topics. There may or may not be any truth in all or some of them, and one or two may well be met with incredulity. Nevertheless, in the absence of anything else, I suggest it would be foolish to dismiss any of them out of hand, as a result of preconceived prejudice. Give them a chance.

Least fantastic and phantasmagorical is the theory of the psychopath. According to some sources, 1% of humankind can be clinically classified as psychopathic, this rising to 3% among top business people and the political classes. I have my own shortlist of prime suspects, but I'll keep it to myself.

The main characteristic of psychopaths is that they have no innate moral sense; no feeling of right and wrong in affairs, no natural emotional response to others' joy, grief etc. They may cry at a funeral, not because they feel grief-stricken, but because they have learned that it's the thing to do. It is as if there is something missing, something not there, in the life of a psychopath. No heart, no soul.

The psychopathic factor is fine as far as it goes, but is descriptive rather than explanatory. Description seems to be sufficient for some. Buddhism, when confronted with the messy sides of the human condition, may simply state that samsara has been in existence since beginningless time. Or it may take the line of the Parable of the Rain Cloud, in the SaddharmaPundarika Sutra, which states that humans come in all different shapes and sizes, but that the Buddha's truth will rain down on them all alike. For some of us, this is not enough; too many questions left unanswered. Let's move on further:

The Gnostics turn up occasionally on Pale Green Vortex. In the Gnostic Tripartate Tractate, we are told (in the section 'the Tripartition of Mankind') in no uncertain terms that humanity is not homogeneous. It is divided into three types of being (corresponding roughly to my threefold division, I submit). There are the pneuma, or spiritual souls. They are naturally attracted to the saviour, as the text puts it. Then there are the psychic; spirits in matter. They may respond to the saviour if shown by others. Then there are the hylic, who are pure matter, devoid of soul, and who are repelled by the saviour. This is the analysis in the Tripartate Tractate: three quite distinct types of human being.

The Gnostics are also prime exponents of archon theory. Of how human minds become infected by these inorganic beings, minions of the demiurge, the false god who has deceived people into believing he is the true one. The archons confuse and deceive the unwary (=most of us) through imitation, simulation, sowing false ideas into the human mind. They are the architects of unmitigating error in the affairs of humanity - in the world of politics, for example.

I have faith that the notions of the Gnostics are based in direct experience; they were not a bunch of idlers sitting around and scratching their heads during long winter nights. I have never seen an archon, but know of people who have.

Then there is the extraterrestrial connection. A number of North American indigenous peoples will tell you that humanity comes from some star or stars. I imagine that there are plenty of other indigenous groups who will opine similarly. Then there are the western equivalents, positing alien origins or alien interference in the creation or history of humanity. Annunaki, Sitchin, the rest. I have spent little time with this material personally, but it is there for all to discover should they so wish.

Finally, we have star people; starseeds. Star people are walking the face of the earth right now, but do not really belong here at all. The true home of their soul is elsewhere: other planets, stars, galaxies. But they have turned up here for a while, for a lifetime, maybe to learn, maybe to try and help humanity on its perilous way. Like typical humans, they have undergone the process of rebirth/incarnation, during which an amnesia sets in. Some will be properly aware of their extraterrestrial origins, some slightly so, while others simply live with an uneasy sense of being different and not really belonging. Crazy? Some may think so. But if you meet an otherwise rational, sensible human who claims to have come from a star, what do you say?

Images: me        

     

       

Con Men

I hadn't listened to anything from Neil Kramer for a while now. There was a time (roughly 2011 - 2016) when Neil's insights were a regular and vital part of my life. Listening, reading, and speaking one-to-one a number of times, Neil helped me come through a particular phase in a way that I don't think anybody else could have done. For this I am immensely grateful. In more recent times, it's not so much that our paths have diverged, but what I have required is maybe just a little different.

A few weeks ago, I dipped into Veritas Radio and the interview which Neil gave there during December. It reminded me of the clarity that Neil can bring to topics, especially in painting the 'big picture'. I know of nobody else who succeeds in this the way that Neil does; it was a pleasure to listen to him once more.

Two elements in particular stood out for me. Neil described a bit more what he means by 'Empire', and why he uses the term. He prefers to use this expression rather than 'globalists', 'New World Order', 'Illuminati' etc: while they all refer to more-or-less the same phenomenon, he feels that 'Empire' comes with less baggage (my word), less stuff which often accompanies those other terms. Empire is both an ideology and a group of people. Its intention is not to raise each and every individual to their unique and wonderful best. The opposite is true: Empire aims to keep people on a lower intellectual, moral, and physical level. 'Empire's main message is that you are just nuts and bolts'.

Neil also talked about the use of confidence trickery as a means of mass manipulation. It can be done through negative emotions, such as fear and jealousy; or through more positive ones, such as hope and kindness. A con person poses as one of us: 'I am here to help you'. In reality, they are here to enslave us.

The classic confidence trickster in my immediate memory was - is - Tony Blair. I was one of the millions who shed a tear to see him smiling his trademark smile, shaking peoples' hands, on first becoming Prime Minister. Those years of Tory tyranny were over. Blair came with a single word emblazoned upon his Superman-like chest: Hope. Little did I know what a trick it was. Here was a man to out-Thatcher Thatcher by a mile. Tony Blair comes as a great teaching in the ways of dark politics, of the con man supreme.  

The notion of confidence trickery helps give shape to much of what I see, yet struggle to communicate clearly and succinctly. In particular how 'good' people become fully paid-up members of the bandwagon of darkness, of enslavement.

Corporate environmentalism is a classic example of confidence trickery, especially in relation to 'climate change'. Rightly or wrongly, many good people become worried shitless about impending climate catastrophe. In a state of anxiety and feeling a duty towards the suffering planet, these people are easy targets for manipulation. They desperately wish to feel some hope, so when shady tricksters come along, like Al Gore and Ed Miliband some years ago, offering all manner of hopeless and actually destructive measures (carbon trading, windfarms everywhere etc), people will grasp at the straws. Then, even when it is pointed out how these moves are crap, such people are too invested emotionally to actually listen and change their mind. They've been caught by Empire - while believing that the opposite is true.

A similar process is at work in the particular brand of nationalism and independence routinely dished out in Scotland. People's sense of injustice and indignation in regard to their treatment by Westminster has been deliberately fuelled. Then, when they have reached the point of despair, they are offered 'hope' in the form of a certain brand of independence. Never mind the fact that those offering independence are in reality as fully woven into the matrix of Empire as any politician you'll ever come across in London. Their interest in you as a unique aspiring individual is absolutely zero. Nevertheless, if you can get people emotionally invested, they will continue to support you whatever the slavery you come up with. Of course, this one has not succeeded. Not as yet, anyhow.

If you wish to listen to Neil's interview on Veritas, it's December 6th 2018. Follow the link below.            

veritasradio.com

Climate Change Unites the World

Jordan Peterson is an interesting guy. By 'interesting', I mean somebody who is thought-provoking and who is not afraid to speak his or her mind, especially in the face of massive opposition. Somebody who I will agree with sometimes, disagree with sometimes, and say 'I don't know' probably most frequently of all. By the way, I think Jordan could do with a bit of yoga, judging from his posture in the clip below.

I have known about Jordan Peterson for a while, initially through his famous 'gender-free language' stance in Canada; a reader of this blog put me onto this - you know who you are, thanks! My reading and 'researching' has generally been limited to the real personal essentials for the past year or two, however, so I have not paid him too much attention. I am just dipping into a few bits and pieces at the moment.

My few brief encounters with Jordan Peterson have been enough to effect a considerable change in my being. Jordan has rekindled my faith in the power, the possibility, even, of thinking. I had pretty much given up on 'thought'. Almost all of what is presented as 'thought' is in fact no such thing. It is received opinion, which is adopted by people because it aligns with their own personal biases or wishful hopes. Human beings too readily identify with their thoughts (read 'the words that unconsciously constellate in their minds'), while relegating the other aspects of being - feeling, intuition, sensation, if we follow Jung's system (which we don't have to) - to an inferior position unworthy of proper humans. Just check out pretty much any mainstream source, and it's all derivative crap. No proper thinking at all. Which suits the mainstream just fine: keep it stupid, keep it stupid.

So listening to Jordan Peterson for a minute or two has been personally revelatory. Not, to repeat, that I will necessarily agree with everything he says. But here is a man who knows how to think! It is marvellous, miraculous! So thank you for that alone, Mr Peterson.

This is Jordan Peterson speaking to folk at the Cambridge Union, pretty recently, I believe. On that subject close to all our hearts, climate change....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBbvehbomrY

A Ramble Through the Sexes...

Prologue

So, today we're talking gender. Sex. Duality. Polarities. Roles. Stereotypes. That sort of thing. But before that, a word about language. I have a certain word in mind:

'Mindfuck'. This is a word that Pale Green Vortex has shied away from using, despite it being uniquely descriptive of one of the recurrent themes on this fantastic blog. You see, we are fully tuned into the modern zeitgeist and, above all else, do not wish to offend or upset anybody. However, we have noted with a degree of surprise that Maria Sharapova, in her autobiography 'Unstoppable', uses the word. If it works for Maria, it's good enough for us as well. Be ready for it to appear with gay abandon from now on.

At this juncture, you may be wondering what Pale Green Vortex is doing reading about the life of a famous tennis player anyway, when surely we should be studying conspiracies, multi-dimensional consciousness, and all the other stuff that turns up on this site. Well folks, it goes back to the 'Russian girls take drugs' theme, which was explored some time back. What was Maria's take on the 'naughty meldonium girl' story? This was the curiosity which fuelled our rare amble into sporting autobiography.

We are left in no doubt that our favourite rich blonde considers the meldonium incident a bit of a put-up job, by people who don't like her very much. Her description of the affair is clear, her reasoning impeccable. 'They' knew she was taking this supplement, as she had been doing so for years, and it was a monitored substance for a year before the ban. 'Not a day went by when I did not wonder if someone was trying to do me in.' And again: 'The world Anti-Doping Authority grew concerned about meldonium not because it improves performance but because it was being taken by so many athletes from eastern Europe and Russia.' Thanks, Maria, we love you. Despite your screeching. And as an autobio of a certain intelligence, we recommend your book to our readers.

Part One

Anyhow, we were going to talk about gender, that kind of stuff. Let's go back to my childhood, when genderish things were, generally speaking, remarkably simple. Men were men, and women were women. Men did what men do, while women did what women did.

Men, in general, got a job and went out to work. Their task was to provide for the family. They made the big decisions, like where to live, what colour the walls should be, where to go on holiday. In the evening they went home to the meal which their devoted wife had prepared. For this, and for other services provided by his wife, the man probably expressed minimal gratitude. After dinner, he would set about 'relaxing'. Typical relaxation pursuits might include reading the newspaper, watching the black-and-white television, and maybe spending a bit of fun time with the children.

The woman, meanwhile, stayed at home. She bought groceries, cooked meals, cleaned and tidied the house, and looked after the children. In any spare time, she might visit a neighbour, for a chat and a cup of tea. She quite likely felt insufficiently appreciated by her husband, and many women from this time died quite young, having led tragically submissive and unfulfilled lives. Others, meanwhile, though appearing to be passive, really ran the roost. Those with the confidence and guile to do it and get away with it.

Even as a child, I was deeply unimpressed with this state of affairs. People tied tightly into rigidly stereotyped behaviour. No room for manoeuvre, no room for independence, individuality - or anything, really. Thus was created a society with uniformity and conformity its watchwords; a society with spirit, soul, and life-blood effectively wrung dry. Not exactly my cup of tea.

Change was required, that was it: change. Here we are, sixty years on. And all's changed! In our so-called modern western democracies, at least, the rigid stereotypes based upon gender have been in the process of crumbling for a while. In some quarters (cue: mainstream media, the main driver of cultural and social fashions and programmes) the rigid stereotypes are being replaced by - not just no gender stereotypes, but no gender roles at all. In particular, anything that men can do, women can do as well, whether it's becoming a builder or getting drunk and noisy on the train. It works the other way round a bit as well, but not so smoothly or completely.

It's a game of ping-pong, taking place within an arena of opposites. This is what mainstream programming does - all that it's capable of - bouncing trends between one pole and another. I suppose that it's a law of sorts: bounce from one unhealthy, or unbalanced, pole - that of rigid gender stereotypes - and you will inevitably end up in another unhealthy place. It is not possible to react from unhealth to health. Health requires a recalibration, a kind of transcendence of the duality of sickness altogether.

What I see being pushed is actually a form of non-sexuality. Or asexuality, more like. It is as if that strict gender stereotyping of the 1940s and 50s is seen as the only form that differentiation on the basis of sex can take. Gender, sexual duality, is therefore regarded as sick, something to be eradicated. Thus we arrive at a point where gender differentiation is considered unimportant, a mere detail. It's all fluid, man. There is no distinction between man and woman, really. We're all one. We're all the same.

Removing the tension between male and female cleans things up. There is a great collective sigh of relief. All those deep, complex, sometimes painful, emotions can be cast aside. People can relax, safe in the knowledge that nothing disturbing is going to happen, that nobody is going to upset them. No man is going to approach in the bar, say 'hello gorgeous', and get too close. The world is an increasingly sanitised place. It's sexuality for the facebook age: keep things on the surface, please.

Only one problem. There is a difference between men and women. It's quite a big difference; such a big difference that a certain tension, a felt frisson, is inevitable. While it's not quite the same as the primal dualism of masculine and feminine, it makes a reasonable proximation. It's the basis of creation, of how the universe is made up, of how it works. Remove that, and...….??!!

Part Two

I recently caught a minute or so of a woman on a screen. The topic she was talking about was consent between adults. She wished to define it. What constitutes 'consenting adults' and what constitutes violation and rape. She was not going to take any prisoners, this was immediately apparent. She was the type who would have a man lose his job and his reputation for daring to tell a female work colleague that she was looking good today.

I wondered what would make a woman devote a large chunk of her life to all this. Was it overflowing love and compassion for her sisters? I didn't think so. I didn't pay much attention to what she was saying: instead, I looked closely at her - who she was, or might be. I sensed no great compassion emanating from her being. She was hard, brusque, sharp. Aggressive in the way that people sometimes are who present themselves as rational beings. So what was it that was getting her mojo working?

It was later that it hit me. Surrender; fear; hatred; self-hatred. These were the words that unbidden came to me. How to weave them into a whole?

Surrender. I never gave much attention to surrender. And then kundalini turned up, and it became key. The books will tell you: to negotiate the influx of kundalini, the only realistic strategy is surrender. Give in to that force, that power, and you stand a chance of coming through it a better person. Resist, fight, attack, and there'll only ever be one winner.

For months I found surrender impossible. Clenching, clinching, flinching: these were my typical reactions as the energy tried to find its way up and through my body. Despite my years and decades of Buddhist meditation and other spiritual practices, I was unable to 'give up my ego' and allow kundalini her way. I was shocked at how little I was able to surrender. Things have improved somewhat since then.

'Surrender' is also an integral part of the fulfilled sexual response of a woman. So much so, that several authors I have read suggest that kundalini awakening is less problematic for female than for male, due to her biological and instinctive acquaintance with surrender. And, in another place, somebody muses whether a woman's kundalini awakening might be more complete than a man's, precisely because of this distinction: a man just can't do it in quite the same way.

'Surrender' is altogether different to submissiveness, which is the characteristic quality of the female stereotyping of decades past. Submissiveness is the fallen, distorted version of surrender, in the way that it is intended here. Submission leads to diminution of the individual, whereas surrender is an act of sublime creation, leading to the opposite.

Shiva and Shakti: the divine masculine and feminine 'principles'; the creators of the universe through their union, their sacred dance of unutterable joy. Shakti, paradoxically, both surrenders completely, and is the divine lady of creation, the creative, 'principle'. Through their sacred interplay does the world come into being.

Surrender: it's inbuilt to the physiology, and consequently the psychology, of the female. Check out how sex between woman and man works. And so we come full circle, to the lady on the screen...…

Part Three

We're not talking rape, real abuse and violation. Neither are we talking about the behaviour of some men, who are really bad news when it comes to dealings with women. We're talking cultural and social norms; a culture where touching a girl on the arm, saying anything about her appearance, making a suggestion that she finds surprising, is viewed as offensive, criminal, the perpetrator to be taken to task. We're talking the fear of touch,maybe. Where 'consent' is something agreed over dinner, or jotted down in an appointments diary.

The things is - it's not quite as easy as that. As I intimated earlier, sex cannot be reduced to calendars, carefully-phrased agreements. Sex and sexuality emanate, in good part, from the world of Dionysus, not that of Apollo. Dionysus the wild one, the spontaneous, the sometimes dirty, the 'can't control me'. It is as if a certain element in modern culture desperately wants to discard Dionysus, with his touch of danger and non rationality. Instead, sexuality is to be claimed as part of Apollo's world. Clear, rational, predictable, even. Safe. We can breathe a sigh of relief and get on with our lives.

It's a move which can only lead to trouble. In Greek mythology, each god or goddess has their own domain. Should this principle be followed, then matters go not too badly. But if someone messes with the natural order of things, or a goddess or god tries to usurp what is not rightfully theirs, then there is trouble. Big trouble.

This 'land grab' by Apollo denotes a fear, I suspect. A deep fear of the nonrational forces. An attempt to tame the wild, the deep, the unfathomable. This is the shadow of #MeToo. Not the real abuse, which does happen. But the shadow is the fear of surrender, of part of what is the innately feminine. It would appear to be based upon hatred of ones female self, ones female body and its female functioning. It's a sad realisation, how so much modern, right-on, women's rights stuff, while superficially lauding a woman's freedom, is in fact self-hatred, a rejection of the core of ones being, no less, the expression of a wound.

The lady on the screen. Showing her wound. Showing it to the masses. Showing it through 'reason', through apparent concern. Her wound. How much is socially-engineered, who knows? For sure, many women walk around with wounds that have been socially engineered, manufactured, viciously so, the victim oblivious to the real source of her anger and indignation. Terrible, really, this manipulation of women. Turning them against themselves, while they believe the opposite to be true. And so it goes.....

Images:   Top: Marital bliss, 1950s style
              Centre: Tantric Buddhist Yab Yum
              Bottom: Shiva and Shakti Yab Yum  

 

           

Tardis News....

Jus a little thing connected with a topic that took a paragraph or two on Pale Green Vortex a while back....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhWtvktarbw