Friday, June 22, 2007

In the Wake of the Impossible Dream

This is impossible. I just sat down, and the baby's already making noises in the next room. No way to blog under these coonditions.

In honor of the simmering soulstice, I think I'll just pluck something from exactly one year ago and see if it still has any relevance. Frankly, I write these things in such a daze that when I go back and review them, it's almost as if someone else wrote them and I'm reading them for the first time. I've added a few additional thoughts as they occurred to me.

Which reminds me of one of Bion's books, Second Thoughts. Between the 1950s and mid-1960s, Bion underwent some sort of profound transformation in which he changed from being an ordinary, if gifted, psychoanalyst, into an unorthodox visionary mystic philosopher. The book is a collection of scholarly essays written by his old self, looked at from the perspective of his new self. Thus, "second thoughts" has a double meaning, in that one naturally has second thoughts about things written by a self that is effectively dead and no longer exists except insofar as the tracks left on the printed page.

In a way, it is as if one has the responsibility of being one's own literary executor. The first half of Second Thoughts presents the essays, while the second half is a commentary in which Bion essentially deconstructs himself, almost as if -- no, exactly as if -- the earlier Bion were "dream material" presented for the purposes of the later Bion's analysis.

For most people, they don't undergo sufficient growth in their lifetime for this to be an issue. I was thinking about this the other day, when I made the comment about my own past being so radically disconnected from my present. Further thoughts along these lines were provoked by Will's interview of Mrs. G.... about which I'm starting to get a little jealous. I wish he'd interview me! I want some attention!

Anyway -- shh! please be quiet -- F.L. is over there, actually amusing himself, so I have a moment to develop a thought -- as I was about to say, one of the downsides of radical change is that it necessarily creates a kind of alienation -- from one's past, from previous relationships, from the culture, from any number of things. One dies to the world, and with it, one's previous self. Through the mid-1990s I had undergone a lot of change, but I was still more or less myself. I could draw a continuous if winding road from there to here.

Looked at from this angle, I can understand why so many of my generational cohort of baby boomers are so stuck in the progressive past. They're all still basically caught up in the dream of the 1960s, with no new self to critique the dream -- which is why the dream turned into a nightmare. I was about to say that my generation has got to be the most un-introspective and un-self aware in American history, but I suppose it happens with every generation, which has difficulty seeing outside its own narrow reality tunnel.

This came up just yesterday with the bulletin about how 90% of the journalists who give financial support to political candidates are leftists. At the same time, these people are so clueless that they don't even know how biased they are. Ignorance is one thing, but unconscious ignorance masquerading as sophistication is another thing entirely. But that's our MSM: self-congratulating unreflective ignorance on stilts. Increasingly they just speak to themselves, ensuring their own lack of growth -- like an animal that tries to live on its own excrement.

To the extent that you have undergone significant growth, you must necessarily look back at your past and cringe at the moronic things you thought, said, wrote, and did. You must interpret the dream from the standpoint of being awake. It's painful, in part because one must essentially "write off" a good portion of one's life as having essentially been a waste -- if not actually harmful -- or at best, a series of inevitable lessons, given the inclinations and architecture of one's particular soul. One did one's best with the knowledge and materials at hand.

But the New York Times still proudly displays the Pultizer Prize awarded to Walter Duranty, who was Stalin's greatest mouthpiece in the West. Rather than speaking Truth to Evil, the Times was the latter's stenographer. But do they have any "second thoughts?" Obviously not. The left hasn't undergone sufficient growth to be capable of that kind of self-reflection.

For the left, nothing changes, since leftism is an abstract pseudo-religion uninfluenced by the ravages of time. Indeed, that is one of its central appeals. It is "effective" not in the world, but in the soul, so to speak. That is to say, like Islamism, it is believed because of the transformative -- even intoxicating -- effect on the personality (emphasis on the toxic). I always think this while reading most any leftist writing: how intoxicated they are!

Ironic that they are at war with "faith," but real faith always questions. Because faith is faith, it can be questioned from both within and without. No one need accept faith to begin with, and once accepted, it can be constantly questioned from within. Not so leftist faith. From the beginning it has been confused with enlightenment values, hence the "science" of dialectical materialism and all its latter day descendents, including all of the major Democrat candidolts at war with true liberalism.

Hmm, this almost turned into a full post after all.

*****

The devil [is] the humanized personification -- humanized on contact with man -- of the subversive aspect of the centrifugal existential power... --F. Schuon

What is it with these hostile powers? Why are they afflicting so many spiritually sensitive souls at this particular time? What do they want and when will they go away? Why am I and so many other cosmonaughts experiencing these bizarre dreams and inexplicable physical symptoms?

In World War II, millions of good men traveled to hell in order to fight the latest incarnation of evil. What was going on then -- not politically, but cosmically? No mere human psychology can explain the level of pure evil embodied in the Japanese and German governments that inflicted such infra-human brutality on their millions of victims.

[Update -- I recently got a refresher course on the demonic brutality of imperial Japan in the book A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900, which, for some reason, is still not widely appreciated -- one more reason why the left can conflate what goes on at Gitmo or what happened at Abu Ghraib with "torture." In addition to being a disgraceful torture of language -- one of the left's specialites -- it's such a dishonor to the memory Americans (and Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, and other English speaking peoples) who were hideously tortured by these monsters. For that matter, I'll bet one in a thousand leftists doesn't have any idea what actually went on in the real Gulags. One of the reasons it is so very dangerous for the left to be in control of the educational establishment and almost all mainstream organs of information dissemination is that leftism can only operate in the dark interstices of ignorance it first must create in order to thrive -- economic ignorance, spiritual ignorance, psychological ignorance, historical ignorance, etc.]

I just finished an excellent new history of the Cold War, and it is the same story. I mean that literally, for history itself is the same story. The drama of exterior or "horizontal" history can obscure the deeper reality of interior or "vertical" history. Outwardly it looked as if a “world war” had ended in 1945, but nothing could be further from the truth. Pure evil cannot surpass itself, but Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot (and now the Islamists) and others gave it their worst shot. And they did so not only largely “under the radar,” but aided and abetted at every step along the way by an elite anti-divine and anti-evolutionary spiritual movement called “the international left.”

Although atheistic, it must be emphasized that there is nothing unspiritual about these people, being that spirituality exists on a vertical axis that descends into a kind of "negative space" below the horizontal horizon. It is a dark "dream world," just as positive spirituality operates in a kind of light-filled dream world (the cosmos itself being the warp and weft of the cosmic Dreamer).

Thankfully, this movement did not fully insinuate itself into the Democrat party and hijack liberalism until the early 1970’s, so it posed no existential threat to our ability to name and extinguish evil, for evil cannot triumph so long as virtuous and courageous men can recognize it and mercilessly burn it from our midst.

But things are different today. Once again the same evil -- the same hideous death-worshipping ontological evil that lived through men like Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo -- has now lodged itself into the heart of a religion and a region of the earth. But like any other parasite, the evil that animates this movement has adapted and learned from its mistakes. It knows that its only hope of success is to convince sophisticated and cultured men that it does not exist.

Perhaps you remember the absolute outrage among sophisticated leftists when Ronald Reagan acknowledged and named this evil exactly 25 years ago, in June of 1982. Not only did the left dismiss him as wrong, but, just like President Bush, he was regarded and reviled as the real source of evil in the world. You may think that we ultimately won that particular linguistic battle once and for all, but the opposite is true. As I have had occasion to mention before, the left learns nothing from history -- that is not its role in the cosmic drama. Rather, it exists to obscure those lessons, for they issued the identical howls of outrage when President Bush recognized and named the most recent incarnations of ontological evil.

Here is what President Reagan said, updated with some obvious edits. You tell me if the left wouldn’t react identically today if these words were uttered:

“I've often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the West about standing for the ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world....

“If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. We see around us today the marks of our terrible dilemma -- predictions of doomsday, anti-American demonstrations, a terror war in which the West must, for its own protection, be an unwilling participant. At the same time we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course?... Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?

“We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings....

“All the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. We dare not make that mistake again. So, let us ask ourselves, ‘What kind of people do we think we are?’ And let us answer, ‘Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.’

“What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term -- the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Islamo-fascism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people....”

*****

Those who lived through it well remember how Reagan was absolutely despised and reviled by the left. Their hatred of this particular speech was not the issue. Nor was Reagan himself the issue, any more than Hitler or Stalin were the issue. Reagan was simply a vehicle of much larger forces, and was opposed by the identical impersonal, anti-Divine forces that would oppose him today.

One again, our brave men are in hell, fighting satan. But the morally twisted left, which cannot recognize evil, sees the opposite. Dennis Prager routinely asks callers opposed to the liberation of Iraq if they can at least acknowledge one thing: that we are fighting evil. Not only will they not concede this point, but they are generally outraged and insulted by the question. Rather, America is the aggressor imposing its will on an occupied people.

Here is what a clear mind, uncontaminated by the toxic thinking of the left, sees:

“In the overheated exchanges that too often substitute for reasoned political discourse, definitions and distinctions can blur. But there is a huge difference between Coalition forces and the wanton, sociopath terrorist with no vestige of honor, who knows nothing but destruction and has no plan for the future other than the subjugation of others while on the path to some psychotic pathology inured by tribal culture and carcinogenic beliefs that will, if left untouched, leave people living in mud huts and slitting throats of historical enemies for another thousand years, or, if slightly more science-minded, leave them seeking nuclear weapons to reach out and destroy the world.

“We did not create this evil, although it does reveal itself more sharply by comparison in the presence of decent people. When the tactics of an enemy cross the line, sentient peoples recognize that they are no longer entitled to be called opposing forces, insurgents, freedom fighters, revolutionaries, or Jihadists -- they are terrorists....

"No living creature is safe while a rabid predator roams. No. Our people who have truly stared into the face of this terrorist demon have seen the ruby glow in its eyes. This is not a myth. This is not a politically contrived caricature, this demon is real. It usually stalks the easy prey -- children, women in crowds, families focused on prayer, rescue workers responding to people in need. Some terrorists manage to get our soldiers.”

****

But what I really wanted to touch on in this post was the nature and role of this ontological evil, and the effect it is having on spiritually sensitive souls at this particular time, as it wells up from the bowels of the earth-consciousness, opportunistically roaming about, looking for minds to colonize. I’ll have to get to that tomorrow.

There is another type of vibration, remarkable for its suddenness and violence; the seeker literally feels these vibrations swooping down upon him.... These are what Sri Aurobindo called the adverse forces. They are highly conscious forces whose sole aim, apparently, is to discourage the seeker and divert him from the path he has chosen. The first sign sign of their presence is easily perceptible: joy is clouded over, consciousness is clouded over, everything becomes shrouded in an atmosphere of tragedy....

Thus there is kind of threshold to cross if we want to find the true life force behind the troubled life of the frontal man.
--Satprem

32 comments:

robinstarfish said...

Although we are increasingly beset by evil in high (and low) places, an occasional reminder that we are not alone drives by in the form of a certain old police cruiser....

julie said...

This is a tad off topic, but since it does pertain to the fight against Evil I thought I'd mention it here, with Bob's permission. The Fightin' 6th Marines in Fallujah are asking for e-mails of support (RCT-6lettersfromh@gcemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil). They are hoping to receive at least 6000 (one for each soldier, I think). They are currently up to 4970 today, from 3000 yesterday.

The reason I think this is relevant is that our soldiers need to hear from us that we believe in the job they are doing, and we support them in their fight against true evil. All they hear in the news is the same negative, autocoprophagous crap that we hear. It's disheartening to us; imagine how much worse it must be for them.

The mention of torture and the difference between our version and their version also brought to mind a story I read yesterday (via Bob Agard and shoprat, and for the sensitive types it's both disturbing and illustrated, but has a positive ending and is also imho relevant), Who is the Great Satan?"

Right. I've gone on rather long this morning, so will now shut my gob and let the smarter folks talk.

(as punishment for long-windedness, my wordveri (2nd time) is cnxmxduq)

Anonymous said...

>>Why am I and so many other cosmonaughts experiencing these bizarre dreams and inexplicable physical symptoms?<<

Well, if I may be so bold as to suggest that it's - you know it, you love it, you can't live without it - the Quickening. And that doesn't necessarily translate as a rain of Universal Goodness. On the contrary, those who are incapable of receiving and integrating the energies resulting from the opening of the 7 seals (see book of revs) are going to go bat crazy. Some of these will align themselves with archetypal evil, and in doing so, further open the portals for the dark forces to enter.

Old adage: the closer you get to the sacred, the closer you get to the profane.
I think the thing to remember now is that if evil is getting stronger, even to the point of inflicting us with darkness of spirit, then the Light is also getting stronger. That's always been the point of the individual Dark Night of the Soul - we may not be able to sense the Spirit during the Dark Night, God may seem utterly absent to us, but the Spirit is there. We then have to go on faith and hold out 'til the break of dawn.

>>I wish he'd interview me! I want some attention!<<

OC readers will be thrilled to know that an interview with Bob will eventually be forthcoming. Eventually.

CrypticLife said...

The bulk of the people the Iraqi (or, if from outside of Iraq, other-than-Iraqi) terrorists kill currently are not US soldiers, but Iraqi citizens. They kill Iraqis trying to find jobs as policemen, construction workers, or simply shopping. This completely contradicts any characterization of them as "resisting invaders". It's a battle of certain Iraqi (or other-than-Iraqi) to take over the country from other Iraqi. Regardless of whether we went into Iraq for proper reasons, the people we're fighting there are evil.

I know someone who works as a newspaper photographer. When sent on assignments, they're told exactly what kind of picture to shoot. They're told what races to include in the picture (if it's a welfare story, find a caucasian; if it's a graduation find a non-Asian minority). This is an example of relatively trivial significance, I can only imagine when it involves war the restrictions on unbiased photography must be far greater. Somehow, the blunt racism of pre-selecting photographs to show based on race is never apparent to the editors. While I certainly do not agree with many of you here on many things, I completely share your revulsion of these types of activities.

Given this, I have no trust the supposedly "unbiased" MSM. I actually have slightly more trust for outlets that are obviously biased such as FOX -- at least they know their facts will be scrutinized.

Van Harvey said...

From a recent Michael Yon update:

"I don’t want to say much more about that, but our guys are seriously outsmarting them. Big fights are ahead and we will take serious losses probably, but al Qaeda, unless they find a way to escape, are about to be slaughtered. Nobody is dropping leaflets asking them to surrender. Our guys want to kill them, and that’s the plan.

A positive indicator on the 19th and the 20th is that most local people apparently are happy that al Qaeda is being trapped and killed. Civilians are pointing out IEDs and enemy fighters, so that’s not working so well for al Qaeda. Clearly, I cannot do a census, but that says something about the locals."

While some hold on with a deathgrip to their deadened dreams, others, with impossible determination and courage, confront the sleepwalkers and destroy them.

Sometimes we wake up, which is good; but thank God there are others who refuse to fall asleep.

Anonymous said...

>>Why am I and so many other cosmonaughts experiencing these bizarre dreams and inexplicable physical symptoms?<<

I once heard it put this way in Biblical terms. If you examine the time line of humanity from Adam, you have about 6,000 years so far. (Not talking about age of the earth or evolution right now).

Now imagine that the human race is actually one entity before God, not so much just us individuals, but one living organism (in some way).

So for the first 4,000 years God dealt with humanity mostly in the physical space. You fought evil by killing the other guy, sword to sword. David has to kill his giants by very physical means. This primary mode of God relating to man is physical. You need to be forgiven of sin? You have to kill a goat, or sheep, or something.

Christ comes and it shifts to God dealing with the soul of man. Christ does not stone the demon possessed, he casts out the demons. He deals with the thoughts and heart of man (soul), not the external observance of laws.

We have been in this for 2,000 years, with of course plenty of overlap with the physical. But the world really, really changed from before Christ, to after Christ. Thinking itself changed, if even to argue now about the nature of God (arguments about the trinity etc).

Now we are shifting again, where God is started to deal with the spirits of men. That IMO is why you can see eclectic groups with divergent views, but assembled under the same spirit, such as Leftists have nothing in common, intellectually with Islamics, yet the are drawn inexplicably to sympathy with them anyway.

Nothing explains this IMO but the fact that the age of soul is ending, the age of spirit is beginning. Interesting that the age of spirit falls on the 7th day, the Sabbath Rest so to speak.

So spiritual warfare will increase, because the evil spirits, demons, fallen angels are being exposed, the veil is lifting, to where even the un-spiritual can practically see the spirit realm, or they must live in such utter denial that they become insane blind men.

Indeed, Revelation speaks of a day that God Himself will become so universally revealed that evil men will cry for rocks and mountains to fall upon them to hide them from such a Revelation.

Anonymous said...

I'll buy that. On the spiritual level, birth pangs are indistinguishable from -- or at least conflated with -- death throes.

Anonymous said...

cousin dupree

I find it interesting that the best Science Fiction is based on Romans 8, even if unwittingly. The birth of the sons of God, or the manifestation of the sons of God, is replayed in a science fiction format, in such novels as The Centennial, or Childhood's End (Arthur C. Clark). Or the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov, or Dune by Herbert, or Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein.

So many of those types of stories, almost as if it is a template overlaid on the universe that perceptive writers cannot but fail to tune into and convey in writing.

Anonymous said...

Yes, what's that old cliche -- science fiction writers are the unacknowledged legislators of the cosmos?

Anonymous said...

Will,

I see again that you have used the term "The Quickening". As most of the world knows, that is a term which I coined in the 90's and still reserve the rights to today.
I'll have to ask you to refrain from it's use and come up with a slogan of your own, lest I be forced into litigation which I am, at this point in time, reluctant to initiate.

AB

NoMo said...

Art Bell - How can you initiate a lawsuit from a padded cell?

Anonymous said...

That's not a padded cell. It's a padded doublewide trailer in Pahrump, Nevada, where he lives with his mail order Filipina bride.

NoMo said...

Will - Ever been here?

www.rebelscience.org

(Hey, it's Friday)

Lisa said...

I first heard of the quickening when I watched The Highlander and thought wow, that's cool....

Pinky is still at large having some kind of grand adventure. Few false alarms, but still holding out some hope for her return.

Van Harvey said...

AB,
Pull up a pad and go nite-nite. 'The Quickening' was had long before you by Connor and Duncan (who was way better) MacLeod of the Clan McLeod - There can be only ONE!

Van Harvey said...

Lisa!

Lisa said...

You owe me a shot of good tequila, Van! (I don't like beer) ;)

wv: otlkk (is pinky near?!)

Van Harvey said...

Lisa said "You owe me a shot of good tequila, Van!"

Done! Next time you walk n' roll through St. Louis let me know... although I'll leave the tokillyou to you and my wife, I'll stick with Scotch. Also goes better with The Highlander ;-)

Anonymous said...

Mr. Bell -

Here's more proof. Click on The Gathering once you're there.

Raccoon Warning - it's easy to waste, er, slack a LOT of time on that site.

Susannah said...

It seems Dawn Eden very recently confronted her former self.

Ouch.

This post and comments following were thought-provoking. I'm glad it's not just me that feels a battle of spiritual forces is the undercurrent to the times.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Hmm.. quickening...

I do suspect I know of what you speak.

Also, My new site rolls deep...

Feedback is welcome... the site is like a blank slate, where all things are possible.

Joan of Argghh! said...

Some rare and ancient items on display where I work are shamanistic or soul-f3tish in nature. So the place can easily fall prey to "really weird shit".

Yesterday while leaving work I had a small nudge to call a co-worker at home and pray with her, since there had been many startling physical misfortunes befalling our work-mates and family members all within about two weeks. Tornadoes, uterine cancer, broken hips and terrible malpractice, cracked ribs. Even I have bruises and lumps I can't explain. Out of 90 employees, the odds were running almost 10 percent that you'd be next.

Today, a coworker called in to say he was abandoning his ticket station and going home, saying he thought he was having a heart attack. Which he was. Which is why we called 911 and hauled him to the cardiac care unit.

Dumbfounded, I looked at my secret prayer partner and told her of my spiritual "nudge" last evening. I'm out of practice in that area, so I felt really bad that I had dropped the ball. She immediately got chills, too, and realized that we had been struggling under it for two weeks. We found a quick moment and ran to a place where we could pray.

Stand, watch, pray. Spiritual things, even those "nothing" shadows, are quickening at every level.

julie said...

Yikes, Joan - your workplace sounds disturbingly and weirdly hazardous right now. Whatever's going on, it can't hurt to pray. Thank God you were on the ball to call 911; it's amazing how often people will try to go home in the midst of a heart attack. May God watch over your workplace and keep you safe in the midst of strange happenings.

Lisa said...

Done deal, Van! or should we meet in the middle at Tohellyouride to shoot the tokillyou...? I'll bring some oranges from my tree.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Man, speaking of Michael Yon (earlier) that man is an incredible blessing to us all and a credit to his profession (of whom few are truly left.)

When I read his dispatches last year RE: Lebanon it was eye-opening. Especially regarding the general corruption - on all sides - of their political process.

Guess we get to share the pain this year. Congress IS the opposite of progress...

Anonymous said...

I've been to Pahrump, Nevada. It's not a bad little burg. It could use more motels and have its layout a little easier to use at night. I got confused in town and just went on through to Boulder City, Nevada, where motels are cheap and plentiful.

Las Vegas is lousy for motels--I mean the kind you can just drive in to and get a cheap, clean safe room.

Anonymous said...

Hmm, AB's gonna sue me . . .

OK, how's about . . instead of the Quickening, we say . . . the Great Spin Cycle . . . .

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Hey Will! Howzabout the Ultymate Anti-Scurvy Salad (A.S.S.)?
I wrote about it today.
Not the Ultymate one, jes' the regular kind of A.S.S., which is important, because during a Quickening, or
Great Spin Cycle(TM), you don't wanna find yerself with scurvy, now do ya?
So grab yerself an ice-cold mug o'grog, and head on over to Cap'n Bens place and git yerself some learnin'.
We can all use a bit o'culinary Sailor wisdom, while we wait for Bob to write about the metaphysical implications of extry virgin olive oil.
Yer favorite pirate chef,
Skully

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

JulieC makes a good point.
Those Marines, Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen need to know how much we support them, now more than ever!
They're surging, so we need to surge also!
Drop them a line or two and let them know you support them and their mission! I can't tell you how much they appreciate just to hear from us.
It not only helps to counter the 24/7 crap the media puts out, but it helps to shore up the motivation of the Heroes doing the the hardest of all jobs: protecting us and our liberty, and tryin' to secure liberty for over 50 million folks in Iraq and Afghanistan!

Anonymous said...

Okay, so I may have "lifted" the slogan from others but as my old Uncle Harry used to say "he who is first to the copyright office wins."
I've actually moved my doublewide to the Philipines, along with my new bride.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and Will?
"The Great Spin Cycle" works for me.

CrypticLife said...

Hmm, actually "quickening" is a very old phrase, from what I understand, relating to birth. "Highlander" appropriated the word, it did not invent it.

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