.:|:. Dove Love’s .:. Points and Passions .:|:.

By Dove, www.TarotwithLove.com  Aces are awesome :)  I love them for some reason…maybe because they are the seeds of “magic.”  They align with the Magician (major arcana card in the Tarot), whose number is also ONE.  (Note, any card in the Tarot,  major or minor, that has the same number as another card has some relationship with the same-numbered card.) 

When I got to work this morning, I was pulling cards, as usual :) … asking my same ole questions, getting the same ole answers … yeah, it would all be so easy if we could take those answers and create perfect lives with them :)  The fact is, with or without the use of something like the Tarot, deep down, we all know how to heal our lives.  But the real deal is being able to “break through” the fear, the blocks, that keep us from doing what we know we need to do… 

Aces are kinda like spurs encouraging us to do those things.  Spurs to become the “Magicians” that we are :)  Little “gods” that create “magic” everyday — without even knowing it.  But once we begin to know, that’s when the real power is gonna kick in ;)  The less ya’ fear, the more ya’ “know” :)

Anyway, so I started pulling Aces out the wazoo this morning.  One after another.  That’s always exciting.  Aces are about new beginnings, fresh starts, big bunches of wonderful potential are reflected in the Ace. 

I then got online to check my email and came upon an interesting article called “Creating the Next Society” …  from one of my favorite websites, www.naturalnews.com and the synchronicity of it spurred me, ha, to write this blog.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

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(NaturalNews) It’s fairly obvious to anyone paying attention that the American Empire, as currently configured and operated, is simply not sustainable. Financial collapse is inevitable (and accelerating, it seems), and even mainstream America can no longer deny the obvious signs that things have gone terribly wrong: Skyrocketing fuel prices, unprecedented inflation in food prices, rampant epidemics of preventable degenerative disease, plummeting real estate prices, an increasingly-worthless national currency, disastrous war failures, rampant dishonesty in Washington, and accelerating climate changes that are causing flooding, crop failures, droughts and worse. It is becoming increasingly difficult for even the Pollyannas of the world to argue that the United States of America has a bright future.

Click link above to read the rest of the article.

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It’s only a matter of time, People…we know that.  It’s time for us to become the Magicians that we are, to take the actions that we know deep inside that we need to take to heal ourselves (Job ONE), to heal our world… 

Just noticing the word “America.”  Kinda sounds like “a miracle” and it even has the letters of the “Ace” in it.  Interesting.  I think America was meant to be one of our miraculous and wonderful manifestations, and in many ways it has been.  But our fear mucked it up along the way, the self-loathing and consequent greed, intolerance/hatred, indifference — allowing fear-based religion to brainwash us into believing that we’re wretched and lowly without some being outside of us to “save” us.  From that, how could we possible not hate ourselves, and others.  Try to imagine instead if we’d been taught that we are amazingly wonderful beings, precious, sacred…just because we are.  In need of no “fixing” or “saving” …  Imagine the world we would have created knowing that truth :)  Imagine. 

Peace,
Dove

By Dove, www.TarotwithLove.com  I can hear a choir of certain individuals spewing things like, “Well, I went to public schools, and I did gist fine…self-esteem, puleez.”  Uh, yeah okay.  I have to admit, there’s a part of me that wants to reference such people as well, idiots, but really that’s not necessarily the case.  The fact is we’ve been programmed, brainwashed, into accepting all this controlling crap — and gawd forbid that we should question any of it.  Our school system is just one of our multitudinous controlling systems, but it’s one that packs the biggest punch after religion, in my view.  They grab us when we’re just babes and fill our little minds and hearts with energy (thoughts, beliefs…fears) that governs the rest of our lives…  Read more about that here.  Even as adults, we continue to draw from that energy (both conscious and subconscious) and create our lives with it, with those “beliefs.” 

Dove

From John Gatto’s “Dumbing Us Down”
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In his speech, “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher,” Gatto describes the seven lessons that are taught in all public schools by all teachers in America, whether they know it or not.  He writes:

The first lesson I teach is confusion. Everything I teach is out of context.  I teach the un-relating of everything.  I teach dis-connections….Even in the best of schools a close examination of curriculum and its sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions….Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working along with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending, for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess….In a world where home is only a ghost, because both parents work…or because something else has left everybody too confused to maintain a family relation, I teach you how to accept confusion as your destiny.

The second lesson I teach is class position….The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class….My job is to make them like being locked together with children who bear numbers like their own.…If I do my job well, the kids can’t even imagine themselves somewhere else, because I’ve shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes….That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school.  You come to know your place.

The third lesson I teach is indifference….When the bell rings I insist they drop whatever it is we have been doing and proceed quickly to the next work station.  They must turn on and off like a light switch….Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency.  By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestinated chain of command.

The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency….It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives….[Only], the teacher can determine what my kids must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions, which I then enforce.  If I’m told that evolution is a fact instead of a theory, I transmit that as ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been told to tell them to think….Successful children do the thinking I assign them with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm….Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it…Fortunately there are tested procedures to break the will of those who resist; it is more difficult, naturally, if the kids have respectable parents who come to their aid, but that happens less and less in spite of the bad reputation of schools.  No middle-class parents I have ever met actually believe that their kid’s school is one of the bad ones.  No one single parent in twenty-six years of teaching.

The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem….The lesson of report cards, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials.  People need to be told what they are worth.

The seventh lesson I teach is that one can’t hide.  I teach students they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues….The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate.

Source:  http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/bookstore/dumbdnblum1.htm

 

Free Homeschooling (link from Gatto’s site)

 

By Dove, www.TarotwithLove.com  Watching ole Charlton Heston (damn, he’s good) play Moses in that movie, “The Ten Commandments.”   A movie I’ve seen so many times since I was a kid.  I’ve always liked it, only now it’s a blessing that I no longer feel even a hint of fear in watching it, unlike when I was a bible-pounding kid.  I see it so differently now…

That line jumped out at me that the Pharaoh spoke.  He was angry that “the slave’s god” was clearly kicking their god’s ass, lol ;)  And to his priests or whatever, he angrily said something like, “You created the gods — to play upon the fear of the people.”  Indeed, all “gods” are fabricated for this reason.  That’s probably the best and most telling line of the movie.

Sitting here watching this, good-gawd, no wonder most people are so horrified of “God.”  Another line that got me, Moses telling his former love that he couldn’t save her child (firstborn of the Pharaoh) because he was “nothing without God.”  Again, no wonder with such things spoken in this type of movie — watching it over and over, year after year (more people watching it than reading the bible) — no wonder we are so self-loathing.  No wonder our world looks the way it does, no wonder we endeavor to destroy it, ourselves.  We believe we are nothing.  So sad. 

It’s all so misconstrued, twisted around into BS — “to play upon the fear of the people.”  No, Moses is nothing without “God,” because Moses IS “God.”  We all are, this is what Moses meant.  This body is a shell, nothing — it is the “spirit” within that is real, is “God.”  And it is us who have personified this thing called ”God” into a fiery-eyed one, separate from us — who supposedly loves us one minute, but is highly wrathed up about us the next. 

The scene that really gets me in the gut is where they are eating the herbs and bread.  Sitting there hearing (trying to ignore) the unnerving cries from a distance of the mothers and fathers watching their children die.  One man in the house with Moses’ is singing!  Yee-haw, rejoice — God’s green stuff is killing children!  Good-gawd.  And then the woman (mother of the Pharaoh, former mother of Moses) is pained by the cries and says, “They’re my people.”  Another of Moses’ people leans over to her and says sweetly, “We’re all God’s people.”  Uh.  It’s okay, hon, God knows what he’s doing in killing those children.  Geez.

When ya’ know it’s all symbolic, this movie is so much easier to watch — yet, at the same time, unnerving in the realization that so many of us believe this represents literal truth.  Moses says that he cannot save the Pharaoh’s firstborn, that the Pharaoh brought it upon himself with HIS OWN WORDS.  Not God’s words, but the Pharaoh’s own words.  Meaning, we create our own reality.  The Pharaoh wished this upon others, and since we are all God, he wished it upon himself… (”karma”)

All the children supposedly being killed by the green death-smoke — it wasn’t about death, it was about transformation.  Again, symbolic.  Interestingly, green is the color of the heart chakra, it’s about healing, it’s about love.  We “die” to (become free of) our old selves when we heal our hearts, and we become something new (transformation, aka, “death”). 

And the absurdity of this Pharaoh not letting the people go after Moses shows him some heady stuff from our “God” :)  I mean, geez, he changed the water to frickin’ blood, even the container of water that the Pharaoh held.  No water for seven days, then the three days of darkness, and that cool fiery hail ;)  How stupid could the Pharaoh be to not give Moses whatever the hell he wanted, lol   Not reality — it is all symbolic messages.   The Pharaoh represents our fear, and how our fear has an irrational death-grip on us (”let my people go.”)  And we allow our fear to have this hold on us — represented by Moses leaving each time.

It’s ALL about us, collectively, and individually.  We are very much NOT “nothing,” we are God :)  We are both Moses and the Pharaoh — it is fear, and only fear, that enslaves us.  We need only to “worship” (love) and believe in the “God” that is within us, that is us.  We need only to face the ”Pharaoh” (fear) within us and set ourselves free from it.  Only then will we truly “know God” (love and trust our own hearts) and get to “heaven” (peace, and creating the blissful lives we desire). 

*Yawn*  It’s time to wake up, to snap out of the brainwashing, the fear, that has kept us as slaves.  ”Fear not.”  “There is NOTHING to fear, but fear itself.”  (Pharaoh = Fear, Moses = Love, Freedom)

“Let my people go.”

Peace,
Dove

By Dove, www.TarotwithLove.com  Well, it started on Saturday… this Jesus thing, he’s been around me for some reason.  Oh, but he thinks it’s funny that I call him “Jay-sus” lol ;)  Jesus would really be a drag if he had no sense of humor, ya’ know? 

Anyway, I thought nothing more about it after Saturday, but there he was again this morning…  He went shopping with me, heh :)   Today was my errand day.  And it was an exceedingly icky day weatherwise — icy cold, and highly wet, rain or really cold mist all day long.  I shivered as I closed my umbrella and walked into the post office and around the corner to the area where my p.o. box is located. 

Very unusual, a little lady with coal-colored hair appeared outta nowhere, and was opening a box not far from mine.  I said something about the icky weather and she said something sweetly about being grateful :)  “Yeah, you’re right…” I responded.  Then, also out of the blue, she said to me, ”Remember Jesus is always with you, no matter where you go.” :)  That really stoked me, since having had the Jesus energy around me just a coupla days before.  I just smiled at her, thinking “You are Jesus, sweetie.” 

My next stop, minutes later, was the grocery store…  As I looked for a park, I noticed where someone had written on the front of a car, “I (heart symbol) you.”  That was so close to the mention of Jesus, I couldn’t help but think that was him talking to me again ;)  { Update: Hey, I was just re-reading this, and realized that I hadn’t tied this “I (heart) you” with my other Jesus post where I noted that I had sang “Jesus loves me…” as a little one…ah, that just makes me smile all over again :) }  Throughout the day I was seeing and hearing things that aligned with this energy…  even hearing “Jesus” a couple of times on the radio as it scanned.  At one point, I felt I was chatting with him in my mind, mostly joking with each other :) 

Then I started seeing the number 16 everywhere, that usually represents, for me, the Tower card in the Tarot (number 16).  Interestingly, I had a day last year around this time when I began seeing the 16 like that, but that one last year was unnerving, I felt the Tower inside me, I shook inside (like the Tower), it frightened me … and sure enough, it proved to be a warning of something not-so-good about to happen…  But I lived through it, and came out of it for the better.

But this one today was different, I felt no fear, and I saw positive things around the 16.  So I felt this, unlike the other, was a positive message.  The Tower card can represent “enlightenment,” and freedom…even just a surprise.  At one point I was in a store, browsing, and I began seeing it again on items in the store.   I felt I was about to get a “surprise,” and felt I might be seeing someone that I knew…  And sure enough, just before I walked out of the store, in walked a co-worker I never would have imagined seeing there — it really did shock me (surprise)  :) 

At the end of the day, in the parking lot of my last stop for “errand day,” I was backing out and saw flashing lights at a distance, an emergency vehicle.  As I got on the main road for home, more emergency vehicles (I don’t think they were related to the other), about four of them, I had to pull over a couple of times…  These also reflect “Tower” energy…but again, I noted that I felt no fear inside from them…  I glanced at a license plate in front of me that simply said, “Sun” and that made me smile… that’s the “God/dess” card in the Tarot, a card about much joy.  My favorite card…

I’d gotten a lot of messages through the day like “No problem,” and “Don’t worry.”  So that was comforting.  Also many things that represent intuition, and “magic” and, of course, Jesus is part of that :) 

Still not entirely sure why Jesus has been hanging out with me lately, but I did get a strong message about “Heaven” at one point today.  I’d been getting that the Six of Cups card is related to it.  That is a sweet card that can represent home and joy and peace…  “Jesus” told me that this is “heaven” — it’s all the same thing – peace, “home,” joy — “Heaven.”  Ahh, so that’s what it meant when I heard years ago, at a climactic point in my life, that I was “getting closer to home.”  Home, peace, joy — “heaven” :)  I hope Jesus’ visit means I’m just almost there — I think so :)   I’m feeling very “blessed” lately…

Thanks Jay-sus, I heart you too *muah* ;)

Peace,
Dove

By Dove, www.TarotwithLove.com  Someone asked me yesterday if I could teach her how to connect with her heart.  My first thought was I don’t think I can teach something I haven’t learned so well myself.  It’s a journey — and mine began about a decade ago.  My own intuitive guides strongly advised me to meditate (every day), but most of us resist doing this, and so have I.  It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve begun to meditate with any regularity.  But it is, without question, crucial to connecting with one’s heart, and to discovering one’s own power…  The resistance is what makes it a “journey” :) …  an invariably rough one.  Our “de-programming” isn’t going to happen overnight, and there’s no book, class or guru that will make it happen jiffy quick, heh ;) 

Many “Tower” events will invariably be part of this journey — that’s where we resist, but our higher self wants freedom, and this part of us will send a “lightning bolt” to come crashing into our comfort zone(s).  That is, whatever is holding us back will begin to crumble…  

Our excessive materialism is holding us back.  For those who are still fully invested in the illusion, of this materialistic BS, still hungering to have a zillion-inch screen TV and all the latest hi-tech toys, giving every minute of one’s life to make more money so as to consume more and more, stay-tuned for that bolt :)   It isn’t about some scary “god” forcing this upon us, it is the core of us wanting freedom from the chains of this illusion — that we’ve created, and are greatly suffering because of.  Once the initial pain of that lightning bolt, and the destruction therein of that which imprisons us (the “Tower”), we then begin to feel so much better, so much lighter…  But again, this will not happen overnight.   It’s a journey, and there are no short-cuts.  If it’s easy, you aren’t doing it :)  Remember Frodo in “Lord of the Rings”?  Ya’ gotta destroy “the ring.”  Truly connecting with one’s heart, it is like Frodo’s journey.

Simplicity…this is how we begin to connect with our hearts.  Clearing away all the glop, inside and out – material, mental, emotional…all the things we have piled upon our hearts.  Things we’ve put ahead of that which we truly desire, things (and people) that we’ve put above taking mega-good care of ourselves, things that are suffocating those things we truly love, that which stifles our creativity, our passions…  All of those things are a prison, and deep down we wish to be free.  So we either consciously remove these things, or…the energy that is “deep down” within us will do it in a more dramatic way (the “Tower”).  Note, to get a taste of the Tower, you can do a google search for “Tower Tarot.”  This Tarot card represents freedom and “enlightenment,” but a Tower experience is a challenging way to become free of that which imprisons us — a change that seems to be forced upon us.  We resist this MAJOR change in our lives, because we are blinded to that which enslaves us.

Self-care is how we begin to connect with our hearts.  Self-love, self-respect, self-understanding…  When we heal our hearts, we will then move into them :)  It all begins with routinely looking within. 

My advice is to begin meditating daily, even for just 5 minutes.  That will begin the process.  Self-care — exercise, meditate, do yoga, eat well, rest, sleep, play, set goals, “pray” (ask your higher self for answers), affirm, establish boundaries…take care of you FIRST…  When we truly fall in love with ourselves, truly — then all the rest will fall into place.  That might sound too simple, and would be, except we resist…  So buckle up for a wild, but quite magical ride :)  Moving into one’s heart is moving into their power, real power.

As I was pondering this person’s question about connecting to her heart, I came upon this great post on 2012 called, “The World Will Not End in 2012,” and I honed in on these paragraphs from it…

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“The greatest wisdom is in simplicity,” Mr. Barrios
advised before leaving Santa Fe. “Love, respect,
tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It’s not
complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It’s
encoded in your DNA. All you need is within you. Great
teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your
heart, and you will find your way.”

————-

“Anthropologists visit the temple sites,” Mr. Barrios
says, “and read the inscriptions and make up stories
about the Maya, but they do not read the signs
correctly. It’s just their imagination… Other people
write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say
that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan
elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It
will be transformed. The indigenous have the
calendars, and know how to accurately interpret it,
not others.”

Source: http://indigolifecenter.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/the-world-will-not-end-in-2012/

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Again, simplicity, as we begin to heal we will begin to hunger for it — simplicity.  And we are the world :)  We are changing, “transforming.”  And holding tightly onto the old will just cause us more suffering.  We don’t really want it anymore, but we don’t consciously realize this…yet.  

I want to interject here that we should allow NOTHING to put fear in our hearts.  Let nothing I say here, or anything in the above article, put fear in your heart.  The “light” and the “dark” that this article speaks of is within us, it’s ALL within us — let no one tell you that there is some power or force outside of you.  You are the power — in your world.  Always remember, “Believe and it shall be so” and always trust your own heart, your own intuition, your own truth.  Anything else is giving your power away, giving it to someone or something outside of yourself.  And that’s how we became imprisoned in the first place. 

Additionally, to heal one’s heart (absolute requirement to connecting or moving into it) we need to stop blaming others for things that we’ve manifested in our own lives (we create it all).  When we begin to point the finger, we should immediately visualize a mirror in front of us :)  It’s all us, everythng and everyone around us, is us.  We can learn so much from simply realizing this, and taking actions to CHANGE US, and give up the need to change and blame others.  Since we are all of it, when we change us, the rest naturally changes :)

Peace,
Dove

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Dove’s Art    Dove’s Posts At-a-Glance    Dove’s Tarot Website

By Dove, www.TarotwithLove.com  This post is actually about the number 5 :)  Geez, this number is haunting me!  Especially right in this moment, I keep seeing it EVERYWHERE, and I have been seeing it and the number 16 prolifically in the last several days.  The 16 (Tower card in the Tarot) is also a number I allow to rattle me – I allow both of these numbers, 5, 16 to spur fear in me.  And the thing is, the number five is very much a part of me.  Today’s the 23rd, which equals 5, and I was also born on the 23rd (one of my 5’s), my first and second given names have 5 letters.  The number 5 is very strong in my numerology…   and gawd knows, my life has certainly reflected the 5 energy. 

The most potent thing that the 5 represents is change — and per the Tarot, change that isn’t very comfortable, but I think most significant changes generally aren’t.  I s’pose because I’ve experienced so much of the negative side of the 5, it’s difficult for me to see the good in it.  But there is good (”God”) in it, just like there’s good in everything.  The big “God” is everything, both the “Devil” and the good side of All That Is, ”God,” :)  Consequently “God” encompasses both sides of the coin.  Everything has both “good/positive” and “bad/negative” energy (”God”) in it.  Everything.  No matter how generally good (Star/Sun) a Tarot card is, there is still a negative to it…and no matter how negative a certain card generally is (Devil) there is still a positive side to it.  Numbers, astrological signs, Tarot cards, people, gods, and goddesses :) — everything and everyone has the energy of both positive and negative within them.  Love is just the top side of the coin, with hate on the other side.  Same with peace and conflict.  One is simply meaningless without the other.  That seems like a no-brainer, but it’s difficult at times to remember.

I am passionate about freedom, and our basic human right to have freedom.  The 5 represents freedom.  Given that, you’d think I’d love the 5.  But again, it spooks me because I have such a habit of seeing it in the negative.  There’s not one generally “good” card in the Tarot with a 5 on it.  The 5 of cups almost always represents sadness, loss, maybe having been abandoned by a loved one.  The 5 of swords (almost always) represents wicked conflict, sometimes hatred and war, self-interest in a bad way…  The 5 of coins…loss, fear, insecurity, poverty, ill-health…  The 5 of wands is usually another conflict card, with less venom than the swords card.  And even the 5th major arcana (most significant cards in the Tarot) represents something I, for the most part, deplore — religion and tradition.  The Hierophant, pope — ultimately, the teacher.  Something I’ve been called, and oddly, deplored the idea of as a child (I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I would say, ”I just know it isn’t a teacher!” lol)  The Hierophant often represents rigidity, something or someone that (come hell or highwater) is not going to change.  If I get this card in a future spot, it often means nothing’s happening, nothing’s going to change any time soon.  A “no change” message. 

So where do the cats, dogs, popcorn and foxes come in? lol  Well, in hesitating to write this post, I momentarily left the computer, plopped down in a chair, and clicked on the remote.  And there was my most unfavorite thing on TV, a football game.  Blecky, with a capital “B” ;)  A referee was on the ground for some reason, showing me the number “5″ on his back.  Geez.  Then a swoosh of …  number 18 on a players back, and then I heard the announcer say several words that seemed like gibberish to me, something about “Cats chasing dogs…popcorn…and foxes.”  I dunno.  But it all has meaning, if I would take the time with it…  The 18, I know — it’s the Moon card.  Fear.  Probably reflecting my fear of the 5.  I had just drawn cards asking about this 5 message that the Universe is drowning me in and pulled three major arcana cards, the first was the Magician (the fox is on this one in the Animal-Wise Tarot), then the Temperance card, and then the Empress.  All generally very positive and powerful cards.  A significant time in my life.  A need to bring more balance into my life, a seemingly unending need.  Healing…a need to process “stuff,” my emotions are just all over the place.  It’s like old stuff is coming up and I don’t know what to do with it, it’s overwhelming…  As always, I resist expressing myself, expressing what’s been gnawing on my insides all my life.  Reeking havoc in my life, making it impossible to have genuine, long-lasting relationships with others…and just drawing other angry ones like myself, who experience similar patterns.  Some who hide it better than I with all their syrupy talk with no foundation, others who don’t hide it at all and seem to hate everyone…  And those like me, who seem to vacillate between the two ;) forever seeking that balance and authenticity.

I know like attracts like.  I don’t believe in the “projection” theory :)  Well, I do, sort of, but I think if we have an ongoing connection with someone, there’s a potently similar energy there.  What’s intrigued me are the people I draw to me.  Oh, they all carry anger, no doubt about that — no projection there :)  I think most people carry it, just varying degrees…  But it’s interesting to observe how they each mask their anger.  Some don’t — some are clearly explosive with their anger.  Others claim they aren’t angry, all the while masking it with that passive-aggressive thing or similar.  I think those who recognize that they are angry are at least closing in on the “cure.”  But those who are angry or are still angry despite all their “love talk” and meditation, now those people are more inclined to do the projecting.  One sweet guy I drew a while back, is kinda one of those people.  Very much a “love talk” kinda guy, resisting the anger per his religion’s teachings – he now has colon cancer.  That concerns me per what I discovered with talking to my emotions, and the discovery of my anger living in my stomach…and then becoming depression (”Jake”) in my colon… 

I think we have to go and confront our “5,” maybe live with the 5 for a while to work through it all…  It seems to be crucial so as to get the healing and peace that follows in the number 6.  The 6 of cups is peace…(or it can show a continuing to repeat the patterns of the past).  The 6 of swords, grieving, healing, moving on…  The 6 of coins, giving and receiving, we gotta learn to do both…  The 6 of wands — victory! :)  And the big kahuna, heh, 6th major arcana, the Lover’s card — real love, bay-be! ;)

Unfortunately, we can’t skip the 5 to get to the 6, no reaching the love and peace of the 6, without moving through the anger and hatred of the 5 first.  Many of us try to do this — like religious leaders who wind up on the floor in a fetal position, and priests who harm children in a most vile way…  If we try to sidestep the 5, push down our anger and pain, it will come out sooner or later in some wicked way, often as disease or ill-treatment of others.  See the 5 Tarot cards, they all kinda dance together — they are surely spun from our inability or resistance to change, like many of our leaders, the Hierophant in his/her worst light.  The Hierophant is the teacher, and most of our religious teachers have taught us from fear, because most of our religions are rooted in fear… and we’re paying the price of holding this energy (anger, all ”negative” emotion is rooted in fear), of learning and endeavoring to adhere to all these rigid rules. 

Freedom, a wonderfully positive side of the 5, is not, nor will it ever be about rigid rules.  And without freedom (no rigid rules or religion, negative face of the Hierophant), then there will be no genuine love, the blessed energy of the Lover’s card.

Hmm, well, it’s a little after five, maybe I should go make some popcorn, lighten up a bit ;)

Peace,
Dove

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Dove’s Art    Dove’s Posts At-a-Glance    Dove’s Tarot Website

By Dove, www.TarotwithLove.com  I have this absolutely wonderful book for which I  reach so often, and have done so for several years now.  Ya’ might say, it’s my sacred book, my “bible.”  :)  And oddly enough, it mentions “God” throughout the book.  And that’s not something I’m generally fond of, a reference to a male biblical ”God” outside of us – I’m very anti-religion.  Been there, done that — took on a lot of fear that took a lot of years to shed because of it.  I know that being taught from birth that one is a “sinner” (and all the hell and brimstone stuff) is gravely harmful…  I don’t think, I know, it has greatly harmed, almost destroyed, our world.  I believe “God” is neither male nor female.  I believe the stories in that old book are primarily symbolic and when  it references “God,” it speaks of us, a wisdom and power within us…   I believe many are coming to realize the truth of what I am saying here, and many more will.   But, because I love this book so much, it is so filled with wisdom, I’m tolerant of the “God” aspect of it ;)

I recently connected with a woman on here, Grace :) and seemingly made the mistake of expressing my honest views with regard to religion and such.  I’ve never been a “yes” person, and I’m exceedingly honest.  I don’t want “followers” or “friends” with whom I cannot be honest, and “yes people,” well, they bore me.  I tend to tell it like it is…I guess I am a lot like that there Queen of Swords :)

I thought my last post to Grace would help her to understand my position, but I don’t feel that it did per her response — I see the defensiveness (her:  my “numbers of new commentors and visitors” …) despite her efforts to pretty it up :)  And that’s okay.  But her response did kind of stun me, it was like she couldn’t hear or didn’t want to hear what I was saying.  I admit her position makes no sense to me…  But upon feeling her defensiveness, including stating that her other friends did not take my position (even as I stated that I felt she had been light-hearted and not intentionally disrespectful per one of her statements), but I then started questioning myself…and it didn’t feel good to do so. 

And so I got still for a moment, and asked, “Am I wrong?”  How can I feel so strongly about my position on this…if it is so wrong to be feeling this way.   I see clearly that religion harms people, it not only seems wrong, it seems very wrong…  Why do I feel bad for speaking my truth?  And as I was feeling/thinking this way, this book came to mind.  Ahh, so I decided to ask the book :)

And the book I’m referencing is a wonderful book called “The Language of Letting Go,” by a woman, Melody Beattie, that I feel is so very “connected,” so very wise.  I love her, and I love this book of hers.  I often get still and “ask a book” a question, and I get the most amazing answers, invariably on point.  But this book, the way it’s set up, works the best in doing this little ritual.  So I filled my mind with the energy of this issue between Grace and I, and I asked to be shown the answer.  “Am I wrong?”  “Should I join in and embrace beliefs that I feel are so very harmful, so destructive?”  “Tell me, what do I need to know about this?”  And, with my eyes closed, I opened the book randomly.  I often hear which side (which page), and I heard “Right, top.”  The whole book is set up with short elaborations on different issues.  The title of the section I opened to is “Who Knows Best?” :)  And I’m going to type it here and will show the point where I was directed to first read, the “Right, top” point.

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Who Knows Best? 
(by Melody Beattie from “The Language of Letting Go)

Others do not know what’s best for us.  We do not know what’s best for others.  It is our job to determine what’s best for ourselves.  “I know what you need”…  “I know what you should do.”…  “Now listen, this is what I think you should be working on right now.”

These are audacious statements, beliefs that take us away from how we operate on a spiritual plane of life.  Each of us is given the ability to be able to discern and detect our own path, on a daily basis.  This is not always easy.  We may have to struggle to reach that quiet, still place.

Giving advice, making decisions for others, mapping out their strategy, is not our job.  Nor is it their job to direct us.  Even if we have a clean contract with someone to help us — such aas in a sponsorship relationship — we cannot trust that others always know what is best for us.  We are responsible for listening to the information that comes to us.  We are responsible for asking for guidance and direction.  But …

{here is where the “right/top” of the page begins)

… it is our responsibility to sift and sort through information, and then listen to ourselves about what is best for us.  Nobody can know that but ourselves.  *Dove smiles*

A great gift we can give to others is to be able to trust in them — that they have their own source of guidance and wisdom, that they have the ability to discern what is best for them and the right to find that path by making mistakes and learning.  (Melody’s emphasis in italics)

To trust ourselves to be able to discover — through that same imperfect process of struggle, trial, and error — is a great gift we can give ourselves.

(And then Melody always concludes each section with an affirmation.)
Today, I will remember that we are each given the gift of being able to discover what is best for ourselves.  God, help me trust that gift.

I love this answer.  And I find it delicious that “God” did not tell me I’d be frying in hell if I don’t measure up jiffy quick, lol ;)  Nah, he/she guided me toward trusting what I strongly believe is the truth  in this moment.  That we learn to trust the way we feel, our own heart/intuition (the “God” within) – and allow others the same.  That’s more important than a bunch of rigid, harmful religious rules…  And what my intuition tells me in this moment, is that if we can’t do that with someone without fear of being rejected, without fear of losing ”friends” or “followers,” then that’s not a healthy connection or situation.

Peace,
Dove

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Dove’s Art    Dove’s Posts At-a-Glance    Dove’s Tarot Website

Absolutes.  I read a post today that used these two words (”never” this, “always” that) in a sentence as to how we are apparently supposed to conduct ourselves without exception.  I keep asking myself why that bothers me so much.  And what’s coming to me is it boxes us in, when there are no exceptions.  It’s limiting, it’s suffocating, it’s controlling. 

Ahh, I’m getting it now.  Freedom.  I’m big on freedom, and these boxes labeled “never” and “always” are stifling.  They limit us, ya’ don’t dare peek outside the box even for a second — for a breath of “fresh air.”  And with our tidy boxes of no exceptions, we are ripe and ready for judging others if they should dare go outside that box.  When we say never or always, that’s it — no more talking about it, no opening for any other consideration, the door is shut, we’ve found the “truth.”  Are there any truly valid absolutes?  That’s just it, we don’t know.  How do we even know what is a “good” or a “bad” outcome — how do we know that these are valid measuring sticks as to whether something is or is not an absolute truth.  If we stop and think, we can all come up with a plethora of examples where people went against a supposed absolute and the outcome was wonderful — or they followed the rule of the supposed absolute and the outcome wasn’t so great.  And again, how do we know that what we see as “good” or “bad” is a valid argument for an absolute anyway?  We don’t truly see the big (big) picture — as to why everything happens the way it happens. 

It just seems like it would promote freedom, and non-judgment if we simply trusted our own intuition from moment to moment, and allowed others to do the same without judgment, rather than stuffing ourselves and others in boxes with absolutes. 

I think the most empowering thing we can do is to learn to trust our own heart, our own “intuition.”  And the only way we can really do that is without boxes, trusting that we do the “right” thing every time we follow our intuition — no matter what the outcome looks like.  Otherwise, we continue to go through life judging (aka hating) ourselves (and others) for supposedly making the “wrong” choice per some outcome that we don’t think looks pretty enough for this reality.   And consequently, at best, we learn to only half-assed trust ourselves. 

Many believe that we never make the “wrong” choice in anything that we do per the “big picture.”  I tend to agree with that, and I believe my intuitive ability has strenghtened in that belief.  It’s freeing.  Ya’ trust “it,” and then you don’t worry about the outcome or what the supposed “truth” is.  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is building that strength of trust within us, and allowing and encouraging the same in others. 

Peace,
Dove

By Dove, www.TarotwithLove.com  I’m one of those people who starts a lot of books, but finishes few :)  But this book I felt strongly guided to read, driven to finish it.  It’s worthy. 

“The Paradigm Conspiracy” by  Denise Breton and Chris Largent.  Five stars on Amazon.  Reading it would surely help many of us to “wake up” to the reality of this controlling society — anyone who values real freedom should read it.

Here’s an overview I just came upon. 

Peace,
Dove

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Paradigm Conspiracy
Denise Breton and Christopher Largent

FILTERING CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH PARADIGMS
[Abridged]

A brief but comprehensive overview of the structure of paradigms is presented regarding how control systems work within consciousness levels, and why there is a need to change governing paradigms to move beyond victim-blaming and toward system transformations. The concept of filtering consciousness through paradigms is presented, followed by: discussions regarding choice of paradigms; what is normal or possible for consciousness; seeking paradigms that fit us; saving paradigms but modifying them for more efficient performance. The cultural non-commitment to human potentials is discussed, and the importance of learning that new worldviews bring new worlds.

FILTERING CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH PARADIGMS
Most of all, though, we resonate with Mr. Swann’s emphasis on mindsets, worldviews, and paradigms as the key to it all. That’s no surprise, since we’re philosophers. It just makes sense to us that philosophical models provide the channels through which our consciousness and hence our lives flow. Filtering aspatial, atemporal, superconnected consciousness through paradigms is like pushing cookie dough through a cookie press with different gadgets to put on the end: whatever gadget we choose gives the cookies their shape. So too with consciousness: whatever mindsets or paradigms we choose determine the form of our perceptions, which in turn shape our decisions, actions, experiences, social systems, worlds, and futures.

A colleague of ours, Sue Rolfe at Hazelden, uses the 5-day work week to illustrate the power of a paradigm to shape the rhythm and flow of our lives. She writes, “Our 5-day work week is a paradigm….Who decided we must work 5 days a week? Perhaps on Mars they work on the weekend and have 5 days off. In any event, this ‘working paradigm’ which rules us is of our making. We decided that, for the economic health of our planet, 5 is the magic number. If you work more than 5 days a week you are a hard worker or maybe even a workaholic, less than this and you might be considered lazy and unmotivated.” (It’s actually Venus where they work only on weekends; on Mars they work all 7 days.)

CHOICE OF PARADIGMS
Choice, as Sue points out, is precisely what’s at stake. But we first have to be aware of paradigms and how they’re affecting us in order to exercise our power of choice.

If we’re not aware of the role that paradigms have in shaping experience, then we believe we’re stuck with the world as it is and ourselves as we are. “What paradigm? My belief-structure has nothing to do with it. This is the way I am, that’s the way human beings are, and that’s the way the world will always be.” The sort of universe that the paradigm creates becomes absolute. Scientists of the old school, for instance, claimed to have no worldview intruding on their “objective observation of reality”: they were simply “seeing things as they are.” No more. Scientists up to speed with “new physics” (a century old by now) know that their models or paradigms determine how they think, what kind of experiments they construct, therefore what they observe and how they interpret their observations. Reality isn’t “out there” the way we once thought it was. It’s an interactive process that’s continually coming into being relative to the paradigms we choose-the cookie press gadgets we use to filter reality.

That’s good news. Insofar as we recognize the power of paradigms and our power to change them, we have options-paradigm options. We’re not stuck with the world as it is, because we can shift paradigms, and as we do, everything shifts with us. Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn-who died in June 1996 and to whom we are indebted for naming paradigms and their power in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions-explained that when scientists shift paradigms, they live in new worlds. The old rules don’t hold in the same way, and what before was considered impossible can become not only possible but even normal.

This means that whenever we shift paradigms, not only do new possibilities emerge for how we can structure our worlds together but also we discover potentials within ourselves that the old paradigm declared either nonexistent or off-limits. (If we shift away from the indentured-servants-to-money-systems paradigm, we’ll have time to explore these potentials.)

WHAT’S NORMAL OR POSSIBLE FOR CONSCIOUSNESS?
Awareness of paradigms and the possibilities that emerge with changing them carry enormous implications for how we understand consciousness. Are the limits we experience in perception, learning, and knowing absolute, or are they imposed by a paradigm-one that we can choose to have or not?

Psychic and paranormal experiences suggest that the limits imposed by materialist philosophy are not absolute. Even one case of powers that defy physical limits proves what’s possible, whether these possibilities are commonplace in the current paradigm or not. By challenging paradigms that put our mental powers in straitjackets, we free ourselves to tap powers we’ve barely begun to imagine.Examples of mental powers defying so-called laws of matter abound. Then of course there’s research begun by Georgi Lozanov in Bulgaria and reported by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder in their books Superlearning and SuperMemory. According to learning studies going on all over the globe, our minds are capable of vastly more than we ever imagined. If we have human brains, we’re geniuses, and the only reason we’re not experiencing our minds’ powers is that they’ve been shut down by stress, negative programming, trauma, or mind-numbing boredom.

Clearly, there’s more going on with consciousness and our human potential than the official paradigm acknowledges. Again, the fact that extraordinary powers occur at all proves the possibility of powers that may be latent in all of us.

SEEKING PARADIGMS THAT FIT US
Imagine, for instance, a paradigm that describes us as free beings, moving in time, space, and matter through the powers of consciousness, unconstrained by demands for money and unconcerned by the quest for power or control. Imagine further a paradigm that honors us for who we are, that treats human beings-as well as all beings-as treasures of the universe, and that therefore places a priority on nurturing and developing our potential.In the current world where humans are ownable, exploitable, controllable commodities-useful only insofar as they can either command or generate capital-such models seem utter fantasy.

According to spiritual teachings the world over, though, such models more closely fit what they call “True Human Beings.” Hindu philosophy, for instance, takes our potential seriously enough to categorize liberation as the fourth basic desire of human beings, the one that naturally arises in us after we’ve grown weary of pursuing the desires for 1) pleasure, 2) success, and 3) duty.
Liberation is the liberation to be who we are in the big picture, not to be narrowed by models that aren’t worthy of us. It’s the freedom to live from the inside out, to be guided by who we are in our essence, rather than to spend our lives juggling family, social, financial, religious, or other cultural expectations.

SAVING THE PARADIGM
If we don’t experience ourselves or each other as free and great beings, it’s not because we lack this potential but rather because the paradigm/cookie gadgets our cultures pour us through aren’t equal to our essence. We come out twisted, grasping, angry, and insatiable because we know we’re more, yet the cultural paradigm has no room for us. The paradigm can’t both acknowledge our innate worth and treat us as objects to be subjugated-objects that must be coerced into systems that violate our dignity and potential by their very structures.
Born into the culture, what choice do we have but to be subjugated? Babies and children don’t have options but to submit. So we adapt ourselves accordingly. We conform to social systems by adopting the roles that go with them, narrowing ourselves to fit the cultural agenda. We become the competitive, insecure, obedient, brain dead, soul-disconnected creature that our social systems require. If we didn’t comply, there’d be no place for social systems to hook into us and control our behavior, which the paradigm says they must do in order to achieve social order.
But instead of social order, the paradigm generates violence and suffering-images of which we see everyday on the news and feelings of which we experience as stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem or even self-hate. These images and feelings say nothing about which alternative paradigms might better serve human beings or who we might be if we used less narrowing models. They simply give us feedback about our cultural paradigm.
But paradigm oblivious, we don’t interpret culture-wide pain as paradigm related. We don’t trace personal and social suffering back to the cultural paradigm and so set the stage for changing it. Instead, we save the paradigm by believing that humans must be fatally flawed and we ourselves more than most. Accepting the cultural paradigm that excludes what’s most valuable about us, we view ourselves in the mirror that social systems give us: a mirror of externals. Our paradigm options go unexplored.

CONTROLLED BY EXTERNAL REWARDS
In a paradigm of externals, externals call the shots. Instead of allowing us to be guided from the inside out (a formula for anarchy, the control paradigm claims), the paradigm controls our behavior through rewards and punishments. We come to think and act like Pavlov’s dog, salivating over the next bonus, a bigger kennel to call home, a fancier collar to sport, or a top dog position. The paradigm isn’t about developing our talents, abilities, or potential; it’s about making us controllable by giving or withholding external rewards.
To achieve this control, the paradigm grades each “thing” in a hierarchy of externals. The inner life means nothing compared to the outward characteristics indicated by our species, race, gender, age, status, group affiliation, and income. If dogs possessed the wealth of Bill Gates, for instance, they wouldn’t suffer in medical experiments, just as people who have money don’t work in sweatshops or sell their children into slavery.
That’s the problem with externals: they’re fine until they become the means for enslavement, which unfortunately they do almost immediately. When a paradigm puts external values first, consciousness dimensions are dismissed out of hand.
Small wonder that the potentials of our minds and hearts-and all the values that go with them, e.g., meaning, compassion, justice, or wisdom-go undeveloped. A control paradigm has neither use nor place for them.

NOT EXACTLY WELCOME
Naming paradigms and their power for good or ill isn’t a new insight; it’s as old as philosophy. It is, however, an overlooked insight in an age that can’t seem to shake a materialistic, control-obsessed paradigm-and for good reason. Reflecting on paradigms is the stuff of change, and changing paradigms is the most fundamental and powerful change we can make.
To a paradigm of control, that’s not welcome. The sum total of our experience contingent on something as invisible and changeable as a philosophy? Change by paradigm shifts, which anyone can make? Powers of perception and creativity that defy rigid material boundaries? Humans as beings of immense powers and abilities? Once you let these cats out of the bag, there’s no telling what mindsets and institutions might be made obsolete.
Obsolete is precisely what established institutions of power and control don’t want to be. They learned from the fate of carriage and buggy whip manufacturers when cars came along. Established interests now make sure that questioning the neanderthal paradigm of burning things for energy triggers “War-of-the-Worlds” panic about destabilizing the world economy. Even the call for improved public transit systems borders on subversive.

“MORE TO US” IS THREATENING TO POWER-OVER INSTITUTIONS
Stiff challenges face a paradigm shift on the simple level of out-there technology, frozen at a stage that Captain Picard sometimes finds among the more primitive human civilizations he encounters. What challenges might we face if we embark on a far deeper level of questioning-on redrawing the paradigms that sort out who we are and why we’re here?
Plenty. If the cultural paradigm’s purpose is not to honor human potential but rather to make it an obedient servant to existing social structures, then nothing could be more threatening to the established order than a paradigm shift regarding our self-conceptions. We fit into society as it is now only as long as we don’t remember that we’re more and here for more.

PSYCHOTHERAPY’S PURPOSE
The agenda for traditional psychoanalytic therapy, for instance, isn’t to develop human potential; it’s to keep people functional in established social structures, however miserable their lives may be and however abusive or wrong-headed the social structures. “Well-adjusted” becomes a synonym for mental health.
But if someone is well-adjusted to being an SS officer in Nazi concentration camps, is that person mentally healthy? In Fire In The Soul, psychoneuroimmunologist Joan Borysenko writes of this narrow aim of therapy: “Sigmund Freud…believed that when a person was cured of neurosis the best outcome that could be expected was return ‘to an ordinary state of unhappiness.’” (New York: Warner, 1993, p. 54)
Psychotherapy’s official job is mopping up the mess that social systems make of our lives by convincing us that the mess is our fault, our failing, our screwiness. If we don’t conform, adjust, fit in, and measure up, something must be wrong with us. And psychotherapy has its truth: we may well be frozen in grief or shock and not functioning at our best, but don’t the social systems that shape us deserve equal scrutiny, equal critical analysis?
Thankfully many therapists reject this paradigm and venture forth with their clients on the forbidden territory of meaning and human potential as well as of critiquing social structures, but it’s no easy task persuading insurance companies to come along. Control institutions pay insurance companies to pay health professionals to keep people in their place, serving the established order.

THE AGENDA FOR SCHOOL SYSTEMS
Nor are school systems committed to developing the more that we are. Schools are an arm of social structures, whether religious, governmental, or economic. According to the paradigm-defined needs of those structures, tapping human potential doesn’t create enough Dilberts to ensure the “efficient” running of corporate, governmental, religious, and educational hierarchies.
In this century, business interests have dictated the structure of schools. Henry Ford quickly noticed that creative genius and intuitive knowing aren’t useful on factory lines. So he pioneered the “modern” school system that inculcates values and skills appropriate for 20th century work life: being punctual, obeying orders, enduring hours, weeks, and years of boring, repetitive tasks, not talking while working, not resting, keeping to the schedule at all costs. Our minds become casualties of industrialization.
Our souls end up casualties as well. Trusting our own judgment, thinking for ourselves, adhering to our values, and having confidence in our innate worth don’t make us good foot soldiers for my-way-or-the-highway bosses. Only people with low self-esteem are sufficiently insecure to tolerate abusive work environments. Insofar as we believe we don’t deserve better, we adjust, becoming the kind of person that’s required to “do the job.”
Obligingly, school systems produce people with precisely the low self-esteem that’s needed for worker “flexibility.” Fears of being wrong, of not making the grade are fears confirmed for 90 percent of the population. That’s the percentage who are required not to get A’s by the bell curve system, guaranteeing that 90 percent of everyone coming out of school believe that they’re incapable of excellence. Schools mirror back to students the mass message that “you’re just not good enough, but if you do what you’re told without question, you may get better and be rewarded.” That’s a handy message to have installed in the psyches of 90 percent of the population-handy for perpetuating corporate, religious, governmental, and professional tyrannies, that is.
All this modern schooling goes against what we know about the human mind and how we learn-and have known for decades. Studies in learning show that we learn best when we’re most relaxed, yet schools maximize stress through fear of failure. Studies show that children learn most easily through cooperative learning, yet schools impose a competitive model. Studies also indicate that students’ beliefs about their own learning abilities affect their performance-if they believe they’re good learners, they learn easily; if not, learning the simplest things becomes difficult-yet schools systematically undermine students’ confidence.
In these and many other ways, school systems perform virtual lobotomies on our psyches, producing graduates who’ve long since lost their joy in learning, who believe they must be right all the time and “know it all” or be condemned to outer darkness, and who experience post-traumatic stress symptoms at the thought of having to learn new things on the job.

CULTURAL NONCOMMITMENT TO HUMAN POTENTIAL
Alice Miller, a champion of the potential we all possess from birth, pulls no punches in her books-For Your Own Good in particular analyzes the social, cultural agenda of shutting down our potential. As she explains, the traditional rules of child-rearing passed down from generation to generation have nothing to do with developing our potential, either emotionally, intuitively, psychologically, or intellectually. Their one agenda is control: control the child as soon as possible by any means, whether it’s by punishment, humiliation, intimidation, beatings, grading, whatever it takes to break the child’s will and autonomy.
The justification for this agenda is that children raised any other way won’t fit into society when they grow up. According to this cultural paradigm-expressed in the rules of child-rearing-learning to forget who we are and to become what others want and expect us to be is the most important survival skill. Our potential as human beings is irrelevant, a side issue, compared to our ability to conform.
Of course we’re supposed to believe that social systems have our best interests at heart and that obeying them is indeed “for our own good.” If we conform properly, our potential will develop accordingly. But is this so? As we’ve seen, schools and therapy - two systems that you’d think would be committed to developing human potential - have no such commitment. In what system or area of the culture might such a commitment exist?

Governments are fully occupied with who has power over whom, who has the biggest budget, where money can be found, who wins which election or vote, etc. Developing the human potential of its citizenry is not a priority. If anything, it’s not on the agenda at all. The insider’s view that “the masses are asses” is music to ambitious politicians’ ears, who then believe it’s their manifest destiny to expand their personal power and become benevolent dictators. Dumb masses are easy to manipulate with slogans and half-truths. For their purposes, the less human potential the better.

As much as we value spiritual teachings, we can’t say that religious organizations have much commitment to developing human potential either, though granted there are exceptions. Adhering to fixed doctrines, building congregations, raising money, meddling in the personal affairs of members, running down sectarian competitors, and using fear and guilt to exact obedience and tithing keep them busy enough.

Businesses and corporations certainly don’t concern themselves with human potential, even though they sometimes pay lip service to it in the hopes of making employees more “productive.” The bottom line is the bottom line, and if human potential comes up at all, it’s considered a frill or luxury-”warm fuzzy stuff” that doesn’t count in the “real world” of business except to mollify disgruntled workers or help them adjust to higher levels of stress.

Scanning the culture, we frankly can’t find any system that’s consistently committed to exploring human potential. If anything, our social systems regard human potential as an impediment, an annoying feature of human beings that gums up the systems’ otherwise efficient workings. If people would just learn their roles and stick to them, everything would work so much better.
If we didn’t know the paradigm behind these systems, we may find this lack of interest in human potential odd. Developing human potential seems crucial to keeping human civilizations vital and evolving, up to speed with the challenges that continually arise. Technology per se can’t save us, since we’re not using the alternative technology we already have to remedy social and environmental ills. What we lack is the the wisdom and foresight, the honesty, the sense of meaning, justice, integrity, and the good to manage human affairs well. These aren’t technology issues but paradigm ones. Wisdom and foresight are precisely the potentials that a paradigm geared to domination and control factors out of us.

FIGHTING BACK
But no paradigm, even one that’s used to having the last word, is the last word. The human spirit, being what it is, doesn’t take kindly to soul-lobotomies and develops all sorts of responses. One is to join the lobotomizing dominators: do it to others before any more can be done to you. Another is to adopt roles and play along, to accept one’s lobotomized lot in life.
Addictions make both responses easier. We can lay off 5,000 employees and numb the pain with a 15 million dollar bonus. Or we can take drugs to make it through the day in our Dilbertesque cubicles. Either way, numbing ourselves with addictions of process (money and power) or of substance (drugs and alcohol) makes us forget the pain of living in a control paradigm culture.
By numbing us, addictions serve the established paradigm well: insofar as we forget pain, we don’t confront its causes. Lobotomizing systems go unchallenged, as long as we find ways to cope with being lobotomized.
That’s why recovery from addictions begins with recognizing pain. Acknowledging what we feel in social systems is the first subversive step toward a cultural paradigm shift. A paradigm of control through externals unravels when we affirm the importance of what’s going on within. When pain counts with us-when we refuse to ignore it, “to put up and shut up”-the days are numbered for the paradigm that’s causing us pain.

NEW WORLD VIEWS BRING NEW WORLDS
Refusing to be trapped by dominating institutions on one hand and on the other claiming our essence, who we are in the big picture-what’s called the “soul” until a better term comes along-we foment revolution of the most constructive, effective, and powerful sort. Each of us in our own ways participates in creating new worldviews, which in turn create new worlds within and without. ————————————–
Denise Breton and Christopher Largent
2019 Delaware Avenue, Wilmington, Delaware 19806
Tel. (302) 571-9570 Fax. (302) 571-9615
e-mail: mjbreton@aol.com

NOTE OF INTRODUCTION  (by Ingo Swann)
Denise Breton and Chris Largent, a husband-wife team, have been teaching and writing together for twenty years. They each have backgrounds in religion and philosophy (Chris from Dickinson College and the University of Delaware; Denise from Boston University, the University of Delaware, and Yale University.)
They have taught half-time in the University of Delaware’s Philosophy Department for over twenty years.
Their debut book, THE SOUL OF ECONOMICS: SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION GOES TO THE MARKETPLACE (1991), was hailed by PUBLISHERS WEEKLY as “perhaps the clearest, best written book in that newest of genres, religion/business.”
Their second book, THE PARADIGM CONSPIRACY: HOW OUR SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT, CHURCH, SCHOOL, AND CULTURE VIOLATE OUR HUMAN POTENTIALS (Hazelden, 1996), insightfully focuses on how worldviews can cause or end suffering.
This extremely important book examines many paradigms that run our social systems, what kinds of “worlds” they create, how they affect us personally, and how we can create new models to replace dysfunctional paradigms. In an extremely clear, non-antagonistic presentation, the book overall provides a workable model for individuals to claim their power to change social systems by changing the paradigms on which they are founded.SOURCE:  http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/paradcon.htm#Denise

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Well, that’s what I saw upon arriving to work this morning ;)  Yet another spiral — been getting that symbol a lot lately, including in a recent pic I created.  No, the one I saw this morning was not a vision, heh, it was on the cover of Family Circle actually.  One of my favorite mystical symbols, the star, was there too.  Both were among a bunch of fancy and highly-sugary treats on display.

Upon finding the magazine here on my desk, I immediately zeroed in on the chocolatey spiral that one of the treats formed on a background of something minty-colored.  It’s one of those rolls sliced — formed with different layers of stuff, rolled up and cut — and voila, a spiral.  The star is a giant cookie, looks like a couple of layers of butter cookie, apricot jelly showing through the star opening in the center, white sugar-powder all around it.   Okay, none of that was really relevant to my post, but it was fun describing it, lol

The Universe has such a “sweet” sense of humor ;)  Again, this spiral symbol, I keep getting it lately — even last night was reading a blog that spoke of it…  Been wondering what the Universe is trying to tell me with it.  But with this one, with the fabulous star symbol and the “sweetness” of the whole presentation, it’s gotta be a very positive thing.  Not that I doubted that :) 

So I’ve been searching for various meanings of the spiral and finally came upon one that I strongly resonate with.  I’ve posted a few excerpts here with the link to the article.  It’s a great article, called “A Glimpse of the Spiral as a Symbol for the Transcendental Mystery of God” by Paula Vaughan.  (Note, everything inside the two lines like this ====== are all excerpts from this one article.)

Dove

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Archetypal Symbols
Carl Jung, the founder of Depth Psychology, helped reconcile the unconscious and conscious halves of his patients’ psyches by studying symbols found through dream analysis and spontaneous artistic expression, thereby enabling people to heal. He proposed that symbols appear when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt (Storr, p. 249). Jung said that when we attempt to understand symbols, we are not only confronted with the symbol itself but we are brought up against the wholeness of the symbol-producing individual who is in touch with his unconscious (Jung, p. 92). He explained:

Spirals in nature, the body, brain and soul reflect our kinship with God. Jung said the spiral shows there is nothing but God — man is God become concrete (Storr, pp.344-345). The spiral represents the cyclical ebb and flow of God’s energy that is always moving the collective mind, body and spirit of humanity toward balance and health. God’s existence is witnessed through spiral archetypes in art, dreams, symbols and the synchronous, collective unconscious that bridges the gaps of culture, time, space, and reality.

Source:  http://onewomansmind.net/center/spirals.html

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Wonderful article.  Much more, I highly recommend going to the site and reading it all.

Peace,
Dove