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When society has lost family or the family is dysfunctional and there is no wisdom nor models to be successful, at what the past generations done, and can see the changes in the future.  When there is no community, but neighbors and family scrambling after every last dime, then spend it to entertain themselves, because there is no future, no other sense but the gratifying of the self, there is no man or woman or child that knows good.  When people who steal, cajole, trick and lie into being comfortable and buy the hangers on that keep him company, believing money can buy loyalty, and then enjoy when they fall due to hubris and mistakes.  There is no hero to be supported, to learn from, to survive in spite of it all. 

Integrity is when a man knows himself and the world as it is and should be and lives it.  Then that is not just another male of the species, that is a Man.  If a woman does the same and has integrity she is a woman.  We are a social species.  The success of our children, our future, and others depends on each other.  When we can not identify with baker, the mother, the mechanic, the grocer, the doctor or the warrior, we don’t value them, nor ourselves.  And honest good man and woman, recognize that they are not islands, they are part of a community.  And it is that community that existed once, exists or even harder must exist in the future, is what one lives and dies for, for in it, do we not add to our soul, and to the collective memory and a spirit of the people. 

And only in a community that supports each other can any of us survive.  A good man or woman who is undervalued and underappreciated, there is no support or good found towards anyone in the community.  The following of celebrities is a thing it is empty and hollow as hollow as they are.  Otherwise they tear each other down.  The mob ruled by parasites neither are people, they have with the lack of integrity stealing the spirit of others have carved their souls to nothing and are but the living dead.  Integrity builds the soul, with or without a community, it comes from an honest relationship if not in community and kindred, but at least with the universe, that knows the truth of these individuals. 

An honorable man keeps their honor shiny, it is the onus of obligation to oneself, their past and the future, it is the same root word to shine or to meet and obligation in Japan known as “on”, and it means to shine one’s sword.  Honor, onus, on, my sword, my soul, integrity to shine for the past, the present and the future.  This whether appreciated or not, to at least if nothing else, a caretaker of my soul, working for my childrens future, a community that I can reincarnate in, so may it be. 

Lo, in the darkness, with no love, light, support, nor a single shred where the world would acknowledge my existence. 

Shrouded by that which could not love, nor pity, nor do what is right. 

There when in the pain of the desire of oblivion, not just death, I embraced, there was darkness.  And then my soul, from right, frith, and will, with its integrity, the universe showed me who or what I am.  The universe and nor that which enshadowed me, could grant me my wish.  I exist, and the universe nor the gods can touch me.  And in that, I saw my immortality. 

In that anyone with integrity adds to this flame of adamantium.  Where those live the lie, faithless, feckless and desiring of no communion with others except their own pleasure extinguish their precious self, one sliver of a time.  I weep not for them, nor do I take joy in watching the walking dead. 

I weep for those whose life was extinguished before they could fulfill their potential. 

Find your light guard it and enshrine it with your integrity, it will shine in the light, even if its obscured ephemeral willowisps of time. 

LHP and RHP, Left Hand Path and Right Hand Path two concepts that have been bantered, chewed, and fought over because they have been conflated and mixed into other concepts. 

In different magical traditions LHP and RHP mean different things. 

The underlying concepts of Light, Dark, Good, Bad, Evil, Heaven, Hell, Overworld, and Underworld all have mixed and overlapping meanings, that further confuse the meanings of these LHP and RHP.  The discussions of all these things have been overdone, to death, in various magical and spiritual forums.  The added dimensions of Morales and Ethics is another.  Philosophically consequences are heavily steeped to the nature and practice of each tradition. 

Good vs. Bad

Good and Bad are valuations.  They are relative to each person and how they value their life and all other things.  Relatively Good and Bad are as normal and different from one being to another.  As Morticia Addams says “Normal is an illusion”.  Many folk form Wiccan, other Earth based, or Pagan belief systems, look at Birth, Life and Death, the cycle of life as neither good nor bad.  It is.  As far as Evil goes, some don’t believe in it. 

Heaven and Hell versus Overworld and Underworld, not necessarily the same thing.  For most people the distinction is a philosophical one.  Heaven, sumerland, the here-after of what ever place is a matter of belief.  And for others Hell is a matter of belief based on the Divine supernatural order by the pantheon, gods and cultural expectations.  The valuation is based on belief.  Shaman, Mystics and others who travel these realms, may attribute one or the other as an overworld or an underworld.  The Natural spiritual planes have underworlds and overworlds.  They may or may not overlap with the Heavens and Hells of their beliefs.  Not all underworlds are based on evil.  They are based on spiritual dynamics of spirit.  Spirit that are artifacts of time, or where time collapses, this is your underworld.  Where things are replicated duplicate and exist through time, is your overworld.  The dynamic of worship of a being, an affinity with practices, places and events through time give a sense of immortality.  Shamanically, technically it appears brighter.  Underworlds appear darker.  There are underworlds where the sun is out all the time and still isn’t as bright as an overworld.  And there are overworlds based on the moon, and night where they are considerably darker.  Light and dark became and is another subjective valuation.  Granted primitive man, living amongst predators that hunt at night, is a bad thing, not evil.  There are realms where underworld and overworld elements are mixed.  The beings that live in such places, fae, gods and everything in between are just as capricious as humans, good bad and indifferent. 

It is here that darkness and the mystical perception of it, albeit colored by ancestors concerns come into play.  In the overworld and underworld dynamic that comes into play with Heavens and Hells, good and healthy practices, that met with and are judged worthy and good by gods, this implies a life beyond death.  An acceptance into a realm of relatively more light, and adjudged good, by the gods and your society makes it a personal good.  Here ethics are applied based on the morales and stipulations of the divine.  Ethics are a shared based set of good behaviors for a society, and when there is a religion, implies that they should be part of one’s morales.  Infernal creatures of the underworld hells, exist only in the sense that they are perpetuated by the constant bad behaviors that exist through time, taboos, and sins (behaviors against the ethical moraes and dictates of the culture and religion that one is bound to) the aspects of spirit that don’t exist through time suffer through a backdrop of change and chaos, where only nature that overlaps it in any detail is the only structure left.  Over time and ever deeper levels of hell the maelstrom of unstructured time eats away the last remnants of that which is not part of structured and timeless events, places, beings and things.  In the natural planes of overworld and underworld there is no Evil.  Just is.  The subjective bad valuations are only as consistent with what ceases to exist and our relationships with it. 

The supernatural existence of underworlds as hells, go contrary to the religion, beings, places and things.  And infernal creatures that exist do so under the auspices of people, places and things, maintain that which contradicts the heavenly order.  With people and beings involved this gets sticky and messy.  The convolutions in the relative valuations, and the actual value of these religious ordering of the spiritual world, lives and dies, also.  Many Abrahamic beliefs conflate their supernatural order as perfect good and everlasting. 

The concept of a perfect good and everlasting was introduced by Greek Philosophers and by an aberration of beliefs that the Zoroastrians created.  The Greeks believed in Ideals.  Idealized perfect good with the natural world was what one who wish to strive to be perfect would strive for.  The Zoroastrians took two God concepts of Enlil and Enki from Sumeria and the Akkadians, and turned them into Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu or Ahriman.  Enki, like Erebus of the Greeks, were deep underworld beings, that were more associated with water, the source of life.  Hades was not a primordial but represented the current God’s (Zeus) vision of the afterlife for people.  Many of the ancient people didn’t really conceive of an afterlife.  Much less being able to be associated with the Gods unless they made you a divine being.  The Zoroastrians created a myth about Enlil’s Father Anu who from Earth gave birth to two sons.  Ahura Mazda was born first and created everything.  Ahriman was born second, and there was not one place in the universe for Ahriman to create anything.  This is a far cry from the predecessor beliefs.  This was an absolute creation, and jealousy that wants to destroy creation to create its own.  Here lies the first dichotomy, where Evil takes its entrance into the psyche of mankind.  The idea that there are forces that are willing to destroy what exists.  All of it, good, bad and indifferent, along with the hells, heavens and all else.  So it may create.  Evil the antithesis of life took and shaped how we viewed the world.  This concept of truth ‘ashe’ was what kept the world in order.  Druj the lie, is what was done to destroy the world and all of life.  This absolute concept of Evil took the concept of bad and Idealized it. 

These concepts were absorbed into the Abrahamic beliefs.  When Persia conquered Babylon, and freed the Jews, their belief constructs were brought with them and infused the Judean practices.  The minor being that was called the advocate, a fallen Angel, that was there to test faith and belief of the Hebrew god, was promoted in various mythologies.  Shaitin is cognate with Sais and egyption god of fate.  Tampering with the destinies and almost a mythic undercurrent of free will to be exorcised in creation, involving mankind, obviously. 

Lets mix this up a bit.  The Akkadian and Sumerian beliefs got mixed in with the Assyrians.  These gods, including Ahura Mazda, and the Hebrew Yahweh were called Ashuras.  Ahriman and all the primitive beings under his thrall were called Devi’s.  This is where the term devil comes from.  Ashura is cognate with Asura or those beings that are not Sun Gods in pre-Brahmanic faiths of India.  The story has two sibling clans Devis and Ashuras.  The Devis are the class of Gods that are worshipped today in India along with Suryas, Yakshas (some of them, there are demon classes there also) and the Asuras (The Jealous Gods) were on the outs.  God in the Old Testament says of Himself that He is a Jealous God. 

Technically Ahriman isn’t a Devi.  However this is the name construct given to him and the spirits he controls. ( If he couldn’t create them he had to seduce them). 

The Zoroastrians made very vivid pictures of Heaven and Hell.  Heaven based on the planets, and Hells based on their sins against the Morals and Ethics of the culture.  How much of this is made up to scare people into being controlled, and what hells were manifested because of belief, probably both.  This too influenced the Greeks, the Jews and the rest the world’s religions coming from the middle east. 

Demon comes from the Greek word Daemon, a spirit, usually connected with a place, or a set of behaviors and practices.  This is not a soul of a being, but a functioning spirit.  The discussion between soul and spirit is a separate discussion.  My previous article speaks to that. 

Now where the “Devil” by any other name, and other beliefs, practices and religions, where the Devil was an advocate for humans.  Encouraging them to become god like and not just abject slave to service the Gods, this was not what the gods wanted.  Whether it was the Devil or Prometheus, or any supernatural being that descended to encourage people is where the devil becomes an anti-hero.  The creators of humans are either good or bad, indifferent, but people were expected to toe the line.  The advocate for humans depending on the religion was either a good or bad guy. 

Right hand of God, the Right Hand Path, that was one way of looking at defining RHP.  Hands in general were sacred.  There were two places I know of that speak of LHP vs RHP in history.  Vedic Yoga practices speak of liberation or Moksha and separation from all attachment and becoming one with God was considered RHP.  The LHP practice was called Tantric.  This was not about committing all sorts of evil atrocities.  The idea was that people who had to deal with life and could not be monastic and deal with a total detachment from the world, had to learn detachment by doing the everyday things.  Some have taken it to mean doing all of the taboos.  In the end, good, bad and indifferent were just part of life.  If one learned to become indifferent to it all, emotionally and spiritually detached, the illusion of life could fall away, the same as it was for those living in monasteries who became detached directly.  Because some schools practiced taboos, and in the light of western observers, these practices were offensive, the label of evil was attached.  The other concept of LHP was that of being an illegitimate child.  Children that were heirs were from the Right Hand.  Children of the left hand were illegitimate.  They were bar sinister (sinister for left).  Bastards by any other name had it rough and had to work harder than their half brothers and sisters who claimed inheritance.  This social drama and the term sinister made left handedness and the concept of the Left Hand unpalatable. 

Here we are in post Renaissance Europe with all of these concepts, already muddied by two millennia re-interpretations and misinterpretations. 

Metaphysical practices and magic where people worked with the children of God (Angels) to become children of God being legitimate heirs to heaven, the Right Hand Path is defined.  Left Hand Path, magicians who by their prowess ascending in their adepthood as being counterparts to their Angelic peers, could control demons.  Demons dealt with, in theory, the day in and day out functions of life, along with evil aspects of man.  LHP of working with demons and taboo energy, essentially they have to be in control of it and be above it at the same time.  This is a western Tantric magical practice.  Now there are those who identified and or worshipped the anti-hero gods, from myth, from philosophy, and or rebellion to the hypocritical order of the “so-called” good.  Here the LHP as a belief, and also, for those in the RHP, the controlling of demons, for magical and or spiritual purposes, is a utilitarian practice.  The LHP in the face of a conservative culture that marginalizes people, in spite of the taboos and laws of the elite of any culture, flourishes. 

LHP, underworlds, darkness, relative badness are not necessarily evil.  There shaman and energy workers of various cultures that work with either side or both.  The nature and tendencies for LHP practitioners and the source of their beliefs and experiences may draw them toward antisocial behaviors against adopted morales and ethics of their prevalent culture.  Some revel in the idea of evil, although they are not dedicated to the destruction of the universe for some being that wants a piece of the action.  They just want life and all that it has to offer for themselves.  Does this even make them bad?  Depending on the social circumstance, not necessarily. 

Black Magic is the use of magic against people’s or sentient beings will.  RHP and LHP both can be Black Magic. 

I have met satanists that are fun loving people.  I have met Orthodox Theistic Satanists, and yes they are evil.  I lived with Bullies and Sociopaths, who are Evil.  They destroy lives, circumstances and anything decent, with no intent of anything beyond their own amusement.  This is Evil.  Fascists are evil. 

I have met many people who are RHP or very moralistic, who are overweening, arrogant, sadistic evil individuals.  They end up supporting ossified social constructs that are destructive to life and the growth of people and society. 

Most who banter LHP and RHP, Light vs. Dark, Good and Evil, have no clue to the origins or the depths of the meaning of each.  Conversation is necessary to tease out what people mean and where they are at.  And more so, people have to check their assumptions about everything so they can hear what others are saying.  And instead of making assertions, ask questions where people are at and what they mean and why.  Failing that, it destroys life, relationship, understanding, it participates in the lies of all our given assumptions support.  That too is an evil. 

Some of us have been in the battle with Evil, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.  When they fight for Life, Love and Truth, understanding goes a long way, to create a better world.  Destroying the Destroyers becomes a sacred task. 

PEOPLE EMBRACING CHANGE

Mind, Body and Emotion in balance generates Spirit.  Truth, Life, Love, in Harmony generates Integrity.  Spirit and Integrity creates Soul.  This is how we grow at all levels. 

These are principles that I have espoused for well over a decade. 

What does this all mean?  Let me put this in context of a quote and questions put forth by , Ted Nation. 

“‘Bind nothing!  Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt.’  Liber AL 1:22 (Aleister Crowley)”

“How do you value your self?  How about others?  Is any man truly greater than another, or lesser?  Is it the choices we make that give us value?  Do we have value?  How do you quantify that value?” 

Let me start with the principles, expand on it and then apply it. 

Most Yoga schools teach a triangle of mind, body and spirit.  And in it they teach detachment from ego and the world.  This a two dimensional approach.  Emotion enervates the body, creates state dependent behaviors, processes that harness the mind and the body to function and to action.  Actions may or may not create attachments to the world and to our own way of doing things.  Taking for granted a set of behaviors, and beliefs and attachments to our selves in a point of time.  Once done, we have rendered ourselves an artifact.  We are decaying as soon as we hold ourselves to a yardstick that which is also an artifact in time.  It is the relationship with others and other things.  Can we afford to disconnect ourselves from anything.  Can we afford to attach ourselves to anything.  It is the process of relationships to everything. 

Take a diamond, without a gem cutter it’s value is much less as a raw stone.  How much value is a gem cutter, when he can turn raw stones into something of value.  The art of a gem cutter, how much value is that, when it can be spread to other gem cutters?  And who profits from all this?  And what of all the gem cutters, when there are no more gems to cut?  What are the gem’s relationship to the gem cutter or the art?  It is a dynamic, but a finite closed loop.  It may exist through time, and be valued amongst gem cutters and those who profit from them, but in the end, when there is no more.  And people value the gems more than any of the people ever involved with them, down to the miners. 

Can the art of gem cutting be applied to other arts?  Can the disciplines applied to that art be applied to other arts?  If so you have a living thing.  Not an artifact with a birth, life and death of a singular thing, process or dynamic, but a process that extends through time, and past artifact’s existences.  Processes useful to swim amongst artifacts of time and existence. 

The spirit or essence of a thing, is based on the balance of mind, body and emotion.  The better equal lengths of the base makes the area.  In balance, a volume of essence and spirit are created.  Spirit without a container, form or structure, dissolves back into its constituent parts, with its form and function an artifact in time. 

Life by itself is into a relationship with only one thing, is an artifact.  Its value with other artifacts of existence lost in the dissolution and desolation of time and chaos.  Life without it, we have nothing.  Love, without it everything is meaningless.  Truth, the crucible by which all things are tested.  Judgment in the harshest or kindest degree, depends on our honest relationship with everything.  Life, Love and Truth in Harmony begets Integrity.  These three principles must be in harmonious dynamic and equilibrium.  This is to say, One must have an absolutely honest relationship with everything, your self, the world and if not the whole Universe.  This generates Integrity, honesty with one’s self, the world and the Universe.  This is a relationship, a process, an art of relationships, holding the truth of each sacred.  Would not the Universe, hold sacred the Truth of you? 

This simple tetrahedron, if body, mind and emotion is in balance creates spirit.  It is the essence the blue print, of the person, the processes, and relationships not only with itself but the whole world.  The complex dynamic tetrahedron of Life, Love and Truth, creates Integrity.  It is the discipline of the process and honest relationship with itself and the world that keeps its structure intact.  Together Integrity and Spirit makes the Soul. 

How do you value your Self?  How honest are you?  How much effort do you put into your own being and the creation and maintenance of your Soul?  If you are looking for a yard stick to measure yourself against, the yardstick is an artifact in relationship to other artifacts.  The question is how does the World value you.  How does it hold you sacred, whether it knows it or not?  If your soul continues to have an honest relationship with the world, and holds the spirit and essence of all that truth, actions and processes, how are you not immortal? 

Is it the choices we make that give us value?  Yes and no.  A choice is not the action.  An action and the honest relationship of all things, of that action is what makes the value. 

Do we have value?  Again by what yardstick?  My family, work, and community, have I contributed to the arbitrary value of the yardstick of material goods to each?  Or, have I added to the essence and spirit of each to exist beyond its concept of self?  How can unconscious things, places, people and entities value us, by what yardstick?  What is immortal about each, and what is an artifact of time giving form, substance and topology of the reality, and what is the process of it and its relationship to all of its constituent parts? 

Quantify the yardstick and the ephemeral value of artifacts of existence.  What power and presence does it hold on us or give a platform and ocean of artifacts to swim in?  How well do we swim in it, or how well poorly we float like flotsam? 

All I can say to the idea of quantifying value, is how do you qualify it?  Am I an artifact or an immortal process?  Am I an artifact forgotten for the new shiny, or do I have an honest relationship with the immortal Universe, and do we hold each other sacred? 

As a man, “Is any man truly greater than another, or lesser?”,  by the yardstick yes.  As that part of us that is an artifact of existence, no. 

Ronald Glasser’s rules of power (some of them):

” All things are equal to another”. 

” There are exceptions to every rule, including this one” (See above)

This axiom is a spiritual teaching re-framed in many ways, to help develop detachment and equanimity interacting with the world.  It is about having an honest relationship with everything. 

The truth of each person and being is exactly the same.  Our honest relationship with each does not have to be the same. 

Paraphrased from “Fiddler on the Roof”: “Rabbi, is there even a blessing for the Czar?” “ Yes, yes, there is a blessing for everything and every one.  May God bless the Czar, and keep him very, very, very far from us!” 

That is an honest relationship, with self, community and the world demonstrated right there.  An honest relationship with things that are bad for us is to keep them very, very far from us.  Bind the artifacts, not us to them. 

The Aleister Crowley quote is another re-framing of the Hindu Yoga teaching of detachment.  We are in a sea awash with a world of artifacts, and we interacting with them we need not to be attached to them.  We only need to be honest with our interaction with them.  A yardstick is only good enough to paddle through a sea of artifacts, no more no less.  And each class of artifacts yardsticks of every sort can be used and be useful.  Those values are an artifact of a class.  Our choice and action about those valuations depend on how we value our relationship to yourself and others. 

When we are immortal, we are part of the Universe, and it with us.  There is no differentiation except our own attachment to our own soul.  Valued and held sacredly only as we have done so with the Universe.  And in that reflection of the universe we too are held, sacred and immortal. 

Sri Yantra of MahaKali or MahaDurga

The principles and schematic, and its resemblance to the Merkabah or the Star of Metatron is no accident.  In each practice and concept and contemplation of each of these principles in each plane can be its own genius.  Thereby not only are these principles of immortality, they too are principals of immortality owned by the soul housed within.  All other concepts and usages of the Merkabah tradition, if true (many new age confabulations are not) should work well in concert with these principles. 

Or I could be a white privileged, slacktivist that only cares about personal guilt about this cultural farce, that has been going deadly earnest. 

Racism has been deadly since the beginning of this country.  From slavery to incarceration, whether it is about cheap labor, drug wars or simple hatred for people of color POC, or pure greed with genocide and theft of the lands of the Native Americans. 

No matter what I do, I will always be suspect of privilege and have enjoyed some aspect of privilege.  I am not female, a POC, LGBT, or any other target of bigotry, or am I?  I am a white male, large and now middle aged. 

The safety pin or paper clip had supposedly been used to identify resistance to Nazi Germany and support of Jews or any other minorities oppressed by them.  In England and the US, anti-immigration sentiments essentially insured millions died.  The Safety Pin instead of the Paper Clip in Britain is being used to support immigrants and muslims post the Brexit vote to leave the EU European Union.  Britain’s rise of conservatism has been hand in hand from Margaret Thatcher with Ronald Reagan and all their successors. 

The USA incarcerated 120,000 Japanese, and the USA lost 420,000 men and women. 

Putin’s interest in Trump as a fascist is simple.  Trump is an isolationist, as are other republicans and they will destabilize NATO.  Trump will gain more leverage in the EU.  Russia lost over 26 Million people to Nazi Germany and WWII.  Thirteen percent of the population gone.  They will have no problem convincing their public and the EU to take the USA to task and wipe us off the face of the map.  States will exist in their state’s rights as a divided third world bombed out dystopian hells. 

The Genocide of Native of Americans either directly or by disease over these centuries is horrible at a level that is unconscionable and is still being exercised today.  Corporation agents employed at various government agencies insure a sanctioned theft and abuse to this day. 

The reasons why Trump got elected is sadly due to a prosperity theology along with fundamentalist dogma in rural white America, people that have never been exposed to anyone beyond their narrow white world.  This has been used in politics and extremely conservative religious right groups for over three decades, with an extreme use of conservative propaganda.  They are racist and they don’t believe anyone else deserves human rights or dignity. 

Over most of the last century the two party system was ostensibly bought and sold by the corporations and elite rich.  There was a while in the past 30 years the elite were comfortable just purchasing one side, the republicans, with a little support to be thrown to the democrats.  Hillary was an example of the old time political cronyism and corruption bought and paid for by Wall Street. 

People are sick of it all.  In the election Bernie and Trump were seen as getting rid of the status quo politics with the libertarian party waiting in the wings to take over the bought and paid for position of the republicans as they disintegrate.  The powerful elite have plans with in plans and contingencies. 

So, here we are.  Nazis Fascist America.  Either well meaning reactionaries who voted for Trump Gaslight themselves or they are in part with most of the FOX news and republicans trying to Gaslight the rest of us saying they are not Anti-LGBT, Misogynist, Racist, against Muslims, immigrants or any other minority.  If they deny it now, it is only from Sea Lioning , race baiting, or a profound engrained disassociative disorder that is psychotic. 

There is only one set of winners this election, the rich and powerful that either directly or indirectly own the premium stock of of the largest corporations in the world.  Common stock has been made to be sucker’s game where we invest in it only to have them drain the value of it and rob us yet another way.  How the powerful elite has institutionalized wage and debt slaves is another long article that I may or may not write.  The fact is the south who fought to keep slavery lost to the north that insured all immigrants would be wage and debt slaves in a rigged system.  The support of the current Republican party, as a way for the south to rise again, has only enslaved all the white people as well, but also to be the cracker enforcers, of this power structure.  The midwest rural people who fought to carve out land, stolen from the Native Americans, to develop their own wealth have lost it to banks.  This has been manipulated for the past 50 years with the Farm Bill Subsidizing small farms only to eventually get rid of the programs to bankrupt the farmers and have these properties and farming opportunities go to the large agribusinesses.  The Agriculture department, along with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Food Drug Administration, and Department of Natural Resources have been peopled, implanted with corporate agents of Agribusinesses (Monsanto, et al), Oil, Timber, Mining corporations, to insure the theft, or orderly acquisition, is all legal and neatly tied up.  Now along with the Native Americans, Farmers and Ranchers are being affected also.  Yet the White Farmers and Ranchers want to blame minorities and the Government as outlined by the media, as a liberal black president. 

Only now, as it is with the Emperor of the Star Wars, “Now your training to the dark side will be complete”. 

The whole use of exhortation and other apologetic rhetoric styles, along with best neurolinguistics used in media, editorial talk shows and Fox news for 30 years have people programmed.  The use of Prosperity Gospel in the fundamentalist churches along with the Dominionist movements to turn the US into a theocracy, has created that perfect storm of belief, to ignore all truths and self awareness, seems to finish us off. 

The power of monied resources, propaganda, and religious entrainment to belief has turned half of America into useful tools.  Beyond the obvious abusive sociopathology, they are in turn taught to blame everyone and everything else except themselves, creating narcissists that can’t and won’t ever deal with the truth of themselves. 

We are all in a very bad place.  One thing I learned about narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths, they will not and can not change.  They only respond to pain and the power to execute pain, or the fear of pain of death.  The only cure is death.  They however believe that anybody who opposes them are not human and that is the first step of rendering us as targets.  As targets we are no longer human.  Conscience, common sense or basic human decency are not even in the picture and can’t be brought up to be questioned unless you too will be labeled as another non-human target. 

The Safety Pin, I have heard two arguments against it.  First, Alt-Right people are or might use it to lure people into confrontations.  Anything that helps someone abuse it, misuse it and make people afraid of anything that may help them.  It furthers abusive isolationist strategies.  Second, there are good intentioned white people who feel guilty they haven’t done anything of substance to help so they are showing an outward symbol that in essence means not a damn thing.  What have your really done?  In essence most of them will say nothing, or conflate a bunch of BS that they can not see as being absolutely useless and inconsequential. 

Many gave up on the idea. 

I will use it as an opportunity to get to know me.  I have no guilt, I am more than simply aware that I might as well put a yellow star on me and say “Ich bin ein Juden!”  Don’t start a fight to test me.  Know me and need me, I will be there. 

So get to know me. 

Beyond being an older white male, and there is privilege with that.  It ends there. 

Anyone that claims they are an ally, get to know them.  Let them get to know you.  Being white is a big hindrance to developing this trust.  Being male is another big hindrance.  Living as a male in Upstate New York and the NorthEast during the 70’s where radical feminism was in full flight, I was another damn patriarchal male. 

Get to know me. 

As an intellectual in an anti-intellectual america, I am a target.  I am not relatable.  I graduated out of Colonie Central High School, in 1975.  I was 16 years old.  The suburbs between Albany and Schenectady NY, was poor.  The working lower middle class and mobile poor lived in these post WWII and Post Korean War Saltbox Bungalows.  This is where the middle class losing ground met the up and coming out of the slums of the city.  My neighborhood although white, was the urban type of redneck, that was called the “Greasers, Motorheads and with a liberal sprinkling of Stoners”.  There was a sprinkling of the “Preppies” but mostly they were in the other school districts. 

The principal worked with the local authorities to give bad recommendations about the students, even if they were well placed academically or financially to go to college.  They were highly recommended for the draft into the Vietnam War.  In 1974 many of these students who had older brothers that died in Vietnam held a riot at 100 days (till the end of school) with a smoke bomb the size of a coffee can to evacuate the school.  They carried the principal’s car up to the top of a hill, upside down and trashed it. 

My neighborhood, had two drug gangs separated by age.  We had a whorehouse where the local girls from 12 – 17 worked it.  That business was shut down because they didn’t pay the rent of the house they rented.  The lack of police, the use of the locals, and the lack of any common sense on the worth of what they were doing, speaks volumes of the dysfunction there.  At 14 years old I am walking down the street and I get stopped by the police and threatened with my life.  Being polite, hands on my head and not moving may have saved me.  The parents protected their little monsters, and the police were way past fed up.  The parents were abusive, manipulative, sociopaths.  If not they were alcoholics or addicted to valium or the gamut of legal drugs of the day.  I was big so I was a challenge and a target, by police, parents and the gangs. 

I went to church as a social outlet and to escape the dysfunctional home.  It was the only free time I got beyond being the good compliant daughter that mother wanted and never had.  I was the namesake of my Uncle Bill who she dearly loved and expected me to be an adult, do adult responsibilities with no authority, no support and to be treated as a complete idiot child.  Psychotic double bind there.  I was the obstacle to her career.  I was unwanted and nothing I ever did would ever be good enough.  She had a long term affair with a married man, who was probably the best influence in my life, while he was a political hack that insured my brother knew how to verbally manipulate people as one of the best classed sociopaths I know of.  I was “shark baited” to my mother constantly, for a string of verbal and physical abuse, for and by him and my mom both.  Church was where all the hypocritical kids went to, to get their free love, sex, and partying while God and Jesus forgave them.  I was pondering the insanity of life, why God put me where I was feeling like a complete alien.  I was in The Twilight Zone where an individual was put on display with creatures that were clearly not like him, but look liked them as a scientific study.  When you read the bible through and start asking questions, now I become a target by those who just want me to believe. 

If you are empathic, telepathic sometimes and have experienced a bunch of paranormal experiences, fundamentalist churches are not your friends. 

Without the finances and falling through all the social programs and into the cracks of society, “so-called” easy student money for the late 70’s didn’t exist for me.  A simple 1040 form from a parent starts the whole financial world of being a student, even being poor.  Had I stole the form as my brother did, or declared emancipation from my mother that could’ve changed things for me.  I had no one who would throw me that clue.  The counselors at the school were there for a paycheck and viewed all the kids as hoodlums or worse.  I asked for help or for someone to talk to my mother.  I was told to go away, or they would call security and the police.  And, don’t bother them again. 

I was beat up every other day for several years until I turned 12.  I grew to be 5’10” tall 180 lbs.,  took up wrestling in school and studied martial arts on my own.  After a few last fights with gangs and their leaders, I was left alone.  Except once where a local goon was attempting to go back to school, but mostly it was to intimidate me.  I was blessed with a bunch of kids jumping on the guy who 4-6 inches taller and outweighed me by another 100 lbs.  and probably 19 yo when I was 15.  I was ready to go to jail and do my best to kill him in school.  This goon went straight after me with out all the highschool drama.  It was serious business to him.  I knew nothing less and I would be hounded day in day out, eventually have a whole gang of bigger monsters in the older gang, that were more violent. 

I worked odd jobs, painting, mowing, raking leaves, fixing plumbing.  What allowance I had was taken away from me, and I bought my own clothes, gym clothes, school books and if I wanted, my own school lunches.  I was a target for the scam artists and thieves from the school, neighborhood kids and the adults.  I learned the deep nuanced skills of sociopaths, psychopaths and this social pathological way of dysfunctional thinking. 

Needless to say trying to go to college in 1975, with no money, parental support, or not being a ward of the state, although I was courted by some of the best schools in the nation, including RPI, Stanford, etc.  those administrative hurdles might have been the Grand Canyon, ask me to jump it with a kite.  I was given the ultimatum to work and pay rent, go to college or go into the service.  There was glut of 18 year olds, and the jobs wanted 2 years experience even for McDonald’s and Burger King, preferably with degrees in business.  17+ colleges in a very small population for the Tri-City Area, made getting a job Impossible. 

Two days after my 17th birthday, I joined the Marines with someone I knew in Scouts.  He bailed in boot camp.  Believe it or not Bootcamp was better than my home life.  Marine Corp Boot camp, better than my home life.  1975-79 was directly after the Vietnam War, and still being spit on and named a “baby killer”, did nothing for me socially.  I was manipulated and got involved, unknown to me, with a DC prostitute that was recently freed from prison, to use me to get her kids back.  A whole new level of sociopath to learn and survive from.  Before I met this woman I was in Camp Barret OCS Field training school for Midshipmen freshly minted lieutenants.  I was coming home on the camp bus from the Main Base’s Enlisted Mans Club.  I was enjoying the one privilege of being an underage serviceman, to enjoy drinking alcohol.  On that bus I was the only white man.  I was stomped on for over a half an hour while the bus driver pulled over to allow my fellow marines to continue beating on me and to stomp on me more.  I am made of stern stuff.  I wasn’t hurt bad.  They got to the camp and I went to the on-duty Sergeant of the guard, while this one big dude was still beating on me, I asked for assistance.  Three weeks later I got pulled up in front of the camp’s CO for an inquiry of me being a racist, saying I used the word “jigaboo”.  I never heard the word before in my life.  I did call them chicken, because they wouldn’t let me up to fight them.  I asked for the Provost Marshall ” a defending attorney in the military justice system” .  I was being set up to be a scape goat.  What I found out was that 6 months before I got to the base there was a race riot.  Six months before that 3 fellow Marines were shot dead because they were black and an opportunity of a target by what appeared to be another marine driving on to base and shooting them with a shot gun. 

I did not choose to hate women.  I did not choose to hate black people.  I chose to understand. 

In these intervening years I was stuck with a worthless GI Bill that could not help afford a college that was meant to educate someone.  Community colleges were looked at by professors as an extension of high schools by privileged brats.  What I was, was apparently worse.  I have suffered more outright hate, abuse, and dirty under handed dealings by white people, banks, landlords, bosses, you name it. 

I worked as a typist for a college where I was one of 3 men of an office of over 70 women.  I was not male enough because of the job.  I wasn’t a person of respect because I was part of the evil patriarchy.  No matter how hard I worked I wasn’t good enough for even as an employee for most of them.  I don’t hate women.  I learned office politics, and the reality of NY clique behaviors and how pathological they are.  If you don’t fit in any one of them, you will never get a chance to migrate in the ageist, cliquish extremely small jingoistic groups that existed in the Tri-City area. 

I got to work for the State of NY.  Their affirmative action was in full swing and whatever you scored on your civil service tests even a 102, 2 points added as a veteran, would not get you a job or promotion.  I learned about nepotism, grooming of favorites and the low brow cliquish good ole boys or girls clubs, and was always put on the outside.  I watched people as they lost their retirements from NAFTA agreements and treaties sending their mill town jobs from the Mohawk and Hudson River companies overseas.  They hated minorities, not the corporations.  They hated foreigners and not the politics that played them.  I watched Carter be set up by the CIA Director to have the American students in Iran rescue be sabotaged.  I watched the tax reforms advantage the rich and the “invest in America” of Bush Sr.  to have his son execute fleece all of America by crashing the stock market as people tried to have anything to retire with 16 years later. 

All of what I said was true, and was forgotten and it came to pass, and being solidly ignored because I am young, not positioned in society correctly, no degree, no support, with a only a couple of weird friends, only to be constantly dismissed, abused and used by women, employers, bosses, and acquaintances pretending to be friends. 

And still I am privileged, as a white male.  Were I female, minority or gay, it would have been much much harder.  At the same time my social education was excellent.  Because I learned from it, searched for the answers out of love and not hate.  I want to help and fix this mess, and I needed to understand it. 

I am 58 years old.  I have tried to donate to Equal Rights, Planned Parenthood, and other organizations.  Unfortunately I watched as these organizations put up people for a vote that had no common sense and common ground beyond the one issues. 

My family supported the Liberal party.  My Grandfather helped with the Worker’s party.  Railroad workers were worked around the clock and dying at the switch and controls for train engines and Eugene Debs was trying to keep girls from being chained into sweatshops and dying from fires if they were allowed to use fire escapes.  It was being infiltrated by the Communists and he helped with Socialist party which became infected with Communists, and helped break it.  He helped with the creation of the Liberal party that was pro-union and very anti-communist.  They worked for the 12 hour a day manifesto.  This got the Railroad socialized by the government for the planned war for WWI.  Post WWII they worked for the 8 hour day as we know it. 

My grandfather, father and older brother went down south to help sign up black voters, and push for the Equal Rights Amendment.  The family pushed for issues so that they would be dealt with by whoever won the elections.  They each ran for various elected offices and failed. 

My great grandfather and his brother fought for the Union in the Civil war.  And to the anger of the Confederate Sons, they were part of Sherman’s scorch and burn campaign. 

This is not enough to cover the sins of our family.  My great great grand aunt took the slaves our family had south and sold them.  This is after NY outlawed slavery. 

I have stood up for women, minorities, the handicapped, the mentally disabled, and the LGBT people, for the financial freedom and liberties we all as human beings deserve. 

I found that nothing short of a bullet will cure these narcissistic sociopaths that are parasites or enablers of parasites in our country. 

I am working with a core group of friends to create a church, a tribe, that focuses on leadership, community values, and supporting family and diversity.  We can garner absolutely no interest whatsoever.  We need leaders, healers, and skilled people to build a new society.  We need groups of people to help heal and build the society when it all blows up and goes to hell in a handbasket.  Like anything, it seems likely I am destined only to clean up the messes that others have left behind and be abused for it, not to be trusted to help make any of it better, to prepare for anything better. 

I am 58 years old, fell into the cracks of society, and eke along.  I need to get my last two kids into college or work.  They are good kids.  That may be the only successful thing I have ever done.  Their mom helped.  I am watching me being shuffled out of work and out of skills to work here in the near future.  I have no success, no retirement, bills and nothing of value except for some books. 

I don’t care if you don’t believe me.  I don’t care if you think I am one of the damned oppressive white patriarchy.  I don’t care if you hate me. 

I will stand up for you.  I will stand in front of you and if need be take a bullet or the abuse.  I have gotten pretty used to doing that.  If the safety pin is like a gold star and be considered SJW “Social Justice Warrior” and I get shot by one of the Alt-Right, so be it.  If it keeps you safe and gives you time to flee, so be it.  If you want me to obstruct traffic, no.  That will be on you.  That is your choice to do that.  I understand why that may be something to do.  I believe in public safety.  I don’t believe in giving any of these rat bastard Nazis an excuse to mow people down.  I will be armed, I will fight back. 

Our country has taken a significant step to becoming a Fascist corporate Oligarchy.  The rich will be out of the country hiding all the ill gotten gains through this while our country kills each other.  I can’t afford to escape.  I can’t afford to leave.  There are good people in this country.  If I can be part of the resistance against a Nazi America, so be it. 

Know this:

I will be going dark about all these things and beliefs on Facebook.  Facebook is owned by conservative right people. 

I will start deleting my old posts and hiding them from the public and eventually my friends. 

There are conservative acquaintances that have acted in accordance with the abusive narcissistic parasitic behaviors they have been programmed with.  When they come with guns and brown shirts, I will be pointed at. 

If you question if I will support you, do question me and others.  You can not be too careful. 

It will be getting worse. 

When it does, I will do what a fat old man can, and it will be much worse than obstructing traffic. 

I would rather be in a place to create a better world, better people, and be there to put a world back together that is worth living.  Like any other hoped for dreams, that too will likely be destroyed. 

I will pray for a better world.  I will do magic.  I will struggle mind, body, spirit and soul, to make things right. 

or die trying. 

I must be satisfied with love I have received for being who I am. 

I want to finish a book on magic.  The wage slave I am I must study to be accredited for something that will keep me employed. 

If not that then.  If the Gods deny me, they can’t destroy me.  I have survived, this scouring chaos of existence.  I have integrity.  I will struggle to keep my last scrap of dignity and yours. 

This is dark, this is pessimistic, but not negative.  I cannot help what the pragmatic reality actually is.  I pray for our country and all good people to survive.  I have faith there are good people out there and they are worth preserving. 

Let me know you are trying too.  We need allies, friends, and witnesses if it is our last breath. 

If we fall into the abyss, I will hold onto my light and pray you find a way out. 

The Second Triangle of Immortality is Life, Love and Truth in Harmony creates Integrity. 

The First Triangle is Mind, Emotion and Body in balance creates Spirit. 

Spirit and Integrity creates and maintains Soul. 

Truth is the singular most important thing that can help people get along and is the absolute necessity for Gods to exist and for anyone who wishes to obtain immortality in any of the World’s belief systems. 

Cognitive Dissonance is the most singularly frustrating thing when dealing with people.  It is when their brain’s operating system is based on emotions.  They switch from one operating system to another by a constant flow of emotions.  It is from this very flow of emotions people gauge their comfort level of information based on these emotions and how they evoke the next set of emotions.  Sadly, cognitive abilities, analytical skills, and information don’t buffer well between these emotional states.  There is an extremely limited overlap of information and abilities from one emotion to another and fail people miserably.  Disjointed analytical tools live in different emotional operating systems. 

People live constantly in cognitive dissonance their whole lives.  The very purpose of meditation and contemplation is to create a singular state of mind which holds all the data and analytical skills in one place to grow and to be improved upon.  Then no one can relate to these people because their emotions and data don’t match the patterns that make them comfortable. 

Comfort and a fear from being made uncomfortable, beliefs from comfort regardless of the context of the thoughts and feelings don’t match what is expected, is out right rejected. 

Cognitive Dissonance is the very playground sociopaths, psychopaths, FOX news, Conservative Think tanks & social media outlets, and every one in a culture that expects a specific sets of actions and reactions works from.  It works because it is an empirical logic that shows for most of one’s actions works.  It is lazy and economical requiring no thinking whatsoever.  People think they think; however, listen to them say “I believe”, “I feel”, and “you should” which are all speaking from a set of programmed responses. 

They take everything they think, feel and believe for granted.  Because it feels right, they believe it to be true. 

The sad fact is there is truth in each of these beliefs which is turned in to an actionable emotionally charged reaction.  The context, and circumstances are missed. 

Case in point, I posted a simple meme in the wake of yet another murder of a black man by police officers. “ STOP KILLING BLACK PEOPLE”.  That is it. 

A good friend of mine simply stated All people’s lives matter.  She cares about every one, is multi-ethnic and has a broad view of life.  Another friend of mine gets triggered from what would sound like #AllLivesMatter.  To put this in context of #BLACKLIVESMATTER as part of a post on Treyvon Martin’s Murderer, George Zimmerman’s, acquittal.  Since then many other black people are being murdered or killed by police, in jails, and elsewhere.  Many are innocent and demanding their rights.  Lately in our society that will get you killed.  Post Ferguson Missouri, with Michael Brown being murdered, white racist provocateurs who started shooting into a peaceful demonstration exacerbated an ever worsening situation.  What came out at that time from white supremacist social media trolls, was a meme from conservative, bigoted think tanks: #AllLivesMatter.  There was a space of time this meme got out into liberal environments and was embraced by well meaning people.  Quickly people realized this was an attempt to “whitewash” and down play all the severe issues #BlackLivesMatter embraced.  It was indeed meant to diffuse the this movement with a racist inference that white people lives matter.  This created even more confusion with the intent of each.  My friend did not mean to infer or embrace this whitewash propaganda tool.  If you knew her this would be the last thing on her mind.  My other friends were severely triggered and acted as if this was the intent.  When people are getting verbally assaulted or have their sense of self assaulted, they fight back.  They each did.  Each of them I like and would want to spend a lot of time with.  They all, if given a chance, would probably think everybody is a good and great person.  The think tank that created this racist meme of #ALLLIVESMATTER succeeded in having people tear each other apart. 

I failed. 

I shared something I feel and what should be a simple action and a simple truth. 

I failed because what I said was empty without a personal action. 

I failed because the problem is so much bigger than a simple meme. 

I failed my friends because by sharing this it divided people who should work together. 

To address these issues, and other issues like: rape, rape culture, corporate greed, citizens united, labor inequality, gender inequality, racism, bigotry, income inequality, lack of health care, lack of education, disability, retirement, healthcare, foreign policies, the enslavement of country by debt, corporate ownership and manipulation of government, foreign wars, wars that support an industrial complex, education inequality, economy, corporate tax loopholes, misogyny, hate groups, and so many others, they are all intertwined. 

We are taught to label and put simple handles, to make how we deal with specific issues easy.  They are based on beliefs, values and judgements, that are not necessarily our own.  They are convenient rationalizations.  For some they are decent, and others they are horribly bad.  The fact is we don’t actually work with so many of these issues directly, however we feel a need to identify one way or another as if it defines us in society.  And it does because it attracts and detracts the type of people we can work with at some level.  It is a shorthand that is easy and natural.  It is easy and natural for it to be manipulated by those who know these issues and people at a much deeper level.  Because we believe we are in control of our lives, this thought that others control our very thoughts, emotions and beliefs is difficult to believe. 

All these issues are so big, so massive, it is overwhelming.  It is easier to focus on singular issues as an issue unto themselves.  We have been taught to manage things with small incremental changes.  This is a perpetual treadmill, a drudgery of paperwork,, housekeeping, bureaucracy, and industry to make everything and do everything as cheaply as possible, to further make us slaves to our work, culture and the way things are done. 

What have we done?  What activism have we done?  Have we at least stood up for our friends?  Have we taken care of the sick, the poor, or the disabled?  Have we voted?  Do we know or care what the local elections look like, what issues they are bringing?  We have stood up for our friends.  We share memes, and stories.  Have we asked for facts, figures, and what the truth is, or do we just repeat what others have sent? 

What can I, a single person, do?  Do we know enough about others to stand with them and do a protest?  Do I have bail money?  Do I have friends, lawyers and a support structure to take care of me, my children, my family, and to keep them from being killed at least?  And what do politicians and people in power care about protests, petitions, and our facebook memes?  Nothing.  Zip, notta, nothing.  Zero.  And if you do stir some truth up, a little funding here and there, and these nutjob provocateurs make the protesters look crazy, or shoot them, or cause other mischief.  What is the effect?  Again, zip zero nothing.  We are supposed to stare at all the divisive emotional differences, without the depth of investigation they deserve only to be given emotional divisive issues to focus on. 

We don’t have to convince the choir.  The nutjobs aren’t on our friend’s lists.  If they are they probably turned off following the sources to our memes.  We have done that with theirs.  Or we simply have unfriended those who are so heinously off into their own little world. 

All the truth in the world won’t change scared, feeble minded people, who have lost their jobs, their retirements, their way of living, who have been made to be afraid of everything and everybody.  They are fighting for the same little modicum of life and justice they use to have.  Hell, people would be happy with what they have now.  And they know they are losing it one bit of a time.  They have been lied to by a society that is sociopathic, narcissistic and led by psychopaths, that care not one wit about them or any of us. 

Is there anyone you trust?  Heck, if you are following me on social media, you can almost guarantee people who are following me are decent people.  Thank you for what trust you have in me to post or share things that matter to you, that supports you.  Thank you for sharing things with me that uplift me and support the type of person I choose to be.  I hope I do the same for you.  Do you trust me?  Do you trust the people that follow me and post stuff on my stuff? 

Who thinks this stuff through and keeps updated on various things?  I don’t know everything.  Who tries to be fair and have a level view of things from multiple angles?  Is that a leader or a politician?  A politician works to get emotional support and tacit approval for what they do.  A vote, in a corrupt, rigged, and representative of only the richest supporters is what you get.  It is a game of charades.  It use to be they at least played along and paid lip service to what we as a people care about.  Instead of a meaningful platform, they took issues that would move people and assemble them as a campaign marketing tool.  Can you trust them to get experts to tell them what to do? 

So, what we do lacks power or leverage.  Activism, voting, and through the most positive thing by education, and that is corrupted by propaganda, media and misinformation.  Who can we trust?  Do you have leaders?  Do you empower them?  Do you support them?  Is the ideas, or ideals worth working for, dying for, worth sacrificing yourself for?  Are they worth it?  What are we worth? 

Revolutionaries the thinkers, philosophers and ideas to make things better are systematically destroyed by those who have grabbed power.  They promote what cements power in the vacuum left by the destruction of what was bad with what is the new evil corrupt mechanisms. 

So when it comes to power, Truth doesn’t matter, and Lives don’t matter.  The milieu of the existential angst of the powerless, prey on each other.  And if they are motivated against powers that be, the underlying power of the new order is supporting it. 

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”  Said by Jay Gould.  Today, the NRA right wing, controlling the conservative right who are supporting our corporate neo-fascists are being souped up to kill minorities, anybody who isn’t conservative christian, and each other when it suits them. 

“I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating. ”Said by William M. Tweed This has been an ongoing strategy of the political parties, and those that sponsor them for most of our country’s life.  Each segment of population that gets the vote, the outcome has already been predetermined. 

Truth matters and Lives matters.  They are our most precious resources that need to be cherished.  We need leaders, and the truth is there is a cost to make them, to feed them and all the endeavors, that deserve our efforts, our lives and sacrifices.  Because we have so few of them, we need to create them and back them up. 

We have failed our country because we have let what is going on in the past 100 years or more happen.  We have allowed ourselves to be blinded by mouthing platitudes, principles and morals without context, thought, review, or be guided by intelligence and spirit.  We have allowed ourselves to be uneducated and to be led by valueless, misguided or misled politicians who become convinced of the sacerdotal kool aid offered by those in power.  They have not listened to, nor supported those who sacrificed their lives to know the truth of things, and those who sacrificed their lives to make a better country for themselves and their children.  We forgot to question, to fight for something greater than ourselves.  We have been inured to people’s suffering, and engendered greed and selfishness as a virtue. 

If we can not trust a few close people, how can you trust one to become a leader, to create the power to change society?  The power is in us collectively, and we need a vision and a visionary to contain and wield that power, who is responsible to the people who would tear them to shreds if he or she betrays the people.  Those who have economic power who hire mercenaries, police, politicians, lawyers, doctors and soldiers are responsible only to themselves and get the other people seduced by power and greed to kill each other off. 

All Lives, Truth and Living don’t matter, if the truth is that you are powerless to change a damn thing.  It doesn’t matter if we can’t talk with each other, trust someone to sort it out and back them up if you aren’t willing or able to do it yourself.  If you can’t build a culture where we get along, then we are separated, manipulated and are a commodity for someone else’s use. 

I have and still get beat up by trying to build the bridges between people.  The fact is people still cling to their narrow ways generally, and rarely bridge that gap of understanding between individuals or groups.  To manage the issue at large one has to have 50,000 foot view of the problem and be able to tend to those issues.  People in general do not have the capacity to see that.  Because they don’t have the capacity they can’t and won’t believe the person who is trying to help them bridge the gap.  This was true 30 years ago and it is more true now.  If you cannot get two cliques of of people to work together, over a simple issue, how do you manage this with large issues across a whole country? 

If people could give each other a break, check their assumptions and their emotions, ask for clarification we might get dialogues going.  If we are willing to entertain another person’s point of view we might be able to build bridges.  If we cultivate people that can find a way between two points of view you create statesman.  If we support people who bring better ideas, and trust people to develop better world, we might get a world that we may be more engaged in and trusting each other to become mutually decent citizens. 

People Embracing Change is about building such a culture.  I may be unworthy for such an undertaking.  Maybe I am.  Maybe you are.  This will need a fundamental change in the way we think, feel and behave.  And that is too scary.  Lives will matter if we have absolutely honest relationships with ourselves, others and the world around us.  That would be an act of love that is too scary to commit to.  The Truth is we are too afraid to live a Life that Matters, or are crushed by those who are afraid of that change. 

What we need to do is build and create, leaders, cultures and relationships.  We need to study and speak to each other’s truths and experiences and build common ground.  We need to acknowledge each other’s hurts and experiences.  We have to be able to move beyond our hurts and our experiences, to build new lives.  Build new Lives that Matter together.  Then we will embody the living truth. 

Shamans, or spirit workers of different traditions, are healers, intercessors or just the crazy person that has the idea that will work. 
Truth is the foundation from which they work.  Without Truth death and destruction follow them faster than a freight train while standing on a railroad crossing with the lights flashing. 

There are shaman that work with shadow and underworld, while others work with the over-world and light.  There are Shaman that work with spirits on an earthly level. 

There are those that work for the Good of the Community, and others just for themselves. 
There are magic workers who work for their own selfish reason outside of the truth of the community and are parasites.  This causes misery and eventually the world around them collapses.  And they bring the world in collapsing around them.  The effect sometimes is immediate, and for some it takes lifetimes. 

Many shaman work from their own intrinsic nature.  Some are called to one affinity or another.  Some are damaged to begin with and some choose to be that way. 

My path is balance.  Many say balance and mean getting even, justice or retribution.  I mean balance.  It is dancing in a dynamic equilibrium assessing each and everything for the absolute truth of it in time with all other things. 

I know of shaman who are excellent at spirit integration/soul retrieval, other people who are exorcists, of big or little things.  There are shaman or energy workers, who help with the energetic imbalances people have, and help working with blockages removing them or helping people to do the hard cathartic work of their causes so they will leave on their own accord. 

The work to help people heal with traumas or deep neuroses, to clear those energetic strongholds that attract negative entities, energies or other cases deal with various afflictions and psychosomatic outcomes of dissociative disorders, is a very touchy and difficult set of circumstances. 
Healing these issues, most people are attracted to the healers that can do them some good.  A perfect good is hard to find, and the shaman or energy worker that is skilled to deal with the specific issues maybe more difficult.  There are soul retrieval methodologies that may not necessarily retrieve spirit fragments, but do the personality or psyche reintegration that is necessary for those who have had parts of themselves sequestered or hidden from themselves.  For Some the healing never fully takes place.  Many rituals dance around the periphery of the truth of the trauma and how the person has dealt with.  Some wounds, like Frodo said, never heal. 

There are spirit retrievals after removing an entity that had been possessing a person.  Some times that piece is long gone.  The person lives a half life. 

Many people walk their whole lives with neuroses or traumas so deep, that these aspects hive off, sometimes as poltergeists.  Cognitive therapy or cathartic rituals can help with some acceptance and reintegration.  Some people, they and their families will be haunted by it.  Other people these aspects from traumas or neuroses hide in their bodies their whole lives.  Some create a long term illness, usually an autoimmune disorder, others some sort of physical manifestation in a permanently affected portion of their body, a limp leg, a list, a set of nervous tics, or some organ malfunction.  These require extra-ordinary healing. 

All of this healing requires accepting and coming to grips with the Truth, of what happened, and the choices one made with those experiences. 

One of the axioms of healing is “Do no Harm”.  And in some healing, some, no pain no gain.  The axiom of speaking, “is it kind?”  I am not talking about the kind thing by letting a person find out the truth the hard way, which in actuality is excessively cruel.  It only saves yourself from not taking the brunt the persons reaction.  There are sometimes no matter what you do, say or miracles that you can pull out of a bag of tricks, you can not heal or save a person. 

Some people have recreated themselves, they have built a strength a resolve a character that made them better than what they were.  The cause of the trauma that caused their spiritual disassociation, may just have precipitated what was necessary for them to evolve change and grow.  Sometimes it manifests as a cancer, or some other incurable issue.  Sometimes it is represented by some type of obsession of spirit or a place holding place for types of spirits.  And you have to let it go, they have made themselves better, no matter how much they have and will suffer. 

I read a interesting book of Chinese Shamanism that describes spirit bodies that leave the soul and spirit vehicle.  These spirit components are called the Hun and the Po.  The Hun is related to heavenly or over-world spirit and the Po has its affinity with the underworld.  When you travel to these planes/worlds there are particular natural characteristics of the spirits that are there.  They fit the various understandings of afterlives heavens and hells and everything in between.  Most people end up going into a planes that are a combination of overworld and underworld, rooted into a place that has a similar energy to the person and where human overworlds and underworlds intersect.  Realms of ancestors are coherent ones connected to their progeny.  The difference between human and natural based overworlds and underworlds or supernatural realms, is that the human realms tie into belief and or behavior and often reflect aspects of their religious beliefs.  These realms also reflect the zeitgeist, Weltanschauung, the energy and behavior of a people, place and time.  Natures supernatural realms are not clouded with the collective conscience of people.  These mixed places tend to be staging areas before people move on. 

A person’s soul and spirit vehicle (that spirit that which is the immediate vehicle for the soul, regardless of all the other spirit/astral components.  Inevitably without people, place or nature keeping all the spirit components together, they separate.  The soul if it is attached to one or the other more strongly will go to each of their respective places.  Sometimes one component is coherent enough without the other half and the soul.  For example if you are traveling and you see aimless dead and they are usually attracted to a conveyance of some sort, or some place where that underworld component can be absorbed back into the world, that is an underworld.  Not unlike the spirit train in the movie “Spirited Away”.  Sometimes people end up being there a long while because of their attachments.  Similarly it is true for heavenly/over-world places.  Heavenly spirit fragments that have no soul end up being like 2 dimensional NPC characters in a very rich bright world there those whose soul is there appear to be functioning in more than one place and or time. 

Okay why am I going into all this.  Sometimes souls fragment.  Most times finding those pieces are crucial to the development of a person, their spirituality and their ultimate evolution.  This is where Shaman with soul retrieval expertise is necessary.  And those who are psychological healers to deal with acceptance and the processing of those traumas.  So the individual can let go of the negative attachments. 

There are sometimes, the nature of the fragment soul, spirit or both, serve no purpose to the person, their evolution or growth.  It is like a cancer.  IT is like the biblical aphorism, if thy right hand offendeth they cut it off.  If there is a spiritual gift like grace/salvation or something similar it is designed to cut out these aspects from the self, and add alignments with god or the spiritual realms people choose.  In real life, some have these negative aspects who have been so sequestered they turn into obsession, oppressive spirits processes, entities or things, often manifested as illnesses of various sorts.  They will hang onto them with all of their might, or they are so intrinsically bound to them to this life, they can’t let it go.  This is where I learned the miracle of a “reaper” There are many “Grim Reapers”, they are tied to places, people affinities and things.  I met my first one. 

I had a girlfriend who had a lot of childhood trauma, and abuse that manifested itself is in a host of physical problems, Multiple personalities, and with horrid psychological counseling false memories. ( This is where I find rape is such a heinous and violent crime that needs serious punishment and a society that treats as seriously as all the damage it does, even to the core of the soul.)  Sometimes with bad work of regression therapists seeding wrong information to have people fabricate a false reality.  Or sometimes people do it for themselves to compensate for the massive black hole of memory loss or loss of time, or gaps in personality, to survive.  At this point the manufactured reality was cobbling a working methodology for her as a person.  It was a fiction that was sorting out character traits, personality aspects, parts were healing and evolving, other were withering.  These manufactured memory parts were helping her body survive longer while the hidden parts would have killed her.  She wasn’t ready to leave and she needed to let go of parts of the psyche, soul, spirit and other stuff.  She was a loving evolving but often times irascible, difficult individual.  Decades ago, one of the personalities I ran into, who gave me some obnoxious grief.  I blessed her/ cursed her to know nights of complete happiness.  Decades later, I was responsible for just that.  Some of these healing take inexplicable twists turns and crossing of fates.  Sometimes you can not heal the person.  And sometimes you can not extricate critters, demons or things from a person.  They have to do it themselves.  The hardest part is just to be there.  Love them.  Hold space for them.  Ground them in reality.  Love them more, Love them harder, and respect and hold sacred all that they are trying to become.  What healing I could do was to help with pain.  Nothing else worked.  The reason was that this was matter of deeper core healing, and involved letting go of what wasn’t her anymore.  There was an episode where she went to the hospital, and almost died.  She lost her memory, parts of her personality that held memories of her abused past.  Funny now, she was a born again virgin.  That helped in the healing.  She had other fixated aspects of personality that had to be let go.  I had to stand strong, and just be what was real in my life.  That had a hard eruption of personalities.  That was a deep learning experience.  It also helped drive a stronger spiritual ability to deal with other people’s reality beyond the focus on ones own.  It helped to heal and process memories in a new way and start letting go of some of the fabricated realities.  Her illnesses progressed, and I got the call to come to the hospital, and she passed before I got there.  She wasn’t gone yet.  Her Matron Goddess was there and a psycho-pomp/spirit guide.  What was left was a residual green energy tying one last thing to her body in her heart.  It was green energy what some would call residual energy.  Some call it the Heart energy or spirit.  I gently lifted it from her heart and it dissipated.  She was free to go.  Her spirit went to an over-world for a short while and I know that she has safely reincarnated into a loving family.  Two nights later I was dream traveling.  It was an underworld and it was a dark level of shambling shells of people.  Those type of shells where a focus of work and drudgery which were let go and not owned by their makers and owners.  I manifested a bus around me, and my drum and played, drawing these spirit shells onto the bus.  My teacher was their watching.  Then I manifested into a Mansion with this green suited Skeletor type of character who welcomed me into his abode.  White skin over a skeletal head and frame in a nicely done albeit green suit.  Usually my alerts would be going off, but I got a sense that this was okay.  He went back to his desk, held his hands over his head and their manifesting over his head was this very same type of green energy, to only let it rain down on him giving a resilience and youth to a skin now less taught over his skeletal head.  He had this shared comrade of a vibe going on and said to me, “It is nice when you get a perk like this in this business”.  You had to be there to understand this odd bit of comradery. 
My girlfriend was free of the burdens that were holding her back. 

Since then I have noticed where this one person’s passing, the reapers associated with this person’s life was gently removing what was holding him back.  I saw my mother in one staging realm.  After awhile she transitioned from this one realm she was at, then to a place where she was separating.  The vision wouldn’t make sense unless you had all these other experiences.  The horror of her neurotic behaviors were manifested, acknowledge, albeit in an emotionally hard way.  I had to show up to be a catalyst for that last bit of transformation.  And finally she had an over-world self that was paying respects to and seeing off one last shell of her former lover who probably had an aspect following me for decades. 

I have found that some aspects of soul are not meant to be reintegrated.  For some people they have to be let go.  I have seen treatable cancers become untreatable.  I have seen the horrors of rape, trauma, war and abuse play this horrible hell on peoples lives and health.  Sometimes, it frees the soul that is the will and glory of an individual held sacredly by a healthy spirit letting the rest go.  I have seen what it does to beings that don’t let it go.  Oft times they manifest into creatures that are denizens of these hells, reflecting these torments, while they lose what is left of what was good.  And when their is nothing left but this unbalanced shell, it only hopes for more unbalanced spiritual drama that people offer.  Reapers for example had a fear and fascination with death.  Definitely not a job I want.  Some people have ancestral realms following their progeny. 

This letting go, is a grief cycle on a spiritual level while people are living and changing through various places in the afterlife. 

To do this you have to love people for who they are, who they are working to become.  As a shaman that means a lot more. 

On a personal note, this lesson applies to life.  I am watching my country tear itself apart.  And it is only in the beginning.  Again I will do whatever is loving, and the rest I am going to have to let go and watch it happen.  I don’t know whether there will be enough country left over to survive and evolve, or it will crumble and be reabsorbed into the world and some new order after all the weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth have finished.  Again, as a person I got to keep my morals and truths and survive.  As a shaman, I need to hold space for those who want to create and hold sacred the idea, that community, that holds each other sacred, to evolve, grow and thrive.  I can only hope I teach some to do it, and hopefully have a group to hold space for a community to grow.  What is wise to keep and what to let go.  That is a balance, and hard work.