Opening to the Precognitive Mind

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"You have the sight now, Neo. You are looking at the world without time."

~ The Oracle in The Matrix Reloaded

There's a very good article on The Huffington Post, about the nature of psychic and precognitive development. Dr. Larry Dossey began having precognitive flashes about his patients, early in his medical career. In his new book, The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives, he lays out documented cases of precognitive experiences and explains how we can all connect to these abilities. As he explains in the Huffington Post article, psychic ability is connected to our spiritual expansion. The more we become aware of our interconnected and our connection to "God," or "all that is," the more psychically open we become. This is something I've been trying to explain to clients and others for years. Psychic abilty isn't some magical ability that some of us have, and others don't. It's our birthright.

Individuals often find that their power of sensing and knowing expands as they mature spiritually. These expanded capacities often involve the capacity to know yet-to-be events that lie in the future, as the unbroken stream of prophets, visionaries, seers, and shamans throughout history attests. A modern analog of this ancient ability to know the future is premonitions, sometimes called intuition, gut feelings, or sixth sense.

Premonitions are often regarded as unrelated to spirituality, but there are profound connections. The most obvious involves love, as in the following example.

. . .

By linking minds across space and time, premonitions reveal the oneness of which these scientists -- and many spiritual traditions -- speak. Premonitions therefore imply that we are not isolated individuals, but beings whose consciousness operates outside the present and beyond our physical body. They suggest that in some sense we are nonlocal or infinite in space in time. When we deeply sense this, we may become "transparent to the transcendent," as mythologist Joseph Campbell put it.

Through love, premonitions link human beings across space and time. There is no more fundamental aspect of spirituality than love. Premonitions are a window through which we glimpse our connection not only with one another, but with the Infinite as well.

"I wanna tell you a little secret, being the one is just like being in love. No one needs to tell you you are in love. You just know it, through and through; balls to bones."

~ The Oracle from The Matrix

Frequent Churchgoers Pro-Torture

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A while ago I asked if we need God to moral. Perhaps a more appropriate question would be, does religion make us immoral? I have to ask, in light of this Pew poll, which found that very observant Christians are more likely than their more secular countrymen to support the use of torture. Staunch Catholic Andrew Sullivan bemoans the startling news:

So Christian devotion correlates with approval for absolute evil in America. And people wonder why atheism is gaining in this country. Notice the poll does not even use a euphemism like "coercive interrogation" - forcing Allahpundit to substitute it. (Even HotAir, it seems, finds it difficult to write the sentence: "Evangelicals are more likely to be conservative and conservatives are more likely to support torture.") But it remains a fact that white evangelicals are the most pro-torture of any grouping. Mainline Protestant groups were the most opposed. A mere 20 percent of non-Hispanic Catholics believe that torture is never justified.

He also points out that in another recent poll, Southern Evangelicals turn to expediency over scripture when it comes to questions of torture. Personally, I don't think scripture would help much, as the Bible condones a wide range of violent, even genocidal, behavior against enemies. Still, you'd think a few of our most devout might ask themselves, "Whom would Jesus torture?"

I think the worst news coming out of this poll is that nearly half the country, overall, thinks the use of torture can be often or sometimes justified, with only 25% opposing torture in all circumstances. In addition to exposing flagrant immorality, it points to a disturbing, underlying ignorance. Part of the problem may be the question asked: "Can torture be justified?" The implication is that it may be a necessary evil. What an appalling number of Americans fail to understand, as they struggle with moral implications, is that TORTURE DOES NOT WORK. So the question would be better phrased, can terrorizing and degrading people into false confessions and bad intelligence ever be justified?

This seminal point has been made over and over by military, CIA, and FBI interrogation specialists, to stunningly deaf ears.

In November of 2007, U.S Army Brigadier General Finnegan took time away from his duties as dean of West Point Academy and flew to Southern California to plead with the brain trust behind the Keifer Sutherland vehicle "24," to stop glorifying torture, because it was confusing recruits. He was accompanied by both military and F.B.I. interrogators. Their overall point: While it may make good television, torture is not legal, not moral, and not effective.

Finnegan told the producers that “24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors — cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions [stet] spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, “Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted.” Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: “Whatever it takes.” His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”

. . .

Cochran, who has a law degree, listened politely to the delegation’s complaints. He told me that he supports the use of torture “in narrow circumstances” and believes that it can be justified under the Constitution. “The Doctrine of Necessity says you can occasionally break the law to prevent greater harm,” he said. “I think that could supersede the Convention Against Torture.” (Few legal scholars agree with this argument.) At the meeting, Cochran demanded to know what the interrogators would do if they faced the imminent threat of a nuclear blast in New York City, and had custody of a suspect who knew how to stop it. One interrogator said that he would apply physical coercion only if he received a personal directive from the President. But Navarro, who estimates that he has conducted some twelve thousand interrogations, replied that torture was not an effective response. “These are very determined people, and they won’t turn just because you pull a fingernail out,” he told me. And Finnegan argued that torturing fanatical Islamist terrorists is particularly pointless. “They almost welcome torture,” he said. “They expect it. They want to be martyred.” A ticking time bomb, he pointed out, would make a suspect only more unwilling to talk. “They know if they can simply hold out several hours, all the more glory—the ticking time bomb will go off!”

. . .

“In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence,” [former Army interrogator Tony] Lagouranis told me. “I worked with someone who used waterboarding”—an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. “I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee’s hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened.” Some people, he said, “gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information.” If anything, he said, “physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up.”

Lagouranis also detailed his Iraq war experiences in a book, and numerous media appearances. His life lesson was a hard one. He compromised his moral compass and put himself in legal jeopardy... for nothing.

In some of the discussion I've read of the poll, I think the wrong conclusion has been reached, correlating Christianity with this appalling ethical lapse. The poll, itself, says otherwise. The largest percentage of those opposed to all torture was among mainline Protestants. (31%) The defining factor seemed to be religious fervor, as indicated by church attendance. This, of course, skews the overall result towards Evangelicals, and it is among Christian Evangelicals that torture was indicated to be the most popular. How much of this has to do with Christian teaching and how much to do with the political leanings, is a key question. Personally, I think it may have a good deal to do with an attraction to fundamentalism in authoritiarian personalities, but that's pure conjecture.

Of course, it wouldn't be the first time religious fervor, grafted to imperial aspirations, was fueled by torture and false confessions.

It appears that the Franciscans participated in the witch trials in a supporting or facilitating function by gathering or manufacturing evidence such as for the Logroño witch tribunal (in Euskadi), for which they interrupted their preaching crusade to present a "dressed toad" and pots of "witches' salve" as evidence of witchcraft (Henningson p.345). They were deeply involved in spying out potential witches and reporting them to the authorities. The Franciscans even tortured women extracting false confessions such as the one done by the monk Fray Juan de Ladron. He took part in the witch-hunt in Alava as one of the Inquisition's special emissaries. Three women were reported by him after the priest at Larrea, Martin Lopez de Lazarraga, had tied them by the hands and neck, assisted by de Ladron, who then threatened to take the women to the Logroño showcase witch-trial if they did not confess. They did confess but later told Salazar what happened. Lazarraga had been appointed inquisitorial commissioner and put into the head of one of the women the idea of accusing six uncooperative locals priests of witchcraft. At Logroño many people were tortured into admitting anything the monks told them to say. One of the women, Mariquita de Atauri, felt so bad after denouncing so many innocent people under torture that she drowned herself in the river near her house.

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Because Nature Is Always Smarter

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Add this to the litany of horrors unleashed by Frankenfood giant Monsanto. Genetically modified crops are now besieged by superweeds.

The gospel of high-tech genetically modified (GM) crops is not sounding quite so sweet in the land of the converted. A new pest, the evil pigweed, is hitting headlines and chomping its way across Sun Belt states, threatening to transform cotton and soybean plots into weed battlefields.

In late 2004, “superweeds” that resisted Monsanto’s iconic “Roundup” herbicide, popped up in GM crops in the county of Macon, Georgia. Monsanto, the US multinational biotech corporation, is the world’s leading producer of Roundup, as well as genetically engineered seeds. Company figures show that nine out of 10 US farmers produce Roundup Ready seeds for their soybean crops.

Superweeds have since alarmingly appeared in other parts of Georgia, as well as South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, according to media reports. Roundup contains the active ingredient glyphosate, which is the most used herbicide in the USA.

Yes, just as antibiotics have led to the creation of superbugs, Roundup infused crops are now overrun by herbicide resistant weeds.

In the U.S. alone, glyphosate use jumped by a factor of 15 between 1994 and 2005, CFS claims. And this herbicide gusher has given rise to a host of "superweeds" -- weeds that tolerate heavy doses glyphosate. How do farmers deal with superweeds? By jacking up the dose of glyphosate.

The trend of increased rate of glyphosate use is clear. For soybeans, per-acre applications of Monsanto's herbicide jumped by a factor of 2.5 between 1994 and 2006. Corn farmers didn't really embrace GMOs until 2002; accordingly, between 2002 and 2005, glyphosate use on corn "jumped from 0.71 to 0.96 lbs./acre/year, a hefty 35% increase in just three years."

Farmers of Roundup Ready crops appear to have entered a pesticide treadmill. They have to raise application rates to keep up with resistance; and every time they do, they create hardier and hardier weeds. Monsanto, which expects to rake in $1.4 billion in profit from Roundup sales alone this year, is evidently laughing its way to the bank.

More fun still: They're also producing pesticide resistant bugs. So, we've got that goin' for us. But, Michelle Obama should definitely use pesticides in her organic garden, because not using them makes the nice people at MACA "shudder." Yeah. Nature's scary.

"Cursed (although I curse myself) be the hands that formed you! You have made me wretched beyond expression."

~ from "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley

William Henry on Stargates

This video series was recently posted to YouTube. It's from his Conscious Media Network interview. The original can be found here. There appears to be a variety of problems with YouTube players, right now. This video series can also be found in my playlist, so one way or another, it should be viewable.

John Anthony West Explains Egypt

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I first learned of John Anthony West when I read Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods, many years ago. West's theories on the real age of the Sphinx figure heavily into Hancock's ideas about an antediluvian civilization from which Egypt and Latin America may have inherited much. West originally put forward his ideas about Egypt in Serpent in the Sky; a book designed to introduce the much earlier work of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz. It is a conception of ancient Egypt very different from the that of most Egyptologists. West has devoted years to exploring a symbolic system he thinks is far deeper and richer than is understood by prevailing interpretations.

West's symbolist interpretation of Egypt is graphically depicted in the television series Magical Egypt. Some industrious soul has uploaded the entire series to YouTube and I've been very much enjoying it. I've broken it down into episode by episode playlists, which are posted on my channel. I cannot recommend these enough, so I'm posting them all.

I should say that West's overall interpretation accords with my own experiential sense of the Egyptian mysteries and the past life memories that I can never seem to escape. One of the most intriguing aspects of the shows is in the introduction. Woven into the opening theme music is something that sounds like a strange, unintelligible whisper. It's a little like the din of conversation one might here at a party, except that it's somehow distorted and diffused; a conversation that you can hear, but can't, even though it's going on right over your head. This is the sound of what I call the "whispering room" of the Egyptian exhibit at the Met. In this room, where a number of the mummies are displayed, this strange, barely audible whisper is ever present. I always find it hard to leave that room to look at the rest of the exhibit. I find it, somehow, comforting. I'm not the only person to have heard it there, and I suspect West has heard it as well; probably in Egypt, itself.

Posted below are all the episodes. DVDs of the entire series are also available for purchase in the bookstore.

Battlestar Galactica: The Conclusion (With Spoilers)

“A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.” ~ Simone Weil

The take-away from the "Battlestar Galactica" finale is that technological advancement, at the expense of spirituality, dooms us to an endless cycle of cataclysm and destruction. In looking through the reviews, I see that some don't know quite what to make of that conclusion.

The finale could have been all about failed hopes, dreams, lives. But Moore chose a much sunnier - and arguably more overtly religious - ending. I found that somewhat surprising even though the religious overtones had always been there. Hell, you don't have something called Resurrection without Biblical overtones, much less references to "gods" and a "one true god." These issues were always in play - and "BSG" always got critical credit for tackling them when most writers wouldn't go near it, other than in some darkly metaphorical way. But to have many of the key final twists and explanations come down to what can best be described as divine intervention was, for me, very much unexpected. Stunning, even.

I, myself, was somewhat surprised at how overt the spiritual message was at the end, but for me, the esoteric elements of the show have been among it's most compelling features. My original post on the spiritual and mythical thrust of the show is here.

In the concluding episodes, we saw the introduction of still more spiritual themes, including references to "angels." The possibility that this ties in to "Galactica 1980" is discussed here, and is probably one of those things that will be discussed and debated by fans, for years to come. But, after the last episode, it's clear that for whatever else Starbuck was, her return from the dead was in angelic form. She, indeed, had a "special destiny" and it was to lead the survivors, human and cylon, to the new earth. But, Starbuck was only one of the players who was "dialed in" to a higher plan. Starting with Laura Roslin, whose use of kamala extract allowed her to pierce the veil and tap into the Pythia prophecies, these glimpses of supernatural intervention underscored the narrative, from the outset.

I should note here, because I failed to do so in my original BG entry, that Kamala is a Hindu name and means lotus. (It is also, it would appear, one of the names for the Goddess Laxmi.) The association of the lotus with spiritual enlightenment, and with the god-head itself, appears in many myths; notably Buddhist, Hindu, and Egyptian. I wrote a bit about my own strange journey with the mythical lotus here.

In the final season, the division between the spiritual and purely analytical came into sharp relief. The show's lone atheist, Cavil, is revealed to be hostile, not only to humans, but to his own humanoid form. Cavil: The name means "to quibble." But, it derives from the Latin calvi, which means "deception," as in "calumny." I would not be surprised if it is this darker aspect that the writers were alluding to, with the name. Dean Stockwell has done some of the finest work of his career in "Battlestar Galactica." Cavil is a perfectly drawn character; his rage cool, measured, and methodical. Only in flickers do we see the petulant, disappointed child, driven by hatred for the mommy who has doomed him to a life he thinks imperfect and foolish. In the brilliant "No Exit," (Season 4, Epicode 15) he confronts Ellen, fifth cylon and progenitor of the seven cylon models with his contempt for her effort to build bridges between humans and machines. In this final season he emerges as a bitter saboteur, whose disdain for the all things human -- emotion, irrationality, spirituality -- is a key motivation.

In the climax of the final episode, we see these two operating principles collide when Gaius Baltar and Caprica Six find themselves in the opera house, and the final five above them, just as they were in the dream they have shared with Laura Roslin and Athena, repeatedly. There, the final battle over Hera plays out on what is actually the CIC of Galactica. Baltar, who the New York Times aptly compares to none other than Joseph Smith, pleads the case for a broader spiritual vision, to a recalcitrant Cavil.

“Whether we want to call that God or Gods or some sublime inspiration or a divine force that we can’t know or understand doesn’t matter,” he says. “God is a force of nature beyond good and evil.”

And so, this mysterious force that has revealed glimpses of its divine workings in sacred scrolls, dreams, visions, hallucinations, and the from-the-gut decisions of inspired leaders, takes them to their conclusion and new beginning. The show leaves us with no question that neither spirituality, nor pragmatic science is enough. The duality represented by cylon and human forms, and merged in their hope for the future, Hera, is the necessary balance to break the cycle of destruction that has typified human history as we know it... and as we may not.

Graham Hancock Discusses Supernatural

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I've put together playlists of several interviews with Graham Hancock about his book Supernatural. All threee interviews are excellent and informative. In them, he shares his experiences with the use of ayahuasca and other psychotropes, under the care of traditional shamans and other healers. He also explains his belief that shamanic, altered consciousness experiences underpin all the world's great religions and advocates that individuals have the freedom and encouragement to experience the boundaries of consciousness and explore the spirit world for ourselves.







The final interview with Conscious Media Network is also available for viewing in their free archive. It's the shortest of the interviews at just under a half hour.

The Great Ennui Continues

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Karen Bishop posted this on Thursday. You'll note, I've only just now gotten 'round to posting any mention. That sums it up fairly well. Yawn. I don't care about anything.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, we are starting over. After enough souls residing in the lower dimensional old world, had been given enough time and opportunity to choose if they would stay behind or move on to their newer and higher vibrating reality of the next step for the whole, many of us then left for the next rung of our very new reality. When we left, we may have felt a great completion, a sense of loss of identity and purpose, and perhaps great feelings of no sense of place. We were done with a very important phase, and because this phase was completed by enough of the whole, we were most certainly done with a very important mission. This was a huge completion. Because we are very done, we are now readying to start over…to experience a grand rebirth, and some very new beginnings.

. . .

Moving into a higher vibrating reality creates common themes that are always present. Some include: A very low tolerance for lower vibrating energies and ways of being, great loneliness, memory loss, a strong feeling of no sense of place, a great dis-connect from much of everything, extreme fatigue and feelings of not wanting to do anything but rest, apathy, sleepiness, mood swings, great joy, peace, a deeper connection to Source and our souls, greater feelings of love, and a very strong awareness of what is around us.

Bishop's last couple of posts have been dead-on accurate for me. All I want to do is rest and I don't feel well rested or relaxed no matter what I do. I feel thoroughly exhausted. (Note to self: I keep meaning to burn to some benzoin, for psychic and emotional exhaustion, but I keep forgetting. Probably because I'm exhausted.) All I want to do is sleep, read, and watch movies. Most of today, you'll find me on the comfy couch with my daughter watching the Harry Potter marathon on ABC Family. The commercials will drive me bonkers, but, eh, what are ya gonna do. The remote is way over there.

Oh, here's a thing. Is anyone else having problems with electrical things: power fluctuations, batteries and other power sources becoming erratic, bulbs burning out like mad, electronics breaking or malfunctioning... I am. I'm also having some very strange energy surges in my body, and I don't think the two things are unrelated. Over the past couple of weeks, I keep fluctuating between being exhausted, but unable to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, and then days when I'm practically narcoleptic.

Battlestar Galactica: Where Are We Headed?

Mike Ragogna is freaking out.

Alright, Battlestar Galactica, I can't take it anymore. So what if you are the best-executed, brightest star of all of televised sci-fi, and smarter than practically every show on television including Heroes, Lost, and 24. I can't deal with another sleepless "OMG, Adama's dead!" night, nor an "is Starbuck a cylon?" thought popping up in the middle of a job interview.

Mostly, like many of us, he's freaking out because the most brilliant show on television -- a show that doesn't even belong in the same paragraph with 24 [ahem] -- is coming to a close. The final episodes we've seen so far have been brilliant and I am optimistic that the show will go out in a manner that fulfills its promise.

Ragogna's blog on this is worth reading, not just because the fan girl in me bows to the fan boy in him, but because he presents a really credible explanation for how the new series may tie directly into the original, all be it, awful show. Not having watched much of the original or Galactica 1980, I can't speak to the accuracy of his recollection. But, as presented, it makes perfect sense. A warning: If you are not up to date on the series, so far, do NOT read this. Massive spoiler alert. But, if you're looking for a very interesting hypothesis about where we're headed, check it out.

A reminder: If you're unfamiliar with my reasons for just drooling over this show, it is all explained here.

Syriac Bible?

A possibly valuable Bible manuscript was retrieved from smugglers in Cyprus. It's age an authenticity remain questionable.

Authorities in northern Cyprus believe they have found an ancient version of the Bible written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus.

. . .

Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic - the native language of Jesus - once spoken across much of the Middle East and Central Asia. It is used wherever there are Syrian Christians and still survives in the Syrian Orthodox Church in India.

Aramaic is still used in religious rituals of Maronite Christians in Cyprus.

"One very likely source (of the manuscript) could be the Tur-Abdin area of Turkey, where there is still a Syriac speaking community," Charlotte Roueche, Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College London told Reuters.

Well... This Might Explain a Few Things

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The newest Karen Bishop WINGS update is posted and, um... yeah. Actually, the selected text from the email alert nailed it down for me. It comes from The Ascension Companion.

APATHY

I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S wrong with me these days. I just don't seem to care about much of anything anymore." "I seem to have lost all interest in becoming involved with the things that I used to." "I don't care what happens." If you have had any of these thoughts or feelings lately, know that they are a regular part of the ascension process and have a perfect and distinct purpose.

At times, we may feel as though we are going along, "acting" our way through our daily lives. We are simply not present, as our lives do not have the meaning that they used to. We don't seem to be in alignment with what we had created in the past. And in addition, becoming exhausted through all the trials and tribulations that ascension can bring, can make one very apathetic. We are just too darned tired to become involved with or care about much of anything. "Let the chips fall where they may," becomes our general course of action (or in-action!). "I no longer have the desire to stay on top of things."

But apathy has a gold nugget within it. Being apathetic actually places us in a higher vibrating space. It supports our continual process of letting go of attachments. When we no longer care about much of anything, we then become unentwined with much. We are then left in a space of "no space, and this is the space of the higher realms. We are then much more in the moment. When we do not care about much, we are not filling our thoughts and emotions with things that are not really "real." And we are much more out of the way.

In the new WINGS posting, she goes on to explain the current phenomenon.

Our current themes? Manifesting what we may have always wanted, finding ourselves feeling as if we have no purpose, desire, or interest in anything, feeling completely alone with absolutely no connections, anger and resentment at the past, stuck in old relationships, being extremely busy wrapping up so we can move forward, setting things up for the new, or feelings of bliss, excitement and having the beginning experiences of new connections and an amazing new beginning of freedom and joy.

What an interesting hodge podge of manifestations, but they all make sense if we know what is transpiring with our evolutionary process.

When we complete important phases of our spiritual evolutionary journey, we go to a new space. Thus, when we are “done,” we find ourselves in a space of re-booting or feeling empty and apathetic about much. Nothing excites us anymore, we may feel useless, lethargic, empty, perhaps assuming we are depressed, and our joyous states of excitement and high energy may be completely gone. This state of being is an indicator that we have completed a very important phase within ourselves and with the planet. It is very common for ascension.