Video – After more than two years of false reports and disinformation regarding HAARP shutdown, including false stories spread by the amateur radio league and online stories about the HAARP IRI (ionospheric research instrument) being “torn down” and “abandoned”, HAARP is back in the news.
13th August 2015
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
What skills, qualities and information do we need to live an honourable, healthy and happy life? And of those skills and qualities, which are provided and nurtured through the school system? The answer is almost none of them.
It’s clear that we need to redesign our education model.
It is up to the parents, mentors, peers and other societal influences to fill these gaps, but we all know this doesn’t regularly occur. If the guides and teachers in a child’s life don’t have the knowledge and skills to properly inform and take care of themselves, then how can they be expected to share it with others? They literally can’t. To break this cycle, we need an effective safety net to provide the skills and information that our children need to develop into awakened, functional and well-rounded adults, not just well-behaved employees of “The System”.
The education system in western society is not geared towards providing what’s best for each child. Primarily it is designed to produce citizens who contribute to, and consume from, the interdependent global economy. It’s like a factory assembly line; it helps us find which mundane 9-5 job we are best “suited” to, as we grow into stressed out and discontented adults.
It is in this sense that we are indoctrinated through our schooling to uncritically accept the socio-economic system that we are born into, regardless if it means ill-health and discontentment for the individual, and even our society as a whole. The model is simply attempting to shape new generations of children into conforming to the old ways, without recognizing the uniqueness of each child — or that we are undertaking a huge paradigm shift into a new era of human consciousness.
However, it’s not just the systemic box that we’re squashing out children into; our kids are being lied to in many ways. There is also little focus on real education, such as equipping them with the creative, personal, emotional, social and other life skills to properly survive and thrive in today’s challenging society. For example, emotional and social skills are a “different way of being smart” and are extremely important for kids to learn at a young age, so why aren’t they a primary focus? It just doesn’t make sense. Instead, our kids are being medicated with antipsychotics at alarming rates, mostly because their behaviours don’t fit the mould we’re forcing them into. Adding to this problem, up to 40 percent of U.S. schools are now cutting back on recess — the time when children get to go outside and be children!
It all seems too crazy to be true, yet there are some regions and countries doing something about this mess. For example, meditation has been introduced into some schools, having a remarkable impact on the learning and social development of students. In addition, countries like Finland have taken an entirely different approach to educating their kids, proving that less is more.
Ultimately, there are positive changes happening and even though they might not yet be perfected, they’re still not being taken seriously by political and community change agents. Given that our society is evolving on so many levels, we need an education system to reflect those changes; particularly as technological automation is also expected to eliminate many manual jobs from the workforce in the near future.
An interview with Will Stanton
Will is a young Australian writer, researcher, activist and teacher who has worked in a number of primary schools, including a government school in Kathmandu, Nepal. His book, Education Revolution, exposes the challenges and shortfalls of the current system from an insider perspective, and proposes an entirely new model of education; one that frees children from indoctrination and nurtures their innate potential as unique, loving and creative human beings.
In the following interview, Will explores the Six Dimension model he created for a new educational paradigm of our future. He believes teachers are the current system’s best asset, but are underpaid and overworked and are generally faced with a restrictive system that inhibits the highest potential being realised by each child, and each teacher. He also discusses the decreasing investment in education by our governments, as well as ways this funding barrier can be transcended — by moving to new ways of organising our society, economically, socially and politically.
Education is much, much more than conventional subjects and the occasional personal education class. Clearly there are valuable skills and information to be taken from the current system we educate our children in, so a proportion of it should be incorporated into the way we move forward. Yet we have to accept the reality; both culturally and politically, our education model is not only failing our kids’ health and wellbeing, it’s also perpetuating a system of social order that is lethal for our collective and planetary future. We cannot continue to train children in the “old ways”, which clearly are not working for our society or our environment.
Many parents are dissatisfied with the current system, which has translated into an increase in home schooling, and even unschooling practices. This is one way in which an individual family can break the grip of an out-of-date and unsophisticated education system and equip their kids with the kind of education they truly need.
Our children are our future; they need to be educated on the toxic realities of our society, to learn not to repeat or conform to the status quo, and to engage in creating the kind of conscious society they deserve. In addition, the philosophical and societal shifts that we are awakening to need to be deeply embedded into the educational structure, so that we can collectively begin to transcend the dysfunction of our world and create a bright future for both our global society and our natural environment.
Please note: This article is part of the ‘Redesigning Society’ interview series, which you can view in full on The Conscious Society YouTube Channel. This series presents a range of expert perspectives on the current state of societal affairs, as well as the collective changes we desperately need both philosophically and practically. Details of upcoming and past guests and topics can be viewed here.
from: http://wakeup-world.com/2015/08/13/after-a-decade-of-education-why-are-our-kids-so-uneducated/
by Zen Gardner
The outdated matrix programming by the engineers of deceit can’t keep up. The vibrational changes are exceeding their capabilities. The imitators of creation can’t maintain a current operating system any longer in the face of this massive Universal shift we’re undergoing.
And it’s driving them nuts.
Just look at the desperation we’re witnessing. Crude military and police state maneuvers are only one aspect, of course working in concert with dastardly economic manipulations and an outlandish propaganda barrage. The biggest clue is seeing the previously incremental and now hyperbolic use of technocratic programs from mass surveillance and data gathering to the advent of cyber warfare and artificial intelligence, while crazed maniacs at CERN try to crack into other dimensions.
The magnitude and desperation of their insane agenda has become completely transparent to just about anyone.
This last techno-based stage is a draconian move to try to delete our innate humanity before our awakening reaches critical mass. They’ve openly admitted this. Hence their attempt to transmute everything from genes and humans to automated monsters and geoengineering. Agreed, when it comes to realizing what’s happening there are the entranced apathetics who swallow anything, but we’re witnessing what’s bound to lead to a total meltdown of their dark designs before our very eyes.
If you can’t see it, look again.
First of all you’re in the wrong mindset if you’re looking only for data or left brained evidence that they are in their death throes, although it’s out there for those who can see. When we come to understand the vibrational workings of our holographic reality everything takes on new dimensions and opens us up to understanding these more esoteric notions.
Those with awakened hearts can feel this. I say hearts because much of what we need to grasp or at least track is intuitive and somewhat metaphysical. Taking all of the information and dot connecting and personal spiritual experience together paints very clear pictures, we just need to trust what we’re seeing and learning. When we explore these realities we’re sensing, we start to notice how they’re manifesting.
Forbidding free speech, shooting civilians with no cause, obviously propagandized news, wars with no possible end, deliberate poisoning, starvation and dumbing down of populations are all completely transparent. Add these next levels of technotronic and genetic morphings and the picture is as plain as day.
They’re as obvious as the desperate, flailing, and dying aberrant parasitical species that they are.
It’s kind of a conscious or spiritual symbiosis we’re experiencing as our awakening dissolves their machinations. They all work together. But ignoring the spiritual and metaphysical as “evidence” in conjunction with such obvious manifestations is why this world has devolved into its current state. Previous enlightened civilizations and earth connected tribes took this type of understanding to heart. Our current imposed paradigm does nothing of the sort.
Of course, because it only exposes their perfidy.
Their programs can’t keep up with the changes the cosmos is bringing to our planet and race. The perfect metaphor. While they’ve literally gotten away with murder for millennia and are working furiously to enforce their “programs” at so many levels, the time’s up. We have news for you boys, you’ve been superceded, or should I say “super seeded”. The new upgraded paradigm is taking over one awakened light infused body at a time. It’s just a matter of time before your whole wicked system crashes.
The shift is moving through their lower level grip and on into massive human empowerment and transcension beyond the net they’ve laid for humanity.
It’s got to be frustrating the hell out of these creeps. Imagine, the very thing you’re trying to encase in every way possible keeps morphing before your eyes and slipping through the grate. They can throw up matrix program after program but their perceived petri dish subjects just keep finding ways to survive and grow beyond their control or even imagination. What irony the Universe has.
But again, this reality is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps it’s those who grasp this that transcend. Something to think about.
Humanity is getting out of hand, in their eyes. All the while we’re being empowered not only by our own awakening and resultant commitment to truth, but also by a fundamental vibrational shift we’re undergoing. No savior, no galactic battlestars. It’s us, and an organic consciousness evolution at the deepest level with a living, expanding and all enveloping Universe.
We’re awakening with Creation Itself.
Anyone who’s woken up to almost any degree understands everything is interconnected. Even “modern” physics is arriving at this reality, all while mainstream thinking ignores the profound ramifications of such a liberating concept. That we’re all interconnected not just as a race, but with the earth and the cosmos in such a fundamental way is a game changer. While this has been known for eons and is now finally being identified, our current control model cannot even begin to acknowledge this fact. To these oligarchs and self-appointed maniacal masterminds, no matter what powers they’re summoning, that truth is something apparently well beyond their debased comprehension.
It’s out of their league.
Sure, they have their satanic rituals and tap into other dimensional powers and entities, but it’s child’s play compared to the True picture of our all Powerful Creative Universe. That they live in rebellion against this Force is a known reality for millennia, and even alluded to by spiritual traditions and native shamanic teachings alike for ages. Bringing this understanding “down to earth” is another story.
This is why genetic engineering and the transhumanism agenda is so important to them. This attempt to fundamentally change human nature and the merging of man with machine has been in the works for a long time. Clipping the link with our humanity by short circuiting the human creation is an obvious next step for these would-be controllers. Agreed, they’ve made it a fad and carefully groomed acceptance of such a trend, but it’s going to fritz and die in the junkyard of temporal existence. It can’t stand, never mind last, in such a creative force field.
Time will bear this out, as has happened to previous off-course civilizations.
It’s up to us. We have everything going for us but our will and actions need to be aligned with this transition. We can ignore it or respond. The sanctity of our free will cannot be violated. Either we fully awaken and get paddling and ride the wave or it crashes on us and perhaps dissipates on the shores of time for lack of recognition or response. And the whole cycle may need to be repeated. Not a nice destiny.
I don’t know.
I know I’m not coming back. I’m pretty sure I’m done with this insanity while doing my damnedest to change things this time around. If enough of us did it won’t get repeated, but time will tell. Not many seem to be willing to respond, even though their lives and their children and grandchildren’s lives are at stake as well as the future of humanity. Talk about self imposed defeat and debilitation.
But people are waking up.
Either way, the matrix will collapse over time. We have an opportunity to make it this round. Let’s take it. The true civilization of love, peace, harmony and abundance awaits manifesting.
Is it time?
I think so. It is for me.
How about you?
Love, Zen
from: http://www.zengardner.com/crashing-matrix-last-ditch-trans-everything-agenda/
The Stunning Intelligence of Crows and Magpies
Reprinted with permission by earthfireinstitute.org
Something made me look outside my office window… An intensity of energy? An unusual movement caught my eye. Loki the fox was crouched in his enclosure looking very excited and very predatory. Above him a panicked bird was flying circles, panting, terrified of stopping for a moment. I rushed out. At any moment Loki could leap and vitality would become a pile of lifeless black and white feathers. The moment I opened the door to Loki’s enclosure a crack the magpie shot out, directly over my head, faster than I could believe. He had seen the possibility of freedom and made an instantaneous calculation that the fox was a greater danger than the human. End result: Well-entertained fox; safe and wiser bird.
Looking out the window over my computer, I almost always see one or more of the handsome black and white birds flitting, hopping, perching or observing. I see them every day. All over the property they are squawking, stealing, plotting, complaining, playing, inventing, and generally declaring their presence and vivid life-force. But because I see them every day, I fall prey to that common human quality of taking them for granted, barely noticing them. If I even give them that much recognition. As I walk to my writing cabin absorbed in human thoughts, I am ignoring their busy lives as they flit all around me going about their magpie business. How could this happen? It is a function of the human brain to adjust and accept and then not really see any more. When we are children everything is full of wonder, but there is no reason we can’t keep that alive. We just have to work at it a bit. Familiar, does not mean ordinary. And I forgot that.
I “knew” that the crows and magpies we see all around us are smart, but that’s as far as my awareness went. I had to go to halfway around the world to India to get a new appreciation for them—specifically to an international conference on animals held in New Delhi this past month. One of the presentations was on the intelligence of the corvid family, which includes crows and magpies. Dr. Auguste von Bayern, a researcher with impeccable credentials from top animal behavior institutes, flew in just for a day, driven by her discoveries to help change the perceptions of these maligned birds.
She presented evidence showing that their brain size in relation to body mass is equal to that of great apes and dolphins, and only slightly lower than humans. And that it is not just their brain size, but cognitive abilities as well, that are on par with those of the great apes. In fact they are considered by some researchers to be among the most intelligent of all animals.
How can that be? Aren’t mammals the most highly evolved, most intelligent creatures on the planet? We used to say “birdbrain” because we measured the brains of birds using ours as reference point. But our human-oriented perspective led us astray. The sharp intelligence of corvids arises despite the fact that their brains are built in a way that is fundamentally different from those of mammals. Corvids use a portion of their brain that has no direct counterpart to humans, parts that we discounted because they didn’t fit the location of intelligence in the human brain. Apparently acute intelligences have evolved more then once, in different ways.
Thinking Birds
Evidence of the intelligence of crows, magpies and other members of the corvid family are plentiful. Corvids have been recorded to recall their food’s hiding place up to nine months later. The Clark’s nutcracker, a type of North American crow, collects up to 30,000 pine seeds over three weeks in November, then carefully buries them for safekeeping over an area of 200 square miles. Over the next eight months, it succeeds in retrieving over 90 percent of them, even when they are covered in feet of snow. Brain power.
Urban-living crows have learned to use road traffic for cracking tough nuts. On a university campus in Japan, crows and humans line up patiently, waiting for the traffic to halt. When the lights change, the birds hop in front of the cars and place walnuts, which they picked from the adjoining trees, on the road. After the lights turn green again, the birds fly away and vehicles drive over the nuts, cracking them open. The birds wait patiently with human pedestrians for a red light before retrieving their prize. If the cars miss the nuts, the birds sometimes hop back and put them somewhere else on the road. Or they sit on electricity wires and drop them in front of vehicles. (From the BBC series “The Life of Birds”.) Crows have shown remarkable innovative tool-making abilities even beyond those of chimpanzees.
Members of the corvid family have been known to watch other birds, observe where the other birds hide their food, and steal it once the owner leaves. They also move their food around between hiding places to avoid thievery, but only if they have previously been thieves themselves. Cache robbing is common. Knowing the character of their compatriots (through their own mischievous efforts), a magpie often makes several false caches before making a real one. They use their own experience of having been a thief to predict the behavior of a pilferer, and can determine the safest course to protect their caches from being pilfered.
What the above examples show is that these birds are thinking. That is one of the things that’s so interesting. They demonstrate many of the intellectual abilities we associate with human thinking but without language This suggests that many of our intellectual abilities which we assumed we need language for, we don’t. That opens a window into understanding our own thinking in a different way.
Social Birds
Corvids are also intensely social birds with a strong sense of community. They send out sentinels so the others can eat without worrying about predators. They provide mutual aid. A group of crows in England took turns lifting garbage bin lids while their companions collected food, showing a capacity for teamwork. The bond between the male and female is extremely strong and often lifelong. They build nests together, and the male will feed the female as she sits patiently on her precious eggs. Both parents look after the chicks. Young corvids play elaborate social games similar to “king of the mountain” and “follow the leader;” they manipulate, pass, and balance sticks, and show what certainly looks like joy as they slide down smooth surfaces, climb or fly back up, and do it again. And again. They have a sense of self, recognizing themselves in a mirror. They have been reported to recognize each other as individuals; call one another by “name.” The black-billed magpie, the ones outside my window, have been seen to hold a “funeral.” When one magpie discovers a dead one, it begins calling loudly to attract other magpies. The gathering of loudly calling magpies (up to 40 birds have been observed) may last for 10 to 15 minutes before the birds fly off silently.
I see these raucous, chattering, vibrant, brassy birds very differently now, these direct descendants of dinosaurs. As a result my world is richer and more colorful. Not only are they definitely extroverted, opinionated beings, but once you tune in you sense an awareness, an alertness, an intelligence. It reminds me that we are surrounded by the many intelligences of other beings. That gives a wonderful sense of companionship.
You would think, living with bears and wolves and many other animals, that the appreciation I developed would carry over to all species. But in my busyness running an organization, which involves human-centered and human-created necessities such as fundraising, insurance, and staffing, I got lost in my own head. I just pretty much ignored magpies and the great vitality they add to the land. It is a constant learning to be ever more open to what is around us and not get lost in our own busyness. It so impoverishes us. I wonder how we can help each other enter into, or stay, in the mode of broader awareness. I will work on that but would welcome your thoughts. Maybe I will try to concentrate for one week on each life form around me – birds, mammals, trees, plants. That promises a lifetime of learning, increasing awareness and companionship.
PS – About that magpie who almost got caught… how come, if they are so smart? They are birds of great appetites as well as great intelligence, and I suspect greed got the better of him. Apparently it is possible to be greedy as well as intelligent…
from: http://spiritofmaat.com/magazine/august-2015-rediscovering-passion-and-desire/our-animal-friends/
THE SUNSPOT THAT WON’T EXPLODE: Measuring more than 150,000 km wide, sunspot AR2396 is one of the biggest sunspots of the current solar cycle. For the past week it has crossed the solar disk apparently poised to explode. Yet it has not. “It is a sleeping giant,” says Sergio Castillo, who photographed the behemoth from his backyard observatory in Corona, CA:
“AR2396 is huge, but dormant,” says Castillo. “There are very few flares erupting out of it.”
Castillo took the picture using a “Calcium K” filter tuned to the light of ionized calcium atoms in the sun’s lower atmosphere. Calcium K filters highlight the bright magnetic froth that sometimes forms around a sunspot’s dark core. AR2396 is very frothy, indeed.
Magnetic froth, however, does not herald an explosion. It merely means that the sunspot is photogenic.
from: spaceweather.com
EARTH IS CROSSING TWO COMET DEBRIS STREAMS: The Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) is scanning the skies above North America for echoes from disintegrating meteoroids. There are plenty of echoes to detect. The latest CMOR sky map shows two active radiants in the night sky–one associated with the Perseid meteor shower (PER) and another with the Southern Delta Aquarids (SDA):
Perseids come from 109P/Swift-Tuttle, a large comet with a rich debris stream. The shower is expected to peak this year on August 12-13 with as many as 100+ meteors per hour. Of all the meteor showers of the year, the Perseids produce the most fireballs.
While we are waiting for the Perseids to peak, the Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower is making its own contribution. Caused by debris from an ancient sungrazing comet, this shower produces 10 to 20 meteors per hour every year in late July and early August.
Earth’s simultaneous interaction with these two debris streams should keep the meteor rate elevated for the entire week ahead. Be alert for flashes of light in the night sky
from: spaceweather.com
Conner Habib’s series The Sex Radicals will be appearing regularly this summer on Reality Sandwich.
“Civilization has not yet begun.” –Wilhelm Reich (1897 – 1957)
To view sexologist and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich as our culture views him, move through his life backwards. When he’s remembered today, he’s summed up and dismissed by his sad ending. He’s thought of mostly as a madman, dying alone in prison, a fraud, discredited by the government.
To view his life as one of his supporters, move through it from the beginning of his career to the end; he worked tirelessly to help others, and was eventually driven mad by the mad world he lived in.
To really understand Reich, the narrative shouldn’t be backwards/forwards. We should look instead at his ideas — whether they are true or false — and the possibilities they create for us. Instead of taking a linear approach, we can take a sexual one. Pain and pleasure intertwined. Thought and action. Tension and release. View Wilhelm Reich as a paradox: a man who revealed a new, loving world to us in an angry language we still can’t understand, a man whose work was officially dismissed as ludicrous but also taken seriously enough to merit governmental seizure and destruction when all his journals, books, and papers were burned by the FDA.
Here’s a lengthy quote from Reich’s book, The Murder of Christ: The Emotional Plague of Mankind, which, complete with shouting capital letters, shows him in all his glory: a profoundly clear thinker, ranting in a crazy tone, shocking us with truth and confusion all at once.
“It IS possible to get out of a trap. However, in order to break out of a prison, one first must confess to being in a prison. The trap is man’s emotional structure, his character structure. There is little use in devising systems of thought about the nature of the trap if the only thing to do in order to get out of the trap is to know the trap and to find the exit. Everything else is utterly useless…
The first thing to do is to find the exit out of the trap.
The nature of the trap has no interest whatsoever beyond this one crucial point: WHERE IS THE EXIT OUT OF THE TRAP?
One can decorate a trap to make life more comfortable in it.
This is done by the Michelangelos and the Shakespeares and the Goethes. One can invent makeshift contraptions to secure longer life in the trap. This is done by the great scientists and physicians, the Meyers and the Pasteurs and the Flemings. One can devise great art in healing broken bones when one falls into the trap.
The crucial point still is and remains: to find the exit out of the trap…
The exit remains hidden. It is the greatest riddle of all. The most ridiculous as well as tragic thing is this:
THE EXIT IS CLEARLY VISIBLE TO ALL TRAPPED IN THE HOLE. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO SEE IT. EVERYBODY KNOWS WHERE THE EXIT IS. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO MAKE A MOVE TOWARD IT. MORE: WHOEVER MOVES TOWARD THE EXIT, OR WHOEVER POINTS TOWARD IT IS DECLARED CRAZY OR A CRIMINAL OR A SINNER TO BURN IN HELL.
It turns out that the trouble is not with the trap or even with finding the exit. The trouble is WITHIN THE TRAPPED ONES.
All this is, seen from outside the trap, incomprehensible to a simple mind. It is even somehow insane. Why don’t they see and move toward the clearly visible exit? As soon as they get close to the exit they start screaming and run away from it. As soon as anyone among them tries to get out, they kill him. Only a very few slip out of the trap in the dark night when everybody is asleep.”
Reich was an Austrian-born student of Sigmund Freud’s; he was a promising figure in psychoanalysis who eventually departed from the circles that praised him. Contrary to the common condemnation of psychoanalysis for its preoccupation with sex, Reich’s idea was that it didn’t focus on sex enough.
For Reich sex was it.
He allowed the mysteries of sexuality and sexual drives to lead him to a deep and frantic understanding of our culture. It’s an understanding that shakes you away as you follow, and I can’t claim to understand it fully. To read Reich is to allow yourself to live in inspiration rather than total clarity. So here are four of his basic concepts, which intertwine and grow out of one another:
Character analysis, character armor, orgastic potency, and orgone energy.
With his concept of character analysis, Reich worked to examine what people’s resistances to health and happiness were. Why were they avoiding wholeness and integration? How did they excuse themselves into surviving — knowingly or unknowingly — in suffering? Unlike analysts before him, Reich sought to be more precise and less moralizing. What are the moments of your life, he wanted to know, that have led to your characteristic defensive behaviors? We have a torrent of emotions within us awaiting expression, we are shamed into silence by our families, our cultures, our partners. The chilling effect of these outside forces turns our emotions into “frozen history.”
If this aspect of character analysis seems common, Reich’s theory of character armor and the corresponding concept of orgastic potency are still waiting to be embraced. Character armor was premised on the idea that the body is a sort of material reflection of the emotional state. Or to use Simone de Beauvoir’s words, “The body isn’t a thing, it’s a situation; it’s our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project.” Whenever we have a defensive emotional gesture, it becomes bound up in our situations, our projects, our bodies, stuck like a choke. For instance, people with anxiety issues often have shallow breathing patterns or tense jaws. These knots in the body stop energetic flow and cause all sorts of health and mood problems that might seem unrelated to the initial characteristic defense.
If you’re flinching at the word “energetic,” you’ll want to know that Reich tried to flesh out what that meant. As with much of his work, he both succeeded and failed. His concept of “energy” was sexual energy, a refined version of the psychoanalytic idea of “libido.” He believed sexual excitation underlies many of our motivations, but also that it is a continuation of the creation of life itself. The same exuberant force that leads to life is what makes us happy and healthy. Sex creates us, and our lives and motivations are living praise of that creative act; our painful behavior is a contracted, angry refusal to acknowledge our sexual being-ness.
Reich understood culture as a giant sexual expression gagging on tangles of repression. The stored up sexual energy and frustration of a culture becomes oppressive. The Nazis (whom Reich later fled), for example, opposed birth control, abortion, contraception, and homosexuality. They were totally sexually repressed. One of Reich’s revolutionary stances was to support sexual freedom, even if he was against a particular sexual practice. It was a typically Reichian paradox. For instance, he wasn’t thoughtful enough to allow homosexuality to be “healthy,” but he did fight against anti-gay stigmatization and legislation.
The taboo, he knew, was always more dangerous than the act.
Modern-day Reichians have carried on his work to explain how cultures co-create our character armor. Class and gender inequality as well as adverse environmental conditions create a positive feedback loop. Sexual repression occurs as a result of poverty, which creates armored behavior, which creates more repression, and so on. And certain environmental factors echo familial ones. “…the emotional responses of a child to famine and starvation are similar to those stemming from maternal rejection or isolation — rearing factors which are known to have powerful disturbing effects upon later adult behavior,” writes neo-Reichian researcher James Dameo.
Reich was invested in individual responsibility, but was also a true pioneer in pointing out that it’s not you that’s fucked up, it’s culture.
Individuals are not merely selves — they are conglomerates of cultural pulses and counterpulses. Or, as biologist and symbiosis expert Lynn Margulis once put it, “Identity is not an object; it is a process with addresses for all the different directions and dimensions in which it moves…”
How to dissolve the character armor? Sex.
To free up sexual excitation and dissolve character armor, one must be able to immerse him/herself in sex, and to have a liberating orgasm. The orgasm was of primary importance to Reich, and “orgastic potency” was how fully you experienced it. The orgasm was the event of release; all the stored up excitation left the body, resulting in total relaxation and harmony. In essence, orgastic potency measures a person’s ability to surrender, relax, and release neuroses and psychoses.
Before we start shooting our celebratory confetti into the air, Reich was specific about the sorts of orgasm you could have. Not all orgasms were equal. You had to be thoughtful about your total immersion. People who weren’t, as well as people who were merely intelligent about sex without really engaging in deep thought or practice of it, were, for Wilhelm Reich, merely sexually sophisticated rather than sexually liberated. It’s a dichotomy that should haunt every sex-positive person to the core until they come to terms with it. That doesn’t mean accepting Reich’s terms for who is sophisticated versus liberated; take those or leave them. But it’s true that standard cultural sex education and good feelings about sex aren’t what separate the sex radicals from the openly horny. Sexual liberation of ourselves and culture is a deep and unending work.
Reich developed a few methods to release stuck energy and increase orgastic potency. Most prominent was vegetotherapy. A patient lies on a table and breathes deeply and rhythmically to build up excitation and heighten emotion. The Reichian therapist sits close by, speaking gently. Relax, relax, release your muscles. Often, a scream or a flood of tears erupts from the patient.
Many popular forms of alternative medicine, such as the Alexander Technique, bioenergetics, and Rolfing are new versions of vegetotherapy, seeking to thaw frozen histories. But if these techniques are known, their ties to Reich are often secret, severed, or ignored.
Then Reich discovered cosmic energy. And that’s when the feds came.
Reich’s idea of libidinous sexual energy began to morph, through the lens of his theories and studies, into a stranger principle of “orgone” energy. Orgone energy was “a subtle biophysical energy which permeates all living things.” For Reich, orgone was the truth behind what people called God, a scientific principle to explain away mysticism. It was free-flowing and, because it was free, it could be used to help people undo character armor. To this end, he created orgone “accumulators,” which would gather the energy and allow people who sat inside the boxes to absorb the benefits. He also turned his accumulator inside out into a “cloudbuster,” a sort of rainmaking device which helped disperse atmospheric orgone energy knots.
People were sick. Culture was sick. Even the sky was sick. At the center, Wilhelm Reich was trying to heal everyone. In the process, he absorbed their illnesses.
Most of Reich’s later work revolved around orgone energy, and much of it yielded provocative data. But Reich’s theories were too intangible and unintelligible. Orgone energy was never clearly defined enough to communicate his research to many others, and unfortunately, Reich would publicly vent the frustration of being misunderstood again and again, isolating potential allies. When Albert Einstein visited Reich, for example, and stood in an accumulator, he noted that there was a temperature change in the box, but believed it could have been just a run-of-the-mill temperature gradient. Many others had experienced this temperature change (including in boxes other than the ones Reich made and ones manufactured today), and Reich created controls against such normal gradients. But rather than absorb Einstein’s report as data, he repeatedly wrote to Einstein pressuring him to reassess his position. When Einstein didn’t respond, Reich called it a conspiracy and published a book about it.
Reich wanted to help free us from a history of repressions, and by helping us, finally begin civilization. But what gets frozen in a man who tries to unfreeze history, and fails?
We can still take up his lesson: Sex runs through culture like a hidden line of power, and where we don’t release it, where we don’t help each other come to our senses, we hurt ourselves and everyone else.
However we look at the paradoxical figure of Wilhelm Reich, we’re unsettled.
Maybe Reich was so crazy that he created an entire theoretical world out of himself, a world now available to us for to think about, mull over, fear, delight in. Or maybe he was so sane that he showed us we’re all crazy.
Kate Bush’s song, “Cloudbusting,” calls up Reich’s final days, from the viewpoint of his son.
On top of the world
Looking over the edge
You could see them coming
You looked too small
In their big black car
To be a threat to the men in power
Reich was a powerless threat to everyone in power.
He’s still a threat. The more we forget him, the more potent discovering him again becomes.
from; http://realitysandwich.com/318033/stripping-off-our-armor-the-accumulating-paradoxical-power-of-wilhelm-reich/
The prints on these T-shirts certainly jump out at you.
The eye-catching tops feature extreme close-up shots of animal faces in 3D.
Fans can adorn their chests with a whole host of creatures’ faces; from docile dogs to snarling bears and even a hairless cat.
3D: The eye-catching T-shirts feature close-up headshots of animals – including this one of a chocolate labrador
The designers behind the quirky T-shirts began with dog prints, but branched out to other animals when the 3D shirts caught on.
Michael McGloin, from New Hampshire company The Mountain, said: ‘A light bulb just went off and I realized this is what we had to do.’
Mr McGloin said the New Hampshire firm’s tops had become a phenomenon.
‘We needed to be the only player in the dog themed T-shirt market. Covering all of the top breeds to start with and then eventually moving onto all animals.’
Creepy: The hairless cat on this T-shirt features one of the more menacing glares in the collection
Cheeky: The whiskered black and white face of a raccoon stares from this 3D T-shirt
Bear-ly dressed: A snarling bear shows off its fangs on the front of this top from the U.S. based T-shirt company
Quirky: Anyone wearing this 3D walrus T-shirt would be sure to attract a second glance
Cute: The realistic printed shirts, including this one featuring a panda, are designed by New Hampshire firm The Mountain
Docile: One of the friendlier looking faces in the T-shirt range; a black and white border collie
Canine clothing: Dogs feature heavily in the T-shirt range, with this beagle print likely to prove popular
Solemn stare: Michael McGloin, from the U.S. firm behind the T-shirts, said the prints had become a phenomenon
Bird’s eye view: One of the popular T-shirts features a close-up of an owl in 3D
Playful: An adorable bichon frise is one of many breeds of dog to adorn one of the 3D tops
Curious: This T-shirt is emblazoned with the face of a quizzical looking giraffe in 3D
Craze: The nose and paws of this hamster almost appear to protrude from the front of the T-shirt
Lightbulb moment: The Mountain, which is behind prints including this 3D wasp face, wanted to be the ‘only player’ in the animal-themed T-shirt market
Ferret-face: The strange tops feature an array of animals from cute and cuddly to more aggressive varieties
Cheeky: A gorilla appears to smile from the front of this T-shirt from The Mountain’s new range
Perfect for lazy days: A sloth stares from the front of this 3D top
YES, THIS IS REAL: NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), on a mission to monitor the solar wind a million miles from Earth, has taken a unique picture of the Earth-Moon system. It shows the farside of the Moon crossing the iconic “blue marble” on July 16th. Click to witness the transit:
DSCOVR is a partnership between NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force. The July 16th images were captured by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope onboard the distant observatory.
Because the Moon is tidally locked to Earth, only one side is visible from our planet. The unseen farside of the Moon was shrouded in mystery until 1959 when the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft swung around the Moon and photographed it for the first time. DSCOVR will repeat the trick about twice a year as observatory periodically crosses the orbital plane of the Moon.
Once EPIC begins regular observations next month, NASA will post daily color images of Earth to a dedicated public website. These images, showing different views of the planet as it rotates through the day, will be available 12 to 36 hours after they are acquired. Read the NASA press release for more information.
from: spaceweather.com
By April Holloway
ancient-origins
As long as humanity has had beliefs in a higher power, the use of magic, spells, curses, and incantations have featured widely across cultures. A number of influential texts or ‘grimoires’ (textbooks of magic) were developed over the centuries, many of which became the books of choice for secret societies and occult organizations that endured well into the twentieth century. Here we feature five manuscripts that provide a fascinating window into the magic of the ancients.
The Book of Abramelin the Mage
Abraham begins his narration with the death of his father, who gave him ‘signs and instructions concerning the way in which it is necessary to acquire the Holy Qabalah’ shortly before his death. Desiring to acquire this wisdom, Abraham said he traveled to Mayence (Mainz) to study under a Rabbi, called Moses. Abraham studied under Moses for four years before traveling for the next six years of his life, eventually reaching Egypt.
It was in Egypt that Abraham met Abramelin the Mage, an Egyptian mage who was living in the desert outside an Egyptian town called Arachi or Araki. Abramelin is said to have then taught Abraham his Kabbalistic magic and gave him two manuscripts to copy from. Pne of the highlights of this grimoire is an elaborate ritual known as the ‘Abramelin Operation’, which is said to enable a mage to gain the ‘knowledge and conversation’ of his/her ‘guardian angel’ and to blind demons. The manuscript was later used in occult organizations such as Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley’s
As part of a larger collection known as the Lesser Keys of Solomon,
The Ars Notoria is the oldest portion of the Lesser of the Keys grimoire, dating back to the 13th century. However, the texts contained within are a collection of orations, prayers, and magical words which date back to well before the 1200s. The prayers are in several languages, including Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. It was not a book of spells or potions, but a book of prayers and orations that are said to strengthen and focus one’s mental powers, by beseeching god for intellectual gifts. Among these intellectual gifts is the concept of a “perfect memory.”
Those who practice liberal arts, such as arithmetic, geometry, and philosophy, are promised a mastery of their subject if they devote themselves to the Ars Notoria. Within, it describes a daily process of visualization, contemplation, and orations, intended to enhance the practitioner’s focus and memory.
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum,
It appears that Weyer’s fascination with magic began while working under Agippa, but later escalated after he became a doctor in his own right: he was summoned to a particular fortune teller’s court case and thereby asked by the judge for advice on the topic. This court case started his interest in researching the witchcraft way of life, culminating with his decision to attempt to defend those who were accused of practicing. Twenty-seven years after this case, when Weyer was sixty-two years old, he published Pseudomonarchia Daemonum,
Weyer’s work claims that while demons and the monsters from hell could have illusionist power over people, the affected people were not witches on trial—the “mentally ill”, as Weyer stated—but rather the magicians who played tricks on common folk for an easy coin. Weyer’s intention was to create a creed to vet out the accused who were, in fact, innocent. How helpful Weyer’s efforts for the accused witches were remains unseen, yet there is evidence that his pleas for their mercy went predominately ignored.
The Picatrix
The Picatrix
The text is composed of both magic and astrology. One element that has contributed to the notoriety of the Picatrix is the obscene nature of its magical recipes. The gruesome concoctions are intended to alter one’s state of consciousness, and may lead to out-of-body experiences, or even death. Ingredients include: blood, bodily excretions, brain matter mixed with copious amounts of hashish, opium, and psychoactive plants. For example, the spell for “Generating Enmity and Discord” reads:
“Take four ounces of the blood of a black dog, two ounces each of pig blood and brains, and one ounce of donkey brains. Mix all this together until well blended. When you give this medicine to someone in food or drink, he will hate you.”
The Arbatel de magia veterum (Arbatel: Of the Magic of the Ancients
The Arbatel is claimed to have been written in 1575 AD. The author remains unknown, although it has been speculated that it was written by a man named Jacques Gohory, a Paracelsian (a group who believed in and followed the medical theories and therapies of Paracelsus).
The focus of the Arbatel is on nature, and the natural relationships between humanity and a celestial hierarchy. It centers on the positive relationships between the celestial world and humans, and the interactions between the two. The Arbatel was an extremely influential work for its time.
from: http://in5d.com/magic-of-the-ancients-5-incredible-texts-of-spells-curses-and-incantations/
