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Sunday, August 6, 2017

Herculaneum - A Tail

As many of you know, I volunteer at a local museum, and I’ve been working a Pompeii exhibit since it opened. It’s a great exhibit. I like to wander around, studying the artifacts and thinking about the people who made them and used them.

I’ve worked almost every job in the exhibit, but one of the most boring jobs is the VIP door: You’re there to help people who need to use the elevator to get to the second floor of the exhibit. Hours can pass where no one needs help. There’s a photo op nearby and I try and pass the time offering to take people’s pictures, but time still drags.
I pass the time reading up on Pompeii, the history, the last days, anything I can find that can be read on my phone. I’ve learned a lot about everything from volcanos, to water supplies in ancient times, to proper care of archeological sites once they’ve been uncovered. My excuse is that I want to be prepared when people ask me questions, which does happen from time to time. <Wink>

Herculaneum is/was a city, like Pompeii, that was also covered in the same eruption that buried Pompeii. It’s not so famous because it’s buried a lot deeper and there’s a modern city on top of it. Herculaneum is interesting for several reasons, perhaps more interesting than Pompeii. First, it apparently was a much wealthier city, with more elaborate art and treasure, and because it was buried deeper, many building are intact through the second story and above, unlike in Pompeii where only the first floors survived, for the most part.

One of the wealthy villas they have found is called the Villa of the Scrolls, because it contains a huge library of scrolls, many of which have been read, and many more are waiting for the technology that will allow us to read them. This villa was apparently owned by the uncle of the emperor Augustus. What’s exciting about these scrolls is that they are not records, but literary works of all kinds. What’s really cool is that some of the works are known to have existed, from references by other writers of the period, but no other copies had ever been found. For scholars, it’s really exciting to get your hands on an original version, not one handed down over the centuries, copied, re-copied, translated, and copied again.

My tail begins with a pain in my shoulder. It first showed up as not a big deal, but over time it got worse and worse and spread to include a stiff neck as well. At first I dismissed it, thinking that it was caused by holding and reading my phone for too long. But I do the same thing at at other positions in the exhibit without any problems. It wasn’t until last week that I connected all the dots and realized that I only got the pain when I was working in that precise place, the VIP door, and I when was reading about Herculaneum. Being who I am, I came to the conclusion that there was a connection. With enough digging, I came up with the following story.

I was a young boy in Herculaneum on that last day, August 24th, 79 CE. I had an older sister and parents. Our parents had not left with everyone else, I don’t know why, maybe they were worried about thieves. In any case, they had left earlier in the day, and had never come back. I was badly scared and wanted to leave, but my sister wouldn’t go and I couldn’t bring myself to leave on my own. I’ve sure we fought about it, but she was stubborn, a “Mom and Dad said wait here!” kind of thing. Later that night, well after dark, though with the clouds and ash, it was difficult to tell how late it was, things got seriously bad, and the part of the house I was in collapsed. A beam from the second floor hit me on the right shoulder, broke the bone and I was buried under the rubble of the second floor and roof. I have no idea where my sister was, somewhere else in our villa, I suppose. Fortunately I didn’t have to suffocate or suffer a lingering death from thirst, one of the pyroclastic flows of super heated air finished me off fairly quickly. I suppose that’s good, yes?

I can surmise that my family was pretty well off, from the fact that we had a large house, and my clothes seemed pretty nice, but a ten-year-old generally doesn’t pick up on these things. Especially when you’re a child in a society where you tend to stay with people of your own rank and station. You tend to take everything for granted without thinking about it too much. My feeling is that were servants, but they had fled early on, leaving the parents with no one to help them get their valuables out. So they went out looking or, perhaps, abandoned their children to their fate. I don’t know why they would do that, but families were probably just as “complicated” back then as they are now. I lean toward the abandon theory because, if they intended to return, the mother probably would have stayed with the kids. Just a guess. Anyway, since the vast majority of Herculaneum has not be excavated, it’s possible that my remains are still there. Interesting to speculate on, but I’m sure I’ll never know for sure.

That’s my story, accept it or not, as you like. This could explain why I’m so interested in the artifacts, the people who used them, and how they were made and used. I have no trouble imagining what it must have been like, living in those houses, and the hustle and bustle of the streets outside, and the smell! God the smell of the refuse in the streets on a hot, still summer’s day! They must have prayed for rain as much to wash the streets as for the water. There’s a reason why the wealthy people had their houses upwind of the heart of the city!

If you have time, you might want to check out the exhibit, or delve more into the history of both Pompeii and Herculaneum. There’s a cautionary tail there, as Vesuvius is still a active volcano, and millions of people now live in it’s shadow.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Common Knowlege Aint So Common?



A person contacted me recently, saying that they were pretty sure that was more to reality than we'd been taught. He went on a bit, but the upshot was that wanted to buy a K2 meter and go to a graveyard on afternoon and answer the question once and for all. These sort of things come up a lot in my conversations, and I'd thought I'd publish my response as a point of general information. I tend to forget that I have been involved in this for a long time, and what I take for common knowledge really isn't that common at all. If you are going to get into the paranormal and do psychic research, you have to understand that psychic abilities don't follow the rules that we take for granted. That doesn't mean it doesn't follow rules, we just don't fully understand them yet. Just like in the early days of electricity, nobody knows what it is or how it works, so there's plenty left to be discovered, for those who have a mind to do so! Here is the letter in full, I hope you find it informative.

Hello,

Well, I have some good news and some bad news. But first, a little story.

My daughter called my this past weekend. She lives in another state. She wanted my help with something that had happened: A couple of days before, she was lying in bed at around 8 in the mornings, and she heard some noise outside her door. When she looked, she thought she saw the door begin to open a crack, then she blinked and it was closed again, without a sound. Then she had a feeling that there was something in the room with her. This feeling was so strong that she was afraid to move or open her eyes. She stayed like the for about a hour, then got up and left the room. She didn't know what to make of it, and she hadn't slept in that room since because she was afraid of it coming back. The irony of this is that she has complained to me, several times, that she was mad that she had never seen a ghost or had any kind of related experience! The thing is, she has been exposed to quite a bit of paranormal stuff, even had a spirit attach to her at one point, but, as far as she was concerned, it wasn't "real," so it didn't count. I have to say that I went on a similar journey, and it's taken me over a decade to get that the "unexplained" is all around us, all the time. The catch 22 is, if you can't believe it, you can't see it.

Ask any die-hard skeptic and you'll see that, not matter how much evidence you present, no matter how good the quality, they know that "it's fake or there's a reasonable explanation." In my daughter's case, she probably would have dismissed it as a bad dream, not too long ago. When you accept that reality is bigger than the material world, you will start to realize that it permeates our lives in ways small and large. The biggest problem turns out to be sorting the wheat from the chaff: There is so much bunk out there from people that literally seem to believe everything they read, and people that appear to deliberately spread false and misleading information for profit, that you have to develop your own inner sense of what is true for you. The good news is that you will find what you are looking for, if you can believe what you find. The bad news is that no amount of proof will be good enough, if you don't.

I, personally, don't watch "ghost" shows, though I have been on a number of investigations. I have seen some interesting stuff, nothing dramatic, and nothing that would have convinced myself a few decades back, but a lot of it raises intriguing questions in my mind. I also find it interesting to watch how the other people on the investigations, feel, think, and react.

If you do some more research, you will find that instruments appear to react to the person holding them. In the same situation, it will be dead as a door-nail in one person's hands, and light up like a Christmas tree in another's. In a way, this makes sense, because our instruments are designed to be as insensitive to paranormal influences as possible, otherwise they would appear to be unreliable for the purpose for which they are designed. They are not completely immune, as some people can significantly affect electronic and physical devices: You know, the people who can't wear a watch, for they simply won't work around them, or they crash computers, if they get too close. As a computer scientist, I had the opposite effect, people give me stuff that's flaky or doesn't work, then I fiddle with it for a while and it then works just fine. I've gotten a lot of free appliances and electronics that way.

Here's the really bad news: I you want to prove it to yourself, you are going to have to put in a lot of time, one afternoon won't do it, no matter how spectacular the results. They could have been just a fluke. Any serious investigator will tell you that the "good stuff" is rare and you have to put in a lot of hours to get it. The only exception to this are the "gifted" psychics. I put gifted in quotes because it rarely seems a gift to those people. Believe me, having spirits bug you 24/7 is more of a pain-in-the-ass than anything else.

All that said, if you want to hang out for an afternoon, I could do that. We can swap stories and try a few things to open you up, if you're interested. Do you have a place in mind? Let me know.

Rodney Whitehouse

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Love Lesson Learned

Another lesson learned today. Volunteering today at OMSI, I trained a new person for the Pompeii exhibit. She was a bit difficult, in that she gradually tried to take over the whole job we were sharing. Fortunately, I was soon offered another position and fled. The work isn’t hard and she could do it fine on her own by that time. I felt increasingly “off” the rest of the day. I left around lunch and tried to nap and meditate after I go home, but couldn’t, because I was too wrapped in anger and despair that seemed to come out of nowhere. It wasn’t long before that that I noticed I had a raw throat, like I was coming down with a cold. Then I spent a couple of hours finished up a project, and then tried again to meditate. This time was more successful, but, after a while, I discovered myself seemingly “trapped” in a golden place. Well, not really gold, more amber, but you get the idea.

I wasn’t really trapped, it just felt like it. Like my body was asleep, I was awake, but I was in this amorphous place that was big and empty. I was floating in the center of this big empty, in fact, I was in a center of a spherical clearing, surrounded by patchy clouds, and behind them was an amber glow. The place had a sense of being hollow and echo-y. I felt very alone.

It was odd to be there. I’ve never had this happen before. The sense of being cut off from the outside world was very strong. I wondered why for a bit, then tried to get outside or reach outside, with only limited success. I remember seeing a patch of ocean, but it was like through a dirty window, and hard to maintain the image. I tried to imagine other places or reach people, but I only had a pale shadow of success. I sent out a distress call to a dear friend to please, please send me a message, a text, to get me out of this place. A part of my mind mocked my efforts, saying that she didn’t care anyway and all this “connection” stuff was just a sick illusion, a lie that I told myself. Fortunately a text did come, within a few minutes, and the sound help me get up.

During the meditation I had focused on my sore throat, with some success, but I couldn’t get any handle on what was going on: was I tired? Had I been talking too much over the past few days, (Volunteering usually requires a lot of talking to patrons!)? I had managed to move the pain from the back of my throat, up higher and it was much less. But, still, I felt distinctly unhappy, sad and lonely, and if that wasn’t enough, the emotions were confused and didn’t seem attached to any thoughts or things that had happened. I sent a distress text to my friend, hoping she could cheer me up a bit, but I couldn’t just sit around a wait, it was getting to dinner time and I was expecting to host a group later, so I had to get up and make something to eat. Then, I was standing over the stove, the answer occurred to me: I had picked up a “hitchhiker!” I don’t know why these things aren’t more obvious to me. Perhaps I just don’t trust my instincts enough yet, or maybe I just have so much internal “noise” that I don’t really catch external influences. Anyway, now I knew.

It took a few minutes to get his attention. Yes, “his,” it felt male and I got the name “Bill,” which was good enough for my purposes. He wasn’t very communicative, but it didn’t take more that a few minutes to get him to notice the “light” and connect with someone he knew, who then took him on. And then he was gone, and the sadness started lifting, but there was still a residue left behind.

My friend hadn’t replied yet, so I let her know, briefly, what had happened, and it wasn’t long before she did cheer me up. She has the ability to make me cry, laugh and feel loved, all with a few texts. And life was good again.

All this happened in the space of one afternoon, and it showed me a few things about myself. One, I think this is the first time I have ever reached out for help when feeling down. I have always had this unspoken idea that I’m supposed to hide unhappy feelings and “be strong” for other people, or, at least, don’t “be a bother.” I’m just supposed to hide and never expect support. This episode has shown me the personal value of relationship and mutual support.

The next thing I got was the understanding that you can’t really be much help to anyone else unless you are willing and able to accept support yourself. Until I was willing to accept support, I didn’t know how it felt or how to do it. I could say the words and go though the motions, but I didn’t know what it felt like to give or receive genuine support. And I’m sure the people I’ve tried to help over the years picked up on that. They knew my actions were hollow, with no real understanding or commitment. It has taken a willingness to be vulnerable, to expose my weaknesses and fears, deep fears, and allow them to be acknowledged, accepted, and soothed, to teach me what it feels like to be truly supported, warts and all. And now that I know what unconditional support feels like, I am better able to offer that to others.

I know this didn’t just happen, all at once, but has been a gradual thing. It’s just that today, for the first time, I saw how well it can work, when I need it. And I see, for the first time, how amazing, truly supportive relationships can be. This has been a real sys-opener for me, and I hope everyone reading this has the opportunity to get beyond the fear, and the needs to hide, manipulate or dominate others, and just get to know what it’s like to accept, and be accepted, unconditionally. There’s nothing like it!

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Karma Is Dead, Long Live Karma!

Back around 2012, there was a big hullabaloo about the End of Karma. That all seems forgotten now, but it was a big deal at the time. What does that mean to say there’s no Karma? Well, first I’ll define Karma, for there’s lots of different views of it out there. In essence, Karma is the reincarnationist’s version of sin and blessings, a metaphysical system of credits and debits that you accumulate throughout your life, which then are cashed in, for happiness, or suffering, in your next life. The main difference between sin and karma is that with sin, you get one chance to get it right, then you are judged and sentenced for eternity, but karma gives you multiple chances.

Another difference is that, with sin, God or some god, is your judge, where with karma, either you judge yourself or it’s like a cosmic computer program where all your actions are fed in, and out spits a life, outfitted with the proper amount of suffering and reward for to your particular case. This is really just an outline, there are more variations than you can shake a stick at, but you get the idea: In both cases, of sin and karma, we are told to behave ourselves because of a cosmic system of rewards and punishments.

The main problems with both of these systems is that what is sin, what is “good” or “bad,” is highly dependent on where your are born, who raised you, what religion you belong to, and current events. You could easily say that sin has be so overused in our cutler that it’s become meaningless. Depending on who you talk to, drinking the wrong drink, wearing the wrong clothes, being born with the wrong genes, or even thinking the wrong thought, are grievous sins requiring eternal punishment. This makes it a bit difficult to know exactly what values are “good” across all cultures. Heck, the notion of what is a sin, varies hugely among Christians in the United States alone, how’s anybody supposed to know what to do? Especially when we’re not talking about one culture, in one time, but across all eternity.

Could we do without this whole system? The argument against is “What prevents atheists from stealing and murdering to their heart’s content?” When I hear this, I can’t help but wonder about how good and moral someone is, if the only thing that prevents them from committing all kinds of amoral acts is a threat of eternal punishment? And, since you don’t have to look don’t have to look any further than the daily newspaper to find any number of sinful acts, including mass murder, committed by professed Christians, it seems that the system doesn’t seem to work all that well. And, maybe the reason it doesn’t is that the entire thing was made up by people to control people. I suppose you could say they had good intensions, but things have gotten way out of hand, driven by those, on one side, who want loopholes to allow them to do what they want, and those on the other who want a rule for everything.

In the end, it all boils down to one rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If we all followed that, in our behavior and in our justice system, we’d definitely have a different world. And, the thing is, in the light of eternity, what else really matters? Many religious are convinced that following arbitrary rules makes the closer to God. That’s all well and good, until the rules are hateful, hurtful and result in emotional, financial and physical harm to others. You know that vigorous proponents of racial and economic segregation would be incensed at the idea that they couldn’t live where they want, work where they want, have their children go to the schools they want. Perhaps the best justice system would be to treat people as they treat others, and that, in my view, is how karma is supposed to work. If you discriminate, you will be discriminated against, if you steal, what you have will be stolen, if you rape, you will be raped (regardless of sex), if you abuse, you will be abused.

But I don’t think that is how the cosmic system works, it’s not a balance-the-scales, the-good-get-rewarded-and-the-bad-punished kind of thing. Kama is “dead” because karma never existed, and neither does sin. Both are human inventions. I find that reincarnation, as a way to gain experience in all aspects of being human, fits the world much better than other philosophies. It answers the question “Why does a good God allow so much suffering in the world?” with the answer that God has nothing to do with it, we create the world we want, with the result that we have to then live in it. Near death experiences and past life regressions both show that we are not judged, ever. We decide what kind of life we intend to have, not God or anyone or anything else. We even decide if we are going to incarnate at all.

Some souls choose to be the Hitlers, Stalins, religious zealots, abusers and mass murders of the world for their own reasons. Perhaps to create opportunities for suffering, for acts of heroism and self sacrifice. Perhaps to gain an understanding of what it’s like to be that kind of person. Who knows? But it only takes a short look at the world to see that we all live by our own moral codes, sin and karma not withstanding, so it’s best to clean up your own “karmic” house before you set out to judge and set rules for others to live by.

It just seems to me that the way to a peaceful life is to treat others as you want to be treated and to have compassion for those who don’t, and are victims of those who don’t. This makes things simple and avoids a lot of convoluted mental and moral juggling to aline your ideals with what is actually out in the world, and in your head. Take a moment to recognize how you really wish to be treated and put that out in the world every day. It will come back to you in ways small and large.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

The Next Demotion

Poor mankind! Poor humans! We keep getting knocked down off our perch, our place in the grand scheme of things just keeps getting smaller and smaller! Once upon a time, in the good old days, we were the center of the universe and everything revolved around us. We, (especially white males) were the epitome of creation, those were the days!

But then Galileo had the bad taste to look up in the sky and see that something revolving around another heavenly body, how impolite was that? For that gross breach of etiquette he was place under house arrest for the rest of his life. Not so long, in his case. How foolish was he for actually seeing something that contradicted what everybody knew what true?

Not long after that, Kepler came along and showed that we weren’t the center of our solar system. In his case, he made sure he was dead before his ideas were published. Smart man! 

It took a long time for that idea to really be accepted, but, since then, in the last two centuries, the our demotions, in the physical world have come faster and faster. We’re not the center of our solar system. Now our sun is one among countless other stars, in no way better or special, at the outskirts of our galaxy, again, not unusual or special in any way, among countless other galaxies, in a universe so vast, with numbers so large, that the mind simply can’t comprehend how insignificant we humans actually are.

If that wasn’t enough. For a long time, it was figured that we had one of the rare, of not the only habitual planet. Turns out that planets are a common as dirt, with at least as many planets as stars, and the number of habitual planets is, again, so large as to be boggle the mind.

Next we find that life isn’t limited to existing in the relatively narrow band of environments we were familiar with. We have found simple life forms living in space, in the deep oceans, and far underground, miles underground, far from any sunlight, in environments so hostile and toxic, in temperatures and pressures so extreme, that anything we’re familiar with would be destroyed in a matter of moments. This tells us that life could exist in many different places in our solar system alone, not to mention the rest of the universe. Things are not looking good for our civilization! Though many still want to cling to the belief that we are the most intelligent and advanced thing out there, that is looking less and less likely every day. It’s probably only a matter of time until we find proof that we are not alone. What a blow to our ego!

If that wasn’t enough, a more subtle revolution is also going on. It’s funny, in a way, because it’s been going on for centuries, but most people haven’t noticed. You would think that the major world religions would be fighting this new view, but they generally have nothing to say about it. I believe the reason are that they, for the most part, don’t recognize it as a threat. Most of the faithful accept their human-centered theology so thoroughly that they can’t conceive and any other point of view. Religious leaders are so confident in their singular point of view that they only worry about threats from other religions, like them.

In my view, the limitations of Christian theology become more and more obvious, the more you look into it, and the attempts to resolve these problems end up going down one of two paths: In one, they double- and triple-down on the basic premise of one universe and one afterlife, where you go to heaven to hell, depending on a fairly arbitrary set of rules, and where the justifications and explanations of this structure and these rules are so Byzantine in their complexity that they freely admit that no one understands them. “It’s Gods’ will,” they say with a shrug. In a way, this resembles the bizarrely complicated schemes that medieval astronomers came up with to explain the moments of the heavenly bodies, necessitated by the assumption that everything had to revolve around the earth.

One the second path, theologians start to deviate from the simplistic assumption that our human experience is the only experience there is. One can’t step too far down this path and still be acceptable to the Church, or any religion. It seems that, at it’s heart, every religion, no matter what it says, can’t quite let go of the idea that they are the “best” or “only” way to….what, be “saved,” “enlightened?” That, I suppose, is part of human nature, to assume that whatever makes sense to you is the best and only sensible option. Despite this assumption of followers of every religion that theirs is the “best so far,” a sea-change is in the works.

The first first sign on this change is noticing that every religion and faith is just one among many. Not first or best, just but one among many possible faiths. And that there is no objective measure, or reason of any kind, to promote one over any other, other than “This is what I believe.” This is just as hard for the faithful to swallow as the idea that the earth revolved around the sun was for medieval europeans. As I said, the battle isn’t really on yet, for most people don’t see it coming. Most people think that there is a “war” between the sacred and the secular, but that’s an illusion. What’s really going on is a blending of materialism and spirituality, resulting in a new worldview that is putting the squeeze in the millennia-old dogmatism of western religions.

What we are starting to see, derived from research into reincarnation and NDEs, (Near Death Experiences) our human experience is just one tiny part of a much large tapestry. Far from there being one “reality” and one “afterlife,” there are an uncounted number possible realities we could be born into, and what we call “the afterlife” is much larger, richer and more varied than we are capable of imagining. Just like in the physical universe, where we have been demoted to just a single species, on a insignificant planet, drifting on the outskirts of an unremarkable galaxy, floating among uncounted billions of other galaxies, our human experience is just one among countless experiences a soul can, and does, have, and is no more important to the grand scheme of things than the life of a bacterium to the cosmos.

That’s not to say we are unimportant, we are, just not in the ego-driven, human-centered way we want to believe. We are part of something so much greater than we can imagine, and we each contribute to this whole in our own special way. Like a small child who doesn’t understand the contribution she will one day make as President, we do not comprehend our ultimate power and destiny, once we mature. In the meantime, we would be best served by learning the lessons beyond the material, the promote the best of us, elevate the worse of us, and contribute to all those around us.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Re: what a gorgeous stuff!

Hey,

 

 

I've been looking for something on the web and have accidentally come across that gorgeous stuff, just take a look at it read more

 

Take care, Sabeen

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Rearranging the Deck Chairs

I had a dream a few days ago. It didn’t mean much at the time, it just seemed silly, but the meaning became clear yesterday. I had a lot of dreams that night, but this one is the only one I remember. That seems how dreams work for me. when I wake up, I can remember snatches of many different dreams but only one is clear enough and detailed enough to recall.

This dream is set in sunny California in the early 60’s. The whole thing looked like a 60’s glam movie, with long, low convertibles, beautiful people, and bright sunshine with saturated colors. It took place in a large parking lot, mostly full, that seemed to be at the beach. I watched it all in third person, the person I take to be me was driving this blue convertible. The “me” in this dream was a “Rock Hudson” type with a pretty girlfriend, at least that’s what she seemed, she came a went throughout the scene. Everyone seemed happy, almost movie musical happy. You’ll see why that’s weird in a minute.

The whole parking lot was flooded with water. Over the doorsills in some places, a little lower in other places. Nobody seemed to care. My car was full of water that sloshed around as I drove. I didn’t look like I cared, smiling and happy. I drove around the lot for a while then found a new parking space where the water was a little less deep, actually below the doorsills. Maybe I thought that the water in the care would drain out. After I parked, the girlfriend re-appeared and I sat there, with my arms wide open, face up to sky, eyes closed, smiling like this was the best day ever. I watched this from above, like it was the ending of a great movie. Roll credits.

Yesterday it hit me, what it means. The water is the “sludge” in our lives and we spend our lives “being happy” and trying to find a place where the “sludge” is, perhaps, just a little shallower. And we celebrate if we find such a place. 

I was struck by the superficiality of the whole thing. Beautiful people, fancy cars, beautiful location, nice clothes, but we all ignore the sludge, for the most part. But we do spend a lot of time “driving around the parking lot” looking for a place with less sludge. Nobody every tries to leave the parking lot. Funny, huh?

What is “sludge?” All the crap that weighs us down, fills our time, yet, ultimately, never adds anything to our lives. Worries: About money, about what people think, about things we can do nothing about. Fear and hate: About just about anything. Fear and hate are two sides of the same coin, you distrust what you fear, you’re fear what you don’t like. 

We are all afraid of stuff, whether we admit it or not. (Not afraid of anything? What about “uncomfortable?” Are you uncomfortable around certain people, in certain situations, with certain subjects? “Discomfort” is mild fear, it doesn’t take a whole lot to turn “discomfort” into something far stronger.) The common way you’re supposed to deal with fear, is that you find the source of your fear and remove it from your life. Then you will “feel safe,” right? Except that doesn’t actually work. No matter how hard or how far you push your fear and discomfort away, it always finds you. I know how that works. I’ve lived in “unsafe” areas, then I get a chance to move to something better, and, for a while, I feel much better. Then, I begin to notice things, and hear things, neighbors talk, incidents on the news, and before long I feel “unsafe” again.

What are you afraid of? People different from you? Be it appearance, income, education, age, beliefs, clothes? The government? Liberals? Conservatives? The rich? The poor? Climate change? Poison, in your food, water, medicines? Look around you and you’ll have no trouble finding people who want to stoke your fears, for their own ends, and once they’ve go you hooked, truth no longer matters, facts don’t matter, all that matters is the “it” that “they” want you to fear. And it’s so easy, because the fear is always there, inside you, just waiting to be pointed at someone or something. What fear? The fear that they will all find out those things we hate about ourselves.

Ever wonder what the fear-peddelers get out of it? Think about it, they all want something and are willing to scare you into giving it to them. They want your money, time, support, or just the attention. There’s always some hidden motive, because, if they were on the up-and-up, there’d be no reason to use fear to sell you their agenda. The thing is, the world has a lot of problems, but none of them are unsolvable! We have the knowledge and technology to solve or, at least, mitigate, everyone of the world problems, and the only reason we don’t is fear: Greed is fear of not having enough. Conservatism is the fear of change, or losing what you have. The need for power comes from fear of loss of control. Bigotry, of all kinds, religious and racial, including misogyny, is fear of anyone who is different. There is enough of everything for everyone, money, food, living space, if we could only get over all the fears. 

So, in my dream we were all perfectly happy, walking and driving around shin deep in sludge. We enjoyed the sunshine and our fancy cars while carefully ignoring the mess and the reality that the sludge was rotting out the cars, inside and out. We cope by vying for better parking spots, with less sludge, but nobody considers leaving the parking lot. That would require leaving behind your car, your status and the “parking place” that you have worked so hard to secure. In the real world, things aren’t so cut and dried. Getting rid of all your material things, and walking away from you responsibilities and obligations doesn’t free you from the sludge, It’s not even a necessary step. The sludge is inside and, once you start cleaning that up, what you manifest on the outside will naturally follow as a natural consequence of your new values. In all things, it doesn’t matter what you have, or what you do, it’s why you have it or do it. Intension is everything. 

In my journey of a thousand miles, I have faced and expunged many hidden fears, small and large. They are usually linked to traumas, so the fears vanish when the traumatic emotions are acknowledged and released. This is difficult for us Westerners, we are taught to “forget about it,” and suppress any hurt, “get over it, nobody wants to know.” We are so uncomfortable with feelings. Or we dwell endlessly on how we feel about what happened, which just reinforces the trauma. Neither of these is helpful. It always comes out and haunts us, making us easy prey for any fear monger that comes along. It doesn’t matter how smart and logical we think we are, or how confident we are that our religious or other beliefs protect us, our sludge is there, effecting every decision and coloring every opinion.


The solution that I teach is to use a combination of tools and practices, including hypnosis, with meditation, shamanistic and other traditional and new-age concepts to discover, uncover and release the trapped emotions that keep us stuck in past events. This removes the “scales from our eyes” and allow us to see the world as it is, not as we feared it was, and the fears begin to melt away. This process takes time, and that’s good thing, for having too much change all at once would be a tremendous shock to our system, but it’s not so bad because it pays dividends all along the way. The slow progress allows you to adapt your lifestyle and values as your inner landscape changes. Many people want a new life, without, you know, actually, changing their life. They want to world to treat them differently without changing the way they view and treat the world. That, of course, never works. The simple and powerful fact is, you change yourself, you change the world. Anything else you do, from success seminars to positive affirmations, is no more that driving around the parking lot, or, as some say, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Maybe it looks good, and may even make you feel like your acomplishing something, but it's untimately fultile if you're expecting any real change in your life.