Of freedom

The title reminds me of Gibran's writing. Romantic, nostalgic, clean. And then there is Nelson Mandela's "Long walk to freedom" - and immediately my gut says, yes. Freedom, lost in the first months of our sojourn to the planet, is won back in pieces as we gain courage along the way.  I have been listening to some TED talks as I work away for the so-manyeth week of my life behind a keyboard. They say this:

Freedom begins with knowing what you want - rather than accepting the life-model handed to you by your growing-up circumstances. Know thyself. Be clear.

It follows on to making choices that support what you want - where you live, how you prefer to eat, how you prefer to spend your time. Then living with the consequences of those choices.

This means taking responsibility for your choices. It means condoning slave-wages when you drink certain brands of coffee. It means killing off a species of rare animal when you buy a certain aphrodisiac. It means contributing to the dismantling of beloved landscapes when we put fossil fuel into our cars. And when we think this way, discover which of these effects of our actions we really care about, it informs our choices with even more clarity.

And so it goes on.

This is not a simple idea for me, this Freedom. I understand the critical mass activist power of this way of thinking. But just off the top of my head I would say freedom for me represents the ability to create in the world as I dream. Sounds a bit flaky. So, toned down: freedom from confinement, freedom from my own and others' insanity. Unlikely. Cosmologically: freedom from this mortal coil. Inevitable in a long-term way.

So, to be more practical in my approach I am trying this over the years - to systematically remove from my thinking the trammels of paradigm, to consider more and more impossible things before breakfast. To make real connections with the people I work with, buy from, live near. To live up to fewer expectations of others and more of my own. To play more in my own way - with food, colour, ideas. To go down ever more rabbit holes to find out which are viable and which are decoys.

Ho O'ponopono

One of my favorite people told me about this today - I tried it out.

That is to say, I called to mind all the people, things and situations that have unsettled me or caused me pain or worry in the recent past, held them gently in my mind one by one, and addressed them with, "I'm sorry | Please forgive me | I love you | Thank you".

The idea is that if we make reality (through thoughts and feelings) we must take responsibility for everything in the world - not just ourselves (which is difficult enough...)

Of course it seems impossible. But in terms of energy patterns - the actions of the Other in each of my painful situations arose through patterns which I have also generated at some point - I have caused for others the pain I experience myself. And of course, these situations cause me pain because they mirror something in myself.

So, if I heal these things in my own mind and heart, they might be healed in what seems to be the "world-out-there".

I'm going to play with this idea for a while, and see what happens. Already my sons came home today and co-operated in their homework tasks blithely without their usual resistance. Coincidence? We'll see.

Check out Dr Hew Len for more detail.

The feminist tipping point

The subject has come up: what is the difference between the tone of the Piscean Age and the Aquarian into which we now plunge head-long?

I discussed them amongst my friends, all of whom are well-educated, well-informed, and critical thinkers. We began by describing what we felt was different between what we FELT about living 6 months ago, and what we FELT now. Then, we pooled what we could of information about the Aquarian nature, and tried to sort out which of our observations about our feelings and observations about the turning of the age fitted that model without too much massaging. There was an almost perfect match. So, I went hunting to find some info from astrologers who might have given a more knowledgeable description, and I found http://www.bewaretheaquarianage.com/uploads/3/0/5/0/3050484/aquarian_age.pdf.

This piece of it worried me:


Masculine Energy:  
a. If denial of feminine continues in this atmosphere there will be no supporting basis and all aspects of feminine energy will be ignored, except basic physical sexual needs.
b. If feminine energy is accepted in its proper place it will provide a foundation for understanding for the next level of enlightenment.

examples:
a. Women will lose all social status. Intuitive aspects will become universally ignored.
Analysis will dominate all things – yet the “why” and inspiration will be absent.
The imagination will be derided more than ever before.
Love will be considered just emotion and chemistry – lust will take center stage.
Real self esteem will be lost with denial of half of self. 
Resulting inner chaos is highly destructive.
Imagine a world led by a bunch of run-amuck mad scientists aided by computers filled with misinformation and no sense of individual worth.
b. Women will become full and equal partners and participants in all aspects of society.
The intuitive will be powerfully linked with logic to open a new era of light and exploration.
Understanding of love will become clarified and separated from lust, sacrifice and emotional baggage.

It reminded me of the dire warnings of two great women I have listened to recently.

In 1999, Germaine Greer wrote a book "Whole Woman" where she bemoaned the failure of the feminist movement to uplift women to a position of self-value. She looks at the last decades of the 20th century and sees how women have become more sexualised and objectified than ever, that young women have turned to male traits to be powerful, and that rape statistics have not subsided for all the legislation that has passed through the western world. She berated women for their complicity in their disenfranchisement, their defeminisation, their dehumanisation - as did her predecessor, Wollstonecraft, 100 years before.

Next was Dr Frene Ginwala, the fabulous first Speaker of the House in the democratic South African parliament (now retired). A veteran of the human rights movement in SA, she looked back at the last 15 years in my country, and, addressing a hall full of senior school girls, warned them that their liberty was at stake to a degree similar to the disenfranchisement of their grandmothers. She too referenced statistics around violence towards women, the diminishment of women in top government positions. She pointed out that South African women (in general) are more in the power of traditional (patriarchal) leaders now than they have been for 60 years. (This would not worry me so much had I not had the opportunity to meet many of these traditional leaders in recent years - our elected president himself is a polygamist.)

This woke me up with a big start. It brought to mind the image of an Afghan woman that appeared on the cover of Time magazine, having had her ears and nose cut off under Sharia law.

And so I noticed this: as far and fast as women colonise the middle-management and small business owning ranks of the western economy, just so fast are women in other parts of the world being smothered in heartless, misogynistic bullying.

Perhaps there really is a watershed moment arising for women. If we do not make a firm and conscious effort to maintain the ground we've gained in self-determination, if we don't bring our daughters up to be strong and independently-minded, we will subject future generations to another era of suffering under the dark side of masculine domination.

In our country this year, the violent death of Anene Booysen has rekindled these issues in media debate. My daughter's school (the very same where Frene Ginwala proclaimed her warning) will stage a public demonstration of solidarity with the freedom-of-women movement - unprecedented in its 110 year history.

I salute you, Jeppe Girls. I hope to see solidarity of the same calibre from your brother schools.

Stand your ground, girls - your survival, and that of your daughters depends on it.

Checks and balances

Now and again, I dip my toe into the New Age waters to see what's happening. Mostly I am foolishly hopeful to find, this time, some intellectual rigor, some psychological auditing, some genuine heart. Like in the Christian churches I find devotion, fellowship, transformation in people, and like in the Christian church, I find poor understanding, blind faith, exclusivity tactics. That is: "If you don't do it our way, WE'LL PRAY FOR YOU..."

Now I've done some research into the design and practice of ritual, I have been through the in-the-fold lifestyle. And I have to say, that the moment you have to bend your faith into blindness, you're in trouble. Whatever guru or organisation you've attached yourself to requires intense scrutiny from you. In new testament terms: test every spirit.

A teacher of mine gave me these guidelines:

• Does the person / organisation make a profit? ('No' is the correct answer)
• Is the person / organisation physically healthy? (First, make sure your own house is in order)
• What is the state of their relationships?

If these questions can convince you that you are not being taken advantage of, that the person / organisation practices what it preaches (to the benefit of all) and that they have content and practices that can relate to all people positively, helpfully, then you're in a good place.

I like to add something here - is there any way you can verify the material they are passing on to you? Are you aware of your own psychological and emotional processes that cause you to favour one set of ideas over another? Are you satisfying an emotional need or are you genuinely searching for truth?

I sigh. So much of the New Age content is just shallow. It lacks cohesion. So many people are channeling the same tired old set of high spirits, and their material and style don't add up. Please - do your research before you decide to believe something. Read the positive and negative reviews. Beware of the generalist language of the New Age that veneers everything it says with a throbbing pink and turquoise glow. (If I have to hear the word "amazing" describe one more thing...  Perhaps I'm too old now to be amazed by much.)

A last lesson for now:

Trust your body.

This means you need to learn how to listen to it. And once you have removed the noise caused by cravings for bad food, for adoration of the opposite sex, and poor health, you'll find that you can gauge the merits of any situation by listening to how your body responds.

On Battles

I bring you a battle today - mostly because it is a theme I need to revisit this month for my own purposes. War, violence, domination, winning - all part of the human psychic cocktail. Over the years I have found the odd occasion to fight a battle, and have found that my pacifist upbringing had left me with few tools to engage profitably in battle. Those childhood battles amongst siblings and on the playground left me with more of a distaste for people than a toolkit for survival - and I am still surprised when I come across bullying in any form.

I watched Ghandi on DVD the other day, and chuckled to be reminded that he used guilt as a lever to manage his followers in India via his hunger strikes. I smiled: so much like parenting ("So, when you leave the bath running, it's because you think it's OK for me to spend yet another hour working to pay for the water you've wasted?"). This works when you have a bedrock of love, as Ghandi did in his followers, or as I have in my family.

But in those times when the battle you approach is entirely hostile, entirely about needing to win, what do the mysteries say?

Pinkola Estes celebrates wildness - the knowing and the timing of the wild thing that knows when to stalk, knows when to wait, knows when to spring. Instinct. But this is too simple and little understood. Ultimately the behaviour of the wild thing is based on the desirable outcome: survival, advantage. The actions of the wild hunter / warrior is not chaotic or random. It is discrete, considered, strategised. It is based on interrogations into the nature and habits of its opponent, the lie of the land (read the Art of War), tallying of resources.

Casteneda speaks of remaining unavailable, invisible to your opponent, even as you stalk him. He speaks of storing power so that it can be used to devastating effect when you need to. He speaks of moving an individual via his circle of influence, never directly. He speaks of alertness, avoiding assumptions, applying force to a lever.

Battles in my adult life have shown me this: I am the only one who wants to fight with gentlemen's rules, so they likely won't work for me (and they haven't). I have never fought to dominate, my battles are generally about protecting my family, my home, my turf. And most soldiers who have gone to war leaving families behind know that there is nothing more worthy fighting for. Where stakes are high, the art of battle is the most important skill to have mastered. The last, most precious advantage I will not gain until my children are off my hands: having nothing to lose.

Is it food?

Several years ago, a friend of mine gave me a book to read - all about the history of the trade in tea, coffee, tobacco and sugar. The book (don't recall the title or the author - sorry), written somewhere in the mid 20th century, described these 4 commodities as narcotic, and the commerce around them as economic parasitism. I was somewhat surprised, never having looked at these things in this way, but the book made a strong case. A memorable example of the economic parasitism argument was the Boston Tea Party. The author proposed that the colonialist / imperialist / profiteering situation that gave rise to this event had not been appreciably changed nor resolved since then, but had simply gone into hiding behind front-businesses.

This feels too big for me to do something about. But what stuck with me was the peddling of addictive substances as food, creating a media-hype about the benefits of these non-foods: main-lining and normalising them into the thinking and lifestyles of people world-wide. Nutrition and medical media reporting still relates most "new findings" to our craving for sugar, tea and coffee. As tobacco became successfully demonised, so in the face of similar pressures on the other 3 culprits, we learn that it's OK to have coffee daily, that tea has anti-oxidant properties, that children need sugar for energy. The proportion of media messaging around these commodities it exaggerated compared with other foods and drugs. And, since as a race we are addicted to these substances, we are only too ready to have our consciences appeased.

On top of that sits the historical burden of the conditions of production of these substances, often resting on the shoulders of slaves, child-labour and the like. The string of middle-men is entrenched and long, and the end-user prices bear no resemblance to the cost of production.

So the book ultimately proposes this: that the business of bringing these commodities to market is all about creating a demand through creating addiction, then making as much profit as possible by driving prices up and forcing down costs of production.

This made me annoyed. I thought I would test the hypothesis that I was addicted to coffee and sugar (the others never featured much in my lifestyle). I went cold turkey on both. I felt horrible. I craved, I raved, I walked into walls, I shouted at people, I cried. Then after 2 weeks, I felt fabulous! I had energy to spare, I was wide awake first thing in the morning, my post-nasal drip disappeared, my acne improved, I slept well. I noticed that coffee and sugar were my comfort foods. When I was sad or tired, I craved cake and cappuccino. So I ate nuts, cheese, and watched movies instead. My favorite meal: stir-fried lamb tossed with fresh basil, avocado and olive oil.

Then I lapsed. A couple of years later I had systemic candida. I went on a diet to fix it - off the allowed list: sugar, coffee, tea, alcohol, starch, natural sugars of all kinds, meat from animals older than one season, ground vegetables  Added to my diet: Warburgia (Pepper Bark / Isibaha) tincture. 6 Weeks later I had lost 10kg and I was candida free - no more nasty mucus, no more acne.

I'm weaning my little children off sugar (the big ones have migrated there themselves to fix their own health issues). They are cross about it, but not when they're eating other good things.

Stevia was a great help to satisfy the remnants of my craving for sweetness, but my drug of choice is now a cup of chicory (25% coffee added) with a dash of lactose-free milk. And sometimes, expensive, thin slabs of chocolate.

Strange reality

"The world is a mystery. This, what you're looking at, is not all there is to it. There is much more to the world, so much more, in fact, that it is endless. So when you are trying to figure it out, all you're really doing is trying to make the world familiar."

Don Juan words from Casteneda's "Journey to Ixlan".

I have this problem all the time - trying to encourage people to consider that what I describe in my experience has reality, context and relevance. That old buzz-word, 'paradigm' comes into play. It's as hard as getting a 6-year-old to understand why she can't have that pink toy in the supermarket today.

It's like this: the reality of each of us is unique. In those places where we agree to share an idea about reality, we seem to have common ground. But we are talking only "seems" here. This leads us into the dangerous territory of feeling safe with making assumptions about the world and about one-another. Having fewer expectations about the world, people, life, days lead to fewer surprises. We remain more open to grasping a situation in its totality rather than just those things about it which seem to correspond with our reality of the moment.

If I experience something that you have not experienced, this does not make my reality wrong, simply strange. And it is in the lands of strange that adventure, growth and evolution lie. Our fear of the unknown keeps us safely tucked behind closed doors, perhaps reading books, probably believing that we know how the world works. TV, the internet, books - these are repositories of the realities of others - a pity it would be to not excavate your own. It is only through going in amongst the unknown that we can gain new knowledge.

This takes some courage. The conformative pressure of commonly accepted reality has some devastating tools for the ego that attempts to describe something new.

What are your unusual experiences? What is the strange reality you walk in?