The Blood Moon

They said the blood full moon with an eclipse would stir some sh*t, but we didn’t see the sheer horror that would arise from the celestial turning of tides. The blood moon oozed a harsh lesson as it splattered the earth with fear and tears. The irony is that Kirk, the most vocal proponent for guns, said even that children were collateral damage to the right to own guns, was shot. And the cosmic play didn’t stop there. The force of the lesson was drilled deeper as children in schools screamed and fell under gunfire on the same day.

The lesson is clear for those who choose to see. Of course, the right media has twisted it, making Charlie Kirk a martyr, a righteous religious man who loved his family. Maybe so, but the parents in Colorado loved their kids, too.

In these times of seeing the worst of humanity, there is a strange inverse effect, maybe the wisdom from the moon. After the sadness and anger subside, if we let the love for this life overcome our fear, a feeling emerges that I can only describe as faith. The word 'faith' can elicit a negative response, as many people have used it to overlook reality, only to be hit with a harsh reality check. However, faith is a profound human quality that enables us to overcome adversity. Faith that the lessons that need to be learned, no matter how horrific, will be learned, and we will grow. I hold onto the faith that humanity truly desires peace and harmony. No matter how crazy it gets, I keep balanced by chanting for peace on Earth.

We are all bearing witness to how ugly, how cruel, and how greedy we can be. We can keep our eyes open while also keeping our hearts open. We are here to learn, to grow into being a better humanity. Some can see the writing on the wall and change quickly, but others seem to need the wall to fall on them and a crisis of delutional beliefs to accept the message.

What is called for is patience. Not just a passing patience but an infinite patience of the moon and stars. We hold space for our fellow humans who cling to delusions and false beliefs while the world burns. All we can really do is encourage them to let go of beliefs that are hurting others and themselves.

In this age of Aquarius, it will not do that only some people choose peace, acceptance, and harmony; it must be all of us. So, we must witness the breakdown, the lessons played out, and the pain of clinging until not only the United States, but the world, chooses cooperation over fighting, equality over racism and sexism, power with rather than power over, and generosity over greed—in short, harmony and peace.  

I encourage everyone I meet to keep the faith in humanity.

From the Hippy Think Tank

It’s hard not to talk about this Rump that is ruining everything. When we listen to the news, the rapid-fire horrors come at us incessantly. We’re left numb, stunned, and confused. This leads to apathy and hopelessness. Hence, I don’t write on this blog; instead, I lie in bed, eating ice cream while watching comedies.

Let’s be clear, it’s not actually the Rump-master, but the devious think tank behind him. These rapid changes coming at us are part of the think tank tactics - disrupt the system with quick blows, making it difficult for people to form a response. Behind the scenes, Think Tank Repugblicans Monopoly has been studying controlling the masses for a long time, waiting for the perfect figurehead to carry out their plans for full control.  

And also propping up this Emperor-with-no-clothes is the good ol’ apple-pie-nazism. Let’s face it, we have been harboring a rigid, racist, sexist, nazi-normality in the white suburbs of America since the beginning. I mean, American Jim Crow laws influenced German Na-zi-ism. If we didn’t idealize rich, blond, white men, we wouldn’t be in this position. We obviously need to reconsider our ideals.

But here, in this blog, coming to you straight from the hills of Humboldt County, the Think Tank of Hippy emerges, like a puff of hope, a counterthought that will undermine this coup.

The reasons why Rumpkin will not become the next Hit ler-

1.  Cheeseburgers will kill him. He is old and not in good health. He won’t live long enough to take over the world.

2. His big mouth and insecure wiener is alienating very powerful rich people.

3. During WWI, the German people were devastated and needed the economic and moral uplift that a strong leader, vented anger, and another war provided. But Making America Fart Again is dragging us down.

4. In other repressive regimes, like in Russia or China, they have not had a history of freedoms. They moved from a repressive Czar or Royal Dynasty system to a repressive communist elite. Taking people’s freedoms after they have already had them is a different situation. People know what freedom feels like.

5.  We have never had so much access to information before. When oppressive regimes were installed in other countries, information could be controlled. Now, one viral video, and you can never name a kid Karen again. And a salute to South Park!

6.  When the masses begin to move, it will be impossible to stuff everyone into their prisons.

7.   And now, the most devious, cutting, manipulative tactic of the (THC) Think Hippy Cauldron - Hippies believe in the goodness in people’s hearts.

Yep, that’s it. Beating, loving hearts.

The National Guard and the police are American people too, with families and (hopefully) a conscience. They may do some of the bidding of the Evil Overlord, but, at some point, they will be facing white America wearing red hats on the front lawn of the White House. Mainstream America, driven into motion by the rising prices of food, gas, and clothing at their favorite stores -Target, Costco, or the Dollar Store, will have their cheep-shit bubble popped and will get into their gas-guzzling pickup trucks and head to the lawn of the White House. The KKkranky police won’t attack their own.

This is an important point.  It’s imperative that it is not freaks, minorities, LGBTQRST, or long purple-haired hippies on the front line. We didn’t vote for this. It has to be the Good Ol’ Boys Club dismantling what they created.  This will be the turning point. Only then will we be able to truly shift the heart of America away from the toxic presumptions and beliefs that are holding us back from being one of the leaders of the future Earth.

This doesn’t mean don’t go to the protest. We need to protest for our own souls, to feel like we are saying ‘NO!’ to this. But be safe, put the white soccer moms pushing strollers and old white men waving American flags up front.

The pimple of pus is oozing. Now, everyone can see very clearly the ills of our society, government, and structures. We are here in this moment of Earth’s history to learn life's lessons and grow as a society. It is through challenging situations that we grow the most. When this pimple pops (probably during the obvious upcoming election frauds), we will be called to purge and uproot our nazi undertones, the corruption of corporate politics, and the very root of our glorification and idealism of wealth. Then, only then, can we truly move forward as a holistic America and a model for the world to follow.

After all these years, Jimmy Hendrix doing the National Anthem is still pretty radical.

Profile of an pacifist Activist

My friend asked to be anonymous, and in this day and age, I fully agree. Here is her interview-

 “I have been writing letters of this sort since I was a teen. My second mom had us write letters for Amnesty International, which provided us with some diplomatic training. They point out that attacking and demanding only puts others on the defensive and, while it may feel good to vent, it achieves little in the direction you are hoping for. That appeals to the humanity and underlying consciousness that exists in most of us, albeit hidden, and can get results.

“And that’s how I approach my letters for change or support.

“I have written all the Supreme Court Justices individually twice, and messaged them directly as a group through their website twice as well. Each time, the message is basically the same: 

Thank you for doing the work you do on behalf of the nation and its citizens. Please do all you can to uphold the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and all the Amendments, the Rule of Law, and the right of all citizens to vote.

We appreciate the important role the Supreme Court, as an independent branch of government, plays in protecting our democracy. We are counting on you.

“I generally write these by hand on thank you cards. I want them to know we appreciate the role they are assigned, that we recognize the difficulty of it, that we are aware of the issues, and that we are paying attention.

“I never expected to receive ANY response from SCOTUS at all, and, I must say, in receiving a response, the last member of the Court I would imagine getting one from was Thomas! You will note it is in answer to a card from last February.

“Perhaps what it indicates to me is that someone is actually reading these cards… and not just staff. I take that as a good sign. They know we are watching.

“What I do know, at least relative to Congress, is that communications (calls, cards, emails) are read by staff and tallied by topic, after which the Congressperson is informed of what their constituents think is important. And that is why I do it; I do all three. It is my form of activism, especially now that I can’t get around as I would like.”

Rainbow Elder speaks

“I started going to Rainbow Gathering when somebody said let's go see an eclipse. At the time, I was living in LA in a commune that was not Rainbow related. So we hit the road and everywhere we went, we stayed in Rainbow houses because there were urban and rural communes on either side of Interstate 5 from San Diego to Vancouver, and you wouldn’t travel more than a day without finding a communal Rainbow house. That was my first experience before I even got to a gathering.  I saw the eclipse, and it turned out to be a bunch of Rainbows at Stonehenge on the Columbia River Gorge. There, every psychedelic known to man was being shared, and somebody that I picked up hitchhiking said, You've got to come to this gathering. It's done by the people, for the people. It's living theater. It's participatory democracy, and you can do anything you want as long as you're not hurting anyone; you can mobilize crowds of people to do anything they're interested in doing. There are songs. There's dance. There's storytelling. You've got to come!

And so that was in 1979, and I went. Yeah, it was a remarkable experience, but the next year I said, I'm not going again. Well, I found out that everybody says that because it's a rough camping experience, so you have to be pretty dedicated to want to attend a gathering. It's not like your average festival, where you drive and park, and there are showers.  It's not like that.

At a gathering, you park and then you walk a loooong way to the heart of the gathering to get away from the gasoline and what we call Babylon. Well, I ended up going again. It was because the whole purpose of Rainbow Gatherings is the prayer for peace on the 4th of July. This silent meditation and prayer for peace that's been happening since 1972 is a very moving experience. I was in a large Meadow with 10,000 people holding hands in a circle, in silence with nothing but Mother Earth. It's a very profound experience.

So that's the central reason for the gathering, and it's what keeps me going back. Still, there are so many other things around that that are inspiring - it's a temporary autonomous zone created by the people, there are no leaders, there's no central organization, there's no steering committee, there's no legislature, there's no bylaws, it's all done on a totally volunteer ad hoc basis by people seeing a need and stepping up to do it. That's what the gathering is about, and the reason I do it is because it's the only place I've been where you really are one of the people making it happen

So, I saw a need – I started directing parking. I had to say thousands of times - you can't drive down here, then having people cuss at me. I got really good at dealing with people doing that. I learned how to do peacekeeping, and so that was one of the major things I did when I was younger, which was just peacekeeping, and through that, I became interested in crisis intervention. I worked as a crisis counselor for 12 years as an outgrowth of my Rainbow experience. I found out I have a natural flair for it, so it kind of carried over into the rest of my life. Now that I'm older, I can't run around like I used to, so I just go there and enjoy. Now, I’m part of the history, but I'm not a historian; I'm an accidental archivist.

The life-changing thing about Rainbow Gatherings is that it encourages people to become active in their own lives. We're not aligned politically or spiritually at the Gathering, but everybody there is very interested in doing something radical in their outside lives. Working together with like-minded people, groups go off and do things. We had a lot of Rainbows go to Standing Rock when it was happening as water protectors. The Rainbow values kind of infiltrate Burning Man. The values are very much in the Oregon Country Fair. Those values are basically community, peace, and love. All the happy stuff that you would think about - mutual aid, respect for the environment, questioning the status quo, challenging the status quo, and growing intelligently.

There is a very good book called Dark Money by Gene Meyer. I've been trying to read for years. I can't get past chapter 3 because it's incredibly depressing. She researched it very well, and it's about the Right Wrings Billionhaires and Khristian conser-vatives who have been working in concert for decades to make this country in their image. Of course, you know Wright wing Khristians have one agenda, and the millionaires have another. The millionaires give the schools to the Kristians, just so that they don't get regulated in any way. One of their tools that way, way back they figured out was that if they could get people fighting among each other, that furthers their agenda because then people are not paying attention to what the RWB is doing.

So, everything from the incredible corruption of our government, the fact that lobbyists are really writing our bills for us, the fact that corporations are people, and money is speech means that corruption has been enshrined in this country. That's one of the things we're fighting, but the weapons of the RWB are dissension among the people who oppose them. We have to stop fighting among ourselves long enough to figure out how to answer this threat because it's not the Demorat’s fault and it's not Biiden's fault and it's not Obmama's fault. This has been planned for decades, this takeover by the RWB who don't want regulations, or in the case of the far Kristian wright who just want to be able to do what they're already doing in a lot of southern schools which is teaching God instead of science. I don't care if they teach God, but they can't throw science out the window. You know, separation of church and state, baby. So, it’s convoluted. It's hard to fight this particular coalition of vested interests that got that evil man elected.

But when you see people say awful, horrible things that make you mad, remember it's their intention to make you angry. That's what they're trying to do.”

Listening to Carla made me consider how Rainbow Warriors' core values of community, love, peace, and respect can be put into action. It’s a soft way to meet the hardness of the RWB. Will it work? I think it will be similar to the Rainbow Gathering in that it won’t be easy.

Cool truck

the peace movement

Watching the news leaves me blinking in disbelief. It takes real consciousness to choose the lighter path in this time of little shop of horrors.  

Every chakra is engaged, starting with the head – enlightenment or confusion, the throat –clear voice or stifled silence, the heart- love or hate, solar-plexus open creativity or rigid righteousness, and finally the root chakra – feeling safe and open to our passions or fear, insecurity, and pent-up. Maintaining a calm center and energy flowing is like swimming upstream against a waterfall. Let’s face it – we’re traumatized.

In this time of upheaval, we must remember that we are meant to be here. What we do and feel is essential. If we want peace, we must find it within ourselves. If we want harmony, we can’t fight for that; we must live it. If we want justice we must insist on it again and again. It is the ultimate challenge – how to live in chaos and not engage-enrage but heal and deal. From Jesus to Nat Chit Hung to the Black Panther, this is what every inspiring story is about.

Each one of us has to decide what’s in our hearts. Do we want revolution, resolution or retribution? Each of these paths is very different. What we hold as a vision guides our actions. Maybe there is even a third option that we haven’t even thought of yet, for we are in the Age of Aquarius; it’s not just about long hair and drugs; it’s about testing every boundary and every idea of normal. This time is characterized by extreme ideals, with the side effect of making it difficult to relate on a personal level.  Dig it, we’re there.

We are adrift into a future we cannot rely on. So, all we have is this moment. This is it. This is life. Throw ourselves onto the steps of the Wit Howse, protest, and post signs, but part of the solution is also snuggling our cat, playing with our children, swimming in a river, or also humm… chocolate and wine? Can’t undo it all. Folly has been part of the human condition since day one. Our own happiness can’t be contingent on the outside world.

At every moment we are given an opportunity to live with integrity, uphold our values and nurture our relationships. The simple moments build a life. As the end line of the movie Don’t Look Up says, 'We had everything.' We must savor our scraps of freedom as they are being thrown away with this Idiocracy.

Folly will undo itself.

Karma will be rough for those who play along.

No one is safe until we are all safe.

And since we are trapped in this show of fools, we might as well cut loose and clown around.

There must be some way out of this said the Joker to the Thief… check out All long the watchtower.

Healing the divide

The news is like ceaseless, driving rain pelting my face. Trying not to reiterate what has already been said, this blog is a digestive system rather than an echo chamber. I digest. And, at times, given a lot of bad news, digestion takes a while. I masticate and contemplate, then see what comes up. Let’s call it intuitive news digestion. Now I’m ready to hand you the sh*t.

The Orange Turd - we’ve heard enough about him. What’s more interesting is that he is an icon of a movement. The people who think he’s wonderful are the root of the issue. What does he mean to them?

Our country has a deep rift. But like a fractal pattern, perhaps each of us also has a divide within. We all have demons, but we have learned (through helpful therapy) that the things that haunt us are usually repressed desires, fears, or anger that ooze out of our control and pop up, unbidden to destroy relationships and make our lives difficult. The more we try to rid ourselves of these unsavory attributes, the more they surface. Our minds feel out of control when our anger or ticks wreak havoc until we turn toward the quality we are pushing away.

In the body of America, there is an unmet need, a repressed expression. We are demonizing the other half of ourselves. We cannot divorce ourselves or kill ourselves, so we must face our demon-half of the population, for we demonize each other. Not only must we face our other half, but we must love, hold, and listen to our demons with compassion to try to understand. Only then do we see the ferocious evil melt into a child-like, unmet need.

What is the need for the other half of America?

Well, let’s look at their icon. He is the obvious racist, sexist, capitalist pig that is so very repulsive to science-based, inclusive liberals. But let’s reduce the Orange Turd to a feeling. Well, he shoots from the hip. He’s impulsive. Deeper still, he is illogical. He speaks purely to emotions with no facts or real content.

Here is the first clue to understanding.

Then there are those signs outside our liberal doors or yards that say- We believe - water is life, love is free, no person is illegal, and science is real- it seems almost incomprehensible that we need to say any of this. It’s so obvious. But taking out the sexism and racism (not that these aren’t important), we are left with the part about science. We proclaim its reality as if cell phones, computers, and cars aren’t enough proof.

Maybe another clue.

Confucius maintained that one must liken oneself to oneself. We cannot show compassion to others unless we develop compassion for ourselves. We are all a little bit crazy. Confucius also maintained that it was imperative to chant, do rituals, recite poetry and be moved by music to truly change at a deep level. This is what is offered in the churches of America: feeling, music, belonging, faith, and resurrection. Something that Science, and education doesn’t provide

Psychological clue #3.

See my blog post with pictures of Jesus holding guns. It seemed so bizarre. But when I put on my phycologist thinking cap and see it as an image that has meaning, it becomes less offensive and more of an interesting symbol. Religion is defending itself. It feels endangered and threatened to the point that it needs violence to survive.

Clue #4.

Putting these clues together, perhaps we can hypothesize that the emotional, illogical, spiritual side of America (the religious right) has risen as a repressed monster because it has been impoverished and out of favor with our rational, logical, scientific paradigm of America.

There has been a significant decline in Christianity in America, about 16%. Of the 62% of the US Christian population, 40% identify as Protestant and 19% as Catholic. Perhaps this is the reason why the Catholic Church chose an American Pope.

You can see the mosaic of clues pointing to the root of the divide. Let us put facts aside and journey to the mythical, magical side where we dream and imagine. This is what we need to learn from our counterparts; even though it feels like Christianity is an outmoded religion that doesn’t allow us to move forward, yet it holds the roots of ancient myths, community, and spirit. Scientific, capitalist America needs this, for science on its own is out of moral and spiritual control and will destroy us just as much as non-critical thinking, faith-based political force that we have now.

A quote from the book, A Short History of Myth –

 “Because the novelist and the artist operate at the same level of consciousness as myth makers, they naturally resort to the same themes. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness can be seen as a heroic quest and initiation that has gone wrong. Published in 1902, just before the West began its great disillusion, the novel describes the sojourn of the ultimate civilized Mr. Kratz deep in the African jungle. In traditional mythology, the hero left the serenity of the social world behind. He often had to descend into the depths of the earth, where he would meet an unsuspected effect on himself. The experience of isolation and deprivation could result in a psychological breakdown, which led to a vital new insight. If he succeeded, the hero returned to his people with something new and precious. In Conrad's novel, the labyrinthine recalls the subterranean tunnels through which the initiates crawled back into the womb of the Earth and the underworld of the primeval jungle. Kurtz does indeed look into the darkness of his heart but remains stuck in his resignation and dies spiritually. He becomes a shaman manique, with no respect but only contempt for the African community that he abuses.”

“A mythological hero learns that, if he dies to himself, he would be reborn in new life, but Kurtz is caught in the toils of a sterile egotism, and when he finally reappears in the novel, he has the obscenity of an inanimate corpse, obsessed with his own fame. Kurtz seeks not heroism but only barren celebrity. He cannot make a heroic affirmation of life: his dying words are – “The horror, the horror!”. Conrad, a true prophet, had already looked at the triviality, selfishness, greed, nihilism, and despair of the 20th century.”

“In 1922, T.S. Eliot depicted the spiritual disintegration of Western culture in his landmark poem The Wasteland. In this myth of the Holy Grail, the wasteland is a place where people live inauthentic lives, blindly following the norms of their society without the conviction that comes from deeper understanding. How is it possible to put down creative roots in this stony rubbish of modernity where people have lost touch with the mythical underpinnings of their culture? Instead of understanding the inner coherence of their tradition, they know only heaps of broken images. Elliot lays bare the sterility of contemporary life by means of poignant, lapidary allusions to the mythology of the past- to European, Sanskrit, Buddhist, biblical, Greek, and Roman myths. It's alienation, ennui, nihilism, superstition, egotism, and despair as he confronts the imminent demise of Western Civilization. When we have pieced (religions) together and recognize their common core, we can reclaim the wasteland in which we live.”

At the end of the Short History of Myth (which I hope some of you read – it is truly short), Armstrong proclaims that humans have always been mythmakers and challenges us to deepen ourselves by integrating living myths back into our lives.

What myth do we hold as true enough that we can let go of our critical minds and just go with the symbolic dream? There are so many breakthroughs in the phycology-therapy sphere that there are signs of real transformational understanding. Science, as well, is expanding into the surreal. So much has come out of the quantum small to the vastness of deep space-time. How can we not see God? There it is - not a God-man, nor a Goddess-woman, yet infinite creations held by endless space. It's magical, mysterious, and powerful.

Maybe our next myth might be a fusion of Jesus and science. Jesus, the transgender, intuitive explorer of space-time, with Mary Mangelin, a genius physicist, explores space in their quantum ship shaped like a cross. They sacrifice themselves to a black hole and come out in a parallel universe, learning that all is destroyed in order to be created again – the ultimate recycling symbol. Infinity is realized. They are resurrected in this parallel universe, bringing back the divine wisdom, logos, to Mother Earth. The Father's wisdom rejoins the emotional Mother Earth, the male and female unite within Jesus, and the repressed feminine becomes empowered through Mary. In a fractal universe, as below, so above, so inside, so outside. Here, within us, is where balance is restored.

Scientific minds integrate with our moral mythical minds, and we can see both truths.

Here is a stab at a space-Jesus myth, but it is not enough. The myth needs music, theater, art, holidays and community to bring it to life. Like so many shifts in religions, the new overlays on the well-trodden path of the old.

Spirituality needs to hold science accountable to life, and science should hold spirituality accountable to open-mindedness. This is the balance we need to survive.

Perhaps this gives us something else to chew on besides grinding our teeth in anger and frustration through the pelting rain of nonsensical atrocities. We protest and put a sign on our front lawns, but we also need to look for solutions within our own lives. How are we divided within ourselves? Are we whole? What spiritual language do we speak, and can we use this to decipher what our religious counterparts are saying?

No matter what happens, even if it all looks bad, it comes down to what is in our minds and relationships. How do we want to spend these precious moments of life? Hate and worry erode our soul. There’s more than one dimension to work on.

Cut loose, dream deeply, imagine unity, and untangle our feelings by befriending our pain. Sorting out what the other half of Americans are about is beyond what the crazy T-rex does. He’s a patsy to the dying oil industry (even as the Earth’s ecosystems collapse), a stubborn patriarch (which I am losing hope that we will ever get beyond), and an egomaniac (endemic of our culture). Our conservative family and friends will still be here long after he is gone. We can only change ourselves and make the heaven we hope for by developing our inner world for who has ever had the outer world be perfect? Well-being is our affair. Developing compassion and understanding for our conservative population is what will move us closer to a calmer center and a cohesive America. This is not easy. Hate and division are much easier but more toxic and will lead us to destruction.

This is a call for each of us to be the hero in the journey to wholeness.  

simple yet fun