All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.
After the Rough Fire: Lupine and Poppies
ROOMS THAT DREAM:
APT. 34
In Apt. 34, you are an emperor with a golden throne and a golden toilet. You have more wealth than half the people in the world. In order to achieve your exalted status, you have had to depress wages and crush unions and blackball (and even kill) activists who fight for justice and strive to create sustainable communities for future generations. You have had to buy off politicians in the political parties so that they allow your lobbyists to write legislation that benefits you, politicians who will cut funding for social programs for children and seniors and veterans and the homeless and anyone else who might need help. Your handmaidens also gut or eliminate any regulations that might keep the wealth from flowing in your direction. As a master of mankind, you follow the vile maxim: All for me, and nothing for you. You throw poor people who have not committed violent crimes into for-profit prisons, modern concentration camps that treat prisoners as slave labor. You take over smaller businesses and crush the competition to create monopolies, a practice the government allows because of your influence. Also, unfortunately, many people have to die in order for you to maintain this system. For instance, nine million people, one third of whom are children, die of causes associated with starvation every year. Untold millions of people die unnecessarily from viruses and curable diseases because you demand a for-profit health care system that is twice as expensive but far less effective than a universal health care system. You don't even provide adequate testing or protective gear in a pandemic for front-line workers and the population in general. Unfortunately, numerous people also keep dying because you have gutted food and safety regulations. The climate is becoming weirder and weirder, but you don't allow your environmental protection agency to regulate carbon dioxide or anything else that might interfere with your business interests. In fact, people keep dying unnecessarily for economic and environmental reasons, but that is the price of maintaining a free market capitalistic system where anyone can succeed as long as they are intelligent and work hard. That is truly the price of freedom.
But one day you wake up and realize that you can no longer assess all of the damage you have caused.
Knowing that the tax rate was once over 90% for the wealthiest people in society, you decree the following:
Any company that has raised prices by more than 0.01% since the health and economic crisis began will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund a universal health care system and social programs for the poor.
All funds currently allocated for the military will be shifted to education, health care, and programs that eliminate poverty.
Any company responsible for global warming or for polluting the environment will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund renewable resources, health care, and environmental protection.
Any company that sells weapons of war, such as the AR-15, to the public will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund health care, education, and programs that support families of the victims of gun violence.
All credit card companies will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to supporting job creation and education.
Any company that has established a monopoly or that exists as part of an oligopoly will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will support the creation of new businesses and educational programs.
Any company with a minimum wage of less than twenty dollars per hour will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund health care, education, and the arts.
Any company that does not meet safety regulations will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund health care and education.
Any company that runs a for-profit prison will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund prisoner rehabilitation programs, education, and health care.
All profits gained through the stock market will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund health care, education, and the arts.
Any company that sells an addictive substance that has harmed one or more people will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund drug treatment programs and other health care programs that help people overcome addiction.
Any company that has busted a union or fired labor activists will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund a universal health care system, job creation programs, and social programs for the poor.
All income above five hundred thousand dollars a year will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund a universal health care system, education, environmental protection, and social programs for the poor.
All companies that employ lobbyists will be taxed at a rate of 92%, and all of the taxes will go to fund health care, education, and the arts.
Any person responsible for raising interest rates during a health and economic crisis will be fined a million dollars and imprisoned for a minimum of five years.
Any politician who lies more than twice or tries to cut social programs instead of raising taxes on the wealthy will be taxed at a rate of 92% and will be barred from running for office again.
As your new government implements these laws, you smile. It's a start.
(You realize that you are still on the right path because you find a story by Justin C. in your kitchen....)
Wind Poppies after the Rough Fire
PENDULUM DREAMS:
After the Rough Fire
California has experienced many devastating wildfires in recent years and will no doubt experience more conflagrations this summer. The Rough Fire in 2015 blackened 151,623 acres (61,360 ha), a season record in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but nature quickly recovered. The Creek Fire, in 2020, incinerated 379,895 acres (153,738 ha), leaving nothing but rocks and dirt and ashes in a once densely forested region. The Rough Fire reveals regeneration; the Creek Fire reveals negation caused by a terrible natural imbalance.
The Rough Fire finally halted on the east side of Vomac Road. When I drove to the North Fork of the Kings River a few days after fire crews had extinguished the inferno, the hillsides were so blackened that I couldn’t help but believe that the fire had blotted out the entire ecosystem forever. The blaze had reduced the best memories of my childhood to ashes: I had spent many hours by the river with my family as I was growing up. As I stepped out of my car to survey the devastation, I searched for any sign of life, and I felt suddenly like I was going to vomit due to the smoke that still hung in the air, so, discouraged, I drove home. I returned many months later and discovered that most of the oaks had miraculously survived, the hillsides glowing with poppies and other wildflowers. Fire had regenerated the region, the earth bearing the most stunning profusion of wildflowers that I have ever witnessed in that area before or since.
On the other hand, the region devastated by the Creek Fire will take decades, if not centuries, to recover. Due to a rise in temperature caused by greenhouse gases, most of the trees in the area had been weakened by a lack of water. Before the fire, many of the trees had already died due to an assault by the bark beetle: without an adequate amount of water, the trees could not produce enough sap to drown the burrowing beetles. Due to this imbalance, almost nothing in the area was left but scorched earth after the fire.
In this capitalistic society, for most people it is almost impossible to avoid a similar kind of devastation physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Cumulatively, over many decades, this society blackens our bodies, hearts, minds, and souls. We can regenerate ourselves, but how long regeneration takes depends on the level of devastation.
Physically. I have lived my entire life in the Los Angeles area and in California's Central Valley, two of the most polluted areas in the nation. Both areas are famous (or infamous) for their persistent air pollution. Occasionally, in both places, I could barely breath due to the smog, and my lungs hurt so badly that I thought I was going to pass out and die. The water in both places has sickened me. In Fresno especially, I have often felt nauseated for hours after drinking tap-water. On top of that, the American diet was literally killing me. Gluten is pervasive in the food supply. An indigestible protein in gluten breaks apart the tight junctures in the small intestines, and food particles and waste escape through these holes into the blood stream, overwhelming the immune system and causing inflammation in different parts of the body. Eventually I experienced atrial fibrillation (which can cause heart attack or stroke) when I ate even a small amount of gluten, and I experienced digestive issues that would occasionally cause me to black out. No one in this society can escape the contaminants in the food and air and water unless they are extremely careful and are fortunate enough to live in a pristine area. Also, of course, the pandemic, which has killed over one million people in this country, leaves many people in a black whole of grief, vulnerability and fear.
Emotionally. When you are grieving or ill, people tend to avoid you. A month after I turned seventeen, my father died at the age of fifty-five from a heart attack. At the time, I was terribly ill from gluten and chemical sensitivities. I was overwhelmed by grief for my father, and my friends abandoned me. My family members avoided expressing their emotions, and we tended to avoid each other as well. No one I knew could deal in a caring way with my experiences of death and illness. Everyone, it seemed, remained in avoidance mode and denial, so I ended up suffering from extreme depression. One day I was startled to see that my aura was black, and I believed people could, due to the survival instinct, sense my emotional negativity, but I couldn't find my way out of the black hole I was in. Avoidance by other people of emotional pain can have a devastating effect for many years on someone experiencing depression. No one can escape grief or suffering, so many people in this society, unless lucky enough to have caring friends or family members, can end up unexpectedly in an emotional black hole like I did.
Mentally. Ever since I can remember, I have experienced an assault on social values such as truth and beauty and justice, so I have often found myself in limbo on the mental level as well. In this society we are inundated with lies and propaganda and alternative realities. Many in this society have no compunction about telling lies or half-truths in order to gain or maintain power and wealth and status. Some people, like our former president, pile on one lie after another so that we become overwhelmed and throw up our hands. If you are paying attention at all, you can find one lie after another in advertising and social media and political discourse. Mentally, if we are paying attention at all to the political and economic and environmental realities in this society, we can quickly find ourselves in a state of mental confusion and despair due to all the lies, a black hole that is difficult to escape. This of course benefits the elites who perpetuate corporate tyranny: the elites in the media constantly lie to us so that we remain in a state of confusion. The elites intentionally cause divisiveness so that we direct our anger at each other, not at them.
Spiritually. In this country, we are vulnerable physically and emotionally and mentally. That vulnerability sometimes causes an overwhelming sense of frustration or paralysis or panic that makes us want to lash out at other people. Racism and antisemitism and ethnocentrism and political tribalism and lies divide our country, causing us to fear and hate each other. Hatred is a spiritual toxin that can also leave us in a black hole. Unfortunately, other people like white supremacists and neo-Nazis want us to join them in their black hole; hatred gives them power. Sometimes even people you might admire or respect provide little or no guidance. For instance, when I was in college, my professors were either atheists or existentialists. Most of them believed that a spiritual dimension does not exist and that life is meaningless and absurd. If I wanted to fit in and succeed academically, I felt like I had to remain in a spiritual black hole.
Regeneration occurs periodically in the evolution of the soul, enabling the soul to spiral higher and wider. When I began meditating in my early forties, I saw in my mind’s eye that negativity over the years had indeed blackened my energy field physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, but I eventually released the dark energies through a process of mental purification, and a miracle occurred: I became a new man. The darkness in my circumscribed, fragmented personality vanished, and I felt whole again. I connected profoundly with the earth and experienced nonlocal consciousness more and more often. And now I know this in my core: Regeneration is possible on all levels of being—though it may be the hardest process a person ever experiences because it entails the renewal of the psyche after what has usually been a long process of devastating negativity on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels.
Around the time of the Rough Fire, I had a dream in which I had climbed a flight of stairs, and when I reached the top, I turned around and encountered a double of myself directly behind me, dressed in shiny black clothes. I felt so terrified that I whipped around and pushed my double over the railing. When I peeked over the side, I didn’t see my double at the bottom, but I heard groaning and cries for help and realized that the sounds were coming out of my own mouth as I stood at the top of the stairs. Nobody came to help me, perhaps because my double below was invisible to them, and my cries became fainter and fainter. Just as I recognized that I was dying, I woke up. As I contemplated the dream, I understood that I had pushed my etheric double over the edge because I was too afraid to deal with the black energies that had accumulated in my aura from my disease and related personal woes. I couldn’t see my etheric double on the floor below because it had also become invisible to me: I had focused so much on basic survival that I had ignored my health--physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. My double had only showed itself to me in the dream as a warning about the extent of my illness, but I was in so much denial that I panicked and pushed it away, which in the dream resulted in the destruction of my body as well, for emotional, mental, and spiritual health is the foundation for health of the physical body.
Around the time of the Rough Fire, I had become so busy with work and so fatigued by my chronic illness that I had ignored my spiritual practices. I was no longer meditating or performing spiritual rituals; instead, I was taking a two hour nap every afternoon after work. As my dream suggested, I had allowed negative energies to swamp me, and I was suffering the consequences: I was again experiencing atrial fibrillation, and I couldn't identify the cause. I was feeling pain in my esophagus from inflammation, which worried me because inflammation can lead to gastrointestinal cancers of the esophagus and the small intestine. Inflammation caused by gluten also damages the villi, the small, finger-like extensions that line the small intestine. The villi flatten out and no longer effectively absorb nutrients. Eventually, other health problems associated with inflammation and poor nutrient absorption include iron and vitamin deficiencies, low bone mineral density, skin rashes, defects in the enamel of the teeth, chronic fatigue, joint pain, and severe digestive problems, among other things. Unfortunately for me, the most miniscule amount of gluten in my system causes inflammation and atrial fibrillation, which can make my heart go haywire for hours. I couldn't allow any gluten in my diet whatsoever, but removing it entirely required a Herculean effort because gluten is so pervasive in the typical American diet, and I couldn't examine each bit of food under a microscope; I had had to resort to a time-consuming process of elimination, which placed me in continuous jeopardy of a heart attack or a stroke.
Eventually I completely eliminated gluten from my diet. I also survived for another reason: after I performed a thorough purification process, both physically and mentally, I began to experience nonlocal consciousness regularly. The higher self can transcend space and time and also perceive with the "soul senses" as well as the physical senses. In other words, I could scan my energy field with my mind's eye and "see" black streaks in my etheric body, which signaled the onset of physical disease. In this society, many people have great difficulty understanding the concept of nonlocal consciousness because we tend to get locked into the material conditions and specific circumstances of our space and time, in other words, "local consciousness." We are conditioned to believe that transcendence of the physical senses and material existence is impossible. Most of us remain unaware that in addition to the physical body, each individual aura contains subtle levels of energy, sometimes known as energy "bodies," that can be vehicles of consciousness: the etheric, astral, mental, and spiritual bodies. This is well-known in some Eastern spiritual traditions and in occult circles, the word occult meaning "hidden."
A person experiences nonlocal consciousness when working with great spiritual powers known as Gods and Archangels and Angels because those awesome spiritual beings exist in other dimensions. I continue to perform the Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram, which involves Archangels, Angels, and Elementals, every day for the purpose of healing. For instance, during the climax of a ritual, I saw, in my mind’s eye my etheric double behind me again, this time without the black clothes. As a body of light, it joined with my physical body. The next day I felt much better, and the atrial fibrillation had all but disappeared. During the next ritual, I had a clear vision of myself with a golden crown on my head and a golden, equal-armed cross in my heart. I was sitting in front of a table with a brilliant white tablecloth, on which rested a golden plate and chalice, a full moon floating above the tablecloth as if the edge of the table were a horizon.
The next day during the ritual, I invoked the Archangels of the Elements again and asked them to regenerate my etheric body with their powers of harmony. I also asked what sacrifice I needed to make in order to serve them for the highest good. Again, I envisioned the golden crown and equal-armed cross, the golden plate and chalice on the white tablecloth, with the full moon floating just above the edge of the table, but I also envisioned above me a brilliant white sun with a black Calvary Cross at its center. The Calvary Cross, on one level, is an unfolded cube of space and time, a symbol of sacrifice and regeneration, of crucifixion and redemption, of the death of the lower personality and the birth of the higher self. In my vision, the moon, always waxing and waning, represents the incarnated personality on which the Sun of Tiphareth, the Christ center, shines. During the ritual, in that deep state of meditation, my personality vanished: I was Everyman and Everywoman—in front of me a spiritual banquet of abundance, on my head a crown representing magnificence and in my heart the golden equal-armed cross of harmony.
The next day during my ritual, I had the same vision of the golden symbols, the white tablecloth, the moon, and the sun with the black Calvary Cross. I asked Archangel Michael to reveal my sacrifice, and the black cross suddenly fell from the sun into my heart. I intuited that I must take the blackness from people who had harmed me, or from those whom I had harmed, their negative energy in the form of a black cross entering my heart center. I envisioned a particularly problematic individual from my past and took the black cross containing all the negativity he felt for me into my heart, and then after a while I let it fall out of my aura, down into the magma below the earth, where it burned up. Then I intuited that I should fill that person with light. When I did so, suddenly a golden crown appeared on his head, a golden equal-armed cross over his heart, a golden plate and chalice on a white tablecloth before him. Then I imagined pink energy filling his aura, pink being the color on the Tree of Life corresponding to the highest spiritual love. Then I envisioned another prickly individual, and I performed the same cleansing ritual in my mind. I recognized an important facet of regeneration: In order to cleanse myself completely, I needed to cleanse each person who harbored negativity for me as well, taking his or her blackness into myself as a sacrifice and then releasing it, an act that freed us both and revealed the magnificence, harmony and abundance of the human spirit.
This vision occurred in nonlocal consciousness on an archetypal level, a level deeper than the personality, in the state of being represented on the Tree of Life as Yesod. Just above Malkuth (the physical universe), on the Tree of Life, Yesod, the Foundation, is the Sephira (Emanation) of etheric energy and The Holy Ghost. During meditation, if you can go deeper than the personality and its personal subconscious content, you can encounter transpersonal symbols that reveal spiritual principle. These symbols can swing you above Yesod across a gulf to the Emanation of the Sun known as Tiphareth (Beauty), a sphere of harmony and healing and spiritual inebriation. On the Tree of Life, the magical symbol representing Tiphareth is a sun with a black Calvary Cross in the center. The Calvary Cross on one level represents the sacrifices needed to establish and maintain harmony within the self and the community and the world, but it also symbolizes death and regeneration, the death of the personality and the birth of the higher self, a psychic state that includes nonlocal consciousness. One spiritual experience assigned to Tiphareth is The Vision of Harmony, where you recognize that you are a thread of consciousness in a vast tapestry of interwoven energy that includes all of life, including the earth and plants and animals and other people. The other spiritual experience assigned to Tiphareth is "The Mysteries of Sacrifice," in which you recognize what is necessary to establish and maintain harmony and regenerate the soul.
I have experienced hatred for a few people over the years, which, I realize now, had become a deeply ingrained spiritual problem responsible for some of the blackness in my aura. I could only become whole if I changed my hatred into love, recognizing that those people are magnificent spiritual beings who struggle in difficult situations just like I have. I believe that what poet William Blake says is true for all of us: "The Angel who presided at my birth,/ said 'Go and love without the help of anything on earth." Unless the people who harmed me are psychic, of course, they will never realize that I have forgiven them and now know them for what they are spiritually. However, it became clear to me that forgiveness on an archetypal level is a way beyond the negativity that plagues so many of our relationships. When I felt forgiveness, I felt whole again as a spiritual being. I felt a sense of spiritual regeneration and knew that I was completely recovering, and I believed that my former enemies also subconsciously felt less negativity since on the spiritual level we are all connected.
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