Tag Archives: Homer

Wake Up!

This sequence started with an exchange between me and a publisher who wears a second hat as a major RFK Jr. supporter:

ME: How are you?

TL: Great. You?

ME: Greatly heartened to know you are well!

As for me. Long story short, it’s said God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle. But sometimes wish he didn’t trust me so much.

Bottom line. On the same day RFK Jr took the oath of office, I swore a parallel oath to God to honor/fulfill the responsibility I’ve been given to support his mission. Will survive to do so.

As for TQS [The Quantum Solution], it’s still writing itself. Have very strong feeling an event’s coming down the pike which will influence content/approach. Waiting for its arrival.

And within a day, the event arrived.

It wasn’t at all what expected. Nothing related to world events — neither politics, wars, nor natural disasters.

It was personal.

I took a fall which triggered an avalanche of Aha moments.

Over night, half asleep, I reached for a door frame to support my weight, but misjudged its distance. Leaning forward, I missed it. And went down.

Crash! Shock!!

No injuries, thank God. But seriously shaken.

As is my way, after settling down, I queried the I Ching, my go-to mentor, seeking to understand the implications of the fall. What message was to be taken from that surprise? What adjustment called for?

The answer came back, unequivocal. No changing lines. Hexagram 21, BREAKTHROUGH. It looks like this:

When I searched my conscience, what surfaced was a paralyzing tension in my attitude towards publishing. That’s what I’m being advised to correct.

Yuppers. In the past, my now deceased teacher took a dim view of my writing, citing the biblical warning against casting pearls before swine.

But in my musings now, when I returned to the classic tale of humans turned to swine, it reminded me that, at least in this case, they were eventually changed back again. This has relevance to my reservations, as well as potential solutions.

In Homer’s Odyssey (a classic story of the archetypal hero’s journey), Hermes, the healing god, supplies the medicinal remedy that returns the ship’s crew back from spell-bound pigs to their original, true selves. He also, by the way, forewarns our hero of the sorceress Circe’s dangers, giving him an herb that makes him immune to her dark spells. (To the best of my knowledge, what that herb might be isn’t named. That would be an interesting rabbit hole for someone to explore, don’t you think?)

Remember Hermes? He’s the winged messenger (Mercury) who carries the caduceus, familiar symbol of the current medical profession, which (sadly) has forgotten its origins and is long overdue to remember, restore and perhaps upgrade itself! (But that’s a subject for a different, lengthy discourse.)

When I search my soul, the nagging, pessimistic part of my psyche feels that life’s too painful. Wants only to withdraw. Have nothing to do with the majority of barbaric humans driven by appetites, all too easily seduced by black-magic temptations of the dark side.

What I recognize is that my BREAKTHROUGH must be to replace remnants of pessimism and self-doubt with this awareness: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY.

It is ignorance instilled and enforced by dark-side slave-masters that drives bestiality, cruelty and viciousness. Education driven by a positive paradigm shift has the potential to change that!

And that’s exactly my job. From now on, I’ll focus on this KEY. According to the Quantum Paradigm, we are each made in the image of God. Inherently, at our core, each and every one of us — even savage murderers, thieves and exploiters of every stripe — remains in deepest essence divine. We each carry the magical seed potential (albeit latent and forgotten) — to transcend illusory limitations. Therein lies certain hope of a better future.

Like Lambert, the sheepish lion, we each have the potential to WAKE UP! To remember who we truly are.

As of now, however, the vast majority of humanity remains, as I was, half asleep. Staggering, they reach for support, but miss the mark and fall.

And it’s my given job is to serve as an awakener. A messenger. A reminder that according to the complete and correct Quantum Paradigm (towards which humanity now has the opportunity to shift), divinity rests at the eternal core of who we’re born to be.

More than once, it has occurred to me that in a generation’s time, these changes will be accomplished, whether or not I publish. They’ll inevitably come to pass, simply because astrologically, all the attitude-shaping outer planets will have changed sign.

Pluto, the powerful planet of transformative personal and political change, recently shifted from earth-based Capricorn into air-ruled Aquarius. The day after the March 29th radical New Moon eclipse in Aires, Neptune, the creative planet of inspiration, intuition and devotion follows suit, moving from water-based Pisces for a 14-year transit through fire-ruled Aires.

After that, over the next two years, stern, conformist Saturn, the planet of rules, structure and institutional authority, will leave the water sign of Pisces to enter fire-ruled Aires. Eccentric Uranus, the planet of invention, foresight and genius, will exit the location where it’s been stuck in earth-bound Taurus to reside in more compatible, air-ruled Gemini.

So, in the future, no matter where in the world a child is born, into whatever cultural milieu, its astrological markings will be radically different from those of its grandparents and even parents. Without anyone having to do anything to bring about this change, one-hundred years from now, no one left will be of the current imperial, conquest, control and dominance mindset.

But that too-easy cop-out doesn’t let me off the hook. That’s then. This is now. Humanity still needs to make the (sometimes messy and painful) transition from here to there. And replacing the current empirical science model, mainstreaming the Quantum Paradigm, is a necessary part of the process that will lead humanity into its long-foreseen better future.

In The Leviathan, first published in 1651, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes posited that in its natural state, human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” On this assumption, he rationalized the necessary existence of absolute governmental power.

This serves as an example of the dynamic that the beliefs people hold have very real consequences. “Thinking makes it so.” Believing humans are bestial not only gives them license to act that way, but also to treat them as such.

Fortunately, beliefs remain a matter of personal choice.

In this light, the Make America Healthy Again movement now afoot in the U.S. has great potential to shift widespread beliefs and therefore results. It’s no accident that RFK Jr. openly says “spirituality” is a necessary component of a nation’s health.

Better, more awakened beliefs emerging now will lead to better results in the future. This is the hopeful premise of The Quantum Solution.

MY Worst Fear

When I posted What is YOUR Worst Fear, I intended to follow the next week with a sequel, MY Worst Fear. But it has taken a full month of soul-searching labor to deliver. The outcome – a yin-yang re-birthing of this website.

062115 embryo

The original sequel would have expressed the persistent fear described in Rethinking Survival:

The greatest personal obstacle I listed was pessimism, an attitude embedded deep in my upbringing, which crops up from the reservoir of inherited weaknesses from time-to-inconvenient-time. . . . the demon that surfaces when things get especially rough, taunting that all I’ve learned has been in vain, all the books I’ve written were for naught.

I feared the fate of Cassandra. I feared that I’ll fall short in warning that we urgently need to recognize an unwelcome elephant’s presence in civilization’s room – the hovering uncertainty of human survival.

Then doubts crept in. I decided to learn more about Cassandra, sung of by the bard, Homer, in The Iliad. I knew she was a priestess gifted with foresight. I knew her warnings went unheeded. Her prescience failed to prevent the destruction of her people.

But research uncovered another side to her story. According to legend, she received her gift from the Sun god Apollo in exchange for promises which she failed to keep. The curse of disbelief was attached to her prophetic abilities – so it is said – as punishment for deceiving the gods.

Obviously, I hope there’s no similarity between us on that count. Also, Cassandra died a hideous death, a fate which isn’t included in my particular fear portfolio.

So I searched my memory banks for a more accurate image of my worst fear. Immediately, one came forward.

As a teen, I spent two wonderful summers at Interlochen, the National Music Camp. One night, as was my habit, after the bugle sounded taps and the lights went out, I hid, wide awake, completely covered under my wool olive-drab army blanket and turned on a flashlight to read in the dark.

My borrowed book chronicled atrocities of the WWII holocaust. The powerfully horrifying image that remains with me was an enforced still birth. Enroute to death camps, Nazi guards responded to calls for help when a Jewish woman went to labor by chaining her legs tightly together at the ankles. Suffering oceans of agony, she died together with her unborn child.

Over the years, this is the repeating image of agony that comes to mind whenever the constellation of conspiring events seems to prevent me from bringing my writing into the world.

But again, rethinking led to doubts. I put this fear to Plato’s test, remembering his standard:

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

I decided, figuratively speaking, to turn the flashlight formerly hidden furtively under my youthful pillow for secret night-time use to submit my adult fears to the daylight of reason. Knowing that fear invites danger, I asked myself, “Am I allowing festering fears to become a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

So I named my immediate fears, one-by-one, and took responsibility for allowing them to influence my decisions, yielding a new array of options for correcting old mistakes. I can now proceed to direct future choices toward better outcomes.

For one thing, I decided to take on the paralyzing web of Catch 22s that plague a writer’s career. This is not the place to digress into war stories and bitter complaints. Suffice it to say that trusting authors are all-too-easy prey for members of the established publishing profession who specialize in eating them for their lunch.

But then, the alternative – to do everything alone, wear the many diverse hats required to bring a finished product to the general public – has just as many pitfalls. Marketing especially has been an issue. I took this position in The Positive Paradigm Handbook:

To my way of thinking, a person with something of extraordinary value to offer should be eagerly sought out and welcomed.

This is the book I dearly wanted for myself, the one that wasn’t on the shelves no matter where I looked. I’d have given everything I had for the knowledge in the Handbook. It’s the sum of what I’ve searched a lifetime to find. I’ve sacrificed a great deal to write and make the information usefully available. I’m offering it whole, on a silver platter, to those with an ear to hear.

So courting readers seems inappropriate and undignified, even embarrassing. I’ve accepted the necessity of marketing as a humbling, character-building opportunity. I can gladly swallow personal pride for the sake of human survival. The trade-off is more than worth it.

In some respects, however, I stand my ground. When marketing standards go against the grain of the Positive Paradigm, I draw the line. One fashionable marketing concept is called branding. “The author is the brand.”

Here I disagree wholeheartedly. It’s not about me. I’m just an imperfect messenger, not the message. I am but a transient visitor, briefly here, soon enough gone. The universal structure of the Positive Paradigm is the brand and its center hub is forever.

In this, yet another Greek myth is relevant. Again, from Rethinking Survival:

The Titans were gods sired by Kronos (Father Time). Fearfully jealous, as each was born, Kronos stole the male infants from his wife Gia (Mother Earth), swallowing his sons whole. This story is a metaphor for the Law of Karma. Our deeds may seem to be swallowed up by time, but in fact they never die.

In the cyclical course of natural events, they come back, as did the Titans, returning to conquer and replace the old gods.

Suffice it to say this self-assessment has resulted in a total rethinking of my attitudes and approach. These will be mirrored in the redesign of this website, to take place gently and gradually over the summer months. I’ll save the transformations of specific fears into action plans for a future post, “Under Construction.”

Nothing of substance – the archetypal ideas presented here – will change, but presentation will improve dramatically.

In sum, facing my worst fears for the purpose of writing this post has had a marvelously healing effect. Just so, I remember the Bene-Gesserit fear mantra from Frank Herbert’s Dune:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

062115 eye of the tiger