Is Spirituality Spiritual?

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Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. ~ Joseph Heller

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[Jana]

In awakening psychospiritually, we are simply elevating ourselves to our rightful, noble “Human” condition. A condition we naturally would have been in, had we been born into an enlightened society! That is we pick up so much reactive density in defense against collective insanity and abuse on our way to adulthood, that this constitutes the barrier to the quickening of kundalini, consciousness and spirituality. Therefore to fire up the spiritual alchemy and live consistantly on the higher subtle and psychic levels, we must methodically address this density. We must detoxify and strengthen on all levels through fasting, saunas, removing heavy metals and parasites, change to a cleansing-remineralizing diet, exercise in nature, and disassemble the body armor and adopt a myriad of practices such that we peel back, layer upon layer, the density of the egoic cocoon. As well as detoxifying and strengthening we must also train and focus consciousness to increase depth, coherency and discernment. Thus meditation, Taoist energy practices, Martial Arts, the Inner Arts, tantra, the creative arts and soul-vocation etc... need to be equally engaged in this multipronged approach to deepening our lived spiritual experience.


Terrence McKenna, in his outstanding “Psychedelic Society,” speech on Youtube.com said…Human decency or “liberation” is a resonance with or anticipation of a perfected, transcendent future. We transform by attempting to live as far into the perfected future as possible. We can will the perfected future into being by becoming a microcosm of the perfected future, and by no longer blaming outside institutions or hierarchies of control. He said that only through the marriage of the masculine (Sky-Father) and the feminine (Earth-Mother), can the alchemical perfection of a new form of humanity arise, and that it is incumbent on us to personally “act” toward bringing this about. Terrence said that we acquire this higher order of freedom by virtue of applying attention to the “Art of Being”…beyond our geographically localized grids of fate that make us what we are, but don’t want to be. In the externalization of the soul and the internalization of the mind - through a triumph of imagination and self-evident gnostic truth, we can create a new language to express a new reality beyond the fascist material flatland and set about establishing a sacralized secular humanist society on earth for the first time.

To create an enlightened global community we must train men and women how to be honorably “Human.” If we expect individuals to give up their parasitic and predatory ways in order to reduce crime, hisharmony and dysfunction, then leaders and governing bodies must set the example. Enlightened society is made up of spiritually awakened and empowered individuals and within a self-reforcing feedback loop of human descency the quality of human existence is maintained and evolves. Since we have the potential for rational investigation and change, we should not have to fight to maintain body, mind and soul within a human world that is corrupt on all levels. Otherwise we cannot really call ourselves Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise man" or "knowing man"). By perfecting the means of extracting ourselves from the density of unenlightened human existence...we help to create a morphogenic field in which all humanity can awaken.

[Jana]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/author/story.cfm?a_id=10&objectid=10477549

HAS NEW ZEALAND LOST ITS SOUL?
The increase in violence and social decay in New Zealand is caused by a misunderstanding over what it constitutes to be “human.”
Current industrial society is not healthy for the white race that propagates it, and it certainly is not healthy for the native populations of Maoris and Islanders either. The patriarchal model of society serves only a status quo of dysfunction. It is a system of default built on an injustice that can only be maintained through silence, lack of communication and force. Patriarchalism is synonymous with preditorism and parasitism, where there is no real growth in humanism or addressing the deeper realities of existence. Fascism=Economic Materialist Dictatorship=Patriarchy.

You can’t expect a person who is little more than a cog in a commercial machine to still be human. Not when the structure and spirit of society at large is dehumanizing. Since the distress of this breakdown in the social fabric is most obvious in the male population, we should start considering whether it is high time that we undergo a collective “Male Liberation Movement.” Only disempowered males are macho, violent, family-tyrants, criminal and delinquent. Males are only disruptive when there is no structure of honorable ascendancy for them within a tribal/village structure; when there are no models of honorable leadership for them to follow; and when they feel there is no future and no purpose for their existence. When they have been trained in disrespect from the moment of birth.

A punitive approach in dealing with social decay is only a continuation of this ongoing assault to the humanizing principle. We cannot blame individuals for being dysfunctional within a dysfunctional system. The problem is fundamentally one of lack of self-esteem and it is essentially a spiritual problem in which we all are participants in the outcome and future potential. To redeem the health of the individual you have to reinstate the health of the family system, the village system, faith in leadership, respect of elders and hope for the human experiment at large. That is you have to reestablish an intact human-primate community with an intact sense of the future, and an intact self-esteem that is rooted into the earth and the heavens.

If the individuation process is confounded and suppressed at any level of Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs, then the fabric of society cannot hold together. We cannot build healthy humans in a humiliating society, where the individual is only as good as they are useful, and where self-development and self-improvement is a all-out war against the forces of Tall-Poppy-Syndrome, apathy, inertia and social stigmatization and prejudice. Empowered men work in partnership with the men and women of their community. Empowered men seek empowered women and thus gain a sense of deep confidence in the future and satisfaction in the present.

You solve the problem of social decay by community building and retraining individuals to be fit for community, by helping them find their passion and supporting the growth of fully “human” humans. You cannot grow healthy humans in an exploitive culture that is still a thinly disguised version of the predatory-parasite dynamic. Masculinism and Feminism must go hand in hand into the brave new future.

As with everything, the war we have with our self-sabotaging desires need not occur if we raised our game to include a more conscious appreciation for reality. There is only a problem with the body, when we train our body over the course of generations to become addicted to life destroying substances and practices...such that we become so senseless and unconscious that we have a magnetic attraction for antilife things. The body thus becomes victim to our compulsions, and the social fabric of society crumbles in crime, delinquency, depression, disease, war, violence and child abuse.
There need be no war with the body and no need to torture it with aestheticism either, if we gave it what it truly needs to fulfill its nature...above and beyond the destructive methods of our surrounding culture...if we treated the body sustainably as a permaculture system...we can then train ourselves generation after generation to live by life-loving principles. Brahman is the body...Brahman is the Universe...to not be at war with Brahman is good common sense.

[Jana]

The Sure Path
"The only thing that can't be made an object is I-I, or the pure Witness or God." Ken Wilber

The Way, The Truth and The Life is to realize the highest, and the creative path of the ascent of the spirit. Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici —By the power of truth, I, a living man, have conquered the universe. Supramental Truth is represented by the “Flame” in Vedic symbolism.  The Flame is the force of the divine consciousness of supramental Truth. The supreme light of the Godhead who gives his luminous impulse to all thought. The Superconscient, the Infinite Above, is the voice of rhythm which creates universes perpetually…manifesting contents in itself and of itself. Sarasvati or the Muse, is the river of inspiration flowing from Truth-consciousness (Satnam). "Satnam" means "God's Name is Truth." Intuition is the hound of heaven (Anubus in Egyptian), who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds the illuminations concealed there. Intuition is the forerunner of the Dawn of Truth or the “superconscient” in the mind of man.

“Karma is action that requires further action.” Ken Wilber

Sri Aurobindo says Karma and Transmutation constitute factors which are directed towards progress…they create “effect” by the propulsion of karma and they set “direction” through the Transmutation of spirit. When intuition attracts spirit into the fiery Cosmic Magnet of the Supermundane, the transmutational fires of kundalini are inevitable. The fire of Agni Yoga represents the creativity of the Cosmic Magnet that proceeds by way of consciousness perfecting. Following the Cosmic Magnet, the highest manifestation will attract spirit by way of the Hierarchy of Light.

The line down the center of the Sacred Marriage of poles, charges, hemispheres, and sexes…is the infinitesimal, the superconscient ground over which we firewalk in our Agni Yoga, through the progress of Karma and Transmutation. Sin is merely that which confounds and convolutes our sure path of increasing light and truth. That which dampens the light of supramental love in the bodymind…through tamic clouds of darkness, foulness, inertia and ignorance. Sin is thus the long way home to our Self. This is the Secret of Secrets. The Vedic meaning of “sacrifice” is psychologically, a symbol of the union of the cosmic and the individual…by becoming self-conscient and aware of its goal…the giving of the fruit of the highest divine nature of man, which is rewarded by the further enrichment of the Self by the cornucopia of the Gods. So what we sacrifice here, is that which clouds, confounds and convolutes our sure path from darkness to light.

Pointing out the Way of Resurrection through the resounding note of Bliss and Joy, the high energy frequencies of this Hierarchy of Light can be glimpsed as lightening through the dark clouds and dust storms of the demon haunted world. The Cosmic Magnet ever urging humanity to strive upwards toward realms of harmony, of light and of joy. Soma: "the call of the heart" is immortal delight in existence, secret in the waters; a mysterious pressure and fiery admonition directing toward The Good: “The Way, The Truth and The Life” toward ever increasing electrifying, strengthening and deepening the stream of Love Divine, deeply entering the stream of evolution and adopting the alchemical art of self-perfecting.

[Jana]

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Forget spirals and quadrants...the major division of the Matrix is Good on the one hand and evil on the other. Healthy or sick. Thanatos or Eros.
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." GO
"They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening." George Orwell

Meanwhile back on the Integral Farm the minions fought constantly over the lines, stages, states, levels, colors, symbols...moving concepts around the chessboard like it actually meant something. Prize however, goes to the Integrally Inspired Orgasm...just how does one generate a sustainable orgasm 24/7 and in New York of all places. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZRcGPm8Z8s&feature=related —OneTaste™ - Beyond Tantra Pt. 1 Sustainable Orgasm

Notice the statuary trade marking of the OneTaste concept...checkmate!


Still if you have seen through the checkerboard...without getting dizzy from the black and white of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bf10bbsLzY&feature=related —The Matrix, Neo as Jesus non-martyr Messiah.

then you might be interested in this scholar of the obsurd, pundit of the past present and future pathologies www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AQOMK46VpQ

[Jana]

"What percentage of American spirituality would you say is just New Age bullshxt?"

I tend to think that ideologies that are grounded in sub-rational logic to be anti-spiritual and centered in trying to build the sense of self love, self importance and security. So you can pretty much dismiss the New Age as not really being spiritual, but of spiritual affectation.

The hipsters that are "following" religions, gurus, and eastern traditions...I don't see them as spiritual either, again it is egoic reinforcement and wagon circling to offer protection from a deteriorating world.

Those sleepers not cognizant of the socio-political-economic war we are engaged in, also haven't begun to become spiritual yet, they are not even awake to the reality around them.

So I would say, the worldover, there is very little spirituality going on, except by supreme intellectuals that are taking on the gargantuan problems of the age and doing something about it...warriors, fighting for the sanity and common sense of the species and the wellbeing of the globe.

[Jana]

How to screw up your life by being a raging bully
The complexity of human relations requires just a little unpacking. But you can be sure that anytime someone throws shit in your face, then that shit causes a cortisol rise and freeradical production in their body. It causes the perpetrator's bodymind damage, lowers their vibration and produces a lesser life and thus soul damage. The perpetrator is after the "initial burst" reward chemicals and adrenaline, but they do not track the longterm damaging chemical effects of their violence (shit) in their own system.

At the deepest fundamental level a perpetrator (preditor) is usually the worse off in any human interaction. Therefore it makes no sense at all to set ones violence or poison on the world...for we destroy ourselves by doing so, either as nations or individuals. War is a "stupid" animals game, a game of lesser mortals with a lack of understanding about the biophysics of reality and the tricky nature of karma. You will notice that whenever someone directs exclusion or negative energy towards you, they will invariably have to keep doing so. In order to justify their original bad-behavior, they have to build a case for having done so, and there is little you can do to change the chemistry.

Ho'oponopono Hawaiian forgiveness prayer is highly effective technology for healing the perpetrator of violence, through forgiving oneself by asking for the perpetrator for forgiveness for being part of a system that generates human distress and disfunction.

Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len. This book features the Hawaiian forgiveness practice of Ho'oponopono. This karmic cleansing prayer is a simple process of "letting go" of any "toxic energies" and the dysfunctional retaliatory  nature of ego, to allow a "new space" for the healing power of the Divine.

The thing America has yet to discover is that their preditory international policies destroy the soul of their country, therefore they destroy the economic and success of their own country even AS they reap the bounty of war from other countries. Such sub-human tactics are plainly counterproductive. The only alternative is to spiritually, morally, intellectually and technically evolve...in order to know deeply the true nature of karma.

There are 8 million Iraqis starving in Iraq now, and it is morally up to the US to enact their reparations and FIX IT.

[Jana]

For me, the physical attraction is there if the spiritual/mental is happening, but I don't meet any sane individuals anymore.

Example of an extremely attractive human, who happens to be female...but this is the kind of mental-spiritual integrity I am talking about, which must be there to ingender attraction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpAgzji9KnE The Nuclear Madness, Helen Caldicott

I find people are either cynical or manic deniers...both of which are very unattractive...attraction in the Brave New World/1984 can only be a pathetic incipid affair...a further escape.

I tried to point one young mans attention to Bush/Cheney's attempts to start world war 3 by stealing nukes from their own weapons stores...well the next time that young guy saw me he said...Hello Dog...
I said what was that? Dog? I don't think I am a dog. I am not loyal, and I don't bark, but I do bite!

So that young man, vested Integralist, who buys statues of Quan yin, Buddha and Shiva from our store...was trying to 1.Sexually reject me, even when I am not even interested. 2. Stop me from bringing up issues related to real-life moral questions which demand action from those with any rational faculty whatsoever 3. Trying to inflate his masculinity through denigrating a captured female (I was stuck at work at the time, proprietry making it impossible for me to kick his ass) 4. Simply in the game of spreading poison as a casual method of going about his day.

Thus I say America is in bad psychological spiritual trouble, and it doesn't appear that the young 20's year olds are any saner than the older folks.
Sex in America, would thus be a step into an asylum....until people get off their ass and demand their country back.

[Jana]

Good news BOK is not overly bloated, it is going to be less than 600 pages, phew, I was sweating blood over the page count!

I think Helen Caldicott is the only person left on earth that can get me emotional...her book on the psycho-chemistry of warfare should be interesting.
I have a feeling that what appears to be latency, denial, apathy, diversion, displacement activity, regression,  intoxicated hubris, perverse humor and various other forms of maladapted bad character traits exhibited by the current population...is only a temporary failure in the human spirit, and that integrity, truth-seeking, bravery, courage, strength, commitment, drive, discernment, intelligence, integrity, faith and honor will emerge and reign supreme.

The show being played out now (Future of Man Tsarion 21) might be that Bush is deliberately going to push the Iranian issue...in order to get himself politically crucified, so that Hilary can get elected. Notice that Gore and Clinton are trying to rile people up to stand up for themselves and counter the corruption. Hilary thus represents a wolf in lambs clothes which don't quiet fit, so you can wolfie parts showing here and there.

Manic Denial…Self Abdication…Abhorrence of autonomy…when we free ouselves from the tyranny of our dependence…man is forever running away from his own shadow…necrotic/biotic…Eros/Thanatos…self-cruelty/self-abuse…sadism to the self…deep and abiding violence toward the self
Evil is an absence of truth. Evil flourishes when good people do nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67UdXXNB1i4  —Alan Watt
www.youtube.com/watch?v=81RdQv9G02c&feature=related —Michael Tsarion

[Jana]

This is not a general putdown on the male population...I am compaigning for the creation of the pink pill that will put an end to Male-Inspired Warring Aggression Addiction (MIWAA). That is do things "my way" of else!

THE BIOLOGY OF THE BULLY
We need Robert Sapolsky to tell us what happens to the brains of the aggressor males in mid life. What exactly does the reward chemicals for triumphant power-control tactics do to the various regions of the brain. Because this would probably explain why members of the top levels of the politico-military-industrial machine are itching for war, at the expense of the rest of the population of earth. Besides the obvious production of endorphins, the heady mix of testosterone, adrenaline and dopamine must produce a certain kind of brain that is paranoid-scheming-status addicted-aggressive. The brain damage produces a psychotic sociopath in that there is a will to execute the plan regardless of “consequences” to other humans or the environment. We might find that various tryptamines that work on the serotonin pathways create a hallucinogenic intoxicating high that only occurs mostly in males at the height of warfare and the perpetration of terror. This could be one of the reasons males get addicted to instigating family tyranny and domestic violence. Such aggression must produce the brain damaging stress hormone cortisol in both perpetrator and victim.

In Robert Sapolsky’s audiotape “Biology of Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality” he says that testosterone lowers the threshold for the stimulation of action potentials in the brain, making the neurons (and consequently behavior) more excitable. Perhaps reducing the capacity for the new regions (prefrontal cortex) to gain supremacy over the older more primitive drives (fight-flight-fuck-feed).

Thus we have to conduct a serious study of the long term brain damaging effects of bully chemistry and deeply question why we let the world be run by such men. And how we might change human society in ways that ensure genuine cultural evolution and reparations to the planet. We might be able to offer psychological attunement drugs and nutritional supplements to these errant males, or send them off to a distance part of the universe. Perhaps if given the right kind of occupation their aggression could be channeled to higher purposes.

The self-engrandizement of men 50+ years of age, must be a kind of social autism that arises in high testosterone males, as the ego tries to compensate for the slow loss of sexual potency. This however only occurs in societies with diets of cooked food and animal products, which clog up the arteries and reduce sentience and sensitivity. This self-engrandizement that leads to leaders taking their country to war is the same thing as “infantile indissociation.”


I think this state of pathological grandiose inflation is the fate of many a Guru and rather than true transcendence it represents infantile fusion and indissociation, that is magically and mythically charged (e.g. the purple and red in spiral dynamics). Indissociation is the term used by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980) to refer to the failure of young children to differentiate themselves from their environments or objects from one another. This subjective-fusion with manifestation is similar to an infant’s magical uroboric perspective; a state of oceanic indissociation or egocentric fusion, which is undifferentiated or "one with" local environs. This infantile indissociation also lies at the root of mythic religion as the following quote from Joseph Campbell illustrates.

“We have noted that in the world of the infant the solicitude of the parent conduces to a belief that the universe is oriented to the child’s own interest and ready to respond to every thought and desire. This flattering circumstance not only reinforces the primary indissociation between inside and out, but also adds to it a further habit of command, linked to an experience of immediate effect. The resultant impression of an omnipotence of thought—the power of thought, desire, a mere nod or shriek, to bring the world to heel—Freud identified as the psychological base of magic, and the researches of Piaget and his school support this view. The child’s world is alert and alive, governed by rules of response and command, not by physical laws: a portentous continuum of consciousness endowed with purpose and intent, either resistant or responsive to the child itself. And, as we know, this infantile notion (or something much like it) of a world governed rather by moral than by physical laws, kept under control by a super-ordinated parental personality instead of impersonal physical forces, and oriented to the weal and woe of man, is an illusion that dominates men’s thought in most parts of the world—to the very present. We are dealing here with a spontaneous assumption, antecedent to all teaching, which has given rise to, and now supports, certain religious and magical beliefs, and when reinforced in turn by these remains as an absolutely ineradicable conviction, which no amount of rational thought or empirical science can quite erase.”  Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology

[Jana]

"My dream is to have an incarnate form of divinity, one that is truly a King like the Christ, like Aragorn, or a Woman who is capable of total enchantment/power. In my imagination they are alive."

I think we all aspire (a-spire) toward King Arthur and Maid Marion for this projection is the source of the flame in the alchemical wedding at the heart of spiritual transmutation. We are primed with these images in our childhood fairytails and they correspond to the romantic in our ego, and the King and Queen in our biology. We are robots programmed with a fairytail, without been given any training in how to realize this quest of the self-realized-spiritualized man and woman. The commercial world banks on keeping the illusion alive, while the poor robots stumble around in make believe dramas trying to realize a half forgotten dream. The only consolation for this tragic game of humanity-lost is the perpetuation of the myth of the pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow (enlightenment) and to drown our disappointment in sense gratification.

Churches, religions, Gurus take advantage of the confusion, ineptitude and disappointment of the flock to build their coffers, buy property and gain power. People sell their soul for a pretend parent, security in numbers and brain numbing programming to silence their suffering. Religious institutions have no use for the self-realized-spiritualized man and woman...for they would cease to exist if by accident such a creature was created. Thus the dream must be perpetuated and thwarted at once in order to keep this grave state of spiritual stagnation in place.

(More reading on the subject:
The Return of King Arthur by Diana Durham

Interesting subject to figure out how religion plays on the basic couple-myth...king/queen...by offering consolution to a dissapointed humanity...that is dys-a-pointed humanization. The imagery of Rex and Regina is hardwired into our genes. It is fundamental to all aspects of our being. We deal with our ineptitude to fulfill the blaring genetic demands and the demands of our heart to be fully potentized and completed through the usual ego-adaptation and defense mechanisms:
Sublimation, distraction, displacement, depression, repression, substitution, diversion, regression, addiction, dissociation, day dreaming, wishful thinking, materialism, blame, anger, masturbation, overwork, goofing off, shopping, chocolate, etc... and idolitry, guru and moviestar projection etc... and worldsaving.

[Jana]

Philosophy (love of Sophia-wisdom) cannot prove the existence of God, but it can prove the perfection of the mind and the supreme spiritual development of the soul. Humanism doesn’t prove the existence of God, but it proves the potential in humans for a higher self. Science cannot probe the existence of God, but it can prove the miracle and mysterious order and complexity of nature. Religion cannot prove the existence of God, but it can demonstrate the potential for human divinization. In questioning the existence of God cannot we just agree that there are layers of phenomena above the rational mind itself! The arguments for and against God are childish and halt disclosure of the real questions…like how are we to live a spiritualized life? How are we to daily divinize our energy more effectively and increase our ability to dissolve the ego? Or as this amazing guy said to me yesterday “How are we to live rationally in an irrational world?

This young guy who came into the bookstore yesterday was perhaps the most realized person I have met here, in that his political assessment and philosophy was self-developed and advanced…on the level of a Chomsky. He said something like if you “decide” to realize your own divinity, then the machinations of the fascist machine cannot touch you. (Rather like Aurobindo finding enlightenment in prison.) His emphasis was that this attunement to “unity-divinity-love” was a DECISION of the will, which protects us from the distractions and fear tactics of the world. The reason why this guy was so “there” was because he is a yoga teacher, or he is a yoga teacher because he is “there.” I am coming to the conclusion that “God-(our unifying connection)” or our divinity does indeed need to be yoked, and that it is physical activity, energy moving and detoxification…and the opening of the body armor (fear, ego-body) is what allows us to be fully “there.” Those that merely meditate and read books and spout learned religious rhetoric fail to “make real their UNIQUE divinity,” because they have failed to make transparent their worldly body and ego-defense.

Merely hinting that the desire for God is an erotic urge is deceptive, and hides the indivisible nondual nature of matter-energy-spirit…and the nature of kundalini. What we should be acknowledging is the potential for the “spiritualization” of matter and to explore all means by which we humans can abide in the “living God.” "God" is subjective experience that requires the spiritualization of the eye of perception. The living God is not an idea, it is the felt-sense and tactic knowledge of the fundamental unifying principle. Almost two thousand years of the Church-Patriarchy’s focus on killing the snake, and the subjection of women has grossly retarded the spiritual development of humanity, as the genuine spiritualizing transmutation phenomena was demonized and riddled with superstitious projection. My hope is that BOK will help rectify this terrible loss of lived human divinity through both organized religion and material secularism.

Reflections from checking out this....
Book Review By JOHN PATRICK DIGGINS on Charles Taylor’s new book “A Secular Age,” http://www.nytimes.com/ 16 December ‘07

[henry]

for those of us in need of inspiration, see "catalogue of yogic powers:siddhis" at esalen center for theory and research(wish i knew how to link ). siddhis are known as charisms in the west. i think i need to do a headstand ....henry

[Jana]

Flatland is separatism. It is a symptom of the differentiation/aquisition phase of human socalled development. A specialization of function into slave/master mentality with the consequent lack of humanness. You could simply call it rampant materialism. I think it the hubris of the ego that we all think our viewpoint is the correct one—the culture generates narcissism and self-interest—because if you don't keep up with the fight for survival you are screwed.

I almost got one lonely tear up here over Aussie PM Judd's SORRY...it was very moving. I am hoping that it will set a precedent for other such events around the world, so the white race can get over their colonial guilt and fear/self hatred. It was one spark of humanness in a world that seems like it is spinning off its axis.

I was thinking that depression is a kind of aborted "response-ability." Those suffering depression get the first half of the equation right "facing realitiy," but they fail to continue the process of emergent consciousness by going the next step and "transcending reality." Considering how complicated and dangerous the human species is becoming, we are all going to have to learn new transcendent modes of being that are not merely denial or abdication of "care."

   

[jimtzu]

i think most depressed people would rather sit comfortably in their misery, lying to themselves about their own roles in their troubles rather then face up to the reality of the situation. 
at the same time the depression could be a gestation period for the subconcious to work on the concious to be able to transcend whatever particular problem was causing the depression, if that ever occurs. without looking inside, the problem goes into and endless loop that is harder to escape.

[marianthi]

I like how Cedrus Monte, a multi-disciplinary fellow traveller, views our times of darkness.  She comments:

Experiences of despair and loss of connection - even after breakthrough, life-changing events, extensive analysis, and a profound sense of communion with the forces of nature and spirit - have led me to believe, and growingly accept that my own path leads me repeatedly on pilgrimages to the inner shrine of darkness, not because I am morally deficient, not because I am depressed, and not because there’s some form of enlightenment or personal maturation that I am just not "getting." Rather, I am led to the shrine of darkness because, in spite of a desire to consistently experience the peace and happiness of a certain spiritual liberation, the mournful face of God abides within me and wants to be seen, and loved, through my eyes. At this shrine I have learned to love when I experience nothing to love...

In pilgrimage to the shrine of darkness, something is attempting to come into fuller consciousness. Through pilgrimage, the rites of mourning are asking to be lived; death is seeking to be fully embraced as part of life; the dark sister, the dark feminine, is asking to be honored. It is not the wholesale eradication of suffering that we must heroically achieve, but the humble understanding that suffering is inseparable from life.

Yes, ´suffering is inseparable from life´ even when we have achieved all we have hoped for, all our family, friends and culture hoped for.  Resting in this suffering without fuss, macerating in it without resistence can draw out rich flavours out of our being, flavours that we never thought we had within us.