Answering Readers…

The first question comes from Dera:

DERA

Do you see a solution to the problems with the Mexican Drug cartels waging a war on the govt of Mexico City? I am so concerned about the people there and is legalizing drugs the answer?

Hi Dera,

My intuition tells me that the US will try to intervene in keeping the drug cartels under control, but won’t have a lot of success. The violence will continue to escalate until the people of Mexico are forced to have a kind of civil war against the drug lords. There are similarities to Chicago during the 1920s, but of course in Mexico it is even more extreme and violent. The mix of psychopaths, illegal drugs and corruption within the government all contribute  and it feels like it is escalating to the doorstep of genocide. I don’t feel this is going to get better soon, actually I feel it will get much worse. I only hope I’m wrong about this.

Oddly, I don’t feel the answer to this problem is to just legalize drugs because there is such a strong network of organized crime and corruption that it would be substituted with something perhaps even worse like sexual slavery, prostitution of children, etc. This network must be destroyed first and the government replaced with one truly vested in the good of all the people not just their own pocket books. I’m not saying everyone in the Mexican government/police/military fit into this category, but there are enough that do to make the good people ineffective. 

Eventually, those within the government who are not corrupt will have to build an army out of the ashes of those who have been devastated by the drug lords. Together, the people will have to fight this cancer overtaking their country or it will end up war torn and could lead to mass genocide as these psychopaths gain power and control.

The more violence these drug lords perpetrate the more they become sick with a mad cow-like disease eating away at their souls with each act leaving them nothing but empty shells feeding on destruction. This is the disease of war. It is what is happening in Darfur, what happened in Rowanda, what happened to ordinary people who became Nazis. This sickness is born from violence against our fellow brothers and sisters. It is the sickness that begets war and makes people do horrible things they would never believed themselves capable of. It can also infect ordinary people after seeing ones family slaughtered or child mutilated. It is the darkest side of Kali, the crazed destroyer. It is chaos, insanity, absolute coldness. I wish I could say inhuman, but this darkness is a part of the human condition, the shadow side. In normal healthy people we feel it rear up, but repress it with rationality, empathy and compassion. When all those things are gone there is no controlling it.

This is a very scary situation. I wish there was an easier answer.

hopeandaplan

I was watching two evangelists speaking with Rachel Maddow a couple of nights ago. They were explainging how socialism would usher in peace which was the prerequisite for the advent of the anti-christ’s arrival. They said Obama wasn’t the Anti christ because he wasnt popular enough but that his policies were setting the stage for his appearance. Huh? They are admitting that they would prefer people to go hungry and wage war so they can stop the antichrist. Who is the person(s) who have managed to pervert Christian principles so successfully? I also found it interesting that their segment coincided with James Dobson’s resignation from Focus on the Family. I respect religious differences and I embrace all spiritual expression but how is this evangelical dogma different from jihadist extremism? Any thoughts on the future of these people’s influence in American politics? Thanks.

Hi Hope and a Plan,

I’ve lost count of how many anti-christs there are, and have been. Nostradameus had at least 3. These dudes have had one pretty much every time there’s someone who wasn’t pro lining their pockets with gold. Sure, socialism is going to bring the anti-christ, that makes a lot of sense, I guess he must be living in Sweden or Norway, or maybe Denmark? Oh, I know perhaps Canada where they have “socialized” medicine.

We all know how Jesus was a TOTAL CAPITALIST! Whew, he just loved him some money and really didn’t want anyone helping out their neighbor or loving others. He taught anti-compassion and letting people starve to prove a point and loved war if it made him some dough. Oh, yeah, wait that’s those guys! I guess they must be the anti-christs because they are anti-everything Christ stood for. Besides I thought they wanted the anti-christ to come, so the big space ship in the sky could come and suck them up and they could be one of the chosen people to live forever in their decrept sack of rotting bone bodies. I mean come on, this is some insane crap. It really is just insane. 

Let’s look at the reality of this proposition. There’s this crazy, angry, jealous God who sends down his only son (something Jesus never said but hey, the Romans needed to make him into a living God so they could sell the religion) to save humanity from the original sin of Eve “eating of the fruit of knowledge” and thereby cursing all of us due to her mistake. Wow, that’s a very insecure God. He doesn’t even want us to have knowledge in case we might figure out he wasn’t all that, I guess. So Jesus removes this original sin if you believe in him, OK, then you die and go to heaven. Kind of, then your body rots in the ground until “Judgement Day” when Christ returns (after the anti-christ) and everyone is brought back to life forever. It’s not quite clear if we all are just animated skeletons or if we get back our old bodies and if so, what period are we talking, when we were really old, at the time of death, or do we get to pick our favorite period?

Here’s a question, after spending all that time in heaven (the other afterlife story) with angels, God, and living in perfect peace, why would you want your rotted out old body to be re-animated so you could live on earth forever? Heaven sounds like a much better deal to me. 

It’s all about fear and control. I’m sure that the crazy jihadists believe just as strongly in their book of stories as the crazy Christian zealots believe in their stories. But here’s something that neither side seem to understand, these are stories meant to illustrate ideas, greater ideas, spiritual ideas that are not easy to explain in common language, and are often beyond our understanding which is why they are never literal. The bible conflicts with itself pretty much on every count. In Genesis God first refers to himself as We, then as an I, he makes everything at once, then in 7 days. I remember studying the book of Genesis in high school and thinking how bizarrely contradictory it was. And wondered why no one ever addressed this.

Ultimately, all spiritual paths and all religions (by virtue of them being related to people’s spiritual paths on occasion) are not straight forward, black and white, easy to understand, direct, concrete or literal in any way at all. The language of the spirit is poetry, visions, flashes of understanding, connection, compassion, intuition, symbolism. There is nothing simple about it and absolutely nothing literal, which is why zealots who see everything as literal are insane and truly waste their lives looking at the multiverse through a keyhole, randomly assigning roles to whatever they see based on the book they have in their hand.

It is absolute blindness.

I don’t think one could even begin to name how many zealots have lived in the history of the human race, yelling that the end was near, blah, blah, blah. But when it comes to these people actually really doing something about evil, like calling out the government of Darfur, calling Omar Bashir the anti-christ or at least an anti-christ, they won’t because what happens in Africa stays in Africa. The world to these people is the US and maybe Europe? But everyone on the planet could die off because of someone like Bashir and things would be peachy. These types weren’t calling Hitler the anti-christ either. Whys that?

Cause they reserve their hate speech to use as scare tactics to get people away from helping out others, because they don’t care about anything but their pocket books, their place in society and their power. And if it doesn’t effect them personally then it isn’t important.

So let’s get real about these a-holes. They are not spiritual, they are not Christian, they are not anything but shysters. 

OK and these questions tomorrow, and I’ll go back further over the week and answer earlier questions as well:

Sherry

Hi Denise Here’s something that might be of interest to all. For so long now we’ve watched small businesses get run over by large corporations and big box stores. It’s been hard to keep small individual businesses (i.e. mom-and-pop stores, etc.) from going bankrupt. I feel that once we get past the next couple of years and the economy begins to grow again, there will be opportunities for individuals and small companies to grow again. Especially since so many have closed up in the last few years. Right now everyone seems to shop at Walmart and Costco, etc. just to save as much as possible, but I think that when times get better people may want a more personal touch in their shopping. Would you ask the cards if an expansion of entrepreneurship is coming in the new economy. I would hate to think that we’re stuck with the Walmarts for the future. Use this recession time to prepare for what you want to do in the future. Lay the groundwork, so to speak. Thanks.

skaley

Hi Denise, I have a feeling that the US Dollar will start sliding heavily after sept 2009. How do you see the USD playing over the next 5 years?. How will the strength/weakness in USD effect the housing prices in the country? Do you see housing prices becoming affordable and in line with rents again?

 

Best wishes and many blessings to all you good people,

Denise

Exoplanets, Multiverses and the Aquarian Age

There have been over 300 exoplanets found in recent years. Exoplanets are planets that revolve around other stars, planets outside our solar system. So far those found exoplanets have been gaseous monsters more akin to Jupiter than Earth. And actually often many times larger then Jupiter. The reason being; they are easiest to find because they literally tug on the stars they revolve around. And with our new fan-dangled telescopes in space and telescopes with computer programs that compensate for our atmosphere, we have been able to peer into the universe actually back to the beginning of time. A freaky thought, we can actually look back (because light takes a long time to get here) back at the birth of our cosmos. By 2012 scientists believe they will find a planet that is not only earth-like, but has the makings and or markings of life.

Oddly, the more scientists study our universe the more questions have been raised which are often relegated to the realm of philosophers, theologians and occultists. Such as; if there was a big bang, how did it happen? That question has actually been tackled and led to some very interesting theories that echo ancient philosophy. One such theory is well known, string theory which proposes a minimium of at least 11 dimensions and tiny strings that vibrate which basically sing everything into being; this idea seems very like the myth of Quaoar. And accordingly our universe was created by 2 other universes bumping together and suddenly Bang! Our universe was born. I like this idea, it’s very much in keeping with the Goddess/God myths and the idea of “as above, so below.”

There is also the theory of an infinite amount of universes and dimensions, some compeletly barren of life others thriving like ours, where everything just happened to be perfectly tuned to allow it to exist. To me this seems the most logical and probable, it also doesn’t dismiss the idea of string theory or the notion of universes doing the bump and grind.

And lastly is the anthropic principle which basically states, there are just too many coincidences for our universe not to have some sort of creator because everything in our universe is perfectly tuned to encourage life. If anything about our universe was slightly tweaked it would be barren. And perhaps, which is my personal opinion, all these theories are right in a way.

Needless to say, chances are extremely remote that we are the only universe, and there are only 4 dimensions (time being one of course). In which case we are not only one star in a galaxy of about 250 billion, inside a universe of who knows how many billions of gallaxies. But we are in a multiverse with an infinite amount of universes, and an infinite amount of dimensions. This makes the possibility of us being alone extraordinarily unlikely. And this reality will challenge our current major Western religious traditions which rely on personal conversion via a special emissary from God.

These theories threaten the idea of anthropomorphic God (if there’s so much life, and its so diverse why would we we God look like us? He could look like an alien eight legged space creature for all we know, but chances are He/She doesn’t look like anything but is pure energy). It also threatens the notion of one Messiah sent to save us.

If God had to personally rescue every intelligent life form by sending his son or daughter down to every intelligent life in the multidimensional multiverse He/She wouldn’t be able to do anything except save His/Her creations from the forces of darkness.

These theories make the idea of our specialness seem a bit egomanical and the religions built on these irrational feelings seem small and ill equipped to answer the big questions which they were designed to answer. It’s my belief that as science progresses on its course it will continue to bring us closer to the truth, and a real understanding of the multiverse. We will end up coming full circle to many of the older esoteric teachings which (having studied them) are remarkably akin to what science is digging up. The three major western religions, all very much Piscean age in their emphasis and spiritual teachings, will begin to crumble. This will be the end of the world as we have known it, Armageddon. But it won’t be the end of us, we will survive to find enlightenment outside this limited view which has had people killing each other over the fine print of the very same God’s word.

It is no wonder that the extraterrestrial or UFO phenomena has really not been properly investigated by the scientific community and has been mired in government secrecy. My grandmother told me a story about listening to the radio show, “War of the Worlds,” when it came out. She said people were running down the street screaming. And there were actual suicides, people throwing themselves out of buildings because they not only believed they were being invaded by aliens, but people were so terrified by the very idea of alien creatures. People are frightened of other human beings from different races, imagine an alien race dropping down from the sky. Who would choose to believe this? And of course the government would want to cover it up. It takes away their power to protect their people if some alien race can swoop down and do experiments on their people and they can do nothing to protect those people. How does it benefit any government to acknowledge they have no power to stop these attacks?

For me the lamest arguement against the visitation of extraterrestrial beings is a common one that goes something like this: “Well, if they are visiting us, then why don’t they land on the whitehouse lawn and meet with the president to prove to us they’re really here.”

Here are the flaws in this arguement. 1. If they are advanced enough to come here from another universe, dimension, time or place in our universe then we are by comparison extremely primitive compared to them and potentially dangerous. Do our scientists tap the alpha wolf of a pack on the shoulder and ask, “Uhm, excuse me Mr. Alpha wolf would it be OK if our peeps here tagged some of your pack, and maybe did a little experimenting on them so we could get a better idea of what you guys are all about?”

If any scientist was stupid enough to try that, not only would the alpha wolf not understand the scientist, chances are the wolf would rip the guys face off and eat his guts for breakfast.

I’m pretty sure if an alien race came to earth, they would want to observe us first, make sure we weren’t violent and irrational. If  however we were intelligent and civilized enough to negotiate with, they might then make some kind of contact with our government. But after observing us for as little as a week, it would be clear we were naturally hostile, violent and unpredictable kind of like a wild animal.

We invaded Iraq because we thought they had weapons of mass destruction. What would we try to do if we knew without a doubt our people were being abducted, abused, tortured, experimented on, and who knows what else? Wouldn’t we demand our government kill these evil aliens?

Answer: Yes.

We don’t let other humans torture and kill without repercussions. We certainly wouldn’t let some creepy alien race do it for purposes of their personal edification.

And number 2) Has anybody every considered we are being treated in the same way we treat animals? Perhaps we are an experiment to one or more alien races, and part of the experiment is observing us, the way we do animals in the wild, with as little meddling as possible. Perhaps, they don’t want to be found out! Maybe they don’t land on the white-house lawn because they don’t see us as equals.

Wow, imagine that!  A creature in the universe who is actually more advanced and thinks they are smarter than us!

Now back to the theological question raised by alien life. I’m sure our universe is teeming with it. And besides finding life on other planets, I’m pretty positive life from out there has found us. There is too much evidence, too many witnesses, too many mass sightings and too much bizarro activity to keep pretending. Something is going on, and it has been for a long time. The shapes of the crafts have changed from saucers to triangular lights, but there are far too many credible sightings and physical evidence from witnesses to poo poo.

I recently saw a case of two woman with a young boy who witnessed a UFO many years prior. The woman who got out of the car showed signs of severe radiation poisoning and was hospitalized 3 times for this, and isolated to the basement of the hospital with a hazmat sign posted outside her door. The other woman had milder radiation poisoning. She had remained in the car. The boy had the least since he was not only in the car, but away from the windows.  According to the doctor who treated the woman for radiation poisoning the other woman and boy were shielded from the radiation due to the metal of the car. The boy was most shielded because he was under the dashboard. I guess the glass of the car allowed some radiation to spill through. 

And back to the theological question of extraterrestrial life:

It’s my belief there is no creator type of God, but rather an infinite energy that is God/Goddess/Higher power. It has no gender and is actually simultaneously in everything, and everyone, joining all of the universe together in a giant web of energy. And when we die, we rejoin the core of this energy, get recycled through a process of co-creation, where we are active participants in designing our next lifetime in order to learn and grow.

It’s my belief that as pieces of this divine being, we are each attempting to individuate through various lifetime, and like roots from a plant, our souls are in search of the water of knowledge which we each bring back like dutiful ants to our source the God/Goddess energy, or the infinite, which is like a multifaceted diamond with many faces and areas to reflect upon for deeper connection.

Now back to my point about the end of the Piscean age and the earnest beginning of the Aquarian one. The Piscean age was about sacrifice, martyrdom, selflessness all as necessary tools to master for spiritual development. Its my belief that in the Aquarian age, being connected to the whole of creation/the Universe and personal individuation will be the main themes of how we get to the next step in our collective evolution.

Science will play a major role in how we come to see both the connection between us and all things, and in our own uniqueness. Actually, I have the feeling that science itself will become fodder for spiritual revelations and confirm very ancient ideas like the old stand by, “As above, so below.” Which is really an ancient description of a fractal and the idea that we have everything available to us to unravel the mysteries of ourself and the universe if we just pay unbiased attention. Another ancient model which seems very prescient is the Kabbalah or Tree of Life which is a very elegant, simple and poetic way of describing creation. 

In it there are two pillars of creation. One side feminine the other masculine. Beyond the pillars is the unknowable region of GOD which is a genderless, unfathomable beingness called Kether on the Tree of Life, the Abyss beyond the two pillars or dual nature of our universe. It is oneness where we are connected directly to God/Goddess through our higher-self. It is pure energy, beyond our brain’s comprehension (it is a place unbound by the laws of our universe and our dualistic order). Our higher mind, our soul, our higher-self is able to go to touch this sacred space beyond space-time, beyond the laws that govern our universe or multiverse but if one tries to understand it or make sense of it, all knowing of it disintegrates. It’s like trying to carry a patch of air in your hand while diving under water. All you are left with is the knowing, the feeling. But Kether can not be brought back here it is a vibration too high and powerful for thick slow moving Malkuth (the final earthly plane on the Tree of Life) which is where we live and why we don’t remember our life inbetween lives and most of us don’t remember our other lives which are washed clean in the energy of Kether.