Christmas Nightmare

I consider it fortunate to have had negative Christmas experiences from the start. It has given me an “outside looking in” perspective at the whole phenomenon. It also has made me wary of authority and what they pass out as truth.

About the same time i had this dream, my little brother was catching hell for leaving puddles on the floor. He was three. Then he caught more hell ‘cuz he tried to blame it on the kitten. My old man was livid. Telling the truth was a big deal to him. I even caught a little hell just for being in the room. So, when i climbed up in the garage attic and found the leftover scraps from the cowboy outfit my folks told me had come from Santa, i got pissy for a six year old. If honesty was such a big deal, how come they lied to me about ths Santa Claus shit?

The Benevolent Lie

“You’ve kind of suspected it all along, right? It always seemed like something wasn’t quite right. You believed that elaborate story they told you and now it turns out to be bullshit. You have a right to be pissed. That was the first time you caught them lying to you.

There is no way a fat elf with flying reindeer could deliver presents ’round the world in one night. But that was the first clue… don’t believe everything they tell you. You could end up playing the fool.”–Luce Gravel

There is more to this than just fabricated stories for children. In our culture lying is a way of life. Santa was our first lesson in lying for a good cause. I call it the benevolent lie. You can count the tooth fairy, the boogy man and Easter bunny in that class. Where does it end?

Does our health care system really promote health? Does our system of education really educate? Do the police really protect and serve the public? Are the courts really there to dispense justice? Is the government really of, by and for the people?

Once you start to face the lies, and question the authority that presents them, it becomes apparent that the con game is much more complex than it seems on the surface. U bin had!

Deceit is Natural

Look around you, deceit is a natural phenomenon that is basic to plant and animal behavior. Plants and animals spend a lot of energy trying to fool their enemies and potential prey . They have learned to mimic each other in color, shape, behavior and even pass hormones and pheromones. Plants go to great lengths to fool insects into participating in their pollination. These complex sexual arrangements are no accidents, but carefully contrived strategies designed to propagate the species.

Research into human behavior has shown that deceit is part of our baggage as well. Babies learn to deceive their parents at an alarmingly early age. Children and teens become proficient liars when confronted with the difference between what is acceptable behavior by their parents and what is demanded by their peers. Need I bring up the battle of the sexes to support my argument?

Supposedly our culture abhors deceit, yet rewards it at every turn. First of all, our culture teaches us how to use deceit in games and entertainment.

To be successful in most competitive games, the players are expected to use deceit of one kind or another. The player fakes one way and goes the other. The chess player, or general, feints an attack from one quarter to get his opponent out of position and attacks from another. In poker or bridge, keeping your cards a secret is essential and bluffing is a valuable skill. In other areas, we also admire the very best fakes and liars. We pay to see a magician who we know is going to fool us. Writers of fiction are paid to spin wild yarns that are expected to be untrue.

Heroes of fiction usually solve a crime or prevent some injustice by unraveling the lies and exposing the truth. However, in real life we find that this seldom happens: our heroes, mostly law enforcement types or lawyers unravel only the most obvious lies, so even poorly planned deceptions are usually successful. The ones who go to jail are often scapegoats, patsies, enemies of somebody important or simply shanghaied to provide slave labor. After all, privatized jails need to fill beds to show a profit. TV, movies and dime novels support the lie that cops and lawyers and judges are noble defenders of our rights and freedoms. That’s how lies get sold to the public, but it doesn’t make them true.

Some “system of justice” we have. Trials favor the best liars and cheats. Juries and witnesses are easily manipulated. Judges can be bribed. It happens all the time. The advantage goes to those most willing to con, intimidate, bribe and/or kill in order to win their case, in short, the criminal element. An honest citizen hasn’t got a chance.

In the news lately we see the white collar and political crooks getting off scot free, while the little folks get jail time. That’s if the big shots are caught at all. How many other “Enrons” are there out there? We citizens are told that crime doesn’t pay, but it does for these guys. Come on, look around. Between the honest folks and the criminals, who has the bucks and who is dirt poor?

The system is set up to favor the crooks. Even honest folks find that when times really get tough, there are more illegal options for putting food on the table than legal. Some of them aren’t really dishonest, but “protected trade areas”, like drugs and sex. The result is more lies and deceit.

Political parties hire professional actors(deceivers) to front for their causes. (Reagan, Arnold, etc.) It is no big stretch for them because politicians are actors to begin with. We know they just read scripts and are chosen for the ability to sell ideas, but we still get into the process. We just love to be fooled.

Advertising is “creative lying” designed to accomplish it’s singular goal: to sell a product. The public not only believes these lies, but the begs for more.

Government, religion, business and the media strive to project a certain righteous image to the public. If one spends any time in serious study of the reality of day-to-day operations in any of these areas they will find that they don’t even come close to that image.

Lying is a major activity for TV and movie characters. The “situation” in situation comedy is usually a lie someone has told that is compounded my more falsehoods until the “situation” peaks and the liar is found out.

Take history. One only has to study the histories of major world events from different countries or religions to realize that someone is lying.

This isn’t new. Some evil force is not taking over our souls. The Force has owned us all along. Just like steers in the open range, our freedom has always been an illusion. We work harder when we think we are free. Hey, we are happier when we think we are free, why not believe it?

The truth is that we have a very high tolerance for lies. We hear them all the time, tell them all the time and still keep this crazy self image of being honest members in an honest society. Why are we lying to ourselves? The culture we live in thrives on lies. We are immersed in that culture. How do we do it? Denial! We are blind and intend to stay that way.

The pious might say that deceit is of the devil and god is truth. We humans are learning the meaning of integrity and moving towards god. However, the Bible itself gives us evidence that deceit is part of god’s plan. “In God we trust” is a mantra to Christians, yet in the most important event of the Christian faith, Jesus on the cross, he says, “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?”

So, God didn’t tell his only son that he was to be sacrificed? Hmmmm. And we are expected to trust this god? Whom is fooling whom?

We couldn’t keep our sanity without a big dose of denial. We humans are caught in the middle between opposing forces. Until we identify and understand those forces, Life is just not going to make sense, and denial will have to do. However, the gods have given us the brains to figure this out for ourselves. It is important that we do. The survivors will have to.

So we’ve been betrayed, but we can’t take it personally. Deceit is just a tool of the trade in the Natural World. Our built-in denial keeps us from questioning too closely, so we keep some semblance of sanity and it all works as planned. When you know who the gods are and what they want, you will see that it has been a very effective strategy.

So, what is all this deceit and trickery meant to accomplish, and for whom?

Talking to Animals and Other Creatures part 1

Communicating with the environment, from talking to animals, insects, plants and the Forest Goddess.

Before There Were Forests

Every handful of living topsoil contains more microorganisms than there are human beings on Earth. All those billions of creatures aren’t living isolated existences, but are organized into colonies. That is they are organized into cooperating and communicating networks that share nutrients and information.

These are the ancient ones, the oldest and most stable products of evolution. They were here first, before animals, plants or any multicellular creatures.

These microorganisms represent the primordial intelligence that learns and builds on what it knows about itself, in an organized, purposeful, goal oriented progression. And it starts right here with the tiny creatures that understand information processing, communication networks and symbiosis.

What to expect

This presentation is based a couple of concepts at odds with some of the basic assumptions of science and religion. The first is that the biosphere as an intelligent entity. What makes it intelligent is that it communicates. The system intakes, processes and distributes information to and from all agents within its system. That relates to the second concept, that evolution is not a random process, but one controlled by intelligent, goal oriented communication.

Once you accept that you and i are agents within an intelligent system, new explanations for the life’s anomalous occurrences present themselves. Once you start to explore those anomalies, armed with this new perspective, a very different picture of human history emerges. It is also a liberating experience to find out that we can communicate with other entities within the system.

What do psychedelic aliens have to do with forests anyway, you may ask? Seems like too many unrelated subjects are being included. Well, you have heard it before, everything is connected to everything else. Herein i will show that it is not merely a romantic metaphor as some would like you to believe, but an overriding property of reality. Exploring the connections between religion, psychedelics, symbiosis in complex adaptive systems and alien encounters, can lead to some interesting revelations.

Besides, we now know for sure that space travel is possible, by both man made vehicles and spores carried by the solar winds, therefore we all may be aliens.

Just as science needs a unified theory to bring together its many disciplines, the rest of us need a unified theory of reality. This one works for me.

Throughout there will be tips on how to expand your natural communication skills. I will give you exercises that you can use to verify my conclusions.

Life is Communication

When we combine the findings in the field of biology with general systems theory we find an unexpected mathematical synchronicity. The formulas that govern the formation of networks in complex systems are the same for the growth of biological systems and our beloved internet. The blood flowing through your veins is following the same fractal power laws as your email. It has taken the smartest people on the planet decades of study, trial and error to figure out how to run a truly complex communications network, but these laws governing the efficient transfer of information have been in use in biological systems all along.

In short, biological systems are constructed as if they are meant to be communication networks. Everything from tree trunks, roots, branches, leaves to coastlines and watersheds is built as if for the transfer information. Some coincidence. If we honor this evidence and look at biological systems as if they function primarily as information processors, a whole new model of reality begins to take shape.

When we look at matter as information stored in physical form, like memory in a computer, the network like construction of biological systems makes perfect sense. Biological systems process and transfer matter/information with great efficiency.

Matter as information is more than bits, it is more dynamic than that, more like strings of bits that have coherence. The information of reality is organized in the form of stories. The physical world is current state of all of the stories being told. Stories aren’t random, but unfold in very predictable ways. Stories follow rules, laws of communication that run through all living systems.

Within this new model many of the claims of the ancients take on new significance, many of the anomalies uncovered by science disappear and a pathway to a truly sustainable future reveals itself. This is the real significance of the Information Age. It is not only that we have learned to use these formulas to build our networks, but that we have found the best model for reality we have yet discovered, and it is virtual.

Plant Communication

Great interview! Talk to yer plants and good things happen. =-)

This Path Isn’t for Everyone

This path isn’t for everyone. There those who really fear the forest. They have been brought up to think of Nature as the enemy, to be conquered and managed. To go into the forest is an act of bravery that takes planning, special equipment and most of all, courage. The idea of a benevolent goddess of the forest is foreign or even repulsive to the western warrior mentality. If she exists, she must be fought and beaten, says the warrior. To the mainstream of this industrial/consumer society, She doesn’t exist unless She can be sold for profit. To most environmentalists she is nothing more than a convenient metaphor.

On the other hand, even for the most hard core of the survival of the fittest practitioners, the forest is the only road back. It is the forest goddess, through her plant spirit messengers, that can reconnect lost souls with their source.

Mother Tree

While i’m writing about the forest goddess this video explains the science behind Her.

More Than a Metaphor

That’s why i have brought you deep into the forest, to give you human history from a different point of view. We’ve had the history of civilization written for us by the ones who have profited from the exploitation of the Biosphere. The version i am presenting comes from my communication within this system.

I didn’t get this model of intelligent microbes from books or discussions nor did i think this up on my own. I got this view of straight from the horses mouth. I got it directly from a member of the microbial mat. It came in an intelligent exchange, sort of an interview, where i asked questions and received answers. My encounter with this plant spirit overloaded my psyche with information that spawned more questions. I have spent the last thirty plus years sorting through that information and comparing it with other sources. I have interviewed other plant spirits along the way. I’ve learned valuable lessons from living alone in forests, deserts and mountains. I have found a landscape exactly as described by magicians, mystics and indigenous cultures in general. It is from my experience probing this separate reality that i obtained this version of human history.

So, this model of “how it all works” that the plant spirits have collectively laid on me, fits very well with the latest studies in biology, genetics, adaptive complex systems, symbiosis, quantum mechanics and information processing in general. The plant spirits got it right! So, for me the forest goddess is much more than a metaphor. The physical world we live in is intelligent. The whole Universe is a communication; the story of Life being told. We are part of that story. We are built from the same story elements as all of creation. Our bodies are made from intelligent parts that all communicate with our environment. Our bodies understand the language of Life, even if our intellect doesn’t.

Out of the Loop

If bio-systems are all about communication, how and why have human beings been cut out of the loop? In one version it has something to do with god, a tree, and a serpent. In another it was the loss of the rich biochemical soup we were fed in a mature forest that caused our mental capacities to diminish. In yet another we met a mind altering mushroom that stimulated our cultural development. In still another, aliens from deep space altered our DNA to make us a slave species. To indigenous people around the world, westerners have simply chosen not to listen to the spirits and have cut themselves out of the loop.

Each of these scenarios is dependent on a specific world view, but they have some common elements the indicate they might each have part of the story. It could be that each is a separate description of the same phenomenon? Could there be a simple biological explanation? I think there is. It requires no new knowledge, simply a new way of looking at human history.