Good morning and welcome. I’ve just completed the audio podcast for the week, which is available here. Note, someone just said that I claim it’s January. It’s actually a balmy, moist, monsoony July here in New York. This week’s edition considers the idea of emotional patterns and the recent eclipse in the sign Cancer as an opportunity to stretch and grow into new emotional potential. So much of our lives are shaped and even dictated by our emotions that this is 100% necessary we’re going to outgrow our old patterns and take up healthier ones. I cover this in the midyear audio and will be going into more detail in the Cancer birthday report as well (stay tuned for that).
The podcast also looks at the cluster of planetary events the last two weeks of July, beginning with Saturn entering Libra next week; the Sun entering Leo on July 22; the Aquarius Full Moon on July 25; Saturn opposite Uranus, part five including the Aries Point, on July 26; and Mars conjunct Saturn on July 31.
This is an exciting grouping and we can all be just thrilled that the eclipses came ahead of this setup rather than in the middle of it all.
Today is Bastille Day, which is the celebration of the French Revolution. That happened back in 1789, right after the United States Constitution was ratified. As Wikipedia puts it rather eloquently, “French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic, and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from liberal political groups and the masses on the streets. Old ideas about hierarchy and tradition succumbed to new Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights.”
Such was in the air at the time. There was a Uranus-Pluto aspect — just like there is right now. Back then it was an opposition; these days it’s a square. They are similar and have many of the same influences.
To understand the French Revolution, all you have to do is visit the Palace of Versailles. I did once. It was the most stunning display of absurd opulence you can imagine, unless of course you’re alive today in the era of multi-billionaires who made their money stealing from investors, cheating the government and manipulating the market. Too bad we can’t tour their houses and see how they live. The French Revolution was a revolt against this waste and extravagance, and also against the monarchy, which was still living under the delusion — even in 1789 — that the Sun King was a kind of God-Emperor of the sort you read about in scifi novels.
We could use a bit of that kind of Enlightenment thinking, except for one thing: a couple of centuries later, science is the new religious authority; it is the unquestionable establishment. What we need is a revolt against both religiosity and so-called science, and an embrace of the natural world and the authenticity of our inner nature. You know how hard it is to wash varnish off your hands; we have a bit of scrubbing to do, and opening our senses to life.
For some reason this post is stirring up all sorts of memories. I was in Cambridge Bay one summer, writing about an arts festival and a group of Irish sailors doing the Northwest Passage… I attended a film night, showing old National Film Board black and white shorts documenting the Inuit after they were sort of “discovered” by Canadian officials. (Same sort of “documenting” as museum exhibits of humans in many cases.) The setting was the local learning centre, a small classroom-type place. I was surrounded mostly by Inuit elders. At one point, one Elder made a statement in Inuktitut, which I didn’t understand. Which then set off a bunch of statements and then, finally, belly laughs. Lots and lots of belly laughs. I asked a young Inuk what the heck was going on.
These Elders were remembering when the Kabloona came “exploring” in the North and how they required that their penis (plural form?) be held by an Inuk while they peed, because they couldn’t handle the cold on their bare hands. (We are talking, potentially, minus 80C here… ) At first I was very freaked out and seriously didn’t understand how this could be a source of laughter. However, they explained to me that rather than it being a demeaning story to them it was, rather, demeaning to the white man. Couldn’t hold their own dicks to piss. How pathethic and hilarious, was the attitude.
Doesn’t take away from the stark pain of someone like Minik or Ota being transposed. But it certainly shows a thing or two about the explorer… don’t you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ota_Benga
There is also Ota Benga — and I am pretty sure he wasn’t the only Pygmy that was displayed in the Bronx Zoo. I also heard of a pair of Pygmies that were on display during the day and collected trash at night.
michele —
how heartbreaking. and to think we have a museum dedicated to admiral peary here in maine.
i’m sure there are more stories like that of the early explorers, unfortunately. i guess i’ll stick with the butterfly conservatory at the museum of natural history, like i did on my last visit.
And ya..like dinosaurs. When I was a kid there were maybe six varietys and they were gray and that was that.
Just look at ’em now! In addition, some of the varieties in books today have been fabricated out of the discovery of just an arm bone or so.
I agree with Eric’s point that what is mostly needed is a change of perspective. That is, ‘put it on the sign’ (in the books in our minds) that Discovery of our Past is just as much a work in progress as Discover of our Future.
xo
I think of the term “cold” hard facts when I think of science and it’s a term that makes me shudder, as I feel that facts can be used to “chill” out further discourse, acting like a rigid force blocking out other possibilities.
Facts are important as solid empirical evidence, the result of working through a hunch or a hypothesis, but can not be the end result in and of themselves. There needs to be room for developing further interpretations of facts based on other criteria, intuition for one, that examine facts from a wide variety of angles in turn leading to newer factual knowledge, and on and on it could go. Something like, “cold” hard facts meets “warm” tender flow! (Jeez I hope some of this makes sense!)
I’ll end by quoting Matthew Fox, who does a much better job of it.
“To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to inaugurate new possibilities between spirituality and science that would shape the paradigms for culture, its institution, and its people.”
I
We have our work cut out for us, yes, but we are getting up to speed I feel.
Oh my gosh, Eric – Just mention that museum to me and I think this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minik_Wallace
I know museums at that time did a lot of “human” exhibits… Anywho. Minik made me sad years ago and he does now too…
Off to listen to your dulcet tones wisdomize…
Haha! Madonna’s music is and always has been GREAT workout music. And she keeps a sexual overtone to the workout too – which makes it even better.
xo
I agree with Morgana that one can get a sense of abusive oppulence from many places, including Archetectural Digest. One must “digest” the person with the place; that is, their commentary and lifeitime achievements along with how they create their personal space to get a sense of differences – certainly there are those that are ‘of the people’ and wealthy (that we should all be!) and those that are only ‘of themselves’.
But then aren’t these two types (as examples of general types of beingness) at every level of wealth/poverty?
Here’s to wealth and balance….and Sting and Madonna!
At some point in the past 10 years I went to the Museum of Natural History in NYC and they had their prehistoric man exhibits and one had a sign on it that said basically, “the facts presented in this exhibit are out of whack by a few million years. Sorry for the inconvenience while we update it.”
This is an issue. At least they admitted it; but it would be nice for science to admit that it’s a work in progress, and that work is based on an ongoing process of discovery that should not count anyone, or anything, out of the game.
There is also the issue of, “If a scientist says so, it’s scientifically sound,” without the need or even the request for data. A scientist is not a rabbi who blesses something into being true. A scientist evaluates the available data for its veracity; and engages in a process that begins with a theory, or an educated guess, called a hypothesis.
I just came across this article in the Huffington Post — “Is consciousness the centre of the Universe?” and thought that it would add to this discussion re your notion Eric, that we need a new enlightenment and a revolution against science.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/is-consciousness-the-cent_b_645069.html
The author is Dr. Larry Dossey who contends:
“If science educators were bold enough to emphasize explicitly the connections between modern science and kids’ participatory, empathic instincts, this might be a turn-on that would pivot many of them toward a fascination with science in general.”
Here’s to bold science educators stepping up to the plate and encouraging conscious, free thinking among their students asap — no matter what resistance their school boards may present. Send all naysayers off to the guillotine I say, and bring on the revolution….!
Oh god. Well, it was 7 am. And all those J months — there are 12 months. Why do 25% of them have to start with the letter J ?
Anyway — LATE BREAKING NEWS.
IT IS JULY.
Hey Eric,
At the beginning of the audio you said twice that it’s January!
Her music is not as interesting as the person. But I just watched this video on youtube of her performance of Like A Virgin at some MTV music awards thing in like 1984, and while that song is pretty silly, there’s a great moment when she is humping her wedding veil.
SAM
January?
And yes, I meet a good few young actresses or aspiring actresses who claim they are afraid to pose nude because it will ruin their career. And I always say, tell it to Madonna.
I read a biography of her once. She was young and was posing nude for money and this photographer was writing her a check. She told him she didn’t have a bank account. So he opened his wallet and counted his cash. Her fee was $50 or something and the guy had less than that in cash, and he’s counting his nickels and quarters. She refused to take full payment — she didn’t want to leave him with no money.
I am so not into her music. (I would be, if she had a real drummer on those albums, many of which I’ve studied — I inherited a bunch, and left them in my car CD changer for a few weeks and listened over and over recently.) But Madonna the woman — I truly love what she’s done, which is claim the right to be herself.
Eric, dude, man, JANUARY???
Isn’t it like 90 degrees in NY right now?
Speaking of another really rich musician, I was just reading Madonna’s wikipedia page, by the way. First of all, there are some gorgeous nude pics of her out there on the internet from like 25 years ago — think dark brown hair, gorgeous bush and hairy arm pits. Also I remembered why I always thought she was brilliant back in the day.
“What we need is a revolt against both religiosity and so-called science, and an embrace of the natural world and the authenticity of our inner nature. You know how hard it is to wash varnish off your hands; we have a bit of scrubbing to do, and opening our senses to life.”
hear, hear.
I don’t believe that wealth, of its own, is a bad thing, and there is plenty to go around. It’s how we get it and what we do with it. I have met my share of wealthy people who (for example) have wanted to invest in Planet Waves, sometimes stunning amounts of money. They all had control agendas; some claimed to be spiritual but were obviously driven by greed; and through the process did their best to torture me, manipulate my thinking and try to control my future. None of them have any part of Planet Waves, or of me, or of the people I love who work here.
I was reading Sting’s Wikipedia page yesterday and just laughed. He’s worth more than $300 million — and he made it playing bass, singing and writing songs. The world is better off for Sting, many ways. We have all benefited in some way from his presence. It’s the people who steal and poison, whose vision includes murder and imprisoning others: that’s different.
The most interesting thing I learned in the Sting article is that he’s picked the tree where he wants to be buried. He is in conscious relationship to death, and as a result, he can live his life well. That is the missing piece for those who exploit humanity.
We can visit those places now, Eric… I think it might have started in the media (in our general time, anyway) with with the TV show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and continued on with shows such as Dynasty, Dallas, and even MTV Cribs and the Kardashians. Unfortunately, not enough people seem to consider it an absurdity or an outrage; rather, they see it as something to aspire to. It’s easier than training one’s attention and awareness on the absurdity and outrage of the unawakened Self, I guess.