Camel in Tent!

I feel inhibited by the perceived lack of privacy on my devices.

I can tell it is keeping me from writing everything I feel and think. Too bad.

Last night I dreamed a bad and sad worry dream, but I don’t feel free to write it down, even on my supposedly private journaling device. 

I would have written it down in a paper diary, for my own use and reflection.

Too bad. It’s like a window is closing.

For millennia, our thoughts were private, but limited by ignorance, superstition, and false beliefs. Then, for a brief historical moment, a window opened, due to the brave and heroic actions of those who fought for freedom and enlightenment, and even privacy, and we had a glimpse of free flowing light and expression. More recently, this window was thrown wide open for a few moments in the early years of the internet, and we glimpsed the possibility of a truly free and open world of love and sharing.

But now, with current technology, the camel’s nose is pushed firmly back into my tent. The whole head, really. Sad. What can be done to stop the whole camel from knocking down my tent? The whole herd from trampling it? Only an updated ethic that respects privacy, legally and morally. If information is to flow free, the use of it needs protection. Otherwise it will be and is obviously misused. 

For example, when women or children are given the right to travel freely it is still only possible for them to do so if the whole culture supports and enforces the standard that they may do so unmolested. If your vulnerable information is to flow freely, we all need to support and enforce the protections against the exploitation of it for profit or abuse. 

Primitive, patriarchal ideologies preach that women must be kept at home behind walls or placed in black bags to protect them from bad guys. 

The daily compilation and recitation of all of the worst things that have happened, which, by the way, are considered newsworthy because they are rare exceptions to the usual and normal, lead stressed and panicked grown ups to post armed guards at schools and other fear addled bizarre actions, like constantly keeping children behind locks and walls.

But the only enlightened way to protect the vulnerable is to give everyone enforceable rights. In the case of our privacy, the right of control of how our information is used. Rights we can use to defend ourselves, rights everyone takes to heart, and supports in a tangible effective way. 

An enlightened world is our only hope. And it is the light that shines in our newly open windows that we must defend from the camels that do not belong in our tent. We want the light, the breeze, the free flow of voluntary sharing of information, but we do not want camels’ noses in the tent, camels’ heads in the room watching us, and we certainly don’t want to be trampled by a herd of them destroying all we hold precious.

In the past when everyone lived in small tribal communities, everyone knew all of your secrets and history. This was oppressive in many ways, and did inhibit cultural evolution, but helped the tribe as a whole cohere and survive. Then, urbanization gave people a way to break free individually and innovate. This was so successful that we created an elaborate and abundant industrial civilization. 

But now this extreme freedom is being abused in increasingly less rare, but increasingly more destructive cases in a way that threatens the very freedom and autonomy it has bestowed on us. For example, the increasing weapon fire power available to anonymous and possibly disturbed individuals; the access that the interstate highway system gave to criminals to hit a town and run; and now, the ability for huge corporations and governments to follow your every move. These are no longer familiar members of your tribe who would suffer consequences for hurting you.

It has come to the point in today’s world where we will either lock down in fear, or open up in freedom and love. It will not do to lock up women and children, and it will not work to lock up our freedom of expression, autonomy, and private agency. So we must quickly act to prevent information abuse so we can keep the window of free flowing information open for sharing. Let us not smother this baby in its’ crib.

Already in China, home of a large percentage of the worlds people, the window opened by the interweb is shut, the doors are barred, a new great wall is going up, and freedom of expression is trapped and suffocating. Even freedom of thought is being starved by lack of information even as the new technologies are being turned upside down and abused to encircle and oppress each individual. Compared to the physical hundreds of thousands incarcerated there in re-education concentration camps, my little self imposed inhibition about writing down my bad dream seems trivial. But the dark clouds of fear and self censorship now gathering are just the same.

I wonder which way will will choose to go.

Patterns in Time and Space

“The way isn't a circle and never can be a circle unless you repeat the same after the same. Is it possible to find something new?...

The way is spiral, and I will keep believing in this!”  -Deyth Banger

There are four cycles of time in the year, the annual, the month, the week, and the day. 

The year and the week are “yang”, the day and the month are “yin”.

The year holds the solar seasons.

The month is based badly on the lunar cycles.

The week is a human devised cultural construction.

The day is Earth’s way of creating our day/night cycle.

Each cycle has its own rhythm. We dance and juggle our way through all of them simultaneously. Since these are cycles, there is really an arbitrary decision as to when we start and end them. We humans love to draw lines, measure things and make models. It feels empowering to anticipate and predict what we will be dealing with in the patterns we have noticed, and in the case of the week, created.

But the universe has no precise circles, they are all actually spirals, since we are also moving through time and space as well. So we never are in the same place each time our planet goes around the sun, because the whole solar system is hurdling through the galaxy, which is itself hurdling through the universe and so on. Spirals spiraling in spirals. 

Geometric models are giving way to far more complex fractal concepts. A geometric form such as a perfect line or circle or square, simply is not found in the universe. Fractals are simple algorithms that can spiral out, repeating endlessly into similar but never exactly identical formations. 

Days and nights spiral light and dark as the Earth spins. The weeks spiral through the months, which spiral through the years, which spiral on through time, patterning, but never exactly repeating. Also, we live in a moment of particular and ever increasing climate instability, which makes predictions based on past patterns hopeful and nostalgic at best.

That being said, pattern recognition is a deep built in impulse in our nature that is not going away.

“The spiral in a snail's shell is the same mathematically as the spiral in the Milky Way galaxy, and it's also the same mathematically as the spirals in our DNA. It's the same ratio that you'll find in very basic music that transcends cultures all over the world.” -Joseph Gordon-Levitt

I wonder where we will be at this time in the next spiral cycle.




Beginnings

“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth… not going all the way, and not starting.” –Buddha

All things you might wish for have a beginning. Beginnings are not usually big and grand. Even the greatest things ever start as very small insignificant seeming dots. An impulse, a thought, an insight that leads to an idea, that leads to some action. But to the great tree, that once upon a time, long ago moment of being a seed was oh so important! Your own precious human body began as a conception!

Nurture this newborn year, this new start. Nurture the tiny precious things, the seeds of the things to come.

Hold each one in your heart and feel if it is a good one, no matter how small. When it is a time of new starts, whether on the calendar, or in a day, feel the coiled potential and momentum that you hold. What will you give your priceless attention and energy to this time? 

Whatever it is, it will grow. Even in the microcycle of an in and out breath, a thought can be received, entertained, or dismissed. Don’t underestimate the power of such a small thing as one thought, for from such beginnings have grown great projects.

“Every moment is a fresh beginning.” -T.S. Eliot

I wonder which seed I hold in my hand will grow into something beautiful and unexpected.

Drag Everything Along As You Go

Wherever you go, all that has gone before, all of your development in the past, all of your parents’ history, all of the ones before them, all of the time and events in the universe so far, go along with you, by definition. So it is. Be aware of this, or not, but it is so. You dance along whirling, swirling the whole of time and space as you go. It is one big, whole, connected, One. 

Why should you remember this as you walk along through your day, breathing your cycles to the rhythm of the all? Because your great spiral arms are embracing all potential at all times.  Once upon a time you squeezed into a box of the limitations of the world, and for your own good reasons. 

You wanted to design a specific objective, to make a thing, to do a thing. A thing that has parameters, perimeters, specifications. You succeeded! But you, you are not the thing. You are the one who squeezed into the thing. You can relax now, and remember that you are not the limits you made.

Believing or not believing will not keep the sun from coming up in the morning, and whatever you think about it, won’t change the reality but will certainly affect how you feel. Walking around with a bag on your head is pretty silly, but most of us have forgotten that we are wearing them. As soon as you take the bag off your head, sun belief won’t be an effort or an issue anymore.

So reach out your arms right now, swish them through the air, and feel the entire universe shift a little. Feel your heart beat in unison with the great pulses of the farthest stars, for it is so now, always has been, and never will not be so. You abide in the boundless. You are an inextricable component of it all. How could you not be? Do you really think you made yourself?

So do, and dance, and do remember, that you drag everything along with you as you go.

“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: You haven’t.” -Thomas Edison

I wonder where I might drag the universe next, and where it may may dance with me.

Peace in the Darkness of the Year

“Time passes so fast. Make time to be still.” -Lailah Gifty Akita

You need a strategy to cope with short days of light and long dark nights.

Get up and out into the light as soon as it is available. Outside light is best, but a very bright indoor light early in the day will substitute. Drink in that blue daylight like it’s love juice from the sun. It is.

Move the body. Even when you really don’t want to go outside due to bad weather, you can put on music and dance.

Eat early in the day, and stop eating for the day as early as you can. Comfort food usually isn’t, really. Unless you need extra calories because you have to work outside in the cold, a heavy diet in winter isn’t helpful. I like the idea of eating roots in the winter; soups and bakes with ginger, carrots, onions, garlic, beets, potatoes; Earth energy. The creatures and the plants withdraw into the earth at this time.

Feasting is festive though, with friends and loved ones, but for every feast, you need a fast. Keep the balance. The fast before the feast, instead of after, is better because your stomach will shrink, so then you won’t eat as much at the feast, but you will enjoy it just as much.

Remember to feed your heart too. Humans like to hunker in together in the dark times. Go visiting, go to social events, hang out with your sweetie. Call someone far away.

Just as we traditionally ate stored food from the sunnier times in the solstice season, what else have you stored from the year? Can you read your journals from the year just passing? Maybe scroll through your photos of the past twelve months? 

If you can, sit by a fire. Give your no longer needed emotional debris to the fire. You can even write it down on a scrap of paper and toss it in.  This is the end of a cycle, so you can go with flow and release whatever else you no longer need or want. The fireplace will take your unwanted stuff and keep you warm, clearing your aura in the process. 

Light a candle. Or just “cocoon”, curl up with a book and a blanket.

This is a good time of year to center, find spirit, to just stop. In the past, the mountain passes would close, and the commerce would pause. Even today, many people get vacation around solstice. There is nothing quite as quiet as a day when the snow is so deep that the roads are impassable and the power is out due to fallen trees, but one need not go to extremes. Things generally slow down at this time so why not also pause?

In the quiet, in the stop, in the silence, feel the empty space. Nature does not abhor a vacuum, nature loves to fill one. Make a space for the new. Make some empty time for inspiration and it will come. 

Hold out your open cupped hands to the possibilities. Visualize love glowing there, and you will hold in your hands a crystal ball. A bowl of the to the yet to become, the still unsprouted seed coat of what is to grow in the coming year. Then, be at peace. Cherish the moment. And wait.

Soon enough, you will feel moved from within, as surely as time marches on, as unstoppable as spring. You will be spring loaded. Before long, things will be moving at such a pace that you will fondly remember this moment and draw strength from it as you fly into the dizzy busy times you only dream of in this still dark night.

“Om is said to be a four-syllable word in Sanskrit, originally as AUM. A, the waking state. U, the dream state. M, the unconscious state. And the fourth, the silence that surrounds it—wherefrom everything arises and whereto everything inevitably returns.”  -Drew Gerald

I wonder what may spring from this still moment.

Dawning

“Enlighten the people generally, and the tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of the day.”- Thomas Jefferson

This is the dawn of a new golden age.

It begins with each individual. Many have already arisen before this dawn, knowing that, indeed, things cannot go on this way much longer. They know the night cannot go on forever, so they get up and light a candle. They cannot wait for the sunrise, and they do not have to. Awakening is possible at any moment. And there is plenty to do. It is the start of a glorious new day!

I know it is hard to believe. Try not to be too disturbed by the breathless daily recitation of the bad news, for it is but a collection of the most unusual and worst things which makes them newsworthy, by definition. These stories are far, far outnumbered by the daily normal happy stories of love and goodness, not newsworthy because they are so common and routine. The truth is we are gradually, definitively and measurably getting better all the time, even though we have huge issues and problems to solve, and real threats and dangers to avert. 

By almost any metric, more people are well and happier than ever before. We are even awakening to the damage our headlong rush toward prosperity has caused to our planet and environment, and starting to heal it.

 My daily walks not only fill me with sadness as I watch the birds I once saw in greater numbers diminish, but also hope, as I stroll past flowers that were recently removed from the endangered species list because people around me cared enough to notice, and save them. On average, humans an the planet are safer, freer, healthier, smarter, and more enlightened than in any previous period of history we know of. 

The same information revolution that brings us the daily pile of worst things, is also enabling us to find one another, join together, and inspire one another. We have challenges, but maybe we can muddle through, even thrive. Success is never assured, but there is real evidence that hope is reasonable. We have the answers at hand now, would we simply take them to heart, and take the next step.

While the sleepers still slumber, a great day is coming. Now the light is growing and the dark is diminishing. The approach of the new day, or at least the impending end of the night, is undeniable. No, it is not the darkest just before the dawn. It is beginning to get light. Everywhere. 

Even in the places in our world where the hold of the dark has been strongest, there is upheaval. The cages are rattling. People now know about each other and they are waking up to their common needs and aspirations.

And yes, the same powers of communication that allow us to know about one another are available to those who want to do harm. And predictably, they are also stirring, thrashing about, making a desperate last stand, and a mess.  Confusion has been weaponized. Predators hunt in the cracks of the day, the shift change, dusk and dawn. Be wise.

But awakening we are. Some will just watch. Some will sleep through the dawn, preferring to skip the chaos. Some will look for holes to crawl into, some will try everything to deny. The coming of the new day can no more be stopped than the, um, rising of the sun. 

I rejoice. 

And we need not wait. You can join now, and begin to live in the new day dawning. As if. Because merely assuming the posture of the new day is enough to bring it in for you now. How do you imagine the new golden age of love and light?

If it is an age of kindness and truth, embody those qualities. Sharing and abundance? Be that now. Have you not made it this far? Peace, tolerance and forgiveness? Create a space for that in your heart here and now.

 There, so now a beachhead is established. Remember help is available to you for the asking, so ask. Allow the light to wash over you, and give thanks.

Now open your eyes and look around the beach. The storm of the long night has left a lot of trash that is being revealed in the growing light of the dawn. There is work to do. You have a job! Give thanks! It is good work to have.

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.” -Henry David Thoreau

I wonder what we will build?