Ouachita Celebration!

Views of Queen Wilhelmina Lodge and the Ouachita National Forest that surrounds it.

Blog pause: ... I'm heading up this mountain, Rich Mountain, for a few days 'cause that's where daParty is! B's birthday was last week … the celebration is this weekend!

It's a big deal for us ... quite without warning and with zero grace, B fell into the River Styx in 1996. Getting him out of there, oh that was a to-do ... but a mission accomplished! It's time to make happy!!!

Entanglement Word Morph

Having danced with astral terminology, let's waltz with entanglement:

… the act of entangling
… the state of being entangled
… something that entangles; snare; involvement; complication*

Oh, for pete's sake, is it too much to ask a definition to exclude versions of the term it's defining?

Okay … let's take the backward step and look at entangle:
… to twist together or entwine into a confusing mass; snarl
… to complicate; confuse
… to involve in or as if in a tangle**

That's closer … no cigar, but closer. Obviously, the word entanglement isn't out of morph mode yet. In the mid-1930s, entanglement ~ as applied to quantum activity ~ was christened. The father of this baby: … Austrian theoretical physicist and winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics, Erwin Schrödinger.

The word Schrödinger used, however, wasn't entanglement … it was verschränkung. As per The Center for Quantum Computation, there was loss in the translation:

"Entanglement" and "Verschränkung" are examples of translated words that indeed conjure up different images in their respective languages.

The German "Verschränkung" translates literally into English as "folding" or "crossing over", as in the folding or crossing of one's arms or legs.

The English "entanglement" translates literally into German as Verfangen, which is often used to describe a tangle of strings or of cables.

Both, it seems, bring out the correct notion of inseparability: the binding or linking of two systems in some physically fundamental way.

However, the meanings of these two are undoubtedly quite different."***

Quite different, indeed. German verschränkung implies far less anarchy than English's balled up entanglement version. It's important, ultimately, to keep this in mind because the bottom line is the difference in hodgepodge and harmony ... and that's a matter, whether we ponder the nature of the void or not, that underpins our personal world views and determines how we structure our lives. It certainly had an effect on Albert Einstein.

Einstein, who believed God didn't play dice with the universe and who had his own baggage when it came to quantum entanglement's non-local implications, objected. His take on the concept:

Spukhafte Fernwirkung ... aka ... Spooky Action at a Distance.

Well, spooky may be correct … but spooky doesn't mean it isn't true.

* Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006

** The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company

*** The Center for Quantum Computation

Astral ~ Why Go There? … part 3

Ask and ye shall receive

I'd asked … it took a hole in the ground for me listen up.

At first it was mildly interesting ~ obviously relieving but not captivating ~ to note I wasn't called to every atrocity I heard about. Thinking back, it was a good half a year, maybe more, before it dawned on me these brutality alerts weren't guiding me to individuals … they were about the dots, the events themselves. *Big Duh Moment*

When that light bulb switched on, I did the decent compulsive thing … I decided to track the calls. My plan was to identify hairball markers … my hope was they'd shed light on the links ... my goal was to discover whatever it was I kept missing, to find the why behind the calls.

That meant spreadsheets, monstrous spreadsheets. In addition to regular data ~ names, ages, times of day and criminal backgrounds ~ I plugged in natural events ~ phases of the moon, solar flares, concurrent earthquakes and storms.

I sought out feng shui pathways and obstructions ~ rivers, aquifers, highways, intersections, mountains and molehills … any discernible line of flow or holding pot that might foster energetic effects.

I'm easily dazzled by details. One day while clicking along in data entry mode, I realized my method was faulty. The mapping approach was equivalent to diagnosing small pox by poking each little lesion.

Air out of my sail, I stood down from the spreadsheets to reevaluate. Popular advice was: … go within. Fact of the matter, I was reluctant to enter an altered state with nasty astral on my mind. I didn't know what to do … but I didn't worry for long.

In the autumn of 2006, soon after I hit the pause button, a friend ~ an experienced healer and journey worker ~ and I responded to a shooting. We weren't lone attendees … a multitude of workers had been called.

Amid the gathering of lightworkers and facilitators, something else was visible: … a big hole in the ground.

To my perception, the hole opened into a tube with a multitude of forked off, smaller branches. It wasn't red but it reminded me of the body's circulatory system. It's inaccurate to say it wasn't pumping anything into the 3d scene because it may have been ... it was laboring to hold its field of manifestation.

However, its primary objective was to drain the scene … it was a furious energy sucking vacuum cleaner. Instead of funneling into a central canister, the energy acquisitions surged ~ harum-scarum and at breakneck speed ~ through the tunnelettes. I couldn't see where any of them were ultimately headed but I felt sure they wouldn't end up in dead end receptacles.

I didn't like it and I wasn't pleased to see it … but there it was, bigger than day and un-ignorable. It had my attention and ~ ratso fratso damn ~ it pointed in the one direction I didn't want to go: … toward the astral. I whined before I considered the trail of clues.

Underground was symbolic … this was a dimensional portal, replete with pathways. To say it was angry would be an understatement … my take was that it was steeped in bloodlust and malice. Moreover, that the entire network was a conduit, frantically transmitting highly charged emotions and thought forms, meant it existed in relationship to something other.

The hole marked a hairball dot ~ a terminal of manifestation in 3d. The system's branches demonstrated how the invisible links operated. The driving force that permeated the vision was a great sense of urgency. That sense was key to my understanding. *Big Eureka Moment*

The system had a limited window of opportunity! It had a quantum structure! This was entanglement ~ astral entanglement ~ in action!

Astral ~ Why Go There? … part 2

As to the other question ~ Why scrutinize the astral? Why not let the sleeping dog lie? Perhaps I could if it was resting … but I don't think it is.

'Things always happen in threes!' … Is this a superstition? an expectation that's fulfilled by waiting for semi-comparable incidents to occur? an acknowledgment of similarities noted coincidentally? or does it have a somewhat mysterious, yet bona fide, basis in fact? I believe it's the latter.

In fact, I believe beyond the three-in-sequence scenario: … I believe many presumably unconnected events are 'somewhat mysteriously' bound together. It wouldn't surprise me to know there are legions of invisible links. The ones I can name off the top of my head are:

• consequential … these fall into the obvious "if this, then that" category;
• archetypal … these are restagings of great romantic legends and cultural dramas;
• hairball … these don't appear to be consequential and they don't cater exclusively to standard themes. They come in waves but they do not fit a classic copy-cat theory.

Several years ago, hairballs began grabbing my attention. The uncomfortable truth is: … I've been drawn to some really ugly incidents. Primarily these involved abuse and slaughter of innocents. My interest wasn't relegated to rubbernecking … it was more like a calling. The nature of the calling, though, was unclear. It had a high weirdness factor and I was repulsed.

I did the normal thing ~ I ran through the checklist of possibilities: … Was I careless? Had I allowed myself to be caught up in media frenzies? Were unrecognized karmic wounds popping open? Was I undergoing a complete identity rewrite?

With each gruesome event, those questions were never far from the top of my mind. Never far below the surface was something else as well: … a deep feeling of responsibility. I knew I had to pay attention … there was something I was to witness, to ascertain. But what?

When it comes to end of life transitions, my role is customarily indirect … that is, while I offer support to the ones who are passing forward, my job is to secure peace in the environment surrounding them. This, then, is what I began doing with real time transpersonal hairballs.

When called to an incident, I offered the tools in my care … at the very least, it beat gawking.

Astral ~ Why Go There? … part 1

Models are helpful for pondering because thoughts do well in containers … containers are like cauldrons, bubbling with ideas that you spice up with new notions.

In astral discussions I've had with myself over the past years, the model I've used is one that closely parallels the emotional definition of latter day Theosophists. Unlike them, however, I've expended zippo effort to create a hierarchical structure.

This is because: … unless it's a matter of utmost consequence and as positively necessary as it can be because there's no viable alternative, I don't do astral.

It really doesn't matter to me if it's labeled a plane or a dimension. This astral is as heavy as it is dense, harboring vile and nasty thoughts and forms. It's toxic and it's volatile, with all manner of host-seeking elements trying to implant depraved seeds and adhere to wanderers. I agree it's not exclusively an after-life realm and I have no dictate telling me it's restricted to earth's humanity.

So, if I don't go there and I don't invite it to wherever I am, why talk about it? For pity's sake, isn't discussion a form of invitation?

Valid questions. I'll start by addressing the invitation potential. Yes, chatter about anything can stimulate and solicit its energies. Knowing this happens is essential to the manner in which a topic is reviewed. I have no intention whatsoever of empowering astral jigglies.

We don't have to swim in a septic tank to know there's one the in neighborhood. By sidestepping emotional involvement and focusing on intellectual examination, I believe we sufficiently distance ourselves from astral junk to permit discussion.

This isn't an exercise undertaken for adventure. It's mandatory. Those of us whose purpose is to assist transformation must know the circumstances and characteristics of the realities we encounter.

If we don't look at the largest reality pictures we're capable of getting, we end up in fire fighting mentality. It's like when you're juggling a dozen things at work and an unexpected something happens that overrides all of your pressing projects. You extinguish the new fire … and when you return your attention to where you were, you discover another fire ignited in your absence.

It's the same whether we're on the job or spiritual workers. On a personal level, fire fighting leads to burn-out. How many lightworkers and healers have you witnessed longing for home? loving hearts who are tired to the bone, craving respite and nurture from the ceaseless chaos of living?

Similarly, fire fighting jerks ~ and subsequently divides ~ our attention to the point where even easily accomplished, routine tasks fall through the cracks. We feel ineffective. It doesn't take many episodes of subjective impotence for us to deem ourselves ill equipped for any task, our 3d job or our greater purpose.

So how do we abort the downward spiral of reaction, of darting recklessly from fire to fire and refocus? It is doable.

The first step is to stand tall on the spot and survey our landscape … in short, regain our clarity of vision. Whatever is within our range of perception, regardless of whether it's judged positive or negative, isn't there on accident.

By whatever tags we've chosen to append to our lapels ~ lightworker, healer, energy worker, priestess or priest, shamanic practitioner, bridge builder or warrior ~ we're facilitators. To fulfill our purposes, it's essential for us to know the operational lay of the land.

Astral Word Morph

Mental, structured awareness of Theosophy
+
Organic, less rigid awareness of Spiritualism
____________________________________________
Awareness Moving Itself into Mass Consciousness

The morph for the term astral went something like this: … in the final quarter of the 1800s, astral was the Theosophical term-of-choice for the plane of reality immediately adjacent the physical. To the movement's founder, H.P. Blavatsky, astral corresponded with the Sanskrit Linga Sharira ~ the refined vehicle of individual consciousness.

Blavatsky's understanding had historical backing but it didn't stand alone for long. Theosophists ~ who felt astral more aptly referred to Kama, the principle of desire ~ and Spiritualists ~ who were deeply concerned with afterlife validation ~ concurrently promoted re-definition. By the 1930s, astral as equivalent to the emotional plane/body was entrenched.

This re-understanding had staying power in no small part because it wasn't removed from accustomed beliefs: … it was a version of Dante's hell, filled with foul and tortured souls. One of the hardest things anyone can do is move her/his perception beyond local and learned confinements.

Standards of duality ~ of here and there, of us and them, of right and wrong, of reward and punishment, of polar opposites ~ are time honored, cross cultural denominators. Tinkering with these mainstays can be the social equivalent of messing with Mother Nature. But forerunners and seekers do it anyway.

Branches on the tree of astral definitions grew outward with ripples in consciousness. The ferment spurring astral re-definition a century ago included the Science of Mind concept of thoughts-as-things … a major tenet that facilitated the feasibility of thoughts ~ from waking and dream states alike ~ as energetic entities.

Reports of the Roswell incident further advanced astral's scope by including the possibility of off-worlders in the unseen population. The paradigm supporting pillar of duality ~ the closed-system, vertically linear model implied by angels & demons ~ became suspect with the inclusion of alien beings.

On the Metaphysical Richter scale, this shift ranks as a 9.7+ quake in perception. The fallout from the upheaval is ongoing: … the astral now presses toward dimensional revision. Consciousness is keeping pace, perhaps setting pace: … beyond the universe, we glimpse the multiverse.

Other than noting that it morphed, continues to morph and means different things to different people, why fret over the definition of astral anything? I'm harping on it is because I highly suspect it is an unacknowledged element of entanglement in modern society.

Zones of Ambiguity

Ever wonder if angels are dakinis by another name? if a dopplelganger is identical to a shadow person? are ascension and rapture the same thing? are soul and spirit interchangeable? is it correct to call the etheric template an aura?

If you've questioned along these lines, you're familiar with zones of ambiguity. Zones manifest when definitions overlap. It's organic ... words morph and terms adapt. Change is a function of living language.

Of course, a lot of words are deliberately skewed … marketing gurus do a lot of it. As a sales device, wordplay is a biggie. Morphing is spin in politics and it's used to dehumanize opponents in combat. Beyond insidious manipulation, however, natural morphing serves consciousness.

The universe is ceaselessly creative. After it propels a volley of seed ideas into the collective, receptive resonant minds in labor grab handy terms ~ concretely parallel or conceptually correspondent ~ and use them to communicate their newborn insights.

It's a logical enough thing to do and re-definitions make sense, of course, to word-parents anxious to share their infant epiphanies with humanity at large. Re-directed meanings, however, don't necessarily mean squat to new ears … assimilation can be messy and take time.

In academic, religious, scientific and philosophical arenas ~ systems where ideas are held in place by formalized rings-pass-not ~ it's not unusual for morphed terminology to be ridiculed. People paying it the smallest attention are denigrated. Reactions from this front tend to be low key, in keeping with the rules of etiquette. Make no mistake, though ... subtlety can be an effective weapon.

Google "New Age Definitions" and you'll get a ton of bona fide hits … you'll also get servings of objection. Some schools of indoctrination simply don't take kindly to what they consider the external hijacking of their proprietary glossaries! For seekers who are not hidebound, navigating these designated zones can be treacherous.

Disruptive zones ~ some directly definition related and some using terms as fulcrums for agendas ~ arise inside movements as well. In the early decades of Wicca, in the days before the internet, there were published debates concerning valid use of the word priestess … basically the dispute was over whether or not the term could apply to an independent, even solitary, practitioner or if the role, the word, rightfully ~ a la the diving right of kings ~ belonged solely to a chosen member of an accepted tradition.

In the same general timeframe, a similar dirty laundry tussle took place in Reiki circles … there was more controversy than you could shake a stick at about the necessity of proper lineage. Obtaining Master status was quite pricey then ~ so the money issue wasn't moot, either. Although her take veered from officially sanctioned lines, Diane Stein helped end the hoopla by granting public access to guarded attunements and symbols when she published Essential Reiki.

Both of these internal struggles were very much aligned with the hierarchal models of power and authority prevalent in the collective mind of the time. Even though separated by millennia, the modern day zones echoed the ancient Lao Tzu pattern: … in the same way the Old Master didn't emerge from a thought vacuum, neither did Wicca and Reiki. They, too, held forward visions … likewise, they contained constructs of their predecessors.

The smaller point is: … when we're in a zone of verbal ambiguity, there's wisdom in knowing what definition we're examining and who's claiming ownership.

The larger point is: … what happens in a verbal zone is not different from what happens in the overall field … you know: ~ as above, so below ~

Essence of Change

Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, or more simply Ovid, is credited with fixing the notion of transformation ~ all things change, nothing perishes ~ in Western mind forever ago.

Although he's afforded glory for coining the phrase and lauded as a muse for medieval poets, he didn't hold sole intellectual property rights to the famous observation. One of his predecessors, Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus, made similar statements ~ all things flow, nothing abides & nothing endures but change ~ several centuries before Ovid further tweaked them.

In the East, possibly contemporaneously with Heraclitus, Lao Tzu ~ the Old Sage or Old Master and legendary author of the Tao Te Ching ~ was likewise deeply into the concepts of rhythm and transformation. The body of thought forms that nurtured him, moreover, predated him.

China's oldest classical text, the I Ching aka Book of Changes, originated during the reign of Emperor Fu Hsi, circa 2953-2838 bce. So, for at least two millennia before Lao Tzu tackled the untackable and spoke of that which cannot be spoken, implicit patterns of change were not only recognized ... they were studied and honored.

It's easy to see how Asia Minor, poised between worlds, served as a cultural passageway. It's no big step to acknowledge it as a scholastic melting pot where orators, philosophers, students and teachers flocked to water in wells of corroboration and inspiration. Yes, Anatolia was a portal on an ancient land based web of dusty trails.

Be that as well and good as it was, perceptions of change before codification were no more anchored in any geographical location than they were tied to a single individual or school of thought. Recognition of the process of transformation didn't require an academic degree. It wasn't an insight specific to any one civilization: East or West, North or South.

All that exists, exists in consciousness. Dry rocks get wet in rain. Trees weather seasons, their life sap pulsing in time with temperature. Coral reefs blossom and spawn in the wake of a full moon. Bears hibernate; butterflies migrate. Babies become children and grow to old age. Every form of consciousness that registers flux is familiar with change.

Change is fundamental. It comes with the teritory ~ any territory: ... physical, emotional, mental, spiritual.

It doesn't matter what names and analogies we use to tag and describe it. It doesn't matter if we like or loathe it. It doesn't matter if we anticipate it and cooperate or are overcome in surprise. It proceeds, invited or not. It makes no apologies. Individuals or entire civilizations, it treats the small and the large without prejudice.

Change is the most dependable aspect of reality-experience there is.

Linear Models ~ Trans-3d Realms & Correspondences

In vertical format, energetic flow logically addresses the notions of weight and gravity … heavy thoughts and emotions sink to lower levels while lighter energies rise.

This upright form also parallels standard representations of the chakra system.

Viewed horizontally, the sequence moves left-to-right in the same way prism charts depict long-to-short light/energy wavelengths/frequencies.

In greater context, of course, directions don't matter. Low-to-high and left-to-right are merely constructs that resonate in the Western mind. If the image was flipped upside down and/or turned backward, it would remain accurate because direction is relative to center ... and center is any tiny point of everywhere.

True as that is, reversed or backward would require an extra mental processing step, so I'll stick with the norms ... they're simple and make sense to me! *S*