Why Do We Think Tibet is So Spiritual?

One would think that some perfect brand of Spirituality would help us to overcome life’s small difficulties.  Well, Tibet has had a relatively small difficulty, or at least the Powerful Elite Ruling Class of Tibet, the Lamas, have had a difficulty.  You see, prior to the Chinese taking over territorial jurisdiction of Tibet, the Lamas held sway, and really didn’t do much with their power except to tax the people so that the Lamas could live in luxury in their well- padded Monasteries and Temples.   When the Chinese ended the Lamas’ free ride, most of the Lamas ran away, telling their sad tale to foreigners and collecting money and political support for the violent overthrow of Chinese Rule.

 

It may be simplistic of me, but wouldn’t the Spiritual Approach had been to find an accommodation with China.  After all, China is perfectly willing to tolerate any Religion that equally tolerates China, that is, that respects the Sovereignty of the Chinese Government.  Catholicism is a prime example.  The Chinese even provide sponsorship for the Catholic Church in China, though withholding support from the outspokenly right-wing anti-communist Pope – the Pope that has dismantled Poverty Programs all around the World because they seem to him to lean too far to the Political Left.   Besides, the Vatican has too much to worry about regarding its role in the International Banking Scandals then to pay much attention to the Chinese Catholic Church which can get along fine enough without it.   Masses are conducted and the teachings of the Church are allowed to go forward.   The World is as it should be.

 

My God, but if the Catholics have enough Spirituality to come to a peaceful  Accommodation with the Chinese, then what is so wrong with the Tibetans?   Their Leadership brainwashes their poor monks into setting themselves on fire in order to provoke city-wide riots aimed at scandalizing Chinese Rule and destabilizing the Government.  Yes, the Chinese must react to the Riots to maintain the Public Peace, but clearly every provocation comes from the Tibetans, and probably at the instigation of the Delai Lama himself.  Either that, or the Tibetans have descended into chaos and nobody is any longer in charge.  Just the Essence of their Spiritual System is at play, and it reveals itself in Flames, Blood, and Murder.

 

What good is any Religion or Spiritual system that relies so much on violence to itself and violence to others?  Is that what the World needs – Peace through killing killing killing.  Yes, it’s a very ancient method to achieve Peace, and many Moderns still adhere to it – to kill every man woman and child enemy that exists in the World.  When every Enemy is Dead, then Peace will Reign.  And how has this Ancient Method of arriving at Peace worked for the World?  How is it working now for the Delai Lama?   Clearly we need a Spirituality that is less Militant and Violent, and more, well, Spiritual.

 

Maybe the first qualification of a Spiritual Leader is the ability to shake hands and talk across a table.    

2012 Prophecy, The Pope Passes

Not only will the Pope pass away, but so will the Institution of the Pope.  We are now living under the last Pope in History.   Really, it is quite an old prophecy: Saint Malucky in the 11th Century had published a list of future Popes and it ends with Pope Benedict.  This Pope, aware of the ancient Prophecy, didn’t hesitate to take the name Benedict, and perhaps Popes have been supporting the prophetic list for centuries, always taking the next name on the list.  But the list does run out, and it runs out now.  

It is just a guess, but if big things were to happen during 2012, certainly the passing of the last pope would qualify.   But then there is the part about this pope being the very  last, that the Catholic Church will suddenly find the motivation and means of overturning such a long standing Tradition, which, divisive as it is in keeping all the other branches of the Catholic Church from coming together – the Russian and Greek Orthodox Churches, the Coptic Church, the Thomasian Catholic Church, and even the Church of England --  well even as a obviously rotten tradition it is still a tradition… we can call it an Institutional Habit that is hard to break…  and that rotten Tradition seems to be set in stone.  What possibly could be so powerful as to so disrupt it? 

Right now, the present Pope had been in power so long, not so much as the Pope, but as the Number One Executive Member of the Vatican who had personally hand-picked EVERY Cardinal for about the last 50 years now.  So EVERY Cardinal now alive, practically, is Conservative – a Rich Man’s Politically Right Wing Traditionalist Cardinal.  What could make these, well, Devils in Red  Caps, turn around and dismantle their machine which they are probably, at the moment, very proud of, or, at least, very much invested in?   With things are as they are this minute, if the Pope were to die today, we’d have another cold blooded poison snake Pope by tomorrow morning and business as usual by the evening.  

This is why I think there will be a COMPLEX of events at the end of 2012.  Yes, if the Aliens from Outer Space land and present a DETAILED ROADMAP FOR SUSTAINABLE CIVILIZATION that is entirely different from Capitalism and the Legal Bribery and Special Interest Pedalling that Democracy has become (and probably always has been), then I could anticipate a huge popular Uprising for Change.  But also a huge Global Economic Collapse might trigger about the same chain of events.   I would hope for the Aliens, but with every day in the News we hear of the Economy, everywhere, spiraling downward – cutbacks in government, and private company downsizing causing  less spending and lower payrolls, causing less trade, causing more companies to lose business, and more governments to collect less taxes, and so the Knife goes deeper and the Spiral swings Lower.   The Bottom of the Rotten Bucket has to fall through some time.  

But I’m willing the bet that this Pope has already seen his last Christmas…  

Radical Islam vs. Radical Westernism

All of a sudden, in historical terms, the West became amazingly wealthy and powerful and then used its wealth and power to largely subjugate the rest of the World.  Some non-Western Nations were able to reach quickly, notably Japan, and assemble their own defenses against the aggression of the West, but unfortunately this required them to, well, Westernize, that is, to do to themselves what the West would have done to them…  to do a kind of, ‘if we cannot beat them, then we will join them’ kind of thing.  But most non-Western countries were quite overwhelmed, and were colonized to at least some significant extent or another.

Of course in many cases to be colonized by the West was not the worst of all possible things that might have happened to some of these cultures.  Where Societies had already effectively collapsed into a kind of malignant stagnation due to the ascendency of barbarian influences, where extremely small minorities of Clan or Tribe or Class had concentrated all the Wealth to themselves and allowed the remaining People to wallow in an inescapable poverty surrounded by a neglected and shattered social and economic infrastructure, then Westernism would have appeared to come as something of a Liberating Revolution, breaking the Concentration of Wealth at least for a generation or two, until the Western Grip of effective Barbarism would fully have time to ruin everything all over again.  But for a while there would be a much appreciated respite.

So many Peoples and Societies were at first quite mesmerized by the apparent optimism that came from the liberation from their old Ruling Classes and the subsequent freeing up of Wealth and Resources.   They looked to their new Western Masters as somehow shining examples for a New Way of Life.  And what was this new way of Life?  Well, I think it can be summed up as something of a Western Trident, that is a 3-pronged spear of attack or influence – Secularism, Industrialization, and Democracy.   Secularism would destroy or at least mitigate the moral concerns from Religion that would impede the Usury inherent in the Capitalism that would fund Industrialism.  Also, Seculariism, with its abandonment of Religious Principles, would also brush aside the moral reluctance to allow a few Owners in the Society to exploit for their own ends the lives of everybody else, that is, to condone entire societies being subjected to something that would become in time a merciless Wage Slavery.   The Next Influence, Industrialization would expand not only because of the drive of Greed inherent in Capitalism, but also because of the Necessities brought on by War, that is, all of the Wars that would almost be expected to arise between Nations that had abandoned Religious Principles in order to become so necessarily Secular, and in consequence taken on the Cold Reptilian Strategizing for Advantage that does not shun a War that they think can be easily enough Won.  And so every Secular Industrialized Nation became a military threat.   And so it was soon learned that more thoroughly industrialized Nations can make more cannons more quickly than lesser industrialized societies, and the least Industrialized Societies being the most vulnerable of all.    About Industrialization, there no longer seemed to be a Choice.   Then there is the Influence of Democracy.  Well, the propaganda about Democracy is convincing but only insomuch as it is misleading.  Democracy claims to Represent the People; however, when you really think about it, Democracy only represents the Winners, and of the Winners, it only really represents the very few people who picked, funded and supported the winning candidates, while everybody else is, well, in as much of a Dictatorship as they ever were.   Simply look at the West where Democracy has been established the longest.  Voter apathy is rampant, that is, many of the people subjected to democracy recognize that it is effectively useless to vote.  Of course there are exceptions, but only in elections were the Ruling Classes pay heavily to put out the most stirring and provocative campaigns of emotion-driven propaganda, and where nearly all of the Educated People within the Society conclude that the subsequent Large Voter Turnouts bring a far worse result then if people would have sensibly stayed home.   It has gotten so dysfunctional in the West that now all of the Conservative Parties actively restrict access to Higher Education and do everything in their power to sabotage Public Education at the lower and medium stages, even allowing the children to ‘drop out’ of school when it is almost a guaranteed certainty that they will thus come to no good, and all because  ‘Think Tank’ Consultants hired on by the Ruling Classes have pointed out time and time again that Educated People recognize and reject their Propaganda and so tend to vote against them, and that if they want to win Elections, then it is best to cultivate as much Idiocy and stupidity in their Societies as is in their power.   Of course this can’t be good for anybody but themselves, but, luckily for them, that is all they care about.

But, while the Western Trident of influences – Secularism, Industrialization, and Democracy, had their inherent dangers, still, there appeared a kind of glitter and utility about it all in these previously Collapsed and Stagnant Colonized Cultures,  and so in a large degree those Recovering Societies  began to enthusiastically push for the adoption of Western Ways and Western Institutions.

Remember, that much of the Progress these Colonized Societies had at first seen sourced not so much from the Virtues and Powers of Westernism, but simply as an effect of having been liberated from their Old Masters before their New Masters could have sufficient time to sufficiently consolidate their own solid and total Grip.    But time moved inexorably forward and now the Grip has tightened, and this brings us the topic of Radical Islam.

Yes, many of the Islamic Societies had become convinced believers in Westernism.  Their Societies were pulled into the Western Banking Systems, and their Markets had been opened up to cheap Western Goods.  So their own Banks dwindled and their own sources and means of production dried on the vine.  Even their own farmers ended up bankrupt while trying to compete against wheat and corn grown in Kansas, by subsidized corporate Farmers a half a world away.   The Grip had grown solid.  The New Masters, off in the West, are in place and the new strangle hold is much more firm than it ever had been  before.   And now that the Western Trident of Influences no longer Glitters for them, we can understand that there is bound to be a Reaction, a Resistance, an Opposition.  If it is no longer Good for them, then we must expect sensible people to do what sensible people do when they want to get rid of what seems Bad.   But not everybody is sensible.  In fact most people aren’t sensible in any significant scholarly degree at all, and this is what gives way to Radicalism, that is, people taking extremely simplistic approaches to achieve extreme Ends, even when their initial motivations and rationales had been to a large part understandable and sympathetic.   

Unemployment for those under 30 years of age in the Islamic World stands at about 70%.  Now, what are that many young men to do?  Well, in many parts of Islam, money flows from the Wealthiest Oil Soaked Nations to the poorer areas in the form of Scholarships to Religious Schools, and what is offered is Food and Religious Education.  Families are motivated to accept these Scholarships for their young men simply to relieve them from the load of another mouth to feed, and besides,  the Religious Education certainly won’t hurt, or this is what is assumed.   Oh, this is only in Regions still at peace.  Where Wars or Conflicts have broken out, then the Young Men are given Food if they agree to Fight.   Well, of course any young man would agree to Fight.  To turn down an invitation to Fight would be Cowardice, and not just in Their Culture, but in nearly every Culture on Earth a Young Man can hardly, not with any shred of Honor or Dignity left intact, turn down a good bloody Fight.   

You know, the same thing happens in the West.  Unemployment goes up, and more Young Men go into the Military.  And the ones that can’t get into the Military, because the Political Parties had been too successful in denying them an adequate Education, well they join the Criminal Gangs and fight for Territory where they can traffic drugs, control Prostitution and steal cars without bumping into each other and meeting with undue price competition.   Of course, in the West you have nearly nobody going off to Religious Schools.   The West thinks it less dangerous to foster a Criminal Society then Religiously Radicalized Society.  Well, we shouldn’t have to choose between two Evils, but I find it oddly paradoxical  when people think that Religion must necessarily be an ‘Evil’ influence.     

Islam is using the Religious Schools to resist Western Secularism.  Why?  Well, it is much harder for Capitalist Usury and Industrial Exploitation to take firm hold in a very morally conscious Religious Society.  And so Religious Education is pushed…. Well, for everybody but the girls.  In the West it is objected strenuously that girls are restricted from Education, and the Westerners are left to believe that these restrictions are in place out of motives of simple meanness.   Well, what Westerners fail to consider is that in a Society where unemployment among Males is already hovering at about 50%, and much higher for Young Men, that Educated Females would only be one more added factor in keeping the employment figures low and in depressing wages for those who do have jobs.   After all, although they shouldn’t have to, it is well known that women are willing to work for less.   While they complain of low wages, it never seems to make them quit.   Also, Islam isn’t blind and has seen what Female Education and Employment has done in the West.   A century ago, all throughout the Western World, in most families and even in most poor families, the Wages of the Man were sufficient for the entire upkeep of the Household.  But now Husband and Wife both need to work, and for what?  The same thing that the Man could do before now has to be done by Man and Woman both.  Where is the Advantage?   From One Wage Slave, Society now demands Two Wage Slaves.  Is that Progress?  It seems like a more complete Subjugation.   The West has grown blind to the problem, but it is understandable that the Islamic World should be terrified of the same consequences, and not be soothed by the comforting notion that they too will grow used to their yokes and shackles, seeing them instead as the necklaces and bracelets of a High Standard of Living.  

The West claims that educating and employing women liberates them and empowers them.  And this is true to the extent that they now have enough personal resources to be able to readily abandon their families, but we can understand that not everybody thinks this a good thing.   Oh, and is it really liberating to have young women leave their children and families at home in order to work long weeks for minimal wages.   We can say they have a Choice, but do they?  After Female Employment hits a certain level, Inflation takes hold and adjusts prices so that Families absolutely need to send the Women off to Work, when just the Man working is no longer enough.  This is what Islam is trying to preserve itself from – the Necessity of having to force all of their Women into Wage Slavery.

Some well-meaning Westerners, even Al Gore who is ordinarily liberal and thoughtful about things, advocates Education for Women because it lowers the Birth Rate.   He says it is because ‘empowered’ women just so happen to want to have less children.   Well, yes!  But why?   Might the reason be that their employment would be adversely effected by having babies?   Could it be that Employment leaves them too run down and fatigued to have any energy left for babies or child bearing?  Or the answer simply might be that with both Husband and Wife working, there is a friction created so that the couple no longer gets along well enough to be in the position, so to speak, to have babies.  You know, even in the West there was a relatively long period also where Men were objecting to the Wife going out to work.  They saw it in rather practical terms where once the Wife was at Work, then her Boss becomes her New effective ‘Husband’.    Indeed, if the Boss asks the Wife for anything, yes, anything, how was the Wife really able to refuse?   Isn’t the Boss the Boss?   Work was like another home, and there the Boss was, well, the Boss, and the Husband, off at home or another job,  was rendered insignificant and meaningless.   And were these concerns simple paranoia, or have there not been Millions of instances where wives have had affairs with their Bosses and Supervisors, thus being one of the leading causes for Marital Instability in the West.   Now, why would Islam intentionally take on the same hideous issues for itself?   And, yes, why was Al Gore too stupid to see it at these angles?  Oh, well, he and others may well be plotting for the eventual dissolution of the Institution of Marriage altogether, which might not be such a bad idea, but let’s leave that intriguing question for another paper, and remember that Islam may still be holding out hope for the Institution of Marriage, especially that part where Husbands can collect as many wives as they think they can afford.

So, we are at the point now where we should understand that Islam, while no longer seeing any advantages to Westernization, now wishes to resist its Influences.   And yes, sometimes the resistance is extreme and crazy, and, yes, provocative.   But a detached and objective comprehension of the problem might suggest that if we left Them alone, then they would leave us alone.   But this is where Western Radicalism comes into play.  Globalized Capitalism cannot spare any Resource, and sees the Territories of Islam in terms of the Material Resources that could be extracted.  Particularly Oil.  The thought that Islam would ever simply refuse to Sell, well, that is incomprehensible, and would certainly re-trigger the old Colonization response.  If they will not Sell it, then we will Take it.

Also, a very important point to remember is that Islam is obviously split.  Many Regimes are emphatically Secular and sympathetic to Westernization, or at least amenable to being subsidized by Western Dollars.  At least they were.  You know, it is rather confusing that the West is now abandoning the Secular Regimes that had previously been the most sympathetic to Western Influence.  The West is now promoting Democratic Takeovers, by mostly Sectarian and Tribal Political Factions that are almost guaranteed to be at each other’s throats.  Societies that had been held together by Religiously Impartial Secular Authoritarian Regimes will now descend into Civil War or at least the kind of Civil Unrest provoked by 51% Majorities tyrannizing over 49% Minorities.   But the Western withdraw of support for Authoritarian Secularism may have other, and even more severe consequences.

What if the only Way the quarrelling Sects and Tribes can stop their bickering is by focusing on a Common Enemy, and what if this Common Enemy becomes the West?  You know, Islam, if it were ever able to gather Focus and Consensus, could  destroy the West in less than a Business Week.  They would only have to announce the end of Foreign Sales of Petroleum.  Yes, they would lose all that income, but all that Income had only been leading the Way into Westernization.  If they decided to go back to Riding Camels, Herding Sheep, and Weaving Carpets, then they could simply wash their hands of all that Oil Money and not be any of the Worst off for it.   And the Western Economies, with their severe need for Oil, and with their Currencies being evaluated so much in relation to the Price of Oil, well, the Deprivation in Energy Resources and the Confusion done to the Currencies would be overwhelming.

Yes, the Western Militaries, particularly the United States would find excuse to Invade, but it would all need to take too long and the actual economies would be in too severe a state of collapse to recover even if the Oil Fields were reopened inside of a couple of years.  We saw how long it took the United States to reopen the Iraqi Oil fields, and that was with no really serious opposition.  If the United States were to provoke some serious native hostility, then the Oil Fields would never reopen, well, not unless the Unites States resorted to Genocide and repopulated Islam with Oil Workers from Texas.  Hmmm, I shouldn’t even think such a thing, because, well, it IS possible.  As I said before, Secularism has no moral inhibitions, and we have already seen that the United States is willing to justify Murder just for political expediency.  Not from Necessity or Survival, but just for Convenience.    From killing one person to eradicating entire populations is just a matter of degree.    The Willingness has already been demonstrated.

But maybe Islam only needs to be patient and wait (besides, everybody knows the Oil Fields in the East are almost Empty anyway).  Maybe the Collapse in the West has already begun and needs no further push from Islam.  The Real Level of Unemployment in the West is at about 20%.  In the United States they mask this by keeping a huge portion of the Population in Prison, and in Military Uniform.  But, still, a great many people are effectively ‘working’ outside of the System, mostly in Criminal Enterprises.  Where in Islam the Unemployed go off for Religious Schooling, in the West they become Mobsters and Smugglers, Prostitutes, Pimps or Car Thieves.    If there were to be a significant  Economic Crisis in the West, and with every passing day the News Reports make that seem more and more likely, well, it is very likely that the Strongest Elements remaining  in Society would be the Criminal Enterprises, and once they took over Control, it would be extremely difficult for the Legitimate Authorities and Owners to ever get it back again.

Of course it would be Bad everywhere.  The Population Centers of Islam depend on Commercial Food Deliveries just as much as any City in the West, perhaps more.   And all of that would grind to a halt.  Billions of people, everywhere, would die.     

But what would be left of Islam could go back to its Camels, and perhaps with that strong backbone of Religion, with any Religion being significantly better than no Religion at all, well, they could re-achieve something of a New Civilization, perhaps a re-flowering, after a couple hundred years, of the Golden Age of Islam that we had seen in the 11^th Century.  But for the West I would guess a New Dark Ages would emerge.  The Rugged Individualism that has been fostered in the West, in the place of Religion, would translate into the most aggressive Barbarism.  The Self Made Men of our so-called Civilization, with its collapse, would simply turn into the biggest self-justifying Thieves and Bandits.  Everybody would be each other’s Worst Enemies.  Men, seeing each other as Rivals, would kill each other on sight.   If History is able to survive, then it will record that the Fall of the West was even more spectacular than its Rise,  and probably of far far greater duration.  

Dying in a Dream is a Good Thing

If you have died or have faced death in a Dream – A Monster chasing you or some such thing – and you are something of a young adult, early twenties or about, then this dream is a Mortality Dream. You are being shown that you will die... some day... not very soon as the case usually is.  The Monster confronting you is your eventual Death.

But more importantly, in the dream context, you are being given the opportunity to confront Death in the Dream World, and then to realize that in the Dream World you are quite Un-Killable... well, almost... you can be ‘killed’, but if you can keep from waking up for about 20 seconds, you will find that you come back to "life".

So, don’t be too afraid of those Monsters.  My advice is to confront those Monsters and let them kill you, and then 'stay dead', that is, go down and lay there dead and don't get so emotional that you wake up prematurely and ruin the dream.  You have to lay there and just wait. After about 20 seconds it will begin to feel ridiculous and you will get up Alive... or something like the Living Dead, but you won’t be ‘gone’.

After such a dream you will have the realization that you cannot be killed in a dream. It is quite liberating. You might not at first believe it, but other dreams will soon occur to verify it -- you will be gunned down, hit by trains and buses... you will soon get the point that nothing in a dream can even scratch your little finger, well, that holds you back any.

I remember my first Mortality Dream... I and my young friends were being chased through this Amusement Park by a deadly Monster and we could simply not get much of a lead on the Thing, and so I finally decided to stop and just wait for it. I watched my friends run off ahead of me. I slowly turned back to face the Monster, and it surprised me what I saw. It was not the same Monster, but it had turned into the Prison Guard from the movie "Cool Hand Luke", the one with the Mirrored Sun Glasses and the high powered rifle. I asked him, "what are you going to do?" And he said, " I am going to shoot you dead". Anyway, quite matter of factly, and to my surprise I replied simply, "Okay, give me a second", and I turned around so he could shoot me without me having to watch it face to face. BOOM! and the rifle bullet smacked into the back of my head and drove me forward into the ground. Of course I was dead! So I laid there being dead for about 20 seconds until it started to seem ridiculous. I got up and looked around and saw a gas station on the other side of the street. I walked over and asked to use the Men's Room and when I went inside I walked up to the mirror over the sink and opened up my mouth wide, and I could see Sunlight coming through the back of my head... I had left the door open. Seeing the large hole in the back of my head I said, ironically enough, "Yeah, I'm dead alright.

the next night I was hit by a train. the night after that I was shot by feminist terrorists with a machine gun. Soon I got the point, that Dreams couldn't kill me. It is very liberating. it takes the Fear out of dreams.

Being Too Lucid in a Lucid Dream

The Purpose of Lucid Dreaming is to give the Dreamer a sense of Self in his Dreams and the notion that he can make Choices within his dreams.

 

When I look over my personal history of Lucid Dreams what occurs to me is that at the moment of Lucidity, I made the choice to leave ordinary medium lit dreams with casts of ordinary dream character to go to better lit Spiritual Dreams with a much Higher and much more engaging set of Dream Characters.  Mostly my Lucidities led me to the same choices each time, that is, to Levitate on out of there – to pick up and fly away to better Places.

 

Now, there is a Truth about dream levitation – dream flying – and that is when you dream fly, you go from Lower to Higher.   I used to enjoy dream flying for the sake of dream flying, and was discomfited when I would seem to run out of gas way up at stratospheric altitude and be forced into a descent back to the Mundane.  Only after about a dozen dreams did it finally occur to the young me that I was landing into some of the most Spiritually uplifting dreams of my life.

Dream Flying is not about the Flying.  It is all about where you will land.

 

So Lucidity does give you that Choice.  You can leave your current Dream and go to a Higher Dream.  Now, many new people coming into Lucid Dreaming, after reading all of the New Age Propaganda salted about by all of those New Age Tycoons – Book Writers and all those Work Shop and Week End Seminar People, well, after all of that very promising and very deceptive reading, they come to think that they can control EVERYTHING in a dream.  Not just their own personal Dream Choices, but that they think that they will actually be able to control all of the Dream CONTENT – Story Line, Sets, Costumes, Dialog, etc, etc.

Well, think about that for a minute – Dream Content in a Lucid Dream when every detail comes across so sharp and well defined, and there being thousands or millions of details in each dream scene, well, how could the Dreamer even begin to CREATE all of that in the spur of the moment.  No, in real Lucid Dreams, regardless of all the fabricated marketing propaganda, the Dream Mind still creates the Dream Scenes and all of the basic Dream Scenarios, while the Lucid Dreamer is allowed his own Enlightened and Lucid Choices.

And this leads to a very common Lucid Dream Problem.  People complain that they soon ‘lose’ Lucidity.  Well, yes, but this is actually a GOOD thing .  You see, Lucidity is a Blessing and a Curse.  It is a Blessing when it leads to the first choices to go to a Higher Level of Dreaming.  It is a Curse when it keeps you from fully participating in the Spiritual Dream that your Dream Mind had created for you.  Certainly you can understand that it would be a serious distraction if you were to be continually mumbling to yourself “ I am dreaming I am dreaming I am dreaming” when you really should be enjoying perhaps the most Spiritual Dream of your life.

I had one such Lucid Dream.  When I became aware that I was Dreaming I decided to lift off and fly away.  When I came down I was met by a radiant little girl, the Blessed Virgin Mary in the form of a Child, who took my hand and led me to the Spiritual Pope in Heaven, a thin angular and ascetic old man.  He refused all honors, and all respects because, as he inclined his head toward the ‘little girl’, all of that is quite meaningless while in the presence of the Blessed Virgin.  This heavenly Pope introduced me to my Patron Saint, a man who while alive had been a Bishop but who had been assassinated by a clandestine group of rightwing radical bishops in Rome, to prevent him ever becoming the first Latin American Pope.   I was quite in state of shock after learning all of that and so the Heavenly Pope moved the proceedings along by summoning a group of about 20 men, including myself.  Another man and I were given Awards.  They were Spiritual Vision Kits – boxes containing a number of Stones and a set of instructions.  Each Kit contained 12 Stones but only 9 stones were to be installed into the Instrument permanently and then one of the three other stones could be installed on occasion depending upon which Spiritual Realm one wanted to see into.

 

What a great dream, si?  That Patron Saint has become a fixture in my Dreams, and I now call him the Ruby Bishop – he wears a purplish violet gown with a strap bearing a large Red Ruby on his chest, and he saves the World in the next 30 years.  Now, in that Dream I had lost my Lucidity shortly after I met the “little girl”, and isn’t that a Good Thing.  If I had stayed Lucid and mumbled to myself the whole time, and tried to interfere with Dream Content then I might have screwed up one of the best dreams of my Life.           

Scrambling to Meet the UFO Invasion

I did not see the Alien Space Ships because the point of view of the Dream was apparently from the perspective of the Alien Space Ships, and I can’t even tell you how many of them there were, except to say that the U.S. Army helicopter squadron that was sent out as something of a First Responder saw enough of them to be really worried.

I did see the Place.  It looked like Texas, along the Rio Grande River, bordering Mexico, on Route 10, or maybe it was still in New Mexico, as I didn't actually see the river.  There was a Hill on the American Side, with some greenery, and the Hill was a bit cut away by a Bluff, but it all looked like the American Southwest Desert – reddish, sparse, hot and dusty. 

I saw the American helicopters arriving, and in each helicopter I recognized some sort of Alien Presence, though it was probably invisible to the men in the helicopters. 

My attention was drawn to the Command Helicopter, where a Captain or perhaps a LT. Colonel was in charge.  Apparently he was keenly aware of the importance of this particular mission.  I can’t remember exactly what he said over the Radio to all of the other helicopters and his men, but it was something like the following. 

“Men, I want your attention.  Our first priority of course is to defend and protect the United States of America, but if we possibly can we need to try our best not to start an Intergalactic War.  So don’t fire unless fired upon, and by “fired upon” I mean being blown out of the sky and crashing in flames.  We do not want a War that could destroy the Entire World because we are startled by some bright flashing light, surprised by some strange crackling sound or because one of our birds blows an oil seal and puffs out a cloud of black smoke.  Do you understand me?  (all answer “Yes Sir”).  

“Just look at it here.  There is no going back on this day.  In the entire History of Humanity how many Days could possibly rank up with this one, and the Encounter we are about to make?  What we do today will be remembered Forever.  And the Consequences of what we do will very likely last Forever.  So, please, let’s not do anything unforgettably Stupid.  Do you understand me? (all answer “yes, sir”).

Now, it’s very reasonable to suppose that they have some very sophisticated technologies, certainly with Space Flight, and we can suppose with Weaponry, but probably also with Intelligence Gathering – their ability to listen in, not only to our radios and intercoms but even just our voices.  So for here on out do not say anything you do not want them to hear, and, well, don’t even think anything you don’t want them to know.  Imagine that they are sitting right there beside you… imagine that they are already right inside your head, and that should keep us fairly safe.  Stay smart, stay alert, and don’t say, think or do anything that could piss them off without my direct orders.  Do you understand me?” (all reply, “yes, sir”).    

And with that I saw the Commanders Helicopter banking over into a turn and I sort of knew that the helicopters were going to encircle the Alien Space Ships and begin their ‘Encounter”.  There would be a Challenge along the lines of “You are in the Air Space of the United States of America, a Sovereign Nation, and by the Rights of International Law, you do not have the Legal Right to be here, but considerations can be made if you are in distress and require aid.  Please identify yourselves and state your Business”.

I’m hoping that everything went well.

I was thinking of this dream, and of why the Aliens chose Route 10 in Texas just north of the Rio Grande.  Well, at the first hint of trouble the Aliens could have moved a few hundred meters to the South and been in Mexican Airspace, with a lot less to worry about.

Oh, there was more to this dream as it continued into its second chapter.   Of course everything hit the News.  The United States Government could not cover this thing up.  It was just off Route 10, one of the busiest cross continental highways in America and everyone has those little cameras in their phones nowadays.  Plus, I have a feeling the News Vans and the News Helicopters were there as quickly as the Army had been, as the TV News kept running actual film and needed so little in the way of cheesy graphics and drawings.  We were all seeing the Real Deal.  After about 10 days of Excitement, it all began to Normalize, and people were suddenly used to the Presence of the Aliens, like they had always been here.  It was probably just a massive failure in the collective imagination, or Thought Fatigue had finally set in, but it all suddenly got passé.  I was speaking to this one young lady who was expressing such a ‘it doesn’t really matter anyway, kind of a thought’ and I remember telling her “hey, you just watch, but in 20 years we are all going to be wards of the State, and They are going to be the State.”

Well, it sounds a bit pessimistic, but it is hard to imagine how any Intelligent Species could do much worse than we are. Maybe they have a plan for our chronic economic recessions and Global Climate Change, rising Ocean Levels and Species Loss.  So far we haven’t come up with anything.  If we have Lost, it is only by Default.

The Productivity Recession

I have written earlier regarding other functional contradictions inherent in Capitalism, once it hits its Saturation Point, as it now seems to have done, such as there being no real source of Profit in a Global Economy, and that a chronic Commodities Scarcity even during a Global Recession would guarantee that Price Inflation would kill any twinge of a Recovery at the very first wave of new hiring and increased Demand.  Now, this small paper will discuss how Productivity contributes to the collective pain and misery that are becoming ever more associated with the ideas and institutions of Capitalism.

Firstly, I understand that people don’t ordinarily think of Productivity as a problem.  People think of Productivity as being equivalent to the idea of making stuff, doing stuff, and keeping busy in a good way.  But in economic terms it is more complicated than that, where ‘Productivity’ is a factor of things, of Goods Produced divided by Invested Labor.  So, Productivity as an Economic Factor, can go up in two ways – 1) the same number of workers can produce a lot more stuff, or, 2) a lot less workers can produce the same amount of stuff at a much reduced cost.  Well, businesses don’t really like the first means of achieving greater productivity, as simply increasing the absolute amount of product leads to Price Deflation, that is, charging less for their product.  It cheapens the Market.  So businesses like to put out the same amount of stuff at less of a labor expense, by firing workers.  So, basically, increased Productivity does not mean, in most cases, that more is being produced, but that less people are involved in and compensated for doing the producing.  

I was reading up on the News, and found a small article on the BBC Webpage, where this one lady journalist was batting back and forth the idea that the West might slip into an eternal state of Stagnation just as Japan has appeared to do, or that the West might still Recover and everybody but the Japanese can go on being happy again.   The detail that caught my eye was where she stated that while all the firings, redundancies, downsizings and unemployment were just simply horrible, that the bright side of it was the Productivity was shooting up, that it seems that the Companies were still getting product out despite the fact that everybody but the Boss and his pretty secretary were fired.  So, to this insightful BBC lady journalist, the ‘silver lining’ in all this economic news is that employees are rather unnecessary and would in fact derail any significant recovery. 

Of course, the sizeable hole in this way of thinking is that Demand will never recover as long as nobody is employed, and that the Boss buying buckets of caviar, new yachts, mansions, and Mercedes-Benzes’, and his secretary buying a new smart phone, slightly faster than her old Smart Phone, simply are not enough to carry us all to a new age of universal prosperity.

Then there is the matter of the numbers themselves.  Yes, when numbers are trending upwards, it is better than numbers trending downwards, sure, but then there is the matter that Bad Numbers following Worse Numbers are still Bad Numbers.  It is like looking at just one Team’s performance in a sports match and to say that if the one team scored nothing in the first quarter, and nothing in the second quarter, but scored one amazing goal in the third quarter, that things were looking up and becoming hopeful for the fourth quarter and last chance before total doom.  But what if the other Team had scored 75, 95 and 168 in those same first, second and third quarters respectively.  Then we would suddenly see that any tiny numerical improvement in the context of this broader picture of total annihilation would be effectively insignificant.  The Boss and his secretary buying something in this quarter is seen as an improvement only because they bought nothing at all in the last quarter, but everybody else is still starving just as badly.

Well, I suppose it is just mean spirited for the rest of us to be fixating on ourselves and our own petty problems when we should be truly happy when the 1% see an opportunity to expand upon their brilliant successes.  So we should be happy at the increased Productivity Factor, but remember, it only helps Them, but for the Rest of Us, well, it only adds to the Pain and the Problem. .  

Oh, and there is that matter that People are looking for Good News, and with every other number going badly, Productivity is the only number on the rise, even if marginally.  So the Economists, the Policy Makers and the Journalists are clinging to it like it is their Last Straw.  They don’t see it as an embedded structural contradiction, that creating Product without Employees kills any chance at not only Recovery and Growth, but any chance that Society will not collapse and the World fall into barbarism and chaos, as we see happening in the Near East and Africa where it has always been the Practice of the Very Rich to keep Employment very low.

Another News story caught my eye.  The United States had created a liberal policy of making it easy to fire workers, thinking that the same principles exercised in reverse would make it easier to hire workers (but it is never so easy to Hire as to Fire, as hiring workers takes advertising, selecting, processing and training the new Workers, even when there are no Governmental Requirements to deal with).   Most of the World followed suit, well, except for Germany.  Now, in retrospect, it seems that liberalizing policies to make it easier to fire workers only resulted in the consequence that millions of workers were fired, mostly because it was just so darn easy to fire them.  And because Consumer Demand in these countries swiftly declined, they fell deeper into Recession, and since they lost the capacity to Produce, at the opportunity of the least sight of Demand anywhere else in the World, they stayed stuck in Recession.  Germany, who didn’t fire everybody, kept a strong domestic Demand, and because they kept their Factories open they were able to answer for any blip of returning Demand.

Of course, this is not to say that every country could have benefitted by keeping their Factories up at 100% Capacity, as there simply would not have been business enough for everybody.   This reminds me of something that happened to me years ago – a young Economist spoke of the Hong Kong Miracle, that in Hong Kong they charged no Taxes to Businesses or to the Wealthy, and so Businesses and Wealthy People flocked to Hong Kong and so Hong Kong was doing rather better than every other City or Country in the entire World, paying for their local Government and necessary Social Infrastructures with Wage Taxes paid by poor people who were just happy to have a job.  He concluded that everybody should do exactly as Hong Kong so that everybody would as Well.   I reminded this Young Economist that there can be only one “Pirate Island”, so to speak, that is a place with no laws, no regulations, and no taxes, and that if “Pirate Islands” were to multiply, soon the leveling effects of competition would again return everybody to the same deadly flat playing field as before, and all would be equally poor again, only this time, with no viable tax and revenue structures in place.  Everybody would in fact be worse off after their “Miracle” played itself through.

Again, regarding the limited “German Miracle”… I remind you of the Commodities Scarcity Recession, that with increased Employment, there would be a huge increase in Commodities Inflation and everything would soon go Crash again.   But, Germany did have a strategy whereby in a General Recession effecting every Economy in the West, that they would do the least worst.  I guess we should all congratulate them on their applied Selfishness, and remember especially that they did in fact succeed the best by caring about the ‘Productivity Factor’ the least, and that they saw the cutting of Labor Costs in the same way as cutting off their Hands and their Feet.  You can only cut off so many of your own hands and feet before it begins to become a problem, don’t you think?

Now, I did read a book a while back, which specified that productivity growth, that is, firing workers to increase profits, is not really supposed to be a problem because it is supposed to lead to increased Growth which would cause these same workers, and even more, to be hired back again.  The way the Policy Makers and Bankers saw it, Productivity increases of about 2% a year could help propel Growth to 4% a year and so Employment would grow by about 2% per annum and everybody would be happy.  But now Growth is flat and Productivity is still at 2%, which means that the Work Force is shrinking by 2% a year.  That means that Demand is shrinking.  That means that the Tax Pool is shrinking.  Remember, Rich People don’t pay taxes, Workers do, but when a Worker loses his job, the money that would have been paid in Wages reverts upward to the Rich Boss who pays too much in Political Campaign Contributions not to have Tax Exempt Status for everything everywhere and all the time.  The reason so many Municipalities are in Fiscal Crisis is because their Tax Structures were implemented back during the old Industrial Phase of Western Economic History, some half a century ago, and they have not been able to realign their Tax Systems to follow the Money upward as it Concentrates at the Top.  When the Workers had all the Money, they paid all the Taxes, and now that the Rich People have all the Money, the Workers still pay all the Taxes, but with a lot less Money – you can’t get Blood from a Stone, and so Cities, States, Provinces and entire Nations are going Bankrupt.   

I have one last point to make.  Yes, some Policy Makers do recognize that it takes more than catering to the Top 1% to make a healthy Economy, and so they have been making the Political Moves to implement Jobs Programs and fostering policies that would encourage hiring workers and increasing Employment.  Yes, yes, this would be fine, but so far it seems that all of this would be done with Borrowed Money, Bond issues, and such.

Well, the problem with Borrowed Money, is that it is very much the same as Printed Money, that is, it seems to just come out of the Blue to help one particular Society, that decided to just help itself, to buy up Commodities that other Societies have to pay Hard Cash for.  So Inflation goes up for everybody, and a Generalized Global Recession for Everybody is curtailed by those who cornerd the Markets with their worthless bonds and cheap slips of paper.   And the World allows it because these particular Economies are considered “too big to fail”. The fear is that if the Big Boat goes down, all the little boats will be sucked under with it.  The Idea of the Global Economy survives in the Notion that in a generalized Collapse, there will be no survivors.   But even with everyone clinging together, not much that is sensible is being put forward.  When it comes to generating actual matters of Policy, every little Political Entity represents only itself and speaks only for itself, and nobody and Nothing exists to speak for All and Everyone.  

But, yes, it is One Global Economy and so we do need One Global Economic Plan.  But, with Democracies in it means that Nobody is In Charge.  And with Nobody in Charge, we can certainly look at the bright side – that we can all glory in our Freedom.  We can all die of starvation and exposure or in the clashes of massive civil unrest in the grateful glow that nobody is telling us what to do.    Yes, it is better to die Free then to let some dictatorial Universal Brotherhood tell us what to do!