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Joy to the World in a new light!

Pennell and me Xmas for mailing 2012This gorgeous creature is Pennell Rock, my dear friend of several decades now, who lives in Marin, in Northern California, and is spending the holiday at my house. Read this beautiful piece he has written, which he read aloud at our Christmas dinner table and you might do in years to come, and you will gain insight into the universal meaning underlying the Christian celebration.

The Birth of Light
Gnosis is the fundamental existential truth of Being. This essential truth is not just some passive reservoir of esoteric knowledge. If one looks at the imagery of any great religion, there often is the good news that the essential has the force to come upon us in a revelatory manner. This is the symbolic meaning of the enlightened savior. Christians celebrate this arrival every year, just as the darkness of winter is threatening to envelop the world.

The imagery of the Christmas story expresses the luminous event, which can take place in any human heart. The birth of the holy child is the blossoming seed of Light. Gnosis has nothing to do with worldly grandeur, but is grounded in humility (the stable). It has everything to do with the grandeur of the spirit (the heavenly display and the angels). Because it lights up the essential, it brings a new order and thus threatens anarchy for the non-essential, which rules the world (King Herod), and which will go to any lengths to eliminate its luminous core (Herod’s order to slaughter the first born throughout the land).

The Light of true Being originates directly from the Source (the immaculate conception). It can come forth only when lovingly nurtured by humble and pure-hearted receptivity (the Virgin Mary), and cared for in the trust and protection of the ego, which, through loyal devotion, has surrendered and put away its doubts (Joseph). There is no place for this event in the comfort of accepted society (no room in the inn). The narrow confines of social acceptability cannot accommodate it (no sanctuary except in the stable with the animals). Even, and perhaps specially, it is the naïve outcasts from ordered society, in their innocence, who can recognize and receive it (the shepherds). The mind hungers for gnosis as its greatest potential. The wise will travel the world for it, and once they come upon it will lay before it their greatest treasures (the three kings and their gifts). Gnosis is the just rule of the Good (the King is born).

Joy to the world!

A Milestone for the Crop Circles

It could get exciting in England next summer. Last summer, out of the blue, a £100,000 ($158,899 today) Challenge was offered for duplicating one of the best circles ever. But, the requirements weren’t clear and that could be why no one applied. This coming summer, a revised version will be offered with requirements that could be met if the best crop circles indeed were made by people. So, there would be no reason, if hoaxers have done the great circles, for them not to apply.

If anyone wins, we’ll be privy to what will turn out to have been one of the greatest pranks ever perpetrated on the world. For decades, with hundreds of circles a year in 40 to 50 countries, and no one even caught in the act. How did people do that?

With its size, anyone who could win the reward would figure to go for it. So, if no one meets the terms we could have news about other-worldly origins. If it’s verified we’re not alone, that would be the biggest story ever for humanity.

I’m thinking about a TV reality show next summer, in England. Any team members out there? The Challenge is a peg to hang all things about the phenomenon on, that would educate and entertain. Please send any pipelines you might have to selling it.

Sarah MilesIt’s Sarah Miles, who starred in many films and was nominated for an Academy Award, who’s at the forefront of the Challenge. In giving my two cents, I’ve gotten involved in next year’s action. I’m smitten by Sarah, who I was surprised to discover was such a friend of the circles. You’ll get a taste of my feisty cohort in this gossipy piece, and here’s her Wikipedia page.

Here’s something about the circles that I even learned something from, that Sarah wrote a few years ago:

Blake’s Jerusalem
By Sarah Miles

I have been down our English country lanes experiencing crop circles for over quarter of a century; always curious for more investigation, for more understanding; forever keen to revel in the continuing mystery. I seek the freshly fallen pictograms, as they are sometimes known. It is fascinating to experience the diversity of conflicting energies within these fresh creations because, in that first day of their falling, the energy is at its most potent; as the days go by, it seems to dissipate. Usually a pictogram’s potency is benign, often profoundly uplifting. Yet there were some, mainly the insect shaped formations that came down about a decade ago, that made some people nauseous and a few complained of migraines. Indeed, I once came out of one with a hefty headache myself. I put it down to the energies within them being too dense for us mere mortals to assimilate quite yet.

I might be fairly sensitive to different energies – (there’s nothing remotely clever in this by the way, it’s simply a fact, just like the wrinkles massing on the backs of my hands) – but there are a few individuals whose sensitivity to a variety of different energies is truly astounding.

In the early nineties I went regularly to Malta to study with a small esoteric group. Andrew Bertie was one of the group members and at that time he was the Grand Master of Malta as well as a Cardinal in the Vatican. Andrew didn’t believe crop circles were created from outer space because, from his viewpoint, “belief” was too frail a word. Apparently they used to have open debates on crop circles in the Vatican. Oh, how I dream of the day when England might follow suit and begin open debates!

Another member of the group, George De Trafford, was quite an extraordinary fellow. So highly regarded was George for his sensitivity to energy in the late ’80s and 1990s, most of England’s crop circle fraternity would send photos of crop circles to Malta for George to test. They believed that George had the miraculous gift of being able to feel energetically whether a crop circle was a hoax or the real McCoy.

In the summer of 1992, I was driving with George along the A272. He had his right palm up like a dog sniffing the air. Quite suddenly he boomed out, “Stop the car!” He leapt out and scampered off, and there, about a quarter of a mile from the A272, hidden from view behind a hedge, was a fresh crop circle.

“It’s a virgin!” he exclaimed excitedly, picking a bunch of crop stems and gallivanting off up the field. He turned round to face the circle roughly eight feet away and proceeded to set fire to his cluster of stems. Once a healthy spew of smoke had been created, he stamped out the remaining stems quite ferociously.

“Arson won’t help to keep the farmers on side, they’re off side enough already!” he joked, and after more foot stamping he began scrutinizing the belch of smoke as it traveled downwind towards the circle.

“If it’s a hoax the smoke trail will travel straight across the circle, but if it’s a genuine circle, the smoke will be unable to penetrate the outer wall of energy surrounding the circle; it will simply climb upwards, perpendicular, higher and higher into the air until it drifts up, out of sight.” And so it did.

George gave me a huge gift that day: proof with my own eyes that perhaps I wasn’t deluding myself over experiencing certain energies after all.

There were some formations that fell several years back, where the birds refused to fly through the outer wall of energy. I once took the famous medium and healer Betty Shine and a zither player into a fresh formation. We recorded him playing while we all sang along. When we heard it back outside the circle, we were puzzled. An eerie, hollow echo reverberated on the tape, making it sound as if both the zither and our singing were coming from a recording studio made entirely of glass. We checked if there was something wrong with the tape recorder. We did some recording outside the circle for a few minutes and everything was normal. We went back inside and the same echo effect appeared again!

Another way of distinguishing the genuine article from a hoax is the way the crop has been laid out with its varying styles of crisscross weaving to create the artwork. Whatever the crop, no stem would be crushed or broken. Each stem would be gently bent into its basket weaving, and still growing as if caressed flat by some gentle wind of intelligence.

What I find so bewildering is the fact that they are right here, these monumentally uplifting art forms, in greater numbers than anywhere else in the entire world – and using England’s most glorious Wessex countryside as their canvas. Even if we assume, at a conservative estimate, that two thirds of them are hoaxes, it still leaves us many geometrically perfect art designs to revel in. How come there is no mention anywhere of how privileged we are that they are here? Some believe Blake’s Jerusalem may be right here on our doorstep, upon England’s green and pleasant land, and we may never even know it.

What’s on Your To-Do List for the Next President?

PARADE, the magazine-like Sunday insert in the L.A. Times, put out this query, with answers to be delivered to the president after the election:

What’s on your to-do list for the next president? Click here to tell us, and we’ll send your advice to the White House!  

Here’s what I wrote:

Try to harness the power of collective thought, where the winner of the election asks everyone to spend a minute in silence, at a designated time each day, to focus on the world being peaceful.

Here are two instances that speak to there being real power for the good in such focusing of collective thought.

 1. During World War II, “the idea of a daily moment of united prayer and silence was born, now known as the Silent Minute, and signaled by the chiming and striking of Bib Ben at nine each evening,” when people “were asked to devote one minute of their time  to pray for peace and to create a channel between the visible and the invisible worlds through which divine help and inspiration could be received.” “Soon after the end of hostilities in Europe, in 1945, a British Intelligence Officer, whilst interrogating high Nazi officials, asked one of them why he thought Germany had lost the war. This was the reply. ‘During the war you had a secret weapon for which we could find no counter-measure and which we did not understand, but it was very powerful…I believe you called it the Silent Minute.’” The idea, widely held at the time, was that this practice had prevented the invasion of Britain. (From a booklet about the man responsible for this silent minute, entitled, WELLESLEY TUDOR POLE: Appreciation & Valuation.)

2. There are scientific studies that attest to the power of collective thought. See this project, based on the idea that “the healing intention of one person can have a positive effect on another who is at a distance,” from the Institute of Noetic Sciences, founded by astronaut and 6th man to walk on the moon, Edgar Mitchell: . “Over the past thirty years, significant scientific research has been conducted on the potential effectiveness and value of distant healing practices. The practice of distant healing is drawing increased attention as an important component of integral medicine models that blend a range of approaches to health and healing. Many leading health professionals and spiritual leaders believe distant healing practices may significantly expand the capacity to facilitate healing.” “Scientific research projects have studied the effect of distant healing on a numerous disease states, including heart disease, AIDS, cancer, bacterial infections and recovery from surgery…does enhance the healing process across a broad range of disease states.”

One of the speculations of historians is that thought and perhaps sound gave us the pyramids. Our mechanistic culture has cut us off from what is in the ethers, if you will, beyond what can be put under a microscope. Why not try what perhaps our ancestors knew that we have forgotten? Worse that can happen is nothing, while the positive effects could not only achieve specific desired results, but could establish a whole new human capacity.