Saving the World

Garden news: I’m nearly done digging over the garden and laying paths. The two photos above show how it looked exactly a year ago -- viewed through the back door-- and how it looked as of today. Taking out the privet hedge was quite an experience.

I’m trying to get the digging done before my trip to Southeast Asia in December; when I get back the ground may well be frozen, and I’m basically a fair weather gardener.

Last week I was interviewed by a bright young woman who is doing a Photography degree. As her coursework, she is interviewing and photographing women who have chosen an alternative lifestyle – in my case, she was interested in the fact that I was involved, for fifteen years of my misspent youth, in a religious cult.

Such cults appeal to two kinds of people: those who are in it for what they can gain personally, and those who are in it to ‘save the world’. I fell into the latter category.

It takes a certain amount of strength of character to hold the tension between ‘thinking globally’ and ‘acting locally’. Those who can’t hold that tension either give up and lead cynical or small blinkered lives (thinking locally), or they get inflated ideas about saving the world (acting globally).

I believe that it is a mark of a mature spirituality to know that none of us – individually or even collectively – can ‘save’ the world, but nevertheless to keep on keeping on, staying engaged with our responsibility to humanity and all living things, including the Earth itself. Some of us express that responsibility as activists, some as artists, some as healers (of all persuasions), most as ordinary extraordinary folk doing ordinary work, more or less involved with our (biological or adopted) families, keeping the world going, doing the best we can.

Time, Space and the Dao

I’m currently doing an informal peer review of a book entitled ‘Time, Space and the Dao’, written by my friend and colleague Roisin Golding. It’s a scrupulously well-researched explication of the astronomy and calendrical systems behind the ‘Stems and Branches’ approach to acupuncture.

It also contains some fascinating facts of general interest. Did you know that…

In the northern hemisphere the waxing moon is a right crescent and the waning moon a left crescent, and in the southern hemisphere it’s the other way around. At the equator the two points of the crescent moon face upwards, whether waxing or waning.

The length of time between the autumn equinox and spring equinox (presumably in the Northern Hemisphere) is 179 days, whereas the length of time between the spring equinox and autumn equinox is 186 days. This is because the earth moves more slowly during the summer months when it is further from the Sun (aphelion approx 4th July).

Cool, huh?

Sex is a health issue

Sex has been a repeating theme this past week.

Last week I witnessed a remarkable recovery in a friend who has suffered from long-term chronic illness. The change in this person’s energy is profound. What had brought about this shift? A new relationship.

Now we all know (or should know) that falling in love can be powerful medicine. But what was remarkable about this one is that she’s not in love. She likes her new lover tremendously, and is hopeful that the relationship will develop and deepen, but she’s not riding on a limerant euphoria.

She’s simply having good sex. And it has turned her whole energetic configuration around toward a far healthier pattern.

Around the same time, my son called my attention to an article on the University of Singapore students’ website. It was written by a student, Dennis Nilsson, in response to a government campaign, purportedly aimed at reducing the risk of AIDS amongst students, but which comes across as an attempt to persuade them that sex is dangerous and degrading, and that abstinence is the only way to avoid disfiguring and deadly disease. Dennis quite sensibly points out that a scare campaign does little to educate people about safe sex. You can view the article here: http://www.campusobserver.org/2006/October/28/aids_campaign/aids.html

I reckoned this campaign would do little more than lose the government any credibility it may have with students.

Synchronicity or what, but two days ago my favourite astrologer, Eric Francis, published a punchy – and relevant – article, which you can find on his website www.planetwaves.com, entitled “No Sex till your Saturn Return!”.

He writes that the US government has been running a similar campaign on American students for 25 years, since the early days of the Reagan administration. Not only that – the states may apply to the Federal government for grants to teach abstinence! These programs teach that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable method to prevent pregnancy or disease. They give no instruction on contraception or safe sex. What is astounding is that all but four of the fifty American states have taken the bait.

But wait for it – it gets worse. This week, USA Today reported that new federal guidelines encourage the federal money to be used to persuade unmarried adults up to the age of 29 that they should not engage in sexual activity.

Eric goes on to say:

We may question why it's national policy under conservative administrations to indoctrinate people into not having sex, and why hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on this while people go hungry and homeless. We may observe that the most important social policy at the moment is fear. Whether it's being freaked out about shampoo on airplanes or by the possibility of someone blowing up your local Super K-Mart because they resent our awesome way of life, fear is all the rage. But so far no commentator that I have seen has made the connection between fear as a way of life (and politics as usual), and a publicly-funded policy of sexual repression.

But someone named Wilhelm Reich did, more than half a century ago. Reich, a medical doctor and psychoanalyst, was Sigmund Freud's favorite student until the two parted ways [that's a story worth telling, but not today]. He was a practicing psychiatrist and writer through the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s. He noted that the Nazis placed sexual purism high on their list of social agendas, essentially spreading fear on the emotional level, weakening the integrity of personal relationships in the process.

In his 1942 book, The Function of the Orgasm, Reich commented on the relationship between repression and fear: "It became increasingly clear that the overburdening of the vasovegetative system with undischarged sexual energy is the fundamental mechanism of anxiety, and thus, of neurosis. Each new case amplified earlier observations." In other words, the more orgasm is suppressed, the more scared people are, and then the easier they are to manipulate with that fear.

He observed, as well, that repressed sexual energy creates the effect of a deep mystical longing in people, such as a yearning for cosmic answers to their problems, rather than taking personal responsibility and making adult decisions. This mystical longing can be harvested by those with political agendas, and was answered in the person of Hitler, who portrayed himself like the god-emperors of old. His power was fuelled by the increasing anxiety, terror, and oppression of the Nazi regime, all of which were intermingled with a climate of sexual moralism. Remember that in Nazi Germany, homosexuals and prostitutes were among the specifically targeted groups, and part of the ethnic cleansing program held that only pure Nazis could have children.

In the United States, this type of social policy is currently being effected through mingling religion and politics. The neo-conservative government in the United States is supported by a vast network of churches that essentially function as Republican clubhouses, and which push an agenda of supposedly Christian moral values. These involve foisting severe anti-gay and pro-marriage agendas on their constituents, including movements to ban gay marriage by state constitutional amendments. The only reason it does not seem outrageous is because we've grown accustomed to insanity….

Consider this. In neocon terms, you may have a serious problem even if you're just attracted to someone of the opposite sex. In 2005, something called The Institute for American Values published a report called The Future of Family Law. In part, the report concluded: "As an institution, conjugal marriage addresses the social problem that men and women are sexually attracted to each other and that, without any outside guidance or social norms, these intense attractions can cause immense personal and social damage."


When I read this, I was so gobsmacked that I emailed it to my son in Singapore – whereupon he emailed back that the Singapore government are threatening legal action over Dennis’ article, and are requiring him to post an apology and a statement of the official government position.

I find this all deeply worrying.