reply to EWTN “Women of Grace” blog: Is Paranormal State TV for Real?

EWTN “Women of Grace” blog: Is Paranormal State TV for Real?

Vun, the Spirit of Fire, is the portal to the Ancestors
in the Dagara tradition of West Africa.

http://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/?p=14401

My reply to their post  is as follows- “waiting for moderation” (ok fine, it is more than the one paragraph that they suggest, but then there were more than one in the accepted comment on the page....Susan Brinkman can come talk to us here if the WOG blog can’t handle the bandwidth...I’d love to continue the discussion of such things with her and any others so interested and inclined, but I progress):

I have also noticed the great proclivity for drama to be a constant creation in shows such as these, as it is in most, if not all (sur)reallity tv.  This is the first mistake of shows like this.  The connection to human spirits who have passed over can be unsettling as those spirits can be truly unsettled and frustrated and in our midst, but the melodrama around it is not helpful to understanding out traditional responses to assisting those spirits, our Ancestors in their successful passage to the realm of the Ancestors.  Thank you for pointing out one of the fundamental problems with these types of programs in general.

There are, though, problems with the above characterization of these spiritual dynamics:

"First, let me say that I believe homes can be haunted and that spirits can toss around frying pans in the middle of the night. But I don’t believe that these events are due to the behavior of the deceased owner of the house who got lost somewhere between here and eternity and is roaming the halls looking for peace. This is pure theater. Disembodied souls don’t have voices that can be recorded on EVP meters, not only because their voiceboxes have long ago rotted in the grave, but because our God, who loves us beyond our comprehension, doesn’t let any of his beloved creatures “get lost” on the way to eternity."

If we take spiritual energy as purely that (and we know the implications are deep here), we know that energy is conserved, transformed, not deleted or destroyed.  Why then is it impossible to conceive that that human energetic imprint or spirit can not then have a corporeal effect, still, on the potential energy in the movement of objects or emotions or human sensation?  It only makes logical, rational sense that that would be entirely possible, in addition to the multiplicity of occurrences outside of televisual narratives that confirm these dynamics, especially in traditional and indigenous  contexts (even modern ones where people have not shut down their full range of human energetic awareness) where many thousands of years of communal energetic learning, awareness and experience give grounding to such experiences in a functional and integrated way.  This is why so many, many indigenous cultures have traditions, rituals and ceremonies for engaging and reconciling energies and spiritual dynamics in the Ancestral continuum.  Malidoma Some' asserts eloquently in "Healing Wisdom of Africa" that we are in such grave straits in the modern world precisely because we have forgotten and neglected (and been terrorized away from) our Ancestral relationships.  

In addition, the multi-dimensionality of the universe must be taken into consideration when we speak of being able to hear spirits or Ancestors, those that have died.  Of course they don't have voice-boxes.  That's a simplistic argument, but it is wholly dismissive of energetic reality to suggest that we are limited to the creation of sound pressure only in the normal physiological sense.  This is why we call it SUPERnatural or metaphysical!  Nor should we assume that our human ability to hear is only limited to the ear.  Again, that is simplistic in a world that largely agrees that we can see with the mind's eye.  The learned (and coerced) limitations that many of us acknowledge are exactly why we dismiss Ancestral energetic dynamics in the face of "rational", "scientific" objectivism.  It is pure folly and ignorance to relegate ourselves to "Avatar" science, thinking based upon the requirement to have energetic dynamics show up on meters or machines to be real or reliable.  Clearly, though, study and experience shows that this can happen, but it is not the only way that these dynamics can be substantiated.  I am sure there are countless Roman Catholics who can speak to the presence of their deceased loved ones in their midst with great assuredness and clarity.

The other issue that can and must be engaged here is that so many cultures do have the experience and awareness of souls being "lost" if the correct energetic work is not done or if our relationships to them are broken or out of balance.  The cultural perspective from which the Roman Catholic viewpoint is derived is not the only valid one on the earth.  To wholly dismiss the tens of thousands of years old (and beyond) cultural perspectives, wisdom, experience and knowledge of indigenous peoples would be clearly arrogant and ethnocentric at best.  That primary human legacy cannot be undone with the writings of one particular culture, just as the rantings of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees did not necessarily make Jesus's statements and perspectives wrong.

We are on the right track with critiquing television programs that misappropriate and distort spiritual phenomena, but we are gravely mistaken when we provide narrow and simplistically dismissive filtered reads to time-proven, functional and expansive human cultural narratives.

[reposted also on my facebook page]

"God Is Red" (Vine Deloria, Jr.) review for Alibris.com

Required reading.....

...for anyone studying indigeny, energetics, indigenous spirituality, christianity, European religious history, culture, philosophy. This is a fundamental work in understanding the relationship of Native American/indigenous spirituality and religious concepts and their relationship to european christianity and the peoples that carried these two traditions. Deloria makes a clear and concise case for the reevaluation of the efficacy and function of christianity outside of its cultural space and in all of the geographic and cultural spaces it has been forced into. Christianity, in Deloria's critique, clearly becomes a brickish template slammed down upon the more culturally congruent and functional spiritual and religious concepts and practices that were created and practiced by Native Americans on Turtle Island (north America) as opposed to the avenue of ultimate salvation that christians have characterized it as. Deloria shows this to not only be fraudulent, but impossible because of the very nature of spiritual/religious creation by humans in time and space. "God Is Red" is a valiant representation of spirituality /religion as a functional, organic cultural production and relationship with Spirit, not merely a dogmatic exercise and tool for socio-political, psycho-sexual and imperial control.

Deloria's calcuation of the culturally divergent conceptions and uses of space and time shine forth as academic genius from his pages. This is key to his thesis.

If "God Is Red" is not on your reading list, your understanding of indigenous spirituality and religion may not be complete. It should be read in every christian seminary, school and missionary headquarters. If christian missionaries and developers of missiology would understand (largely a matter of openness and choice, not intelligence, of course), embrace and live the truths of Deloria's work in this text, mission work and other forms of proselytizing would cease for the betterment of all those whose cultures have been and are still yet to be depowered and destroyed by the unGodly superimpositiion of christian concepts and practices upon people's for whom these displaced and contentious ideas and lifeways were never meant.

Excerpt from "Environmentalism and Revolutionary Energetics: Monadnock, Oxbow and a Very Sad River in Chicago"

"Environmentalism and Revolutionary Energetics:
Monadnock, Oxbow and a Very Sad River in Chicago"

Part One

This is an 'article' (I'm not sure what to call it) I wrote about issues of environmentalism and spirituality. It addresses concepts of indigeny and energetics along with religion, politics and even Ayn Rand. Stay tuned for further excerpts. Comments and feedback are highly regarded. US

"Put "environmentalism" into your search engine and see what comes up.

(long pause.... waiting for you to do as suggested.... ok...do it later...)

As I pondered the relationship of environmentalism and revolutionary energetics in the purview of the information supersidewalk, I was confused, surprised and disappointed considering my assumption of the positive nature of a movement or set of ideas named "environmentalism". Envisioning images of well-written picket sign slogans outside of corporate headquarters, brave and valiant, nay intrepid eco-warriors in Navy Seal-esque inflatables buzzing behemoth high-tech whaling ships on the cold, open seas and quietly powerful women setting up shop in beloved trees, I was summarily smited by such resources as:

"Environmentalism.com home
Links and articles analyzing the destructive religion of environmentalism."

"The Death of Environmentalism
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
In this remarkable report on how environmentalism became a special ...
modern environmentalism is no longer capable of dealing with the world's most serious ..."

"Environmentalism Refuted - George Reisman - Mises Institute
Environmentalism is the product of the collapse of socialism in a world that is ignorant of the contributions of Ludwig von Mises-a world that does
not know ..."

"The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: Environmentalism and ...
Argues that environmentalism uses false scientific claims to frighten the unwary , has a doomsday mentality reminiscent of Dark Age fanatics, ..."
(electronic search, Google, retrieved 10/25/08 from http://www.google.com/search?q=environmentalism&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a)

The above links were not the only ones that came screaming bloody-humanity-murder off of my computer screen, but they were the ones that demanded the most of my attention. As a student of progressive and revolutionary social movements and politics (and physics), I know that there is always a reactionary backlash to any substantial progressive or revolutionary action or set of ideas. The presence of these websites on the first of many pages about environmentalism was a clear statement of the organizational power of these reactionary forces and, unluckily, a tip-off to a possible deficit of organization of the environmental movement, at least on the pages of Google.

I wondered why one of the first links, "environmentalism.com" was an anti-environmentalism page. Had no one in the environmentalist movement thought about, cared enough or had enough money or time to safeguard one of the main portals to information about one of the most dynamic and enlightening ideological thrusts in these modern times? Was the environmentalist movement merely a hodge-podge of under-funded and over-emotional neo-hippies sitting at their Macintosh laptops in their hardwood-floored group-domiciles in Cambridge, Austin, Oakland and Portland? I wasn't sure, but then I couldn't remember the last time I met someone who proudly and expansively bore the moniker of "environmentalist" on their sleeve or in their words (interestingly enough, my experience with "republicans" and "democrats" is much the same).

Perusing environmentalism.com, embarrassed that the ‘bad guys' had outbid ‘us' on ‘our' domain name, I found their reference to the Unabomber as an "explicit environmentalist" akin to the same extreme kookism that marks the globalization movement's characterization of anything or anyone remotely smelling, walking or talking like socialism (peoplism as I like to call it conversationally), a system which focuses primary attention and resources to the needs of humanity. Silly, right? Deep within that kookism reference, the parallel between anti-peoplism and anti-environmentalism was clear.

The nature of that first Google page could have also lent itself to the pernicious move of the capitalist corporatocracy toward the destruction of net neutrality, a real and current effort that threatens the democratic nature of the internet and would render non-tribute-paying (read progressive, socially-responsible and/or peoplist) sites imperceptible or virtually inoperational in the web realm.

Nefarious machinations of the capitalist corporatocracy (thank you, John Perkins, for a perfectly concrete and functional buzzconcept) notwithstanding for the purposes of this communiqué, there is an element of our human experience that is deeply missing from the somewhere-over-the-radar work of environmentalism and the steadfast legions of reducers, reusers and recyclers. The contemporary environmental/green movement is missing a major power dynamic in its attempt to bring balance back to our natural world. We find ourselves doing material things in relationship to our desire to "save the earth". We find ourselves doing political things, all be they rocks against a brick wall (not pessimism, but a reminder that if the rocks are numerous and big enough, brick walls can be reduced to dust) in the interest of creating a world free of rampant pollution and animal (including human) extinction. We find ourselves doing physical things, biking instead of driving fossil fuel vehicles, taking stairs instead of elevators, building green buildings instead of status quo office complexes to help cool a warming globe.

And we still find ourselves in the lurch of wholism and functional completion in our efforts to live in harmony, in balance with the very physical and naturo-spiritual reality that gave us birth."

The sad river in Chicago.

Copyright 2008 Ukumbwa Sauti

Indigeny and Energetics Introduction 01

This work around indigeny and energetics seeks to place indigenous thought and practice, including naturo-spiritual dynamics (nature and human spiritual development have always been partners in history), in its correct historical perspective, to empower indigenous people and others through a change in conceptual outlook and an opportunity to move humanity forward in time with the correct vision and intellectual and spiritual motives. Indigeny and energetics seeks to provide a place for the organization of thought and work that has been put into a tailspin by the forces and ideas of modernity/capitalism and the machine/industrial age, which the framework of indigeny puts into a correct perspective as a sub-cultural, functionally-limited and necessarily temporary socio-political dynamic.

Indigeny and energetics concepts are strengthened by the substantial and growing awareness of the relationship of capitalism/consumerism/ materialism to the continuing destruction of the natural environment, the home and sustenance of humanity on both the physical and spiritual planes. Indigeny has existed for thousands, upon millions of years - modernity for about 250 to 500 years at most in its infancy, adolescence and adulthood. Modernity is aging quickly, becoming outmoded, fraught with irreconcilable ideological and material conflicts. These conflicts cannot be mitigated within the offending system due to the nature of its shortcomings.

This blog is offered as a repository of the initial literary developments and writings of indigeny and energetics (concepts developed by Ukumbwa Sauti, M.Ed.) in particular and as a place for discourse on the issues of sustainability, environmentalism, spirituality, religion, media, modern culture and technology in general.

Ukumbwa Sauti is informed and guided by the works of Malidoma Some’, Alwyn Thomas, David Sprague, East Coast Village, Vine Deloria, Jr., Winona LaDuke, Jerry Mander, John Perkins, Kwame Nkrumah, Seku Ture, Malcolm X/El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, Ted Andrews, Bernadette McDonald/Douglas Jehl, David Helvarg, George Gerbner, Ben Bagdikian, Don Jorge Tamayo, St. Suzan Baltozer and the millions upon millions of indigenous people who have contributed so beautifully to the great body of knowledge and work and life and living experience that we know as human development.