Energy-Flipping

There's this thing about energy.

It's got a whole explanation behind it but for the moment we're just going to go with what is actually a pretty simple  concept.

Say you've got a bunch of bad energy coming from inside, or from anywhere for that matter.

It's Energy - and you can use it instead of feeling like it's gonna drown you or otherwise keep you from what you want to be, which probably is NOT feeling like negative energy is swamping you.

So you flip it.

Your body, mind, and soul are inextricably linked. You are one organism so all of your parts (body, mind, spirit) are in the same place at the same time, right? You might not be able to change what's going on in the world around you - but you CAN take your own parts and use them to help each other.

If you're feeling blue, or cranky, or whatever, and would rather feel happy, or in a good mood instead ...

Here's the 'simple' part.

Your body affects the other parts as much as they affect your body, so use it.

Use your body.

Behavior (the use of your body) is a product, if you will, of what's going on inside of you.

The reverse is also true.

Believe me on this one because it's been put to some severe tests by my own self.

When you feel like boo-hooing, sing instead.

When you feel like cutting loose and hollering, find something good to talk about instead.

When you feel like sitting on the couch and lazing the day away, get up and do something active.

What you WANT to be doing instead of what you Feel Like Doing At The Moment is just as much an option for you at any given time, so pick that option instead of the negative one.

Hard to do?

Yep.

But really hard only at the beginning. It gets easier and you'll get really good at it before you even realize.

That having been said, it does take some will-power and might not always work as quick as you want it to. Don't you quit. Keep trying ... unless you want to wallow in negativity, you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain.

When you're using your body to sing, or dance, or take a walk, or do something (anything) productive and fun, it has the effect of re-setting your mind and your soul to go along with it.

Whether Energy comes across as Negative or Positive, it is STILL ENERGY and you can most certainly take that Negative and flip it into Positive.

The quickest and 'easiest' way is to use your body.

Physically 'acting out' behaviors that belong to what you want to 'be' or to 'feel' actually do have more of an impact than a person would think.

You'll feel as though you're 'being fake' but really you're behaving in anticipation of what you will soon be, and there will be times you might notice the transition between 'faking it' and 'making it happen'. It's all part of the same thing, all part of You.

Which isn't to say that whatever was making you blue, or cranky, or whatever doesn't need to be dealt with - it's just a lot easier to do that if you tackle it from a position of strength - and flipping negative to positive, on purpose and by using your own body, mind, and spirit in positive ways to make it happen reminds you pretty powerfully that you DO have the strength to deal with what you need to deal with.

Just sayin'.

You've got more to you than you might think.


The photo? CERN banged two tiny bits of matter together and got a picture of the Energy produced when they collided and their Energy spiraled out to take whatever form was next for it as it was done being those particles. This is the top view. The side view looks like an hourglass.

That's beauty, the Energy of our world.

If those two tiny particles contained the Energy caught in that photo, imagine how much Energy our bodies contain.

Quit underestimating yourself.

You've got everything you need right there in your own self - body, mind, spirit - so what's keeping you from using it?

Nothing. 

Find your Balance.

Love Yourself - because until you do you won't know how to love anyone else.

Forge Ahead Whether You Like Each Other Or Not

I'm not sure when or where came the spawning of the concept that you have to agree with and like everyone else in order to get anything done.

As a matter of fact, if you think about it, there are plenty of times and places that a great deal got accomplished by folks who honestly flat out could not stand each other as individuals.

If you think for one minute that the colonists of what would become the United States of America all got along like bosom buddies, you'd best go back and take another look at the whole thing. Because that was NOT the reality.

Even so, a powerful nation was forged, a brand spankin' new form of government introduced to the world, and a new path was set.

By a bunch of people who didn't see eye to eye on exactly how to accomplish what they set out to do.

Point is - they did it.

They sat down and hammered out what needed hammering out, and I have NO doubt that there was a lot of shouting and name-calling (likely an understatement) in the process.

People who didn't like each other, didn't agree with each other, nevertheless worked together to get done what needed to get done.

If they could do it, so can we.

We the People of the United States of America have what it takes to stay on that path, to protect and preserve the nation forged in brutal times, and to accomplish what we set out to do.

We the People of the World, likewise.

They've Already Told This RICIMER Tale

The histories have already SPOKEN, the story-tellers have already HAD their say, the documentaries have already been DONE, and the movie-makers have ALREADY addressed the issue. The verdict is in.

All I'm doing is presenting a different point of view (and a fictional one at that), not arguing with the experts.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, in their right mind, in any of those industries is going to want to touch this story's point of view with a ten foot pole, not in the world in which we live in today.

At the very beginning of writing the books of SONG I thought I might make the Catholics and the Baptists mad but so far they've not been critical of the 'truth' as it seems to me: by definition you CANNOT have a Father and a Son without a Mother - so how can that third Person of the Holy Trinity be anyone except the Mother? It's pretty obvious who a person's mother is at birth. There have been cases where fathers' identities haven't been all too clear, though. Female lineages are a lot more clear and easier to track, if you ask me. That's a scientific fact: mDNA is way easier to work with. It's consistent and accurate, relatively speaking. Point being that women are at least as important as men. If you find that threatening in some way, oh well.

Be that as it may be, I take the Mother's place in the Trinity as a given, something patriarchal ideologies could take exception to so I guess I'm lucky to be ignored.

And the women of Celt ancestry still bow to no-one. Ever.

So there's that to not worry about.

Not being overly fond of ideologies that go around trying to shove their beliefs down people's throats, and separating said throats from bodies and heads if opposed, yes I've taken a dim view of Rome's usurpation of the Faith they could not manage to eradicate in 300 years of trying. That they then weaponized it while denying half of the human population equal representation doesn't set too well with me, either. Being a descendant of the ones who held out, never gave up, never gave in, and won in the end, maybe it's something in my DNA that refutes the right of any to dictate to any other, let alone all.

Maybe it's because the church came to its senses in the end, after too long a time and too much brutality, that my condemnation of the early practices of the Roman church isn't being lashed out about.

Maybe it's because the peoples of Europe did, in the end, form themselves into strong independent nations once Rome's boot was off their throats - again, not quickly and not easily and with too much brutality - but they did it. And the very peoples who had held Europe for millennia before Rome came calling were back in control of their Continent. Fussin' and fuedin' an't nothin' new, folks. The factions of the Celts had been perfecting it for thousands of years already. That they'd HAD thousands of years TO perfect it says something about the stability of their culture, appearances to the contrary be damned. They were fussin' and fuedin', not trying to own everybody else body and soul.

So there are two more things to not worry about since who's gonna argue with what's already done and over with, right?

Right.

So far, so good.

The kicker here is that while I'm writing all this stuff about the past, there are a few things going on in our present that are liable to become obviously connected to said past. That's what's gonna keep me safe from media, from politics, from religion, and from invasive ideologies. Ain't nobody gonna want to go out on THAT limb I tell you true.

Writing fiction about ancient times is one thing. Connecting it incontrovertibly to current events is not gonna fly. So it's a good thing I just want to tell the Story and am not ambitious.

Because what motivates Ullin of Iona, RICIMER, and all the rest of our Characters is what lies at the heart of our current situations.

These Circles mean something:

That center Circle is FAITH

The rest of them represent

FAMILY

FRIENDS

FREEDOM

FUTURE

They're our Legacy.

This symbol, which you haven't seen as much of, means something too:

It's a pretty design, this is true.

It's also a warning.

This is the way it is NOT supposed to be.

It will not work.

Here is a representation of the underlying design by which our world is governed:

I call it the Father Phi Spiral.

That's for a couple of reasons.

One is that the line through the middle makes the Spiral look more like the symbol we recognize as PHI.

Phi is the blueprint of our world.

You can look it up if you doubt me.

The second reason is that it's one of the oldest of all symbols preserved by humankind. 

It means something.

It has always meant something.

It has always meant the same thing.

CREATION

GOD

1.618

BALANCE

And you know what the building blocks of the Spiral consist of?

TRIANGLES

What I'm about to suggest might make every religion except for maybe Buddhism and Hindu mad as hornets but I don't particularly care.

[WARNING: SIDETRACK]

Because it's not 'just' that the Holy Trinity has to have a female function if creation is to continue to procreate, which it most assuredly will, with or without humankind.

It's not 'just' that I find it personally offensive, what has been done in the name of 'religion' for all this time.

As a matter of fact it doesn't have much of anything to do with 'religion' at all, because people get to choose what (if anything) they want to believe.

What it has to do with is that attempts to twist the Spiral out of balance have caused, are causing, and will cause literal harm to innocent folk.

Half of us can't be heading in one direction and the other half heading in the opposite direction, and any of us expect balance to be maintained. It hasn't worked yet and it ain't gonna EVER WORK. Our universal - literally - governing principles will not allow it. [sidetrack inside sidetrack: speaking of governing principles, the Constitutional Republic government of the United States of America is fundamentally based on PHI.]

Look again at this warning symbol:

Say you're on one side of this 'twisted spiral' thing and I'm on the other, just walking along.

Where are we going to end up?

We'll either hit a dead end

or collide in the middle.

Either way we lose.

Plus, that spiral ain't gonna stay twisted like that because by design it CAN'T stay that way.

One side or the other is gonna flip back around so it's all in balance again.

So what in the heck do we think we're DOING?

May as well stick with the PHI thing and not lose our balance in the first place, if you ask me.

Which I realize you didn't.

[END SIDETRACK]

I think that maybe, just maybe, the significance of triangles and spirals and such clear back as far as we can track humankind has to do with something we ALL instinctively KNOW somehow.

There's no conflict between Science and Faith. They're the same thing.

Which is another thing to not worry about because Science is zipping right along to prove it and Faith is plodding reluctantly to accept it.

So what's the worry?

Me, I'm not worried because I'm just a little old lady with no real stake in much of anything - nothing to lose that I haven't already lost or don't care if I do lose.

But there are folks in our world who would likely not appreciate having people's attention drawn to parallels between historic fact and current events.

The divisions caused by 'identity politics', for example, mean that twisted Spiral is already out of balance. And I don't have to tell you who's been pushing that for a while now. I doubt they know what they're doing, but maybe they're hoping that when the time comes it will be the other side of the twist that will swing around and the Spiral will balance itself in their favor.

On the other end of the spectrum, but on that same side of the twisted Spiral, are the folks trying to shove the EU down the throats of the peoples of Europe. They don't want anyone reminded of how that ended when Rome tried to do it - twice - once via military and once via ideology. Neither ended well for Rome although Europe, once recovered from the ravages inflicted by the attempts, came out of it with those strong independent nations that Ullin and RICIMER and the others were betting on. Rome struck out twice trying what they're trying now.

Yet another loser in this equation is an ideology that can't seem to wrap its head around either the Holy Trinity OR that a Mother is required if there are to even BE a Father and a Son - OR that what they're trying to do has already failed more than once.

None of those people want to be challenged to explain how on earth they think they're going to take two failures and turn out a success by trying the exact same things. It's not like math where two negatives can produce a positive.

Honestly.

What did they do, look at history and say, 'Hey, check this out! This thing here FAILED spectacularly, and that thing over there FAILED just as spectacularly! Let's put them together and they'll be GREAT! We'll rule the world!'

Considering that the goal of both examples had been to 'rule the world', and both FAILED spectacularly, success by combining the two doesn't exactly seem very promising.

My point here, and in the books, is that our fictional folk (some not quite all the way fictional) SUCCEEDED in what they set out to do, not because they themselves were masters at what they did (although they were) but because their goal was WHAT THE COLLECTIVE, INSTINCTIVE, WILL OF THE PEOPLES AFFECTED WANTED.

So the moral of the Story is: the EU is doomed, and so is that invasive ideology. One is trying what Rome tried first; the other is trying what Rome tried second. Against the exact same populations of people. For that matter, some folks in the States are trying to do do what Rome also tried: pitting folks against each other. That, if you recall, resulted in something called the Barbarian Conspiracy, which didn't work out so well for Rome in the end did it?

Mamm of Dunnottar, fictionally speaking, asked Attila, "How stupid are you?!?"

Me, I would never think of asking anyone any such thing.

Out loud.

I might wonder it to myself, though.

If you're going to try stuff, you might want to first do a little homework so you know a little something about the people you're up against.

Not to be a spoil sport or anything, but at least three quarters of the citizens of the United States of America are probably descendants of the peoples Rome FAILED against - twice. The percentage in Europe is likely higher yet.

Fussin' and fuedin' is one thing Rome thought was more than it was.

Leave off the crap and leave our Legacy alone. 

Our instincts are still intact.

Believe me.

Go play in the rest of the world, and quit tryin' to mess with our Circles.

RICIMER MIGHT COME BACK.

And see how you like them apples.

Thoughts on Repeal/Replace

Below is a post I wrote just the other day, only to find that the next step seems to be a side-step. I wonder how many people are more than halfway wishing they could recall their Representatives and (especially) Senators right about now? Unfortunately, that's not an option.

XXX

Apparently the Republican Senators have (finally) managed to agree on something when it comes to the ACA.

That's a step in the right direction.

From what I read and hear, division continues regarding how to proceed from here, and that's to be expected. Different populations in different States have different ideas about what they want from a health care system; their Senators are duty-bound to represent those different ideas.

And me, to whom it doesn't personally matter one way or another, I'm sitting here thinking about it because what DOES matter to me is everyone else in my nation.

Some want this; some want that; some flat refuse to even consider alternatives ... but alternatives it's going to have to be I think.

Last week I think it was, I heard an echo of what has been in mine own head for a while now.

How about a compromise?

Before you start in on the concept as either selling out or being pig-headed, remember the vast variety of opinions that are represented in our Senate. Each and all of them are just as important as every one of the others, all have equal status. It might not seem that way, and no doubt plenty of folk don't really believe it is that way, or should be that way. BUT it IS that way.

Back to the thought of compromise.

For the folks who insist that a 'single payer' plan is the only thing they'll even consider, why can't we give them that, within reason?

For the folks who insist that they want to be able to choose their own plans and have no interest whatsoever in any kind of government interference in their health care (or their lives at all for that matter), why can't we give them that too, within reason?

The thought is to provide the best of both to everyone.

People get (or not) whatever insurance they choose for themselves to cover most things; that's a bow to those who refuse to 'not get to choose'.

But set a limit on what those policies have to cover (and what the premiums can be) with a 'safety net' single payer (government) coverage for catastrophic types of things; an equal bow to the other end of the spectrum..

The reasoning is that there are plenty of objections to an overall plan where the healthy don't get to choose whether or not they're going to foot the bill for folks who, for example, take their child in for every runny nose.

There are also justifiable objections to outrageous premiums for those whose very lives are dependent on what have become extremely expensive medications, and/or those whose lives are abruptly interrupted by an accident with the accompanying out of pocket expenses that can and do break them financially.

So why can there not be something that considers both sides of the whole thing?

You get your own insurance to cover your child's runny noses; the 'safety net' is in place if one of those runny noses turns out to be a life-threatening situation that's not covered by your insurance policy.

People who might object to paying for you to take your kid to the doctor for every last little sniffle are probably the first ones to organize a local fundraiser for someone who has been in an accident. While they might not see the logic behind covering somebody else's (preventable) sinus infections, they are likely absolutely willing to kick into the kitty in cases of emergency.

Insurance companies might appreciate having regular customers (who, having to pay for their own basic health care might actually start taking an interest in preventive measures and not use their insurance quite as much) without having to try to cope with huge claims (because that's where the 'safety net' comes in) and make their basic premiums reasonable, maybe on a sliding scale that takes into consideration individual income and health history.

Health care providers might feel the same way and make their basic care costs reasonable.

I'm not too sure about pharmaceutical companies making their products reasonably affordable but have a feeling that any who DO would find themselves with a lot more customers.

Medicaid and Medicare are in place, and will remain in place, for the vulnerable among us. That's not the issue here as I see it. We all kick into the kitty for that and the individual States choose for themselves what they're going to do with the funds we provide them with for the care of our vulnerable.

Balancing personal responsibility with societal responsibility seems to me common sense.

Those who are so attached to the ACA that they cannot let go of it will retain the societal responsibility associated with it via that 'safety net'; those who are of the opinion that people need to start contributing to their own health and well-being will be vindicated as personal responsibility becomes expected.

It's a win-win in my opinion, but what do I know?

I'm more an advocate for personal responsibility when it comes to health care issues, but I am not the only person in the whole wide world and I full well know it.

There's no reason in said whole wide world that a reasonable compromise cannot be reached that will meet the needs/demands of everyone involved. I'm not talking about 'replacing' the ACA but repealing it in toto and developing an entirely different plan of action on behalf of all of us - a reasonable compromise among reasonable people who actually care enough about one another to respect each other's needs and are willing to meet halfway.

QUIT WITH THE TANTRUMS AND THE TAUNTS

Honestly, enough is enough.

Because I’m neither democrat nor republican, I might be justified in feeling a bit of an outsider in mine own nation.

Watching the two political parties has gotten beyond entertaining, believe you me.

The democrats are behaving like spoiled brats who have been denied what they want but think pitching fits every which way from Tuesday might get them their way.

It won’t.

The republicans are taunting and gloating, which is reprehensible and serves no good purpose but to retaliate against people who are already down for the count. Since when is it okay to kick someone when they’re down?

Stop it.

Just stop it.

There is no reason in God’s green world that all this stuff has to be happening.

More than half of us were labeled ‘deplorable’ last year. We didn’t appreciate that, not the republicans nor we independents. Do we want to taunt? Of course we do. That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Justice has already been served up in generous portions to the one who spat in our faces. We can smirk and snicker all we want, but we don’t have to do it publicly.

So stop.

The vindication has been, is, and will be self-evident. It doesn’t need to be rubbed in.

No, it’s not to be expected that the tantrums will stop any time soon, but we don’t have to react to them as though they’re even worth our notice.

There are, you know, many valuable issues that do deserve attention.

That’s what we want to see more of.

We want updates on the progress that’s being made in the background while the tots are trying to keep themselves center stage with one dramatic fit after another after another.

Parents: when your toddler is pitching a fit, the last thing in this whole wide world you want to do is pay attention to it, other than to make sure it’s not doing actual harm to said toddler or anyone else.

The democrat party can cry if it wants to cry if it wants to cry if it wants to; you might cry too if it happened to you. Which it hasn’t but it’s not going to help anything to keep giving in to their craving for attention. It’s flat not worth it when our energy could and should be spent on better things.

Like what?

Pick a spot, any spot, and start there.

We’ve got a war on, in case nobody’s noticed lately.

We’ve got jobs growing and being filled.

We’ve got violently-disposed individuals about to be checkmated.

We’ve got technology ramping up to take on the renewables and get them into play – putting to use our non-renewable resources to get that job done. In case you weren’t aware of that.

We’ve got new options coming at us on the education front, as the current system has dramatically failed.

We’ve got agricultural choices to make.

We’ve got financial decisions to tackle.

We’ve got independent, individual, freedoms to define and to defend. Yours stop BEFORE your fist hits my nose; mine stop BEFORE I hit you back.

You know, stuff like that.

The times we live in are some of the most exciting in the lifetime of Earth.

Why in the name of anything you might hold dear would we choose to focus on drivel when the universe is unfolding before us and we could be celebrating all of the above and a whole lot more?

Balance will be restored and yes we do need to do our part to help that happen. Tantrums and taunts don’t help.

Change the focus.

If the media doesn’t, change your own focus and forget about watching or listening to the tantrums and the taunts. Look around yourself and see what you can see. If you’re going to go on line, check to see what’s going on in some of those marvelous and changing areas. If you’re interested in one or more of them, for goodness sake educate yourself.

The tantrums aren’t worth our attention. Neither are the taunts.

We get to live in a time that’s truly worth paying attention to, so start paying attention to things that are worth it.

A Rambling Meander (yes I know it's redundant)

2016  12  26  random thoughts

Got home from work this morning at about 0830 or so and slept for almost eight hours straight, a change for me from the fragments I’ve been able to manage lately (as in for the past eight months or more) so I’m amazed to find myself both awake and halfway alert. It’s also a bit of a surprise to find myself inexplicably ‘tuning in’ to things that generally are reserved for the times I’m going into that ‘universal’ mode thing, whatever you want to call it.

Par for my course, my first thoughts are of my family and friends up north – they’ve got serious Winter coming down on them and I’m grateful that they’re all both smart and experienced enough to keep themselves safe.

Next on my mind comes the situation of my nation and the world in which we live in.

Then the Characters, having allowed me to think about all that other stuff for a while, come to the fore.

After that comes, briefly, a bit about mine own situation.

Stories for younglings are likely to be on our agenda, along with a bunch of short stories about whatever anyone happens to come up with.

You see, my daughter has an email account for my littlest grandling, and I get to send stories and such to her. Of course she can’t read yet as she’s only nine months old, but one day she might want to read them – and there they will be just sitting there waiting for her.

Onward.

Per the Winter that’s settled in up north – we did pray for something other than one of those ‘winters that don’t show up’ years this year, to get the outsiders to go home – and so Winter obliged. Now the prayers are for an early, cool, long, slow Spring – to minimize flooding and get all that water soaking into Earth where it can do some good.

Onward.

As for the world in which we live in – my thoughts are both hopeful and a bit worried. The thing is that I can never be quite all the way sure that my ‘thoughts’ are entirely mine own or if I’m picking up on something that’s kind of ‘free-floating’ in the air around me.

No, I’m not delusional; I’ve gotten stuck with an INFJ/P personality type, which I certainly didn’t ask for and would have most assuredly chosen a different, more ordinary one, if I HAD been given the choice.

I also have this cast of fictional Characters for whom everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, is grist for the mill of fiction. Hence my view of the world in which I live in is always perhaps more geared toward seeing it in a context that’s quite a bit bigger than my own little bit of personal energy …

I suppose, for all practical purposes, it doesn’t really matter much does it?

Whether mine own or whatever else might be contributing, there are ‘thoughts’ that refuse to be polite enough to not come where they’re not invited.

That Hope is by far the first to come to mind, and the strongest, is a real big encouragement, I have to say. 

There are those who are in despair, which is understandable, and some of those I honestly do know and love … and hope to high heaven that they will soon pick up on the Hope part of the equation. Whether it’s mine own or our world in general, a person would have to look askance at me when I say it’s at the top of the list and dominates, but it’s definitely right there, and it is definitely dominating.

Maybe it has something to do with Hope springing eternal and all that, but for the past months, probably for the past year or more actually, it’s been powerful and growing. In the midst of it have been (thankfully brief) times of sheer and utter horror, but overall has been that sense of a swelling Light.

It’s impossible to explain but it is very much *there*.

And that, my friend, is Hope come calling in no uncertain terms. It’s associated with Healing, which is a tremendous relief; and Faith; and Peace, another huge relief although perhaps a bit puzzling given the circumstances; and its primary source seems to be something to do with the Balancing of the Spiral.

Yeah, I know that sounds kind of mystic maybe, esoteric no doubt, and probably about as unrealistic as a person can imagine.

But there you have it.

It is what it is.

Despite those who seem bound and determined to make of Earth a battleground, still the vast majority of what I’m *getting* is NOT all about fighting, or conflict, or any of the uglies that are besetting us and will continue to beset us. By far there seems to me a sense of growing determination that we (humanity) are going to find our balance and that the uglies are not going to be able to unseat it. Not permanently.

Because there are lots and lots of folks (with very loud Voices) who want it to be otherwise, mine own little Voice is going to get no attention and I’m all right with that. Because, you see, this little Voice is but a very small indicator of something that’s one heck of a lot bigger and stronger. So I’m not going to fret myself about coming across as a lunatic.

Yes there are worries – there have to be else we’d not be able to deal with what we’re going to have to deal with. The worries poke at us and keep us from falling back to sleep.

Will the United States, Russia, Israel, China, Argentina (where did that one come from – what the heck), Australia, Scandinavia, Canada, UK, India (???), and France (???) … do what? … I don’t know … do what has to be done on behalf of everyone who wants Peace?

And what will be the price of that Peace?

Again, I do not know.

What I do know is that what I have felt rising is not diminishing in either nature or intensity – and that’s good news.

Maybe it’s the Buddhists and the old Indian understandings of Peace and Unity that have been (at last) reconnecting themselves to the positive flows and exerting some of their old influence?

Maybe it’s partly a reawakening of our own North American Elder Folk’s spirit, the one that goes back to before fighting became the ‘norm’, which is a long way back indeed considering the tribes have been at war with one another for millennia.

Maybe it’s got something to do with the political situation finally prodding folk all over the world into actually paying attention to what they perhaps had come to take for granted. Asserting their own Faith in opposition to something being used for the harming of others … and I’m talking about the kind of Faith that rides deep inside, not associated with any one creed or dogma or definition.

Me being me, and our Characters being themselves, putting it in terms of the Justice, Mercy, and Peace of the Mother coming into play tends to make the most sense to me.

In other terms, there’s an inherent Balance that’s the fundamental Law of the entirety of our world, the one that stretches from infinity to infinity – the one whose fractals are part and parcel of every aspect of the whole thing, the triangles of which are immutably woven into spirals at every level, all of them moving and moving and moving from infinity to infinity in constant unremitting motion. That would be Energy, at times taking on form as Matter.

And that’s a scientific train of thought that nobody wants to follow any more than anybody wants to follow the esoteric one that is actually the exact same train of thought.

What, people want to know, can we expect in the coming Time?

Warfare, for starters.

Not what anyone wants to hear, is it?

What happened to that whole big Peace thing? What about all that Hope that’s supposedly infusing the atmosphere of our world?

Well, those things are what are behind the warfare, as always.

To get to one, you generally have to get through the other – Peace will not come on its own without conflict because there is some powerful opposition to Peace.

Otherwise, Balance would never become.

Can’t have one without the other, and that’s just the fact of the matter.

People can try to deny it, they can try to avoid it, they can try to say it doesn’t have to be that way – until the cows come home they can try to convince themselves and everyone else that there’s a different way (and I for one would dearly love to believe them) – but Pi in the Sky wishes have zero chance against PHI in the Sky reality.

Warfare is what’s coming?

Warfare is ALWAYS coming, in one form or another.

But I write fiction; I’m not a prophetess, so don’t take my word for it. I just have a hunch that what’s ahead for us isn’t going to be all that different from what’s behind us, that’s all.

We can (and we do) try to make our reality fit into the frame of what we want it to be – and that’s fine because that ability and that instinct is a gift to us and we’re obliged to use it whether we would will it or not – and so we can, for millennia on end, use that gift to help us get through what we have to get through, to do what we have to do when we have to do it, and to ultimately survive for as long as our species is going to remain viable in our world. It is not a vain pursuit but one of a more vital importance than even the most dedicated of us realize.

It is a source, for good or for ill, of the Balance which will be kept no matter what.

So yeah, to say that it’s important is something of a massive understatement. Our universe is going to continue to unfold as it should, something folks have been aware of for a lot longer than we might imagine or that many of us want to believe.

And that’s okay.

Infinity is eternal, remember.

We aren’t going to be able to wrap our heads around that concept and we don’t have to.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t the reality in which we live in.

Anyway, warfare is pretty much going to be a given – until we’ve almost destroyed this very world in which we live in, or at least our little bit of it (which is of vital importance to us because it’s the ONLY bit of it that we DO live in).

Eventually, hopefully, we’ll figure out how to exist without overt warfare.

Don’t go holding your breath on that, because it’s liable to be a long time coming and carry a price tag that we, of our time, are not going to be willing to pay.

But the time will likely come that the conflicting ideologies will indeed come to agree to disagree and warfare will just stop.

How?

Well, the only thing that comes into my fiction-oriented mind is what the most idealistic of us (including me) will not even consider. That is that the fighting will stop when Earth is divided fairly equally among the ideologies that wish to dominate the whole.

Sooner or later everyone is going to reach the conclusion that there’s no way any single choice of belief systems is going to ever be able to dominate the whole. Humankind is flat out not designed to accept any such thing.

And so the division will come, likely after a couple of things happen.

One is a no-brainer – warfare that will come to within a hair’s breadth of utterly demolishing a very hefty hunk of Earth herself.

The other is a more natural thing, and when the two come together, at the same time, there won’t be so very many of us left to come to the conclusion I just mentioned (that ‘peaceful cohabitation’ of conflicting factions is not going to happen).

And the survivors will agree to separate and to keep themselves to themselves – to develop their own ways independently of the others.

Fictionally speaking, this concept is where the world of DANANN comes from – that’s one of the books of SONG – where the Quadrants are each self-supporting and closed to the others.

We haven’t gotten into what it is exactly that each of the Quadrants is like that makes them so different from one another but I suspect it has to do with both politics and religion since those seem to be kind of the things that divide folks. Not skin color or intelligence quotients or anything else, at least not that I can think of.

People tend to fight about both territorialism and expansionism, for both political and religious reasons.

So in the end (temporarily at least, relatively speaking) it will come down to eliminating both of those concepts by giving each a ‘safe place’ in which to do whatever it is that they want to do, so long as it doesn’t interfere with or harm any of the others.

So what are the divisions going to be?

Elephino.

As I said, I write fiction; I’m not a prophetess.

My best guess would be that Northwest would be for the people who, at the time of the division, are in favor of theocracy.

Northeast might be set aside for those who are ready, willing, and able to blend many diverse cultures into one.

Southwest could provide for those who wish to live simply with Earth and with one another.

Southeast could well be where the ‘spiritual-minded’ can live unfettered as they choose, to follow whatever paths they want without being judged by anyone, so long as they do no harm.

And so the divisions are defined, borders are laid out, resources of each quadrant are assessed to be sure everyone has plenty of what they need to be self-sufficient, and the quadrants are fine with leaving everyone else alone and being left alone in return.

And so there is Peace.

There’s no trade, but no trade is necessary.

There’s no interaction or communication, but no interaction or communication are wanted.

There’s no travel between the quadrants and little within them (except for those too independent-minded to have been able to choose any of the four options and so they are assigned all of the islands of Earth for their own), but ‘no travel between quadrants’ is part of the solution that eliminates territorialism and expansionism.

Politics and religion take a little longer to deal with but they eventually end up irrelevant because there’s no real purpose in ‘preaching to the choir’.

So things change and it doesn’t really take all that many generations before the quadrants are the norm that nobody bothers to question or even wonder about.

Part of the ‘ease’ by which this whole thing is accomplished stems from the fact that, at the time, technology has begun to reign supreme.

There are no books, for one thing. What few are left by the time the near-destruction of Earth is complete are gotten rid of while everyone’s focusing on survival. Books were a big part of what caused all the trouble in the first place, or so it is perceived, so nobody wants them anyway; they’re reminders of what the survivors of humankind want to leave behind.

Technological communication is all there is, and it is naturally edited to eliminate references to anything to with the things the people of Earth so desperately want to leave behind that they agree to ‘the quadrant option’ in the first place. When the time comes that knowledge of the Histories of Earth is completely deleted from the technological system by which Earth has come to be governed, nobody even notices.

Meanwhile, technology has come up with solutions to most, if not all, of the physical and psychological ailments of humankind. They’ve all become things of the past, too – and nobody wants them back any more than they want the books back, or to be reminded of ‘the bad old days’ in any way, shape, or form. In less time than a person would expect, nobody even realizes that there ever even had been ‘before times’.

Do I think any such thing is really going to happen?

How would I know?

But I’m not going to bet against it.

Take away the reasons for conflict and give everyone what they want while replacing their need for self-governance with a set of computer-generated ‘laws’ that apply to everyone … and spend several generations ruthlessly enforcing said ‘laws’ by way of technology and electronics (so that actual people are not involved in the enforcement), with the assent of the survivors of humankind … and you’re gonna end up with Peace.

Everybody’s living in their own utopia; nothing left to fight about.

With nobody to try to convince, it won’t be long before the religions of the world won’t even have to be outlawed; they’ll die natural deaths as their followers won’t have anyone to argue with about anything and the folk will turn their minds gradually toward survival and development of the resources at their disposal within their relative quadrants.

Politics likewise. With no opposition, there’s no point.

So.

In the wake of the *theoretically inevitable catastrophe* of humankind-created all-out war (and other man-made factors) in a deadly fatal combination with to-be-expected natural events (let’s go with an impact, earthquakes, volcanic activity, climate change, tectonic plates shifting, etc.) just exactly WHO is going to come up with this ‘reasonable alternative’?

My guess would be the atheists, scientists, futurists, techs, and the Dalai Lama.

They’re probably the only ones that anybody is going to be ready, willing, and able to listen to.

Why?

Because they’ll be basically the only ‘neutral’ folks on Earth at the time, with no bones to really pick with anybody. They’re apolitical and non-religious. All they care about is having the resources they want to develop the knowledge they want, with the Dalai Lama thrown in to represent a spiritual aspect (which by that time the rest of them will have long since acknowledged as an inherent part of the whole PHI thing). They’re also the best prepared to ride out a catastrophe.

Plus, by then they’ll have developed the technology to be able to provide the neutral enforcement of the only real ‘law’ everyone has to go by: Harm None.

And they’ll succeed. For a time, they’ll have their Peace.

Yep.

And then the whole thing is going to start all over again, because it has to. That’s the deal. Balance is what makes the world go ‘round.

You know the Norse legends? Ragnarok and all that? The basic story line is, I think, probably dead on. People being people, there have to be ‘characters’ that folks can relate to and be interested enough in to keep the Story alive, but the point is always the bottom line cyclic nature of the whole.

I have a feeling that none of the story lines of our ancient myths and legends are linear as opposed to cyclic in nature.

Just as we will never be able to wrap our heads around the concept of there being no literal ‘In the Beginning’ we also cannot wrap our heads around the concept of there being no literal ‘The End’.

And really, we don’t have to wrap our heads around any such thing. I doubt much, if any, of all this stuff is going to be happening any time soon, probably not in the lifetimes of anyone who is now alive at least.

Each and all of our individual lives do have a Beginning and an End. Each and all of us are made up of energy, waves and particles, and it’s up to each and all of us to Choose to contribute the energy that belongs to us, however temporarily, to whichever ‘side’ of the Balance of all the energies of our world we want to support.

Keep in mind that both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ have to be equally represented, if that makes any sense. Keep in mind that apparently ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are relative terms. I think that the whole concept of PHI is based on opposition being a requirement for Balance. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ don’t actually come into play at all – only ‘opposite’.

Back to politics for a moment here, can anybody be truly surprised at the response in the United States by a long-quiet (and apparently presumed dormant) population? As long as there was a relative Balance going on, said population had no reason to assert itself. When there came a threat to that relative Balance, with overt ‘we’re going to dominate and you can’t stop us’ behaviors … well … guess what.

For me, the fascinating part of this whole scenario is that we all seem to be functioning instinctively. Ask us to explain and we’re liable to come up with all kinds of ‘reasons’ for why people are as they are. They make sense only up to a point, because most of the factors have been a part of the equation for a real long time. So why NOW have those factors all of a sudden become issues?

I think it’s not so very different from any of the cycles of power our world has been through.

It’s kind of like physics, right?

Actions produce equal and opposite reactions and the chain of events spirals ‘round and ‘round ad infinitum.

Instinct kicks in on some level that we as individuals aren’t even aware of.

Aggression triggers retaliation, no matter on what scale.

If I could believe for one instant that what’s coming could be prevented or avoided, I’d be first in line to try to figure out how to do it.

But I think the best we can hope for is that, when all is said and done, the survivors will recognize the requirement for Balance, and put their energies into keeping that Balance not by the cycle of aggression and retaliation but by focusing on maintaining Balance by refusing to try to tip it.

No, I don’t see that happening, which is a sadness to me because it would be really nice to be able to believe such a thing might be possible.

Bottom line?

Because apparently there are plenty of people who are bound and determined to be aggressive, there are going to be just as many who are bound and determined to take the opposite position. Neither side is going to ‘win’. On the other hand, neither side is going to ‘lose’ either.

The cycle might, for a time, seem to favor one or the other but no matter how much jockeying for position goes on the result is going to be Balance. Even if these particular ‘sides’ annihilate one another, more will pop onto the screen and keep the cycle spinning. Even if, somewhere along the line, a time comes that Balance is kept by maintaining a fragile Peace, it ain’t gonna last. Somebody will choose aggression; retaliation will be the answer, and …

Man.

What a kind of depressing sort of thing to be thinking about, huh?

*laughing*

Depressing only because I haven’t included the multitudes of wonders and joys and beautiful times that, honestly, really do make up the bulk of what I’m *getting* from every direction.

Because, think about it, what is GOING to be the response to this deep darkness that seems to be threatening the world in which we live in?

THAT is what seems to be in its ascendency right now – that response to darkness, which is Light.

Threatened by aggressive Hatred, what is the retaliatory response going to be?

Yeah.

That wheel, it does indeed go ‘round and ‘round, doesn’t it?

For my part, the getting to Choose thing is a no-brainer.

Choosing to go with the Light when threatened by the Dark?

No-brainer, like I said.

It’s recognizing what’s coming at us, and focusing with everything we’ve got in us on the antithesis of that darkness that seems to be at work here, and it’s that focus that makes our lives truly a journey of love and peace and joy and all of the things of the Light.

The best part of the whole of it is that Light-filled journey so very many of us are sharing, whether many of us are aware of it or not.

One thing that the Dark will never understand, never ever ever, is that the harder it pushes, the stronger becomes the Light. You’d think that too would be a no-brainer, but (being as I happen to like the Light I can say this without compunction) nobody has ever accused the Dark of having the wit to figure it out.

Maybe that too is part of why the Dark seems to always want to be the aggressor, who knows? Maybe that part of the whole has just enough wit to have figured out that the Light has something the Dark is missing, and so is constantly trying to take what would be so freely shared. I reckon maybe there’s half a wit involved in that.

Did I just call half of the energies of the world half-witted?

Yes, I do believe I did.

Since everything has to balance, I suppose that means the energies of Light are blessed with having a wit and a half.

Whew.

That’s a relief.

Justice comes in all sorts of ways that may or may not make any sense to us; so does Mercy. Peace is something we all might be able to understand, but we have to go through the first two before we get there.

Justice is the Balancing. Mercy is Survival. Then (maybe) comes Peace, with or without a price tag but probably with one.

And that’s kind of a view of the world in which we live in from the unique perspective/s of our Characters.

Onward.

Mine own situation is that there are challenges but I’m managing to make it through them one by one. The losses of this past year have broken me in some ways but yammering about those losses isn't going to do the least bit of good. Better to focus on what is left to me.

Reinventing the Wheel

Think about your own self for a minute. Now think through your family, friends, associates, co-workers, folks you meet on the street regularly enough to say hello to, folks you don’t know as well, people you know on line but not in person, people you might know something about via media … basically, everybody you know or know of.

You’ve just defined your own interpersonal spiral. It begins with you and spirals out from you to include all of the others. Because your spiral now has a definition, it has just become a cognitively recognized part of you and cannot ‘un-become’. It is now a permanent part of your memory. At odd moments for the rest of your life it will pop into your consciousness.

Each and all of us have these interpersonal spirals, all of which flow out from us as individuals to intersect and interlock with those of everyone else. This too is going to pop into your mind at odd moments for the rest of your life. The interactions of each can and do affect all.

Since it’s on your mind at this moment, think about the good, the bad, and the ugly that each of the above persons has in them, beginning with your own self. There’s some of each in all and well you know it.

Now that the thought is right here, so to speak, let’s reinvent the wheel.

You’ve no doubt got your individuals pegged into categories. That’s because we do that automatically. We like orderliness and will arrange patterns instinctively. When you think ‘good’, or ‘bad’, or ‘ugly’ a certain subset of individuals will come into your mind. Although you know full well that each of those individuals also has each of the other characteristics, the way you view them based on your experience is going to define their identity on your spiral.

You’ve just defined the spokes of your own interpersonal wheel, the one of which you are the hub. The strengths and weaknesses of all of the individuals included in your interpersonal spiral have designated their place on one of the spokes of said wheel.

And that wheel goes ‘round and ‘round, your life being the path on which it turns.

‘But,’ you say, ‘I don’t want some of those people to be a part of my spiral, or my wheel.’

Too bad.

They are there and there they will remain. You can try to remove them all you want; they will not leave you. Ever. Once included, they cannot be excluded. Ever. Once someone or something has become a part of your cognitive recognition, you cannot un-recognize them or it.

Sorry.

That’s just the way we’re designed.

On the plus side of this whole thing is that the negatives do play a vital role. Accepting that will help you reconcile their presence in your spiral, your wheel.

You see, not only do we seek and find patterns because it is instinctive to us, we also MUST have balance. That’s probably the most basic law of all of creation.

And so, as the wheel of your own individual spiral traverses the path of your life, each of those spokes in turn hits the ground. The impact travels up that spoke straight to you at the hub. The wheel is balanced, and balanced it must be – all the time. Each of those spokes is exactly as important as all of the others. Trying to get rid of any of them is a lesson in futility. We are absolutely unable to do it.

Your individual spiral and wheel are of the most importance to you; mine are most important to me; everyone else’s are most important to them. That’s the way it’s designed.

However, our individual spirals do indeed intersect, interact, and interlock with those of everyone else. The scale expands from us as individuals on outward to include our families, friends, associates, co-workers, folks we meet on the street regularly enough to say hello to, folks we don’t know as well, people we know on line but not in person, people we might know something about via media … basically, everybody we know or know of.

Because the individual spirals of all those others also intersect, interact, and interlock with those of everyone else’s, the spiral keeps expanding and growing. Our uniquely individual spirals are part of a much bigger one.

The pattern is set, immutable.

Science calls it PHI, the Golden Mean, Perfect Balance, whatever. Folks of Faith know it as God’s Plan. Either way, it cannot be changed. It is Law and we are governed by it. From the enormity of the Universes to the tiniest sub-particles we are able to identify, our world is governed by the spiral, the balance of energy that literally cannot be altered.

So when you, just like me and everyone else, would really love to just get rid of the ‘uglies’, remember that we flat cannot do it. That’s not much consolation, is it?

What we CAN do is try to fill our own spirals, our spokes with as many of the ‘good’ folk as we possibly can manage. By doing so, we may be able to collectively bind our own positive spirals more closely together which would force the negatives onto fewer spokes, so to speak.  Overall, there will still be the same number of positives and negatives, but maybe, just maybe, we can minimize how often our negative spokes hit the paths of our lives by focusing on developing the number of positive ones … which would have the effect of concentrating the negatives into a few powerful spokes rather than spreading them out into more, but less high-impact, ones.

Again, small consolation, eh?

We cannot change the Law. Balance will prevail, no matter what.

Choosing to throw the power of our collective energy in on the positive side of the equation, however, might just make more of a difference in our individual lives than we think it could.

The ugly is always going to be with us in equal proportion to the good. That’s kind of a given.

But we don’t have to be any more a part of it than we absolutely have to on an individual basis.

Choose to seek, find, and nurture the good that is all around you. Focus on the beautiful, the kind, the gentle, the strength of the good, because it is powerful indeed.

At the same time, do not neglect to recognize that the ugly is with us, as all around us as the good is. What good we choose to seek, find, and nurture will be our defense against the ugly.

So as you’re thinking about your interpersonal spiral and the wheel that rolls along the path of your life, think about how you can strengthen the positive spokes so that when the negative ones hit that path they will have less of an impact on you at the hub. By strengthening your own spiral, your own wheel, you are strengthening those of the folk whose spirals most closely intersect, interact, and interweave with yours. That bigger spiral too becomes stronger, and spreads faster and further than you can imagine.

It’s a bit of an irony, isn’t it, that the bigger and stronger the negative becomes, the more likely it is that the positive will react by coming to the fore to counter it. But so it is. So it has to be. Balance will prevail.

We can, each and all of us, choose whether to put our personal energy into the equation for good or for ill. It is already a part of the bigger spiral, but we really do get to pick which direction we are going to send the power of our individual energy.

I get to choose; so do you.

Regarding COME HELL AND HIGH WATER

This is the postscript from the three books that will be COME HELL AND HIGH WATER.

The Extinction Level Event (ELE) that took the mammoth, most of the large mammals, and many other species really did happen. Our fictional Aduan did not, of course, cause it. Neither did anyone else; it was a fluke of nature, ‘one of those things’.

The presentation of the event is definitely fiction, but the sequence set in motion by such an impact is not. I have in no way exaggerated what is likely to have happened back on that day. I have, if anything, minimized it.

The temperatures generated; the velocity at which those big rocks, heightened even more by Earth’s gravitational pull, hit the crust of this planet; the amount of raw energy unleashed by the backlash, and what was forced into the ground; the magnitude of the earthquakes triggered; the effects of fiery impact infernos fueled by forest and plain, hot enough to create their own winds to drive them onward and outward with nothing to slow them; the volume of volcanic ash in the air and metres deep on the ground, on top of the ashes left by surface fires, and toxic gases released to create a havoc of their own; the ravaging of coastlines and far inland done by tsunamis ten times larger than we have ever seen; the steam rising above ice caps (glaciers) as the temperatures and velocities of those hyper-heated rocks hit them; the ice-melt breaching barriers, creating outlets for glacial Lake Agassiz (for example) resulting in an overland tsunami; an atmosphere so thick with steam, ash, noxious gases, and smoke that sunlight could not make its way through; particles of sulfur in the upper atmosphere turning back said sunlight; ultra-hot winds carrying raging electrical dust (and ash) storms for months, perhaps years, perhaps decades on end; intense heat and bitter cold, meeting in thunderstorms that send water vapor down in torrents that cause their own floods … it’s too much, and too big, for me to be able to wrap my head around.

Not a gradual progression over centuries, or decades, or years, or even weeks – but an abrupt onslaught with no time for rhyme nor reason, let alone recovery from one before the next hit. 

And that was just the beginning.

Atmosphere blocking sunlight means no photosynthesis, no growing plants putting oxygen into the air, nothing for herbivores to eat. Dying prey feeds predators only until the prey is gone. Drought brings famine; famine brings disease; disease brings death; death brings more disease and death and despair. Despair brings desperation brings war brings more death brings more disease … and the vicious cycle goes ‘round and ‘round for a real long time.

Waters sealed by ash; waters whose saline balance is disrupted by an influx of fresh water ice-melt; waters whose surface becomes way too hot; waters clogged with dead and decaying plants and animals … how could they support their own life forms, let alone contribute to the rest of the world?

The same thing happened to the dinosaurs millions and millions of years ago. Nobody caused that one, either. It just happened. Earth did not die; a whole new set of life forms (with but a very few exceptions, the rare survivors whose descendants live today among us) rose to take their place. Compared to that one, what happened 12,800 years ago (give or take a couple of thousand years) might be considered but a bump in the road.

But if ‘Something Happened’ today that was even a fraction as bad as that bump in the road … uffda … that’s the only word that comes to mind.

When it comes to the technologically advanced city of Phi in the middle of North America, that’s pure-dee fiction. Not that something like that culture might not have existed, mind you. I have no idea. Neither do you, for that matter. Nobody knows and none of us are likely to ever know. Whatever was on North America at that time is now a part of a black mat of carbon well below our feet. Anything that might have survived was in for more of the same, although on smaller scales, as time went on.

With our own technological advances soaring right along, in terms of finding the biggest and the smallest we can manage, in just the past few decades – it’s not beyond the shadow of a doubt that someone before us might have gotten to and beyond where we are now. We are not as invincible as we like to believe.

The world of my grandparents will seem as ancient to my grandchildren as we think of when we talk about the Iron Age, or the Bronze Age, or the Stone Age. Our young ones will never know life without electronics, as we will never know life the way our grandparents knew it. The ‘learning curve’, only a few generations instead of thousands of years, is accelerating rapidly, faster than most of us are even aware of. We have among us a lot of very smart people. Relatively speaking, it won’t be long before ‘Hiving the Stars’ might become a part of the lives of our young folk.

Who knows?

Not me.

But if that time should ever come, I hope they will carry with them the Circles of Dunnottar and the SONG of PHI.

Someone up there out there might recognize them.