by Steve Guettermann

In the African country of Cameroon, the Mofu people survive a harsh life by planting millet, their main food crop. The success of the crop depends upon timely rains and the people’s tribute to their ancestors. Without either, their seeds and crops may be devoured by black ants and termites, which can have a better life than the people, since they usually find something to eat.

Close-up of a Jaglavak ant, courtesy of NOVA.

One year, the rains were late.

As a group of elders talked about the problem with their chief, one man added that termites were throughout his home’s walls and getting close to his granary.

Nothing he had done stopped them and part of his roof caved in. He asked for help.

It was decided to call in the Jaglavak, a specific type of army ant that kills termites, but can also attack people and livestock. The villagers knew that to invite the Jaglavak could cause worse problems than the termites, but if the termites spread to other houses and granaries the people would be wiped out.

All of this is captured in a NOVA documentary titled Master of the Killer Ants. It is essential watching for anyone interested in the importance of giving sacred, or ceremonial, reciprocity, as well as a primer on how to make effective prayer. Human survival is at stake, and nothing focuses intent as when we have our backs against the wall, especially when that wall is collapsing from termites and we stand to lose everything.

The documentary stresses the importance of many relationships, with gratitude among the most important. We can probably agree that to say “thank you” for something given to us is good manners. And there are many ways to sincerely say thank you through words, gestures and deeds. However, requiring others to thank you can become controlling, such as holding up a cookie to a child and making him say “Thank you” before he gets it. We may have learned early that receiving is conditional rather than reciprocal. That makes all the difference in the world.

Instead of a flow of giving and receiving, potential abundance becomes a dribble of behaving in order to have. It is well known among child development professionals that children sense their dependence on the adults charged with caring for them, and behave accordingly. Once bright-eyed, unlimited beings learn to behave to have, they can become puppets rather than thoughtful and sensitive participants. Adults who role model interdependence, rather than dependence or greed, contribute to everyone’s abundance.

Abundance is more flowing when the conditions are based on appropriate expression rather than solely on behavior. The Inca, for example, had and have a simple formula for appropriate behavior and civil expression: Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t be lazy. As long as those three conditions are met, a person’s freedom and communal sustenance are assured.

Appropriate behavior is important, but learning to give back in appreciation for what has been received is a better social skill than manipulative behavior modification. Many studies show how important giving back is to our positive social development. Giving back encourages both children and adults to become sincerely grateful, responsible and connected rather than controlled, spoiled or entitled. The biggest reason for a child may be because the involved child sees how his or her actions make a difference.

Kids who take the next step and enter into sacred reciprocity, which also means sacred relationship, enter a domain virtually all indigenous cultures incorporated into ceremonies and which were highlighted in the NOVA episode. They not only get a feeling of belonging, they experience how the larger, magical world responds to them. It can put them in touch with lifelong curiosity steeped in imagination and right action, and giving and receiving. It will do wonders for a child’s sensitivity, intuition, compassion and connection when they see that the planet reciprocates for their reciprocity with even greater connection.

The onslaught of negative peer pressure can be another source for giving away one’s power. It can also leave parents absolutely bewildered by their child’s behavior. In her book Developing Your Backbone: The Science of Saying NO, Anne Brown, Ph.D., writes,

Researchers have found we are more effective in our interpersonal interactions when we are more open and aware of our blindnesses. The more authentically we speak, the more successful we will be in our career, our love life, our family, and with our health and our friends. If our speaking and actions are driven by honesty, we will be in the world with authenticity, power, passion, dignity, peace and success.

However, a child connected to the planet can be the more influential peer and demonstrate to his or her friends ways to positively empower themselves. Ceremonial reciprocity can do this through developing a greater connection. That greater connection simply puts more imagination and information and creative energy into the hands and heart of the child, thus building the authenticity needed for healthy living. Generosity and reciprocity support authenticity, but don’t make up for a lack of it.

Sacred reciprocity teaches and shows that we are not special because we are special. We are special because we are equal. Hence, feelings of entitlement or being a puppet give way to equanimity. When life pushes us to our limits and beyond, ceremony can provide the bulwark against being absolutely crushed.

During the darkest nights of the soul, however, when we are brutalized, bludgeoned by losses and abandoned, giving sacred thanks can seem like a joke. It is almost impossible to muster sincere gratitude when we are angry with the Creator and life. Once we realize nothing we do in life will ever buffer us completely from the pains of life and what the soul needs, we can embrace ceremonial reciprocity and the dark night at the crossroads of surrender to the truth of our soul. This helps dismember our longing for what Caroline Myss calls a search for “a logical and reasonable god,” and reinforces that life is larger than our particular struggles.

The term Dark Night of the Soul came from the title of a poem written by St. John of the Cross around 1578, while John was imprisoned for trying to reform his Carmelite order. Although the term initially centered on a spiritual crisis, it has become more encompassing. Today the dark night is a euphemism for “The shit has hit the fan…and I can’t come up for air.” It will likely last months if not years, although in Aaron Ralston’s case it lasted hours (with his arm trapped under a boulder while hiking solo) and for Mother Teresa, nearly a lifetime.

The soul may sense it coming and think it is ready for it. Or, something may hit out of the blue, so to speak: the death of a loved one or a relationship, and/or a physical, mental, emotional or spiritual trauma. One loss can trigger a series of losses, pile-driving the soul ever deeper beyond depression into the depths of hopelessness, shattered faith and, well, darkness. During the dark night it seems impossible to garner the slightest uplift from the vibration of the memory of good times, as good memories may be one of the triggers of real funk. The dark night is a crisis in consciousness, of belief, a psycho-physio shattering and dismembering of energy, leading to what some call chaos.

When a person, especially in western culture, begins to understand the importance of true sacred reciprocity as an integral part of life, it can signify the person is on the verge of a split with something old, or on the verge of connecting with something new. It can put the soul on the threshold of the dark night or it can be the lifeline as one plummets towards the depths of the dark night. A sincere appreciation for something one has or the perfect clarity that something needs to go, such as when Aaron Ralston cut off his arm to release himself from being pinned by a boulder for 127 hours in a slot canyon, can make one grateful for the experience.

During the dark night, we’d almost give anything to have things back the way they were, but going back is not an option when falling. Nothing can stop the soul’s inevitable surrender to releasing what must go. It is simply a question of when, not if. Sacred reciprocity helps the soul find and live with soul, but it cannot stop the Dark Night of the Soul.

Sacred reciprocity supports communal purpose, too, as shown in the story of the Jaglavak. In this case, the villagers realized they had neglected some of their sacred obligations, thus the entire community was put in jeopardy. It was not punishment as much as it was imbalance spawned by a lack of right relationship. Once the intent was made to restore it, the people’s granaries and homes were saved, and the rains came.

Most importantly, the Jaglavak left the village after destroying the termites without taking any goats or children because the people abided by the terms of sacred relationship. There was no written contract. No backstabbing or backroom dealings. No treaty violations. No EIS. No PACs. No pesticides. There was only the spoken and honest prayerful intent and action from the heart of, “If you do this, I’ll do that.” That’s what made it so magical.

Dear Eric,

I agree with your analysis and thoughts about what is fueling the social rupturing we are seeing today. I am an amateur student of history and there is a deep underlying pattern that I have seen that holds true for most of humanity’s experiments in social living, at least as we know of it in recorded history (and this is key – “recorded” history).

Thou Art Divine, by new 1lluminati

Somehow, somewhere, human beings made a shift in their perceptions. Before the shift they were a part of a whole. They were part of nature, part of the Great Mystery, so to speak.

Indigenous people still hold this way of seeing themselves so we know that it did exist at one time. At some point — and scholars disagree on when, exactly, this happened — humans (which are Souls in a body let us not forget) stepped out of Unity consciousness and moved into duality consciousness. This in itself was not a problem so long as the social order/mythos accepted both sides of any duality as having equal power and merit.

Where we began to come unstuck was when someone somewhere decided to start seeing duality in hierarchical terms so that values were ascribed to one side or another of any polarity whereby one half of the whole was seen as superior and the other inferior while at the same time one set of polarities was considered “us” and the other belonged to “the other” thereby separating ourselves from a collective whole.

To the Soul or Spirit which comes from a Unified field of Divine Wholeness, this new paradigm is terribly confusing to be sure but since human beings incarnate with amnesia it has taken us a very long time to evolve our own abilities for self-reflection to see this conundrum and wonder about it.

Instead we were hurtled along through thousands of years of history where societies organized themselves on more deeply entrenched structures of hierarchical power (often called Patriarchy) where the social ordering of power and distribution of resources mirrored the way we perceived our world.

Since there is a quantum entanglement between thoughts and matter, we have solidified this social world into something that is now so restrictive, domineering, aggressive and materially-oriented that we stand on the brink of our own destruction; and — to circle back to your article — the Soul in us is angry about this because we KNOW somewhere deep down inside that we could create something totally different from what we have going on here.

I think humanity sits on the brink of a major revolution and I’m not sure we’ll survive, but some of us will, no doubt. Humanity, in my opinion, must now change the way it thinks, literally, about reality. We can no longer see things in dualistic terms, especially hierarchical dualistic terms for this path has reached its apotheosis and it was a spectacular success that is doomed to fail.

Because when we ignore the whole, when we devalue the “other,” whatever that may be, when we separate out ourselves from the whole we succumb to the illusion that we are separate and somehow can thus be better than the other by virtue of our beliefs, our power or our politics…and none of that is true. We MUST switch our way of thinking from “either/or” to “both/and” in every way possible if we are to survive.

Anger, as you point out, is a key to unlocking this process because if we explore anger and why it is vibrating in our field of experience, we usually discover that somewhere a boundary has been violated. A breach of trust has occurred.

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Something that the deep soul within us knows that something has been transgressed and we are now out of balance with the wholeness (even a dualistic wholeness) that is our birthright. The violation then triggers a natural response; fear. In my own personal work and witnessing the emotional healing work of others what nearly always happens when you peel back anger is you find fear.

And when you look at what the fear is about it usually comes down to either fear of death or fear of rejection/abandonment — which is a kind of death. These are the deep, primordial regions of the root chakra which have been under such extreme pressure most recently…our very embodiment and reason to be here in a physical form comes into question when it becomes so damned hard to just be here. This is not why we wanted to incarnate here; yet it seems to be the structure we’ve all been collaborating on for a rather long time.

The thing is, WE, over the centuries have created this polarized mess we now find ourselves in, and the truth is WE are the only ones who can fix this. We are the solution we are seeking. It has to come from a change in how we think and perceive the world. We have to choose now to consciously tear down the artificial structures that are false paradigms and come to a way of seeing the polarized wholeness of all things. De-powering the power structures that we’ve put in place are the key and that begins with our own relationship to power.

“Power-over” is no longer an acceptable path of action, “Power-with” is how we save ourselves and the planet. I think young people, especially those who have been fortunate to grow up with strong mothers and/or sensitive fathers are here to help show the way. The old, crusty Capricornian way of consolidating power and controlling it at the expense of others is being plowed apart by Pluto. The new seeds of ways of living more consciously are now being planted in those fresh furrows…they are the seeds of our future way of living together. Some of those seeds have already sprouted and are flourishing. Others feel the calling to plant in their own communities and simply not comply with the old ways any longer.

The refusal to participate in hierarchical duality, in bullying, in patriarchy is the only way forward now. We’ve backed ourselves into a corner in a world of excruciatingly high contrast societies so we can see just how messed up this way is…and now we get a front row seat to how we will dismantle it and build something (hopefully) anew.

Thanks for all the serious and good work you are doing to contribute to this process. I have been a long-time reader of your work and am appreciating the quality of questioning and observing that has been coming thru lately.

Since I know how much you appreciate the power of communication, the media and advertising, I’d like to call your attention (if you’ve not seen it yet) to a wonderful bit of news that was recently on the CBS program called 60 Minutes about how an advertising agency helped a nation (Colombia) heal several generations of war.

They literally used Light to heal and change the issue and bring about Peace. You can see the story here and read more side stories too. This is an example of holistic thinking and new approaches to old problems that will move us forward in positive ways. Here is the link…enjoy!

yours in spirit,
Sally

Editor’s note: Andrew McLuhan is the grandson of media studies pioneer Marshall McLuhan, and a friend of Planet Waves. We’ll be featuring his writing on media criticism from time to time. This piece originally published at medium.com on July 11, 2016.

By Andrew McLuhan

I live in a small town. In a small town, everything is personal.

Andrew McLuhan and son.

I was walking to work last night, to my part-time night job as a projectionist at our local theatre. It is a great second job because it doesn’t interfere with my full-time day job, and it gives me time to read and write after I sell tickets and start the show (I’d say ‘film’ or ‘movie’ but I’m a stickler for accuracy, and those terms don’t apply to what we show anymore).

I was walking to work last night, which is a short walk, as pretty much everything in town is within a ten-minute walk. I’d already stopped for my coffee.

Ahead of me I see a guy, and I think at first he’s wearing a weird dress, but it turns out to be some sort of oversize sports jersey and he’s wearing shorts underneath it. He says something to a lone tourist with a careful beard, sandals, and oversized camera. The tourist is not amused. The guy isn’t walking particularly carefully, and he is twisting the remains of a cigarette in his thumb and forefinger so the heater and remains fall to the sidewalk first, followed by the filter a moment later.

It’s early on a Sunday evening, it’s been a hot day, and there’s not a lot of action on the Main Street. I’m not talking on a phone, listening to a device, or otherwise distracted by anything. I like to experience my environment as fully as possible.

I’m getting closer.

It really does sort of look like he’s wearing a dress, and maybe going through some gender-identity issues. You don’t see that a lot in my town.

He’s looking pretty rough, and not too with it. You don’t see that a lot in my town either.

Now I’m close enough that I can see more than the back of his close-cropped head, and I realize that I know this guy.

I don’t know his name, know him to stop and have a conversation, but in the 20 years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen him around. I know him in the sense that you know everyone in a small community. In fact, if I were better at remembering names, I’d probably know his name too.

As I start to see more of his face while I’m overtaking him, I see he is indeed rough.

This is when he notices me, and asks “Hey bud, spare some change so I can get something to eat?”

“Sorry man,” is all I can manage as I go past, less than a hundred feet from the theatre. I’ve got less than five minutes before I’m due to get things going for tonight’s showing.

In those lightning moments between being asked something and making an answer, I think a few things:

This guy’s on heavy drugs, or coming off them and needing more. If I give him change (which I don’t have much of) he’s just going to go buy more drugs or smokes. I’m not going to enable that. I’m not working a second job two nights a week to pay for someone’s drug habit — I’m doing it because I have a wife and two little boys.

So I gave my lame response and went to work.

The show was, as usual, very sparsely attended. Half a dozen people. We’re having problems getting volunteers to man the concession stand, so I do that also. I continue reading/studying ‘Theories of Communication’ (M. McLuhan/E. McLuhan, 2011, Peter Lang Pub., NYC).

‘Theories of Communication’ is really blowing my mind right now.

When I leave the theatre a couple hours later, it’s getting dark. It’s that magic time for light: the clouds wear a wonderful magenta tint. The street is even more quiet than before.

My thoughts return to the guy I saw earlier, who asked me for some change for something to eat. I knew this guy to see him. I’d often see him walking around with headphones on, hanging out near the Tim Hortons coffee shop. He didn’t look great, and he didn’t look that bad last time I saw him. He’d never asked me for money before, I’d never seen him ask anyone else either.

What had happened to him?

And then I started to feel bad. No, I don’t know him personally, but this is a small town, and everything’s personal. We’re all neighbours.

I lived the first part of my life in a major city, and I’d have an experience like this and not think twice — you can’t think twice. If you did, you’d never get anywhere, you’d have to stop constantly. You couldn’t function. It’s this reality and attitude that allows for much suffering to continue. [I suppose that’s how we rationalize inaction when we live in a larger community — but if people in big cities treated them like small towns, like everyone’s a friend and neighbour, imagine the reduction of poverty, crime and general suffering.]
But this isn’t a big city, this is a small town. And I let a neighbour down.

If he had been a friend, a relative, I would not have just walked by and brushed him off.

I didn’t have to give him money or worry about ‘enabling’ his habits.

I was almost at work, I had a few minutes to spare, and I could easily have said something to him. If he was a friend, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, like I didn’t think twice about brushing him off as if he didn’t matter.

“Hey man — are you alright?”
“Do you need some help?”
“Can I help you?”

Three things I could have said, and I could have taken a moment to try and help the guy. But I didn’t, and I feel bad about it now. I truly believe we are all in this together and should try to help each other when we can. I talk about that all the time. But when it came down to it, I didn’t.

I can only hope that next time, I’m a little more conscious.

I failed my community yesterday. I hope that today I help.

Editor’s Note: My dear friend Marcy Franck has become very involved in helping Syrian refugees — both in Greece, and now in North America. (You can read her previous posts on Planet Waves here.) She’s currently trying to help one particular family still in Syria. — Amanda P.

By Marcy Franck

I’m not sure what to make of the call I just had.

But I need your help.

Canada has an amazing private sponsorship program for refugees. Sponsor groups come in a few different forms–one of them is through community organizations. I have been calling every single one of them to advocate for an awesome Syrian family who desperately needs to leave Syria.

Marcy Franck, newly arrived in Chios, Greece on July 24. She is back in the U.S., but still working doggedly to help Syrian refugees. Photo courtesy of Marcy Franck.

So I just got one man on the line — a totally nice guy who works as the head of the refugee sponsorship program at his organization.

I introduced myself as I always do: “Hi! My name is Marcy Franck. I am a US citizen living in Boston, and I’m trying to help a Syrian family find a sponsor group in Canada.”

Silence.

Then, laughter.

Like, peels and gales of laughter.

This guy may have peed his pants, he was laughing so hard.

Between gasps of air he said, “Don’t…. don’t…. DON’T TELL TRUMP! Bahahahahahaha!”

I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t have words, either.

Eventually I said, “I don’t care if Trump knows.”

…. as if someone would whisper it in his ear and get me in trouble?

The guy calmed himself down and said he was just kidding. I laughed nervously and promised I wouldn’t vote for Trump and then he answered all my questions.

Continue reading →

An image from a short video the UpToUs crew made as a plea to Bernie Sanders, asking him to reconsider running as an Independent. Senator Sanders didn’t respond. Credit: Shaunti Lallyiam.

Part 1  Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5  Part 6   Part 7  Part 8   Part 9

Astrology offers a macro-view of the energies effecting humanity, both in the present and in the past. In the UpToUs series, I’ve explored several times the similarities and differences between today’s activism and that of the 1960s (the main piece in which I offered my thoughts is here, and you can also view the many astute reader comments on the subject here.) In this final article, we’ll take a look at the astrology of these two periods, which gives a new kind of insight into what may be going on, and of the work yet to be done. There are countless interrelated planetary influences, of course, so to keep things simple I’ve chosen to focus on two wide-reaching ones which seem relevant to the topic of these articles: the Uranus/Pluto square, which I will compare to the Uranus/Pluto conjunction of the 1960s; and the United States’ Pluto return.

This year’s Democratic National Convention, with its masses of protesters angry at a “rigged system” and “the death of democracy,” came on the heels of the square between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn, which was in play most intensely between 2012-2015. The timing parallels the infamous Chicago DNC of 1968, remembered for its anti-war protests and police violence, which occurred shortly after the Uranus/Pluto conjunction in Virgo from 1965-1966. 1968 was also the year that Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated; the aftershocks of the current Uranus/Pluto aspect seem to be in the form of the comparably anonymous deaths of African-Americans by the police. So what is the interplay here, and what does it say about where we may be headed next?

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Editor’s Note: My friend Marcy Franck has returned home, but she has more stories about her experience volunteering with Syrian refugees on Chios, Greece. You can read her prior posts on Planet Waves here, including parts 1 and 2 of the Hospital Hotel series. Any donations made at her YouCaring page will continue to go directly to aid. — Amanda P.

Shopping Spree

By Marcy Franck

Part 3 of 4

I have taken orders for 15 families and think, My God. What have I done?

Marcy in the amazing warehouse filled with clothing, shoes, toiletries, and snacks sent or purchased by private donors. Humanity lives in every box, piled high to the giant ceiling. Photo by Marcy Franck.

Even with my donors’ generous donations, I can’t buy everything they need.

I think of the single widow pregnant with twins, the old man with a heart condition, the girl with legs that don’t work the way she needs them to, the boy with epilepsy, and I am afraid to let them down.

I freak out in a chat with my Facebook friend who has volunteered on Chios before. She says, “Why don’t you look in Toula’s warehouse?”

“Toula has a warehouse? I only know of the other one, and it’s pretty sparse right now.” I said.

“No! Go ask Toula and see what she can do for you.” I had met Toula on my first day here, because I heard she was amazing and I wanted to introduce myself. She is a local hotel owner who also founded Chios Eastern Shore Response Team — CESRT almost a year ago. With a giant team of volunteers, CESRT does everything from sea rescue to distributing clothes. And she is totally crazy in the most amazing way.

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