Ballantyne’s Inspired Musings #57
April 2009
Vox clamantis in deserto
The voice of one crying in the wilderness
The Mount Everest of Spiritual and Philosophical journals
An oracle for the wise
Subscriptions $25 or more – the more you send the more you get. Available only by email .pdf
An inter-episodal recovery
I am at present unable to work much on BIMming so I thought I’d so a short wrap and send it out with just a small amount of accumulated stuff. LA’s creative forces seem to have entangled my malleable personality – the part that has the whim of iron. I’m finishing up my book, auditioning for some screen work, and publishing photos in the most accessible form I can find for sale – Picasa 3 by Google. By a multiple set of inter-locking flukes I have a commercial acting/modeling agent who told me face to face I am, mostly due to my age, in demand for screen work.
So what actually happened??????? I was 4 months behind in my storage locker fees so I was just going to abandon it and let the stuff go to auction. I talked to my main psychic advisor and she said borrow the money, sell the one thing I grieved losing as it seemed to be of value, my panoramic slide of Mt. Everest, and then pay back the moola. So I got my stuff out of hock, sold enough valuable trinkets on eBay to pay back the fees and have posted the Everest and all the other saleable photos I can readily come up with on this new Picassa program, which appears to obsolete all the photo agencies out there. I currently get 50% of the commission on photographs I have posted with an online agency that is somewhat hard to work with.
I still have the problem of the one scumbag in Laguna who sells my work as his own – he re-photographed a large photograph I sold him. Problem is – I am subject to legal fees, for starters.
I’ve also taken to blogging some here. It’s possible my newsletter of 20 years may become a blog although the enforced coherence of editing smoothes out my thoughts some instead of caffeine inspired blog blitzes, like this one.
It appears on-line publishing is the wave of the future, as is online movie downloads, so I’m doing both. To use Kay Jameson’s phrase – I appear to having a full inter-episodal recovery[1]. LOL
I am acting out my interpretation of est technology – KEEP CREATING NEW PROBLEMS FOR YOURSELF [or you will become subject to old problems over and over again]. So - I need new headshots!
Many people seem shocked by ‘the economy’. Get over it – this are going to get MUCH worse. Although it’s a bit like talking about re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, the best single reference I’ve found is Naked Capitalism. Some of its commenters are right in the middle of the decision making process and others carry the frustrated brilliance of those deeply involved in the financial industry who rue their golden handcuffs. I know, I used to meet them, went to prep and Ivy League schools with them, AND I hear the frustration of the seemingly secure and excessively normality filled lifestyles I long ago left behind. Most of the truthful economic information now comes from blogs.
Some of the more memorable recent posts or references include this, this, although many others are worthy of reading or perusing – if you like following the economy or preserving your purchasing power. I know a number of typical real estate investors who, like most Americans over the past 60 years are used to a slowly and persistently inflating economy. Many have 401-Ks down 50% in the past 12 months. What is one to say – sell all your real estate NOW and buy silver, any kind of silver – coins, bullion [if you can find any], put it in your closet or store it in Dubai or Singapore.
If I get a large managed account, a possibility as I keep getting questions, I’d probably fly to
You’ll know when we are getting close to, not at, market bottoms when the price of an ounce of gold equals the DOW. Think maybe 5000 from my current vantage point. This, if you believe the historic means, SHOULD have investment consequences for you.
The
Do I sound angry here? Not really. It’s just that I vowed to no longer be an active supporter of the US government when I got a 7 year IRS tax audit 3 weeks after writing a letter to the then head of the FBI, Louis Freeh, complaining about not prosecuting their sharpshooter who gunned down an unarmed woman. I had no tax liability but a variety of nefarious things were done by the IRS. During this time I wrote to Sen. Arlen Specter and was somewhat the impetus for the famous IRS Senate hearings. More recently I wrote to then Chmn. of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, about the lack of progress in
Our founding fathers suggested that liberty can only be secured with eternal vigilance – and we all have failed at that. Then again, this is the historic progress of the rise and fall of empires. If I had the time I’d write up my now more coalesced thoughts on the progress of human nature and that the fractal which describes it is a torus. Some time ago I wrote an introduction to the mathematics of chaos[2]. The chaos and turbulence we will experience is normal for the healthy unfoldment of the human conscious – in the long term. In the shorter term, I’m waiting for the desert to warm up so I can escape.
"No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart." Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit from http://www.janemac.net/
My Amazon review of Evangeline Adams – “Merely America’s greatest astrologer
Probably her best book. The section on the mythology of the planets is particularly good. The example horoscopes are now a bit dated – who knows the personality of Samuel Gompers or Rudolph Spreckels?
The prediction section using the rulership of the Sun sign decants should be mastered by anyone with more than a newspaper - make that Internet - column interest in astrology. Learn the alphabet of astrology here.”
". . . his gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him. Many of us would, if we could; but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet - or seem likely to do it, in this state of existence - and few languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered."
Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, also from Jane above
The SEC is in the position of the old British Foreign Service official who after a career spanning 1903-1950 recalled, "Year after year the worriers and fretters would come to me with awful predictions of the outbreak of war. I denied it each time. I was only wrong twice." Rich Lowry in the NY Post
“Always tell only the truth, and all the truth, and do so promptly – right now.” —Buckminster Fuller http://futurepositive.synearth.net/2004/01/12
"That's what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there's food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is not time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be." from Nation, by Terry Pratchett
‘While all human personality is probably, at bottom, in a kind of chaos, and only compelled into coherence by the necessity to act in the outer world, it has been the tradition of biography, in all its forms to impose a, more or less, Newtonian pattern of linear intelligibility on this turmoil of an individual’s nature.’ Jesse, the biography of Jesse Jackson by Marshall Frady
“It was by far the most content I’ve ever been,” he said. “My bike was a piece of junk. I had nowhere to go, no place to be. Didn’t have anyone telling me what to do. If I felt like lying on the side of the road, I did.” Svein Tuft Canadian Rider Has Made Unorthodox Climb to the Top http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/sports/othersports/08cycling.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
“Climb the mountains and get their glad tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and storms their energy, while cares will drop like autumn leaves.” John Muir, 1898
FOUGEDABOWDIT
or a few notes from James Hillman – A Blue Fire
The disease which the experience of death cures is the rage to live. pg. 71
Until the soul gets what it wants it must fall ill again and another iatrogenic[3] vicious circle of recurrent illness begins.
For it is not the therapist or any actual person whatever who is the keeper of my soul beyond all betrayals, but the archetypal persons of the gods to whom the anima acts as bridge. The shaping of her amorphous moods, sulphuric passions, bitter resentments, and bubbles of distraction into distinct personalities is the main work of therapeutic analysis or soul-making. pg. 86-87
Projections occur between parts of the psyche, not only outside into the world.
Neither trust nor forgiveness could be fully realized without betrayal. pg. 281
Lately, I most like the Dalai Lama’s suggestion we should fall at the feet of our enemies and bless them as our enemies reveal parts of ourselves we could never otherwise see. This has caused me to think that beyond forgiveness should be gratitude. Gratitude that we experienced the betrayal in the first place as not only did it cause us our induction into forgiveness and re-contextualizing our concepts of trust, BUT ALSO the realization that the seeds of our experiences of betrayal lie within us. Those who we experience as betraying us, in fact, act out parts in our own psyche’s carefully scripted drama for our soul’s development.
Due to a variety of factors currently not fully under my control, LOL, I have a mean and fractious streak. I have come to believe that beyond gratitude is NOT CARING or forgetting. That is, the betrayer who has led us to forgiveness, trust then gratitude becomes like everyone else.
“Forgetting, that marvel of the old mind, may actually be the truest form of forgiveness, and a blessing.” Hillman, Force of Character, pg. 93
Simplistically then – FOUGEDABOWDIT
A vertical person in a horizontal world
The puer therefore, understands little of what is gained by repetition and consistency, that is, by work…in proceeding step by step through the labrynthine complexity of the horizontal world. These teachings but cripple its winged heels, for there, from below and behind, it is particularly vulnerable. It is not meant to walk, but to fly. pg. 228
You left impressions unforgettable
and when I view our moon
your image surfaces
and that love seems forever.
—Saigyo (1118-1190) http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9241142925
Salomons
Lately, I’ve been hiking up to 25 miles a week here in LA. I recently found a new hiking shoe which is the best I’ve worn in 35 years of extensive walking and trekking – Salomon XA Pro 3D Ultra Shoes. The main attraction is they come in an optional wide width which I need. For years I have been wearing shoes and boots up to two sizes larger than I actually need in and then putting on two pair of socks to accommodate the problems of getting my feet comfortable in the shoes. I bought my first pair of Salomons 2 sizes larger and they worked great but my feet were moving around a lot in the shoe. On my second pair I am now down to one size over and was able to wear them for a 12 mile hike right out of the box – no break in – with only one light pair of CoolMax socks. These shoes are available at REI and, hence, are subject to periodic large discounts, like the 20% twice a year member’s discount.
The only other sort of berserker hiker I know in LA, a lesbian friend who hikes 5 to 12 miles a week to relive the stress in her life, also wears this identical shoe. I am doing about 20 miles a week, walking from Sherman Oaks all the way down to
Dear Mr. President
Are you going to be locking us up in the camps Bush constructed when we riot in the streets over YOU stealing our wealth??????????????????
David Axelrod was right. You have sold out to those Wall Street sons-of-bitches. All this economic posturing and purposeful obfuscation is a transfer of wealth from the taxpayer and average citizen to ‘the banking interests’. You’ve blown it listening to those assholes like Ben Bernanke and that misogynist Larry Summers. God save us from a bunch of academic know-nothings who have never been short a contract of soybeans in their lives but suck up the public teat. Congress which has voted itself the most generous health care plan in the
I have yet to see the political contributions FNM and FRE made to Congress published – my 2 ‘senators’ refuse to release them to me citing …….
Read the Naked Capitalism blog if you want to know what’s really going on economically instead of those assholes in YOUR administration who are lining the pockets of GS, AIG, MS et. al.
People are just beginning to understand why I began saying years ago that Hank Paulson, Frank Raines, Hank Greenberg, Sandy Weill and others belong in jail.
Carlos Ballantyne
I posted this on my blog and got the following comment - OOOOH! I HAVE NOT SEEN OR HEARD YOU SO EXCITED? OR ANGRY? HARLEY
to which I replied whith another post
Thanks for the comment.
Thanks for the comment. My highly intentioned letters sent to the right persons have effected MANY changes. I can only estimate each of my carefully thought out and carefully addressed letters expressing my strongly held opinions has the effect of 100,000 or more opinions equally strongly held but not effectively expressed. When you see me envision a swath of 100,000 ardent, involved citizenry.
My opinions about the bailout stem from my belief that the current economic crisis is still in the beginning stages, and that the
“Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value ---- zero.” Voltaire (1694-1778)
One of my recent campaigns has been to expose the pay-to-play financial hookups between Congress and the Federal mortgage giants FNM and FRE. Essentially, FNM/FRE made large numbers of campaign donations to Congress members in return for continually watered down oversight provisions. I personally had a number of prospective financial management clients some years ago who were seemingly safely invested in FMN stock which traded as high as $70 a few years ago and paid a seemingly safe and reliably conservative dividend. JUST YESTERDAY it was revealed that Rahm Emanuel Was Director Of Freddie Mac During Scandal. Both Sens. Barb Boxer and Diane Feinstein have refused to reveal to me campaign contribution received in the past 7 years from FNM and FRE despite my repeated direct requests.
I still cannot believe there is no outrage that Franklin Raines, CEO of FNM before and during its implosion, has managed to keep his huge performance bonii AND lives on a $120,000/month FNM pension, largely outside the
I have an outstanding prediction of the DEMISE the Federal Reserve. Furthermore, I predict that the American citizenry, once the full truth is exposed, and much of it will never be, will riot in the streets over the loss of their wealth – actually its transfer to others. SEE: The new bailouts are an end run around Congress - http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/guest-post-new-bailouts-are-end-run.html
Among my other letters:
1. My letter about 6 years ago to the head of the California State Tourism Dept. proposing a Tour of California bicycle race suggesting that since there was so much controversy over drug use in the Tour de France, that many of the top riders were Americans, and California has an international allure, such a race was a sure winner perhaps capable of equaling or supplanting the original Tour in importance.
2. My letter to Senator Arlen Specter about the IRS which contributed to the huge televised hearings about 12 years ago. One of the phrases from my letter was quoted directly by Specter during the hearings.
3. I have had a long running controversy with Citibank ever since they treated me badly as a computer networking design consultant some time ago. I wrote a letter to the head of one of their then largest shareholders, a hedge find in Greenwich, CT suggesting Charles Prince was acting incompetently as CEO and further suggesting the bank had laid off one of their most competent strategists, Louise Yamada, whose advice, if they had followed it, would have extricated them from much of the financial stress they were in. C stock began seriously tanking soon after I wrote this hedge fund.
4. In a campaign lasting MANY years I contributed to the ascendancy of true democracy in
FINALLY, I wrote to Sec. of State Rice suggesting the
5. I have written a number of other letters about a variety of things I should not talk about due to the possibility of retribution. I am now listed as a contributor to a mid-East aid organization here after writing a letter to the Chmn. of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the
I’m off to my next adventure for the day and could say more, I have many stories to tell and could have written this better given more time.
I suspect Mr. President and David Axelrod were reading or discussing my letter at the time I scared up the rattlesnake. LOL
Joseph Stiglitz’s Op-ed in the NYT 4/1/09 greatly simplifies the purposely complicated ‘recovery’ package. “But Americans are likely to lose even more than these calculations suggest”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html
Sure, go ahead, sit around and do nothing – it’s YOUR money.
SAGed
or the inter-episodal recovery continues!
My agent gave me a bunch of papers to sign and demanded I sign up on a variety of casting related websites as a requisite for actually signing a contract with me. The paperwork finally bubbled up to the top of my stack, I did everything AND THEN studied astrology to ascertain an auspicious time in which to sign the contract. I determined the moment and drove over to the office un-announced about an hour before. They waylaid me, as I expected, since I didn’t have an appointment, and the LA ‘thing’ is all that sort of stuff. At almost the exact minute I determined I signed the paperwork.
A day later I get a hurried call and a text message to go for an audition. I go in - the casting director likes me immediately as I’m different than the other guys. “Where are you from”, he asks. “
The shoot itself was quite remarkable – huge set in downtown LA at a mostly closed shopping complex, most highly acclaimed commercial director of all time, hair and makeup, etc. I scoped out the LA subway system the day before as there was a station right at the location. I finally go in front of the camera. The volatile director begins yelling at me about my lines. This goes on for some time. We get through that, I have to change my wardrobe during the shoot as it’s incorrect. We go on. The director says “Beautiful” a couple of times to my later lines. As far as I know, my pieces will be used in a continuing set of commercials for one of the world’s largest corporations. Apparently I get residuals every time my part appears on TV.
One of my psychic friends says I’ll be cast for an upcoming large commercial campaign and ‘my face will become known all over
On the problem of headshots - “Don’t take out a single line. I paid for each one.” Anna Magnani as quoted in ‘The Force of Character’, James Hillman, Random House.
[1] manic depression is characterized by “excessive involvement in pleasurable activities.” “full inter-episodal recoveries” Diagnostic and Statistical manual DSM IV, from An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison
Sounds sort of like me in that brackish time between adventures. Jamison described diffidently going to the head of her department at
BIM17, lest we forget
Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson
I felt a cleaving in my mind
As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.
The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, - you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
D. Preliminary Conclusions and Intermediate Thoughts
It is not easy for me to share with you what appear to me to be unorganized and sometimes disjoint thoughts. It offends my sense of order. I think a better purpose is served by ignoring my inner resistance.
TRIBAL CONSCIOUSNESS
We human beings are at the end of a long age of tribal consciousness. Ever since mankind began he gathered in familial and tribal groups for protection and to further the species as represented by that group. In time, this consciousness led to inter-tribal warfare that is still with us in the form of seemingly senseless conflicts between tribes, countries, regions and races.
The paradigm shift that will occur is that soon we are to become ONE tribe as it were. I see (literally, at times) the flux of human consciousness coalescing into a single unified stream. It is as though rivers of different colored water commingle and thoroughly mix into another larger stream of a single color and consistency. Thinking about the human consciousness in this way makes for use of the mathematics of chaotic systems.
I liken the shift in consciousness from tribal to universal as being like the quick evolution of a point to the opposite side of a strange attractor. Thinking about the human consciousness in this way may lead to conclusions about what human being will be like after the shift. Then, perhaps, I can better make inquiries into or better, design a schema for, the spiritual consciousness of humankind. I mean, you don't want it to just be random, do you?
SYMBOLS
The study of symbols is useful because symbols are the projections of our consciousness. Therefore, it seems to me that if the consciousness of human beings is going to change then its symbols will change also. So I'm thinking about what some of the new symbols of mankind might be in order to better ascertain the nature of that consciousness.
Fractals may be a good possible candidate for a new type of symbol. Fractals have non-integer or fractional dimensionality. A point has 1 dimension, a line, 2 and a cube, 3. A fractal, however, has dimensions like 2.3, 3.5.
So, using the ideas of mathematics some questions I have come up with are; What is the fractal of the human consciousness? In other words, what are some of the bounds to which human beings will be confined over a large period of time? Or again, what is the shape that contains all that human being can ever be? Knowing that shape it might be possible to predict where human being is going in the future.
WAVES
I think it is useful to think about waves in the human consciousness. I see that species have many of the properties of solitons such as stability and capacity for self-organization. See, for example, Arguelles’s definition of consciousness.
Medons look interesting also. I am daymaring about things like what happens when strange attractors cross or coincide. Could one jump from one strange attractor to another? Would it hurt to go from dimension 2.3 to 3.2? Could WW II be viewed as a medon? If our civilization encountered another civilization would that be like our strange attractor intersecting another strange attractor? If the universe were viewed as a wave then would the astronomical bodies be seen as medons or coalesced vortices of energy expressed as matter?
E. A Few Quotes
James 1:5 - If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, ... and it shall be given him.
James 4:14 - Whereas ye know not what will be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appearth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) - Oh, how many of them there are in the fields. But each flower in its own way. In this is the highest achievement of a flower.
Mandala - Consciousness is the power of an organism to order, integrate and transform itself.
Mandala - Man is a transition, an agent of transformation as well as the material to be transformed. This transformative operation can only occur through the focusing power of some new symbol or image of the whole process in which man now finds himself involved.
C. Jung - That which we do not bring to consciousness appears in our lives as fate.
C Jung - It is only under ideal conditions, when life is still simple and unconscious enough to follow the serpentine path of instinct without hesitation or misgiving, that the compensating function of the unconscious works with entire success. The more civilized ... and complicated a man is, the less he is able to follow his instincts. His complicated living conditions and the influence of his environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice of nature. Opinions, beliefs, theories, and the collective tendencies appear in its stead and back up all the aberrations of the conscious mind.
Tucci - Thus, even when the worlds at last are consumed in the cosmic fire, the force of karma, the sum of the individual experiences, acts as though thrust forward for the creation of a new universe. The latter then is not initiated ex novo but conforms itself according to the predisposition which survive destruction, so that it begins where the old world ends and inherits from it all its characters and possibilities.
M. Planck - A new truth does not triumph from convincing opponents and showing them the light but thanks to the fact that opponents are dying off and a new generation matures within the surroundings of the new truth.
Kellert - Recent investigations ... indicate that aperiodic or chaotic dynamics are typical of the healthy functioning of the human neurological and metabolic systems.
F. Bibliography
Mandala, Jose and Miriam Arguelles, Shambala,
The Theory and Practice of the Mandala, With Special Reference to the Modern Psychology of the Subconscious, G. Tucci, Rider,
Man and His Symbols, C. Jung, Aldus Pub.
Scientific Genius - A Psychology of Science, Simonton,
In the Wake of Chaos, Unpredictable Order in Dynamical Systems, Kellert,
Solitons, A.S. Davydov,
Chaos, From Theory to Application, A. Tsonis, Plenum Press
Does God Play Dice - The Mathematics of Chaos, Blackwell,
[3] The terms iatrogenesis and iatrogenic artifact refer to adverse effects or complications caused by or resulting from medical treatment or advice. In addition to harmful consequences of actions by physicians, iatrogenesis can also refer to actions by other healthcare professionals, such as psychologists, therapists, pharmacists, nurses, dentists, and others. Iatrogenisis is not restricted to conventional medicine and can also result from complementary and alternative medicine treatments.
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