When things are as bad as they appear to be here in the US, and with growing anxiety every day, sometimes all we can do is breathe and reach for the light wherever we can.
Light is the thing we seek
Within the darkest of day,
let it show us the way.
Little words by Athey Thompson
“Reaching for that Star” by Florian Ceglarek
It’s becoming more and more difficult to ignore that absolute shitshow that’s going on in this country since that orange POS and his puppet master muskrat defrauded the election in November.
And yes, I truly believe that his “winning” was not the will of the people; with muskrat’s help and maybe aided by a foreign government, there is a growing fear that the vote was tampered with.
I can’t imagine what the rest of the world thinks about us. The deteriorating relationships with our friends in Canada and Mexico is hard to believe, but it’s all real.
We are living a worst case scenario.
While all this is going on, yesterday my local congressman posted smiling pics of himself in my city having a cup of coffee at a local place like democracy isn’t burning to the ground. Talk about not reading the room! You should have seen all the comments telling him to get back to DC and DO SOMETHING to stop this madness.
As much as I try to stay away from watching the news and becoming overwhelmed with dread, THIS can’t be ignored, no matter how hard I try:
From the BBC (as I no longer trust most US based news sources):
The Trump administration has given Elon Musk’s deputies access to the federal payments system that controls the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds every year, US media report.
[From Enchanted Seashells: To clarify, this includes Social Security payments, social security numbers, and banking information for those who get direct deposit.]
Reports suggest members of Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) – which is not a government department, but a team within the administration – have been granted access to sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.
Two officials at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were reportedly placed on leave after a standoff with Doge members over access.
Read the full article here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77rkg5dm3vo
And that’s about all I have to say about that meaningless event that’ll take place in Washington DC on January 20, 2025. Instead, let’s focus our attention on Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is SO repulsive…I learned that Alabama and Mississippi both combined the King holiday with “Robert E. Lee Day” to honor the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was born on January 19.
If you’re like me and refuse to watch a single second of the inaugural farce, there are plenty of ways for us to stay busy by streaming the King Center’s commemorative service and by volunteering in our community, as MLK Day is designated a day of service.
I absolutely will not acknowledge the magacult funeral of the death of democracy and neither will beautiful and intelligent former first lady Michelle Obama…
After election day, I really hoped something was going to be done to nullify the fraud, but now I’m really depressed. It’s going to happen and no one stopped it.
I’d never use the word “presidency” to describe his criminal power grab. Muskrat/Russia seemed to have succeeded in stealing the vote and I’ll never stop wondering why Kamala Harris conceded and why President Biden didn’t do something — ANYTHING — to stop this travesty.
That orange POS is a twice-impeached, convicted felon and that’s his legacy.
I will never acknowledge him as president. I didn’t last time, either. My condolences and sympathy go to democracy. It’s on life support right now.
P.S. I always kinda sorta liked Carrie Underwood, but I can ‘t understand her very poor decision to perform at the rapist felon’s inauguration. Shame on her!
Randy Rainbow nailed it in 2017:
I originally wrote this a year ago: Everlasting Love | Rosalynn and President Jimmy Carter
President Carter passed away today at the age of one hundred, so it seems appropriate to repost, along with the thought that he’s now been reunited with the love of his life.
I only recently learned how deep was the life of love between former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn, and so profound that his mother was the nurse that assisted in delivering Rosalynn. This was an inevitable destiny.
Said President Carter, “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”
In October 2019, Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, became the longest-married presidential couple in American history, and this July marked their 77th—and final—wedding anniversary together. Rosalynn died on November 19, 2023, at age 96.
The hometown sweethearts’ seven-decade relationship saw them travel from their rural roots to the highest office in the land and beyond. Even in their final months together, as Jimmy entered hospice care in February 2023 and Rosalynn eventually joined him, the pair was there to support each another.
Jimmy and Rosalynn came from Plains, Georgia, a town of 600 people. Born in 1924—the first president to be born in a hospital—James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr. was the eldest of James and Bessie “Lillian” Carter’s four children. James was a successful local businessman and Lillian was a nurse.
Edgar and Allie Smith were neighbors of the Carters, and in the summer of 1927, Lillian helped deliver their first child, Eleanor Rosalynn. Jimmy, then a three-year-old, and newborn Rosalynn met just a couple days later for the first time.
Although Rosalynn had known Jimmy all her life, it wasn’t until 1945 that romance blossomed. She was a freshman at Georgia Southwestern College. Jimmy, following stints at that same school and the Georgia Institute of Technology, was entering his final year at Annapolis.
When Jimmy returned home that summer, Jimmy spotted his sister and Rosalynn walking down the street and impulsively asked her to the movies, after which the two shared their first kiss. Jimmy was immediately smitten after their first date, and told his mother that he had met his future wife.
The whirlwind courtship continued when they both returned to school, and that winter, Jimmy proposed. Initially concerned about how fast the relationship was moving and wishing to finish college first, Rosalynn said no. But Jimmy persisted, and when Rosalynn visited Annapolis that spring, they became engaged. The couple married on July 7, 1946, just weeks after Jimmy’s graduation.
In 1962, he won a seat in the Georgia State Senate, and subsequently became governor in 1970s. Rosalynn campaigned tirelessly on her husband’s behalf. Jimmy’s victory saw her take on a new role as Georgia’s first lady, where she began working on causes she championed for the rest of her life, including mental health. Rosalynn became first lady when Jimmy Carter became president in 1976, Rosalynn was the first presidential spouse to have her own office in the East Wing. She sat in on Cabinet meetings, advised on staff and personnel moves, served as an envoy on overseas trips, and joined former first ladies in the unsuccessful effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. So closely aligned were the couple that Jimmy referred to Rosalynn, who he’d nicknamed Rosa, as a “perfect extension of himself.”
After President Carter lost re-election in 1980, they moved back to Georgia and continued farming peanuts, as well as supporting global humanitarian efforts, through both the Carter Center and their work with Habitat for Humanity, through which they built more than 4,000 homes around the world. In 2002, Jimmy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of work supporting democracy and human rights.
In all their years together, the couple also had time to prepare for their eventual final goodbye. Back when Jimmy was being treated for cancer, they created a fitting plan: Both of them will be buried under a willow tree on the grounds of their house in Plains, where their stories began.
They have spent their final months together at home. If ever two people are an inspiring example of the enduring love of true life partners, it’s Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter.
Curated from https://www.biography.com/political-figures/jimmy-rosalynn-carter-love-story
I’m not sure there’s a whole lot to celebrate this year; I don’t feel entirely full of the joy of the holidays, and I’m not all that excited about buying presents for anyone. The depressing election results seem to have cast a pall on our future and what’s going to happen in just a few short weeks.
I found these Goethe quotes which make a lot of sense to me right now. Even though I really only know about Goethe because of my German professor Angel Boy, and despite the fact that Goethe died in 1832, his words are timeless…
“Man sieht nur das, was man weiß.” (You only see what you know.)
“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”
“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”
“You must, in studying Nature, always consider both each single thing and the whole.”
It is said that the following words were Goethe’s last as he lay on this deathbed, “More light, more light! Open the window so that more light may come in.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.
“Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.” Joy Harjo
While we’re in the midst of preparations to enjoy a feast with friends and family tomorrow, I hope we don’t forget to honor, and with gratitude, recognize the Indigenous Peoples.
For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and protest because it commemorates the arrival of settlers and the oppression and genocide that followed.
“Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.” Chief Seattle
“When you know who you are when your mission is clear, and you burn with the inner fire of unbreakable will; no cold can touch your heart; no deluge can dampen your purpose. You know that you are alive.” – Chief Seattle, Suquamish/Duwamish (1786-1866)
Chief Seattle (more correctly known as Seathl) was a Suquamish and Duwamish chief. A leading figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers, but I bet he regretted it as soon as he realized what it really meant to his people.
Photo of people and tents and quote credit to Chief Seattle and Native Red Cloud Maȟpíya Lúta~Hińhan Wakangli. Photo credit of Chief Seattle from Wiki
Paul Levy writes: “Wetiko is a virus of the mind that cultivates and feeds on fear and separation.”
I lost a few followers here on WordPress since the US presidential election. I guess some people don’t like my absolute hatred for that orange POS, but it’s never been a secret how I feel about repression and criminal behavior and loss of reproductive rights, oh well…I’m grateful they chose to delete themselves. We are not the same.
Along with the results of the election where the decent candidate, Kamala Harris, conceded her apparent loss, there’s been an uptick in chat about wetiko. I’ve written about it before but now theres a resurgence of interest in anything that could possibly explain the toxic world we inhabit.
Wetiko is a disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via a collective psychosis of titanic proportions.
This mind-virus-which Native Americans have called “wetiko”-covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests.
Drawing on insights from Jungian psychology, shamanism, alchemy, spiritual wisdom traditions, and personal experience, author Paul Levy shows us that hidden within the venom of wetiko is its own antidote, which once recognized can help us wake up and bring sanity back to our society.
A Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for more than thirty years, he has intimately studied with some of the greatest spiritual masters of Tibet and Burma.
“For millennia, humanity has struggled to understand the manifestation of evil in our world. In this regard Dispelling Wetiko is an extraordinary book, and author Paul Levy has made a great contribution to our understanding of the evil that is happening in our world today, as well as who and what we are.” says Hank Wesselman PhD., anthropologist and author of The Bowl of Light Previously reviewed here: https://enchantedseashells.com/2022/12/15/what-im-reading-the-bowl-of-light/
A contagious psycho-spiritual disease of the soul is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via an insidious collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus—which Native Americans have called “wetiko”—covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests. Wetiko is a psychosis in the true sense of the word, “a sickness of the spirit.” Wetiko covertly influences our perceptions so as to act itself out through us while simultaneously hiding itself from being seen.
Wetiko bewitches our consciousness so that we become blind to the underlying, assumed viewpoint through which we perceive, conjure up, and give meaning to our experience of both the world and ourselves. This psychic virus can be thought of as the “bug” in “the system” that informs and animates the madness that is playing out in our lives, both individually and collectively, on the world stage.
Before being able to treat this sickness that has infected us all, we have to snap out of our denial, see the disease, acknowledge it, name it, and try to understand how it operates so as to ascertain how to deal with it—this is what my book Wetiko is all about.
The Normalization of Wetiko
A few years ago I ran into a friend whom I hadn’t seen for a while. He asked me what I had been up to. I answered that I was writing about the collective psychosis that our species had fallen into. His response was telling. He asked me what made me think there was a collective psychosis going on. His question left me speechless; I literally didn’t know how to respond. What made him think there wasn’t a collective psychosis going on, I wondered. Could he give me one piece of evidence? Our collective madness had become so normalized that most people—my friend was extremely bright, by the way—didn’t even notice.
Many of us have become conditioned to thinking that if we were in a middle of a collective psychosis it would mean that people would be doing all sorts of “crazy” things such as running around naked and screaming, for instance. This ingrained idea, however, gets in the way of recognizing the very real collective insanity in which all of us are—both passively and actively—participating. If we want to envision what a collective psychosis could actually look like, it might be a real eye-opener to realize it would look exactly like what is happening right now in our world.
What Is Wetiko Really?
Wetiko is a cannibalizing force driven by insatiable greed, appetite without satisfaction, consumption as an end in itself, and war for its own sake, against other tribes, species, and nature, and even against the individual’s own humanity. It is a disease of the soul, and being a disease of the soul, we all potentially have wetiko, as it pervades and “in-forms” the underlying field of consciousness. Any one of us at any moment can fall into our unconscious and unwittingly become an instrument for the evil of wetiko to act itself out through us and incarnate in our world. If we see someone who seems to be taken over by wetiko and we think they have the disease and we don’t, in seeing them as separate we have fallen under the spell of the virus ourselves.
Wetiko induces in us a proclivity to see the source of our own pathology outside of ourselves—existing in “the other.” Wetiko feeds off of polarization and fear—and terror—of “the other.” Seeing the world through a wetiko-inspired lens of separation/otherness enlivens what Jung calls “the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul,” and simultaneously plays itself out both within our soul and in the world at large. Wetiko subversively turns our “genius” for reality-creation against us in such a way that we become bewitched by the projective tendencies of our own mind.
Falling under wetiko’s spell, we become entranced by our own intrinsic gifts and talents for dreaming up our world in a way that not only doesn’t serve us, but rather is put at the service of wetiko (whose agenda is contrary to our own). Our creativity then boomerangs against us such that we hypnotize ourselves with our creative genius, which cripples our evolutionary potential. To the extent we are unconsciously possessed by the spirit of wetiko, it is as if a psychic tapeworm or parasite has taken over our brain and tricked us, its host, into thinking we are feeding and empowering ourselves while we are actually nourishing the parasite (a process which will ultimately kill its host—us).
In wetiko disease, something that is not us surreptitiously, beneath our conscious awareness, takes the place of and plays the role of who we actually are. Shape-shifting so as to cloak itself in our form, this mercurial predator gets under our skin and “puts us on” as a disguise. Miming ourselves, we become a copy, a false duplicate of our true selves. We are then truly playing out a real version of the imposter syndrome.
The Sickness of Exploitation
Wetiko is powerless to control our true nature, but it can control and manipulate this false identity that it sets up within us. When we fall under the sway of wetiko’s illusion, we simultaneously identify with who we are not, while dissociating from and forgetting who we actually are—giving away our power, not to mention ourselves, in the process.
Disconnecting from our own intrinsic agency, we open ourselves to be used, manipulated, and exploited by outside forces. Indigenous author Jack Forbes, who wrote the classic book about wetiko entitled Columbus and Other Cannibals, refers to wetiko as “the sickness of exploitation.” Wetiko can be conceived of as being an evil, cannibalistic, vampiric spirit that inspires people under its sway to take and consume another’s resources and life-force energy solely for their own profit, without giving anything of value back from their own lives. Wetiko thus violates the sacred law of reciprocity in both human affairs and the natural world as a whole.
The main channel of wetiko’s transmission is relational. It exists through our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the world at large. Like a vampire that can’t stand the light of day, the wetiko virus can’t stand to be illumined. However, in seeing how it covertly operates through our own consciousness, we take away its seeming independence, autonomy, and power over us, while at the same time empowering ourselves. The way the vampiric wetiko covertly operates within the human psyche is mirrored by the way it works in the outside world.
Jung never tired of warning us that the greatest danger threatening humanity today is the possibility that millions—even billions— of us can fall into our unconscious together in a collective psychosis, reinforcing each other’s madness in such a way that we become unwittingly complicit in creating our own destruction. When this occurs, humanity finds itself in a situation where we are confronted with—and battered by—the primal, primordial, and elemental forces of our own psyche.
The Internal Origins of Wetiko
The most depraved part of falling under the thrall of wetiko is that, ultimately speaking, it involves the assent of our own free will; no one other than ourselves is ultimately responsible for our situation. There is no objective entity called wetiko that exists outside of ourselves that can steal our soul—the dreamed-up phenomenon of wetiko tricks us into giving it away ourselves.
People under the sway of wetiko are implicated in and willingly subscribe to their own enslavement. They do this to the point that when offered the way out of the comfort of their prison they oftentimes react violently. They symbolically—and sometimes literally—try to kill the messenger who is showing them the path to freedom. Ultimately speaking, in wetiko disease we are not being infected by a physical, objectively existing virus outside of ourselves. Rather, the origin and genesis of the wetiko psychosis is endogenous; its roots are to be found within the human psyche. The fact that wetiko is the expression of something inside of us means that the cure for wetiko is likewise within us.
If we don’t understand that our current world crisis has its roots within and is an expression of the human psyche, we are doomed to unconsciously repeat and continually recreate endless suffering and destruction in increasingly amplified forms, as if we are having a recurring nightmare. In my language, the inner situation within ourselves is getting “dreamed up” into materialized form in, through, and as the world.
In waking life we are continually dreaming right beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when we are under the influence of our unconscious complexes. In other words, when we are “under the influence” of our activated unconscious, we will unknowingly recreate our very inner landscape via the medium of the outside world. What can be more dreamlike than that?
Recognizing the correlation between the inner and the outer, between the micro and the macro, is the doorway into being able to see wetiko and wake up to the dreamlike nature that wetiko is simultaneously hiding and revealing depending on our point of view and level of awareness. Recognizing the connection between what is happening out in the world with what is taking place within our minds becomes a channel or secret doorway that leads beyond our merely personal psychological issues, empowering us to deal with the essential problem of our time.
To “heal wetiko,” which refers to a concept describing a deep-seated psychological pattern of greed, selfishness, and destructive behavior, according to author Paul Levy, you can focus on practices like increased self-awareness, shadow work, mindfulness, cultivating gratitude, connecting with community, and actively working to counter destructive behaviors by integrating your unconscious aspects and projecting positive intentions into the world; essentially, by consciously choosing compassion and generosity over self-serving actions.
https://www.innertraditions.com/blog/wetiko-in-a-nutshell
Key aspects of healing wetiko:
It’s been a week since that orange POS felon won/stole/corrupted the presidential election in the United States, and we anticipate a sad and dark future for women with less rights and less autonomy over our own bodies.
I found this amazing work of art that (sadly) perfectly describes how we’re feeling:
“Watch out now, take care
Beware of greedy leaders
They take you where you should not go”
Beware of Darkness by George Harrison. In my opinion, Leon Russell’s version (as always) is the BEST.
Could this day be any more sad? What the hell happened?
This election was important. We needed Kamala Harris to win to save democracy. We showed up, we understood the assignment, and more importantly, we VOTED.
We were on the right side of humanity, morality, intelligence.
I had predicted a Harris landslide, and anticipated being able to right the wrong that was done to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and finally have an intelligent (female) president BUT it seems as if that disgusting orange POS has worked some black magic to win? tamper? with the voting process AGAIN. I will never refer to him as president — I didn’t last time, either.
What’s worse is WHY anyone could vote for a convicted felon, a horrible immoral, sociopathic narcissist.
It makes me so sad that, as sick and evil as that orange POS is, there are those who think he should be president, who laugh at his cruelty and support his insanity. What the hell is wrong with people like that?
I will never believe that he fairly won the election. This country is in for some dark days — in fact, the entire world and humankind will be in for a most difficult time.
I have a message for Kamala Harris. Don’t concede. Demand a recount and a thorough investigation. Did that evil Musk have something to do with this unexpected outcome? I think that needs to be scrutinized at the highest level. Something needs to be done.
This is an overview of Project 2025. It’s as horrific as it sounds. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is only darkness.
Let’s do it this time; let’s get the job done and elect President Kamala Harris!
When Hillary Clinton ran for president, I was really excited. I posted signs, I made phone calls, I participated in governance.
I thought she won. We ALL thought she won. She SHOULD have, but…
There’s a lot to unpack and delve into about why and how she didn’t become president because she absolutely won the popular vote. I truly believe the vote was interfered with.
According to TIme magazine, When Russia set out to interfere with the 2016 election, it went all out.
“Over the course of the election, a wide-ranging group of Russians probed state voter databases for insecurities; hacked the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee; spread propaganda on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram; staged rallies in Florida and Pennsylvania; set up meetings with members of the Trump campaign and its associates; and floated a business proposition for a skyscraper in Moscow to the Trump Organization. The goal, as determined by the U.S. intelligence community and backed up by evidence was to damage the Clinton campaign, boost Trump’s chances, and sow distrust in American democracy overall.”
I remember first being overjoyed, then confused, and finally, majorly depressed as, with class and dignity, Hillary conceded.
Since President Biden has chosen not to seek another term and has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the BEST and ONLY Democratic party nominee, we are BEYOND EXCITED!
From Kamala’s speech: “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you. Part of the extension of the work you will do is, yes, focused on our young leaders and our young people, but understanding we also then have to be clear about the needs of their parents and their grandparents and their teachers and their communities, because none of us just live in a silo. Everything is in context.”
With future President Kamala Harris, we have another chance. I hope you understand the assignment, too.
It’s too important to NOT vote. We need to save democracy and save our reproductive rights and save this country from the horrors of Project 2025 or another four years of that insane orange turd and his disgusting MAGA cult, the cult of derangement.
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 