"There Are Many Worlds... Of Being And Awareness"

Contrary to what those of us who were raised in Industrial Culture have been conditioned to believe, there are many worlds, actual and accessible, other than the incoherent, fragmented, and divided one continuously displayed in the majority of print and electronic media forms. It is expanding and life-affirming to one's own existence, and all one touches and relates to, to be congnizant of more of these.

HOPI
SONGS OF THE FOURTH WORLD
Documentary Film, 1985 (58:32)

A Resource Handbook (32 pp.)

CONTENTS

I. PREFACE: A FILMMAKER’S JOURNEY, Pat Ferrero
II. INTRODUCTION TO THE FILM, Emory Sekaquaptewa
III. INTRODUCTORY NOTES ON THE HOPI, Hartman Lomawaima
IV. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION, John Connelly
V. CORN & LINGUISTICS: TWO ACCOUNTS, Emory Sekaquaptewa, Mary E. Black
VI. THE HOPI ENVIRONMENTAL ETHOS, Judith Todd
VII. SONGS OF THE FOURTH WORLD, Carlotta Connelly
VIII. SCRIPT ANNOTATIONS, Tsianina Lomawaima
IX. ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: SELECTED READINGS, Judith Todd
X. GUIDE TO MUSEUMS
XI. CONTRIBUTORS

The Inner Speck of Star
Michael Meade, Living Myth, 2018

Since the 1970s, Shawnee/Lenape scholar Steven Newcomb has been decoding the Domination System that began with the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere. His cogent analysis includes the core understanding that, “The words that we use create and maintain the reality that we experience.” In a wide-ranging 2012 presentation, Newcomb illustrates and deconstructs the framework for Doctrines of Domination within 15th Century Vatican Papul Bulls and their Latin language meaning that form a Protocol of Domination Vocabulary. This language continues to be fundamentally operative in today’s world. Colonization, in what Newcomb terms the Empire Domination Model of Christianity, has a dual purpose of both the taking of Original Free Peoples’ lands and lives throughout the world as well as colonizing consciousness and thought patterns. As he describes an instance of this:

Cultivate in Latin is colere which means to colonize and to design. The root of colonization is colon which is the digestive tract of the body politic, to extend that metaphor. But colo in Latin is to filter out impurities in the process of mining. So the background context is the mining and that means mining everything for profit, for wealth and so forth—power. The root impetus to the entire thing is greed, the will to domination; the will to be enriched in order to gain more power.

Jeannette Armstrong: Indigenous Economics
Techno-Utopianism & The Fate of the Earth, IFG Teach-In, Oct 2014

John Trudell
what it means to be a human being

[A]t some point, the descendants of the tribes of Europe no longer knew what it meant to be a human being. They just didn’t know – they didn’t want to know. So the descendants of the tribes of Europe, in the end, had to love what they feared which was there to possess them. See, and I think it messed up love in a lot of ways, you know that they haven’t unsorted yet....

But anyway, all of this took place through our intelligence. Our intelligence. Now whoever it is we pray to, right?, whoever it is we pray to, however we pray, whatever, however we do that, alright?, I think that we have an obligation and a responsibility and it’s about respect. If we respect our Creator, then we should use our intelligence as intelligently as we can as often as we can. And that means with clarity and coherence. That means to activate and respect our intelligence and activate the thinking process so that it’s going the way we want it to be because that’s why it was given to us.

Our intelligence – as the human being part of all of this reality that’s going on, we were given intelligence, this is what was there to help us through the evolutionary reality – to ride the balance, so to speak, of the evolution with our intelligence. It’s our medicine, it’s our protection, it’s our self-defense.

The 6 Nations: Oldest Living Participatory Democracy on Earth
Also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, they call themselves the Haudenosaunee or People of the Longhouse. Their story, and governance, truly based on the consent of the governed, contains a great deal of life-promoting intelligence for those of us not familiar with this area of American history.
Includes:
- A Basic Call to Consciousness, The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World,
  Geneva, Switzerland, Autumn 1977
3 complete books:
- Forgotten Founders,
  Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois and the Rationale for the American Revolution, 1982
- Exemplar of Libery, Native America and the Evolution of Democracy, 1990
- Native American Political Systems and the Evolution of Democracy:
  An Annotated Bibliography, 1996-97
- Borked! Tales From the Ramparts of Multiculturalism
speech transcripts:
- Oren Lyons at the UN: Opening Speech for "The Year of the Indigenous Peoples", 1993
and articles:
- Dating the Iroquois Confederacy
- Guest Essay, Sovereignty and Treaty Rights - We Remember
- Guest Essay, Haudenosaunee Environmental Action Plan
  and articles related to the 1995 United Nations Summit of the Elders:
- Iroquois Population in 1995
- How Much Land Did the Iroquois Possess?

"A Native American Worldview, Hawk and Eagle, Both are Singing,"
by Paula Underwood Spencer      (PDF, or text formats)
   Indigenous science begins with an apprehension of the Whole, only very carefully and on close inspection reaching tentative conclusions about any Specificity.
   Indigenous science is based on a profound immersion in and awareness of the whole circumstance. Rather than mistrusting personal experience, Indigenous science has learned to thrive on it. . . .
   The basis of learning, the basis of the pedagogy, is to cease preventing people from learning things for themselves. This way of thinking, what goes on in here, can really be taught from the inside out. When it's taught from the outside in, someone else comes between you and yourself, and that's not considered a wise idea. That's the tradition.
   In one of your papers on Perennial Wisdom it says that the Native tradition is nature-focused. I would like to modify that a little. I would like to say that Indian traditions are nature-inclusive. You do not see man and nature as separate from each other, but you see yourself in the context of an interrelated whole instead.
   . . . The idea is that everybody learns, but you need to figure out how a child learns in order to design a learning circumstance in which each individual can teach themselves. The idea is always to teach yourself. In fact there is no word "teach," or there didn't used to be, in the fundamental language.

Learning From Ladakh, by Stephan Bodian, Yoga Journal, May/June, 1992      (Text)
"It took me a long time to accept that the smiles I saw were real," [Helena Norberg-Hodge] remembers. "Then, in my second year there, while at a wedding, I sat back and observed the guests enjoying themselves. Suddenly I heard myself saying, 'Aha, they really are that happy.' Only then did I recognize that I had been walking around with cultural blinders on, convinced that hidden behind the jokes and laughter had to be the same frustration, jealousy, and inadequacy as in my own society."
          As soon as she dropped her cultural preconceptions, she began finding evidence everywhere of an extraordinary dignity, self-respect, and joie de vivre. Most Ladakhis, she observed, derive contentedness from within and rarely allow external situations to disturb their highly prized equanimity. She tells, for example, of accompanying a traditional "thanka" painter on a trip to Kashmir. Everywhere the two visitors went, people ridiculed the man, poking fun at his "backward" dress and mimicking his language. But much to Norberg-Hodge's amazement, he remained completely unaffected by the abuse and never lost his cheerful, smiling demeanor. When she asked him why he didn't get angry, he replied, in characteristic Ladakhi fashion, "Chi choen?" ("What's the point?") -- meaning, why should I allow my precious peace of mind to be disrupted by such inconsequential circumstances?
          Eventually, Norberg-Hodge began to realize that this peace of mind in the face of life's inevitable ups and downs was based not only on the teachings of Buddhism, but on a deep sense of belonging instilled in Ladakhis from infancy. "The Ladakhis belong to their place on Earth," she explains. "They are bonded to that place through intimate daily contact, through a knowledge about their immediate environment with its changing seasons, needs, and limitations. . . .
          As people become fixated on how much money they have, they feel pressured to earn more, the pace of life accelerates -- and one of the first of the scarce natural resources to be depleted is time. In traditional Ladakh, no matter how much work there was to be done, life was lived at a human pace, time was plentiful, and everyone could afford to be patient, explains Norberg-Hodge. Now, "time-saving" technologies and the money economy have turned time into a commodity that can be bought and sold, forcing people to speed up to keep step with machines. As a result, they're spending less time just being with their families and friends, less time engaging in traditional spiritual practices or observing the slow, subtle changes of the natural world around them. As one Ladakhi told Norberg-Hodge, "Machines are dead; you have no relationship with them. When you work with machines, you become like them; you become dead yourself.

The Spirituality of the Earth, by Thomas Berry, 1990
Thomas Berry's Earth Spirituality and the “Great Work,”, by Andrew Angyal, Spring 2003
Paths Of Learning: An Introduction to Educational Alternatives
by Robin Martin, November 2000
Robin contacted me in September 1999 with the following proposition:
The Rat Haus Reality web site is one my favorites in terms of real content on the Web for helping people access more holistic ways of viewing life; it's right up there with Znet for alternative ways of thinking! As such, I'd like to propose a potential collaboration between your organization and a new project that I'm working on called Learning Options, which is about holistic education research, and seems quite in sync with your mission "To promote and encourage seeing wholistically, within ourselves, with all our relations, and throughout our world within universe."
This paper is the initial result of our meeting. Robin's spirit and energy are inspiring to the extreme. i have already learned loads from this quicksilver being of bursting curiosity and hope you too will find much illumination and joy of discovery prompted by Robin's championing of the creative light burning within each and every one of us.
--ratitor

Seeing The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism (PDF, Text formats)
Take this book inside, help grow the future.
A selection of resources quoted in the above:
1. "The Post-Corporate World," by David C. Korten. (Text)
2. "Life After Capitalism," by David C. Korten. (Text)
The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, by David C. Korten:
1. Table of Contents/Book Excerpts (Text)
2. Readers Comments (Text)
3. About the Author (Text)

Community Currencies
a positive, possible, practical, and exciting way to help birth the 21st century!

Gaia's LifeWeb :
The Writings of Elisabet Sahtouris

Krishnamurti and David Bohm :
an enquiry into the nature of thought and the source of conflict in the world
Freedom is not a reaction: freedom is not choice. It is man's pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.

-- Krishnamurti, from The Core of Krishnamurti's Teaching, 1980

Laurens van der Post :
Insights and perceptions from a man whose life was dedicated to teaching the meaning and value of indigenous cultures in the modern world, a world he felt is in danger of losing its spiritual identity to technology, prejudice, empty values, and a lack of understanding of the interconnectedness of all life on earth.

A Dynamic Conceptual Blueprint for Spokane Arts in Community School (SpArCS),
by Patricia Ratcliffe-Phillips, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction,
Creative Arts in Learning Program, Lesley College, Spokane WA, 1998
(PDF, Text)
   The arts encompass symbol systems that have traditionally been associated with emotion rather than thought. Consequently, they have been considered a superfluous diversion from the serious business of learning through the linguistic and numerical systems that are considered logic-based, and therefore essential to functioning effectively in our culture. However, many students, particularly those who are visual and kinesthetic learners, have difficulty making sense of the abstract symbol systems used in reading and mathematics; and the arts provide alternative symbolic languages that involve students in concrete experiences that can help all students at every ability level to go far beyond mastery of "the basics".
   The distinguishing feature of the human being has been identified by philosophers and scientists alike, as "the capacity to create and manipulate symbol systems" (Eisner, 1994, p. 79). Language and mathematics are just two of the forms through which individuals represent and develop "evanescent" ideas and feelings in a process of creative thinking that makes communication possible.
   Music, dance, drama, and visual arts are equally legitimate symbol systems which are used to make sense of and give expression to human experience. These symbol systems have generally been considered of lesser importance than reading, writing, mathematics, and the sciences in the curriculum, largely because they are associated with vague and subjective perception, rather than reason. . . .
   Inspite of the predominance of a rationalistic world view that separated reason from perception, as first articulated by Plato, artists have always sought knowledge and understanding of the world through the senses. Renaissance scientist and artist, Leonardo DaVinci said, "All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions". In a similar vein, Einstein once explained that his insight into the theory of relativity came to him through listening to music. He revealed his multi-dimensional approach to the search for understanding of the physical universe in saying that, "The aim of science is the conceptual comprehension and connection as complete as possible of the sense experiences in their full diversity" (Oddleifson, 1997, p.38). Eric Oddleifson, a business executive who is a passionate proponent of the arts in education, points out that the aim of arts is similar. Both artists and scientists use perception and reason to investigate the world in a search for coherence and meaning.

Interviews with Joseph Chilton Pearce:
- 1999: Expressing Life's Wisdom: Nurturing Heart-Brain Development Starting With Infants
  It all begins with children feeling unconditionally wanted, accepted and loved. This is the key to the entire operation. You can have everything else: a high standard of living, the most expensive school system, the finest teachers in the world; but if the children are lacking that initial experience of being unconditionally loved by at least one person, and if they do not feel safe and secure in their learning environment, then nothing is going to happen very positively. This cannot be overstated.
  Television literally prevents neural growth in the developing brains of children. When young children watch too much, it suppresses the capacity of their brains to create an internal image of some thing, or some one, or some event not presented to the sensory system by the environment, which is the essence of what we call "imagination." Researchers used to think that it was only the content of the programming that was negatively affecting children. Now we have ample evidence that the technology of the device is very harmful in and of itself. In other words, the simple act of watching television has profoundly negative effects on the physiology of human beings.
- 1998: Waking Up To The Holographic Heart - Starting Over With Education
  . . . neurocardiology . . . is the general title of the newest field of medicine. Oxford University brought out a huge, thick volume of medical studies from all over the world entitled, Neurocardiology, which includes studies that haven't worked their way into the journals yet. Discoveries in the field of neurocardiology are, believe me, far more awesome then the discovery of non-locality in quantum mechanics. It is the biggest issue of the whole century, but it's so far out and so beyond the ordinary, conceptual grasp, that a lot of the people doing the actual research are yet to be fully aware of the implications.
  Close to a century ago, Rudolph Steiner said the greatest discovery of 20th century science would be that the heart is not a pump but vastly more, and that the great challenge of the coming ages of humanity would be, in effect, to allow the heart to teach us to think in a new way. Now, that sounds extremely occult, but we find it's directly, biologically the case.

Excerpts from The Zuni Man-Woman, by Will Roscoe, 1991      (Text)
There is an old joke that the typical Zuni household consists of a mother, father, children, and an anthropologist. In fact, the Zunis are one of the most written-about tribes in the world. . . . It was with genuine disappointment, then, that I came to realize how often the impact of these outsiders on the objects of their fascination has been disruptive and detrimental. Despite their admiration of the Pueblos, early anthropologists more often bolstered the image of the vanishing Indian than challenged it. . . .
   Early observers were convinced that the cause of science and the immenent disappearance of tribal cultures justified their actions. . . . Such predictions enact what James Clifford has termed the redemptive allegory of anthropology -- the assumption that the "primitive" cultures are doomed to disappear except for those artifacts "rescued" by Western scientists. Such predictions are not only self-serving -- since they inflate the importance of the fieldworkers's reports -- they can also be self-fulfilling. They sustain and foster the idea of Indians as a vanishing race by referring only to their past.
   The alternative view, however, challenges many comfortable assumptions: that there are neither primitive nor civilized, inferior nor superior, simple nor advanced societies -- only different ones. This view requires learning to think in "plurals" -- imagining the multiple histories and cultural stories of human societies in every part of the world as parallel, equal developments intersecting without necessarily merging, and associating non-Western societies such as Zuni with the future of the planet instead of its past. We must question the assumption that change means the loss of something essential and find ways to discuss cultural differences without encasing them in value-ladened descriptions.

Mother and Child: The Erotic Bond, by Lynda Marí (PDF, Text)
I see that what I am holding out for, in these borderline experiments in erotic love with my son (the wording is so sensitive here, and nothing that I can think to say is quite what I mean), is a rewriting of sexuality as I know it. It is not a free-for-all kind of sexuality that powered the imagination of the "sexual revolution" of the '60s and '70s but left us, men and women, just as split in ourselves as ever. It is an inclusive kind of sexuality that recognizes itself basically everywhere. It is not so scary in its infantility because it's just as much a part of adulthood, too. And if we were to recognize that kind of sexuality much more intimately in ourselves all the time (since it's operating there all the time anyway), we would have to pay it close attention, to be careful and caring with it. I imagine our having to add lots of new words to our language to describe it in its multiple manifestations in any interaction, fantasy, work of art, etc., in much the same way we have thought Inuit peoples to have so many words for snow. But I recognize that as innocently as I try to cast it, it's a sexuality that would not support life on the planet as we know it, that is, would not support social hierarchies, multinational corporations, a free market economy, racism, colonization, or any other of the problematic realities that depend on our ability to split off what's safe and good (mother) from what's desirable (woman). . . .
. . . . What I mean to say is what if, for a reason I can't presume to know, for a split second some of my psycho-social infrastructure slipped just enough to reveal another of the best-kept secrets: that all love whether it be for our children, our lovers, our work, our ideas, is fundamentally the same love, is first and last, coming and going, not even erotic but autoerotic? For isn't erotic love just a further development, a successful splitting off, redirecting, and renaming of that first continuous unbounded connection/pleasure we feel with our mother's body?
Of course, autoeroticism is not such a secret since we can find it strategically positioned, just as I'm suggesting now, in psychoanalytic discourse. The real secret, though, is how "ardorously" culture struggles to forget what eroticism actually is, where it comes from, and why it is absolutely everywhere all the time, especially and necessarily in a mother's love for her child. When we successfully forget that fact, as we require ourselves to do in the name of becoming adults, we severely limit the ways we can experience the connection/pleasure which originally nurtured us into life and which sustains our desire for life forever after. It seems evident that one of the reasons, for instance, that Western culture has so little regard, by and large, for what's left of natural life -- for plants and animals and earth and atmosphere -- is its successful endeavor to see itself as separate from all that life, to forget the connection/pleasure that informs our very being here.

Understanding and the Imagination in the Light of Nature,
a talk by Terence McKenna in L.A., 10/17/87 (Text)
A wide range of ground is covered here by an extremely dynamic and glib raconteur. Of special interest is the section on octopi and the seeing of meaning communicated as pure intent without ambiguity. (Text)

On Synchrony and Group Cohesion, by Edward T. Hall (Text)
Where does "music" "come from"? Salieri defined it thru Mozart as "taking dictation from gaud." As difficult as it is for thought (the response of memory) to grasp or understand the ineffable fact of human consciousness, there appears to be some sort of capacity to `pluck an infinitude of beats out of the sea of rhythm we are all immersed' in. The following provides a glimpse of something the mind balks at seeing.

The First Men, by Howard Fast (Text and gzip'd PostScript formats)
"Now something has happened. If these children can go into each other's minds completely--then they will have a single memory, which is the memory of all of them. All experience will be common to all of them, all knowledge, all dreams--and they will be immortal. For as one dies, another child is linked to the whole, and another and another. Death will lose all meaning, all of its dark horror. Mankind will begin, here in this place, to fulfill a part of its intended destiny--to become a single, wonderful unit, a whole--almost in the old words of your poet, John Donne, who sensed what we have all sensed at one time, that no man is an island unto himself. Has any thoughtful man lived without having a sense of that singleness of mankind? I don't think so. We have been living in darkness, in the night, struggling each of us with his own poor brain and then dying with all the memories of a lifetime. It is no wonder that we have achieved so little. The wonder is that we have achieved so much. Yet all that we know, all that we have done will be nothing compared to what these children will know and do and create--" [1]

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There Are		*Many* Worlds ...
of being and awareness