Patriarchal Nightmare Part 3

The Meaning of the Term Nightmare. Its meaning is implicit in the word as a combination of “night” and “mare,” that is, a female horse that as a dream aspect haunts us during the night. The word functions as a precise metaphor for macho men’s greatest fear which is a central concern of this book. The mare aspect also drives “home” how instinctual this fear is. “Mare,” “home” and “night” have feminine connotations. We at night enter into ourselves, slow down thinking and feel more as well as reflect more. Finally, we surrender to the darkness of sleep during which we dream, some of which we call a nightmare.

The typical response to such a dream, after the adrenalin and heart beats reside, is “Thank God, it was only a dream.” This remark epitomizes the ignorance of this outer, superficial culture that knows only social and bodily/physical reality and is unaware of or frightened of the third reality, that of inner psychic reality. A tennis player, however who practices “inner tennis” knows it helps him play better. Olympic down-hill skiers have learned to imagine skiing down a particular hill endless times, as advised by mentors. This new athletic behavior is called “sports psyche.” These athletes know the power of the imagination also present in dreams coming from the unconscious. The unconscious, in turn, participates in the mind of all of Nature.

This same imagination serves life’s most fundamental task, knowing one’s authentic Self. Research in dream labs also shows that all dreams, remembered or not, balance conscious unbalances. In turn, this imagination emerges out of the womb of Mother Nature in us called the Essential Self. Jung puts it this way: ”One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” (Jung, l967, para. 335) Also, like the mind of Nature, dreams speak only the truth and are in the service of life. No dream – and I have worked with many thousands—ever teaches evil.

Nightmares, however, contain a factor not found in ordinary dreams. That factor is sheer fear. Such a fear, moreover, is different than an objective fear, such as being in a field when thunder and lightning is occurring or in war when bombs are falling. Facing these, one runs for cover. In a typical nightmare, one is running away from a dangerous animal, a powerful person, or some strange presence in a threatening area. All these possibilities are examples of psychic or subjective fear. This kind of fear is at the cutting edge of our growth, for in its fearfulness the seeds of courage and creativity are present. In its darkness, a greater light of awareness is awaiting. Such fruitions do not occur, however, without our consciously confronting the fear. For example, the parents of the ancient dream people of Malaysia, the Senoi Indians, would say to a child who reported a tiger was chasing her in a dream: “Child, turn and face the tiger the next time. Look into its eyes, wrestle with it, kill if you need to. This way, you will receive its power.” Jung teaches us to do the same, asking at the same time, “Who are you? What do you want? What am I supposed to learn from you?” The challenge of patriarchal men is to do the same with Nature and women. Otherwise, their patriarchal pathology which always exclude people or ideas that are different with continue. The maternal principle in all of us and in in all things, on the other hand is of her very essence inclusive. A patriarchal culture’s most lethal exclusion has been the sacredness and power of Nature; and so her environment has been raped by this male viewpoint. Mother Nature is now inclusive in her anger, due to her being unnaturally warmed and her earth, water and air polluted. She has recently, for example, shown us her anger in Hurricane Sandy on our Northeastern coast, the mile and half wide tornadoes in Oklahoma and the most recent severe storm of all in the Philippians that killed over 5,000 and rendered 500,000 homeless. Since our response to this crisis must be a world-wide cooperation of every nation, all of humankind must realize the inclusive outlook of the maternal principle. Hopefully a collective fear of cosmic proportions will help patriarchal men---who as industrial and political leaders have been responsible for this collective rape--- overcome their greatest nightmare.

Yet we must not, as we pursue this massive social effort, forget the immediacy, creativity and beauty of Nature, first of all, within ourselves. Jung states this truth as follows:

Nowhere are we closer to the sublime secret of all [Nature’s] origination than in the recognition of our own selves, whom we always think we know already. Yet we know the immensities of space better than we know our own depths, where ---even though we do not understand it---we can listen directly to the throb of creation itself. (Jung, l980, para. 737)

Then, given that Jung also taught us to see the beauty in psyche’s depth, we can join with Hildegard of Bingen, one of the wisest women who has ever lived, to realize “There is no creation that does not have a radiance.”

Patriarchal Nightmare Part 2

John Giannini on the Sacred Feminine (aka Patriarchal Nightmare, Part 2)

Culturally, some religious denominations still struggle with women’s issues more than others. The theologian of the former Pope Benedict XVI wrote that women cannot be priests because ”men are likely to think of God in terms of philosophical definitions and logical syllogisms…a quality valuable for fulfilling a priest’s duty to transmit church teaching.” And, besides, he adds,” men are more practical.” I can hear a multitude of women-- who are philosophers, theologians and CEOs of companies or who as wives and mothers attend to endless pragmatic duties—angrily responding to this man who obviously is living in an ecclesial male vacuum and its fear and hatred of the feminine.
  
We see this male outlook in typical television ads. The analyst James Hollis points to an ad in which, for example, “a macho group of merry fellows hoist girders, saw logs or drive fork-lifts, but little is said on how men relate to women, unless helped with alcohol.” Hollis concludes: “How can men expect to have good relationships with women when men do not have a relationship with their own feminine soul?” (Hollis, 1993, p. 54)

Underlying this male behavior is a fear and hatred of feminine qualities within themselves. This lethal attitude called misogyny is the oldest prejudice in history. (Holland, 2006) The analyst Erich Neumann gives this attitude a cosmic meaning:

Devaluation of the Earth, hostility toward the Earth, fear of the Earth: these are …..the expression of a weak, patriarchal consciousness that knows no other way to help itself than to withdraw violently from… the Earth as the unconscious making, instinct-entangling and therefore dangerous feminine.(Newman, 1994, pp. l70-l7l)  

We will see many other evidences of this universal patriarchal misogyny in this book as well as spiritual awakenings to the maternal archetype’s presence in Nature, culture and persons. This fear and hatred of the feminine in women, in sensitive men, and in the cosmos constitutes what I call “The Patriarchal Nightmare.” On the other hand, speaking of nightfall, all of us, male or female, experience the maternal archetype’s attribute as darkness in which we are enveloped by her and even more crucially, we eventually must surrender to her darker reality of sleep. Whether we know it or not, we are then in the arms of the maternal principle, in which in some dreams, patriarchal men will experience her as a holy terror.

I will give countless examples of male violence not just toward women but to humankind. Each day evidences of this male pathology mount up. For example, on the first page of one New York Times, I found the following: (1) an article condemning HBO’s “Game of Throne’s” because it is “riddled with sexual abuse.” Further, it has a seventeen million person following, the most since HBO’s “The Sopranos.” (Itzkoff, 2014, p. 1). (2) An article, describes how Myanmar’s Buddhist-led military government has cut off medical aid to Muslims, after its “expulsion of Doctors without Borders, one of the world’s premier humanitarian aid groups.” (Perlez, 2014, p.) (3) Another article states that Obama has ordered a “policy review of executions” after a “botched execution in Oklahoma.” (Baker, 2014, p. 1) We are one of the few nations still fostering this inhuman practice.

Carl Jung, who is often the hidden source of much current thought on personality and spirituality, will provide a psychological approach to a depth view of the maternal principle who is patriarchy’s greatest nightmare.

Intuition Materials

I've written documents (a whole book in fact) on intuition. Anyone interested?  - John Giannini

Some Thoughts

Dear Folks,

We are easily diverted by all the negative news from particular issues, locally or internationally, such as the beheadings. Don't forget basic issues that effect you and your family and friends.

- John Giannini

A Manifesto for Peace

Context

"We fire missiles from the sky that incinerate families huddled in their houses. They incinerate a pilot cowering in a cage.

We torture hostages in our black sites and choke them to death by stuffing rags down their throats. They torture hostages in squalid hovels and behead them.

We organize Shiite death squads to kill Sunnis. They organize Sunni death squads to kill Shiites.

We produce high-budget films such as American Sniper to glorify our war crimes. They produce inspirational videos to glorify their twisted version of jihad.

The barbarism we condemn is the barbarism we commit. The line that separates us from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is technological, not moral. We are those we fight."

- Chris Hedges 

Christ Hedges is the former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times and is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. He is the author, with Laila Al-Arian, of Collateral Damage and an earlier book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (Free Press).

A Manifesto for Peace

What is needed, is to go beyond a worldview and approach to conflicts rooted in terror, war and violence. What is needed, is to transcend a paradigm and approach to politics, governance and conflict that is itself the true and greatest threat: not any 'them' or 'the other', but the logic and practice of war that is itself a mirror and reflection, an escalating pathology that we collectively need to have the intelligence, integrity and courage to overcome.

Our task today is not to mobilise, legitimise and sanction the violence of governments and military alliances of 'this' or 'that' side nor to mobilise, legitimise and sanction the violence of non-state actors and groups. Our task today is to mobilise the vast and overwhelming majority of humanity who are tired and exhausted of the violence, destruction, war and killing, and the bankrupt policies, 'intelligence' and 'leadership' which fuel it. Our task today is to dive with all the integrity of passionate doctors searching for cures to ebola and aids to find cures to a sickness far more destructive and devastating - the sickness of war and the global intellectual, academic, economic and political systems that underpin it. Our task today is to recognise the evidence-based empirical fact that there are ways to address conflicts effectively, that prevention of war and violence is a concrete and practical reality, and that to achieve this we need to overcome stale ideological maxims and certainties as valid as the belief that the earth is flat, and instead engage with all our tremendous and extraordinary diversity, intelligence, innovation and creativity to build peace - real peace, just peace, the peace that transcends and overcomes the illogic and futility of war.

Our task today is to create the new anti-apartheid movement, the new suffragettes movement, the new civil rights movement. Like all these movements before it will take organising, it will take dedication, it will take hard work, effort, commitment and passion. Like all these movements before, it will take a dream, and our realising that that dream becomes real the moment we dedicate ourselves to making it happen.

Our task today is to create this movement, and to reach out to soldiers in armed forces and to members of ISIS as our brothers and sisters, and have them put down their weapons. Our task today is not to mobilise youth in Benghazi or anywhere else in Libya, Iraq, the United States, Jordan, France, Nigeria, Mexico, Japan, China, or elsewhere to kill. Our task is to mobilise them to have the courage to live, and to join in the effort to rebuild their countries, and to build together the world we wish to live in.

Our task...  is to be the change we wish to see. A global movement is rising. Join us. 

- Kai Brand-Jacobsen, Patrir

The Sacred Feminine Series, introduction to The Patriarchal Nightmare

John Giannini has written two more books, following his Compass of the Soul, and can be considered two parts of a Sacred Feminine series.  The first is entitled 'The Patriarchal Nightmare' and the second, 'Intuition'.

I wish to start sharing his work virtually in order to spark conversation about the material and win some interest among the public for John's thoughts, his words, that I think deserve public hearing and that I think should be shared freely.  - Martin Giannini, John's son

Here begins the introduction to The Patriarchal Nightmare:

“There is no creation that does not have a radiance.” - Hildegard of Bingen

I have been moved to write on this subject of patriarchy and its nightmare, the maternal principle, because of the enormous outrage I have long felt about male dominance and attitudes. My outrage has not diminished; it has only increased exponentially as I have met men who are equally concerned. I have encountered the pathology of this five thousand year masculine culture in my personal life, my work, my readings and in the lives of everyone I have met and studied.   I do not condemn paternal men as such since they have given us intelligent systems, structures and laws. “Paternity” is a positive archetype. I condemn only what Webster’s describes implicitly as its pathology,“patriarchy,” with an overt “dominance by males.” Its general characteristics are its misogyny as a hatred and fear of women and the maternal principle in all of us, a rigid exclusion of other types of people and ideas that do not agree with their ideology, and their resultant violence in every aspect of life from rape to war.  Over all, I condemn its pathological one-sidedness, which Carl Jung writes is always “barbaric,” So this pathology is the standard bearer of all such barbarisms.

Simultaneously I learned that the antithesis to this male dominance had once been the goddess-based cultures in the Neolithic period of history that preceded the written word and male control.  I began to see the larger meaning of the goddess as the unitary earth and holistic psychic forces, which I call the maternal principle.

This book is the story of a five-thousand year old titanic battle between a patriarchal pathology and its exclusivity and the mother principle’s inclusiveness. Because I write as a Jungian depth psychologist and as a theologian, we will also explore the spiritual aspects of this cosmic narrative. The main-line churches, influenced by the paleontologist  Teilhard de Chardin, now accept the facts of evolution, with the added proviso of a divine causality. Such a sacred energy assumes that intelligence and purpose are crucial factors in evolution. Then, the great quantum physicists of the last century, having discovered the mathematics of matter, called this intelligence “mind.” Since they acknowledged that their discoveries do not explain the essence of matter, most of them have written metaphysically about the miraculous fact of existence itself. (Wilbur, l984)

I am also privileged to be an old man, still working, writing and loving. I am increasingly aware of the mighty flow of history in which we as a human species share in the second mystery of existence, the first being life itself. The second is that we know that we know. We have reflective awareness. Daily, I see hundreds of people from the youngest to the oldest on the streets, at public events and on television. I realize that each of us has an inner life and history so individual that its patterns are as unique as one’s finger prints.  Whoever we are, we all participate in the cultural drama of patriarchy and the maternal principle in public as well as in our deepest reflections. 

My plea to the people of Israel: Liberate yourselves by liberating Palestine

Excerpt reprinted from Haaretz


Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, in an exclusive article for Haaretz, calls for a global boycott of Israel and urges Israelis and Palestinians to look beyond their leaders for a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land.



By Desmond Tutu    | Aug. 14, 2014 | 9:56 PM

A child next to a picture of Nelson Mandela at a pro-Palestinian rally in Cape Town. August 9, 2014 Photo by AP  

The past weeks have witnessed unprecedented action by members of civil society across the world against the injustice of Israel’s disproportionately brutal response to the firing of missiles from Palestine.

If you add together all the people who gathered over the past weekend to demand justice in Israel and Palestine – in Cape Town, Washington, D.C., New York, New Delhi, London, Dublin and Sydney, and all the other cities – this was arguably the largest active outcry by citizens around a single cause ever in the history of the world.

A quarter of a century ago, I participated in some well-attended demonstrations against apartheid. I never imagined we’d see demonstrations of that size again, but last Saturday’s turnout in Cape Town was as big if not bigger. Participants included young and old, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, blacks, whites, reds and greens ... as one would expect from a vibrant, tolerant, multicultural nation.

I asked the crowd to chant with me: “We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.”

Earlier in the week, I called for the suspension of Israel from the International Union of Architects, which was meeting in South Africa.

I appealed to Israeli sisters and brothers present at the conference to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.

“I implore you to take this message home: Please turn the tide against violence and hatred by joining the nonviolent movement for justice for all people of the region,” I said.

Over the past few weeks, more than 1.6 million people across the world have signed onto this movement by joining an Avaaz campaign calling on corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation and/or implicated in the abuse and repression of Palestinians to pull out. The campaign specifically targets Dutch pension fund ABP; Barclays Bank; security systems supplier G4S; French transport company Veolia; computer company Hewlett-Packard; and bulldozer supplier Caterpillar.

Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in illegal Israeli settlements.

We have also recently witnessed the withdrawal by Dutch pension fund PGGM of tens of millions of euros from Israeli banks; the divestment from G4S by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the U.S. Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21 million from HP, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar.

It is a movement that is gathering pace.

Violence begets violence and hatred, that only begets more violence and hatred.

Continue reading here.  

Will You Vote?

Dear Folks, 

No big message here. I simply want to strengthen what Debbie W. Schultz says below as head of the Democratic National Committee. This November election will be a very crucial, literally vital to our country. If we don’t vote by the millions for our Democratic candidate, there is a danger we may even lose the Senate. We need also to reconquer the House. Is this impossible? Not if we vote, and encourage all we know to vote. Obama’s work would be finished and a next Demo President would also be seriously blocked from meeting basic needs, from jobs, to immigrants and the environment. 

Love, John G

Debbie Wasserman Schultz wrote:

A Matter of Character

Dear Folks, 

We are wise enough as Democrats to know our party and its reps are not perfect. We are getting a taste of this now in the latest Veterans Department scandal in which some of its places have falsified the number of Vets cared for. Because of our two latest wars and Vets returning we know Vet hospitals and clinics have been overwhelmed. We also know –and have for years—that Vet Care as such has been famous even among Europeans for the level of help, when a Vet is actually there.

However, as a party we have been pure compared to the Republicans. We have not only been more effective. We also have demonstrated more sheer character. There, I have said it: we have more character, because our major concern—not perfect but major—has been for the people and not the wealthy and powerful. Consider what has happened since Obama came to office. Rep Jay Rockefellow said this in Congress yesterday: “Our president is mostly opposed because of “his wrong color.” We simply look at the facts. This present Congress ---with the House under Republican control for the last two years and the two years preceding, when the Senate Republicans filibustered into the hundreds—has been the most ineffective in terms of bills passed in its entire history. Except for Obama Care and fiscal controls under Barney/Frank - and both seriously hampered because of Republican resistance - Obama and his team have been crushed in such vital issues as jobs and infrastructure, unemployment compensation, immigration, minimum wages, and food stamp - all programs which would feed our economy from the ground up: a trickle up, not a failed trickle down from the wealthy, who are the richest people in human history.

To a Scientist

Andrea Tsurumi

Dear Folks,

For years I have been writing a book to be called (almost finished) "The Patriarchal Nightmare: The Maternal Principle in Nature, Culture and Persons." There was an article by this scientist Saturday in The New York Times. Here is my answer now added to my book.  - John G

A Sour Note from One Scientist.

The following article appeared in The New York Times by Alan Lightman, a physicist who teaches humanities at M.I.T. (Lightman, 2014k, p. 17). The article is entitled “Our Lonely Home in Nature.”

Like so many of his cohorts, he does not believe that “Nature is purposeful. Nature simply is…..There is no reciprocity. There is no mind on the other side of the wall.”

He writes this because he considers mother nature’s many calamities, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, “happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.”