roddenberry

Hi, readers of this site. Yvonne has a query concerning a strong and ongoing personal interest of hers. It concerns
For many years she has felt that Alfred Russel Wallace has been undeservedly overlooked (indeed, declared a non-person). Here's why. Dr. Wallace was a naturalist--but a middle-class individual without Charles Darwin's upper-class status. His work in that field led him (Wallace) to develop the theory of survival of the fittest and natural selection. He wrote to Darwin outlining this idea; and, to put it bluntly, Darwin usurped the idea and claimed it as his own. After all, a middle-class naturalist couldn't possibly have a better idea than an upper-class one.
What Yvonne is interested in is this: How did Roddenberry know of Wallace? In an episode involving a holodeck experience of a 19th-century reception, why did he have Samuel Clemens/ Mark Twain repeatedly mention Wallace so forcibly? Did Roddenberry share Wallace's--and

Arthur Conan Doyle's--belief in spiritualism (spiritism)? Did Clemens share it?

Going to Brushwood

Hi, readers of this site, and merry meet!


It's a sign that Gavin is getting better: We're off to Sirius Rising and SummerFest at Brushwood Folklore Center, setting off on Sunday July 15 and driving gently northward. Of course this means that the School's mail will be a little bit delayed, though not so much as it has been a couple of times during the worst of Gavin's health problems. We'll get it all back on schedule as soon as we can. Don't go away; don't lose hope. We're still here.

We'd love to see some of you troops there. Oops--not just some of you, but any or all of you. Save mid-July 2013 for what can be a life-changing experience. See

www.brushwood.com

to get precise dates and all the particulars. Blessed be all. Gavin and Yvonne

We's Back

We's okay. Yes, our power went out, but it's back on now: It came on after three (3) days. We've had similar power outages before. Living in the mountains in a place of reasonably severe winters gives you this natural experience on a fairly frequently basis. On reflection, it seems that that the pattern is once every two years or so.

This time it was more interesting than most because it was so unexpected. A minor summer thunderstorm abruptly turned into a series of microburst tornadoes that swept across the northern part of the country from somewhere around the Chicago area and left four million people in the dark ... during a persistent heat wave. A large number of those people also didn't have water because our water supply depends on electric pumps. Of course the gas stations get pumped dry first thing, and ice becomes a commodity as rare as gold nuggets. The battery-powered radio worked well enough in our house, so that we could pick up all the tales of disaster from local towns, although interestingly, none from our own; mainly because the telephones, both landline and cell, went down.
Still, it gave us a chance to meditate on how lucky we are having lost only one piece of siding from the house, whereas a local church lost half its roof--just peeled off. An act of "God"? Or maybe of a malicious demon? We heard no one gasping, "Thank you, Lord!" or "Hosanna!" Still, as the pastor told everyone, "We're well insured." Rather he seemed to have a "What? Me worry?" attitude like that of Alfred E. Neuman. They hadn't bothered even to haul tarps over the exposed roof to prevent further damage.

Thinking outside the box

When most of us were children, or even not yet born, a man named Hubble found that distant stars had what is called red shift in the light that we on earth received from them. The red shift is caused by something called the doppler effect: The motion of bodies moving away from us stretches the light waves that reach us, just as a passing train's whistle seems to change pitch as it rushes away from us. This great discovery of Hubble's led to the whole notion of an expanding universe and then to the origins of the universe at the Big Bang.
But what if Hubble was wrong? Of course this very idea is like ranting against apple pie and motherhood: no one in the scientific community is likely to support the idea that there is another way of thinking about red shift.
Mainly through meditation, we Frosts have received an alternate possibility. It is what we call tired light.
Today there is consensus that a large part of the energy in the multiverse is made up of dark matter. We have no idea what dark matter is; but we do know that it acts like a fog, obscuring distant stars. So now let's imagine that the light coming toward us across the vast distances in the galaxy travels through dark matter--as it does--and that the dark matter absorbs some of the energy from the light. So far so good? Just as in the case of the doppler effect, absorbing energy from the light causes a red shift. The further the light from a distant star has to travel, the more dark matter it has to push through. Thus distant stars would appear to be moving away from us faster than stars closer to us would appear to be doing.
This simple explanation of the red shift phenomenon obviates the necessity for the much-admired Big Bang theory. It is simple; it is elementary. Having lived in foggye olde England, I (Gavin) know that a car's headlights shift into the more-yellow range when viewed through fog. Why then wouldn't light shift more into the red range when some of its energy is absorbed by the elusive dark matter?

Tired light? Remember that phrase. You heard it first from (shudder) those people, the Frosts.

Spiritual versus Mundane Energy

I am only one--but still, I am one.
I cannot do everything--but still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
-- Edward Everett Hale

Mountain-top removal is the practice of Big Coal in West Virginia of dynamiting whole mountains, destroying them, and throwing the loosened soil and rock (the "overburden") into the nearest stream, killing the stream itself and all flora and all fauna supported by it.
So the other day some friends of ours went to a rally protesting the practice of mountain-top removal. They told us that the festivities started off with a sincere prayer to Jesus. At a pagan meet a week earlier, we ourselves had joined hands, chanted, and raised energy to protect the earth from the devastation caused by the coal companies ("operators"). Whether or not either procedure did anything, in both cases they helped the participants by letting them feel that they were actually doing something to save the mountains.
The question is: Were they? A secondary question might be: Which procedure would produce more results?
Through countless experiments we know that people have power. Probably the most famous work is the Russian research (see Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Curtain) in which the (female) lab workers actually moved 2-kg blocks across the surface of the test table, using only mind power. So if you gather together a bunch of people and get them all concentrating on the same idea, surely their combined force must have some effect. We think this is especially workable if the force is used in an effort to change the minds of politicians and mine owners.
Now let's think about the possibilities of Jesus-power. We Frosts share a belief of classic Hinduism; namely, that transcendent deities (no matter what their names) have no power to operate on the earth-plane. However, if people continually put their own energy into a visualization of a god (no matter what its name), then that energy must be going somewhere.
Thus we might say that people who for centuries have prayed to Jesus have caused a pool of energy to exist called "Jesus". Of course this assumes that the energy of those worshipping exceeds the amount of energy extracted by those praying for help. The energy that is stored in this pool is mundane energy. It is put in by people using their own mundane energy in their worship. Because it is the same energy as the energy developed in the Wiccan circle, when that local group prays to Jesus to stop mountain-top removal, some of the stored energy (both ancient and modern) might serve to get the result they're aiming for.
Many years ago Isaac Bonewits came up with the idea of the bank account in Mount Olympus Savings and Loan. Each deity that has been worshipped has power stored in its specific savings account; and if you can locate that account (make out a withdrawal slip/prayer request), the power in the account can be used to make things happen on the earth-plane.
Therefore it matters not which system you use: Similar results should obtain.

Meditation is Easy

Too many people make too big a production of meditation. The key thing is to find somewhere quiet and peaceful, and become quiet and peaceful yourself. If some question or thought is bugging you, you will find it extremely difficult to get a meditative answer because the fact that something is bugging you takes you out of the flatlined, serene state that allows the mind to drift free.

Q: What do you mean, flatlined state?

A: If you were to go to the doctor's office and get hooked into one of the machines that monitors your body functions, then in the state we're striving for, the readout would be essentially a flat line.

Any repetitive task that doesn't involve sudden, abrupt surprises will do. Washing dishes at a sinkful of nice warm sudsy water is ideal, provided the dishes aren't too fragile and you don't have to take too much care or worry about breaking something. Somehow having water present and involved helps meditation along. It may be that the fact of our origin in the sea ourselves so long ago in what is surely the most natural of environments, the contact with warm liquids, gets us back to a time when our problems were of an entirely different sort.
Today there are so many things that cause us stress that simply getting into the meditative state is a challenge. We have probably mentioned before our favorite mnemonic, HARP: These letters represent four words that will help you proactively limit stress.
The H stands for Humor. If you can laugh at yourself or at a situation, the stress will be removed from it.
The A stands for Avoidance. Why do you have to continually put yourself back into stressful situations when they could be avoided? Why do you always drive to work at the same time over the same route? Why not try a time when there won't be a traffic jam? Why get into a fight with a loved one or a child over things that in a few weeks' time will seem so unimportant? Just refuse to get into the fight. Just refuse to drive when you know traffic will be jammed.
The R stands for Renaming. Right now summer is starting. It's @#$* hot downtown--but it sure is pleasant at the beach. So instead of thinking what a lousy hot day it is, think of how pleasant it would be on the beach.
Finally the P stands for Place. This is a tricky one. What you need to do is try to remove yourself from the place you're in and put yourself into a pleasant environment: a safe environment. We often go through a little meditative exercise with our students. We ask them to invent a safe place: safe and pleasant and secret, one that they can keep in their mind and revisit when a situation seems to be getting out of hand.

To enhance further your ability to meditate, a glass of red wine and a chunk of dark chocolate just before starting adjust the body's endorphines so that meditation comes more easily. Of course, being "those people" (oh gasp), we also recomment an orgasm or maybe two before starting. Yes, we've said it all before and you'll hear us say it again; but meditating isn't difficult. It just takes a little time and patience.

To Pray or Meditate

It seems to us that people pray too much. All they're doing is asking some unknown deity / juju to help them with a mundane problem--not a spiritual problem but a mundane one. It reminds us of the sticky-faced kid sitting on Santa's lap in the mall concourse asking for expensive Christmas presents. Meditation, on the other hand, is listening, both to your inner self and for spiritual guidance in your problems.

In days gone by when Grandpa followed the plow and Mother did the laundry by hand on a scrubboard, they spent time with their hands busy and their minds open to receive information. This is the ideal of meditation. You have probably heard that you must sit in a certain fashion with a white robe of unbleached fabric and say certain mantras or yantras to release the mind from daily cares. Most of this is pure blah-blah (for want of a ruder term) window dressing. Yes, we teach meditation; but it is extremely elementary and certainly free from esoteric hoodoo. The only thing that sometimes worries us is that people do not do any protective measures, just to be sure that no naughty occult practitioner is playing games and sending bad vibes or entities against you ... and knows enough about such things to be effective. ("Psychic attack! Psychic attack! Squawk! I'm under psychic attack! Oh gasp.")

But once you have established a connection with the Beyond, connecting to the entity we call a Guide, such protective measures become less essential. All you need to do is sit down quietly and wait for answers to come to the questions you may have. We recommend doing it always at the same time every day, when the sun is below the horizon. We also recommend that you take a drink of red wine and perhaps eat a piece of dark chocolate to adjust your endorphines so that your body will be more relaxed. Another way of relaxing the body, of course, is to have a good strong orgasm a few moments before going into meditation. Perhaps you might want to think of meditation and prayer as the two sides of a coin. The prayer is the asking; meditation is the receiving. What is the good of asking if you never bother to wait and listen for a reply?