Prologue: Mythology, Religion, Liars, The Conspiracy Of Silence, And The Cloak Of Invisibility

“I don’t blame the circumstances, I do not blame the place and time. When I had the choice between right and wrong, I could not quite make up my mind “—Peter Yarrow, from lyrics to Arkansas

Introduction:  Mythology, Religion, Liars, The Conspiracy Of Silence, And The Cloak Of Invisibility

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”—-Joseph Goebbels

The fig leaf from the Garden Of Eden myth is used symbolically to cover our sense of shame for being our self.

Whether we’d like to admit it or not, governments, in general, are some of the shadiest organizations out there. The bigger and more powerful the country, the more likely it is to sit on a massive pile of shocking secrets. Such is the United States case, which perhaps has the most significant number of conspiracy theories drafted in its honor.  What about the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy’s assassination, the Iran Contra Affair, UFO’s, and all of the other so-called conspiracy theories did not just grow out of nowhere.  Due to the work of Congressional investigations, and the Freedom of Information Act, our country has learned that many of our so-called conspiracy theories actually do have a foundation in fact, though most times, the facts are not as clear as we would like them to be, thus subject to interpretation and political leveraging.

Our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, according to President Lincoln’s Gettysburg address..  As goes our government, so goes our citizens, so goes our government, etc.  Our governments have been designed to represent the interests of its citizens, and if the citizens are prone to keeping dangerous secrets, so also shall the government.  Historically, America has shown itself to be the People Of The Lie. The white race has shown that it has immense talent and expertise in leveraging a falsehood into a profitable enterprise for itself. For example, the European immigrants committed genocide and stole America from its native inhabitants, and kidnapped and enslaved men and women of African descent, and much of America still found a way to justify its own murderous excesses,.

Much of the American Christian Church morphed into a political ally for our capitalist economic system and government, and they are the primary agent for the proliferation of the lie that we have no value unless we adhere to their belief systems..  And when it comes to our excesses and crimes against humanity, we have learned that if we change the subject fast enough, or spin the facts in creative, though deceptive ways, we can avoid being held accountable and responsible for our own errant attitudes and actions in our world.  We are a country that has learned to scapegoat the innocent, and enrich and aggrandize the guilty among us.

Where and when are we to find our freedom, while the church and the government are trying to control us?

Where and when are we to find our freedom, while our conditioning and our traumas are still trying to tether us to an unhealthy past, while trying to control us in the present?

Why would we ever consider granting each other release from the binding arguments of our own lies and misunderstandings?

This book is a documentation of my understanding of the facts of our lives, clues about our shared human nature, and the discovery of our possibilities for the transcendence of our human condition.  Our sense of self or ego is as limited and mysterious to us in our unenlightened space as is our limited concept of God.   The only “God” that most people ever become aware of.are the lies and confusion spread by unevolved religions and their less than aware adherents, or created through our reactions to our own history.  We do not give real prayers, as we continue in earnest our culturally prescribed mutual control dramas.

In our native essence, we have a curious mind and a balanced masculine/feminine nature.  We naturally seek to understand our self and our relationship with the whole, yet we become self-conscious, judgemental, and/or uncomfortable with those assessments.  The loss of our connection with nature and our imbalanced and inaccurate perceptions of self and each other contributes to our sense of isolation, loneliness and vulnerability. If we do not make ourselves aware of the reasons behind the choices that we make in life, we remain unconscious human beings, with little true freedom.  The resulting perceptions spawned from our confusion are legion in number, and are resistant to change. It is no wonder why making a conscious choice is so difficult. One eventually has to ask:

Why is life, and the truth, so threatening?  Why would I rather hold onto a fantasy, than face myself?

The fig leaf represents denial, or our need to hide from our inner creator and all of our creations. Thus, the ceding of personal responsibility is consummated through the scapegoating, or the sacrifice, of others. Our self protective armor has evolved over hundreds of generations from a single fig leaf to become a Kevlar suit and military style weapons for far too many human beings.  As Goebbels alludes to, the truth is the greatest enemy of our culturally institutionalized misunderstanding of Life, our self, and all of our relationships with all of mankind.  This division between reality and fantasy draws its energy from the lies that we continue to tell ourselves, and vigorously defend to each other.  Our ignorance to higher possibilities began in the mythical Garden of Eden, and is where, at least conceptually, the feeling of shame and the need to tell lies to cover up our sense of inadequacy becomes, mythologically, mankind’s first experience of dishonesty, which continues unabated to today.

When we don’t have the facts that we need, we sometimes trust the version of the facts offered to us by others, or even ourselves, even if their source is the cunning “snakes in the grass”.  The lies start small, as indicated by the fig leaf. But as our defense mechanisms grow in sophistication over a period of time, eventually we clothe ourselves entirely with them.  The flaming swords of the Cherubim guard the gates back into Eden, preventing us in our now “fallen” nature from ever reentering the Garden again.  The reason is simple:  We have abandoned our native intelligence, and now all that we see is a lie, projected out of our self, until we find a release from our temptations to  believe solely in our self-defining and limiting judgements, grief, traumas and wounds.  As we return back to our innocence, we lose our need to hide from ourselves, control others, and no longer remain paralyzed by the fear of our own vulnerability and innate spiritual power.

Lies are the primary activity of the relatively unevolved mind,  a mind typically intoxicated by subservience to its hubris,  a second hand life experience,  and twisted self-centered understanding of what is good, and what is bad. Lies serve us as a creative avenue for maintaining a safe distance from threatening truths that we are not yet prepared to confront. Nobody wants to grow up to be the best liar in the world (the former President Trump might be the exception). Yet, through the living of a lie, and the telling of lies, we can convince ourselves that we have no need to adapt, adjust, understand others, accommodate, and/or heal.

Some who have been traumatized and victimized by the family, or by the community, may find little support in their search for justice and compassion, thus they are compelled to  remain silent about the abuse, fearing reprisal and spiritual assaults.  We are ALL the beloved of God, of this Universe, and of our Mother Earth, and that is a poorly comprehended and applied fact within our collective consciousness. In truth, we should also be beloved by our fellow man, and we all have felt that lack of love.  Unnecessary pain and suffering comes through denial of this truth, and is the basis for all of the social ills within civilization.

Self deception takes on added importance, and danger, in the mirror of relationships

The parable of The Emperor’s New Clothes represents in narrative form how we are susceptible to the lies of the mind being spun together,with the invisible golden threads of self-deceit.  Our deception, both to ourselves and to others, creates for us a self-perceived “cloak of invisibility”.  The lies that we tell ourselves to cover our innocence and vulnerability feel like they are spun from gold, and, at least initially, we take pride in our new version of our self. Because of our social nature, we want to look good to others, thus the parading around of our latest “clothing”.  But life will always present us with “an innocent young boy” who sees through the deception, and proclaims our nakedness before our adoring crowds.  Oh how the masses loves this eternal parade of fools, which, in our deceived state, we remain active participants.

The need to please others without first finding our real self can lead to some incredibly challenging, and embarrassing, situations. It is enlightening to note how much of the ego’s energy is devoted to it’s own recognition, when there was a shortage of loving attention very early in life. The ego, both individual and collective, is created from a desperate call for love from a world that has not yet learned how to listen to and to love itself.

Through our own unwillingness to embrace this world with love, with its ever evolving truth, we tend to maintain a caricature of our real self, and we build an almost impenetrable fortress around this misunderstanding (this idol, or self creation, is called our “ego”), thus perpetuating a culturally conditioned war both against the present moment, and all who appear unlike ourselves. Acts and attitudes of duplicity and folie-a- deux characterize much of the crazy making attitudes and communication styles. The need to tell lies is a confirmation that we are practicing denial of our basic truth, and are not yet courageous enough to face our self completely and honestly.  When we don’t honor our own truth, we share in our culture’s conspiracy of silence created to continue the perpetuation of those control dramas that prove we are anything but children of God.

Be conscious, oh Mankind, of those pain filled secrets that we must keep,

For by our suffering silence, we slowly die, while staying disempowered and asleep.

The so-called cultural conspiracy of silence is spawned through our culture’s accommodations to our lying nature, the need to hide from those lies, and it manifests itself in two primary ways.  First, the conspiracy embodies all of the shameful ideas that we have thought and  acted upon, sometimes culminating in intentional harm to self, and to other.  We keep our secrets close to the chest and fear our day of reckoning, when others may see through our surface stories to the hidden truth behind our senseless fear,  heartless indifference or hatred of our self and others.  A compelling part of this conspiracy is that others also share in this activity of keeping dangerous secrets, secrets that are attacks against our self, the (potentially) innocent other, and the truth.  This mutually imprisons all of us.  And this is a most important component of the common knowledge game, an activity that I will devote a lot of attention to in a future chapter.

Second, the conspiracy indicates a hesitancy to talk with others around our spiritual potential, and our innate ability to connect with and manifest a more aware, intelligent, state of being.  Those who are avid in their church attendance may believe that merely belonging to a particular tribe, be it Judaic Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, they are already granted their necessary grace, as if through a magical dispensation..They are threatened by talk that indicates that their way may not be in resonance with “God’s will”, and they shut down all points of view in disagreement with their own,  Others feel their resistance to any truth not already understood and applied.  Many just turn their heads, and their words, away from the resistant person, knowing that their own new or elevated understanding, or true spiritual discernment, makes them invisible to those who refuse to look at life anew, from a shared love or more collaborative perspective.

Who wants to spend their lives continuously  in confrontation with the unevolved?  Thus, those not trained or equipped to qualify for the debate team just smile, and walk away, keeping their words to themselves.  We may remain silent because of our own perceived inadequacy at presenting a supporting and compelling argument for our own point of view, fearing the indifference and rejection from others..  Those with personalized versions of our culture’s institutionalized hatred or judgements, such as white supremacists, toxic forms of masculinity,  misanthropic gun owners, and/or religious and political fundamentalism are especially resistant to open communication.  Such people may even  feel that their freedom and way of life are threatened.

The presidential election of 2020 showed that there were 72,000,000 voters who picked, perhaps,  the most obvious and outrageous liar and deceiver to ever take political office.  And, of the 79,000,000 voters who opted for the more evolved alternative, who knows what percentage of those voters voted against the liar only because they did not have a well defined point of view, and a vote for Biden aligned them with their own tribe, yet not with their own heart.  It takes a person of the highest order of spiritual integrity to successfully confront such attitudes while maintaining compassion and equanimity, thus not being threatened or degraded by the contact.

Spiritual freedom has never been about guns, money, or religion.  Good luck communicating and collaborating successfully with someone stuck in their own tribal and personal self-righteousness.

This is a critical part of the conspiracy of silence.  We become invisible to each other, the less that we are curious about others while becoming unwilling to communicate with each other,  and the less we remain curious about ourselves.  We become invisible to our self when we sit on our voice, and fail to listen to our essence as our inner voice cries out for justice, peace, healing, and change.

As a culture, we also need to remember that our mentally ill population, which includes the addicts and the alcoholics, are society’s “canaries in the gold mine”. We are all susceptible to the damages incurred by spiritual asphyxiation, should we neglect to listen to the stories being told by our most vulnerable family members. The sensitive and the oppressed of our culture define the leading edge of the journey of our own shared human experience and are indicators of our collective spiritual condition.

There is a cultural conspiracy of silence, and that fact remains beyond question. Those who have been traumatized by their own, or their family member’s, mental illness often do not communicate their distress, and thus suffer in silence. There are many secrets that are kept, that are held close to the heart, for the victimized, the broken, and the ill do not have the language, nor the receptive audience to share their trauma and pain, with. Some traumas are so painful and distressing that the victim is fearful that the revelation of their disease will bring harm to others, or further harm to themselves. And major sectors our culture remains judgmental, uncaring and indifferent to the plight of the suffering, and close their minds, hearts, and ears to those in need, so that they can continue relatively unbothered in their own selfish, self serving worlds.

I have been personally impacted at the deepest, most profound levels, and my own mental illness and addictions as a teenager and young adult were a cause of greatest concern for myself, my family, and my community, as well. I have been victimized by mental illness, addiction, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and my path through life has made me a reluctant expert in these matters. Not only is remaining unconscious and victimized not a helpful option now, It is inappropriate and unhealthy for me to keep a silence around these issues, as I tend to be as sick as my secrets. In my unhealthy past, my conditioned response would be to keep silent, as I had nothing of value to share with the world, and/or the world could give a shit about what I had to say anyway. Extrapolate that response to all of life, and we can perceive the isolating framework that imprisons much of the American psyche..

We continue to feel forced to argue for our own limitations. Yet, to argue for those illusions is to ultimately prove their existence, for that which the mind focuses upon and identifies with, it attempts to develop a supportive narrative around.  Concurrently, if we continue to argue for and defend the world’s present chaotic, limited state of awareness, those illusions become further entrenched within our matrix of understanding.  In the seeing of our problems is the pathway to our release from them, and to our liberation, revealed.  Let us walk with assurance and integrity upon these new paths, after fully understanding the errant paths that we are presently wandering upon.

The mythical story of Theseus and the Minotaur provides for us an allegorical sign that points in the direction towards our own healing potential.. .Theseus had to travel deep into the labyrinth (the human mind) to confront, and to defeat, the Minotaur (our lies, fears, traumas and deep woundedness that negatively impacts our life).  Yet, Theseus would not have had success, had he not left a trail of string, to follow back out of the labyrinth,  after the Minotaur’s defeat..  Theseus had a “clew”, or, in our modern terminology,  a clue, or way to finally escape the clutches of a mind under the influence of its darker side.  Those with a serious drug, alcohol problem have been given many clues, they just have not yet successfully struggled through the maze of their own mind to find and slay the real beast that keeps them seeking intoxication to the point of their own detriment.

We had better have a very good clew/clue before engaging our hidden monsters within our deep interior labyrinthine minds

J.R.Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy is a fantastic “Middle Earth” variation on the same theme, with the heroes Samwise  and Frodo taking the Ring back to its source in Mordor.  We must confront the dark tricksters and defeat and silence them, or remain controlled by them.  It is OUR responsibility to find our freedom, and blaming others for our creations is a failed, though socially acceptable, solution.

Consciousness itself is the Garden of Eden, Adam, Eve, the Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Apple, God, the labyrinth, the Minotaur, the Emperor’s New clothes, and the innocent boy calling out our lies. And, we are that Consciousness.  Jesus of Nazareth clearly stated that humanity is the prodigal son.  We have strayed far from Eden, and feast in the pig pen of an unevolved human experience.  Yet, the journey back to our true nature, or essence,  though being a most difficult endeavor, is the most rewarding, experience that life has to offer.  If we commit to traveling upon new paths of consciousness, eventually, Eden will reappear within our interior vision, and we need spin no more illusions of our self in vain attempts to capture the attention of others.

We can all return to our essence, to our original “Garden of Eden” state, but we had better have a “clew”.  Otherwise, we will remain trapped in our labyrinth of self deception and spiritual corruption until the end . Without the healing of our wounds,  loving acceptance of our self and each other remains impossible, we remain separated from our true nature, and we continue being dominated by our demons from the past.. The conspiracy of silence still reigns supreme, and our religions, economic policies, politics, and, in general, our collective consciousness, continues to give more support to our fantasies, rather than to facts and reality.  “Spin to win” is the propagandists slogan, and is a tool for oppression. By such processes throughout our history disputed or disproven “facts” are used to create theories that promote division, chaos, and disease within our world.

Be aware of those fig leafs, and automatic weapons.  Watch out for those minotaurs.  Listen for that innocent child who is trying to call BULLSHIT on the parade of fools.

Beware of those institutions of government, religion, and politics as they force feed the population lies and misstatements of the truth in order to maintain their own self-serving “order”.

Eventually, without collectively AND individually embracing our troubling issues and seeking healing from them, the  chaos and division created through the lie, or Armageddon,  will eventually overwhelm the culture, and threaten civilization with its very destruction.  And, the most “religious” humans among us will suffer the same fate as the most profane, for we all are living the LIE.  When the planet’s ecological balance is irreparably damaged through the actions of man, Armageddon  will not separate the ” good from the bad”, it will only separate humanity from its ability to live, and to thrive.

I do not care to read the post apocalyptic narrative that will be created by the ignorant, or the wise, survivors.   We can choose to work together to defeat the cultural Minotaur.  We can work together to take the dark ring back to Mordor.  We can work together to repair the gates to Eden to make paradise accessible once again,

We are free to make new choices, and thus travel new paths of consciousness.

We can dramatically improve our perceptual aim, and  finally hit love’s bullseye with consistency.

Freedom is only for those brave enough to seek it, while breaking free of our culture’s historical shackles.

We can break free from the narratives created by the religious and politicized people of the LIE.  We must find a way to bring Love’s eternal order out of the chaos of the normal human experience.  By improving our perceptual aim, we will hit Love’s bullseye more consistently.

We can save the world . . . from our unhealed self.

We can stop hiding from ourselves. . . and from each other.

Prepare to take the journey to meet our real Maker!