Fractal Focus on Our Common Reality 2020

Watched “The Plot Against the President” last night with several others who live here, not all of us on the same page politically. I was grateful for our unstated agreement not to burst out with either yays or nays at any point in the film, due to the presence of others who, we all knew, were “on the other side.”

And as one of them said afterwards, not having budged one inch in her point of view, “that’s just one way of telling the story.” Which is exactly what I would have said, were I her! Everyone has a unique point of view, that particular point from which he or she is viewing, and spreading out into space like a beam of light, illuminating certain aspects of “reality” and ignoring others, its rays focusing from a lifetime of sifting though various, usually “second-hand sources” that one tends to trust or not, depending upon the coloration one is giving, moment by moment, to the changing? settled? fixed? gestalt one has placed upon the vast accumulation of memories we label as our “world-view.”

This particular woman, also named Ann, though she goes by “Annie,” is a long-time friend of Green Acres Village, and she also happens to be a new housemate! Annie wants to “discuss” the movie we watched last night at this evening’s family dinner (we hold them once a week, though in this Covid era we no longer invite people from far and wide to join, so no longer calling it “Community Dinner”).

I personally am declining her invitation. I have decided not to discuss politics with her, ever. Why?

Given that she and I both feel passionately about “what is really going on” at this seemingly climactic era in human history; given that she and I inhabit radically polarized mental/emotional worlds (now called “silos”), both of which have been built up over many years research and experience; given that we are both intelligent and sincere in the views we hold, and that neither of us holds serious ill will towards the other — I want to keep it that way. To discuss a movie like this, made by Republicans, presumably, to show how deep state networks of bureaucrats and Democrat politicians schemed up and covered for, a coup against this sitting president, would almost inevitably, in these volatile Mars square Jupiter/Saturn/Pluto times, segue into argument or debate, using point by point (seeming) “facts,” each of which is meant to buttress and/or explain and/or undermine  one or the other’s larger context of meaning. But since the contexts of meaning that each of us (especially the two Ann’s) have built up over literally decades, are utterly divergent, what good does it do to debate particular data points? All this does is trigger and stir up the volatile anger, lurking in the collective just underneath, and fed, on a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute basis, by screaming headlines over mainstream and social media.

Forget it! We have plenty to focus on, together, here at home, where we face real, practical problems, some of which she, especially, I am very grateful to say, has insights into that have eluded Dan and myself. For example: why is the kitchen sink backing up? Well, guess what? Tiny particulates from my daily batches of homemade chai elixir have been accumulating. This Annie noted, as she handed me the extremely fine meshed strainer she had just bought to solve the problem. YES! That diagnosis of the problem, and that solution to it,  had never occurred to me.

Meanwhile, Dan is going to take it apart, and hopefully fix it today . . .

Speaking of fractals . . . hmmm . . . pipe clogged, just as the love-pipe that naturally courses through the collective unconscious is clogged with old swampy gunk that needs to be purged in order for life-giving waters to flow again. That gunk is covered by anger — fury at being wrong; fury at being right, and long ignored; fury at having one’s evil deeds exposed; fury at having allowed “authorities” to tell us lies; on and on, one can forever “spin” the onslaught of BREAKING NEWS!! that just presses massively forward, wave upon wave, this “Red October,” no end to it, no time to absorb, contemplate, discern, integrate.

And meanwhile, we’re all supposed to wear masks?

I see this vibrant little household on Overhill Drive, Bloomington, Indiana, as one tiny potent fractal of the entire U.S. population at this pivotal moment in human history when slow-moving, and thus epoch-defining Pluto (conjunct Jupiter and Saturn in 2020) approaches its return for the very first time to the degree it occupied when the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. Powerful, prime mover Pluto, so far in our nation’s history, has been used largely in an adolescent fashion, as “power over” other nations, at war fully 93% of the time. Now that penchant for making war has boomeranged back on us. We are at war with one another, and to get through this fractious time we are being asked, as a nation, to grow up. Use Plutonian power responsibly. Help each other attune to the mysterious, all-pervading power from within that courses through the universe.

More deeply polarized politically than ever before in our national history, and instantly “triggered” to fight with words or worse, we can instead choose  to sink below our egos’ elaborate mental constructs of the wider world —

— to consciously engage Pluto’s primal life force energy within ourselves. What we are actually working with in our day to day lives? What struggles do we have in common? Here is where cooperation can begin. A renewal of trust, love, goodness.