Cultural Contexts

Jim and I have now completed all the film-watching we had planned of the Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s Broadway stage musicals that were later made into Hollywood movies. And even though the movies were primarily produced in the 1950s, for me they have represented many of the predominant cultural patterns from the 1940s and 1950s in the United States, before the large-scale cultural upheavals began here in the 1960s and 1970s. (Until 1968 there had been censorship guidelines for the film industry called the Hays Code, that spelled out what was acceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States … and I think the Hays Code directly represented some of the cultural limitation agreements at the time. Then after 1968, a film rating system was introduced.)

During our recent movie-watching process, Jim and I also added a made-for-television Rodgers and Hammerstein production from March 31, 1957—Cinderella, with Julie Andrews in the title role. It was reported to have been seen by over 100 million people in the U.S., fully 60% of the country‘s population at the time. Watching the fairy tale in February 2011 provided a fresh picture of some of the underlying patterns that are part of our Western world and mutual European backgrounds for gender relationships.

In Cinderella, she is a poor but beautiful young woman, while he is a handsome and rich prince—a story line that played out with different versions over and over again in movies I saw on Friday nights with my parents in the later 1930s and most of the 1940s. At a minimum the male needed to be able to support them both because the female had limited options to make much money in those days; and besides, it was her gender role to take care of the home and family. In many of the films, before marriage she was a secretary, store clerk, or struggling actress, and he was a successful businessman.

Jim and I have also completed hearing/seeing two of the three proposed CD/DVD series from The Teaching Company about our American past—America‘s religious history, and its philosophical/intellectual history. Furthermore, we ordered and watched a two-hour film—A More Perfect Union: America Becomes a Nation—based upon the 1787 convention of delegates in Philadelphia, convened to modify or streamline the Articles of Confederation, out of which the Constitution of the United States then emerged. (The film had been officially recognized by the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution as of “exceptional merit.”)

To all of those perspectives I mentally integrated some of what I read in the Prince of Wales‘ recent book, Harmony, A New Way of Looking at Our World. He wrote that from the seventeenth century onward, science was able to view Nature as inanimate, unconscious, and mechanistic. He says the British worldview had become “a mechanistic mindset,” wherein humans were separate and separated from the natural world.

So watching film representations of the men who crafted our country‘s foundation in A More Perfect Union as people amidst their time and context too—inheritors of British traditions, laws, agreements, and worldviews—was illuminating. There was a mutual background of individual rights and the rule of law. I think the combinations of who those individual men were, their industriousness, their educations (including their ongoing self-educations), their mutual beliefs, the economic opportunities available in “the New World,” and numerous other factors combined into a potent mix that has grown and been developed to become what the United States of America is today.

And now, many people in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, within their historical and current-day contexts, are expressing their desires for more freedom and economic opportunities. At the same time, they don‘t have a whole continent of resources such as the colonists had in the New World. They also don‘t have the backgrounds the American colonists had from the previous European Age of Reason, the European Scientific Revolution, the European Christian religious past, the English Magna Carta of 1215, and subsequent English laws. What people elsewhere do have are their own backgrounds and belief structures—which I think are very wise to be aware of as patterned energies in motion from their past into their present.

One of the things I‘m saying is I believe there is an overall cultural cohesiveness within each era in each geographic location that includes its past … and to my mind they all have had and have value in their own ways. By not using any filters of superiority/inferiority, dualistic opposition, or competition, I can use a lens that Sees the value of us all amidst the contexts we live in today, along with those contexts within which earlier people lived.

In terms of Going Beyond into A Completely Different Reality, I still come back to a perspective I expressed in the essay “Freedom” I blog-posted on 9/23/10—that for me a wholer, fuller freedom is liberation from one‘s culturally conditioned mind. Hence, clearly Understanding one‘s cultural past and present can be used as stepping stones during the process of Liberation. Then, no matter what culture one is amidst, being free and liberated from embedded cultural patterns can open up new and fresh ways of thinking, everywhere. That is, it really can be a more even playing field as each individual spirit-being person who chooses to access a dimension of basic Oneness, achieves her or his vaster and more wholistic potential > > and then keeps on expanding.

With Respect for Each of Us, J.

More Than One Experiment?

While Being amidst a large-scale culmination time this winter, a few weeks ago I began freshly exploring “The Land of Our Births”—the United States of America, starting with its originations—from a perspective of Understanding the various background threads that have made up our nation‘s overall and complex story. Along the way I have been placing that picture in a global context—our country‘s relationship or lack of same with other countries. And beyond that, I have been Seeing the whole thing within what I‘ve called a spirit-being experiment for the past thousands of years, where trouble-causing patterns were energized by spirit-being humans and played out as experiences in individual, group, and national Lives. All together, it has become a dynamic tapestry.

One conclusion that has emerged so far is that not only is it quite likely there has been a vaster spirit-being experiment taking place globally for thousands of years, the United States of America may also be an experiment—that is, its origination and development has been and is an experiment within a bigger experiment, (which is a probability I am currently delving into).

Yes, almost a year ago I did successfully dissolve plans I had for any more studies such as going back into the U.S. historical past and threading out the earlier patterns which have evolved and grown to the present—which was wonderfully freeing at the time! Then as “I” personally evolved and expanded, a few weeks ago inner urgings directed me to get into the two small baskets of materials I had collected about “The Land of Our Births.” They were still cozily stored under my desk upstairs (which I had not taken downstairs yet).

Within the baskets, in addition to many other materials, I discovered one DVD and two CD courses from The Teaching Company that I had previously purchased during their sales, before removing that study from my future plans … all of which I had not seen or heard yet. They included America‘s religious history, its philosophy and intellectual history, and Frenchman Alexis de Touqueville‘s observations about the U.S. during his visit here in 1831 and 1832, from which he later wrote Democracy in America, a two-volume study of the American people and their institutions. When I asked Jim if he was interested in joining me while I watched and heard the DVD and CD courses, he was positive—seeing it as a great finale to many of the studies we had done in earlier years.

At the time when I asked Jim if he was interested in joining me with my U.S. historical focuses, along with still and video photography, he was immersed in his musical interests and studies, focusing on composer Richard Rodgers‘ accomplishments with his two main collaborators, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. He was also bringing in other composers from that era—primarily the first half of the 20th century—like Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. (Jim is entranced with beautiful melodies and harmonies, and thinks he may eventually like to do his own composing.)

The above people were all connected to stage productions in New York City, from which many Hollywood movies were later made. Therefore, Jim‘s New York stage interests have correlated with my earlier Life in southern California from the later 1930s through most of the 1940s. I have laughingly said that while other families went to church together on Sunday, in those years my family‘s weekly activity was a Friday night double feature at a local movie theater … all of which fed us participants at church and the movie theaters weekly doses of certain cultural patterns at the time. (In those years my parents believed in a remote God “up there” to whom they prayed nightly, and I was free to attend numerous Protestant Sunday schools and churches with various friends.)

My mother especially loved musicals and musical comedies, so over the years I probably saw more than a hundred of them. Anyway, this winter Jim and I have been and are watching many DVDs of earlier movies, such as Kern and Hammerstein‘s Showboat; Rodger‘s and Hart‘s Pal Joey; and films based on some of Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s Broadway productions: Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music. Last week we saw State Fair, the only musical Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote directly for film. We both have greatly appreciated Oscar Hammerstein‘s lyrics, starting with Showboat. Oscar described himself as 1/3 realist and 2/3 mystic, and I certainly agree. To my mind, his lyrics often went far beyond poetry and spirituality.

After Jim decided to join with me and my American history DVD/CD studies, he and I began to correlate our evening film-watching with my materials, and it has really worked out well as many elements of our American past have become vibrantly alive nightly. Also, it‘s been very enlightening to See those movie “models-for-life” from my current-day perspectives and who/what I Am today.

A major difference between the plan I had envisioned almost a year ago about studying the multiple patterns that are embedded in our United States‘ past and what I have been doing recently, is its scope and purpose. Even though I‘ve been going through a lot of materials, both during the day and with Jim in the evening, I‘ve been doing it primarily as a personal process, instead of doing it as a pattern study to then write about.

Concurrently, with considerable Compassion and interest I‘ve been following recent events as they have unfolded in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere. Connecting those events with my American history studies, the original United States of America as we know it today was founded by people with desires for more personal freedom from their previous restrictions along with enhanced economic opportunities. And in the present I have been witnessing people in other parts of the world also seeking more freedom from their previous restrictions along with more economic opportunities too.

What will happen now? Obviously this is a very different world today than the one out of which the United States of America came into existence. As I Understand it, the combined human species within our global industrial matrixes has been using up many of the world‘s natural resources, including clean water and fertile soils. The human population is currently a little over seven billion. And today, we‘re all living on an Earth where there are dramatic climate-change effects manifesting—floods, drought, severe weather, and people who are hungry and homeless. (Nonetheless, I think that trying to feed people and animals with genetically modified food is an unwise choice.)

So how can young people, and people of all ages around the world attain their goals of better Lives in an environment of increasing pollution and diminished/diminishing natural resources? What is a better Life? It seems to me the answers need to come from multitudes of individuals effectively using her or his own point of divine power amidst an expanded dimension of Oneness. And I think that standing back as a liberated spirit-being human amidst any culture in today‘s world can be both an identity and a position anyone anywhere on the globe can choose to use.

With Unlimited Best Wishes To Us All, J.

Growing A Pot of Safety and Peace

During my recent culmination time, when as-a-composite-Being, I Am both liberated and open daily to multiple connections from the past, future, and elsewhere, I‘ve been experiencing Understandings from amidst a completely different reality. At present, a large portion of my emphases is to encourage and be available to what emerges, both invisibly and visibly.

One event that has taken place is that the pot of peace I imaginatively planted and described in my last blog posting—that is, peace that goes far beyond wars and battles—grew in expanded and invisible dimensions before I even got the painting of it started. As I now See people and events, I believe that without feeling safe, there can be no real peace. In Jim and My Lives in the past, so many of our confrontational actions and counteractions took place amidst an environment where neither one of us felt safe-enough within our individual matrixes, so we brought in our protections! That is, when either one of us felt threatened, in various ways we each used defense/offense cultural tactics we had learned.

And now in the present, I Am a Being who is comfortably energizing divine safety along with peace for myself and others, as part of my contributions to the overall current-day spirit-human events. I‘ve Realized that I can truly create a personal core that is both integrous and untouchable, without needing protections, while also horizontally Appreciating others for their positions and perspectives. Of course, if someone‘s sense of safety is built upon dominating and controlling others, and/or feeling superior or inferior, more than likely we won‘t even connect. And more than likely there will also be non-connections with those who are choosing to maintain (and defend) their current sense of identity, their worldviews, and the status quo.

For his part, Jim is even more experientially Realizing there are other ways to experience one‘s strength and personal power than the ways he learned to be a cultural male. And one of Jim and My current focuses is on even more skillful and easier mental/emotional communication processes.

With Best Wishes from A Winter Wonderland of Snow, J