‘A magnificent and devastating work of art. There is a raging anger here, and a deep sorrow, but at the core Haydar gives us truths about love. This is one of the most important books I’ve ever read.’ Bri Lee
‘I am from a family of strong women.’
Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had been mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder.
After her mother’s death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents’ relationship. They had been unhappy for so long – should she have known that it would end like this? A lawyer by profession, she also saw the holes in the justice system for addressing and combating emotional abuse and coercive control.
Amani also had to reckon with the weight of familial and cultural context. Her parents were brought together in an arranged marriage, her mother thirteen years her father’s junior. Her grandmother was brutally killed in the 2006 war in Lebanon, adding complex layers of intergenerational trauma.
Writing with grace and beauty, Amani has drawn from this a story of female resilience and the role of motherhood in the home and in the world. In The Mother Wound, she uses her own strength to help other survivors find their voices.
‘Gripping, transcendent, tender and, at times, infuriating. With a daughter’s heart and a lawyer’s mind, Amani Haydar maps the territory that connects the wars we fight abroad to the wars we endure in our homes.’ – Jess Hill
The Wheel of Fortune is numbered ten and is usually shown as a great wheel. Sometimes Fortuna is seen, turning the wheel for all eternity. There are people or animals on the Wheel – some are falling off to be crushed, some are struggling to stay on, while a solitary figure makes no attempt to maintain its position but succeeds anyway.
Fortune is not the same as luck. We make our own luck and follow our own destiny. Good fortune comes from the still centre which contains the very heart of ourselves. The seasons will continue to wheel, the sun will rise and set, the planets will move in their allotted courses – with or without us.
If we struggle against the flow of life, we become those struggling to ascend the Wheel, or even one of those crushed beneath it. However, if we realise our own power to create a beneficial future and then trust in that vision, we shall become the still figure, master of our own universe.
5iF3R Jan 7, 2011 Volume 1 of 5 in the ‘speaking freely’ series. (52 minutes) For many years John Perkins claimed to have been working as something he defines to be like an “economic hit man in the world of international finance”; a function he performed by persuading Third World countries to take on large -scale public works projects. Today, we recognize that these types of projects, financed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), have served to enrich U.S. corporations while creating crippling debt for these countries, effectively turning them into American client states. Experiencing a change of heart, Perkins resigned from the business in 1981. After running a utility company, he founded the nonprofit organization, Dream Change Coalition (http://www.dreamchange.org), which works closely with Amazonian and other indigenous people to help preserve their environments and cultures. Take the time for a conversation with Perkins about globalization and inequality around the world. Produced: 2007, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1245106/ www.johnperkins.org, www.dreamchange.org For a better quality copy please visit Cinemalibre @ http://www.cinemalibrestudio.com
The Astrology Podcast Nov 27, 2019 Part 1 of our series on the meanings of the 12 houses in astrology, with astrologers Kelly Surtees, Austin Coppock, and Chris Brennan. At the beginning of the episode we review some basic conceptual structures that are necessary for understanding how the houses got their meanings, such as the concept of angularity, good and bad houses, and the planetary joys. After that beginning material is out of the way, we begin by talking about the first house and what it means within the context of natal astrology, followed by the rest in zodiacal order. We don’t really deal with the issue of house division much in this episode, since that was covered partially in a recent episode on the origins of the different forms of house division in astrology. This is the first of a two part series, and the rest of the houses will be dealt with in part 2, which should be released sometime next month. Patrons of the podcast will get early access. This is a followup to our previous episodes where we talked about the significations of the seven traditional planets, and the qualities and meanings of the zodiac signs, part 1 and part 2. This was the first episode that we recorded when we got together in Denver last week to record a bunch of episodes in person in our studio. Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction and Preliminary Considerations 00:02:48 House Division 00:05:38 Purpose of the Houses 00:10:13 Angular, succedent, and cadent houses 00:13:57 Diurnal rotation and astronomy of the houses 00:20:45 Order of the houses 00:24:00 Zodiac signs not the same as houses 00:36:30 Joys of the planets 00:38:40 Angular triads, meaning of cadent and succedent 00:41:11 Good and bad houses 00:50:00 1st house 01:26:50 2nd house 01:58:16 3rd house 02:30:32 4th house 02:54:22 5th house 03:18:21 6th house 03:42:24 Concluding remarks, where to learn more.
Lifespring was an American for-profithuman potential organization founded in 1974 by John Hanley Sr., Robert White, Randy Revell, and Charlene Afremow.[1][2][3] The organization encountered significant controversy in the 1970s and 1980s, with various academic articles characterizing Lifespring’s training methods as “deceptive and indirect techniques of persuasion and control”, and allegations that Lifespring was a cult that used coercive methods to prevent members from leaving. These allegations were highlighted in a 1987 article in The Washington Post as well as local television reporting in communities where Lifespring had a significant presence.
Before becoming defunct in the mid-1990s, Lifespring claimed that it had trained more than 400,000 people through its ten centers across the United States.
Key people
Lifespring was founded by John Hanley Sr. along with Robert White, Randy Revell, and Charlene Afremow. By October 1987, Hanley owned 92.7 percent of the company.[4] Prior to Lifespring, Hanley had worked for the multi-level marketing organization Holiday Magic.[4] He and the other founders had also worked for Mind Dynamics with Werner Erhard, the founder of est, which became the basis for Landmark Education.[5]Holiday Magic was founded by William Penn Patrick, co-owner and board member for Mind Dynamics.[6] Holiday Magic later folded amidst investigations by authorities and accusations of being a pyramid scheme.[7][8]
The Director for Corporate Affairs of Lifespring, Charles “Raz” Ingrasci,[9] had also worked at est to promote a mission to the USSR and the Hunger Project. Ingrasci is now President of the Hoffman Institute, an organization founded in 1967 and also part of the human potential movement which offers programs which are similar to Lifespring’s.[10][11]
Course overview
The Lifespring training generally involved a three-level program starting with a “basic” training, an “advanced” breakthrough course, and a three-month “leadership program” which taught the students how to implement what they learned from the training into their lives. “There is no hope” is a fundamental tenet in the course. The fundamental purpose of the leadership program was enrollment, participants were told the city and the world is at stake and the only solution was enrolling as many people into the trainings as possible.[12] Less than two percent found them to be “of no value”.[12] Graduates were often eager to share their own experiences in the training with family, friends, and co-workers, although they were precluded from sharing fellow trainees’ experiences. There was never any compensation for assisting in enrolling others into the workshops.[12] However, another, independent study found, “The merging, grandiosity, and identity confusion that has been encouraged and then exploited in the training in order to control participants is now used to tie them to Vitality (Lifespring) in the future by enrolling them in new trainings and enlisting them as recruiters.”[13]
The basic training was composed of successive sessions on Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday day and night, Sunday day and night, a Tuesday night post-training session ten days after graduation, and a post-training interview. Evening sessions began at 6:30 pm and lasted until 11:30 or 12 or later. Saturday sessions started at 10 am and lasted until approximately midnight. Sunday sessions started at 9 am and lasted until approximately 6 pm. The trainings were usually held in the convention facilities of large, easily accessible, moderate priced hotels (i.e., mid-town New York). A basic training was usually composed of 150–200 participants, while an advanced training was composed of 75-100 participants. Approximately 50 percent of advanced training graduates participated in the leadership program. Training also included alumni volunteers who served as small group leaders, several official staff, an assistant trainer, and a head trainer.[13]
The training consisted of a series of lectures and experiential processes designed to show the participants a new manner of contending with life situations and concerns and how other possible explanations and interpretations may lead to different results. Some individuals complained that they felt harangued, embarrassed, or humiliated by the trainer during the training. A few individuals chose not to complete the training. Additionally, the trainer used many English words in a manner different from their usual meaning. “Commitment”, for instance, was defined as “the willingness to do whatever it takes”. “Conclusion” was defined as a belief. Also, words such as “responsibility”, “space”, “surrender”, “experience”, “trust”, “consideration”, “unreasonable”, “righteous”, “totally participate”, “from your head”, “openness”, “letting go” were redefined or used so as to assign them a more specific meaning.[13] “Stretch” was an activity that was outside the participant’s comfort zone. During the advanced course the participants were sometimes sent out to perform certain tasks. If any participant did not complete their task the group was considered in “breakdown “.
Lifespring claims to have trained more than 400,000 people through its ten centers across the country.[citation needed] A number of lawsuits were filed against Lifespring (personal communication with trainers), including two cases in which deaths allegedly resulted from trainings. Lifespring settled most of the suits.[citation needed]
In one case an asthmatic was allegedly told that her asthma exacerbation was psychological and later died from the exacerbation. The lawsuit was settled for $450,000, and Lifespring admitted no wrongdoing. In another case a man who could not swim was made to jump into a river and drowned. This case was also settled out of court.[22] Many suits said the trainings placed participants under extreme psychological stress.
The Washington Post published an article about the company in 1987.[4] It quotes Hanley as saying, “If a thousand people get benefit from the training, and one person is harmed, I’d can it. I have an absolute commitment for having this training work for every person who takes it.” However, according to the Post, by 1987 Hanley and other Lifespring executives had known for more than a decade that some people were not suited for this level of personal inquiry. As evidence, the Post cited:
Talk among top company officials about how to make the trainings less harsh while maintaining their effectiveness
Dozens of reports submitted to Hanley in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Lifespring staff about participants who became panicky, confused, or nervous
Over time, the training company began qualifying students and required doctors’ signatures for people who might require therapy rather than coaching.
Criticism
The Post also reported in the same article that Hanley had been convicted of six counts of felonymail fraud in 1969, and was given a five-year suspended sentence.[4]
In 1980, a federal judge rejected Hanley’s request to have the felony conviction removed from his record. His request for a presidential pardon was also denied.[4]
In 1990 KARE-TV (Channel 11, Minneapolis-St. Paul) ran a segment called “Mind Games?” that Lifespring said was deceptive and sensationalized.[9]
One prominent critic of Lifespring is Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court JusticeClarence Thomas. A congressional aide when she took the course, Mrs. Thomas said in an interview with the Post that she was troubled by exercises that involved stripping, sexual questions, and body shaming. After talking with a cult deprogrammer, she decided she needed to stop participating, but it took several months of work to overcome the “high-pressure tactics” to fully break with Lifespring. Afterwards, she received “constant phone calls” to pressure her to stay with the group, and ended up relocating to another part of the country to escape the calls.[23]
Peter Byrne tells the story of Hugh Everett III (1930-1982), whose “many worlds” theory of multiple universes has had a profound impact on physics and philosophy. Using Everett’s unpublished papers (recently discovered in his son’s basement) and dozens of interviews with his friends, colleagues, and surviving family members, Byrne paints, for the general reader, a detailed portrait of the genius who invented an astonishing way of describing our complex universe from the inside. Everett’s mathematical model (called the “universal wave function”) treats all possible events as “equally real,” and concludes that countless copies of every person and thing exist in all possible configurations spread over an infinity of universes: many worlds. Afflicted by depression and addictions, Everett strove to bring rational order to the professional realms in which he played historically significant roles. In addition to his famous interpretation of quantum mechanics, Everett wrote a classic paper in game theory; created computer algorithms that revolutionized military operations research; and performed pioneering work in artificial intelligence for top secret government projects. He wrote the original software for targeting cities in a nuclear hot war; and he was one of the first scientists to recognize the danger of nuclear winter. As a Cold Warrior, he designed logical systems that modeled “rational” human and machine behaviors, and yet he was largely oblivious to the emotional damage his irrational personal behavior inflicted upon his family, lovers, and business partners. He died young, but left behind a fascinating record of his life, including correspondence with such philosophically inclined physicists as Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and John Wheeler. These remarkable letters illuminate the long and often bitter struggle to explain the paradox of measurement at the heart of quantum physics. In recent years, Everett’s solution to this mysterious problem-the existence of a universe of universes-has gained considerable traction in scientific circles, not as science fiction, but as an explanation of physical reality.
Many of you are aware that Al Haferkamp, H.W., M. resigned his position as Dean of The Prosperos earlier this year. A search committee was then setup by the Board of Trustees to find a new Dean. They informed our H.W. Members of the vacancy and asked for applicants from anyone interested in the position.
Originally, we had 3 candidates nominated but two declined. One was eliminated because he did not want to follow the system. Therefore, we only had one candidate make it through the entire process. That candidate was William Fennie, H.W., M.
The Board of Trustees met on Sunday, 6/19/2022 and William was unanimously chosen to be the next Dean of The Prosperos. Note that the Dean is affirmed or renounced every year at the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees.
Additionally, in the same time frame, Heather Williams, H.W., M. resigned from the Board of Trustees. A search for a new board member was ensued. We picked Calvin Harris, H.W., M as our new board member by a unanimous decision.
Since William is now Dean and member of the Executive Council he is no longer on the Board of Trustees. So, we are searching for yet another member for the Board. Any H.W. member who is interested should contact me at the email address below.
Please extend welcome to our new Dean, William Fennie, H.W., M. as well as our newest member of the Board of Trustees, Calvin Harris, H.W., M.
We also extend much gratitude to Al Haferkamp for his many years of service to The Prosperos and look forward to working with William and Calvin.
On June 29th, 2022 we have a New Moon at 7° Cancer. The New Moon is conjunct Black Moon Lilith and square Jupiter in Aries.
This is a bold, action-oriented New Moon. Cancer is our inner mama bear; it is what we hold dear to our heart. Jupiter in Aries is bold and doesn’t take “no” for an answer. A square is a tense aspect, asking us to find a resolution between what feels right (Moon in Cancer) vs what we believe is morally right (Jupiter in Aries).
The New Moon in Cancer square Jupiter will give us the impulse to act upon what it is that we hold most dear.
Our emotions (Cancer) fuel our actions (Aries) and the other way around. We feel compelled to take a stand, even if we’re at odds with what’s right by society’s standards, or by our own moral convictions (Jupiter).
New Moon In Cancer – Lilith And Jupiter
The New Moon is conjunct Black Moon Lilith (BML). Black Moon Lilith is a very raw, instinctual energy. Lilith was Adam’s first wife who refused to submit to him, so she left Adam and the garden of Eden.
Black Moon Lilith is where we refuse to submit to others and seek equality. BML is also a symbol for the dark side of our feminine energy; ‘dark’ not because it’s negative, but because it’s unacknowledged. If we’ve been suppressing our emotions, at the New Moon in Cancer, they will erupt in unprecedented ways.
The most intense aspect of the New Moon is the square to Jupiter. Jupiter is the Great benefic, however Jupiter squares have the reputation of blowing things out of proportion. Thankfully, Jupiter also forms a sextile with Venus at 7° Gemini. Talking things through and focusing can save the day.
Yes, there is truth in those emotions. There’s no point denying them. But reacting from a wounded child perspective is not going to help. Jupiter (in the 10th house from the New Moon in Cancer) is asking us to wisen up. Acknowledge how you feel – and from that place of honoring your truth, communicate what you feel, without finger pointing or putting others down.
I’m not going to smooth this out.
This is an intense New Moon and lunar cycle that will force us to change our ways. Change is not always easy, but it always happens for a reason.
Whatever the New Moon in Cancer will set into motion, will eventually set us on a new trajectory – a trajectory that is more aligned with our highest potential, with the person we are meant to grow into.
New Moon In Cancer – Rabbits In Human Clothes
The Sabian symbol of the New Moon in Cancer is “A group of rabbits dressed in human clothes walk as if on parade”.
We are all familiar with humans wearing rabbit outfits for commercial and entertainment purposes – but what does it mean when a rabbit wears human clothes?
Rabbits dressed in human clothes symbolize the tendency in all forms of life to imitate higher forms for growth purposes. That’s not because rabbits are inferior to humans. But the implication of the Sabian symbol is that the rabbits act for aspirational purposes – to come across as what they aspire to be, even if they’re not there yet.
“Fake it till you make it”. Children imitate their parents for evolutionary purposes. Students imitate their teachers to learn a new skill. Looking up to others who are experts in the field we want to excel at (Jupiter) helps us grow and evolve (New Moon in Cancer).
The question the Sabian symbol raises: where do I need to level up in my life, even if it feels awkward, even if I come across like a rabbit in human clothes?
New Moon In Cancer Goal Setting Practice
As you may know, the New Moon influences us not only on the day of the New Moon, but during the entire lunar cycle, which lasts until the New Moon in Leo, on July 28th.
New Moons are the best times to reset your mental models and plan for the future.
New Moon goal-setting is a powerful practice.
When the Sun and the Moon – our 2 luminaries – align, we have a magic window of opportunity to press the reset button and start again.
This is our day in the month when we can co-create with the universe. New Moon goal setting works, and if you don’t have a New Moon goal-setting practice, I highly recommend you start one.
In our Age of Aquarius Community, every month, at the New Moon, we do a goal-setting exercise.
Our New Moon astrologer, Caroline, shoots a video where she shares the astrology of the New Moon, as well as manifestation best practices to best tap into the particular energy of the New Moon. You’re invited to write down your goals, and then watch the magic unfold.
We have members who have been doing this practice for 1,5 years now with great results. Some members fixed their health issues, others attracted new job opportunities, others met new romantic partners – anything is possible when you’re committed to the practice and show up consistently.
