TammyFayeTribute • Feb 24, 2012 Tammy Faye Bakker and the PTL singers sing one of her signature songs — Don’t Give Up You’re on the Brink of a Miracle.

–Mike Zonta, BB editor

“The Prosperos is organized to promulgate a source of genuine democracy based on the axiomatic Truth that Beingness is the identity of every person. “

William Fennie, Dean of The Prosperos

November Opportunity

During this month of commemoration and thanksgiving we pay homage to those who have served our country, and we have the opportunity to remember the good in our life, and the good in the collective enterprise called the United States of America. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy as we practice it in the U.S. is a truly terrible system, “except compared to everything else”. The Prosperos is organized to promulgate a source of genuine democracy based on the axiomatic Truth that Beingness is the identity of every person. We are entitled to base a profound sense of gratitude on the understanding of that Innate Self – the reality of anyone we encounter. In the weeks to come we will present classes and activities to make this understanding vivid in the lives of our students. Heather Williams will present Translation® class using an experimental format; HughJohn Malanaphy will present Lucid Dreaming in a one-day session; and I will teach Metonymy Translation® for the first time to an online group. These classes have been selected to make our approach to the solstice and the Christmas season a time of deep insight. Please review the events listed in this message, and give a thought to ways in which you might participate. Aloha nui, William Fennie Dean

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” Viktor E. Frankl (1905-1997) Austrian Psychiatrist

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

NOVEMBER 8, 2022 AT 7:00 AM BY ROB BREZSNY (newcity.com)

Photo: Yau Anthony

ARIES (March 21-April 19): When you Aries people are at your best, you are driven by impeccable integrity as you translate high ideals into practical action. You push on with tireless force to get what you want, and what you want is often good for others, too. You have a strong sense of what it means to be vividly alive, and you stimulate a similar awareness in the people whose lives you touch. Are you always at your best? Of course not. No one is. But according to my analysis of upcoming astrological omens, you now have extra potential to live up to the elevated standards I described. I hope you will take full advantage.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In my experience, you Tauruses often have more help available than you realize. You underestimate your power to call on support, and as a result, don’t call on it enough. It may even be the case that the possible help gets weary of waiting for you to summon it, and basically goes into hiding or fades away. But let’s say that you, the lucky person reading this horoscope, get inspired by my words. Maybe you will respond by becoming more forceful about recognizing and claiming your potential blessings. I hope so! In my astrological opinion, now is a favorable time for you to go in quest of all the help you could possibly want. (PS: Where might the help come from? Sources you don’t expect, perhaps, but also familiar influences that expand beyond their previous dispensations.)

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Sometimes, life compels us to change. It brings us some shock that forces us to adjust. On other occasions, life doesn’t pressure us to make any shifts, but we nevertheless feel drawn to initiating a change. My guess is that you are now experiencing the latter. There’s no acute discomfort pushing you to revise your rhythm. You could probably continue with the status quo for a while. And yet, you may sense a growing curiosity about how your life could be different. The possibility of instigating a transformation intrigues you. I suggest you trust this intuition. If you do, the coming weeks will bring you greater clarity about how to proceed.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality,” wrote ancient Roman philosopher Seneca. That’s certainly true about me. If all the terrible things I have worried about had actually come to pass, I would be unable to function. Luckily, most of my fears have remained mere fantasies. What about you, fellow Cancerian? The good news is that in the coming months, we Crabs will have unprecedented power to tamp down and dissipate the phantasms that rouse anxiety and alarm. I predict that as a result, we will suffer less from imaginary problems than we ever have before. How’s that for a spectacular prophecy?

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Poet Matt Michael writes, “Sure, the way trees talk is poetry. The shape of the moon is poetry. But a hot dog is also poetry. LeBron James’ tomahawk dunk over Kevin Garnett in the 2008 NBA Playoffs is poetry. That pothole I always fail to miss on Parkman Road is poetry, too.” In accordance with current astrological omens, Leo. I’d love for you to adopt Michael’s approach. The coming days will be a favorable time to expand your ideas about what’s lyrical, beautiful, holy, and meaningful. Be alert for a stream of omens that will offer you help and inspiration. The world has subtle miracles to show you.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo author Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, but as a child moved to England and later to Canada. His novel “Running in the Family” describes his experiences upon returning to his native Sri Lanka as an adult. Among the most delightful: the deluge of novel sensory sensations. On some days, he would spend hours simply smelling things. In accordance with current astrological omens, I recommend you treat yourself to comparable experiences, Virgo. Maybe you could devote an hour today to mindfully inhaling various aromas. Tomorrow, meditate on the touch of lush textures. On the next day, bathe yourself in sounds that fill you with rich and interesting feelings. By feeding your senses like this, you will give yourself an extra deep blessing that will literally boost your intelligence.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You evolved Libras understand what’s fair and just. That’s one of your potencies, and it provides a fine service for you and your allies. You use it to glean objective truths that are often more valuable than everyone’s subjective opinions. You can be a stirring mediator as you deploy your knack for impartiality and evenhandedness. I hope these talents of yours will be in vivid action during the coming weeks. We non-Libras need extra-strong doses of this stuff.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Here are tips on how to get the most out of the next three weeks: 1. Be a master of simmering, ruminating, marinating, steeping, fermenting and effervescing. 2. Summon intense streams of self-forgiveness for any past event that still haunts you. 3. Tap into your forbidden thoughts so they might heal you. Discover what you’re hiding from yourself so it can guide you. Ask yourself prying questions. 4. Make sure your zeal always synergizes your allies’ energy, and never steals it. 5. Regularly empty your metaphorical trash so you always have enough room inside you to gleefully breathe the sweet air and exult in the earth’s beauty.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “I straddle reality and the imagination,” says Sagittarian singer-songwriter Tom Waits. “My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.” I think that’s great counsel for you to emphasize in the coming weeks. Your reality needs a big influx of energy from your imagination, and your imagination needs to be extra well-grounded in reality. Call on both influences with maximum intensity!

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Sometimes, Capricorn, you appear to be so calm, secure, and capable that people get a bit awed, even worshipful. They may even get caught up in trying to please you. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily—as long as you don’t exploit and manipulate those people. It might even be a good thing in the coming weeks, since you and your gang have a chance to accomplish big improvements in your shared resources and environment. It would take an extra push from everyone, though. I suspect you’re the leader who’s best able to incite and orchestrate the extra effort.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): If you have been posing as a normal person for too long, I hope you will create fresh outlets for your true weird self in the weeks ahead. What might that entail? I’ll throw out a couple of ideas. You could welcome back your imaginary friends and give them new names like Raw Goodness and Spiral Trickster. You might wear fake vampire teeth during a committee meeting or pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster to send you paranormal adventures. What other ideas can you imagine about how to have way too much fun as you draw more intensely on your core eccentricities?

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I suspect you will have metaphorical resemblances to a duck in the coming weeks: an amazingly adaptable creature equally at home on land, in the water, and in the air. You will feel comfortable anywhere you choose to wander. And I’m guessing you will want to wander farther and wider than you usually do. Here’s another quality that you and ducks will share: You’ll feel perfectly yourself, relaxed and confident, no matter what the weather is. Whether it’s cloudy or shiny, rainy or misty, mild or frigid, you will not only be unflappable—you will thrive on the variety. Like a duck, Pisces, you may not attract a lot of attention. But I bet you will enjoy the hell out of your life exactly as it is.

Homework: What’s the unfinished thing you most need to finish? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

By Maria Popova (themarginalian.org)

“To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love,” the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh admonished in his terrific treatise on how to love — a sentiment profoundly discomfiting in the context of our cultural mythology, which continually casts love as something that happens to us passively and by chance, something we fall into, something that strikes us arrow-like, rather than a skill attained through the same deliberate practice as any other pursuit of human excellence. Our failure to recognize this skillfulness aspect is perhaps the primary reason why love is so intertwined with frustration.

That’s what the great German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900–March 18, 1980) examines in his 1956 masterwork The Art of Loving (public library) — a case for love as a skill to be honed the way artists apprentice themselves to the work on the way to mastery, demanding of its practitioner both knowledge and effort.

Erich Fromm

Fromm writes:

This book … wants to show that love is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him. It wants to convince the reader that all his attempts for love are bound to fail, unless he tries most actively to develop his total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one’s neighbor, without true humility, courage, faith and discipline. In a culture in which these qualities are rare, the attainment of the capacity to love must remain a rare achievement.

Fromm considers our warped perception of love’s necessary yin-yang:

Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.

[…]

People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love — or to be loved by — is difficult. This attitude has several reasons rooted in the development of modern society. One reason is the great change which occurred in the twentieth century with respect to the choice of a “love object.”

Illustration by Maurice Sendak from Open House for Butterflies by Ruth Krauss

Our fixation on the choice of “love object,” Fromm argues, has seeded a kind of “confusion between the initial experience of ‘falling’ in love, and the permanent state of being in love, or as we might better say, of ‘standing’ in love” — something Stendhal addressed more than a century earlier in his theory of love’s “crystallization.” Fromm considers the peril of mistaking the spark for the substance:

If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.

[…]

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.

Illustration by Julie Paschkis from Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People by Monica Brown

The only way to abate this track record of failure, Fromm argues, is to examine the underlying reasons for the disconnect between our beliefs about love and its actual machinery — which must include a recognition of love as an informed practice rather than an unmerited grace. Fromm writes:

The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one — my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry — and for love. And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.

In the remainder of the enduringly excellent The Art of Loving, Fromm goes on to explore the misconceptions and cultural falsehoods keeping us from mastering this supreme human skill, outlining both its theory and its practice with extraordinary insight into the complexities of the human heart. Complement it with French philosopher Alain Badiou on why we fall and stay in love and Mary Oliver on love’s necessary madnesses, then explore more of Fromm’s visionary work on love not only as a romantic experience but as a social catalyst of collective sanity.

The Two of Cups

And here we have the Lord of Love, a card of bliss, deep joyous love reciprocated fully and with great enthusiasm, a card of reconciliations and new growth! Here we see harmonious and contented exchanges of emotion, which vibrate with an ecstatic undercurrent of passion and heat.

Because this card is a reflective and receptive one, there’s an issue that people sometimes forget when reading it – to be truly loved, deeply treasured, valued highly by others, we must first and foremost strive to feel those things for ourselves. When we work toward loving ourselves, we hold our inner nature in high regard, treating it with deference and proper respect. When we see ourselves in that light, other people cannot help but respond to our personal sense of value.

Furthermore, when we work to love ourselves, we release so many areas of self-doubt and uncertainty that we become infused by a new energy – and this we can lavish on others. The Two of Cups is about engaging in a caring and tender fashion with our own needs, first and foremost.

It isn’t so much about achieving self-love, as about, in every single day of our lives, striving towards self-love. That action leads us into a positive, self-supportive and accepting approach to life. And also, when we stop wasting energy telling ourselves what’s wrong with us, we have lots more energy to enjoy being who we are.

When this card comes up in a reading, if it relates to the inner journey, then it tells you to put your attention in the moment, to leave the past behind, and to let yourself be free to enjoy everything that comes your way.

If it relates to outer events, it may point to a forthcoming reconciliation in a relationship where there has been pain and disappointment – this need not be a love affair, it can cover many different types of loving relationship.

It might point up a new relationship which has recently begun and which will grow into a deep and lasting friendship or affair.

And finally, it may reassure you that the meaningful relationship in your life will strengthen and grow, developing into exactly what you need it to be!!

(via angelpaths.com and Alan Blackman)

(Courtesy of Rob Brezsny)

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement; get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) Jewish Theologian

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

Rebecca Solnit (born 1961) is an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art. Wikipedia

(Courtesy of Rob Brezsny)

How long has it been since you did your last Translation? 

Translation is a practice, like playing the piano OR doing daily physical exercises to strengthen your physical body.

Like anything else, practice is essential to achieve the goal of the practice.

The goal in the practice of Translation is unpacking or unzipping the truth from what appears to you as a problem. The TRUTH that we seek – in the practice Translation – is NOT “my truth or your truth”. The TRUTH that we seek – is the ultimate TRUTH of our very BEING.  “The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.” – Eckhart Tolle

Translation is challenging work! We work with AXIOMS. We use Syllogistic reasoning – which requires you to reason through 5 steps. Today with computers, Smart Phones and Artificial Intelligence – many people are fascinated with clicking buttons and getting immediate responses. (We must remember: A democracy requires people to reason through things – and to question things – rather than to just follow dictations from a leader.) 

The 3rd Step of Translation is the argument where you prove to yourself that TRUTH is a constant, ever present Oneness of Energy flowing through One Infinite Mind and it is here now whole and complete. Thus, in the realm of ULTIMATE TRUTH – there is no lack or limit. 

The 5th Step of Translation is the ultimate conclusion – a statement of TRUTH – and you take this statement with you into your new day – your consciousness is slightly opened to BEING connected in a new way with your True Self. This connection releases you to experience the Unpredictable Good that is here now! ENJOY!

Engage with a group of people searching for TRUTH (not your truth or my truth – but TRUTH). We will do some exercises too!

HEATHER’S TRANSLATION CLASS
Date: December 5-9, 2022
Time: 9:00 am to 11:30 am Pacific/10:00 am to 12:30 pm Mtn/11:00 am to 1:30 pm Central/Noon to 2:30 pm Eastern

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER: https://www.theprosperos.org/prosperos-events/translation-williams-202212

LOVE is KEY to humanity evolving!!!