The Sibling Society by Robert BlyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I really do think women and feminist men will save the world. I keep seeing these nerd-type guys downtown with T-shirts on that say EVOLVE on them. And many other total weirdos, women and men. Add EVOLVE to NOW.
I was reading Robert Bly’s 1977-1996 The Sibling Society on my three-week train and plane trip to family and friends in the Midwest and South during June, and 35 years ago or more, Bly was hearing Joseph Chilton Pearce and others talk about Evolution’s End: Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence, and the neuroplasticity of the brain, which could indeed not only abandon the lowest order Reptilian way of savagely reacting, but actually move forward into the midbrain Mammalian (hear, “Women,” “mammaries,” “community,” “cooperative,” “feminist” etc.) and on into the measured Neo-cortex human(e) being self-awareness of the homo supposedly sapiens.
And hope is really part of being human, too.
“All of us who have been angry at the fathers rejoiced at first when the fathers lost authority, but the picture becomes more somber when we realize that the forces that destroyed the father will not be satisfied, and are moving toward the mother. Mothers are discounted everywhere. (“Lock her up!” wc) When mothers and fathers are both dismembered, we will have a society of orphans, or, more exactly, a culture of adolescent orphans.”
Adolescent elders who have not been initiated into adulthood by same-sex elders of a thriving and continuous community, but have been ignored by overwhelmed parents and “educated” into consumerism by cynical, violent, hopeless and shallow images of humanity and “reality” by TV and the consumptive, surveilled and “monetized” social media spawned by the once-idealistic Internet lack impulse control and societal values. These have been discarded along with the huge, unused potential of the human, emotive, sensate spirit, body and brain working as one with our supportive environment and all the beings, spirits and stories that entails.
We have lost our souls. No one was there in our periods of initiation to accompany and guide us out of bimbohood, narcissism, violence or obsessive drug and alcohol indulgence, random sexuality and into a world where “the eyes of our mothers and fathers…sometimes said that we were worthy.
Now we look into the eyes of television, and the eyes reply almost always that we are unworthy…the soul is not prepared for what it has learned.” (my italics, wc)
But wait --- there are stories of giants and helpers. Of snake-husbands who devoured their brides. Of the wise bride who....... but, you see, you have to read it yourself, or, better yet, be told it by a wonderful elder, like Robert was for so many of us...
A Retreat for Women, Men, Mentors and Teachers, Artists and Activists
Join mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade for this intensive four-day retreat. Life is change and each life crisis offers adventure or complacency, as we either become a greater vessel for the flow of creation or else shrink from life.
Ultimately, the heart of the human drama concerns whether we are moving towards greater life or moving away from it. (my italics wc)
Like a long-lived snake, we are asked to shed old skins of what we thought we were in order to become our genuine self. While each turning away from the call of the soul leaves us less able to contribute love and meaning to the world around us, Each shedding reveals more of who we are at our core. (I reversed clauses in the last sentence wc) (I need to end on a positive note.)A life fully lived requires that we redeem unwanted and rejected parts of ourselves, as solving the pressing problems in the outer world requires a transformation of the inner world. The deeper the connection to our true self becomes, the deeper and stronger our connection to both nature and the divine can also become.
“The path of discovery will inevitably raise the exact fears that hold the heart captive. An adventure becomes meaningful when it forces us to become ourselves…The problem involves our inability to truly trust what resides within us. Courage is a heart word…the core of one’s deepest feelings and innermost thoughts. For the heart harbors thoughts and dreams as well as feelings and emotions. The heart can be mined for enduring courage and living imagination; yet we must often be driven there by fear or despair or loneliness.” Fate and Destiny
Michael Meade Introduces this 2019 Mosaic Fall Retreat: The Arc of Transformation -- A Retreat for Women, Men, Mentors and Teachers, Artists and Activists
“Each soul is ready to shine in its own way…” from What the Heart Loves (FB).
“It’s possible at this point in modern culture thatMost people think that we change world by changing things in the outside world. & Yet,
• Any meaningful change really has to come from the depths of the individual human soul. At least, That’s the principle that Mosaic works on – that when
o (The soul of individual people changes, then eventually those –>
o Changes move into the culture and those changes can also affect –>
o The relationship between culture and nature). & Based on that principle, which involves both
• the idea of Calling and
• idea(l) of Healing. In other words,
o people become most valuable to themselves and to other people, when they‘re responding to the call or the vocation, & of course the call is
o calling on the genius that’s embedded inside each person, but then in order to be effective, responding to the call,
o then each person has to Be really on a healing path.
• & so Each fall Mosaic …4 day retreat. To which people come together from all areas of life where Mostly people who are working on some kind of Meaningful community projects. So there are Environmentalists, & activists of all kinds but also, healers & therapists. For 4 days we come together. And
o we work on these ideas of How to respond to the Call to one’s soul to
o participate meaningfully in the World, & then
o how to bring Healing along with the efforts to make change in the world, &
o healing both to the individual and to the group, and then
• How to work at the intersection where nature and culture can come together &
• Heal that rift that’s so serious in the modern world.
(Yessssssss.......... wc)
Bly, Robert, (1977 and 1996) The Sibling Society : An Impassioned Call for the Rediscovery of Adulthood. Vintage, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, NY.
Hartman, Joanne and Mary Claire Hill, eds., (2019) She’s Got This! Essays on Standing Strong and Moving On, Write On Mamas publications, ShesGotThisAnthology.com , San Francisco Bay Area, CA.
Lasky, Marjorie Penn, ed., (2018) You’re Doing What? Older Women’s Tales of Achievement and Adventure, Regent Press, Berkeley, CA.
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