If, after reading this article, you need to ask yourself what this has to do with shamanism just remember shadow. Stalk your own stink'n think'n and keep it honest if your goal is to evolve.

I saw an article posted on Facebook that reminded me of an Alcoholic’s Anonymous saying. AA folks have a wonderful concept called “stink’n think’n.” Stink’n think’n means you’re seeing with ego and fooling yourself to suit your own agenda. There is a good deal of stink’n think’n, for example, coming out of Washington these days It surrounds the political and social agendas attached to the people working there. In any case the article I read reminded me of the old AA concept.  The piece is called The Real Reason We Can’t Believe All Women and it’s by Dr. GS Potter. You can find it on Medium and I’ll include a link at the end of my analysis.

I’ve read it four times now and I am still shaking my head.  It’s psychotically convoluted on so many levels. I choose not to dissect all of them but will focus on its relationship to #Metoo. Her premise mixes apples and oranges and then looks for support from arguments based on self-declaration, not facts. It is #fakenews. Dr. Potter states “we can’t just believe all women” – that is her thesis as headlined by her title – but she tries to tie this to race (black women beware (!) because a particular white woman lied 62 years ago and caused the death of a black man).  Say what?  Granted, the story she relates is horrible. Horrible but irrelevant to her thesis. It doesn’t prove “we can’t just believe all women” and why go to the trouble of taking it a step further and aim this paranoia at black women and the growing surge of energy supporting all women who are speaking to the abuse they have suffered?

What this position serves to do is inject race relations into a feminist issue, thereby diluting the feminist issue and introducing an adversarial element. It turns women on women. Is a women about to own her power? Yes? Then let’s discredit women. That is a male narrative.  The story as she presents it does illustrate how grossly racist the south was and how black people were oppressed and killed at will by individuals who enjoyed immunity from vigilante justice. It does not prove anything about women in general and to say it does only shows ignorance and harms the #metoo movement, which Potter claims to have sympathy for. It is false equivalence passing for logical argumentation and it doesn’t pass the smell test.

Potter claims #Metoo is white led. Fact: Me too was founded by a *black* woman Tarana Burke in the late 90s and morphed into a spontaneous cyberspace movement on Twitter when used by actress Alyssa Milano.  It is fair to say some black feminists are irritated because they feel Ms. Burke was not given as much attention as Milano’s tweet brought 20 years - and a different zeitgeist later – but Potter doesn’t bother to acknowledge Burke at all.  Maybe she doesn’t know Burke exists.

In fact, Potter is white. She is white and is placing herself in the position of speaking for and about black people. She wants to tell black women what to think – as if she is the intelligent one instructing the little children. White women can and should stand with black women, but white women cannot and should not, define black issues and in doing so Potter coopts black oppression for her own recognition and aggrandizement as a defender of the underdog.  This disempowers the stigmatized person and further robs their dignity.

Moreover, to do so is racist and reflects the attitude of superiority (conscious or unconscious) of the person coopting the minority experience for personal academic masturbation. It is racist because it assumes a position of superiority over the issues of a group she doesn’t belong to and presumes to speak for. It is not possible to walk in the shoes of a group we don’t belong to. That shoe won’t fit. 

I am also bothered that she has taken the victimization of a man, conveniently perpetrated by a female, and used it against women everywhere to introduce a racial element and paranoia into this growing women’s movement.  #Metoo is about women as *culturally accepted chattle* for men to do with as they please. #Metoo is colorless. It is uniquely female. I find Potter using the example of murdering a black male as a reason to question any women’s claim of abuse, to be a misogynic action in and of itself, because again, her example is really about racism not misogyny. Don’t say apples are oranges because they share the same bowl.

Potter could have pointed out #metoo has brought a fresh look and renewed respect for Anita Hill whose bravery in speaking up against a black man about to become a Supreme Court justice was extraordinary.  And what hasn’t been talked about in white circles is the flak she likely took from her own community – especially males – for standing up to Clarence Thomas, because she subordinated her blackness to her sex. You get shit for doing that. Dr. Potter could have spoken to that. She didn’t. Twice she failed to acknowledge importance of black women who were avant garde leaders in speaking to the abuse of women.  How about #Believeanitahill, would that be OK?

So, in conclusion, what I gather about Dr. Potter (after reading this article and researching her), is that her ‘brand’ appears to be speaking for minorities and nonwhite causes and in doing so she has found a way to make herself a very special white person.  I hope she also accomplishes some good, but when self-appointed Saviors appropriate another group’s identity and victimhood, maybe for the sake of a headline, or being the special big fish in a small pond, all I see stink’n think’n. 

For a breathtakingly horrifying example of how men harass women in the workplace, see this article that describes how John Hockenberry, “award winning, respected journalist” (otherwise known as an overweight, dingy, married, white, disabled male in a wheelchair), who ran a diversity program for the PBS radio station WNYC, managed to sexually harass, belittle and ultimately deprive women of color of good jobs. He harassed them. He kept his job, they couldn’t.  I wonder. Would Dr. Potter still say, “we can’t just believe all women” because the perpetrator was white?  Does she think that ingratiates her with minorities? Somewhere around paragraph 19 is a particularly gross power trip carried out by Mr. Hockenberry. Check it out if you can tolerate reading it.  Also. Don’t forget to note WYNC managed to find a male to put in charge of their diversity segment. They just had to find one who was disabled so they could justify it. Sexual harassment of women isn’t about color folks, it’s about power. Here’s the link: https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/public-radio-icon-john-hockenberry-accused-of-harassment.html

Bottom line: #Believewomen - without question - just follow the letter of the law in bringing the wrong doer to justice.

For a look at GS Potter’s article click here: https://medium.com/@SIIPCampaigns/the-real-reason-why-we-cant-just-believe-all-women-f6eac4105990

© Copyright 2017 P.L.Campbell all rights reserved

Welcome to day one. 

Definitions:

Shamanic seeing: A shaman sees through the heart. Some of what a shaman can see is patterns of energy 

Intent: determination that is commitment to a decision powered by the energy of activated focus. 

Imagination: Envisioning something not present – creating something from a void 
                                                ***

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. How will you exercise choice, imagination and intent to shape your reality? I offer the following for you to ponder….. As those interested in a shamanic path have come to know, Intent and Imagination, are the foundation and launching pad for the work of shamans and shamanic practitioners. Moreover, the things we think and imagine, if given enough power (i.e. energy) either by an individual or collective focus, takes on a life of its own, pulls in similar energies, and when enough of these similar things join, they form what is called a Morphic Field (http://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction). 

A Morphic Field in turn, will then exhibit an influence of its own on the group from which it was birthed. When it does, it begins changing group behavior. According to Sheldrake, laws of nature may also be subject to change through this influence. That is an extremely powerful concept. Why does this matter? Well, it affects, much like Jung’s archetypes, the dream we call consensual reality because Morphic Fields carry the Intent they have been charged with. 

Here is a current example: According to the book Dark Money by Jane Mayer, Charles Koch, began as early as the 1970s to identify an agenda to fundamentally change core ideas about how American business and government works, and who’s benefit it should serve. Koch, as a collector and holder of vast resources identified that he should dictate the waking reality of the rest of us to benefit his business and ideals. He formed an Intent to control America for his purposes. A reading of only the first two chapters of Dark Money will provide chilling support for Mayer’s thesis. After the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Koch and his brother David doubled down on the Intent. They Imagined how to defeat the growing call for economic and civil rights equality and they put behind that plan a focused Intent to bring right wing ideals for economics and cultural policies into power. They followed up with an action network. And they succeeded. 

Today Donald Trump was sworn in as President. Within an hour of this event, all reference to the environment and LGBT people had been scrubbed from the White House web site. Too, in another show of meanness toward ordinary people, and a grab for even more resources, (still within this same time frame) FHA mortgage insurance (a program that helps the working class and new home buyers afford to own a home) was announced as eliminated. The Kochs put power (energy) behind an Intention, while they used Imagination to form a plan, manufacturer a new reality, enforce their agenda. So far it's worked. And they aren't even shamans.

What I see as someone who looks at energy, is that the network these men built with the intent to control America, brought widespread influence across all segments that mattered in the making of change (e.g. media, foreign governments, etc) and as it did so, it became a morphic field. That field than became an attractor, calling under its influence, other resonating fields such as those that carry a blueprint of fear, fear that leads to discrimination, hatred of difference, misogyny, resentment of ‘political correctness’ etc. The dark money and dark work of sorcerers concerned only with their own welfare were put into play. Then the field began to impact behavior. This certainly isn't the entire explanation for the instillation of Donald Trump following a man like Barack Obama but it's a significant contributor 

In the shamanic view we are all one. Earth, animals, insects, birds, fish, people, the cosmos, we are all respected as each other's relatives. All of us have a special quality to contribute, a 'medicine' that contributes to the whole. We thrive when we belong to community and everyone ultimately needs to do well or we are all lesser for it. Personal greed has no place. This is so the opposite of much of current first world culture. It doesn't have to be. 

The fabric of consensual reality is a group effort. We impact it with our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, conscious and intended, as well as unconscious and unintended, then eventually it impacts us. We need to beware and be aware. 

So these are my thoughts on inauguration day. Don’t become part of a reality you haven’t consciously consented to. Do be aware of the energy that is circulating. Do come from love, not fear. Do come from a place of your own construction. Imagine the world as it can be dreamed. Intend. Make your medicine count. Do it. 

© Copyright 2017 P.L.Campbell all rights reserved