a return to love, abstract expressionism, cia, dictatorship, new age philosophy
another lovely day on BI... i am sitting in my car in the parking lot for the north light walk... i can walk out to the northernmost tip of the island from here... i used to be able to walk all the way to where the island disappears beneath the water in a line of crisscrossing currents... it is a mystical place to me... for many years now there has been a steadily growing colony of seals in residence at the tip... they are in command of the water and land now... the mystic portal has its guardians... i don't know why the portal needed guardians...
i am feeling anxious today... there is a big "rare and unusual" gathering of military brass in quantico, va... lots of speculation on why... no clear answers... most speculation on the left is sinister in nature... statements from the administration suggest it's no big deal... not sure what the right is saying... apparently every one star general and above, along with key staff members were invited... i assume most accepted the "invitation"... there have been lots of alarming signs of unfolding dictatorship... whether this is another will depend on what actually happens while they are there...
i have finished reading marianne williamson's a return to love.. built on a course in miracles by hellen schucman who claimed that jesus christ dictated it to her... mw was smitten by it... studied it carefully and did all the exercises in it, then began lecturing on it and writing books... she did well enough to run for president on the democratic ticket against joe biden... she didn't last long but had an interesting perspective on the world...
the book is interesting... some compelling ideas... some genuinely whacky to me claims of efficacy... some strange notions such as love being the only real thing in the universe... all else is an illusion...
she doesn't seem to have any of the normal credentials... just success and a following...
i find alignment of some of her spiritual ideas with those of iain mcgilchrist... mcgilchrist does have credentials and his book is well researched and footnoted and thoroughly written... also arduous to read...
in another plot twist, the author of acim was encouraged by psychologist William Thetford, who she worked with as a research associate, to develop the ideas in acim and publish them... the wikipedia article i read connected him with a cia program aimed at pushing new age spiritual thinking into the left...
Another dismissal of ACIM and claim for its subversiveness comes from some on the political left, who note that William Thetford, who encouraged and helped bring Schucman's work to press, was a CIAoperative and psychologist. In Harper's Magazine, Sheila Heti quotes a post asserting the CIA sought "to infiltrate and dilute the American left with New Age ideas and inwardly-focused, anti-rational religious movements".
this jives with what i have read about cia involvement in promoting abstract expressionism as a demonstration of freedom of thought and expression... i wonder what art and philosophy the cia currently pushes?...