GLOSSARY — Pathway A—Seeker
Abrahamic
Tradition
Beloved
Dominion
Earthfolk
Nurturing Embrace
Forever Family
Heartfelt Action
Intimacy
Intimate Enemy
Inviting
Living Earth
Nurturing Embrace
Precious and Preciousness
Ritual
Sensual preciousness
Scientism Big Story
Secular Big Story
Sojourning Aliens
Vital Zest
Warrior's Quest
Abrahamic
Big Story
A tradition of those who consider the Biblical Abraham to be their cultural
and spiritual Father. This includes people of the Jewish, Christian,
Islamic and Mormon faiths. The Abrahamics consider themselves a Chosen
People. They are lone male monotheists. For them all life comes from
male energy both physical and spiritual. "The male body—human
and divine—is the birthing body," flows from their Garden
of Eden Eve-created-from-Adam's-rib story. Earthfolk cite the Abrahamic
tradition as the source for the dominance of the values and rituals
of the Warrior's Quest.
Beloved and Belovedness
The Beloved is the precious Other. You become Beloved when you both
recognize and receive one another as a precious Other. The state of
being Beloved is a state of ecstatic communion wherein two manifest
a new oneness, a new presence, that of Belovedness. Beloveds experience
a birthing which is a new borning of two—already alive in time
and space—as one. And as they uncouple, as never the same again.
Sensual preciousness blossoms as a spirituality of the Beloveds, and its
core ritual act is the nurturing embrace of the Beloveds.
Dominion
The power of Dominion, of dominance and total control over the Earth
and all creatures is how the Abrahamic Tradition has interpreted certain
passages in Genesis. Chapter 1:26, “Let us make man, in our image,
after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Chapter 1:28, “And God blessed them…and have dominion over….”
Chapter 2:19, “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every
beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto
Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every
living creature, that was the name thereof.”
Earthfolk
Earthfolk became aware of themselves – Awoke! –
when they first saw the snapshot of Earth from outer space taken by
the Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968. Their vision is that every human is
a parent and child in the Forever-Family which is everlasting. They
praise and honor the Other as precious Other. They hold that the respectfully
intimate erotic presence which is made manifest when two couple and
express a newborn precious Otherness unleashes the energy, called vital
zest, which heals and whole humans and the Living Earth. This intimate
vital zest is more powerful than nuclear energy. Consequently, Earthfolk
ritualize every aspect of their living, for ritual is the way they invite
the Other into their nurturing embrace.
Nurturing Embrace
The nurturing embrace is a simultaneous invitation to accept and receive
the full sensuality of the Other, share preciousness, and make present
Belovedness. To prepare for the nurturing embrace, Earthfolk practice
"living as if I am no one's Enemy."
Forever-Family
With just a slight bit of peering it becomes clear that all human experiences
are emotionally relational and familial. Everyone comes from the human
family which has always been and will always be, that is, Forever. Everyone
is a child in a family, and all families are genetically related. It
is the Family that never perishes.
Heartfelt Action
A heartfelt action is a defining action of a Big Story. It is how the
Big Story is made manifest through the personal actions of an individual.
A heartfelt action describes an act or group of acts which practitioners
of a Big Story must do. A heartfelt action is not optional, it is required.
It is the testimonial act which endows the believer with personal and
group identity as a proponent or confessor of the truths of the Big Story.
Intimacy
Intimacy can only occur when two share their interiorities in such a
way that each experiences their own preciousness as they are embraced
as a Beloved. Earthfolk use the imagery of two candles merging their
flames to form a third which is a oneness of a couple who then become,
as they move apart, separate identities, again. For Earthfolk, respectful
intimacy cannot be experienced alone. It is a communal presence.
Intimate Enemy
The nuclear bomb is not "user-friendly"!
It kills—vaporizes!— everyone and everything. It
is an uncontrollable weapon whose target is the Earth and Life itself.
Yet, there is an even more peculiar, unnerving, amazing and somewhat
paralyzing revelation that a sojourning alien encounters. Not only in
this vision is every person—you—expendable, considered
acceptable collateral damage, but you have no intrinsic value or right
to life. You are simply a target to be vaporized. You are not an enemy
slain who is then brought home to be buried by his or her loved ones.
No. You have no right to your body—living or dead!
You have no right to exist! You are beyond worthless. Poof!
You are nothing but a cloud of vaporous atoms.
There must be something so
powerful, so precious, so numinous, so precious, so divinely creative in
your intimate presence that the Warrior's Quest is to obliterate, annihilate—make
it seem to your family and loved ones that you never existed. The power
is the vital zest made present from within your intimacy—for this
reason you are the Warrior's Quest's intimate enemy.
Inviting
To invite is to open oneself, sensually, so that your preciousness is
made present. When two humans are inviting, they open for a nurturing
embrace. It is a giving through receiving. It is an act of vulnerability,
of open-heartedness, and fearless surrender to your Beloved.
Living Earth
Earthfolk awoke to see Mother Earth for the first time ever with outer
space, sojourning alien eyes. They felt as if just born. They gasped
to feel ecstatic through every sense. They felt the living connection
humans have with Mother Earth. She holds us, feeds us, rocks us, embrace
us—nurtures us in every way human. It was also immediately obviously
that Her thoughts are our thoughts, Her heartbeat our heartbeat, and,
in like manner, our consciounsess is Her consciousness, our conscience
is Her conscience. To one another we are each a precious Other, and
living is living within a nurturing embrace of Her and us.
Nurturing Embrace
Sensual preciousness peers and grasps that your body is only fully present
when coupled, that is, respectfully embraced. When in a nurturing embrace,
your body changes. All of your skin becomes your mouth. You speak to
your Beloved with and through every fleshly aspect and memory. Your
whole body becomes tongue. You taste each other as you lie upon each
other. Every fiber of your being reaches out and grasps your Beloved.
Through the nurturing embrace you and your Beloved with remember what
the Lone Male wants you to forget, namely, Her coupled with Him is the
source of wholeness and healthiness.
Precious and Preciousness
The iconic Starship Earth image stunned the gathering Earthfolk as they
sensed that other human bodies were their own. That every Other is a
precious Other, and that through embracing is how everyone's precious
Otherness is evoked. The nurturing embrace of the precious Other makes
present each as a beloved. The discovery of the precious Other as beloved
is a sensing which redefines and re-images who we are as individuals
and who we can become in group identity, namely, a Forever-Family of
Beloveds.
Ritual
A ritual is a performance which normally employs all five senses to
make present a new presence. It is a repeated performance which builds
upon shared memory. For Earthfolk ritual is the way two Others approach
one another as they seek each other’s preciousness. Ritual is
the defining of a special space and time in which two seek the Other
as Beloved.
Sensual preciousness
Sensual preciousness reflects the vision which sees that the life force
arises from a respectful intimate nurturing embrace. The respectful
intimate nurturing embrace of Beloveds releases the creative precious
Otherness from which all life flows. Sensual preciousness’ vital zest
expressed by Beloveds through a nurturing embrace is the only energy
which can counter and defuse nuclear energy.
Scientism Big Story
Scientismists apply the empirical scientific method to obtain an understanding
of what something is or what is happening. Since the scientific method
properly works with exploring and ascertaining empirical data, there
is no necessary theory or Story which emerges from its application.
Scientism is the peering at and imaging with empirical data to creatively
imagine a story, e.g., a story of origin such as the Big Bang, which
makes a whole narrative out of discrete parts.
Secular Big Story
The Secular Big Story's defining characteristic is that it develops
primarily as a negative reaction to godly, divine and spiritual claims
of the Abrahamic Big Story. In contrast to the Abrahamic tradition the
Secular has not evolved a tradition with well defined doctrines and
required dogmas, nor a profusion of ceremonial rituals, nor authoritative
institutions. While individuals will claim to be secular, and scholars
will cite a “secularizing” influence or trend, there is
no indisputable definition of “secular” or “secularizing.”
Earthfolk see Secularism as a movement within and not outside of the
Abrahamic Big Story. Secularism describes the transfer of spiritually
erotic power from traditional religious language, imagery, laws and
institutions to secular language, imagery, laws and institutions. The
Secular Big Story made possible the creative imagining and production
of the atomic bomb, and so ushered in the first ever Secular age, that
of the Nuclear Age, which Earthfolk see as an Age of Darkness.
Sojourning Aliens
The unintended impact of the military expedition which took the snapshot
of Starship Earth is that it awoke the Earthfolk. All at once they were
present on Earth but as if aliens from outer space. They felt themselves
as sojourners who were present among others who did not and could not
see them. They realized that they began to see Others in a profoundly
new way, namely, as precious Others. They realized that, while many
Earth people were living in misery and found the earth to be just a
ball of dirt, they were comfortably at-home on Earth, which, for Earthfolk,
is a Living presence.
Vital Zest
A key Earthfolk discovery is that the only power which can counter Endless
Warring and nuclear power is the vital zest made present when, with
respect, humans intimately embrace as Beloveds. Earthfolk—as they
contemplated the dreadful fear which peering at the image of the Atomic
Bomb’s Mushroom Cloud chillingly evoked—were paralyzed by
the terror of impending nuclear self-annihilation. Astoundingly, at
this moment they broke-through to an experience of the power of respectful
intimacy. They discovered the Other—you—as precious. They
discovered that embracing you—the Other—as precious released
an intimate energy as physical, quantitative and powerful as the Atomic
Bomb’s nuclear energy. Earthfolk named this intimate energy, vital
zest. As this vital zest is shared within a respectful intimate embrace
it makes manifest the presence of the Other’s preciousness. This
is the presence of the Other as known only as each share their preciousness.
It is a presence evoked in a moment of transformation, that is, as intimacy
opens to Belovedness. For Earthfolk, the only transforming and controllable
power which can counter nuclear power’s obliteration of intimacy—Poof!—
is the vital zest made manifest through and evoked by your rituals of
intimacy, your practice of Sensual preciousness.
Warrior Quest
The Warrior Quest is to vanquish the Intimate Enemy. In the Abrahamic
tradition the Warrior's Quest is the singular way a male experiences
and understands his masculinity. There are no other manly options except
to find both initiation and redemption through the Warrior act of slaying
an enemy. In other traditions the Warrior is simply one among many masculine
expressions. In them the male has a broad-range of possible heartfelt
acts which can define him, including acts of healing, compassion, etc.,
or what the Abrahamic would, condescendingly, call feminine traits.
The Abrahamic Warrior is hard as steel, and his penis is both Adam’s
Rib and Aaron’s Rod.
As Earthfolk see it, the Warrior's Quest is sourced
in Genesis’ annihilation of the Mother Goddess and the feminine.
Consequently, the Abrahamic Warrior’s primary enemy is Her, the
Mother Goddess, and every female. Warrior sex is termed the War of the
Sexes. Endless Warring is the Abrahamic Warrior’s idea of “peace.”
The Mushroom Cloud and a militarized Starship Earth are fitting icons
of the Abrahamic Warrior's Quest vision and practice.
