Actually, I’m going to assume that the signatories of the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” were not all that concerned about some random guy losing his job for being a complete jerk. Although they mention no specifics during their criticism of what they perceive as a growing intolerance and censoriousness among liberals, they make it pretty clear: The “calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought” that concern them most involve either themselves or people they might know. – Mary McNamara (LA Times)

PERHAPS you’ve heard.

HARPER’S Magazine published a Letter. Institutional luminaries, along with impressive college and university contributors as signatories, participated in, “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.”

Did they understand the national backdrop, or the background that could have been the catalyst?

The “hate mail” page on my site was once a high-trafficked spot. I feel Ms. Rowling, but…

A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate spelled out reality in starker terms than any privileged class could.

Then there’s the obvious for intellectuals and thinkers who’ve faced the fire to thrive.

Another topic this week is the new cover for CITIZEN KATE which will be on sale from July 18-24th. was compelled to write this novel, regardless of the odds, after I heard the call of a giant of a man.

“When we’re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked, in 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact? Did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing?” – Rep. Elijah Cummings

My answer is CITIZEN KATE.

TM NOTE: Negotiating podcast technical issues. Thanks for your patience.

Like Sheryl Sandberg’s self-help hit Lean In before it, #Girlboss argued that the professional success of ambitious young women was a two-birds-one-stone type of activism: Their pursuit of power could be rebranded as a righteous quest for equality, and the success of female executives and entrepreneurs would lift up the women below them. – The Girlboss Has Left the Building

THE PHENOMENON of “Lean In” went global before it peaked, then puttered out. When “#Girlboss” hit, Sophia Amoruso became more than the it girl of “corporate female empowerment.”

With Sheryl Sandberg’s failure to lead at Facebook, while Mark Zuckerberg put American values up for auction, her “lean in” mantra today seems like a rancid notion from an elitist techie who could have put country over profit, but instead stayed silent for her own gain.

When Ms. Amoruso left #Girlboss, she said COVID-19 had finished them financially.

This week Ivanka Trump did a creepy video about the American worker. There is only one problem. Another line from Amanda Mull in The Atlantic

That same basis in self-interest, however, makes girlbosses particularly unsuited to a moment that has stopped prioritizing their personal achievement—and is instead focused on the national reckoning over racial injustice.

It’s not enough to do a man’s job well.

Women have a tool set beyond what most men offer.

Creativity is live action problem solving, with a twist, when you put your instincts first.

A reading from a mystical section of May Be Fatal opens a pathway.

Fire photo: Max Saeling, Unsplash

Having a New Moon Solar Eclipse on the Global Axis indicates an opening of a new timeline, a new world, and new dimension of being. It represents a point in our history, but also in our hearts, where a new world has dawned. (source)

SOLSTICE provides powerful symbolism.

Descriptive “shed a skin” narratives are common.

The times are extraordinary. Mystics foretold great changes at this moment in human history, without specifics.

In my experience, a warning won’t equate to a map. It’s often the opposite, so prepare for surprise.

Results vary and depend on a person’s priorities.

If you’re not first in your own life, this will be rough. It could be even if you are.

Photo by Max Saeling on Unsplash

via Twitter, source unknown

But when former First Lady Michelle Obama used uncharacteristically loose language to dismiss Ms Sandberg’s career advice catchphrase, “lean in”, she seemed to underline just how far Ms Sandberg’s star had fallen. “It’s not always enough to lean in because that [expletive] doesn’t work,” Mrs Obama said. – BBC

THE LIST is long, but three women make Trump’s world of White nationalists possible. And, yes, they’re White too.

Sheryl Sandberg leads the list. Bloomberg business roasted her recently.

“Leaning in” seems premised on the idea that, if women can simply buy in to the sanctity of the profit motive, they will be amply rewarded in time. It leaves out important things like having genuine human reactions to bad ideas, overruling idiots and being moral. When Sandberg says we need more women leaders, I can’t help but ask: leading what, and to what end? In this case, real leadership would at the very least involve a public disavowal of Zuckerberg’s irresponsible stance.

Kayleigh MacAneny has a law degree from Harvard, schooled at Oxford, and knows when she’s lying, but isn’t interested in the Constitution. Her sights were set on more personal goals like getting in front of the camera, “but couldn’t get a break.”

The Guardian

After graduating in 2010, she worked for three years as a production assistant at Fox News for Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and father of Sarah Sanders, Trump’s second press secretary. In 2012, she wrote a tweet about Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, that has come back to haunt her: “How I Met Your Brother – Never mind, forgot he’s still in that hut in Kenya. #ObamaTVShows.” … But in 2015, McEnany received some intriguing career advice over cocktails from Michael Marcantonio, a fellow summer associate at a law firm and a Democrat. In an interview with the New York Times, he recalled telling her “Donald Trump is going to be your nominee,” adding that if “a smart, young, blond Harvard graduate” wanted “to get on television and have a career as a political pundit, you would be wise to be an early backer”.

Then there’s Ivanka Trump, bless her heart. Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox weighs in and it’s devastating for the “disassociated princess.”

And where she stood was so clear, because it was intentionally, internationally televised. She was part of a brain trust that had urged her father to hold a photo op outside of St. John’s church, across from the White House, last week. She had reportedly urged him to pose with a Bible—a Bible that she handed him from her now iconic bright white $1,

Trump Molests a Bible

“This idea that the AG of the U.S. has suddenly become an interior minister, in a thugocracy, with a private militia of some type that reports to him, is antithetical to every precept of American democracy.” – Steve Schmidt, Lincoln Project

WATCHING THE TORTURE AND MURDER of George Floyd traumatized the citizenry. When armed troops showed up in Washington, D.C., the lid blew off America.

A good time to resume “Sacred to Psychic” podcasts because…

When Trump stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal church, it made me want to scream. It’s this character trait that worried me the most.

But the president went too far and revealed a part of himself he’s managed to keep hidden.

“Imagine — if you can — not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken … You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, will most likely remain undiscovered. How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage?” — Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door

The quote above comes from “The Psychopath in Chief,” by Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer of Trump’s Art of the Deal.

The psychopathy of the president is why I was compelled to write my thriller Citizen Kate which features a psychopathic president.

When I started this podcast, the novel coronavirus was being debated. There weren’t people dying by the dozens. And George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor were both alive.

A cross-country move… No Internet for the first time since 1997.

The cosmic winds now whipped up for the start of eclipse season.

In the middle of it all, Trump molests a Bible.

“Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. And, yes, every one of our body’s atoms is traceable to the Big Bang and to the thermonuclear furnace within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe; we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we’ve been empowered by the universe to figure itself out, and we’ve only just begun.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

FICTION led me deeper into a world I’d glimpsed through meditation. The act has unlocked power ignored for the surety of historical myths.

There’s a reason women have fled from organized religion, something I’ve been immersed in my entire life.

It’s now my main platform. Coupled with the knowledge of a creative master, which I’ve honed over decades, the simple act of prayer has morphed into a deep dive into a pool of unlimited possibilities.

There are prompts in the pool of our unconscious, subconscious, and the great void we tap in the silence.

Allan W. Watts’ brilliant exhortation leaves a vast openness.

Add Neil deGrasse Tyson’s theory of everything, as I see it, and he’s hit on something.

The universe has the answers if we dare to question.

For creatives, it’s the portal to unlimited power.

In this new era dawning, what will you do?

The universe wants you to jump… It has ways of pushing those who won’t.

“… This attitude is not faith. It is pure idolatry. The more deceptive idols are not images of wood and stone but are constructed of words and ideas mental images of God. Faith is an openness and trusting attitude to truth and reality, whatever it may turn out to be. This is a risky and adventurous state of mind.” – Alan W. Watts

ANXIETY.

Nothing mitigates physical torments like meditation.

Dr. Wayne Dyer became a powerful teacher over his lifetime. He helped me in innumerable ways. His meditative musings remain an invaluable tool.

“It’s the silence between the notes that makes the music” is an ancient Zen observation, which clarifies this idea. Imagine, if you can, music without pauses or silent spaces. Without the pauses for silence, the music would be one infinitely long note of noise. What we call music would be impossible.

This is true for all of creation, including the world that you wish to create for yourself. Creativity itself is a function of the gap. The evidence for this is right in front of you.

It’s possible to be guided in meditation, but you’ll have to find your own way because there are as many methods as there are people on the planet.

Meditation is as personal as prayer.

It’s akin to creativity, which can explode through the exercise of disruption.

In the 21st century, after 2,000 years of overbearing control, it’s time for re-education.

As Wayne Dyer said often, “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”

 

According to the findings, published today as part of the Gender Social Norms Index (pdf, p. 8), only 14% of women and 10% of men are free of bias against women. This is a data point that correlates with gender inequality, the study found: Where biases against women are stronger, inequality between genders tends to be higher. (Quartz)

SPACES filled in with details improve a narrative, however, my new “Sacred To Psychic Podcast” is about disruption.

My amazing sister.

Little comfort to soothe anxiety, because it’s our friend. Our anxious moments reveal spots of fertile ground, if we do the work.

The women characters in my fiction navigate in unsafe spaces. Familiarity with shadows, and psychological traps I earned through the unbounded choices of my life.

Nothing impacted me more than my mother’s do or die intent to imprint Christianity on me.

Her campaign was relentless. Guilt, martyrdom, and all forms of psychological manipulation, which we both acknowledged was going on, were tapped. It lasted for years because I couldn’t make sense of organized religion, even as my faith deepened, and questions obsessed me.

This podcast is a process.

Explaining the creative arc of my work as I decipher the tools I’ve stumbled upon in the last years is unnerving.

I’ve worked without a net my whole life.

 

Almost all of our sources on love and sex in the ancient world have one thing in common: they were produced by men, and for men. Recovering women’s perspectives is exceedingly difficult, and an ongoing challenge for scholars. – Classical Depravity

THERE is a thin line between the sacred and obscene.

The thrillers I write tread along these lines, because the heroine has psychic gifts which come through her inner voice. But the people Dr. Kate Winter hunts are diabolical murderers with no respect for life.

The journey to writing these stories began ages ago, although I didn’t realize it at the time.

Running parallel to my art has been a quest for answers.

It’s taken 2,000 years, but it’s time for a reeducation.

Women have been elected heads of national governments on six continents. They have flown into space, served in elite combat units and won every category of Nobel Prize. The global #MeToo movement, in 15 months, has toppled a multitude of powerful men linked to sexual misconduct.

Yet in most of the world’s major religions, women remain relegated to a second-tier status.

Women in several faiths are still barred from ordination. Some are banned from praying alongside men and forbidden from stepping foot in some houses of worship altogether. Their attire, from headwear down to the length of their skirts in church, is often restricted.

Religion News

 

Photo by Chad Greiter on Unsplash

There is still a gender gap in American religion. Women are less likely than men to describe themselves as religious “nones” (23% vs. 30%), and more likely than men to say they attend religious services at least once or twice a month (50% vs. 40%). But women, like men, have grown noticeably less religious over the last decade. The share of “nones” among women has risen by 10 percentage points since 2009 – similar to the increase among men. And the share of women who identify as Christian has fallen by 11 points (from 80% to 69%) over that same period. – Pew Research (“In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace”)

SOMEWHERE between six and eight-years-old, a visceral image was seared into my brain that changed the trajectory of my life, although I wouldn’t realize it for decades.

It would turn out to be the first of many terrifying images and events I witnessed or experienced as a young girl.

The lesson learned was humans do terrible things to each other.

So, is it any wonder we’re experts at sabotaging ourselves?

“Sacred to Psychic” is a podcast journey of a creative life that spans decades, and resulted in liberation, and creative mastery.

We each have creative muscles, and dreams, but the fertile ground lies in our secrets. Where we’ve been harmed. When we’ve hurt others.

The sacred portal of my Christian faith has had life-altering consequences…

Once I matched the devotion from Christianity with what I’d learned from my instinctual center.

The creative force I wield is disruptive.

“Sacred to Psychic” offers no safe spaces, because the world of energy has none.

This journey doesn’t require a Magician guide, but I’m here if you want one.