With Open Minds Forum restored now for almost half a year at it's new location with forumotion.com we can now turn to look at reaching out to OMF's original members who have not yet returned home. OMF's original membership was over 6,000 members strong, prior to the proboards suspension, according to the rolls of the time. We can probably safely assume that some of those accounts were unidentified socks. If we were to assume a reasonable guess of maybe as many as 30% possible sock accounts then that would leave potentially somewhere between 4800 to 4900 possible real members to locate. That is still a substantial number of people.
Who were all these people? Some were average individuals with common interests in ufology, exopolitics, globalism, corruption, earthchanges, science and technology, and a variety of other interests. Some just enjoyed being part of a vibrant and unusually interesting community. Others were representative of various insider groups participating in observation and outreach projects, while still others were bonafide intelligence community personnel. All with stake in the hunt for truth in one fashion or another. Some in support of truth, and communication. Others seeking real disclosure and forms of proof. And others highly skeptical of anything or limited subjects. The smallest division of membership being wholly anti-disclosure oriented.
So where did these members vanish to? They had many options. There are almost innumerable other forums out there on the topics of UFO's or Exopolitics, the Unexplained, and Conspiracy Theory. Did they disappear into the world-wide network of forum inhabitants? Did some go find new homes on chatrooms or individual blogs? Did they participate in ufo conventions or other public events and gatherings? How about those who represented groups in special access? Or IC and military observers? Those with academic affiliations? Where did they all go and what would be the best way to reach out and extend an invitation to return?
And what constitutes a situation deserving of their time and participation? Is the archive enough? How exactly do people within the paradigm most desire to define a community? Is it amenities, humanity or simply population size for exposure? Most of the special guests have been emailed and have expressed that population size for exposure is what most motivates them. But not all. Long-time member Dan Smith has other priorities and values motivating his participation. Should this open opportunities for unattached junior guests who have experience and dialog to contribute to the world? How best to make use of OMF's time, experience and resources?
Many skeptics would like to see the historical guardian of discourse opportunity to just up and disappear; go into permanent stasis. They think that not everyone has a right to speak about their experiences and if there is no proof involved then there can philosophically be no value to discourse. I personally would respectfully disagree with them. Discourse has always been the prelude to meaningful relationships and meaningful mutual relationships have always been the prelude to exchanges of proof. In a contentious social environment with regards to communication vs disclosure how do we best re-establish a haven for those preludes? Is it only the "if we build it they will come" answer? Well considering OMF has been largely fully functional over the last four or five months this line of reasoning is not necessarily true. So what would be the best way re-establish this? Your suggestions are sought. Please comment.
“Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”
—Robert Frost
Last edited by smelly da goat on Sun Dec 05, 2021 10:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
Just cross posting this channeled post of mine in case he deletes it.
…
Black Elk stopped by today.
I can’t explain but he has been pinging me.
He tells me the time has come to go into the world.
He says the world will actually come to me.
He tells me I have seen the shadow world clearly and that the Thunder Beings have taken notice and I have a task to accomplish.
He puts his hand on my shoulder and sings to me.
He sings be strong little blackbird.
You are being kicked out of your nest.
I corrected him, I AM smelly
He said, no, you are both.
Sometimes you jump the mountain peaks and sometimes you must fly.
Now is the time to fly.
He says, vision is a great gift and burden.
You can bear this burden now.
You have within you all of it, you can unlock big medicine.
I should make a medicine bag and protect myself better.
He will show me what to do.
I am humbled.
“It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those men get lost.”
“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.”
Dan, you are wrong about me, I care about all of this.
“I did not see anything [New York 1886] to help my people. I could see that the Wasichus [white man] did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation's hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.”
I wrote a little about it for another blog I write on.
—
Native American Medicine is plant based and spiritual. They had better medicine than the Europeans, but they did not have counters to their diseases and it decimated them. This is similar to many indigenous cultures, but the Greeks stand out to me. They used incubation, a form of ceremony, to facilitate physical healing through spiritual healing. You would go into a dark cave or space for days. I’ll talk more about incubation sometime and my experiences. I have personally also used Ayahuasca over a 2 year period with profound benefits. Similar to use of Peyote in indigenous ceremonies. There is a deep connection between mind and body. As the mind thinks, the body becomes. The emotions of the body are also healing and disease causing.
Much of this wisdom was passed down verbally in Native American culture. The Cherokee had a written language and did capture a lot of their cultural wisdom in writing. However, there are a few that made their mark and one of them is Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota (Sioux) healer. Black Elk, also known as Heȟáka Sápa, came from a long line of healers. Not only his father, but also his uncles were medicine men. At 19, he was a healer in his tribe and used a flowering herb that he had seen in visions and later found in nature. In fact, Black Elks’ visions are what made him famous. His first vision occurred when he was in a coma. This vision and his other visions and experiences were dictated, through an interpreter, to writer John Neihardt who wrote Black Elk Speaks in 1932. Another book was written featuring his translations: The Sacred Pipe by Joseph E. Brown.
“Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that one.”
“It is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.”
“I knew that the real was yonder and that the darkened dream of it was here.”
“When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the west, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greenier and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm.”
—Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
I have a deep love and respect for Black Elk. I feel even he has spoken to me in my dreams and touched my heart. I can’t explain. But I feel my path before me and I see how life flows from me into others and vice versa and I know I am on the right path. I have Native American blood in my veins and it speaks to me. I hear it louder than most other voices in my blood. I am trying to honor and explore that.
The way of the healer is difficult.
The shadows are attracted to these ones and make things difficult.
The first and greatest task is to know and heal thyself.
…
Fascinating.
“I think that I have told you... that a man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see. You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.... It was even then only after the heyoka ceremony, in which I performed my dog vision, that I had the power to practice as a medicine man, curing sick people; and many I cured with the power that came to me. Of course it was not I who cured. It was the power from the outer world, and the visions and ceremonies had only made me like a hole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish....“
I have completed my Heyoka ceremony too.
“Only those who have had visions of the thunder beings of the west can act as heyokas. They have sacred power and they share some of this with all the people, but they do it through funny actions.
But in the heyoka ceremony, everything is backwards, and it is planned that the people shall be made to feel jolly and happy first, so that it may be easier for the power to come to them. You have noticed that the truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping. When people are already in despair, maybe the laughing face is better for them; and when they feel too good and are too sure of being safe, maybe the weeping face is better for them to see. And so I think that is what the heyoka ceremony is for.”
I tell you the truth, the Thunder Beings are real.
Like a bird on the wire Like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free
…
The Sioux god is environmental and exists in the present while the white man's god exists in the future and promises great things in another life. The Indian god exists in the present world and is found in the wind, the earth, the plants, and all the animals and everything that happens is the result of his actions and intention. There are no coincidences in the Indian's existence in this world everything is the result of their god's action and needs to be observed and interpreted in order to divine the meaning.
This is also my awareness above.
Which is why I wholly reject Dan’s Eschaton and position.
It is now and present and clear.
Unless one opens themselves up to the real, they are blind begging fools.
He says unless this happens or that or this idea connects to that we are lost.
NO!!!
We are not lost, open your eyes.
Enough of this nonsense already.
He has no power!
I stand with Black Elk and we stand for all of us.
...
The path of the mystic/shaman and the schizophrenic is very similar. But there is a very big difference. The shaman descends into madness for their people and own healing. It is a controlled decent.
A controlled burn.
It always costs you something.
This is why one must prepare and be mentored and guided into how to use backwards living and madness to maximum benefit.
Some smelly fools like myself, have a natural knack for it, to be sure.
The spirits come and teach us, we have no physical mentors usually for long.
Blessed or cursed by the gOdS.
And what are the gOdS?!
Oh, they are real, very very real.
God is intelligible through multiple parts.
But you would have to experience them to know what I mean.
You would have to shatter yourself into a 1000 pieces with no hope of return, not to destroy yourself but to have a chance of an audience.
You would have to throw yourself off cliffs into the ocean to have a moment with them.
I promise you, few are capable of this.
But if you are crazy enough to attempt it and return from that madness, what power can flow through you.
Real power never rests in an individual, that is always a false power.
The real power comes from those who can open a hole between this world and the real one and allow the power to enter and the pain to exit.
The great barrier for the West to this is our self centeredness.
Our self centered spirituality, which is actually a trap.
Empathy is the great gateway!
The greatest portal!
You think a muppet using a portal to save their own ass or to gain something for themselves is worthy of such an audience?!
HA!
To make the return, you must be venturing for more than your own illusory self.
More than seeking power for yourself.
Let us call these ones who return and find the way, God's favorite idiots.
This is a blog post from a priest who posted some commentary on Black Elk Speaks, Chapter 4: The Bison 🦬 Hunt.
He mentions a Celtic poem about blackbirds.
Black Elk called me blackbird in a vision.
…
Chapter 4: The Bison Hunt
After his vision, Black Elk says he felt “homesick for the place where [he] had been” in his vision. He also felt more connected to all other living things. He says, “There was a bush and a little bird sitting in it; but just as I was going to shoot, I felt queer again, and remembered that I was to be like a relative to the birds. So I did not shoot” (32).
There is an old Celtic poem called “The Scribe in the Woods” which begins,
A hedge of trees surrounds me, a blackbird’s lay sings to me, praise I shall not conceal,
Above my lined book the trilling of the birds sings to me.
A clear-voiced cuckoo sings to me in a gray cloak from the tops of the bushes,
May the Lord save me from Judgment; well do I write under the greenwood.
A few years ago, I taught a seminary course on Celtic Spirituality in which I invited students to go on an intentional nature walk and pay attention to God’s immanence in everything around them. This was a way of experiencing what some scholars of Celtic spirituality call chthonic pan-entheism. Pan-entheism is not be confused with pantheism which asserts the divinity of the earth, an assertion that is outside the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy. Pan-entheism, on the other hand, asserts that God is immanent within all of creation, an assertion that is in fact rooted deeply within Christian orthodoxy.
Anglican priest and scholar Urban T. Holmes attempts to define the word “chthonic” when he writes, “‘Chthonic’ has no synonym. It calls for a receptive consciousness and describes the underworld of ancient mythology, with all its fearsome power.” He also says that “sacraments are rooted in the earth in all its chthonic power,” concluding that Anglican spirituality, in general is “earthy.”
I asked the students to write reflections on their nature walk. One student wrote, “I delight in the raucous calls of the birds even as I silently recall their names: song sparrow, common raven, Western bluebird, American crow, ring-billed gull, dark-eyed junco. Their names replace those of the Celtic gods I brought to mind at the beginning of the walk…The great value of nature for the spirit is that it forces us to attend to its rhythms, to slow down long enough to meet with its timid inhabitants or bask in the patient solidity of the trees.”
Another one of my students who happened to be Navajo and the daughter of the late bishop of Navajoland wrote, “There is something very solemn and reverent about hearing and feeling your own heartbeat and breath while walking…the prayers I longed to say, were already being sung by a nearby bird.”
Like Black Elk and the Celtic poet, my students experienced a deep connection to and discovered prayerful delight in birds. I remember one of the first songs I wrote in high school with my new ukulele was called “The Language of the Birds”: Lord, you know the language of the birds, Lord, you hear each word. Perhaps birds sometimes intercede for us with chirps too transcendent for words (Rom 8:26).
The birds are indeed spiritual teachers. People have known this for centuries. The term “augury,” which means “divination,” has its etymological origins in observing the flight of birds in order to foresee future events.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet says, “We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow…Let be” (Act 5, Scene 2, lines 5 – 10). Here, Hamlet appears to be referencing the words of Jesus when he says, “Are not two sparrows for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matthew 10:29). In other words, we might not be able to tell the future by watching birds, but birds can still teach us about God’s providence, even when a bird dies.
And Leonard Cohen says, “Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried, in my way, to be free.”
Birds are our relatives and teachers, showing us how to pray, reminding us of God’s providence, and inviting us into freedom.
He just can’t dance with smelly in a fleeting world.
He takes offense at my teasing about this.
Too bad.
It’s Philosophical Friday!
My grasp on the things in life is constantly challenged. More and more I accept the world is fleeting. Not holding on too tight to anything seems like real wisdom to me. Relax and have fun, it’s gonna be ok.
I have a high tolerance and love even for chaos and change. I’m not afraid to turn the table over and shake it all up. One of my favorite pre-Socratic philosophers had a deep thought I often come back to.
“The waking have one world in common; sleepers have each a private world of their own.”
—Heraclitus
According to both Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus held extreme views that led to logical incoherence. For he held that (1) everything is constantly changing and (2) opposite things are identical, so that (3) everything is and is not at the same time.
Nothing is permanent and the observable world is in a constant state of change and this is the cause of human suffering: people insist on permanence in a world of impermanence. The Buddha encouraged people to accept the essential nature of life and detach themselves from the false idea that anything they held to could be permanent. Heraclitus had the same message but with a significant difference: one could attach one's self to anything, as long as one understood it was fleeting.
We grasp to a fleeting world trying to make it comprehensible. We seek to avoid the uncomfortable changes. Look at how our politics and economics reflect this. In my view, the world is upside down, missing its real potential, as are most people.
Embrace change to unlock your potential!
The difference between the two philosophers is that Heraclitus encouraged active engagement while Buddha suggested enlightened disinterest. Buddha taught a path of gradual detachment from the mutability of the world leading to the understanding and recognition that one could live one's life fully without craving for what one lacked, fearing what one might lose, or mourning what was past. Heraclitus encouraged people to embrace change as the fundamental essence of life and live in it, even celebrate it, with total awareness of what one had and would inevitably be lost. The Stoics were more in line with Heraclitus.
Although their central focus differs, their goal is the same: to awaken those who cling to what they know through fear and ignorance and allow for their movement toward a higher, more vibrant understanding of life. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, this same focus would be developed in the 20th century by the iconic Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung who emphasized the importance of the process of self-actualization – comparable to the state of awareness encouraged by Heraclitus and the Buddha – by which one could let go of childish fears and limitations to live a more mature and fulfilling life.
It’s so strange the way things turn.
TBs: Relax and have fun.
TBs: It’s all ok.
Heraclitus was right on every point:
1. Two things are eternal: Emptiness and Change. Emptiness is the lack of form, and change affects only form. For those identified with a given form there can be no eternity, for the change of their forms is the end of themselves.
2. Opposites are the same in the sense that, for instance, high and low are both height, and height is not opposed to anything. Every apparent duality can be referred to an absolute which is not opposed to anything.
TBs: Don’t give up, you have friends.
TBs: You aren’t the only one.
TBs: You aren’t beaten yet.
TBs: We are proud of who you are.
TBs: It’s never been easy.
TBs: There is a place where you belong.
Spin the wheel 🛞 let it ride.
A friend commented on my above post on FB, I like what he said.
Our problem is that we understand Heraclitus and Jung to be postulating that the ultimate step of self-actualization is to be found in pursuing the external. I say the last step is to experience own existence.
Your existence has no colors, no gender, no age, no culture. The formless infinity within that powers your life nevers changes because no particulars can be specified. Certainly though, enjoy your sense perception of reality but appreciate your ability to perceive above what is perceived.
Now we are cooking with gas
Damn, the world is ours.
—
Heraclitus seems to have phrased his philosophy in such a way as to wake people up and force them to confront their own spiritual laziness and emotional lethargy.
He advocated for complete awareness of existence in the form of simply paying attention and remaining critical of other people's definitions or declarations of truth. He regularly criticized his fellow philosophers and earlier writers, doubted the opinions of professionals in any area, and believed he understood best how to navigate the path of his own life.
I have to say, I quite agree with his approach to life.
He also claimed that there was a natural force, associated with transformative fire, which moved all things in rapid succession according to their nature and this was known as the logos.
The Logos infuses all things (but did not create the world nor could bring about its end), operates naturally as 'change', but humans resist this natural flow and, because of this, cause themselves and others to suffer owing to their ignorance of the nature of life. Heraclitus wrote: "To the Logos all things are beautiful and good and just, but men have supposed some things to be unjust, others to be just"
Conflict and strife are natural and transformative. One cannot grow without striving toward some sort of goal, and strife is necessary in this process. Heraclitus, in fact, views conflict as a vital force in maintaining the world:
“We must recognize that war is common and strife is justice, and all things happen according to strife and necessity.
War is the father of all and king of all, who manifested some as gods and some as men, who made some slaves and some freemen.”
“Something in us wishes to remain a child, to be unconscious or, at most, conscious only of the ego, to reject everything strange; or else subject it to our will; to do nothing, or else indulge our own craving for pleasure or power.“ —Carl Jung
No more sleepwalking for the smelly goat.
There are no easy answers.
“The serious problems in life are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so, it is a sure sign that something has been lost.” —Jung
No matter how much you change, you can only become yourself.
Actually, you are always only yourself.
Damn, that’s something.
“Those who seek gold dig much earth and find a little.”
—Heraclitus/The Riddler/The Dark
Socrates asked about Heraclitus’ writing.
“What I understood was fine, and no doubt also what I didn’t understand; but it needs a diver to get to the bottom of it.”
—Socrates
Most are asleep, led by their own beliefs and desires, as true in our day as his. One cannot study to find the common Truth/Logos and once found, one can only point to it. Inner contemplation is the only way to discover this. One must find the truth on one’s own, through your own eyes.
“I searched myself.”
This is a true human being.
I agree with Nietzsche, one does not overcome their evil, they remain at war within and this friction and opposition is where true wisdom is forged.
You don’t need his books, which were lost.
He tells me, you can find it on your own, he tells me…
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
—Henry David Thoreau
This begins my master class on how best to apply philsophy. Henry spent a long time in the woods, he went a little crazy. Bodhidharma stared at a wall for years. Cold Mountain lived on a cold mountain. Diogenes lived in a wine barrel. What do most of us do?
Consume and get fat and die of rich person diseases, most without a positive balance in their checking accounts, how absolutely ironic and funny.
Give up the ghost, you are already dead.
Let’s start there, you are a goner. You are not going to win life. Your purpose isn’t to be free or have a happy life or be rich or poor, it’s to spread your DNA and die, to be consumed, to allow the next wave of being.
But let me tell you something, this is the doorway to joy, to Eden.
Failure is freedom!
I feel most folks are utterly asleep and full of There, I said it. We live in a fishbowl full of turds. I don’t want to be a winner. I don’t want fame or riches. I ain’t gonna start a YouTube channel or TikTok. I mean, I have a YouTube channel that gets 1-100 likes mostly per post. No one likes what I like really and that’s just fine by me.
"The straightforward and good person should be like a smelly goat— you know when they are in the room with you.”
—Marcus Aurelius
I’m weird, a misanthrope, a smelly but I love life on this little blue marble, I really do. So I ain’t all bad. Hell is other people Sarte mused and he was close, what he should have said is, hell is yourself, enjoy your stay.
I was one of the walking dead how did I find my groove, I failed and failed and failed. I became a bum. I wrote my heart. I puked my guts out. I read broadly and saw I was just another bastard. Welcome to the party.
The funniest thing, once you finally embrace the above and stomp around and splash in it, a funny thing happens, people hear you and see you. Your worst fears realized. They want your freedom. Some hate you for it, others sit at your feet.
Well, I don’t have anything to offer the little birds but a kick in the ass out of my nice comfy nest.
There you go, that’s lesson one in how to be a loser.
It’s not totally clear whether you can’t or won’t facilitate passage.
I do my small part to facilitate Dan.
And I have the favor of the Gods.
Do you?
I have some good up close magick.
The secret is keep ‘em laughin and distracted.
While all are on their own journey, we end at the same spot we all began, so you really don’t have to do much besides show up and keep an open mind.
I’m always available and open to meet other open minds, we don’t have to agree, you have to have higher quality than me for me to listen and that’s rare these days.
Why look where we are, we are in fact meeting on an open minds forum.
What a coincidence!
Your friends don’t seem too open to me.
Not the kind of folks I like to hang around with anyway.
God does play favorites.
I’ve called them out, they call me noise, I’m just doin my thang.
I don’t hide, I abide.
I really am a kind and gentle smelly
Life and nature have calmed me down quite a bit.
Anyhoo, there isn’t really anything to say, that hasn’t been said a 1000 times.
True, all will be stripped away, my love, what I have built, what has loved me, my body, still…
The ocean is boundless
Love is felt like a hot
I have what I need from my hard work
Today would be a fine day to die
But I wouldn’t mind another
What can any of us really share about our own small lives day to day i.e. woke up, felt good, breakfast good, heard some birds, sky cloudy mostly blue, mind calm and still, dogs ate well, wife is happy, had a good had some interesting social interactions, read a good book What else do we really know? Just speculation and opinion.
I don’t know about you, but I speak to myself often. Little prompts, who is speaking, Eric, my Will, the Eternal Flame what does it all mean and matter? We just are here and the rest we are making up as we go.
These are golden days though they flow through my hands like water.
The personal is against any explanation in terms of physical, cosmic changes.
Many liars fail to recognize the Logos.
“For perhaps one will escape the notice of the perceptible light, but of the intelligible light it is impossible so to do, or as Heraclitus says: How could anyone escape the notice of that which never sets? In no way, then, let us cover ourselves in darkness.”
Open Minds Forum v.2 2012 - Current. OMF continues its work on the topics of UFOs, Exopolitics, Extraterrestrial Contact, Conspiracy, Ancient History, Exotic/Cutting-edge Technologies, Cryptozoology, Special Cases, Associated Theories & Philosophies, Whistleblowers, and Sanctioned Communications.
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by Post Eschaton Punk Thu Oct 07, 2021 2:32 am
There, I said it. We live in a fishbowl full of turds. I don’t want to be a winner. I don’t want fame or riches. I ain’t gonna start a YouTube channel or TikTok. I mean, I have a YouTube channel that gets 1-100 likes mostly per post. No one likes what I like really and that’s just fine by me. 
how did I find my groove, I failed and failed and failed. I became a bum. I wrote my heart. I puked my guts out. I read broadly and saw I was just another bastard. Welcome to the party. 
is quiet as the moon
sing in chorus
no muppets bothering you.
where we are, we are in fact meeting on an open minds forum. 
What else do we really know? Just speculation and opinion. 
» Why are we here?
» The scariest character in all fiction
» WRATH OF THE GODS/TITANS
» Uanon's Majikal Misery Tour "it's all smiles on the magic school bus"
» What Music Are You Listening To ?
» Livin Your Best Life
» OMF STATE OF THE UNION
» Baudrillardian hauntology - what are some haunting truths to our reality?