DEES DREAMS AND VISIONS

JULY, 2013

 

7-1-13 - DREAM -  I worked at a very large company.  I'm assuming it was the electric company.

 

I was assigned the job of writing a letter to every individual who had an account with the electric company and asking for a donation to a very important project the electric company was heading up.

 

At first I didn't know how to go about getting the names of the individuals, but the person who assigned me this task sent me up to the third floor where the executives worked and get the file that contained all those names, addresses and phone numbers of the people with an account.  That would include not only every home/apartment owner with an account, but all the businesses as well.

 

I had friends who worked on the third floor who had access to that information, and even though when I went up to the third floor and didn't find very many people working, I was given a computer print out list, which was hundreds of pages long and about three feet in length, and over a foot high of sheets of paper that was all connected in one large print out.

 

I carried that computer print out list back down to my office, where I met my husband who looked like John  (a TV character who wore blue jean coveralls to do his job - who also worked for the electric company.)  He was extremely tall and very wide as well - a very strong man who knew his job well.  

 

He was assigned a new job as well, to dismantle some very large wooden objects so something other project could be built.  (Again I'm assuming that it was the same project I was going to ask for donations for)  My husband would be preparing the site, and I would be collecting the money to rebuild the structure brand new.  I saw the tool he was going to use - it was mechanical - like a screw remover that backed out all the screws individually, so that wood could be reused to build something new.

 

For his new job, my husband had to have a new work outfit, and that was my job as well, so get him a new suit of work clothes so he looked the part of being in charge.

 

HERE  IS AN INTERESTING SYNCHRONICITY - IN TODAY'S NEWS:

In today's socially-driven world, your customers aren't just customers -- they're valuable marketing assets. Word of mouth -- or keyboard, as these days it's mostly done via social media -- is what drives your business' success. If companies want to promote themselves in an organic way, they've got to develop brand advocates.

 

Turning advertisements into sales is no longer the best route for small business marketing. A small business doesn't have to count down to the dollar to determine ROI for a paid advertisement. Instead, small businesses that focus on creating awareness of products and services in the minds of potential customers become the most successful.

 

But because brand advocates can't be bought, it requires a bit of foresight on the part of the company. Here are five steps to creating brand advocates for your small business:

 

1. Provide an amazing product or service. If you want customers to be really excited about your product or service, you have to start by ensuring your company provides the best. Steve Jobs championed the idea of great products as marketing tools. He focused on creating an "insanely great product," paying keen attention to detail to ensure Apple's creations couldn't be beat. No one will willingly promote something that isn't the best out there, so before you jump into obtaining brand advocates, first make sure you're delivering to the best of your ability on your end.

 

2. Create people power. Brand advocates aren't created out of monetary investments -- they're created out of investments in relationships. This isn't something that can be automated, either: It takes time and effort on the part of the company to engage with customers at each corner, including social media, the company website, email lists, blogs, and mobile devices. Advocacy is a two-way street -- if someone tweets at your company, tweet them back. If someone leaves a glowing comment on your Facebook page, feature it in a status update. Creating advocates means giving customers a sense that their contributions to your company are just as important as your contributions to their lives.

 

3. Help advocates create content. Brand advocates are people who have had a great experience with your company. They become advocates because they want to help others. Provide an easy way for happy customers to give you positive reviews -- feature testimonials on your company blog, create polls to get feedback, and use videos, photos, infographics, or other multimedia content to give advocates a platform to engage with.

 

4. Keep it authentic. Too often, companies use incentives to spur brand advocacy, but this isn't always the best marketing route. Customers will become disgruntled if they learn your company had to pay someone to write a review or post a recommendation -- it diminishes credibility and hurts your reputation. If you can't get brand advocacy via authentic routes, it may be time to reevaluate the quality of your product or service.

 

5. Become socially conscious. Earn your advocacy by showing you're a company with a conscience. Many brand advocates have abandoned companies like Nike and Adidas because they learned of the companies' poor treatment of workers overseas. Give back to your community, or take a stand on social issues that matter. Customers will be more likely to stick with you in the future if you show you care about the greater good now.

 

Remember: creating advocacy doesn't mean counting numbers. When small businesses find brand advocates, they gain a renewable marketing strategy that can help drive their business for years to come. Use these tips to drive engagement and relationships, and watch your small business in both sales and recognition.

 

Kes Thygesen is the co-founder and head of product at RolePoint, a complete social recruiting suite that provides unrivaled access and reach to quality job candidates. Connect with him and RolePoint on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

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7-2-13 - DREAM -  This dream was vague and foggy like a memory.  I was with a tall white haired man in an English garden.  We were having a conversation, but I can't remember any of it.

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7-2-13 - NAP DREAM -  I had a printed page about a crop circle, and I wanted to copy the url onto my computer, but it was too long to remember, and I didn't think my 'mouse' would capture a printed page like it does a computer page, so I figured I'd have to type in the url to get it, because I needed to copy the contents onto a new page.

 

see: http://www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog526.html

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7-3-13 - DREAM -  I don't really recall a dream, but Mikki called me on my astral phone.  All I remember is seeing a woman's somewhat chubby face and there was no nose on the face - just eyes and mouth.

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7-4-13 -   12:01 a.m.

 

Joe and I were watching a TV show about Egypt and the scroll of the Egyptian Dead.  I closed my eyes for a moment and saw the words:  RITUAL TONIGHT.

 

DREAM:  The ritual began and I saw a rabbit in a cornfield.

 

I opened my eyes and it was exactly 12:01 a.m.

 

Introduction

 

The banning of the Aztec Calendar in a Tucson classroom in 2012, was the symbolic culmination of a six-year effort to destroy the district’s highly successful Mexican-American Studies (MAS) department. This mind-numbing act gives the public a glimpse into the level of conflict and censorship present during this “debate”; it is a form of censorship that went beyond the banning of books. In effect, this conflict is about civilizational war. And to the chagrin of those promoting this war, this effort has boomeranged; the attack on the MAS program has created an unprecedented interest in Indigenous knowledge, history, and culture. The destruction of Tucson’s MAS program as also created a teaching moment of what is commonly referred to as the Aztec Calendar or the Sun Stone, though more precisely known as the Tonalmachiotl.

 

The Tonalmachiotl was created over many centuries. The one most people are familiar with was chiseled in the 1400s in Mesoamerica and currently resides in Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology. The interest in learning how to read it, especially in the United States, is very much on the rise.

 

Exploring this growing phenomenon, Dr. Cintli examines, in the first part of this essay, examines the political context of the efforts to prevent the teaching of Mexican history and culture. In the second part, MAS teacher Norma Gonzalez touches on the contents of the Tonalmachiotl, whose teaching was banned in Tucson schools in 2012.

 

The Political Context

 

When the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) governing board voted in January of 2012 to suspend its Mexican-American Studies department, chaos ensued. Contrary to what the board and the district’s superintendent, Dr. John Pedicone, had been telling the community for months, that vote did not suspend the department; rather, it abolished it. This is the same department that was graduating close to 100 percent of its students and sending close to eighty percent of them on to college.1

 

Perhaps the most underreported aspect of this conflict is that shortly after the department was dismantled, one of the MAS teachers, Norma Gonzalez, co-author of this article, was told that she could not teach the Aztec Calendar to her students. In a symbolic sense, this spoke volumes. Indeed, this prohibition on teaching the Tonalmachiotl confirmed the idea that the debate was a civilizational war—a characterization that was first advanced by former state school superintendent, Tom Horne. When Horne first began this campaign to eliminate Tucson’s MAS department, that is, he advanced the idea that it needed to be done because the MAS curriculum was purportedly outside of Western Civilization. Indeed, there are few symbols more connected to Mexico’s Indigenous roots and history than this Pre-Columbian calendar, a calendar so exact that it continues to be more advanced than the Western Gregorian calendar in use today.2

 

Despite the significance of this incident involving the censuring of the Aztec Calendar, it has never been widely reported by the mainstream media. In part, this may be due to the fact that after the dismantling, chaos ensued in Tucson schools, primarily because this action took place in the middle of the school year in response to the 2010 anti-ethnic studies HB 2281 legislation. What would happen to the teachers, the students and the curriculum, became not academic questions, but trauma that was played out in real time in Tucson classrooms. Overnight, no one was quite sure what was legal or illegal, or what was permissible inside of the classroom. In one case, after student Nico Dominguez spoke at the previous school board meeting, he was pulled out of his classroom at Tucson High School by TUSD security personnel.3

 

During this chaotic time, MAS teachers were given nine directives, explaining what they could expect thereafter, including what they could and could not teach.4 The directives had the additional chilling effect that even students were unclear as to how they could interact in class. The first directive is jarring: “assignments can not direct students to apply MAS perspectives.” In the 43-year history of MAS/Raza Studies, there are no known parameters that define or limit “Mexican American Studies perspectives.” That the district would attempt to constrict the teachers was an apparent attempt to also constrict the discipline and its perspectives. The second directive banned MAS books and other teaching materials, including art and posters, from the classroom. Aside from the resulting district-wide walkouts, most of the attention immediately focused on the book banning which included TUSD personnel entering former MAS classrooms—during class time—boxing books and labeling them “banned books” and shipping them off to the district’s warehouse.

 

One teacher reported that her computer had been wiped clean and she, along with all the MAS teachers, were told to clear up all their MAS books, not just the seven that appeared on a TUSD list.5 The directive involved some additional fifty titles, which constituted the MAS curriculum. To this day, the district and state deny that any books were banned.6 Ironically, despite that denial, one rationale that MAS critics utilized for their removal was that such books—which dealt with such topics as critical race theory—were appropriate for college youths but inappropriate for high school level youths. The critics actually advanced the argument that Ethnic Studies, and Mexican American Studies specifically, were appropriate in college but not high school or younger.7

 

After the directives were issued, the chaos began as both teachers and students were confounded, not sure of what could be taught or discussed in their classrooms, including what could and could not be written in class. Of the many situations that arose, one, involving MAS teacher, Norma Gonzalez, bears special scrutiny. A few days after the dismantling of MAS, while Gonzalez was teaching the meaning of the Aztec Calendar to her students, the principal instructed her to take down the image. The principal cited the TUSD vote, explaining that because the calendar corresponded to Mexican history and culture, its teaching was now prohibited. One of the great ironies of this situation is that while the calendar apparently could no longer be taught in Mexican American Studies, it could be taught in Native American Studies.8

 

None of these draconian prohibitions were surprising; another one calls for the regular monitoring and collection (confiscation) of teacher and student work by district and state officials, which has happened. Despite these unprecedented measures, this six-year conflict has actually begun to create a teaching opportunity nationally for Indigenous knowledge. For instance, Gonzalez made the observation that while many Mexican families have an Aztec Calendar in their home, the vast majority don’t know how to read it. Indeed, this observation is true about most Indigenous knowledge in Mexico and Mexican homes. What little is known is viewed as part of the past and function more at the level of artwork or relics, as opposed to living knowledge.

 

When Horne began his attacks, claiming that MAS was outside of Western civilization and that its roots were not within the Greco–Roman tradition, what he was apparently referencing were the Maya philosophical concepts that anchor the MAS-TUSD department.9 These concepts are In Lak Ech (You are my other Me) and Panche Be (to seek the root of the truth). These concepts teach students to see themselves in each other and to pursue the truth in all that they do. Invariably, this leads students also to fight for social justice. Those concepts are traced not to Europe but to this very continent. However, as Maya scholar Domingo Martinez Paredez explains in Un continente y una cultura (1960), the concepts are actually not Maya, but rather belong to all maiz-based peoples of this continent.

 

Other elements of the curriculum that can be construed as outside of Western civilization, in addition to the Aztec calendar and these maiz-based philosophies, would be the teaching of other Maya-Nahua or Mesoamerican knowledge. Because of this emphasis on maiz-based knowledge, Horne also alleged that MAS teachers taught the students to see themselves as part of groups (Aztecs or Mayas, apparently), as opposed to individuals.

HB 2281 has precipitated several legal challenges, yet, regardless of how the courts settle this, Mexican-American Studies, particularly with a maiz-based or Indigenous perspective emphasis, is ascendant nationwide.10 Probably at no time since the 1960s has there been this much interest in these studies. The interest nowadays appears to be even more profound because its allure is that Indigenous Knowledge, history, and culture has once again become “forbidden” knowledge.

 

In this environment, people nationwide, and students in particular, want to know what elements within MAS are considered to be “outside of Western civilization.” Specifically, they want to know about In Lak Ech and Panche Be, the Aztec Calendar, and about the great book of the Maya, the Popol Vuh. Within this book is the creation story of the Maya, how the cosmos was born, and how human beings and maiz were created. This has also sparked interest in other Indigenous (Maya-Mixtec and Aztec-Mexica) codices that contain Indigenous knowledge and history of the continent, including the creation stories of other Indigenous peoples. One such codex, or Amoxtli, is Codex Chimalpopoca, which contains the creation story of the Nahuatl peoples (Legend of the Suns), which is somewhat similar to the Popol Vuh. The knowledge contained within these ancient books is referred to as In Tlilli In Tlapalli—The Red and the Black (Boone 2000). This is the knowledge that students want and are now clamoring for.

 

The battle to defend MAS-TUSD has created an unprecedented thirst for this knowledge (often found in the few surviving codices), knowledge that has been on this continent for many thousands of years. In these communities, there is also high interest in the Nahuatl (Aztec), Maya, and Quechua (Inca) languages. This also includes a high interest in Mesoamerican mathematical knowledge systems, including the Nepohualtzinzin, and, to a lesser extent, the quipu of the Inca, reputedly 5,000-years old.11 Both of these devices record knowledge; they are not simply counting devices. This also includes interest in the Maya-Nahuatl numbering systems,12 and the culture that has also been preserved in the oral tradition, song, poetry and dance.13

 

In the United States, in the past, these different kinds of Indigenous knowledge were seen at best as quaint or simply of interest to poets or esoteric and erudite scholars. However, since the advent of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, with an emphasis on In Xochitl In Cuicatl, or Floricanto—Flower and Song—but even more so, as a result of this Arizona conflict, there is a groundswell of interest in these forms of Indigenous knowledge.

Beginning in the fall of 2012, many communities nationwide are set to recommend to their local school boards that maiz or Indigenous-based Mexican-American Studies—with a social justice emphasis—be introduced and taught in their schools.14 It is safe to assume that this is not what Horne had envisioned.15Now, no one is certain whether Horne’s successor, John Huppenthal, will next come after MAS at the university level, though he has promised he will do so. If he does, no doubt this will create an even greater interest in Indigenous knowledge and studies.

 

Cultural Relevancy and Maiz-based Curriculum

 

For the predominantly brown students that attend Tucson Unified School District schools, a maiz-based (corn-based) curriculum possesses a profound relevancy to their humanity, thus imparting purpose for their existence as planetary citizens, effectively rendering them at once responsible and response-able.

 

Components of a maiz-based curriculum include: identity, discipline, tlanelhualtiliztli (seeking truth for stability), Nehuan Ti Nehuan (I am you and you am I), and cultural relevancy. As colonized people we struggle with identity, as that is what the colonizers immediately attack. Without knowledge of our culture, history, or roots, we are weak individuals; thus, acquiring an authentic identity is critical as a component to cement a positive identity. Acquiring an authentic identity places students on a path towards self-love. Discipline is presented in the manner in which students are in control of their learning and are expected to have confidence in themselves to move in a positive and progressive manner. As such discipline is understood as the training of self, in all aspects, so that we can positively transform the self and the collective. Seeking truth for stability is a requirement as students become academicians through their devotion to research due to the application of critical thinking. Community is the essence of the classroom environment, so students are expected to conduct themselves with the utmost respect for themselves and everyone around them. This is practiced daily through the application of Nehuan Ti Nehuan.

It is through the implementation of these components that students experience love with high standards, the concretizing of an ethnic and academic identity, the expectation that they must be researchers (as the more knowledge they gather about a topic the more stable they will be as authorities on that topic), and a vision of themselves in others as a basis for their interaction with one another.

 

Relevancy is when a student finds a significant and logical connection to classroom content and knowledge that provides a bearing on the students’ daily lives. This maiz-based curriculum fosters students’ connections to their essence. Within the Mexican American Studies (MAS) curriculum, culture is defined as a “lens,” figuratively speaking, that we utilize to perceive our world. Culture was created as a necessity for humans who first inhabited the Earth so we could live in harmony with our surroundings. Cultural relevancy is the ability to utilize that “lens” in the classroom as a tool for the students to critique, understand, question, value, perceive, apply, evaluate, and to relate to the content that is being presented. Cultural relevancy is what the maiz-based curriculum provides our students to profoundly impact their lives.

 

Cultural Symbols and the Aztec Calendar

 

Culture is expressed through language, values, beliefs, etc. and has various characteristics. One of the characteristics of culture is that it is symbolic. Every culture has a set of symbols that expresses its features. As a Mexican indigenous person, many cultural symbols permeated my home as a young girl, and I accepted them as just that, symbols. Growing up, I was particularly interested in the round shaped plaque with many symbols on it; it is commonly known as the “Aztec calendar.”

 

Today, as a student of Amerindigenous culture, I have come to deeply appreciate and value the teachings embedded in some of those cultural symbols that made up my home as a child. Indeed, they are symbols that are present in most Mexican indigenous homes. Specifically, I have long been a student of the Aztec Calendar, or properly named by its creators: the Tonalmachiotl. It is this symbol precisely that has enlightened me about indigenous Mexican culture and, more generally, all indigenous cultures of this continent. The Tonalmachiotl represents the keys to the cultures indigenous to this continent and should be a required subject taught in all schools on this continent.

 

This symbol was the point of reference for the development of the former MAS maiz-based curriculum, that is, until I was prohibited from teaching it by my former administrator at a middle school, when the program was dismantled. Upon returning from an administrators’ meeting, my administrator literally stormed into my classroom the day after TUSD killed the program as a result of HB 2281 and stated in front of my students, most of them Mexican, that I was not to teach anything related to that symbol, pointing to the Tonalmachiotl. She stated that the TUSD directives (and specifically the 1st directive) prohibit the teaching of anything that had to do with “Mexican culture.” Needless to say, I was in shock primarily because this is a cultural symbol that permeates the Mexican indigenous homes, restaurants, bakeries, and murals of her very students. The calendar is more “American” than any Greco-Roman symbol that the state of Arizona would have its teachers teach. In fact, according to my co-author, University of Arizona professor Roberto Rodriguez, “Tucson is home to the oldest cornfield in the nation,” thus establishing maiz-based curricula and culture as more indigenous than “America” itself.

Since this event, interest in maiz-based curricula has skyrocketed as educators nationwide have been intrigued by the prohibited curriculum. What follows, then, are lessons on the Tonalmachiotl and maiz-based perspectives.

 

The Knowledge in the Tonalmachiotl

 

Professor Arturo Meza Gutierrez, a respected teacher of Mexican Indigenous culture in Mexico City, states that the Tonalmachiotl communicates to us that we have the right to live a just and happy life and that we must respect the four life-giving elements. Developing a curriculum centered on these precepts appeals to the students’ humanity and yields tremendous growth, as evidenced by human measures. Human measures are expressed through the students level of engagement in life, that is when they engage positively in life because they have a purpose, they have hope that opportunities exist for them as opposed to being in a state of nihilism where we can find students of color because of colonization. A stable identity that allows them to walk in beauty.

Focusing on growth based on these human measures will positively and drastically foster progress in all academic areas, as evidenced by TUSD’s Raza Studies students’ consistent outperforming all other student groups in AIMS (standardized test) scores. This curricular focus imparts to students the keys to their indigenous identity and their rights as planetary citizens of this continent, thus cementing their purpose in life, their responsibility and their sense of self, their humanity.

 

According to the teaching of our Mexica elders, caretakers of our indigenous history and knowledge, the Tonalmachiotl is based on at least 30,000 years of research and study conducted on the Earth and the Cosmos; it is a scientific documentation and an astronomical account (Meza-Guitierrez). According to Calpolli Teoxicalli, the twelve-foot diameter stone is the culminating product of research conducted by our indigenous elders.16 Our ancestors’ query was centered on living in harmony with all of creation. This research cultivated the knowledge to understand the Earth and her cycles and to effectively and harmoniously work with her and the Cosmos (Calpolli Teoxicalli). Moreover, this knowledge establishes a connection with our inner-self to live in harmony from within and without.

 

When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1525, an understanding of these cultural symbols and the knowledge embedded within them was the furthest thing from the Spaniards’ minds; they came to destroy. As colonizers of this region, the Spaniards proceeded to chronicle the history of the Mexica. Purposefully they wrote that the face in the center of the Tonalmachiotl is that of a sun god, but to my understanding, that is a 500-year-old fabricated falsity. Evidence reveals that it is not a sun god as there is no word in Nahuatl to express an idea of a sun god.

 

According to the teachings of Meza-Gutierrez, the face represents Tlaltecutli, the Earth. Tlaltecutli translates into “our guide”; thus, the Tonalmachiotl is our guide to understanding how to live in harmony with the Earth. The Sun is, however, represented in the form of an Eagle and Butterfly in the center of the Tonalmachiotl, symbolizing an astronomical event that can be witnessed on Earth every year in July.

 

Among the many documented counts within the Tonalmachiotl, two are of significance and are elaborated in the maiz-based curriculum. The xiuhpohualli (a solar count) represents the solar calendar, which consists of 360 days with 5 days of the nemontemi, a reflection period used to evaluate the previous year with the intent to learn and grow from our lived experiences. The xiuhpohualli consists of eighteen veintenas (20-day cycles) as our ancestors discovered that the climate changes slightly every twenty days. Each twenty-day period that changes in the Earth’s climate is recognized and ceremonial obligations continue to be completed in an effort to assist the Earth or thank the Earth for everything that She provides. This solar count was critical to the survival of our ancestors as it was an agricultural calendar that provided the necessary knowledge for them to grow their sustenance effectively without destroying the Earth. An understanding of this count cements our interdependence with the Earth and establishes our responsibility to respect Her, for ourselves and the many generations hereafter.

 

The second count, the tonalpohualli (human count), consists of 260 days. The tonalpohualli consists of twenty trecenas (13-day cycles). This count totals 260 days, which is the amount totaling the human gestation period and applies to our development in the womb and the philosophy that the very second we take our first breath we are granted the energies of the day. Additionally, each thirteen-day cycle carries an energy that, when known, can be used. For example, according to the thirteen-day cycle, Ce Tochtli (one rabbit) days carry the energy of completion and maturity, a great time to undertake a project and to complete it.

 

Knowing the energy of the day on which we were born serves as a guide to realize and develop our potentials and capabilities so that we can fulfill our destiny as human beings to develop our profound potentials and inhabit this Earth and live in harmony with Her. This is what the Tonalmachiotl teaches us. Each day is given the symbol of an animal, a plant, a life-giving element or a symbol of life. For example, the day tochtli (rabbit) carries the energy of fertilization and maturity, and so a person born on the day, rabbit, is granted that energy. As such, that person can be fertile with the creation of ideas and on the completion or maturity of projects. A person born on the day atl, water, has the potential like water to give life, to take the shape of any container that it is housed in. As such, that person will be the giver of life to all things, ideas, and projects and will be well-established in all groups of people just as water conforms to its surroundings.

 

Each of the twenty days carries a very specific symbol because the elders matched the energy of the day with an animal or element that is representative of the specific energy. The twenty days, which appear counterclockwise in one of the inner circles, are the following: cipactli (crocodile), e’hecatl (wind), calli(house), cuetzpallin (lizard), coatl (serpent), miquitzli (skull), mazatl (deer), tochtli (rabbit), atl (water),itzcuintli (dog), ozomatli (monkey), Malinalli (herb), acatl (reed), Ozelotl (jaguar), cuautli (eagle),cozcacuautli (condor), ollin (movement), tecpatl (flint), qiahuitl ( rain), and xochitl (flower). In a maiz-based curriculum, students are able to find the personal symbols that correspond to their birthday. By knowing these symbols, students have acquired an identity that gives them purpose and direction in life to live in beauty.

 

Another critical pillar of the maiz-based curriculum is centered on the Nahui-ollin. This way of knowing is extrapolated from the center of the Tonalmachiotl, including the face and the four images in the squares surrounding it. The knowledge reveals a fundamental concept in Aztec-Mexica Cosmology that establishes a guide for everyday life and decisions. Moreover, it guides us in our development towards harmony and balance of the mind, body, and essence that fosters community. This epistemology serves to guide our decision-making in that there is an understanding that as evolutionary beings we grow and become wise through our lived experiences. The cycle consists of the male energies of Tezcatlipoca (reflection), Xipe Totec (transformation), Huitzilopotchtli (our will), and Quetzalcoatl (stability). The Nahui-ollin demonstrates that we must be reflective in our daily actions so that we can learn from them and grow into loving and respectful human beings.

 

This maiz-based curriculum focuses on the development of identity, purpose, and hope that is appealing to a students’ humanity and not focused on test scores. The focus on human measures is how we can transform the experience of students in the classroom and where we can disrupt the achievement gap.

While some will deny that there is a civilizational war at play here, what is clear is that indigenous knowledge has been demonized. That demonization has backfired as there is a newfound interest among people of Mexican, Central, and South American descent—indigenous peoples on this continent—to learn about the ancestral knowledge that lives in our midst. That the knowledge that is indigenous to this continent would be deemed to be Un-American is mind-numbing. Regardless of how this plays out in the courts, this is why it has become a teaching moment. It is possible that the calendar that has graced homes, schools, and restaurants in both Mexico and the United States for many generations, will no longer be appreciated simply for its artistic value, but for its actual content.

 

Notes

 

1. A June 2012 study confirms the positive relationship between taking MAS classes and success in school, thus debunking once again the notion that there is no such proof. See this study.

 

2. For a broader discussion on the topic of whether MAS is outside of Western civilization, go to Truthout.

 

3. The proper context of this conflict can only be appreciated by knowing that several months before on May 3, 2011, perhaps 200 law enforcement officers converged on the school board meeting, surrounding the entire neighborhood, occupying the building with SWAT officers, snipers, police dogs, a bomb squad and a metal detection unit. At this meeting, seven women were arrested inside for speaking in support of the program, while youths and students were beaten outside. To this day, there has been no accounting as to the reason for the massive show of force.

 

4. The directives can be found on this website in a column titled TUSD shuts down Dept., bans books, & issues draconian directives as to what can and cannot be taught in schools.

 

5. The initial seven books that were boxed in Jan 2012 were: Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic; 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures edited by Elizabeth Martinez; Message to Aztlan by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales; Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement by F. Arturo Rosales; Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuña; Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire; and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years by Bill Bigelow.

 

6. Several of my own books were part of the MAS-TUSD curriculum. Two, The X in La Raza and Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human, were banned by TUSD administrators the year before and were part of the original MAS curriculum since the department’s founding in 1997.

 

7. The argument that TUSD was not censoring books was also predicated on the idea that the books were not actually banned, but simply placed in district libraries. While books are available to students, they can no longer be taught in MAS classes or by former MAS teachers.

 

8. Chucho Ruiz, who is part of Calpolli Teoxicalli in Tucson and who teaches for Chicanos Por La Causa in area schools, including TUSD schools, is permitted to teach the Aztec Calendar through Native American Studies.

 

9. Tom Horne has not attacked the concepts of In lak Ech-Panche Be or Hunab Ku, but these are the most celebrated concepts of the MAS program. His attacks have generally attacked everything outside of Western Civilization. One such attack was Lecture #1023, Heritage Foundation, May 14, 2007

 

10. One of the legal challenges actually precedes HB 2281. The long-standing Fisher/Mendoza desegregation lawsuit may trump local and state laws. As of Nov. 2012, it seems likely that the courts may order TUSD to reinstate the Raza Studies curriculum. A preliminary report calls on TUSD to greatly expand its Latino-relevant classes.

 

11. In the United States, people of Mexican origin have a greater interest in the Nepohuatzinzin because it is of Mesoamerican origins, though Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci posited in the 1700s that it is similar to the quipu of the Andes.

 

12. In a maiz-based curriculum, students are taught things as simple as how to count in Nahuatl. For example, here is 1-13: ce (one), ome (two), yei (three), nahui (four), macuili (five), chicuace (six), chicome(seven), chicueyi (eight), chicnahui (nine), matlactli (ten), matlactli huan ce (eleven), matlactli huan ome( twelve), matlactli huan yei (thirteen).

 

13. The oral tradition is passed on by both, elders, primarily from Mexico and Central America, but also by traditional dance groups referred to as danza. Several influential elders who have had direct relationships with Mexican American community have included Maya scholar, Domingo Martinez Paredez, Aztec-Mexica elders, Florencio Yescas and Maestra Angelbertha Cobb, conchero elder Andres Segura and Mexicayotl elder, Tlakaele. All are now deceased except Maestra Cobb.

 

14. In the summer of 2012, educators convened a Raza Studies Now conference in Santa Monica, Calif., with the expressed purpose of spreading Raza Studies at the pre-K–12 levels nationwide. Several of the participants were those that also took part in writing “El Plan de Santa Barbara” in 1969, a blueprint for spreading Chicano Studies at the college and university level nationwide.

 

15. During the first week of August, Mr. Horne verbally reversed himself on the topic of the Aztec Calendar. At a press conference held to denounce the use of death threats in the debate over MAS, he stated that HB 2281 does not prohibit the teaching of the Aztec calendar, nor does it prohibit the teaching of Mexican-American history or culture. However, he added a disclaimer, saying that he is not responsible for what administrators do in the classrooms. See my Truthout article.

 

16. Calpolli Teoxicalli is a family of Indigenous families in Tucson, Arizona, who guide their lives according to the Tonalmachiotl or Aztec Calendar.

 

References

 

Boone, H.E. 2000. Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs. Austin: University of Texas Press.

 

Boturini Benaduci, L. 1974. Idea de una historia general de la America Septentrional. Preliminary analysis by Miguel Leon Portilla. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua.

 

Chimalpopoca Codice: anales de Cuauhtitlan y leyenda de los soles / traduccion directa del nahuatl por Velazquez. (1945). (Velasquez, Primo, Feliciano (ed.). Mexico City: UNAM.

 

Forbes, J.1973. Aztecas del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlan. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett.

 

Martinez Paredez, D.M. 1960. Un Continente y Una Cultura: Unidad Filologica de la America pre-hispanica. Mexico City: Editorial Poesia de America.

Rodriguez, R. 2010. Amoxtli X – The X Codex. Austin: Eagle Feather Research Institute.

 

— — —. 2012. “Raza Studies: Inside or Outside of Western Civilization?” Truthout: Public Intellectual Project.

 

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.

Roberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor in Mexican American studies at the University of Arizona, can be reached at xcolumn[at]gmail[dot]com.


See:  BANNED BOOKS   AND BOOK OF RULES

***************************
7-4-13 - NAP DREAM - I had been watching "The young and the Restless TV show with the same characters in it".  Billy, Chloe, Delia, and Kevin were on the show where Billy relapsed into gambling, and Delia relapsed into leukemia and went to the hospital with a fever.

I was sitting in my meditation chair for this dream.

I drove to a mall where I stopped to buy some candy for Delia who was sick in the hospital OR for myself, which I don't eat.

However, the male clerk suggested I purchased some cherry cough drops (which I could have used when I started coughing when I woke up)

I paid for the cough drops, and it seemed that the male clerk gave me more money back than I gave him in the first place.  He gave me a dollar bill and a couple small coins.

I then sat everything on the candy counter in order to put on brown woolen gloves to drive with because it was cold outside.  I had to set everything on the glass counter top in order to do that.

As I woke up, I heard a loud noise of something falling and assumed it must be the TV remote, but when I looked it wasn't.

Somehow, a pair of black binoculars in the case plus a pair of sunglasses threw themselves off a high box and it hit the wooden sewing table several feet away making a clattering sound.

Why would binoculars and sunglasses through themselves across the room all by themselves just as I was waking up?

A certain symbolism as the dream took place in winter?

And the dream suggested I purchase cough drops and I started coughing as I woke up. 

Very strange!

Chloe

The name Chloe is a baby girl name.

Biblical Meaning:
The name Chloe is a Biblical baby name. In Biblical the meaning of the name Chloe is: Green herb.

American Meaning:
The name Chloe is an American baby name. In American the meaning of the name Chloe is: Green herb.

Greek Meaning:
The name Chloe is a Greek baby name. In Greek the meaning of the name Chloe is: Green shoot. Fresh blooming. Famous bearers: The title Chloe was borne by Demeter, Greek goddess of agriculture. Chloe was a character in American writer Hairiet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'.

SoulUrge Number: 11

People with this name have a deep inner desire to inspire others in a higher cause, and to share their own strongly held views on spiritual matters.

Expression Number: 7

People with this name are excellent at analyzing, understanding, and learning. They tend to be mystics, philosophers, scholars, and teachers. Because they live so much in the mind, they tend to be quiet and introspective, and are usually introverts. When presented with issues, they will see the larger picture. Their solitary thoughtfulness and analysis of people and world events may make them seem aloof, and sometimes even melancholy.


 

Kevin
Gender Male
Origin
Word/Name Gaelic
Meaning Gentle birth
Other names
Related names Kev
   

Kevin (/ˈkɛv.ɪn/; Irish: Caoimhín /kiː.vʲiːnʲ/, Middle Irish: Caoimhghín /kəiṽʲ.ʝiːnʲ/, Old Irish: Cóemgein /koiṽʲ.ɣʲinʲ/, Scottish Gaelic: Caomhainn, Latin: Coemgenus) is a male first name of Gaelic origin. Among the earliest famous bearer of the name was Saint Kevin, although Kevin is not a biblical name. Caoimhghín derives from the Irish caomh (Old Irish cóem) "kind, honest, handsome" and -gin (Old Irish gein) "birth". Kevin influenced the similarly Gaelic-derived Kelvin, as well as the Latin Calvin.[1] "Kevin" is one of the top 100 male baby names in Canada, Chile, France, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United States.[2] It can also be spelled Kevyn, Keven, or Kevan.

 

 

 

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DELIA  Delia is a feminine given name, either taken from an epithet of the Greek moon goddess Artemis or else representing a short form of Adelia, Bedelia, Cordelia or Odelia. Whatever its origin, Delia is a very popular first name for American females (as well as a very popular U.S. surname).[1]

 

 

BILLY 

English Meaning:
The name Billy is an English baby name. In English the meaning of the name Billy is: Nickname for William 'resolute protector' often used as an independent name.

American Meaning:
The name Billy is an American baby name. In American the meaning of the name Billy is: Nickname for William 'resolute protector' often used as an independent name.

German Meaning:
The name Billy is a German baby name. In German the meaning of the name Billy is: Will-helmet. Famous Bearers: poet and playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and William Wordsworth.

SoulUrge Number: 9

People with this name have a deep inner desire to serve humanity and to give to others by sharing money, knowledge and experience, or creative and artistic ability.

Expression Number: 6

for harmony and balance in their lives, and respond positively to beautiful things.

 

*****************************

7-5-13 - VAGUE DREAM -   I was in a room somewhere with a man who looked like Paul W.   He was looking at a booklet the color and size of The Farmer's Almanac.

 

What was on the cover of this booklet was a single island right in the center.

 

It comes to me to call this  NO MAN IS AN ISLAND.

 

And because he was looking at such a small book, he couldn't see THE BIG PICTURE.

 

*****************************

 

7-5-13 - NAP DREAM -  I was in my New Berlin, WI house and it was like it was in 1960.

 

I walked out onto the front porch and the lay of the land was like it had been before the government took our land away for the freeway project for I-15.

 

However, when I walked down the front steps, there was no driveway like it had been - it was a beautiful perfect lawn, not one blade of grass was out of place and it was all the same height - and I saw one orange cat walk down where the driveway had been ... and I turned and went across the lawn towards the rear of the house, and everything was perfect - all the trees, the flowers, the lawn - it was just perfect.

 

*****************************

 

7-6-13 - Today would have been my parents wedding anniversary, which they never celebrated because apparently my Mother never wanted to get married in the first place.  Anyway, it would have been the same number of years that I am also - 74.  I always mixed up my parents anniversary date with my daughter's birthday - which was the 1st - she was 51 this year.  Time flies!

 

DREAM -  There was no sound in this dream where there should have been.

 

To begin with, apparently it was noon-time, and I was at home and two yards over, two teen age boys were driving up and down the driveway, spinning the wheels of two black cars they were driving just for fun.

 

I tried to stay out of sight so they wouldn't see me watching them because I didn't want them coming over to my house and asking me why I was spying on them.  (There was no sound being made by the cars spinning their wheels on the driveway. )

 

I then went to an old age home for golfers ( Golf was on TV while I was dreaming) 

 

Again, this dream was silent.

 

The walls of this hospital were made of glass and the walls slid sideways rather than doors opening and closing. 

 

There were two nurses, wearing white, which I saw several rooms over.  I didn't want them to see me, so I was trying to hide my presence, even though I had to go to the bathroom, and the toilets were metal chairs with flat arms on the sides to hold onto, and the seat of the chair had a hole in the center and a metal potty was on the floor like a child potty chair, but not sliding in and out right beneath the seat like a regular potty chair of a child.

 

Like I said I had to go to the bathroom, but was afraid to do so in these odd potty chairs where one could see between rooms through the glass walls.

 

I saw two old golfers in one of the rooms - they didn't really seem old - they looked like two young boys wearing bluish colored baggy pants and shirts and the two guys were in one room talking to each other and I couldn't hear their conversation either.  I also couldn't hear the conversations of the two nurses talking to each other, nor of the glass walls sliding when I moved them.  I was hiding my presence from these people as well.

 

*********************

 

7-7-13 -  THE KEY IS THE DREAM

 

I was living with a dark haired woman who was a little on the chubby side.  We lived in a large house and the house was on rolling hills of grass.  I apparently was the keeper of the gardens. 

 

I and the woman went outside to see how the heavy rain had affected the gardens.  Because of the rolling hills, some parts still looked dry and the grass was yellowed, like hay would be, and other parts had washed away because the rain took it out. 

 

I continued walking around and then found a crop circle on the side of one of the hills. 

 

The crop circle was a round 8 pointed glyph that had a number on the tip of each point that said  11:11 and beneath each of the numbers, it said, "THE KEY IS THE DREAM".

 

I was so astonished to see this crop circle on the hill, I wanted everyone in the world to see it, so I took a photograph and called in another woman who was a publisher of books, and told her that I wanted this printed in a book, but not small like the photograph - I wanted it full size like the crop circle on the hill. 

 

In order to make it that big, each of the points of the glyph had to be printed individually and then assembled later.

 

When the woman showed up to pick up the copy of the glyph for the book, each of the points was ready, and we placed them into white plastic bags for transport to the publishing company. 

 

However, somehow two bags got hooked together in a manufacturing glitch, and we had to tear them apart so they could be transported separately in order  to fit into her vehicle. 

 

When they were done, it had to look like this: so far -  picture is not done - may have to do it by hand. 

 

*************************

7-8-13 - DREAM -  I don't know where I was living, but I went out into the yard, and there was a huge crop circle in the grass that looked like a big fat tall spiney cactus with a lot of letters and symbols in it that I couldn't make out what they were.

 

I thought to myself - "No!  That's not the same one."

 

7-8-13 - DREAM -  I don't know where I was living, but I went out into the yard, and there was a small crop circle in the grass that looked like a short fat plain spiny cactus.

 

see:  http://www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog529.html

 

**************************

 

7-10-13 -  DREAM  -  While watching the Jim Bakker television broadcast, my eyes got tired, so I paused the show and closed my eyes, and had this dream.  I was standing in a room, along with an older woman, across from Jim Bakker who was trying to explain something to a woman next to him and something went wrong with what he had been saying to the other woman, and he turned and reached out his hand to the woman next to me and said, "Olivia!  Come and help me!" 

 

Spanish Meaning:
The name Olivia is a Spanish baby name. In Spanish the meaning of the name Olivia is: Olive.

Swedish Meaning:
The name Olivia is a Swedish baby name. In Swedish the meaning of the name Olivia is: Olive.

American Meaning:
The name Olivia is an American baby name. In American the meaning of the name Olivia is: Olive.

Latin Meaning:
The name Olivia is a Latin baby name. In Latin the meaning of the name Olivia is: Olive: symbol of peace.

Shakespearean Meaning:
The name Olivia is a Shakespearean baby name. In Shakespearean the meaning of the name Olivia is: Twelfth Night', also called 'What You Will' A rich countess.

 

SoulUrge Number: 7

People with this name have a deep inner need for quiet, and a desire to understand and analyze the world they live in, and to learn the deeper truths.

 

Expression Number: 5

People with this name are excited by change, adventure, and excitement. They are dynamic, visionary and versatile, able to make constructive use of freedom. They fight being restricted by rules and conventions. They tend to be optomistic, energetic, intelligent, and to make friends easily. They may be changeable, restless, untidy, and rebellious.

 

It came to me, since watching just that little bit of the show, that we can do what Jim Bakker was doing on television, but in our community, we can have a prayer and spirit music breakfast every morning.  Everyone eats breakfast, everyone should start the day with prayer and hear some music, like I heard today, not only on television but on youtube.com. 

 

I was truly inspired today by spirit.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1ZwaEzMtJw  The Great Bell Chant

 

Even though we are not professing to be a Christian Community, we are indeed a spiritual group:

 

Here are some ideas: Others can submit other ideas as well.

 

DAILY PRAYER
Wednesday, July 10 ~ Praying to love rather than fear
DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Wednesday, July 10 Praying to love rather than fear I John 4 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. …
Read More from our Blog »

Tuesday, July 9 ~ Praying to be ready

DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Tuesday, July 9 Praying to be ready Luke 12 35 “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks …
Read More from our Blog »

Monday, July 8 ~ Praying for hope

DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Monday, July 8 Praying for hope Lamentations 3 19 I remember my affliction and my wandering,     the bitterness and the gall. 20 I well remember them,     and my soul is downcast within me. 21 Yet this …
Read More from our Blog »

Sunday, July 7 ~ Praying for fellowship

DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Sunday, July 7 Praying for fellowship 1 John 1 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the …
Read More from our Blog »

Saturday, July 6 ~ Praying to love

DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Saturday, July 6 Praying to love 1 Peter 4 7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. 8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over …
Read More from our Blog »

Friday, July 5 ~ Praying to love God

DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Friday, July 5 Praying to love God 1 Corinthians 2:8-10 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,   …
Read More from our Blog »

Thursday, July 4 ~ Praying to acknowledge

DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Thursday, July 4 Praying to acknowledge Luke 12 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. 7 Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; …
Read More from our Blog »

Wednesday, July 3 ~ Praying to search
DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Wednesday, July 3 Praying to search Luke 15 8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds …
Read More from our Blog »

Tuesday, July 2 ~ Praying for authority

DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Tuesday, July 2 Praying for authority Matthew 7 28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. …
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Monday, July 1 ~ Praying to come near

DATE:     AUTHOR:     CATEGORY:  

Monday, July 1 Praying to come near James 4 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Unfortunately, all we have …
Read More from our Blog »

 

HOW TO BE A NO LIMIT PERSON:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjhTlYfLQGk great seminar by Wayne Dyer

 

 

*************************

7-11-13 - Multiple Dreams after watching a long TV show about King Tut's mummy.

 

I kept looking at a map about the location of King Tut's mummy.  The map was always yellow and King Tut's location was near the top of the map.

 

***************************

7-11-13 - DREAM - I and my husband drove up to the rental office of an apartment building that was made of wood.

 

We stepped up into the doorway of the place and met the female rental agent.

 

We started talking about going to Texas and the rental agent's daughter came in and heard us talking about going to Texas and she said that she had been there as a child and couldn't even remember making the trip - that's how boring it was there.

 

***********************

9/11 could have been stopped:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9uB64ghcq8&list=PL3FAFB75870576229

 

**************************

7-11-13 - I watched the Jim Bakker show again this morning, and they had a visiting pastor by the name of Simon who had gone to Moldova and adopted 4 little girls and brought them to America.  These girls are beautiful teenagers now, and Simon wanted to know what happened to the rest of the 15 girls who were in the orphanage when he adopted his girls.  As it turned out, one of the girls, when she turned 18 found her birth mother who didn't want her and she couldn't get a job to take care of herself, so the orphanage sold the girl to the sex slave trade.  The girl traveled through 4 countries and ended up as a prostitute in China.  When they talked to this now woman about her life, she said the worst day of her life was on Christmas day of 2010, when she was forced to service 95 Chinese men.

 

The show was collecting money at the rate of $1,000 each from visiting people at their show and offering a statue of Jesus along with a Bible verse on a plaque and the Jesus statue was a miniature of the one that is going to sit at the doorway of their own orphanage in Moldova.  They are building one for boys and one for girls, and trusting God to provide the funding.

 

I understood the problem there, and life is tough for orphans wherever they are, and I had never thought about orphans with regard to my own community and thought I could possibly work with orphans as well, at least providing free health services for them or ask people who live in our community to adopt an orphan at some point when they are with us.  That would be a good service, since back in 2010 Jesus begged me to move east and work with the Indians, and I'm certain he didn't mean India as that would have been impossible for me to do.  I'm having trouble just moving 40 miles to where the nearest Indian tribe is as it is.

 

MEDITATION:

 

When the show was over, I closed my eyes after shutting off the TV, and like yesterday, I found myself back in the Jim Bakker show scene, and there was a visiting man with white hair talking to someone on his left about something, which I couldn't hear, but while he was talking he turned to his right, and a woman holding a yellow rattle snake held it to the man's lips and he kissed the rattle snake on the lips.

 

I was horrified to see this and opened my eyes to get out of the scene.

 

Now I'm wondering if this scene is connected to the Texas dream from earlier today.

 

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/30/11956841-snake-handling-preacher-dies-from-rattlesnake-bite-in-west-virginia?lite

 

  • about unpleasant consequences if you don't co-operate. It could also ...

Rattlesnake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattlesnake  

[edit]. Snake handling at the Pentecostal Church of God in the town of Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky ...

Young snake handlers say they grasp the power of faith - USA ...

www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-06-03/snake-handlers-pentecostal-...

Jun 3, 2012 ... Hamlin is part of a new generation of serpent handling Christians. .... Hamblin almost died at 19 when a bite from a yellow timber left him hospitalized ... Rattlesnake venom is hemotoxic, meaning it destroys blood cells and ...

Snakes tend to be seen as phallic and are sexual symbols or a symbol of temptation for many.  They have a tendency to symbolize something negative, fearful, untrustworthy, or mysterious for people.  Depending upon the context of the dream and the dreamer’s culture, snakes have a tendency to represent someone that is trying to harm the dreamer in an underhanded, sly, and sneaky manner.

As a positive symbol, snakes represent transformation, knowledge and wisdom. The presence of a snake in a dream may indicate self-renewal and positive changes for the dreamer.

The meaning of a snake to the dreamer is important to explore.  Different cultures assign both negative and positive characteristics to snakes.  From a biological point of view, snakes are seen as adaptive, are able to shed their skin, are skilled predators and could be poisonous.  These traits could be viewed as both negative and positive.  The experience the dreamer has with snakes has a tendency to also reveal itself in the dream.

The type of snake is relevant to the dream.  If the dreamer is someone who has some knowledge of snakes, the type of snake needs to be taken into account. A poisonous snake, a harmless snake, or a snake that constricts its prey all has different meaning.  A constricting snake, such as a boa constrictor, may indicate to the dreamer that they are being suffocated, restricted or repressed in their waking life.

Psychodynamic Dream Interpretation of Snakes

Dreams can assist the dreamer to explore and understand the state of his/her unconscious, what is needed for greater personal development, and gaining insight into their psyche. Snakes may symbolize hidden fears or and worries that are currently threatening the dreamer. Since snakes are mysterious, the presence of a snake in a dream may be alerting the dreamer to something in his/her waking life that has not fully surfaced yet. We often use dreams to process the experiences we have in our days. We often dream of the important facts of our days that we may have missed. The details within the context of the dream are always important. For example, dreaming of a snake with a head at each end would most likely symbolize the feeling of being pulled in two different directions, the risk of burn out, how the dreamer is not getting anywhere due to lack of commitment or direction, or feelings of confliction possibly relating to sexuality to sexual/romantic relationships. A two headed snake, in contrast, may symbolize a cooperative relationship. Finally, dreaming of many snakes may mean the dreamer is anxious, overwhelmed, and possibly that a lot of little things are "getting to" the dreamer.

Dreams may not mean what they appear to mean at first glance. Characters and objects within a dream, although separate from the dreamer within the dream, may actually illustrate aspects of self to the dreamer. The relationship to each other and the qualities assigned to each object may reflect aspects of self the dreamer is either unaware of, beginning to develop, recently accepted, or has repressed. A snake may symbolize a part of self that is either unknown or is believed to be undesirable by the dreamer.

The Eastern Perspective on Snake Dreams: The Esoteric Body

The snake is a symbol of Kundalini, a Hindu concept of pure energy located within the base of spine. Kundalini is described as a dormant potential force in all people. Yoga is the practice that is supposed to awaken the Kundalini energy. Yoga evokes the progress of Kundalini through the different chakras. Each chakra leads to a different level of awakening and mystical experience.

In dreams, the snake could represent wisdom, spiritual awakening and inner power.

The snake is a very positive symbol within the eastern cultures, practices, and religion. Individuals familiar with these practices may discover their dream relates to these concepts more than others.

Christian Dream Interpretation of Snakes

The Christian perspective may view the snake as a symbol of temptation. The snake relates to the serpent in Genesis 3 that tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. In this story, the snake is a sneaky and sly individual having a negative influence on others. The snake can relate to a malicious enemy, betrayal, or deception. Christians may find their dreams of snakes relate to trials and tests they are experiencing in their waking life and their relationship with God. An individual dreaming of snakes coming from a Christian perspective may want to explore further what this biblical story means to them and how the lessons and hardships experienced within this story relate to his/her current experiences.

Alternative Perspectives on Snake Dreams: Psychics or Mediums

 Some people dreaming of a snake- especially the skin of a snake is a sign of protection from illness.

Others may view snake dreams as predictive in nature showing the dreamer a potential danger or a deceitful person they will soon be encountering.

 

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7-11-13 - NAP DREAM -  I was cross-stitching the shape of our community property on the front and back of a piece of cloth. The thread was a golden tan color, and the shape at the end was heart shaped.

 

**************************

 

7-12-13 - JOE:  I was laying in bed and woke up to hear Joe starting to chant like an Indian, and I listened and all of a sudden he reached out and hit me in the side of my head.

 

I yelled at him to wake up, and he said he was dreaming that we were in the car and I was driving and fell asleep at the wheel and he was trying to wake me up and I wouldn't wake up and he hit me to wake me up and grab the wheel of the car with his left hand.

 

That's the second time he's tried to hit me while he was sleeping and chanting like an Indian.

 

***************************

 

7-13-13 - DREAM -  I was embroidering a very large picture of a forest of trees that looked like very tall elm trees.

 

At the end I couldn't tell if I was adding to the tree branches or trying to delete them, and I stopped working on it and woke up instead.

 

**************************

7-13-13- DREAM - I was apparently in England for some reason, and I went to visit my Mom for Christmas. 

 

There were several doorways into the large wooden house she lived in, and I wasn't familiar with the side door that was open and was surprised to see that they were using that doorway.

 

Before I got to the doorway, I saw a large orange dump truck embedded in the side of the house.

 

I went into the doorway exclaiming my surprise that they used the side door.  I went over and hugged my Mom and said, "Merry Christmas" and quickly sorted out in my mind what other holidays I could wish for her, and couldn't think of any others that were appropriate, including her wedding anniversary.

 

Inside the house was my friend Norman who I hugged and I told him I'd visit him at his house later.  My daughter Jeanne and a bunch of little kids were there, as was my brother Marty.

 

I left to go to Norman's house and when I rounded the corner of the front of the house, there was a yellow school bus embedded in the front of the house.

******************************

 

7-13-13- NAP DREAM - I was embroidering on a piece of cloth that had a beautiful pattern on it already, and I was using what I'll call invisible thread, such that when I made a lot of tiny stitches on the roses, the object would seem to disappear and actually not be there.

 

I don't know how that works because with sewing, you can take a seam ripper or scissor and cut the threads and pick the threads out of the fabric, and that isn't what I was actually doing... I was actually covering up what was there and it just made it 'look' like it wasn't there.

 

Invisible Threads - invisiblethreadsclothing.com
www.invisiblethreadsclothing.com/
Graphic tees & Accessories inspired by the performing arts
  • Invisibility at Amazon - Low Prices on Invisibility - Amazon.com
    www.amazon.com/Invisibility
    Invisibility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisibility - Similar to Invisibility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Invisibility is the state of an object that cannot be seen. An object in this state is said to be invisible (literally, "not visible"). The term is often used in ...

    Cloak of invisibility - Category: Invisibility - Invisibility in fiction

  • Sir John Pendry, pioneer of the 'invisibility cloak', wins top ...

    www.independent.co.uk/news/science/sir-john-pendry-pioneer-of-the-invisibil...

    Jul 1, 2013 ... A British physicist who has pioneered the development of a new class of metamaterials and proposed the idea of an "invisibility cloak" has won ...

  • Quantum invisibility cloak could hide objects from reality ...

    www.extremetech.com/extreme/158405-quantum-invisibility-cloak-could-hide-ob...

    Jun 13, 2013 ... Researchers believe it is possible to create a quantum invisibility cloak. Anything hidden in it would be shielded from reality ...

    • "Invisibility Cloak" Hides Cats and Fish: Scientific American

    www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=invisibility-cloak-hides-cats-and...

    Jun 11, 2013 ... An arrangement of glass prisms routes light around an object but cannot hide itself.

  • How Invisibility Cloaks Work - HowStuffWorks

    www.howstuffworks.com/invisibility-cloak.htm

    With optical-camouflage technology, the invisibility cloak is a reality. Learn what it is.

  • Quantum Invisibility Cloak Hides Objects from Reality | MIT ...

    www.technologyreview.com/view/516006/quantum-invisibility-cloak-hides-objec...

    Jun 12, 2013 ... Physicists have worked out how to cloak a region of space from the quantum world, thereby shielding it from reality itself.

    Researchers Invent Invisibility Cloak | ABC News Blogs - Yahoo!

    gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/researchers-invent-invisibility-cloak-1911484...

    Jun 12, 2013 ... From the blog ABC News Blogs: Researchers at Purdue University have developed an invisibility cloak that uses time to make things disappear ...

  • Invisibility cloak makes pets vanish - video | Science | ...

    www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2013/jun/10/invisibility-cloak-makes-pets-...

    Jun 10, 2013 ... Scientists demonstrate how a rudimentary invisibility cloak made from panels of glass can make a goldfish and a pet cat disappear.

  • Metamaterials breakthrough could lead to the first ...

    www.gizmag.com/metamaterials-wide-spectrum-optical-invisibility-cloak-stanf...

    Jun 12, 2013 ... A Stanford breakthrough in optical metamaterials could enable fabrication of a wide-spectrum invisibility cloak.

  • New 'Invisibility cloak' makes objects disappear by bending ...

    www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10111998/New-Invisibility-cloak-makes-o...

    Jun 11, 2013 ... Scientists have made a pet goldfish and a small cat vanish from sight using a newly developed "invisibility cloak

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    7-14-13 - DREAM - I was in a room with two women, and not eavesdropping, but the two women were talking about the purchase of the property I live on.  The woman who was talking was the woman who just looked at the house last week.  She told the other woman, "I made a math error while  calculating the price of a tree, and didn't realize it, and neither did 'they', so I got the property way cheaper than it is worth. "

     

    She didn't specify which tree she was talking about but there are hundreds upon hundreds of trees on the property -  so that can really add up to a large number.

     

    ****************************

    7-15-13 - DREAM -  I was working in a rather large office in an apartment building.  My boss looked like Nora Buchanan - the lawyer from One Life to Live TV show. 

     

    Norah hired a young woman to work with me, and when she brought her into the office, she had a partial mask over her face, over her nose area, that made her look rather alien. 

     

    Over the next few hours, she took off her mask and then she looked completely human, but she needed her clothing folded so she could stay in the building, so I started folding her sweaters, which were wrinkled, and smoothed them out for her.   Her jacket was black and white tweed and really ugly.  Her hair needed cutting so she looked more human too - it looked very wig like.

     

    A short chubby man came into the office then and voiced his suspicions of this new girl... I can't place right now who he looked like, but he was a friend who 'knew' things.

     

    Then we got a problem in the drain of the sink and when the maintenance man took the top of the drain off, there was bugs in the water, swimming around with small black and white fish I hadn't known were there either.  He easily got rid of them, but that was odd too.

     

    I attempted to call my spiritual teacher on the phone and the sound was very hollow on the phone like we were talking through a tube.

     

    Then my friend Alyse called on the phone and while we were talking, we both experienced a bad thunderstorm and the power went out and all the trees were blown down in our front yard and she said the same thing happened in her yard as well.

     

    NOTE:  While I was dreaming this, before and after, I heard loud cracking noises in the door and in the next room like the boards were shifting.  It was rather unsettling to say the least.

     

    Other dreams with Nora in them:

     

    ****************

    7-16-13 - I recall seeing a part of a TV show that had a lot of actors on it and it was a famous group evidently who worked together in some kind of special program, but I didn't see the whole show so I don't know what it was.

     

    DREAM - I was part of a crew who had to make the beds where the actors spent the night.  They were jam packed into this dormitory every night.

     

    I was just helping this crew as my real job was in the 'big' building.  This was evidently the overlow building.  People of all ages, including children took a shower and spent the night here.  The beds seemed to be only about two feet apart, just enough room to walk between.

     

    Our in the hallway, where I was getting the supplies, were sheets, pillow cases, blankets, and crocheted caps, some as small as baby size, and it seemed everything was a dull blue color - maybe one could correlate as 'navy' blue but worn - (not like new denim color).

     

    I didn't know anyone in the crew, but they were white and colored skin of various shades and everyone worked together until the job was done.

     

    Every bed had a number, and I recall hearing the number 64, though I also heard the number 80.  It seems that 64 was the highest number of 'regular' sleepers. 

     

    I told one younger boy that if he needed help, I could do that because I had experience in the 'big' building.

     

    I woke up when the job was complete.

     

    HERE ARE OVER 6 MILLION WEBSITES ABOUT THIS: http://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_it=clpromo1&ncid=aolsea00010000000041&q=actors+dormitory     Using quotes around the words 'actors dormitory' only had 5.

     

    SEE  http://www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog532.html

     

    *************

    7-17-13 - DREAM 1 -  I was working in an office and deleting numbers off a screen one by one - up to the number 19.

     

    I woke up and went to the bathroom, disappointed that I had had such a crummy dream.

     

    DREAM 2 - I was working in an office, and dropped a piece of raw meat on the floor and promptly threw it into the trash because the floor had little black specks all over it.

     

    I then picked up a pair of white shoes for my Father to wear when he went home, and then my Mother came to get him to drive him home.

     

    On the counter in my office, I found a number 10 envelope, and on the back of the envelope was written by hand:

     

    Congratulations on your promotion:  and below that, every executive in the upper echelon of where I worked had signed the envelope with their title and number designation (not their names)  Agents were - 500, executives were - 1000, and 1500.

     

    There were some other employees upstairs as well, but none had numbers 1 thru 19.

     

    **************

    7-18-13 - DREAM - I don't remember any details, but I was at the new community - living there.

    **************

     

    7-18-13 - FOR DAPHNE:  SYMBOLS

     

    SEA URCHIN

    HERMIT CRAB

    SAND DOLLAR

     

    LION'S GATE

    DIAMOND HEAD OVERRIDING

     

    GRAND TRINE

     

    JULY 16TH, 2013

    • July & August 2013 Grand Water Trines & T-Squares | TRANSITIONS

      deniselefay.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/july-august-2013-grand-water-trines-t-...

      Jul 1, 2013 ... This Grand Water Trine will be in effect throughout all of July but is exact on ... July 26, 2013 Venus Opposition Neptune; July 27, 2013 Mars 9° ...

    • 2013 GENERAL FORECAST - Astrologer Bill Attride

      astrologerbillattride.typepad.com/astrologer-bill-Attride/2013-general-fore...

      The General Outlook for 2013 continues to resound with the larger elements that arrived upon the world stage in .... The Grand Water Trine, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune July 17-19, 2013 .... Mercury Retrograde in Cancer (June 26 until July 20).

     

    ****************

    7-19-13 -  THE RAINS ARE COMING

     

    DREAM 1 -  There were red words floating around in the air helter skelter and I was knocking them out of the air until only the words

     

    THE RAINS ARE COMING were left floating in the air.

     

    DREAM 2 -  There were red words floating around in the air frenetically and I was deleting the words as fast as I could until only the words  THE RAINS ARE COMING remained.

     

    DREAM 3  -  I went to work in the morning and while I was walking down the sidewalk, a big old car went past, belching nasty orange-brown gas out of its exhaust.  The smell was awful as I walked through it. 

     

    Lots of people were walking through this orange-brown exhaust of the vehicle - it was quite sickening to experience - watering burning eyes too - not just the smell.

     

    I was working in a large office then with other people and was cleaning up as things that were not in their place, and while I was doing this, the boss  Howard Stern came in and started talking 'sternly' to us and complaining that the place was a mess.  He left before I could explain that we were working hard, not just fooling around.

     

    His complaint made me angry and I continued cleaning because we had to do it and nothing else mattered now but making the place look nice.

     

    The next day, I was again in the office and the boss Howard Stern came in, and I said to him, "I know now why things were such a mess yesterday!  We all walked through this nasty orange gas that was coming from the exhaust of a vehicle as we went past it."

     

    I was actually just using the car gas as an excuse, but Howard Stern's eyes instantly got very big and he jumped up off his chair and started grabbing everything that was made of fabric like the curtains, the rugs, and anything that had a flat surface on it and started taking it out of the office, until every surface was clean and had nothing on it.

     

    He said that we had all been poisoned and that we needed to warn everyone about this orange-brown gas - not to breathe it because it could kill us all.

     

    He and the other men in the office then ran outside to go look for that vehicle and destroy it before it killed everyone in existence.

     

    After Howard and the other men left, I set about to create a huge red warning sign on my new desk in a size about 4 feet square that said, "DON'T BREATHE THE GAS".  The warning sign had to be big enough to copy and yet be spread all over the city so everyone could see it. There to be more instructions on what to do below that, but the warning had to be noticeable to everyone.

     

    I then noticed in the next room where my Father slept on the bed to take naps that the quilt on the bed (made of fabric) had a dark blue background and frenetic golden-yellow lines covered the top of it and I knew I had to cut it up and destroy it but I didn't want to destroy my Father's entire quilt because the reverse side was beautiful.  I just had to remove the side that was contaminated by the gas that had seeped into the room the day before.

     

    Now I was frantic because I didn't know how to separate the side of the quilt that was ruined by the gas from the side that was beautiful without destroying the whole quilt.

     

    ***********************

    7-20-13 - DREAM x 3  I was at a place like a seashore, though I didn't actually see the ocean.

     

    At my feet was a fabric like object similar to a very large hot pad or quilt that was square with sections in it that needed repair.

     

    Three separate times, I overlayed 4 sections of fabric-like squares on top of a matching one still attached below it so it was stronger.

     

    There were 16 squares in each of this quilts.

    I repaired 4 in each one

     

    Since I had the dream three times, there are two ways of looking at it.  Since all dreams were the same, I could analyze each dream separately OR as a group of three.

     

    3 x 4 = 12

     

    3 x 16 = 48

     

    This is the repair of the grid.

     

    SEE:  http://www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog534.html

     

     

    *********************

     

    7-20-13 - NAP DREAM -  I was working in a room on a large table, with a board on it, and creating an electronic grid between other boards, particularly with one led by a young man named Michael.  (Archangel Michael?)  I get that it had something to do with water.

     

    *********************

     

    7-21-13 - CRIMSON LIGHTS

     

    DREAM  - I don't know who I was, nor where I was, but I and my family were at a rough wooden board rental cabin at Christmas time.

     

    I may have been  my dear friend Daphne.

     

    There were other people using this cabin as well, and another family was served their dinner before ours was.

     

    I saw that the family before us was served their meal on very large crimson colored plates that were larger than normal dinner ware.

     

    When it was my family's turn to eat dinner, I asked our waiter if we could use the same large crimson colored plates as the previous family, and that was done for us too.  It seemed to be a lovely meal - (thought I can't remember tasting the food at all, nor the conversation)

     

    My husband, (who looked like my first husband) then went outside to wash up in the wash bowl that was set up next to the cabin.  (We evidently had outdoor facilities for bathing/bathroom, etc.)

     

    I saw that it was dark outside, so I turned on the yard lights so my husband could see better.

     

    As soon as I did that, my husband came inside and swore at me for interfering in his life and turning on the light, and stomped out again and I felt a fear for my own safety.

     

    I went into another room, where I looked in the mirror.  I was tall, blonde with very nice curly, shoulder length hair, dressed in a bright blue long sleeved sweater and jeans.  I could see that I was very beautiful.  I didn't understand why my husband didn't want the lights turned on for him, or why he didn't like me.

     

    I then went outside and got into my vehicle to drive to another location. 

     

    None of the other vehicles had their lights on, and I evidently didn't either and it was getting dark outside.  I needed to turn left onto another road at a T intersection and it seemed that nobody going the other direction could see my vehicle, so I turned on the headlights for my vehicle and woke up.

     

    NOTE:  Crimson Lights is also the name of a restaurant on the TV show "The Young and the Restless".

    POPE PREPARES FOR DEATH - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes

    www.greatdreams.com/pope-death.htm 

    Dressed in red and white papal robes and crimson Vestments, his head covered with a white MItre, the body of Pope John Paul II's lay in state Sunday (04 April) ...

     

  • Princess Diana KNEW - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes

    www.greatdreams.com/diana3.htm

    Camilla made it appear she did not have a care in the world, stepping into the spotlight in figure hugging crimson suit with long embroidered black pashmina ...

    • ******************

    7-23-13 - Merry's Game Board x 2

     

    I was watching Merry playing on a fan-shaped game board.  (She actually looked like my Italian classmate from grade school by the name of Joanne Natoli.

     

    For some reason, each of the playing spots represented a fish.  It didn't matter if she played on the front side or the back side of the board, either way she could win.

     

    I woke up at one point because the room fan was blowing on me, and when I went back to sleep, the dream replayed itself - and Merry won that game as well, because she played both sides of the fan-shaped game board.

     

    NOTE: I was actually seeing Merry's sister Gina.

    *********************

    7-24-13 DREAM -  This was a very bright, but vague dream about Daphne -  It seemed to be about horses as well, but I didn't actually see the horses.

    *********************

     

    7-24-13 - DREAM - I was living in a house that had linoleum on all the floors.  I was reading the newspaper ads for a different place to live.  I found one with 7 bedrooms in the city but Joe refused to go look at it.  I just wasn't finding anything else worth looking at either.

     

    **********************

     

    7-25-13 -  DREAM - I was looking over the garden plot in the new place we were living from above.  I was fascinated by what was planted in row 4, and I kept thinking about moving row 4 to a new location and telling people about it.

     

    **********************

    7-25-13 - DREAM - I seemed to be in the same garden plot as in the last dream.  There were several bags of something I was looking in - something white and soft, and now it feels like it was cotton bolls, but I was thinking these bags were full of clouds.  Maybe rain clouds?  Two dreams last week were about THE RAINS ARE COMING. 

     

    It seems that there were 5 bags of these clouds.

    **********************

    7-26-13 - MULTIPLE DREAMS

     

    I was sewing cross-stitch lines in multicolors in rows that looked like Greek letters.

     

    Each dream had me doing the cross-stitch line in a different direction.

     

    It seemed that if I put all these pieces of fabrics together, it would look like a mountain exploding with streaks of lava coming out in a different direction.

     

    *********************

     

    7-27-13 - DREAM - I was in a small airplane, filming the landing of another small plane ahead of me, and then we landed ahead of that one after overflying that plane.  The landing strip was very wide, and all short clipped grass -  not pavement of any kind.

     

    I didn't see the outside of the house, but went into the house, where the women were wearing long cotton gowns of light blue with flowers on it like they were costumes for summer weather. One of the women was Oprah - the woman with her was a caucasian woman of similar build, wearing an identical blue cotton gown.  They were very close to each other - great friends.

     

    I wondered how one bought a place such as this, and then I found a large size catalog that was distributed worldwide, and I saw on the cover that it advertised one house that said 8-bedrooms.

     

    There was a phone number on the catalog that I can't remember, but I do remember the price of the rent - and it was $1157.

     

    NOTE: According to the internet - the 1157 is a per night rental price.

    ***********************

    7-28-13 - JOE'S DREAM -  (I was awake, watching TV about serial killers on CNN)  Joe started chanting like an Indian, so I poked him to wake him up because he dreams something different when he does that. 

     

    In Joe's dream, I was with him, and there was  a machine like a big hot water boiler and it was so extremely hot he was afraid it was going to explode, so he was going to grab me and get me out of the way to protect me.

     

     **********************

    7-28-13 - DREAM - I was in a large garden and there were many, many lettuce leaves standing up, and they were supposed to be perfect so I spent a long time, poking at each one to make sure they were perfect.

     

    DREAM 2 - I had the identical dream, and when I deemed it perfect - the whole frame fell over with a loud crash.

     

    *************************

    7-29-13 - DREAM - All I can remember is seeing a man, dressed in white, standing on what seems like the balcony of a white metal building with a clipboard, pencil and paper on it, overlooking something below him, making a decision about something.  He had thin short dark hair, and a narrow, thin beard around the edge of his jaw. It feels like it was about water.

    s

    see: http://www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog537.html

     

    *************************

    7-30-13 - DREAM -  I was given the opportunity to remove 10 words from a stairway relative to the water.

     

     

    *************

    7-31-13 - DREAM - I was constructing an index page to websites about water.  I had to do it twice because the link to the main water page had to be larger than I gave it the first time.

     

     

    BACK TO DEES INDEX PAGE

    http://www.greatdreams.com/deepage.htm