 
Sensual Preciousness: transforming humanity and the Earth through the vision and practices of the intimate embrace of Beloveds

Inspired by the vision and rituals of the Earthfolk

Earthfolk Papers, Volume 1 of 2

by Francis X. Kroncke

Smashwords edition, copyright 2013

Cover design by Mikki Fattoruso, mfdesignstudio.com

## INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES 1 AND 2

_Sensual Preciousness, Volumes 1 and 2_ , introduces the Earthfolk and their vision and practices of a spirituality of intimacy. This is a fundamentally distinct way of understanding what it means to be human, and how humans as individuals and communities can interact with each other. http://www.earthfolk.net

But why is _Sensual Preciousness_ being written? Is it responding to a crisis? Or a discovery? Actually, both.

## Chapter1: A Crisis and a Discovery

_Crisis_. There is a _crisis of intimacy_ which is reflected in the **Endless Warring** which is the defining characteristic of human history. In the Endless War, the vision of other people is that _you_ —the Other—is Intimate Enemy. In this vision, you, as Intimate Enemy, are someone to be feared and, eventually, dominated and subjugated. Even the most intimate sexual space is defined as an arena where the "War between the Sexes" is waged.

It is a crisis reflected, moreover, in the almost unimaginable fact that there are enough nuclear bombs to blow the Earth to smithereens and, in so doing, vaporize every human being and every living thing. To grasp the Earthfolk vision is, in part, to understand the connections and disconnections between _Sensual Preciousness_ ' spirituality of intimacy and the spirituality of the Endless War with its Intimate Enemy and nuclear bomb. The latter is a spirituality grounded in a millennia old vision, that of the **Warrior's Quest** , which seeks to exercise _Dominion over all peoples_ , all living things, including the Earth, itself. It is a spirituality of the individual, described quite often in terms of a _Hero's Journey_ , on which an _Intimate Enemy_ is overcome, vanquished, slain. The Warrior's Quester practices "living as if you are my Intimate Enemy." For the Warrior's Quester, "you" is any Other who stands to thwart the Quest. The reward, as the Warrior's Quest ends, is individual victory, enlightenment, salvation.

This crisis of intimacy has assumed a special characteristic since the Warrior has created a weapon he cannot control, namely, the Atom Bomb. The **Atomic Bomb's Mushroom Cloud is the Warrior's Quest victory icon.** It expresses the fulfillment of the Warrior's Quest imagination which is the act of human self-annihilation. The Warrior's Quest has always envisioned an _apocalyptic End Time,_ but it was foretold as an event of triumph by the Warrior's returning god. Now, the Warrior's final victory is within his own grasp, yet it can only be achieved through an act of individual and total human self-annihilation.

In sharp contrast, the Earthfolk vision is of _you_ —the Other—as **precious** and **Beloved**. In this vision, your embrace of an Other effects an intimate convergence which simultaneously makes present each other's preciousness. When preciousness is made present, you are "you," that is, an individual in relationship. For Earthfolk, you are "you" _only_ when beheld by an Other. This is a spirituality of intimate presence which Earthfolk describe as a quest of Beloveds. It seeks and finds fulfillment in the immortal experience of communal presence, which Earthfolk call the _Forever-Family_. This is the communal "we" from which, to which, and in which you exist. For Earthfolk, Forever-Family is comfortably at-home on the Living Earth. Earthfolk's daily practice is **"living as if I am no one's Enemy."**

Yet, the most telling aspect of this crisis of intimacy is that those on the Warrior's Quest adamantly _deny_ that there is a crisis! Earthfolk describe those who created the Atom Bomb with its Mushroom Cloud as being, as a people, in post-traumatic stress. They are a psychically and spiritually numbed people who have long forgotten how to ask for help. To Earthfolk ears, they babble on, aimlessly talking to themselves about how happy they are in their Land of Peace and Plenty as they, simultaneously, set about endlessly raping, pillaging and destroying whatever is before them.

With a twist on the macho playground taunt, the Warrior is "afraid of his own Shadow," here meaning his Dark Side. Even after reflecting on the Mushroom Cloud, the Warrior denies that humans are now living in apocalyptic times. The Warrior denies that the world is engulfed in Endless Warring, and that the Other is seen as Intimate Enemy. The Warrior peers at the vaporized shadows of humans left by Hiroshima's "Little Boy" atomic bomb and hails them as signs of Victory for the Free World. Earthfolk hold that those who do not see their Shadow (and all aspects of human darkness) are doomed to be controlled by their Shadow.

If asked, would you say to yourself and others, "I don't see the Other as Intimate Enemy." Or, "My life isn't part of an Endless War, that's just a political problem." Or, "I love all people. And I feel loved. Mine is a happy family. There is no crisis of intimacy." If so, Earthfolk invite you to consider the possibility that you cannot but answer in this manner. For how you, the individual responds, is more greatly influenced by communal feeling than by your personal act of self-evaluation. But **what is the** _communal feeling_ **which pervades your world?**

Earthfolk invite you to reflect upon what communal feeling is generated as a result of the dropping of the Atomic Bomb. Earthfolk describe this feeling as one of "dreadful fear." It is a communal feeling of dreadful fear which the Earthfolk also traumatically feel because all humans live under the Mushroom Cloud. Indeed, one factor in the Earthfolk's awakening was their insight into and acceptance of themselves as in the throes of post-traumatic stress. In this light, how else is anyone to respond to what the Mushroom Cloud conjures up in the mind, heart and soul but with acts and words of self-delusion and denial? Who wants to say, "Yes, I am responsible for vaporizing other people." No one wants to stand up in public and state that they are fully responsible for creating a world which has already begun to self-annihilate; to proclaim, "I am Earth's slayer!"

Earthfolk hear the many War Stories (popular and literary) which those committed to the Warrior's Quest tell themselves to justify engaging in Endless Warring. In the main, these are _stories of misdirection_ which enable the Warrior Quester to avoid accepting responsibility for the import of their heartfelt acts, most notably, for waging Nuclear War. Do you acknowledge that you are, right now, an active participant in a phase of nuclear war? Are you willing to explore the possibility that the way you are living, right now, is structured by personal and social rituals which make present a world where intimacy is defined and valued solely in Warrior's Quest terminology and images, such as the "War between the Sexes"? Are you living in a world drenched by pornographic media, which is being communicated 24/7/365 on a world-wide-net? A net of imagery whose heartfelt acts are ones of personal degradation, sexual abuse, domination of the weak and violent subjugation?

For Earthfolk, the Warrior's Quest imagined the Mushroom Cloud, and so it became reality. It imagines a world which seeks to snuff out intimacy, and so such becomes reality. But, the Mushroom Cloud, after all, is there because it was and is imagined. Are you open to the possibility that you can imagine a world wherein you are precious and a Beloved? Earthfolk have discovered such a way of imagining.

_Discovery_. The Earthfolk discovery is that the _only_ **power** which can counter Endless Warring and nuclear power is the **vital zest** made present when humans intimately embrace as Beloveds. This is a discovery which startled the Earthfolk as they were experiencing the darkest of moments, the most forlorn of days. It is a discovery they most often made at various moments of personal and communal breakdown: on the battlefield, in prison, during the seduction of suicidal despair. For Earthfolk, it was and is breakthrough as they contemplate the dreadful fear which peering at the image of the Atomic Bomb's Mushroom Cloud chillingly evokes. As they pondered and were paralyzed by the terror of impending nuclear self-annihilation, so did they breakthrough to an experience of the power of intimacy. They discovered the Other as precious. Embracing _you_ —the Other—as precious releases an intimate vital zest as physical, quantitative and powerful as the Bomb's nuclear energy.

The Warrior's Quest vision, which fears you as Intimate Enemy, expresses itself through the social ritual of Endless War from which arose the Mushroom Cloud. When you approach an Other as Intimate Enemy, you are enacting a personal Warrior's Quest ritual. This is "living as if everyone is my Enemy." Through this ritual you nourish and expand the dreadful fear which is symbolized by the nuclear bomb's iconic Mushroom Cloud. In sharp contrast, when you approach an Other as precious, you are enacting a personal Earthfolk ritual. This is "living as if I am no one's Enemy." Through this ritual you nourish and expand the sense of being comfortably at-home on Earth which is symbolized by another iconic image, that of Starship Earth.

In this light, when the Warrior's Quest was heralding its brightest hour, that is, at the moment it achieved military Dominion over outer-space, so did, unintentionally, the Earthfolk vision breakthrough. This was breakthrough as Earthfolk contemplated the astronaut's snapshot of Earth as first seen from outer space as "Starship Earth."

During these moments of reflection, Earthfolk sensed that the **Earth is** _alive_. More, it was clear that all other people, all Others, are precious. It was even clearer, still, that all people live on the One Earth and are One Family. Yes, for Earthfolk the Earth is alive, and it is _precious_.

Earthfolk discovered the simple truth that making the Other precious through intimate embrace is the singular act which unleashes an energy and makes manifest a spiritual presence which can counter the seemingly inevitable nuclear vaporization of the Earth and all people. Earthfolk name this intimate energy, vital zest. As this vital zest is shared within an intimate embrace it makes manifest the presence of the Other's preciousness. This is the presence of the Other as known only as each share their preciousness. It is a presence evoked in a moment of transformation, that is, as intimacy opens to Belovedness.

_Preciousness_ is that distinct vital zest which makes "you," _you_. Note, however, that it is a coupled energy, and a presence which only the coupled Beloveds discover and manifest. Consequently, for Earthfolk, you—who are Other—are the one who will either continue to wage Endless War or be the one to unleash the intimate vital zest and make present that preciousness which will transform the Earth. You will continue to either behold the Other as Enemy and create a world wherein individuals seek only Dominion, Victory and Salvation or you will embrace the Other as precious and transform yourself, humankind, and the Earth, itself, as you make present Belovedness. Earthfolk anticipate that this discovery might sound very odd, off-beat and somewhat absurd to you. Yet, they hope that it also intrigues you enough for you to reflect upon their vision and practices.

## Chapter 2: Becoming Sensually Precious and "Big Stories"

Earthfolk's invitation is for you to experience a _new sense of intimacy_ , which is an experience of being sensually precious. If accepted, this is an invitation for you to transform yourself on the mental and spiritual planes, but, even more significantly, to refashion your physical body. Physically, you are invited to experience yourself, through rituals, with an uncommon sensuality.

To come to the place where this invitation to _Sensual Preciousness_ can be distinctly heard, and where you have sufficient understanding to breakdown your current sense of intimacy so that you feel secure enough to _risk experimenting_ with an Earthfolk ritual or two, requires that you understand your present sense of intimacy. Earthfolk hold that how you imagine what intimacy can mean, and how you make yourself present during intimate moments, is profoundly influenced by the Big Story you profess.

A **Big Story** provides Big Answers to life's Big Questions. Earthfolk contrast their own Big Story to that of three globally dominant Big Stories, namely, the _Religious_ , the _Secular_ and the _Scientism_ Big Stories. As you are presently, Earthfolk, it is important to note, have lived within and professed during their lives the purported truths and values of the three Big Stories which are the dominant cultural forces in the current globalization movement.

Whichever Big Story or Stories grounds your present sense of intimacy, what Earthfolk invite you to explore is the insight that _each Big Story is primarily concerned with explaining what intimacy is and how to express it_ **.** Earthfolk hold that a Big Story presents a way of sensing the energy of human intimacy, and that it offers social and personal rituals which make intimacy present. These Earthfolk claims, more than likely, will not seem apparent to you upon first reviewing a Big Story because "intimacy" does not seem to be a clearly stated Big Question. For most people, Big Stories and Big Questions focus on grand-scale and cosmic events such as, "Where do humans come from?" "Who or what created the Earth?" "What is the purpose of Life?" Earthfolk claim, however, that Big Stories are, foremost and fundamentally, all about intimacy.

Earthfolk claim that **intimacy** is the **Biggest of Big Questions**. More, that the specific questions about intimacy, such as what is it, how to express it, why are humans intimate, etc., are the most significant Big Questions in the three dominant Big Stories. Yet, you would be not out of line to say, at this juncture, "I don't see that. In fact, what I do know about these three Big Stories is that they appear not to be concerned with intimacy at all." A key challenge of _Sensual Preciousness_ is to enable you to see as Earthfolk see. This requires practicing what is called the discipline of sensual immersion.

Earthfolk practice a **discipline** called _sensual immersion_. One aspect of sensual immersion is "peering at" and "sitting in silence with" the Big Stories. Earthfolk's startling discovery about the centrality of intimacy as the foremost Big Question comes from the significance of a negative fact. Namely, that the dominant three Big Stories collectively _deny_ that intimacy is sensually precious. These three Big Stories appear to say that intimacy _must_ be understood in other than precious light. Indeed, after intense sensual immersion, it is clear to Earthfolk that these Big Stories imply, in not so subtle ways, that the concept of " _Sensual Preciousness_ " is either meaningless, absurd, evil and/or oxymoronic. It is the centrality of this common denial in each of the three Big Stories which Earthfolk grasp is an act of misdirection. This collective denial is not trivial. Rather, as Earthfolk will develop and present, it is this denial of the possibility of a sensually precious intimacy which is a defining characteristic of each of the three Big Stories. However, convincing you that Earthfolk's fundamental claim that a Big Story is about enabling individuals to understand and experience intimacy is another key task and challenge of _Sensual Preciousness_.

A companion claim is that **every Big Story is expressed through an array of social and personal rituals**. Earthfolk claim that you, presently, live ritually, though many of the rituals you enact may not be apparent to you upon first review. Earthfolk define rituals as acts and activities which consist of symbolic images and practices which make present that which binds a people or a group. Rituals endow individuals and groups with their sense of identity and, of great significance to Earthfolk, they determine how individuals and groups experience and express their intimate sensibilities. Rituals are, not uncommonly, mistakenly confused with religious ceremonial acts or rites, which are a specific form of ritual.

In this light, as Earthfolk will present, _Endless Warring is a core social ritual of the three dominant Big Stories_. One example of a core social ritual of which most participants are mostly unaware is that of America's Selective Service System (the "draft"). Registering for the draft is the singular ritual act which every eighteen year old male must enact through registering. Every male, by law, must register, despite his physical, mental or spiritual character or health. It is that bedrock ritual act which binds all American males and bestows cultural and spiritual identity as a Warrior's Quester. Even if a male eventually receives a deferment, the act of registration makes one present as a Warrior's Quester. Through the act of registering, males become Warrior's Questers just as inductees do when they "step forward" and take the oath of allegiance. If you doubt the ritual character of this act of registration, consider that not to do so is a criminal act, a felony with a sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. http://www.sss.gov

Even less obvious to most is that Warrior's Quest males see and experience the presence of female bodies and the feminine through a fundamental personal ritual which Earthfolk describe and present as the _Ritual of Skin_. Earthfolk trace this ritual back to a vision of Dominion, a set of images about the body, and a description of what counts as intimate acts of relationship, first expressed in the _Genesis_ account in the dominant Religious Big Story. There, female bodies and the feminine are "skinned" out of the male body. The import of this ritual act is staggering. Suffice it say, at this time, that since females and the feminine have no skin, they cannot experience intimacy. Nor can they make present any aspect of _Sensual Preciousness_. They cannot ever be Beloved. Rather, they have meaning only in respect to the male body and the masculinity from which they are derived. However, opening insights into the Big Stories and their rituals is another key task, challenge and objective of _Sensual Preciousness_.

## Chapter 3: Earthfolk Glossary

The Earthfolk spirituality of precious intimacy can be followed by _anyone_ and _everyone_. It is a vision and set of practices which serve as a source for daily living. The Earthfolk community is diverse and, consequently, composed of individuals with widely varying emotional profiles and intellectual backgrounds. Some learn and teach best through practices and disciplined repetition. Others are more analytical and scholarly. Still others need inspiration before they apply perspiration to attacking a new task. Earthfolk realize that their vision and practices are sourced in deeply emotional and intellectually distinctive personal and communal experiences. And, that Earthfolk use common everyday words and images with slightly different meanings and twists.

As Earthfolk grew in self-understanding and benefited from introducing others to their vision and practices, they clearly grasped that the ideas, interpretations and explanations which have lead them to their Earthfolk understanding are numerous and complex even when presented in popular language. To remind you of their particular Earthfolk meanings, certain key words are sometimes capitalized. For example, _Sensual Preciousness_ , Earthfolk, Beloveds, Forever-Family, Sacred Sexuality, Intimate Enemy, Warrior's Quest, Intending, Attending, and so forth. A glossary in _Appendix B_ and an idea-chart in _Appendix C_ are included as easy references for understanding Earthfolk's key words and the connection between ideas.

**Volume 1** presents the Earthfolk vision as an **invitation** and a statement. How Earthfolk arrived at their personal experiences and intellectual interpretations is not explored in great detail. The volume is intentionally _not academic_ , though its interpretations are sourced in scholarly research. Volume 1 is intended to inspire, though it also requires some perspiration. Its main objective is to interest you in practicing a _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual and so open yourself to the Earthfolk experience, that is, to experience yourself as sensually precious.

Since Volume 1 is an invitation and a statement, there are many broad claims forwarded which, upon first reading, will move you to ask, "Who's saying this? What is the source? Why isn't so-and-so mentioned? Where are the footnotes?" While these challenging questions and skeptical queries are welcomed, the main objective of Volume 1 is to issue a statement and an invitation. As a partial response, brief biographical information about _The Author_ is listed after the appendices, and _Appendix C_ presents a modest listing of _Links_.

**Volume 2** submits a _more detailed_ explanation and interpretation of the Earthfolk vision and practices, but it is also _not_ a footnoted academic presentation. Its Table of Contents parallels that of Volume 1. This volume is for those who require a deeper intellectual grasp of matters before they risk opening their minds and emotions to a fundamental re-imagining and re-ordering. However, the scope and range of this Volume's assertions, claims, interpretations and critical insights is considerable, and, will be for many, quite controversial. Volume 2 is intended for those who, upon reading Volume 1, will continually ask for deeper and more complex answers to, "How did they arrive at that explanation and/or interpretation?"

## Chapter 4: Overview of Section 1

As preparation for introducing the Earthfolk vision, imagination, practices and rituals, Earthfolk issue an Invitation to you. Then, the Foreword and Introduction set the stage for grasping why Section 1 is titled, "Earthfolk Awaken."

Through the **Invitation** , the Earthfolk invite you to explore their _Sensual Preciousness_ vision and its practices which are sourced in and expressed through rituals of intimacy. They invite _you_ because they state that they are present to you if and when you enact a ritual of precious intimacy. They focus on you because they claim that the human race is at a critical point in conscious evolution. That is, that as _you_ choose and imagine, so is "reality" created. Earthfolk invite you to grasp that you are in the throes of the Warrior's Quest imagination, and that, unless you practice _Sensual Preciousness_ , the Earth and all humans will self-annihilate, as the Warrior's Quest fulfills what the icon of the Mushroom Cloud imagines, that is, the obliteration of all Life. They invite you to try a _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual and make yourself present as precious and Beloved. They invite you to practice "living as if I am no one's Enemy," because, "From within this embrace of Beloveds arises the source for your personal and Earth's communal transformation."

The **Foreword** introduces the concept of a _Big Story_ with its complementary _personal Story_. A "Big Story" answers Life's Big Questions with Big Answers. Earthfolk find that there are three globally dominant Big Stories, that of the Religious, the Secular and the Scientism. Earthfolk hold that individuals carve a "personal Story" from a Big Story. It is one's personal Story which reflects the range of heartfelt acts which a Big Story permits.

_Heartfelt acts_ are those which express the values of your convictions and commitments. Heartfelt acts express the beliefs and values for which you are willing to suffer harm, or even die. For example, the range of heartfelt acts for the Warrior's Quest is extremely narrow, that is, it is limited to acts of Dominion, namely, war, conquest and submission. The Warrior's Quester cannot imagine any other way of acting in the personal or social realm. For example, non-warring acts such as compassion, rendering justice, living in harmony with the Earth are unimaginable to the Warrior's Quester.

To assist you in managing the peculiar and particular Earthfolk insights, images and words, a list of key facts, themes, insights and interpretations which weave throughout _Sensual Preciousness_ are provided as a reference as the Foreword closes.

The Introduction explains how and when Earthfolk awoke, and the special way in which they see and imagine. They see as **"sojourning aliens,"** that is, as if aliens arriving from outer space to whom everything on Earth is novel. Since everything on Earth is fresh to them, their vision develops from a discipline they practice. Earthfolk practice a discipline of sensual immersion which "peers at and sits in silence with" the Big Stories to see what is being shown and said, and, equally and simultaneously, what is said and shown by _not_ being said and shown. For example, they peer and sit in silence with the Atomic Bomb's Mushroom Cloud and hear it acclaimed as an image of victory and a grand accomplishment of the human intellect. At the same time, they sense the communal emotion of the people who created the Bomb, namely, dreadful fear. Earthfolk observe that the dominant emotion of all three Big Stories is this dreadful fear.

Earthfolk then present Endless War as a Warrior's Quest ritual through which this dreadful fear is made manifest and thrives. Understanding Endless War as a ritual is the only way Earthfolk can begin to fathom why Endless War has been a hallmark characteristic of human history. Since _Sensual Preciousness_ is introducing the Earthfolk, "Where and how Earthfolk gather," and "Why Earthfolk at this time?" are discussed.

Before continuing, Earthfolk ask you to pause and reflect upon which Big Story or Stories you rely upon for your Big Questions and Big Answers. They ask you to note the main points of your own personal Story. You are invited to use a "Big Story and personal Story Worksheet" found in _Appendix A._

**Section 1** positions the _Earthfolk awakening in 1968_ when the first snapshot of the Earth from outer-space ("Earthrise"), what is called the Blue Marble or Starship Earth, entered human consciousness. Earthfolk heard an **Ancient Call of "** _Mother!_ **"** which stirred their imagination. They saw clearly how the Creation Story of _Genesis_ was an atheistic tale in that it proclaimed the "Death of the Goddess." Earthfolk explain their Creation Story of _Sensual Preciousness_ which is the story of Our Parents. The meaning and significance of two icons, that of the Atomic Bomb's Mushroom Cloud and that of Starship Earth, are discussed in respect to what they tell Earthfolk are the dominant Big Stories and the communal emotion of those on the Warrior's Quest.

You are asked to consider that _you are living in a phase of nuclear war_. Moreover, that everyone, yourself included, who lives under the Mushroom Cloud is living on the Warrior's Quest, and, as such, is in denial about the Endless War and the fact that humanity is on the verge of self-annihilation. For Earthfolk, this Warrior's Quest denial also manifests itself through the de-valuation of human intimacy. The _Warrior's Quester lives "as if you are my Enemy,"_ and he/she cannot imagine being intimate, where intimacy is a term of relationship. To enable you to approach the scope of this denial, Earthfolk present and describe the vision, imagination and heartfelt actions of the Warrior's Quest. The roots of the Warrior's Quest in the Abrahamic Religious Big Story is explored. The linkage between the three dominant Big Stories (Religious, Secular, Scientism) is shown. You are, then, asked, "Are you aboard Starship Earth?"

The special characteristics of the Earthfolk vision of _Sensual Preciousness_ are presented. You will learn that, for Earthfolk, the Earth is alive, precious and Sensually Precious. More is said about Earthfolk's knowing through "sensual immersion" and the practice of "living as if I am no one's Enemy." The notions of beholding the Other as precious, and seeking through a Nurturing Embrace to make present Belovedness, are presented. Then, Earthfolk's discovery and an explanation of "vital zest" is forwarded. Its centrality is that vital zest is that which arises from within an intimate Nurturing Embrace and transforms two into Beloveds as they share one another's preciousness. Of equal significance is that vital zest is that which transforms the Earth. Earthfolk claim that vital zest is the _only_ energy which can counter nuclear energy.

It is explained why Earthfolk claim to be comfortably at-home on the Living Earth, where they experience immortality through the Forever-Family. Finally, you are introduced to the Earthfolk approach to rituals of Sacred Sexuality. It is explained how Earthfolk find a Warrior's Quest Sacred Sexuality ritual to be the core revelation of the Abrahamic Tradition. Sacred Sexuality rituals are defined as a form of _Sensual Preciousness_ practice.

Section 1 concludes with a further clarification about the function of Big Stories. Earthfolk assert that, "Big Stories present spiritualities of intimacy and Sacred Sexuality rituals." As Earthfolk reflect upon this assertion they call you to discern what your range of acceptable heartfelt acts is. Heartfelt acts, you are reminded, are those actions which reveal for whom or what you are willing to put yourself in harm's way or to lay down your life. In contrast to the Warrior's Quest's icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth, Earthfolk forward "Beloveds in Nurturing Embrace" and "Forever-Family" as icons through which the spirituality of precious intimacy can be imagined.

## Chapter 5: Invitation from the Earthfolk

_What is Sensual Preciousness? Who are the Earthfolk?_ Both are uncommon terms and images of an uncommon imagination which is expressed through practices and rituals of precious intimacy. You should anticipate that our Earthfolk words and images do not exactly mean what you think or feel they do on first pass. Our way of imagining presents you with a challenging vision of what it means to be human, that is, to be sensually precious.

We invite you to explore our _Sensual Preciousness_ vision and its practices which are expressed through rituals of intimacy. **Through** _Sensual Preciousness_ **practices and rituals you will experience a startling presence of personal and communal intimacy.** This is the intimate presence of yourself and others as precious and Beloved. Your and others' preciousness and Belovedness is made present as you couple in a preciously intimate embrace. From within this embrace of Beloveds arises the source for your personal and Earth's communal transformation. This source for transformation we call "vital zest." We Earthfolk anticipate that some will assess our way as peculiar, even strange, and at times discomforting. For the Earthfolk invitation is nothing less than a call for you to transform your life and undergo a conscious physical, mental and spiritual metamorphosis.

As a people, we humans are at a _crucial point of conscious evolution_. We can choose to imagine and so create a humanity which is peacefully and comfortably at-home on Earth. One which makes present intimate preciousness. Or, we can choose to linger at the present level of human imagining, which, when closely examined, is sourced in dreadful fear and endless warring. One wherein the Other— _you_ —is seen as Intimate Enemy.

It is also a catastrophic time because the choice has _already_ been made to vaporize the Enemy through nuclear warfare. This is a choice which inevitably finds fulfillment in self-annihilation, which is the logical, practical and perverse characteristic of the Warrior's Quest and its nuclear imagination.

We Earthfolk observe that this dreadful fear and endless warring is the emotional ground of the three globally dominant Big Stories which provide Big Answers to Life's Big Questions. These are the Religious, the Secular and the Scientism Big Stories. These three Big Stories vary in their narratives but each evokes the same basic feeling, namely, of being uncomfortable with and discomforted by living on Earth. They share, at their core, a vision of the Warrior's Quest which sees the Other as Intimate Enemy. In complete and utter contrast, the Earthfolk Big Story's vision of _Sensual Preciousness_ invites you to practice "living as if you are no one's Enemy." Living as if you are no one's Enemy is ground for your experiencing yourself and others as preciously intimate, that is, as precious and Beloved. Earthfolk consciously choose to live peacefully and comfortably at-home on Earth, living as if no one's Enemy.

As noted, we Earthfolk were awakened in 1968 by the first snapshot of Earth from outer space. This is the famous picture ("Earthrise") which is called the Blue Marble or Spaceship Earth. Our awakening was an _unintended consequence_ of America's military expedition, that is, the Space Race against the former communist USSR. Once awake we clearly saw that the vision and imagination which dominates the Earth reveals itself through two iconic images, namely, that of the atomic Mushroom Cloud and Spaceship Earth. This is a vision of the Warrior's Quest imagination, and it seeks its final and spiritual fulfillment in an apocalyptic End-of-Time catastrophe.

As we awakened, we Earthfolk became acutely aware that humanity is entering a new phase of the ongoing global nuclear war. This is the phase during which nuclear weapons will be used on a small scale or triggered by accidental actions or governmental negligence. It is the phase where one individual, just one person, terrified out of their mind and soul by dreadful fear, could unleash the End-Time. It is the phase of the nuclear terrorist.

In a curious alignment with the character of this new nuclear phase is our emergence as Earthfolk. We understand and experience that it is takes one individual, just one person, living as if no one's Enemy and peacefully and comfortably at-home on Earth, to unleash the vital zest of _Sensual Preciousness_. In sum, that it takes just you—just _you_ —to transform the Earth and the Other as you discover your preciousness, your own _Sensual Preciousness_.

**Icons** make visual and graphic the deep seated beliefs, values and emotional bonds of a people. As icons, the _Mushroom Cloud_ and _Spaceship Earth_ reveal that the dreadful fear which the Bomb unleashes is the necessary and defining emotion of the Warrior's Quest. As such, it appears grimly inevitable that the Bomb will be exploded, again. Earthfolk grasp that humans have not only created more nuclear bombs than they can control, but that the same Warrior's Quest imagination which created the Bomb continues to create other weapons which humans also cannot control, these being sourced in biological, technological and cyber-space devices and inventions.

We Earthfolk are _staggered by the dreadful terror_ which grips humanity. As fitting a people who have drifted into a dread-filled age, wherein they are ruled by the Shadow of their Dark Side, those of the Warrior's Quest live in denial. Their basic denial is that they are not living in dreadful fear. To Earthfolk, the Warrior's dreadful fear is clearly manifest in how the individual and the group approaches the Other, that is, as Intimate Enemy. Yet, the Warrior's Quester denies that Endless War is his/her ritual. Rather, the Warrior's Quester claims to be what he/she is not, namely, a Peacemaker. For Earthfolk, this claim is an artful act of misdirection, for the Warrior's Quester will not cease waging war until he/she has achieved complete Dominion over all forms of life. Her/His is an End-Time chant of, "War is Peace," and, "We make war so that we can live in peace."

Of greater note is that **for the Warrior's Quester there is no** _intimate space_. When intimacy is discussed, the Warrior's Quester images it in militaristic terms, that is, as a _"War between the Sexes."_ Indeed the Warrior's Quester's denial is counter-evidenced by millennia of endless wars which, for Earthfolk, clearly reveal that the core ritual practice of the Warrior's Quest is warring at every level, from intimate to global. Moreover, we Earthfolk find that the three Big Stories each find expression in the denial of intimacy as a power. This is manifested in several ways.

One, through the denial of the existence of or a need for a Mother Goddess to create the world. It is claimed that Life and human life does not come from a _Sensual Preciousness_ coupling of a Mother and Father god. Quite conversely, the Religious Big Story can be read as a War against the Goddess. In this light, through its core story of _Genesis_ , the Religious Big Story claims that "God is Dead" in respect to the existence of a Goddess. _Genesis_ , then, is properly seen as an atheistic tale. It is a story of disbelief, and an account of a lack of faith in the fullness of the spiritual presence of Mother and Father. Earthfolk judge this to be both a secularizing and atheistic claim, and it clarifies the common grounding between the three Big Stories.

Furthermore, a _peculiar biology_ is expressed in the Religious Big Story, namely, that the _male body is the procreative birthing-body_. It is claimed that women, in flesh and spirit, are derived from male flesh and spirit. This is a scientism claim which is common ground for the development of the images and "truths" about women and the feminine forwarded by the Scientism Big Story. Collectively, these three dominant Big Stories appear to claim that intimacy is _not_ a Big Question. Yet, each one's denial stands, as we Earthfolk see it, as a Big Answer.

Instead of being stunned by the horror, and in response calling a worldwide halt to the production of technologies we cannot control, contemporary world leaders tell Big Stories whose common vision ceaselessly calls humans to live as if the Other is your Intimate Enemy. Indeed, this Warrior's Quest vision proudly boasts of a history and tradition replete with victories over enemy after enemy. It is a history and tradition which claims that Peace on Earth will only come by waging an endless and total war. While this seems absurd and self-contradictory to Earthfolk, for the Warrior's Quester, the final war, namely, the self-annihilating, apocalyptic End-Time war, is the ultimate ritual which will make present the spiritual triumph of their god, and bring heavenly peace on Earth.

_We Earthfolk see that the Warrior's Quester is simply trapped within an imagination wherein humans are fated towards_ _self-annihilation_. As we reflect upon the icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth and accept, on its own terms, its imagination of Endless and Total War, we boldly ask, "Can anything be done to stop this self-annihilation?" We Earthfolk answer, "Yes!" But it is a Yes which requires your affirmation for it to be realized. For it is a Yes which is sourced in your vision and practices. It is a Yes which issues forth when you make present yourself and an Other as precious and Beloved.

We Earthfolk accept **nuclear power** as an expression of **Warrior's Quest intimacy**. As strange as this might sound, consider that nuclear power was discovered by probing into, what scientists call, the primary stuff or building blocks of the material world. They probed inside until they came face to face with the vital zest present there. But since their discovery was driven by dreadful fear, such is how they experienced vital zest, namely, as the cold fire heart of the Mushroom Cloud. Consequently, when these scientists, who were military agents, made the Mushroom Cloud present on Earth, what happened? For the first time ever in human awareness, consciousness and understanding other humans were vaporized. Poof! They were not just killed, murdered, or slain. They were intimately dissolved—vaporized!

_For Earthfolk, the only transforming and controllable power which can counter nuclear power's obliteration of intimacy (Poof!), and any other dreadful and uncontrollable Warrior's Quest technology, is that_ _vital zest_ _made manifest through and evoked by your rituals of precious intimacy, your practice of Sensual Preciousness. In brief, we Earthfolk practice rituals of precious intimacy, every day, to evoke and make present an Earth where humans are living peacefully and comfortably at-home and living as if no one's Enemy. This is an Earth where everyone expresses their Sensual Preciousness, that is, their preciousness and Belovedness_.

It _is_ all this simple and achievable: _What we imagine and choose, is_. Your choice is either to continue to make present the self-annihilating, apocalyptic vision and energy of the Warrior's Quest or to experiment with your precious intimacy and make manifest the Sensual Precious vision and presence of yourself as an Earthfolk _Beloved_. You are the source for the personal and global transforming power, the vital zest of preciousness. Making present preciousness, day by day, is the only way to prevent another Mushroom Cloud _Poof!_

_Sensual Preciousness_ is about **your** making this conscious choice. It is a choice which only you can make. As we Earthfolk see the situation, the future of humanity rests with you. Why humanity is where it is today, how the Earthfolk understand what must be imagined and chosen, and why the _Sensual Preciousness_ practices of precious intimacy empower you to break-through and be transformed as Earthfolk are the core themes of this book.

We Earthfolk have been gathering and our vision continues to unfold. We are your neighbors, your siblings, the man and woman you next encounter. We have been gathering and we've been practicing _Sensual Preciousness_. We invite you to be peacefully and comfortably at-home with us here on Earth expressing your precious vital zest. As you will come to understand, you are Precious to us, and for the Earthfolk vision to blossom, we need you to be present among us as Beloved. _Issued on Earth Day, 2006_

## Chapter 6: Foreword

A defining human characteristic is that we tell stories. There are "Big Stories" which answer Life's Big Questions with Big Answers. The Big Questions are the _Why, Where, When_ , and _How_ which people ask about Life, itself, and their own reason for being and the meaning of their life. Overtime, each individual carves out a "personal Story" that reflects which questions are most important to them, and which answers give meaning to their life. A personal Story is the story an individual tells when he/she is called upon to explain the basis for their heartfelt acts. These heartfelt acts include intellectual beliefs and moral practices. They are acts for which the individual is willing to surrender his or her life, or, at least, put themselves in harm's way.

It is a premise of _Sensual Preciousness_ that **humans consciously evolve.** Physical evolution is genetically determined and moves by processes which are characterized by randomness. On the other hand, human evolution is imaginatively determined and moves by processes which are characterized by choice. A Big Story expresses a people's imagination and vision. What a people imagine and envision determines what an individual sees and imagines. For Earthfolk, an individual imagines, knows and discovers only within the group's range of possible and acceptable imaginings. For the group, an individual's imagining outside the group's imagination is unimaginable. Those who attempt to do so suffer death, either physically and/or mentally and/or emotionally and/or spiritually.

A Big Story's range of heartfelt acts, that is, its intellectual convictions and moral commitments, are realized through the interactions of personal choosing and communal imaginings. The communal imagination is grounded in socially and culturally defined and approved group practices and ritual acts. It is through group practices and ritual acts that individuals experience the heartfelt emotional bond which grounds their personal identity as part of a group.

Earthfolk hold that it is the **character of this heartfelt emotional bond which determines how humans consciously evolve**. For example, for the Warrior's Quest, dreadful fear is the heartfelt emotional bond. This core emotional bond, subsequently, is expressed through and rigidly bound by a vision of Dominion. Warrior's Quest heartfelt acts, then, are severely restricted to those which validate and make present this Dominion over all peoples, all living things and the Earth, itself. The range of possible heartfelt actions, for the Warrior's Quester, is extremely narrow. It is severely restricted to actions which achieve Dominion, namely, acts of war, conquest of and submission by the Other who is intimate Enemy. In this light, once the Warrior's Quest Big Story's imagination is understood, it is clear why Endless War and End-Time self-annihilation are both essential and inevitable events.

A **Big Story** , then, determines the **range of** _possible_ **personal Stories**. Individual choice is molded by the imagination and vision expressed by a Big Story. The character of a group's communal emotion determines the boundaries of an individual's and the group's imagining. Consequently, the core images, rituals and key words of a Big Story determine what can be imagined and envisioned, and what is acceptable as imagination and vision. What an individual can "see," that is, come to "know" as "reality," is determined by communal emotion. In this light, _Sensual Preciousness_ claims that a key set of visionary, public policy and personal choices made within a movement called "globalization" is currently having the greatest impact on human evolution.

The **three globally dominant Big Stories** (Religious, Secular and Scientism) presently provide the vision and imagination for the globalization movement. Globalization refers to an historical process which is one result of human innovation and technological progress. Economically, it refers to the increasing integration of economies around the world, particularly through trade and financial flows. It also refers to the movement of people (labor) and knowledge (technology) across international borders. It is a movement with broad cultural, political and environmental dimensions.

Depending upon how humans choose, globalization stands to catalyze a breakthrough to a fuller level of human consciousness or a breakdown and annihilation of the human species and possibly Earth, itself. _Sensual Preciousness_ is about the impact of your personal Story and the Big Story whose imagination and vision you choose to guide you. At present, globalization's heartfelt acts are those of the Warrior's Quest. Earthfolk hold that a new globalization Big Story needs to be imagined and a new range of heartfelt actions proposed, namely, those of _Sensual Preciousness_.

One objective of _Sensual Preciousness_ is for you to examine, define and evaluate the Big Stories which dominant the human imagination, and which serve as the basis for your personal Story. Earthfolk are a people who have lived through the Warrior's Quest vision, imagination and heartfelt actions expressed through the dominant three Big Stories. When we first saw "Starship Earth," we suffered a breakdown which enabled us to breakthrough and awaken to the Earthfolk Big Story and imagination. Then and now, we "see" as if through "sojourning alien eyes." The Earthfolk Big Story is a source for personal Stories whose heartfelt actions are fundamentally at odds to those derived from the three dominant Big Stories.

To assist you in identifying the **key events, facts, themes and insights** which weave throughout _Sensual Preciousness_ , here is a starting list:

-On **August 6, 1945** humans realized a previously unimaginable event. They created a weapon they could not control. A weapon which still stands able to annihilate humanity, all species and life forms, and even the planet Earth, itself.

-On **September 21, 1968** humans realized another previously unimaginable event. From the Apollo 8 spaceship they saw the planet Earth as never seen before. They were present to Earth as the Blue Marble and Spaceship Earth.

-Earthfolk were startled and awakened in 1968 by this icon of the never-before seen vision of planet Earth as Starship Earth.

-Earthfolk's awakening was an unintended consequence of a military expedition of the Warrior's Quest vision.

-Earthfolk understand the Atomic Bomb's Mushroom Cloud and Spaceship Earth as icons of identity which reveal "dreadful fear" as the communal emotion of the Warrior's Quest imagination.

-The Warrior's Quester practices "living as if you are my Intimate Enemy."

-The Warrior's Quest vision finds fulfillment in an End of Time self-annihilating apocalyptic event.

-The Warrior's Quest vision is the dominant force in the current globalization movement. Its spiritual vision and practice is to see the Other as Intimate Enemy, and its core ritual of identity is the waging of Endless War.

-The Warrior's Quest vision is sourced in a millennia old Abrahamic tradition which expresses itself through three Big Stories, namely, the Religious, the Secular and the Scientism Big Stories.

-The three Big Stories differ and appear, at times, to contradict or invalidate aspects of the other Big Stories, but they have acted with a common hand in issuing in the End-Time through the creation of the Atomic Bomb.

-The Warrior's Quest has created a world where all humans are suffering from post-traumatic stress. Consequently, the Warrior's Quester lives in denial of the dreadful fear and ritual of Endless-War which define his/her Quest.

-Earthfolk see with "sojourning alien" eyes, as if arriving on Earth from outer space.

-We practice "sensual immersion" which consists of "peering at" and "sitting in silence with" images, events, and experiences to discover not only what is said or presented but what is not said or hidden.

-Earthfolk's vision of precious intimacy imagines and presents a Big Story which sees the Other as Precious and Beloved. Earthfolk practice "living as if I am no one's Enemy," and our core communal emotion is that of being peacefully and comfortably at-home on the living Earth.

-As you embrace, your intimate convergence makes present yourself and an Other as Precious and Beloved.

-Through sensually precious practices and rituals you make present the personal and Earth-wide transforming vital zest of intimate preciousness.

-The vital zest of the Beloveds' intimate preciousness makes present the Forever-Family wherein humans are present to their immortality.

## Chapter 7: On Reading _Sensual Preciousness_

Depending upon the way you process information, you might start with any of the three sections. If you've already been on a spiritual search where the phrase " _Sensual Preciousness_ " has some resonance, then the Introduction and Section 1 take you right to the heart of the Earthfolk vision and its practices. If the three Big Stories of the Religious, the Secular and the Scientism are familiar concepts, and are ones which you've studied and either accepted or rejected, the Introduction and Section 1's presentation as invitation and statement provide you with sufficient information to assess whether you want to proceed to understand Earthfolk's interpretation of the three Big Stories in Section 2, and/or proceed to Section 3 to determine if there is a ritual with which you'd like to experiment.

For others, it is important to first determine what a "Big Story" is as Earthfolk present it, so that they can then determine which Big Story and personal Story, if any, they claim as their own. If you want to determine what your Big and personal Story is before proceeding, then use the "Big Story and Personal Story Worksheet" in _Appendix A_. After that, proceed to Section 2. However, if Section 2 is less than satisfying, you can go to Volume 2 and explore the deeper presentation about Big and personal Stories.

Section 3 is for you when you are ready to explore experimenting with a _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual or two. For some, this is where they will prefer to begin. If you have been practicing rituals and/or have a meditative and/or mindfulness and/or prayerful lifestyle, you might want to start, here. Why? Because, for you, no matter what Earthfolk claim to see or what they claim to experience through their practices and rituals, you are the type that if you can't "get there" through a ritual experience, then you know that you'll never "get it." More, that you don't want to "get it"! For others, figuring out their Big Story and personal Story, then critically comparing and evaluating it with the Earthfolk's, is a mental task which must be completed before entering on a ritual journey. Earthfolk anticipate that most readers do not live a ritual or meditative or mindfulness lifestyle, so that is why Earthfolk rituals are presented last.

## Chapter 8: Introduction to the Earthfolk

We Earthfolk first began to gather when the astronauts' snapshot of Earth from outer space summoned us, back in 1968. This image startled us as if from a **deep sleep**. Never before had humans seen their homeland from such a singularly global perspective. Up until the snapshot of _Earthrise_ from outer space, what came to be called the Blue Mable or Starship Earth, only the Mushroom Cloud of the Atomic Bomb had so pervasively startled people and anchored itself as an icon of identity within the collective human imagination. As the Atom Bomb delivered the world into a Cold War and led to the militarization of the basic institutions of society, so did Starship Earth arouse the Earthfolk vision.

We Earthfolk were awakened from a **primeval slumber**. The sight of Starship Earth roused an Ancient Call within our communal memory. It was a Call from a presence whose story of Domination and Obliteration is told through the _Genesis_ Creation Story within the dominant Religious Big Story. It was an Ancient Call which the Warrior's Quest had silenced for millennia. It was the Ancient Call which named each and every human as precious and, once again, sparked the imagination which beholds the Other as Beloved. It was the Ancient Call from Mother, but one, the Earthfolk immediately knew, as also called in unison with a long silenced Father.

**The ancient Father called the Earthfolk to see Mother, once again, in Her aliveness and Her presence as Living Earth**. As Mother is made present as Beloved, there is also heard the long suppressed call of Her Beloved, of the Father whose subjugation is also told in _Genesis_. It is this Ancient Call of Mother and Father, Our Parents, which is made present as Earthfolk ritually embrace and make present the Forever-Family. At this awakening moment, we Earthfolk were flushed and fused together by the communal emotion of being peacefully and comfortably at-home. At-home, peacefully and comfortably, on the Living Earth with Our Parents.

Unintentionally, and ironically, the Warrior's Quest snapshot from Outer Space ("Earthrise") stimulated in human imagination and consciousness this vision of Mother Earth. The Warrior's Quester was so engrossed in the orgiastic thrill of watching the Mushroom Cloud rise that the stirring of this Ancient Call went unheard. In like manner, during a comparable, intoxicated moment of celebrating Dominion over outer space, so were we Earthfolk awakened by the sight of Starship Earth, of the Living Earth.

Throughout millennia the Earthfolk's slumber had been drawn to near-awakeness by words and stories, heartfelt acts and deeds of those, here and there, who heard whispers of Our Parents. But when they spoke of Mother and Her virtues, that is, of compassion and nurturing, when they spoke of a nurturing Father who forgives and reconciles, they were stymied, brutally at times, murderously at others, by acts of Warrior's Quest Dominion. What has now irrevocably happened, at this most critical moment in human history, is that the Warrior's Quest, by its own hand and conscious choice, has entered its final days, its End Time. Its Call that we imagine a humanity engaged in a ritual of Endless War is now at its moment of final Victory, of apocalyptic fulfillment.

We **Earthfolk** are, then, those who hear the Ancient Call which was violently suppressed, almost obliterated by the Dominating Warrior's Quest. We are a **vanquished victim of Warrior Domination**. For there was a real, chronological battle waged millennia ago wherein those who lived peacefully and comfortably at-home on the Living Earth were decimated. This account is what we Earthfolk hear when we peer at and sit in silence with the Biblical story of _Genesis_. We know who they were back-then because _Genesis_ , despite its intent to obliterate our Memory and Ancient Call, remembers us.

In the first chapter of _Genesis_ , there is a line which begins, "Let us make man in our image, after _our_ likeness..." It is there that _Genesis_ remembers "us." The simple word "us" speaks to the other gods and goddess, to Our Mother and Our Father, who were the Intimate Enemies of the Warrior's Quest's god. We Earthfolk are the people whose god and goddess, whose Mother and Father, were vanquished by the self-proclaimed monotheistic god of the Warrior's Quest.

The Warrior's Quest god raged and threatened:

"I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt (Mizrahim), out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not have _any other_ gods besides me. Thou shalt not make for thyself any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down to them or serve them. For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, punishing the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those that hate me, but showing mercy to thousands of generations of those that love me, and keep my commandments". _Exodus 20_

_Genesis_ **is the Warrior's Quest's "history of the conquerors."** Yet, it is a pyrrhic victory. For humans cannot flourish if they endlessly war, because to do so is to end up exactly where the Warrior's Quester stands today, namely, on the brink of total self-annihilation.

We Earthfolk have awakened but we have been here on Earth in deep slumber since before recorded time. We Earthfolk are the primal people of Earth, that is, we are Earth's-folk. In this light, everyone is an Earthfolk, though at this moment of awakening, becoming a Sensually Precious Earthfolk is a matter of conscious choice. Nevertheless, we Earthfolk hold that from deep within yourself, you, at the moment you embrace an Other as precious and find fulfillment as Beloveds, will, once again, imagine and so make present yourself as an Earthfolk.

We Earthfolk see humanity in the **throes of a momentous choice**. The dominant vision of humanity, which is iconically imaged by the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth, seeks fulfillment in an End of Time apocalyptic event. Earthfolk grasp that, since August 6, 1945, humans have been waging a nuclear war which imagines and can instantly bring about the End of Time. For millennia the vision which is source for this apocalyptic event justified the creation of a Warrior's Quest culture which flowered into the practice of endless warfare. While the final apocalyptic event—the _Poof!_ of total Earthly obliteration and human self-annihilation—might occur at any moment, we Earthfolk are imagining and so creating a profoundly different experience of being human.

While we Earthfolk were startled and awakened by Starship Earth, this was, as noted, an unintended consequence of the military expedition during which the snapshot was taken. Astronauts are military adventurers. The early space expeditions and quest to land on the moon were part of an Escape Plan which took seriously the imminent perils of the Nuclear Age. The astronauts were to determine and make possible, if feasible, how a selected group of humans could travel to another planet and re-seed it with humanity if Nuclear War came to threaten the annihilation of the human species. In this light, Starship Earth is a prime expression of the Warrior's Quest's dreadful fearfulness.

We Earthfolk have studied and collectively lived out through our personal journeys the stated truths and meanings of the Big Stories whose imagination is expressed through the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. We have practiced the varied spiritualities which are sourced in the traditions for which the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth are apocalyptic images. Big Stories provide Big Answers to Life's Big Questions. We Earthfolk judge the three globally dominant Big Stories, namely, the Religious, the Scientism and the Secular as failures. Failures in that they are unable to provide a vision which does not have a self-annihilating apocalyptic ending. Failures in that they are unable to evoke a feeling of being at-home on Earth, peacefully comfortably. Explaining why and how these three dominant Big Stories have failed is a pivotal task of _Sensual Preciousness_.

## Chapter 9: Earthfolk See as Sojourning Aliens

We Earthfolk see through the perspective of everyone being on Starship Earth. When the Apollo 8 astronauts turned to see the Earth as it had never been seen before—as a Blue Marble or as a whole Living planet or as Starship Earth, as just one place, with one human family—so was born Earthfolk's peculiar way of seeing.

Earthfolk answer the key Big Questions about Life by seeing the planet Earth as would arrivals from outer space. You arrive on Earth not as an Earth person. Rather you are a **"sojourning alien"** who sees with "sojourning alien eyes," that is, as if arriving from the outer space of imagining. You are from the outside, a sojourning alien, one who sees and constantly asks _Why? What? When? Where?_ You look at everything you see as if seeing it for the first time. This is an act of imagining, an act of wondering. Of course, you are an Earth person. You did grow up on Earth. You have Earth eyes. But you seek to see beyond what you've already seen. So, you look again. You stare so as to see "more."

This is the Earthfolk act of _peering_ wherein you look at what the shadow reveals as much as you do at what is seen in sunlight. Simultaneously, you practice the Earthfolk act of "sitting in silence with" wherein you listen for the information in emptiness as much as you do to the sounds all around. You not only reach out to touch, but you learn by opening yourself to be touched. You savor hunger as much as fullness. You lean back and drift along, scenting the familiar and the strange. You open every sense to ferret out, unveil, and snare data, information and moments of discovery. We Earthfolk call this "sensual immersion."

Like the astronauts upon their return, the experience of being an alien sojourner is dizzying. When the first human stepped on the moon, _Did he see himself as a Moonman or an Earthman?_ The lunar astronauts returned being a bit of both. Their imagination was split in a way no other humans had ever experienced. They left an Earth mired in a Cold War, whose dominant global imagination was imprisoned in the image of the atomic Mushroom Cloud of nuclear and total war. They returned with the image of Starship Earth etched in their imagination. They returned as the first Earthfolk, though for most of them such was and remains unimaginable.

It is a necessary task of Earthfolk imagining, to be, for a time, an alien sojourner from outer space. To look at what is and imagine what it would be like if you were seeing it for the first time as an explorer from outside the world. To submit yourself to and practice sensual immersion.

**The Earthfolk journey starts, then, with you visiting the Earth.** _What do you see?_

Everywhere you go, you observe that humans live in groups and tell **communal stories**. You note that these communal stories are expressed using all their senses. They dance. They sing. They eat and drink. They induce states of conscious dreaming. They act out stories evoking laughter, pain and deep thought. You observe a core characteristic of human communication, namely, that humans quite often communicate without language, and that they seemingly understand more through sight and touch than any other way. You note that it is through sight and touch, through the seeing and skin-contact acts, that humans are moved at their deepest level, either in stark fear or swooning love.

Human storytelling is a robust and deeply moving experience. As you peer, you see differences among groups of humans. Some appear great. Others trivial. Through more intense peering you find that each group has a Big Story which is a source for answering all their questions, large and small. You observe that knowing these Big Stories and their answers form part of the group's identity. And that acting out these Big Stories through ceremonial ritual acts initiates the individual into the group. Of note, you grasp that these Big Stories do not readily sit next to one another, nor do their initiates. It becomes apparent that knowing a Big Story is a serious matter, and, not infrequently, one of life and death.

What is common, you find, is that each group of humans has a set of **Big Answers** to shared key Big Questions. These Big Answers are expressed in words, images and ritual acts. Every group has a Big Story, in fact, you can't find a major group which does not. While these basic questions about the origin, purpose and meaning of life are shared, the Big Answers differ in respect to images, words and ritual acts. Yet, again, to your sojourning alien eyes these differences do not seem that profoundly different.

Indeed, your alien eyes observe more commonalities in the basic human goals, e.g., to be happy, healthy, comfortable, pleasured, than distinctions according to how each group specifically acts, e.g., the modes of dress, dance, song, types of food. Nevertheless, what strikes you as most curious and telling is how tenacious, sometimes ferociously, each human and each group argues for the rightness and authority of its Big Story and Big Answers!

Yet these Big Stories are so big, so vast, so complex that they carry accounts, histories, images, rituals, songs, etc., which overwhelm the individual's imagination. In this light, you observe that individuals live out their Big Story in particular ways. Each selects and arranges certain aspects of the Big Story which becomes their "personal Story." You note that their selection is based upon those parts of their Big Story which speak to the individual's strongly held heartfelt beliefs and convictions. These are heartfelt because they concern matters over which the individual is willing to surrender many things, including her worldly possessions, family and friends, even life, itself. You note that it is fairly easy to get people to agree about the commonalities of their Big Story but very difficult to get them to change their personal Story.

Stepping back, assuming the alien sojourner's position, Earthfolk survey and review the vast history of Big and personal Stories. They listen to the scholars and sages, tune into the mass media, observe political interactions, and note the transforming currents—historic and contemporary—among these Big and personal Stories. Of all that is happening, the most significant event is that a vast globalization movement is underway.

" _Globalization"_ _describes the ever-increasing and widening communication and interaction among all peoples on Earth._ What immediately startles Earthfolk is that it is starkly evident that the three Big Stories of the Religious, the Scientism and the Secular exclusively dominate the present global human imagination. It is, then, a major Earthfolk interest and urgent concern to understand how and why these three Big Stories are the driving force behind globalization. It is an urgent concern because the iconic images of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth are clearly apocalyptic flowers of these three Big Stories. In these three Big Stories, the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth find a common source and shared roots.

## Chapter 10: Icons of Terror and the Communal Feeling of Dreadful Fear

_Iconic images_ convey how a dominant Big Story has emotionally staked itself into the collective human consciousness and heart. Earthfolk are shaken to the core by the iconic images of the _Mushroom Cloud_ and _Starship Earth_. Shaken to the point of break-down and break-through. We are staggered by the primal communal feeling evoked by these images, namely, dreadful fear. Earthfolk look around the Earth and see humans mired in depths of utter fear and dread at every turn. And while the three Big Stories often define their specific vision through contradicting significant parts of the vision of the other two, their common emotional source has humans living in stark terror and dreadful fear, each of the other.

What initially transformed us Earthfolk was the overwhelming emotion evoked and provoked by the icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. It is an emotion these icons continue to make present, everyday, everywhere. One result of such dreadful fear is that when facing the Mushroom Cloud an individual cannot think.

There is no way that he/she can comprehend what the Cloud truly is and represents. There is no way to intelligently compute why the Mushroom Cloud was created nor why it then came into being, that is, was actually dropped on other humans, because there is no way to sense the fact that the Mushroom Cloud represents a force and event which humans cannot control, namely, nuclear war.

Moreover, there is _no way_ for an individual to humanly feel when in front of the Mushroom Cloud. There is no way to empathize with the act of vaporizing humans, for it means accepting the worthlessness of one's own life because global nuclear war means the annihilation of the species. The Mushroom Cloud is not the result of individual action, not even collective action, rather it is the communal act of a people. It is a communal heartfelt act of conscience, that is, a statement about convictions, here, that "We are right, and you, our Intimate Enemy, are wrong." Such a communal heartfelt act can only be understood by plumbing the depths and meanings of the three globally dominant Big Stories.

The **savagery** of the act of vaporization defies the words we Earthfolk struggle to use to describe the act. It is always traumatic for a warrior to kill an Enemy, once she sees the Enemy as a person just like herself. Modern machine-based warfare enables killing at a far distance. Even then post-traumatic-stress has become a standard expectation for the returning mechanized warrior. Earthfolk ask, "What happened, emotionally, at Hiroshima?" When, for the first time, a warrior used a weapon which unleashed her own self-annihilation? Which doomed his species? What is the level of **post-traumatic stress** , as a consequence, at the **communal level**? Especially if you accept, as we Earthfolk do, that you yourself are, at this very instant moment, a participant combatant in nuclear war?

_Was there ever a more communally savage act than Hiroshima and Nagasaki?_ The group leader of the Manhattan Project, which built the Atomic Bomb, responded, upon observing the first Mushroom Cloud, by reaching for an image from a Religious Story. "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." (Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita's description of the god Shiva.) As he reached into a Religious Story for a way to ground his personal Story, he also expressed that Big Story's communal feeling. Namely, that a presence had been summoned, a power unleashed, which transcended what any individual could ever imagine, and certainly no individual could humanly do, that is, effect the self-annihilation of his own people, his own self, and the human species. What Oppenheimer's heartfelt action reveals is a significant insight for Earthfolk, namely, that the dropping of the Atomic Bomb was and can only be grasped in terms of a communal ritual act, here, the apocalyptic ritual act of a Big Story.

Earthfolk also realize that, for us, the only way to understand a Big Story's vision and communal feeling is through enacting the rituals of that Big Story. Rituals are communal acts of imagining and sensing which are also source for an individual's development of a personal Story. More, certain rituals are bridges for communal and individual understanding of the Big Story. Since neither Earthfolk nor anyone wants to reenact the ritual of vaporizing humans, Earthfolk seek out the bridge ritual which links an individual's personal Story to that communal ritual.

We Earthfolk peer and sit in silence with the Mushroom Cloud and accept that its ritual effect is one of numbing, that is, the post-traumatic stress state of being frozen in stark terror. We Earthfolk, consequently, seek like rituals which also effect this traumatic state. To uncover these rituals we Earthfolk practice peering at and sitting in silence with the accounts within the Big Stories which provide Big Answers to why individuals live in dreadful terror each of the other as Intimate Enemy.

Earthfolk ask, _"What is the communal emotion of Starship Earth?"_ When understood as the military's Plan B—Escape from Earth, what does the icon of Starship Earth reveal? When we Earthfolk saw the astronaut's snapshot, we awoke and found ourselves at-home. Our communal feeling manifested itself through the Earthfolk vision of the Other as Precious, as someone to embrace as a Beloved. What did the astronaut Warrior's Quester see and feel? We Earthfolk pondered, "What communal feeling compels a people to plan an escape from their home planet?" As with the Atom Bomb, the astronaut's snapshot imaged an incomprehensible act because it implied that you could be a human though not living on Earth. Where would humans go? Isn't being human and being on Earth two sides of the same coin? Given that there is no assurance that human life can be re-seeded on another planet, how can anyone understand this act of abandoning Earth?

Earthfolk realize that the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth are **icons of a traumatized people.** Of a people who set in motion a nuclear war whose inevitable end is self-annihilation. Of a people who somehow ceased to love and value their Earth, even their own species, and who are accepting that they have made themselves Exiles. Through sojourning alien eyes, these are a peculiar people who imagine themselves as humans without Earth, who feel called to wander the cold emptiness of outer space locked inside a floating technological device.

As we Earthfolk sit in silence with the Mushroom Cloud what we hear is a communal voice which expresses the collective cry of all humans. What we feel is anguish at a level which can only be sensed when we Earthfolk gather in groups to peer and sit in silence with the iconic images, that is, practice sensual immersion. Note, what we first discovered is that the individual is not the source for understanding why the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth arose. That is, an individual cannot give a meaningful answer to the question, "Why did you create a Bomb which can annihilate everyone, including yourself?" Or, "Why are you planning to escape the Earth on a rocket ship?" Rather, insight can only be gained by looking at the Big Stories which are source for the communal feelings which the icons unleash.

The Big Stories provide Big Answers to Life's Big Questions, and they do so in multi-sensory ways. The Big Stories are composed of scriptures, mythic accounts, historical interpretations, doctrines, dogmas, and formulas, theories, calculations, etc., but most significant to Earthfolk is that they provide rituals. Ritual acts are communal compositions and ceremonies. They are composed of all the sensible elements humans use to communicate. They are ceremonies which seek to initiate and provide entrance to communal identity and feeling.

What we Earthfolk observe is that no one, _no individual, composes a ritual_. Rather, a Big Story ritual congeals over time. A ritual takes time to develop. Sometimes it takes more than a millennium for a people's ritual to take root. For, indeed, ritual is a rooted experience. One that taps into the depths of a people's Big Story. One which is fed by the conscious Light which a people's knows and acclaims, and by the non-conscious Dark which a people communally feels and expresses, and of which they are, in the main, unaware. From this perspective, it is only the outsider, here, the sojourning alien, who, after peering and sitting in silence with a Big Story's ritual, sees the troubled vision, the denied Shadow roots of a ritual.

With this perspective and approach, we Earthfolk began to understand both the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth as icons which expressed communal identity and feeling. We saw that the dropping of the Atom Bomb and the launch of Apollo 8 were ritual acts of the three dominant Big Stories. For Earthfolk, these iconic images only make sense when understood as iconic symbols within ritual acts. To understand these ritual acts, we Earthfolk went searching for the specifics of the visions and rituals of the Big Stories which were ground for the communal feelings of dreadful fear and abandonment of Earth which are evoked by the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth.

Before proceeding, it must be stated that as we searched, Earthfolk took note that communal emotions are always accompanied by their opposites. Namely, that these dominant Big Stories evoke optimism and hope for some. Some claimed that the Atom Bomb would insure the end of global warring. They held that unbounded technological miracles would result from the applications of nuclear energy. They called all to lift up their eyes from the Earth and gaze out upon their future, as explorers and populators of other planets. We Earthfolk listened and listen to those who are buoyed by such heady optimism and boundless hope. While valuing their insights, we Earthfolk hold that it is fair to judge that these sanguine voices have been drowned out by the terrorist screed of the Warrior's Quest which is the dominant voice of those who live on Earth in utter dread and fear.

## Chapter 11: Endless War is a _Sensual Preciousness_ Ritual

When Earthfolk explore the specifics of the three globally dominant Big Stories, they find that each is a special expression of the Warrior's Quest. The Warrior's Quest's definition of what it means to be human is to be a creature, in vision and heartfelt action, at war with others and within himself. War denies the possibility of intimacy because the Other is named as Intimate Enemy.

Earthfolk peer and grasp that the endless warring which describes human history is also best understood as the Warrior's Quester's communal ritual. When Earthfolk peer at the Religious Big Story of the Abrahamic tradition, that is, those who claim the Biblical Abraham as their Father, the centrality of the creation account in _Genesis_ as the primary source of the Warrior's Quest imagination becomes evident. _Genesis_ is the bridge story and contains the bridge ritual of intimacy which is essential for understanding how the Warrior's Quest developed and is expressed through all three Big Stories.

But if endless warring is the communal ritual, what is its individual counterpart? Once Earthfolk understood that _Genesis_ ' central revelation is that humans are condemned to live in utter dread and fear, they grasped why the Warrior's Quest and the ritual of endless war developed as communal ritual, and why the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth arose as apocalyptic icons. But _Genesis_ reveals even more. It discloses that the Warrior's Quest is grounded in a peculiar Big Question, namely, "What to do, intimately, with women?" Also phrased as, "Is there a Mother goddess?" And, "Is sensuality precious?" We Earthfolk sat in silence with _Genesis_ and realized how the personal Story of every Warrior's Quester is ritually linked to this Religious Big Story. We found that the links are **1)** the vision of the male body as the birthing-body, and **2)** the ritual of intimacy which _Genesis_ presents in terms of sensual warfare between the sexes.

Since, as Earthfolk interpret _Genesis_ , human sensuality and sexuality is cast in terms of warfare, that is, as an act against God and as God's act against humans (as seen in His cursing the act of childbirth), so it is that the Warrior's Quester's individual and communal emotion is grounded in finding pleasure in acts of intimate and sexual violence. The Earthfolk vision, itself, turns on this insight that at the heart of _Genesis_ is a revelation about _Sensual Preciousness_. For the Warrior's Quester, the Biblical Revelation is understood as a statement that there is no such thing as _Sensual Preciousness_ , just as there is no such being as a goddess or a Mother God.

Earthfolk call you to understand this Abrahamic claim as you peer and sit in silence with _Genesis_. Soon you will discover the presence of an Abrahamic _Sensual Preciousness_ account and ritual. In time, you will discern the presence of a Mother God in _Genesis_ , but—and this is explained in fuller detail later on—She is the Warrior's Quest's Mother, a spiritually intimate and deeply erotic Dark Mother who is consort to her Dark Father, the Warrior's Quest's God. Earthfolk name Her the Shade Mother, for though She is not seen or called by name, She is sensed as She lingers in _Genesis_ , present as the Dark Vapor or "face of the deep."

As fitting to the balance of the universe, where everything and everyone is created by the mingling of the male and the female, of the feminine and the masculine, so Earthfolk sense and intuit that in _Genesis_ it is with Her that the Warrior's Quest Father creates. This is the insight of _Genesis_ v.1, "When God began creating... with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors." Earthfolk hold that as _Genesis_ unfolds, it reveals that warring is both a ritual of a people's group _Sensual Preciousness_ as it is a ritual of individuals, whose intimate interaction is termed in the popular but sexually abusive phrase, the "War between the Sexes."

Nevertheless, as clear as all this is to Earthfolk, so obscure is it to the Abrahamic Warrior's Quester, which is, more than likely, your identity at this moment. Earthfolk's peering often stands the Warrior's Quest vision on its head or pulls it inside out. So, the challenge for you is to understand your own specific and special personal Story as you gain insight to Earthfolk's interpretation of the three Big Stories, and develop a position from which to accept or reject's Earthfolk's invitation to practice a ritual or two.

## Chapter 12: Where and How Earthfolk Gather

How did and do Earthfolk identify each other? How did and do they develop their beliefs and practices? Why is this book being written?

From the start the image of Starship Earth inspired the fledgling Earthfolk to establish inclusivity as a guiding principle of organization and practice. Up to that time, everyone had been raised in a world inspired by the Atom Bomb, whose guiding principle is exclusivity. The visionaries of the Mushroom Cloud see themselves in exclusivitic terms. Theirs is a Warrior's Quest spirituality that divides the world into an Us and Them. It is a world in which there is always an Enemy, "over there." The Warrior's Quest model is linear, inspired by Newtonian science and earthbound geometry, a politics of conquest, and an economic model of scarcity. At their best Warrior's Questers know who they are, and they know who they are in great part because they know who they do not want to let into their world.

The Warrior's Quest imagines a world in which everyone and everything has an identity. In _Genesis_ this is expressed through Adam's act of naming all life forms. Each must have an identity, a name, so as to be dominated. Naming and identity do not have to be tools of Dominion, but such is revealed through the Warrior's Quest vision. From naming individuals to naming Others as Intimate Enemy, there is a lesson here which Earthfolk accept. It is that one's true identity can only be given by an Intimate Other. That one's true identity is an expression of intimacy and is bestowed by your Beloved. Mimicking Adam's act of naming is to be avoided since it too readily becomes a tool of Dominion. Earthfolk practice naming through the ritual of intimacy. While other practical everyday identifiers, such as a personal name, are useful, they are, from a spiritual perspective, trivial. What each Earthfolk seeks is to be daily named by his/her Beloved. In this light, the statement "I am an Earthfolk" is less meaningful than stating "We are Earthfolk," which expresses the shared identity realized through an intimate nurturing embrace.

_Earthfolk gathered serendipitously_. The issue of how to model an organization or a discipline of practice always bumped up against the inevitability of creating a model of complexity, the inspiration of Quantum science models, the humor of the Butterfly Effect, the playfulness of uncertainty, and an experience of abundance. For Earthfolk "we, humans" are already organized as we should be, that is, One Family and Precious—if we could only see, if we would only practice _Sensual Preciousness_. Consequently, Earthfolk elect to meet through serendipitous gatherings. All the standard organizational models of the Mushroom Cloud are useless since they only lead to eventual exclusivity.

In Appendix E, "The author's encounter with Earthfolk" is described in terms similar to what it meant to join or be part of the **Vietnam Era anti-war "Movement."** This was a peculiar form of organization which had no identifiable leader, either individual or group. There was no way to identify one's self or another as a Movement member. There were no ID cards or enrollment forms. A person became part of the Movement by doing something, that is, by protesting. The Movement only came to be at such moments of protesting. Yet, the government spoke of the Movement as if it were as real as another nation state or a political party.

The Movement gathered serendipitously. There was no universal or common calendar of events. No conferences or rallies or meetings which were "authorized by" the Movement. Yet, the Movement changed individuals, society and the culture.

In the manner of the Movement, inclusivity requires that there be no Earthfolk schematic organization, no formal association, no church or temple, nothing as organized as even the several administratively elusive "Movements" unleashed in the Sixties, e.g., the Women's Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, etc. There is no need for a Directory of Earthfolk. However, the exclusivist's question is included in Earthfolk discussion. "How can you get anything done? If you are not organized? Not visible in the media?"

This is a weighty line of discussion, but, as stated above, it is impractical from an Earthfolk perspective. Having people say, "I am an Earthfolk," is truly not important. Being an Earthfolk is more a matter of being preciously intimate with a Beloved than it is a matter of personal or group identity. Anyone can claim to be an Earthfolk, but all that matters is that Earthfolk are making themselves present, each to the other, through a nurturing embrace. As you experience personal and communal transformation, that is, are made present to and share your vital zest with your Beloved, so are you present to all Earthfolk.

For Earthfolk a book or any media production should send you out of control, questing. As part of our quest, some Earthfolk have gathered to risk what writing this book requires, namely, to be misunderstood! You are asked to simply respect that neither this book nor the author is the message. Each is only a messenger.

The Earthfolk vision is developing but it is doing so in its own curious way. Since it is not a vision of the dominant culture or of the globally dominant three Big Stories, it is not and will not be broadcast by the mass media. Its values, as they become known, serendipitously, are not only suspect to the dominant culture in terms of morality and legality, but Earthfolk rituals and preciously intimate erotic practices are definitively alien and so somewhat incomprehensible to those not startled and summoned by the image of Starship Earth.

As the millennium opened so did the pervasiveness of the virtual human world of the Internet and the World-Wide-Web. In many ways, Earthfolk "are" as the Web "is". To go online you have to go offline, but you are online while sitting in an offline space and time. For Earthfolk, the Mushroom Cloud world is offline.

We Earthfolk go online through the practice of _Sensual Preciousness_ with its spiritually intimate rituals. As the Atom Bomb released thermonuclear energy, so do our _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals release the sensually precious intimacy of vital zest which makes present Precious Otherness through the nurturing embrace of Beloveds. It is as Precious Others that Earthfolk are tending the garden which Starship Earth is. Such experiencing and being experienced as a Precious Other is ecstasy.

Earthfolk are those who imagine the everlasting, Earth as forever hearth and home, The Earth is us. We are lively manifestations, presences of Earth. We are its consciousness, its imagining, its conscience: Earth's passion. Earth is hearth and we the flaming breath of fire. We are full-flesh in blood and gasp birthed from the Earth: seed, flower, bloom, and fade. Most majestically are we imagined again, as such Sensually Precious. Earthfolk are forever presences. As child are we now. As Forever-Family are we through time. As Earthfolk are we everlastingly present. Everything which is: has been and will be. Every person counts.

All told, Earthfolk is a Big Story which as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Which means possibly that you will not "get it." That the Earthfolk Story just won't make sense or click. Such is the risk in telling a fresh Big Story. In brief, telling the Earthfolk Big Story is an act of imagining—imagining somethings old to imagine somethings afresh.

You are invited to see through the Earthfolk Story because it is a Big Story which needs your imagining and your personal Story grounded in the practice of _Sensual Preciousness_ for its own sustenance. But this peculiar need is part of the Earthfolk Big Story itself, namely, that you and your imagining is the most critical human act of these millennial times. Everyone counts, and we Earthfolk are counting on you!

Earthfolk realize that only when you achieve insight into—and in your heart feel the dreadful fear of—your dominion will you clearly grasp the Mushroom Cloud's Big Story and so understand why your personal Story is as it is, and why you act as you do, for Good and for Evil. We Earthfolk know that, paradoxically, this insight as to how the Warrior's Quest is the source for your imagining of a Big and personal Story can only be fully bestowed through a _Sensual Preciousness_ practice of embracing the Other as precious.

We Earthfolk do not have a mechanical, follow the dots formula to offer. We recognize that our Earthfolk Big Story is grasped at both breakdown and breakthrough moments, either personal or communal. Since you are reading this book, which is an intellectual act as contrasted to an emotional embracing within a _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual, in the following section Earthfolk invite you to reflect upon, "In which Big Story or Stories is your personal Story of dominion grounded?" We hope that this examination will enable you to peer with Earthfolk's sojourning alien eyes. Later, in Section 3, you will be invited to practice a _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual and "test out," so to speak, the presence of preciousness and Belovedness which we Earthfolk manifest.

## Chapter 13: Earthfolk awaken

The Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth

To start seeing, hearing and sensing the _Sensual Preciousness_ vision requires that you come to grasp the vision which currently guides you, and discern how it determines how you, at this moment, see, hear and sense. Earthfolk identify the vision which dominants global culture as the one which produced the two iconic images of the atomic Mushroom Cloud and the snapshot of the Earth seen from outer space, of Starship Earth. These two images are graphic bookends to a vision and an imagining of what it means to be human.

On August 6, 1945 humans began to see and feel as they had never before. On that day they first saw themselves living under the Mushroom Cloud. While, initially, it was an image which mainly meant that a world war had ended, it endowed humans with a new way of imagining and so defining what it means to be human. It empowered them to see into what only gods were supposed to know, namely, the fundamental structure of reality. It empowered them to act as only gods were supposed able to act, namely, to harness the primal power to create and/or destroy the Earth. Many sensed that they were no longer "human" as previously defined. Consequently, new answers to Life's Big Questions were in the offing. As the Nuclear Age opened, a new Big Story emerged.

At its best the glory of the Big Story which dropped the Bomb is a celebration of the unfathomable imagination which collective human effort can produce. A shaman, at that time, spoke of "The Spiritual Repercussions of the Atom Bomb." He saw a linkage between the fire in men's minds and the fire of God's love. Nuclear fire was an invitation from God for humans to advance in consciousness, to become a global people and truly create a brave new world. Reflecting upon the risk of mutual self-annihilation, global leaders proclaimed that no nation would ever go to war, again.

Nuclear fire enabled humans to imagine and explore a sub-atomic nuclear world, and to dream of amazing ways to smithy the nuclear fire which could be unleashed from this strange realm of reality. The Mushroom Cloud celebrated the _Genesis_ of an awe-inspiring fire which quickly lit up the imagination of those who dreamed of solving humankind's major resource problems and harnessing this seemingly inexhaustible nuclear fuel to travel among the planets and galaxies.

Knowing Without Human Senses

Most significant to Earthfolk is that the Mushroom Cloud freed human imagination from the constraints of the five human senses. The sub-atomic nuclear world can only be imagined, not humanly sensed. The Mushroom Cloud became a symbol of an uncommon way of sensing. Nuclear scientists developed and had to rely upon machines to "know" and "sense" this world of split atoms. It was a world whose actions and reactions were traceable, for example, in a bubble chamber, but not knowable in any way humans had ever previously claimed to know.

While machines had been used to explore the microscopic and macroscopic worlds, these devices were adjuncts to the human senses, e.g., looking through a microscope or a telescope. The microscopic world was part of everyday reality—humans just needed magnifying machine glasses. In the same light, telescopes allowed humans "far vision," as is the origin of the word. The atomic and nuclear world, in sharp contrast, could and would never be directly sensed. All knowing and sensing was through interpreting data recorded by machine activity. The nuclear and sub-atomic world was and will never be part of everyday sensate reality. It is a machine sensed world in which human sensing is an adjunct to machine knowing.

For many, machine sensing was claimed as true progress. It removed the annoying variable of human sensuality. While humans could know through the five senses, they could never just do so. Their five senses were always a part of a whole which was greater than their sum, namely, human feeling. Every human sense is interpreted by an emotion. For Earthfolk, sense with emotion defines human sensuality. Sensuality is, from a "pure science" approach, a less than ideal method of knowing because it can never be purely objective. For humans everything sensed is simultaneously felt, e.g., as beautiful, harmonious, right fitting or elegant, as is the Quantum mathematical theory developed to explore the atomic world.

Ideally and theoretically, machine recordings and reports are not polluted by the subjective and idiosyncratic feelings of humans. Nevertheless, even when they discipline themselves with methodological rigor, human scientists impose their feelings on their sensate readings. By nature, humans cannot be completely objective. The "I" is always feeling while it is thinking and these feelings taint evaluation and interpretation. While a scientist cannot but be moved by a sunrise, for it is programmed into the basic human core of sensuality, a machine will never be distracted by beauty or harmony or disturbed by unhappiness with its job. The fly in the scientist's ointment has always been that human knowing is sensual. With nuclear age machines, this irksome problem, it appeared, could finally be solved.

Nuclear Imagination: Vaporizing Humans

With great optimism it was forecasted that, one day, humans would be able to understand the basic building blocks of reality and so know how the world had been created. It was envisioned that, once the fundamental structure of reality was understood, humans could employ that knowledge to explain how everything really fitted together. They could explain the Alpha moment—Creation and Where and How All Came to Be, and the Omega moment—Where and How All Things Are Going and Will End. Practical applications for improving the lives of all people, ranging from cures using nuclear medicines to advances in genetic manipulation to the positive ecological impact of nuclear powered transportation, were excitedly proclaimed.

Earthfolk see the Nuclear Fire and its promise. Despite problems with nuclear waste and other practical operational challenges associated with harnessing nuclear power, the fact of nuclear energy is here. But what is critical to Earthfolk is that nuclear energy stimulates an imagination—that of the Mushroom Cloud, and a consequent set of acceptable heartfelt actions—foremost being dropping the Bomb, atomizing humans.

The Mushroom Cloud when first seen, and when ever seen, evokes primal feelings. Its sight provokes breakdown or breakthrough. For most it unleashes a feeling of dreadful fear that paralyzes. For others it unleashes a feeling of absolute power, a heady human sense of positive pride, and a sense of relief that, given enough time, humans can assemble together, as the scientists did in the Manhattan Project, and solve just about any earthly problem.

While the Mushroom Cloud's Big Story presents an amazing vision, we Earthfolk are more awestruck when we look at the personal Stories of nuclear scientists and military leaders. How have humans who are inspired by the Mushroom Cloud's Big Story acted? What Earthfolk reflect upon is that nuclear energy was first used to obliterate and vaporize human flesh. The dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 was the first heartfelt act in the opening paragraph of the personal Story of the pioneering nuclear scientists and atomic war military leaders. Since that time few other Mushroom Cloud personal Stories have been told which testify to other than military uses, inventions and applications for nuclear energy. Some have harnessed the nuclear fire to generate a modicum of electricity. Others have applied the devices which are used to explore the sub-atomic world to improve aspects of medical knowledge and practice. Yet, when Earthfolk hear the phrase "nuclear energy" or once again observe the Mushroom Cloud we anticipate that a discussion of war or of a military application will follow.

At its worse, the Mushroom Cloud reflects the imagination of a Big Story which terrifies those who ponder the Bomb's insight and moral that we humans cannot control what we produce. Its Big Answer to the Big Question, "What is the purpose of Life?" is haunting, since the voice from within the Mushroom Cloud whispers, "Self-annihilation." Or, to the Big Question, "What is especially human about being human?" the Answer is clearly ironic, namely, that humans are a species whose good intentions more often than not pave the way to another region of hell. Or, "How should we live?" Big Answer, "Endlessly at war in fear of and seeking to dominate other people."

At the time of the first blast there were calls to put the nuclear genie back into the bottle. Earthfolk understand that once a way of imagining and a novel way of human sensing has been discovered and unleashed, it is almost impossible to suppress. For Earthfolk the most disturbing legacy of the Mushroom Cloud is its peculiar definition of human intimacy.

## Chapter 14: Human Intimacy No Longer Valued

_How did the Mushroom Cloud re-define human intimacy?_ Earthfolk see this emergence of machine sensing versus sensual sensing as the most profound impact of the **Scientism Big Story.** Scientists had, for centuries, been moving towards modeling humans as machines. It is popular to talk of the body as if it is a bio-mechanical device (which in the Scientism Big Story, it is). Heady research strives to create bionic replacement parts so that humans can live longer as quasi-machines. For some the ultimate goal is to be able to make humans as machinelike as possible and machines, eventually, into their own self-sufficient "life" forms.

With the discovery of the nuclear world, the _model moved beyond describing humans as_ _machines_ _to defining humans as_ _bundles_ _of atomic particles_. This was a significant step in the reduction of "human" essence to something nonhuman. Now it was not just the nonhuman machine (which was still able to be sensed, that is, touched, etc.) as model but the insensible world of nuclear particle clouds. Scientism's triumph was its assertion that the Basic Truth is that Reality is of Non-Human Stuff. It is not a difficult leap to go from this model to grasping why the first heartfelt act of nuclear scientists was a Warrior's Quest act of not just slaying humans but of vaporizing them, that is, changing them back into nuclear stuff. For, after all, what is another human but just a whiff of atoms? Poof!

_Scientism's Big Answers changed_ _after_ _the Mushroom Cloud appeared_. Before then it explained matters with a certain, almost adolescent, innocence. Though the theory of Evolution had led to applying the sobering phrase "survival of the fittest" as part of almost every Big Answer, the pre-Mushroom Cloud Scientism Big Story spoke glowingly and rapturously about the Future in terms of inevitable Progress which was grounded in the fact that the human mind, given enough time, would unveil the mysteries of the universe. Many foretold a humanity which would evolve a super-consciousness. Some foresaw a certain immortality for humanity which would be achieved by replacing mortal flesh with a "living machine" in which the human mind existed as pure thought.

With the discovery of the Atomic Bomb came the knowledge of the atomic nature of all reality. Through their work nuclear scientists clearly demonstrated that all reality is interconnected. They showed that at the sub-atomic level all humanity is made of the same basic stuff, and that we are all simply that one stuff. This insight into basic reality could give rise to a declaration that all humans are intimates each of the other, but it did not and does not. And, more than likely it never will. Their Big Answers to the Big Questions concerning the meaning and purpose of life were still trapped within the limits of the Mushroom Cloud's vision and imagination. Instead of rejoicing that science had removed the primary reason for justifying human conflict and war, namely, that the Other is Intimate Enemy, they dropped the Bomb, which, among many things, said to the world, "Fear us! We now possess the power which gives us complete Dominion over all living forms!" Instead of answering, "We live on the One Earth. We are One Family. We are all One Flesh, One Mind, One Soul," they did not pause—nary a breath's hesitation—before ratcheting up their military might, even moving to militarize outer space.

While Nuclear Fire remains _trapped_ within the imagination of the Mushroom Cloud, we Earthfolk value the unintended consequence it produce, namely, the insight that the interconnectedness of all things at the atomic level is a useful metaphor for human intimacy, that is, humans are all the same atom! ("Atom" and Adam—inevitable Biblical pun.)

Instead of affirming the metaphorical unity between nuclear atoms and human hearts, the Mushroom Cloud was used to devalue human intimacy. The Bomb's capability of annihilating all life, even of the bomber nation, at any given instant, manifests a total disregard and lack of reverence for life in any form. Under the Mushroom Cloud there is no concept or reality called intimacy. Instead of building a connecting metaphor upward from the atom to the human heart, a disconnecting metaphor surfaces from the Mushroom Cloud. It is that all life can be disconnected until there are just atoms. And that to do so is not a violation of any sort, rather it is simply returning Life to its essence, i.e., its nuclear state.

The _Mushroom Cloud's legacy_ is this _reductionist and annihilating metaphor of Life_ and human life as a whiff of atoms. It leads to the assertion that among all clusters of atoms there is no intimacy, just a (machine sensed) cloud of nuclei. Its Big Answer to what is special about humans is, "Nothing." Its answer about the future—"Why are humans on Earth, and where are we going as a species," is "To wage Endless War and realize self-annihilation."

It is understandable, then, that when we Earthfolk look at the Mushroom Cloud, we are overwhelmed by a pervasive feeling of powerlessness. The Mushroom Cloud simply frightens those who open themselves to its primal emotion of vaporizing fear. All are immobilized by an awesome and drenching sense of terror, helplessness and insignificance.

## Chapter 15: Warring as Heartfelt Act

How does the Mushroom Cloud set the boundaries for possible heartfelt actions? Since humans are but whiffs of atomic stuff, and since there is only dis-connectedness of anything human in the nuclear metaphor, iconically and emotionally the Mushroom Cloud can only evoke hopelessness and despair. This vision of hopelessness and despair validates the key heartfelt act of Warrior's Questers who are Endlessly Warring. They endlessly war because they live in dreadful fear of the Other as Intimate Enemy.

Endless Warring is the reductionist act supreme. It reduces all human issues and concerns to the act of exercising Dominion over another, subjugating them or murdering them. Murder is one way of rendering a human into non-living stuff. Slaying is atomic vaporization in slow motion. The Warrior's Quester's heartfelt act of slaying expresses and makes present the Mushroom Cloud's vision of human life as, at its core, just a bundle of atoms. Consequently, the answers are obvious to: What is the value of an individual life? What is the value of Life, collectively? Zilch.

Always remember that the initial Mushroom Cloud event was the Warrior's Quester's defining heartfelt act, namely, to slay other humans. The Cloud's imaginative heritage is sourced in hatred and violence, and it remains nurtured by and in obeisance to those emotions. The Mushroom Cloud proclaims that there is no such concept as human intimacy. There is no "self" which is beyond defilement. No matter where you are, your person can be vaporized. There is no place to hide. No home to shelter you. At any moment, Poof!

The Mushroom Cloud vision of total human and earthly obliteration continues—sixty years after its debut—to discomfort humans. What is notable to Earthfolk is that even the proponents of a Star Wars nuclear defense are uneasy about nuclear energy because they have come to learn, over the years and by playing brinksmanship, that the only way to win an atomic war is not to play the nuclear game.

Earthfolk realize that it is difficult to shift the way you imagine the world. No human can get up each day and feel healthy and whole by addressing the universe, saying, "I hate other people. Every other person is my Intimate Enemy. I will dominate and vanquish everyone I meet, anywhere, anytime. If it must be, may Earth be blown to smithereens, today!" Yet, this is what Earthfolk see as a practice which logically follows from the Big Story which is book-ended by the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. What else must Warrior's Questers be saying to themselves and each other, every morning and every night?

We Earthfolk can only describe the Warrior's Quester who imagines the Big Story which has produced the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth as someone who is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. How else to assess the situation? Or, should it be said that these Warrior's Questers have simply gone mad? That like a severely disordered psychotic, they are inflicting harm upon themselves? That they cannot cease from killing one another? That they cannot breakout of their mood of dreadful fear and the apocalyptic dream of self-annihilation?

## Chapter 16: Earthfolk Awaken On Starship Earth

Nevertheless, paradoxically and serendipitously, the Mushroom Cloud is one factor in the emergence of Starship Earth. For when it was understood that the Mushroom Cloud's Big Story is that we could totally obliterate ourselves, humans took to outer space, quested for the moon and beyond. It was to be humanity's "Plan B—Escape Into Outer Space." The quest for the moon was fueled by the atomic race with the now former Soviet Russia—USSR. It was argued that if the Rooskies got the drop on America and caught us by surprise that we should have a fleet of rocket-ships ready to launch a team of space colonists.

It was more readily believed, back at the dawn of the Nuclear Age, that Earth's human ecology could be readily re-established on another planet. Few doubted that we humans could live unEarthed in space colonies. At the time, movies such as "2001" inspired many. And, experiments such as Biosphere did likewise. However, many, such as we Earthfolk, gathered from the astronauts experiences on the moon, in Skylab, and from the Biosphere experiments that Earth Life may be unique and not exportable.

The **race to the moon** was intended to showcase American technological, military and moral superiority. There was no intent for any astronaut to click "home slide-show pictures" to show his neighbors upon return. The snapshots of Earth were part of a military intelligence regimen. If ever there was an Unintended Consequence more significant than the main intention itself, it was this snapshot of Starship Earth. Thanks to the Mushroom Cloud Warrior's Questers, the Earthfolk caught the "first sight" of themselves.

Ironically, what humans discovered as they escaped the boundary of their planet and its gravity was a startling insight into what it means to be human. They discovered the human as an Earthman which laid the seed for the vision and imagery of Earthfolk. Instead of Escape from Earth, a new perspective on what it means to live on Earth arose, namely, that all we have—all we only and ever will have—is the Blue Marble. Our home and hearth is a Starship.

When the "Earthrise" snapshot of Starship Earth was taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts on December 24, 1968, few would have said that the Earth was a living presence. Yet, that is what was made manifest and which was felt by us Earthfolk. While those living under the Mushroom Cloud appreciate that Earth is a Blue Marble, a planet teeming with living beings in the air, land and water, they still are seeing and feeling as Warrior's Questers. In this light, Starship Earth continues to be interpreted by many as an achievement and a validation of the Warrior's Quest's way of knowing and feeling. Many feel today as others did back then that, indeed, humans have taken the first step towards not only cosmic exploration but cosmic dominance.

## Chapter 17: Starship Earth Alive—Precious and Sensually Precious

While Starship Earth was discovered by Warrior's Quest astronauts, who were primarily on a military expedition to see "if we are alone" and to lay the foundation for a cosmic defense against aliens, if they existed and if they attacked, the result for Earthfolk was the discovery that, indeed, we humans are not alone, that we have one another. It revealed that the Earth is intimately human and, for Earthfolk, precious.

For Earthfolk more was discovered than what appears to be the trite insight that all humans share the one cosmic dirt-ball tagged "Earth." Earthfolk were swept up and away by an unsettling sense of identity and a heartfelt emotion which we describe as feeling Sensually Precious. Feeling one's _Sensual Preciousness_ describes the how of the Earthfolk experience. Namely, that full human sensing, understanding and imagining occurs within moments of intimacy when each of us knows our self through a precious Other. Here, the Other was Earth, itself. This sight of Starship Earth was a birthing moment. As Earthfolk peered and saw it so we became fully aware—somewhat shocked and awestruck—of the precious intimacy which the living Earth is.

That moment's fullness of insight and intimacy was akin to watching a woman give birth wherein, back then, the _body born was the Living Earth itself_. We Earthfolk found ourselves enthralled and sharing the beat of a common heart as we peered at the snapshot of Starship Earth much like the first time a young child sees pictures of a babe in the womb. As we peered at the snapshot Earthfolk understood that "we came from there" just as a child points at her mother's belly with gleeful discovery. We claimed our Mother's belly to be the Earth. We proclaimed ourselves to be humans who are the passionate breaths of the Living Earth.

Through all births, Death enters. The child is alive but on his/her journey towards Death. In like manner through all dyings Birth enters. The person passing over is born within the Forever-Family in another manifestation of its immortality. The sight of Starship Earth brokered this sense of dying and being born. We Earthfolk knew ourselves as both Ancient and Newborn. The Ancient Call awoke us. What died within us was our presence as Intimate Enemy, and what awoke was our presence as precious and Beloved. Our awakening is a Creation Story. It is a story about the dying of the Warrior's Quest and the birth of the Earthfolk imagination of _Sensual Preciousness_. At once, we Earthfolk were present to ourselves as Forever-Family and so to our extended family that reached back to Ancient Times and forward to these New Times, which only you can imagine.

At our awakening we Earthfolk clearly saw through the eyes of the Warrior's Quest vision. We saw ourselves as unintended visitors in the Warrior's Quest world, and we knew ourselves as sojourning aliens. We soon came to understand that key to our insight was understanding and interpreting the Warrior's Quest Creation Story of _Genesis_. As the Earthfolk vision and imagination of _Sensual Preciousness_ emerged, explaining to you how Earthfolk awoke would require moving you to a deeper and unusual interpretation of _Genesis_.

With the astronauts, we Earthfolk rocketed up into "outer" space only to find that we had arrived at a peculiarly new inner space. It was so thoroughly a sensual feeling that all five senses were overloaded. Drenched. We found themselves speechless, but swelling with a feeling of oneness with everything. The word "cosmic" could barely snare the moment's fullness. Indeed, we sensed ourselves as a new "we." Not a "we" as in separate from "them" or as a Chosen People. Rather, in a sense of fullness, with a "we" made present through embracing all people, through, amazingly, embracing the Earth, herself. It was then that we Earthfolk felt with a peculiar sense of heart our, Earth's and all people's _Sensual Preciousness_. It was when we knew the Earth as all and only what humans have. We grasped that there is only human space in "outer space."

There is only human space in that all space—outer and inner—is accessible. When the astronauts looked back at the Earth they saw the cosmos, not just a planet. For the Earth exists within a cosmic web that reaches into galaxies beyond counting. Henceforth, from the moment of their exploring sight, Earth can only be known through its cosmic identity. No longer can humans wonder if they are alone, for the astronauts woke us up to our _Sensual Preciousness_ , which is a knowing and a feeling that being human is being cosmic. It is a knowing and feeling that the Earth expresses the intimacy of the cosmos. What happened with that snapshot is that Starship Earth revealed itself as the only hearth and heart of and for the single ethnicity of humans. Such a feeling is one sensual aspect of what Earthfolk feel when we claim to be Sensually Precious.

## Chapter 18: Are You Aboard Starship Earth?

Earthfolk accept that all humans are still under the Bomb's Mushroom Cloud, and that presently most see themselves as aboard Starship Earth only proverbially, "as through a glass darkly." For many, the Mushroom Cloud image continues to successfully obscure full sight of Starship Earth as Living and Precious because it is still primarily classified in militaristic terms. The difficulty in accepting Earthfolk's perspective is that most still live as if everyone is their Intimate Enemy. Simply listen to the media shows and reports and you'll see and feel the dreadful fear of the Other as Intimate Enemy. Do you want to be aboard Starship Earth? If so, you will have to clearly understand your Big Story or Stories and how your personal Story makes you present to others. On board Starship Earth you are precious. All on board practice "living as if I am no one's Enemy" as the recurring thought and imagery through which they make their preciousness present to Others. Consequently, your gaining insight into the vision of the Mushroom Cloud Big Story and the heartfelt practices it commands is an important goal and task.

While you might conclude that Earthfolk are calling you, primarily, to an intellectual task, be forearmed with the emotional expectation that you might feel deeply discomforted, even anxiously disturbed, during this quest towards _Sensual Preciousness_. For Earthfolk's analysis of the Mushroom Cloud's Big Story requires that you look at both the wonderfulness and dreadfulness of that Big Story, and that you come to confront your personal Story and your role in sustaining and expressing the wonderfulness and dreadfulness through your personal, intimate heartfelt actions.

At the end of _Sensual Preciousness_ , while you may affirm or reject your previous acceptance of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth's Big Story, it is Earthfolk's hope that you will, at the least, grasp more fully how critical and Life-saving are your personal actions.

## Chapter 19: Earthfolk's Practice of Sensual Immersion—Peering and Sitting in Silence

Earthfolk's analysis, evaluation and interpretation of the vision and range of heartfelt actions imagined by a Big Story comes from a specific sensual discipline which we practice. It is a holistic discipline wherein information gathered from the five senses is immersed in the emotions of an experience. Symbolically, it is the melding and melting of mind with heart.

The emotions of an experience include those known and experienced in both the Light and Shadow of a moment. Earthfolk peer and sit in silence to hear what is not said, see what is hidden, smell what is masked, etc. In sum, Earthfolk describe this as sensual immersion, an instance which can lead to making present one's _Sensual Preciousness_. From within such moments of sensual immersion do we Earthfolk form our deepest thoughts, unleash our intuitions, and free our imaginations.

To attain sensual immersion, we Earthfolk peer as we sit in silence. Sitting in silence is the practice of opening one's self to what is not apparent or obvious. It is an openness to hear the "sounds of silence" and to see the invisible which nestles the visible. Sitting in silence is a way of tuning one's senses to pick up information which lingers around, within and surrounds a commonplace image, word or insight.

Peering is not just staring or a visual act. It is also an act of acceptance, here, an acceptance of the Shadow, of the dark which accompanies light. It involves quieting the senses to open them to fuller input, from a trickle to a flood, of information and/or insight. This is a sensual discipline in that Earthfolk seek to evoke the full range and subtlety of emotion which accompanies peering and sitting in silence. We hold that until the emotion of a word, sound, image or insight is grasped in its robustness, the depth of information and truth is not properly tapped.

Earthfolk accept what a Big Story says about itself. Namely, Earthfolk peer through the vision and engage in the heartfelt actions which are core to a Big Story's message. Great effort is given to understanding a Big Story on its own terms, through its own self-evaluations and interpretations. Then, as when peering at a work of art, Earthfolk pause to see what is not said, not revealed, not heard, not able to be sensed through the Big Story. We surrender ourselves to the knowledge of the Shadow and the Big Story's dark revelations. Earthfolk labor exhaustively to sense and then value and interpret what this peering and sitting in silence approach presents. Throughout _Sensual Preciousness_ this discipline of sensual immersion is applied. Your response to the claims of Earthfolk's discipline of sensual immersion will, hopefully, clarify what your Big Story means to you.

Most people have had an experience similar to Earthfolk's moment of sensual immersion where someone has asked them to "really look" at, say, a photograph which is familiar. "Do you see what I see?" the other asks. Quizzically, you look and concentrate and then, "Yeah, I do see that!" You were so familiar with the photograph that you had not processed all the information it contained. You simply kept "seeing it" as you saw it in terms of the information it first gave you. Earthfolk would suggest that a certain emotion was attached to your original vision of the photograph, and that to slip into another perspective you had to adjust your feelings. Words, sounds, images, smells, touches, tastes are all more robust than anyone can savor upon first sensing. The same holds true for Big Stories.

_We Earthfolk invite you to sit in silence and peer at the three Big Stories which dominate the imaginations of humans_. You might ask, "Why should I spend time with "x" Big Story?" especially if it is a Big Story you basically reject? For example, Earthfolk peer long and hard at _Genesis_. Notably, the Rib story of the creation of Eve. We see what the Religious Big Story of which _Genesis_ is a part has traditionally enabled people to see, namely, a world created by a Lone Male God. He creates the first human, who is also a Lone Male. Then, in an amazing and astounding way, you are given eyes to see that the male body is the birthing body, for, in _Genesis_ , woman is created from male flesh.

Earthfolk peer and sit in silence with _Genesis_ and share with you our discoveries. We discern the presence of a Mother Goddess in _Genesis_. We grasp that while _Genesis_ appears to not address the issue of intimacy that, in fact, _Genesis_ is a story whose main message is about intimacy. We conclude that _Genesis_ is a story about _Sensual Preciousness_.

_Sensual immersion engages each and all the senses_. Upon first encounter, spirituality appears to be a matter of thinking, understanding and then making a "leap of faith" to a set of doctrines that form a way of living. The truth in this "leap" is that the only way one comes to preciousness is through accepting one's own feelings. Preciousness is, then, not as much a matter of mind as it is of heart.

In the Abrahamic tradition there is a specific approach to the senses and to _Sensual Preciousness_. As with other aspect of this patriarchal tradition, the specific approach is defined by several negative facts. Overall, using _Genesis_ again, there appears to be no _Sensual Preciousness_ , no sacred sexuality, and no Mother Goddess. Without comment Adam's body is presented as the birthing body. That of the feminine which exists in _Genesis_ is totally derivative of the type of masculinity Adam, himself, is experiencing and manifesting.

Let's peer and sit in silence with _Genesis_ ' negative facts and peculiar understanding of the male body. As a Lone Male, Adam was not aware that he is lonely. It is his god who says that Adam needs a companion. Adam, apparently, did not sense his loneliness. He, also, did not "see" the emptiness of the Garden, what it was missing, namely, a woman. Adam lacks certain senses, the key ones being that of touch, taste and smell.

Let's reason backwards from what happens after **Eve arrives**. Adam sees her and hears her name. She is "woman." But there is no intimate or sexual relationship until the Serpent enters. Note that the **Serpent** is _that of the male which speaks with the female_. But let's broaden that insight. The Serpent is that of the male which touches, tastes and smells the female. What is your first visceral reaction to the image of the Serpent as a slithering creature? That it is cold, slimy and has a tongue which darts out, continually. The Serpent constantly "tastes" the air. It also has a poisonous bite. What this image provides insight into is that the Serpent brings to Eve the other male senses which Adam lacks.

What are the senses of intimacy? There is clearly sight and hearing. There is the beholding of the other and the calling of their name. Eve and Adam are at this level before the Serpent arrives. But then Adam and Eve know their nakedness. Their flesh touches in the interior ways of intimacy. He feels her with his totally skin. His touch is a taste of her lips. His feel is of her erotic movement and its issuance of fluids which evoke the scent of lust and the overwhelming moment of orgasm when he "loses" himself within her. They truly eat one another. They feast upon the Other with every sense. Intimacy is such a moment of _Sensual Preciousness_.

From that moment of naked intimacy, Adam and Eve are experiencing what _Genesis_ , on its face, is denying, namely, the necessity of a male and a female for life to be. Their nakedness exposes the fact that there is a nakedness in _Genesis_ , that there is both a statement about Sacred Sexuality and _Sensual Preciousness_ , and it is that it is a Dark or Shadow or Shade nakedness. In their Shade nakedness, the Dark Father and Dark Mother, war. They use every sense to deceive, trick, betray and misdirect the Other because their ultimate intimate moment is when one realizes Dominion over the Other. The Shade Parents are always sexually warring. Their rituals are always ones of sexual abuse. Their intimacy is always a zone of Dominion.

Once Adam and Eve are sensually immersed within one another, they are expelled from the Garden. Their god attempts to stymie, stifle and, hopefully, suppress the insights about their intimacy which they have just discovered by cursing the two key acts through which Adam and Eve need to build intimacy. She is cursed in childbirth. He as to his ability to bring home food. To earn a living. Overall, this curse implies that life on Earth is a dead life. The Earth as a Living Presence is hidden from them as, due to the curse, they will spend their lives distracted by other pressing needs of sheer survival. Life on Earth is miserable, one of suffering, and a quest to die and return to Paradise.

In the Garden the **Serpent** _enabled Adam and Eve to sense one another with the senses of intimacy._ They smelled one another as only lovers can. They licked and sucked, rubbed and tenderly hugged, drew deep breaths where they inhaled their lover's eyes and nose, ears and toes, they laughed, they rolled about, and they totally immersed themselves, one unto the other, as they coupled in orgasmic shudder.

Traditionally, the foregoing paragraph would be denounced as blasphemous. The Warrior's Quest interpreter would sputter and fume about the fact that it was, indeed, just such an intimate moment which led to the Fall. He would continue with the conclusion that you should learn from this that the flesh is evil, and that indulgence in the sensual leads one down the road to the fires of hell. Wild, orgiastic demons would infest you if you linger upon the feminine. Thus, in the Abrahamic tradition women have been veiled, draped, hidden within tents of all sorts, and, simply, made invisible. Consider the erotic power of a woman's senses in this Abrahamic tradition. Just a slight look, a glance and a male is understandably undone. Why else the shrouds? Just a wiggle and a walk, just a scent of her bodily otherness, and, again, the Warrior's Quester absolves himself the sins of erotic wildness because he was seduced!

In the Abrahamic tradition, menstruation and other specific female bodily moments, such as childbirth, are cordoned off. The Warrior's Quest male struts about somewhere else, doing "male things," as he waits for his women to stop being a woman. Of all things, he is not to smell her most womanly smells of blood and issue. He is not to be present with her as her skin expands to be the skin of all Life as a child is born. For his own "experience" of these womanly moments of blood and birth, the Warrior's Quester follows the story of misdirection of his patriarchal forbearers and goes out and slays someone, even the women and children of another man. Only by slaying another can the Warrior's Quester give balance in the peculiar way which balance is achieved in his world, through expressing Dominion over another, here, an Intimate Enemy.

Your first reaction might be, if you feel fully identified as a Secularist, "Why waste time with that fairy tale?" Or, "Why give that account so much weight and value?" In like manner, if you immediately identify with the Religious Big Story, you might ask, "Why waste time talking about Scientism?" Earthfolk invite you not only to peer and sit in silence with the Big Stories you reject, but, even more critically, to do so with the Big Story you already profess, confess and through which your identity, intimacy and range of heartfelt actions is grounded.

## Chapter 20: Heartfelt Actions

Earthfolk focus on the three Big Stories and select certain accounts within those Stories because of the heartfelt actions which flow from each Story. A heartfelt action is a defining action of a Big Story. It is how the Big Story is made manifest through the actions of an individual. A heartfelt action describes an act or group of acts which believers in a Big Story must do. A heartfelt action is _not_ **optional** , it is required. It is the testimonial act which endows the believer with personal and group identity as a proponent or confessor of the truths of the Big Story. Heartfelt acts are both conscious acts and acts of conscience, with the latter often driven by strong convictions of which the actor is not always fully conscious and aware.

One example of a Religious Big Story heartfelt act is recorded in Joshua, Chapter 8, of the Jewish and Christian bibles. There Joshua defines himself as Yahweh's chosen warrior through a heartfelt act of mass murder. He completely obliterates all human life in the city of Ai. For the warrior on the Warrior's Quest, slaughter and butchery of the Other as Intimate Enemy is an act of initiation which creates personal and group identity. Similar heartfelt actions which identify the Other as Intimate Enemy are defined and described in the Secular and Scientism Big Stories.

In the Secular Big Story, since nothing or anyone is considered precious, the image of the sexual other is as a sex-toy. Sexual interaction's goal is primarily pleasure and secondarily, or never, for procreation. Sexual acts are ones of mutual-masturbation, a phrase which a Secularist would not find offensive, for masturbation, itself, is considered the most satisfying form of pleasure. The Secularist range of heartfelt actions is bounded by concerns for sexual health ("safe sex"), and, at its best but not necessarily, for sexual safety, that is, sexuality's violence must serve the goal of pleasure.

In Scientism, whatever is claimed to be true has to adhere, as best it can, to empirical testing and rational analysis and evaluation. Its heartfelt practices are modeled on actions which can be judged objective and disinterested. In this vein, tests on human subjects which are conducted without patient permission are acceptable if the results prove beneficial to the greater good, which often is defined as new knowledge. However, since there is no Scientism Pope or absolute authority, there is no necessary boundary to Scientism's heartfelt acts.

Scientismists, as we Earthfolk understand them by looking at their heartfelt actions, model their heartfelt actions on a version of "Might makes Right." In brief, anything—living or inanimate—can be probed, analyzed, dissected, etc. Expert knowledge endows the Scientismist with the credentials and authority to experiment without restraint. While this might sound like an overly-simplistic caricature, Earthfolk merely point to The Mushroom Cloud and ask, "Who, if anyone, ever said, When is enough, enough?" Or, "Although we can create this Bomb, should we?"

Of critical significance is our Earthfolk interpretation and conclusion that the most telling characteristic of the three Big Stories is that they commonly describe a singular heartfelt action which results in imagining a world in which humans live in dreadful fear. This singular heartfelt act is that which defines and initiates a Warrior's Quest, namely, the act of identifying and fearing the Other as Intimate Enemy. To fear the Other as Intimate Enemy is a foundational tenet and the source heartfelt act of the three dominant Big Stories.

Seen through Earthfolk eyes, it is not an accident that the iconic images of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth are fitting apocalyptic expressions of these Big Stories. If you strongly identify with either the Religious, Secular or Scientism Big Stories, anticipate that you will vigorously disagree with Earthfolk's interpretation of your own and possibly all three Big Stories. But it is just these Earthfolk claims and interpretations which are the points to be explored.

## Chapter 21: Big Stories are about Interiority and Intimacy

Earthfolk find that the concepts of interiority and intimacy are the primary and defining concepts of a Big Story. This is one of Earthfolk's key interpretive claims. Namely, that how you understand the concept of your interiority, e.g., of your self or ego or person, determines how you understand and value your intimacy. Your intimacy is discovered, notably, only when you are in relationship. Interiority is an individual's self-awareness, her/his self-identity. Intimacy can only occur when two share their interiorities in such a way that each experiences their own preciousness as they are embraced as a Beloved. We Earthfolk use the imagery of two candles merging their flames to form a third which is a oneness of a couple who then become, as they move apart, separate identities, again. For Earthfolk, intimacy cannot be experienced alone. It is a communal presence. The Big Stories exist to enable you to form your interior identity and to experience a defined range of intimacy.

Earthfolk gained this insight into intimacy and Big Stories as we saw a thread developing between the Religious Big Story and the other two, the Secular and Scientism. Peering and sitting in silence with _Genesis_ made clear that the primary purpose of _Genesis_ was to answer the Big Questions, "What to do with women?" and "Where is intimacy grounded?" The Big Answers were that women were subordinate to men, since they were created from male flesh. And, that **intimacy** is an act of Dominion, wherein the woman is to _submit_ to the man.

_Genesis_ "tells" a woman that her meaning as a woman is found through a very peculiar and constrained relationship of intimacy where her sole purpose is to sexually serve her man. This is expressed in theological imagery by the absence of a Mother Goddess. Without a Mother Goddess image, a woman has no way to envision herself as a precious being. Her spiritual and physical, her mental and emotional self is totally derived from her man's maleness. At her core, _Genesis_ ' woman exists as a curious form of maleness. There is no greater "revelation" in _Genesis_ than this revelation about male-female intimacy.

**Interiority** defines and describes a singular, personal experience of identity. You express your interiority to others when you make identity statements, such as, "I am a Minnesotan and a conservative Lutheran serving as a senior manager for General Mills." In contrast, intimacy is an engaged, communal experience. From another direction, intimacy is relational, and is created by your engaging an Other. Your intimacy is how you are known through your heartfelt actions with others. Intimacy is known, also, through how others describe your heartfelt actions in terms of relationships with an Other, for example, "She's a good person. Always volunteering." Or, "He's a patriot. Willing to risk his life for others." Or, "They're such loving parents, always taking time to be with their children."

As we Earthfolk read the three dominant Big Stories they, with a common hand, seek to foster a very restrictive notion of interiority and strive to annihilate the experience of intimacy. Their notion of interiority is bound up with their solitary identity as Warrior's Questers. Warrior's Quest interiority is restricted to a very constrained identity of "me" over against a ubiquitous and abhorred "them." For the Warrior's Quester, Earthfolk's vision of intimacy is seen as a threat to the dominant Big Stories fundamental definition of relationship as an act of Dominion. However, explaining this relationship between interiority and intimacy is yet another key Earthfolk task.

We Earthfolk will explain how the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth are expressions of both Warrior interiority and intimacy. More, we will show how the transformation of human consciousness, which is core to the Earthfolk way, is linked to our vision of human interiority as precious and the _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals of intimacy which make present the Beloved.

## Chapter 22: Communal Feeling Determines Vision

Another key Earthfolk insight is that how humans communally feel determines what and how an individual sees. Earthfolk find that the main impact of a Big Story is that it evokes this communal feeling. An individual's feelings are responses to communal feeling, and communal feeling defines the range of possible individual thoughts. Moreover, for an individual to breakthrough and move beyond the communal feeling entails an experience of breakdown of his/her Big Story.

Earthfolk's insight, however, counters a defining theme of the three dominant Big Stories which holds that the individual is a solitary being whose personal thoughts and feelings are his/her own. In this view, the group sees and feels only what the individual wants to share. It is held that an individual can choose not to share her/his personal thoughts and feelings. Moreover, that there is no obligation for them to do so. From this perspective, it is the solitary atomic thinker who brings his/her genius to enlighten the group. The Manhattan Project, which created the nuclear bomb, is an example of how individual geniuses collaborate and create. Earthfolk reverse this perspective and claim that it is communal feeling which is the source of an individual's vision and heartfelt moral and spiritual actions.

The insight into communal feeling, which Earthfolk's experience of Starship Earth revealed, is that everyone's thoughts and feelings count. No one is an isolated being, rather, everyone exists as an individual in relationship, that is, as part of a communal experience. "Being human" is a communal status. More, that everyone's thoughts and feelings are active forces in the ongoing creation of everyday reality. While no human is solitary, everyone has a keen sense of their named, personal identity. For Earthfolk, this is a sense of separateness and of personal named identity which has meaning as it manifests communal feeling and communal identity.

While the three dominant Big Stories present the individual as an isolated identity who chooses to engage in relationship, Earthfolk see that "relationship," defined as a two-way interaction and/or communication of thoughts and feelings, is the defining characteristic of being human. The sight of Starship Earth startled Earthfolk with this simple feeling that all humans are born from and exist within relationship. We saw that there is only one Earth, which is home to all living creatures, and, notably, a singular human family. So, why do the three Big Stories define their vision and feeling in terms of such isolated individual experience? Only peering at and sitting in silence with the iconic Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth provides Earthfolk with plausible answers.

In the three dominant Big Stories life is presented as an individual's quest to find happiness, whether that happiness is defined in terms of psychological integration or spiritually as union with their god or career-wise in terms of personal fulfillment. For example, in the Christian spiritual tradition there is the focus on "me and Jesus." Of being Saved and living happily in eternity in heaven. In like manner many secular psychological movements stress individuation or self-realization. Personal success is also realized through becoming Number One, "Numero Uno."

Most Earthfolk were raised in a Big Story whose heartfelt actions were described in terms of individual, not communal, moral and spiritual acts. Each of the three Big Stories focuses upon the individual, for example, it is the individual who is a sinner and must repent to be saved. Likewise, the source for socio-economic inequities is laid at the feet of the individual who is held responsible for their own lowly social or economic status. It is also claimed that the genius of individual inventors and entrepreneurs is the engine which drives the market economy to success. So any failures are, logically, the failures of individuals, not of a group or communal imagination. As globalization advances, the challenge is laid before third-world peoples to become independent, self-actualizing and self-directed individuals which, they are told, is the ticket to becoming happy and successful.

## Chapter 23: Big Stories Speak When the Individual Cannot

The necessity of understanding the vision of a Big Story by opening to its communal feeling was grounded in our Earthfolk observation that the defining individual and communal reaction to the icon of the Mushroom Cloud is an act of denial which is accompanied by the deep numbness of dreadful fear. When Earthfolk pose the question, "Are we not in the midst of an ongoing nuclear war?" many people simply cannot comprehend the question or they stare vacuously. It is not an answer which an individual can provide. It is a Big Answer which only a Big Story presents through communal voice and feeling.

_Your education_ was probably like most Earthfolk's, and it did not include any approach to or understanding of communal voice and feeling, of learning through the holistic experience of sensual immersion. You might have participated on teams and even led collaborative projects, but no one sat in silence with an opening to group inspiration. Though meditation is a trans-cultural practice, it is rare to find any group which seeks to find a communal voice for their vision, and since they lack this communal voice they cannot "hear" what their communal feeling is.

Though it might appear that Religious Big Story followers have a tradition of monastic meditation and contemplation, and that "The Church" articulates their communal voice, the patriarchal, authoritarian structure of the major religions negates involving the individual as a creator of the communal voice. Consequently, as Earthfolk use the term, this is a "collective voice" and not a communal voice. As part of the collective, the religious individual is trained to mindlessly echo what the "Church Fathers" set forth as catechism. They rotely voice the "Church's voice." In like manner, when in the military, the individual repeats what he/she is told to voice. There is no call for the individual soldier to become part of a process which issues in a bottom-up warrior voice. The Chain of Command is top-down, and the soldier's voice is that of a "grunt."

For Earthfolk, "communal voice" arises from the conversation among individuals who are seeking to discover the transforming voice evoked through communal embrace. That is why we Earthfolk invite you to experiment with a ritual, since without your participation our Earthfolk communal voice cannot arise, nor can its communal feeling spread. The significance of this distinction is that the three Big Stories' communal voice is hidden. As with their denial of the communal feeling of dreadful fear, the three Big Stories deny that their communal voice is that of Dominion.

Though Earthfolk see that communal feeling is part of the vision and rituals of the three dominant Big Stories, these Big Stories are in denial about their communal feeling. Indeed, once our own communal feeling of being peacefully and comfortably at-home on the Living Earth was evoked by Starship Earth, only then did we Earthfolk know that icons always express a communal feeling and "speak" the communal voice, even if these are hidden, "in the Shadows," so to speak. With this insight we Earthfolk began to re-explore and re-examine the three Big Stories in a search for their hidden icons and moments of communal voice and feeling.

## Chapter 24: Icons Are A Part of Communal Expression

We Earthfolk began to look at the Big Stories and their traditions with an eye for the most ancient icons and their Shadows. We sensed that the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth were flowers of other ancient iconic seeds. And, we anticipated that we would only find them through a communal act of sensual immersion. While this might strike you as peculiar, it is a way open to everyone. Yet, communal sensual immersion is not a conscious venture of most major social groups. Though religious sites (synagogues, churches, mosques, sacred groves, etc.) are, in Earthfolk view, communal sensual immersion venues, such is not part of their self-awareness. And, they, more than likely, will never become self-aware on this point. Why? Because their historical traditions, doctrines and rituals are focused on re-enforcing the sense of living as if on an isolated individual quest, that is, the Warrior's Quest. In short, the Earthfolk practice of communal sensual immersion is alien to the basic theme of the foundational accounts in the three Big Stories.

What do Earthfolk sense is being communally felt by those followers of the Big Stories for whom the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth are icons? On its own terms, Starship Earth was a snapshot taken by military explorers who were seeking to conquer not only the Earth but outer space. This icon affirmed the superiority of Western culture. At the time, America bathed in the glory of having won the Space Race. This victory demonstrated, as did being the first to create an Atomic Bomb, that America would outlast the attack of any Enemy in that, as a last resort, it would be Americans escaping on rocket ships to seed other planets.

As Earthfolk peered at the icons we could feel the peculiar sense of communal security that these two icons conveyed to Americans. With the explosion of the Atom Bomb there was a national sigh of relief that the war was finally over! The world was once again safe. With the capture of Starship Earth there was a collective slap on the back as human survival was ensured. Even if the Earth were to face the annihilating impact of an all out nuclear war, the human species would be saved. While Earthfolk sensed the communal feeling these icons effected, we also reflected upon why Warrior's Questers and others seemed unaware and/or silent about the Shadow side of these events.

## Chapter 25: Rituals of the Warrior's Quest

We Earthfolk peered and sat in silence with these Big Stories with the hope that we would gain some insight into why communal sensual immersion was so powerful yet so hidden. One of the criteria for focusing on the selected three Big Stories was that they addressed this issue of communal sensual immersion. As stated above, the three Big Stories addressed this issue, but they did so by denying it, that is, they placed primary emphasis on the individual's quest and sensing. Yet, the denial enabled Earthfolk to see the shape and form of the communal feeling which was actually put forth by each Big Story.

Earthfolk found that the Big Stories' focus on the individual's quest was intricately linked with key rituals which re-enforced that focus. Though it may sound odd and peculiar, the initiating ritual of the individual's quest, in all three Big Stories, is that of warring. Group identity and individual worthiness are achieved by warrior acts. All heartfelt acts are defined in terms of the Warrior's Quest. This is a very narrow definition of what could possibly count as meaningful acts. It meant that only ritual acts of violence, especially sexual violence, counted. This is a claim that _Sensual Preciousness_ will address many times, that is, that war is a ritual act of sexual violence, actually, a Shadow _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual. As an icon, the Mushroom Cloud reveals that the people who created it are focused on warring, notably, warring for global dominance. But, what does it reveal that they are communally feeling? What does it show about how they direct the resources of their collective imagination and wealth? For answers, Earthfolk went back to the first Big Stories humans ever told, that is, the Religious Big Stories.

The Abrahamic Tradition

What Earthfolk found, and what we hope you will both understand and experience through sensual immersion, is that what the Atom Bomb unleashed was another way of expressing the defining emotion of the Religious Big Story, that of dreadful fear, which is the prime emotion for the Warrior's Quest. The Atomic Bomb is the communal emotional expression of a millennia old Religious Big Story which is sourced in the communal feeling which founded the Abrahamic warrior tradition, that is, the tradition of the children of Abraham, the Biblical patriarch of the Jews, Christians and Moslems. This communal feeling is one of exile. It is a feeling suffused with guilt for an offense termed an Original Sin.

This Original Fall from grace, so the Big Story states, is caused by sexual temptation. Earthfolk understand this sexual temptation as the invitation for humans to develop intimate relationships. Consequently, the punishment for seeking intimacy is not only that of being exiled, but it is an act which cursed human sexuality. The curse cast the act of human sexuality in terms and images of sexual violence. Women were forever cursed in that violent suffering defines and describes the act of childbirth. For men, they are to "labor by the sweat of their brow," which means that they are to violently suffer when they work. In the ancient story this meant as they farmed or shepherded the land or, in Earthfolk terms, spent time mid-wifeing the Earth, bringing forth food.

## Chapter 26: Earthfolk's Communal Feeling of Being "At-Home" on Earth

It is necessary to remember that we Earthfolk gained this insight, not from intellectual analysis, interpretation or argument with the Abrahamics, but at the moment of Starship Earth's startling awakening. In that moment, Earthfolk felt different. We did not feel that we were exiles. Rather, we felt comfortably at-home on Earth. It was a moment which redefined our interiority as we were present in and through our intimacy as precious and to each other as Beloved.

Earthfolk's feeling of being comfortably at-home is a communal feeling which simultaneously makes individual identity knowable. Human identity is familial. Everyone shares the same family name, that is, Earthfolk. Home is that communal place where humans understand the peculiarities of their specific individual identities as they encounter their family. Home is where family is experienced as immortal, that is, as past, present and future. We Earthfolk call this the Forever-Family. Our gasp at the sight of Starship Earth was such an emotional sense of the immortal Forever-Family being comfortably at-home on Earth.

In this light, Earthfolk comprehend that it is communal feeling which determines the scope and boundary of a Big Story's vision. Of equal significance is that a vision defines the boundaries of acceptable heartfelt actions. That is, the scope of a vision defines and describes the possible range of acceptable moral and spiritual acts. When tasked with responding to significant moral or spiritual challenges, individuals respond with thinking and believing claims, which are, as Earthfolk hold, sourced in identity defining communal feeling statements.

When pressed or persuaded, people will begrudgingly surrender their intellectual positions, but never their feelings. "This is how I feel," is uttered as if validating an unassailable and immoveable state of being. For example, the last defense against a skeptical or contrarian attack is often, "I don't' feel that I can do that because humans are by nature corrupt." Or, "I do that because I feel that human nature is not fixed, that it can change." Or, "I feel that God always has a hand in things that happen to me." A person's convictions are anchored in and an expression of his/her deep feelings. And these deep feelings are sourced in the vision of the Big Story which the individual uses to answer Life's Big Questions.

This Earthfolk insight as to the primary emotional basis of a Big Story arose from our primal gut response to the two iconic images which bookend the three dominant Big Stories, namely, the iconic mages of the atomic Mushroom Cloud and the first astronaut's snapshot of Earth from outer space, of Starship Earth. We found that there was no way to intellectually persuade someone about the dreadful apocalyptic meaning of the icons if the emotions evoked were solely those of dreadful fear. Our Earthfolk claim that we were comfortably at-home, living as if no one's Enemy made no sense, and still does not, unless the icon of Starship Earth awakens the communal feeling of being comfortably at-home.

Earthfolk experienced communal sensing quite _serendipitously_. Since most of us were not raised with an awareness of communal sensual immersion, it happened as we experimented with rituals. What was known was that rituals arise over time to connect conscious awareness with deep feelings. Rituals were and are the way individuals engage in communal sensual immersion. This is one reason we Earthfolk invite you to experiment with a _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual or two. It is the only way that being with Earthfolk is initiated.

## Chapter 27: Earthfolk: At Home on the Living Earth with Forever-Family

Earthfolk are at-home on Earth. _Comfortably_.

We Earthfolk responded with jaw-dropping amazement to the snapshot of Starship Earth—"It's alive!" We felt the Earth alive. Alive not only through the obvious plant and animal life forms, but alive as the whole of which each person is a part. Being "at-home" is a special moment and feeling. It is comfortable and comforting. Home is the place you come from and to which you return at day's end. It is the hearth, that source of warmth which is sensual, bonding, and precious.

Earthfolk at-home around the hearth makes present family. A family which is at once very local as it is global. It is from family that all come and it is into the Forever-Family timelessly present that each passes. This image of Forever-Family is a key to understanding how Earthfolk feel. It is a core heartfelt image. As core as are the iconic images of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth.

We Earthfolk feel the presence of the Forever-Family whenever we see or embrace another human being. It is through the simple act of embracing that humans nurture their immortality. It is through the bonds of the family that humans experience their immortality. Individually, humans experience themselves, over time, as the family's child, then its adult, then its aging grand-self passing over. Individuals pass away, but there is always a child being parented and so family is. For each and every human is immortal in that they are Forever-Family. Embracing another as Forever-Family is a primary _Sensual Preciousness_ practice.

We Earthfolk feel comfortably at-home, happy to know others, and sensually pleasured in preciousness through the familial embrace.

In contrast, at its core, the Mushroom Cloud sets humans feeling ecstatically afraid. It is an icon that provokes a transformation of the human heart and imagination, but with a vision of majestic darkfire beauty. It evokes a serenity of absolute terror, and it thrills with an almost giddy delight in the macabre fascination of self-annihilation—the obliteration of the Earth, itself, by human mind and hand.

Mushroom Cloud humans ground their personal Story in the feeling of being warriors who are in a state of never-ending war, oscillating between hot and cold war periods. They live in a tribal world of national enemies, divided into small plots of land inhabited by "Us" and "Them." As warriors in the never-ending war, Mushroom Cloud humans interminably roam, at worst raping and pillaging, never truly at home, every morning breaking camp.

As did the Mushroom Cloud so did the Starship Earth image alter human brain chemistry. It set humans wondering about Earth as our only home. Do we need to travel to other planets? What do we truly know about our own spatial locality, this Blue Marble? It was then that we Earthfolk were summoned forth and came to know ourselves as a people. Then, that we found ourselves sharing the heartfelt emotions of living in joy, inviting one another to build the Earth, and being ecstatically pleasured by a life which is Forever-Family.

The Earthfolk sense of being at-home within the Forever-Family is source for the practice of _Sensual Preciousness_. For those who live and feel in the Mushroom Cloud, " _Sensual Preciousness_ " is a nonsensical phrase. For them, the whole Earth is not home, only a small part, their nation, is. Their focus is on Homeland Security. Their sense of family is restrictively local; narrowly genetic. They talk of bloodlines, using the word "family" to separate and distinguish themselves from others, even their neighbors next door.

Quite differently, _Sensual Preciousness_ is a practice which stems from the experience that every other human is Forever-Family. That every person is child, a precious Other. And that this Precious Other is a heartfelt presence whose personal, intimate self is source of the primal energy, the bonding love of vital zest which created and continues to create the world, reality, our humanity. Every child grows through the act of parenting, of embracing others as precious. When embraced as precious, the Other becomes a Beloved. "Forever-Family" is an inclusive phrase which identifies each of us as a precious child who is welcomed to sit at the hearth. In the Forever-Family there is only one bloodline and it is human.

## Chapter 28: The Human Sense of Preciousness and the Nurturing Embrace

The iconic Starship Earth image stunned the gathering Earthfolk as we sensed that other human bodies were our own. That every other is a precious Other, and that through embracing is how everyone's precious Otherness is evoked. When the embrace of the precious Other makes present each as Beloved, we Earthfolk call it the "nurturing embrace." The discovery of the precious Other as Beloved is another aspect of sensual immersion. It is a sensing that redefines and re-images who we are as individuals and who we can become in group identity, namely, a Forever-Family of Beloveds.

The five common senses of touching, tasting, smelling, seeing and hearing can become, individually and combined, ways to sensually immerse and so break through to that ecstatic heartfelt "more" which so many desire. Through _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals which image the Other as precious, each sense opens to the fuller _Sensual Preciousness_ of the Beloved. Practically, Earthfolk became aware that they could only learn, know and fully be through sensual immersion, that is, through a nurturing Embrace.

For example, Earthfolk practice a ritual of Inviting. Inviting is a _relational act_ , not something which can be experienced solo. To Invite another is to simultaneously open oneself to your and the other's Preciousness by sensually giving and receiving. Preciousness is only evoked through relationship, it is not a presence achieved when alone. When two humans are inviting, they open to the nurturing embrace.

The **nurturing embrace** , here, is _not just_ a hug but the _offering_ of your skin as a ritual instrument of intimacy. You offer your preciousness through every sense, and receive it likewise. The actual details of inviting are specific to each event. At times, two approach one another with an emphasis on the merest of fingertip touching. They do so imaging the other as their own skin and slowly exploring and delighting in every aspect of preciousness. At other times, multiple senses are engaged. The meeting space is festooned with flowers, candles, scented oils, and there is a swarm of sensual delights. In either case, and in every case, the invitation is for the other to "get under my skin," to so become attuned to the Other that he/she melds with you into Belovedness.

For Earthfolk, the inviting nurturing embrace is a key heartfelt act that breaks open the Warrior's Quester's titanium padlock which the Mushroom Cloud places upon human feeling and imagination. The Warrior's Quester's padlock locks-out. It secures a dead-bolt upon an individual's heart, and locks him/her into an imagination of dreadful fear. Into a primal fear of inviting another into one's intimacy. The Warrior's Quester is, in imagination and ritual, locked into "living as if everyone is Intimate Enemy." In contrast, inviting is most often the first act of the day between Beloveds. Inviting is your opening your preciousness. It is a giving through receiving. It is an act of vulnerability, of open-heartedness, and fearless surrender to your Beloved.

Offering the nurturing embrace is a _simultaneous invitation to accept and receive._ While we Earthfolk live amidst the Warrior's Questers and their Mushroom Cloud and the militarized version of Starship Earth, we sense that we can live "as if I am no one's enemy." To do so, Earthfolk image even the Warrior's Quester as precious Other, and invite him/her to be comfortably at-home with us on the Living Earth. Although Warrior's Questers may call Earthfolk their Enemy, we hold that we must risk our very lives through "living as if I am no one's enemy" in the hope that the Warrior's Quester will breakthrough to their own preciousness. Indeed, we Earthfolk hold that every human is embraceable, although we realize that offering the nurturing embrace is an act of invitation; it can never be forced.

As the Warrior's Quester imagines and practices "living as if everyone is Intimate Enemy," we Earthfolk practice embracing the Other as precious. Why? Are Earthfolk just overly-sentimental, "feel good," or touchy-feely types? Hardly. The nurturing embrace is, pardon the word, a deadly serious act. Earthfolk hold that every human is precious, but more significantly that every human has within his/her intimacy the only power which can offset that of nuclear annihilation, namely, their Sensually Precious vital zest. It is important to grasp that vital zest is all, and more than, that which is conveyed by the word, "erotic."

**Vital zest** is not "erotic" as popularly cited on the Internet as the lust of pornography. It is not just body "heat." Nor is it "love" as sentimentally acclaimed, which is a toss-away word of seductive banter. Rather, _Sensual Preciousness_ ' vital zest is the _primal, seething, explosive and morning calm fire_ which rises as the Sun does and rests as soothing Moon glow. It is the energy/force/power which is the thrill that makes Living an ecstatic and eternal moment. Sensually Precious vital zest is like molten steel which can destroy human flesh with just a splash, but if artfully guided and formed, pressed and molded, can be used to make-real fantastic wonders of the human imagination and heart.

Through _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals the precious hearts of humans yield this primal preciously intimate and erotic energy of vital zest with which humanity as a people imagines and creates their Big Stories. For Earthfolk, the world-transforming event of conscious evolution (as opposed to the world-ending self-annihilating apocalyptic event) is effected through the deepening of each person's intimacy and consequent release of vital zest. Note, that we Earthfolk hold that _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals can be engaged by every person. When you are comfortably intimate with all people, when you see and experience them and yourself as precious, then you cease to live in fear. You will begin to feel as Earthfolk feel, comforted and comfortably at-home on the Living Earth. You will live with a zestful vitality!

We Earthfolk invite you to see as we see, to feel as we feel. In brief, to feel Sensually Precious. Yet, this will only happen, for most, after wrestling with what you have been taught that your Big Story says and means. Note that Earthfolk interpret the three globally dominant Big Stories as integral parts of the Abrahamic tradition. That is, the Religious, Secular and Scientism Big Stories are sourced and molded within the visions and heartfelt experiences of the children of the Biblical Abraham (including Jews, Christian, Moslems). Yet the Abrahamic imagination is not simply of historical interest. Rather, Earthfolk see the Abrahamic imagination as driving today's engine of globalization as well as fueling the apocalyptic vision of nuclear holocaust and the desperate plan to escape to other planets. Consequently, for you to evaluate Earthfolk's vision of _Sensual Preciousness_ requires a deep understanding of their analysis and interpretation of the Religious Big Story.

## Chapter 29: Comfort and _Sensual Preciousness_ Rituals of Sacred Sexuality

Embracing the precious Other and making present each other as Beloveds through sensual immersion led the Earthfolk to practice rituals of Sacred Sexuality, which are a sub-set of _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals. Under the Mushroom Cloud sexuality is imaged as a war. As stated before, the Big Story which is source for the Mushroom Cloud forwards a spiritual vision whose main storyline is that there is no such thing as _Sensual Preciousness_. Rather, it holds that there is and can only be a War between the Sexes—a condition imposed upon them as punishment by their god. In this Big Story there is no precious Other. There is no vision of Beloveds. In this Big Story humans are not comfortably at-home on Earth, rather they are in exile. Key to their punishment is that they experience sexual intimacy as the cause for their exile and punishment.

In bold contrast, Earthfolk grasp that Starship Earth also made present in human minds and hearts the knowledge and feeling that home is where precious intimacy is made present. That what is sensed through sensual immersion is the intimacy of the Other. And that this intimacy is source for preciousness. Earthfolk hold that family is source of and expresses this primal precious intimacy. More, that the source of family is the preciously intimate, erotic act of coupling which makes present, gives birth to other humans whose presence continues the Forever-Family.

In this light, the Earthfolk vision pivots on the insight that all life, all creation, _everything which is earthly and human_ is, has been, and always will be—more, can be—fashioned through the inspiring moment of _preciously intimate embracing_. Beloved and precious humans are, then, the Living Earth, itself. They are Earthfolk as a familial presence, a forever living presence.

Inspired by the iconic Starship Earth, Earthfolk sense the preciousness of the Living Earth itself. Earth pulses with living presences which create, destroy and procreate life as forever presences. Among all these living presences, the embracing throb of human copulation is the heartbeat of intimacy which is at once that of an individual couple as it is themselves as Forever-Family, as sensually precious parents. Intimacy describes an experience of one's self as it is experiencing itself as a precious Other. Humans are the Living Earth's intimacy. We are its consciousness, its imagining, its heart, and its conscience.

Within a sacred sexual union vital zest pulsates. Within a sacred sexual union humans sense how Life itself flows through their distinct and indivisible presences. For Earthfolk, each of us, in our flesh and person, is a ritual instrument of intimacy. The primary coupling act of _Sensual Preciousness_ ' sacred sexuality evokes the presence of that love which never ends, has always been right here, as close as a kiss, as everyday as embracing. When humans parent—couple in a _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual—they enjoy ecstatic foreverness.

_Sensual Preciousness_ ' sacred sexuality rituals begin with the invocation of an inviting ritual. Two invite each other into precious intimacy. As will be discussed in more detail later in Section 3, to practice _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals, and especially those of sacred sexuality, is to make one's self present, in flesh and person, in a way never before imagined in any Big Story or practiced through any personal Story.

## Chapter 30: Big Stories Present Spiritualities of Intimacy and Sacred Sexuality Rituals

We Earthfolk imagine and tell a new Big Story which is sourced in the emotion of comfort. It is the feeling of being comfortably at-home on Earth, and it is also the feeling of being **comfortably at-one in sexual communion** with a Beloved. Through _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals human sexual acts evoke spiritual intimacy. Intimacy has many aspects and dimensions, one is the ritualized moment where sexual lust burst into vital zest. In this light, vital zest is evoked through a movement between two Beloveds which has the rhythm of a duet.

Earthfolk focus on rituals of sacred sexuality because of a very peculiar characteristic of the dominant Big Stories. This is a very peculiar yet defining characteristic, as we Earthfolk assess, of the core revelation of the three Big Stories. Namely, that each professes that there is nothing which is Sensually Precious, and that preciousness can never be experienced through sexual intimacy. This is imaged in a negative fashion by the most telling (and curious) characteristic of _Genesis_ , namely, that there is no Mother Goddess. _Genesis_ appears to be all about making it absolutely clear that a Father god—who Earthfolk call the Lone Male god—created everything. More, that His first creation is a male, and that women, the feminine, what most humans consider the birthing body, is actually derived from male flesh. In this light, _Genesis_ is stating that sexual acts of intimacy between two lovers have little to do with preciousness, and are, in essence, acts of genital pleasure, not of intimate human transformation or transmutation. Instead of being a duet, Abrahamic sexual intercourse is modeled as a warrior duel.

For many, this might be **Earthfolk's most controversial and disturbing claim** , namely, that there is a _Sensual Preciousness_ sacred sexuality spirituality and practice at the core of the three dominant Big Stories. Reflect and assess, Is this true of the Big Story you profess? We Earthfolk hold that all Big Stories practice a _Sensual Preciousness_ and are, in essence, spiritualities of intimacy. This _Sensual Preciousness_ is, however, artfully concealed. To expose the depth and reach of the three Big Stories' _Sensual Preciousness_ is why Earthfolk are so focused on the Religious Big Story of _Genesis_. For in _Genesis_ there is more to learn about _Sensual Preciousness_ and sacred sexuality by understanding what is not said and who is not seen.

On its face, what is seen in _Genesis_ is what Earthfolk term the Lone Male god and his Lone Male creature, Adam. There appears to be no act of _Sensual Preciousness_ or sacred sexuality from which the world and life, itself, is created. There is no Mother God. Adam, himself, exists alone. His Eros, or Life Force, is expressed through his Dominion over Earth and all living creatures. When a female is created, which is a decision made by his god and not a conscious request made by Adam, she is created from within him, from his flesh. Eve is Adam's bodily derivative. Both Adam and Eve are created beings. Neither is birthed from a mothering source. The message is that there is no sacred sexual act as source of Creation. Or, so it appears.

Earthfolk peer at and sit in silence with _Genesis_ and find a _Sensual Preciousness_ of Shade Warrior's Quest Eros. It is an Eros which is expressed through practices of sexual violence and abusive parenting. The sleight of hand in _Genesis_ is that it appears to be an atheistic account. That is, there is no Mother Goddess. But an utterance from another Creation account, in _Genesis_ 1:26, "let us make man, someone like ourselves...," provides the interpretive key. Namely, that there are gods and goddess. That there are many aspects of femininity and masculinity present in the world. As Earthfolk peer and sit in silence, we call attention to our sighting of the Mother Goddess who is veiled though fully manifest in _Genesis_. She is the Shade Mother. The consort of the Shade Father. Both are Warrior's Quest parents who raise their son to be a Dominator, and who so sexually abuse their daughter, Eve, that she has no sense of self-worth or value. Eve only experiences her female sexuality as she "sins," that is, when she listens to the Serpent and makes Adam aware of their nakedness, which is a metaphor for the sexual awakening to their intimacy.

_Earthfolk hold that because Adam and Eve became aware of the power of intimacy, so were they exiled and cursed_. We ponder, **"How powerful must be human intimacy that a god would punish humans for experiencing this power?"** Earthfolk see in the exile and god's curses an affirmation that it is through human intimacy that the _Sensual Preciousness_ which does create Heaven and Earth, that does sustain Life forever, is made present. While this is explored in depth in Volume 2, sighting the Shade Mother and identifying the Lone Male as Shade Father and so unveiling the abusive intimacy which is present in the Garden of Eden is a momentous discovery upon which all Earthfolk interpretation and evaluation of the Religious Big Story is grounded.

Contrary to traditional Abrahamic self-interpretation, _Genesis_ is _not_ simply the story of a lone, **monotheistic** , patriarchal Father God. Rather, it is a story of **Divine Parents** , but they are the Shade god and goddess. This, however, is not simply an insight which applies only to the singular story of _Genesis_. It is an insight into how the whole Abrahamic tradition unfolds. It especially throws light on the hows and whys of the Christian interpretations of Jesus, his birth, the role of Mary, and the meaning of his death on the Cross.

At this point, simply ask yourself, _What type of parents are pleased by the agonizing death suffered by their Son on the Cross?_ Jesus' death on the cross is proclaimed as an act of salvation, and one that satisfied the Father (expressed in a traditional interpretation called the Satisfaction Theory of Salvation). Only abusive parents claim that their violence is salvific! Finally, it is this Warrior's Quest _Sensual Preciousness_ of sexual abuse which links the Religious with the other two Big Stories. The other two re-express this Shade Warrior's Quest Eros. As Earthfolk have found, the other two Big Stories do not deny nor reject _Genesis_ ' Revelation that _Sensual Preciousness_ is based upon rituals of sexual abuse and sexual violence.

Carefully reading and hearing _Genesis_ as we Earthfolk do is probably the most painstaking challenge you face. For if you peer and sit in silence with _Genesis_ as we do, you will have to confront the Shade Warrior's Quest Eros drenched _Sensual Preciousness_ of sexual abuse which you have been practicing. And, then, you will be faced with making a heartfelt choice whether you want to continue to live within its imagination and enact its rituals.

Earthfolk realize that our analysis and interpretation of _Genesis_ is radical and daunting. Nevertheless, your evaluation and acceptance of the Earthfolk interpretation of the type of _Sensual Preciousness_ at the core of _Genesis_ will determine, to a great extent, your acceptance of the Earthfolk vision. So, it is especially critical that you seek to understand Earthfolk's take on this old, old Biblical tale.

## Chapter 31: Beloveds in Embrace and Forever-Family are Earthfolk's Icon

While Starship Earth is an Earthfolk icon when it is felt as a living presence in whose embrace humans are at-home, the countering icons to the militaristic Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth are the Beloveds in embrace and the Forever-Family.

_This means that you as Beloved and when, through embrace, you make present the Forever-Family, so are_ _you_ _Earthfolk's icons._ This is why you are invited to participate in an Earthfolk ritual with your precious Other, hopefully, to break-through and experience one another as Beloveds.

As Beloveds in embrace you not only are iconic, but the energy which you unleash, the preciously erotic vita zest, is the creative energy, the creative Eros of Life, itself. Once you are Beloved you are not only in embrace with your precious Other but, together, as a new presence, you two are embraced by the precious Otherness which is the Forever-Family.

Earthfolk's fuller intellectual analysis is offered in Volume 2. In this volume, a summary evaluation of the three dominant Big Stories follows. As stated before, Earthfolk find Biblical _Genesis_ as source for understanding the vision and heartfelt practices of the Warrior's Quest and the emergence of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. While those who hold solely to a Religious Big Story might claim _Genesis_ as "theirs," since it is in a book of scriptures called the Bible, Earthfolk see _Genesis_ also as the historical source for the Scientific and Secular Stories, both intellectually and imaginatively. We claim that _Genesis_ is the source for the heartfelt practices which define the Warrior's Quest. This claim, however, is part of Earthfolk imagining. Coming to see _Genesis_ in this light is an Earthfolk way of seeing with sojourning alien eyes.

## Chapter 32: Overview of section 2

In this Section, Earthfolk explore the general characteristics of the three dominant Big Stories. These are the Religious Big Story, the Secular Big Story, and the Scientism Big Story. Earthfolk explain why we select and focus on these three Big Stories. We assert that these three Big Stories all find expression through the Warrior's Quest.

We Earthfolk claim that these three Big Stories are the engine driving what is called **"globalization."** As we define globalization it is a movement which seeks to effect an economic, cultural and religious transformation of the Earth and human consciousness based upon the vision, values and practices of the Warrior's Quest. Earthfolk find the pervasiveness and dominance of these Big Stories evidenced by never-before-imagined twin icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. This dominance is further evidence by the Warrior's Quest themes of violence and sexual abuse which flow On-Air! and Online! 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Earthfolk present four points which we use to evaluate the Big Stories. Through these four points of evaluation Earthfolk argue that the three Big Stories are, as to their roots and impact, three branches of one imaginative tree. We find this tree to be the Abrahamic tradition. How each Big Story answers selected Big Questions is presented.

We Earthfolk, then, present our own Big Story and its Big Answers. All this is further preparation for you to determine what is your Big Story and your personal Story. With this exercise completed, Earthfolk introduce you, in Section 3, to their " _Sensual Preciousness_ ' Spirituality of Intimacy."

## Chapter 33: Earthfolk evaluation of the three dominant big stories of the Religious, the Secular and the Scientism

As Earthfolk began to share our vision it became clear that we were composing a Big Story which offered fresh, but highly controversial, Big Answers to Life's Big Questions. Given the diverse backgrounds of the Earthfolk, we came to articulate our vision in respect to the varied traditions, values, terminology and stories of the dominant three Big Stories from which the Earthfolk vision called us away. The globally dominant three Big Stories are the Religious, the Secular and the Scientism. Consequently, introducing others to the Earthfolk vision required carefully explaining why the visions of these three Big Stories had to be discarded. Such an effort often put the Earthfolk in the position of sounding quite contrarian or "anti" this or that Big Story. One result of such critical thinking discussions is that both sides get defensive, and many people often feel personally attacked or disrespected. Indeed, to approach a breakthrough often requires undergoing a breakdown.

As stated before, in this Volume 1, we Earthfolk focus on inviting and introducing you to our vision with the anticipation that you will venture forward and practice a ritual or two. While an evaluation of the three Big Stories is presented, the expanded analysis and interpretation which is ground for this evaluation is presented in Volume 2.

Much of our Earthfolk's analysis and interpretation centers around peering at and sitting in silence with the other Big Stories so as to discern their Shadow or Shade content and values. This method also enables us to sight and evaluate our own Shadow/Shade content. At this point, Earthfolk's evaluation is useful if you are not presently rigidly tied to one or another of the dominant three Big Stories. However, if you are a strong believer, reading sections or all of Volume 2 might be useful, though it might lead you to simply reject everything Earthfolk.

As individuals, Earthfolk have studied and been raised within one or more of the Big Stories, and still others in no spiritual or philosophical tradition, and yet others in non-Western, non-Abrahamic ways. Earthfolk selected the three Big Stories because, as seen through sojourning alien eyes, because they are globally dominant and the imaginative source for globalization. This is a selection some might negatively judge as being Euro-centric or Western or Biblical. Earthfolk simply assert that, while all traditions and Big Stories are valued, the three selected express the vision and heartfelt values of the Warrior's Quest with a forthrightness and boldness which provide a clear foil for articulating the Earthfolk vision and practices.

In Volume 2, each Big Story is presented in greater depth and with some complexity. For example, the Religious Big Story is presented as the historic intellectual and emotional source for the Secular and Scientism Big Stories. Likewise, the Secular Big Story is interpreted by two approaches, that of the "Sacred Secularists" and the "Non-Sacred Secularists." The Scientism Big Story is interpreted by "Sixth Dayers," "Sacred Scientism Stewards," and in terms of a "Non-Sacred Scientism." Such distinctions are not applied in this volume, rather each Big Story is evaluated in generality.

## Chapter 34: The Big Stories are "On Air!" and "Online"

As stated in the Introduction, we Earthfolk have purchased our evaluative insights through passionate journeys as devotees and practitioners of one or all of the dominant Big Stories: Religious, Secular and Scientism. Notably, experiences in prison as inmates—most often because of civil disobedience—has given us a set of peculiar insights gained by living in the penal and corrective institutions of the Big Stories Shade world. Earthfolk, as sojourning aliens, have been Inside and Outside the interior and intimate spaces of each Big Story.

We Earthfolk clearly understand that many people _never pause_ to deeply reflect upon their life or the world. To them, we say, "Turn on the TV." Or, "Logon to the Net." Everything which Earthfolk say about the significance of the Big Stories is clearly stated, re-run and re-hashed on TV and the World-Wide-Web, 24/7/365. The core value-teaching stories and themes of the Big Stories are replayed through sit-coms, soap operas, law and order serials, music videos, video games, news shows, porn sites... it goes on.

As the broadband world of the Internet began to exponentially expand, it was instructive for Earthfolk to learn that there are more sites devoted to pornography than any other topic. It was sadly enlightening to further understand that the fastest growing trend in this "virtual" pornographic world was a drift towards sexual violence with a proliferation of sites focused on sex with children. This matched and reflected a striking trend during the last three decades in TV and the multi-media world towards more and more explicit presentations of graphic moments of sexual contact, notably, of stories involving acts of sexual violence.

Earthfolk's sojourning alien eyes note that the **dominant media story** and theme appears to be one whose message is that sexual violence, the sexual abuse of children, and the _sexualization_ of just about every human act of communication is or should be normative. Since the dominant three Big Stories are the driving force of globalization, understanding why sexual abuse and sexual violence is the core theme of multi-media telecommunications became a top priority for Earthfolk.

We Earthfolk peered and sat in silence with these facts about the rise of stories focusing on sexual violence and sexual abuse. Are these stories simply the unintended consequence of the relatively recent telecommunication revolution in the broadcast and broadband worlds? Would the focus quickly change once governmental agencies and community groups responded with regulations and tighter controls? Or, is the telecommunication revolution simply allowing the deep roots of the dominant Big Stories to be exposed?

Earthfolk accept the revelation of the telecommunication revolution in respect to its core impact, which is that it frees humans to more fully express the vision and central heartfelt acts of their Big Stories. But which Big Story has been most concerned with issues of sexuality? The search for an answer sent Earthfolk back to the Abrahamic Religious Big Story and its Creation account in _Genesis_. As is discussed in fuller detail in Volume 2, Adam subordinating Eve and expressing his Dominion over all creatures of the Earth is so endlessly repeated in the multi-media world that with Earthfolk eyes it appears that the repetition is an emotional narcotic. In general, a night watching TV or surfing the Web affirms the grip fear, hatred of the Other as Intimate Enemy, degradation of women and female power, and the sense of impending doom has on all humans who are hooked into the global mass and multi-media "IV." Earthfolk claim that the current explosion of sexual abuse and sexual violence stories can only be understood by grasping the Shade aspect of _Genesis_.

If ever our Earthfolk claim that the three Big Stories are globally dominant is doubted, you are invited to peer and sit in silence with your favorite multi-media experience. If you doubt Earthfolk's interpretation of these Big Stories, simply peer again and sit in silence with the icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. Sit and consider that the icons and heartfelt values of these Big Stories are being telecommunicated more rapidly and more often than ever before, that is, on a 24 hour, 7 days a week, 365 days a year cycle. Sit, listen, see and then reflect upon a world which is engaged in Endless Warring, and which is entertained by stories of sexual abuse and sexual violence. If ever there was a period in human development for you to take a step back and query What? and Why? and Where are we going?—that is, if there ever was a time to scrutinize and evaluate the dominant Big Stories, it is certainly now.

## Chapter 35: Four Points of Earthfolk's Evaluation

What startled Earthfolk when we first peered at Starship Earth ("Earthrise") was the breath-stopping feeling that they were at-home. It was a breakthrough moment which Earthfolk describe in various ways. For some, there was a sit-down-and-exhale sense of relief. For others, a kick the heels excitement. For most, as discussion began about "What do you see? What do you feel?" there was a sense of being safe. All found the words comforting, comfortable and comforted to be apt.

Over the last half century, as the Earthfolk communion has grown, the phrase which caught the sense of what it means to not be living in the Religious, Secular or Scientism Big Stories was "living as if I am no one's enemy." Before all the analyses, interpretations and experiences which formed _Sensual Preciousness_ were gathered, we Earthfolk found ourselves continually discussing this recurring phrase of "living as if I am no one's enemy." It expressed the primary response which just about every Earthfolk claimed—in varying words—as part of their breakdown and breakthrough transformation.

The breakdown involved ridding oneself of identity as a Warrior's Quester and of approaching the Other as Intimate Enemy. Since identity as a Warrior's Quester links all three Big Stories, coming to a sense of one's self as not-a-Warrior's Quester delivered Earthfolk into unknown psychic and spiritual territory. As glib as the phrase "living as if I am no one's enemy" can roll off one's lips, the actual personal and spiritual transformation disturbs the most secure corners of an Earthfolk's interior identity and understanding of intimacy. Transformation is as painful as a woman's labor to bear a child. It is, likewise, as gloriously a flowering of one's deepest self as when a new life is birthed.

It soon became evident that all Earthfolk were drawn to this phrase and the challenge it presented because it countered the basic imagery and emotion which is common ground to all three dominant Big Stories, that is, dreadful fear and the primary sense of interior identity as a Warrior's Quester. This Warrior's Quester has little to no sense of intimacy, for he/she does not seek relationship, does not seek to open to the Other. Rather, the Warrior's Quester's identity is as Intimate Enemy of the Other, and so the sole heartfelt relationship which grants meaning to the her/him is the act of Dominion manifested through slaying. Slaying the Other is the ritual act of the Warrior's Quester which evokes what the Warrior's Quester considers "intimacy." This is physical and/or psychological and/or spiritual slaying and conquest of the Other.

The Warrior's Quester achieves intimacy through conquest, the exercise of Dominion. The central symbolic act, for the Warrior's Quester, is that of slaying. Earthfolk came to grasp that the shedding of blood is the singular heartfelt act which bestows both identity upon the Warrior's Quester and makes present his/her experience of intimacy. The Warrior's Quester only know that she/he is intimate if there is blood-shed. As strange as this insight might sound, consider that only the female body sheds blood. The monthly shedding of blood identifies the body as female, and indicates that it can make present Life itself through a child. Her monthly blood-shedding indicates that if she is embraced, that from that intimate moment, Life continues.

As we Earthfolk read _Genesis_ , it claims that the male body is the birthing body, in that Eve is "birthed" from Adam's Rib. In this light, the Warrior's Quester's act of blood-shedding—his own or the Enemy's—is a ritual act which attempts to make present the male body as the birthing body. Through ritual acts of warring, the Warrior's Quester believes that he is actually making Life present. This is one reason why the Warrior's Quester denies his Shadow, because blood-shedding and the slaying of the Intimate Enemy is, as his vision enables him to see, Life-giving. From this perspective, Earthfolk accept that Endless Warring is, for the Warrior's Quester, a defining sensually precious act.

While we Earthfolk practice "living as if I am no one's enemy," this approach recognizes that each Earthfolk will be called Enemy by others. And as Intimate Enemy we are in danger. Earthfolk clearly recognize and respect that the Shade world is an integral part of the Warrior's Quest, even if the Warrior's Quester denies the Shadow, as he is wont to do. Earthfolk grasp that to counter violence and sexual abuse we must first understand our own violence and acts of sexual abuse, that is, our own Shade vision and values. We Earthfolk know from experience, notably from time as prisoners, that you can only defeat violence and Shade acts such as sexual abuse through accepting your own violence and Shadow.

The Warrior's Quester's dangerousness is that he/she does not accept their Shadow or their violence. The reason there is Endless War is that the Warrior's Quester deceives him/herself into believing that War is Peace. This denies the truth that good and evil both reside in the mind and heart of humans. In fact, Earthfolk see the Warrior's Quester's denial of the Shadow as expressing a sentimental wistfulness that once the Enemy is slain that no further Enemies shall arise! This is, indeed, Pollyannaish thinking. Consider the ancient Catholic saying that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." This is simply another way of stating that murder births revenge which births murder, endlessly. The Warrior's Quest is self-defeating, existentially and apocalyptically. As Earthfolk see the Warrior's Questers, their Peace is indeed a state of warring. They live miserably on Earth.

The presence we Earthfolk strive to evoke is a personal space which is inclusive, which is an opening to the Other to come into our interior and intimate spaces. It is an inclusivity which seeks to realize the Other as being one's own self, as being kin in the Forever-Family. Once identified as Forever-Family, so is one opened to receive and be received as precious and Beloved. The various ways in which Earthfolk rituals approach creating this intimacy of preciousness and Belovedness will be discussed later.

What is of significance in understanding Earthfolk's evaluation of the three dominant Big Stories are four factors which we find are key to each Big Story's vision and range of heartfelt actions. Earthfolk focus on these four factors because they not only link the three Big Stories and reveal them as branches of the same imaginative and spiritually intimate and erotic tree, but they also serve as foils for the articulation of Earthfolk's vision, heartfelt actions and rituals.

Each Big Story is 1) sourced in the emotion of dreadful fear, identifies and 2) names the Other as Intimate Enemy, 3) seeks to annihilate the goddess and the feminine, and 4) expresses itself through heartfelt actions of the Warrior's Quest which prophesizes a self-fulfilling apocalyptic story of self-annihilation.

## Chapter 36: The Religious Big Story

The Religious Big Story is robust. It defining characteristic is that it seeks to answer all of the Big Questions, once and for all. It is a static Revelation, not an ongoing Story. It is a Big Story with well defined doctrines and required dogmas, and a profusion of ceremonial rituals. While there are quite a few Religious Big Stories, the dominant one which reflects the values of the others, is that which sources the West's quest for global Dominion. This is the Abrahamic Big Story which encompasses the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem traditions.

The gist of the Religious Big Questions and Big Answers are as follows.

Q: _Where do humans come from?_

A: Humans cannot know this answer through human research, analysis or science. Humans can only know Big Answers through the Abrahamic tradition and its scriptures, which are sacred and revealed. God does not reveal truth to everyone, although everyone can have access to truth by joining the Abrahamic tradition through confessing and professing the truth of the Abrahamic Big Story. Revelation is a special knowledge, understood only by those who have faith. This faith is explained to you by a special group whose male members have been selected and ordained by God through their response to God's Calling.

Q: _How did humans get here?_

A: Humans were created in the Garden of Eden. Adam was created first. Eve was created from Adam's Rib. God created everything "out of nothing," that is, "creatio ex nihilo." God created humans from dirt, and He breathed a soul into them. God gave Adam Dominion over all the Earth and all creatures, including Eve.

Q: _Where are humans going?_

A: Eve was tempted by a devilish Serpent. He gave her knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve then tempted Adam. Together, they disobeyed God—committed an Original Sin—and so were cast out, exiled from the Garden of Eden. Life on Earth is cursed, and it will expire in an End of Time apocalyptic event where God and His Messiah will return. Evil doers shall be slain. True believers will be saved. They will live in eternity with God. Heaven is like the Garden of Eden.

Q: _Why are humans here on Earth?_

A: Humans are a Fallen lot. Because of Original Sin, God is humanity's Intimate Enemy. Since everyone is born depraved, every other human is a potential tempter who invites you to revel with them in sin. This is especially true of women who are temptresses as Eve was. Everyone is your Intimate Enemy. The only purpose of life on Earth is to repent, be saved by an act of faith, then live so as to know, love and serve God so that you will be with Him in heaven for eternity. Humans must find salvation. This is offered by God through his Messiah.

Some Abrahamics believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the only Son of God. They hold that only through faith in Jesus Christ can you be saved. They believe that Jesus was crucified, died on the cross, and rose from the dead. That by doing so he atoned for the sin of Adam. Faith requires accepting that Earth is a Vale of Tears, an abode of suffering. For many Abrahamics, suffering is a redemptive act, and the purpose of life is to live in "imitation of Christ" ( _imitatio Christi_ ) and to accept suffering. Other Abrahamics still await the return of the Messiah. For all Abrahamics, there really is no meaning to life on Earth except to prepare to die well, that is, in a state of grace and faith.

Q: _When did humans first appear?_

A: _Genesis_ is the only record of creation. While no one knows the exact time, many Abrahamics have studied their scripture and concluded that humans were created about 10,000 years ago. They hold that humans lived when the dinosaurs roamed. Other Abrahamics do not look at _Genesis_ and the sacred scriptures for scientific validation of any event. These hold that humans evolved as part of God's plan.

Q: _How are humans to act?_

A: Abrahamics follow Revealed Truth and Law which they hold has been interpreted by an approved and limited set of prophets, priests, spiritual writers, theologians, and other inspired people whose works are contained in an approved, canonical body of scripture and writings. Among these scriptural canons are the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old and New Testaments, the Islamic Koran, and the Book of Mormon. All obey a patriarchal authority of males who claim direct lineage to, and exercise, Adam's Dominion. They do this through an anointed and ordained authority which has come to be expressed through religious institutions and organizations.

Q: _Why is there Evil in the world?_

A: Why God permits evil is a mystery. Evil is present here on Earth because of a human act, that is, the seduction of Adam by Eve, which is symbolized by the Apple from the Tree of Good and Evil story. All humans are evil by nature, and only by God's grace and bounty can they be saved through belief in His Son, who came to Earth, suffered and died for you on the Cross.

In searching this Big Story the four points under evaluation arose as core to the vision and heartfelt practices of the Abrahamic tradition. The most significant interpretive clues for Earthfolk were found in the Creation narrative and the heartfelt actions of the people who appear throughout _Genesis_. As discussed before, _Genesis_ reveals itself to Earthfolk as a _Sensual Preciousness_ story, with a special story-within-the story concerning sacred sexuality. It affirms for Earthfolk that Big Stories primarily focus on defining the interior and intimate spaces and expressions of a people. There is no other more significant "creating space" than that of the intimate. For how a Big Story defines and describes intimate space determines how its believers understand their identity and, as critically, their relationship to the Other. The possible and potential range of heartfelt actions is directly sourced in a Big Story's account about interiority and intimacy.

Sourced in the Emotion of Dreadful Fear

When Earthfolk encounter the Religious Big Story we instantly knew that we were Other. As Other, we are excluded from the believer's intimacy. As Other, our identity is as Intimate Enemy. We are the not-Chosen. We are not Precious. The Abrahamic approaches us as Warrior's Quester and does not reach out to invite us or engage us in embrace. If an Other enters the Religious people's interior space, they are slain. The Other is deemed taboo, and until they are initiated through penile circumcision the alien males cannot enter the Holy of Holies. The Religious interior is the group or tribal identity, e.g., as Israelites, Christians or Moslems, and any attempt to embrace their intimacy is seen as an attack by an Enemy. The only good Enemy is a dead enemy, ala Joshua 8.

The Religionist lives in a Fallen world. The Earth is seen as a temporary abode, which is cursed as a land of exile. Everything earthly is considered transitory and only of meaning if it assists the believer in following the dictates of their god's Big Story. This is a story with an apocalyptic End of Time war to end all wars, marked by the triumphant return of a Savior. The Warrior's Quest in spiritual terms is to die well, that is, forgiven and righteous in the eyes of their god.

Identifies and Names the Other as Intimate Enemy

Ritually, we Earthfolk redirect the fear which emanates from the Abrahamic tradition and visualize ourselves as accepting and embracing the Abrahamic Warrior's Quester. Through this embrace Earthfolk accept our own Shade Warrior's Quester self. This leads to the practice of living "as if I am no one's enemy." Instead of identifying and naming the Other as not-Chosen and Enemy, Earthfolk invite the Other into intimate embrace to evoke preciousness and so identify them as Beloved. However, the result of not living as a Warrior's Quester is often quite severe and dramatic, for it often lands one in prison or some other Shade institution. For others, the consequence is even death. For most, it is rejection as gook, infidel, heretic, pagan, or traitor.

Seeks to Annihilate the Goddess and the Feminine

The Abrahamic Religious Big Story has no intimate space. This appears to be an extreme interpretation. (This and the following are explored more deeply in Volume 2). Yet, consider that Adam and Eve were never in a relationship of equals. She is his absolute derivative, in that she is created, not born. She, as the Rib story relates, is taken from Adam's flesh. Adam's body is the birthing body, not Eve's or any Mother Goddess. In the Garden it is only Adam as the Lone Male with his Lone Male god until Eve is created. As the Lone Male god has no Mother Goddess consort, neither does Adam. Adam, himself, is not born, rather he is created by a Lone Male father god.

Eve has no intimate relationship with Adam. In the Garden there is no family, and until the Serpent enters, Adam and Eve have no sense of their nakedness, which is a symbol of their awareness of their intimate space. In this light, they have no relationship of any sort in sexual terms. Eve shares only in Adam's physical identity as "bone of my bone." Once they do discover their intimate space, they are exiled and punished. Part of their punishment is that they are to define themselves as being Warrior's Questers, for whom the world is an alien and terrible place. They are placed at war with the Earth itself in respect to how hard it will be to work the land. Eve is placed at war with her own body, as she is told that she will suffer the pangs of childbirth.

We Earthfolk hear through this Creation account that the source of family is a Warrior's Quester event which is best described in terms of war between the sexes. Eve's sexuality is positioned as a weapon which the enraged Lone Male god uses to make her suffer. Adam and Eve's shared interior identity is defined solely in terms of being a Warrior's Quester. Eve and Adam are the template for seeing the relationship between male and female in terms of a "War between the Sexes." Indeed, Eve is Intimate Enemy. She must be dominated. Not loved. Not invited with a nurturing embrace.

Earthfolk describe _Genesis_ **as a story of the** _Obliterated Womb_. There is no womb in _Genesis_ , or, rather it is revealed that there is a new womb and that it is the male body. This revelation of the male body as womb strikes the sojourning alien Earthfolk as so wildly bizarre that we pause to peer and sit in silence with it. What is this story fully revealing? One insight is that the Rib story is one of misdirection. That is, that the focus of the story is exactly what it is trying to direct attention away from. Instead of the Rib, the iconic visual of the story is the penis.

Just as Adam's body is presented as the womb for Eve, so it is clear to Earthfolk that the creational power is that of Adam's semen. (This is an insight validated by the ritual initiation practice of circumcising the penis.) The revelation of _Genesis_ , then, is that only Lone Male sexual power is necessary to create the world. Female power, however presented, as well as female bodies, are not necessary for birthing. What sojourning alien eyes see in _Genesis_ is a sacred sexuality story, with its revelation as to the peculiar Warrior's Quest ritual act of sacred sexuality, that is, slicing the penile skin so that it bleeds.

_Genesis_ ' sacred sexuality story is that only male sexuality is a source of divine expression, of _Sensual Preciousness_. And, that the act of same-sex sexuality, namely, masturbation, is the Warrior's Quest's core sacred sexuality ritual. Historically, the Abrahamic tradition denies and rejects this interpretation. They would state that in _Genesis_ there are no _Sensual Preciousness_ acts of any sort since there are no visible acts of sexual intercourse between either gods or humans. They would not interpret the Rib as a symbol for the penis, rather they present it as hard fact.

Our Earthfolk interpretation of _Genesis_ turns the Abrahamic tradition upside-down. Earthfolk claim that _Genesis_ is, in essence, all and only about _Sensual Preciousness_ and the ritual of **masturbatory sacred sexuality**. Indeed, _Genesis_ is a Lone Male, same-sex _Sensual Preciousness_ story whose defining heartfelt act is that of masturbation. It is this ritual of same-sex masturbation which is source for the Abrahamic's spirituality of _Sensual Preciousness_. In sum, there is only one, singular ritual of Abrahamic _Sensual Preciousness_ , and it is masturbation. It is not insignificant nor inconsequential that the Abrahamic ritual tradition is male-centered and rife with symbols and rituals which we Earthfolk identify and interpret as expressing the truth that only males have intimacy, and that they experience this intimacy only through masturbatory acts.

In this light, it is seen that Eve is loved only insofar as she is an expression of Adam's same-sex erotic ritual. She, herself, becomes a sex-toy. How else to see her once the misdirection of the Rib story is understood? It is revealed that Eve is brought into existence through a masturbatory, self-pleasuring Lone Male sexual act. Her femaleness and femininity only have value insofar as they are not an expression of intimacy, rather, only as she is an expression of Adam's interiority, of his identity as Warrior's Quester. She has no identity other than through Adam, and she can never claim intimacy since she does not have existence other than as a derivative of his own flesh. Eve is all and only an expression of Adam's dominion, which, for Adam, is expressed through masturbation. She is derived from his flesh, and "loving her" is all and only an act of loving himself.

For the Warrior's Quester there should be no War between the Sexes because Eve should submit—as it is Revealed! Women express their Fallenness by not submitting. Rather, they follow the temptation of the Serpent who "revealed" that they could be intimate. It is precisely this desire to be intimate which leads to the War between the Sexes. For the Abrahamic Warrior's Quester, the revealed sense of intimacy is his being masturbated by Eve's body. Her pleasure should be in pleasuring him, not herself. For her to seek intimacy is an act of rebellion against and a rejection of Adam's dominion.

While the role and meaning of the Serpent begs a fuller discussion (which is presented in Volume 2) when an insight into non-Warrior's Quest intimacy, namely, the sharing of a mutually sensual intimacy and the development of a partnership of equals, is opened to them via Eve's talking with the Serpent, Adam and Eve are cursed and exiled. They become, in Earthfolk's view, sojourning aliens here on Earth. Earthfolk derive great value from _Genesis_ ' serpentine insight into Abrahamic Warrior's Quest intimacy.

Abrahamics express their heartfelt actions through the Warrior's Quest to slay an Enemy. The Warrior's Quester's interior is a severely restricted personal space. The Warrior's Quester's identity is that of a dominator. The heartfelt actions of the Warrior's Quester all key upon expressing this dominion, whether it be over the Earth or other peoples. There is no personal space for the Warrior's Quester to be other than a slayer. Heartfelt actions of compassion, reconciliation, comforting, healing, cooperation or collaboration, that is, any actions which invite the Other into one's personal space are devalued and/or denigrated. The Warrior's Quester must continually be at war against some Other force, either a real or imagined Enemy.

The Warrior's Quest offers a _very crippled image_ and notion of the warrior. Earthfolk realize that there are many other and healthier images and notions of masculinity. There is even a place for warrior masculinity, but it is one image in a long line of images along the spectrum of masculine and feminine traits. Through _Genesis_ , the Abrahamic tradition only offers this crippled notion of warrior masculinity, which Earthfolk distinguish by calling it Warrior's Quest masculinity, and noting its inability to acknowledge its Shadow side and Shade elements.

In the Christian tradition this Warrior's Quest was re-written, as its main ideologist Saint Paul presented, through _Jesus as the New Adam_. Christian spirituality found expression as a crusading Warrior's Quest. Jesus, himself, is offered as not only the one who slays the Evil Other, namely Satan, but who, himself, is slain. In this light, Jesus is God the Father's Intimate Enemy. In Christian doctrinal tradition, the main interpretation about the meaning of salvation is called "The Satisfaction Theory." It states that Jesus' death on the cross "satisfied" the Father for Adam's transgression. For Christian Warrior's Questers, Jesus' death is the only one which satisfied the Father. Everyone else must live as if the Intimate Enemy of the Father. They are then saved, vicariously, through Jesus' suffering and dying.

As stated before, Adam brought Eve out from within his body. Jesus reverses the process and absorbs all goddess presence and power in his flesh. In the Christian tradition, Jesus' body is slit open while he is dying on the cross by a Centurion's spear. (John 19:34) From his body flow blood and water. This is Warrior's Quest blood-shed. Blood and water are symbols of a woman's menstrual issue as well as of the water she breaks as childbirth nears. On the cross Jesus goes one step beyond Adam and reveals that he is all that Eve and the Mother Goddess could ever be, that is, the source of Eternal Life and of New Birth. Jesus makes fully present, once and forever, the Obliteration of the Womb first revealed in _Genesis_.

_Jesus' death_ is claimed as the _New Birth,_ as the Resurrected Life. In this light, Jesus as the Crucified Christ is the ultimate expression of the Warrior's Quest in that within his own flesh he is also Intimate Enemy, and so constantly wars against his own humanity. Warring against one's own flesh has been a mark of Christian spirituality. Warring against one's own flesh is a heartfelt act (e.g., self-abuse, self-flagellation, self-denial, etc.) which is fully understood only when explained in terms of the Warrior's Quester's understanding himself as Intimate Enemy of himself, in imitation of Christ.

Self-fulfilling Apocalyptic Story of Self-Annihilation

For the Abrahamic, there is a curious satisfaction that an eventual apocalyptic End of Time will come. This is a Big Bang End of Time characterized by a global orgy of warring which is most vividly foretold in the Christian book of Revelation. In short, Christians (and all Abrahamics) will get their revenge on the hated Other, their Intimate Enemy, as the Earth is obliterated and they return, rapturously, to the Kingdom of God, forever. Their hatred is orgasmic and will be fulfilled through the vengeance their Lone Male god will wreck upon the unfaithful and non-believers. Their End of Time is a Warrior's Quester's triumph of total annihilation of the Other. It is an End of Time which began with Joshua's massacre at Ai and has begun to realize its fulfillment in this age of the Mushroom Cloud.

Earthfolk accept that there are some Abrahamics who claim that this does not have to be how the Religious Big Story is interpreted. They cite examples of saints and others who, they alleged, were not Warrior's Questers. These are individuals who seem to have found Love where the Warrior's Quester finds Hate. Who claim that there can be Peace on Earth, or, at least, a less violent world committed to social justice. They speak of universalism and compassion and of everyone being a Child of God. They cite, e.g., the "Sermon on the Mount" and the call to lay down one's life for the Other. We Earthfolk acknowledge these individuals and their heartfelt actions, and value them as "roots" and/or "leaks" which served (and serve) for many Earthfolk as bridges and inspirations during their time of breakdown or break-through.

" **Leaks"** describes the simple fact that dominion may be claimed but its Big Story has cracks, that is, "leaks," which are caused by the unintentional retention of images, truths and values which the Big Story cannot totally suppress. In this light, Eve is a leak. Her mere existence in _Genesis_ can be seen as re-asserting the truth that life cannot be Lone Male. That Lone Male same-sex masturbatory _Sensual Preciousness_ is untrue, not just weird. Leaks lead indirectly or by unintended consequence toward Earthfolk _Sensual Preciousness_.

"Roots" are, for example, saints who have demonstrated an instinctive response to anyone suffering and so lived a life which re-asserts that everyone is a Child of God and that no one is specially Chosen. Roots are cited n volume 2 and Internet sites are listed in Appendix C—Links at the end of Volume 1.

Indeed, many other individuals and heartfelt acts can be summoned as examples. Yet, despite these leaks and roots, the Abrahamic Religious Big Story expressing the Warrior's Quest dominates and rules the global imagination, and it is moving humanity inexorably towards the brink of apocalyptic self-annihilation. Adam's body as womb and the Crucified Body of Jesus as womb appear to Earthfolk as foundational heartfelt acts of the Warrior's Quester's sexual abuse of women, of the Obliteration of the Womb. They are symbols and acts of sexual violence which Earthfolk have experienced are made present through Abrahamic rituals of war and Lone Male intimacy.

From this perspective, you can understand why there are those among the Earthfolk who have spent decades digging up "roots" and spying "leaks," with the result that they have eventually abandoned the Abrahamic Religious Big Story once they realized that their staying, even as radical or liberal or progressive activists, was/is counter-productive. As long as we confess the Faith, as long as we bow our heads, even if begrudgingly, so are we sustaining the presence of the Crucified and the dominion of the Lone Male god, and so the Obliteration of the Womb and the rituals which are source for the sexual abuse of women and the feminine.

We Earthfolk conclude that the **Abrahamic Religious Big Story** is _not_ a spiritual pathway. This is so because it cannot be walked by couples, since it cannot be walked by females, goddesses and the feminine. Remember, for Earthfolk, precious intimacy is a relational and a communal experience of Belovedness. As a "spiritual pathway of the Warrior's Quest," Earthfolk conclude, the Abrahamic tradition is not a pathway to preciousness or Belovedness.

Since Abrahamic _Sensual Preciousness_ is expressed through rituals of dominion, especially slaying and sexual abuse, there is no place for the Other as Beloved. Rather than being a spiritual pathway, the Abrahamic Warrior's Quest is more a solitary stagger, like a drunk stumbling down the road, hallucinating in _delirium tremendum_ (DTs). As seen by sojourning alien eyes, the Abrahamic Religious Big Story is a self-absorbed, narcissistic, life-denying orgy of crazed Warrior's Questers whooping it up around a cross-burning campfire.

The Abrahamic Religious Big Story clearly expresses all four points of Earthfolk's evaluation, namely, that it 1) starts with the emotion of dreadful fear, 2) identifies and names the Other as Intimate Enemy, 3) seeks to annihilate the goddess and the feminine and 4) expresses its heartfelt actions through a Warrior's Quest which prophesizes a self-fulfilling apocalyptic story of self-annihilation.

## Chapter 37: The Secular Big Story

The Secular Big Story is a fairly new story when compared to the Religious Big Story. Its defining characteristic is that it develops its Big Answers primarily as a negative reaction to central claims of the Religious Big Story. In contrast to the Religious Big Story, the Secular has not evolved a tradition with well defined doctrines and required dogmas, nor a profusion of ceremonial rituals, nor authoritative institutions. While individuals will claim to be secular, and scholars will cite a "secularizing" influence or trend, there is no indisputable definition of "secular" or "secularizing."

A group, called Secular Humanists, propose a range of heartfelt actions (ethics, moral code, and vision) for a sought after "common good" of all humanity. However, claiming one's self to be a secular person, or declaring a nation to be a secular state, or describing something as a secularizing influence or event is an act of self-definition. That is, you become secular by stating that you are. There is no "secular faith" or "secular scripture" so there is no way for the individual or group to become secular other than by stating that one is secular. In contrast to Religious believers who can be accused of heresy or ex-communicated or de-frocked, no such "de-secularization" process exists since there is no ritual of secular initiation which is comparable to a Religious rite of initiation such as Christian Baptism.

The gist of the Secular Big Questions and Answers are as follows.

Q: _Where do humans come from?_

A: There is no indisputable Secular answer to this question. Most Secularists accept scientific findings and Scientism interpretations, so they would reply with a reference to the theory of Evolution. What Secularists hold is that there is no separate realm of sacred reality called spirit or the supernatural. There never was nor could be a place like the Garden of Eden. Anything which they might describe as "spiritual" or "psychic" refers to a material and physical characteristic of humans.

In the Secular Big Story there is no Garden of Eden, no precious place, there is only human space and time, and that is sufficient. There is no sense of being in exile. No longing for this Life on Earth to End so that Life in Eternity with God can Begin Anew.

Secularism often agrees with the Scientism Big Story, but where the Scientism Big Story is derived from insights into the broader implications of the scientific method, Secularism pivots upon an assertion as to what humans can do. In this light, a Secularist does not necessarily rely upon the scientific method for knowing. Rather he/she relies upon common sense. While "common sense" has no precise definition, as Earthfolk see Secularism, it is an affirmation that what is real and true can be known by every human, using their five senses.

The sum of knowing through the five senses is one definition of common sense. To make claims beyond any human senses is truly senseless. For how can a human know other than what all humans know? As with Scientism, Secularism accepts no "special knowledge," no Revelation. Secularists would struggle mightily with or outright reject Earthfolk's notion of sensual immersion as a pathway to _Sensual Preciousness_.

Q: _How did humans get here?_

A: Again, there is no indisputable Secular answer to this question. Most Secularists are tolerant of religious or other theoretical explanations of how the world began and how humans evolved, etc. Tolerant but unbelieving.

Secularists do not see a personal Creator. Some, whom Earthfolk call "Sacred Secularists" (see, Volume 2), may talk of a deity or a creating Force or Energy, but this is an élan vital, a life force and not a transpersonal, transhistorical living presence such as the Abrahamic god who claims, "I am the Lord thy God." Since there is no personal Creator, humans are responsible for building the Earth. The world is not Good or Evil, rather it is as humans create it.

Some "Sacred Secularists" hold that there is a Benevolent Deity, but it is not directly involved in the development of human affairs. Secularists interact with Religious Big Stories from postures of total denial of any Religious claims to cautious openings to mystical notions such as pantheism ("Everything is god.") to panentheism ("God is in everything.") The concern of Secularism is more with Right Now! than with focusing on the past or even the distant future (meaning, life after death and heaven).

Q: _Where are humans going?_

A: Secularists teeter on the edge of being nihilists (that is, believers in nothing and no-meaning) to being existential humanists (that is, being as "human" as one can be in the moment). Others broach a "Sacred Secularism" which fosters a Secular Humanism that is buoyed by hope and optimism. While avoiding utopian dreams, that is, of a Kingdom of God or even a Peaceable Kingdom here on Earth, Secularists hold that humans can create a Good Society, namely, one which can achieve Justice, Equality and Happiness. Others would answer that humans are "going" wherever Evolution takes them.

Q: _Why are humans here on Earth?_

A: Secularists would see a "god" hiding behind the word "why." Why implies that one needs to question the obvious fact that humans are on Earth because Earth is where humans are! Yet, the question is really about purpose. Is there any purpose to life? Is there any reason I should act my best as opposed to my worse? Do I have any obligations to others? For many Secularists, humans are simply Earthlings, and each of us should make the best of the moment. This often leads to a moral relativism where the Secularist has a hard time, on his/her own terms, condemning someone as Evil or praising them as Good. For, without an ultimate authority or absolutes, terms such as Good and Evil are relative to one's culture, historical period, market conditions, etc.

Other Secularists tout self-actualization or self-fulfillment as the only goal an individual can envision. It is difficult for a Secularist to propose a purpose for the group, such, as the formation of a United Nations or an Earth Charter, because group values exist only as the arithmetic sum of individual values. There is no authoritative group, such as a Catholic Church, or authoritative tradition, such as among Rabbinical scholars, or authoritative teachers, such as the Dalai Lama, for Secularists to follow.

Q: _When did humans first appear?_

A: Most Secularists, if answering this question at all, would reference the findings of evolutionary scientists or the views of Scientism.

Q: _How are humans to act?_

A: Secularists would hold that the one thing they do know is how humans should not act. That is, they should not act as if they have a special knowledge, a Revealed Truth, which is not knowable by every other human. Most would propose that heartfelt actions can be discerned by using Human Reason, which is the artful practice of rational analysis, working only with reasonable assumptions, and engaging in self-critical discourse. Secularists are guided by the insight that, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George Santayana) For them, a study of history is the best guide for learning about human mistakes and for developing a plan for individual and group action.

Q: _Why is there Evil in the world?_

A: Evil is many things to many people. Evil often arises because of a perceived injustice. However, if people reason together and learn how to negotiate, what appears to be Evil is often a matter of unreasonable expectations by an alleged aggrieved party ("the victim").

Evil also arises from stupidity. Even Nazism can be grasped as an irrational and stupid response to very specific inequities and perceived injustices.

For others, Evil is the absence of Good. Which means that if you do not act for the Good (as you perceive it) in a specific incident, then something Evil often takes its place. This Evil could have been prevented by your Right Actions.

There is no "Evil god" as there is no "Good god." It is best if humans stopped using the terms Good and Evil as if they were spiritual truths. All can be understood, negotiated, and justly resolved through human openness, the application of the skills and insights of Reason, and if everyone is motivated by goodwill and the search for a Common Good.

From its historic start, some Secularists have held the view that humans are moving in a positive direction. They state, in agreement with Scientism, that human effort is a progressive force. They assert that collective human effort will eventually create an improved society. For such a progressive Secularist, underneath John Lennon's "Imagine" can be sensed a trust and a steely hope that humans can and will progress and create at least a near-Utopia here on Earth, e.g., a Great Society. This will happen once humans release themselves from the illusion cast by the Religionists that there is a sacred space, that is, a heaven to which they can escape.

## Chapter 38: Secularism and Earthfolk

Earthfolk see Secularists as both reducing vision and expanding vision. As will be noted about Scientism, Secularism reduces human sensing, especially the sense of sight. There is no claim for the insights accrued through sensual immersion as Earthfolk aver. For the Secularist there is nothing gained by saying that there is a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts, other than making a claim that humans have yet to understand all the parts. Secularism denies holism when such is defined as creating a new presence or entity which is other than a product of its parts. In this light, a Secularist would say to a Religionist who claims an ecstatic moment of embrace by, say, Jesus, that all she was having was an ecstatic, peak human moment.

Again, in respect to imagery favored by Earthfolk, the Secularist would state that that two candles merging to form a common flame is simply just that, two candles merging, nothing more. Moreover, that when two humans couple, there is no third presence made manifest, rather, it is merely two humans coupling. Secularists would hold that metaphor, simile, allegory, etc., can inspire the human heart and mind, but not transform into something called presence or Belovedness, and certainly nothing of the ilk of spirit or soul.

Many Secular claims are similar to Scientism's claims, but the Secularist makes the assertion not simply as a scientific fact but as a secular value. Which means that the Secularist sees everything as within the human sphere. This is the Secularist mode of expanding sight. They want people to see all that is here "Now," to concentrate and focus on the matters at hand, the issues of the day. They want to enable people to see what is Now, not what is Past or Future which, as they judge it, is the Religious Big Story's emphasis.

The practical value, as the Secularist sees it, is that keeping one's eyes focused on what is right in front of us—Right Here and Now!—will lead to people doing right by one another as they see the Other as themselves, as part of the Human Family and not solely as an Intimate Enemy. For these Secular Humanists, it takes Religious "vision" to see the Other as Intimate Enemy. If people keep their eyes on earthly matters, than the Secularist sees hope for humans developing a collaborative and cooperative "space" which all nations and peoples can share.

Secularists, in this light, move away from the flowery and fluffy claims of Religionists who assert that while living on Earth they are "really" living presences in other dimensions. That is, that they are "in the world, but not of the world," and that "Jesus" lives within them, and like utterances. In agreement with Scientism, the Secularist might assert that there are other dimensions, but these are all and only aspects of the material and human world.

Most Secularists, following the general principles of the National Secular Society http://www.secularism.org.uk, would consider the Earthfolk interpretation to be just unredeemed supernaturalism induced by hyper-emotionalism. They would peer at the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth and simply conclude that humanity can make mistakes, but ones which can be undone if reasonable people sit down together. However, while they would accept the Earthfolk insight that people live in dreadful fear and terror, they would argue that people can as likely live in a world where humans collectively seek Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

While respecting the fundamental, noble aspirations of Secularists, especially the Secular Humanists, Earthfolk cite the Secular Big Story as expressing, in common with the Religious Big Story, the four points of Earthfolk's evaluation.

Sourced in the Emotion of Dreadful Fear

The Secular Big Story is sourced in the emotion of dreadful fear, for it is also a visionary source for the creation of the Atom Bomb and the icon of the Mushroom Cloud. The Atom Bomb found a vitalizing source in the apocalyptic vision of the Religious Big Story. For Earthfolk, the Atom Bomb is the Warrior's Quester's offering to his Lone Male god. He offers it, anticipating that his Lone Male god, through the Warrior's Quester's own heartfelt act of obedience and surrender to the Will of God, will use the Bomb to initiate the End Time. Since the Warrior's Quester was born in dreadful fear—of Original Sin and exile—he anxiously anticipates the End Time, even if it means self-annihilation.

In contrast, the Secularist does not will the Bomb, nor create it in respond to faithfulness to some god's Will. Rather, since the Secular Big Story lacks an absolute moral authority, there is no guideline for the Secularist to follow if and when he wants to oppose the creation of a weapon of mass destruction and self-annihilation. To whom would the Secularist appeal? There is no sacred space, no realm of revealed and precious morality. All he can do is act as an individual. All he has at hand are the arts of reasoning and persuasion. Indeed, he may heartfeltly refuse to participate in the creation or the dropping of the Bomb, but this is an idiosyncratic act, an existential act of moral choice. It is not a moral decision which he can demand that others follow because there is no Secular moral norm.

For the Secularist, when the State began to work on the Bomb, his social and cultural allegiance had to be to the State. No matter how wrong he might consider the State's action, the Secularist, as a social actor, is compelled by reasoning that "my country right or wrong, my country!"

In contrast to the Religious Big Story there is no personal Secular god to fear. Yet there is darkness at the heart of the Secularist vision in that the Secularist fears his/her own meaninglessness. While Secular Humanists strive to be optimistic, theirs is a sanguine view drawn against the more compelling general Secular beliefs of the survival of the fittest, the battle of tooth and claw, and the warrior vision of life as a battle against the odds. With a naturalist's eye, the Secularist positions humans within a world which does not have to be human. Rather it can be hell, a place of Jean Paul Sartre's "No Exit." In Secularism, Edvard Munch's "Scream" is an emotional and visionary icon.

While there is no god "out there," all that there is, is Earth afloat the eerie emptiness of outer space. Not only is there no sacred space, there is "nothing" out there. "Outer" space is vast, empty and cold. Using Hollywood as Secular high priest, most movies about aliens focus more on the "Star Wars" theme of Enemy Aliens than on a doll-like and benign ET or the cosmopolitan and often intellectually and morally superior aliens of Star Trek.

Secularists are not at-home, peacefully and comfortably on a Living Earth. Yet, like Earthfolk most urge support for efforts such as the United Nations, the World Court, and the Earth Charter movements. Such institutions are seen as courageous stands against the chaos that brews under everything human. Indeed, what gnaws at the heart of a Secularist is that the future lies in the hands of their fellow humans, and, as the creation of the Mushroom Cloud notably indicates, the human Other is not to be trusted farther than the eye can see.

## Chapter 39: Internet as Secular Space

Earthfolk view the Internet as the most secular Secular space. A key characteristic of virtual cyberspace is that an individual can assume any identity while online. There is, then, no interiority while online. The user's offline identity need never be known. Having endlessly creatable cyber-identities enables the user to approach a very novel state of being, that is, as a human-with-no-name. With no name and so no identity there is not the remotest possibility of creating a moment of intimacy. There is _no_ such thing as **"virtual intimacy."**

While the Net is touted as a global communications web, at its core it is non-relational. It is merely the nanosecond exchange of binary units, of 1 & 0s, of On and Off electrical charges. As we Earthfolk evaluate the Net, it allows for the possibility, and occasional moment, of human communication, but it exists in its essence as a no-place, as a non-relational hyper-dimension wherein no heartfelt action is necessary or required. This means that the Internet is, and will always be, a realm of amorality.

Earthfolk ponder what might be the long-term impact of Webbed Users (individuals and groups) existing without interiority, that is, without any real-time, sensible identity. The question arises, Isn't this lack of interiority the state of the Lone Male Adam in his Garden of Eden? And isn't it telling that pornographic websites are the sustaining economic threads of this Web? The Internet continues to be the battleground for Warrior's Quest sex where the price of admission, and the reward, is eroticism and sexual pleasuring without intimacy. Isn't Internet sex the ecstatic realization of Adam's same-sex _Sensual Preciousness_ where not only the Other is now without identity and intimate value but so is the user? Is the Internet the Secular Garden of Eden?

Identifies and Names the Other as Intimate Enemy

The Secular vision expresses its heartfelt actions through the Warrior's Quest and so identifies and names the Other as Intimate Enemy. This is just a fact of the history of Secularism. Neither Secular America nor any other highly identified materialistic Secular State has set itself apart from the Warrior's Quest. The former Communist Russia and Maoist China did not. Cuba and other Socialist nations do not. There is scant but cosmetic difference between the core dreadful fear of the Religious and Secular Big Stories. Each Big Story has been a mid-wife to the opening of the apocalyptic nuclear war which presently engulfs the Earth. What the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth icons convey is the common feeling of dread and fear of the Other that links the Secular to the other Big Stories.

Seeks to Annihilate the Goddess and the Feminine

As with the Religious so does the Secular Big Story seek to annihilate the goddess and the feminine. The Secular attitude towards _Sensual Preciousness_ and sacred sexuality is brazenly evident in popular Western culture. Where Secularism lacks a high priest who can articulate their concept of secular space, it does have a _Sensual Preciousness_ **high priest in Hugh Hefner**.

We Earthfolk see the secularization movement, when peered at, as primarily focused upon the control of sexuality, both individual sex and how sexual intimacy is experienced within the family. Communism had at its core so-called revolutionary notions about family and free sexuality. In this vein, the family unit still remains the control valve of post-Maoist China. In like manner did and does the Vatican continue to evangelize for its concepts of sexuality, intimacy and family. As Earthfolk peer, it is in their shared views on _Sensual Preciousness_ (that there is no such thing) and on Sacred Sexuality (that there is no such thing) where the Religious and the Secular Big Stories interconnect. For each, the female, the feminine, the Intimate Other is invisible. There are no goddesses except as they are subjects of penile domination. To read/see Playboy is to read/see Adam and Eve in the Garden.

" **Play** _boy_ **"** is an apt phrase for the Secular self-image as sexual actor. Playboy sensuality certainly does not lead to preciousness and/or make present the Other's preciousness. Playboy's sexuality is certainly not sacred, and does not make present a Beloved. Rather sex is "doing it," which is cast in terms of playing or of "just fooling around." Humans play with each other's body. In brief, men and women are sex toys each for the other. They engage in **"mutual masturbation,"** which is the ultimate pursuit of one's solely pleasured self.

In the Playboy erotic world, humans are simply genital playmates. Getting-off and coming are the ultimate and only objectives of sexual intercourse. Whether this is by one's self in masturbation or with others in group masturbation is not of issue. The stated personal goal is expressed in the phrase, "Was it good for you, too?" Meaning that "I have no idea what you were experiencing as I was pleasuring myself with your body." Pleasuring one's self is the objective, and if that happens to one's sex partner, all the better. But better not in the sense that one has transformed his/her lover into a Beloved, but that one has achieved mastery of the other's body and expertly masturbated them better than or at least equal to how they could do so alone.

Playboy's mutual masturbation sex toy activity is the very visual and explicit heartfelt action of the Warrior's Quester as sexual actor. If necessary, the Warrior's Quester engages in domination. Nothing should stand in his/her way. Sexual toys and other devices are accepted instruments, at times _de rigeur_. But Playboy also strives to present Warrior's Quest sex with a gentler hand of dominion. While she ("sex goddess"—not Mother or Sensually Precious goddess) is lauded for her beauty of flesh, for the Playboy male, women are as invisible as are the pictorial monthly Playmates' natural but imperfect airbrushed skin and reconstructed mammaries. While Playmates are just glossy paper-mates, what is termed "hard-copy," they have been re-born as "virtual" sex goddesses of the Internet. There, they are simply and always ready to stimulate, online or off-line, 24/7/365.

In like manner, **Secular women** often see themselves as **erotic stimulators**. They dress without modesty. They are naked without blushing. They open themselves to as many males at one time as opportunity permits. To be penetrated by cocks at every orifice is ultimate testimony to one's fulfillment as sex goddess. Earthfolk see these Secular women as _Shade women like Eve_.

There is a subtle but telling significance in the difference, as Earthfolk discern, between nudity and nakedness. Playboy's women are nude. **Nudity** is a posture of exposure. The Playmate shows "all," yet reveals nothing intimate. In _Genesis_ Adam and Eve are nude until they eat the Apple. Then they experience a moment of intimacy, that is, they become aware that each is naked before the other. **Nakedness** is a relational term. Adam and Eve were "embarrassed" and sewed aprons of fig leaves. Playmates are not naked. They prance around without blushing. They have no modesty and would find such a silliness. They are there to be used on the spot by anyone, male or female, for genital stimulation and pleasure. As Earthfolk see it, nudity is sex in the Secular public space or public eye. Nudes may be termed "sex goddesses" but they express no creative intimate presence or spiritual power.

Since America is the homeland of the Playboy movement of Warrior's Quest sexuality, it is telling that most mainline American religious denominations and sects have moved into the Playboy camp. They have done so under the rubric of "Free Sex." Protestant groups have almost wholeheartedly subordinated their sexual morality to Hefner's notion of sexual "spirituality." Even the more self-proclaimed progressive denominations have mingled Playboy with strands of feminism and come up with a devaluation of marriage, sexual morality, and any notion of _Sensual Preciousness_. Priests, rabbis and Protestant ministers have surrendered their moral authority over sexual issues to their high priest, Hugh Hefner.

In like manner, a certain camp within the feminist movement deems **pornography as a step in Feminist Liberation**. Earthfolk presume both groups consider Hugh Hefner as Secular icon.

As another icon of Secular sexuality, Las Vegas is the legacy of the **Puritan "city on a hill."** It is a city in the wilderness of the desert, a moral frontier where all vice is virtue. More telling is that Las Vegas, like the Internet, is a fundamentally virtual city. In it you find whatever you want, from the pyramids to castles to foreign cities and countries, all there but not there, at least not geographically or real-time. As with the Internet's ability to allow the user to live without interiority, to live with a virtual identity, in Las Vegas, so it is claimed, you can be whoever you want to be without any responsibility for your heartfelt actions ("What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.").

Roman Catholics and other more traditional religious groups maintain a vigilant watch over the decline of sexual morality, but, unfortunately, it is not a crusade driven by respect for the goddess or a veneration of female _Sensual Preciousness_ or a spirituality of intimacy. Rather, it is a desire to keep women invisible and subordinated in more traditional ways and customs. In short, the Playboy trumping of Protestant sexual morality plays the same hand for women as does the traditional Catholic cleric.

Earthfolk actually reason backward from this acceptance of the Secular Big Story's continuance of the values of _Genesis_ to their understanding of the Secular's primary emotion being dreadful fear. For what Earthfolk find in _Genesis_ is the dreadful fear reflected through the icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. Earthfolk reason that if the end result of the Religious and the Secular traditions are these icons of dreadful fear, then where are they sourced? The Big Answer is the same for both Stories. It is sourced in the fear of the goddess, of the feminine, of the Other as precious and Beloved.

We Earthfolk, once again, sit in silence with the Internet as Secular space, and ponder the fact that the vast majority of websites are linked to the sexual abuse of children and women. It is telling, to Earthfolk, that the Net is dominated by pornography. In one sense, Hugh Hefner's fondest wish was fulfilled in that the Web is the ultimate virtual sexuality space. When online all types of masturbatory sexual stimulation are available. These are offered to anyone of any age, with access being simply limited to the knowledge and ability to logon.

The **rosy upside of the Net** is that it can be used to communicate information other than sexual titillation. People can share information which can lead to intimate exchange and growth. But the consummation of such intimacy requires being off-line, back into the world of the five senses. Earthfolk rituals of _Sensual Preciousness_ cannot make present the Beloved while online.

With all this said, the Internet is a "leak" for the Earthfolk whose experience of the Web has been very positive. It has been, synchronistically, the main channel for the spread of Earthfolk ideas and the growth of its communion world-wide. The concept of "Sacred Sexuality" appeared on the Internet before it was listed in reference books and encyclopedias. But the clear fact is that, at its core, it is a Secular space wherein the presence of the goddess and her Beloved are not.

Self-fulfilling Apocalyptic Story of Self-Annihilation

A Secularist could argue that there is no need for an apocalyptic story because Nature, itself, will eventually move beyond the human species. The end of the species may come through an evolution to another humanoid life form or simply evolve into a genetic dead-end and become extinct. What Earthfolk hear, however, is an echo of the Secularist apocalyptic as they sit in silence with the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. While Secular Humanists would wrestle with setting boundaries for some universal and basic form of morality, say, the adoption of the Golden Rule, such is just considered a Secular option.

In the main, Secularism identifies the Religious Big Story with being a morality tale. Secularists object to being told what to do, and run the risk of creating a world which has no moral boundaries. In fact, that is what Earthfolk see as their triumph. The race to create the Atom Bomb occurred during what many would call an apocalyptic moment. While Nazi atrocities were not the main reason for entering World War Two, the battle was cast in apocalyptic terms of a world-wide-war and of a battle for civilization. The issues were framed in terms rooted in the Religious Big Story, that is, of Good versus Evil. Of Barbarism versus Civilization. Of "Saving the World from...."

The **Nazis** were considered an atheistic or neo-pagan movement which had no morality, at least, not Judaeo-Christian morality. Earthfolk see the Nazis as one supreme realization of the Warrior's Quest. Ironically, in countering them, the Allies, notably Americans, cast off their own sense of moral boundaries and participated in violating every traditional Religious and Humanistic principle in respect to war. Both sides waged a total war. Both sides demonized the other. Each felt that it was expressing the highest human values, with the Nazis self-identifying as the Master Race. In response, America moved with like fearlessness and abandon and without moral traction. America "beat" the Nazis to the creation of the Atom Bomb (using many captured Nazi scientists). We Earthfolk see the _Nazis and Americans as brothers in the race, like Cain and Abel_. They are only distinguished, one from the other, by the winner's laurel wreath. Horrifically, it is a wreath laced with ethereal radiation emanating from the iconic Mushroom Cloud.

World War Two was a victory for the Secular Big Story. It is that Story's apocalyptic chapter. It tells that humans can cast off all morality and come face to face with the presence which such an effort makes real, namely, a power and presence which humans cannot control. Earthfolk are amazed that the demonic character of this apocalyptic event and chapter has not been presented to nor understood by so many. It is as if the iconic Mushroom Cloud was just a sci-fi poster, not a living reality of everyone's every day. In contrast, Earthfolk accept that humans are living, right now, in a Secular, apocalyptic nuclear war moment. At any time, Poof!

Remember that Starship Earth was a snapshot taken by warriors who were developing Plan B—Escape from the Planet. The plan was to have spaceships at the ready with sufficient biological material to re-seed Earth forms, including humans, on other planets if a nuclear "World War Three" broke out. There was no intent on the astronauts' part to take a snapshot that would awaken the Earthfolk or make people feel comfortably at-home on a Living Earth.

While the Religionists have delivered sermons from the pulpit and the street corner announcing that "The End is near. Repent!" it is the Secularists who have actually ignited an apocalyptic moment, that is, Nuclear War.

The Secular Big Story clearly expresses all four points of Earthfolk's evaluation, namely, that it 1) starts with the emotion of dreadful fear, 2) identifies and names the Other as Intimate Enemy, 3) seeks to annihilate the goddess and the feminine and 4) expresses its heartfelt actions through a Warrior's Quest which prophesizes a self-fulfilling apocalyptic story of self-annihilation.

## Chapter 40: The Scientism Big Story

The key connector between Scientism and Secularism is that most Secularists accept the scientific method as the proper rational tool for knowing and seeing the world and reality. Some Scientisimists meld the Religious Big Story with their own, forming either a "Sixth Day" or a "Sacred Scientism Stewardship" story, but others reject Religion with the same disdain as do Secularists.

Instead of valuing common sense as the Secularists do, Scientismists apply the scientific method to obtain an understanding of what something is or what is happening. Since the scientific method properly works with exploring and ascertaining empirical data, there is no necessary theory or Story which emerges from its application. Scientism is the peering at and sitting in silence with empirical data and telling a Story which makes a whole narrative out of discrete parts.

In Volume 2, two groups are identified, namely, The Sixth Dayers and the Stewardship Scientismist who position scientific data within a Religious or quasi-Religious Story. The Non-Sacred Scientismist finds no usefulness in traditional Religious stories. Scientism in hand with the Secular Big Story are the driving forces of globalization and as such are of prime concern to Earthfolk.

The gist of Scientism's Big Questions and Big Answers are as follows.

Q: _Where do humans come from?_

A: Scientismists look at the fossil evidence gathered by evolutionary scientists and theorize that everything which is present right now is here because of past physical and biological activity. Physical and biological activity describe the vision termed materialism. For Scientism, as with Secuarlism, there is no realm of experience, knowledge or existence other than what is right in front of us, what humans term "nature." Evolution describes a random process of mutation and natural selection which accounts for the development of complex structures and species from simpler structures and species. In this view, everything which is human is explainable by understanding humanity's material base. The categories others use to describe humanity, such as body, mind and spirit are, in essence, ways of talking about how the basic material of the life force has evolved. Scientism rejects any special Revealed knowledge or supernatural realms.

Q: _How did humans get here?_

A: Scientists have discovered an Evolutionary Process that proceeds by randomness, mutation and natural selection. Neither scientists nor Scientismists can point to the "missing link" which shows exactly how organic life came from inorganic, or exactly how self-critical rational thought arose from instinctual behavior. While Scientismists value humanity for its distinctive and "evolved" characteristics, they take note that human life is just one option Evolution took. Although they cannot answer all questions about how life evolved, e.g., how the brain "thinks," Scientismists are confident that humanity as a species will someday become extinct.

Q: _Where are humans going?_

A: Wherever evolution takes the human species. By all observation, this appears to be towards extinction, which is the fate of most biological entities. Entropy will win the day.

Q: _Why are humans here on Earth?_

A: Evolutionary evidence does not speak to this question. Humans are here because they are here. For many this question is a search for an answer to, Are humans special? Some Scientismists, as would Secular Humanists, hold that humans can create a world of meaning, such as a Good Society or a State of Happiness. Some even believe that such is where Evolution (with a capital E) is going. But since evolution is a material process, one driven by randomness, and since everything is subject to the law of entropy, humanity as a species will eventually become extinct. In the meantime, so goes the hope, scientific research will enable humans to live a fuller "human" life.

Q: _When did humans first appear?_

A: Consult the latest findings of evolutionary scientists.

Q: _How are humans to act?_

A: Evolutionary scientists hold that every species adapts in a strategy of survival. However, "survival" is not a conscious plan, rather it is more a "decision" made through the process of natural selection, which, moreover, is a process not knowable or accessible to human thought or manipulation. Scientismists join with the Secular Humanist in hoping that the inventions created by humans will truly enhance human life and be instruments of the species long-term survival.

Q: _Why is there Evil in the world?_

A: Pure, empirical science can provide little evidence for why humans act for Good or for Evil. At times in the history of science, experiments have been conducted to determine if there is a genetic or any biological explanation, predictor or "hint" for assessing whether someone will become Good or Evil. Such efforts have proved little that is conclusive or even hypothetically useful.

Evil is a particularly human description of certain actions, based upon their outcomes more than on their intent. Evil appears to be the result of individual actions. Meaning, that Evolution explains group phenomenon, and in that light the group cannot be described in terms of Good and Evil. Evolution proceeds by its own processes which are beyond human control.

Still others suggest that technology is not only an extension of biological processes, e.g., a shovel is an extended hand, but that technology-as-biology is the next stage in progressive and integral evolution. Here, bio-technology is not an appendage nor a replacement but an eventually higher state of human existence. From this perspective, technology will also provide resolutions to various Evils. This is especially notable in the futuristic musings about nascent cyber-technologies. The Future is forecasted as an existence where the _causes_ of most Evils _will be resolved_ through benefits accrued from human biological integration with technology.

Sourced in the Emotion of Dreadful Fear

When first examined Scientism is not seen as sourced in any emotion. Since it roots its worldview in facts determined by the scientific method, it also assumes the emotion which is a basis for "being scientific." This is the emotion required to achieve objectivity. Objectivity is not simply an intellectual posture of skepticism, it is also a discipline of detachment. In this respect, the scientific method is sourced in an emotion which seeks to be non-relational. For the scientist, her act of observation is supposed to be "value free," which means not tainted by subjectivity of ideas or emotions.

For most, this scientific posture and emotion of detachment appears to be a practice of no great import for the Big Story. However, as with the Secular Big Story, what we Earthfolk peer at are the icons which the Scientism Big Story produced, namely, those of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. Our emphasis on the creation of the Atom Bomb as the blossom of the scientific revolution is not widely shared. Many scientists and Scientismists would point to other findings and discoveries, but, for Earthfolk, "The proof is in the pudding," in this respect. It is difficult for us to imagine what is more awesome than creating a weapon which can vaporize others and destroy all life.

The Mushroom Cloud reveals what happens when humans achieve total objectivity. That is, when they successfully so remove their personal feelings from their actions that they even objectify themselves in the process. How else to understand the true achievement of the Atomic Bomb but as humans arriving at a point where they have lost their sense of individual intimacy such that they commit an act of suicide?

For what else is the Atom Bomb but an act of individual and collective suicide? In this light, the seemingly personal act of an individual scientist working hard to remove subjectivity and so place him/herself in a value free, purely objective space is, with Earthfolk eyes, an act of fear. It is fear of what is human, and an act of withdrawing from what is human. It is fear of letting the Other into one's personal intellectual and emotion space, for to do so is to be tainted, and the data produced is considered corrupted and useless.

The scientific act of disciplining one's self to be objective is a way of restricting intimacy to the zero point. However, as Earthfolk see it, it is an act of misdirection, in that it is actually an act of intimacy. It is an act of intimacy which refuses intimacy to the Other. The scientist says, "I know" as if an isolated individual. This is a view Earthfolk know from their use of sensual immersion to not only be erroneous but dangerous. When any human so restricts their intimacy, it is impossible for them not to create a world without intimacy. Scientists and Scientismists have created a world without intimacy, to which the twin icons of the present nuclear apocalypse testify.

Scientism, then, is sourced in the emotion of dreadful fear as root to the blossom of the Mushroom Cloud. What the scientific method feeds upon is curiosity and skepticism. These are values more than just habits. Curiosity blends with skepticism in producing methodological doubt. This is the practice and value of always asking a further question, an endless Why?

Scientism is a temporary suspension of that Why? question as a temporary answer is formulated. Because of the scientific habits of curiosity and skepticism, the Scientismist always anticipates that any answer is temporary, though not always tentative. When answering the Big Question of When and How everything began, the Scientismist is firm about Evolution as a fact, but is open to modifications such as the theory of punctuated evolution. In this vein, views about whether the universe is expanding or contracting go somewhat cyclically in and out of fashion, and, an approach to dating the exact time various homo sapiens emerged or what happened to a specific hominoid species are always open to modification and revision.

The Shadow side of this curiosity and skepticism, Earthfolk hold, is, once again, dreadful fear. The reasoning is backwards, again. Earthfolk look at the icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth and ask, "What type of thinking and feeling produced these?" Science, itself, is a historically recent mode of knowing. For Earthfolk, what Science has produced is arguable in terms of value. Where Scientisimists of all stripes hold that scientific knowledge has led to beneficial advances, for the sojourning alien eyes of Earthfolk, the value and usefulness of the whole, historically brief, scientific tradition is cast in doubt. Science and the Scientism vision, like Secularism, has proved unable to articulate a moral vision other than a highly individualistic, existential or idiosyncratic one.

Where scientists would claim that the search for Truth should have no bounds, Earthfolk see the scientific effort and the Scientism Big Story crippled by what the creation of the Bomb revealed, namely, that there is no one within the scientific community who can answer, "When is enough, enough?" or "Even though we can, should we do it?" In sum, the scientific community's morality and the morality that emerges from Scientism is a variant of "Might Makes Right!" Both the scientific community and Scientism reveals itself as kin of the Warrior's Quester in that each is "afraid of its own Shadow."

Most scientists and Scientisimists see themselves as discoverers in the Warrior's Quest mold. They fearlessly seek to "Go where no human has gone before!" However, unlike the fictional Star Trek adventurers, no Prime Directive of non-interference has ever been articulated. The opposite, in fact, continues to occur at every level of scientific inquiry, that is, heedlessly probing and breaking through every boundary, with a nod to moral issues only after a crisis or a catastrophe erupts.

Earthfolk ponder why the scientific community and Scientismists did not call a halt to their efforts, that is, declare a moratorium on any and all scientific research, until they learned all they could from the self-revelations of the iconic Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. As stated before, Earthfolk hold that if you do not seek to understand your Shadow experience that then you will be controlled by your Shadow. Earthfolk ask, When will scientists and Scientismists stop creating weapons of mass destruction? Will the only answer be a cosmic, Oops!?

When Scientisimists compose their answers to the Big Questions, the assumption is that what is not knowable today will probably be knowable tomorrow. Proponents of this view point to the short History of Science and observe that inventions appear almost by benevolent design. From Galileo's telescope to the microscope to the computer to lasers and so forth, much like the Religionist's belief that "God will provide," so the Scientismist has a skeptically toned confidence that humans will inevitably invent devices which enable a form of Progress.

Earthfolk see a short term value to many scientific discoveries and applications. Yet, we find more compelling the argument that every new discovery creates a set of more intricate and intractable problems which humans cannot control, and which seem to perch humanity at Doomsday's door. Can you hear the knocking of super-resistant microbes? Or, the nuclear wolf huffing and puffing?

Identifies and Names the Other as Intimate Enemy

What we Earthfolk focus upon is the emotional stance which the scientific method requires. There is a reason why the image of the Scientist is someone in a white lab coat. This is a symbolic dress which infers that, once donned, the scientist is pure. Pure here means not tainted by subjectivity or emotions. Once so robed the scientist then has free range to prod, probe, dissect, dissolve and explore anything. Here Earthfolk see curiosity being stripped of its skepticism. There is a certain hubris which auras the white-coats. It is communal, not just individual. They are not skeptical about their right to invade any interior space, nor any intimate space. In this vein, they are Warrior's Questers who see an Intimate Enemy, here named ignorance or disease, upon whom they can use any instrument of destruction. This white-robe is a variant issue of the Warrior's Quester's military uniform.

We Earthfolk hold that the Atomic Bomb stands as the culmination of both the scientific tradition and the Scientism Big Story. Humans have now probed to find a force, an energy which they cannot control. Is it possible that nuclear energy is a presence? That what the scientists have wandered into unintentionally is the living presence of dreadful fear? What else does the Mushroom Cloud evoke in the viewer? That, instead of a Living Earth, we are all on a Dying Earth? Despite the science of it all, the human response to the Mushroom Cloud is quaking terror and dreadful fear.

Earthfolk anticipate that Scientisimists will not peer and see as we do. In fact, since scientists try to be pure and objective, they have created a situation where they cannot see how much they are a part of what they create. They cannot and do not sense themselves as creating "knowledge" from within their subjectivity. That, as has been said by some in the quirky world of Quantum physics, to observe an experiment is to change that experiment. Earthfolk hold that what the nuclear scientists discovered is the collective human Shadow. It is as if they have unveiled the Shade Mother who lingers in _Genesis_.

Scientific knowledge, as interpreted through the Scientism Big Story, comes full circle to make present the same dreadful fear which sources the Secular and Religious Big Stories.

Seeks to Annihilate the Goddess and the Feminine

Scientism is materialistic at its core. This is a value shared by many Secularists. When it comes to understanding humanity, Scientism works with a reductionistic pen. In the area of sexuality, almost all discussion focuses upon issues of interiority, that is, identity. The end result, which has been championed by some streams of feminism, is that sexuality is only identity. And it is a genital identity. If you've a penis, you're a male—a vulva, a female.

In Scientism, there is little else to sexuality but organs of copulation, as any notion of intimacy is discounted with a nod to the claim that intimacy is a cultural variant. It is held that while sexual identity is transcultural, what it means to be intimate varies wildly and widely. More, that while there is a biological basis for sexed identity, there is no scientific valuation possible concerning acts of intimacy. Earthfolk see this scientific approach to sexuality as blending with the Playboy mentality already discussed. For Earthfolk there is a spiritually intimate, erotic _Sensual Preciousness_ and sacred sexuality story at the center of Scientism just as there is in _Genesis_. It flows from defining sexual identity in terms of biology and holding that how one expresses intimacy is irrelevant. The only issue of note is safe sex and sexual health.

What Scientism advocates is a view that echoes that which Adam took of Eve. Eve's identity was solely as Adam's derivative. Only the Serpent's knowledge opened her and then Adam's eyes to their intimacy. While Scientism does not necessarily propose seeing the sexual Other as a sex toy, as does Secularism, it does see the sexual Other essentially in terms of public health issues. Within the Scientism vision the range of heartfelt sexual acts is limited to those impacting the health of men and women. There is no way, as Earthfolk see it, to move from Scientism to a celebration of men and women as gods and goddesses, as creators of the intimate space. No way to see preciousness and sight the Beloved.

Scientism simply doesn't have much to say about intimacy. In this way, it gives, possibly unintentionally, support to the Playboy view that would say that anything sexual is fair game as long as no one gets hurt, meaning, injured or diseased. If anything, Hugh Hefner delights in his Playmates being fresh and sparklingly hygienic, that is, the creamy clean "Girl Next Door."

Self-fulfilling Apocalyptic Story of Self-Annihilation

The fruit of Scientism is not the Big Bang which, supposedly, describes the act of creation. The fruit is the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth which are the Big Bangs of the End of Time that lead to self-annihilation. A famous poet noted that the sound of this End of Time is as likely to be a whimper as a bang.

It is not insignificant to Earthfolk that both icons derive from military expeditions. That both icons are expressions of a desire to rid the world of an Other whom one hates. The only shortfall of the Atomic Bomb is that the fallout could kill the attacker. With dark irony, scientists could only identify and study this fallout phenomenon by first dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. Likewise, the striking shortfall in the space program has been the seemingly clear but unintended insight that the human bio-sphere may a) never be fully understood, b) never fully replicated, and c) forever remain unexportable to other planets.

So, in the end, both iconic moments throw humans back onto the Earth. An Earth which they sought to dominate, either in response to divine mandate or to the inevitable solutions produced by a scientific human mind. Since the advent of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth, wars have proliferated as never before. The only mutation of note from these events is the emergence of the sub-species of humans known as terrorists. Like cancerous cells within the human body, these terrorists are spreading hatred and unleashing suicide bombs in imitation of "Little Boy," who vaporized Hiroshima.

In this terrorized world, governments, notably led by Secular America, are asking their citizens to peer at the Other, but to peer only with eyes of dreadful fear. Everyone in the world, today, is living out the vision created by nuclear scientists whose dedication to the Warrior's Quest was manifested through their communal heartfelt action of creating a Cloud which globally radiates the Scientism Big Story of self-annihilation. While an argument can be made that scientists have discovered many marvels and produced, at least as far as it is known to this moment, a short list of miraculous applications, especially in the field of medicine, the incontrovertible fact is that basic science research has always been driven by military needs and objectives.

The short History of Science, especially in the West, is a chapter in military history. Almost every great invention has been spurred on by some military need, that is, "in the national interest." Secular America is the most militarized economy of all time. And it is this militarization which is another driving force of globalization. Humans are armed to the teeth as never before.

While there are some scientists who claim a "new science" (which some call a noetic science) and apply the terminology and models of Quantum physics, fractal mathematics, and biological models that speak of the Living Earth as Gaia, these views are still of minor influence in the crusade of globalization. Within its community, however, many Earthfolk are profoundly moved by this noetic science and its implications for a new version of a Scientism Big Story.

The Scientism Big Story clearly expresses all four points of Earthfolk's evaluation, namely, that it 1) starts with the emotion of dreadful fear, 2) identifies and names the Other as Intimate Enemy, 3) seeks to annihilate the goddess and the feminine and 4) expresses its heartfelt actions through a Warrior's Quest which prophesizes a self-fulfilling apocalyptic story of self-annihilation.

In final evaluation, all three dominant Big Stories are linked by these four points of evaluation. While, as stated before, each Big Story denies parts of the other two, the three are branches on the same imaginative, spiritual and visionary tree.

## Chapter 41: Earthfolk's Big Story

We Earthfolk realize that most people look at the three dominant Big Stories as being quite different from one another. The history of the evolution of each Big Story is fraught with conflict between advocates of each Big Story. At times, violent suppression, even death, was wielded by one, most often the Religious, against the others. With sojourning alien eyes Earthfolk note the size of the shared roots which bind these three Big Stories. While their differences have been detailed and interpreted by scholars for centuries, Earthfolk find their shared roots being nourished by the four points of evaluation listed above, and, more significantly, by the communal emotion they evoke of dreadful fear as manifest through the icons which crown all three Big Stories, namely, the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth.

The gist of Earthfolk's Big Questions and Answers are as follows.

Q: _Where do humans come from?_

A: Earthfolk accept the physical findings of evolutionary science. However, we accept them as providing only a partial human answer. The questions that **empirical science** _cannot_ answer concern those realities which define the essence of what it means to be human.

**Humans are human** _only_ **when in relationship**. Biologically, humans are always in relationship. We are born within and through the web of life which reproduces the generations. However, Earthfolk see no evidence to state that Life has not always been biologically alive.

**Life has always been and always will be**. This means that there has always been and always will be an aspect of Life which manifests the essence of what defines being human. While the notions of inorganic states and organic life are useful for certain scientific explanations, through sensual immersion Earthfolk intuit that human life has always been manifested. That the Forever-Family has existed, forever. The scientific imagination cannot envision this forever-present manifestation of human life, so, consequently, they cannot detect it.

We Earthfolk sensually immerse ourselves and grasp that **each human is a manifestation of the Living Earth**. For Earthfolk the proper human self-image is that of a child in the womb. Meaning, that humans are always being born as new presences of the Living Earth. Physically, humans make present the sensually precious Forever-Family.

_Being human is making present one's preciousness through the nurturing embrace of a precious Other._ In other terms, being human is caused by the _Sensual Preciousness_ showered upon you by another which then evokes from within you what each of you manifest and share as preciousness. Being human is, then, being Beloved. In a limited, but illustrative application of the dual principles that nature abhors a vacuum and that something cannot be created from nothing, preciousness must exist from the Forever as did the material elements that evolved into the spectacular human body. If atomic and sub-atomic matter exists, as scientists and Scientismists claim, from "the beginning of time," why not that which makes humans human? Why not sub-atomic and nuclear corresponding and complementary presences of preciousness? As scientists and Scientismists look backwards and spy, at the Big Bang instant of creation, a whole cloud of atomic particles, Earthfolk look forward and spy the Forever-Family and the presence of preciousness as a simultaneously occurring aspect of existence.

Earthfolk are at-home, comfortably, within the Living Earth as immortal manifestations of Earth's consciousness, heart and conscience.

Q: _How did humans get here?_

A: Earthfolk, again, accept the physical findings of evolutionary science. And, again, it is a partial answer. Earthfolk peer and sit in silence with the global mass of humanity and see that "human" has always been an aspect of the Living Earth. Why would this not be true?

Most scientists would reject the notion of "creation from nothing" because that implies another realm of existence, possibly of a god or gods. Why then would they argue that what makes human's human, here Earthfolk's preciousness and the vital zest of intimacy, has been created from nothing? If humanness evolves and is not "created from nothing" than the task is to approach understanding reality with a way and a discipline that detects human preciousness. Here, Earthfolk forward the practice of sensual immersion and the rituals which makes present vital zest.

Nuclear scientists choose to focus on empirical data and so do not even imagine that there is human data. Such is neither part of their imagination or method. Scientismists have chosen to embrace the communal emotion of detachment and accept a very restricted notion of holism, that is, that there is a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts, but it is a whole which exists only as an aspect of its parts, that is, something new is not created independent of its parts. In contrast, for Earthfolk, humans, in every aspect, that of their body, mind and spirit, are wholes which cannot be explained by any complexification of their parts. Love, Honor, Beauty, Hate, Fear, etc., are defining aspects of what it means to be human, and they are emotional manifestations that are only made present through relationships.

Q: _Where are humans going?_

A: Wherever hope, the sensually precious vital zest of the nurturing embrace of the Beloveds, imagination, and the rituals of intimacy make us present.

Q: _Why are humans here on Earth?_

A: Earthfolk joke, "It's hard to imagine!" The Living Earth has entered upon a phase of conscious evolution wherein She seeks to express and make manifest Her preciousness. Humans are here to express this preciousness through a "Nurturing Embrace." This is the embrace of Beloveds wherein each becomes the other, where male becomes female and vice versa, as each transforms and makes themselves present in their fullest humanity.

Q: _When did humans first appear?_

A: Earthfolk jibe, "Why do humans disappear?" Which means that dying is more the question at point. It is an event which humans observe in the Now. When, in historical time, did the human body in its present biological form first appear is a question of meaning to evolutionary biologists. For Earthfolk, imagining what disappearing-at-death makes present to humans provides insight into why new humans appear during the birthing process. It is all a wonderment of the Forever-Family.

Q: _How are humans to act?_

A: Every human act and action counts. Which means that "reality," "the world," your identity, your intimacy, everything which is you and human, is created by you as you make yourself present to the Intimate Other. Presenting to Others as Intimate Enemy creates a world of Endless Warfare. Presenting to Others as precious creates a world of Beloveds, and makes manifest the Forever-Family.

Q: _Why is there Evil in the world?_

A: How humans imagine creates their reality. The Warrior's Quest imagination has been so dominant in the human psyche that it appears—to faith, to reason, and to scientific inquiry—that beholding the Other as Intimate Enemy is "reality." When justifying the claim that "Evil is real!" the Warrior's Quester cites his own history of violence as evidence. This is circular reasoning. It is an application of, "We make war that we may live in peace."

We Earthfolk repeatedly assert, "Not to recognize and own your Shadow is to become ruled by your Shadow." Humans are artistic beings. The primary human act is one of creativity. Each individual creates his/her world, and by doing so models behaviors and beliefs which others emulate and replicate. There will always be Shade Mothers and Fathers. Always evil deeds. But these are the result of human imagination which, in itself, defines for humans the range of their heartfelt acts, that is, what they consider Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, Moral and Immoral. Humans imagine and choose. If you imagine the Other as precious and Beloved, the issue of Good and Evil becomes a secondary concern.

If you imagine the Other as precious and Beloved, you will approach an evil deed as something gone amiss, artfully. You will seek to bring the Other out from their Shadow, by clarifying how they are imaginatively stuck. Often, be it noted strongly, this requires a great risk and sacrifice on your part. You might have to witness to the other's Shadow and suffer their Shadow, evil actions until they can peer and obtain a new vision. You might have to put your life in harm's way, and be drawn into their punishing Shade institutions before, together, you both emerge. The tools of human creative engagement and re-visioning are the imaginative skills of compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation and transformation.

The **Earthfolk Big Story** clearly expresses **counterpoints** to all four points of the evaluation made of the other three Big Stories, namely, that it 1) starts with the emotion of being at-home comfortably on the Living Earth 2) identifies and names the Other as precious, 3) seeks to make present the _Sensual Preciousness_ and sacred sexuality of the goddess and the feminine and 4) expresses its heartfelt actions through the practice of "living as if I am no one's enemy," and through making manifest the presence of the Forever-Family through the nurturing embrace of Beloveds.

## Chapter 42: Your Big Story and personal Story

_What then is your Big Story?_ Or, which parts of each have you selected out to compose your personal Story? How do you answer the Big Questions? More, what is the range of your heartfelt acts? Can you describe your fundamental, core convictions and commitments in non-Warrior's Quest language, images and rituals? What is the communal emotion which manifests through you? Is it dreadful fear? Being comfortably at-home on Earth? Spend some time clarifying these matters for yourself.

As to heartfelt acts, these are really the telling factors. How do you act when you meet an Other? Do you approach them as Intimate Enemy? Now, before you answer that, take a moment, peer and sit in silence with the icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. **Do** _you_ **manifest any aspects of post traumatic stress syndrome?** Here is a definition of PTSD.

"People who suffer from PTSD often _relive_ the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged, and these symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to significantly impair the person's daily life.

PTSD is marked by clear biological changes as well as psychological symptoms. PTSD is complicated by the fact that it frequently occurs in conjunction with related disorders such as depression, substance abuse, problems of memory and cognition, and other problems of physical and mental health. The disorder is also associated with impairment of the person's ability to function in social or family life, including occupational instability, marital problems and divorces, family discord, and _difficulties in_ _parenting_." (National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder http://www.ncptsd.va.gov )

Earthfolk doubt that you are assessing yourself as suffering from PTSD. You probably are not looking at yourself as depressed or abusing drugs or losing memory, rather, those are problems of Others. Of others who can't function in society like the homeless and those veterans who beg on the streets, or those who are obvious druggies or are simply getting old and forgetting things.

We Earthfolk would then simply ask you to reflect upon "how close" you are to some of these PTSD behaviors. Are you constantly stressed? Anxious? Have you integrated recreational drugs or booze into your "normal" life? Do you take time to be with your family? Or are you a workaholic and proud of it? When you watch the News are you upset about the violence, the endless wars all around the globe, or the insecurities of The Market or the future if you got seriously ill or were disabled? Or, do you just "tune them out"?

Do you see PTSD traits manifested by your government, your leaders or authorities you respect?

There is no way Earthfolk can bring a mirror to your face and soul; only you can.

Just consider, however, what it does mean to live under the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth when seen as a military image. Do you feel comfortably at-home on Earth? On a Living Earth? When you hear about the spread of toxic pollutions, the unsettling fact that something is happening to Earth's temperature, the growth of bio-chemical weapons, and like issues which imply that "something bad" might be afoot which is out of human control, what do you do? Write Congress? Or switch to a sports channel?

How have you handled racism, sexism and health and economic disparities? Do you dismiss them as issues just made up by special interests groups, those Others who are always trying to cheat and get ahead of you? When you watch riots and protests and hear someone speak passionately against a value you cherish, do you want to put them all in prison? Execute them. Are you surrounded by Intimate Enemies? If you claim to be non-violent, do you own your own violence? That is, your non-violent Shadow? We Earthfolk call you to consider that if you do not own your Shadow that then it controls your life. If you are an American, does your country have a Shadow?

When looking at the PTSD definition, from above, isn't American society "reliv(ing) the experience {of the vaporization of the Bomb} through nightmares and flashbacks {Endless Warring}, have difficulty sleeping {see TV and Web ads for sleeping drugs, drugs, drugs!}, and feel detached or estranged {hit that remote!}, and these symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to significantly impair the person's daily life. {Are we Americans "psychically numb"?}"

Furthermore, "The disorder is associated with impairment of the person's ability to function in society or family life {Rise of the Dysfunctional Family}, including occupational instability {How many careers changes have you experienced? Are you on "Monster.com"?}, marital problems and divorces {Thank god for Las Vegas!}, family discord {Why have "battered woman" and "spousal abuse" entered every day discourse?}, and difficulties in parenting {How many single-parent households, did you say?!}."

Finally, just consider how you relate to women, the feminine and the Goddess. Even if you are a woman, Are women invisible to you? Do you honor the female body? Do you seek to cultivate and broaden your feminine sensibilities? Do you see the Goddess in Others? So, when you close the door and enter your bedroom, what aspects of the feminine do you honor, invite to be present, seek to discover? Is your life just a low-grade porno movie? Are you linked to the world-wide-web of sexual abuse? What are the images of women that inspire you? Naked Playmates? Female soldiers? Pregnant mothers-to-be? When all is said and done, do you treat yourself and Others as sex-toys? Or, is preciousness and Belovedness the ambience of your intimate space and relationship?

## Chapter 43: Overview of section 3

This section presents you with what Earthfolk sense when they enact a ritual. To prepare for enacting a ritual, further explanation is made of key Earthfolk concepts, here, "preciousness, vital zest, Belovedness, and living as if I am no one's Enemy."

" _Sensual Preciousness_ : a Declaration" summarizes the Earthfolk vision and interpretations. Then you are introduced to several core _Sensual Preciousness_ practices. The difference and complementarity between Intending and Attending is explained. Lastly, certain _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals are described.

In this section, the Earthfolk vision of the Living Earth as having a **Mind-Surge** is presented. Earth's Mind-Surge is present in a manner similar to how the brain makes present the human mind. Earthfolk hold that everyone is precious and that everyone's actions and every action "counts." This means that the Mind-Surge is either swarming with images and the warring energy of the Warrior's Quest imagination or with images and the vital zest energy of the Earthfolk imagination. What you do, what you imagine, how you approach the Other, in sum, how you express your intimacy in ever widening ways towards Others and the Earth, itself, determines what swarms in the Mind-Surge.

Earthfolk conclude by offering you the icon of the Nurturing Embrace of Beloveds. Inspired by this icon, so we Earthfolk hold, what is being created by your Intending and Attending practices and rituals of intimacy is that vital zest which is nothing less than the pulsing rhythm of the Living Earth's precious heart.

## Chapter 44: _Sensual Preciousness_ ' spirituality of intimacy

Preciousness, Vital Zest, Belovedness, "living as if I am no one's Enemy"

Earthfolk's images, concepts and words have a nuance which might frustrate you. Have you ever stood before a painting where another person, with a lot more art education, keeps asking you, "Do you see that?" or "Can't you just feel the mood of wicked merriment?" Of course you can't see anything and you don't "get" whatever art education helps this other person to feel. Yet, if another person can see and "get it," you know that if you study and practice that you can get to a point where you breakthrough to their understanding and feeling, or else where you've acquired sufficient knowledge to know that they are a fraud!

The only way to fully see as we Earthfolk see and feel as we feel is through a ritual of precious intimacy. But that sounds circular. Like you're being asked to chase your own tail. And although that might seem the case, here are some definitions and descriptions of Earthfolk terms and images which might move you towards making a solid evaluation of _Sensual Preciousness_.

Preciousness

Preciousness is when you see and sense the special uniqueness of the Other. Most often you find yourself using the word "precious" to describe children. They have a certain innocence about them which enables you to see them discover the world and themselves. You watch a young child play with alphabet blocks. You've been saying, "This is A. A is for Apple" (since there is an apple image on the block, also). You've done this a thousand times, and then, at a special moment, the child shows the block to you and says, "A is for Apple." At such a moment you are delighted, tickled pink, and you want to rush off and tell someone else, "Hey, April just said, 'A is for Apple'!"—as if she deserves a Nobel Prize.

Such a moment is precious because you shared in a rare moment. It was a "you" experience, not just something the child did on her own.

In the same manner, you encounter a long-time co-worker acting as a coach for your son's basketball team. Your interaction with this person has always been formal, very "businesslike." It's not that you wouldn't have taken the time for some personal communication, but that's not how things happen at the office. You don't approach him right away. You don't want to be an interfering parent. So, for several games, you watch as this man works with the kids like a maestro at a concert. The boys hang onto his every word. He has a way of kneeling down to talk at eye-level with the kids that speaks volumes about how much he cares. He always calls over a kid who has just struck out and gives him a pep talk. When they lose, he's as positive and excited as when they win! That strikes you as admirable, even if a bit curious. When you do go over to speak with him, you know that you are meeting him, truly, for the first time. You glance into his eyes and you, yourself, feel like he's your coach.

Earthfolk feel, at times, that humans should throw away their names. This would require asking someone, Who are you? What makes you special so that I can remember you? Such questions would lead to opening the Other's preciousness to you. Consider how you and your Intimate Other share your preciousness, right now. Or, do you? Could you jot down what is precious about your lover? Would you feel comfortable calling and being called Beloved? How would you advise your Intimate Other to approach you so that you'd feel comfortable enough to share your preciousness?

_Sensual immersion is a key, here_. While you don't have to use every sense every time, the approach is to learn, over time, how you liked to be sensed and how your intended Beloved likes to be sensed. You've probably said at one time, "She heard every word I was saying," which meant that you were not just talking at her but that she was listening to you in a relational moment. You "connected." Each sense: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing is a way to open preciousness.

When your Intimate Other becomes present to you as precious, it is then that the spark of vital zest shocks you both electric such that you grasp and gasp that you, together, are One as Beloved. How does that happen?

Vital Zest

What happens between you and your precious Other when you have orgasm? You know the difference between "coming" when it is simply ejaculation into another's body or having someone simply pleasure you and that moment of satiation, where you are so full of the Other's presence, lust, fire, desire... that you just feel, well, "Other." You feel so out of your "normal" self that you have few words with which to describe what's happening. At such a moment Warrior's Quest culture can't get beyond offering you words and images of warfare. Despite that, you know when you've shared something special. You go off and buy flowers. Or, you make a special meal. Or, you say, "Honey, don't you think we should get away for a long weekend?" You speak of it as a Wow! precious moment.

The Warrior's Quest world doesn't get much beyond some "Yahoos!" and "Boy, that was great fucking!" It doesn't know what it is missing, there in the preciously intimate moment.

What we Earthfolk discover in the preciously intimate moment, which we evoke through a nurturing embrace, is the Other as food. There is no better category for vital zest than that of food. Preciousness is a nourishing moment. When you feel Beloved, when your preciousness has been celebrated, when you are awed by that most human of moments, that of precious intimacy, you feel larger, fuller, filled-up by the Other. You've probably heard yourself say, "I could eat you up, you are so delicious!" That's feeding on vital zest.

There is an energy like but more than electric that snaps, crackles and pops! between intimates. It is not just the athletic wildness of youthful lust and "blind love." Not just being sizzlin'! No, that's fine. That's always a good thing, at eighteen or eighty! Rather, for Earthfolk, we've sat in silence and peered at that which is greater than we intended which was made present through precious intimacy.

What is it that drives people to have kids and commit to developing a family? What is it that flows among a group so that they all feel committed to the same heartfelt acts? What is it which is evoked, empathetically and sympathetically, when you see pictures of people in other nations, half-way round the world who are either in the clutches of pain or joy? At these moments, "We are the world," are lyrics which seem so obvious.

_Vital zest is that which is made present when humans are preciously intimate._ It is the foundational human transforming presence. When you are with an Other and you make present your own vital zest then, if the other receives your invitation, you form a relationship that builds outward from that of two as intimate Beloveds to your own Forever-Family to everyone as Earthfolk.

Here now is an Earthfolk insight which you may have anticipated. For Earthfolk the Warrior's Quest imagination is so dominant that it is the source of the communal emotion which, at this time in history, binds together more people across more social, cultural and spiritual lines than any other force on Earth. Earthfolk clearly see that the Warrior's Quest imagination does not consists simply of the arithmetic sum of individual imagineers. No, there is a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts, and it is Earth's Mind-Surge. Just as we Earthfolk discovered that individual thoughts are formed by communal emotion, so do we grasp that the Earth is endowed with a Mind-Surge much as the brain is with a mind.

How can you account for the repeated discoveries which show that the same type of Warrior's Quest stories are told in widely disparate geographical and cultural locations? How do you account for the rapid domination of one Religious Big Story, say that of Christianity, over another, say that of the Aztecs? There is "something happening" around the Earth among humans which we Earthfolk find best understood as a Mind- Surge.

For Earthfolk, every Warrior's Quester act of slaying, every moment when someone is approached as Intimate Enemy, at every instance where another is degraded or sexually abused, at these moments the Mind-Surge swirls with images, feelings, thoughts and imagination. Rituals are the way a Big Story, such as the Secular, feeds the Mind-Surge. For example, the ritual which begins by beholding the Other as Intimate Enemy, as one to be conquered in a battle between the sexes, this ritual deposits Shade energy into the Mind-Surge.

To counter this and to nourish new growth in the Mind-Surge, Earthfolk feed it vital zest. This is the preciousness that "ascends" from the heat of precious intimacy and sends thoughts, images and feelings of the Beloved, of the Forever-Family, of the Living Earth to swirl around the Earth's Mind-Surge. We Earthfolk hope that the vital zest that is consciously offered up by Beloveds through the nurturing embrace will soon make the icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth fade from human Memory.

Belovedness

The simple image which approaches expressing what happens at a moment of Belovedness is that of two candles merging to form a third flame of communion and then which "disappears" as the two candles moved apart. At the moment of Belovedness, each feels Beloved, **simultaneously** as an individual feeling and a communal feeling. When apart, Belovedness resides within each as preciousness. Belovedness is evoked and made present when two couple in the nurturing embrace.

The nurturing embrace describes the act of sensual immersion with an Other wherein preciousness is not only honored but so is a moment of worship evoked. Worship is known when Belovedness is felt. It is the Other being in your own presence experiencing being comfortably at-home with you, and you with the Other. When the Other's and your preciousness is evoked, each has a sense of the presence of the Forever-Family in and through each another. You sense immortality, which comes and goes like fragrance rising from the worshipping candles.

Achieving Belovedness is not a "sure thing." It is not the result of mechanical acts or procedures. Often, two lovers remain so focused upon themselves as two that all they effect is an egoism of two. This type of "love" often grows cold as the lovers age. This happens because theirs is an act of only two individuals coupling. When two become Beloveds they experience their life as a communication with others outside and beyond their relationship. They are moved to expand their family from their local, blood-ties line to that of their area, ever outward, to all other families on the planet.

Belovedness is tapping into the preciousness of the Forever-Family such that the new oneness created by the Beloveds is sensually immersed in all Life as they experience themselves through this communion as one with the Living Earth. Belovedness is, from another perspective, that moment when the mystical aspect of humanity is grounded in the mundane. Meaning, it is your Beloved's body, in all its strengths and frailties, through which you sense: taste, smell, hear, see, touch Others and feel touched by them.

For Earthfolk, one indication of the post-traumatic stress disorder which afflicts the Warrior's Quester is his/her inability to discover Belovedness. Instead of sighting the Other and sensing preciousness, the Warrior's Quester sees an Intimate Enemy. Instead of being comfortably at-home with an Other, the Warrior's Quester attacks—rapes and pillages. Instead of touching the mystical aspect of Life through a nurturing embrace of the body of an Other, the Warrior's Quester denies that intimacy offers more than just pleasure, and often values it only as a breeding moment.

## Chapter 45: "Living as if I am no one's Enemy"

You will not be present to preciousness or discover your vital zest or be born to Belovedness if, at first and always, you do not practice "living as if I am no one's Enemy." It is presented last in this section because you have no motivation to practice it if you did not desire to breakthrough to moments of preciousness, the surge of vital zest, and the allure of Belovedness. If you do seek to breakthrough, then this is the practice which effects breakdown.

Since all of us live under the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth, you need to be honest about how ingrained and "sub-conscious" is your Warrior's Quest practice of "living as if I am your Enemy." Your body, mind and spirit is so attuned to waging Endless War on the intimate, personal, social, cultural and spiritual levels that to start breaking-down one aspect of this mind-set is to send an tremor through all aspects. "Living as if I am your Enemy" is nurtured by dreadful fear, that is, by the Shade energy of the abusive Shade Parents. This dreadful fear, as we Earthfolk peer, always comes back to being a fear of one's own self. As a Warrior's Quest child, you learn to fear Others but this fear is rooted in the dreadful fear you have of yourself.

In _Genesis_ , the dreadful fear is sourced in a breakdown of relationship with the Lone Male father god (the Shade Mother is not visible, upon first glance). This breakdown occurs when Adam and Eve discover their intimacy (thanks to the insight of the Serpent). The Lone Male god reacts by "scaring them to death." He says that what they have done is such a great offense that He must exile them, and that He is righteous when He curses them, especially, the act of birthing and of bring food forth from the nurturing Earth.

What do Adam and Eve learn? Among many things, they grasp that the Other—here, male for the female, female for the male—is the source for evoking god's dreadful fear. How? When they couple, that's when the Lone Male god goes berserk! It is clear that if they are to make their way back to the Garden, that the very first thing they must ensure is that they do not live intimately, instead, that they live as "if I am your Enemy." And so, this is the primary heartfelt act of the Warrior's Quest—to live as if you are everyone's Enemy.

Humans and the Earth are now almost five millennia into this Big Story. The Mind-Surge is froth with a gazillion acts of dreadful fear. Can you now see what the we Earthfolk see when we peer at the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth? Do these icons validate for you our Earthfolk insights? Do you accept that what is floating in the Warrior's Quest Mind-Surge are these apocalyptic images of the End-Time? And that the Bomb is still primed, able at any moment to explode and initiate the final act of dreadful fear of the Other, namely, global and species self-annihilation?

How to counter this Warrior's Quest Mind-Surge? Clearly, if we Earthfolk told you or felt ourselves that you had to "change the world, right away!" then you'd feel paralyzed. You'd say, "I can't do that. I'm just me. Even if I embrace my Beloved, our vital zest is so puny." True, this very sense of "I" as not being able to do anything which can stop the madness of nuclear war or global pollution or genocide, etc., is a result of the very practice of seeing Others as your Enemy.

The Warrior's Quest sense of individuality is, upon close review, truly weak. The Warrior's Quester does not seek a robust, creative individuality, rather, he/she seeks to become a cog in the war machine, to surrender and lose personal identity as part of say, "The Corps." Warrior's Questers are ferocious as an army but weak as individuals. They are, as noted before, afraid of their own Shadow. Moreover, the Warrior's Quest heartfelt act voids personal moral responsibility. That is, the fighting soldier is not morally responsible for his murders. As part of, say, "The Corps," he can commit any atrocity imaginable and avoid being held personally responsible. The few cases in military history where individuals have been tried for war crimes only underscores the exceptionality and irregularity of individuals accepting such responsibilities for their Warrior's Quest heartfelt acts.

You fill the Earthfolk Mind-Surge through your personal, intimate actions. Indeed, we Earthfolk claim and proclaim that there is no other way. That the insight you gain from _Genesis_ is that the personal, intimate relationship is that which can enrage the Warrior's Quest god. It is precisely when you behold the Other as precious, when you couple in the nurturing embrace and evoke Belovedness that you issue forth into the Mind-Surge those images, words, energies, affections, visions, imagining, etc., which counter the Warrior's Quest. It is this simple: to stem the flow of dreadful fear, embrace your Beloved!

We Earthfolk understand that we were awakened. And, that what was awakened was our sense of preciousness, which was always "there" within our relationships but, as children of the Warrior's Quest Shade Parents, we could not imagine being so nurtured and worshipped. Clearly, millennia ago, when the Religious Big Story of the Warrior's Quest was being first imagined and proclaimed, there were those who lived in such a way as to prevent, back then, its final triumph through an act of apocalyptic self-annihilation. That is, that right at the moment of the emergence of the Warrior's Quest imagination, there were those whose beheld the Other as precious and so were countering the Warrior's Quest imagining. These were devotees of The Mother, of the Goddess. Overtime, they were vanquished and went, so to speak, underground. Their imagination slumbered until the image of Starship Earth startled us.

Now, however, you live at a time when matters could not be any drearier. You have the Mushroom Cloud and you have Starship Earth—what more do you need to motivate you to breakdown your Warrior's Quest self and move towards discovering your Earthfolk imagination? If the Mushroom Cloud doesn't "scare you to death" and make you "jump out of your skin," than what will?

We Earthfolk know that to move away from the Warrior's Quest vision puts you at high risk. To practice "living as if I am no one's Enemy" immediately throws you into the Warrior's Quest Shadow. You might even end up in a Shadow institution. Only you can weigh the risks of continuing to live as a Warrior's Quester and be part of the imagination which will inevitably make present the nuclear holocaust, or you can choose to practice "living as if I am no one's Enemy."

There is no pat script to read or rote act to emulate. Rather, and this is the challenging part, how you practice living as if you are no one's Enemy is something you must imagine, and it is a practice you must define and develop. For some Earthfolk, this is, mainly, a psychological task where they work to control their thoughts. They practice hourly moments of self-examination where they confront how they've been thinking, the words they've been using, how they've been interacting with others, how they really feel—they check off their Shade behaviors as best they can.

For others it is a spiritual task akin to reciting a mantra. They image the Other as welcoming and inviting them, and themselves as friendly, open, etc., as they recite "I am not your Enemy" time and again. Again, others prefer to simply surround themselves with images, pictures, posters, slogans, elements they have blessed (like stones, cups of water, flowers) and situate themselves within an inviting and blessing environment. They feel that they are permeated by the positive energy this environment creates and that it makes them present to the other presences who made these true slogans or beautiful images or fragrant flowers, etc.

Now that you know what we Earthfolk are trying to make present, and why we engage in rituals and imagining, what follows is a "Declaration of _Sensual Preciousness_ " claims and insights. This is followed by an introduction to other _Sensual Preciousness_ practices and rituals.

## Chapter 46: _Sensual Preciousness_ : a Declaration

Precious Otherness and Belovedness

_Sensual Preciousness_ is a spirituality of intimate precious Otherness. It is a spirituality that beholds the Other as Beloved. Its ritual act is the nurturing embrace of the Beloveds which makes present that which is the source for personal, communal and Earthly transformation, namely, the vital zest of preciousness. Its practice is that of "living as if I am no one's Enemy." It is fully manifested through the presence of the Forever-Family.

Core to _Sensual Preciousness_ is the concept and ritual practice of "sensual immersion." Sensual immersion is the necessary first step towards making present the preciousness of one's self and the Other as Beloveds. _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals are fully drenched in the sensual. While sensual immersion involves one or all five senses, in _Sensual Preciousness_ "sensual" is defined and experienced as a term of relationship, as sourced in the embrace of the precious Other. Sensual denotes a communal sensation. You and the Other are sensually immersed as you nurture each other's preciousness. This describes the nurturing embrace of the Beloveds.

While one can sense without being sensed, being sensually immersed describes a coupled act of mutual sensing wherein a new personal presence is made manifest as two Others effect and share a fuller Oneness.

_Sensual Preciousness_ pivots on the insight that the nurturing embrace of the Beloveds, through ritual sensual immersion, is the creative starting point and moment. It is that sensually intimate embrace which links two bodies and positions them as twin foci on the spiritual ellipse. Once coupled in nurturing embrace the mystery of transformation and transubstantiation occurs. Namely, that while remaining two, a new oneness, a new presence emerges, that of Belovedness. It is an emergence which is birthing: the new borning of two, already alive in time and space, as One. And as they uncouple, as never the same again. Moreover, it is an emergence which releases the transforming vital zest.

Every human can venture forth onto the _Sensual Preciousness_ journey. Every person can embrace in _Sensual Preciousness_. Everyone can be transformed and transubstantiated. From within the nurturing embrace of every couple, vital zest is manifested as the Other, as a new presence of Belovedness, flowers.

Dying to the Imagination of the Warrior's Quest

But, first, both must die. Passing through and creating with this dying is what the practice of _Sensual Preciousness_ is about. It is a dying to the imagination which sees the Other as Intimate Enemy. It is the dying to the vision which finds full expression as the Warrior's Quest. It is a dying to the spirituality of individuality which practices "living as if you are my Intimate Enemy," and which seeks dominion over everyone and everything. It is being reborn as a new presence which is truly new flesh, truly new soul—that of the precious Other as Beloved. This is what _Sensual Preciousness_ is all about. The wonder of the present historic moment is this blossoming of _Sensual Preciousness_.

Why is _Sensual Preciousness_ only now becoming known? Are there those for whom _Sensual Preciousness_ is discomforting? Who see its vision as a threat? Yes, the dominant spiritualities forwarded by the three globally dominant Big Stories, that is, the Religious, Secular and Scientism, find _Sensual Preciousness_ discomforting and subversive to their own spiritual vision, which is the Warrior's Quest for dominion over the Earth and all peoples.

Warrior's Quest spirituality is the expression of the Abrahamic tradition which bases creation in the act of a Lone Male god. The Warrior's Quest denies the spiritual value of sensual immersion with its ritual enjoyment of the body and celebration of sensual ecstasy. The Warrior's Quester treats the Other as a sex-toy and performs the practice of sexual coupling as a ritual of mutual masturbation. For the Warrior's Quester, bodies are procreational vessels at best, and, essentially, prisons for exiled souls "doing time" on Earth. Such is the spiritual vision and practices of the Warrior's Quester who is the imaginative and spiritual incarnation of patriarchal culture. More, of a particular and quite peculiar patriarchal culture which has Obliterated the Womb, that is, suppressed and exiled Mother God, all goddesses, the female and the feminine. The Biblical Judaeo/ Christian/ Islamic/ Mormon mythos is the vehicle for this Lone Male Warrior's Quest vision of sexuality and spirituality.

Mother Goddess

Biblically, as revealed in _Genesis_ , there is no Goddess. No Mother. There is no coupling. There is only a singular center which is that of the Lone Male isolated and confined in a self-worship of idolatrous egotism. Only the Lone Male Warrior exists. Only his flesh is created and pro-creational. For what is Her/her is solely from within Him/him. She exists as his created. The female is not born from the male, rather, she is a male derivative. She is not a precious Other, not Beloved. She is sensed but not a sensual Other. Between them there can be no relationship of sensual immersion. From within their embrace there rises no vital zest to transform themselves and the Earth. Their embrace is not nurturing. Rather, their embrace is that of Intimate Enemies engaged in a War between the Sexes. Other current patriarchal spiritualities and Big Stories may not be so uncluttered in their imagery, but all share the same spiritual revelation, which is that the primal creative act is not an act of birthing and mothering but an act which makes manifest Warrior's Quest dominion.

The Warrior's Quester professes as spiritual truth that the Mother Goddess is not only absent at the creation of humanity but that She is not needed. The Warrior's Quester proclaims that Her Womb is Obliterated. That Her body is not embraceable. That She is not necessary for spiritual birthing. The Warrior's Quester decrees that the male body is the birthing body and the source for all spiritual power, which power is his exercise of dominion. For him, the Mother Goddess has no sacred space or time or memory. She is not only not sensual, she is not even sensed.

Only the Warrior's Quester is Chosen, and the Warrior's Quest is to capture and slay those not-Chosen, that is, the Intimate Enemies. Historically, this Intimate Enemy is the object of a Holy War. One in which all aspects of the Intimate Enemy's reality is destroyed. This, commonly, entailed the slaughter of the Innocents: suckling babes, women, the sick and the elderly, but a more telling practice was the capture of women as true "booty."

Captured women lived only insofar as they bred sons. They were property, true slaves. Genital prisoners. They were not captured as treasure, that is, as bearers of the alien culture's values. Rather, they were captured solely to reproduce, to be a seed-bed. They were to jerk off the Warrior's Quester with their bodies.

Your Body is a Ritual Instrument of Intimacy

In _Sensual Preciousness_ , the male is the ritual instrument for intimacy of the female as is the female for the male. It is the male's to be gifted with her precious vulva as his, and the female's to be gifted with his precious penis as hers. It is a gifting which effects intimacy, which is the real presence of each other as one intimate Beloved body and person. Male and female bodies coupling in a nurturing embrace manifest and release vital zest which transforms them into Beloveds.

In stultifying contrast, the Warrior's Quester understands this coupling ritual as mutual masturbation wherein his seed is deposited and her pleasure is solely in being useful for his procreational goals. The Warrior's Quester "Gives it to her!" but in the style of a punch, a poke, a bang and a slam, bam, wham! The Warrior's Quester female is feared only insofar as she does birth males—sons whose phallic rods will replace the fathering warrior. The Warrior's Quester does not fear the female for her peculiar and special potency, any manifestation of which is instantly slapped out of her head.

_Sensual Preciousness_ holds that one can only read the eternal story of the Forever-Family on the flesh of the precious Other. This reading comes into focus as two couple in a nurturing embrace. A nurturing embrace is the holding which issues forth into being held. It is a sensually immersing act, and a moment of passing through. The flesh of the precious Other manifests itself as the ribbon of time. On the Beloved's flesh can be read the story of human evolution, growth, struggle, hope and faith. The Beloved is God or Goddess. The Beloved is the one for whom all time has yearned and groaned to create. As one becomes Beloved, so does one pass through dying and become newborn into a flesh, a consciousness, an intimate spirituality which is never-ending, that of the Forever-Family.

_Sensual Preciousness_ holds that sensual coupling, immersed and anchored in the practice of _Sensual Preciousness_ 's nurturing embrace, is the necessary profane act which initiates spiritual response and presence. The flesh is the profane cathedral. It is external, the world, the Earth. To enter the sacred, taboo places, the lingam and yoni must embrace.

Intimacy's Vital Zest Transforms

_Sensual Preciousness_ ' vital zest emerges and blossoms as two move their bodies as the ritual of living and dying. Through this ritual act each beholds and honors the multiple faces and the innumerable presences of the precious Other. Vital zest binds and transforms them when each allows their Belovedness to nurture the Other and themselves as One. It is manifest through the penetration of the lingam and the enfolding of the yoni. It opens a moment of imagining wherein the distinct genital sexual awareness of each blurs and melts into precious Otherness. As such _Sensual Preciousness_ can arise at a moment of fierce, most athletic clash and grunt where numbness of flesh keys the slip into birthing or at a moment of truly simple touch, soft gentle whisper, mere fingertips touching, these conveying all the most electric and ecstatic hunger and satisfaction of the dissipation of the Now into the Eternal.

Embracing the Beloved

_Sensual Preciousness_ flourishes within senescence. This is not a chronological moment as it is a moment of flowering, which encompasses blooming, the dispersal of seed and the faithful continuance of Life itself. The Beloved is embraced within this senescent moment. Bodies which are ore beds embrace, extract from each other's heart and soul, smile and grimace, fear and hope all that is sterling.

_Sensual Preciousness_ worships the profane, so mapping the play of the Beloved's intimately precious presence. All that the Beloved is, is profanity. The Beloved's life story, dreams, illnesses, successes and failures, down and through the blemishes and glories of the instant quality of flesh, all is accepted, read, drunk with the eyes external and internal. In this light, _Sensual Preciousness_ is the grasp of the full weight of the Beloved's temporality. It does not withdraw from blemish or beauty. All that is blemish is celebrated as peerless. All that is beauty is celebrated as largess. Consciously, the Beloveds are canvass and palette each for the other.

_Sensual Preciousness_ is shared when the Beloveds move beyond sexual coupling as Warrior's Questers do through mutual masturbation, as they find it wanting. It events at the moment the Beloveds realize that all about them has driven them to live in the Warrior's Quester's masturbatory erotic fantasy. They recognize that fulfillment has been preached as "coming," and that this "coming" is not a coming forth but merely an ejaculation, a prayer to solely one's pleasured self. Now, as Beloved, as precious Other, personal identity is not wrapped up with genitality. Personal worth—preciousness—is not shaken when genital vigor shifts.

_Sensual Preciousness_ arises from a crisis and is drenched in shock. Shock at that jolting moment when one realizes, "It is over." It being the Warrior's Quest as a foraging stud or as a disposable sex-toy. It meaning acknowledging that the round of breeding lust is spent. Now, no longer does Life with a capital L need one for its survival. One no longer has the young look, and one is not looked upon with lust by the young.

For Warrior's Quest males there looms the resurrection, that capturing of new booty—a "trophy wife." As hyper-sexual image, she enables him to have meaning. Although all know that it is not true Warrior's Quest meaning in that this trophy is not for breeding. Yet, with such erotic symbolism the aged Warrior's Quester enters senility flashing the mask of youth, however beguiling a mask that be.

The Warrior's Quester's aging females fare less well. No longer breeding stock, they are empty chests with no milk of life, and, to boot, they are barren. What else but to trash them? Waste them?

_Sensual Preciousness_ is the peering at this moment of crisis. And it is a seeing into the fullness of birthing. Not just birthing as something a female body does but birthing as something males also do. _Sensual Preciousness_ is the male flowering and the female empowering. It is the awesome manifestation of the Beloveds vital zest, a transforming power now expressing itself as Forever-Family. For what are the Beloveds to prepare for but their own passage as forever precious? Their own birthing into the fuller embrace of Forever-Family? Their mutual flowering into endless loving?

_Sensual Preciousness_ is the adoration of the Goddess in the person of the Beloved. It is the worship of the female power of birthing not just in its physical mode as child but in its preciously intimate mode as spiritual healing. Warrior's Questers have been blinded to female spiritual intimacy. They are impoverished receivers, accepting only that which is genital. They have been blinded to the Goddess in the female and so have not the slightest sight of their own femaleness. Through _Sensual Preciousness_ the fuller presence of the Goddess both in their Beloved and within themselves and so through their nurturing embrace becomes manifest.

Memory Weaving personal Story

_Sensual Preciousness_ is the sharing of memory. The Beloveds begin to weave their personal Story. They are aware of it consciously and seek to nurture it in submerging-conscious ways through ritual. _Sensual Preciousness_ is ritualized living. The Beloveds understand each other as co-creators of a common body and soul. They honor their bodies as ritual instruments of intimacy—evoking the vital zest of preciousness.

They work each day upon the other. They touch, massage, embrace, penetrate and mold the body of their Beloved. They enter their private spaces as boats upon their shared desire. It is this privateness which flowers. It flowers through worship. A worship that spreads the Beloved as canopy across the sky and celebrates him/her as all that is and will ever be. All this to expand and deepen the Beloved's self-centeredness. To center the Beloved and so provide a boundary to his/her individuality. This self-centering enriches individuality and makes sharp the line of their private self, space and time.

_Memory_. Memory can only be when an Other hears and accepts the Beloved's personal Story. Warrior's Questers live together but their personal Story is only of war and therefore not true story. For the War Story (the Iliad or The Fall or The Revolution) denies memory. It is a Big Story based only upon the Victor's words. In it the story of the Intimate Enemy is lost; vanquished. For it is a story of Endless War; a story of Obliteration.

Memory for the Beloved is the rejoicing in the distinctiveness of the precious Other as Beloved. It is a rejoicing exuberant as well as resigned. It taps into sorrow and fear as it does into laughter and hope. For memory is the energy innervating the dynamic link between the two intimate foci of the nurturing embrace. It is memory which seeks to heal the Warrior's Quest story of self-annihilation and the Obliteration of the Womb. For the Beloved's memory remembers those slain, the dead, the captured, the least, yes, the outsider, the prisoner, the alien—those cast and exiled into the Shade. And through remembering, so do the Beloveds bring them to life again and for all time as present in the Forever-Family.

The Fear of Dying

_Sensual Preciousness_ happens when one embraces the fear of death, so dies and becomes. The Beloved is this fear of death. Here, the Warrior's Quest provides insight, though not direction. For the Beloved will always be Other, private and distinct. The Beloved will age and change and pass away, so leaving the other Beloved to embrace them beyond the embracing moment. How terrible and terrifying! But it is so in the most majestic and awe-inspiring, gasping way. In like manner, the Beloved will bid farewell to the precious Other as he/she passes away. Such terror! Such beauty! Only _Sensual Preciousness_ prepares the Beloveds for their coupling beyond the nurturing embrace as they are made manifest as Forever-Family.

_Sensual Preciousness_ knows the hag, the crone, the shriveled breasted witch and gives them their due. For there is no denial of the negative, the demented, the sick part of the Beloved. It also knows the old man, the wizened coot, and the incontinent husk of former virility. It knows these in that they are moments in the senescence, recognized as forms which Life's vital zest assumes as it prepares to transform.

_Sensual Preciousness_ **celebrates and ritualizes the male and the female in all their manifestations of God and Goddess**. _Sensual Preciousness_ is playful in this regard—using masks and disguises and pranks to explore the numerous expressions of maleness and femaleness.

_Sensual Preciousness_ is the fearing of the female. For her sacral vulva kiss truly sucks the juice from the male and spits out his seed as children. She is monster; fearsome ravager of his flesh; cannibal in that she eats his body, sucks the marrow from his penile bone and delivers to him death re-born as his children.

_Sensual Preciousness_ is the fearing of the male. For his sacral penile tongue is serpentine. It bursts through her Innocence and calls for her to suffer the blood of the moon. It furrows her and harrows her innermost self. It is the male which is the instrument of her Mobius twisting into child-bearer. For her, he is pain, the thunder of forgotten memories, and the hero demanding that she sing her song, step forth from her cave and dance with him under the shadowless brightness of the mid-day sun.

The End-Time of the Warrior's Quest

_Sensual Preciousness_ is a vision and imagination, a set of practices and rituals which the Abrahamic Warrior's Quest people dreadfully fear. For the nurturing embrace of the Beloveds is an End-Time act in that it augurs a millennium of living on Earth as God and Goddess. When two Beloveds embrace in _Sensual Preciousness_ they are bringing to an end the Warrior's Quest. They are ending it by recognizing it, accepting what insight it offers, and then immersing it within memory. Their vital zest lays to rest the Warrior's Quest imagination and its "vital zest," that of nuclear power.

As the recent chronological millennium opened, so did _Sensual Preciousness_ blossom. Beloveds became increasing aware of themselves as that which Returns as the millennium of the Warrior's Quest closes. _Sensual Preciousness_ marks the return of the nurturing embrace. Of the nurturing embrace of God and Goddess coupled, of male and female manifest within and ritualized through one another as Beloveds. _Sensual Preciousness_ flowers as the Forever-Family—wherein every person is child, and every precious child within his/her Belovedness is a parent of all on the Living Earth.

## Chapter 47: The Forever-Family

Genesis' Shade Family

Earthfolk find the three dominant Big Stories grounded in a _Sensual Preciousness_ story wherein, upon first review, there is no goddess or feminine presence. As this traditional understanding unfolds this becomes a _Sensual Preciousness_ story which forwards as Revelation a very peculiar sacred sexuality story. It focuses on a Lone Male same-sex sexuality which is masturbatory and not relational. In this story the sexual Other is not precious or a Beloved. Rather, the sexual Other is equivalent to a sex toy to be used in a mutual-masturbation activity. There is no pretense at exploring or sharing intimacy, rather the interior of the two is their identity as mutual masturbators. This interpretation of _Genesis_ goes against all Abrahamic traditional interpretations and renderings, but given that Eve is physically derived from Adam, a created human not a birthed one, we Earthfolk have to confess what we discover when we peer and sit in silence with _Genesis_.

This mutual masturbation form of _Sensual Preciousness_ is fitting to the Warrior's Quest which values sexual relationships only insofar as they birth infant warriors. The Warrior's Quest family is valued in a very skewed and truncated rendition as a marriage made to achieve Warrior's Quest goals of conquest and domination of the Other. Warrior's Quest marriage is not about intimacy. It is not about the adoration of the Beloveds. Rather it is solely about seeding the female and valuing male infant warriors.

Of startling discovery to Earthfolk was the insight, which was gifted after much peering and sitting in silence, that this very peculiar _Sensual Preciousness_ story of _Genesis_ does, in fact, reveal the presence of a goddess. Indeed, even so wildly imaginative an account as _Genesis_ is, it could cloak but not ultimately conceal the universal truth that there can be no Male without a Female. There must be, as is said in the first _Genesis_ account, a divine couple behind the phrase "let us make humankind in our image." ( _Genesis_ 1:26) We Earthfolk peer and identify this divine couple as Shade Parents. It is the Shade Father and the goddess as Shade Mother, what has been called in various traditions, the Dark Mother. She is the consort of the Warrior's Quest Father who is also a Shade Parent or Shade Father. The Shade Mother engages only her consort's Lone Maleness. She does not honor, value or call forth other masculine or fathering aspects.

The Shade Mother collaborates with the Warrior's Quest Father in the sexual abuse of their daughter, Eve. This is sexual abuse in that Eve is not allowed even an iota of identity or intimacy. Hers is only identity as a derivative of Adam. These abusive Divine Parents, Shade Mother and Shade Father, allow her to be dominated. In this light it is logical and clarifying that Eve's intimacy is cursed upon exile. In her intimate relationship with Adam, she is to experience not adoration, pleasure, ecstasy, rather, suffering and domination. "You shall bear children in intense pain and suffering; yet even so, you shall welcome your husband's affections, and he shall be your master." ( _Genesis_ 4: 16)

_Genesis_ **, then, is a** _Sensual Preciousness_ **story about family**. But it is about an unprecious or Shade Family. It is an abusive family whose intimate relationship makes present suffering and fear. This readily becomes a patriarchal family with a Warrior's Quest identity. As Warrior's Questers, the family's range of personal heartfelt actions is limited to only those slaying acts which endow one with Warrior's Quest identity. On every front—personal, social, cultural, spiritual, economic—only Warrior's Quest heartfelt acts are valued and permitted. To exercise other than Warrior's Quest values, for example, compassion or the laying down of one's life for another or treating an Other as precious and Beloved, all such acts are belittled, demeaned, and rejected.

_The Warrior's Quest is the way of the individual Hero in service to a Warrior King_. While there are warrior traditions which have a Warrior Queen, the Religious Big Story's Warrior's Quest is a special form of patriarchalism. It is a monotheistic patriarchalism which still continues to manifest its global dominion, for example, through the Roman Catholic Pope who venerates Christ the King and who perpetuates the domination of the feminine as revealed in _Genesis_. The range of Catholic heartfelt action is severely restricted to acts which make present suffering and agony. This is in imitation of Jesus' death on the Cross. Acts which do not make present the miseries of the Cross are not deemed redemptive, and are, in essence, meaningless and valueless. Once you feel the Warrior's Quester's sense of essential worthlessness and grasp the utter miserableness of Earthly living, you then begin to understand why Catholics and all Abrahamics are trapped in an Endless War.

The Warrior King emulates the Lone Male God of _Genesis_ in that he expresses his dominion over his warriors by restricting their range of heartfelt acts to those which shed blood. All other acts of virtue or morality are subordinated and valued in respect to the degree of sacrifice and blood-shedding they achieve. The Warrior's Quester's spirituality of intimacy is grounded in bloodlust. To be slain in battle is to gain a Hero's honor. All Abrahamic sectarian traditions have this die-for-God-go-to-heaven promise. All are God's warriors, such as the Catholic " _milites Christi_ " Crusaders, and as expressed through the Protestant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers!" Likewise, Moslems have their suicidal jihadists. Since the Warrior's Quest is sourced in the Abrahamic tradition, all battles are battles against the Other who is not-Chosen, who is Intimate Enemy, who is named as Alien or Evil or Satanic or Feminine.

Earthfolk see in _Genesis_ ' story about Adam's body as the birthing body a key to understanding its link with what is revealed through the Christian Crucified Jesus. As stated before, Jesus steals the goddess' identity and all aspects of feminine intimacy as his body is claimed, like Adam's, to be the birthing body. It is Jesus' blood and water—that gushed from the wound inflicted by the Centurion's spear (John 19:34)—which is considered sacred and spiritually transforming. Eating his flesh is how Christians are Saved. This Act of Communion (Eucharist) mocks and steals the truth of mother-as-food, as it is only the mothering body which feeds the fetus and which nourishes at the breast once born.

We Earthfolk have peered and long pondered what the **Crucifix** makes present. It images the brutality and savagery of the act of crucifixion, and presents itself as a way of insight into the Lone Male god's relationship with His divine-human Son. Why has the Crucifix become the central icon of the Catholic Church, even to this day? Because the Crucifix is the icon of the sexually abusive Shade Family. Who but **abusive parents** could ever be satisfied and pleased by the agonizing death of their child?

When we Earthfolk sit in silence with the Crucifix we hear the wail of the sexually tormented Mother goddess and her daughter mothers. We feel the sexual abuse of Shade Parents who tell their children that they are not precious, not Beloved, not Forever-Family. It is a moaning and weeping which rises as intimate memory as we Earthfolk embrace as Beloveds. Earthfolk are present to these Shade Parents, and through the nurturing embrace of Beloveds we draw them towards their own preciousness. Through such an act of precious intimacy do we Earthfolk free the vital zest which heals and wholes those sexually abused.

We Earthfolk could be faulted for wildly imagining these interpretations. Sadly the wave of priestly sexual abuse and pedophilia within the Catholic and Protestant churches affirms a depth and a history of sexual abuse which staggers even those among the Earthfolk who spent a significant portion of their lives as ministers of the Christian Gospel. The type of twisted and crippled masculinity expressed in _Genesis_ , both through Adam's story and the subsequent exile, are now known to be the essence and core of the Abrahamic ministerial practice and "service." The pedophilic priests who sexually abuse children are faithful sons of the tormenting Shade Mother and Father. But their Shade spirituality can be, and is being, countered by our Earthfolk practices of _Sensual Preciousness_.

Everyone is Forever-Family

In utter contrast to the Abrahamic Warrior's Quest, we Earthfolk source our understanding of what it means to be human in terms of emotional relationship. While humans can have individual experiences, with just a slight bit of peering it becomes clear that all human experiences are emotionally relational and familial. This is to say that the claim to a sense of individuality and to "my individual, personal experience" is a way of talking about relationships. All human talk is about relationships and emotions, no matter how suppressed these may be. Such is a lesson learned by Earthfolk once the Shade Mother's presence was felt.

For Earthfolk, defining one's **"individuality"** describes a stepping-back to look at how one relates to the Other. In contrast, in the three dominant Big Stories Earthfolk note that this claim, as to the priority of emotional relationship, is reversed. In them the individual's experience is seen as the source for the familial, collective and/or communal experiences. In these Big Stories, true to their emphasis on life as a journey or quest of the Warrior Hero, relationships are secondary. Theirs is a "me and Jesus" Way. This form of individuality turns into a sense of being isolated and alone, and it is accompanied by great anxiety about one's own mortality. This source of existential dread—"I am alone!"—echoes throughout the Secular and Scientism Big Stories. This is a vision which we Earthfolk reverse. For Earthfolk, it is the Family which is Forever and which enables the individual to experience his/her temporality as part of her/his immortality.

For Earthfolk this stress on individuality as prior to and ground for communality is a logical claim arising from _Genesis_ ' revelation that "in the beginning" there was only Adam, the Lone Male. However, Earthfolk find that this visualization of Adam and God as Lone Males, in _Genesis_ , is a clever act of mis-direction. For the Goddess is right there, as Shade Mother. So, even _Genesis_ unintentionally confirms our Earthfolk insight that "in the beginning" there is Family. However, the _Genesis_ family is a Shade Family and has successfully hidden its true Shadow character for millennia.

We Earthfolk look about and note that there are _only_ **families**. Everyone comes from family. There is no other way for a human to land on this planet except as an expression of the relationships of two parents. In this light, everyone comes from intimacy, however minimal that intimacy might be. It is as a result of the intimate relationship that a person's interiority is named, that is, his/her identity is formed. The child is identified as the offspring of a father and a mother. Interior identity emerges from intimacy, not vice versa.

This simple biological fact is what makes Earthfolk dizzy as we read _Genesis_ and its wildly imagined Lone Male Rib Story. It is difficult to believe that this Ribbing has been believed by so many for so many millennia. How do you feel when your hear that Adam is the only true individual? That he remains the only individual because Eve is not fully human, rather that she is a male derivative? That she came about as _Adam masturbated her into being_?

Remember, there is _no family_ **in the Garden of Eden**. Family only comes to be in exile, and it comes in the Warrior's Quest mode. Earthfolk see all this as a very bizarre imagining which has had, and continues to have, a disastrous impact on humanity. The faithfulness to this Religious Big Story account cannot be based in biological observation or logical analysis, rather, as we Earthfolk sense, it is accepted because of the communal fear which has crippled the human imagination. Those who composed _Genesis_ were emotional cripples, and simply unhappy humans. However, they have successfully created the human world in their image. From the wildly erotic spiritual imaginings of the Garden of Eden to the wildly erotic spiritual imaginings of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth is but "one small step for mankind."

## Chapter 48: "Why are we together?"

For Earthfolk the primary question, then, is not "Why am I?" but rather, "Why are we together?" This is the primary _Sensual Preciousness_ Big Question, and as such, it can be posed as a Big Question asked by the created male Adam of his Creator Father. Keeping the presence of the Shade Mother as background, consider that for millennia, for male Abrahamics, the answer was that spiritually intimate power, namely the power of creating (their notion of vital zest), was theirs alone. That all which was and would be rightly came from within their Lone Male intimacy. Indeed, when a companion was needed for Adam, the Father created woman from Adam's rib. This was proper since creating, back then, did not require embracing a spiritual intimacy outside of their Lone Maleness.

Through the ages women have had no basis for asking this Big Question as a spiritual question. This was and is so because they have, in the Warrior's Quest, no spiritually intimate power, no vital zest, indeed, no Big Story existence. Nothing is created through them, rather, they are created through. Their bodies are the profane breeding ground into which subsequent Adams planted their Lone Male creating seed.

For those men and women who do ask the Big Question of one another, "Why are we together?" the Religious Big Story has two answers. The first spiritual answer is: to control human lust and so assist the other in fulfilling the prime spiritual duty of worshipping God, the Father, now and through eternity—not just as the One God but as the Lone God. As St. Paul states, "But if they don't have self-control, let them marry. For it's better to marry than to burn." (1 Corinthians 7-9) Marriage, then, is an egoism of two. Each partner is to individually seek mystical Union only with Him as Lone Father in the after-life. They are not called to seek mystical union together, as a couple.

This Eternal Union (the Catholic image of the "Communion of Saints") is the reward for a married life lived denying the body and denying intimacy. As such, it is a life lived denying the feminine as a source of spiritually intimate power, that is, for that birthing vital zest which transcends and transforms death and dying. It is a denial of the _Sensual Preciousness_ manifest through the time-vivifying biological birthing of infant life, that moment of sensual immersion in vital zest which spiritually weds the union of male and female.

**The** _denial of the feminine_ **as a source for spiritual intimacy and vital zest is a pivotal dogma of the Lone Male.** Namely, that life on earth (Mother Earth, in the body, in the world) is meaningless. Meaning will be granted only as a reward in the after-life. Moreover, to "get there," one must be Saved. And this Salvation is rendered by being re-born through communion with and a faithful embrace of the Father's Son. Again, all meaning, all acts of birthing, transformation and transubstantiation revolve around becoming one through a peculiar type of Lone Male same-sex sexual eroticism. From Earthfolk's perspective, this is the imagery and language of sexual abuse, in that a woman's, the female's, the Mother Goddess' sexuality is denied and imagistically obliterated.

The second answer is profane and rather simple. The Abrahamic tradition states that men and women are together to breed. Women are male ribs, and through this subordinated imagery the practical sexual doctrine arose stating that it was a sin for a woman to deny her husband sex on demand. On its own terms, women existed for the genital pleasure/satisfaction of males as they fulfilled their creative obligation of creating more sons, in _imitatio Dei_. In marriage, the Abrahamic Shade woman has meaning as she submits to Lone Male dominion in service to the iconic penis.

In this light, in the Abrahamic Big Story, the spiritually intimate power of creating was grounded in a male-only same-sex eroticism. The lust for life, the desire to reproduce, the gaining control over the non-human world through naming, all these were satisfied by male-only erotic heartfelt acts. These were acts of a homosexual eroticism, but a distinctly peculiar (for Earthfolk, crippled) form of that eroticism. It was an excluding homosexuality that premised itself on the Obliteration of the Womb, that is, of all that is feminine. This is the Obliteration of the Womb as it is Adam's body which becomes womb.

This crippled notion of homosexuality clearly stated that females, mothers, the Goddess or any other feminine erotically intimate energy and presence is not required for creating nor for the continuance of life, itself. It is a _Sensual Preciousness_ Shade homosexuality which pivots on the dogma that, "Males have no mothers." While such a statement wildly flies in the face of every day biological reality—given that homosexuals have mothers—it was and is a spiritually erotic statement of the first order in the Lone Male Big Story.

**With the presence of the Shade Mother, the sub-text to** _Genesis_ **is revealed**. It is that only a certain type of female will be tolerated, namely, a _Shade Woman_. She is one who totally surrenders her spiritually intimate erotic energy—her vital zest—manifest through her womb, to Adam's dominion. Here, Eve—until the Serpent opens her eyes about intimacy—accepts her role as derivative. Her femininity is defined in terms of her acceptance of subordination, domination and sexual abuse. In this manner, she is being faithful to the dictates of her Shade Mother. For Shade Women sexual abuse is considered an act of _Sensual Preciousness_. In the Secular Big Story this Abrahamic tradition of women defining themselves as Shade Women for whom sexual abuse is normative thrives. Sex-without-intimacy, also phrased as "meaningless sex" or "heartless sex" or "Free Love," links the Secular with the Religious Big Story as each interprets and expresses the _Sensual Preciousness_ of the Warrior's Quest.

## Chapter 49: _Genesis_ is a story of misdirection

For Earthfolk, a striking, spiritually intimate and sensually erotic Creation Story is flowering, that of the Forever-Family. It is one which deeply knows and feels the dreadful fear which rises in the Religious Big Story from its Obliteration of the Womb, but it also knows the Goddess as source of creative intimate presence. Both the Obliteration of the Womb and the presence of the Goddess become apparent if you discover _Genesis_ ' mis-direction and uncover the Shade Mother.

For Earthfolk, this insight requires that you sit in silence with the sexually abusive not-Forever-exiled-Family and own within your own life this darkness, the presence of this Shade Family within your own heart and your relationships. From this uncloaking of the Shade Parents within your own personal and communal relationships does the Earthfolk sense of Forever-Family emerge. This is a spiritually intimate presence which manifests the vital zest that ensures human immortality. It is a vitalizing Big Answer to the Big Question, "Why are we together?" That Big Answer being, "Because through the nurturing embrace of Beloveds we are God and Goddess manifesting the precious intimacy of the Forever-Family."

_Genesis_ is mis-direction because it appears to talk about a Creator God for whom Creation is "Good." However, as discussed at greater length in Volume 2, _Genesis_ opens with what salespeople call "bait and switch." You read about everything which is Good. Even Adam is Good. But what you are asked to "buy" is what happens on Day 6. Namely, that Eve's presence brings about Evil. More, because of Eve, humans are exiled from Paradise and cursed. This is a message about human intimacy, in that Eve's seduction of Adam, that is, the Apple event, is considered a sexual act, one wherein they discover their "nakedness," namely, their human intimacy. In one sense, _Genesis_ is a "chump" story. Its narrative set-up lures you in with, "And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." ( _Genesis_ 2:31), and then leaves you stupefied by dreadful fear, "Thus God expelled him, and placed mighty angels at the east of the Garden of Eden, with a flaming sword to guard the entrance to the Tree of Life." ( _Genesis_ 4:24)

## Chapter 50: The Embrace of the Beloveds

_Sensual Preciousness_ holds that you can only sense the presence and vital zest of the Forever-Family through intimate coupling with the flesh of the Other as Beloved. Vital zest floods through Beloveds as they sensually couple through the nurturing embrace. As you become Beloved, so do you pass through dying and become born into a flesh, a consciousness, a spirituality of intimacy which is never-ending, which is Forever-Family.

_Once the Forever-Family, so are the Beloveds immortal_ , for time is never but only as the play of dying and being born again. Everyone is child. Everyone parents. There need not be living parents to be a child, nor genetic children to be a parent. Parenting is a practice and ritual of _Sensual Preciousness_. It is the coming into fullness of being Father of All and Mother of All. It is the practice and ritual of bringing all you meet into the Forever-Family through inviting them with a nurturing embrace.

To counter the misdirection of _Genesis_ and its spiritually intimate Shade Warrior's Quest, in our intimate moments, we Earthfolk consciously invoke and practice an "Intend to Comfort" ritual which makes present the spiritually intimate vital zest which will end wars. It is a practice based upon the Earthfolk intention to live "as if I am no one's Enemy." It is a ritual which evokes a state of ecstatic peacefulness when coupling through sensual immersion wherein one couples with another to become a newborn presence. Our Earthfolk Comforting ritual seeks to ground relationships in the presence evoked when each person "lives as if I am no one's Enemy" and so lives comfortably at-home on Earth.

## Chapter 51: _Sensual Preciousness_ ' Practice of Intending

A core Earthfolk practice is that of Intending. It is a consciously chosen way to approach an Other through inviting him/her into your intimacy. We Earthfolk live an intentional life. Every day opens with acts of intending. Through these acts the depths of the preciousness of the Other, realized through engaging all their senses, is approached, as are one's own depths.

_Intending is being consciously intentional+plus_. The plus is the orientation of yourself towards your precious Other, your Beloved. Intending is a conscious act but it is not simply one of thinking. It is a bit more like perpetual meditation on your Beloved. When you Intend, every other person becomes an expression of your Beloved. As you observe the movements of Others so do you sense the fullness which your Beloved has endowed you with through her/his Intending with you at this same moment. Intending is a coupled act of consciousness. It is a step beyond awareness to what others have attempted to grasp through phrases such as "cosmic consciousness." When Beloveds Intend, the whole world, every moment, each act is creative and eternal. Intending is making present the immortality humans share when they couple in the nurturing embrace because it is how they "transcend" time, that is, it is how they are with one another when not in immediate physical or communicative proximity.

We Earthfolk experience the three dominant Big Stories as stating that humans should not live lives of Intention with acts of Intending. Rather, that we are to live lives of Blind Obedience, of Submission to Authority, and of Surrender. People who fear the Other can never Intend in the Earthfolk manner. They choose to forget Others, and do so through names which make them invisible, e.g., gook or "alien" or piece-of-shit or Bitch!

Intending to Comfort

What is the starting point of _Sensual Preciousness_ ' practice of Intending to Comfort? It is the act of consciously intending to evoke the sensually precious presence of comforting and of being comforted. To arrive here, you must sincerely affirm with all your senses that you are all and everything which all Creation, from the Forever, has struggled to and has playfully created. It is letting rise from within your heart the ecstatic joy of just being here, today, right now, this instant. This letting and this rising is also the response you make as you turn towards your Beloved and embrace. You each approach the Other with a welcoming attitude, inviting one another to be at-home, comfortably, right now in the presence of each other's preciousness.

We Earthfolk experience and practice Intending to Comfort as the starting point because the Biblical Lone Male tradition starts with Intending to Abuse wherein it is proclaimed that you are worthless, a miserable sinner, worthy only of banishment and being cursed. This is especially true if you are female. In one Abrahamic sectarian tradition it is a morning Men's Prayer to rejoice, "Lord, I thank thee that I was not born a woman!" Intending to Comfort evokes the opposite images and feelings towards the Other. Each is happy that the Other is precious and here right now.

The _Intending to Abuse_ hammers home that, "You've lost it!" "Get out of the Garden!" And it instills in you a core feeling of fear seething with dread and terror. You fear God. Fear your flesh. Fear the world. Names are given to this fear: Other, Satan, the Devil, the Evil One ... Eve, and then She whose name is not spoken in _Genesis_ , Mother.

Through Intending to Comfort, you accept your inestimable self-worth, and you begin to sense that you are so worthy because you are Forever-Family. That "Creation" is really a way of being Forever-Family, here, meaning that-of-you through which you are present to the past and move into the future. All that you are is all who have been who have co-created you. All that you will be is all who come from those you have embraced in co-creation. You stand, now, as a cauldron of spiritual intimacy and vital zest, to be stirred and to be a stirrer.

_Sensual Preciousness_ ' Intending to Comfort is an act of conscious evolution. It involves your waking each day and opening yourself to be comforted by and to comfort all Others. All Others are intimate and precious, and are to be found within your nurturing embrace with your Beloved. Practically, let's assume that you and your Beloved are in the same room. There is a wide range of comforting rituals, but the objective is the same, namely, to welcome your Beloved to the day. You could begin, "Welcome to the day!" or "Welcome to the sunrise!" These are common greetings of the Beloved. Slipping into the nurturing embrace then becomes, over time, instinctual and effortless. You soon cannot "wake-up" without the preciously intimate ritual act of being comforted and comforting. Even before coffee you sate your hunger with a sip of vital zest!

This Intending to Comfort is repeated at night when you slumber. "Welcome to the night!" or "Welcome to the moonrise!" Each greeting and embrace is followed by a peering and sitting in silence which is a practice of preparing to meet the day or the world of dreams by opening oneself to the Other through sensual immersion in their preciousness. To sensually immerse in the preciousness of your Beloved is how you go "on line" with other Earthfolk, everywhere. These are acts of Intention wherein the Other hears that you consciously intend, with clear awareness and memory, to live comfortably with them during this day or so slumber at the end of day. This act of Intending to Comfort leads to the many rituals which are part of what we Earthfolk call the practice of Attention, which is addressed below.

Intending to Worship

Earthfolk's practice of Intending to Comfort is the emotional ground for many rituals. Rituals are acts which couple practices of Intention with acts of Attention. The following section will explore _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals and the notion of Intention/Attention.

The ultimate comforted presence to be evoked through all rituals is that of the worshipping moment. This is the instant of breakthrough to the sense of thirdness, of the two Beloveds as freshly One. Worship is approached through first practicing Intending to Comfort and then enacting a ritual which seeks to evoke preciousness through sensual immersion. However, we Earthfolk practice Intending to Worship in the moments when we cannot get together for a ritual. Intending to Worship is a way of filling your day with the expectation of your Beloved.

What you anticipate when you Intend to Worship is what you savor from your past acts or rituals. Intending to Worship is lingering in the memory of ritual ecstasy. It is reliving through a sensory memory the sensuality of the nurturing embrace. As you look at a picture of your Beloved your hands sense the touch of her. As you inhale the fragrance of flowers which he has sent, you taste the deliciousness of his tongue upon your cheek. And so it goes, throughout the day!

You recall rituals because rituals are consciously designed and enacted sensory performances. Rituals are the necessary preparations for that transcending and transforming moment called worship. Worship is that Flash! when two Beloveds merge into a newborn presence. One cannot worship alone. Nor can one worship an Other without that Other's invitation and intentional participation. Without mutual invitation and intention "worship" become idolatry as seen, e.g., in Hollywood screen idols or Rock 'n Roll stars or Playmates. It takes at least two to ritualize, and through ritual lay the ground for the breakthrough moment of worship. So, when apart, you Intend to Worship in preparation.

Intending to Worship seeks to sustain the worshipping Flash! which for _Sensual Preciousness_ is that breakdown/breakthrough experience and event when two couple through the nurturing embrace and become One. You Intend to Worship when physically or communicatively separate so as to avoid an "egoism of two." That is, you seek to remain in the marrying and parenting moment which worship is. It is marrying in that it is the unleashing of the dynamic precious intimacy, that intimate vital zest which nourishes the personal relationship of the two who are intimate foci, each for the other. It is parenting in that a new presence is imagined and birthed. It is an unparalleled joy when this new presence is a physical child who flowers from the Now, enfleshing Past and Future in the wonder of their infant face. But parenting means much, much more. It means the fullness of being. Of your becoming the Earth and the Sky. It is your flowering through your own and your Beloved's surging vitality and dying entropy. It is when you blossom into Forever-Family, which often is a blissful moment which shudders you into total self-negation or pounds at your skin like a torrent crashing into and yearning to burst the dam of your flesh. The practice of Intending to Worship is how you continue to sensually immerse yourself in your Beloved through memory and imagining.

The _Sensual Preciousness_ approach to Intending to Worship has ancestral connections to those in the Abrahamic tradition who "leaked." These are those, who despite dreadful fear, found rapture in ecstatic union with a Beloved. These connections include what was pointed at, but not sensually realized, by such phrases as Communion of Saints, the Cosmic Christ, the Body of Christ, and the most misunderstood phrase of that tradition, the precious Holy Spirit. While these leaks can orient you towards _Sensual Preciousness_ , at their core they still validate the Warrior's Quest and so we Earthfolk advise that you should, in time, discard them. Your task is to practice Intending to Worship wherein you open yourself to the Other as Beloved, and in doing this these leaky images will prove to be, in time, of scant usefulness.

_Sensual Preciousness_ starts with Intending to Comfort and Intending to Worship because it is fruitful to pay attention to what the Warrior's Quester does not want you to intend. For example, the Warrior's Quester does not want you to approach, in any way or with any intention, the Other as precious. He does not want you to Intend to your Beloved. Be alert, however, for the Warrior's Quest is mighty and powerful. It has dominated the world for as far back as human imagination is known. It is the language, song and dance of the presently dominating human consciousness, and it will remain so until to the day you begin Intending. Consequently, understanding the Warrior's Quester's Intending to Abuse is useful in order to understand Earthfolk's offsetting Intending to Comfort. Countering its Intending to Abuse is what Intending to Worship effects. When you celebrate the preciousness of your Beloved, together you experience the presence of Forever-Family through which you experience yourself as god and goddess.

Intending the Forever-Family

As Beloved you are faced with the question, "What should I intend?" In the Biblical tradition, you are not situated as a creator, rather, as a derivative and subordinated presence for whom the question is, "What does God intend for me?" The answer, as recalled from mastering the rote Roman Catholic catechetical Q & A, is, "To know, love and serve God in this world and to be happy with Him forever in heaven." Biblical intention, then, requires that you pay attention to yourself—your soul—and not bother with other humans. Rather, you are directed to focus on your personal relationship with the Lone Male father. _Sensual Preciousness_ answers the question quite differently as it calls you to Intend the Forever-Family.

## Chapter 52: Godding

When you start with Intending to Comfort and Intending to Worship, you ground yourself in a sense of your own self-worthiness as a creating presence. In the Warrior's Quest, only the Lone Male god creates. Moreover, the individual, the Lone Male Adam, it is important to note, cannot create. When you practice Intending to Comfort and to Worship you initiate an expansion of your sensuality such that you are present to your own preciousness, to your _Sensual Preciousness_. You are present to your godding self and power.

You create and experience this godding power within and through the nurturing embrace of your Beloved. "Godding" is that moment when you make present, for yourself and all people, an air of comfort and being comforted. Here, "create" brims with the zesty vitality of dipping into the past and forming the future through the intimately orgasmic moment of coupling through nurturing embracing. You creating is _Sensual Preciousness_ 's "godding." This again calls you away from Biblical intention where you are Intending to Abuse. In contrast, our Earthfolk godding describes you embracing and being embraced. It heightens your awareness that everyone is Forever-Family, and as Forever-Family, all are "dancing time" together.

_Sensual Preciousness_ is the many acts of godding. When godding you Intend to couple with other people for creative expression. This creativity has manifest and multi-fold expressions: working, cooking, dancing, discussing, arguing...all the way to and through sexual embracing. When godding, you avoid the pitfall of the Warrior's Quester who has only one lone erotic sexual image, namely, that of the female as sex-toy and that of the male as one who needs to "get off." She is to be competitively beaten down, conquered, bested, and if Enemy, obliterated. In contrast, godding is the investing of spiritual intimacy into many moments, moments which are by Warrior's Quest standards mundane and profane, again, such as working, cooking, dancing, and so forth. These latter acts the Warrior's Quester has always demeaned and devalued as "feminine traits and skills."

Godding is being present in your many and multi-fold sensualities, that is, through the many ways you wield creative fire, not just a Sword of Fire. _Godding is when you and your Beloved transform and each becomes the other, male to female, goddess to god_.

These several practices of Intending is how you clear your mind and ground your emotions when you catch yourself drifting off into Warrior's Quest moods and practices. Remember, the Warrior's Quester's spirituality of dominion saturates the profane and the secular. Be watchful, because it is a most powerful isolating potion, which shrinks male and females down to identity as only genital sex-toys. Moreover, fear it because it wages Endless War upon you.

_Sensual Preciousness_ godding, then, pays special attention to the shrinking power of the Lone Male story. Godding rituals assists you in coping with the Lone Male's shrinking power. Through these godding rituals, one Intends to Comfort and Worship his or her Beloved, and orient him/herself to their godding creativity as, together, they make present the Forever-Family.

## Chapter 53: Intending the Obliterated Womb

Since the Warrior's Quest seeks to wage global dominion, especially through suppression and enslavement of the feminine, our Earthfolk Intending the Obliterated Womb is an act of consciously willing the presence of Her, the Goddess, Our Mother. It is an act of memory, of recalling Her whose presence was visibly Obliterated from _Genesis_ , but not spiritually erased! Though She is present as Shade Mother in _Genesis_ , this is a "leak." It indicates that She is there, which is recalled by the phrase in the other Creation Story of _Genesis_ , "let us make..." ( _Genesis_ 1:26)

_Genesis_ is the willing-into-forgetfulness of Her, that is, the Obliteration of Womb. Earthfolk consciously remember and evoke the presence of the Obliterated Womb as part of their practice of making Her Womb present once again. Through this practice, we Earthfolk first call forth, identify and embrace the presence of the Shade Mother. We do this as we sit in silence, together, engulfed in Warrior's Quest Shadow. This is a practice which prepares you and your Beloved for entering into sacred sexuality rituals, discussed in a later section. For the mis-direction of _Genesis_ is to visually state that there is no need for nor any special intimacy made manifest through Sacred Sexuality rituals.

So, _Intending the Obliterated Womb pivots with acts of memory and remembering_. While Intending the Obliterated Womb addresses how you focus upon and make present the Mother and Goddess through your nurturing embrace, no one has lived at a time when Her presence was present as other than Warrior's Shade Mother. It is only now, through _Sensual Preciousness_ practices, that the Goddess is being once again worshipped and Her Womb reverenced.

For males this requires the development of numerous experimental approaches to discern how to practice Intending the Obliterated Womb. No male, or daughter of the Shade Mother, knows how to enable or to recognize and then transform their Lone Male bodies which have, as Jesus did, stolen Her Womb. For Lone Males have ever to overcome their inheritance, namely, the Warrior's Quest practice of ignoring the female, the feminine and the Mother they actually see. How, indeed, to overcome that myopic Cyclopic sight which sees the female and then shrinks her to only flesh and from mere flesh into her anatomical parts: piece of ass, rack of teats, nice box, as well as shrinking her erotic power to cutesy animal images such as pussy and beaver?

Men in general, and women who recognize and make present the Shade Mother within themselves, seek to practice Intending the Obliterated Womb because all that is around in the Big Stories are Warrior's Quest images and memories of sexual abuse. However, Intending the presence of the Obliterated Womb is akin to turning your skin inside out. If you do it, you will die! Yes, no one knows how to simply practice Intending the Obliterated Womb. Discerning and composing Obliterated Womb Intending practices is daunting. Here, you are confronting the purest creational risk, that is, you are conjuring up presences and powers which—disguised or through Warrior trickery—have the power to shrink you: body, mind, soul, spirit, dream flesh and truly Obliterate you! Yet, this is what _Sensual Preciousness_ knows you must primarily Intend and practice, daily.

Fearlessly, _Sensual Preciousness_ intends to couple with female power. Creatively, the male searches out the numerous ways this female Womb can be discovered. Intentionality, here, links with receptivity as a method. The male poises himself—peering and sitting in silence—to receive the female as Shade Woman so that her Obliterated Womb may be sensed, and they, together, sensually immerse in Obliteration. Sounds impossible, yes?

Such intending and sensual immersing requires that the male position himself on the precipice of being slain. Psychologically, this is an opening to madness, for the male has no grounding in the Lone Male Warrior's Quest psyche to plumb for coordinates or points of reference concerning the worship of the Obliterated Womb. The Lone Male intends only to receive his same-sex god, so how does a _Sensual Preciousness_ male intend to receive Her and her?

Intending the Obliterated Womb is a coupling desire. It is an openness to the presence of the Other as Beloved wherein you allow your Beloved to touch your most intimate self. It is making yourself present by inviting your Beloved to "live as if we are no one's enemy." It is the opposite of the dreadful fear which besets the Warrior's Quester every time he encounters an Other's presence, whether human or divine. It is Intending to live comfortably at-home through the fresh body created by Belovedness.

Intending the Obliterated Womb is a preciously erotic moment of ecstasy. It is the realization of one's self as fully precious. It is an act which boldly counters the isolating sense of the Lone Male which has you define yourself in bodily parts, here genitalia. Instead of intending to present yourself through your fleshly parts, you free yourself to imagine one another as Mother of All and Father of All. Embraced, you breakthrough to the presence of your Forever-Family immortal self.

## Chapter 54: Intending to Dream

Intending the Obliterated Womb is also a practice of dreaming. Earthfolk observe that it was as Adam slumbered, and through his dreaming, that the Womb was Obliterated. Dreaming, then, is where you must "go" to discover, to discern in the Shadows of sleeping time, Her presence as Womb. Intending to dream, then, is a practice of not being caged by clock time, that heartbeat of the Machine Society.

Earthfolk Beloveds do not cease creating as they slumber. Rather, Intending couples the dreamers. They ritualize the moment of conscious moonrise departure and set intimate images and stories loose to map their way back to sunrise kiss and embrace. That is, they discuss what they Intend to Dream together. They lie down in slumbering embrace intent upon slipping into the dream state with an openness to dream the Dark, together. For Beloveds, dreaming is remembering and re-experiencing Life within Mother's Womb.

Intending to Dream is the most difficult practice for those bound to the Secular and Scientism Big Stories. For them, sleeping is an "off" switch state where nothing of great importance happens. Remembering dreams is of scant significance. For them humans are not to waste their time dreaming dreams, neither at night nor during the day. Our Earthfolk dreaming is intentionally not dying to one's preciousness and intimate presence as does the Warrior's Quester when he/she lays down to sleep.

Intending to Dream is a nurturing embrace of the Shade and Shadow worlds. It is creating by moon fire. Through dreaming, Beloveds makes themselves present to their Other in the comfort of night, that is, night as the time of the moon, of the moon goddess, of Her. For the Beloveds intend _Sensual Preciousness_ dreaming as preparation for the moment when they will create beyond their Earthly demise. They dream the fall of their flowers and leaves. They dream the decay of the ecstatic flesh. They dream themselves as Forever-Family. They dream the sleep of immortality nestled within the Womb of Mother.

## Chapter 55: Intending Memory and Remembering

A key practice of precious Intending is remembering. Remembering is not just a wistful act of sentimentality. Rather, it is a centering act of sensual immersion wherein your whole body, every sense, is tuned to your presence in the Now with you feeling yourself as one with all who have preceded you and all who shall yet come. Remembering is a relational act wherein you open yourself to relate to the Past and the Future in a robust Now. Remembering is the act of making yourself, through relationship with your Beloved, present as Forever-Family.

Remembering is another answer to, "Why are we together?" And this is a Big Question which Earthfolk pose to their Beloved, each day. Part of the Big Answer is to remember all of one's own specific family and of the Forever-Family thus making present all who have ever lived, right Now. This is akin to a state of cosmic consciousness, an image which many Religious Big Stories possess, such as "The Communion of Saints."

Remembering is the honoring of the dreams of your forbearers which have found their presence in you. As you look upon your Beloved it is the honoring of the dream of your coupled living as it brings other presences here onto the Earth, in flesh and spirit. For many, decorating their living space with genealogical pictures assists them in this practice.

In the Warrior's Quest culture, Remembering has been purposefully focused on the single and simple act of sacrifice, namely, the shedding of fatal blood. Warrior's Quest redemption is a Remembering through the ritual offering of bread and wine, of the blood-shedding on the Cross, "Do this in Memory of me." In the Christian story, this is the blood of the Lone Male god's only child, His Son. As the blood of this Son is shed he ceases to be the historical Jesus of Nazareth and becomes transformed and transubstantiated into the Christ. The Christ is the memory of the Father. The Christ is the memory of the Lone Male. Jesus crucified and dying on the Cross transforms into the Christ who dies daily through the ritual act of remembrance called the Mass. Through the Mass' remembrance of Jesus' death, _Genesis_ ' act of the Obliteration of the Womb continues. The potency of this remembrance, which is prayed daily by those Christians who celebrate Holy Mass, is what keeps the Religious Big Story's imagination alive. The Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth find their Warrior's Quest bloodlust rooted in and nourished by the ritual of the Mass and its kindred Christian rites of memory.

What does the Warrior's Quester remember through the shedding of blood? A body shedding blood is a natural "woman's thing." It is Moon memory. It is genetic memory never-ending. Men do not "naturally" shed blood. But the Warrior's Quester is warrior only insofar as he sheds blood. And Warrior's Quest memory—tales, sagas, myths and history—is constructed around the chronological shedding of blood. History's storyline beats to the drums of war, from the Iliad to the Crusades to the "War to End All Wars." This Warrior's Quest remembering nourishes the Endless War, which is secularized as "National Security policy."

We Earthfolk clearly understand that the globally dominant Religious Big Story with its Warrior's Quest of Endless War and practices and rituals of sexual abuse thrives because it priests and followers rise every day and pray the Daily Mass. Many among the Earthfolk prayed for decades at Daily Mass. They also crawled on their knees around the Stations of the Cross until calluses thickened and became carapace. They meditated in Silent Adoration till their minds blanked and their unworthiness erupted into ailments visible and invisible. Some flagellated while chanting after communal confession: Culpa. All these were acts of remembering, of reliving the expiating pain of Jesus. They were attempts to suffer in one's person the redemptive, transforming pain of the Christ. As the Warrior's Questers remember the Obliteration of the Womb, so is their Big Story made present, once again. To counter this millennia old act of remembering, we Earthfolk rise daily to practices acts of Intending the Other as precious.

Earthfolk males have learned that remembering the Obliterated Womb requires great courage. There is significant psychological risk in this simple ritual of remembering, for all the Warrior's Quest images of bloodshed carom and careen, shriek, scream and howl through your mind. Many Earthfolk have become erotically terrified unto the gasp of dying. For the core image which will rise is the slicing off of your male penile wand. Yes, this is what remembering "The Rib" conjures up.

"Slicing off your male penile wand," who wants to dream that? Consider that in _Genesis_ Adam is laid down to sleep. He dreams. The Lone Male god dreams Adam and together they "give birth" to Eve. What even the Warrior's Quester cannot deny is that birthing requires seminal blood—the transmittal of genetic material—and so what lingers behind the Earthfolk interpretation is the fact that birthing is a bloody act and consequently that when Adam masturbates Eve so is Adam's penis sliced. It bleeds, as it must in imitation of the Womb, and from the blood Eve issues forth. When an Earthfolk ritual of remembering brings into conscious awareness the Obliteration of the Womb what comes with it are horrifying and harrowing images, emotions and insights. The bleeding male wand is just one.

Earthfolk women understand the bizarre memory which is the Obliteration of the Womb. While they realize, as daughters of Eve, that they have been taught to see themselves as worthless and as having Obliterated Wombs, they grasp that the healing of the practice of remembrance can only occur through a transforming communion as Beloveds. Women heal men as they receive, forgive and comfort their Adamic men and their bleeding wands.

Beloveds intend memory as they touch each other's body. From a kiss on the forehead to a caress of a cheek, the praise of eyes which sees into the other's soul, down through a kiss on the lips and then the sculpting of the flesh downward and upward, front and back, arriving at the moment of nurturing embrace, a comforting instant, so is remembering begun. While rituals vary as to how the senses are stimulated, that is, sound, smell, etc., the shared vision is to peer and sit in silence with the Obliterated Womb and in so doing to remember it into the Now.

A male may place his hand upon his Rib and confess his Adamic offense of Obliteration. He humbles himself before Her whom he has oppressed for millennia, and through Her daughter's caressing gesture the healing of memory begins. A woman may place a male's hand upon her womb or engage in other sensual acts, including healing his bleeding wand through coupling. At an appropriate moment, she praises him for his openness to death. She touches his penis as bleeding wand and invites him to know her as goddess, to remember himself as her Beloved, not as her dominator. However it is that they Intend the moment, it enables them to heal the past and to turn towards the future as Beloveds, at-home now with comforting memories.

## Chapter 56: _Sensual Preciousness_ ' Acts of Attending

Attending, as used by Earthfolk, is becoming aware of and engaging your Other through every sense to finally evoke a coupled intimacy which makes present your Beloved and effects the swarming of vital zest.

_Sensual Preciousness_ ' Attending is more than just being aware of or simply recognizing the Other, that is, of "paying attention to." The nuance is like the difference between doctoring and healing. Attending is an Earthfolk act of healing through immersion in deep intimate touch. The traditional Warrior's Quest doctor looks at you, objectively, as a "patient." You are charted through a range of analyses, diagnoses and invasive technologies. This approach has some merit if it then Attends to you as person, and assists you in participating in the healing process. But to be a healer means to allow the disease to enter you as it is in the patient. This is an act of transference, an act of relational intimate touching which, as with sympathetic magic, keys upon mutual receptivity.

_Sensual Preciousness_ healing means letting your intimate vital zest flow into the diseased person. Clearly, this is the healer's most spiritually erotic power for it seeks to touch and embrace with the sick person at every level of their presence. _Sensual Preciousness_ healing involves embracing the ill person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Many in the "alternative health movement" champion a like understanding of healing. Where _Sensual Preciousness_ continues a step further is through the embrace of dreaming. The healer dreams with the ill/dying person. The healer assists the ill/dying person in dreaming with him/her through their mutual experimentation with _Sensual Preciousness_ practices and rituals. The healer attends to the Memory of this person and Intends every-day to be present to and with them.

_Attending accepts nothing which impacts interpersonal relationships as trivial_. Jokes, images, metaphors, allusions, nicknames, etc., are all vehicles for Attending. Watchfulness, patience, being-with, carefully listening are also aspects of Attending. When degrading words or acts take place—whether the individual referred to is present or not—these are instantly exposed and rejected for their lessening Shade power.

Attention, moreover, approaches playfulness. It uses humor and laughter to defuse the tense Warrior's Quest degradation moments. Attention clears a space for Her to play, here, meaning express the many aspects and dimensions of Her preciously intimate presence and power. However, since the Warrior's Quester does not play, playful Attention, then, is one of the most difficult aspect of Attention. In play, roles are often reversed. Imagination leads the way and colors the scene and nothing serious occurs.

Since the Warrior's Quest has carried the day in Abrahamic and Western culture, "playing" is seen as childish or even girlish and foolish. "Don't be silly!" is how the Warrior's Quester stops playfulness, and silliness is more than often a word which connotes that, "You're acting like a silly little girl!" As such, women have been tagged as playthings or playmates, and Warrior's Quest females, in general, carry the burden of being deemed dreamy air-heads ("eye and arm candy"). Warrior's Questers don't play, they compete. So, it is to the thousand ways the Warrior's Quest locks-up playfulness, to the thousand ways He locks-up His imagination so that roles are not reversed, to the thousand ways He has of isolating Her, trivializing Her, demeaning Her that _Sensual Preciousness_ Attends and pays Attention.

Above all else, _Sensual Preciousness_ Attends to the Beloved through the body. As a creation of the Lone Male Warrior's Quest Big Story of the Obliterated Womb, you are not Beloved, and you hate your own body. As a Warrior's Quester you desire to pound and harden your flesh into a sword. Female Warrior's Questers want to diet till their bones clink and rattle. It has often been remarked that the Abrahamic Warrior's Quest has forwarded a spirituality based upon the hatred of the body. Again, looking at _Genesis_ , there is no body as you know body. There is nothing born of Her or slipping from out a womb. No, when you peer, you see that there is present only the cloned Adam. As such, there are no god and goddess bodies. This has translated into the Warrior's Quester disregarding her body and having no "softness" about his own. He spits out, "Grin and bear it!" "Suffer in silence!" For we Earthfolk, in contrast, there are only god and goddess bodies, each and all Sensually Precious. And, for everyone there is open the _Sensual Preciousness_ quest for deep intimate ecstasy and the discovery of the precious through every possible act of mutual sensual immersion in the Beloved's body.

The Abrahamic Warrior's Quest tradition has made the **female body odious**. The body of a woman is not to be enjoyed, and even more telling is that she is not to enjoy herself. Male enjoyment of her does not include intentionally pleasuring and/or attending to her and rejoicing in her orgasmic sensuality. _Sensual Preciousness_ Attends not just to "getting her off"—to affording him a kind of voyeuristic cooperation in masturbation—but it Attends to Her spiritually erotic power, her deep intimate vital zest, which is unleashed through a nurturing embrace within a sacred sexuality ritual.

Earthfolk Attend to the male and female within every Beloved.

## Chapter 57: Playfulness

_Sensual Preciousness_ plays. When you play you open yourself to your Beloved's multi-sensual presence. Play is immersion in the shared creativity of imagining.

It is clear when someone isn't playing. Their refusal to "get into it" is apparent. It is often stated in Warrior's Quest culture that play is a childish thing. And that "being an adult" means "getting serious." Biblically, it is stated, "But when we have been made perfect and complete ... It is like this: when I was a child I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I became a man my thoughts grew far beyond those of my childhood, and now I have put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly: but then face to face: now all that I know is hazy and blurred, but then I will see everything clearly, just as clearly as God sees into my heart right now." (1Corinthians 13:1-12) While there is a grain of truth here about the difference between childhood and adulthood, what is most significant is that this passage peers through the haze and references how the Warrior's Quester will be when he is "made perfect and complete." At that time the Warrior's Quester ceases to play.

Without sentimentally romanticizing childhood, there is a way children are present to the world that the Warrior's Quest culture beats down and out. The child must be taught boundaries, such is part of parenting. But, as one eventually comes to know as a parent, the child must also be taught the refined hatred of an historical Enemy or a despised race, as well as told with whom not to play. The latter grounds the beginning of the Warrior's Quester child's social and political identity. The child learns to whom he/she must be present and with whom he/she must not play.

Warrior Play is Dominating

_Sensual Preciousness_ plays, but it is acutely aware of how, as Warrior's Quester and Lone Male, the Memory of playing has been forgotten. Playing means "getting outside the box." Since you spend most of your day building the box, getting outside of it requires great courage, strength of mind, and commitment. This is the state of just letting everything go. Not holding on. Stepping over into an altered state of consciousness, namely, consciously "living as if I am no one's Enemy." It is ironic that one has to "work at getting there," that is, to an Earthfolk consciousness, but this is how things are when everything secular, especially work, is imbued with the warring spirituality of the Lone Male.

Consider that all day long you are psychically, emotionally and physically hammered and herded by the dominating powers of the Lone Male. It is telling that while the work-day was "shortened" to eight hours and the week to forty, the actual fact is that there is no longer a Day of Rest (comfortable leisure and play). Unintentionally, so it appears, this reform led to the fact that Warrior's Questers work all the time. This is one sign of the post-traumatic stress disorder, namely, being unable to enjoy Life. This lack of enjoyment is a manifestation of living in dreadful fear, the fear that "I don't have enough time!" and so must work, ceaselessly and endlessly.

Since the Warrior's Quester has been expelled from the Garden of Eden, wherein he once played, his sense of work is deadly. Work is a "job to get done." Work is "following orders." The ultimate example of Warrior's Quest work is the ghastly and repulsive "Final Solution" which turned the Jewish people into Intimate Enemy and through highly efficient technology (railroad cars, Zyklon B, and smelting ovens) murdered without conscience ("I was just following orders!").

Warrior's Quest work is deadly because it is not an imagining. Most people do not go to work expecting that they will return home happy. They expect that their labor will be extracted from them, and, at best, fairly compensated by a wage. In this setting, work is collective but not communal. The workers do not own what they produce, either financially or imaginatively. In Cyber-Society, every worker is seen as a Virtual Worker: one that can be replaced by another with a click of the squeak-less mouse.

"Do you want to play with me?" is about as seductively erotic as an Other can get. The question brims with erotic danger and wildness. Yet, for the Warrior's Quester it results in an affirmation that leads to "playing" in the sense of not valuing, "just fooling around," and of doing something without responsibility. The Warrior's Quest Playmate is someone to screw, and not have to wake up to and "face" in the morning. _Sensual Preciousness_ doesn't play that game.

_Sensual Preciousness_ evokes the playfulness in every situation and every relationship. It does so because it is grounded in the mythos of the Forever-Family. The Forever-Family plays, sensually. This is how family is created, and how personalities are developed. Playing, here, is sharing imagination. It is communal imagining. When playing there is no sense of hierarchy, that is, who is parent and who is child, rather, it is the chase and dance of each one as each becomes parent and child, child and parent. The joy of this playing is that you are never boxed into being parent or child as a role.

_Sensual Preciousness_ playing is something most Americans, Westerners and patriarchal peoples do not do. Look around at all the extant world cultures and into their dominant religions and mythologies and ask, "Where does She play?" She may be played with as a sex toy, as mentioned before, but she does not play. Sexual intercourse, consequently, is toying with the female and her body, most specifically her genitals. Hip and "sensitive males" may be more explorative, but most are looking for a "G spot" or some other orgasmic area, touching that which can intensify her thrills, while keeping her intimately distant and meaningless. Few seek the Obliterated Womb, and fewer seek to die and be reborn. Few Warrior's Quest females (Shade women) are beyond letting males toy with them. They, too, look upon sexual embrace as a "service" and nothing more than mutual masturbation, which they find very pleasurable and satisfying.

## Chapter 58: Bodywandering and Dreaming

To play means to bodywander. This starts when you peer at your Beloved's body and perceive that it is a map. It is a map of Mobius pathways. Ones that twist and turn you inside-out. Ones that flip back and have you bodywandering yourself. When you bodywander you Attend to the flesh of your Beloved with every sense: sight, smell, taste, hearing and on every level: physical, mental, spiritually, astrally.

_Bodywandering is faithful Attending_. It is a way that leads to play. If you simply attend to your Beloved as skin, that is, if you touch your Beloved as if his/her skin is their boundary and so your boundary, then you remain at the Warrior's Quest distance from Her. The concession given to Her by Him in _Genesis_ was to use Eve's skin to enfold male bodies. Consequently, in every body—male and female—there is this scent of Her. And you can discover Her if you Attend to your Beloved's skin as map and bodywander.

Once playing together, that is, bodywandering, you and your Beloved will be blessed with Dreaming. Dreaming is where the spiritually intimate presence of the female has been banished, and why the Warrior's Quest belittles dreams as meaningless. Dreaming is the ultimate breakthrough to the deepest moment of the preciously erotic embrace which bodywandering stimulates through every sense and act of Intending. As you bodywander, this dreaming time and presence which the Warrior's Quest banishes will become your most desired state of the nurturing embrace.

Through luminous technology the Warrior's Quester believes He has banished Night, and that He can live without dreams. He seeks only a drug induced altered state of non-consciousness. Through bodywandering's robust sensuality, a novel state of non-conscious dreaming is made manifest. Dreaming is _Sensual Preciousness_ ' playful bodywandering.

## Chapter 59: _Sensual Preciousness_ Rituals

Imagining Earthfolk

There have been _many revolutions of the imagination_ in the Religious Big Story of the Abrahamic Biblical tradition. Difficult passages in the Bible perplex many people because they seem at odds with the main story. As such, the Hebrew prophets often expose the contradictions and inanities of the Biblical tradition. Among Christians, a St. Francis or a St. Teresa of Avila and other mystics (mostly male and a few female) create like problems for the mainstream. In other patriarchal traditions you will find a Gandhi or a Sri Aurobindo or a Rumi or a Black Elk. Even Teilhard de Chardin has cracked the iron egg of Catholic tradition a bit. Then, there are contemporary thinkers and leaders, many of whom are from the Jungian school or who follow Joseph Campbell or new theologians like Matthew Fox. Indeed, a substantial list can be drawn of those admired by many Earthfolk as **"roots"** or **"leaks"** whose insights and experiences are deeply valued but whose works appear, either directly or indirectly, to justify reverence for the monotheistic, Lone Male Abrahamic Biblical mythos. (Some are listed in Appendix C, Links.)

We Earthfolk understand that, for some, these "roots" are still useful guides. However, Earthfolk hold that these thinkers, to varying degrees, still make present the Endless War and validate the Lone Male Warrior's Quest Way. They do this _unintentionally_ by retaining the language, imagery and imagination of the Lone Male. Earthfolk hold that the twin icons of the Warrior's Quest, namely, the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth, are more than sufficient witnesses to the total domination achieved by the Abrahamic Tradition. The efforts to claim the Abrahamic tradition as one of peace-making or compassion or non-violence or even social justice have all failed, and it is a failure that must be accepted with all its consequences. It is no longer time for reform or even a revolution within the Abrahamic Tradition. Rather, it is a time to imagine anew. To respond to, _Awake!_

To be clear about this point, we Earthfolk awoke due to an unintended consequence of the icon of Starship Earth that was photographed for military purposes. _What was awoken?_ The Memory of Mother, of Her, of the feminine. But it was the Mother in all her complexity of presence, including Herself as the Shade Mother which was remembered. Both the Shade and the Light aspects of the Great Goddess were made present to Earthfolk as we were startled by the sight of Starship Earth. At that moment Earthfolk, slumbering on the verge of Memory, became sensually immersed in Her preciousness as we peered and sat in silence with the image of Starship Earth. What cascaded forth were sensings of Her which had been suppressed and dominated for millennia by the Warrior's Quest, most notably, Her "invisible image" in _Genesis_. As the slumbering Earthfolk gasped and were awakened, so were both alive, Earthfolk and Mother, aware and present to one another as the Living Earth. Each was sensually immersed in the preciousness of the Other. Each desired to couple in nurturing embrace and make manifest Belovedness.

Earthfolk have often pondered, _How and why did the Abrahamic tradition gain dominion through the Warrior's Quest spirituality?_ There is no simple answer. What they do know is that, for millennia, Mother has been there, ever present to humans in more than her Shade Mother manifestations. That, for millennia, Mother as the Living Earth has been seeking to awaken humans from their slumber. In this light, all those called "roots" worked with what they had, which was the Warrior's Quest imagination, imagery and language. However, we Earthfolk accept that these near-awake Earthfolk could never imagine other than with Warrior's Quest ways. The Warrior's Quest dominion was just too spiritually and imaginatively powerful. Many who tried to reform the Warrior's Quest or who opposed it were exiled, tortured and/or slain.

It is also critical to note that we Earthfolk hold that if the Lone Male god did not achieve dominion through the Abrahamic tradition that some other like patriarchal system, East or West, would have served His needs. That the West is presently dominant is simply a matter of historical accident.

As should be evident by now, our Earthfolk **discovery of Mother** was _also_ a **discovery of Father** , and of a more robust and vital masculinity than allowed by the Warrior's Quest vision. To be Beloved is for the male and the female to couple, as was stated in " _Sensual Preciousness_ : a Declaration." In fact, while the Warrior's Quest imagination holds that the notions of gender are hardwired to the genitalia one possesses, within the Earthfolk imagination the focus is not on gender, genitalia or sexuality in itself. Rather, the focus is on relationship, communion and the making present of preciousness and the release of vital zest through the nurturing embrace of Beloveds.

Earthfolk peer at the icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth and quickly the Warrior's Quest Big Story and its communal emotion of dreadful fear is exposed, as are its rituals of dominion and sexual abuse. After doing this, we Earthfolk conclude that the source for this Big Story, namely, the Abrahamic tradition must be abandoned. It cannot serve to create an imagination which enables people—human folk—to live peacefully and comfortably at-home on the Living Earth beholding Others as precious and Beloveds. This includes an abandonment of the Secular and the Scientism Big Stories, for, as evaluated in Section 2, they also make present the two icons of dreadful fear and apocalyptic self-annihilation.

As convinced as we Earthfolk are of the _need to abandon_ the Warrior's Quest Big Story and the Abrahamic tradition, this book itself reflects the our Earthfolk understanding that this Big Story and tradition must be thoroughly understood and evaluated in order for you to even begin to risk experimenting with an Earthfolk ritual or two.

But the call for this abandonment must be made. To be clear, for you to continue to validate one or all of the dominant Big Stories, no matter how reformed (or radical) you believe you are or how much you attest that "I don't affirm the Warrior's Quest aspect of the Abrahamic tradition," is to sustain their dominion and to be responsible for their unleashing of a nuclear apocalyptic End-Time. Yet, abandoning the Abrahamic tradition is your choice, and yours alone to imagine and make.

_Sensual Preciousness_ **is a way of imagining**. It is _not_ a movement, _not_ a school, and _not_ just a technique. _Sensual Preciousness_ ' imagining makes present your godding self and that of the Forever-Family. As with the Intendings and Rituals, you and your Beloved should seek out imaginative sources. Again, there is a long list, on which some include Martin Luther King's Dream. John Lennon's "Imagine." Starhawk's vision. Mary Daly's wildings. Jane Schaberg's exegesis. Wilhelm Reich's genital embrace. Norman O. Brown's Love's Body. William Irwin Thompson's edgy insights. Jean Gebser's monumental history of consciousness. Joanna Macy's vision. Georgia O'Keefe and Judy Chicago's art magic. Margo Anand's Tantric Sky Dancing rituals. Again, see Appendix C, Links.

But, again, put a **"** _Beware!_ **"** on all of these Roots and Leaks, for the Lone Male is tricky and He will stoop to the dirtiest of tricks to misdirect and prevent you from peering and being present with Her. Meaning that he will slip in a Lone Male image or interpretation that sounds reasonable but which truly gets you nowhere. For example, the Lone Male would call Christ on the Crucifix a manifestation of the Father's compassion in that He sent His "only" son to die for you. Don't fall for that sleight of hand! Consider our Earthfolk insight that the Crucified Christ's body vanquishes the Mother, the female, the feminine, once and for all, as the Christ body becomes the birthing body, in imitation of Adam. _Do you still hold that the male body is the birthing body?_ If not, then it is time to jettison all images which cause mis-direction and confusion. (See, Section 2—The Religious Big Story under "Seeks to Annihilate the Goddess and the Feminine.")

The "Beware!" here is that you will forget that you are the godding presence. This is what the Warrior's Quest wants you to forget. _Sensual Preciousness_ is a peasant's revolution, a peasant's imagining, a peasant's way of being. Peasant is a word freighted with many negatives in the Warrior's Quester's eyes. The peasant, however, is close to the Earth. The peasant lives humbly. While the peasant was often seen by the Warrior's Quester to be a brute, a slug, and a near-human, _Sensual Preciousness_ affirms that the peasant is a godding presence. While being wary of romanticizing this image, _Sensual Preciousness_ ' "peasant" describes a way of being present, rather than a social or economic class. Such a peasant is an Earthfolk.

The "Beware!" is also a warning that you will be tempted by the Warrior's Quest not to worship your wand and Obliterated Womb. You will be tempted to forsake your body, this Earth, your preciously intimate vital zest, and to focus on "the other world of heaven" or solely upon the Lone Male father god. _Sensual Preciousness_ calls you to Intend and Attend to your presence as coupled with your Beloved. In brief, everything Sensually Precious erupts from your coupling, from within your nurturing embracing. Always remember that you make present _Sensual Preciousness_ ' Big Story through the heartfelt acts which compose your personal Story.

Until our Earthfolk imagination permeates more and more people, the Warrior's Quester's use of the scientific way of knowing will not open practical ways of vivifying the Living Earth. Again, there are scientists today whose works "leak" with mystical insights akin to _Sensual Preciousness_ , here, the reference is to the Gaia scientists. Yet, _Sensual Preciousness_ peers and sees clearly how the Warrior's Quester creates His Lone Male Big Story, over and over again, each day. How the daily media stories on film, stage and through books and poems vivify the violence and loneliness of the Warrior's Quest. We Earthfolk call you, then, to couple with your Beloved, for as you do so, so do you vivify _Sensual Preciousness_ ' Forever-Family.

We Earthfolk peer and grasp that we live forever through various times and spaces. That we are present to all sacral and secular times and spaces through Memory. As the scientific principle of the conservation of energy alludes, no presence is ever Obliterated. While entropy properly reveals the face of decline and decay, it is but one coordinated energy of the Mobius cycling of Living and Dying. Earthfolk know that our imagining can create many worlds—even the Warrior's Quest world!—for the cauldron of imagination is both infinite and infinitesimal.

We Earthfolk ritualize through our bodies, that is, our bodywandering. For the Warrior's Quest the body is also a ritualizing entity, but the Warrior's Quester focuses solely upon the slaughter and sacrifice of the body to evoke its redemptive bloodshed. _Sensual Preciousness_ ritualizes through the coupling of the wand and the Obliterated Womb. While there are innumerable ways in which _Sensual Preciousness_ couples can couple, at this historic moment of the dominance of the Warrior's Quest mythos, coupling must be grounded in the nurturing embrace. For it is from within the nurturing embrace that the healing and wholing of our Living Mother and Father Earth is manifest.

The **nurturing embrace** is symbolized by an **ancient symbol** , that of the _Ouroboros_ , which is the snake-swallowing-its-tail. This symbol signifies eternity or what we Earthfolk call Forever. When coupled in nurturing embrace, the Beloveds are present each to the other as immortals. For the Warrior's Quester, slaughter is his nurturing act. His slaughter on many planes: physical, mental, spiritual, economic, etc., makes present his Forever, that of Endless War. This endless ritual murdering of the Innocents vivifies and vitalizes the Warrior's Quest. You counter all this Warrior's Quest madness when you couple in nurturing embrace with your Beloved.

The Abrahamic Lone Male Warrior's Quest Big Story might be ended by his own hand through nuclear self-annihilation. The Mushroom Cloud may indeed rise to mark the end of humanity. Starship Earth may be vaporized by this nuclear explosion. We Earthfolk say, Yes, that might happen, but what we know is that the Warrior's Quest will End as you couple with your Beloved. More, that truly it will only End through your nurturing embrace as Beloveds as you release your vital zest into the Mind-Surge and make present the precious Heart which beats for the Living Earth.

## Chapter 60: Ritual Elements

_Sensual Preciousness_ is imagining the **creation-of-all-that-is through the nurturing embrace of Him and Her manifest through the Forever-Family**. This imagining is the prime _Sensual Preciousness_ vision and it has a range of heartfelt actions which are as broad and deep as individuals can compose. Through ritual, as the Abrahamics do through their daily ritual of bloodshed, for example, through the Catholic Holy Mass, the world as Earthfolk imagine it is made real. The only way to peer and move beyond the dreadful fear made manifest through the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth is through the ritual of Beloveds embracing. It is through the rituals that all which Earthfolk Intend is Attended.

To many, our Earthfolk assertion of the importance of ritual may be a substantial barrier to experiencing our Earthfolk vision. In the Warrior's Quest neither the individual nor the couple are ritual elements. But for Earthfolk, the person of each Other, as one invites the Other within a nurturing embrace, is the primary ritual element of every ritual. Your body is your Beloved's ritual instrument of intimacy. All other rituals are derived from this foundational ritual of embracing Beloveds.

_Sensual Preciousness_ ' rituals, then, **start** with you and **your imagining power**. For your power creates the world and links Forever with your Now through intimate embracing achieved through sensual immersion. All _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals reference this primal imagining and draw upon the reality created, which is the immortality of the Beloveds. When you imagine your Beloved within the nurturing embrace you live each day as Forever-Family, as brother and sister, father and mother with all Earthfolk.

For your _Sensual Preciousness_ imagining, _nothing is forbidden_. This is said with respectful fear of the Warrior's Quester's malevolence. Clearly, nothing from the Warrior's Quest imagination is useful for _Sensual Preciousness_. So, it is not so much that _Sensual Preciousness_ forbids but that it has no use for acts of degradation, enslavement, abuse, and others that make present the obliterating power of the Lone Male. What is intended here is to free you up to explore your imagining, and to creatively use any type of prop you might need.

Rituals are _playful performances_. As stated before, the preciously erotic act of Beloveds playing together moves them away from the primal act of _Genesis_ which is focused on domination. Playfulness can take you into almost any situation: humorous, concerned, excited, desert calm, etc. Your only guideline is that you discuss the ritual with your Beloved, and then mutually agree on how the performance proceeds.

When you Attend to your Beloved as you work on creating rituals, open yourself to be played with. Playfulness requires an intentional move away from the "I'm in control of everything" trait of the Warrior's Quest. For some this will take years. Possibly a whole marrying life. Remember, a ritual does not have to be elaborate. It does not have to be complex. It does not have to be a "star performance." Rather, it might entail simply the repetitive act of sitting across from each other and looking. Looking until you peer and so recognize one another. It might just be a foolish moment of giddy exuberance, Hi!—indeed, although this might be the one and only ritual of your life, it may suffice to unleash the spiritual intimate and erotic vital zest of the Beloveds which the Lone Male has sought to forget.

This said, no ritual need be permanent. Every day and every embrace can be filled with novelty and random acts of innovative ritualizing. But for most a few key rituals will be developed over time. You might find it useful to keep a journal or notebook. Jot down the rituals or aspects of a ritual which worked. In this light, you'll produce a _Sensual Preciousness_ recipe book in which you and your Beloved are the ingredients and the spice of your imaginings.

## Chapter 61: Addressing

Addressing is a ritual which opens the **four directions** of the Earth: North, South, East and West. It is a way of orienting yourself and your Beloved so that each of you becomes the Earth. You draw into yourself the imaginings and powers from around the world. Addressing is a bit like logging-on to the Web. It is a ritual which can be used at any time but most especially at morning, noon and night. It can be performed alone, in expectation of your Beloved, or together.

**Facing East**. Stretch your body. Image the sun in its power of rising, cresting or waning. Breathe deeply, inhaling its power. Let it fill you and stimulate your fire. Let it blow firestorm into your morning and race up your spine to whack your cobwebs and shake out the shadowy dusts of dreaming. Praise all who share this sun power. Praise the common brain of Mind-Surge. Praise your own searching intellect. Praise the awareness which fills all eyes with the light your are beholding.

Remember those for whom this light is their first ever, of new birth, and feel your flesh stretch through the presence of their new infant life. Remember them and receive their smiles. Remember your first moment of Flash! For those at their mid-day, sometimes too busy to even raise their heads to notice the sun, silently call all around to halt and to gaze with you. Feel them in your body, that vigorous work-a-day body. Ready yourself to take on all challenges. To burst into strength of purpose and intent. Then stretch to feel the aches, those limits of your bones and muscles. Touch your toes and give praise to all who are bent, never to stand upright again. Then right-up and bend backwards and let the sun settle or float by or drain.

**Turn to the South**. Here, remember all around the Earth who are lying down as you rise up. Or who are sleeping as you lunch. Or who are squirming near the shore of wakefulness as you settle into twilight. These are all Forever-Family. Feel them in yourself as proper to the moment. Stretch aside your legs and bend from your waist so that you touch the ground (or so visualize). Image yourself as the Living Earth nestling all. And as Parent leading each one by the hand. Rejoice that all are part of the cycle and the flow. That each, as you are, is both seed and flower.

Accept the presence of the Warrior's Quest. Sense the breathing of the Lone Male. Be prepared for the snare and the net, for you are His prey. Laugh as you remember your own Warrior's Quest silliness in having forgotten that your body belongs to your Beloved. Laugh that you once had no Warrior's Quest memory of the Forever-Family. Touch your southern self, those ritual elements of coupling. Banish the Warrior's Quest as you feel the presence of your Beloved. Feel yourself couple as Beloveds.

**Turn to the West**. Here, all come to moments of joy. Be it returning home at a day's end or waking to embrace at first sight. Possibly, meeting to share a moment of noonday repast. Stretch your arms out wide. Lift up your head. Let the play of light wash over your face. For those who are starting the day, praise all as fellow creators of the day. For those at mid-day pause, share the laughter of the day's many friendships. For those at day's end, welcome all you remember into moonrise memory. Open to all that is painful and stubborn, delightful and amusing, mundane and ecstatic. Review the day if it is ending, and prepare your body, mind and heart to lay down with your Beloved and dream.

**Turn to the North.** Prance in place. Legs dancing on the doorstep of the day. Or walking eagerly to meet a friend or Beloved for lunch. Or in celebration of this being your last activity as you step towards a deserved rest. Here, turn a circle to the left, for all in the Forever-Family who live where water flows counter-clockwise. Do likewise to the right for all who live in the clock-wise swirl. Improvise! Spin around. Moan and groan. Shake your body so that the rocks and pebbles which have settled in unhappy places are moved and your fire flows freely.

All this Addressing is done while holding the image of the Forever-Family as surrounding you. Of your Sensually Precious Parents and all who are brother and sister. Address them and they become you. Address yourself to become them. Address and so make present the Earthfolk.

## Chapter 62: Presence

Presence is the Beloveds sensually immersed in each other as precious. _Presence describes that moment when the Womb is no longer Obliterated_. It is the realization of the godding embrace. Your presence is as you are present to the Other and the Other is present to you through a _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual wherein you are newborn as Beloved.

Presence evokes the Memory of Forever-Family. It is a moment of being in the Now with all Memory, which Memory is also anticipation of the Future. When you behold your Beloved you open to her/his Memory. You open to immersing your presence with his/her presence and so realize the immortality which is Forever-Family.

Remembering means as much the putting back together of members which have been rent asunder as it does refer to mental recall. In the Biblical mythos, the dismembering of Her body is what is forgotten and not recalled. So, the ritual of Presence requires the presence of the Abrahamic tradition. For this, use the "Good Book" of the Bible.

**Here is a ritual of Presence**. The Bible or any of its Abrahamic derivatives will suffice. Respect this Book. It is in your hands but its weight is the weight of Memory. Before the printed text, this Word existed. It existed in the thoughts and dreams of millions before it manifested itself in words and paper. This is said so that you do not deceive yourself and think that the Book, by itself, contains and manifests this tradition. But since this Book is everywhere, in order to define _Sensual Preciousness_ space and time, you must ritually move away from it.

Place the Book on the ground. Walk with your Beloved to cast an embracing circle around it. Open to a particular passage which you would like to move beyond and let it lay. Take a candle, light it and pass it across the pages, reaching back and forth from him to her. Respect that this Book is source for the Warrior's Quest Shade Mother and Father. Your simple act of passing the light from him to her, from Other to Beloved, breaks this darkness. Once this has been done, you may read from the Book and say, "I remember more than this Book reveals. I remember what it obscures, hides and suppresses. I remember you my Beloved. I remember our Parent Mother Goddess within you. And I remember Her within me. I remember our Parent Father God within you. And I remember Him within me. I remember us embracing as Forever-Family." Do this as often and for as long as you want.

Then, if you are at this level of intimacy with your Beloved, undress and sit down as close as possible within the circle you have imagined or marked. Place the Book upon your laps and peer at each other. Peer and touch each other's wand and womb. Say, "I remember my godding power. I remember our godding embrace." Place the Book aside.

"You are my sensually precious word."

"You are my sensually precious word."

In unison, "We are the Living Earth's Book, together, never-written, never-ending."

Then, settle within a nurturing embrace.

It is good to find each other in all of a Beloved's ways. Approach and attend your bodies as the parchment of all Memory and all time. Probe and play. Stroke and excite. Couple and shoot fire. But practice the quiet times between. Those times through which you must also be present, each to the other. Those steely times when the fire recedes and the chill of the room blankets you. Be steady and attend, and so peer. For you must write more than the Abrahamic Book lets you forget. You must write in your _Sensual Preciousness_ Book of the more which you are as Beloveds. Write more of your sensually precious imaginings, of your explorations of one another. How you dance for each other, and through the dance set the heart of all humankind racing. How you open every part of yourself so that the unknown mystery of you unfolds and unfolds and unfolds, ever unfolding. Remember, that intimacy expressed through sexual coupling is not just to effect the egoism of two of the Warrior's Quest mutual masturbation act but it is the experience of two-as-one creating and imagining the world as filled with mutual Belovedness. It is you as a bi-folded, Mobius playful nurturing embrace. Imagine everything! Imagine everyone!

The _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual of Presence addresses rituals of sacred sexuality because that is what the Abrahamic Book claims it, itself, addresses, but it does so, as we Earthfolk interpret, by claiming that there is no _Sensual Preciousness_ and no rituals of sacred sexuality. The sexually abusive _Sensual Preciousness_ of the Warrior's Quest is powerful and it needs to be powerfully Addressed. Consequently, in this light, for Earthfolk, the Abrahamic Book is always a central ritual item in any sacred sexuality ritual.

To manifest Presence you will find that you _must be_ playful. For many it is erotically helpful to don the masks and cosmetics of the theater. Do so without a moment's hesitation! For what you can be sure of—what the Abrahamic Book has so successfully revealed by suppressing erotic playfulness—is that males have not peered and seen females as Beloved, not even once during several millennia! So, stimulate your imagination with masks and paints, with jewelry and perfumes, with robes and feathers, with whatever sensually stimulating elements evoke your many selves. Be your serious self. Unlatch your silly and buffoonish self. Let fly those corny jokes! However you do it, set the occasion for you to slip on a banana peel and immerse yourself within the sensually erotic pool of your Beloved. Imagine that!

## Chapter 63: Stirring

One personal Earthfolk memory of the Warrior's Quest's dark power is, "We lay together like kindling, but with cold spark. Dulled out and blacked-out and night-draped bodies, as if Eros did not play with the masks of twilight and transform us into a thousand faced dreamer. What has the Warrior wrought? For it wasn't night time which laid Adam down. Nor was it the blanket of stars which was pulled up over her fresh body. No, it was just all emptiness. And of course She's been called empty-headed ever since."

So, stir. Bring your **bodies close**. Just close enough, not touching. Feel the magnetism draw. Feel the first wash of warmth from your Beloved. Drop the world's clothes. And press. Ever so gently. And let your desire stir.

Rustle up a sense. Just one. Take your time. Breathing is always easy. Listen for your Beloved's breath. Listen for your own. Come to **breathe together**. Let your common breath just rise. Let it entwine, twist and curl like smoke and draw you together in a bemusing moment.

**Touch**. A nose. A finger, tip to tip. Fingers settling from their night flight onto the ledge of your Beloved's consciousness. Fingers which touch and tingle and start to slowly wash over your Beloved's still sleepy skin. Skin which is never-ending. Round and round, up and down, so you can go and as you go salute the Bodywanderer. Awaken yourself as you awaken your Beloved.

Touch to **kiss**. Gently. Upon the brow. Upon the eyelids. To a lip. Then wherever the flight takes you. Swoop down and kiss around the swirl of yearning flesh. And remember Her. Pause and respect her southern mouth. Halt there, peer and listen in silence. Does the Womb's fire crackle? Is the morning hearth stirred? If so, draw its heat and splash it across your Beloved's thighs and down her calves and twine around her ankles. Draw it all up and stand before her and find those eyes.

See together. Look at the phantasm you each are. Laugh as you **behold one another** as stumblers from the dreaming pit. Now peer. Look not at but beyond. Work the erotic heat as you both touch and gently kiss. This is the stirring journey.

When the moment opens, Attend through a **nurturing embrace**.

**Draw your Space**. Set your time. A blanket. A walking of the perimeter. However it is done, respect your individualities and privacies. Gather this time, this space and Intend Comforting.

Beloveds, there is the spark which ignites. If it takes hold, fling off the flesh on fire and merge spine to spine, mouth to mouth, wand to womb and enfold each other in a nurturing embrace. This the awakening fire, to purge time's dross. It is fire that melts images so that they can be kneaded into a bread for sharing. It is not so much a moment for words as it is a moment of gesture, of posture and position. The Beloveds receive one another. Penetrate as to link, to pivot the time into the Forever. The fire of presence is what you want to stir and share. Let your wand be the totem which links the Earth to the sky. Let your womb be the cave which leads to the center of the Earth. Be gentle. Be fierce. For you are beach and ocean slap. Awake!

At that time when you prepare for the dream, so it again is time to stir. Yet, you come all frenetically stirred up. You tote a body-bagful of images of yourself thrown by those who imagined you throughout the day. You bring the looks and gazes, desires and fears, smells and lusts, the endless sensations of a day among the many. It is time to un-stir.

**Take off** , and as you do Address each aspect of garment. A shirt. A blouse. A shoe. Let it spark your imagination. How have you been formed today? How have you been beset by the Warrior's Quest Shade dream? Been managed by the Lone Male who stalked your imagination all day with seductions of lust and violence? For you are not who you were this morning. When the moment opens, Address together.

**Draw your space and set your time**. Stones at the edge. Flowers to work exorcism. Water to dip into and cleanse your skin, sprinkling one another. For you have come from the entanglement of the workday. Dip your fingers and sprinkle your Beloved. Intend the power of water— its spreading power, seeping power, its unstoppable power. Watch your Beloved crack and split open like dry rocks in the desert. Then light the candle. Focus upon each. Both drawing each other through the flame. Waft the heat and the spiraling smoke onto each other. Intend to melt. Warm the flesh and let the edges loosen. For it is time to exchange bodies. She to him. He to her. Play with this. Tell your Beloved about himself as you become him. Tell your Beloved about herself as you become her. Play with the masks. Surprise and stimulate. Play and laugh. Play and tear.

**Stir up your voice**. Take time to discover your sound. Each one at rest lets the air which has drawn them like a rope across the river now draw from within you what this day has made. Exhale your sound. Pause. Inhale it. Pause. Listen to your Beloved's sound. Listen to your shared silences. Let the vibrations shiver across your bodies. Let your melding sounds draw you both together, like working the pulley to raise the bucket in the well.

Now, **embrace**. Lock with arms and legs, hands and feet. Draw close by, either through lying down or sitting on one's lap. Attend to the womb. Listen with your fingers. Hear her inner thoughts. Stroke her clitoris and watch the smoke steam from her eyes! Understand that this is her coupling mouth. Hear the ageless voices as they cheer you on. Hear their song. Siren song. Prepare yourself. For you are her stirrer as she is yours. Stir her furnace. Be stirred. Cast your desire like dry twigs, blowing to raise Beloved heat. Temper your flesh within one another's alluring eyes. Set free fingers which roam around her cave, fingers which sprint out to splash in her delta, fingers which play your reed like a flute. _Ah, every part of your Beloved's body is a ritual element of intimacy!_

**Kiss** each upon your southern wings. Lick her, drawing her fecundity into your soul. Spread your hands across her body and wipe her lusts all over your hands and wring out the cries of her heart. She hears you. And Attends to your wand, as she catches it spiking from your forehead! There it is your third eye. It is from there you have not seen her for ages. She places her hand upon your forehead and pierces your astral eye with her fingers of promise. Drawing from you that Memory of Her. She sees you as Adam seeing Her. She peers at all which has been forgotten, Obliterated by the Lone Male. Boldly, courageously she remembers and reclaims that of you which is of Her and is her own. She and you nurturingly embrace the sacral totem of her clitoris which is the Tree of Life. And from within you she draws forth the Serpent's insight, and as such you both are stirred into intimacy.

For all of you is wand, and she wants all of you. A stone she sucks. One you gave her. She offers it to you on her tongue. You place it in her belly-button. She is now anchored. She rises and you recline. You are now the river and she the owl. Wise and watching you flow. Watching you flow into your dream. She alights upon your wand as if perching. She with wings now hands calls for you, calls not as for the Warrior's Quester but as for the Magician. For she knows the many magic spells you have cast upon her, and she knows that as Magician your wand is wondrously Intending and not a murderous sword or bombastic gun.

_Beloveds revere and worship the wand. Beloveds revere and worship the womb_. This the preparation for dreaming. To grapple and lock and hinge and enfold each other in a nurturing embrace so that everything physical and emotional and mental and astral has been stirred. Now, with the cauldron at peak pitch, at its boil, at its gurgling near the edge, only at this moment beyond the orgasmic wake-up of flesh and heart, at this moment so are you stirred and ready to sleep and so to play the Dream and transform the Lone Male's Warrior's Quest presence of Shade god and goddess into Forever-Family.

## Chapter 64: Crowning

For the Abrahamic Warrior's Quester the ultimate crown is the **Crown of Thorns**. That crown which sheds blood. That gives the right to shed blood. All golden crowns laid upon the heads of Kings down through the warrior ages are such crowns of blood-shedding.

It is not a full explanation of this Crown of Thorns to perceive that it is a twisted reference to Her bloodshed. Her moony issue which expresses the fecundity of all. For all are born through Her shedding of blood. But Hers is blood shed not for our murder as for our borning. Where the Warrior's Quester wears His Crown of Thorns to manifest redemptive pain, which we Earthfolk view as the pain of sexual abuse, _Sensual Preciousness_ wears the crown of wand and womb to manifest the joy of living comfortably at-home on Earth.

_Crowning_ is a ritual where the body of your Beloved is **reverenced and worshipped at the points of wand and womb**. As a practice the Beloveds press their faces and the crowns of their heads into each other's cradle. Your Beloved is your crown. Wear her! Wear him!

Crown yourself with his sensually precious fire. Place your head between his hips and imagine him as alive upon your flesh as clitoris. He places his head upon your womb and draws forth your penile presence and potency. Transform him into your clitoris, transform her into your cock, for that is from where Beloveds undock in dream.

As she lays prone, approach her with Intention and Attend to her many mouths and tongues. Approach her Attending to her manifest preciously erotic powers, which are fearsome and awesome and fascinating. The seductive power of her verbal mouth which calls your name and which name ties siren ropes around your heart. She tugs and you move forward. Closer. And as you move Attend to her non-verbal mouth which calls for your tongue. Which speaks to you of union and pleasure and the consummation of your desires. But hold a moment in fear! For her southern goddess seeks to devour you! ... Be strong. Courageous. Lay down between her legs. Slowly inch your head and so dock upon her womb. Pause and be still. Listen with astral ears to her story. That of her abandonment by Him—of Her Obliteration. But pay attention, so that you are not seduced, sucked in and spit out! For all that you have ever left here before has been this Memory of Her as Rib. All only the Memory of jerking off. Be strong. Persevere.

Place your hands alongside her buttocks. Press your face upon her womb. Whisper to her with your heart. Dance with her with your tongue. Praise her as the food of life, as the sustainer, for from her comes the power to reproduce and manifest new life. Speak with her, and impress upon her with your Attending that you worship Her presence. Reach and rest hands upon her breasts. Imagine yourself as within her. Curled up in fetal float. Awash within her. And then unfurl and stretch your body at match to hers. Here, now you are her spine. Twined bodies. And you touch her third eye, drawing its attention to your blindness, that blindness within which only her Beloved eyes heal. Sense yourself as she feels your presence, as at prayer with her.

When she comes to you know that you have never been crowned as wand. No, you have been armed, primed, had your fuse lighted, gotten her to turn your crank but not crowned. You have never been properly worshipped as wand. So, great courage must be yours to face the fears. For all that Memory holds for you is His slicing of Adam's wand to draw the blood with which He created Eve. This is Memory only of the fear of Her as wand robber, ball buster, as the Shade temptress who will get you to shoot your wad so that, in your weakness, you will do whatever she says. But this need not be so.

Lay your hands aside his buttocks. Look at his wand. Stare at it. Work to peer through and beyond it. But recognize it for the dream it manifests. For sure, as you approach, his wand salutes. (If not, rouse him from his lair!) And as his wand rises, imagine him as root. As root growing into shoot and from shoot into tree and from tree into that which links the Earth and the Sky. For the wand is such for you, as it is for him.

Sprinkle some water on his wand. Watch it rise and fall. Laugh at it. Smile. For it is certainly blind when unconnected to you. Reach out from within all the Memories of the presence of Her and press his wand between your palms. Rub him. Arouse him. Draw the fire from his rocky base up to the tip of this Sensually Precious tongue. For his wand is a godding tongue. It seeks to send out its message, a message carried by a thousand seminal couriers, each and everyone with a message to you: I love you! I worship you! Come to me! Embrace me! ... Ah, his passion is as endless as the Warrior's Quester's Endless War.

Hold him and kiss him and stroke him, but be careful to guide him, for his Warrior's Quest instincts are ever at terrorist edge. Understand and image that this wand must enter your cave to paint its message on your walls. But fear him! For this message can transform you. It has a parenting aspect which can flip your body inside out, impregnate you, and unearth the child resting within the recess of your cave.

Point him to your astral eye and imagine as he has imagined you when worshipping your womb. For his wand must penetrate on the astral plane and link with your spine so that the erotic river flows, round and round, cycling from eye to eye, from wand to womb, over and around and under and through your bodies. As such are you in a preciously nurturing embrace.

Both now be present within the nurturing embrace as twin crowned. Wearing one another. Fully wand and fully womb. Worshipable. Kingly and Queenly. Empowered. Sensually Precious. _Releasing vital zest through your sacred sexuality_.

## Chapter 65: The Ouroboric Nurturing Embrace

Warrior's Quest rituals are all _genitally shrunk_. The Warrior's Quest is to ritualize so as to steal, plunder, rape and pillage on the emotional and spiritual levels. The Warrior's Quester believes in and advocates the "War of the Sexes!" The Warrior's Quester's spiritually erotic ritual moment is strictly focused upon the singular act and moment of "getting off." His exclamation is, "I shot my wad!"

_Sensual Preciousness_ images the **body as the cosmos**. Each part of the body is imaginatively linked with the fullness of the cosmos. This imagining validates a legendary spiritual saying, "As above, so below." What imagines and links the Earth with the cosmos is your preciously erotic presence. Beloveds are Moon and Sun, each for the other. All that exists within the universe lives within your act of sensual intimacy. When you bodywander and stimulate muscles and organs, you connect your Beloved to the cosmos. Realize that we Earthfolk mean this literally. All that is cosmic is a manifestation of you and your Beloved's _Sensual Preciousness_. When Warrior's Questers rocketed into Outer Space they peered and saw it as emptiness, as _Genesis_ ' dark void. They "tripped out" but still felt only dreadful and terrifying fear. As we Earthfolk sensed when we first gazed upon Starship Earth, what is present when you peer into outer space is the cosmos as at-home. It, as is Earth, is alive.

_Sensual Preciousness_ **peers and hears how the body speaks**. _Sensual Preciousness_ remembers that your skin is your body's major organ. It is the unifying container of your spirit. It is a cauldron where sensate and non-sensate imaginings meet, collide, meld and transform. As such, it is clear that the female body speaks with a male and female organ, namely, the clitoris and the womb. But what of the male? He with only a penis for wand? Where is his female organ? The Warrior's Quester looks between his legs and is embarrassed. Given his own obsession with his genitals (an obsession Papally blessed!), he sees nothing and so he covers his embarrassment with a Lie, "I don't need Her. I can stimulate myself. I can create by myself." For him masturbation is _Sensual Preciousness_.

_Sensual Preciousness_ peers and grasps that your body is only fully present when coupled. Once coupled your body changes. All of your skin becomes your mouth. You speak to your Beloved with and through every fleshly aspect and Memory. Your whole body becomes tongue. You taste each other as you lie upon each other. Every fiber of your being reaches out and grasps your Beloved. You nibble each other. Consume and inhale. Your combining heat melts and you drip into the cauldron of your nurturing embrace.

As you so Attend you and your Beloved approach the most playful ritual. Your tongue slips into her womb and her legs laurel your head. She takes your wand into her mouth and addresses it as tongue. Your legs halo her. In so many ways can you now twist and turn, slip and slide in and out of each other until the many languages of your tongues speak. Her womb hears you. She reads the desire of your licking. She sucks you as you suck and dip into her sweet delta waters. Your wand rides with great courage into her womb cave. You are steel and overcome the righteous fears of her deep Shade memory. Like a flower sinking roots, a tree grappling further and further into the soil, so your wand is transformed by her. She invites you onto the stage, there to speak. She asks you to speak to her of Her and of Him. Your wand is in her mouth. Your mouth on her womb. So proceeds the ritual of tuning, of discovering your shared vibration, the ritual of listening with your full body and of speaking with your many tongues. This is the ouroboric nurturing embrace.

**The** _physical aspects_ **of ouroboric nurturing embracing are themselves** _symbolic_ **.** It is not necessary to be flexible, pliable and elastic to achieve the ouroboric nurturing embrace. It is not a matter of athleticism or yogic contortion. Rather, it is a matter of sensuality, not just sensation. For many Earthfolk, the ouroboric presence of themselves to their Beloved is made by simply pressing forehead to forehead and touching however and wherever else they can. It becomes an ouroboric nurturing embrace when any given sense enables two to immerse in the emotion of Belovedness as it flows, physically and/or symbolically, from wand to womb. At its most basic, it takes just the simple sense of sight for two Beloveds to be sensually linked and so make present themselves through an ouroboric nurturing embrace.

As noted, the visual symbol of _Sensual Preciousness_ ' Nurturing Embrace is that of the Ouroboros which has been imaged as a snake or a dragon biting its own tail. This is a symbol of Eternal Recurrence because the snake was considered the animal that never dies. This was concluded from the fact that it sheds its skin. In time, animal images were vanquished from religious art and the Ouroboros was translated into the Circle. In Catholic/Christian art, the Circle becomes the halo, and it appears as encircling the Cross. _Sensual Preciousness_ vivifies the Ouroboros as it imagines you and your Beloved coupled. As Beloveds, haloed.

The ouroboric nurturing embrace is catastrophically powerful. The Warrior's Quester will snicker because for Him it is but two at their masturbatory best. ("Good ole 69!") In this light, what stands for the ultimate symbol of Warrior's Quest genital sex becomes through _Sensual Preciousness_ the ultimate symbol of the Forever-Family: He and She in an ouroboric nurturing embrace. Of God and Goddess coupled. Of the male and the female in communal comforting.

Since the ouroboric nurturing embrace is so potent, it is a ritual to be adopted when you and your Beloved have bodywandered deeply, after a timely practice of the Intendings and of rituals which express your intention and playfulness.

Through the ouroboric nurturing embrace you and your Beloved will Remember what the Lone Male wants you to forget: Her coupled with Him. You will discover death in this time, in this space. You will rise from the playful bed as a new presence, drenched in ecstatic preciously erotic delight.

Through the ouroboric nurturing embrace the Warrior's Quest and its Obliterated Womb is remembered and transformed as the Forever-Family is imagined and made present.

## Chapter 66: Earth's Elements

There is a growing list of popular books that present rituals for increasing intimacy and sensuality, and are useful for developing _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals. The fact is that rituals need to be developed, and again this fact leads back to you. Your venture towards _Sensual Preciousness_ will require that you ritualize. Now, you say, How do I do that? For most people, their neighborhood professional in the "god business," that is, priests, ministers, mullahs, and monks were and are the main source of rituals. They have the ceremonial manuals, the sacred spaces, loads of candles, incense, precious water, etc.

We Earthfolk take an **alchemical** approach. This means that you need to look at yourself as an element or a swirl of elementals. However, there is no specific definition of elementals. As with most of our Earthfolk _Sensual Preciousness_ work, you will define the terms and images over-time as you manifest the fuller swirl which _Sensual Preciousness_ evokes and conjures.

_Alchemy seeks to transform dross matter into precious matter_. For some, lead into gold. It is, among many things, a collection of ways of approaching transformation and, ultimately, transubstantiation—a term which is of little meaning to most but which is somewhat happily understood as a breaking into other physical dimensions. The alchemical preparation is that of venturing, of experimenting. It is a preparation that is tremblingly aware of the manifold dimensions all about of which most often you are scarcely aware. Yet, of which your language, actions, dreams, visions, that is, all your senses are harbingers.

For some of you, the movement into ritualizing will be relatively easy. You are at home with external expression of internal thoughts, moods, as well as your skin. For others, this is a terribly difficult step.

It might be helpful to understand how you already ritualize yourself. If you have been agreeing with our Earthfolk vision, then take a step back and look at your day. What do you do when you wake in the morning? Are you silent? Do you greet your lover? Or greet the day? Walk over and open the window, take a deep breath and smile? Or do you rise like a slave? Mumbling as the daylight washes over your eyes. Trudging off to the bathroom. Ever so reluctantly turning on the shower? Drowning out thoughts with radio blather? Or amping up cable TV's Morning News?

If you live by yourself, try and go through a day with this split awareness. What is it that you eat for breakfast? How do you eat it? Sit and gulp it down? Do you approach food as just fuel? Or do you pray? Read the morning paper? Want to find a joke before you read the Op Ed pieces? How do you arrange the table, if at all? Are you grateful? Idling in neutral? Waiting for that first cup of caffeine to kick in?

Do you wait for the world to wake you up? Or do you wake up the world?

When you dress, how do you do it? What is your focus? Or how do you look to yourself? How do you look to others? Are you painting and grooming yourself to express yourself or to hide yourself? Putting on visual armor to go forth into the world of work? Or dressing so that you reveal your sexuality, thrusting your lustfulness into the moment?

If you live with another, it might be helpful to observe them as a way for you to observe yourself. Not only what they do in terms of waking, etc., but in how they respond to your presence. How do you both begin your relationship? Intentionally or accidentally? With a tacit agreement to just let the other one have their space until they are ready to leave, then a kiss and a hug in silent departure? Or do you Attend and/or Intend?

Remember that _everyday work in the Abrahamic tradition is_ _cursed_. Certainly, you can begin to observe how you prepare and launch your work relationships. How you craft them. Some are personal. Others quite formal. Are you at work as if inside a spaceship? Just slipping in and out of the hours, being an alien observer? You've certainly observed how others form their relationships with you. You know those who will sit down with a cup of morning coffee and chat. Those who are fun to lunch with. Others with whom you are always on your guard because they are distant and "professional to the nines."

For many, a start with observing the workplace and its rituals is the easiest. Just consider, everyone has eight hours to share, for five days—taking the average corporate work week. How does it all come together on the personal and symbolic level? What happens when the company reaches for the mystical? Meaning, when they get everyone together for inspiration and motivation? Where they talk about being "family" and attempt to get you to "live for work" not "work to live"?

You might be saying that this is all much ado about nothing. That it is an observation of mundane, boring, trite and trivial matters. But is it?

Given that many Earthfolk have a **Roman Catholic background** , we often talk about the _Daily Mass_. It is a ritual formed over centuries. What is important is that every step—every —is one of Intending and Attending. When the priest dresses, each piece of clothing is accompanied by a ritual invocation, prayer, dedication or blessing. The movement towards the altar is a procession. What types of candles are lit and how many is pre-set by official ceremonial rules. Every motion on the altar of all the participants is spelled out. There is no improvisation.

_The Daily Mass itself is about how humans sense._ The five senses are mingled with how one is seen, and how one is looked upon, either as priest and/or penitent. Smell: incense, flowers. Touch: ritual blessings; hands upon the head; how the host is held, how it is placed upon the tongue or into the hands of the recipient. Speech: what is said. How what is said is enhanced by other sounds: bells, songs; enhanced by the colors of the feast-day which are strictly arranged and set down. How one is to move. Steps and bows and kneeling, of both priest and attendees. Then it is all about simple fare, about eating. The taking of a meal. Of simple bread and wine. Peasant fare. Raised up to transubstantiate all about into a new Body, a new Flesh, to wit, a new Skin.

The Daily Mass, then, takes seriously the mundane, trite and trivial. It takes seriously the five senses because it respects the linkage of literal, symbolic and mystical. It respects the numinosity behind just about everything and everyone. The priest, after all, is supposed to be you. Your representative before God, so it is you praying the Mass.

Although it requires a longer discussion and presentation, there are also parallels in the rituals of Scientism. If you adopt a "scientific" approach in your workplace or are a scientist, step back and note that the five senses are valued but only if they can be mechanized. You work in a world where machine reportage is reverenced in that it is more trusted than individual sensing. We Earthfolk take this to be Scientism's core emotional practice, that is, a ritual of "detached observation." It is where the approach to Others is to define them as objects to be probed, examined and experimented upon.

**Scientism's ritual of probing** defines its range of heartfelt acts which are basically amoral because when it comes to probing the maxim is, "If you can, you should." This is a version of Might Makes Right. If you can probe, then you should, whether this be on the micro or macroscopic levels. The working assumption, which we Earthfolk judge to be a sacred Revelation at the base of scientific inquiry, is that the intellect (properly capitalized as Intellect) should not and must not be restrained.

The Scientism approach to you as an individual is that you have no right to claim yourself, your skin as a boundary, as a special "I." Rather, you can be probed once you are redefined as patient or subject or client. Yes, there is some resistance to this probing method in some scientific quarters, but it is a faint voice. The much touted "peer review" procedure within the overall scientific profession is more a post-crisis authority than one which sets guidelines for heartfelt scientific acts. Scientism's rituals do not respect the rights of the individual because everyone and everything is reduced and simplified as a "field of energy" and not as a nexus of precious intimacy or a presence of Preciousness.

In this light, we Earthfolk see _your world as ritually structured_. What you are Invited to do is to reflect upon how your current rituals provide both positive and negative boundaries to your core heartfelt acts, especially as they affect your Intending and Attending to Others. This is not an easy exercise because, in most cases, it will bring you face to face with your own Shadow, as you come to see your own vision and heartfelt actions as reflections of the dominant Warrior's Quest Shadow.

We Earthfolk invite you to see _your body as a ritual instrument of intimacy_. If you can emotionally "get there" and become comfortable with your body as a ritual instrument of intimacy then you will also begin to grasp why Earthfolk describe your body and that of your Beloved as Earth Elements.

Earthfolk honor your skin as a sensually precious space. All within you, all aspects of your being, all your senses, are elementals which are the stuff of _Sensual Preciousness_ rituals.

## Chapter 67: Water

You need water to exist. You are compositionally "carbon based bags of water." But more, you are water for others. Your presence either slacks their thirst or drives them to drink—a bit of humor, there.

With your lover, as you seek to become Beloveds, consider how you are water each for the other. How do you, presently, slack the other's thirst? And thirst for what? What is it that your lover drinks when they drink you? When they take the cup of your body and drink?

Water seeks its own level. This is true on all three levels: literal, symbolic and mystical. What are those levels for you and your Beloved?

Practice being water. This is a humbling exercise. For you are satisfying your lover at whatever level he/she wants. To your lover you are as present as thirst. Meaning, you give yourself totally to him/her. Practice being there—without question, without hesitation. When they ask, you drop what you are doing—instantly!—and make yourself totally present to him/her.

Crazy? Too risky?

Yes, you can be greedy as a lover. Evil. Abusive. There is not a doubt that you can drink too much. Of lemonade or wine. You can get a belly-ache or stinking drunk. There is a risk.

But share your water. _Grok_ —as some say. Sit in silence with your Beloved and explore for water.

What is it that you thirst for? Really, really work on that together. What is the water with which your Beloved seeks to slake her/his thirst?

Be not surprised to find that you thirst for the simplest of drops.

There is the wetness of your Beloved. For most, intimate sexual embrace engenders steam. The steaming of desire in kisses, in licking, in the explosion of fluids... the dripping onto the other, the sweat of yourself offered to the other.

Sweating together. Not a delight to some. But for others a way to be water in the most elemental moment. To cherish that you wring one another out! That you cause your Beloved to leak, to trickle, to flood. Be bold, and mingle with this common wetness that of your preciousness. Share, as is said, your bodily fluids—become water.

## Chapter 68: Earth

"Dust thou art..." This is presented as a chilling reminder of the quickly fading bloom of the human Rose which you are. Let's turn that Biblical boo-hoo around.

Indeed, you are dust. Dirt. Your body eats the Earth, and you deposit back. You are this ongoing process. In and out. Spiraling. Mobius.

This relentless cycle can be, however, a celebration. Of our fundamental grittiness. Yes, you are the Earth. Swirls and whirls of vitally zestful dust!

What the Beloved sees is the Earth being transformed through his/her Beloved. Aging—that feared demon of the Biblical mythos: most evident as Secular "youth culture"—is celebrated by Beloveds. Every day you are bombarded with commercials touting products and processes which can keep you young: "hide your wrinkles" and mask all signs of aging. This is a denial of yourself as Earth. It is a denial of preciousness and Belovedness.

**What is the earthiness of your Beloved?** Her weight? His hairiness? The thickness of an eyebrow. The twist and bend of lips. The odd protuberance of an ear, a nose. The oddity of feet and the mangled toes. All that of your Beloved which is the intricacy of how they have been formed?

Over-time your earthiness calls you to insights about your Beloved. You see time written on them. The mottled hand. The bags under his/her eyes. The revenge of gravity. The halting step. This is yourself being formed and reformed by Earth, itself. It is you in every season.

Why do we only want to live in early Spring?

Only the Beloved knows the weight of his/her Beloved. Only you can feel and hold the eternal weight of your Beloved. In your hands cup the thigh, tend to the toes, stroke down the hilly landscape of body: chests, belly, legs, buttock... it is given to the Beloved to be Earth for the other. It is for the Beloved to celebrate the Earth of the Other.

Consider that it is yourself as Earth that you most prevent your Beloved from knowing and experiencing. In Warrior's Quest society people want to hide their earthiness. They are ashamed of being Dust—so is it revealed to them in _Genesis_.

It takes a lifetime to truly be Earth for your Beloved. To share the seasons. To open yourself to be explored.

How have you presented your earthiness to your Beloved? How have you received?

Rituals, here, are all about the seasons. Each calendar year provides us with a ritual key. So many let the years just roll-by. But there is winter, spring, summer and fall to each year. Is this not also the seasons of your intimate earthiness? Your interior cycle? The play of your intimacy as Beloveds?

_Do you know your Beloved as winter?_ Even if only eighteen—are you observing and cherishing the wintering? It is there.

## Chapter 69: Fire

Fiery breath. Fiery breathing. Our breathing is at its base a sensually precious erotic flame. Issuing forth from our hearth: our heart.

How do you breathe the world? As you prepare to meet even yourself as morning awakens? What do you say? Do you heave a sigh? Smile and snort? Jump up and down and bellow your lungs in some callisthenic exercise? You've been breathing dreamily, now you are awakening. Notice how you breathe.

For your breathing you take to the forge. Words come. What are your words? Of first greeting? Of looking at your own self in the mirror? Of meeting your lover? Your children? When you enter the work place, how does your breathing express you?

You know the breathing of tenseness. Of anxiety. Fear. Of being late. Of disappointing someone. Holding your breath!... What is the breath of your "just being me"? Of moving through the day? Your morning, afternoon and evening vocabulary? What changes, if anything, when you come home or meet your Beloved? "Whenever I see you, you take my breath away!" (Aw, shucks!)

Once your work on this, _how does your Beloved breathe?_ How do you know your Beloved through his/her breathing? How do they breathe through all the phases of the day? When you come together, what makes for harmony or discord? What makes your relationship windy, a storm, a tornado? How and when does your communal breathing roar, either into a maelstrom of hating breaths or into the common pleasuring of a cool breeze at a sizzling summer day's end?

This windy fire is also musical. There is a sound to each person. When lying next to your Beloved share this sound. Raspy. Sighful. Titters. So many. As you settle in, snuggle.

Spoon. Embrace. What is the breath of your kiss? How is the temperature of this heart air raised? So that you both begin to conflagrate?

As sound, so sing. Breathing together. To find that breath of the Beloved. Yourselves as a new presence, a fuller body. Not always a lilting tune or even in tune! But truly your song as Beloveds. Do you and your Beloved have a special song? Do you desire to compose one? Do you desire to be sung? If so, have you ever shared that with your lover?

Wash your Beloved with your fiery breath. Breathe upon every aspect of his/her fleshly manifestation. Breathe upon her toes! What is your breath as you so breathe? What presence of you comes through this action? A tingling laughter? An irritable humbling? Move up and down and across. You know when you blow fire across her breasts or his cock, when you playfully catch the fire in her eyes or he hears the heavy breathing of your rumbling orgasm, well, you both know that fire. But often that is more like a hay-fire that flares up in a brilliant burst but just as quickly disappears into a mist of ash. Do that but also go slowly. Breathe slowly, like blowing embers. Be warmed, each by the other.

What are the lesser fires, the mysteries revealed by a breath upon the back, the tip of fingers, the kneecap? There is the promise of the swirl—a word which gulps its own breath!—of a magical, mystifying, befogging breath that will engulf you both. This is what you are working towards. Why you assemble these breaths of every aspect, assemble and play them out in ritual, such that the fire roars up and frightens you, creating a numinous moment, an elemental moment. It is a time of facing a fundamental essence of your own interiority and intimacy. Here the two of you are like logs ablaze, skin jumpy with the itchy desire to burst out of your own skin and jump all over your Beloved like flitting, splattering, popping and fizzing embers! Crackle! and Pop!

When you say, "You take my breath away!"—well, isn't it that you have just received a different breath? Or that around your Beloved you are aware that you are breathing differently? That you are both a different kind of fire when together. "Fire in the hole!" has a meaning you can steal here. Yes, it is a play on words as you go from holey to holy to wholly.

_Dancing_ is a special fire. You know those special moments when you are in the arms of your Beloved. Whether you are tripping over each other's feet or cavorting like gazelles what you feel is that special space called togetherness. You are dancing, which is an exertion, which is a way of swirling together. You know that you dance in rhythm to how you can breathe. When younger, you could dance all not, never get out of breath. Your breathing is expressing part of you as you dance. It is dancing when you are together "in rhythm" which is as you breathe together. Dancing certainly is more than just expertly executing the steps. Indeed, your dance may be one marked by elephantine movements or the scurrying of field mice or the athletic swoop and twirl of mating birds but what matters is that you two are in sync, are relaxed even when clunking about. You know that dancing is the creating of an intimate space, of your moving together, of coming as close to being one breath as possible.

There are many, many ways to breathe. Painting. Sculpture. Swimming. Even passive ways like reading together, silently or to each other. Cooking. Oh, the simmering and sizzling fires of cooking!

It is just that you will especially see Her in her and him in Her when you begin to create your breathing ritual of fire. "I burn for you!" When your Beloved is about, time flies like newspaper curling into ashes. Consummation.

The ritual of Fire is, more than the other elementals, the one which moves beyond words into movement and form. Into destruction as prelude to creating. When you breathe with your Beloved you will be present to an intimacy that catalyzes. One which is all splatter and kabloom and molten eruption and exploding, uncontrollable embers of thought, desire, craving... Oh, in Fire you are purified, purged, refined, smelted, and freed! Freed to be formed into a Beloved.

## Chapter 70: Air

You thought Air would be about breathing, right? Look at it more as the elemental which connects with skin. _Your skin finds its boundaries in what you call air_. Air is that other, that outside, that external, that possibly alien presence which forms you. As Earthlings, anyways. It is the special something that makes this planet unique. Possibly, then, it is the planet-as-you in a fuller dimension?

Air is how the presence of others forms you and your Beloved. Others not so much as people or even things but as that living something which has been present as long as everyone else has ever lived and—if you believe the present paleontological story—even before. Air is what Earth is as it is present.

Let's air it out! What is really going on here? Let's get your story straight. Well, when you begin to explore Air you come into contact with collective and communal things, ideas, beings, etc., for which our culture, especially America, is not too keen on valuing. Outside of monumental crises like Pearl Harbor and the recent World Trade Center, there is little everyday talk about communal Air.

When you work on Air you are beginning to look at the common spaces, feelings, imaginings you share with your Beloved. So, to start, look at the space you share with your Beloved.

Let's call it home—temporary, mobile, tented or rented. Ownership is not the controlling notion here. Ownership of the common space is, however. How do you and your Beloved share space? Sure, you divide it. This is mine. That is yours. That's okay. But consider something even as simple as how you share the bathroom in the morning. Nowadays more and more folks have two or more bathrooms in newer homes but there are still so many times, maybe when at a motel or in a cabin, where you share, so how is it that you manage these moments? How do you work yourself so that you fit? What is it that you chip off? Or paint over? Or do you enjoy it at all? Those moments in interior space that can be intimate or deadly!

When you arrange the furniture, how and why are you doing what you do? You may be into feng-sui but most folks aren't. Yet how do you arrange yourselves? What are your acts of distancing, of closeness? How do you adjust to how the other likes things, like where to put the remote?

See this is an awkward exercise. But you can go from room to room, or into any space you share: a closet, a car... and instead of just letting things happen or waiting for the blessings of serendipitous surprise, take a moment and work on this painting. What colors does your Beloved cherish? Fragrances? What expression of order and organization makes you or your Beloved or both of you comfortable?

Each of you creates your own Earth. When you get together and form a homing space you are creating a world. In a nutshell, but it is there. You know this is so when others visit, you are acutely aware that they are reading and interpreting your common homing space. How does it express itself to your visitors?

Air is quite a transforming ritual. Once a couple practices it, they often are lifted up to another dimension. It's like the realization that you and your Beloved are comfortable together. That you do have a home or homing space. That you have so acted together that you are present to one another like no other friend or visitor is when in that same homing presence.

When two are Air, they often experience sliding. That is, a slipping through mundane, clock time into another reality, another dimension. Often it is a tingle of eternality. When Air, you are comfortably at-home as Forever-Family.

## Chapter 71: Skin

Another _Sensual Preciousness_ approach is to look at _Genesis_ **as a story of Skin**.

In other creation stories, whomever creates—God or Divine Being or Coyote or whomever—is understood as wielding a preciously intimate erotic power since they are forging the seething Life Force of Eros into various life forms. Non-Biblical and non-human-imagery stories often position humans as part of a greater fabric, of a web of Nature or as a ray of a Fiery Light or as somehow situated in the network of all living things. Elements of this type are present in the Biblical creation story but, significantly, how humans are positioned is presented through a very wild imagination. That is, the purpose of the Six Days of Creation sequence is to make clear that all creation, all life forms, are subordinated to the created human, Adam.

The Biblical revelation is that all life forms, except women, are part of a web of life whose center is Adam. He is the reason Creation is. He is the life form through which the creator god expresses His Dominion. In sum, all life forms are part of the human web of existence. Human life is not part of Nature or a natural web, rather, anything considered "natural" is but a subordinated part of a super-natural web which is, so it is revealed, an expression of Lone Male spiritual intimacy. In this light, the female is the last to be created. She is an intimate after-thought.

In contrast, in other creation stories, if it is the Great Spider who creates, then your body is part of the fuller body of all life around you. Humanity is part of a complex and diverse web of living things. If the creator is a Mother and Father God—even if one is rendered in animal form—then you are part of a clan or tribe, one which has clear and definite connections to the animal world. Through these creation stories males and females are given an interior identity, and the scope of their intimate heartfelt actions corresponds to those found within a relationship from which the tribe, clan, nation, etc., can grow, that is, from family/kin relationships. You are related to the world and to the whole creation because you are part of, even though not exactly identical with, all other creatures. In one sense, what is common to all animals and humans is that all have skin. Skin is evidence that each one was born.

With _Genesis_ , a Creator conjures the created **"out of nothing,"** out of the Void, or Dark Vapors. It is all "Fiat!" "Let there be..." This is not a birthing story. It is prestidigitation. "Abracadabra!" Immediately, you know that the Creator exists outside of and before the Creation. The creating act then has no analogies or metaphorical links to the created's world. Whomever this Creator is, "it" is not linked to the created world by any necessity or "natural" bond. It is not family. It is not a divine body. It is not-skin.

You can infer some degree of intimacy by arguing that the Biblical Creator somehow "needed" to create the world and humans, but the real impact of _Genesis_ ' opening is a "Wow!" Meaning, there was no need to create the world. In fact, Creation becomes, in the tradition, a graceful, grace-filled and in the same vein a gratuitous act of God's Dominion which is a mystery that is unfathomable to the human mind. In the Abrahamic tradition, one cannot look to the created's experience to understand the Created.

In short, _Genesis_ lets us know that this world is god's world, not ours. The subsequent Garden of Eden is not ours, either. It is god's precious place, not humankind's.

What is the impact of all of this? It speaks directly to our Earthfolk notion of intimacy, of skin. While humans come from this Lone Male god, they are not created from his intimacy. Intimacy is a term of birthing, and in _Genesis_ there is no birthing. No cosmic groaning. Rather, there is only an exercise of power, of Dominion. Just a magical moment of conjuration. "Presto!"

Right from the start, then, you begin to understand—as you first hear this tale told, today or millennia ago—that something rather peculiar is being proclaimed. This "Biblical tale" is truly a revolutionary, radical break with any then current creation story. You need to pause to consider what it must have been like to first hear this. The hearers would "feel" the spiritually intimate erotic change. Erotic? Yes, the Biblical Story is like a direct punch in the nose—or, kick in the groin! There was no need to parallel or emulate other creation stories by using analogy and metaphor, e.g., humans are not suckled by the Great Wolf. In these other creation accounts there is always a way to connect to the creation story by examining one's current relationships to humans and animals. Such stories explained the spiritually intimate erotic linkage, that is, how the energy of life flows from one living thing to another.

Now, the Biblical account says, _There is no erotic linkage!_ There is no necessary or natural relationship between the animal/human and the spiritual/divine world. The spiritually intimate erotic power, that is, the Life Creating Energy, of this Lone Male god is absolutely separate and distinct from human and animal experience. The Creator is not "father" in a family sense. Rather, He is Patriarch in the power sense, here, of Dominion.

In the Biblical tradition, you cannot go directly or even indirectly to the divine experience from the human. You cannot contact god through your own intimacy. Rather, the contact is through a Dominion relationship. One of submittal. Of being a Captive. Or, in the Islamic way, through Surrender.

When the Bible presents the Eve-from-Adam story, it is consistent within itself. For who, upon hearing this now or then, is not given pause by the oddity of the account? Women from within men? Clearly, the Biblical folk knew the meaning of their own stories. They were preaching a fantastic new way of not only understanding God, Man and the Universe, but they were unleashing a wild and even alien spiritually erotic imagining.

You hear it. You look at women. Everything changes. _Presto!_... You can't ground what you hear in any type of human experience. No. You take it on faith. It is a Revelation. A voice from beyond. A Beyond beyond Beyond. Where this Lone Male god exists.

Heady stuff. Sweaty palms. As a male you walk differently. Your feel your skin differently. You look at animals differently. You inhale, fill your chest—Dominion! You learn that Lone Male dominion can be yours if you submit, obey, surrender to God. If you surrender everything which up to that point seemed human, everything which was a way of human knowing and was a sense of how one fit into the world. Fitted into family.

**You look at other men—Cain and Abel**.

It goes on from there at a rapid pace. From Chosenness to a Promised Land to Joshua dedicating his massacres to his Lone Male Warrior's Quest god.

The preciously intimate erotic is no longer the Life Force. It is no longer an experience exuding ecstasy of Nature or Mother Nature or Love or whatnot. Rather, Eros becomes sexual, not spiritually intimate. More, in the Abrahamic tradition intimate eroticism is solely defined as genital. Thus arises the Biblical importance of having male sons and of rendering women as "useful" only and when they give birth.

For the Abrahamic Warrior's Quest male, genitalia assume importance as identifiers, as expressions of one's interiority. _Circumcised cocks are Yahweh's totems_. This wild and bizarre emphasis continues down through the centuries through Catholic priestly cock obsession through the Warrior's Quest culture's "mine's bigger than yours!" obsession with guns, weapons of mass destruction and the penile Star Wars missile defense.

## Chapter 72: Prison' Skin

Prison is another social space where you discover the essential place **cock** has in Biblical culture. As we Earthfolk have experienced, prison is the Garden of Eden. "Doing time" places you back at the Biblically creational moment. It is where you get skinned alive!

**What is prison if not an iron womb?** And the guns and clubs, the bars themselves but penile projections? If you think this is too Freudian, then you have to be there to see how it goes down. Prison experience is an Earthfolk tool for interpreting the spiritually intimate eroticism of _Genesis_ and the Warrior's Quest. While this may not be how you have ever thought about prison, consider that, psychologically, inmates are feminized. They are forced to role-play being the bitch. Prison's discipline is about total domination. Inmates lose all control over their bodies. There are rules and regulations about everything: from how you dress to how long your moustache hairs can be.

Like Eve, inmates are "bone of bone" of their dominators. Human names are taken away and numbers bestowed. Total dependency is enforced, most notably through knobless doors which require that the inmate constantly "wait" for The Man. Six times a day you are herded back to your dorm or cell for Count, "Lock up and Count!" What are they counting when they count you while you sleep? What is the dream-world infidelity they fear? This exercise of total domination goes on and on, through the cycle of the rise and set of the Sun and the Moon. Every human action is regulated. In the Visiting Room you are allowed one hug upon meeting, one upon exit. During the visit you and your visitor must sit straight ahead, not touching knees. Your mail is censured.

As discussed further in Volume 2, prison, when understood as the Garden of Eden, is all about interiority and intimacy. Whether the term rehabilitation is used or not, society somehow hopes that the inmate will leave prison and never commit another crime. We Earthfolk find this as laughable a sentiment and as Pollyannaish a policy as we do the Warrior's Quester's claim that War brings Peace. To grasp the utter idiocy and stupidity of the Warrior's Quest and its silly views about the effectiveness of prisons and wars you have to understand the deep hold _Genesis_ has upon "America" and the three dominant Big Stories. Again, this is more deeply explored in Volume 2.

## Chapter 73: Lone Male Skin

We Earthfolk hold that when Adam's Rib is used and so effects the Obliterated Womb that the Lone Male is saying that his skin is special. He is preening that his skin is exceptionally different from every other skin story. To assert this, the Abrahamics **skin their cocks** which become their clan totems, their precious rods, and their emblem of group identity. We Earthfolk reject this Abrahamic sense of skin and re-assert what many other creation stories forward, namely, that when you touch your skin you know that you are one with all people and all living creatures.

So look, peer at your skin. This is the reality of your individuality, your separateness and your potential isolation. Yet if you peer at and sit in silence with your skin you immediately know that you are related, interconnected, linked. You immediately grasp that you did not generate your own skin. In fact, you come to realize that you are skin because of others, here, your parents. You open yourself to making present the Forever-Family.

Your skin then is memory: present and future. "You" are in your skin but so are "others." All those others who came before you as your family and all those who will come from you as Forever-Family whether physically or spiritually.

As you explore your skin, you come to realize many of its peculiarities. That "it"—and so, "you"—have certain needs. To be touched by another. There are hands to touch. Lips to press. Arms to embrace. Although you come to manage and control these, you observe, in yourself and others, an almost uncontrollable urge to touch, hug, embrace.

Through touching you discover yourself as you discover the other, namely, through embracing. This is the creating message. "You" become as "others" become known, felt, embraced, etc.

There are urges and desires that you come to know and to observe, and you learn about the big, vague words used to wrap these urges and desires, such as, Love, Friendship, Loyalty, Hunger, Adoration. These are words which seem only to point you in a direction or towards someone because they are words which never seem fully attained. You learn quickly that not just love but intimacy is something which you crave again and again.

Your skin has many "functions." There are holes. Entrances and exits. There are tricks, e.g., eyes which can be opened or shut. Tongues which play hide and seek. As a youth you experience that this skin grows and that you expand and that as you expand physically so you hear that you are growing "up." In mind and spirit as well.

_The most shuddering discovery of skin is when you learn its spiritually intimate erotic linkage to sex._ You learn that your genitals allow you physical entrance into another wherein you have an experience like no other! You grasp that these male "outties" and female "innies" are more than appendages of physical sense. They are more than simple interior probes. Yes, they probe the interior like no other part of the skin but they seem specially attuned to mutual embrace. At the same time, you experience a vulnerability like never before, as if the Other could skin you alive! You sense that they see through you, that "you've gotten under my skin." As we Earthfolk know so well, when you make present your precious intimacy with another and so touch Preciousness and so first spy the possibility of Belovedness, the Shadow also loom large. The potential for abuse: physical, mental and spiritual is readily obvious. Like Adam and Eve, you sense that your intimacy is so personal that to bring it into public light is to feel shame. Shame, here, in a good sense. Yes, making present your Shadow is good and healthy. You don't want to be controlled by it, so you respect it. Humorously, so many men when they experience the "petit mort" for the first time speak of feeling like a babe in the arms of their lover. For the Warrior's Quester such a feeling of tenderness and of being back in the womb is, itself, an evil thought and temptation. They deny these tendernesses and cover their feelings with acts of domination, that is, of sexual abuse, verbally and physically.

When you move beyond the Warrior's Quest Shadow of sexual abuse, what you discover is that sexual coupling evokes a powerful, somewhat overwhelming intimately erotic sense of yourself, that is, you realize intimacy in relationship. "Intimacy" can hardly contain the break-down of yourself which the ecstasy of embracing causes. Your body no longer seems your body. And the body of your Beloved no longer seems to be his or her own. Somehow you are together. United. One. It is a strange, bizarre, unsettling experience where, as Beloveds, you gaze at one another and find yourselves knocked senseless. You have no words. You seek a new vocabulary.

If you've never experienced your body in its multi-dimensionality, then when you engage in sexual intercourse you experience a profoundly new and quite often unnerving sense of who you are. You discover your literal physical self, your vulnerable emotional self, your mind-boggling, mystical self. _You experience your "self" as "we" in a breathless and heart-pounding way._ It is such a boggling sense that no words seem able to capture it. You find yourself going from baby-talk and cooing to the creation of special nicknames (which are totally embarrassing if heard by others) to a tongue-tied silence. It is such a baffling moment that only laughter and pure silliness and surrender to the moment allows you and your Beloved to transit back to normal time. It is at such a moment of embracing and un-embracing that you grasp the wonder of what Creation is... must you not wonder what was being communal felt by those who wrote _Genesis_? Who presented life in such a dreary, depressing way? Who clearly lived without ecstasy?

When intimate, you are stunned by a life force which seems to have, without your conscious intention, descended upon you and embraced you. The only way that you can express this break-through is to embrace again and again. To plunge into your newfound embrace of being wildly imagined as Beloveds. Overtime, through Earthfolk practices and rituals, you sustain this intimacy through the nurturing embrace.

In the main, everyone can discover this sense of **ecstatically erotic intimacy**. This very amazing sense of discovery, of yourself and the Other, is able to be felt by everyone. In fact, for Earthfolk, it is the simplest of insights, that is, that what happens through intimate sexual embrace is a redefinition of who you are, for you begin to think of yourself as always in the presence of the Other. He/she becomes your Beloved.

Clearly, "skin" is you made present in fantastic and spiritually erotic imagining ways. Skin is both the boundary of and gateway to your preciousness.

As you look around, and as you age, you notice that skin is ever-changing. Yet, that it is also deathless. The skin of those who die lives on in the skin of their family, through siblings, nieces, cousins, etc. Skin changes but then it seems not to. It appears to be one which can be called ever-lasting or forever. An intimate experience of your skin is a way to make present the Forever-Family.

When beheld as a Beloved, as you look at, feel, lick, smell skin, you learn everything you need to know about answers to who, where, when and why you are here and what "here" will always be. You are present to your skin and you are present to everyone else, to the precious Other. We Earthfolk say that you can read the Story of the Forever-Family (of all time, of evolution, etc.) on the ribbon of flesh of your Beloved.

How then are you to relate to other skins? Notably, male to female skin?

## Chapter 74: Wands and Wombs

_Wands_ and _Wombs._ Are they in anyway special or different or peculiar in comparison to other parts of the skin? To the eyelids? To the fingers? To the tongue? Mouth? Anus? For Earthfolk, none are special, different or peculiar in a separating way. Rather, they differ in how each leads toward fullness, towards Sensually Precious ecstasy.

You observe that the flirtatious look finds itself touching in a tender way, leading to a kiss, then a more pervasive touching of the body, of all parts, genitalia, excitation. This leads to a somewhat seething, frenzied drive to enter into the other, not just with wand and womb but, while needing those, the drive is so intense that words clang hollow, emotions whack you both about and the convulsion and propelling of bodily fluids and contraction of muscles and the sheer heat and sweat and... whew! The genital embrace is certainly one way of entering the Sensually Precious. You hardly know yourself. You stare, peer at the other, wondering! Wonder-struck. Stunned into sitting in silence!

As you age, you come to know (or if you're young, you might hear from "old lovers") that such intimacy is engendered in quite different ways. With varying degrees of intensity, but nevertheless with as much, if not more, sense of intimacy and presence. You learn that the skin itself in its many manifestations (as body, as mind, as soul) is but a simile, a metaphor, an anagogic allusion. But what you come to clearly know and understand is that Skin creates. Has been creating. Is the creating presence, now and forever.

This is one way _Sensual Preciousness_ ' sacred sexuality is discovered. You engage in your own creation story, in the creating act, with your skin. You make present all that your skin can be, which is the other, here, the Beloved. You become the birthing God and Goddess, the Great Mother and the Great Father.

**What you don't have in** _Genesis_ **is Skin**. And without Skin there is no Beloved.

What we Earthfolk hold that you do experience through the nurturing embrace of your Beloved is both precious intimacy and your sacred sexuality. The world is, has been, and will be through your being Beloved, now and forever. Through you the Living Earth—Our Mother and Our Father, you and I as Forever-Family—manifests _Sensual Preciousness_.

Ritual of Skin

A starting practice then is to look at your skin until you begin to see your Beloved. Sit, stand, whatever. Be before each other and observe. Gaze and travel into the endless fractal crevasses of your Beloved.

**Skin is the map of ages**. Carrying family history. Family stories. Personal tragedies and triumphs. Sadness and comic relief.

Behold your Beloved. In the morning stand so that your Beloved is the moon receding and the sun rising. Hail your Beloved. Celebrate his/her individuality and distance. Shout "Hello!" across the infinite space that is not yours and not your Beloved's but the playground for your mutual celebration and creating. Move towards each other peering, looking as the shadows of morn unveil your Beloved. As the brazen exposure of light betrays the uniqueness of each other.

Shout, speak, point, delight in the differences. "Great Red-head! I yearn to draw my fingers through your hair." And with a gleeful eye, scan every hair. Check from ankle to top of the head. Peer into private areas. Smile. Share laughter. Play with this awakening. Play with the unraveling of the dreamer into the body of your Beloved.

As you come closer, move to the dance of touch. Ever so slightly greet each other with whisper and puffy breath. Meet each other with your breathing as you have with your sighting. Touch with the smile, the look, the leer, the wicked flick of finger, and as practiced and designed meet in your space, that chosen space of rug, blanket, a boundary of candles, whatever, and come, dock unto each other with fingertips, gently, drawing and moving about so as to receive the form of your Beloved, of her cheek, his thigh, her nose, his ears, her belly, his chest.

Draw forth as extracting your Beloved's power, the power of just being, the power of having come into time and into flesh and into the moment, of having come into Forever-Family. Now embrace and sniff, lick down and up, scenting your Beloved, licking the drop of her breasts, licking the thickness of his biceps, pressing your hands upon her feet, wiggling toes, laughing, coming up and around, feeling asses soft with sleep, stroking to raise the fire of morning, chanting, chanting a practiced prayer of morning rise and moon-set.

Light candles, dip a flower into a silver bowl of fragranced water and bless your Beloved. Laugh, lift up and dance about, slowly, like galaxies shifting, and all the time filling yourself with the presence of your Beloved, to come to that moment when you latch onto each other as Skin. Cup her breasts, cradle his balls, suckle sweetly the lips of unfed hunger. Pull and tug, shift and plunge, roll about. Quietly, sit down legs thatched. Then, however it comes, wand into womb, womb over wand, the penetration, the probe like shooting star, the salutation to your Beloved's interiority.

Pray, sing with words short or long. Awaken your Beloved by your arrival: fingers, hands, palm and wand, tonguing deeply. Ah, there are so many ways to arrive! And there with your skin now conveying all which your eyes had touched and your breathing recognized, there with all that is of you which is now your Beloved search for the common breath, the comfortable embrace, the locking kiss, kiss of wand and womb. This is the melting and the melding, of all of your desire, desire for life, desire for the creational moment, desire to be desired and to desire. So it comes, moon-set and sun-rise announced through the coupled body and soul which is Skin.

## Chapter 75: Sacred Sexuality

_Genesis_ ' _Sensual Preciousness_ message is that there is no such thing as a spiritual intimacy expressed as sacred sexuality. There is, for the Abrahamic Warrior, only the sexual sense of one's genitality. All sexual sensation is genital. More, only Lone Male masturbated penis sensation is good and sacred. This is in line with its message that women—the feminine—is part of the masculine interiority (the Rib) and that the feminine does not exist on its own as a preciously intimate power, that is, Eve and femininity are derived from male spiritual intimacy and as such there is no such thing as feminine intimacy. In other words, females lack vital zest.

From our Earthfolk perspective, Abrahamic sexuality is all about interior identity and not about relational intimacy. The common mockery of the Abrahamic Warrior's Quester is that his dick is in his brain. Since we Earthfolk allegorically interpret the Serpent as the spine, this simply means that the Warrior's Quest Lone Male is not emotionally connected to his penis. It becomes, for him, a rod or instrument of battle in the War of the Sexes. For him his penis is a sex-toy to be used with the female who is also his sex-toy.

When this Abrahamic genital sexuality is evaluated in terms of intimacy it becomes clear that the penis is a tool of sexual abuse. "How else to understand it?" ask Earthfolk. For in _Genesis_ the Mother, the female, the goddess is Obliterated. So totally dominated is She that all which remains is the hapless Eve whose only interior identity is as "bone of my bone" of Adam. The preciously erotic presence evoked in _Genesis_ is that of the sexually abused woman. What greater sexual abuse can there be then to be Obliterated, that is, to be there but not be seen? To be present but not Attended to? To be embraced but not worshipped? To be but then not actually to be?

The Abrahamic tradition, in further Biblical stories and ensuing centuries of theological interpretation and doctrine, is relentless about affirming, re-stating, "revealing" the "truth" that, sexually, there is only the male, the Lone Male. Lone Male masturbating into ecstasy as worship of his god becomes translated into rituals of priestly ceremony and disciplines for everyday spirituality. As to the latter, Abrahamic males are dominators whose female spouses are not to deny them sex upon demand. The Abrahamic is a tradition in which there is no sexual intimacy when referring to male-female coupling. Nothing sensually precious can emerge from sexual coupling in the Lone Male Warrior world.

You can see the ready translation of all this into its secular variant. As presented when discussing the Secular Big Story, the secular high priest is Hugh Hefner. In Playboy women are only visual stimuli for beating your meat. All just Eve's daughters. Ho hum. Women are only visual stimuli. Their interior identities are as playmates for males. They are presented as cute animals, as Bunnies. Despite the list of Favorite Things and other "interests" of the Playmates, it is clear that they are interchangeable and replaceable amusements, there only for the male's masturbatory fantasy. Hefner is just "a second Adam" masturbating himself into dreamland.

## Chapter 76: Describing the precious intimacy of sacred sexuality

As with the notion of "leaks," you find in literature, movies, locker room banter some moments of awe-struck "Wow!" about "fucking some broad." The leak is that the male loses himself in an unguarded moment, and is overwhelmed by emotion. While this is a powerful emotional moment it is also heralded as a moment of jeopardy and danger. There is the old Warrior's Quest tactic of striking your male enemy as he lies in bed, when he is allegedly depleted in strength. "Strength" here references that he has lost his warring state of mind. His testosterone level is depleted. Ejaculation is seen as a loss of vital, core power, a weakening, a being sapped by the feminine seductress, that Intimate Enemy. Again, there is the somewhat legendary advice to athletes not "to do it" before a game. Bottle up that awesome power! Don't let some "little lady" break your bottle. So, even within the Warrior's Quest there is a hint that there is something powerful, something "not male" which can happen through sexual embrace.

For Earthfolk, sexual embrace always ignites a moment of desire for precious intimacy. And it takes a true hardening of the heart for humans to deny that they desire precious intimacy. Whenever we Earthfolk overhear someone say to another, "It was only sex!" we wonder what they are truly trying to say by using the word "only." Such a word appears to clearly state that the Other had expected "more." Indeed, "heartless sex" is a way of coupling, but it is Adam's way of coupling which means that he tells Eve, "Look, you're just my Rib. Spread your legs and get over it!"

In a like vein, in the Christian tradition there is an telling inability to totally get rid of Mary. Mary is Eve's daughter, and straight-on there is not much to get excited about here. Eve was not a goddess reeking with feminine lust for Adam, at least not in the Abrahamic Story. But she is a "leak." Meaning, What is it that she did which was of such great import that they got the heave-ho out of the Garden? What was there in "Mary" that made her a "necessary" part of the Incarnation? Why did the Abrahamic Lone Male god have to tell Adam that he needed a woman? The Christian tradition labors (fights and kills) over the doctrine of Jesus' being "fully god and fully man." They affirm that he suffered in the flesh. They argue strenuously and then make doctrine that Jesus was not some divine alien figure who merely possessed a human body and used it as a "vehicle." They executed heretics who did not accept that the Divine Father mated with an earthly woman. Similarly, there is the manger scene showing that Jesus was part of a family, with an earthly mom and a stand-in earthly dad. Implied in all this is that Jesus' birth was "real."

So, **even for the Lone Male** God, _somehow_ the **womb was there**. Every effort to sanitize it, immaculatize it, virginize it, fails. Christians don't call her "Mother of God" as goddess but they can't get rid of her. Mary leaks.

**Mary** leaks the Earthfolk Story. Her mere presence affirms that males need females for birthing. That no child—male or female—comes from the Lone Male. Adam's deep sleeping and Jesus' wound in the side are—so Mary leaks—not "real," rather they are allegorical.

Mary leaks the truth of _Sensual Preciousness_ and sacred sexuality. That to create a Big Story, to birth the world and the human family, which consists of children, requires a man and woman in preciously intimate and sensually electric erotic embrace. Wand into womb. Womb enfolding wand. Embracing. And through a nurturing embrace, making present a third as birthed, namely, the Beloved. In flesh as child. In spirit as child. As child, so the Forever-Family.

All this however is just the beginning. Just "knowledge." What humans have been missing under the sexual repression of Abrahamic Biblical _Sensual Preciousness_ is practice. We all lack a tradition of rituals to assist us in exploring preciously intimate sacred sexuality. Again, one leak in the Roman Catholic tradition is that marriage is a sacrament. "Sacrament" is a strange and esoteric word to many. What it means here is that the union of male and female is spiritually erotic. It is not just a civil contract or a "piece of paper." It is not merely living together. No, it is quite a bit more. Through marrying two can find themselves godding and so making present that creative energy, power, force which sustains the world. They experience and make present the Forever-Family.

We Earthfolk realize that you and everyone else is swimming against the tide of Warrior's Quest dominion. Nowhere is this more evident than when you try to form new preciously intimate erotic words and imagery. Presently, the secular Playboy world does not have a language for Beloveds. Playmates are endearingly called animal names, from chickie, beaver, pussy to bunny. There is great delight in sexual athleticism where achieving complex gymnastic "positions" is lauded. So, the initial step is to work through your Warrior's Quest erotic language and imagery. This may be distasteful for some but we Earthfolk have benefited from bringing to consciousness all the Warrior's Quest language and imagery which has anchored itself into one's psyche.

To discover the intimate preciousness of sacred sexuality, one ritual, then, is a search to discover language. You start with a sacred space. Compose that space with rugs, candles, flowers, scents, music—however you want.

**Note:** There is a level of psychological maturity and self-confidence necessary to approach evoking spiritually intimate eroticism. The safest advice is to thoroughly discuss all rituals before working together to create a sacred space, compose a ritual performance, etc. Plus, sexuality is an aspect of sensuality. For many, spiritually precious intimacy is achieved without intercourse. For more on this approach, see "Great Sex Without Intercourse," in Appendix C, "Links."

You might find it helpful to associate the following words with the act of undressing. First, greet each other with the Skin ritual. Recognize and welcome one another as Beloved. Despite the temptation, this is not necessarily a physical coupling at this point.

Begin to undress. Take off your hat, throw it aside. Drop a scarf, unfurl a blouse, drop your trousers, etc. Let it all rip and be open to start with whatever sexual word comes first. For example, "Let's get laid!" Who starts first, man or woman, is not an issue. Just begin. Work on all the words and images. "Screw you!" and toss off a shirt or a blouse. "Suck my dick!" "Lick my pussy!" Be as "warrior" as one can be. Seduce through cupping your breasts and stroking them, with your tongue deliciously darting in and out, enticing him. Soon, there is the moment of contact. Go for it! With lunge or a sweet embrace, even coy wickedness. During this time indulge yourself in the Warrior's Quest. Erotically gambol until exhaustion, until numbness, until loss of words, until all the emptiness of such words fill you up.

Clearly, this is, for many, too physical and extroverted an exercise. But somehow you should find a way to move beyond Warrior's Quest words. To so throttle the imagery and abusive poetry it offers that you are hungry for new imagery and poetry. Until you find the Warrior's Quest banter boring.

The objective is to find yourself on the other side of your words. If the male has been all Suck me, Fuck you bitch, Eat me, and the woman has been all Slave and Submissive and Innocent to become Captive (a Dumb Fuck), well, try to face that fact. Talk about your words. Talk about the imagery. Talk about your feelings during this Warrior's Quest.

For some, foolishness and silliness are useful tools at this moment. Dress back up, but each as the other. Male in female dress. Female in male. Talk as you so dress. What does it evoke in the male to put on a bra? Or panty-hose? She to slip on his briefs, with the wand slit? Play with that slit? Let this foolishness take you many places. Play with exchanging names. He's Sally and you're Sam. But share you imagery.

**The playful objective here is to broaden your erotic sensuality**. It is like when you wade into a lake, at first you shiver and splash water onto yourself in an attempt to become part of the water. You wade in slowly so that the water becomes part of you. So, this is now how you are playing your body—all its five senses—to move into the wetness of your Beloved.

Cross-dressing. Working through Warrior's Quest words. Reversing warrior sex positions. These are like oxymoronic words whose juxtaposition of opposites creates a break-through. Yes, for some there is the risk of break-down. We Earthfolk are quite sensitive to this fact. Your may discover that you or your Beloved can't go "there." That such actions open up too much interior vulnerability, namely, a sense of invasion and attack or even capture. At times this approach evokes the lingering but deep seated Warrior's Quest fears. Approaching the numinous within your coupling makes clear how much each of you has to prepare to open the numinous within your own self, first. So, this ritual—as any ritual might—could result in a break-down with no break-through.

If you proceed—days, weeks, months, years later—what you are present to is the peculiar emotion of letting your Beloved into your presence. Your presence is your interior identity as doorway to your intimacy.

In the intimate moment you realize yourself as a Beloved within the Forever-Family. You experience your immortality. This is what most spiritual traditions call "soul." Intimacy is your soul moment. You pass on but you do not die in the Warrior's Quest sense of being obliterated, of becoming nothing. Once intimate, you break-through and become an ecstatic immortal.

## Chapter 77: Deep-sleep Dreaming

_Dreaming_. In the Abrahamic culture dreams have played a fairly standard though minor part in the Big Story. Most mentions of dreams or dreaming come in _Genesis_ and in the book of Daniel. Dreaming is employed as a standard device of god's forewarning or an individual's sensing god's intentions. In the Christian testament, Matthew is the only one to employ it in his stories. He uses it mainly during the flight from Herod to deliver a warning to Joseph and Mary.

We Earthfolk claim a more significant value for dreaming. In _Genesis_ , Adam is laid down into a "deep sleep." This phrase occurs a handful of times. Abraham had at least one. In the Christian testament, several disciples fall asleep while Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane. There is a sense in these references that to sleep and deep sleep means that the sleeper awakes! Or should awake into deeper insight. Once so newly awake, then their spiritual action or moral action takes place in wakefulness, in consciousness. Indeed, "Dreamer, awake!" is a common story-telling device to denote change and the discernment of a great insight.

Earthfolk hold however that there is more, a tremendously significant "more" to this "deep sleep" imagery than meets the eye. Why? Because it is the device used to present the most significant moment in _Genesis_. Namely, the "creation" of woman, which is actually the moment of the Obliteration of the Womb.

The woman, the female, the feminine is found from within a deep sleep. Adam does not know how to enter this depth on his own power, rather it is an action the Lone Male god works upon him. Adam's maleness is unconscious, he does not awake and say, "My god laid me down and took a woman from inside of me!" In fact, when she is "created," Adam is surprised.

_Adam's ribcage is the womb with its birth canal_. His body becomes a vulva. But he is unaware of this motherly aspect of his masculinity. Indeed, it is a moment wherein the womb, his fake one and her real one, is Obliterated from Memory. Both Adam's and your continuing forgetfulness about this aspect of Lone Male masculinity and the Abrahamic tradition's total obscuration of the meaning of this deep sleep event simply underscores deep sleep's centrality in the Big Story. Like a magician waving his wand, "Presto!" the act of birthing woman is quickly done as the trick, "Now you see her. Now you don't!" Adam is awakened but he does not have insight as to how Eve got there. He simply believes that she is him, "bone of my bone." A humorous, Biblical insight, namely, that all woman is, is a boner.

When you grasp that the "creation of woman" is the focal point of _Genesis_ , then discerning the meaning of deep sleeping is critical and crucial. Consider that you are hearing _Genesis_ for the first time. You've heard Big Stories about how the world was created. And about how you are to relate to Nature and animals and other people. You know women. You know men. So, in order to get to the "Let there be!"s, the writer(s) of _Genesis_ have to position the feminine force, Mother Nature.

In contrast to ancient hearers, as a contemporary reader you start at the first line of _Genesis_ and read the chapters as if they are linear and cumulative. You expect that the Chapters are structured in a sequential fashion, and that each one is building towards the conclusion or an objective which is the necessary result of what has proceeded. But, as in languages where the verb comes at the end of the sentence or utterance or where folks read from right to left, if you're a Westerner you might be annoyed to know that the Story's conclusion explains the beginning and not vice versa.

So, in the early times when the "creation of woman" passage is heard, an "Aha!" drops. Of course! the male hearer says to himself. Aaaagh! many women probably groaned. He is pleased. So, this is how things really are! Men and women hear that everyone up to this time (of the composition of _Genesis_ ) has gotten it wrong! That all those other Big Stories are wrong. They hear that women were not created when men were. That the feminine force is not a divine force, not a goddess. No, that there is a novel revelation. Indeed, it is a Revelation! that if every male were put into a deep sleep then he would know what Adam came to know about god. Namely, that god drew the female from out the male.

There's a Great Simplicity here, a Great Division, for the world is all of a sudden rent in half. It is revealed that only males count. Whew! Okay. That makes a whole lot of things a whopping lot easier. "Woman, fetch!" "Woman, obey!" Henceforth, when they meet wifely or feminine resistance, the male can say, "God made me do it!" For it is revealed that, "The woman made me eat that damn apple!"

If you sit with this deep sleeping insight for awhile, you see that the realm of deep sleeping, of dreaming, of imagining is the realm of the now discarded, now devalued feminine. It is the rejection of moon time, of the day's darkness, and so of the deeper complexity of what it means to be human. What is further revealed is the character of this creature which comes from the male's wandy womb. When Eve goes about being in touch with her inner self to whom does she speak? Not to Adam. Rather, to the (also somewhat wandy, wiggly) Serpent.

Adam comes off as pretty much of a half-wit. Sort of the dumb jock stereotype. The "heavy stuff" of the story centers around Eve and the Serpent. The Lone Male god tells Adam and Eve about the Tree of Life, but only Eve is connected to a source which threatens their relationship with god.

**Who or what is the Serpent?** As mentioned before, the Serpent is that of the male which speaks with the feminine. The Serpent is that part of the female and the male psyche and soul which was not drawn out from Adam's wandy womb. All that the Lone Male god draws out from Adam's womb is that very minimal and limited aspect of the feminine which a male needs from a female to birth children. What is "left behind" in Memory is that of the feminine which stands on her own, has her own body, which is Goddess and Mother God.

The Serpent speaks with Eve about preciously intimate eroticism, that is, about the Tree of Life. He is that part of the male which speaks with the female and he is reminding her of her true goddess nature as Mother god. From their conversation Eve has greater insight into her powers as a woman and as a goddess. She approaches Adam and makes him aware that they are naked. She enables Adam to see her, peer at her, in a way he had not done when he only saw with Lone Male eyes.

**Before the Serpent arrives** , Adam does not connect birthing with something he does as a male. He does not even know how Eve was created because the Lone Male God put him into a deep sleep, which is for him a sleep of forgetfulness. Eve certainly didn't learn about her female powers from Adam. She does so from the Serpent. As an image the Serpent is an allegorical representation of the spine. He is the spinal column, and he reconnects the male with the female. The Serpent is actually a male/female presence because he/she speaks to both the male and female aspects of Adam and Eve.

**Adam does** _not_ **speak to the Serpent**. Being created by the Lone Male god as a Lone Male, Adam, in one sense, has no spine. Remember, he had walked around in the Garden doing whatever god asked him to. Adam didn't complain. Didn't say, "Hey, god, you forgot to give me a woman. My thingee's driving me nuts!" Rather, it is god who makes this discernment. His god tells Adam that he needs a companion. The knowledge of woman is a knowledge the Lone Male god has, but he does not fully disclose this to Adam.

_But what does Adam get?_ **A woman who brings the Serpent with her**. For why did the Serpent come but to speak with Eve? Where did the Serpent come from? Yet another leak, that is, from out of the deep sleep. And what is the Tree of Life but an image of the fire, the energy, the creative force which births, because life only continues through birthing? It does not continue through ongoing "creation from nothing" where Lone Males continually create humans. No, Life continues through birthing.

**The Tree of Life is rooted in Mother Earth, in her bowels, her womb, and her ass.** The Tree breathes the air and kisses the sun's light. It is showered by sunlight, which is solar sperm. This Tree is the connecting life form between Earth and Sky. It is also a symbol of the spinal column, and is, indeed, _Sensual Preciousness_ ' spinal column, namely, that which connects the precious eroticism of the Earth with the precious eroticism of the sun and moon.

The Tree of Life is that preciously intimate erotic source which is in the male and drives him towards the female to embrace, couple and bring forth children. What else could it be? A factory? Consider that the Tree represents aspects of both the male and female, those aspects wherein they embrace and couple. It is a symbol of _Sensual Preciousness_.

Eve is supposed to not know about the Tree of Life for she is supposed to not see herself as divine, as precious, as intimately spiritually erotic. Rather, she is to see herself as negatively unique, different, and special only because of her genitality. She was not born with a penis, so she is less.

But Eve does know about the Tree of Life because the Serpent lives in the Tree. The Serpent lives inside of everyone, as the power which rises, is aroused, by the preciously erotic imagination. Without the Serpent, there is no birthing.

We Earthfolk realize that you are at another millennial end of the telling of the Religious Big Story. That the Religious Big Story's themes are so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that it is easy for you to fail to see how the Biblical Stories continue to structure your life, as we Earthfolk claim they do through the Secular and Scientism Big Stories.

It is also not so easy for you to see how Secularity and Scientism are derivatives of the richer Abrahamic stories. Derivatives, but just as potent. In fact, more potent because Secular and Scientism power is like the Shade Mother's invisibility in _Genesis_. It is a power most people are not aware of, meaning, that when they make Secular and Scientism claims they believe that they are not being Religious, but, we Earthfolk hope you can now see that, in fact, they are making present the same intimately spiritual erotic power of dominion.

Secularists like **Hugh Hefner** of Playboy feel that they are superior to Religious moralists, when in fact they lessen their own humanity as they deny that they are doing what they are in fact doing. They celebrate Playmates while they degrade them through usage as sex-toys. They have no guilt, which they claim is a good thing. Their range of erotic heartfelt actions is even more limited than the Religious believer's. The Secularists are harder of heart and quite dismissively cavalier about their sexually abusive practices. This "freedom from morality" is often heard from Hollywood producers who exclaim, "It's just a story!" or "It's a documentary!" What we Earthfolk see is that Secularists have put you into a form of deep sleep dreaming as you are numbed by TV or webcasts or other multi-media experiences, and as you sleep, so to speak, they slip in the storyline which is both Endless War and endless sexual abuse of females, the feminine, and the goddess.

Here is our Earthfolk segue to dreaming and deep sleeping.

The Biblical tradition unintentionally exposes and reveals the cold, hard fact that the feminine, the Mother, the Goddess are spiritually reachable only through deep sleeping, that is, through collective and communal imagining. This is how we Earthfolk define deep sleeping—as collective and communal imagining. It is into such a deep sleep that the Warrior's Quest placed the Great Mother. It was his triumphant act of dominion, namely, her Obliteration from consciousness. It is from this deep sleep dreaming that Earthfolk are awakening.

Collectively and communally, every night when you go to sleep, you become a deep sleeper. You re-dream the Biblical stories. Consider that you are commonly told that sleeping is a state of unconsciousness or non-consciousness, meaning that nothing happens. But it is all Creatio ex nihilo over again. You can have bad dreams and wet dreams and totally idiotic dreams and then you "Wake!" What are called "depth psychologists" attempt to work with dreams and to explain the meanings of your nightly stories. But their task—admirable in so many ways—ultimately fails because deep sleeping is not a singular, individual act, rather it is a collective and communal act.

But you say, Nah!... If so, consider the many ways in which you are bombarded with variants of _Genesis_ and the values of the Warrior's Quest. What are the themes on the News? What is it that they consider news-worthy? Stories about war, conflict, violent crimes. About politician's infidelities, such as oral sex in the Oval Room. And sports shows which are increasingly highlighted with coliseum spectacular clips of hockey brawls, and baseball teams angrily rushing onto the field, and football players violently throwing each other around by face masks. All this and then into the sit-com, where the humor is hurtful, deprecating, humiliating. In sum, anything upbeat is dismissed as Pollyannaish or cute or sentimental.

Adam obliterating Eve is evident in the recent globally broadcast Islamic attitudes towards women. This is the third wing of the Abrahamic Big Story. Islamic women are enshrouded as if the living dead. Other Abrahamics, including Secularists, roundly condemn, even mock, these practices. Yet the Warrior's Questers of Western cast often fail to see how the same Obliteration of the Womb is effected through their Secular valuing of stereotypically beautiful, spotless Playmates as sex-toys.

You might think Earthfolk value this one instance of deep sleeping from _Genesis_ far too much. But, again, if our Earthfolk interpretation is correct and the story about the creation of woman is _Genesis_ ' objective, then how can Earthfolk undervalue this insight?

Where does all this get you? To the fact, discussed when talking about Intending and Attending, to the power of sleeping and dreaming. It is not enough, we believe, to simply straighten out your conscious relationships with the feminine through male relationships with women. Rather, both men and women have to start seeing each other differently. They have to peer at one another, in sunlight and moonlight. They have to see that the Other is precious. They have to make present themselves as Beloveds. They have to make manifest the Forever-Family.

What we Earthfolk see when we peer and sit in silence is something quite peculiar and unusual. We see that to be fully Beloved men and women have to explore their communality, their collectivity. They have to immerse their nurturing embrace through deep-sleep dreaming. This requires immersing their nurturing embrace into their imaginations and their dreams. Yes. You and your Beloved are called to deep-sleep dream together.

How can this be done? _Who knows!_ There is **no tradition** of deep sleeping. Rather there is one that basically says, This is how we got Eve. And one woman is enough. So, stop deep-sleep dreaming! Consequently, men and women for millennia have followed this Biblical discipline. Meaning that when they lay down to sleep they accept that sleeping is the land of meaninglessness, that it is non-conscious (not something of its own, just "not" conscious).

By you and your Beloved deep-sleep dreaming a quite different presence of your Self to the Other will be manifest. Earthfolk believe that through deep-sleep dreaming together you will encounter the Serpent. That from such deep-sleep dreaming an exciting form of preciously intimate erotic energy will be unleashed. It is the vital zest energy that will counter the deep-sleep images of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth. Some talk about this as "Dreaming the Dark." We Earthfolk appropriate that with a twist, meaning that from this Dark will come Light, and from that light so dark is sourced the novel intimate spirituality of our Earthfolk Sensually Preciousness' erotic imagining of Beloveds.

As with many things said here, we Earthfolk do not know other than to Invite you to deep-sleep dream with your Beloved. This is why in the Invitation and elsewhere, you heard how important you are to Earthfolk. More than attempting to tell you how to live, we Earthfolk are inviting you to break-down your Abrahamic imagination—symbolized by the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth—and break-through to something new, which is to make present yourself and your precious Other as Beloved. Once you have done this, we Earthfolk are confident that you be present within the Forever-Family.

## Chapter 78: The Ritual of Deep-sleep Dreaming

**Deep-sleep dreaming is a** _moon ritual_ **.** For most that is, except those on the graveyard shift and insomniacs. When the moon appears folks begin to yawn, stretch and think about retiring for a good night's sleep. Maybe Earthfolk should get down on Thomas Alva Edison (or maybe not, in that Great Men are made by the times as much as they make them) because he is responsible for technologizing the Sun ritual.

For how many eons did folks gather around the campfire and watch the stars appear and then talk, possible augur those mysterious lights, soon to retire to sleep "under the stars"? Until the electric light bulb, that is. The incandescent light bulb is a triumphant scientific moment of the Warrior's Quest which took place not too long ago. In the modern Age of Technology, people soon forgot about stars and just kept artificial "sunshine" around. One result is that you "stay awake" longer. And you do consciousness activities well beyond the dictates of your biological clock. Late into the moon's night, you read. You watch TV. You keep your lighted consciousness humming. Once weary, you collapse. Possibly you pop a sleeping pill and then go to bed. But even before that, you wind up the clock and/or set the timer to wake up. After all, you don't want to sleep too long! But we Earthfolk ask, How long is too long? A millennium?

Possibly it is a bit romantic to say that people in the Abrahamic culture and others used to prepare to go to sleep. But let's look at a core Western monastic practice. This is something Earthfolk feel you should pay attention to and value. The monks created Divine Hours for every hour of the day. There was a sleep preparation hour, namely, _Compline_. Many Earthfolk who were monks prayed, "Be sober, be watchful! For your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith." (1 Peter 5:8-9) This is appropriate to the Religious Big Story which has you living in an adversarial mode. So, you prepare to sleep by alerting yourself that in your dreams you will also encounter the demonically erotic Adversary. Ah, those sins of sexual pollution so feared by the aspiring young monk. Wet dreams. How often certain Earthfolk were counseled about that spiritually erotic "weak" time just before dozing off and also just as you awake when the Devil likes to slip in—appearing as succubi of delicious feline beauty, nakedness and pleasure—to tempt you to sin.

In the Secular culture, sleep is just a rest period between Hours of Work. You sleep off the clock to be ready to get on the clock, again. In Scientism, sleep is simply a turning-off of conscious thought, and dreaming is considered a random, bizarre, often humorous experience. What happens when you dream, however, is not valued as having any meaning for your daily life, except if you awake tired by a "bad" dream, such as being chased all night. One wakes to the clock. Flips on the lights. Ready and raring to "Go!" All is preparation for work.

There is a lot more to explore in this regard, but for the moment the simple fact is to recognize that sleeping and dreaming have no spiritually erotic weight in the Secular and Scientism cultures. One simply lays down so as to rise up to work. But do note the ritual element in all this.

In order to deep-sleep dream you have to encounter the Dark's Shadow. Again, we Earthfolk prefer the word "Shade." It is a more robust word. There are so many degrees of Shade. You need to set aside the technological sun. You need to set yourself into the rippling tide of Shade as it descends slowly from twilight to a starless pitch dark night, to the Shade which is moon-glow.

You can practice with a plant or a pet. Watch their cycle. Watch how they relate to the common sun and moon's relationship. A bit silly for some, but very revealing.

In time, you and your Beloved move into dreamtime, together. You lay down the sun as it lifts up the moon. You observe each other in this new glow. You observe and create. Mime. Mediate. Play. Whatever you do, do together. You are an embrace of your presences. All this to move you towards lying down together. To the opening of your moon self, that fuller self you become as you move towards deep-sleeping. Because deep-sleep dreaming is the creating of an Other. It is a nurturing embrace of Beloveds.

In bed in the Biblical tradition only Adam deep-sleep dreams. The woman is inside him. Presumably she sleeps his sleep and not her own. As she is his bone of my bone, so is she dream of his dream.

In deep-sleep dreaming, the Beloveds are in a nurturing embrace. One of Intention as well as Attention. It is a form of intimate intercourse. It is an Intending to venture forth on the moon's journey as they began the day by Intending to do so on the sun's journey.

Okay, you say, but how?! And even if Beloveds do deep-sleep, how will they know it? Honest questions. Like most _Sensual Preciousness_ experiences, deep-sleep dreaming is not easily and readily described and defined with current spiritual images and imaginations. Yet, you know as a Beloved knows their Beloved. It's hard to say it any other way.

That is why it is a matter of practice. You develop your intimate rituals. You create a body of images and words. You Intend deep sleeping. You Attend to the Other during preparation.

Unfortunately, at this historic time, there is no non-Biblical, non-Secular or non-Scientism methodology with which to explore these issues. You can look at Abrahamic culture and ask, How is its deep-sleep dream sustained? Either you accept the fact that you are only fully human when awake or you ponder what function and purpose sleeping and dreaming provide to the three dominant Big Stories. You can look at technology and reflect upon not only what it does in terms of sun imagery but why it is, in the main, a set of Awake and Consciousness devices. Why didn't you hear about these topics in school? Why aren't there PBS shows on these themes? On the disappearance of moon-glow? On the disappearance of deep-sleeping? On deep-sleep dreaming as a collective and communal imagining exercise?

The sun and the moon. Work and sleep. Male and female. Sacred and sexuality. Topics which are not only intellectually related but form the basis for how you practice deep-sleep dreaming.
Chapter 79: Invitation of Earthfolk

As during the opening section, so at this ending, we Earthfolk extend to you an Invitation to practice _Sensual Preciousness_.

"Something is in the air." It is an allure. An erotic whiff. An erotic whiff with a sensually precious pungency. At times, we Earthfolk can hardly breathe because the air is so rich, vibrant, alive!

_Sensual Preciousness_ : the phrase will find its way into private and public discourse. How? When? We have no answers to these two questions. Why?... Why: the Earth has made us aware of its vitality, awareness, consciousness and dreaming. Again: How, When—no answers. But around us is the fact, the scent, the hunch, the urge to live as humans in a totally new manner and mode. We seek to live as Earthfolk.

Earth and folk. As Earthfolk: an oxymoron to the Abrahamics. In the Biblical Big Story, humans live as aliens upon the Earth. The Earth is a created entity. Humans dominate the Earth. Full human meaning is imagined as a "life" after death, above the Earth, in an eternal paradise. Time will end and the Earth will disappear.

Earthfolk. The Earth is us. We are manifestations, presences of Earth. We are its consciousness, its imagining. One of its seeds and flowers. Earth is home. We come forth from the Earth, flower, bloom, fade and are re-imagined. Earthfolk are eternal presences. As child we are now. As family we are through time. As Earthfolk we are eternally present. Everything which is, has been and will be.

Every person counts. Everyone is a child: literally, symbolically and mystically. The Earth is alive. We are the consciousness of the preciously sacred. We live in the Now as individuals, in History/Time as symbolic, ritualized being, and in Eternity as the communal, mystical We of the Forever-Family.

The Abrahamic Biblical spiritual Eros has found its dominating expression through the Warrior's Quest. It is a very strange and frightening Quest. It states that there is only one Creator god who is alienated from humans. He is a Lone Male god without female mate. He is said to have created the world from "nothing." Females are derivative humans. Born from the flesh of males, while they lay deep-sleep dreaming. Suffering is the lot of humans. Only those Chosen will be "saved." Ceaseless spiritual warfare against Evil, the Devil, Lucifer—The Adversary: The Enemy—this defines and describes "life on Earth."

Earthfolk put this Story aside. It is its own self-fulfilling, horrific prophecy. A "Good Book" of self-hatred. Of self-abuse. Why it arose is a perplexing question. That it is not useful is quite evident. Only you as icon, that is, you in a nurturing embrace of Beloveds can transform and transubstantiate life. Only through your nurturing embrace is made present the Living Earth, endlessly alive as Earthfolk.

We Earthfolk open for our nurturing embrace when we orient and move the Other with expectations of being present as Beloved and as we worship one another's preciousness. As you start, remember and imagine that,

• You are all that creation has groaned and rejoiced to make manifest

• You are an eternal presence of preciousness

• manifested through others whom you know as family

• You are a child of family in the present

• You are a parent of family through historical time

• You are Earthfolk in eternity as Forever-Family

• We put the Abrahamic Biblical "Good Book" aside

• We put aside all Warrior's Quest Big Stories, all patriarchal tales and legends

• We put aside the secular variant of the Abrahamic Lone Male Big Story

• We put aside the scientism variant of the Abrahamic Lone Male Big Story

Being an Earthfolk begins in the moment you are aware that being fully you occurs within a nurturing embrace of preciousness that makes present yourself as Beloved

• Within your nurturing embrace you begin to hear, sense, smell, touch the fuller presence

• that is the presence of the Other as precious and Beloved

• Within your nurturing embrace is where the Earthfolk Big Story is manifest through the skin of the Beloved

• The skin of the Beloved is Memory

• Family is time, memory, hope, dream—Forever-Family

• Within your nurturing embrace is manifest and made present everlasting erotic pleasuring

• All that a Beloved is, is a manifestation of everlasting preciously intimate pleasuring

• Every moment offers an opening for heartfelt acts of the nurturing embrace

• To embrace the Other as precious

• To embrace the Other as Beloved

• To embrace as One

• Every action of everyone and every moment is potent and "counts"

• Every moment is an artful moment wherein you create good, evil or "nothing"

• Every thought, breath, sniff, touch, lick, press, movement, dream is potent

• Every action, thought, imagining of the individual is at the same time a collective and communal creating action

• Humans can live as Warrior's Questers: have been, many will continue to

• Humans do not have to live as Warrior's Questers

• We can live as Earthfolk: are, shall, will!

• So are you Invited.

• For you are the preciously intimate moment and presence

• For _you_ are Sensually Precious

Embrace!

## Chapter 80: Daily Practice and Rituals

We Earthfolk invite you to practice "living as if I am no one's enemy" as well as a ritual or two, every day for a month or so. This is the way you will get-in-touch with Earthfolk. As you experience your preciousness through a nurturing embrace with a precious Other and so become Beloved, then you will be present to Earthfolk. As suggested before, this is how we Earthfolk go "online."

_Practicing "living as if I am no one's enemy" is like turning yourself inside-out._ The Warrior's Quest surrounds you with spiritually erotic energy delivered through words, imagery and actions of endless warfare, coming at you online and On-air! You might as well decide to swim in an ocean of sulfuric acid. So, beware as you become bold and venture forth.

"Living as if I am no one's enemy" is opening yourself to your own preciousness. It is being among other humans as family, as Forever-Family. It is being open to the Other's preciousness—which most Warrior's Questers do not realize they possess or if conscious of it are fearful to express. Being open to your preciousness is seeing through the Other's eyes as you approach and accept their nurturing embrace of you. Now, at times, this nurturing embrace might fail to nurture because your Other remains anchored in the Warrior's Quest Lone Male energy. But practice and practice and you will begin to break-down the presence you've been trained to manifest, that is, yourself as Intimate Enemy.

_Select two rituals as experiments_. Addressing, Presence, Stirring and Crowning are ones that you can slowly begin to practice with your Beloved, or with another who is seeking their preciousness. They are adaptable to different levels of relationship.

As you so practice so will you become with your Beloved living icons of the Beloveds and the Forever-Family. Through your preciously erotic practices you will discover the depth and blessings of _Sensual Preciousness_. Your _Sensual Preciousness_ practices and life will make manifest the healing and wholing vital zest, that preciously intimate erotic preciousness that will make the icons of the Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth fade from human consciousness and cause the Warrior's Quester's quest for total self-annihilation to evaporate from the human imagination.

You are precious to us and for our Earthfolk vision to blossom we need you to be present among us as Beloved.

## Chapter 81: Appendix A—Big Story and personal Story worksheet

At various times in reading _Sensual Preciousness_ , you might find it beneficial to return to this page to answer additional questions and/or amend and annotate your previous answers.

A. Big Questions

Here are the Big Questions used in the body of _Sensual Preciousness_. The bullets are additional questions to assist you in your self-analysis. You should jot down other questions which come to you as you use this worksheet.

Where do humans come from?

  1. Are humans created? "Created from nothing"?

  2. Did whatever is "human" exist, always? Meaning, is whatever makes humans "human" an integral part of some primary substance or energy or source?

  3. Is what is "human" a product or end-result or manifestation of a primary non-human process, e.g., did Life evolve or develop from non-living matter or elements?

  4. Is the human race a seed from an alien culture?

  5. Other:

How did humans get here?

  1. A Creator god created them.

  2. A creating force created them, e.g., evolution.

  3. A creating presence created them, e.g., Intelligent Design.

  4. Humans have always been "here" on Earth as part of the Living Earth.

  5. Other:

Where are humans going?

  1. To a heavenly place.

  2. To a higher plane of consciousness.

  3. Nowhere. "Life" just blips out!

  4. Nowhere human. Part of the Eternal Return/Recurrence pattern of all Life.

  5. Nowhere. All Life and Earth will be destroyed. Entropy triumphs!

  6. Wherever they "consciously" choose to "imagine."

  7. Back to a Mother Planet once the alien Mothership returns.

  8. Evolve into an integration of technology and biology, a new bio-tech life form.

  9. Other:

Why are humans on Earth?

  1. To serve a god who has a Plan for humans. Humans are god's stewards.

  2. To atone for an original offense, such as "Original Sin." Fell out of Paradise.

  3. To achieve personal fulfillment, e.g., psychological integration, and be healthy.

  4. To unleash their interior powers, e.g., of higher consciousness.

  5. Humans are an "evolutionary epi-phenomenon," and as such will eventually disappear as all species will. That is, humans are an evolutionary blip! on the cosmic radar screen.

  6. A question which cannot be answered?

  7. Other:

How are humans to act?

  1. Follow absolute moral code sourced in a Revelation.

  2. By guidelines of human Reason.

  3. In pursuit of Truth, as known through the scientific method.

  4. According to dictates of the survival of the fittest.

  5. Follow legal rules of a given, sovereign nation state.

  6. Whatever is necessary to achieve ecological balance and harmony.

  7. Whatever maximizes and optimizes achieving status of being "Number 1."

  8. By determining what is the path to personal health.

  9. By balancing individual needs with social goods.

  10. By dictates of social justice, with a special focus on helping the less able and less fortunate.

  11. Other:

Why is there Evil in the world?

  1. There is an Evil god.

  2. The Benevolent god tests humans by tempting them.

  3. Humans brought it upon themselves by defying God. This is conveyed in the story about Eve and The Apple.

  4. Evil is merely the absence of Good. If people took time to reason matters through, and then act upon their insights, they would prevent Evil.

  5. Individuals are Evil, not humanity. That is, "Immoral Man, Moral Society."

  6. Evil describes actions which logically follow from who you imagine Other people are. If you imagine them to be your Intimate Enemy, then many things they do are Evil.

  7. Evil normally results from collective stupidity, that is, the group cannot see what the individual can. That is, "Moral Man, Immoral Society."

  8. Other:

B. Personal Story

Based on what you determined about the general outline of your Big Story, what is the range of your heartfelt actions? That is, what are you convictions? These are beliefs, actions, values, etc., for which you are willing to risk your life, even to the point of putting yourself in harm's way and/or sacrificing your life. Here are some opening notions to stimulate your self-reflection.

  1. I am willing to die for my country.

  2. I am willing to kill others to protect my country.

  3. I am ready to protect my family, even at the cost of my own life.

  4. I would never lie.

  5. I would never lie in a situation where someone else might suffer physical harm.

  6. I would never intentionally harm someone.

  7. I would use violence for a just cause.

  8. No one has the right to tell me what to do.

  9. If I consider a law immoral, I will not comply, no matter what the risks or penalties.

  10. I would never knowingly break a law. I respect all legal authorities.

  11. I am prepared to lay down my life for my neighbor, in a perilous situation.

  12. I always seek counsel before making a significant moral decision.

  13. I see Others as my Intimate Enemy.

  14. I am comfortably at-home here on Earth.

  15. I would never intentionally pollute any aspect of the Earth.

  16. I would never take a life, not even support an abortion.

  17. No one is perfect. I strive to be non-judgmental about someone until they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are wrong, have erred or are immoral.

  18. God is watching me. I'm just human. I seek to comply, as best I can, with divine truths.

  19. The best we can do is determine what is best for all in any given situation of common concern.

  20. Every person is on a spiritual journey. There is nothing bad or evil about people, they just do bad or evil things. They can be healed and/or forgiven.

  21. It is stupid to do other than play it safe. Watch out for yourself and the rest of the world will be better for it.

  22. There is no such thing as the "Common Good."

  23. I'm here to serve others, pure and simple. Life doesn't make sense, but I can make sense out of Life!

  24. The best each of us can do is give and receive pleasure. Whenever I can, that is how I judge why I do something, that is, to obtain and give pleasure.

  25. It's a fact, this "War between the Sexes"!

  26. As long as no one's health is harmed, any high-risk or out-of-the-mainstream physical, sexual or psychological act is okay. Be healthy and play!

  27. When I am in a society with values other than my own, I comply with them. If something is legal there but not in my own society, that's okay with me.

  28. Others:

C. For Further Self-Clarification

  1. What is your overall emotional feeling about life?

  2. Do you believe that there is such a thing as "communal feeling"?

  3. If so, does it impact your individual feelings and thoughts?

  4. What is your definition and description of "intimacy"?

  5. Have you ever felt "Precious"? and/or "Beloved"?

  6. Is there such a thing as "sexual morality"?

  7. In what situations do you or have you ever felt a) shame, b) embarrassment, c) pride, d) deep fear, e) upsetting confusion, f) deep happiness?

D. Your Specific Thoughts and Comments

## Chapter 82: Appendix B—Glossary

Abrahamic Tradition

A tradition of those who consider the Biblical Abraham to be their cultural and spiritual Father. This includes people of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths. The Abrahamics consider themselves a Chosen People. They are monotheists. Earthfolk cite the Abrahamic tradition as the source for the dominance of the values and rituals of the Warrior's Quest. In that this tradition denies the existence of other gods and goddesses, and explicitly denies the existence of a Creator Mother god, Earthfolk judge it as vitalized at its core by an atheistic movement.

Addressing

Addressing is a ritual which opens the four directions of the Earth: North, South, East and West. It is a way of orienting yourself and your Beloved so that each of you becomes the Earth.

Attend and Attending

Attending is becoming aware of and engaging your Other through every sense to finally evoke a coupled presence of precious intimacy.

Beloved and Belovedness

The Beloved is the precious Other. You become Beloved when you both recognize and receive a precious Other as they recognize and receive your precious Otherness. The state of being Beloved is a state of ecstatic communion wherein two manifest a new oneness, a new presence, that of Belovedness. Beloveds experience a birthing which is a new borning of two, already alive in time and space, as one. And as they uncouple, as never the same again. _Sensual Preciousness_ blossoms as a spirituality of the Beloveds, and its ritual act is the nurturing embrace of the Beloveds.

Big Story

Big Story is a people's source for answering all their questions, large and small. Knowing these Big Stories and their answers form part of a group's identity. Acting out these Big Stories through ceremonial ritual acts initiates the individual into the group. Big Stories do not readily sit quietly or peacefully next to one another, nor do their initiates. Knowing a Big Story is a serious matter, and not infrequently one of life and death.

A Big Story has a set of Big Answers to shared key Big Questions. These Big Answers are expressed in words, images and ritual acts. Every group has a Big Story, although while the basic questions about the origin, purpose and meaning of life are shared, each group's Big Answers differ in respect to images, words and ritual acts.

Big Stories are vast and complex. The carry fabulous accounts, histories, images, rituals, songs, etc., which often overwhelm the individual's imagination. Individuals live out their Big Story in particular ways. Each selects and arranges certain aspects of the Big Story which becomes their "personal Story." Their selection is based upon those parts of their Big Story which speak to the individual's strongly held heartfelt beliefs and convictions. These are heartfelt because they concern matters over which the individual is willing to surrender many things, including her worldly possessions, family and friends, even life, itself. Though it is fairly easy to get people to agree about the commonalities of their Big Story, it is very difficult to get them to change their personal Story.

Bodywandering

Bodywandering is a playful approach to your Beloved's body. It starts when you peer at your Beloved's body and perceive that it is a map of Mobius pathways. When you bodywander you Attend to the flesh of your Beloved with every sense: sight, smell, taste, hearing and on every level and on every level: physical, mental, spiritually, astrally.

Comforting

This is the act of consciously Intending to evoke the sensual presence of comforting and of being comforted. It is letting rise from within your heart the ecstatic joy of just being here, today, right now, this instant.

Crowning

Crowning is a ritual where the body of your Beloved is reverenced and worshipped at the points of wand and womb.

Deep-sleep Dreaming

Collectively and communally, every night when you go to sleep, you become a deep-sleep dreamer. You re-dream the Biblical stories. You are commonly told that sleeping is a state of unconsciousness or non-consciousness, meaning that nothing happens. Earthfolk hold that there is a tremendously significant "more" to this "deep-sleep dreaming" imagery. In _Genesis_ , the woman, the female, the feminine is found from within a deep-sleep dream.

Dominion

The power of Dominion, of total control over the Earth and all creatures is how the Abrahamic tradition has interpreted certain passages in _Genesis_. Chapter 1:26, "Let us make man, in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Chapter 1:28, "And God blessed them... and have dominion over...." Chapter 2:19, "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."

Earthfolk

Earthfolk became aware of themselves—Awoke!—when they first saw the snapshot of Earth from outer space taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968. Their vision is that every human is a parent and child in the Forever-Family which is immortal. They praise and worship the Other as a precious Other. They hold that the preciously intimate erotic presence that is made manifest when two couple and express a newborn precious Otherness unleashes the energy, called vital zest, which heals and whole humans and the Earth. This intimate vital zest is more powerful than nuclear energy. Consequently, Earthfolk ritualize every aspect of their living, for ritual is the way they Invite the Other into their nurturing embrace.

Emotion

Earthfolk use "emotion" to define and describe that which individuals share as they experience themselves as a group, whether a pair or a nation. Emotion is that something which no individual can describe in terms of its origins for it is evoked by another rather than generated by an idea. Humans are born from within emotion and have meaning only as they experience emotion, which is a relationship with an Other. What makes humans human is that which they describe in relational terms, for example, love, honor, respect, being free, beauty, harmony, warring, hating, murdering and so forth.

Forever-Family

With just a slight bit of peering it becomes clear that all human experiences are emotionally relational and familial. Everyone comes from the human family which has always been and will always be, that is, Forever.

Heartfelt Action

A heartfelt action is a defining action of a Big Story. It is how the Big Story is made manifest through the actions of an individual. A heartfelt action describes an act or group of acts which believers in a Big Story must do. A heartfelt action is not optional, it is required. It is the testimonial act which endows the believer with personal and group identity as a proponent or confessor of the truths of the Big Story.

Intend and Intending

This is a consciously chosen way to approach an Other through inviting him/her into your intimacy. Intending is a conscious act but it is not simply one of thinking. It is a bit more like perpetual meditation on your Beloved.

Interiority

Interiority is an individual's self-awareness, her/his self-identity. Your concept of interiority, e.g., of your self or ego or person, determines how you understand and value your intimacy. Your intimacy is discovered, notably, only when you are in relationship, and as you become aware of your intimacy so does your grasp on the character of your interiority become clearer.

Intimacy

Intimacy can only occur when two share their interiorities in such a way that each experiences their own preciousness as they are embraced as a Beloved. Earthfolk use the imagery of two candles merging their flames to form a third which is a oneness of a couple who then become, as they move apart, separate identities, again. For Earthfolk, intimacy cannot be experienced alone. It is a communal presence.

Inviting

To Invite is to open oneself, sensually, so that your preciousness is made present. When two humans are Inviting, they open for a nurturing embrace. It is a giving through receiving. It is an act of vulnerability, of open-heartedness, and fearless surrender to your Beloved.

Memory and Remembering

Remembering is not just a wistful act of sentimentality. Rather, it is a centering sensual act of sensual immersion wherein your whole body, every sense, is tuned to your presence in the Now with you feeling yourself as one with all who have preceded you and all who shall yet come. Remembering is a relational act wherein you open yourself to relate to the Past and the Future in a robust Now. Remembering is the act of making yourself through relationship with your Beloved present as Forever-Family.

Obliterated Womb

_Genesis_ is the story of the Obliterated Womb. There, Adam's body is substituted for the female womb. From his body a Rib is taken and with that the Lone Male god creates a woman. Earthfolk understand the Rib as the allegorical penis, and see the act of female creation as one of masturbation. In _Genesis_ the visual icon is Adam's penis and the hidden icon is the Obliterated Womb. The concept of the Obliterated Womb stands as the primary Lone Male _Sensual Preciousness_ concept. It is what the Lone Male god proclaims, namely, that there is no womb! Earthfolk ritualize to makes present this Obliterated Womb so as to heal this Shade act through the presence evoked by the nurturing embrace.

Nurturing Embrace

The nurturing embrace is a simultaneous invitation to accept and receive the full sensuality of the Other and make present Belovedness. To prepare for the nurturing embrace, Earthfolk practice living "as if I am no one's Enemy."

_Sensual Preciousness_ peers and grasps that your body is only fully present when coupled, that is, embraced. When in a nurturing embrace, your body changes. All of your skin becomes your mouth. You speak to your Beloved with and through every fleshly aspect and Memory. Your whole body becomes tongue. You taste each other as you lie upon each other. Every fiber of your being reaches out and grasps your Beloved. Through the nurturing embrace you and your Beloved remember what the Lone Male wants you to forget: Her coupled with Him. God the Mother coupled with God the Father: our divine parents.

Peering

Peering is not just staring or a visual act. It is also an act of acceptance, here, an acceptance of the Shadow, of the dark which accompanies light. It involves quieting the senses to open them to fuller input, from a trickle to a flood, of information and/or insight. This is a sensual discipline in that Earthfolk seek to evoke the full range and subtlety of emotion which accompanies peering and sitting in silence. They hold that until the emotion of a word, sound, image or insight is grasped in its robustness, the depth of information and truth is not properly tapped.

Precious and Preciousness

The iconic Starship Earth image stunned the gathering Earthfolk as they sensed that other human bodies were their own. That every Other is a precious Other, and that through nurturing embracing is how everyone's precious Otherness is evoked. The nurturing embrace of the precious Other makes present each as Beloved. The discovery of the precious Other as Beloved is a sensing which redefines and re-images who we are as individuals and who we can become in group identity, namely, a Forever-Family of Beloveds.

Presence

Presence describes that moment when the womb is no longer Obliterated. It is a flowering of the nurturing embrace. Presence evokes the Memory of Forever-Family. It is a moment of being in the Now with all Memory, which Memory is also anticipation of the Future.

Religious Big Story

The Religious Big Story is robust. It defining characteristic is that it seeks to answer all of the Big Questions, once and for all. It has well defined doctrines and required dogmas, and a profusion of ceremonial rituals. While there are quite a few Religious Big Stories, the dominant one which reflects the values of the others, is that which sources the West's quest for global dominion. This is the Abrahamic Big Story which encompasses the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions.

Ritual

A ritual is a performance that normally employs all five senses to make present a new presence. It is a repeated performance which builds upon Memory. For Earthfolk, ritual is the way two Others approach one another as they seek each other's preciousness. Ritual is the defining of a special space and time in which two seek the Other as Beloved.

Sensual Immersion

This describes the immersion of information gathered from the five senses in the emotions of the experience. From this moment of sensual immersion do humans form their thoughts, unleash their intuitions, and free their imaginations.

Sensual Preciousness

_Sensual Preciousness_ reflects the vision which sees that the life force is, itself, and arises from, a preciously intimate nurturing embrace. The preciously intimate nurturing embrace of Beloveds releases the creative precious Otherness from which all life flows. _Sensual Preciousness_ ' vital zest expressed by Beloveds through a nurturing embrace is the only energy which can counteract and deactivate nuclear energy.

Scientism Big Story

Scientism applies the scientific method to obtain an understanding of what something is or what is happening. Since the scientific method properly works with exploring and ascertaining empirical data, there is no necessary theory or Big Story that emerges from its application. Scientism is the peering at and sitting in silence with empirical data and telling a Big Story which makes a whole narrative out of discrete parts.

Secular Big Story

The Secular Big Story's defining characteristic is that it develops its Big Answers primarily as a negative reaction to the claims of the Religious Big Story. In contrast to the Religious Big Story the Secular has not evolved a tradition with well defined doctrines and required dogmas, nor a profusion of ceremonial rituals, nor authoritative institutions. While individuals will claim to be secular and scholars will cite a "secularizing" influence or trend, there is no indisputable definition of "secular" or "secularizing." Earthfolk see this Big Story as a movement within and not outside of the Religious Big Story. Secularism describes the transfer of spiritually erotic power from traditional religious language, imagery, laws and institutions to secular language, imagery, laws and institutions.

Sitting in Silence

To initiate sensual immersion, Earthfolk peer as they sit in silence. Sitting in silence is the practice of opening one's self to what is not apparent or obvious. It is a way of tuning one's senses to pick up information which lingers around, within and surrounds a commonplace image, word or insight.

Sojourning Aliens

The unintentional impact of the military expedition which took the snapshot of Starship Earth is that it awoke the Earthfolk. All at once they were present on Earth but as if aliens from outer space. They felt themselves as sojourners who were present among others who did not and could not see them. They realized that they began to see Others in a profoundly new way, namely, as precious Others. They realized that, while many Earth people were living in misery and found the earth to be just a ball of dirt, they were comfortable and at-home on Earth, which, for Earthfolk, is a Living presence.

Stirring

A ritual which is a preparation for the exploration of intimacy. The Beloveds grapple and lock, hinge and enfold each other in a nurturing embrace so that everything physical and emotional and mental and astral has been stirred.

Vision

Vision is seeing. Every people has a vision, that is, a way of looking at what is around them and interpreting it in a certain way. This is a way which is particular and often peculiar to them and not to other people. For Earthfolk, a vision of a people includes what they claim to see and what others who do not share their vision see that they do not see.

Wand

This is Earthfolk's word for the penis when understood as a ritual instrument of a _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual. The word carries a sense of magicalness and the power to make something appear which was not there. It also carries a sense of trickiness. Earthfolk spied the wand in _Genesis_ , hidden there in its character as trick. For the trick of _Genesis_ is to assert that the penis is only a penis and not a wand.

Warrior's Quest

The Warrior's Quest is to vanquish the Intimate Enemy. In the Abrahamic tradition the Warrior's Quest is the singular way a male experiences and understands his masculinity. There are no other manly options except to find both initiation and redemption through the warrior act of slaying an Intimate Enemy. In other traditions the warrior is simply one among many masculine expressions. In them the male has a broad-range of possible heartfelt acts which can define him, including acts of healing, compassion, etc., or what the Abrahamic would, condescendingly, call feminine traits. The Abrahamic Warrior's Quester is hard as steel, and his penis is both Adam's Rib and Aaron's Rod.

As Earthfolk see it, the Warrior's Quest is sourced in _Genesis_ ' Obliteration of the Womb. Consequently, the Abrahamic Warrior's Quest's prime Intimate Enemy is Her, the Mother Goddess, and every female. Warrior's Quest sex is termed the War of the Sexes. Endless warring is the Abrahamic idea of "peace." The Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth are fitting icons of the Abrahamic Warrior's Quest tradition.

Womb

Womb is Earthfolk's word denoting all of a woman's private parts. Just about every Warrior's Quest word for a female body part is a denigrating one, part of a vocabulary of sexual abuse. Earthfolk use womb because it carries many notions, such as the sensually precious ground where semen seeds and life begins to grow, the cave in which all human life resides in preparation for the transformation into a independent living being, the power which a male has when he couples as Beloved and is Invited to the Crowning ritual. While the Warrior's Quester will endow no word referencing the female with honor and respect, when Earthfolk say womb they are making present a moment of worship.

Worship

The ultimate comforted presence to be evoked through all rituals is that of the worshipping moment. This is the instant of breakthrough to the sense of thirdness: of the two Beloveds as freshly One. The worshipping Flash! for _Sensual Preciousness_ is that breakdown/ breakthrough experience and event when two couple and become one. This is not a "egoism of two." Rather, it is a marrying and parenting moment. Marrying in that it is the unleashing of the dynamic precious eroticism that vitalizes the personal relationship of the two who are intimate foci, each for the other

## Chapter 83: Appendix C—Links

The Internet as an information resource has changed an author's presentation of references and sources. Formerly, a Bibliography revealed, to a great extent, the intellectual works which were stored in the author's personal bookcases or accessible through his academic institutions. A Bibliography conveyed the sense that the works cited were "official" or "mainstream" or "approved by peers." With the Internet, treasure chests of documents and information are made available with just a browser and a mouse-click from anywhere around the globe, at anytime. Unfortunately, the Internet's strength is its weakness, at least from the "authoritative source" perspective. That is, anyone can post a website and "publish" information, however shoddy, ignorant, prejudicial and/or silly.

The following Links are listed in respect to the Internet's best quality, namely, that you can be networked. Almost every informational website has its own "Links" to other websites. Quickly, you can obtain counter-views, dissenting opinions, in-depth research, contact information for an authority or authoritative institution, or even link with a bizarre and "far out" commentator. At the least, "surfing the Net" sharpens one's skepticism as it simultaneously never ceases to amaze in respect to "where" it takes you. After all, it is all "cyber-space" and, like it or not, by using it you are a "cyber-naut."

One hard-copy, "offline" book or article is cited for those who do not have ready access to the Internet.

The Links are presented in respect to key ideas in Volume 1. None of these Links should be taken as evidence or proof of what Earthfolk believe. For many of these Links are "roots." Others are texts which "leak." The topic headers are intended as Search phrases.

At anytime, you can readily shift to your own linkage. There are free and subscription services for every thematic encyclopedia you can imagine. From the subscription Encyclopedia Britannica to the free Wikipedia to various encyclopedias of religion, scientific disciplines, etc. There are also online libraries, one of note is the subscription service "Questia."

"Google" and "Yahoo" are your doors to research and imagination. Who would have imagined that "serious scholars" would google and yahoo!? But such "cyber-sounds" are just one indication of the merriment of Linking.

ATOMIC BOMB

Manhattan Project Preservation Association. http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/CG/CG_03A.htm

http://www.atomicheritage.org/

Remembering the Manhattan Project: Perspectives on the Making of the Atom Bomb and Its Legacy, Cynthia C. Kelly, editor, World Scientific Publishing Company (April 2005)

Nuclear Weapons Image Gallery. http://zvis.com/nuclear/nukimgdht.shtml

Starship Earth. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo8/A08_MP.PhotosFS.gif

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo8/Apollo8.html

Lord Shiva the Destroyer. http://www.lotussculpture.com/shiva1.htm

J. Robert Oppenheimer, video clip. http://www.atomicarchive.com/Movies/Movie8.shtml

CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

Evolve http://www.evolve.org/pub/doc/index2.html

Association for Global New Thought http://www.agnt.org/

Noetic Sciences http://www.noetic.org/

Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential, Barbara Marx Hubbard, New World Library (January 1998)

GLOBALIZATION

International Monetary Fund http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/ib/2000/041200.htm

The Wombat. http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml

Bioneers. http://www.bioneers.org/

History of the Internet. http://www.davesite.com/webstation/net-history.shtml

International Forum on Globalization. http://www.ifg.org/

Global Research. http://www.globalresearch.ca/

Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph E. Stiglitz, W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (April 2003)

OUTER SPACE

Review and evaluation of early projects. http://www.newint.org/issue123/space.htm

Space Colony Art from 1970s http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/70sArt/art.html

Review of book which started space colony movement. http://www.space-frontier.org/HighFrontier/

High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, Gerard K. O'Neill, Collector's Guide Publishing Inc; 3rd edition (October 2000)

"We stay bound to Earth at our peril." http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/colonize_now_011030-2.html

"Space and Human Survival." http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space/survival.htm

PLANETARY CULTURE

Earth Charter. http://www.earthcharterusa.org/

Sri Aurobindo. http://www.sriaurobindosociety.org.in/index.htm

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Future of Man, Image (April 20, 2004)

http://www.godweb.org/godand.htm

http://www.gaiamind.com/Teilhard.html

Riane Eisler

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, Harper, San Francisco (September 1, 1988)

http://www.partnershipway.org/

http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/eisler.html

The Gaia movement

http://www.gaiamind.com/evolve.html

Jean Gebser

Ever Present Origin : Part One: Foundations Of The Aperspectival World, Ohio University Press; Reprint edition (August 31, 1986)

http://www.gaiamind.org/Gebser.html

http://www.noetic.org/

http://www.gebser.org/publications/index.html

Marija Gimbutas

Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 B.C.: Myths, and Cult Images, University of California Press (June 1982)

http://www.levity.com/mavericks/gim-int.htm

http://www.shadowdrake.com/neopagan/marija.html

http://www.telesterion.com/esotericbooks/gimbutas.htm

Lindisfarne Association. http://www.pacweb.com/lindisfarne/ Its "Fellows" link presents a long-list of interrelated thinkers.

James Lovelock

Gaia : A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford University Press, USA (November 23, 2000)

http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/

Partnership Way. http://www.partnershipway.org/

Elizabeth Sahtouris

EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution, iUniverse (October 2000)

http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/

William Irwin Thompson

Coming Into Being : Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness, Palgrave Macmillan (June 15, 1998)

http://www.rain.org/~da5e/Thompson.html

http://photosynthesis.com/William_Irwin_Thompson.html

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

National Center for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/

Robert J. Lifton

Destroying the World to Save It : Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, Owl Books (September 1, 2000)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5531.htm

Christopher Lasch

Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, W. W. Norton & Company; Revised edition (May 1991) http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hutchison/040208 "Narcissism and the culture war."

http://www.reviews.ctpdc.co.uk/lasch.html

RELIGIOUS BIG STORY: ABRAHAMIC TRADITION

Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God's Phallus And Other Problems for Men And Monotheism, Diane Publishing Company (September 30, 1994)

Off With Her Head!: The Denial of Women's Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture, H. Eilberg-Schwartz and Wendy Doniger, University of California Press (November 1995)

Mary Daly,

Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation, Beacon Press; 2nd edition (June 1, 1993)

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/daly.html

Matthew Fox

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality Presented in Four Paths, Twenty-Six Themes, and Two Questions, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam (October 9, 2000)

http://www.matthewfox.org/

Feminism and Christianity

Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza Orbis Books (November 2001)

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/chris.html

Feminist Liberation Theologians Network. http://www.his.com/~mhunt/FLTN.htm

Norman Gottwald

The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 BCE, Sheffield (October 1999)

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1308

James Hillman

Archetypal Psychology, Vol. 1: Uniform Edition of the Writings of James Hillman Spring Publications (November 2004)

http://www.menweb.org/hillmaiv.htm

http://www.jungatlanta.com/DecodingHillman.html

Information Center, Womyn for Womyn http://www.icwow.org/index.htm

The Inquisition's judicial manual.

The Malleus Maleficarum of Kramer and Sprenger, Montague Summers, Dover Publications (June 1, 1971)

http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/

The Jesus Seminar. Westar Institute. http://www.westarinstitute.org

"Lesbian Feminism and Queer Theory: Another "Battle of the Sexes"?"

http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/WMNS/Projects/Porteousd/Lesbian%20Feminism%20and%20Queer%20Theory%20Another%20Battle%20of%20the%20Sexes.htm

Jacquelyn N. Zita, Body Talk: Philosophical Reflections on Sex and Gender, Columbia University Press (1998)

Erich Neumann

The Origins and History of Consciousness, Bollingen; Reprint edition (September 18, 1995)

"Erich Neumann: Theorist of the Great Mother," Camille Paglia

http://www.bu.edu/arion/Volume13/13.3/Paglia.pdf

Camille Paglia

Sex, Art, and American Culture : Essays, Vintage; 1st edition (September 8, 1992)

http://desires.com/1.2/sex/docs/paglia1.html

Rosemary Radford Reuther

Goddesses and the Divine Feminine : A Western Religious History, University of California Press (May 1, 2005)

http://www.progressivechristianwitness.org/pcw.cfm?id=16&p=5

http://www.aquinas-multimedia.com/catherine/earthspirit.html

http://research.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/xian.html

Jane Schaberg

Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives, Sheffield Academic Press (March 1995)

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/illegit.html

Bishop John Shelby Spong

The Sins of Scripture : Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, Harper, San Francisco (April 1, 2005)

http://www.bishopspong.com

Phyllis Trible

Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Overtures to Biblical Theology) Augsburg Fortress Publishers (June 1984)

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/img/assets/6396/TribleP_FA51305PDF.pdf

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1838

WATER. Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. http://www.his.com/~mhunt/index.htm

Mary E. Hunt, A Guide for Women in Religion : Making Your Way from A to Z, Palgrave Macmillan (December 17, 2004)

RITUALS

Starhawk

Spiral Dance, The - 20th Anniversary : A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 20th Anniversary Edition, Harper, San Francisco; 20th Ann edition (October 1, 1999)

http://www.starhawk.org

http://www.reclaiming.org

http://www.his.com/~mhunt/index.htm

The Global Oneness Commitment. http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Homas_-_Homa/id/2153

WATER. Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. http://www.his.com/~mhunt/index.htm

Black Elk

Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Precious Man of the Oglala Sioux, University of Nebraska Press (December 2000)

http://blackelkspeaks.unl.edu/blackelk.pdf

http://www.indians.org/welker/blackelk.htm

SACRED SEXUALITY

Sacred Texts. http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/index.htm

Tantra http://www.newfrontier.com/nepal/whatis.htm

Playboy Philosophy. http://www.playboy.com/worldofplayboy/faq/philosophy.html#1

Margo Anand

The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, Tarcher (December 1, 1990)

While difficult to find a website for her and her former "Skydancing Institute," her works are seminal for an introduction to and an understanding of Sacred Sexuality. She presents an integration of the ancient Hindu Tantric tradition with Western values.

David Daida

The Way Of The Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Woman, Work, and Sexual Desire, Sounds True (October 31, 2004)

http://www.deida.info/

Ken Wilber

The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader, Shambhala (September 14, 1998)

http://www.kenwilber.com/index.html

"Great Sex Without Intercourse," http://www.nvsh.nl/Website_Engels/Texts/Sexual_Information/Basics/Skills_1.htm

http://www.askmen.com/love/love_tip_150/197_love_tip.html

http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/healthinfo//pdfs/GreatSex.pdf

SECULARISM

American Atheists. http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/

Council for Secular Humanism. http://www.secularhumanism.org/

National Secular Society. http://www.secularism.org.uk/

SCIENTISM

Scientism, a definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

"How science correlates to Christianity, atheistic scientism, and New Age mysticism"

http://www.ldolphin.org/olkhov.html

David Bohm

Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge (November 15, 2002)

http://www.david-bohm.net/

Bill Joy

Why the Future Doesn't Need Us : How 21st Century Technologies Threaten to Make Humans an Endangered Species, Random House Audio, Abridged edition (March 28, 2006) Audio CD

http://www.tecsoc.org/innovate/focusbilljoy.htm

Ray Kurzweil

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 2000)

http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html

WAR AND WARRIOR'S QUEST

War quotes. http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_war.html

Peace poem. http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/peaceday/poem/6poem.asp

Daniel Ellsberg

Papers On The War, Simon and Schuster (1972)

http://www.ellsberg.net/

Every Church A Peace Church http://www.ecapc.org/peacemakingarticles.asp

David Harris

Our War: What we did in Vietnam and what it did to us, Crown (September 3, 1996)

http://www.rtis.com/reg/bcs/pol/touchstone/february97/terry.htm

John Keegan

A History of Warfare ,Vintage (November 1, 1994)

http://www.militaryreadinglist.com/authors/K/john-keegan.htm

"Muscular Christianity." http://atheism.about.com/od/religiousright/p/MuscularChrist.htm

Warrior Culture of the US Marines. http://www.usmcpress.com/warriorculture.htm

"The Warrior's Code." http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE02/French02.html

S. Brian Willson. http://www.brianwillson.com/ "We are not worth more. They are not worth less."

WORLD RELIGIONS

Internet Sacred Text Archives – has numerous relevant links.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/time/index.htm

http://www.sacred-texts.com/time/origtime.htm

Mircea Eliade

The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion, Harvest Books (October 23, 1968)

http://mythosandlogos.com/Eliade.html

www.beliefnet.com

Vatican Council Two

Bill Huebsch, Vatican II in Plain English: The Council, Thomas More Association (February 1997)

http://www.progressivechristianwitness.org/pcw.cfm?id=16&p=5

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/

Institute for Interreligious Dialogue. On the Abrahamic Tradition. http://www.iid.org.ir/iide/Conference.asp?T=2&L=11&ID=

Thich Nhat Hanh

The Miracle of Mindfulness, Beacon Press (May 1, 1999)

Thich Nhat Hanh: Essential Writings, with Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books (June 2001)

http://www.seaox.com/thich.html

## Chapter 84: Appendix D: The author's encounter with Earthfolk

I am writing _Sensual Preciousness_ in the early winter of my life. It has been a seed I've carried all my life, deep within my heart and imagination, although only recently have I sensed its stirring presence. Shall this seed erupt into shoot and then blossom in the deep winter of my yearning? Shall it be, against all odds, a bloom upon the icy landscape? I laugh at this improbability, but then, as I've sensed since it first began to germinate, this is a question only you can answer.

My relationship with you is what _Sensual Preciousness_ is all about. In the most succinct of images, my decision not to murder you is the seed which has been deep within my heart and imagination. As strange as that might sound, consider that my life is defined by a search to understand why society has dutifully called me forth and given me reasons to see you as my intimate enemy. The society about us—the global human community—has been endlessly at war since time immemorial. I, like most males in my country, was called in my youth to "step forward" and become the next-generation solider in this endless war. I was told that my slaying of you as intimate enemy would be an act of faithfulness to my State and my Church. I was told that killing you would be evidence and proof of my manliness. There was, in my youth, no vision or imagination which pressed me with insights and reasons not to slay you.

Can I ask you to reflect for a moment, before reading forward, upon the fact that though there are philosophies, religions and spiritualities which value compassion, gentleness, mindfulness, self-sacrifice, and like virtues, that they are aberrations in a world dominated for millennia by endless warring? I admit that I once thought that I could find a way within one of these more pacifistic spiritualities to claim that you are not my intimate enemy. But I have to admit that I tried and found them all wanting. I will talk more about my attempt to practice a pacifistic spirituality but I will have to be honest and state that, despite my best efforts, none led me to value you as Sensually Precious.

The course of my spiritual journey has been determined by my effort to claim you as other than my intimate enemy. It is a course which wends through years in a Catholic seminary and monastery, decades studying and teaching as a lay theologian, years as an anti-war activist promoting nonviolent Resistance against the government, a sentence of five years in prison for refusing the Call to hunt you down, and years in the darkness of my mind and soul as I wandered, broken but seeking wholeness.

Only my encounter with the Earthfolk rituals and vision provided me with an imagination and practical ways with which to approach you as other than intimate enemy. While I want to invite you to encounter the Earthfolk on your own terms, throughout this book, I'd like to expand upon their vision and rituals with some references to how they changed my life. The first insight that the Earthfolk vision presents is that you—the Other—are precious. I will explain later how they came to this insight. What is of paramount import is that you as the Other are not an intimate enemy to be feared. Rather, you are someone whose embrace makes present a coupled sense of preciousness. More, Earthfolk hold that "you" cannot be you unless and until you are embraced. One simple conclusion from this approach is that if I slay you then I slay myself. Another is that if I am to understand myself then it is imperative and necessary that I preserve your life. If either of us dies, then each of us dies. As we grow together, so is our self-insight deepened.

This coupled sense of preciousness often transforms the couple and manifests a new presence of each as Beloved. While Earthfolk words and images will be explored in fuller detail, later, they serve to alert you to the special value Earthfolk place on you. As common as these Earthfolk terms and images appear, namely, preciousness and Beloved, Earthfolk's understanding of spirituality is anything but commonplace. At its core is the definition of spirituality as a coupled experience. This alone stands 180 degrees from the dominate notion of spirituality which is that such is an individual journey or Quest.

Moreover, if you follow Earthfolk practices and rituals you will experience a profound and radical shift in how you understand your body, your senses, your mind, and what is made present when you spiritually couple as Beloveds. I cannot stress how totally unnerving and exhilarating is the state of being present to your own preciousness and that of another in an embrace of Beloveds. But moving you towards this insight and feeling through following an Earthfolk practice or ritual is one of my tasks.

You can now begin to grasp why I state that for _Sensual Preciousness_ to blossom, I need your answer to, "Are you my Beloved?" I need your answer because I have come to learn that I am only whole when you behold me. Against the popular vision which fosters an extreme notion of rugged individualism and a "go it alone" mentality, Earthfolk state that "I" am only whole when you cherish me. I am not fully me if I am not your Beloved. You are not fully you unless you are my Beloved. _Sensual Preciousness_ is an invitation for you to examine your own journey and determine how you will answer this question.

I fully grasp how difficult and treacherous my invitation is. I realize that I am a survivor. A survivor of a millennial old war whose vision and imagination are grounded in simple stories but ones which have such deep roots in your and society's mind and imagination that for me to ask you to interpret them as Earthfolk do is to ask you to put your body, mind and soul in harm's way. I have asked, "Are you my Beloved?" at various junctures of my life, and have suffered for simply asking the question. As noted, I was sent "Inside," into society's House of Terror, into a world of darkness, of pain and suffering, into a caged world. They told me that I was no longer Francis X. Kroncke, rather, I am 8867-147. In light of this, I have to be brutally honest and tell you that just asking this question can have dire consequences. You will inevitably confront the darker side of your mind and soul, as you will that of your society and spiritual tradition. As I did, you might even wake up one morning and realize that you are an outlaw or a heretic, someone no longer acceptable to everyday society. Yet, you also might realize, as I did, your own _Sensual Preciousness_ as you hear that you are Beloved.

In most spiritual traditions there is a discussion of the "positive way" ( _via positiva_ ) and the "negative way" ( _via negativa_ ). The former is known to most. It is the celebratory aspect of spiritual insight, e.g., when one is moved to ecstasy by a sunrise or at the Baptism of an infant innocent. The latter is not as well known. The "negative way" is often called "The Dark Night of the Soul." I first found the Earthfolk during my stay in prison. As I will explain in increasing detail throughout the book, at this time, the Earthfolk call is only heard in moments of soulful darkness. While I refer to prison as my Dark Night, you might be called to explore other places and experiences. When I was released from prison and first spoke in public, I was almost always approached by someone who confirmed the character of my Dark Night by referring to a stay in a mental institution or through recalling a battleground experience or discussing the descent into the liquid or hazed hell of booze and addictions. The lesson I want to share with you from all this is that if you don't "own your Shadow" or your Dark Night then it will own you. One of the early insights the Earthfolk vision provided was that the dominant warring spirituality is one which denies its Dark Side. This is a critical insight and one which I will address often.

_Why is this question, "Are you my Beloved?" so dangerous?_ You are probably saying to yourself, "This guy had to do something other than ask this simple question to get thrown in jail. What did he really do?" The historical answer is that I raided Selective Service draft boards with seven other men. This is a group the press called "The Minnesota 8." Though I considered it an act of nonviolence, that is, one form of civil disobedience, I was convicted of a crime of violence. This is significant because it underscores that to ask, "Are you my Beloved?" will be taken as an act of violence. See, http://www.minnesota8.net

"But what did you think you were doing in that draft board?" I anticipated this question. And here is where you will have to be patient with me as I guide you through my journey. I ask for your patience because almost everything I am going to say as I explain myself will seem wrong-headed, counter to how you've been educated, and fraught with consequences and challenges you might prefer not to face. So, the simple answer to the draft raid question is that I was performing a spiritual ritual. Yes, I know that it was an act of "breaking and entering." That was exactly how the prosecutor presented "the facts." Nevertheless, I hold that the draft raid was my first _Sensual Preciousness_ ritual of Belovedness, although I did not have those terms back then. In short, to understand why it was for me a sensually precious ritual will give you a sense of how I think and interpret matters.

The raids took place in July of 1970. As it is today, American society was steeped in a warrior tradition whose most popular icon, then, was John Wayne. The Catholic Church was likewise steeped in a warrior tradition whose most popular icon was, and is, the "milites Christi" or Soldiers of Christ. "Onward Christian Soldiers!" and all that. When it came to forwarding reasons for me to kill you, each warrior tradition provided plenty of intellectual, moral and spiritual ammo. You were my target either as an Enemy of the State or an Enemy of Christ.

Personally, I first opposed the Call to kill you by getting the State to recognize my claim for Conscientious Objector status. This was an argument that the Christian tradition was, at its core, a religion of peace not war. I claimed that Jesus was a pacifistic leader who made a compelling distinction about what needed to be "rendered unto Caesar." I claimed that the Christian tradition required that I "render unto God" what was His right and only His right, that is, to take a life. Eventually, I was granted my CO status. It is somewhat ironic that I completed my military obligation through two years of Alternative Service.

Though I had avoided combat, I realized that I was still killing you. I was doing so through the actions of others, of those still being drafted. Somehow I had failed. How? I realized that I had been, in a term of the day, "pacified" by the government. Somehow, instead of having an impact, I had been neutralized. I was perplexed. I had waged my nonviolent war against the violent war by a spiritual act of moral resistance. Or had I? Here is where I began to understand a term and reality which plays a significant role in the interpretations forwarded in _Sensual Preciousness_. I grasped that I had swallowed—hook, line and sinker—a story of mis-direction.

A story of mis-direction is one which appears, on the surface, to be saying "this" but actually conveys below the surface or subliminally a quite contrary "that." The story of mis-direction in my case was the Catholic Church's claim that its tradition contained the rituals which made the spirit of God present. In its own language, the Catholic Church calls these rituals "sacraments." There are seven sacraments which "make precious" and "make God present" at distinct phases in one's personal growth. These include sacraments for birth and dying, for atonement and reconciliation, at the moment of marrying, and for expressing a common bond with other believers. During my trial, the federal prosecutor mocked me by stating to the jury that, "Mr. Kroncke is trying to create the eighth sacrament!" More than either he or I knew at the time, he was right.

As draft age men came and went through my office at the Catholic student center, called a Newman Center, I realized the depth of my failure. What had I achieved by obtaining a Conscientious Objector status, other than protecting myself? Nothing I had done could protect these young men from going forth and hunting you down. When I told them about my CO status and my Alternative Service they expressed admiration and congratulated me on getting out of the war, but it didn't speak to their particular dilemma. Most would step back and say something to the effect that they wished that they were as educated and articulate as I was, but that they couldn't do what I did. Somehow what I did was not morally or spiritually contagious!

In light of my religious background, I prayed, preached at endless Peace Masses, sang rousing anti-war hymns, and wrote letters to the editor. However, the war increasingly escalated and the body bags swelled and multiplied. Worse, despite statements against the war by the Catholic Bishops and other religious authorities, no one who exercised spiritual authority or power was effective or listened to by the government.

Here is how my thinking but more notably my spiritual experience began to change. At this time I began to doubt that I had ever been in a spiritual place, despite my years in the monastery and in churches at Daily Mass. Here is when I began to see the breadth and depth of the story of spiritual mis-direction which had fooled me.

In simple terms, the Church's "seven sacraments" were phony. They were ceremonial performances but they were not truly sacramental, that is, they did not make present "God" or any spiritual power. They mis-directed me away from where the spiritual power which binds a society and a people actually reside. Consider that I could have stood on a street corner and desecrated the Bible (or any precious Book of other spiritual traditions) and what would have happened? People would shout that I was a hate monger. Or that I was racist. Someone might come up and try to smack me. But what would the police do? Nothing.

Now, consider that I had taken out my draft card and burned it. That I had called to the crowd to do the same and shouted for them to Resist! the draft. If I did that, the police and FBI would rush from the crowd with handcuffs and chains, twist my arms around my back, possibly throw me to the ground, even pull out their guns, and speedily whisk me off to sit in an iron cage. Which act, then, would have told you that I had made present the power which gives and takes life? Which act was truly spiritual, in that it expressed the deep beliefs and moral values of a people, here, a people at war? Beliefs and values which challenged—"Resist!"—put the protester's life in harm's way.

You deepen your understanding of the ritual character of the Draft when you realize that it is the only universal act which every male, at 18 years of age, must do. Certain individuals will receive deferments, such as paraplegics, the mentally impaired and seminary students (yes, "Divinity" students!). What an 18 year old cannot do, however, is not register. The act of registering is, then, a "sacramental" ritual act which binds all males and makes each present to the other as a Warrior. As the Earthfolk vision unfolds, you will be asked to examine the many rituals of your current way of living. I anticipate that your immediate response is, "I don't have any rituals." I accept that challenge.

Now you can begin to understand how the _Sensual Preciousness_ vision was seeded in my personal life. During the draft raid, I was conducting a ritual which sought to make present you as "not my intimate enemy." I was attempting to make present your and my preciousness. I took your Draft card and your 1-A files, which held your letter of "Greetings" from Uncle Sam, and destroyed them. By doing so I proclaimed and made present to you yourself as Beloved. I called you to step forward and refuse induction into the military, and by so doing proclaim that you accepted yourself as Beloved and that you ceased to see other people as intimate enemy.

This is what I was doing back then, but I did not have the _Sensual Preciousness_ vision or its language to share with you. Back then, I could only speak through my Catholic voice, and I talked about "allegiance to a higher power" and that "It was necessary to break the law of the State to be faithful to the higher law of the Church." I tried to speak with an American voice which spoke of a tradition of non-violent resistance to social evils, such as slavery. But in the end, the Church leaders ignored me, issued orders to prevent me from preaching and condemned me through their collective silence. In like manner, the Judge, in his Instructions to the Jury, stated, "Everything which Mr. Kroncke has said here for the eight days you must consider to be irrelevant and immaterial." I entered prison, vision-less and voiceless. I had hit The Bottom.

You can see why I began to realize that the world wasn't exactly operating the way I thought it was! I had anticipated that the Church would support my theological defense. After all I had been a faithful son and dedicated theologian. More, I had expected some response from political leaders who, so I believed, would awaken to the truths Resisters were proclaiming, namely, that the war was illegal since it had never been declared and that the Selective Service System was unconstitutional. But since neither had taken hold, I had to ponder, How does the world work? Why is Democracy always at war? Where is God?

I sat in prison and had to accept the fact that I was a criminal, one who was living outside the law, an outlaw. I had to accept the fact that the Church was never going to be my home, ever again. I was, obviously, very depressed, somewhat paralyzed. It is simply ironic and darkly humorous to relate that I watched the Attorney General of the United States get indicted as I sat in the prison TV room. My felonious ears also heard a President say what everyone knew was his own indictment, "I am not a crook!" You might think that I felt some joy at all of this. Or that I laughed heartily. I did not. I simply went out and played lots and lots of basketball.

When I left prison in July of 1973 everyone was saying that the war was ending. There were no more significant anti-war rallies. Students and other activists were returning to other issues and pursuits. I, too, went elsewhere. Eventually my path took a turn into marriage and parenthood. I spent three decades in the corporate sector as a salesman and manager. Yet I was still lost and dwelling at The Bottom. I drank to excess. I lusted after Mammon. I tried to live a "normal" life as a youth league basketball coach, a Good Dad, a breadwinner, and, to a degree, I did. But a thought nagged me. "Why hadn't I killed myself when in prison?" Why, when in the pit of darkness where I had no words to explain myself any longer, where I was deeply disturbed in mind and heart, why, then, had I not taken "Exit, stage right"?

What was I living for? Certainly, my sons and my family. But I had stopped going to church, and the world was still endlessly warring. Moreover, I worked in early Cable TV sales management and not only saw but passively assisted the ominous seeding of telecommunication's pornographic worldwide growth. What happened is something I can only explain as the Earthfolk explain themselves. I awakened. This happened when I first heard the call, "Mother." Now here is where the story of _Sensual Preciousness_ truly begins for me. I had just one word, "Mother," but it made me feel what I came to be, that is, sensually precious.

"Mother" came to me in 1983. I wrote an article, "Prison, Bottoming Out, The Mother" which ended, "At The Bottom, angels come to minister. The task ahead: to carve with a tongue unused to these alien categories, my sacrilegious words. God The Mother embracing God The Father made present through Child: each and everyone one of us ... each and all present, here at The Bottom, my family: Precious."

I had written this article in an effort to get a perspective on the question of why I had not killed myself while in prison. After all, I had lost everything, at least I had felt that I had lost everything. What remains, I pondered, when one Judge thunders, "You gentlemen are worse than the average criminal who strikes at the taxpayer's pocketbook. You strike at the foundation of government, itself." The other, "I direct you that everything which Mr. Kroncke has said here for the last eight days is irrelevant and immaterial." Worse than the average criminal. Irrelevant and immaterial. Where to go from here?

**Here is where the Earthfolk come in**. I realized that when I had resisted the war that I had done so not as an American nor as a Catholic but as a member of something called "The Movement." No one took time to strictly define what The Movement was. There was no membership ID cards. No entry fees. But in all the papers and through the TV reports the reference was to The Movement. Indeed, I was in prison because I was a member of this elusive, subversive, counter-cultural "something" which the government—and the Church—feared, this "Movement."

When I heard "Mother," I also sensed that I was part of something, but it was again as elusive as was The Movement. In the beginning it didn't make much difference to me. As I became more aware of the Earthfolk, or as they frame it, as I awoke and then continued my awakening, I realized that what "they" were called or named was irrelevant. What made us present, each to the other, was the insight and sensibility given through the core practice of "living as if I am no one's Enemy." This is how people began to perceive that they were among others who were awakening. Somewhere, in a discussion or while dancing, at table sharing bread of mind and soul, sometimes in a moment of simply beholding the other, I'd feel the other make me present as "not an Intimate Enemy." There is much to discuss about this as _Sensual Preciousness_ unfolds.

So, I am going to say to you that you will never meet an Earthfolk, other than as you might have met someone in The Movement. That is, that it is through a ritual action that the Earthfolk are present to you, just as it was through the ritual action of protesting that one "became" and "met" Movement people. In fact, the word "Earthfolk" was initially tolerated simply because this book needed a name. Later, as the Internet grew, some preferred to say that being an Earthfolk is being online while living in an offline world.

Only during the 1990s did I become aware that it was my task to start writing about the Earthfolk vision. Up to that point all of my experiences with them were spiritual. As I will explain, I was feeling comfortably at-home on the Living Earth. This communal Earthfolk feeling was sufficient in itself to sustain me. Daily, through specific _Sensual Preciousness_ practices and rituals we Earthfolk were present, each to the other. Through these practices and rituals—certain one are part of this book—I began to see, hear and be present to other Earthfolk. As I will present, the Earthfolk themselves claim 1945 and 1968 as special years in their awakening. These were the years when two iconic images arose within human consciousness. These were images which no human had ever imagined or seen. They awoke the Earthfolk, while at the same time they heralded the triumph of the Warrior's Quest vision and imagination. These are the iconic images of the Atomic Bomb's Mushroom Cloud and the astronauts' snapshot of Earth from outer space, what is called, the Blue Marble and also Starship Earth.

While these twin icons of Warrior's Quest triumph awoke the Earthfolk, you will also come to understand that their awakening was just that, an awakening from a deep sleep. This is a deep sleep with a mythic dimension. As such, you will understand the Ancient Call which awoke the Earthfolk. To so understand the Earthfolk's Ancient Call, I will invite you to look, once again, at the Ancient Call of the Warrior's Quest tradition. As will become evident, this requires that we spend a lot of time examining and interpreting the Warrior's Quest's Creation Story, namely, the Biblical account in _Genesis_.

Bear with me as I open the Earthfolk vision and imagination. Since being an Earthfolk is a spiritual experience, it will, at first, strike you at least as peculiar as my statements about draft raids as sacramental ritual acts. My most difficult first task is in enabling you to see the character of the Warrior's Quest spiritual tradition which grounds the modern world. This is a tradition which sees you as intimate enemy, and which has been engaged for over five millennia in a ritual of endless warring. You will be asked to consider that you are bound by this Warrior's Quest tradition whether you profess a religious, secular and/or scientific worldview.

While my personal journey in no way reflects the fullness of the Earthfolk vision and imagination, I will reference my experiences to demonstrate how one individual seeks to practice _Sensual Preciousness_. Please do not confuse the messenger with the message!

If you look to my life experiences to assess the worthiness of your engaging _Sensual Preciousness_ practices and rituals, then you are doing yourself a disservice. If it is not clear by now, it will be readily evident, that I am a deeply flawed individual who, like most, has a handful of redeeming characteristics. As I stated above, this book is truly about you. About the relationship you form with Others. About your preciousness and how you can live in _Sensual Preciousness_.

END

## Author information

_Francis X. Kroncke_ is a seeker whose has journeyed through the monastic life, the theological academy, federal courtrooms, a federal prison cell, and the byways of corporate America. In 1970, he took his Catholic theology into the American courts as he defended his draft board raiding crime, re: the trials of the "Minnesota 8." During and after serving time, he explored the dark, Shadow side of America...and his own soul. In his published essays he has focused on the ancient call which is heard most distinctively in the institutions and through the experiences of the dark side of the biblically based Western and American cultures. The article, "An Outlaw's Theology," was published in the journal Cross Currents (June 2011). A companion piece, "A vision of coupled presence," appeared in the journal Theology and Sexuality (2011). Also available on Smashwords are the novel, "Kill the Dove!" about the Sixties and prison. "Outlaw or American Patriot?" a trial memoir. "Outlaw Visions" a journey through becoming an Outlaw, a Subhuman, and an Earthfolk. See, other writings, interviews, the play, "Peace Crimes," etc. at: http://outlaw-visions.net

Links:

The "Minnesota 8"

"Peace and War in the Heartland"

"Earthfolk"

"Outlaw Visions"
