Looking Through the Eyes of The Shadow Self

The mists were thick as Kat climbed along the hard crust of crystalline frost that covered the path. An irregular echo of footsteps followed her. It was the ice cracking the rocks. She made it to the top of a high mountain. The low sunlight illuminated the deep waters below. She turned to look around. Cast upon surfaces of mists and clouds loomed the enormous blind Spectre of Brocken, known as the Grey Man of the mountains, whose Gaelic title is Am Fear Liath Mòr.

Awareness removes some of the mystery of what is observed. The rare optical illusion, seen only when viewed at the proper angle, magnifies the shadow of the observer. It is held within a rainbow, called a glory, formed by charged particles that interact with water droplets and diffract. The spectre was believed to foretell death of the observer. Kat remembered the moment when she felt the death of her innocent self.

Memory is short and often depends on what is experienced. The senses become numbed when a stimulus is constant. It is a form of adaptation. In 2001, North Americans were watching the weekly series, Survivor, Who wants to be a Millionaire, ER, Fear Factor and Big Brother. These shows popularized and normalized the struggle for survival and privacy invasion. Shock and randomly spying on anyone from anywhere, was a form of amusement. International News was available to the public. The sources had limits and biases. The same images were interpreted in different contexts by various American and International television stations and opinions about wars were often rife with controversies.

Mankind has often benefited by working together as a group using communication. Media holds the potential to raise the bar and improve the mean state of mankind or reveal the Achilles heel of various ideals. Television had only entered households in the 1960’s. When Charlie Chaplin wrote and produced stories that explored a political, moral, and intellectual sensitivity, it was a new tool that held promise. Using the magician’s sleight of hand, and smoke and mirrors, the media can direct thought, to direct the eyes of the observer.

Knowledge is power, but complex information can be hard to transmit, be camouflaged in the background of life, or deliberately misinterpreted. Intention is a form of energy that can create a critical mass that can change into matter, even if it is non-sustainable or at the expense of others sacrifices. Today, wiretapping has been replaced by passing information at the speed of light, obtained by the Elf on the Shelf, or Siri listening in on conversations. Information is a catalyst that causes cascades of thought that can direct thousands on social networks, to forge forward, pulled by imaginary forces. They defend an illusion of what they think is wanted, or that they believe holds the summa bonum, the highest good. Modern thought often becomes outdated

Life is marked by change and always has a finite end. Kat had lived through the austere time of the 1950’s, the dramatic changes caused by population increases, globalization and communication of 60’s, the recession of the 70’s, consumerism of the 80’s, abundance of the 90’s, the computer revolution of the 2000’s, then the expansion of consciousness of 2010 that connected matter and energy. The distance between polarities was causing turmoil in 2020’s. She remembered the first time she had read the signs associated with age-development of the brain, and the passing of an era. The emergency signal sounded. The day the twin towers fell, and the Pentagon was attacked was called 9/11, September 11, 2001.

The announcement of the tragedy, presented over the school linked television, chilled the air. A scene of panic flashed on the screen. Kat looked over her class of beautiful children, born to parents, who for the most part had eagerly awaited their arrival and loved them deeply. A blue haze appeared. The student’s faces that held the hope of the future of humanity had turned grey.

Kat had accepted the challenges of teaching the next generation some strategies for facing a changing world. Since the 1970’s, before the great leaps in exponential population doubling began, it was clear that the future would have to deal with crises of all sorts, with totally different tools than what customarily had been used. The art of living as a full human, required skills, resiliency, adaptability and teamwork. The students could deal with this.

Then the second tower was hit. That moment was frozen in time. Involuntarily, tears fell. Perhaps it was a reaction to having lived in the U.S. When the Pentagon was hit, Kat realized her innocence had disappeared.

The death of nearly 3000 innocents in the 9/11 tragedy pierced the illusory veil that things could stay the same or get better. At the onset it was not clear if the terrorist attack was caused by radicals within the country, where domestic terrorism was increasing, or outside forces. The innocence of feeling safe because of distance from the powder kegs in the world, and believing security was sufficient to prevent violence was lost.

Kat peeked through the eyes of the fleeting shadows of the heavy shroud of the Spectre. Kat needed to normalize the abnormal reality after the Twin Towers went down. She established Herstory based on relationships that appear to repeat in nature, society and History.

The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 cycled 100 years before Sars and Covid slowed down the world. In 1914 there was the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that initiated the Great War. That year Rutherford & Andrade demonstrated the wave nature of gamma rays that can that sling energy and elicit multiple possibilities over time and space. In September 2001, there was a gamma burst detected, after the destruction of the Twin Towers. The War on an invisible spectre, terror, directed against Al-qaeda in Afghanistan’s Taliban, and Iraq began.

The War on Terror ended almost 20 years later. Victories are claimed by more than military battles. The public needs to be moved. In spite of knowing Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo, many French citizens still believe that the Universe got it wrong, and that Napoleon was robbed of his victory. The use of repeated stories, rumours propaganda and deceit are often at the heart of the cultural biases that evaluate who is victorious.

Kat approached the new uncertain reality with conspiracy theory and Science. Sci-fi, became melded into a psi phi reality. The psi phenomenon is a parapsychological means to access information in ways that transcend habitual time and space constraints. Phi, a repeating mathematical concept that transmits the transcendental qualities of the maxima and minima of the Golden ratio wave, can be used to apply algorithms that can elicit a mental influence at a distance.

Individuals navigate the chaos of no man’s land, while gyrating through space and time. They forge a path through the junk and rabble oblivious to some patterns that occur in cycles. The universe holds the power of a multi-jointed pendulum swinging with a specific beat that comes of itself. Sands placed in a disc under a swinging pendulum during an earthquake form the design a rose in an eye.

Events often correspond with people who live up to their names. Einstein, whose name means ‘one stone’ , presented his theory that unified stone -solid matter to Energy. About 100 years later, Robert Brout, Francois Englert and Peter Higgs were awarded the Nobel prize for their description of how electromagnetic weak forces interact to create a field that leads to the creation of particles.

The name Brout, is a deformation of the German ‘Brot’ meaning Bread, a sustenance, a waft of air, a special brew that is made of the fruit, seed or stem and a sprout that can make a new plant. It means to graze in French. Selected parts of the field can unite and change energy into a particle of matter.

The name Englert holds the prefix ‘engle’, meaning angel, and suffix ‘ ert’, an emergency response treatment, often associated with an estrogen treatment therapy, to earth received time, that coordinates with universal time.

Higgs, which the French pronounce as ‘X’, that sounds like ‘eekgs’ is the name given to the boson particle that marks the spot of origin for the mass of elementary seed particles. It transfers the Hyggs, the Danish concept of a simple moment, when one is conscious of a cozy time that holds kinship and feels like a hug. The X forms an hourglass that measures time past and future. The X closes in to form the number eight, and a curve that repeats upon itself, the sign of infinity.

The attack on the ‘Twin towers’ was an attack against the World Trade Center that housed the international financial and trading community of the US. The reality that capitalist consumerism could provide what is wanted by exploiting child and human labour, and the environment, was surfacing in the public’s eye. Following the logic of cyclical repetitions, the fate of the Twin Towers seemed to resemble the story of the Tower of Babel, a place where one tongue was spoken, and there was potential to have everything that is wanted. However, the loss of contact with reality combined with the overestimation of ability, pride and hubris, resulted in the tower being destroyed.

The Spectre of Brocken disappeared. Kat felt pangs of nostalgia that held the essence of saying goodbye to a sick and dying friend and a past that can no longer exist.

As Kat walked down the mountain, she sorted her thoughts. She remembered reading Samuel Becket who began the Theatre of the Absurd, that addresses complex relationships between individuals, their manners, possessions, struggles for rank and position, and the conquest of sexual objects. Memories of Francois Truffaut’s movies of ‘ the New Wave’, captured the essence of madness that was noticeable before, during and after the wars.

In a way befitting her name, that stems from the Greek ‘katharsis’ meaning to make pure, clean and clear, she recognized Herstory was a psi phi tale intended to provide relief for that moment she had lost innocence. The spectre had let Kat face her shadow self, void of innocence and accept the need to navigate cycles of change in the new wave passing through the theatre of the Absurd.