mystikegg.com - A Mystical Guide to Enlightenment

I took this picture near Fairfax and 3rd in Los Angeles. There is a lot of interesting urban art in public spaces that offer a glimpse into the social or collective unconscious. What was the creative intent behind this piece? It is left up to the viewer to determine as the artist has given no context other than being on display in an urban public place for all to see. We see a cigarette package with only a few cigarettes left. On the package we see a shark with his mouth gaping wide displaying fierce teeth. What does this mean? Why did the artist decide to display this in a urban space?

Let’s break it down from an archetypal perspective. Cigarettes represent a vice, an addiction, something that is enjoyable to some, but with long term health risks and even death. Cigarettes are a symbol of addiction and satisfaction. If you are smoking a cigarette, or offering a cigarette to others, it is a lucky omen which denotes self-satisfaction and prosperity.

A shark represents Water in dreams and links to the unconscious mind. Anything within that water will therefor link to your feelings and intuitions in some way. Sharks will tend to symbolise fears and worries. They will symbolize resentments building up within you and others. If the shark bites then those resentments maybe shown. Sharks can symbolize dangerous and unknown territory. It may show that you feel something involves great danger and risk.

What does this translate to from the perspective of Southern California? The major headline in California these days is the real estate meltdown. Could the cigarette represent the addiction of easy and “free” credit and prosperity that it seemed to generate. The shark may represent what is happening at the subconscious level. That this unprecedented credit expansion is headed into dangerous and unknown territory seems obvious. What the inevitable social reaction to this crisis will be remains to be seen.

• What you might ask does the Federal Reserve the US Dollar, spirituality and mysticism have to do with each other, nevertheless gold? It is a very good question. I will relate it to the the historical links between mysticism and the alchemical traditions and the attempt at transmuting base metal into gold.

• Our banking system is a pretty special thing. It has allowed for the development and growth of an infrastructure and economy that up until recently has had no match in modern history. The fuel of the banking system has been the creation of credit. The creation of credit has grown exponentially and this growth is required to sustain the economy

• How is credit created? Well, literally it is created out of thin air. Banks do not have the money that they agree to lend out. They basically create the money by adding a credit onto their computer system and then debit it in favor of the mortgagee. The only requirement of the bank is to hold a minuscule fraction of the total value of outstanding debt as a reserve, which through legislation and “modernization of the banking system” has amounted to almost nothing.
• So what backs up the bank? The Federal Reserve a privately held “uberbank” provides money and short term loans to keep the banks running and does so by printing money and magically depositing money or buying back bad debts from the bank. This money provided to the banks is denominated in US Dollars so that when money is created it essentially becomes worth less as more is poured into circulation. As more money floats around competing for limited things like real estate, commodities like gold, silver, oil, and food the price of these things goes up. The mandate of the “Fed” is to strike a balance between inflation (when the price of things goes up) and growth (the economy expands). It does this through intervention in the “free market” by manipulating interest rates. When the economy is growing too fast and inflation is noticed; rates go up. When the economy cools down; rates go down. When rates are held too long in any one position it creates imbalance. This imbalance creates spiraling growth and inflation, or a cooling down of the economy and recession. But what happens when credit is created at a break neck pace with nothing of value created in return? Bubbles occur such as the real estate bubble. When there is a fundamental understanding that there is no real value behind the observed growth, the bubble it begins to collapse.

• So what does this have to do with alchemy and gold? Well the goal of alchemists was to create gold or “money” out of nothing. Gold for all of human economic history has been valued as the ultimate store of wealth. Why, because it does not corrode or loose any of it’s properties over time, it is fairly rare, it is portable, and can be easily sub-divided (minted into coins). For this reason precious metals have played and important role throughout history as a store of wealth that stands the tests of time.
• The alchemists desired to create gold as the ultimate store of wealth. It seems the Fed as the modern day alchemists have sought to create gold out of base materials. In this case lending too much money to buy real estate to people that had no way of paying the loan back. This frenzied loan or credit creation created the housing bubble, has fueled the nominal increase in the stock market over the last 10 years, and has also pushed commodity prices to all-time highs including gold.
• Gold hit an all time high of $1000 per ounce denominated in US dollars as has Oil hit all time highs of close to $150 a barrel and climbing. The reason for this being that these two physical things are in short supply as both new reserves of oil and gold have been increasingly difficult to find and the number of dollars chasing after these finite commodities have also increased. By the law of supply and demand the price of oil and gold which have been historically linked will continue to climb as both are in declining new supply, demand is going up and the US dollar which they are denominated in has lost almost 40% of its value and some say is on the precipice of a drastic melt-down similar to that seen with the Asian currency crisis.

• So why is there increasing demand for gold and oil? Gold as stated previously is the historical safe haven for wealth. Holding US Dollars in the last 5 years has been a terrible investment as much of Asia the worlds largest holders of US dollar reserves have discovered. If you were a government or individual holding your savings in US dollars you have seen much of your savings wiped out as the dollar has declined. If however you had bought gold in 2001 you would have seen your savings almost quadruple. But why gold? Isn’t it an antiquated relic from the past as many modern economist proclaim?
• What about bonds they are a store of value and they also pay a premium over time with the advantage of something called compound interest. Here again we are faced with the dilemma of a declining US dollar and also artificially low interest rates to the point where the real rate of return on a T-bill is actually negative (Interest Rate - Rate on inflation) so that even holding bonds generating interest are actually losing money. But you might say I want my money to be safe and what is safer than a bank? Well you had better ask the customers of Northern Rock, the bank that was bought by the British government because their was a run on it and it failed.
• Well the super wealthy don’t have to worry because they have investment banks to make them tons of money (you need money to make money right) Well tell that to the investors of Bear Stearns the US investment back that collapsed and whose share price went from over $100 per share to around $12 dollars. The only reason the shared did not go to zero was the “Fed” met in a panic on a Sunday morning and gave JP Morgan another investment bank the billions of dollars to buy Bear Sterns to prevent panic on Monday morning in the stock market. So gold again is now being recognized as the time tested store of wealth.
• What about oil? The notion of Peak Oil has been quite controversial, however it seems more and more economists realize that we are not running out of oil, we are running out of easily accessible cheap oil and world wide demand from India, China and Russia is increasing. Again supply and demand dictate that the price will continue to rise in this environment, despite a slow down in the world economy.

• OK this is all bad news and as spiritually minded people with a mystical focus the notion of unlimited abundance is a common mantra. So where does this all fit in? The “Fed” tried their hand at unlimited abundance by creating and printing almost an unlimited amount of US dollars and it has resulted in the creation of the housing bubble and its collapse. Similar actions have created real estate bubbles and collapse in the UK, Spain and Eastern Europe. Now with the no holds barred creation of money to prop up the failing banks with billions of dollars, the US number one export to the rest of the world has been inflation the kind of which has not been seen since the 70’s.
• So what does unlimited abundance really mean? Some could argue that money is like energy it is neither created or destroyed. It flows from one place to the next through gradients, and can be dissipated but not destroyed. So we could buy Gold or Sliver as a store of wealth through coins. Or gold mining stocks - Yamana (T.YRI), Jinshan Mines (T.JIN) or silver mining stocks - Silver Wheaton (T.SLW) as money flows into these commodities, of which I have. We could look into alternative energy stocks as the price of oil continues to rise (I don’t own alternative energy stock yet because they tend to follow the general market which is the beginning of a downturn, however there will be an excellent buying opportunity in a year or so). The greatest fortunes were made during the Great Depression and Recessions of the past.

• Or we can rely on something that is always in high demand and which seemingly comes from nothing. Our creativity and intuitive spark that drives humanity onto a greater path and spiritual evolution. These things come from the unlimited abundance of the unmanifest realm have the ability to create wealth and abundance beyond our imagination in the material world. Not necessarily things but ideas and states of being and awareness that are priceless and which every one on this planet is chasing after in one sense or another. Freedom, peace, joy, health, and inner radiance have no monetary measure but bring riches beyond comparison and those that can harness these moving forces will realize abundance in a changing material world.