Linda Goodman’s Social Activism

by Gregory Ellison

If life hands you a lemon - make lemonade!

We’re all familiar with this cliché of the new age, a way of saying that no matter how bad things get there is always a way to make something positive from them.

Right now the world has handed us one great big lemon named WAR.

The war on Iraq - along with many issues surrounding the whole “war on terrorism” and America’s formally announced “pre-emptive” global strategy - has deeply divided both U.S. and world opinion, giving rise to numerous angry debates, with partisans of all sides hurling insults, threats and accusations at one another. Many around the world believe that the government of America, in attacking Iraq with neither international consensus nor United Nations approval, has effectively announced its intention to dominate the world with military force, reserving for itself the right to police the world whether the rest of the world wants that policing or not. Likewise, they argue that the same authoritarian approach is swiftly undermining the civil liberties and freedoms of America itself, even to its own citizens. Others point to Saddam’s likely possession of weapons of mass destruction, his aggressive history and his brutality toward his own people, and insist that America is doing no more than exercising its right to act in self-defense, and is in fact acting in a humanitarian capacity by liberating the Iraqi citizens from a brutal dictator and ridding the world of his threat to the peace and security of all nations.

Meanwhile, human beings of both sides are being bombed, shot, tortured and mutilated, living in the fear and rage of battle, and dying for a cause they believe in or in the simple struggle for survival in a situation they did not choose.

As often happens when the dogs of war bare their fangs in the world, the field of public discussion has become nearly as heated as the shooting war itself. We are seeing worldwide protests on both sides. We are hearing fervent rhetoric that not only presents the case for or against war, but also angrily condemns those who think otherwise. We are at war, and we are at war about the war.

Is there any way to “make lemonade” from these bitter lemons? I believe there is, and the ideas of Linda Goodman, the original spiritual mentor of our website, might help steer us in the right direction.

Linda Goodman was herself both a deeply patriotic American and a deeply committed advocate of world peace and human unity. Yet these are the very polarities that we are being told are incompatible in today’s war-torn world! If we do not support the war, then we must hate America and the “American imperialist warmongers.” And if we DO support the war then we must denounce its peacenik opponents as anti-American, terrorist-supporting, or at best impractical idealists incapable of facing the realities of living in a world where force is the only thing that is respected.

In other words, in the realm of the current polarized thought that is fueling the war and the angry debates about the war, we can be on the “side” of America or we can be on the “side” of world peace and human unity - but not both!

I believe that Linda would suggest that this war - and the worldwide debate it has engendered - is an opportunity to learn how to reconcile these opposites within ourselves ... and in so doing, to raise our consciousness to a level where we are able to end war in the world, because we no longer contain its roots within ourselves.

The relation of money-and-power conspiracies to peace, an issue being hotly debated today, was also one that concerned Linda, who took an active role in earlier versions of the debate. At the same time, she shared with readers her intuitions about how to transcend the dualities that cause us to adopt “us and them” positions within our own hearts, which eventually find their way to outward expression as war. She addressed the issues both politically and spiritually.

Linda was an American patriot

Linda made no bones about her patriotism or her dedication to the American Constitutional form of government. She spoke about it and wrote about it widely. This passage from Linda Goodman’s Star Signs expresses her devotion to America:

Our Constitution, with its guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, is unlike any Constitution of any other nation ever founded on the Earth. Even more importantly, it’s the only completely un-ethnic country in the world.

There’s no such thing as an American, in the way that there are Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Russians, Japanese and so on. Other countries, other nations accept immigrants, but immigrants are America. There are no other kinds of Americans.

Americans are Indians (both kinds, from India and our red brothers and sisters). Americans are French, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Russian, English, Italian, German, Cuban, Mexican, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Swiss, Australian, Finnish, Polish, Yugoslavian, Eskimo ... and every other ethnic group on the Earth.

Never before has there been a country founded on the dream of being home to every man and woman, every single Earthling, regardless of nationality, race, faith, creed or color. The dream of our founding fathers was to establish the great ideal of brotherhood and sisterhood of all races, a nation to test working together as one. Our Creators smiled upon this courageous dream of all-embracing good will and individual freedom, and protected it from subjugation ...

- Star Signs, page 306.

And yet, although Linda fervently believed in America and its ideals, even going so far as to say that it had a “divine mission” in the world, she was an outspoken critic of abuses of governmental and institutional power. She was, after all, the “mother of the new age,” and the new age that she helped to usher in, an age born in the same time and from the same forces as the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s Liberation movement and the Anti-war protests of the Viet Nam era, was quite a bit more strident and anti-establishment than the tamer version of the new age that is known today.

Linda was a social and political activist

Linda was herself a vocal activist for racial equality, feminism and the peace movement. Always a believer in equal rights and incapable of understanding racial prejudice, she wrote fondly in Gooberz of her childhood friends Grace and Bob and her shock that some people thought them “bad” because they were “colored.” One of her earliest pieces of creative writing, from her grade-school years, was a satirical protest poem about racism called “Would You Want Your Sister to Marry a Colored Man?” In part:

no! I would not - certainly not! Because I knew a girl once who did
and it ruined her whole, entire life, to be this colored man’s wife
he had a bright red temper, purple passions
and dark green jealousy
also a yellow streak of cowardice
oh! And terrible dark blue moods ... and cloudy grey thoughts
but his colors were all painted over with white
so everyone believed he was very good, and terribly bright

- Gooberz, page 35.

In later years she expressed her convictions in more active terms as a speechwriter for Whitney Young, director of the National Urban League and one of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the ’60s.

Linda was also an outspoken anti-war and “ban the bomb” activist, and her books are littered with references to the “nuclear madness” of the arms race. She railed against nuclear testing and complained bitterly that it was the opponents of nuclear arms who were jailed for participating in anti-nuclear protests, rather than the creators and proponents of those weapons ... in Star Signs, page 269, she described her depression over living in “this lunatic asylum where the wise ones are locked up (people protesting nuclear madness) and the really flaky ones are running around free.”

She deplored the collaboration of government and “big business” to bilk or defraud the people in the quest for profit. One of her heroes was Ralph Nader, famous for his exposés of corrupt regulations in the auto industry and other large enterprises, and she quipped that she would vote for him for anything, even dog-catcher!

In Star Signs she complained about the combined power of the American Medical Association and the Food and Drug Administration to create a “medical monopoly” that mandates a single official approach to medicine (characterized by emphasis on drugs and surgery, both highly profitable) while criminalizing or severely restricting the practice of alternative health care approaches ... thus denying to patients the right to choose for themselves about the care of their own bodies.

Perhaps the single biggest target of Linda’s anti-establishment sentiments was the Central Intelligence Agency with its broad secret powers and deceitful agendas. In the chapter on Lexigrams in Star Signs, her Lexigrams for CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY include:

CIA CAN LIE,
CIA CAN TRAIN AN INTELLIGENT AGENT IN A LYING GAME,
A CIA AGENT CAN CREATE ANGER and RAGE,
CIA EAGLE A LIE

Ahead of her time, she blamed “our CIA, with their Organized Crime partners” for the widespread problems of drug addiction in America and other countries. (The CIA’s involvement in drug dealing is now widely documented.) Again in Star Signs, she wrote:

The enormous, completely-out-of-control drug Frankenstein afflicting our children today, along with their parents, is the direct responsibility of our government. It owes Americans a huge karmic debt. The dominant characters in the first act of the tragic drama of drugs are intelligence officers, military personnel and an array of scientists, working either directly or indirectly for the United States Government, beginning in the early 1950s.

There are some facts so simple and so obvious that even the Mad Hatter at a tea party in the White House rose garden could see the logic. But then, there are those who appear to be a lot madder than Alice’s Hatter who have been in charge of things in Washington for the past couple of decades.

- Star Signs, pages 270-271.

Linda had good reasons to be critical of the CIA and other clandestine government agencies ... personal reasons. While investigating government crimes in connection with a Lockheed boat called the Star Quest (connected with Watergate and other covert activities in the Nixon administration), Linda received threats against her children’s lives. Shortly thereafter, her daughter Sally “committed suicide” in circumstances so suspicious that Linda was convinced that foul play was involved and that there was a deliberate cover-up of the immediate evidence surrounding the incident. For the remainder of her life, Linda spent much of her time, money and energy investigating the true fate of Sally. Although the full results of that investigation have never been made public (and the “real” Sally never returned), we know at least small bits about what Linda discovered through a partial manuscript of a book she intended to publish but never did, called SPIDER LINE: Linda Goodman’s Search for Sally. Even the small surviving fragment of this investigative piece reveals involvement by CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and Justice Department officials in a widespread and chilling network of alleged conspiratorial criminal activity. As stated in the introduction to that unfinished manuscript:

Spider Line will inform the world of the shocking experiments conducted by government agencies, in connection with “mad scientists” of the type of Nazi Dr. Mengele, from American and European Universities. These people have been - and still are - conducting experimentation in cryogenics, cloning, brain implant, super learning, mind control, amnesia and the implanting of false memory, changing identity through medical surgery - and through the use of body doubles, look-alikes and astral twins.

The public must be made aware of what is happening to these pathetic victims, including thousands of the world’s young people - a situation which is ongoing, and which will continue, unless such deplorable and inhuman experimentation is halted through exposure and the resulting public outrage.

- Linda Goodman, from the unpublished outline to her proposed book Spider Line.

Can a patriot be an activist opponent
of government actions?

In Linda Goodman’s case, obviously so. As shown earlier, Linda deeply believed in the foundations of her country, America, and in its role in bringing to worldwide expression the values of universal brotherhood, good will and individual freedom. As she put it in Star Signs, page 305, “The shimmering dream of these founding fathers of America, these framers of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence ... was not a fragile one. Their dream possessed unlimited and infinite strength ... for the greater goal of Love and Peace on Earth.”

And yet, she stridently and forcefully exposed corruptions in government, opposed war and weapons programs, and even sought to create “public outrage” over clandestine activities of the CIA and other government agencies.

How do the two mesh?

In my opinion, the foundation and ideals of America are only realized fully when they are consciously compared and contrasted with their subversion. The standards of human interaction in freedom and good will, based on voluntary cooperation, tolerance, and the acceptance of each individual’s sovereign nature set forth in the founding documents of America, may very well be the “cosmic destiny” of this country in which Linda so deeply believed. But it is only by experiencing and recognizing the variance from those ideals in practice when they occur, and gradually returning them to the ideals, that that destiny will be fully realized ... not only on a “national” level within America, but on a global level as the founding fathers intended.

Yes, the founding fathers DID intend to spread the American way throughout the world ... but not the American government, and certainly not the American military and economic interests. Rather, they intended to spread the principles that informed the formation of America ... the idea that human relations should be mutual, voluntary and equal, rather than one “side” or “interest group” dominating another ... the idea of the sovereignty of the individual, guaranteeing that the fundamental relations between and among humans should always be founded on mutual consent, without coercion or domination. These principles at the core of America, embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and fueled by the American dream-in-common: guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for EVERYONE; these principles represent the America that Linda was patriotic about ... not the specific government in power at any given time. And it is only through willingness to criticize the specific actions of any government officials or policies or agencies that real patriotism can be maintained as a living spiritual legacy. Otherwise it degenerates into mere “nationalism,” which is no innovation at all but has been the common basis for human organization - and human exploitation - for thousands of years.

Love is All

Linda’s “final revelation” of metaphysical wisdom that she shared with us came in the closing pages of her last major published work, Gooberz, as the answer to the question that had plagued her throughout her life: Why does SADNESS rhyme with GLADNESS? I can’t “answer” that question here, as its understanding is unfolded throughout Linda’s works, when read in concert with deep meditation and the opening of one’s “third eye” to the wisdom of the higher s-Elf. But it can be intuited by noting the commonality between that question and her frequent observation that light attracts darkness, an observation that also relates to a dominant theme running through all her books: the union of Twin Souls or the perfect balance between male and female energies.

This is the same theme expounded in the doctrine of Yin and Yang in ancient China, the notion that peace, harmony and enlightenment are not attained by light triumphing over darkness ... nor by male triumphing over female as the doctrine of patriarchy has asserted for thousands of years ... nor by spirit triumphing over matter ... nor by the technologically advanced civilizations of the West triumphing over the backward and “undeveloped” cultures of the Third World ... nor by ANYTHING triumphing over ANYTHING: because triumph involves separation, and separation is illusion. It is rather the perfect BALANCE and ACCEPTANCE of both sides of every pair of “opposites” that leads to enlightenment on a personal level ... and to world peace and harmony on a global level.

As Linda said in Star Signs, “I’ve shared my personal discoveries of truth with you because I believe that any kind of search implies an obligation to exchange with others what has been found, in the interest of hastening the sunrise of harmony on Earth, the ultimate Peace.”

Thus, Linda believed that the social activism required to bring about the resolution of humankind’s recurrent wars, exploitations and tyrannies involved two steps. The first step is IDENTIFYING the hidden agendas by means of which the powerful few control and exploit the relatively powerless masses ... and this is beginning to occur, hastened greatly by the fierce debates engendered by the current war and the presence of conflict throughout the world. For the first time, people around the world are talking directly to one another through the Internet and other media of mass person-to-person communication ... and in this communication, the corruptions and hidden agendas that have existed throughout most of history are surfacing and being discussed. There is still much heated debate and disagreement about the nature of the “conspiracy” or who the “culprits” really are. But for the first time, mass consciousness is awakening to the fact that there ARE and HAVE BEEN corrupt and deceitful forces leading us toward their own ends, through the medium of creating and maintaining SEPARATION - this race against that, this nation against the other, this caste or class against the others, male against female, religion against religion, and on and on. It is still unclear and confusing, but the dawning of worldwide awareness has already begun ... and will continue at breakneck speed, aided and abetted by the presence of the very awful wars and conflicts erupting at this moment in history. This dawning of global awareness is the “lemonade” being made from the lemons of war and strife!

PERHAPS MOST OF ALL, Linda Goodman saw at the root of the social and political problems of the world the long reign of the doctrine of patriarchy.

That this eating of the “forbidden fruit” of the “Tree of Knowledge” was later called “Original Sin” reveals the desperation of the dark forces to hide the Light of Truth by a polarity distortion, channeled through the ancient patriarchs who feared losing the masculine superiority principle through sexual equality.

Under the powerful Uranus vibes and the Aquarian microscope, all deception will be exposed for the hypocrisy it is. And this shall be called “Original Innocence” - the beginning of Wisdom. When people all throughout the world enter into cooperation with these Divine principles of the Golden Balance of Male and Female, the New Age of Aquarius will finally manifest itself in all the splendor and magnificence of the reborn and wiser Atlantis. Not all the chauvinists and atomic and nuclear energy madmen combined can stop the Uranian tidal waves of Truth.

- Linda Goodman’s Love Signs, page 17.

In the final analysis, then, the most potent form of political and social activism - in fact the ONLY platform radical enough to put an end to war and man’s inhumanity to man - is a four-letter word: LOVE.

CREDITS:
Photograph of Linda Goodman circa 1970, source unknown
Illustrations from Linda Goodman’s Star Signs:
- Obverse of the Great Seal of the United States
- Reverse of the Great Seal of the United States
- The union of opposites seen through the third eye

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