Reconstructing our Global Reality

Our nation, the United States, is the richest and most powerful nation in the world.  The rich live a decadent lifestyle and there exist a large middle class, but tens of millions live in poverty.  50 million people [1/6 of our population] cannot afford basic health services.  15% of our people live in dire conditions.  85% of retired Americans, the most vulnerable demographic among us, live in poverty.  We also have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.  Yet how can this happen in the "wealthiest"  nation in the world?

We all feel somewhat helpless don't we?  This helplessness does not feel good and so we often suppress our compassion in an attempt to defend ourselves from the perverse inequality in this country and in the world.  And sometimes in attempts to ward ourselves from the pain we blame those in poverty for being in poverty.  Subsequently we look outside ourselves for the solutions to our problems.  We want "someone" else to fix the big problems facing our world.  Yet when we do this we subvert our ability to be optimally human by allowing "our leaders" to deal with our inner most spiritual and ethical dilemmas.  The roots of this dilemma are psychological.

We need to be brave and observe the belief structures that uphold this current way of life.  All of it.  Do we really believe we are "survivalists?"  This belief supports our current destructive ways.  Yet I know there is a place in all of our hearts that cries out to the injustice, to the destruction, and to the tyranny all around the globe.

We need to be brave and honest.  We need to ask ourselves whether or not a concentrated group of people, those who have a detached interest apart from you and I, a group of people whom create the politics that govern the distribution of power and wealth, can really be trusted to the overall wealth of the entire collective of people?

I understand the confusion, the frustration, and the desperation we feel.  The problem seems so beyond us and too big to deal with as individuals.  And therefore we plead for our governments to fix our ills.  But we need to bare witness to the possibility that our desperation gets us to oversee the truth that politics is a game of deception.

If we were really allowed to see all that went on in government we would not choose to be governed at all.  Governments aim is to convince us that the decisions it makes is for our own good.  Yet this system allows for our food to be poisoned in the name of profit.  It pushes us into war to protect its own interests in the name of profit.  It is a horror.  And we are told that we are "survivalists."  But are we really?  Or is that what we are taught?  Therein lies the deception.

Politics is a practical art.  The political arena becomes a place where people of power seek to convince you that their self-interest is your own. In this process we abdicate our autonomy to a governing body that each day alienates itself further and further from the needs the common person.  The 99%.

Now, this is not my attempt to bastardize America.  I am pointing to an endemic of social system dysfunction that can be felt and observed everywhere.  The governments no longer govern, they conduct deals for their own self-interest.  War and dysfunction is their business.  War is absurdly profitable for the powerful.  Furthermore, over 50% of America's hard earned tax money goes to fund the military: [Pie Chart].  "That's the name of the game" they tell us.  "Freedom is never free" we hear.  But how are we free if our social ethic condones the mass murdering of civilians and soldiers worldwide in the name of profit?  Is this really freedom?

On the surface it seems that no one is going to stand up to the outrage of inequality we see.  Yet, there is an outrage building within the hearts of all of us.  We are becoming more compassionate and I feel more of us are becoming more aware of ourselves and each other.  We feel the outrage for the innocent children with their rib cages exposed and swollen bellies desperately look for food at their local trash heap.  If we are to evolve as a society and as people this perverse inequality cannot happen anymore.  And anything that gets in the way of progress should be made aware of and done away with.  We must ask ourselves the ultimate question: Can self-interest ever be replaced by the best interest, the common interest, of humankind?  If so, how?

-------------------------------------------

The profit motive allows us to justify and condone our destructive ways of life.  And who do you think keeps in place a way of life where the acquisition of wealth justifies the destruction of the world and the dis-empowerment of most of its people?  The banks, those with the wealth, and those in power.  Those with the power would no longer retain power if they acted in the interest of the commoner.  And that is why nothing ever changes.

But we must awaken to our own POWER!  We have it and it is within us.  It is the invincible truth within you that no one can touch.  Therein lies your true freedom and source of highest intelligence.  Inside you exists your moral and social compass.  Let's realize that those with the power could no longer retain power if we awoke to our true nature as divine creators on a collective spiritual journey.

If our civilization is to evolve we should be governing ourselves.  We cannot grow and become great when we are constantly being told what to by government.  Government influences everything in our lives.  From education, to medicine, to our morals, and to what we know.  Believe me, there is no elite of people that knows better as to how the course of how your life should unfold.  Only you know what is best for yourself.

I suggest we get out of our minds and into our hearts and let OUR morals guide us.  The highest voice within should be the voice that guides us into the future, not the voice of another of whom you elect to do so.  There is a voice within you that loves and cares for everything.  Listen to that.  We may just see the world change!

-------------------------------------------

You cannot legislate mortality.  You cannot mandate equality.  What we need is a shift in the collective consciousness, not an enforcer of collective consciousness.  And we can only do that when we come to terms with the currently reality.  Each of us needs to be responsible for what we see here.  And we can only do that when we have equal compassion for ourselves as well as for others.  Only when we see another's plight as our own will we change the world.

The entire planet faces a crisis of consciousness.  We must decide whether we can care for each other and move forward with a drastically new way of life.  If we don't we may just destroy everything we have worked so hard to create.  It is time for the world to stop kidding itself, to wake up, and realize that the only problem of humanity is a lack of love.  Love breeds tolerance and tolerance breeds peace.

The fastest way to get to a place of love and concern for humankind is to see that all of humankind is your family.  When we awake to the the realization that we really are one giant family our compassion will govern us.  No longer will we see each other as separate and a new world ethic will be created and felt.  These are simple yet profound guidelines.  They can help us reconstruct our global reality and govern ourselves in a way that will truly create peace on earth.

What can we Learn from the Tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary?

I personally cannot wrap my head around what happened today.  How could someone shoot at innocent children?  How could someone massacre the most precious amongst us?  What happened in Newton, Connecticut has troubled me deeply.  Yet after we morn we must reflect on why this has happened.  

This event has become one of many.  There is a undercurrent of irrational madness that is pulsating through certain people to act in the most heinous of ways.  And although some may not agree I need to state what I feel.  This event, and those like it, are not just the outcome of "sick" people.  These "sick" people do the things they do because they feel they are doing the "right" thing.  Yes, people who take the lives of innocent people, especially children, are outrageously sick and troubled, but how and why did they become this way?  How did this person justify such madness?

We of course can make adjustments in gun control policy.  And maybe that will change the number of deaths per gun assault, but that still will not change the brutality at the core of such events.  The young man who took the innocent lives of those children was obviously sick, but why was he?

Maybe his parents taught him that this brutality is normal.  Maybe he was severely neglected as a child?  Maye this or maybe that...The motive is not entirely important here.  But what is important is that we observe how this event is reflective of where we have evolved as a society.  I am not making excusing for this man.  He is disgusting.  But what I am also trying to say is that our social dysfunction is at the root of why this event took place [as well as the events that happened at Columbine, Virgina Tech, and Aurora, CO].

Do we ever question that paradigm that begets such tragedy?  Has our survivalist way of life caused a disturbance in all of us that has us so desensitized?  Has the psychological isolation that has us repressing our emotions come about due to a lack of a communal ethic between people?  All I am trying to say is that these "isolated" bursts of brutal rage have to do with how we function socially.  I am not saying I know how or why.  We must all collectively discover that together.  As I have said before... we can only heal together.

There is a little darkness in all of us.  I say that becuase at the social level we condone brutal war, the perverse inequality we see globally, and the mass murdering going on everywhere.  We say it is "out of our hands" and our insensitivity condones this survivalist dog eat dog way of life.  But when will we be brave enough to change our ways and make a stand?

A brave awareness to see things as they are will help us move forward into a more peaceful co-existence becuase this brave awareness will open our sensitivity to life.  This sensitivity will help us see what we are doing to each other, to ourselves, and to the Earth and upon the discovery of our own ignorance we will act with an enlightened sense of empathy.

So I urge you to bring the light into the darkness.  Bring the positive into the negative.  You can do this by loving your neighbor, helping those who call out for it, and by getting more involved in your community.  Give to those as if you have everything to give and let your fears subside.  For it is the emotion of fear that begets all of the things that are messed up with the world.  Greed, anger, and insensitivity are all products of fear and the the idea of not having enough.  We need to transcend this survivalist mentality if we are finally going to have the society that we yearn for.

Again, we may never know the full intention of why this man did this.  His actions were the epitome of darkness, but we must observe the darkness that is inherent in this current society if we are going to see our way into the light.  God bless the town of Newton, Conn, the children and families of Sandy Hook Elementary School, and to everyone reading this.  May we find the strength and courage to walk a new path.

The Power Within

As self-reflective beings we are gifted with tremendous creative power.  Our self-reflections become known and felt on the inside through experience.  And by honing in on these inner thoughts and feelings we enhance our ability to effectively live with purpose.  We are always creating, but to the degree to which we become aware of our inner experience is to the degree to which we hone in on this creative potential. The hard work of enhancing self awareness pays off becuase we figure out through experience what is best for us.   

The purpose of this post is to understand how to bring the knowledge of the soul forward so that we can reflect this energy upon life as opposed to letting the repetitive and conditioned mind dominate our existence.

As our thoughts and feelings radiate outward they interact with everything.  All thoughts and feelings are creative.  For example, if I were walking around feeling angry chances are I wouldn't find myself in experiences that day that are joyful and creative.  Opportunities to experience a sense of well-being, peace, and or fun may be right there in front of me, but in this instance my anger would block me from seeing the opportunities to create that.  On this day my anger would became the filter through which I create life.  The natural rule here that I want us to observe is that...life will bring you exactly what it is that you bring to life.  It's that simple.

Of course we have a hard time believing it's this simple.  Our emotions are dynamic and multifaceted.  Often we find ourselves chasing to understand our own thoughts entangled by their mixed messages.  But only when we get out of our on way do we start letting go of how our emotionally dynamic self constructs a life of confusion, contradiction, and emotional imbalance.  So then how do we get out of "our own way?"  We do this by getting out of our minds.  But given how we have been operating for so long it may not come easy.

Simply put, we over use the mind.  Yes, the mind is a beautiful thing.  It helps me convey this message to you, but when we come from a place that is always thinking, always analyzing, we diminish our ability to tune in with the soul.  To me, the soul is the place in all of us that just knows.  It does not need to question.  To me the soul is the place that does not judge, but discerns.  To me it is the place that guides, but does not force.  To me the soul is the source of guidance that enables us to be who we are and create a life that aligns us with the highest vision we have about ourselves.

We are a three part being.  We are mind.  We are body.  And we are soul.  Over indulging in one aspect over the other leads to some sort of disharmony. 

So then how do we "get out of our minds" and balance ourselves so that we can listen and utilize the knowledge of the soul?  I suggest we take time to become profoundly aware of ourselves.  We do this by observing how the mind is operating and how the body is feeling.  Without awareness of the mind the mind uses us.  Without awareness of the body we oversee what it is trying to tell us.  Without awareness we live unconsciously.

To use the example from before, without awareness we may never allow ourselves to control the anger we feel.  Without awareness of the anger, the anger will control us.  It will take root in our body and wear us down.  By taking time to be observant we diminish the control that our impulses have over our experience.  Awareness lets us process, digest, and let go of the experience we are having so that we can step into something totally new and aligned with this moment.

But how do we become more aware?  We become more aware by attempting to decipher between the feelings we feel innately as our own and the feelings we feel that are influenced by conditions we place on ourselves.  The feelings that stem from a sense of lack or temporary fulfillment are feelings that are bound to conditions.  How can one experience a sense of full self-acceptance if we believe we have to be something we are not or attain something that does not start from within?  Thing is, you are already who you want to be...you intuitively know this if you listen to yourself without the clutter and demands of the conditioned mind.  The ultimate process of self creation starts when we listen to the knowledge of the soul.

The knowledge of the soul is a type of knowledge that is beyond concepts and ideas.  Soul knowledge is the experience of unconditional acceptance.  This acceptance brings you a sense of passion and clarity to create a life that suits your highest vision of yourself.  Putting that soul knowledge to work is knowing that in this moment of now that you have the ability to create the life you feel inwardly drawn to.  There is no questioning this.  But it is the mind that reminds you of your self imposed limitations.  And it is the mind that reminds you of who you think you should be.  Yet, the soul knows that life is not bound by the conditions we place upon ourselves.  The conditions we often put in place becuase of past experience.

We often feel safe when we think we know who we are.  But the act of thinking and knowing cannot coexist simultaneously.  If you think of something to be true you only assume it to be true.  Yet when you know something "truth" becomes irrelevant for you have no need to have your truth validated by some idea or someone else.  Your declaration to see things as they are and the confidence you gain by knowing yourself to be who you are releases you from the burden of unconsciousness.  You move forward and create how you decide and that is that.

Allowing yourself to be who you are and allowing yourself to be with things as they are requires that you see things as they are without the need to label it or change it.  From this place of knowledge the mind takes its rightful place in your experience as the transmitter of your life as opposed to the generator it has so "normally" become.  It is important to realize that things may seem normal and we therefore do not question them, but normal does note denote natural.  So please release yourself from the burden of having to be something.  You are already something...and that something is perfection.

It is love and perfection that begets all creation.  And as the creator of your life this is who you...Love and perfection!  So why not create with the knowledge of who you are as opposed to who you think you are.  Go on and step into your power...it is already within you!