Democracy and Our Built-in Shit Detectors, Part 1

My hope is democracy is still a viable option for helping me, and you, as American citizens, make our contributions, and our nation’s contributions, to a world that works for everyone. This, even though our version of democracy - the two party/primary system, is close to hopelessly broken, and as a result of this disfunctionality, voter turnout is declining. My hope is that people can learn to chose differently, guided by a sense of their reality as spirit and their connection to the spiritual intelligence described in my last two posts, and thus, vote differently and make our democracy more viable, less disfunctional and able to contribute to a world that works for everyone, not just a few.

The first step, and most fundamental learning, is on the spiritual level. When you and I come to understand that everyone of us here - no matter our political, religious or sexual preferences, and everywhere in the world, have the natural inner capacity to awaken from the ego’s nightmare and realize our potential to contribute, things will start changing for the better.

The second step is realizing that this awakening is not a once in a life time experience, but an ongoing process. There will be moments of joy, enlightenment and compassion engulfed in hours of fear, hate, blame and loathing. We all crave red meat and it’s good for us occasionally, but its destructive and dysfunctional as a regular diet.

So, the third step is becoming mindful and taking responsibility for our cravings, and while feeding them occasionally, mastering them and choosing how, when and where to surrender to them. Being mindful is controlling and choosing which thoughts and cravings we will feed. If, for example, I’m feeling rage, anger, fear and blame, it’s my choice whether to honor those feelings by looking for ‘reasons’ like being victimized, illegal immigrants, Muslim terrorists, the budget deficit, or just appreciating the feelings and realizing that there really are no ‘good’ reasons for them, despite of the evidence presented by self-serving politicians and media folk who benefit from conflict; that these feelings are just there and arise and manifest and, if we let them, will dissipate.

Feelings, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, are like clouds, wispy and insubstantial, unless we nurture them and make them solid and ‘real’, and will pass across the sun – our reality as spirit, temporarily blocking it, scaring us perhaps, and making us feel cut-off and bereft from it’s warmth, light and energy. But in truth, the sun is always shining…somewhere, and we can never be separated from it.

How comforting is that thought, that feeling! Its thoughts and feelings like that, thoughts of compassion, self-love, brotherhood, and responsibility for choosing, that we want to nurture. Conflict, rage, anger, fear and blame are not the sun, not a part of our reality as spirit, but are a part of the ego’s nightmare, designed to keep us from our reality.

Invisible Power

“To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all. But to believe in the unseen is both a triumph and a blessing.” Bob Proctor

We cannot account for the seen without having faith in the unseen. To believe in Life is to believe in the invisible.” SOM Text p 407

The emphasis in yesterday’s post and in this one, is not to suggest that we ignore or deny the evidence of our senses. Doing that will only create problems, because we believe we live in a material, sensory world, and need our senses to survive. We still have to wash our hands, brush our teeth, eat, drink, pee and poop and not ply in traffic. But the more we come to see our experiences here and the concept of ‘here’ - the world itself as somewhat arbitrary, as based upon consensus reality, as the products of our social, psychological conditioning, we can control and change them.

Like the wind, we can’t see the invisible spiritual essence of life, but we can see the results of a belief in it. Be still and know. When we turn our attention to the deepest, mos centered place within, we can sense Life’s invisible spiritual essence, our connection to it and our reality as It.

Just as it is possible to harvest the invisible power of the wind, so can we harvest the invisible power of spirit, and manifest it here, in the ego’s nightmare. Learning to center and keep our focus on what we want and what works for all concerned, instead of what we don’t want enables us to do that. We manifest what we dwell upon – spiritually, mentally and emotionally. As we develop our belief and reliance upon our spiritual reality, we experience more of it and are able to contribute to a world that works for everyone.

Learning to Trust Intelligence More Than Our Senses

In spite of what our senses tell us, we now accept that the world is round. How else are our senses, outwardly focused and trained to function in the ego nightmare, deceiving us? “The whole process of science is,” Laurance Doyle says in the 4/5 Monitor, “actually the process of taking the evidence of intelligence over the evidence of the senses, intelligence being more reliable than what might appear to be true from our limited perspective.”
The earth was always round, even when we knew it was flat. What else in life is like that? How about what spiritual intelligence says about everything being one and connected? The Earth did not change; the only thing that changed and needed changing was our perspective. So, right now, we are one and all connected. How can we awaken to this more reiable, spiritual relity of intelligence instead of believing the false evidence of the senses designed to support the ego’s nightmare?
Awakening to our reality as spirit is much more about going within and gaining a new perspective than it is about fixing a ‘real’ problem in the ‘real’ world – the ‘real’ problem in the ‘real’ world being the movie screen and turning within going to the projection booth.
The Earth did not need fixing, but the limited way we saw at it, did. Allowing the Mind that is already within us to shine through, reveals the spiritual evidence of health and harmony that is much more reliable than the false evidence of disease or discord provided by our ego dominated sense. Be in the place of spiritual intelligence, come from the place of spiritual intelligence; let the Mind be in us that was also in Christ Jesus and we will joyfully contribute to a world that works for everyone.

The Best Government Money can Buy and the Givingness of Infinite Intelligence

“It is only as we allow the Divine current to flow through us on and out that we really express life.” SOM Text, p 440. Indeed this is what I want to do, what we all need to do, but it takes a bit of effort. It is not business as usual. Business as usual may be seen in the following two excerpts from today’s AOL headlines.
Banks Illegally Foreclosed On Dozens Of Military Borrowers, Federal Investigators Say
WASHINGTON -- Two of the nation's largest mortgage firms illegally foreclosed on the homes of "almost 50" active-duty military service members, according to a Thursday report by the Government Accountability Office.
The report does not identify the two mortgage companies. GAO investigators attributed the finding to federal bank regulators, who recently completed a three-month probe into allegations of improper foreclosures carried out by the nation's 14 largest home loan servicers.
Sponsors Of Oil-Drilling Expansion Bill Received $8.8 Million In Industry Contributions
Contributions WASHINGTON -- The chief sponsors of a bill to expand oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and open the coastal waters of Virginia for exploration have received more than $8.8 million combined in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, a review of campaign finance records shows.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act by a 266 to 149 margin. The measure would force the federal government to conduct three lease auctions in those areas by June 2012. It is considered the first step in a GOP-led process to loosen restrictions on offshore drilling. Authored by House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), it faces a much closer vote in the Senate as well as the stated opposition of the Obama administration.
Nevertheless, the bill's passage in the people’s chamber underscores the extent to which the political world has moved beyond the concerns over domestic drilling that arose in the wake of last year’s historic oil spill in the Gulf. It also serves as another reminder that, in the halls of Congress, certain legislative power comes with financial prowess.
“It may not be shocking that [these members] are top targets of oil and gas money but it nevertheless warrants some questions about whether they are representing Big Oil or their constituents,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center for Responsive Politics' executive director. “Do these constituents support drilling? If they don’t, then they need to make positions known. Because the oil and gas companies, rest assured, have made very clear their desires. And, through their donations, they have made clear the clout they wield.”
The oil and gas industry is one of the most politically active interests groups in Washington. In the 2010 mid-term election cycle alone it spent $30 million in contributions to federal candidates (either through individual contributions, contributions through political action committees, or money sent to “outside” groups). More than $21 million of that went to Republicans, which was 77 percent of the industry's contributions.
Their campaign involvement, moreover, is rising. In the 2006 mid-term election cycle, the industry spent nearly $10 million less in political contributions.
And those figures pale in comparison to the amount the industry spends on lobbying. In 2010, oil and gas companies spent just under $146 million employing the service of nearly 800 lobbyists.
The oil and gas industry's influence also extends to operations in a wide swath of congressional districts. This setup allows companies to pitch more lawmakers on the idea that expanded drilling would help both the economy and their re-election campaigns.
Such a dynamic affects even members of the House GOP’s freshmen class.
“It is only as we allow the Divine current to flow through us on and out that we really express life.” No divine current here, only the usual flow of big business capital buying the so-called democaratic government, supposedly representing the best interests of the great majority of the people of the USA, for itself.

Does Oneness Include Liberals and Democrats?

Does this include Liberals, too? How about Democrats? Or, Iranians, terrorists, gays, or French people? Where are my ‘freedom fries’? And Jews, Muslims, Ba Hai, and Hindus, are they included, too?

ONENESS by Ernest Holmes

There is One Spirit incarnated in everyone, an immortal Presence forever expanding everything, causing everything to grow. What a difference it would make in our human relations if we tried to sense the meaning of this Divine incarnation in all people and adjust our viewpoint to the truth that all are bound together in the unity of God! While we may think otherwise, behind all this vast array of life there can be but one common Cause, one Universal Mind, one Infinite Spirit flowing into, through, and becoming everything.
We are so used to seeing ourselves as separate from each other that we suspect the very feeling and emotion that causes us to embrace everything in love. But the person who loves the most will live the most. We meet each other only in fragments, only partially, when we refuse to open the whole avenue of our consciousness to the realization that there is but one living Spirit in, over, and through all. If our human relations are to mean the most to us, we must sense that there is within everyone a Divine Presence manifesting Itself in infinite variations—the same impulse, the same love and life, but never quite alike in any two persons.


Does this include Liberals, too? How about Democrats? Or, Iranians, terrorists, gays, or French people? Where are my ‘freedom fries’? And Jews, Muslims, Ba Hai, and Hindus, are they included, too?

Are Facts Different from Opinions and Does It Matter?

Some astronauts have commented that they couldn’t see political boundaries from space, but saw the earth as on unified globe. Could that be true? Is the earth one unified globe? Naw! I mean the French and Iranians and Chinese, you mean they’re our fellow passengers on planet earth – the same as white, American, protestant, Southern Republican Christians? No way! When we finally destroy the planet’s ability to sustain us, will they die out same as us? Of course the white, American, protestant, Southern Republican Christians will be raptured and so have nothing to worry about.

Not so long ago, people thought the earth was flat – many still do, probably the ones who don’t believe in evolution, simply because it looked that way. But the evidence presented to the senses, which is still the same now, conflicted with the evidence presented by intelligence. Indeed, the whole of human progress and the process of science is the process of taking the evidence of intelligence over the evidence of the senses. It’s the realization that intelligence is more reliable than what might appear true from the limited perspective of habitual human perception.

Unfortunately, the realization that intelligence is more reliable than what might appear true from the limited perspective of habitual human perception, is happening less and less in the USA and even the idea that there is such a thing as facts, science and intelligence that transcends human prejudice and habitual perception is under attack.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” It’s possible to function as a society and preserve the planet and have competing worldviews; it is not possible to function as a society and preserve the planet with a lack of agreement on what is provably, objectively true and what is not.

“Political polarization,” Eugene Robinson says, “is old hat. Empirical polarization – a rejection of this nation’s founding Enlightenment principles – something new. The vast majority of scientists look dispassionately at the data and conclude that atmospheric warming and climate change are real. Deniers don’t produce data of their own, they just say no, no, no – and attack the scientists’ political views, rather than their research.”

Are Americans really deciding there’s no difference between fact and opinions? Seems like we are; and if we are, we are surely doomed as a nation and probably the world along with us.

Knowledge and Imagination

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Einstein

Although there does seem to be enough knowledge available to deal with many of the ‘problems’ we confront in the ego’s nightmare, we seem to need a whole lot of imagination, intuition and centering in our reality as spirit to apply this knowledge. Imagination and intuition and spiritual centering are opposite mindsets to the ‘business as usual,’ mindset and suggest that ‘if you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.’

So, if we’ve had enough of what we’ve been having, let’s use the knowledge we aren’t using along with imagination, intuition and centering to have something else – to apply the knowledge we have, discover new knowledge or a combination of both. A no brainer, right?

Well, you’d think so, but some people cling to their ignorance with a passion that keeps them and the rest of us stuck. Take for example the AIDS situation described in an article entitled “Southern Discomfort” in the current Utne Reader. One point before I get into the article. Part of the general ignorance embodied in the conventional wisdom is that ‘good’ folks – heterosexual Christians, can avoid AIDS by avoiding the ‘bad’ people – the non-white, alternatively sexed, that have it. Not true, absolutely not true. Read on.

The challenges specific to the Southern U S, a region cinched tightly by the Bible Belt, have resulted in disproportionately high rates of infection, as well as a very high percent of people living with HIV who don’t know they have it, and are therefore infecting all those ‘good’ folk. 36% of the US population live in the South, but half of all the people in the nation with HIV live there. The South has the highest rates of new HIV cases, half of new AIDS diagnoses, the largest numbers of adults and adolescents with HIV/AIDS, and the most AIDS deaths. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is raging across the Southern US like an out-of-control fire.

Programs to reach those in need and those at risk are probably not reaching those most in need. Tight fisted and impoverished state governments, and conservative attitudes toward sex have created a perfect storm of inadequate HIV care and prevention. Black churches are in denial and it’s hard to reach Latino populations due to the stigma and fear of immigration if treatment is sought.

Come on! Enough is enough! Let’s quit going in circles! Common sense, simple decency and self protection suggest we don’t have to support or agree with people in regard to sexual orientation, immigration status, or religious and political beliefs to use our compassion and imagination to overcome all the BS that isn’t working and apply the knowledge we already have along with our imagination, intuition and spiritual centering to fight for the right to stay healthy.