Victory for the Terrorists Denied, 2

Addressing problems by asking everyone and everything I encounter: ‘Does this impede or contribute to my goal of awakening from the ego’s dream of separation,’ enables me to return to the source of my experience (my mind) and if necessary, choose again. Asking continues the process of undoing my investment in the ego’s projections of responsibility onto others instead of myself, thus doing what Einstein recommended - solving the problem at a level of thinking different from the level that created it in the first place, and agrees with Pogo that we have met the ‘enemy’ and they is us.

Imagine how meaningful our lives would become if this question were uppermost in our minds as we went through each day. The seemingly separate events, relationships, situations and our responses to them would be unified in a new way, giving us a sense of purpose we lacked. Asking the question puts the goal of awakening from the ego’s nightmare and experiencing the reflection of spirit’s love here, at the center of our lives.
And really, what else is there? Isn’t that all we really want?

Victory for the Terrorists Denied!

The Course in Miracles reinforces the need for us to take responsibility for the way we think about things, such as the ‘threats’ in the defense authorization legislation, and work from the inside out to deal with them. Doing that instead of blaming and fearing what’s outside our minds, is the change of thinking Einstein mentioned when he said you can’t solve the problem at the level of thinking that created it in the first place. The level of thinking we’ve been using is outside-in. It’s that level of thinking that holds the problems in place and perpetuates them.

When we take responsibility for our own hearts and minds, refusing to be manipulated, shifting to inside-out thinking, guidance and solutions enabling us to contribute to a world that works for everyone and everything, thus solving the problem, will be available. There is something within us that knows, that is not overwhelmed by the interdependent complexities surrounding us, but appreciates the interdependence and can use the complexities, not by simplifying them or dumbing them down into sound bites and slogans, as we do now, but by accepting them and our responsibility for them.

“Choosing vision over judgment,” Ken Wapnick, a powerful interpreter of the Course says, “we can no longer make others responsible for our pain or joy. Remembering that nothing exists outside the projecting mind, we know that everything comes from decisions the mind makes, generated from the basic choice between the ego and (spirit).” Knowing this, experiencing the peace and joy that can come from this knowledge, we want to “meet everyone (and everything) in the same way, with an openness of heart and mind that frees us from the prison house of hate.”

Meeting everyone (and everything) in the same way, “allows us to return to the source of all worldly things and experiences.” We return to the source by asking “one simple question of absolutely everything that befalls us throughout our lives: Does this impede or contribute to my goal of awakening from the ego’s dream of separation. We are not asked to be ego free, but simply to ask the question, thus beginning the process of undoing our investment in the ego’s projections of responsibility onto others instead of ourselves,” and thus solving the problem at a different level of thinking than what created it in the first place, as Einstein recommended, and agreeing with Pogo that we have met the ‘enemy’ and they is us.”

Victory for the Terrorists?

Osama bin Laden is dead, or so we’re told, but the President of the United States and the US Congress have given Al Qaeda, Hizbolah, the Taliban and all the other anti-democratic terrorists the greatest victory they have ever had, a victory they could have never, ever, have gotten on their own. By a margin of 87 to 13 the US Senate passed and the President will ‘reluctantly’ sign the defense appropriations bill that includes three provisions that effectively undo the 5th and 6th amendments to the US Constitution, allowing the President or his designees to arrest and detain anybody, US citizen or no, and hold them incommunicado, if they are labeled by said President or his designees as aiding, supporting or in anyway participating in acts of terrorism against the US and its allies.

Think about that! Do you hear the sigh of relief going up to heaven around the nation? At long last we are finally safe! Thank God! Now, a person can be labeled a terrorist by some bureaucrat, picked up and held, but not tortured of course, the US doesn’t torture, and held until God knows when. So what, you say, I’m not a terrorist. You are if ‘they’ say you are. That’s all it takes, and you have no recourse; can’t have a lawyer, can’t confront your accusers who need no evidence; you just go to jail. Too bad for your family and business; too bad for you.

This passed 87-13 and will be ‘reluctantly’ signed by the President. Who are these people? What do they think they’re doing? What happens to common sense, compassion and support for the Constitution once these people get to Washington? We have met the enemy and they is us. We did this to ourselves, not the Nazis, Commies or terrorists, but our so-called elected ‘representatives.’ Who or what do they represent? Don’t they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States? Which Constitution are they protecting and defending?

Fear, blame, anger, laziness and competition – the way we’ve been thinking about things and doing things lately in the good old USA, has taken us to this place. It’s a place we’ve never been before, one that doesn’t bode well for Truth, Justice and The American Way. If we always do what we always did, we’ll always get what we always got. Haven’t we had enough of this garbage? Must we go the way of the Roman and British empires? Can’t we stop before it’s too late?

Einstein said you can’t solve the problem at the level of thinking that produced it in the first place. We’ve met the enemy and they is us. If we want things to be different we’ve got to be different. We’ve got to change how we think and behave. We’ve got to look within at our own hearts and minds, not without at terrorists. It’s us. The terrorists are only doing what they’ve sworn to do. What are we doing? Who have we become? What’s going on in our hearts and minds? Can we finally take responsibility for our own thinking and behavior? If we can’t or won’t do that, control ourselves in our own homes, what chance do we have to control others?

The fear mongers and terrorists we’ve got to watch out for are the people we elected in Washington and in many state capitols. The level of thinking we need to solve our current problems is within us, not outside us. We’re the ones eviscerating the Constitution and endangering our own safety. We’re the ones who need to take responsibility for our dysfunctional thinking and behavior. If we do that, we have a chance. If we don’t, we’re doomed. Business as usual, blaming, denial and finger pointing will destroy us.

I don’t have the answer. I don’t think there is an answer. I think wanting a single answer and not wanting to face the uncertainty of dealing with the complexities we’ve created, is a big part of the problem. But I do know that if we don’t recognize the real problem – our own thinking and behavior – we’ll never find a viable solution.

I invite you to think about this, see and understand the problem, then join with me in exploring new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that as Einstein said, take us to a new level so that we can, together, people of all beliefs and natures, come up with something that will deny the terrorists, both foreign and domestic their victory, and enable us to contribute to a world that works for everyone and everything.

Sameness and Oneness

Everyone – men and women, grown-ups and children, Americans and Africans, old and young – is the same, facing the same minute-to-minute choice in our minds, between our transcendent reality as spirit or acceptance of the ego’s illusion of the world. No matter what I choose in this moment – ego or spirit - this sameness is the truth and the reality behind all appearances of difference. And no matter what I choose in this moment – ego or spirit – eventually, I will come to experience this sameness in everyone and everything, and know my reality as spirit.

This process of constantly choosing, understanding and moving towards my sameness/oneness with spirit, begins as I learn that my interpretation of the sensory data, brought by my sensory organs to my brain, is solely instigated by the mind, because ideas leave not their source. So, its not the sensory data I need to work with but my mind’s (my decision maker’s) interpretation of that data. Does my interpretation of what I’m perceiving bring me closer to spirit, revealing the sameness beneath the appearances of difference, or does it entangle me more deeply in the ego’s illusion?

So, I come to understand that projection – what I’m experiencing outside me as a result of my decision maker’s choice for the ego – makes perception. Once I have projected the mind’s interpretation of differences beyond the mind and onto the world, I conveniently forget I have done so. Thus, there is no way out of this vicious cycle of projection and perception unless I begin to question the validity of my perceptions. “Escape is impossible,” the Course says, “until [I] see that [I] have responded to my own interpretation” of my own projection. What I perceive, “is the witness to [my] state of mind, the outward picture of an inward condition.”

Understanding this projection/perception phenomenon is the beginning of constructive change and spiritual growth.

Joy!

Joy is different from happiness. Joy, arising from an awareness of my reality as spirit, is available all the time. Happiness, arising from my experiences in the world, is available only when things go ‘right’ in the world.

Most of us are rarely happy for no reason. Happiness is dependent on something happening outside of us. Joy, on the other hand, can just well up and be experienced for no reason, without anything happening.

Of course I can experience joy and happiness at the same time and often do. But just knowing that joy - the feeling of grace, gratitude, meritless well being and peace, is always available, encourages me to access it more often. I’m practicing joy – choosing to go within, realize my Reality, and consciously choose joy.

Joy, joy, joy! I’m getting so good in my practice that often all I have to do is see the word, hear it in my mind or say it to myself and I can experience it. I’m practicing this no matter what’s going on around me. It’s amazing! Stuck in traffic, stubbed toe, malfunctioning computer, even cancer - joy, joy, joy, and I begin to feel it.

As soon as I get over my initial disappointment, anger, fear, doubt and worry (remember, the ego always speaks first), I pause, take a deep breath and invite joy in…and it comes…eventually. Sometimes sooner than others, but it always comes.

It’s so cool! Try it. You don’t have to be special, do anything special or have anything special happen, just pause take a deep breath and invite joy in. It comes…eventually. In fact, all you can do is invite it and make it welcome. Any other activity is part of your bloated nothingness and will block the divine circuits. Try it, invite joy in now.

Direct Democracy, 3

So, our so-called ‘representatives’ do not write nor read legislation - staff and lobbyists do that; they are more loyal to their parties and ideologies than to the majority of the people they supposedly represent; they do what their parties or a small faction in their parties, not their consciousness’, tell them to do, cashing in their integrity, hearts and souls to keep their jobs (again please note the glaring flip flops of McCain and Romney, but not Ron Paul).

We can tinker around the edges of this system of so-called ‘representative government’ encouraging third parties, redistricting, campaign finance reform, etc – which we should do. But really, it’s broken and can never be truelyfixed, especially by the people who are in it and benefiting from it [fixing the system from within is a foolish, non-viable cliché]. We need something else some other system, a system of direct democracy in which the people represent themselves without intermediaries. This is the same issue Martin Luther addressed when he nailed his 95 to the church door.

Here’s my paraphrasing of what Luther was saying: priests, rabbis and gurus (representatives) and the churches and other religious institutions (political parties) have a place but that place is not between God and individual human beings. We too, need nothing between ourselves and our government. I am not sure, nor have I thought seriously about, how we will replace the current system. However, I do know, as I hope you do too, that it is broken almost beyond repair and that before it implodes completely, tearing down our nation and society, we need to be thinking about alternatives to it.

With computers and the internet we now have the technology to support an alternative. The subject matter expertise in Congressional staffers and corporate lobbyists is necessary and can never be duplicated by individual voters. New scientific research on crowd sourcing reported in a book of that name and a book called, The Starfish and the Spider, show that rather than the stereotype of crowd as a dangerous mob, the crowd has access to greater intelligence about more sustainable solutions and opportunities. Somehow, we need to figure out how to use these tools to directly inform and involve voters, once the so-called ‘representatives’ are gone – to transition to a form of direct democracy.

The intent of this series of posts is to invite readers to awake to the need for a change in our current political system, join with each other, and together, create a more effective and efficient political system more in line with our ideals and aspirations, and then develop the means to transition from what we have, to the better alternative. This is something to start thinking about now, before we’re torn apart by the flaws of the current system. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary. This is a time of great opportunity! We need to seize it! The parallels between this time, Washington’s and Martin Luther’s are there and can be seen if you look for them.

We have more in common than what separates us. We are all Americans! Let’s get in touch with that – our shared, ideals, hopes and aspirations. Everyone has a right to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Can’t we agree on the facts and work from there to build a system and a world that works for everyone and everything?

Direct Democracy, 2

Tell me, what’s the difference between a ‘campaign contribution’ and a bribe? It’s always been this we and we know it, but the problems with this system of ‘representation’ are becoming more critical now, than ever before.

It needn’t be this way. Please get that! It needn’t be this way. So many of us see the charade of so called ‘representation’ for what it is, but don’t know what to do about it, or think there’s nothing to be done, so we do nothing or drop out, leaving the field to fanatics and idiots. One only has to look at the current crop of Republican presidential candidates to see that. It needn’t be this way.

What would replace the current system? Let’s examine what we’ve got before we answer that. What really, bottom line, is the function of our so called ‘representatives’? Is it to write legislation with the best interests of the majority of the people in their districts in mind? That’s the concept everyone gives lip service to, but is that what they really do? No. What do they really do? They do everything they can to keep their cushy jobs and represent the moneyed interests who can keep them in those jobs. They are just like any other group of employees, doing what their bosses - the people who pay them, want them to do.

In addition to that, they are there as negotiators, brokers and deal makers. Given the current system, that is their only legitimate role, the closest they come to ‘representing’ ‘the people’ in their districts. They do not really write legislation, their staffs and lobbyists do that. They do not study situations comprehensively nor seek ways to create sustainable opportunities for the majority of ‘the people’. They fight fires.

Eyes fixed on the media - which is a player in its own right that doesn’t really try to inform nor educate the population but merely tries to keep it riled up, stressed out, entertained and confused so its sponsors will benefit - our so-called ‘representatives’ address the so-called ‘issue’ of the day – Janet Jackson’s costume malfunction, gays in the military, flag burning, Michael Jackson’s physician, the basketball player’s greed, ball players’ use of steroids, etc. Anything but the really substantive challenges and opportunities like health care, energy and the environment. Anything to keep ‘the people’s’ minds off the really important stuff.

Together, the media and so-called elected ‘representatives’, serve the moneyed interests who own them by providing the fear of Al Qaeda and the bread and circuses that keep us immobilized and unable to find sustainable opportunities for growth and improvement. The status quo is what they serve and who they represent.