Universe-Project

It’s all coming together!

2012-01-30T21:34:00.000-08:00

This morning, I had a beautiful, divine epiphany. What I “saw” in my mind’s eye was that we are, as a species, approaching a crucial “jump time.” We’re preparing ourselves – and preparing the way – to jump to a higher level of order. By doing so we will empower ourselves to employ greater creative capacity, experience richer diversity, manifest more beauty and joy, and bring forth higher consciousness in service to all of life.

What will this higher level of order look like? If we turn to our own biology for clues, we can compare where we are right now to where the single-celled organisms were in the time before they began to cooperate and build complex, multi-cellular organisms. In every multi-cellular organism, the whole is always greater than the simple sum of its individual parts. It is that “something more” that provides the reward for coming together, because each individual cell benefits more from the joining than it surrenders in the way of autonomy. For thousands of years now, humanity has been focused almost exclusively on promoting and preserving our individuality, on being “separate” from each other in order to maximize our personal potentials. That’s been a grand ride for all of us; it’s enabled us to know and love the joy of our special uniqueness. The thing is, we’ve likely reached the end of the road when it comes to our individual evolution. For us to jump as a species to a higher level of order, what is being called for now is for us to consciously choose to cooperate as a singular, unified body, in order to create a shared system that automatically delivers to every single being in the social body whatever it needs to be the best it can become.

We’re being asked by life itself to fulfill the original promise of multi-cellular organisms, only this time with our individual consciousnesses as the drivers and deciders. We’re being invited to notice and appreciate that we work better together and accomplish much more than we can do on our own, to embrace the realization that when we come together and work together the whole is far greater than the simple sum of us. We’re the newest fractal of an existing social pattern: it’s life’s chosen design, only more complex because we’re bringing consciousness to the equation.

This mission is one we’ve been unconsciously undertaking for many years. We’ve already automated most of our production processes for goods and services, as well as our delivery capacities. Fewer and fewer labor hours are now required for us to make the things we need. In fact, so few labor hours are required to make the things we need that we’ve begun to invest our labor hours in making things nobody needs just to use them up! We’re “making work” to enable individuals to survive, instead of freeing individuals up to do the work that will help us all thrive.

What if we embraced the idea that nobody needs to work full time anymore just to earn their basic needs, and that at most we may each need to invest a few hours each week to ensure everyone’s needs are met? What would we do with our free time and our creative capacity then? I suspect most of us would quickly get bored watching mindless entertainment, which has only served to distract us from the stresses of earning a living. Instead, I imagine most of us would eventually turn to our inner selves to seek and bring forth our passions, talents, skills, curiosity, and our grandest ideas – and apply those to the challenges we’re facing as a collective. What amazing things we might accomplish if our time and creative capacities were free to apply themselves to our serious problems! What wondrous dreams we might manifest if we were able to use our minds more effectively than by paying bills and taxes and worrying about our mortgages and debts. What beauty we might be able to bring forth if all our artists, architects and designers were free to allow their minds to run wild across the playground of their own imaginations, and call forth the amazing visions that dance in their heads!

I believe humanity has already been working toward this jump point for many centuries, but has not yet been fully conscious of what it is doing. We WANT to be free of the need to work hard to meet our daily needs, which is why we’ve automated so many tasks that nobody wants to do. We intuitively grasp that it’s in our best interest to set ourselves free from the daily grind for basic needs, so we can explore our higher capacities and discover what we’re truly capable of. We’ve continuously gravitated toward living in and building social systems because – consciously or not – we realize that what we can create together far exceeds what any one of us can do alone. We’ve already become a multi-cellular organism, but we haven’t quite made the final leap toward sharing and loving social cooperation. We’re still clinging fearfully to the last vestiges of our individuation in the form of self-sufficiency, which is what we need to let go of if we’re to thrive. We don’t need to be individually self-sufficient; we need to be individually manifesting the utter uniqueness of that which each of us is! In that shift we will find our strength, and make our way through the challenges that arise. Not by becoming exactly like each other, but by coming together fully as a diversely creative collection of unique and conscious beings in a shared social body.

A Human Resolution for the 21st Century

2012-01-04T08:12:00.000-08:00

As we enter the New Year, resolutions always seem to rise to the front and center of everybody’s thoughts. We make personal resolutions to lose weight, drink less, exercise more, spend more time with family and friends, eliminate all the clutter in our homes, etc. While we don’t always succeed at keeping our resolutions, it feels good to take stock of the things we feel might benefit us to change, and to make an honest effort to bring about those changes for our own good.

Why then, I’ve been wondering, doesn’t humanity as a whole make resolutions that would benefit our shared society? Wouldn’t it be helpful to us as a species if we could agree on certain behavioral shifts we think might improve the quality of life on Earth for all living beings? Worst case, making resolutions gets us thinking and talking about what we believe needs changing, which in turn elevates our awareness around what it is we might be doing better. And the thing is, the more people who consciously decide to pay attention to what it is we might do better, the higher the odds we’ll uplift our society.

One of the amazing things about human consciousness is that, inevitably, we each must pass through a four-step process that transports us from ignorance of to absolute mastery of anything it is we wish to achieve. For example, we can’t wake up one day and decide we want to be the world’s best novelist and then go out and achieve it tomorrow; it takes work. Hard work. It also takes commitment, struggle, effort and conscious focus, along with a willingness to look foolish when we inevitably stumble. The reward for undergoing this struggle is that, eventually, we feel joy when we perform the task because we do it so well and so effortlessly it becomes a pleasure for us instead of a chore.

It seems then, there’s a mechanism hard-wired into our consciousness that enables us to shift a task out of our bandwidth of conscious effort and into our unconscious bandwidth, but it requires time and effort for that to occur. Imagine, for example, what life would be like if you had to concentrate constantly on remembering to breathe to ensure your survival. How much ‘space’ do you think would remain in your conscious awareness for you to wonder about other things, or to tackle other, more complex thought processes? That we are able to master things like breathing through evolutionary design then and shift them to our autonomic nervous system is a tribute to the brilliance of consciousness itself. Whenever we master a skill and it becomes an unconscious process for us, consciousness rewards us with the freedom to tackle something new, something fresh, something even more complex and perhaps more beneficial to us than the task we’ve finally mastered. Consciousness, it appears, possesses an eternal ability to collapse in on itself, thereby creating infinite volumes of space within its own awareness for higher learning to emerge as life evolves.

The four-steps we each must pass through as we move from ignorance to mastery of any given skill or ability are these:

1) Unconscious incompetence – this stage is represented by the Fool’s Journey in Tarot, and can best be described as the blissful ignorance of early childhood. Our journey begins the instant we decide we want to learn a new skill or ability, although we possess virtually no understanding of the effort it might require to master that skill. The Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden describes life just prior to the fool’s journey, when it speaks glowingly of the time before humanity undertook the Herculean task of mastering an understanding of the difference between good and evil. Had we known before we undertook that task how much evil we’d have to experience in order to learn the difference between the two, we might have been so daunted by the challenge that we’d never have found the courage to begin. Thankfully, ignorance truly is bliss when it comes to undertaking any fool’s journey! Being blissfully unaware of how much we don’t know, we cheerfully set out to fulfill our mission, confident (in our ignorance) of our innate capacity to achieve our objective.

2) Conscious Incompetence – Once her journey has begun, it doesn’t take the fool long to encounter unforeseen challenges. Quickly she realizes she isn’t yet all she’d imagined herself to be, and how much she needs to learn if she’s to succeed in her objective. The fool looks around and suddenly notices all the others who appear far more capable of performing the task she’s undertaken for herself. Conscious at last of her own ignorance, she feels humbled. She now understands the effort that will be required if she’s to succeed. She needs to become a sponge, actively seeking information and learning as much as she can – trying (and often failing) repeatedly – as practice, study and hard work supplant the bliss of her former ignorance. It’s here we so often give up in disgust, deciding we didn’t want to achieve our objective nearly as much as we’d once thought, because it’s harder than we ever imagined it’d be. This stage is represented by the student, the young acolyte coiled expectantly at the feet of an aging guru, eagerly awaiting the wisdom the master delivers.

3) Conscious Competence – In this stage of the learning process, our former student has pushed through the many frustrating struggles of learning, practicing, failing and learning anew and has finally hit upon a personal formula that enables her to achieve success in her chosen field. At times she even experiences flashes of brilliance, but it’s not yet consistent enough to depend upon. Here is where discernment at last arises, enabling her to weed through a massive influx of unhelpful or distracting information, so she can focus instead on the wisdom that moves her forward. She knows exactly what she needs to do to master her chosen skill; however, she needs to remain focused and maintain a conscious commitment if she’s to succeed. This is the stage of the scholar, the one who studiously dedicates herself to her work, and does it quite well when she puts her heart and mind to it.

4) Unconscious Competence – When we enter this phase, something amazing – miraculous really – transpires. Our former scholar no longer needs to read as many books or concentrate on her notes when speaking to others. The hard-won wisdom she's accumulated has become second nature to her. Others may ask her difficult or perplexing questions, challenge her or seek her out for advice. Whatever the situation, this master knows which answers to offer without having to refer back to her writings or read more books on the subject. She feels confident she can perform well at any moment without having to concentrate on performing her skill. This stage represents the musician who can play beautifully with total strangers, the poet who can offer a rhyme on the spur of the moment, the chef who can enter a strange kitchen and prepare a fabulous meal with whatever ingredients he finds. It is at this stage we take our well-deserved rest and enjoy the fruits of our labor …before our now-empty consciousness grows restless and sets out on the next fool’s journey it’s chosen for our evolution!

When we understand how our personal consciousness works, we can feel confident it works the same for the collective, because human society is but a fractal mirror of the many individuals it serves. That being the case, I have come to believe that when humanity first climbed down from the trees and began our long, slow march toward civilization, we were collectively undertaking a fool’s journey of breathtakingly epic proportions. For eons now we’ve been struggling to figure out how to build a civil society. We’ve taught ourselves how to feed, clothe, house and educate ourselves in ways that advance the human condition, and that improve the quality of life for all concerned. We’ve run countless social experiments over the ages, most of which have failed, but all of which have taught us valuable lessons. We’ve played with power/dominator social structures and have seen the great evil that arises when power becomes overly concentrated in the hands of just a few. We’ve exploited the resources of our home planet and have learned there’s a price to pay when we don’t respect her longstanding replenishment cycles. We’ve domesticated animals and plants for our advantage, and are coming to understand that risks accompany the benefits of tampering with natural evolution. We’ve improved our technology, expanded our creative capacities and put together a compendium of human wisdom that is breathtaking in scope and volume. Even so, we continue to struggle as a species for the simple things in life, which informs us we’ve not yet mastered the art of building a sustainable civilization.

In that spirit - and given that the arc of human evolution is far broader and longer than the arc of personal human development - I would like to propose a New Century Resolution for all of humanity, and I invite you to hold this intention along with me. It is my fervent hope that we agree to decide that the 21^st Century will at last be the one in which we come together as a species and focus our collective attention on ensuring that all people worldwide receive adequate food, shelter, clean water, clothing, medical care and a proper education without having to struggle so hard to acquire those things. I would like to see us develop a planetary infrastructure worthy of fulfilling this mission, so we can free up the hearts, minds and bodies of the seven billion remarkable others with whom we’re sharing this space. If we do that, we could then apply ourselves to tackling the enormous challenges we’re facing as a species. We already have enough productive capacity and technology to achieve this goal; we simply haven’t yet developed the willpower – inspired by a powerful supporting motivation – to attempt it. It’s therefore time, I believe, for us set out on this new fool’s journey as a species and commit ourselves to the mastery of this task, though as yet we have no understanding of the challenges we might face as we proceed.

Imagine what we could accomplish if most people didn’t have to work all day just to meet their basic needs! We could dedicate ourselves to replenishing the resources we’ve depleted through our ignorance of the natural living system in which we’re embedded. We could clean up the pollution we’ve created and better steward the delicate ecosystems we’ve carelessly damaged. We could focus on building sustainable housing for all, using renewable resources and with zero carbon footprints. We could invite more of our artists, philosophers and research scientists to beautify society and expand our understanding of the cosmos. We could even explore the farthest reaches of space, not out of desperation or necessity, but driven by awe and a profound curiosity about the larger realm that contains our tiny, fragile world, and that has given birth to the wonder that is us.

That dream explains why, these days, whenever someone laughs or calls me a fool for my ideas, I thank them with love. I can’t imagine a better fool’s journey for us all to undertake.

First They Ignore You...

2011-10-04T05:38:00.000-07:00

As I observe the media responses to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, what comes to mind is a wonderful quote by Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win."

It seems to me that those opposed to the message of this movement have recently shifted from phase one - ignoring the energy of the movement - to phase two, which involves ridicule of the individuals who have dedicated themselves to the cause. On Fox News yesterday I watched the so-called "news" commentators belittling the protesters for using their laptops, as if somehow this protest against financial corruption implied a concurrent moral aversion to the use of technology. They also laughed along with Donald Trump, who had called in to the program, when he asserted his belief that most of the young people were probably there to "find dates."

We're also observing a scaled implementation of phase three - fighting - which began with the mass arrests of protesters by police officers who aligned themselves with the power/dominator corporatists who fund and control our government officials. Ironically, those officials are paying police salaries using our taxpayer dollars, which means the people we've hired to protect us have now become bullies who oppress us in the name of "social order" to preserve their own jobs. But as we've seen too many times before in human history, the fear of losing their jobs can cause people to behave in ways that run counter to their own moral code of conduct. That explains why so many police officers purposefully corralled a large number of peaceful protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge, entrapping them into moving into the street. They then gave themselves permission to abuse their legal authority in an effort to intimidate the people and undermine the energy of the protest.

Strangely enough, while the rather miniscule Tea Party movement was breathlessly covered by the media as a powerful social movement for change, the growing and highly energetic "Occupy Wall Street" movement was ignored for nearly two weeks. Why the difference? Perhaps it's because the message of the Tea Party aligned perfectly with the agenda of the media moguls who control the dissemination of information in our modern society. That message - to destroy governmental power and elevate corporatism as the highest form of social organization - grants enormous powers to those who control the global flow of money. Not coincidentally, it also robs the general public of the means by which to resist the power elite. The thinking goes something like this: take away a man's food, shelter, health and means of survival, and his ability to fight injustice diminishes because his attention becomes redirected toward simple survival. What that thought process fails to take into account however, is that a person who finally feels he has nothing left to lose is the most dangerous person of all. Even so, it seems those who are attached to the power/dominator social model, which relies on intimidation and coercion to control the behavior of others, are constitutionally incapable of overreaching to the point of self-destruction. Since aggressive domination lies at the very heart of the model, the model doesn't seem to know when to cease dominating others out of the realization that excessive domination turns an energy of resistance back on itself.

"Occupy Wall Street," as opposed to the Tea Party movement, points its finger at the root of social injustice, and demands we solve the problem of aggressive domination instead of continue to mitigate the worst symptoms of continued social injustice. Welfare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, the renegotiation of criminally high mortgage loan balances and rates - all are attempts to mitigate symptoms instead of address the underlying social disease. So what IS the disease, and how do we cure it?

I would postulate that the social disease we presently face is the false belief that everything is separate, and that so-called "individuals" can therefore freely exploit nature, resources, ecosystems and even other human beings for personal gain. For centuries now we've been enamored of the belief that everything we observe in our material world is a discrete object, a passive noun, and that when the noun is energized (by a verb) it is activated. What we're just now coming to realize is that nouns and verbs are human conventions, and that life itself is not so neatly divisible. No noun exists that is not internally verbing to some extent; likewise, no verbish energy exists that is not flowing and manifesting through some noun. The whole of reality is therefore already alive and humming with order and purpose; it's only our limited sensory perspective that causes us to miss this powerful Truth. We look at a chair and see a passive object, but if we turn an electron microscope onto it we discover that every atom within the chair is teeming with ordered activity. Every molecular bond that has formed to build and hold the form that is the chair represents a miniature social contract that obeys the underlying laws of our universe. The chair is chair because the atoms have all agreed to make it so, and will continue to do so until their contract ends - at which point the chair as we know it will cease to be. The atoms, however, will carry on, forging new social contracts with other atoms to bring other temporary forms into this world. They are assisted at times by cosmic consciousness flowing through human minds, and at other times by cosmic consciousness flowing through nonhuman forms. Always though, it is cosmic consciousness that dictates the direction of life's evolutionary flow, whether it does so through human beings or through some other living means at its disposal. We are each therefore tools of the ONE Source, not separate objects acting in disconnection from that Source. The only question then, is whether we realize our true nature, or falsely believe we are acting on our own.

If everything is alive, and everything is interconnected and directed by a single Source, there is no such thing in our world as a "self-made man." We are each here by grace, and we reflect the evolutionary manifestations of all that has come before us. We exist because we are supported by the entire infrastructure of the cosmos, from our nurturing planet to our heat-giving sun, to the galaxy that controls and contains our sun, to the intergalactic cluster that contains and connects our galaxy to all others. If any one of those connections break, we are at risk of total species extinction. To understand that at the deepest level of our psyche is to realize our true place in the cosmos, and to humbly regard ourselves in our proper cosmic context.

That humanity has, for many centuries now, placed our desire for money and power above a reverent relationship with our own living planet - and with each other - is a reflection of our lack of awareness of the interconnectedness of everything. It isn't evil that drives us then; it's childish ignorance. Even modern science has failed us here, because most of our scientific theories cling to the belief that what's alive and subjective inside every object is less material than its objective properties. The assumption that we can come to know the totality of the whole through the simple dissection of its parts down to some mythical lowest common denominator misses the highest truth of life itself, which is that the whole is - always and ever - greater than the simple sum of its parts. Modern science fails to focus on these connections, and instead seeks to define reality by mathematically summing up all the supposedly observable and individuated objects in the universe, without concerning itself with the added benefit gained by such a conjoinment. Thus the ongoing search for a unified field to bring all of reality together is an impossible quest under the scientific method, because it seeks a summary answer "out there" instead of noticing that any unified field MUST first be found at the closest possible point to the observer - which by definition must be within the pure awareness of the observer. That awareness does not exist outside of the unified field, as modern science seems to assume it does. Pure awareness thus appears to be the magical "something more" that reality has gained by summing itself into a living, unified field.

With this new understanding, this new movement - which is comprised of young and old, rich and poor, people of color and people of Western European heritage - is not a movement designed to separate right from left or the wealthy from those who suffer. It is, at heart, a great leap forward in human consciousness, because at heart it's a celebration of life's rich and powerful interconnectivity. As such, violence will not serve its ends, because to do violence against what we're connected to is to do violence unto ourselves. What does serve this rising movement - and will continue to serve it well - is the courage of gnostic conviction of the truth. The conviction that life itself is far more precious than money, that human creativity deserves to be unleashed so we can collectively tackle our problems, and that to trust and love and nurture each other will get us farther than trying to direct and control each other for short-term gain is the deeper message underlying this movement. Thus this movement represents the genuine energy of freedom, but a freedom writ large on the psyche of human beings all over the world, as one by one we step into the realization that we are here to serve life, not just self; and that by serving life we ultimately are serving ourselves as enlightened members of the larger living whole. This movement therefore represents the desire of all spirits to be free to self-express and bring their unique capacities and talents into our world. We long to do so in gratitude for this precious gift that is life, which we're experiencing as a temporary form we have come to call the "self."

No amount of ignorance, ridicule or even force can long subvert the Truth of who we are. As Martin Luther King once said, "The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." When we know ourselves to be inextricably embedded in the infinite, eternal field that is life itself, we discover we have all the time in the world to stand for Truth. That awareness is the ultimate strength of the movement. It will not be suppressed by fear for the survival of our personal bodies, because we recognize these bodies to be but temporary manifestations of the larger living whole that will - always and ever - contain everything that is us. To serve that thus becomes the highest calling a human being can answer. And it is in that service that we find both grace and peace.

So to all those who would ignore, ridicule or attempt to coerce their brothers and sisters into falling silent and ignoring their deepest truth, I exhort you now...notice the truth of who you are and allow it to set you free. Feel your own inner energy vibrating in your own cells, and pay attention to the invisible umbilical cord that is your breath, and that connects you to this world through the gift of life. Accept that you cannot survive or thrive without a healthy, vibrant world to support your existence, and that you cannot feel joy without also feeling love for and toward your fellow man. Step into the truth of your own interbeing, and release the false belief that you are an island. Allow the grace of life to pulse through you and flow lovingly into this world that created and contains you, through you, as you. Bring love into this world by being loving. Bring peace by being peaceful. Bring generosity by being generous of mind and heart and spirit. See where that shift gets you instead of succumbing to the fear that possesses you now.

Fear cannot survive in the light of love, so set yourself on fire and banish the darkness within your own heart. Know there are millions of others who are ready and willing to midwife you into this new reality, and who desire - once enough of us are awakened to our interconnectedness - to design a new society that reflects this truth. A society that serves the whole by empowering all its parts to fully self-actualize will be a society blessed with love and fruitful abundance, and from that abundance all forms of life will be nourished. The whole is always and ever greater than the sum of its discrete parts. So allow the One Source to carry you to greater heights of beingness than you imagine you can achieve or attain on your own. That's grace in action, and it brings to each the peace that passeth all mental understanding.

Know yourself.

Namaste, my brothers and sisters, one and all.

Advice to Start Up Companies

2011-09-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

Having been part of a couple of Fortune 100 corporations in the past, I believe I've got a decent amount of experience with old economy thinking, as well as an understanding of its fatal flaws. What I've come to realize is that - as folks in the trenches begin to step up in an effort to shift our global economy toward serving a higher purpose and being supportive of all life and away from the current self-serving power/money paradigm - we must, as individuals who are integral members of our economic system, not allow ourselves to succumb to pressures to continually duplicate the old paradigm just because its trajectory has been powerful. To repeat what isn't working because it's all we know how to do is the very definition of insanity. Conversely, to stand up to that old economic paradigm and be willing to put yourself on the front line for what you believe is true is a test of personal courage.

Before I felt free to quit my job at Smith Barney I had to be willing to acknowledge that I had no idea how or if I'd survive that departure financially. I had to be fully accepting in my own mind and heart that the consequence might mean becoming homeless and eating out of dumpsters - as well as being shunned by former clients, family members and friends - for choosing to stand in my highest truth instead of continuing to "sell out" for the money and accolades that arise from succeeding in the existing social structure. From that place of humble acceptance, I found the strength to trust myself to do the right thing to the best of my capacity in every given moment. By being willing to surrender it all I discovered I had nothing left to lose, which meant no fear of loss remained to hinder my ability to strive to become my grandest version of my highest vision of myself.

Having gone through that trial by fire and having personally discovered - once I stepped into the abyss of the unknown - that the universe is actually a benevolent place and supports those who have the courage of their own convictions, I would like to offer the following advice to anyone who is contemplating starting their own business (or making any other sort of radical life change.) If it doesn't resonate with you then it's not meant for you...let it go without judgment. All information finds its true home in its own way, which is part of the marvel of the cosmic unfolding of life.

1) Before you begin the arduous process of creating something brand new, allow yourself to mentally "go to zero." Going to zero means having the courage to picture yourself in the worst possible outcome you can imagine, should you fail. If you can accept that outcome - if you are willing to live with the consequences of the worst possible situation you can picture as a result of your engaging in your new venture -you will discover that fear no longer has the power overwhelm your capacity to be reasoned and focused on whatever will enable you to succeed. If, however, you've been too afraid to look deeply into the darkness of your own imagination and discover if you're capable of living with the consequences of failure, you'll likely be unable to conduct yourself with the necessary level of integrity to succeed. That seems to be the way the universe works. We have to be willing to surrender it all in order to achieve our highest aspirations. Anything short of that is "hedging our bets." And when we hedge, we're acknowledging that we don't trust ourselves enough to invest everything we have to offer in our own success. But if you don't trust yourself enough to put everything on the line for the chance to succeed, why should anyone else place their trust in your ability? That insecurity will surely flow through to your decision making, and color the outcome of your venture before it begins.

2) Give deep thought to what it is you are wanting to create, and focus the bulk of your attention on that. Don't invest energy into thinking about what you don't want to happen, because that dilution of focus will sap your capacity to direct the bulk of your energy toward your own success. All we need do is examine our world to find countless examples of situations where humanity is busy creating the very situation it does not want to happen, because its attention is focused on (and its energy is directed toward) prevention of what it doesn't want instead of achievement of what it desires. We've made war on each other to stop war, which has only succeeded in creating new enemies. We've made war on drugs, which has only succeeded in generating new, more harmful drugs and organized crime that harms more people than the original drugs we set out to destroy. So set your vision, remind yourself of it regularly and often, and check yourself constantly to discover if you're straying from it because your fears are arising in your subconscious and subverting your higher intentions. Only when we are vigilant and consistently aware of our own undisciplined thoughts can we develop our core competency in this.

3) Spend time thoroughly studying Dan Pink's amazing book, "Drive." In it, he dissects human motivation and what drives us all to succeed. As it turns out, Pink's book reveals that the drivers humanity has been focusing on for too many eons now - reward and punishment - are external motivators that are fear/greed based, thus are only under very limited and short-term circumstances. Many studies prove that human beings are actually far more driven by a universal set of intrinsic motivators than they are by the external motivators of reward and punishment. What are those intrinsic drivers? It seems they are threefold:

---The desire for autonomy, which includes the freedom to be who we are and work without overly aggressive supervision, including when and how to do the jobs we've been tasked to accomplish.
---The desire for mastery, which involves taking as much time and investing as much energy as is necessary to master the skills pertaining to our passions, talents, abilities and desires.
---The desire to serve a higher purpose than ourselves, which involves knowing that the function we perform has the capacity contribute to the advancement of human society and be beneficial to life on Earth.

Therefore, if you're going to start a new business, build a company where these drives are honored and fostered and you'll find yourself with employees who will go out of their way to serve the business's ends because they love what they do. They will appreciate the trust and freedom they've been gifted, and will be grateful to have an opportunity to develop their core competencies. By creating a win/win scenario, you enhance the chances your company will succeed.

4) Acknowledge from the outset that nobody starting a new venture can possibly know what they don't yet know. In Tarot, life is called the "fool's journey" for a reason. We discover our own ignorance piece by piece, only after we've foolishly - and perhaps with the arrogance of ignorance - delved into the depths of our own incompetence. It is from that place of humility, from our rising awareness of our own incompetence and our desire to attain mastery, that true learning begins. To therefore blame, shame or guilt start up employees for failing to grasp what they did not know at the outset of the venture merely creates a hostile working climate that may well derail your operation before it gets underway. Which leads me to my next point:

5) Allow the unfolding of your venture to take as long as it takes to succeed. Impatience has killed more start up companies than any other personal and emotional failing. The desire to become too big too fast, to create a product before constructing a solid ground of operations, to meet some arbitrary internal deadline to the point that a steady, measured approach to success is tossed aside for the sake of meeting the target, is almost certain corporate suicide. Don't allow the existing human condition - which sets too much stock in time-based accomplishments and not enough in relaxing and allowing - to push you into being stressed and overworking to the point of exhaustion. An exhausted and unhappy employee (or employer) cannot possibly be bringing the best of themselves to the world. And if you're not doing that, then what on Earth are you doing? And for what reason?

I invite all prospective jobs creators - as well as all existing employers - to ponder these things as we move forward as a society...together.

When Good People go Crazy

2011-09-20T05:55:00.000-07:00

Several times in my life I've experienced the sorrow of witnessing the absolute emotional and psychological unraveling of another human being. I am, at the present moment, once again observing exactly such an experience. As I take a deep breath and step back from the self-induced, self-destructive, take-no-prisoners carnage that this individual is currently creating, I find myself examining the way the situation has been unfolding. I have been seeking to understand - with deep feelings of loving compassion for the individual in question - why it is that sometimes good people go crazy.

The following quote by Albert Einstein has been most instructive: "The intuitive voice is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant, but has forgotten the gift."

Irrationality, which is the energy that fuels mental craziness as well as all emotional reactivity, does not arise from the intuitive voice, which doesn't create fear or encourage fear-based thinking. The intuitive voice is - always and ever - arising out of the energy of unconditional love. Irrationality can only arise when the formerly rational mind - the faithful servant of the deepest essential self - has lost its way, and is no longer listening to the powerful intuitive voice that is encouraging it to value love before all else. What causes that to happen is a function of separation consciousness, the mistaken belief that each of us is entirely independent from one another, and from the larger world that has created and contains us all. It's hard to unconditionally love the external world (or its occupants) when we perceive it to be a dangerous and hostile environment for us to navigate, threatening to our very existence - because we imagine the totality of our existence to be only our mind-based self. Of course, it is only the mind that is telling us that terrifying story; the mind - out of fear of its own mortality because deep down it knows IS a mortal element and will ultimately dissolve with the body - that has attempted to elevate itself to the level of the infinite, eternal One Source that is manifesting life through every one of us.

Our society, such as it is, does not make it easy for those whose rational minds have (consciously or unconsciously) severed their connection to their deeper intuitive voice to find their way back to emotional wellness. As Einstein inferred, we have created a modern society that itself has elevated the status of mind to a level above the intuitive voice, which means we have - for all intents and purposes - created an insane society. Love these days therefore takes a back seat to success; empathy and respect take a back seat to personal reputations and self-image; integrity takes a back seat to the fear-based drive to accumulate wealth and perceived security.

Irrationality arises when the rational mind, faced with the cognitive dissonance of wanting to act out of accordance with its own highest principals in service to its own fears, chooses to invent a rationalization to justify the wrong action. The rationalization that occurs (which is actually irrational at the deepest intuitive level) goes something like this: "I can't afford to practice my highest values and be my best self at this point, because I'm not yet secure enough to do so. When I have attained the level of security I desire (or fame, fortune, public accolades, etc.) then I will be free to be fully and truly myself."

Having personally attained (and then willingly surrendered) the things I once thought I needed to feel security, if I've learned anything in this life it's that the search for one's self-image "out there" is an endless quest that is doomed to end in failure. Once we achieve what we believed we needed to be happy and feel secure, we discover either that it's relatively hollow and quickly loses its luster, or we discover we have to continually to battle the external world to hold onto whatever we've gained. The fact is, any quest to hold onto impermanent things is a fool's game, because all things must eventually dissolve. As Eckhart Tolle says so eloquently, "The things we think are so important in our lives, all the life dramas and suffering that consume so much of our attention and our energy, one day amount to the dash between the date of our birth and the date of our death on our tombstone."

Therefore, how we choose to live within the context of that dash matters more than all the narrative stories we're creating about ourselves to satisfy or quiet the fears of our mind.

Yesterday I took a time out from life and strolled through an old Vermont cemetery. I noted the dates of birth and death on many tombstones, wondering at the life stories that lay beneath my feet. Who was Lena, aged 13, and what was the cause of her untimely death? I'll never know. I'm sure she had many amazing life experiences, suffered some tragedies, was mourned by her family members and friends. Yet all that remains to remember her by is that dash.

This is true for most all of us. Most of us are not destined to become rich, or famous, or to go down in history as movers and shakers of human society. Most of us will live our lives quietly, and our bodies will dissolve as bodies inevitably do. The key then, is to be able to wake up every day - knowing it may well be our last day on this Earth - and to live it as if that is so. That most of us fail to do that, imagining we will only be able fully live in accordance with our intuitive voice, the voice that is always on the side of love, once we've accomplished our personal goals, is to put the destination ahead of the journey, allowing the end to justify the means.

That is humanity's collective insanity, and it is indeed what causes good people to occasionally go crazy.

Namaste

Money: A Manifestation of Separation Consciousness

2011-09-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a fundamental misconception about the nature of money among many members of modern spiritual movements, as well as within many New Age and intentional communities. I say that because frequently I read books or hear very well meaning people make statements like, “money is neither good nor evil; it’s our attitude toward it that determines whether we live in abundance or in scarcity.”

While that’s an interesting notion, and on a very limited personal level there is a certain amount of truth to it, what that assertion fails to take into account is that money is more than an idea or a projection of our personal beliefs; it is a very real medium of exchange that our society has designed over time to represent the way we’ve chosen to interact with one another. As such it carries its own DNA, one that gives it a physical structure and shapes it independent of our beliefs about its nature. Based on its inherent nature, money – at least as we are presently manifesting it in our world – makes it impossible for us all to live in harmony and abundance, no matter what our attitude may be. Why? Because in its present incarnation, money – much like the popular game of Monopoly® – sets up a collective win/lose game. The fact is, if I acquire and hoard money in a sufficient enough quantity so I need never worry again, I am in a very real sense contributing to the scarcity experiences and physical suffering of many, many others. Perhaps that explains why our personal intuition, which inclines many of us to feel negatively disposed toward the energy of modern money, is more accurate than the beliefs we have about our need to magnetize more of it to ourselves.

But why is that so? And if it’s true, what does it mean for us, as spiritual beings, that we desire ever more money in its current incarnation? Equally importantly, how might our desire to accumulate enough money to guarantee our personal security impact our ability to be in right relationship with one another, and with life?

To understand these things in their deeper context, we need to first understand how money was – and continues to be – born into our world…and how, unlike all other natural life forms (and in direct violation of the natural law of impermanence) it does not ever die. Let’s begin with the birth of money in the form we know it today. (Should you be interested in understanding more about the history and various incarnations of money, I discuss them in depth in “Sacred Economics: The Currency of Life.”) In our modern world, money is born when our government – which represents the American people – borrows it into being from the National Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve then issues either digital credits or actual paper dollars and lends them out to its private member banks. That money then flows into general circulation through acts of additional borrowing. Banks lend their money (creating much more of it in the process) to private citizens and corporations. That transfers money out of the banking system and into the hands of the public. From there it can enter the economic flow and stimulate the exchange of goods and services.

When however, we dissect this process, we uncover a major problem. That is, the Federal Reserve only ever issues into circulation the amount of principle each loan conveys to the borrower, even though every single loan comes burdened with the need to pay back all that principle plus some additional interest. That means, on a societal level, it is structurally impossible for all of us to live our lives free of debt. The very nature of the equation means that in order for one person to pay off her debts in full, some number of other people will have to lose most or all of their borrowed principle so she can accumulate enough to pay back both the principle she borrowed plus all the interest that she owes. Because not all our debts come due at once, we fail to notice the insidiousness of that system, but that doesn’t mean the problem isn’t there. The fact is, for every modern loan ever made and for every business enterprise ever undertaken through an act of borrowing, our society as a whole must go deeper into debt to make it happen, which creates a higher collective obligation that can never fully be repaid.

What, you may be wondering, does any of that have to do with me? So long as I pay my debts successfully and accumulate money efficiently enough that I live in personal abundance, why is what happens to those who can’t pay their debts my problem? For an answer to those questions, we must draw upon the deeper spiritual and biological truths so many of us either intuit, or have gradually come to realize as our awareness of how our cosmos works has evolved.

The monetary system described above is grounded in a longstanding (albeit false) belief that we are each separate from one another, as well as separate from our larger living world. That belief arose from a fractured worldview that assumed “we” must protect ourselves from “life,” and that – at whatever cost – we must protect these fragile forms from physical harm. That assumption springs from separation consciousness, the belief that somehow we are other than life itself. And when drawn out to its logical conclusion, that assumption of separation has led to the presumption that we each have a life we can lose, and that it must somehow be protected and preserved as if it is a distinct and precious object we possess. But from what are we protecting this supposed life we “have,” if not from life itself? And who is this “we” who must protect this life we have come to believe we possess, and that we can lose? What is that, if not the very essence of life itself, which both creates and animates the world of form? To recognize that is to recognize the absurdity of the original assumption, the belief that “I” am separate from “life.” That belief, that fractured worldview which imagines that “I am one and everything else is other” obscures a more potent truth: that “we are all.”

Because the tool of money was originally conceived during humanity’s long and painful experiment with separation consciousness (which seems to be mercifully coming to an end in modern times) our monetary system fails to take into consideration – because when we created money we ourselves failed to understand – that we are in fact all inextricably interconnected, and that life is a process of cooperative interbeing; not, as we often imagine, a random collection of separate beings all “doing” life for themselves. As a fundamental tool of separation consciousness, money therefore demands that we each serve the needs of the personal me ahead of the needs of the we, rather than viewing the two as entwined and of equal importance. Through serving the self as supreme, individuals in our society gain economic privilege and social power by capitalizing on others’ bad luck, missteps and misfortunes. Money pushes us, by its very nature, to figure out new ways to commoditize, package and sell our natural world. We unthinkingly convert life itself into raw materials to be killed or exploited, manipulated, dominated and eagerly consumed for the sake of economic productivity and monetary profits. Because our collective focus is on serving the temporary form that is the individual by depreciating the infinite, eternal flow of creation that is the underlying life process, it fosters within us a constant fear of lack – not because we are spiritually unaware and thus failing to hold an appropriate attitude of abundance – but because we are devaluing what we are to serve what we believe ourselves to be, which is considerably less than the truth of what we are! Worst of all, this belief system desensitizes us to our own inner joy and overwhelms our innate desire to serve a higher purpose than our temporary self – to serve life, which we are – because it demands that we satisfy our personal debt obligations before we pursue joyful life service by fulfilling life’s deeper purpose for taking this form. And then we wonder, when we look around, why so many of us are living isolated, fear-based lives of quiet desperation that require Prozac, alcohol, frantic overeating and mind numbing television programs to help us temporarily alleviate, though not dispel, that sense of despair!

If that were all there was to it, we’d certainly have plenty of work to do as a species to redress that foundational misunderstanding of separation consciousness. But that’s not all. I mentioned earlier that money violates natural law, because (at least the way we’ve designed it) it does not die. Let’s now examine how that negatively impacts our lives, and life itself.

As temporary life forms, we know that our body comes into being through the vehicle of conception and childbirth. Our body then matures, puts forth the fruit of its physical, emotional and creative capacities, and eventually decays. Death then, becomes the vehicle whereby our physical forms are broken down, fully consumed and then recycled by life itself, so life can use all of itself again to recreate itself anew. Once we embrace that truth, we come to understand that each of us is, in a very real sense, fully embedded in life’s infinitely creative and eternal cosmic dance of self-expression. We are not separate or excluded from that process, nor are we disconnected from its boundless creative flow; we are the eternal dancer, infinitely dancing the dancer’s eternal dream. All that ever changes is the shape the dancer takes, and the ability the dancer gains (through a good deal of dedication and patient practice) to challenge itself to perform higher and ever more beautiful acts of amazing self-expression. Death then, is not our enemy, or something to be avoided at any cost. It is merely the vehicle by which life transports itself to a new and higher level of creative self-expression through the continuous process of destruction and rebirth.

In our earliest social exchanges, shortly before separation consciousness rooted, the things we exchanged all decayed and eventually died. Grains rotted, and domesticated animals aged and died as well. Even the energy we offered to others in the form of our personal labor disappeared forever, unrecoverable even if our offering of time went unused. The creative fruits of our endeavors – be they pottery, textiles, woodwork, construction or art – also broke down or dissolved. No matter how hard we’ve tried through the ages, we’ve found we’re unable to preserve these temporary forms or prevent their natural decay. In the past that meant we were continually inspired to exchange what we had to offer, because if we didn’t either use or exchange our abundance we would lose it.

As separation consciousness took hold however, and with the advent of money to facilitate human exchange, we suddenly discovered we had the capacity to store value for a very, very long time. While our many goods and services (for which we were using money as the medium of exchange) passed away with time, the money itself did not. At first in the form of metal coins, then later in the form of paper and now in modern times as digital records, we found we could store value in perpetuity through the act of hoarding money to meet future needs. The unforeseen consequence of money’s eternal nature is that money – which was initially intended to be the primary tool we used to exchange human goods and services – took on a dual function. It also became our primary means to store value, so we might pay off our debts someday and set ourselves free from the need to do work in exchange for the means to survive.

Unfortunately, by combining those two functions – the primary means of exchange and the primary means of value storage – we designed a tool of duality that is highly problematic. If, for example, I need to use the money I’ve accumulated to store value so I have something in reserve to meet tomorrow’s needs, how can I use it as a means of exchange today? Yet the moment I remove my money from today’s flow of creative exchange and tuck it away in reserve to meet tomorrow’s potential needs, I’m hindering everyone else’s ability to exchange their creativity here and now, because I’ve reduced the means that makes such exchanges possible. The more money that gets hoarded, and that eventually stagnates in large pools of wealth – dammed up as a store of value held by the wealthiest few among us – the less means the rest of us have to fuel our creative flow and thrive together.

Each of us must constantly decide which of these two functions our money will serve, which creates stress within our psyches. If I use my hard earned money as a means of exchange today, I must remove it from storage and surrender its potential to meet my needs tomorrow. Likewise, if I store it away for a rainy day, my ability to share in life’s creative exchanges in the here and now gets reduced. If the value of money declined over time so we knew it would be worth less tomorrow than it’s worth today – the way our own mental capacity diminishes and our own physical forms deteriorate – it would be easier for us to strike a balance between these dual functions. What throws it out of whack, however, is the fact that we must pay interest on all borrowed money. Interest means lenders are rewarded for hoarding money to a point of excess, and then parsing it out to the needy so they can grow their own wealth at the expense of others.

If I lend you ten dollars and demand that you return twenty to me next week, that twenty means I’ll have more buying power next week than I’d have if I’d spent the ten I have today. You, in turn, will need to spend that borrowed ten dollars in a way that you’re able to use it to earn at least twenty more dollars within the next week. If you’re unable, for whatever reason, to use the money I loaned you to earn more than twenty dollars by next week, you’re still obligated to pay me the twenty we agreed to, which leaves you worse off for having accepted my “help.” And what if you borrowed that money to put food on your table, care for your sick child, or to cover your electric bill so your family doesn’t freeze to death in winter? While those things are fundamental for your survival, they don’t go far in aiding you to be able to earn twenty dollars in the future, beyond the fact they allow you to live and strive for another day.

Clearly then, consumerism (spending money on end goods that we use instead of investing it in creative enterprises) robs us of our capacity to pay off our accumulating debts. Meanwhile, the very nature of money rewards hoarding far more than it rewards us for engaging in supporting the flow of creative human energy. That explains why today we live in a society where the pressure in on us all to consume more end goods, which render us deeper in debt and less able to effectively create, while at the same time we feel a countervailing pressure to save as much as we possibly can so we can use what we save to exploit the needs of others and grow our own wealth. Is it any wonder then that, even with seven billion of us on planet Earth today, we witness so much pent-up creativity – so much wasted human capacity – because most of us don’t have enough means to fully self-express and give our gifts in this world?

When we look around us (if we’re honest, and not imagining all is perfect so we don’t have to respond to what is) we can’t help but notice the suffering on our planet. We see her soils being raped, her bowels being gutted to access her natural resources, her air being fouled by all our toxic emissions, her waters being denuded of life and severely polluted. We see ancient forests, fragile tundra and unique ecosystems being slashed and burned for short-term monetary profits; we see the extinction of untold species who have “gotten in the way” of our own economic growth. These are but symptoms, byproducts of the way we’ve constructed our relationships with life, which in turn is rooted in the false belief that we are separate from life, as well as from the larger living world that birthed and contains us. Money, as a symbolic artifact of that longstanding belief system, is not neutral. It is, in truth, ignorant of our newly emerging higher realization. It’s a reflection of an outmoded level of human consciousness, a byproduct of our experiment with the idea of separation. As such, we cannot shift our personal inner awareness and evolve our consciousness to a higher state of being while still binding ourselves to the energies and beliefs our existing systems continue to represent. The assumption that we are entirely separate from life, and the assumption that we are inextricably entwined with life as life, are fundamentally incompatible! Therefore, as we collectively awaken to the realization that the long social experiment we’ve been conducting to discover if we are indeed separate from life has proved false, we’ll have no choice but to rebuild our systems upon a new foundation – the understanding that all is entwined, all is alive, and all deserves to be treated in sacred manner.

So what does all this mean for those of us who have awakened to the truth of our interconnectivity, yet find ourselves still embedded in outmoded social systems that don’t reflect that awareness, but contribute to the energy of separation consciousness? How do we navigate the reality of those social systems without strengthening them? How might we hospice them out of existence without rendering our newly awakened and interconnected selves helpless (and broke!) in the meantime?

I wish I could offer an answer, or wave a magic wand and make things fine. Unfortunately, all I can do is offer a pointer based on my own experience. The truly profound shift in my life occurred when I quit my job as a stockbroker in late 2007. I woke up one day and realized – down to the very depths of my being – that I’d rather surrender every material possession I’d accumulated in this world and live like a homeless bag lady (which, while not desirable, was doable) instead of continuing to feed the insatiable beast of separation consciousness through my fears and anxieties about the future. That for me was the pivot point, because surrendering my need to control the future empowered me to live as if I have abundance in every moment. The fact is, I do have abundance in the only moment there is: this sacred Now. Nothing, I finally realized, could truly harm the infinite/eternal essence that is life, because that aspect has no oppositional force. While birth (creation) and death (destruction) are oppositional aspects of the process life uses to dances its way through an infinite number of temporary forms, life itself has no opposite. We are that, and will be always, in whatever forms or shapes life chooses to take.

To come to know myself as life, to surrender my sense of self’s desire for immortality through my acceptance that this limited human form is impermanent and will die along with my sense of this form, which is but a brief reflection of all that life is, was to step into full alignment with nature’s flow. In that moment I ceased worrying about money as a store of value that could determine how much I could get for myself to protect myself from the future, and instead began to focus on how very much I had to give to this precious all of life that is here and NOW. In doing so, I set myself free from the shackles of fear that demanded I continually hoard more money for my physical protection. That, in turn, freed me to begin to consciously direct the flow of whatever money came my way toward those creative endeavors and spiritual ideals that honored life’s interconnectivity, instead of toward things I once believed protected me from life! Once I realized I was life, and did not need to be protected from what I am, my fears subsided.

This is not to say my fears have vanished, or that I am always and ever in full alignment with the wondrous flow that is life. The momentum of human history is powerful, and the deeply conditioned belief in separation takes time to unwind. What it does mean is that whenever my fears arise, as they inevitably do, I take a moment to look at the thoughts that are triggering those fears. Always I find they are “me” thoughts, questions my sense of self is asking about what will happen to it, should such-and-such occur. To gently observe those fear-based thoughts and recognize them for what they are, and then to release them without judgment, shame or guilt, is an ongoing part of my daily spiritual practice.

Will I run out of money before enough people wake up to the truth for us to change the nature of this sacred life experience? I don’t know. Will I lose my house in this current mortgage debacle, as seems to be a possibility now? I don’t know. Will I find myself, in my old age, penniless and homeless and unable to acquire the things I need to survive? I just don’t know.

What I do know is I’m no longer content to live in a world where I’m not doing everything in my power, using every means available through this temporary expression that I am, to assist in humanity’s quickening to the realization of our magnificent and harmonious interconnectivity as life. It’s why I give away money (or spend it) almost as quickly as it enters my physical realm, and why I look for places to help and serve and give. For me, life is no longer about personal affirmations, or personal abundance, or even personal enlightenment. It’s about love – that boundless energy that always feels as good to give away as it does to receive. These days, and by life’s grace, I’m choosing to express from a state of love instead of a place of fear, and I do my best to affirm that choice each moment. Over time, I’m coming to appreciate the remarkable difference between dying rich…and dying, having richly lived.

I hope you are too.

Gnosticism (knowing God) versus Holy Books (learning about God)

2011-08-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

When I hear people hold up their holy books as the definitive word of God and declare that all life's answers can be found in their chosen book, what comes to mind immediately is that here is a person who is unconsciously disconnected from the power of life that resides within him or herself. I feel compassion for that, because to surrender your power to decide for yourself how to be as you go through life is to feel a lack of trust and faith in yourself as an agent and creation of God - whatever you conceive God to be. It is to place a physical distance - the dimensions of your chosen book - between yourself and your creator. It is to render yourself a perpetual child of humanity's historical teachings, rather than view yourself as an evolving part of the larger creative life process.

As children, we do what our parents tell us to do without question, without thinking, and are taught that this is good. At some point in our maturation, however, we discover we must step into the fullness of our own capacity and discover for ourselves how to be, what we believe, and what feels right for us to do. We know our parents aren't always going to be standing right behind us, informing us how to act every step of the way. Becoming an adult means we must develop our own core competencies, even though that means we'll make a few mistakes along the way. We accept that challenge, because we know that eventually we must learn to trust in our own abilities to analyze and apply what we know, and what we feel to be true, to every new situation that arises. Only then can we feel any sense of confidence that we are prepared to raise our own children, to build a solid, stable foundation from which they can grow.

So it is in our relationship with God. Evolution, which is woven into the fabric of life itself, encourages us to continue to grow and mature. God wants this for us, wants us to learn how to use the gifts we've been given in ways that improve the quality of life for all of God's creatures on Earth. And although rule books written by the wisest men of their era were helpful guideposts for humanity when we were like children in our mental and emotional evolution, the complexity and constant challenges we experience today - as we move out of species adolescence and take our first tentative steps into species adulthood - have dramatically altered the way we relate to life, compared with how we did things thousands of years ago. Metaphorically speaking, holy books are like the training wheels we attach to children's bicycles. Eventually we are meant to cast them off, to learn how to ride the bike for ourselves without our speed and capacity being impeded by the limitations of the training wheels. That doesn't mean we must surrender or negate the benefits of having used the training wheels; far from it. It simply means we've advanced beyond what they are now able to teach us. To leave them behind - with gratitude for all their support - is the answer.

What we understand about the world in which we live - our perspective on how we fit into the larger scheme of life - continues to advance over time. Our understanding of science has helped us grasp that death is a physical illusion, that nothing in this world is ever lost or destroyed, it only changes form. Science has also helped us realize that what we perceive as "solid" isn't solid at all, it is mostly inner spaciousness, and that it is only our sensory perspective (designed to enable our "solid" bodies to navigate this reality without banging into other "things") that gives our world the appearance of solidity. We've come to realize we are not the center of the universe, but are infinitesimal specks of life on a rather unassuming planet, in the orbit of a very ordinary star in the midst of a massive galaxy that is but one of many trillions of galaxies within reach of our strongest telescopes - and that is only the fraction of the world we are able to view! We've come to understand that nature isn't "personal," and doesn't attack us out of spite or anger, but has its own long established processes and geological activities that we are sometimes, unfortunately, caught up in. We've come to realize that what we do in this world has consequences - always. For instance, there is no place to throw garbage "away," no action we can take that does not reverberate energetically, no damage we can do to this world from which we can walk away unscathed - not on a spherical planet where everything is utterly interconnected in space and time.

There is so much we have yet to learn, so very much we don't yet know, yet we endlessly strive to attain higher wisdom as we continue to evolve. In that larger context, whatever relationship we personally choose to forge with the creative process that is still acting within us, upon us and all around us holds the power to help guide us in ways that are fully relevant to life as we experience it today, as opposed to the limited guidance we're still able to glean from words that were written down long ago to explain life as it used to be to those (and by those) who did not hold our level of understanding.

To turn our attention within, and slowly learn to trust the essence of eternal life (God) that emerges when we quiet ourselves and listen to the wisdom that arises from the wellspring of the infinite inside us isn't easy, any more than that first tentative spin we took on a two-wheeler was easy. It is, however, a highly rewarding process. The best part about establishing and building a personal connection with God (gnosticism) is that we develop our own core competency in relationship to the world. The connection we open is there inside us everywhere we go, and can be instantly accessed in any situation. We don't need to call a "time out" to consult an ancient holy book, or to invest energy figuring out which group of conflicting instructions in a particular book ought to apply to a given situation. When we still ourselves, quiet our minds and open our hearts to truth, it always appears. If we really want to experience miracles in life, this is the place to begin. The relationship we're able to forge with the infinite/eternal within us when we discover we ARE that, manifesting here and now as this, a temporary form, is miraculous.

Why is it important for as many of us as are willing to do so to go within and connect with our truths? Because in life, no two situations are ever exactly the same. Every moment offers a confluence of different people, different times, different energies, different relationships, different histories, different outcomes. As tempting as it may be to cling to a "book of rules" that will inform us how to behave in every situation, it doesn't take most of us long to realize life isn't quite that neat. There IS no rulebook that will give us the definitive truth on how to BE in every situation, or how to think or feel about what is happening right here, right now. There are guideposts, yes. Approximations we can turn to. Insights that have been gleaned by others who have gone inside themselves and made their own deep connection with God. Interpretations of language by experts we can occasionally consult. But there are no fixed rules for life. There is only life, challenging us at every turn to step up and live it, fully right here, in this now. When those who have stepped into the truth as it is now come into relationship with those who are using an ancient book to inform them about the truth, conflict inevitably arises. That's because the past cannot inform the future from a place of genuine wisdom, for it does not possess the experience that is present in this moment. Past can only inform the future from its own historic perspective, which ends as of the writing down of the past. Thus, calling upon the past to inform us is like expecting the child we used to be to tell us how to behave as an adult. We can glean lessons from our childhood, yes. We can recall specific moments and act upon specific insights that are reflective of those past experiences. But we can only do so from the perspective of the adult we are today. Certainly we don't believe that the untrained, highly limited mind of the child we used to be should fully inform our behavior, without us adding our adult wisdom to the decisions we choose to make. That would be a far too limiting way for us to function.

Expecting our chosen rule book to provide all life's answers is equally limiting. Even "Thou shall not kill" - which seems like a pretty straightforward law - has asterisks attached! Thou CAN apparently kill if the other person is trying to kill you, or is harming another, or in the context of war, or (at least as some believe) out of vengeance or to mete out justice. And what exactly does "kill" mean? Does it refer to the tissue that is an as-yet unborn child? Does it limit itself to that which is already in existence as a separate human being? Does it apply to gently assisting another in their passing over to death if they are suffering beyond redemption? These are not questions for which any book offers real answers.

These days, I prefer to personally step into each new situation that arises with "don't know" mind, and then invite Truth to enter and inform me how to be in THAT given moment. I concern myself much less with how others are choosing to be, and instead focus on doing what I know to be good and right and true in the given moment - which becomes a full-time job once we commit ourselves to it. Nowadays I'm usually far too busy making sure I'm living in full integrity with my own inner truth to concern myself with how others are choosing to live. And as well read as I happen to be, because I genuinely love both reading and writing, no book I've come across yet contains the insight, the flexibility, the wisdom, to do that hard work for me, because words are dead. They cannot adjust to life, bend for it, flow with it, change as it does. They are fixed representations of what was alive at that time. We cannot breathe life into words, no matter how hard we try. Words are only thoughts that lived in a mind that lived in the past, reflecting the reality of the individuals who thought them. Even these words you're reading right now are already dead on the page. Our world has evolved beyond where it was when they first arose in my mind in the present moment. To carry the written word into the future and try to breathe life into it now, to expect those words to be utterly relevant to your own reality in this brand new moment, instead of CREATING YOUR OWN THOUGHTS is to waste your God-given gift to connect with life as life, to feel and think and experience life for yourself.

Knowledge is what we glean when we turn to the words of others to instruct us about how life is. Wisdom is what we gain when we enter into the experience of life for ourselves. Knowledge is two-dimensional, thus doesn't truly exist. Wisdom arises in the three-dimensional realm, which is where humanity lives. This doesn't mean we should throw away the compendium of collected human knowledge; far from it. Value lies within it, particularly as pointers from the past and important lessons around mistakes already made and overcome by the men and women who came before us. The key is to appreciate knowledge for what it is, a history of the journey of human ignorance to a place of higher understanding, and not the whole Truth of life, which is infinite and eternally unfolding.

The Paradox of the Modern Business Model

2011-06-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

So often today we hear the crowd-pleasing mantra, “let’s starve the government,” being promoted by politicians and conservative economists, as if that would be a grand idea for us to implement. To force the government to cut spending to the bone, to put it on a financial austerity program that mimics what we would do in our own homes if we lost our jobs or other means of financial support, would at last put governmental power firmly in check, or so goes the theory. The question nobody seems to ask, however, is: in check to whom or what? Whose power will then prove greater than that of our starved, diminished government if we succeed in this proposed austerity mission?

Certainly not the power of our state and local governments, who themselves have been too long starved for income, and who depend more and more upon the federal government for assistance in funding crucial aspects of their annual budgets. Who then truly benefits from a weakened and undermined federal government system? I would suggest that the beneficiaries, those who are promoting the idea of starving our government and who are selling that proposition to the public like so much snake oil, are the wealthy plutocrats, bankers and top tier mangers of businesses in this nation (along with the political puppets they fund and control.) Their mission is clear: to subvert the federal government’s agenda in favor of their own narrow agenda and worldview. But why? What does business have to gain by undermining the governmental structure that for centuries has coddled and protected it? Why has such enmity arisen now, such that the leaders of commerce would willingly and consciously attempt to defang the very beast they once created, the one that has jealously guarded and protected their interests since commerce first arose in human society? After all, the earliest forms of social governance came into being to protect personal property rights and to safeguard the possessions that wealthy people had begun to accumulate, shortly after the notions of individual ownership and personal success had been embraced by human society. In fact, government seems to have difficulty knowing what to do with itself without business interests – and the fruits thereof – to protect. Business has never truly existed without a strong governing arm to stabilize the larger society and ensure that businesses remain free to produce, profit and benefit from the fruits of their labor without public interference or without the greater society’s need stripping them of the results of their business efforts.

As is true when we seek to understand the driver behind any human behavior, we must examine business’s motives if we wish to understand why it’s now opposed to strong governance. Let us never forget that any business’s primary motive is to earn a monetary profit. All other motives we might wish to attribute to a business must align behind that singular prime directive. No profit; no more business. It’s that simple. It seems likely then, that the reason our business community today seems so eager to starve government funding must spring from the fact that, over recent centuries, whole functions of government have sprung up and been publicly funded that compete with business in the marketplace of ideas, and now threaten the supremacy of the monetary for-profit paradigm that is the corporate worldview.

Modern governments over time have broken a centuries’ old pact they once had with businesses (and the oligarchs who run them.) With the establishment of democracies and constitutionally based governing systems, the longstanding, primary role of government as the protector of its society (which in prior centuries meant the plutocrats and the monetary for-profit paradigm) shifted radically. Governments instead became the direct and primary protector of the citizenry, rather than simply the protector of the social operating system and the individuals who controlled the system and exploited the citizenry to keep it running.

Think about that. Over the past hundred years we’ve funded governmental scientific research that has discovered cures and vaccines (not just symptom alleviators) for many of the diseases that ail humanity and that disproportionately harm the poor. We’ve funded studies that tell us if the things we’re doing are harmful to human life. We’ve funded testing facilities and safety agencies to monitor business practices and protect the public’s health. We’ve funded consumer protection agencies to defend us against the most predatory activities of private enterprise. We’ve funded environmental protection agencies whose goal it is to balance the public’s long-term desire for clean water, air and unspoiled lands with business’s desire to exploit and pollute those resources for short-term financial gain. We’ve funded free public education, which has created a more informed public and a smarter labor force - one that now has the intellectual capacity to challenge business’s motives and practices, and that sometimes tries to steer our business model in new and disruptive directions. We’ve funded public broadcasting, which attempts to provide free and factual information to all citizens - which challenges the private sector’s ability to control the national agenda by controlling the information that flows to the public. We’ve also funded (via military spending and space exploration) the invention and development of advanced technologies that have been translated into inventions and communications systems. Those in turn have benefited humanity outside the control of the corporate plutocrats.

Nothing is more likely to enrage the plutocracy than having its for-profit model ignored or disturbed by upstarts who are working outside the model. The first approach the plutocrats take if an upstart creates a disruptive new technology is to try and destroy their model or undermine their credibility. If that doesn’t work the plutocrats eventually embrace the upstart, seducing the Steve Jobs and Arianna Huffingtons into becoming part of the business model by buying them out or by offering them an exclusive membership in the club of the corporate brotherhood. That guarantees the goals of the upstarts will shift into better alignment with those of the for-profit business model.

The plutocrats who run the international business machinery are ever eager to control the release into our society of any new ideas that may affect their ability to earn a profit. Only by rigidly controlling the flow and timing of new ideas can they ensure their profitability remains on firm footing based on their private agenda. That's why businesses lobby so hard to regulate or limit the expansion of inventions like the Internet – which, not surprisingly, flowed out of the government pool of ideas and took root before business could control the spread of it. Since the advent of the internet, which has empowered individuals to eliminate middle men, do their own research and make better and more informed decisions, businesses have had to invest inordinate sums of money to try and regain the power they lost to the individual via the net. Business wants to restrain and control all such potentially heretical ideas that may flow out of government, and that might benefit the citizenry in ways that could damage short-term financial interests.

Government, on the other hand, has no such financial constraints on what it does or creates, other than those its citizenry imposes. When we study the Declaration of Independence and at the Constitution of the United States as they are and not as we’ve been told they are, what we find is that, as initially conceived, our government's motives are to protect and defend the citizenry, to regulate commerce, to monitor and protect our natural resources and to protect and preserve the public commons for the sake of future generations. The government will (if not tampered with or bribed into silence by controlling business interests) release into the world whatever new ideas it brings forth, along with those studies and inventions it develops, based upon how informative and beneficial those things seem to be to its citizenry, and how protective they will be of the public commons. Furthermore, it will prosecute businesses that willingly violate public health and safety laws. Government also aggressively challenges companies when their practices grow too predatory and harmful to the citizenry they are supposed to be serving, not exploiting for their own financial benefit. Often that more principled governmental approach – based on its charter to defend the rights and wellbeing of its citizens ahead of the financial needs of its corporations and plutocrats - puts pressure on corporations to change the way they do business, or to change the composition or nature of the goods they produce. Corporations hate that, because those changes cost them money and reduce their profitability.

The corporate plutocracy wants its financial for-profit model to reign supreme, and its agenda to be viewed as more crucial to the health and wellbeing of the citizenry than the governmental agenda. It therefore cloaks the government in a constant cloud of suspicion in an attempt to undermine it. For decades now, business has been conducting a covert political campaign to sway public opinion against the benefits of strong government by pointing angrily to what it terms the government’s weaknesses and moral flaws. By making a strong federal government seem dangerous and inept, international corporations have set themselves up as the “good guys” and their federal regulators as the “bad guys” in a war for public opinion and support.

As in any good war, the best defense is quite often a powerful offense. By labeling the government as dangerous and evil, and by screaming as loudly as possible about the government’s ineptitude and lack of moral fiber while using privately funded airwaves to wage their relentless attack, business has conveniently deflected the public’s attention away from its own ineptitude and moral failings. By funding the campaigns of business-friendly politicians, and by supporting their attempts to infiltrate the offices of government and attack it from within, business has enabled its own agents and lobbyists to create new laws that both shield it from prosecution and grant it greater control over public elections. The Supreme Court’s recent “Citizens United” decision (which was reached by a majority of justices who, in turn, have been appointed by politicians whose campaigns were funded mainly by business interests) tortured our constitution by interpreting it to mean that “free speech” is the same thing as spending money to fund political campaigns. That decision exponentially increased the plutocracy’s power to back more and more puppets to promote its agenda and undermine the stated purpose of our government.

What’s the net result of this ongoing war between a government that directly serves its citizenry, and a plutocracy that serves its own financial interests and controls the behavior of the citizenry - along with the use of national resources? For decades now, we’ve been bombarded with persuasive rhetoric and seemingly logical arguments that have been drawn against our genuine personal interests, and many people have been won over by the corporate worldview.

So what, exactly, is this worldview into which we’re being seduced? It’s the belief that money, and the short-term acquisition of enough of it, is more important in the short run than long-term human health, happiness and the wellbeing of our own living planet, because ultimately the acquisition of enough money will allow us to buy for ourselves those things we truly desire. Under that worldview everything we do, every decision we make, must be viewed through the financial, for-profit lens. If we can’t make money at something – or at the very least have it be revenue neutral - we simply won’t do it, no matter how crucial it may be for humanity’s long-term survival. The singular exception business seems willing to promote, the one aspect of government it seems willing to fund to a nearly unlimited extent, is the capacity to wage war against other nations to protect our business interests. And why not? War is an amazingly profitable enterprise for the business paradigm. In what other industry do we make breathtakingly expensive products – products funded and resourced by the public and not by private enterprise itself – that we blow up or destroy almost immediately, requiring us to then build them all over again and generate continuous corporate profits? Certainly the government can be allowed to run a monstrous deficit for the sake of feeding that highly profitable financial enterprise, so long as the public can be convinced a given war is righteous enough for it to pick up the tab in defense of those business interests.

The sobering truth is, for too long we’ve been sold a bill of goods that says we can use money to buy happiness, health and a sense of wellbeing. We’ve convinced ourselves it must be true, because the press constantly holds a few wealthy role models up to as all as evidence that we too, if we continue to work hard, not complain and do exactly what the plutocracy says, will eventually be in position to “have it all.” What we’re never told is that, under the existing scenario, it’s impossible for more than a few people to genuinely have it all. A power/dominator structure that supports and is controlled by a plutocracy – by its very nature – requires many more worker bees than it does overseers. The systematic dismantling of the middle class we’ve been observing for the past forty years has been the plutocracy’s attempt to prevent too many worker bees from becoming mid-level overseers wielding too much power, because a too-strong middle management power base threatens the pyramidical nature of the power/dominator structure that underpins the for-profit business model. That’s particularly true because most mid-level workers tend to rise from the families of lower level worker bees, thus feel some affinity for the struggle and suffering of the lower classes, whereas plutocrats tend to spring from the middle class or are born of other plutocrats, which insulates them from feeling empathy for the struggle of the lower classes.

When we look at what’s happening in our society today - without shying away from what the evidence reveals - we can see what it is about the government’s activities that have so offended the business establishment. We begin to grasp why business today wishes to dominate government, to change the very nature of its function. Because the motives of government are life-oriented and long-term, while the motives of business are profit-oriented and short-term, these two competing viewpoints have been on a collision course for the past two hundred-plus years. In earlier centuries they operated in dynamic balance because neither system had the best interests of the citizenry at heart. But of late the balance has tipped precariously in favor of the power/dominator business model, at the expense of the rights and needs of the citizenry. It’s money that makes all the difference in a society where money equals power. And since business interests control most of the money in this nation, including how and where it is printed and to whom it flows, whereas the government remains deeply indebted and has not been permitted to accumulate excess cash, it is business that is funding – and winning – the war of public opinion.

If out business model wins this war and becomes the sole driver for human advancement, it means people will remain ever harnessed to the need to pay for what they use on a daily basis and to sell their labor from the time they're old enough to work until the day they can no longer physically do their work, so they can continually earn enough cash to pay businesses for the goods and services they need to survive. That model, unchecked, subverts a large part of what we are trying to accomplish as a species, which is to free ourselves from the need to physically work and to mentally struggle without any end in sight, and to eliminate our the endless need to pay those who control the world’s resources for access to what we need to be our best selves.

The irony is, humans continually seek freedom but have chosen (unwittingly, perhaps) to bind ourselves to a model that perpetually denies us our freedom. Why? Are we so afraid of what we'll do with freedom if we actually achieve it? Are we more enamored of the seeking of freedom than we are of the notion of actually being free from these self-imposed constraints? Are we more interested in controlling the behaviors of everyone else than in claiming genuine freedom for ourselves? The fact is, we can't have life both ways in this situation - we can't be personally free so long as we continue to support a system that manipulates and coerces us all into behaving in highly controlled, self-limiting ways.

The monetary for-profit business model, which intuitively many of us are coming to realize cannot serve humanity’s ends in the long run, does not seem to appreciate the fact that - first and foremost, human beings are LIFE forms with feelings and talents and skills and abilities, and imagination and immense creative capacities - not just physical assets or liabilities on some conceptual global corporate balance sheet. If anything, the business model manipulates that fact to its advantage by instilling fear in us that we won’t be able to survive unless we tow the corporate line, perform our duties in the way business prescribes, and accept our roles as good worker bees within the power/dominator structure. The business model justifies a reward and punishment, fear-based and externally driven "means" – which is to say it enslaves and coerces people, using their need to earn wages and to buy the goods and services they need to survive – because it claims to have humanity’s end goal in mind. Given that our end goals are personal happiness, planetary abundance and enough freedom and autonomy to live our own lives to our fullest capacities, how is it even possible for us to achieve them under the current business model, when businesses motives – and its very structure – is antithetical to long-term abundance, planetary wellbeing and personal autonomy?

I pose these questions not to attack business or to defend government. Nor do I believe this represents a purposeful war being waged, so much as it represents a reflexive reactivity that has been programmed into humanity for many thousands of years. While some people may be deliberately making and supporting choices that benefit themselves at the expense of the larger society, I do believe most are, as yet, unaware of the impacts of our choices – nor do we even clearly see our options – due to all the static being generated from the noise produced by the two opposing sides. I therefore pose these questions to invite us all to consider what our real goals are, and to examine the nature of the structures under which we’ve all been operating for centuries. Perhaps it’s time for us to sit down and look at our goals, and compare them to structures we’ve created over time, to determine whether or not these structures are taking us in the direction we wish to go. For what it’s worth, my personal opinion is not nearly so important as the decision that will be made by the human collective. I will surely die within the next fifty years, hopefully before we’ve so desecrated our planet that it’s unable to carry and nurture human life any more. Many of you who are reading this may also be dead very soon. What is important then, are the conscious choices we collectively make as a species today. Will we make those choices with the long view in mind, or merely to provide ourselves with some sense of short-term stability? How What we choose to be and what we choose to do right NOW will influence the state of the world we leave to future generations. How hard we work today to make the necessary changes – along with the amount of short-term pain we’re willing to endure – will determine how hard future generations will need to work, to either carry on our best practices or undo any structures we’ve created that are destructive to life and that imprison the human spirit.

Let me close with a couple of quotes from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican president who was elected shortly before this outright war between business and government heated up:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. “

And this one:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies – in the final sense – a THEFT from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

I ponder these quotes quite often as I observe the present direction of human society. They help me inform my choices when it comes to the worldview I am personally choosing to hold.

Of Clocks and Cash

2011-05-06T05:47:00.000-07:00

Something that just recently occurred to me is the idea that money is to commerce as clocks are to time. Both were designed to serve as a unit of measure that all people everywhere could generally agree upon, they just measure two different concepts. Clocks measure the concept we call time; money measures the concept we call value. Clocks and money were originally important not because they possessed value in and of themselves (intrinsic worth) but because they empowered us to communicate with each other around abstract concepts using a common language, so we could reach a shared understanding (extrinsic worth).

Time is not a thing; it's an understanding about rate of change that is relative to humans, our sensory capacities and the planet on which we happen to reside. As things stand, we earthlings live on a planet that rotates on its own axis at a fairly steady and observable rate of change. Because we're a remarkably clever species, we've been able to devise a way to monitor that rate of change (based on our planet's relationship with the sun) and have divided the pace into bite-sized, standardized pieces we all call hours. We've also designed time pieces called clocks to enable us to swiftly compare and agree upon the time without each of us having to perform the tedious mathematical calculations that would be necessary if clocks did not exist. That makes life easier for everyone concerned.

Nowadays, if I say I'd like to meet you at four o'clock in the afternoon, we can both check an entirely different clock and still be relatively confident our meeting will go off as planned. If, however, I can't seem to find a clock as our meeting time grows near, I may have to scramble to discover the correct time or guess what time it is before I show up. If I guess wrong or lose track of the time altogether, our meeting may not happen and you'll go away disappointed. That doesn't mean I ran out of time, don't have any time left or didn't have enough time to begin with; it simply means I was careless about tracking our agreed upon unit of measure so I could be where I needed to be when I needed to be there.

Modern society has grasped the importance of everyone knowing exactly what time it is, so we've made it easy for people to access that information. Imagine though, if as part of our arrangement for the distribution of our personal time you demanded I hand over a clock to you to reward you for agreeing to meet me as I'd asked. What if you had to reward me with a working clock every time you asked me to meet you? Pretty soon people would be stressing mightily about whether or not a particular meeting was important enough to be worth the surrender of a valuable clock, and we'd all be running around bemoaning the fact that we didn't have enough "time" to go around! People would start to worry they wouldn't have enough "time" in the future to ensure they could set up all the important meetings they might need to have someday, so they'd start hiding spare clocks under their beds or storing them in vaults to keep them safe.

As more people hoarded more and more clocks, even as more and more people were born on this planet who would need to set meetings to accomplish their objectives, we'd start to realize that we couldn't possibly create and distribute enough clocks to make everyone happy. In fact, most of our efforts and attention would shift from taking care of ourselves and our planet to creating, distributing and hoarding more and more clocks. Eventually we'd have to begin to make "hard choices" about who was really worth meeting and who wasn't so important as to deserve a valuable clock. Businesses and communities would surely suffer, because it would be difficult for us to come together around new ideas when we couldn't be sure the idea would amount to anything important. Why run the risk of surrendering a perfectly good clock on something that might not prove to be worth our time? Only those things that contributed to the production of clocks would get done, and all the rest of our needs would begin to suffer. Personal communications would lapse and relationships would lose their closeness and trust. In fact, the world would likely become a very difficult place for us to effectively navigate. Life would seem fraught with problems and obstacles, and we'd all become very suspicious and stingy around anything relating to someone trying to convince us we needed their time in exchange for a clock.

Luckily, we don't require each other to give away clocks in exchange for the gift of our time. I know that if I freely agree to meet with you because you have something important you need me to do - or simply because you want to relax and pal around for a while - that when the time comes and I need you (or somebody else) to meet with me because it's important to me, I can count on you (or somebody else) to be there - in time - for me. This understanding doesn't only relate to close family members or friends. Perfect strangers often agree to give us some of their time, because that's the way we've all agreed to socially manage time. I don't bother to keep a time card around how many hours I gave you versus how many you gave me, nor do we ever "settle up" with each other, because tomorrow we'll both have more time to pass around. So far as we're concerned it really doesn't matter who gave how much time to whom or who asked for the time and who agreed to give it, so long as all of us get all the time we truly need from one another. In fact, what I frequently find is that if I give my time to you I always benefit from that exchange, because I get to feel needed, appreciated and loved.

So much for how we measure and distribute the concept we call time. When we consider the way we measure and distribute the concept of value however, we notice an entirely different picture begins to form. Like time, value is not a thing; it's a conceptual understanding. Money, just like clocks, was originally conceived as a method to standardize how we measure the value of different objects or types of labor we wished to exchange. Its purpose was to enable us to communicate effectively when we traded our labor and the fruits thereof with each other. Money thus has become the universal language of value, the same way our clocks establish the language of time. Long before we invented cars and planes, before we discovered electricity and oil, before we realized we could harness the power of the sun - back indeed, to when human labor was the primary form of energy being used to produce goods and services - we imagined that measuring the amount of value moving around our system would enable us to make certain everyone was contributing to the economy by putting in as much as they were consuming.

A host of problems have arisen out of our attempts to measure value as compared with time, and even more arise when we insist on inputting into the economic system a tangible form of measure (money) whenever anyone extracts anything of value from that system (goods or services.) The main difficulty with applying this exchange concept to value is that it presumes the net value of everything we're collectively creating and consuming equates to a zero sum game. Money goes into the system from us when we consume value; money comes out of the system to us when we create value. Put another way, people collectively inject their labor, creativity and knowledge into the economic system; people then extract all the goods and services being provided.

Theoretically at least, if those items and values were well matched, our economy would work just fine. Unfortunately though, the zero-sum equation presumes that collectively we have a finite amount of available resources, a finite amount of human creativity and a matching pool of available human labor. It further assumes we can calculate how much money all of it is collectively worth and place precisely that amount - and not one penny more - into circulation to move things around and satisfy everyone's needs. But because it's untrue (and we know it's untrue!) we wind up with either inflation or deflation. Since what we create, produce, have learned and can do has expanded exponentially over time, we're always needing to inject more and more cash into the economic system to "monetize" the growing amount of energy, productivity and creative capacity that is coming online every year. When we do that, businesses automatically raise their prices to capture more profits for themselves. Because the cost to us of extracting things of value from the system typically rises much faster than do payments for value injected (in a post-industrial world we collectively have more labor hours to sell than businesses need, so the competition for jobs drives wages lower) people cease taking goods and services out of the system, which means money stops flowing into the system and production grinds to a halt. That leads to recession, which in turn forces businesses to lower their prices to induce people to extract goods and services from the production side again, until the system resets itself once more.

If we could "fix" prices and at least stabilize the equation that way, perhaps we could get a handle on the variable labor problem. Unfortunately, that notion presumes we've come up with a universally objective and agreed-upon way to measure and fix the value of goods and services, but we haven't. That's because the value of things isn't at all objective, it's highly subjective. Unlike time, where anyone can check another clock if they don't believe theirs is telling them the truth, we have no objective means of confirming prices or the cost of specialized services. If I tell you the new house I'm selling will cost you three hundred thousand dollars, it doesn't really matter how much genuine value I've invested in its construction. All that matters is whether or not I can convince you to buy the house, based on how badly you need it. Likewise, if I tell you the surgery you need will cost you twenty-five thousand dollars, you're really in no position to challenge the price. You can complain, but you can't demand I do it more cheaply because you don't really know how much value it offers.

The trouble with attributing value to goods and services is that - unlike time, which we can agree upon - value is always a highly subjective experience. Despite that, the system of measure we're using presumes we can objectively compare the value of say, an orange versus a hammer. The thing is, if I'm starving, that orange may well be priceless to me while the hammer is relatively useless. Alternatively, if I need to build a shed, the hammer becomes invaluable while the orange is but a distraction. Ditto our attempts to compare a surgeon with a plumber, and to declare one generally "worth" more than the other. Taken even further - in a society that assigns positive value to contributions and negative value to extractions from the system - children, the infirm and the elderly become financial liabilities, while hearty adults are viewed as financial assets. Unfortunately for humanity, these mechanical measures of value fail to take into account the organic ebbs and flows of life we all experience at one time or another. They also fail to account for the fact that although in a given moment a child may be extracting food, water, shelter and education from the system, that child is, at the same time, adding all that to improve herself, thus improving her capacity to contribute more in the future. The education being "consumed" and thus being charged as a negative value is not lost; it's creating value-added for the whole! Nor is the food being consumed (and thus charged for) lost forever; those calories are supporting the physical growth and nutritional strength of a living human being who will, in turn, provide major value-added to the whole, if given the chance.

In truth, the wiser we become as a species, the better we're getting at figuring out how to accomplish more using fewer manpower hours, as well as how to live and work more sustainably so we don't use up all of our natural resources. We also know that our human population has exploded exponentially, that people are living longer, are generally healthier than ever, and that new babies are being born on Earth every day, so it looks like there's going to be more manpower, creativity, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, passion, talent and skill to go around tomorrow than was available to us collectively yesterday. We've also invented machines and developed technologies to increase our productivity even more. All this means less and less human energy needs to go into our system to produce all the goods and services that are coming out of it - even though more humans and hours are now available to inject into the system. These factors completely upend the balance of the zero-sum equation. Ironically, they create excessive abundance that most of us can't afford, because what we're aiming (and failing) to do is force the system into flat mechanical balance: a specific amount of human labor goes into the economy and receives in exchange a set amount of monetary wages; then products and services come out in sufficient quantity to absorb all those wages back into the economic system, so they can go back out as wages all over again. None of this, of course, concerns itself with how fairly those wages are being distributed across a living population with very real needs, nor does it take into account the amount of hoarding that occurs, which siphons money out of the equation all the time.

Unlike time, for which we have an agreed upon system of measure yet are willing to exchange it freely with each other, we refuse to freely exchange the things we create. Instead of accounting for the overall energy flow taking place in our economy so we can observe and track the net value we're collectively creating, we're demanding that each individual on the receiving end of every value transaction provide the giver with a physical representation of the value received to prove to the world the transaction has occurred. We've thus turned money, a conceptual unit of measure, into something to be valued all by itself, and out of that one simple choice we've created for ourselves all kinds of planetary hurt and human suffering.

The same problems that would besiege us if we were required to give away clocks in exchange for someone else's time now besiege us around the exchange of money for value. Because we never seem to have enough money in circulation to match all the human energy, ingenuity, creative capacity and wisdom out there - ready, willing and hungry to be exchanged - we now find ourselves wringing our hands over how many things we ought to be doing but simply "can't afford." We're being called upon by our politicians and corporations today to make "hard" choices, to sacrifice benefits and wages that would offer us better lives, to forgo better educational processes and schools for our children, to forget about building (and repairing) quality infrastructure for the benefit of our society, to forgo nicer parks, well maintained roads, social services, elder care, medical and nutritional support, quality housing for all people, healthy food, clean water and air, renewable energy systems and so forth. We've all been born into and have bought into this longstanding culture of lack, even though it only exists because we don't have enough money in circulation to ensure all the things that truly need doing get done.

It's not that we don't have enough value to achieve whatever we want, it's that the units we use to measure that value have been systematically hoarded by a few individuals. That gives those who hold the most hoarded units unbelievable personal power - they can wave those monetary units around and everyone else will jump through hoops to serve their every need, so as to accumulate more units for themselves. The wealthy can also direct the flow and consumption of limited resources in ways that suit their agendas, which usually revolve around earning them even more money. They can determine what goods will be produced, in what quantity they will be produced, and how much (or little) the rest of us will earn while doing that work at the behest of the wealthy. They can tell us what we can and can't own or have based on the number of monetary units we've managed to store for ourselves, and they can deny us life's necessities if we fail to accumulate enough of those units to satisfy them. The more time that passes under this system, the more everything that doesn't have to do with the production of ever more money slows down or stops. So many of us are myopically focused on making more money so we can buy the things we're producing that we don't have enough time to focus on producing the things we need to thrive as a species! Our modern lives, it seems, are so highly stressed and revolve around lack and struggle not because we don't have enough value in the world to go around or enough creative energy to exchange with one another, but because all our human labor and creative energy is jammed up in the bottleneck being created by this highly controlled exchange of money for "value."

Throw away clocks and we'll still have plenty of time to go around. We wouldn't suddenly all decide we'd rather sit at home forever, or grow unwilling to go anywhere or meet anyone else. We don't need to know what time it is to still desire companionship, connections, relationships and the chance to meet new and interesting people. Likewise, throw away money and we'll still have plenty of value to go around. We wouldn't suddenly stop taking care of our own basic needs or stop working to meet the pressing needs of other human bengs (or of this planet) simply because we no longer assigned an arbitrary monetary value to the work we were doing. In fact, throw away money and we'd stop doing things that weren't important to us, or that were causing serious harm to life and the planet. Much of that work is presently being done simply so someone can accumulate lots of dollars, not because it's helpful or good for us all. Eliminate the value distortion created by money and at last we'd be able to see that the so-called value much of our work is providing doesn't outweigh the damage it is causing. This make-work (work done for the benefit of the wealthy to generate more profits) would vanish, and real work (the work humanity really wants done and needs to do for its own sake) would take its place.

Just think about that for a moment, and you'll realize that freedom would suddenly break out all over our planet! All the laid off school teachers, along with those who can't get hired because there's no money to pay their wages, would be able to live out their passions and help all children learn. We might see student/teacher ratios as low as five to one, enabling teachers to work with students individually and nurture their personal passions, skills and talents. Firefighters, policemen, construction workers and engineers could all go back to work. We could build adequate housing for everyone in the world, in ways best suited to their local climates and using local materials to make them more sustainable over time. We could design renewable resource technologies, and everyone could have access to the free energy such technologies would provide. We could restructure our manufacturing systems so that waste, planned obsolescence and throwaway products are no longer manufactured, because our focus will have shifted to producing genuine value - not paper profits - for the sake of the world. Last but not least, we could learn once again to trust each other, to give and share and support and nurture each other and our home planet, because the question we presently ask ourselves before today we do anything in exchange for value: "What's in it for me?" would gradually shift to, "How will my effort (or my consumption) add greater value to myself, to humanity, to our community and to our living world?"

The fact is, there is no shortage of genuine value, no shortage of natural resources (when they're distributed fairly, used intelligently and not exploited wastefully) no shortage of human creativity, labor or innate drive to achieve. We already have within us and all around us all the value we need to accomplish everything we need to do for humanity and our planetary system to thrive, if we relinquish the power money holds to prod us into working...or to hold us back from doing the things that need done.

Designing A Freer Social System

2011-04-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

On occasion I'm blessed to read a book that radically changes my understanding of life by expanding my thinking in ways I never imagined. Recently, Dan Pink's excellent book, "Drive" has had that impact on me. The book details the many studies that have been conducted around human motivation, and reveals that - at least where our creative capacities are concerned - people are far more powerfully motivated by their intrinsic drives (energies arising from within) than they are by extrinsic pressures like rewards and punishments. This understanding actually violates one of the primary tenets of physics, which says that a body at rest tends to remain at rest while a body set into motion tends to remain in motion, but that principle - as is true of most strictly scientific principles - fails to account for the existence of consciousness and free will within the object.

If we look around today, much of our society is constructed around reward and punishment drivers. Our religions, for example, teach us that if we behave as we've been taught we'll go to heaven (eternal reward) and if we don't we'll go to hell (eternal punishment.) The thing is, once we know there will be a particular outcome based on our behavior, we're no longer truly free to choose how to behave. The certain outcome tips the scales, pushing us toward the behavior that will deliver the desired outcome. Under this sort of motivational driver, our attention shifts toward following a given set of rules to generate a specific outcome (the ends) and away from evolving and improving ourselves so we become more mentally and emotionally adept at determining how best to behave in any given situation (the means.)

Our educational systems use rewards and punishments to force children to learn what they're "supposed to" learn and make sure they feel shame and guilt if they do not. If they pay attention and regurgitate, as unaltered as possible, the information they're fed, they get good grades and are perceived as successes. If they ask too many questions, fail to agree with what they're being taught to memorize or find the whole process too boring to hold their attention, they're labeled stupid, failures or ADD/ADHD. They're even medicated (punished) back into compliance so they can be appropriately instructed and controlled. Teachers too are rewarded for getting their students to achieve good test scores, and are punished if they fail to teach to the tests. Somewhere along the way genuine learning, the art of critical thinking and the innate curiosity of children to ask and obsessively seek the answers to "why?" was squelched in service to spitting out compliant, high scoring data memorizers who could then neatly drop into our economic reward and punishment system.

It's not surprising then that we find the same sort of reward and punishment system underlying our economies. If we work hard and produce what our employers desire from us, we receive wages that will allow us to survive and possibly thrive. If, on the other hand, we fail to find an employer whose demands we can successfully satisfy, we're punished for it by the withholding of the money we need to survive. If we wish to start a new business a bank may lend us the capital we need to do so, but if we're not successful on our first go the bank will repossess what we've built and label us losers by damaging our credit ratings, making it that much harder for us to succeed in the future. This prevailing financial reward and punishment system does make certain grudging allowances for those who are old, infirm or ill (Social Security and Medicare are examples of this), but only to a limited extent and only for a specified period of time. We don't really like making these allowances for individuals, because we're not sure how many people are malingerers taking advantage of the system we've devised to benefit the truly needy. (Perhaps right there we find a clue that the reward and punishment system we've designed does not sufficiently motivate most people to attain their highest level of personal capacity.)

Modern justice systems are also grounded in rewards and punishments. Obey the laws and we're granted permission to live as we wish to within the restrictions and boundaries of those laws. Disobey the laws and we're punished with fines, jail time and criminal records that may haunt us for the rest of our lives. Interestingly enough, this system is grossly economically inefficient. For instance, a person who robs a convenience store and steals two hundred dollars may get arrested and jailed for seven years, at a net cost to the public of over two hundred thousand dollars. Economically we'd have been far better off - and the violence and suffering the offender created could have been avoided - by simply giving the individual the two hundred dollars he needed, or paying him an annual allowance so he could acquire the things he needs without resorting to social violence. That however, would violate our socially entrained sense of needing to "teach people how to behave," because we fear that by giving people what they need they won't learn how to behave properly. Ironically, the exact opposite seems to hold true. Deny people what they need and they may well begin to act improperly out of frustration, anger and physical desperation. Give them what they need and they will not feel compelled to violate their wish to live in peace.

Modern two-party governance is also founded on a system of rewards and punishments. If the party you support attains political power, you'll be rewarded by having the ideas you prefer be written into law, while the supporters of the losing party will be punished by not being able to test their ideas or have them properly heard and respected by the ruling party. Because neither party can maintain total political control long enough to actually see their party's platform executed and discover the underlying validity of its beliefs, the battle continues to rage because we never truly learn which way is better. We wind up with this policy contradicting that policy, or our ideas getting watered down so much that they aren't really the ones we wanted to test in the first place. This constant back and forth push of power means that whatever laws do get created can't even be counted on to last, because when the opposition regains power the first thing it does is attempt to dismantle the legislative efforts of the outgoing party. The people are the ones who suffer most during these push/pull struggles for the right to determine the nation's destiny, because instead of being able to charter a steady course for our own future we're blown about and battered beneath this typhoon of oppositional political energies.

While rewards and punishments may have served humanity to some limited extent in the past, these extrinsic motivational techniques of rewards and punishments no longer serve an intelligent, creative and empathetic adult population. They may in fact be what's hindering our ability to successfully evolve. By contrast, the intrinsic motivators Pink discusses in his book are drivers that are, by nature, hardwired into us to motivate us without the need for external sticks and carrots, and if nurtured and permitted to flower, they may well hold the power to propel society forward in great leaps of unleashed creativity.

According to the studies, our three primary intrinsic motivators are:

1) The desire for autonomy, in which we possess some element of control and choice over what we do, and how and when we do it.
2) The desire for personal mastery, in which we are free to take as long as we like and are given access to the tools we need to practice our passions, talents and skills until we've attained a satisfying level of performance proficiency.
3) The desire to serve a higher purpose than ourselves, such that we are free to apply the skills we've mastered in ways that uplift and support the rest of life.

When we observe children we see these three motivators at work. Children will cry when they are hindered from exploring what they wish to explore, when and how they wish to do it. They will spend endless hours developing their own innate skill sets...walking, talking, learning to use their fingers and hands and to coordinate their bodies. (For them this is play, not work!) They will also take great delight in bringing joy to the grownups around them, when we observe them achieving a new milestone and provide them with laughter as feedback. It's only through the process of socialization (in the schools, through parenting and in religious training) that these natural drivers become subverted and external drivers supplant them over time. By applying material punishments and rewards to motivate our children to do what we want them to do, we deny them the autonomy to figure out what they truly wish to do. We also convert their natural curiosity and play into grueling work, and we substitute external rewards (like grades and allowances) for the deep intrinsic joy of doing something well so they can bring joy to the world and be helpful to others.

How can our society best support these intrinsic motivational drivers that in turn would help us uplift the human condition? For starters, we could free up all humans from the need to labor in exchange for life's basic necessities. By giving everyone what they need, we free ourselves from the stress of having to work to earn what we need. Our time and energy could then be redirected toward determining what it is we want to create - as individuals, and for the benefit of our society. If we're no longer all slaving to earn our daily bread, we will each have more time and freedom to pursue our personal passions and develop our unique skill sets and abilities, so we can discover what unique gifts we have to offer the world and attain sufficient mastery to bring bring them forth. Because our attention will no longer be focused solely on providing our basic needs for ourselves, we'll be free to allow our intrinsic desire to serve a higher purpose to emerge and serve the collective needs of humanity, the planet and the living ecosystems that sustain us.

This single shift - from demanding that human beings each work to earn what they personally need to survive - to ensuring all human beings freely receive what they need from the larger society, holds the power to set alight human creative capacity and foster an explosion of energy that could, in turn, resolve the many, many challenges we face as a species today. Freed from the grinding need to provide all our basic needs for ourselves, we could turn all that newly unleashed energy toward cleaning up our planet, fully educating all children, protecting our delicate ecosystems, freeing ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels, redirecting our shared resources with intelligence and compassion and setting a steady course toward a shared higher vision of where we'd like to see humanity go. In a very real sense, this is a higher-consciousness fractal of the seminal shift that single0-celled organisms made when they agreed to come together and be part of much larger multi-cellular systems. By sharing the burden of providing for each cell's basic needs, they in turn freed each other up to practice their unique talents and abilities, and to specialize in service to the formation of a greater whole living system. You and I would not be here today had not single-celled organisms attained this realization at the limited level of consciousness they possessed.

That we're hardwired to act in cooperative and intrinsically motivated ways means we're not really taking too much of a risk to let go of our old power-dominator systems of reward and punishment and allow nature to take its evolutionary course. Apparently God truly does not play dice with the universe; we've been gifted these intrinsic motivations - along with the desires for communion, peace, harmony, beauty, happiness and human companionship - for a reason. Let's purposefully use these gifts then instead of suppressing them, and perhaps we'll surprise ourselves by how much we're able to accomplish once we let go of our fears of how others will behave (which drives our present need to control each other) and instead trust higher nature to have provided us with the tools necessary to motivate and successfully activate ourselves in service to life.

Capitalism as Institutionalized Slavery

2011-04-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

What we do to ourselves in the name of work is criminally insane. Most of us don't feel joy in what we do, we're struggling to get and hold a job so we can pay our bills and survive. We buy homes we rarely see because we're too busy out working; we have kids we don't raise because we can't afford to be home when they need our attention. We spend hours in our vehicles on smoggy, overly trafficked roads to get to and from where we need to go - not because our employers can't figure out ways to encourage us to work from home, but because they don't trust us to do the work if they're not watching over us.

In large part we make stuff nobody really needs, then convince others to buy it to satisfy the corporate profit margin. Meanwhile, the stuff we do need to accomplish to ensure the long term success and happiness of our species - infrastructure repair, much better schools, quality medical care for all, sustainable and green housing and food sources, environmental protection and thoughtful resource stewardship, scientific exploration and genuine advancements in human health and well being - don't get done because we haven't figured out ways to make those things monetarily "profitable."

The concept of developing free, clean and renewable energy so people can tap the energy grid of the planet wherever they may be strikes FEAR in the hearts of the corporate system. Why? because if we can all get our energy for free, corporations can't profit off our energy need in perpetuity! Ditto foodstuffs - corporations don't want us collecting our own seeds and growing organic vegetables in the backyard, or raising our own chickens. They want centralized control - they demand centralized control before they invest in new systems - because that way they get to control the distribution, the supply and the price of what we produce.

What we used to call the "middleman," the broker between buyer and seller, has become the monster in the system. The companies that act as middlemen now take advantage of both buyers and sellers, carving off massive pieces of the exchange for themselves in the process and calling that "profit." They're starving the feedback loop between buyers and sellers, hampering the evolution of human society by rendering us incapable of functioning without the middleman, and consolidating power to ensure they continue to expand their reach and capacity to seize ever larger pieces of the social pie. The largest middleman today is the financial services industry, which represents a full 40% of our GDP. What is the function of financial "services," but to match those who have money with those who need it? Yet over the years, that function has lost sight of its purpose as the companies now pay lenders (savers) almost nothing and in many cases charge them for the privilege of saving their money, then they turn around and charge borrowers exorbitant rates of interest (or refuse to lend to them at all) for the right to borrow money that isn't even theirs!

What we call the 'free market' has never been truly free. He who corners the supply can dictate the price, and he who encourages demand by making his product appear indispensable to the public will also profit. He who has little or no money (either by accident of birth or social circumstances) to influence the flow of goods and services gets no vote in what gets produced, in how scarce global resources get used or in how he gets to live and work in this life.

Hint: if you don't get to decide what you want to do with the richness of your own life, you are NOT a free being living in a free society. You're a slave, only one without the benefits of having a master provide your shelter, clothing, food and medical care. Instead, your master provides you with some stingy amount of cash in exchange for your labor, and insists that you provide for yourself the things slaves used to get free from their masters. That way, the master can control his costs, better manage his profits and cut the slave loose if he or she becomes too much of a financial liability.

Capitalism isn't freedom, folks. It's institutionalized slavery being sold to the public as a "free market."

The Vast, FREE Energy Field That We Are

2011-03-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

What I've been mulling lately is the fact that humanity itself has for eons been an energy commodity, one we've self-directed and used in service to whatever it is we desired to create. Our energy has gifted us the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the great cathedrals of Chartres and Notre Dame. It's gifted us a global library of wisdom that is overwhelming in its breadth and scope. It's gifted us telescopes and space ships, electron microscopes and super-colliders. It's produced technologies to make our lives better, and technologies so destructive we could ruin the ability of this planet to host complex life forms for many thousands of years. Human energy is, when we examine it from this perspective, a great beast of a resource, one that - if we cooperated - could be consciously directed and applied in service to whatever shared vision we chose to hold as a species. Never mind fossil fuels, wind energy, geothermal or solar power; the greatest energy pool available to us is humanity itself. That's because solar, wind and fossil fuels can't think. They aren't creative, they don't know beauty, they can't feel what we feel, know what we know, love what we love or desire what we desire to create. While we can still steward them in support of our visions and ingenious designs, they can't produce those dreams on our behalf. Only we can do that.

For thousands of years, it seems that what we've chosen to create using our vast and growing repository of human creativity and physical energy has been a society that services the desires and whims of a wealthy few, whose happiness is attained by purchasing the energy and output of many, many others. In essence, that's because we've been selling our time and physical labor to the highest bidder, in exchange for the cash we need to purchase the products of other people's labor and creative output (energy = reward.) This arrangement has led to constant imbalances between the haves and the have nots, because in every era some few people have been able to capitalize more fully on what they had to offer in comparison to the offerings of others. They found themselves at the right time, in the right place, with the right idea to resolve the right challenge, and connected with just the right people to help them create it. Whatever it was that enabled the output of one person's creative energy to be desired by many, it's clear that a few humans in every generation have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, while the rest of the people struggled to put in their time and take out whatever they could get in exchange for their own hard work. The fundamental inequity in that system is that whenever someone comes up with something new that happily advances the whole of human civilization, our system rewards them with material wealth far beyond their capacity to spend it in a given lifetime. As more and more inventions explode on the scene, more and more material wealth gets bestowed on those few lucky persons. Because there's a limit to how much material wealth exists on this planet, while the human race can expand and reproduce indefinitely, we've lately run into trouble with that formula for success.

This defines the economic system we devised thousands of years ago when material wealth seemed infinite, much of the planet was still an unexplored mystery and the human population was but a fraction of what it now is. That system has not only caused imbalance, it's led to multi-generational imbalances, because monetary wealth (unlike stores of grain or cattle that rot and die) could be passed down from parent to child. Children of the wealthy quickly began to apply a whole new economic formula that trumped energy = reward. They found they could use the power of their inherited wealth to purchase whatever they wanted in the open market without having to invest their own energy in productive social pursuits (money = power.) Centuries ago we labeled such people royalty. Today they're simply called the upper class. In any case, for as long as we've employed an energy = reward system, it's fostered a division between those who daily have to sell enough of their energy to provide for their own survival, and those who do not. Of late the imbalance between these two classes has widened precipitously. It's gotten so bad that we're facing imminent social and economic collapse, because the billions of people who today need to sell their daily energy can no longer find buyers who will pay them what it takes for them to survive.

Technology is partly responsible for the fix we're in. Where technology has taken us over the past few hundred years is into a mechanical replacement cycle. Fossil fuels are now being fed into machines that, in turn, replace human energy in the production process. Machines don't demand wages, benefits, have medical issues or family problems or negative attitudes. They don't question authority, and they don't wonder why they're creating what they're producing. Fixing a machine when it breaks down is much simpler than dealing with a person and all their feelings, needs and wants. When we retire a machine we can throw it away without mercy or compassion, or take it apart and recycle its many parts.

In a post-industrial society, human energy is now no longer as necessary for the production of goods and services as it once was. We even measure that by tracking what's called "productivity." Productivity is a way of determining the amount of goods and services produced per man-hour of labor. As more and more products are produced using fewer and fewer man-hours, productivity increases. This is good news for producers since it increases their profitability, but it's bad news for humanity, which needs to sell more of its man-hours so it can pay its societal bills. Meanwhile, the pool of human energy (which translates into man-hours) has grown huge over the years - we now have nearly seven billion people on this planet! That means human energy, which is in lower demand, has been getting cheaper than even the price of fossil fuels. This increased competition to sell human energy to fill the few remaining slots where human energy is still required for production or service has driven down the price of human energy on the open market. Additionally, globalization has enabled businesses to seek out the absolute cheapest human energy pools and draw upon them to produce the goods they create. Unconsciously then, we've elevated the value of using technology to cheaply produce goods and services above the value of caring for the human lives that are supposed to consume those goods and services.

This imbalance is unsustainable. Not only because it cheapens human life, but because in the long run, the energy = reward formula entirely breaks down as the imbalance between the haves and the have nots widens. When people are denied the opportunity to input their energy into society via the open market, they are likewise denied the opportunity to earn monetary rewards. And what are those rewards, but cash prizes (allowances, really) that enable us to pay our mortgages, purchase cars, buy energy, food and clothing, provide education and medical care for our families - all of which ARE the products and services being offered for sale by the for-profit business establishment?

The are really only two ways around this systemic breakdown without redesigning the entire system. The first is to outright gift money to the people who can't get jobs, so they can infuse that cash into the for-profit engine and keep the machinery running and themselves alive. This is often derisively called, "the nanny state." The second option is for businesses (and the wealthy people who run them) to bypass serving most human needs altogether, mainly by making products that other corporations need and that governments will purchase, or by making products that primarily serve the needs of the very rich. An example would be the continuous production of new war machinery, which governments can then use to blow up other countries' war machinery, along with those expendable people who aren't contributing much to their society anyhow. Governments can then contract with the weapons companies and pay them to make more of the destroyed war machinery, only this time better and stronger, thereby keeping the business "economy" running. Where budget cuts occur in this type of corporate state are in the arenas of public health, education and welfare, as well as the arts and other human services that the jobless folks can't pay for anymore. The general population in such a state is provided only with as much as people need to barely survive so they can continue to energize the ongoing production of war machinery, and nothing more. Another example of how this type of state functions would be through a stock market and banking system where the wealthy can buy and sell each others' holdings and try to make even more money off of each other by using the money they've already made, without offering any new products or services to the general public. When companies in this kind of state do offer a service to the public, it's usually grudgingly, for their survival needs alone, and on such onerous terms it enables companies to bleed as much free cash as possible from a struggling, stressed population without offering them much value in return.

Until we first realize this is exactly the kind of state that we're creating, and that the political battle being waged today is a war of values between the nanny state and the corporate state - neither of which serve humanity's long term interests - we can't fix it. When enough of us do realize it, painful as it may be to accept the unvarnished truth, we will likely need to redesign our entire economic paradigm. The old energy = reward formula clearly cannot hold, since it already failed us in the past. Meanwhile, it's getting clearer all the time that the money = power formula is only increasing our social imbalance and creating more suffering. So then, what formula might we wish to consciously adopt to replace those outmoded equations?

I would humbly suggest we go with something like wisdom = value added. Unless we end the practice of materially rewarding people (paying them allowances) in exchange for their physical effort and instead begin to celebrate the wondrous, diverse and unique creative capacity that is contained within every human life, our species is likely to continue to suffer, struggle and experience stress. The thing is, even while our supply of fossil fuels is running dangerously low and we're discovering the risks of nuclear fission, we still have plenty of energy available to us - it's called human creativity, ingenuity, talent, skill and physical ability. Wisdom, which emerges from the sum totality of every individual life experience, seems to be something we can produce in infinite supply as we employ our human energy for the sake of our own evolution. To value and nurture what we can produce in seemingly infinite supply (wisdom) means we can create eternal value added so long as we thrive. In a very real sense, humanity has the innate capacity to become a self-designing perpetual motion machine, utilizing the wisdom gleaned from past generations and all their trial and error experiments - combined with the energy, ingenuity and creative capacity of the people alive in the present - to construct an ever-better platform for new generations to then build upon. Right now, we have on this planet seven billion amazingly diverse minds and bodies that carry within them a vast potential to contribute the best of what they are to the world at large. We're just tragically wasting much of that energy, allowing people the world over to suffer and die unloved, unsupported and unappreciated, because we think we no longer "need" their human labor to earn a profit.

So here's the deeper question we may wish to answer: For what purpose are we focusing on earning a financial profit, if not to better the world in which we live so that all of us can thrive, ourselves included? What good will all our money be if we don't create and maintain a healthy, stable human society? And because happiness is a huge factor in maintaining human health and stability, shouldn't we be supporting the expansion of happiness in everyone?

Perhaps one solution to the imbalance that presently threatens to topple modern society is to cease perceiving ourselves (and each other) as mere energy units to be bought and sold, or as liabilities or assets on some vast global business accounting statement. Perhaps the solution lies in remembering who and what we are - living, feeling, reasoning creatures within a vast living ecosystem - and then asking ourselves why it was that we started evolving and building societies to begin with. Was it to ensure that everyone on the planet would be endlessly enslaved to a monetary for-profit paradigm (energy = reward?) Or was it so we could personally suck all the juice out of life at the expense of everything else (money = power?) Or was it, perhaps, to help everyone and everything alive live better, feel better and become the best they can be as they mature, so we can all benefit from what everyone and everything else has to offer?

Perhaps we'll never know what the original intent of societal construction was when it first began, but surely we can thoughtfully consider what we'd like it to become - what feels best for us to create in the here and now - and then aim for that.

The Power of Perspective

2011-03-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

It's easy to look around today and notice that our world is filled with chaos. State sponsored violence is on the rise in many parts of the world. All over this planet people are starving and dying, natural disasters are disrupting things, climate is changing, species are disappearing, resources are being rapidly depleted and civilization is quaking from massive shifts in human behavior.

Many of our traditional religious teachings inform us that humanity is in some sense broken, that we're atoning for the sins of our past human failings. The laws of karma and original sin are examples of such teachings. From the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve's consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a story most Muslims, Christians and Jews alike grew up hearing and believing. It teaches us that mankind disobeyed god's command to accept his law without question, thereby triggering a cascade of tragic life events that are still reverberating in our world today. That's why, whenever a global tragedy strikes, we hear biblical literalists describing the event as god wreaking vengeance upon humanity for having violated one of his laws. Now I don't know about you, but that description of humanity's relationship with god as one of a naughty child who's being punished has never felt to me like it's the truth. It's uninspiring, and it makes my heart clench with fear and guilt instead of expand with gratitude and love.

Meanwhile, I've noticed that our modern scientific teachings feel equally uninspiring. Scientists scramble constantly to design new mathematical formulas (or beef up the old ones) to explain the fascinating new things we're observing, but much of what they've been doing for the past fifty years has added little of genuine value to the compendium of human wisdom. If I discover a color I've never seen before and give it the name "lefleus," what have I actually learned about the nature of the color? Or about how colors work, or why they arise, or how they're all connected to each other? My sense of modern theoretical physics is that it's long been doing just that - creating complex mathematical equations and slapping them down like names on what we're observing - without really explaining what we're seeing or how the cosmos fits together.

After years of trying to reconcile the world's spiritual and intellectual teachings with my own experiences and observations of life, I've discovered that for me to feel happy and my heart to be at peace I must continually shape (and reshape) my own perspective of what and how I imagine this world to be, and then live according to my own realizations. Because my observations, feelings and life experiences too often contradicted what I'd been told to believe was true, the constant confusion I experienced had created within me a powerful cognitive dissonance that made me unhappy and downright mentally ill. That meant I either had to start trusting myself and my own sense of things, or else I had to accept without question the things other people wanted me to believe.

Tough call. Who was I to imagine I might better be able to understand and define my place in the cosmos than all the amazing gurus, avatars, thinkers and doers that have walked this world before me? Wasn't it true they were the smartest, most brilliantly innovative, most spiritually "tapped in" people who ever lived? Some have even been labeled gods and are worshiped by millions today. Then again, how did they get to be that way? By accepting everything they'd been taught without question, or by making the second choice - the harder choice - to trust themselves to be able to set out on a journey of intellectual inquiry and spiritual self-discovery and ultimately find a way home? What each of them had in common, I realized, was that they'd somehow found within themselves enough courage to trust in their own capacities. That empowered them to decide for themselves how they wished to perceive their singular precious life. Later, as their perceptions grew more clear, they then figured out how to expand that understanding through the broader lens of our shared humanity, so that others might find the courage within to embark upon their own journeys.

The moment I accepted my own truth - that I quite simply didn't believe a lot of the things I'd been taught since I was a child - I realized I needed to invest a lot more time in contemplation, study and actual experience of this mystery in which I am embedded. I also discovered, after much frustration and effort, that there exists a significant gap between what I know to be true about life when I'm in the thick of it (simply being) and what I'm able to say about it when I try to describe or define my experience in ways that other people can understand. I began to notice very quickly how many people seemed positively eager to argue with me over the descriptions of life I put forth, as if they could negate the truth of my experiences by challenging the language I used to describe them. What that's taught me is how to listen carefully and respectfully to others so I can hear how they are describing their own experiences, and to discern whether they're describing something that's similar to my own understanding using slightly different language, or if they're describing a life experience that's different from my own. I've found I can learn much from either situation without making anyone else's descriptions or experiences "wrong." I've also learned it's easier not to try to discuss what I've experienced or defend the way I've chosen to describe it other than with those who are - like me - sincerely trying to appreciate this mystery we're all experiencing, and who aren't convinced they already have all the answers.

If you're wondering by now where I've come to after years of intensive focus on the question, "what is life?" let me share with you what I've come to understand, which is precious little! You're free to quarrel with these thoughts, expand on them, embrace those that resonate with you or discard them in favor of your own interpretation. I simply offer them by way of explanation of what I've been doing, and am not attached to any as absolute truths. I change my mind all the time these days rather than allow it to grow calcified around concepts I'm not entirely sure are true, and am happier for the experience of that!

As yet, all I can know with even the slightest degree of certainty is that - most of the time - I'm sincerely grateful to be alive, and that the life force that has both created and moves through me seems to be a unified field that creates, animates and activates everything in this cosmos. I've come to perceive birth and death as doorways for consciousness, and sense that the life force that moves through those doorways is a force that has no opposite. I know that my spirit soars when I experience beauty, and it feels awe when it honors the vastness and diversity of this cosmos. Whenever I feel anything less than a soaring awe for life, all I need do is step outside and look up. In fact, I’ve learned that, no matter where I am, when I’m fully conscious of and present to life I hold the power to invite my spirit to soar continuously, because I can notice beauty anywhere and feel awe whenever I cease thinking and simply stop to BE with all that is.

I know my heart sings when it feels love, whether through the giving or the receiving. I know that when my heart sings of love I feel that every step I take is an act of grace. I've discovered I hold the power to invite my heart to sing all the time by unconditionally loving what I encounter, because I carry love within me in a seemingly endless supply. Loving life has become an important part of my conscious daily practice, and it's helped me to love myself as well as all else.

I know my mind rejoices whenever it reaches a breakthrough understanding around something it didn't previously comprehend. I've found that the truth is never mundane, never boring, never uninspiring or fear provoking. In fact, only my questions provoke my fears, never the answers I'm given. I’ve realized I hold the power to rejoice constantly, because I've come to recognize and appreciate my own astounding level of ignorance, so I now know I have the capacity to be continuously surprised and endlessly delighted by the introduction of new ideas and understandings.

As for my physical body, it feels relaxed and at peace whenever my spirit, heart and mind are in aligned focus around my spirit's intention. I know that I hold the power to feel relaxed and be at peace in every moment, because I've learned how to consciously align my spirit, heart and mind. When those three aspects of my inner being are working well together - with my spirit setting the highest intention, my heart pointing in the most loving direction and my mind selecting the wisest and surest approach - my body will not hesitate to calmly and peacefully take the desired journey, wherever it leads.

That's about it - all I really know about life in a few paragraphs. Along the way I've had to let go of many longstanding, firm beliefs I once held around concepts like liberty, the pursuit of happiness, patriotism, freedom, the value of material comforts, democracy, hard work, the special nature of humans and so forth, because I found them to be confusing to hold with real integrity. Most of the time I found I couldn't align my spirit, heart and mind around how to fully express those values in every situation, and that instead I was investing an inordinate amount of time asking my mind to explain to the rest of me why I wasn't able to do so. The only value I've found I can hold and express with any consistent degree of integrity, where all of me can remain in perfect alignment, seems to be around the value of love. In every situation I encounter, I've discovered that - if I don't know what to do - I can always ask myself the question, "Is this loving?" before I say or do anything to impact the life of another living being, or even the planet itself. If the answer is yes, I can feel confident that whatever I'm about to say or do will serve the situation, and that all of me will agree with it so there will be no self-rebukes or mental wars of rationalization later on.

Lately I'm even beginning to let go of my cherished beliefs around the existence of any original human wound, or sin. I've begun to wonder if we've been told for so long that we're wounded beings and have caused (and continue to cause) deep wounding to others and to this world that we've come to believe without question that this is truly who we are, that our human nature is such that we'll never be whole, or well, or healed. I'm even beginning to suspect that the wounds I worked so hard to "heal" in my earlier years may well have been the products of my fevered imagination, beliefs I created about myself based on the stories I was told (as well as the many stories I told myself) about the nature of this world and what we humans have believed ourselves to be.

What I'm discovering, as I center more deeply in the intention and direction of life being offered up by my spirit, is that my spirit feels indestructible, indomitable, irrepressible and fully empowered to take what may be an eternal journey toward infinite self-perfection. I don't have a clue how long it may take to get there, how many colorful body suits my spirit may try on and cast off along the way, how many sensory capacities, life experiences and thought processes my spirit may choose to cloak itself in, or how many uniquely different life forms it may wish to encounter and engage, but I'm okay with not knowing all that at this point in my journey. I have to be!

Actually, I'm doing my best these days to stop asking questions of spirit or imagining anything, and to instead notice what IS and discover if I can bring more love to whatever I encounter. When I love whatever is I no longer feel wounded, or broken, or fearful, or less than I imagine I ought to be, because those thoughts and feelings seem to dissolve in the wondrous ocean of love that fills me up as I give it away. I've therefore come to embrace that I'm eternally evolving, not endlessly healing, and to love my growth instead of curse my brokenness.

So then, now that all these thoughts and words and feelings have been committed to paper: What IS life, exactly? I have to confess that in truth, I still don't know. Then again, perhaps we're not individually meant to know the entire truth of life so much as experience it in its infinite unfolding, and if so I'm okay with this truly amazing journey!

When Propaganda Fails, It Fails Spectacularly!

2011-03-11T07:35:00.000-08:00

I admit, I used to get angry. Now though, I'm starting to laugh whenever I hear the absurd propaganda messages coming out of the mouths of Limbaugh, Beck and so many others - including many of our politicians. The thing is, you can only tell the poor it's their own fault they're poor for so long. We've been doing that for decades now, effectively enough that most of the poor who were born poor have been made the scapegoats of the middle and upper classes. We've all been trained to blame the poor for being a drag on our economy, for crime, for the moral decay of our nation and for hampering our ability to "keep up" with the rest of the world. It's been a media campaign of hatred and division that has created some remarkable results, not the least of which is that it's obscured the ongoing, thirty-year confiscation of wealth by the power elite that's been happening right under our noses in this nation.

A problem arises though, because the elite don't know when to stop. The idea that "enough is enough" seems not to cross their greedy minds. And so it is that many new and clever wealth confiscation policies - implemented by the power elite - have lately begun to render poor the entire middle class. They've done so by systematically reducing the value of middle class homes, binding people to underwater mortgages, reducing average wages and benefits, increasing monthly costs for basics like food, energy and education, and offshoring jobs so workers must compete more fiercely with each other and have an even harder time making ends meet. While doing all that, the elite propaganda message that the poor are responsible for their own situation - accompanied as it is by the message that poverty represents a personal moral failing - has been ratcheted up within the right wing media.

What the elite, who are financially supporting this message by taking control of the mainstream media outlets, have failed to realize, however, is that the educated and hard-working people who are suddenly finding themselves poor as a result of predatory corporate activity, corruption in the entire banking/financial system and the elite's callous disregard for their workers' quality of life aren't pushovers. The former middle classes (including those who are still just managing to hold on) are presently waking up to the fact they KNOW they're not really to blame for their financial struggles and stress. And if they're not to blame for their own misfortune as is now being proposed by the elite, than the question that must arise in them - quite naturally - is whether perhaps those "other" poor people (whom the middle class have been blaming for decades as a result of the media propaganda machine) may also not be to blame for their poverty and misfortune.

These two former enemy classes have been pitted against each other for decades because the wealthy - rather than caring for the needs of the poor themselves or uplifting them out of poverty - have forced the struggling middle class (through modern regressive tax policies) to grudgingly provide necessities for the poor. As these two former enemy classes now unite in opposition to the pyramidical, financially based power structure that ruthlessly oppresses us all, they're producing amazing results - PEOPLE POWER!

United, the suffering create an enormous force that the outnumbered elite cannot control. Nor can the elite afford to physically destroy the masses through the use of military force, since the elite count on those masses to labor in the businesses that produce and support their luxurious way of life. Not to mention the fact that most military personnel, courtesy of the "all volunteer army" are the children of the poor and working class. They're highly unlikely to attack their families and friends in the streets where they live.

The more absurd and hypocritical the right wing propaganda gets, the more obvious it becomes that their arguments have no moral center. As more and more people grasp the true intent of the propaganda - which is what happened recently in Wisconsin - the more likely it is we're approaching a social eruption point. Frankly, what would be more worrisome to me than a continued ratcheting up of the lies and rhetoric would be belated attempts by the wealthy to "give back" tiny amounts of wealth to the masses to appease them temporarily. Thankfully, the greedy can't seem to find it in their frozen hearts to care enough about the plights of others to do that, as was proved by the recent demands for additional tax cuts for the wealthy. Even the political progressives, who support limited redistribution of wealth because they believe it will help to stabilize the overarching system, can't seem to convince the greedy to part with their plunder.

The ongoing and expanding confiscation of what is, in reality, our national wealth and resources, demands a massive counter-response from those from whom this wealth has been confiscated to forge a new and dynamic social equilibrium. The farther the scales of power and wealth continue to tip toward the very wealthy few, the more likely it is that the reactive energy from the growing ranks of those who are suffering will be volcanic, and will cause a social upheaval that won't be easily reversed.

The good news is, humanity is in dire need of a brand new social order. The best thing that could happen to us would be for us to gain an opportunity to design a world that is grounded in a win/win paradigm. That would enable us to consciously set a shared vision for what it is we want humanity to achieve, and to aim for that. Such a world would be founded on principles of regenerative and sustainable living, environmental and species preservation, less labor and more creative and scientific exploration, more harmony and cooperation and less cutthroat competition, an accumulation of wisdom instead of material possessions, and generosity of spirit rather than personal hoarding, fear and greed. Our achievement of that vision would depend upon the establishment of a vibrant, creative, empathetic and healthy human society that freely supports and willingly provides for human self-actualization and then elicits the grateful contribution of ALL its self-realized individuals, rather than one that promotes power and wealth for a lucky few and willfully ignores the suffering of all others.

I happen to believe that for humanity to survive, for us to overcome the many self-created challenges we face as a species today, we need to put an end to many millenia of win/lose human behavior. So I'm no longer interested in protecting the wealthy from the follies of their own choices, though I will continue to try to mitigate suffering wherever I encounter it in person. Even so, I sense we've already passed the tipping point, so when it comes to the coming social revolution I say...bring it on! Let's see what we can design with a higher vision for the greater good. Let's do so for the sake of future generations, as well as for all of life on this beautiful planet.

When Waves Collide

2011-02-26T05:40:00.001-08:00

What we're witnessing now is no less than an energetic collision of two major waves of human evolution, one receding and one just now arising. I exhort us all to rejoice in this, because although it means we're presently caught in a swirl of chaos and conflict, the opportunity is arising for us to catch the new wave and begin to ride the leading edge of a massive change in the way we "do" human society.

The outgoing wave is represented by the power/dominator culture that has controlled human behavior for many thousands of years. The disintegration of this wave, which began over a century ago when angry citizens began to overthrow their oppressive monarchies, continues unabated. We've recently witnessed its expansion throughout the Middle East as dictator after dictator falls to the public outcry against tyranny. Because in the early part of this global revolution people didn't know how to create a non-dominator culture, the first rebels who overthrew their oppressors eventually repeated the mistakes made by their predecessors. The new governments that arose purported to be populist systems, but eventually they all fell back into old, unconscious patterns of dominating and controlling the many for the benefit of the powerful few. I include the United States in that assessment, because while our Founding Fathers had the foresight to envision and design a populist system, our government long ago ceased acting as a true democracy and has instead become a corporatocracy. The national agenda is now being controlled by the wealthy elite, who use manufactured lack and campaigns of fear to cow the suffering masses into submission. The recent Supreme Court decision that allowed businesses to fund political campaigns simply codified the silent overthrow of democracy that has been occurring beneath the surface for many years. Business interests now dictate to politicians what they wish to see occur. Our current crop of political puppets - particularly those who rose to power post the Citizens United decision - are allowing their strings to be pulled by these hidden overseers in exchange for status and privilege as members of the "ruling" class.

We see evidence of the old power/dominator wave wherever we notice energetic attempts to control the many (and the much) by an elite and powerful few, and wherever we spot high concentrations of global resources and monetary power creating suffering among the many have-nots. The last gasps of this wave are visible all over America today. They include recent attempts by the corporate controlled media to de-fund NPR and PBS so that in the future all conventionally conveyed information will be screened by the business community before it reaches the public. It includes the removal of longstanding safety nets from beneath the working poor, along with across-the-board reductions in government services, to cow people into working harder for ever less money and fewer benefits. We find it in the recent mortgage scandal and banking collapse, which was followed by a taxpayer-funded refueling of the very financial institutions responsible for the illegal activities that destroyed the wealth of a shrinking middle class. We see it in the recent foreclosure debacle (accompanied by illegal efforts to introduce forged documentation to accelerate the foreclosure process) which has laid the entire burden for this scandal on the backs of laborers and the poor. We see it in cynical attempts to sell the de-funding of Planned Parenthood to the masses based on the religious right's pro-life doctrine, so as to make abortions inaccessible and to deny birth control to the poor, which will ensure that the next generation of working stiffs will be born. We see it in attempts to "dumb down" education so that children are not taught HOW to think, but are instead force-fed WHAT to think and then required to submissively regurgitate that information without error in order to be considered "successfully" educated. We see it in the de-funding of college tuition for students, such that education is out of reach for most or else requires young people to shoulder huge debts that will enslave them to corporate America even before they've fully matured. We see it in the raping and polluting of our environment, the excessive consumption of nonrenewable resources, the careless extinction of other species, and in the production of cheap goods and services marketed constantly through a barrage of advertising and designed to part the masses with their hard-earned cash. We see it in the selling of so-called "services" like mortgage lending, utilities and credit card borrowing, which use ongoing debt to bind workers to corporate America, where they struggle to earn a paycheck to meet those endless obligations. We see it in our current medical system, which limits care to those who can afford it, promotes symptoms abatement instead of genuine cures, and supports the marketing of old age as a disease that must be overcome at any cost. We even see it in our religions, which train people not to question authority and teach us from an early age that we're broken, unworthy and must spend our current lives atoning for the sins of our forefathers if we hope to experience a happy "afterlife."

While looking at this outgoing wave isn't pleasant, we can't turn away from it and pretend it doesn't exist. It's very real, and the energy it is still producing is causing real human and planetary suffering. Certain factions within New Age and spiritual circles have taken the position that we should only look to the "light" and pay attention to the good things that are happening. But to ignore the shadow side of human behavior is to run the risk that this energy continues to collect in the depths of the shadow, where it might regroup (as it has in the past) to rise again.

Looking at the shadow side of the power/dominator wave - contrary to popular fears - doesn't strengthen it. It merely shines a light on it, bringing it to public attention where we have the power to consciously CHOOSE whether we wish to feed this energy or starve it. Meanwhile, the new wave of energy that's arising in human society is gathering momentum and developing global coherence, and it now seems strong enough and bright enough to overcome the heavy, depressing energy of the old wave.

The energy of the new wave can be identified by its grounding in a joyous and overwhelming love for life. It carries within it a reverence for this planet, for other creatures, for nature, for the interconnectedness of all beings and for the evolutionary thrust of consciousness. It values the environment and supports concepts like sustainability, renewable energy and regenerative living. It proposes we make less but make it better, consume less but consume it more wisely, work less but work smarter and with the intention of advancing humanity and stewarding our future. It values wisdom above information, realization above dogmas and spirituality above religious training. It approaches reality from a whole-systems viewpoint instead of objectifying and valuing separation, and knows everything to be alive, sentient and evolving. It defines success not through possessions or monetary wealth, but through the metrics of human happiness, planetary health, the well-being of other species and the ability of society to empower ALL individuals to self-actualize. It promotes self-governance, self-discipline and self-awareness as the cure for external domination. It views work not as jobs for pay, but as the necessary labor of humanity to advance the survivability of our species. It values play and social engagement as much as work, and honors the arts as creative expressions of human consciousness. It recognizes that the true resources of humanity reside not in how much sweat we produce in a day, but in our ingenuity, our creativity, our imaginative capacities, our passions, our talents and our skills. It values cooperation above competition and realizes that humanity advances through freely sharing our wisdom so we can build on what we've learned, not through the bottling of knowledge and selling what we know to the highest bidder. It recognizes that all the money ever created cannot possibly match those resources, and that trying to measure the worth of unique human beings through comparing them to each other is a hopeless enterprise. It learns from the past but does not cling to it; it leans into the future but does not fear it. In short, it is a wave marked by human maturation, where all the fears, insecurities, aggression, isolation, sexual obsessions, cliquishness, short-sightedness, rebelliousness and arrogance of youth are being replaced by a quietly growing desire to live and work in peaceful communion with one another - and with nature - for the benefit of future generations.

So again I say, let's rejoice as we midwife what's arising, and let's not shy away from consciously hospicing the old out of existence. The past served us once, and it serves us still by teaching us how not to be tomorrow. While at times it may appear that the old will never die and the new is too diffuse to overcome the density of the power/dominator structure, it is in that very diffuseness that the new is finding its footing and its power. One or two loud voices in the wilderness can be effectively stilled, but the voices of the many, joined together, will not be silenced. No messiah is necessary to lead this rising wave of human advancement. What will lead this wave instead will be a thousand, million points of living light. So I invite each of you to tune in, turn on and begin to shine your light right NOW...the world is waiting!

The Ego and Labeling

2011-02-23T07:49:00.001-08:00

Lately I've been noticing the amount of labeling we're doing as a species. When we label another person as "this" or "that" (or even as "not this" or "not that")we are reducing what is essentially the irreducible aliveness of an ever-changing being to a limited mental projection we have created in our own minds. We then give ourselves permission to treat that person as if they are the label we've assigned to them, rather than as what they truly are. By doing so we unconsciously allow our ego to circumvent the energy of Spirit, which knows all beings are a loving emanation from the One infinite/eternal field of life, temporarily existing as differentiated forms.

The human ego loves its mental labels! Once we've attached a mental label to something, the ego then feels free to judge it as good or evil, right or wrong, the same as "me" or different from "me," because discerning these patterns is the primary function of ego. Discerning patterns allows us, as human beings, to position ourselves in space-time and to form patterns of understanding about the world by which we can successfully navigate our sensory reality. As soon as a label has been attached to something, it becomes "objectified." The ego then grants itself permission to behave toward that object the way it believes best for itself based upon what that label tells us about the object, without any further concern for the life force moving within the object that the ego has judged. The ego then, is never in full relationship with the energetic field of life, because it concerns itself mainly with static objects and forms relationships with the world on that limited level. The ego's relationships consist of surface labels and judgments, learned patterns and conditioned, mainly unconscious responses to the various objects it imagines it encounters.

On a certain level of behavior the labeling function performed by the ego can be very helpful to us. If I notice a "rock" I become instantly aware I cannot pass through it and must instead go around it. I don't need to stop and contemplate the rock (or the tree, or the river) to know how to be in relationship with it for my own physical safety. This allows me to move through the world of form easily and quickly, so I can accomplish much more than if I were required to treat each object I encountered as if it were a brand new experience and as if I had no understanding of my surroundings or how best to relate to them.

On another level though, this process of labeling and reducing can be very harmful to us, as well as to those we encounter. When I meet another human being, perhaps in a restaurant, and label him as "waiter," I then give myself permission to behave toward him as if his sole purpose in life is to take my order, serve me my food and clear away my dirty dishes without disturbing my meal in any way. Unless a deeper awareness rises below and behind the surface level of egoic conditioned labeling, I will therefore miss the opportunity to interact with that being who is doing the serving on a soul level, where I can honor the depth and beauty of his aliveness and invite him to honor mine.

For a very long time - probably since the evolution of human language - humanity has learned to move through the world using labels and forming conditioned mental patterns with respect to objects. This behavior has allowed us to evolve rapidly, to create new technologies and to advance our capacities and objective understanding of the world. And yet...because we have become so attached to our labels and comfortable with our judgments, the technologies we've created and the ways we're interacting with our living planet and with each other often fail to root deeply enough to form loving, lasting relationships on the level of life itself. This explains why we can pollute a river without relating to it as something more than a "convenient place to dump waste," and why we can bomb a city and not relate to its suffering occupants as anything more than "enemies." Most of the suffering we observe in our world - and most of the damage we've done to our living planet - can be traced directly to our habit of objectifying and reducing life to mere mental concepts, and then relating to it in a limited way as if the concept we've formed is the whole truth of what we're experiencing.

I believe the evolutionary shift that is occurring right here and now in human consciousness is an internal thrust toward greater awareness of the limitations of assigning labels, as well as an awakening to the deep and energetic interconnectedness of all things. The realization that we can't neatly reduce the energetic field of life - in any form - to a static label and relate to it only in that limited way is a change that enables us to shift our present social systems (which are failing) toward new, deeper and more meaningful ways of being in relationship with one another and with the living world that contains and supports us all. That internal movement is urging our long-subdued spirits to awaken. An awakened spirit recognizes and honors the limited but crucial role being played by ego in keeping the body safe, even as Spirit steps forward and claims its rightful place as "captain of the ship." We're not here to eliminate our egos or blame and curse them for performing their given functions, but to direct them where they belong, in service to Spirit. That new contextualization allows Spirit to engage more fully and richly with itself in the field of life - as it meets and honors its infinite/eternal self in the form of all other beings with whom we share this living world.

The Rising Feminine as Evolutionary Force

2011-02-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

If you're a woman and reading this blog, you may recall adolescence as a turbulent emotional time, fraught with insecurity. We worried about our bodies - would they mature to resemble those of the supermodels being held up as paragons of beauty? We worried about relationships - would we be able to attract and develop an intimate, loving relationship with another without having to exchange sexual favors before we were ready? We worried about pregnancy - would we be able to make it through the "danger years" of adolescence without finding ourselves saddled with a child before we were ready and able to fully care for one? We worried about protecting ourselves from sexual predators - would we, innocents that we were, be able to recognize that danger before it was too late? We worried about accidentally bleeding all over ourselves at the most inopportune times, and we suffered through the pain of menstrual cramps as well as the emotional ups and downs of our own hormonal tides. We worried about belonging to the right clique, about wearing the right clothes, about saying the right things, about (heaven forbid!) not embarrassing ourselves to the point of no redemption. In short, we worried. Constantly. At least most of us did. Even those of us who were popular and expressed supreme confidence on the outside, on the inside still felt occasionally diminished by the uncomfortable changes of our adolescence.

The result of all this was that during adolescence, the happy, energetic girl-child who held her own with the boys during prepubescence lost her confidence. As she looked around, she noticed the boys getting bigger, bolder, stronger, more aggressive, more assertive with every passing day. Masculine energy, fueled by a massive increase in testosterone, became something against which she could no longer physically hold her own. By contrast, and out of an innate desire to protect herself, the feminine retreated into the safety of her own psyche while the masculine practiced expressing himself and manifesting his own ideas into the world.

Why is this so important for us to discuss? I believe it's crucial because if we look at how we develop on an individual basis and recognize that, as has been scientifically validated, our cosmos applies patterns and uses fractals to replicate itself, we can see that the social behavior of humanity seems to be reflective of the behavior of human individuals as we mature. In other words, the way we each evolve as individuals is very likely indicative of the way we've been evolving as a species.

What can we observe about human society today that gives us clues about our species evolution? To begin with, we can observe that it is indeed still a male dominated society, and that - at least when it comes to social design - women have yet to fully reclaim their status as equal partners working in communion with their men. We can also observe the behavior of humanity and draw some conclusions from that. For example, we're still a highly aggressive and competitive species, which is reflective of the adolescent male. We're short-sighted, selfish, narcissistic and highly self-conscious, all of which are also classic adolescent characteristics. We're still fear-based, and many of us continue to harbor the sense that, deep down, we're just not good enough. That too reflects our adolescence and the lack of competency juveniles feel, even as they desire more personal freedoms. At the same time we project arrogance and an unwillingness to acknowledge we might just be wrong and perhaps have much yet to learn. What stage of your own own life do those traits remind you of?

On the bright side, we're also a bold species: adventurous, clever, resourceful, imaginative, and courageous. Still, we have yet to solidify a common dream toward which we collectively aspire, a shared intention toward which - laser-like - we can focus and direct the vast amount of human creativity and energy we have at our disposal. We're still floundering to define humanity's purpose, still seeking and searching and questioning who we are, and why we're here.

If all this is indeed true and humanity is making an evolutionary turn from adolescence to species adulthood, we can look to our personal evolution for clues as to what we might expect to happen next. We know adolescent boys kill themselves at a rate of six times the suicide rate for adolescent girls, have 20% more accidents than do girls, and that four in five adolescents who commit murder are also male. From those statistics we can extrapolate that so long as we remain a male-dominated, primarily adolescent society, we're far more likely to destroy ourselves (purposefully or inadvertently) and to continue to recklessly kill each other than we will be if/when we make the successful transition into our species adulthood. While those may seem frightening statistics and perhaps cause for some pessimism, we also know that the female brain fully matures at 22, while the male brain doesn't mature until the age of 25. If we include that information in our template for our species evolution, it becomes clear that, on whole, the feminine aspect of humanity, which was diminished during adolescence, will awaken, rise and enter the fullness of human adulthood before the male aspect of our species steps into its full adulthood as equal partner with her. While male energy may have led the shift from our species childhood to our adolescence, it's more likely that female energy will lead the way from our adolescence into our adulthood.

Perhaps this explains why modern spiritual movements, ecological movements and social equality movements are populated more richly by women than by men. Perhaps it also explains why humanity's modern challenges reflect our neglect of tasks that would have traditionally fallen to women to perform in the typical home of old. When we observe our society today, we note that our infrastructure is crumbling; our planetary garden is not being tended; the other animals living with us are not being properly cared for; not all humans are being fed, housed, clothed, educated or nurtured properly, and the elderly and infirm are not being well treated. Because our society has had a predominantly masculine thrust over the past few thousand years, what has been neglected (or gone underground during our adolescence) is the womb-like environment that is our planet, which both birthed us and continues to provide us with necessary sustenance. We've been growing frantically and furiously, as is typical of adolescence, but the time has come for us to cease our rapid growth and enter into a more thoughtful, introspective age.

As we leave behind the industrial age and the age of information (the sponge-like period of adolescence where we gather data without too much discernment) what comes next? Here again we can look to our individual shift toward adulthood for clues to add to our species' evolutionary template.

The key to becoming successful in young adulthood is the development of our core competencies. Competency arises through experience, failure, learning and growing...in wisdom, rather than in size. We discover - through painful trial and error - how to live in harmonious relationship with one another; how to choose partners with whom we can work to raise a family; how to set long-term goals and delay our personal gratification to enhance the odds of our success; how to validate ourselves and make sacrifices for the sake of others (especially the helpless innocents who look to us for support) and how to love others for the sheer joy of it, without any expectation of a reward. We also learn that we're not in control of life's events, and that life has a way of expressing itself that is presently beyond our ability to comprehend. We learn to surrender our egos to that truth, to relax and allow life to be as it chooses to be, even as we use our skills, talents, passions, abilities and drives to shape it as best we know how. We let go of our need for continual drama to stimulate our adolescent psyches, and settle into a pleasant state of peace. Though that state may be broken externally by circumstances beyond our own control, we allow our emotions to rise, pass and return us to peace once we've weathered the storms we must face. Through it all, we remain humble in our awareness that - no matter how much we learn about life - there will always be more to learn, to experience, to honor. Last but not least, we trust the inner compass that is our heart (our feminine self) to guide us through the unknown wilderness of the ever-unfolding moment as our mind (our masculine self) continues to mature.

Today, as we ponder these things, let us take a moment to honor the feminine, rising. Let us not in any way diminish, blame, shame or make "wrong" the masculine for being as it is - as it was meant to be - even as we allow ourselves to feel freer to reveal the feminine heart-light which has for too long been hidden from the world. I call to the rising feminine within us ALL - male and female - to step into the fullness and richness of your own truth, your own deep sense of purpose, your own desire for harmony, and embrace those divine and beautiful aspects of yourself. The cosmos itself, by forcing us to confront so many challenges all at once, is calling for us all to shine in the here and now, to mature into the ripeness of human adulthood. Allow your own heart to glow and become giddily pregnant with the infinite possibilities, and let us see what wants to transpire next.

Why We Need Strong and Stable Governments

2011-02-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

One of the most misguided notions being promoted today is that our governments should run more like a business. The belief that a "responsible" government shouldn't operate at a deficit, and that the government ought to put its attention primarily on national defense and social justice and leave it to the free markets and corporations to manage the rest of society totally misses the point of effective governance.

Many of our founding fathers were successful businessmen, yet when they conceived the federal government they never once mentioned corporations, balanced budgets or focusing on short-term business objectives. In fact, their overarching vision for government was that its primary purpose was to protect the people and to preserve and protect the public commons. A government of the people, by the people and for the people isn't therefore a government intended to operate with monetary objectives in mind, but with the goals, desires and needs of people in mind.

Governments and corporations not only have different drivers, they also have different capacities. A corporation answers to investors and shareholders and is responsible for earning quarterly and annual profits, so it MUST hold its short-term profit objectives front and center when it decides what to do. Companies can't afford to focus too intently on where they're headed over the long-term, especially if doing so means they might have to divert funds and invest them in future projects that would render them unprofitable for an extended period of time. Corporations are therefore inherently limited in their ability to imagine and activate a higher vision for a better humanity. They must instead wait until whatever problems we're facing become so acute that solving them will be profitable before they'll tackle those problems with any degree of sincerity. That attitude often conflicts with what humanity would like to see happen when it comes to addressing our social and environmental challenges. Do we really want to wait until oil prices reach $500 a barrel and we're having national shortages again before we get serious about alternative energy sources? What happens if we wait too long to direct significant energy toward the problem and wind up running out of oil before we've figured out our next approach?

Government, on the other hand, has the ability to take a long-term view of what's best for humanity and direct its attention toward achieving those long term-goals, even if they take generations to reach fruition. The highway system is a great example of this. We began conceiving a national highway system in the 1930's, but it was only in the early 2000's that we actually fulfilled that vision by paving the last few hundred miles of road that had been laid out in those early plans. What corporation do you know that could have imagined, designed, funded and completed a project of that magnitude over a span of more than seventy years?

We also often hear people say things like, "Individuals know best how to spend their own money. Keep that money in the pockets of the people, don't give it to the government." While that may sound good to someone who's hurting financially, the truth is our governments have the capacity to tackle projects so vast in scope that no individual, local community or even state has enough energy and resources available to effectively complete them. Think of the massive electrical grid that spans this nation, or the vast dams, levees and water delivery systems we've constructed over the years. Consider our national network of community colleges as well as the entire public education system. I might indeed "know best" how to spend my own money, but what I know doesn't help me much when it comes to building a school, constructing a dam or replacing a rickety bridge in my neighborhood. Government affords us the opportunity to pool our resources and collectively invest in our social welfare. Government therefore IS socialism, pure and simple. Why we've bought into the notion that anything done on a collective level to promote the well being of all of us is a bad thing reflects our residual fears around the prospect of totalitarianism or fascism gaining a foothold in our nation if we permit government the strength to do its job well. That has little to do with our own reality, and much to do with the bad memories we have of how other governments have abused and misused their authority.

Last but not least, because government's charter is to protect the citizenry and protect and preserve the public commons, LIFE and the health and needs of life lie at the heart of the government's mission. Government is the only modern institution we've designed to remain above concerning itself with whether or not something is financially profitable. Instead, it has the power to make decisions based on whether a behavior is detrimental to life, to society, to the environment and to the survival of the species in the long-run, and to make decisions from that perspective. If we continue to attack government and reduce its capacity to make decisions that are supportive of life first and foremost, what are we left with? A world that places profits before people, money before resources and short-term gratification before long-term health and well being? Is that truly the world we wish to create for ourselves? And if we do, how long will we be able to live in it before it collapses because we've failed to nurture and protect life itself?

Too many of us today have grown seduced by the belief that everything we do must be viewed through the lens of its "economic viability." What a narrow perspective, and how limiting that is! While we wail and worry about whether or not we can afford to do this or that, The living, breathing world around us is crying out for our attention to resolve the very REAL problems and challenges we're facing with regards to the protection of our environment, the preservation of our natural resources, the social inequities of our societies, the global suffering caused by manufactured poverty and the ongoing decimation and extinction of other species.

We can continue to direct the bulk of our attention toward deciding what we "can afford" to do and remain mired in that short-term and limited perspective, or we can re-contextualize our worldview to honor the needs of life ahead of profits. The thing is, if we fail to do so, no amount of paper profit we may earn will be enough to breathe life back into our planet once we've destroyed its capacity to carry us.

That's the most grave challenge we're facing today. The surface battle between corporatism and governance is simply a reflection of that problem, the battleground on which the philosophical war between life and money is being waged. Clearly though, if we destroy government's ability to promote the values and needs of life in favor of promoting corporate profits and our own short-term gratification, we'll be sending a loud and clear message to mother Earth: we're not interested in becoming a genuinely sustainable and participatory species in the web of life. Like children, we want what we want, right here and now, and we don't much care who or what gets hurt while we attempt to achieve it.

Because we're embedded in an inextricably interconnected web of life, we won't be permitted to maintain a selfish attitude much longer. It's not personal; but because life operates as a feedback loop the system won't sit back and allow humanity to destroy Earth's entire living habitat since that means humanity too would eventually die out. It'll solve the problem the way it always has, through species reduction or outright extinction. So while we may think we have free will to behave as we wish - and in the short run perhaps we do - in the long run the choice is already out of our hands.

Humanity must grow up soon. It's not a choice, it's an evolutionary mandate.

Deconstructing Dogmas

2011-01-21T08:32:00.000-08:00

One of humanity's greatest gifts - and perhaps its greatest challenge - lies in our ability to pass down wisdom from one generation to the next. This capacity enables us to rapidly advance as a species, because each new generation doesn't need to repeat the experiences of past generations. Instead we can build on what has been learned by our elders and use that vast platform of wisdom as a place from which to create new experiences for ourselves, as well as to attain ever higher levels of wisdom.

Where the challenge arises around this gift is the fact that what made sense for one era, and what has been passed down through generations as wisdom, may not make sense anymore in light of the changes that have occurred within our species and in our world. In these situations, what we've carried forward as "wisdom" may in actuality be "baggage" we must shed if we hope to evolve successfully as a species. But how, we must ask ourselves, do we discern which of our ancient teachings and beliefs should be reverently carried forward, and which should be released with thanks for the service they once provided, but provide no more?

The key, I believe, lies in our willingness to continuously and patiently examine our dogmas and to seek the real reasons WHY they became beliefs we held so tight in the first place. Where we have no written record of why a particular belief came into being, we must use our powers of critical thinking to apply our understanding of both life in that bygone era (as well as our understanding of the collective state of human consciousness at that time) to try and make some sense of why it exists. If we can discover why a particular belief was first adopted, we can then decide if those reasons still apply to us today.

One example of a dogma of dubious origin would be the Jewish blanket prohibition against the consumption of shellfish. When we examine the history of shellfish consumption, what becomes clear is that eating undercooked or raw shellfish can indeed be a dangerous pastime. We're told in the northern hemisphere that we shouldn't eat raw oysters during months that contain no "r's," because the warmer water temperatures in those summer months place us at higher risk of bacterial contamination and illness. It's not surprising then, that in the warmer Mediterranean and seafaring regions where Jewish law originated, the highly educated authors of Jewish law decided it was crucial to ban the consumption of shellfish to protect a mainly illiterate and childlike population from what must have been a common illness and freqent cause of death. They obviously had no direct understanding of bacteria and no cures for seafood poisoning, so by declaring shellfish "unclean" they were offering the best insight they were capable of at the time. Add to that the fact that the poorest and least educated of people in that region would have made their living from the sea. Presumably then, those poor fishermen would have sold the best of their catch at market and fed the "trash" of the sea - the shellfish - to their own families. The feeding of shellfish to the families of fishermen has gone on for thousands of years, which explains why a "po-boy" sandwich is made of lobster and why New Englanders put oysters in their stuffing. Clearly then, when we apply modern reason to the ancient dogma we begin to understand why such a regulation made sense in that bygone era. But does it make sense today for Jewish law to continue to prohibit the eating of all shellfish under any circumstances, when today we know how to prepare it and safely consume it?

As a non-Jew I won't presume to offer an answer to that question. It's for every thinking Jew to decide for himself. What I do know is while many of our religious dogmas may have made sense in ancient times, in different locales and for a different level of human sophistication, they've filtered out as largely unexamined biases into our secular society, often with disastrous consequences. The religious prohibition against homosexuality, for instance, can be reasonably examined in light of the fact that it arose during an era when child mortality was high, the construction of great societies was accelerating, and the need for labor and military forces was great. Homosexuals, however, weren't likely to reproduce and contribute new children into the social labor pool. Because homosexuality isn't a choice, the leaders who wrote religious canon must have realized (likely after some trial and error) that only way to suppress homosexuality was to shame the individuals into pretending to be what they weren't, and by threatening them with eternal damnation unless they behaved as obedient social repopulators. Today though, with child life expectancy as high as it is, the global population nearing seven billion and the need for physical labor giving way to the use of machines and technology, that urgent need for everyone to continually reproduce has not only declined, it's fast becoming a problem. Why ban lifestyles that effectively control our problematic population growth, when the reason for originally banning them no longer makes social sense? Not only that, but the policy violates our modern, more advanced understanding of the sovereign right of every adult individual to be exactly who he/she is so long as their behavior does no harm to others.

The difficulty with releasing our ancient dogmas arises precisely because they're so strongly held yet are critically unexamined. They're strongly held because the original reasons given by lawmakers for the belief weren't always the true reasons people were expected to hold them. The original reasons like, "if you practice homosexuality you'll go to hell," were made-up reasons that enabled lawmakers to accomplish social engineering in a population they felt was too ignorant to be effectively educated around the genuine reasons. Just like we sometimes "trick" our children into doing what we want, as in, "Stay in bed or the monsters are going to come out and eat you up," so too did early lawmakers trick an unsuspecting and childlike public into behaving in ways they believed best served society.

Part of our collective maturation process stems from separating the scary tricks that were played on our childlike ancestors to get them to behave in certain ways from the truth. Our longstanding fear of the scary tricks, which were well crafted to keep people in line at their time of origin, often pits our sense of reason against our attachment to those unexamined dogmas in a battle for the evolution of our personal consciousness. We were not only taught the dogmas, we were taught the fears as well.

To find the inner courage to step willingly into the process of examining everything we think we know but that doesn't really make sense, and then to try to make some sense of how it came to be so we can decide if we truly wish to hold those beliefs anymore may be the single greatest task we must accomplish as individuals. Our species can only advance itself to the level of the average human consciousness it contains, so the more of us who - childlike - refuse to examine our inherited dogmas and make way for personal growth, the harder it will be for humanity as a whole to move ahead. None of us can single-handedly change the belief system of an entire society, but each of us has the power - as well as a moral obligation - to ensure we're doing our best to help humanity evolve, by letting go of what doesn't serve us any longer.

Becoming Conscious of Our Agreement Fields

2011-01-14T11:09:00.000-08:00

A given society isn't a collection of monuments, an ideology or even the historic records it produces. A society is a living thing, and what comprises it are the people who self-identify with it by embracing a set of beliefs that are specific to that society. That collection of shared beliefs make up a vast agreement field. Take away the agreement field that binds a society together, and it either reorganizes or collapses. We find evidence of that fact throughout history: societies have risen, established powerful agreement fields, and then disappeared abruptly once the agreement field no longer reflected the truth of who the people knew themselves to be.

Consider feudal Europe. For centuries those who lived and died there unconsciously accepted the shared belief that some of them were born to be royal and others were born to be peasants. That social structure, with all its myriad rules and complexities, made up an enormous part of their shared agreement field. Hardly anyone challenged the system; peasants grew up knowing they'd likely be poor their entire lives and that their function was to serve the royal class - of which they could never, ever become a part. Then suddenly, during a short spasm of revolution that began in the late 18th century, a majority of people all over Europe chose to "opt out" of their shared agreement fields. They guillotined the French aristocracy (upending once and for all the notion of subservience). They also murdered the Russian royals and stripped the surviving European monarchs of any real power. Americans too decided to reject their agreement field with England, upending the old colonial relationship to establish a brand new field of agreement we now know as "democracy." What drove that shift, as we well know, was a massive shift in human consciousness. A collective awareness rose among people that the feudal system was inherently wrong because it didn't fairly honor and nurture the majority of those born into it. That new conviction, which flooded the hearts of the suffering peasants with its deeper truth, replaced their simple, previously unexamined belief - that they were born peasants and were destined to die peasants - that had once been the social norm.

Every agreement field - and almost all the beliefs it contains - operates mainly on a subconscious (unexamined) level, because it's been programmed since birth into our collective consciousness. Unexamined though such agreement fields may be, they define every society and establish the rules under which the citizens agree to conduct themselves - for all their lives.

Beyond our primary social agreement field there exist numerous smaller, overlapping fields of agreement based on culture, political beliefs, family histories, economic systems, religions, racial backgrounds and personal life experiences. These fields are often out of harmony with one another, or with the larger societal agreement field. Wherever they come into conflict is where we find most of the suffering in our world. One group of individuals may identify with a white supremacist field of agreement, while another might embrace an agreement field of African-American racial oppression under the despotic rule of the white man. Place these two agreement fields side by side and violence might well erupt.

When specific beliefs from two powerful fields are in conflict, it places individuals who identify with both fields in a difficult position. They often feel they must choose one field over the other (i.e.: my Christian beliefs are more important to me than my national beliefs). They then try to change the beliefs in the one field so they more closely match the beliefs in the field toward which they feel a stronger affinity. In essence, by "converting" the beliefs that are part of the secular field of agreement to match their Christian set of beliefs, they hope to end the cognitive dissonance and/or alienation they feel. The trouble is, the very act of attempting to forcibly convert the larger secular agreement field to Christianity triggers cognitive dissonance in those who haven't signed on for the Christian field of agreement, and who aren't interested in having that become a litmus test for being a "good" U.S. citizen.

When we examine the cognitive dissonance we sometimes feel when the fields of agreement we self-identify with are in direct conflict, we really have two choices, not one. Obviously, if they're in direct conflict, one of the beliefs has got to be wrong. Rather than simply and uncritically choose which agreement field we support and which we must reject or change to be happy, our wisest move is to step outside BOTH agreement fields for a time and examine the specific belief that is causing us the problem. An uncritical or fear-based mind tends to lurch blindly toward the agreement field that has impressed itself most deeply on the psyche through years of conditioned programming, but IS that the best reason for us to embrace a belief? By taking the time to deeply examine what it is we truly believe, we empower ourselves to discover our own highest truth.

The trouble with all these longstanding agreement fields that overlap and coincide to form a complex human society is that they came into existence long before most of us were born. We weren't offered much in the way of opportunity to contribute our truths to them, and often were taught that just questioning them was enough to cause us to be rejected by the others who were in the agreement field. For the main part we were also indoctrinated into these agreement fields before we were old enough to think for ourselves, which makes it very hard for us to question what we believe.

There's a heaviness that seems to develop over time in every society, and America is feeling it now. It results from the collective weightiness of the conflicts from all the longstanding agreement fields we've put into place. Many of those agreement fields are relics of bygone eras, but the very act of letting them go seems terrifying to those who self-identify with them. Who am I, we wonder, if not the sum total of all my agreement fields?

As we ask ourselves that question, what we discover is that as we begin to release our mental grip on all our various agreement fields, what emerges is something that is not lessened by our lessening of attachments, but expanded beyond measure. Our attachments to our unconscious agreement fields limit our capacity to engage with each other - to engage life - on the broadest possible level where we all can agree: that we ARE life, having a shared (albeit temporary) bodily experience. All the rest of it - mother, Christian, daughter, employee, artist, wife, friend, middle class, American - are beliefs about who we are, distinctions we make that bring color and passion and direction to our lives...but they're not the truth. Today I may be a wife; tomorrow I may be a widow. That being the case, how helpful is it for me to attach to tightly to the notion that I am wife? Why not just settle for loving where I am, as I am, and being grateful for what I have while I still have it?

Our Society Shapes Us All, And We Shape It

2011-01-12T07:52:00.000-08:00

The baby boomer generation - often derided as the most greedy, narcissistic group of individuals this country has ever seen - didn't arise in a vacuum, and it didn't raise itself. Those of us born between 1947 and 1966 arrived on the scene into a preexisting social system which taught us from early childhood that materialism was exceptionally good.

We were inundated with TV ads - the first generation to experience commercials commingled with Saturday morning cartoons - that urged us to acquire the latest and greatest toys. Cereals and fast foods were packaged with our films and TV shows, which in turn bombarded us with images of the "good" life. We were raised on Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, Lassie and Dick Van Dyke. People on those programs lived in single family homes with nice yards in mainly peaceful suburbia. The nicest families had two cars in every driveway, a couple of kids and amazingly well trained pets - and it was all fenced in with white picket. The "bad" life was represented as an inevitable descent into drugs and crime, inner city poverty, homelessness, joblessness and an endless cycle of welfare - all of which stemmed from laziness and/or the lack of moral fiber.

Our religions taught us that we were inherently sinful, and that the path to salvation was to obey authority. To question the Church's teachings meant you'd been seduced by Satan. Hell - eternal suffering and torment - was the punishment that awaited us if we failed to practice blind faith.

In our factory style schools we responded like robots to the commands of bells. Our success was determined by how much better we performed on tests than our peers. The sports we were encouraged to play required us to "beat" others. Losing was labeled as failure, and we learned our worth was determined by how well we measured up against others. Our schools taught us America was the best nation in the world, and that other nations either wanted to be just like us or were so jealous they hated us for our freedom.

Sexuality became the weapon advertisers directed at us when we entered our adolescent and young adult years. If we wanted to get laid we needed a Porsche, or at the very least a BMW. Meanwhile, the fashion magazines urged us to replace our wardrobes every year or risk being labeled frumpy; or worse - unable to afford to keep pace with the ever-changing standards of feminine beauty. The health industry sprang up and targeted us as we hit our early thirties, selling us beauty products, exercise equipment, gym memberships and fad diets, shaming us if we failed to conform to their impossible standards of beauty. For men, that meant packing washboard abs even after sitting eight hours behind a desk. For women it meant being heroin chic thin while trying to hold down a job, care for the children and manage to run a home.

When we entered the workforce we were discouraged from choosing careers that spoke to our artistic and heartfelt passions because we weren't likely to become financially successful, which we learned was the most important factor when selecting a career. We were taught to sell our time and energy to the highest bidder. Our companies then taught us it didn't matter if we offered the world the best product or service; what mattered was that it generated a profit. We discovered quickly that people were expendable (and exploitable) in the corporate quest for profits, as was good service, product quality, the environment, our time with our families and our sense of personal accomplishment.

We were taught by our government to fear the alien other, and to battle any resistance to the global spread of capitalism by using our superior military might. Those who didn't like our way of life were labeled ignorant heathens or godless doers of evil, and we were taught to perceive them as mortal enemies. We learned we needed to "duck and cover" against the omnipresent threat of nuclear war.

Now that we baby boomers are collectively aging, we're being informed that aging is no longer a process but a disease. It's incurable, but we're being urged to do all we can to treat the symptoms. We're supposed to diet and dye, lift and lyposuck, nip and tuck, take hormones and do yoga to hide the embarrassing truth of our aging from the world.

We are the first generational output of the late industrial information age. We were guinea pigs for the "great consumer society" that began in the 1950's, when money from our post WWII reconstruction of the ruined rest of the world flooded our culture and funded a huge middle class that grew temporarily fat and happy on all that global rebuilding. Our sheer numbers made us the perfect target for corporate consumer enterprise. Frankly, it's a miracle any of us still value and practice compassion, generosity, love, kindness and peacefulness; that we do only proves that the human spirit can rise above societal programming.

The American middle class is dying as the rest of the world resurrects. We're observing the reassertion of humanity's ancient have/have-not division around the world. We've been playing this win/lose social game for many thousands of years, and it requires many more losers than winners for it to continue to work. The American dream we were promised as children has become a nightmare of over-consumption, excessive growth, resource depletion, environmental degradation and personal stress to the point most people need medication (or alcohol, tobacco or illegal drugs) to stagger through their days. Because we've been taught we should be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and that any personal failure to thrive is purely our own fault, we've been cowed into surrender to our own fates. Like a herd of cattle being driven to its own slaughter, we've blindly accepted that we're here to serve the for-profit motives of our corporations - even if it kills us all. It doesn't occur to us to notice that in reality we are those corporations, and that perhaps the solution to our many ills is to insist they serve the needs of all the life forms on Earth instead.

It's a painful process to consciously examine and purposefully eliminate the countless hours of toxic programming each of us has received. Human consciousness is like a vast, shared river out of which we all must drink. We've fouled that river the way we've fouled our oceans, air and lands. Before we can even begin to clean it up we must first stop dumping pollution into those waters. Knowing that, as the first generation of adults to have arisen under the grand consumer social experiment, it's now incumbent upon each of us to ask ourselves what toxins we're still pouring into the river. What are we contributing to the collective consciousness, and what might its impact be on unformed minds? What behaviors and ideologies are we passing along to our children, our neighbors, our world? Nobody grows up in a vacuum, as the tragic events of last week have so painfully reminded us. We are our brother's keeper - and teacher, and friend and role model - and we each bear partial responsibility for all events that occur in our shared world. It's time we stopped pretending that what we do individually doesn't matter.

Let's stop telling ourselves that one person can't possibly make a difference in this world. The time is now for each of us to peer deeply inside of ourselves and dredge up the best of what we're capable of becoming. To then gift that to the rest of the world in gratitude for the precious gift of life that we've received is why we're here.

The future of life itself may depend on it.

The Meaning of "Namaste"

2010-12-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

I still remember the first time I heard someone explain to me the meaning of the phrase "na-mas-te." I was told this Eastern phrase essentially means, "The light in me salutes the light in you." What a beautiful statement that is! And how powerful it is to honor the light that shines within another each time we greet them or say goodbye until we meet again.

I've pondered namaste and its meaning many times since, and every time it amazes me with its clarity, beauty, simplicity and glittering depth. To me it's become like a linguistic diamond, a rare jewel I can gift to others over and over again, and yet never run out of the beauty it has to offer.

If we break down its meaning what we discover is a conscious acknowledgment, on the deepest level of soul, that those identifying things we so often believe ourselves to be - our species, race, creed, nationality, sex, social status, talents, limitations and personal life experiences - are but temporary costumes and trappings that infinite, eternal Spirit is presently wearing while we act out our given roles on this stage we call "the world."

How beautiful is that? To look at another being - REALLY look - and to consciously notice that under whatever bizarre or alien costume Spirit is presently hiding beneath is the clear and brilliant essence of life itself, peering back at us through its radically altered appearance and winking at us. "Here I am," says Spirit, from inside the body of a homeless, muttering woman. "Can you see me?"

"Here I am," Spirit whispers, huddled in the form of a cancer-riddled, dying child. "Can you see me still?"

"Pssst...over here!" From in the prison around the corner, crouched in the form of an angry, violent and broken shell of a man. "Can you see me now? Can you love me no matter what form I take, or even when I've completely forgotten the game we're here to play?"

Namaste. Indeed I can, at least when I remember to look; when I'm not too busy hiding myself from everybody else, losing myself so thoroughly in my own costume and so busily playing my own role that I've forgotten who I am and where I'm supposed to look.

Shakespeare was right; all the world IS a stage. That means the script we've all been working from - the belief we're all separate and isolated from each other by our differences - CAN be changed. That makes sense, since the stage and its living props are constantly rearranging themselves to move us along in our remembrance of that truth. Once we grasp our deep connectivity - genuinely see it - we realize we can change our role in the story and act out something completely new without being driven by a sense of desperation, or the fear of failure. So what if the rest of the world doesn't want to act out the story of love and connectivity I'm now consciously choosing for myself? So what if so many "others" have become so attached to their roles, so lost in the seriousness and weightiness of it all, that they've forgotten they're wearing costumes, or who they are? Why not peek up their heavy skirts now and again and giggle, pointing at Spirit hiding inside them and cry out, "Namaste!"

And so...namaste to you, my friends, whatever costume you may be wearing and wherever you may be on the stage of life. I invite you to remind me - as I will continue to remind you - that this IS a game, a temporary reality, and that on our soul level we're here to play together in harmony.

The light in me salutes the light in you.

The Beauty of the Bubble

2010-11-23T11:15:00.001-08:00

If pressed to explain my thoughts on life and why I believe it's eternal, I often draw upon the metaphor of a soap bubble. As we all know, when we blow a soap bubble we temporarily encapsulate a bit of air inside a delicate, rainbow-like membrane. That membrane then floats through the air, carrying the contained air with it.

If the air inside the bubble were somehow capable of experiencing consciousness the way we humans do, the first thing it might notice is how pretty the world looks when viewed through the prism of the membrane that contains it. It might spend most of its time gazing out at reality through the beautiful rainbow window of its shell, enraptured to be observing such exotic splendors as birds, trees and clouds. Like a child, the bubble would admire the world around it and exclaim with delight whenever it noticed something new appearing outside its fragile window. Occasionally a few air molecules would cross the bubble's permeable membrane and enter it from without, while some would also leak outside from within, but the bulk of the air inside the bubble would be so entranced by its experiences it wouldn't even notice what was happening.

Later on, if that air bubble developed a sense of self-awareness, it might suddenly begin to realize that some of the other bubbles around it were bumping into each other and exploding. Whenever they popped, the air bubble would notice that they disappeared...seemingly forever. It might then begin to fear that it too could disappear if somehow another bubble (or a bird, or a plane or a butterfly) bumped into it. Worrying about what that meant might begin to constrict the joy the air bubble felt from simply being present, aware enough to experience the world through the prism of its fragile rainbow. The bubble might even become aggressive due to its fear, bumping into other bubbles on purpose to try and pop them before they had the chance to damage it. Whole bubble wars might eventually evolve, with the younger, bigger bubbles working together to attack and destroy the smaller, weaker ones until the whole sky was filled with the fury and energy of smashing bubbles.

The irony, of course, is that those of us who exist outside the limited perspective of the soap bubble know something the bubbles don't yet realize: when they pop, the airy part inside them doesn't just vanish. It expands back into the larger atmosphere, where it mixes with all the rest of the air outside. While there it picks up some new characteristics based on whatever combination of molecules the outside air contains, then eventually it enters some other form. Perhaps it enters another bubble, or perhaps it flows into a living creature by way of an animated in-breath. Who's to say? But whatever happens, the atmosphere relates to all the temporary forms it encases by entering them and suffusing them with life.

To compare life to the air inside a soap bubble is to let go of the profound fear of disappearing when we die. To recognize one's conscious self-awareness as similar to the air inside a soap bubble is to realize the idea of "self" is an illusion. At bottom it's all the same air; it's just that some of it is having a temporary soap bubble experience.

Our bodies are like the membrane of a soap bubble. Each one of us is beautiful, unique and amazing, as well as fragile. The world we think we understand is the world we see, feel, touch, smell and taste and interpret as experienced through the prism of the bubble (human form) that contains our awareness. It's not necessarily the truth of what the world outside of us is, so much as a magical reflection of what the bubble we occupy is, as we gaze through the bubble into the vastness of the totality that contains us. The AIR - not the bubble - represents the deeper truth of what we really are.

Sadly, too many of us go through life fearing that all those other bubbles are dangerous, because they have the power to destroy the very air inside our bubble, when all they really have the power to do is pop our fragile bubble shell which is temporary anyway. When our bubble shell does inevitably pop - whether it pops by itself or is bumped by something else - all that really happens is we're released from the temporary - albeit beautiful - constriction that has been our human form. Death does not destroy us; it only ends our capacity to experience the rest of the world as perceived from within the bubble. The harm in that isn't in our destruction; it's that the greater world has been denied the opportunity to fully experience, observe, enjoy and delight in the magnificent bubble we each have the power to be!

It helps us anchor this metaphor if we consider the formation of the bubble (birth) as similar to the constriction that is an in-breath, and the inevitable dissolution of the bubble (death) as the expansion that is an out-breath. What we call "our" life then, is really only the infinitesimal pause between the in-breath and the out-breath. True life can be found in the endless flow of the atmosphere between the forms and the formless.

To "fight" to the death to preserve and protect that infinitesimal pause - to attack others and exist in constant fear that they will perhaps attack us - is to miss out on the entire reason the atmosphere energetically created and occupied the bubble in the first place. Its underlying purpose is to enjoy, explore and experience itself through energizing an infinite variety of temporary forms and by playing with a variety of senses and experiences, because it CAN. Since the atmosphere that fills up your bubble is the same atmosphere that fills up my own, for me to attack your bubble or try to destroy it means I'm essentially attacking myself in another form. Far better then for me to honor the air inside of you as the same air I hold within me, and to do my best to support your bubble while you become the most beautiful and amazing bubble you can possibly be! When that happens, hopefully I'll be around to enjoy the show you give. If not, the atmosphere that contains your bubble will also contain what was me, so I'll surely be there anyhow; just not in a physical form.

The beauty of this bubble metaphor is that when we embrace it we're able to let go of our fear of death as a form of self-destruction. We come to view the formation of the bubble and its eventual dissolution as inevitable as the contraction and expansion of breathing and not something to be feared. We understand that the experience of being inside the bubble is but a brief, joyful, exhilarating ride we're here to enjoy and share. When our bubble pops, at it eventually must, we'll get to carry back to the larger atmosphere all the experiences, observations and wisdom we've gained from having been on this amazing ride. Our individual feedback will blend with the contents from all the other bubbles that have burst, just like our atmosphere blends a variety of molecules to form a unified field. That blend determines what forms the atmosphere will occupy next: more bubbles, or perhaps something completely different. It's important to note here that the atmosphere doesn't wish to have mainly painful or bad experiences for very long, because every bit of air inside the bubble that experiences mostly pain and suffering eventually feeds those negative experiences back to the whole and makes the entirety of the atmosphere that much sadder.

None of this is personal. Humanity may or may not continue to survive as a life form, but truly it doesn't much matter. Whatever we collectively learn from this temporary human experience will inform the larger atmosphere what works and what doesn't work, so it can figure out how to create more love for the totality of itself. It will then respond to our input by choosing to animate forms that bring it more joy.

Perhaps if enough of us wake up to the truth of the beauty of experiencing the world from inside the amazing bubble that is our temporary body (which may be what the atmosphere is encouraging us to do now) we can collectively rediscover the unfettered joy of being human without experiencing the fear that this temporary form is the only thing we really are. The key seems to be to let go and perceive yourself as the air and not merely the bubble, so you can discover within you the truly exquisite lightness and joy of being!

Pitting Life Against Money - Who Wins?

2010-11-08T08:40:00.000-08:00

Lately the public conversation has revolved almost entirely around what we can afford to do versus what we cannot afford to do as a species. Conservatives attempt to help individuals by directing wealth toward business enterprise, while liberals attempt to offer direct financial aid to those in need. On the surface it appears to be the ideological equivalent of teaching a man to fish versus feeding him daily fish; except what we're coming to understand is that the conservative approach does not teach men to fish for themselves at all. Instead, it reduces them to the equivalent of tying countless fishhooks onto endless lines to catch millions of fish for the benefit of the captain, so they can go home with half a fish to feed their entire family. This approach is no more helpful in the long run than is offering people abundant free fish and encouraging them to give nothing in return. One creates a slave-like dependency that benefits a wealthy few; the other creates a child-like dependency that burdens a working few.

What makes it tough to balance wealth and human need is that we've chartered our economic institutions to profit monetarily, and have made that their primary reason to exist. We've ASSUMED, without much evidence to support the assumption, that businesses will only profit if they're creating and providing real, tangible benefits for living human beings.

What's become apparent, particularly over the past hundred or so years, is that any connection between what benefits human (and natural) life and what's profitable for business is far more tenuous than we've traditionally believed it to be.

There is often a HUGE difference between what's good for business in the short term and what's good and healthy for life (and our planet) in the long run. There's also a huge difference between the productive life span of a corporation (granting it the power to overwhelm and outlast the needs and desires of individuals) and the productive life span of a human being.

Then there's the problem of externalized business costs. It behooves business to externalize their costs (to not pay for certain things and to not price those costs into their goods and services) as much as possible to maximize their declared profits. However, it harms society to have to absorb all the externalized costs of doing business. Externalized costs are items like the costs of building and enhancing private business roads and infrastructure, which often gets picked up by the towns and states that are soliciting corporate investment and hoping for new jobs to support their communities. They also include the costs of cleaning up industrial waste, the costs of replenishing or restoring depleted natural resources, the costs of artificially low wages that don't enable people to survive without public assistance, and so forth. Externalized costs are borne by all citizens and taxpayers, and they amount to some $2.4 TRILLION dollars per year in the United States alone - enough to balance the federal budget if we eliminated them and placed those costs squarely where they belonged - on the shoulders of the private business community. Instead we allow our governments to go broke so our companies can continue to report solid "earnings" and maintain the illusion that all is well with how we're managing industry.

There's also an emergent global corporatism with which we must contend, in which the corporations and their owners no longer reside in the towns (or even the nations) where their harmful policies damage local environments and indigenous populations. Under Adam Smith's capitalistic paradigm, we embraced the assumption that businesses would behave well and concern themselves with caring for the public commons and supporting the well being of the local population, because any damage a business caused would lead to direct harm for the owners' families.

Capitalism - which pools money to invest in those businesses that look potentially profitable or have existing profits - also punishes corporations for being honest about their mistakes and missteps, instead of rewarding them for coming clean about the potential harms their products or policies may be causing. This leads to extended cover-ups that damage the health and welfare of untold millions.

Last but not least, the endless growth model that demands continual profitability as a measure of success does not reward businesses for providing higher quality products for less money - OR for finding ways to reduce the financial burdens being placed on individuals. Businesses are instead rewarded for commoditizing and monetizing every conceivable human need and desire, then turning those needs into consistent cash flow streams for themselves rather than designing their products as one-time investments that will free individuals from ongoing expenses. This creates a continued (and ever-expanding) human dependency on money for survival, and since our primary way to attain money is to work for corporations, we're becoming ever more deeply enslaved to our own economic paradigm. Meanwhile corporations do better when they ruthlessly reduce their labor force and cut human wages to the bone. The result is increased human stress and the constant fear of lack and loss of livelihood. We've all become beholden to and MUST SERVE our corporations - no matter how poorly they opt to serve us - if we hope to survive, instead of having it the other way around.

The capacity to determine the future direction of humanity, to promote the shared values we espouse and to pursue our highest and greatest dreams as a species has shifted AWAY from we the people and our vision of what constitutes a beautiful, moral and worthwhile life; ONTO corporations, who make their decisions based upon what will maximize their short-term profitability regardless of how harmful those decisions may be to life.

This is ultimately an anti-life paradigm. We need to notice and accept the truth of that, unless we wish to collapse beneath the ongoing destruction and impoverishment of life in favor of money.

What needs to happen now is that the CONTEXT of our national diologue must expand WAY beyond simply discussing whether our governmental and economic policies are financially profitable. We need to - first and foremost - discuss whether what we are doing is harmful, and cease doing that. Second, we need to institute a global discussion around what work needs doing to benefit all of humanity and our living planet (instead of focusing on what make-work jobs we can create so people can get paid to survive) and DO that work. Last but not least, we must begin to envision a new future for ourselves. We must look to a world in which our corporations serve and honor the needs of living people, and in which their primary charter is to FREE humanity from the burden of the 40 hour work week and the steady onslaught of bills and stress and need. Freeing the individual from enslavement to a make-work job for the sake of wages and profits will allow us to instead maximize our capacity to learn, to grow in wisdom, to explore and unveil the secrets of our cosmos, to express our artistic creativity and to BECOME the best we can be - both as individuals and as a species.

Anything less than that is running in place, spinning the hamster wheel to try and survive. Why settle for that?

Collapsing...and What to Do About It

2010-11-05T07:33:00.001-07:00

What's become clear after the recent election is that asking politicians to solve the current mess we're in is like asking a dog to attack the master that feeds it. The corporate money that flowed into campaigns to beat the Democrats (courtesy of the recent Supreme Court decision) because the Democrats' anti-corporate policies were upending the financial profitability of the economic system for the benefit of living people made this mid-term election the most expensive national campaign in modern history. More money was spent to ensure congressional gridlock than ever before. We must therefore ask ourselves, who does a gridlocked congress benefit, and why would they invest so much to ensure our congress was neutered?

The answer is NOT the American people, though some were deluded into believing that by supporting the corporate agenda their personal life situation would improve. While that may be true in the short run, the collapse of the larger civilization in the longer run will destroy any short-term advantage they might gain. The real answer is the global corporatist structure, the mega-corporations that no longer have any serious national loyalties and whose primary concern is making more and more money by consuming more and more global resources and exploiting more and more human workers - forevermore.

Global corporate managers don't have to live in the towns where they're closing down factories, causing pollution, destroying delicate ecosystems, pillaging limited resources, triggering competition for wages that reduces the local standard of living, eliminating human benefits, etc. They're part of a rarefied community known as the "uber-wealthy." Membership in that elite community buys them the freedom to isolate themselves from the public and ignore the massive amount of human misery they're creating in the name of corporate profits.

Unfortunately President Obama, in the wake of the recent Democratic drubbing, has NOT turned his aim toward this true cause of human suffering - the anti-life policies of our mega corporations - but has instead stated he needs to be more clear about his support for business and its cancerous global agenda. After tentatively biting the hand that feeds him, Obama's experienced the angry lashing that inevitably comes and now feels chastened enough to slink back into an uneasy truce with his master. His problem was that not enough pack members stood by him and rebelled with enough force to do more than irritate the master, while the more loyal dogs - eagerly anticipating their sweet rewards - surrounded the master and successfully defended him against further attack.

Still, what gives me hope is the realization that such a system cannot survive much longer, especially now that the only power group with the ability to take a principled stand against its oppression and destructiveness has been neutered. As global corporatism's anti-life policies expand unchecked it MUST collapse, because any organic system where the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts (which empowers it to contribute something valuable to EACH of its cooperative parts) cannot survive. Eventually enough parts will refuse to cooperate with a system that does not serve them but only abuses them. Disintegration thus becomes the logical outcome of excessive tyranny. Nature, it seems, has wisely built resistance to the tyranny of concentrated power into the very fabric of life to ensure life is not oppressed too long by those with delusions of grandiosity. Some however, doggedly ignore this truth at their own peril. History is replete with lessons about unchecked tyranny, and the unhappy results for those who would lord it over others with an iron fist.

In this case the tyrant that dominates modern society is not a petty political dictator; it's a belief system infused into a nonliving enterprise. While that may make it difficult to kill global corporatism, it certainly makes it easier to overthrow. All we need do is change our collective beliefs about the wisdom of valuing monetary profits over honoring and nurturing life itself, and we render the present for-profit system irrelevant. What makes shifting our belief system easier is the growing realization - one person at a time - that the for-profit paradigm is NOT making life better for us or for our loved ones, but is in fact making the entire world poorer, more fearful, less beautiful and far less regenerative than ever. At some point enough of us will have had enough and will let go of our beliefs to embrace the truth: we cannot survive by destroying our only host planet, or by crippling the creative capacity of most of our fellow humans so a few can live large.

What modern global corporatism seems to have lost touch with is the organic nature of humanity. It's reduced reality to a conceptual theory: If you can pay for it, you can have it - no matter how outrageous, wasteful, immoral or destructive "it" may be. If you can't pay for it, you must suffer or die - no matter how unfair or heinous that may be. By starving and enslaving the bulk of the human social body and degrading our shared planetary environment in order to reap more financial benefits for themselves, the corporate plutocracy is systematically destroying the very social fabric that supports and sustains it.

This ego-based approach won't survive because it violates the deep inter-connectivity and feedback loop of nature. In nature, all unique life forms are gifted the freedom to attain maturity as best as they are able, given the basic resources in their locale. They're then invited to gift the fruits of their adult abundance freely into the larger ecosystem. In turn, they draw from the ecosystem whatever they may need to survive and thrive - but only that; no more. We humans though, in the name of capitalism, are denying far too many of our young people the ability to discover and blossom into their full creative capacities. We next cripple them with social debts before they've begun to produce. We then force them into mechanized production slots that don't tap their highest and greatest talents and creative abilities, but provide us with what we "believe" we need instead. And we wonder why we're experiencing scarcity!

Many of us also take much more from the planetary ecosystem than we truly need to thrive. We hoard the excess for future generations - namely our immediate blood relatives - at the expense of too many others. Our fears for the survival of our own families has caused us to lose sight of our innately tribal nature, as well as the fact that our personal blood lines cannot survive unless other blood lines also manage to thrive. (Incest, as the blue bloods of medieval Europe belatedly discovered, does not make for a hearty human species.)

The recent Fed action (announced yesterday) to infuse nearly a trillion dollars of new debt into the American economic system is likely to crash the dollar globally, and since the dollar is already worthless (which is publicly unacknowledged but privately understood by the global financial community) all those who BELIEVE they've accumulated great financial wealth will suffer much more than those who have already given up their lust for money and instead learned to recognize and appreciate genuine assets. Genuine assets include food and the ability to grow it; clean water; personal skills, talents and creative abilities; companionship; love; trust; shelter; passion and wisdom - to name but a few. Money, we must come to realize, is only a "greater fool" game. The fact is, it's only as valuable as our capacity to convince someone else (the greater fool) to accept it in exchange for something we can actually use. Cut out the middleman that is money - which is hindering our freedom to exchange our gifts and talents - and we level the playing field immediately.

If collapse is indeed imminent, how are we navigate what seems to be a very chaotic time in human history? For starters, I recommend everyone get intimate with their genuine internal and external resources. Reconnect with nature and how it functions in your area. Figure out how to care for yourself and your family without the need for money to acquire necessities. Discover your personal skills and passions, and develop them. Surround yourself with like-minded individuals and reconnect with people on your local community level. Get strong within your spirit and know that all is collapsing because the old must always disintegrate to make way for what is evolving. Nature is a relentless recycler, and she needs the ashes of the old to give birth to the rising phoenix. Above all, revel in the mystery and wonder of every day. Teach yourself to prize LIFE, to embrace her natural rhythms, to cherish what really matters.

And don't forget to be grateful. To live in "interesting" times means it's on us to shift our reality to a new way of being in relationship to each other and our planet. That you're here now means you're part of the larger plan. Do your part as best you can, and life will take care of itself. You can trust in that.

Humanity Is Perfect Just As It Is.

2010-10-13T07:15:00.000-07:00

We are not broken; we do not require redemption or salvation from ourselves. We are wondrous, brilliant, capable, insightful, deeply feeling and deeply appreciative beings. We are an exquisitely unfolding evolutionary movement in the grand and beautiful scheme of cosmic life, waking up to and discovering ourselves mid-purpose. As perfectly evolving aspects of the Divine Creative Process, we have been gifted the virtually unlimited capacity to be more, do more and know more than what we now are. We are not wrong so much as like ignorant children, just now learning how to behave in the larger classroom of life.

Because we are capable of it all - from acts of profound evil to unconditional love for all that is - nothing is inherently our "human nature." We are absolutely free to choose which aspects of the full gamut of living possibilities we want to manifest, and to become that. We have been fully empowered to become our highest vision of our greatest selves in service to all that is. The only things preventing us from achieving that high goal are the limiting and negative stories we tell about ourselves.

What is evolving within us now is not our physiology, but our higher consciousness. The functionality of our minds is expanding exponentially at this time, enabling us to realize just how much we are capable of imagining and creating. The cosmos, by unstintingly revealing to us the consequences of our past actions and by not buffering us from the negative results, is sending us clear messages that invite us to consciously CHOOSE how we wish to be. It has gifted us road maps to success in the form of our emotions and innermost feelings, which joyfully inform us when we are in alignment with the higher cosmic purpose, and painfully prod us whenever we wander off course.

It has birthed us into a wondrous field of abundance - a garden of beauty that feeds and supports us like babies, while we slowly mature into the fullness of our capacities. It has showered us with amazing diversity and a full spectrum of talents, skills and abilities we can use to great advantage once we stop viewing those who are different as threatening and learn to collaborate with them instead. The cosmos has laid for us the widest, brightest footpath to success that it knows how to create, and every morning it shines a new light on that path.

There is no right or wrong answer for what we become. No crime or eternal punishment for missing the mark in our youth and from our confusion. We ARE the universe, in person. We are here to test, explore and play with our own capacities. Whatever happens to our species, whether we continue to advance or eventually are replaced by some other higher life form, we all remain part of the ongoing cosmic process, ever learning, ever growing, ever evolving. We ARE the stuff out of which tomorrow will spring.

No mistakes then; only lessons well learned and new opportunities for growth and advancement in wisdom. We cannot fail; we can only leave some work undone, awaiting the energetic commitment of future generations of cosmic life.

Since we ARE those future generations, here and now - why wait? Why not begin now, and see how far we can get?

Honoring Our Messengers

2010-10-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

Recently on my Facebook page I've been involved in some highly intelligent and stimulating discussions around whether it's more important to understand how a thing works or to learn by experience how to use a thing.

I've been noticing that this seems to be the same question behind the underlying tension that exists between science and religion. Scientists are most interested in explaining exactly HOW a thing like human consciousness works. They want to explore the mechanics of the body, the brain, evolution, mathematics, quantum physics - all the fascinating components and moving parts - that make up the larger mystery we call life. Meanwhile spiritualists - particularly those who have been exploring the depths and capacities of human consciousnesses for many, many years - believe they already know the meaning of life. They've figured out how to use their minds by asking why life exists, and then following that question to a destination that revealed to them a truth. They're not really interested (or only mildly interested) in grasping the mechanics and learning how they work. Their passion is to support others in taking the journey into inner revelation, so they too can know WHY we've got these tools we've been gifted.

What seems to be happening then, is that scientifically oriented individuals find themselves defending their line of inquiry against what seems on occasion to be an almost condescending attitude from those who already consider themselves experts on the meaning and purpose of life. Likewise, spiritualists are often condescended to by modern scientists, who can't imagine that someone who doesn't understand the mechanical workings of a tool could really understand how best to use it.

That's because explaining where a thing came from and how it works isn't the same as developing an expertise around knowing when to use it and why it exists at all. Scientists - who ironically are using the subjective nature of their own consciousnesses to the best of their abilities when they make their inquiries into life's objective form and function - don't attempt to explain why consciousness exists so much as to explain precisely how the vehicle that has allowed for its existence creates opportunities for it to self-express. Spiritualists, who ironically are activating the highly mechanical objective structures and technical operations that the scientists are so busily defining, don't attempt to explain how the mechanics of consciousness works so much as why it's important to use it, and for what purpose.

We all know that to be able to put together and take apart a television set tells us nothing about the ins and outs of network broadcasting. Even so, it helps to understand as much as possible about how a TV set actually works before we start fiddling with the buttons on the machine. For help with that we don't turn to the experts who create our TV programming. They may hold wonderfully deep wisdom around the broadcasting feed that flows into our sets, but if our TV breaks they can't tell us how to repair it. Likewise, TV repair people may be very good at fixing a broken set, but they have no idea how broadcasting works or which channels we can access from our location.

I therefore believe that if we are to honor the form (not to mention the absolute brilliance!) of this living universe that has created, contains and activates us all, we need to immerse ourselves in both being life and in applying ourselves to understanding more completely who/what we are and why we're here.

If we stubbornly claim we don't need to understand all the buttons and functions on a home power tool in order to skillfully use it, we're bound to miss realizing some of its potential. At the very least it may take us an entire lifetime to become an expert with a particular tool and discover all its hidden capacities. Likewise, if we don't turn on a power tool and diligently practice using it in a safe and controlled environment, the odds increase that the more we assume we know about it because we've studied a manual, the more arrogant we'll be about using it in a way that damages our surroundings or causes injury to others - or to ourselves.

To refuse to more fully explore the tool of human consciousness because our ancestors passed down to us an ancient manual written for a similar tool they used a couple of thousand years ago leaves us reliant on faith that we truly know what we're doing. That's a self-limiting approach, because the human mind - like all other complex technological systems that have developed over time - has made enormous strides in capacity and function. If we fearfully cling to the comfort zone of what we've been told to believe about older, outmoded versions of ourselves, we risk missing out on the greatest advances in human evolution. Science, by shining a light on the mind's physical evolution and mechanical complexity, is helping us recognize that human consciousness - like a modern electric chainsaw - has vastly improved from the time of our great, great, great grandfather's flint axe. Still, as spiritualists so often remind us, oohing and aahing over the "coolness" of new technology, or studying a manual so we gain a better understanding of the chainsaw's many capacities is NOT the same thing as hitting the "on" switch and figuring out how best to cut down a tree.

How we learn is a very interesting topic in itself. For those who are mechanically inclined by nature to work with their hands, picking up a tool and playing with it seems the most efficient way to learn how to use it. They may glance at the manual now and again if a question or two arises; but they learn by subjecting themselves to the physical experience of practice, not by reading or listening to lectures about the process. This path to higher learning is the one taken by all the great sages who have ever lived in our world - those who have fearlessly wielded the tool of Mind to explore the innermost reaches of themselves. These are the early Jewish prophets who - despite their fears - asked searing questions of God; and who received answers that spoke to humanity at its level of understanding at that time. They then shared those answers with the many millions who didn't yet know they had the power to create their own subjective experience of God. This describes Jesus, who - because he sensed the ancient manuals referred to an outmoded version of who and what he believed he had the capacity to become - stepped beyond those texts and plunged into the abyss of the unknown, on a wondrous journey of self-discovery. This also describes the radical subjectivity of Muhammad, the Shamans, the Pagan High Priestesses, Buddha, Krishna, the Vedics, the Sufi mystics.

For others of us, following objective lines of rational inquiry is the way we prefer to learn. Many of us thrive by applying our external senses to what we observe and by determining how a given system functions. These are the great scholars of the world, the scientists and mathematicians who work tirelessly to bring greater clarity to the history, structural evolution and present day workings and functions of this amazing tool of life we've all been gifted. They dissect, explore and reveal the inner workings of the atom and the farthest reaches of accessible space, using tools they've created to expand the limitations of our bodily senses. This describes Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein, along with countless others who have made their contribution to our storehouse of knowledge.

What I believe we're just now collectively coming to realize is that the subjective and the objective are not separate realities at all, nor are they innately hostile modes of realization. They are, in fact, highly complementary ways for us to get at our deepest truths. Our eternally ongoing subjective experience, synthesized with our infinitely expanding objective knowledge, advances the total wisdom of the whole being.

Why, you may be wondering, am I so excited by this line of inquiry? Perhaps it's because I was VERY slow to set out on my own journey of self-discovery. Perhaps I'm not quite as intelligent as some or perhaps I'm a bit more fearful; almost certainly I'd been religiously indoctrinated into believing that I risked entering hell if I left behind the comfort zone of faith into which I'd been birthed. For me to make the journey then, to actually hit the "on" button and begin my self-exploration, I needed to both study the manuals and test the methods that had been espoused by the first Jews and early Christians. I also studied the teachings and explored the practices of Wicca, Shamanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, theoretical physics, biology, evolutionary theory, quantum physics, mathematics, philosophy and so forth. Continually I merged all that information with my personal experiences and explorations, so that along the way I could feel confident I was moving in the right direction. For many years I stumbled about, traversing first this side then that side of the mountain of self-realization, wandering from ancient path to modern path and back across again, until one day (today perhaps!) I suddenly realized I'd created my very OWN path - the perfect trail that has led me to be the beautiful, grateful and loving being I am at this very moment.

Along the way, whenever I felt lost or afraid or beset upon by the demons of my own imaginings, I regularly consulted whichever manuals or sages spoke loudest to me at that particular stage of my inner journey. Eventually I discovered that virtually all the manuals and all the sages - both the ancients and the modern day versions - pointed to the same thing, only from different social, cultural, historical, experiential and rational perspectives. What I especially love about my own journey is that because I have flailed about in ways that have caused me to literally stumble on all of these paths in my struggles up the mountain, I can honor them all for having been there to provide me with a much-needed boost of courage and support whenever I felt too dispirited to continue.

I therefore salute ALL the manual designers and sages from every era and walk of life. It seems to me that - rather than continue to argue over who's produced the most up to date manual or which sage got it "more right" than all the others - we ought not to throw away any of the fruits of all our human efforts. We never know when some poor, lost soul may find something we personally don't feel is important to be exactly what he or she needs to get back on course. May we instead begin to more fully honor our own evolutionary progress by thoughtfully updating our ancient manuals with grace, instead of worshiping them or the tools they describe as the apex of human advancement. May we continue to broaden our trails, to groom and light the many paths that lead the way to human self-realization. May we also begin to more compassionately - instead of through judgment, intimidation or impatience - kindly and lovingly take the hands of those who feel ready to make the journey alongside us. May we also develop the wisdom to redirect those who don't feel called to our path toward other paths that may speak more clearly to their own way of learning.

In this fashion it will continue to get easier for each of us to continue our quest to understand and explore the infinite nature of the eternal "I AM," and to bring back our personal wisdom in greater service to the highest good.

How to Design a Regenerative Social System

2010-10-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

Frankly, despite all the chatter and fears today about the "New World Order" and its concurrent conspiracy theories, I don't happen to believe that the systematic elimination of most of the human race is the conscious mission of our capitalistic/governing system or any of the people in it. While some people seem to believe that a massive human extinction event may be necessary to achieve a new level of social sustainability, I don't believe they actively strive to create that disastrous outcome.

I do believe what we've experienced has been a slow evolution of the entire human species, until we've reached a point where the system we designed initially to serve the needs of a burgeoning, evolving and mentally developing population has become one that we've outgrown. Clearly our "growth at any cost" model no longer serves the needs of a species that has already reached the upper limits of planetary expansion. Like a baby in the womb at the very end of its gestation, we're now confronting the twin challenges caused by the rising need for consumption and the upper limits of vital supportive structures. Even so, our fundamental belief in and emotional attachment to the only system we know remains comfortably ensconced in our collective psyche. Like the proverbial frog in the pot, we humans sit stubbornly in our too-warm water, even as the temperature climbs and our skin begins to burn.

My aim here isn't to tear down our social system. It's to turn down the heat by reframing things so our motivation mirrors our highest priority: to support and honor ALL life forms on our home planet. In a very real sense it's high time we give birth to ourselves as a species, and give our mother planet a much needed break.

The first step will be for us to reach a shared agreement that this IS our highest priority. At the moment we seem to be arguing over whether our highest priority is to preserve and protect our personal selves and our own immediate needs, OR to steward and honor the larger collective so it can meet the needs of its many individuals. What's important to notice is that this sets up either/or choice that triggers a win/lose game. And since we already know that both our individual well being and our community's health are required for our survival, for us to continue to play that game can only lead to destruction no matter who wins. Destroy the mother and we all know that the infant cannot survive, but the mother's desire to nurture her child must not be underestimated here.

To therefore reframe our discussions around the concept of honoring ALL life forms - BOTH in their unique individual capacities and talents AND as larger organic collectives - changes the nature of the game we're playing to a win/win paradigm. Instead of choosing up sides and pitting both crucial elements for our survival against each other in a battle to all our deaths, we honor the truth that supporting the one is how we support the other.

Our next step is to determine how to balance the needs of all individuals with the needs of the many planetary communities we've created. My suggestion is that we do all we can to design and embody a new system that produces new goods and offers new services only in humane, regenerative and thoughtful ways with our primary motivation being what serves and supports all life. Such a society would gift whatever it produces to all its members in such abundance they would be freed from the demands of "make work" and could realize their highest vision of themselves. Fully self-actualized individuals, having been freed from the necessity of earning their daily bread and expending energy in the stressful quest for survival, would then be empowered to gift of their skills and creative abundance into the system that allowed them to flourish and honored their dream of becoming the best they can be. Here we must note that when we love and feel gratitude for our system - be it our family, our community, our nation or our entire universe - to serve it becomes an honor instead of something we resent and try to avoid.

We can begin this social redesign process by forgiving all debts and ending the practice of charging each other money in exchange for the skill sets, talents and energy we have to offer. Just as we don't charge our family members for the work we do in the home, there's no need for us to charge for the labor we do for our greater home, this planet. We'll also need to take inventory of what we've created so far, and notice where the most pressing needs are arising. We can then gather the energy we've free up from the "make work" we're creating to earn our paychecks, and apply it to meeting everyone's basic needs as quickly as possible. That in turn will empower many more of us to contribute even more talent and energy to meeting our future desires. That extra energy will naturally focus itself on designing and producing what needs to be created based on what we collectively aspire to produce. Here it's important to remind ourselves that nature has proven to us over and over again that abundance produces in ever more abundance, while impoverishment only creates more suffering and lack. This means we can't look at this process through our existing lens of lack, which generates fear; but must instead peer through the expanded lens of our desire for greater abundance, which generates hope.

Next we can begin to prioritize our dreams as a species. What DO we want to accomplish for ourselves, and what legacy do we wish to leave for future generations? Do we want to clean up the planetary messes we've made so far? Do we wish to more rapidly advance our technological capacities and eliminate the laborious jobs that nobody likes to do? Do we concentrate on improving infrastructure, converting our systems to renewable energy and designing lower impact dwellings using sustainable energy sources? Do we advance our knowledge of science and expand the arts? Do we focus on educating our children in ways that set free their highest capacities? Do we lovingly hospice our elders in gratitude for all they've done? Do we set our sights on exploring the oceans and thrusting ourselves into the wilds of space?

My suspicion is that if we get it right we can do ALL these things, and more. What seems to be required of us here is a shift in human awareness. We each need to begin to trust what we already know - that collaborating with each other makes more sense and benefits us all far more than does competing, fighting and destroying one another. We need to look inside ourselves and honor the fact that we are personally hardwired at birth to want to be more, do more, know more and love more, and that the only reason we've fallen short is that we haven't yet built a society that nourishes our desires to full fruition. We must begin to accept the fact that we don't need to prod each other any more than we ourselves wish to be prodded into working though forced labor contracts and the imposition of bills and emotional stressors. We must accept the truth that just as we ourselves function much better when we come from a place of love and feel joy for our work, so do others. We also need to embrace the fact that just as we don't necessarily what everyone else has or wish to do all the same things as everyone else, not everybody is going to want what we have or choose to do what we do. Because we're all so amazingly, uniquely different in our desires there will always be enough to go around.

It helps to note that it feels much better to live and behave this way toward our fellow man, so that's a gentle hint from the Cosmic Mind that holds and supports us all.

Getting to Zero

2010-10-02T07:51:00.001-07:00

My dear friend Makasha is one of the permanent residents at Hummingbird Ranch, the intentional community where I'm spending the week in spiritual retreat. This morning, as I was walking through the community's five hundred acres of pristine mountain wilderness, feeling the first rays of the morning sun warm my face and tapping into the sounds of the nearby bubbling stream, I contemplated the meaning behind one of Makasha's favorite phrases, "getting to zero."

It occurred to me that whenever we're headed in the wrong direction, the first thing we need to do is cease going forward before we can even begin to consider turning around. That's what Makasha means when he speaks of the importance of getting to zero. When we grant ourselves the time to be still we find ourselves in position to select a brand new action from a whole range of possibilities; possibilities that aren't open to us when we're focused too intently on forging ahead.

It also occurred to me that perhaps what modern society needs most at this point in time is to rest for even a short while at its own zero point. For some time now we've been rushing forward in a highly focused manner: exploring, expanding, designing, competing and creating new products and processes. While our inclination may be to continue to forge ahead because stopping might feel a lot like admitting defeat, what we seem to be missing out on is a crucial opportunity to evaluate what we're doing, how we're doing it, and - most importantly - why.

What we're invested in these days isn't so much the stock market, or the housing market or even the consumer marketplace. What we're invested in is maintaining the structure and integrity of our basic social system - whatever that structure looks like and no matter which culture we're in. Every adult alive today has already invested a tremendous amount of personal energy learning about, adopting and adhering to our many shared social agreements. To therefore drop the agreements that no longer serve us can feel threatening to our sense of who we are. Those who have succeeded within the system feel they've earned the right to profit from their efforts. They also tend to blame those for whom the system isn't working for their inability to succeed. Likewise, those for whom the system isn't working still hope to find some way to make it work, and blame those for whom it is working for creating problems that make it hard for them to succeed.

Order - even the kind that is destructive and causes suffering to the human spirit - feels comfortable, because it's known. To accept responsibility for the chaos that may ensue, knowing full well the risks we may be taking by stepping into the abyss of the unknown can be terrifying.

But is it any more terrifying than plunging heedlessly forward when we haven't stopped to consider whether we're headed for nirvana or disaster? If the system we're invested in, the beliefs we've been trained to accept without question and the rules we've been taught to obey cause harm to life, isn't the more reasonable choice to practice moral disobedience? For instance, since we have literally millions of foreclosed homes and empty hotels in this nation, why are we still embracing the belief that just because someone can't afford to pay for shelter they don't deserve a safe place to sleep at night? Why, when thirty percent of the world is either overweight or grossly obese, are we still clinging to the belief that because people can't pay for food they have to to starve? Why, when our oceans and lakes and streams and rivers are choking from pollution and overfishing, are we still shrugging our shoulders and accepting that it's just the way it is, the unavoidable result of for-profit enterprises? Why are we content to watch the destruction of delicate ecosystems, species being driven to extinction, our air fouled, our topsoil eroded and our resources consumed to the point of vanishing, and call that "business as usual?"

Insanity has often been defined as doing more of the same thing and expecting different results. The only way out of insanity then, is to first STOP doing more of the same thing. Getting to zero therefore becomes the first sane step toward reversing any state of affairs when that state of affairs is detrimental to our health, our emotions and our spiritual well-being.

The nice thing about getting to zero is that it doesn't require immediate (fearful or reactive) decision making around what we need to do next. By definition, zero is the still point, the silence, the state of inaction out of which intelligent choices and creative new responses are free to begin to emerge. That very stillness allows for the rising of an intelligence far greater than what is available for us to draw upon when our panicked mind has begun to doubt its own capacities or our body - frightened for its very survival - reacts out of instinct. When accessing that deeper dimension some people call it the heart centered choice, others call it tapping into intuition; but whatever we call it we all know that when we shut down our internal chatter, take a few deep breaths and stop to notice - genuinely notice - what's going on all around us our receptive apertures open wide enough to gather the necessary input to enable us to make much wiser and emotionally satisfying choices.

Some people have died of hypothermia in the wilderness while carrying a pack of matches in their pockets. Others have gotten lost and pushed themselves deeper into the wild instead of waiting for help to arrive. What all such people had in common was a fatal inability to "get to zero." For whatever reason they stubbornly clung to beliefs that didn't serve them, and acted them out. We can learn much from these cautionary tales, or we can collectively act them out on a larger scale. My suggestion is that we take a lesson from my very wise friend Makasha, and grant ourselves the gift of time to rethink what we're doing and why.

Universe-Project: From Polarity to Harmony: The Win/Win Way Through

2010-09-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

Universe-Project: From Polarity to Harmony: The Win/Win Way Through: "I'm noticing how polarized humanity seems these days, across virtually all aspects of human life. Meanwhile, our challenges grow more pressi..."

From Polarity to Harmony: The Win/Win Way Through

2010-09-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

I'm noticing how polarized humanity seems these days, across virtually all aspects of human life. Meanwhile, our challenges grow more pressing every day. That's generating more fear, along with a greater willingness to implement new ideas. While it doesn't seem we have a shortage of new ideas, we do seem to be lacking any that offer a new solution. Instead, we're proposing more radicalized versions of the same old, tired solutions we've already tried and that haven't worked before.

An either/or approach to anything sets up a win/lose game. And when faced with a win/lose challenge, humanity's position (because we can be VERY stubborn creatures where our competing values and beliefs are concerned!) is to dig in our heels and fight to win the battle for our side, no matter the cost. While there are shades of gray in this present battle and nuances involved in every issue, when we distill down the fight to its fundamental polarity, the essence of it is an all out, no holds barred ideological war between the "no self other than god" camp and the "self is all there is" camp - which, ironically, will collectively leave us with a sense of loss no matter which side wins.

The question we must ask ourselves before this battle progresses much further is this: might we be fighting so strenuously because there are relative aspects of truth to BOTH these sides? What if the deeper truth is we are a both/and species, living in a both/and world? Might there truly BE a unified field that is indeed greater than us all (a higher cosmic intelligence, if you will) AND an existential material reality that is urging us, as uniquely individuated expressions, to be more, do more and know more as we intelligently evolve?

Having "tried on" that theory to see how it fits, I've been delighted to find that a great deal of peace, joy and opportunity for higher self-expression and self-actualization has arisen as I've deepened into the experience of myself as both/and being. As an individuated being, I have increasingly come to know myself as a highly creative, loving and talented person. That awareness feels both marvelous and joyful - when I direct my creative energy in service to other people, and encourage them to express their own genius in service to others as well. It feels awful - because it creates in me a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety - if I use my gifts to enrich myself at the expense of others. Knowing myself to be an inextricable part of a unified field has helped me understand why life works that way.

What I've come to believe we're being called to do as a species, as well as to personally experience and integrate at this stage of our evolution, is to SYNTHESIZE two apparent polarities: the cosmos as "all thing" and the cosmos as "no thing." All-thing (a material expression) and No-thing (a non-material field of infinite potential) are not competing truths or realities. Together they form a unified system; one that creatively self-expresses as an ever-changing collection of unique forms. It seems likely that what we are in fact part of is an infinite field of ideas, feelings and perspectives, eternally expressing and perfecting itself through its creative use of form and self-perception. That field both objectively experiences and subjectively knows itself as something greater than the simple sum of its parts across space and time.

That lives; therefore we live.

Interestingly enough, any simple study of biology teaches us that for any organism to thrive, no matter its size or complexity, the whole must be greater than the sum of its many parts. Otherwise there would be no reason for those previously independent units, which were already wholes unto themselves, to form a larger unit and dedicate part of their energy to the maintenance and support of that larger structure. Each one of us is an amazing example of how such smaller unique wholes (in the form of the 100,000,000,000 cells in your own body) come together to create a living human being, which - because we have been gifted the power of self-awareness - we KNOW without any doubt is greater than the simple sum of its many cellular parts.

If we apply this objectively experienced and subjectively known truth to the universe that created and contains us all, it becomes apparent that everything is based on that one fundamental principal. Everywhere we turn, we find smaller wholes that have come together to create something finer than a simple addition of parts. If that's true for a water molecule, a rock, an orchid, a beaver, a person and a planet, why wouldn't it also be true for the cosmos that in turn contains all these things, including us?

What's amazing is that this rational (mind-based explanation) yet gnostic (able to be experienced) synthesis of the all-thing and the no-thing, when embraced as the truth about ourselves and applied to all else, generates enough energy to resolve all our current conflicts by moving us not to one side or the other of the self versus no-self battlefield, but by transporting us beyond that battlefield to a brand new playground ripe with possibilities.

Once we accept there is truth on both sides of the debate, and that neither was ever entirely right or wrong, we understand the only way for this war to end well for any of us is for us all to fuse the two half-truths into a much grander understanding of life, out of which solutions to our challenges will naturally emerge.

For example, the bitter political debate we're engaged in exposes the fundamental conflict between a form of collective (no-self) totalitarianism - appearing in its benevolent form as a disempowering nanny socialist state, and in its malevolent form as a murderously fear-based fascist state; and a form of supreme individual (all-self) chaos - appearing in its benevolent state as an inequitable and socially irresponsible libertarianism, and in its malevolent state as destructive and deadly anarchy. While each side has been promoting the most benevolent form of its preferred system for quite some time, what we're most likely to end up with, presuming this war continues unabated, is the most malevolent form of one or the other. That's because all attempts at compromise will be overrun by increasing violence and fear, creating an environment that sets people up to embrace the extremes for the sake of simple survival.

Any of the approaches outlined above generate a few positives and a whole host of problems for humanity down the line, because they are all half-systems. Since problems expand over time unless they're corrected, embracing a half-system will inevitably trigger a need for us to either legislate away personal freedoms over time through some form of externally imposed governance (a shift toward totalitarianism) or to forcibly overturn the collective half by force to provide more personal freedom (a shift toward chaos.)

The fact is, we've already seen all four of these models in action, yet none has managed to succeed well enough to convince its own citizens it's the ultimate social solution. If none can convince a majority of their own citizens they work, they surely won't be successful in convincing others to adopt their ideology over the long haul. Additionally, what we're just now learning is that tweaking a model that has already failed at its core only causes that model to fail in a different fashion, but in a more spectacular way because the tweaking keeps it afloat for a longer time.

We can synthesize our political polarities by acknowledging that an individual can't thrive without belonging to a healthy collective that offers ALL its members - no matter the circumstances of their birth or their physical gifts, challenges or intellect - a wide open pathway to self-fulfillment and joy. Nor can we create a healthy collective unless a majority of its members are healthy, self-actualized and willing to contribute some reasonable amount of time and energy to the support and ongoing nourishment of the collective.

Combining the needs of the individual with the needs of the collective is what's required to develop a whole-system model. While modern culture has, over time, left behind the old economic models in which a person was either born into wealth or poverty and basically stayed there forever (peerage and caste systems) the new paths to success we've created have been mainly offered to the children of the wealthy, members of the social majority and the most enterprising and talented spirits born among us. The paths to success narrow considerably for poor and middle class children, the culturally or racially disenfranchised and those born with mental, emotional or physical challenges. They disappear almost entirely for those who have the great misfortune to be born under violent totalitarian regimes or in desperately poor nations that lack infrastructure.

Even when these pathways DO lead a person to success - as they often do for the children of the wealthy and the middle class - they typically end before most children self-actualize. Our capitalistic system is designed to train us how to become adequate enough to enter the economic workplace and do okay in life. It doesn't encourage each of us to discover his or her own inner genius and nurture that to fruition, because our present half-system, which promotes the individual and neglects the larger collective has already grown so impoverished it needs the merely adequate energy of most of the able-bodied just to survive. To convince young people to cease aiming for self-actualization, we reward their bare bones development by training them to leverage adequacy to serve themselves and their family first, their close friends and the community second, and the larger society last - if they serve it at all. What we've failed to do is set any expectation that people have an ethical responsibility to gift of themselves back to the society that enabled them to achieve some measure of success. Perhaps that's because when we stunt a tree by starving it or forcing it to mature before its time, the limited fruit it produces won't be nearly enough to feed the animal kingdom.

That capitalistic nations don't ethically guide citizens toward serving the larger collective, combined with the way they reward selfishness, duplicity and greed, leads to a concentration of wealth in the hands of those few who manage to fully leverage their personal talents. The wealthy then hoard their money to protect themselves and to ensure a comfortable future for their offspring. Hoarding creates scarcity, which chokes off the pathways to success for the multitudes. That reduces the odds that our society as a whole will thrive. When only a few in a living system are happy while the majority are miserable, the system - as we know from biology - must either transform or collapse.

The global economic suffering we're observing today is symptomatic of the fact that a majority of people feel disenfranchised by their present system, which explains why they don't like to vote and don't want to pay taxes. In the West, that's the result of systems that originally placed too much emphasis on individuation and material success, and not enough on creating a healthy, sustainable society out of which enlightened, self-actualized people can consistently emerge.

The opposite approach, a system that inhibits personal self-actualization for the sake of the collective leads to totalitarianism applied through militarily enforced socialism, fascism and oppressive theocracies. We've witnessed how those forms of governance decimate free thought, hinder the exchange of knowledge and destroy artistic creativity. Enslaved people can't be stripped of their ability to think or imagine because that's an inherent aspect of human nature. Instead they must be made to fear using their innate abilities. That's because any capacity to imagine radical new ways of being and doing makes people dangerous to a state that depends on conformity for its survival. When imagination and freedom are suppressed too long however, the society loses its capacity to innovate, which means it can't address new challenges. The collapse of the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes testifies to the cancerous nature of a system that subverts individuation.

When we grasp that to date all our competing systems have been only half a design, it's becomes apparent that this endless war between the supporters of self-annihilation and the proponents of unfettered self-interest can't solve humanity's problems, no matter who wins. What's called for is a collective awakening to the realization that we are a both/and species, living in a both/and world. We are, by nature, imaginative, creative and unique life expressions, operating within a grander unified field; one whose abundance we are entitled to freely and fully draw upon in order to awaken our individual genius. Because we are entitled to draw upon its abundance, we are also beholden to gratefully pledge to it the excess fruits of our genius if we hope to thrive in a place of peace and prosperity.

That we've never before implemented a whole systems approach which supports the freedom of the individual while at the same time fostering our individual commitment to serve the unified field - and thus serve ourselves - is GOOD news! It points us in a radical new direction and offers a vision of what we might become if a majority (or even a large minority) of us discover the joy of becoming fully ourselves and then direct all our unleashed genius toward making life better for everyone and everything else around us - because that includes and benefits us over time.

The spiritual underpinning for all of this, the groundswell pulse of energy that is urging us to transform our failing economies, our governments, our educational systems, our judicial systems, our religious institutions and the way we interface with our planet and all other life forms, is flowing into humanity now in the form of a cosmic invitation to evolve. We're each being pressed by life itself to discover, hone and express ourselves as a beautifully unique note; then to express that note in human harmony. Achieve that, and what will be asked of us next is to play humanity's harmonic in concert with the rest of the living orchestra, in a way that renders the whole cosmic symphony grander and more beautiful than it was when we were playing out of tune in search of ourselves.

I, for one, can hardly wait to hear the melody.

Embracing The Heart/Mind/Body Connection

2010-09-14T19:07:00.000-07:00

Duality seems to be the greatest challenge humanity is facing at this stage of our evolution. Whatever side of whichever fence we presently find ourselves on, what we can all agree upon is that we're collectively suffering from paralysis caused by our conflicting approaches to governmental power; our ongoing social clashes between men and women; our disagreements over what's profitable for individuals versus what's beneficial for life; our raging conflicts between what our minds want to explore versus what's healthy for our planet to experience; our wars over which religion is supporting the "truest" God...and so on down the line of our disagreements.

What is it about duality, we must therefore ask ourselves, that causes us to experience so much social dissonance? Certainly if everyone in the world felt, thought and acted exactly the same as everyone else we'd have far fewer battles and problems to resolve. Yet we don't all view life from a singular perspective, nor do we wish to, although we've all sprung from a singular source. So why are we experiencing these polarizing struggles, why all the pain and suffering we're going through as a species?

Duality, we're learning, can be destructive. At one time or another we've all joined or identified with a particular group and embraced its ideology, which in turn may have led us to fear the members of an opposing group. If we're Christians, we identify with the teachings and stories of Jesus Christ, which causes us to grow suspicious of those who don't embrace Jesus as the son of God. If we're Muslim, we identify with the teachings and writings of the Prophet Muhammed, which causes us to grow suspicious of those who don't embrace Muhammed's teachings. Two different ideologies, two belief systems, two seemingly intractable views on life and how it should be led by human beings. Is there any way through this tangled web that can leave both sides satisfied, both intact, both free to self-express without fear of oppression?

Whenever we're dealing with two opposing sides, the ability to solve a problem depends on both sides agreeing to a single shared solution. When those two sides are naturally divided both by philosophy and by approach, a disagreement more often than not leads to a no/no or a yes/no failure to agree than it does to a yes/yes agreement on a mutually satisfying solution. Consider how the Republicans and Democrats are approaching our political and economic challenges these days, and you'll recognize the controlling power of "no." The ability of the naysayers to stall any attempt - even by those in the majority - to solve a problem means that at least two-thirds of the time we can expect to fail to resolve our conflicts. The likelihood of any conflict that stems from human behavior resolving itself is quite small, while the likelihood it will worsen if we do nothing is substantial. Entrenched duality systems therefore create recipes for social disaster, as fewer and fewer human conflicts get resolved and more and more conflicts worsen in severity.

We're only just now experiencing the consequences of many years of duality thoughts and behaviors. The planet itself is letting us know that duality is not the right format for us to follow, because our problems are worsening even as our interpersonal conflicts grow more acute. So if duality isn't the answer we'd hoped for, what is?

All I have to go by, when proposing a social solution to this challenge, is my own internal experience of duality and how I resolved it. For years I suffered from painful experiences of dissonance between the inner workings of my own mind and the emotional responses of my physical body. At times it felt like a war was raging inside me. My body, speaking the primary language it knows, tended to constrict around my unconventional thoughts, sending signals of danger, fear and anxiety to my brain. Meanwhile my mind, speaking the primary language it knows, angrily disparaged my body's painful intrusions into the passionate explorations of what it considered to be important personal questions. Only recently have I discovered a way to move beyond that mutual hostility, to empower my mind to feel free to explore appropriate questions while encouraging my body to relax and trust that my mind won't push it in a dangerous direction that will threaten its future existence.

The solution, I've discovered, is not to forcefully try to unify my mind and body - either by getting angry with my mind for exploring perturbing thoughts, or by growing frustrated with my body for feeling the legitimate emotions that arise. Both of those methods have proven counterproductive. If I chastise myself for having negative thoughts, my internal lecturing only increases the number of negative, judgmental thoughts I begin to think. If I grow angry or fearful because my body is expressing fear and anxiety, that only increases the level of fear and anxiety I experience. Clearly then, increasing the power of something doesn't make it go away!

The process that lately seems to be working is to invite a third party - my heart's loving energy - into each dissonant conversation that takes place between my body and my mind. When I invite my heart into the mix and create a "trialogue," what I discover is the gridlock caused by polarity collapses. My heart, by virtue of its intrinsically loving nature (which is its primary language) holds the power to bring a healing, trusting energy to the battlefield where previously my body and mind were engaged in their war of wills. On the field of love, true synergy becomes possible. My heart sends waves of love and gratitude through my body for all its support, which immediately relaxes my body. It simultaneously sends waves of loving, heartfelt appreciation to my mind for all of its efforts, which shifts my thoughts from the negative to a happier energetic.

It isn't as if my heart takes sides or votes with one or the other; the experience goes a good deal deeper than that. My heart, simply by changing the tone of the inner debate that has been raging, raises the level of exchange beyond what feels good to the body versus what sounds right to the mind to what feels loving and supportive of that which they both are - life itself. On that level, love renders moot the delusion that there are differences between my mind's objectives and those of my physical body. When my body trusts that my mind's work is being done out of love for life, and when my mind trusts that my body's responses are offered out of love for life, they quickly realign themselves and begin to work together to address whatever challenge I am facing. Gradually my mind has been learning to pay closer attention to my body's responses, and to move slower and more gently through its thoughts. Likewise, my body has been learning to relax and allow my mind the necessary space and freedom to explore disconcerting ideas so it can find a way to resolve its own deep questions. The key to success seems to be maintaining an inner vigilance so that I notice when the dissonance first begins. That way I can quickly call upon my heart to intervene as the tension starts to rise, before the inner war takes over and causes more suffering.

I suspect this simple learning process that's been taking place within me is an illustration of what humanity has the potential to create on a much broader social scale. We can continue to focus on our surface differences, concentrate on our fears and suspicions, feed our mistrust and perceive "the other" as speaking a foreign language we don't understand. In doing so, we add power to those feelings and make more real the prospect we won't be able to solve our shared social problems. Or we can, by changing the context in which we perceive our problems, move beyond the duality of "us versus them" to a trialogue systems approach to problem solving. When we open our hearts and go beyond our fears for our physical safety, our competing mental ideologies, our cultural clashes and our external sexual differences, what we find - on the field of love - is that we are all unique and fractal creations of life itself. In life we are unified, and as life we can embrace, without a doubt, that what is good for one of us is good for us all. To begin to create solutions that emerge from love's field, rather than from where we presently stand entrenched in our mental and physical differences, makes it far more likely we will reach a yes/yes solution supportive of life.

And isn't life, when we get right down to it, what we're all here to be and do and know? Without life, and without love, what does any of what we think or do actually mean? To start there then - to perceive love as our shared compass and view life as our shared experience - allows for the emergence of a solution in which we can trust. How life unfolds may be a continual mystery, but the vision we hold of where we're going grows clearer when lit by love. When we love life in all its infinite forms and many creative expressions, there is no challenge we can't rise above.

No Self? No Problem!

2010-09-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when we notice others receiving public accolades for all their hard work, we feel slighted that we too have not been noticed or fully appreciated by a larger audience for our own good works and personal contributions. We want to feel the power of that same limelight under which we see our own heroes basking, and experience the same public gratitude for the amount of energy we're expending on behalf of other people. It doesn't seem "fair" that one person should suddenly be elevated to the status of public hero when we ourselves are working just as hard as they are to do the right thing, yet nobody's noticed our efforts.

The human ego (the mind-based sense of self) seems to endlessly crave external validation. It needs constant affirmation that it's done the right thing or is better at what it does than everyone else. When it doesn't get enough positive feedback the ego starts to feel deflated, even angry that the rest of the world hasn't noticed or honored its true worth. Occasionally an ego grows so enraged over being ignored that it lashes out at the world and inflicts incredible violence and suffering on innocent people.

The need for external validation is what drives much of human behavior - both the constructive and the destructive kind. For many of us, that need springs in part from having been raised in religious faiths that taught us from an early age we were inherently unworthy. The message behind original sin that many children internalize is that they were born bad, and that their sin can only be washed away by someone in a position of authority. According to most Christian traditions, nothing a person can do in this life has the power to absolve his or her sinfulness and bestow the grace of forgiveness. Absolution from sin requires the approval of an appointed external source. The disempowering nature of that belief and its deleterious effect on the ego's capacity to love and heal itself (and by extension, others) cannot be overstated.

Traditional religions focus intensely on the evils of sin and the hedonism of fleshly pleasures, potential temptations by Satan and the risk to our immortal soul if we fail to follow the dogmatic rules of our faith. That too places a tremendous amount of stress on the human ego. On some level the ego knows it can't possibly make the ideal choice in every situation, because often it can't know beforehand which was the right choice until after it's learned a lesson from its own mistakes. The unspoken, mostly unconscious, but ever-present suspicion that the ego may inadvertently make a bad choice that could cost the immortal soul a ticket to heaven leads to an anxious, fearful ego that doesn't dare trust its own judgment - especially considering it's already been taught it can never be good enough. So the ego turns to others to soothe it and make it feel better about itself, to affirm that it's okay, is doing well and is deserving of reward. It's like a well that can only be filled from the outside instead of filling up from within. Such a well is in constant danger of running dry, and its lack of inner abundance inhibits its capacity to give.

How tragic are the consequences of such religious teachings. How painful they are for the ego to bear, and how much suffering they've caused to humanity over the eons. To end that suffering, to eliminate the pain and doubt and lack of trust in our own capacities is therefore a challenge worth tackling, because what it does for us personally - and by extension for all of humanity - is free us from the misery of fear. Self-validation and renewed self-confidence enables us to step into the fullness of our own perfection so we can learn to love ourselves just as we are.

The ego (mind-self) that has been taught to fear and even loathe itself for its many presumed imperfections has been lied to on multiple levels by society. Perhaps such teachings were initially designed to coerce people into doing the right thing, but what's become clear over time is that we humans respond much better to love and appreciation than to fear and intimidation. The truth is, the ego-mind that so fears it may err and cause the soul to be damned forever is but a temporary manifestation of a physical human body, and it will dissolve - along with all its thoughts, fears and beliefs - when the body dissolves. What remains after death then is not a mind-based, thinking entity at all, but pure awareness itself - the god-stuff that flows through every one of us. That god-stuff cannot be eternally damned, because it is not a separated self that can be isolated or punished by itself in any way. It's an integral part of the totality that IS the cosmic consciousness we sometimes refer to as God.

There IS no separate self after death; no entity who will see, feel, taste, touch or smell the world around it once the body dies. Such sensory qualities are pointless without the need for such sensory input to help a material body navigate the larger world. Instead, like air that was once temporarily trapped inside a soap bubble, when we die our human awareness will expand back into the vastness of everything that has always existed beyond our tiny, temporary personalized sense of self.

Every soap bubble is a beautiful manifestation in its own right, a brief wondrous creation in space and time. So too are each of us wondrous creations, gifted with the ability to be and do marvelous things during our temporary human lifetimes. To therefore become the most beautiful version of ourselves that we can imagine ourselves becoming, without fearing that how we choose to be or what we may choose to experience has the power to destroy the essence of who we are, is spiritual freedom. We are NOT our bodies, our senses, our thoughts, our fears or even our life experiences and stories. We are the witnessing presence within these human forms that are our bodies. When one day our own bubble bursts and the experience of being a human ends for us, as it inevitably must, our experience of being a separate human "self," which was in fact a mind-based exercise, will end along with it.

What this means for us, on a deeper level, is that cosmic awareness (what we call God) is like the air in which all soap bubbles briefly float. A wisp of that cosmic awareness exists within each one of us. That wisp will someday be reunited with all the other wisps of awareness that are presently contained by those we have loved - and those we have wronged - in our lifetimes. Let us therefore resolve to unconditionally love ourselves and do our best to love each other more deeply and fully during the brief amount of time we have to practice loving each other - because everyone we encounter in life is only ourself in a temporary disguise.

The self of the mind is an illusion created by thought. The only self that truly exists is the ONE awareness that lives within us all. And it is divinely perfect already, deserving of our love and gratitude as it explores its own infinite potential for the benefit of all the many wisps of awareness that are manifesting in this field of creation it has designed. The more we embrace that truth and learn to validate and love ourselves, the more love we have to send out to the rest of life.

Rebalancing our Masculine and Femine Energies

2010-08-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

Lately it's becoming clearer to me that the work our society most desperately needs done - work for which not nearly enough paying jobs exist - is work that has traditionally been performed by women in the home. The reason behind the pay disparity for our respective roles, when we look at it logically, is clear. Since men designed our modern economic system, and since masculine energy and values have dominated most of human society for several millenia now, all things traditionally feminine have been neglected, ignored or relegated to a lower status than what has typically been viewed as the purview of the male. I don't believe this was intentional so much as accidental; men simply didn't think about the value of what women do when they designed our modern Western society.

For instance, our entire planet today is in dire need of a good spring cleaning, given the messes we've been making for such a long time. We've got whole plastic islands floating in our oceans, scorched earth where beautiful trees used to grow, filthy, stagnant waters where once clean rivers flowed and mounds of garbage stacking up in our planetary corners. Additionally, many other species with whom we share space are going extinct because no one is caring for or about their needs. In a well run home, it traditionally has been the women who take care of the pets, clean up the house and make sure things are in order. Because we don't pay women to do such "unproductive" work, by extension we haven't figured out how to pay business to do it either.

Basic home maintenance has also been neglected in our society, which is why our roads are crumbling, our water delivery systems are failing and our energy systems have become inadequate. Additionally, our limited natural resources are not being equitably divided, so many of us are going hungry and dying every night. How often does that happen in a well-run home? A loving mother feeds all her family members, and she doesn't permit the men to hoard the food. For countless centuries it was also the woman (along with the older children) who forged paths to the river each day to fetch the water and wood for the fireplace, tasks which today still fall on women in places that have not yet industrialized. Such tasks have long been taken for granted by men, who were either out hunting or farming and weren't present to witness the energy expended by their women to keep the home running, so the assumption that somehow those tasks will continue to "magically" get done persists in society.

We can also look to the sorry state of education, health and elder care for more insights. Raising, teaching and nurturing our children to reach their highest capacity has long been the province of women in the home. Caring for the sick too has been a feminine role. Though medicine men sometimes provided the necessary cure, it was the women who nursed the patient back to health. With our elders it has usually been the daughters who have reached out to care for their parents in their old age, and who have lovingly hospiced them to the end of life.

The challenge we humans face today is to accept the fact that this world we've primarily structured around masculine energy, competition, domination, power, productivity and control is NOT a whole system. It is an unbalanced half-world, one in which the softer qualities of love, compassion, kindness, nurturing and cooperation are not being valued. Yet we know, as members of our own families within our private homes, that for any of us to thrive we must first create a stable, loving, orderly environment out of which to successfully operate.

How do we begin to place appropriate value on feminine traits when they don't create marketable products, only environments (wombs) out of which success is birthed? Feminine energy clearly isn't as easily measured as are masculine enterprises, because feminine energy is hidden, obscure and internal while masculine energy is forceful, projected and highly visible. I suspect the shift in our awareness will come when we collectively embrace the fact that each of us contains both of these so-called "masculine" and "feminine" energies, and that we need to honor them both to thrive and feel whole.

Interestingly enough, many women today are growing more and more "masculinized" and are stepping into roles that have traditionally been held by men. Many men too, are discovering the joy and beauty that is their feminine side. As this trend toward greater internal balance continues, it will become ever more apparent to us all that we can't continue to do "business as usual" from an economic standpoint, because our economy - at least the way we've designed it - doesn't support the maintenance and care of a beautiful,loving home environment from which our species can continue to successfully create and thrive.

Our present options seem to be to incorporate the feminine aspects of home, hearth and community maintenance into our current male-dominated business model - most likely through increased taxation on masculine productivity - so we can afford to pay people well to perform our traditionally feminine tasks; OR we can change the way we're operating so that none of us get paid to do chores because everyone performs their chosen work out of love for and a sense of responsibility to our larger human family.

Is there a both/and solution to this dilemma? Can we incorporate a love for our planetary womb and a deep appreciation for all life forms - including children, the infirm and the elderly - into our present paradigm, still maintaining a for-profit economic system? I simply don't know. What I can say is that for us to make it through the current spate of crises that we face, we need to design a whole systems social order where everyone benefits from - and contributes fully to - the beautiful world we choose to build and share.

I Am

2010-08-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

I am everything that is...I am cloud and rain and earth and tree and flower. I am every fruit I have ever tasted, I am water and fowl and sheep and cattle and lamb. I am forged in the stars, I am sunlight and heat, I am wind and the slow, chill movement of icy glaciers. I am fish and bird and dinosaur...I am Jewish holocaust victim and the one who tormented and killed those innocents. I am crusader, I am warrior, I am heathen and lover of language...I am Jesus, nailed to the cross, and I am those who wielded the hammers that caused such pain. I am Vlad the Impaler and I am Buddha, who sits and smiles because the truth has chosen to make itself known. I am rocks and mountains and sand and oil and the effervescent sheen of a morning rainbow. I am ALL of the ALL; which means I am nothing special, yet everything true.

Every atom within my body is truly non-human. They have gathered together in a playful dance to temporarily sing me into existence. They carry within them the memories of all that has come before me; they hold in their infinite centers the dark, inspiring tales of life in all its mad glory. Death, love, sorrow, bliss...the eternal pleasures and sufferings of a thousand billion trillion infinite moments...all these are etched in atomic electrons that carve their immutable truths into my soul. Whatever I think I know, I know much more than I believe.

My umbilical cord to my mother is the every breath I take - it connects me to this world that holds and loves me. My exhales are a gift to my mother, an energetic offering that feeds my brothers and sisters in this world. Every beat of my heart, every thought in my head, every feeling and sensory perception I have does not belong to ME. It belongs to this world, through which I am temporarily passing in the form I label as "me." I am the gift that keeps on giving unto infinity and beyond, the miracle of the essence of life itself. I have no beginning, no end and no destination.

I AM the journey.

Walk with me?

Personal Improvement Action Steps To Create a Better World

2010-07-22T10:10:00.000-07:00

Whenever I talk about Sacred Economics people often respond by asking me what they can personally DO to change our society. It's a common frustration. Intuitively we're coming to realize we're stuck in a social system that doesn't support an adult approach to life, because it was created by a juvenile species. As a structure designed by adolescents to control the wayward behavior of other adolescents, our system fosters continued adolescent behavior: self-consciousness, self-absorption, alienation, competition, fear that we're not "good enough," judgment, cliquishness and group-think, rebellion, aggression, short-term gratification, unfettered growth and consumption, a need for external validation and a tendency toward self-destructiveness.

While changing "the system" is an impossible task for any single person to accomplish, what we can each begin to change, one person at a time, is our unconscious practice of adolescent behaviors. We can change those patterns by noticing where we are acting like juveniles and - without blaming ourselves for being what our society has programmed us to be - stretching toward our personal adulthood. What we're seeking to attain by doing so are higher degrees of self-governance, self-discipline, self-awareness and yes...self-love.

Adolescence sucks. Ask anyone who's been through it and come out the other side, and the almost unanimous opinion is they'd rather have their teeth pulled without anesthesia than go through it over again. Yet here we are, called upon by life itself to go through it again collectively, and emerge as a fledgling adult human species. Since we already know how good it feels to get adolescence over with, why not start now?

In that spirit, I'm attaching my practical self-guide for stepping into my own adulthood, in the hope it may provide some concrete ideas for how we can collectively begin to make this transition. Feel free to add any new ideas or practices of your own, and embrace only those that resonate with you.

Daily Practices:

1. Upon waking, offer joyful gratitude to life for the opportunity it’s gifted me to be in this world one more day.

2. When preparing meals, ask myself if the food I’m choosing best serves my cells and body, so they can serve me.

3. When greeting other people, notice – REALLY notice – who they are (instead of what they’re doing) and honor their inner aliveness.

4. When doing my chores, stay focused on the task at hand and place all my attention on what I am doing instead of distracting myself by thinking about other things.

5. Turn off the television. Read books that sing to my heart and soul, spend time in nature and pay attention to the non-human life that is going on all around me. When I do choose to watch TV, choose programs that enlighten me, inspire me, are supportive of life or bring me deep enjoyment.

6. When confronted by a challenge, slow down. Breathe deeply and do not take personally whatever is happening. Every challenge presents an opportunity for me to transform a disagreement or misunderstanding into love. Respond from a place of compassion when I feel ready.

7. If I find myself around people who feel compelled to measure, judge and compare others, be silent. Walk away…or if I must speak, comment only on how amazing, gifted and infinitely complex each one of us truly is.

8. Pay close attention to my body’s signals. If it feels tired, give it rest. If it craves exercise, take it outside for a walk. If it feels hungry, nourish it. If it feels “bored” shift my attention to the complexity and activities happening in my surroundings, or change my surroundings to place my body at ease.

9. Notice my daily habits and static patterns of behavior. Am I doing things because that’s the way I’ve always done them, or am I doing things because the way I do them makes sense? Focus on changing any habits I could do better or more efficiently.

10. Be kind to myself throughout the day. Remember to enjoy the sense of a task well done, to reward myself with the occasional joy or treat after completing something hard, and take frequent time-outs to appreciate the beauty and miracles of life.

11. Stay in the moment. Practice calmness and serenity whenever I encounter people, images or stories that try to push my attention into the future or drive it into the past. Remind myself I have no power in either of those places. Steward my energy accordingly. Anger and fear diminish my ability to respond from a state of complete awareness, so notice them if they arise and allow them to subside before I respond.

12. When I’m ready to go to sleep at night, take a moment to look back on the day’s experiences and accomplishments. Remind myself that today I’ve brought a bit more love into the world than was here the day before. Be satisfied with that knowing. If today is to be my last day of life, remind myself how very good it was.

Longer Term Practices

1. Pay attention to how we’re all relating to each other. If I am presented with an opportunity to demonstrate what it feels like to give more than I take, then do so. If I find myself in a situation where someone asks for my help, offer it without requiring anything in return. Know that whatever assistance I can offer them will enable them to assist others in the long run, which is good for me.

2. Notice my spending and consumption habits and patterns. Am I buying and using things because that’s the way I’ve always done it, or am I being thoughtful about and appreciative of the life energy that has gone into producing what I am using?

3. Notice the garbage I am producing. Are there ways to reduce or eliminate some of my waste, or to recycle it more effectively? Am I composting any food waste and returning those nutrients to Earth in a helpful way?

4. Be more conscious of my water consumption. Can I recycle my bathwater, or reduce the time I’m spending in the shower? Is my landscaping native to my environment, or does it consume excessive time and energy to support? Am I using biodegradable products wherever possible to protect the planetary water supply?

5. Pay attention to my food supply. Is the food I eat grown as locally as possible, or does it consume vast quantities of energy to bring it to my table? Am I growing my own food and learning more about the time and work it takes to produce good food? What about the animals and animal products I’m consuming – are they well-treated and humanely cared for, or am I contributing to their misery by participating in their exploitation and consumption?

6. Look more deeply at the goods I purchase. Are they well made, or are they simply cheap? Do I want to buy products that are cheap and disposable, or things that will last me a lifetime? Do I allow advertising to sway me around what I “need” by selling me things I may want?

7. Notice my own travel patterns. Do I ride when I could walk, drive alone when I could share rides, organize my chores and trips so I don’t have to make multiple excursions? If I must drive, am I using the most energy efficient vehicle possible for the trip?

8. Continually inventory my possessions. Are there things I’m holding onto I no longer need or use? Can I give them away to someone else in need and not feel deprived? If I give them away, will I need to replace them or can I do without them indefinitely?

9. Practice new ways of sharing and experiment with new ideas. Can I invite someone to share my space if I have extra space? What about tools and other things I rarely use? Can I work with my friends and neighbors to create a rotational schedule, so we all don’t need to buy these rarely used items?

10. Take inventory of the energy usage in my home. Am I conscious of lights left on, fans operating in empty rooms, appliances draining power when no one is using them? Have I continually investigated solar energy, wind energy or the geothermal options for my area?

11. Stay abreast of new technologies that are supportive of sustainability. Even if they are not presently affordable or available, keep interested and continually look for ways to apply them as they become available.

12. Participate more fully in my village. Be open to any requests for help from neighbors and friends who support the practices and policies I myself am supporting. If what is being proposed is loving, sustainable and supportive of life in all its many forms, give whatever I can to bring it to fruition.

13. Lovingly steward ALL children and young people. Know they are eagerly seeking dependable role models in this ever-changing world. They desire NOT to be told what is true or what they “should” do, but for me to demonstrate competence in the skills they hope to achieve. Honor and support their passions, talents, desires and dreams…for they are the ones who will inherit this world I'm co-creating.

There...But For Grace...

2010-07-16T05:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning a friend and I dropped by a local coffee shop to relax and chat a while. As we approached the entrance together, I happened to notice an elderly man sitting alone at one of the glass topped outdoor tables. A brown paper coffee cup was resting in front of him, but his hands were busy gesturing as he mumbled toward the sky, perhaps in response to a voice only he could hear. Something about his demeanor prompted me to approach him. I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, smiled and said, "Good morning, my friend."

His entire face lit up as his attention shifted away from the conversation he'd been having with himself and responded to the sound of my voice. "Hello there. Is this a Club Med?" he asked, motioning vaguely toward the bubbling fountain beside the coffee shop. With the temperature hovering in the mid-eighties, the late morning sun blazing in the cloudless blue sky and the merry burbling of the water beside us, I could understand the logic - if not the nature - of his reasoning.

"Not a Club Med, no. It's a coffee shop." I replied, unsure what else to offer.

"Too bad." He shrugged. "I used to live beneath this place, you know. Ask anyone who's lived here a while what it used to be like before this. Although my home wasn't here, on top. It was inside the Earth. Before it exploded and thrust me into the past, the present and the future all at once."

His face grew animated as he began to tell me his story. He spoke to me of the spaceships, and the awful people who were trying to steal his blood for its unique DNA configuration, which resembled the molecular structure of honey. His mission, he informed me, was to stop the Earth from falling into a hole it can never get out of. Those of us who were milling around the coffee shop - he kindly included me in this explanation - were part of the human Exodus, the souls he was here to protect from the invaders.

I noticed how his fingernails were encrusted with the deep layers of dirt that accumulate from too many days without access to clean running water. His clothes, while neat, were worn and threadbare. Off to one side stood a shopping cart neatly packed with whatever precious items he'd managed to collect for himself on his travels. A blue plastic tarp covered the entire basket, preventing me from seeing the treasures within.

As I listened to his story, I found myself shifting between awe at the level of intelligent coherence he projected as he spun his tale, and compassion based on the realization he occupied a world no one else could truly enter. It was a magical realm indeed, filled with demons and heroes and adventures and lots of danger, while at the same time it was tinged with hope and wrapped in a deep sense of purpose. When he finished speaking he gazed up at me expectantly, waiting for something. What though? What could I possibly have to offer a man I couldn't understand?

Suddenly, I realized what he most needed from me wasn't for me to validate (or challenge) his ideas. By some serendipitous miracle a stranger had reached out to him and, at least in this one precious moment, had gifted him the chance to make some - any - slim connection with another person. That was what I had to offer, and it was enough. I smiled and patted his shoulder once again. "Well," I said, "That is some story. Best of luck to you, and I wish you success."

He laughed and pocketed the cash I offered him as if it was more of a distraction than something to be noted and appreciated. "I'm gonna be alright," he said, eyes twinkling. "I know how to take care of myself. Don't you worry 'bout me."

I walked away then, aware I wasn't worried about him in the least. Somehow, despite whatever dark nights of the soul and tragedies of the heart he'd experienced in his charred and broken past, he'd created a new world for himself out of the ashes. It was a world in which other people played minor supporting roles now and again, but where his primary "reality" mainly unfolded through the story inside his own mind.

It's a place I happen to know all too well, because I've been there myself the past. It's called psychosis. The alien landscape where my new friend dwells, perhaps permanently, is a world of his own creation. His mind has gotten so rooted in its own thoughts that his body has grown physically disconnected from external reality. While the body checks into the world now and then to tend to its basic needs - mundane things like shelter, food and sleep - as soon as those needs are satisfied he retreats to the world inside his mind once again. For people in his condition, sensory input is experienced not for what it actually is, but for what the mind has chosen to believe it to be so it "fits" into the story his mind is telling.

Angry, judgmental people become the alien abductors; the distant sounds of airplanes become invisible hovering spaceships. Kindly passing strangers become members of the Exodus team; the shopping mall becomes a cover for a hidden underground world filled with strange plants and beasts. Luckily for him, the saga he's woven is epic; it's exciting and coherent and open to lots of interesting possibilities as time passes. It is, I suspect, a story with enough of a punch to carry him for years.

It occurred to me then, as I entered the cool shaded realm of the coffee shop, ordered my tall mocha with whipped cream and prepared to settle into a comfortable chair and talk with my friend about our intertwined lives, that the only difference between him and me was that I'd managed - with the help of a loving family, good friends and an excellent doctor - to pull myself back from the precipice of mental illness before I'd fallen in so deep no one could help me. Most days these days I find myself fully connected to reality, surrounded by people who perceive the same things I perceive. Still, every so often a panic attack overwhelms me, reminding me just how fragile is the mind, and how lonely and frightening a place it can be when we're trapped inside it alone.

That's why yesterday morning I gifted a piece of myself to the man from the center of the Earth. There but for the grace of God...go all of us.

The Inherent Limitations of Capitalism

2010-07-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

After much contemplation, below is a brief list of the inherent problems and fundamental shortcomings I've found in the capitalistic/for-profit paradigm. It's my belief that these problems reflect the adolescent mindset that created the system. Adolescents are fond of win/lose games, because they require external validation to feel good about themselves. Adults, on the other hand, prefer win/win games, because they validate themselves based on how much they are able to self-actualize and contribute to the well-being and success of others. Feel free to explore these issues more deeply, to ask questions and challenge your preexisting beliefs around capitalism for yourself. It's vital for humanity's social evolution and maturation that we let go of all the unexamined beliefs that have been instilled in us since childhood, and discern for ourselves what feels more right and true as we move forward...together.

1) Capitalism is designed to facilitate the flow of human creativity through a direct-exchange process (I'll give something to you if you give something to me) rather than an indirect one (I'll take what I need out of the larger system and when I'm able I'll give back whatever I can produce for everyone else's benefit.) Indirect exchange is nature's blueprint. The flower feeds the bee, which feeds the bear, which dies and feeds the insects, which nourish the earth, which feeds the flower. Because direct exchange is overly simplistic and highly limited - I may desperately need your corn but you have no present need for my masonry skills - we invented money to represent conceptual value and reduce the inherent problems with direct exchange. However, the human population and its concurrent ability to be more creative and productive over time have been expanding exponentially, so our need for money to change hands for an exchange to take place is actually hindering our ability to create and exchange all we're capable of doing and producing. There isn't enough money in the world to effectively match all our efforts and abilities; we now have to wait for it to become available BEFORE we can perform.

2)In a for-profit paradigm, "success" means continually taking out of the system MORE than you put into it. Even if you then reinvest your profits, you're doing so in order to take out even more than you extracted the first time at a later date. Since everyone is continually taking out more than they're putting in (or trying to) the system itself grows consistently more impoverished. One of the first rules of biology is that any whole must be greater than the sum of its many parts. Unless we design human society around that principle, the system is bound to collapse. Why be part of something that forces you to be "less than" you could be on your own? (The seething resentment this fosters explains why so many of us feel alienated and try to game or cheat the system.)

3)Allowing the "free market" (buyers and sellers) to dictate what gets produced and how it gets distributed is fundamentally undemocratic, because it denies a vote to those who don't have enough money to participate in the decision-making process. What gets produced is thus predicated upon who can afford to pay for it; how it gets distributed depends upon how much people are willing to bid for an item as they bid AGAINST each other. It's an amoral system conceptually; when applied to living beings it becomes profoundly immoral. When we fail to feed human beings who can't afford to buy the food they need to survive AND we've destroyed their ability to provide for themselves through ownership laws and other property restrictions, we're valuing monetary profits above life itself.

4)Capitalism requires constant growth and continual consumption to satisfy the ever-present profit motive and thus sustain itself. Our primary motivation is to acquire ever MORE. No living organism can consume and grow forever without destroying its host in the process, so capitalism is an inherently unsustainable model that must be released, or it will inevitably collapse.

5)Capitalism functions like a Ponzi scheme. All global lands have long been sold off and parceled out to the wealthy privileged few who got here first, so all new humans born into this world arrive with a huge disadvantage as the population rapidly expands. Like any Ponzi scheme, capitalism will thus always produce more winners than losers. Since the value of money is relative - I must have more money than you to outbid you for what we both want - no amount of cash infused into the system can correct that fundamental flaw. Prices will simply rise to siphon off the newly infused cash, enriching the wealthy even more.

6)Capitalism promotes unhealthy competition by fostering a 'destroy the enemy' siege mentality. A destroy the enemy approach promotes more, cheaply made products at lower prices, which cheapens society and creates more waste in the long run. Healthy competition asks the question, "how can I improve upon what has already been done by others?" Its aim is to elevate society by making it more beautiful, functional and long lasting.

7) Capitalism discourages cooperation. Anti-trust laws were invented because we can't trust our companies not to collude against the best interests of humanity in their quest to earn a profit. If companies were motivated and rewarded NOT by monetary profits, but because they performed a valuable service for the social good, they could get together and share ideas that could facilitate far more rapid advancement in how we produce things, as well as in what we're producing.

8)Because capitalism requires constant consumption to generate continuous profits, it must manufacture needs to induce spending by the wealthy once basic needs have been mainly satisfied. (An example of a manufactured need is a product like health insurance. Another would be cable TV.) Capitalism also creates artificial lack by deliberately keeping supplies of goods tightly controlled and limited, forcing people to bid up for them so adequate profits can be made. This keeps people trapped in the economic system by forcing them to continually labor to earn enough money to pay for the things they believe they need to ensure their own survival. It also destroys human trust and core competency by turning us all into children, entirely dependent upon an economic system that doesn't genuinely care about our well-being, to provide us with what we need.

9) Capitalism, through its use of money to represent conceptual value, has promoted the worship of an abstraction over a genuine appreciation of tangibles. As a result, our reverence for the importance of each thing based on its own inherent worth has been greatly diminished. For example, we intuitively consider a $10 hammer more valuable than a 20 cent orange - ask any schoolchild and they'll regurgitate the "correct" conceptual answer. Ask an indigenous person in the Brazilian rain forest which is more valuable however, and he'll tell you that if he's hungry, he appreciates the orange. If he needs to build something, he appreciates the hammer. One is NOT more valuable than the other - they're both priceless when they are necessary!

10)Capitalism fails to value the uniqueness of each individual. The social imperative to make money as a goal unto itself enslaves people to the labor force in exchange for their daily bread. People in need of a job to survive are not free to explore their skills, talents, passions and abilities and discern what they can best contribute to the whole over the long run. Capitalism therefore creates obstacles to genuine self-actualization.

11)Capitalism is a dangerous practice, in that it consistently undermines and exploits the one thing that can truly sustain us long-term - our planet - so a few people can gain short-term strategic advantage over the rest of humanity. It removes the sanctity of life - the undefinable aspect of nature that MOST defines us - from the social equation, by placing personal material success ABOVE the survival of the very fabric of life that supports us all.

12)Capitalism reinforces human frailty by blaming the "losers" for their failure to succeed in a system that - by definition - MUST always have more losers than winners for it to work. Since money is relative, I can't be successful unless I possess more of it relative to nearly everybody else. Clearly then, the more money I'm able to hoard, the more losers there will be in relationship to me. Blaming the so-called losers for not being able to lift themselves out of such a system destroys our trust in our abilities as a species, and discourages us from confidently and courageously exploring our own capacities. We "surrender" our dreams to the need to work for a living, rather than reach for the stars to discover and bring forth the best in ourselves.

Embracing the Flow of Creation

2010-07-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

Lately I seem to be stumbling more frequently across a New Age teaching promoting the idea that reality is perfect just as it is, and that for us to criticize reality or try to change it in any way is to create suffering for ourselves and others. This seems to be an offshoot of an interpretation of certain Buddhist teachings, which propose that emptiness is our preferred state of being and that all human action is ultimately meaningless since the material world is impermanent.

In my experience, these sorts of beliefs fly in the face of reality itself. While I can grasp a limited benefit to adopting them, I suspect they're really just conceptual intellectual exercises designed to train people to detach themselves emotionally from both the challenges and the seductions of this world so they don't suffer unduly when the world around them changes or the time comes for them to leave it all behind. The rationale goes something like this: If you don't attach meaning to anything that is temporary, how can you feel emotional pain when it inevitably disappears? Likewise, if you don't ascribe any value to your own actions or discern any purpose behind how you relate to the external (material) impermanent world, what does it matter if your actions are not appreciated by others, or if you fail to create the intended result through your actions? In short: if we don't care about anything we experience or do, nothing that happens (or fails to happen) can bother us.

To try and train one's psyche to detach from reality in that way seems absurd. Perhaps it helps lessen the fear of future suffering based on the fear of future loss, but at the same time - for me, at least - it would also require me to surrender all love, joy, appreciation for beauty and the intimate experience that comes from knowing myself to be embedded in, and participatory in, this ever-changing energy that is life.

Do we need to deaden our souls in order not to feel pain? Is the suffering that comes from losing something inevitable if we connect to this impermanent world in an intimate, loving way? Is suffering even something we want to avoid at all costs, or is it simply the price we're required to pay in exchange for experiencing joy? These are all open questions, and I find myself frequently exploring them as I continue my own exploration of this life.

What I seem to be discovering is this: it's possible to open-heartedly and completely embrace an experience, a task or a relationship without experiencing undue or endless suffering when it changes. It's possible if we ALSO embrace an attitude of gratitude, if we remain fully conscious of whatever is still PRESENT once the event we were experiencing or the person we were loving so completely has gone away. Yes, we may feel deep sadness at the loss of a loved one, a temporary hole where that person used to be, but that hole CAN be filled and joy can return to our lives if we make the effort to refocus our attention on giving that same amount of love to everything else around us that is manifesting.

The challenge then, is to discover within ourselves the capacity to be both fully present to life and remain lovingly engaged with it, while learning not to cling to the temporary form it happens to take or try to recover that which is irretrievably lost. A line from a song from the '60's expresses this idea rather nicely: "If you can't be with the one you love, honey...love the one you're with."

While some may interpret that to be a statement promoting free sex, I perceive it to be promoting a deeper truth. To love whatever you're experiencing in every moment, or at the very least to be able to accept your life situation and interact with reality so as to change it for the better if it's not exactly to your liking in the moment, is what life seems to be all about. After all, we were gifted a brain, a body, arms, legs and opposable thumbs for a reason - we're not ethereal minds floating disconnectedly through some vast expanse of empty space. Let's USE the gift of reason then - not to pretend that reality is an illusion, though it clearly is an illusory (temporary) experience in its present form - but to discern how we can make the BEST of what we have in every moment we have breath remaining in us.

Who cares if no one but me ever knows how much I've loved and appreciated being an integral part of this world, or realizes all the things I've done to add a bit more love to the space around me? That I know it of myself, and that when I die I'll get to appreciate both this amazing world AND the gifts I was able to bring into it is what ultimately matters for me in the end. I suspect I'd rather face death from a place of gratitude for having lived my life as fully and deliciously as possible, than from a place of regret that I failed to attach meaning to any of it and as a result lived a meaningless - ultimately wasted and emotionally unsatisfying - life.

I don't have any idea what comes next, or even if there IS such a thing as "next." The best I can do then, is embrace THIS, enjoy this, love this and appreciate this, and allow whatever wants to happen to be.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."

Resolving Human Bipolarity

2010-07-01T15:22:00.000-07:00

As a woman who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder for a while now, I've had the opportunity to observe how this so-called "disease" manifests inside me, as well as to notice when and why it manifests. I've also learned what to do to help myself move beyond it, to the point where it no longer feels like a medical disorder but has actually become a helpful tool for navigating reality.

The good news is, bipolar disorder isn't "personal." It's actually happening to a whole lot of people these days, which means it's probably something humanity has to move through as part of a collective evolutionary shift in our consciousness.

The best way to explain what I see as the cause of bipolar disorder is to use a computer metaphor most people can understand. Anyone who's ever owned a computer knows that they rely on a basic operating system to make them work. Programmers write applications specific to the operating system using languages the system understands. Things may run smoothly for a while, but inevitably we learn that the operating system we've been using has some serious limitations, so we upgrade to a new operating system. Unfortunately though, after we upgrade we often discover that our old applications will no longer run on the new operating system. That means we need to buy brand new applications (or application upgrades) to get our new system to work.

The modern human brain - like many computers nowadays - is concurrently running dual operating systems: let's call them Humanity 1.0 and Humanity 2.0. Humanity 1.0 has been mankind's default operating system for many thousands of years now. It's a system that basically tells us we're each separate from everything else and that life is a win/lose game. Humanity 1.0's programs are filled with usses and thems, victims and persecutors, the victors and the vanquished. In Humanity 1.0, mankind is the ruler of all that he sees and the entire natural world is his to exploit for strategic advantage. Virtually all our present social applications - our traditional religions, judicial systems, educational systems, economic infrastructures and political systems - were designed to operate effectively using Humanity 1.0.

Sometime in the recent past a new operating system birthed itself into being, one with fewer limitations and a lot of exciting possibilities for the future. It's a pretty cool system too, in that it removes the fear of loss from the game of life and replaces it with things like trust, love and social harmony. Humanity 2.0 informs us we live in a unified, interconnected and fully alive world in which our differentiation doesn't separate us from everything else so much as makes us more valuable to the whole, which in turn nourishes and supports us as individuals and as a collective. Humanity 2.0 proposes that, because everything in life is inextricably interconnected, the only way any of us can truly win is if we all play a win/win game. In Humanity 2.0, mankind's role is to carefully steward the world's natural resources for the long term benefit of all the life forms with whom we share our space. While Humanity 2.0 is a wonderful operating system, to date mankind hasn't written many applications that run on it. That makes it really hard for our brains to function well in 2.0, because our existing programs only run on 1.0.

What, you're probably asking by now, does any of this have to do with human bipolar disorder? My proposition, based on my own internal experience, is that what we presently call bipolar disorder is actually a clinical observation of what happens to people under one of four problematic operating conditions:

1) Their minds are running on Humanity 1.0 and they perceive themselves as big losers in the game of life (depression.)

2) Their minds are running on Humanity 1.0 and they momentarily perceive themselves as huge winners in the game of life (mania.)

3) Their minds are running on Humanity 2.0, but they keep bucking up against those who are running on 1.0 and don't understand how to play a win/win game (depression.)

4) Their minds are running on Humanity 2.0, but they haven't yet found enough useful applications to help them manage the system's immense capacities and bring some working structure to the game of life (mania).

The trouble is, none of the programs we've written for Humanity 1.0 will run on Humanity 2.0, because win/lose games are fundamentally incompatible with a win/win operating system. If we try running a 1.0 program on the 2.0 system we wind up with a total system crash, which I can tell you REALLY hurts the head! A hard reboot will eventually restart the system, but it isn't a pleasant experience from inside.

For an example of the kind of system incompatibility I'm talking about, let's consider the environmental folks known as "ELF," which stands for "Environmental Liberation Front." As 2.0 operators, they fervently want all of us to do whatever we can to nurture and support the environment that sustains us. So far, so good. The trouble begins though, when they then go out and blow up automobile dealerships that sell gas guzzling trucks and SUV's to make their point. That's clearly a 1.0 solution for a 2.0 operation. It's also bound to get the attention of the 1.0 police, who perceive the new system as some kind of worm, virus or other no-good intruder and try to kill it, or at least box it up for a good long time so it can't create any more conflict with the 1.0 system.

An example of 2.0 software that some people tried - and failed miserably - to run on the 1.0 system would be (don't bite my head off!) communism. As an economic philosophy communism was a win/win application, written to illustrate what our world could look like if everyone supported everyone else in maximizing their talents, passions and skills, then we each gifted of our abilities freely to everyone else. It predicted a world of peaceful abundance, and would have been just fine running on Humanity 2.0. The trouble with applying communism to society at the time it was first implemented was that the 2.0 operating system wasn't up and running in nearly enough human beings, so the proponents of communism tried to jam it onto Humanity 1.0 using the power and fear of fascism to make it work. Win/win games can't succeed at the point of a gun, so the 2.0 program crashed and burned and everyone assumed the program itself was very badly written. Unfortunate, but predictable with the benefit of 2.0 hindsight.

The key to successfully navigating this complex systems/programming mess seems to be twofold. First, we must remember there is always an operator - our own internal sense of awareness - who can choose, at any moment, which operating system he or she wants to run. If we don't choose consciously, our unconscious mind will choose a system for us, which means by default we'll mainly be running the very limited Humanity 1.0, since it's the system most compatible with our existing applications. If we choose instead to consciously run Humanity 2.0, which is kind of like an iPhone on super steroids, we then have to take some responsibility for designing new software for everyone else so they can see what a really cool system we're able to run. The early software we write probably won't shake up the world, but if we can design a couple of really neat applications and begin using them consistently we're going to demonstrate swiftly how much more we can collectively accomplish - and how much faster - using 2.0. One amazing 2.0 application already in operation is the Internet itself, which offers a dizzying array of information and fresh new ideas to anyone with access to a computer...and does so for free, out of the deep desire to give and share of ourselves.

My recommendation is that everyone check out the new Humanity 2.0 operating system for themselves and play around with the possibilities. Let's then put our heads together and see what software we can come up with to make it work for us all. The sooner we do so, the quicker we can retire Humanity 1.0 with honors, and the sooner "bipolar disorder" will become a disease of the past.

Your Money or Your Life

2010-06-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

If you ever played the game of Cops and Robbers as a child, you know that one of the most common questions posed by the person who played the robber was, "your money or your life!" It seems on the surface like a very simple question, and as children most of us didn't hesitate to turn over our fake wallets and imaginary wristwatches to the kid who was holding the plastic gun to our head. In real life though, that question seems to have become more difficult for humanity to answer. What I'm wondering then is why, and how, we've reached a point where our collective obsession with money - with conducting business as usual even in the most unusual or dire of circumstances - has caused us to cling to our money instead of our lives.

I pose this question because I listened to President Bush in 2001 exhort Americans to do the patriotic thing and go shopping after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. I pose it because I witnessed the near-collapse of the entire U.S. banking system in 2008, which triggered a panicked government (spelled taxpayer) infusion of cash to encourage the banks got back to business as usual, even before we understood what caused the problem. I pose it as nation after nation and state after state are cutting essential human services out of concern for their "budget deficits." I pose it as I hear the citizens of the Gulf of Mexico demand in one breath that BP and the U.S. government immediately stop the oil spill that is gushing into the ocean, and in the next breath demand the president lift his temporary moratorium on deep water drilling so they can go back to business as usual.

Perhaps, if there's a lesson in all this, it's that there is no such thing as "business as usual." There is only the business of business, which focuses on earning a monetary profit; and there is the business of life itself, which focuses on conducting ourselves in a way that honors ALL life forms and the amazing ecosystems that nourish and sustain them...as well as us.

This planet is literally holding a loaded gun to humanity's head right now. The question she is asking us as she insistently reveals to us her eroding soils, her polluted rivers, her massive species extinctions, her corrupted and depleted oceans, her raped and pillaged resource reservoirs, is this: "Your money or your life?"

We can continue to stubbornly look away from nature's loaded gun and pretend to continue to go about business as usual. We can ignore the increasing desertification of the land, the destruction of crucial rainforests, the strip mining, the decline of organic food supplies, the disruption of crucial migration patterns, the frightening changes in weather patterns, the melting glaciers, the toxins polluting our water and our foods. Even so, the weapon remains cocked and loaded, and Mother Nature's finger is slowly easing off the trigger. How many of us, I wonder, will act surprised and appalled when the bullet at last hits our brain, claiming we never saw the gun or heard the question?

This is NOT a diatribe against business, or patriotism, or the right to earn a living. This is a diatribe FOR the essential nature of life, without which none of those other ideas are possible. This is a call, to all who read these words and grasp the truth of them in their hearts - to WAKE UP and be counted as one who speaks for life in all its beauty, magnificence and glory. This is a spiritual cry from the heart of one who loves this life and holds to the hope of us learning to thrive as an organism rather than a virus upon this planet, NOT to murder our mother, but to love and honor her as the beautiful being that birthed us and gives us life.

From Short Term suvivial to Long Term Thrival

2010-06-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest flaws of capitalism is the way it rewards short-term focus over long-term reasoning and planning. While short-term decision-making may briefly benefit an individual (or an individual corporation) because a single life span is typically shorter than the lifespan of the system that contains it, a consistent lack of attention to the long-term needs of the whole means the overarching system may well collapse within the lifespan of the individuals it holds. In other words, when individuals ignore or do damage to the whole for short-term personal gain, their choices eventually threaten the viability of the whole. Since the survival of any individual depends upon the survival of the whole, behaviors that place individual needs above the needs of the whole don’t serve the individual very long.

Imagine what would happen if all human beings cared more about their personal survival than they cared about the survival of the species. No woman would ever give birth because it wouldn't be worth the risk of her dying to bring children into the world. No man would ever venture outside his known environment, because the excitement and challenge of exploration and discovery would be less meaningful to him than his continued self-preservation. The fact is, if all of us cared more about ourselves than we care about each other, humanity would vanish within a single generation. Ironic as it seems, we’d become victims of our own fear of death and our longing to survive at any cost!

Likewise, no system can survive for long unless the individuals that comprise it feel happy and are thriving within the system. The only way a system can ensure that the individuals within it will thrive and be happy is for the system to honor and support the needs of its many members. To do so, the system must invest the full capacity of its surplus resources into supporting the growth and development of every young individual until each individual reaches maturity and self-actualizes to its highest creative capacity. That requires the system to demonstrate tremendous patience while it waits for each individual to reach adulthood. The system can’t demand that its youth make heavy sacrifices during their growth phase, nor can it make it harder on them to grow or cause it to take longer for them than necessary to reach their highest capacity – at least not without threatening its own continued existence.

What appears to have happened to humanity some 40,000 or so years ago is that human consciousness shifted beyond the collective unconscious embeddedness in the larger ecosystem, to one where we suddenly became more aware of ourselves as individuals. Self-awareness changed everything, in that it caused us to notice ourselves as unique players in the larger game of life. What we've been doing ever since has been learning to stand upright in that truth and balance ourselves accordingly, without falling.

Our first impulse was to focus on developing ourselves as individuals, and rightfully so. Babies aren’t expected to care for their parents, but to place their full attention on self-development. As an infant species we humans needed to discover what we, as individuals, were capable of doing and creating. We needed to push ourselves, to grow and learn and experience the ups and downs of life to the fullest extent. Like children, we needed to skin our knees and bruise our shins and occasionally break a bone or two, so we could understand ourselves better and become more competent as we grew. The natural byproduct of that childish exploration was a lack of awareness of our dependence on the planet that supported us while we learned. Our benign neglect of our planet has recently ceased to be benign as our individual skills and abilities have expanded and consumed ever more natural resources. The evidence of our continued impoverishing of our mother planet is only now becoming visible to us. We’re awakening to the ongoing distress of our patient and loving mother, who needs us to wean ourselves off our dependency on her so she can recover her strength and vitality.

Not long ago the rashness and exuberance of human adolescence culminated in a few individuals putting their minds together and inventing nuclear weapons, at which point the rest of us suddenly realized that unfettered individual achievement had brought forth the power of species extermination. I suspect that realization marked the turning point in human development. It was the moment when our single-minded focus on individual development shifted, and we began to turn our attention to the health and well-being of the whole. The sixties reflected the birth of that shift with our thrust into outer space so we could look back upon ourselves, the environmental movement, more expressive human sexuality, popular resistance to the Vietnam War, early experimentation with communal living and the way Western thought (individualistic and selfish) began to embrace Eastern thought (collective and selfless) and meld the two into a spiritual perspective that has come to be known as "new age."

Meanwhile, the economic system that is capitalism, which originated from Western thinking and has since spread throughout the world, focused almost exclusively on the short-term needs, rights and capacities of the individual. It demanded that every individual care for himself first, his family and community second, the larger collective third and the greater world that contains him dead last. The underlying presumption of capitalism has been that what's good for the individual is necessarily good for the collective, so to give the individual free rein to be selfish and self-serving is to support the evolution of the whole. Were that true, we’d have no need for a legal system to harness the worst excesses of “human nature.” That we do have a legal system, and that its need to make new laws can’t keep pace with the continual expansion of human excess speaks less to “human nature” than it does to the inherent flaws in the capitalistic system that entrains and socializes human behavior.

We’re seeing the results of our overly capitalistic focus (the prioritizing of individual short-term needs over systemic long-term needs) playing itself out in the larger world today. Our corporations have long been rewarded for focusing on short-term profits over concepts like workplace safety or environmental concerns, and have been penalized for making investments in the future that may not pay off for many, many years - if they pay off at all. We’re witnessing the tragedy born of such short-term thinking as we watch oil spew into the Gulf of Mexico, where - despite the dramatic destruction of fragile habitat and the still-unchecked disaster - local politicians are already calling on the president to lift the moratorium on drilling so that individual livelihoods can resume. When making an individual living takes precedence over the essential preservation of life itself, something is gravely out of balance in our approach.

For years too, corporations have benefited by eliminating jobs, reducing wages and increasing their profitability in the short-term. Their methods of choice have been increased mechanization, the installation of technologies to increase productivity, and – where human labor is still necessary – the shifting of jobs to third world nations where people will work for lower wages and fewer benefits. The negative long-term systemic consequences of those choices are just now becoming apparent. As wages evaporate consumers disappear along with them, and corporate profits trend into decline. Without wages to generate taxes, government revenues also collapse and basic social services must be cut. Programs necessary to ensure the self-actualization of a new generation of healthy system participants – schools, hospitals, parks, nutritional programs, etc. – vanish. Programs to care for the elderly and infirm disappear as well, leaving those who’ve already given their life’s blood to a system that promised to support them feeling helpless and afraid, as well as angry and abandoned in their time of need.

Any system that for too long encourages its adult individuals to be selfish and shortsighted must collapse, because no one is paying attention to the young or the old. If the youth can’t depend on the adults in the system to nurture them into full maturity, we wind up with a stunted generation that’s forced to raise itself, one without the proper tools or supportive guidance to give it loving and appropriate direction. By the time those children reach adulthood, their resentments against the system that neglected them are well (and deservedly) entrenched. Why would they feel obligated to contribute anything of value to a system that abandoned them in their time of greatest hope? Likewise, if the elderly can’t trust the adults in the system to support then once they can no longer care for themselves, why would they feel obligated to contribute anything to the system while they’re still hearty enough to do so? Their fears (deservedly) are for their own survival, so they hoard their abundance to protect against being abandoned in their time of greatest need.

What’s the solution to the seemingly intractable mess we’ve gotten into? The first step is to acknowledge the existence of the mess, and – rather than try and impose blame, shame or guilt on each other for our present state of our affairs – accept that the development of a shortsighted system was likely a natural part of our evolution. Many good things have emerged from our extended adolescence, and there’s no need for us to reject or abandon the wisdom we’ve already gained as we move forward. The second step is to take personal responsibility for where we are right now, which means we must individually agree to take the actions necessary to shift the system into greater balance between the needs of individuals and the sustainability of the larger whole.

Making that decision requires us to “give up” a little something of our individuality. What we’re being asked to surrender, though, is our lack of awareness of our connectedness to the whole, our selfishness, our fears and our greed, all of which in the long run benefit us personally to eliminate! It's like asking a deciduous tree to surrender its dead leaves so the soil that nourishes it can revive itself in the spring. Additionally, if each of us give back even a little bit of the resources we’ve been hoarding to provide for ourselves in old age, we'll collectively restock the larder of the system and enable it nurture our young and provide more richly for the elderly – which we ourselves have been (and birthed) and will someday become.

For any system to thrive and remain sustainable, we know the whole must always be greater than the sum of its many parts. What makes a system sustainably great is threefold:

1. Its ability to love and communally support its young and nourish their hopes and dreams until they mature.
2. Its openness to gratefully accepting the unique creative bounty of all its adults and its willingness to continue to support them all in their diverse achievements as they flourish and gift richly of themselves to create more abundance for all.
3. Its respect and compassion for the elderly and infirm, and its ability to maintain their trust as it lovingly cares for them in appreciation for everything they’ve been, done and are until they die.

As capitalism continues to falter we must devise such a system for humanity going forward. In doing so we must also take into consideration the fact that life in the cosmos is a fractal experience; a series of individuals nested inside ever-larger wholes, eternal and infinite in breadth and scope. An individual person can be viewed as a cell in the body of humanity, but humanity in turn must be seen as an organ in the larger planetary body. We can’t do what’s best for humanity in the short-term without balancing our needs against the long-term needs of Earth and its ecosystems. In the same fashion, we can’t pollute our own cells with toxins and junk food and expect our cells to happily service our needs for many years. Giving joyfully and responsibly to that which is larger than ourselves - as well as taking loving responsibility for that which is smaller than us - anchors us firmly in the center of our own reality and provides us with balance as we step into our full maturity as a human species.

Surely we’ll make some mistakes as we tentatively take our first steps into species adulthood. Competence doesn’t come easy; it’s a slow, sometimes painful progression of trial and error, practice and learning, experimenting and discarding. What works against us may be our stubbornness, our impatience, our aggression and our out-of-proportion fears, which are hallmarks of adolescent thinking that we’ll hopefully outgrow before too long. What works in our favor is our capacity to persevere in the face of great adversity, our prodigious ability to learn from our mistakes, our virtually unlimited creative imaginations and an amazing wellspring of love from within us that guides us toward what is beautiful and true.

I wish us well as our human journey continues.

Humanity and the Money Game

2010-05-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

The need for money is psychological barrier humanity has constructed to artificially separate itself from the earthly abundance that already exists. Everything we need to thrive – food, land, shelter, water, education, energy, clothing, home furnishings, travel, health care – exist in quantity on the other side of the money barrier. All we need do to access those items is to work continually for money, which we then give away in exchange for the things we need to survive.

The money game was already in full swing when all of us were born. We didn’t invent it, and we’ve not stopped playing it long enough to really study its flaws and limitations. We’re so focused on personally surviving in the game that we haven’t had time to consider the value of deconstructing this barrier to our collective abundance. We’ve instead turned our attention to finding new and clever ways to siphon more and more money away from each other, in the hope that we can individually accumulate enough cash to at last punch through the barrier and gain permanent access to the wild abundance that exists on the other side.

Every so often, a few people manage to accumulate so much money that other people’s profit-making schemes are no longer capable of siphoning away very much of their cash, and for those people the barrier falls for good. They find themselves in material heaven, with access to endless delights measured by all the best goods and services the money game has to offer. The Bill Gateses, the Sergei Brins and everyone who has ever won first prize in a lottery have all experienced the falling away of this psychological barrier to abundance, the same way the people of East Germany experienced the collapse of the Berlin Wall and at last felt physical freedom.

The rich, in turn, may retain enough compassion for their friends and neighbors still trapped behind the barrier to try and help them punch through it as well, but no wealthy person can give away enough money to make a significant difference in the quality of life for most of the rest of us.

If all the wealthy gave away most of their savings to large numbers of people who were still stuck behind the barrier, all they’d manage to do is to assist those people in permeating the barrier for a moment or two, before the barrier moved away from the crowd again. For example, if Bill Gates gave away forty billion dollars and created four thousand new millionaires, those millionaires would soon be competing with each other to purchase new houses, fancy cars and expensive services. Once the people who create those products and services noticed the increased competition, they’d raise prices to draw more cash away from those newly created millionaires and enhance their own efforts to punch through the money barrier and gain access to all the things the millionaires have.

It seems then, that the more money we invent, lend, grow and trade among ourselves behind the barrier, the more each of us will personally need to accumulate if we hope to punch through the barrier. That’s because the value of money is relative, not fixed. Whether or not we punch through to abundance then, isn’t a function of whether we’ve been able to accumulate a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand or a million dollars for ourselves. It’s dependent upon each one of us accumulating vastly more than most everyone else accumulates – no matter what that number of future dollars might turn out be. Yesterday’s millionaires don’t have nearly the clout they once did, since prices continue to rise and siphon off more and more of our cash as we play the game. Additionally, more people are entering the game every day through population gains and the ongoing exportation of capitalism, so more and more money needs to flow to entice those newcomers firmly into the game.

Since it’s impossible for every one of us to accumulate relatively more money than everybody else, the money game sets up a reality where – in order for there to be any winners – there must always be a far greater number of losers who remain stuck behind the barrier and continue to work very hard to play the game. They may be willing or unwilling participants, but they must not be allowed to quit the game or the winning players will have no one with whom to continue to play.

Modern creations like interest, mortgages, insurance policies, taxes, utility fees, etc. ensure that money will continue to be siphoned away from most of the players before they manage to accumulate too much. These “fee traps” help ensure that the majority can’t quit playing the game without surrendering the necessities of life. People who try to go around the barrier by taking what they need or by refusing to pay trap fees are labeled “criminals” and are punished for their refusal to play the game.

The wealthy can afford to invest some of their money into finding creative new ways to avoid having their hoards of cash siphoned off by the workers who remain stuck behind the barrier. They invent tax shelters, move their production facilities to countries where labor costs are cheaper, install automated assembly lines that eliminate human jobs, and make workers compete with each other for increasingly scarce positions, which gives them the power to pay out lower wages. They also reduce paid benefits, eliminate retirement plans and force workers to cover more and more of their daily costs of living. Through taxation, governments try to provide a safety net for those who can’t manage to meet their daily needs, but because government is controlled by the wealthy it creates that safety net by taxing worker wages instead of hoarded wealth, which siphons even more money away from the workers who remain stuck behind the barrier.

The danger for us in continuing to endlessly play this game can be seen by noticing what is at stake – for us as individuals, and for life itself. Unlike a board game, this game allows people to die if they can’t pay for what they need to survive. People therefore become enslaved to the game through the ongoing (and very real) fear of death. Meanwhile, those who appear to be winning must continually hoard more money to retain their access to abundance and privilege. They wantonly use up scarce resources and damage the entire planetary ecosystem in a relentless quest to manufacture more and more “necessary” goods and services they can then impose on the workers who live behind the barrier. Clever advertising seduces workers into believing they need more things, and social laws (auto registration, property taxes, water bills, etc.) force them into spending their hard-earned money on life's necessities. Long term, this game cannot continue without destroying the entire field of abundance that sustains us. There can BE no absolute winners in the money game; only a few who may beat the system in the short run but who help bring down our entire civilization in the end.

The point of the money game – which places huge emphasis on material consumption and the ‘need’ for us to work to pay for life’s necessities – is to continue to siphon money away from the masses of working people so they can’t ever punch through the barrier themselves. That means they must remain slaves to the game for their entire productive lifetimes, after which they become society’s discards and are considered financial “drains” on public assets.

Children too, are not revered as gifts for whose nurturing and care our society is responsible in this game. They're treated as future business commodities – potential workers who will step into the money game at maturity and support its continuation. We educate them only so far as their knowledge can be “standardized” in a way that will enable them to plug seamlessly into the system when they reach working age.

The money game offers no vision for the future. It holds no promise for humanity as a species, for our planet as a sustainable and abundant source of life, or for the higher evolution of human consciousness. All it promises to do is to bleed the life energy out of most of us in exchange for our short-term survival. The questions we must ask ourselves then, are these: Do we want to continue to play this game? If not, how do we stop? How can we tear down the psychological barrier to our own success that we’ve erected inside our own minds?

I suspect the answer is for enough of us to love life - in all its many forms - fiercely enough to come together and "just say no" to the game.

The Limitations of Money as Energy

2010-05-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

The funny thing about things not happening overnight is they don't - only suddenly they appear to! The collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of World War II, the destruction of the World Trade Center, the fall of the Soviet Union - all were experiences that took years in the making, but were observed by most as "overnight sensations."

The disappearance of money as our energy of exchange may happen the same way. We've been wrestling with money's inequities and limitations for thousands of years, struggling through recessions and booms and deflation and inflation, imperialism and human exploitation, land wars and power/resource grabs - all in service to the need to control the continued flow of money and profitability.

What hasn't changed is that money, by design, is a win/lose game at its core. It's worth is relative, not fixed. That means we CAN'T all ever have as much of it as we need, or it loses its value and power. Prices would just go up to absorb the extra money in the economy and siphon it off to the wealthy few at the top, so we'll continually need more of it than we have, no matter how much of it we put into circulation.

Right now the US owes 12 trillion dollars to the rest of the world. One trillion dollars laid end to end would stretch from Earth to the sun. Do you get that picture? :)

Unfortunately, what I'm saying is that we've agreed to exchange an energy source that must be deliberately kept scarce (money) for our work product (our labor and creativity) to build our modern society. Is it any wonder then, that we'll never have enough? The problems we're now experiencing with money are a reflection of the same struggle we're having with fossil fuels. We have too high a need for continued energy output, but not enough fuel to keep the system going. (I suspect our thinking will eventually shift and we'll solve both those challenges around the same time.)

With seven billion of us here on Earth we have an unimaginable amount of physical labor at our disposal, along with an infinite amount of talent, passion, ingenuity and creativity. Still we fret that we can't provide enough for all of us, and wonder aloud if we need to depopulate in order to survive. Why? Could it be we're choking off our own capacities at every turn by limiting education and personal progress to those who can afford to pay for it, so that someone else can profit off their acquisition of knowledge and self-empowerment?

We hinder our own ability to thrive at every turn by assigning no value to a person's work unless it's in service to a profit-making machine in the form of a job, despite how very much real work remains to be done to promote humanity's cause. We impoverish ourselves too, by funneling the primary fuel that runs our economy (money) into the hands of a very few. We then allow them to hoard it and spend it mainly on themselves, so they can live far better and more comfortably than most of the rest of us. We nod our heads when they promise to allow it to "trickle down" to us, and wait for the soothing rain that never comes.

We are self-destructing piecemeal by allowing our REAL energy - our own labor and creativity - to be used to subvert our genuine needs and values in exchange for the fake energy that is money. We can't eat money, wear it, live in it, drink it or mate with it. We can only pawn it off on someone else in exchange for what we actually need to survive - so long as the other person still clings to the delusion that money is real and possesses tangible value.

Meanwhile, we've been unwittingly destroying our surroundings, killing our fellow species and reducing our own ability to survive over the long-term to support the short-term profit making engines of business enterprise. None of which is pointed in any clear direction that serves as a vision for human destiny or promotes our evolution as a species. The direction of our economy today mainly points toward continuing to preserve and protect the continuation of business itself, while entertaining us (or stressing us into Prozac) in the short run so we don't notice what's happening around around us. We've also been encouraged to divide into groups and fight over concepts and beliefs, which distracts us into missing the reality of our planet's deterioration. We're now slashing our spending on all the stuff that has the potential to ensure a brighter future for us all - things like schools, scientific research, health care, parks, infrastructure and social services - because we fear we "can't afford" to do the things we need to thrive as a species.

These days I observe all the chaos, wars, banking collapses, moral failures, job losses, global contractions and business distress with bemusement, tinged with sadness. I trust that one day we'll wake up and a majority of us will have completely lost all faith in money as a form of energy exchange - seemingly overnight!

What happens after that will depend on what we're doing now to raise our own awareness of our interdependence on each other and on the magic, mystery and wonder that is life itself.

The Pending Productivity Crisis

2010-02-17T08:37:00.000-08:00

For years now we’ve been experiencing a boom in productivity. Much of our economic growth over the past several decades has been a direct result of those gains. While increased productivity seems like a wonderful thing, when we place it in the context of an eighteenth century economic model we discover that our modernization of manufacturing without a concurrent modernization of the consumption side of the equation is the cause of much of our present misery.

Productivity gains occur when fewer people produce more goods in less time. Industrialization, technology and computerization have all contributed to the shift toward higher automation and more rapid product production. The advantages for businesses are clear: machines don’t require wages, get sick or need benefits, and they can be counted on to produce quality standardized items day in and day out.

The advantages to the average human being of increased productivity are less clear. Certainly more goods are available at lower overall prices, which is helpful to consumers. What sometimes gets lost though is the high quality craftsmanship that used to be the hallmark of our human creativity. While cheaper goods seem to offer us better value, in many cases they just cheapen society by creating more landfill and waste. Sure, a two-dollar hammer may be appealing if I’m low on cash, but if the head falls off and I have to buy ten cheap hammers in my lifetime as opposed to one high quality twelve-dollar hammer, who has really profited – other than the company (likely overseas these days) that produced the two-dollar hammers?

Another problem we’re facing is the fact our economic model was constructed around the idea of people working for wages they could then use to buy those things they need. As we eliminate jobs by the hundreds of thousands, either through increased productivity or by exporting them to cheaper labor pools overseas, what gets forgotten is that the local laborers we’ve cut off from wages today are the very consumers we’re hoping will purchase our goods tomorrow. Productivity has overwhelmed jobs creation – not because we’re a nation of slackards – but because our very industriousness and technological savvy has outstripped our need for manual labor at an ever-increasing rate, even as our population rises and our productive life expectancy increases. Our system is failing because to date it has failed to take into account the need to place cash in the hands of all people, including those whose jobs have vanished, those working less than the standard forty-hour week and those who are reaching adulthood only to discover high paying jobs are fast disappearing – no matter the level of education attained.

We can’t modernize half the economy (the production side) without taking into account the effects those choices have on the other half (the consumption side.) Profits are suffering because too many people can’t afford to buy all the goods we’re now capable of producing. For years an increase in service jobs has helped ease the pain of lost manufacturing jobs, however many service jobs aren’t provided by for-profit businesses but by government. Teachers, police officers, firefighters, DMV staffers, social workers and so forth all perform vital community services, yet we’re cutting back on their numbers and salaries because we can’t collect enough income tax revenue to support them. And how could we, when our tax roll base (a function of real wages) continues to precipitously decline?

It’s clear our economy needs an overhaul; one that ensures consumers are able to afford the goods we’re producing. At the very least we need to ensure that all people – particularly those presently disenfranchised from the labor pool – can at least afford to eat, provide a roof over their head, heat or cool their homes and access clean water.

These aren’t easy challenges and may require us to take steps quite different from the way we’ve envisioned our present economic system. To continue to ignore them, however, won’t make them go away. Nor will clinging tenaciously to an eighteenth century economic wage model resolve the problems we face in our twenty-first century high technology world.

(Next column we’ll suggest some potential approaches to address these challenges.)

Supreme Idiocy

2010-01-25T08:17:00.000-08:00

The recent (five votes to four) Supreme Court ruling granting “free speech” status to political campaign contributions will likely go down in history as one of the worst decisions to ever come out of our federal judicial system. This ruling takes us back to those unenlightened days when people of color were considered three-fifths of a person, by effectively declaring that the people with the most money are entitled to carry far more political weight than those without. Money, at least in our nation, flows to the highly successful few: to the uber-rich, the large institutions and the corporations that already wield too much power over the average American.

Are you aware that a mere one percent of Americans already own ninety-five percent of this nation’s wealth? That leaves the other ninety-nine percent of us scrapping over the five percent of wealth the uber-rich haven’t happened to get their hands on yet. Not that they’re not trying; the financial debacle of 2008 exposed the lengths to which some corporations are willing to go to capture greater profits for the power elite.

Gifting the wealthy elite – including the mega-corporations they own and operate – additional power to impact the political process is like inviting a convicted pedophile to baby sit your children. The risk far outweighs any possible short-term benefit. Just consider the kinds of mischief that can be made under this new ruling. Hard as it is now for small businesses to compete against mega-corporations, imagine how much harder it will be once those same corporations have the power to make unlimited campaign donations to the individuals who write the legislation that can grant them special favors? Once Wal-Mart can pay off a multitude of city councilmen, state legislators and local congressmen with unlimited amounts of campaign cash, how easy do you think it’ll be to block their expansion into our neighborhoods? How much clout can a small business owner’s political donation provide against such a massive tide of funding?

The beautiful thing about free speech, and the reason it’s been so cherished and protected by our democratic society since the founding of our nation is that it’s FREE. Everyone – rich or poor, black or white, immigrant or citizen, religious or non-religious, man or woman, ideologically popular or ideologically reviled – has the power to exercise it. Information is power, and to be able to communicate with each other lies at the heart of our political process.

We are a nation founded on ideas, built on ideals, and dedicated to the people. Our forefathers grounded our Declaration of Independence in a reverence for life itself – the right to life being foremost of their three most cherished ideals: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we now allow nonliving institutions to subvert the rights of the living by favoring profits above the quality of our own lives, we’d best acknowledge we’re also subverting the very values and ideals on which our nation is founded.

The profit motive is fundamentally amoral. Profits can be derived, as any good businessman knows, through moral means or through immoral practices. Therefore, elevating the power of profitability over the power of genuine free speech raises an amoral process above our value system. For the most part our nation’s policies reflect our collective moral compass. This latest decision however, made by five men in black robes, vacuums the morality out of our political process so rapidly we can almost hear the “whoosh” of our conscientious input being extracted from the system.

The solution is simple. Whenever a system tips too far in one direction an equal and opposite reaction will occur. Already grassroots organizations are gathering steam to create a constitutional amendment that explicitly denies personhood status to corporations, thus restoring a living person’s status as the thing that we most value. Please visit http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/user/register for more information if you’re interested in participating or supporting such a movement.

And remember, free speech has always been free. When money is free, perhaps it too might be reasonably considered free speech. Until then, let’s call it what it is: legalized bribery.

Where are we going?

2009-10-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

So far, humanity really hasn't set a "vision" for where it wants to go or what it wants to become. Defining our own trajectory may be exactly what we need to propel us out of our present reality, which is powered by mass unconscious consumption, to a reality based on conscious creativity and grounded in a deeper sense of purpose.

We've been frantically consuming material resources for many centuries now, because in some part of our unconscious mind we recognize that consumption is part of what we humans have been chartered to do. Everything we observe in the universe consumes something and transforms it into something else; that's part of the grand recycling/evolutionary process of creation. Nothing gets wasted and everything eventually gets changed.

I suspect that what we've failed to realize so far is that we're not really here to consume increasingly more stuff until we deplete our natural resources and die off; we're here to consume just enough resources to enable us to live comfortably and sustainably while we create new life experiences for ourselves, which we can then consume and transform into higher wisdom. The nice thing about consuming experiences and transforming them into wisdom is that there isn't a top stop on growth anymore when wisdom becomes our focus. Consciousness doesn't take up any more room or require higher caloric intake as it becomes smarter. Willful ignorance uses just as many calories as does wisdom! In fact, the wiser we become about our world, the more likely it is we'll require fewer resources to function more effectively within it.

The key then is for us to be fully present to whatever experiences we're having and learn as much as possible from them. Don't sleepwalk through an experience while daydreaming about where you'd rather be or what you'd rather be doing - HAVE each experience fully and richly so that whatever it has to teach becomes yours to know. To do so requires courage, an openness to new ideas and the patience to "ride out" even the most difficult of experiences, while trusting that there is always something more to be learned from wherever we happen to find ourselves in life.

I'm so looking forward to seeing what evolves as humanity slowly opens its eyes to the need to set a course for our shared future. The process of "coming together" around a shared set of values and ideals may not be easy to undergo, but I suspect it's necessary for us to make the next leap in human evolution. It's time then, for us to begin talking about who we are, why we think we're here, and where we'd like to go as we journey toward the future.

I encourage you to think about these things whenever you're communicating or interacting with others, because the young people who encounter you will likely be searching for some greater sense of themselves. What are your words and actions saying to them about humanity, about its strengths and weaknesses, about its possibilities and problems, about your beliefs about us - and therefore about THEM? Even as you explore your own beliefs through your thoughts, words and deeds, know that what you are and do has the power to influence the thoughts and feelings of others. Take responsibility for your messages by anchoring yourself in your deepest truths about who you really are and what you're really capable of being, doing and creating. Express and BE that to the best of your abilities. Then you can rest assured that whatever you're bringing into the world and to the minds of other people will be a universal truth - because you ARE the universe in person.

Jobs or Work?

2009-10-02T07:50:00.001-07:00

This morning we learned that the U.S. jobs market shed another 263,000 jobs in September, bringing the unemployment rate up to 9.8%; a 26 year high. By the way, that's not counting those who are employed only part-time because they can't find full time work, or those who have dropped out of the job market entirely. If we add them in, some sources estimate that we'd be looking at an unemployment rate above 15% of the able-bodied American population.

This problems begs an important question: how long has human society suffered from this thing called "unemployment" and what can we do to fix it? Why do we even have such a thing as unemployment, when there's clearly so much work that needs to be done around the place? We're all aware that our national roads and bridges have fallen into shameful disrepair; our sewer and water infrastructure is crumbling and imploding all around us; our energy delivery systems are at least fifty years outdated; our schools are suffering from student/teacher ratios as high as 40-1; essential services like police and firefighting are being slashed below safe levels; our elderly find themselves isolated and without appropriate home and/or nursing care; millions of our children are being left at home without adequate after-school care; we're still dependent on foreign oil sources that are rapidly declining; our food sources and manufacturing capacities have been shipped overseas and are out of our quality control; our medical facilities are overwhelmed, understaffed and incapable of handling the needs of the larger populace - have I missed anything here?

It doesn't take us long to realize that our early ancestors had no experience with unemployment problems. In a hunter-gatherer culture or an early agrarian culture, not to work meant certain death for one's family and for oneself. Our ancestors couldn't afford to wait for someone "in charge" to promise them a paycheck before picking up a spear, a hoe or a bucket to attend to their daily needs. They understood what mattered, and took care of life's business without worrying about whether their 401k plans were intact, whether they had medical insurance, if they'd been promised adequate time for their lunch breaks or whether their environment was a friendly place in which to work. What's happened to us? How is it we've lost touch with so many basic truths about what it means to be alive? We've been lulled into putting our need for money before our own survival, and as yet we don't even know it. We've become like frogs sitting in a slowly boiling pot of water - the heat is rising yet we're too sleepy and unaware to jump out of the pot and save ourselves from dying. At least we haven't woken up to the hard truth yet.

What it will take for human beings to awaken to the fact that we're slowly destroying ourselves with our unhealthy co-dependence on corporations to inspire us to work? Can't we see that by allowing our corporations to control our work ethic by using the bait of money, we've handed over to them the power to determine exactly what work gets done - that which is most profitable for their bottom lines - as well as how much of it gets done. Everything else - what truly benefits human society, what honors and supports our environment, our resources and the life forms with whom we share space - gets left behind in that endless corporate quest to earn a few dollars.

Our modern human family can no longer afford to view itself as "nuclear," and thus separate from all others. That's become a clear recipe for disaster in an increasingly shrinking world. What happens in the rest of the world affects what happens here, and vice-versa. "Their" pollution has become "our" problem; "their" suffering (political and social disenfranchisement) has become "our" pain (9/11). This breakdown of humanity into "usses" and "thems" must therefore end if we're to thrive. After all, we're sharing space on this planet and are in this life together, come what may.

What then, if we toss out our mortgages and money, our loans and debts and simply pull together as a species to accomplish our objectives for the greater good? How much more might we achieve if we chose to love and trust each other more than we depend on money to keep us safe from potential disaster?

I'm simply posing the question. For me, the answers are not to be found by studying my bankbook or brokerage account. They're in my heart, which knows the right thing to do. I'd love to hear yours.