We Need Consciousness, Not Just Political Reform Journalist Faiz Sakir of Think Progress wrote on October 5,2011: “The original “Occupy Wall Street” protest has grown beyond its name — it is no longer solely about the courageous people camped out at Zucotti Park; it is a nationwide movement bonded by a shared refrain: “We are the 99 percent.” This slogan has entered our political and financial lexicon and refers to the 99% , the vast majority of Americans, and their opposite, the 1% who have the exceedingly disproportionate share of the wealth. There is a mounting disgust and anger in America’s citizenry with a political and financial system that rewards the 1 % at the expense of the rest. The Occupy Wall Street protest reflects this by moving outside of it’s original platform as a protest against Wall Street, and has become a nationwide movement that is bringing awareness to ordinary Americans, not just about income inequality, but the declining median household incomes, the growing numbers of people getting kicked out of their homes, increasing numbers of adults and distressingly children falling below the poverty line, the millions joining the ranks of those without health insurance, and the corruption and unjustifiable political influence by greedy banks and corporations in the financial services sector. So far, the proposed solutions of the 99% have been political in nature at the level of national policy and are encoded in a list of demands called “99% Declaration” and a more loosely defined set of [...]
moral economy
Occupy Wall Street
Evidence Of Our Human Spirit The upheaval that our world is experiencing is a sign of the human spirit behind our culture, and that has been the case in every place in every time. For those who study history, the condition of the United States in our time is no surprise. It happened in Rome. It happened for the British Empire. The fall of every empire was presaged by the increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots. When we comprehend how dire the state of the economy is, the impact on our lives can feel chaotic. The wake-up calls that are pulling us out of our sleep can feel shocking, dismaying, and depressing. It is no wonder that many people are afraid. Historically, chaos has meant that things aren’t working. But humanity is resilient, and within chaos resides our capacity to open up into something new. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche said “I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.” We can see evidence of this capacity in the Occupy (Wall Street) movement, which has as of this writing has 2,668 occupy communities spread not just around the United States, but in more than eighty other countries as well. Note 10 People want a voice and they want change. Matt Taibbi said this in the November 24, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone magazine: ”Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks [...]
Money as Circulation
Why Hoarding by the Few is Death One of the principles of money is that it is fluid and dynamic.. It’s purpose is to go on moving from hand to hand, and that is why it is called currency. Greed and hoarding, destroys its whole purpose and the current becomes stagnant. The more money flows the richer a society, as it supports the unfolding of human potential of all of it’s citizens rather than for just a few. When it flows, money can be a servant of all rather than a master by a few. When there is only fiscal liberty for a few, it creates a hierarchy in society from which follows competition, ambition, dependence, helplessness, possessiveness, power over others, oppression and even tyranny. In our current society, money has stopped circulating. If we liken it to blood, we can see that when blood is circulating it is life. But when blood has stopped, it is death. It is the same with money. Money stopped is death. The more money circultaes the more there is. The more money is used the more it circulates, and the richer the society is. The fact that almost all of the money has been hoarded by a few- and it is getting worse not better- is leading to a death. Our money system, our society, and there are some who say even our species and/or planet earth cannot continue without the death of the organism. This is at the macro level. Now lets [...]
The Real Law of Attraction is NOT “The Secret” and NOT “The Power”
The Decent Of ”Spirituality” Into A Materialistic Egocentric and Self-Centered Doctrine I noticed in the New Yorker this week that the author of the book, The Secret, has just written a new book, The Power. Oh dear. It’s unfortunate that in the name of true spirituality ego-centric pseudo-spirituality gets on the New York Times best seller list. I was hoping that the Secret would pass by an disappear into oblivion before it could hurt people even more than it has and that the author, Rhonda Byrne, a purported ”spiritual” teacher would deservedly lose any proponents she might have gained. (I’m really sad Oprah didn’t see through this one and rather, by having the Secret contingent on her show, actually supported the growth of Byrne’s fan base). In case you need a reminder, in the Secret, Byrne was supposedly revealing a big secret that there is a “law of attraction in the universe”. Anyone on the spiritual journey, or even who has been in therapy, knows about this energetic law. It is no secret. She twisted the meaning into the idea that thoughts have power, and thinking about something is the way to get it, so therefore thinking positive thoughts will get you what you want. And mostly what people want is money. So it was just really about getting rich. She even went so far as to say the Law of Attraction is “the greatest power in the universe”. Wow. Even more than “God” or Being or whatever you call [...]
The Rubber Is Meeting The Road
The Spiritual Opportunity Of Our Money Pain I really like this guy , Matt Taibbi, who writes for the Rolling Stone magazine. He again has a great article this month on the continued betrayal of the American people. The article is called “Wall Street Strikes Back” and the table of contents description on Page 5 tells a lot of the story: “Congress looked serious about financial reform until the country’s biggest banks unleashed an army of 2000 paid lobbyists”. In the body of the article, Matt talks about the watering down of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act and ends with a few points that In feel are important to mention here. On the positive side, the bill will curb some of the predatory lending I have spoken a lot about. But the more important issues the bill was supposed to address, like breaking up large risky banks, requiring financial giants to set up a fund to pay for their own bailouts, and probably most importantly, forcing the derivatives market to be more transparent, won’t happen in any meaningful way. So the $600 trillion derivatives market will continue to work without the light of day, and that in my mind is criminal. Matt’s conclusion foretells the continuing impact on the American people- “a war the once looked winnable will continue to drag on for years, creating more havoc and destroying more lives before it is over”. So the results of the financial fiasco keep getting put back onto the shoulders of [...]
Concentric Circles of Recession
We Are Not Out of the Falling Bubble Woods Yet. I heard a joke the other day, that might have been funny if it weren’t so close to the truth. “The last will and testament of the Icelandic financial sector requested their ashes be spread over Europe”. I loved what my husband’s friend said in response to hearing that: There was a special bequest to England who replied “We said cash not ash”. But this is what is happening not just around Iceland debt, but debt in general all over the world. The debtors are being blamed, and the creditors have been given cash. The US government bailed out the banks- who were responsible for making bad loans, but gave nothing to the debtors. In effect, the bankers have been paid for their bad loans. As our economy is shrinking, these same creditors are grabbing as much as they can and in the process making the debtors feel guilty. The creditors are more guilty. They supported predatory lending- lending knowing that the debts could never be paid. It is another chapter in the wealth grab. The 10,000,000 Americans who are probably going to lose their homes didn’t cause the problems, but they and the American people whose taxes funded the bailouts are going to be left holding the bag. The economist Michael Hudson has likened the American democracy at the moment to an Oligarchy. He said that 25 years ago, 1% of the American public owned 27% of equity income, [...]
The Money Split
The Spiritualization of Money At the core of all great spiritual teachings is the recognition that as human beings we have two natures. In Hindu, this is talked about in terms of Shiva and Shakti. In Buddhsit Mahamudra, it is the union of luminous clarity and emptiness (Shiva) and Phenomenon. In Dzogchen, it is the union of awareness and phenomenon. In Tantra it is the Masculine (Emptiness) and Feminine (Form). In Christianity, it is the Father and Holy Ghost (Shiva) and the Son. In The Diamond Approach, it is the Absolute and the Logos or Realization/actualization. The shakti/phenomenon, form, the Son and actualization all point to us as human beings incarnate, as embodiment. So what is implied is that human life has meaning only insofar that we consciously and intentionally occupy two worlds, the spiritual and the human, at the same time. And that meaning appears at the place where these two worlds meet these two worlds- in the relationship between the two worlds. In our secular world, where we have not recently (I mean in terms of a few centuries) by and large not paid attention to that relationship, that meaning has largely been lost. I thought this was a good subject to cover today, because we have just passed Easter, where we have been reminded of the divinity of Jesus and hopefully also, of our own spiritual nature. So, let’s begin by looking at the symbolism of the cross. We have a horizontal and vertical segments meeting at the [...]
Sustainable World
The Great Turning Laast Sunday, January 3rd, in Mill Valley, CA I spent the afternoon at Awakening The Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium which was created by The Pachamam Alliance. Apparently this symposium has 2000 trainers that share it around the world in more than 40 countries on six continents. This alliance was created out of a call for partnership from one of the world’s remote indigenous dream cultures, The Achuar of the Amazon rainforest that was anwered by a small group if people, that included Lynn Twist. Lynn wrote the book, The Soul of Money, which I love and supports the movement as I do from the chase from “more is better” to sufficiency. This is how she says the Achuar put it: “We need to change the dream of the North, the dream of the modern world, a dream rooted in consumption and acquisition, without any regard to the consequences of the natural world or even our own future.” The mission of the Pachamama Alliance is to bring forth as environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on earth. The symposium was organized around four questions: Where are we? How did we get here? What is possible for the future? Where do we go from here? They have a book called the Sustainable World Sourcebook which we should all have which gives detailed answers to all of these questions, which I can’t go into in detail here, but I would like to address. If we really look [...]
Money and Inquiry
Applying the Spiritual Method of Inquiry to Money One of the themes that I have continued to talk about is taking responsibility? It seems like an easy concept, but it is actually something very difficult to do. Mostly we like to blame- our mates, our parents, our investment advisor, the government, the economy, Bernie Madoff etc. etc. What responsibility means is taking the 180 degree turn- instead of looking at the other, we begin to look at ourselves. This is the turn talked about in the spiritual journey- you can’t start until you begin to turn inwards. But it is not just those on the spiritual journey who need to take responsibility- we all do. It is required if the planet is going to survive- the argument about that has moved from “if” to “when”. There is no “other” that is going to do that for us. It is necessary that each one of us take responsibility for how we are living our lives and what we are contributing to the planet. If you confront yourself truthfully, you can know for yourself. Of course, we are influenced by the culture we live in. One measurement of the mean responsibility (average) in your culture is the carbon footprint, which you, as an individual, are contributing to. And the carbon footprint in the US is the second largest in the world. The only country higher is Australia, and that is because of the exportation of their natural resources, not because of their [...]
Debt is the New Bondage
Staying Out of Credit Card Debt As stated in the New Yorker in its April 13, 2009 issue, in the article I.O.U. by Jill Lepore ,”Consumer debt has been the engine of the American economy since the 1970′s and arguably longer”. I would argue not just the American economy, but the whole world consumer driven bubble economy that has just crashed because it is simply not sustainable. Many are now recognizing that the predatory lending practices of the banks and credit card companies, with the tacit approval of the government through it’s interest rate manipulation and, as Jill Lepore, says its pitching to the American people that credit is a civic responsibility , have created a such a giant hole in the economy that we wonder if it can actually be fixed. We have no appreciation for history, or geography, in this country. It was never something that was valued in our education. If we did appreciate history, we would know that the downfall of every civilization was presaged by a wider and wider split between the haves and the have -nots. Think the Fall of the Roman Empire and now perhaps what we are experiencing, the Fall of the American Empire. We don’t have to go back that far if we were interested in what happened to us with respect to debt. And if we look we will see, that we have had many rises and falls of the economy, and in all cases debt was seen as necessary [...]