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 [...]
paradigm shift
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 “I Am” Sickness
Our Belief in Separateness is Leading Us To Serfdom Joseph Stilitz has done it again. He succinctly outlines the causes and impacts of the increasing disparity between those who have and those who don’t. The title of his article brilliantly says a lot: “Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%”. There are some amazing statistics out that illuminate this disparity in a way that make it more personal for us living in the United States. For example, that 400 families in the US have the same wealth as the bottom 150,000,000 million Americans. On the world stage, the top 1 % own 97% of the wealth. In the US, that percentage is 1% owns 40%, but it is a growing disparity. In the 1980’s , those percentages were 12% and 33%. So, we are being impacted too by this disparity and the statistics are changing at an alarming rate. As Sitiglitz pints out “we’re doing inequality on a world-class level”. In my experience, we in the first world were congratulating ourselves for not feeling subject to the lack that so many people in the world have been experiencing, which has been denial of the worst kind- we are special and it won’t happen to us- that’s what happens to “them”. Evidence of our belief that we are separate. Even as we watch protests in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, we are not recognizing it is increasingly the same situation at home. This is hubris and narcissism, not of the [...]
Two Practical Matters- Social Security and Health Care Insurance
The Turning Tide One fantasy that is becoming dangerous to embrace is the illusion of security in the form of Social Security in the United States. I have heard many people say that they have no savings or investments, and instead intend to rely on these monthly payouts to support them in their old age. It has recently been announced that Social Security has become permanently cash-flow negative. In other words, more will be paid out yearly in benefits than will be taken in as revenue. Some people are shocked when I tell them that there is actually no “trust fund” sitting there that they and everyone else who has been working (or their employers) have been paying into for all these years. Rather, the government has always been “borrowing” those funds. What’s more surprising to these people is that the total amount that “should” be in there isn’t even a legal debt. It is a government liability that is backed by a moral obligation only. It could be eliminated by political will, which is a significant probability given the current economic situation. If it is allowed to wind down, many who are paying into it today, and have been for all their working lives, won’t see any benefits. Social Security cannot survive without raising taxes and/or decreasing benefits. So when creating your financial plan, it is better to know now rather than later that you cannot rely on it as a source of income. Other countries do have [...]
The Desire Diet
Hitting the Offswitch on Consuming Following your desires and wishes ties you to the wheel of doing and that requires money. And money requires time. So, you end up taking away the energy to just be. It also keeps you outwardly focused, stopping the inward movement that will uncover the light that you are. This is a practice that can push the offswitch on our outer-directed projector and create an inward direction for our attention and help us be with what actually is. This practice will also bring you into moment-by-moment intimate contact with your worldly desires so you can see how they are operating in your life and give you greater understanding of the nature of desire. For a period of time, not less than 6 weeks, take an aim to take a fast from your wishes and desires. Not to stop try and stop them from arising- but rather just not act on them. And then inquire as each one arises, what is underlying the desire. For example, you want to buy a pair of jeans. When you sit with the desire, you see that you believe that will make you more beautiful. You are already beautiful. Or, you may look in the mirror and see wrinkles and wish you were younger. It immediately brings the desire for a facial (or even a facelift). As you inquire, you may feel the fear of your mortality and recognize how you don’t accept your aging and the reality of impermanence. [...]
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 [...]
Chaos and The Economy
A Spiritual View of the Economic Crises I was at a mediation and guidance session the other night that was led by my friend, Pratima Freeman, who has been receiving guidance higher consciousness during meditation for many years. Not any particular being, but a transmission from a source of wisdom. See her website, Gifts of Guidance. She told me on the way to the evening she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to teach on. Apparently during the meditation, she got the message that she was supposed to teach on joy, but had a lot of resistance to that. With all that was going on in the world, why joy? But that’s what we did, and it led to a very interesting evening about women and their role in the ending of the patriarchy. What I understood, is that we all need to stay connected to our joy. I am not talking about happiness here. Joy is experiencing everything without judgment or concern. It is a state of beingness. Whereas happiness requires that “this” happen and “not this”. There is a vast difference between them. Joy is inclusive, while happiness is exclusive. Another example (mine) is that when we say abundance, we don’t mean the being state of feeling gratitude for the beneficence of existence, of consciousness and experience that flows through our lives, but rather we mean money. So it is joy that is needed is for there to be a grounding in being while the world enters into [...]
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 the Patriarchy
The Challenge to the Old Masculine Mentality The masculine is what turns the soul outward to affect the world. But in order for it to help us through the global crisis, which is really a wake-up all to humanity, it must escape the defining cultural influences to which it has been subjected for centuries. The forces of the old masculine approach ( what I call the patriarchy) are being challenged by a the arising of the feminine and a new masculinity that uses its strength to support and empower the community. What I call the patriarchy is really a magnification and distortion of the true masculine qualities. True masculinity is about achievement in the world, but not cut off from consciousness and in partnership with the feminine. The old patriarch loves the rigidity of the law, the power of the hierarchy, and the tyranny of oppression. The difficulty is that old ways die hard and our institutions including banks, government, church, and corporations are still easily controlled by this mentality. People who are in these institutions are not objective, because their own interests are being served- so whether consciously or unconsciously, they are enmeshed in this mindset. You just need to look at the bonuses Wall Street keeps paying out to see the truth of this. These people have not reflected on their inner lives, and the values that would flow from such a reflection. Instead, they act through layers of rationalization, manipulation, greed, and hidden agendas which (I hope for [...]
Facing Limitation Is Being Human
The Economic Crisis as Human Growth in Conciousness As I spoke about in my last blog, the chase for more is better has been a defining characteristic of our culture for some time. One of the hallmarks of this is the resulting “ubiquitous frenzy , arising from the almost universal discomfort of being with oneself. Everyone involved in this chase has been exploiting the present moment as a stepping stone to new experiences or pleasures that will keep them from having to feel our discomfort. We have become attached to our escapes from ourselves. This has become such an expectation of our culture, that Obama and the present government administration has been trying to bail out the centralized money system in an attempt to let us keep the “American Way”. It’s failing. It was doomed to fail. And not just becuase of the economics involved. I do follow those. I have made reference before to those I trust on that front, for example Michael Hudson who wrote “The Financial War Against Iceland” and many other articles over the years of great insight and wisdom and also Catherine Austin Fitts of Solari.com. But the economics is not my job. My job is one of consciousness, and to bring that to our money. From my perspective, the bailout was doomed to fail because a new consciousness is necessary for the survival of the planet, and us. That means we can no longer run from our discomfort. If we had chosen a [...]