Archive for the ‘Change’ Category

A word to Rush Limbaugh. Baloney.

After listening to his tirade blaming feminists and women generally for Anthony Weiner’s poor choices, he has now affirmed for me what I have always suspected. He is a mean-spirited, ideologue jock with a gift for gab and business.  Kudos to him for the latter and shame on him for the former.

Yes, I know he was responding to Claire Shipman’s comments on This Week with Christiana Anampour, and yes I know the This Week segment seemed to say that if more women were in positions of public and private sector authority the world would be a better place, but really…. do two wrongs make a right?

It’s not about male versus female.  Isn’t it time we got past the “us or them” mentality that has brought humanity to the brink of its own destruction?  Just how much havoc do we have to wreak before we get it?

Like everything else in life it’s about balance.

Limbaugh is stuck in the 70’s. Consequently, his reaction is understandable.   Feminism was a reaction to 5000+ years of what author Riane Eisler calls in her book The Chalice and The Blade “dominator social systems.” Dominator systems are based on aggression, domination and exploitation.  They are maintained through fear.  Think subjugation, slavery, slaughter, Inquisition, crucifixion, burning at the stake, gas ovens, atomic bombs, and terrorism. The list is, sadly, endless.

We’ve had 5000+ years of dominator driven advice and rule because men have done the advising and the ruling.  Are they inherently bad? No. Do they need to be more in balance? Yes.  Is partnership with women the answer? Partly.

You see, it’s not a simple as gender.  If women rise to positions of power, only to act like men when they get there, then women will be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

The solution is social systems wherein both women and men contribute their inherently unique characteristics, and God-given gifts, so that together they are able to achieve something greater than either could achieve on their own.

Getting to this realization and then exhibiting an openness to explore the possibilities is the key here.  Both genders have some hurdles to jump if they hope to be successful.  Men will have to moderate their propensity for aggression (testosterone driven) and women will have to moderate their propensity for emotionalism (estrogen).

But think of it.  If these two forces of Nature can first bring themselves into balance, then join with the other in a balanced union and effort, imagine the possibilities. I think we have to imagine the possibilities.

At this point, imagining the alternative is just too scary.

 

It’s the day after, so what can I say about Congressman Anthony Weiner that hasn’t already been said? Well, I’m not certain.  But I have a few “off the beaten track” remarks to make and so will try and put this sordid story to rest here by making them.

1.  Those women who participated with the Congressman in sexual references beyond that first “tweet” or Facebook exchange are as culpable as the Congressman, and for them to claim duplicity, victimization or embarrassment is its own shame.

2.  Predatory sexual practices, whether male-female (the most notorious), male-male (i.e. the Catholic Church); female-male; female-female or adult -child are reprehensible and speak to the emotional illness, moral depravity and lack of character of the perpetrator.

3.  Accepting responsibility for reprehensible behavior, absent a consequence, is an empty gesture with no redeeming value.

4.  As adolescent and perverse the Congressman’s sexual preferences and behavior may be, it is his willful and knowing decision to lie and deceive his friends, colleagues, and constituents that make him unfit to hold public office and thereby, public trust.

Every day, each of us is confronted with opportunities to confront or deny behavior in ourselves and others that is the basis for a degenerating society.  What we do in these moments is our personal contribution to the world in which we live.  If each of us is not ready, willing and able to stand and resist the perpetual lowering of the bar for acceptable behavior, then no politician or bumper sticker will save us from self-imposed and self-selected destruction.

 

New York Congressman Anthony Weiner apparently has no survival instinct.  He is patently self-destructive. Not only did he place at risk both his marriage and his career by blatantly pursuing perverse sexual behavior through the internet and social media sites, but having been exposed (no pun intended,) he exhibits neither remorse nor an inclination to admit to his behavior. He’s in denial… publically at least.  Personally, only his humiliated and presumably pained wife knows if he’s in denial privately as well.

Brooklyn Democratic Chairman and power broker Vito Lopez has been quoted as saying “Something like this better be put to rest. If it’s left outstanding, it could have damaging impact, even if it means the difference of 3 or 4 percent of the vote in a very competitive four-way or five-way race” regarding Weiner’s chances in a future mayoral contest.

Is that really the issue? Is the potential damage to Mr. Weiner’s political career what the media…what we… need to be focusing upon?

Given the dire economic straights the economy is suffering and the worldwide propensity for revolution, isn’t this a little reminiscent of how the country handled the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinski revelations?  Didn’t we learn anything from that sordid moment?  It’s not about the economy, political careers or even the wanton misuse of power.

It’s about how We The People continue to look the other way… in our personal lives and in the lives of public figures when its simply easier and more convenient to do that than confront the reality.

The reality is that as a culture and a society we have so lowered the bar that we barely blink… and are almost never heard…when behavior is demeaning, degrading and socially harmful.  So Weiner gets 15 minutes of media focus for his disgusting behavior and our kids are exposed to one more sexual deviant. So everyone laughs when the “F” word is used at the MTV awards and our children are watching and making a mental (even if subconscious) note.  So the likes of Schwarzenegger, Strauss-Kahn, and Edwards are momentarily exposed and perhaps embarrassed (I think that requires a conscience and I’m not sure these guys qualify) and then life goes on for us… and further downhill it goes as well.

It’s really up to each of us to begin to examine our own lives and hold not only public figures accountable but ourselves as well.  It’s time (actually its almost past available time) when we redefine and restructure our values, our priorities and our tolerance levels for what kind of world we want to create and live in.

Anthony Weiner and deviants like him are symptoms of an ailing culture. We are both the illness and the cure.  Which of those we end up cultivating will be determined by the our choices starting now… and the personal responsibility for those choices we are each willing and able to accept.

 

Sometimes there’s just no way around the tough stuff.  While I realize my credibility will take a hit with the following statement, I none-the-less feel compelled to make it.

You are living in two simultaneous realities.  Both are quite real.

In Reality Number One, the world is experiencing unprecedented and widespread change.  Social unrest and faltering economies are breaking down and reorganizing for the good of all involved, even if the transition period is fraught with difficulty and endless challenges.  The outcome, however, is a proverbial giant step for humankind.

In Reality Number Two, the world is experiencing unprecedented and widespread change. Social unrest and faltering economies have created a dangerous global environment wherein opportunists, both political and economic, are exerting every effort, and seeking every means, to meld excessive governmental power to personal financial gain for the few at the expense of the many.  The outcome will be the destruction of the world as you have known it.

How can this be?  How can both be happening at the same time?

The answer is because this moment is a bellwether for the future of humanity. What is at stake is nothing less than personal freedom and rights granted every human being by our Creator.

There is the potential for either of these realities to prevail.  Who doesn’t viscerally feel the yearning for freedom by the Arab youth throughout the Middle Eastern countries manifested through various degrees of uprising? Who doesn’t also feel the violence boiling just below the surface of these uprisings… and the manipulation of those young people by persons with a sinister agenda?  Who does not know from human history that absent the presence of Light, darkness multiplies like cancer?

Will the result be harmony or subjugation?  Will it end in evolution or devolution?  What determines the outcome?

You do.

This is your moment to choose between darkness and Light. This is your moment to join with others of like mind and be heard. This is your chance to put fear to rest and break through the illusion of terror in order to show others who are less certain, the way.  This is your appointment with destiny.

You have always had this much power.  Never before have you been this close to a full awareness of that fact combined with the Will to act upon it.

The future of the world will literally be created this day by your choice and made manifest by your voice. You are the answer. Now is the time.

It has been set before you this day.

 

 

Fundamentally, everything in the physical world is made up of energy.  Life is all about managing that energy.  Now if you believe that we create our reality with our thoughts, then it would make perfect sense that we find ourselves in the middle of a global energy crisis!

To wit:  Just today, Goldman-Sachs is predicting $5.00 a gallon gas by mid-summer.

So what does managing personal energy have to do with a global energy crisis?  Well, while we tend to focus only on external conditions… such as OPEC’s control and manipulation of oil prices… or the lack of sufficient renewable or affordable energy… what if you and I are actually the cause of the energy crisis?  What if you and I fail to properly manage our own internal energy we then collectively, though our combined thinking, create a literal global energy crisis?

How?

Well, there are only two emotions: Love and Fear.  We are frightened and controlled by fear every minute of every day by the media and, too often, by our religious beliefs.  What if widespread fear is a reflection of the misuse of individual energy?  And what if enough individual misuse combines to manifest as…wait for it…the global energy crisis?

What to do?

Immediately and permanently, dismiss fearful thinking. Focus on loving thoughts… on what’s right with your life…on what you have to be grateful for…on the best of humankind.

If enough of us move from Fear to Love we may just find, for example,  fuel prices coming down… and that could just be the first step in turning around not only the global energy crisis but a great deal more about our world that is created and controlled by fear.

 

 

You’ve heard the expression a thousand times. “Follow the money.” It’s used when one is looking to trace back to the origins of how something has occurred.  What if I told you that the expression “follow the money” is actually a perversion and a deliberate distraction of a much more powerful and accurate expression?

Curious?  Good!

Following the money may get you a very limited revelation about a specific occurrence… but if you want a greater understanding of how everything in your life occurs “follow your feelings.”

Your feelings are the fuel that drives the engine of your beliefs and your beliefs are the basis for your thoughts about what is true for you. Whether you realize it or not, what you think about yourself and the world in which you live actually manifests as your reality.

We are always thinking.  What we think we create.  What we think most often is what we most often create.  This concept is the basis for all of the self-help and self-actualization teachings that have become so widespread in the past several decades.  But if you have difficulty grasping either the philosophical or spiritual basis for this concept… how about a scientific one?

At the quantum level, the conscious presence of an observer affects matter, literally.  What this means is that when a conscious observer is present to observe an experiment, the mere presence of that observer changes the outcome of that which is being observed!  Consciousness… thoughts… matter.

We humans are actually transmitters and receivers of vast quantities of information.  We perform this exchange of energy by way of frequency.  Not unlike radio waves.  I like to think of it as AM, FM and… well… add whatever letter works for you.  I prefer “CM” as in Consciousness Modulation.  The more conscious, or aware, you are of your feelings, beliefs and thoughts the more power you have to create your own experiences.

This brings me to the point.

True power lies within.  Fear acts to “jam” the vital information you need to send and receive on CM.  Refusal to recognize this, or to take responsibility for it, traps you in a powerless, pessimistic, victim consciousness.  It’s a lower frequency wherein very little else can be accessed other than fear.  It’s also a frequency that has been broadcast and used for millennia to keep you from realizing and actualizing your own power.

You have Free Will.  Today, as you make choices about everything from what to wear to what to eat… remember to make the most important choice of all.  Choose to follow your feelings all the way to your beliefs so that you can consciously choose what you think about life, its possibilities and your role in it all.

I assure you that what you tune into on CM is light years (a deliberate choice of words!) beyond anything you’ll ever be able to access on any other frequency.

 

This one is personal.

Time Magazine’s cover story this week is “Sex, Lies and Arrogance:  What Makes Powerful Men Behave So Badly?”  It’s been prompted by the recent revelations of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the alleged criminal behavior of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  Perhaps, if we use the moment wisely, and exhibit more than the attention span of a five year old, we as a nation (and maybe even a globe) can finally embark upon a long-overdue discussion upon which literally rests our future.

It goes something like this. Women are not property and no one, confidant or stranger alike, has the right to take what they want when doing so infringes upon the person of another.

That’s part one.

Part two is that an exclusively male dominance in ruling nations, setting governmental policy, establishing religious tenets, administering academic institutions, controlling the private business sector and even writing history, for over two thousand years, has resulted in a world woefully out of balance.

The attempt to subjugate, demean and obscure the Divine Feminine role in everything from Creation to spouses has led us to the precipice of moral blindness and, potentially, the inevitable extinction that must follow.

Poor behavior and shameful choices require neither financial success nor notoriety.  Someone I knew and trusted, a very ordinary guy of average means, tried to rape me.  While so doing, he actually expressed his belief that “our relationship” gave him the right to have sex if he wanted it.  My rights didn’t seem to be a consideration.  Miraculously, while being physically overpowered, I had the presence of mind to somehow speak and act in a way that gave him pause, which allowed me to ultimately escape the moment.  I will never understand how I had the ability to forgive him, which in my heart I did, although it changed my ability to trust him.  In hindsight, he said it never happened… but denial is one of many mechanisms for abdicating personal responsibility when the truth is too painful to bear.

In the final analysis, sex, abuse of power, violence, greed, deception…a whole host of behaviors… are about Free Will.  They’re about the choices we make every minute of every day because every choice is an act of self-definition.  We are who we choose to be.

If male energy is about survival, and if left unchecked mutates into dominance, then it’s time we acknowledged and, yes, honored the critical and necessary standing due female energy, which is about nurturing and compassion.  Together these energies co-create a framework in which their combined efforts exceed, by leaps and bounds, what either could accomplish alone.

Co-Creation. Balance of Power. The Divine Feminine. The Sanctity of Male and Female Alike.  These are the timely and necessary topics of discussion.  Without such discussions, and without resurrection of the Divine Feminine role in co-creation, we are all dinosaurs on the brink of extinction.

 

 

 

Lately, there is much talk of personal responsibility.  Perhaps nowhere is this concept more relevant than when applied to our thoughts.  As we look around the globe at social, economic, and political conditions it seems appropriate to ask, “What are we doing, or not doing, that is directly related to what we are experiencing?”

But what if the same question is equally relevant to the escalation of violent weather conditions we are experiencing worldwide?  What if we are causing those conditions, not by global warming or disregard for natural resources, but by our thoughts?

At the quantum level, physicists have proven that the conscious presence of an observer affects and changes the outcome of the event being observed. Consciousness, awareness, is energy that affects matter. “Pay attention”… that admonition you often heard repeated as a child… now takes on new meaning.  Your attention is energy.  How you use it, where you place it, matters. Literally.

We have the freedom, Free Will, to place our attention on anything we choose. When millions, maybe even billions, of people place their attention on the same thing, the effect is likely to be profound.

Which got me thinking.

It’s often said by environmentalists and others that Earth and weather upheavals in the form of volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, warming, hurricanes and the like are “Mother Earth” telling us, in her own inimitable way, that She has had enough.  But what if Earth and Nature are not reacting to our behavior, but to our thoughts?  What if as we think imbalanced and violent thoughts we create  imbalanced and violent Earth conditions?

What if the more people who think violent thoughts then the more extreme and widespread are manifested Earth conditions?

Maybe President Obama and others want to rethink encouraging “revolution” across the globe.  Change need not be violent unless we choose it to be.  Maybe we ought to rethink how we communicate and apply certain words and concepts.  Maybe thoughts are things which, once given voice, are made real. Maybe all the violent change humanity seems to be experiencing globally starts in our minds.

Perhaps starting today we each can be more circumspect around what we think and say.  Perhaps there is good reason to put an end to watching, and thereby energizing with your attention, the violence the media loves to disseminate.

A Native American proverb makes the point.  A grandfather talking to his young grandson tells the boy he has two wolves inside of him struggling with each other. The first is the wolf of peace, love and kindness.  The other is the wolf of fear, greed and hatred. “Which wolf will win, grandfather?” asks the young boy.  “Whichever one I feed,” is the reply.

Today, by your thoughts, starve violence and feed peace.

Personal Responsibility starts there.

 

For a new way to think about personal responsibility, language and global change see my new book The Lightworker’s Handbook: A Spiritual Guide to Eliminating Fear. CLICK HERE to learn more.

I don’t want to believe that Barack Obama means to intentionally disrespect the Constitution of the United States, destroy out international alliances and jeopardize the security of Israel and so I won’t believe those things. 

Instead, I choose to believe (Free Will) that he is an individual lacking in a core understanding of who he is and what he believes in.  This was my conclusion after reading A Bound Man by Shelby Steel in 2008 and why I did not vote for him that year.  It was later reinforced when I read The Roots of Obama’s Rage by Danesh D’Souza, a well-documented and intelligently thoughtful analysis of Obama’s heritage, life and character.

This core lack in Obama makes him not so much vulnerable to outside pressures, as some have asserted, but subject to the hunger and need of his own ego.  When the vessel has a hole in it, no amount of water can fill it up.  Lacking core values, Obama gives no weight to the values of others. Consequently, he feels free to override, or altogether bypass, 1) the American public in forcing the passage of Universal Healthcare when 62% of those polled did not want the bill passed; 2) Congress by circumventing the War Powers Act in Libya and ignoring the values set forth by the Founders in the U.S. Constitution and, 3) the Israeli government and its valuing of the safety and lives of its citizens.

It’s unlikely that we’ve had many Presidents who did not suffer from some degree of need to fulfill their egos.  And it’s probably safe to say that more than a fair share of them had huge egos.  But to make a distinction worth noting, it’s not Obama’s ego that makes his Presidency so dangerous… it’s the fact that no amount of railroading, conquest and imposition of his will upon those who oppose him can satisfy that ego.

I once her a psychiatrist explain “A neurotic is the easiest type of patient to treat.  He or she just has an excess of something.  It’s a matter of reducing or minimizing those excesses.  But someone lacking input at critical stages of development is the hardest to treat because you’re trying to put values in where none have ever existed.  There’s no foundation or reference point.”

This description, I believe, describes Barack Obama

It is for those of us who see the present dangers posed by a leadership so lacking to speak our minds and shine a bright light upon the problem.  While he is but one man in the history of a great nation, he has both the bully pulpit and the power at the moment.  If the Great Man theory of history holds true, that great men appear at critical points in history and take the people where his vision leads him, then we have much to concern ourselves with where the vision is highly personal and is born of need.

We must be careful that some version of the rationale people often use when explaining why they don’t fly in airplanes does not wind up applying to our nation’s destiny:  What if it’s not my time but it’s the pilot’s time?

 

I have a friend who cannot seem to stop blaming herself and feeling shame for behavior she has corrected and no longer participates in.   Her shame and guilt act as an ongoing impediment to her making any kind of meaningful progress in her life because she forever doubts her worth as a human being.   And what’s worse, she expends so much energy trying to hide the knowledge of her former behavior from others that she’s grown comfortable living a lie.

Which got me to thinking about the futility and sheer exhaustion of carrying around unnecessary baggage rather than proudly wearing the lessons and benefits of life’s experiences.

When I was 24 years old I tried to commit suicide.  I speak annually to high schools on depression and suicide and also often include reference to the attempt in my many inspirational speaking engagements which cover a variety of topics.  I am never ashamed to mention the attempt because growing past the circumstances and insecurities that led me to try is one of the greatest lessons of my life.  Rather than see the attempt as something for which I should be ashamed, I see it as a triumphal turning point in my own life and an experience that may help save others from such pain.

However, life experiences can only be instructive and helpful if shared.

I believe that we are all here to be a light unto one another.  It serves no one to hide your light.   And if you’ll allow me to expand the metaphor out a bit … it’s through acquiring experience, of every kind, that we get “brighter.”

I wish I could convince my friend that she needn’t cower or hide from the truth of her experiences.  I wish I could gift to her the forgiveness I feel having given my own unconscious behaviors over to God.  But it is right that we each get to a place of awareness and peace within ourselves in our own time.  I can at least take comfort in the fact that we all, do in fact, ultimately get there.

In the meantime, while I cannot help her carry her baggage… I do routinely remind her that when she is ready, she can simply put it down.