Archive for the ‘The Nation’ Category

If you can’t see this one… you are likely overdue for an eye exam.

Within the last year, recently disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) made it his mission to lead a personal assault against Glenn Beck in an attempt to destroy Mr. Beck’s career by undermining his sponsors.  In particular, Congressman Weiner accused Beck of an “unholy alliance” with Goldline, alleging the company was a “multimedia rip off” and that Beck was using his radio and television shows to manipulate listeners into investing with the company.

Weiner’s attack was designed to destroy Beck by raising questions, through innuendo, about Beck’s integrity, truthfulness and motives.  It turned out there was no factual basis for the Congressman’s allegations and he likely knew there was no such basis when he made them.  The charges faded into oblivion.

The Congressman himself was not so fortunate.

With the now infamous photos of Congressman Weiner and his shameful “sexting” revelations, he has become what he set out inflict upon Beck: a pariah whose integrity is revealed to be nonexistent.

(If you cannot see the Divine aspect and irony of this reversal you need to stop reading and call your optometrist to schedule that eye exam).

I have been listening to Glenn Beck for several years and am certain of a few things as a result.  He loves his country, does his homework, is sincere, and is the bearer of Light in a darkened world.  I call such people “Lightworkers.”

It’s a fulltime job with no days off.

Congressman Weiner, by his actions, has demonstrated that he represents the antithesis of what Glenn Beck stands for.  The Congressman, it turns out, is a participant in, and therefore a promoter of, Darkness.  Now there’s the real “unholy alliance” in this story.

As with all darkness, the Light shining upon it reveals it for what it is.

Congressman Weiner has inadvertently served his country well.  He has, by his actions, given credibility and added strength to Glenn Beck’s purpose and thereby empowered the Light.

In the final analysis, this was a classic and eternal clash of opposing energies.  It has always been the case and always will be that Light reveals, and thereby transcends, all that is dark.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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?

 

In a rapidly changing world in which the flow of information by major media outlets is controlled by corporate ownership and investors with an agenda we, the public, are easily manipulated by selective and biased reporting.  Therefore, it is critical that you think for yourself and dig deeper than surface reporting in an effort to be truly informed.

In fact, inner guidance, more than any other source, will be the most reliable place to verify reality.

Example:  The Egyptian Revolution.

President Obama, as well as mainstream and social media, were enamored with the recent revolutionary uprising in Egypt.  Each was certain the uprising was democracy in action and a harbinger of better things to come regarding Middle East relations with the U.S. and Israel.

Now that the dust has settled, so to speak, the reality appears to be something altogether different.  What is emerging from the chaotic aftermath of the riots in Egypt is a very vocal and vehement expression of defiance against the United States and a blatant intention to destroy the State of Israel.

I find two conclusions instructive from events as they have unfolded:

1.  This Administration and the media fueled the flames of uprising with a false premise and now that the winds of change are directing the fire on a deadly path, both are disturbingly and shamefully silent.

2.  Mubarak may have been a dictator but he was also an impediment to Muslim extremism taking hold within Egypt.  (Not to excuse his dictatorial hold on the country, but rather to highlight the possibility that unless you have set in place enlightened leadership or a viable alternative plan for governance, it may be best to bypass revolution as a vehicle for change).

As to my point about inner guidance, I think that as the days of rage unfolded on camera, common sense (or just plain checking in with your “gut”) probably told anyone who was conscious and not living in a fairy-tale-wishful-fantasy world that events in Egypt were at best precarious and at worst foreboding.

Unfortunately, time has proven the latter to be the case.

The most valuable lesson to take away from this experience is that reality is best obtained from within rather than imposed by external sources…  too often motivated by an agenda that is little concerned with our well being.

Let us not behave like sheep but rather individuals who possess the wisdom to tune in within and surf our own channels.

 

 

 

When I read that the military’s code name for Osama bin Laden was “Geronimo” I had an uncomfortable feeling and immediately went to Wikipedia to read the history of the Native American Apache leader.  What I read turned my uncomfortable feeling to disgust.

How insensitive, blind and continually arrogant can we be to perpetuate a false and demeaning stereotype of the wise and spiritual human beings who preceded our very existence on this continent?  How ignorant of our government to choose to identify a mass murderer by the code name of one of the, if not the, most celebrated and honored leaders of a nation?  A man who is legend to his people for his dedication, bravery and mastery.

To me, this shameful choice exemplifies two controlling principles: 1) History is written by the “victors” and 2) Until each of us is willing to honor all peoples and value their unique contributions as part of the “human family” we will continue to be led by those who favor some at the expense of others.

I think the United States government, from our President to the Joint Chiefs, owes a public apology to all Native Americans.  Failure to do so will be yet another blight upon our disregard and continued devaluation of a proud and honorable people.

The resulting shame will be ours and, ironically, give unintended credence to some of the rants of Osama bin Laden… that the West and its leaders are concerned with only their own prosperity and care little for the interests or plight of people of color and differing belief systems.

How sad and ironic, for us, should that be the case.

This is not a post about Osama bin Laden.  It’s a post about you and me.  He’s gone and that’s that regarding him.  However we remain… so how we act, and react, from here on out determines our future.  What also remains are the issues that created a world in which someone like him could develop and be successful, using the term “successful” in its most narrow sense.

In a world where people and nations vie to maximize their health, wealth and general well-being… not only without regard for others but, at times, at the expense of others… there will always be fertile ground in which to cultivate  disease such as bin Laden.  But such a destructive environment is under our dominion and control.  We very much have the power, individually and collectively, to choose again and create a world where every human being’s right to life (basic sustenance) and pursuit of happiness (the possibility that one can better oneself with effort) is guaranteed.

To create such a world we will have to re-prioritize what it is we value above all else.  Such choices will necessarily begin with compassion, dignity, and cooperation.  Such a world will need to be based upon logic that transcends Aristotle’s conclusion that solutions consist of only two options:  “x” or “not x”.   Such thinking leads to dilemma.  An alternative, or tetra lemma approach, considers “x”, “not x,” “x and not x,” or “neither x nor not x.”   In other words, simply put… one or the other or both or neither all become possibilities and thereby broaden the options for resolution.

Egypt wasn’t a spiritual, religious or political revolution.   It was an economic one where 50% of the population is under the age of 24 with no economic future of any consequence.   You cannot make food scarce and eliminate hope for the future without dire consequences.  Such are the elements that foster environments wherein diseased minds rule.

We are better than that.   But what it takes to turn this all around is not only personal responsibility but, first and foremost, personal courage.

Courage to think for ourselves.

Courage to reject systems that do not work.

Courage to speak out about values and policies that devalue others.

Courage to say no to a politically-based “collective” approach wherein the few seek to dominate the many under the guise of leadership.

Courage to speak out for spiritual Oneness, our inherent connection to all living beings, and all that it implies.

Courage to be patient, thoughtful and thorough with the process so sound decisions can be made along the way.

There is no harm in a centralized government.  We have one in this country.  But as it was designed, that central government had very limited power over the individual states that, along with their inhabitants, remain free to pursue individuality and personal creativity within an economic system intended to support growth rather than inhibit it.

Today is a new day and the quality of our choices will determine tomorrow.