>     Doesn’t it seem that for quite some time now there is always someone, or something, “raging” at us? Whether it’s the wildfires in California, the terrorist in the Middle East, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, or some angry motorist in rush hour, we appear to be surrounded and inundated with rage. And it’s closing in. What’s a person to do?
    For the most part, it will be a good thing if you can find your peace and direction from within. We are in times of great chaos and change…not necessarily a bad thing…but change, especially change for the highest good of all concerned…is always accompanied by stress. Stress is the natural by-product of a structure expanding. The old limits and parameters are “tested” as they attempt to adapt and accommodate new dimensions.
    It’s of little value to look outside yourself to try and find the answers for the answers are within. Each of us was designed, created, with an internal reference library to access for locating all that we need to know in any given situation. The key to accessing the information stored within the library is an ability to listen…to receive.
    We are not taught about receiving. We are taught about giving and we are taught about doing, but rarely do we find guidance around the Art of Receiving. There is a very good reason for this age-old, deliberate omission…for if you know how to access internal guidance that provides you everything you need to know, there would be no need for the “experts” and organizations outside of us to which we all flock and financially compensate for their “special” knowledge.
    When you lack the ability to receive and proceed from internal guidance, you are at the mercy of, and are reliant upon, those people and institutions that appear to have what it is you lack. Appear is the key word here. Believing that someone else has more knowledge than you do about how to BE YOU is an illusion created by others and perpetuated by you. One of the ways this illusion is perpetuated by self and others is through fear and chaos. These mechanisms may take many forms, but they’re all of the same origin and for the same purpose. Control.
    Chaos in the form of rage is the current form of choice.
    The best way to deal with chaos and rage is to learn how to be “in it but not of it.” (Now where have I heard that advice before?).
    When in the midst of chaos, or when in the presence of rage, what you want to do is perfect going within yourself to access the reference library of infinite information with which you are equipped to obtain what it is YOU need to know to transcend the situation. Transcending the situation means being able to witness the chaos without becoming a part of it…without contributing to it…without helping it grow.  
    I have heard multiple stories in the past three days of people who did not evacuate their homes in California as the raging wildfires approached, even though they were ordered to do so by local government, but instead chose to stay and use their brains and their resources to fight the fire. In each of those cases, they saved their homes although every evacuated and abandoned home around theirs burnt to the ground.
   Fear and rage are powerful behavioral control mechanisms.
    Inner guidance is the override.
    When chaos comes, and others warn you about what to do and how to handle it, don’t abandon yourself. Go within, use your intuition and internal reference library to adapt and expand new dimensions…and, oh yes, survive.   
    
    
    
   

>     There are probably almost as many jokes about California as there are about lawyers. As a former practicing attorney, I can tell you that many of the one’s about my profession are earned, or at least warranted.
    As for California…we may have to reassess.
    The devastating wildfires ravaging the State this week bring to light a new perspective on what is characteristically seen as the “flakiness” and “Kumbaya” spirit of people who are born or choose to move there. And while it may be true that personal relationships are typically not of the same depth as those formed elsewhere in the country, it is also true that there is something rather remarkable to be learned from Californians as well.
    Qaulcomm Stadium in Southern California has been turned into a refuge for individuals and families displaced by the danger and destruction of the wildfires. It has also, apparently, become a shining example of what compassion and caring look like. It is vintage California and deserves a second look.
    I had my own experience with compassion California style many years ago and the memory has never left me. I had moved to Los Angeles to start law school. The week of my move was also the week of my birthday. I literally knew no one in the city. On the third day, which also happened to be my birthday, I went shopping for some things I needed for my apartment. While in a furniture store, I happened to mention to the person I was speaking with that I had just arrived and it was my birthday. What occurred next defies the imagination, but it happened to me…so I can tell you that it’s true.
    Within minutes, the owners of the store closed the store, ordered pizza, went out a bought a cake, and threw me a birthday party! Now it may not have been sound business practice, but I can tell you in their single act of caring those strangers made a transplanted, lonely young woman feel important, and yes, loved.
    When Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, the world watched as civil services and public officials failed to fulfill their intended purpose, chaos and looting broke out, and the stadium where people were housed was both unsanitary and unsafe.
    In California, civil services and civil servants alike have been visible and hard at their jobs since the fires began. At Qualcomm Stadium, there are stilt walkers and massage therapists and cooks and suppliers and every possible category of volunteerism imaginable. There is compassion…California style…on display for all to see.
    There is also a woman at Qualcomm who lost her home to bank foreclosure a month ago who is greeting every new arrival at the stadium with a hug. She says she knows the trauma of losing everything you have and she just wants to give back what she can.   
    I recently read that human beings need 8-12 hugs a day for emotional and physical health. I don’ know where you live or if you’ll get your requisite 8-12 hugs today. But just in case your short, I know where you can get one.
    Perhaps we need a few less jokes about Californians and a few more lessons learned.
    
 

>  Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, returned to her country yesterday after 8 years of self-imposed exile. Although warned to delay the return based upon intelligence that indicated her life was in jeopardy, Ms. Bhutto proceeded as planned. The arrival brought the anticipated attempt on her life and, although she was not harmed, over 100 of her supporters were killed and hundreds more wounded when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in the throngs that greeted her motorcade.
    The ire directed towards the former Prime Minister has to do with who her perceived friends are. She is seen as a friend of the West, and, therefore, an enemy of those forces in the Middle East and Europe who are bent on imposing world-wide, terrorist-based Islamic rule.
    While much can be said for Ms. Bhutto, it is her followers and supporters that deserve our attention and respect. Every person who publicly turned out to greet her knew, with certainty, they were risking their life to do so. But like Ms. Bhutto, they refused to be intimidated or cowered into denying who they chose as “friend.”
    Bullies are as old as humankind. It’s one of our less attractive qualities.  They exist and are evident as early as kindergarten. Some children will try, by sheer force of will or body, to make another child do or say or be the way they want them to be. And too often, this approach works. The practice doesn’t stop as we get older…it just becomes more subtle…more socially acceptable. In middle school, high school and college it can most often be seen as the will of the “clique” or the hierarchy of peers or the criteria for acceptance into a sorority or fraternity. Whatever the means, the message is clear: conform or be rejected and ostracized.
    The potential for the acting out of this less than admirable human quality, in it’s extreme, is seen in acts of war. Children growing up with the quality unchecked and lacking conscience, who gain access to either political or military power, have the opportunity to escalate, exponentially, the force by which they try and impose their will upon others.   
    Threat of death is a powerful motivator.
    We are not so surprised when a former Head of State such as Benazir Bhutto faces down the threat of death and proceeds based upon her beliefs. What is amazing, and needs to be lauded, is the determination and courage exhibited by her followers who faced the threat of death to support what and who they believe in.
    The bullies are among us. They have a committed, albeit perverted, determination to impose their will upon us. They think they can tell us what to believe and around whom to rally. They think the threat of harm and the specter of death is all they need to cower us into submission.
    There is no darkness that is not extinguished by light. The way to battle the bullies is not with might. It is not to meet them on the battlefield of their choosing and, by so doing, become them.
  The bullies hide their identity and cloak themselves in darkness. The way to beat the bullies is to give energy to the Light. The way to prevail is to, at every opportunity, stand up for what is the best that humankind is capable of achieving. The way to prevail is to understand that when you feed anything you give it power.
    Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize recipient Eli Wiesel said the thing he learned in the Concentration camps was that “you do not give evil energy.” By keeping your thoughts, words and actions behind that which elevates the human condition you will be nurturing and powering the best of us.
    If you’re wondering what that looks like, it was the scene in Pakistan yesterday.
    While the terrorists and the media would have us distracted by the mayhem, blood and destruction there, I saw only the Light.
    Some things, you see, are worth dying for.
    
        
    
            

>     Turkey is mobilizing to invade northern Iraq to attack the Kurds. The United States House of Representatives, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is about to pass a formerly introduced resolution condemning the ethnic cleansing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire (read as “former Turks”) that occurred hundreds of years ago. Several former U.S. Secretaries of State see the resolution’s passage as untimely, antagonistic to Turkey, the probable reason for the mobilization of Turkish troops on Iraq’s northern border, and an ill portent for the likelihood that the U.S. military will be able to continue to use Turkish air space and passageways to move troops into Iraq.
    On it’s face, and at first glance, I’d have to agree. But we live in challenging times that demand we think beyond the surface of things as well as for ourselves. So, upon further glance, I see a different reality.
    Ethnic cleansing is reprehensible whenever and wherever it occurs. As a Jew, I am gratified that the world, albeit late in coming, acknowledged Hitler’s and the German peoples’ efforts to exterminate certain ethnic and religious groups, mine included. To this day, Holocaust deniers and those who give them a platform, raise my ire. I can imagine that Armenians, who were the object of just such an effort by the ancestors of today’s Turks, have waited long and painfully for acknowledgment of the horror their ancestors experienced.
    I am proud to be part of the nation that is willing to step up and publicly make such an acknowledgment and condemnation. We must never be silent about an attempt to exterminate a people because they are different from us…primarily because they are us. We, the people of the world, are simply variations of a common theme called Humanity. To deny or injure one part of us is to inflict, inevitably, pain upon all parts of us.
    As for the fear-based propaganda being touted that such a resolution will “anger Turkey” and thereby cause it to retaliate against both us and the Kurds…a step they obviously took today by passage of a resolution to invade Northern Iraq…well, let me digress to something I heard today on the radio.  
    Rush Limbaugh was speaking about Hilary Clinton’s recent statement that she thinks a woman in politics needs to have “skin as tough as a rhinoceros” then likened herself to Eleanor Roosevelt in terms of criticism endured. Mr. Limbaugh, in an attempt to mock both Hilary Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt by reference to the rhino comment, said that “there were likely no two First Ladies in history more frequently cheated on by their husbands” than the two of them. Somehow, Mr. Limbaugh blames the moral failures of Bill Clinton and Franklin Roosevelt on the women they were married to rather than on the egocentric, immature and misguided choices made by the men themselves.
    Which leads me to Turkey and it’s reaction to the pending U.S. resolution. If Turkey chooses to respond with military aggression against the Kurds and closure of it’s air and ground space to U.S. troops, that will be the responsibility of the Turkish government and it’s people, not the fault of the U.S. resolution.
    Remember the old saying, “It’s not what happens to you it’s how you handle it?” Well, that’s it. That’s how it works.
    I think the U.S. Resolution is a good thing but only halfway to being a great thing. It needs to condemn the action against the Armenians and it needs to also forgive the Ottomans for having behaved poorly at the time.
    Acknowledgment + forgiveness. It’s the motto of the State of Israel and the Jewish people towards the Holocaust. “Forgive but never forget.”
    There are a few lessons to be gleaned form this most current dilemma.

    1.  Harm done to one is harm done to all.
    2.  Behavior is personal and responsibility for choice remains with the one doing the choosing.
    3.  Official acknowledgment of reprehensible behavior by a government is a reasonable act.
    4.  Without forgiveness, pain and hatred fester.
    5.  With forgiveness, all parties are liberated to move past the moment.

     Infighting within the U.S. over the resolution, U.S. condemnation of Turkey absent forgiveness, a reactive, aggressive response by the Turks, a cycle of blame, anger and aggression…these are all part of an old paradigm that has repeatedly failed to create a better world, or a better way.
    Let us take this opportunity to take responsibility for how and why we act, and react, as we do and step into the light of a new paradigm where compassion for our diversity and forgiveness for our humanity are the principles that guides us and the foundation upon which we build a better future.
    Oh yes, and one further lesson, Mr. Limbaugh.
    Men who blame women for the poor choices they themselves make need to grow up.

>    When a child is a toddler wanting to do something the adults don’t want him to do, it’s a pretty common behavioral technique to pose a distraction to get the child’s attention off of what he’d rather do.
    This is the historical purpose of war.
    While it is true that individuals can and will have differences that lead to conflict, it’s the conscious organization and management by others of small, unresolved conflicts that has been the foundation for large scale violence and destruction throughout history. The manipulation of the many by the few, for the purpose of distracting the many from pursuit of more life enhancing goals, is how people who crave power obtain and maintain it.
    Allow me to share a personal example of how managing conflict at it’s source preempts the possibility of larger scaled conflict that is  later manipulated by others.
    Last year I went to Santa Fe to visit a friend, Katharine, who lives there. She and I met a few years earlier at a Buddhist lecture in New York City. We felt an instant bond and although living in different cities (I in New Jersey and she in Maryland at the time) we developed a rich friendship based mostly upon telephone communication and 2 or 3 in-person visits. So, when I flew to Santa Fe last year to spend 4 days with her at a resort in Taos, it was new territory for us both. We did well for the first two days, but by the third tensions were rising over our apparent differences and preferences. By the fourth day, we had checked out of the resort and were headed back to Santa Fe, hardly speaking. The drive back was long and silent. When we reached Santa Fe, we went to have lunch at an outdoor cafe where the tension could no longer be contained.
    Both Katharine and I are strong-willed women on lifelong spiritual paths. We each know Who We Are and our direction comes from within. The power of our respective energies fully engaged in mental, verbal and emotional “battle” at that cafe was palpable, and held the potential for much destruction.  Although we were each firmly rooted in our “positions,” we were also acutely aware of the potential for loss…the loss being both the harm we would inflict as well as the end of the friendship.               
    Recognizing the possible outcomes, we each chose to honor the bond between us by allowing the other sufficient space to hold her personal integrity while simultaneously each relinquishing the need to win. 
    Put simply, Love prevailed over Fear.
    Both Katharine and I believe in reincarnation. In since talking about what happened in Santa Fe, we each feel that we had many such encounters in prior lives that ended poorly, with one or both of us harmed. Whether or not you believe in such things, one thing is certain.
     We all establish patterns of behavior personally and collectively that, unless altered, produce the same outcomes over and over.
    Such is the case with aggression born of difference.
    If Katharine and I had not been able to respond to one another as we did, but instead walked away harboring anger or hatred for the other, those feelings, captured within ourselves, would have become a breeding ground for even more anger and hatred.
    When one is holding anger and hatred, it is not possible to be inner-directed. It is only possible to be manipulated by those feelings, and others, who know how to play upon them and fan the flames of destruction.
    War is the natural outgrowth of millions of personal patterns of ineffective conflict resolution enlarged to collective behavior. Those patterns, small and large, are based upon the inability to allow another their rightful place in the world and the mis-perception that so allowing would somehow diminish the allower.
    Nothing could be further from the truth.
    When we use our personal power and creative energies to pursue and explore our own path rather than depleting ourselves by trying to influence or power over the path of another, we are enhanced not diminished. As importantly, we eliminate the possibility that anyone or anything will have the opportunity to play upon those misdirected feelings and distract us from the true purpose of our lives.
    We are not children, although we may act like them at times. Let us stay focused upon changing our own personal patterns. When we are able to do that, there will be no further need for parental or politically induced distractions.
    No further need for war.
  
   

>    Ann Coulter, columnist, author, speaker, and political commentator is a dinosaur. She and others like her are on the verge of extinction. They refuse to see beyond their own limiting and divisive beliefs in order to catch the wave of unity that is sweeping the globe. It’s not that they don’t sense the global change taking place, it’s just that they want to obstruct it, making a conscious effort to re-frame the tidal wave of change as a “return to Socialism or Communism” rather than the evolutionary leap to honoring diversity within unity that it is.
    For a long time, Ann Coulter, and the Conservative Christian Right she represents, have spoken in exclusionary terms of “us vs. them”…”Republican vs. Democrat”…”Conservative vs. Liberal”…”Christian vs…well…that one was just taken to an entirely new level by Ms. Coulter.
    It seems that earlier this week, in an interview on Donnie Deutsch’s CNBC’s cable show “The Big Idea”, Ms. Coulter stepped completely out of the shadows and stated that the United States would be better off if everyone were Republican and Christian. As if that were not thinking small enough, she went on to say that “Jews” needed to be “perfected” by becoming (I can only assume) messianic Jews, or, born again Christians.
    If a Jew needs to be perfected it is safe to conclude that in my present state I, as a Jew, must be imperfect. Now, I looked into the mirror earlier that morning and every morning since Ms. Coulter made her beliefs known, and I have not observed my obvious imperfections. What I see in the mirror is the same thing I see when I look into the eyes of any other living being…the image and likeness of God. Quite simply, perfection. It’s a perfection best described by a dear friend who passed away a couple of years ago and who taught me, “We are all born perfectly imperfect.”
    It is for each of us in our own way and using the gift of Free Will to take the situations and character we are born with and elevate them through good choices, deeds of service, and right speech. Right speech, by the way, is not the political Right Ms. Coulter espouses. It’s using words carefully chosen in a way that does no harm. Suggesting that people who do not see the Creator as you do as being not only wrong but in need of changing their beliefs to match your own is arrogant, condescending and dangerous. The arrogance and condescension are obvious on their face. So let’s take a look at the danger.
    Caesar, Attila, Hitler, and a host of other politicians also believed that their view was the only view and certain imperfect peoples needed to be either converted or eliminated. While Ms. Coulter only spoke to stage one, the conversion process, history shows that stage two is never far behind.
    I think it’s important to give credit where credit is due. Ms. Coulter is very bright and attractive. But there were bright and attractive dinosaurs as well…even those with silky hair and long, lanky legs…and they are extinct as well because they could not adapt to the inevitable changes that came their way.
    We are living through a transition unparalleled in human history that is expanding, exponentially, the abilities and scope of human consciousness. It is a time of comprehending, in a most profound  manner, how we are all connected and interdependent, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion or status on the food chain. Thinking otherwise is a futile attempt to stand firmly rooted in quicksand.
    Someday, in a world where respect for life regardless of form will be the norm, children born into harmony and unity will be able to see politically right-wing Conservative Christians in the Smithsonian…as an exhibit.
   

>    One of the troubling reports to come out of the shooting at an inner-city Cleveland Tech School yesterday that killed 2 students and wounded 2 teachers, is the allegation that students tried repeatedly to meet with the Principal over concerns around the assailants behavior and ongoing threats but she apparently could not find the time to actually conduct those meetings.
    It seems unlikely and odd that someone in the position of being responsible for the education and welfare of a group of school students would have their priorities so misaligned… and yet I’ve run into the same lack of common sense in an affluent, suburban white school district.
    We live in Cherry Hill, New Jersey with some of the highest real estate taxes in the state to fund what is seen as an outstanding school district, with Presidential Blue Ribbon recognition to show for it. We also have a history of alcohol, drug and suicide problems among our school age children. So, when we moved here 5 years ago and there were two teenage suicides in the first 3 years, I volunteered my experience to the Drug and Suicide Prevention Task Force.
    My experience was not my law degree nor the fact that we had a school age daughter enrolled in the district. It was that I had tried to commit suicide at age 23. 
    My volunteering efforts were welcomed and I was invited to sit on the Task Force. I attended two meetings and quickly recognized the familiar symptoms of political correctness and bureaucratic dysfunction. After the second meeting, there was yet another student suicide and the Task Force “mobilized” a community-wide grief and counseling event at one of the High Schools. After an assembly event where the Superintendent was to speak (his daughter had attempted suicide a few years prior) we were to break out into smaller groups in separate rooms and talk more personally with the students.
    A politically connected and affluent male member of the community with a personl history of clinical depression, who is active in both the school district and a local synagogue, was going to speak with the children in each room. He had done this every time there had previously been a suicide. I offered to speak to the individual groups as well, explaining that as a female who survived an attempted suicide and gone on to college, law school, a successful career and family, my story might resonate better with the female student population.
    My offer was ignored then outright rejected.
    The priorities of the “powers that be” are, usually, maintaining the powers that be. In so doing, those in positions of power often spend too much time making sure they are fortifying their position rather than adequately performing the duties of their position.
    There’s a great quote from the movie “American President” when Michael Douglas, playing the role of President of the United States, arrives at a press conference unannounced and taking the microphone says, “I’ve been so busy trying to keep my job, I forgot to do my job.”
    If the allegation against the Principal in Cleveland turns out to be true, then she will have to “own” that quote as well as the memory of 3 dead and two injured people which were, perhaps, the result of her misplaced priorities. On my homefront, I left the Task Force shortly thereafter and slipped quietly into the night where our school district is concerned.

    That is, until last night.

    Last night was “Back To School Night” at Cherry Hill East High School where our daughter is a freshman. We walked through her roster, spending 10 minutes with each of her teachers. When we got to Health and PhysEd, her teacher told us that he has 50 students in his class because the Board and others of “the powers that be” decided to underfund the staffing of that department by 3-4 teachers. He also had his classroom size cut in half (at the same time the amount of students was increased) to provide more space for the World Civilizations and English classes
    Here’s the rub. It’s in the Health class that stress, suicide, alcohol, sexual relations and drugs are taught. So, common sense was  cast to the wind as those who make the decisions that matter either willfully, or blindly, failed to focus on what matters.
    As I told the Assistant Principal last night, “I am all for academics. I went to college, have a law degree and am a writer. But if a person does not have the emotional stability to handle the stresses of the world in which they live, the best college and best paying job in the world will not prevent an inevitable disaster.”
    I am hopeful that the Principal in Cleveland, although belatedly, is today reassessing her priorities and will live her life differently as a result of the tragedy.
    I am less optimistic about our School District based upon past performance. However, I am about to slip not so quietly back out of the night I went so quietly into when I left the Task Force.
    Perhaps if they did not find me of value then, I can be of help now by assisting them in re-prioritizing their values.