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There is so much sadness and suffering in the world, and anyone who believes in God and defines it as the Source of Pure Intelligence and Perfect Love would have to ask: Why?

Why in the world would God place sadness and suffering in the world? And what tools, if any, has God given us with which to deal with sadness and suffering when we encounter it (as surely we will during our life)?

The answer, as I have come to understand it, is that God has not deliberately placed sadness nor inserted suffering into our world, we have brought it into our experience of our own free will.

This is difficult to believe or embrace, I know, and so it requires a little exploration and explanation.

Sadness and suffering are responses, both emotional and physical, to particular situations, circumstances, and events that manifest or occur during our lives.

FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time
PART IV of an ONGOING SERIES

Because they are responses and not events in themselves, they are entirely within our control. Because they are entirely within our control they are created by us, not foisted upon us.

There are some who have said that God has imposed sadness and suffering upon us as a punishment for our so-called evil deeds. Yet my understanding is that sadness and suffering are not punishments, they are consequences. And consequences of what? They are consequences of our thinking.

Thinking is the tool that God has given us with which to deal with life events and circumstances, situations and occurrences. Yet why do events and circumstances, situations and occurrences that ordinarily might be reasonably expected to produce sadness and suffering within human beings even have to arise?

Ah, that is an even larger question — and on humanity’s answer to that question hinges the future of the entire human species. We will explore that question in the upcoming entries in this series. But for now, let us go about this investigation step by step. Let us look at this business of our thinking, and the role it plays in bringing sadness and suffering into our experience. We’ll take that first step in Part V of our series here.

Even just a cursory exploration of this website reveals the extent to which sadness and suffering inhabit the human experience. It is impossible to be alive on this planet without encountering both. The question is not whether you will encounter it, the question is, how much of it will you encounter?

Behind that lurks another, more important question. When you do encounter sadness and suffering, how will you deal with it? What tools will you have. More to the point: What tools do you have? I mean, as human beings what tools are we given?  And by whom?

I believe there is something larger than myself, something larger than all of humanity, something larger, even, than the entire universe. I call this something “God.”

I believe that God exists and that God is the Supreme Intelligence behind and in everything. When I say “in” everything, I mean to assert that the Thing that I call Divinity is manifesting Itself in, as, and through all of Life. It is the underlying aspect, the foundational energy, of all that exists, in any and every form.

Using human language (which I understand is very limited), I call this energy the Divine Essence. It is That Which Is, manifesting in a million-billion-trillion ways that ultimately form everything in existence, both physical and non-physical, visible and invisible. It is part and parcel of All That Is, and nothing that Is can be in any way other than, or separate from, It.

FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time
PART III of an ONGOING SERIES

I believe this Divine Essence has intelligence — indeed, is Intelligence in its Purest Form — and that the degree to which this Intelligence manifests Itself is related to the level of Consciousness evidenced or present in any Life Form.

Further, I believe that Consciousness is expandable when it is Aware of Itself. That is, when a Life Form expresses the quality of Self-Consciousness, it is said to be Aware of Itself, and is thus labeled, in our language, a Sentient Being.

I believe that Sentient Beings are the Ultimate Expression of Divine Essence, and that the Pure Intelligence of God is accessible to all Sentient Beings. Indeed, I believe it is the purpose and underlying intention of all Sentient Beings to fully express Divine Essence.

I define Divinity as The Sum Total of All Essential Energy.  Using the limited language that is available to me, I describe this Essential Energy as Pure Intelligence and Perfect Love.

I see this Essential Energy as the Totality of All That Is, and in my understanding it is from this Totality that All That Is emerges and expresses.

This is another way of saying that it is in God that we live and breathe and have our Being.

If any of this is true, then why is does sadness and suffering exist? What form of Pure Intelligence or Perfect Love would will for Itself this kind of experience — and why? And what kind of tools does Life provide for its various Expressions in the moments of their encountering this experience?

To answer this question we must inquire into the nature of sadness and suffering itself. And we will do that, precisely, in our next entry here.

Every event and circumstance on Earth is jointly produced, placed into the collective reality as a collaborative creation of The Collective Itself.  And the tragedy is that The Collective does not know this—or, worse yet, does know this, and merely acts as if it does not.

The result of this is that most people wind up turning to God at the wrong time….usually after, rather than before, events have taken place or circumstances have been created.

This is because most people do not know who they truly are, nor do they have an accurate understanding of what their relationship with God is.

Thus, people think that most of them are at the effect of events and conditions such as conflict and war, financial collapse, political upheaval, violence and killing.  They believe that it is the tiny few who are in power who are creating them, and the masses are left to only endure them. And when it comes to so-called Acts of Nature, even the powerful few are thought to be at the effect of life.

Whether it’s an act of Man or of Nature, our species is very clear: It’s not our fault. We had nothing to do with it.

 

FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time
PART II of an ONGOING SERIES

No human behavior has anything to do with global warming (which half the planet continues to deny is even occurring), earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes, raging wildfires, torrential rains, or tsunamis—or the increase in disease among the Earth’s people, such as the growing cancer rate, or the increase in early heart attacks, stroke, and Alzheimer’s.

No human behavior has anything to do with the dying off of the bees (which, if it continues, is going to have a disastrous effect on pollination worldwide, and then on global food crops), or the increasing toxicity of our drinking water, or the fact that tests show that hamburgers from fast food chains rarely contain more than 15% real meat (and in some tests have been shown to contain only 2% actual meat), or the fact that more than 650 children die every hour on this planet because of starvation.

When an entire culture refuses to believe that it has anything to do with what is occurring, it cannot do anything about what is occurring. 

This, in 25 words, is a summation of the present reality on Planet Earth.

As I have noted in this space before, much of this has to do with our understanding of the nature of God itself. Is there even a being called “God”? What is the true nature of The Divine — and what does it want, need, require? What does it actually do in our lives? How does Divinity interact with Humanity? What is the nature of this relationship? Does it even exist?

These questions and more will be explored here in this multi-part series titled FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time, headlining The Global Conversation online newspaper in the weeks ahead.  I hope you will join in the discussion by posting in the Comment Section below — and invite your family, friends, and acquaintances to do the same. Now is the moment for a worldwide conversation on a matter of global impact and universal significance.

In the months ahead I will bring this discussion right into your home via telephone and video links. Look for that from CWGConnect. In the meantime, join us here for the online print-media element of this exploration.

God is the source of all help to people in the world, but most people are asking God for the wrong kind of help—and even then they often do not turn to God except when it is too late.

Most people are asking God to change things. They are asking for a change in the situations, circumstances, and events of their lives—not understanding that they are asking God to undo the very conditions that they, themselves, have co-created.

They are asking God for peace on Earth, and goodwill between all people—while they, themselves, continue to co-create the opposite.

They are asking God for health, safety, and security—while they, themselves, continue to co-create the opposite.

They are asking God for everyone to have an equal opportunity for full self-expression, for abundance, and for personal happiness—while they, themselves, continue to co-create the opposite.

It is true. All the while that we humans send up our prayers to God, we deny that we, ourselves, are continuing to co-create the opposite of that for which we say we yearn. And there is one thing we can be certain of in our relationship with God: God will always give us Free Will, allowing us to create in our collective experience whatever it is we choose to create — even when it violates the spirit of everything we say we wish to create.

The chief problem facing humanity today is our absolute refusal to accept responsibility for the experiences that we, ourselves, are collaboratively creating.

What God deeply desires us to do is to allow God to empower us. Yet when we turn to God for the wrong kind of help at the wrong time, it disempowers us, because it affirms our thought that that we are the victims of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time
PART I of an ONGOING SERIES

As well, it furthers our thought that we are powerless to alter the circumstance we have created, and that God is now the only one who can help us — if there even is a “God.”

As long as most people think of themselves as being at the effect of the events or circumstances in their lives, they are bound to repeat them, because they are not aware of how or why those events have occurred.

This is a declaration, in 40 words, of the precise reason that life is the way it is on the Planet Earth today.

People are not at the effect of the global events and circumstances in their lives, they are collectively at cause in the matter.

Every event and circumstance on Earth is jointly produced, placed into the collective reality as a collaborative creation of The Collective Itself.

And the tragedy is that The Collective does not know this—or, worse yet, does know this, and merely acts as if it does not.

Much of this has to do with our understanding of the nature of God itself. Is there even a being called “God”? What is the true nature of The Divine — and what does it want, need, require? What does it actually do in our lives? How does Divinity interact with Humanity? What is the nature of this relationship? Does it even exist?

These questions and more will be explored here in this multi-part series titled FOCUS: The Nature of God and Life/an exploration of critical importance in our time, headlining The Global Conversation online newspaper in the weeks ahead.  I hope you will join in the discussion by posting in the Comment Section below — and invite your family, friends, and acquaintances to do the same. Now is the moment for a worldwide conversation on a matter of global impact and universal significance.

In the months ahead I will bring this discussion right into your home via telephone and video links. Look for that from CWGConnect. In the meantime, join us here for the online print-media element of this exploration.

 

 

Pope Francis made a breathtaking and extraordinary statement on July 29 about homosexuality. His remarks have reverberated around the world.

During an impromptu exchange with reporters on a transoceanic flight back to Rome following a triumphant week-long visit to Brazil, His Holiness was asked about the presence of a so-called “gay lobby” in the Vatican. His response: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

Elaborating on the statement, he said: “When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them?” The pontiff allowed as to how the problem regarding any gay lobby that may or may not exist within the Vatican was not the sexual orientation of its members, but any policies they promoted that would be opposed to the church and its traditional teachings.

His comments represent a radical shift from previous statements by all the men who had headed the world’s largest single Christian denomination over hundreds of years — and signaled once again that this new Pope may be taking the Catholic Church in startling new directions in which it has never traveled before.

Francis also told the press that the church needed to demonstrate a new degree of compassion for divorced Catholics. Presently, divorcees within the church are not allowed, by papal decree, to receive communion, and are marginalized in other ways in local parishes worldwide.

A CNN report on the Pope’s informal interview session on the return flight from South America quoted Francis as saying, “I believe this is a time of mercy, a change of epoch,” regarding divorce.

“He said the group of eight cardinals tasked with reform will explore the issue of whether divorcees can receive Communion,” the CNN report added.

Yet even as the pontiff’s statements brought new hope to gays around the world that religious oppression may be lessening, and just as laws in the United States banning gay marriage are finally loosening, new developments in Russia over the past week indicate that the laws in that country are becoming more and more oppressive regarding homosexuality, leading to a piercing question: Will we ever be able to civilize Civilization?

A law has just been passed in Russia that makes illegal to “spread information about non-traditional sexual behavior” to minors (defined as persons under 18). In Moscow recently, members of the Moscow Gay Pride movement were detained by police for holding a rally that has not been authorized, and for “promoting untraditional sexual relations,” according to reports from NBC News.

And on Sunday, July 28, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church,  said that legislation in the United States making same-sex marriage legal “is bringing the apocalypse closer.”

The situation has become so volatile in Russia that the U.S. State Department has issued travel warnings for gays who had hoped to visit there. The State Department’s statement said that “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is widespread in Russia, as harassment, threats, and acts of violence have been targeted at LGBT individuals. Government officials have been known to make derogatory comments about LGBT persons.”

Over 80% of the Russian population is said to support stringent anti-gay attitudes and laws.

It seems terribly sad that such conditions should prevail in one of the world’s largest nations and most visible and prominent cultures. The attitudes of both civil and religious figures — endorsed and openly promoted by such highly visible political and spiritual leaders as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill — have long been part of the nation’s social outlook.

The basis of all this appears to be the centuries of teaching by sects within the Christian tradition that sexual relationships involving persons of the same gender are a violation of the Will of God. That’s what made the remarks by Pope Francis on Monday so striking.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the world’s second largest Christian denomination in terms of numbers of followers. Only the Roman Catholic Church is larger. The theological influence of the ROC in Russia runs wide and deep, with, by some estimates, over 70% of the population declaring themselves to be adherents.

The statements about God’s Will with regard to homosexual behavior is yet one more area in which the theology of Conversations with God presents spiritually revolutionary messages. There is no manner or way in which the expression of a love that is pure and true is inappropriate or spiritually objectionable, CWG states unequivocally.

It is difficult to comprehend how a spiritual community which holds that God is the epitome of love, compassion, and forgiveness — which the Russian Orthodox Church presumably does —  could espouse, endorse, and support a view that would culturally, spiritually, and even legally oppose, restrict, and condemn the expression of love between human beings, with this opposition based on nothing more than gender.

Such opposition and condemnation feels to be the social expression of a primitive and backward culture; a species that does not understand the true nature of the relationship of its members to each other and to God.

Ours is a species that, in many places, roundly approves the death penalty, and that throws people in jail for years for simply growing, distributing, or smoking a particular plant. So perhaps it is small wonder that segments of it could disapprove of love simply based on gender.

I believe that the decision to legislate morality is the first sign of an uncultivated society. It occurs to me that advanced civilizations do not create oppressive laws as a means of suppressing private loving behaviors with which some of its members — no matter how powerful or influential they may be — personally disagree.

While I deeply admire Pope Francis for his conciliatory statements about gays — and for all the moves he has been making, large and small, since assuming the papacy to bring the Roman Catholic Church into the 21st Century — I am sad to see what is going on in Russia today. I dearly hope that all of human consciousness will one day soon grow beyond such barbaric demonstrations of limited awareness.

It sounds too good to be true, I know — but could it be true anyway? Is it possible that July 23 really was the actual and “official” beginning of 1,000 Years of Peace?

That’s what some astrologers and prognosticators (including long-ago predictors, such as Nostradamus) have said. The world, they’ve declared, is now in for a Great Upheaval — but not a destructive one. Rather, a reconstructive one.

We’re talking here about a complete re-make (what I called the Overhaul of Humanity in my book The Storm Before the Calm) designed to create the most joyous, efficient, effective advancement in the Human Story ever conceived.

It’s going to involve — according to the predictions — a complete restructuring of our political, our economic, our cultural, and our spiritual ways of being. According to astrologers, it’s all about the Full Moon shining through the 7th House on the morning of July 23nd, and Jupiter aligning with Mars…or something like that. (I may not have all the details right.)

In any event, I believe it is true that all of life is nothing more than energy vibrating. I have always been told that energy impacts energy. That is, one energy source has an impact on another energy source, interacting in such a way that a third energy vibration is produced between the two of them.

This process of energy intermingling and interacting is going on all over the Universe between all of its interconnected manifestations of Life. We live in a cosmic cosmology that feeds itself, sustains itself, and recreates itself anew in a single simultaneous process occurring ubiquitously unilaterally. Do stars and other heavenly bodies, therefore, have an impact upon life on Earth? If the cycles of the moon can affect the tidal waves of our oceans (to say nothing of the tidal waves of our emotions), what do you imagine the entire night sky can do?

We have just now concluded a thousand years with Saturn in our sphere of energy influence on the Earth, because of its position relative to us generation after generation. Now, a new thousand-year cycle has begun, with the Sun as our highest energy influence as of July 23. This calculation is based on the Cycles of 7, which is said to apply in the cosmos.

Observations across history have revealed this cycle, with a seven-millennium cycle having begun with the so-called Moon Millennium starting in 4000 BCE. Those days are now behind us. With the Sun Millennium having been inaugurated, we will be experiencing what is, quite literally, a New Dawn. It is the dawning of a new civilization — or, perhaps more accurately, the beginning of the “civilization of Civilization.”

If this is indeed the true beginning of a new cycle in human history, how fast this new cycle takes hold is going to depend a great deal on us, of course. The spiritual activism movement that has been created — called the Evolution Revolution  (see info box elsewhere on this website’s home page) — is part of the Twelve Spheres of Life Initiative of Humanity’s Team. This and other outreach endeavors will go far toward determining if the long predicted 1,000 years of peace and prosperity is upon us.

Question: What role, if any, do you wish and plan to play in getting this 1,000-year cycle going? Have you looked at the Evolution Revolution information page on this website? Are you “in”?

It was clear when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States that as the first black person to hold that office, new ground had been broken, and the country would find itself in a position to experience new opportunities to increase its understanding of, and relationship with, the black community.

At no time was that more evident than at 1:30 or so on Friday, June 19, when the President made a surprise visit to the White House press briefing room and offered remarks, without notes or a teleprompter, about the nation’s response to the verdict in the Trayvon Martin killing.

I believe that it serves the public interest to publish the President’s remarks word for word, without further comment from me now, then allow all of us to post whatever reactions we may have to what the President said in the Comments Section below this entry.

Here, then, is a transcript of President Obama’s remarks at the White House on Friday, July 19, 2013 as released by the Office of the Press Secretary:

THE PRESIDENT:  I wanted to come out here, first of all, to tell you that Jay is prepared for all your questions and is very much looking forward to the session.  The second thing is I want to let you know that over the next couple of weeks, there’s going to obviously be a whole range of issues — immigration, economics, et cetera — we’ll try to arrange a fuller press conference to address your questions.

The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week — the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling.  I gave a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday.  But watching the debate over the course of the last week, I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.

First of all, I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle’s, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they’ve dealt with the entire situation.  I can only imagine what they’re going through, and it’s remarkable how they’ve handled it.

The second thing I want to say is to reiterate what I said on Sunday, which is there’s going to be a lot of arguments about the legal issues in the case — I’ll let all the legal analysts and talking heads address those issues.  The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner.  The prosecution and the defense made their arguments.  The juries were properly instructed that in a case such as this reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict.  And once the jury has spoken, that’s how our system works.  But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling.

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.  And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.

There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.  That includes me.  There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.  That happens to me — at least before I was a senator.  There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.  That happens often.

And I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida.  And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.  The African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws — everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws.  And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.

Now, this isn’t to say that the African American community is naïve about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they’re disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence.  It’s not to make excuses for that fact — although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.  They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.

And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds to the frustration.  And the fact that a lot of African American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African American boys are more violent — using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain.

I think the African American community is also not naïve in understanding that, statistically, somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.  So folks understand the challenges that exist for African American boys.  But they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.

Now, the question for me at least, and I think for a lot of folks, is where do we take this?  How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction?  I think it’s understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests, and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through, as long as it remains nonviolent.  If I see any violence, then I will remind folks that that dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family.  But beyond protests or vigils, the question is, are there some concrete things that we might be able to do.

I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here.  Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government, the criminal code.  And law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.

That doesn’t mean, though, that as a nation we can’t do some things that I think would be productive.  So let me just give a couple of specifics that I’m still bouncing around with my staff, so we’re not rolling out some five-point plan, but some areas where I think all of us could potentially focus.

Number one, precisely because law enforcement is often determined at the state and local level, I think it would be productive for the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.

When I was in Illinois, I passed racial profiling legislation, and it actually did just two simple things.  One, it collected data on traffic stops and the race of the person who was stopped.  But the other thing was it resourced us training police departments across the state on how to think about potential racial bias and ways to further professionalize what they were doing.

And initially, the police departments across the state were resistant, but actually they came to recognize that if it was done in a fair, straightforward way that it would allow them to do their jobs better and communities would have more confidence in them and, in turn, be more helpful in applying the law.  And obviously, law enforcement has got a very tough job.

So that’s one area where I think there are a lot of resources and best practices that could be brought to bear if state and local governments are receptive.  And I think a lot of them would be.  And let’s figure out are there ways for us to push out that kind of training.

Along the same lines, I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it — if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations.

I know that there’s been commentary about the fact that the “stand your ground” laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case.  On the other hand, if we’re sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see?

And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?  And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?  And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.

Number three — and this is a long-term project — we need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African American boys.  And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about.  There are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement.  And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?

I’m not naïve about the prospects of some grand, new federal program.  I’m not sure that that’s what we’re talking about here. But I do recognize that as President, I’ve got some convening power, and there are a lot of good programs that are being done across the country on this front.  And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes, and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African American men feel that they’re a full part of this society and that they’ve got pathways and avenues to succeed — I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation.  And we’re going to spend some time working on that and thinking about that.

And then, finally, I think it’s going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching.  There has been talk about should we convene a conversation on race.  I haven’t seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations.  They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have.  On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there’s the possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can?  Am I judging people as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin, but the content of their character?  That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.

And let me just leave you with a final thought that, as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better.  Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race.  It doesn’t mean we’re in a post-racial society.  It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated.  But when I talk to Malia and Sasha, and I listen to their friends and I seem them interact, they’re better than we are — they’re better than we were — on these issues.  And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.

And so we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues.  And those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature, as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions.  But we should also have confidence that kids these days, I think, have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did; and that along this long, difficult journey, we’re becoming a more perfect union — not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.

Thank you, guys.

END
1:52 P.M. EDT July 19, 2013

No one does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.

Conversations with God brought us this startling message now nearly 20 years ago. In the aftermath of the trial of George Zimmerman and the Not Guilty verdict that was brought back by the jury — and in the whirlwind of feelings that many people are experiencing in response to that verdict — we might do well to examine that message from CWG.

The point that it made: everyone ultimately does what he or she thinks is “right,” based on their beliefs about Life and how it is and what that means to them; their understandings regarding their relationship to other people; and their truth about God — assuming they believe in God at all (which, of course, is also a “truth” about God).

In this tragic case both George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, the teenager he stood accused of killing needlessly until the jury found him innocent of that charge, had a less than favorable “model of the world” that may have led them to regard each other with suspicion — and that seems to have been at least part of what led to this tragic situation.

Mr. Martin apparently labeled Mr. Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker” when describing, in a cell phone conversation with his girlfriend, the man who was following him. For his part, Mr. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, was recorded on his phone report to the police dispatcher as apparently lumping Mr. Martin in with “punks” who previously have robbed the neighborhood, adding that “these **** always get away.”

The spiritual opportunity here is for all of us to change a model of the world that declares some people “guilty” and others “innocent” for doing exactly the same thing: what their understanding of circumstances and their experience of life led them to do, feeling strongly that, from their point of view, they were “right” in the doing of it.

In a highly advanced civilization, there would never be a “trial” (an interesting word in this context) to determine a person’s guilt or innocence. Rather, a public hearing would be held before the entire community (in this case, the whole country) in which a person would be invited to plead regretful or not regretful (and the reasons for it) regarding an action that was taken that hurt or damaged another — and to demonstrate and prove their regret, if that was their plea, by offering service and recompense to the injured party and/or the family of that party, if a death was involved. If they pleaded “not regretful,” the community would respond in a non-violent way that it felt appropriate in the circumstance.

If a person pleaded “regretful,” a lifetime of service to the deceased’s family, or to the person injured if a death was not involved, together with honest reparations to the degree appropriate and possible, would do more for everyone involved — and more for society as a whole — than placing someone behind bars (much less killing them) for an action that came from their deepest inner sense of what was needed, given their model of the world.

If that model of the world is so twisted and distorted that its assessments as to what  is appropriate make no sense to anyone else at all, even our legal system allows a jury to find a person innocent by reason of diminished capacity.

If that model is not so twisted or distorted, how can we rationalize placing someone in a cage for the rest of his or her life for doing what they, in a non-distorted way, thought was right? Shouldn’t our argument be with their model of the world — and the model of the world of our entire community as well?

I realize that this is a very radical way of thinking, and so I just propose it as one new way of exploring and examining the emotions that tragedies such as the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman incident bring up for all of us.

Trayvon Martin might have simply continued walking — perhaps even running — to his father’s house, just a few hundred yards away, rather than turning back, heading for the person following him, and allegedly confronting that person.  If I’m afraid, and not looking for a confrontation, I move away from, not toward, the other person in a situation like that. George Zimmerman might have simply stopping following, or never gotten out of his truck to follow to begin with. If I’m not wanting to potentially confront another (much less possibly hurt another), I move away from, not toward, another person is that kind of situation.

Bad judgment — by my personal measurement — may have been used by both persons in this situation. Yet, using the model of the world of each of them, as best we can guess it judging from the words they spoke just prior to their confrontation, we might be able to see that both did what they thought was right and necessary for them to do.

“No one does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world,” CWG says, and that is what I hold in my heart in the aftermath of the verdict in this trial. And, certainly, deep compassion for the family of Trayvon Martin, whose loss is incalculable, and whose pain can never truly end.  I will work until my final day to assist our planet’s people in changing their model of the world, one by one, so that hatred and non-forgiveness does not emerge from tragedies such as this…and so that such tragedies themselves might one day never again occur.

We can start changing our world model by releasing at last our notion that we are somehow separate from each other, and embracing the cosmic truth that We Are All One. That in itself would halt more violent confrontations that any other single shift in thinking within our society.

I send you love on this day.

Hugs…Neale.

Is there any spiritual reason for, or value in, a society’s working to reduce the gap between its highest, middle, and lowest income brackets? Can anything be said in favor of a culture that seeks to create mechanisms that militate against an “every man for himself/to the winner go the spoils” mentality?

If a particular society observes this gap to be grower larger, larger, and ever larger, is there anything to be said for doing what it takes to put a stop to that widening, and to even shrinking that chasm, so that a “good life” may be experienced by all?

What can be said of a society that creates a bigger and bigger gulf between the rich and the poor — and puts into place mechanisms and laws, choices and decisions that reinforce the notion that everything about this is alright; indeed, that this is the way it should be?

I ask these questions because the other day the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, released statistics showing that the average earning of a CEO in a major company in 2012 was $14.1 million. That’s per year, not per lifetime. The figure represents a 12.7% increase for the boss over the previous year.

Average worker salaries, meanwhile, have not increased by 12.7%. Nor even by 6%. Nor even by 2%. Nor, in fact, at all.

For most workers in the U.S., wages in 2012 remained at their 2011 levels — and that’s in the best-case scenarios. Many saw their wages actually fall, the EPI study showed.

And the salaries of their bosses are not the only compensation awarded the folks in the front office. Most also received stock options and other awards, adding more than 50% of their actual cash paycheck to their total income.

All this is happening because corporate earnings continue to soar. But the workers who make those earnings possible are not reaping their proportionate share of the benefit. The website Business Insider.com recently carried the headline:

Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High,
Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low

(Read more here)

The good news is that at least a larger number of Americans are working today — however disproportionate their wage — than at any time in the past thirty years.

Oh, I’m sorry. I got that wrong. It’s exactly the opposite. The Business Insider website says it’s precisely the other way around.

It seems that American companies are hiring fewer American workers than ever before in history.

Than ever in history.

And while workers are so hungry for jobs that they’ll take sub-par wages just to keep bread on their family’s table, corporate heads are making 20 times what their employees earn, dollar for dollar. That’s right. For every dollar the average worker earns, the average CEO earns twenty.

Oh, gosh…I’m so sorry. I got that wrong, too.  That was in 1965. Gee, I was looking at the wrong page on my stat sheet. Today, in 2012, the CEO of a major company makes, on average, something along the order of 273 times more than the average worker.

What is perhaps most remarkable of all: It is not only the very rich who seem to be okay with all this. Millions of people in the middle, and even lower, income class in the U.S. also apparently think this is perfectly alright. Many staunch Conservatives, most Tea Party members, a huge percentage of Republicans, and a handful of red dog Democrats will tell  you: This is the American way. Theirs is the Land of Opportunity, and in the Land of Opportunity everyone has the same chance to “get theirs.”

But is it true? Does everyone in America have an equal opportunity? Is it true of black Americans? Female Americans? Gay Americans? I just ask. Does everyone in America have an equal opportunity to be the CEO of a major company, and earn nearly 273% more than the workers they boss?

More important, is this really the way that an enlightened society sets up its laws and economic mechanisms, and treats its members?

I am curious. Really curious. What do you think? Is there any spiritual reason for, or value in, a society’s working to reduce the gap between its highest, middle, and lowest income brackets? Can anything be said in favor of a culture that seeks to promote ideas and ideals, and maybe even create mechanisms, that militate against an “every man for himself/to the winner go the spoils” mentality?
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