Category: Headline

And so, another government and another president are removed from office in a revolution, this time (again) in Egypt. (I wonder if anyone in the U.S. sees the irony of this news first making headlines during the time that Americans were once again celebrating their own revolution — the Fourth of July weekend.)

In the book The Storm Before the Calm, published two years ago, I wrote of the human experience of revolution — and called for a new kind of revolution. Here is some of what I had to say there:

A search on Wikipedia under the word “revolutions” brings up a virtually endless catalogue of uprisings, beginning with the popular revolt in the Sumarian city of Lagash that deposed King Lugalanda and put the reformer Urukagina on the throne in 2380 B.C., ending with the revolutions that overturned governments in the Arab world in 2011.

Let me just give you part of this list, just to take a quick look at how people have been responding on this planet to how they’ve been governed…

We have seen literally hundreds of uprisings and revolutions across our history, including the Fall of the Roman Empire, the First of the Wars of Scottish Independence, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the revolution in India, the Boer Revolt, revolutions all over South America, the European Revolutions of 1848, the revolutions in modern Hungary, in Yugoslavia, in Haiti, the dissolution of the Soviet Union by 1991…

…take my word for it. This is a tiny portion of a list that goes on and on and on…and ON. We’ve been “revolting” since the beginning of our gathering together in clans and tribes and then, nations.

What is this all about, do you think?

What do you imagine has been causing all of this? Why do you think it never ends? And what do you think could make it end?

I can tell you what it’s about. And I can also tell you how to make it end, with one Final Revolution. Indeed, that’s what the Storm Before The Calm is all about. What has bee causing all of this for so long is that…

Human beings have been clear for a very long time that the way those in power have constructed life on this planet is not the way it was intended to be lived.

And so, since forever—for centuries and millennia—people on every spot on the globe have been agitating. They’ve wanted a new way of life—a new way of being human; a way that they know it was intended for them to be human.

Their agitations have continued right up to this present day. Even as this is being written, people in many places on earth are still saying No! to the way things are, and are demanding change. They’re prepared to die for it. They have been dying for it. They’re dying right now, as you’re reading this.

But we are ready now, as a global community, for that dying to stop. We’ve had it. We’re done. There’s got to be a better way. We wonder, why don’t those who seek to govern us get it? But they don’t, so now we’re seeing what I have been calling here the Overhaul of Humanity. This is a revolution that will not ask people to die, but will simply ask people to inquire. It will invite people to make inquiries of themselves and others that could change everything in such a huge way that, finally, future violent revolutions may never again be necessary.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down the so-called Defense of Marriage Act is a cause for celebration around the world, as it strikes a tone that legally legitimizes love between all people regardless of gender, and sets a standard that other nations are now going to be hard-pressed to ignore.

The day will come when it will seem, in retrospect, amazing that it took so long for such a thing to happen in our world — yet this is not a time for criticizing the past, but for celebrating the present.

From this day forward, all Federal Government benefits available to opposite-gender married couple in the U.S. will now be offered to same-sex marrieds as well. President Barack Obama lost no time in ordering his country’s Dept. of Defense and other branches of his government to rewrite regulations to immediately reflect the court’s decision.

The Supreme Court’s additional action in striking down as “unconstitutional” a ballot initiative passed by California voters prohibiting same sex marriage also blazed across the dark sky of intolerance as a comet of hope to all those who believe that the expression of true love between any individuals, announced and demonstrated through the entering into a commitment of lifelong partnership, should never be prohibited, but encouraged in a global society ravaged by a sociology of increasing separation.

With the astonishing increase in the divorce rate among heterosexual couples over the past 20 years, the ironic joke among gays has been that all they want to do is to get into what straights want to get out of.

The High Court’s decision did nothing to change the fact that gay marriage is still illegal in 34 U.S. states, but it makes it very clear that the gender composition of a marriage should have nothing to do with the flow of important Federal benefits to spouses — and, as noted above, it sends a huge message to all states, and to people throughout the world who are watching and listening, that legal prohibitions against gay couples are simply not appropriate.

Conversations with God, of course, made it clear in its messages nearly 20 years ago that “there is no manner in which the expression of a love which is pure and true is inappropriate,” directly addressing the loud announcements that had been made by some religious leaders over the years that homosexual expressions of love are against the Will of God and will be punished by everlasting damnation.

(Such denunciations came from the same kinds of people who swore with equal vehemence not very many years earlier that inter-racial marriage also violated the Will of God…and that left-handedness was a sign of the Devil.)

The human community is at long last evolving out of its primitive notions of an intolerant, judgmental, condemning and violently punishing Deity. What is perhaps most notable about the U.S. Supreme Court’s two decisions regarding gays is that they came from a largely conservative panel of judges. This makes it difficult and more than a little inconvenient for hard-core conservative Republican politicians in America to find cover for their previously highly visible and loudly intolerant views regarding gay marriage and equal rights for gays.

For those who believe in, and still see, America as the “land of the free,” it seems that it is about time this major social adjustment was made. Love is, after all, the basis of all healing and the foundation of all caring societies. It seems remarkable that anyone could have ever argued against it. Especially those who claimed to be articulating the Will of God.

For all those who love Love, this is a happy day.

Look, the problem is simple. The honey bees are dying. Look, the cause is obvious. It’s us. Honey bees had no problem living and multiplying until we came along. Even then they had little problem until we decided to fill the air and cover every flower and foliage in sight with pesticides and poisons.

The honey bees are dying all over the world, and we are killing them. And if we don’t turn this thing around, that is going to kill us. Many of us. Because, you see, humans depend on the Earth’s ecosystem to survive (whether you believe it or not) — and the Earth’s ecosystem is going to be irrevocably damaged if the bee population drops at the rate that it is now dropping.

Why? Because honey bees are responsible for nearly 80 per cent of all pollination across our planet. So what? So this: More than two-thirds of the world’s top 100 food crops are pollinated by bees. So what? So this: those bee-pollinated crops supply almost 90 per cent of humanity’s nutrition.

Okay, here come the naysayers. Nonsense! You eco-panickers are all the same! Everyone knows that grains are primarily pollinated by the wind.

Yes, that is true. Everyone knows that. But vegetables, fruits, and nuts — arguably the healthiest, best food — are pollinated by bees, writer Rex Weyler tells us at the website Nation of Change. You do not want to miss the article, which contains a great deal of important information.

“The bee collapse is a challenge to human enterprise on the scale of global warming, ocean acidification and nuclear war,” Weyler says. And he’s right. There is a way to stop the collapse, he says. There is something that humanity can still do. But we all have to give a darn. We all have to care.

I hope you care enough to read the article at Nation of Change. You’ll find it here.

It is time for the world to wake up. Most of the people on our planet think that humans have nothing to do with conditions on the Earth.

The inability to see, recognize, or acknowledge our own role in the producing of our own experience is the first mark of a still-maturing species — and the first obstacle in humanity’s path as the few who do see the connection try and try in vain to change the course of our species’ future.

Some time ago a humorist remarked that if we are not careful, we will wind up exactly where we are headed. And it was the late cartoonist Walt Kelly’s wildly popular character Pogo who gave us this observation: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Sadly, this is true. Human beings in largest number refuse — abjectly refuse — to see the link between their beliefs, their behaviors, and the worst of their collective outcomes.

The messages in the Conversations with God books have made it very clear that many of the unhappy exterior circumstances and conditions of daily life have been collaboratively created over a period of many years by the entire community of beings populating this planet — yet those beings refuse to take responsibility for their collective choices, actions, and decisions, preferring to believe that they have nothing whatsoever to do with any prevailing condition or circumstance.

The easy availability of guns with rapid-fire high capacity magazines has nothing to do with the increasing number of mass killings in the U.S.

The conducting of underground nuclear tests has nothing to do with the increase in earthquakes and tidal waves across the planet.

The degradation of our atmosphere by human-made pollutants has nothing to do with global warming. In fact, there actually isn’t any “global warming.” That’s all the raving of wild-eyed environmentalists. (And the World Bank, which just issued an urgent call to the entire planet to take immediate and decisive action on climate change or face multi-millions in poverty very soon.)

Our actions, let it be known, have nothing to do with our experience. Do not make us ‘wrong’ about anything. Bad stuff is happening, yes, but human beings and their choices have nothing to do with it.

Yet Conversations with God points out that unless and until we accept responsibility for the occurrences and events of our lives, we render ourselves utterly incapable of doing anything about them.

Case in point: a study released this week reveals that the increasing incidence of children born with autism is directly connected to the increasing pollution of our air.

A report from Bloomberg News says that researchers from Harvard University’s School of Public Health found that pregnant women exposed to high levels of diesel particulates or mercury were twice as likely to have an autistic child compared with peers in low-pollution areas.

In other words, chemicals in air pollution, inhaled by pregnant women, produce abnormal babies. And those chemicals are being put into the air by human beings.

Put more directly, we are specifically responsible for producing many of our own abnormally challenged offspring.

“No, we’re not! No, we’re not!” the scoffers will now no doubt come out to loudly declare. “We have nothing to do with it! The study is wrong! It’s those pointy-headed Eastern liberal scientists, again. Besides, we have to put those chemicals — which don’t hurt anyone — into the air! We’re talking about jobs here. We need to live the way we’ve been living! And only one of every fifty children is born with autism anyway. What’s the problem?”

In our next post: The problem with bees. Oh, yes, we also have nothing to do with that. And further…there really is no problem. Those liberals are making that one up, too.

I don’t mind when people use the Bible as their Source and Authority on matters of spiritual consequence, but I do have a problem with people who use the Bible “buffet style,” choosing only those verses that suit their purpose or personal opinion, then ignoring anything and everything that does not—or that they think might make them, as staunch believers in the Bible, “look bad.”

The Rev. Tim Reed, pastor of First Baptist Church of Gravel Ridge in Jacksonville, Arkansas may not be a Buffet Bible Believer, but I would like to ask him some questions, just to make sure.

Rev. Reed was quoted in a news story the other day as saying that his church has no choice but to terminate its charter with Boy Scout Troop 542 because the Boy Scouts of America has lifted its ban on openly gay youths. Reed told one of the major television news networks that “it’s not a hate thing.” He said it is a “moral stance we must take as a Southern Baptist Church.”

The Christian minister was quoted by the network as saying: “God’s word explicitly says homosexuality is a choice, a sin.” Others likewise use “God’s word” as their authority in this matter, most often pointing to the Bible’s book of Leviticus at Chapter 18, Verse 22. As found in the King James Version that verse says: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

Many Buffet Bible Believers also cite Leviticus 20:13, which offers this: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

And still others often point to 1 Corinthians 6:9, which says, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind…”

Using the Bible in this way may seem to provide righteous authority to some Southern Baptist churches, most of which are predicted to end their charters with Scouting in the weeks ahead. That could amount to nearly 4,000 Boy Scout troops soon without a sponsor. Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, was quoted in the news story mentioned above as saying that “Southern Baptists are going to be leaving the Boy Scouts en masse.”

Okay. Now. Fair Question time. Which verses of the Bible should be operative in our lives if we are to live up to its moral injunctions, as the Southern Baptists feel that are doing in response to the Boy Scouts’ decision to admit gay youths?

Do you suppose it might be the verse in the Book of Deuteronomy where it says that if a man marries a woman and finds that she is not a virgin, and if her family cannot prove that she was a virgin before her marriage, “she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death”? Or perhaps it would be the verse that says that if found to be in an adulterous relationship, both the man and the woman are to be taken to the city gates and also stoned to death. (Before deciding, please keep in mind that if this were to be applied, some churches would have to stone to death their own ministers.)

Or perhaps it’s the verse that says that only certain people are welcome in God’s house of worship. If you happen to be a child born out of wedlock, or the great-great-great-grandchild of a person born out of wedlock, God says you may not set foot inside a church. The Bible makes this very clear. It says that no illegitimate child, “nor any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, even down to the tenth generation.”

And, did you know this? If a certain part of a man’s body happens to be injured in an accident or as a result of war, he may likewise not join with other worshippers of God in a House of the Lord. The Bible says: “If a man’s testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be included in the assembly of the Lord.”

Yes, these are words right out of the Bible. Turn to Deuteronomy 23:1-2, New Living Translation. “Oh,” you might say, “one of those modern Bibles.” Yes. The King James Version has it this way: “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord,” but it means the same thing.

And the Bible has some startling news for women who take some of those self-defense classes that are offered these days. They can find themselves in a lot of trouble because of some of what they might learn in those classes. The Bible says: “If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.”

God’s Word also provides us clear guidance on what to do about children who don’t obey their parents. These are probably not thoughts that many mothers would have—maybe even not Southern Baptist mothers, but we have no choice but to obey. As Rev. Reed would say, “God’s word explicitly tells us” how we are to respond. And what does God’s Word instruct us to do with rebellious children?

Kill them.

Now you might not believe that, but it’s right there, plain as day, and you can’t deny God’s Word: “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you.”

I guess that would do it, all right…

So with respect, I ask you to excuse me, Pastor Reed, if I am not totally convinced that humanity’s infallible answers will be found in the Bible. You may not agree with all of the above verses, either. But if we are going to be Buffet Bible Believers, rather than a Literal Word of God Believer, then might you please tell us which verses of the Bible we are advised to ignore, and which we should apply to the letter?

Thank you, sir. That would be very helpful. We would not want to be called hypocrites for citing some verses of God’s Word when they support our personal prejudices, and ignoring others when they do not, now would we…?

The great challenge facing Humanity, if it wishes to evolve to the next level, is finding a way to release negative emotions without harming ourselves and others.

In the first installment in this series–found here–we discussed the problem and the presence of violence in our world—as well as the source of it. Much of it, we said, has to do with sudden eruptions of unwanted data in one’s mind.

We said that you can shove your unwanted data (bad memories, traumatic events) into your personal “trash bin” (the subconscious), but can never get it completely out of your mind. You can “overwrite” it with dozens of newer and better memories, and soon the bitter memories can begin to fade, but they will never be deleted.

Unlike computers, however, there seems to be no way to control if or when this “unwelcome data” shows up in our lives, triggered by something that causes it to spontaneously arise out of the subconscious and take over the conscious mind.

I believe that this is precisely explains the state of human affairs on this planet today.  Yet there some ways open to us through which humans can release these negative emotions without harming others or themselves.

Now, in Part II of this series, a look at what psychology offers around all of this.

Because such spontaneous eruptions can apparently be stimulated, and thus occur, at any time—nearly always temporarily controlling, and sometimes severely warping, our behaviors—mind scientists such as Arthur Janov and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross spent years looking at ways that this reservoir of emotional content could be emptied on command, at will, under controlled conditions, so that people took control of them, rather than they taking control of people.

Their idea was to engage in deliberate triggering of the subconscious to release the buried pain through the voluntary expression of it even before it is actually felt. The theory is that expressing emotion does just that: express it. That is, push it out.

PART TWO OF A THREE- PART NEWS ANALYSIS

Processes such as Janov’s tool (which he called Primary Therapy) and Kübler-Ross’ device (which she termed the Externalization of Repressed Emotions)—to cite two examples—involved top-of-the-voice screaming, or beating a set of old telephone books on a mattress, using a rubber compressor hose. Persons were encouraged to begin the screaming or the banging even when no negative emotion was being experienced in their present moment.

The result was in many cases remarkable, if surprising to the participants: the spontaneous “appearance” on the surface, a bringing forward to a place of present-moment consciousness, of intensively negative and apparently deeply-held feelings about another person or a long-past event—negative emotions that shocked many participants with their intensity, with many swearing that while they certainly understood that they held “bad feelings” about some things, they never knew they had such mountains of anger within them.

As Janov and Kübler-Ross suspected it might, the expression of these negative energies in such a dramatic way turned into the expulsion of them, releasing them from their captivity in the subconscious, where they had been held in some cases for many years, and allowing patients to “let go” of them permanently.

The idea, once again, is to release these long and deeply held emotions on purpose, under controlled conditions, rather than have them overtake us, becoming an episodic (or, worse yet, a chronic) aspect of our personality, behavior, and experience. (As in the case of the man who shot people in a Colorado movie theatre, or the person who kidnapped, beat, raped, and imprisoned three women in Cleveland over the past ten years.)

What can possibly cause such repugnant and repulsive deviant behaviors? Clearly, mental aberration, abnormality, anomalousness. Yet what causes this? Is it possible that there is a pain even more deep-seated than that caused by obvious childhood traumas or life-impacting tragedies? Or there be something along the lines of a “primal pain” that precedes all the others, and actually gives weight and substance to them?

If we can find the answer to that question—or at least one answer—we could go a long way toward eliminating eruptive anger, malevolence, violence, and killing from the collective human experience. We could create a society in which, at last, its members were much more safe, much more secure, and much more free from fear.

Will we, can we, ever completely eliminate every cause or source of attack, one human upon another? Perhaps not. Can we enormously reduce the number of such events occurring in our communal lives? I believe we can. Yet the solution I propose will come from the spiritual, not the psychological, community of healers.

And that’s where you come in.

(In the final installment: The source of the original pain—and the way to get rid of it. A surprising description of what you can do as an average, ordinary person to offer a non-psychological solution that, if it swept the planet, could change the world.)

We began here in our column last week a three-part series of New Analysis articles on the fact that we are doing little to address the cause of violence in our world, and looking at some of the tools our global society might use with which to do so.

That series was scheduled to continue in this entry, but I am going to take the liberty of interrupting the series with my present post, because it seems in appropriate for me to simply continue in that vein here without a single mention of the horrific events in Oklahoma. I cannot — and we cannot — ignore what has happened there and just move on with our lives without at least asking how the concepts of the New Spirituality apply in this situation, and where those of us who were not immediately affected by it may fit into all of this.

The first principle of The New Spirituality, as most readers here know, is: We Are All One. If this is true (and it is), then what occurred in Moore, Oklahoma (a near suburb of Oklahoma City) is part of all of our lives. If we are practicing The New Spirituality then, we will be immediately looking for ways to help that part of Ourselves that has been impacted or hurt by the huge level EF5 tornado that hit there.

Alia E. Dastagir, staff writer for USAToday, has offered a terrific rundown of ways in which people can do that immediately. Her story can be found here:

Here, from her story, is a list of helping opportunities. I hope and trust that you will respond with an open heart as soon and as hugely as you can.

The American Red Cross has several shelters open in Oklahoma and Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicles have begun delivering hot meals throughout the affected areas. The Red Cross is also working to link loved ones in Moore who are OK through a website called Safe and Well. Text REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10 to American Red Cross Disaster Relief, donate online or by phone at 1-800-RED CROSS.

The Salvation Army is activating disaster response teams and mobile feeding units to help residents and rescuers in Moore, as well as in other locations in the Plains and the Midwest that were impacted by tornadoes. Donate online or text STORM to 80888 to contribute $10 to the Salvation Army’s relief efforts or make a donation by phone at 1-800-SAL-ARMY. If you’re sending a check make sure you put the words “Oklahoma Tornado Relief” on the check, and mail it to: The Salvation Army, P.O. Box 12600, Oklahoma City, OK 73157.

AmeriCares has a disaster relief team working with first responders and local health care organizations on the ground in hard-hit Oklahoma City suburbs. Shipments of water, medicines and emergency aid have been sent, with more shipments underway. You can help by donating through the AmeriCares website or by phone at 1-800-486-HELP. Text LIVE to 25383 to make a $10 donation. You can also mail a check or money order to: AmeriCares, 88 Hamilton Ave., Stamford, CT 06902.

Operation USA announced it’s providing emergency aid where needed to community-based health organizations across Oklahoma. Donate online, by phone at 1-800-678-7255, or by check made out to Operation USA, 7421 Beverly Blvd., PH, Los Angeles, CA 90036. You can also donate $10 by texting AID to 50555. Corporate donations of bulk quantities of disaster-appropriate supplies are also being requested.

Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief says it has deployed at least 80 volunteers to respond to severe weather in Oklahoma. Those interested in helping can make a tax-deductible donation to the BGCO’s Disaster Relief ministry online or call (405) 942-3800. You may also send checks to: BGCO Attn: Disaster Relief 3800 N. May Ave. Oklahoma City, OK 73112.

Feed the Children, which is headquartered in Oklahoma City, has transported bottled water and food to the impacted area. The organization is accepting diapers, canned goods, non-perishable food, snack items, water, sports drinks, and cash donations. Text “Disaster” to 80888 to make a $10 donation. After receiving a confirmation message you must type “yes” to complete the donation. Cash and corporate donations can be made online or by phone at 1-800-627-4556.

Samaritan’s Purse, which provided relief to residents of Moore after the devastating tornado in 1999, deployed two Disaster Relief Units from their North Carolina headquarters before dawn on Tuesday. One will be based in Moore, and the other in Shawnee. Samaritan’s Purse is looking for volunteers to help with the relief effort. You can donate online or by phone at 1-800-528-1980. To give by mail, please send donations to: Samaritan’s Purse, P.O. Box 3000, Boone, NC 28607-3000.

Save the Children is mobilizing staff to provide support, relief and recovery services to communities and families in Oklahoma. The organization is prepared to deploy their Child Friendly Space kits in shelters, creating safe play areas for kids. They are also ready to deploy infant and toddler hygiene materials to support young children displaced from their homes. Text TWISTER to 20222 to donate $10 to Save the Children and help the response effort. You can donate online or call 1-800-728-3843.

Operation Blessing International, a Virginia-based humanitarian group, is deploying to Moore, after working on tornado relief in Granbury, Texas, following last week’s storm there. A caravan of OBI emergency equipment was sent to Moore, including a construction unit, mobile command center, trucks full of tools and supplies, and a team of construction foremen. You can donate to the group online or donate by phone at 1-800-730-2537.