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And so now we have 20 students randomly stabbed in the chest, back, and abdomen in a blood bath at a high school outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the hands of a sophomore boy who is in police custody, being questioned, at this writing.
Where are we going in our society? What is happening to the Body Human? Did this kind of thing occur with this kind of frequency during my youth? No. Plain and simply…No.
The makers of increasingly violent video games played by millions of children around the world for the past two decades continue to deny, to this day, that those graphic depictions of fictional violence have anything to do with the sudden and shocking increase in actual violence in our youth.
The makers of increasingly violent motion pictures watched by millions of people around the world for the past two decades continue, to this day, to deny that those graphic depictions of fictional violence have anything to do with the sudden and shocking increase in actual violence in our society.
The makers of increasingly violent television programs watched by millions of people around the world for the past two decades continue, to this day, to deny that those graphic depictions of fictional violence have anything to do with the sudden and shocking increase in actual violence all over this planet.
Nobody has anything to do with anything.
The makers of laws guaranteeing free and easy access to assault weapons, and the manufacturers of those weapons, have nothing to do with the shocking number of killings by guns in the U.S.
Nothing.
The purveyors of porn and the providers of easy access to it now on the Internet, together with the creators of the increasingly raw and explicit sexual content in all forms of our entertainments — from television to music to films to videos to comic books, for heaven sake — have nothing to do with the sex-run-wild environment of our society today, in which the beauty and the wonder and the sacred intimacy of physical love has been reduced to a primitive act of self-gratification, and crimes of sexual violence are on the increase everywhere.
Nothing.
The producers of genetically modified crops and the manufacturers of chemical after chemical after chemical and the makers of cigarettes, cigars, and pipe tobacco have nothing to do with the through-the-sky statistics of cancer and Alzheimer’s and birth defects and the slow but sure degradation of the collective Body Human.
Nothing.
The proponents of fracking and the extractors of more and more oil and the clearers of entire old growth forests and the releasers of pollutants into the air and into the waters and into the earth itself have nothing to do with the warming of our globe, the obvious and undeniable changes in our weather patterns and the once slow and the now rapid despoiling of our environment.
Nothing.
The lawmakers behind the unending machinations and stalemates and spying and erosion of personal rights coming out of Washington and many other seats of power around the world have nothing to do with humanity’s growing frustration with and lack of trust in its ability to even govern itself.
Nothing.
The powers behind a global economic model that allows 5% of the world’s people to hold or control 95% of the world’s wealth and resources have nothing to do with the widening hopelessness, despair, and suffering of the world’s teeming masses, nor their increasing restlessness, anger, and violence.
Nothing.
Nobody has anything to do with anything.
Oh, and one more thing. Lest we forget. Let us be clear that the preachers and speakers of the ever more strident claims of our species’ incredibly intolerant religions have nothing to do with the numbers of people killed or maimed in the name of God under the banner of protecting God’s “honor,” expanding God’s kingdom, or demonstrating God’s authority.
Nothing.
We have decided that we live in a world where nobody has anything to do with anything.
And most human beings are, apparently, content to leave it at that. After all, they can do nothing about any of this. So what can be expected of them…?
Right.
Nothing.
Our purpose, our mission on the Earth right now is very clear. Our opportunity, our invitation, our challenge is to change the world’s mind about God.
To do this, we must first ask ourselves, and then ask the world, a profound question: Is it true that God threw us out of the Kingdom of Heaven, that we are born in sin, and that God will now not let us back into heaven unless we follow certain rules, the obedience to which is the only path allowing us to return?
Is it true, furthermore, that if we do not follow these rules we will not only be denied re-entry into heaven, but will be condemned to unimaginable and everlasting torture in hell?
Is this the God of our understanding? Does it matter?
Yes, it does. Because humanity’s belief in a violent, angry, and vindictive God justifies humanity’s embracing of — and approval of — violent, angry, and vindictive behaviors with each other. So long as we believe that judgment, violence, condemnation and killing are the Ways of God (the Bible tells us that over a million people were killed at the hand or the command of God), we will believe and behave as if judgment, violence, condemnation and killing are appropriate Ways of Humans.
We have based our behaviors on what we understand to be God’s behaviors. That is why God’s Message to the World is so very important at this moment in the evolution of our species.
“Okay, you claim to have talked directly with God, so tell us . . .what is God’s message to the world?”
The speaker was the world-famous host of one of America’s most popular national television morning shows, and he was asking me to answer the biggest question of all time.
“Can you bring it down to a sentence or two?” he added. “We have about thirty seconds.”
My mind raced. How could I say something in thirty seconds that would capture the essence of what Deity wants the world to know? Then, in one quick flash, I heard God’s answer in my head.
I blinked and made an announcement that surprised even me. “Actually, I can bring it down to five words.”
The host raised his eyebrows, showing a nanosecond of disbelief, then deadpanned to the camera: “All right then. Ladies and gentlemen, from a man who says he communes with The Divine, here is God’s message to the world . . . in five words.”
I knew that millions were watching in households around the globe. This was my chance to bring God’s most important communication to more people than I ever imagined I would, or could, in my lifetime. Looking straight into the lens I repeated the words I had just been given to say.
“You’ve got me all wrong.”
If that is true, it re-opens for all of humanity every question, every discussion, we have ever had about the Divine. It my answer is inaccurate, there is nothing further to discuss. The discussion is closed.
This is how most of the religious world would have it. The discussion is closed. God has spoken to us, we are told by virtually every one of the world’s major religions. And God has since stopped talking to us. There have been no further, no new, revelations.
This leaves us lingering for centuries — nay, millennia — with what God is reported to have said to us, which can now never, ever be explored or explained, and certainly never expanded. No one has the right to expand on What God Said. Anyone who does so will be condemned as a blasphemer, an apostate, a heretic.
Yet on page 3 of the 3,000-page dialogue known as Conversations with God this statement appears: “I talk to everyone. All the Time. The question is not to whom do I talk, but who listens?”
Our opportunity now on this Earth is decide whether there could be a shred of truth in that statement. As I said, our invitation is to Change the World’s Mind About God. I believe this is the mission on which God has invited all of us to embark. It is work that will require great courage and deep conviction, for it contradicts every word of every religion in every culture and tradition on the Earth.
We are not children of a lesser God, who would judge us, punish us, and condemn us to everlasting damnation if we do not come to God through the right doorway, on the one and only pathway, by means of a singular means of salvation. Indeed, “salvation” itself is not even necessary, for God did not throw us out of the Kingdom of Heaven, then setting rules for our return.
The Good News is that we were not “born in original sin,” and we do not have to somehow earn our way back into God’s good graces so that we can go home. We are home right now, everlastingly in the arms of our loving creator, eternally embraced by Divinity, and imbued with It both now and even forevermore.
We are, indeed, “about God’s work.”
We have a chance, in this golden age of instant global communication, to launch a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a violent, angry, and vindictive God, and ending forever our telling and re-telling of the ancient and wholly inaccurate story of Separation.
We have been telling each other a story — and passing it on from generation to generation — that God is “up there” and we are “down here”, and never the ‘twain shall meet until Judgment Day, when we will be tried, judged, and convicted or acquitted…and if convicted, condemned and sent to everlasting torture as our punishment, that has produced our Separation Theology.
This in itself might be harmless enough, but the problem is that our Separation Theology produces a Separation Cosmology. That is, a way of looking at all of life that says that everything is separate from everything else.
And a Separation Cosmology produces a Separation Psychology. That is, a psychological viewpoint that says that I am over here and you are over there. And a Separation Psychology produces a Separation Sociology. That is, a way of socializing with each other that encourages the entire human society to act as separate entities serving their own separate interests.
And a Separation Sociology produces a Separation Pathology. That is, pathological behaviors of self-destruction, engaged in individually and collectively, and producing suffering, conflict, violence, and death by our own hands—as evidenced everywhere on our planet throughout human history.
Have we had enough now? Are we ready now to admit and to acknowledge that there may be something we do not fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which could change everything?
Are we ready now to, each of us, become messengers of a New Spirituality? Do we have the courage? Do we have the commitment? Do we even have an interest in doing so?
If so, how might we accomplish this? How can we change the world’s mind about God?
A question looms on the minds of billions of the world’s people these days: Can humanity find a way to save itself from itself?
What will it take for us, as a species, to see, to admit, and to do something about what we are doing to ourselves?
Is it even possible for us, as a global civilization, to even acknowledge our behaviors — much less concede that they may have anything at all to do with the State of the World today?
The question is not limited to the obviously and painfully inept way that we are handling our global political affairs (i.e., Crimea, Syria, Egypt, etc.). It gets down to how we are simply handling our planet itself.
For instance, we’re losing 95% of our sea scallop harvest, did you know that? I deliberately brought this up because it looks like a tiny and almost meaningless example of humanity’s careless disregard for its own future, as alluded to in the statements above. But is it?
The major problem is not the loss of scallops. That’s sad, but it’s not the planet’s major problem. The major problem is the cause of the scallop loss. The cause of the loss is the precipitous rise of acidity in the Pacific Ocean — and that portends a possibly greater challenge for the Earth.
“This is a bit of a red flag,” Chris Harley, a marine ecologist from the University of British Columbia, recently told CTV News. (CTV is a Canadian television network.) Mr. Harley’s remarks were reported recently in an article for the Common Dreams website by staff writer Jacob Chamberlain.
“The cause of this increase in acidity, scientists say, is the exponential burning of fossil fuels for energy and its subsequent pollution. Oceans naturally absorb carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fossil fuel emissions, which causes acidity to rise,” Mr. Chamberlain wrote. Then he quoted Mr. Harley as saying that “an overdose of carbon in the atmosphere subsequently causes too much acidity in the world’s oceans.”
“Oyster hatcheries along the West Coast are also experiencing a steep decline, CTV News reports,” Mr. Chamberlain wrote.
Why is even this a problem? “Whenever we see an impact at some level of the food chain, there is a cascading effect at other levels of the food chain,” Peter Ross, identified by Mr. Chamberlain as “an expert in ocean pollution science,” said in the Common Dreams story.
Mr. Chamberlain goes on to write that “A recent study warned that ocean acidification is accelerating at a rate unparalleled in the life of the oceans—perhaps the fastest rate in the planet’s existence—which is degrading marine ecosystems on a mass scale.”
So what…some might say. So the “marine ecosystem” is degrading. Even if on a “mass scale,” does this matter?
Yes. We depend heavily on the health of the oceans. And a recent study published in Nature (described by Wikipedia as a prominent interdisciplinary scientific journal first published in 1869) was put in perspective by German marine biologist Hans Poertner in the Chamberlain article.
“The current rate of change is likely to be more than 10 times faster than it has been in any of the evolutionary crises in the earth’s history,” Mr. Chamberlain quoted Mr. Poertner as saying.
“Poertner says that if humanity’s industrial carbon emissions continue with a ‘business as usual’ attitude, levels of acidity in the world’s oceans will be catastrophic,” Mr. Chamberlain’s article for Common Dreams concludes.
The authors of the study conclude that the diversity of responses of sea life to acidification could lead to profoundly altered ocean ecosystems in the future. Yet, with all that said, the biggest thing about ocean acidification is that it is a sure and certain warning sign that global warming is not — as many humans continue to insist — a figment of our imagination, and/or unimportant to the planet’s future.
Next month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will issue its most recent report, according to environmental journalist Fiona Harvey.
“The IPCC report, the first since 2007, will provide a comprehensive picture of our knowledge of climate change,” Ms. Harvey explains in a previous Common Dreams article.
“It is expected to show that scientists are at least 95% certain that global warming is happening and caused by human activity,” Ms. Harvey reports.
There seems very little remaining doubt among scientists about this. What will it take for the largest number of humans outside of scientific circles to believe it? That becomes one of the crucial questions of our age. And if human beings in large numbers ever do believe it, what will it take for all of us to actually do something about it?
For that matter, what, if anything, can be done?
These are the questions being placed now before the members of the Evolution Revolution. For more information on this, see the blue box in the right-hand column of the Front Page of this online newspaper.
I do not believe that nothing can be done. Every major change that has ever occurred on this planet began with a conversation. You are invited to join in that conversation here, in the Comments Section immediately below, as well as in the Evolution Revolution Discussion Groups worldwide.
The people of the Crimean Peninsula have spoken, in an election that the world must assume was largely untainted by coercion or ballot-box stuffing or other corruptions. The result was never in doubt in any event, as more than 60% of the residents of Crimea are Russian speakers and are deeply embedded in the Russian culture. That majority wants to be part of Russia. It never favored being separated from Russia in the first place.
So the people of the Crimean Peninsula have spoken, voting overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and become an independent republic, the government of which, all the voters knew, will immediately request membership in the Russian Federation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made an astonishing statement of agreement with them on Tuesday when, if an NBC News report by Albina Kovalyova is correct, he said that Crimea was “stolen” from Russia when it was handed to Ukraine in the first place, half a century ago.
The NBC News report said that Putin, addressing a joint session of the Russian parliament, “described the 1954 allocation of Crimea to Ukraine by then Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev as a mistake and said that the wishes of the local people had been ignored.”
The NBC report goes on to quote Putin as saying that Russia was going through a difficult period at that time, and that “the people of Crimea were not asked about anything. It was hard to imagine then that Russia and Ukraine would be different countries. But it happened. The U.S.S.R. collapsed.”
The result of this was that “When Crimea became part of a different state, Russia felt it was stolen,” NBC quoted Putin as saying. “A million people went to bed in one country and woke up in another,” the report said he added.
The network said that Putin told the Russian parliament that Russia thought Ukraine would be a friendly neighbor, but that the situation “developed differently.”
On Tuesday Putin apparently went even further, describing Kiev, which is the capital of Ukraine, as “the mother of all Russian cities,” again according to yet another report from NBC News.
President Putin says he would think that Americans would understand and support the vote for independence by the people of Crimea, just as Americans support the whole idea of freedom of choice and independence, having declared its own independence from England many years ago.
Mr. Putin also said that he hoped that Germany and the rest of Europe would understand the desire of Russia to embrace Crimea again as a part of the Russian Federation, just as East and West Germany joined together once again a few years ago to form one nation — a move that, Putin said, Russia supported. He did not point out that this was even though Russia then “lost” East Germany as a satellite region under Russian control.
These words, reportedly from Putin as quoted by NBC News, are being placed here in order to put the entire Crimea/Ukraine situation in a new and larger context, allowing, perhaps, for a deeper understanding of why Russia is taking the position it is now taking regarding Crimea and Ukraine.
This does not make the Russian position “right” (nor does it make it “wrong”) — it simply makes it, perhaps, more understandable to people in the West.
All of which brings us to a remarkable idea placed in the Comments Section beneath the last headline story on this webpage, which also focused on the situation in Crimea, and invited readers to offer their suggestions on how to deal with the apparent impasse between Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., and Europe.
A reader named Cate Grieves wrote…
“If I was the President of the world, I would get all the Presidents together. They then sit around a large ROUND table. They would then have to stick a large white piece of paper to the front of their clothes. On this piece of paper would be their name — in LARGE black ink in capital letters. Then each person hands the person on their left, their name badge. They then put it on.
“Then, each person has to believe they are the person whose name they have. They then explain to the group, to the best of their ability, why they believe they are right. They are only allowed to speak for the name they have on.
“After they have all spoken, they move the names along again, one more person to the left.When they have all had a turn at each name badge, they can then discuss an outcome. The other rules for this event are: that no-one is allowed to interupt or criticise what anyone has said. They are all allowed to speak for as long as they want. They do not get to speak with their own name badge.”
Now there’s a fascinating idea. It would be an exercise in wearing the other shoe, and it could offer a remarkable format for creating a solution to more than a few problems around the world. (And in people’s homes!)
It would probably never happen, because “role playing” would probably be considered too “New Agey” or too much like a “psychological game” for world leaders (or couples in a marriage, for that matter) to actually engage in it. But it is an idea that could change the world.
In any event, now having heard more from Vladimir Putin on this whole subject, your own additional comments and observations are invited below. What does our contemporary spirituality invite us to say and do about all of this?
Here’s the situation regarding Ukraine: Everyone is “right.”
Really.
From their own point of view, everyone is “right.”
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is right. Acting president Oleksandr Turchynov is right. Russian President Vladimir Putin is right. U.S. President Barack Obama is right. The Ukraine parliament in Kiev is right in claiming that the election in Crimea to determine whether that area of Ukraine will secede and join the Russian Federation is illegal under the country’s constitution. The parliament in the Crimean Peninsula is right in calling for the election and declaring that the people there should have the ability of self-determination.
Everybody is “right.”
How can that be?
It’s simple. As Conversations with God tells us: “Nobody does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.”
Mr. Yanukovych absolutely believes he was forced to leave the country by an unruly, out-of-control, threatening mob of “fascist” ultra-nationalists. Mr. Turchynov absolutely believes that this “mob” was comprised of citizens of Ukraine exercising their right to protest, and that the Parliament of Ukraine was right to vote to remove Mr. Yanukovych from the office of the presidency after he fled the country, appoint a caretaker president, and move forward with the forming of a new government.
Mr. Putin absolutely believes he is right in doing what he can to protect the Russian majority in the Crimean Peninsula, who he claimed said they feared that the same kind of mob that forced Yanukovych out of office in Kiev would take over Crimea as well, and route the Russian speaking majority there. Mr. Obama absolutely believes he is right is telling Mr. Putin that Russia is, in effect, invading the sovereign territory of Ukraine, that the Russian citizens there are under no threat from anyone, and that international sanctions against Russia are going to have to be imposed if Russia does not move its troops out of Crimea.
Everybody is absolutely right from their point of view.
What, then, to do?
We have been saying in these from the beginning of this online newspaper’s publication that the problem in the world today is not a political problem, it is not a financial problem, and it is not a military problem. The problem in the world today is a spiritual a problem, and it can only be solved by spiritual means.
What has to happen in Ukraine is that all of the leaders, all of the human beings who are deeply involved in what is occurring there, are going to have to ask themselves a simple (yet remarkable for its simplicity) question: Can we all find a way to be ‘right’ without hurting each other?
It is seem that a civilization which declares itself to be “evolved” would be able to answer that question in the affirmative. Our civilization, however, has not so far been able to figure out a way to do that. We hurt each other. We kill each other. We use “force” — because we apparently know no other way to resolve our differences.
And so, on it goes — our Crisis Civilization moving from one flare-up to another, from one conflict to another, from one killing field to another.
Can we avoid more killing in Ukraine? Can we find a way for everyone to be “right” without hurting each other?
What proposals would you lay on the table if you were a global leader right now? Please offer your ideas below.
Worldwide Discussion: The People Join In
‘WE HAVE, BECAUSE OF THESE ILLUSIONS, LOST ALL COMMON SENSE’
Mewabe
The wars and rumors of wars we hear, the global economic collapse, the social unrest and uprisings, the overall fear that is felt by many people are all the symptoms of a very simple problem, which other individuals have addressed before.
I totally agree with Neale and other people’s assessment that the idea of separation is the cause of humanity having lost its spiritual way. Alan Watts spoke of this in the 60’s, and anyone who understands ancient teachings understands this.
This loss of spiritual understanding has led us to countless human conflicts and suffering, but it has also led us to conflicts with the natural environment, to an illusion of not only being separate from but above nature, and of being its masters.
Having created a few interesting technologies has given us an unrealistic sense of superiority over all life, and the delusion that, seemingly able to control nature to some degree, we could live independently of nature while growing our economies and our world population forever, without limits whatsoever.
We have, because of these illusions, lost all common sense. There is anger throughout the world because many feel that governments and societies are not fulfilling their part of the contract with the public, which is to endlessly create new jobs, to endlessly increase standards of living, to endlessly produce consumer goods, and to endlessly make life better than was that of the prior generation.
These things are not happening, so people feel totally cheated. They work hard, go to college, play by the rules, and jobs shrink, resources shrink, standards of living plummet while costs of living skyrocket. Populations are so completely out of touch with nature, which is, ultimately, life, and so totally immersed, mentally, in their social and cultural concepts and constructs, that they blame their governments and demand that they fix the problems that all of humanity has created by living in a state of complete disharmony with, and often in direct opposition to, the natural order or natural law.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is authored by a contributor to this global dialogue who posts here as “Mewabe.” It first appeared as an entry in the Comments section following this newspaper’s last headline item, Here we go again—now it’s Ukraine. That story posed the question: Will humanity’s behaviors of attack and violence continue forever? Is there no way to alter this pattern? It is Mewabe’s thought that a return to Right Relationship with Planet Earth itself must be the first step in changing humanity’s conduct.
The publishing of the considered opinion of contributors to this newspaper’s Comments sections is part of the expanding of the dialogue here, intended to widen the exchange of views among the people in this Global Conversation community.
To learn how you can continue this conversation in real time in-person exchanges with people living near you — thus generating powerful on-the-ground energy for change in our world — see the blue box to the lower right on this front page, which invites you and the other 465,000+ people who have visited this newspaper to join in an Evolution Revolution.
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Anyone with open eyes could have seen the writing on the wall 2000 years ago. Many Native Americans saw it 500 years ago when the European invader came here and started cutting down the ancient forests and destroying the ecosystem. They understood that such a way of life couldn’t be sustained forever, precisely because they were not under the delusion of being separate from nature, unlike Euro-Americans.
It’s really simple: when you know you are not separate from nature, you plant your two feet on the ground and you take a realistic look around, and you know that you cannot consume more than the soil can produce, you cannot drink more potable water than the earth can generate, you cannot populate more than a given place can sustain, and you cannot discard more than can be reabsorbed by the earth, and you know you cannot discard toxins and other poisons that will find their way into your bloodstream or that of your descendants.
This is called living responsibly, and knowing that responsibility alone, which is an expression of love, respect and appreciation for what gives you life, can give you freedom.
What part of all this is so difficult to understand? Apparently all of it, as humanity keeps asking for more meaningless jobs, more rapid and endless growth, more opportunities to do everything faster, bigger and louder, and more meaningless gadgets and toxic products to buy and discard ever faster.
Until we regain some basic common sense, which means living in balance and harmony with nature in a sustainable manner while understanding that we are not separate from and above nature, there won’t be much hope for humans, and more wars, revolutions, economic collapses, and environmental disasters will come, and at an accelerated rate.
It is important to state that “We are all one”. But at this point, it may be more urgent to understand that we are one with the earth, because if we don’t, we won’t have a place to be all one except in the spirit world.
Here we go again. Yesterday it was Iraq, Iran, Libya, Egypt, Syria…today it is Ukraine.
Russian troops have moved into the Crimean Peninsula and ordered the army of Ukraine to lay down its arms.
Once more, one country has invaded another. Once more, peace moves further away. Once more, power over trumps power with the people.
Will it never end? Can it ever end? Is it simply the nature of human beings to live in constant conflict? Are we as a species simply incapable of coexisting harmoniously?
What is the answer to all of this? Is there an answer?
Yes. But we cannot see it if we refuse to look at the source of all that is going wrong.
The biggest difficulty in the world today is that we continue trying to solve our problems at every level except the level at which the problems exist.
We first try to solve our problems as if they were political problems, because we are used to using political pressure on this planet to get people to do what they don’t want to do.
We hold discussions, we write laws, we pass legislation and adopt resolutions in every local, national, regional, and global language and assembly we can think of to try to solve the problem with words—but it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate very quickly, and the problems reemerge. They will not go away.
So we say, “Okay, these are not political problems and they cannot be solved with political means. They are economic problems.” And because we are used to using economic power on this planet to get people to do what they don’t want to do, we then try to solve the problems as if they were economic problems.
We throw money at them, or withhold money from them (as in the form of sanctions), seeking to solve the problems with cash. But it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate very quickly, the problems reemerge. They will not go away.
And so we say, “Okay, these are not economic problems, and they cannot be solved by economic means. They must be military problems.” And because we are used to using military might on this planet to get people to do what they don’t want to do, we then try to solve the problems as if they were military problems.
We throw bullets at them and drop bombs on them, seeking to solve the problems with weapons. But it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate very quickly, and the problems reemerge. They will not go away. And so, having run out of solutions, we declare: “These are not easy problems. No one expected that they could be fixed overnight. This is going to be a long, hard slog. Many lives will be lost in trying to solve these problems. But we are not going to give up. We are going to solve these problems if it kills us.” And we don’t even see the irony in our own statements.
After a while, however, even primitive beings of very little consciousness become tired of the killing and the dying of their own sons and daughters in battle and their own women and children and elderly in the line of fire. And so, after enough killing has been done with no solution in sight, they say it is time to call a truce and hold peace talks. And the cycle begins again…
We are back to the bargaining table, and back to politicking as a solution. And peace talks often include discussion of reparations and economic recovery. And so, we are back to money as a solution. And when these solutions fail to work in the long run, we are back to bombs again.
And on and on and on it goes, and on and on and on it has gone throughout human history. Only the names of the players have changed, but the game has not.
Only primitive cultures and primitive beings do this. I know that you have all heard the definition of insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different result.
We can’t seem to change our ways, however, because we are very used to trying to force solutions in our world.
Yet solutions that are forced are never solutions at all. They are simply postponements.
I know that you have heard, a hundred times by now, the definition of insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different result.
The great tragedy and the great sadness of humanity is that we are forever willing to settle for postponements in place of solutions.
Only primitive cultures and primitive beings do that. Highly evolved beings would never, ever settle for a ten-thousand-year postponement in solving their biggest problems. Here on this planet we’ve never really faced the largest problem of humanity head on. We refuse to. We pretend we don’t even know what it is. And so we do our endless dance all around it. And we continue, century after century, to solve the world’s problem at every level except the level at which the problem exists.
The problem facing humanity today is not a political problem, it is not an economic problem, and it is not a military problem. The problem facing humanity today is a spiritual problem, and it can only be solved by spiritual means.
The problem is rooted in our most fundamental beliefs about life, about each other, and about the thing we call God.
Put simply, the problem with our basic beliefs is that we believe in Separation. We believe that all things are separate from other things, that all people are separate from other people, and that all humans are separate from God.
This is, and has been for millennia, our Cultural Story. It is a Story of Separation.
Our opportunity on the Earth today is to jointly author a brand new story about who we are and how it is with us. And most important, how it’s going to be.
We get to declare, at long last, as a single voice, the truth of our being: We are all One. And with that declaration as the foundation of our New Cultural Story, we can bring an end at last to Separation Theology.
Separation Theology is a theology that insists that we are “over here” and God is “over there.” Its doctrine tells us that God separated us from God as punishment for our sins, and that our job now is to get back to God, which is possible only if God will allow it, which God will do only if we obey God’s commands, follow God’s laws, and submit to God’s will. In short, we must do what God wants.
This Separation Theology has produced a Separation Cosmology (that is, a way of looking at all of life on this planet that includes separation as its basic principle), which, in turn, has produced a Separation Psychology (that is, a psychological way of looking at things, of holding life, that rests on a foundation of separation), which, in turn, has produced a Separation Sociology (that is, a way of socializing with each other that encourages us to act as separate beings serving our own separate interests), which, in the end, has produced a Separation Pathology (that is, pathological behaviors of self-destruction, producing suffering, conflict, violence, and death by our own hands).
Only when our Separation Theology is replaced by a Unity Theology will our pathology be healed. We must come to understand that all of life is One. This is your first step and it is mine. It is the jumping off point. It is the beginning of the end of how things now are. It is the start of a new creation, of a new tomorrow. It is the New Cultural Story.
Oneness is not a characteristic of life, life is a characteristic of Oneness.
Life is the expression of Oneness Itself. God is the expression of Life Itself. God and Life are One. You are a part of Life. You do not and cannot stand outside of it. Therefore you are a part of God. It is a circle. It cannot be broken.
What does all of this have to do with you?
Well, if you believe that humanity can and must change its Cultural story, from one of Separation to one of Oneness, you will do what you can to place that new Cultural Story on the ground.
First, you can make a firm commitment this day to demonstrate Oneness in every moment, by the way you move through Life.
You can choose to show that you are One with everyone and everything, just by the way to think and speak and act . . . this very day.
If you are consciously aware of what you are thinking, saying, and doing, you will relate to other people . . . the other person in your life, the other people in your family, the others on this planet in a different way today, seeing them, experiencing them, as part of yourself.
Now you might say, “That’s all very nice, but what difference will it make? It’s not going to change anything in Ukraine today.” And you’d be right. It’s not. But imagine what would happen in the long run if everyone reading this decided today to act in every moment as if We Are All One.
Each of you is going to touch other people before this week is out. And they, in turn, will touch other people. And those people will touch others.
Do you think this means nothing? I tell you, this is how the world works.
This is how politics work. This is how societies work. This is how religions work.
You have more power than you know. If you begin moving through the world a certain way today, the world could begin to change tomorrow.
The readership of this online newspaper could start a snowball rolling downhill. Yes it could. Believe it or not.
And then there is prayer. This, too, as you know . . . is very powerful. And so you can pray every day that the world will at last come to its senses, stop all this nonsense, and see . . . and live . . . the truth of our being.
And you can bring other people to this awareness. You can write Letters to the Editor, send messages to our society’s leaders, and, on a more personal level, you can read the book The Storm Before the Calm, published in full right here on this website. It lays out an powerful course of action that you can take right now to assist us all in re-writing our Cultural Story.
Then you can join the Evolution Revolution and begin, in your own living room, a grass roots movement designed to change the world.
To learn more about this, return to this newspaper’s Front Page and click on the Blue Box in the right hand column.
So there is something you can do — about your life, and about our world. Things do not have to be the way they seem inevitably to be.
In a spiritually evolved society, should Freedom not be the highest value? Should people not be able to do exactly and precisely what they wish?
Conversations with God says that Freedom is the highest form of Divinity. Indeed, it is one definition of Divinity Itself. Should this not mean, then, that in a spiritually alive and awake and aware community of souls, business owners ought to be able to serve — and refuse to serve — anyone they wish?
Government coercion of individual action is only necessary in an un-evolved society, and is a demonstration of the inability of that society’s members to govern themselves. The question is: Is government coercion of individual action appropriate?
Conversations with God tells us that in the highly evolved societies of sentient beings which exist in the Cosmos, there are no laws at all.
And yes, CWG tells us, there are such societies, and there are such beings, in the Universe. They simply do not exist on Earth. And so on Earth we have to pass laws that say that a person who owns a business has a perfect right to refuse to do business with anyone, for any reason whatsoever. In a free society, the sponsors of such laws assert, individuals should not have to forfeit their right to basic freedoms of choice and action simply by creating, opening, and, incidentally, funding a business. Not having to forfeit that right is what liberty means.
And entire societies — which are nothing more than bunches of individuals clumped together — have a corollary right to exercise their liberty to live as they wish, based on their mutual agreements, these folks assert. Therefore, nations that wish to make homosexuality a crime punishable by life imprisonment have a perfect right to do so, as long as the majority of the members of that society consent.
That should end all the hoo-hah over laws recently passed in Arizona (although vetoed by the governor there) and in Uganda. At least among the spiritually aware, the discussion is over.
Or is it?
What about when the majority of the members within a society consent to laws that impinge upon the freedom of individuals within that society?
That is, what about when the majority of the members within a society act in a way that is wrong? For that matter, what about when individuals choose to do things that hurt or damage the society? What about when individuals act in a way that is wrong? Does Freedom equal the “right” to be “wrong”?
What is “wrong,” anyway? Conversations with God says there is no such thing as Right and Wrong. It says there is only what works and what does not work, given what it is we are trying to do. That includes, presumably, “we” as individuals and “we” as a society. Yet what if “we” can’t agree on what it is “we” are trying to do?
It is “wrong” to drive 97 miles an hour on the way downtown? Well, that depends on whether what you are trying to do is buy a pair of new shoes at a department store, or buy some time on the way to the hospital as a woman in the passenger seat is giving birth.
Society has decided that “right” and “wrong” are contextual. That is, it all depends on the circumstances. In Florida it is perfectly okay to kill someone on the basis of your fear (real or imagined) that your life or personal safety is being threatened. You have a right to “stand your ground.” People there are soon going to be deciding whether this means you can pull out a gun and kill someone because he threw popcorn in your face during an argument in a movie theatre.
So, it is “right” or is it “wrong” if you are the owner of a business that serves the public to deny service to a member of that public simply because you choose to? Can a hotel owner refuse to rent a room to a person because of the color of his skin? Can a grocery store owner refuse to sell food to a person because she is gay? Should basic freedom allow people who own, and built up, a business the right to engage in that business with anyone they choose…and to refuse to do business with anyone they choose?
What if you are the owner of the last gas station before the desert in Arizona? Or of a diner in Alabama?
In the United States, the majority of the members of society have decided that no, you may not discriminate against customers simply because of their race or their gender. But what about their sexual orientation? What if their sexual orientation — and the behavior that proceeds from it — violates your most fundamental religious beliefs? Must you support their behavior and violate your own beliefs to protect their freedom? What about your freedom?
In Uganda, the majority of the members of society have decided that if two persons of the same gender hold hands and kiss in public, they may be sent to jail for life. People living there want the freedom to eliminate such behavior from their society, claiming that it damages the family and undermines the society itself. But what about the freedom of individuals who want to hold hands or offer a kiss to a person of the same gender?
Just what does “freedom” mean? Does it mean we have the right to act in any way we wish — as individuals or as a society — no matter who it may affect in a way with which they do not agree?
This is the great philosophical question that individuals and societies have been struggling to answer for thousands of years. The question, at its basis, comes down to this: If there is none, is it okay to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre? Is this not freedom of speech? Or must there be some controls on our exercise of freedom?
We have decided in human society (in most places and nations, at least) that the answer is yes. We have decided that actions are not acceptable under the banner of freedom if they are detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of other people.
Would the law passed by the legislature in Arizona, which would have permitted business owners to discriminate against anyone they wished by not serving anyone they chose, based on religious beliefs, have been detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of other people had it not been vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer, but been allowed to stand?
Is the law passed by the parliament in Uganda allowing the government to send homosexuals to prison for life detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of other people?
What spiritual “rule of thumb” applies here? Let’s have a discussion. Your views are invited below.
Noticing that its application is “inconsistent and unequal,” Jay Inslee has decided to oppose the death penalty.
Mr. Inslee is not the first person to come to this conclusion. Indeed, people have been pointing this out for many years. He is also not the first person to decide that he opposes the death penalty because of it. But he is the first person to come to this conclusion and to reach this decision who happens to be the governor of one of the United States.
As a result, that State — Washington — has, effective February 11, stopped using its governing authority to kill people in an execution chamber…at least for the next three years. By executive order, Mr. Inslee has imposed a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty as long as he is in office. His current term expires in 1016.
Why would anybody in the United States — particularly anybody in a position of political power whose ability to hold onto that power depends upon the approval of voters — oppose the death penalty, which has been an American institution for so many years?
“There are too many flaws in the system,” Mr. Inslee is quoted in media reports as saying, adding that when the ultimate decision is death “there is too much at stake to accept an imperfect system.”
Um….uh….do you think?
The mystery is not why one courageous person would risk his political future by doing what is obviously right — but why every governor in the nation is not doing the same thing.
The State of Texas, for instance, reportedly leads the nation in putting people to death — and by some accounts and appearances the largest number of that state’s residents seem to be proud of that. “Texas justice,” some have been known to call it.
Yet not only justice, but “equal justice under the law” is the primary responsibility of any government, Washington’s governor asserts, then adds that in death penalty cases he is “not convinced equal justice is being served.”
Mr. Inslee is quoted in press accounts as observing that the use of the death penalty in his state has been so unequally applied that it was even “sometimes dependent on the budget of the county where the crime occurred.”
That kind of disparity is, of course, unconscionable, and Mr. Inslee has realized this. Fortunately, there is no other state in America where the death penalty is or has ever been unequally applied.
Um….well….maybe it has…but just once in a while, just now and then…so what does it matter? Well, it doesn’t seem to matter, as few governors or state legislatures in the United States have done what Mr. Inslee has just done, which is to simply announce: that’s enough. No more state-sponsored killing on my watch.
While 32 states in the U.S. still authorize the death penalty, Maryland became the most recent state, prior to Washington, to end executions when it repealed its death penalty law outright in 2013.
Two years earlier Gov. John Kitzhaber put a moratorium on all executions in Oregon. And eight years prior to that, in 2003, Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted all death penalties to life sentences.
But, as noted above, many states in America still kill people as a means of punishment — and they do not always do it mercifully.
Much news was made just a few weeks ago when the State of Ohio was widely accused of having badly botched the execution of a man convicted of murder named Dennis McGuire by using a lethal injection made up of a combination of chemicals that had never been tried before.
According to one journalist who witnessed the execution, the condemned man “struggled, made guttural noises, gasped for air and choked” before succumbing to a new, two-drug execution method.
In an online story about the execution, the Guardian newspaper news article said “Eyewitnesses in the death chamber reported that it took up to 26 minutes for McGuire to die, making it the longest execution in Ohio in modern times.“
The Guardian story went on to say that “the prisoner was seen to be gasping for air for up to 14 minutes in a procedure that one observer, Lawrence Hummer, described in the Guardian as horrendous and inhumane.”
Some medical experts had warned the state that the “death cocktail” would cause slow oxygen starvation, resulting in not just death for the criminal, but prolonged suffering, amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.
The state refused to listen to those opinions, or to the appeal of the criminal to at least postpone the execution until the injection had been tried on animals. It went ahead with the procedure, and the result, as described above, made headlines around the world.
At least one family member of the person the criminal had murdered appeared by press accounts to be not particularly concerned with reports of Mr. McGuire’s alleged suffering, reportedly saying to the media that the person Mr. McGuire was convicted of killing was also not spared suffering.
The spiritual question raised by all of this, of course, is whether the highest or grandest spiritual value to which humanity can aspire in cases such as this is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
Billions of humans embrace this notion of justice — many, if not most, of them declaring that it is a concise articulation of God’s Law. God, these believers declare, imposes just this kind of justice on all human beings at the moment of their death.
In your belief system, is this true? And where do you stand on the death penalty, regardless of what you believe about God?
So it has come to this.
More and more schools across the country are now apparently involving children in so-called Active Intruder Drills.
Complete with armed police bursting into darkened classrooms to “rescue” endangered children, the firing of blanks by fake “intruders” using real runs, and realistic enactments that in one case actually frightened students, these drills may soon become part of The New American Scene in classrooms from sea to shining sea.
So we are told in a remarkable news story revealing this latest educational development published February 8 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a column by writer Aisha Sultan headlined: Hiding in the hallways: Intruder drills get graphic
In the story, Ms. Sultan describes how some schools involve members of the high school drama club who don gruesome make-up — complete with fake blood running down faces from make-believe bullet holes in students’ temples — and then play out an entire scene, giving school officials, teachers, and first responders “a chance to practice what would happen in such a worst-case scenario.” Except for the voluntary actors, other students are not involved in such drills.
But, Ms. Sultan wrote in her Parents Talk Back column, not all such drills involve only adults. “Masked ‘intruders,’ armed with guns, fired blanks at a group of teachers in a library in a rural Oregon school last year,” her article reported. Further, she reports, a student at Central York High School in New Jersey wrote about the deafening noise when those armed police officers burst into her dark classroom to “rescue” the students during a realistic active intruder drill.
And yes, it allegedly happened that, according to Ms. Sultan’s report, “an El Paso, Texas district took it a step further with a surprise intruder drill so realistic that students sent panicked texts to parents.”
The purpose of the drills is to potentially save lives by reducing panic in the case of an actual on-site intruder attack at a school, Ms. Sultan makes clear, just as schools for decades have run fire drills, tornado and earthquake drills — and even, in the 50s, air raid drills and atomic bomb drills.
But the possibility of an intruder coming right into a classroom and killing students in could blood adds a new dimension to the model of the world with which a child grows up, one would have to conclude.
Or, as Aisha Sultan wrote: “When you have to imagine yourself getting shot, your teacher hiding you, year after year since you were five years old, that creates some sort of impression. When a threat is so real that you can hear screams and shots fired and smell sweat during the trial runs, that changes a child’s perception of what places are safe,” even though, she continued, “schools remain one of the safest places for children.”
Yes, but does the world feel safe to children who grow up made, in realistic invader drills, to line up against a wall where no one can see them so that their classroom looks empty? When they watch as their teacher quickly rolls down paper on all the windows? When they are told to not make a sound until they hear “all clear?”
“So the defense we’ve given our children since massacres at Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook is very often: Turn off the lights, stay quiet, and hide,” Ms. Sultan opines. “That’s certainly easier than trying to make even the smallest reforms to the country’s gun laws.”
Changes such as restrictions on the purchase of assault weapons or even reasonable requirements for background checks for gun buyers are supported by “the vast majority of Americans,” the writer asserts, but such modest gun control measures cannot survive any legislative process “because of the power of the gun lobby,” she alleges.
Meanwhile school security “is an industry now,” she wrote in her column, “with trainers and equipment and realistic drills meant to convince us that teaching children to dodge bullets at school is somehow a normal part of growing up.”
