August, 2013
So now it has begun.
Another escalation in international tensions is upon us as a result of the alleged use of chemical weapons by the government of Syria on its own people, and the possible response of the United States of pinpoint missile strikes against strategic military targets in Syria.
President Obama announced Saturday (Aug 31) that he would not order an intervention in Syria by the U.S. without approval in a vote by Congress. That body is not due to return from its summer recess until September 9 — but it could be called back into session by its leadership on a moment’s notice. It is unclear at this stage how much of a reprieve the world has from the threat of a U.S. military intervention in Syria.
Members of the vast spiritual communities that are spread across our planet are asking today: What can we do? In the face of the possibility of this latest and seemingly never-ending use of violence in the name of bringing an end to violence, what can we do?
The answer is that we now have to use, intently and with passionate and mighty focus, the most powerful force in the Universe — a force more powerful, even, than all the missiles and all the bombs and all the chemical weapons in all the arsenals of all the military establishments of all the governments of the world.
Prayer.
Prayer is intentioned Thought, and Thought is one of the Three Tools of Creation given to us by our Creator. Those tools are: Thought, Word, and Deed. Of these, Thought is the most powerful, because Thought is the least physical. Therefore it is the least dense, and thus the most far reaching, permeating all physical bodies, barriers and constructions.
I believe the prayer of the day should be that Congress votes against a military intervention — even a limited, air-power-only intervention — by the United States. The reasons for my belief are found in the lengthier commentary in the news article to the lower left of this website’s Home Page, under the column title Interpreting Conversations with God.
I hope you will read that article at once, and then I hope you will join me and Marianne Williamson in the Global Collective Prayer Initiative, Monday, September 2, at 16:00 GMT (that is 9 a.m. Pacific Time). We will pray solidly and intentionally for ten minutes that the U.S. will not launch air strikes on Syria, and that the larger Syrian conflict may end, at last, with peace and harmony prevailing.
For the official record, next week will be my 50th article here on The Global Conversation.
We’ve had conversation about a wide variety of topics. Relationships, The Middle East, bullying, and even time itself. However, through months and months of articles, I realize that there is something very important I have not done yet.
I have been talking to you all, and have made the call to a more peaceful and more unified society. What I haven’t done yet is respond – I haven’t let you respond to my messages about what YOU think, what YOU believe, and what YOU envision for the future. So, to change this way of thinking, I’m opening this post up to YOU. People have heard plenty of my voice, so now it is time for them to hear yours.
I’m letting YOU make the call – YOU choose whatever topic you wish to extend your highest spiritual beliefs towards. Write to me what your highest vision of the truth about whatever topic of your choosing is, and I will respond to it.
So, if you want your incredible teenage spiritual views to be a part of The Global Conversation, just do the following:
-Choose a topic you feel as though I haven’t addressed or one that truly inspires you.
-In a paragraph or two (or longer), express your views on that topic, and (if you feel ever so inclined) ask questions about the topic as well.
-Email this paragraph to me at lauren@theglobalconversation.com.
-Within the next few weeks, your views and my responses to your paragraph will be my articles. So, if you want to have your views featured, know that you can!
As teenagers, we have a voice that deserves to be heard. The world deserves to see that its youngest generation is truly aware of all that they are and all that there is. I am giving you the chance to use that voice, and I can’t wait to see just how elevated your consciousnesses are!
(Lauren is a Feature Editor of The Global Conversation. She lives in Wood Dale, IL, and can be reached at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com)
There can be no justification, in a spiritual sense, for a military attack by the United States on Syria, whatever the intention or cause.
The very first message of Conversations with God, on pg. 5 of Book One, says that We Are All One. If this is true (and it is), then killing each other to resolve our problems — even our biggest problems — can never be the answer.
There are those who say that the leadership in Syria (meaning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government and military minions) must “pay” for its alleged approval of the use of chemical weapons against Syria’s own people.
The U.S. says it has incontrovertible evidence that the chemical weapons attack that recently killed hundreds of men, women, and children in Syria was conducted by the military of the Assad regime. It says that a military strike against Syria would be limited to the destruction of that government’s own military apparatus.
The spiritual wisdom on this matter says that we cannot continue with the insanity of using killing to end killing, violence to end violence. Negativity only breeds negativity, and CWG says that the problem in the world today is that we keep trying to solve the problem in the world today at every level except the level at which the problem exists.
First, we try to solve it as if it was a political problem, because we are used to using political pressure on this planet to push energy around to get people to do what they don’t want to do. We hold discussions and write laws and pass legislation and adopt resolutions in every local, national, regional, and global organization 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 over time, the problem reemerges. It will not go away. So we say, “Okay, this is not a political problem and it cannot be solved with political means. It must be an economic problem…” You see, we are used to using economic power on this planet to push energy around to get people to do what they don’t want to do.
So we try to solve the problem as if it were an economic problem. We throw money at it, or withhold money from it (as in the form of sanctions), to try to solve the problem with cash—but it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate over time, the problem reemerges. It will not go away. And so we say, “Okay, this is not an economic problem, and it cannot be solved by economic means. It must be a military problem…” We are used to using military might on this planet to push energy around to get people to do what they don’t want to do.
So we try to solve the problem as if it were a military problem. We throw bullets at it and drop bombs on it to try to solve the problem with weapons —but it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate over time, the problem reemerges. It will not go away. And so we say, “Okay, this is not an easy problem. This is going to be a long, hard slog. Many lives will be lost in trying to solve this problem. But we are not going to give up. We are going to solve this problem if it kills us.” And we don’t even see the irony in our own statements.
You see, 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 all heard the definition of insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different result.
The sadness of humanity is that we are forever ready 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 10,000-year-postponement in the solving of their largest problem.
The problem in the world today is a spiritual problem. It has to do with what people believe. It has to do with our most fervently held thoughts and ideas about Life, about God, and most of all, about ourselves.
This problem of beliefs creates a condition of hopelessness, helplessness, anger, and rebellion. That condition produces a circumstance of run-away violence.
The problem of beliefs is a problem which all of us have helped to create. This is true because all of us have beliefs—and if those beliefs are mistaken, and we then pass on those beliefs to our children and our grandchildren and our neighbors and our friends, we join together to create a Cultural Story that creates the very Conditions which produce the very Circumstances we are trying to avoid. Yet we cannot eliminate them and we cannot avoid them until we eliminate and avoid the beliefs that created them.
And that is OUR work, my friends. That is OUR job. We must change the Cultural Story that created the Conditions that produce the Circumstances we seek to avoid. Yet we will never do that, we will never even be able to, as long as we refuse to acknowledge our own responsibility in the matter. It is as the headline on the masthead of this online newspaper reads.
It is WE who hold the beliefs that we hold, that create the Cultural Stories that start the spiral going. We, ALL of us — including the people who use violence to announce and to scream out their discontent — must change our cultural story, must change our beliefs, if we expect and hope to see a change in humanity’s behavior.
This is because all behavior springs from belief. All behavior. Everything you do, you do because you believe something. You believe something about who you are, you believe something about what is currently happening, you believe something about what you are doing—and, most sadly of all, you believe that you are “right” about all of that. The possibility that you may be “wrong” never even occurs to you.
Yet we are wrong. About almost everything. Certainly about almost everything that is important, such as God, and who God is, and what God wants. And Life, and how it works, and its purpose and function. And we are wrong about each other, and about ourselves, and who we are in relationship to each other, to ourselves, and to God.
The problem in life is a spiritual problem—and the spiritual problem is a simple problem of misidentification. We have misidentified Who We Really Are. We have failed to answer accurately life’s four major questions: Who are we? Where are we? Why are we? What are we doing here?
Most people have not even asked themselves those questions, much less answered them.
If the United States goes to war in Syria — and it very much looks as if it may — the world will have once again used precisely the wrong tactics to solve the world’s problems. What is wrong with all the nations of the world who disagree with the alleged actions of the Syrian government simply and powerfully boycotting that government? Refusing to sell it anything, give it anything, supply it with anything, or deal with it in any way?
There are those who say that won’t work. Russia and China, two huge allies of Syria, will give its government all that it needs to keep things going over there and to stay in power. But surely there must be some effect that the combined nations of the world which disagree with Syria can have on that country, other than raining rockets down on its military facilities and killing more people.
More killing cannot be the answer. Have we become so barbaric as a species that more killing is the only answer the world can come up with? Or have we so utterly failed to crawl out of our Original Barbarism? Is there no way we can advance as a species? None at all?
If I were President Obama, I would hold a globally televised news conference immediately, and place before the world every last bit of evidence that I had that Syria’s government forces were responsible for the chemical weapons attack on its own people. As of writing this update (Friday, Aug 30, 1 p.m . PST), U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has done that, to the degree that he can, without revealing or placing in danger U.S. intelligence methods and sources.
Then I would ask the whole world, “Is this where we have fallen? Is this what we are willing to tolerate in the name of non-intervention in a so-called sovereign nation’s affairs? Are we willing to stand by and do nothing while, according to the irrefutable evidence we have obtained and shown you here, a despotic government kills its own people by the thousands to stay in power?”
UPDATE: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has, in essence, done that as well. His statement may be seen and read here:
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/30/20261297-read-secretary-of-state-kerrys-full-speech-condemning-syria-attack?lite
Then I would dare both Russia and China to respond to the incontrovertible evidence which has been gathered and placed before the world. I would demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad respond to the evidence. This is something that Mr. Kerry has not done.
I would boldly and publicly challenge Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to respond to this evidence, and to do so now. I would demand that he give an explanation of his regime’s actions and stop pretending that the intelligence evidence of thousands of sources, including satellite technology picking up rocket launchings from regime-held areas of Syria and landings in the opposition-held areas, mean nothing.
I would demand, as well, that the rest of the world — Russia and China in particular — respond to these intelligence findings, and stop blocking every attempt to economically and politically punish the Assad regime for its actions, to show him and all of the world’s real or would-be despots that humanity will not tolerate despotism, or the killing of a nation’s own people by a nation’s own government, by any means — to say nothing of the most heinous.
Why do we not do that, I wonder?
UPDATE (Sat., Aug 31, 3 pm pst) As you must know if you are following this international story, President Obama has said that he will not order a military strike by the United States on Syria’s chemical weapons capacity unless the U.S. Congress votes to authorize him to do so. If you are wondering what you can do, please read the headline story on this newspaper’s front page, then join me and Marianne Williamson in the Global Collective Prayer Initiative, Monday, September 2, at 16:00 GMT (that is 9 a.m. Pacific Time). We will pray solidly and intentionally for ten minutes that the U.S. will not launch air strikes on Syria, and that the larger Syrian conflict may end, at last, with peace and harmony prevailing.
UPDATE (Sun. Sept 1, 12 noon pst) Pope Francis today told a papal audience: “Never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake. War begets war, violence begets violence.” NBC News reported that the Pope made his remarks “ahead of the traditional Angelus prayer on Sunday.”
“I appeal strongly for peace, an appeal which arises from the deep within me. How much suffering, how much devastation, how much pain has the use of arms carried in its wake in that martyred country, especially among civilians and the unarmed! I think of many children will not see the light of the future!”, the television news network quoted Pope Francis as saying.
The Pontiff, of course, denounced the use of chemical weapons, saying that he condemned “with utmost firmness” such use.
Over 10,000 page views in less than two days have been given to www.GodsNewNews.com — have you checked out this page?
Even though I author a “Romance and Relationship” column here on The Global Conversation, there are frequently occasions when I write outside the boundaries of that particular category. Most often that happens when I hear of things taking place in our world which I think would benefit from us taking a closer look at and then entering into a dialogue about. But in this particular article today, I am sharing a story with you that can be portrayed as nothing but pure, authentic, and wholesome romantic love, the kind of romantic love which demonstrates in such a clear and moving way what relationships yearn to be.
I would like to introduce you to Fred Stobaugh, a 96-year-old gentleman who lives in Peoria, Illinois. In 1938, Fred married his sweetheart, Lorraine, and he journeyed through the next 73 years side by side with his beloved wife, cherished partner, and wonderful friend.
In April of this year, Fred and Lorraine’s journey together changed when she transitioned out of her physical body here on earth, leaving him facing a life without her for the first time in over 73 years.
Shortly after her passing, Fred came upon a singer-songwriter contest being hosted by a local recording studio and began to jot down some lyrics to a song dedicated to and written about his sweet, sweet Lorraine. The official rules of the songwriter contest required interested applicants to send YouTube links via e-mail to their studio. But since Fred is not a professional musician and didn’t know how to use YouTube or the internet in that way, he handwrote his entry and lovingly placed it into a large manila envelope and mailed his song titled “Oh, Sweet Lorraine” to Green Shoes Studios.
“Oh, Sweet Lorraine” Lyrics:
“The memories always linger on.
Oh, sweet Lorraine, no, I don’t want to move on.
The memories always linger on.
Oh, sweet Lorraine, that’s why I wrote you this song.”
What was about to take place in Fred’s life was beyond anything he could have ever imagined.
You see, this is where the paths of Fred and Lorraine Stobaugh intertwined with the path of Jacob Colgan. Jacob is a musician and music producer at Green Shoes Studios, who happened to be the person to receive Fred’s entry in their singer-songwriter contest. He was so moved by it that he decided to contact Fred and, with his permission, offered to professionally produce it.
You can see the video documentary here:
Within the powerful messages of Conversations with God, we have been given an opportunity to view our relationships in a way that perhaps we have never considered before, one which invites us to view our partnerships and relationships, no matter how fleeting, as not ones of simple chance or mere coincidence, but rather purposeful fulfillments of our souls’ deepest yearnings and desires; to understand and embrace the idea that the people with whom we encounter and interact with are not just random experiences, but rather we are spiritually motivated and connected participants in each other’s ultimate communion with God.
Is it some haphazard occurrence that Jacob Colgan and Fred Stobaugh met in this way? Or is it possible that the crossing of their paths was long before decided, not in a tightly scripted way, but in some powerful and wonderful way which also involved the soul of Lorraine, so that they, and now you and I, could have an experience of Love never before experienced? So that Fred can continue to experience the eternal essence of his beloved lifetime partner long after the presence of her physical body ceases to be? So that Jacob Colgan can experience what it feels like to help return someone back to themselves and, in doing so, experience the light of his own Divinity?
I guess we will all walk away from a story like this with a different understanding and experience. As in all of life, we each get to make it up in whatever way we choose.
The important question to ask is: How am I going to make it up this time?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
With all of our intelligence, with all of our inventive genius, with all of our years of evolution, we just can’t find a way to do the simplest thing, can we…?
…We simply can’t find a way to stop killing each other.
We are impotent, utterly and completely impotent, in the face of this basic, fundamental developmental challenge.
Will it never end? Will the killing and the violence and the continual threats to world peace never, ever end?
The Western powers (U.S., Britain, France chief among them) are said on this day to be considering a military strike against the military apparatus of the government of Syria. Such a strike by these major powers would be, they say, in response to the alleged use by Syria’s government of chemical weapons against its own people.
The Syrian government, for its part, claims that the chemical weapons were used by “terrorists” who have long been agitating to upend the government.
As all the world knows, a civil war has been underway in Syria since March, 2011, with rebels seeking to overthrow the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“As a result of the ongoing civil war, an alternative government was formed by the opposition umbrella group, the Syrian National Coalition, in March 2012,” an article on the country in Wikipedia states. “Representatives of this government were invited to take up Syria’s seat at the Arab League on 28 March 2013. The opposition coalition has been recognized as the ‘sole representative of the Syrian people’ by several nations, including the United States, United Kingdom and France,” the article goes on.
Now, the government is suspected of using chemical weapons against its civilians. US Secretary of State John Kerry has been widely quoted in global news reports as saying that it was “undeniable” that chemical weapons had been used in the country, and that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had committed a “moral obscenity” against the nation’s own people.
“Make no mistake,” Kerry is reported to have said. “President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapon against the world’s most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny.”
On Aug 27 CNN’s website headlined a report that the U.S. military was in position with warships and ready to strike on a moment’s notice should the order be given. Syria, in return, has said that the U.S. would be “surprised” by the shape and power of its response.
Must this go on forever? Must life on this planet go on forever like this? Is there no way—simply no way at all—for members of the same species…a species that considers itself to be evolved…to resolve the differences that arise between them without putting hundreds of thousands of people, if not the entire world, at risk of annihilation?
What would it take for human beings to find a way to live together in peace and harmony? What is the missing ingredient…that one piece of data that could change everything?
In Syria, the Assad family has held power for decades. The rebellion there is the uprising of thousands of citizens who say they are tired of the repression by the Syrian Government of any form of dissent. Indeed, the rebellion itself turned violent when peaceful protests in 2011 were ruthlessly squashed by the military, with intellectual leaders of the rebellion arrested and tortured—some of them now among Syria’s so-called “disappeared.”
People will agitate for freedom as long as people are alive, because freedom is a basic and fundamental aspect of Divinity, and human beings are individual expressions of Divinity. That is why revolutions have been part of human history for thousands of years. For centuries the human scenario has been a struggle between the powerful few and the freedom-seeking many.
With all the killing, with all the needless dying (not just of armed combatants, but of countless bystanders, including unarmed and nonaffiliated men, women, and children), one would think that our species as a whole would find a way to end—finally, at long last, end—the cycle of murder and violence. But we don’t seem yet to have found the key to doing that. After thousands and thousands of years, we
Just.
Can’t.
Find.
The.
Key.
What stops us, do you think? A species that can put its members on the moon, a species that can unlock the sequencing of DNA, cannot find the key to stop killing each other.
Remarkable.
Our species is in a never-ending struggle to end its own most vicious struggles. It seems powerless to end its own misuse of power.
What stops us, do you think?
Should the United States and other Western powers (i.e., Britain, France, etc.) undertake a military action in Syria, bypassing the United Nations Security Council in doing so?
I’m trying to take my career to the next level by applying for work with some people who are quite famous. They say they love my work and will consider hiring me when they have an opening. I feel like I’ve reached out to them as much as I should at this point, so how do I stay on their radar without making a nuisance of myself? …Edwin
Dear Edwin… Don’t forget that celebrities are really just people too, in a different place along their path. They don’t have anything you don’t have. Their awareness that they have it is the only difference. Don’t be in awe of them. Just love them for Who They Really Are and allow their perceived successes to be an inspiration to you. Express your gratitude to them for showing you what you are also capable of and be a friend when given the opportunity to interact with them.
For now, just send loving vibes. Let the energy do the work of reaching out. We always think we have to do it on the physical plane, but we don’t. It is equally effective to reach out energetically as long as we do so from a happy, excited-about-the-prospects and possibilities place.
Conversations With God invites us to start from a place of beingness and to allow everything we do to come from that inspired place. It also says the two most powerful words in the Universe are “I am.” Say this affirmation to yourself: “I AM the man who has taken my career to the next level and who works comfortably with famous people.” Then surround them with love and light and envision your working together. See it as happening now. Pre-pave it at the energetic/thought level and love it into existence. This is how to consciously create everything. Simply love it into existence!
If some inspired action steps come to you from this place of being, then, by all means, act on them if it feels good and right to do so, but don’t try to force it into being. Never force it. That gives the opposite result because it is a resistant action and what we resist persists.
Now, please bear in mind that every relationship serves a particular purpose and this one could merely be a stepping stone to something even greater for you. After sending joy-filled love and light to these people, I invite you to allow Life to unfold in Its own wonderful way. Embrace everything that shows up and everything that doesn’t, knowing that all is happening for your highest good. Expect the best!
Love-Allow-Embrace-Expect-Experience-Enjoy!
(Annie Sims is the Global Director of CWG Advanced Programs, is a Conversations With God Coach and author/instructor of the CWG Online School. To connect with Annie, please email her at Annie@TheGlobalConversation.com
(If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to: Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com where our team is waiting to hear from you.)
An additional resource: ChangingChange.net offers spiritual assistance from a team of non-professional/volunteer Spiritual Helpers responding to every post from readers within 24 hours or less. Nothing on the CCN site should be construed or is intended to take the place of or be in any way similar to professional therapeutic or counseling services. The site functions with the gracious willing assistance of lay persons without credentials or experience in the helping professions. What these volunteers possess is an awareness of the theology of Conversations with God. It is from this context that they offer insight, suggestions, and spiritual support during moments of unbidden, unexpected, or unwelcome change on the journey of life.
According to the Telegraph, Real-Madrid want to offer a record £200 million plus for Gareth Bale, who plays for Spurs in the English Premier League. Just two weeks ago it was £80 million!
“It is understood that Tottenham Hotspur are holding out for £104 million for the 24-year-old forward who is pushing hard for a move this summer. In addition Real Madrid want to pay Bale a salary of £7.8 million a year – net of tax – over a proposed six-year contract, ” says correspondent Jason Burt.
This doesn’t include sponsorship fees by advertisers, which could easily bring his earnings over £15 million. Maybe £20 million, no one knows for sure.
I celebrate Bale’s personal success at reaching the pinnacle of his profession, and rewarded for that in terms of both prestige and money. When we look at the current paradigm, we can easily see that most of humanity is working to have more money, so we can enjoy a better life, are we not?
Yet what kind of society have we created, where we see a company pay this type of exorbitant fee for a footballer and then we say that we cannot find the money to pay for the healthcare for millions of people? In the UK, many hospitals are closing, nurses and doctors are quite often overworked and underpaid, and many welfare benefits are being cut for those “slackers” who should “get a job”… cuts that may even see whole families thrown out onto the street.
It seems that our values are a little topsy-turvy, are they not? We are creating bigger and bigger divides between the rich and the poor, the “haves” and the “have nots”.
Shall we use the usual justifications, such as “that’s just the way life is…” or “that’s the way the cookie crumbles…” or “to the winner goes the spoils…”? Or, perhaps we should look more closely at what, exactly, has created these monster earnings?
And we should definitely look at what we can do to create a world which is not so greedy and out of touch with its own needs. In the UK, so many people (mainly men but some women too) care more about how their team is doing, than how the economy is doing, or how their neighbour is doing. That’s a fact!
The Premier League competition formed when the FA Premier League broke away from The Football League in 1992 to take advantage of a lucrative TV rights’ deal which will be worth £3 BILLION (that’s 9 zeros after the first digit!) as of 2013–14, with BSkyB and BT Group securing the rights to broadcast!
The Premier League is currently the most-watched football league in the world, broadcast to 643 million homes, with a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people.
With an audience of 4.7 billion, big mainstream advertisers (think Coca Cola, MacDonalds, Barclays Bank and so forth) will pay a lot to keep brainwashing their audience into buying their goods and services. It is a sorry fact that if someone sees an advert enough times, they will unconsciously reach for the product through a subconscious imprint.
For example, the brand LYNX always links itself to SEX and makes no apologies for it. Why? So that guys will associate themselves with the guy who gets the HOT LOOKING GIRL IN SKIMPY UNDERWEAR by putting on Lynx Deodorant. You may laugh – but they do it because it works.
In the Conversations with God series, God said to Neale Donald Walsch that beyond a certain income, the rest of a person earnings should go into a collective pool, to be used for the highest good of society. It gave a figure of around $20 million.
I think that’s fair, don’t you? In fact, it’s more than fair.
Hospitals, schools and so forth would benefit from the earnings taken above that threshold, and the contributor would be recognised for his/her vital contribution towards his/her fellow human beings.
It seems we are greatly reluctant to do this – it would go against “free enterprise” and inherent “freedoms”. Yet, it seems to sit with us just fine that over half the world’s population is earning below the breadline, and DYING.
If it isn’t okay, we seem incapable of doing anything about it. We seem incapable of standing up and saying the current paradigm is not fair nor sustainable.
Many people will ignorantly blurt out that these footballers – as well as other athletes, movie stars and so on – deserve what they earn. They are “paid what they’re worth”, is the reasoning. “They are talented”, will be the answer! Yet are they more talented than the hospital nurses and doctors we have? Are they any more talented than the school teachers who educate our children?
Is it any wonder that children growing up don’t want a “real job”?
And, do any footballers, or professional athletes, mainly young men in their 20s, need to pocket more than £10 million a year?
With all due respect to “free enterprise”, I really don’t think so…
(Jaime Tanna is the founder of Energy Therapy and an active Reiki Master and Spiritual Mentor, Healer and Teacher. Together with his wife Jennifer, their unifying vision is to empower others through spiritual education and energy-based healing treatments, to help them become aware of their true natures, and to live more joyfully and consciously. You can visit their website at www.energytherapy.biz)
(If you would like to contribute an article you have authored to the Guest Column, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Guest Column.”)
Just about everybody knows someone who is addicted to something, and I am not talking about the soft addictions that limit our connection to our highest self. I am talking about hard core addictions that are affecting the lives of not only the addict, but also many lives around them. Addiction takes no prisoners and it spares no lives. Families are torn apart, friendships are dissolved, businesses go bankrupt and employees lose their jobs. Children are left without parents and parents lose children to drug related tragedies.
Many of us have been asked to help someone who is in need of treatment, only to find that after a few days of sobriety the person has returned to their past behaviors. I know of one person who has spent over $200,000.00 on treatment programs for his son only to have him end up using after all was said and done.
Addicts are not soulless-bad people who willingly harm others for the sake of doing so. They are suffering with a disease that affects their mind, body and spirit. They are doing what they feel they need to do in order to survive and they live in fear of having to change their way of life. They are afraid because the disease of addiction strikes at the center of the brain that operates through our subconscious; the same part of the brain that controls our heart beat and our breathing as well as many other survival functions.
If you have ever watched the television shows such as; Addicted, Intervention, or even My Strange Addiction, you will see the cold hard truth of what it is like to be under the spell of addiction. You will see, “Continued use, in spite of negative consequences” up close and personal. Still, without having the experience yourself, you can never truly understand what is going on in those persons thoughts. The behavior appears to be completely insane, and it is.
Insanity is defined: Repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. The addict truly thinks that the next drug is going to fix them and they will never need to use again, hence the term “get my fix.”
What I have found in my experience, as well as in the experience of others, is that insanity is temporary. The second step of the Twelve Step programs is; Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. So how do we do this? How do we come to believe? How did you come to believe? Have you always believed? Do you still not believe?
When I first came to sobriety, and was confronted with this step, I did what many others have done; I went on faith. If it worked for others it could work for me – unless they were lying! Yes, I didn’t believe yet, but I was willing to give it a try. What I have come to understand over the years of being clean is that to be fully sane, is a lifelong process. I return to sanity in bits and pieces only to awaken to other areas of insanity. Through the enlightenment of unhelpful behavior patterns exposed in my life, my level of joy and freedom are increased.
To be fully sane, is a lifelong process.
Faith is simply taking someone’s word for something and being willing to give it a try. It doesn’t mean just trust me and don’t question me. Faith is not going blindly on what others say. Faith is temporarily putting aside current beliefs to experience another way of doing things. Faith, with experience, turns to belief. Belief, with experience and awareness, turns to knowing. When you get to a place of knowing something to be true, you have found peace.
So this is what I am here for, to help others to take a leap of faith, and support them through their process of coming to believe, and then walking beside them as they get to know, who they really are and what they wish to do. This is life in recovery. This is the path to peace.
In June we kicked off our first in a series of CWG on recovery retreats. A small group of people all shared a life-changing event. If you are in recovery and not experiencing great joy and freedom or are still suffering with addictions, please consider giving yourself this experience. Our next retreat will held in San Jose, California, Sept 19 -22nd, 2013. On October 24 – 27th, 2013, we will have another retreat in Orlando Florida. Click here for more information on these life-changing retreats.
(Kevin McCormack, C.A.d ,is a certified addictions professional. He is a recovering addict with 26 years of sobriety. Kevin is a practicing auriculotherapist, life coach, and interventionist specializing in individual and family recovery and also co-facilitates spiritual recovery retreats for the CWG foundation with JR Westen. You can visit his website here for more information. To connect with Kevin, please email him at Kevin@TheGlobalConversation.com)
