The Global Conversation

Tag: we are all one

  • Welfare Reform, Prison Reform, or God Reform?

     

    I was thinking about “welfare” today.  As it exists in the United States, of course.  I looked up some statistics.

    Money spent on Welfare in the U.S. was “$1.03 trillion on 83 means-tested federal welfare programs in fiscal year 2011 alone,” according to  Read more:

    It also seems that if one forsakes the normal systems entirely, and lives on the streets, asking only what each individual person has in their heart or ability to share, it is still not acceptable.  To highlight this point Mormon Bishop David Musselman disguised himself as a homeless person and entered a Sunday service.  The congregation was less than welcoming.  In the U.S. alone, there are 600,000+ homeless…although statistics seem to show that number is dropping.  Read more: 

    Money spent on prisons in the U. S. was about $74 billion a year, and makes the U.S. have the largest incarceration rate in the world, according to —— and other sources, and “The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world not because it has higher crime rates, but because it imprisons more types of criminal offenders, including non-violent and drug offenders, and keeps them in prison longer.”  Read more:

    While the financial numbers are disparate, to be sure, isn’t a LOT a lot?   It occurred to me that Progressives and Conservatives alike are providing “Welfare” but simply calling it something that agrees with the way they believe human society should function.  Some consider that we are “our brother’s keeper”, and others believe in “an eye for an eye”.  And while I am well aware that I am speaking primarily of my knowledge of America, I am not ignorant of caning and stoning and inhumane prison conditions in the rest of the world.

    My question is this…Why is the thought of directly helping people so abhorrent that we have to create a world in which we virtually demand that people commit a crime, or beg, in order to be taken care of?  Do we continue to create more and more poverty so that the rich can feel superior, and vindicated by giving to people made to beg in some way?   Is this the accepted way of giving and receiving among us these days?

    As CWG states, all attack is a cry for help.  Why don’t we, as a world for the most part, see that “criminals” are, at their root cause, asking for help?  Aaahh, that might be the crux, might it not?  Who/what benefits from the current system?  Might it be the private prison system, that is incentivized by states guaranteeing a certain number of prisoners?  Might it be a current political clime that operates under a fear  and power paradigm?  Maybe.

    These “criminals” are part of a much larger picture.  How is it that their cries for help, from a very young age, and culturally, have been ignored?  Is it possible that our cultures come from our understandings of how God treats us?  Is it possible that a God who will punish with eternal damnation will also ask us to “spare the rod, spoil the child”?  Operate under the “eye for an eye” model?  Obviously, for many.

    What creates the need for a welfare system of any kind?  What kinds of government and corporate structures reinforce the paradigm?

    Is it also possible that the conflict within humanity at this time knows that we are all One, and that we should take care of one another, with no condition, but is pulled by all around us to act within the punishment paradigm?  What might that marriage of those conflicting thoughts produce?  To me, it produces prisons.  It produces people who believe they have to be bad, and forgiven, to be given succor, and community.   It produces a system of Prison as Welfare.

    I believe it is time to begin reforming God, not reforming prisons or the welfare system.

    It is time, to look at the duality of our belief system that at once says that we have a punishing God, and a Loving God in the same breath.

    Which is it?

    It is, and of course, as always, up to us to decide.  Up to you, and to me, to Be the change we wish to see.  It is time to be honest enough with ourselves to notice whether or not this duality feels true to us.  It is time to be brave enough to admit it to ourselves if it does not.

    I know how difficult this can be.  I used to have what I call “half completed sentence” dialogs with myself….”if God really is all loving, how could he…?  If I really am created in the image and likeness of God, why am I…?”  Stop that thought!  If I didn’t compete it, I hadn’t fully sinned!  More accurately, if I didn’t complete it, I wouldn’t have to do anything about it, and risk angering and/or disappointing others.  I wouldn’t lose what I had, even though I knew instinctively it wasn’t working.

    When the circle of thought brings us back to ourselves, what does that mean in terms of everyday life?  I believe it means it is time to notice, within ourselves, if we are angry and sad and reach out for someone to help us understand.  I believe it is time to notice those around us who seem to be struggling to find a place in this world, and be there for them.  To hear their unvoiced cries for help.  I believe it is time to consider that God does not ask us to beg…but does ask us to understand one another, and I most fervently believe that Goddess asks us to know that the greatest joy in life comes from giving, with full and open heart and soul, to others.  Indeed, I believe this is all we are here for.  Reform God, and we just may not have any need to have people begging, in any form, for what it takes to live in this world, and we just may reform it all.

    How are you “reforming” God?

  • We are all one vs. violence

    My animal survival instinct and my human ego tell me that my life (and the safety of my family) is more important than yours – but my soul tells me that it is not.

    There, I’ve said it. Is that raw enough? Doesn’t that really sum up the reason that we consider going to war? That we kill each other in the streets? That we continue to fight over food, economic policies…over anything?

    If you have read my previous articles, you know I usually approach parenting as it pertains to my young daughter. Well, during the recent crisis in Syria, I have had many discussions with my spiritual, peace-loving, twenty-year-old nephew. One struck me as odd and we played it out until the wee hours of the morning. He, like me and so many spiritual people, has been praying intently for a peaceful, non-violent resolution to the Syrian situation. He has visceral reactions at the thought of us intervening in another country with even targeted attacks; and he is adamant in his agreement that violence would beget more violence.

    On this night, we discussed our shared feelings that no “collateral damage” is acceptable, as well as our wish that there was a way to break the cycle of war to end tyranny. We talked about how past acts, like what is going on in Syria, that have gone unchecked by the international community have come back to haunt the world when they became mass genocide later. But we both, again, stated wishes that we lived in a world where there were other viable answers than more violence. We acknowledged that there are no easy answers and stated that we didn’t envy any of the leaders and their decisions at this time; especially given the thought about retaliation if our government did decide to act with strikes.

    And that’s when he surprised me.

    As the conversation turned toward the long-term effects of waging violence against others and what happens when we continue to anger the rest of the world with our interventions and potentially have aggression toward our own soil, his demeanor and attitude changed. He is all about peace until he feels his own safety and security threatened. He almost became hawkish as he talked about protecting our soil at all costs. I gently began asking him questions, trying (mindfully) not to make his opinions wrong, about where he draws a line of difference.  He stated that this is “our land” and “our people” and so we must protect them.

    I asked him what border makes it “ours.”  Is it our lawn? Our street? Our state? Our country? Our continent or hemisphere? I even posited that, within my understanding of “We Are All One” from Conversations with God, to me, “our” includes every human on earth as an equal and undivided part of me. With this in mind, we either love and protect, to the extent possible, every person on earth equally or we give up that façade and we try a different approach.

    See, like most of you, I don’t know the answers to these burning questions. I don’t know how to end violence in the world. I hope and believe that the spiritual and prayerful push of the last week and a half had an effect on John Kerry’s off-hand remark, the Russian encouragement, and the Syrian apparent acquiescence to a possible chemical disarmament (try to say that 10 times fast).

    But I cannot walk around feeling that American lives are superior and deserve to be protected above other lives. I cannot, as much as I love my daughter, my nephew, and my husband, carry a gun to protect them at the cost of killing another person. I just cannot value one life over another. I haven’t fully decided where self-defense fits in with spirituality (although I have been confronted with situations in which I knew I would not kill to protect myself), but we have to start somewhere to shift the paradigm away from violence. Someone has to be willing to “put the weapons down” and talk…

    …And intelligence and diplomacy have to stop looking like weakness.

    In the end, I may not have changed my nephew’s mind about protecting “us” at all costs. But I am hoping that on some level I have helped him to begin exploring a new level of the concept, understanding, and application of “We Are All One.”

    What conversations have you had with your young ones about the conflict between violence and love?

    (Emily A. Filmore is the Creative Co-Director of www.cwgforparents.com. She is also the author/illustrator of the “With My Child” Series of books about bonding with your child through everyday activities.  Her books are available at www.withmychildseries.com. To contact Emily, please email her at Emily@cwgforparents.com.)

  • All attack is a cry for help

    Spiritual viewpoint on the Boston bombings: All attack is a cry for help. We are all ONE. Enough of the bloodshed. Let us call for a total paradigm shift.

    We must learn to find a way to know that we are all brothers and sisters here on this earth, and that humanity is ONE race.

    We must move into greater understanding, and have compassion for each other.

    We cannot continue to seek to control the behaviour of each other through force, which never works. It is a low energy vibration. All spiritual masters have said this.

    We must ask for greater transparency, and honesty, from our governments and leaders. We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to ‘foreign policy’ which directly or indirectly suppresses whole nations because of our lust for power, and our need to maintain a status quo in which a great portion of the Earth’s people live in abject misery and squalor.

    Although there is talk of catching the terrorists responsible, these words surely ring hollow for those who are dead or injured, and all the families affected.

    Political rhetoric always comes to the fore at a time of crisis, and then our politicians and leaders soon go back to their old ways, oblivious to the world’s suffering.

    If we recognise there is no “other” than us, then all of humanity’s problems will evaporate overnight. It can be no other way. A sense of urgency must be upon us all now to correct our deepest misperceptions.

    “Consciousness is everything, and creates your experience. Group consciousness is powerful and produces outcomes of unspeakable beauty or ugliness. The choice is always yours. If you are not satisfied with the consciousness of your group, seek to change it.” ~ Conversations with God.

    It is clear then: what is needed is a change in consciousness, not merely a change in policy.

    jaime-tanna (2)(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.”)

  • Reminding children about self-love

    Have you ever watched a young child look in the mirror? They are mesmerized with what they see! They make goofy faces, smile and giggle…but you do not see them looking at themselves with criticism or derision. You don’t hear many four-year-olds say “my nose is too big” or “my eyes are too narrow.” Children do not learn these concepts until other people teach them to feel that way about themselves.

    In recent years, the cosmetic company, Dove, has embarked on a “Social Mission” to increase the self-esteem of females. As part of this larger mission, they recently conducted a campaign called “Real Beauty Sketches.” The basic idea was that they surreptitiously paired strangers for a brief time and then had each person sit with a forensic sketch artist to create drawings of one of the participants. The drawings that resulted from the self-descriptions were much more critical — and far less accurate — than the descriptions given by the strangers, even though they had only met for a brief period. I wonder what this says about us, as a species, that others see us more clearly than we see ourselves.

    Before proceeding, I feel two things bear clarification: first, I wish Dove would include boys; it is just as important for them to value themselves as girls. Second, I feel the point is not to focus on physical beauty as a status symbol or that there is some arbitrary level of perfection to which to aspire. My point is that every human being, no matter the gender, color, size, shape, ethnicity, and/or level of perfection based on societal standards, is perfect and should feel perfect when looking in the mirror. Every child deserves to love what he or she sees in him or her SELF.

    So what can we, as parents, do about it? We can put our children in a bubble until they turn 18 so that society never teaches them negative stories about themselves! Oh wait, that won’t work? Darn! Hmm. You really want to make me think on this one then, don’t you?

    I have, personally, tried to limit my own negative self-talk in front of my child because I know that she is learning how to view herself through how she understands my view of myself. But I think that is only part of the puzzle.

    What we can do is apply the principles of Conversations with God to our interactions with our children in a way which will help them to grow up confident and secure in their inner beauty, their inner connection to God, and their inner knowing of their value and place in the Universe. My goal would be to help children to know that they do not have to internalize the ideas others have about them. Some concepts that may be helpful are:

    We are all one – This might help your child to overcome feelings of pain if other children taunt or ostracize him or her for being, looking, or sounding different. Remembering that you are connected to the All, even in the face of others being mean to you, can help you to feel that you are not alone.

    Love is all there is – Remembering to love yourself, even when others are not showing you love is huge in remembering your perfection. It is also helpful if you can, in the face of being hurt by someone, be love back to them instead of reacting back in meanness. It helps you stop the cycle of meanness. You may even change their mind about how to treat someone! And there is nothing more beautiful to anyone than love shining through.

    No human beings are better than other human beings – This concept is typically used on the context of the fallacies of life and how human try to separate themselves from each other, finding reasons to produce conflict, killing and war. However, I find that it is applicable here because to assess beauty in societal terms is to classify some as better than others. If we can teach children from a young age that differences in facial or body features do not equate to better or worse, they just mean different, then children will not judge their own beauty according to the standards of others. Instead, they will see their beauty as inherent, internal and all-encompassing.

    Children come into this world feeling love, promise and open to possibilities. They only learn about limits from what they are told and experience. We can help them learn to overcome society’s limits by fostering a deep sense of self-love and connection to God from a young age.

    Hopefully, through these small efforts we can help our children to see the beauty we see in them, long into adulthood!

    (Emily A. Filmore is the Creative Co-Director of www.cwgforparents.com. She is also the author/illustrator of the “With My Child” Series of books about bonding with your child through everyday activities.  Her books are available at www.withmychildseries.com. To contact Emily, please email her at Emily@cwgforparents.com.)