Category Archives: Collective Consciousness

On “being” and “doing” in “must do” U.S.

Posted in Being Peace, Collective Consciousness, Healing Journey, Personal Growth, Uncategorized by

One of the most enormous transformational journeys in my life involved going through the Fisher-Hoffman process in the 1990’s, then continuing for approximately 10 years to “process” every deep issue I could identify and release. At the end of the 9-month Fisher-Hoffman class* the facilitator warned us to be careful, once finished, about jumping too fast into things.

The release of a big block of old stuff for most leaves a sense of a hole that needs to be filled, she told us, and if you anxiously leap into filling the space immediately you’re most likely to re-build the familiar old stuff. I took it to heart and kept it in mind as I continued marching down the “release the old” path.

Eventually I reached a point where I felt as if I no longer had a strong sense of who I was. Here in the U.S. where “being yourself” is endlessly celebrated along with a strong moral certainty that having goals and working hard to reach them is the only way to be worthwhile, such a journey has been an interesting challenge.

It’s been 20+ years since I reached that moment and I have to tell you the ongoing journey of transformation has mostly just increased the sense of not knowing. All those old issues, auto-programmed reactions, etc defined so much about how I operated in the world that without them, I’m not sure. I pick up, look at and drop various “goals” and longings-to-be of different stages of life and find they no longer appeal. At the same time I don’t have a strong sense of “what’s next”.

A lot of health issues created a strong sense that healing had to be the primary objective and, of course, it has included more digging into the depths of consciousness as well as following a lot of alternative therapies to heal the physical aspects. Mostly I keep moving through what seems to be in front of me.

The Buddhist concept of “no self” has helped me negotiate through these years. Not that I have any illusion I’ve achieved that ultimate space of the Buddhist path, but I think stripping away a lot of old touchstones and auto-behaviors has brought me closer to that space and farther from the American ideal of deciding who you are and insisting upon sticking to every aspect of that.

To me life seems far more flexible and shifting and my goal has more to do with always tuning in to “hear” the inner sense of the right next thing to do in this moment. I watch people from many spiritual traditions, including the more “New Age” type spirituality paths, insist that having a plan, deciding on steps and “doing things” is a MUST and at this point I mostly shrug and think to myself it’s a deeply held American belief that needs to be culled out of the collective consciousness.

I’m not unaffected by the overwhelming majority view. In fact it leaves me uncomfortably questioning whether I’m doing something “wrong” by not having a plan and a destination more often than I’d like. But I always wind up tuning in, breathing deep and throwing off the “do, do, do” dictates in favor of listening and being…

I wrote a longer piece discussing this a while back but it’s on my mind again as I contemplate how this all applies to political activism. Stay tuned for that post 🙂

* If taken via the Hoffman Institute, the course is much shorter (a residential week or two?). Ellen had facilitated there for some years and evolved the process into a longer and, to me, much more in-depth one. Instead of being residential, hers was a weekly class with assignments to do in between, some gatherings to help one another on release work, etc. and spread over a period long enough to let everyone have time to delve into many issues. Unfortunately she died some years ago and as far as I’m aware no one else teaches the method as she transformed it.

For real change break the power of the rich!

Posted in Change the World, Collective Consciousness, Current Events, Environmental, Opinion, People Power, Politics by

As many of us are, I’m following current politics anxiously and often. Having been a “leftist” for 50 years, I’m really happy to see a new generation finally getting how much we need big changes. I’m also glad to at last see some understanding of the role of the rich in creating most of our woes. But I’m also uneasy because I don’t see much understanding that a simple change of administration is not an ultimate answer. Too much power has always been held outside of government by the rich and major corporations. Without breaking their power, we’re doomed to be always caught in their greedy machinations.

I’m not sure why it’s so hard to get that to sink in. In part, I think most activists want quick changes and, as they quickly subsided after some victories on Viet Nam, the environment and various rights in the 70’s, the current crop seem impatient for a quick shift that then absolves them from the need to participate. I started trying to get my hippie activist friends in the 70’s to understand the import of research I was doing on the Council on Foreign Relations (think east coast power elite) and their vast inroads into government positions and policy. They didn’t want to hear it.

In the 90’s I tried to talk to my politically-inclined friends about how we vote with our $$ and the importance of bringing down the power of bad-acting corporations (pretty much all…) and again was met with shrugs of impatience. In more recent years I’ve been pushing progressives to organize around the need to bring down the oligarchs. A few people are getting it but I’m not seeing enough.

There are 3 basic parts I see where we can start breaking up the power of the oligarchs and global corporate bullies. First, boycott, boycott, boycott, And the first thing to understand about boycotting is it doesn’t take a large percentage to influence the behavior of corporations. Studies have shown a boycott by 5% can influence a policy change. The complicated part is getting together lists of all the companies owned by the worst oligarchs and all the companies with the worst policies on labor, environment, etc. And then organizing for as many people as possible to boycott all the ones they can.

For instance, someone who lives in a small town with only Walmart as a choice can’t reasonably be asked to boycott Walmart but they can put the Buycott App on their phone and boycott as many products from bad actor companies as possible when shopping there. And sometimes you’ll find dilemmas like Whole Foods being own by Amazon but donating Democratic and, for instance, making one of the highest environmentally ranked toilet papers on the market. It takes people plugging in as much as they can where they can. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/advocacy/direct-action/organize-boycott/main

Another big issue with boycotts is the lack of alternative products and businesses. I’ve written before of the world-wide and growing local co-op movement , which I think holds a lot of promise. We need more co-ops, more small manufacturing, etc. to provide people with alternatives to buying from the greedy pigs.

Another arena where I see possibilities of fomenting change re big corporations follows the brilliant plan carried out by environmentalists with Chevron and Exxon. A concerted campaign of buying shares, recruiting shareholder activists and using voting rights garnered them a seat on each board (since defeated at Exxon). Maybe activists could coordinate the various angles required to elect more Board members to lots more companies. A long shot, but it sure would be helpful if we could create some change from within those companies.

All of this requires some really long-term planning and finding ways to encourage people to boycott, etc. for longer periods than they’re usually willing to do. Which requires enough liberals, progressives, etc to really understand how crucial it is to break the power of the rich that we can stay organized and carrying on the work.

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I’ve written more extensively about all of this in the past and there’s a whole list of posts, most of which contain a lot of links to more info, at the bottom of this post: Boomers, Revolution, Politics

Healing my anger with ho’oponopono

Posted in Being Peace, Change the World, Collective Consciousness, Healing Journey by

I’ve been making my way VERY slowly (i.e., most of the time not at all) through the ho’oponopono course for which I signed up a few months ago. So far, though, completing the class isn’t feeling like the point as much as reconnecting with the practice — also gaining insight from the videos of the course I’ve watched — and the deep reminder that everything I see reflects something inside of me.

The big place in which it’s come into play has been noting my high levels of anger at Republican pseudo-Christian right-wing fascists. How often, as I watch MSNBC or read articles pointed out by fellow progressives on social media, I yell and shake my fist at the lying, misogyny, bigotry, hatefulness, murderous intent, utter lack of compassion, etc.

Now I shout “You lying f**k!!!” and then repeat “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” I contemplate how much anger must be in me to be constantly that angry. To question how much misogyny, bigotry, etc. there is in me if I keep seeing that much outside of me. Yikes. “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”

At the moment I can’t say I see a big change in the frequency with which I erupt upon seeing various news items, though I have moved to watching MSNBC less and spending more time researching on subjects raised on social media, like learning more about Constitutional interpretation, etc. Watching less means fewer occasions to get angry. What I really notice is how the constant repetition of the prayer keeps shifting me back to a more peaceful place.

Those of you who’ve read my blog for a long time will know I always come back to the Oneness of energy. We’re all energy and exist as one wholeness of energy. Thus we each contribute to the peacefulness or hatefulness of the planet by which energy vibration we choose to hold. Knowing that, I continue repeating, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you”, trying to release all those hateful qualities within me.

I also believe in the basic theories of David Hawkins’ Power vs Force, which posit that those who raise their vibrational levels to higher points help to raise the vibrational field for thousands (or, at the highest, avatar-type levels, millions). And I think the spiritual movement that has built around the world, quietly, in the background since the 1960’s, has been raising the vibrational level.

The movement brought westerners into practices that eastern spiritual leaders have taught for centuries as well as bringing eastern lights like Yogananda and Thich Nhat Hanh to the west and also led many people to study indigenous spiritual traditions. Human vortexes of higher energy have thus been created at various points around the world. Some spiritual leaders have actually set up places where certain numbers of people chant or pray 24/7 to keep a high vibration helping to counterbalance lower energies.

Much of the world has lived in apathy, the 100s, the bottom of the scale of energy. The next level up is anger, so when enough people have raised their vibrations to impact the whole, a significant number of people who’ve been in apathy are raised up to anger, something I believe we’re seeing now. The next level up is the 300’s, where self-awareness and introspection begin to operate. I feel that when we move the energy up enough to have a majority of people vibrating above 300, we will start to see the harmony, justice, equality, etc. for which so many of us yearn.

I can’t control what other people are doing, I can just work on my own vibration. As well as repeating the ho’oponopono prayer, I meditate, practice yoga, chant, etc. I belong to several spiritual groups in which I’m able to periodically participate in the “energy of two or more” phenomenon around building peace. Right now I have a big focus on the readiness with which I yell and shake my fist at what I consider Republican perfidy and keep repeating, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”

I’m also contemplating whether I should return to more frequent metta practice. I’ve been a big fan for many years. In the leadup to the Iraq war, I spent half an hour every day saying it for President Bush. It didn’t stop him from faking intel or starting the war, but it did shift my feeling about him and my sense of his deep insecurities. Didn’t mean I suddenly liked him or agreed with him, but it created a softer place in my heart that has remained that way.

For me it was a profound shift and I wholly credit the power of the lovingkindness chant. I’ve always used Jack Kornfield’s version from Path with Heart: “May I be filled with lovingkindness, may I be well, may I be peaceful and at ease, may I be happy.” Obviously, substitute someone else’s name to say it for them. And I often leave off the “may” and state it as an affirmation “___ is filled with lovingkindness,” etc.

Whatever practice or technique works for you, I hope everyone is finding a way to keep returning to peace, to keep releasing old anger and fear, etc. in order to raise their vibration and contribution to lifting up the planet.

For some interesting info on energy in the world, etc. see https://www.heartmath.org/gci/gcms/live-data/ and https://noosphere.princeton.edu/

Recovering from the work ethic

Posted in Collective Consciousness, Personal by

I’m shell-shocked. With the death of my dear friend, Gay Luce, I finally took in the enormity of what I’ve dealt with in the last 2-1/2 years and realized how gobsmacked I am. The upside is also seeing how well the many years of spiritual delving, meditation, yoga, etc. have served me. The other is seeing how, subtly, I fight a regular battle between my desire to just sit back and absorb and the societal message of “go, go, go”.

It’s odd to find myself in that battle because long issues with my health have put me pretty far outside the norm of constant doing and I’ve learned to make peace with that and accept, even enjoy, living life on a different path. Wow, these societal beliefs hold on deep in our beings!

As several friends kept asking me how I was doing and mentioned how much I’ve been through, I finally took stock:

  • January 2020. Mom fell and broke her hip. First hospital fails to diagnose and sends home on broken hip. Next day second hospital correctly diagnoses. During weeks in hospital bad chair sets off old hip issue for me
  • Early April 2020. Mom finally gets home from rehab and we hit Covid lockdown
  • May 2020. I realize Dad really needs me to figure something out for him but… Covid lockdown. Start calling him every day and organizing Covid supplies from afar
  • July 2020. Dad died
  • November 2020. Dear friend Pat died
  • 2020 way into 2021. All kinds of problems with Dad’s estate and a new judge’s misinterpretation of a common legal phrase in will, including I have 2 cousins who are now dead to me…
  • 2021 and 2022. Five more friends died
  • February 2022. Mom fell and broke her leg. Having finally calmed down the hip issue, bad hospital chairs set it off again and I also developed a rash. Hip issue combined with remnants of psoas injury to lock the whole area up.
  • May 31 2022. Mom had been home a little more than a month when she started throwing up blood and we found out she had an inoperable issue that would inevitably be fatal.
  • June 2022. Mom died.
  • June-September 2022. Mom’s house was on a reverse mortgage and I’d been told I’d have 3 months to get out. So began a mad dash to clear her hoarder stuff enough to separate out my belongings and organize for movers. All the furniture moving and box hauling threw whole hip/low back area out even more
  • September 2022. I moved to the condo I inherited from my Dad in Florida. Good news is I’d known the place since 1980, bad news I don’t really know the area or anyone else
  • September 2022. Tried to get driver’s license, couldn’t pass eye test, found out I needed to have cataract surgery.
  • October 2022. Mad dash to clear Dad’s stuff and get my stuff in sends hip/back into incessant, immobilizing pain
  • November 2022. At doctor visit to get referral for eye surgery, also dealt with the rash I developed while Mom in hospital in Feb, which became ongoing issue, many treatment trials, dermatologist visits and still not resolved
  • January and February 2023. 2 cataract surgeries
  • February 2023. Find out my friend Gay is in bad shape & start organizing a 9 Gates community help/service group and schedule.
  • March 2023. While moving chair throw back and hip all the way out again. Left the chair right where it was and all efforts to continue clearing Dad’s stuff and finish unpacking mine stopped.
  • Eye surgeries changed me from lifetime of near-sighted to far-sighted so now have to wear glasses for the many hours I spend reading and writing. The shift gave me headaches.
  • Can’t afford the copay for physical therapy so am working my way through a bunch of PT exercises posted on YouTube from chiropractor which are helping but because muscles are in such bad shape, also very painful work.
  • June 2023. Gay died.

Looking at the whole list makes my head spin. And yet, even though many days I long to just hang out reading and watching TV and taking naps, most days with no doc appointment I push to grocery shop or cook something or clean something.

Between the friends who noted how much I’ve faced and my own explorations lately of our society’s built-in beliefs about work and wealth and poverty, it finally hit me that, even though I mostly live outside those norms, in little ways I still operate out of “must do” assumptions.

People around here keep asking if I’ve finished clearing and setting up. I keep telling them no, I just stopped and left everything sitting around as it was and that I actually kind of like that it’s my space, in which only my wishes count, and I find I don’t care if part of it is still a mess of boxes and Dad stuff. Could just be me, but I always feel a little wave of disapproval. Oddly, on that one I just don’t feel pushed. Not gonna do it until my hips and back can tolerate it. That’s final!!!

Some amount of cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking fall into the “must” category, at least for me, but even with those I find myself realizing more could slide than I sometimes allow and I often feel burdened by the perceived need to accomplish those things.

Even more, I find I am often haunted by a sense of failure or lack of accomplishment if I had a list of things I thought I should do and get to the end of the day without doing any of them. And a sense of guilt when pain or exhaustion leave me just unable to do anything arises sometimes.

Because of the years of health issues, I’ve tended to operate at a pretty low level and have often had older friends who accomplish more by lunchtime on an average day than I do in a couple. It’s another thing with which I’ve largely made peace over the years of a life outside the norm. Yet those “musts” and “shoulds” still influence my life and decisions about how to spend my days.

For most of my journey I’ve been looking inward at issues that were by and large personal. When I released them, worked through them, etc. they were gone and other people didn’t really influence the process. I’m finding it really interesting to be looking at the issues built into the culture. Because so many people believe in societal assumptions like the need to work all the time, it makes releasing the assumption more complex. I find I vacillate between the space on my own in which I’ve let go and the space where the cultural consciousness keeps intruding.

I’m pulling for a personal and societal revolution of rest in which we let go of grind culture and forge a new path.

“The Crime Problem”: A Successful Propaganda Campaign

Posted in Collective Consciousness, Opinion, Politics, Uncategorized by

The crime problem is made up. And an amazing example of the power of propaganda to sway the thinking of an entire nation. Much as our individual psyches are filled with memories, old beliefs, admonitions from parents, etc. that must be addressed in order to raise consciousness, so must we ferret out the beliefs, etc. embedded in the national psyche and address those. I think this one is a major point of consciousness that could shift a lot.

I first became aware of the big lie about crime when, as a graduate student, I landed on “The Reaction to Crime Project”, an LEAA funded research project conducted by Northwestern’s Center for Urban Affairs, starting in 1976. My first assignment was a “literature survey” involving reading hundreds of studies and articles on crime statistics.

I was stunned to discover that the wide-spread perception of crime being rampant everywhere was basically a manufactured problem, created by changing how crime stats are reported with a lot of help from TV creating a national audience for news that until then was largely only locally reported.

In study after study and article after article covering several decades of research, I read that the old reporting was based on the probability of being a victim of any given crime. Then law enforcement decided to change to reporting gross numbers; i.e. total number of murders, total number of burglaries, etc. Since the population is always growing, the total numbers of crimes is pretty much guaranteed to grow. But through all the years of screaming about the awful, ever growing crime problem, the probability statistic–the chance of any given citizen being a victim–never changed.

For most crimes the PROBABILITY OF BEING A VICTIM HAS NOT CHANGED IN 100 YEARS unless you’re a male POC between the ages of 15 and 25. Take that in. You have no more chance of being burglarized or assaulted, etc. than the people in the 1930’s and 40’s who didn’t lock their doors because they felt so safe. The constant bombardment with “news” of the “terrible crime problem” has literally shifted an entire population from feeling safe to being convinced they live in a violent world where criminals are lurking around every corner.

The literature didn’t offer much of an explanation as to why the government decided to change reporting from probabilities to totals, but the first thing I noted was that it led to huge increases in budgets for law enforcement. And over time I could see how the change also made it easy to take the second step of blaming the huge “crime problem” on POC and immigrants even though statistics don’t support those conclusions either. These groups are unfairly targeted by law enforcement with little protest from the populace at large because everyone has bought into these made up tales of crimes and who commits them.

The LEAA project was a huge one, requiring a lot of funding. What shocked me once the literature review was complete, was that they were funding the research knowing that people’s fears about crime far exceeded the reality but they had no interest in trying to change that false perception.

The only thing they wanted us to do was figure out whether programs like Whistle Stop, community involvement, etc. could reduce the fear a little. In other words, whatever the original purposes were in government changing the reporting and creating the perception of rampant crime, LEAA didn’t want to take down the manufactured belief in rampant crime.

Over the years since my time on the Reaction to Crime project, I periodically checked in on the crime stats to see if there was any big change. There was not. Outside of certain neighborhoods and the young male POC demographic (and a few crimes that were added to the roster since then like car-jacking…) and more recently the mass shooting issue, the chance that you will be a victim of most crimes has not changed in 100 or more years.

Because people believe this false scenario, huge amounts of money are spent on policing and various law enforcement efforts in cities, towns, etc. in general instead of focusing funds on the programs that would reduce crime in the particular places where it tends to actually be rampant. Spending money on the fake problem instead of developing solutions for the real problems.

This is not the only instance over years of doing lots of research and reading wherein I’ve noted that politicians and the media manipulate “truth” in order to convince the populace to believe whatever they want them to believe. Because the belief is so widespread, I’ve brought it up over and over through the years and noted most people just glaze over when you try to tell them there really is no rampant crime problem. The belief is so ingrained, people can’t take in the truth.

How do we wake people up from the manipulation?

@Lawrence @TheLastWord @eji_org @hmcghee @TheProblem @maddow @CBSSunday @briantylercohen

Is it work if it’s fun?

Posted in Change the World, Collective Consciousness, New Age by

Anyone on a deeply spiritual journey knows a major part of the journey involves looking deeply into issues, emotional blocks etc. As the U.S. has lurched through four years of crises and scandals it has become ever more clear to me that we as a society have issues and blocks to address — many of which are so pervasive they also show up as our personal and ancestral issues. One of them I’ve contemplated often is our general view of work.

I watched a news piece about a woman with her own business the other day. She picks up and delivers dogs who’ve been adopted from out of state and she loves it. Loves it so much she said “it doesn’t feel like work”. It struck me how often I’ve heard that.

On my own journey I realized long ago that that attitude correlates with a general belief that work is “supposed” to be hard, unpleasant; something you must do to eke out a living that will probably barely support you. When I quit practicing law, which I loathed but made a pretty good living at, and began doing things I loved, I instantly began to fail.

It kept going for a long time, even after recognizing that I held deep beliefs about the impossibility of financially succeeding at something you love to do. For me it also turned out my health issues needed to take precedence, but I haven’t forgotten the import of the belief work must be an unpleasant struggle.

Ever since, I’ve noticed how most people talk about work in this country. Yes, there are people who love their work and speak enthusiastically, but there’s a widespread belief among many that work has to be an unhappy drudge. When I heard this woman sounding guilty about her pleasure in the business she’s created out of her love of dogs, I felt really struck about how deep that strain of thinking goes in our society.

Imagine what a shift in that one set of beliefs would do to change the world. If everyone believed it’s possible and okay to find something you love to do or to find a way to love whatever you do for work, wow, how different things would be.

Seven Days of Gayatri with Deva Premal

Posted in Being Peace, Collective Consciousness, Uncategorized by

For the first seven days of January, Deva Premal and Miten offered seven days of doing the 108 round version of Gayatri. They’ve had a weekly Gayatri on FB and later via a paid app since last spring — reaching out in Covid lockdown — and I’d loved those so much I jumped at the chance.

When I did a regular chanting practice a shorter version of the Gayatri was one of the three I chanted daily but I’d not done the 108 round version more than sporadically and it’s just been occasional on their weekly practice. I always found it powerful but the energy of doing it every day was quite amazing. There are usually 2-2.5 thousand people participating and I’ve been amazed at how well I can tap into the larger energy of the group. Powerful.

Besides loving the chant for myself, I love the association with heart and peace. They were doing the 7 days as an uplift to energy as the year began and that felt incredibly important to me, especially with all that’s been going on both in the world and in the U.S. As I’ve teetered between rage and holding a calm space, I’ve kept feeling a need to lift my energy, try to hold a higher space, etc.

It was quite amazing to sing the chant daily. Especially for the first few days I could really feel the build of energy in me. Didn’t stop me from the moments of rage, but left me feeling generally more energized and uplifted, easier to tap back into the heart space. Also feeling like my nadis were not just all being energized but as if they were being rearranged or reconfigured as well.* By the final few days I think I’d adjusted a little bit more to that huge influx of energy.

The worldwide sangha they’re forming is lovely and I highly recommend participation. I’m about to sign on with the app so I can participate in the larger array of activities they’re hosting, including daily meditations, access to a library of mantras, participation in sangha, Q&A with Deva and Miten, etc. They still offer the Gayatri free via Facebook and YouTube once a month. Click through on picture above to page where events are noted.

We so need to lift the world’s vibration now. As I’ve mentioned many times, the higher vibration of few can raise the vibrations for many more and we need to lift the multitudes who are caught at the anger level on up to the next level, where self examination and greater openness begins. If Gayatri is not for you, please find the meditation or practice that suits you and commit to it and/or if you can find a practice group or sangha with which to join energies on line, please practice with such a group.

* When chanting is 108 rounds, it’s one for each of the 108 nadis, or energy channels, which aligns you with the universe or creation.

People Power: politics and changing the cultural base line

Posted in Change the World, Collective Consciousness, Politics, Uncategorized by

The deeper I move into this People Power series the more I realize how much we need a shift in our basic thinking on multi-levels and in multi-arenas.  Watching Marianne Williamson’s much-needed voice shaking up the political arena is fueling my sense of “time for change” even more. It’s time for us to take power back from global corporations and unscrupulous politicians and she’s calling out the need for these changes.

Her candidacy has left me doing a lot of deep ruminating.  Starting with the fact I’ve never particularly liked her.  And note I’m NOT saying I DIS-like her.  My instincts for which teacher or which book is for me are spot on and I just never felt drawn to her… for ME.  And I admit I’ve always pick up a frisson of something in her demeanor or energy that leaves me uneasy.

So I’m not an enthusiastic supporter of her as president.  But I’m an enthusiastic supporter of her important voice staying in the race long enough to start moving the conversation in the direction it needs to go. As far as her ultimately being the candidate, still mulling.

There’ve been a few really good articles about the importance of the conversation she keeps inserting into the political arena.  In this article in Harper’s Bazaar by Kerry Pieri, the writer asserts, “Williamson is trying to teach us that our mind-set needs a new baseline, one of true empathy…” And she argues this is so important in these times that people need to stop calling her crazy for trying to talk about love and peace.

And Erica Ariel Fox, in a Forbes article discusses how much we need to re-insert soul and spirit into our politics, telling Democrats they should learn from her.

The switch to moving from fear and war as our base of operations to love and peace is key and crucial but not the only one we need to make.  From our unconscious consuming habits to our reliance on federal government instead of moving to local power to our blindness to the power of corporations over our lives and our world, we need radical change in our base line of thinking.

And I”m thankful Marianne Williamson is standing up there, bravely facing ridicule, and loudly advocating positions we are not used to hearing from politicians.  These conversations need to become part of the cultural base line and consciousness in order for we the people to assert our power.

@MarianneWilliamson @2020Marianne

The People Power Series:

 

Working on a plan…

Posted in Change the World, Collective Consciousness, Uncategorized by

The class on Co-Humanity and Compassion more or less ended last weekend (material stays up for six months and we can keep working on it and post about it) and I sort of dropped off.  As mentioned in another post about the class, I struggled early on with the secular viewpoint and the final push was to make a plan concerning what we intend to do to help “bridge the/a divide”.

In the end, while I seemed to fall out of step with the class and its goals, its thought-provoking nature and my deep contemplation of my discomfort with it have brought me in step with myself.  Seeing where I’m aiming more clearly.

Pretty much all instructions made it clear that creating a meeting, setting up a facilitated dialog, joining an interfaith discussion were the intended kinds of plans.  Action out in the world would count as “doing something”.  Prayer, meditation, raising consciousness, etc. don’t count.

The issue of what constitutes “doing” is one with which I’ve grappled for a long time–in fact I wrote a post some years ago asking what If prayer is something?  I’ve now come down firmly on the side of believing that praying, envisioning, meditating, clearing issues and any other forms of clearing lower energies and raising vibration are not only doing something but perhaps the most important something we can do.

In a world where SO many people don’t believe that last statement to be true, I also see the proliferation of attempts to build bridges, change policies, etc. as important steps in the process.  So I’m not discounting the efforts of the do-tasks form of action, just stumping for the great importance of understanding we’re all part of one great consciousness and every time we lift the level of vibration we change the world.

When I read David Hawkins’ Power vs. Force to some extent I felt I was reading confirmation of something I already knew.  His extensive studies on energy levels and how they impact the whole are, I think, probably just a beginning.  When science really learns how to study this stuff I imagine there will be many refinements.  But the basics he lays out in the book I think describe how it works quite well.

There’s a scale of energy vibration/consciousness:

The higher the level at which a given individual is vibrating the more people he or she can counterbalance:

One individual at level 700      counterbalances…       70 million individuals below level 200.

One individual at level 600      counterbalances…       10 million individuals below level 200.

One individual at level 500      counterbalances…       750,000 individuals below level 200.

One individual at level 400      counterbalances…       400,000 individuals below level 200.

One individual at level 300      counterbalances…       90,000 individuals below level 200.

Twelve individuals at level 700          equals…                  one Avatar at 1,000

Hawkins, Power vs. Force 1995, p. 282.

Accepting these numbers means a relatively small number of people who raise their own vibratory pattern to a higher level can not only counterbalance many who operate at lower frequencies, but can lift the consciousness level of the whole. My personal take on some of the anger and chaos unleashed now is that the huge number of people around the world who have been on a spiritual journey of clearing old issues and meditating, etc. to raise consciousness have lifted a huge portion of the population out of the 50 and below range into the 75 to 100 range where jealousy, anger, etc. dwell.

When enough of the world is lifted above 200, I think that is when we will begin to see peace and harmony unfolding.

So my plan is to continue on my People Power series. From the spiritual perspective there are two main points to the series and then a third more secular one.  (1) In many places I’m pointing out places where cultural issues are embedded in our collective consciousness and need to be released; (2) spoiler alert I’m going to advocate for the power of creating visions, meditating, etc. to help shift the planet; (3) I’m suggesting some”practical” doing steps that move outside the normal boxes and suggest radical change.

So that’s my plan and I’m sticking to it!

People Power: Truth, Lies, Myths, Manipulation

Posted in Collective Consciousness, Opinion, Uncategorized by

For part 2 in my People Power series a lot of focus right now on truth telling and “fake” news, which is discussed as if it’s a phenomenon that started with the current U.S. administration.  The truth and what we believe and why we believe it are crucial at this point but it’s a slippery slope.

The media and people in power have been hoodwinking us for years (maybe always?) and we all now hold a lot of beliefs that are based on falsehoods and/or manipulations.  In the wake of the 2016 election I’ve read a lot of studies about belief and how hard it is to change one or more.  Bottom line is beliefs are very hard to change in all people.  Once a belief has been accepted, most all of us will ignore evidence that tells us a different truth.

By and large these studies aimed at the right wing folks who elected the not-really-a-president, but what I’m seeing is that both sides are subject to the same “set in stone” thinking.  And the liberal/left often seems so smug about knowing what’s true and what’s not that they are blind to the ways in which they have been duped and are just as gullible to believing what’s been fed.

My first three examples of ways the media shifts perception all come from events of which I was aware or in which I participated in the 1980’s:

1 Nicaragua

  In the 80’s there was a huge civil war in Nicaragua in which the socialist Sandinistas were fighting the party of the late right-wing despotic dictator Somoza.  The Somozan guerillas called themselves Contras and had death squads torturing and killing people.

Reagan supported the right wing and the giant propaganda effort he waged on their behalf led to the Iran-Contra affair.  One small but key move he made to shift perception was to start calling the Contras “Freedom Fighters” in order to portray them as the good guys.

After a while I noticed that NYT articles about the situation were using his propaganda phrasing, calling the Contras “Freedom Fighters”.  It’s a subtle but effective way of re-shaping perception by a small change of phrase.  The anti-abortion movement pulled off a similar shift by changing their movement to “Pro Life”.

[At a guess, it was not the reporters on those articles who used the phrase, but probably an editorial change commanded by somewhere up the chain]

2 Nuclear Power Cases

Nuclear Power Plant cases are giant sprawling things, with thousands of pages of complex expert testimony, briefs that are usually 100 or more pages each and opinions that are just as long.  They’re complicated and cover tough-to-grasp topics like nuclear power plant engineering and econometric forecasting.

I worked on those cases and I barely grasped the minutiae even after several years, relying on the greater expertise of older attorneys who’d been at it so long they knew every nuance.  So I can imagine how tough it must be for a reporter covering the outcome of such a case –presumably among other assignments on other topics — to comprehend the material.

Pretty much every time one of our cases came down, I’d read the newspaper report on the opinion/outcome and scratch my head, wondering if the decision on some other nuclear plant case somewhere else had come out that day and the reporter confused the opinions.  Really.  I’d read the opinion and then the news and fail to see how one led to the other.

I don’t think anybody manipulated on purpose in those cases, but in complex technical matters it’s too much for a mainstream media reporter to be able to get it all and write a concise, understandable article that accurately reflects the material.  I’ve talked to other people in other complex arenas who’ve said the same thing.  Media coverage often doesn’t reflect the kind of understanding that people within the “biz” have.  On complex topics, if you really want to know, you probably need to look at trade-specific journals or major studies.

But the news articles are often the only info the public ever sees, so any mistakes in the coverage wind up being part of the belief system.  One example in nuclear stuff I see all the time is the assumption that nuclear is the cheapest form of power.

Putting aside the incalculable issue of how much the environmental devastation will cost down the road, (1) the cost overruns of building them have been astronomical; and (2) the ONLY reason they ever seemed relatively cheap in the U.S. was the gigantic federal underwriting they received.  If you add the grants into the overall cost they’re very expensive.

But because the powers that be who favor nuclear have always referred to it as the cheapest form and the federal money supporting them is never mentioned there’s a general belief that nuclear power is cheap.  In this case the public is misled by a combo of misinformation and omission.

3 Perception of Crime

Yup, I’m back to this one again.  And before you roll your eyes and think I need to stop with this one, I really want you to take this in and understand how manipulation changed perception and what that means for us.

As a sociology grad student in the late 70’s I landed on a huge research project called “Reaction to Crime”.  The premise was that the perception of rising crime threats arose from some changes in reporting and the idea was to figure out how to assuage those fears.  Part of the project was a gigantic “crime statistics survey” in which a small group of us poured through decades of studies and articles on crime stats.

In a nutshell, what we found was that the chance of being the victim of a crime, from robbery, burglary, assault, battery, kidnapping, etc. to murder HAD NOT CHANGED IN DECADES.  Two major changes fueled the change in perception:  (1) crime used to be reported differently and not in gross numbers as it has been for some decades now and (2) the rise of television meant that many crimes that once would have been reported only locally became national news.

The change in reporting from noting probability to just counting the total number of crimes and sounding the alarm that it kept going up suits law enforcement and politicians very well because it helps them convince the public they need big budgets and fuels election campaigns.

The thing is, the population keeps growing, so the totals will always grow. The only relevant info in terms of being afraid of crime is the probability.  Has not changed significantly over all for more than 100 years.  And I keep checking in on the studies and reports as they update and it’s always the same.  Unless you’re a Hispanic or Black male between 15 and 25, the chances of being a crime victim have gone down by and large since Colonial times. (And I’ve not looked into it but I suspect some crimes related to opioid sales and distribution have gone up in recent years.  And hate crimes only have relatively recent stats as they were not considered separately).

But every time I talk to people about this I see them politely nod and then observe them a day or two later discussing the terrible crime problem.  So this is the piece I want you (and I use “you” very generally here, hoping I might reach a wider than usual audience) to really get.

I am telling you the factual evidence compiled by decades of experts in this field shows  a perception of crime as rampant and getting worse that IS NOT TRUE.  And most of you have bought so deeply into the manipulation that you do not really believe me when I tell you this.

How does this make you different from climate deniers?  Or flat earth believers?  Somebody presented those folks with an alternate view of truth and they’ve bought it so thoroughly you can’t persuade them it’s actually false.

This is how manipulation works.  It presents you with a version of events or a way of phrasing or skewed “statistics” that suits people in power and gets you to believe what they want you to.  And then you can’t be dissuaded.

In the 1940’s, when people left everything unlocked and wandered around feeling safe, the only difference in likelihood of being a victim was perception.  Not the numbers.  Perception.  So when you worry about crime and contemplate security systems, etc. remember nothing has changed since the days of unlocked doors except your perception.

A few articles:

In a broader sense, this all goes to a point I’ve been making for a while about the price of lapping up negative news and largely ignoring (instead of demanding!) positive news.  The corporate elite–who quietly (and I’d argue without a conspiracy but acting out of self interest) hold the strings of power and use them to manipulate–put a lot of effort into keeping the populace afraid and pointing fingers at one another and at “circumstances” like rising crime.

Lately I’ve been noticing in my digital Washington Post subscription, although they continue to dislike the President while also celebrating him daily via multiple posts, they’ve been tearing down the Democratic candidates and Democrats in general on a daily basis lately.  At first I was surprised but then recalled I’ve read several times that the big mainstream media folks have recouped their financial standing by covering this administration incessantly.  Which will presumably change if he isn’t elected in 2020.  Bear this mind.

The point of creating fear is to keep us from noticing (1) together we actually have the power since the 2% need us to buy their crap and (2) they’re really the ones raping, pillaging, plundering, and destroying the earth and its people.  But if we’re all hopping around about crime and racism and immigrants and refugees and dividing into camps pointing fingers at one another they just get to keep taking more power and leaving us with less of everything.

Which brings me to another item I keep coming back to, this lovely 10 minute Ted Talk by Julia Bacha on the importance of being aware of the positive and the price of focusing on the negative.

It’s time for us to wake up and look at the world with new eyes.  To step back from the “truth” as we keep perceiving it through the lens of mainstream media.  It’s time to seek and celebrate the multitudes of positive things in the world.  And by noticing and celebrating we bring attention.  Since energy flows where attention goes, that means energy moves to the good stuff.  That’s how we start moving the power.  Change the flow.

For those of us in this blogging crowd who have come to know each other here, we have been in the forefront of those who are digging deep into our own psyches and releasing the old false beliefs and delusions in our personal lives.  Now it’s time for us to dig into the false beliefs and delusions of our society and world and step back to hold a deeper truth.  I don’t usually ask this, but please forward this through social media for me.  We need to get this out there.

Dipping into Peace and Love

Posted in Being Peace, Collective Consciousness, Journey2Peace, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

A another blogger — also a friend — asked me recently to post something about being peace.  I’ve been re-reading old posts and giving it some thought ever since, without quite landing on what I’d like to write.

In the meantime I felt drawn to yet another Steve Nobel meditation and I think it will make a nice opener to what I’m thinking may be a series of posts reflecting on peace.

This one, “The Sun Goddess Amaterasu Transmission. Embracing A Higher Flow of Pure Grace” is almost entirely about filling with grace and love and light from the Divine Feminine and I found it amazing.  If enough of us start resonating with this level of grace and love most or all of the time the world will shift…

The need to look beneath

Posted in Being Peace, Collective Consciousness, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

In the aftermath of Kate Spade’s and Anthony Bourdain’s suicides I’m seeing a spate of articles and info pieces on suicide prevention.  The thing that always strikes me when I see analyses of not only suicide but also opiate abuse, addictions or other types of “dis-ease” of any sort, is that no one wants to talk about what I think is the heart of the matter.

In the “first world” we have cut ourselves off from nature, from our essential divinity and thereby from connection to our own souls. Spiritual types talk about it sometimes but the “experts” in these fields talk about these issues as problems with reasoned solutions, instead of ever acknowledging how broken we are by our basic culture.

Some 30 years ago, when I realized how much alcoholism there is on my family tree (not in my immediate family but at the level of aunts and uncles and great grands of various levels…  rampant) I attended a few al anon meetings to explore whether I might have been affected.

At the time, immersed in examining how we create reality, I was horrified at the constant repetition of negative affirmations throughout the 12-step programs.  “I am a drunk.” “I am a liar”.  “I am powerless…”  But even more, I was perturbed by the lack of acknowledging soul and our ability to tap into our own spirit and be transformed.

Over the years, as I have explored ever more deeply into spirit, I have also noted how wounded so many in our society seem to be because of being cut off from nature and its cycles and thus from their own connection to All That Is.  I’ve kept waiting for the “experts” to understand how central that disconnect is to so many of our so-called diseases.  I see the same issues deep within a lot of mental health problems.

So many solutions seem to just side-step the real issue; even to obscure the real issue by providing distractions from ever looking into the true heart of the matter.  Our hearts need healing.  Our souls need healing.  And they don’t heal without a long tough journey through the stuff we don’t want to see.

I’m not sure how we nudge that change into being.  But always I come back to knowing we all vibrate in the same web of being.  Every time one of us heals something in our own hearts we add to the healing of all.  Be the love.  Be the peace.  Heal your own heart.

Being a trailblazer

Posted in Collective Consciousness, Personal, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

Last time I talked about a recent phone conversation that has been a big spark for thinking about this transition time I’ve been in.  The same discussion ignited a lengthy examination of my role in being one of the spiritual trailblazers who’ve been moving ahead of the curve.

It’s not how I would usually think of myself.  And even writing about this makes me realize there’s still a big issue to explore about wanting to always be humble and not take credit for anything “big”.  But I started seeing at least 10 or 12 years ago that some of my thinking about a lot of spiritual things and especially the application of spiritual principles in the world, was not in the same place as other people I knew or other people in general on a similar path.

At first, since I tend to be an outsider, I assumed I was just out of step — as usual.  But then one of the many quite psychic body-workers/healers with whom I’ve worked, commented on me being ahead of the curve on this.  Then, a little over two years ago I wrote about an amazing healing experience with Oshunnike, who made an even more pointed observation while she worked (and I was completely out of it and hadn’t said anything) that I am way out there ahead of where most people are in what I understand and the work I’ve been trying to do and it’s going to be hard for me for a while — and lonely.  She literally pulled this observation out of the air — 🙂 seemingly — as I’d not mentioned anything about this.  Two years ago and it’s still hard…

On the one hand it felt SO good to have this confirmation of feelings I’d barely acknowledged or allowed myself to note and on the other it was hard to accept the idea of me as a trailblazer.  But her words and that thought stayed with me and I’ve realized the truth of it more and more.  My reaction to the U.S. election last year and the aftermath have been bringing increasing clarity to how radically different my understanding is from the way most people see it or react to it.

I’m so grateful that I have friends who “get it” and I’ve been hoping to reach out more toward those who do.  Thus my gratitude is so enormous for having this great conversation show up — with a friend I rarely get to talk with at length — and for the wave of realizations it has brought.  Just having someone talking to me about it made me feel weepy.

Again, one of the things it has me contemplating is how I seem to have gathered a community here in the blogging world of people who get it — and I’m coming to understand it’s possibly the main reason I was drawn to do this.  So again, I’m interested to hear from you all about this trailblazer thing — your experience of being ahead of the curve on understanding how the world works and how far outside the mainstream understanding it is.

I’m wondering if there is some way we can support one another more than by just reading and commenting?  I’m sensing those of us in the advance troops could use some assistance in holding an energy space together, to join our energies in the forward movement to a new age.

What do you all think?

Waking up: time to change perception

Posted in Being Peace, Collective Consciousness, Journey2Peace, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

With increasing certainty I’m seeing how deeply most of us are captured by a set of widely-held beliefs and how hard it is to step outside the frame to see any other world view as true.  I’m feeling strongly now is the time to open to other truths and to be willing to hold our ground while standing outside the normal thinking.

Our perceptions of how violent the world is, how high the chances of being a crime victim, our sense of terrorism in the world and more are shaped by the stories the media and our leaders have perpetuated.  It’s ingrained in us that the world operates according to these accepted stories but if you let yourself open to other stories you will see other truths exist and are ignored.

I’ve previously written about my personal experience with studying crime statistics in graduate school.  Details are in the previous post so for now let’s just say the statistics on probability of victimhood have remained the same for decades — stretching back to at least early 20th century USA; no more chance in the 60’s or 70’s or now of being the victim of any of the major crimes* than in the 30’s or 40’s.  You know, back when people didn’t lock their doors and weren’t afraid of crime.

I tell people about this often and I see them startle and then brush it off and return to the now-ingrained perception that crime is getting worse all the time.  Just a small shift from reporting probabilities to reporting gross numbers (which of course go up as the population grows) combined with the rise of a national media and a fascination for bad news changed our perception from one of safety to one of fear.  Perception of truth changed.  What was actually happening changed not at all.

I come back to this often since I know the data so well and it has been a touchstone for me in awareness of how our beliefs can be shaped by which facts those in power choose to present.  I’m not saying journalists are evil manipulators.  I think they’re immersed in the same belief system, so what they see is shaped by the same forces and then the folks they work for are encouraging the parade of horror stories because it sells better.  And law enforcement has every reason to encourage the mis-perception because it garners them bigger budgets.

Armed with that knowledge and greatly helped by the Internet I’ve been able to see the same thing happens on many fronts.  Take, for instance, the widespread hysteria over terrorism.  Check out the graph below and note the probability of being a victim of a terrorist attack.

Chance of Death Graph

Graphically displayed you can see the widespread fear of being a victim of terrorist violence is so far out of proportion to the likelihood as to be ludicrous.

People should be feeling terrified of heart disease and dieting and exercising to save themselves.  But the media doesn’t fan the flames of fear about heart disease, they prefer the giant drama of terrorist attacks.  [For more info on these probabilities, see this article.]  It’s time for us to stop being mesmerized by false perceptions fostered by the media and government and really see what merits our fears and what is unworthy of our awareness.

If you turn your attention in the other direction and actively look for stories of nonviolence, you will see there are groups and individuals creating nonviolent movements and performing nonviolent acts all around the world.  It just doesn’t make the mainstream news.

This video in which Julia Bacha discusses the price of focusing on violence instead of nonviolence is well worth the ten or so minutes it takes to watch.

 

When I started searching for positive news to share every day (see post) I started turning off the hypnotic suggestions winding constantly through my brain and stepping into a new sense of the world.  I don’t have to sit around envisioning an imaginary world full of good people doing good things in some mystical future.  I see a world full of good people doing good things right here, right now.

Many things came together for me at once.  The sorry result of the U.S. election led me to institute lovingkindness practice.  A sense in my personal journey that it was time to stop eradicating issues and start creating the next phase led to positive guided meditations, etc.  Distress over the negative views on FB led to searching every day for good news.  After some months I realized the persistent change of my focus awakened a new, deep-seated view of the propensity for goodness being enacted every day in all parts of the world.

As I pointed out in another post, the constant doom and gloom about the environment can be seen from an uplifting view — backed by a great deal of science — that changes are already happening which, if current progress continues, will reverse global warming.

The web now allows us (see links at bottom) to see every-day acts of kindness, movements to help the environment, to create peace, etc.**  Mainstream media choose to focus on 5% of what’s happening and we the people encourage them by buying the parade of horrors over the good news.

We can make the choice to put our attention on the 95% who are doing good or are at least benign.  We can stop supporting the parade of horrors.  It’s up to us to create the change.  It’s time to snap out of the hypnotic fascination with mainstream news and views and open our eyes to other truths.

The problem is I’m also reading about changing people’s minds and have read many research articles informing me it’s not so easy.  Once people have made up their minds about a belief — regardless of it’s truth — they really don’t want to change it.  Ra of Rarasaur put up the cutest and most fun version of this info, a cartoon/info post on The Oatmeal.  The upshot is I’m all fired up about changing perspective and stepping outside the currently accepted assumptions about the state of the world and I don’t know what to do to help.

I know most of my readers are already here on this.  I’m a little bit hoping for some help in spreading the word.  But even more I”m hoping for ideas of what we who are awake can do to help change enough peoples’ perception to create a new paradigm.  For supporting one another in stepping outside the depressing views so widely held and holding firm in the stance that other, more powerful, truths are out there and growing stronger.  If the majority actually paid attention to this alternate reality, the world would change.

*Unless you’re a black or brown male between the ages of 15 and 25 and living in an inner city.  Those chances of being murdered are way up.

**Three places to find good news:

J2P Turning to Peaceful Activism

Posted in Being Peace, Collective Consciousness, Journey2Peace, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

 

The plan when you last heard from me was to write a J2P post exploring the current thrall of the media and healing and that’s still coming but I’ve been sidetracking into explorations of the many movements going on these days.  I’m paying a lot of attention to the trend in many groups and among democrats, to define themselves by what they’re against and to speak constantly in terms of battles, fights, resistance, etc.

Some of these groups even talk about nonviolence while throwing out these violent words and I always wonder if they know ANYTHING about the traditions from which the notion of nonviolence came.  Americans, in particular, seem to believe nonviolence refers only to actions.  But in Hinduism and Buddhism, nonviolence refers to every level, including speech and thoughts.

When I receive notifications from “peace” groups and groups working for change that are filled with battle language and nasty slurs against the opposition, I feel my muscles tighten and my energy dim.  Their words of violence are painful to me and I’m convinced, whether everyone feels it as acutely as I do or not, such words hurt everyone who hears them.

I’m not saying we need to be in denial about what’s happening, nor am I saying we can’t get angry.  But the anger is only useful if we then mindfully turn it to compassion and doing something constructive.  Something that furthers progress on what we’re FOR.

There are some brilliant ideas starting to float around out there for ways to address what’s happening without violence.  I would like to see a combo of my two favorites, which are:  (1) setting up a fundraiser wherever the alt-right/neonazis are planning to march and taking donations based on either the number who show up or the distance they march and giving the money to a group that works against neo nazis or to the NAACP or SPLC or ACLU, etc. and (2) send tons of people dressed as clowns and armed with white flour and white flowers to throw every time the nazis yell “white power”.

Why not do both???  Or think outside the box some more and think of something even more brilliant???  (BTW scroll on down from the two videos for some links to great info on nonviolent activism.

And some resources on sacred activism: