Dear friends, I'm posting this old, unfinished piece with notes in hopes that you'll find some value in it and we can enter into dialogue. With Blessings--May all things go well for you,
John
Be Awake Now
A Call To Collective Awakening
Dedication
I prostrate to Father God for touching my heart with love, for intelligence, curiosity and the desire to make this life work for all of us. I prostrate to the Great Mother Goddess for being the source and substance of all. And I prostrate to this living presence which is manifestly God-Goddess-All-That-Is for being the All in each and all and allowing us to come home together now. And I prostrate to all my sisters and brothers who are blessed with heart and vision, with the determination and willingness to listen to and follow their deepest guidance into our inclusive solution. This book is dedicated to my teachers and the preservation of the teachings, to my friends and to all beings. May all beings be happy; may they have the cause of happiness which is understanding and virtue. May all beings be free from suffering; may they be free from the cause of suffering which is ignorance and non-virtue. May all be liberated and free. And may there be peace and love in this and all worlds.
Intro
A call to collective awakening:
Our human species is out of balance and out of control. In the twentieth century we human beings have killed over 100 million of our fellow humans. Any sane review of human history reveals the domination of a culture of violence, warfare, rape, enslavement and exploitation and the determined decimation and elimination of any and all cultures rooted in interconnectedness, partnership and balance.
I sometimes wonder why is it, when humans are facing the gravest crises of all history the best we can do is divert our attention into entertainment, and retrench in our fixed ideas about what works or at least what would work if it weren’t for "them" ruining it for "us"? Why aren’t we openning up to one another and searching deeply, openly through the collective wisdom of all peoples on this planet for the common threads and the most useful ideas?
The bad news is so bad that most of us are in denial, afraid to face it, in part or as a whole. Basically, we are afraid it will break our heart and throw us into catatonic despair because we believe there is nothing we can do about it; that things have gotten so far out of balance that the ones who are in a position to influence changes are so far out of touch and so beholden to wealthy, vested interests that our altruistic intentions and limited influence is of no practical significance. And yet, unless we pull our collective head out of the sand of our denial, evasion and escapism, we are going to end up where we are headed!
In chapter 1 you will find a lay-scientific description of the ways that complex systems spontaneously create new structures for themselves, relinquishing old patterns and coalescing around new, more harmonious and functional patterns. Chapter 2 points out that the universe is a single system, describing in some detail the interconnectedness of all of life and our undeniable enmeshment within that matrix. In chapter 2 and continuing in chapter 3 are addressed two dimensions of the problems that effect all of us. Some of this is hard to get through because this is the really bad news concerning the ecological situations we have created for ourselves and the global economic/political system which has come to run the governments and media on this planet to the political and economic advantage of an elite minority and the disadvantage and destruction of the vast majority of inhabitants of this globe.
Again, you may find this information very disturbing but we must face it or we may not have sufficient motivation to change how we are with ourselves, with one another and with our planet. I trust you will have the courage to read it. Besides, then you get to the good news which is actually very, very good. It is not actually new news; it just has not been widespread or widely acted upon before. However, it seems that the crises we are facing as a species are the catalyst we have needed.
In chapters 4 & 5 you will come to see that all of the symptoms of humans being out of balance and disconnected derive from a single, fundamental misunderstanding which has been passed on innocently, from generation to generation for millennia. Although the growing momentum of our confusion is formidable and the effects of our mistakes run deep and spread wide, it is not only imperative but fortunately, it is possible through understanding and insight for us to change within ourselves individually. Thereafter, we become a significant force in the human community for balance and wisdom, kindness and compassion.
I am not speaking here of some theory or some airy-fairy ideal or imagination. I am speaking of the profound shift of identity and perception that has been heralded by all the great sages and saints from all humanities’ sacred wisdom traditions and is the manifested significance of what has been called the Perennial Philosophy.
Even though we have been confused for a long time, now is the time for us to awaken and redeem our mistakes by living as what we truly are. It has already begun. Although corporate media has not taken notice, hundreds, perhaps thousands of us are already awake and many times that number are awakening. There is a quietly spreading enlightenment occurring in the human species, a surging wave that will soon wash through all of us and transform how we are in our selves and together. If this writing is in your awareness and it means something to you, you are already one of us. You are destined for freedom, peace, wisdom and kindness; you are destined to take your place among us, actively contributing your piece of our solution.
We have been removing species from the fabric of life at an unprecedented rate of one thousand species per year and it is unclear how much longer the fabric can remain whole. Our large scale behaviors (greenhouse gasses, ozone depletion and deforestation) are changing the climate, the oxygen-carbon dioxide ration in our air and causing erratic and extreme weather patterns.
Instead of schools for our young people, we are building high-tech prisons which are, in fact, factories for enslaved labor.
Our democratic institutions are at the behest and in the employ of multi-national corporations whose economies are larger than most of the nations in this world. Not to mention the plutocratic and military/governments that exploit and enslave their populations for the benefit of a powerful, self-appointed, ruling elite and their multinational cronies.
(In discussing our collective situation most examples come from the US because I am most familiar with them. But I am sure that wherever you are on this globe you can find your own examples; the domination model of the and multi-national corporate and cultural hegemony has infested this whole planet.)
And yet, millions of us are feeling the pull to make a real difference; everything is in place for us now. The severity of the crises we face are the catalyst for us to shift into a new way of being—a new way of being within ourselves, with one another and with our planet. The transformation takes place within each of us individually; but we are not alone and disconnected. The internet provides us with ready means of virtually instantaneous communication around the globe. Many of us have already made the shift. And, we are everywhere--we are in every strata and every ethnic, social and political segment of human culture. Now is the time my friends; it is time for us to awaken and collectively birth a new consciousness on this beautiful planet. As prophesized in the bible, these are the end times. We are at the end of time and the beginning of NOW.
The basic idea of this book is that our human species has become confused and ignorant of the roots of our confusion. This has been going on for millennia which is why Christ was crucified and not the norm. You will find a somewhat detailed description of a number of the symptoms of this pervasive misunderstanding. I hope that if you are not yet aware of it, this will make clear the seriousness of our collective dilemma. The root causes of our species having gone awry will be examined. It will become obvious that our habituated, linear reactions of adversarial power plays to ensure that "our" vision/version of how things should be will overcome, dominate and defeat "their", obviously wrong, approach will not work in this case. There no longer is a "them"; there is nobody here but us. We are all in this together.
Edwin Markham, poet laureate of the state of Oregon, points the way:
He drew a square
To shut me out;
Heretic, rebel,
A thing to flout.
But love and I
Had the wit to win;
We drew a circle,
And we drew him in.
-Edwin Markham
What is required of us at this time is something new; something that has never taken place on the massive scale that seems to be called for. We must awaken and recognize our profound, innate interconnectedness with one another, with this planet and with Life, itself.
The blueprints for this transformation exist within our collective consciousness; there are numerous historical examples from all of our sacred traditions of individuals who have awakened and articulated both the nature of our fundamental confusion and the realization, the Truth, which sets us free. (As Jesus said it.)
The hidden assumptions from which our collective confusion derive will be examined in light of the facts of unmediated direct experience, science and the guidance of the wisest and most revered beings our human family has birthed.
What awakening is will be explored and how it comes about and manifests in life will be described. Although it has thus far failed to get any media attention, there are a large number of us who have awakened and many, many more who are awakening. A number of examples of this spreading enlightenment gaining momentum around our world will be shared.
Although for a rare few individuals, awakening is instantaneous and final, for most of us there is a process by which we reclaim our original nature and release our conditioned patterns. You will find sharing of keys, techniques, if you will, and other resources: feel free to use them if you find them helpful. May all be auspicious.
I Humans’ Alarming Relationships With Themselves, One Another, Other Species And the Planet
Poverty and Inequity (add global facts):
Here in California where I happen to live, despite the ongoing economic boom and growing wealth, 15% of our citizens are struggling to survive with incomes below the poverty line—up 5% in the last ten years. On a wider scale globalization has brought either unemployment and its attendant miseries or long hours for minimal pay. Meanwhile, in the last sixty years the CEO’s of major corporations have increased their earnings from forty times the entry level wages in their industry to 400 times the entry level wages and in some cases up to 1000 times entry level wages. The CEO of one of the insurance industry leaders was very active in the fight a proposed law to limit the payout from insurance companies for a lifetime of pain and suffering resulting from corporate negligence to $250,000. He was at that time (the 1980’s) receiving $250,000 per week!
(Pain, Cruelty, Violence, Exploitation, Warfare, Cultural Hegemony, ,)
International Corporate Domination of Governments, Societies and Economies.
Destabilization of Ecological Balance, Climate Disruption
ECOLOGY: John Seed; Wynnona La Duke; David, Wendl Berry
Ecological Matrix: the interconnected web of life—John Seed, Winnona La Duke, Terrence McKenna, Lyall Watson
(What’s going on with human males on this planet?)
Let’s look at some of the influential things humans are doing on this planet at this time.
There are some six billion of us humans who live here on this planet, a dynamic, balanced life support system coursing through outer space. The rest of this life support consists of the 30 to 50,000,000 other species with whom we share this planet.
The interactions among the elements of this third rock from the star we call "Sun" and these 30-50,000,000 species has co-evolved into an intricately interwoven relatively stable system which supports and sustains life in all of its diverse and interrelated forms. A relatively closed system. Other than the metaphysical infusion of love and peace and universal harmony, the only inputs we receive are a continuous bath of cosmic radiation including sunlight and an occasional rock or perhaps a spore from outer space. And so, with these inputs and the elements and the life that is here, over the millennia, these 30 to 50,000 species within this planetary subsystem of the Universe, combine their natural behaviors in such a way that life itself has spread, diversified and flourished. And in this process of this co-creation, everything gets recycled and reused in remarkable ways. The planet herself is recycled star material—coalesced light.
And then, of course, there is our species. What is going on with us? Rather than living harmoniously in continuous dynamic exchange with the other 30-50,000,000 types of living beings natural to the Earth’s system, we seem at best to be a burden to the Earth and at worst, a blight. We are more like a cancer or a virus than a natural part of a living system.
Increasingly over time, perhaps increasing at an exponential rate now, we are making life unlivable here. And that isn’t just tree-loving unlivable for the other 50,000,000 species. We are making life unlivable for ourselves as well.
(John Seed, Wynnona La Duke, etc.)
(Trees eat CO2 and produce oxygen. Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas which is causing our atmosphere to trap more sunlight, raise the temperature on the planet, melt the polar ice caps and disrupt our formerly predictable seasonal weather patterns.
Overcrowding
Destruction of the matrix of life)
(Manipulative polls and single-issue driven, reactive politics. Unfortunately our traditional family values, as evidenced by our behavior, include violence, incest, alcoholism and bigotry.
In this world of approximately 6 billion people we have abundant resources; we have enough food to feed 7 billion people. And yet, there are over 40,000 people dying of starvation and starvation related diseases every day! Increasingly people are suffering from malnutrition, homelessness; they lack education, resources and any viable recourse—their elected representatives act, not in the peoples’ interest, but at the behest of the corporations who pay for their election.
(The use of violence to achieve economic goals despite the will of the people of a region or a nation. Shell in Nigeria)
With our expanding technological capacity we have murdered 100,000,000 humans in the 20th century. Children on street corners and children in schools are shooting one another. Six-year-old children have begun using guns, killing their peers, to settle their spats in the sandbox.
And speaking of schools, here in California, birthplace of the technological revolution that is transmuting the way we communicate and the way we exchange information, resources, goods and services on this planet, we are 42nd in education in a nation of 50 states! But we are first among the nation’s states in new, high tech prisons. And with the adolescent crime rate dropping dramatically over the last ten years, we have made it easier for adolescents to be tried as adults in court and sent to these prisons.
Why are we setting things up to send so many of our young people to prison instead of college? The reason is that our prisons in the US are now factories that international corporations use with a virtual slave-labor population. Large numbers of these children of ours are being raised to work for the very corporations they wish they could buy from. And these kids of ours are being paid the lowest wages and being forced to work in the least hospitable environments on the planet (unless, of course, we consider the desperate situation of the Tibetan monks, imprisoned for being spiritually focused, who are producing many of the goods we now see with American corporate labels and "made in China" stickers on them.)
Ah, the corporations on this planet; they have become transnational legal entities who don’t have the same kind of legal, social, moral or environmental responsibilities as the rest us. Through their economic influence of the political process they have made themselves nearly invulnerable and with the new international trade agreements, their authority and power supercedes and overrides the laws of what used to be called "sovereign" nations. They have become enormously powerful; their influence is everywhere.
On the following table you can see that 50 of the 100 largest economies on this planet are corporations (bold type). And it should be pretty obvious that the economies of say, the first 25 nations on this list are almost entirely dominated by large, multinational corporations.
From:[email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: 100 Largest Economies,
List of Anti-Corporate Groups
Date: 12/16/96
From: Steve Gorelick (ISAC) ([email protected])
Rank Country 1991 GNP (US$)
(US$) Business
1 United States 5,686.0
2 Japan 3,337.2
3 Germany 1,516.8
4 France 1,167.7
5 Italy 1,072.2
6 United Kingdom 963.7
7 Canada 568.8
8 Spain 486.6
9 Russian Federation 479.5
10 Brazil 447.3
11 China 424.0
12 Australia 287.8
13 India 284.7
14 Netherlands 278.8
15 South Korea 274.5
16 Mexico 252.4
17 Switzerland 225.9
18 Sweden 218.9
19 Belgium 192.4
20 Austria 157.5
21 ITOCHU 157.0
22 Sumitomo 150.8
23 Marubeni 140.7
24 Mitsubishi 136.3
25 Mitsui & Co. 133.8
26 Iran 127.4
27 General Motors 123.8
28 Electricite de France 123.8
29 Finland 122.0
30 Denmark 121.7
31 Ukraine 121.5
32 Taiwan 118.9
33 Indonesia 111.4
34 Saudi Arabia 105.1
35 Turkey 103.9
36 Royal Dutch/Shell Group 103.8
37 Exxon 103.2
38 Norway 102.9
39 Argentina 91.2
40 South Africa 91.0
41 Stet 90.3
42 Thailand 89.5
43 Ford Motor Co. 89.0
44 Tokyo Electric Power 87.5
45 Nissho Iwai 86.4
46 Deutsche Bundesposte Telekom 85.3
47 Toyota Motor 78.1
48 Poland 70.6
49 Yugoslavia (former) 70.0
50 Greece 65.5
51 IBM 64.8
52 IRI 64.1
53 American Telephone & Telegraph 63.3
54 GE 60.2
55 Tomen 60.2
56 Israel 59.1
57 Portugal 58.5
58 British Petroleum 58.4
59 Daimler-Benz 57.3
60 Sears Roebuck 57.2
61 Mobil 56.9
62 Hitachi 56.1
63 Iraq (1988) 53.0
64 Venezuela 52.8
65 Algeria 52.2
66 Nichimen 49.9
67 Cargill 49.1
68 Matsutshita Electric Industrial 48.6
69 British Gas 48.5
70 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone 48.2
71 Philip Morris 48.1
72 Fiat 46.8
73 Kanematsu 46.6
74 Pakistan 46.1
75 Philippines 46.1
76 Volkswagen 46.0
77 Malaysia 45.8
78 Siemens 44.9
79 Kansai Electric Power 44.6
80 WalMart Stores 43.9
81 Samsung Group 43.7
82 Nissan Motor 42.9
83 GTE 42.4
84 Colombia 41.9
85 Kazakhstan 41.7
86 New Zealand 41.6
87 Unilever 41.3
88 ENI 41.0
89 Singapore 39.2
90 Telefonico de Espana 38.8
91 Czechoslovakia 38.4
92 Peru 38.3
93 Du Pont 38.0
94 Texaco 37.6
95 Ontario Hydro 37.4
96 Ireland 37.3
97 British Telephone 37.3
98 Chevron 36.8
99 Chubu Electric Power 36.8
100 Elf Aquitane 36.
Well, what do these corporations do? Let’s list some of the specifics. The control the vast majority of the petroleum and energy production, transportation and sales, food production and distribution, genetic engineering and seed banks, finance, the media including TV, cable, newspapers, magazines, radio, etc., arms and munitions, transportation, agricultural equipment, automotive production, pharmaceuticals, sugar, alcohol, tobacco, insurance, etc. And through their influence, corporations now largely control most if not all governments on this planet at this time.
Thanks to corporate lobbied legislation there are now one hundred-fifty-three federal programs provide $167.2 billion to benefit corporations, annually. This is a cost of $1,388 for each taxpayer in America. In stark contrast, social welfare programs for the poor, (who don’t have wealthy corporations lobbying for them,) including child nutrition, housing assistance and food stamps, cost $50 billion per year, or $415 per taxpayer. Notice that welfare for the needy among us is less than a third or the cost of welfare for the wealthy. Do you see anything wrong with this picture?
For example: Cargill, Inc., number 67 on our list of 100 largest economies on the planet, has a net worth of $3.6 billion. Nevertheless they have received $1.29 billion from federal taxes in "export enhancement" bonuses. Again, our federal government has deemed it appropriate to lose money on the sales of timber from our national forests to private companies; these forests belong to every citizen of the United States. Likewise, while severely reducing any public funding for public radio and television, the government has seen fit to give away the right to use the airwaves, which belong to the citizenry, free of charge to the multinational media conglomerates. US companies with foreign operations can avoid tax laws and are permitted to "infinitely defer" earnings in the US. Last year alone, they avoided paying $1.1 billion in US taxes—an interest free loan from the US treasury the burden of which falls on the citizenry.
Business exemptions from laws, special tax breaks for businesses, government purchase of goods and services at more than market value, direct payments form the government to companies—where do these special benefits come from? Each subsidy, each legal or tax break, each form of payment results from the business or industry’s directed stream of campaign contributions.(Footnote: Common Cause date?)
And what has happened in the United States with campaign finance? In 1974, in response to the abuses of the system that resulted in Richard Nixon leaving office as the house of Representatives was about to open impeachment hearings, the legislature passed The Federal Election Campaign Act, the first comprehensive campaign finance reform law. In response to a suit filed by those objecting to the restraints on campaign finance and spending by the act, in 1976 the Court stated that there were two competing values: the right to free speech in donating or spending money for elections and preventing corruption in elections; it said that in some instances the interest in preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption justified restrictions on the donation of money. Never the less the Court said that preventing corruption is the only legitimate reason to restrict contributions and expenditures. As a result money has been equated with free speech, protected by the first Amendment to our Constitution. The Court also struck down limits to what a candidate can spend in their own campaign—now 39% of the 100 senators are millionaires, many are multimillionaires! Are these people really looking out for the interests of the people of their state? The courts decision undermines the whole idea of democracy; it gives vastly greater influence to people who have money, time and manpower to continuously lobby for their vested interests than to the average voter.
In 1978, the Federal Election Commission, at the behest of the two parties, opened the soft money loophole. It stated that party activities could be paid for by funds outside the limits established by the reforms of 1974. This allows corporations, unions and individuals to to funnel unlimited amounts of money to those candidates who will support their agendas. There have been many millions of dollars spent on so called, "issue ads", sponsored by interested parties which effectively shoe-in the candidate of their choice.
Today, to run a successful Senate race, a candidate must now raise an average of $16,000 a week, every week for six years. A House candidate has to raise $7,100 a week for two years. Politicians spend much of their time raising money with the corporations, unions and hired lobbyists who have the money to give them. In some cases it is worse. In early winter 1999 Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey threw in the towel at a press conference. He said, "A powerful factor in my decision was the searing reality that I would have to spend half of every day between now and the next election fund raising.…I would have to ask literally thousands of people for money. I would have had to raise $125,000 a week, or $25,000 every working day. That’s about $3,000 and hour!
Never the less incumbents in the 1998 election raised between two and ten time the campaign contributions and PAC money. After new House Speaker Dennis Hastert took office in 1999 he offered industry lobbyists audiences if they would contribute to his own PAC. Isn’t this unethical and shouldn’t it be illegal?
And much of the rest of their time is consumed being lobbied by the over 11,500 lobbyists (1998 p63) and an untold number of un-registered "consultants" roamiing the halls of congress. Law firms, staffed by people who have been close to congressmen are now lobbying as well. The Buying of the Congress, by Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity, said that from 1991 to 11996 at least fifteen percent of former Senate aides and at least fourteen percent of former senior House aides became registered lobbyists. They came mostly from the "money committees," for example the House and Senate commerce Committees which handle issues such as banking and telecommunications.
Both parties use PACs (political action committees) to fund whatever and whoever they want. Creatively ambitious politicians dole out funds from their own "leadership" PACs to garner support from other party members for their programs, their ambitions and the legislation they want influenced. These PACs are funded by corporations, unions and wealthy individuals who have specific vested interests. Running for office has become so expensive that members don’t feel they can raise the money from the common people in the places where they live and so, they raise money from the people and organizations who have it. They trade money for access.
Partisan manipulation is out of control. In the fall of 1998 the Electronic Industries Alliance named a former Democratic congressman its president. The republican leadership in congress ordered their staffs not to communicate with the association and blocked legislation that was of interest to the electronics association. The National Association of Home Builders was similarly ostracized for the same reason.
There were many good reasons not to expand NATO in 1998. But defense contractors were the most generous contributors to congressional campaign committees. The six largest had spent over $51 million on lobbying fees from 1996-1997. Interestingly it should be noted that the NATO expansion called for greater "inter-operability of military equipment." In plain English that meant that new NATO members would have to buy sophisticated weapons from American defense companies. (Who, by the way, have consistently supplied over 51% of the weapons and armaments that have been used in regional, ethnic, and civil conflicts around the world.) These arms manufactures also gave support to various ethnic groups around the country who backed NATO membership for their native countries and were thus enabled to create an appearance of popular support! These well funded groups that are organized to derail citizen movements or to support corporate interests have the appearance of grassroots organizations and a one of the latest tools of the ruling elite’s manipulation of public information and public policy. Because they are really fake grassroots movements they have become known as "astroturf."
A further elaboration of influence peddling and self aggrandizement takes the form of interested parties access- & favor-seekers, corporations and foreign governments being asked to donate money to fund a new department or a chairmanship at a university in a congress persons’s home state. At times legislation is delayed and congress people ongoingly collect funds from both sides attempting to influence the outcome.
Corporations have recently arranged an obscure loophole in the latest IRS Code in the United States which allows politicians, consultants and interest groups the power to "gather and spend unlimited amounts of money without having to report the names of donors." (SF Examiner May 14, 2000 pg. A1) And so, now, anyone or any corporation or special interest group from anywhere in the world can dump millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars into any election campaign to influence its outcome and the citizens cannot even find out who is responsible!
Cumulatively, these changes make a mockery of the democratic idea of one person, one vote. In the United States candidates, legislatures, issues and decisions are determined by corporate interests.
For more examples, more horrifyingly disturbing details I recommend The Corruption of American Politics—What Went Wrong and Why, by Elizabeth Drew (©2000 Overlook Press www.overlookpress.com Ralph Nader, Common Cause, & )
Of course, it makes one wonder, how much are the corporations and the governments being responsible and taking into account the well being of the inhabitants of this planet and the balance of life on the planet itself? Their record is dismal. Except for their interest in humans as a work force and as potential consumers their actions bespeak a callous disregard for any concerns that don’t directly enlarge their profit ratio.
Dee Hock, founder and CEO emeritus of VISA International a credit card company owned by 22,000 member banks with 750 million customers engaged in $1.25 trillion transactions annually has lashed out against corporate values in his recent book Birth of the Chaordic(sic) Age, (Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., SF). Based on his experience of VISA, a place of "intense cooperation and fierce competition" as well as his knowledge of contemporary corporate culture, the book states, "The monetized(sic) commercial form of corporation has steadily become an instrument of those with surplus money (capital) and those with surplus power (management) to reward themselves at the expense of the community, the biosphere, and the many, commonly called ‘consumers’ and ‘human resources.’"
These "human resources," Hock says, " are mined, smelted, shaped into products, worn out, and discarded with little more consideration on the part of monetary stockholders and management than they might give a load or ore or a pile of lumber."
Conservative "think tanks" and corporate public relations organizations generate endless papers and press releases bemoaning the heavy government regulations oppressing the corporations. There is lobbying for "regulatory relief" and most of the national media (read "corporate media") repeat the corporate spin, decrying the burden of regulation.
Dee Hock states that the "monetized shareholder" form of corporation, "has demanded and received release from the revocation of its charter for inept or antisocial acts." These organizations are continuing to expand as they devour scarce resources, demean the human spirit and destroy the environment."
"The roles of giant, transnational corporations have slowly reversed. Government is now more an instrument of such corporations than the corporations are instruments of government."
In fact, there is extensive evidence that the vested interests believe that humans are disposable in the face of any possible loss of their profits.
(Shell in Nigeria, Central, Meso- and South American Native Populations-displaced and decimated)
In 1443 the first black Africans were captured an taken to the west Indies as slaves on sugar plantations. This is the first time since the Roman Empire that mass slavery had been used to grow a crop for trade and the first time in history that one race had been singled out for a servile role. Slavery was used by the merchants and landholders to produce and sell sugar, tobacco, coffee and tea to the Europeans and the Colonists. These products are all addictive and none of them are necessary to the human diet.
The blatent disregard for the lives of human beings when profits were at stake is nothing new. In the 2700s the importation and sale of opium was out lawed in China. Nevertheless the Portugese were smuggling it in and English financial interests felt threatened. And so they manipulated the situatioon into the so-called Opium Wars of 1838-1842 The Chinese eventually capitulated and the Treaty ofTientsin legalized opium traffic in China. This resulted in the addiction of an entire culture.
(Food of the Gods, Terrence McKenna p201 & pp )
And in recent American history, what became of the revolution that was brewing in the inner cities within the black culture. I don’t think it would be far fetched to say that it went up in smoke—the smoke drawn out of a crack, cocaine pipe. Crack, a new, cheap, lethally addictive form of cocaine coincidentally appeared on American street corners during the Reagan administration, just about the time of what was to become known as the Iran-Contra connection. The CIA’s trading guns for money and money for cocaine. What did become of all the cocaine they bought?
In 1922, General Motors researchers discovered that adding tetraethyl lead (TEL) to gasoline reduced engine "knock", allowing development of large, powerful automobiles with high compression engines.
In 1924, Du Pont and General Motors (GM) created Ethyl Corp. to market and produce TEL.
But "as early as the 1920s, public health experts, government officials, scientists, corporate leaders, labor, and the public were acutely aware of the dangers and public health hazards posed by the introduction of lead into gasoline." (Rosner & Markowitz, 1985) And from there into the air we all breathe. The effects of lead toxicity have been well documented for a long time. Lead poisoning effects brain functioning and results in decreased intelligence, decreased impulse control and the array of symptoms whose recent epidemic in our children is now labeled as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Despite such awareness, the massive use of TEL went forward. Why? -- In the 1920s, Du Pont, GM and Ethyl, together with Standard Oil of N.J. forcefully presented 3 self-serving arguments through media outlets they were able to either buy space in or influence:
1. Leaded gasoline was essential to the industrial progress of America--they promoted lead as a "gift of God". This, even though it had been demonstrated to and documented by the Society of Automotive Engineers that the "pinging" of large engines that lead reduced could also be eliminated with a blend of unleaded gasoline and ethanol(?) made from agricultural by products.
2. Any innovation entails certain risks that, they said, were minimal.
3. Deaths and illnesses at TEL processing plants were due to worker carelessness -- "blame the victim" strategy. (E.g., in 1924, 80% of Standard Oil's 49 TEL plant workers died or were severely poisoned from organic lead)
Thus, for the sake of massive private profits on a monopolized product, leaded gasoline was promoted and sold for decades, resulting in millions of tons of toxic lead pollution in the U.S. (See Gallery of lead pollution promotions.)
Finally, in 1973, EPA initiated incremental reduction of TEL in gas. By 1982, leaded gasoline contained 1.25 gram/gal (& accounted for 86% of the lead in the atmosphere of our planet). By 1986, down to 0.1 gram/gal. But by then, lead used in U.S. gasoline and put into the air we all breathe since 1920s totaled 7 million metric tons (15.4 billion pounds)!
Since 31 December 1995 it has been illegal to sell for use in on-road vehicles any gasoline which contains lead or lead additives. But still, today leaded gasoline produced in the U.S. and is being used in nonroad vehicles-- primarily as aviation fuel, but also in farm machinery and race cars.
From 1986 to 1995, average lead concentrations in U.S. urban air decreased 78%. But an abundant "legacy" of lead remains in soil, air, dust and our bodies, affecting us and our children and their children for generations to come.
In a typical show of corporate values and true intentions, during the 1990s, while being phased out in the United States, TEL sales and use expanded abroad!
http://www.uwsp.edu/acaddept/geog/courses/geog100/Lead-Science.htm
Similarly, tobacco Co.’s called to task after decades of lies and deception are continuing Marketing to children in Asia & South America. And when I was there a couple of years ago, I saw numerous 6 & 7 year old children smoking and selling Western cigarettes on the streets of India & Nepal
(Greenhouse Gases/freon
Rainforest clear cutting
Alcohol Billboards in the Black neighborhoods
Etc.
Concentration of wealth, resources and access to government, recourse,
& media in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals & groups.)
Most people in America do not know that the Federal Reserve Board is a private corporation. Almost no one knows that Federal Reserve Board buys bills for the cost of production i.e. 1.2 cents per one, five or ten dollar bill and 1.5 cents per twenty, fifty and hundred dollar bill and then lends the cash to the US Gov’t at face value (i.e. one, five, ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred dollars) plus interest! Hence, our enormous national debt. What is going on here? How did things get to this point?
Formerly, one country bans the use of toxic chemicals in agriculture or industry. No problem, they’ll get sold over seas and come back on shore in produce or products or in the polluted air or water which circulates all around the planet or in polluted air or water which circulates around the planet.
Now with NAFTA and GATT, the so called international free-trade agreements pushed through national legislatures by vested corporate interest, any nation’s laws—environmental protection, health & safety, etc can be ignored if they interfere with "free trade"
III-2 The Science of Systems and the Collective Process
VISION: A few years ago, during the mid-1980’s, in a reverie, I had a vision. I saw myself walking down a trail in an oaken forest. I happened to notice a small trail, barely visible steeply leading up to the right and was drawn to follow it. In a short while I came to the trail’s end and was facing a huge, smooth obsidian cliff. I knew I was to walk into that cliff and so I did.
I found myself out in space, blackness and stars in the distance. I sensed a presence and was soon joined by a wise and kind being who appeared as a sphere of light. This directed my attention to a region of space I hadn’t noticed. And there I saw the Earth a beautiful blue, green jewel against the velvety blackness. There was an enormous amount of loving light pouring into the Earth; it felt soothing, gently and healing. I was deeply moved.
My companion urged me closer. And when I move closer, I saw that this light which from space was all that was visible, was pouring into cracks and crevasses, into all the dark and hidden places. And out of these places an ugly, dark, sticky and stinking substance was oozing, a confused and evil darkness. My stomach turned and I felt sick; I wanted to turn away.
Again my companion urged me to look closer. As I did, I shrank and I could see that at an elemental level, where the cosmic, loving light was making contact with the darkness and forcing it out into the open, there was a change taking place. The light was, I want to say transmuting the darkness, but it was more like the light was demonstrating to the darkness that at its essence it, too, was light. And, molecule by molecule, the darkness was being turned into the light it was made from.
I was taken back to the macro view and again the darkness seemed horrific and overwhelming. And then, once again I was taken back to my perspective from space. And here, I could see nothing but light and love, pouring in, bathing the Earth in an endless stream.
It can be helpful to view things systematically and here, recent scientific developments are very interesting:
Digression into how science says complex systems evolve new forms:
General Systems Theory-Ludwig von Bertelanffy
General Semantics--Alfred Korzybski
Dissipative Structures—Illya Prigogine & Erich Jantsch
Implicate Order—David Bohm
Morphogenesis—Rupert Sheldrake
(We seem to be moving from and isolated version of a 3d, individualized stage of consciousness development through an increasingly polarized, dreamlike, archetypal 4th dimensional stage of consciousness and into a 5th dimensional recognition of our common-unity as the actual basis for our global community. We are beginning to recognize our mutuality, our innate, interconnectedness with one another, with the matix of life on this planet and with the Universal elements and forces which support and sustain us.)
There have been increasing oscillation of human culture as the polarities get played out.
Dissipating a 3 dimensional conceptual identity as separate humans and resolving as recognition of being the unbiased awareness of now, appreciating and acknowledging how all this appears within the presence of awareness being and responding to whatever is presenting itself as I am spontaneously moved from within the spacious, still sphere of being here.
Humans live at an interface between experiences of the internal individual and the collective. Individuality becomes relatively subsumed by the conditions and circumstances we find ourselves in. And when Her hand sweeps across our m-w/d-b she will use any form or "other" to move, confine, influence or effect us in ways that are beyond our control.
II Fundamental Root of the Problems
A The Conditioned, False, Mediated Identity and Its Implicit Consequences
1 Ignorance, Fear/Anger & Desire/Greed/Lust
The only lasting solution to the myriad problems we humans face as a species is a quantum shift in our collective consciousness. The symptoms of our problems are rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of who and what we are individually and together which has been handed down from generation to generation for milenia.
At first blush, this may seem simplistic or impossibly idealistic but if you will bear with me and follow my reasoning through, I believe it will make sense. Lets begin with looking at reasoning itself. Reasoning can be valid and sensible and still be false. Only valid reasoning which begins with a true premise can be true. All reasoning based on a false premise is false regardless of how convincing it may seem. My personal, social and cultural patterns and institutions based on a false premise are false, inherently dysfuntional and sinful (in the original meaning of the word translated as "sin"—which is simply, "off the mark.")
Again, the root of all these problems that appear in our world is a simple but fundamental misapprehension of what we are. If you know this already, you may not need to read this book. If you don’t already know this, you may wish to consider the following facts about what has been going on here and see whether this conclusion is warranted. I invite you to read on.
Mistakenly, we think we are separate and independent beings and we believe that thought. As a result we see life in terms of polarized and adversarial, incompatible opposites. "Me vs Other, me vs world, us vs them, mind vs body, emotionality vs intelligence, life vs death, spirit vs matter, my view vs your view, objectivity vs subjectivity, etc., etc.
When we consider the facts, then we can reconsider our fundamental assumptions and reassess what is so. From that everything will fall into place
As we have seen, life is a dynamic fabric with all strands interwoven with all others, a dynamic field of interpenetrating, mutually sustaining patterns of energy. What we have here is an elemental and interpecies communion; a multi-dimensional, living system of sub- and super-systems whose very natural responses and behavior generates the context in which each other can be sustained, survive and flourish. There is no independent existence; we all depend on the Earth-Sun system; we all depend on each other.
In the shadow of our mis-representations are the excesses of greed and violence, the attempts to abuse, dominate and exploit on both individual and collective levels that were touched upon in chapter ____. All of this confused behavior results from ignorance.
All of this is impossible once we recognize that most fundamentally we are this totality; that each apparent other that we perceive is another expression of our whole self. Like our arms, apparently separate but more essentially parts of the same body.
2 Polarized World View Through the Personal Mind
Ego or "little me" develops as an adaptation to the mind world in which each or us found ourselves as children. This conceptual overlay is a conceptual filter which has conditioned our distinctions, our labels and our evaluations of what circumstances, events and things mean in relation to us and our world. Our perceptions and responses are conditioned by the filters we unconsciously employ.
The complications we have described arise with the arising of interpretations based on the belief that the "little me" is a separate entity with a will of "my" own.
The ego isn’t present; creates a conceptual past & future to live in. Ego "experiences" what is absent; its sadness is the absence of happiness. The "I" thinks to support its conceptual and abstract ‘"past" & "future" which are linked by thinking which in turn results in a sense of personal doership. This notion of I have done, I am doing and I will do completes the illusion of separation. When in fact, the "doing" and the "choosing" of any individual happen as the expression of the totality in the moment.
(3 The Personal & Collective Pain Body
4 Past & Future Time & The Conditioned Identity: An Abstract Mind-World/Dream-Body in A Hell of Its Own Creation---move to ?)
In fact the past is non-existent—how can a present which exists become non-existent? Further the future is a non-existent figment—how can this non-existent imagining become the actual present? These believed conceptual fictions are responsible for all the distorted, destructive relations and behavior we can witness in our species at this time.
Recognizing our dilemma is the first step—it awakens our impulse toward freedom, balance and wholeness.
As we begin to gaze inwardly we can notice an "I" that usually seems to be here interacting through our mind with the world of our perceptions. But these perceptions are simply our habituated mis-interpretations of what is real true and desireable or threatening. They are based in a fundamental misconception. At their root all our problems are ground in premises adopted by children raised in a culture with a fundamental misunderstanding. It is simply a case of mistaken identity.
We’ve been living in a limited, disconnected identity, a partially private and partly collective mind-world/dream-body.
As each child adapts to the world view of human consciousness, his or her sense faculties contact the world through seeing, hearing, touching, smelling. The child’s mind inherits the distinctions, values and sense of identity instilled by the parents and the enveloping culture. By the time a child is three or four years old they have adopted their fundamental adaptation to the world they found here when they first arrived. A personality has coalesced around their conditioned beliefs and distinctions.
In the following sense there are two layers of perception that can occur within awareness for us human beings. On the one hand we have been referring to what Eckhart Tolle calls this "little me" and its world, who we are and what our world is like, This based in our interpretation of our history and grounded in our inherited assumption of separation. This is a socio-bio-psych-physio-neuro-chemical mind-world/dream-body; it is the Gestalt of who & what we perceive and project as our self, our world with all of the seemingly distinct elements of both. The "little me" arises from the patterns of our inherited, fundamental distinctions and beliefs—our paradigm or world-view. This is a mentally-constructed realm of apparent experience and participation that we take as our world; it is what I am referring to as our sub-creation, or our mind-world/dream body. It seems to me that this is the tower of Babel, a confused, if conventional, misunderstanding that is accepted as real.
Meanwhile, prior to, during and subsequent to this experience of the "little me" and "my" world there is a parallel, innate realm of participation and perception. We can each discover this realm by paying attention to our actual, direct experience in the moment. Most simply, experience consists of sensations, emotions and thoughts. Thoughts make distinctions, apply labesl and describe objects, events, beings, circumstances and their significance to us. The experience of sensations, emotions and thoughts always and only occur within awareness. Upon examination it becomes obvious that there is awareness of whatever we may think or feel we are. In fact, we are always aware of the slightest movement of thought, the slightest nuance of sensation, as it occurs. And this awareness, itself is prior to and beyond, more than and other than our thoughts and feelings, our cherished beliefs.
Here, we can recognize that it is the awareness that makes our present moment real, whether we are attentive to this actual moment itself or our images and projections of the past or the future. Our experience of this moment is real because this moment is the content of awareness now. Even if we are imagining a future moment or remembering a past one, what makes the anticipation or memory real now is the fact that it is occurring in awareness now.
Is there a single moment of life in which being is not aware? Our sense of our self may change; our images and ideas of ourself and our world have changed many times since we were children, for most of us; our friends, family, environments, situations and our thoughts and feelings about them, our clarity and confusions, come and go as the apparent flow of our lives. In fact all space, all place, all time flows in endless diversity through the open appeture of our present awareness of this, now, moment.
So what is this awareness that each of us thinks we "have?" Anything I say can only point. In a moment I will speak about what I find, but you must know that your freedom depends on looking, yourself, without preconceptions and then, directly seeing for yourself. That said, I ask you to openly wonder, "What is aware of reading these words, in this momentary context? What is aware of the understanding of the words’ meanings and the feelings you may have about them? In truth, what is this that is aware now?"
And now, pause and wait; attentively, in openness. What do you find is actually here, now? If you find a feeling, an "I" sense or a thought, "I am a …(whatever).", notice that there is awareness of this feeling, sense or thought and inquire, "What is aware of this?"
Relax; be gentle as you would be with an infant or a baby bird. But be persistent and attentive. Simply notice what is always here.
For myself, when attention rests on this that is aware, I find nothing whatsoever; it is as if there is a blank, unbiased space with no discernable center or periphery. And yet, paradoxically, this nothing, this empty space is obviously aware. Like a vast open realm, this nothing is unobstructed, nothing is prevented from arising within it. And, again, paradoxically, as I rest as this utter openness, it is full to the brim with everything that happens to be appearing here, now.
Paradoxically both empty and full, both nothing in itself and the substance of everything apparent, this awareness is what each of us is, now and now and now, most fundamentally. All our conditioned beliefs and their consequent perceptions of our selves, of "them", of our world exist as temporarily stabilized patterns of thought within this awareness. Like everything else within awareness, these beliefs, perceptions and thoughts will change. But the open presence of awareness does not change. Registering every nuance of perception, sensation and thought and yet it is fundamentally untouched and un affected by any of it. It is not impaired by confusion and it is not enhanced by recognition. It simply is as it is, always, now and forever. Awareness is what we are, innately, fundamentally.
The realization of awareness is the philosophers’ stone, the wish fulfilling gem. Although it may be unnerving at first to realize that we are actually nothing whatsoever and that somehow, this nothing is cognizant, This awareness is what we are. As we learn to rest here, there is inexpressible peace and well being. It makes sense of course.
We have always believed ourselves to be a separate entity, disconnected and vulnerable; seeking whatever we believed would enhance our well being as we understood it and avoiding whatever we deemed hurtful. We sought satisfaction in things, in people, in power, in pleasures; all misdirected because of our fundamental confusion. No wonder it didn’t work; it can’t. As Roger Walsh, M.D. has said, we can never get enough of what we don’t really need.
However, once we have turned our attention to this aware ground of our being and have begun to rest here, well being and contentment, love and compassion spontaneously bubble up, filling our heart and mind with the knowledge and love of God with kindness and compassion toward all of creation.
This awareness is impersonal; it is the province of the totality that is. It is impersonal, non-judgemental, absolutely present and at ease and content regardless of what events, people or circumstances are temporarily appearing within it.
And so, at any particular moment we are either simply reflecting the world as it appears within this sphere of awareness or we are sub-creatively reacting to the distinction, interpretations and judgements of our "little me’s" conceptual filter.
(The little me’s mechanism of dissatisfaction and avoidance of the actual now.)
Speaking non-theistically, if we simply begin with the most comprehensive perspective we can and use distinctions wisely, we can cut through the miasma of our conditioned mind-world/dream-body, leaving past and future behind in a pile of conceptual debris which will self destruct momentarily. And, thus, here we are immersing ourselves in the open, unobstructed expanse of the actual now—not knowing anything in particular, not believing or giving value to any particular interpretation—willing and open to freefall as universe’s awareness of itself re-creating itself anew, now.
(However, even though we say yes to life as it is in one moment, our conditioned patterns of distinction thought and belief have a momentum which is reenforced by conventional social and cultural patterns.)
B The Forms of Resistance to The New Species: Fear, Separation, Greed, Fundamentalist Dogmatism, Adversarial Divisiveness
III The Inclusive Solution Dissolves Problems on Contact: Awakening.
A Awakening is The Profound Recognition of What is True About Ourselves, One Another and Our World, This Truth has Always Been True Regardless of What We May Have Believed Prior to Our Recognition of This Truth. The Fact That People Believed That The World Was Flat for Thousands of Years Never Made It So For an Instant.
My friends, my brothers and sisters, we are all here to wake up, to get out of the conceptual overlay of our mind/world-dream/body and regain direct access to things as they actually are. And now is the time.
For the most part, we have lived in our conceptual overlay which has conditioned our perceptions, determined our interpretations and predicated our projections and our reactions. Again, this is a sub-creation, our personal version of the karmic vision of the human species in which we’ve all been raised. Most of our distinctions have been inherited and are assumed to be obviously true.
And, as I have mentioned I, we, us be more than we know; in fact, more than we can know for actually, each of us is in reality the vast, open sphere of awareness within which occur our "I", our "you", our "us" and our "them", as well as all other phenomena of this universe and all our distinctions, labels, meanings and values associated with them. This of course includes all that we think and believe we know.
The fact of interconnectedness on all levels of and in all dimensions of our individual, collective, reflective and conscious being is always true and not as a theory but as a principle
B The Glimpse-What is Seen to Be So and The Freedom from Suffering
1 Now is the Time
2 The Single, Open, Inclusive Sphere of Awareness
(Here is clear Now)
The transformation occurs in the twinkling of an eye/I although it may be enacted over time. We drop all of our preconceived notions of ourselves, others, our world, our life, all of it dropped into the gaping vastness of the unknown now.
From our first glimpse of Reality, our empty, open presence, we are destined to awaken. As we learn to rest as the awareness we are, allowing whatever appears to arise as it does and allowing whatever goes to do so in its own way, we begin to get used to simply remaining present without grasping or aversion. This is the essential meaning of meditation—getting used to being here.
Conceptionless presence is here. A pure awareness in which conception may or may not arise.
Reliable Doorways to Reality
There are a number of doorways into the present experience of our being. Some are more consistently reliable than others. In general, these work with our energy and our beingness. Please be aware that there may well be more ways than I am making note of here. Breathing, chanting, devotional singing, some kinds of dancing or music can evoke the direct experience of our being. Cultivating the altruistic intent, loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, and the practice of self-inquiry work more directly with the being.
[Elaborate : Cultivating the altruistic intent, loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, and the practice of self-inquiry, the Pauses in breath, Douglas Harding]
Psychedelics (LSD, mushrooms, peyote, and yage and possibly marijuana) and Entheogenic drugs (such as MMDA or Ecstasy) are potentially useful but unreliable in terms of the specific character of the spaces that are temporarily accessed and they arepotentially dangerous. And they tend to make us believe we need the particular substance to engender a direct perception of who and what we are. False!
One way of looking at the totality of our experience is to consider the contents and their container
1 Contents of Experience
a Sensations--Our Only Actual Contact with This World. Takes place in the now. "I" and "object" are inferences projected onto the direct experience of sensing (or thinking for that matter)
b Emotions--Our Reactions to Our Interpretations of This World. They follow our thoughts which follow our sensations.
c Thought—The Dynamic, Interlocking Web of Our Superimposed Labels, Meanings, Beliefs, Perceptions, Conceptions and Our Identity. These distinguish, label and evaluate our sensations relative to our perceived/conceived well being.
2 Container—This Empty, Inclusive Openness Which Is Cognizant—the Awareness of Our Ever-Changing Field of Experience.
3 Awareness & Its Contents Are One Seamless Whole: Contents Without a believed story.
Conduct a little experiment with me. Wherever you are as you read this, relax. Gaze out openly, not especially focused on anything in particular. If you are blind and reading in braille or this is being read to you, just listen openly to all the sounds and stillness in your environment.
I’ll use my own experience right now as an example. At this moment I am walking in the woods in one of the large regional parks that ring the San Francisco Bay Area, paper and pen in my hands. I am moving through an open space in the trail now; there are tall shrubs, some scotch broom holding out the last yellow of its spring bloom. There are bay laurels and other shrubs I don’t know the name of; some ivy and grasses are growing around the bases of the larger plants. The warm sun shines from a clear sky onto my chest, arms, shoulders and face. Ahead of me the trail drops out of sight between a gnarled California oak and a, perhaps, fifty-year old pine. The trail between them is dappled with a sunlight and shadow pattern which dances in the gusting breeze. In the distance beyond them rises a steep hillside covered with pine and cedar, oak, bay and eucalyptus trees, tall and gracefully swaying, their shiny leaves glistening in the sunlight like ripples on a lake. Down hill to my left and across the sometimes audible little creek below the hillside rises, a grove of massive redwoods, many oaks, a few pine and fir and still more eucalyptus. There are butterflies and dragon flies and many little insects fluttering and darting through my visual field. I hear the silence interspersed by the sounds of of numerous birds, the creek fare below. My jeans russle and as my boots contact and push off from the now dry, pebbly trail a rhythmic sound accompanies me. Now here is a clump of little yellow flowers, like poppies, and ferns and grasses. And there is a granite outcropping, the hilsides bare shoulder sticking out from the dry, sandy soil, purple thissles growing up beneath it. A moment a go a single engine plane passed over head and behind the hillside to the south.
And yet, when I regard any of these particulars (or you regard any of the particulars in your environment right now) there is no outline separating that glistening eucalyptus from the azure blue sky above and behind it or the grasses and poppies from the exposed granite, roots and earth behind them. Even the names I call these things are not inherent to them, they are superimposed labels we use to distinguish and separate them out from their context, conceptually.
If our projected, conceptual distinctions, labels and interpretations are not recreated (or if they are simply not taken to be anything other than distinctions, labels and interpretations), there is recognized a singularity of awareness which includes all of its fluctuating contents. The appearances and the awareness in which they occur is a seamless whole; they are two sides of the same coin. And this is so regardless of whether conceptual separation is one of the appearances within awareness.
Remember, the map is not the territory! And the Earth was never flat, no matter what we may have believed.
The complementary and paradoxical nature of the truth of being evidenced by its simultaneously being nothing and cognizant is further elaborated when we examine what we label as events occurring "inside" and "outside" us. Regarded directly, the whole universe, from the nearest leaf to the furthest stars, including our labeling and evaluating and reacting to our labels and evaluations is occurring within this awareness. And, although awareness notices everything that occurs, it is untouched and in fact untouchable by any thing, event or process that occurs. It is as if everything is somehow out side of it!
So once we have had a glimpse or glimpses what sooner or later usually happens is we find ourself back in our old mind-world/dream-body reacting to someone or something that has occurred in our lives. What can we do? How can we get back to our pure perception and free ourselves from our habituated, conditioned identifications?
First, simply notice we have begin to subscribe to some version of our personal story. As is said in the common parlance, "Shit happens." Accept things as they are, even as the temporarily appear; even, if it occurs, our judgement of having become distracted and having gotten caught up, once again. Simple unbiased acceptance of things how ever they are and/or appear allows us to disengage form the story we have been telling ourselves and just come back. We simply come back to this empty open presence which is the awareness that is here in this actual moment and we let go of the conceptual overlay of our story.
It may be reassuring to realized that we can never be more than one thought away from the Truth and that is what ever thought we happen to be believing instead of noticing the untouched awareness of this actual moment that we really are.
If you don’t know if you are caught in a version of the story, be patient. If you are back in the world of the "little me", the experience of dissatisfaction and suffering will soon ensue.
And so in brief, Be Awake Now. Drop the story and come back to here—a hundred or a thousand awake moments a day soon becomes the norm. If the conditioned patterns recur, as soon as you notice, drop the story and return to the open presence of the actual now. Persist until it is natural, normal and continuous.
3 The Abstract, Conceptual Nature of the Old, Conditioned Identity—The map is not the territory
False self is conditioned and polarized – light & shadow
(must have shown phenomena as empty of self nature—in the ecology section ?)
C The Implications-Oneself, One’s Body, The Spontaneous Gesture of Kindness to All Forms of Oneself, Theistically, God is All, God is One All that appears is an appearance in, of and by This One, Shiva-Shakti, etc. The universe is one. Each is in, of and by this one. Through the empty openness of awareness, awareness is displaying itself to itself within itself for His/Her/Its own sake.
cooperative society
sufficiency, mutual support: trusting the connections that feel like they are leading home.
D The Embodiment, The Immediate, Rapid or Gradual Sifting Through the Habituated False Identity in Light of the Undeniably True Revelation.
First learning to discern the ways in which the temporary and false are false and turning from that and toward the permanent.(elaborate)
Second, recognize that we are all in the same boat. Most fundamentally we all want to be happy and to be free from suffering but we’ve been ignorant of how to go about that. And so, inadvertently self-defeating, we have ended up only creating more suffering for ourselves and each other. Understanding that out of the same ignorance, others, like we ourselves, have behaved badly and been hurtful and even cruel in misguided attempts to get happiness and be free from suffering. As we recognize how the cumulative, inexorable momentum of confused and falsely predicated conditioning turns and has turned well meaning intentions into self-defeating misery for ourselves as well as others, kindness and compassion naturally arises in our hearts. And we wish that these others, like ourselves, might have happiness and the cause of happiness which is clarity and virtue; that they and we might be freed from suffering, hatred, violence and selfish greed; that they might be freed from the cause of suffering—ignorance and its resultant non-virtue. May each and every one be liberated, awake and free. And may I somehow be useful in alleviating suffering and quickening the awakening of us all. In order to be most useful to the most beings may I be fully awakened, now or soon.
The third key to embodiment is clarifying the view of Reality and eliminating any subtle introjected or projected conceptual distortions to things as they are.
It is helpful to realize that "I" cannot properly judge. "I" do not have enough information, insight or understanding to properly assess what another is doing or how they are being. Judgement is God’s. Value assessment is the province of this multidimensional totality which manifests as everything, especially, you and me and this sentient and semiconscious species we collectively are.
This awareness which simply registers the sense impressions of God’s creations is the light which emanates from that same Source.
As each or us shifts attention from the "little me’s" mind and we take our rightful place, residing in and as the intrinsic awareness of now, it is the end of time. It is a moment of death of what we have become as we are born again as we always have been. This is the end of the illusion of a separate, personal me, our mental image of ourself. This is the awakening out of that dream of confusion and dissatisfaction and into living as God’s awareness of God’s creation as it is unfolding through and around us within the open sphere of now.
This is the emergence of a new self-conscious species. Self-conscious in the sense of being conscious as what we actually are. The process involves saying, "Yes" to reality and, "No" to our habituated delusions; saying "Yes" to this moment as it is and "No" to our "little me’s" story with its recollected and projected images, beliefs, etc. As the awakening unfolds within each of us this acknowledgement of what is true and turning away from what is not may have to occur many times.
But as one of my teachers, Justin Hanuman Golden, told me, "So what if you fall back asleep and reawaken a thousand time a day—that is a thousand moment of truth and reality."
Recognize, Allow, Release
At any moment in our day we can recognize whatever beliefs we happen to be holding at the moment. We can notice that, for whatever justified reason we happen to be believing that something is real and true and significant about some distinctions we have made in our mind.
At any moment we can ask ourselves, "Do I want my personal, conditioned mind-world/dream-body? Or would I rather notice the peace and ease of being available as the actual now? And then we allow the story, our belief, its distinctions and our reactions to be as it is. We don’t judge it; we don’t push it away or continue to elaborate itself-justified arguments. We simply turn our attention toward the ever-present awareness in which that abstraction and this actual moment is occurring. And then? Then we just let go; be as we are, however we find that to be. And we rest.
Another of my teachers, Tsoknyi Rinpoche described it thus: When we notice we have been distracted, it takes a certain effort to turn our attention back to the awareness. It is like the effort required to pick up the stick and strike a gong. Once we have returned, we just rest as the awareness of this moment, however we find that to be. We don’t keep striking the gong, turning to look again and again. We don’t examine, is this it, is this not it; this is not quite how it was last week, etc. We turn and look and see, and then we rest. When we find ourselves down the track on the train of thought again, it is grace—a moment of awakening. Our opportunity is to simply, turn our attention and look toward the awareness itself, and, seeing its empty cognizance, its unobstructed display, we rest as that.
Initially for most of us our moments of clarity are brief and few. Gradually, over time, they last longer and are more frequent. In due time we abide as That, open, present, loving, creative and available to respond to life as it appears.
E Experiences of the path and the Possibility of Siddhis and Their Potential Danger as Ego-Reinforcing Distractions—Stay on Track:
In the process of getting used to being as we are experiences of profound clarity, bliss and stillness may arise. We may find ourselves temporarily or even permanently endowed with some mundane or supernatural power, for example—clairvoyance. It is wise not to become self-congratulatory, self-enamored and self-aggrandizing as if we personally had anything to do with it; as if there was a personal "me" anywhere to be found in the first place. It is better to simply notice these events as elements that have arisen within awareness and give our whole attention to the empty, unobstructed awareness in which they occur.
IV The Expressions of Embodied Awakeness
A Qualities of Awake People
1 Integrity, Peace, Aliveness, Loving Kindness, Appreciation, Compassion, Well Wishing, Equanimity, Contentment. Happiness.
Inclusiveness, Harmlessness
B Activities of Awake People:
Awake people do whatever they happen to be doing with their whole being because awake people are presence itself. If we don’t know whether or what to do we rest as being and patiently wait, knowing that when and if there is something we are to do, it will be the next obvious step and we will find ourselves taking it!
(How Can I Help?. What would be Most Useful at This Time?)
C Examples of Awake/Awakening People
There are already many people from all walks of life who have awakened, and hundreds or thousands of times as many of us who are in the process of awakening. In my limited experience and perspective I personally have witnessed hundreds and in speaking with over 20 western teachers I have met I know of thousands.(elaborate)
Evidence of the Emerging Enlightenment
1 People in The Awakening West, Etc
2 People Working For Peace, Justice, Freedom, Equal Rights/Equal Voice, Ecological Balance, Inter-Racial, Inter-Tribal, Inter-Ethnic, Ecumenical Communications, Sustainable/Mutually Beneficial Economies. All People in every walk of life who approach whatever they are doing from an all-embracing, inclusive perspective; Brahma Viharas
V What Can You Do
A Wake Up-Now is the Time
Stay Clear
4 Connect With Others—Spontaneous Affinity & Support Groups; Trust the Connections that Feel Like They are Leading Home
all of us are here now. Each one is This One—Ja, I & I, Allah Hu; each is an embodied locus of awareness
5 Read, Study, Go to Satsangs, Dharma Dialogues, Find A Sangha or Sanghas You Find Helpful. Don’t Settle for Less Than The Absolute.
B Follow Your Heart
1 Take the Next Obvious Step or
2 Wait Peacefully Until the Next Step is Obvious and Then Take It
3 Continue As Above
sufficiency, mutual support: trusting the connections that feel like they are leading home.
C Who here wants to communicate and see what we can do together about waking up and realizing that all of this diversity is "God", "Allah", "Brahman", "Tao" expressing Her/It/His Self within the unobstructed, open sphere of Her awareness?
/If You Want to Engage With Us At The Awakening West: AwakeningWest.Org & [email protected]
VI Appendices
A Bibiliography
B Resources: Satsangs, Web, Active Groups
C The Hundred Largest Economies: Their Interlocking Interests and Domination of Global Affairs.
Ecological Imbalance, Disruption of Climatic Patterns
Number of wars and Regional conflicts at this time
Danger in the streets of every community: The rise in hate crimes, Domestic Vilolence, Child Battery, Child Molestation, The sanctioning of violence as a solution to differences of opinion, belief, culture or religious conviction.
Who suffers and who benefits?
What’s up with men?
II Fundamental Root of the Problems
Every child that is born comes into a family that exists in a culture that is fundamentally dysfunctional. Perhaps western culture is pre-eminent in its dysfunctionality but pretty much the whole world has followed suit. Each human has adopted an identity to adapt to the world in which we have found ourselves. We all seem to be separate—we are disconnected from one another, from the earth, from the feminine principle of wholeness and mutuality and most essentially from the essence of our own being. We live in an abstract conceptual world of our own making.
Fundamentally ignorant of our innate interconnectedness we live in a constant tension between desire for what we imagine will please or satisfy us and fear that we won’t get what we want or will lose what we have. Others are either the means for supplying what we desire or obstacles to obtaining our wants. The earth is simply the source of raw materials for the manufacture of our valued things. Bouncing back and forth between the pursuit, maintenance and avoidance of the loss of pleasures, power and acclaim we waste our lives in confusion and endless dissatisfaction.
Our adopted identity is a false creation; a false idea that we take to be who we are. It is simply who we think we are. And, because we believe it we overlook and fail to recognze who and what we really are. Our adopted identity is composed of our body-mind/personality. Our perceptions are conditioned by our sense of who we are and what the world is; we see through a glass, darkly. We preceive our projected concepts and react to protect our mis-identification.
Because we experience ourselves as separate, finite bodies every other is a potential source of pleasure or satisfaction or a potential threat to our well being or even our life. Social conventions are a thin veneer over our more primal responses which are kept in check by our fear of reprisal.