First off, let me give a warm welcome to all the newcomers to this forum, it's great to see some new faces here! This is a great place to share and work out concerns about the many troubling - and exciting - issues facing us today. So please feel free to share both the frivolous and those deep core issues.
With that said, I was reading an old article about the UFO phenomenon and came across something that struck me. When describing where they possibly came from the writer wrote "from out of space" instead of outer space. Upon reflection this began making more and more sense. In one stroke it wiped out the geographical/distance element and ushered in something else entirely, something bordering on the fantastic and other worldly. Is it possible that it was never intended to be "outer space" at all but that that phrase was conveniently latched onto by the disinfo agents? Honestly, I guess both work and have their uses, but I really like the idea that they come from "out of space" and not from far away. And no, I'm not a big UFO guy, but that was one of those "ah-ha" moments for me that opened up new possibilities.
Another one was in reading and listening to Mark Passio's work. I began perusing his sight What On Earth Is Happening - Podcasts and listening to his podcasts. Included with each podcast are some images which relate to his talk. All of these images are pretty spot on but one in particular having to do with the word anarchy caught my attention. First off, I like the way he uses his background in Latin and Greek to break down the meanings of the words. Once I finally took an interest in learning I'd always wished I'd had a formal understanding of Greek and Latin since they make up the roots of most of our words, which make no sense to those who don't have a background in these languages. Here's his breakdown of anarchy: ANARCHY: From the Greek prefix an- : without; the absence of & the Greek noun archon : master; ruler. Anarchy does NOT mean "without rules." It literally means "without rulers." No Rulers. No Masters. Passio's full of such great insights, can't recommend him enough.
Alright, sorry if this is one of my more frivilous posts but I would love to hear other insights that people have had, sort of a "things that make you go 'huh . . .'" post, you could say.
true, to first do anything, we must set our comfortable cup of tea aside and get off our comfortable seat in our cozy box and get our hands dirty. our minds are already plenty dirty enough to not really accomplish much besides posturing and postulating. it's ALL going away because it's ALL part of the same paradigm. so, left defines right, etc. nothing within this system will fix this brokedown palace. there may be a few ideas which lead to freedom outside this corral, but it's not going to change for you or i or anybody. it will have to fall. but for the shift from slavery to freedom to occur, people will have to learn invividual accountability and responsibility for their actions and intentions. there is no other way for it to work. and if they can't figure that out with whatever level of intelligence they have, then they will no longer be necessary for the new paradigm. oh, and one must let go of the old way of defining and looking at things as "good" or "bad" or "right" or "wrong". that only works when applied to oneself. you can't even tell your children what to do or what is right or wrong for them except by the example of your living in harmony or not.
the monkey mind will keep one engaged and distracted in all manner of pursuits, but it won't figure anything out that we haven't already known for QUITE SOME TIME...
Having trouble posting in the right place.
Hi Noa,
I've been trying to think of how to respond to your post and find a way to explain my thoughts; the reply that Bob made earlier today said it so well and clearly, but it appears his posts have run into some glitches.
I think that we both agree that escapism, avoidance, complaining, and other forms of inaction will not help - no matter what perspective and philosophy it's wrapped up in.
I also think that we're both trying to say that each individual needs to take personal responsibility and take action on a micro and/or macro level. I put forward the suggestion that this can also take place from a variety of perspectives and philosophies.
One person may be very angry with what is going on in the world and with what the elite are doing, and do what he can to say no to oppression, stop complying, and work towards greater social and economic freedom for the betterment of all. By spreading the word and using the creative force of his anger to spur others to action, his contributions are making a difference.
Another person may see everything as a reflection of what is inside and see how she is part of a larger whole. In doing so, she recognizes the impact that her actions and inactions have made, and takes responsibility for her everyday choices and encourages others to do the same. By learning to accept and heal the darkness inside, she is gaining the courage to face those she once considered to be enemies and give them the space and opportunity to transform.
These are just two examples; each person has his or her own unique perspective in this life, with the opportunity to take personal responsibility in his or her own way. For me personally, it does not work to remain in anger - in that space, I am small, afraid, and inactive; rather, I am more inspired to act from a space of love and interconnectedness. For others, anger is a life force that inspires them to challenge the status quo and lead others to revolutionize their lives. I respect the many viewpoints and inspirations that serve as the paradigm for creative change in an individual - there is so much to do in so many areas, and we all have different roles to play.
I honour all of you who work for positive change in this world, and I also deeply honour your unique choices in perspective and life paradigm.
With love, Trish
Very well said, Trish. I have one further comment about your statement, "By learning to accept and heal the darkness inside, she is gaining the courage to face those she once considered to be enemies and give them the space and opportunity to transform."
In a perfect world, giving people space to make better choices might be enough for them to see the error in their ways. I think it's naive to presume that the controlling elite are going to turn over a new leaf when tens of thousands of years of human history prove otherwise.
These people have been dominating and controlling us since Sumarian times. They are too focused upon their own lust for world domination to care one nit about the common people. They lack sympathy and compassion and they turn a blind eye to the suffering they willfully inflict upon men, women, and children. Even if they wanted to empathize with our plight and "transform" themselves, they may not even possess the capacity to do so.
Can a scorpion be taught not to sting? Can a snake be coaxed not to bite? It is their nature to do these things. How realistic is it to expect all people to think and behave as we'd like? "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."
Let's hope and pray for miracle.
it takes a serious amount of pressure and forces to transform coal into diamonds. an easy or peaceful life just wasn't in the cards for us as a global entity. more is expected. make it so. then we can all let out a collective "aaaaahhhhh". my wife and i fondly refer to the letting out of held breath as "gas-bagging". i'm looking forward to a global gasbag release. not better programming. if you really look at "history" you find that all of those idyllic gardens or paradises were corrupted or destroyed to bring us together. since separation doesn't really exist in the empirical sense, there must be an ulterior motive for this. we still have individualities to share, so once all of the false labels and boundaries are eliminated, we can really start sharing. and let it all out.
I love this discussion! And what if every being in this universe is somehow interconnected in a grand cosmic dance? What if each one of us is playing our role in the magical divine unfolding of this ever-present moment of now? What if by reaching underneath physical reality and not only acknowledging this interconnectedness, but breathing sacred love with the souls of those we see as "them," we are literally creating a new paradigm that transcends the whole us vs them paradigm? What if the most powerful work we can do is not on the physical plane, but rather in the much more subtle spiritual realms where the whole game looks quite different?
With much love and joy,
Fred
what if? so sly and subtle, you are. so gentle with the fledglings. you know we are exchanging on all of those levels. and that our concept of "the mundane" may be a bit off. not so slight or insignificant, after all. we're all here to do what we're all here to do! and the CM is picking up speed/velocity every day. galactic boogie!
Thanks for the reminder, Fred. You're right. A regular practice of breathing sacred love to "them" can only help.
[This is out of sequence now, but it may still be relevant... ]
I think Jeff Foster, the author of the article that Trish posted above, has a profound view, but one that we're not used to even recognizing due to our cultural conditioning, let alone putting into practice -- even those of us who espouse the deep connectedness or "oneness" of everyone. And part of that view is that acceptance of the horrors that are perpetrated upon people and the conseqent suffering is not about condoning all that, but about letting them in so that they touch us, and in touching us they may transform us so that we indeed actually see what so many only talk about: the fundamental sameness and even identity of all of us -- indeed of all forms of life. (The two meanings of the word "suffer" may be to the point here: to feel pain, and to allow.) Someone pointed out that if we can't let the ugliness in, we won't really be able to let the beauty in, either; it's about openness of being; that's what transformation is all about.
This view has implications that may well be fatally destabilizing to our view of our own selves and all other selves, and to our social and political structures -- that would be real revolution. It can be terrifying, if only on the subconscious level. And (I feel) that we turn away from an acceptance of these horrors (in the sense of letting them touch us) in well-practiced ways, including burying our heads in the sand (pretending that they don't exist, or at the very least minimizing them), OR spending all of our energy reactively blaming the obvious perpetrators, even as agents of evil.
Sure, there are perpetrators, about whom we've spoken endlessly in these posts, and they need to be identified and we need to do what we can to mitigate and even stop what they're doing. But they aren't agents of "evil" any more (or less) than you and I are. Why? Because they are human, too, and their expressions of anger, frustration, and lunacy come from the same source as our expressions of anger, frustration, and lunacy (albeit maybe on a different scale): the "identification with a mind-made sense of self" that Foster identifies. Bulls eye, Jeff. Deeper than this false self is the I AM -- that primal sense of Being -- that exists prior to and beyond all that makes up the mind-created self (Mooji does a great job a pointing people to an exprience of this I AM).
And this really goes to the absolute heart of the endless cycles of suffering in our personal lives and in our collective life on this planet. Our mind-created sense of self is made up of all of the ideas (mostly those "given" to us by family, friends, educators, "authorities"); memories; conditioning; beliefs; images [body and emotional] -- positive, negative, and neutral -- that we've collected over the course of our lives. This mind-created sense of self is by its nature limited and set apart from all (and sometimes even against) other "selves", and is in fact the very source of the us-them dichotomy and all the dramas of conflict that result from it on everything from the personal to the global scale.
So we're all in this together, as they say, because we share this terrific misunderstanding -- you and I who may direct angry comments toward someone, the parent who hits his or her child, the dictator who orders the annihilation of an entire ethnic population.
On this last point, it has been said that Hitler was so evil that he can't even be called human. Well, if we believe that, then the lesson of Hitler's life and "work" has been lost to us. The only abiding lesson is that he WAS human, completely human, and that all humans have that potential in them -- as well as the potential of a Jesus or a Buddha, and all in between. The lesson is that we would do well to look to what's happening inside ourselves, to accept the existence of the anger, the fear, the frustration, the jealousy -- all of it -- that we find there, as well as the love, the forgivness, the appreciation, so that we can nurture what in us will result not in evil, but in good (using the conventional dualistic terms), in our own beings. And not assign the "evil" exclusively to the worst and, by now, obvious perpetrators of the worst and most obvious horrors.
Truthfully, I don't believe in evil; I believe in ignorance. Anyone who deeply understood the connectedness, the sameness, even the identity of all of us that lay beyond the mind-created descriptors that comprise our ideas of ourselves (and therefore the us-them dichotomy) couldn't possibly hurt -- or even disrespect -- anyone else.
So... in defense of the Jeff Foster's article, here's what seems to me to be the essence of what he said, taken from it:
Do we enter into the age-old story of good versus evil, us versus them? Do we further solidify our identification with a mind-made sense of self?
...Do we sit back and simply 'accept'? If acceptance means detachment and passivity, no. If it means coming into profound alignment with life, knowing that intelligent change and healing always emerges from a fearless plunge into the mystery of the moment, then yes. True acceptance and creative change are lovers.
...In the Middle East, a Jew donates a kidney to a sick Palestinian, saving her precious life. In India, a woman feeds and washes those with leprosy, because she sees that we are all expressions of the very same consciousness.
...Don't use the 'news' as an excuse to stop living your truth, even for a moment. Don't believe for a second that there is a force called 'evil' in the world with any power whatsoever to win over Life. Terror cannot win, for it emerges from a gross misunderstanding of our nature.
One caveat to what I said above: I know full well that letting in painful realities so that they touch us deeply requires the "stomach" to feel that pain and grief. (I claim to be no more than a beginner at this.) It's a matter of practice in not only doing this, but in not lapsing into judgment and condemnation in reaction, which is all just more duality and more suffering. Jesus said something like, "Learn to see with an eye that is single." (Is this accurate, you folks who are familiar with the Bible?) Not adding dualistic thinking on top of the pure experience.
Thanks for that beautifully written piece, Bob. I very much resonate with your thoughts. By viewing and responding to the world through the filter of the old paradigm of us vs them and good vs evil, I suspect we just perpetuate the dualism. By remembering our deeper interconnectedness, even as we do all we can to stop the destructive behavior, we are creating a new paradigm where we support the divine essence in every being and pave the way for profound transformation.
With much love and warm wishes,
Fred
Well said Fred !
Love All <> Eric
That was well-conceived and beautifully written.
But do you really think that all humans have the potential in them to commit genocide or other atrocities?
I'd sooner take my own life.
Noa, if you look at my thread where did man come from? you will see that there may have been a gene put in our dna that makes us voilent . Neanderthals were peaceful and out of nowhere pops up cromagnun and remember, if you are familar with Stichen then you know Anu was geneticist so you can imagine what was going on . It is all theory of course .
Love all < Eric
I apologize to Bob, Greg, and possibly others who have had trouble when trying to post a comment on page one of a multi-page thread. Apparently that doesn't work. I'm working with our tech guy Andrey to see if we can do something about this. Sorry again for the trouble, and have a good one.
With love and warm wishes,
Fred
If it's possible to set the post to open to the last (most recent) page upon entry, that might do the trick.
I was just responding to all these new posts and I accidentally hit the Tab key or something. Then when I put the cursor back and started typing, all these posts flashed in front of me and sent me back to page one where I had originally started another post before I realized there WAS a page two. I returned topage two, but naturally it was gone.
Arggh, too frustrated to try and do it over now (maybe the same thing happened to Bob). Maybe I can pick this up tomorrow. For now I just want to say thanks for the posts; Noa, Trish, and Bob's posts in particular gave me a better understanding of how Fred's view and mine on suffering and "evil" differ without getting angry and judgemental.