There is a delay in my ability to translate this blog onto video. My wife, who will be behind the camera, has to much work to do right now . She has a test in massage school she needs to study for and some children and other personal problems that demand most of her attention. So no video for a bit.
The Lords of the Wall Streets of the World have made one hell of a mess. Their greed and callous disregard for the consequences of their actions in acquiring vast fortunes is causing untold damage to the planet and people of the world. If there were social justice in this country and around the world the men and women who have created this economic and environmental catastrophe would be in jail awaiting trial for crimes against Humanity. Instead most of them are still enjoying the good life relative to the vast majority of the people of the world. How many will be indicted or convicted? Only a very few. What about us? We will have to deal with the very real and dangerous results of their actions for the rest of our lives.
Such is how it is and such is how it has always been. The rich and powerful have always behaved the way the current ruling classes are behaving. The biggest difference is that their greedy personal-ego driven choices have become more destructive because of the development of modern technologies and chemicals. The vast increase in population and the shortening of physical distances because of communication and transportation advances have combined to create the perfect conditions for world wide suffering. Now there is not only one World but one Ruling Class of the World and one People of the World.The rich and powerful throughout recorded history have hardly ever given a damn beyond a few gestures and words hear and there about the way the vast majority or the world's people and other creatures are forced to live and die.
My wife pointed out to me that not all the super wealthy and powerful are indifferent to the people and planet. There are many exceptions to this. The Gates family, Sores and Warren Buffet. the Kennedy family to name a few. That there are exceptions does not disprove the rule. History has shown over and over in every country in the world that the main concerns of the very rich and powerful have to do with accumulating more wealth and power for themselves and their families and friends, the rest of the country and the world be damned. Even when the occasional leader has stood up for the people how long has it been before they were either killed or brought off. In most cases our saviors soon show that their concerns were masks for their real agendas which was and is, more often than not, more power and wealth for themselves. The people have been and are used as foot soldiers and laborers and cast aside when we are were no longer useful. The best we ever get from them are a few tokens or gestures depending on how prosperous we helped them to become or how threatening we became to them. As I was once told by an old man in Kentucky, " Son, some of need those few gestures. So thank God for them."
What I am saying is that if we look to the rich and powerful to save us or change the world for the better we might as well spend every penny we have left on lotto tickets. We have a better chance at winning the lotto than depending on them to secure our future. So what is to be done? What can we do? Class war does not work. They have to many ways of winning and if we won some of us would soon become them and we would be back to where we are now or worse.So what is to be done?
The good news is that we are doing what is needed right now. People alone and in groups all over the world are reaching out to one another. We are sharing information and giving all kinds of support in a multiplicity of forms to each other. Needs and problems are being recognized and confronted and dealt with by an ever increasing number of people and organizations in and out of governments and institutions. I have to say I feel more hopeful and dedicated than I have ever felt in my life. And many people all over the world feel the same way. It is a good time to be alive.
If you are confused and afraid and in pain of any kind I urge you to become an explorer and an adventure. Become the Fool in the Tarot deck and set out to find a new way of seeing and thinking and being. There are as many paths to understanding and help as there are hearts and feet and minds.Try some things on this blog or follow some of the many links you find here. Reach out to us and we will reach out to you. By we I mean all the people of the paths of Love.
The paths of Love are ways that proclaim the Unity of all beings. The people of the paths of Love want to be of help to all sentient beings in need. We help when and where we can. We do what we can when we can and leave the outcome to the Mother/Father.
One of my Sufi teachers once said that it is like this. We have a need or see another in need. Before we take action we say BishmAllah, which means I will do what I do with the highest awareness I can. Than we will respond to the need in the most beautiful way we can. After we have finished the first action we say inshAllah. That means I will leave the results of my action to the Mother/Father. We observe the results.If we see a need for another action we repeat the process. If the need has been resolved we celebrate. He said it is a beautiful dance with Allah. We are responsible for between BishmAllah and inshAllah. Allah does the rest. Allah leads first by showing the need. We lead next by responding to the need. She/He leads next and so on and so on. The dance continues forever.
I was speaking with a good friend of mine named Candy recently. She had just lost her thirty seven year old son to cancer. We were talking about the condition of the world and our desire to help. Candy has been a good friend and teacher for me since I went to Kent State in 1968. She has been on the spiritual path for over thirty years and has practiced a form of meditation for those years. Candy said that perhaps this world was never created to resolve all the problems that we face but as a place where we could incarnate on to have experiences.
I agree with her. I believe that we came hear for a multiplicity of reasons including just to have the adventure of being human on this planet. My perspective is mainly from the Sufi path. I see a strange and wonderful duality about our species. On the one hand we are human and full of crazy social life and pain. We are as another of my Sufi teacher said, an immature species slowly becoming mature over millenniums. Right now we are in early adolescence. And the adults among us know how difficult adolescence can be. On the other we are divine beings who have chosen to forget who we are while we are pretending to be human. And while we are being human we are simultaneously still Divine beings who in the greater Reality are dancing and singing with the Beloved and with each other. We are dancing and singing together even as we seem to be suffering and hating and fighting each other. You see this in the Hindu story of the Bhagavad Gita ( link to a copy of the Gits http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/gita/ ) and in all the spiritual traditions in one form or another.
What seems to be our reality is an illusion and what seems to be to good to be true is the Truth. The One Truth does not deny the reality of the illusionary truths that confront us day to day. We still need to act as if suffering is real and respond with as much love and help as we can muster at the moment. Such is the nature of who we are and where we are.
As a parting gift I leave you some links to paths worth exploring.
For those in various kinds of pain I urge you to get the book Open-Focus Brain. I have been using the techniques found in this book for all kinds of pain and they work more often than not.
http://openfocus.com/
For many links to a number of different kinds of paths try the following link and have some fun.
http://urbangurucafe.com/wordpress/index.php
A place to go for a Buddhist perspective. I send you to a place on the sight that I have just finished reading. You can go to the Home page from there.
http://www.tricycle.com/web-exclusive/family-dharma-leaning-suffering
A Sufi Zen thing,
http://www.zensufi.com/
And here are a feew more.
http://www.allspirit.co.uk/
http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/
http://sunlightgroup.blogspot.com/
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