"Each of you is his own universe, and your inner and outer realities regularly form your very own Hall of Mirrors." ~The Reconnections.
August-September, 2006
Arundhati Roy: India's Poetic, Powerful New Voice
It takes a lot to render me speechless. This 44 minute video did just that. Even as certain world leaders continue to stand deaf in the presence of gathering world concern over senseless war, racial and class distinction, and other assorted insanities, the vibration of "regular people wisdom" continues to rise! When I see her, I see a younger generation's Maya Angelou, with a twinkle in her eye and quiet fire pouring from her heart. She's profound, focused, clever, and confident. I see great things coming from this being in years to come. Well.......hey......I see great things coming from her now!
Click HERE to sit back and enjoy the video.
To Kill An American?
Oh my! It keeps on being a surprise a minute in this Danielverse, I tell ya. People have gotten pretty down on Americans lately---ever since we started playing "tough" and arrogant with our world. A person can only absorb so much of it before he begins to BELIEVE in all that negative press, to the exclusion of the REST of who and what we all are. The other day I saw a bumper sticker. It made me smile, and also cry a little bit. It was pasted on the bumper of a good old American-made car, belonging to someone who is hurting, to be sure. It said:
"I love my country...........but I think we should start seeing other people."
I heartily agree! We need to "see other people"........ we also need to hear what they see in us. Sometimes it takes an "outsider" to see beauty in a person (or a nation). This letter was written to the Associated Press recently. It was simply too precious to let pass. Many thanks...... to this dear friend in "Oz," and all good friends everywhere in the world.
To Kill an American
You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.
So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is . So they would know when they found one. (Good one, mate!!!!)
"An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.
An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.
An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.
An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.
An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world.
The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence , which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.
An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.
When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!
As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan . Americans welcome the best of everything...the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least.
The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty , welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America
Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.
So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.
Paradox
What can we say about today's world? It's a MIND FIELD, and everywhere we look, there are contradictions in logic to BLOW APART our ability to make clear sense of things. The United States funds rockets to help Israel blow up Lebanon. Then, we send aid to the Lebanese, who have been blown up by those rockets.
There is a "case" to be made for each action. The purpose of this writing is not to question motives or reasoning, but simply to state that paradoxes are springing up everywhere. The real trick is taking in a paradox that is represents (seemingly) conflicting actions or motives, and holding it within.........so that the energy of both opposites can permeate us to the center of our being. THAT is the "Inner Armageddon," which the Reconnections speak about in many of their transmissions.
One of my favorite writers, Rainer Maria Rilke, had this to say about Paradox:
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. LIVE the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
The other night, at a local Club Recon Meeting, I initiated a group meditation around the tragic shootings that had just occurred in Downtown Seattle---where a Pakistani Man walked into the Jewish Federation Building in Belltown and said: "I am a Moslem, and I am angry at Israel." He then opened fire on whoever was in his path, leaving one woman dead and sending five more to the hospital. My focus was on that pain, and I said to the group: "One of the paradoxes that are in question here is the dichotomy called "peace at any price (on one side of the spectrum) and open and rage-filled attacks (on the other)." I wanted us to have a go at LIVING the paradoxes in our Group Consciousness, if only for an hour.
Before we began that meditation, however..... someone in the room off-handedly shared an anecdote about a member of another ethnic group (neither Jewish nor Arab) who had been stopped by local police for speeding, and had acted in a strange and hostile manner. I mindlessly chimed in with a few (somewhat negative) anecdotes of my own regarding this same group, and admitted I didn't know what their problem was. One woman remarked that she didn't like categorizing people in groups. I nodded and we let it go at that. It wasn't until days later, when another Club Recon member brought the subject up again that I realized the conflict and contradiction that was present within me (and in us) in that moment.
The words "Politically Incorrect" ring loud in our mass mind these days. Although I didn't blatantly condemn this ethnic group in my statements (I simply shared a few negative experiences with a few of them), I definitely committed a faux pas, as Group Facilitator....setting a negative tone, which activated us into our own experience of "living the question," rather than becoming the answer. When we all left that night, there was an UNREST in us.....with many things (seemingly) left unsaid. As the days go by, more group members are speaking........and the picture of that "heaviness" I felt is becoming clearer.
Our current social fixations about being "Politically Correct," in my opinion, are simply attempts by humanity to STEP AROUND these Mind Fields.......kind of like walking on eggshells........so that none of us has to fully examine the unconscious prejudices which inevitably raise their ugly heads at every turn in life. Though it's always easier to be wise in our choice of words---especially in regards to those with whom we have not yet gained a level of complete intimacy---things do happen, and consequences flow from those events.
That Pakistani Man in Seattle said: "I am angry at Israel" and he started shooting. In the meeting, I shot my mouth off, saying "I am angry at ____________" (ethnic group), and, in so doing............I unwittingly TOOK ON THE PARADOX..........so that the Middle East Conflict could be GROUNDED IN MY WORLD, so that it doesn't simply remain some distant, detached, philosophical debate.
"The Great Reconnector" (not!) has a bit of animosity and prejudice rattling around inside him?" Well, yes......I dare say. One of the primary reasons I have been given the task of spreading a Oneness Message is that I, at my core, can be VERY self-protected and separated at times. Teachers teach what they most need to learn. And I have some powerful voices, teaching through me at times, just so I can hear their message of reconnection over and over. A Conscious Channel doesn't get to "leave" like trance channels do. In a sense, the Guides give me a front-row seat........saying to me: "Sit here. Listen up. You might learn something."
Am I sorry I didn't catch on to my faux pas at the time? Yes, absolutely. But I also know that there is purpose in everything. After all, Mel Gibson's drunken debacle also rides high in today's news. And isn't there a bit of Mel in all of us? Were those nasty words he used with the cop created by alcohol, or were they actual indicators of his reality within? I would probably say BOTH. As each of us struggle with our many paradoxes within, we earnestly hope our politics (and good manners) will keep us safe from their appearance outside. But sometimes..........that which has earnestly been kept hidden, suddenly spews forth.............
The leaders of today's world.......be they Arab, Israeli, American, Russian, Chinese, or whomever.........are trying to be strong and decisive about resolving all these paradoxes cropping up within humanity at this time. Most of them, however, are not willing to LIVE THE QUESTIONS......to fully embody the paradox.......so that internal maturity can be attained. What did Rilke say? "The answers are not being given to you because you would not be able to live them."
Life and death decisions are being made by old men in comfortable war rooms, sending young men and women (who they do not know) to die in trenches for their lofty purposes. Meanwhile, their own sons and daughters (for the most part) remain safe at home. It's like that Star Trek episode, where two nations had been at war for so many centuries they simply turned the whole thing into a video game. If a "hit" was recorded in your sector on the planet---you simply reported to an "extermination station" so that the fruits of war could be dispatched in a neat and 'civilized' way." The real life-changer for those two societies came when The U.S.S. Enterprise became one of the "casualties."
The agony of war continues today, for the most part, because those who initiate war (who make the actual decisions) do not directly experience all the grim results of those decisions. This is also true for "armchair quarterbacks" who sit at home, watching CNN.
It seems that it's NOT really "war" until someone you know dies in it. For many of us (our leaders included)......."collateral damage" doesn't mean much as long as it is someone else's kid that is brought home in a body bag. Did terror exist on the planet before September 11, 2001? You bet it did. But the "War on Terror" didn't exist, officially, until the U.S. felt its sting. Our "U.S. Enterprise" had finally become one of terror's casualties.
That, too, is a paradox. And it's the reason we send bombs to Israel and aid to Lebanon. BOTH SIDES of the equation are rattling around inside us now. We think certain things, but we also FEEL other things. We are HUMAN.........and that is what makes this whole business such a gut-wrenching affair.
THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (click here)
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"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned,
so as to accept the life that is waiting for us."
--Joseph Campbell
Do Something BRAVE today! (And then run like hell!)
Izzat Phunny, or What?
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