Silent no more

I wonder what were her thoughts as she walked hand-in-hand with her husband on that warm May evening? I wonder if her last thoughts were of her unborn baby, her beloved husband and the hope for a new life together? I hope her death came quicker than the awareness that it was her own father who cast the first brick to her head, killing her.  

The world's oppression of women, especially in heavily patriarchal cultures, is desperately calling out to us, begging us to all awaken to the oppression in our own lives and those of our sisters, mothers, grandmothers and daughters. Nothing will ever be the same again. Once you realize your soul has been in bondage, a funny thing happens.  It's suddenly not in bondage anymore. That awakening has to spread across the world, into every pocket, enclave, home and community.

The tears of billions of women in varying stages of liberation are giving birth to a new generation of feminine liberation. The voices of those weeping alone tonight all over the world - from heart break, soul loss or physical torture, silently suffering in a million different ways - are being heard at last.

This includes the more than 200 Nigerian school girls being held captive by Boko Haram. Their fate remains uncertain and who can imagine what they are suffering presently? I pray God is protecting them.

This week, when I first read about a young Pakistani woman, three months pregnant, who was stoned to death by her own father, brothers and their male accomplices, while her beloved newlywed husband stood by helplessly unable to save her, I was shocked.  I couldn't breathe.  My heart was profoundly wounded by that unbelievable cruelty. As an unbearable deep ache within me took my breath away, I felt physically sick. I quickly turned the page of the newspaper. I didn't want to know this could happen anywhere. I attempted to turn away, pretend that it wasn't true as I have so many, many times when I've read or heard about the unbelievable injustice, exploitation, use and abuse of innocent women virtually everywhere - Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, America, even Portland. 

From sex trafficking in America to the sale of pre-pubescent girls by their families into marriages to much older men in the Middle East, it's too hard to comprehend such things can happen, much less speak up, stand up and wake everyone else to this great evil.

But, earlier today, headlines on CNN made an even more disturbing revelation unavoidable.  I read the incomprehensible. This woman's husband had killed his first wife a few years earlier so he could marry her. 

At first, I wondered if she knew that and what kind of man would do that and how could she love such a man and risk her own life to be with him. Then came the realization of the terrible tragedy of it all. Women who are caught in such a culture don't know any better. As much as they are victims, so are their oppressors. They participate, unwillingly perhaps, in the continuation of the ultimate dysfunctional culture. They accept their lower status and attempt to navigate among abusers as part of their everyday lives. This young wife, soon to be a mother, had traded one family of abusers for another.  Her husband like her own father and brothers are all victims of this hideously ugly ignorance.  Under the spell of this dark systemic evil all is lost - body and soul. Life itself will not endure this silently any longer.   

Have all their souls been silenced, numbed by fear and ignorance? I can't comprehend what causes a father to put a noose on his daughter's neck and cast bricks against her skull until the life in her is cast out.  What kind of cultural brainwashing could go against the natural loving bond of a father and daughter? In other parts of the world, fathers die everyday protecting their wives and children.That has been how it always has been.  What would allow this to happen? 

And if, as some say it has, this has happened for over a thousand years why are we only waking up to this obvious evil now?  I would suggest that we have collectively, finally, evolved to a place of absolute non-acceptance.  We cannot stand by and watch this happen as we've watched the dictator Bashar Assad torture and commit genocide against his own people in Syria, a once beautiful country long touted as an Eden, as one of the most fertile and vibrant countries in the world.  

As this long foretold, newly emerging Golden Age is calling us all to the awareness of our unity as a human race, slowly, yet virulently, it will not tolerate this kind of prejudice against women or the cruel, merciless exploitation and oppression of any who are marginalized victims. The new age will not be silent. Our tears will be heard and are being heard. If the world is silent, nonchalant, unresponsive to such cruelty, the angels of justice, those invisible hands that orchestrate life itself, will give back to those what they have given.  

"Justice is mine," they say, the Lord has declared.  And, while I don't believe in justice, it seems this Pakistani husband had his beloved wife taken from him as he had taken his first wife's life.  While that isn't justice, because justice cannot restore the lives of those two innocent women, it clearly makes one sit up and listen.

With all that in mind, I share the following that I received in my e-mail this morning.  It seems fitting, especially, given the great birth pains of the divine feminine, today. She, who has been silenced into subservience, self-exiled from her own creative life, murdered, beaten, tortured, rejected, abandoned to die at the hands of those she trusted, will not be silent any longer.  She is us as we are all one with each other.  If a woman suffers as this woman did, or as the 200 school girls, or the shakled and brutally tortured imprisoned person in one of Assad's dark prisons in Syria,  or the missing girls in America or the countless women who are sexually traded, assaulted, raped and abused everywhere, everyday - we all suffer.  

We cannot be silent anymore.  Everyone of us has to reach for our soul and speak out, dream our biggest dreams and rekindle our own souls, breakout of the closet our too long repressed  passion for our lives.  Together we are one and only as one will we rise into the full stature of our collective humanity.  

Eve has tasted the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and she will never be silenced again.  Taste it.  It is life itself.

    

This post comes from a friend of the "Standing on the Side of Love Campaign" and contains personal and community reflections and resources about sexism, patriarchy, and sexual assault. Trigger Warning for sexual assault and violence. There is no greater agony than  bearing an untold story inside you. -Dr. Maya Angelou This past week, another tragic mass shooting occurred in Isla Vista, California. This time, the shooter released several videos and a manifesto that made clear his distaste for many people, especially, but certainly not limited to, women. In these materials, the shooter expressed his beliefs that women should be judged on their appearance and that he was owed sexual experiences from women. Also this past week, we also lost a great American hero, Dr. Maya Angelou. Assaulted as a young child, Dr. Angelou did not speak for five years, believing her words brought on the death of her perpetrator. She later found her voice and used it to raise awareness about the many times she experienced sexual violence and assault throughout her lifetime in over 30 works including autobiographies, anthologies of poetry, books for children and more. She taught countless women the importance of sharing our stories to release the guilt and shame we might otherwise internalize after experiencing sexual violence. And on a personal level, this past week I was sexually assaulted.  Shortly after the Isla Vista shootings, the #YesAllWomen Twitter hashtag sparked a nation-wide conversation on misogyny and patriarchy, and I had a burning desire to share my story. These milestones all occurring this week make it so clear to me that patriarchy still rules our society, that sexual assault and misogyny are not limited to one incident but are a ubiquitous threat, in varying levels, to all of us. The humanity of every person is threatened by this reality. I wanted to share my story both to help me heal personally, and to provide information that yes, all women, and all people of all gender identities might find useful. Immediately after the assault, friends and family pointed me to resources that have helped me profoundly. I hope all of you reading this have never experienced, and will never experience sexual assault or violence. Sadly, statistics and personal experience force us to acknowledge and bear witness to the fact that far too many women, far too many people, will have to suffer through this as well. If you, or a loved one, experience sexual assault, here are some points you may find helpful: • Ask for and accept help as you are able and willing: This might be something that is usually hard. I realized early on I needed to be honest with a close circle of people about what happened so that I could have their support. I also reached out immediately to a local rape crisis center and survivor’s advocacy network. To find information on your own local resources visit: RAINN and the National Center for Victims of Crime. • Be prepared to make difficult decisions: The circumstances of every assault are different, but in my case, like so many others, I knew my assailant. There were many things that needed to happen immediately so I could be in a safe space away from harm, and that was the most important thing I needed to focus on. You or your loved one might also be confronted with many other immediate decisions, like whether to go to a hospital to get a “rape kit” done, when to reach out to sexual assault detectives, or deciding to press charges. People will likely give you conflicting advice, something I experienced over and over. I was also told: “ultimately it is up to you to decide”, as if that would be comforting. It wasn’t. I didn’t ask to be assaulted in the first place, and it felt like I had this huge burden of making all of these deeply uncomfortable decisions that felt overwhelming. I got through it by practicing self-care while journaling to see what felt like the right things to do for me. You may find creative expression might be something that helps you as well. • Remember that ending patriarchy and misogyny will take work: Transforming the way we treat ourselves and each other will take lots of love, compassion and time. But we have to take action today to ensure that the normalization of violence against cisgender and transgender women, genderqueer and gender non-conforming people ends. For more information on transformation check out Black Feminism Lives, Against Patriarchy: 20 Tools for Men to Further the Feminist Revolution and the UUA Reproductive Justice Curriculum for Congregations. For a few days after my sexual assault happened, all I wanted to do was scream with rage. In fact, one day I had to do just that. I parked my car in an almost vacant lot, turned a warrior women song on full blast, so loud my car shook, and I screamed. I screamed until my face hurt, until I let all that rage and anger and fear out of me, so it wouldn’t stay inside and become toxic. Then I made a very conscious decision to stop screaming. I turned off the music, and sat very still. Later, I wrote some words from Dr. Angelou in my journal: You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. One thing you might consider doing is sharing this story with others in your lives, so they have access to these resources. You might also want to share your own story, perhaps anonymously like me, or with your own voice—whatever feels most comfortable and safe to you. In the words of Dr. Angelou: History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. I ask you to join me so that collectively we can change the long history of sexual violence in our communities. Listen to the stories shared by people directly impacted by violence. Our collective future of love and liberation depends on it. Signed, #YesAllWomen PS: #YesAllWomen has acted as an important rallying call in recent days as people share stories of systemic and personal violence that is normalized. We recognize that people with many gender identities are impacted by violence. Let us begin with working for the human rights of all people to be respected.

Above photo:  https://sites.stedwards.edu/andrewkf/2014/04/30/incarnation-and-the-dignity-of-women/

Blocking infectious negativity

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. 

I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.        

                   Matthew 10: 34 - 37

                                                                                    

The Columbia River crossing, dividing Oregon and Washington, is only half a mile wide and yet that half mile is as vast as my imagination. Each morning as I cross that beautiful river, I am reminded of The Peace Bridge in Buffalo, New York, which separates and connects the U.S. and Canada. That international boundary also contains a magical quality, but nothing quite like the Columbia in the early morning as the sun rises over Mt. Hood and the river is still blanketed by the early morning mist. There is an almost poetic surreal essence about the river in the morning.

As lovely as it is, it is yet a boundary, a division between two very different states.  With the frequent crossing, I could easily forget - if it weren't for the view and the long traffic jams on the bridge - that I was leaving one state and entering another.

The Columbia River crossing is a kind of sacred river for me. Each morning and each evening as I make that crossing, I leave behind in that other world all its cares and worries, its dramas and emotional turmoils. I shift my mind from one world to another. 

The Columbia River crossing is also a spiritual sword, a dividing marker, clearly separating two very different worlds as I work in Oregon and live in Washington. Work can be stressful. I am challenged by a supervisor who doesn't understand the spiritual life in the way in which I understand it and express it in my work choices and writing.  This job was not my best choice, but here I am anyway. How did this happen?  How is it that I find myself in such a place?  Nothing is an accident. Unaware, I attracted this situation to myself to be experienced and then healed and ultimately replaced by a new (and yet to come) situation that more closely reflects what I want to experience. 

I've realized that we all contain a kind of energetic system that has a magnetizing quality that draws to us a person, place or thing - or job - anything - that matches that same level of energy.  For example, a sad person will attract more sad people, news, events into their lives. So I'm a happy person, how did this happen?  Apparently, I had allowed my vibration to be lowered, unintentionally. So, when this job came into my life - and I use this job as an example of what happens to all of us - I hadn't yet been able to separate my mind from an infectious negativity that had seeped into my unconsciousness, until I reflected on the power of the sword to separate the world's diminishing value of  us and our incredibly awesome real self worth. We are priceless, lovable, and incredibly powerful, beyond our wildest imaginations.  

The sword is our mindful intention to clearly choose our thoughts - on all levels of consciousness.  Since we are constantly creating our life experiences through our thoughts, conscious and unconscious, these imperfect things in our lives point to yet unconscious negativity that needs remediation and transformation.  That, I think, we can do when we embrace - even love - that which repels us.  The sense of discomfort and angst is an arrow pointing toward something unconscious in us that can only be healed through self-love and the strong conscious decision to not allow your power - as in your emotional state and convictions - be defined, controlled or stolen. 

That is the only real power anyone has - what they are thinking and how they choose to respond to any given situation.  However, we truly have to be aware there are wolves in sheep's clothing and they do come to steal our power.  If we fight them, they win.  If we love them, we win, but in doing that we have to be aware of why we're doing it and remember that we are also choosing not to be controlled.  That sense of restored power will lead us to an even deeper and greater inner peace and joy once we've created what we want, but to get there we have to transform the obstacle that plaques us today. 

The sword is a powerful metaphor for that which separates - flesh from bone - human from human - and so it is a powerful and effective metaphor for separating our conscious thoughts and emotions from the world's onslaught of negative programing that seeps like poison from our news casts, our politicians, our banksters, our parents and our children.  We are all unwitting co-conspirators in this massive outpouring of all things anti-life, anti-creation, hugely negative and spiritually poisonous and emotionally disturbing.  There is violence in every breath.  We have all done this. We've all found ourselves gossiping, or listening to gossip or commenting on the latest round of news to pour off the front page. Negativity is infectious.  It is slowly becoming "the new normal."

The Light of God warned us - through the wisdom of Jesus the very human man who was also fully filled with the light of God in His own spiritual maturity - about this.  He often said, "You are in the world but not of the world."  We have to, at his urging, become vigilant by consciously setting our inner minds to recognize what is toxic to the spirit and block it mentally.  We have to remember who we are and remain mindful of that at all times. It may be in precisely this context that He urged us to love our enemy, love those who hate us.  Why would we want to do that?  Because it will raise your power level to a higher vibration, making your own love stronger, and make you more effective creators, and also draw you closer to an authentic encounter with God. 

We can monitor our thoughts by watching our feelings, our emotions.  Our emotions are a thermometer to what is in our consciousness. So, when your boss is in your face, you can choose to respond humbly, kindly and openly, while reminding yourself that this moment is a sacred opportunity to expand your own creative ability, your own power.  The more you do it, the less often she'll show up at your desk shaking her head and the paper in her hand. We also maintain our power because we chose to be positive which refuses her the opportunity to downgrade our power, which is another word for stealing it. A co-worker occasionally leaves angry because his power is undermined every day.  If he could stay positive, despite anything our boss does or says, and stay focused on being joyful and mentally self-determining, he could stay free, liberated from another person's bad mood, and in joy. Joy is evidence the spirit is free of the negative influences of the world.

So, when we set our emotional gauge to joy or love or peace or healing - or even to the sheer power of pure unconditional love - we need to lock it there.  The world - of which we are not - will attempt to infect that peace, that joy, that love in an effort to steal our inner power, the only real power there is in an otherwise  power-hungry world.  When we react to anything outside our inner chosen realm of peace, we feed it and fan the flame of unrest. So, we need some kind of boundary in our mind that separates us from these two worlds.  For me, it's the river.  For Jesus it was a sword. He was never a proponent of violence and yet he knew the most vicious crimes are in our minds and so to separate our thoughts, the image of a sword may have been the better choice.  The mind understands what a sword does and so to separate two different realms - only a sword could do that.  

He also knew - as we have come to see lately - terrorism, evil, will suck us in through the abduction - either spiritually, emotionally, psychologically or sadly physically - of our children, our parents, our loved ones. The most insidious evil from the dark side attempts to draw us off our chosen path through the words and actions of our closest family members.  If, as in the case in Nigeria today, our children are taken, we have no choice but to go after them. Wouldn't we do anything for our children or our parents and siblings?  Of course we would.  

But, on another level, would we forfeit our own souls to follow them into the violence of the dark side?  That is where awareness is being called for. Do we care so much or need so much their approval that we would abandon our own resolve, our own inner choices to be accepted by them? Right there is where Jesus' sword comes down, separating us. He would say, "no."  

If we allow ourselves to be dissuaded off our path, away from our joy and love and light, we have nothing left to give, to shine out, with which to inspire others.  We have to manage our thoughts as well as if not better than how we manage our financial lives.  We have to be as careful about what we allow in our minds, even what we are thinking about, as we are not to consume toxic foods,

We have to draw up sides within our minds so when we see the news, we can see it but not allow our emotional natures be overcome by it.  There is horror all around us, sadness everywhere, crime everywhere, and yet there is also a watery, mystical garden in there also, blooming with radiant colors, brimming with joy and light-filled high places of love and peace.

We are called to a higher standard. We are called to the abundant life, that authentic promised land of inner peace flowing like "milk and honey." We are called to be a light to the nations.  We are called to be vehicles for the holy in an unholy land.  And, so, we are called to be very aware of our thoughts. I also think if we are very good at this, we may become able to enter the other side of the river, or the sword, that place of toxic thought and darkness, while remaining on the side of light by keeping our minds fully steeped in our love and joy and peace and forgiveness. I think that is what he is asking of us. Since "the kingdom" is an inner realm, I think this is what is meant and is urgently needed today.

Moon over Washington, DC

At its zenith, last night's gorgeous moon, expanding in radiance in its steady ascension, reflected back to us Earth's own rising spirit.

There is beauty everywhere.  Life is still an amazing, luminescent and mysterious - and terrible - adventure. We are amazed all the time.  Last night's full lunar eclipse, at first glowing like an enormous lantern, was at the very least a reminder of the awesome, genius of creation itself.  A rock in the sky, shining back to Earth her own tempestuous evolving state of affairs - tranquil, idyllic, aesthetic - even poetic - in some areas and dissentious, rebellious, dark and messy in others.

"All of creation travails as a mother in childbirth," St. Paul wrote in Romans 8:22 (my paraphrasing)

A priest friend of mine once said to a parishioner who was lamenting a difficulty he was facing, "In order for an airplane to ascend and fly, it needs resistance from the air flow beneath it."

As we are all challenged in own own uniquely personal prescription for soul-growth, we will also all spiral through profoundly dark times, painful challenges, so difficult that we may come to doubt even the wisdom, genius and love of our Creator and the creation process itself.  In order for an experience to be truly disconnected from any of our support resources, it has to stand alone in its sense of reality, and that's a terribly dark place.  In short, you have to come to the end of your rope, and then step off into the abyss.

Although Søren Kierkegaard said that it is only then, in the air, off the cliff, that we find or experience faith, I might add that even then, we will remain in the dark for as long as it takes for our soul to evolve during that gestational period. That time period may be moments or years. It takes as long as it takes. It is a birthing process but we are not our own mother or midwife.  We are not in control of it, despite how much we thrash and cry out. We are at the mercy of something else, someone else, so awesome, so authentic, that it's simply ineffable. 

When we are completely out of resources, when there is no hope - none, period - only then will our soul, stirring breathlessly deep in our subconscious turn its face to God.  Then, miraculously - no other word comes close - God does act. It is always what is right, what is needed, but it seems to only come when we're ready.  I don't understand any more than that.  

Then, the music resonates, the wine flows, the children play, the flowers bloom, the sun shines and all is well again. The sun comes out after the rain, and as we take it all in, it even seems the dark death we'd gone through makes all the joyous sounds of the light so much sweeter.

And, so it is.  Life is often a mirror of all that - the dark, the light, the tempestuous and the tranquil.  It is awesome and in some inexplicable way, one which we never dreamt we would admit to while in the dark, it is all good, truly wonderful.

Last night's amber hue, cast across a brilliantly white luminescent moon, reminded us of Earth's own on-going processes, passionately real, terribly awesome.  And, it is like a childbirth, painful and yet each spiral of dark, that rings around to light, brings forth a new part of our collective soul.  Humanity is giving birth to herself, evolving, growing and reaching together as we grow up, becoming  a little bit more authentic, transparent and passionately alive each time.

(Above photo of ruby-red lunar eclipse courtesy of Jared Pias of Washington, D.C.)

Marius

Beautiful Marius in the Coppenhagen Zoo  

Conscious, sentient, gentle-spirited, Marius looks out at those who visit him each day wondering if they are also. Maybe not so much because he was recently killed at the Coppenhagen Zoo to make way for more animals!

Copenhagen Zoo kills 4 lions, weeks after shooting giraff
By Laura Smith-Spark and Bharati Naik, CNN
Updated 11:47 AM EDT, Wed March 26, 2014

(CNN) -- A Danish zoo that made international headlines last month when it killed a healthy giraffe is once again in the news after it killed four lions to make way for a new male.The lions were killed Monday, said Tobias Stenbaek Bro, a spokesman for the Copenhagen Zoo.

Shattered unity

 “My prayer is ... that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are 

  in me and I am in you. May they also be in us ..." John 17: 20 -21

In the debris of antiquity lie the shattered pieces of a once global civilization stretching beyond the reaches of our collective awareness. It seems we were once one humanity, one family. Artifacts dating back many thousands of years are the scattered remnants of a long gone civlization. They indicate there was a time when we spoke one language, communicated and traveled throughout the planet. Then, something terrible happened, suddenly plunging the world into chaos, then darkness, isolating us in pockets around the world. Only recently has the internet and satelite communication restored global communication reconnecting us.

All of this teases the imagination.  What were we like?  Is there something innately human that we might rediscover about ourselves that we once were.  Were we peaceful back then?  Is there something different about us today that wasn't part of our collective psychological makeup then? 

Today, it seems as much as we have always wanted peace and unity, it has eluded us because we didn't know what happened or even that anything happened. Consequently, we lost an understanding of who we were or of our full potential. A full portrait of who we were and potentially could be still remains a mystery.

While we may be able to see who we've become, we don't yet see who we once were or who we could be. If we could understand this, maybe we would reimagine ourselves back into a Golden Age. The key to that vision is discovering what happened to that once glorious period when we were whole. What shattered us and how do we heal?

Today, pieces of that ancient race who we once were and one day will be again, seem to call to us from the bottom of oceans or remote parts of the planet that are ice covered but were once florid landscapes. 

According to archaeologists, the Earth has experienced catastrophic planetary events - two global deluges, calamitous comets and another global flood caused by the rapid melting of the last ice age.  These natural planetary changes induced tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquakes, which wiped out entire civilizations, many times over, sending us reeling in absolute terror, even fearing God had punished us, as we struggled desperately to survive, feed ourselves, and restore communities.

Human beings have faced mass starvation, somehow survived heinous tyrannical oppressive rulers, endured corrupt religious persecutions, armadas, inquisitions which have successfully controlled our minds with fear, terrorism, racial prejudice, genocidal extinction and waves upon waves of global misery - and it continues - all because of our collective fear. It is a cycle of fear, spun possibly originally, by living precariously on a volatile planet itself. 

And, more recent discoveries stemming from our ancient pre-history, reveal other terrors involved in daily life. The ancient pyramid in Crimea, which was built during the Jurassic period (as hard to believe as that is) means we would have lived among wild beasts who stalked us incessantly. 

Yet, just as adults are responsible for healing their dysfunction resulting from childhood abuse, we might heal humanity from those ancient terrors which are buried deep within our collective psyche just as the ancient cities lie at the bottom of the world's largest oceans. Since we know now that memory is carried in our DNA, we know that DNA also carries memories of our ancient terror and acts it out in all our fear-driven violence across the planet. 

This suggests that our collective human childhood has deep, buried memories from tragic events that wiped us out at least five times. It seems the stories of Noah and Gilgamesh and the Rig Veda's story of Manu and the fish are all true. And, there are others, so many others that we now know our ancient writings are loaded with real historical truth. 

On the other hand, through the discoveries of anthropologists we are getting a glimpse of an ancient Golden Age, a scientifically advanced time, even more advanced than we are today in many ways. We can see faintly we were once truly awesome.

While sorting through all this I can't help wonder if there is a way we could recapture that original essence of what it is to be human? Is it possible to return to a Golden Age, a time of creative prosperity, an atunement with the stars and galaxies, a knowledge of how the universe works along with a true and lasting peace?

It may be like surveying fragments of a shattered bowl and imagining what it might have looked like in its original unblemished state. Aren't we like that?  While we are aware of our global dysfunction, do we have any idea really who we were and potentially who we could be? Lately, we've even begun to ask where have we come from. We'd always assumed we were created, or evolved into being, right here on Earth, but there are those who suggest we came from another star system and have benevolent brothers and sisters, fully human, like us, among us now, helping us heal from our ancient nightmares.

Scientists have revealed the universe is holographic which suggests the whole is evident in each individual, microscopically.The whole world's modus operandi is revealed in the individual. For example, we know a severely traumatized person is psychologically fractured and dysfunctional. While broken, one can not envision one's potential. It eludes them and remains only in potential until he or she heals. Evidence of that individual's earlier trauma is revealed in its projection, shadowing his or her life. 

A person's potential emerges only once he or she has faced and transcended that earlier traumatic event, integrated it and become whole. Since wholeness is essential for empowerment and creativity, neither the individual or humanity can reach full functionality until all working parts, are working. Until then, the individual and humanity blindly limp along, weak, powerless, destructively exploiting others while fearfully hiding their deep hidden truth from others (and self) behind a mask. Until they awaken from their illusion, they remain stagnated in a state of perpetual fear, subconsciously fearing what happened to them would happen again. What is it we are all afraid of?

A fractured "self" is a broken soul, the human race is a broken people. As an individual reaches for healing and reintegration of its fractured self, humanity is also. 

Humanity is like that shattered ancient pottery, scattered across the planet. As we heal, become reintegrated and whole, we will begin to experience our power, grow and evolve. 

As I write this, Ezekiel 37:1-14 comes to mind, lending an image of a dead world, dry bones in the desert, into which God breathes life. It suggests that our way back to our Golden Age unity is one individual at a time until a wave of healed humanity forms and arises. In addition, healing our world happens as we each heal. As we learn to love ourselves, we become empowered and equipped to love others. There is no short cut to this. We can't evade our own inner work first.  

Through self-discovery, one becomes aware the outer behavior directly mirrors the inner spiritual damage which had been projected outwardly all of one's life. In short, we do what was done to us, but we don't remember what was done to us, nor are we aware of what we are doing. Thus, the cycle of abuse continues through eons of generations. 

Humanity, collectively, is doing that on a global stage.  This may be like Karl Jung's collective unconscious. We share in a long forgotten, subconscious memory of something terrible, traumatic, and utterly devastating. We know this because we have been projecting mirrored images of that buried memory all around the world, everywhere, in unimaginable horrific detail.  

It seems  there was a time back in the midnight of time when we might have known this and lived as one global family. Were we peaceful to each other back then, when we spoke one language, lived within one culture? 

So, to rewind back to the time before the shattering. It seems there was once a time when the human race was like a beautiful piece of fine china and something happened that shattered it into a million pieces and each of those pieces evolved separately. Over thousands of years, each piece evolved separately. 

The evidence that something so terrible once happened to us is in the fear that keeps us fighting and waring against each other - brother against brother - nation against nation. That fear that came in the wake of global disasters seems programmed in our DNA. And, rather than come together, our fear pulls us further apart threatening our planet's very survival.

Yet, despite whatever understanding archaeologists and anthropologists are offering us, we remain separated, split apart from each other.  We are still primitively divided by language and nations, highly competitive, and prejudiced, fearful of each other.  We know that if we remain fractured, continuing to injure further our once beautiful integrity, we will devolve further rather than take the next step in our planetary evolution.  

As much as we know we need to come together as one again, how do we bond together as one humanity, joined with the love in our hearts, our compassion for each other, our common hope, and shared breath?  

I stumbled across a thought - a simple, single one-liner kind of thought that has been simmering in the back of my mind for some time now that I'd like to share here.  It is a new spin on an ancient theme that cracks open the mystery and would point us in the right direction if we can unglue our minds from our misguided collectively believed fear-based guidance.  

For forever, we've individually and collectively been giving our power away to those we fear have something we want or those who control our destiny. We have projected our fear out into the universe on a god who has come to represent our ultimate authority. We have set up a system of thought (religion) that is a kind of idolatry. We are bowing down to something that doesn't exist in the way we think it does. We are looking for God in the wrong place. We have become a world of the blind leading the blind.  

If we really knew who God is, we would realize that God is asking us to do the opposite.  God is asking us to assume our own authority, be our own masters, draw God's power into our beings, and become powerful.  In that state of personal empowerment comes great vision, great wisdom, utterly wonderful intelligence and the power to love in the way Jesus taught us to love.  When we are our own authority, self empowered, we can love our enemy.  We can stop the reciprocity game - an eye for an eye.  That primitive reactionary defensive behavior stems from a terrible ancient fear - a fear that comes from the time when we were fractured, shattered into a million pieces, and scattered across the globe.

It is time for us to know: there is no one above us and no one below us. No one has authority over you or me and we have no authority over another. Each of us is sovereign beings, with the same rights and privileges of another. We are our own master and everyone else is his or her own master. There is no one who judges us, or controls us. There is no one who can destroy us because we can't be destroyed. Even death is only a doorway into another living. 

If we could deeply integrate those thoughts, our oppressive, and oppressing fear would dissolve. Without liberating our minds from fear, we remain subject to everyone else's fear. As it is now, our fear feeds another's fear in a self-perpetuating fashion inviting the other to the fear dance. That fear is a powerful phantom of our long oppression. It is as powerful and real as we have made it.  

Each fear thought feeds that collective phantom a little bit more.  Now, though we have created it, it controls us. It is in us - all of us - every one of us in our own way, because we are all cut from the same cloth. We are all acting out our ancient bondage to an ancient fear. Our personal dramas, community crime, political abuses, corporate exploitation, international conflicts all mirror that one collectively shared thought. As we all reenact that fear age after age, we are unconsciously attempting to eradicate it from our experience. We are afraid of something so deep that we can't seem to reach it to end it.  Whatever happened to us back in the midnight of time has left the entire human race in a perpetual state of posttraumatic stress syndrome.

Yes, we love and love deeply, passionately, and all long for that day when paradise will scoop us up and enfold us in her motherly arms.  Our longing is so dear, so precious.  We all long for that and seek it in our personal relationships, but that dark repressed fear snuffs out that light, drawing our world back into the nightmare.

We all share a collective nightmare from eons past. It is imprinted in our DNA and we have all shared that DNA, so we are already one family.  But, as masters of our own lives, autonomous, intelligent and self aware, even mindful of our thoughts and choices, we can reclaim our power and step away from our fear as we feel it rising up our spine. 

The future begs for a different reality than the misery we have thus induced and repetitively experienced. It is an insanity that has run its course.  It is time to end it. Just stop. Each one must put down his fear and choose courage. The planet's need for cleansing is equal to the cleansing our collective human soul needs.  

We are so marvelously loved by our Father and are part of our Father just as our own children are part of us.  We carry our Father's spirit in our heart, His love deep within our souls. We know on some level the sheer awesome power of His love and yet are afraid it would overwhelm us, overcome us - possibly destroy us.  Maybe we are afraid of who we really are.  Our vision has been stunted by a dimly lit consciousness for so long that the sun blinds us from our true sight. 

We need to know that His love, which is within us, is magnetic, resonating with the pulse, the OM, of the universe. It is incredibly powerful and capable of healing our world if we come together as one. As one body, loving bravely, we will courageously face down the epidemic forces of fear that still seek to control, manipulate, intimidate, and govern our lives, hijacking our sense of authority over our own lives and decisions, stealing our meager incomes by deceptive corporate advertising and multi-national conglomerates, which feed the gluttonous, yet empty, souls of mega millionaires.  

That totalitarian mammoth evil can be faced down when we really awaken to the truth that there is no one better than any one of us individually, or worse either. We are all our own masters. There is no authority over us. There is no hierarchy of authority. We are not just a peg on some ladder, desperately holding on for fear we'll be knocked off. We don't have to beg to be alive. We can unfurl our beautiful spiritual wings and soar in joy and freedom. We will as soon as we look into the eyes of another and realize that other is just as imprisoned by our collective fear as we are.  

Only our love let loose from our fearfully frozen hearts, can glue us back together. This will be released as we accept our self-mastery, claim our divine right of full authority over our lives, and take full responsibility for our own choices, as masters, autonomous human beings, reaching for a more evolved and richer life, for ourselves and our world.  Only then will we be free and able to free another. They are as afraid of us as we are of them. Yet, we are both the same. I carry the same ancient DNA in my body as you, you breathe the same air as I, we drink the same water, listen to the same news, fear the same fears, dream the same dreams.  

When we awaken, everyone else will awaken also. When we all are awake, we can move as one joyous family, freely, happily sharing our common resources, loving powerfully and passionately. When we are all awake we will heal our world.

Underground pyramids in Crimea

Intrusion on the illusion

Gracefully, a beautiful, brilliant white seagull glided past my window at work. The sun seemed to resonate with the bird as it dipped and soared in the wind, glowing in the morning light, delighting at just being alive. In fact, the radiant little bird knew in order to fly, it had to be free. It knew nothing else.

At the time, I was heavily immersed in writing, designing and editing one of three newsletters I produce at work. While my writing is usually completely captivating, intensely drawing me into the story I'm telling, the sudden flash of those powerful wings caught my eye, causing a wonderful momentary distraction.

I had been reflecting lately on the essential need for absolute freedom for creativity to flow, unrestricted, as an unblocked river needs to flow.  It seemed the sudden distraction of the seagulls fly-by was something I needed to internalize a bit more in so many ways. 

Sometimes these themes are universal, rather than personal, and beg for exploration. Last night on the news, the media was showing enormous ice dams on rivers in Indiana and Ohio that were causing a maelstrom of troubles.  It seemed Mother Nature was teaching us something spiritually vital as much as she was summoning our attention - much like the bird's intrusion.

And like the answer to a crossword puzzle, a co-worker told me about a strange Oregon "love cult" that swept the area around the turn of the 19th century.  What seemed strange to my co-worker was that the love cult was led by a Christian minister.  I just had to laugh, but then sobered quickly as I thought about the flood of priests who have been caught doing something similar.  What does that have to do with the seagull and the blocked rivers in the northeast?  More than seems obvious.

When my co-worker showed me the picture of that minister, I was struck immediately by what I could only call a sinister look in his eyes.  His slanted and seductive gaze gave it all away.  This guy was drunk on power and knew how to manipulate people, primarily women, to gain their allegiance, "love," and power.  He won them over, heart, mind, soul and body by projecting a power image, a kind of charisma, to seduce them to give him their "power," i.e. sexual access. I thought how interesting it is that a woman's power is interconnected to her sexuality.  

They who had no sense of real self worth and power, who were like jamed up river beds, hungry, vacuous, were vulnerable to the predatory seduction of another who was equally as powerless but masqueraded as one with power. He could not have succeeded if they had been empowered. Their power was already gone by the time he entered their lives.  But, their power and sense of personal value and dignity, as all those endangered by our collective predatory, authentically powerless illusion we call "the world," was blocked. The block is multi-layered, diverse, complex and all pervasive - psychological, physical, religious, tradition, cultural norms and controls. 

Whatever it was and is, is that which exploits the weak, drains women's souls of self love and personal power, and that usually shows up on some level in their sexual prowess.  The antidote is for all of us to become healthy, strong, whole, self-empowered, fiercely courageous with a strong determination to be bold and live powerfully, enriched and enriching our experience here.

I went back to writing, but my mind was running with this thought and I wanted to detour through scripture, psychology, history, anthropology, health science, earth changes and the universality and wholeness of it all.

We know the earth changes are due to global warming. While we also know all the planets are heating up as the solar system makes her 26,000 year circuit through the Milky Way, our excessive materialism, exploitation of the natural environment for oil, urban sprawl, reduction in natural habitats for the animals and so much more, has turned up the already high planetary temperature. The result on a physical plain is a heating up which is ironically causing the sudden sub-zero temperatures in the country, which are causing the rivers to freeze up, blocking all shipping. It's interesting that nature's response is actually curing the disease. I think the metaphors are obvious. 

Concurrently, the Middle East and the Ukraine are erupting in long overdue revolutions as repressed rage is suddenly blowing off the lid of the political oppression of tyrannical rule. Meanwhile, Russia is poised, like a predatory vulture, to sweep in and take advantage of the consequent poverty which is plunging the Ukraine into an unprecedented financial vulnerability. The impulse of both the Ukraine and the Middle East toward revolution and civil war is a profound cry for freedom from oppression, from the icy tyranny that has blocked their self-determination for centuries.  

As we human beings seek greater self -expression, more personal empowerment, a greater global spiritual experience, we are going to stand up for freedom, we are going to find ways to break the ice and let the creative life force flow.  We must be free, but to break into ultimate freedom, we also need to realize unless we regain our own individuality, self-realization, spiritual autonomy, we will be victimized and preyed on by those who will corrupt the faith, use it as a lure, to seduce away our power. This is what is happening everywhere.  It is as if the world itself is crying out in its demand to free itself from the shackles of oppression on every level of life.  

It's both a global crisis and a universal call to wake up, step up and reclaim what is true.  We all need to wake up from the drunken illusion in which we are still staggering around, like drunken sailors.

If we are to respond to our life's purpose, our own destiny-call, don't we need to awaken from the seduction of our times, the call to success in worldly terms, be onguard for the wolf in sheep's clothing, who will lead us to destruction?  

In the story of the bad minister who seduced a whole colony of women, he eventually married one of them, and moved to Seattle. In a Seattle street, the woman's brother shot and killed the minister. The brother was consequently arrested, tried and acquitted. Later, the woman shot her brother. Later, in jail, she hung herself. 
  
It's evil's mad drama, but in order for evil to prevail, it must first "tie up the strong man," to paraphrase Jesus, or the strong woman. Today all of us are weak, somehow disempowered by all that goes for power in our illusion we call "realty." We are all either victims or predators, the two players in the synergistic dance of disempowerment. For us to find our power, we must all be free to be first and fed from the great well within and learn to fly and in that flight, we will encounter true beinghood. And, that's enough, isn't it? To be full of our own innate divinity and power is so awesome, so radiantly beautiful it's enough to make the sun dance at our soul flight.