Archive for the ‘Behavior’ Category

I watched CBS’s “This Week” on Sunday morning when Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, was interviewed and asked how the terrorist who tried to blow up a Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit managed to get a multiple visit U.S. visa and board the plane when he was a known security risk.  But for the quick response of a passenger who jumped the terrorist and disarmed him, the ending might have been tragic. The Director’s reply was that the system had, in fact, worked and the passengers and everything necessary came together to thwart the attempt. 

My 16 year-old-daughter was walking through our living room at the time the Director spoke those words and, without missing a step, my daughter said out loud “It wasn’t the passenger’s job. It was yours.”  It seems my 16-year-old gets it….even if the Director of Homeland Security doesn’t.

Now, one day later, it seems Director Napolitano has had a change of heart.  Within 24 hours of that  comment she has, apparently, made a startling realization. The system, it now appears, failed.
.
No kidding, Janet.

I pride myself on being able to find the higher meaning in every story.  I have found it here.

Either 1) the Director changed her mind due to the outrage that followed her comments, making it a political change of mind not necessarily an enlightened one; or 2) she really is that dense and believed the system worked as intended, or 3) absent political fallout, she will defend this Administration regardless of the correctness, truthfulness, or even logic of her assertions. 

Whichever is the case, the incident has given us insight into the necessity of replacing her as Head of Homeland Security.

It is hardly in the interest of this nation, or its citizens, to have an individual so unqualified, political and/or clueless, as Janet Napolitano in charge of our individual and collective safety.

So, let us be grateful to the Nigerian terrorist who failed at his intended purpose… but succeeded, brilliantly, at an unintended one.

We now know Napolitano must go. 

Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

The recent news about Senator Max Baucus and his behavior with a former staffer has an interesting undercurrent to it.  While on its surface the news seems to be about yet another unfaithful member of Congress who, at the very least, improperly used public monies to fund a romantic trip to Asia with a former staff member turned current live-in lover…there is a broader and more important story within the story.

Wanda Baucus, the Senator’s former wife, is speaking out on the subject and its not her first foray into the subject. 

The subject I’m referring to is the effect that the dominance of men in positions of power in Washington has had on women and, inevitably, on the country.  Both their presence in such positions as well as their complicity in failing to hold one another accountable for immoral and, at times, criminally actionable behavior. 

Now if this were the 60’s or 70’s, you’d likely think “Here we go. Another feminist male-bashing tirade.”  But its not.  We’re closing in on 2010 and both the means and the goal are of a higher order.

Wanda Baucus, a former outspoken supporter of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, has recently said that ” If the women I know in Washington in the Senate talked and said all
the things they know, this government would — I mean talk about the
revolution… this place would be turned upside down.”

She’s t alking about sexual harassment and more.

Sadly, we have become so accustomed and hardened to such revelations that when they occur we are no longer shocked.  It takes the fall of a seeming paragon of accomplishment and morality such as Tiger Woods to even phase us anymore…and even then only for a week or so.  Thereafter, we go back to business as usual.

But here’s the thing.

The country is broke. The government keeps spending money we do not have.  Millions are unemployed.  No one trusts the politicians… a state of being they’ve justifiably earned, I might add.   

I’d focus on the excesses but I think it more important to focus on the deficiency. 

The Divine Feminine has been too long absent.  

By the D ivine Feminine I do not mean feminists.  I don’t refer necessarily to women exclusively.  However,
for the most part, what has been absent and what is now being resurrected will come forth mostly by and through women. 

What I am referring to is the resurrection of that aspect of Creator’s energy that balances out the qualities and characteristics inherent in male energy. 

Male energy, in its natural state, is positive and expansive.  Female energy, in its natural state, is negative and receptive.  Be careful that your mind doesn’t immediately attach worn out definitions to any of these words.  There is nothing inherently “good’ or “bad” about the words positive or negative.  Where we run amok is when they are out of balance in relationship to one another.  S uch imbalance results in chaos which lacks the ability to self-organize.  When in balance, we are a self-organizing species.  We will return to a state of being that is the highest good for all concerned.

Absent balance, we will go the way of the dinosaur.

Which beings us back to Wanda and Max Baucus.

I know nothing about either of these people personally.  What I do know is that Max Baucus is symptomatic of a diseased and dying concentration of perverse power run amok.  Wanda Baucus is symptomatic of the emerging Divine Feminine that will, by its very presence and design, bring the human race back into the necessary balance to sustain physical life, expanded consciousness and spiritual growth.

Often following a long journey in the darkness, an emergence into the light can momentarily seem blinding.  Remember, its just momentary. Our future is here and its bright.  Just be patient and allow yourself some time to adjust to the re-emergence of the brilliant Light of the Divine Feminine.

Lately,it seems that life is too frequently stranger than fiction.  When an institution of higher learning such as Harvard University’s Ethics Center chooses to invite Eliot Spitzer to speak, I find it difficult to overlook the dire implications.

Have we lost our minds… or have just Harvard’s Administrators lost theirs?

This public servant, this former Chief Executive Law Enforcement Officer of NY, willfully violated the law while in office while prosecuting others for the very same behavior.  Historically, I think we call that hypocrisy…not to mention, in this instance, a felony. Oh, yes, and also morally reprehensible since the felony was participation in prostitution.

I find the title of the advertised lecture particularly offensive. I am offended on behalf of Ayn Rand. Anyone familiar with the economic determinist views of Rand knows that Eliot Spitzer’s ethics and morals are the very ethics and morals Rand found disgusting and detrimental to a fully functioning society that honors, above all, the individual and a commitment to truth and integrity.

I am unmoved by Harvard’s attempting to justify their choice by claiming that Spitzer’s speech will be limited to economic issues and not encroach upon ethics.  Isn’t the Bill Clinton legacy fresh enough in our minds to raise a red flag about trying to compartmentalize a role model’s behavior to fit the issue at hand?  I think the economic boon of the Clinton years, in hindsight, was not worth the moral depravity exemplified by both he and his wife lying about a pattern of morally deficient behavior. 

Such was the slippery slope, one could argue, that brought us Reality TV. And we all know how helpful and uplifting that’s been working out for us.
 
I think Eliot Spitzer should stay home and not speak at Harvard. 
I think Harvard should rescind his invitation if he does not volunteer to doso.
I think sold out ticket holders should turn in their tickets.
I think students should protest his appearance.

I think how we respond to Spitzer’s scheduled appearance will say more about us than his appearance will ever say about Harvard, ethics, or our financial future.
 
As always, the choice is ours.

Lately, we’ve been facing a lot of really important ones.

Have you noticed?

There’s an indescribable freedom that comes from letting go.  I say this without hesitation because I spent decades trying to hold on to people and things or to control outcomes.  Having given that up, I speak with certainty  about the joy of surrender….a concept that engenders fear in so many of us and yet, ironically, is the only way to know and experience Life at its best… and as intended.

Ask most people to define surrender and you’ll hears words such as as “defeat”, “subjugation”, “giving up”, “abandon”, “relinquish” or “yield.”  Even Dictionary.com gives the preferred meaning as “

to yield something to the possession or power of another; deliver up possession of on demand or under duress.”

No wonder we fear the thought of surrender.  It’s gotten a really bad rap for, well, at least two millennia!

But what if we look at surrender another way?  What’s to lose? (no pun intended).

How many of us have sought, or striven for, something or someone only to find that the “getting” is not only less exciting that the striving…but also that the “having” isn’t all we hoped for…nor does it bring us the happiness or satisfaction we believed it would?

I’d say almost everyone can identify with such experiences and feelings…probably more times than we’d like to recall.  And yet, most of us just go on repeating the same pattern… simply changing the object of our desire or the intended outcome. 

In reality, trying to control either the process or the outcome just isn’t all its cracked up to be.

So what’s the alternative? 

Spiritual surrender.

We have been misled into thinking that surrender means weakness.  But, as power is to force so spiritual surrender is to weakness.  What do I mean by this statement?

Power originates from within and radiates outward. It’s source of supply is regenerative.  It emanates from certainty.  Its goal is harmony.  Force is finite, external pressure applied against resistance.  It seeks to dominate.  Its goal is victory.

Power has nothing in common with force.

Spiritual surrender seeks to go within.  It is a conscious choice freely made to align One’s Self with a Greater Knowing.  It’s goal is Unity for the sole purpose of experiencing Love.  It is predicated upon Trust in the goodness of All Creation.  It presupposes no harm.

Weakness is a reluctant relinquishment of One’s Self to an external force which, through imagination,  has been attributed inauthentic power.  It is predicated upon fear of the unknown.  It seeks to exchange autonomy for the illusion of protection.

Spiritual surrender has nothing in common with weakness.

As I said at the outset, my conclusion is based upon my knowing. It’s not something I’ve read…although there are many versions of it in various spiritual writings.  Knowing comes from direct experience.  It is, therefore, imbued with certainty and results in an expanded consciousness.

Like power.

Like surrender.

Whenever I am about to sound like I have an agenda, I think its important to preface that supposition with a disclaimer.  So, in anticipation of any preconceived idea you may have about my political orientation, let me say at the outset that I was, until recently, a life-long Democrat.    That is no longer true.  I am currently a registered Independent. This said, let me turn to the recent White House assault upon Fox News, Glenn Beck, and countless Americans who see the world and the future of this nation differently than they.

It was my habit for many years to watch the Sunday morning television network news programs. I was always a political news junkie and enjoyed the weekly wrap-up and commentary.  It has also become my habit to listen to Glenn Beck when I can.  So what I know of what Mr. Beck espouses, and the meaning I glean from what he says, is based upon my own personal experience.

Good thing, too.

Because had I listened this past Sunday to what Chris Mathews and his guest commentators said about Beck, and those who are moved by his mission, I would think that he and they are some “right-wing-nut, tea-bagging, birthers” out to wreak havoc upon all that is good in this country.  Watching and listening to Matthews, I felt as if I was in an episode of Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone.”  What was being said was dishonest, inaccurate, and biased.  A perspective designed to support an agenda and maintain an illusion worthy of Houdini.

Which brings me to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod.

The previous Sunday, both appeared separately, and simultaneously, on two different Sunday morning network news shows to parrot, almost verbatim, a script that had obviously been predetermined.  Their script went something like this: “Fox news is not really a news outlet.  Its is more of a business with a perspective to sell and market for a profit.  Therefore, it should not be treated seriously as a news outlet but more in the manner of talk radio. Other news organizations should treat it accordingly and not follow in it’s footsteps.” (I paraphrase but the point is accurately made).  At the time I found it mildly amusing, since it is obvious that all media reporting has seemingly come to have a “perspective”…with network news NBC, CBS and ABC being no exception.

I stopped being amused when, this past week, the White House attempted to essentially blackball Fox News from the White House Press pool. Their shameful effort failed due to a momentary attack of “spinal conscience” from the other members of the pool. They said, “No Fox, no Us.”

The White House then had a change of perspective and Fox was included.

There are several lessons we can take from all of this. 

1.     Perspectives come is all colors, shapes and sizes.

2.     United we stand. Divided we fall.

3.     Freedom requires vigilant attention and rapid response.

4.     Source within for the Truth.  Perspectives change.  Only Truth is constant.

I can’t wait until next Sunday morning.  There is nothing I need to watch.

I think I’ll take a walk instead and get some fresh air.

    

    

I think anyone will agree that we are as polarized as any of us can recall in our lifetimes.  Polarization is not particularly helpful when going through profound times of transition and transformation.  After all, sayings like “United we stand…divided we fall” are founded, at some level, in Truth. At the same time, it might also be said that polarization is a direct by-product of transition itself.

So how do we deal with this seeming paradox?

I think its by recognizing that whenever change occurs, a natural state of tension and resistance is created as the parts of an organism, organization or society reorganizes and realigns itself.  As difficult as it may be to live through a realignment, it’s a necessary stage of growth.  Perhaps, the best way to transit a realignment (not to mention survive one!) is not by trying to hold on to the tail ends…thereby finding oneself whipped and flailed about in a constant frenzy…but to draw one’s energy into the center where the most stable condition possible exists.

So where’s the center?

It’s, literally, inside of you.

When remedies that previously worked and laws that once created order now seem, at best ineffective and at worst harmful, it is smart to retreat within and find solid ground amid the shifting external sands of reorganization.

This doesn’t mean you “drop out” in 60’s-hippie-type-fashion, but rather ask your own questions and find your own answers from a place within yourself.  It is futile during times of profound change to look outside yourself and seek solutions amid chaos. The best you can hope for in so doing is to be drawn into someone else’s perception of events, analysis and action.  The danger therein is that perception is time constrained. It is based upon one’s limited view at a finite point in time.

The principles that one needs to successfully traverse change are unchanging and beyond time. Since everything in the world you or anyone else can perceive is subject to change and time bound, your answers cannot possibly be found there.

If not without then within.

If you trust yourself to be able to source inner guidance and allow others the same opportunity without having to polarize their findings or your own, a core of stability can be created that will transcend and transform all that is in transition external to our true inner selves.

The paradox of unwanted but necessary polarization is thereby resolved.

As is all conflict.

Wouldn’t that be sweet.

A few nights ago I found myself with my 16 1/2 year old daughter, Zoe, seated at a Barnes and Noble waiting for Glenn Beck.  His latest book, “Arguing With Idiots” was recently released and this was an author’s book signing.  As Zoe and I ate a quick dinner nearby the bookstore, we pondered how many people would show up. 

Arriving an hour and a half early, we bought two copies of the book and were handed numbered wrist tags. Our numbers were 473 and 474.  By the time Mr. Beck arrived, there were 2000 people waiting to see him.

But not just any 2000 people. 

These were 2000 of the most polite and happy people I’ve every encountered in any one place at any one time.

Which is the first point I want to make.  No matter what misinformation the mainstream media likes to pump out, the people that are attracted to Glenn Beck and his message are not angry, right-wing revolutionary 9/12ers out to destroy all that is good in America.  In fact, these people appeared to be much of what is good about America. 

My second point is about the book itself.  I’ve read about 4 chapters. Its infuriating.  But please understand just what’s infuriating about it.  It’s the documented idiocy, incompetence and corruption of a government grown out of control and the propensity of entrenched ideological organizations to support it by advocating for policies, programs and structures that are destined to destroy all that is, in fact, good about America.

I live my life and form my opinions based upon my own personal experience.

It is my personal experience that Glenn Beck is a lightening rod for all different types of Americans who have had enough and simply aren’t going to take it anymore.  What form their opposition and resistance takes… only time will tell. 

But if Thursday night at Barnes and Noble is any indication, we (yes, I’m in) will come at this armed with knowledge, civility, and most importantly, certainty.  I doubt anyone in that crowd, or anyone else drawn in by Mr. Beck’s message, wants or intends to use any type of force to end the corrupt use of power and the politics of destruction that have become a way of life in our nation.

I said we don’t want or intend to use force.

If those in power, who have used and abused the public trust with which they were gifted, are unwilling to relinquish their death grip on the Republic… then civil disobedience will devolve into whatever is necessary. For I believe there is now no turning back.

Let us all pray that they go quietly into the night so that we, as a nation, will not someday have to paraphrase the words of Golda Meir to the Arab world:
 
         “We can forgive you for killing our sons.
          But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.”

I continue to believe in the highest good for all concerned.  I believe it is not too late. I believe that transition is always difficult… and transformation always worth it. 

Now, let us turn away from empty bumper stickers and get on with the business of real change.

    

It’s often said that teachers have an important job because the future sits in front of them for 6-7 hours every day.  If that’s true, then the most important job in the world is being a Mother because that job, just for starters, is 24/7 and no summers off. 

I know, because I am one. 

I was also a divorce lawyer for 13 years who wore a pager and had a cell phone so that I was available whenever my client’s needed me. I know what a demanding career with no down time asks, and takes, and I can say with unequivocal authority and experience….there is no comparison.

Now, we Mothers are not all great at what we do. We try hard, really hard. We make mistakes and, hopefully, at times learn from them.  We’re too often tired, under appreciated, don’t even get me started on pay, and are never quite sure if what we’re doing will help or hurt in the long run.

But its an incredible journey that has as its reward a sense of selflessness that’s hard to come by and a unique insight into what unconditional love looks and feels like.  Which is why we are often fiercely protective of our charge and its well being.

Which is also why we have to march on Washington.

We have a government, a President and a Congress, who are mortgaging the sovereignty, individuality and financial security of those for whom we are responsible: The children. 

We, and others, have tried to garner our President’s and our Representative’s attention to ask them to be more aware…more responsible…more committed to the consequences of decisions they have been too quick to make. Their response, if at all, has been long coming and woefully inadequate. 

Mothers must have patience but not in the face of disaster. There is a time and season for everything. The time for waiting is passed.  It is now the season for action. 

Every Mother who cares about the opportunities her child will have in the future to be a free citizen with the right to speak its mind without fear of reprisal and pursue its dreams without governmentally imposed limitations on how and where and to what extent those dreams can be followed… needs to put on her Bierkenstocks, Manolo Blahniks, Uggs, Nikes or, if necessary, arrive barefoot in Washington, D.C. to say, “With one voice we speak for the children and you will no longer put up for bargain sale their rights and inheritance.”

No one will deny what a Mother can do.

Think what a million of us will do.

If the White House thought it had a problem with Glenn Beck, conservative talk radio and the “organized smear campaign” against Van Jones….they better hold onto their hats as they are not likely going to be able to hold onto their jobs.

This morning, on both Glenn Beck’s radio show and, simultaneously on FOX cable TV, they ran an undercover video with audio exposing WHO ACORN IS and WHAT ACORN DOES. A portion of that video is being excerpted on the web, as I write, at Big Government.

ACORN “professionals” assist, advise and conspire to commit fraud with an undercover man and woman posing as a future Congressional candidate and a teenage prostitute who allegedly want to purchase a house in a respectable neighborhood to run a brothel.  Proceeds from the brothel will go into the campaign coffers of the man when he runs for Congress. 

The man and woman are undercover and with hidden camera and wired with a mic.

The ACORN employees are shameless criminals.

If ever there were a straw to break the Public’s back it will be this one.

ACORN employees:

    -Advise the couple how to evade filing federal taxes;
    -Proceed in misrepresenting the girl’s “job” by using the code designation for an unrelated occupation in order to qualify for federal loan monies to purchase the house;
    -Tell the teenage girl she should be proud of her prostitution;
    -Suggests the couple not discuss the 13 year-old-girls from El Salvador who are illegal and prostitutes working within the brothel or not get them social security cards because they’re not old enough to get social security.
    -Suggests the prostitute claim the 13-year-old-illegals as dependents.

ACORN is:

    -The organization from which President Obama emerged. 
    -Where President Obama learned how to community organize.
    -Having it’s employees arrested across this country, as recently as this week, for fraudulent voter registration. 
    -Along with SEIU, had the voting laws changed in Nevada in order to give Barack Obama an advantage over Hilary Clinton in the Primary that likely cost her the nomination.

Out of every bad comes a good.

This is a moment to STAND UP FOR WHAT IS RIGHT.
This is a moment to STAND FOR TRUTH.
This is a moment to say NO MORE CORRUPTION.
This is a moment to say NO MORE DECEPTION.
This is a moment to say I AM NOT AFRAID.
This is a moment to say I KNOW WHO I AM.
This is a moment to say I KNOW WHERE I WANT TO GO.

This is Your moment. Your choice. Your reality.

The road is forked just around this bend.  One way will take you home and the other will take you to a dark and twisted place. You have the Inner Guidance to know which way to go.  All you have to do is listen from within, trust in that voice, and stand with certainty for what you know to be True.

The rest will done for you.
Not by the Federal government, ACORN or Van Jones.
But by the Only Power There Is.

    

This past Thursday I wrote a column that was unusual for me because it had political subject matter.  I try to avoid that arena here.  Breaking policy, I wrote it because, as is always the case, truth is “the highest good for all concerned” and that’s my mission statement.  So, I go where it takes me.  On Thursday it took me to the White House.

It’s Sunday morning and the trip was worth it.  Van Jones has resigned.

Glenn Beck is a Public Servant, in the purest sense of the word, for has done the nation a service.  He shone a bright and unwavering light, the Light of Truth I dare to say, upon a shadowy man whose intentions have been deliberately masked and obscured by those in positions of power in order to advance a very anti-American agenda.

The resignation of Van Jones as Special Adviser to the President is a victory for full and fair disclosure… a legal and ethical concept lost on this Administration.  He is but the latest in a long list of appointees and nominees by this President who have personal and professional histories of corruption, pay-for-play tactics, cronyism and supporting policies and foreign governments that would see an end to freedom as we know it.

This is a cloaked and shadowy Administration but I still believe in Hope and Change.  They are what Barack Obama promised us and they are exactly what he is delivering….albeit not quite the way he and his wife intended.

There is always a silver lining… and I see this one shining brightly through.

We can remain HOPEful that there are brave and impassioned men and women, such as Glenn Beck and those who are making his personal mission possible, to shine that Light of Truth when and where it’s needed.

We can CHANGE the face of politics by removing the mask of deceit and cloak of subterfuge and demanding accountability, full disclosure and truthfulness of those who claim to aspire to serve the public good.

Van Jones’ resignation is not the end.  It is the beginning of a sea CHANGE moving this nation and, ultimately, free people everywhere, to higher ground where HOPE is the order of the day and the air is cleaner… not of CO2 content but of fear.

Yes, “HOPE and CHANGE.” 

Turns out it really is more than a bumper sticker after all.