Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

I recently heard that more copies of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged have sold in the past few months than in the past few years combined. In case you’re unfamiliar with Rand’s philosophy or the story of Atlas Shrugged, both are predicated upon the escalating, and ultimately fatal, corruption of our society’s leaders in both business and government and the decision by some to withdraw from that society in order to begin a new one based upon integrity and individual productivity.

Sound familiar?

Of course, there are no accidents. The emerging interest in Rand’s work is a natural outgrowth of the frustration and helplessness felt by so many as we try and traverse these challenging and transforming times. Over the past decade we in this country have witnessed, permitted and at times condoned dishonesty, corruption ad greed. It was all a slippery slope we descended while turning a blind eye to the direction in which we were collectively headed. No, everyone was not complicit or guilty of what I just described. But even those of us who knew better were too silent, too complacent and for too long.

So here we are.  And while Rand’s solution in Atlas Shrugged is somewhat impractical (the protagonist, John Galt, who begins the dropping out and setting up of the new society actually does drop out and takes a whole lot of others with him) it does present a rather accurate picture of exactly what road we need to go down in order to rise above and beyond where we are and where we have been for some time now.

We aren’t going to be rescued by any one individual or by our collective private or governmental “leaders’ either. In fact, we’re not going to be “rescued” at all. This isn’t about rescue. Its about turning within and understanding, no…strike that…not understanding but rather knowing with certainty… that each one of us has a role to play in reshaping our world and the foundation for that new world, or paradigm, will be built from the bottom up, not the top down.

Consequently, you matter. Not only do you matter, you matter as never before. Every thought you have, word you speak and deed you partake of matters.  We got here by abdicating personal responsibility. We allowed others with apparent power to make vital decisions that spiraled our lives, and their own, out of control.  In order to un-torque that spiral and set it once again spinning in the right direction, it is necessary that each of us get our direction from within ourselves.

There is no one to go to for “expert” advice on this one. This one is on each of us, individually. And it will be different for each of us… which is why you can’t go anywhere outside yourself for guidance. No one knows better than you do what is best for your highest good and the good of all concerned. The key is trusting that you know the answer.  Actually, it’s trusting that you’re wired from within to be able to access a Source of guidance and wisdom that has only your highest good as its primary objective.

Just yesterday a friend told me that there was a TV show in the San Francisco area that had only good news. It only lasted a couple of weeks. I understand that. I had a talk radio show in Pennsylvania a few years back called “Higher Ground” that looked at the highest message in even the most negative news and it lasted less than a year. But here’s how I see it. It isn’t that we only want bad news or titillating news…. its that we’ve been raised on fear for thousands of years by those same people who we allowed to get us into this mess.  It’s the definition of the word “propinquity.” If you have a migraine for a few thousand years and wake up one morning without it, you’ll miss it.  Take away the fear we’ve been raised on and we’re not sure what takes its place.

The unknown can be pretty scary itself.  If you let it.  Or, you can keep accessing that place inside yourself that is connected to that Source that has as it’s primary objective your wellbeing.

I never give advice I haven’t lived. I know what is is to be scared, confused and hopeless. Been there. Done that.  So I can tell you, with certainty, that the way out is to surrender to that Source, that inner guidance… and follow your instincts. But I can only tell you this with my certainty. You’ll have to live your own.

John Galt really is here after all and will lead you successfully through whatever is coming. If you want to see him go look in the nearest mirror.

Catchy title, don’t you think? Bet you’re wondering what they could possibly have in common.

Well, before I go there, let me first say that I’m a life-long registered Democrat who has never voted for a Republican Presidential candidate. I have no ax to grind and no agenda here, other than to face life with eyes wide open as opposed to eyes wide shut.  To that end, Campbell Brown, CNN anchor and columnist, posted an interesting article today on CNN.com.

Ms. Brown notes that a year ago, Barack Obama publicly vowed that he would accept public financing and “work with the Republican nominee to ensure they both operated within those [spending] limits.” Problem is… Obama didn’t keep his word. Now why he didn’t keep his word is almost as important as the fact that he simply didn’t. The reason is that he quickly realized how much more money he could raise outside the constraints of the Federal Election Law rules. And since money not only talks in America, it also buys elective office, that observation wasn’t going to slip past a Harvard Law School graduate.  Hence, he reneged on his word.

So why Nixon?  Well, 19 years before Richard Nixon was elected President of the United States he had earned himself the nickname “Tricky Dick” based upon his campagin tactic against Helen Douglas for a United States Senate seat…which he won.

Now I never understood how people were shocked and surprised by Watergate and all that it encompassed, or Nixon’s erasing of the tapes, or his patent lying, when they had knowingly elected a man nicknamed “Tricky Dick.”  The only rationale I ever came up with was that despite the discernible facts, voters just didn’t want to know. And I think it’s happening again.

I’m not saying Obama is Nixon, or has his character..or lack thereof. I’m not even saying much about Obama… mainly because I don’t think this is about him.

I think it’s about Us. 

I think we need to wake up, rub the sleep from our eyes, get past the campaign slogans, and hold ourselves accountable for what is knowable vs. what we only want to know. 

And I think we’d better hurry.

There is too much at stake here to cry “poor me” after the fact if what we wind up with is exactly what is known before hand, but also exactly what we chose not to ponder too long or too hard.  As Michael Douglas said in the movie, An American President…. “Citizenship isn’t easy. You’ve got to want it bad.” 

Well, we’re still blessed with it…Citizenship, that is…admittedly within a system that’s less than perfect and which, lately, is more out of balance than is healthy. But while we still have a voice and a vote it’s our responsibility to call them as we see them…not as they tell us it is.  If you’re running on “Change” but fueling it through age-old-slight-of-hand and deceit…well, shame on me if I let you get away with it.

And shame on me if I help you get there.

Our choices aren’t great this time around. I’ll grant you that. I like Joe Biden but I’ve got to elect Obama to get to him. And I like John McCain but he is up in years and Sarah Palin worries me greatly. So does no check and balance with the prospect of a Democrat Congress and Executive Branch.

So, what to do?

I have no easy answer. Each of us has to privately come to that moment of truth on November 4th. That’s the beauty of it. My sole purpose here is to make enough noise to startle you into opening your eyes to all that’s knowable.

Once you do that, at least you can make an informed decision. Then you can take pride in knowing you  made a conscious choice… and let the chips fall where they will.

REMEMBER to click here to download a FREE copy of my e-book, “Too  Many Secrets.”

Well, I’ve done it again and it’s worked…again.

For the past two weeks I have pretty much disengaged myself from any media sources that promote bad news or fear.  Now, practically speaking, this means almost all media sources… since bad news and fear are still being hotly marketed, although I think the powers that be are dragging their feet somewhat in perceiving the shift in consciousness that’s taking place.

Most of us have moved, or are moving, beyond the need or the desire to be manipulated by fear. Awakening from that long sleep, we are becoming more discriminating in what we allow ourselves to be exposed to and where we place our own thoughts.  As I’ve always said, “Thoughts are things.”  Once you have one, you’ve can pretty much rest assured that you’ve now manifested it in some way at some future point in time. That’s what all the “hoopla” was over the DVD “The Secret.”  It set forth the underlying principal that what you think about you draw to you…for better or worse. It’s true. And when you begin to take that principal to heart and live it…well, you can actually experience the difference between what I call “default thinking” and “deliberate creating.” 

In both methods you get back what it is you have placed your thoughts upon. But in default thinking you get back a whole lot more of what you don’t want than what you do. That’s because of two reasons.

    1. Most people spend their thought energy in either the past or the future…regretting or worrying respectively. With most of your thoughts in regret or worry…you create, by default, more regret and worry.

    2. When you abandon your present moment to thoughts of past or future, you absorb, like a sponge, what it is that’s occurring in the present moment.  Given the world we live in that’s more often than not fear-based conversations and news.  Taking in fear-based thinking in the present moment crates more fear in your future.  

On the other hand, in deliberate creating, you pay attention to what you are thinking and when your thoughts don’t align with your intention..what it is you want to create in your life…you change those thoughts while also being vigilant about eliminating externally generated messages that don’t support what it is you want.

Which is why for the past two weeks I have eliminated the news. I saw it coming. All the fear and panic around the economy. I simply wasn’t going to consciously set myself up for being part of the problem by further feeding the fear. I deliberately created two weeks where there was no bad economic news.

And you know what?  I didn’t miss a thing.

In fact, I stayed off the emotional roller coaster ride of the market’s ups and downs. I missed all the Doomsdayers and analysts and poll takers who offer nothing in the way of constructive thinking but loads in the way of fear. Instead I spent the time I would have been creating by default watercolor painting, reading positively affirming books, practicing piano, writing bogs, helping friends and building a future more consistent with how I choose to live my life.

When I write blogs such as this one I always include the disclaimer that I am not a Pollyanna nor do I have my head in the sand. I’m not denying the reality that “times they are a changing”…I simply use my Free Will to decide what that change looks like to me…and in so doing use my thoughts to support the highest good rather than the lowest common denominator. When the time comes to deal with the change, when it’s actually in front of me, I will. In the meantime, there’s just no point in worring about it.

So, today, take control of your life by way of your thinking and avoid the avoidable. No one says you have to watch or listen or read about what’s being sold to you. Tune it out, turn it off, and place your thoughts where you want them to be.

I promise you that in your “absence”…you will not have missed a thing that matters.

 

I met Paul Newman once. Well, actually, I stood next to him crossing a street in Atlantic City, New Jersey at the Democratic National Convention that was being held there. I had always spent summers at the Shore as we had a beach house there when I was growing up. That summer, 1964, I was 16 years old. I had volunteered to work as an usher seating people at the Convention. One night, after finishing my job, I was heading to the corner to “catch a jitney” ride home (sort of a mini-bus unique to Atlantic City culture) when, waiting for the light to change to green so I could cross, I turned to glance at the man standing next to me who was also waiting to cross and, well, yes, it was Paul Newman.  

Now a 16-year-old girl in 1964 standing next to Paul Newman has just one thought: Don’t faint. I actually remember thinking that. I also remember beginning to stutter, literally, trying to get out the words, “Are you really Paul Newman?”…as if a possible answer might have been, “No, not really.”  Anyway he was gracious and kind to the obviously star-struck and inarticulate teenager…a situation I think he must have been very used to…and he made a comment or two before the light changed and we both crossed.

Today he died at age 83.

What I am most awed by is not his eyes or his movie career or the longevity of his celebrity marriage in an age when celebrities can’t seem to stay married longer than the time it takes to make a movie. I am most awed by his foresight and charitable nature. He seemed to get, earlier than most, how connected we all are and how giving is the one sure path to personal satisfaction, not to mention material wealth.

There is a short video clip on Newman’s Own website today that is a brief interview with him that appears to be quite recent. If I heard it right, and I listened to it twice, he actually says “goodbye” at the end and it’s not a gratuitous goodbye…its the goodbye of a man who knows he is dying and is saying it from a place deep inside his soul. In that clip he speaks about the need, his need, to help others… particularly children, the poor, the elderly and the Earth. And help he did, having given 100% of the proceeds from his company Newman’s Own, $250,000,000, to charitable causes. 

When my father passed away 9 years ago a Rabbi told me that the best way to honor a life is to take something that was admirable about that life and become it. Perpetuate it. Carry it forward. I think we could do a lot worse than honoring Paul Newman’s life in this way. If each of us could come to understand how connected We All Are and that the greatest personal satisfaction and wealth come from giving…I believe this to be the winning combination for successfully moving beyond the economic, environmental and societal challenges we face.

Only when we care about, respect and support each other as well as the Earth with all It’s life forms will we turn this around and end the blight that is upon us and return to a state of balanced well-being.

It has been 44 years since I stood next to, and gazed into, those riveting blue eyes. Today I learned for the first time that those eyes were, in fact, colorblind. Maybe Paul Newman was not able to see color but he saw something much more important.

He saw Oneness and made the world a better place for it.

Let’s keep up the good work.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”

>I couldn’t help wondering why I was so taken with the CNN photo image of Lehman Bros. headquarters on Wall Street this past week as the news broke of its pending bankruptcy following failed efforts to have it rescued by third parties. Then it hit me. It was almost seven years later, to the day, that the Lehman skyscraper image, with words of its pending financial collapse printed below, appeared on CNN…seven years to the day after 9/11.

What I was so taken with was the irony, no, not the irony but the connectivity, between the financial buildings on Wall Street that literally came tumbling down seven years ago and the ones now figuratively tumbling down… both before our very eyes.

I think one was a precursor of the other. It’s time we paid attention to the message, don’t you think?

I have listened in the past few days to Alan Greenspan and Suzy Ormond, the former being the “official” financial guru and the latter being the “populist” version, and I think they’re both wrong. Well, not wrong, just misguided. Remember when during the 1992 Presidential campaign Bil Clinton said, “It’s the economy, stupid”? Well, it’s sort of the economy now only not the way Clinton meant it. Back then he meant that George H.W. Bush was out of touch with the challenges faced by most Americans because Bush was a blue-blood elitist. 

Now, it’s about how we’ve prayed too long at the altar of money and material acquisitions…so much so…that we went too far astray from the meaning of Life and what loving Life, and one another, truly means. So, as with all things out of balance, our condition has required a “course correction.” 

The happenings in the financial market are a symptom…they are not the dis-ease.

We all feel it. Not just monetarily. We feel it in the stress we live with every day trying to keep pace with a reality controlled by the pace of technology. We feel it in the loss of meaningful relationships or even the time to cultivate them. We feel it in the frustrations we encounter trying to get adequate health care or even just a live person, rather than voice mail, to assist us in getting adequate health care. We feel it in the pressure of raising kids in a world where everything is so impersonal and where cheap, meaningless sex is so readily marketed in every medium.

Despite Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, it’s not about Change. Its about adaptation to change. We don’t need change. We already have it. We’re in it. Take a look around. Nothing is working like it used to. And that’s not a bad thing, either. It’s a good thing. Because things stopped “working” for us a while ago. We’ve been working for them. That change happened slowly over time…so slowly we missed the switchover. Only now are we waking up to the reality of where we find ourselves.

What we do about it is All That Matters.

In less than 60 days a new President of The United States will be elected and he (yes, it’s still a “he”) will take the oath of office a few months later.  As part of that oath he will swear to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.  In so doing, might I suggest our next President spend less time bailing out the financial sector and trying to shore up a broken, misguided system of governmental corruption and more time inspiring this nation in what a call to greatness looks and feels like. This is the highest service he could perform for his nation at this time. To point the way out of darkness and towards the Light.  Inspiration is food for the Soul. This is what we truly hunger for…not a DOW over 13,000.

We, the United States of America, remain an experimental beacon of individual freedom, creativity and ingenuity. We have survived infancy, childhood and our teenage years. Will we now accept the personal responsibility of adulthood, seizing the moment to become the best we can be… or will we stay stuck in those rebellious teenage years where, if we cannot have it our way, we’ll just “throw a fit” and dig in our heels…until the rest of the world grows up and passes us by?

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”

>   Six months, ago while driving in my car, I saw a cat in the middle of the road that had obviously been recently struck by a passing car. I made a U-turn, put my emergency flashers on, gently picked up the body, and walked to the nearest house to try and find its owner. The house I knocked on happened to be it’s home. It turned out that the cat had gotten out of the house without it’s owner’s realizing it. Sadly, it was dead.
    Yesterday CNN and other news agencies reported that a 78-year-old Hartford, Connecticut man was struck by two passing cars who were ‘chasing’ each other. Neither driver stopped. As the man lay critically injured in the street, a video camera memorialized passersby on foot and in their cars observing the man but making no effort to assist him…not even calling 911. They just looked and went on their way.
    I set forth both instances not because I want to praise my actions and condemn theirs, but rather to simply explain why I did what I did.
    In my reality, we are all connected. “All” means not only humans, but every living thing regardless of it’s position on the evolutionary chain. Believing this in my heart, as I do, I could no more fail to assist any living person or thing in need than I would fail to get myself assistance if I were injured.  There is simply no distinction between the two. In fact, it is the making of distinction that creates so much apathy and indifference in the world.
    What happened in Hartford, …the apathy, indifference and just plain callousness of the witnesses and bystanders…may have multiple origins. It may be as I have stated above, or it may be the result of so much excessive violence through various forms of media to which we are all exposed that has hardened our hearts, or it may have been fright that the man (who is Hispanic) is an illegal alien and no one wanted to create more trouble…or yet some other reason I have not thought of.
    Regardless of what the origin of the lack of action and the withholding of assistance, it is a troublesome warning light that went off in Hartford. It says more about us than perhaps we want to know. It says we lack compassion, are disconnected from our humanity, and have lost sight of how interconnected and interdependent in relation to one another we are. I say “we” because I am that man who was left to die and I am each of those people who failed to act, just as I was that cat.
    Perhaps that’s a perspective we could all benefit from.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”

    On a flight to Florida this past week I was reading an excerpt from Barbara Walters autobiography Audition and came across the most glaring example of self-deception I’ve encountered in a long time. Reflecting on her shock and disappointment with Dick Wald, Chairman on NBC, who apparently failed to support her retention with the Today Show when ABC was bidding to woo her away, Ms. Walters stated the basis for her disappointment as follows:

    “Years before, we had snuck [sic] out of an NBC Christmas party on a clandestine romp to see Deep Throat, the much-talked-about porn film. I liked, trusted and respected him and I thought he liked, trusted and respected me.” [emphasis added]
  
    Apparently, on reflection, Ms. Walters believes a former clandestine meeting to watch porn a reliable basis for a lifelong relationship from which she could anticipate not only genuine friendship but also loyalty.
    Is it just me or is there something fatally flawed in her thinking?
    They left a Christmas party to watch porn. Now I’m a Jew so I could be mistaken, but isn’t Christmas the season people try and connect with their higher selves…with all that is good and decent in humankind?  And isn’t “Christmas porn” not only an oxymoron but a mockery of the inherent dignity of humankind? OK, forget humankind. How about a mockery of the inherent dignity of women? Of all that is divinely feminine?
    The issue of importance here goes well beyond Ms. Walters personal moral code. That is for her to define and for her to live.
    What’s to be learned from Ms. Walters shock and disappointment isn’t unique to her. We each have a tendency to bend the rules when they apply to us while using a higher, less flexible standard when applying them to someone else. I am certain that Ms Walters, if asked on her television show, The View, would decry the behavior of Elliot Spitzer or any other person of similar lapses in judgment and yet she cannot see her own.
    We each sometimes act as if there is no “boomerang” effect and we can, in fact, send out contaminated energy and somehow miraculously receive it back purified and cleansed. Further, we see in ourselves and others that which we wish to see rather than what is. And it’s from this idealized version that we expect right behavior when it’s needed. The reality is that we get what we get from who one chooses to be…not from whom we fantasize them to be.
    I am not saying that had Ms. Walters not ducked out of that Christmas party years prior to go watch a porn movie with her male acquaintance that he would have stepped up and been there for her years later in her time of need. What I am saying is that to be shocked that he had no moral core or that how they began their relationship was a foundation built upon an integrity of spirit to be relied upon is to delude only herself.
    The lesson is to always come from the highest good possible and to be honest about what that is. And if, in hindsight, we fall short in reviewing ourselves or others, to remember that hindsight is 20/20…not rose-colored.
    There are Universal Laws.
    Energy begets like energy and consequences follow actions.
    At these we should feign no surprise.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”

   
   
   
    

   

>If you’ve ever been aware of how the sky looks and the air feels just before and after a rain storm you’ll appreciate what I’m about to say.
    The news continues to be troublesome on it’s face. A perverse father who imprisons and rapes his own daughter, a political campaign that looks like it has no end in sight, continually escalating oil and food prices and rising unemployment, just to name a few. These are what we awaken to each day. It might just be enough to depress you.
    But wait a minute.
    Where else in Life, or Nature, can you find change that hasn’t been preceded and accompanied by, growing pains? Isn’t that what we’re experiencing? So many commentators and “doomsdayers” (or should I say “Armageddonites”) want to point to all the stressors and hold up the mirror of fear and destruction. Surely, they point out, with all the bad news (and as they see it prophetic events) The End is surely near.
    Not as I see it.
    What I see are the natural byproducts of transition. Growth pushes against restrictive boundaries and throws off waste. That’s how it happens. Further, I see not a transition for the worse but rather a transition for the highest good for all concerned.
    Why?
    Because the way we were living and the values we prized had ceased to serve our progress. We had become accustomed to stagnation and mediocrity in our lives. We had our values and priorities upside down. We were numbed by the technology and the media’s repetition of violent reporting and images to how much pain there is in the world. We had spiritually lost out way.
    Yesterday I received an e-mail from
a young man in upstate NY who is a trader on Wall Street who wrote that he was
depressed and unmotivated because he was “having his first bad year in
the stock market, ever. And it’s been raining here for 3 days.” Pain, as the Buddhist’s say, “isn’t meant to cause us suffering. It’s meant to wake us up.” And so all this “suffering” we’re experiencing is a gift to re-focus us on the Present, on what matters.
    I e-mailed the young man back and said that Life was trying to teach him something about worry and materialism. I suggested that perhaps he needed a “rinsing off” and that he should go out and run in the rain…to experience what was Present in his life.
    I have a lot more I could say on this topic but the sun just broke through the clouds and I’m going out for a walk.
    Perhaps first I need to get a little heated up.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”
    

>A 73-year-old father in Austria imprisoned and held hostage his 18- year-old-daughter in the basement of his home for 24 years repeatedly raping her and fathering at least 7 children with her, many of whom were born in captivity and never saw the light of day until freed by authorities this week.
    Sometimes it’s harder than other times to find the positive message in a story.
    It really challenges the rational mind and the loving heart to make any sense of this barbarous and heinous act. I am certain lawyers and psychologists will plead insanity or incapacity or some “Twinkie-like” defense (I’m a former practicing lawyer) but the woman and mother in me can find no justification sufficient to relieve this man of the burden of responsibility for his choices. Twenty-four years is a long, long time. Both the extent and complexity of his ongoing scheme necessitated repeated intent and knowing, willful behavior. Whether Austrian law will dictate the death penalty or his remaining years imprisoned without parole, one or the other is the rightful outcome.
    But can we take anything away from this nightmare that can be of service to us? I think so.
    It’s a reminder about the value of human life and, particularly, the value of and dignity due the lives of women. In too many cultures, ours included, we still send messages both overtly and covertly that it’s OK to objectify women, to think of them as property. And while we’ve come a long way, we’ve a long way to go.
    Recently separated, I had my own two experiences of late. The first was at a restaurant/bar where, after accepting a dance with a man, he proceeded to “steer” me off the dance floor by repeatedly touching me…as if I could not get to where I was headed without his assistance. I don’t really think that was his intent. I think he was claiming some level of ownership in relation to the other men around. He was saying, “This is mine so I can touch it.” The second happened days later when I met my estranged husband in a public place to discuss the terms of our separation. As we were entering the Barnes and Noble book store, he slapped me on the rear end and said, “Well, you won’t be on waiver long.” And while he was, in his own mind, “complimenting” me for how I looked, he was also assuming he had the right to touch me without my consent.
    I can take care of myself and let both men know they were over the line. But here’s the point.
    When you live in a society that markets sex and objectifies women in the media while still turning a somewhat blind eye to sexual harassment in the workplace, there is the tacit sanctioning of devaluing an entire gender. Once this happens, it becomes a slippery slope.
    I’m not saying that the average man is capable of the despicable acts performed by this sick “father” in Austria. Nor am I absolving women of our responsibility of knowing when a line is crossed and the need to speak out arises.
    What I am saying, however, is that the bar needs to be set very high when it comes to honoring human dignity, regardless of gender, and the burden is on each of us to lend our strength to seeing that the bar never falters.

REMEMBER to click hereto download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”

>     CNN is reporting that according to Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Columbia University Earth Institute, the “biggest story” in the world is the escalating price of grain and the resulting riots taking place from “Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt.” The story further goes on to say that Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, says that “soaring prices could mean seven lost years in the fight against world poverty.”
    I am struck by the Zoellick quote as it’s a mere five days until Passover, the Jewish Holiday that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. Remember, that nation where Joseph, a Jew, ruled as Viceroy to Pharaoh because Pharaoh had a dream that only Joseph could interpret. His interpretation? Seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. His suggestion? Stock up while the gettin’s good. It was later in that same unfolding of history that Passover commemorates the going out, the Exodus, from Egyptian bondage to freedom in the Promised Land.
    Now I may be mixing some apples and oranges here…or not. But it seems to me that while history often repeats itself, so do spiritually based events where we have failed to learn the higher lesson.
    So here’s my take on all of this.
    We, the United States, the World, had it’s “seven years of plenty” and instead of stocking up, we super-consumed or squandered our plenty. Now, it looks like seven years of famine and the granaries are empty. Or maybe the grain is just being controlled by those who profit off of such matters.
    The point is that reliance on the “Egypt” of today, all those oil rich countries to which we pay homage because we’re addicted to “the way we’ve always done things” has created the mess that is now unfolding around us. Kabbalah, mystical Judaism, teaches that the Egypt of the Old Testament was not an actual nation but rather a “level of consciousness” to which the people had descended in their obsession with ego and materialism.
    If we are there again, what can each of us do if we’re not Bill and Melinda and have no charitable foundation from which to throw billions at the problem? Well, maybe not much in the way of dollars. But the problem didn’t happen overnight and neither will the solution. So work with what you have.
    You have compassion, prayer and the ability to change the way you value, and therefore treat, the planet, it’s resources and it’s inhabitants. You have the freedom to want less and use less. You have to think about whether that next purchase is necessary or habitual. Before you throw something away you have to first ask if someone else might need what it is you’re discarding and if the answer is “likely yes” then you have to take the time and make the effort to get that item to where it can be of help. You have to change the way you are living to consume less and contribute more.    
    Not more money. More conscious behavior around the idea that we are All One and what is happening in Haiti or Bangladesh or Egypt is happening to a part of You.
    Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change. It’s not just a cute self-help phrase. It’s physics. And we live in the physic-al world. So we really can make a difference by how we see things and how we act upon that vision.
    I’ll be celebrating Passover this weekend. Judaism demands that every year we treat the Seder meal as we recount the Exodus from slavery to freedom, as if it’s actually happening to us in real time. The last line in the Seder that’s repeated each year is “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
    Here’s a new twist.   
    This year we can be of higher consciousness.
    This year we can avoid past mistakes.
    This year we can trade in ego and materialism for compassion and service.
    This year around the world.

Remember to click here to download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”