Archive for the ‘Self-Awareness’ Category

“Lone Survivor” opened in theaters this past weekend to become the second highest grossing movie ever in the month of January. It’s both a war film and a profoundly moving account of ethics, determination and sheer courage in the face of overwhelming circumstances. Yet, the most important message of the movie (and the book upon which the screenplay is based) occurs off screen.

I have seen Marcus Luttrell, the sole surviving Navy SEAL of “Operation Red Wings,” interviewed several times. In his recounting of the experience, he expresses himself this way:

“It went bad for us over there, but that was our job. That’s what we did. We didn’t complain about it. We never gave up. We never felt like we were losing…until we were actually dead.”

What first caught my attention about Mr. Luttrell’s response was his use of the words “we” and “our.” His choice of pronouns may not seem all that extraordinary…after all, these four men trained and performed as a unit. However, it’s the last half of the last sentence that riveted me.

“…until we were dead.”

Marcus Luttrell returns to us to do much more than write a book or make a movie. He returns to us to personify the living manifestation of the unifying principle of Oneness. Four men died on that mountain in Afghanistan, not three. You know that through Mr. Luttrell’s statement. His experience was that “we were dead.” However, four men crawled off that mountain as well and have survived to tell their story through Mr. Luttrell.

Yes, it is a story of war and its ravages as well as of courage, compassion and endurance in the face of overwhelming odds. But above all else, it is a story of our connectedness to one another.  What happens to one of us happens to all of us. Until we own that reality, we will continue to tear one another apart both in and out of war.

The solutions we seek to the world’s challenges are not political, they are of the heart.  True unity is no better expressed or understood than in the manner that Mr. Luttrell speaks of his/their experience, his/their bond and, most tellingly, his/their deaths. Four men went to Afghanistan and all four have returned to speak to us with one voice.

If Marcus Luttrell still questions why he made it back, my prayer is that he wonders no longer. Every morning that he awakens his three friends awaken as well. It is the highest form of resurrection and it is his purpose to exemplify this reality for the rest of us. I, for one, am eternally grateful to him for the integrity and commitment he brings to the calling. May the Nation, and the world, be awake enough to seize this profound moment to finally understand what divinity in action is all about.

There is only One of Us

Listen to Carole discuss Marcus Lutrell in an excerpt from her radio show “An Hour of Inspirational Gold” on BlogTalk Radio.
Note: click on the gray play button below
[audio:https://www.carolegold.com/mp3/btr-Jan-13-2014.mp3]

 

 

I like to play with words…and words within words. So here’s my latest effort. It concerns the choice each of us has as we go through uncharted territory of profound change. The word I worked with is “revolution.”  The words I found within it are as follows: vile; revolt; to; lure; into; evil; lie; rile; rule; toil; into; the; root; to; true; love.

These are the concepts behind “revolution” that I created using the above highlighted words.

1.  Revolution can manifest as a vile revolt whose few proponents will lie and purposefully rile others in order to lure them to an evil end resulting in oppressive and manipulative rule over the subjugated majority.

2.  Revolution can be a person or group willing to toil ceaselessly and diligently to unearth fundamental truths by getting to the root of existence…which is light energy emanating as true love.

I think we’re in a revolution of the second kind.  At least that’s the revolution I’ve signed up for and, since we’re a complex adaptive system, the actions of each of us matter. How we think and behave during the revolution matters because each of us is an Agent of Change and how we choose to use our energy will determine the outcome.

Which revolution are you down for?

 

Whether you are pro-gun ownership or pro-gun control, there is no doubt that an airsoft gun is not a firearm. This simple fact makes the suspension from school of Khalid Caraballo, age 12, and his friend, Aidan for “possession, handling and use of a firearm” the latest example of politically motivated efforts to redefine reality and subjugate our children’s behavior to the directives of government control.

Did I mention that the boys were playing in their own front yard awaiting the arrival of a school bus at the time of the alleged behavior? Yet, the misdirected punishment is…suspension from school?

How do reactions such as this by administrative bodies and government entities continue to have legs? Well, when the President of the United States uses a memorial service, as President Obama just did, to shamelessly put forth a political agenda and seize the moment to actually encourage “transformation” and “obsession” it’s no wonder.

This isn’t about the 2^nd Amendment right to bear arms. Nor is it about the propriety or impropriety of children playing with guns of any ilk. Those are topics for another day. This is about common sense and the relentless redefinition of what is right, wrong and politically correct by the powers that be.

The President (and all Progressives) commonly refer to the United States simply as a democracy. As a former Professor of Constitutional Law myself (as was the President) I find this to be incomplete and misleading. A “democracy” is one person/one vote. It is ultimately mob rule. The Constitutional Republic established by the Framers was a deliberate and carefully crafted effort to avoid creation of yet another failed democracy. Historically, that model of government had never worked. A fact that remains true as of this writing.

We are not governed by mob rule and the Administration’s and media’s efforts to incite “transformation” and “obsession” to achieve their goal of gun control leads not to an end that is in the highest interest of all, but rather to incidents such as the one where a 12-year-old child is punished for…well…being a 12-year-old child.

If Khalid Caraballo’s mother and father have an issue concerning their child playing with a toy gun, if their particular morals and values prohibit it, they will act accordingly in directing and educating their child. Absent that, the powers that be, in this case school Administrators, need to mind their own damned business.

If you aren’t incensed by this latest and blatant display of arrogance and overreaching power, it’s because enslavement is a slippery slope and you’ve past the point of recovery.

They want us divided. No, this isn’t a conspiracy post. It’s an epiphany.

You know the old saying, “United we stand, divided we fall?” Well, it’s old. Very old. It goes back to Aesop, the Ancient Greek story teller who lived between 620 and 654 B.C. Maybe it’s older than that. I suspect it is because it holds a fundamental secret that is the difference between destruction and survival…between lack and prosperity.

I’d been thinking about the seeming deterioration of race relations in this country over the past few years and wondering what was the impetus? The more I thought about it the more I decided that there really is no racial deterioration…just the promotion of a false sense of one by the media and others who have more to gain, and more to retain, by our division than by our unification.

After 9/11 we saw what we were made of. We experienced our connection and our love for one another. We each know that we are all One in humanity. We know it and we exhibit it whenever we are called upon to do so…and sometimes even when we are not. But we each feel insecure and alone in some ways as well. Maybe it’s just the impermanence of life as we know it that gives us a feeling of unease that is so easy to exploit.

And exploit our insecurity they do.

Those of us on a spiritual or God-focused path know that we are at a tipping point of understanding from deep within our hearts such as the world has never seen. And those who would rather that awakening not occur will do everything and anything in their power to make certain we do not get there. The tool most within their power is division by way of fear.  Therefore, in order to to strengthen their grip on humanity and retain the positions of power they have cheated, lied and stolen to achieve, they are pulling out the “big guns”…figuratively and literally. War is on the horizon. Whether its nation against nation in the Middle East or black against white in the West. Divide and conquer.

Gandhi had it right. So did Martin Luther King. We, the People, can overcome. But our only hope is the acknowledgement of our Oneness and the expression of that knowing through Love. Without it we remain divided. And divided we fall.

Let each of us be the change we wish to see in the world, as Ghandi admonished. Let us be loving and truthful in our daily dealings with those we encounter. Let us not perpetuate the worst of humankind by being part of it.

I have a Catholic friend who just returned from Amstedam where she visited The Anne Frank House. She asked me, “How could people do that to one another?” “They forgot there is only One of Us and that we’re born for the sole purpose of remembering that single, life altering fact” was my reply.

Remember now. Unite now. Love now.

I am a Jew. As such, I have heard the refrain “Never Forget” my entire life in relation to the Holocaust. Like other Jews, I always took it as a caution to be aware that under the right conditions, it could happen again. To the Jews. But as I hear and see what is happening to Christians in the Middle East and particularly in Egypt, I fully understand that the admonition goes far beyond we Jews. It is a mantra that every compassionate human being must recite because we, as a species, remain capable of horrific persecution and devastating destruction.

Not all of us, of course. At least not in the moment.

In the moment that perverse banner is being carried by the Muslim Brotherhood as they seek to exploit the political unrest in Egypt by scapegoating Christians, burning their churches, looting their places of business, raping their women and executing them simply because they are seen carrying a bible.

There is not a Jew alive whose stomach should not turn and whose body should not feel a chill at the familiarity of these events. Been there. Done that.

So what is the issue? The issue is, “Do we as Jews have the courage to stand in solidarity with Christians of the Middle East?” “Do we as Americans retain yet enough of what has made us a beacon of light throughout our history to now shine that light on the atrocities being inflicted upon Christians?” “Are we as humans still able feel the pain of others who, though outwardly different from us, are inwardly the essence of who we truly are?”

There is only One of Us. Today, we are all Coptic Christians.

I have never understood how so much of the world sat silently by and turned a blind eye while Hitler and the disease called National Socialism embarked upon its campaign of annihilation. I am sad to say that I have begun to understand it.  Today, the silence of our media and paralysis of our Administration are eerie portents of what may follow.

We are each responsible not for the carnage being inflicted upon Christians in Egypt, but for our silence in the face of it. God help the Muslim Brotherhood extremists who are looting, burning raping and murdering.

But who will help the silent?

What has happened to us? When did we lose not only our sense of humor but also our freedom of speech? A rodeo clown in Missouri dons a mask of the President and seeks to “get chased down” by a bull and its cause for a  federal investigation not to mention a lifetime ban on the clown?

In my lifetime, I cannot recall a President who was not spoofed, mocked, made fun of or characterized in a mask by some person or another. Yet I cannot recall it becoming an event of such monumental proportions nor resulting in the firing of an individual from his professional line of work.

Yet, here we are having reached either the absurd but inevitable end result of political correctness or, worse, the “fundamental transformation” of the role of President into the role of a “god” who cannot be “blasphemed.”

I am fairly certain that just as with Oprah’s recent mis-characterization of what she experienced in Switzerland, calling a communications malfunction  a personal and racial affront, so too has the P.C. mentality turned political satire (however base) into a personal attack on the first black President simply because he is black.

I think not.

The spoof was much more likely a political statement by someone who disagrees with the President’s policies and found a way to express that in the humorous context of what is his life’s work.

As Thomas Jefferson said, we are duty bound as citizens of the United States to “question with boldness even the existence of God.” Surely, given that directive, it should come as no surprise, nor insult, for someone to question or even mock with boldness, the President of the United States.

Think this one over carefully. What’s happening here isn’t about P.C., race, or politics. It’s about the silencing of free speech. The rodeo clown’s. Then, soon to follow, yours and mine.

It’s been done before and eloquently memorialized before.

“First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Catholic.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.”

History repeats itself.  Speak up before there is no one to speak for you.

 

 

Whether I have an aversion to herd mentality or simply have a thought process that weighs facts differently than most I cannot say. What I can say is that just as I recently wrote how I never saw the wisdom in the adulation of Oprah, so too have I never understood it in relation to Hillary Clinton. Now, as she ratchets up the Hilary for 2016 onslaught, I can hear the hoofs of the herd begin their run toward the White House. Should it turn out to be a stampede, I’d caution those participants to realize that as with all excesses there will be unintended collateral damage.

In this case, however, should she actually become President I fear the damage will be the demise of our already mutilated Republic.

Can we be so hungry, or blind, in our rush to elect the first woman President that we will ignore a lifetime and very public display of deception, immorality, and sheer lust for power? Do we think that any woman of the desired gender will fill the bill simply because of that gender? Did any black, regardless of experience, fill the bill and meet our expectations of the first black President?  Did he cure the racial divide or stoke its fires? As I look around at the current state of things the answers to these questions are obvious and disturbing.

How can we actually be contemplating, no make that eager, to return to the White House a couple known and shown to have an insatiable appetite for power and a total disregard for both ethics and morality? If nothing else, Bill’s obfuscation while President and under oath (“It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is”) and Hillary’s Benghazi cover-up and inhumanity while Secretary of State and under oath (“What difference at this point does it make?”) should be all the red flags any thinking person needs to run not with the herd towards the White House but as far away from it in the opposite direction as possible.

But I said “thinking” person…didn’t I?

No one enjoys feeling like a broken record. It’s especially frustrating when the urge to inform is overwhelming and the reception is, at best, lukewarm. I am certain Paul Revere felt like a broken record as he blazed through New England announcing “The British are coming!” However, what differs from Colonial times is that those of us who are currently awake and concerned enough to perceive imminent danger are ringing a bell whose sound is falling upon deaf ears.

I have been writing you for over two years about the inevitable harm to our way of life, particularly our personal freedoms and free enterprise system, that will result from our government’s deceitfulness, corruption, negligence and sheer incompetence. It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. It’s about the lust for power regardless of party affiliation. We are way beyond politics now. We are into survival.

What humankind in general, and Americans in particular, shrinks from accepting is personal responsibility for creating the brink at which we now teeter. We have arrived at a government out of control, forcing upon us rules and regulations that defy our founding documents as well as our present will, because we have been too self-indulgent and momentarily satisfied to stand for what is right rather than acquiesce to what is expedient.

I have written about history’s pattern of enslavement and how we choose to remain blind to its teachings. I have written about power versus force and where true power is found. I have written about personal responsibility and the hell that follows its willful abdication. I am not alone. There are other voices, other “riders ringing the bell,” who also grow weary and disillusioned by your silence and inaction.

You and I are each but one voice. But one voice has changed history time and time again for better and for worse. One voice has joined with many voices time and time again to change history for better or for worse. So whether it is your lone voice speaking loud and clear with a firm determination to be heard, or your voice joined with other like-minded individuals to unite in a chorus of humanity’s best, it matters not.

What matters is that those of us who grow weary of ringing the bell, but who will not cease to do so, hear and are refreshed by the sound of an approaching army of voices who say, yet again, to the corrupt and oppressive powers that be, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

I never understood the fascination with Oprah Winfrey. Not ever. I was always perplexed by why she became the go-to source for so many women (and a fair amount of men) on what to read, what to wear, whom to emulate, and the list goes on. She became a cultural icon… but for a culture that was dying from lack of standards, principles and values. Now, with the release of the movie “The Butler” and her marketing efforts to promote it, she has revealed herself to be devoid of decency and at ease with re-writing history to serve a political agenda.

By equating the horrific torture and murder of Emmett Till with Trayvon’s Martin’s death, I can only conclude she will say absolutely anything, regardless of its veracity, in order to get ratings and attention for herself and her commercial ventures.

We are living in tenuous times when up is down and deceit is deliberately sold us as truth. There is bad news and good news. Which do you prefer first?

Well, in the absence of your vote, allow me to choose.

The bad news is that any individual who does not think for themselves and verify, to whatever extent possible, the facts of what we are being told is abdicating their individuality and humanity in lieu of becoming one of the many in a national herd of sheep.

The good news is that there is still time, albeit ever decreasing, to take back the reins of personal power and responsibility in order to demand that those who have failed to uphold and protect the Nation as is their job, be removed and replaced by others who value integrity and liberty.

We must hurry. The Middle East is crumbling. Tensions with Russia are escalating. Our government oscillates between incompetence and full-blown deceit.

If we are to break the patterns of history which have repeatedly ended in enslavement of the many by the few under such preconditions, then those of us whose eyes are open and hearts are committed to a higher calling must now stand and be heard.

Are you following the herd or in search of the truth? If it be truth, what are you doing about it?

We The People  do nothing regardless of how deceitful, corrupt or perverse our government, through its elected officials, has become.

We The People  do nothing as all the deceit fuels our separation from one another.

We The People  do nothing as Truth is called lie and vice versa.

We The People  do nothing while our instincts warn us that the abyss is near.

We The People  do nothing but act like slaves even while our individual faiths teach us that we are created free and in the image of divinity.

We The People do nothing but allow our children and their children to be burdened with irreparable harm.

We the People  of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Exactly Which People are we?