Archive for the ‘Self-Awareness’ Category

Suicide crosses all economic and sociological boundaries. No one is immune by nature of their family ties nor is anyone to blame.  In fact, suicide knows no boundaries. This painful fact is most recently evidenced by the suicide death of Matthew Warren, the youngest son of Pastor Rick Warren, mega-church founder and author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life.”

It seems almost a cruel irony that a man who inspired so many to find purpose and meaning in their own lives must now tragically face an inability to gift that same purpose to his own child. This tragedy is not a failing on the part of Pastor Warren. It is the sad but very real outcome of an individual’s inability to find hope and meaning in the midst of suffering.

I know. I tried to commit suicide at age 24 and have spent decades since building a rich, full and meaningful life. However, since that fateful day, I have periodically been challenged with those same thoughts that caused me to choose attempted suicide all those years ago.

The difference in how I have since dealt with those thoughts is by learning to override them through an understanding that the only constant is change. Therefore, no matter how bleak the present moment may seem, I know that I can trust in the fact that it will pass and change will come.  I also developed an ever-growing sense of self-worth by facing, and overcoming,  life challenges…starting small and working my way up to ever-increasing accomplishments.

I have read that Matthew Warren was described as “an incredibly kind, gentle and compassionate young man whose sweet spirit was encouragement and comfort to many.” How I empathize.

We live in a fast-paced, often-times alienated-from-one-another world due to technological advancements and misplaced values. The more sensitive, caring and perceptive one is of the pain of others, the more challenging it can be to exist under such circumstances. It seems the most gifted, the most artistic, the most remarkable individuals in human history have suffered the greatest emotional turmoil. Perhaps this is the price of truly understanding and feeling our connectedness to one another. I do not yet have this answer.

What I do know is that hope and trust in the ability to survive and prosper are tied to experiences of competency. The more often an individual is able to experience autonomy combined with accomplishment the more likely they are to be able to emotionally and intellectually weather the storms of clouded thinking that see suffering as permanent and suicide as an option.

To schedule Carole Goldstein to speak to your group, organization or school on attempted suicide and effective ways to overcome negative thinking click here.

To know Barney was to love him. He was a sweet-natured feline who didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Unfortunately, he also didn’t have any sense of, or respect for, boundaries. At his worst, Barney would think nothing of jumping into your lap even if another cat was already there. He simply was “wired” in such a way that wherever he wanted to be, and whenever he wanted to be there…well, his intention was always his priority regardless of who or what was in his way.

Michelle Obama’s appearance as a presenter at the Academy Awards last night instantly brought back memories of Barney and his total lack of appropriate boundaries.

There appears to be no aspect of our lives that this Administration, and other Progressives, consider beyond the scope of their involvement and/or regulation. Like Barney, and his dismissal of all laws natural, Progressives proceed full steam ahead with a “damn the Constitution and God-given rights” attitude should either be in their way.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to tell you how much soda you can drink with disregard for the Bill of Rights and First Amendment. President Obama and Vice President Biden want to prohibit, or restrict, how you can defend yourself and your family despite your rights under the Second Amendment. Michelle Obama wants to tell you what vegetables to eat and she wants to dress up as an Oscar to tell you how good movies are for you, even when they are not so subtly indoctrinating you with a particularly Progressive agenda.

Call me crazy, but just as I wanted Barney to understand there were places and times that his appearances were unwelcome, so too do I want my politicians to understand that they are not my nutritionists, my parents, or my movie critics.

When I was in law school I had a professor who called me into his office one day to impart some unsolicited “fatherly advice” as he phrased it. He told me he had seen lots of students pass through those hallowed halls over the years and it was his observation that I “just didn’t have what it takes” to be a lawyer. He recommended that I “drop out of school and find another career.” I listened respectfully and when he finished I replied, “I have a father. If I want fatherly advice I’ll ask him.” I went on to graduate and successfully practice law. He died a year later.

It’s important that we know our boundaries. Deliberately ignoring them indicates a level of hubris worth noting. Therefore, I want Mayor Bloomberg, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Michelle Obama and all the other Progressives who lack any sense of boundaries to “step back jack” and stay out of those areas of my life that God and the U.S. Constitution deem mine to live and regulate.

 

While most of the country is easily distracted (and manipulated) into following either the Grammy Awards or a firefight between a heinous ex-LAPD cop and various law enforcement agencies, some of us have been otherwise engaged. There are actually reasons to be concerned, but among them aren’t Taylor Swift’s latest stab at an ex-boyfriend or the political rant of an ex-cop gone bad.

In case you missed it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has bought enough gold over the last decade to equal three times the size of the Statue of Liberty hedging against collapse of the EURO and the U.S. dollar.  His secretary of State has deliberately snubbed our recently confirmed Secretary of State by not returning Kerry’s phone call relating to North Korea’s provocative nuclear test (a direct diplomatic smack in the face).  Further, two Russian nuclear-armed bombers circled the western Pacific island of Guam just prior to President Obama’s State of the Union speech apparently directly addressing and taunting President Obama’s unrelenting determination to dismantle our nuclear deterrent capabilities.

I don’t write a blog to instill or escalate fear. There’s enough of that in main stream media, Hollywood productions and video games. I do, however, write to awaken and inform.  Yesterday, on my talk radio show “The Gold Standard” I spent the hour looking at “apathy” and “victimization” and how they lead to enslavement and violence, respectively.

Unless enough of our citizens awaken to the immanent need to question his or her focus, values and energies… we are in for a boat load of trouble that will make what happened on the Carnival cruise ship “Triumph” look like a stroll in the park.

If, by chance, you feel overwhelmed and tend to take the stance that you are just one person so what can you do anyway, well… try writing U.S. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas a “Thank You.”   He may be the “new kid on the [Congressional] block” but he’s doing the heavy lifting in Congress you say you always want from your elected officials.  He’s taken on the status quo and refusing to play by the “accepted” rules. You can thank him for the delay in the Chuck Hagel nomination for Secretary of Defense, a delay that is warranted if, for no other reason, than dubious and misleading statements Hagel made under oath that necessitate further scrutiny.

Email the thank you to Senator Cruz and write your own Senators praising Cruz’s courage as exemplary. Then rethink whether you ought to be a passive follower of movie star romances and real-time gun fights or an informed and engaged citizen.

Is there anyone out there who is still unconscious enough to believe anything our politicians say or do?  I suppose the incredulous answer is “Yes” because they’re still “saying  and doing” and, as in the President’s staged statement made just moments ago concerning the pending fiscal cliff… they’re still allowing themselves to be used as useful idiots positioned for the camera behind the President with smiles on their faces. Amazing. Truly!

These corrupt, disingenuous and self-serving public servants have just been given a pay raise by our President to be paid for with your tax dollars while they vacationed for Christmas at their respective homes (in the President’s case Hawaii) while we were left twisting in the wind over the potential price of milk and our tax burdens for 2013 and beyond. Then, they did us a favor and returned from holiday to perhaps cut a totally inadequate and piecemeal deal at the 11^th hour when they should have, and could have, worked this out months ago.

This is but the latest example of why you have to disengage from “The Game.”

The purpose of The Game is to keep you twisting in the wind and therefore, frightened. Frightened people are infinitely more manageable and easily manipulated (read: “enslaved”) than are independent, internally directed, personally responsible people. Hence, why they perpetuate all the uncertainty and fear.

I love board games but I don’t play chess. The reason I don’t play is because no matter how many times it’s been explained to me, I don’t get it. Besides, there are a multitude of other games to play with rules I do understand. Now, maybe it’s not the best analogy. After all, the rules of chess don’t change mid-game as do the rules of elite power brokers. Power brokers, and those sycophants who hang by their sides, play by rules and change them at will while the rest of us are forever playing catch up.

But where the analogy is GREAT is that we don’t have to play this game. We can get off this board and choose another game.

The one I like is “The Game of Oneness.”

It has many dimensions but the rules are constant no matter which one you’re in:

1. Be personally responsible. 2. Have unfaltering integrity. 3. Think for yourself. 4. Buy only what you like regardless of what is marketed. 5. Back off technology. 6. Exhibit compassion for yourself and others. 7. Spend time in Nature and realign with its rhythms. 8. Cultivate joy in your heart and spread it outward. 9. Do no harm.

When you get to the end of that board, having played by the rules, the win is so much more than dying with the most toys.

The win is Eternal Life.

I understand why Jesus smashed the tables in the Temple courtyard. I could smash a few myself. There simply comes a time when enough is enough. When every rational and civil attempt to right the wrongs has failed.

The fiscal cliff is looming, Obamacare is about to change our lives (not for the better), and 20 children who had no means of defense are dead. Meanwhile…

– Members of Congress have gone home for Christmas. Really?

– The President and his family are vacationing in Hawaii. Really?

– We’re told we’re in an economic recovery and should believe the numbers… not our personal experience. Really?

– Congress has a better healthcare plan that the rest of us. Really?

– Sasha and Malia have guards with guns to protect them at school. Really?

– The children of many Congressman and Senators go to private schools with enhanced security. Really?

– In 2000, then President Bill Clinton requested $60 million in federal funding for a program called “COPS in Schools” that does exactly what the NRA has now proposed and which the media is currently mocking. Really?

There is such a thing as righteous anger. Righteousness, as I define it, is the “rightful use of energy.” When energy is properly utilized and directed so that both the intent and the outcome are in alignment with eliminating that which is diseased and corrupted, then such use is necessary.  As our “leaders” vacation and provide themselves with exceptions, exemptions, protections and perks unavailable to the rest of society, I am reminded of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

At the moment I have but one prayer:  “Please, God, show me the way to the tables.”

I don’t know why he did it. No one does. It was a tragic and senseless act by a troubled soul.  I wept as did the Nation and as we each try to find some fact, some new information that could perhaps bring something resembling meaning to the chaos I am certain of one thing.

Hatred and further polarization are inappropriate and destructive responses. Whether media personalities or politicians… family members, friends or co-workers…“coming at each other” over gun control is to wildly miss the point. Only a world that has lost its moral and value-based compass could have strayed as far from Truth and harmony as we have strayed.

It’s about so much more than guns. That is precisely what we will try to avoid. We will try and tie it all up in a political package aimed at curbing assault weapons rather than accepting personal responsibility for how we have abdicated doing what is right when confronted with the opportunity to do what is expedient.

We have shunned putting forth the time to be parents to instead turn the children over to be influenced by technology. We have avoided living lives that establish standards that would then give us the right to demand the same of our elected leaders. We have failed to provide decent facilities and care for the mentally ill. We have determined the success of our personal lives by our incomes rather than our degree of inner peace, and that of the Nation by its Moody’s credit rating rather than its citizens proliferation of compassion. We have neglected to revere life in all its forms thus destroying at will that which is inconvenient or burdensome. We have lost the patience to allow our lives to unfold in harmony with natural rhythms and, by so doing, misplaced conscience as we took what we wanted when we wanted it without regard for consequence. We belittle and mock our own inner connection to the Divine while falling prostrate at the feet of material false idols.

There is no President, no legislation, and no committee to see about all the ways in which we have erred and rebelliously refused to self-correct. For in the end, this is what it has come down to. Self-correction. For if we do not use this moment, this tragedy, this waste of human life to stop the hatred, name calling and polarization… to awaken to our Oneness… then it will be too late to Self-correct.

We will have moved beyond any remedy conceivable by our limited capacities and inflated egos to turn the tide of self-destruction. If that should happen, the correction will come from a place outside of our understanding and may God have mercy on us.

Awaken now. Stop the separation now. Take responsibility now. Feel your humanity now. There is only One of Us.

What I do to you I do to myself. What I think of you I think of myself. What I wish for you I bring upon myself.

This is law and it is incontrovertible.

In Koheleth 3:1 (Ecclesiastes 3:1) it states,“Vanity of vanities, said Koheleth; vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” It’s a much quoted, and as much interpreted, phrase. Recently, I have come to a new understanding of vanity.

Vanity, the isolated ego, likes to say, “I did this” or “What a great person I am to have accomplished this” or “I got this all by myself.” Vanity is the false belief that any one individual, solely of their own power, accomplishes success or greatness.

This thought immediately led me to President Obama’s recent statement that became so controversial during the campaign. The President said, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” His statement, on its face, seems true and consistent with my definition of vanity, which caused me to reflect upon how I, and many others, had so negatively reacted to the President’s statement.

But I’ve also been thinking a lot lately about Abraham Lincoln. Mainly because I’ve been trying to figure out what has prompted the “revival” of his story. The sixteenth President seems to be suddenly emerging everywhere…in novels, new biographies, re-printing of former biographies, reissuing of his own writings, as well as movies. Why?

I’ve concluded that in no time since the Civil War has our Nation been so divided. While in 1861 it was North against South and abolition against slavery, it is today poor against rich, black against white, Republican against Democrat… but it’s the same deeply held differences and the same destructive hatreds. What saved the Union was President Lincoln.

Lincoln, who was not traditionally religious but deeply theological, believed in both Divine Presence and Divine purpose. To that end, he called upon Creator for guidance and strength. However, he also bound himself to certain behavior based upon Divine purpose. For example, he vowed to God that if, at the Battle of Fredericksberg (Virginia), the North was successful at turning back Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Lincoln would issue the Emancipation Proclamation he had written two weeks earlier. Upon the North’s success at Fredericksberg, Lincoln did just that citing his vow.

Lincoln none-the-less understood that Divine principles had to be realized within the context of the morality of the times. Therefore, he saw the error and danger of both the radical Abolitionists (who would have instantly forced the end of slavery and destroyed the Union) and the pro-slavery advocates (who would have had their goal reached at the same destructive price).

Lincoln knew he had a partner in his vital mission to preserve the Union. He also knew his partner had the grander vision and the greater plan. Which brings me back to President Obama’s statement.

Everyone, and every idea, has its “shadow side.” This is the person or idea turned on its head, so to speak, misusing its energy to accomplish not the highest good but rather the expedient and/or self-serving outcome. Both Presidents Lincoln and Obama tell us that if you build it you do not do so or succeed alone. You have a partner. The critical difference between these two leaders is the end to which their perspectives lead a nation.

President Obama would have us believe that our “partner”…with a small “p”…is everyone and anyone along the way who had any input into our journey. Therefore, they too deserve the benefits and profits of the outcome.  It is this belief in “entitlement” that has caused so much division and, now hatred, among the citizenry. This perspective generates a “right” not found in either our Bibles or our Constitution. Even God demands action on our part as a quid pro quo to Divine protection and prosperity.

President Lincoln had a “Partner” as well. However, that Partner was the Supreme Being Itself to whom Lincoln turned, drew upon, and publicly acknowledged. He was, after all, the President who initiated a Federal Day of Thanksgiving and signed a Proclamation for a National Day of “humiliation, fasting and prayer” during the Civil War.  President Obama is the first President in the history of the Nation not to mention God in his formal Thanksgiving Proclamation.

Contrary to President Obama’s words, which result in ego-based entitlement and the remedy of forced redistribution of wealth, President Lincoln’s actions sought spiritual and national unity engendered by submission to the purpose and power of Divine principles.

As a result of Lincoln’s certainty in his beliefs and willingness to publicly acknowledge the role of the Divine in human history, the Civil War was followed by a stronger Union than had ever before been achieved. We truly became The United States of America. This was in no small way attributable to the insight, foresight and deeply held theological beliefs of the Nation’s leader at the time.

My conclusion is my prayer. That the Nation awakens to the shadow side of the principles that President Obama supports and advocates. We will not be joined, and will not survive, so long as we believe not in God but in government as the authority and power that makes life worth living. As we traverse these potentially perilous times, we have had quite enough “vanity of vanities.” Let us now seek to rediscover humility by acknowledging Divinity.

Devotees of Ayn Rand ask “Who is John Galt?” I would concur adding, “and where is our Abraham Lincoln?”

Moral equivalency is only possible in a world where there is no God. Without belief in a Supreme Being, all values are subjective. Absent a fixed, higher order of what we generally term “good” or evil” all values are subjective. Therefore, what is good to one may be bad to another.  Once you begin down that slippery slope you inevitably arrive at moral relativism.

Such is the case with Leftism, its media and reporting on the Middle East.

Yesterday, I was part of a web conference call with Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University speaking from Jerusalem where he is a Shalom Hartman Institute Engaging Israel Research Fellow. The purpose of the call was to give a real time update on conditions in Israel as that country enters the 8^th day of conflict with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization based in Gaza.

Professor Troy described the psychological impact upon himself, his children and the citizenry in general when sirens sound, giving them 60-90 seconds to find shelter from incoming rocket attack. He also described how quickly life returns to “normal” once the threat has passed. How his children continued on to their soccer practice, shopping excursion and hike as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. He lamented how after two or three such occurrences over a three day period his 15-year-old daughter had at first been reduced to tears but by day three, seemed to have accepted it as a part of life.

In particular, he expressed compassion and remorse for the loss of civilian life, particularly the children, on both sides of the conflict. Which brings me to my point. As a Jew, I know many Jews and a fair amount of Israelis. Nowhere among all of them do I ever hear anything but sorrow over the loss of civilian life. As with Professor Troy, they always express particular sorrow over the loss of life when children are the victims.

Yet, this is not the case in reverse. Hamas, and the Palestinian people, celebrate the loss of innocent life, regardless of age. They celebrate not only the loss of Israeli lives, they celebrate the loss of their own when it’s in service to killing innocent Israelis. As I post this, the most recent example is the bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv this date where 21 civilians have been wounded with Hamas taking credit for the attack.  In Gaza, they are passing out candy and celebrating in the streets. This is not the aberration for Gaza and West Bank inhabitants under such horrific circumstances. Disgustingly, it’s the norm.

As for moral equivalency, the Western media makes no distinction between the two societies. Yesterday I watched a U.S. news anchor condemn Israel for bombing a building in Gaza that housed a known Hamas leader and some Palestinian “journalists”…one of whom lost part of his leg in the bombing. Where was that anchor to condemn Islamic extremists when terrorists beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl, a Jew, while he was still alive then posted the video through Al Jazeera?

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir summarized the pain Israeli’s experience best when she said, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. But we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill theirs.”  I know of no such morally equivalent sentiment ever expressed from any representative of Hamas. Such is the obscenity of the moral equivalency expressed by the world in relation to this conflict and its two participants.

If the world does not recognize and stand for what is good while identifying and standing against what is evil, then Israel’s continued existence is not all that is at stake here. It is the continued existence of humanity.

I live in two worlds…the physical and the metaphysical. We all do to some extent. The physical world is what we can see, hear, smell, touch and sometime prove with objective means. It is a world evaluated and acted upon by our Conscious Mind. The metaphysical world is less easily defined but no less real. It is comprised of the branch of philosophy that treats the underlying theoretical principles of a subject.  It studies the relation of universals to particulars, and the teleological doctrine of causation. Its scope is broad enough to include the theologian, the philosopher, the mystic, and the fortune teller.

Some people, like myself, acknowledge and live in both of these worlds in a more or less balanced degree.  It wasn’t always so for me but I have worked deliberately, and at times accidentally, to achieve that balance…that harmony.

Others, such as Nikolai Tesla physicist and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of alternating current (AC) electrical supply system said, “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

So what is our resistance to that beginning?  What is our fear around opening up to the unknown? Again, Tesla leads us in the direction of the answer. “If the genius of invention was to reveal tomorrow the secret of immortality, of eternal beauty and youth, for which all humanity is aching, the same inexorable agents which prevent a mass from changing suddenly its velocity would likewise resist the force of the new knowledge until time gradually modifies human thought.”

We are living in a time when such “genius of invention” is opening up new ways of perceiving the physical and the non-physical, relating to one another and healing the body. We are being gifted the opportunity to open the heart frequency to receive more enlightened information than the mind frequency has the capacity to receive.  But remember what Tesla said about the resistance “mass” puts up to “sudden changes in its velocity.”  We humans are mass and as such, are not immune to the natural actions and reactions of matter.  However, the Universal Laws of Change and Movement that affect all matter also subject us to that “gradual wearing down” of resistance Tesla identified.

Nature is The Answer because it holds all the answers. I live by the same desire that drove Tesla when he said, “The desire that guides me in all I do is the desire to harness the forces of nature to the service of mankind.”

Dogs cannot see color but colors exists to all who can see them.  There are worlds around and within us operating under the same Universal Laws that apply to the reality science studies and relentlessly pursues. If you want to know those worlds, if you want to see where others cannot, relinquish the grasp your mind has on the physical world and open your heart to those worlds that are beyond its grasp.

 

Ronald Kessler writing for Newsmax.com is reporting that the Obama Administration knew of General Petraeus’ national-security-compromising, extra-marital affair and deliberately held back on exposing it until after the Presidential Election. If this turns out to be accurate, then the lengths this President, now elected for another 4 years, will go to protect himself and those around him far exceeds the imaginable. Not only that, but his total disregard for the safety and security of the United States and its citizens reveals a pattern of behavior that, when combined with other occurrences, borders on treason.

Treason? That’s a serious charge. Well, you decide.

1.  A refusal to use the term terrorist or Islamist in relation to the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious/political organization dedicated to the eradication of Israel, domination of the United States, and the establishment of a global Caliphate run by Sharia Law.

2.  Public encouragement and support of the Arab Spring despite ongoing indications that the revolution was leading Egypt to a more radical Islamic state than had existed under Hosnai Mubarak’s downfall.

3.  Funding and arms to topple dictator Muammar Gadaffi leading to the arming of Al Queda which then used those weapons to attack the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and kill Ambassador Stevens and three others.

4.  U.S. Arms shipments through Turkey, by way of Muslim Brotherhood intermediaries, allegedly to support Syrian rebels opposing President Assad’s regime when in fact those arms were and are going to the radical Islamic extremists in Syria.

5.  Failure to come to the aid of Ambassador Stevens and the others who died in Benghazi despite advance notice of the threat to the State Department and real-time intelligence to State, Defense and the White House as the murders were occurring.

6.  Deliberately failing to identify the known terrorist organization(s) who attacked and killed U.S. citizens in Benghazi while simultaneously conspiring to deliberately mislead and misinform U.S. citizens by blaming it on an irrelevant and unconnected video.

7.  Information indicating that General Petraeus was seriously compromised by his own behavior and subject to blackmail, thereby potentially putting the U.S. in harm’s way yet deliberately withholding that information and refusing, for months, to dismiss the General until after the Presidential election fearing adverse consequences for the President’s re-election possibilities.

Treason is a crime that refers to extreme acts against one’s  sovereign or nation and is defined as “a citizen’s actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation].”

So the question remains, “At what point does this Administration’s knowing and willful actions that repeatedly put American citizens at risk while supporting known terrorist organizations seriously injure this nation and thereby reach the level of treason?

I’ll leave you with that question since this is both your country as well as mine. While we both ponder the possible answers, know that you continue to be lied to and fed misinformation by this President, his Administration, and the mainstream media.

Rethinking your vote yet?