Archive for the ‘Spirituality’ Category

There’s a tragic story out of Canada about a teen suicide. It is the latest in the devastating effects of bullying. I found it so ironic that it followed the Vice Presidential debate by two days because, for me, the connection was unmistakable.  No, I am not blaming Vice President Joe Biden for the suicide of a Canadian teenager. What I am calling him on is his modeling of bullying as viable and preferred method of communication.

As a survivor of attempted suicide at age 24, I have a particular sensitivity to tragedies such as the one in Canada. As a talk radio host, I have a need to keep abreast of the news. As a citizen, I have an obligation to be educated, aware and hold my elected officials to a certain behavioral standard of public service and when they fail, to replace them. As a human being, I am personally responsible for not only my own choices but those of others whom I either condone or condemn.

In a nation plagued by bullying, cyber and otherwise, I was shocked and dismayed that in all the commentary and condemnation of Vice President Biden’s shameful behavior during the debate with Congressman Ryan this past week there remains, even as I write, an absence of awareness and identification of the fact that the Vice President was being a bully.

I make this accusation because his behavior was demeaning, condescending, intimidating, designed to make Congressman Ryan look foolish, stupid, out-of-touch and not worth the time or space the Congressman was taking up…in other words…worthless.  That is always a bully’s intention and modus operandi.

When bullies succeed, as they did in Canada, it ends tragically.  When they are rewarded, as would be the case in re-electing Vice President Biden, we validate them, their behavior and abdicate our personal responsibility to stand and say to the perpetrator, “You are the loser. You are the one who is deficient. You are the one lacking in self-respect.  I choose to condemn your behavior and, instead, stand with your intended victim.”

It is, sadly, too late for the teenager in Canada. It’s almost too late for the Nation…but not quite.

I saw President Obama disrespect Governor Romney by refusing to look at him throughout the debate and deeming him not worth the effort to prepare. I saw Vice President Biden disrespect Congressman Ryan by way of interruption and condescension. That’s all I need.

Hope and change?  I have hope and here’s the change we need.

We have a choice on November 6^th.  We can choose to reject the behavior and politics of bullying, name calling and destruction and choose decency instead. By so doing, we will reject the bullies and move toward ushering in a new era of civility in our public discourse. Perhaps when our leaders exemplify respect for one another, our youth will have new models to emulate and the bullies will be relegated to our national dustbin where they belong.

 

It begins.

We are witnessing the beginning of a global insurrection aimed at the downfall of Western civilization as we know it.  This is the end result of strange bedfellows having inadvertently, and in some cases deliberately, combined forces to achieve a common end: global domination.

It will be harder to reign in those forces now that we have been averse to self-correcting and accepting personal responsibility for our individual and collective contributions in allowing the world to lose it moral compass.

We have been gluttonous and greedy. We have feigned ignorance and allowed, in some cases condoned, oppression and suffering. The list of errors and omissions is not limited to the Western world. Eastern and Middle Eastern nations have suppressed and oppressed their own people. They condemned and tortured their own, often in the name of God, while diverting attention to the excesses of the West and blaming it for their own refusal to move into modernity.

Because of our unwillingness to be proactive, we find ourselves playing defense. So the question of the hour is, “How do we respond?” This is my answer.

1. Immediately bring all American troops home. They are overextended and depleted from multiple tours of duty.

2. Congress and the President to immediately cease, and suspend indefinitely, all financial aid to any country that protests against or attacks American interests. They do not deserve out help.

3. Alert the world that we will use our resources only to defend our borders and to support the defense of the State of Israel. They are a true ally and share in our humanity and love of freedom.

4. Above all stay focused upon peace and pray.

Judaism begins its 10-day holy period on September 16^th which ends with the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, on September 26^th. On that date, Ahmadinejad sought, and has been granted, the podium at the United Nations. Islamists love anniversaries and holidays. Do not overlook what is in the works. The time for burying heads in the sand is long gone. Awaken to the reality, take responsibility for the outcome, and create a new one before it is too late.

This morning, talk radio host Glenn Beck was analyzing the speech given last evening at the RNC by Ann Romney. Beck said there’s something electric about ANN Romney and it’s because she’s genuine.

He’s partly correct.

For those of us who have been viewing the world through what some would refer to as a “spiritual” perspective, it’s much deeper and more profound than Beck’s conclusion. It’s also more exciting and hope-filled.

The Divine Feminine aspect of Creation has been suppressed and oppressed for at least 5000 years. With few exceptions, there has been a deliberate and repeated attempt to write the role, and power, of women out of the history of humankind. Oftentimes, when obliteration wasn’t quite possible, denigration was the substitute as in the trafficking of women as sex slaves or the burning of them as witches.

Women’s wisdom (and therefore our unique contribution) was recognized early in Western culture by the Greeks. They were called “philosophers,” a term which has survived millennia, without our ever stopping to realize the name means “lovers of Sophia”…the Goddess of Wisdom.

The return of the Divine Feminine to her rightful place alongside the Divine  Masculine has been a long time coming. Her absence has been the source of an imbalance that has perpetuated thousands of years of aggression, greed and war.  We have waited patiently, hopefully and longingly for her reemergence and recognition.

Ann Romney took the stage at the RNC and stood firmly in her Self.  She was convincing without being overbearing, powerful without being forceful, authentic without being contrived and wise without being didactic. She exemplified what true power looks and feels like. It is power born of experience and strength, tempered by compassion.

Some say they wish she were the candidate. I say let us be aware and grateful that her husband, an example of the drive, aggression and achievement oriented energy of the Divine Masculine has standing by his side this long-awaited and actualized representative of the Divine Feminine.

Together these two balanced energies may actually represent the necessary hope and welcome change we were promised and which has so far eluded us.

 

Note: You have to watch her give the speech (not read or listen) to understand the power of the energy.  Click here to watch the raw video.

As I write this post, the predictors are that Hurricane Isaac, now barreling across the state of Florida toward the Gulf Coast, could result in catastrophic damage to Louisiana equal to that of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Not just in the same location but on the anniversary of the Katrina disaster.  Let’s pray otherwise. Since I’m a proponent of the theory that there are no accidents and everything happens for a reason, and since I’ve mentioned prayer, let’s see if there’s any ancient wisdom to be gleaned from the name of this Hurricane.

Isaac was the son of Abraham, the first Patriarch and progenitor of all three major religions. Abraham was told by God to bind Isaac to a rock (Mt. Moriah) and there offer him a sacrifice to God. Although Abraham was distraught at the instruction, it was Abraham’s unwavering faith and trust in God that caused him to come within seconds of slaughtering his own son. But it took more than Abraham’s faith. It took Isaac’s as well. Isaac was 37 years old at the time.

We all know the outcome. At the last moment, God directs Abraham to cease and desist and Isaac goes on to become the second Patriarch of the Jewish People.  So what’s the message Isaac brings?

Our safety, our very survival, is dependent upon our unwavering faith and trust in a benevolent, if not always understood, Creator.  It’s this unwavering faith that is often tested and, when found to be heartfelt, as often rewarded with the protection and well-being promised.

We are going through some rough times and each of us is being tested. There must have been a lesson to be learned from the Katrina disaster that we somehow missed. Perhaps it is about subjugating our Will.  Perhaps it is another attempt by Creator to awaken us in time to the compassion we lack and the priorities we have confused. Perhaps it is to remember that as Abraham and Isaac…we are not separate but in this together.

Regardless of our age or our inclination to doubt, let’s follow the example of Isaac and surrender to the Will of Creator by having trust that there is meaning in the chaos and faith that there will be goodness in the outcome.

In the meantime, pray for those in the path of this Isaac.

There’s a lot of hate speech flying around these days considered to be standard rhetoric for an upcoming Presidential election. The Democrats (via their SuperPACS and minions) have called Mitt Romney a felon, a murderer and a racist while Republicans (via their SuperPACS and minions) have called Obama a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military and hates the U.S.

It seems differences of opinion or policy are no longer sufficient grounds for debate. Now, its personal. Not only is it personal, but the opponent isn’t just in disagreement he (or she) is wrong, bad and often just plain evil. While personal, political attacks aren’t new (you can read some pretty mean-spirited exchanges between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison) it appears that we’ve reached a new low. Now it doesn’t even matter if they’re true.

So what lessons may there be out there for us regarding hate speech? I’d say the Bible is a good enough place to start.

There are two mitzvot in the Torah that specifically address improper speech: “Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people” (Lev. 19:16), and “ye shall not wrong one another” (Lev. 25:17, which according to tradition refers to wronging a person with speech). In fact, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in Judaism, of the 43 sins specified in the communal confessional prayer, 11 are sins committed through speech.

How we use words must be pretty important since God apparently wanted to be heard on the topic. And, yet, we continue to be reckless and unconscious when we speak.

A war of words is a war none-the-less. As long as we choose to communicate in this manner (or remain silent while others do) we continue to support the foundation for wars of a greater magnitude. After all, a war of words is simply the first step taken (the microcosm) towards the final destination (the macrocosm): war that actually kills.

In case you think this is an overblown and exaggerated conclusion, or too great a leap from a war of words between individuals to wars between cultures or nations, allow me one final spiritual reference.

In the Torah, the gravest of speech-related sins is tale-bearing or lashon ha-ra (literally, “the evil tongue”), which involves discrediting a person or saying negative things about a person, even if those negative things are true. In fact, true statements are even more damaging than false ones, because you can’t defend yourself by disproving the negative statement if it’s true! Some sources indicate that lashon ha-ra is equal in seriousness to murder, idol worship, and incest/adultery (the only three sins that you may not violate even to save a life.

Let’s evaluate this campaign season, and the candidates in particular, by their lack of evil speech.  Let’s give them the message that the last one standing with the electorate will not be the one who perpetuates the hate, but rather the one who promotes the highest good.

Where did all the hated come from? At what point did it become fashionable, even preferable, to lash out through emails, Facebook, editorials, even in person against others whose political or spiritual ideas differ from one’s own? How and why did we close our eyes, bury our heads in the sand, while the Nation “chose up sides” and created two opposing teams based upon the philosophy of “Us Against Them?” Have we been manipulated into intolerance or did we get here on our own?

What, exactly, have we become?

Recently I experienced the stark contrast in the ways in which we can choose to live our lives. I believe our very survival as a country rests upon each of us making the right choice.

On my Facebook page, through a Facebook “friend,” appeared several postings to another page that was titled “Dogs Against Romney.” It is what it’s titled. People who don’t think Mitt Romney should be President because he and his family traveled on vacation with their dog in his cage on the roof of their SUV.  As someone who has spent her life rescuing animals, I understand the outrage (although I’ve seen dogs on motorcycles thoroughly enjoying themselves so whose to judge?) but also commented on the page regarding the narrow and single issue approach to why someone would or would not vote for anyone when we have so many economic and foreign policy issue to address.

Expressing my thoughts was, apparently, my sin. What followed were personal attacks on me, targeting my heartlessness and my obvious hatred for Barack Obama. Neither is true, and both are extreme and personal attacks targeted at me rather than a dialogue about substance.

On the same day, I watched an interview with Chris Williams, a Mormon whose car was struck by a 17-year old drunk driver named Cameron White (also a Mormon). The accident instantly killed Williams’ pregnant wife, their unborn son, 11-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. Only Williams survived. In the instant that he regained consciousness immediately following the accident and looked around the car, realizing his entire family was dead, he made the decision to forgive whoever had caused this tragedy. The entire story, including the ongoing relationship Williams and White maintain is chronicled in a new book titled “Let It Go.”

Since both the Facebook incident and the Williams/White interview occurred on the same day, I had to ponder the message. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and so I’ve come away with two thoughts…one personal, one Universal.

Personally, I’ve forgiven those who lashed out at me on Facebook for expressing my differing opinion and send them nothing but love and blessings in return. Universally, we need to awaken from this sleep of illusion that we are all separate, that we can treat one another any way we please and if that includes anger, hatred and even violence we can somehow survive and prosper.

As difficult as it is to comprehend Williams’ forgiveness, it is none-the-less a reality and a clear message about the powers of forgiveness and love. Forgiveness  (and tolerance) heal and we have become a critically wounded species. It is our only cure.

Refuse to be seduced by both the political war and the social media illusion that “I can attack you from a distance and somehow walk away myself unharmed.” We are all connected. Until we understand, accept and act upon this reality we will continue to try and destroy one another with words and weapons.

The saying is true.

United we stand, divided we fall.

 

 

 

Don’t blame the gun. It’s an inanimate object. It can’t fire itself and it cannot maintain the requisite intent to commit a heinous act. Murder, mass or otherwise, is about the lack of conscience, morality and, occasionally, sanity of the perpetrator. So let’s not get all puffed up, Mayor Bloomberg, about gun control and  carried away with the moment while losing sight of the environment that fosters such monstrous acts.

Our energies are better spent understanding and quelling a society that promotes violence in every form of media, condones or remains silent when “winning” is achieved by stepping on the backs of others, and so totally devalues human life as to make abortion a method of birth control.

We have so lowered the ethical and moral bars that we’ve descended to a shameful level of human consciousness. We refuse to take personal responsibility for where we are… while too many still think the “right” candidate or “right” leader will cure all their ills.

Not so.

The shooter, the hate-filled neo-Nazi, who gunned down innocent worshipers in Wisconsin is a symptom of what ails us. The disease which he portends, chaos, is spreading like a cancer. Yet, each of us can, by our personal actions, slow and even arrest that spread. However, it means not letting people like Mayor Bloomberg, and others, divert our attention from our personal responsibility by finding a scapegoat in gun control. Would it be nice to live in a world sans guns? Certainly. But it will do little good to take away the guns without instilling a corresponding understanding by humanity of our connection to one another and our Oneness.  For without such conscious awareness and personal responsibility, there will be the same diseased hearts and minds who will find alternate means of destruction.

It’s not about them and it’s not about the guns. It’s about us…what we value, what we espouse and what we teach, by example, to the next generation.

While many are making much of what happened yesterday in Arkansas and Kentucky, it’s no surprise to me.  That’s because I’ve been saying, for quite some time now to anyone who will listen, that Barack Obama is finished.  He will not be re-elected.  The reason for my optimism is that we’ve reached the tipping point. A sufficient number of Americans are now awakened to the reality that 1) he has no leadership capability and 2) he has no core.

This President was elected on a hope and a prayer….not hope and change. He was successfully marketed and insufficiently vetted.  The inevitable outcome of that carefully crafted combination was that we elected not only a man without qualification, but more importantly, one with a political and social agenda that flies in the face of what it means to be an American.

Neither three years of on-the-job training nor the stated preferences of the American people have caused this President to waver from his anti-capitalist, anti-western, anti-personal freedom stance.  He has brought a hubris and arrogance to the office that was obscured, for quite some time, by the limelight of being the first African-American President.  That light has faded to reveal a vacuous, condescending and opportunistic man.  Which is why recently in Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia an out of state lawyer, an “uncommitted” and a felon, respectively, nearly matched Obama’s vote totals in the Democratic primaries.

I am heartened by this timely and needed turn of events. I am, as stated at the outset, not surprised.

One of the characteristics of the unprecedented global change in Consciousness we are transitioning through is the inability to sustain deception. Simply put, there are no more secrets.  True Light, the Light of Creator, does many things but perhaps none more meaningful than unveil the shadow side of things. Absent the shadow, Truth emerges. Therein lie the basis for my optimism.

Yes, we are transiting some difficult circumstances. Yes, we all feel the challenges. Yes, there is much being asked of us and, likely, more to come. But the shadow has been unveiled for all to see and many have now opened their eyes.  It is not Obamacare that will be repealed in November but Barack Obama himself and what he tried to do. And failed.

 

It’s pretty obvious why “The Avengers” has hit a financial home run in its opening  weekend. Perhaps our political candidates running in 2012 would do well to pay attention.  The message is that people are 1) looking for leaders, 2) heroes and 3) anyone capable of cleaning up the mess.  Without real life satisfaction, they are flocking to theaters to get lost in the escape of watching it on screen.

Beware.

While it’s a good sign that people are finally fed up with the deceit and corruption that we’ve permitted and, in too many cases, participated in… threshold moments such as this one have historically been “ripe for the pickings” by less than altruistic individuals.

If we are to survive and establish an ethical and moral code that reflects who we really are and what we are capable of, then we’ll have to be fully conscious and personally responsible in order to avoid being seduced by those who would take advantage of our collective frustration and anger to manipulate us into an even darker reality.

We became a consumer society. As such, we became accustomed to being taken in my promises and marketing ploys that have as their end game making you want to buy what someone else has to sell. In our quest for authentic leadership we bought “Hope and Change” in 2008 with less scrutiny than we buy a car. That abdication of personal responsibility got us where we find ourselves today. To make the same mistake twice will be fatal to the culture and the Nation as we have known them each to be.

Change is filled with opportunity.  This is a time in our history, both national and human, when creative thinking is called for as is the “heavy lifting” required by each of us to see the world through this transition. Metamorphosis is never an easy process; however, when properly accomplished, it’s always a beautiful one.

We each hold in our hearts and our minds the potential for unprecedented growth. The question is “Do we have the wisdom and courage to make good use of it?” We can succeed but only if we, as individuals, identify the hero within and then act accordingly.

The latest disclosure in the Trayvon Martin killing appears to be that NBC selectively edited then aired the 911 call made by George Zimmerman resulting in the impression that Zimmerman voluntarily identified the suspect as “black” rather than responded to the dispatcher’s question as to whether the suspect was “black, white or Hispanic?” So the facts turn out to be different than the illusion.

Funny thing about facts. They often do that.

As a former practicing attorney, I can tell you that the facts are seldom apparent. They require a diligent and determined effort if they are to be uncovered. It’s why we have pre-trial investigations, a formal process of discovery, trials by judges or juries who act as arbiters of the facts as presented. Even after all of that, we remain conflicted when the death penalty is at stake because we know, in our hearts, that even after the most thorough effort sometimes facts, and therefore the truth, still remain undetected.

But undetected facts are quite different than deliberately obscured facts.

What one or more persons at NBC did in editing that 911 call was deliberate. It was either a knowing falsehood, with the intent to mislead, or it was incompetence. Either way, there’s no justification and no excuse for the damage done.

I frequently speak professionally to organizations on ethics. In fact, I developed a system called Ethics-To-Go© because, in a highly technological and rapidly shifting world where trends change daily, we need “user-friendly” ways to hold onto what we value.

Everywhere you look, we are deficient in ethics. There is an absence of ethical behavior in both our public and private leaders. These individuals, however, are not the cause. We are. We get the leaders we deserve. So long as we do not demand of ourselves the highest ethical (and moral) behavior we can expect no more from those who aspire and rise to positions of authority and power. They are merely our reflection.

NBC, by its malfeasance, has contributed not only to the lowest common denominator but also to the violence erupting nationally. By their act they bolster those who believe this crime was all about race rather than about fear and aggression and in so doing, fan the flames of racial hatred and violence.

Thus far, there are several take-a-ways from this as yet unfolding story.

1. We are not a nation of vigilante justice.
2. Violence begets violence.
3. Allowing the process to unfold is critical.
4. Manipulation of the truth results in staged chaos.
5. We cannot reply upon the media.

I suspect there are more take-a-ways yet to come.

In the meantime, let’s be grateful that there’s enough light around to illuminate all this darkness. Let’s also be committed to being the Light so we enlighten ourselves and others. It is only by embracing personal responsibility that we can hope to someday get the leaders we want and deserve.