Archive for the ‘World’ Category

Someone once asked what caused me to dedicate myself to encouraging and inspiring others to be the best they can be. I had to think about that question for a day or so before I was able to land on a reply that felt grounded in truth. The answer takes a little biblical analysis and some personal history to understand.

In describing the birth of Isaac’s twin sons, Esau and Jacob, Genesis 25:25 states: “Now the first came forth, red all over like a hairy garment; and     they named him Esau.” In Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, it teaches that Esau was “red all over” because he was filled with the desire for blood and all things material. In fact, Esau grew up to sell his birthright as the firstborn (he was the firstborn of the twins) to his brother in exchange for a bowl of soup following an act of murder.

We always have choice. This is the blessing of Free Will. Esau, too, had a choice. Kabbalah goes on to teach that with his lust for blood, Esau could have grown up to become, for example, a butcher thereby satisfying his lust. Instead, he grew to become a murderer.

My personal story is this. Growing up, my sister always told me I was a selfish person. Perhaps I was whether I had reason to be or not. But if that was my nature, I too had choice as to how I was going to live out that nature.  At some point in my life, I realized that what gave me the most satisfaction was not acquiring material possessions or making money but rather when I helped someone believe in their highest potential, supported them in moving one step closer to their heart’s desire or came to the aid of an injured animal.

So, my choice was simple once I had the realization. I could either spend my life satisfying only myself in pursuit of outward goals that society said brought happiness, or I could spend it helping people and animals to have their best life. Both ways would have been consistent with my nature. The only difference was the level or frequency of how I would actualize my self-satisfaction.

As we approach mid-term elections and the 2016 Presidential election that follows, Republicans will tell you to vote Republican to save the Nation from Democratic policies and control. Democrats will implore you to vote Democrat to save us from disaster should Republicans take the Senate. Libertarians will implore you to vote Libertarian to rescue us from governmental encroachment upon our civil liberties.  Green Party advocates will implore you to vote Green to save the planet. In 2016, as in 2008, we will be inundated with new versions of hope and change.

But as with Esau and me, there is only our nature and understanding how to use it to the highest good that real change ever occurs. There are no political solutions to what ails us. There is no “change of the guard” that will alter our future. Only a change in the heart of each of us will bring about the world of peace we all so desperately desire.

Butcher or Murderer?
Self-gratifier or Giver?
Warrior or Peacemaker?

Free Will. You get to decide.

I tried to commit suicide at age 24 and came frighteningly close to succeeding…if success is ever the right word to use in such situations. As such, I have a lot to say about Robin Williams, not because I knew him but because I know exactly how he was thinking and feeling when he made the decision to try.

I would first say to those who would second guess his motives, his financial situation or his degree of “selfishness” as I have heard it referred to: DON’T… unless, of course, you’ve been to the point of consciously, albeit irrationally, trying to die by your own hand.

It’s not about the money, it’s not about the fame, it’s not about the lack or excess of anything other than feeling. It’s about feeling too much in a world that does not have enough love or compassion. It’s about living a lie and becoming the comic, the drama queen, the rebel, the alcoholic, or the workaholic in order to harden you sufficiently to withstand all the insensitivity, separation and denial.

I’m not a big proponent of medicating depression. In fact, I was coming off of anti-depressants when I used those same pills to try to kill myself. And, while one of the first thoughts I recall having upon surviving the attempt was what hell I had put my family through, it never entered my mind at the moment I made the decision. You see, when the pain gets bad enough and the fog gets thick enough, the realization that you have finally figured out a way to stop the suffering seems like a relief and that single realization takes precedent over anything resembling rational thought.

When a person tries to commit suicide, they don’t really want to die. They’ve just misplaced hope. Hope that things can and will change. Hope that the pain will ease. Hope that the fog will lift. Hope that they will ever feel joy again. Hope that on balance, life is actually worth living through all its trials and tribulations. Hope that tomorrow, or even an hour from now, it will be possible to give and receive love again. Which is why everyone, not just people who are depressed, should sit up and pay attention to what Robin Williams was driven to do.

We are living in a world overwhelming us with so much negativity that we are losing hope. You see it in the growing apathy. Apathy unchecked leads to hopelessness. Where is the outrage and help for innocents beheaded or buried alive? Where is the outrage, and help, for the Iraqi’s stranded on a mountain top? Where is the outrage and help for children being used as sex slaves and pawns in a political game? Where is the outrage for female genital mutilation as a “religious” practice? Where is the outrage for corrupt, lying, greedy politicians who prosper at our expense and our decline? Where is the outrage at what’s happening on our border? Where is the outrage at what we do to animals every minute of every day in the name of science? Where is the outrage at the manipulation of our economy for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many?

I know. I know. You are tired. You are overwhelmed. You feel powerless. You are dancing as fast as you can dance. So was Robin Williams. That’s the cautionary tale he bequeaths us.

His most important message and he brought us many through his seemingly endless creativity, is that having to feel less, or dying, is not the answer. The message of immediate importance is for each one of us to finally embark upon creating a world where kindness, cooperation, compassion and love are the norm not the aberration.

A world where feeling too much will only get you more joy.

I have long lived by the certainty that everything is energy. This includes money which, by logical extension of thought, includes the economy. The evolution and advancement of humanity has always been tied to its understanding, harnessing and application of energy. Since human nature, in its lower form, contains elements of both selfishness and greed, there are those who throughout time have sought to understand, harness and apply to their sole benefit, the production and distribution of money for the purpose of concentrating power among the few.

The concentration of power among the few can only be achieved at the expense of the many. Which brings me to the invaluable lesson we in the United States and elsewhere can learn from Hamas.

What we witness Hamas inflicting in Gaza, and what occurs throughout the radical Islamic controlled regions of the world, is a combination of physical and psychological enslavement. Through terror, brute force and total disregard for quality of life (or life itself) such “leadership” profits and prospers while sacrificing the very people it claims to be representing.

We in the West should not be quick to judge how the Palestinian population could allow and participate in such a diabolical arrangement as we in the United States are living in an “economic glass house.” Instead of physical and psychological enslavement we in the West have been blindly cooperating in our own financial and psychological enslavement.

By way of understanding and controlling the means of production, distribution and regulation of the energy of money, and the mind-altering control of the means of dissemination of information by media…elites and power brokers in this country have enslaved us as surely as those in countries we condemn for lacking humanitarian policies. The only difference is the subtlety and masking of true intent as executed in the West. While Islamists use kidnapping and torture as their weapons of choice, the U.S. government and global power brokers use the Federal Reserve, the World Bank and social engineering as theirs.

What humanity must do, and do in a hurry before escape (freedom) is no longer a viable option, is to plunge the stake of truth into the heart of the beast of enslavement that has been sucking our life’s blood from us for at least the last 100 years. We can do this by awakening to the truth of what’s happening and taking a lesson from the ancient Israelites who were economically and psychologically enslaved to Pharaoh: they opted out in a hurry.

We too, must now hurry to opt out of a corrupt and diabolical system that manipulates us through the illusions of “lack and fear” and which have caused us to become indebted and addicted to a fiction that “more and faster” is better.

You must opt out of the lie that you are only one person who has no ability to know what is happening to you and lack a voice to articulate that knowing.You must opt out of fear and all its progeny…victimization, depression, frustration, impotence, rage, violence, and hate.

Step into who you are. Step into your connection with all that is good and true. Step into the memory of what freedom feels like and reclaim your birthright.

Slow down. Self-source. Have courage. You have the answer and you know the way out.

We are living in extraordinary times. There isn’t anyone I know who does not feel the profound upheaval and changes we are experiencing both globally and personally. One of the awakenings taking place is the realization that we are free to see, and therefore create, a world of our choosing. We need not be enslaved any longer to someone else’s reality or to the perspective fed us daily by a variety of media outlets and politicians.

Which leads me to write about “compassionate war.” I realize the phrase itself seems like an oxymoron. How can you have something as violent and destructive as war and see it in terms of compassion? The answer lies in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.

My focus is not the politics of the conflict nor is it the terrorist designation of Hamas. It’s about Israel and the manner in which it has chosen to prepare for and proceed with this inevitable clash.

In two weeks of fighting, Israel has agreed unilaterally to 4 separate halts in the armed fighting. Two of those were humanitarian requests, one by Hamas itself, which Israel honored and Hamas did not. Israel literally built a hospital at one of the border-crossing check-points to treat any wounded Palestinians who would need treatment. No one has showed up. Israel offered and readied millions of shekels, (Israeli currency is 3.5 :1 as against the US dollar) so at least one million dollars, of medical supplies and equipment to deliver to Gaza but the Palestinian Authority rejected the offer.

Israel has spent millions of dollars building bomb shelters throughout Israel and in these past two weeks, 75% of its population has had to use them. In Gaza, tens of thousands of tons of cement and building supplies intended for schools, office buildings and homes were diverted by Hamas over the past five years to burrow and build elaborate tunnels underground from Gaza to Israel to be used in a mass terror attack scheduled for this coming September 25^th, the first night of the Jewish New Year.

Perhaps most astonishingly, Israel has done what no other nation in the history of the world has done. It gives advance warning to Gaza’s citizens where and when they will strike. By way of leaflets dropped by the Israeli Air Force, cell phone text messages and twitter postings, Israel gives the Palestinians every opportunity to flee a known missile launch site before striking. Hamas has deliberately positioned those sites in homes, schools, graveyards, and mosques while ordering Palestinian men, women and children to remain where they are despite certainty of injury or death.

Just today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that any lasting truce will require 1) the “demilitarization of Gaza and social and economic relief for the Palestinian people there.”  Even in the midst of war, the Israeli’s are looking out for the well-being of their adversary.

All civilized people who revere life want a world without war. However, as long as there remain uncivilized people who glorify violence and death there will be a need for defensive action.

In the Torah, the Old Testament, it talks about the nation of Israel being a “light unto the Nations.” I think it is fair to say that in a defensive war thrust upon it, Israel has and continues to act in ways that exemplify how even in the darkest of times, honorable men and women can shine a light upon their humanity and reflect for the world our connectedness to one another.

Compassion and reality are not mutually exclusive. Although, when examining the U.S. government’s response to the current invasion by illegal aliens and the world’s response to the current war between Israel and Hamas one can only wonder.

As a lawyer, there’s a saying I’ve always liked: “Facts are pesky things.” They demand acknowledgement and, in the absence of opposing facts, stand as legal truth. We have some border facts confronting us so let’s give them their due:

1. The U.S. Border is the line of demarcation for identifying those legally residing within its parameters (U.S. citizens) and those living outside those parameters (foreigners).

2. The Constitution of the United States leaves room for interpretation as to who is obligated to enforce the U.S. borders (the Executive branch or the States) but it’s undisputed that it’s one, the other, or both.

3. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA) sets forth the legal requirement and process for entering the United States and subsequently obtaining citizenship.

4. With limited and narrowly defined exceptions, people entering the country in violation of the INA commit a crime.

5. The Presidential Oath of Office is explicitly clear that it is the obligation of the President of the United States to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

6. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 created two territories: a homeland for the Jewish People (Israel) and Palestine.

7. Every Arab nation rejected the establishment of the Arab state and refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli state.

8. In 1948, following war between the Arabs and the Jews, the State of Israel formally came into existence

9. Arab nations and Islamic terror groups have been the aggressors and waged repeated wars and terrorist attacks on Israel and its citizens since 1948.

10. In the 1967 Six Day War, Israel was attacked by surprise by 6 Arab nations, prevailed in that war, and subsequently returned to Egypt over 26,000 square miles of territory Israel captured in return for peace with Egypt.

11. Israel subsequently relinquished all sovereignty over the Gaza strip to Palestinians.

12. Arabs and Islamic terrorists have been continuously attacking Israel on a daily basis from both the Sinai and Gaza.

13. Children do not wage war of their own accord nor do they willingly violate borders and should not be used as pawns to further a political agenda.

Let’s temporarily feed, clothe and provide emergency medical attention to the tens of thousands of illegal foreign children crossing the U.S. border. Then as quickly as possibly send them back to their countries of origin.

Israel has a right to defend itself while protecting and maintaining its legal borders. In 1967, then Israeli Prime Minister Gold Meir said, “There will be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.”

Compassion and reality are not mutually exclusive.

It’s certainly easy to become frustrated, angered, even enraged at national and global events. Terrorists are summarily released from Guantanamo to inevitably return to their pursuit of our destruction; original IRS files under investigation, allegedly lacking any archived copies, suddenly disappear and the hard drive that housed them is destroyed; literally thousands of illegal immigrants pour across our southern border daily while the Federal government, charged with our protection, stands by idle and silent; the most radical of radical Islamic terrorists murderously and savagely tear their way through Iraq seizing cities and imposing Sharia Law as they go, negating the efforts we made and the lives we sacrificed to bring that nation a chance for freedom; food and energy prices soar upward while we are told there is no inflation and one hundred million, one third of our population, are unemployed.

Yes, it is definitely easy to be overwhelmed and enraged…easy and terribly wrong.

Overwhelmed people feel victimized and are susceptible to manipulation by anyone promising an end to their frustrations. Enraged people are reactive, fail to reason and consequently, think before they act. Neither false prophets nor indiscriminate actions can serve us now.

What’s needed is very simple, if not necessarily easy:

1. Pull back to your most basic and immediate needs and environment.

2. Ask yourself, “How will gratuitous anger serve me?

3. Ask yourself,” What can I do to simplify my life and reduce stress?”

4. Reach out to neighbors, friends or colleagues to establish a community of support for one another.

5. Commit to not allowing yourself to be seduced into blame, violence or hatred of others.

6. Identify and stand firm in your core beliefs regardless of their political correctness…so long as those beliefs are not at the expense of another.

7. Hold fast to faith in humankind’s awakening to the realization that united we stand and divided we fall as All are One.

8. Allow truth to emerge from within you rather than allow an agenda to be imposed upon you.

Every historical period has its challenges. This one is no exception. What causes pain and suffering is not change. It’s our resistance to change. The world is changing in rapid and profound ways. Old patterns of behavior and correction will not work. When we switched from horse and buggy to the combustion engine, you could not fuel that engine with oats…although those oats worked just fine under the old system.

Rather than judge who did what and how we got here, let’s use our intellects, our hearts, and our individual uniqueness to co-create solutions. The dawn of a new day brings the opportunity to either repeat yesterday or live today anew.

Free Will. You get to choose.

 

Neither gun control, knife control nor any legislation can or will make us better people or more able to resist what is the very human inclination to misuse energy in all its forms. Tragedies, such as what occurred in Santa Barbara this week, have been part of human history for as long as that history has been passed down orally or memorialized in writing. Cain killed Abel without a gun.

Whether you believe the Torah/Old Testament as the literal word of God or only a warning of what has been human nature from time immemorial…it matters not. There is evidence as far back as humankind that we have refused to accept that life can be disappointing and others may have what we desire. Then, failing to obtain either satisfaction or those things we covet, we compound our mistaken perspective by concluding that we have the right to use violence to get what we deem to have been denied.

Whether it’s a sick, tortured and delusional young man in California, neighbor against neighbor, or nation against nation the use of violence is born of the illusion of separation. The illusion that I can hurt the other without hurting me. That what I think and feel and do are limited to me and the small world in which I believe myself to be the epicenter.

Five Thousand plus years of this illusion have proven to be not only wrong but consistently and repeatedly destructive. Now, for the first time in humankind’s history the capability to be thoroughly self-annihilating as a species is before us as is the means to actualize that destruction with unprecedented speed.

Free Will is what can save us from making an irreversible mistake. But exercising that will in an era of technological addiction and deliberate manipulation of human consciousness requires great courage and focus. It requires that each of us unplug from the sources and forces that would keep us enslaved to a separation mentality. It requires enough awareness to know that no political solution is uncorrupted. It requires joining the masculine, scientific mind with the feminine, compassionate heart so that balance can be restored to a species that has chosen to live under the illusion that we as individuals are helpless and need rely upon political power to accomplish miraculous deeds.

Nothing could be further from Truth.

Do not believe what you read. Do not believe what you hear. Do not believe what you see. Believe only in the knowing that you are Infinite Divine Being in action. You are a co-creator and absolutely everything you think, say and do matters.

Thereby comes the correction.

The next time Secretary of State John Kerry chooses to describe Israel as heading towards an apartheid state he would do well to closely examine the reaction of world Jewry to L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s bigoted remarks about African Americans. There is probably no other People on earth, living in or out of Israel, more sensitive to bigotry, bias, religious persecution and hate speech than Jews.

Sadly, the Secretary’s comment was founded in either 1) ignorance of historical fact or 2) his own apparent bias about Israel, its people and its government. I hope it is the former, although in a position of such gravitas requiring heightened diplomatic skills neither is acceptable nor excusable.

Arab Israeli’s make up approximately 20% of the population. Historically, Arabs living within Israel since 1949 have enjoyed more freedoms than Arabs living in any Arab speaking country. Since 1949, Israel has seen 70 Arab Israeli’s elected to the Knesset (with 13 serving currently). Arabs serve in the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, the Israeli Defense Forces, the Israeli police, as emergency medical service providers, doctors, businessmen, entertainers, television personalities and in a multitude of positions within every aspect of civil society.  In 2004, Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered that every public company have at least one Arab Israeli on its Board of Directors.

Does this seriously lead anyone other than Secretary Kerry (or Arab extremists seeking the annihilation of the State of Israel) to conclude that an apartheid Israeli nation is a foregone conclusion? I think not.

Personally, I stand with former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, who today said that “children are running our foreign policy” and with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) who yesterday called for the resignation of Secretary Kerry.

Ignorance is only bliss when it does no harm.

Do you remember the scene in the “Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy’s dog, Toto, pulls down the curtain to reveal the “Wizard” to be nothing more than an old man who has intimidated a land and its inhabitants with his “smoke and mirror” powers? And do you remember that as the fallen curtain exposes his fraud to Dorothy, Tin Man, Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion the old man continues to speak into the microphone and turn the wheel of his deceptive light and sound show in a last ditch, desperate attempt to hold onto the fiction of his power? Yes? Your recall it? Good.

Now pause for a second and think about the world in which we have been living.

Think about President Obama and Vladimir Putin and Hafetz Assad and Monsanto and Wall Street and the mass media and the pharmaceutical industry and an almost endless list of other apparent power brokers. Notice any similarity? Get the picture?

The Light (a/k/a Toto in my Oz analogy) has pulled down the curtain that’s been obscuring the illusion of power and control under which humankind has been living for thousands of years. What we are seeing and feeling, if only we will open our eyes and our hearts, is the end of illusion. True power, the power given the free-willed individual to understand and live her or his own connection to Source, and to all sentient beings, is what has emerged.

Look at Ukraine or Egypt. Look at Justina Pelletier now being returned to Tufts Hospital for the medical treatment she desperately needs because of public outcry against Boston Children’s Hospital and Massachusetts Department of Children and Families.  Look at the stunning Homeland Security decision issued today that flies in the face and reverses Eric Holder’s and the Justice Department’s efforts to extradite the Romeike family who have been seeking political asylum in the United States under grounds of religious persecution in Germany. These are each inspiring and remarkable examples of an awakened Consciousness that finally sees past the illusions of fear and control that has kept we humans confined and dependent upon our keepers…like animals trapped in a zoo.

Both we and the animals were created to be free.

The curtain is lifted. There is no omnipotent power called government or DOW Jones or GE or Google running your life or mine. There is no “cost of living” increase the government or the corporation needs to provide for your financial security because there is no “cost of living.” Life is a gift. The only way to pay back is to pay it forward, in gratitude to Source, by way of service to one another

Breaking News: Look behind the curtain. You are the Wizard of You… and We are the Wizards of Us.

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?