The End of Nuclear Arms Begins Today!

Dateline: August 1st, 2009

Posted from Los Alamos, New Mexico, birthplace of the atom bomb, and source of thousands of deaths from bombings and from radioactive poisonings.

Headline: Nuclear Disarmament Began Today in Los Alamos

With courage comes more courage. With visioning comes even greater visions. With great love comes even bigger love, even Big Giant Love!

Today, with a group of committed citizens from around America, and led by three visionary leaders of peace, the end of nuclear arms began.

"Nuclear bombs are immoral, their maintenance is immoral when millions are hungry, their development and testing is immoral when our brightest minds are being put to use to kill other human beings by the thousands", said Nobel Peace Prize Winner Maread McGuire.

"We are standing at the brink of possibility. There is a window that is now open for nuclear disarmament to actually happen. Take a stand. Stand up for peace, for what is right, for the end of this insanity that we’ve all lived with now for 65 years. We can end this, it’s up to us." With these words, Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize Winner from 1997, catapulted the nuclear disarmament movement forward in the birthplace of the death cult of the nuclear age.

Can we really end this craziness now? Is there actually an opening in the global consciousness for the end of nuclear bombs, missiles, testing, mining for uranium, the poisoning of the earth and skies, the blood of children and mothers and fathers endlessly suffering due to the holocaust of our nuclear policies?

Yes. Now is the time to truly build security, by saying to ourselves across the world, "We will stop this insanity that has ruled our politics and planning, our hearts and minds, for too long. We will end this death cycle, and end it in peace. No more. Enough is enough."

Be inspired. Let your Self be inspired.

Be empowered. Let your empowerment spread to your family, your friends, your colleagues, everyone you know and touch and love and care about.

Let your spirit ring out for freedom from this insanity of nuclear bombs. Let your vision begin to see a world beyond nukes, beyond intimidation, beyond ultra-crazed macho-ism. "Mutually Assured Destruction" (M.A.D.)(Yes, it IS MAD!), the policy of containment because we’d destroy each other if we let loose with our arsenals of evil, now gives way for the new paradigm:

"Spiritually Assured Communities Evolve", or S.P.A.C.E.

You are important. You count. Your voice matters. Remember what happened with the Obama election? Remember, just a few short months ago, how we progressives, those of us who’ve worked toward our own personal evolution, got into the streets, on the phones, into our cars and our neighborhoods and created a groundswell of support that put the first black man into the White House, a man of compassion, of fatherhood, of peace and justice? Remember?

That effort is what it will take to rid the world of these evil machines of mass destruction.

And we can do it.

Be inspired. Pass it on. And then be inspired again, and again.

We can do it. We truly can.

And now’s the time.

Namaste’.

I Take a Breath Today

I’ve found myself being too attached to the outcome of a project I’m working on. I’m feeling anxious, unnerved, fearful, angry.

I stopped today and realized that I wasn’t in my desired state of mind and body, and I felt constricted, alone, bored and confused for a couple of days.

Thank Goodness for Wayne Dyer, who in his chapters on Willingess and Passion in his new book, "Excuses Begone!", helped set me straight. Or, in another sense, I was able to both attract the right teachings from reading his book, as well as be able to have enough awareness of my Self to apply his teachings to my current situation almost immediately.

So, first I’m breathing on purpose, deeply, into my belly. Feeling the breath come in and go out, and feeling the relaxation that comes from this practice.

Secondly, I’m allowing my body to relax, which relaxes my mind and so my emotions. I feel more content, and able to see this project for what it is: a part of the path, something I can see and feel but isn’t a life or death aspect of my life, and I can relax and Let It Go. It will be what it will be, in it’s own time.

So thirdly, I take a breath, I relax, I see this project and it’s unfolding timeline as perfect in every way. I can feel the sense of Perfection flowing over me as I type these words, relaxing even more as this sense becomes more real for me.

As I relax, I enjoy the project already more. It’s harder for me to enjoy such a project when I feel so tensed up about it. Maybe you have that struggle too?

And I smile. I’m content with what I’ve done, my contribution, my place in the project and in the Universe–not to be too dramatic–but as others have said that "The personal is political", so I say, "The personal is Universal". What we experience in every moment is how we hold ourselves in the Universe.

I choose to hold myself in peace, satisfaction, contentment and ease in the Universe.

I take a breath today.

Speaking to Your Heart

I’m speaking to your heart right now.

Let your intellect rest for just a moment.

Your heart is calling you to listen deeper. I’m asking you to listen to It.

Your heart is where the richest, thickest qualities of your life will be felt. I want you to feel It.

Your heart is asking of you to live your life at the front of the wave of your life. I ask you to learn to surf that wave.

Your intentions are not enough. We know which road is paved with good intentions.

Your desires are not enough. Desires need fine tuning.

Your intellect is not enough. It’s a good tool, but falls short of satisfaction and intimacy.

Your heart is calling you, and I’m listening. I can hear it asking you the one big question that you’ve longed to answer, and for some reason, keeps escaping your attention:

Where is my heart leading me today?

There is no religion, or savior, or guru, or master who can answer that question for you. No one else’s opinion matters but your own.

Where is my heart leading me today?

Take a moment, and sit with that question. Let your Self feel your heart beating, calling, asking for you.

This isn’t a game, or a silly personal growth exercise. This is the Essence of You asking you to listen.

I ask you the question I ask my Self: Who am I to not listen to my Heart?

Ask for patience if it’s hard to listen to your Heart. Ask for guidance if you’re not sure where It’s leading you. Ask for wisdom if the inklings are unclear. Ask for courage if your Heart is calling you in a direction you find challenging.

But above all, listen to your Heart. Today.

Top 10 Ideas for Creating a Peaceful Heart

1. Laughing at yourself.

2. Laughing at the absurdity of it all.

3. Smiling practice.

4. Being enthusiastic.

5. Refusing boredom.

6. Taking time.

7. Watching & Listening.

8. Contemplating action.

9. Refusing to hate.

10. Only kindness, always.

The Peace You Seek

Here’s a twist:

You’ll never find peace of mind outside of you.

And you’ll never find peace of mind focusing only on you.

Weird but true.

Peace of mind comes from four directions, in my experience:

    1. Health

    2. Wealth, as you define it ( I have a new definition, which I’ll share with you later!)

    3. Love–the greatest of these.

    4. Perfect Self Expression

These four directions fulfill a matrix for peace of mind. That peace that we all seek won’t be found in someone else, laying your expectations on another person fulfilling you by loving you or being your object of love, or by being the One that makes you whole.

It doesn’t work like that. The peace you seek, that we all seek, comes from within. You have to BE that peace, that love, that sense of your potential that you’ve felt for so long and have wondered why you haven’t reached it as yet. It’s not enough to seek it, to desire it, to long for it, to project it, to expect it.

You have to BE PEACE, itself. Or, rather, BE PEACE IT SELF.

That means that when someone does something and you feel upset, you have to be peace it self.

When someone cuts you off in traffic, you have to be peace it self.

When your love of your life does something that irritates you, you have to be peace it self.

That ‘SELF’ that you have to be in order to have peace of mind includes those four directions: Health, Wealth, Love and Perfect Self Expression.

So, here’s how it could go for you, in say, an example where the one you love does something that you find irritiating:

    1. A healthy way to look at her or his behavior is to disengage from your own reactions. Those feelings are yours, and most likely stem from some expectation that you have about how the ‘correct’ way to act is for someone you’re in relationship with. Those expectations are mostly what get in the way of relationship happiness and fulfillment. I’d suggest you drop them, continuously.

    2. Coming from a place of wealth, a person you love doing something you find irritating could be seen from a thousand different angles. So, that’s a wealth-y way of looking at it, first off, in that you have an infinite number of ways to look at any situation. Secondly, if you are full as a person, and thus wealthy, whole and complete as you are, then someone’s behavior doesn’t detract from your wholeness one iota. Thus, coming from a place of wealth, you stay whole and complete, not threatened by their behavior, and thus, not irritatted.

    3. Love is of course the greatest path. If you come from Love, absolute Love, then you can see the other person as a reflection of your own inner patterns manifesting, and thus a carrier of the message you need in order to evolve to the next level of your life. You could cultivate Love for your beloved, and find the good in their irritating behavior. You could send Love to them, rather than get snagged by your own controlling patterns. The path is Love, the result is peace of mind along this path. You get to choose, so choose Love.

    4. A part of this path of peace of mind is Perfect Self Expression. PSE is a way of saying what is going on with you that totally takes responsibility for your own thoughts, emotions, reactions, communication and results. There is no mis-communication within a path of Perfect Self Expression. There’s only the constant searching for how to speak so the other person ‘gets’ you, and you ‘get’ them as well. You can always say, "You know, I’m having a bit of a reaction to what you’re doing there, and it’s my reaction I know. I’d like to slow down, and not react, so I’m going to take a moment and get myself together so I don’t go off the hook here." Your reactions are yours, and yours alone. They exist within your own experience, not someone else’s. Dumping them on someone else, especially someone you supposedly love, is silly and counter productive to being close with that person. That is what you want, right, to be close with them? Then choose Perfect Self Expression, take responsibility for everything that you feel and think, and make your life your own.

So peace of mind as a path takes you to places that may seem unfamiliar. Places of self-responsibility, of self-examination, of self-love and loving others deeply. These are good places to be, they’ll lead you to where you want to go if you let them. But you have to let them, and not be so set on being self-determined, not so goal-oriented, not so controlling.

You have to let go a bit in order to find peace of mind. You can’t find it by trying to control all the people and episodes of your life. Doing that will actually create more trouble for you, rather than finding your path to peace.

I know. I’ve tried the other way. It doesn’t lead anywhere worthwhile. Actually, it doesn’t lead anywhere at all.

Find your path to peace throught the four directions we’ve talked about. Make it be yours. Email me if you’d like some help getting your Self onto that path. I’ll show you how.

Namaste’.

 

What it Takes to Contribute Meaningfully to the World

What it takes to contribute meaningfully to the world:

Heart-felt sharing

Being your best

Being the change you wish to see in the world

Starting from your own feelings

Owning your own wisdom

Loving bigger than you thought you ever could

Loving bigger than that!

Extending your Self to others

Watching for the Numinous showing up everywhere

Forgiving your Self first

Seeing others as a mirror for your own consciousness

Sharing as part of the Universe, like all things do

Becoming more, accepting who you are now

Living with paradox

Loving your Self

Forgiving those who trespass against you

Forgiving your parents

Letting it all be okay

Giving yourself permission to cry when it hurts

No excuses:There is either do, or do not.

Accepting mentoring and coaching

Visioning your biggest game, and playing it

Allowing the unfoldment of who you can be in this lifetime

Enjoying children, sunsets, kittens, puppies, beautiful moths and butterflies, and politics

Making love with all your heart and soul

Holding your kids, in your arms, and in your heart

Never, ever giving up

Declare meaning when you feel it–don’t be silent about what you value

Giving others space to be different than you, and still loving and liking them

Finding your own way, as opposed to following a religion

Taking care of your body temple

And in these ways, you’ll contribute meaningfully to the world. And the world will be better for you having been here.

Namaste’

Finding Love Within–then Out to Others

I was thinking about Love the other day, and I had a visceral experience of Love flowing out of me and toward my Love, Sarah. It was really tangible, like an energy flowing out of me. I liked that feeling a lot!

So it got me thinking–where did that feeling of energy, of Love, come from that I could feel it flowing out of me and toward Sarah? I had to admit something that I’ve heard all my life, but especially since studying Mahatma Gandhi’s life story: this powerful Love comes from within me.

Not like its from my spleen or some organ like that, but from the energetic that powers my being, that lifts my spirit every day, that wakes me up and inspires me, helps me breathe and run and cry and sleep, and wake up every morning. This energetic, the Numinous of who I am, seems to have an energy that is Itself within me.

If this is true, and my experience for myself is that it is real and true, then this Love dwells within me. Maybe within you, too, if your experience is similar to mine.  Perhaps this is what the Master Jesus meant when he was quoted as saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." Maybe. If so, then I like that, too.

So Love might just live within each of us. That would then make us Love in our essence, and so the Numinous, that which is the expression of the spiritual nature of who we are, is Love.  So when the Master Jesus was also quoted as saying, "You must love your neighbor as yourself", then to me that could now mean that loving me comes first, and then loving all others follows.

I’ve often wondered what teachers meant by ‘loving yourself’. Maybe it’s just letting ourselves feel this Love flowing from us to another, or out into Nature. Maybe it’s like putting our hands into a fountain of water, feeling the water shooting up into our hands, flowing down through them, sensually feeling this flow of beautiful water all through our being.

Maybe Love is like that, flowing out from us, back within us, moving in and out as our awareness moves from within our Selves out to another, and then back again. Maybe, we are this Love, in our essence, our Numinous.

Maybe we can become Fountains of Love!

Let’s try it, shall we?!!

Happy Loving!

Keeping a Loving Heart and Mind

Nothing is more powerful I’ve come to believe than a loving heart. In all of our affairs, with a loving heart, so much more can happen for good, for clarity, for peace in all our relations.

And with such a heart comes a loving mind. Our thoughts are things, living and breathing their influence within our minds, and challenging us to stay in line with them so there’s continuity. Loving thoughts feed loving hearts, and vice versa.

So keeping a loving heart and mind is essential, especially in these troubled and challenging times. Can we love bigger, greater, with more depth? Can we extend our lovingkindness to others easier, even to those whose behavior turns us off, or who we just don’t like very much? That’s the challenge, I think, to love those who are difficult to love.

From our inner life and how we feel toward ourselves, to our close relationships, to our friends, community, nation and our world, a loving heart is essential to peace, and the more we practice nurturing a loving heart and mind, the more our own lives, and the life of our planet will experience that peace.

So cultivate a loving heart and mind. When you feel yourself straying into negativity about someone, bring your Self back to love. Keep a watchful, loving eye on your own thoughts, that will soon spring into words, and make sure they are loving thoughts. Hold others in your heart with love, especially those with whom you struggle to love. Them, especially.

And above all else, love yourself, your Self, with all your heart and all your mind.

That is the way of peace I wish for you.

Namaste’. 

The Illusion of Wall Street & Washington Money

I have to say I was furious over Bush’s paying off his supporters with the initial $700 Billion bailout.

The whole scheme was fabricated on gambles being the basis of our economy, and Bush and his money friends ran with it for eight years, making billions.

You see, much of the trouble of our global financial situation is due to debt. And the process of taking debt, both mortgages, gambles on commodities and the like, and pretending that debt is actually a commodity that can be traded and exchanged, created the real estate bubbles around the world. The more we traded debts like mortgages, the more money seemed to be ‘growing on trees’, and greed took over–as it always does in speculative situations.

Now, the debt has crumbled, as it also always does. An economy based on debt and the growing of the ability to pay off debt is totally dependent on a growing economy, and the peoples’ ability to pay off that growing debt on a regular basis. But when this house of cards slowed down, as all economies do periodically, the greed-based debt pyramid had nowhere to go, but down. And down it has come.

This pyramid scheme propped up prices for everything that we’ve been paying for for a couple decades now: houses, cars, appliances, even wages and those immensely obscene bonuses to corporate managers, even as their companies crumbled around them. The pyramid has led to us having to scramble excessively in our lives, to keep up with the ‘things’ that we all have been duped into thinking we need.

So it has all fallen apart. And what is left when a house of cards falls down? Two things: The players, and the stack of cards on the table. The players are you and me. And the stack of cards are our own resources and talents, connections and skills. In other words, the actual true value of our relationships within our own local economies.

So what does one do when one is furious, but wants to change that anger into something productive?

Bless President Obama. He’s stepped into a nearly impossible situation to win. But he’s focused on the same thing as I’m saying here: Our wealth doesn’t lie on Wall Street, or in Washington. Our wealth comes from that other ‘W’ word: We. We are our wealth, our best source of freedom, of liberty, of economical well-being. We are the source of the cure for this horrible situation we’ve found ourselves in. And We can do it, We the People.

You have to take your financial consciousness into your own hands. And We have to do so as communities, and stop relying on the bloated policies and ideas of this ill-begotten and sickness of greed perpetrated by Bush and his people.  We have to do it, and We have to start now.

Here are three steps you can do, right now, today, that will help turn your life and the financial life of your community around. I’m doing these things, and it’s working. Here they are:

    1) Return to a cooperative way of living within your means, and within your neighborhood and community. Start co-ops for food, energy, transportation, handyman services, babysitting, energy sustainability. Any product, service, need or desire can be brought into a cooperative of teams within your community. Get five people together to start it, and get moving.

    2) Live within your means. Stop believing ads on tv that tell you how you should look, live, eat, behave. In fact, stop watching tv altogether, it’s nothing but a wasteland of horrible values, people hurting and killing each other, and ads for junk that you don’t need. For instance, have you noticed that all laugh-tracks on so-called comedy shows now are laughing at the ridicule and sarcasm one character perpetrates on another? Why watch such junk? Turn it off, start a garden, read with your kids, make love with your spouse, and have coffee with your friends and neighbors. Live locally.

    3) And that leads to the third idea you can start today: Buy locally. Support your neighbor’s businesses, stop going to the big-box stores, stop shopping for junk and junk-food you don’t need, and eat at locally owned restaurants, shop at locally-owned stores, and contribute your money right back into the community, instead of sending it through these huge corporations into this ridiculous maze of financial mishandling we’re now suffering from. Gandhi only bought locally made products, and started a revolution based on not buying clothing made in England. You can start such a revolution, too.

Start being the "We the People’ our fore-fathers and mothers imagined, worked for, fought and died for. Keep their legacy alive in your own life. We owe it to them, and to our children and grandchildren.

If you do these three things, they will lead to other steps you can take.  Be open to community. Let it pull you forward into a life filled with connection, love, and financial abundance, within your means, through this Way of We!

What if We Just Keep on Changing?

Oh my, it’s hard to keep up with the freedom and releases of domestic terror tactics of the Bush gang now that President Obama is in the White House.

Is it perfect? By no means. But of course, the US is a democratic republic, not a utopia. Of course there will be mistakes made, and misdirections followed. But the closed society that the Bush gang was creating, step by step in the model of Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet, Stalin and others of that evil ilk, is fast being dismantled. And in it’s place is a free and open society, one that does not torture, one that honors the writ of habeus corpus, and one that includes everyone in this great conversation we call America.

The joy and great happiness that came with Barack Obama’s election was in part that he is our first Black President. In part for the honoring of the tremendous sacrifices made to end slavery in our country, to end Jim Crow, to end segregation, and to heal the racism that is the killing virus in our history. Part of the joy of this man and his family entering the White House for the next four, possibly eight years, is that they are affable, likeable, loving and kind people, that their two darling daughters are such joys, and that we have longed for friendly people as leaders for so many years.

But I’m also convinced that a huge part of ours, and the world’s joy, happiness and relief, is that this neo-fascism that Bush and his gang tried to inflict on Americans and the world has come to an end, without their brand of murderous evil continuing. The world breathed a great sigh of relief to see this modern version of hateful leadership leave our government, finally, after years of fear-mongering, hate-based politics, and evil deeds. We are happy for the end of this horrible man’s legacy, and the leaving of his tribe of haters.

It’s a relief.

From this relief can now come energy for change. And what if we just keep on changing? What if we envision a nation of service to others, of compassion and love toward our fellow citizens and toward the world? What if we take on a leadership role as a loving and kind equal member of the world of nations, a people who lift others up, who figure out how to share the world’s resources rather than bullying others out of theirs?

What if honor returns to America? What if we can look ourselves in the eye, as President Obama has stated, and say to ourselves, "We are America. We believe in freedom, the rights of due process, the right of having to be proven guilty. We don’t torture. We honor all people, and hold these truths to be self-evident: That all people are created equal, even gays, lesbians and Iraqis. That all people are endowed with certain unalienable rights, not just those who attend our name-brand church. And among these rights are life, liberty to marry anyone we wish, and the pursuit of happiness."

We are America once again. And the fascists have left the building. We bless them, but still hold them accountable for their crimes. And, we do so in due process, even though they wouldn’t extend that right to us.

Long live freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America, and around the world. 

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