Empowerment Therapy
"Brian's Intuitive Reaction to September 11th, 2001. A Systems-
Theory Analysis Written on September 28th, 2001"
by Brian J. Hubbard
November 24, 2000
Date Written/Completed/Edited: September 28, 2001
Number of Pages: 34
[Brian’s Note: Here is the article I promised about a month ago. As I wrote this entire essay nearly in trance, almost as an ‘automatic writing’ project from my subliminal awareness, there were many mechanical editing errors to be corrected.
At times, there will seem to be repetitions and even a degree of rumination, I allowed much of it to stand. This is not only because, at times, the repetition serves as a sort of ‘programmed reinforcement’ of some of the more important material I presented, but I wanted this material to reflect that it did evolve almost in a stream of consciousness. In other words, I did no research for this essay, and my points are not in the context of logical argumentation, but rather, consistent with the theme of the essay, of sharing my intuitions and sixth sense I have about the recent events.
Thus, this article was not researched on the basis of facts that are indisputable, but, rather, my memory about some facts of the past. I am, however, pretty confident about my memory. But it is always dangerous to be too sure about oneself, so I would be the last to say my memory is 100% accurate.
Again, this essay reflects an impression based on genuine beliefs that are rooted in intuition. Intuitions being intuitions, they are eephemeral and can not be argued as if in a courtroom of law. That is, I suppose, the downside of strong impressions that are based on solid intuition. The upside of solid intuitions is they are changeable, but the change comes from the force of inner experience, or inner energy that interacts with the outer world and, on that basis, stand on their own. This means, in a sense, they are indisputable. This also means that your own impressions based on your intuitions are indisputable as well. There is much room in this world for very many diverse intuitions that can peacefully co-exist. Intuition does not negate facts, they integrate basic facts and ultimately transcend them. As Victor k Frankl said in Man’s Search For Meaning, it does not matter what happens in the world, but what really matters is the meaning that you give to that event. Thus intuitions and argumentation are essentially mutually exclusive. So if your impressions based on your facts and intuitions radically from mine or are totally congruent with my own, I congratulate you nevertheless for daring to create your own impression.
The only thing that does matter, in my opinion, is whether your impression is essentially anchored in goodness or evil. You will see in the upcoming section on ‘reverence’ that all life is sacred and to be embraced, whether Afghan starving children or struggling US soldiers. Biophilia embraces all forms of life while necrophilia revers death as eloquently articulated by Erich Fromm in ‘The Sane Society’; this is essentially the difference between good and evil. However, if one is not anchored in the former, than one is anchored in the latter, as is there is nothing in-betweenThe word ‘anchored’ is quite deliberate as reverence is a process, or a force in a pro-life direction. No human is purely reverent, and all of us have at least some elements of destructiveness, or at least, self-destructiveness. By the same token, reverence for those whom are anti-life means compassion for these people as well, as the reverent believe that no matter the degree of nefariousness of one’s deeds, he or she is, given all of his or her limits, is doing the best one can in that point of their evolution. I think this is essentially the meaning when the dying Christ proclaimed, ‘Forgive them, O Lord, for they not know what they do.’
At the end, I will provide a summary, as many as I can remember, of the sources of my information and intuition. I hope this makes at least some sense to you, and I encourage some feedback. B.H.]
DearMembers of ‘Hub’s Safety Net’, [Note: Brian has an ‘on-line’ group of friends that has been established as a support group; if you would like to join, e-mail brian@brianjhubbard.com to join and receive rights and responsibilities of joining as the terms must be agreed-basically, they are simply an agreement of ‘good nammers’]
Well, I don't know about you, but September 11th's Attack On America has really got me thinking. While I am totally candid about the intensity of my brain juice flowing, I am equally candid about not having reached any resolutions. But I can say with growing conviction that I am closer to reaching a clearer picture, and, I must admit, this panoramic vision does not totally coincide with the mainstream battle cry of patriotic revenge. In fact, my perspective, based on hours of clear and uninterrupted thinking-through backdropped by meditative reverie (created simply by turning off my ear-shaped amplifiers that connect me to the outside world), is most likely quite a distance perspective from the mainstream view of hard-core patriotism. Frankly, this furious new display of flag-waving spurred by September 11th seems to border on mass hysteria and most likely will make Christmas, 2001 appear like the 4th of July. 21st Century patriotism also seems to have the advantage of amplification and, thus, affirmation from today’s super-tech age of instantaneous and multi-interactive media.
This is the first time I am putting my thoughts on the record (not to mention my butt on the line) and I only, for now, feel comfortable sharing it with those I consider friends and whom I trust as people whom accept me unconditionally, as I do you. After all, that is how I developed the Safety Net, and you may go back to your e-mail in November, 2000 with the subject heading 'Congratulations, You Have Been Selected . . .'
Pre-amble or Pre-Ramble?. As a preamble to this discourse, I would like it to be absolutely and unequivocally clear that I do love and respect our country. For openers, this country had been very good to me and my loved ones. I also believe, all things considered, this nation is the world’s greatest, its democratic foundation providing the rare combination of freedom while simultaneously providing an abundance of entitlements for security and opportunity alike, despite the diversity of its citizenry and political constituency. However, following the laws of the Universe, nothing is perfect, and it is this lack of perfection that serves as the driving force of our free wills, or, for that matter, that draws the line between good and evil. In fact, it is this human condition of God’s endowment that lays the groundwork for this entire essay. This unavoidable human condition of imperfection that so mysteriously and paradoxically woven with free will, serving as one of mankind’s greatest conundrums, will become clearer later to those of us whom truly do value the path of growth towards spiritual love and compassion as well as love of life.
The first item I want to put on the table is that I feel what happened on September 11, 2001 at 9:03 AM was atrocious, horrendously tragic and totally inexcusable. It was devastating to bear witness to so many innocent worldwide citizens perishing in such violent and egregious conditions with a death toll of civilians outnumbering our nation’s soldiers killed in the entire American Revolution, The Civil War's deadliest battle at Antietam, and the Pearl Harbor invasion. Any warm-blooded human being can not by any stretch of the imagination find the necessary words to reflect his or her tormented feelings about this 21st Century horror. Simply speaking, the people responsible for this indescribable act of atrocity must be brought to justice, not simply for the sake of future prevention, but for the sake of justice itself.
Issues and Complexities of Responsibility. But it is this question of responsibility that I am struggling with. I say with frankness and hesitation alike that I think this issue must be probed deeply and the invisible, larger portion of the iceberg must be explored not only for truthful justice is to prevail, but there may be any real chance of world peace and unity. To get to the real bottom, the real bottom of the iceberg, I really believe that we all must look at this matter from a spiritual perspective as well as a logical one.
Logic and scientific reasoning whether in law, business, medicine, whatever, involve the uses of physical evidence that not only can be observed by the five senses, but observations that can be shared by others with their five senses as well. This is basically the principles of physical evidence. However, coming into the 21st Century with its impending evolution into a new age of awareness, which some call the 'spiritual renaissance', we have learned that science and reason can only take us so far. The application of quantum mechanics based on sub-atomic energy is right around the corner. Computer chips and the current binary principles of digitized computer software are heading for the same replacement status of transistors as consumers demand for faster and faster computer technology increase not by the minute, but by the second. We are more and more approaching life on a different reality, a reality that goes beyond the five senses of the physical world, a reality that simultaneously complements and transcends material reality with a reality of energy. As our spiritual lives are based on energy, and it does transcend the physical reality of the world as we once knew it, looking at what happened on September 11 will reveal an explanation that transcends ordinary waking-state reality. This ordinary, commonplace experience of familiar consciousness employs the laws of physical evidence as its stagnated cornerstone of truth as we now know it.
I began getting fascinated with the idea of energy fields of human beings and their spirit as a psychotherapist with a strong background and interest in systems theory. One of the basic principles of systems thinking is that not only do causes have effects, but effects have causes. Perhaps one of the easiest example I can give to clarify this phenomena is a clinical case scenario of a typical couple coming for counseling.
A typical situation is a husband who complains throughout the entire session of his wife being unfaithful, showing little interest in him and maybe even having an alcohol problem. The term 'co-dependency' that has been coined for the past thirty years simply means that, on some level, the person who is complaining of the partner's behavior, or the 'co-dependent', is in some way encouraging the very behavior that he is complaining about. This encouragement may be conscious or conscious, it may be passive or active, but, without question, it is an encouragement recognized not only by those with skilled eyes and ears, but also those with compassionate and open hearts. The reason for this encouragement? The answer to this question is complicated, but it has something to do with benefiting from the behavior being complained about. Looking at it another way the effects of the behavior are yielding some kind of payoff for the husband. The simple fact is if someone really wants to resolves another's injustices, that can be accomplished, certainly not by changing the other person, but by changing the way one responds to the other person (thus, the word 'responsibility’ literally meaning response-ability’).
It is here that I want to make an extremely important distinction, not only for the purpose of clarification, but, far more importantly, for the purpose of putting to rest a notion that can be deadly if exploited (which is very often the case in conventional relationships). The difference between encouraging behavior and being responsible for behavior are light years apart. Responsibility for behavior, or blame, is owned solely and exclusively by the one performing the behavior, whereas encouraging the behavior is the cultivation of fertile soil to increase the likelihood of the behavior being carried out. Of course, there are degrees of encouragement, reflected in oftentimes confusing rhetoric such as ‘coercion’ or ‘pressuring’, as in the case of people like Charles Manson, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden who give orders to their mindless followers, cases could be made for their degree of responsibility. But for some hard liners on the issue of responsibility, which admittedly I am aspiring for, even in these nefarious situations, as long as there is a choice, then the hard line of responsibility is drawn. I guess it boils down to the scenario of someone holding a gun to your head and ordering you to do something, is there still a choice? I am sure that part of any disagreement to this question, if any, would be tied to the issue of what the order is, but my guess is the vast majority of us would acquiesce to the order if we are not suicidal, that’s part of being human. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few martyrs in the top .001 per centile in the demonstration of courage who have chosen death such as Jesus Christ, Joan d’art and St. Thomas Aquinas. For myself, It is sacred and saintly deeds carried out by rare personas as these who do affirm the issue of responsibility.
But, as one can see, the line between encouragement and responsibility in extreme cases not only can be fuzzy to the point of undetectability to the human eye, ear and intellect but can also open Pandora’s Box to civilized mankind as well. But to the spiritual person who embraces love and love of fellow man, the invisible becomes visible and the line can be seen. Therefore, as long as there is a distinction and separation between the two concepts, it doesn’t matter whether they are micrometers or light years apart. Now please don’t get me wrong. I strongly believe the wicked and hateful types like such as Hitler or Bin Laden have done many horrible and destructive things and are fully responsible for their deeds, but I also think those whom have chosen to follow these necrophiliacs are equally responsible for carrying out these orders of destruction.
Encouragement, Systems Theory and Inter-relatedness of Energy. Of course, this systems thinking not only applies to relationships between people, but societies as well, and energy has a lot to do with it. Getting back to the dysfunctional couple above, a skilled therapist would not only take into consideration the face value of what the husband is reporting, but, more importantly, what's happening in the energy between them. Close attention would be focused on what kinds of vibes are going on, what are the obvious or subtle non-verbals. Perhaps most significantly, extreme scrutiny would zero in on what is NOT being said or done.
A good way to test out this theory of encouragement energy is pretty simple. The next time one of your loved ones does something that bothers you, rather than focusing your energy outward by looking, evaluating and/or criticizing that behavior, turn your energy inward. Ask yourself, what am I doing to encourage this behavior, or better yet, what can I do differently to discourage this behavior. Ten to one you will instantly feel a negative energy shift into a positive one, for the very least because there will be a new awareness of the range of choices, including the choice to ignore or to reinforce the undesired behavior. This inward shift of energy towards self-awareness without a doubt will provides a sense of positive optimism and control, in essence a sense of hopefulness. This exploration of options is not manipulation, as manipulation is a direct intent to change someone else while positive encouragement is more a matter of boundary clarification through a better understanding of what true responsibility really is.
September 11th and the Encouragement of Perceptions in History. Accordingly, if we observe and attempt to evaluate the events of September 11 at face value, compiling the physical evidence of the terrorist catastrophe through our five senses gathering direct and hearsay information that is selectively reported to us through the media, the outcome, or effect, in my judgement, will undoubtedly be quite predictable. These effects based on selective physical evidence have produce similar predictable responses in the distant and not so distant past and have been gloriously cited as responses characterizing America's greatest moments in history.
One such response ceremoniously earmarked in American history is the retaliation of Pearl Harbor that led us into the last 'Good War', the war that brought evil to its righteous and cataclysmic end. It was perhaps the last time we Americans truly rose to the cause to defend against and eradicate the cancer of the world, Fascism led by a despotic leader whom envisioned 'the Master Race' which not so coincidentally he made himself a major part of.
But some strange things happened after World War II, some of which still cannot be explained fully today, because so many things are still beyond the grasp of factual and observable evidence. And it is relatively easy to hide things when those same things are only looked with the physical senses of the material world. I am not sure exactly who, but someone leaked out the possibility that FDR had known about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor, as US Naval Intelligence had broken the Japanese code through cryptology. Granted, as demonstrated by Randolph Hearst during WWI, the media loves big news as big stories sell newspapers, many newspapers. But, on the other side of the coin, just as there is a positive side to just about anything, reputable newspapers must at least base their claims or pay a horrible price as we learned in Watergate and 'The Pentagon Papers' released by the New York Times.
Now, please don't misunderstand me, I truly loved FDR, and certainly am a New Dealer, but all I am saying that many times in the face of national happenings, crises or otherwise, there can be a lot more than meets the eye. Some defenders of FDR's position with Pearl Harbor acknowledge that, yes, Franklin did get the spy reports on the possible attacks. However, it is possible that he dismissed these reports as being inaccurate at best and inconclusive at worst. This could be the case for the widespread understanding about aviation skills also knew about those enemy of The Rising Sun were equally certain that those alien aviators were unable to withstand a long Northern route followed by a direct turn from above to successfully hit those unprepared ships. Furthermore, there was general consensus in the Pentagon that Japanese have poor night vision. Thus, according to Franklin and his advisors, an attack on Pearl Harbor was very unlikely no matter what those intelligence reports did say.
But there is one other indisputable fact. FDR really wanted to get into the war. However, he did not have the full support of the isolation-minded American people with World War I still fresh in their memories until after Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, it was a completely different ball game, the exact ball game FDR wanted. Sure, we gallantly waved the flag and sent our boys off to war, to which they responded with tremendous courage and determination to which everyone participating in that fight against pure evil and for pure justice should undoubtedly be immortalized by remembrances of their bravery for generations to come.
What is equally true, however, is that many Americans realize that many of the British, French and others so desperately struggling for their lives wanted us to enter the war much earlier, dammit, why did FDR wait so long? I think the answer is relatively simple, the war was not only a fight for justice against evil, there were many political, self-serving interests in the war as well. What does this have to do with anything going on now? Please be patient, I will get to that, but a little more historical backdrop is necessary to strengthen my point.
SYSTEMS THEORY AND RECENT HISTORICAL EVENTS. The effects of the last Good War was the Cold War, leaving an aftermath, as reflected by McCarthyism and the 'Big Red Scare, a heightened sense of paranoia of who are true friends and foe were. During this time, relaxing of protective laws became commonplace (not much unlike the temporary elimination of 'habeas corpus' by Abe Lincoln during the Civil War), shakedowns became part of the game and police brutality was encouraged, anything to make sure we protected ourselves from those Red bastards and anarchists. Interestingly, as all readers of fiction by Ludlum, Clancy, Follett and other writers paid so highly by publishers who were making millions by satisfying the demand of the typical American reader fascinated by spooks, as well as all readers of history know, United States Intelligence became a national priority. Billions were pumped into not only the CIA, FBI and FTA as was so evident during the days of bad boys like Al Capone and Bugsy Segal, but now Federal dollars were being dumped by the truckloads into places like the DIA, the NSA and every branch of military intelligence. This pumping of protective intelligence funding was targeted at such intelligence strong-arms as naval intelligence to ferret out the sub-service elements that, to any degree, threatened the status quo of American democracy. As Richard Nixon so clearly articulated in his notorious prosecution of Alger Hiss, we must do anything to prevent the Russians from coming and taking over our precious America. By the way, it was pretty interesting to learn how a poor Quaker from Yorba Linda, California becomes so powerful right from the freshman years of his Congressional tenure. Someone out there who had it in for Commies must really have loved him.
Then other interesting things happened. During the Eisenhower Administration, we begin sending in advisors to Laos to help the French and prevent the Communist domino effect. But Ike is pretty smart, not to mention courageous, because, going beyond the laws of physical evidence, he smells a rat. He sensed that there was more to Laos and, eventually, Vietnam and Cambodia, there was a phenomena perhaps far more motivating than patriotic love of Uncle Sam and the deep fear over the collapse of the free world by the totalitarianistic reds. Smiling Ike, on or off the golf course, smells, partly through his intuition, self-serving special interests, especially big corporate business, and even more especially, oil. He makes this evident when he becomes the first President ever to warn of the greedy and often corrupt (thus The Whistle Blower Act) special interests of the mighty military-industrial complex to his fellow Americans, the very same Americans whom he so gallantly helped to defend from evil through his leadership in the last Good War. 'Beware the military-industrial complex' was one of his most memorable lines of his Farewell Address to Congress in early 1961.
Now Jack Kennedy's at the helm. While JFK isn't exactly a communist lover, as influenced by his father, he's not exactly a organized crime lover either, as influenced by his brother Bobby how convenient. Now that Fidel has booted Baptista off the island of Cuba along with the corrupt capitalists and casino owners, we not only have a Russian allied enemy right next door, but we have some pretty ticked off Cubans flocking past our Floridian shores to develop their ties with both the CIA and the mob. What a coincidence, the very two groups who hate the liberal Jack Kennedy who snubbed J. Edgar Hoover when pressured to go after commies, but welcomes Attorney General Bobby Kennedy's idea of chasing mobsters instead.
It’s a wonder that Jack won the election, even if by the narrowest margin barring Election 2000 with so many devout enemies, thank goodness he had the charisma to attract the female vote as well as the liberal one. But what JFK was more thankful for was his father’s influence that enabled him in 1956, when the popularity of television was reaching its peak and making superstars of entertainers such as Elvis, he was asked to flash that captivating Kennedy smile while narrating the history of the Democratic party at the Democratic National Convention that put up Adlai Stevenson for the second time to run against Eisenhower.
As if that exposure wasn’t enough to attract millions despite not really doing much in Congress (partly due to poor health), his father multiplied the Kennedy flock by buying over thirty thousand copies of his published Harvard thesis ‘Why England Slept’ to make it a bestseller. Following this, he had a heavy hand in quietly and surreptiously arranging for Theodore Sorensen to write the Pulitzer winner ‘Profiles in Courage’ with Jack’s name on it. Despite some controversy how adept Captain Kennedy was at the helm of the PT109 in terms of what led to the collision with the Japanese destroyer in the first place, Joe managed to influence the media, thus the American people, into believing he was one of the bravest war heroes ever. I even read accounts that brother Joe was so envious of this adulation that he volunteered for one of the war’s most dangerous missions to equalize (or neutralize, depending how one looks at it) his younger brother’s glory. We all know the rest of the story on that one. I do have a big question mark about how grateful Jack was to Sam Giancana for swinging the election in ’60 though, because, according to Judy Campbell and other sources, old Joe and Sam kept their little business a little secret between themselves.
Old Joe Kennedy undoubtedly had different things than going after gangsters on his mind when he insisted that Bobby be the nation's Attorney General. For one thing, he really needed to put the lid on the scandalous wiretaps Hoover had on the Kennedys. Without the slightest doubt, poor Ol Joe must have gone aghast when he realized that his sons were going after the same big boys that allegedly helped him to get his son elected. (I wonder if mega-stresses such as this contributed to his stroke; I heard that he didn’t drink too much alcohol, as it put your guard down.)Of course, any favors from businessmen, especially shady businessmen like mobsters, does not come without a at least a small price, and that little price tag for mob help in Illinois and West Virginia was for Jack to be in Sam Giancana's back pocket. Old Joe was quick to spot out hucksters and back stabbers in business, that's why FDR appointed him the head of the SEC after all the corruption by the big railroad men at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Being such a shrewd unraverler of conniving business deals that could even lead to monopolies, how could he possibly explain the back stabbing of his own son? This question becomes more chilling when considering the old man was dealing with a guy who once was rumored to have a contract on his own life for overstepping his boundaries in Detroit during the bootlegging days of Prohibition.
Despite their well-known lack of moral Puritanism in their character when it came to women and other things, the Kennedy brothers, to me, possessed a dual spirit that was mesmerizing, a soul that radiated brotherhood, sisterhood, equality and opportunity for not only all Americans, but people throughout the entire free world. That is why so many across the world mourned him when his time was up on this planet. This kind of loving spirit that offers hope for so many suffering, underprivileged and disadvantaged doesn't go over so big with the mob and big business. Sure, they may give some lip service and even token donations to get a tax break, but everyone knows that these guys do not want the status quo that is so favorable to them to be disrupted. The spirit of change and progressivism are dirty words to these folks who not only worship money, but more importantly, power. If Watergate and the resulting power given to the media resulting from it had happened before JFK was elected, chances are Jack would have never have gotten in if some of his less than scrupulous past had been exposed, but the media, at the same time, never would have ever been able to deny his charisma and spirit that was so infectious, hardly any person with genuine love in their heart could have escaped it.
So JFK's agenda is quite a bit different than the CIA's when a plan is drawn to get rid of Castro, and after the Bay of Pigs blunder in April 1961, the intelligence boys have a perfect scapegoat on their hands. Actually, according to the House Select Committee on Assassinations formed in 1977, it was learned that Florida don Santo Trafacante who had been booted off Cuba was actually acting as a double agent, tipping off Fidel whenever the spies and the mobsters came up with a concrete plan. When the CIA learn of this, what do they do in the name of national interest and security? They simply cut off Trafacante from any information not only succeeding in eliminating the valued info, but in arousing Castro's suspicions so he can be on full alert. Any text in military or intelligence strategy 101, I am certain, would be that if you learn of a double through your counter-intelligence, the best strategy for neutralizing the enemy is to give the double the wrong information so the enemy can be placed in the most vulnerable position. I remember reading somewhere that it was type of intelligence breakthrough that led to Rommel's defeat in Africa.
REALITY AND THE MEDIA. Anyway, now that the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King are assassinated, the public is clamoring with outrage for the truth, what's really happening with investigations, so the media is getting far more leverage into ferreting out the truth, and are learning some pretty interesting things. I don't want to go into many details to further detract from my basic point, besides the stories are pretty well known, President Diem of Vietnam's coup, the Iranian Contra scandal, Nixon's own internal intelligence at the White House AKA 'Plumbers', Ford’s controversial Presidential Pardon (made even more inflammatory with his role on the Warren Commission) and, of course, Bill and Monica. What is really interesting about all of these scandals is the role and the increasing frequency of tight-lipped 'leaks' of classified information that hit the press to expose all of these subterfuges. Unlike the days of Jefferson and his alleged affair with a servant, just about anything can be found out these days and a common theme is definitely emerging and catapulting us into the 21st Century, a Century that has miniaturized and complicated the world at once through such razzle-dazzle technology as computers, the Internet, fax machines, cell phones, space stations and satellites just about everywhere. What is emerging is that it doesn't really matter to the leaders in the business and military world what happens, what really matters to these people, sometimes in the name of necessary secrecy for national security, but the reality more often than not being political interest, is what looks like what happened. With the exception of understanding our own experiences in our everyday interactions with others, reality outside the realm of our direct experiences as validated by our intellect that is rooted in logic is what we are told it is. In other words, for the person who bases reality on his five senses, reality is based on the laws of observable evidence. However, reality as truth is pretty hard to come by when the principles of logic tell us that reported reality is only as real as the trustworthiness of the informers. If we didn’t observe certain events ourselves, how can we be certain that what happened is true unless we have total trust in the supplier of the information? I doubt that many really believed, for example, Tricky Dick’s and Rosemary’s explanation of the 18 ½ minute gap in the Watergate tapes from the Oval Office that never would have been heard about if not the slip from Alex Butterfield. What was so secret that Nixon and Woods took to the grave with them? Could have it been information so politically damaging for conservatives and the intelligence alike that public uproar about the cover-up was the lesser of two evils? Could it have been about Nixon’s knowledge of the CIA’s role, backed up by Texas good old boys, involvement in the JFK assassination and that it was linked to the Bay of Pigs? Who knows. At a time that Nixon was on the outs with the CIA, this seems like it could have been pretty good information to neutralize the enemy, or at least to take the edge off his paranoia. I can see him having a little chat with John Erlichman on the subject, both unsuspecting that the tapes would ever be revealed to the public in their entirety. Erlichman seemed to be teasing the public with this frightening possibility in his book ‘The Company’. If trust is rooted love and desire for well being for those we love, how can we be so certain that the billions in the outside world whom we don’t even know and have so many special interests and different agendas are so trustworthy? For example, when we are in a store and the salesperson is behaving quite friendly, how can we be certain whether the friendliness is motivated by the desire for profit or by genuine love and compassion for all people, thus is trustworthy? And how validated is this distorted reality? It appears to me, for example, that we place a higher value on lawyers who have a reputation for winning cases, not searching for the truth in the pursuit of justice. OJ’s trial was a real wake-up call in this regard.
But I truly that mankind is evolving to a higher, more spiritual form of reality that, in turn, is based on a consciousness that goes beyond the five senses. This is why, even for scientists who typically embrace physical reality based on observable phenomena that can only be measured through the logical physical evidence, are beginning to understand, as reflected in the emergence of quantum mechanics, that there is a reality that goes beyond the five senses, that is sub-atomic and can only be understood by understanding energy, including human energy. If we are to accept this transcending type of reality as true, then there can be no avoiding the non-observable fact that truth is energy as well. In other words, truth is vibrational and if we open our hearts to this spiritual connection to mankind as a whole, we have the capability of knowing truth.
When anyone with a reasonable degree of inquisitiveness ponders comparisons in cultural advancements between centuries (e.g. just about everyone thought Galileo was totally mad for insisting the earth revolved around the sun, and, in the Nineteenth Century the idea of putting a man on the moon was sheer madness) it is not too difficult to imagine, in today’s high tech society of DNA and thumbprint security how far humans can go with technology, providing they don’t use this technology to create their own extinction.
Here’s one for you. With all the advancements in technology, including genetic engineering and cloning which pose ferocious ethical debates about playing with life forces, do you think it is possible to create a foolproof ‘truth machine’? With advances so sophisticated going way beyond the level of the electron microscope, will it be possible to create something so valid that court will have no choice except to allow it? Is there the possibility, rather than polygraphically measuring heart, expiration and pulse rates, that such a futuristic machines could calibrate energy sensors, or auras, that reflect a person’s true spirit, whether deceitful, compassionate or in-between. Think about that one, what would that do not only to our society, but the entire world. Think about that one, people would always have the ability to know the real truth. This is basically the same thing as being able to read minds. What would that do to our criminal justice system? Obviously, it would be a pretty big shake up, either prisons would swell or the number of criminals and defense lawyers would drastically drop. More globally, what impact could such a foolproof lie detector have on national politics and international relations? But what about the ethical considerations, would common folk want such a failsafe machine, citing privacy violations and debasement of humanity and vote these out in the democratic process the same way football voted out the use of ‘video instant replay’? If such a machine were really available for today’s people with their overall standard of ethics, do you think they would want this truth machine? In other words, would people really want to know the truth? My inclination is that only people who value growth would be inclined towards such a contraption, everyone else would have too many jitters about it.
TRUTH AS ENERGY AND AUTHENTIC POWER. More and more, in the continuing evolution of humans, are beginning to pay homage to Einstein’s laws of relativity and his previously incomprehensible statements to the effect of ‘the past, present and the future are all an illusion as time is an illusion. Heightened consciousness that fully comprehends intuition, love and reverence for all life understand this meaning of human energy. People who can ‘see’ reality in this expanded awareness thus come to understand what true power is all about.
As I had written in my own book ‘From Emptiness to Empowerment’ there are two basic types of power. External power is referred to and thought of having control over, to dominate either by direct force or manipulation. True power is an internal power meaning to have control over its own destiny, including its own awareness and energy level. In other words, the well-being of the latter, or the empowered person comes not from controlling or manipulating others so that he or she can feel powerful, but, rather, acquires a sense of power directly from his or her own inner resources. Authentic power not only include one’s own understanding of the material world, but equally important (if not more important) an understanding of his or her or her own emotional and spiritual worlds. Equally significant is that the empowered person realizes we cannot live in the vacuum of isolation and alienation from others, that we do need others, empowered or otherwise, if our inner sense of emotional and spiritual gratification is to be actualized. Anyone who has read From Emptiness to Empowerment know how important the psychosocial need for ‘love and belonging’ are as well as, linked to this truth of healthy living, the need for cultivating healthy support systems is indispensable to our well-being. So if we have control over our own reality, a reality of reverence and the light of divinity and reverence for all life, and this reality is fundamentally different from many others on our limited planet, how do we resolve this dilemma and acquire a sense of unity with the world without the use of external power, domination and public relations manipulation which are the hallmarks of imperialistic nations? The answer is not an easy one and this is part of the reason I am writing this for the Netters t begin with.
REVERENCE VERSUS RESPECT. I think the answer has something to do with the concept of reverence for all life, an empowered state that can only exist when we reach a level of consciousness that transcends the limiting logic of science and reason that are centered around the laws of physical evidence. I really got a good grasp of the fundamental meaning of reverence when I read a powerful book, ‘The Seat of the Soul’,. In fact, I read it three times, thanks to a good friend who suggested it to me. Reverence has to do with love for all of life, regardless for its shape, nomenclature, and/or its activities. One who has reverence is joyful when in awareness of life and is in tremendous pain when he or she is aware of the elimination or destruction of life. Reverence is a state of energy that emanates from the spirit of the soul. Again, this can only be experienced on the level of sub-atomic energy, on a level beyond the physical world.
Reverence is far different than respect. While I believe that I have reverence for all of God’s living creatures(including reverence for people who believes their reverence is rooted in Jesus Christ, Buddha, God, Allah and the other names that God has been given), I certainly do not have respect for all people. I certainly don’t respect Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, Bin Ladin, King Herod, Caliguloto name a few. There are even occasions that I don’t have that much respect for people I know, including family members and friends. Of course, there are times that I disrespect myself and I thank the Good Lord that I can catch myself in those times of disrespect. However, lack of respect can be in a matter of degrees or it can be permanent and intensive. But reverences a love for all life and it comes more from the energy of our heart rather than the limited logic of our mind that interprets reality through our five senses.
It is this awareness of reverence that allows us to rely on our spiritual selves that houses our true vision of intuition that comes from our heart. It is reverence that enable people to know that truth is vibrational, because with reverence, we allow ourselves to disrespect the behaviors of others that do not embrace reverence, namely evil. Intuition is the pathway to the soul and the spirit. Intuition does not necessarily mean that we are able to accurately decipher and calculate facts of the physical world with a precision that only is allowed by the laws of physical evidence. Reverence, however, is the energy that enables us to determine whether is a truly loving and trustworthy person, whether that person is truly empowered or is on the road to empowerment. Because of this intuition that connects to other loving energy like a powerful magnet, it, hence, enables a higher likelihood of predicting when people are being truthful, loving and trustworthy. It is a little like that the intuitive person can always tell that garbage is always garbage, regardless of how one tries to wash it, clean it, or whatever forms of camouflage are attempted.
Thus, what is the connection between reverence, the spirit beyond the five senses which include intuition and the way we deal with evil? I would like to quote directly from this passage:”
. . . How we understand evil, therefore, is very significant. Evil needs to be understood for what it is, the dynamic of the absence of light[author’s note: previously also light defined as devine love and wisdom] It is not something that one should prepare to battle, to run from or walk on. Understanding evil is the absence of light automatically requires that we reach for this thing called light. Conscious light is equal to divinity, the divine intelligence. Where there is an absence of divine intelligence that darkness itself maneuvers. It is simply that there is darkness and we tremble in the darkness. The existence in darkness is not permanent. Every soul will eventually be fully enlightened. A soul with no light will come to know light because there is so much assistance provided to each soul at all times. There is much light, as we shall see, that is continually surrounding such a soul even though it may not be able to directly penetrate it , and there is much assistance to souls that insist upon living in darkness. The encouragement to take even one thought into light is always available. Eventually, they always do.
Understanding that evil is the absence of light does not mean that it is inappropriate to respond to evil. What is the appropriate response to evil? The remedy for an absence is a presence. Evil is an absence, and, therefore, it can not be healed with an absence. By hating evil, or one who is engaged in evil, you contribute to the absence of light and not its presence. Hatred of evil does not diminish it, it increases it. The absence of light causes a personality to suffer. There is pain, then you hate, you bring that suffering upon yourself. Hatred of evil affects the one who hates. It makes him or her a hateful person, a person who also has off centered himself or herself from light.
Understanding evil as the absence of light does not require you to become passive or disregard evil actions or evil behavior. If you see a child being abused or a people being oppressed, for example, it is appropriate that you do what you can to protect the child or aid the people. But if there is not compassion in your heart for those who abuse or those who oppress, or those who have no compassion, do you not yourself become like them? Compassion is being moved to and by us through the heart, to and by us through the energy of love. If you strike without compassion against the darkness, you yourself enter the darkness. Understanding that evil is the absence of light challenges the perception of power as external.
Can an absence be defeated? An evil person can be arrested, but can evil be arrested? An evil group can be imprisoned, but can evil be improsened? A compassion of heart is more effective against evil than an army. An army can engage other armies, but it can not engageevil. Compassion of heart can engage evil directly. It can bring light where there was no light.
Understanding evil as the absence of light requires that you examine the choices you make each moment in terms of whether they move you towards light or away from it. It allows you to look with compassion upon those who engage in evil activities, even as you challenge their activities, and thus protect you from the negative karma. It permits you to see that the place to begin the task of eliminating evil is within yourself. This is the appropriate response to evil. The higher order of logic and understanding that characterizes the multi-sensory human permits it to learn more quickly than the five-sensory human than what its alone tell us and what its intellect makes of that. We have evolved as far as the intellect will take us. We have explored the scope and depth of the five sensory reality and we have discovered the limitations of external power. The next phase of our evolution will take us into the experiences of the multi-sensory human and the nature of authentic power. This requires the heart.
Evil and Compassion. After reading the book twice and this passage three times, I think the piece I am having the most trouble with is ‘responding to evil with compassion’. How could I possibly respond to a Hitler, a Bin Laden with compassion. What about the possibility that FDR really did know about the impending attack, would there be room for compassion if our only four-term elected leader knowingly let more than two thousand people perish. I guess some people would argue that the commitment of evil acts have to do with intent, thus arguing for the rationale of the intent. But to me, evil is pretty clear cut, and I hope would be pretty clear cut for someone who is truly reverent. Evil is the activity, or the force behind an activity, that is aimed at destroying life, while goodness simply does not do that.
But as all of us American baby boomers have learned from Vietnam to the present day, - including the Warren Commission, Watergate, Iranian hostages, Reaganomics (including banking de-regulations leading to the S and L scandals), the Ford Pardon, the ‘liberation’ of Kuwait and the Monica-White Water scandal involving both perhaps our smartest President (according to at least one ‘think tank’) and the Office of Independent Counsel (that was so independent, no one knew how who had jurisdiction-reminds me a little of the CIA) - that the intent of our leaders can be far more self-serving and special-interested in spite of their pre- and post-campaign rhetoric. Even the near-reverend Jimmy Carter, the born-again Christian and leader of the Samaritans (who openly confessed to many extra-marital affairs, I believe), and was perhaps the only possible candidate after Watergate as he was as ‘clean as a hound’s tooth’, committed perhaps his first political lie to the American publican by swearing to the people that he would never lie to the American people. I think more than a few people speculated on his ‘less-than-open’ policy with the Shah of Iran (did we harbor him?) followed by an embarrassing, botched attempt to rescue the hostages. Granted, there has to be some room for leadership privacy in the name of national security, but where does one draw the line between rationalization fueled by private interest and public interest fueled by public interest? More important, who really knows where this line is drawn?
My position is that know one, like the JFK archives, really knows the full truth, except possibly for a very few insiders who are allowed to know. I do know this, however, there was a lot more to know than the gatekeepers would allow the public to know. It wasn’t only a Bob Woodward inspired most likely for public recognition himself that opened the floodgates to the truth on Watergate, it was ‘something in the air’, something to do with a enlightened public, or portion of it, that wanted the truth. Coming off a post World War II prosperity, JFK was perhaps given far more leeway for his personal transgressions, but, ironically, it was perhaps JFK’s life spirit that raised the first serious about the murders in Vietnam. I don’t think it is a coincidence that JFK’s demise occurred on November 22nd only to his foreign policies in Southeast Asia reversed (after secret meetings in Hawaii) by LBJ, Maxwell Taylor, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara a few short days later. So I think a lot of people smelled a rat after the release of Earl Warren’s report by a committee that included none other than CIA boss Allen Dulles, Gerald Ford (close Nixon ally and Chairman of House Committee on Intelligence) and other right wing conservatives. Similarly, the Washington Post, revealed as recently as Katherine Graham’s death, knew the climate was ripe for a so-called dangerous inquiry to what was really behind the Watergate break in on June, 17, 1972. Too many people were all too aware of Nixon’s alienation of his own legitimate national intelligence by creating his own (the Plumbers who didn’t know how to pull off a clean break in of Ellsberg’s shrink, of big business by his wage-price freeze and plans for a Vietnam withdrawal, of Defense by overriding Joint Chief of Staffs with pulling Alexander Haig into the White House, the list pretty much goes on. It is the people’s sensing that much more that meets the eye that gets the real credit more than Deepthroat as to what really happened at Watergate. Could have the intelligence community capitalized on this quest for the truth that helped them to realize that the public would find out what really happened, leading to Nixon’s downfall by intentionally setting up a messy job (e.g. the visible black tape, Howard Hunt’s phone number found on McCord)?
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES FOR EVERYTHING IN SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVES. My point here is that perhaps the most powerful force in uncovering much of these historical power struggles is a new heightened awareness of the people, sort of a collective sixth sense. But I also wonder if this collective sixth sense, and perhaps seventh and eighth senses, are not only uncovering more of the reality behind power struggles truly are, but could they also be uncovering the reality of what authentic power is as well?
I was sickened when I learned about what happened on September 11th, but perhaps not quite as sickened who could see with graphic detail the horrendous scene of the American Airlines flight 77 Burrowing through the hundredth floor of the World Trade Center with the inferno intensity of Armageddon. Perhaps there is a reason for me not to have seen the horror with the same visual clarity as most of the world could see, thanks to modern technology and CNN. It relates to a thought along the lines of systems thinking and is something I don’t share with too many people. Is my blindness and deafness something other than a disease? Could it, depending on my own degree of growing reverence, serve as a possible constructive purpose? This goes something along the lines of the Ebola virus, perhaps the deadliest virus for which there is no known immunization. Could this virus, deadliest to all animal life, perhaps serve a life purpose, perhaps serving as Mother Nature’s protection against human’s eroding of the earth’s rainforest and topsoil? Does everything really have a role in the balance of nature, mosquitoes and humans included?
Perhaps, my inability to see the madness of Bin Laden’s destruction was to prevent me from plunging into a blind fury that would leave no alternative except for the immediate and complete elimination of not Bin Ladin and all his complex network, but anyone, and I mean anyone who ‘harbored’ him and his followers.
When I first listened to Bush’s overwhelmingly approved speech two nights after the Attack on America, I had some nervous reservations, reservations that I made a pact with myself that I was going to keep private for a while. But there was ‘something in the air’, something that if I didn’t smell a rat, I at least smelled a mouse (probably an unconscious reawakening of ‘The Mouse That Roared’). Mustering as much reason as I could, including my own recognition that I am not completely satisfied with Election ‘2000 outcomes, not by a long shot.
Now, please don’t get me wrong. Being an independent, I was relatively impartial to my desire for the winner on Election Tuesday. However, as you may recall from one of my messages, I had some serious reservations about the fairness of the process and, truthfully, wondered if there was any possibility of a little internal hanky-panky going on in the State of Florida governed by President Bush’s brother.
Watching the Supreme Court proceedings closely, I saw nothing happen on the high court to allay my apprehensions, either. Apparently, some other legal big shots, most notably Vincent Bugliosi and Alan Dershowicz (whom I haven’t quite forgiven for OJ and possibly Claus Von Bulow) with their respective books ‘Injustice in America’ and Supreme Injustice’ respectively, also believed that there could have been some shady dealings in Florida that could have swayed the high court to stick strictly to party loyalties rather than the supreme pursuit of the truth. After all, the ultimate truth is what the United States Supreme Court stands for.
For example, I read one report somewhere about possible subterfuge in the allegedly staged ‘crashing of the gates’ at the Miami/Dade County City Hall where last minute voters, in a vain attempt to correct their previously casted erroneous ballots, and city officials were forced to close the doors well before the allowed curfew sanctioned by the Florida Supreme Court. Is subterfuge like this possible in America? Was it really possible for Sam Giancana to rig the ballots in Illinois through his strong-arm tactics and his control of the Teamsters with intimidation tactics? From what I have read, not only with US intelligence and other covert operations by good guys or bad guys, but also foreign intelligence such as the KGB, the Mussad, Scotland Yard, Interpol, whomever, it seems that anything is possible.
Speaking of possibilities, could there be a very secret group of clandestine financiers, especially those connected with such gigantic enterprises as oil, aircraft manufacture and hi-tech computer hardware and software, e.g. Howard Hugh types, who are really calling the shots in this country which some refer to as a ‘quasi-democracy’? And is it possible that part of the way this external power is established is through control of the CIA and, to an extent, Defense? After all, aren’t the nation’s giant arms to defend this country and the nation’s eyes and ears to tell these giant arms what and whom we are defending against quite dependent on the campaign contributions to the political structure that will support these arms and ears? And don’t these guys have the most powerful lobbyists? From my heart and my intuition, I think these linkages are very possible, and I believe that much of intelligent America ‘sees’ this possibility. I know JFK made a strong statement about the CIA after the Bay of Pigs blunder, was it coincidence that his place in history came to an abrupt end only two years later? Remember, the CIA was relatively young in 1963, having been dubbed as OSS during WWII (I forgot what that stands for) I am sure that the CIA’s first mate to Helms being the brother of Dallas’s mayor makes this coincidence a little more interesting. George Bush, before becoming the Veep under Reagan was CIA Director prior to his call to the White House during the 70s, not long after those turbulent 60s. And, of course, father and son, or Bush and Shrub, both come from Texas, the land of the free and the home of big oil. Are these linkages possible, or entirely coincidental?
SPIRITUAL PATRIOTISM. I realize here that I have to be quite careful what I say, as these are very sensitive and volatile times. I want to inform you that I am very much for democracy, but a genuine democracy based on the truth and integrity of the authentically empowered citizens, not a quasi-democracy based on externally powerful insiders. On this basis alone, I consider myself a true loyalist who embraces patriotism, but patriotism, being territorial, does not necessarily imply true spirituality, or the true desire for world peace and unity in the world. Being spiritual and an embracer of all life, or as reverent, means just that, that I am valuing my spirit, and a spirit goes beyond the five senses of logic and scientific reason. My intuition is part of my spirit.
When I revert back to my intellect alone, I do consider the other possibility that the Bush-Texas-intelligence connection may be totally unrelated and entirely coincidental. But recently, two facts struck me as quite interesting. Prior to September 11, 2001, the national economy, as everyone knows, was in quite a slump. Internet businesses were failing at a miserable rate, and layoffs were occurring faster than the speed of sound. Don’t ask me where, but I was hearing community scuttlebutting and possible joking about how Bush could use a good war to bolster the economy. Then, on September 17, 2001, six days after the Attack, the cover story for Newsweek is ‘The Accidental President’ outlaying the Supreme Court blunders and Gore saying, behind his newly grown beard, ‘I told you so’. In other words, George W. Bush was not faring too well with his ratings, not faring well at all. But on September14, the morning after, he is being regarded as the greatest Presidents of the land and the provider of the greatest Presidential speeches ever?
Now, and finally, I am getting to the heart of what I want to say to those I feel safe with. Regardless of the forces, controversial or otherwise, that landed Mr. Bush in the Oval Office, I am willing to get behind him 150%. There is no doubt that we need to be led in a unified manner in these very difficult times, and like it or not, politics has been around not only as long as mankind has attempted to be civilized, but, more importantly, when mankind realized that self-government was a responsible component of civilization. Politics, deriving from the Greek word polis meaning ‘city’, is territorial, thus, on that basis alone, it is competitive, sometimes of cutthroat proportions. But what makes politics in government just about synonomous with war is that wars are essentially territorial conflicts for power, not authentic power, but external power. Even to the most restricted in vision, history has demonstrated over and over, even before Biblical times, that civilized man will do anything for power, killing and assassinations included. ‘Et tu, Brute’ moaned by the dying Julius Caesar eternally symbolizes to the planet what the roots of political turmoil and power struggles really are and how deadly they can be.
EXTERNAL POWER AND OIL. It is this fact of power-based reality that got me thinking more about The Middle East, because I am quite concerned for the sake of mankind that it is this Biblical territory what September 11 is all about. There is no question that oil is the lifeblood of all of the world’s most externally powerful, technologically advanced nations. With this indisputable fact in mind, consider these facts that I recently came across from the US Census on Energy compiled in 1995. I am going to present the world'’ sources of oil and the quantity these territories possess in ratio form only because I am too lazy to pull out my talking calculator. This is where much of the world’s oil is located and the ratio is provided in one hundred thousands of billions of gallons (e.g. 100 means 100,000 billion gallons). Again, the exact amount is not as critical as the relative amount and location of the crude oil is located.
Saudi Arabia: 255
Iraq:100
Kuwait: 95
Iran: 93
Abidabi (sp?, right next to Saudi Arabia: 92 (also appears to be about size of Vermont)
Venezuela: 59
Russia: 58
Mexico: 56
United States: 26
China: 24
Bolizia: 24
Nigeria: 16
Norway: 12
Algeria: 9
Indonesia: 8
India: 7.5
Canada: 6
Egypt: 4.5
--
The first thing that strikes my mind when I saw these numbers was the relative similarity of the amount of the world’s three so-called super powers of the Cold War, namely the US, USSR and People’s Republic of China, particularly US and Russia when considering the comparative size of the world giants. That is, while 48 parts of oil in the USSR as compared to 26 for the US may not seem so vast a difference when considering the size of the USSR during the Cold War. But now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, what really strikes me is the closeness between China and the US. And how close is China to Pakistan and Afghanistan? I would guess anyone who can see or feel a globe, the kind we used to be fascinated by in elementary schools, would get a few butterflies in their stomachs when they see or feel the proximity. Quite frankly, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, but not only due to the touch of the globe, but also due to some simultaneous flashbacks in history.
My awareness of the critical role of oil didn’t really surface, and I suspect this is true for other baby boomers, until the turbulent days of Vietnam. It was my days as a left-winged, liberal dove while attending the University of Massachusetts that I learned of the likelihood of the military-industrial complex that was motivating the top brass in Defense, State and the EOB of the White House to stay in Vietnam War, a war that even the conservative elements in the military and Congress were acknowledging could not be won through limited, conventional military intervention. It was too politically unpopular to truly escalate the war. But considering the tides turned right after Kennedy’s demise in 1963 when Secretaries of States McNamara and Rusk, perhaps through the instigation of Head of Joint Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor, persuaded Texas ranchman Lyndon, a favorite with the ‘good old boys’ in Texas (including Connally who, despite his affiliation with the Democratic Party was to become appointed by Republican Nixon as Secretary of Treasury-interestingly, Connally and Nixon during Nixon’s Presidency, along with other Southern conservatives, were attempting to create a new conservative party, but Watergate interrupted that)to stay in Vietnam. But the war in Vietnam became so unpopular, it nearly divided the country along non-territorial ideological lines and was the major factor in LBJ’s decision not to run again. So after Bobby is murdered and Wallace, who threatened to split Nixon’s vote, becomes a paraplegic, Nixon, a favorite of the good old boys is in. It was not his views on Vietnam that got him in, as they were not that radical a departure from Humphrey’s, besides Hubert ticked off a lot of people with his shift from LBJ when he was Veep, so many didn’t know if they could believe him or not. Rather, it was Nixon’s public position in favoring business, especially big business as well as his position of ‘law and order’ that many of the rednecks could reunite the country again.
With this basic backdrop in mind, why was there was there so much scuttlebutt about ‘withdrawing with honor’ all about that dragged out our involvement from 1968-1973? That’s five years worth of human lives, money and anguish that could have been avoided if the inevitable, pulling out of a war that everyone knew couldn’t be won, had been carried out in ’68 or even ’70. Why did we drag it out, and what was this ‘honor’ stuff anyway. We learned from the Pentagon Papers that we were not really that close with South Vietnam, a country itself divided among between left and right, Catholics and Buddhists. The only reason I can gather we delayed the inevitable, again going back to systems thinking, is that someone was benefiting from the evil. Could have it been oil and big business, the same nucleus that even conservative Ike warned us about, and the liberals, without their big campaign bucks coming from oil, could so clearly see?
One of the reasons I give this serious consideration, consideration admittedly only guided by logic, is that 1973 was a pretty crucial year internationally, and really did not include Vietnam. Nixon had alienated big business with the wage-price freeze, the Defense by overseeing the Joint Chief of Staffs by pulling Alexander Haig into the White House and the CIA for all of the above as well as creating his own White House intelligence, AKA ’Plumbers’. This is a very powerful group, considering that he was on a seesaw with the moderates and definitely on the outs with the growing liberals, many of whom are baby boomers. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if solid documented evidence surfaced later that Watergate was a set-up by the intelligence community, many possibly being ordered by powerful oilmen, many from Texas. 1973 was the year the heat in Watergate was really on.
RISING CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE MIDDLE EAST. But, still other interesting things were happening. The Arabian nations, very disappointed about the continuing existence of Israel after the wars of 1967 and 1972 discover they have a not so secret weapon despite their military and governmental lack of sophistication. The Arabian nations, constituting over 64% of the world’s oil realizes it can put the squeeze on Western technology and develo0pment as well as their ties to Israel by simply withholding oil. OPEC is born somewhere here and the first oil embargo of 1973 had not only Nixon telling people to wear sweaters at night, but to stay home more to save on gasoline. I remembered this time so well because I was in grad school, and when Nixon refused to allow daylight savings time to go into effect, I nearly killed myself by falling off a wall at 8 AM due to my nightblindness.
With gasoline and home heating oil prices skyrocketing, it is indisputable that grassroots Americans were becoming conscious of the real world problems were, and what the real dangers were that lay ahead in the future. It was about this time that people were expressing, discreetly or loudly, their thoughts, apprehensions actually, about Biblical prophecy. I believe it was about the mid 70’s that theological authors such as Hal Lindsey began writing books such as ‘The Late Great Planet Earth’ which nearly sold billions internationally and formed into a classic film narrated by Orson Wells. Many people who dared to listen or read these modern day portraits of Biblical prophecy were becoming increasingly edgy about the coincidence of certain world events and what the Books of Daniel and Revelations had prophesized. Israel forming its own nation in 1948, the recapture of Jerusalem in 1967 the Camp David Accord easing tensions between Israel and Egypt, an Accord, however, that only increased tensions overall in the Middle East. Although the PLO was organized somewhere in the mid 60’s, it reached its peak of international recognition after the ‘73Israelian-Egyptian war when the Arabs realized that that there was little chance of wiping Israel off the map by conventional military means, so terrorism, capitalizing on surprise attacks by an undetected few at strategic locations, was the answer.
Now what makes all of the growing tensions in the Middle East are the alliances that are being developed. Israel, who has little if any oil, only the support of the US and other Western nations, who also don’t have that much oil. Most notable of these oil depleted nations are the European nations. The United Nations even failed to support Israel when it was very apparent that Egypt, with Russia’s aid, was getting ready to make Israel history once again. The only chance of survival for Israel was to attack militarily firsthand this element of surprise was so successful, that the United Nations did intervene insisting on a cease fire, eliminating Israel’s chances of acquiring more territory and creating more likelihood of a balance of power in the Middle East. Although hailed by Americans, Europeans and Jewish people throughout the world for their courage and skills in the Six-Day war they received little outside support barring some US weapons and other hardware and this laid little groundwork for the war to come in 1972. Not only did they get much help from anyone, including the United Nations, but world sentiment seemed to be on the side of the PLO terrorists when Israel attempted to use her military to neutralize these terrorists in the struggle for the West Bank of Lebanon. Actually, it was Israel that became one of the first nations to sadly learn that traditional military warfare was not an effective deterrent to terrorism.
But what worries me now, in terms of the survival of the world, is the shift of alliances, or at least the shift of potential alliances now that the Soviet Union became unglued. Overall, the entire Middle East seems to be a vast geographic area that seems to be boiling over. The eight year Iraq-Iran war, precipitated by Iran’s internal struggles with a new Islamic Republic booting out the Shah and leading to American hostages, basically came to a draw, the only thing different were over a million casualties. Saddan Hussein coming to power with megalomania, he is envisioning creating a new Babylonian Empire and himself becoming the new Nebacanezzer (sp?). He takes over Kuwait not only to gobble up another oil empire (which, according to the stats supplied, would have given Iraq 198parts to Iran’s 94), but also setting up military strategy to wipe out Israel. What could be the possibilities had that succeeded, overtaking, or reaching some accord with Iran, which could lead to the eventual takeover or merger with Saudi Arabia, creating a United Islamic Republic controlling over 64% of the world’s oil. This kind of potential can get everyone thinking, including the US Industrial giant with far more oil reserves as we became all too aware with OPEC’s embargo of 1973. Perhaps, the US oil giants of Texas and Oklahoma are not so willing to keep the war going in Vietnam, military-industrial complex or no complex.
But Islamic Muslims hating American capitalists (or at least the extremists in power do), new alliances are either struggled for or fantasized. Tensions between Pakistan and India, with a respectable nuclear arsenal, not only have Westerners watching them very closely, but an equally keen eye is now kept on China who has just about as much oil as the US. I think it is safe to say that China’s presence in the Eastern Hemisphere is far more formidable now that Russia has collapsed.
The US, under former President Bush, got a lot more eager to resolve other nation’s problems in the case of Iraq and Kuwait then it would have in the case of other nations, including third world nations who have little natural resources to offer. But Daddy Bush had to be very politically correct to get ‘Operation Desert Storm’ off the ground, and doing anything more than de-stabilizing Iraq and booting Hussein’s army out of Kuwait, I believe, would have been unpopular with the American people for humanitarian as well as other reasons. I think this fact is demonstrated when, despite Father Bush’s heroics in Desert Storm, he was not re-elected simply because American people were more concerned about their own economy and other domestic issues, not foreign policy issues.
I have heard some arguments that we went a little easy on Iraq and allowed Hussein to exist because Iraq serves as a neutral buffer zone between Iran and Saudi Arabia, minimizing possibilities of a new land of a giant Islamic Republic. I still wonder if Papa Bush and his boys were endowed with political sanctions and constituency approval as reflected by the polls not only from within US borders, but outside as well, they would have liked nothing better than to find a way to get greater control over a giant portion of that oil somehow.
This would have meant one of two things, either drag out Desert Storm at least until 1992, or through the benefit of intelligence reports, to break it up into a series of necessary wars.
Father George and his intelligence cronies knew well before the public was aware that Mad Saddan was stockpiling nukes) possibly from Russia) as well as bio-chemical weaponry. Thus, world sentiment , including United Nations involvement, could have been favorable to either a possible ’grand war’ or ‘serialized’ war. Could have Daddy Bush held back from either option simply it wasn’t quite enough to justify a massive takeover somewhere in the Middle East, most likely somewhere pretty damn close to one of those lucrative oil reserves, even if this so-called takeover were under the guise of a ‘peacekeeping’ mission?
Actually, I really wonder how much George Bush, the liberator of Kuwait, truly appreciated UN involvement, especially when the UM made it clear that they were at the helm in the fact finding of uranium, plutonium and anthrax commission. I wonder if George would have liked nothing better than to have US intelligence to gather the data with a few of Uncle Sam’s allies, and then report the facts to the rest of the world. I still have the intuition that there is some connection between the fact-finding missions of the post-Desert Storm era and Iran recently declaring that they preferred the United Nations to lead a peace restoration mission after September 11th, because, among other things, George W. is too arrogant.
Granted, the domestic economic situation was a mess, including the S and L scandals in the wake of Reaganomics de-Federalism act of de-regulating banks which not only skyrocketed real estate prices, but sent many people to jail (including the McDougalls, partners with Hillary and Bill in Whitewater), left many near starvation because of collapsed financial institutions and soared taxes to recover the stolen money. Granted these were pretty nefarious acts on the part of the government, but I still wonder if another factor contributing to Clinton’s election is that the American people were getting subliminally jittery about former CIA Director Bush’s strength, and thus pre-occupation with foreign affairs while the people were simultaneously sensing on a subliminal level that playing too much with foreign policy with things the way they are in the Middle East a bit like playing with dynamite, lots of dynamite.
SYSTEMS ANALYSIS, ENCOURAGEMENT AND THE POSSIBLE CO-DEPENDENCY OF GEORGE W. Now that son George W. Bush is in the Oval Office, does this provide a renewed possibility for control of Middle Eastern oil somewhere around the Caspian Sea? Is it possible, speaking in terms of human energy, that Bush in some way, perhaps even unknowing to himself, that he encouraged September 11th, even if by only looking the other way for one second too long? Is it possible, despite terrorist attacks during Clinton’s time, the Muslim fanatics waited for Bush to get into office knowing he would take a much harder military response than Clinton would have, even if this were only conjecture on their part? I know that many would consider these possibilities absolutely bizarre, and in no way would Bush have desired, consciously or unconsciously, for 2,000 people to die, for the economy take a nosedive and for the all Americans to hold their breaths wondering where and when the next attack will occur, but let us consider the effects of September 11.
First and foremost as a result of September, Bush is just about able to do whatever he wants whenever he wants to. That is a pretty enviable position for a President to be in, especially one who is less in favor of Federalism coagulated by bureaucracies in favor of a more ’laissez-faire’, de-regulation approach to national government. When you really think about it, his popularity is so strong now, he couldn’t have that much less power than a monarchy, or even a dictator.
Not only is Congress being to make national security decisions far more rapidly than their capabilities, but the checks of civil liberties are being greatly reduced so we can nab the terrorists. For example, I am not sure how far I want this article to go, and I don'’ think I am being paranoid. This means also, of course, George W. can do whatever he wants militarily, in Afghanistan or otherwise, and make repetitious use of the phrase ‘smoke ‘em out’ without sounding too stupid.
Sure, we are providing relief for the refugees, but could this be a PR strategy? I recently was appalled to learn that the FBI were out for the weekend after I made a hesitant phone call to the nation’s protectors after receiving a slightly suspicious e-mail. I had just listened to Bush the previous evening of October 11th in which he assured the nation that everything was safe as Federal authorities, including the FBI, were working around the clock. Maybe they use a twelve hour clock. Go to the football games, come to New York, everything’s OK the man bellows to a national audience. But if anything looks out of the ordinary, even the slightest bit suspicious, dial 911, call the police and notify the FBI on their hot-line 800 number. Taking a stab at patriotism to settle the cookies crumbling in my stomach from this weird looking Internet message, I am rewarded for my loyalty by being bluntly told that the FBI were home for the weekend. They must have thought George knew what he was talking about, so watching football took a sudden priority over stalking terrorists.
In fact, could whatever is happening over there on the Eastern Hemisphere one big show of PR? I hate to say so, but I do think, on some level of energy, it is possible because I do not fully trust George W. But this is not a political statement, as I am an apolitical person, and truth is, I didn’t trust Clinton, Bush’s dad, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, LBJ and not even Jimmy Carter one hundred per cent. Truth also is, had I known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have even trusted JFK or FDR.
The reason for this lack of total trust? They are presidents with the necessary balance of power in mind, this means they have to be political to get elected and stay in office. It is just not logically possible to get elected without making promises to a variety of constituents with conflicting expectancies. Looking at it another way, the world has not yet evolved into the consciousness of spirituality and humanitarianism that is necessary for spiritual leaders to get placed in the position of power, not external power, but authentic power. But depending that common folks like you and I stay on the right track, I believe it will get there.
POLITICS AND AUTHENTIC EMPOWERMENT. What would the hallmarks of a more spiritual, humanized world be? Simply put, it would be a far greater ability to communicate, not only between people, but leaders of people as well. People with true love and compassion in their hearts for fellow mankind do not communicate for any other reason to connect with one another, to bridge the existential gap of aloneness in this universe with love and understanding, not control and domination. Translating this to the modus operandi for our world leaders would mean the very same, in fact, is a beckoning for more of the same if world peace is ever to come. This kind of communication with the heartfelt desire cannot happen not only if there is an attitude of superiority from one of the interacting parties, but there is even one iota of a desire for such superiority. People with external power in mind rather authentic empowerment, people who value the material in money and status, are not able to communicate on this level simply because their life plan conflicts with peaceful and spiritual co-existence. This orientation to bridging the existential gap of aloneness in the world is not to be judged, however, as authentic empowerment is an evolutionary process that requires time and the allowance of wisdom. It, contrary to the belief of the extremists and other radical politic groups (including the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution that enabled Stalin to murder over three million people) also means that any type of change within people or groups of people can not be forced, even by holding gunsto the heads of intimidated people or dropping 5000 pound mega-bombs on a nation’s land. The message so clearly portrayed by the hoodlum Alex in Burgess’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is that change must come from within the person, and spiritual change must come from that person’s spirit. Forcing our children to go to church and Sunday school may introduce some pretty nifty spiritual concepts, but it will not change their spirit. Spiritual change only comes from the productive processing of spiritual experiences. It is evolutionary, but it is not automatic.
I remember reading in Bob Halderman’s book, ‘Inside the Nixon White House’ about their landmark trip to Communist China, breaking the diplomatic impasse that had existed for years. In a meeting with the Chinese leadership, Nixon and Halderman were told ‘It seems like your country has leaders who are very young and do not possess true wisdom’. It got me thinking of my own development and evolution, is it possible to develop true wisdom, at least as a pre-requisite, without having being on the full path of life? I always felt saddened by this country’s basic attitudes about the elderly, similar to those of the disabled. It seems that in this country that the notion of the elderly is that they are old folks to be taken care of, not listened to. What’s even sadder, in terms of co-dependency, that many of the elderly take on this identity of second-class citizens (except those with money, especially old money, of course) and face their final days in desperate fear rather than enlightened wisdom. Sometimes I wonder if the King James version of the Bible just neglected to put the 11th Commandment ‘Respect Your Elders’, for the Easterners seem to have gotten this commandment somewhere. Maybe when we baby boomers become a disadvantaged majority, things will take a turn for the better. Maybe the Gray Panthers and the AARP will have broader agendas than more residential care facilities, and maybe, just maybe, a new Cabinet post will be developed’ the Department of Elderly Defense’ that works closely with Defense and even secures a position on the Joint Chief of Staffs. Prazy, isn’t it, this kind of rumination, but welcome to the Road Less Traveled, the path to spirituality. I do not believe idealistic Utopianism to be crazy, or even rhetorical babbling, I see them as benchmarks, as future goals that won’t be experienced in our lifetime, just the same as an airplane was a pipe-dream for cavemen that watched birds fly. It is this kind of outlandish idealism that must balance the practical and logical minded of the status quo (especially those whom profit greatly from it) if the light described in the previous excerpt from ‘Seat of the Soul’ is to grow and spread over the planet so that evil will truly find its limits and eventual demise.
I don’t know about you, but I brushed aside many issues of spirituality while participating in the American Dream at a furious pace during my thirties and forties. Granted, I regarded myself as sensitive and compassionate enough with other people, partly attributable to my profession and partly attributable to the crisis of impending blindness/deafness. As compassionate I felt myself to be for other mortals, my true consciousness was predominated by what I am certain most other middle class Americans was predominated by-hustling and getting ahead through the stiff practice of the work ethic. Well, isn’t getting ahead synonymous with competition? Looking at it another way, is there room in the same heart for c competing and true collaboration on an unconditionally loving spiritual level? I am not so sure, for I think it is a sort of reincarnating, evolutionary process that allows time and fertile supportive environment that, in turn, allows for true wisdom. Scott Peck wrote in ‘Further Along the Road Less Traveled’ that spirituality is a phenomenological, evolutionary process that involves passages through the natural and unnatural life cycle that ultimately leads to the supernatural. In essence true compassion and desire for world peace cannot be taught or learned, it is an internal development, given the right conditions, that occurs over time. I tend to agree with this.
Getting back to Father George books, something really stuck out to me when I read Tom Clancy’s ‘Bear and the Dragon’. While this latest writing of Clancy’s book is fiction, he bases much of his novels on historical events as well as historical predictions, and does so with remarkable adroitness. The excerpt which stuck out so much to me is an international trade meeting between the Chinese and the Americans because the Chinese were contemplating an embargo of their goods to the US. During this meeting, there was some dialogue between the US Undersecretary of State and a Chinese diplomat, and the dialogue was supposed to be one of collaboration and negotiation, not one of debate. It was most likely to reflect what Steven Covey refers to as win-win communication in which outcomes were to be satisfactory for the two parties. While Clancy’s intent was to portray the Americans as being so ‘reasonable’ while the Chinese were, on the other hand, very hard-nosed and unyielding, and thus, to blame for the breakdown in negotiations. Truth is, I experienced the Americans, even in fiction, to be quite unresilient and unyielding, using overbearing strategies of ‘reason’ backed up by facts and figures to win the diplomatic debate. With fiction like this and many others in mind, I truly do wonder what really happened in the attempted negotiations prior to Desert Storm when Bush tried to convince the soldiers of Iraq to vacate Kuwait. WasFather Bush, from a perspective of co-dependency, truly attempting the Iraquians to split, or was he, on some level, encouraging them to stay to allow for a great chance for a piece of the pie in the Middle East? As another example of how so-called diplomatic dialogue are merely euphemisms for power struggles, I did read one report somewhere that JFK was quoted as saying ‘I cut his balls off’ referring to Nikita Kruschev’s honoring the blockade in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. I even read reports that Jack even violated congressionally required protocol in his secret dealings with Nikita (which included the Kennedy’s pledge never to bother Fidel again which really ticked off some conservative right wingers). This kind of bravado by our Camelot who was shooting up some pretty nifty drugs at the courtesy of Dr. ‘Feelgood’ Jacobsen was a role model not only for young Americans, but all Americans. My spirits are slightly buoyed by George W. Bush’s upcoming visit to China, but I would love to be a fly on the wall for that one (as well as have my hearing back).
EMPOWERED COMMUNICATION AND EMPATHY. In genuine communication with other people, friends or foes, one attempts to understand the other’s experience to get to the real heart of the matter and this is what empathy is all about. So, in essence, our leaders with their constituents in mind, truly able to empathize? Or is their communication a camouflaged ploy for outwitting through manipulation and domination? Is my view of a leadership with the ability and practice of non-competitively communicating with empathy with other nations idealistic? Of course it is, simply I am willing to bet my view is one of the rare minorities; besides, as stated earlier, I don’t think the world is ready for empathic leadership. I am sure some would argue that it goes against human nature, and that is perhaps the case if we only look at history from a historical perspective. But if we examine the events in history not only as facts of the past, but as an evolutionary process and we do accept the illogical thinking of Einstein that time is only an illusion, my crystal ball reveals a future that is happening right now and is quite compatible with Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’.
But as well intended as patriotism, even genuine patriotism based on genuine love of country, there still exist the pitfall of territorial nationalism and, therefore, superiority. Empathic leadership cannot occur under those conditions, for as long as we think of superiority, the element of control has to exist. This theme will raise controversy from a common sense perspective because, after all, isn’t the USA a better country than some third world country where starvation is commonplace or a dictatorship country where one can be executed for expressing true views? Again, looking at it from a vantage-point of reason will undoubtedly yield an affirmative answer, but not necessarily will an affirmative will occur when looking at it from the position of spiritual evolution. If we look at some of these third world countries, or even dictatorships or Fascist nations from an evolution standpoint, there is a greater likelihood of acceptance of where these nations are considering all of the life forces comprised in those nations. The reason for any nation’s evolution at any point in time goes far beyond the laws of reason as understood by people and this is why humans cannot change other nations from an external point of power. Like the development of humans as passages into the realm of energy and spirituality must come from within, and this is one thing history has taught us as a matter of fact. Nations may be able to conquer other nations, and thus control their territory, but they cannot control another nation’s collective spirit in terms of where they have evolved to. To dominate another nation collective heart and soul is no more possible than another nation have controlled our collective spirits during the American Revolution, the Civil War (other nations were thinking about hopping in) or WWs I and II.
Does this mean we just forget about September 11, let the Telaban continue and not be concerned about Iraq or China and just let the Anthrax flow? Of course not. But as Israel has learned with the Palestinians and terrorism, conventional mass destruction with smart bombs and other military marvels is not the answer, in my opinion. Being compassionate does not mean condoning evil. It means, as Victor Frankl so poignantly portrayed, keeping compassion in your heart in the face of the greatest adversity while looking for true justice with the true perpetrators, because if we lose our compassion, the world becomes darker and the chances of world peace are even further reduced. For each and everyone keeping compassion in our hearts in the face of such evil will only create the greater possibility of this compassion to grow, as it is energy and far more infectious than the deadliest of bio-weaponry that even includes smallpox. Compassion in our hearts, even in the face of greatest evil, will create the greater likelihood of encouraging, in a systems perspective, a national leadership with spiritual compassion willing to pursue world peace not through domination, but through empathic communication.
How can I possibly resolve this dilemma of supporting our leader while simultaneously voicing that I am aware actions have to be, as a matter of political leadership survival in our present-day traditional government, be driven by the need for self-serving power? The answer, to me, lies in understanding not only our President, but his followers and enemies in terms of human energy and its continuing evolution into the 21st Century
. Going back to systems theory, when I offered the example of the husband’s encouragement of the wife’s undesired behavior yet encouraging it, the cause and effect that applies in scientific thinking do not apply here. The husband’s encouragement is not a direct encouragement, like ridiculously pleading to his partner ‘Hey, baby, would you go out and have an affair on me, and while you’re at it, will you hit a bunch of bars and become an alcoholic?’ Even if this absurd scenario were the case, and the wife agreed, the hubby would not be responsible, of course, but in systems thinking, this is far from the case.
The major reason that this is far from the case is the husband, in terms of external power, must create the illusion of following the logic of reason. While just about every couple who take their marriage vows claim at the outset that the key to a healthy and satisfying relationship is to communicate well and give something if you want something, this ideal slowly changes if the husband wants something more or different than the wife can give. So rather than working together for the marriage to work, secret agendas come into the picture and competition (another word for a power struggle) replaces, in some cases, the togetherness.
But since external power is power based on the accumulation of external things, the hubby’s good standing with friends, the family the community, especially his clientele if he is a successful businessman, so he must not alienate these resources if he is to maintain and continue accumulating his sense of worth. But there is one more important reason to create the illusion of reason and integrity on a rational basis. If he doesn’t create the illusion, the wife will have far greater control in the power struggle, thus giving her the greater competitive edge and risk losing all of his poker chips, falling like a row of dominoes.
It is a little like in child abuse cases, the easiest ones to work with, in a a way, are those where the abuse is very obvious and the most difficult ones are the ones that are cleverly hidden, or shrouded in illusions. Actually the dynamic is a little more complicated than this especially where drives are subliminal or downright unconscious for in this part of the dynamic, a ‘push-pull’ force is created enabling the partner to conveniently stay ‘stuck’ in the unfulfilling relationship for fear of jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
ILLUSIONS AS SURVIVAL MECHANISMS. For people more oriented the material world of reason and logic, the basic point is that illusions must be created to survive the ordeal with minimal risk of losing other personal resources, resources, however, that are rooted in the external world. If this equilibrium of reality and appearances must occur in the case of illusions, how does one encourage someone else in a negative direction while creating the illusion of going into a positive direction? This is accomplished through the creation of energy fields, energy that is most likely not observable, but definitely can be felt, as truth is vibrational, especially for those who are reverent. As I said before, what often becomes more important than what is spoken is what is not spoken. But the dilemma is that these energy fields are not felt on a conscious level of understanding by those whom do not feel their own energy, especially the positive energy of love and compassion. Even if these fields are felt, they go beyond the scope of observable reason and evidence to be taken too seriously, or taken at all.
It is a little like the energy of air currents. When high and low pressure systems are in relative proximity without disturbing one another, peaceful co-existence of these different energy systems occurs. But when positioned in such a way, vacuums, turbulences and other disruptions of the co-existence are disrupted and a new force is created, sometimes a force of wrathful destruction (like in ‘The Perfect Storm’) and sometimes of gentle, playful nature. But energy is energy, and s we are taking a giant quantum leap into the 21st Century world of the sub-atomic, this evolving awareness is becoming just as real as the discovery of radio waves before the 19th Century.
This creation of unobservable energy that cannot be placed into evidence with logic dominated by our political, legal and business systems also collects, like smaller currents of wind collecting into larger ones when they converge. It collects not only between people but between groups of people. But the energy is multi-directional, not unidirectional, so not only do people give off energy to groups, but groups give energy to people. This is essentially what I am referring to when I say causes not only have effects, but effects have causes.
Now, I believe this is the critical point. We are only responsible for creating our own energy. While in the process of creating our own energy, we also can encourage the creation of others’ energy. Once again, however, we are light years away from bearing responsibility for the creation of others’ energy as that energy must come from within a life source, a living human being or other living matter for that matter). It is equally true, as a matter of spiritual fact, while we mere mortals are only responsible for creating our own energy, we are equally responsible for choosing the energy that comes from the larger system, whether we accept the positive energy of love, compassion and joy or the negative energy of anger and destruction. Thus, in the creation of our own energy and the responsible choosing of universal energy, we are being responsible for own reality, but merely encouraging other’s reality.
So, to me, even with my possible awareness of our leader’s motivations) which some may refer to as suspicion), the resolution lies in allowing, as the only possibility, of his responsibility for his motivational energy without the compromise of our own. Translating into more practicable, or ‘reasonable’ terms, I believe this refers to the legitimate need to protect the victims of evil and doing whatever possible to contain evil while understanding that evil itself will only die out when those forces are evolutionary overtaken by the forces of goodness. We can only do this by being responsible for our own forces while supporting those forces that are attempting to stop evil. This spiritual law submerged in the waters of conventionalism hold water Even if there is the possibility that those forces may have at least some partial basis in self-serving, or evil in the sense of evil, for the simple reason that we have no control over that force, thus no responsibility.
Is this collective consciousness of goodness possible over time or we truly headed for Armageddon? If Einstein’s hundred plus year claim of that the past, present and future are an illusion, which is becoming more evident in the years of quantum, sub-atomic understanding of energy is becoming our reality, then not only has Armageddon occurred, but it has past as well. Likewise, the one-way road to Heaven is not a trip in the future that is based on our present behavior, spiritual or otherwise, but it has come and gone at the same time. In other words, it is here right now. We can only ‘see’ heaven with our spirits and our collective hearts, not with the five senses governed by our minds.
A VISION. I have a vision. Some day that is right now, five-sense reality will be replaced by multi-sensory spirituality that will manage the planet with the energy of our souls. There will be no need for bombs, military planes and gas masks. There will be little need for courts, police and prosecutors. The trillions that will be liminated from nations’ budgets will go into feeding the hungry, educating the illiterate and creating safe homelands for everyone on the planet. Relations between people will be characterized by the light of love rather than the competition of envy. All children will feel so safe that they will find it unbelievable to think there was once a time that going out on Halloween was once unsafe. In other words, nations, under a true world of nations without political agenda, will be a stone’s throw away from Heaven. Alas, the world will not be perfect, for, once again, it is human imperfection that gives us consciousness. It has been said that it is the distinction between Good and Evil that gives us consciousness, for it is every second of our lives that we must choose between Good and Evil. In a perfect world, or Heaven, there has to be separateness from something in order for humans to have consciousness. In the perfect world, that separateness is God. So it will only be when God makes His Presence will the perfect world happen. When will that happen? Only God knows and he and She will let us know when He and She is ready to make His and Her presence. After all, God is the Ultimate Role Model that spiritual change comes from within, so there is no way in The Promised Land that we can ‘encourage’ God to chooseanything, whether through the increasing or decreasing of evil. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the Grand Entrance will occur when there is more light in the world. But God’s Private Entrance is already here, as the past, present and future are the same. It is just that we can only ‘see’ God with the energy of our souls.
Brian J. Hubbard
www.brianjhubbard.com
Sources of Information and Intuition
[Note these sources are from my memory alone, there will be gaps and this is only scratching the surface. ]
“Learning is not the filling of a pail, but, rather, the lighting of a fire.” William Butler Yeats
Books-Non-Fiction:
High Treason: Conspiracy in the JFK Assassination/Volume I, by Livingstonand Robert Brodeur
High Treason: Conspiracy in the JFK Conspiracy/Volume II by Livingston
Inside the Nixon White House by Haldeman
Inside the White House by Koestller
Blind Ambition by John Dean
The Darker Side of Camelot
Jack and Jackie
Jackie After Jack
The Immortals
Doublecross by Nick Giancana
Mutual Discontempt )about Bobby’s and LBJ’s rivalry)
Nixon and Kennedy
A Vast Conspiracy [about Clinton]
Monica’s Story
All the President’s Men by Woodward
Under Fire by Oliver North
In Retrospect by McNamara
Diplomacy by Kissinger
Pentagon Papers edited by New York Times
The Rise and Fall of president Nixon
The Agenda by Woodward
RFK by Schleshinger
Warren Commision Report [excerpts only]
The Powers that Be by Haldeman
A Reporter’s Life by Walter Cronkite
D-Day, The Climactic Battle of WWII by Ambrase
Citizen Soldier/June, 1944to May 1945 by Ambrase
[Actually, over time I read several JFK books but didn’t seem very reliable and biased such as Johhny, We Hardly Knew Thee by Powers and O’Donnell
Rational –Emotive Therapy by Albert Ellis
Releasing the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins
The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck
Further Along the Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck
]
The Civil War: An Illustrated History by Ward
Gods and Generals by Jeff Scharra
The Last Full Measure by Jeff Schirra [ I am getting this last name and may be confusing with Wally Schirra, the sixth astronaut, oh well . . .close anyway, and will look up one of these days]
Killer Angels by the father of Jeff above
Moonshot by Alan Shepard
John Glenn by ‘guess who?
Tom Landry by Guess Who once again?
Molehunt by Jack Anderson
Hillrats
Outrage by Vincent Bugliosi
Reasonable Doubt [This is a good one about laws of physical evidence in a courtroom]
Supreme Injustice by Alan Dershowitz [actually, only read a review as the book isn’t available yet with Library of congress]
Armegeddon, Oil and the Middle East
The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey
The Living Bible
The Bible Code
Conjoint Family Therapy by Virginia Satir
Family Therapy by Salvador Minuchen
Systems Theory by Murray Bowen
The Family Crucible by Augustus Napier
The Last Brother by Joseph McGuiness
Pursuit of Justice by Robert Shapiro
In Contempt by Chris Darden
Without a Doubt by Marsha Clarke
Kato by Kato Kerwin
His Name Was Ron by the Goldman Family
Trial at Dedham by Russell [about Sacco and Venzetti]
Seat of the Soul
Ageless Body, Timeless Mind
Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dyer
Don’t Know Much About History by Ken Davis [Don’t let these titles fool you, these ‘Don’t Know Much . . .series are great overviews]
Don’t Know Much About the Bible by K. Davis
Don’t Know Much About the Civil War by Davis
Don’t Know Much about Geography by DavisLove and Will by Rollo May
Self-Actualization by Abraham Maslow
Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
Diary of Ann Frank
Doctor and the Soul by Frankl
Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm
Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
The Sane Society by Fromm
Becoming Partners by Carl Rogers
I’m OK, You’re OK by Harris Games People Play by Eric Berne
Games Alcoholics Play by Steiner
Mindhunters by John Douglas
This guy is a Sig Ep![another Bill and Monica book by Newskweek’s Mike Ishakoff, but can’t remember the title]
Death of a Princess (good one about coverups)Wired by Bob Woodward [another good one about coverups and the media]
Last Train to Nashville by Gurelmek [about Elvis, another good one about ‘images and the media, with coverups]
First Love by Gurelmek [same as above]
The Gulag Archipelego
Dr. Zhivago Boris pasternak
Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown
Now I know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Autobiography of Malcolm X [good one about identity issues and territorialism]
Mohammud Ali: His Life and Times by Tom Hauser
Hurrican Carter[great one]
Mary Ann Faithful: An Autobiography [great one about images and the media; her life with Rolling Stones, stirred up memories with recent Paul McCartney fundraiser, also raises a lot of Jim Morrison’s death]
The Only Dance There Is by Ram Dass
Remember, Be Here Now by Ram Dass
A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda
Journey to Ixtland by Castaneda
Elvis by Goldman
Shout [about the Beatles;Brian Epstein’s death very interesting]
Riders of the Storm [about the Doors written by the drummer, forgot his name John Dentmore?]
Light My Fire [again about the doors written by the keyboard player]
Crime and Punishment
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steve Covey
The Natural Mind by Andrew Weil
Spontaneous Healing by Andrew Weil
Anatomy of the Spirit by Carolyn Myss
FICTION:
The Company by Erlichman
Just about all of Clancy’s books, especially the following:
Debt of Honor
Executive Order
Bear and the Dragon
Clear and Present Danger
Patriot’s Game
Sum of All Fears
Jack and Jill by Patterson
Hide and Seek by Patterson
[actually, just about everything by Patterson]
Silent Witness Richard North Patterson
Good Night and Lullabye by Vincent Bugliosi
And the Sea Will Tell by Bugliosi Shadow of Cain by Bugliosi
Til Death Do Us Part by Bugliosi
Key to Rebecca by Follett
Eye of the Needle by Follett
Triple by Follett
[just about all of Robert Ludlum’s books]
[everything by Robin cook, Patricia Cornwell, Pat Conroy, Michael Palmer, and Michael Crichton. Especially meaningful by Crichton was Time Line, the Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man and Air Frame; also just about everything by Steven King(actually I have been accused of reading too much King, but great for opening up thinking to para-psychology)
Winds of War by Herman Wouk
War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Native Son by Richard Wright
[Everything by John Grishan]
[Everything by Steven Coonts e.g. Final Flight,Flight of the Intruder, Under Siege, etc.]
The Fourth K by Mario Puzo [this is a great one about ‘truth machines and terrorism, by the way, did anyone catch the latest about FBI wanting to use sodium pentathol with those still in custody, and Larry King raised the point that if we used sodium pentathol for the truth with potential terrorists/allies, why don’t we use it for people on Death Row?)]
[Everything by Tom Harris e.g. Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, Hannibel and Black Sunday]
Just about everything by Leon Uris, but Exodus, Trinity, QB VII and Mila 18 are especially relevant]
[Just about everything by Irwin Shaw, but Young Lions especially good]
[[Brian’s Note: Again, I am only ‘scratching the surface with my conscious memory as it allows me to penetrate on October 31, 2001, but I am slightly distracted about trick or treaters arriving in a short while. I will pull together a more comprehensive list in the near future, for whatever it’s worth, but I don’t want to give the impression of bias]]
Home | About
Brian | Speaking | Writing
| Counseling | Contact Info
| FAQ