What Are Your Limits?

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.” 

-   Frederick Douglass

Does Subservience Protect Us From Injustice? World Affairs Journal, Egyptian Case Study 

"There is a true story from the early 20th century that is told by the great writer Ahmed Amin in his excellent book “A Dictionary of Egyptian Customs and Traditions.” A peasant laborer acquired a vast fortune and bought a large boat, called a dahabia. He bought smart and expensive clothes and sat in his dahabia as it glided across the water. The man who owned the land he worked on, an arrogant and cruel-hearted man, saw him and ordered his workers to storm the dahabia and arrest the peasant. The peasant begged for forgiveness, swearing he would never sail the dahabia again if the landowner thought he had done wrong. The landowner accepted his apology, but then gave orders to his servants, who tied the peasant up and dragged him along he ground until his new clothes were covered with mud and ripped to shreds. Then they started to beat him until his knees, his feet, and his back were bleeding. 

 

To my mind, this story reflects a widespread pattern for the relationship between the despot and his victims. 

 

I remember this lesson when I follow what is happening in Egypt. Generations of Egyptians have grown up in the firm belief that submitting to injustice is wise, and that kowtowing to those in power is the best way to protect oneself from harm. Egyptians have long believed that objecting to the authoritarian system is sheer folly and will never change things for the better, and that those who resist injustice will be detained, tortured, and even killed. Egyptians have believed that coexistence with the authoritarian regime will save them from the harm it can inflict, trusting that the vast apparatus of repression which the state possesses only goes into action to crush those who stand in its way.

But now, perhaps for the first time in decades, Egyptians are waking up to the fact that submission, failing to speak out for justice, and being obsequious towards oppressors will not prevent injustice, but often add to it. Khaled Mohamed Said, the young man who was killed in Alexandria last month, was no political activist and did not belong to any movement aimed to change the regime; in fact he may never in his life have taken part in any demonstration. He was a completely peaceful young Egyptian, dreaming like millions of Egyptians of escaping by any possible means from his oppressive homeland. He was waiting to obtain a U.S. passport like his brothers, so that he could leave Egypt forever. 

 

On the evening of his death, he went to an Internet cafe to pass the time, again like millions of others. He committed no crime and broke no law, but as soon as he went into the cafe two plainclothes policemen pounced on him and without a word started beating him brutally. They banged his head on the edge of the marble table with all their might, dragged him out of the cafe and took him into a nearby building, where they continued to beat him and banged his head against the iron gate of the building until their purpose was fulfilled. Khaled's skull was smashed and he died in front of them. 

 

Regardless of the real reason behind this brutal murder, and regardless also of the successive statements issued by the Ministry of the Interior to justify the crime, all of which have turned out to be untrue, the clear meaning of this murder is that submission is no longer enough to protect Egyptians from repression. Khaled Said was beaten in the same way as young people demonstrating for freedom. Repression in Egypt no longer distinguishes between demonstrators and ordinary people, sitting in cafes and sleeping at home. The brutal murder of Khaled Said and the fact that the killers have escaped punishment plainly indicate that any police officer or any plainclothes detective can kill whomever he wants, and the apparatus of despotism will step in at once to exonerate the killer..." 

 

What will you risk for freedom?    Look around you - your freedoms are being taken away, one by one, day by day.   We are all economic and social slaves.   For how long will you just quietly submit?

Pilobolus perform "Symbiosis"

The Divine Feminine and Masculine:  Dancing Life

Slaying Dragons - Pity They're Not All As Easy To Vanquish!

My son's 7th birthday cake...

He's currently enamoured of dragons...   Last year it was dinosaurs and the year before Peter Pan and pirates...   I wonder if he's going to be a tilter at windmills and slayer of dragons like his mother?

I hope all his dragons are as peaceable and docile as this one - fierce on the outer and sweet on the inner...

Did the Cat Eat the Canary?

If You Repeat a Lie Often Enough....

Is this really what our world has come to?

Politics, power and control?

New: Teaching Session Offered Each Tuesday in Seattle

                

I'm launching a new class...
It's a 45-minute teaching session offered each Tuesday, focusing on the practice and benefits of breath work, and uncovering limiting core beliefs and self-sabotaging patterns of thinking, choice-making and behavior.

We'll be discussing what, how and why you think, do and say what you do, what are your expectations of yourself and life and what keeps you from reaching your full potential.

We won't just be sitting around; we'll also use experiential exercises to get to profound, deeply personal understandings.

So, if your life isn't going as well as you'd like and you need new ideas, strategies and tools to change that, come and check out what I have to offer.


Time:       6 - 6.45pm

Location:  5 Focus Fitness,
              1009 8th Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98109

Cost:       $10.00

RSVP:      5 Focus Fitness at 206 631 2818
              Sahila at 206 679 1738

For more information on breath work and the other modalities I offer, see my website: www.metamind-spirit.com

 

 

 

The Difference Between Strength & Courage

One of my first metaphysical teachers sent me this teaching at Christmas 2001:

It takes STRENGTH to be firm,
It takes COURAGE to be gentle.

It takes STRENGTH to stand guard,
It takes COURAGE to let down your guard.

It takes STRENGTH to conquer,
It takes COURAGE to surrender.

It takes STRENGTH to be certain,
It takes COURAGE to have doubt.

It takes STRENGTH to fit in,
It takes COURAGE to stand out.

It takes STRENGTH to feel a friend's pain,
It takes COURAGE to feel your own pain.

It takes STRENGTH to hide your own pain,
It takes COURAGE to show it.

It takes STRENGTH to endure abuse,
It takes COURAGE to stop it.

It takes STRENGTH to stand alone,
It takes COURAGE to lean on another.

It takes STRENGTH to survive,
It takes COURAGE to LIVE...

Little did I know when I received this in the post, that in a few short months I would begin a 7-year journey where I would learn to live this teaching...

 

 

 

Chill Out - Take Time & Enjoy the Ride

A lot of my inspiration lately has been about stepping into power, questions as to whether or not evil exists (it doesn't!), 'rules are for fools and guidelines are for the wise', and whether or not being in a place of compassion includes taking an activist, confrontational role in the world (it does - see Gandhi and Mandela and Jesus)...

I might start today with the idea that each of us are presented with the answers as we need them. Some of us are in a hurry to get from A to B, to complete the journey and we demand solutions immediately and think we are failing if we don't get them.

But as Rainer Maria Rilke says:

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

 
and this:

"Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave... Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”

 

 

 

 

George Carlin - Bitter Old Cynic or Fearless Truth Teller?

George Carlin's ‘Final Words to the World’: ”It’s called the American Dream because you would have to be asleep to believe it”...

Can you really say he's wrong about all this?   I can't, though I wish desperately that I could...

Despicable & Grotesque Brainwashing of Our Most Precious Treasure & Resource: War Games Lure Recruits For 'Real Thing'

"A controversial Army Experience Center in a northeast Philadelphia shopping mall will soon close its doors after a two-year pilot program. With regard to its military outreach efforts, the multimillion-dollar facility has declared "mission accomplished," but opponents question the Army's version of reality...

...At the center, teenage boys sit in a row of Army-green recliners facing flat-screen monitors. They square off in video war games like the popular Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Once visitors register and prove they're 13 years or older, they're given free access to the facility's array of war-themed games...

...John Gallato, 18, and three of his 15-year-old friends sit atop the Army vehicle eagerly waiting for their mission to begin. With a lifelike machine gun in hand, Gallato says experiences like this will help prepare him for the future.

"I'm going to be killing people," he says. "I'm actually joining the Marines and will be doing this in real life."

When they get the green light, the four teens begin maneuvering through virtual war zones and shooting at targets while dodging bullets themselves.

These simulated war experiences have met with strong opposition. Combat veteran Staff Sgt. Jesse Hamilton says the Army has sanitized the horrors of combat.

"The heat, people screaming, blood, flies, horrible smells, smoke in your eyes stinging, sand — the list goes on and on — and they've taken all of that out," he says. "What they've effectively left is what they consider to be the 'fun' part."

Demonstrators have voiced opposition to the Army Experience Center in Philadelphia throughout the two years the pilot program has been operating.

Kathy Leary, of the BuxMont Coalition for Peace Action, says war is not a game. "We've heard kids come out of the Army Experience Center saying, 'They're really showing me what war is really like' — and obviously that's not what war is really like. There's no reset button in war." 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128875936&sc=fb&cc=fp

As a former military wife of 18 years and the mother of a son currently serving in the New Zealand Army who spent six months in Afghanistan recently, I think I have the right to say this completely sucks... 

We need to be moving towards educating for peace, not brainwashing our young people to prepare them to go and kill in any country's name...

Is Civil Disobedience Compassion in Action?

What are your responsibilities as an "awake and aware" social activist?

For a while now, I've been impatient with, and frustrated by, what I see as wishy-washy responses to what's going on in the world by people who claim to be compassionate social activists... 

These people criticise my perspectives and actions, saying there's no place for anger in creating a peaceful future.   They suggest that giving energy to the negative will increase it and that focusing on the positive will undo all that is so damaging in our world.

I can't buy into that attitude/belief system.

I think there's a place for righteous anger and action to call attention to the things that are hurtful in our society.   Jesus got pretty angry with the merchants in the temple and with those who wanted to stone the adulterous woman.   Gandhi wasn't shy in expressing his anger at the British ruling India.  Martin Luther King was pretty vocal - blunt in fact - in demanding equal rights for African Americans.   Mother Teresa didn't soft-pedal on the poverty and disease killing women and children in India... 

In my opinion, those who say we should concentrate on the positive are in denial about what is really going on; they're overwhelmed by the imbalance in the world and are too scared to confront it.   If they did really face it, what would that require them to DO?   Would they be required to put it all on the line, risk losing their place on the ladder if they really named what is going on?  If we name it and label it as unjust, don't we then have to own our complicity in the status quo, stop enabling, stop participating in the system that's creating and continuing this imbalance?  

So how far should we go, then, in confronting injustice in our society?

See here and decide for yourself...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_%28Thoreau%29

The Occupation of U.S. Public Schools: Kids as Cannon Fodder & Consumers

 

"In November of 2009, 90 retired U.S. military leaders, including former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark, 2 former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 6 other 4-star generals and admirals, announced their plans to cultivate another demographic to fight future imperial wars — pre-schoolers. According to Rear Admiral Barnett, “Our national security in the year 2030 is absolutely dependent on what’s going on in pre-kindergarten today.”

Major press throughout the country printed the story, echoing the concern that so many 17-24 year olds are unfit for military service today and that in the future it could mean “a limited pool (of potential recruits) will hold back our military readiness and erode our national security in the long run.” 

 

Although it may be surprising that they are targeting tots, it’s probably not surprising that high-ranking retired military men have an interest in raising cannon fodder for the future and passing on the lethal legacy associated with their careers. But what may come as a surprise is that they are already well on their way with the aid of the Obama administration and U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, as well as congress, in pursuing an aggressive agenda, spearheaded by the Pentagon and corporate business interests, to alter the entire U.S. public education system.

 
To this end, Mission Readiness promoted the Early Learning Challenge Fund. It was included in the Zero-to-Five Initiative (that’s “zero to five” years of age) of President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Request. Congress was lobbied for support state-by-state and the House of Representatives passed the initiative in the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act last September; it currently awaits passage in the Senate. The money is not for actual program. The strategy is to shift who has control of public education beginning with children in the tender years and continuing through high school.

 

The Early Learning Challenge Fund is only one of a number of grant programs designed to “reform” the nation’s education system by militarizing and privatizing it. The so-called “education reform” movement was initiated by practitioners of a new form of private giving called “venture philanthropy,” which regards public schools as free-market terrain in which to exercise its own ideologies and agendas, away from the purview of public accountability and without cumbersome educator, local community, and school board input (the “reform” movement pushes for giving city mayors, rather than school boards, oversight for schools—although it will involve itself in school board campaigns when it isn’t possible).

 

Kenneth Saltman, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Foundations in Education at DePaul University, stated: “Within this corporatized view of educational leadership found in venture philanthropy, military leadership is celebrated for its alleged link with corporate management—a focus on discipline, order and enforcement of mandates through a hierarchy at every level of public schooling.” (Kenneth J. Saltman and David Gabbard, Education as Enforcement: the Militarization and Corporatization of Schools, New York: Routledge 2003.)

  

Saltman calls the militarization of public schools with its focus on urban and predominantly African-American and Latino student bodies, “a ‘profoundly racialized phenomenon’” in that “these students are framed as suffering primarily from a lack of discipline which the military and corporation can supply.” 

 

Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad, who made a fortune through residential home building, and the insurance and financial products corporations SunAmerica and AIG, is regarded as the foremost practitioner of venture philanthropy in education reform. He created the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems to carry out its agendas—placing corporate executives and military officers who are not educators—in charge of public school administrations, and indoctrinating administers who are already in the school system into its methods nationwide.

 

By 2010, graduates from the Broad Superintendents Academy held 68 superintendent positions and 88 senior school district executive positions across the country. Last year, 43 percent of all large urban school districts that conducted external searches for new superintendents filled their positions with graduates of the academy.

 

It isn’t any wonder then that the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which operates these programs on school reform, sees things moving in the direction it desires. Its 2009/2010 report states: “The election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. Secretary of Education marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned. With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time and national standards—the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.” 

 

Military infiltration and control of public schools figure prominently in this scenario. Of the 14 members of the Broad Superintendent Class of 2010, (They keep their current jobs and attend “class” training for ten months at specific times throughout the year.) four are high-ranking military: the former Chief of Operations, NATO Afghan Operations; the Director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis for the United States Military Academy; the Commanding General of the United States Army Human Resources Command; and the Director of the Human Performance Resource Center for the United States Army. The class of 2009 included the Commanding General of 10th Mountain Division and Joint Task Force of 25,000 U.S. military in Afghanistan.

 

 

The education “reform” movement has so permeated our national culture that it now forms the framework of discussions about education—often in glowing terms. Both the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Minneapolis’s Star Tribune referred to the selection of the new St. Paul School Superintendent for training at what they call the “prestigious” Broad Supervisor’s Academy. Although the new superintendent is an educator qualified for other reasons, the Pioneer Press called her experience at the Broad school “something the School Board could hardly overlook when they were choosing candidates.” 

 

Several top officials in New York City’s Department of Education were trained at the Broad program but a chemistry teacher complains, “My district can’t provide working heat, light, or running water for my under-equipped lab, but we pay hundreds of thousands to the consulting businesses he (Eli Broad) promotes.” She goes on to state: “The real drive behind his manipulations is the marketing plan for the useless ‘services’ and products provided (at public expense) for his for-profit entrepreneurial ‘partners.’ Edubusiness entrepreneurs hide under a layer of fake nonprofits set by ‘philanthropists’ like Broad and Gates.” (Gotham Schools at http://gothamschools.org)"...  from: http://www.worldwidewamm.org/newsletters/2010/0310/fodder.html

 
If this doesn't have you in complete outrage about what's going on in the US and in education, what will?

 

And if you do find this morally indefensible, what are you going to do about it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hands Off Our Mother!

Unproven scientific ‘fixes’ for global warming are a major threat to the planet...

 

"It used to be that ‘stepping lightly on the planet’ was considered common sense for addressing global warming, but a brash new breed of planet-savers has a more heavy-handed suggestion. Since action on reducing greenhouse gases is proving ineffective, they argue, it might soon be necessary to deliver Mother Earth a huge technological smack in the climate system. For her own good, of course.

 

Welcome to the concept of geoengineering – large-scale schemes that propose manipulating planetary systems to counteract global warming. Humans have inadvertently altered the global environment before, but geoengineering differs in that it brings intentionality to messing with our planet. Geoengineering proposals range from dumping iron in the ocean to grow CO2-gobbling plankton, to polluting the upper atmosphere with sulphur particles to mimic large volcanoes. Such volcanoes have occasionally cooled down the atmosphere before. Unfortunately, they can also cause monsoons to weaken and fail, intensifying hunger in the tropics.

 

 Sounds risky and dangerous? Of course it is. Seductive to policymakers? Yes, that too. But as billionaire airline tycoon Richard Branson baldly told the press last year: ‘If we could come up with a geoengineering answer to this problem… we could carry on flying our planes and driving our cars.’"... from: http://www.newint.org/columns/currents/2010/06/01/global-warming-geoengineering-fixes/
 

Why is it always men who think of these "solutions" but can't see the disastrous consequences?

 

Do they have such a deep hate of the sacred feminine that they can seriously consider these measures as 'problem solving'?

 

The Dalai Lama and indigenous elders all say the solutions the world needs will come from women - maybe you have to be able to have a child/give birth to really understand and value life?

 

 

 

Will the US Follow New Zealand & Australia & Recognise First Peoples' Rights?

In finally announcing its support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, New Zealand has acknowledged that indigenous people must have full freedom to use their lands and resources as they wish.

The Declaration calls for states to acknowledge indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and demands that private interests obtain ‘free, prior and informed consent’ for use of indigenous land for commercial and development purposes.

http://www.newint.org/columns/currents/2010/06/01/new-zealand-indig...

When will the US follow suit?

Its Been a While...

Well... its been nearly a month since I last posted... something to do with it being summer, birthdays (mine and my son's), daughter visiting on her way back to Australia from Istanbul, personal stuff, public education/school district activism and focusing on growing my business/practice - there's still the rent to pay, groceries to buy, utilities to keep from getting cut off, petrol for the car blah, blah, blah...

Why aren't we at the point described in one of the Star Trek movies where everyone's basic needs are provided for because we have the resources and technology to do that?   Buckminster Fuller talked about that in the 60s and Robert Theobald proposed a full unemployment society a decade or more ago.  

An NPR report today focused on the possibility of teleportation: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128910996&sc=fb&cc=fp

Don't get me wrong - I was so excited to see the report.   I thought - "wow, its about time" - because I've always thought that anything we can imagine already exists in some other place/time and if its all about frequencies, we only need to resonate at the same frequency to bring it into our here and now... Shamans and mystics have been doing that for eons.

But I also thought: if we're working on that, why can't we be working on a new socio-economic system that solves the problems we face in the world - population issues, health, education, housing, clean water, the environment, conflict, poverty, debt, sustainability, not enough work to go around, failure to treasure the arts and anything which doesn't contribute to GDP/GNP...

Its so depressing to think that until capitalism has completely sucked the lifeblood out of this planet, our mother, and all of her living inhabitants, until the skies are grey and the seas are black and the land is dry, devoid of trees and infertile - we will not find the will to live differently....

Would it be such a loss if our species went extinct?  Really, we're just fleas on an elephant's back.   The day we finally step irreversibly, irretrievably over the line, Gaia would maybe just do a huge shrug and throw us off.   Gaia would survive, repair herself and thrive, as James Lovelock thinks http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8594000/8594561.stm 

And because energy can only be transmuted, not created or destroyed, the individual and collective 'energy' that is each of us and all of us would surely manifest in another form somewhere else in this awesome creation called LIFE... 

 
 

Does Evil Exist?

(Repost from 28 June 2010)

I was privileged to lead a breath work session yesterday...

And part of the session included a discussion about the identity and nature of the Life  Force (am staying away from terms such as God/Goddess etc, which are loaded, exclusionary, inaccurate and based in our human need to set in place a hierarchy of power and to anthropomorphise everything we don't understand!)...

Under the holographic principle, the sum of the whole is contained in each of the parts.... so, logically, if one believes that there is an originating Life Force, which is all-knowing, all-loving, infinite and omnipotent, then by extension, as its creations each one of us is also that Life Force - all-knowing, all-loving, infinite and omnipotent... which has huge implications relating to how we see and express ourselves in the world, as powerful beings or as victims?  But that's another day's subject...

Holographic Universe

Evidence from physics and quantum mechanics show that the Observor influences any event or object of consciousness, changing the wave to a particle, the formless to form. Everything is energy. At a subatomic level, all molecules are alive, moving, and conscious. Mind is not just determinative over matter, but mind and matter seem to just be energy vibrating at different frequencies.

Which brings me to the question of whether or not Evil exists...

If one accepts the holographic premise, then Evil cannot exist because all creations of the Life Force ARE the Life Force and one would then have to say the Life Force is evil.  And some might indeed think/feel this, but wouldn't they then also have to consider themselves evil?

A secondary factor to consider is our human need to label events, situations and people, to assign a value to them such as 'good' or 'bad', 'positive' or 'negative', 'ugly' or 'beautiful', 'loving' or 'hateful', 'easy' or 'difficult' etc.

I think we do this to satisfy our need to find order in the chaos, to assign definition so that we can feel secure, so that we can establish a relative place for ourselves in the scheme of things, to give ourselves an (illusory) sense of control and power.

If we were all to be honest with ourselves, this need to label is really quite a pathetic attempt to claim our place at the centre of the universe and to give ourselves an out, an excuse when we don't live up to the sacredness we carry within ourselves!

If we look at the natural world, those value-laden terms mean nothing, have no relevance at all... Things just are...

Some humans might see lightning striking, burning and felling a tree as a negative, sad, disastrous occurrence.    However, for the natural world its just an event, signalling the end of one form of life and the beginning of another, as the felled tree trunk begins to decompose and return to the earth and in the process gives shelter and sustenance to millions of small and microscopic life forms.

So if the Life Force and its creations cannot, by definition, be evil, and if value-laden descriptors are a human construct that have no significance in the rest of creation, how then to understand the "horrifying' things that happen in our own spheres of existence, in the world, in Life?

I've come to understand this from two different perspectives.

The first stems from a meditation experience I had very early on in my spiritually "awake and aware" journey.   As part of this moment, where I experienced actually being ALL THAT EVER WAS, IS NOW AND EVER SHALL BE, I came to know that the Life Force's sole purpose was to experience itself in all of its infinite potential - a gorgeous, awe-inspiring, completely loving cosmic game of "What If..."   If I manifest as this, what happens then?    If I choose this, what follows?    A joyous, wondrous, exciting experiment in CAUSE and EFFECT in which we all are participating as co-creators, as manifestations of that Sacred Life Force.

The second "AHA" moment came in a flash of insight that was sparked by the events of 9/11, took me back to seeing biblical events in a new light and then flash-forwarded to WW2 and Adolf Hitler.

All my "AHA" moments come in the shower - sad, prosaic but true!   And in this one moment when thinking about 9/11, apart from realising that this event was a logical outcome (Effect) after years of American meddling in world affairs (Cause), including responsibility for the deaths of millions under oppressive regimes the US had covertly and overtly helped put in place, I understood that all the people involved in 9/11 had come together in this co-creation to offer us all a gift.

As well as playing out whatever needed to play out for their own and their families' journeys, the 'terrorists', the pilots, the passengers, the people in the towers, the firefighters all had given their lives so that we could make a choice about how we wanted to move on in the world.    They all had the courage to be involved in this event so that we could choose a pathway forward of love, reconciliation and co-operation, not more war and death and misery.

Without the 'terrorists', this event would not have happened.   Imagine a soul - by definition all-loving because it is the Life Force - coming into this lifetime, knowing that it was going to choose and enact a path that would end in death and vilification.    Remember how acting contrary to your true nature feels like a painful, twisting inside.
    

Imagine those other souls, agreeing to co-create this 'painful' event, so that we would each, and as a web of interconnected beings, have the opportunity to step into a new vision of life on this planet...

Sadly, we did not take that step - instead we continued the "power over" game and began more wars.... possibly because, as Marilyn Waring and others before her have pointed out, war-making is a profitable business, is one tool for ensuring "economic growth".

That realisation about 9/11 spiralled my thinking back to the Bible and the place of the Life Force aspect/soul called Lucifer in the scheme of creation.

Human beings need duality to give them a sense of context and place on the continuum of life.    We need contrast to make our choices.    If Lucifer is a creation of the Life Force, IS the Life Force, then Lucifer cannot be evil, unless we accept that the Life Force is evil.    The soul that is Lucifer is serving us in the highest manner possible, giving each of us every day the chance to make choices - life sustaining choices or life destroying choices, choices which expand us further into all we can be or contract and diminish us.

Which then led to the thought that Judas Iscariot also was a hero in the story of the life of the man called Jesus Christ.    Without the 'betrayal' by Judas, the Crucifixion would not have happened, nor the Resurrection, and Christ would not have been able to show us in such a dramatic fashion that we have the choice to live life in a different, more loving manner.

Which then led me to think about all the other 'evil' people in earth's human history, with Adolf Hitler coming most prominently to mind.   Again, Adolf Hitler's choices and actions opened the door for us as a species to decide to change our ways.

I think it was an act of courage and service to us all, for the soul that manifested as Adolf Hitler and all the souls that manifested as the victims and fallen of the Holocaust and WW2 to do what they did.   (And I say these things with respect, from the vantage point of being Dutch and having had my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all experience life under the Nazis during WW2)...

Unfortunately, the meaning and impact of those acts of courage seem to have been lost/wasted on us...

Because now we have the BP oil spill and the G8/G20 meetings and protesters, another opportunity to listen to each other, to learn from example and experience, to step into a new, holistic, loving way of being for all life forms on this planet... and there doesn't seem to be much momentum for change being enacted - lots of talk, yes, but action?   No...

Are we a lost cause, this human species?   Is that where the Evil really exists?

PS: Or are we only “lost” in this universe/reality?    Given the multi-dimensional nature of creation, with parallel realities and universes co-existing in the eternal NOW, are all the choices we didn't make in our 'now' playing out in other infinite Life lines?

Birthday Revelations: How to Step Out of the Toxic Dance

"There comes a time in life when you walk away from all the people who create pointless drama in your life and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus on the good.    Life is too short to be anything but happy."

Actually, I had the very same thought this morning as I was waking up...

There is a person who will be in my life for a long time (we were the portal/brought a child into the world together) and there is nothing but needless drama in my interactions with this person, drama initiated by his attitudes, choices and actions.

And for many reasons, some to do with my own "story" and some to do with what I thought I understood about our reasons for coming together and walking this path, I thought it was my job to hold the line, enforce boundaries...

And on a psychological level, its been about submission - he not willing to submit to a strong and abusive female, his mother, whom I represent in this dynamic.

And its been a complete energy drain for five years now...

For a long time, I have been asking my version of the Sacred for insight into how to step out of this dance.

And I woke up this morning (great birthday present!) with the determination to just "stop" engaging; put out there what needs to happen with no attachment to, expectation as to the outcome.

There is no win-win in this arena because the mother is dead.   I can't help this man with his woundedness; he's 56 and only he can decide when he's going to finally grow up and stop being a victim/martyr to his past, to his story.

In fighting me at every turn, in attempting to control me, in asserting/exerting his power abusively, he's fighting his mother, hoping one day that in conquering me, he'll conquer her.   The more I engage, the more I feed into and fuel his unfinished, unwinable battle.

So I remove myself, put out there only what really needs to be said/done and refuse to engage...

Let him respond however he chooses (not how I think/feel he ought to respond) and I'll just get on with it - live Life - regardless.

Its his journey, his consequence, his effect, his karma... Its the job of the Sacred now to find the balance... I step out!!!

Wow - what freedom... what a gift... what a way to end my 52nd and start my 53rd year of living!