The Corbyn earthquake?

 The Corbyn earthquake – how Labour was shaken to its foundations


Whilst there is a human capacity to make mistakes, (and learn from them), the humanity exemplified simply by the demeanour of Jeremy Corbyn contrasts sharply with the spin doctored bids for power that are not in touch with nor advocacy for People - in most politicians and indeed many operating in positions of leadership and trust in our society.
The media do not report on the shadow power operating 'behind the throne' of the appearance of power. Partly because it is a negative self interest at work that is believed to offer protection and security - but always of a personal or personal group or cartel of interest and not as a whole.
And so there is pervasive corruption of many kinds of dis-integrity that holds us in rigidities and resistances to needed change, as well as the more obvious corruptions of a personal opportunism - including the largely corporate willingness to profit from the supply of sickness, destruction and misery. Few can begin to articulate what they feel or sense to be unreal or deceptive - but lack of engagement in politics is an indication of a sense of distrust and futility. I do not pretend or expect Jeremy Corbyn to 'solve' our problems - but I do see him as a public example of willingness to serve Humanity - and not an idealogical blindness of self-righteous hunger for power - not the bankrupt and visionless puppets of financial, international and corporate lobbies that merely seek their own survival and prevalence over what they see as obstruction to their growth - without any genuine connection with true human value.
Humanity is at stake in the old paradigm of corrupt financial systems, unchecked and runaway power in international corporations and cartels of interest, along with capture of regulatory institutions and indeed the mainstream media.
A movement FOR humanity is a cross party and indeed a trans-party movement founded in a willingness to truly communicate. THAT is a foundation which is lost to the willingness to deceive in order to coerce apparently desirable outcomes.
The nature of what can be addressed and to what degree is not the power of any man or woman - but of a collective willingness - which is also the willingness to identify our individuality with a Humanity that is greater than the sum of its parts.
A FALSE imposition upon the nature of who we truly are, cracks - and light gets in. Not the false Obama decoy of a presentation of hope as yet another persistence of the same governance under a different disguise - but someone who is not seduced and corrupted by the lure or baiting traps of power. I have little doubt but that he will be subjected to every kind of baiting and inducement by those who fear change that aligns Humanity but threatens their sense of power and privilege - but whoever we may believe ourself to be, our humanity is not something that can be bought or protected by what money can buy. True worth is pre-money and our society needs to align with reality - and not the asserted realities of fearfully exploitative coercive agenda - dressed up to seem acceptable to a medicated and managed population. Thankyou for your attention.

"what’s gone wrong and who is to blame?"

 Coalition Britain: how has David Cameron affected the UK's reputation?

Few dispute that the UK has lost influence on the world stage – but what’s gone wrong and who is to blame?

When I read the heading - and particularly the sub headline - which titles this entry, I felt no call to read further - for anything predicated on such basis is inherently meaningless or insane.


- - -

"what’s gone wrong and who is to blame?"
This sort of poor excuse for 'thinking' is the nature of the 'problem.
Clarify the definitions - the foundational lens through which we cognize, and all else reveals itself.
Investing in "what’s gone wrong and who is to blame?", may operate in the guise of self protection or an expansion of the capacity to control or manipulate an outcome and thus everyone may willingly blind themselves to the whole - and their integral part within it - in favour of a self-assertive 'divide and rule' mentality that is essentially at war with Life because it is at war on one's self.
There IS a natural honesty of being that CAN be experienced THROUGH willingness and desire to have it. Although the act of exclusively focussing upon or 'seeing'. "what’s gone wrong and who is to blame?" will provide a script of self-justification - a justifiction - in which the OTHER or the EXTERNAL carries the major "blame", it simply operates as a deceit by which to choose against the true of one's being and SEEMING to 'get away with it'.
However the symptoms of DIS-EASE are packaged, toxic debt is the false currency operating as guilt - backed by the FEAR-standard. To base our identity in fearful and shameful - BLAMEFUL - self-definition is to GUARANTEE war, scarcity, deprivation, dysfunction, loss - oh the list goes on but you get the drift.
To drift into a negative or self-fragmenting disposition is a result of NOT living consciousness responsibility. However, we can never truly LOSE our being and it will pick us up the moment we open to listen and integrate with it. Responsibility is a NOW-ability of response, from re-cognition - from a fresh take - from a fresh take - from a fresh take.
Or one can defend a 'point of view' that honestly evaluated, has no true foundation in your joy. Choice is the nature of our human existence and disguising choice within deceitful manipulations is ONE of our CHOICES. One CANNOT change what one first does not OWN. The blame game guarantees non-ownership of false definitions through a sort of negative version of 'pass the parcel'. It works to keep us in the dark. It is a choice made IN the dark. But now you have read this you are within the responsibility of your conscious choice. You are not 'victim' to conditioning excepting you have yet to honestly acknowledge its operation through the use to which you put your mind. Live from a truly integrative disposition and KNOW your participance.

Reflections on phishing scams and self deceptions

In a computer list-group the subject of phishing and malware scams comes up - as does frequently in news articles relative to hacking and snooping and using personal data for private agendas.
I started reflecting on the nature of scams and wrote the following:

Increasingly I feel that 'scams' are substituting for relationships of shared honour and integrity.

Phishing operates to seem like a known and trusted communication that purports to warn and or protect a danger or threat, or simply to offer special access to services or powers.

In a way a scam operates to take advantage of those who do not want to check in consciously with the legitimacy of a communication. This may because they want something offered such as a cheap or desirable bargain, to be true, or because they do not want a warned or reported danger or threat to come about.

In this way most of us are manipulatable in significant degree.

If a group of people dressed as policemen tell you to do something you will likely do it regardless that it goes against your natural inclination because we are conditioned to obedience simply from recognition of a uniform and associated behaviours.

Most people mostly 'play by the rules' most of the time, but increasingly, those in positions of power as a result of our extending such trust, act as if they own and have a right to such power, while we generally feel powerless and subordinate to be led or protected or receive service from such corporations or organisations.

'Keep one's head down and don't provoke reaction', seems to be what is masked within the sense of 'keep calm and carry on'. It isn't really calm for it is not a condition of peace in which joy and a discernment of what does not belong to joy are clearly and obviously communicated. It operates a kind of conflict avoidance. A risk aversion strategy that tends to back off and let 'others' or 'the rules' deal with or sort out any conflict situation.

contd...

In private mode, one might well engage in strong but private opinion and emotion, but this teds to 'express itself' in fantasy - apart from where dissatisfactions leak into our daily relationships. Hence the 'outlet' and apparent escape into tv, movies and computer games - but which generally feeds a negative loop rather than truly refreshing or recreational activity.

Conflict avoidance operates as a withdrawal of presence, a limited form of 'playing dead'. It is not that 'good men do nothing' which allows negative agendas to rise unchecked, but that true presence is blocked of its natural communication. In some sense guilt or a sense of personal invalidity operates to undermine ones sense of being able to tell the difference between true and false, as well as one's capacity or authority to call it out or give witness for what it is.

Clearly the nature of 'scam' is an art of deception that has evolved over generations and part of human consciousness for millennia.

Our first experience of deception is perhaps that of fooling oneself and blaming it on others. One can set up a mask of relative innocence as a protection from a conflicted sense of self. As a kind of escape from situations that in their moment are intolerably fearful or painful.

My sense is that all who come into this world learn 'the mask' and in a sense become it - or at least become confused with it in various ways and degrees.

the sense I have of negative agendas rising increasingly fearful within our world is a natural consequence of the confusions implicit to a masked sense of existence. It operates as a sort of tacit 'conspiracy' of negatively defined self interest. For fear is the substitution for a true sense of identity and existence, and if we do not challenge it and discern its true message, we consent to be dictated or ruled by it in exchange for a surface reality in which we are forever hiding from or even warring what lies beneath. It is true that the strategies of fear are loveless to all excepting a special and segregated sense of oneself alone - even when that sense extends to one's special others or group. 

To be exposed in such a mind is generally humiliating because one loses 'face'. One is revealed 'sinful' and thus rejected, reviled or invalidated as a human being. But no matter who might engage or join in such activity, the one whose judgement really cuts and invalidates... is one's own against oneself.

Once one acquires the belief of an evil or a shameful or inadequate sense of oneself, a split or segregated mind seeks to hide or mask it. While much of our social adaptation can accomplish this in ways such that this becomes invisible - because 'everyone else is doing it too' - there are pervasive aspects that remain active as an ongoing defence all the time that we seek to make unconscious - as if to thus make escape into a world without such fears - or at least a sense of our self free of them.

Truth needs no defence for it rests in its own appreciation, but a lie asserted in place of a true appreciation must be perpetually asserted, protected and maintained. This is what gives rise to a mentality of self-justification - which I sometimes call self-justifiction. In symbolic terms it is the mentality of the 'fig-leaf' in terms of a separated self-sense that lost awareness of Eden and took upon itself alone, that which once came naturally as a communioned sense of Life.

Clearly we all experience what we believe to be true even if later we discover it was an illusion, trick or scam. So at the level of our experience it is ALL true and there is no contest as to THE Truth. But a true reflection or expression of who and what we are, is what truly resonates and is relevant to the choices that you accept into your heart - not least because the movement of listening to the heart uncovers them there.

Housekeeping is a basic responsibility for keeping order by setting a clear unified purpose. When conflicted and divided purposes arise that bring conflict and division - and corresponding lack of peace, then it is as if one has a house of unwanted guests who do not belong here. keeping house is a realignment with what wholly belongs - such that attention or hosting services are no longer offered to that which does not resonate with the clear frequency of your presence, and so either they leave or one chooses to live where they are not.

This is simply the effect of living out from a clear and consistent sense of one's innate worth - not specially above or below others. And the underlying scam that would prevent such a waking and conscious act of living is a deeply laid habitual program within our subconscious mind routines.

It takes persistence to break the habit - but only of a clear choice taken in the now of the noticing of the old choice. For habits are patterns of choice.

It seems too much to pay to live as a responsible consciousness, because so much of what was kept hidden in defensive hiding mode now comes to the awareness - and at first seems overwhelming to eyes that have not yet learned to see in the light.

But the actual cost of asserting, maintaining and defending a desire to make unconscious, that which is rejected or feared, is incalculable - and wears out such that the very fears and guilts and evils that were supposed to be hidden, rise ever more as the reflection of our 'world'.

It is said one cant teach an old dog new tricks and there is truth in that for the patterns become too set. But it is also true that an old trick that no longer works obliges one to learn new ways to live.

The times we now live in are obliging humanity to wake up because the scam that was hidden is increasingly becoming exposed - and so cannot serve as a successful illusion. This is the calling and the opportunity to align with the choice of our hearts rather than be led by the mind which seems to have gone off by itself and has forgotten what love is and what we are.

But the same calling can be seen as the witnesses and necessities for ever more fearful defence against an ever more evil world. The essential event or information is interpreted through the core beliefs by which we identify within our sense of self existence. A negative or segregating self definition will automatically interpret everything to obtain reinforcement of itself, as will a positive or re-integrating sense of self-definition.

It is not the advertisement or the politician, nor the peer group or the family or the cultural inheritance or past conditionings that give the Word as to who and what you are, it is through your own heart's acceptance that what you are finds expression and reflection and is thus shared and known truly - rather than through a glass darkly.

This paragraph was in my morning reading (shared after I had written much of this reflection):

"If you do not believe that which is not Truth, you shall experience Truth. But if you choose to believe the false as the truth about you, you shall experience the false and believe it is true". From 'The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament' (NTI).

The term 'Holy Spirit' symbolizes that which knows you truly and which has never left your mind - though it has in a sense been turned away from, discarded and lost. Just as a cut will self-heal, so does consciousness reintegrate - if the cutting desisted and the healing was welcomed, because in truth what is Indivisible never could be separated from or attacked with.

The nature of the scam of an isolated ego power unto itself has been to initiate a journey within perception and experience. It is our perception that is healed or reintegrated to a higher or more embracing inclusion.

Once one sees through a scam one is no longer tempted to click the bait. It is then no longer an active liability. The forms of scams are innumerable and can multiply faster than one can learn to recognize their forms - indeed will mutate as the very means to 'protect' from scams. But a core honesty of self can discern the coercive intent in any or all of them without having to follow their branches to discover their fruits.

To be in a true foundation IS the capacity to discern the same and is the frequency of attraction to like kind as it is unavailable to that which has no belonging or conceivable existence in such open communication.

Sufficient be the evils unto the day thereof means, 'use that which is still residual to your own un-mindfulness to awaken and reintegrate as a wholeness of being' - instead of using it to persist in self-justifictions that no longer actually serve your desire. 

Thankyou for your attention

When self-honesty no longer tolerates hiding pain of self-betrayal

The headline for this article ("I wont be able to live with myself after politics") caught my notice - as does the current media and political incapacity to communicate ABOUT anything Jewish or related to Jewishness, in the same freedom that it might communicate about any other group identity. I was also aware of the opinionated personal attack comments that illustrate how successfully consciousness fragments and denies its own nature AS communication. All are Expressions of Communication without exception. A special form of communication above or outside all others is a mistaken identity that never can rest within and as the unique Expression that it actually Is.
 - - -

One way that the mindset of obfuscation triumphs over clarity of vision is in focussing on personalities so as to distract from issues.
For the record - one not only has to live with one's self - but IS ONE self! This reveals that the self-construct - or mask-persona is a mental layer of asserted or justified ideas with which one has invested and become identified.
The answer to a self-conflicted SENSE/experience of self is to LOOK directly AT it - that is to notice THAT it is occurring rather than to struggle in ever shifting, futile and deluding attempts to make the un-real real. When we can own our own conflicted ideas and purposes, we can let them go in focussing wholly on what aligns and expresses us truly.
Repentance is immediate, self-forgiveness may take seventy times seven - but that doesn't matter. That is simply the discipline of persisting in a true sense of value for oneself and others.
Israel's mentality symbolizes Ishmael curiously enough... The nature of the blind urge to power in the world is to usurp the legitimate heir and inheritance.
The movement of being with which one aligns wholly is the movement of Wholeness that comes of itself to a receptive willingness. This is the power to share the Gift of Life rather than the wish to steal it from others in the fear that one's own will be stolen back or used as a basis for scourging or punishment.
Unless we begin to uncover and acknowledge the fears beneath our so-called rational mind, we will be dictated over by hidden power that neither knows us nor loves us. This is writ large in the world - yet is uncoverable in each consciousness. Notice the obfuscating tendencies of a mind-in-hiding and become more discerning as to whose voice or purpose speaks for you.
The wish to hide from fear and to hide fear from awareness is the basis by which we 'give our power away'. But it remains OURS to re-cognize as our primary act of choosing where to give our attention.
Fear tempts, persuades, coerces and compels. Simply NOT accepting such a basis to act out from INVITES or makes welcome a movement of wholeness.
One more thing... Fear tells you it will make you safe (and special and powerful). Look up and take account of the fruits of your choosing - and if they are NOT in alignment with the true desire of your heart, then CHOOSE ANEW!
Fear sets the framework for choices, none of which allow a true choice to be recognized, felt, embraced, embodied, given witness, extended in gratitude.
The poor in Spirit deprive themselves and know not the blessedness of their true inheritance. Unless we are in the extension of the love that we ARE - we are misperceiving everyone and everything from the basis of a negatively defined self.
Fighting evil, feeds its basis. If we do not identify and discard the self-hatred that is implicit in a negatively defined and segregated self-sense, we operate within its dissociated and deluded dictate.
It dreams of victory - yet its victory is YOUR utter defeat. Such an experience can be had - but it can never be true - for it is by your Word that your perception is delivered as YOUR experience. As you define yourself in relation to all things - so will they be unto you. Materialism denies Consciousness in a 'living death' or conditioned sleep. When what Matters to you is peace of wholeness, the true relation of all things will be restored to your acceptance.

Happiness

Happiness at its root is a core function of being - of our being.
Happiness always expands and gives permission for being - but tends to then be associated with the forms of the situation or event.
Egocentricity, is the sense of identifying with the persona and its mental chatter - which runs like a virtual layer of interpretive imaginations on top of what actually is simply present. It is conditionally happy - that is it defines itself such as to define happiness in specific conditions and by defining it negatively as unhappy conditions. This conditioning of nurture and nature - is founded on a sense of there being something fundamentally lacking, invalid or wrong with our self. This is a psychic divorce from our true nature upon which we construct a mask or persona - and attempt to make it valid, solid, respectable, powerful or loved. No supply of which actually satisfies more than momentarily - such that unhappiness is defined as the 'standard' where each seeks there consolations or distractions of choice from a dissonance of being that does not go away but must be kept at bay.
This is of course a crude and general sketch - but those who have opened within also recognize the territory, even if they have become more aware of the basis out from which they live.
Happiness paradoxically comes from giving it away or releasing the desire to get it. Abiding with and through boredom, doubt and discomfort is the releasing of the surface mentality that is not generally directly connected to anything real - being a mentality of conditioned reaction that believes itself free.
Freedom - to be what you are is happy - or rather the full acceptance of what is actually present always connects to a quality of being that is free of unhappiness. It also re-establishes a perspective for choosing or discerning that aligns with your joy.
Yet to wake from the dream of a life that is trying to become something in its own right - one has to become aware of the definitions that actively create our experience of any given situation - including the opportunities that are present within it.
Decide to be happy and then everything that arises can be used to serve your decision. Disappointment is the result of appointed expectations being unmet - and so one uses it to own the thoughts and feelings.
Most do not want responsibility of mind and so choose to protect unconsciousness by giving power to external agencies to supply them with substitutes or justifications.
Guilt or blame - self invalidation - is the undermining of well being. It is easy to see in act - and releasing it a Gift of Life to oneself and others. The attempt to coerce and control via guilt is never going to result in happiness, because self-betrayal is a poison that can only be healed by 'going straight', and honouring yourself and others with honesty of being. There is apparently no market to exploit in such wisdom apart from writing books perhaps - and so it has no relevance to a 'marketized and weaponized society'.
For fear can be spread in ways that 'create' dis-ease which then can be sold 'protection'. There is a global trillion dollar market for this and it has our definition of profit and value - running cancerous with a parasitic intent that has corrupted our body politic. Happiness is the antidote. True and free and joyful happiness as our ordinary now.

Pausing from reaction

MPs rule out British assault on SyriaGovernment motion on action against Assad defeated by 13 votes

I am pleased to see that that which seeks to manipulate by inciting reaction has had to pause.

To pause from reaction allows a space in which an honesty can rise to awareness that otherwise is kept at bay.

An honest perspective may seem unaffordable to vested interests and masked agendas - particularly if the promise of gaining advantage or of mitigating loss is believed credible.

But an insane perspective is no perspective at all.

If it seems to be the only view available, perhaps one has yet to pause from reactive thinking and listen in the heart. Honesty and discernment are felt in the heart, but emotional reactivity is a manipulation of the mind as if to usurp a unified perspective.

Though at root the dynamic of deception is simple. It spawns complexities of entanglement in conflict that cannot be solved within its own framework. This is also seen in the financial 'system'.

The mindset of division, blame and self-righteousness is embedded in human consciousness as a conditioning, but it is not native to Consciousness Itself.

Who can pause of their own thinking can open to wisdom.

Not in subjugation to another's will - but yielding in trust to the true power of life.

So yes, I am saying that what we take as our thinking is a deception, and that we need wake up, by pausing of its programming and noticing what is active currently.

Or stoke the fires of opinionated identity in reaction and to hell with it?

We all have a choice, because we ARE all choosing in every moment, to use it.

A sense of righteousness is compulsive to the one that fears their own illegitimacy. But at the deepest level, we are all complicit in the 'sin' of putting our own thinking above that of love's awareness now. So much so, that very few will be able to pause reaction to this so as to hear its message.

As long as we love to hate, and love to fear - so long will the insanity and pain of war blight our lives. Not just in wars of bomb and bullet - but war as a perpetual and accepted NORM of relations with ourselves, each other and our world.

I would that love's honesty rise in everyone and make no exception. For if I say that 'so and so' does not deserve love's awareness, I attack myself.

To say NO to an unacceptable behaviour, may well be a direct expression of love - but the presence of integrity is what is actually communicating.

Where is our integrity? Is it not the basis of our sanity and trust in ourselves and therefore each other? Is it not the resonance and quality of our communications as well as the forms of meanings that are conveyed?

Humiliation is feared and avoided with lies that lead to more lies. Yet a moment's honest reflection can shift to a true humility - and here is integrity that does not lord it at another's expense. It always starts now - and it is always a responsibility of thought and intent, now.

Pause itself isn't an answer, but in it, the desire for answer can be lived as an expression of trust. Not in the terms set by the problem - but in one's true relation that is NOT defined by the terms the problem sets.

Our surface minds have been conditioned to war - but our true mind is not what we have covered it with - and so can be UN-covered - unless we persist in warring so as to maintain a NOT knowing in which to seem to exercise 'self-will'.

War, Justice, democracy, deception and Life

The underlying principle in the idea of democracy that is worth standing for by living it - is that of engaging communication AS communication - and not as manipulation.
To be governed by twitter would hardly be to yield our allegiance to the wisdom and discernment that rises as a unified perspective from a willingness of truly listening and speaking into a trust of being heard.

Private interests, put before the true interests that include our own, disrupt communication and seek to manipulate. Not only others - but firstly ourselves. We come up with narratives or stories to justify our agenda - and keep it secret, even from ourselves.

"Oh everyone is in it for themselves - its Darwins's divinely revealed law in our genes!" SEE this as simply a narrative of a separate self interest.

Now the fear of loss - and the fear of being exposed as un-valid, heartless, selfish or hateful - is not a thing to be brushed aside in self righteous immunity, for its is much more deeply embedded into our consciousness than most everyone can admit, because it has become a basis of our thinking and our identity.

Regardless that there are those who seek to use psychological insight to more subtly manipulate the minds of others, they can only reinforce a pattern that we ourselves host and promote - and all of their intent is directed to maintain a state of fear and division in the mind - by whatever means and at all costs. For the survival of an apparent capacity to exert power over another depends on it - and this same power seems to be the only defence against a world of threat and ever shifting shadow enemies that rise up against it in the same measure as it has itself set in motion.

A true state of trust and communication cannot be grown from a mind at war with itself. But the war is hidden by projecting it on the world and making what seems to be a unified mind over and AGAINST the part of our mind that we hate, deny, fear and cannot tolerate.

True justice must bring home the thoughts we hold in secret to a true awareness. The presentation of relative innocence is the maintenance of a state of universal guilt.
True innocence of being is not arrived at or determined by our thinking, but is innate to our very being - regardless of that it is covered over with the experience of a wish to give our private thoughts priority over a truth that we do not make or rebrand or own.

There is an innocence of being where our thought cannot attain or penetrate - yet IS uncoverable to a willingness to put down our self-certainties and listen - as an extension of trust. Because we are alive - and not because of anything we or anyone thinks.

The war upon the surface is a distraction device. Everyone plays the game, but becomes blind in playing it. We cannot manipulate or mechanically leverage our Good - because Life is a relationship in which it unfolds through a willingness to share it.

Not to share it so that everything is measured according to one or another set of rules - but to share in purpose what living truly is- beneath the mind of guilt and fear that robs us of our presence extended.

One simply cannot use the mentality of conflict and expect to rule it. It corrupts - in terms of blinding and hollowing out. It replaces Life with a fantasy.
One CAN awaken to an integrity of being that is capable of communicating itself through us and through the situations of our life, appropriate to the need. This is an expression from a unified self in alignment with what is true in all. It has the feeling of peace of being and depth of connection in it - that no hyped up stimulus of righteousness can bring. It is the capacity to move through fear and release investment in guilt, one step at a time. We only live one step at a time.
To take this step from an honesty of being - grows that quality in ourselves and knows itself in its fruits. Whenever we notice we have lost our way and become reactive, THAT is the call to pause from reaction and listen for the movement of our being. For it is present to be felt when our noise of war and chatter of distraction is allowed to fade. Even if for an instant.

Without the felt connection with our being we are but indulging the fantasy of a mind that seems to have gone off on its own - or been abandoned. This may serve a scientific or religious function but it is not our unified human being where heart and mind are as one and not divorced or at war.

Nothing will get the mind to lay down its own thinking - excepting you awake and bring your attention present.

We cannot expect private self interest to be other than is its job description, but we can cease to employ it. Here's to a brighter future BECAUSE more of the Presence of Life is in its unfolding! (And not waiting on conditions to change in order to be the willingness to uncover and share it).

(I wrote this into comments on the Syria Crisis - relating to Assad's interview with The Times and Hague's reaction).

This Defamation Bill is a disaster for free speech

Comments on the issues around the 'defamation bill' of which I have not studied in detail - but anyway felt to comment on the theme and issues as I felt them.


In exercising freedom of expression here I risk being understood or appreciated by none and perhaps of offending many! - but as I am airing reflections for your consideration or to be passed by according to your desire, I have no investment in an outcome beyond an enjoyment of exercising a freedom to speak.

Opinionating tends to be defamatory and lack honour by its self-serving nature. We are used to being private or unpublic in our personal mythologies of praise and blame, but the world has changed.

Communicating is lost when using mere forms of communication (of no intent to actually open communication) - as attempts to dump blame or shame on others, set ourselves off in a relatively self righteous contrast or distract attention from what we do not want to be made aware of.

Is there a way to communicate a lack of integrity without attacking the person of another? I feel there is, and I have embraced the discipline of feeling for clearly positive ways to say things that otherwise tend to be encoded in story such as to convey mixed messages - that simply add 'my story' to an already conflicted and confused situation. (Of stuckness or standoff).

The nature of a lack of conscious appreciation for life is a personal sense of powerlessness - and from this sense are we liable to grow a persona/identity that gets a hit from the fantasy of power played out - whether in a socially supported role or as an Internet troll. Powerlessness feels bad. Piling blame on top validates the shit to the shitty for the temporary satisfaction of others who enjoy your humiliation. But all that is needed is to restore the true appreciation for life such as to undo the basis for a fantasy self.

To own what we say is to demonstrate the courage of our convictions - as is to retract when we realize we are wrong.
Anonymous or masked identity may play out all kinds of fantasy roles - but should not be allowed to remain masked when there is a clear and reasonable case of dishonesty and injustice.

Whether we can get Corporate PR companies, and Government 'spin doctors' to stop distorting and manipulating our information stream is another level.

The law is often blunt and blind. The spirit in which a law is meant to serve may not at all be that in which t is applied.

There needs to be discernement between hurt feelings (hurt ego) and a loss of reputation that has substance.

Without discernment, made up stories are taken for real, and get to displace actuality.

Our true word is an extension of our self - and our false witness is an extension of our ignorance of truth.

A wilful ignorance of truth is made to serve a freedom to privately and mutually determine reality and fight over it.

Reality does not sue - or retalliate against illusion - for It remains unchanged even if the mind turns upon itself and spins. There is always more going on than our surface realites suggest - but where an illegitimacy is accepted in the name of truth, it shall be uncovered and undone. For it never truly WAS, nor IS, nor Shall Be

Reality remains completely non-stick. But when we give value to shit by dumping or casting it out onto others - we set up a false sense of self validation - and base a whole society on it.

When we look to the world to get our identity we (set ourselves up), and hurt ourself. But our word is our deed and speaks directly of our thought and intent, like to like. If our words, thoughts and deeds do not align as one, then no amount of PR or spun presentation can make an iota of difference - though illusion can make for delay in protection of a well dressed suffering.

Speaking truth to power

This response arose after reading a BBC article by Lucy Kellaway:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13974474
The seven deadly sins CEOs won't admit. (Apparently they are Control freaks . Vain . Ditherers . Bad at listening . Bullies . Afraid of conflict . No good at small talk). But the line that prompted me was (in bold below).

"Given that most of the 60 interview candidates were probably guilty of at least one of the above, why did none of them own up?

The first possibility is that they didn't dare.

But I suspect the real problem is worse: they don't know what their faults are.

A decade of psychobabble, coaching and 360-degree feedback has made no difference.

It has not changed the most basic truth - people never speak truth to power."



This is generally true because of what and where power is defined and believed to be. We assign it to those persons whom we project our fantasies upon - and who seem to be able to have power of decision over the fates of others - or to exercise more influence upon events than others.

Rather than focus on such personas I feel to turn it round and consider the same mentality in our own mind and to look at why WE do not generally choose to listen to truth, and why we become caught up in a war of deceptive perceptions, in which partial truths are used as fodder for propaganda or truth is altogether hidden from sight - depending on the particular tactical advantage offered. Because we believe deception IS power over a fearful truth - or a truth that renders us powerless and invalid.







Is listening to truth possible, from within a love of the will to power?

Such a listening is clearly dis-allowed while the wish to assert one's will is active.


Why seek further for an understanding of why human beings deny, distort and deceive the truth of them selves and each other?


The self-identity that arises from the will to power is a trap. But it is traded in the same way as drugs. IE - in the implicit presumption that it offers enhancement of and relief from reality. But it reinforces the very conditions that it is supposed to overcome.


It might seem that leaders are particularly prone to such traits, (as the article lists), but you will find everyone quite able to assert their will in their own particular ways.


One subset of the way we assert our will is to avoid personal risk by getting or letting others to do what we not want to deal with.


Until there is a willingness to bring the issue of the personal will and its ego to light, we will continue to participate in a way of life that actively undermines and denies truth.

But truth isn't a contest of interpretations, definitions or mapped out models. Truth is one with trust. Honesty is predicated on - and extends -  trust. Once we are willing to deceive ourselves, we dislocate our own mind from its true nature - but then experience the world in terms of threat, competition, scarcity and guilt - or a sense of self unworthyness that we may then seek to overcome.


Those who 'know not what they do', act out within their self made illusion, in forgetfulness of the willing that they are doing that dislocated their mind from its Truth.


Soul is not threatened - but to lose sight of the nature of our love is a terrible and desperate experience. It is also the core experience of the human doing.


Jesus - whether the story is considered history or not - is an example or model of human being. Because to be is a receptive listening, beholding and discerning - from which comes a different will than that of reacting to fearful or loveless judgements - whether those judgements are so called received wisdom of experience or panic or greed of the moment.


To undertake any responsibility in the world is going to involve difficult decisions - or choices where none of the options off an ideal answer. But in the willingness to allow true communication, the best or optimal step will arise as the expression of win-win - even if it can be seen as win-lose or lose-lose from a thinking perspective outside the process of communication.


Presence can be bluffed - but such a presentation has no true presence. A true man or woman has a clear presence. But unless you are in your own truth, you will not be discerning the difference.


The manipulation of truth is of course nothing to do with truth - but with perception.

It might seem that we live in amazing times, where mind control is writ large in corporate terms and appropriation and asset stripping move into the so called personal realm of our minds.


On what basis is anyone or anything to be believed or trusted anymore - and are my own thoughts reliable as the true expression of my heart's knowing?


Give unto Caesar the things that belong to Caesar - in that we do the things that are required while we are the world. But give unto God that which is God's - for the truth is not made by man nor is our own awareness and capacity to know truly.


Maybe God is too misused a word in a world that made its own competing versions. But to truly listen is to put the will to power behind you - and simply know what is truly given you to share. Awareness is true - but is hostage to stories that distract attention from a freedom of being that cannot be truly lost - but can be used to deny its own nature, while trying to become a 'someone' - all by ourselves.

The sense of powerlessness that is part and parcel of the human conditioning is illegitimate, but true power is shared and not wielded. Some are drawn to overcome their sense of self limitation in ways that are writ large upon the world, for better or for worse in worldly terms. Others feel that a strategic powerlessness of diluted power is safer, whilst secretly coveting the capacity to wield it.

Truth speaks to truth. The will to power speaks to a like will. While we try to serve both, each undermines the other. Listening to this will serve reawakening to your heart. Honesty is known in the presence of the heart.

Thank you for your attention

Freedom, trust and honesty - wikileaks

The personification of issues whether via the hero’s halo or the smear of shame is irrelevant and serves only to obscure a current movement in consciousness.

The way to enjoy and appreciate freedoms is to exercise them, wholeheartedly.

We are not free to make the truth be what we say it is and then act out from that as if we are acting legitimately - no matter what degree of coercive intent we may bring to bear. For when we do so we are suffering deception - and 'inviting' contagion. This is the loss of true freedom for ‘a lead role in a cage’.

Governments acting in secret assure their citizens in public that they are protecting and serving them. If through disclosure they are shown to be hypocrites - then let it be an opportunity to regain a sane and legitimate basis for communication and governance. Not tomorrow but henceforth.

The mind that fights against - is trapped in the very argument as defined by its 'believed' or chosen opponent.

Standing for or giving witness to truth - is worthy of trust when it is an expression of a peaceful intent - for taking 'sides' is a way of asserting one’s identity wilfully rather than discerning the real in receptive willingness to discover. Of course others will perceive according to their choice.

All are equally deserving of the awareness of truth - and the truth is not as we would make it or spin it to ourselves. Truth is not deception. Its tangibility is associated with the absence of fear and the presence of trust.

The illegitimacy of deception may give rise to a sense of an evil intent and therefore a justified enmity. But only truth reveals illegitimacy in terms of correction. The ‘deceiver’ can use everything including disclosure of truths to serve a hidden agenda. Therefore be free of a hidden agenda.

The mind that seeks to use guilt - blame and shame - against others and thereby feel self validated is yet playing out a deeper private agenda of misplaced self interest in which it sleeps. There are fears beneath the surface that work to KEEP secret - to keep hidden - from awareness. It is here that the real work is engaged that is also reflected in the world we share.

The complexity and sheer impossibility of maintaining a masked reality means that there are disclosures and leaks - and these are usually dealt with by distraction and denial so as to 'restore normal reality'. I'm not talking now about the U.S - but about all of US.

The kinds of cultural shift that are genuinely NEEDED - come through discerned opportunities that are TAKEN. Don't wait for your leaders.

Meanwhile Tweedledee and Tweedledum provide our sport - while we play brinkmanship with a Great Tar Barrel!

There are of course many layers of meaning through such events as are unfolding - but a true priority is more likely to arise from a calm and connected heart and mind.

That the human mind is given to tricksy deceit whereby it takes on and is thereby taken in - is not news - except to us who are waking up to that we've been party to it. Don't try to hide that from your awareness or invest it with guilt.

The story of Jesus gives example of how to 'deal' with hypocrites and trick questions - and yet to be patiently dedicated in educating and serving to the genuine willingness of others - regardless of their apparent status.

He did not do so by using guilt against them to unseat them - and thereby gain the upper hand. Quite the opposite - he Lived guiltlessness to those who suffered their own sin and freed them of the need to believe it as their truth.

He didn't 'do' this so much as be unwilling to 'do' otherwise - and then trusted the movement of being that expressed itself as helpfulness, wholeness and healing.

A true peace can come only from honesty - and for this - the internal divisions whereby we like to maintain private agendas secret even from ourselves must be freely - step by step - undone.

When the mind that spins in its own deceits seeks to broadcast - let it be discerned and disregarded - so that attention can be wholly given to listening for true guidance in the need of the current situation as it truly is.

This is a matter of practicing so as to bring forth the basis from which we live. For what we demonstrate - or ‘teach’ - teaches us.

Cablegate - exposure and opportunity

In a world predicated on gaining or maintaining oneupmanship we are in a sense always at war and always seeking strategic alliance for self serving ends that we justify to our particular self or business or nation - as survival - as well as calling on our particular mythology of specialness.

I feel there is another way of communicating than with a two faced approach and that we cannot imaging what such an approach can bring in terms of benefit - because we are so deeply programmed to fearful and exploitative ways of 'relating' to ourselves - each other, and our world.

The Golden Rule is to do as you would be done by - and there is simply SO MUCH that is currently accepted currency of exchange that is less than that - that there will be considerable fear and reaction to the loss of privacy in terms of exposing a manipulative intent.

However, let them who are pure in heart and mind throw the first stone. The blame game is itself just another mechanism of manipulation. My point is that we are invited by circumstance to find ways to communicate that are really effective communication - rather than playing the game of deception.

I don't believe this is imaginable as a practice until some kind or heart awakening honesty pulls the lawless self-will into alignment with a Greater Purpose. But then again, the increasingly unstable scenario of our times begs the reevaluation of who and what we are and what life is - as well as our true function as participant expressions of life.

The contagion and disease of fear is not only poison to the spirit - but sets the scene whereby we are easily manipulated and controlled so as not to awaken and be expressive of our spirit. Yet the enemy is never really 'out there' but is a mentality that we think we can use and 'get away with it'. But it is a hollow path that brings loneliness, poverty and suffering.

Yes there are other aspects to the wikileaks - but the reevaluation of the basis of our relationships and communication is the aspect I feel most fruitful of engaging

I am sure to sound hopelessly naive. But the reality of love is not a matter of belief- but the context in which everything meaningful aligns truly.

Wikileaks

Moving to culture of rehabilitation?

 Rehabilitation cannot be applied like band aid - nor can it effectively coexist with a culture of vengeance and punishment.

To wake up to - and find alignment with - our true home - our true environment and our 'true family' or culture of relationship, cannot be mere continuance of the mind of a passively aggressive but generally sublimated reaction, that inevitably arises from lack of any genuinely consciously shared sense of life or identity.

Our most fundamental metaphysical or philosophical self and world beliefs are involved and expressed in all that we do  - but are generally invisible unless we compare and contrast cultures and epochs.

We have 'wanted' to explore the belief and indulge the experience of being 'self determining authoritative powers in our own right - and have an unconsciously communicated societal bedrock of presumption of a 'God given' free will which has then become 'self and other destructive' and has disqualified us of true love-worthiness.

We have then attempted to live in fear and to attempt to become successful - yet without a real basis of shared worthiness - all our self-becomings are vain illusion.

Such lack of any real substance is accompanied by more and more concern with image and presentation and coercive pressures to conform to increasingly meaningless criteria.

That this breaks down is a sign of a deeper sanity - But the symptoms are alarms to wake up to having strayed and thus accept a process of 'adjustment' to become currently connected anew..

Unless we live and grow such a culture, we continue in a madness of ever shifting and conflicting 'self-interests' - that serve apparent short term interests of the mood or power of the day without ever engaging or addressing reality.

I write into such a forum in the faith that a deeper awakening of heart is called for - and not a continuance of tricky thinking and self serving opinion.

We have become prisoners of our own mind. The mechanism of 'the scapegoat - the dumping of our personal hate and sin onto others so as to then exclude them - is a childish magic that not only doesn't heal - but perpetuates guilt, fear and distrust and division.

Economic catastrophe brings with it the intelligence of energy use - of what in truth we can afford. Not as a financial consideration - but at a much deeper level of alignment with true priority.

If we want something that truly works - we can not afford to indulge in and manipulate the mythology and mechanism of guilt for personal gain.
This means we have to become willing again to honestly feel again - yet NOT react out of the interpretations that first arise, but instead grow a culture of support to move through pain, fear and hate, in order to regain a greater sanity.

Practical outcomes will never arise from imposed or applied thinking - no matter how ingenious the thinking - or indeed how inspired it is - unless the context of its working out is a cooperative willingness.

If our behaviour is truly undermining of and threatening to ourselves or each other - it is altogether appropriate that we meet with proportionate restraint and a process of education appropriate to the nature of the situation.

True citizenship is being usurped by a mindless manipulative madness that is its own sin and punishment both. Life lived truly arises from the law of love - and it is this that must be our compass: love.

It is seemingly impossible to reach those who are prisoners of their own thought - for they create an exclusion zone and will not listen. Yet it is impossible to suffer such exclusion of one's own heart and know peace, joy or true fulfilment.

We are all in this - life - together - but not in the way our thinking sets up. A change of heart is a change of the basis of all our thought.

Wikileaks - the mind of the mask undone?

Is it possible to be consistent in thought and deed? To not be false or hypocritical?

Is it possible that the left hand knows what the right hand doeth but chooses not to know so as to operate in secrecy and stealth with guile - and then automatically presume, experience and act as if everyone else is operating on the same basis - and act in such a way as to promote and justify fear in the other?



Is it possible for fears to be acknowledged and true communication - reached between parties who have historical enmity or rivalry - such that a heartfelt trust is felt as a pervasive presence?



I feel it is possible - and ultimately necessary - but runs counter to an existing identity and mindset of control, manipulation and mind control. Such a strategy is understandable - but blind. For by it the history of confusion, conflict and their related sufferings - is perpetuated.



The language and models that we entertain in our thought and language tend to express and promote private or local mythologies of a phoney sense of self. A special sense of self. Acting out a fantasy life at the expense of a shared or true life. This is now what we are offered for our consumption by our media at large, but we are not consumers - we are in relationship with, and participant in - Life.



Stealing life from life and from each other may be business as usual - but it undermines all that is truly beautiful and good - even if it works under the guise of worthy endeavour or temporary alliances against enemies in common.



The mark of slavery is fear - and is written on the brows of those who do not look within and find peace, nor look out with a blessing from such peace.



I do not expect any nation to put its house in order but that the culture of its people calls it to order. In this sense I use 'a house un-divided' as a house that can stand. To find a shared will amidst the differences that we all have needs an ever greater willingness to uncover communication - within ourselves - and with each other.



We need each other because by and of ourselves alone - we are blind amidst our own thought.



The reactive and superficial urge is to force outcomes in favour of oneself - or to use guile to maintain a secret agenda to achieve outcomes by stealth.



When superiority or dominance is imposed or coerced upon others it serves short term private ends at the expense of all. It kills it host and looks for the next opportunity to exploit - because it equates exploiting as living.



May your own personal wikileaks awaken you not to humiliation and despair or tragi-comic attempts of bluff and bluster - but to a reappraisal of the way the mind works and its blindness - when taken out of the heart that truly engages, listens and accepts involvement.



Dishonesty may mimic the forms of civility to mask its true intent, but exposure to the light of an unjudgemental awareness rewakens sanity as an entirely fresh basis from which to act.



We equate freedom with slavery and run from freedom as it it were slavery.

But to be and appreciate the very being that you are, remains your true freedom - and from that perspective, one can directly discern truly.



When truth outs us - don't reach to throw the first stone. Listen more deeply and abide with what is found in the heart in silence.



The tricksy voice that speaks as if for you does not know you, love.

Until you leave it unused, you accept it as your own.

Yes - I am leaking within your own mind that which you are programmed to reject.



As within - so without.

In gratitude for your attention - even if it seemed to render nothing of any consequence to your appetite!

Unwinnable wars and the mentality of self illusion

The infectious mentality is on all sides of a conflict - when that conflict is engaged in terms of war against an unholy or un-sane enemy. War against terror/Jihad = the same blind call to eradicate an unowned shadow.
Practical wisdom has to look within with deep honesty amidst urgent need - whilst also bringing step by step practical response to the ACTUAL need or call  - and not becoming a mindless mechanism of perceptual 'needs'.
Our opportunity as a western culture is to engage in 'readjustment' with reality - because the world at large - incl some Islamic nations and individuals - are not fitting into OUR way of life nor our economically driven political charade.
In this sense the WAKE UP CALL for renewing and extending the REAL values within our own culture is an unrecognized gift.
The mindset or modality of thought that needs reexamining is not merely in 'leaders' or 'others' - but is in our own minds. Communication Works when truly engaged rather than using war to EXcommunicate.

Papal visit: Cardinal Newman's 'miracle cure'

The attribution of miracles to an act of God or intercession by another so as to bring about an act of God is an attempt to describe the experience of being healed from within.

"Suddenly I felt an intense heat, like an oven blast, and a strong tingling sensation throughout my whole body," he said. "I felt an indescribable sense of joy and peace, and was totally transfixed by what I believed to be God's presence. When I became aware of what was happening around me I was standing upright and I exclaimed to the nurse that I felt no more pain." ~ Jack Sullivan

Significant to such experience is the indescribable joy and peace. Though ineffable, it is an experience of certainty - but not at the level of intellect. That certainty might later be expressed as belief in God - for it is clearly not one’s own or another’s achievement - and witnesses to a level or directness of Being that has no counterpart in the realm of the world or self as we otherwise judge it to be.

If it can be understood that a prior distorting adustment operates within the mind at a fundamental level and results in an experience that overlays and obscures truth, then it follows that to cease applying such an adjustment allows the original to shine through.

However this adjustment itself leads to a false sense of self and world, that does not know itself one with indescribable joy and peace - but is a state of conflicted identification, thought and desire. The experience of a dissonant sense of reality becomes a struggle of opposition and limitation that is reflected in such experience as dysfunction, sickness, conflict and death.

Just as machines now can be programmed and then adjust their own programming according to conditions met, so does the mind 'lock itself' into experience by interpretation based on beliefs applied from a past mis-take; from a faulty or incomplete apprehension of reality.

Prayer does not reach a God made in our image - who may or may not - (or can or can not)  - then act. Prayer is the true communication in the heart that allows communion to be restored to awareness. Within a restored ‘channel’ of communication, guidance and teaching occurs that serves to heal or whole the mind that has identified with limitation - as willingness is given to accept Universal Will in release of a personal or private will.

Reality is indescribable, and its unified wholeness is lost to any mind that prefers to engage the act of definition. The operation of private will is a freedom within the mind - but it is a way of using fantasy to perceive reality differently than as it is. It is important to remember that reality as it is - is never affected by fantasy and never can be. This is a fundemental principle underlying the miracle - which merely undoes a distortion that - though experienced as real - was never true.

The complexity and ingenuity of the confusion whereby we are deceived as to what is true and what is false should not be underestimated, but it has been established within the mind in its experience of fragmentation and division, upon a false premise over a very long period of time. Likewise, the acceptance of its undoing is a guided step by step process of understanding, willingness and acceptance.

The witness of healing is for the minds that are open to it - not as a spectacle to induce belief - but as a living and communicating testament to the faith that questions or challenges experience and opens the heart to enquire directly of its truth. The outer forms that may or may not be associated with this are not the active principle.

The mystery of our heart’s truth is not a challenge to be explained or to conquer - but is the wonder and unspeakable grace of love. Such love is not the domain of another world or a god elsewhere - but is the always present truth of being itself - of which we cannot in truth separate from - no matter how hellish any experience we might suffer in confusion.

The willingness to serve the awakening is a willingness to live from the basis of a revealed love - but not merely to mimic truths or teachings. Nothing is revealed to a mind that already believes in its own thoughts except that which validates itself. In this sense beliefs themselves are to be re-evaluated such that those which serve as stepping stones are used and perhaps later outgrown - while those that merely block, are rendered useless or of no value.

It is altogether understandable and appropriate that in great need, we turn out from our own self-certainties and ask or open to a greater dimension of being than that to which to which we are identified and accustomed to. But is it not a careless indulgence that waits on dire crisis to value connection with and renewal in - the joy, peace and integrity of Being Itself?

Confusion is in our mind when we take our self image and act out from that in attempt to become good, wise or well. When the mind becomes open enough to become aware of and responsible for its own liability to limit itself - it turns to the heart by becoming quiet and listening - and then trusting the guidance and direction that is discerned or felt as a result of bringing attention presently to rest.

The story of Jesus is a living Symbol in the mind for the way of discovering “the Father’s Will” within. It is not for or from any kingdom in 'this world’ of 'competing wills'. It is for the Light in you to awaken from what you thought you were and what you think everything is. This is not a process of destruction or judgement - but of discovering friend or brother where enemy or fool seemed to be. Of suddenly seeing from an inclusive perspective in which all that was helpful in your thought is retained and consolidated - while that which was erroneous has simply fallen away. When this shift occurs, it may be accompanied by tangible and demonstrable events or healing - for the world experience is ultimately a reflection of thought though not merely of the surface chatter that is humanly taken to be thought.

Man is not the center of the Universe. But ‘within’ man - or prior to the consciousness that identifies itself separated or orphaned - is Awareness - that is both Universal and local and yet is Indivisible.
In this sense Mind Is the active Principle, Law, Nature and Substance of All - including the tangibility of the Universe. But beware - for what we habitually refer to as 'mind' is twice removed from the direct Process or Movement of Be ing that Awareness is one with.

Yet mind is and can never itself be limited or fixed by the thought that is its expression - and through which it knows itself existing. Thoughts of exclusion, division, limitation and blame are not truly creative but only serve to perpetuate an experience of guilt, exclusion, isolation, opposition, scarcity and fear. To such a mindset, everything is misinterpreted. The discovery that one was wrong, helpless, in need, or un-sane - is the moment where the veil is thinnest - and a little willingness can grow to reveal itself as the prayer of the heart.

It is always possible to discern the difference between the call of love for love, and the demands of self-illusion for a ‘special’ love. But only as we ourselves are willing to value truth above the self-image that uses the forms, images or symbols of truth to make its own meanings.

Corporate Disaster poisons the world we share

Look carefully at the way 'creative' obfuscation is employed in all our relationships. It isn't just the corporate accounts or government budgets or the PR and manipulative deception so as to maintain the illusions that we assert to others and OURSELVES. Sanity and honesty are inextricably facets of each other. There are 'games' being played that cost the Earth - and cost the appreciation, well being and wealth of what would we would be living - in an integrated willingness of purpose and worth. Corporate selfishness NEEDS to be constrained within the community interest or its simply exploits, undermines and destroys, in the wake of blind short term interests. There's no profit in such loss. Governments and official regulatory bodies NEED to hold their service as a duty of trust and beware of inducements to cosy up to the 'rich and powerful' when those lobbies attempt to use their leverage for mean and callous ends. It isn't that bad people need to become good - but that we need to stop and reevaluate what the Good truly means. Unless we stop and start from a fresh perspective, we are always trying to force life to fit our self illusion. Our whole way of life will change from a rediscovery of what life truly is. Or of course one can insist on persisting from a basis that has never worked, is not working, and will never work. Of course it seems to work - thus the protection of the status quo by those who are in power. But the real cost is becoming increasingly more difficult to deny - and many are less willing to be controlled by loveless thinking. The emotional 'body' of the American people is feeling hurt, confused and outraged. The feeling needs to be acknowledged - but it does not need to become a basis for satisfying the urge for vengeance under the disguise of justice. Educate. Feel for the truth that can be received. We are oil addicts because we have used it to empower a way of life that exploits rather than shares. We can change our way of life, set a fresh direction, and get off the addiction, one step at a time. The risk factors at Macro level need to come right down. It isn't ok to make these kind of tradeoffs at the cost of a commonwealth that hardly appears on balance sheets. At the microlevel they need to come up. We as individuals need to dare to explore, discover and grow the ways of a true peace amidst the lessons that we experience as symptoms of ignorances past. There is nothing compulsive about ignorance apart from a desire to stay in the dark, play out the games of division and blame and shame and love the sense of our own image, judgement and opinion as if these offer safety, fulfillment or sanity.