{"id":75663,"date":"2014-04-12T08:43:38","date_gmt":"2014-04-12T12:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=75663"},"modified":"2014-04-14T12:43:25","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T16:43:25","slug":"all-we-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/all-we-are\/","title":{"rendered":"All We Are"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

“Even today there is a dictatorship of a narrow line of thought which kills people’s freedom, their freedom of conscience. This is the drama of the closed heart, the drama of the closed mind … and when the heart and mind are closed there is no place for God.”
\n— Pope Francis<\/a><\/p>\n

“Should you perceive a problem, you surround that problem with love. You define it in love. You recognize that it is caused by the lack of love that lies behind all problems. And with love, you introduce the understanding that provides the solution.”
\n–Ken Carey, Return of the Bird Tribes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, ain’t we got fun these days, with the heavens full of goads and graces, obstructions defined, barriers readied to storm on one hand and beckoning doors flung wide, on the other? We can always trust Aries to be the sharp point of the spear, now pointing us toward the coming Cross, our opportunity to experience all four of creation’s elements — earth, air, fire and water — at cross point. And just now, even as I write, Venus is conjoining with Neptune in Pisces, joining the water trine along with Saturn and Jupiter, opening up a transcendent path to those willing to reach high enough. If that wasn’t enough, the coming pair of eclipses will bookend this energy nicely, perhaps for the history books.<\/p>\n

\"PoliticalWith weather uncooperative, with violence all around, with obligations (taxes) looming, it’s easy to get carried away by this dramatic soup of energy: the personal, the public, the political. Let’s see if we can sort it into its various vibratory signals, assess where we are as opposed to where we’ve been, and ready ourselves for action. From the mundane to the profound, then, let’s determine if our movement in these last few years is actual progress or just another loop of more of the same. Are we clearing the cobwebs? Or are we creating them? Are we doing the inner work? Confronting the illusions? Telling ourselves the truth?<\/p>\n

First, let’s give the regressives their due. The full compliment of crazy is out in force, almost maniacally engaged in nonsense without a twinge of embarrassment, even when they’re proven wrong — or wrongheaded — which is almost always. Eric Holder has been accused of wanting to make gun owners wear tracking devices, a Senate sub-committee in South Carolina wants to extend their Stand Your Ground\u00a0defense to embryos<\/a>, and Pat Robertson has publicly petitioned Gawd Almighty to deliver us all from “this president.” True to their austerity ideology (for people, not corporations), the House wasted time and resources by approving Paul Ryan’s most recent budget proposal, which will rid the nation’s health care and food stamp recipients of “paternalistic, arrogant, and downright condescending” assistance from the state. And true to their calling, Limbaugh, Beck and O’Reilly continue to trumpet more hot air to a quickly warming planet.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Taking it to the streets, some crazy lady slipped past Secret Service to throw a shoe at Hillary Clinton’s head as she spoke at a metal recycling convention in Las Vegas. Hil dodged the shoe, and the intent, by asking if the incident was part of Cirque du Soleil, thanking goodness that the thrower “didn’t play softball” and adding that she didn’t know waste management was so controversial. Earlier in the week, she had finally confirmed that she was thinking about running for president, in contrast to Jeb Bush who — identified as one of the GOP’s few credible candidates — has been pressed to run against her. While the thought of a Clinton\/Bush campaign season constricts my heart and dashes any hope for actual sociopolitical progress in this nation, I’ll admit that Jeb is the pick of the Bush litter. Still, both parties seem reluctant to commit, and Jeb surely noticed the forest for the trees this week, as his own party members lobbed verbal shoes of their own. In a recent interview, Jeb suggested that illegal immigration is an “act of love” by people hoping to provide for their families. Outrage was immediate.<\/p>\n

Now, I don’t want to go all mushy over such a statement, considering that as president, his brother George once told us that, \u201cToo many OB\/GYN\u2019s aren\u2019t able to practice their love with women all across the country.\u201d We can’t be exactly sure what ‘love’ means to a Bush, I suppose, but it seems to me that Jeb has a personal stake in this immigration discussion. His wife, Columba — whom he met as an exchange student in Mexico — is a naturalized citizen, and Jeb’s defense of what motivates illegals adds a bit of humanity to an otherwise uncivil discourse. Life is an on-going instruction, and those we marginalize intellectually as “less than” can quickly become our peers and more, even our loved ones, as we recognize our commonalities under the skin. On a vibratory scale, however, Jeb is not resonating with his own. He’s an outlier, a relic from his daddy’s GOP.<\/p>\n

On a grander scale than election politics, we know the government is hard-pressed to manage its homegrown crises, even though it’s putting on a happy face, like the one worn by Sylvia Mathews Burwell. It was announced today that Burwell will replace Kathleen Sebelius, who has become the beleaguered face of the Affordable Care Act. Burwell is Obama’s current budget director, hoped to be an effortless confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Sebelius resignation comes as something of a surprise, although not without political angst from all sides. Not that being the moving target of this new social contract has been a cake walk. No, seems to me that representing improved healthcare coverage for the American public turned out to be the nation’s worst rescue mission, and Sebelius, bless her, deserves a medal for lasting this long. Keeping her (considerable) composure for five years of muddled politics, inept contractors, frenzied attacks and outright lies took more strength of character than most politicians can muster.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, secrets everyone figured out long ago are receiving confirmation. A retiring prosecutor for the Obama administration tells us that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is\u00a0corrupt to its core<\/a>, its leadership doggedly failing to prosecute mega-banks in hopes of employment opportunities down the line that would offer better pay and perks. I know this shocks you to your core, much as you must be absolutely flabbergasted to discover that the CIA not only lied to Congress and the Department of Justice about how many people it tortured during Bush War II, and for how long, but also ducked out on informing its own Inspector General. Further, the “harsh interrogation techniques” used in this process were based on\u00a0faulty legal reasoning<\/a>. Go figure.<\/p>\n

A decade too late, this news has reached us when we’re too numb to care or when we’re too preoccupied with life-stressors to magnify it into a useful aha! moment. Timing is everything, they say, so your yawn can be forgiven, but at least let’s celebrate that the confirmation has finally come. As footnote, I hear that Alberto Gonzales is now teaching law at a fourth-rate Christian college. I should also note that last decade’s television hit, “24” — eight seasons of chest-thumping “counter-terrorist” drama featuring clandestine operative Jack Bauer, part military icon, part avenging angel, willing to waste anybody to keep America safe — has been brought back from its timely death by the FOX channel, aimed at satiating those to whom Uncle Dick Cheney will always be a great American patriot. “24: Live Another Day” is currently in production, half-season counterbalance to the nation’s growing disdain of over-the-top nationalism.<\/p>\n

So, out there, deep in the heart of the nation and the world, has there been enough increase in awareness in the last decade to say we’ve grown into a new understanding of ourselves? I remain faithful to the thought that we’re getting there, even though I still hear ‘stupid’ spoken all around me. I still shake my head at what passes for entertainment. My eyes still well up at the litany of tragic stories that are the consequence of not caring enough for ourselves or one another. We still resist and posture, still judge and project. Looking around for our halos, most of what I see is our warts.<\/p>\n

Still, I think we’ve come a way from those first startled mental\/emotional impressions that the turn of the century brought us, bouncing off a wall of adolescent response and sleepy misunderstanding. If pain matures us, then we’ve grown up some these last years. We’ve discovered how many times we looked the other way, how often we believed lies that made us feel good about ourselves at the expense of someone else, and we’ve experienced the consequences of not paying more attention to political realities. Personally, we may feel more vulnerable now than we did when we believed lovely lies about who and what we were in the “good old days.” Still, most of us are making our way, facing our fears and meeting our needs. But have we come far enough to consider ourselves prepared for what comes next, for what the astrological impulses are pushing us toward? Are we ready for [r]evolution?<\/p>\n

I suspect not all of us feel ready. We can only do so much, some argue with a shrug. Look around at how stuck we are. Collectively we seem unable to get past the barriers that keep us mired in old paradigm consciousness. And it’s easy to get discouraged, considering the magnitude of our challenges, especially that of climate change, our existential nemesis. Makes our brain hurt to think about, makes our heart skip in fear.<\/p>\n

What goes on in our heads seems little help at a time like this. What goes on in our emotional body, our feelings — our heart — is a more reliable compass. The two quotes at the top of this post — one from Pope Francis representing the traditions of the church, which includes Biblical dominionism, and another from Ken Carey speaking for a planet-centric transcendence of realization regarding our connection to all things and beings — essentially ask the same thing of us, to inhabit the dynamic of love in all our dealings in order to “overcome” and remake the world. Neither assumes we’re helpless to impact our condition. Both assume that the power of love dominates all else. Are they right?<\/p>\n

Could it be that the very hubris of our supposed domination over the things of the world has created a false narrative that keeps us splintered, unaware of our own power as part of the authentic whole? Are we just making this harder than it is, millennia after millennia, locked into what we see with our eyes as opposed to what we know\u00a0deep within? Are we failing ourselves by being afraid to risk failure?\u00a0Is our determination to inhabit the safety of status and stuff,\u00a0what is known and comfortable,\u00a0that which\u00a0keeps us from making a necessary leap into a new era?<\/p>\n

From an interview with author, Ken Carey, with thanks for permission from the interviewer, Douglas Gillies:<\/p>\n

The Third Millennium [the book] was a moment when my love had expanded enough to be one with the Earth’s love, and to feel the Earth as a part of myself and to be connected with the planetary intelligence. At that time, there was a lot of talk about incredible pollution. I live in the Midwest along the Mississippi River. And the Earth said in so many words, “You know Ken, all these environmentalists that say it’ll take 500, 600, 1000 years to clean out all the pollutants and the toxins from the Mississippi River. They’re wrong. I can flush out toxins from that Mississippi River belly a lot quicker than people think.” And that was a few months before we had the great floods in the Midwest. If we look at it as something we’ve got to do alone, it’s daunting, it’s overwhelming. We feel disempowered. But we have help from intelligent systems, bio-regions, ecosystems, mountains. Every aspect of the Earth is intelligent and as soon as we begin to do our part, we’ll see things happening that probably today we would call miracles.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As we consider our options at this point in history — including our ability to discern what is real from what is not — what is mystical seems just as relevant to me as everything I see all around me. In 3D, the surest template for reality is nature, and yet due to the changes the planet is undergoing, even that is not so sure as it was. Perhaps this is that moment when seeing and believing don’t have much in common anymore. Perhaps there’s more under heaven than we know, Horatio. Again, Carey:<\/p>\n

Many people have a bad self-image and it’s inhibiting their success in life, so they try to reprogram themselves with a better self-image. To me that’s like replacing the brass bars of the cage with bars of gold. The real challenge is to let Earth and Sun define us, let the planet define us, let the Life Force define us, moment to moment. We are literally hologramatic projections of the Universe and of the Universe’s intelligence. We have the ability to not only monitor that intelligence in the Universal sea of information in which we exist but to bring it through in our language, in our art, in our architecture, in our every expression.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole of\u00a0the interview here<\/a>\u00a0and add it to your mental\/emotional library. Unless we’re thinking bigger and broader, projecting our\u00a0creativity outside of the box and following our intuition, we are not bringing all of our energy to the opportunities ahead. We — the whole of us — want to open our arms to being all we are, all we can be, in\u00a0a time of change and miracles.<\/p>\n

When we’ve relaxed into that beingness, then the light bends and the world changes, ecosystems are healed and people are healed.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves “Even today there is a dictatorship of a narrow line of thought which kills people’s freedom, their freedom of conscience. This is the drama of the closed heart, the drama of the closed mind … and when the heart and mind are closed there is no place for God.” … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}