Old Struggles on a New Earth
This article first appeared in Conscious Choice.
Although my book on prophecy and the Mayan Calendar is behind me, I am still approached all the time by people in search of the meaning of the encroaching end date of December 21, 2012. "Is it the end of the world?" reporters ask me on television. In emails, I am begged for advice on matters ranging from shamanic ritual to retirement funds, from dealing with extraterrestrials to seeking a safe place to hide out from polar shifts, earthquakes and super storms. Meanwhile, academics and self-taught experts send me their pet theories on tribal prophecies, astrological conjunctions, UFOs, Egyptian gods, quantum consciousness, Illuminati conspiracies, free energy technologies and much more.
My view is that "2012" is useful as a meme if it helps us to catalyze a shift in global culture and consciousness. Rather than fretting about what may or may not happen on that date, we should concentrate on the work that needs to be done now, on an inner as well as outer level. My recent focus has been the outer level, studying social theory and political philosophy. If we were to have an opportunity to transform society, what could that transformation look like in a practical sense? How could it be carried out? I have been reviewing the ideas of thinkers like Macchiavelli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt, seeking insight into the nature of politics and power.
How do we bring awareness gained through shamanic practice or yogic discipline back into the gritty realities of political struggle and the fight against global inequity of wealth and resources? It seems there is still a lot of denial among Western mystics and "New Agers," as well as elitism and spiritual materialism. Whether someone does a flawless series of asanas, drinks ayahuasca with 20 different shamans or visits hidden monasteries in Bhutan has no value as a sign of spiritual attainment. How they live day by day, what they do with the psychic energy and time available to them and how their work helps to liberate others is what matters.
I see this tendency to ignore the social and political struggle in the works of wildly popular writers such as Eckhart Tolle, who has repackaged Vedanta for the masses. In Tolle's recent book, A New Earth, he writes: "We are coming to the end not only of mythologies but also of ideologies and belief systems." According to Tolle, the creation of the "new earth" needs no change in social practices as long as you make "the present moment... the focal point of your life." Tolle exhorts his audience to "enjoy what you are doing already, instead of waiting for some change so that you can start enjoying what you do." Whether you are an artist, teacher, Fox News executive or currency speculator doesn't matter: "The new earth arises as more and more people discover that their main purpose in life is to bring the light of consciousness into this world and so use whatever they do as a vehicle for consciousness." For Tolle, the effort to change our society's inequitable and unsustainable practices has no particular value compared to the paradise of presence.
The popularity of this message is unsurprising. Some political thinkers argue that the adoption of Eastern thought in the West has given people a way to accept capitalism, and "Empire," by finding detachment from it. For the critic Slavoj Zizek, Western Buddhism and Hinduism "enables you to fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless this spectacle really is – what really matters to you is the peace of the inner self to which you know you can always withdraw..." Zizek goes so far as to propose, "the onslaught of New Age ‘Asiatic' thought... is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism."
The shift of "2012" could mean that Eastern mysticism, the earth-based shamanism of tribal people and the West's pursuit of philosophical and scientific knowledge about the world come together to create a new form of consciousness. I suspect the West still has to realize its spiritual destiny – its dharma – in the transformation of matter and the creation of a truly equitable and sustainable world. As the design scientist Buckminster Fuller wrote, "No human chromosomes say make the world work for everybody – only mind can tell you that." We may not need "ideology" any more, as Tolle says, but we still need good ideas about how we reinvent our society and its institutions to become ethically transparent and sustainable. Rather than escaping from society's problems by embracing pure presence, we can use the awareness gained from spiritual practice to become more effective agents of social change.
Image by spike55151, used courtesy of a Creative Commons License.
- 3-7-08
- Daniel Pinchbeck's blog
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Dear Mr. Pinchbeck
After becoming conscious of the 2012 date sometime in 2006 I have seen an increase of synchronicity about such date, no question due to our unitive knowledge and universal consciousness. So I have subsequently since then been traversing my spiritual pathway, finding the likes of Capra, Huxley, Baba Ram Dass, Lao Tzu, and the practice of Tai Chi Chuan to be guides in this journey. So not but a week or so ago did my partner give me your book on the topic of our coming global consciousness shift, and I have been very deeply touched by its message. Prior to receiving your book I had stumbled onto a man by the name of Lee Carrol, who has since 1989 been the channel for "Kryon" and entity from the other side of the veil who gives him "thought packets" or downloads as you described them in regard to Terrance McKenna's channelled messages. The reason I am contacting you is to give you the free-will to look at what Kryon says through his channel Lee Carrol, it directly coincides with the message of a vibratory shift that is apparent in your book. I was just reading today, thinking to myself, I wish there was some way I could contact Daniel Pinchbeck to let him know that this channeler out there is speaking the same message perhaps they could learn something from one another. So there it is, I found a way to contact you and the message is given. Synchronicity has lovely ways of working does it not? Thank you for your service to humanity by raising our awareness and adding information to the universal consciousness. Namasté.
"This is It and I am It and You are It and so is That and He is It And She is It and It is It and That is That." Alan Watts
yes Im
yes Im understand...thx travel jakarta bandung Blogger templates Blogger Indonesia dukung internet aman, sehat & manfaat
Yes and...
I do agree that to look at 2012 as a marker of a consciousness shifting meme is helpful. Things are transforming no doubt, but life has always been in flux. None more so then human consciousness. The great prophesies always speak of tendencies that will shift in relationship to the present moment. It is always up to the individual/collective to decide what the ending of the "story" will be.
I also agree that "New Age" thinking over the last 20 years has mostly been a immature narcissistic exercise to cover up the messiness of unacknowledged shadow. The New Age movement became a watered down version of the Human Potential movement of the late 50's and early 60's. The thinking at the time by thinkers like Michael Murphy and company was to synthesize all available world knowledge to bring in a new renaissance of human consciousness; the union of body,mind,spirit, economical and environmental. The "New Age" later became water down in mass media (hmmm... a social trend watered down by mass media, how unusual) as a movement of crystal wearing bliss bunnies. But even old school New Age'rs like Steve Bhaerman, (aka Swami Beyondananda) are writing about the grittier realities of today.
My boarder view is that after the tumultuous 60/70's groups of people needed to go within and bring worth something deeper to effect change. Beyond the knee jerk reaction of saying fuck off to the 60's thinking, there was/is a collective need to expand and deepen the vision of social,economic and ecological transformation. I feel that the biggest mistake that the social movements of the 60's/70's were that people looked at what was happening from a narrow point of view of having of have the change NOW, as appose to looking at the bigger picture of the Great Movement of the cosmos. As Jackson Brown once said about the dissolution of the 60's "...Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening."
I do believe that people could read into Eckhart Tolle's work as a way to avoid life. But that is not what he is talking about. His point is that true transformation can only occur from taking action from a place of presence, or stillness. Any other way will always lead to more suffering. He fully writes about the collective nightmare of our modern life. He also talks about a new conscious consciousness that is emerging either out of deep pain or non-ego based awakenings. He writes that one should only act from that still point of the Now. That acting from presence will provide one with a deeper connection to source, and that the results will then be more effective.
He is using the same ideas of being a Samurai, act with out thinking. All the great mystics revolutionaries from Jesus,Moses, Mohammed to Gandhi, Malcom X, Marley etc. brought worth their greatest achievements only after they had a ego shattering experience. Or should I say their small "i" became connected and of service of the greater "I". Your points are well taken Daniel, but let us not throw out the baby with the bath water...so to speak.
Keep up the good work. Peace
Lucifer's dream-
Hi Daniel,
I’m always surprised at how much of the world remains stuck in an either/or bind. You can go to an activist bookstore (as I did earlier today) and meet well-meaning and willing to fight people who are dead set against religion, but can’t seem to see in what ways their materialism is yet another fundamentalist ideology- and then you can have dinner with wonderfully open-minded people who lack the judgment to see that ‘The Secret’ is no different from Joel Osteen’s feel good Church in Texas- just another entertainment culture distraction from living a meaningful and involved life.
I think that the 2012 horizon is an opportunity to ask some serious questions and make a conscious decision about whether one wants to remain in an either/or structure of consciousness or not before that worldview reaches its logical conclusion- self-atomization. Frankly, the ways out are available and have been for some time, you point to many useful authors in your books. But a popular audience raised in Disney’s world is far more likely to “follow their bliss” than they are to pick up Teilhard de Chardin and grapple with the real complexities and ambiguities of consciousness philosophy.
If spirit-seekers continue to throw out the baby with the bathwater regarding western philosophy, including the underpinnings of a rich spiritual movement appropriated by the Roman Empire for its own authoritarian gains, then they will dissolve their individual identities in philosophies that are not oriented to their structure of consciousness. Krishna, Buddha and Christ are not lifestyle choices in a post-modern bookstore, but qualitatively different entities with their own mythologies and specific relevance to phases of an evolution of consciousness.
The end of religion calls for a complex integration of esoteric traditions rather than a totalizing of feel good philosophies. While Zizek might be taking it to far with the notion of Eastern philosophy as the ‘hegemonic ideology of global capitalism,’ he makes a good point about the way in which some people rationalize their behavior with high minded spiritual ideas. The Bhagavad Gita is a wonderfully rich and complex text and has been used to rationalize both violence and non-violence. After all, Krishna basic message to Arjuna was not to doubt his Dharmic role and to get in there and fight to the bloody end.
Unfortunately, it takes someone as baroque and esoteric as Rudolf Steiner to deal with these complexities. There is a reason that he gave that bizarre lecture regarding Christian Rosenkreutz sending the Buddha to Mars. The sacrificial deed performed by the Buddha in the sphere of Mars is, according to Steiner, what allows an individuated self to develop Buddhist compassion ‘without’ dropping out and forgoing one’s duties in the modern world.
I, too, am struggling more with political questions now and reading more about economics and sociology than I had before. I don’t doubt that a time will come when a spiritual, philosophical, aesthetic and sociological education will be needed to aid in decision making amidst dire ecological and political nightmares. That is not to put off one’s responsibility to a distant future, but to act now through education rather than entertainment. And more and more, I come to the realization that there is no ‘answer’ out there, but rather that in this age of chaos, the individual must make their own moral distinctions from an educated, but improvisational intuition- like a jazz musician choosing the right note at the right time.
Sorry for the length here, I did not intend it at the outset. I’ll end with one of Steiner’s warnings about the dangers of Luciferic influences from the East, that is, if left unmediated by individual responsibility. I think this is applicable to the feel good New Ager issue- The Secret, Osteen etc.:
“Lucifer desires goodness, spirituality, for mankind, but he wants to make us into automatons with no free will. Human beings are to be made clairvoyant according to perfectly good principles, but in an automatic way; the luciferic spirits want to deprive human beings of their free will, the possibility of doing evil.”
Great points...
It is up to those who are aware to help others on the road to go deeper. Follow your Bliss is not a feel good notion because along the Hero's journey, as described by Cambell, one will find the darkest demons of their soul. True Bliss is a ego destroyer. The Secret does work because it is culled from the magickal traditions of the ages. It is not the end all, just the spark to ignite the journey.
Anyone who has done the work, is responsible to support the ones coming up the path, as the ones ahead have helped us. More...More...More
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power,the world will know peace." Jimi Hendrix
HONEST action
price for events
hi shesravingmad,
jivamukti has many advantages including its amazing location and our deep friendship with the people who run it. If we had the event for cheaper way out in Queens somewhere, we would have other problems, such as a smaller audience, and many attendees would end up taking cabs anyway. Honestly, $20 is not very much for all the performers and so on. Perhaps you may want to enquire into your own judgmental attitude?
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
I WOULD travel to QUEENS for more authenticity....
you dont know what
authentic experience
its all good in tha hood
let she who is without sin cast the first stone
End of Empire
Excellent post ecolocal. I'm in complete agreement. There seems to be a fair amount of evidence that the creators of the New Age movement, Andrija Puharich springs to mind, were at some stage deeply involved with MKULTRA and COINTELPRO. The UFO seems to be a disinfo project also. I like to keep in mind some words of TS Eliot: "What is going to happen has already happened."
We do indeed need to be prepared to stand firm and calm in the hurricane, and love it too...
This is interesting: http://www.intelligencer.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=918803
and here's the report the above article discusses: http://www.europe2020.org/spip.php?article527&lang=en
We are decadently squandering resources with little or no or even negative returns - example the war in Iraq costs every US household $138 a month! - there are many many analogies with the collapse of the Roman empire. As that Empire fell, the educated elite drifted out to the fringes, to scattered monasteries and villas, where what learning could be preserved was passed on - while the cities were taken over by military commanders and the dark ages began.
I think we are in a similar situation now - poets, scientists, priests, intellectuals, are all moving to the fringes of a mainstream that has gone insane, and is seemingly deaf to their calls, or at least has built up too much inertia to heed them.
(applause)
Daniel, I also love the direction you are heading. I think more people need to hear your voice. I'll help if there's a way to.
"The revolution is quiet, my friends, like the clicking of bullets into a pistol's empty chamber."
True Spiritual Attainment
Amen my Brotha
Fits and starts like sneezes, earthquakes, zits and levies breaking. The aha moment is not on page 365, although I have found that reading enough contradictory information helps collapse the mind under its own weight which is usually pretty fun.
From St. Augustine to Bill Wilson, I have noticed a pattern of deep spiritual suffering before the flash to a higher understanding. Le petite mort of the soul. I don't think there are any shortcuts. When it happens it happens.
The spiritual tension on earth is palpable and necessary. Accepting present reality is not complacency by any means. We will witness the collective reults of our actions. It will hurt, but we will be ok. Even if it hurts a lot.
Fly or fall faster.
When your heart bleeds pain you wake up
Alas...
I think you're trying too hard and missing the boat with your take on Tolle by turning his teaching into a concept -- exactly what it isn't, right? :-) I'm a little surprised, especially after all your exploration into spirit and the nature of consciousness.
www.farrfeed.com
I may be exaggerating
I may be exaggerating slightly to make a point. But I do feel there is a strain in these writers (Tolle, Chopra, etc) that supports complacency and acceptance in regards to social and political struggles. There's almost a kind of psychic mood or ambience created by Tolle's work. Tolle and Chopra would not have reached mass middle-class popularity if they proposed that spiritual liberation required sacrifice of material gain in order to serve the planet. I also see these texts serving a particular function in which they replace the types of Christian homilies that provided a moral ideology for Americans and Europeans to support colonialism in the 19th Century. At the same time, I do see a lot of value in these authors, and consider everything to be part of an evolutionary process, perhaps moving toward a deeper awareness.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
agreed
Laughter
I don't believe there was
I don't believe there was any tampering - i have had posts lost as well. There must be a little bug in the system. My suggestion is if it is a long and meaningful post, write it in a text document so you don't lose it then check to make sure it goes up. We haven't censored anything yet.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Missing Posts?
Hi Zezt,
I can guarantee you that we haven't deleted any of your posts -- or those of anyone else so far, for that matter (other than spam attacks, which we need to get better about deleting more quickly...). All I can suggest is that you save a copy of your post on the hard drive, and make sure that it actually appears on the web page where it's intended to go -- after you click the submit button. Sometimes folks hit "preview" rather than "submit" and think the comment was posted, when it actually wasn't. Webpages can also be quirky, and not respond to requests the way we want because of a glitch in Net traffic. But believe me, there's no censoring going on here. Of course, there is a line we expect community members not to cross in their posting -- but no one has crossed that line yet. And if/when this does happen, believe me we'll let that person know.
So frustrating!
There's nothing more frustrating than to have an electronic piece of writing disappear before your eyes! As a rule of thumb, before I click "submit" on any important email or post, I key-command copy the text just in case my connection drops or hangs up. This has saved me numerous times! I also see the wisdom in saving a hard copy as a Word document.
-st
Empathy IS Action
At the end of the day, I suggest we simply have to achieve our own personal gnosis, and take it from there. Social concerns CAN be a way to facilitate this gnosis, but they are more often a means to avoid it. Who among you is without sin, cast the first stone. Personal effort to "change the world" stems from arrogance, hubris based on judgment (stone-casting), the belief that the world is sinful and oneself is pure and wise enough to fix it. Better to sort out one's own back yard before meddling in the neighbors' business.
The "problems" in the world are there PRIMARILY to reflect back at us the areas of blockage in our own psyches which we need to attend to. To Buddha, all beings are Buddha. All we need do is to align ourselves with the macrocosmic order, get our orders, and carry them out. The problem with New Ageism and religion is not (in my opinion) that it shirks social responsibility, but that it encourages individuals to focus on externals, and/or to make only the most superficial inner examinations (i.e., go to church and confess and you get to heaven, or simplistic interpretations of Eastern wisdom like karma and past lives, and magikal truths like “we create your own reality”).
Everything that happens on Earth happens according to Macrocosmic design, and this includes "social injustice," pollution, etc. Who are we to question it? This is not to demean the power of compassion, empathy for the suffering of others: but I suggest that this empathy itself is sufficient to provide relief and healing, without any direct intervention, which unless asked for, is always likely to be interference anyway, based on ego. Those who feel true empathy do not interfere, those who interfere do so because they are incapable of feeling empathy. (It may be that both modes are valid, however.)
Question is: At what point do we cease to regard our fallen state (Promethean knowledge of good and evil) as a curse and begin to experience it as the means to seize our sovereignty? The existence of error PROVES the reality of “free will,” but ONLY when we turn away from error. Lucifer’s fall was preordained, his voluntary obedience – redemption - will be an act of pure volition based on EXPERIENCE.
(PS. the steiner quotes suggests a confusion in RS's teachings, or at the very least a conundrum that requires reconciling, sincce Steiner also wrote that Lucifer gave humanity free will by blinding it to the presence of spiritual hierarchies.)
www.aeoluskephas.blogspot.com
Threefolding
"I’ll end with one of Steiner’s warnings about the dangers of Luciferic influences from the East, that is, if left unmediated by individual responsibility."
Yes, a conundrum indeed. It is the reconciliation of this paradox that leads to human freedom, at least within Steiner's system anyhow. But he is only one of many philosophers who saw early on humanity's need to emerge from dualistic thinking. His mythological threefolding of Lucifer- Christ- Ahriman is an image of structural shift from duality to polarity. Lucifer is the light-bearer and catalyst for the ego, Ahriman is the demon of fragmentation, abstraction and materialism- to be extremely brief about it. Christ in this schema, becomes the crossroads of incarnation between the universal and the particular, and is also the representative of man in the sense that a man who does not heed to external religious authority or to pure reason will require some creative internal mediation of the polar influences.
It can be very easy to get lost in Steiner's mystical language, but one only need to read a bit of Nietzsche and Schiller to see his philosophical inspiration for this system. Schiller's Aesthetic Letters provide a prototype of the threefolding in his proposition that 'play' allows for creative mediation between reason(Ahriman) and man's sensuos nature(Lucifer).
And Nietzsche exchanges absolutes in religion and science for a radical perspectivism in which all external horizons become blurred to the point at which truth and wholeness can only come about amidst the chaos of individual freedom- again like the organic emergence of music during an improvisational jazz performance.
To understand the dualism that we are emerging from, one needs to look both to the development of monotheism amongst the Semitic people's as well as abstract science- from the Greeks through the schools in northern Africa and then through the scholastics and into the Renaissance. Individual ego development is intimately bound with abstraction and monotheism, which is why the eastern cultures are predominantly collectivist and we are not. The organizing principle that we use to apprehend sense data is fundamentally different then that of someone raised in pre-modern China. This is why eastern philosophies should not be taken as they are but integrated by someone who has a deep inderstanding of the evolution of consciousness, such as Jean Gebser or Rudolf Steiner or Sri Auronindo. If you read them closely, they are all saying the same thing: dualistic thinking ran it's course around the time of the French Revolution and dutifully served the purpose of abstracting an individual ego from an undifferentiated state of being. But now, this structure is deficient and those who attempt to sustain its validity are doing so for their own ends- for power.
To sum up- yes, Lucifer is your friend, but as an individual, you must always retain control. It is the same with Ahrimanic technologies. To 'fear' them would be to succumb to Ahriman's influence. Rather, you must be the master. So as I said in the first post, there is no 'answer,' no clear cut path that Lucifer or Ahriman is good or evil, but by contemplating these entities as living processes rather than dead concepts and exercising your ability to mediate between them, you can, and indeed must, carve out your own individual path. to avoid such a reponsibilty is to subsume your identity into a collective or to mistake arbitrariness for freedom.
Also, just to be clear- traditional Christian Theology is dualism par excellence. God is good, Satan is bad. No matter how you embellish Satan's mythology, the structure is the same. Steiner's system is a way to exercise polarity and emerge from dualism without intellectualizing it. The contemplation of the difference between Ahriman and Lucifer serves that very purpose.
Thanks
yoga and war
School can be a Tragedy
zezt...I've been in communication with the Gatto Organization...they are doing good stuff, spreading the word, cracking open the big box of secrets. Probably his most profound statement was about how we hesitate to loan our cars but don't give it another thought to hand over our children...those great loves of our lives who we hand over with blind faith, to total strangers and a school system infiltrated with deceptive behavior modification theories and ideologies.
There is something amiss in the menu of shaping young lives. I'm a college educated and Certified Child and Youth Councilor whose fate to never work in the field was sealed when my first Family Studies Class began with the statement, "the family is no longer sacred." You know I could have walked away right at the moment, but my curiosity as to why such a fallacious statement was important, to begin one of our main study groups, made me stay the course. My field training occurred in the school system. Believe me, what I saw, heard and witnessed became far more important than anything I could have ever put into my work binders. I prevailed to the end but I knew with all good conscience I could never take part in any institutional stystem that is intentionally frigging around with the developing personality of young kids. I use my credentials for reseach purposes!!!!
god seems pretty rational to
Confronting the shadow and bringing the battle to new fronts.
Lovely posts everyone. I can certainly see the passion rising within us and I absolutely love it. Reading VerdarLuz's post and connecting with the window of time we have now when we really can truly make change based on the emotional feelings within made me tear up the other day. Reading these last few posts has empowered me even more.
The task, as it seems, now, which was addressed compellingly by zezt, is "to also know what fuels this evil and the apathy which allows this evil to go on and on and on through the generations, maintaining its status quo. It is myth, it is propaganda, it is TV Trickery, it is narrative, it is mindcontrol is what it is, and we need to see it right through. Then we see the fat diseased ridden horrible old emperor naked for sure."
We not only need to do our own shadow work and determine what is holding us back in our daily lives, but we do need to begin exposing this shadow controlling the minds of so many otherwise wonderful people and we need to begin confronting this control with subtle attacks.
I am reminded of a group of posts a few weeks ago on art, media, and pranks. We need to be pranksters but we need to be brilliant ones. There is truth to all comedy, and we need to expose the truth of the shadows any way we can. Let's bring this world shadow out to light and let these forces be as one and bring us into the consciousness shift we so desire.
I'm still trying to think of ways to go about playing these artistic, transformative, pranks and the best thing I can think of (despite Daniel's common sense about the $20 salon event) is to just go out there and ACT!!! Be goofy, be free, be truthful, be expository. Stop someone in their tracks today and make them THINK. Lead them to the rabbit-hole. All of our changes must happen on an individual basis, but we certainly can help to awaken those around us... we can show them their doors and teach them to be free.
If only Oprah added Nietzsche's Zarathustra to her Eckhart Tolle reading...
All bridges can be rebuilt.
conscious choice
I have to say I'm appalled that I just visited the Conscious Choice magazine site and saw an advertisement for an "enlightenment credit card".
Absolutely ridiculous. All authority is absolutely ridiculous.
All bridges can be rebuilt.
I have to say, doctordewey...
I laughed my little but off the first time I saw it advertised as well. Contribute to our major corporation, earn enough points and we'll give you a holistic spa getaway!
Now looking back, I'm torn. If a certain card is able to encourage people to make better choices for themselves and the environment, shouldn't it be embraced? But at the same time doesn't the very act of getting that card contribute to our current unsustainable financial institutions, have a negative impact on the earth by using plastic, and contribute to the spiritual materialism that Daniel was talking about?
I don't know. Anymore thoughts?
-
I am new to this website but I can't escape the feeling that many of those commenting are just using this article to preach their own thoughts in the hopes of being recognised as wise or enlightened.
I don't mean to offend, it just seems like most of the comments aren't really comments. Although I did notice that the forum is quite empty so I suppose this would be the best place to get your ideas accross...
thinker..
Social Convention
Thinker...social convention would say that a "comment must be a comment" maybe you have misunderstood that this is a fringe site full of freedom and the importance to social network, talk, discuss etc!!!! The importance of this site goes way beyond any need for self-serving importance, revealing your wise or flaunting enlightenment...it actually hurts and is troublesome to understand the world we are all living in.
this one time i was at the
you are very farking great,
i wanna show you
i can only imagine.. jimi
Soul Chain
If we have fallen, no longer the pinnacle, do we still bear the karma?
Is the myth of the prodigal still relevent?
thanks
correction
transform society
Hello Daniel, my name is
Everyday we feel the urge or the call of our heart. It is a call that is deeper then just a mere thought or feeling. In a practical sense it just may be a call for you to go and fetch your elderly neighbor’s newspaper for her or him out of the snow; to help coach your son’s football team; maybe even to leave coaching to help a whole community of immigrants that have found themselves victims of abuse; to paint to your hearts desire; to write poetry; protest war; stand in courtrooms and testify for the innocent arrested; walk the streets of poverty; sit in the homes of the rich; speak before community councils; to give a message of peace to a president; or it just may be to pull feathers to give to children. But no matter what, when your heart calls, from the moment you take that first step of this acknowledgement, you begin to see that a whole tribe takes that first with you. For within your own story is the unfolding of a story about tribal humanity itself. Follow your heart.
Following this call is always carried out by just doing. Go with it! Do not question for a moment where it will take you. Realize that your whole life is uncertain and sitting watching the next reality program on the networks that trap you and keep you in their grips of spiritless materialism's want and need is not going to change that – as you wonder when life is going to come to you. Seek out life that is the call of the heart! Love yourself! Go and love others! Live in truth and show others what you know. Keep nothing hidden. Always use your real name. Do not be afraid of death.
Read the latest books on politics, history, and contemporary issues of the day. Understand that your knowledge is limited and your opinion will only take you so far. Books I would like to add to Daniel’s list … Hodginson’s The Freedom Manifesto, Naomi Wolf’s The End of America, Bert Ehrman’s God’s Problem, and your own, Daniel, 2012, but I wouldn’t recommend Obama by David Mendell… it was flat and there wasn’t enough critique to get a clear view on the man Mendell was writing about.
I, like you Daniel, was born on the beginning timeline of Generation X. I was born Christmas of 1965. We are a generation that has been failed by the generation before us. I almost feel cheated or that I was placed into slumber by the generation of baby boomers. I feel they talked a good game but in the end followed the line of greed. In it we were forgotten, but not only us, but the grandchildren of the Baby Boomers have been left with their heavy debts and this same generation is ready to heap more upon them and us. They have become the generation of self indulgence. They have found that their worries have only gone so far as to be concerned about the next quarterly earnings. A generation that started out fighting against war has now become a generation that has given us a war that may last a hundred years. It is time for us to say enough is enough… it is time to think not of the tightening of time that shall end in 2012… that will come and go soon enough. But to think of the 2012 and the children that will carry humanity beyond that point. We have lost the concern for our next generation; somehow we must take this back. It will not be easy.
We must break down the large for the sake of the small, the elderly for the child, the institution for the tribal, the false for the true, the inhuman for the human, the material for the spiritual. And within the spiritual, whatever practice that you choose, go deeper. Let the soul be your guide… pray. The greatest instrument that we have in the world to bring about this collective thought of good that David speaks of is through our children. If we refuse to awaken the children to what awaits them, they will not rise out of the gutter that has been given to them and towers us now. The greatest amount of psychic energy is in the children and of now we are feeding them video games, babysitter t.v., broken homes, spiritless families, fast food, hurry-hurry- hurry. We must bring the children back to tribal communities, but in a way I believe 2012 is going to help do this for us. So we must prepare them for this event… act locally think and behave tribally. We will be peering into the center of the Milky Way on December 21st, 2012! What a fantastic time to be alive! The Tree of Life is about to rise again. Make sure the children are aware of this celestial event and await it like the second coming of Christ himself! A new freedom! Do not be afraid… because a deceitful world of big corporations, warring governments, malevolent religions and bankers is really not one that you would really want to be a part of… if at all your children. It’s called enslavement and we’re only a key turn away from this. Remove the shackles now… start with the children. Give them hope that comes from the center of the Milky Way. A mystery so profound nobody can figure out what will happen. And time that man has wondered about since time began. Keep it beautiful they will begin to dream of a new beginning that we can't even begin to concieve and it will be their's.
And about Tolle. Yesterday, I took my son to go see the movie 10,000 B.C. Go and see it with your teenage son if you have one. See where the elephants went! Go see what is truly important in the end! The giant corporations, the greed, the enslavement. Do we fight for only our own self interest, the interest of our own tribe, or the interest of everyone involved. Should we become warriors in this present struggle of humanity? Be not afraid!
There is this scene in the movie where a warrior is speaking to another about his father and he says, “Some men draw a circle only around themselves. Some men draw a circle only around them and those they love. But your father drew a circle around him and all others. Your father was a great man.”
You see we must change. We have insolated ourselves! Tolle is wrong. We have to come out of the present reality of our own small circles that we have drawn around ourselves in this present time… it matters that we act as a tribal people to include all others. Consciousness is an act in itself, but if we do not act on this action and rest our heads against the couch while absorbing another episode of American Idol, it will end like two silver metal balls on fishwire that knock back and forth but never really go anywhere. We must change this society. And it must start with a new tribal consciousness that knock on the hearts, minds, souls and spirit of a generation that is called the Why Generation. We must begin to answer those questions as a tribe of human beings that are conscious of the great impending dilemma of the Why Generation and work hard for the best of the Why Generation and for those that will come after the answer that we give to them. And maybe The Answer Generation will thank us for coming out of our present state of false idolness and for giving them an the answer they truly need.
Today is part of forever.
delicious comment
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your beautiful outpouring! Welcome to our virtual "tribe".
Yours,
dp
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
good points but...
at any rate, facing the shadow, and integrating spiritual practice into the physical world to walk as an agent of positive change is not anything new- especially not to new age and healing circles. the spiritual bypass of old is dead. there are many amazing modalities that have gone beyond this initial concept to a fully developed and integrated process. the prejudice towards the new age also feels antiquated. there are honest and dishonest people in all groups. we all are more effective if we are grounded and integrated-whether as an investment banker or a healer.
to respond to some other posts, i would like to say, as a healer, is that when you put yourself out there, advertise and make money, you are able to touch and help so many more people. for so long i felt guilty about charging for sessions. i did anything to avoid it, leaving me depleted with little time for clients. what inspired me to make money was, a kogi mamos from columbia. the kogi's land had been under siege by the druglords and farming. the only way for them to maintain their land was to buy it. that was just the reality. now, these guys really know their land. they have the wisdom we so desperately need to survive. i couldnt write him a check because i didnt have money, i wanted to so badly.
so i came home and began clearing my abundance issues(self-worth/fear of being killed for being a healer) now, i have enough time to keep my practice going and am able to offer more sliding scale slots as a result. i am able to make donations to causes i believe in, like the kogi. and the icing on the cake is that i am able to do what i love all the time. i can practice what i preach by living in abundance in all ways, and maybe even pay off that credit card debt.
i met an apache healer who had a cure for cancer. it was a simple combo of herbs. he refused to charge and had serious issues with money-mostly the rejection of capitalism and of course, fear of being killed, as so many natives were for their knowledge. while i have compassion and respect his choice, the result is that far more people will die from cancer who could have been helped.
so, i wouldnt dismiss someone because they are making money for giving advice, or sharing what they've learned. i would use discernment as to whether its right for you. and thats my 50 cents.
Virtue
discernment
nitelite