A human being may have had a perfect upbringing, yet that fact does not have ultimate significance in the evolution towards good mental health and well-being as an adult. Avoiding a childhood characterized by physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse is certainly a desirable and necessary foundation for strong, healthy children, and parents have an immense responsibility for all relevant support.. . Yet normal, strong, healthy children will not necessarily avoid the adversity of broken adult-hoods, and all will eventually bear witness to the devastating effects of suffering on self and/or on others. The cultivation of a few friendships within Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or in homeless shelters, warehoused disabled senior citizens in long term care facilities, communication with military veterans suffering from injuries from battle and/or post-traumatic stress disorder, volunteering at sites of climate change inspired catastrophes like hurricanes, flooding, and tornadoes, working at a domestic violence shelter or as a medical professional, or manning a suicide hotline, will bring home some painful truths for those who have not yet personally experienced misery and hardship. See the Buddha, and the story of Siddhartha, for a good narrative and an allegorical confirmation of man’s predisposition towards all such natures of suffering.
Many of America’s nominally “good religious people” raised in “good religious homes” do not have access to the healing truth that the application of a more universally distributed love would have on their lives. The absence of that love has brought great harm to our world. Any philosophy that continues to devalue or obscure the pain that their own skewed understanding of God and Love has inflicted on innocent people, such as Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ’s, pagans, “witches”, “atheists”, or even themselves, over countless generations needs an immediate upgrade . Many religious and non-religious strong, healthy children and adults look upon the destruction of our natural world, continued global warming, and the extinction of thousands of sacred species of animals as a necessary part of economic development, thus showing a true disconnect with the painfully dark reality of their own intentions. Some even cling to their denial of the reality of climate change/global warming, believing that their disregarding of scientific facts is somehow supported by living in a fantasy world in an “alternate reality” with “alternate facts” that support liars and cheaters like the President of the United States. These supposedly “healthy people” display a profound disease of the Spirit, which directly impacts ALL OF US.
The Earth-destructive and self-destructive decisions of Capitalist economics has been married to aspects of a Judeo/Christian ethic, culture and faith for several generations. This “two part harmony” has sung the following refrains for hundreds of years: “Be fruitful, and multiply,-Prosperity is a sign of God’s love for his people. We are the chosen people of God, Take dominion over the earth, etc.”. The selfishness and tribalism of these beliefs threatens the very safety and security of all of Mankind, with the religions encouraging over-population and the continued destruction of our planet. No one is immune to this disease, and the collective, worldwide brokenness that spawns such ignorance.
Those who profess to follow God through admiring Donald Trump are now the true infidels. I never thought that I would live to see the day when our country would be ruled by such a spiritually primitive, overtly lying, cheating, scandalous force. For Donald Trump, the end justifies the means. For Evangelical Christians, the end, and their new beginning is the suicidal world-wide Armageddon, in whatever forms that takes, that our wayward, selfish, white supremacist leader may ignorantly lead us into.
They treat the wound of my people as if it were nothing: “All is well, all is well,” they insist, when in fact nothing is well.
– Jeremiah 6:14 (CEB)
The people who hold most strongly to the “all is well” philosophy, or its “God’s will” without full internal examination of self, need enlightenment, they just aren’t aware of that fact yet. Most adults live a life of denial of the collective disease of American consciousness, while more than just a few have prospered economically from American Capitalism, and the diseases of the Spirit that are spawned from the socially, environmentally, and spiritually irresponsible versions of it. When economic standards of living take precedence over environmental and social standards of living, all manners of darkness erupts. Selfishness and self-aggrandizement, corporate, religious, and individual greed, socially and environmentally irresponsible allocation of resources, seizing of assets of those less powerful in other countries, and economic minimization and subjugation of those without an empowered voice becomes the norm within the society, Those who believe that economic transcendence is the end point in the journey of happiness and enlightenment are living a life begging for the rudest, and most painful of awakenings, however.
Economic progress at the expense of spiritual principles, and at the expense of our sacred planet, is suicide, and insanity manifested. A liar, cheater, criminal,thief, promoter an indirect participant in treason and collusion, puppet of Russian and Saudi Arabian money and oil interests, and, ultimately, a traitor to American values, has no place on any world stage, let alone the presidency. Those who continue to support the Trump abomination are part of a collective disease of the human spirit. We who do not walk in this darkness will continue to speak out against the broken ones who continue to consciously support ignorance, greed, tribalism, and corruption.
Yet, broken adults can become the very foundation upon which insight into the nature of destructive aspects of human nature and consciousness can arise from. Those who have survived the journey through the depths of hell can develop the capacity to show others how to avoid or escape misery’s grasp. And, perhaps, they can save a future child from the need to write a six hundred page book about escaping our culture’s conspiracy of silence that few people have the time, understanding, willingness or the capacity to be interested in. If I were requested to read somebody else’s account of the collective disease within human consciousness, while I was still in denial of its damaging impacts, I would have little interest, as well, save if it was required reading for a book club.
People who have been happy from birth may not have as much need, or motivation, towards achieving depth of understanding, compassion, and empathy as those who had a troubled upbringing, and are seeking answers to the great questions of life. The “happy ones” may not be driven to seek, and to find, the truth, at least as much as those whose spiritual siblings were suffering, disease, and impoverishment. It is a revelation to finally see that much of the dogma and nonsense that many variations of religious thinking morph into exist solely to insulate the believers from the access to their own legitimate, authentic human suffering and pain. The “painful Truth” is that Truth IS painful, until all of our wayward holdings, attitudes, and behaviors are fully examined, and released, so as to make way for a new understanding and experience of life, where Truth can be experienced more as Love and Peace, and a collective will to support and care for all of our sacred planet Earth.
When our childhood ends, and our eyes are finally opened, the conditions of our childhood becomes almost irrelevant, whether or not we had a positive experience. When our childhood ends, we are no longer insulated from the damaging effects of our own, our religion, or our culture’s wayward thoughts and intentions, and we begin the search for a new way of being. When our childhood ends, enlightenment becomes our teacher, our student, our lesson plan, and our life’s journey. When our childhood ends, we finally let “God” off of the hook, and directly address all of the greatest, most challenging issues of life itself. When our childhood ends, we stand in the power, love, and wisdom that “God” gave to us in the beginning, before we personally, and collectively, ignorantly, or with malice, added to the suffering of all of “God’s” creations. When our childhood ends, we are all healed, regardless of the conditions of our upbringing. When our childhood ends, the world becomes new to us, while we help those still stuck in the past of their own childhoods. When our childhood ends, we are able to help right the wrongs of our fellow man, and of ourselves. When our childhood ends, we stop thinking like we are separate, independent human beings, and start thinking collectively, for the good of the earth, and for the good of all mankind. When our childhood ends, the one true, real God begins to work with us, and through us. When our childhood ends, we lay aside our prayer fantasies and our worship of spiritual deities, and begin the real work of co-creating with the Universe.
It may be easier to build strong children, than to repair broken adults, yet both are important endeavors and services that mankind will be requiring for ages to come. Hopefully, our childhood, whether it is now happy, or unhappy, ends before our civilization self-destructs, and our sacred world, burns in the hell created by Mankind’s continued ignorance and darkness of Spirit. We remain terminally ill as a culture, as a nation, and, potentially, as a planet. We need a miracle experiment, a movement towards a change in individual and collective consciousness to be undertaken by all who want our planet to survive.
The beginning of Wisdom is knowing that Life is infinitely more sacred and important than the religious and philosophical beliefs by which we falteringly attempt to define our relationship to It..
We must commit to fearlessly challenge all assumptions that lead to depression, drug addiction, suicide, and other self-defeating beliefs and behavior. We must commit to exposing the bedrock of lies that much of our collective consciousness and religious misunderstanding is based upon, the lies that tell us that we are not worthy of love and acceptance by others, and/or that we have no value other than remaining the unconscious minions of those in positions of power who have been spiritually disfigured by their monetization of humanity. We must commit to transcending all forces that lead to an untimely death through “white middle-class male despair syndrome”.
Freedom and intrinsic human value are not goals to forever pursue, as they are part of the very fabric of Love, awaiting those with the insight to weave them into happier, healthier, more meaningful lives.. Our civilization has not yet embraced and fully applied the principles of Love, the Love that transcends time and history, nationality and place. We must birth together the Love that has the capacity to save the world from the damaging, insane behavior of a collective consciousness hypnotized by its own imaginary self-importance, a self-importance that drives human overpopulation and the resulting destruction of the very planet Earth that was created to provide for all of Life, and not just our limited, selfish visions, religiously inspired or otherwise.
We must honor our body, and the planet Earth, as the temple of the “living God”. We must not knowingly introduce physical and/or spiritual toxins into our body/mind, nor will we encourage or support others to bring harm to their own bodies and minds, to the bodies and minds of others, or to our planet Earth. We all must become “prophets” for the truth that supports and sustains the very life-force of our sacred planet Earth, and all of its inhabitants. We must commit to continue to support and work towards rational solutions to global warming/climate change. We must continue to get outdoors and enjoy nature, and honor the natural world at an enhanced level, and encourage all others to do the same. To not do this work is to continue the suicidal,insanity into a self–destructive conclusion, the Armageddon that many of the religiously disfigured Christians now cling to, and see our corrupt POTUS as now leading us into.
“It is No Measure of Health to Be Well Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society”
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is time to grow up, end our collective childhood, and find our true relationship to Spirit. It is time to grow up, and save ourselves.
The Awakening Voice (by Bruce Paullin)
Though the slowly shifting desert sands of time,
Keep creating ever taller dunes for America’s lost, thirsty souls to climb.
It is through transcending our hateful world of so little reason and rhyme,
That we will reaffirm the way of Truth, with its quenching waters of the Sublime.
As seekers for Peace, on Truth’s high mount’ we must continue to climb,
Or we will stumble through the swirling sands of chaotic, corrupted minds.
That tempts and confuses minds with the lies of false rhyme and reason,
So all our inner Lawyers must object to deceit, and charge those thoughts with treason!
Are we but marionette’s dancing images trapped upon the ATM screen of a monetized mind?
With Corporate America’s dollar driven beliefs in full control, what freedom can we find?
We must release ourselves from the spiritual imprisonment of these choking, binding strings,
And unleash our hearts’ truest wisdom that our liberated Intelligence can then bring.
As shadow boxers of Trumped Up Evil, to what ends do we hope to aspire?
Becoming co-champions with false leaders in their nightmares creates situations that are perpetually dire!
When we first heal our own illusions that promote self-destructive mental pugilist blows,
Our hearts can support the real fight against the Dark Ones who are now on public show.
As a pro-Trump marathoner, only on Life’s treadmills will we perpetually stand,
To follow in a liar’s missteps dooms us all to fail and become life’s also-rans,
Who forever just chase in vain Sanity’s unifying, healing voice.
So step off of his divisive, circular belt, and share first place in the Life all may rejoice!
To finally realize the Truth, is to see ignorance’s agendas are only illusions that limit and bind,
Spun together with the same golden threads of the Emperor’s New Clothes, his evil tailors did wind,
To corrupt the minds and hearts of all innocents, and all of the vulnerable that they can find.
So we must continue to seek our own truth, and then our struggle becomes Sublime!
The non-illuminated, restless mind is devoid of all of Love’s rhyme and Truth’s reason,
And only chases after desert mirages, until it sees the internal corruption that is guilty of treason.
Shame on you, Donald Trump, your minions, and the pseudo-Christians who continue to support you.
Blessings to all of America’s holy
warriors, who seek for, and hold onto, all that is just, equitable,
and true.
