Saturday, April 4, 2009

Letter from the editor

The obsession of profit has taken precedent over everything else in this physical world we as a biological human bacteria have constructed in the history of our existence. Self awareness and mental growth is thrown to the wayside as we desperately search for something to fill the gaping holes within ourselves. We are promised the American dream, which now more than ever, represents over indulgence and blatant wastefulness. We feel we need to have the newest apple products to take our minds off of the living in the moment and being aware. We have to continuously buy new ipods to hold more music which is a reflection of the way some live their lives. We need more space and bigger cars to hold more. I'm guilty too. Cyclical consumption and planned obsolescence keep us in a consistent state of perpetual wanting. We constantly need to buy more and perpetuate this cycle because purposefully, nothing is built to last. Yes, I back the Venus Project http://www.thevenusproject.com/. As I talk to more and more friends and family, I see that THIS gluttony and greed IS the American way and attitude.
Of course capital I's is also the world we live in. We are taught always to capitalize "I" as if we have any more validity than another. As if we should hold some kind of special title just for being us. No one wants to give up their superfluous dollar. THAT is the American way. To have the opportunity to buy bigger and more toys at the expense of different groups of people is the American way. It is masked as "working hard can get anyone to the top". The question is working hard for whom. Are you really working to provide a better life for yourself? Are you really free? Realistically, you're as free as your purchasing power and how much does a student have to work to repay student loans before they are able to land a job so they can pay taxes that go to a banker that has secretly enslaved them? You can labor to no end but you can only get "rich". "Wealth" is a completely different story. Riches can be lost in months and it is simply what the wealthy give to us to shut us up for a moment. As for the children born into less fortunate families, their resources are nill and the public education standards drop to accommodate the poverty level. The odds are strongly against you. When you have no choice but to consume the cheapest food, poisoned with preservatives and cancer causing chemicals, a healthy mind and body is slowly depleted over the years. The circumstances of life have worked in favor for some but not for many and that is no reason to discriminate. Yes we have running water and electricity here and that makes us much better off than 3rd world countries. We only have this comparison because the US and the leaders of these 3rd world poor countries have established it that way. Through economic hitmen and corporations such as Halliburton, the US has became the world leader in the manipulation and exploitation of other countries. These countries are rich with resources, but they have been exploited and remain poor due to capitalism.
Its not about manipulating the system to take care of your own. That's exactly what got us here in the first place. The JP Morgans, Rothchilds, Warburgs and Rockelfellers bought there way into the US government to institute their own agenda to enslave the American people by putting them into perpetual debt. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5352106773770802849&ei=JD7aScPaA4GyqALT1cSTAw&q=money+as+debt+full&hl=en
Existence now should be about finding happiness within a breath of air and helping build something for the future when we're gone. Not to selfishly attempt to preserve your legacy, but to build a solid foundation for people to grow as a species, to alleviate misery.
We have been brainwashed into thinking that working the first 10 years of your life just to pay off college tuition is OK! Everyone deserves a place to live and food to eat. Its not socialist to want food and shelter for everyone and it is very possible. Realize that the American constitution WAS set up to help resist international bankers and to restore a natural law. Remember this was the main cause of the revolutionary war.
The US was built cheaply on the backs of slaves and stolen from the native Americans. We can't change what they did but we can help preserve the vision of what they wanted in the constitution and how it was eventually interpreted. Originally the American Constitution was written with SPECIFIC interests in mind. The US Constitution was NOT written with the interests of slaves, native americans, women, or people who didn't own land. The Constitution was written up to ensure the power and wealth of a select few, and was written to appease the majority of the public just enough to believe they had a say in what was going on. Eventually, it was interpreted to give rights to the people. We can help rediscover the cultures that have been lost and preserve the ones that are threatened by those who fear what they don't know. Its been less than 100 years of the Federal Reserve. There is no reason why the vast majority of people around the world can't fight this globalization from international bankers for a better way of life for all. When more than half of global wealth is owned by 2% of the population it is understood that we are not working for the greater good of humanity. I've observed the people that retort that "it's Gods will and let it be" are the people who are sitting in comfortable positions regardless of what happens around the world and the people who want change are the people who have to sift through the corpses of their loved ones. Of course this extreme of mass killings and death is not only due to the greed for money and power through earths resources, but through the religions of the world that feel they have their own direct link to their own God who they are more than willing to kill for. Polybius, the historian of 203-120 B.C., says: "Since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions and violence, there is no other way to keep them in order but by the fear and terror of the invisible world; on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods, and of the infernal regions." He, as well as many rulers knew that creating a fear of pain in an afterlife was the most reliable way to control the populous.
Granted, people don't join a religion to be scared. Generally they feel its the only way to be a "better" person and to have faith in something bigger than themsleves. The negative effect that religion perpetuates, unconsciously and consciously, is the feeling of separation and can eventually lead to the most disgusting form of elitist psychosis. Taken from the Westboro Baptist Church website on why they are protesting at the funeral for the victims of the VA Tech University massacre, "Why did this happen, you ask? It's simple. Your military chose to shoot at the servants of God today, and all they got for their effort was terror. Then, the LORD your God sent a crazed madman to shoot at your children. Was God asleep while this took place? Was He on vacation? Of course not. He willed this to happen to punish you for assailing His servants." This is what we are eventually left with from the literalists who stand for death and destruction to all those who don't believe. Of course it is argued that these are not the "real" servants of god and in turn, THEY argue too that the moderately religious are also not really God's followers. Just like buying alcohol for an alcoholic "enables" them, supporting this insanity also enables these inhumane, disrespectful, brainwashed nazis to protest at the mourning of many innocent people who died heinously.
I have learned at the quantum level of our connection to everything, not only through the study of quantum mechanics but through a spirituality. I've lived and experienced this through vipassana meditation http://www.dhamma.org/. I've learned about the connection of all things not from listening to someone else's interpretation of a mistranslated, edited, incomplete book that has caused the death of countless people, but through self realization, and self observation at the experiential level, with no outside influence. I've found that more can be discovered about natural law and the God that encompasses it, by observing oneself. By silencing all other distractions and repetition of daily life, one can observe the quantum reality as opposed to the gross reality, which in turn relates our existence to the entire galaxy. Many answers can be found through self observation without having to fear a pit of fire in the afterlife, or attend church a certain day of the week, or recruit others to a prescribed religion in hopes of manipulating the world to ensure the return of a messiah. Truth doesn't have to be discovered through any particular form of meditation or religion, it can be achieved in many different ways. I believe one can find truth through teachings of whatever holy leader but there is a fine line to walk between being self righteous and actually helping people because each teaching eventually prescribes to te same thing, that to follow anything else is wrong. The buddhist philosophy summed it up best for me when it described religion as "the hand pointing to the moon." Its the moon that is the truth and religion is the hand. The hand is pointing to the truth but it itself is not the truth. The point is to eradicate this separatist mentality religion subscribes to and really realize at a the deepest level of our connection to nature, the universe, and all life. Life and death are just levels and linear time is completely man made. I don't claim to know more than anyone else. I'm a student and a teacher, and this is what I've observed in my short time on this planet.
Logically and factually, our perception of the entire world is based upon our senses, which are undisputably the only ways we take in information and process it from the world. It would therefore be of the utmost importance to our existence to train our brains to be acutely aware of THESE mental processes. I wanted to learn what the world IS and not what I wanted it to be or what others tell me it is. I've found that realistically, ultimate religious devotion is solely built on an insurance policy that you WILL have happiness and eternal bliss in the afterlife and in the christian religion, you have to prescribe to one thing, that Christ is the son of God. The "unconditional love" spoken about in the bible doesn't factor in when you're faced with this "choice". A looming reason why one follows the teaching of Christ is to ensure "eternal life through Christ" and when this "saved" mentality is enabled to the fullest extent, it becomes the basis for separating oneself from non believers, and other religions by giving the follower a holier than thou mentality because the follower "knows" and the non believer does not. It becomes mentally destructive to the youth and other civilizations by demeaning and discrediting their way of life as "lost". Jill Mytton, a counseling psychologist specializes in the trauma religion causes children (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXA7GA9yntc ). One can simply live a better more fulfilling life simply by having RESPECT FOR ALL LIFE in general which is taught at a young age no matter where you're from. Its the fear of death and the fear of not having control that terrifies people into blind submission. Blind faith gives an excuse not to reason and think. The idea of heaven and hell in an afterlife was expressly created by the catholic church. No where in the bible does Jesus even state this place of fire and damnation. Taken from Jesus' Teachings on Hell from Gospel Themes: "The New Testament equivalent of sheol is hades, which occurs only eleven times. Like its synonym sheol, the King James Version translates the word “hell.” However, the correct translation is hades, or the unseen. The Bible doesn't use hades exclusively for a place of punishment. Luke 16 pictures righteous Lazarus there. Acts 2.27, 31 says Jesus went there. In I Cor. 15.15, Paul used the same word when he said, “O grave, where is thy victory?” In Rev. 1.18, Jesus said he had the controlling keys of death and hades, the unseen, and in Rev. 6.8, death and hades followed the pale horse. Finally, in Rev. 20.13, 14, death and hades gave up the dead that were in them, and were then cast into the lake of fire. These verses illustrate that hades refers to anything that is unseen." Any catholic or christian would have to ask themselves if they would still have the same feelings about devoting their life to the Chrestus (which was simply a title meaning "the anointed one") if there was no promise of a heaven or afterlife? The appeal suddenly wilts and many other traditional fallacies come to the surface after realizing the bible has been altered many many times and the English language can't possibly do the ancient Greek language it was written in justice. A single word is used to encompass an entire concept and many metaphors are translated as historical events. The mixed messages are contradicting as is what can be expected from a composite book made up of many different authors. Rev. William Sloan comments : "Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, "'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace," and why Jesus said, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34 NIV)
Later we are taught to love your neighbor as yourself. Its these instances that enable followers to justify hate, genocide and mental slavery.
I do not conclude there is no God because I have experienced the all consuming divine force which I believe is in every waking moment of our consciousness. The argument that the bible is complete truth because of its long lasting stronghold on humanity through history also means nothing. We still say God Bless you when someone sneezes because in medieval times the sneeze was believed to be the soul of a person leaving their body which obviously is ridiculous. If a superstition so asinine has incorporated itself into modern culture as common manners, what other irrelevant habits have we kept alive?
I address these issues not out of maliciousness or contempt but for the sake of finding real truth, actuality, academic correctness and reason. It IS a comforting feeling to know there is a "plan" and that no matter what, you will always be taken care of. I have experienced this first hand being incarcerated for months having my freedom taken away and then being faced with rioting against a different race. The possibility of an extension to my sentence from being involved in a gang fight or the possibility of getting beat down or stabbed was a real threat. The peace I felt when I accepted my fate, whatever it may be, was liberating. None of these things happened because of the circumstances of my release date but I realized, just like I observed at the meditation school, as soon as I stopped fighting the feeling of panic, the feeling metamorphisized to an inner peace. I had a feeling that I would be taken care of by the universe within MYSELF or not. That was "God". It was a luxury. But what of the Palestinian teenage girl who has to identify her sister and mothers charred body after an Israeli US funded missile strike? Does she have that same luxury of believing she is being taken care of? Definitely not. Does she deserve this fate because she's Muslim? Definitely not and you put yourself in the same category as the old fuhrer Hitler if you believe so. Millions have been killed in the name of religion, and the Bible, Torah, and the Koran have bred these fundamentalist religious "warriors" to kill others because they honestly believe they are doing God's will. Peoples feeling of inner peace and faith is made easy when genocide, exploitation and disrespect for human life isn't experienced first hand and when there IS inner peace in these circumstances, its because of their hope for a fulfilling afterlife. Now, post 911, certain military personnel have taken it up on themselves to cause even more destruction in the name of Jesus. Journalist Jeff Sharlet, an editor for Harpers magazine wrote an article called Jesus Killed Mohammed. It was a report on this story, in his words: 'A man named Staff Sergeant Jeffery Humphrey, one of the very few soldiers who, in this military climate, had the courage to come forward and speak out about what he had seen, he had been stationed in Samarra. It was Easter. The day began calmly. A chaplain brought around a copy of Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic film Passion of the Christ, which they then put on constant play throughout the day.
When they came under attack, the Special Forces, Army Special Forces to whom he was assigned, had their Iraqi translator, an Iraqi American Christian, paint in giant red Arabic letters on the side of a Bradley fighting vehicle the words “Jesus killed Mohammed.” Then, while they put the translator on the roof with a bullhorn, shouting in Arabic, “Jesus killed Mohammed,” and then training their guns, training American guns on anybody who responded, the Bradley fighting vehicle rolled out into the city of Samarra and drawing fire everywhere it went, leading the Special Forces to conclude that every single Iraqi who took offense at these words, “Jesus killed Mohammed,” was part of the enemy and therefore needed to be destroyed.
And I spoke to the man who drove that Bradley, Lieutenant John DeGiulio, now Captain John DeGiulio, promoted since. And he describes wreaking almost biblical destruction on one whole block, blowing up every single thing he saw. And he said he was able to do this, because God was on his side and because he had been spiritually armored by watching Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. And then he thanked his chaplain for preparing him for that kind of spiritual battle on the streets of Iraq. '
Awareness of oneself seems to be the only answer to end all this. Religion has proven through time it most definitely is NOT the answer because of each groups presumed exclusivity to a God and lack of acceptance of others. The awareness of ones self and one's reactions, to alleviate the craving for rewards in an afterlife and instant gratification, or to alleviate the misery that comes with unwanted feelings such as loneliness, fear of the unknown, death, and resentment, has proved to me to be the healthiest way to achieve peace and solitude in ones self. Once this is achieved one can help others. To be the change you want to see in this world you have to first know where you stand in your conscious reality.
Its an eternal evolution but recently my personal waking consciousness has been dedicated to helping youth, creating aural emotions to live through in real time, bestowing knowledge to loved ones, accumulating knowledge through self education and creating awareness. I am passionate about this because I can feel my life's cycle flying by, and without drugs and alcohol, which have consumed at least a 6th of my life, I am able to appreciate consciousness fully in its unaltered state. I gratefully have depleted the majority of my crutches and obsessions to spend money on a self inflicted false sense of reality. I've slowly refined my short role on this rock in space and at this period in my life I'm determined to educate, raise awareness, and contribute what I can to the building of a more humane future for this world but in all honestly I know I can't take this ride too seriously. I just want to contribute some kind of knowledge and experience, not to be gratified, but to alleviate some kind of misery.
Remember, don't join a movement because you want something to complain about or because you want prestige, do it because no one person on this earth should choose how you should spend your time on this planet, meaning your short time doesn't have to be designated to working long laborious hours to pay bills and taxes to a small group of people who think they're above you and you don't have to attend church regularly or recruit other followers to reserve your place in heaven. That's not what are existence is for. The Federal Reserve Bank makes 900 million dollars per DAY on the US taxpayers and just like churches, they are never audited and pay no taxes. They remain this way because we have accepted the government and religion as unfallible truth, and thats what puts all the power in other peoples hands to dictate the way you spend your life. We have to do something. I've realized the right to purchase an i-whatever, vote for the next American Idol, be prescribed ritalin, pay taxes and give a religious evangelist money to remodel their house is NOT a luxury, its a mental incarceration. More to come