To respect an adversary...

There are times when we really are given a glimpse into the world around us, as well as within ourselves, and get the chance to look at what it is that we respect and expect of ourselves, even when it takes you into strange places.

I recently heard about Barbara Walters' "10 Most Fascinating People of 2009" special which showed one of those apparent cultural inequalities that pop up on occasion. We hear about them, the glass ceiling for women in business, racial inequalities and similar issues, but Barbara really threw one in the face of her viewing audience.

On her special, she had an interview with Lady Gaga where there was a picture of her kissing another woman, no big issue, Madonna and Britney Spears kissed, Jessica Biel has and have you heard of Ellen DeGeneres?

I was later saddened when she interviewed Adam Lambert as the tone was completely different. Sure, at the AMAs he groped a female performer and kissed a male musician, but I've seen girls get groped and I've seen guys get kissed, why does it become raunchy and lewd when two guys kiss? They didn't seem to have a problem as far back as the 80s when we saw two guys kiss on Dynasty. Shame on you Barbara for not being even-handed in your presentation.

Sadly, not only did it really show me one of these cultural inequalities and decrease my level of respect for Barbara Walters, but it got me thinking about why I was losing that respect and exactly what I respect in others as well as myself. The big one that hit me was conviction and that's when I thought of "him".

There is a gentleman that I truly despise, for both what he says and how he says it, but I cannot help but respect him for his conviction to what he believes. The person at the center of this mental and moral dilemma is Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, most infamously known for his GodHatesFags.com website and his church's protests at the funerals of Matthew Shepard and military dead.

I took a look at the GHF site for the first time in a long while and am glad to see that they apparently hired a web designer and modernized the site. It's about time...

So let's get into the guts of my issues with Pastor Phelps.

1. I completely disagree with his position on Homosexuality and I won't get into the particulars of my thoughts on his and many other interpretations of the Bible (I have gone through this in the last 2½ years on the blog so you can find it).
   
   I will say this, I am not a Jew and according to the Apostle Paul there is no requirement for me to be bound by the Law of Moses to follow Jesus.


2. Pastor Phelps believes in a theology called Absolute Predestination which states that there are those who come into the world, destined from birth to find salvation and the rest of us are outright ineligible.
   
   It is easily used to separate the "chosen" from the rest, I believe in a God that would at least make salvation available to all his creation.


3. I don't know if it is still on the site or not, but there used to be the following statement which tore through my heart and soul.

   God doesn't hate you because you are Gay,
   you're Gay because God hates you.

   I once sent them a question asking if Absolute Predestination was true and I'm already damned by God, since he made me gay, why deny me any semblance of happiness before my God ordained eternity in Hell begins?
   

As much as I might think he does the term Christianity a severe disservice and is a fountain of hate, I cannot help but respect his tenacity to stand up and be ridiculed (deserved or not) for what he believes.

There is a line from "The American President" that is so very appropriate for this discussion...

America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight.

It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.

You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free".

It is like the Indian Upanishads say about people and religions; there are 400,000 types of people all at different levels of spiritual evolution, no one religion will ever speak to all of them. This is why I always teach that no matter what form of religion or spiritual practice, as well as none that you might have, respect the differences you find around you as all learn at their own pace.

A true spiritual practice is about personal growth! Like it or not, ALL people are on their path of return to the source and will learn in their own time and pace. If you find yourself as a High School student, you don't hate the 3^rd grader for not knowing Shakespeare, you help him learn from where he is. Be that sign post for all around you.

Some cheese for that whine?

As much as I enjoy people sharing with me, I find that I get a bit short with them when all they are doing is whining about this, that and the other.

People in general seem to be predisposed to whining and complaining and not really being interested in actually doing something... I sometimes wonder where we learned this, I don't think it is our nature.

---

I was having a somewhat heated conversation with a friend about ways in which we can make the world around us a better place and become responsible members of society.

As often happens, the question was raised as to what difference a single individual can make against six-billion uninterested persons and corporate neglect in the search of short-term profits?

The question was recurrent, in many forms and from several direction, the general underlying perception seemed to be a collection of how terrible things truly are and a plethora of excuses as to why there was little to no reason to actually act and a general justification to be just as selfish as the "rest of them."

Somewhere we learn all about what we do not want, we will fight against this or that "wrongness" but we never seem to be similarly motivated to act for some right or good thing.

Over the last 9 years we have seen a collection of protests (probably a sign it's headed in the wrong direction right there) against the wars in the Middle East, against the passage and court ruling that allowed California Proposition 8 to stand (a curious question that is almost as bizzar as the US Supreme Court case of Bush vs Gore in 2000).

Mother Theresa understood the idea that I am alluding to, when she said, "I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there."

When we talk about the Law of Attraction (LoA) one of the concepts that we MUST become familiar with is that the Universe is vast and grand, but in some ways, not so bright.

The Universe assumes that if we don't want something, we would not put any energy into it. Sadly the opposite is usually true, we spend the majority of our thought and energy on exactly that, what we don't want, hence we keep manifesting what it is we don't want.

For example, many years ago I took a class in Beginning Witchcraft, during which (Sorry, I couldn't pass it up) one of my fellow students asked me to help her with a "Money Draw" spell. The teacher of the class was a bit miffed, as it was the full moon and she asked how I was going to do this type of spell during a waning moon.

For those not familiar with what I'm talking about, traditionally, one does magic that causes growth at the New Moon so that as it waxes, gets larger, the object also enlarges. Conversely, banishings are done at the Full Moon so that things get smaller along with the Moon.

I told the teacher that what I was planning to do was actually a Banishment of Poverty. She was fairly impressed, she never thought of it that way. Today, I probably wouldn't do it this way, since we were focusing on what we didn't want, but it made sense at the time.

---

So the next time you find yourself sitting around and complaining about what is wrong in the world and your life, take a moment and figure out what cheese to serve with your whine, I like Gouda and Feta.

Talk about timing (Bad)

Tuesday last week, I wrote an entry about simple ways to practically start empowering yourself and to begin the creation of a world you want to live in. The basic starting point was like the ice crystal analogy:

Do you know how ice forms? A single crystal will form and that starts a chain reaction as more and more crystals form adjoined to the first.

We tend to want to change the world since we see SO much wrong with it, just as we do with out other issues and our serious spiritual growth, we are always looking "out there" instead of looking where all the answers lie, within.

One of the issues I made reference to is becoming informed and the lack of real news that we get on television and many radio stations, and it struck me as an interesting coincidence that I would run into it headlong that very evening; enter James Arthur Ray.

James A. Ray is a fairly well know teacher of the Law of Attraction that I have been aware of for a couple of years. A friend had loaned me CDs of a couple of his talks and I had seen him on "The Secret" but other than that I was not really a fan. So the very night I wrote the last entry I went to to the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey to see him in person.

I really enjoyed the couple of hours that I spent there, but I had become curious as to something that had happened recently that seemed to be troubling him terribly. As the evening progressed, I wondered if he had recently been diagnosed with cancer or something or if his family had been in an accident or some other personal tragedy since he did make reference to the press and how they have been spinning "it."

As I left the Ritz, my friends and I ran into a television reporter from a Phoenix television station who answered the question that had been buzzing around my head.

For those like me, who don't watch the "news" very often, Mr. Ray had been leading a retreat in Sedona, AZ when 2 people passed away and several others became ill. Later a third person passed.

The reporter did what he was expected to do; ALL his questions implied that James had done something wrong, his failure to grant interviews on the subject was suspicious. I asked the reporter if there was any information or evidence of any wrong doing at the event, he was hesitant to admit "no."

In today's world, the police tend to assume guilt, news agencies are in the business of selling news (gotta raise those ratings for more ad revenue) and sadly the masses eat it up whole since it must be true if it is on TV.

Do I know what happened in Sedona? No. I wasn't there but I will wait till there is some actual evidence before I jump to a salacious conclusion.

What do I know? The fasting and sweat lodge techniques are very powerful but also potentially quite dangerous, care must be taken by both the coordinators and participants.

Hold the families that lost loved ones in your hearts as well as the people who became ill and also hold James Arthur Ray, the trials of being in such a situation is extremely difficult and as much as the others are looking through things with a microscope, I am sure that he is doing even more to himself.

A Small Begining to the New Revolution

"...where Life and Spirit become One!™" Practical Lesson #1

---

Is Hell freezing over? We actually seem to be having a change in the weather here in Southern California...

The day is overcast and there is something like a 40% chance of rain today and nearly a guarantee for tomorrow. God knows we need it, but I and everyone who thinks about such things is concerned about the burn areas, no coverage and 4" of rain makes for soup and mudslides.

On occasion, I go on about the press and it's apparent lack of real news and the dumbing down of America.

When I was a kid, we used to watch the local news for, oh my God, local news, weather and sports. Afterwords the Network news would come on and give us the National and Inter-National stories for the day.

Now maybe it's just LA (somehow I doubt it) but the lead stories this morning were the latest collection of killings and robberies and "Storm-Watch '09." The joke about Los Angeles is sadly true, "LA is the only town where a light sprinkle get a 'Storm-Watch'."

The other day I heard a headline that went something like; "State Study Determines Danger of Landslides in Recent Burn Areas." Someone actually spent tax dollars to determine this? No wonder we are broke in the State of California, which reminds me of the story "Will California be the Country's First Failed State?"

Do you ever wonder why you hear about Government cutting the funding for Education and then they complain that the students are either dropping out or failing to pass their courses? Hospitals and Social Care programs lose money then more people enter the uninsured rolls and get the majority of their health care in emergency rooms (THE most expensive way of dealing with issues). What outcomes do you expect?

Why is our nation loathe to have business and the more successful pay an equal share with what they tax me? Remember that story a few years ago of an executive that actually announced that he was somewhat ashamed that he paid less in taxes on his 6 or 7 figure salary than his secretary did on her 5 digit one?

Every time someone mentions raising the upper level tax rates, the claim of unfair tax increases for this group gets voiced. Here's a little research project for you, look at the tax rates of, oh say, 1980. You will find that the tax rate on all income over $88,000 for a single individual was 50%, today the top rate on the IRS rolls is 35%, period (by the way, the maximum corporate income tax is 38%, at least till you get to 18,333,333 when it drops back to 35%) these numbers are from IRS instructions for 2008 1040 and 1120 forms.

When this subject and others like it come up I tend to hear all sorts of bitching about them, but I rarely hear anything constructive, little less relatively solution oriented. So here are a few ideas that could be the basis of a beginning to correct these issues. Lets start a new American Revolution of awakening the masses and striking terror into the hearts of the power brokers...

   EDUCATE Yourself   
My more paranoid and/or conspiracy theory friends and acquaintances believe that the failure of the educational system is a deliberate attempt to keep the common folk from uprising since they are/will be to stupid to do otherwise.

In this age of the Internet and nearly unlimited information, you can become a PhD in nearly any subject you please without spending a lifetime in school. Sure, you need to be careful as far as verifying the validity of information you find on the Internet, but, trust me, so does the information from TV and Radio "Talking Heads" as they nearly all have "their" perspective and biases (does anyone REALLY believe Rush Limbaugh is truly an objective individual on his show?). As I have discussed previously, even our institutions of learning are not exempt from excess posturing and biases by professors, no matter what your perspective.

   Make your voice heard   
I'm not talking about just showing up at protest marches, but writing and emailing the decision makers in their respective fields. Write the News Director of your local TV stations and express your disappointment at the lack of REAL news on the program.

Contact your elected Congress and House of Representative members. I hear people complain about the money and power of the special interests in Washington, but they only have money, YOU have the votes that keep them in office and trust me, THEY know it.

   Show your support financially   
In today's world of Corporate Culture and Bean-Counters that do nothing but look at the bottom line, hit those you disagree with where it hurts, their pocket books!

I, for example, think that Walmart should offer both full time hours to their employees and health insurance. As it stands now, they expect the public to pick up the tab since they will not offer much of any health-care benefits. They say that it would raise their costs and then the prices they charge the consumer, so explain Costco which offers excellent wages and an excellent benefits package and they do not have nearly the volume of Walmart.

The defeatist will say, how can my little financial protest stop these major corporations and though by yourself it cannot make much of a dent. But, imagine if millions were to join you? How many people walking away from company X and shopping at company Y before company X gets the message? 100,000? 1,000,000? As the expression goes, "it starts with ONE" be it a step or dollar.

   Start with yourself   
In all of these, the point starts with a single focal point, YOU! The simple fact is that the power is yours and only you can give it up.

Do you know how ice forms? A single crystal will form and that starts a chain reaction as more and more crystals form adjoined to the first. The big picture will take care of itself, but you have the knowledge that you are doing your part, others will follow.

   On election days, GO VOTE!   
My mother used to tell me that America is a great country and asks so little of us, it really only asks that we inform ourselves and make our voice heard on election day.

Here's something you might find interesting, in 2004 George W. Bush was re-elected by a 51% vote amongst the estimated 61% of registered voters that cast ballots (he called this a mandate, gads!). Some estimate that only 60% of people who are eligible actually are registered, that means about 18-20% of the people who could have voted actually voted for Bush.

Think about this, if the people who are dissatisfied with government today could come together and vote as a block to support REAL reform in Washington, it would only take 6 years to perform a complete overhaul of the Federal Government. Talk about a bloodless coup!

People may have to let some of their personal issues take a beating in the short term, but try voting for substance, vote for the big picture; reclaiming the government of the people, by the people, and for the people back to the people.

Sadly, people tend to be a bit like lemmings, they will follow the crowd off a cliff until someone offers another alternative. Stand up and offer that alternative!

The world truly is what we make of it and if we wish to sit on your butt and just whine about "it going to the dump" and refuse to do something about it, then I say shut the f' up if you are unwilling to be part of the solution. Doing nothing makes you just as responsible, but are you REALLY going to be happy with what you are responsible for?

By the way, I hear people throwing around the word "fascism" and tend to think of the fanatical cult of one, like a Hitler or Mussolini. Mussolini once defined fascism as follows:

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power

So the gauntlet has been thrown down, put up or shut up, and decide what is more important to you. If you want government to be more responsive to the people than to business and special interests, get off your ass and do something.

All good actions are never in vain, so I ask you to consider these simple ideas and consider joining this small beginning to the new revolution.

Perception & Happiness

I have been looking over my recent tweets and I noticed that I have been inspired to several about perception and happiness being a choice.

One of the basic tenets that I believe in is the idea that Man is indivisibly part and parcel of the Creator and that God is just as linked to us.

I remember a scene from a film I was watching recently, "Bless the Child", where a young child will grow up to bring many to God, according to the story.

The scene that I was thinking about is when Cody, our "special" child, is taken out to an alley by Eric Stark, the founder of a "Demonic" Youth Cult, to see what appears to be a schizophrenic homeless man who is sitting on the ground muttering to himself.

ERIC

Look at this man. He should be in an institution, but God abandoned him, didn't he, left him here to suffer. Death, would be a kinder fate, even a cruel death.

Through the power of the one I serve I can give him the strength to end his pain.

ERIC places a small gas can and a box of matches on the ground near the HOMELESS MAN. Eric then begins to perform a ritual. The man starts to show signs of understanding and begins to reach for the gas can and pour the contents over himself as CODY watches in horror.

ERIC (CONT'D.)

Watch. If God loves his children so much, maybe he'll stop this. Redeem him, somehow. Or maybe the release I've offered him is his only true salvation.

CODY starts to walk up to the HOMELESS MAN while he pulls out a match and strikes it, Cody blows out match and hands him something.

CODY
(hugs homeless man and whispers into his ear)

He hasn't forgotten you.

One of the simple truths in this is that we are all the manifestation of a thought of the Creator who cannot forget us and if he ever did, we would blink out of existence, it is the thought that gives us form/creation.

This is the basic premise upon which the Law of Attraction functions.

Creation is not something we do, but something we are. We ARE creators, just like our parent, the difficulty comes in remembering that and creating by deliberate intention and not by accidental default.

Our moods and thoughts are the gauge by which we can determine what it is we are creating and if it is something that will bring joy as a result. Most of us create in anger and jealousy and the fruits just magnify that initial seed that we planted.

Start by becoming aware of your "states of mind" and then watch for the results. When you get to where you are immediately aware, change the program intentionally and see what new fruits you create.

Happy creating!