Sometimes There is a Need to Detach and Reflect

As we all globally witness and participate in the unfolding of world events, those events seem to overwhelm us and we feel helpless to effect change.  There appears to be forces beyond our control that have the control.  This feeling challenges our sense of our eternal nature.  It makes us openly or quietly question the existence of a God, it denies us our sense of eternity, and the purpose of living.

To be clear here, this is not about religion.  Religion, whether we are Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Buddhist, or any other of a number of beliefs is NOT what I am talking about here.  I believe one’s choice of HOW they reflect on their relationship with the Creator and the Creation is more dictated in this reality by where they were born, how they were raised, etc., ie: their Religious Bent.

No, what I am saying is that in the true reality of things, how we contemplate the Creator, the Creation, and our role in the scheme of things is quite personal and the relationship with the Creator and Creation is the most intimate of all the things we “think” about.

Ascension is the goal.  It is to rise above our circumstances, our habits, our behaviors in order to have a more true experience and understanding of reality.  I have come to the place where I believe this ascension process has only two rules.

The First Rule is the quickest path to ascension and a full appreciation of the Creator and the Creation is Love, unconditional love for everyone and everything in the universe.  This tenant is the one lesson that appears in the teachings of what we know and appreciate as the Masters of every religion. Given our experiences with wars, race, politics, being in a state of unconditional love seems both difficult and unattainable for most of us.  I know I am a long way away from achieving that goal.

So, it seems the second rule applies to most of us, the rule of Karma. Because we have been granted full free will by our Creator, we are free to do good things or we can do anything we like for very selfish reasons, including murder, lack of empathy for others, and total disregard for the affect of our actions on others.  However, at some point this Karmic debt must be balanced in order for ascension to proceed.

It seems to me that some of us, while we understand this rule, we still choose build debt on one side of the ledger, that is, do whatever we like in total disregard for this karmic debt, even though we know at some point in eternity there will be a reckoning and balancing of that debt.  Each religion has its version of Hell or “nothingness”.  It also seems to me that some may spend many lifetimes on the dark side and in doing so soon forget how much “debt” we are building.  There are many of those beings present among us during this experience right now, no doubt.

So in our most private of moments, we need to ask ourselves who we are right now and if we are satisfied with who we think we are and where we, as individuals , are going.  Those of us who feel we are not one of the “dark ones”, and yet we are victims of them, feel as though we have been either abandoned by our creator, or worse, there is no creator in the first place.  It is a truly easy conclusion to reach, and no one can deny our logic if we reach such a conclusion.

Well, really is that true?  Two giant pieces of logic kind of slap us in the face.  1). Given the order and mere existence of the universe simply does not support the logic of random non-intelligent creation.  2). Why be conscious in the first place if there is no purpose to it? Again, I want to re-emphasize that I do not consider this a contemplation of religion or how a given religion presents the concept of the Creator and our proscribed way to act in relationship to the Creator’s desires.  Given the size of the universe and the real possibility of the diversity of life within it, that just seems too parochial.  There is a personal more intimate reflection of who we are within each of us. It is this internal dialogue that I am addressing in this rant.  Pontification is best left to prophets, priests, and holy men.

Somehow, we have to remember we are not humans having a spiritual experience, but instead we are spiritual beings having a human experience.  In this state of reflection, surely we understand that we are all of one family, with one origin and one destiny.  When I contemplate this possible reality, two questions arise in my mind.  1). How can any of us allow our family to suffer so? 2). Why do we tolerate dark ones having dominion over us, denying us the happiness we seek and know we could create?

I remember a teaching of Buddha.  Buddha was asked by a man seeking his wisdom “how do I find the happiness I want?”  Buddha replied saying, “First remove the “I” because that is ego, and secondly remove the “want” because that is desire.  What do you have left?”

Some Fact Checking on the BIG BAILOUT and Its Effect on the Economy

Remember back in 2008, when Uncle Ben Bernanke and Little Timothy Geithner went to the Hill and said they needed $700 B to bailout the banks or else the world economy would collapse?  Yeah we all remember, there have been millions of articles, documentaries, and movies made about it.

Ok so when the Congress called Uncle Ben back to testify about what he did with the money and was asked to explain how the bailout had saved the economy, he REFUSED to disclose who got how much, defending his position by saying that divulging such information could jeopardize the public faith in the individual banks who had received monies.  Congress said, ‘Oh OK that makes sense’.

Then, in 2009, the discussion was that if banks were too big to fail that those banks should also be too big to exist, as that would put us right back in the position that got us into the jam in the first place.  Bernanke agreed, but offered no statements as to what should be done to prevent it.  Some in CONgress did and the Dodd-Frank Bill was passed.  At the time some said it was too weak as written, but hey, at least it was a start.

So, here we are now.  How has Dodd-Frank or Federal Reserve policy worked?  I do hope you are sitting down for this.  You may also want to pour a stiff dink, if you are so inclined, or at least have a pair of vise grips handy to occasionally pinch yourself.

First, too big to fail has resulted in the following: Five banks — JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve. Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the largest banks’ assets amounted to 43 percent of U.S. output. The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy!  WHAT????  Yeah you read it correctly.  Back in 1970, the 5 biggest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.  Today, the 5 biggest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.  What say you Uncle Ben? What say you CONgress?

At a recent lecture at George Washington University, Mr. Benanke said ,according to CNNMoney, — “The bailouts of Bear Stearns and AIG were “distasteful” but still necessary. Meanwhile, the Fed was “helpless” when it came to saving Lehman Brothers, he said.

“Lehman Brothers was in itself probably too big to fail, in the sense that its failure had enormous negative impacts on the global financial system,” Bernanke said. “But there we were helpless, because it was essentially an insolvent firm.”

In a lecture about the Fed’s emergency efforts during the financial crisis, Bernanke explained that the central bank was willing to bail out AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) and Bear Stearns because it expected both firms would eventually be able to pay back their loans. Bear Stearns was ultimately acquired by JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500).

Lehman Brothers, on the other hand, had no collateral to put up in exchange for the Fed’s assistance.

“It was very difficult and in many ways distasteful intervention that we had to do on the grounds that we needed to do that to prevent the system from collapsing,” Bernanke said. “But clearly, it is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which some companies are ‘too big to fail.'”

Oh! Then I guess we really had no choice except to fork over the $700 Billion.  It was exactly $700 Billion though, wasn’t it Uncle Ben?  It took a court case by Bloomberg (because CONgress wouldn’t or couldn’t demand the info) to reveal the true number of the bailout.  Vise grips and shot glasses at the ready, here are the real numbers we are all on the hook to the FED for.

The amount of money in secret loans that some of the big Wall Street banks received from the Federal Reserve is absolutely staggering.  The following figures come directly from a GAO report….

Citigroup – $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley – $2.041 trillion
Bank of America – $1.344 trillion
Goldman Sachs – $814 billion
JP Morgan Chase – $391 billion

OMG that’s $7.1 TRILLION and then with the bailouts of foreign banks, yes most of the major banks in Europe, and yes we did those too, but you know the information is “so sensitive”.  The total is $16.115 TRILLION and that is more than the annual GDP of the entire country!

But this has been good for the economy right?  I mean if we, as the American people, throw that much money at the problem things are getting better.  I mean the banks did the responsible thing to fix the problem, after all we have trusted them with an entire year’s worth of labor by everyone and every company in the US.  Well…..consider these two facts.

1). Over the past few years, big Wall Street banks have made huge amounts of money speculating on the price of food.  This has caused food prices all over the globe to soar and it has caused tremendous hardship for hundreds of millions of families around the planet.  The following is from a recent article in The Independent….

Speculation by large investment banks is driving up food prices for the world’s poorest people, tipping millions into hunger and poverty. Investment in food commodities by banks and hedge funds has risen from $65bn to $126bn (£41bn to £79bn) in the past five years, helping to push prices to 30-year highs and causing sharp price fluctuations that have little to do with the actual supply of food, says the United Nations’ leading expert on food.

Hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital now dominate the food commodities markets, dwarfing the amount traded by actual food producers and buyers.

Goldman Sachs alone has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from food speculation.

2). According to the New York Times, the too big to fail banks have complete domination over derivatives trading.  Every month a secret meeting that includes representatives from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup is held in New York to coordinate their control over the derivatives marketplace.  The following is how the New York Times describes those meetings….

On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.

When the derivatives market fully implodes, there will not be enough money in the world to bail everyone out.  According to the Comptroller of the Currency, the too big to fail banks have exposure to derivatives that is absolutely outrageous.  Just check out the following numbers….

JPMorgan Chase – $70.1 Trillion

Citibank – $52.1 Trillion

Bank of America – $50.1 Trillion

Goldman Sachs – $44.2 Trillion

That’s over $200 TRILLION dollars, more than 3 ½ TIMES the global GDP! And that is just the Big Five’s exposure to the derivatives market.

This is beyond insane and would be funny except we are being enslaved to keep it floating. When you combine these facts with the current crisis in the EU, and the fact CONgress has gutted Dodd-Frank and even voted down the Volcker rule that would not allow banks to speculate with our deposits, it doesn’t even make sense to a brick wall.

I write this article because the banksters are counting on us not understanding how well they have fleeced our global economy with no hopes of any recovery.  They hope we will all just say this is high finance and we don’t need to understand it.  You would understand if your teenage ran up $5,000 in credit card bills wouldn’t you? And I am certain what you would say and do to your irresponsible teenager who did such a thing.  THEY would be grounded for LIFE, and you certainly wouldn’t give them any more of your money!  For each and every one of us, we need to understand this is the very same thing, only the irresponsible teenagers in this scenario are the FED, the banksters, and our CONgress, and I am being nice. Criminals could also be used to replace irresponsible teenager in this real life scenario, lots of criminals.  So what are we going to do about this, DAD? MOM?  There really isn’t anybody else stepping up, nowhere in the world.  Sorry to be such a bummer, but it is what it is.

How Do We Act?

It is said that the question of morality can be contained in two statements.  First, how do we want to treated in any given situation, and two, how do we act? I must agree that the logic of those statements, in the most concise manner, does seem to define well the word “morality” in a universally correct manner.

So let’s take a look at some recent incidences in the terms of morality, and how we, as a collective, have reacted.  Let’s start the crash of 2008.  At first glance, it looked like just the money guys were effected and from a moral point of view we said, “well that’s the karma for greed.”

Then we began to appreciate the huge amount of wealth that had been extracted from us as a price for that greed.  First, there were the retirees who got their first quarterly statement from their 401ks and retirement plans, most lost 30-40%, some even more.  How did we as a moral collective react? And why didn’t we?  We did react, but by being deceived to “look over there” and we created the Tea Party and over-reacted in a more immoral way.  We didn’t demand prosecution of the perpetrators of the scam or more governmental regulations, no we did EXACTLY the opposite, demanding less government and no one pursued those inside and outside the government who were responsible for those reckless acts that destroyed our economy.

Then came the “Housing Crisis”, which was nothing other than a fleecing of a fledgling middle class.  How did we act as a moral collective?  We did nothing.  People were thrown to the street world-wide, not just in the US, and we did nothing as a collective, except feel sorry for “those folks”.

Then came the attack on sovereign funds, in Europe and the US.  We watched as people’s retirement funds disappeared, their jobs vanished, just to pay “the bankers”.  What did we, and are we doing as a moral collective?  Nothing, after all these are financial things between bankers and government officials, right? We watch as police and military battle their own citizens and we are not morally outraged? Who are we? Are we not moved as a collective to people emolliating themselves in Tibet?  Are we not morally outraged as a tyrant such as Assad methodically murders his own people? Are our hearts and brains shut down to such a degree that we are NOT moved to action by a 77 year man in Greece committing suicide on the capital steps because he cannot bring himself to rustle through garbage to find something to eat? I cannot bring myself to believe we are who we appear to be at this moment.

So here we are, and as we speak, the assault on personal liberties, union rights, women’s rights, hell, even the right to be democratically represented in places like Michigan and Wisconsin, continues unabated.  Who are we and what have we morally become?

Most of us watch this on TV unfolding right before our eyes and somehow think it is only happening on TV.  It is not, it is happening to US! This is something that is not just political, this is something that transcends politics.  Those of us in the world, who live in free societies, must understand these actions strike at the core of our beliefs.  Where is the moral outrage?

If we, and I mean each of us individually ,when we look in the mirror, act, how do we act from a moral perspective? It is not about insurrection, revolution, or anger.  We saw that hasn’t really accomplished much in Egypt, or through the efforts of the Occupy movements, or the uprisings in Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, or the riots in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, UK, and the US. We must act to re-establish a moral base in our institutions of government, finance, and education.  I would suggest we all start by going to the closest mirror and take the following pledge.

1). I am a moral person.

2). I cherish freedom and democracy for all peoples.

3). I have a responsibility to everyone to protect our freedoms and dignities.

4). I will act to vote in an informed moral manner.

5). I, personally, will demand of my elected officials, at all levels, to act in a manner consistent with morality.

6). I will do this every day and I will take this pledge every day to remind me of the power of who I am..A Human Being.

If we were all to act collectively, in this manner, this world would change overnight, literally.

The 19^th Century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant wrote:

So once again, How do you act?

Questions, Indictments, and Incitement!

All men, when they stand before the creator, are judged equal.  All men on earth are judged by the amount of money they have accumulated.  I say as above, so below.  It is time we face the reality that we are all guilty of crimes against humanity.  In a world of plenty, our children starve.  In a world of wealth, people are living in squalor.

How is it that we can worship GODS, as just and true, when we act in such horrific ways against our fellow man?  How can we say we are civilized, or how can we say we rule in democratic and just ways when there is so much suffering and sorrow and war in our lands?

We know this is not the correct way, and yet, we do nothing.  We watch our children die, we send our young men to war and they return to homelessness instead of our honor and respect.  O true, we do say the words, but we don’t act.  We forget instead.  We turn our backs instead.  We look to our governments to solve the problems, because after all, what can we do?

Even when it is our own brothers and sisters, we do not respond.  How is it so?  How can it be?  Are we not all of divine nature?  What has us so fearful?  What makes us believe we are not responsible?  What makes us feel so powerless?  This cannot truly be our nature.

The basis of Judeo Christian religion is the story of Adam and Eve.  The core of this story is the fall of mankind, the original sin.  But was it a fall?  Recent manuscripts recovered in Iran tell a different story.  They tell a story of a push rather than a fall. To quote Worldbridger by Juliet and Jiva Carter, Sowelu Publishing (2007).

“AS THE PROGRESSIVE REVELATIONS UNFOLD, SO TOO DOES A HOLONOMIC TEMPLATE FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE FULL HUMAN BLUEPRINT AND A NEW MODEL OF EXISTENCE; A TEMPLATE TO RECOVER HUMANITY’S RESONANCE WITH GEOMETRIES OF LIGHT, RETURNING US AND OUR PLANET TO THE HOLISTIC SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM.”

So now we arrive at this mystical point, 2012.  This heralded time, even from ancient times, has arrived.  What is it?  Why do we sense that something is going to happen?  Why is it so many are beginning to hope?  Maybe, just maybe, the Carters are right.  But if this is true, what is our responsibility to recover humanity’s resonance with geometries of light?

It seems to me it is obvious we should be participating in the recovery and restoration of our full human blueprint.  We must look at one another in the true light of who we are, brothers and sisters all, no exceptions, for we are all simply, but wondrously human.  We must now, in preparation for this time, turn to one another and see what happens when we say to each other, hello, I really see you, or smile, instead of putting our heads down and quietly passing by with eyes averted.

We have seen in recent times that we are not powerless.  The Arab Spring, the occupy movements, and now the Treyyvon Martin events clearly demonstrate our power.  When we decide to act, collectively, our will is imposed, in spite of the oligarchic power structure, and failed public institutions.  We do know how to act in just and passionate manners, commonly and collectively.  Universally we yearn for freedom and justice, and we know it when we see it in its true form.

What am I saying?  We should start a revolution?  Yes, in a way I am, but, not a revolution of violence and death and destruction.  We already have too many of those going on in the world.  No, I am talking about a revolution on a personal level.  The next time you see an injustice, no matter how small, and you feel a need to act, ACT!

Speak up in your community activities, participate in the political process, come to the aid of those in need and encourage others to do the same.  Elevate the people in your community who do good.  Make them heroes and celebrities.  Start today. Whether you are 10 or 90, there is some individual or group that would benefit from your voice or your time. This is not about charity, or giving wealth, this is about us all understanding that our participation in the present, the now, is needed, is important, and is required.  We have a role in our collective destinies.

An old philosopher (I am sorry I have forgotten his name, but not his words) said that every decision in life that we make, we make either from a state of fear or love.  I say we have been making decisions from fear lately and this is time to make more confident decisions based on the love of ourselves and our fellow human beings.  It is time to act in our families, our vocations, and our politics in a unifying manner and not a divisive manner.  Instead of having intolerance for another’s view, let’s have intolerance for rigidity.  Demand debate and compromise in the political process. And as for the treasures of our labor, that just distribution of the wealth be the law of the land.

It is 2012 and I do have hope.  Hope, not acted on is hopelessness, don’t you agree?