Friday 20 August 2010

America is For a Reason

At an early stage of my spiritual journey in life - starting to be engaged with in earnest during my junior year in university - I spent some time looking into the curious historical reports of a wise white male Teacher appearing in the Americas, and instructing the peoples in agriculture, and living in harmony with each other and the earth, and so forth. What was that all about? I wondered. It apparently well predated the time of the Spanish conquistadores, and the Catholic Church priests that accompanied them, in their conquest - attempted conquest - of the New (to them) World. One theory was that the prototype for such a personage in what has become present-day America and for Quetzalcoatl/Kukulcan in Central America (and to some extent Viracocha in South America; although he was much more of a creator god) was an early apostle, having traveled to that part of the world to 'save' the heathen. (How he would have known about it was a further question.) Another theory was that espoused by 'the Mormons' - the church I was born into, and researched more closely due to my 'awakening' in university, and finally left on the basis of my research: that it was in point of fact Jesus Himself, having transported Himself (somehow) to this part of the world to spread His message further. (And left them with the sense that He would return. And walked away on the water. For how else could He have gotten there?...) For whatever actual historical reasons for the reports from the indigenous peoples themselves, it was an intriguing 'message'. And its investigation caused me to come across the idea/concept of Aztlan: the home base for the peoples who became known to the wider world culture as the Aztecs.

No one knew precisely where this land/area was; at least according to all the books on these matters that I read. But there was a general sense that it was from north of present-day Mexico, somewhere. And I see (from reports out of Arizona, where 'the radicals' are gaining a firm foothold in the school system; that initiative now under major governmental reactive response) that the present-day movement called La Raza places it precisely: the larger part of southwest America, stretching over several states (including my growing-up state of California). Which the more radical of the adherents of the concept of La Raza - The Race - want to take back over, and incorporate into a Larger Mexico. (Somewhat akin to the Israeli-Zionist concept of Eretz Israel.)

Thanks, no thanks.

It's fine to have pride in one's roots. And I have pride in my roots as an American by birth; so I know the feeling. But there's a larger picture, here. One vaguely assumed under the concept of time; of progress; of, in a word, development. Historical, social, economical, political - and spiritual - development.

America is for a reason, folks: for The People to be free - in line with their essence, as being free moral agents - from unlimited government, and as an example thereof. Also, to be free from its control by vested interests; as the military-industrial complex, and the pharmaceutical industry, and other corporations, are engaging in today.** That's why the American constitutional system of government - a federal form of government - was set up to have elections for the lower legislative House every two years: to try to help keep The People in charge of their government, in a more hands-on way than with longer terms of governmental service for representatives of The People. Unfortunately, things haven't quite worked out that way. But that is, and was, the purpose of the template. Government 'of, by, and for The People', as Lincoln intoned so meaningfully, and clearly, at Gettysburg; that such government "shall not perish from the Earth".

Too many people today are in too great a rush to break down the American experiment in self-government - from both the Left and the Right. Those voices should not be listened to - or rather, should be listened to, for the awareness of that presence in the human psyche; but not acted on. America still has a work to do.

Help it be about that better business; and we will all benefit from the experience.




* Interestingly, one 'take' on His departure was that it was on 'a raft of snakes'. Not a bad descriptive attempt to convey a sense of a craft with fire plumes coming out of it...Now, they could have figured that their great Teacher, appearing as if out of nowhere, came to them from the sky in the first place, and went away the same way. But with the added description of something like snakes....
Chariots of the Gods, anyone??
And Zecharia Sitchin's learned 'take' on all this???...


** Thanks, Ike, for the early warning on this front. A young American living in Southern California at the time heard you, and opened his eyes a little wider in response, at what all was going on in the world in his time and place.

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