(As further to my mentioning in a very recent blog of my disgust with various machinations of the federal government in America, contrary to the spirit of the founding of the nation)1
It was 1973, and about the same time as David Wilcock was being born on the other side of the continent, whose mother had had dreams and visions telling her that her child would be a "spiritual leader," and who would end up writing a book called The Ascension Mysteries, I was driving down towards the L.A. area to begin a new chapter in my adult's life. I had quit my job - as the assistant manager at a small furniture factory in the East Bay area - in disgust; not at the job itself - I enjoyed it, having ‘worked my way’ up to it from being the Fabric Dept. guy who prepared (measuring out) the material for the (cutting and fitting) jobs, for both chairs and sofas - but because I, a staunch believer in the federal constitutional republic of the U.S.A. - a special nation, set up amongst all the nations of the planet to prepare the way for The New to come in (the details of which I didn’t know, didn’t care, didn’t need to; only knew that it was a’comin’ in; knew because it was the reason why I had incarnated at this time) - was being forced, as said asst. mgr., to apply regulations handed down from the federal government, under what was called OSHA - the Occupational Safety And Health Act - to the shop floor of a business that the federal government had no business regulating to that extent, to my way of thinking, and understanding of the Constitution.2
So I was taking this federal ukase very personally, being a staunch American citizen and all. And chose not to go along with it. By quitting my job (with a warning note to my boss, a part owner of the business, that he and other small business owners like him needed to start making a stand against the incursions of the federal government where it had no legal business sticking its long nose in, or there would be no stopping the Big Brother juggernaut, and the federal constitutional Republic of the U.S.A. would disappear into the ogre’s maw. Or words to that effect).
That was the first practical step I took in rebellion against the encroachment of the federal government deeper into our daily lives. But I was far from through, in my sole, citizen’a protest. Because I had had it up to my disjointed nose by then anyway, especially with the federal government attempting at that time as well to limit the dosage strength of vitamin supplements that the public could purchase OTC. (To keep us from possibly dangerously self-medicating ourselves, don’t you see. Actually, as competition to the pharmaceutical industry. Which wants to sell us its products for our colds, e.g. Not let us prevent ourselves from getting them in the first place, or treating them by/for ourselves if we do catch them. Thus hurting their profits - and the investments of their stockholders - in the process.) And so, having had enough of Big Brother’s antics, feeling at the end of my bodily tether (and near exploding in indignation all over the place), and wondering why the general public wasn't more aware of what was going on in their country, I calmly cleaned out my flat, put most of my belongings in a Salvation Army collection container, and went to downtown Oakland, intending to engage in an act of ‘civil disobedience’ protest - somewhat akin to H.D.Thoreau - by throwing a stone through the window of the local office of the FDA.
I had announced my intention in a Letter to the Editor of the Oakland Tribune,3 so that as it turned out I was met by some authorities when I arrived. But as it further turned out, they had moved; and I was urged by said authorities (I don’t know who they were; they were not in uniform) to give up on my quixotic quest. In the event, I chose not to; and to make the immediately ensuing part of my story short, I chose another federal office to make my symbolic act of objection at (as I recall, it was the IRS). Broke a small pane of glass in its entranceway with the half-brick that I was carrying for the occasion. (In my day pack; with a change of underpants and a T-shirt in it, which was what my belongings had been downsized to, apart from the clothes that I was wearing.) Calmly waited for the arrest that was soon forthcoming; and was driven across the Bay to jail in San Francisco for my pains.
Where I was interviewed, on tape, by a couple of plainclothesmen, whom I never found out the jurisdiction of. Told my story, of why I wanted to have my day in court. It was not to be: Instead, I spent the night in jail; was taken the next day back across the Bay to a small holding jail in Oakland; and after a short while, wondering what was going on, was simply released from there (obviously having been figured as the equivalent of a Harmless Eccentric),4 to go my way. Wherever that might be, and what doing..
In the event, I ended up staying, as an invited guest, with my sister-in-law and her family, and new husband (a couple of years after the death of my brother; in a quixotic quest of his own. Must have run in the family), for awhile, until a) I got back on my feet financially (being a Fuller Brush man. Yes, they still had them in those days - along with Avon Calling ladies), and b) I happened to get an offer from an old friend to come down to Hollywood and stay at his place while we tried to develop some properties, his and mine, for films. I engaged in that pursuit with him for awhile, and, when nothing of ours was getting off the ground, moved out, and got a job at a wholesale fabric business, in their Customer Service department (a link I cultivated from my days up north in the small furniture business). Where I worked for a few years, when the opportunity came my way to go join the spiritual community in the north of Scotland that I referred to in the footnote above. Which was just as well, inasmuch as I was facing another opportunity to have my day in court; and The System may well have been too stacked against me for me to have any choice but to go to prison for my beliefs.5
This particular issue had to do with how the federal government had seduced the public into believing that Federal Reserve Notes were actually dollars, which are - it turns out, inconveniently for the Feds - defined in the federal government’s very own statutes, as the equivalent of a certain amount of silver. When Nixon took the U.S. currency off the gold standard, he broke the link with precious metals as backing, and left the public a) holding the bag (ever heard of buying ‘a pig in a poke’?), and b) with the opportunity to make a legal stand against the machinations of the Money Boys. Which opportunity I chose to take up, by refusing (in a legal way) to have my paycheck automatically deducted for withholding tax, until the federal government allowed me to be paid in legal dollars. It was part of the scenario of s group of people called the Tax Resisters’ League, or some such, whose worthy advices I was following, when the opportunity came my way to leave this sorry state of affairs behind, and proceed more directly on my spiritual path.
Which has led to where I am penning these words now. As I wait patiently to make my mark, on the larger scheme of things, than the best-laid schemes of mice and men that have been going on. For long enough, now.
For far, far, long enough now.
But, time will tell.
As it does everything. In
The End.
—
footnotes:
1 To all those who have been busy traducing the memory of the Founding Fathers of this nation, and thus attempting to cut the sense of loyalty of Americans to their federal constitutional republic, I say:
‘Thank you for self-identifying yourselves, you New World Order bandits. We can pick you off one by one now.’
2 Yes, we dealt with ‘interstate commerce’ - with our business engaged in both California and Arizona. But that didn’t mean that the federal government could regulate all aspects of our business. The Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution only covered - was meant to cover - such things as the safety of the business’s interstate product, as far as I was concerned, and ever knew about before. ‘Safety and health’ matters of the workers was a matter between the state governments and the businesses therein, and any union that might be involved (as it was in our case). But the federal government appeared to be attempting to stick its nose in all aspects of our lives in this country; thus turning it into a centralized form of government. Not a federal form.
On our way to where we are now: On the verge of the corporate-government complex running everything economically in the nation; decreeing power over everything that affects ’the bottom line’ - “affects investment…impacts their profits”. So: No more State laws against GMOs (or even labeling requirements that might lead the public to think that there was anything wrong with those products), or allowing on the ‘market” - or even advertising of - natural products in competition with pharmaceutical products, that might lead the public to think that there might be something wrong with the drug companies’ products; and so forth and so on.
Pure fascism, in other words. 1984 a little late, is all. But better late than never, say the New World Order pushers. So close now to their end game that they can smell it, in the air. Like a male dog sniffing a female dog in heat. Rutting time.
They think. But to continue.
3 Which I had contributed many a letter to over the four years that I had lived in the area, almost all of which they had kindly printed; to the point that I had found out that I had made something of a name for myself among locals in the process.
How I had found that out is another story. Or two.
4 A term t take from what we members of the spiritual community over in Scotland that I ended up joining a few years later were called by the Home Office, and us international members allowed to remain there as, undisturbed.
5 Fortunately, somewhere in that time period I had come across, in my widespread readings, the works and story of Sri Aurobindo, an East Indian man who in his younger years was imprisoned for his beliefs - in his case, wanting freedom for India from England - and while in prison, had a ‘change of heart,’ in the sense of realizing that the answer was not to be found in violence but in spirituality, and came out to go found a spiritual community/ashram of his own. So I was in good company, as it were.
N.B. I almost went to go join that community, such was the state of my own mind at the time. But Fate intervened - as they say - in the form of the need of a relative of mine for some financial assistance right at that time. So I passed. And am, in hindsight, glad that I did; for the community that I ended up going to suited me far better than a devotional kind of spiritual community. I could be my own person, not some self-forced devotee. In Service to Others. Not to a guru.
In the event, a spiritual community grew up near his ashram, in the south of India, after his death, that was more to my liking, rather than an ashram-style community. Called Auroville, and loossly based on his teachings, it became a sister community to the one that I ended up joining - Findhorn, in the north of Scotland. More accurately, the Findhorn Foundation. A non-profit Trust, with a strong connection with Nature.
Another story.
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