On the Subject of Fools, and the Fooled

Two things of particular note have just come up in my life: one on the 'macro' level, and one on the micro. First, on the macro:

I weighed in on a conversational thread on the ronpaul.com website, on the subject of the proposed Muslim cultural centre near Ground Zero in NYC, thusly:

"137 responses to “Ron Paul to Sunshine Patriots: Stop Your Demagogy About The NYC Mosque!”

"Stan
"August 23, 2010 at 7:44 pm | Permalink | Reply

"Good points, Dr. Paul (although you did misunderstand the Nancy Pelosi comment, as someone here has pointed out). Yes, people can be stampeded, by people with an agenda (in this case, neocons & their corporate buddies pushing for Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace). But it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it. And there is a perspective here that Muslims will be getting one on America by slipping an if-not-an-outright-mosque-at-least-a-Muslim-dedicated building into the Ground Zero meme (for which many of them feel they have been unfairly blamed & framed). Which feeds into the ‘average’ American’s uneasiness that some changes are afoot that they don’t like or trust.

"One of them is the rise of Islam – and its Sharia law – over and against the basic western Christian/Judeo-Christian cultural position. That is a major threat to their way of life and institutions (already under ‘attack’ by the rise of secularism). And that sense of a threat has been exacerbated by their uneasiness over the man who made his way into the presidency, by charisma, and other impulses going for him, like a desired change in the body politic from what had been going down. But: Is he a Christian or a Muslim? What about all the questions about his background? Why won’t he clear up all those questions, about his birth, and his passport, and his school records, etc. – in sum: Who is he, really? It all has fed into a spirit of paranoia. And then the Muslims come along and want to build something (perceived as) ‘on’ hallowed ground – hallowed to the American experience…

"In short: I feel you were insensitive to these serious and sincere feelings, Dr. Paul. It’s not really about freedom of religion at all, or your vaunted property rights. It’s about sensitivity – and more. If the Christians built their churches on the ‘heathen’ sites they superseded, and the Muslims have done the same sort of thing…

"I trust you see what I am getting at, and what others have tried to convey, also: that you missed the essential point.

"You may feel that your son is not aware enough of the ‘agenda’ of the neocons in stirring up this sort of brouhaha, to serve their own ends. But at least he doesn’t have a tin ear on the matter. Please take another look at this matter, and consider a wider perspective on it than the one you took. Yes, there is truth in what you shared. And there is also error.

"Which there is plenty of on both sides of the issue. A little more light, and a little less heat, would go a long way in moving through this confrontation of two cultures. A dialogue held by a neutral moderator, anyone??"

And what did I get for my pains? One written response, 4 thumbs up, and 40 thumbs down (and maybe counting). The written response:

"Stan, you are a moron."

While we're on the subject, a word about causation: specifically, about the roots of 9/11. Such roots are always all intertwined; but the tap root was, and is, capitalism, and, in this instance, capitalism's imperialistic bent, in its search/voracious hunger for resources, that antagonised the Muslim world in the first place. Was a stick to a hornet's nest, in a piece of the dialectical process unfolding with such culmination in our time.

Capitalism, to give it its due, was a good way to distribute scarce resources; having them go to the resource-ful, first in a free-enterprise mode (until Monopoly began to rear its ugly head, out of that nurturing nest). But it was not the only way that that end could have been accomplished. And, it was, in the event, accomplished in a way that seeded the current global crisis, with the creation of interest-bearing money (needing endless growth to pay off the debt money), and fueled by the concept of fractional-reserve banking. That is, with and by merely materialistic means. Means, which became an end in itself, when 'money' took on a life of its own, and moved from being simply a medium of exchange - in regards to scarce resources, with varying degrees of value - to an object of glorification.

The Christian tradition has a 'take' on this subject, with its parable of how it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

What is that all about? On to my micro level experience.

Last night I was with a small group of 'fresh' (as in freshmen) members newly on their way into 'my' community - the 'spiritual' community I belong to - whom I am being a mentor of sorts to, where the member of the group who was holding the evening's meeting led a meditation on the subject of forgiveness. It brought up some fundamental feelings for me.

The object of the meditation was to think of someone in our lives whom we needed to forgive, for whatever seemingly good reason, and then to move on to trying to access what we may have to forgive in ourselves, as having given fuel to that process. I don't remember the precise steps of the meditation, but I remember what came up for me. And what came up for me was on this subject of, in a word, money; and in the synchronistic context as well of a book that I have been reading recently.

My sharing with the group afterwards went along the following lines. The person I thought of, for the sake of the exercise, that I needed to forgive for something was a person in the community who was constantly harping about money, in the sense of the community not paying its members enough. Brief background. The community of which I am a member - known as the Findhorn Foundation - is an international, nondenominational spiritual community structured as a nonprofit charitable trust, with a trust-deed purpose of engaging in educational programmes of a (roughly) 'religious' nature, with a particular connection with Nature. Our basic motto is Work is Love in Action, ie, our very purpose for being is in the spirit of Service - Service to all those attracted to come here and experience the place, and, through them returning to their daily lives, Service to the Planet, in whatever way they 'land' that intention, in common unity (community) with us. We call ourselves a centre of Light and demonstration, assisting in the transformation of human consciousness on Earth. Our whole reason for being, then, is to Serve; first the individuals who come through here, and through that service, the planet.

It is not to 'make money'. To have a comfortable lifestyle, and existence. To be, then, part of the problem: the rapacious plundering of the planet's resources. Unmindful brutes, soiling our nest. We are here, not to be motivated in our lives by money, but by the principle of Service. And this fellow's constant harping about 'not having enough' personally has been, then, a threat to my belief system - that the answer to the future of life on Earth is to do away with money, ie, with the 'principle' of profit-making, and replace it with the principle of Service. And if we will (once we will??), 'all else will be added unto us' - that mind-shift will open the doors to sufficiency, if not abundance itself. Because people will not be motivated, to give of their best to one another in goods and services, by the opportunity for personal aggrandisement, but by the concept of service to others, in gratitude to our Creator for life with meaning.

So we here in 'my' community are modeling the way of the future, if we can keep the snake of 'money' out of our Eden, and stay true to our roots in Service. And this guy...this - harper... -

simply stands for something in me. I realise.

The part of me that doubts. That we can really do it. On this planet. On this level of existence.

Do 'it': bring spirit to bear, in such a way that we can create an Eden, and take next steps as a race of beings, yes with one foot in the animal world of our nature, but also with a part of our being in connection with the higher realms. As, essentially, spiritual beings having a human experience.

And does that reach exceed our grasp...

So I recognised that that fellow is just a part of me. That I created him in my experience. For a reason.

Not just to recognise that anything 'out there' is just a reflection of something in me.

But to practice forgiveness.

As the final frontier.

To forgive him. (Because he's not really real. Is just a projection.)

And also, finally - ultimately - to forgive myself.

For what.

And that's where the book comes in. Because its message is that we will not gain our immortal reality until we have forgiven ourselves - for the unconscious guilt we carry in our being for separating ourselves from our Source.

For which we have already been forgiven.

Because it wasn't ever real, anyway, to have to be forgiven for.

Was an illusion.

Just part of the process.

Of experiencing the sense of separateness.

In order to return home.

The wiser for the experience.


And thus does the Christian parable of the Prodigal Son come to mind.


Can we do it?

Oh, yeah.

But can we do this other? This superseding of the training wheels of interest-bearing money on the one hand and fractional-reserve banking on the other? This rickety device we are relying on, all unmindful of the Tao?

Remains to be seen.

I think we can.

And I would bet my life on it.

But I see that that fellow is still a part of my reality......


P.S. And I trust that people realise that the population question will take care of itself, once people grok that they will be secured in their old age - as part of the New Order of the Ages (Novus Ordo Seclorum) - and so don't need to propagate to the numbers that they have in the past. So we don't need to resort to population culling scenarios like wars, and famine, and pestilence.
But then what do I know. I'm a moron.
But perhaps we can learn something from The Fool.


*********

Bibliography:

'Your Immortal Reality' by Gary Renard

'The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy's Death Spiral From Greece to the United States' by David DeGraw; ampedstatus.com