Why Gun Control is a Necessary Step in Human Evolution

Let's jump right into this, starting with the more surface issues surrounding guns and arguments against gun control and moving into the deeper, more spiritual concerns over these issues.

An opening statement: so many people in the United States cling to their guns as if these "weapons of mass destruction" were their very lives. These hunks of metal become more precious to them than their good sense and even other human beings.

I don't know if any of you watched the Democratic Primary Presidential Debate that used a YouTube format for voters to ask candidates questions. Well, there was one obviously deranged man, masked on camera, holding up two assault rifles asking what the candidates would do to protect these his "babies." Joe Biden was the first candidate asked to respond, and his response touched my heart. Without missing a beat, he said, "If those are his babies, then that is just sad." The audience at the debate started to laugh along with the moderator, but Senator Biden's earnest eyes and mouth matched the sentiment he expressed. With a world-weary face and voice, he maintained the sad state of the world in which guns are more desperately protected than people.

This is the mentality we are dealing with here, and I want to explain why this mentality does not serve us (it should be obvious based on the fact that guns are made for the very act of destruction), and why it is, in my opinion, imperative for our physical and spiritual evolution to implement gun control laws until such time as our spiritual progress has caught up with the progress of our technologies (guns are a form of technology that make it more efficient to kill) of potential destruction.

Let's start with the cliche "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." That is correct that people kill people. Gun control advocates never argue that a gun just got up by itself and shot someone, so I find it strange that gun lovers use this quip to defend their passion for dangerous weapons.

However, while guns themselves do not have a mind of their own to premeditatedly kill people, the people who own and have easy access to guns do. And this mind, I'm sorry to say, is sadly undeveloped, unconscious, and uncontrollable in most people. Guns make it simpler to kill someone. They take much of the physical effort out of having to put one's hands on another and choke them or stab them or use some other horrendous method of murder against them. Furthermore, guns also provide one safe distance from the person one would kill, making the act of murder a bit less personal, helping to ensure that the killer does not have to watch the life fade from the eyes of his/her human prey. Make no mistake, this lessened physical effort and distance is a major reason why gun-weilding societies are also violent, murderous ones.

Look around, America. We are such a society.

Let's use an example to prove this. If I want to go to my friend's house who lives across town or even a few block away, I am much more likely to do so if I have that technology of more efficient transportation called an automobile than if I had to physically exert myself through walking. I did not say the car guaranteed I would go to my friend's house nor that the effort of walking would keep me from going, but that the presence of an automobile increases the likelihood that I would make the trip. Guns work in the same way. If my anger is in an exacerbated condition over being wronged, I am much more prone to take fatal action against that person if I am in possession of, or if I can easily obtain, a gun.

Taking the metaphor a step further, if I get in my car, I only have to drive a block or so to see just how much more distant, and thus rude and inconsiderate, people are capable of becoming on the road because they have the distance from the others on the road created by the metal box of the car itself. It would be rare that someone would dare cut in front of people waiting in a line at a store! Why? Because the persons whom one stepped in front of would immediately protest and demand that our line-breaker move to the back. Yet, many drivers who would not cause the inconvenience of cutting in a line in front of others who were already there do cut dangerously in and out of lines of cars on roads all over the world. Do you understand that? Their behavior in their cars is more dangerous than it would be to do something similar in person, but they are more prone to this dangerous action because of the relative sanctuary created by the distance of cars. If you cut in front of me in a car, I can only yell at you inside my car, but you do not have to deal with my frustration in any real personal manner.

Unless, of course, I have a gun.

We can see how this analogy applies to the relatively comfortable distance a gun allows a killer to remain from his victim.

I read letters to the editor from citizens asserting that the world is too violent and crazy to give up their rights to carry guns. Some have even confessed that, if they lived in a perfect world, they would have no need for their guns. There is much folly in this argument. First, I know a person who was born and resides in a country in which gun ownership is virtually nonexistent. This person has reported that the murder rate for this country is virtually nonexistent as well. (Ironically, this statistic also poses as a repudiation of the first argument that "guns don't kill people; people kill people.) The citizens of this country do not have to walk around in fear of getting shot, so their fearless shunning of guns is reinforced with less reasons to be afraid. Fearlessness beget fearlessness.

What's more, it is countries like this one that prove just how frightened this society that is mine really is. My God, brothers and sisters, what has you feeling so guilty, so alone, so ashamed, so sad, so greedy that you close yourself off from the rest of the world in your house or your car cradling your gun for safety? How is this idea of "survival of the fittest" working out for you? Because even when you have "survived" and proved yourself to be the "fittest," you are still afraid of the next perceived threat to your existence. Have you ever really reflected whether this is the life you would want to choose for yourself? Do you really want to be responsible for killing or destroying others in order to exist yourself?

This is where we move deeper into the discussion. Let me assure those of you that think you must have a gun to protect yourself from a dangerous world that it is your very belief that you have to protect yourself from the world that makes the world dangerous. You hoard possessions and shut out those in need to protect the pleasure you derive from these possessions, and then wonder why the poor and desolate would try to steal from you. Your need to protect yourself and what you would possess would even lead you to kill a thief even if the thief posed no fatal threat to your physical survival. This is just one example, but the point is that your fear is the underlying imminent threat that you claim to want protection from, but you use tools as useless as guns to protect you from it. If you shoot someone who wants to shoot you, are you now going to feel safe? Or do you have to live with the guilt and then the fear of that same fate becoming of you someday? Do your guns make you feel safe? Are you suddenly covered in some invisible shield of invincibility when your guns are in your hand? No. You are still in danger physically, and really the danger is more acute, when you have a gun. Moreover, you are in a dire and miserable condition mentally and spiritually with a gun.

This is because you are demonstrating your desperate belief in the lie that you bring safety through harm. If you own a gun for protection, you think that you can find relative security through the potential for violence that it can inflict on any unwanted intruder into your life. Many gun owners in America are Christians, so allow me to make a point using Jesus. Jesus was a man of inner peace because of his inner connection to God. Therefore, Jesus did not force violence onto any human being. His peace begat peace in the hearts of many men and women and still does so today. Yet, to those who believed in violence, his message of peace made them afraid. So they used the inner violence within them to concoct their scheme to kill him. Yet, even then, Jesus did them no harm. How was he able to transcend that desperate human desire to protect his physical existence? He knew, without hesitation or doubt, that his physical existence was the smallest part of who he really was, and he knew on a deeply personal level the indestructibility of the Soul that makes up the whole of who he really is (that's right, I went from past to present tense because Jesus is even if his body is not). He would thus not sell the whole for the smallest part of the whole by killing or harming those who would harm him. He said with his actions, "I will not bring forth anymore darkness into this world." Until each of us have the courage to do this, even in the face of those who would oppress us with murder, we are just contributing to the destructive cycle. Our violence will breed more violence and our destruction will breed more destruction.

A first step toward demonstrating that courage is to let go of this destructive possession to which we hold so sickeningly. We see the death these weapons have created all around us and on the news every single day in this country. Insanely, we grasp our guns all the tighter. This is the state of mind of people, and it informs just how ill-equipped we are mentally and spiritually at this point in our evolution to tote and wield such machines of murder. Yet, through this spiritually-motivated action, we step onto the path of proving to ourselves that we are indeed indestructible - not because of any weapon but because of the nature of the Soul itself. Our fearlessness will breed more fearlessness rather than our current state of fear overpopulating the planet with more of itself.

It is time for each of us to let go of this most destructive of possessions in order to begin walking the path toward letting go of all possession, because to possess is to fear being dispossessed. Who knows? Perhaps one day down the evolutionary line, when we have transcended this base lie of the ego that there is such a thing as "survival of the fittest," that there is such a thing as death or "the end of me," maybe then we will see some purposeful use for guns (I doubt it, but who knows). But until then, the first step toward getting us through this fear - that is the ONLY real threat in and to you and this world - is to take the action of someone who is fearless.

Create the perfect world - through your actions - that you say would give you no need to own a gun:

Lay down your guns, and pick up your broken hearts.

Contemplating the Drive Home

Today it's about going home. The wind shivers the plants and trees into a peaceful dance, a gyrating celebration of the coming rain. I dance with them.

Are you afraid of the weather? Does it look yucky to you? I welcome the deep rolling sounds of the clouds above. They sing me home. I karaoke in the car with them.

The drip drops wet the wood of the deck outside my window. Wash me home. I have become so abstract lately, and now I wish to be tangible. This body has no substance. I wash away with the rain.

Carry me through one branch after another. Slide me softly around forms of all kinds. Today, when the day looks like night, it's about going home.

I Cannot Stand

I may say there's never enough time in the day, but I would be lying. Each day, I waste so much time. Actually, I do not experience that, in reality, there is any such thing as "wasted time" as all moments hold an opportunity to transcend whatever one is doing in those moments. Thus, I must contextualize this: I "waste" so much time not doing what I say that I would like to commit myself to doing. The time may be well-spent with my kids, cuddling with my wife before a good movie, playing basketball, keeping myself informed of current events in USAToday or through email and forums, hell, even writing this blog. All of these seem to me to be worthy expenditures of my time (why else would I be involved in these activities if I did not believe this).

The point is, though, that I have committed myself to even something as simple as writing on my eJournal at least 15 minutes per day during the work day. Now, today, this blog entry may satisfy that commitment, but overall, for the past two weeks, I have only fulfilled my desire twice. Mind you, these have been two extremely busy weeks at work as I have been involved in an audit of one of my company's billing centers as well as helping my staff with questions and issues encountered as they audit other billing centers.

So what. How can I draw to myself more of the time for the activity I love doing the most (writing) if I am not willing to meet a very minute requirement to write at least 15 minutes per day in my journal at work and write at least one hour per night for six days a week. I feel that if I just maintain this consistent focus on writing, I will "attract" more writing time to myself. I will have created a habit of writing that will only increase my desire to continue to create more opportunities for myself to write. This is why, two weeks ago, I made a renewed commitment to make the time for writing each day no matter what was going on in the day.

Don't get me wrong, here. I am not beating myself up over this as that would only be counter-productive. I rarely plan anything anymore because those plans are often the source of my pains. This commitment is not a plan. It is an intention. A preference, if you will. I am merely curious as to why I allow myself to be so distracted and consumed with all the "doings" in my daily life to the point that I will not even take the 1 hour and 15 minutes each day I have said I will give myself to write. This is strange to me. Am I so divided within myself that I cannot do what I say I will do even for me? If I cannot keep my commitments to myself, what right have I to expect others to believe in my commitments? This lack of focus and consistency seems to make a bigger statement about who I am choosing to be.

That's right. There is a larger picture to this. Friends, family - I commit myself everyday to staying awake, aware, and present to each moment, and almost before the end of the sentence of the thought that is making the commitment comes to an end, I have travelled through time and space to some same old replay of the past or some same old imagining of the future. Rarely do I keep myself here in this moment, in this paragraph, in this sentence, in this word, or in this very letter. If I cannot fulfill even this most simple (but paradoxically complex and profound) commitment to myself and the world, then what business do I have making other commitments to, say, write a bit each day?

It is always a question of what do I want more? Do I want to be so caught up in the ebb and flow of events happening around me each day, or do I desire the God-centered life? While my answer in words may say the latter, my answer in deeds blaringly proclaim a focus on the former. I cannot start all this talk about consistently writing if I cannot first be consistency in my intent to live fully within each present moment. Well, I can talk about this, but that is all it will be: talk. Talk has its purpose, but it is action in pursuit of one's commitment that reveals one's true choice in any matter.

I choose first to be with myself, with God, in each moment. That is the primary purpose of each of the remaining moments of my life in this body. All other intentions will come secondary to that, and, my choice, in this very moment, is to first master my commitment to this Original Intention before I make promises to myself and others I cannot keep. Only through mastering the Original Commitment can I then make whole the divided parts of myself so that what I say, I do, and what I do, I do out of pure choice, and thus, Pure Love.

Why Not Do Nothing?

I have to confess that I have, throughout my life, been one of the world's worst when it comes to this topic.

This past weekend and early this week, my daughter and I decided to put on a protest of sorts against the big rodeo event that travels through Ogden, UT each year as a part of the Pioneer Days celebrations. (For the negative one readers who look at this blog site, Pioneer Days is a Utah state celebration of the Mormons who settled in the state in the 19th century.) I thought that it was finally time for me to begin to express myself on the topics about which I am passionate, and animal rights is one of those topics. The animals in rodeos today are typically tame by nature (unlike the 19th century beginnings of the rodeo when the animals used were truly wild and there may have been a certain danger, if not stupidity, element involved for the cowboys participating in the events), which means that, in order to induce the bucking, shucking, and generally fucking ridiculous behavior of the bulls, horses, and cattle seen in rodeos, electric prods, spurs, and bucking straps (many times painfully rigged with sharp points and squeezing and pinching the genitals of the poor animals) must be used. All these tools of pain and torture come in handy when it comes to making the "cowboys" look brave and skilled, but, as you can see, it is all just a sham. Like wrestling except in wrestling there are no innocent victims.

It is obvious to see the innocent, choiceless victims in any rodeo are the animals who endure such tools of torture for our barbaric entertainment. Well...it is obvious to me, anyway. Really, I think it is obvious to all of us, but we would just rather ignore that little voice that we have all but silenced inside us that asks us is this what we are really all about as the most powerful species on earth? Hmmm. These provoking tools of torture are not the only negative experience for the animals in rodeos. No, it gets worse:

Horses have been enraged by the prods so much that they burst out the gates at dangerous speeds and have crashed into the fences and had their necks broken on the spot. Bulls are wrestled down with violent jerks of the neck and have been left to suffer with broken necks for almost half an hour before they were euthanized. Calf roping (in my opinion, the most disgusting of the events at a rodeo) involves child cattle being strangled by ropes flung round their newborn necks, which are then ripped backward along with the rest of their bodies all while laughing and indifferent spectators look on. We are a cold race, indeed.

All my life, I have had a voice. I have had ideas. I have had feelings and understandings surrounding how I choose to live my life and who I choose to be. Yet, for much of my time on this planet, I have been taught to fear giving expression to that voice, those ideas and feelings and understandings. People will use your truth to hurt you, many have said to me. People don't care what you have to say, some have implied to me. It won't matter if you do speak up; people don't listen and you can't change them, we have all apathetically uttered in our minds at one point or another (and usually after all the years of being taught the other two statements).

What is the point, then, huh? Why even bother at all to make the attempt to raise awareness through one's compassion and love and passion for anyone or anything at all. Why not just sit back, let the world continue to crash and burn while minding my own business? No one cares, anyway, right?

Let's take this a step further. Let's talk about some of the spiritual insights that have spread into this world, and look at how many are interpreting these insights. There is an idea that, even if it is not necessarily new, is still revolutionary because so few of us have actually adopted its practice into our lives. This is the idea that there is nothing we have to do in order to be anything we choose. To give a much too brief breakdown of this concept, what is attempting to be conveyed with this statement is that doing is never required to produce being.

For instance, I love to write. When I write, I feel creative, I feel inspiring, I feel exciting, I feel boundless, I feel passion, I feel love. Yet, do I have to do this thing called writing in order to feel these emotions and energies? That is an interesting question. Let's see, I have often (as this blog will attest) detested the work I do to support myself. Yet, over the past month or so, I have been performing a little experiment with me as the guinea pig: I have made the conscious decision that I was going to feel creative, inspiring, exciting, boundless, passionate, and loving while doing the tasks at work that I have all too readily judged to be mundane and useless. What have I found?

Only that I can be all of these energies while doing any menial job. I am learning each day that what I am doing makes no difference at all in what I decide to be. Sure, throughout much of my past life, I have chosen to be reactionary, which means that I was choosing to feel a certain way based on what was happening to me or what I was doing. However, I have read and am now experiencing that this is not the only choice I have. I am discovering that, in fact, it is this choice to be reactionary that nauseates the gut, makes the mind feel ill, and shrinks the heart from most new experiences.

Hmmm. How does this affect the answer to the question, "What is the point of doing anything when no one listens or cares, when people will only use my truth to hurt me, when I can just sit here and be happy and content even while doing nothing to raise awareness in others who are suffering through this life?" I have fallen into this trap, my friends. I have told myself that I do not have to do anything to get involved in making the world a more peaceful and loving experience for all. This statement is true. However, if I am truly being Love or Happy or Peaceful, I have seen for myself that I will choose to do activities that come from these states of being in order to promote more of that beingness in this world.

There is a world of difference between choosing to do something and having to do something.

But before we go there, let me move back just a bit. The trap with regard to being and doing that I referred to above has to do with the fact that most of us have spent our lives doing in order to be something. We do the thing called work hard in order to be abundant. We do the thing called buying a house in order to be secure. We do the thing called tucking in the children in order to be relaxed (that last one is for all us parents out there - lol). Then, we here a revolutionary concept like there is nothing we have to do in order to be anything we choose, and it becomes such a relief to the worn out senses (from all the incessant doing we inflict on ourselves) to hear this that you get sucked into a spiritual apathy as you take a deep breath and essentially decide to ignore all the pain and suffering surrounding you because you are being, man, and that's all you have to do. Right on, brother, give me some skin with yo' funky being self.

This is the trap, and oh is it a deep one. While I say I am being content and peaceful, I watch the world fall apart around me, and I feel something tugging at me about this - something perhaps asking me to act (or do) from my being state of contentment and peace, but now I have a rationalization for why I do not have to listen to this guidance. Now I feel more justified in not letting my voice be heard because not only does nobody listen, but I do not have to do anything.

This spiritual rationalization is a fool's gold, I tell you. It is another lie of the ego that has snuck in to your spiritual life and called itself your being. This movement from being forced to do something to realizing that you are at choice in anything you do is not an excuse to withdraw from the world; rather, it is an invitation to truly create a new world altogether. Understanding this choice means that now you will make the choice to be happy, peaceful, wise, etc., and that you will then do things that come from those states of being. No longer will you be tied to what you are doing in order to produce any state of being, which makes what you are doing that much more powerful, that much more loving.

There are well-documented cases of this. Jesus and Buddha both found the truth that being always precedes doing, but that did not mean that they quit doing. It just meant that what they were doing became invested with the compassion and grace of True Love. Why? Because they did not have to do anything to reveal to others what they had found, but they chose to do something anyway. There are, of course, many others throughout the history of humanity and even in our contemporary society who have reversed this perspective of doing in order to achieve some state of being. In fact, we all have the opportunity to do just that, right now.

Here, however, I want to tie this back into the beginning of this post. I was relating my thoughts on the rodeo and a protest of a local rodeo show that was just here in my town. I knew the rodeo was coming, and I was deathly afraid of what this gentle guiding feeling was asking me to do. My God, this "voice" could not be serious! What it was asking me to do felt like a suicide of sorts. It asked me, unequivically, to lend my voice (that I have spent much of my life repressing at the admonition of others - parents, bosses, teachers, and the like) to raise awareness of the voiceless suffering of these poor animals used for human amusement in rodeos.

I quivered nervously within and without for days as this idea of demonstrating at the rodeo continued to surface above the shallow waves of my egoic mind. People would ridicule me. They would curse me. They would look at me funny. They would hate me. They would ignore me. I would be irrelevant to them. And to go through all of that with little hope of actually getting anyone to change their views on the rodeo! It was a horror to behold this conflict in my mind.

Thus, I delayed taking action until I could ignore the question no longer: How can I claim to trust God if I will not follow where He/She leads me? I started researching how to put on a demonstration. I put up signs (although too late) at work asking others to join me. I got in contact with PETA to try to reach out to other members in the area to join me.

In the end, the only one who came with me into the hostile environment of rodeo-loving human beings was my lovely, kind, and compassionate daughter. I was petrified. I did not want anyone to get violent over our attempt to raise consciousness and do something to hurt her. I did not want to get hurt and not be able to look out for her. But by God, we stood out there anyway, just the two of us, without being tied to the result of how many people would actually listen to our loving plea for everyone to consider the suffering the animals in the rodeo experience.

We did this three nights. We held up picket signs at busy intersections where rodeo patrons had to turn to get to the rodeo. We set a table to hand out leaflets near one of the rodeo ticket gates at the stadium where the rodeo was taking place and while the rodeo was going on. We walked the picket signs around the rodeo grounds, with the rodeo workers spitting at our feet, with women (yes, only women did this, not the men - I find it interesting and worth another whole posting to observe how much women have assimilated themselves into taking on the brute characteristics of testosterone-driven men) yelling at me and cursing me, calling me a "fucking faggot" and other nonsense, and when no one would take any leaflets to learn more about the cruelty to animals perpetrated by rodeos, we walked around putting the leaflets under the windshield wipers of the cars and trucks of those attending the rodeo in hopes that maybe some of the people, when removing the leaflets from their windshields would actually take a second to look at the information about the tortures endured by these animals. We did all of this, and I tell you that, although I was frightened each night we were there, I was also evolving. I was remembering what life was like before I let my voice be taken away by harsh step-parents, foolish teachers, controlling religion, and enslaving bosses. I connected, once again, with that eternal essence of Love and Goodness within me that I have been so ashamed of up to now. That shame led me to keep silent in the face of atrocities. That shame led me to fear the wrath of those who would disagree with me. That shame led me to run from the rejection of people who would ridicule my puny position on the matter.

But two of us, a father and his little daughter, stood out there and shined forth more light and brought through themselves more powerful energy of Love than all the masses at that rodeo combined.

I decided to be trusting of my Soul, and it led me to do what would fulfill the experience of that trust. I am humbled and grateful for the truth this experience revealed to me about myself and about my daughter.

Pretentious

Is there anybody as lonely as me? Is there any life as pointless as mine? How many words have I deleted to hide from all the chasm opening wide shadowing over and engulfing my insides? They creep into the words: the fears I must hide. There are lies to cover the lies that lied about the liar who resides now in a desert of dried waste. Why even bother with anything at all?

The sun, that last ray of hope, falls from the sky, leaving me here so alone. I walk for no reason where no reason would wander. Head down and eyes closed, I cross the traffic in the road, hoping against hope that no one will see me until it's too late. The other side is better now that I left it. But now I am here, and no relentless longing will change this fact.

What? I've never left this house? All have walked out on me. No one believes in anything anymore. Everyone hates the one who stands up and proclaims, "Enough!" It is a most lonely existence. Diligence will be punished by insidious behaviors even from the ones professing their love. I find it hard not to hate.

I can just sit here and loathe you for a lifetime. Your treachery runs so deep; the disdain in you gives rise to the contempt in me. DON'T YOU FUCKING TALK TO ME WITH THAT TONE IN YOUR VOICE! I can yell louder, punch harder, claw deeper than you. What's burning you is what's positively consuming me. I would gladly tear your face from your skull to show you the error of your ways.

It is just the loneliest feeling to have to die all by oneself. No one else will join me. Everyone else gets to keep living just the way they are. I am afraid, but one look at the decaying of your face tells me that to live your life is worse than death. Perhaps you will hold close my memory once I am gone. Because I am dead does not mean you must remember me fondly. The legacy of the dead buries the dead even as I die.

The Jenius of Joyce

James Joyce is the author who has had perhaps the most influence on me. He is a master of language and prose, and his work is one of the great artistic gifts given to the world. I just read the short story "The Boarding House" in his Dubliners collection, and this is how I want to write. No, I do not wish to imitate him, but I do desire to hold such a command of the language, the characters, and the reader's emotions that no one can deny that when I am writing, I am in the hands of Love. His portraits of isolation, internal and external conflict, and suffocating cultural and religious mores and taboos stimulate an acute vision of the nightmarish landscape we have created for ourselves in the modern world. Sure, his works - such as the well known and groundbreaking novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses - are not filled with the plot driven adventures of most popular works of today, but as one who has read these narratives with a close attention to the love that went into Joyce's craft, I can say that one feels more alive and observant after traversing the small-minded Irish world - that embodies the prejudices and corruptions of the world at large - Joyce brings to life in his works.

"The Boarding House" is a short, but excellent example of the power of Joyce's art. Another short story example would be "The Dead," perhaps one of the most analyzed short stories in the English language. Each reading of it reveals more of the genius that went into its creation. To write with such a dedication to the purity of the art of the craft is my chief concern when I put pen to paper. Joyce shows me what is possible if I but remove the obstacles to the creative nature within me.

Thank you, Mr. Joyce, whereever you are now out in the Cosmos. Your example has been inspiring for over 6 years to this fledgling artist.

Murder in Cold Love

When, in but a few moments, you die,
let yourself flow into me.
I will be standing here watching you -
waiting for your comfort.
You have suffered long enough in hands
of cold, life-stealing blood
where you squirm and slither asking me
to take you into us.
What you have done has been a blessing
to each and every one,
and that hand that now holds you is your
blessing in return.

Fish Story

I feel a strange energy today about me. I am vital.

I often leave my office desk at lunch, after eating a nice organic, vegan meal, and retreat to the pond that my office building overlooks. There are children out there fishing with lazy parents and grandparents sitting in lawn chairs giving offhand orders to the children about how to cast the line, hook the worm, catch the fish, and kill the fish.

One little boy caught repeatedly during my forty minutes sitting on the dirty pavement beside the pond little fish. Hooked through and airless, each fish was squished between his unkind hands as he removed the hook and flopped the fish indifferently back into the pond.

There have been dead fish on a string floating just off the bank of the pond, left bloated and wasted by the darkness of our minds. Yet, these have not bothered me as much as watching the little brother of the kid catching small fish catch a large fish and let the large fish suffocate to death on the hook. I did not see the suffocation. When the fish was shown to me, it had already passed. The little child, only about 4 or 5, thought nothing of this.

I said a silent prayer for all the fish in the pond. I apologized to them for the indifference we show them when we take their lives for no particular reason. I felt them alive in me, and they were redeemed in their passing: Souls gone on to greater expressions. I promised that I would teach all children possible that killing any creature is never necessary.

Yet, I feel calm about their passing even if I see no need for human beings to bring that about. Nothing is really harmed unless I think it is. I am a strange energy today. I like it. I feel more alive.

It Knows

Put more of it in your mouth. Smush it, crunch it into your face. Chew it barely and swallow. Drown it with something bubbling and burning. Scrape it down your esophagus. Plop it into your stomach. Squeeze it into your bowels. Burst it out your ass.

Sling your money throughout the store. Grope the shiny new objects. Suck them in bulk into your cart. Shush your impatient children. Buy their silence with new things. Place more than you need on the counter. Haggle with the clerk over sales prices. Charge thousands and thousands of dollars. Pay $15.00 per month. Hide your Soul in myriad things.

Stomp upon me loudly. Look indifferent upon my wounds. Trample upon my wisdom. Subdue me to your will. Explode me with your weapons. Gut my life-giving treasures. Pollute me with your cesspools. Cover me in your dead. Drink me from the inside. Stare blank at my magnificent horizons. Unnotice the damage you've done me. Tame me with your desires.

Vomit you from my 'face.

"I Could Really Care Less"

That's quite a hiatus I took from this blog. I know that everyone has been waiting daily with bated breath anticipating the next grand entry from Paul Wilder. Today, I break my silence with a totally irreverent moment I am having right now.

I am not working today. I am here at work. I am sitting on my laptop supplied by my employer. I am surrounded by documents on my desk, all of which probably need my attention in some form or another. I just don't care. It is all irrelevant to me. I cannot, in good conscience, do even one more task today that involves the work for which I am paid.

This morning, I came in and spent about 10 minutes answering a couple of emails. That's it! I've been surfing the web since. And I don't care.

I am sure there is something I should be feeling here about this. Some guilt, some hand-wringing, some underlying sense of dread over what could happen to me for doing nothing, but this fear of doing nothing is just not sinking in today as it has over so many of the past days of my life.

A part of me has even tried to be concerned over the fact that I don't care that I am not going to work even while sitting here at my work desk where I am accustomed to protecting the earnings of the greedy corporate creatures for whom I work. Even that worry quickly faded after a few minutes this morning. I really just don't care.

I wonder if I will ever care again.

I wonder if I care if I will ever care again.

This is a breaking out. I often ask myself, "Self, is it fear that makes your distaste for your job such a pervading part of your life?" The answer I get back is, "Of course it is." Long ago I completely lost interest in this job and in working and/or living within this capitalistic society in which I currently grovel. But I am still here. Thus, it is fear that keeps me here and increases my resentment of the work - that many business enthusiasts would and seem to find complex and challenging - that I find to be so mundane and pointless.

Today, though, I feel different. I feel fear weakening. I am breaking out of my fear on company time. They are paying me to free myself from them. I do not care that I expect them to send me a paycheck to support my family and that I should return their diligence in doing so with my diligence in performing the work for which they pay me.

I have never trusted myself. I have never lived for myself.

(I have to stop right there and state that those last two sentences sound quite selfish. I am being selfish. I know this, and I don't care about that either. By being a false version of selfless, I have become resentful. I have betrayed myself and thus lost my inspiration, my motivation, and my kindness toward others while in the throes of my "selflessness." Now is the moment for me to move into Selfishness. I cannot delay; myself will no wait longer for my fearful ego to let go.)

I have never trusted myself. I have never lived for myself.

I have always been too afraid (so I tell myself) to let others down. On this day, however, I know the truth: I have always been too afraid to let myself down. It is precisely this fear that has let me down time and time again.

I've rationalized this in all ways possible. I have told myself that there is something I need to learn in this situation, which is why I am still with this company. Although a petty rationalization, there is truth in it. I have been here to learn how much I distrust my intuition, how often I doubt my capabilities, how much I fear not knowing what I will do.

Yet, what does it all boil down to? From whence does this fear spring? These are the questions I must resolve to finally take that leap into stepping away from, fearlessly, that which has burdened me for so many days. The answer actually stares me in the face daily, so I know that I am learning none of this, I am merely remembering. Still, I want to confuse the issue; I want to deny this answer; I want to pretend I never heard its wringing in my head. I am afraid to even expose it here on this blog because its implications will force me to let go of an idea I have clung to for many years.

My fear of ending this job that I now resent stems from the truly frightening prospect of losing my family - of facing their judgment for my inability to live up to the deal that I will support them with the food, clothing, and shelter the money from my job affords us. What if they hate me and leave me for being so irresponsible? What if my children are ashamed of their father? What if my wife runs away and never looks back?

Even this outer possibility is only the symptom of what truly terrifies me. I am sickeningly frightened of moving forward without this idea of myself as a caring, loving, family man. I think that the only way to be a caring, loving, family man is to work hard at a job I hate in order to meet the expectations of those in my family. I truly believe that I can only be a good father and husband if the members of my family agree that I am a good husband and father, and they will not agree to that if I quit my job.

Where did I get such a useless idea? When I type it out like that, I understand how ridiculous is my notion of what being loving, caring, and part of a family is all about.

I realize that my fear of losing the image of myself as a responsible provider for my family and my resentment of this job are inexorably linked to one another. I could not have one without the other. I have seen that I can love anything - ANYTHING - that I am doing while coming from a calm, peaceful state of Love. I could end my resentment right now.

I am doing that, in fact. I don't care to be resentful anymore. This is not the cynical carelessness of resentment; this is the lack of fear over any part of me being hurt by my actions one way or the other. For the moment, my fearlessness is over a small aspect of work: I do not care about the fact that I am not working right now. I am not worried about being harmed in anyway by the discovery of my lack of productivity today. I could be fired for even writing on this blog, but I am not afraid of that potential outcome. I am not afraid that getting fired will leave me without this routine source of income that is used to support my family. I feel totally confident that, if I were to get fired for my inaction today, my family and I would be taken care of one way or another.

But I am afraid to take this same "leap" out into the unknown with regard to my own initiative to leave this job. Am I just content to sit here and force someone to choose to fire me? Is that what I am choosing here? It seems to be, at least for today.

When, though, will I step into true Love (read that as "the absence of fear") surrounding this job and thus be able to walk away from what Love tells me deep within my intuition is not fulfilling the outer purpose I have given myself? When will I finally snap the illusory bonds in which I have strapped myself? Love dares me to do it now, but when will I finally succumb to its wonderfully free and frightening vision of my life?

When I choose to, and not a second sooner.

As of this moment, I still do not trust my Soul to lead me to what is in my best interests and therefore what is in the best interests of those I love. Right now, I still cannot surrender to Your whisperings of our shared desire to dare the world to stop Us from realizing our Eternal Emergence into One. Sitting here in this chair, I still cannot walk out and face the judgments of those who are sure to misunderstand, sure to blame, sure to resent me. I am suspicious of You. What is the meaning behind this longing to move out of this current form of doing in which I find myself? I cannot shun this deep dissatisfaction with the job much longer, and I am afraid of what We will do when my rationalizations are no longer strong enough to hold me here in the safe confines of comfortable living and satisfying the expectations of my family. The part of me that is afraid even wonders aloud how You could ever want to put me through such a potentially painful scenario. Why do You want to hurt me?

Or is this a choice I can make to realize more fully that I can never truly be harmed?

I think so.

What will I choose?

Thom Hartmann Newsletter Regarding the Military Commissions Act

Ok, this was the best way I knew to get this letter on here. I am copying and pasting it to my blog. This newsletter comes to me from Thom Hartmann, and it is very detailed in explaining why the Military Commissions Act is something that we as a nation cannot allow to remain in place. Also, I'm sorry if the formatting of his letter has changed due to my pasting it here. However, if you are interested in seeing it with the links to more specific language in this Act, please send me a comment on this blog, and I will forward the email to you. Enjoy, and I hope you are inspired to act just as I am.

Repeal the Military Commissions Act and Restore the Most American Human Right
by Thom Hartmann


"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

-- Winston Churchill

The oldest human right defined in the history of English-speaking civilization is the right to challenge governmental power of arrest and detention through the use of habeas corpus laws. Habeas corpus is roughly Latin for "hold the body," and is used in law to mean that a government must either charge a person with a crime and allow them due process, or let them go free.

Last autumn the House and Senate passed, and the President signed into law The United States Military Commissions Act of 2006, which explicitly strips both aliens and Americans of the right of habeas corpus, the right of recourse to the courts (as provided in the Fifth through Eighth Amendments to the Constitution), and denies appeal through mechanisms of the Geneva Conventions to those designated to lose these rights by the President.

As the most conspicuous part of a series of laws which have fundamentally changed the nature of this nation, moving us from a democratic republic to a state under the rule of a "unitary" President, the Military Commissions Act should be immediately reversed. When a demi-tyrant like Vladimir Putin begins lecturing the United States, as he did just a few days ago, on how our various behaviors over the past five years have "nothing in common with democracy," we should pay attention.

This attack on eight centuries of English law is no small thing. While the Republican's (and 13 Democrats in the Senate) purported intent was to deny Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp detainees the right to see a civilian judge or jury, it could just as easily extend to you and me. (Already two American citizens have been arbitrarily stripped of their habeas corpus rights by the Bush administration - Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi - and there may be others.)

Section 9, Clause 2, of Article I of the United States Constitution says: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Alberto Gonzales testified on January 18th before Congress that "there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is [only] a prohibition against taking it away."

While there are many countries in the world where all power and all rights are reserved to the government, and then doled out to the people by constitutional, legislative, or executive decree, the first three words of our Constitution clearly state who in this country holds all the power and all the rights: "We the People."

Our Constitution does not grant us rights, because "We" already hold all rights. Instead, it defines the boundaries of our government, and identifies what privileges "We the People" will grant to that government.

When Gonzales suggested we have no habeas corpus rights because the Constitution doesn't grant them, his testimony betrayed a breathtaking ignorance of the history and meaning of the United States Constitution. And, because his thinking probably reflects that of his superior, George W. Bush, Gonzales' testimony demonstrates the urgency with which Congress must act to repeal the many laws, signing statements, and executive orders that have been issued by this administration.

But particularly, and first, with regard to habeas corpus.

Abraham Lincoln was the first president (on March 3, 1863) to suspend habeas corpus so he could imprison those he considered a threat until the war was over. Congress invoked this power again during Reconstruction when President Grant requested The Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871 to put down a rebellion in South Carolina. Those are the only two fully legal suspensions of habeas corpus in the history of the United States (and Lincoln's is still being debated).

The United States hasn't suffered a "Rebellion" or an "Invasion" since Lincoln's and Grant's administrations. There are no foreign armies on our soil, seizing our cities. No states or municipalities are seriously talking about secession. Yet the Attorney General says we have no rights to habeas corpus, and the Military Commissions Act now backs him up.

The modern institution of civil and human rights, and particularly the writ of habeas corpus, began in June of 1215 when King John was forced by the feudal lords to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede. Although that document mostly protected "freemen" - what were then known as feudal lords or barons, and today known as CEOs and millionaires - rather than the average person, it initiated a series of events that echo to this day.

Two of the most critical parts of the Magna Carta were articles 38 and 39, which established the foundation for what is now known as "habeas corpus" laws, as well as the Fourth through Eighth Amendments of our Constitution and hundreds of other federal and state due process provisions.

Articles 38 and 39 of the Magna Carta said:

"38 In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.
"39 No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

This was radical stuff, and over the next four hundred years average people increasingly wanted for themselves these same protections from the abuse of the power of government or great wealth. But from 1215 to 1628, outside of the privileges enjoyed by the feudal lords, the average person could be arrested and imprisoned at the whim of the king with no recourse to the courts.

Then, in 1627, King Charles I overstepped, and the people snapped. Charles I threw into jail five knights in a tax disagreement, and the knights sued the King, asserting their habeas corpus right to be free or on bail unless convicted of a crime.

King Charles I, in response, invoked his right to simply imprison anybody he wanted (other than the rich), anytime he wanted, as he said, "per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis."

This is essentially the same argument that George W. Bush makes today for why he has the right to detain both citizens and non-citizens solely on his own say-so: because he's in charge. And it's an argument now supported by the Military Commissions Act.

But just as George's Act is meeting resistance, Charles' decree wasn't well received. The result of his overt assault on the rights of citizens led to a sort of revolt in the British Parliament, producing the 1628 "Petition of Right" law, an early version of our Fourth through Eighth Amendments, which restated Articles 38 and 39 of the Magna Carta and added that "writs of habeas corpus, [are] there to undergo and receive [only] as the court should order." It was later strengthened with the "Habeas Corpus Act of 1640" and a second "Habeas Corpus Act of 1679."

Thus, the right to suspend habeas corpus no longer was held by the King. It was exercised solely by the people's (elected and hereditary) representatives in the Parliament.

The third George to govern the United Kingdom confronted this in 1815 when he came into possession of Napoleon Bonaparte. British laws were so explicit that everybody was entitled to habeas corpus - even people who were not British citizens - that when Napoleon surrendered on the deck of the British flagship Bellerophon after the battle of Waterloo in 1815, the British Parliament had to pass a law ("An Act For The More Effectually Detaining In Custody Napoleon Bonaparte") to suspend habeas corpus so King George III could legally continue to hold him prisoner (and then legally exile him to a British fortification on a distant island).

Now, the Military Commissions Act and Alberto Gonzales say that George W. Bush may similarly detain people or exile them to concentration camps on distant islands. Except these people are not Napoleon Bonaparte. "They" could even be you or me.

The Founders must be turning in their graves. As Alexander Hamilton - arguably the most conservative of the Founders - wrote in Federalist 84:

"The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus ... are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. ...[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious [British 18th century legal scholar] Blackstone, in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital:
"'To bereave a man of life,' says he, 'or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore A MORE DANGEROUS ENGINE of arbitrary government.''' [Capitals all Hamilton's from the original.]

The question, ultimately, is whether our nation will continue to stand for the values upon which it was founded.

Early American conservatives suggested that democracy was so ultimately weak it couldn't withstand the assault of newspaper editors and citizens who spoke out against it, or terrorists from the Islamic Barbary Coast, leading John Adams to pass America's first Military Commissions Act-like laws, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. President Thomas Jefferson rebuked those who wanted America ruled by an iron-handed presidency that could - as Adams had - throw people in jail for "crimes" such as speaking political opinion, or without constitutional due process.

"I know, indeed," Jefferson said in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1801, "that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough.
But, Jefferson said, our nation was "the world's best hope," and because of our strong commitment to rights like habeas corpus, "the strongest government on earth."

The sum of this, Jefferson said, was found in "freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
"The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

When I was working in Russia some years ago, a friend in Kaliningrad told me a perhaps apocryphal story about Nikita Khrushchev, who, following Stalin's death, gave a speech to the Politburo denouncing Stalin's policies of arbitrarily arresting people and throwing them into prisons or mental institutions without the rights of habeas corpus. A few minutes into Khrushchev's diatribe, somebody shouted out, "Why didn't you challenge him then, the way you are now?"

The room fell silent, as Khrushchev angrily swept the audience with his glare. "Who said that?" he asked in a reasoned voice. Silence.

"Who said that?" Khrushchev demanded, leaning forward. Silence.

Pounding his fist on the podium to accent each word, he screamed, "Who - said - that?" Still no answer.

Finally, after a long and strained silence, the elected politicians in the room fearful to even cough, a corner of Khrushchev's mouth lifted into a smile.

"Now you know," he said with a chuckle, "why I did not speak up against Stalin when I sat where you now sit."

The question for our day is who will speak up against Stalinist policies in America? Who will speak against the man who punishes reporters and news organizations by cutting off their access; who punishes politicians by targeting them in their home districts; who punishes truth-tellers in the Executive branch by character assassination that even extends to destroying their spouse's careers? And why is our press doing such a pathetic job that in all probability 95 percent of Americans don't even know that our Attorney General says we have no rights to habeas corpus?

As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Number 8:

"The violent destruction of life and property incident to war; the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free."
We must not make the mistake that Jefferson and Hamilton warned us against. We must not remain silent, like Khrushchev's people did. We must speak out.

Contact your U.S. Senators and members of the House of Representatives (the Capitol's phone number is 202 225-3121) and tell them to stop this assault on eight hundred years of legal precedent by repealing the Military Commissions Act and thus restore the most fundamentally American human right of habeas corpus.

Thom Hartmann is a three-time Project Censored Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of nineteen books and, for the past four years, the host of a nationally syndicated noon-3 PM ET daily progressive talk show which will, starting on February 19th, replace the Al Franken show on Air America Radio radio stations from coast-to-coast and on Sirius Satellite Radio. His website is at www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "What Would Jefferson Do? A Return To Democracy" and Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It.

God and the Military Commissions Act

Hello All: I ask that you please not disregard this communication.

Many of us claim to be Christians or believers in God or a higher power. Now, it is time for us to put our money where our mouths are. We have stood long enough for an administration (monarchy) that rules through fear of "its subjects." It is now the moment for "WE THE PEOPLE" to let our voices be heard before we have given away all of the God-given rights that the founders of this country worked so hard ensure we had knowledge of.

So, then, what do our beliefs have to do with this? Everything. If we claim to have faith in an all-powerful God, then we simply cannot accept the fear-based reactions of our country and this administration to the terrorists - who, by the way, are getting exactly what they wanted. If we claim to live within the unfailing Love and Peace of God, then we are hypocrites if we are then afraid for our earthly lives to the point that we would punish others - even sacrificing many innocent others - simply to protect these bodies. This is exactly what we as a nation are agreeing to by silently allowing the Military Commissions Act to remain a law (see below).

Nobody would agree with you faster that what we see in this world is horrific. Just earlier this week, a gunman entered a Salt Lake City, Utah mall and opened fire, killing and injuring innocent by-standers. God is asking us with each incident such as this - with each brutal terrorist attack: "What will you choose now? Will you choose more death and destruction? Or will you choose Me and My Love?" My friends, we have been choosing the former much more often than the latter, which accounts directly - DIRECTLY - for the horrific violence, fear, and lack of compassion we see every which way we turn. Through our desire to exact revenge on or to become afraid of or even to ignore those who move through this world spreading their fear and darkness wherever they go, we have created this life of misery and pain.

Yet, we still sit idly by (some of us are even waiting for God to save us; here's a revelation: She won't save us. God waits for us to choose. God gives us what we choose for ourselves. This is what Free Will is all about, and the sooner we wake up to this, the sooner we will stop waiting for someone or something to save us and the sooner we will decide to save ourselves) while this administration laughs at having us right where it wants us to feed the power trip of its leader - George W. Bush - and his crony corporations (which by the way love the violence and hatred - love having us believing it's an us against them world). With our apathy, we have created ignorance, and our ignorance has allowed us to be bamboozled.

This administration, and many Americans - like the terrorists who commit such heinous acts of violence -live with the most selfish of fears. These fears have been perpetrated and spread to the extent that we are now willing to give up our God-given rights to make even the simplest statement of disagreement with those we elected to serve US. We can actually be imprisoned if the President deems us to be a threat (for whatever reason he or she chooses) without any of the protections of Habeus Corpus that our intelligent founders were careful enough to document in our Constitution.

Of course, we will first start using this against the Muslims who live in America because we are certain they all want us gentle, white Americans dead, but I can assure you that when it comes to feeding the incessant need for power exhibited by the grotesque violations of the constitution perpetrated by this "leader" (and future presidents and administrations to come) it will not stop there. Before long, even one of us could wind up accused, arrested, and locked away without any recourse simply for believing something contradictory to our dictator. You have to make it this real for yourself in order to begin to comprehend the implications of this. Why should even one person have to be sacrificed to our boiling fear? And who are we to decide who must be sacrificed?

Thus, we come back to God or the Source or Christ, or whatever you experience in your personal spiritual experience. Love (which I think we can all agree is what God Is) would never and can never submit to fear. Love would never and can never agree to do anything or obtain anything (such as security) at the expense of another human being or living thing. Make no mistake about it: We are being given a choice right now that will direct the future course of humanity, a choice that will decide whether we move upward and onward as a species or whether we stagnate and cease to exist. Love will take us to higher and more wonderful expressions of ourselves and fear will end us. It is this simple.

So, I hope now that you will get all the information you can about this fear-based law that we have submitted ourselves to. Then, I ask that you do your part to help the world choose Love. It does not take everyone to make a difference. Even a few of us (even one of us) can bring about great changes and correct injustices. Look at Christ, look at the Buddha, look at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., look at Martin Luther, look at Ghandi. These people have told us, "Look at me and see what YOU can do as well." Yet, these people, each person, made great changes in the world through Love. None of these men were violent. None of these men yelled at others or forced others to submit to their will. They simply said, "I have another way," and then gave us the chance to see Love in the way they offered.

Choose Love. Choose even to Love our oppressive, fearful president so that even he has the opportunity to choose Love once again. He is only afraid. We will not shout. We will not hate. We will not return the violence and injustice. And WE WILL NOT BOW DOWN TO FEAR. We will be persistent with our Love, knowing that the very moment in which we find ourselves is the moment in which we can turn everything completely around. We Are That Powerful When We Choose Love. But you have to try it to believe it. You must teach what you would learn, and now you have given yourself (with this very email) this opportunity to experience the truth of it for yourself.

Send a letter or call your respresentive in Congress, your Senator, and let them know that we choose another way besides fear to create and express our lives. Let them know that what we as a nation have made a new choice about the appropriate "reaction" to those who live in and perpetrate fear. Let them know that we choose Love and that we will prevail against those who hate only through unconditional acceptance and recognition of their dark, misguided presence, which will heal the world.

Thank you for your time and energy in this effort to free the world from fear.

Love,

Paul

P.S. See the letter from Thom Hartmann - an extraordinary man bringing his own energy of Love to our freedom quest - that first inspired this blog. He gives very specific information about this law as well as links to the specific wording of the law, and I saw no need to try to replicate it. My entry here is more of an impassioned plea for us to stop being satisfied with comfortably destroying our planet and species.

Hey Man, Slow Down

I'm in Orlando right now. It seems every interstate has a 55 miles per hour speed limit here. I drive the 55 mph, and I am consistently rushed upon from behind by my fellow drivers and then rushed around by these same drivers as they continue on their way, unless, of course, they choose to teach me a lesson by riding inches from my rear bumper at this speed, which means any sudden brakage by me and I will be involved in a life-threatening wreck.

I'm back home in Salt Lake City right now. It seems every interstate has a 65 miles per hour speed limit here. I drive the 65 mph, and I am consistently rushed upon from behind by my fellow drivers and then rushed around by these same drivers as they continue on their way, unless, of course, they choose to teach me a lesson by riding inches from my rear bumper at this speed, which means any sudden brakage by me and I will be involved in a life-threatening wreck. My children are nestled in the backseat oblivious to how close to death they sit in this moment. Yet, they soon find out as they are rushed away from their forms in the instant the speeding van collides into our small hatchback "trunk." At least they've now been schooled in the art of senseless brutality. Is it possible to cry yourself to sleep for the next 40 years of your life? Maybe I should contact the Guiness Book of World Records as I'm well on my way to reaching that milestone.

I am travelling on the Native American turnpike in Oklahoma on my way to Texas right now. It seems this road has an 80 miles per hour speed limit here. I drive the 80 mph, and I am consistently rushed upon from behind by my fellow drivers and then rushed around by these same drivers as they continue on their way, unless, of course, they choose to teach me a lesson by riding inches from my rear bumper at this speed, which means any sudden brakage by me and I will be involved in a life-threatening wreck. I take comfort as I breathe my last breath from this accident in the fact that I have learned my lesson: don't drive the speed limit in a world of unconsciousness.

I am at work right now and my fellow co-workers and human beings are fluttering about - to and fro - rushing to retrieve files, flying around cubicle corners on their ways to forgetting what they are on their ways to getting, typing themselves hurriedly into dark and eerie carpal tunnels. I walk in slow motion through the chaos around me, and I am summoned into the corporate courtroom office to be judged for my disloyalty to company priorities and fired for demonstrating a lack of ambition. I am told that, if I only looked around me more often and observed and mimicked and copied and imitated the fearful scrambling in circles exhibited by the best, most kiss-ass boss's bitches working for the company, I had the potential to be one of the superstars in the biz, the industry, the economic machine that powers the country. Now, the company founders turn their eyes away when they see my bearded form living vagrantly on the cold, winter streets of Utah.

I am waking up right now. There are a million things to accomplish this day and in the many days that are guaranteed to come, and I know that in order to even have the slightest chance to get it all done and experience the pleasurable relief of ending this struggle to survive just this day, then I have to speed through each moment unaware of all that the moment holds because it holds nothing that can alleviate my fears of being left behind by all of life. I wake my daughter, I give her an ulcer from pushing her quite literally in the middle of her back from one task to the next as she readies for school. I tell her to go potty, get her clothes on, eat breakfast - faster Faster FASTER! WE ARE OUT OF TIME! WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR SCHOOL AND WORK! It's not possible that she's choking on her Cheerios right now as I rush to save her from entering into the quiet calm of the soul so that she can live and die longer in a mad world full of stark-raving lunatics running on their way to nowhere. For just a second, the most frightening idea I have ever had towers over my mind: perhaps it would be better for her to leave this all behind. Leave behind the incompetence of a father who cannot comprehend the damage he does each time he stressfully declares, "We've got to go, we're running behind!" Maybe I would have been better off had some such appropriate-to-the-situation fate befallen me when my own father was rushing me off to the next....

What? I'm not sure, but I am certain that if I don't get to whatever and whereever it is at the optimal speed possible, then I will not be worthy of whatever pleasure awaits me there. Ah, yes, I remember, it is the pleasure of having this anxious monkey pried off my back so that a larger, more ferocious gorilla can be sat upon me in its place as I scurry off under attack to the next destination that promises still fiercer demons of despair.

I am on vacation right now, but I must not take the time to stare at the sky or notice the sound of the smooth flow of the river down the mountainside as I walk up the mountainside because the goal is to get on top and then tumble back down so I can bumble determinedly to the next amusement part or even mountain and see less but do more in order to have more stories to tell more people who don't even care because they have their own adventures to fly through and past in the blink of an eye so that I can experience that I am someone who has a life.

Here I sit across from you at some restaurant, and I have absolutely nothing to say to you. Apparently, you too are at a loss for words, but I promise to you right now that my thoughts are moving at break-neck speeds, bumping and colliding into one another, debunking the debunkings of the debunked ideas of what I can say to you to make this frightening silence end. All these constructions of the racing mind tumble at the slightest wind of doubt expressed by the architect of such airy designs. Predictably, I die as you never call me again, and I search in futility for the boring self engulfed by your rejection. He is, after all, all I know.

Did you ever wonder what we are all rushing so fiercely toward? Then, my friend, that is a start. However, the further you explore this doubt in the intelligence of such a behavior, the more you find that it is a mistaken question. The question that allows you to receive real, enlightening answers is, "What are we all rushing so fiercly from?" For any momentary observation of it all clearly reveals that we are all rushing toward nothing except an illusion of relief from the current mental state that has us rushing. Thus, we have to dig deeper to the cause of the rushing to begin with. The cause is not getting to the meeting on time or knowing that one might miss his/her flight, or even that one must keep up with the Wilderses. Did you ever notice that you drive much too fast and scramble around much too frantically even when nothing in particular is going on, even when you do not have a "time-limit" on when you arrive or what you accomplish? You see, my friend, the cause of our collective rushing to the grave is never, ever any outside circumstance or event or situation.

Ralph Ellison said in his extraordinary novel, Invisible Man, "Keep this nigger boy running." The narrator of this book, who was haunted by dreams in which his grandfather gave him an endless succession of enveloped correspondence that opened to reveal this quotation, and one suspects Ellison himself, experienced firsthand the pain and suffering, the bumps, bruises, and breaks, the utter discombobulation that is inherent in this lifestyle so cherished by our culture. This nameless protagonist, in his earnestness, does not realize what a fool he makes of himself - not that others make of him by expecting him to live up to their expectations of him - until he stops this incessant running. We have all created fools of ourselves.

Yet, this is not a criticism or judgment. It is an observation of a man who has himself been the idiot puppet of the collective insanity of anxiety that is bred at birth into us all, and who is now, in each moment, making a conscious effort to "stop and smell the roses." Yet, before I could allow myself to do this, I had to challenge the greatest lie of my ego; I had to doubt that it was others (who did indeed teach me this very unnatural behavior) who were making me into a psychotic masterpiece of deceptive mind; I had to question the impulse to want to run into and through any driver who dared to drive too slow when I was late for whatever future happening that was clearly more important than their right to live; in short, I had to dare to be haunted by this profound question:

From what am I rushing so desperately?

Can you ask yourself this question the next time you find yourself in the midst of some speed-demon hell in which Life Itself is quite secondary to this incessant desire to get away from the present moment?

Of course you can.

The real question (we must always dig ever deeper for the real question) is

Will you?

Descending Into You

Days like this one, when melancholy winds blow through me, I cannot help but yearn for a way to express my perceived isolation and loneliness. I feel like a disgruntled author at this moment. I am creating a work of fiction - somewhere between novella and novel - and I am waking up early each weekday morning to spend about 45 minutes to an hour working on it before I prepare myself and my daughter for work and school, respectively. This early rising is new for me, but I made the choice to do it because work and home responsibilities leave me very little time throughout the rest of the day to focus on my passion for writing. I realized I had to make the time to follow my dream, and stop procrastinating and feeling victimized by circumstances.

Before I began consciously creating this quiet time for myself to work on the current narrative that is challenging my imagination, I wrote sporadically, and, the contradictory result was that Life provided me, during seemingly unconnected and unsuspecting moments, with a plethora of observations and ideas that have been essential to character and plot development within the story, all of which produced within me the lovely experience of flow: the story was, quite literally, writing itself. Yet, now that I have set out to bring a structure to my writing process, I find myself struggling to take the story where I thought it was going. Discovering the best words to combine for the precise conveyance of form and meaning in order to complete just one sentence has left me feeling suffocated and spent.

I suspect the mental blocks that have recently been erected in my mind to stymie the smooth flow of narrative I experienced early in the creation of this fiction is due to the "sacrificed" sleep that needles me in the back of all my thoughts. It appears that sleeping less inspires my mind to push harder to be productive so that it will not view the time it could spend sleeping as wasted. What a lame point of view this is, and yet, I cannot deny that it seems to be the case with me now.

So now, after a morning such as this one past, in which I barely had three words to add to the piece, I sit at work and obsess over this "wasted" morning I entered before the light entered the house, and I experience being a nervous wreck. I stumble around in my mind searching desperately for a rationale that will prove to me that what I am doing is meaningful, that I have the ability to do this, that I should not doubt my chosen purpose to be an author. However, all I discover are the ashes of dreams burnt up in the flames of the fires of Self doubt. Yes, that's right: Self, with a capital S, doubt.

This is the Truth that my mind contends is a lie. Yet, perceiving it as a lie gives birth the pain I feel now. In the moments I discover my shaky self-confidence trampled upon by the stampeding herd of lacking thoughts, I notice a still Light shining in the distance of my inner-world, but I distrust Its Power to save me, to renew me, to reveal me to myself, to stand me up in the midst of the blind rush of fear that knocked me off my feet and challenge me to behold the absurdity of the delusion of substantiality I attributed to these monstrous beasts of burden who I now observe pass right through my form. From the darkness of my present position in the mud of my mind, that Light is menacing! Rather than stepping into that Light, I grab onto one of the panicked beasties and hope that it is scrambling to a place that will be my sanctuary from the empty despair of being crushed by the mad herd of which the beast I embrace is a part. There is no shirking the implications of this insane flight from the welcoming Light: I doubt God.

I must tell you this is a very humbling confession to make. To admit that you do not surrender to the Grace, Power, and Love of God - of your Self with a capital S - with the knowledge that all suffering has already been redeemed even while you wallow in it is tantamount to asserting that God can fail. I have expressed - not essentially, but quite literally - with this admission of doubt my belief that my problems, my pains, my hurts, my fears, my negativities are greater than Me - are greater than God. Going through my days, trying to stay awake to Reality, claiming to have faith that all is at it should be all while coveting - beneath the mental chatter that put me through the motions of appearing to be a conscious human being - my smoldering identity as a being beyond the healing powers of the Breath of All Life. Indeed, my mental image of being an awakening human being hid and protected this parasitic doubter of Self.

A desolate idea (shifting places and changing faces within me so as to evade recognition) of the incompetence of God becomes me and leads me to roaring rapids of fear and isolation and despair. I jump into the chaos with it because it is me. I drown in this river of self-pity that is itself a creation of this idea that my problems are too serious, too important, too heavy for God to bear. I am a hypocrite.

Who just told me this? What saw this Truth for me? Was it the pathetic me who marches again and again, alone, to the guillotine? Can this sad version of me have come to such a grand understanding of the smallness I am choosing in this moment? Or are You feeding me this Wisdom intravenously through my Soul, nourishing my withering heart through the revelation of the anchor I still cling to at the bottom of the sea of Life?

What is this Love that lifts me up when my thoughts and actions hate Its manifestations? What is this Truth that has compassion on a liar? What is this Peace that embraces my chaotic mind? What is this Success that is experienced during moments of failure? What is this God that never abandons Its deserters?

Let me never again believe there is any possible way to stray from You. Let me recognize You in the darkest alleys of my mind and around the sharpest corners of my emotions. Let me see You in the moment before I know You are there. Let me be the blank slate on which You paint Your Masterpiece. Together, We cannot fail.