At the Cusp of Transformations
Welcome to the March 12, 2007 edition of the Satya Center newsletter. Warm greetings from your Editors, Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry.
Snow is melting here in the mid-Hudson Valley, patches of brown grass are appearing in a sea of white, and we have gone from below-zero nights to sunny fifty degree days this week. Neighboring farmers have begun greenhouse operations to prepare seedlings for spring planting.
It is a time of transition in our little world, and a time of transition for the world at large. The reality of global warming and the imminent end of the hydro-carbon economy have finally begun to penetrate the dense collective thought-forms that structure our mass media mediated consciousness, which supports and maintains the self-destructive status quo.
Over the next couple of years, you’ll be seeing a stream of mainstream Hollywood movies in which human civilization stars as the black-hearted, slow-witted villain out to destroy Mother Nature. Big-budget movies already in the production queue include M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Happening”, “The Simpsons Movie”, “The Transformers” and James Cameron’s “Avatar”, offering viewers variations on the theme of humanity’s impending total self-destruction.
The good news is that most average people around the world understand the gravity of the situation, despite the best efforts of Fox News and the rest of the mainstream Anglo-Saxon media to misinform the global public.
There is no sign that political leaders in the US or UK have any clue about the urgency of the situation, however. If the history of the environmental movement gives us any indication, we can expect that it will take either a global financial crisis or an outpouring of popular rebellion, and millions of protesters in the streets, to capture politicians’ attention and focus their minds on solving the problem.
China is set to surpass the US in the emission of atmospheric CO2, and despite the announced good intentions of Chinese leadership, there is no indication they are able to deal with the crisis. Last year was "the most grim year for China's environmental situation", Pan Yue, deputy head of the Chinese State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), said in a statement in early January 2007. "The goals set out by the cabinet at the start of the year have (2006) absolutely not been achieved."
Meanwhile, the US war in Iraq is unraveling while Bush prepares for a nuclear strike in Iran, and sectarian violence threatens to engulf the entire Muslim world.
According to recent reports in "The New Yorker" and elsewhere, Bush and company originally saw the underdog Shiite Moslems in Iraq as their allies against the Sunni Moslem Baathites and Al Qaeda types who constituted the backbone of the Iraqi insurgency. This was very strange from a historical perspective, which is almost never given in the mainstream media.
A bit of the history makes this clear. Saudi Arabia is the most powerful Sunni dominated state and Iran the most powerful Shiite state. Bush and company have close political and family ties to the Saudi regime and America has a long history of doing business with Sunni Moslem monarchs and dictators, but almost no experience in dealing with Shiite leaders and states. American Presidents since the mid twentieth century have considered Shiites as crazed fundamentalists with a martyr complex and the fact that Moslem Communist parties always recruited heavily among Shiite populations did nothing to endear the Shiites to Washington.
The Shiites have been oppressed in Iraq, and throughout the Moslem world, for 1400 years, and were delighted to see democracy brought to Baghdad, since Iraq and Iran are the two largest Shiite majority Moslem states. In most other Moslem countries, the Shiites are about 10% of the population, and are considered heretics and worse. The Shiites historically have always been advocates for the poor while the Sunnis represent 1500 years of feudal authoritarian status quo in the Moslem world.
As a Shiite dominated freely elected government was installed in Baghdad, the Saudis and other Sunni Moslem leaders began to see red, and Bush and company began to fear that Baghdad would ally itself with Iran.
It is Sunni Moslem insurgents, who are responsible for the vast majority of attacks on American troops. The Sunnis are also attacking Shiite Iraqis of all political varieties, and casting the Shiite led Iraqi government as tools of the Imperialist Americans.
The Sunni insurgency has been receiving large amounts of foreign aid and an influx of foreign troops from Sunni countries including Jordan and Saudi Arabia throughout what is rapidly becoming an Iraqi civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.
The Shiites have been very restrained overall in their response to the Sunni onslaught, because they know that nurturing a successful democracy in Iraq could lead to democratic inroads across the Moslem world, which would enable Shiites to elevate their status and break the stranglehold on power exercised by their Sunni overlords.
Over the last few months, however, partially in response to a diplomatic initiative by Saudi Royals, Bush and company have focused on the Iranian threat above all, despite their problems in Iraq.
America has moved several aircraft carriers and other military platforms into the area near Iran, in preparation for war, and announced the possibility of using nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency says that Iran is nowhere near creating an atomic bomb.
More troubling, Bush and company have recently begun to assemble a Sunni-based anti-Iranian coalition of states including Saudi Arabia and Jordan to help “contain” Iran and the Shiite militias in the infant Shiite-led Iraqi democracy. 
All this despite the fact that it was mainly Sunnis who blew up the World Trade Center, al-Qaeda is composed mainly of Sunnis, and Sunnis are the ones instigating the vast majority of terrorist and martyrdom actions in Iraq.
As part of this bizarre alliance, Bush and company have also delivered a few billion dollars to the Saudi Royals to use in bolstering the organizations of the most extreme Sunni Moslem guerrilla fighters, in the hope that they will be a counterweight to emerging regional Shiite power.
As a result, relations between nuclear-armed Sunni dominated and Saudi-allied military dictatorship Pakistan and Iran are at an all time low and the odds that the civil war in Iraq to become a regional Sunni-Shiite bloodbath extending from the Arabian peninsula into Pakistan and Central and South Asia increase every day.
Once again, both parties in Washington are utterly disconnected from American public opinion, which demonstrated in the 2006 elections and in many opinion polls before and since, that a large majority of the American people want to disengage militarily in Iraq.
I believe most Americans want peace with Moslem countries, while continuing multi-national efforts to counter terrorism in all countries and work peacefully to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. That’s the good news.
The world is in crisis, but the crisis is precipitating an expansion of consciousness. The awakening of the vast majority of the world’s population is already well underway.
To avoid environmental devastation, to manage the challenges of the era of peak oil, to avoid widespread world war and nuclear annihilation, requires a complete restructuring of human society.
To achieve world peace and to achieve a new post-hydrocarbon global society based upon political democracy, sustainable economies, localized agricultural production and energy efficiency, requires a new set of social and political relations and a new group of world leaders.
To achieve peace among the world’s races and religions requires a new, more tolerant, ecumenical spirit and a total separation of religion and warfare. There can be no more widespread support for warrior religions if humanity is to survive.
Above all, there must be a healing of the wounded heart of the world. Right now, the vast majority of the world’s people are locked into issues related to the lower chakras – survival, sexual gratification and conquest, personal and collective will to power and conquest, and perpetuation of ancient patterns of dominance and submission.
The human heart is wounded by the war between the sexes, by the inability of the average human being to open his or her heart to love. This war has all but destroyed the basis for the human family.
The human heart is wounded by the constant human war to subdue Mother Nature – and that war is wrecking the world’s human-friendly ecology.
The human heart is wounded by the war of the priests, which has gone on for millennia, pitting one vision of God against another in bloody battles for the souls and wealth of entire peoples.
The human heart is wounded by the war of the rich against the poor, which has gone on for millennia, as those who have power use that power to exploit those whom they should be protecting and nurturing.
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"Healing the Wounded Heart of the World" |
There is only one way to heal the wounded heart of the world, and that way is the way that all true Spiritual Masters of both East and West have long traveled and taught. That way is the way of the open heart, the way of Love.
Only by opening our hearts to the suffering of our fellow human beings in countries and religions currently opposed to our own will we be able to understand them, forgive them, and work together with them to establish peaceful relations.
Only by opening our hearts to the suffering of the billions of people living in poverty around the world will be able to create social and economic systems that provide the necessities of life for all human beings.
Only by opening our hearts to the suffering of the billions of people who will be adversely affected by global climate change can we find within ourselves the strength to change our addictive patterns of behavior, engrained in our daily lives by the global hydrocarbon economy.
Only by opening our hearts to our fellowship with all living creatures, on land, sea and air, and only by opening our hearts to the web of life that constitutes the living, breathing heart and mind of our planetary Mother will we become sensitive enough to fashion a new human society that can thrive in co-operation with that web of life rather than seeking to subdue, conquer and exploit every element of life on Earth.
The solution to all our problems on Earth can be found if we have the courage to open our hearts to love. Love is the answer. Love is the way, and love will find a way.
It is not fashionable to speak in this manner. Love died in our mainstream discourse some time ago. Love is something that only hippies believed to be real. Too many of those hippies grew up to become yuppies and now strive unceasingly to defend and uphold the increasingly unlovely, deadly and deadening status quo. That is an index of how far we have gone toward a society that is based on Thanatos – on Death. For on this blue-green planet, in our human society, based upon the duality of human sexuality, human experience manifests within the polarities of Eros and Thanatos, Love and Death. It is up to us to choose – Death or Love.
I have every confidence that humanity will choose Love, in its many forms and guises, for Love is the evolutionary goal of humanity. The manifestation of that goal is the development within humanity of a Higher Consciousness, which will operate in a state of ever-Self-conscious Unity with the web of life and also of Self-conscious Unity with Higher Worlds. This Higher Human Consciousness has a Divine Purpose. That Higher Purpose is to do the work of a world-transforming Divine Will. That Divine Will requires that humanity consciously infuse every particle of the web of life on Earth, every sentient and non-sentient being, with the energy of universal unity, healing, affirmation and co-operation known as unconditional Love.
This is what is meant by Teachers who speak of Universal Brotherhood, by Wise Ones who speak of the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. As a species, we are currently in a process of recognizing the limits of our egoistic consciousness, prior to surrendering to Higher Consciousness. That surrender takes place when we open our hearts to love, when we make a choice to serve Love, to experience Love, to seek Love out.