08.31.06
Posted in Hero's Journey, Musings... at 1:06 am by Administrator
I apologize for not posting for awhile. I had a lot on my plate, including another job interview which it turns out I did not get. That is fine with me. I do not think it was the right fit, although the town and surrounding countryside were lovely.
On another note things are starting to shift for me. I have finally identified the name of my Goddess. It is Gaia, the Earth Mother. Now that I have a name I have a focus. I want to serve Gaia as her Priestess.
Also in my meditations I realized that I am a leader. My true nature is to be a loving leader. I don’t need people to follow me, it is leadership enough just to be myself in the world of Empire. I believe I have a role to play in the Great Turning. The difficult part is staying focus and remaining awake.
Namaste,
Swan
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08.05.06
Posted in Hero's Journey at 5:40 am by Administrator
I want to bring to your attention an important article that was recently published in Yes! Magazine. It is by the David C. Korten and is from his new book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. Korten is also the author of When Corporations Rule the World.
You can find the article here: The Great Turning.
The Great Turning article informs us that we have a choice before us. There are two major ways our civilization can go. We can choose the path of Empire or of Earth community. One of these paths has a very unhappy ending.
The path we are on is the path of Empire. The people of the planet Earth and the Earth herself have reached their limit of exploitation. In Korten’s words, “A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced US economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life.”
Pretty scary stuff. And if you have been reading my blog you will know that I posted a similar message in my June 15, 2006 posting The Coming Challenges.
Korten tells us that is time for a Global Awakening. “The lower, more narcissistic, orders of consciousness are perfectly normal for young children, but become sociopathic in adults and are easily encouraged and manipulated by advertisers and demagogues. The higher orders of consciousness are a necessary foundation of mature democracy.” (I.e. If you want to wake up you have to turn off your TV and quite watching the mainstream news. See my posting, Caught in a Spell.)
The answer to this enormous problem begins in changing the cultural stories that we tell ourselves. We must create a new story to live if we want the planet and the life on it to live. “We must infuse the mainstream culture with stories of Earth Community. As the stories of Empire nurture a culture of domination, the stories of Earth Community nurture a culture of partnership.”
Over 5,000 years ago our ancestors lived within a cultural and institutional frame of the Earth Community. They met their needs through cooperation instead of domination. The Bible tells of this story. It is the story of the Garden of Eden. But our ancestors turned away “from a reverence for the generative power of life – represented by female gods or nature spirits – to a reverence for hierarchy and the power of the sword – represented by distant, usually male, gods.” Our ancestors ate from the Tree of Knowledge and learned to dominate the Earth and other people through unsustainable economic growth and warfare.
Korten goes on to say, “Our nation is on the wrong course not because Americans have the wrong values. It is on the wrong course because of remnant imperial institutions that give unaccountable power to a small alliance of right-wing extremists who call themselves conservative and claim to support family and community values, but who preferred economic and social policies constitute a ruthless war against children, families, communities and the environment.”
But I, like Korten, feel blessed to be living in this turbulent time because this is the “most exciting moment in the whole of the human experience.” We are the ones who can create the new world. A world where all life is sacred, from the smallest microbe to the tallest mountain. A world where all people are respected and treated with compassion. A world where no child is hungry. A world without war. A world filled with art and spiritual meaning. This is the world I want to live in. And I know we can create it, if we work together. For as Korten tells us in his closing statement, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
Nameste,
Swan
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08.04.06
Posted in Hero's Journey, War at 1:22 am by Administrator
Check out this website for the inside scoop on Medea Benjamin’s arrest. You can watch a video clip of the incident on CNN and CBS.
Click here to see a CNN live video clip of the action!
Click here to see CBS footage of the disruption.
According to the press release, after witnessing Benjamin’s disruption, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, stated “We are going to witness more and more public outrage as the violence in Iraq escalates in this ongoing occupation.”
A recent Truthout article covering the incident cited a World Public Poll which shows that 87% of Iraqis want a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Medea is one gutsy lady. She deserves our thanks for having the courage to stand up and speak the truth. May we all learn from her example.
Namaste,
Swan
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