Category: Mental Health

Mental health is not simply a matter of what is happening within an individual. It is also affected by our interaction with our world. Genuine, enduring mental health is a balancing act between the individual and their community. Let’s create our future with this in mind!

Can humanity achieve global systemic change?

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Economics, Mental Health, Personal Development, Politics, Psychology, Science, Spirituality, Sustainability
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

We as individuals, and humanity as a whole, whether we know it or not, are facing a crossroads of two increasingly distinct paths. This crossroads has always been before us. Some individuals have already faced this crossroads, made their choice, and are journeying toward the inevitable destination of the path they have chosen. Although, sometimes, along our way we find we are offered an opportunity to reevaluate our choice and alter our path. At this time the two distinct paths are these: one is the path of love, truth, cooperation, kinship and it’s correlated regard for the interconnectedness of all things. The other is the path of competition, greed, materialism, and it’s correlated manifestations of ego, pride, envy, illusions, deceit and disregard, if not contempt, for all that does not serve the competitive process.

While these choices have faced individuals, small groups and localized cultures for all of recorded history, at this time due to the increase in population and the advances in communication, transportation, and destructive technologies, this has become an inescapable choice facing the mass of humanity around the world. For any individual to not make a conscious choice is to, by default, accept the dominant value system in one’s surrounding culture. It is a choice which stands to profoundly determine the quantity and quality of life for every individual and thereby humanity as a whole.

There may be, and reportedly are, some groups of spiritually advanced beings who have established their own isolated cultures which exist relatively insulated from the painful cultural/spiritual contortions taking place in the world. However, that is not the condition in which the vast majority of humans live. Billions of people around the world are painfully exposed to the whims and fantasies conjured within the egos of those who, at the moment, occupy the seats of worldly power within various national governments and the world’s increasingly monopolized industries. Whims and fantasies which increasingly manifest as predominantly serving a relatively small percentage of the population.

The phrase “the world community” has never been more acutely descriptive than it is at this time. We are in our daily activites one world, one community. In reality we always have been, however, in the past, up until possibly 1900, it was easier to ignore that fact than it is today.

There is no question that in many ways simply allowing the world to continue on it’s present course of pervasive materialism and competition would be easier, at least in the near future. However, the price in the long run will undoubtedly be high and I can’t imagine that it will be anything but horrendous involving widespread death and suffering. Death and suffering not only within the human race but among all the various species of life on Earth. This is due to the callous disregard for our environment displayed by governments and industries around the globe. This callous disregard for humanity and the Earth itself is a direct consequence of the highly competitive grasping for wealth taking place among the captains of industry and tolerated, if not subsidized, by governments. This governmental tolerance and subsidizing is usually, if not always, due to those in power within the respective governments being paid off, in one way or another, to insure their non-interference. The competition to be the “first”, the richest, the most powerful has been in active among various individuals and groups for centuries. However, the aforementioned changes in technology and population have produced a world with decreased tolerance for imbalance and non-cooperative methods. The ultimate form of competition is war and to think a highly competitive culture can lead to anything else is to ignore fundamental logic along with what reality has been showing us for centuries. Continuing along the competitive path allows us to avoid facing the undeniably difficult and painful process of revelations around the lies and manipulations which have been taking place within our human cultures for centuries.

This is the choice which humanity faces at this time: do we face and accept the process of cleaning up our cultural myths, lies, and intentional misconceptions? Do we accept the challenge of reorganization along more reality oriented, more cooperative, more survival-oriented lines? The changes which are necessary to realign our world culture with a more truthful and survival-oriented direction will impact some, if not all, of humankind’s deeply programmed religious and cultural precepts. To be successful such an undertaking will require empathy, caring and cooperative behavior on the part of people around the globe.

Are we, as a species, mature enough to choose the path of work and difficulty now in order to manifest needed corrective change as opposed to simply riding out the current materialistic, competitive trends? Those for whom the greatest material sacrifices would be required are predominantly those who have been benefiting the most from the competitive, materialistic paradigm. The “1% ers” as they are commonly called. Or maybe it’s the 1/10th of 1% ers. However, we should not underestimate the degree of mental/psychological challenge which would accompany cleaning up the factual errors and lies which have become embodied in various cultures. Factual errors and lies which may often serve to kindle the fires of competition with, if not contempt for, others. Is it in the realm of possibility to effectively redirect the ego-driven, destructive behaviors currently manifesting so pervasively around the world? Is enough of humanity capable of recognizing our innate interconnectedness/interdependence for global systemic change to take place?

Something it is good and wise for us all to keep in mind is the basic principle of personal, or societal change: that every change that a human being undertakes is first preceded by the desire for change. When that is present there is usually an accompanyng conception of the change desired. There is no doubt in my mind that at this time very many people around the world are desirous of change: major systemic change. The motivation to change exists. We feel it, we talk about it, we dream of it. This being the case, what we most need in order to move away from a competitive paradigm toward a cooperative one is a fundamentally common conception of the changes we want to see become manifest. Governments, political candidates, industries, religions, use advertising, news shows, and other forms of media in their efforts to influence the citizenry to adopt the conception of change, or resistance to change, that they want to see. It’s happening right now. The thing is, we are currently going down the path, the competitive, wealth centered path, that most governments and industries are unmistakably enamored of and working to keep in place. For positive systemic change to happen in the world we first need to free our minds and desires from this agenda.

Then we need to embrace a conception of a different social paradigm: one of genuine, common good. A world in which people who work and contribute to society can expect to see their lives, and their childrens’ lives, rightfully and justly improved as a result. A world in which it is recognized that nobody should be subjected to conditions approximating slave labor and that no one’s, absolutely no one’s, contribution to the public good is exponentially more valuable than anyone else’s. Yes, we need to reward exceptional achievement, however, if we want a stable and healthy society, we need to keep in mind that the contributions of the nurses, teachers, garbage collectors, cooks, and every other contribution which serves to maintain, improve and enhance our lives and society is important. It is a reality that the greater the nature of the contribution of any one individual: the broader the base of contributing achievements of others that it is built upon. This is always true whether the individual claiming great achievement is willing to recognize that reality or not. No one ever has, or ever will, singlehandedly contribute to such a great degree that their contribution is worth 25, or 50 times more than the contribution of the average, positively contributing worker.

Today we see myriad CEO’s, sports figures, entertainers, politicians and others who believe they should receive rewards many hundreds and thousand times greater, if not millions of times greater, than the average positively contributing worker. And due to the effect of media propaganda, we see average, positively contributing workers who seem to support, possibly even worship, that situation no matter the consequences within their lives or communities. As stated, this is in large part the result of the media campaign of those who are in possession of inordinate wealth to keep the reality of inordinate imbalance appearing right, unavoidable. Abraham Maslow, with his Hierarchy of Needs, gave us a wonderful tool for use in helping determine appropriate parameters for material reward within a viable society. As a global community we desperately need greater balance in the distribution of reward for contribution than we currently have. Not a flat line, but a much greater balance.

In closing, let us all strive to create and hold the conception of a world in which we all have a good life. Where basic needs are met and everyone has the opportunity to improve their lot in life through their own personal initiative. A world in which we recognize and honor our spiritual and worldly interconnectedness. This desire and conception, based in love and reason actually already exists, and always has, at a deep, spiritual level within all of us. So, it may be said that the challenge we face is to get in touch with our own personal, yet interconnected, spiritual reality.

The infamous “rabbit hole”: created by the frequent and grievous practice of deception. Maintained by the practice of blind obedience.

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Mental Health, Personal Development, Politics, Spirituality, Sustainability
Image: (c) Dazdraperma http://www.fotosearch.com

If you pay much attention at all to the reports, investigative journalism, conspiracy theories and undeniable conspiracy reality that is increasingly present in many different media these days, sooner or later you are going encounter the term “rabbit hole”. The rabbit hole is, metaphorically speaking, the long dark tunnel (of information, facts) that one must work one’s way through to penetrate the superficial, artificial, mental image of the world which certain aspects of the government, media and various other industries, do their best to assure is the one which most people of the world carry with them. Those who have dared delve into the realms of the realities which are kept hidden as well as possible from the average citizen often pay a price. I’m not referring to sinister operatives who abduct people from their homes and hide them away in some covert prison or another. Or who maybe kill them. Although those atrocities are documented to have happened to honest, caring individuals who have uncovered and revealed truths, or produced products, which certain powerful individuals did not wish to see revealed. Just ask Julian Assange about that, if you can get to him in whatever dark hole he’s being imprisoned in. You might ask Cathy O’Brien, or Dr. Jeffrey R. McDonald, oh wait, he’s locked up for life. Or Stanley Meyers, or Ted Gunderson, oh wait, they’re dead.

The list could go on and on. But that is not the price which I am focusing on in this article. The price I am referring to is the breakdown of one’s internalized worldview. A reality which can often be a far more traumatic, disorienting experience than the mere mention of it even hints at. It can leave a person isolated, paranoid, unable to function well in day-to-day life. Or it might even prove fatal if the resulting debilitation is not successfully remedied. I think some intuitively sense that digging too deep into the affairs of the world might hold unpleasant consequences and consequently they avoid doing so. They usually also avoid listening for too long to someone who has been actively digging. But there are those whose thirst for knowledge, whose need to feel informed, connected with the actual reality of what is going on around them, is so compelling that they are going to seek the truth. Period.

The fact is, it seems that for those in positions of worldly power; governmental, economic, military, or even religious power, the methods they often utilize in dealing with the general public are to deceive, inveigle and obfuscate.

The vulnerability which many of us have is that we have allowed ourselves to internalize the system’s explanation of what’s going on in the world as absolute reality. If we could genuinely rely upon the system to be honest with us, we would not be at such a risk of finding ourselves traumatized and disoriented by the eventual emergence of reality. Unfortunately, in the U.S. and many other places that is not the case. I venture many people in the U.S. and many other countries are experiencing some degree of traumatization following coming face to face with actual reality. Some are experiencing severe symptoms resulting from it.

What can we do to protect ourselves from, or to help heal ourselves from the very real attempts to instill us with an illusory worldview and the inevitable cognitive dissonance we face as a result? To begin with, stop blindly believing in the proclamations coming from those who hold high office. The current dismal global reality is that if there is big money involved there are almost certainly big lies and deep corruption involved. We need to question, investigate, analyze, be skeptical, get grounded in grassroots level reality. Honor the basic values of truth, honesty, fairness, neighborliness. Recognize, understand, and express to the very best of our abilities, our mutuality here on this planet. If we’re not thinking “all for one and one for all” on a global level, we’re thinking “all for none and none for all”, and that is not going to serve us well.

Lies, deceit, greed, corruption are not the unavoidable way of life on planet Earth. They are what humankind through either short-sighted participation, ignorance, complacency or apathy have allowed to become widely manifest. It is important to realize that the use of such corrupt methods are not new to this century, or even this millennium. Our current world culture has seen such methods employed in the pursuit and the exercise of worldly power for millennia, possibly since the beginning of recorded history. But that does not in any way indicate that such behaviors are unavoidable or insurmountable. We, as a species, have overcome many of the challenges which, through our ignorance in whatever developmental stage we were in at the time, we have found ourselves facing. Human beings are responsible for the poisonous corruption when and where it is taking place, and we as human beings can see it stopped. It requires our will to do so and our efforts to be consciously aware and constantly endeavoring. Constantly endeavoring to refuse to participate in the thinking and practices which are undermining our nations, our communities, and our lives. And constantly endeavoring to replace such behaviors with positive, sustaining, honesty, truth and an applied understanding of our mutuality.

Through our cooperation and obedience, we are the strength of our oppressors.

If you have to ignore world events to maintain a positive attitude…

by kendunning, posted in Community, Economics, Environment, Health, Mental Health, Politics, Psychology, Spirituality, Unified Field

If you have to ignore world events in order to maintain a positive attitude, you’re in trouble on two fronts.

1. As technology has given unprecedented access, for good and for evil, to nations, communities and people worldwide, isolationism has become obsolete. There has never been a time when personal involvement in political and economic affairs has been more important. Right now it may look hopeless because things have gotten out of hand, but that is an illusion. The Divine Creative Spirit flows through us all and through the entirety of our world. We are affected by it and we affect it. Our thoughts, our words our deeds, all these things create ripples thoughout our world. We are either acting consciously or unconsciously. It’s time we take back the creative processes of our world to thoughtfully form the world we want for ourselves and our loved ones. Even the thoughts we hold make a difference.

2. If internally you are overly vulnerable to the spiritual content of the individuals and groups who are engaging in hurtful, destructive, and maliciously manipulative actions, you are out of touch with your own, personal, source of strength and renewal. It’s time to get back in touch with the spiritual reality you are a valuable part of. The Divine Creative Spirit, God, is ever present, the strength and resilience of this Great Spirit, is available to all who seek it. There are many books, articles and videos made by others who are seeking and have found various valuable spiritual realities which they are sharing for the benefit of all. I have found “The Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East”, by Baird Spalding to be a source of strength. I’ve been told “A Course in Miracles” is also a valuable source. There are many, many more. And, there are men and women, ministers, priests, rabbis, imams, shamans, not all, but many, who also are personally in touch with the Divine Creative Spirit and can be valuable in offering information, suggestions and support to us on our path to a greater understanding and more enlightened participation in our own lives and in the world at large. Beware of any who claim to be a necessary intermediary between yourself and the Divine Creative Spirit! Embrace those who encourage and aid you in the development of your own personal awareness and connection.

Vital, thinking human beings are not meant to be turned into mindless automatons.

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Manifesting our Future, Mental Health, Personal Development, Politics, Psychology, Spirituality, Sustainability
A path in the beautiful North Cascades.

We are consigning children’s education to school systems which teach them to blindly trust and obey the people who occupy the governmental offices within our society.

For the survival of the human race, that needs to stop. Governments and the people who work within them are only beneficial to a society to the extent that their primary goals are the genuine health and well-being of the society which they serve. This necessarily means working within certain parameters. An essential quality which must be present within the parameters any and all governmental bodies operate within is truthfulness. Hand in hand with truthfulness is openness. Merely saying that the government is not going to allow it’s citizens to know what the criteria are that governmental officials are considering in their decision making does not meet those criteria. Not even close. Somewhere along the line, since the second world war, Americans allowed the Government to take the stance that America is on a permanent war footing and that the type of secrecy which was put in place during the war needed to exist on an ongoing basis. This culture of secrecy creates a fertile ground for corruption, lies, misdirection and unexplained actions. If we treat the whole world as a real or potential enemy, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I believe John F. Kennedy either intuitively or intellectually knew this. One of his primary goals was to take America out of the war-mindedness which had continued after WWII ended, and put America and the world on a course for true, sustainable, friendships and harmonious coexistence between all nations. This flew in the face of the aspirations of wealth and power hungry, militant, individuals who believed they saw a path to their desired version of the future. A path which President Kennedy firmly rejected. Having any nation, or group, especially any with predatory economic goals, act as an ongoing dominant overlord of the people of the world is not a viable, sustainable condition. It is clearly something most people in the world will loathe and reject if an attempt is made to force it upon them.

For sound mental, physical and spiritual health, people desire, need, to feel a vital, reciprocal, interaction with their environment, their world. That desire/need is an innate quality of being born into the human race. However, the connection to, the awareness of, this quality can be dulled. Through repetitive instruction from trusted adults and authority figures, a child’s attention can be redirected from this innate desire designed to support and sustain human beings throughout life, to a dependency upon the declarations of those aspiring to godlike power within the lives of others. However, this innate desire of humanity cannot be dulled indefinitely.

The first allegiance a person should learn is the allegiance to the positive human values we know work toward creating and sustaining healthy people and healthy communities: honesty, fairness, intelligence, analytical thinking, reason, compassion, ingenuity, resilience, strength, love and kindness.

In the Absence of Representative Government

by kendunning, posted in Community, Covid-19, Integrity, Mental Health, Oppression, Politics

In Washington State a State Senator recently bemoaned the ongoing nature of the special emergency powers ceded by the Legislature to Governor Inslee. This is a very important, very timely issue. It appears that on both the Federal and the State level, Chief Executives have gotten way too comfortable with a unilateral decision making ability. It is time we restored the democratic republic to the form it was intended to be. Would we be experiencing, suffering from, the ongoing oppressive mandates, nominally justified by the, again, nominal Covid pandemic, if the experiences and the wisdom of the people were indeed being followed by a representative government? I don’t think so. The fact is a relative few people have experienced the kind of devastating illness potentially resulting from Covid that the media persists in broadcasting as if it were the reality in every house next door.

This is not to trivialize the suffering of those who have been the hardest hit by the virus, but that being said, we cannot continue to react to the experiences of an extreme minority as if that is the reality for all. While giving such minority experiences the time and attention they deserve, it is not wise governance to base the parameters of the functioning of the entire society upon the abilities or vulnerabilities of the most vulnerable among us.

If the vast majority of Americans took inventory of their own first-hand reality and urged our State and Federal legislators to either enforce, or lift, the harsh mandates based on that inventory, mandates which have led to many citizens losing their jobs, incomes, mental health, physical health or even their lives, we would have seen the mandates lifted months ago, for good. If we would have ever seen them imposed in the first place. I tend to think we may have opted for the initial “flattening the curve” 2-3 weeks, but not the ongoing, oppressive marathon we have experienced.

But that is not the reality we are facing. When it comes to the Covid mandates, we are not being governed by a representative body. We are being dictated to by an authoritarian few, often in an arbitrary manner with only the sketchiest, if any, actual evidence to support their dictates.

It is past time for us to insist upon the reassertion of a genuinely representative government.

As we enter the new year…

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Covid-19, Economics, Mental Health, Politics, Spirituality
(c) AlexMax http://www.fotosearch.com

Who remembers this time last year? There were demonstrations going on in France, Hong Kong and other places. There was an international undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the extreme economic imbalance in the world. People, especially young people, were traveling internationally more than any time in history. Through the use of social media and face-to-face conversations (remember those?) people from around the world were exchanging ideas, sharing recipes, and generally getting to know one another more than ever before. Then, well, you know what then.

So much of what was going on contributed to a growing sense of commonality and unity among people around the world. It was a time to rejoice in new experiences, new friends, new awareness. But that was leading to a world population which was emboldened, more competent, less satisfied with being perpetually handed the “short end of the stick”. It’s easy to understand how those occupying the seats of economic and political power in the world might see such a thing as a thing to be feared, to be ended. And so it was.

There can be no question that many (all?) of the people who most likely saw their privileged positions as being threatened by an empowered, emboldened, world population have managed to increase their wealth dramatically as a result of the much touted, cleverly engineered, pandemic. You know the phrase: “we’re all in this together”? Beyond a shadow of a doubt it doesn’t apply to behavior between the economic elite and the rest of us since the advent of Covid-19. The meetings, the sharing, the elevation in consciousness of the common people of the world which was dynamic and ongoing pre-Covid, could not have been more effectively curtailed.

Now we’re entering 2021 with the same media propaganda inspiring fear of Covid-19, rumors and articles about a mandatory vaccinations, vaccines using DNA-altering CRISPR technology, vaccination certificates being proposed for many activities, social distancing, cell phone tracking, highly controlled visas for international travel, restricted or closed restaurants and bars, live music being forbidden. It reminds me a WWII movie in which the protagonist is on a train within Nazi Germany and is confronted by a uniformed, armed, soldier demanding “your papers”.

But it’s all for our own protection…isn’t it?

As we enter the new year, a time that often brings an assessment of one’s life and behavior, one important aspect we have to consider is our trajectory into the future. What is the organizing principle of our lives? Is it fear? Is it love? Is it money? Is it life itself? Are we an intelligent world community? Or are we a collection of livestock to be herded and managed? Why on Earth are common people being led to feel we are defying “authority” if we wish to simply conduct our lives in the most common of manners? Why are we accepting that our ability to carry on our businesses, our family relationships, our community activities, should be unilaterally dictated by a few in some “official” position or another? Especially since some, or all, of those few are materially profiting greatly from their mandates and proclamations.

It’s 2021. Best wishes to you and yours.

Will it take another extinction event, another re-boot of humankind, for us as spiritual beings to realize the folly of ignoring our own interconnected, spiritual reality?

by kendunning, posted in Community, Environment, Manifesting our Future, Mental Health, Personal Development, Science, Spirituality, Unified Field
Image (c) AlexMax http://www.fotosearch.com

We are all energy beings. We are manifested in a manner which presents as material and solid, however, when physicists take a closer look, that appearance begins to be revealed as a manifestation apparently constructed out of nothingness. We’re all energy beings. As such we live within, and are a part of, an energy field. We’re all, at our most basic level, all made of the same stuff. That same stuff is all around us and extends into the infinite universe we live within. We are, quite literally, inseparable from the universe we live within. One universe, many planets, many stars, many galaxies, many dimensions. All within the one, the all. And we have the privilege, the blessing, of being conscious, alive, to experience it.

Beyond a doubt, the experience of consciousness within such a stellar and magnificent reality can cause some aberrations to take place in our minds. We love it, some want to own it, some want to somehow grasp onto the very small piece of it closest to us and control it. As if that were possible in the crude, brutal ways it is usually attempted. We are in a dance, a dance of energy, light, motion, love. To do anything other than try to flow with it, to appreciate it, and to care for aspects of it we have the ability to work with, is hubris. It is the lack of humility, the overestimation of, or presumptuousness as to our place within our reality that creates a lot of problems for us.

Some look around and think because of the color of my skin, or hair, or eyes, or my height, or my physical strength, or my keenness of intellect, I am wholly superior to others. Or that because they happened to be the first human to begin living in a particular valley, or on a particular hill, they therefore own the whole of it. Our desire to own, to somehow freeze the ongoing flow of time and life, and make it our own, has led us to form collectives, cabals, with agreements to abide by certain rules and documents and to live as if those rules and documents truly represent some kind of divine right. Again, such hubris.

Innate within us, within us from the moment of our creation, is a connection to the Universal Creative Spirit, which is, in fact, the universe, the all. Within that connection is guidance. When we still our minds, access that guidance, we know what we should do, and we know what we should not do. We know that each and every one of us, each individual, is ultimately no greater, nor lesser, than any other. In a move that has shown itself to have the potential to be both a blessing and a curse, in all of this wondrous creation, for reasons we may not (cannot?) fully understand, we have been given free will. I guess the Creative Spirit, which flows within and around us, and of which we are all an integral part, didn’t want a bunch of puppets.

We know there have been other civilizations before this one. Civilizations lost in time, we occasionally find artifacts which testify to their existence. One of these prior civilizations, Atlantis, from the stories which have been passed down to us, brought it’s destruction upon itself through it’s hubris. Too much knowledge in too specific a focus. Not enough appreciation of the whole of the system they (we) exist within. In their manipulations of the material world, they lost sight of, lost appreciation of, the spiritual. In their ability to play with aspects of the stuff of creation, they lost humility. They went out of synch with the universal dance they were a part of, and were washed away as the will within universe didn’t see fit to alter the greater in deference to the lesser.

What more obvious way to love, to honor the Universal Creative Spirit, call it God, or not, than to love and honor the creation? After all, the creator and creation are one. We are, in fact, of God. When we forget that we are only parts of a whole, and that none of us has any greater claim to the whole than any other of us, then, again, we get into trouble. In the past that trouble was always, relative to the totality of human existence and the planet, relatively local stuff. We fought with stones, axes, swords, guns and relatively localized explosives. As time has gone on we have become increasingly capable in our ability to wreak destruction upon the materialized reality we are a part of. However, to want to do so is symptomatic of mental and spiritual illness, always. It is symptomatic of people cut off from, in denial of, the foundational spiritual reality which we all live within and are all a part of. To engage in the deception of, the destruction of others, is to engage in self-deception and self-destruction. To engage in cooperating with, nurturing, building, healing, appreciating others, is to manifest those things in our world, to manifest them as resources for, aspects of, ourselves.

We have free will. History shows us the Universal Creative Spirit, because love is it’s essential nature, also will wipe the slate and start again if necessary. When the hubris of the creation has led to a denial of love. Humankind has reached a level of functioning that allows individual men and women, and groups, to engage in activities which affect all human life, all life itself, upon the entire planet. We have free will. We can engage in constructive, loving, nurturing activities, or we can engage in activities which are designed along narrowly perceived avenues of immediate benefit to a few, but which ignore the effects of such behaviors upon the conditions affecting well-being of the larger whole. Conditions which will, ultimately, bear upon all.

Will it take another extinction event, another re-boot of humankind, for us as spiritual beings to realize the folly of ignoring our own interconnected, spiritual reality?

A Tale of Two Crises

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Economics, Environment, Mental Health, Personal Development, Politics, Unified Field

We, the people of the world, are facing two crises at this time. First, there are the cases of illness from the novel coronavirus. Secondly, there are the cases of extreme financial/material hardship taking place. If we just watch or listen to mainstream media one might think that in many cases the second is a direct result of the first. But it isn’t, not at all. Whether or not there was human involvement in the appearance of the novel coronavirus on the world stage is too big, and too obfuscated, an issue to get into in this article. However, the financial/material hardships that millions are facing around the world is entirely within the control of the human population of our planet. And it has been for some time.

The novel coronavirus has yet to touch one penny of anyone’s material security. Human kind has shown itself entirely capable of imposing hardships upon humans all by itself. There’s nothing obfuscated about this issue. And there isn’t anything obfuscated about how it can be solved. All it requires is for human culture to realize our interrelatedness, our interdependence. WE, who are whole and capable need to take responsibility for our lives and to do what we can (and if we’re working together, that is a lot) to assist those who are not whole and capable to develop greater capability. And to be housed, fed and cared for at all times.

We have the resources, we have the people, we have the knowledge, all we need is the will to make it so. It will require that everyone has the understanding that this is OUR world. WE decide what kind of culture we desire for humankind and WE are the only ones who can make it a reality. We must divest ourselves of competitive thinking and behavior, except in regard to recreational games. Cooperation is absolutely essential if humankind is to not only survive but fully realize the wondrous potential that is innate in every human being.

Competition results in stress and trauma and those things result in diminished human capability. Little by little those things do not nurture us, they cause us to gradually shut down and eventually kill us. Kindness, good nutrition, good information, exercise, work, play, art, contributing to a thriving human culture and enjoying the benefits of a thriving human culture, that is what elicits us to realize our fullest potential.

When we realize that the greater “profit” lies in a spiritually and physically healthy human culture (the two are interrelated) then we will be on the path to wholeness. Until then we’re just tripping over our own feet.

In order to move ahead…

by kendunning, posted in Community, Mental Health, Personal Development, Spirituality, Unified Field
View to the west from Mt. Erie, Fidalgo Island

I woke up this morning with thoughts racing through through my mind around every important relationship I’ve had. All at once. What could have been better, what didn’t go well, what would be the right thing to have happened, who did what, etc., etc. Then all that business just sort of evaporated. I am someone who has spend a lot of time and energy into studying human behavior; thinking about such things has been an ongoing process within me beginning in early adolescence. The thing about that process is that it’s full of traps of judgementalism. In a culture filled with such thinking, it’s easy to fall into them and start blaming, or feeling “cheated”. It’s easy to be trapped in our thoughts about the past, to get hung up in the “what if’s”. And while exploring the “what if’s” of our past actions/events may offer some exercise in constructive thinking, getting too caught up in it can also keep us from fully realizing the “what if’s” of our present.

We have to realize our parents, our friends, our lovers, our spouses, our siblings, our children, our neighbors, everybody including ourselves, we’re all on a learning curve. We’re all trying to utilize the tools, mental, emotional and physical, which we have at any given moment as well as possible. And sometimes we make a mess of it. And then sometimes it seems we’re simply handed a mess. In the latter case we may, as a knee-jerk response, just want to angrily fling blame…rather than look for what there is to work with. The best we can do is learn from the past, forgive the shortcomings, forgive the “mis-takes”: both on the part of others and those we brought into being, and move forward. Rededicated (or dedicated for the first time) to living wisely, caring for ourselves, others, our communities, our planet.

We are complex beings and, as a species, we’re finally accruing enough knowledge about our make-up, our needs, our faults, and our potentials to truly work together to engineer a world we can all not just live in, but flourish in. Let’s get away from the adolescent “it’s all about me” mentality humanity has been languishing in for a few decades. Let’s realize our interconnectedness, celebrate both our kinship and diversity, and act out of love to turn this place into the amazing home for humanity and other living things which it has the very real potential to be.

We need…

by kendunning, posted in Community, Economics, Mental Health, Personal Development, Politics, Psychology, Spirituality

It won’t matter much if we have women’s rights to their own bodies or bans on abortions, gay rights or no gay rights, equal pay for women, if we finally rid our country of racial discrimination, looser or tighter immigration laws, prayer in schools or no prayer in schools, a lot of today’s social issues just won’t matter much if the legalized piracy, and that’s what it is, piracy, of inordinate amounts of the capital in the world by the ruling elite continues along the pattern it has been the past few decades.  A pattern which has recently been escalating dramatically.

The economic/sociologic trend we’re seeing in America is that life expectancy is decreasing.  Our communities are seeing ever increasing numbers of people experiencing homelessness, hunger, unaddressed physical and mental illnesses.  Infrastructure is deteriorating.  People seem to be worshipping greed, which is truly a psychological/spiritual pandemic destroying lives and communities.  The idolization of the ways and means of those who are capturing the wealth of the world is on par with idolizing a deadly plague.

We don’t need people to be scheming and hoarding hundreds of millions and billions, even a trillion dollars’ worth of the capital which we, our parents and grandparents, and ancestors back centuries, have worked to develop and produce in the world.  We need better governance than what we’ve been receiving which not only allows such inequity but encourages and subsidizes it.  We need the resources of the Earth to be cared for and distributed in a way that all people have their basic needs met:  housing, food, education, medical care. 

And, yes, we need all people to be contributing to the care of our world and communities.  We don’t need a welfare state. That’s not good for the psychological and spiritual well-being of people.  With the rise of technology taking over so many labor jobs, we need shorter work weeks, job sharing:  but all with a living wage.  We need to be paying for services which do not produce a financial profit but are necessary to maintain healthy, viable communities.  That is true profit:  healthy people within healthy communities.  A world which nurturers the wellbeing of and the development and progress of humanity.  Progress in the arts, sciences, and greater understanding of our shared spiritual reality.

We need people to take reproductive responsibility within the reality of our world and finite resources.  We don’t need men and women making babies which they cannot and have no genuinely viable plan of adequately caring for.  Would-be parents should have a plan which demonstrates consideration of and responsibility for one’s family and the communities we all live within.  We need social programs which provide a temporary “life-boat” for people hit with unexpected hardships.  But living on welfare is not a socially, nor even a personally, responsible plan for supporting a family. However, in order to have a job, jobs need to exist, and when a parent can have more money coming in from welfare than the jobs which may available to them, something is wrong with the economic system.

We need to see the stock market abolished.  We need to see giant corporate farms broken up and an increase in smaller, ecologically responsible, farms.  We don’t need a corporate or national mentality of “saving” money, or of not funding needs in one area only to spend exorbitantly in others:  we need a mentality of the wise use of money.  The same way our bodies do not “save” blood and nutrients it carries, but keep it in circulation throughout the entirety of the body for the health of the whole. 

And, to be healthy and to have healthy communities:  we need truth as truly as we need healthful air, water and food.