Re: Fear, letter, etc.

Aloha,

> Reduction below:
>
> Man/animal = fear
>
> God/god/spirit = love

Both are embodied in us, so...

For anyone here who would like to have some new whole-person experiences of
fear and spirit - and would like to learn to be aware of one's fear without
becoming it and to take appropriate action even when extremely fearful, I
highly recommend the "Leap of Faith" program offering by an organization
called Warrior Spirit.  There web site is:

http://warriorspirit.org/

This recommendation is from personal experience - I have done the Leap of
Faith and several other of Jeff Alexander's programs and they have all been
excellent.  Leap of Faith they do as a "heart offering" (their term) for a 
very nominal fee.

What is relevant IMO to this list from Robert's letter to editor post has to
do with the cultures we create as we live them.

When we live a culture of fear and terror, it is reflected back to us, and
always will be.  I suspect that when we live a culture of peace and
compassion, that too will be reflected back to us.  So far that has never
really been tried on a grand scale.  Perhaps we scare ourselves too much about
trying it.  I have experienced it on a small scale and it is pretty darn cool.
 Not easy, not always simple or nice or pretty, but inevitably much better
than otherwise.

"The terrorists" did not arise from nowhere, with no motivation and no actions
on the part of anyone else to give them their excuses and rationalizations.
Likewise the Bush administration's excuses and rationalizations.
They (either one, or any of us) did not just wake up one day and say "hey,
let's go kill some of our fellow human beings."
To ignore some parts of the system and place all karma (literally, 'doing') on
some other parts is to repeat past failures of understanding.
This is the same essential problem we have with "crime" and "criminals" and a
whole palette of other social dis-eases.

I do suspect that September 11, 2001 was for example some sort of roundabout
reflection of September 11, 1978 - if only because of the matching dates.  If
you don't know what happened 9/11/78 that was similar to 9/11/2001, go look it
up.  Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, as someone
wise once said.

From a certain perspective it is exactly like a couple of small kids, each
saying "he hit me first!!"  Where does that ever get them?

The underlying issues are never about who swung first - rather, they are about
whose needs are unmet and how they are reacting to their needs not being met. 
Whatever their reaction, they are simply trying to get their needs met.



John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
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