Violence in Our Schools

[Anthony Price, the principal of Everman Middle School in Texas, reinstated corporal punishment last year. “It’s had a huge effect,” he said.]

This image is from an article in the NY Times by Rick Lyman, published September 30, 2006.

I quote from the article: "The most recent federal statistics show that during the 2002-3 school year, more than 300,000 American schoolchildren were disciplined with corporal punishment, usually one or more blows with a thick wooden paddle. Sometimes holes were cut in the paddle to make the beating more painful. Of those students, 70 percent were in five Southern states: Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas."

"Among adherents of the practice is James C. Dobson, the child psychologist who founded Focus on the Family and is widely regarded as one of the nation’s most influential evangelical leaders. DuBose Ravenel, a North Carolina pediatrician who is the in-house expert on the subject for Mr. Dobson’s group, said, 'I believe the whole country would be better off if corporal punishment was allowed in schools by parents who wish it.'"

Did the NY Times create a wormhole that sent me into an alternate universe?

I confess I was shocked. I guess I live a more sheltered life than I realized. But then again, I guess it shouldn't surprise me when our "leaders" have just passed a law giving the President the power to torture other human beings. Why should I make a big deal about beating our children?

May God have mercy on our souls! [1671]

Fear, Terror and V

[WARNING: Spoiler for "V for Vendetta"]

There is a scene in the movie “V for Vendetta” when Evey (played by Natalie Portman) is facing her own death by firing squad. Her guard says in a soft voice something like “All they want is a little bit of information. Just give then something.” She responds: “Thank you, but I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds.” She says it in a calm way, not upset, simply stating the truth. The guard says, “You no longer have fear. You are now totally free.” He walks away, with the prison door open.

[WARNING: REALLY BIG SPOILER]

The guard did not work for the government but was V himself, and he tortured Evey as a way to set her free. When Evey realized it was V who had done this, she of course became enraged. V however tells her that her experience of freedom cannot be altered by the fact that he was the torturer. He invites her to recapture the feeling she had a few minutes before. She takes a deep breath and returns to the moment of freedom. She spreads her arms in the rain and feels the freedom.

When she lost all fear, she became free. This had been his experience as well, after surviving the genetic experiments he was subjected to at St. Mary’s. What he did with his new-found freedom was to plan and execute a detailed and ingenious plan to create a revolution. In the process he not only tortured the woman he had learned to love, he also murdered countless people. He was defined as a terrorist. He stated: “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” He was willing to create havoc and uncountable suffering in order to unmask the terror of the government. He wore a mask, yet he was in the unmasking business. In efffect, he was “anti-terror” or “anti-fear.”

Since it is a movie, and a surreal one at that, it is not difficult to see these images and interpret them as metaphors. I can experience the movie as I might a dream, seeing it as symbolic of something internal within me, within us human beings. It of course comes down to the issue of fear. It is interesting to me that Bush doesn’t talk about terrorism; instead he talks about terror. I speak the obvious here, but what is terror except extreme fear? Our government is in the business of fear. Since 9/11, Bush has been systematically promoting fear, exploiting fear, creating it where it isn’t evident, cajoling it, molding it to serve his purposes. He wants us to be afraid, deathly afraid, deathly terrorized by terror. He is in effect turning FDR’s statement on its head. He is saying we only have fear to fear. We must fear fear or we are cowards. And we must fight fear with guns and bombs. This is so strange.

I have had a recent experience which I have found to be real and meaningful to me. During this experience, I discovered that it is possible to be without fear even when surrounded by others who are afraid. When I am without fear, I am a powerful being. [1630]

Experience vs. Experiment

I often struggle with how to share in words the connection between this realm and the others without being immediately dismissed. I can be immediately dismissed by the naturalists who will tell me that there is no reason to believe in any “realm” except this one, this solid, dense world we live in, the plant Earth. I can also be quickly dismissed by the religious folks who have very dearly held beliefs about the way those other realms are structured. When I start talking about my experiences in those realms, they will compare my ideas with their carefully developed beliefs, and end up uncomfortable enough to easily condemn me, or more disturbingly, design to change my mind.

How to create a space for a discussion of this? I have made some feeble attempts in this blog, and I will continue to take stabs at it.

The scientist in me is very uncomfortable with the language of feelings and intuition, because there is no way to subject it to any kind of validation process. Anyone can claim anything by saying “it is a feeling I have.” And yet, these feelings, these intuitions have always played a very important role in the scientific process. Yet, it isn’t the feeling that the scientist asks us to accept; rather, we are asked to accept the data that came from the experiment that was inspired by the feeling.

I do think that there is a similar process that can take place in the “world of the spirit” but I do not think this process has been clarified yet. In many Christian traditions, there is a process called discernment that perhaps begins to approach this. If a religious leader proclaims that God has told him that a certain head of government needs to be assassinated, it is up to each person listening to that statement to discern whether such a proclamation comes form God or not. If I say, “I have traveled to the Near Earth Realms and have discovered that there are discarnate beings there who want to feed off of those who have recently died,” those who hear or read these words have a responsibility to discern whether such a statement has any meaning to them. However, it is also my responsibility to discern within myself whether such an experience was real or not. Even if I go through a discernment process and decide that my experience is real, is it reasonable for others to trust my discernment? I suspect not.

What may make sense is an invitation to others to go through a process whereby they too can have direct spiritual experiences.

I can learn to say, “I have had a certain experience which I have found to be real and meaningful to me. During this experience, I discovered this or that.”

Perhaps I will try that in my next post. [1618]

Breathe in the New Energy

We are so used to old energy. It is a kind of energy that is intrinsically filled with polarity. It is a kind of energy that knows how to resist. It pulls and pushes. It has a kind of wave function, back and forth. Think of politics; there is the pendulum effect. First we flow to the right, then the left. Whenever there is an intensity in one direction, sooner or later there will be an intensity in the opposite direction. Think of the baby boomers who were full of freedom: sex and drugs and rock and roll. And now we have programs in school teaching our children the evils of drugs. We are fundamentally irreverent, and we breed its opposite: religious fundamentalism. And so it goes. We are so used to this that we can barely imagine anything different.

Well, there is a New Energy that has entered this fine Earth. It is an energy that is absent polarity. It has no back and forth motion. It has no motion at all. It simply is. It does not flow in; it is here. It is wherever we are because it is creator energy and we are fundamentally creators. We can access it right now, in this moment. It contains no karma or karmic residue. It is here. Can you feel it?

It is contained in each and every conscious breath.

Breathe it in, deep into you. Your life will never be the same. [1533]

Lake Tahoe

I am so blessed to be here. I am so used to living in a kind of horizonal world. The great plains spead out. The landscape goes outward in a horizonal direction. The vertical is not too evident except when near the river and there are hills. There are bluffs by the river as well, which certainly intoduces the vertical. But here in Tahoe the trees are maybe 200 or 300 feet high. There are hills and valleys everywhere. It is as if my whole world has been turned on its side and the energy of direction has shifted.

The Five Brothers

Lake Tahoe:
Once upon a time there were five brothers. They loved to run and play, here and there. They were powerful dudes, and it was a really far away time when they played. When they were really young and when they created something in the sandbox, later they saw that their creations appeared somewhere else. For example, if they each created a strange monster, the next day, they would walk around the neighborhood and find each of their creations in someone’s yard as a little statue. At first the statues only partially resembled their sandbox creations, but as they practiced they were able to create more and more details. They later graduated to clay, and eventually they used the air herself to mold and create in. One of the games they dearly loved was to put a detail so small in their creations that was really difficult to see, then they would challenge each other to find the statue (it wasn’t always in the neighborhood) and then to discover the tiny detail in the statue. As they played they also learned to travel by some methods that we would not be familiar with today. In fact it could be said that the universe was not structured the same way then as it is now.

It used to be said that these brothers were always to be found together, playing and generating mischief. However even as babies, they were each very different. Some of their first adventures were lived together, like the sandbox creations and they loved to challenge each other in order to finely tune their skills and abilities. However, they grew bored rather quickly. Each brother was especially good at one thing and could easily beat the other at that one thing, so it got to where that one came to be excluded from games involving that thing. For example Hablotqd was really good with plants and if the game involved growing the tallest possible plant, Hablotqd would invariably win, so the other brothers either refused to play that game, or they would wait until Hablotqd was not around to play it, so they could improve their skills. This was also true for Blinjvyr who was good with rocks, Vgnywtos who was good with things related to the air, Titvuld who could do anything imaginable with water, and Verblak who could transform things using fire. As you could imagine, each would go off and develop his special skills and be gone for long periods away from his brothers. They always got together however, once a year (although there really wasn’t anything such as a year back then) and catch up with each other’s adventures.

One year Verblak didn’t show up for their yearly festival. His brothers were a bit upset and set off to look for him. When they found him they confronted him about his absence and he laughed at them. He told them that his creations and his time schedule were his own business, and that they had no right interfering, or even questioning him and his work. After that things were different and although the other brothers had a few more festivals, their passion wasn’t in it, and eventually they didn’t show up either, even though their creations would continue to meet and pretend like they were present. The brothers lost touch with each other for eons of time. Eventually they got so far from each other that it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that they operated in completely different dimensional realities.

Then one day something happened in the Multiverse that brought all five brothers together. There are many stories claiming credit to one brother or another for this event, but it could never be proven that any of them had any initial contribution to the idea. But they were each attracted to this unique place and time because each knew that in this new energy, the possibilities of creation were surpassed by anything in their experience before.

When they arrived they hardly could recognize each other as each had changed so much. There was a bit of tension among them. The ice was broken by Hablotqd who challenged his brothers to a test of strength and ability. All readily accepted, but there were others there who could not be ignored and these others were powerful as well. They set certain specific parameters in this new energy and told the brothers they must agree to these parameters or they would not be willing to play. At first they protested and showed their power, but it was to no avail. They had been gone very long, and they didn’t realize that the others had grown more powerful in cooperation and they couldn’t ignore them. The others explained the reasons for the parameters and the brothers slowly came to realize that these parameters would create the conditions whereby their own powers and skills could be tested all at the same time and place, and perhaps they would be able to decide who the best among them was. They were not used to working with others, but they decided to accept the parameters and joined the group to work together in a new project never attempted before.

And they all walked together among the new energies, creating together. And slowly the Earth took its shape and form.

To be continued . . .