Journalist Faiz Sakir of Think Progress wrote on October 5,2011:

“The original “Occupy Wall Street” protest has grown beyond its name — it is no longer solely about the courageous people camped out at Zucotti Park; it is a nationwide movement bonded by a shared refrain: “We are the 99 percent.”

This slogan has entered our political and financial lexicon and refers to the 99% , the vast majority of Americans, and their opposite, the 1% who have  the exceedingly disproportionate share of the wealth.

There is  a mounting disgust and anger in America’s citizenry with a political and financial system that rewards the 1 % at the expense of the rest. The Occupy Wall Street protest reflects this by moving outside of it’s original platform as a protest against Wall Street, and has become a nationwide movement that is bringing awareness to ordinary Americans, not just about income inequality, but the declining median household incomes, the growing numbers of people getting kicked out of their homes, increasing numbers of adults and distressingly children falling below the poverty line, the millions joining the ranks of those without health insurance, and the corruption and unjustifiable political influence by  greedy banks and corporations in the financial services sector.

So far, the proposed solutions of the 99% have been political in nature at the level of national policy and are  encoded in a list of demands called  “99% Declaration” and a more loosely defined set of goals called the “Liberty Square Blueprint”.

It is crucial that the financial realities of our current economic system are coming to light and ordinary people are waking up to them. It is also imperative that the  concerns be addressed at the national policy level, but what in my view is missing is addressing the underlying issues at the level of the individual and his consciousness. Throughout history, in different empires, there has been this same increasing corruption and income disparity, with the consequent protests, wars, and regime changes that have inevitably ended in virtually identical inequalities. As the Spiritual teacher Osho said “There is no idea of changing the society or the world, because there is no society. Only individuals exist. Society is an illusion. And because we believe in society, all the revolutions have failed. The belief that the society exists has sabotaged all efforts to change man—because the belief is rooted in illusion.”  If this is true, and it seems from the lessons of history, which we often fail to recognize, that it is true, we must address economic issues at the level of individual consciousness.

Bringing increased attention to the development of consciousness in the middle of our money and worldly affairs is the doorway to our freedom from its dominance over us. And that freedom extends out to make a difference in our world. For if we each participate in and take responsibility for our part in becoming conscious about the money in our lives, money can be restored to its true purpose—not as a measure of success, or intrinsic personal value, or as a way to collect fame and recognition, or a means to repress or dominate others, but as a tool of support for who you truly are as a human being and a reflection of the legacy you would like to leave for the planet.

Evidence Of Our Human Spirit

The upheaval that our world is experiencing is a sign of the human spirit behind our culture, and that has been the case in every place in every time. For those who study history, the condition of the United States in our time is no surprise. It happened in Rome. It happened for the British Empire. The fall of every empire was presaged by the increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots.

When we comprehend how dire the state of the economy is, the impact on our lives can feel chaotic. The wake-up calls that are pulling us out of our sleep can feel shocking, dismaying, and depressing. It is no wonder that many people are afraid. Historically, chaos has meant that things aren’t working. But humanity is resilient, and within chaos resides our capacity to open up into something new. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche said “I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.” We can see evidence of this capacity in the Occupy (Wall Street) movement, which has as of this writing has 2,668 occupy communities spread not just around the United States, but in more than eighty other countries as well. Note 10 People want a voice and they want change. Matt Taibbi said this in the November 24, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone magazine: ”Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It’s about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are of not just Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become.”  I would extrapolate that to the entire world. Even if you don’t agree with all of the politics or methods of the Occupy movement that began in September 2011, I believe that it signifies to humanity the strengthening of a force inside of us willing to stand for needed change, as well as a movement toward cooperation and empowerment that can lead the way. We are finding our voices and to beginning to see ourselves as more deeply interwoven in the fabric of the universe, and learning to act from an expanded sense of self and community.

It is time for all of us to get out of denial and face any negative emotions we may be feeling—whether fear, rage, helplessness, or even sorrow that leaves us feeling hopeless or paralyzed—so that we do not have to act like victims. It’s important to recognize that our egos are attached to victimhood: “It’s all the government’s fault” . . . “The banks are merciless” . . . “Those Wall Street crooks, taking their huge bonuses with my tax money . . .” Remember that you can get lost in victimhood even when some of your perceptions about others are correct. In fact, the more the facts seem to justify your feelings, the harder it can be to escape the powerful draw of remaining the victim. To compound the problem, the media love to capitalize on our tendency to judge and blame when we feel afraid or threatened, so they tend to emphasize and dramatize anything that will keep us stuck.

Instead of remaining trapped in an ego focused on negative factors, we could see what is happening as a paradigm shift offering untold opportunities for connecting more deeply to ourselves. So we are faced with two possibilities: We can look honestly into our own illusions, mistakes, and unwise decisions. Or we can avoid looking into and acknowledging our contribution to the situation—which will ultimately make us suffer more.

We may simply have forgotten that each of us has the freedom to shift our frame of reference at any time. In any moment, we can see our problems as a whole new set of choices that we can make in light of our changed circumstances.

One of the principles of money is that it is fluid and dynamic..   It’s purpose is to go on moving from hand to hand, and that is why it is called currency. Greed and hoarding, destroys its whole purpose and the current becomes stagnant. The more money flows the richer a society, as it supports the unfolding of human potential of all of it’s citizens rather than for just a few.  When it flows, money can be a servant of all rather than a master by a few. When there is only fiscal liberty for a few, it creates a hierarchy in society from which follows competition, ambition, dependence, helplessness, possessiveness, power over others, oppression and even tyranny.

In our current society, money has stopped circulating. If we liken it to blood, we can see that when blood is circulating it is life. But when blood has stopped, it is death. It is the same with money. Money stopped is death. The more money circultaes the more there is. The more money is used the more it circulates, and the richer the society is. The fact that almost all of the money has been hoarded by a few- and it is getting worse not better-  is leading to a death. Our money system, our society, and there are some who say even our species and/or planet earth cannot continue without the death of the organism. This is at the macro level.

Now lets take a look at the micro level.

Everyone should have money. They should all be able to earn money, have it and use it. Everyone works- it is a part of being human. In fact, around the world the majority of human work approximately  a comparable number of hours. And if everyone works, then everyone should have a reasonable share of the money flow. But that isn’t the way it is. Instead there are huge differences in what people earn.

Mayan calendar scholar Carl Johan Calleman puts it like this in his article the Beginning of the Fourth Night of the Ninth Wave of the Mayan Calendar System “These numbers in the bank computers (Obviously the same applies to stock, funds etc.) define the power structures of our societies and determine almost all human relationships, what we as a species do and focus on in our life on earth. There are of course some minor exceptions, but in the overall picture it is true that the measures given to each individual in these bank computers determine human life in its totality.”

When people are in poverty, they must attend to their bodily survival first. Then if there is sufficient, they can perhaps address their psychological needs. When there is no money, there is no opportunity for exploring spiritual needs. If you are even reading this article, you are one of the very few on the planet who have enough money for spiritual pursuits. So most people do not have the basic human right of developing their consciousness, never mind their unique potentials.

Both the micro and macro level point to what I have spoken about as one of our main delusions as a human being- that we are separate selves. I  addressed this in my last post, The “I Am” Sickness. It is not possible to move into oneness or unity consciousness as long as we are believing in and acting selfishly from this separate “self”.  It is also not possible for humanity as a whole to grow in consiousness, to move toward onesness and unity consiousness with the current economic system.

Calleman is predicting a total financial system collapse in October, 2011 the end of the Mayan calendar, as “the current economic system is simply not consistent with the unity consciousness”. He goes on to say that if the monetary system would collapse we would each be fully sovereign souls what we create because the power structure would have disappeared. “the consequence would  be that we all become fully responsible for the course of events not only regarding what we do as individuals, but also as a collective”.

I don’t what will happen, and so I can’t subcscribe to the imminent end of our economic system,even though everything his reading of the Mayan Calendar has said so far  has hit the mark. What I can attest to is the movement of consciousness toward individual responsibility, and perhaps if we don’t move on it ourselves, if we don’t choose taking responsibility, the intelligence of existence will up the ante for  us.

Our Belief in Separateness is Leading Us To Serfdom

Joseph Stilitz has done it again. He succinctly outlines the causes and impacts of the increasing disparity between those who have and those who don’t. The title of his article brilliantly says a lot: “Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%”. There are some amazing statistics out that illuminate this disparity in a way that make it more personal for us living in the United States. For example, that 400 families in the US have the same wealth as the bottom 150,000,000 million Americans.  On the world stage, the top 1 % own 97% of the wealth. In the US, that percentage is 1% owns 40%, but it is a growing disparity.  In the 1980’s , those percentages were 12% and 33%.  So, we are being impacted too by this disparity  and the statistics are changing at an alarming rate. As Sitiglitz pints out “we’re doing inequality on a world-class level”. In my experience, we in the first world were congratulating ourselves for not feeling subject to the lack that so many people in the world have been experiencing, which has been denial of the worst kind- we are special and it won’t happen to us- that’s what happens to “them”. Evidence of our belief that we are separate. Even as we watch protests in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, we are not recognizing it is increasingly the same situation at home. This is hubris and narcissism, not of the same order as the 1 % , but remarkable none the less.  The Pancha Mama Alliance  workshop I attended last year had their own sobering statistics such as if you have food in your frig, a roof over your head and clothes in your closet, then you are better off than 83% of the world’s people. So, we were innured to what was actually happening  and we just continued on a with our lives, in denial and/or lack of interest because we believed we weren’t impacted by this inequality, until the economic crisis of 2008 brought us up short.

It is worth outlining what Stiglitz says in his article, both because it will help you understand the mechanics of what has been happening, as well as to provide some needed information that will help  launch us into our discussion  about the total self-interest of the ego.

Firstly he talks about how US, citizens have been doing worse and worse which does not bode well for the long haul. Shrinking opportunity means the human capital is not being used- that means our most valuable asset-, us, the people. Secondly, there are distortions in the economy that lead to inequality, such as preferential tax treatments for special interests(GE is paying little or no tax on billions of profits), monopolies (the banks and increasingly corporations)and this leads to  undermining the efficiency of the economy.  Wealthy Americans got a free ride when capital gains tax rates were lowered , because that is how most wealthy people make their money. Antitrust laws are not being enforced  and lobbying has  allowed the manipulation of the financial system have all been, as Stiglitz says  “a god-send to the 1%”.

Thirdly, and what Siglitz believes is the most important, is that a modern economy requires what he calls “collective action”- a government need to invest in the infrastructure of the country, in education, and in technology.  Our infrastructures are suffering because the more divided in wealth disparity a country becomes, the more reluctant the wealthy are to spend on common needs, because they personally can buy them themselves. They don’t have to rely on government for parks, or education, or medical care or personal security.

The problem is that all these factors become reinforcing of each other- wealth begets power begets wealth. So the 1% has no restraints on it and it doesn’t pay any price for being out of balance. Even the new economic globalization emerging rules favor those who have.  We are moving more and more toward serfdom- something we believed that as human beings  we had grown out of after the dark ages. In addition to disparity, the mounting evidence of this is the growing loss of collective bargaining rights by the worlds’ workers and the loss of impact of the vote by a country’s citizens.  Examples of the latter are the Supreme court paving the way for corporations to buy government by equating them with individuals  although they have vaster resources and no soul and electronic voting which, as we have seen, is much more easily subject to manipulation.

It seems that we are doomed to repeat history. The end  of every world empire in the past was presaged by a growing disparity between the rich and the poor.  That was true of the Roman Empire, the British Empire and now the American Empire.

This 1% don’t seem to recognize is that we are all in the same boat- that if that boat is leaking anywhere, it is leaking for them too.  Or they don’t care- which means they have no compassion, which means no hearts. I often wonder if there is a belief by those who accumulate more than they need, at the expense of others, if they believe they are not going to die. That the money they accumulate somehow is the security that doesn’t actually exist. They don’t know there is actually no perch to stand on, and that each of us is going to die, and that we actually can’t take any of it with us.

So, whether we like it or not, we are all in the same boat, and the crew of that boat is all of us. It does seem that the crew is becoming polarized though- there are those who still insist that greed, arrogance  and hoarding are the true reference for navigation, while many others are recognizing  that we are headed in the wrong direction, and for those there are, as Hathor says,  ”new stars in the sky of our minds” and  ”we are setting our beacons on these cosmic beacons”. If we look around, we can see the forces of mutiny are growing. The financial crisis of 2008 and catastrphe in Japan in 2011 are making the reality of oneness more visible to us all.

I recently saw the movie I Am by  director Tom Shadyac.  It is a documentary  that has wonderful interviews with scientists, phikosophers, mystics, and poet who are all asked the question “What is wrong with the world and how can we fix it”.  I highly recommend you see this film- it is so wonderful seeing consciousness coming into  the movie theaters and thus touching the audiences. The movie title is in a sense the description of the problem. When British philosopher and writer GK Chesterton was asked this question in the 19th century, he responded “I am”.

I amness is a belief that we are separate human beings. When we believe that, we don’t experience or recognize we are part of the greater whole. We don’t realize the effect on us if someone is angry or starving. Instead of collaberation and cooperation, we respond with competition and hierarchy. When we believe we are separate, we  have lost contact with our dual nature of spiritual and material, and we are caught only in the physical, the material- we are out of balance.  We believe we are the center of our own little worlds and believe our own little actions are what support us. We hve lost contact with love, with our hearts, with the possibility of oneness with reality. We have lost contact with Beingness, out true nature.

In Tom’s movie, this economic greed and compulsion is likened to acancer- nothing in nature takes more than it needs except a cancer. The choices he voices  about those separate entities running amock are allow them to destroy us, run, become one of them, or heal them of their “mental illness”. Healing requires consciousness.

So again we come to consciousness. We need to apply love, compassion, sympathy and understanding even as we take our own conscious right action.  These are all aspects of being. It is not about fighting, nor about giving up, but bringing as much consciousness into the situation  and our actions as we are able. Consciousness can turn the tide from competition toward cooperation. Toward our hearts where consciousness lives. The scientists in Tom’s film have been discovering consensus decision-making in all animals from insects to primates. It seems that true democracy is in our DNA, so even science is recognizing  aspects of being in our humanness.

As Desmond Tutu says in the film “The sea os only drops of water that have come together”.

Sme scietists in Tom’s movie

The Turning Tide

One fantasy that is becoming dangerous to embrace is the illusion of security in the form of Social Security in the United States. I have heard many people say that they have no savings or investments, and instead intend to rely on these monthly payouts to support them in their old age. It has recently been announced that Social Security has become permanently cash-flow negative. In other words, more will be paid out yearly in benefits than will be taken in as revenue.

Some people are shocked when I tell them that there is actually no “trust fund” sitting there that they and everyone else who has been working (or their employers) have been paying into for all these years. Rather, the government has always been “borrowing” those funds. What’s more surprising to these people is that the total amount that “should” be in there isn’t even a legal debt. It is a government liability that is backed by a moral obligation only. It could be eliminated by political will, which is a significant probability given the current economic situation. If it is allowed to wind down, many who are paying into it today, and have been for all their working lives, won’t see any benefits. Social Security cannot survive without raising taxes and/or decreasing benefits. So when creating your financial plan, it is better to know now rather than later that you cannot rely on it as a source of income.

Other countries do have national funds available for when their citizens reach old age. The Norwegian government, for example, has funded its pool of retirement money partly through the nationalization of the oil industry because recognized that the national resources of the country belongs to all the country’s citizens. So it is important to know the actual situation of government-supported social security where you live.

Corporate pensions are also becoming less common, and smaller organizations that, under better economic conditions, would gladly fund retirement are less and less able to do so. So it seems that within our current economic reality, the movement is toward each of us being responsible for our own financial well-being and retirement.

A large percentage of people in the First World—regardless of income level—have been financing their lives through debt instead of through savings. Economic circumstances are dictating that we can no longer afford the delusion that we can indefinitely support ourselves on other people’s money. The chickens are coming home to roost, and we all need to wake up to this very real change that is happening. The truth  is  becoming more and more apparent in our world—that the only option is to finance ourselves with our savings.

Health Care Insurance

If you live in a country without universal or government-supported health care, such as the United States, then you might include health care insurance in the bottom tier of  the pyramid. You may never use it, and so it may seem as though you’re throwing money away on premiums. However, if you get sick, you will avoid bankrupting yourself. So you could consider health insurance to be an investment in human capital. For a year, I was a hospice volunteer in a hospital for indigents in San Francisco. I was stunned to see how many people there had not been, as you might expect, living on the streets, but rather had had ordinary lives before medical costs had siphoned off all their savings. This is not by any means unusual; tragically, it is becoming more common as medical costs rise out of sight. In fact, research conducted at Harvard University has shown that medical costs have contributed to more than half of all bankruptcies in the United States. That may not seem so surprising to you, but what might is that half of those bankruptcies are people who had health care insurance.

If you wish to read more on medical costs and bankruptcy, there is an article in Bloomberg Businessweek that you might like to read.

Being in the world and not of it.

You might be asking yourself “What dos this have to do with money and spirituality”.When we look at this matter from the perspective of how we behave with our money day in and day out, we all faced with the same paradox: How can we live in the now where our Beingness is and, at the same time, meet the practical needs of a life lived in manifest reality? Learning how to do that is part of the mystery of being human, part of the mystery of our dual nature as spirit in matter. As we have seen, becoming more aware in our relationship to money has its foundation in our overall aim to integrate Beingness into our lives at every level.

Stephen Leahy is an international environmental journalist who covers international environmental issues in the public interest. In his website he says his work focuses exclusively on important stories that go unnoticed by mainstream media, often which are about climate change.

On February 17, he posted an article “Permafrost Melt Soon Irreversible Without Major Fossil Fuel Cuts”. In his article he says that global warming could cause up to 60% of the world’spermafrost to thaw by 2200 thereby releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere that would further speed up climate change. Without major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, as much as 2/3 of the world’s huge storage of frozen carbon will be released pushing temperatures several degrees higher thus making large parts of the world uninhabitable. And we are only about 20 years away from the tipping point. The study he refers to in his article does not include methane release from the sea nor something called thermokarst erosion of the permafrost from warmer water. Politicians nor policy makers have taken any of this into account when looking at the amount  carbon emissions need to be reduced. So we are at the top edge of a dangerous precipice. Clearly we our out of balance.

It is not hopeless however according to the study Leahy is quoting. If we were able to phase out fossil fuels by 2050 by using renewable energy sources, we could find a safer path. But that would require utilizing technologies that are being ignored.

“What does this have to do with money?” you might ask. For our money system to work, the economy has to grow.  And there are risks associated with continued growth that has relied on fossil fuels, mostly oil. Regardless of the risks, the economic system that is still being supported is still betting  on continued growth.

There are some, such as scientist Chris Martinson who I recently heard on The Solari Report, that believe peak oil is already here, which means we have run into the limitations of energy and thus the limits of growth. If this is true, we are already in a nonexpansionary phase, and where before expansion would allow skimming off the top by Wall Street and others without too much complaint by the rest of us, nonexpansion means a zero sum game with winners and losers. And those who are not insiders will be losers. That includes you and me.

In the US, we are not recognizing the dwindling resources publicly (oil companies are using the mask of the disruption in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya to disguise the real reasons for rising oil prices). As I heard Chris say, the status quo would rather do anything to stay in power and stumble into the next crisis.

Our institutions including the banks, government, churches, and corporations cannot be objective because they live in a distorted mindset, whether consciously or unconsciously. They are not interested in becoming whole as long as their own interests are being served.

These people have not reflected on their inner lives, and the values that would flow from such a reflection. Instead, they act through layers of rationalization, greed, and hidden agendas which are being slowly revealed.

Solutions will not come from solving our world problems simply externally. We must address the spirit and matter within each of us, on our own  personal journey. When we do that, our outer will start to become a reflection of our inner and true forms that have their basis not only in matter but in spirit  will be formed. The less there is an individual ego self present, the more reality will be seen without delusions and  fragmentation which characterize our world,  and become a an expression of spiritual realization. And our institutions and our economic system will reflect those values. Spirit includes community, emotion, relationship and self-reflection. Americans have stopped thinking for themselves and have thereby contributed to the world’s imbalance. Imbalance  has resulted in tyranny, control, oppression, war, logic divorced from the heart, and science divorced from consciousness.

But what if it is too late to allow us to wake up and take responsibility and affect the precipitous human journey before it is too late? What if we cannot reverse the tide and we are witnessing the end of humanity on planet earth? The answer is still consciousness. Only when we don’t take ourselves to be a separate self, living in a world of objects, driven by our distorted material instinctual needs, at the effect of our emotions, will we be able to stand  in the center of chaos and know our eternal Beingness that never dies and know that we will be fine. The earth may not be meant to last. Planets and stars come and go……..who you truly are is unaffected by this. If you look for that, you have changed everything. Do not look for permanence- it is a program of the mind.

Following your desires and wishes ties you to the wheel of doing and that requires money. And money requires time. So, you end up taking away the energy to just be. It also keeps you outwardly focused, stopping the inward movement that will uncover the light that you are.

This is a practice that can push the offswitch on our outer-directed projector and create an inward direction for our attention and help us be with what actually is. This practice will also bring you into moment-by-moment intimate contact with your worldly desires so you can see how they are operating in your life and give you greater understanding of the nature of desire.

For a period of time, not less than 6 weeks, take an aim to take a fast from your wishes and desires. Not to stop try and stop them from arising- but rather just not act on them.  And then inquire as each one arises, what is underlying the desire. For example, you want to buy a pair of jeans. When you sit with the desire, you see that you believe that will make you more beautiful. You are already beautiful. Or, you may look in the mirror and see wrinkles and wish you were younger. It immediately brings the desire for a facial (or even a facelift). As you inquire, you may feel the fear of your mortality and recognize how you don’t accept your aging and the reality of impermanence.

At first, when you begin this practice it may feel like a fast as you come face to face with not having what you believe you need.  But with time, space, and consciousness (what you come to see and understand about yourself as you do this practice) it will begin to feel like a feast, because you will be coming closer to who you really are. And then you may find yourself having freedom from the morphogenetic field of the world caught in external desires.

What I mean by that is a pattern-related field of resonance where knowledge, structure or behavior become increasingly imbedded as a collective habits and beliefs which both influence and are accessible to to others in the field. British biologist Rupert Sheldrake postulated after several experiments that there is a field of habitual patterns that links all people, which influences and is influenced by their habits. And some of those habits of the last few decades has been unsustainable overconsumption,  the valuing of the material over the spiritual, self-destructive debting- subjects I have addressed in earlier posts.

The point here is that, as long as we are acting out of the field, and not out of our own truth, we cannot actualize our unique potential as a human being. We will remain a sheep, an asleep follower of the status quo. The point of the practice is not to separate you from the human world, but rather to give you much greater understanding about the nature of desire and how it operates in the world, thereby giving you the freedom of choice.

So practicing the desire diet, will not only impact your pocketbook in a favorable way, but will support you on your spiritual journey to be who you truly are in the world, your unique humanness.

But it will also contribute consciousness to the human morphogenetic field and perhaps bring a new paradigm of consciousness along with the emerging new paradigm of money. Now wouldn’t that be fun!

There is a great article in the Nov/Dec issue of Utne Reader entitled “Nothing Grows Forever”, which is a reprint of the article from Mother Jones by Clive Thomson. It is a very hopeful article both for us and for the planet, as it not only questions the consumption economics that we have been living in, but provides a viable alternative. It provides a third way other then the dilemma that has been presented to us by growth economists, that without growth we would spiral into poverty and with it we deplete the planet. This third alternative is aptly names no-growth economics.

It asks the questions of whether we could have a healthy economy that doesn’t grow. It also asks if we could halt the inescapable movement toward ecological catastrophe. The point of view of no-growth economics fits perfectly with the movement toward more consciousness in our economics.

According to Thompson, in then 19th Century the economist John Stuart Mill had the point of view that growth only served up to a certain point where everyone would enjoy a reasonable standard of living. After that point he believed, people would be able to live their lives with a focus on things like child rearing, art, leisure and not get caught up in the “trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heals” that he saw in unrestrained capitalism.

This chase of more is better is part of  what I have spoken about earlier when I spoke about consciousness.This chase  has been part of our mantra of not enough that lives at the heart of our jealousies, greed, and arguments with life. Success has been measured in terms of how much we can store instead of our beingness, of who we are. It is interesting to note that in the 1950′s there was very little private storage in America, but now there is something like 200 million cubic feet of private storage filled with stuff. Is stuff really a measure of our success as a human being?

When we are cut off from our beingness, we act out the lust of the the animal part of us that  is dissociated from being. Lust becomes excessive because of the emptiness from the separation from being. And our economy has banked on that lust. So we try and fell the hole with food, sex and objects. So it is a deficiency motivated drive. And we believe that the answer to the deficiency is outside of oursleves. What we don’t realize is that this external focus for more and more uses up our life energy, and doesn’t fulfill us. We try and define ourselves by external and financial achievements, and becuase everyone else is doing it too in our society, we buy into that cultural mindset.

When we recognize that we have been living in a world of lies,  we will want to to find out more about that and create a support for a new perspective, one that supports more truth in our life. We do need money in our lives, not only to support ourselves physically, but also for our interests, our dreams, our families, our personal fulfillment. But that does not mean focussing on getting rich or having everything where money and what it can get us becomes the primary thing, but rather as a support for our lives. We have been more interested in what we believe money brings such as prestige, power, security, or position and forget that is a support for bring who we truly are into the world. So we don’t spend our time finding out about other things that support us physically in terms of time, energy, of relationships, of community, of organization, knowledge or understanding.

Going back to no-growth economics, it has become a real consideration  since the concern for climate change and the sustainability  has moved from the science community more into the mainstream. One of the things the no-growthers  conclude is that with technology, there is more efficiency in the workplace. This could be used to shorten work weeks which would give more free time to pursue other interests, like community,family, or spiritual growth.  They also propose clean energy tax, consuming less, population control,creating a world with fewer economic inequities which would be a more stable world. With consumimg less, we might then value more durable goods that require more labor but fewer materials.We’d have to be seeking fulfillment from activities with a lighter footprint. Some of these could be politically troubling.

The question no-growth economists  raise is how do you prevent people from producing and buying needless stuff which has been the engine of the growth economics. The answer is consciousness. When people recognize true fulfillment is from beingness and not more stuff, then it won’t be as much of an issue. The answer is always consciousness. So no-growth economics and consciousness seem to dovetail.

The Utne Reader article concludes with the fact that no-growth economics could be forced on us in a few decades- that the earth itself will compel people to act when resources become scarce, and climate change is causing global conflict. So the planet herself may be leading us into a new level of consciousness.

If we were enlightened, we would already be living in that way. The answer is always consciousness.

I noticed in the New Yorker this week that the author of the book, The Secret, has just written a new book, The Power. Oh dear. It’s unfortunate that in the name of true spirituality  ego-centric pseudo-spirituality gets on the New York Times best seller list. I was hoping that the Secret would pass by an disappear into oblivion before it could hurt people even more than it has and that the author, Rhonda Byrne, a purported  ”spiritual” teacher would deservedly lose any proponents she might have gained. (I’m really sad Oprah didn’t see through this one and rather, by having the Secret contingent on her show, actually supported the growth of Byrne’s fan base).

In case you need a reminder, in the Secret, Byrne was supposedly revealing a big secret that there is a “law of attraction in the universe”. Anyone on the spiritual journey, or even who has been in therapy, knows about this energetic law. It is no secret. She twisted the meaning into the idea that thoughts have power,  and  thinking about something is the way to get it, so therefore thinking positive thoughts will get you what you want. And mostly what people want is money. So it was just really about getting rich. She even went so far as to say the Law of Attraction is “the greatest power in the universe”. Wow. Even more than “God” or Being or whatever you call the intelligence of the deepest reality. I don’t know any true spiritual teachings that have put selfishness and materialism  at their core. Even gratitude and forgiveness were considered as just strategies to make you more successful at getting what you want.

What is the real “law of attraction”? We attract to us the experiences we need to grow spiritually. Planet earth is a school of consciousness, not a catalog store. But most people believe money and freedom go hand in hand. Your right to be free is at the very core of who you are, but that freedom comes from realizing the depth of your Being, not from accumulating more. In fact it is about letting go: of your conditioning, of your thoughts, your beliefs, your attachments, your petty desires that through our misunderstanding we have taken to be reality. And we know what needs to be addressed because the world mirrors whatever it is to us in our life experience. And then we get to meet it with responsibility and consciousness or not. It is is our free will to not meet ourselves, but until we do we will be run by the patterns in our soul. That is the true meaning of the law of attraction. And when we meet ourselves with consciousness and compassion- our pain, our hurt, our self images- all of the things we take ourselves to be other than the depth of who we are, those limitations begin to thin and we experience ourselves with more and more depth. And when happiness shows up, and it will, we will recognize that happiness is a state of being and not a result of getting what you want. When you are happy, you live in sufficiency, that lends itself to sustainability and simplicity, not lusting after more and more to fill the holes of deficiency and emptiness that live at the bottom of our ego structures. Nothing from outside can fill those holes. When you believe that more money is the answer to your life problems, you are robbing yourself of the greatness of your own spiritual journey. And the amazing thing is that when you do live more in Beingness,  will enjoy the things you gather  and the things you do.

Abundance comes only to those who already have it. It is a universal law. Both abundance and scarcity are inner states that manifest as your reality. Jesus puts it like this” For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even that he has will be taken away.”                                         – Eckart Tolle

Why The Secret was such a travesty in my mind, was that it misled people who have been suffering greatly in the current financial paradigm and made them feel they could change their life experience with just controlling their thoughts, but it actually  would lead them to even more suffering when that didn’t work. On top of their money deficiency, there would be even more inner critic attacks and self-loathing for not getting the positive thoughts “right”.There is no shortcut. Each of us need to do our spiritual work. And the freedom that brings will allow us to experience prosperity no matter what the amount of money flowing through our lives.

It is true that money and freedom are intimately tied, but not in the way proposed by Byrne. Rather, since money is at the intersection of everything we do in the world, our relationship to money can be food for our spiritual journey. When we begin to see the issues that arise reveal  what we need to become conscious of.

In the book review in the Sept. 13 New Yorker by Kelefa Sanneh, she quotes an Oscar Wilde quoted in Byrne’s book, The Power: ” I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them”.  She must have understood that positive thoughts weren’t getting her readers rich, and saw that emotions were in the way. So she’s added control to the mix. She seems to be saying “Let’s dominate  reality so we can create our own ( ego-centric, materialistic) reality.” So again, she is suggesting  a strategy on the surface of life that will keep egos busy, but will totally bypass the opportunity for true spiritual growth and freedom. That’s sad during this time when people  need a genuine spiritual support.

My husband and I just took a road trip from here is the San Francisco Bay area up through Oregon, Washington, Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and camped on the way home down the coast. What was remarkable was the amount of obesity we encountered.  Some of these encounters were more memorable than other. On a ferry, we saw an overweight couple eating ice cream and feeding a young child under one year its own ice cream cup. Another at a rest stop was seeing a family arrive in two vehicles because they couldn’t fir in one vehicle- not because of numbers but because of size. My husband once exclaimed “look at that poor tiny woman!” which caused me to turn around and see this very small-boned woman with a giant belly protruding and an apron of fat descending.

In the San Francisco Chronicle pink pages( Sunday Datebook) from yesterday, a question to movie critic Mick Lasalle included “Do you think movies reflect their times not only in their content, but in the way they’re produced? For example, too many of us eat too much, drink too much, spend more than we can afford. And too many of today’s filmmakers seem to think that if they just throw money at a film it makes up for lack of craft.” Mick LaSalle’s response included ” Your question introduces an idea I’ve never considered, that the bloat in our films is related to the bloat in our people”. He goes on to add that when he travels outside tha Bay area he is astounded by how fat American are these days (like 60, 70 or 80 ponds overweight).He suggests “if they are related, that means they are springing from a single cause (or at least share a cause in common).” and concludes with “I think you might be on to something”. I agree.

My friend, Geenen Roth‘s latest book, Women, Food and God, is wildly successful and should be. It has been top of the new York Times and Amazon best seller list for weeks now and she has recently been on Oprah, not once, but twice. She doesn’t have the new best diet or fad solution. Those just address symptoms. In my view,  the phenomenal success of her book is based on the fact that she is addressing underlying causes for people  and is bringing consciousness into the equation. Her book, which is the culmination of thirty years of work in the field, is coming at the exact moment that people are being called to wake up. Every American should read this book. Even if you aren’t overweight, you have been over-consuming.

We have been living on the surface of life in out-of-control consumption, and this is reflected not only in our size, but in the state of our economy. Some believe not just the American economy, but the whole world consumer-driven bubble has crashed because it is not sustainable. So, not only has our physical health been demolished, but so has our financial health.

We have been chasing “more is better”, not only in food, but in everything. The world economy has been based on American and their consumption. We used credit, not to get something for serious needs, but to satisfy all our superficial desires. And we’ve had a diminishing quality of life experience. We could HAVE everything and BE nothing.

Jacob Needleman says it like this in his book, Money And The Meaning Of Life:

“Plastic credit cards, masses of debt, enormous rates of interest, equaling massive inflation impersonal finances, continuous production of ever new and superfluous information  exactly like the continuous production of new consumer goods that satisfy artificially created needs, easy credit, borrowing money, electronic transfers of millions —ALL ON THE SURFACE OF LIFE.”

We want to be fulfilled, but this consumption never gratifies us. Our animal lust, is part of our survival instinct,  has an intense desire for food, sex, objects and  its activities align with the body for pleasure. When that animal part of ourselves is separate from our beingness, our spiritual self, lust becomes excessive and focused outside of ourselves. We have been we defining ourselves by external and financial achievements rather than who we are, our depth, our relationships, our love. Rather than fulfillment we have been trying to fill our deficiencies.

Imagine if we had angelic lust rather than animal lust. That we could find pleasure in truth, meaning, depth and profundity. Wholeness comes from balance. We need beingness, not more stuff. What we really want is connection with the earth, with other, with our own deeper underlying true nature.

Assessing the causes of this separation between our inner and our outer, our spiritual and our humanness is interesting. There are macro and micro causes. On the spiritual level, you might take it as far back as the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. Or the 4000 years of the partriarchal denial  of the feminine, which is really the creative force that brings spirit into matter. The miracle of each fetus, each baby is that it is the embodiment of spirit. So the loss of the feminine has created financial systems separated from our humaness. Or, as Jacob Needleman makes a great case for in his aformentioned book, the cultural impact of the history of the our western church.

Regardless of the cause, what is important is for us to recognize what is needed is a movement toward our beingness.  The solutions are not going to come from solving world problems externally. That is still a focus outward.  Wholeness requires a different kind of movement.Imagine if we had angelic rather than animal lust. Imagine if we took more pleasure in love, truth, meaning, depth and profundity.

Our mass consumption has been built based on the loneliness and hurt at the bottom of our ego structures. Instead of trying to fill that hole with more stuff, if we feel the underlying pain and hurt of the human heart, it will open into love. And when we have experiences of that, we will recognize that is what we have been longing for. What it  requires is for each of us to look inward, and be with that pain and hurt. That is the beginning. That is the doorway to new spiritual responsibility that we are all being called to.