Saturday, September 30, 2006

Rediscovering the Connection


In a time where we celebrate an Amerika governed by a motley assortment of thieves, torturers, petty criminals, robber barons, and outright perverts, perhaps it may help to recall where we all come from—even the worst and the weakest of us.

On the left is the cell of a mouse brain; on the right is a computer-aided image of the universe (you can get a closer look and description here).

Well, are they "the same"? No, but they are one. It is a matter of connection rather than identity; or, in quasi-scientific terms, relativism rather than absolutism. How you conceptualize it means less than how you feel it.

That said, the concepts do matter. The right thought arises from a true sensing within the heart of consciousness. If the latter is real and unimpeded, undistorted by religious folly, then the idea finds its shape in a perfection of peace. It all happens within your body—the very same aggregation of cells and systems that you have been taught is a soulless lump of dirt and ash, the stuff of shame and guilt.

I would wager that Representative Foley has been steeped deeply in such a course of demagoguery. And so he became a pervert.

The same is true of Catholic priests and anyone who allows sin to be projected into his core nature, who makes his own body into a pit of vile repression.

As I have said before about Rush Limbaugh, Mel Gibson, Ann Coulter, and others: these people need treatment, not publicity. They must be allowed access to the therapy and the medicines they will need to heal, and the rest of us must provide them the understanding and the privacy necessary for that healing. But we must also work to ensure that such diseased people are not allowed to become leaders in our government, our media, or our culture.

Cunningham, Abramoff, DeLay, Ney, Foley: what, do you think, do they all have in common? They have all aligned themselves with an ideology whose core values are human oppression, demonization of Nature, deceit to the public, and, perhaps worst of all, falsehood to themselves.

Before we can even speak of progress or healing in this demented society of ours, we have to return to some common understanding of what we are. Look again at the picture: if the universe is recaptiulated in a nerve cell, what does that say about your body as a whole? What does it say about the body of a community, a nation, an entire planet?

The universe—what some would call god—is not a distant, external entity in a faroff place called Heaven, Nirvana, or Paradise. Rep. Foley is in desperate need of this realization; and it wouldn't hurt the rest of us to look within and rediscover it as well. For wherever there is understanding of the self, there is acceptance of the self. Wherever there is acceptance of the self, there is respect for the self. Wherever there is respect, there is Love, and the tyranny of religion is overthrown.

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Thanks to my good friend Rekha C. for the link and graphic.

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