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04/06/2002 Archived Entry: "2/22/02 Understanding Bush"

These are perilous times. For my part, I am tested daily. I have been saying that those of us, who are committed to bringing about a positive change in the way humanity is going, cannot demonize our opposition. One of the primary burdens humanity carries is our collective ability to view large segments of humanity as not fellow human beings.

The reasons are classic: race, nationality, gender, age, sex, tribe, class, sexual orientation, etc. We do not have the luxury of placing our opposition outside the human family. My challenge is to view Bush, Cheney, et. al. as fellow human beings, and not as (funny to use this word, as he has so abused it) "evil."

If there is something lacking in my education, it is an understanding as to how it is that one can be so duplicitous, and still seem to radiate conviction that one is right. What goes on in the mind of a Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld? What are their real motivations, goals, hopes, dreams?

Quite a few years ago, back when Creating Our Future was an action/training organization for high school students, Jason Clay (from Cultural Survival) was speaking at one of Summer Camps. He said that in third world (he may have said "developing nations") countries, the function of the government is only and exclusively to enrich the ruling families. We were shocked, back then. Now, it seems like the function of the government period, is to enrich the ruling families, except of course in time of war, when it is to survive and/or conquer. In the whole world, the only clear exception may be South Africa

I am so far away from that kind of consciousness that I do not know how to grasp it well enough in my mind to understand it. To me the highest aspiration is to serve, second is to love God, third to love myself, then to love whoever comes before me. What is it like to have one’s highest aspiration be to get more and more, to have more and more, with the having and the getting being limitless? What is it like to seek power and riches without end? Is that the American Dream?

I can only understand it as a form of arrested development. A living in what we yogis call the lower centers. Throughout history the consciousness of most of humanity has resided in the lower chakras (energy centers). Chakras can be regarded as real (in a way) or as symbolic. It makes no difference with respect to how one thinks about their function, or the role they may play in ones life. The first three chakras have to do with an "I" centered universe, in which everything and everyone is seen in terms of how it (they) serve our needs and desires. The "great journey," being the shift in consciousness to a state of being (love - an experience of selflessness within the self) in which we live to serve others. This is said to occur when one’s consciousness shifts to the fourth center, called the heart center.