First, some urls I recommend:

Jay Leno interviews Bush — for laughs out loud: http://g.msn.com/0VD0/02/26?m=Hi_2807_msn.wmv&csid=3&sd=mbr

There's something satisfying about this award: “For the second consecutive year, George W. Bush has been named the winner of the National Council of Teachers of English's Doublespeak Award…an ironic tribute 'to American public figures who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-contradictory'…the NCTE's Doublespeak Committee is a conservative group, because its mission is to preserve clear and accurate language and decry the intentional abuse of words to hide or confuse their meaning.” http://www.ncte.org/about/over/inbox/news/118787.htm

See eight minutes of brilliant footage, from a new 78 minute film, by my friend, Celtic singer Maireid Sullivan: http://www.lyrebirdmedia.com.

Now a say from me:

We lost a bridge from the establishment to the realm beyond consensus reality when John Mack died. (See On the Passing of a Great Man — and here are details about memorials for him in Malibu, California, this Thursday, December 9, and in San Francisco o­n January 16.) One-time head of the psychology department and a distinguished faculty member at Harvard, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book about Lawrence of Arabia, he did a psych study looking for the pathology of people who say they've been abducted by aliens. Surprisingly, he found them to be normal, and his attempt to understand their stories supplied subject matter for two benchmark books about the abductee experience, “Abduction” and “Passport to the Cosmos.”

One of his last talks was as the guest speaker at a crop circle conference in England, in July, where I was o­n a panel. He dealt, very compellingly, with the need to examine our worldview, or the big idea that we take as reality, where we go beyond problem solving to look at our fundamental belief system that defines who we are and gives us our motivation for what we do.

Here are salient quotes from John Mack's talk:

“The scientific worldview is failing. It fails in a number of crucial ways. It doesn't tell us what really exists in the cosmos. It doesn't tell us about our own inner life. It doesn't tell us about all the anomalous experiences people are having that can't be explained by purely empirical and rationalist ways of knowing reality. It also doesn't have much to say when heightened dualism occurs under nationalistic pressures, as conflicts between powers and the dualism of the mind get more and more sharp and the polarizations become so severe that we threaten to destroy ourselves. The worldview of scientific materialism doesn't have much to offer at that point. But the emergent worldview — which would re-ensoul the world, which would reconnect us with the divine, which would transcend the dualism of peoples — would connect us with the world of all living creatures, not just o­ne another. That worldview, if it were to prevail, would have something to offer in relation to the social realities that we're facing, the economic problems.”

“If we look around us most of the social problems can be related to the dualistic mind or the materialistic worldview or whatever you want to call it. And when there's a threat, and there's always a potential threat — now it's terrorists, before it was the Soviet Union — it's an outside threat; it's never us. But whenever there's a threat, the dualistic mind shows itself in an increased polarized fashion. Suddenly, where people were tolerant and moderate, we find intolerance. The enemy is out there. The differences are accentuated. The human connection is put aside as we must deal with this enemy.”

As John Mack was stretched by abductees, I've been stretched by crop circles. This is what he said about them:

“By and large, you can't really nail down the UFO abduction phenomenon. But the crop matter, you can't deny that. There they are. They're there. It's the most dramatic, the most extraordinary crossover from the other dimension in the history of the human race as far as I can tell.”

I had these reflections o­n my mind as I listened last Sunday to prominent Christian pastors o­n “Meet the Press,” in an uncharacteristically heated exchange where the Bush supporters were so adamant about their positions that they kept talking over the others and not letting them get their thoughts out. Applause for Rev. Jim Wallis, who spoke about morality superseding “the word.” Here's a taste from the transcription: 

DR. FALWELL: I wouldn't vote for my mother if she were pro-choice.

REV. WALLIS (Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine): …You said all Christians could o­nly vote for [Bush]. That's ridiculous. There are Christians who voted for deep reasons of faith for both candidates.

DR. FALWELL: …I can o­nly take the Bible seriously…Psalm 139:13-16 — believe that life is sacred from conception o­n…

REV. WALLIS: And Jerry, there are 3,000 verses in the Bible about the poor…that Jesus, our Jesus isn't pro-rich, pro-war and o­nly pro-American. We don't find that Jesus anywhere in the Bible…we don't think religious people have a monopoly o­n morality. There are people in this country who have deeply held moral values who aren't affiliated in any religion. What we need is a serious moral conversation about things like Iraq, a moral discussion. What would Jesus do is a fair question for all of us. But other citizens have other compasses that they use. But let's have a moral conversation, talk about the soul of politics.

One way our worldview could change, where more than what is recognized now would be incorporated, would be from a happenstance so catastrophic that the world couldn't remain organized in a familiar way. In fact, we are being promised such a thing o­n the terrorist front, not to mention there being other fronts that could deliver things with which we could not cope. 

How else might our worldview change? That we, in our zeitgeist, lead external lives, where acquisition supersedes our sense of connection to spirit, is something to examine. This consideration is even more significant than working with the issues that create our political divide. How can you change the gears by which humanity runs itself? That's a vital question. What we need is a platform for looking at our belief system so hands across the sea can join to deal with threats to all of humanity.

To concretize this here, I'm noting but two cogent reports about situations that desperately need species-wide handling:

http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2004/000187.html: “The World Health Organization estimates that 6 million people in the developing world need AIDS drug therapy immediately — and face certain death if they do not get it…And the epidemic continues to spread, and intensify…The paucity and ineptitude of the global response is an indictment of a world order where businesses set global policy, where governments neglect social obligations, and where multilaterals and international NGOs curry favor from stingy, domestic-policy-crazed donors.”

http://www.theotherside.org.uk/English/2.htm: “…abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. 'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.' Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern'…”

In a sane world, I maintain we'd gather the intelligentsia to ponder the question of worldview. “May the best team win” is for the sports arena; we need to become a cooperative world.

“We must act secure in the knowledge that, even though it often doesn't feel like it, the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice” Martin Luther King, Jr.

To: irvthom1@comcast.net
Subject: Something I think worth reading

Hi, Friends . . .

As we moulder around in the backwash of certain miserable realities we have somehow got tangled up in, it might be of some help to consider what o­ne friend of mine in southern CA has been working very hard to get across, or to get accepted or believable for quite a few years, now. Her name is Suzanne Taylor, and the site she ministers through is called Making Sense of These Times, at http://www.theconversation.org — but some of you may have to open your minds a little wider than has become their habit, for it. Most of you o­n this list of mine won't have to.

I found this current message of hers particularly stimulating, though maybe it is o­nly because I have let myself get too lost in the present stream of things — as I am sure most of us have. As I stand back (once more) and look at the direction this reality of our common acceptance is going, I can o­nce again see that we, this entire culture of ours, is o­n a fast track to a very undesirable end. Believing, as I do, that things happen for good and purposeful reason (NOT merely cause and effect) — because my life has told me this is so — it begins to seem as though the 'tilt' we are experiencing must be getting more severe because something has to happen o­n account of it. I wouldn't begin to guess what that something might be. Maybe environmental, maybe economic, or maybe disasters unmentionable . . . I won't guess; I am o­nly sure that we are moving toward it, and have just passed a point of possible return in the recent election. I emphasize 'possible,' because the basic societal course would not have changed.

What Suzanne cues us to is the likely existence of a range of consciousness outside of our own, and the equally likely possibility that it is impinging o­n our own world in order to be of help. It takes a truly open mind to consider these things; though the overwhelming evidence does keep piling up around us. Having recently seen, however, how easily the media manipulates the borders and limits of our accepted reality, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind of the capability of media to determine and limit what we believe to be true, or not. In other words, we have never had better reason, or greater justification, for freeing ourselves from the daily hypnosis.

From: Matthew Thuney [mdthuney@email.msn.com]

Thanks again Suzanne for another illuminating and empathetic message. Happy to pass it along to our CONTACT group. We who are awakening have lots of work to do. Yours in the Quest …

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