CEO-Plutocracy

I have used the term 'corporatocracy' to describe the current world government. Yes, world government. The world is being governed (badly) by corporations.

The Business Roundtable, for example, represents 160 US corporations through their CEOs, who as a group lobby and push around the US government at all levels. There are similar organizations and institutes in every industrialized nation. This amounts to a plutocratic group who govern through veiled bribery and campaign contributions.

The US sees its most blatant putsch by the CEO-Plutocracy to date in the $700 billion demand placed before Congress. Amazingly, Congress has said a temporary 'No', but this is temporary. This minimal show of resistance is spurred now by genuine fear that there will be a popular uprising in the voting booths this November, when a general election takes place.

The reality is this: Those in corporate power know that the planet is polluted, overpopulated and under-resourced. They will do whatever it takes to see that they and their offspring survive in the opulence to which they are accustomed and feel entitled. End of story. It's that simple, ladies and gentlemen.

Practice will become more essential for those who are not part of the CEO-Plutocracy. That is, for 90+% of the human species. To survive in a world controlled from the top is difficult. Look to stories from Victorian England for a primer. To evolve will become more and more challenging. To refrain from self-defensive or forced military violence will become nearly impossible. War will be used to keep the poor occupied, distracted and limited in numbers, as much as possible without alerting them to the real reasons for their systematic enslavement and destruction.

Practice living without aspirations to be part of the CEO-Plutocracy. It is a closed system and it is a corrupt, evil system. Live to be compassionate. Live to be whole in mind, body and spirit. Live without material obsessions or addictions. This practice will put your truth and your essence out of the reach of those who would dominate you or destroy your essential being.

Thieves

Wake up America!

Bail Out = Corporate Welfare = Your Future Bankrupted.

Money

Currency, money, is a contract. In the US we are seeing what happens when unscrupulous thieves break that contract to satisfy their own aggression and greed. They are reaping the product of unbridled greed and desire. No government should give them quarter. No conscientious person need be troubled by their fate.

If you practice daily deception and theft, your life will be subject to deception and theft. Feeding greed and desire inevitably leads to disappointment and pain.

Choice

Pro-Life, Pro-Choice. These political footballs expose the immaturity and ignorance of much of the American electorate.

Life often requires choice. However, choice also implies full individual responsibility for the effects of that choice. I believe this is the sticking point to which Pro-Life supporters react most strongly. Pro-Life supporters tend to see pregnancy as a choiceless event. They oppose family planning, contraception and sex education for minors. This is plainly irresponsible and childish in an age of overpopulation and environmental degradation of the planet.

To insist that an irresponsible pregnancy and subsequent birth is an unquestionable human right is both irresponsible and, for the planet, unsustainable. Generally, a teen pregnancy is an irresponsible pregnancy. A pregnancy in any woman who does not have the means to fully feed and educate the product of that pregnancy until it is an independent adult is an irresponsible pregnancy.

There will come a time when these simple concepts will drastically limit personal freedoms for everyone on the planet because of the strident irresponsibility of segments of the population.

One-ness

The great fear of life, its greatest challenge, is its inherent, physically determined, mental isolation. We are born alone and we die alone. Each of us, encapsulated in one body, must make the internal journey of his/her life in solitude.

Individuals and cultures deal with this differently. Religion is a common vehicle for people to assuage their fears of one-ness as it pertains to life and death. In fact, the less educated the person and his/her culture in modern science and philosophy, the more he/she tends to rely on religion, concepts of immortality, concepts of an afterlife. In these inventions, people can imagine that they are never really alone. In fact, when they die, they can believe, they will be reunited body-less with their loved ones and never suffer the separation of death again.

No such magical thinking is available to the awakened mind. The awakened mind uses practice and learning to forge constructive ways to live with one-ness, while remaining compassionately engaged with other human beings. This is one of the core principles of practice.

Those who embrace awakened, mindful practice as a way of daily living are truly liberated from fear about living and dying alone. Frankly, these fortunate human beings are too busy for these insecurities. They are also too engaged in positive change to be drawn into culture wars or religious wars. They are painfully aware of these horrors of attachment and ignorance all around them. However, their road, their path, is forward, nonviolent, ultimately peaceful.

Labor

The use of the word "work" is varied. Most people associate it with the exchange of time for wage. I have always associated the word "labor" with demanding physical effort.

Labor is a part of my practice. I labor at staying physically fit. I labor at maintaining my small garden. I labor at maintaining my house. Turning labor into practice is a conscious decision to approach physical toil with acute attention and appreciation of the task as having value of its own.

This is a Zen concept as well. Zen practitioners rake gravel, sweep floors, bake bread, polish wood with meticulous attentiveness and daily repetition as part of their meditative practice. Focusing on simply being while laboring yields peace, balance, communing with the Universe.

I have found that choosing a new task, one with an inherent challenge to your skills, yields growth and a tremendous sense of liberation. This is a paradox. By becoming focused in the most material and mundane task routinely and entirely can lead to an openness to the wide Universe. This accounts for the utter bliss found in some craftsmen who master their medium (wood, paint, stone) and continue to strive routinely to achieve a great sense of perfection. The liberation they experience is found in the absolute dedication to the labor.

We are currently in a dark time. Physical labor is currently seen negatively by a vast segment of the population in wealthy societies. Even those with poor education or intellectual capacity look down on physical labor as an inferior occupation. Should we wonder why the infrastructure of these wealthy societies is threatened by increasing use and inadequate maintenance? Should we wonder why obesity is epidemic in these societies?

Practice itself is difficult. Incorporating physical labor into practice adds a great deal to it. For some, physical labor may be the path to practice and human evolution.