Enlightenment is Irrelevent

Here are some entries from the blog of Jacqueline Hobbs:
http://jacquelinehobbs2.blogspot. com

No-one there

If there is no-one there, enlightenment is irrelevant. We spend so much time searching for the right thing to do, to make realization happen, that we neglect to think about who it is doing all the searching. Who is this that wants enlightenment so badly? A false sense of an existent self. Nevertheless, whether we like it or not, that sense of self is there. All we can do is remember that actually, there's no-one there. We are taken, as appropriate, when the time is right, to what needs to happen to see that false sense of self be slowly released. It always happens in a different way for each one of us and the mechanics of that is not under our control. Ultimately, given that there's no-one there, there's nothing that needs to be done. Realization only comes into existence for some, "one" but if there isn't any "one", the whole business never arises.

When the mind ends

When the mind ends, there is Silence. Mind is ego. If the mind ends though, it is usually temporary. The ego has to disappear completely for the absence of mind to be permanent. All spiritual techniques aim for a permanent end to the mind. Once we realize that "we" do nothing and nothing is within our control, the ego function becomes so thoroughly weakened, in the end it passes away. Self-inquiry is another means by which the mind is finished with. Here, rather than trying to stop the mind, we go beyond it, to where it does not exist. Devotion or surrender to a guru is exactly the same as all these techniques. We accept everything exactly as it is: completely accepting it as the guru's will. By fixing on the guru, we focus entirely on what is beyond mind. Whichever technique we pursue - and this is only three - only when there is no longer any mind motion and thinking is entirely absent, will the ego die. Of course by this time we realize that the ego was never there. And all of this is predestined and not a matter of us "making" it happen. We can't. It either will or it won't. How it happens, or the merit by which it happens, is not for us to judge either. None of it has anything to do with us: this is the only way that the mind truly gives up.

Did you notice?

Did you notice what the person with your name did today? What he or she felt? What they thought? What they said (and didn't?) Did you notice what feelings that person had today, what emotions arose, when? Did you register what and how that person is feeling about life right now. ... Do you realize that's not you? You are so taken up with that person with your name, you never stop for a moment to focus on what it is that functions through that person, looks straight through their eyes, has the ability to register and take part in all that gets said and done. Focus instead on yourself. By that I mean, become aware of what "you" are: awareness itself. Stop stock still and don't wander outwards. Stay absolutely still and focus - "rest" - in that awareness. This reference point is all that you have. It is the gateway "in": away from the person, the ego-centre, thoughts, feelings and life experiences ... into the Heart.

The Connection Between Lifestyle and Disease as Related by Two Medical Doctors

This is such important information, so supportive of the Truth of the actual workings of the body and how to take care of it and heal it. Your body has natural protection mechanisms built into it to protect it from harm, and your primary emotions are meant to signal you as to whether your choices are leading towards complete physical, mental, and emotional health or disease and addiction. Your sense of spirituality and of wholeness are no more and not less than the body and mind giving you positive feedback for your life choices. When all is in balance the evolutionary spiral is complete, and you are living in the vibratory frequency of harmony with all of Life.

This excerpt is from the alternative news show Democracy NOW! with Amy Goodman (which I highly recommend over FOX or CNN).

Dr. Gabor Maté: “When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection”

The Vancouver-based Dr. Gabor Maté argues that too many doctors seem to have forgotten what was once a commonplace assumption—that emotions are deeply implicated in both the development of illness and in the restoration of health. Based on medical studies and his own experience with chronically ill patients at the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital, where he was the medical coordinator for seven years, Dr. Gabor Maté makes the case that there are important links between the mind and the immune system. He found that stress and individual emotional makeup play critical roles in an array of diseases.


Dr. Lorraine Day's Story About How She Healed Her Own Cancer (Click Here to Link to Video Interview)

Faith or Doctors? You Choose!

When we are facing the statistics that 1 in 3 of every US citizen will develop cancer of some sort, you may want to turn to Dr. Lorraine Day for education, guidance and practical wisdom. At 69 years young on the day we interviewed her, Dr. Day is a living testament to creating health and healing through natural means.

Lorraine trained as an orthopedic surgeon and was head of the department in San Francisco General. She has investigated the source of the AIDS virus and has challenged conventional wisdom, her colleagues and the medical establishment. A strong and determined woman, Lorraine tells it like it is, so if you have someone in your family that has a medical condition and you don't trust what you hear, you may want to pay very close attention to this interview.

Her official products site contains natural healing products, CD's and DVD's that won't cost nearly as much as your next prescription. If you have anyone in your family that has cancer, please urge them to listen to this interview.

Be at Peace

I have been reluctant to write anything for a long time....so many are so much more articulate than I and I am a horrible typist as well. Every time I have a revolutionary thought, it is swept clean so quickly, and I am back to no-mind before I know it...

If there was anything of value that I could say, it would be that whatever you are thinking is true, let go of it as quickly as possible and come back to HERE. All of thought is a secondary notion, a borrowed contrivance, a story believed. Awakening is an unraveling, an undoing of all that was and is, a return to the delight of pure emptiness.

And this is exactly what is happening in the world, and it is so interesting to watch the scrambling for position, the attempt to hold on to the melting icicle of an illusionary world with no substance. It is like an actor who has so succumbed to his role that at the end of the movie he cannot remember the truth of who he was before the story began. YOU ARE NOT YOUR STORY!

The fear and tension only comes because you have so identified with this earthly coil that the Truth of you seems to be a fantasy...but there was a time not so long ago that you saw through the veil clearly and let it fall away. The dream is fading now....just let it, allow it to go....you came here to awaken so let it happen!

The events in the world are the natural result of humanity's decision to be free....like the butterfly breaking from the chrysalis, or a child being born, there is discomfort and struggle. But the result is inevitable and ultimately joyous. Find a quiet place to sit with a few good friends and enjoy the ride!

We are here in Costa Rica, evolving community, allowing it all to unfold....

There is no way to define this by any prior definitions as the moment unfolds itself...and here words fail and I am again rendered speechless....

Be at Peace, All is Well...

Suzen

Channeling by David Wilcock

READING -- JANUARY 5, 2010 -- "BE AT PEACE WITH THE COMING CHANGES"

The reason you are up in the middle of the night asking yourself these questions is very simple. We have an agenda to perform. The simplest requests are often not heard by you, so it takes diligence and patience to perform some of these operations.

You know as well as I do the stakes that are involved. Nothing less than the survival of the human race as it goes through this critical transition. Therefore, be at peace with the coming changes and allow yourself to rectify that which is not understood in the glow of honest acceptance of that which is.

What we have for you is a new view of humanity from this clear perspective that speaks only of love and light.

For in love and light is a vista of consciousness that opens the door to mastery.

That has always been the way it works. Spirit melds with matter and produces majesty. All is revealed in a nanosecond to those who are ready for it. The law of love approaches the law of infinity, and there is a merger of the mortal with the sublime and limitless.

(Click here to continue reading....)

YOU ARE ALREADY THAT

"Everything is clear. It does not need to be made clear. It does not need to be made clear because it never was unclear.

Because you were never unclear there is no change required. You simply instinctively recognize that you have always been clear. The term 'lack of clarity' becomes meaningless. Lack of clarity is recognized to be impossible.... "

Indestructible Clarity
www.greatfreedom. org

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The Nature of Things

Seeing the emptiness of the phenomenal world relieves us of the heavy notion of things being solid or intrinsic. When we understand that nothing exists independently, everything that does arise seems more dreamlike and less threatening. This brings a deep sense of relaxation, and we feel less need to control our mind and circumstances. Because the nature of everything is emptiness, it is possible to view our life the way we would view a movie. We can relax and enjoy the show.

~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, from "The Theater of Reflection"

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Nisargadatta

Questioner: Why so much insistence on relinquishing all desires and fears? Are they not natural?

Maharaj: They are not. They are entirely mind-made. You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing, not even your body. Your needs are unreal, and your efforts are meaningless. You imagine that your possessions protect you. In reality they make you vulnerable. Realise yourself as away from all that can be pointed at as 'this' or 'that'.

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I recall meeting a spiritual teacher once. She complimented on my necklace. Without thinking I took it off to offer it to her. She quickly stopped me, but did something I will always remember... She had us hold the gift of intention, and release it to God, to Consciousness that surrounds everything. All was suddenly experienced as the Love of Gratitude, even though no physical gift was given.

~ Cathy Rosewell Jonas

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Student: Letting go of our egocentricity so we can experience awakening -- do you suppose it is peeled off us the way we peel an orange?

Adyashanti: Peeling is like having a dream at night in which you dream you are going to a therapist, and you start feeling better and better, and you feel like you are getting somewhere.
Awakening is as if you are sitting on the couch telling your story, and you are still a mess -- haven't gotten very far. Then all of a sudden you realize this is a dream, this isn't real, you're making it up. That's awakening. There's a big difference.

Student: I've made up all of it?

Adyashanti: The whole thing. But the awakeness in you is not dreaming. Only the mind is dreaming. It tells itself stories and wants to know if you're progressing. When you shift into wakefulness, you realize, "Wait, it's a dream. The mind is creating an altered state of reality, a virtual reality, but it's not true -- it's just thought." Thought can tell a million stories inside of awareness, and it's not going to change awareness one bit. The only thing that's going to change is the way the body feels. If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-agrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize it's all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don't awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.

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After Forty Years

After forty years
A few quietly spoken words
Have led me irrefutably to know
That hidden in the constellation I call
Mind, or
Heart
There truly is
The home
I never dared believe
Could be.

~ Jack Cain

What is Mind?

And what is mind
And how is it recognized?
If I clearly draw
In sumi ink, the sound
Of breezes drifting through pine
Is all that is seen.

~ Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481) ~

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Let Experience In

The practice of compassion means letting experience in. A Japanese poet, a woman named Izumi who lived in the tenth century, wrote:

"Watching the moon at dawn, solitary, mid-sky, I knew myself completely. No part left out."

When we can open to all parts of ourselves and to others in the world, something quite extraordinary happens. We begin to connect with one another.

~ Joseph Goldstein ~

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Suffering seems real because we don't have a clear understanding of our true nature. Instead, we believe the passing thoughts, such as 'I am no good, 'I am not there yet,' 'I am stuck' or whatever the thought may be. Eventually we understand that we are not those thoughts. Once our real self is pointed out, the suffering loses its grip.

~ John Wheeler ~

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It's not possible to have a problem without believing a prior thought. To notice this simple truth is the beginning of peace.

~ Byron Katie ~

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"Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past."

~ Lily Tomlin ~

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"Oh soul,you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less, why do you worry?
You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul."

~ Rumi ~

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"The Way is not something which can be studied. Study leads to the retention of concepts and so the Way is entirely misunderstood. Moreover, the Way is not something specially existing; it is called the Mahayana Mind - Mind which is not to be found inside, outside, or in the middle. Truly it is not located anywhere. The first step is to refrain from knowledge-based concepts. The Way is spiritual Truth and was originally without name or title. It was only because people ignorantly sought for it empirically that the Buddhas appeared and taught them to eradicate this method of approach. Fearing that nobody would understand, they selected the name 'Way.' The Way of the Buddhas and the Way of devils are equally wide of the mark."

~ Huang Po ~

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For the Sleepwalkers

Tonight I want to say something wonderful
for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith
in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path
that leads to the stairs instead of the window,
the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing
to step out of their bodies into the night,
to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.
Always they return home safely, like blind men
who know it is morning by feeling shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.
That's why I want to say something astonishing
like: Our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs
flying through the trees at night, soaking up
the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.
And now our hearts are thick black fists
flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.
We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-
walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.
We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness
and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.

~ Edward Hirsch ~

Return to Silence

Silence is the language of God, all else is translation

-- Rumi

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"I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely.
I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God.
God is nearer to me than I am to myself..."

-- Meister Eckhart

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"The silence of a quiet mind is the essence of that beauty. Because it is silent and because it is not the plaything of thought, then in that silence there comes that which is indestructible, which is sacred. In the coming of that which is sacred then life becomes sacred, your life becomes sacred, our relationship becomes sacred, everything becomes sacred."

--Krishnamurti

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You are not what happens; you are the space in which it happens. You are not your thoughts; they come and go. You are the vastness in which these thoughts appear and disappear because underneath all your thinking there is the stillness of pure being,... pure consciousness, the timeless dimension of yourself.

- Eckhart Tolle

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"Choose silence, and love is apparent.

When we choose silence, we choose to give up the reasons not to love,
which are the reasons for going to war, or continuing war, or separating,
or being a victim, or being right. In a moment of silence, in a moment of
no thought, no mind, we choose to give those up.
This is what my teacher invited me to.

Just choose silence. Don't even choose love. Choose silence, and love is
apparent. If we choose love we already have an idea of what love is.

But if you choose silence, that is the end of ideas. You are willing to
have no idea, to see what is present when there is no idea, past,
present, future. No idea of love, no idea of truth, no idea of you, no
idea of me. Love is apparent."

--Ganga Ji

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When we are empty of ego we, too, can carry on in calm acceptance of
life's varying events. When we cease making prejudicial distinctions -
gentle or harsh, beautiful or ugly, good or bad - a peaceful stillness
will permeate our mind. If there is no ego, there is no agitation.

-- Master Han Shan

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Live in your Unborn Buddha-Mind. Then there's no regression. No need for advancement. Any idea of wanting to make progress is already a regression from the place of the Unborn. A man of the Unborn has nothing to do with advancing or backsliding. He's always beyond them both.

Since the Buddha-Mind takes care of everything by means of the Unborn, it has nothing to do with Samsara or Nirvana. Seen from the place of the Unborn, both are like shadows in a dream. There can be no death for what was never born.

The marvelous brightness of the Buddha-Mind, by means of words, is able to enlighten people and deliver them from their illusions one by one. And when someone hears these words, understands and affirms them, he will know for himself that the Buddha-Mind' s wonderful brightness surpasses even the brightness of the sun and moon.

What an incalculable treasure is your Buddha-Mind!

--Writing: The Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei
Translated by Norman Waddell

Stranded on the Bridge

Sanai: BUT I AM FRIGHTENED
LEST YOUR IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY
LEAVE YOU STRANDED ON THE BRIDGE.

Osho: But remember one thing... Each and every master has said it, because the problem is there on both the paths. The problem is, one can be stranded on the bridge. The meditator may become so addicted to meditation that he may be stranded on the bridge. The lover may become too much addicted to love, then he will be stranded on the bridge. Love is a bridge, meditation is a bridge. And you have to go beyond the bridge.

In the ultimate state, the meditator has to drop his meditation and the lover has to forget all about his love. Otherwise you will just be close to the door but you will not be able to enter into the temple. The method has to be forgotten.

Buddha said that each method is like a raft, like a boat: use it to go to the other shore, but then leave it there and forget all about it and go on your way. There is no need to carry the raft on your head. If you carry the raft on your head you are just stupid. But this is what is happening: millions of people become too addicted to their method. And the method CAN be addictive because it gives such beautiful experiences. The last barrier is the method, the last barrier is the bridge.

Just see the point -- it is very paradoxical. The bridge takes you to the other shore: certainly it is a help, and you should be grateful to it, and you should be thankful to it. But it can become a problem.

You may fall in love with the bridge and you may make your house on the bridge. And if you start living on the bridge, you are neither of this shore nor of that shore; you are in a kind of limbo. And many so-called religious practitioners live in a kind of limbo -- they are neither of this world nor of that. They have become addicted to the bridge.

And the bridge IS beautiful! Hence the fear of Sanai. Sanai says:

I AM FRIGHTENED
LEST YOUR IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY
LEAVE YOU STRANDED ON THE BRIDGE.

ALL methods are methods, all means are means. And if you want to reach the end you will have to drop all means and all methods. That is the only way to enter into the ultimate. The lover will have to forget all about love, and the meditator will have to forget all about meditation. Yes, there comes a moment when the meditator does not meditate, because he has become meditation himself; now meditation is not a separate activity. And there comes a moment when the lover does not love, because he is love himself.

The Will to Truth

"When you went to a Zen temple and you wanted to go to a retreat or become a monk or something, they would make you sit at the temple gate, like the gate outside here. Imagine you come to a retreat at Garrison, and they say "No! We don't really want you here, you don't want to be here. You're not serious. Forget about it. Go home. Go back to your life. You don't want this." And 90% of the people would just go, "Well, screw that!' and just go home. And then there's 10% of the people who would kind of just sit at that gate and go 'I really do want to be here.' They go, 'No you don't.' So that's what they used to do. So they would come out occasionally and try to convince you to leave. But another thing, as they were convincing you to leave they would make sure you were well fed. A little breakfast, a little lunch, a little dinner. So they would take care of you, not abusing you, right? They were seeing what you were made of. Seeing if your ego was in control here. If you actually had the will to truth or you had the will to have it your way. And after about a week or so, can you imagine? a week! At the gates! Just to get in to see what's happening! Good Lord! Then they might go, 'Okay come on in. We like you anyway. We were just fooling around.' They'd let you in.

Not that I want to do it that way of course but this "will to truth" which means 'I really want to see things differently. ' I am really willing to see that the way I see things may not be the way they are. I'm willing to see that I was wrong.' That's what enlightenment showed me. Basically I was wrong about everything. But only everything. I viewed things the way they weren't. But pretty much everything. I had this will to truth. This kind of yearning and this irrational impulse as I called it earlier, to truth and that was beautiful but basically what awakening showed me is that the world is not what I thought it was. I am not what I thought I was. The views I had on almost everything have been turned upside down, inside out, washed out, hung up to dry. And that's something that alot of people don't realize, is that what we want? Do we actually want change? I mean every one would want to change, I want to become enlightened. It's not about becoming enlightened. That's not what it's about. It's not about having a greater glow or halo around your head. It's about just the truth. Is that what we want? It's no different than anything else in life, is it? You know if you're an addict, the only thing that matters is do you really want to change. You know as they say in addiction, most people have to hit bottom before they really want to change. And then they hit bottom and maybe some of them are willing to change. They are willing to. Before they wanted to but now they are willing to. They are really willing to change and when they are willing to change then they tend to start to change, don't they? All of us are like that. Most of us are addicted to our mind and ourself and our viewpoint. And of course the idea isn't to take on somebody else's viewpoint. Mine or anybody else's. It's not to take on someone else's belief structure. It's not to take on someone else's teaching. That's not the point.

The point is to discover it for yourself. That immeasurable reality. What you really are. And it's right there, what you really are. It's right there. It's right there. And something that can really start to happen when you just want what's real. Because it's never what we think it is. It's never what we think it is. It's never the image, it's never the idea. It comes from that innocence. Do you know that innocence inside you? You now that innocence. It's kind of like the innocence of the child looking into the sky and wondering, how far is that star away? That innocence, how far? It's just like that. What's real? What am I? It's that quality.

It's not, "Who am I, What am I? I want to find that out because I want to wake up, etc, etc. That's very sort of adult. Very goal oriented, ego acquiring the Great Pearl Beyond Price. But the child thing is like, 'What is that?' How far away is that star in the sky? Who am I really? Really? What's really true? See it's an innocent thing. In the innocence is a beautiful quality. And it comes from the intuition which everybody has. Some of you, of course, have the full realization, but others of you it comes from the intuition. That's what brings us to spirituality in the first place. Some intuition there's a greater truth, there's harmony, there's unity somehow, somewhere. There's something that's real amongst this insanity. There's something that's real and pure and true. Whatever it is, that's the intuition that brings you. That subtle intuition. Hopefully that's there in you, that pulls you. Hopefully it's not the ego just desiring. 'I read about it and I want that. I want truth because it'll be good for me. I want truth and I want a house and I want a million bucks'

So when you start to feel that thread in you, not so much like I want, I want, I want, please God! Not so much like that. But just that simple quiet sincerity, that will to what's real, to what's harmonious, unity...however you would think about it in your own being. That which reaches out in that direction. That thread. That's why the great teacher Nisargadatta, when someone would say, 'What's the most important ingredient to self-realization? ' And he would just say, 'Earnestness. ' And if you got to know his teachings you realize he wasn't saying, you've got to just really. really. really want it. It sounds like it but what he meant by earnestness was much more like this will to truth. You actually got to want what's real. It's the most important thing. Without that, forget it. But with that, there it is. It's that thread that probably has brought you here. That's the thread. That's the thread that brings all of us here, right?

And it's not a once-and-for- all-thing. I can guarantee you that. Truth is a living thing. It's permanently impermanent. It always is and it's always on the move. It's not that thing that you realize and that you hold on to, 'I have realized.' It's a thing that is discovered fresh and anew, now and now and now. Otherwise it dies in your hands. Your great realization can become so much dust in your hands, if you grab hold of it and say 'I've got it and I'll hold on to it and I'll bring this into my life .' You may try that but sooner or later you discover truth is not that thing. Truth is a living thing. Truth is something that's living in a continuous state of openness. All the real teachings are trying to point us in that direction. Teachings are trying to point us there. Sadly we tend to grab on to the teachings. That's the tendency. Whether it's a Buddhist teaching or Hindu or Christian or Advaitic teaching. Whatever it is, the teachings are pointers. They are trying to get you to realize this truth that the truth is not the teachings. Even the teachings that I am speaking right now. This is not the truth. I will never be telling you the truth. I cannot tell you the truth. My job is simply to fail well. To fail as well as I possibly can. The truth is not something that can be communicated. Not something that can be given from one to the other. It's a living thing. It's a revelation. And it's not a onetime revelation. If it reveals itself to you and you try to hold on to it , you'll see it die in your hand. It will wither. But if all that grasping dies, then that flow, that revelation, it's always anew. It's always anew. It's the same thing but it's always anew. It's always the same but it's always anew. It's always fresh. It's always alive.

Adyashanti - Garrision Institute 2008 disk 6

Path to A Peace Economy

David Korten presented the following speech on October 19, 2009 during a keynote lecture at the Economics of Peace Conference in Sonoma, California.

by David Korten

My subject tonight is the Path to a Peace Economy, based on ideas elaborated in my most recent book, Agenda for a New Economy, and the New Economy issue of YES! Magazine.

I start with a basic truth. A persistent pattern of violence against people, community, and nature is inherent in the institutional structure of our existing economy.

You don't treat a cancer with Band-Aids, and we can't resolve our current economic crisis with marginal regulatory adjustments. It is time to rethink and restructure.

Systemic Failure

Our economic institutions have been designed by Wall Street interests to secure personal economic and political power in the hands of members of a small ruling elite. They do it well. Unfortunately, it is the wrong purpose. We need a top to bottom redesign to put in place the institutions of a new economic system, a New Peace Economy, designed to share power and resources in a world that works for all.

So how bad is the failure of our current system? It is public knowledge. A brief review, however, is in order.

Economic Collapse

The Wall Street financial collapse has stripped tens of millions of previously middle class Americans of their jobs, homes, and retirement assets and plunged them into poverty and despair. The federal government and the Federal Reserve have responded by pouring trillions of dollars into the Wall Street financial institutions that created the crisis with minimal conditions and oversight, all in the hope that some of this money would trickle down as loans to the productive economy. The recipient financial institutions used the money instead to fund acquisitions that make "too big to fail" banks even bigger, pay dividends to shareholders who by market rules should have been wiped out in bankruptcy proceedings, award obscene bonuses to criminally culpable executives, and launch new predatory financial scams that create new systemic risks.

Wall Street says we have now weathered the crisis, which basically means the profits and bonuses of its most rapacious financial institutions have been restored. The jobs, homes, and retirement assets of ordinary Americans have not. To the contrary, job losses, bankruptcies, and housing foreclosures continue.

Social Collapse

This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. In the absence of progressive tax and public service policies, the institutions of the old economy create an ever-growing wealth gap between the profligate few and the desperate many. This obscene injustice is tearing apart the social fabric of family and community essential to a healthy society. The resulting fear, insecurity, and sense of injustice fuel the forces of violence as expressed in terrorism, genocide, political deadlock, and high rates of crime, incarceration, and suicide. All are both consequences and indicators of a failed economic system.

Environmental Collapse

Now we come to the system's ultimate failure: environmental collapse. The rules and institutions of the Old Economy drive endless growth in wasteful and destructive forms of material consumption that deplete soil and water, disrupt climate patterns, and convert Earth's natural capital into toxic garbage, thus reducing Earth's capacity to support life, creating massive human displacement, and intensifying a violent competition for Earth's remaining resources that finds expression in bloated military budgets and wars of occupation.

Start with virtually any dysfunction or injustice in our society and it traces back to a failed economic system. Follow the money, and it leads ultimately to Wall Street.

A Failed Experiment

For some thirty years, we have been engaged as a nation and as a species in a social engineering experiment to test the claims of an extremist economic ideology known as market fundamentalism.

Ideology of the Sociopath

You've heard the sermon preached by its most fanatic true believers:

There is no public interest—only an aggregation of private interests, which are best served when we each pursue our individual greed in a marketplace unfettered by rules and other forms of government interference. Public assets must be privatized to increase their productivity and efficiency by selling them to the highest bidder. The faster we consume, the faster the economy grows and the wealthier we become as a rising tide lifts all boats.

Inequality is essential to social order and prosperity. It provides us with wealthy investors able to bear the risks of investing in the creation of jobs and a working class motivated by economic insecurity to work hard at those jobs at a globally competitive wage. There is no alternative. If a few get rich, instead of condemning them out of envy—which is a mortal sin—celebrate their good fortune, because as the rich get richer, wealth trickles down and we all get richer. In America, anyone can succeed who applies himself. Failure is a sign of a flawed character.

Is this story familiar? It is no mystery why this economic theology leads to ruthless competition, obscene accumulation, and reckless consumption that destroys the environment and tears apart the social fabric. It embodies the moral philosophy of the sociopath.

It is now time to acknowledge the lessons of this disastrous experiment. Markets do have an essential role in a healthy economy, but market extremism does not. It turns out that markets do need rules, there is an essential role for government, we all have more when resources are shared, and Jesus and the other great religious teachers were right. We are members of a community and we all do better when we care for one another and act with mindful consideration of the needs of others.

Wall Street as Operating System

The institutions of the economy determine how, as a society, we allocate whatever resources are available to us. In an earlier time, we organized ourselves into clans and tribes in which we cared for one another and allocated resources to secure the well-being of all. Resource allocation decisions were local and relationships were mediated by bonds of mutual caring and security. Money in the earliest human societies was unknown. In our current society, most relationships on which we depend for the basics of survival, including food, water, shelter, and health care, are mediated by money. This gives enormous power to those who control the creation and allocation of money. In our country, that would be Wall Street.

To use a computer analogy, the Wall Street financial system has become the operating system of the economy and the society. The values and priorities of Wall Street thus become the defining values and priorities of the larger society. Wall Street has one value—money—and one goal: to maximize financial returns to those who control the money system. Social or environmental consequences find no place in Wall Street decision making.

A Choice-Making Species

In a few minutes, I will take up the question of how we can change this. In the meantime, I want to put our situation in its deeper historical, evolutionary, and spiritual context. For the past 5,000 years, we humans have been living in a cultural trance of our own making that alienates us from the land, our true nature, and our place in the cosmos.

So who are we humans? From where did we come? And for what purpose? Here is how I understand the big story based on the data of science, the wisdom of indigenous peoples, and the teachings of Jesus and other mystics.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Great Integral Spirit that expresses itself through what we know as creation embarked on a bold and risky experiment in reflective consciousness: bringing forth a species able to step back and to reflect on creation in awe and wonder and to participate as a conscious co-creator in the continued creative unfolding. We humans are that species.

Our reflective consciousness gives us the capacity to choose our future with conscious collective intent. It was a risky experiment, however, because the capacity for self-awareness gives us an ego that can run out of control if it forgets it exists only as part of a larger whole.

In our earliest days, we humans raised our children collectively in the clan, tribe, or village, initiating them to the ways of life and the need to care for our Earth Mother as she in turn cares for us.

Over millennia, as our human consciousness was awakening and our capacities for self-direction grew, we learned to communicate through speech, master fire, domesticate plants and animals, and construct houses of skins, wood, stone, and dried mud. We developed the arts of pottery, painting, weaving, and carving. We undertook vast continental and transcontinental migrations to populate the planet and adapted to vastly different physical topographies and climates. We created complex languages and social codes that allowed for life in larger communities.

Then, some 5,000 years ago, something began to go terribly wrong. We turned from the ways of Earth Community and embraced the ways of Empire. It was a time of separation and forgetting. Community, partnership, and the celebration of life gave way to individualism, domination, and violence.

The few expropriated the wealth of the many. The masculine drove out the feminine. We continued to worship the Sky Father, but turned against our Earth Mother. We came to value the power to kill and destroy more highly than the ability to create and nurture life. Conquest became the measure of greatness. Economies came to be based on servitude and eventually money became the prime arbiter of human relationships.

Consider the dynamics inherent in a dominator system. With a few on the top and the many on the bottom, everyone is placed in competition with everyone else for the favored positions and the bonds of caring and sharing are broken. The creative energy of the species is redirected from securing the well-being of the tribe to advancing the technological instruments of war and the social instruments of domination.

The winners expropriate the available resources to maintain the system of domination. Positions of power are too often claimed by the most ruthless and psychologically damaged members of society. And so it has been for 5,000 years

If this discussion of Empire sounds familiar, it is for good reason. The kings and emperors have been replaced by corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers, but we are still living in the Era of Empire—and the basic dynamics still hold.

In the past 100 years, we humans have achieved technological mastery beyond the imagination of previous generations. Yet, lacking in the wisdom of place and community that is the heritage of indigenous peoples, the cultures we call mainstream have lost their way—forgetting what it means to be human and denying our connection to the web of planetary life. The time has come to rediscover our humanity and bring ourselves back into balance with our living Earth Mother. Creation has presented us with our final examination to determine whether we are a species worthy of survival. We must not, need not, fail.

When Money Rules

At its core, our current economic crisis is a spiritual crisis framed by this well-known scriptural verse from the Sermon on the Mount:

No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24.

Mammon refers to wealth as an object of worship; the worship of a false god; a form of demonic possession; an evil force in opposition to Life.

Our worship of Mammon is the consequence of an illusion: the illusion that money is wealth and that making money is synonymous with producing wealth. The truth, as Wall Street has so dramatically demonstrated, is very different. Money isn't wealth, and it is quite easy to make lots of money without producing anything of value to the larger society. Money, the most mysterious of human inventions, a magical number of no meaning or existence outside the human mind, has displaced life as our object of sacred veneration and become the ultimate arbiter of human priorities. Money determines the fate of nations and shapes the boom and bust cycles of economic life. It allows some to live in grand opulence in the midst of scarcity, while confining others to death by starvation in the midst of plenty.

This is money as a system of power, a tyranny all the more complete because it is largely invisible to those it enslaves. To liberate ourselves from the tyranny, we must demystify money and recognize that it is a mere number created from nothing with a simple accounting entry when a bank issues a loan. As economist John Kenneth Galbraith once famously observed, the process by which money is created is "so simple it repels the mind."

When you take out a loan from a bank, the bank opens an account in your name and enters the amount of the loan in its ledger. That becomes a liability on the bank's accounts, offset by the corresponding asset of your promise to repay with interest. Two simple accounting entries, and money magically appears from nowhere. This simple fact makes banking a very profitable business and is the key to the ability of the institutions of Wall Street and its global counterparts to rule the world.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, once famously said, "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its laws."

That pretty well sums it up. In our current system, this control is centralized in and monopolized by Wall Street institutions that value only money and seek only private accumulation. From a societal perspective it is a devastatingly unwise and destructive arrangement.

Money, particularly money that is created out of nothing without any contribution to the creation of anything of corresponding value, is phantom wealth—it has no substance or intrinsic utility. Creating phantom wealth is a Wall Street specialty. They call it financial innovation. I call it theft.

A Real Wealth Economy

So what is real wealth? We might say it is anything that has a real intrinsic value: land, labor, knowledge, food, education.

Most valuable of all are those forms of wealth that are beyond price: Love, a healthy, happy child, a job that provides a sense of self-worth and contribution, membership in a strong caring community, a healthy vibrant natural environment, peace—none of which find any place on Wall Street balance sheets or in our calculations of GDP.

Pull back the curtain, as the financial crash has done, and the truth is revealed that Wall Street acquires its power by destroying real living wealth to create phantom financial wealth. Wall Street is more than immoral, it is an institutional manifestation of evil.

So what will the New Economy look like, and how will we achieve it?

Living Earth

We begin with a recognition that the old economy is based not only on the illusion that money is wealth, but as well the illusion that we live in a world of open frontiers with endless abundant resources free for the taking. We are only now as a species awakening to the reality that we are passengers on a living spaceship and must learn to live in balanced relationship with our local ecosystems everywhere, working with nature to reuse and recycle everything and to eliminate the release of any substance that nature cannot readily absorb and detoxify.

Spaceship Earth, our Birth Mother, is endowed with a wondrous self-managing, self-regulating life support system that has nourished us as a species through the years of our growing up. As a loving parent, she has absorbed the insults and injuries of our reckless adolescent behavior. Our numbers and the power of our technology, however, now exceed her capacity to absorb.

Defining Principles

We must now restructure our economic institutions to align with three foundational principles: Ecological balance. Shared prosperity. And living democracy. Let's take them one by one.

1. Ecological Balance: It's spaceship management 101. We must bring ourselves into balance with Earth's life support system-the biosphere. This requires something you don't normally hear mentioned at economics conferences. We need to reduce aggregate human consumption, global GDP, starting with the most profligate nations. I'll say more about this later. Follow me closely here: We must simultaneously redesign our human economies to function everywhere as subsystems of the local ecosystems that comprise Earth's biosphere.

2. Shared Prosperity: As we act to reduce aggregate consumption, we need to recognize that Earth's bounty is the shared birthright of all living beings and learn to share it equitably to the benefit of all. The potential benefits of sharing prosperity go far beyond securing our mutual survival. According to a massive body of public health research, people in societies in which wealth and work are equitably shared enjoy greater physical and emotional health, stronger families and communities, less violence, and healthier natural environments than people in more unequal societies. Societies that are more equal are also more democratic and more resilient in the face of crisis.

   This has important implications for those of us who live in the United States. UK social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson observes that among the world's 30 richest countries we in the United States are number one in many things, including homicide rates, teenage pregnancy rates, rates of imprisonment, and numerous other social dysfunctions. We are also number one in the size of the income gap between our richest and poorest members. This is not a coincidence.

   The reason is simple. Greater inequality means greater psychological and emotional stress and insecurity for everyone, including for those at the top. Great sharing means less stress and insecurity.

3. Living Democracy means exactly what it says: living democracy as a daily practice of civic engagement. In a living democracy, popular sovereignty is integral to the fabric of community life. Living democracies celebrate and affirm diversity within a framework of individual rights, community responsibility, and mutual accountability. Their political and economic institutions support local decision making within a framework of cooperation and mutually agreed rules.

Ecological Balance, Shared Prosperity, and Living Democracy: three foundational principles of the new living peace economies on which the human future depends.

A Familiar Alternative

Those of us who came of age during the latter part of the twentieth century were taught that we are limited to a choice between two economic models: the model of Wall Street capitalism or the model of Soviet communism. We in the West chose Wall Street capitalism based on the false claim that capitalism is the natural champion of democracy and market choice. Now we see the reality that when Wall Street capitalism has its way, our political choices are limited to politicians who serve Wall Street interests and our market choices are limited to those that generate the greatest Wall Street profits.

Living Market Economies

We're not supposed to notice that both capitalism and communism, as we have known them, are simply alternative models of elite rule.

We have another option that is rarely mentioned, a planetary system of local living market economies that distribute and root decision-making power everywhere in inclusive, democratic, place-based living Earth communities, much in the manner of healthy ecosystems.

Many of the features of this New Economy option are more familiar than we might at first realize. They bear substantial resemblance to the Main Street economies many of us knew as we were growing up in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

The America We Once Knew

Although we had not yet dealt as a nation with crucial issues of race, gender, and the environment, the market rules of that day protected the public interest as we then understood it. Strong labor unions secured worker rights and assured a living wage. Our middle class was the envy of the world.

Banks were local and strictly regulated. Anti-trust protected the public from the abuse of corporate monopoly power. Cities and towns had vibrant lively Main Street economies served by local independent businesses that were accountable to the community and honored community values. And imagine this: Many insurance companies, hospitals, and financial institutions were organized as nonprofit cooperatives accountable to their members.

Most manufacturing was domestic, much of our food production was local, and we had a positive trade balance. Few families needed more than one car and per capita energy use was modest by current standards. There was substantial non-market household production and the typical wage for one employed working person was adequate to support a family.

Wall Street Take-Over

From the late 70s onward, Wall Street market fundamentalists mobilized to roll back the rules to unleash a consolidation of corporate power and de-link it from public accountability. Their right-wing social-engineering experiment allowed Wall Street to colonize the Main Street economy, decimated the middle class, undermined democracy and sense of community, reduced our national happiness index, and brought financial, social, and environmental devastation wherever it has reached.

Markets can and do support individual liberty and the public interest, but only when they operate within a framework of appropriate market rules and are complemented and supported by strong, democratically elected governments that enforce these rules and assure the provision of essential public services and infrastructure.

Appropriate rules support local ownership, bar private monopolies except within a strong regulatory framework, secure cost internalization and balanced trade among communities and nations, and prohibit monopoly pricing, market manipulation, and financial speculation.

We hear frequent reference these days to a distinction between the Wall Street economy and the Main Street economy. The difference is crucial.

Wall Street is in the business of using money to make money for people who have money without the burden of producing anything of value in return. Wall Street creates money out of nothing, engages in predatory lending at exorbitant interest rates, and uses its control of money to hold the public purse hostage to its demands. It is best understood as a criminal syndicate engaged in counterfeiting, usury, tax evasion, fraud, and extortion rackets—and should be treated accordingly.

Liberating Main Street

The Main Street economy is comprised of local businesses and working people engaged in producing real goods and services to meet real needs and providing meaningful, secure, family wage employment for the people of their communities. It is the logical foundation on which to build a new real wealth economy of green jobs, responsible community-oriented businesses, and sound environmental practices. Although devastated by the predatory intrusions of Wall Street corporations, it is now in revival as communities all across the nation rally to declare their independence from Wall Street and rebuild the community-serving economies they once knew.

No Wall Too Tall

Bringing down Wall Street may seem a daunting challenge to some of you. To get ourselves in the right spirit, I want to share an inspirational song by Raffi that he recorded to celebrate the launch of Agenda for a New Economy at the Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church last January. It's called "No Wall Too Tall." Get up and dance with me as you listen to the words.

How many of you here grew up on Raffi's music or have children who did? Raffi is currently devoting his life to an initiative he calls Child Honoring based on the simple truth that a world that works for all the children will work for everyone.

A Three Part Strategy

So how can we bring down Wall Street's imperial tyranny?

We the people, as global civil society, are engaging this challenge on three strategic fronts:

1. We are changing the defining stories of the mainstream culture. It is a simple but rarely noted truth that every great transformational social movement begins with a conversation aimed at challenging a prevailing cultural story. The civil rights movement changed the story on race. The environmental movement changed the story about the human relationship to nature. The women's movement changed the story on gender. Our current task is to change the prevailing stories about the nature of wealth, the purpose of the economy, and our human nature. YES! Magazine and my most recent book Agenda for a New Economy are useful tools for organizing the necessary conversations.

2. We are creating a new economic reality from the bottom up as millions of people the world over are working to strengthen locally owned human-scale business and family farms, developing local financial institutions, reclaiming farm and forest lands, changing land use policies to concentrate population in compact communities that reduce automobile dependence, retrofitting their buildings for energy conservation, and otherwise moving toward local self reliance in food, energy, and other basic essentials. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) is building a national support system for these initiatives.
3. We are changing the rules: Current law and public policy largely favor the Wall Street economy to the exclusion of Main Street economy. We must work together to promote and support political action at local, national, and global levels to change the balance in the favor of Main Street.

A New Economy Agenda

I'm currently focusing my energy on the New Economy Working Group, a partnership between Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, YES! Magazine, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and the PCDForum. We are working to articulate a comprehensive New Economy agenda. Here are five essential elements:

1. Implement Living Wealth Indicators as the basis for evaluating economic performance: Because we get what we measure, we should measure what we want. We currently evaluate economic performance against GDP, which is an indicator of the rate at which the economy is extracting useful resources from nature, converting them to saleable products, and disposing of them as toxic waste into our air, water, and soils—all for the primary purpose of making rich people richer. And this is what we get.

Stock price indices, another favorite indicator, measure the rate at which people who own financial assets are increasing their economic advantage over everyone else.

Imagine how different things would be if we designed and managed the economy to maximize indicators of the health and vitality of our children, families, communities, and natural systems—while simultaneously reducing environmental burdens by redistributing available resources from destructive and non-essential uses to beneficial ones that improve the quality of life for everyone, create meaningful beneficial jobs, and heal the environment.

We can end war and convert to a peace economy; reorganize our infrastructure to eliminate automobile-dependence; curtail advertising and redirect those creative and media resources to education; end financial speculation and redirect investment to productive sustainable enterprises devoted to meeting community needs. This list is just a start. It is about setting sensible priorities.

2. Create a Real Wealth Money System: Last night Don Shaffer spoke of redirecting the flow of money from global to local financial markets and moving from complex, opaque, anonymous, short-term financial relationships to direct, transparent, personal, and long-term financial relationships. This defines our charge for redesigning and restructuring our systems of money creation and allocation.

Our existing Wall Street financial system centralizes the power to create and allocate money in an interlinked institutional system of mega-banks, hedge funds, private equity funds, the Federal Reserve, and captive regulatory bodies operating in secret beyond public oversight and accountability that I earlier described as a criminal syndicate.

The Bush and Obama administrations both pumped literally trillions of dollars of bailout money into the corrupt Wall Street financial institutions responsible for the current economic mess. Note here the essential difference between the bailout money and the Obama stimulus money. Bailout money goes to Wall Street financial institutions in the hope that some of it will trickle down to Main Street in the form of loans. Stimulus money bypasses Wall Street and directly funds the creation of productive jobs to create beneficial goods, services, and public infrastructure projects.

So imagine that instead of a bailout for the corrupt banks that caused the crash, the government had taken them over, broken them up, and spun off the pieces as individual community-based financial institutions—community banks, savings and loans, and credit unions. Some might be organized as private for-profits. Others as nonprofits or cooperatives. Some might be owned by state or local governments. All would function as properly regulated, community accountable public utilities.

Now imagine that the trillions of dollars that went to bailing out Wall Street banks had instead been added to the stimulus package to directly help homeowners facing foreclosure, create new jobs, and to fund education, health care, and public infrastructure. Further, imagine that the recipients of the stimulus money then deposited a portion of it as savings in these community financial institutions to be continuously recycled as low interest or no interest loans to grow local businesses, expand home ownership, and finance public investment. How different things might now be.

Here is a really radical idea: Let's federalize the Federal Reserve and make money supply management and banking oversight transparent and publicly accountable federal functions. Why should the federal government borrow and pay interest on money created with an accounting entry by private banks, thus condemning our children to perpetual debt slavery to private banks and foreign countries, when it is within the means of the government to make the accounting entry itself?

3. Share the Wealth: As noted earlier, we all do better when we share the wealth. So let's do it with:

• Income and employment policies that assure every person who needs employment access to employment that provides a living wage.
• Progressive taxation and public services policies that continuously recycle wealth from those at the top who have more than they need to those at the bottom who have less than they need.
• Land use and regional development policies that limit sprawl and support compact multi-strata development that prevents geographical division by class and race.

• Ownership policies that eliminate the class divide between owners and workers by encouraging every owning person to do productive work and every working person to be an owner.

4. Favor Businesses Organized as Living Enterprises for which the primary business purpose is to serve the community and profit is a means, not an end. Cooperative, worker, and local public ownership models sensibly and appropriately link business interests to community interests. We can and should make them our favored enterprise models.

5. Change the Global Rules to Support Local Control and Regional Self-Reliance: Current global economy rules and institutions that put the economic rights of global financiers and corporations ahead of the economic rights of ordinary people, place-based communities, and even nations. They have it backwards. The rules and institutions of living peace economies properly support democratic self-determination at local, regional, and national levels, keep trade fair and balanced, favor local over global businesses, and facilitate the sharing of information and beneficial technology.

The goal is to shift the economic system's defining value from money to life, its locus of economic decision making from global to local institutions, its favored dynamic from competition to cooperation, and its primary purpose from growing the individual financial fortunes of the few to building living community wealth to secure the health and well-being of everyone. It is ours to so choose and create.

How to Engage

You will find further information on everything I've covered here in Agenda for a New Economy. Buy a copy, download a discussion guide from davidkorten.org, and organize a discussion group to engage your friends, colleagues, and neighbors in an exploration of the new economy alternatives.

People are always asking, "What else can I do?" I recommend YES! Magazine as the place to start. Each issue is filled with stories of possibility and ideas for action. Visit the "Path to a New Economy" section of the YES! website.

*****

Part of growing up human is putting aside the ways of our childhood to embrace the more inclusive values and responsibilities of adulthood. Our time has come to grow up as a species coming of age on a small planet. This is the larger challenge before us. In a very real sense, it is about growing up spiritually to recognize and accept our place within the larger scheme of creation.

As we engage this challenging work in its many dimensions, we must constantly remind ourselves that we are privileged to live at the most dangerous—but also the most exciting—moment of creative opportunity in the whole of the human experience. We have the power to turn this world around for the sake of ourselves, our children for generations to come, and the continued creative unfolding of life on Earth. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Thank you.

David Korten is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine. His most recent book is Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. He presented this speech on October 19, 2009 during a keynote lecture at the Economics of Peace Conference in Sonoma, California.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License