Cliches are, because they are SO. In the minds of each and every one of us, for untold generations, have been the true answers which, when practiced, would immediately begin returning a world of ignorance, separation, fear, materialism, defense/offense, INSANITY, back into its original and ever-present sublime heavenly state of Reality, wholeness.

For the ground of Earth is the same ground of heavenly reality itself; we have merely obliterated on its surface the natural eternal glory and splendor with rampant, wanton, and widespread projections of our own unacknowledged ignorance, fear, selfishness, and greed in this third dimension of time/space.

1. One Potently Pithy Primary Perennial Principle Persistently Practiced Prevents Perpetual Proliferation of Painful Particular Personal and Planetary Predicaments.

2. Innate consciousness, a.k.a. God/Sublime Self, is the crux of all creation, all manifestation. This is the ‘kingdom of heaven, within.’ The ‘answer’, dear friend, is echoing within—the answer is echoing within.

3. This crucial seed-point of pure consciousness rests within each individual, in the innermost core, or ‘heart’ of each. This inviolate, un-tainted, subtle pure non-material core, is our own true identity, though it may be temporarily obscured by the surface precepts, perceptions and experiences of the earthly human ego/persona in incarnation.

4. A return to fully conscious integrated awareness with innate core identity requires no doing, but rather the ceasing of surface will-based doing. Our doing-ness is our destruction, our predicament. Our non-doing is our salvation, as we cease interfering with the innate balancing systems of earth and life.

5. ‘Will-based’ in this sense means arising from a false surface sense of limited ego/self/identity. All aspects of the societal-material infrastructure of ‘mammonomics’—i.e., of economics/finance, politics, religionism, nationalism, militarism, insular group identification and separations—all these arise from ignorant identification with a false surface ego, and are operated and perpetuated from a basic ongoing dynamic of fear. All these separative surface ideologies & institutions are the symptoms of the choice to live by feardom rather than freedom. The innate markers of fear’s dynamic are heaviness, density, tension, friction, contraction, all of which relate to blocked flow of energy. And the innate markers of freedom are lightness, relaxation, openness, fluidity.

6. Awakening to the true pure core awareness—free of surface identifications, as a little child is thereof free—is the cure and prevention of all humanity’s ills. Where there’s no ego/I/self identity around which to form an energy-blocking and fear-and-defense-inducing ego boundary, there’s no problem!

7. There are a million hacking at the external branches of darkness (ignorance) in endless frustrated futility for every *one* who has exposed the inner roots of darkness to the Light of Truth.

8. Whosoever awakens to this pure perennial inner presence is thereby reunited directly with one’s own true life authority…and need never again be mis-led by any external alleged “authority”, or fascist authoritarian ignoramus, i.e., the blind who are ever leading flocks of blind sheeple into death’s ditch. To the fool for whom a gun is the only tool, everything begins to look like a target.

9. A lesson is repeated until it is learned: we cannot serve/worship both the God of eternal Pure Reality Life-Light-Love-Truth-Peace-
Wholeness…AND simultaneously serve the temporal and divisive ‘gods’ of mammon, of worldly identity, fleeting status, dreams, and values…for it would be like trying to ride on the backs of two burros heading in different directions. While the former leads us to Innate Supernal Wholeness Reality, the latter leads merely to all manner of degradation, deterioration, division, destruction, death (all illusory, transitory).

10. The ‘American Dream’ is so named because you have to be asleep, in a dream-world, to believe in it; and it is no simple dream, but a convoluted nightmare of our own ignorant, selfish, fear-drenched creation & projections.

11. Friends, family, lovers, relations, neighbors, enemies, etc…these are all like people we meet on a bus journey, and in a dream—every one gets ON at a different stop, and every one gets OFF at a different stop; the only one who is always with you, the only one who never leaves you, is your own true innate sublime pure awareness…the one screen-writer, producer, & director of the movie of your life.

12. Energy flows and ‘reality’ grows where attention goes. Remember to focus upon that which is Real, in the deep stillness within—that which you most love, trust, cherish, adore…ignoring all else that is rumored to have any real existence.

13. Whatever we focus upon—whether in love, or in fear—we thereby create more of. Intelligence/Wisdom chooses to focus upon Light(truth)-Love-Life, Inner Tranquility. Only a flawed darkness of the inner lens could result in choosing to focus otherwise.

14. Better a “horrible” end than horrors without end. That which is Real and valuable is eternal; it is birthless, deathless; it is not of the relative realms. Anything which dissolves/dies, is not Real, has no Real existence, has no Real value. As the forms/creations of past ignorance/darkness steadily dissolve and fall away, this is a great blessing, frightful only to those who have yet forgotten their true universal identity, and who ignorantly believe that money provides any real life. Actually, money—being an externalization of the darker impulses of ignorance, separation, fear of lack, desire to control—is a construct which has led us away from real life, light, liberty, wholeness, truth.

15. Why pay the hand/fist that would smite you? Why feed the jaws that would bite you, or the police or jailer who would restrain you? Why would you support a transitory outer-worldly system that enforces the degradation and oppression of all life, lives, and living systems?

16. ‘Love’ is the answer…but it is NOT the answer until we come to KNOW and BE what Love really eternally is, and it is far beyond merely a four-letter word symbol, or an emotion. We will not know what Love is until we know who we really eternally are. And we will not know this until we are completely free of socially conditioned illusions. And we will not be completely free of illusions until we are completely aware, open. And we will not be completely aware & open until we are completely honest, relaxed, trusting, lightness itself…

17. The political/legal/nationalist/military mindset which informs the infrastructure of mammon represents the choice to put darkness before light, fear before honesty’s inner courage-trust-surrender, falsehood before truth, a closed heart before an open heart, division before wholeness, death before eternal life.

18. The choice of a path/way of falsehood & folly is antithetical to the path/way of Eternal Real Life-Light-Wholeness. That false choice is what brings us to this critical juncture on the human stage. Both the underlying dynamic and the ultimate destination of politics is war; war is designed and played out of, by, and for basically suicidal psychopathic egos having lost (temporarily) their sense of decency, sanity, divinity, unity, humanity. Politics is the main avenue of recruiting for Satan, while the second most popular avenue for hell’s recruits being that of sectarian authoritarian hierarchical patriarchal religious institutions.

19. No one, not even God, can change this ungodly political structure from within this political structure. The only way to be autonomous, true, peaceful, and free is to be…autonomous, true, peaceful, and free…

20. If one loves Love, then one must love freedom, for what is love but completely allowing, rather than controlling? And if one loves freedom, then one must love truth, for only truth sets everyone free…

21. And if you’re still not convinced, if you’re still worshiping the premises and princes of darkness, ignorance, fear, lies, nationalism, secrecy, violence, control…at least get your head far enough out of your ass to honestly recall that your earlier stated and sworn oath of duty and responsibility is but to protect and defend your homeland only. And when you are so deluded by intense falsehood, fear, hatred, and greed to extend your empire of fear, control and death to countries and lands not your own, you thereby announce the onset of your own demise…for you cannot even hold the home/center, and yet you drain your resources by attempting to extend your circumference of false power and death in all directions. And you have lied, claiming your military forces’ purpose to be the defense of this country, but instead your corruption has caused you to extend it to foment situations of offensive combat actions across the earthly globe.
You who yet serve the inrastructure of mammon/materialism/worldly status are children who have yet to learn the primary lessons of intelligent life: Love and (at least) let live. Do unto others what you would have done unto you, for it *will* be done just as you have done—if not in this life, then in subsequent life. As you give, so shall you receive; as you plant, so shall you harvest. These are the lessons/guides of utmost basic simplicity, logic, sanity, reality—and yet you have attempted to live in utter denial of these seed principles of real life.

Attempt to live by the sword/gun/bomb/jet/laser and so thereby determine and deliver your own demise likewise. Every ‘murder’—even a military murder—is actually a murder-suicide. Had you graduated from the kindergarten of the universe in your own consciousness, you would have known and begun acting upon this primary perennial principle long ago. The biggest lies of this infrastructure of mammon are that these fearsome impositions could in any way, shape, or form, serve life, truth, liberty, peace, sanity. Everywhere the infrastructure of mammon goes, it serves falsehood, oppression, enslavement, imprisonment, death. Saddest of all ironies, or perhaps most befitting, is that the beings most enslaved by mammon’s materialist/militaristic infrastructure are the very ones who serve in, and ‘profit’ by it. Some profit—the destruction of an entire living planet. Who profits by the crime is accomplice to the crime, and thereof held accountable.

Jeffry
Maui, Hawaii USA

Don’t take a minute to realize,
don’t take a moment to run,
don’t take a genius to understand that we prefer education over the gun.

Stop funding the Chinese for splendor of our Nations lost democratic dream. The veto of the powerhouse can seam hurtful at the seams. We’ll walk a thousand miles if it help’s our brothers and sisters even a foot. Four years have gone by now, and 3000 villages perish in soot.

Now it is our Monks that burned. How dare they take the holy men? First rape was the season, now it’s fire over them. Clubs don’t seem like torture, when black dogs of darkness bark our disease. We’d do anything to stop them as we fade with our immune disease.

Please take that moment to veto, or oven our children’s fire, hey everyone has a hobby, for Than Shwe, freedom is his desire.

by Jeffrey Karl Hellman
Film, Photography, and Visual Arts
Roy H. Park School of Communications, Ithaca College
www.JeffreyHellman.com
www.HonoringHome.com
www.ICFAB.org

Perhaps to say that I had crossed the very ethers of time and space and glimpsed a daring look at freedom. Maybe even to have the audacity to say that I and I alone know the true meaning of freedom.

That I have reached that wonderful state of enlightenment that reveals all the answers to mankind’s questions would be a humbling thing to say. However, none of these are me.

I do know that I believe in freedom in many forms and shapes. I believe that my freedom does not necessarily equate to another’s meaning of freedom.

For some freedom is climbing the face of a mighty mountain, or sailing off a cliff into the sky. Perhaps it is but the freedom to wake up each morning to a roof over your head and something to eat. To have the freedom to write words that are not censored or the freedom to write words without fear of reprisal from a dictatorship seen or unseen, but real nevertheless.

I believe I have glimpsed freedom many times. I believe I have seen freedom in the eyes of a child, in the laughter of a young person or in the glimmer of wisdom of one who has lived many lifetimes.

In my own heart I have known freedom and loved freedom and stood for freedom and have taken freedom for granted. Perhaps that is my greatest sin. I have taken for granted that which many hundreds of thousands of people die looking for, hoping for, trusting for and fighting for – freedom.

But real freedom, well I believe I will have to continue my journey through this lifetime and perhaps along the way I will catch a few more glimpses of a wandering soul that has attained true freedom and in that moment perhaps I will grab just a taste of real freedom before I continue on my path.

by Ron Welling
Gladewater, TX USA

Due to the evolution of nuclear weapons and the mutual annihilation inherent in their use, the reliance of politics on violent means throughout the centuries is called into question. While tracking the evolution of violence, Schell reveals a simultaneous force, moving in counterpoint to the martial system; a tradition of non-violence, born of the world’s spiritual traditions.

Like a sort of “shadow” river, flowing beneath the turbulent surface of the historical ocean, this force has been more persistent than we might suppose.

Indeed, our United States constitution was created from tributaries that tapped the ancient river of peaceful means. Its principles form a cauldron within which we are scorched in the flames of our mistakes, yet blessed with the freedom to correct ourselves.

Most of us sense that violence, as a means to settle our differences, has run its course. We sense, urgently, that in order to supersede global disasters, we must learn to think and act differently.

Enlightened leaders claim that the age-old dream of a peaceful world begins with individuals.

They implore us to look into the mirror–into our hearts–and be honest about what we see. They invite us to live in the moment, to stay awake; to ask ourselves if our methods are working or not working; to notice when our passions need tempering; to ask who or what needs more love from us; to open to the admission that, in the deepest strata of life’s mysteries, the others are us and we are they.

To engage this awareness in good faith and to act upon it, we are taught, is to empower the ancient river–to help one another in constructing new reality from old dreams.

Enormous threat bears enormous potential. Will our world mind blow open the gates…and move with that river, where missiles are rendered obsolete? Where the true battle for freedom finds its authentic locale, in hearts and souls?

In the murky waters of a darkened age, may our mistakes be revealed, and may we learn to hasten the slow dawn of expanding light.

by Barbara Bowen
Artist and Creative Consultant
www.GatewaysCoaching.com
Brooklyn, New York

The world is arse-backwards”, Dr. Francis Israel Regardie

In what context do we put freedom? Do we need a social context, a historical one, some background of political ideologies that shape a culture, or indeed do we need a cultural context? Does freedom differ in theory and practice between peoples, does it take on a different shape in different times?

The answer, for me, quite simply, is no.

Many of the struggles we face today, be they social, ecological, political, financial, war, poverty, oil-addiction, remain a struggle because too many people try to fit an idea of freedom into one of these boxes.

In actuality, this is like trying to fit all four sides of the box into the box. It is a simple-minded, arse-backwards approach to freedom, based on addiction to various measures of security, a dependence on external validation for our inner existence.

Security is an illusion. As all things are impermanent, what is there to secure? In time, a ship’s anchor rusts away and the ship is lost to the ocean.

Freedom is not an illusion. Neither, however is it real.

Freedom is the essence of all things, the dynamism through which we move from yesterday into today. Freedom is eternal, and so does not require a context. Is it simply a utopian fantasy to think that freedom is eternal, and not defined by a particular social or political context?

Again, quite simply, no.

While the methods by which we make freedom known, in the acts that we take to nurture in a particular context, freedom takes on a shape that can be recognized by a culture. Perhaps a peace march, where a country is forced into silence, as the UK was during the Iraq war. Perhaps a sermon on a mount when a people loses the right to even question the methods of an empire. But these actions are not freedom itself.

Freedom is the fire, the force, the fury that motivates, that drives, one to act, but it cannot be contained in the action.

One of the most important things I have ever learned is that the only context needed for freedom to flourish is the individual “courage to care”, to quote Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s imprisoned Nobel peace laureate, and a capacity for wonder.

No ideology will ever liberate anything, no justice system can ever keep the peace. Peace cannot be kept, it can only be invited.

Beyond all the many matrices of ideologies, beliefs, experiences, intuitions, behaviors, consensus’, there lies freedom. And this freedom is eternal, the core of all that is human. It does not need to be searched for, for we are made from freedom. World Peace is not a distant dream of some zen lunatic escaping from the realities of the world, but is the actual reality we live in all the time.

World Peace will not be actualized through blindly following a political path, or a socially sanctioned behavior – all these things are hypnosis.

All these things are illusion. Freedom, and Peace, are what’s left when you stop looking. Freedom is what’s left when a soldier puts down his gun forever. In that moment, all the freedom of the world is realized.

It does not take mass movements, or institutions, but simple actions from the individual.

In everything we do we invite freedom. In every daily act we have a choice to struggle, or stop struggling. Buddha said that he taught only two things “that there is suffering, and that there is an end to suffering”.

All the suffering of the world can end today, and it will not take a mass movement disguised as a revolution. It takes simply a revolution of the spirit, your spirit, my spirit, in every action. In this revolution, no politician, no policeman, no tyrant can ever have any power. For we live outside the illusion progress, and in the love of freedom; ever present, eternal, unending.

Freedom needs no context. Peace needs no plan.

Both are what keeps us moving, if only we were to…..stop…for a moment, and listen. Simply to turn our gaze inward, away from all the many external answers, and listen to our hearts – that radiance that blazes in the depths of our soul, that our actual bodies are blessed with two fingers width below the navel!

In every action, consult your heart, and with every action we breathe a little life into freedom.

by Fergus Harlow
Nottingham, UK