Together We Will Make It

Yesterday I read an article in People magazine about heroes.  There was one woman who found out that her neighbor had to sell his house because the medication that he needed to stay alive cost $6000.00 a month, and they could not afford to keep up the house and keep him alive, and so she held a fundraiser to raise the money to give them time in their home.  Another story was about a man who learned that one of the students in his school could not complete an assignment describing her room – because she did not have a room.  Her father had lost his job and they were living in one room of a relative’s house.  This man invited the entire family, pets and all to live with them.  The last story was about a family that because, again, of loss of employment was losing their home.  They contacted their minister who had set up a program to buy the homes of those who were losing them and allow them to pay rent to stay in their homes until they could buy them back at a greatly reduced price.

These were stories of “Heroes”, however, things will not get better until these stories are no longer heroic but become commonplace.  Most families today must work two jobs in order to survive.  If, God forbid, a life threatening illness strikes and the only medication that will keep yourself, your partner, spouse or child alive costs $6000.00 a month, then the reality is that most of us have to begin making arrangements for the funerals of our loved-ones while they are still alive because paying for the medication for most of us is not even a matter of keep the house or die.  There is no either or.  And it will get worse before it gets better.

Why is the cost of living so high?  Why would life saving medication cost $6000.00 a month?  Here is the reason:

“A new report by the consumer health organization Families USA refutes the pharmaceutical industry’s claim that high and increasing drug prices are needed to sustain research and development. The report documents that drug companies are spending more than twice as much on marketing, advertising, and administration than they do on research and development; that drug company profits, which are higher than all other industries, exceed research and development expenditures; and that drug companies provide lavish compensation packages for their top executives.

The report comes on the heels of a recent Families USA analysis that found prices rose more than twice the rate of inflation last year for the 50 most-prescribed drugs to seniors.

Among the nine pharmaceutical companies examined in the report (Merck, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pharmacia, Abbott Laboratories, American Home Products, Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough, and Allergan), all but one (Eli Lilly) spent more than twice as much on marketing, advertising, and administration than they did on research and development, and Lilly spent more than one and one-half times as much. Six out of the nine companies made more money in net profits than they spent on research and development last year.

The report also documents profligate spending on compensation packages for top pharmaceutical executives. The executive with the highest compensation package in the year 2000, exclusive of unexercised stock options, was William C. Steere, Jr., Pfizer’s Chairman, who made $40.2 million. The executive with the highest amount of unexercised stock options was C.A. Heimbold, Jr., Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Chairman and CEO, who held $227.9 million in unexercised stock options.

“Pharmaceutical companies charging skyrocketing drug prices like to sugar coat the pain by saying those prices are needed for research and development,” said Ron Pollack, Families USA’s executive director. “The truth is high prices are much more associated with record-breaking profits and enormous compensation for top drug company executives.”

Pollack added, “Drug companies’ commitments to research and development are dwarfed by those companies’ expenditures for marketing, advertising, and administration.”

In 2000, the pharmaceutical industry was, once again, the most profitable U.S. industry, and profit margins in the industry were nearly four times the average of Fortune 500 companies. According to the
Families USA report, three companies (Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Abbott Laboratories) received twice as much in net profits than they spent on research and development. Three other companies (Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough, and Allergan) received more money in net profits than they spent on research and development.

‘The pharmaceutical industry’s repetitious cry that research and development would be curtailed if drug prices are moderated is extraordinarily misleading,” said Pollack. “If meaningful steps are taken to ameliorate fast-growing drug prices, it is corporate profits, expenditures on marketing, and high executive compensation that are more likely to be affected, not research and development’”

We, the taxpayers, the consumers, the workforce of the country are the foundation upon which the wealthy have built, and maintained their mansions.  Things will not change until those who hoard the resources release them.  We have been reduced to a thing that is called a consumer.  Imagine that for every ten times more that the executive makes over that of the average worker, that executive rises one story above the people.  Back in 1980 when they made fifty times more than the workers the height was only five stories above us – we were still people and we still mattered as human beings.  Today they range from 30 stories above us to 1900 stories above us.  The only difference being what type of bug we look like to them, a beetle an ant or a gnat.  We have lost any resemblance to humanity in their eyes.

So, they do with us what they must in order to maintain their elevated living.  If it means laying off some and overworking others for less pay, it doesn’t matter.  If it means pricing a drug out of reach of most of the people who will need it, it doesn’t matter. If it means selling us drugs or products that are known to cause injury or fatality – who cares, it just means a few less bugs.  No one with a lingering sense of humanity can take home tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation at the expense of hundreds or thousands of families, if they considered these families human.  But they have risen too high to see, that we have not become less human, even under the labels of workers, consumers, or collateral damage – they have.  Below is information from Fair Economy.org.  It is a Washington based organization that keeps track of these things.  This is greed, not Democracy that we seem desperate to maintain.  Corporations today are no longer crops that nurture the people, build communities through jobs and the services that they bring to our towns, requiring protection to maintain their growth.  No, left to their own devices they have become weeds, which left unchecked strangle the roots of the good plants until everything else is dead.

We may talk about the needs of small business, but the greatest need of small business is a level field in which to grow, the small plumbing supply company that services the community and knows and cares for every employee is pushed out of business by Home Depot.

Small business is connected with the land on which it stands, the people that it serves, and the employees that it hires.  Small business in a part of the community in which it exists and because of that there is mutual support and respect.  Large corporations are like weeds, there is no land that it is native to, no particular field in which it must grow, no need to personally connect with the people that it employs or serves because it is impersonal.

As things continue to spiral down, many people talk about this as a cycle, one of many, and they throw out different timeframes for its completion.  That is nice.  But the truth is that this is a cycle – it is a material cycle that is coming to an end.  At the same time we are entering a spiritual cycle.  This is one where we value spiritual principals over material gain, principals like brotherhood, compassion, equality, sharing, and love.

We can’t jump on a new wheel until we either jump off of the old one, or the old one just breaks.  Over the next couple of years many, many people will be jumping onto the new.  Those who do make the change by becoming members of the family of humanity and assume a responsibility to that greater family, understanding that it is all for one and one for all, will escape the very worst of what is coming.  Clearly, the higher you are the harder you will fall.  So, everyone who is already on the ground floor has experienced the worst.  From here, we must learn to come together and help each other.  It is clearly a time to reinvent ourselves and re-create our goals to be spiritual ones, re-invent the family unit to include a greater family, and most of all – return to community, a life that once supported our ancestors through the hardest of times.  And learn, learn from where we are, know that God gave us this lesson for us to grow.  Never give up, just begin a new and better life with the rewards of love, family and friendship instead of money, power and fame.

IS FREE WILL AN ILLUSION?

One of the phrases that we hear and say a great deal in metaphysical circles in “This is all an illusion”. Although it sounds good, it is not something that we are able to really incorporate into our consciousness because it is so fundamentally opposed to our experience. And though we may be temporarily soothed by the idea of it, the feeling vanishes the moment we bump into a part of that illusion, like a wall, and get a concussion on another part of the illusion – our heads. For most of us the idea that our experience is “all an illusion” is filed away somewhere with God, another idea that, for most of us, is firmly implanted in our belief system but very much disconnected from the reality of our daily lives.

If this is an illusion, why does it hurt so much or feel so real? Why can’t we just affirm it away? In a movie, which is for all intents and purposes an illusion, when one of the characters – another illusion is shot by a bullet – another illusion, the character dies – another illusion. There are two layers here. There is the layer of the actors or the soul who is assuming the role of the character – the illusion who dies. Within the movie, nothing is an illusion. When the actor – the soul – steps out of the movie, or the life in our case, it was all an illusion. A good actor will feel the pain of the character; he will feel the joy of the character which is what makes his performance believable. A good actor is very sensitive, just as a soul is. When the actor leaves the role, he has to re-enter his own life – his own role in the greater movie that is life. This reorientation often takes time. When a soul leaves a life, that soul too has to re-enter its essence, after absorbing all of the experiences of the life that it has just left. A character in a movie or in a play follows a plot, acts or reacts in a way written by someone else. So, in order to react naturally the actor must inhabit the part. We souls inhabit our personalities and so we are able to act and react according to the character that we come to play.

An actor becomes the character, so convincingly. that we are able to anticipate what he will do or say next because we believe him. We may know that the actor is acting and that the words have been written by someone else, the cues given by someone else, yet we feel and experience what the characters are going through. Although the choices that each character is making have been predetermined by the writer, we know that those are the choices that this character would make. Even when the character surprises us, if the actor did his job and writer did his, we can review the movie and see how this unexpected action could have been predicted. This is free will. These characters are predictable because we understand how they are motivated. Yet, does our ability to predict their choices deny the freedom of their choices? No, they are free to choose. What is predetermined is the point from which they view the world at the time that God or the Universe places the choice on their path. How often do we say, “I did that based on what I knew then”, or “If I only knew then what I know now”, or, “The person I am today would never have done that”.

Imagine being in a room, facing a wall and from your position, you can see the wall in front of you and from your peripheral vision you can make out the walls on each side, right and left of your position. But from where you stand, there is no door. Now, the position that you are in places you on a wheel, like a clock gear, that will slowly turn you around. However, right now you only see walls. You are facing twelve o’clock. There is a door at the six o’clock position, but you won’t see it for six hours. Now a voice enters the room and says, “You are free to go”. Is it an illusion that you are free to go? No, there is a door. But from where you stand, there is none. In a story, the character has free will and, we can anticipate that characters actions. We have free will, and our choices are predetermined. They are predetermined because our visibility of available options is really limited to one, at the time that the Universe presents the choice. There may be ten puzzle pieces lined up before us to choose from, yet, the experiences, the beliefs, the impressions of the world that we have accumulated up to that moment sees only one perfect fit. Because there is only one, it is the one that our soul has chosen to best experience the lessons we need to learn.
We have to remember that we come here to learn and to grow. In order to do this, we have to set up a lesson plan.

Our lessons do not only come from where the choice leads us on our path, but also from which choice we make, and how we arrived at that choice. We are here to expand our view, and to learn to see from our hearts. Most actors take roles for a purpose. Many take roles which allow them to stretch, to grow. Free will is not an illusion, but in a way, the choices we make are. They are the lessons; they are the set-up for our growth. They create the plot within which the actor acts. As we learn from each choice, our view expands; our abilities grow until we are in tune with our hearts. When we are in tune with our hearts – we are in tune with our souls. When the soul has mastered the personality, its view is no longer limited. It then sees through the eyes of the creator of the path. The dreamer has mastered the dream, so it is no longer a dream; the actor now writes his part, so he is no longer limited by the existing plot. Illusion vanished and all that is left is one Will in tune with All-That-Is. To enlighten is to light the path so one may see the way. It really has never been a question of whether or not we have free will, the question is, how much we really see of what our free will is acting upon. This is where growth lies.

THE AIR WE FEEL

We understand that the quality of our physical health has a great deal to do with the air that we breathe. When there is pollution in the air, it has an adverse affect on our lungs and our overall health. Too much pollution in the air can threaten our lives. Environmentalists have gone to great lengths to help us fight pollution in our physical atmosphere.

What about the air that our souls breathe, the emotional atmosphere? Just as we all share same air, our souls also share the same emotional and spiritual atmosphere. That atmosphere is the God stuff, which connects all of us. Our feelings of joy, sorry, indifference, pain, love, and hate all go into the common air that our souls breathe.

Everyone is not sensitive to the energy around them just as everyone is not sensitive to pollution or secondhand smoke, but many people are. Many people are sensitive to secondhand misery.

Animals are completely in tune with the earth and their environment. Notice how they act when there is an impending earthquake or hurricane or notice how a pet reacts when its owner is sad. Animals are at one with their environment, what happens around them happens to them.

There is an increasing number of souls who are also in tune with their environments, not necessarily their physical environments, but the emotional ones, which they share with every other soul on earth. They are tuned in and reacting to emotions that are not even their own and wondering why these unconnected feelings engulf them.

For a very long time, the greater emotional environment affected comparatively few people. Most were only affected by the emotions emanating from those nearest to them. However, children who grew up in the fifties and sixties grew up during a very critical time in this country. Women particularly mothers were in a state of transformation. Their unrest was repressed for the most part. Mothers who were raised to aspire to nothing more than being a wife and mother were questioning their choices and so their lives.

Not that they did not love their families, but there was a whole new adventure opening up for women, a whole new exciting world was appearing before their eyes but out of their reach. There were many feelings that women were unable to express or even make sense of within themselves.

This undercurrent of emotion jarred the energy in even the best of homes. Children grew up in an atmosphere where there was often as much going on under the surface as there was on the surface as their mothers grappled with the strange new desires that were boiling up from within. Being spiritually connected to mother, children needed to sharpen their antennae. They needed to feel what was happening around them as much as hear and see in order to maintain their sense of security and connection.

Beyond the intimate emotions affecting the mothers, the entire country was experiencing a heightened level of preparedness. The cold was looming all around while air raid shelters were built underground. This state of preparedness necessitated a heightened state of awareness never knowing when and from where the attack would come.

Children during the fifties and early sixties had to hide under their desks for air raid drills. It caused them again to open up their sixth sense in order to keep up with fear of impending doom. Just as children learn to walk and talk, these children learned to sense, to be always aware of what we could not see or hear because the enemy was somewhat invisible.

Thus, children began to have a heightened awareness that their parents did not have. They were affected by a much larger environment than had affected children before. These children grew up during a time when there was more to fear from that which could not be seen than from that which could and so they became tuned in to a higher frequency than their parents. This sense of fear and dissatisfaction having no recognizable source was perceived by the children as being their own when in fact it was much larger. These children drank in the general sadness in their country and simultaneously fed into it as well.

They were born in a time when the earth herself was accelerating her vibration, as the earth accelerates so do we as a part of her. This change in vibration creates a disturbance among the creatures of the earth and the physical properties of the earth herself. So, we have enormous earth changes disasters of great proportions. This causes suffering among the animals and mankind. As the suffering enters the energy field, those who are sensitive become depressed because they are so deeply connected to the energy.

Things have not become better, they have only become worse. The energy coming from the Middle East is one of intense suffering between terrorism, hatred, fear, despair and oppression. Africa is dying and the wails of the slow torturous death of AIDS are felt within all who are connected but especially those who are acutely sensitive.

There is more suffering than joy in the world today; more empty bellies and empty plates than full. The world is in a constant state of mourning and only the sensitive few are aware of it. Sadly, they don’t even know why they feel death in the pit of their stomachs and so they seek medication.

We believe that what we don’t see, does not touch us. Well we can only avoid being affected if we don’t feel. It is easy to say that it is God’s will. But if it were Gods will we would not be so sad. Joy comes from doing God’s will not depression. This is God’s challenge; it is God’s test of our connection to Spirit. It is Gods will that every creature that He loved enough to give life to, be given a chance to live and be fruitful. He created mankind and gave man the ability to reach across all boundaries and love, and told man to love his brother as himself. We will ease our own suffering by easing the suffering of our brothers. God created the earth and made her bountiful. But her bounty is only enough for all, if all limit their portions to enough. It is God’s will that we be given the choice of more for me, or enough for all.

It is the Universal energy that is clinically depressed; only a growing number of us are too sensitive to be immune to it. This country is suffering from EIDS, emotional immune deficiency syndrome. We cannot stay immune to the emotions that are all around us in the world. The country that we live in is not a place, it is an ideal. The souls born here and the souls drawn here are keenly infused with the ideals on which this country was founded. Those words held in the hands of the statue of liberty are etched in our hearts. We may try to turn our backs on those tired, poor, huddled masses, but we cannot turn our hearts, we were not built the same way as everyone else.

We have a greater privilege being in this country and along with that comes a greater responsibility to the world as a whole because just as it says in the song, we are the world. We here represent the hopes and dreams of every nation on this earth. The hearts of our founding fathers looked to the future of Americans to fulfill the greatness of their dreams of a better world. The founding fathers believed that if they created the Constitution, one day, we would exemplify it as a beacon to the world. This is the only nation in the entire world that was not established on a foundation of what was, but on a foundation of what could and even more, should be. And maybe one day we really will, but if we continue to extend our weapons instead of our hearts, that day may come too late for everyone. Because whether we know it or not, we are all deeply heart sick, and the rampant depression is a symptom of that sickness. We carry within our collective genes a bit of every race, creed, and national origin on this earth. Their cries are our cries. Their hunger is our hunger because in the greatest sense, they are us.