MULTIDIMENSIONAL LIVINGMULTIDIMENSIONAL LIVING
Our planetary nervous system...
The Problem with Magnetic Sensory Perceptions
Prom night.
How can parents make sure their kids live through it without killing themselves and each other? Find out.....
Older citizens.
What happens when we live past the age we’ve financially prepared for?
Child care.
Is your child receiving the kind of attention you are paying for?
If the current media is to be believed, people only learn from fear.
Turn on any newscast. Within the first five minutes what do you hear? Reports of man’s goodness? His generosity to his fellow man? His wisdom, honor, and integrity? Stories that inspire us, of people we want to emulate?
What is reported as news and how it is reported purports to represent us as a people. Over the years I have met thousands of people from all points on the globe, corresponded with as many, and through electronic media enjoyed conversations with millions. A relatively large representation of humanity that leads me to a very different image of mankind than the one flickering on the evening news. In spite of the racey, “push it to the limit”, “appeal to their baser instinct” reporting, mankind is rapidly outgrowing the limits of media’s recording of history.
There are many who are evolving into a spiritual adulthood characterized by a genuine willingness to provide a higher quality of life for everyone on the planet. Hard work reveals genius, and genius gives the world beauty it has never before known.
When you meet people face-to-face, when you talk with them one-on-one, you discover the truth.
Beyond the magnetic tape is a far more attractive reality. Beyond the pieces of sentences, soundbites they are called, purposefully-chosen to be aired, are the paragraphs that tell the whole story. It is the whole story which leads to the truth, to tell less distorts the truth, filtering it through
©1997 Vol. 15 NO. 3
MEDIA...reflection, feedback, or figments of our collective imagination?
It is indeed a most exciting time to be incarned, to exist on earth, to live. Opportunities for soul progression and spiritual growth abound for anyone, anywhere on the earth. What we do not have immediately available to us in our own environment we can learn about through print or electronic media. From CNN to Internet, the so-called information superhighway stretches across the planet uniting people as never possible before.
It is as if mankind has been independently seeking, creating, and working toward what is becoming more and more obviously a common goal. It is easy for us to become myopic, as a culture only familiar with our own point of view, as a government -- isolationists -- only concerned with self-interests, as individuals only looking to satisfy the temporary needs of the senses. The wonderful opportunity the present structure of media brings to us is the potential for expanded awareness. Within seconds we can experience through sight and sound events occurring across the globe. We can join with others, whom we do not know and probably will never meet in this lifetime, observing the unfolding action -- from Olympic events to the uniting of royalty in marriage, from speeches by world class leaders to theatrical spectacles. This sharing creates a kinship, the beginnings of a common bond which makes the world a much smaller place.
Man's current communication system with its orbiting satellites and computerized images, serves as the planet's nervous system, constantly receiving and sending information. It has seemed until recently that the operators of this nervous system were of the grossest form of awareness and of ignorantly malevolent intent, for from the vast majority of information received they chose to send the "bad news". Our planetary nervous system has progressively inundated us with man's inhumanity to man in all of its forms for decades while those promulgating this excursion into the supposedly evil nature of mankind hid their own intentions behind "the public's need/right to know".
Yet recently, if you will notice, there has become a growing number of positive and productive events across the world that by their very nature and content demand to be covered by media. From last year's Parliament of the World's Religions to this year's Summit on Population Control, from scientific developments into the nature and use of physical genetic creation to university studies which report our desire for and willingness toward fidelity in marriage, we are slowly beginning to see the emergence of what is good about mankind. Even when the mass media operators report these events in an unfavorable light, the truth shines forth for "those with eyes to see, and ears to hear". Mankind's true nature is positive, productive, and progressive.
At its heart, every religion existing on earth teaches some variation of the Universal Truth "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The operators may or may not abide by this Truth. It really is of little consequence when each of us as individuals assert our right and responsibility by choosing in high-mindedness what we will accept from the information available.
One of the first challenges a student in the School of Metaphysics meets is the mastery of his attention. He finds the outer world filled with sights and sounds and tastes and smells and feelings which continually bombard his physical senses. In time by practicing spiritual disciplines the aspirant discovers he determines which of these stimuli will be accepted and acted upon. Only that sensory information which will accelerate his journey toward Enlightenment is important, all else is a distraction. Self awareness feeds Self control.
The same is true for our planet's nervous system and its operators. In time those operators will come to accept the responsibility which comes with the freedom they enjoy. Until then, each of us as individuals must be informed, educated, and aware, choosing with foresight and integrity what we will accept, always considering the source and always seeking a wider range of sources before we judge. As long as we know our own minds, we need never fear losing control of them.
©1994 Vol. 12 No. 4
Responsibility ... The Flourishing of Inner Technology
It is truly a wonderful time to be alive. The availability for knowledge extends from one corner of the earth to the other. What is discovered by one person can be immediately shared with others across the globe, accelerating invention, research, and development. As never experienced before, we can in a matter of minutes move from one place, one country, one culture, one people, on earth to another place, country, culture, people. We can see and talk with people who less than a century ago would have remained unknown to us -- alien, foreign, strange.
It is important in this new year that we meet the challenges of man's technology. We can choose to isolate ourselves from one another, continuing to view others as alien, foreign, strange. We can ignore them, as if they do not exist. We can choose to fear what we do not understand. We can perpetuate the sins of our fathers and look forward to the same results -- war, pestilence, famine, disease.
Or we can demonstrate responsibility for the freedom man's technology brings. We can actively seek to understand one another by transcending physical differences.
In religion, we can admit that the name does not make the God, therefore one man's God is not lesser or better than another's and indeed in the heart of both men the concept of the Creator is what is of importance.
In science, we can admit the power of imagination as the driving force throughout creation for it is this power that every great scientist has demonstrated; it is this power that has enabled him or her to transcend the limits of the physical senses and enter the world of the laws of the Universe.
In government, we can embrace the principles of creation, endeavoring to form our physical laws in accordance with Universal Law. Just imagine the revolutionary changes that will occur when man-made laws include the principles that guide the Law of Karma -- the law of balance, the law of cause and effect, the law of freedom and responsibility.
In education, let us strive to remember not only with our brains but with our souls, for it is the permanent memory of the soul -- spanning millennia -- which bears the wisdom of the ages and brings to light individual talent and genius.
In society, let us mature as whole beings, casting away the frivolities of youth and accepting the cloak of adulthood by endeavoring to use wisely the awesome creative power entrusted to humanity by its Maker.
The kind of year it will be, the kind of world we will live in, depends on each of us. It depends solely upon the quality of our thinking. For whether it be health or disease, happiness or sorrow, success or failure, ignorance or enlightenment, thought is cause, and the physical is its manifest likeness.
Each one of us has a duty that did not begin nor will it culminate in the physical world. Most people spend their lifetime seeking and avoiding that duty. Some believe it comes from God or divine guidance. Others believe it to merely be an instrument of fate and the powers of the Universe. Some believe it is thrust upon us by the way our lives unfold. Some believe it arises from the ideas, people, or country you love. Whatever your beliefs about duty, act upon them. This will cause your awareness to deepen, and the energies available to you in 1995 will return to you many fold.
©1995 Vol. 13 No. 1
©2002 SOM