Shout out to Whanau On The Edge: Read First Chapter

INTRODUCTION

Dear whanau although you may feel isolated, your sacrifices and love unrecognized, although the world may seem a cryptic and barren place for the feeling you keep inside: you are not alone. With the often misunderstood emotion of honor may I humbly offer the idea that life has meaning beyond consuming pain, there is a purpose for soul and redemption for every situation. Cooling waters can flow into even the hottest of situations but the work to get there is real, requiring honest self-reflection; the awesome simple truth is as humans we possess the tools required for loving liberation and the blockages to this are merely our own delusional mind.

Although you may be wandering far from your hearts true calling, lost in a void of bitter emotion and after so much effort to know yourself, your secret pain can transform into a strength that will see you live well and die well at the appropriate time and not by your own hand. If you have come to this book and are in need, my family, you are already dead - you have nothing left to loose, die well now in metaphor with me and live on as you are supposed to do. Walk with me and become proud of yourself in ways you may never have before have imagined.

Whatever the experience which has bought you to this book you must know you are not alone love which now seems torn and belittled can form a base from where you will discover your greatest work.

As low and lonely as you might feel, as discarded and meaningless your life may seem, let it be known these things will pass. Although while in the midst of deeply traumatic events such an idea seems outrageous, it is nevertheless a truth which has carried whanau beyond the cliffs of despair. After all I have seen I truly believe anyone can be empowered to find their peace and happiness mitigated only by the fact we have to engage the times we live in no matter how unsettling this may be. Even as you feel your life force ebbing away, your vitality for life lost and now replaced by overwhelming feelings of meaningless futility, such feelings are not rare; they are a product of how we humans have come to live. Although I am no great sage I would wager what you are going through in fact carries the very lessons which lead to great soul promise. If you want to heal, if you want inner peace and to know that you are a valued human, the time has come for your experience to bring a new wave of light upon our earth. Never forget one solid truth - the world needs you. Your pain as a human, the fact you feel, is a reflection of deeper elemental qualities which exist inside of yourself and can become the strength from where you’ll draw acceptance and peace. I cannot ever accept the idea that life is pointless, that our experiences amount to nothing in the grand scheme of living and dying, because I have seen too much wisdom in the eyes of you, my whanau, to understand we are actually on the precipice of something beautiful.

Spiritually powerful people are illusive. True power is not won by sleight of hand or bullying aggression; it has nothing to do with property or superior violence. While this statement may seem at odds with the structures we find on earth today it remains a relevant counterpoint to the basic gangster driven top down violence style of leadership deployed throughout global systems. That such earthly power has no value to the person who has chosen to give heed to the urging of their own timeless soul has been discussed, expressed and debated through art and culture and is a timeless question however the heads up here is I am going to proceed as if this was a statement in fact. It is very simple in fact! Without the experience of suffering caused by the folly of our own greed and shallow lusts we could not move forward as timeless beings in an abundant and loving universe! How in fact could we see the value of love without first experiencing the full gamut of negative emotion? It makes sense that we should experience this in a physical way and in a place of safety such as here on our wonderful planet if we are willing to consider that within the vast universal unknown more refined forms of consciousness might be on offer. That our emotional base, as complex and baffling thing that it is could be a template for universal life and not just randomly ours is an interesting question. A leap of faith to become a believer perhaps but not a valueless exercise for contemplating the possibilities of why we may be here, confined as it were, on such a beautiful, brutal planet. True power is universal and defies even this life, it exists as a foundation so little explored by today's people that we live in denial it is even an option, yet the fact remains, true power is timeless and will always be available to uplift us all - man and woman alike.

As whanau struggling with injured identity, you may not know the process, so few of us do, yet human inspiration is a right which exists for us all, over and above what other humans might say through their emotional needs or delusional minds. Deep feeling is our link to eternity yet when it remains held beneath the cruel human sea of fear inspired interaction, like the death throes of a drowning man who sees his life thrashing before him in flashes of disconnected shame, it can drive us mad. Honesty about feeling is rare and should never involve giving power over to another individual. Even as you struggle with emotional mind demons, these manifestations of our own conscious panacea that’ll thwart joy while inspiring untold bitter thoughts, such things are ultimately powerless for these thought demons, unlike you, are not real. Manifestations of imagination borne of negative experience are common and invariably rise from morbid subconscious unrest. As humans struggle with the very necessary lessons of bad religion and genocidal economies our natural tendency for cooperation is repressed, we push our needs deeper away and accept situations which do not bring us joy thus setting up morbid subconscious unrest which can then be exacerbated by any number of traumatic events. Because you have found this book such barren ideals no longer have a place in your life. We can be real and we can be free, regardless of all the broken need associated with such obvious terms. As whanau we can be respected and beyond this the old rule remains true; as humans the art of loving ourselves is always a fine line between narcissistic delusional love which is destructive and the empowering love of awe.

My family, I have felt the pain and can speak from a heart who has experienced the bitter fruits of pointless toil. I have wanted to die, trapped by feelings of rejection I have been angry and wanted to kill. For many years I have suffered the numbing uselessness of depression, unable to effectively meet the challenges of everyday life, yet in my own time I heard my deeper soul, I gave my heart to concepts of healing which bought me ridicule yet opened my eyes to the pain of our human condition. I have survived and now I see so much potential for joy it is unbelievable, but the difference is that my joy does not rely on the acceptance of others, nor is it carried forward by participating in things I do not believe, nor is it bound to concepts beyond my own heart. My family - because of this - I am free but forever bound to something so beautiful, so beyond me as a single individual, so incredibly deep, bringing an abundance we have been told we can never have, yet promising all this, a way which remains so simple. When a person arrives at the point of awareness where empowerment seems obvious and available, we do clearly see that despite the darkness we collectively create in our interactions so too does the potential for deep wisdom exist with equal measure in every human being.

Let us go deeper then global warming my family. Let us solve that silly state of affairs once and for all, creating in the process an even better world with far more convenient ways to travel than cars. Let’s take it to the next level and be amazed at what we truly are. Regrettably our collective instinct is not a free agent yet the delusional behavior which keeps us tethered to suffering is not a prerequisite made by the earth who gives us life. Our collective instinct is still free and wild in its own way and in every situation it remains true that it is the point at which our hearts meet as creative entities which is truly exciting. Freedom is pitifully misunderstood while people remain trapped in the trauma of our shared existence so wrapped up as it is by the nuances of power, greed and degenerative virtue. Power structures such as we have come to accept could never create the kind of harmonious society which is a prerequisite for spiritual expansion and lasting peace because by nature they are far too aggressive. Excessive aggression de-tunes us as whanau together and we forget that in essence we need each other if we are going to succeed, be comfortable and experience love.

Although we may desperately dream of peace and harmony, we are so far from that in the real world we are left with no choice but to act, for the most part, in a highly instinctual, individualistic survivalist way. None of which is conducive to emotional well being in the first instance, before you even start applying the pressures of personal relationships. This is the game; there are consequences for our own bad behavior both for individuals and collectively. Surprisingly these consequences may also be a function of the love we so desperately seek, they are the brake when we spiral and we must learn to embrace them as signals from our own higher intelligence. While trapped in despondency we cannot see if we allow ourselves to open to the idea of learning as we go gaining faith in our own place and spiritual purpose and so take responsibility for our own reaction to negative situations, we can rise like the phoenix into a stronger, gentler, happier version of ourselves. This is freedom, the world might still be messed up but we will be ok and we will become an influence for good.

My family – the darkness of our times will pass! I know a different way, as do we all if we really look into our souls and listen as we should.

Pollution born of childish technology does not have to be, there are many far better choices yet crippled by fear we do not adequately recognize the forces of greed at play in our economies and so do not invite these better choices in. It is well known that fear and anxiety leave humans emotionally paralyzed and so more likely to accept the violent assertion of power. In this state we are but dead. In this state life on earth will finish - sadly many would say so be it. My family it does not have to be this way, a truly grand future awaits the brave, of this you may have no doubt but you first must learn to love yourself and in that loving to see yourself as a part of a magical whole, of something far bigger than the self if your heart is to be opened to real and meaningful joy. A challenge of unimaginable significance baits the honorable warriors of our time but there are so few who would take the mantle. Useless toil of mixed up need drags on. It kills and is killing still. Do not let it consume you too.

CHAPTER ONE

AN OVERVIEW OF DIS-EMPOWERMENT WHICH SETS THE STAGE FOR VIOLENCE WITHIN OUR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

Whether we want to believe it or not, our condition, as poor as it is, has been deliberately constructed to dis empower us before we have even begun the process of self-awareness and meaningful spiritual empowerment. Pressures of modern living and convenient sayings such as ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy,’ are in the main products of ancient processes designed to centralize power into the hands of a few. Without this there could be no way any of us would accept a life that wasn’t harmonious and full of abundance. A vast majority of humans are beautiful creatures who have been taught they are bad and in the confusion of this, have become angry and hurtful towards each other; the lives we possess have been debased by the banality we allow! Seemingly few truly understand who they are anymore and fewer still are willing to find out what they could be.

We all feel it though, we all resonate to some strange, intangible deep yearning where we know we have value and purpose but full of fear and constraint, blinded by pain and paranoia we keep this secret faith in ourselves and our purpose hidden. We never quite get there, we create reason to doubt ourselves and it and somewhere along the line we quietly slip beneath the surface into a dark but seemingly stable place. Fragile, unformed and sacred we hide our loving spirit away while the bleating narrative of dis empowerment, so cleverly formed through the ages bashes away at our sense of worth. We internalize our pain, we endorse negativity against our own deep reasoning and we look for factions or tribes for protection even if membership in such groups means forgoing personal freedoms. Yet all through this, deep down, we yearn for loving connection and remain social creatures with the potential to be eternally inspired.

Slavery abounds upon our earth and has many forms; it is an ancient paradigm having now become accepted as a way of being because of our human tendency to look back in yearning rather than forward in imagination. Life has little meaning to the cold heart which drives such things forward but do not be deceived; if you are willing to consider those who live beyond the veil of what we consider a successful human life then it is easy to concede the idea that our condition on earth is much as it was since Babylonian nobles were working men to death in order to build grand palaces, sacrificing babies to weirdo gods, and claiming all the handsome women for harems here and there. Modern Emperors ply their trade along well-trodden routes, doling out dislocating pressures of everyday existence, stimulating our emotional turmoil and skewing our perception of need until blinding us to the higher passions which throughout time have bought us humans so much joy. Poetry of the moment has given way to getting by in a brutal world, forming one of the very first human hurts we deal with as children.

We family are trained from a young age to compete and compare, to rise or fall based on strengths which have little ultimate meaning to our deepest hearts, we often compensate for our early feelings of isolation through aggression as a way of being recognized, paying homage to our ancient feudal mind as we do so.

We have a need to be needed as human but times have changed. Although the playing field seems unique to our times, not much is really different in the way we value our lives and spiritual journey since Pliny and the decaying Roman Empire. Theirs like ours was a sophisticated world - albeit one where many died young - a world of commerce and trade, of opulence and abject poverty: it was a frivolous world where little of the eternal human mind was cherished and so it was a world destined to crumble in violence. Heroism has underpinned many a human tale, yet now, as we watch ourselves die for no good reason, we are forced to contemplate the meaning of it all if we wish to be in any way sensitive to our time and place. Causes have been the catch cry of humanity but now in the face of global doom, pointlessness seems to be our true reward. My family it feels like we are floundering for a lack of something to rise for and it is fair to say that only the most mediocre and shallow of our kind do well in the current conditions. Do not despair my friends there is a cause as yet unrecognized which is great and worthy of heroic deeds but we must be subtle, our Emperor has many eyes and many ways of paying off the weak to do his bidding.

Feudalism is running its course on Earth and all people play a role at varying degrees, yet the product of this is so much senseless division breeding ethics which dis empower our potential for finding deep and lasting meaning in our experience. Some would argue that this state of affairs is in fact the experience intended, for the essence of life seems to have an eternal quality. They might say a balance exists beyond the human here and now which we are nevertheless a part of and that if this is so, even the darkest aspects of our journey must find a resolution which can only leave us richer. Questions arise comparing the experience of an individual to those of a community, of a race and ultimately of human kind. Violence and separation echo across our lands, power struggles based on debasing need are the end result. Simple conflicts breed subtle sufferings beyond our human capacity to cope destroying our ability for joy. In this state our relationship to our homes and security become remote, we detach ourselves from meaning as we do what we must to get by, our needs no longer reflect our deepest passions becoming secondary to  primal urging of survival we forget the most subtle and accepting aspects of our human nature. 

Arguing in this way it could be said that only at this point do we become participants in a choice which robs us both emotionally and physically of our essence - our very will to live. Partaking of our energy by enslaving us to principles which have little or no meaning to the requirements of health and self-discovery, individual humans become fodder for the needs of our Emperor and his blinded elite. Anger deep and repressed can be the only result of this, anger which we as individuals must bury in order to carry forward in life can only be mitigated by degrees comparable to our affluence in the constructed human world. In this way it becomes easy to see that those who crave a simple, heartfelt life of meaningful work and creative expression - such is our rite - will be sorely done by. Our bodies are quite simply not our own, even at the highest levels, yet we push on, competing and struggling until little is left of who we are while our lives become consumed by doing what is required.

This first stage of dislocation affects us all, both men and women alike and is the prime circumstance which opens us to isolation and feelings of unworthiness. Dislocation robs we humble souls of our sense of place so that nowhere on our planet do we feel secure without subjecting ourselves to despotic authority and in the realization of this we can start the process of disentangling our negative emotions around what has been put onto us by society and our out-dated power structures and what is of us in the way we have dealt with the circumstances of our lives. My family, in the contemplation of this first point we must never forget there are only two ways to gain political power on earth at the moment: respect or fear.

One is uplifting fostering wealth through talent the other wounding as it needs to damage us in order to cleave us to it. Despotic power such as we know it on earth has reached a critical climax it would seem and we must disentangle our personal wounds from the wounding of fear which has been so effectively used against us throughout history! Despite the efforts of many good people there is everywhere evidence of deep wounding and of the processes which foster divisions and fear through many generations. Modern principles of economy or so called political doctrines could be said to fall into this category as an example. Certainly some religions and many aspects of institutionalized learning conform to this model also. Respect is a heartening experience and creates safety, economies which have mutual respect as the underlying principle allow people to settle into a natural order which is conducive to a profound progression of awareness; food for joy, we have more to share than could ever be garnished by one soul alone.

In fact the argument could then follow that herein lays the “modus-operandi” for manipulators at the highest levels, for it has been proven over thousands of years that in order for despotic forms of power to influence people the people themselves must be made subservient. It then becomes absolutely necessary for people to be insecure. This can only be done by forcing individuals to forgo their relationship to shared creative power, to then compete and outdo each other by dividing communities and pitting groups of people in a cycle wherein the very fruits of security are the articles of trade and can be bestowed or withdrawn to the benefit of the empowered elite. Only then can homes be mortgaged and fools created; only a fool would allow another human to come between themselves and the true majesty of who they really are. By necessity men and women who seek affluence derive benefits by putting human structures between people and their relationship with earth: hence they must reject loving spirituality in favor of forms which do not challenge their particular level or grade of awareness. Shallow religions serve this purpose well as does the real estate economy - backed up as it is by military guns - and they have been cleverly constructed to divide human energy for the benefit of the few.

It follows then that this wounding we must inflict on each other as we engage in all our levels of power and the underlying practicalities of wealth creation deriving from this power is nevertheless at the root of human suffering because it robs individuals of a sense of belonging while directly wounding the essence of who we feel ourselves to be. It follows then that a self-perpetuating cycle of mutual wounding which by its very essence can only serve the darkest forces at play within the human panacea of potential gathers its own momentum and so becomes a weighty part of what we consider to be experience. This can’t be good for us or our planet and of course we see the fruits of this in all the fractured lives and trauma of today’s world. It rolls over poor dislocated individuals like a terrible machine creating deep fractures in society which become festering pools of frustration, repression and anger. We bury violence inside ourselves as we mind numbingly go about our duties, leading to ever deeper levels of dysfunction in the very moments where we could be greeting each other. As individuals we can be free of dislocation, we can engage our minds and find peace with others but we must be real about who we are and what we have experienced. When we bury the violence within like a spring it will have to come out somewhere – somehow.

There is an argument which says we are in effect the creator by virtue of the eternal aspect of our souls, that there is no distinction between the experience of god and the feelings we carry inside. If this is so it makes sense that we all crave love because love is a state of bliss, so simple yet so confused. It would then follow that in order for you to be enslaved you must be confused about love. How many times have you been told that you are a sinner, that only the love of some intangible force can save you, and by the way give us energy and money so that you may be worthy? How many relationships have you had with lovers, friends or family which have supposed to be love yet have left you empty and bitter? While we all remain confused about love, our attempts at sharing love can only result in pain. Herein lies the first lesson.

Forgiveness is our greatest tool, our strongest foundation, and is a quality that without which - my friend - you are going to a bleak death.

Forgive that partner who hurt you, that family member who thwarted your growth. Forgive that person whose bitterness tried to destroy you because unless we do we can never be free from their manipulations. Grieve for them who are so far from joy in their own lives that they must control and hurt in order to find expression. Such is their descent into pain, forgive and stand aside so that you are no longer a part of that circle and watch how solutions you never dreamed of begin flowing into your realm. English has but one word for love, other languages many more – I’m told ancient Sanskrit had over three thousand. Could it be that the process of dis-empowerment begins with the very first concepts we take on? How can deep feeling humans allow this without a pervasive sense of being jibbed?

Such a spirit as we humans possess cannot be easily repressed, there are too many fine qualities within our hearts that must be systematically eliminated if the wounding elements of society are to realize their dreams of power. Fortunately for them well tuned methods of achieving those aims have been honed over a past riddled with violence and indoctrinated thinking. So long has this been happening people have long ago given up imagining any other way, we have handed over responsibility for our souls and just feel lucky to have a job if we have one. We know little of our body’s power, our minds are not even a quarter used, we ferret about proclaiming the end of the world and sedate ourselves by whatever means possible. Drugs and addiction, be they illegal or prescribed, are how so many whanau deal with the gaping hole they feel inside due to the dislocation, making themselves unavailable to joy and totally subservient to material domination. That small percentage of our human family who crave manipulative power are actually some of the most psychologically brutalized people alive, their demons are having a field day. Forgive them so that they might live by living yourself, embrace the one thing they all fear - a self-supporting, functioning, loving human being who has a broad ability for acceptance and can honor the art of life.