BAFFLING BAHOOZA

As information and story lines swirl past us and through us, we can easily have surges of deep unpleasant feelings and opinions. Whether you read the news of you go deep into the internet’s threads of conspiracy or you just can’t bear it and pick up tidbits from social media, we are all loaded with reactions.

You can almost make a game out of it. When you talk to someone all you have to say is ‘covid’ or ‘Trump’ or ‘Black Lives Matter” and an hour-long conversation ensues. It’s a lively game and one that people play daily.

         It wears on one’s heart, the atrocity of it all, but in all of the sorrow and insanity there is laughter. There couldn’t have been a better comedy of the absurd. If it was a primetime show everyone would watch it for fun. But its reality - so now, it is not so funny.

Most of our information is somehow skewed with opinions. Just look at CNN vs. FOX news. You won’t believe we live in the same country. But all of this bombardment of stressful news can push us to be either ranting maniacs, fearful shut-ins, or, on a higher level, questioning agnostics. All we can say for sure is that stupidity and lies cannot survive. Once a lie is exposed, it cannot live for long, because no one believes it.

So why do so many people buy the lies? Because they have been trained to do so. Mix fundamentalist religion with nationalistic propaganda and voila- you have a Nazi state cake.

Add a few odds and ends like minorities who idolize the white power ethos. Hey, can’t blame them - everybody wants to be the white, blond, rich guy. It’s like the cowboy image, they were racist, sexist, assholes but we love them anyway. We buy the hat and boots even if we’re black and queer.

The only ones who have totally jumped ship from the entitled, suburban, rich, white culture is their children, who have seen that it doesn’t make anyone happy – hence the hippy tribe. Mostly white middle class that don’t want to play the game any longer. We would rather live in a bus, smoking weed, going to concerts that to be stuck with a suburban white neighborhood, boring job and a mortgage. Ugg!

And we like other cultures, so we borrow and include them to morph our own culture. This confuses both the white Americana and the cultures that we don the clothing of. No one understands where we are from. Guatemala shorts with a dashiki African shirt, hand woven socks with Birkenstocks.

So, we become the clowns of the three-ring circus. Watching as the capitalist pig balances on the tightrope, gasp as the cops blast a black guy out of a cannon and - center stage - the galloping ponies circling the covid tigers in a ring of flames.

It’s all so entertaining but are we getting anywhere? The answer is YES. All these paradigms and beliefs have been under the surface for a long time. But the belief systems are becoming untrue and hippies have a lot to do with that. We don’t believe the hype. We have watched our families live it and we know it’s all bull **t. It’s harder and harder for the fundamentalist American dream to survive when the children of the elite don’t want it.

Racism is a long climb but with every protest-unrest there are new footholds made by educating people. The Black Lives Matter movement is a great progress because it is not stating what it’s against but what it is for. This is positive visualizing and that is what really gets us there.

The founding principles of our country are democracy (freedom people) and capitalism (freedom of money). These were once were working side by side in the early days, but they have slightly different tangent goals so now, after a hundred years, they are quite far apart from each other and people have to take sides on what America is about.

Today, capitalism is ruling and is basically the game of monopoly with who ever has the most money wins, but Democracy says the majority wins and we try to include everyone. These two deep rooted beliefs about what America stands for are battling. A third of Americans are on one side, a third on the other and a third are mixed up in the middle, not deciding or haven’t really thought about it between Utube and Instagram. These are the people who are very easily manipulated by media spam. One well placed Facebook meme can sway them.

There are many ways this can go. Keeping a strong vision and a loud voice of the world that you want to live in is the key to manifestation. It almost feels like space and time will split apart and some will travel down one road and others will travel down another. Each road will be guided by its enduring belief about the world we want to live in.

One belief has the symbol of an apple- sweet and crunchy good old America, success, power, growth, dominance, righteousness, straight, Christian, gun toting, personal freedom with a white inside.

The other belief has the symbol of the peach- delicious, soft, fuzzy, juicy, inclusive, colorful, open, spiritual, trusting, socially responsible freedom, with pink, orange, yellow, brown, black inside.

Help the psychic field manifest the world you want to live in. You can do this alone, in a quiet place. Being forced to stay put will give us the time and energy to really focus, consider, and meditate.

Sicknesses, presidents, and paradigms come and go. Do what you can where you are. Believe in the magic of manifestation. There are things we can achieve while staying in place-

Vision of a sustainable life and world.

Understanding for humanity.

Love of our family.

Enjoyment of a simple life.

And the most difficult of all- Peace.