Dedication
On April 30, 1999, Hollis Littlecreek,
my flute teacher, mentor and friend, passed from this world.
Hollis, an Anishinabe Native American elder who freely shared
his teachings, was an important catalyst at many points in my
life. How appropriate that on the day Hollis left, I would apply
for my Massachusetts Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permit. I
could imagine him laughing to himself. For while his pipe, his
flutes and his tools were never far away, neither was his gun
-- and among those who visited with him, I was one of the most
unlikely to get one.
Introduction
As I watched the hysteria grow after
the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, I realized
that if I would ever want a gun, best to get it now, because
it would only be more difficult later.
I was under no immediate personal threat.
In fact, whether traveling in India or driving cab in New York,
I've always felt safe and protected. My reasons were more pragmatic
-- like buying a chainsaw now because you just learned you might
not be able to buy one when you would need it.
I learned a lot buying a gun. I encountered
Byzantine regulations and media programmed biases. I made surprising
legal, factual and historical discoveries. I faced uncomfortable
contradictions in my beliefs about personal power, sovereignty,
and an individual's rights and responsibilities within the community.
I also reexamined my beliefs and actions and my responsibilities
to the world our children will inherit.
After encountering some pretty strong
anti-gun feelings when talking with New Age acquaintances, I
ran a survey
to better understand New Age sentiments toward guns. This article
developed from that survey and the research and numerous conversations
that followed.
New Age Hypocrisy
We say we create our own reality. We say we're responsible for
our experience. We say we attract the events in our life. We
say our beliefs affect our experience.
We also say that agents of the State
should be more active in regulating the purchase and use of guns.
(See survey.)
This is the same State we don't trust to regulate Vitamin C.
This is the same State that wages the drug war. This is the same
State we don't want irradiating our food. But, we want this State
to regulate guns. In fact, many of us even think it's a good
idea that only agents of this State be allowed to have guns.
As Ann Coulter asks in a recent article in George Magazine, "Why is it
that the same people who have the least confidence in the police
and military are the most willing to allow only the police and
military to have guns?"
I think most of us in the New Age community
aren't intentionally hypocritical, we just suffer from what I
call the Paint Chip Syndrome. The paint chip looks great in the
hardware store, but when you actually paint your wall, you wonder
what you were thinking.
In one room in our consciousness, we
agree with the Catholic mystic, Pierre
Tielhard de Chardin that we are co-creators
in creation. And as we study the Course
in Miracles we learn there is no "other"
to blame for our sorrow. Meanwhile, in another room in our consciousness
we see someone in such pain that we're moved to tears. No one
should have to suffer that. Someone should do something. Someone
or something is to blame. "There ought to be a law."
We start a petition, pass a law, illegalize a thing.
As Jane Roberts' channeled entity, Seth,
described, we carry contradictory beliefs. Each may appear logical
within its own particular context, but when they're set side-by-side
in the same room, the contradiction is obvious.
A good example of this disconnect is
in the survey. Nearly one fourth (23%) of the New Age respondents
each individually agreed or strongly agreed with both of the
following statements:
"Gun control laws only affect law-abiding
citizens -- criminals will still be able to obtain handguns illegally
whenever they want." and
"If the laws on gun ownership were
stricter than they are now, the overall number of violent crimes
would be reduced."
How can we with one breath repeat Louise
L. Hay's first affirmation in her book You Can Heal Your Life,
"We are each 100% responsible for all of our experiences",
and then with the next breath insist the State forbid a particular
sharp object so our world will feel safer?
Affirmations not in alignment with our
beliefs are impotent, no matter how emotionally soothing they
feel at the time. Accepting and directing the power and creativity
of our non-physical selves requires conscious, integrated and
coherent focus.
You Create Your Own Reality - Sometimes
Some New Age folks play the
parking space game. You know, visualize the parking space at
the entrance to the supermarket on a busy Saturday and ta-da,
there it is. I do it. Although I've not kept precise stats, I
at least imagine it works quite well. It's fun to take credit
for a hard-to-find parking space. It's less easy to take responsibility
for a flat tire, or an accident, or an assault.
Accepting responsibility for everything
may not be easy at first. You certainly won't find much support
for that approach on TV, or in magazines or newspapers. We cannot
pick and choose the realities for which we'll accept responsibility.
We either get to own it all and live as the responsible sovereigns
we are, or blame it all and playing the role of victim, look
to others and the State for protection and compensation for our
suffering.
The question is, "Who is responsible
for my life?"
Fear of the Responsibility of Personal Power
Why do so many of us otherwise
sensible and intellectually honest New Age folks support State
mandated gun restrictions? I think one reason is that we're uncomfortable
with the full responsibility of our personal power.
I lived in an ashram for many years.
It was a very seductive environment for me (at seventeen). I
didn't need to think too much. My life was figured out. Even
my afterlife was figured out. All I needed to do was meditate,
work hard, and participate in a few group activities. I knew
I was in heaven and I was helping to bring enlightenment to the
world. Whenever someone was thinking about moving out, everyone
else would try to convince them to stay for their own good. But
now I think there was another, more important reason. You had
to keep people from leaving lest you doubt your own reasons for
staying.
The dominant paradigm for much of our
culture is the Cult of the Victim. It is a very seductive cult.
We don't need to think too much. Entire systems are in place
to support us and reward us for our victimization. Sovereign
people who accept the responsibility of their personal power
threaten the Cult of Victim. So like crabs in a bucket who pull
back any crab that tries to escape, the victim culture acts reflexively
to squash acts of power.
Gun ownership is the quintessential
threatening act of power to the victim paradigm. It's like waving
a pentagram in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600's. Deep down
folks know they're responsible. But their denial requires they
eliminate anything that reminds them of what they're denying.
That may explain much of the negative reactions to my owning
and wearing a gun.
Gun ownership requires that a person
acknowledge and ponder at great length the responsibility of
their personal power. Nothing symbolizes that responsibility
like putting on a gun. And nothing threatens someone who's afraid
of the responsibility of their personal power like someone wearing
a gun.
Whom does the gun in the care of the
good-hearted person threaten? It threatens the criminal, the
State apparently, and also individuals who have learned to fear
the responsibility of their personal power and the unpredictable
potential of their spiritual sovereignty should it ever be free
of externally imposed restrictions.
Bullets
or Arrows?
I have a bullet on a necklace
I sometimes wear. It gets interesting reactions and looks. My
friend, who thinks the State should confiscate all guns, wears
an arrowhead on his necklace and no one blinks an eye. Some tell
me, "You've gone too far now," "A kid could never
sneak a bow and arrow to school," or "We romanticize
arrowheads because they remind us of a time before there were
guns."
For those who wish to return to a world
without guns, do they really understand the implications and
responsibility of taking away the tools which the outnumbered
and overpowered need, which the women, the elderly, and the disabled
need to protect their bodies and children from thugs with clubs
or bows and arrows?
We revere Native Americans as keepers
of wisdom. We honor them for sharing their teachings of prophecy,
community living, and caring for the earth. Every New Age bookstore
has shelves of books about the teachings and sufferings of Native
Americans. Ironically, many of the people who buy "Free Leonard Peltier" bumper stickers and mourn the Indians'
loss of land and life at the hands of the "power hungry
Christian, white, males of the United States", now want
the same State that took away the Indians' lands and lives to
take away the Indians' guns -- again!
All my friends who have significant
Native American heritage either have guns or support people having
guns. I wonder if that has anything to do with remembering a
time when their grandparents' grandparents really needed a gun
and couldn't get one.
Creative Visualization and Wishful Thinking
When we learn creative visualization
we're taught to define our objective clearly, see it as accomplished
and release it, knowing it will occur. Just as in prayer, we
put our supplication before the Lord not as a whine, but with
thanksgiving that the result has already been accomplished. One
thing that doesn't work in visualization or prayer, is
to instruct the Great Mystery or God or All That Is how
you want your goal to be achieved.
We want a peaceful and free society
for ourselves and our loved ones. That's the goal, the prayer.
And now we've presumed to instruct the Almighty how such goal
is to be achieved by saying that the State should control the
guns. Somehow the means became the goal. Presuming to know the
correct means, we seek to impose those means on others. It's
against our best interests to limit God's means to achieve our
objective. Besides, how can you limit God? God is limitless.
Remember the bumper sticker, "Visualize
World Peace"? Do we want world peace or do we want to live
in peace? Both? Well, we're only responsible for our world. As
New Age author, Stuart
Wilde says, "You don't want to
mess with world peace -- all you want to do is be peaceful."
Perhaps people try to compensate for not being responsible for
their own worlds by being responsible for everyone else's world.
Most people's worlds are already quite peaceful -- we just have
to turn off our TVs and ignore the State alarming us to crisis
after manufactured petty crisis.
"The whole aim of practical politics
is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led
to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,
all of them imaginary."
-- H.L. Mencken
We've mixed up wishful thinking with
visualization. Imagining what a peaceful world will look like,
we attack anything that doesn't match our projection of the final
picture. We decide that in a "perfect" world there
will be no need for guns, so wishing we were in that world now,
we say, "Get rid of guns." But wishing doesn't make
it so. It's not about the presence or absence of guns anyway,
it's about what's in a person's consciousness, not a person's
pocket.
The idealists dream of magic wands.
But their wands don't work, because as victims, they have denied
their own power. So they project their denied power onto the
State to perform magic through external control.
Just because weapons have been used
(mainly by the State against its own people) to destroy people
and cultures, does not mean that is the only use for personal
firearms. "Get rid of guns!" does not equal "Get
rid of war, hate and suffering." This is a task of the heart,
of the spirit, not a task to be given to the regulation writers
of the State.
"Thank
God I Don't Have a Gun!"
Folks who haven't accepted the
responsibility of their own personal power and the results of
their choices don't seem to readily accept it in others. Perhaps
folks who haven't dealt with their own demons figure everyone
else is just like them, ready to blow up at the next insult,
and God forbid they have a gun.
In Rambo and the Dalai Lama,
Gordon Fellman writes about his feelings while reading an account
of firearms training at Jeff
Cooper's Gunsite Ranch,
I finished reading Gobson's account
with a gripping fantasy that I would take the Gunsite course.
I wanted to feel the thrill and power Gibson did. I know murderous
rage, but for the first time, I felt something in me that would
like to soldier, to shoot and slay. I imagined killing Nazis
in muddy battles in World War II and hunting down rapists and
child-molesters in big cities and beating, strangling, and shooting
them. I imagined myself, Rambolike, living on the edge, honing
survival skills and cleverly fashioning weapons to destroy my
enemies with perfect mastery and no aftermath of guilt.
From reading Mr. Fellman's book I've
gathered that he supports gun control and it's no surprise if
he thinks everyone is as full of the self-absorbed frustration,
hate, anger, violence and revenge as he represents himself to
be.
It's almost cliche´ to read of
the man who snaps and goes on some spree of violence: "He
was such a nice, quiet man."
Isn't
It Ironic?
Many in the New Age community
support a woman's right to choose to continue or end a pregnancy,
but not her right to use a gun to protect her child.
Many support a woman's right to control
her own body, but not her right to protect it with a gun.
Many support the rights of the disabled
to have access to bathrooms, theaters and restaurants, but not
access to the effective personal defense of a gun.
Many support not "judging"
others' lifestyles, but then immediately judge those who choose
to protect themselves and others with a gun.
Many support respecting the diversity
of religions, cultures and sexual preferences, but not the diversity
of choosing a gun to preserve the well-being of our selves, our
families and our communities.
3D Choices
We make choices in 3D all the
time. Many of those choices are about personal safety and defending
our selves, our family, our home, our community and our planet.
We put on our seat belts, install fire extinguishers, put our
babies in child safety seats, lock our doors, recycle, organize
to keep the local landfill away from the town reservoir. We stop
using freon, asbestos and lead-based paint. We eat organic foods,
exercise, use condoms, take seminars and go to ceremonies. We
buy car insurance to protect our car, home insurance to protect
our house and possessions, health insurance to protect our bodies
and money. We even read books on psychic shielding.
We revere the Native American tradition
of making choices based on what's best for the coming seven
generations. And then we support more gun control, the one thing
that made all the genocides and massacres of civilians throughout
history possible.
Non-Violence and Self-Defense
Christ's view on self-defense was clear,
asserts Douglas Kennard, a theology professor at Moody Bible
Institute, a seminary in Chicago, and teaching karate sends the
wrong message to churchgoers. "For those who are kingdom-bound,
we should allow ourselves to be abused," he says. "Even
to the point of repeatedly being abused."
-- Wall Street Journal, Thursday October 28, 1999, front page
article on teaching karate in churches
Many people are uncomfortable with the
concept of self-defense. Some Christians, like the writer above,
completely reject the concept. Some equate personal self-defense
with the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) strategy of nuclear
warfare. Some reject self-defense, because its need or preparation
means failure to envision and create a better world. They would
say that preparing to defend yourself simply reinforces the possibility
of attack.
In spirit, we may know there is no death
and even though there are times we may not fear death, this physical
3D experience is still precious. All beings have a right, inherent
in their existence, to defend that existence in this beautiful
3D creation. All have a right and duty to preserve and protect
their family's and their community's existence as well. This
is not about competition. This is not about control. This is
not about violence for its own sake. This is about honoring the
sacredness of this experience of life in 3D. This is about honoring
and protecting our own, our family's and our community's right
to life, liberty and however we choose to pursue happiness.
Some utopian views may include no need
for self-defense and I don't begrudge such visions. But why are
some folks so insistent all of a sudden that only the police,
military and other agents of the State should have guns? Why
are they so eager to take them away from regular folk? What's
the difference between the person who hits you and the person
who ties your hands so that someone else can hit you? Whoever
takes away your ability to defend yourself needs to be defended
against.
In the atmosphere of today's victim
mentality, self-defense can be an irritating reminder of personal
responsibility. Self-defense also can be an irritating reminder
of spiritual sovereignty. Metaphysically, do we think events
occur accidentally?
The
Right to Choose - (Defense)
Since we are responsible (response-able),
we have a right to choose how to respond. Actually, we can't
not make that choice.
Increasingly we are being trained to
give our response-ability over to others. We are taught to seek
help, not self-defend. We're taught to call police (with guns,
by the way) to respond after the fact to a day-care/school/church
shooting, but we're shocked at the idea of a private individual
carrying a gun in a day-care/school/church. (See A
Nation of Cowards.)
I imagine a person who lost a family
member in a school or church shooting being offered a chance
to replay the tragedy with only one difference -- that an armed
woman or man of good heart be present who might avert
or lessen the tragedy. I can't believe that even the staunchest
supporter of gun confiscation would hesitate for a moment to
give anything to replay the scene again -- to have a woman or
man of good heart at the scene with a gun tucked beneath their
sweater
Many people expect benefits without
responsibility. Not aware of the process, we hire others to do
our messy work. Then we criminalize or demonize the activity
for everyone else, so we don't feel pressured to do it ourselves.
For instance, some people who disdain the hunting and trapping
of free, wild animals pay others to raise, kill and butcher animals
under unnatural and often inhumane conditions. Some who support
gun confiscation travel with their own armed bodyguards or police
protection.
Some say you don't need a gun because the police are there to
protect you. However,
In 1856, the U.S. Supreme Court (South
v. Maryland) found that law enforcement officers had no duty
to protect any individual. Their duty is to enforce the law in
general. More recently, in 1982 (Bowers v. DeVito), the Court
of Appeals, Seventh Circuit held, "...there is no Constitutional
right to be protected by the state against being murdered by
criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect
its residents... but it does not violate... the Constitution."
Later court decisions concurred: the police have no duty to protect
you.
- (various)
"Women are supposed to be 'nice.' They like to think of
themselves as nurturing and they don't like to think about hurting
someone," explains Dr. Helen Smith, 38, a forensic psychologist
in Knoxville, Tennessee. Smith, who works with violent criminals
in the courts, sees the aftermath of violence, some of it gun-related,
on a near daily basis. Which is exactly why she says she's pro-gun.
"I see so many women shot dead,"
she explains. "An ex-husband comes back to the house, and
if she doesn't have a gun..." She says women hop on the
gun-control bandwagon because it feels right, because they don't
understand how guns work, and because they don't want to take
the responsibility of protecting themselves.
"When women get on their high horse,
what they don't realize is they're taking away someone's right
to self-protection," she says. "If you want to die
on the street, that's fine."
-- Source
In 3D, all beings have the inherent
right to protect themselves, their families and their villages
from lethal force. To acknowledge that right, acknowledges the
need for an effective response. You cannot acknowledge a right
and at the same time deny the means to exercise it.
"The irony is, if you're willing
to kill a perpetrator, you probably won't have to."
-- Massad Ayoob, Lethal Force Institute
Once I would have described myself as
"non-violent" (in fact, once I was, to the point of
never defending myself) -- but after a lot of consideration I
have decided that what I am now is "nonaggressive."
Violence is the use of destructive force
against an object, or a person who doesn't welcome it. Unfortunately,
self-defense often involves violence.
I cannot claim I am "non-violent"
or "anti violence," because I am pro self-defense.
I simply believe that one should never INITIATE violence. I believe
that most people would describe themselves this way if you put
this distinction before them in those words.
-- C.D.
Tavares,
author
Gandhi and Non-Violence
When discussing non-violence,
Mahatma Gandhi comes to mind. I used to interpret non-violence
as passivity in the face of violence, but Gandhi's approach was
never passive.
Gandhi believed non-violence had to
be a choice. He said a mouse can't be non-violent with a cat,
because a mouse doesn't have the potential to be violent with
a cat. Indeed, non-violence is only possible from a position
of power where there is the choice, the tools and the ready opportunity
to be violent.
More importantly, Gandhi's philosophy
was about shifting paradigms, not conquering a violent opponent,
as Mark Shepard writes:
How, then, to oppose injustice and reform
society? I hoped that Gandhi held the answer. It seemed to me
he had meant to work out just what I was looking for: a way of
defeating and overthrowing the oppressors of the world, but by
moral means.
That was my myth about Gandhi; that
was my filter. I had to read an entire book and a half about
Gandhi before it struck me -- and it struck me hard -- that Gandhi
was not talking about defeating or overthrowing anyone.
Satyagraha
-- Gandhi's nonviolent action -- was not a way for one group
to seize what it wanted from another. It was not a weapon of
class struggle, or of any other kind of division. Satyagraha
was instead an instrument of unity. It was a way to remove injustice
and restore social harmony, to the benefit of both sides.
Satyagraha, strange as it seems, was
for the opponent's sake as well. When Satyagraha worked, both
sides won.
That concept did not pass at all easily
through my filter, and I understand why so many others miss it
entirely. But it is, really, the essential difference between
Gandhi's Satyagraha and so much of the nonviolent action practiced
by others.
You may wonder, how did Gandhi himself
come to this amazing attitude? He said it this way: "All
my actions have their source in my inalienable love of humankind."
-- Mark Shepard, "Mahatma Gandhi
and His Myths"
Similarly, my objective with this essay
is not merely to change gun confiscation laws or who's in Congress.
My objective is to bring about a greater awareness and acceptance
of our responsibility for our world.
"No lasting change is ever wrought
from without."
-- Ken Carey
Lasting change comes from waking up
to our inherent personal spiritual sovereignty. To wake up, we
first have to realize we're sleeping. We have to realize just
how unsovereign we've allowed ourselves to be treated. We gradually
become aware of how our beliefs and assumptions are programmed
and legislated -- they're not really our beliefs at all. They
are what Taisha Abelar in Sorcerer's Crossing calls a
forced inventory in our memory warehouse.
The way I came face to face with my
forced inventory and my programmed assumptions was to become
familiar with guns and how we view them.
"Among the many misdeeds of the
British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving
a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
- -Mahatma Gandhi, "Gandhi, An Autobiography", page
446
Christ, Non-Violence
and Self defense
Many accept Jesus Christ as
the epitome of non-violence.
"Ye have heard that it hath been
said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto
you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee
on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."
-- Matthew 5:38,39
Actually, that's excellent advice for
any concealed carry gun safety class. You'll find that folks
carrying guns are extremely polite and go out of their way to
avoid confrontation. If you're getting slapped on your right
cheek (more an insult than an assault) and your life and limb
are not in grave, imminent and unavoidable danger, you should
offer the other cheek before you even hint that you have a gun.
I doubt Christ intended this verse to
apply to grave bodily harm or lethal force, (but whosoever shall
cut off one arm, offer him the other also . . .).
For me, the key is in Christ's admonition
"that ye resist not evil." As we'll see later, the
real change is to be made in the arena of energy and consciousness,
not by confronting evil on its own terms which only reinforces
it.
Also, the translation of the sixth commandment,
"Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13) is misleading.
I recently learned the word that was translated "kill"
actually means to "murder from a hidden place." The
commandment would more accurately be translated, "Thou shalt
not murder."
The
Medical Model
Medicine is shifting from a
mechanistic world view to a holistic world view. The field of
medicine and health is developing consciousness based interventions
instead of relying solely on mechanical interventions to address
various "disease expressions." The strictly mechanistic
approach that removes the tumor and ignores the person and his
or her world is accepted less and less.
"The mechanism of illness is not
the origin of illness."
-- Dr. Deepak Chopra
Dr. Chopra
teaches the need to trust spirit as we explore health and the
origins of illness, even if it takes us past expected options.
These same insights also apply to society
and the individual. We can no longer afford to assume that the
mechanism of a social illness is the same as the origin of a
social illness.
Illness is feedback, whether on the
individual level or the social level. A tumor in the body can
cause pain and suffering, even death. We now know that if we
remove a tumor and the affected organ but ignore or leave unchanged
the underlying cause, the body is frustrated and confused because
the feedback the body created is gone, but the reason it created
the feedback still exists. So the body sends another message
and perhaps sacrifices another organ, and another.
Illness in society is no different.
Violent attacks, whether with gasoline, fertilizer, knives or
guns, are symptoms, feedback of an underlying cause. As long
as we address only the symptom and not the underlying cause,
the feedback will get louder and more insistent.
On the cellular level, the human body
maintains a level of high alert. Macrophage cells, T-cells, B-cells
and Natural Killer Cells roam the body on the lookout for cellular
threats. When this cellular self defense system encounters a
threatening cell, the Natural Killer Cells shoot a bullet of
tumor necrosis factor that penetrates the cell membrane and kills
the offending cell.
We know that our attitudes impact our
cells' performance. High stress and an attitude of "What's
the use?" is communicated to the immune system and the immune
response cells take up the refrain of "What's the use?"
and allow diseased cells to proliferate. In the same way, if
a person rejects the very concept of self defense, then what
should we expect the Natural Killer Cells to do with that information?
The data from the 1990 Harvard Medical
Practice Study suggest that 150,000 Americans die every year
from doctors' negligence -- compared with 38,000 gun deaths annually.
Why are doctors not declared a public health menace? Because
they save more lives than they take. And so it is with guns.
Every year, good Americans use guns about 2.5 million times to
protect themselves and their families, which means 65 lives are
protected by guns for every life lost to a gun.
-- Dr. Edgar Suter, San Francisco Chronicle, 7/12/94, Opinion
(p. A17).
The
Prozac Connection
Guns are not the only item present
when a murderer intent on killing another human being pulls the
trigger. Drugs are almost always present. And not just the ones
the State has decided to make illegal. No, the drugs that are
often present are State approved SSRI antidepressants like Prozac,
Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, Serzone, Effexor, Anafranil, Fenfluramine
(Fen-Phen and Redux), Deseryl, Meridia, and other serotonin increasing
drugs.
Among the adverse signs and symptoms
of SSRI antidepressants which Harvey Sternbach, M.D. lists the
following in his report The Serotonin Syndrome are the
following:
Insomnia or bad dreams, agitation or
restlessness, hostility, anxiety, anger, violent thoughts and/or
violence, suicidal thoughts or behavior, self destructive behavior,
rage, panic, confusion, superhuman strength-energy, mood swings,
unconcerned about consequences, out of control behavior, and
altered personality.
Prozac
- Panacea or Pandora
Prozac Survivors' Support Group
Kids,
Drugs, Guns and Psychopolitics
Irritating Firearm Facts
The focus of this essay is not the
wisdom of America's founding fathers in writing the Second Amendment.
Nor is it about adding another bit of data to the ongoing statistical
wrestling match over gun confiscation. This essay is primarily
about our inherent spiritual sovereignty being at odds with relying
on external State controls.
Nevertheless, here are some leads if
you're interested in facts. Unfortunately, I don't believe the
disagreement on this topic is rooted in facts. If it really were
about facts, safety and well being, guns would be as common as
seat belts, and gun training as accepted as drivers education.
The
Second Amendment
"A well-regulated militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people
to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
--U.S. Constitution
Some say that the Second Amendment acknowledges
a preexisting individual right to keep and bear arms for both
personal safety and to check inevitable state tyranny.
- Gun
Cite
- The
Supreme Court and the Second, essay
by Don Kates, Jr.
- Second Amendment Foundation
- Independence Institute
- The
Unabridged Second Amendment
Some say the Second Amendment only allows
the states to have a militia, now called the National Guard:
- American
Civil Liberties Union
- American Bar
Association
Guns Save Lives
"If it saves the life of
even one child, it's worth getting rid of that gun!"
Unfortunately it's not that simple.
There's volumes of research on this point. If there wasn't a
larger agenda at work here, and if it was just about the safety
for our communities, our children and our elders, then gun ownership
would be widely supported and encouraged. But then if it were
about facts, doctors would be prescribing prayer circles for
all post-op patients, too.
Some say that guns save lives:
- John Lott's More
Guns, Less Crime
- Jews for the Preservation
of Firearms Ownership (JPFO)
- Links
to Source Studies provided by Gun Owners of America
- GunTruths.com
- A
Letter to Elizabeth
Some say that the presence of guns increases
the likelihood of gun accidents and deaths:
- Handgun
Control, Inc.
- Violence Policy Center
What do you think? Visit Oleg Volk's
survey and find out!
The Politics of Control
Keeping sharp objects out of reach
is not always the wisest choice. Hollis once described how he
learned not to touch hot stoves. His grandfather explained to
him that when the stove was hot he shouldn't touch it. Then Hollis
touched the hot stove, his grandfather didn't try to stop him
and it burned him. Hollis never burned himself on a stove again.
He also paid more attention to his grandfather's suggestions.
One time while visiting friends, I watched
their two daughters, ages four and six, pull out long sharp knifes
from the drawer to serve some dessert. Their mom said it was
okay. The girls had been carefully taught how to use them safely.
Their parents had decided to teach them how to move safely in
the world instead of trying to create a safe world for them.
In contrast, I once visited a house
with an elaborate fence around the wood stove. While that child
may not burn herself, she also has been insulated from the consequences
of her choices. She also has no training in the personal responsibility
of moving through an environment that hasn't been made safe in
advance.
Which child will be better prepared
to act responsibly and care for herself and others?
The ultimate result of shielding men
from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-- Herbert Spencer (1891)
Legislating
Safety
Legislation is good for people
who want something done, but who don't want to do it themselves
and certainly don't want the responsibility for the solution
working. Every time we clamor for agents of the State to "just
do something" we give away more of our power, sovereignty,
responsibility and freedom to the State. We reinforce the paradigm
of State control every time we ask for legislation to make the
world a better and safer place.
"One of the greatest delusions
in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to
be cured by legislation."
--Thomas B. Reed (1886)
"If laws worked, there would be
no crime."
--Claire Wolfe
"There are just two rules of governance
in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to
yourself."
-- P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
"An ye harm no one, do as ye will.
This is the whole of the law."
-- Wiccan Creed
I find it interesting that the spirit
of the Wiccan Creed is quite similar to the philosophy of the
Libertarian Party:
"A
libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right,
under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human
being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act
consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they
realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it
are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."
-- Who is a libertarian?
Cause
and Effect
We've all heard of studies
of rats kept in a small and crowded area. They exhibit all sorts
of "bad" behavior, biting and scratching at each other.
How to stop the violence? Are the claws and teeth the cause?
Perhaps we should declaw and defang them.
As any good Vulcan would say, "That
is illogical." The presence of the claws and fangs are not
the cause of the violent effects. And disarming
people will not address the violence any more than will disarming
the rats.
But we're not rats, we are human beings!
Yes. And perhaps it's time we realized
that and take steps to extricate ourselves from our unnatural
and stressful circumstances. We would do better to take responsibility
and change our lifestyles than to ask the State to protect us
from ourselves.
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices
a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience;
that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because
one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction.
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a
nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined
to commit crimes.
... Such laws make things worse for
the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather
to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may
be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
-- Thomas Jefferson quoting criminologist, Cesare Beccaria
The
Compassion Fascist
I remember sitting around
the table with Hollis and every now and then we'd talk about
what he called "do-gooders." By "do-gooder"
he meant people who, uninvited, poked their noses into other
peoples' lives and suggested what those people should do differently.
For him the actions of do-gooders was both a source of entertainment
and a good teaching aid, though he didn't particularly enjoy
being told to smoke less or eat differently.
Hollis had a lot to teach and share,
but he rarely did so unless asked and I don't remember him ever
volunteering the word, "should." If his advice was
solicited, he would offer it tirelessly. If it wasn't he would
remain quiet, even if in his experience, the result of the person's
choices was about to be painful for them. He was very compassionate,
but not a compassion fascist. He respected the person's learning
process and did not interfere. He was not responsible for them,
and he believed if he imposed his unsolicited advice he would
become responsible for the fruit of their actions and that was
a responsibility he did not want.
He was as generous with his time, his
advice, his tools and treasures as anyone I have met. He was
compassionate. But he did not force his compassion on others
and did not appreciate others forcing their compassion on him.
Nowadays we think an act is compassionate
if it is for another's good. But, how do we know what is good
for someone else in the long run? If we think we know what's
best for others, then we've planted the seeds of accepting that
maybe the State know what's best for us. When we accept the State's
intervention in our lives in the name of a compassion that it
defines, I believe we accept a mindset which sets the stage for
the potential of great mischief.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised
for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may
be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral
busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his
cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment
us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do
so with the approval of their consciences.
-- C.S Lewis
Unintended
Consequences
Attempts to make the world safe,
legislate morality or enforce a world vision can create unintended
consequences. Usually the problem gets worse.
For example:
Prohibition
- Objective: Stop people from ingesting a particular substance.
Actual result: Creation of organized crime, loss of respect
for law, criminalization of millions of Americans, invention
of the "drive-by shooting."
War on Drugs
- So far, similar results.
Child-Proof Caps - Objective: Eliminate accidental child
poisonings. Actual result: Increased child poisonings.
People left the bottles around instead of putting them away because
now they were safe. People also just left the caps off
because they were so hard to remove.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children - Objective: Help suddenly widowed women
with children get back on their feet. Actual result: By
paying women as long as there is no man at home, and by increasing
the amount paid for each additional child, we have more unwed
mothers having more kids.
Pesticides
- Objective: Less bugs, more food. Actual result: Poisoned
food chain, pesticide resistant bugs and people with pesticide
allergies.
Gun Control
- Stated Objective: Reduce accidents and deaths involving
the use of firearms. Actual result: Rapid increase in
hot burglaries (while people are at home), rapes, assaults and
assaults with a weapon.
See Australia.
See Great
Britain.
See Switzerland.
Dying
of Consumption
We've been programmed to be
dissatisfied with what we have and seduced to believe we'll be
happy with the next whatever we acquire. Not only are we looking
outside ourselves for our safety, we're looking outside ourselves
for our happiness in the perfect car, seminar, relationship,
or paint color.
When the emphasis is on stuff and getting
stuff, then more energy goes to concerns of safety, control and
predictability and less goes to concerns about freedom, liberty
and sovereignty. Comfortable and predictable consumption becomes
more important than personal freedom and sovereignty.
One way to experience more sovereignty
with time and finances is to exit the economic squirrel cage.
Instead of earning more, consume less. I find it interesting
that "consumption" also refers to "an infectious
wasting disease affecting the lungs." And in our culture,
consumption as a means to fulfillment has become an infectious
wasting disease affecting many lives.
We'll all be dead soon. And the person
who dies with the most toys is still dead. Toys are lots of fun,
but that's not where all the sweetness of life's adventure is
hidden. We can have lots of toys and still live in a prison.
But to enjoy freedom and liberty and sovereignty, we have to
wake up and walk out.
Rainbow Eagle, a Native American teacher, shares the teachings
of the Peace Shield. He teaches that a community or a village
is only as strong and free and independent as is each individual
in that community. Strong and free individuals make for a strong
and free community.
"If a nation values anything more
than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is
that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose
that too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
[On ancient Athens]: In the end, more
than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable
life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom.
When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but
for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for
most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be
free and was never free again.
-- Edward Gibbon
Just
Try Buying a Gun
There is a lot going on in our
shared social world that is easy to overlook. World-wide systems
(Echelon) are in place that read our e-mail and scan
our phones and faxes. We eat unlabeled altered food made with
genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Hybrid seeds replace dwindling heirloom
seed stock. Laws enable some state schools to diagnose and treat
children without telling parents or the child's doctor.
School principals may excuse any student
in grades 7-12 school to obtain confidential medical services
without the consent of the student's parent/guardian.
-- California Education Code 56010.1
Our buying habits and medical records
are carefully cataloged and marketed. All that and more happens
and you can miss it. I certainly did. Then I applied for a gun
license.
I've since been photographed and fingerprinted
and my life has been scrutinized by the FBI, the BATF, and various
State Police throughout New England. If I move, even within the
same town, I have to report immediately to more local and state
agencies than does a murderer or child molester. If I don't report,
I lose my "right" to carry a gun forever. When I'm
carrying my gun there are places I can't drive, buildings I can't
enter, parks in which I can't walk. In Massachusetts, I even
become a criminal if I walk in the woods or cut across an open
field during certain hours of the day.
So apply for a gun license. Think of
it as an exercise to loosen your belief of who you think you
are and where you think you live. You may find you don't live
where you thought. You may discover how you've been tricked into
giving away your sovereignty. You may think about getting it
back.
The
Global Village
The Global Village is the ultimate
oxymoron. There will be no town meeting in the Global Village.
There will be no talking circle in the Global Village.
Talking with editor Eric Utne in 1977,
anthropologist Margaret Mead said, "99 percent of the time
humans have lived on this planet we've lived in groups of 12
to 36 people." Perhaps it is our longing for that experience
which makes the Global Village sound so good. Some say, "It
takes a village to raise a child." But what kind of child
will the Global Village raise? As I hear strains of Pink Floyd's
Another Brick in the Wall, I imagine a Global Village
intent on raising obedient bricks for the Global Village Factory
and the Global Village Mall.
We are all humans and we share space
on this earth. And yes, our experiences are becoming more intertwined.
But does that mean our destiny is a Global Village where acceptable
behaviors and beliefs are prescribed to us by an unseen council
of elders?
Disarming
the Village
I remember learning to look
for the simple answer, the overarching, uncontradictable theory.
One theory I'm unable to punch holes in is the Goal of Disarming
the Global Village. While I don't see a New World Order plot
behind every local ordinance, I do believe there is an ongoing
effort to disarm the Global Work Camp & Mall.
The mainstream media's ongoing effort,
as Noam Chomsky says in Media Control, is to "manufacture
the consent" of the "bewildered herd", To promote
further gun control the media creates
hysteria by providing a steady diet
of slanted
reporting on the civilian use of firearms.
Supporters of right to carry laws are portrayed as shoot-em-ups
who want to return to days of the Wild West.
Liberalizing concealed carry laws won't
lead to a return to the Wild West -- though it wouldn't be bad
if it did. ... in 19th Century cattle towns, homicide was confined
to transient males who shot each other in saloon disturbances.
The per capital robbery rate was 7% of modern New York City's.
The burglary rate was 1%. Rape was unknown.
-- David Kopel - quoted in the Wall Street Journal, February
28, 1994 in "Have Gun, Will Eat Out"
I believe it's good to be suspicious
when an armed State wants to disarm its citizens. Why don't they
want the people able to defend themselves? What's going on?
A friend responded to my survey with:
gunz,... don't like 'em,... never will,...
gunz to all or gunz to none is my motto,...
but until there is no need for violence,...
someone will find a way to get a bigger stone,...
-- z
And when there is no more need for violence,
when that awareness is shared among all self-aware sovereign
beings, it won't matter if any one is carrying a gun or not.
Seeds
of Gun Confiscation
Rush Limbaugh got it right when
he described the State's gun control strategy:
- Tragedy occurs with a criminal using
a gun.
- Pass more gun control laws.
- Don't enforce those laws.
- Another tragedy occurs with a criminal
using a gun.
- Claim the previous gun laws were not
enough. Pass more gun control laws.
- Don't enforce those laws.
- Another tragedy occurs with a criminal
using a gun.
- Say that gun laws alone are not enough.
We need to register everyone's gun and pass more laws.
- Register everyone's gun. Don't enforce
the new gun laws.
- Another tragedy occurs with a criminal
using a gun.
- Claim that obviously even registration
is not enough. Start confiscating guns.
What is our fear that the State is playing
to? We need seriously to ask, why the push to restrict, register
and eliminate guns owned by people who aren't agents of the State?
All statistics show it's not for the safety of the people. If
it's for the safety of the State, then why would the State be
worried that good-hearted people own guns?
(The Constitution preserves) the advantage
of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost
every other nation . . . (where) the governments are afraid to
trust the people with arms."
-- James Madison.
Some Historic Fruits of Gun Confiscation
I grew up in a small town with
a large Armenian population. The boy who sat next to me in seventh
grade home room would tell how his family was slaughtered and
that his dream was to one day return and kill Turks. When I was
in the seventh grade I learned the Turks killed 1.5 million
Armenians from 1915 to 1917. What I didn't learn in seventh
grade was that in 1911, the Ottoman Turks enacted a gun control
law, Article 166 Penal Code.
A scan of recent history reveals similar
patterns.
In 1929, The Soviet Union enacted gun
control law Article 166 Penal Code. From 1929 to 1953, the Soviet
Union killed 20 million Russian anti-Stalinists and anti-communists.
In 1928, on April 12, the German Republic
enacted the Law on Firearms & Ammunition. In 1938, on March
18, they enacted the Weapons Law. From 1933 to 1945, the Germans
killed 13 million German Jews, Gypsies and anti-Nazis.
In 1935, China enacted gun control law
Articles 186-7, Penal Code. On October 22, 1957, China enacted
the gun control law Article 9, Security Law. From 1949-1952,
China killed her communists. From 1957-1960, China killed her
farmers. From 1966-1976, China killed her reformers. All told,
China killed 20 million Chinese.
In 1871, on November 25, Guatemala enacted
gun control Decree 36. On October 27, 1964, Guatemala enacted
gun control Decree 283. From 1960 to 1981, Guatemala killed 100,000
Mayan Indians.
In 1955, Uganda enacted the gun control
Firearms Ordinance. In 1970, Uganda enacted the gun control Firearms
Act. From 1971 to 1979, Uganda killed 300,000 Ugandan Christians
and political rivals.
In 1956, Cambodia passed the gun control
Articles 322-8, Penal Code. From 1975 to 1979, Cambodia killed
one million educated Cambodians.
But it can't happen here in America,
right? Not according to the JPFO's review of Lethal Laws.
It did happen here. The conquest of
North America by the European settlers of the future United States
was accomplished by "the extermination of some Native American
tribes and the near-extinction of others, by U.S. government
forces . . . ." The forced march of the Cherokee
people from the southeastern United States into Oklahoma along
the "Trail of Tears" resulted in the deaths of a large
fraction of the Cherokee population, and at best, differs quantitatively
rather than qualitatively from the 20th-century genocides described
in Lethal Laws. Hitler looked with admiration at how the United
States government had cleared the continent of Indians, and he
used the U.S. government's 19th-century policies as a model for
his own 20th-century policies of clearing Lebensraum for the
German people.
Disarming citizens before killing or
oppressing them is a time-honored American tradition. After the
Civil War, the first act of the Ku Klux Klan (like the Khmer
Rouge) was to round up all the guns in the hands of ex-slaves.
Only then did other oppressions begin. From the middle of the
nineteenth century to the first quarter of the twentieth, race
riots in the United States usually took the form of white mobs
rampaging against innocent blacks. Black attempts to resist or
to shoot back were often followed with governmental efforts to
disarm the blacks.
Has every country whose citizens allowed
themselves to be disarmed suffered slaughter from their own State?
Not yet.
Has any country's citizens who kept
their guns ever been slaughtered by their State? Never.
For
The Children . . .
We make choices in 3D even as
we explore out-of-body experiences and attend ceremonies. We
choose food, clothes, schools and jobs. To keep and bear arms
is also a choice. And if we're still here after the year 2012,
do we really want to leave our children in a police state when
we die?
What kind of world are we allowing to
be created for our children and the future generations?
If we don't leave in spaceships or dimensional
shifts of consciousness, do we want to leave our children in
a reality identical to the realities that preceded each of history's
horrific slaughters
Better Government or No Government?
I heartily accept the motto, 'That government
is best which governs least;' and I should like to see it acted
upon more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally
amounts to this, which I also believe, 'That government is best
which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it,
that will be the kind of government which they will have.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"
Isn't that what we in the New Age work
for? Isn't that what shifting consciousness and raising awareness
and working with energy is all about on a community and social
level? The goal is not to have more sensitive masters controlling
us with more enlightened laws. Enlightenment is not about State
empowerment, it is about self realization. Enlightenment is about
waking up and living each moment conscious of our divine spiritual
sovereignty. Enlightenment is accepting the responsibility of
our personal power. Enlightenment is embracing the inheritance
of our free will to make free choices.
I believe we are on the threshold of
unimagined possibilities. If we step across that threshold wearing
the blinders of old patterns, we will see nothing new. Instead
we will seek out those who will tell us what to do and what not
to do, when to do it and when not to do it. And if we don't find
anyone, we shall create them. Perhaps that defines our situation
right now. For with every breath we take, we walk across a threshold
of unimagined possibilities. But with each breath we recreate
the old world anew based on old beliefs and old fears.
When a baby elephant is trained for
the circus, a steel band is placed on its foot and tied to a
stake in the ground. Try as the baby elephant might, it cannot
pull itself free from that stake. As the elephant grows it takes
more than a stake in the ground to restrain its bulk and power.
Yet that is all that's needed, because early on the elephant
learned it could not free itself from the stake.
We have grown. It's time to pull at
the stake made strong by programmed beliefs. If we can remember
visions of freedom and unencumbered creativity, and if we can
tolerate not having our hay brought to us twice a day, then we
must pull and pull hard. We may even find that there was not
steel, rope, or stake at all. It was just our programmed fear
of freedom that made that confining stake seem so necessary.
All government, of course, is against
liberty."
-- H. L. Mencken
Whom Do You Trust (with Power)?
When we collectively deny
our power and responsibility and project it as the State, we
create a momentum of control and force that can backfire in our
faces. That's the danger the earth is in now. The danger is from
people who don't trust themselves with their own power, who don't
want to be responsible for the results of their choices, who
only want, as Earl Nightingale said, "to tiptoe their way
safely to death."
The result of our choices and our fears
and our irresponsibility is the leviathan State we see before
us now which, like Audrey II, the carnivorous plant in the Little
Shop of Horrors, devours any who would try even to prune
a branch, slow its growth or not bring it blood.
In order to get power and retain it,
it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected
with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness,
such as pride, cunning and cruelty.
-- Leo Tolstoy
One of the test statements on my survey
was, "Armed citizens are a necessary check on government."
One respondent, after checking off "Strongly Agree,"
added the following comment:
Do you trust the government?
Does the government have guns?
-- Survey respondent
Enough said.
The
Ultimate Heresy
Priests who defend their
claimed monopoly of speaking with God label as heretics any who
would dare claim the experience themselves. The State defends
its claimed monopoly of control and knowing what's best for us
by labeling any who claim responsibility for their own lives
as a threat and a danger to society -- a heretic to the Church
of the State.
The ultimate heresy for the Church of
State is a parishioner with a gun. All the priests and choir
members and acolytes can be fully armed, but let a parishioner
bring a gun into a pew and there will be hell to pay.
Government is the god of the modern
liberal, and woe to them that fail to bow down before their golden
idol. That, in a nutshell, is what the "gun control"
issue is really all about; modern liberals, like Stalin's followers,
cannot abide any person having any power outside of government.
Thus all rights are "granted" by government, and all
instrumentalities in society must be subordinate to government.
Anyone who might resist the golden-idol-god of government, in
any way, is thus warring against their god and must be dealt
with as a heretic. To own a gun is to have some limited ability
to resist attack, even by the jack booted thugs of the government;
thus, to own a gun is to be a heretic in the eyes of the modern
liberal.
--email from ataylor
Keeping your gun means you have not
yet submitted to the State's ultimate authority over your life.
You still retain a modicum of effective response to its growth
and control.
Every large organization takes on a
life of its own, independent of why it was created. The organization
seeks to grow and insure its survival. The State does so by amassing
control and eliminating threats to its survival. The State has
set itself up as a god, giver of all things good to those who
accept its growing controls. A free person with a gun is seen
a threat to that State, whether or not she is. She is a heretic,
free enough and strong enough to not run reflexively to the State
for her safety. For the State's well being, she and her kind
must be made to see the light.
The Individual and Community
The way to the New Age is to begin
living as if the New Age were already here. If we wish to live
as free spiritual sovereigns here in 3D eventually, we must begin
to live that way now. We begin, not by violently confronting
and challenging the State's controls (for which we are 100% responsible,
remember?) but by acting in consciousness of our freedom, even
if the acts are outwardly not yet those of a free
human being.
As we resonate the conscious awareness
of our sovereignty, we impact the collective consciousness. Each
one of us is a vital and integral factor. Every drop in the vase
preceding the "drop that overflowed the vase" counted.
Every straw on the camel preceding its breaking back counted.
Every monkey washing its fabled sweet potato preceding the "Hundredth Monkey" counted.
We are forming communities of awareness
more than communities of acreage. We are beginning to live on
what Ken Carey calls energetic "islands of the future."
These are not islands to escape to. For there is no one from
whom to run. There is no one to conquer. No one who believes
they are a victim can go to these islands -- not the person who
fears the State, not the person who fears the neighbor with the
gun.
Exercise
of Freedom
When I track back the jolt I
first got when I put on my gun, I track the feeling back to not
having been in the habit of acknowledging my inherent responsibility
as a divine being experiencing 3D.
I wear my gun as a practice, a kriya,
a Tao, a way. Inherently meaningless, but of great symbolic value
because we have given it that. I wear it because I can. I wear
it because it is a reminder of the sovereignty I am reclaiming.
I wear it to add my part to shift the energy to the idea that
wearing a gun is not inherently bad or dangerous. I practice
at being skillful with it, as it is a tool which can be of service
to the community for food or defense. I wear it because as people
become more comfortable with the wearing of guns, with the right
to keep and bear arms themselves, then the likelihood of a State
tyranny becomes less. Wearing a gun is my part in shifting from
victim mentality to responsible sovereign mentality, my part
in reducing the power I project to the State.
We don't have to defeat the State. We
just have to understand that the State is our collective creation
born out of not acting as the sovereigns we are. As we become
more consciously sovereign, if enough of us can dissolve the
fearful energy we've been feeding the State then perhaps the
State's fear-driven controls will begin to atrophy.
What you pay attention to grows. Don't
pay attention to the dismembering the State. Pay attention to
remembering your sovereignty.
Recently, a friend asked me to call
the Vermont governor in support of the Vermont supreme court
gay marriage decision. I wrote her:
No. Supporting this is just another
step in empowering the State by acknowledging that the right
to marry is a State-granted privilege. Discussing this only makes
sense if you accept the State's power to dictate "hospital
visitation/medical decisions, rights of survivorship, filing
joint tax returns" in the first place.
Arguing this point gives implied consent
for all the power we've mistakenly given the State regarding
straight marriages in particular and regarding everything else
in general.
Supporting this decision is a fundamentally
misguided use of energy.
Freedoms are like muscles. Exercise
them or lose them. Begin to exercise your freedoms, not because
the Constitution or some statute says it's okay. Exercise your
freedoms because they are the inherent rights of sovereigns.
But like any good exercise program, start slowly. Don't start
off fighting with the State (which tends to strengthen it ).
Realize you've given your power away. Begin to get some exercise
retrieving it. Wake up. If enough people wake up, then perhaps
the violent revolutions which poured so much blood on the earth
will not be necessary again.
Energetic Solutions Instead of External Restrictions
It is simplistic to think guns
will solve everything. It is equally simplistic to think that
making guns go away will solve anything. Shifting awareness is
as easily done with a gun as without. My meditation and my connection
with All That Is is neither hindered nor enhanced with the presence
of those molecules of God which are in the form of a .357 in
my belt.
Building on a strong spiritual foundation,
we teach prayer and meditation. We share ancient mysteries and
insights of sacred
geometry and the merkaba. We set an
example by transforming our own lives from fearful victim to
loving sovereign.
Even as we teach personal responsibility
and the physical skills necessary for moving safely and effectively
in this 3D world, it is also important to learn and teach the
metaphysical choices and understand their impact on our everyday
3D experience.
Here are two basic examples:
Lighthouses
of Prayer
Campus Crusade for Christ
(CCC) has a program called Lighthouses
of Prayer. Part of their activity is
to walk streets of their neighborhoods in small groups of two
or three and simply pray for the well-being of whoever dwells
in each house they pass. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the churches
got together and focused their prayers for a month in that manner.
According to the CCC, the city experienced an otherwise unexplainable
drop in crime for that period.
This is an excellent practice, regardless
of your beliefs. Just walk your neighborhood with a friend or
two, intending blessings on all the homes. Even when you're by
yourself, it is impactful and transformative to intend blessings
to whomever you pass by or meet with throughout your day.
Power
of Prayer
In medicine it seems we
tend to dismiss what we cannot measure or bottle, but the power
of prayer and its effect on healing have recently been the focus
of much research and writing. In this interview for his book Healing
Words, The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, author Dr.
Larry Dossey says:
I must say that I was dragged into it
kicking and screaming. I was a typical physician educated to
believe in things that have some kind of apparent physical basis
like medication, surgery, and radiation.
I had my come-uppance back around '87
or '88, when I discovered a study that really looked like good
science. It showed that prayer made a major difference for heart
attack patients at a coronary care unit. This study came out
of San Francisco General Hospital. It was what is called a randomized,
prospective double-blind study in which a prayed-for group did
terrifically better on several accounts than an unprayed-for
group. I was disturbed by the results. Did this mean there was
something I should be doing that I wasn't? So I began to poke
around the literature, looking for other studies that might corroborate
or invalidate this. I was stunned at what I found: There are
easily 130 studies that show that if you take prayer into the
laboratory under controlled situations, it does something remarkable,
not just to human beings but to bacteria, fungi, germinating
seeds, rats, mice and baby gerbils. One of the things that intrigued
me about the studies was how this material has been marginalized.
You certainly don't hear anything about these studies in medical
school. But after considering the evidence, I decided to incorporate
prayer rituals into my medical practice. It seemed to me that
not to do so was the equivalent of withholding a potent medication
or a needed operation.
Personal and Community Responsibility
We are personally responsible
for the results of our actions. Our immediate family and community
often experience the results of our actions, for better or for
worse.
Although many promote passive compliance
with an attacker, that is definitely not the safest response
to an assault. (see Armed Women Against Rape and Endangerment,
AWARE).
Passive compliance enables the aggressor as in any co-dependent
violent relationship. Passive compliance further emboldens the
aggressor to continue his assaults on other members of the community.
Violent crime is feasible only if its
victims are cowards. A victim who fights back makes the whole
business impractical. It is true that the victim who fights back
may suffer for it, but one who does not almost certainly will
suffer for it.
-- Jeff Cooper, Principles of Personal Defense
An assault may not obviously be violent
to destroy our wellbeing. For instance, we are responsible to
ourselves and our family and our community for not staying
in a job that is killing us. It's time to honor our boundaries,
boundaries we choose, not ones we're told we should have.
Before we can be responsible for the
community, we must be responsible for ourselves.
Q&A
These are some questions I've
asked myself during this journey:
Aren't you just attracting more
violence by having a gun?
No. My interest in guns
is from principle, not paranoia. Like the karate student who
avoids fights as he improves, wearing a gun increases the care,
awareness and grace with which I approach interpersonal relations.
How can you wear a gun and still
say you're for peace and love?
This question tells more
about the mind set of the culture today than about the intentions
of someone wearing a gun. Such a question probably wouldn't have
even occurred to anyone when I was born. As always, it's more
what's in the heart than in the hand that matters.
If you create your own reality,
why don't you create one that doesn't need guns?
I've never needed
a gun. I probably never would have bought one if I didn't see
the State closing down my ability to get one later if the reason
ever arose.
Jane Roberts' Seth once said that at
any moment any person has everything necessary to reverse any
manifestation of illness, period. However, people who have grown
up believing in traditional allopathic medicine should not stop
seeing their doctors or using their medicines, otherwise they
may get even sicker because they still fundamentally believe
they need the doctor and the medicine.
Sometimes you can do all the cleansing,
drink all the herbal teas, make all the lifestyle changes, and
still you need to go to the doctor and have the lump removed.
Just because one person may have cured themselves does not mean
the other person can not go see a doctor. Even though I believe
that so-called miraculous healings are possible and regularly
occur, my health still benefits from doctors in my reality.
I also believe and hold the vision for
a world in which a violent response is no longer necessary to
preserve one's safety and freedom. But, as my friend "z"
said, "until there is no need for violence," towards
people who wish to live safe and free, there is a reason to have
a gun. And when a violent response is no longer necessary to
maintain our safety and insure our continued freedom, there would
be no danger from people keeping their guns.
Do you want to live in a community
where everybody's carrying a gun?
It's not my main criterium,
but if many or most people did have a gun in the community I
would feel safer and more comfortable. People knowledgeable about
firearms are less likely to have accidents with them, people
proficient with firearms can supply food and increase community
safety.
Spiritual Sovereignty
All prophesies speak of the importance
of these times. They speak of these next years as a time when
we can further enslave ourselves or regain our sovereignty. Most
of us say we want sovereignty. However, in Spiritual
Sovereignty, Germane, channeled by
Lyssa Royal, points out "though you claim you want spiritual
and emotional sovereignty, you are actually perpetuating its
opposite."
We've created a system that perpetuates
victimhood through our insurance system and our tort laws. We've
created a State to control our rights in the form of licensed
privileges -- the right to travel becomes a drivers' license,
the right to marry becomes a marriage license, the right to self
defense becomes a concealed weapons permit.
The natural progress of things is for
liberty to yield and government to gain ground. Men fight for
freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from
themselves."
-- Thomas Jefferson
If we are to regain our sovereignty,
we will not do it by fighting the system -- that only justifies
and reinforces it. Even if an external revolution occurs, without
a change in inner awareness, we will soon find ourselves back
in the same unsovereign mess.
But to tear down a factory or to revolt
against a government or to avoid repairs of a motorcycle because
it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as
long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible.
The true system, the real system, is our present construction
of systematic thought itself, rationality itself. And if a factory
is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing,
then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If
a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic
patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact,
then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding
government...
-- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Or to put it another way . . .
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss.
-- The Who
We must begin by taking responsibility
for where we are.
The structures on your planet are in
place and you're struggling against them to change them, but
you can't see what you're struggling against. The challenge now
is to begin, in the darkness, to make out the shape that you
have created to enslave yourself. We cannot express to you how
powerful the changes will be on your planet when you begin relinquishing
these old structures. You will do this layer by layer. Sometimes
you may think you're at the end, but there will be another five
layers to go. It's a very deep process you've created to protect
yourself, believing that you yourselves need to be taken care
of, protected, told what to do.
-- Germane, through Llyssa Royal
The first step is to wake up and become
aware of the power we have given away.
Now, examine day-to-day things. For
instance, there are laws that make you wear a helmet when driving
a motorcycle - protecting you - because it is assumed that you
are not capable of protecting yourself, of being responsible
for yourself. So something is imposed upon you. There are hand-gun
laws - an attempt to control - because there is the belief in
perpetrators and victims. This belief is constantly fed. Keeping
drugs illegal is another false attempt to protect "innocent"
people.
All of these systems you have set up
prevent you from understanding what sovereignty is. Sovereignty
is taking total, 100% responsibility for yourself as an individual,
for your community and for your planet as a whole.
-- Germane, through Llyssa Royal
Waking Up
Different events wake different
people. The process of getting a gun woke me up. It woke me up
to the kind of world that I and all of us collectively have allowed
to develop. It also woke me up to the trajectory on which we
have placed ourselves and our children.
For me, waking up means taking 100%
responsibility for my life and my world. It means I'm responsible
both for my own safety and well-being, and for the State that
legislates how I am allowed to do that.
Acting
In Consciousness
Once awake, what do we do? I
imagine an inmate in a mental institution who stops taking his
drugs and begins to see clearly and the first thing he realizes
is "I'm a prisoner in a mental institution." Strategically,
it is better if he goes about his daily routine as if none-the-wiser
than if he starts storming the doors and screaming at the guards.
One woman dutifully gets her driver's
license and marriage license and fills out her infant's Social
Security Card Application never giving it a second thought --
it's what you're supposed to do. Another woman applies for a
gun license and gives her fingerprints and has an FBI criminal
check run on her so she can have a State license to protect herself
and her children. However she does it in full consciousness that
this is a charade. It serves no purpose to yell at the guard
of the asylum. There is a tremendous difference in the energy
beacon of the person who abides the regulations from a consciousness
of sovereignty and one who abides them because, "Isn't that
what you're supposed to do?"
Acting in full consciousness of your
sovereignty, even if you're doing unsovereign play acting, I
believe impacts the awareness of all and has the potential for
creating a critical mass, a 100th Monkey Effect, wherein people
who otherwise would not have considered the topic, begin to wake
up to their own sovereignty.
Reclaiming
Power
Any 3D acts must proceed from
an inner transformation of awareness. The objective must not
be to reclaim our sovereignty, our power, on the terms of the
paradigm we're trying to change. Otherwise the Audrey II of the
State will eat you, just as it did at Randy Weaver's home in
Ruby Ridge, Idaho or at Mt. Carmel in Waco, Texas.
The objective is not to start a fight
in the old age, but to move into the New Age. The shift will
not occur because of dramatic license burnings. The shift will
occur as people, one-by-one wake up to their inherent sovereignty,
and begin to withdraw their energetic support from the system
they've created to control them.
There are people at present who are
starting to hear the voice of their conscience, who are processing
their victimhood, who are beginning to see the true nature of
the structure and how it was put there. And when they realize
this in their own conscience, they can no longer keep it intact.
They must follow their own integrity. In that choice to follow
integrity - cleanly, clearly, with no anger - the structure begins
to change. The issue is not the structure that is enslaving you,
but the fact that you have allowed it to enslave you. If you
can begin to understand why you've allowed this, why you've forgotten
you put it here to begin with, then true sovereignty is right
around the corner.
-- Germane, through Llyssa Royal
Part of reclaiming our sovereignty here
in 3D is through education and discernment. By understanding
our history, our culture, the spiritual and perhaps the extraterrestrial
heritage and intent of the Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill
of Rights we begin to pick through
what Germane calls the "layers of distractions that have
solidified the structure itself."
The more oppressive your structure becomes,
the more individuals are going to feel the pressure. The more
they will be spurred on to do their own research and the more
they find out about their rights and their "privileges",
then the more they will begin exercising their rights. It's not
going to come by rejecting privileges; it's going to come by
exercising rights.
-- Germane, through Llyssa Royal
The
Sovereign Outlaw
Sovereigns are outside arbitrary
laws of the State, out-laws if you will. The New Age is home
for a sprouting awareness that is outside the State's laws of
fear and control. We are waking up. But there's no need to yell,
some are still asleep in fear, there's no need to raise an alarm.
As the book, E.T. 101 says, we're "here to dismantle
fear, not elicit it." So we may have to "pass for white"
for a bit.
My mental model is the French Resistance
during World War II. As far as the French State saw, those in
the Resistance were model citizens, obeying the speed limit and
returning their library books on time. But behind the scenes
they lived a different reality. Behind our scenes we are discovering
new realities and making the energetic connections necessary
to seed a new world with a new awareness. We are not here to
overturn old laws and replace them with new laws. We are quietly
and respectfully excusing ourselves from this particular party
-- there's a better one down the street at a different awareness.
Don't bother trying to change the way
the host runs this party. Just realize you're not having fun
here any more. It's time to leave. As you walk out, you might
mention to a friend that there's something better unfolding down
the street. Eventually maybe even the host will find the new
address.
Treatise Of An American Outlaw
All people who live subject
to other people's laws
are victims.
People who break laws
out of greed, frustration, or vengeance
are victims.
People who overturn laws
in order to replace them with their own laws
are victims.
We outlaws, however,
live beyond the law.
We don't merely live beyond
the letter of the law,
we live beyond
the spirit of the law.
In a sense, then,
we live beyond society.
Have we a common goal,
that goal is to turn the tables
on the nature of society.
When we succeed,
we raise the exhilaration content
of the universe.
We even raise it a little bit
when we fail.
-- Unknown
I love the trite mythos of the outlaw.
I love the self-conscious romanticism of the outlaw. I love the
black wardrobe of the outlaw. I love the fey smile of the outlaw.
I love the pot of the outlaw and the beans of the outlaw. I love
the way respectable men sneer and say "outlaw." I love
the way young women palpitate and say "outlaw." The
outlaw boat sails against the flow, and I love it. Outlaws toilet
where badgers toilet, and I love it. All outlaws are photogenic,
and I love that.
"When freedom is outlawed, only
outlaws will be free": that's a graffito seen in Anacortes,
and I love that. There are outlaw maps that lead to outlaw treasures,
and I love those maps especially. Unwilling to wait for mankind
to improve, the outlaw lives as if that day were here, and I
love that most of all.
Criminals, because they're plagued with
guilt, often will surrender and go quietly.
Outlaws, because they're pure, never
will.
-- Tom Robbins
"The fact is that the average man's
love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love
of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free;
he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty
is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive
possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge,
courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand
and enjoy liberty -- and he is usually an outlaw in democratic
societies."
-- H.L. Mencken, February 12, 1923, Baltimore Evening Sun
The outlaw is the perfect model for
the New Age. The outlaw who serves humanity by his very existence,
by her refusal to accommodate herself to others' chains of control.
The outlaw -- spiritual anarchist at heart -- envisioning a free
humankind no longer needing the controlling State. The outlaw
whispers in the ear, "Psst, wake up, you're free,"
and another pair of outlaw eyes open. And outlaw bands, rejoicing
at the swelling exhilaration content of the universe, surf energy
waves onto the shores of islands of the future.
Transmutation
and Reverberation
We are alive at a time of special
wonder and magic. Within recent years we have experienced many
new events, everything from Bible
Code revelations to new crop
circles, new waters and everything in between.
We are called upon to approach the future
with faith, not fear. Turn aside the fear that others would plant
in you. The choices you make in this moment echo back and forth
throughout the corridors of time and beyond. This is the moment
to make choices worthy of our heritage.
My "world" has always been
beautiful and even amidst difficulties and calamities, I believe
I shall be in the right place at the right time. My ultimate
trust is in God/Spirit, not possessions and laws. My walk is
in preparation and expectation for a spiritual miracle. And as
part of that walk, I own, practice, teach firearms safety classes
and carry a gun as a service to reinforce and energize this basic
right through use. I know that as more do the same, with the
world as it is now, our families will live in safer communities
within a freer world. This is my calling. It is my small act,
both energetically and practically. It is my part in this great
mosaic of shifting consciousness.
This is not a call to arms, it is a
call to awareness, a call to the service of humanity. In our
waking, others, too, will waken and that move into consciousness
will reverberate.
Begin now to live in the full and growing
consciousness and responsibility of your sovereignty. You are
free to make your choices just as others are free to make theirs.
Let not the fear of the responsibility for your choices keep
you or your neighbor in prison any longer.
You are free. You have always been free.
If you do not realize your freedom now when will your realize
it? Perhaps this is the message you sent yourself from the future
so you would not oversleep. Perhaps this time you won't push
the snooze button again. As you awake, others will also as they
feel the energetic sounds of a New Day. Realize your freedom,
now. Begin to live as the sovereign you are, now. May that awareness
bloom and grow throughout all your journeys through time and
space and beyond.
In love and service,
Richard Roberts
Notes
Great care has gone into checking
the accuracy of the facts and the authenticity of the quotations
in this essay. If you believe that any fact or quote to be questionable,
please email me. Thank you.
The firearms related photos are courtesy
of Oleg Volk. Clicking some photos will provide a hi-res version.
More excellent photos and information are at his site.
Bibliography
The titles which are linked below
are available for review and purchase through amazon.com. When you click through to amazon.com from
this site I get 5% of your purchases. I donate those commissions
to the Gun Owners Action League's (GOAL) of Massachusetts.
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the Third Millennium, Harper, San Francisco, CA, 1991
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Cooper, Jeff, Principles
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Eagle, Rainbow, The Universal Peace
Shield of Truths, Rainbow Light and Company, Angel Fire,
NM, 1996
Eagle Feather, Ken, A
Toltec Path, Hampton
Roads Publishing, Charlottesville, VA, 1995
Fellman, Gordon, Rambo
and the Dalai Lama, State University of New York Press, Albany,
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Springs, CO, 1990
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