Join with the Spirit and Act!

As a progressive and a peace activist, I often find it difficult to speak of the true source of my hope and what I believe to be the only true basis for lasting, peaceful, compassionate change in our society and the world. That source is divine spirituality. Call it what you will—God, Spirit, the Light, Christ, Allah, Brahman. I believe that we exist in a spiritual force field that guides us and works with our individual and collective consciousness to co-create the world in which we live. Spirit makes immanent our deepest and truest desires, when backed by co-creative action on our part. When we are grounded in love and compassion, our work will bear loving and compassionate results.

This is what I believe in a nutshell-- Good will ultimately prevail over evil in the long run. In fact, in a true spiritual sense, evil does not exist because evil is simply the absence of love. I firmly believe that love and compassion will prevail in the end.

But if we want to see the results of love and compassion in our lives and those of our children, we have to get working now. The forces arrayed against us are busy promoting war, conflict, greed and selfishness. But if we get working soon enough and in sufficient quantity for the good, our efforts will prevail. It may be a long time coming in human years, but very positive and lasting results are possible even in the short term if we pool our spiritual resources. The simple fact is that our common fate depends upon our collective spirit-led actions.

Since 9/11 we have been bombarded with constant messages of fear and hated, not love and compassion. Meister Echkart, the great mystic, said this; "It is a lie, any talk of God that does not comfort you." How much does war and hatred comfort you? The extreme fundamentalists of the world (both Christian and Muslim) have turned the God of Love into a God of War.

Now here is the problem today. The old energy based on fear and violence is fighting back with a vengeance. We are caught now in a huge clash for the energy and consciousness of humanity. The old guard senses that it is losing its hold on people. That is why its actions and pronouncements are so dramatic and hysterical. It fears its end is imminent without a frontal assault against the growing power of spirit-led action.

Here in America, in some ways, it appears the resurgence of old energy has been winning. But our people largely support compassionate societal arrangements and policies that support the common good. Large majorities support some form of universal health care; better environmental protection; a dependable, compassionate safety net for the less fortunate; effective regulation of business to protect the people; and the preservation and protection of our civil rights and liberties. A majority opposes the Iraq war and a hostile and aggressive foreign policy.

We don’t always see these Spirit-led policies being pursued because the old energy is strong and has a huge store of old energy power (money) behind it. We don’t have the old energy’s money, but we do have ourselves, our greater number and the ultimate power of Spirit behind us. Political organizers say the way to beat organized money is with organized people. Spirit says the same.

So we are facing the old energy making a determined last stand. It will not go quietly. It is desperate and terrified. It actually believes the loss of its power will lead to the end of the world, because for it, the old world based on fear, selfishness and violence will, in fact, end.

What we need to prevail is for enough of us who seek the good to get off the fence and get working. We all know the Edmond Burke quote: "The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

The opposite, of course, and the hope for our age is: all that is needed for good to triumph is for good people to do something.

When enough of us begin to work consistently, diligently and with compassionate hearts to seek the greatest good for the most people, we will prevail. Love cannot be stopped, for love is the ultimate power. But we have to work, we have to get involved. And, yes, that means getting involved in politics and in social activism. NOW!

The emergence of a better world can only be delayed by apathy and cynicism. We must join with the Spirit and act with the Spirit to create the emerging world of love and compassion that waits for us to claim it. This is what I believe and this is what I act upon.

The Real Cause of the Financial Crisis

Much has been written and said about our current financial crisis but there has been little discussion of the real cause of the crisis, which is our massive debt. The sub-prime mortgage mess was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. Massive borrowing by the U.S. government to sustain its huge military empire has sucked the liquidity out of the credit markets and fear of a collapsing dollar is sending shock waves throughout the world markets. There are three broad aspects to our debt crisis.

First, in the current fiscal year, in addition to spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are spending massive amounts of money on “defense” projects that bear no relationship to the national security of the United States. It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense’s expenditures for 2008 are larger than all the other nations’ military budgets combined. Our military spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. Such expenditures are not only morally obscene, they are fiscally unsustainable. We are financing these huge military expenditures through massive borrowing from China and other nations. If you begin in 1789, at the moment the Constitution became the supreme law of the land, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not top $1 trillion until 1981. When George Bush became president in January 2001, it stood at $5.7 trillion. Since then, it has doubled to over $11 trillion!

Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our manufacturing base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military spending. This is based on the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true. It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy. In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment. Military spending is, in fact, a wasteful economic activity. America can no longer afford to operate on the flawed economic assumption that we can maintain a permanent war economy and treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption.

Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of our country. These are what economists call “opportunity costs,” things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system is falling apart. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our aging infrastructure, which is rapidly deteriorating. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer of civilian goods – an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.



History has demonstrated that it has always been the world’s leading lending country that has been the premier country in terms of political, diplomatic and cultural influence. Today we are no longer the world’s leading lending country. In fact, we are now the world’s biggest debtor country, and we are desperately trying to wield influence on the basis of military power alone. Continuing on this path of taking on more and more debt to finance our huge military machine will ultimately mean financial ruin for our nation.

Some of the damage done can never be rectified. There are, however, some steps that our country needs to take. These include quickly ending the war in Iraq, closing many of our over 800 military bases around the world that no longer play a role in our national security, cutting from the defense budget all projects that bear no relationship to the real national security needs of the United States, and ceasing to use the defense budget as a jobs program. If we do these things we have a chance of squeaking by. If we don’t, we face national insolvency and a long depression.

This economic crisis is teaching us a hard truth: in order to strengthen our country we must cut our military spending We must stop building smart bombs and start educating smart people. We must stop building hydrogen bombs and start building hydrogen-fueled cars. America will prosper again when we stop spending less on the military and more on the needs of our people.