I have written about the necessity and difficulty of Change in all of my books and also in my Jan, 2009 blog, “The How of Change” in which I quoted from “Eco Harmony Dawn Cooking: Balancing your Internal & External Environments”, which I co-wrote with my wife, Nicola Lawrence:

“The urgent question for Humanity is not so much if we need a much higher level of compassion and cooperation, but how can we get to that level? Over his twenty-five years of teaching and even before that, Andy has pointed out that while it is a great impetus to have inspiring global leaders with integrity, compassion and vision - like Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela and now perhaps, Barack Obama – it is also necessary for the average person to radically change. Each of us needs to transform her or his consciousness in order to recognize appropriate leadership and support it on an on-going basis, through seeming highs and lows. Without this continuing support, the end result of any Great Leader‘s work will be more of the same - one step forward and one step back; one step to the left and one step to the right. Meanwhile, our global, human crises will continue to escalate.
There are many specific reasons for the gap between our ideals and actions, but perhaps the deepest and most universal is that we feel ourselves to be separate from each other, from our natural environment, and from our Divine Oneness… or “God” to many. We struggle to bridge the gap. Such feelings of alienation have not been as prominent in all cultures and eras as they are in ours, wherein our current embrace of Science and Capitalism accentuates separation, fragmentation and competition, rather than integration and cooperation. In short, modern society tends to exaggerate the processes which break us into competitive parts, rather than uniting us into a Whole.

We are at an unique point in human history, wherein our practical, global challenges as well as our most profound, spiritual teachings, are calling us to the same place – to unite on a common, higher human ground.

To be able to step unto that higher ground, we must expand the dimensions and parameters of what it means to be “I” and our particular collective identity, “We”, whether that is defined by political ideology, nationality, race or religion. This expansion of the sense of self is essentially a matter of spiritual transformation and consciousness. It can only come about by something radically different taking place within ourselves, not just substituting one belief of the day for another”.

In blunt, crude terms we have to look into ourselves before we shoot off our mouths. 2500 years ago, The Buddha said, “We are the result of what we have thought” and that we ought to be “a refuge unto ourselves”. Jesus (in reference to a stoning of a prostitute) said, “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone”. The crazy thing is that conventional society does not ask us to look into ourselves and take responsibility... we have no parameters or measures for that... yet you would think that the most essential ingredient of a successful Democracy would be aware, discerning voters!
Be aware that many (not all) of our leaders want us to be uninformed and to unthinkingly react to temporary, deceiving “talking points” or “photo ops”! In that way, we become more manipulable even as we see ourselves as “tech savvy”. Many people want change but there is no specific target against which we can direct our frustrations and energies.. unless in a destructive way as in the recent G20 riots or as terrorists do. We have built a technologically evolved and complex society and we need a more evolved consciousness to deal with it.

For 26 years, I taught the exploration and integration of body, energy, emotion, mind and spirit. My 2003 book Ageless Wisdom Spirituality: Investing in Human Evolution (AWS) suggested Ageless/ Perennial Wisdom was necessary to meet humanity’s global challenges. As a member of the (trans-traditional spirituality) Forge, I helped create the Call to Global Spirituality Citizenship (www.globalspiritualcitizenship.org), hoping to bring such ideas into the popular arena.

Recent occurrences started me questioning Freedom of Thought and the interface between Private and Public. Rather than getting my opinions out, should I shut my mouth because Big Brother might actually be paying attention!? The first occurrence was that several well-established, traditional, shiatsu organizations in Ontario were suddenly banned from teaching (some heavily fined) because they were not registered/ qualified under the Private Career Colleges Act 2005. They were small with no organizational muscle or “credibility”. The second was a CNBC program on Google, which revealed that Google keeps the IP addresses of all searches, which are available to the US government under the Patriot Act! Within the last few days, the US Library of Congress announced it was keeping all Tweets for “posterity” and the Privacy Commissioners of 10 countries - Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and Britain - criticized Google for “negligence in protecting user privacy”. The USA was absent in this initiative.
What if a powerful body – political, corporate, governmental etc – decides I (or any law-abiding citizen) was not just insignificant, but a “threat”? Apart from all I have published or spoken in public, Facebook, Twitter and Google now provide loads of multi-media personal information. Is there a picture of me looking drunk or “high” or with nubile women? Telephone conversations and emails are easily intercepted; life style habits are exposed through bank accounts, debit and credit cards (your “credit rating”), and through GPS tracking of cars, cell phones etc. Such investigation is not restricted to black-garbed terrorists!!

If I was taken to court, could I financially withstand the army of lawyers Government or a large corporation would summon? Having lived and taught Oneness and Interconnection, “both-and” thinking, the existence of Qi or Prana life energy etc., could I “prove” the legitimacy of all this in an environment of “either-or” thinking and within which the definition of “reality” is rigid, simplistic, “quantifiable cause-and effect”? How could I prove “consciousness” much less argue there might be different levels of consciousness available to adult human beings? I would be ridiculed! Ironically, if we take a detached look at what “hard-headed reality” has created for us, the Ridiculous is not hard to find. 

If you think the above legal, nightmare scenario is far-fetched, research Monsanto’s many ruthless legal campaigns. This Vanity Fair article is one example: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805. Another is Monsanto’s persecution of Percy Schmeiser (www.percyschmeiser.com), a 79-year old farmer, around whose property Monsanto’s genetically modified (GMO) seeds were growing. Don’t seeds blow in the wind? Anyone seen the movie Erin Brockovich? How come no one wants GMO “Frankenfoods” and yet they constitute the majority of all we actually buy and take into our bodies? 

All this is not just conspiracy-theory paranoia, since it is verifiable. However, facts don’t necessarily impact us if we (including non-Americans) are indentified with a Belief, which in this case is mostly the American Dream. For some time, I have sensed a growing Disconnection in the USA (and in my own country, Canada) between Illusion and Reality.. and the inability to recognize innate quality. Chris Hedges’ explores this Disconnection in depth in his Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.
A few related thoughts and facts:

The last 60 years, corporate and technological power has exploded and transformed society in fundamental ways which are still not recognized by our populace or leaders. President Eisenhower warned about the rise of the “military-industrial complex” and its effect on government, while subsequent Presidents, especially Reagan and George W, openly and enthusiastically supported it. Corporations wield enormous power within society generally as well as in the depths of government and politics. Often they are “too big to fail”, even if they are blatantly corrupt. For many people, even the exploited poor, corporations are seen as synonymous with the “national well-being”. This is an unexamined and probably flawed assumption. Venerable corporations and institutions (including the Catholic Church) have collective egos as fallible and flawed as individual egos... except their impact on individuals is greatly magnified because of their sheer size and power!

A direct result of corporate monopoly has been the acceleration of the gap between rich and poor and the negative impact of “quality of life” issues, the consequences of which have been analyzed in detail in the book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality makes Societies Stronger.

Blog space is ending. To end, I think we need a shift in the way we think and feel, which I feel can only come about because of a (spiritual) shift in consciousness. We need to recognize wisdom in individuals apart from celebrity/ marketing and how much money they have. How that can come about is a question which I hope will come into the popular arena. I have a few ideas!

Obama’s health care legislation is an historic achievement to be joyously celebrated, but that battle is not yet over and many other challenges loom. The systems that have served America so well in the past are broken and corrupted.  Politics are polarized, with bully tactics and outright lying now common; corporate lobbyists have become part of everyday government.  Often “religion” is no longer about compassion and open-mindedness, but condemnation, hard-heartedness and even the espousal of violence and war.  “Free enterprise” has become synonymous with the absence of government regulation and unfettered corporate power, even as this system corrupts, out-sources jobs, increases debt to China, widens the gap between the super rich and the increasing poor, and devastates the natural environment.

In addition, Humanity now faces unprecedented global challenges, which require unprecedented global cooperation and trust.  These include global warming and volatile climate changes, shortage of water, energy and food, and the mass, desperate migrations these will trigger.  Species of flora and fauna are becoming extinct at a rate not seen since the dinosaurs disappeared. Technology has enabled small groups of terrorists to inflict major casualties and damage.

Sadly, America seems to have its collective head stuck firmly in the sand, oblivious to what others think or do, which is bizarre for a country that sees itself as the world’s leader. Over the last 6 months, I have travelled across the planet and have read and listened to diverse, informed views on the USA and its global role. A surprising number of people, especially in Europe and Asia, thinks not only that the American Empire is already over, but that the USA is acting like a second tier country.  They watched in bewilderment at the false war in Iraq, spurred by the absurd “talking points” of the Bush administration; they have seen the USA sabotage international efforts to combat global warming and introduce torture as an instrument of policy; they are puzzled at the vehement resistance to health care reform, especially since the USA is one of the few developed countries not to have a comprehensive health care system and since objective, international bodies consistently rate its health care system as mediocre, despite all the money that is (wastefully) spent. They do not understand Americans’ obsession with guns and how hundreds of billions are spent on its military without any protest from its recession ravaged population.  They laugh at Creationism and the revisionism of history in schools (recently prominent in Texas) as crude Communist Cold War era brain-washing.

Perhaps the biggest blow to American egos will be the ascendance of China.  This acknowledgement has already been made by many outside of America, but would be political suicide for any American politician.. so the Hollywood, Wild West fantasies continue.  Any novice student of history will tell you that empires rise and fall and that they rarely acknowledge when the fall is happening. This is particularly true of the American Dream, wherein “winning” is paramount.

So what are America’s choices apart from trying to make outmoded, obviously failed strategies work?  Any addictions program (and the USA is addicted to power and the American Dream) will tell you that step #1 is the acknowledgement that there is a problem.  The problem is that current thinking, aspirations and attitudes are not working.  If American chutzpa were somehow to prevail, what kind of future would we be looking at?  More wastage, unsustainable living and throw-away people?  More corporate power, Big Brother surveillance and military interventions?  While America (and Canada) is still trying to rev up the old Oil based economy, Singapore, China and several European countries are racing ahead with green technology.

The Chinese classic, Daodejing (Tao Te Ching), which is at least 2500 years old, advises that the apparent Opposites (conventional “enemies”) are in fact interconnected and that flow and change are the norm for the universe; rigidity is a characteristic of dying, not of living.  The Buddha said that we suffer because we are attached (rigid).  Jesus said that, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.  The Muslim Sufi classics talk in the language of Love.  All these spiritual World Teachers point to change, compassion, flexibility and Oneness/ Interconnection… not to power, subjugation, exploitation and violent suppression.

For America, the choice seems to be continuing investing in failed policies and ideas or readjusting their priorities… just as the Brits have recently adapted since their own empire has disintegrated.  What kind of world do we want?  An inclusive, cooperative one or an “every man for himself” one?  If the former, it necessitates a spiritual, transformational shift of the kind that the Global Spiritual Citizenship (GSC) is advocating and trying to enable on different levels.  If you agree with this initiative, please sign our Call (www.globalspiritualcitizenship.org)and let us know what kind of practical initiatives you would like to see happen.

Andy James
Follow my other blogs at www.torontotaichiandmeditatiocentre.com and www.globalspiritualcitizenship.org

“Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” is a 2009 book by Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges.  He makes a very detailed and persuasive case that the majority of Americans (and those enthralled by American culture, which includes very many Canadians) can no longer distinguish between Reality and Illusion, which has historically signaled the death knell for cultures and empires.  The most obvious parallel is the “Bread and Circuses” policy used to distract the citizens of the Roman Empire as it crumbled.  Our present distractions/ entertainments are not that much different from the Romans 2000 years ago – sex, violence, pre-occupation with spectacle and the lives the famous.. in our case even the fleetingly famous, as in “reality stars”. 

However, our technology is able to deliver these distractions much more powerfully, 24 hours a day and wherever we are, especially if hooked up by i-phones, blackberries etc. Movies, TV, wrestling, professional sport, pornography (especially internet), video games, gambling, alcohol and drugs etc. all combine to put us into an over- stimulated, stressed and distracted state, which has become an addiction.. we can’t do without it. An increasing number of personal addictions are being (belatedly) identified: drugs, alcohol, eating, gambling, pornography, sex, prescription drugs, video games and much more.  2500 years ago, the Buddha pointed out that we suffer when we become attached.  Addiction is overwhelming attachment.

If “entertainment” preoccupies us, at the very least, we have less time and energy to devote to the challenges of real life, which are neglected and subsequently turn into crise (and often are still ignored!).  This numbness and desire to escape is obvious and widespread throughout North America.  No one wants to be “bothered” or “bored” by seeming complex and “remote” or “far off” problems..

However, Pop Culture is not only a passive escape, but is often used to deliberately distortion reality by the Power Elite and the Corporations ---which own and monopolize all the major news/ communication,/marketing/ entertainment organizations.  Have you ever wondered how come a certain person (or product) suddenly appears in all the magazines, TV shows etc and is proclaimed a “star” or a “hit”?  There are just a handful of companies controlling the Biz and everyone in that industry depends on them directly or indirectly.  Those who are a nuisance or threat are simply ignored, shut out or in extreme cases, crushed.

The power of media manipulation has of course moved into politics and government.  The Republicans are far more aggressive in using this power and more openly aligned with the Corporations as the Bush-Cheney administration showed.  The Iraqi invasion was sold to the American people (and the world) on blatantly false “facts” – there were never any ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and the administration know this.  Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld simply wanted to take out Iraq for oil and other personal reasons like avenging Bush’s father and getting work for companies like Haliburton, which Cheney used to run.

What is even more shocking than this deception is that the average American has failed to hold them accountable!!... even though thousands of American soldiers were killed and injured and the Treasury depleted by $ hundreds of billions (which could have pumped up the economy, Education or Medicare).  The same thing is happening now with the Depression/ Recession.  People have forgotten (or have bought the Republican diversionary spin) that it was Bush’s de-regulation and Corporations-first policy which was responsible for the crash.  Such disasters cannot be fixed within a year, but that is what people expect and have been turning on Obama for months – well short of a year when many of those same people were escatic over his election.   All this suggests to Hedges – and to me – that Illusion is indeed gradually replacing Reality in North America (and elsewhere).  The techniques that are used to distract and manipulate us when we watch a movie or play a video game are now being effectively used in every aspect of our culture and society.

In my last post, “Is Democracy in Danger”, I pointed my finger mostly at Corporate Society.  Corporations are also manipulating Popular Culture, media etc, but individuals must take responsibility.  We spend our hard-earned $ on all the garbage that the Entertainment industry throws at us and we make the decision not to investigate (or even bother to remember) the issues that are challenging us. We decide to numb out.  Happiness, whether individual or collective, will never come about through numbness, dumbness, meanness, exploitation and violence.  On the contrary, that is the path to collapse…the signs of which are becoming increasingly frequent.

The greatest spiritual teachers and philosophers over the millenia have taught greater self-understanding and awareness, which if skillfully practiced, lead to higher levels of morality, compassion and wisdom – understanding ourselves, the world and how they are intricately interconnected.  They recommend living fully in each moment – the Now -instead of trying to escape it.

Having been invited to teach a Tai Chi master class workshop in Newcastle, England this last weekend, I had the opportunity to spend five days in the country in which I lived for 20 years until 1981.  The overall impression was very positive and strangely refreshing, reminding me that my travel in the last decade has been limited to North America.

The first thing that struck me about Newcastle was that it seemed prosperous and the people seemed relatively cosmopolitan and cheery.  I later had the same impression of Glasgow whence my plane departed.  Newcastle and especially Glasgow in the 1970s and 1980s were depressed areas because their traditional industries - coal, steel, shipbuilding etc. – were dying or dead. Glasgow used to look like a World War 2 bombsite with many buildings in central Glasgow crumbled in decay or bulldozed.  The people were rather insular and suspicious of strangers.  I know this first hand because I am Chinese and have traveled throughout the UK.

It seems to me that two main factors have contributed to this turnaround - firstly, acceptance of the need for change; secondly, money and people from the EU (European Union).  Both of these hold valuable lessons for us in North America, presently clinging on to fading industries like cars and oil and fighting each other for local scraps rather than agreeing to pool our resources and share.  The latter is likely to be demonized in America (and increasingly so in Canada under Harper’s Tories) as “socialism and communism” and the interference of “big government” in our individual freedoms and rights.  In all the hysterical talk about individual rights, no one seems to talk of individual responsibilities.

In Newcastle, service industries, especially IT, have sprung up; there are now two new universities in the city. “Foreigners” abound, not only from the former colonies of the British Empire but from various parts of Europe.  EU money has been used to revive the old quayside area in the middle of the city, bringing restaurants, shops, arts and crafts, an impressive, modernistic concert hall and an elegant bridge that tilts to let ships by. 

In public projects, there seems to be a conscious effort to keep some continuity with the past and to use local skills.  The most impressive example of this is The Angel of the North, a massive public art work mounted on a hill overlooking an old coal mine.  It is 66 ft tall with a wingspan of 178 ft and can be seen from miles away.  Its steel construction made use of local steel making skills.

Life is nothing if not change, yet we so commonly and vehemently resist it.  The Past and the Future never really exist, only the Now, which deserves much more of our attention…both individually and collectively.