Inner Michael

By the time you read this, I will be fast asleep. Well, not actually sleep as we found out during the Conrad Murray-Michael Jackson fiasco. Hopefully those around me will know what they’re doing and will monitor me and if I stop breathing, there is proper equipment in the state-of-the-art surgical suite in the hospital.

I too will trust my primary doctor and hope that his hands are guided and that in those wee hours of the morning, I will be a little more to him than a “patient.” I will be a person healing and he is a healer. My doctor is a personable man and the go-to guy for sports medicine. I will be “asleep” for a few hours. As I drift off, I will utter a little prayer to be safe and for the healing to begin immediately. I will emerge in pain and likely bewildered and then cranky.I will be free floating enough in the Universe, first stop ”Neverland.” As I leave my body behind, I will pass the second star to the right and will be halfway to morning when they wake me. As we spoke, I explained to someone who was a part of the curriculum development way back in the beginning.. that I would be “offline” for a bit, she exclaimed: ”I had no idea!” There are only a handful of people who know of my passage this last year and how it was for me as I watched my life transform into something I didn’t recognize. It is yet another spiritual passage, another initiation along the path. A kind of emptying out. A letting go of all that does not serve and all that weighs me down as I prepare for the next step of this journey. My Indian friend who took me out for an Asian dinner last night recognized it as a grand Vision Quest.

Two years ago I was in a car accident– the third one that jarrred and injurred my right leg and hip. A head-on collision years ago likely began a degenerative process in the bone. In the most recent one, a driver hit me from behind. The chain of events that occurred after that incident has led to this surgical intervention to replace my hip joint on the right side. The damage occurred over time and has prgressed to not being able to walk well. Since a nurse is on her feet and lifting either patients or equipment all the time and that aggravates an already vulnerable condition, I had to stop working. My bones now touch as the cartilage wore away from the inflammation and injury. Physical therapy didn’t work. So Monday I become a bionic woman or a partial robot–whatever you prefer as they replace my hip joint with artificial bones made of plastic and ceramic. 

You can well imagine that “the 99%” has now become personal. I am someone the 1% calls lazy and irresponsible because I can’t work now. Since age 16 I have been making my own way in the world and been self sufficient even raising two children as a single mom. Our state is recalling its governor who has a moratorioum on state sponsored healthcare. My premiums have tripled and are one an a half times my rent. No one should be in a position to choose between their home or their premiums. Since the condition was getting worse, I knew as a nurse that the premiums were the priority. There are many people struggling to make their way in the world. Many older adults have to choose between food and medications that keep them alive. Medically,  I now have a pre-existing condition. If I were to drop my insurance in favor of a place to live, I will be un-insurable. I do not meet the criteria of a ”disabled” person which would give me access to healthcare and state sponsored insurace. Governor Walker has placed a moratorium on state sponsored insurance.  There is already a waiting list of several years and a person must be without insurance for at least a year to be eligible. A medical emergency or surgery can throw people into a crisis. Foreclosures are widespread as many are losing their homes because a medical condition forced them into bancrupcy. Healthcare costs soar when people can’t pay their medical bills and institutions are forced to absorb those costs. As a nurse working with kids and adults on ventilators, my professiona demands that I be able to walk. If I cannot walk, I cannot work.

The governor’s new initiatives and his actions place in jeopardy the kids I worked with who were on vents and are dependent on them for life. If their parents had insurance at work, they became a liability for the companies carrying that insurance and many were fired– not for performance reasons but because of the expense to their employer to keep them on group insurance—they were a drain on the system and their medical needs forced everyone’s premiums higher. Employers have no choice but to let them go. So they turned to Medicaid for help with their children’s medical needs. These handicapped children cannot live without their ventilators and their parents can’t afford the insurance and certainly not the medical treatment required

There are certainly abuses of the system but they are not widespread; Governor Walker thinks they are. He has recalled nurses’ Medicaid pay and billed many of us for hours we legitimately worked but his people have determined, were billed in error. Many of the independent nurses I know, including me, have had to give up pay or pay back monies that the governor’s people say were inaccurately billed in previous years-. There has been little recourse except to be billed or to have pay garnished while these “inaccuracies” and “overpayments” are paid back into to the state coffers. When asked, there are no straight answers for how this discrepancy that occurred years ago “in the computer system” has suddenly surfaced and needs to be “rectified.”

Welcome to third world Wisconsin, third world America.

While I had sympathies for the “Occupy” people and movement, it’s now become personal. The “Occupy” movement and the 99% challenging the 1% is a push for us, as a society, to be compassionate with all members of our culture– the rich and poor, the infirm and the well, the working class and the elite. “What you do to the least of your brethren, ye do to me.” Instead of corporate greed, the 99% is asking for compassion and equanimity for the members of society. Whatever your political persuasions, we are all one in the spirit of “Cry,” “We Are The World,” and “You’re Just Another Part of Me.” It’s time to embrace all people alike and recognize their humanity.

Walking has become a problem, therefore work has become a problem, I was denied disability and the healthcare it brings. There was no choice but to retain a healthcare policy even though it tripled. No one should be in a position to have to choose between insurance or housing. And when the time comes that the individual who has been paying premiums for years needs that healthcare, it should not be denied or the treatment dictated by the insurance company. That insurance compay should not be looking for ways to not pay or to drop someone who suddenly needs the services they are insured for. What a racket! What industry makes millions as people pay for services not needed and then finds a way to deny the very service they are being paid to provide? What industry is taking money from the public to deny the public what they are paying for? What other industry do we pay lots of money to say “no!” ?

Something is very wrong with this whole picture. So yes, “Occupy” while noble before,  is suddently personal. The growing dissatisfaction and realization that the old ways aren’t working on this planet is real. It is time to build on a collective conspiracy to value, elevate, respect and revere people beyond corporate profit.

Without going into a lot of detail, I find that my situation and my life, and thus Inner Michael, must change and evolve. I have refused, put it off, delayed it and tried to get around it.  And while the whole purpose is not clear to me yet, in being called to ”do battle” in so many ways in this last year, I have become a seasoned warrior. I have lobbied for what is just and right. I have stood up to the bullies. I have learned to “listen to the people” while at the same time listening to the still small voice inside. The battle has at times, included battling not just for dignity, but for very sanity as I watched everything that had meaning to me disappear. This journey is taking place on so many levels as to be deep, profound and meaningful. And painful. 

I am grateful for those teachers who surround me—friends, family, my fellow congregants at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and all those who have sent well wishes and gifts my way. There are many lessons in a life passage such as this one. Humility and gratitude must be mastered, for example. As a proud, independent and professional woman, I have made my own way in the world all my life. Suddenly hardship is as much a friend as joy and an even better teacher. Humility best shatters the ego.

To face the reality that one’s body does not cooperate is to grieve significant loss and to face one’s own inevitable mortality. It is a test of fortitude, of perseverance in the face of helplessness and it is a huge challenge to faith. Thank goodness and god for my mentor shaman and a new spiritual director in my life who explained this passage in terms of its metaphor and its archetypal significance. Just knowing that this passage has meaning helps to hang on to a sanity that at times has threatened to disintegrate.

I empathize with those dependent on pain medication. I see how easily it could slip into addiction by those who have no medical background or understanding of the dangers and in particular, addiction. In the fog of pain, it is easy to find oneself asking: “Did I already take my medication dose?” It would be easy to double up and take more than needed. When pain is insurmountable, it is easy to understand how a person might cross the line between dependence and addiction or take more than the body can handle as it slips into coma or death. Severe pain can cause sleeplessness as it wakes you from a sound sleep with a piercing discomfort. When the pain wakens one, that is the point at which there is no point even trying to sleep. It’s not going to happen. I can see how after a few sleepless nights, one might take more medication than is prescribed or in combinations that one is unaware are dangerous. If a medical person finds this tangle hard to navigate, I understand how a lay person might find it impossible or might make a fatal mistake. Taking pills for what ails us is so much a part of this modern culture that the ease with which we reach for chemical remedies is frightening. And that’s a medical person talking.

During a very dark time, a new spiritual advisor who “miraculously” entered my sphere quite “by accident” recently, has restored a confidence and hope that was slipping from its hold by the fingernails. She is an author, Jungian and founder of a lay Franciscan order.  This journey is the same archetypal journey taken by those she identifies as a group representing that archetype and its life passage: clowns, troubadours, madmen, fools and wandering mystics. While the path of the shaman is not simple or easy, the path of the reconnaisance mystic requires a stamina and faith that is not for the fainthearted. I immediately thought of Maya Angelou’s lament that few can identify with who are not either African or Native American…

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

“Still I Rise” ~Maya Angelou

That kind of journey is not one that you choose, but one that chooses you. It is a naturally inspired work in the world whose passion is not without commensurate pain. There are great things that can be done in the world if god intoxication is allowed to have its way, the inspiration and intuition is followed and faith is steadfast and integral. That last one is the requirement that is most demanding in a world that seems to particularly challenge the faithful. And in facing personal hardship, faith is the first thing that is challenged and  becomes doubtful.

A challenging entire passage or vision quest that involves multiple and significant losses makes what’s important in life perfectly and starkly clear. That makes me think of the beautiful gift of experience and words given us by Oriah Mountain Dreamer…

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

—————————–

There are and have been “companions along the way” thank goodness. And there are modern day mystics—Andrew Harvey comes immediately to mind as does his work in the world of spiritual activism. It’s another way to bear witness, to witness, and to resolve to restore spirit to the human condition. Matthew Fox, Michael Beckwith, James Twyman, Neale Donald Walsch, Marianne Williamson, James Redfield, James Cameron, and Dan Brown with other modern spiritual revolutionaries also come to mind.  God bless the visionaries among us. Michael Jackson was one of those. He qualifies as among those gifted artists embodying an archetype and bringing a message that leads us back home– to ourselves.

The journey of faith involves a battle with identity: I am not my things. I am not my profession. I am not my environment. I am not me feelins of despair or desolation or even elation. I am not my fear even though it looms over me. I am not my finances—either wealth or lack. One discovers: I am not defined by any of those things because they can all pass away. The question then becomes – “well, if I am not that, who am I?” In the end, as Oriah so beautifully illustrates, none of that matters. Nada. None. Zip. Amen.

When things are gone, perhaps love is the only thing that matters? What comes to mind then is the lyrics to a couple of popular songs, one from the film Urban Cowboy:

Lookin’ for love In All the Wrong Places
 
I’ve spent a lifetime looking for you
 Single bars and good time lovers, never true
 Playing a fools game, hoping to win
 Telling those sweet lies and losing again.
 
I was looking for love in all the wrong places
 Looking for love in too many faces
 Searching your eyes, looking for traces
 Of what.. I’m dreaming of…
 Hopin’ to find a friend and a lover
 God bless the day I discover
 Another heart, lookin’ for love
 
When I was alone then, no love in sight
 And I did everything I could to get me through the night
 Don’t know where it started or where it might end
 I turn to a stranger, just like a friend
 
I was looking for love in all the wrong places
 Looking for love in too many faces
 Searching your eyes, looking for traces
 Of what.. I’m dreaming of…
 Hopin’ to find a friend and a lover
 God bless the day I discover
 Another heart, lookin’ for love
 
You came a’knocking at my heart’s door..
You’re everything I’ve been looking for..

No more looking for love in all the wrong places
 Looking for love in too many faces
 Searching your eyes, looking for traces
 Of what.. I’m dreaming of…
 Now that I found a friend and a lover
 God bless the day I discover
You, oh you, lookin’ for love
 
In all the wrong places
 Looking for love in too many faces
 Searching your eyes, looking for traces
 Of what.. I’m dreaming of…
 Now that I found a friend and a lover
 God bless the day I discover
You, oh you, lookin’ for love.
————————–

And this song with the same title by Marc Almond:

Looking for Love in All The Wrong Places

Keep on looking now
You gotta keep on looking now
Keep on looking now

You’re looking for love
In all the wrong places

Where your walk it’s always shadow
Conversation always shallow
When they talk they never look you in the eye
They look over your shoulder
To faces even colder
And you feel a little older
Every time

You’re looking for love
In all the wrong places

When you’re looking for reaction
When you’re searching for direction
When you’re scared of rejection
Or attack
You need the warmth of loving
When you’re growing tired of seeing
A colourless reflection
Looking back

You’re looking for love
In all the wrong places

Something real to fill those little empty spaces
So you’re looking for love in all the wrong places

You need understanding
You need a home
All those people so alone
You need understanding
You need a home
All those people so alone

You’re looking for love
In all the wrong places
You’re looking for love
In all the wrong places

You better keep on looking now!

And so the evening shade will fall
Where nameless voices call and call
And think of all the friends you made
While you toast with Prozac and lemonade

You can hold me under septic skies
(You can dream to your own places)
Watch the sun set in my eyes
(You can’t seem to put)
Could this be the time to die?
(A name to all the faces)
The wind upon your face
(Something real)
Your lips upon my lips
Like urban velvet
(To fill those little empty spaces)

So you’re looking for love in all the wrong places
You keep on looking for love in all the wrong places

Dream and take away the tears
(Keep on looking now)
Drift on to where your heart is numb
(You gotta keep on looking now)
It’s lovely there where love becomes
A drug to fill your need
Just believe in you!
And learn to love yourself
Before anyone else.

—————————–

The Sufi Mystic Poet Hafiz says it this way:

My Eyes So Soft

Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly

let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you

as few human or even divine ingredients can

Something missing in my heart tonight

has made my eyes so soft

my voice so tender

my need of god

absolutely clear.
–Hafiz

Michael Jackson traveled this path in other ways and with another kind of lament as a reaction and challenge to the poverty of spirit or soul that he saw all around him and that caused him great personal despair in his life. It was the reason he said instead of your anger, some deserve your forgiveness and that people whose intention involved harm were acting from an internal vacuum and needed “L.O.V.E. more than judgment or disgust. He understood how those with wounded souls acted from a lack more than arrogance or that the arrogance came from a false bravado informed by fear. Michael only wanted to be loved because he knew that is what powers the world where salvation has returned and the world cares for all its children—all the children of the Creator.

Michael knew about the dangers of shadow and projection and ego. He sang of all this and it is a grave sadness that this is not more understood—and his gift to the world not more understood and appreciated. But I believe that time is coming and that we (We) have much to do with that conversion. Too many people, and in particular women of a median age have had a spiritual emergency and awakening at Michael’s passing. The Dalai Lama said that the salvation of the world will come from the West and in particular, Western women. I think he’s right and I think “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” The “Divine Feminine” is on her way back; the goddess is rising and the women are awake or waking. Arundati Roy said “Not only is another world possible; on a quiet day I can hear her breathing.” As close as the breath? Divine energy, Prana, Chi, Ki, Qi, Ruah or the holy breath is as near as the next inhale.

So I would ask that you take a deep breath and say a prayer for my rapid healing and for change as it comes now through necessity. I have been resisting it. I have gone kicking and screaming. I have railed against divine guidance: “at a time in my life when I should be sitting at the feet of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama at the shore of the Ganges, or sitting on a beach with a drink in my hand that has an umbrella, I have sat at the feet of a pose on toes teacher wearing sparkly socks instead of sandals. In the essay and short story “When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Sparkles.” I have screamed at god and demanded to know why this latest messenger instead of brining wisdom like Ram Das did a few years ago, comes with lightning rod polarization and controversy. I have learned that (“why?”) doesn’t work but (“what?”) inevitably does.

Inner Michael, I have decided, will continue despite any bumps in the road or path (obviously) but that there is a larger picture of which Michael and we are a integral and necessary part. I have been speaking of expansion and new perception. That will involve new direction too. The meme will change when consciousness changes enough to support a new vibration and higher state of mind. A simple technology introduced on a planet with impeccable timing is unstoppable and revolutionary in its impact. I hear her breathing too. According to my spiritual director now, the ego must be stripped bare and moved out of the way. A reliance on god and an “informed consent” means a restructuring of the bones of a new creation. The metaphor and paradox is not lost on me.

 Out of suffocating darkness comes blinding light. But the light cannot be seen if the darkness is puny. Part of the lesson is to exault self and one’s work to a place of value and significance. Dismissing the self and diminishing the work or devaluing it no longer serves. When artists and mystics or holy madmen wander in poverty, the impact is lessened than through he power of abundance that establishes and propels or impels through momentum. Critical mass begins with one atom smashing into one other atom and incorporating another and another making the force of that movement greater than the sum of its parts. It takes resources to reach that tipping point. Forcing those with a message to squeak in pathetic poverty instead of roar from abundance is a mistaken insistence in giving away a special gift instead of exchanging value for equal value. Lesson learned.

So after this medical crisis has passed and the healing is well on its way, I will be changing direction and creating new things that are now whispers in my intuition and the voice that leads with silence and urgent impulse. I have learned that instead of kicking and screaming, some days it pays to be silent and “listen.” That is not to say I will never scream at the Creator or Michael again- I am sure I will. But I get the other lesson now—that you can do more with more resources and wealth than you can without. Michael was a millionaire. While I am not expecting that for me, his lesson in abundance is well taken. His habit of tithing and giving back to the world in equal or more measure has hit home. “I get it; thank you, Michael.” 

I stubbornly refused to ask Michael Jackson fans for money. I never wanted to be accused of trading on his name or taking advantage of his fans. Besides, that is just not my style. Inner Michael began with a calling from fans who were desperate to understand their grief, to make sense of a senseless death and the absence of a hero and benefactor that humanity did not recognize or appreciate. They did not understand the depth of their grief or the urgency of their feelings, nor the magnitude of their sense of loss. After answering so many letters, it became obvious that some questions were common to all Michael’s admirers and the grief was different than usual bereavement. 

In speaking with my pastor and spiritual advisor, she asked if I sensed Inner Michael as a calling that I might respond to. As I responded to the need, Inner Michael grew organically on its own until it has become the “home” to some that it is today. The letters I received that tell me about the relief many felt from the knowledge I was able to offer made the effort worth it. “These are my people,” I thought, “they are “another part of me.”

But maybe that’s the ego talking. There’s nothing humble about stubborness. It’s more arrogance than humility. I had to consider that maybe people found value in the past at Inner Michael. Maybe they value the support they recieved during a difficult time. Maybe they found a place to rest or to take a deep breath; or maybe they found a home here. Maybe I have actually prevented them from expressing gratitude in a way that benefits both of us. Maybe I took that opportunity away or deprived them of saying ”thank you” in a meaningful way that has value.

I do, at this moment, look upon all of this—the entire journey and even the current circumstances– as a preparation for the expansion or the next step. I stubbornly believe that the fans have an unprecedented opportunity to change the world. This particular journey—of a group of people devoted to a message (and by proxy and charisma and more than a little magic) and the archetype and persona of the man who brought it. There are some, in particular women who embody wisdom, who “get”this on a very deep level.

There is a reason Michael Jackson was so popular, why he touched so many hearts and why his fans were so loyal and steadfast and why they still are today. The whole of the Michael experience is far greater than the sum of its parts. There is a why in answer to the question of why the man was, and still is, so beloved. 

I want to continue this discussion and expansion. I want to implement some new things and take us in a new direction while at the same time going back to the original mission—understanding Michael and why you have an inner self that resonates (“inner Michael”.) I want to continue deconstructing his work and mining the archetypes and messages that he brought and that continues via his legacy. I have more to examine in his videos or short films, I have parallel teachers to introduce you to. I have more to say at Inner Michael, and I have a new idea that I think will take us into a brighter future. What I am saying is that I need you.

I need companions along the way and in order to create this new life and new work and vocation, I need to support myself and pay the bills. I am more than willing to be a muse, a minister and shaman, and even a wandering mystic or madwoman but I can’t wander naked. Those days are over. And nakedness and poverty garners no respect today. Naked and barefoot will not work now like they did for Gandhi. It’s a different age. I have recruited and constructed some amazing teams of people that have not even been revealed. I have collaborated with stars in their own right and received offers from other stars.

One mission and project that is on the table right now and right in front of me, will bring light to a part of Michael Jackson and his work and life that has gone unexamined. It will bring dignity and respect to his legacy. I want to continue to work with this incredible team I assembled while sharing a  mission that is rich and vibrant and lends itself to art and passion.

I want to continue my work as a producer with another personally hand-picked and remarkably talented team that share both artistry and vision and who step “naked and trembling” into every new venture.

I also want to continue promoting Voices Education Project “Words and Violence” in a larger and more expansive way. When Sue Wilson is ready, I want to work with her in media activism and I want to bring you all with us.

I will step up and step forward but I need to know I am going to step into a place where there is solid ground under my feet. Even a wandering mystic or fool (or the other similar archetypes) needs grounding and as she steps, a foundation under her feet. I need help paying for my website hosting and expenses, to donate back to those who have volunteered to help without remuneration, to pay for where the Michael Messages are hosted, the domain names and websites, and more bandwidth and technologies to facilitate the seminars and workshops that can be offered to develop leadership skills and identify life missions and to understand why we are here and what we are to do. And I need to pay my bills. And most of all, I need to establish the essentials of the mission—wireless access to the web and a place to lay my head at the end of the day.

 This will mean monetizing Inner Michael and the new websites that are planned. I will also design websites and web content for others who ask and are able to contribute to my funding. I will pursue grants and monies for Voices and for “Words and Violence” because that work is THAT valuable—it was the most explored and used part of the Voices website last year. More people are learning of it. It takes time and effort to accomplish that. And last weekend as I provided a keynote presentation for a women’s conference at a retreat center, I learned that speaking about Michael Jackson, what happened to him, explaining the media’s opportunistic targeting of this man and of Lady Diana disgusts people, impels them to listen and to exit the helplessness they feel to change it in favor of action and solutions.

I recently wrote something for the Huffington Post about the treatment of Whitney Houston by the press. I have said at Inner Michael that her work was directly responsible for the release of Nelson Mandella after her concert for freedom and human rights in South Africa. My article wasn’t published. I need time and resources to pursue other avenues. I had given the editors a heads up that my piece was in the chute but it was ignored, went unpublished and I was never contacted. Nor was I told why or asked to change it or trash it and start over. There was complete silence. There is a message in that. People need the personal touch. They need contact, inclusion and direction. While reaching numbers is important, reaching hearts is more imperative. This too means expansion and change.

People told me that they want to change things. They want to make the world a better place and the need to change the narrative on this planet to a more human narrative is absolutely clear to them. So was their helplessness—until we brainstormed solutions. I left the weekend event knowing that there was a whole new population that understood Michael better and who intend to explore the project at Voices and who will take the action only they can take and make the contribution to the humane, dignified and preciously human contribution that inspires them. They will find their “inner Michael” and their own inner light that will help all of us to find and shine our own. They are on their way to making the world a better place and their own life missions. Yes, we did that together. And I want to bring that to Inner Michael.

So, I am going to move a contribution button to the top of Inner Michael and start there. What happens next will determine the direction of my life. And as I am physically able, I will use this long recovery period to develop and foster some of those projects that beckon and await me. During my surgery, I will listen to headphones that play the anthem message we all find familiar and in particular the play and replay of what speaks to me loudly right now: “Speechless” and “Will you Be There?”

Here’s where you can find me and get updates: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/barbarakaufmann

Meanwhile, after you listen to the Youngbloods, try, just try to get these lyrics out of your head! Good luck with that! See you soon enough. ILYM.

Love is but a song we sing
fears’ the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
or make the angels cry
 
Though the dove is on the wing
and you may not know why
 
Come on people now
smile on your brother
everybody get together
and try to love one another right now
 
Some may come and some may go
He will surely pass
When the one that left us here
returns for us at last
We are but a moment’s sunlight
fading in the grass
 
Come on people now
smile on your brother
everybody get together
try to love one another right now
 
Come on people now
smile on your brother
everybody get together
try to love one another right now
 
Come on people now
smile on your brother
everybody get together
try to love one another right now
 
If you hear the song I sing
you will understand…listen
You hold the key to love and fear
all in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
Its there at your command
 
Come on people now
smile on your brother
Everybody get together
try to love one another right now
 
Come on people now
smile on your brother
Everybody get together
try to love one another right now
 
I said…..
 
Come on people now
smile on your brother
Everybody get together
try to love one another right now
right now
right now.

Michael Jackson was a Pantheist. Theology is the study of religion or broadly defined is a “discourse about God” commonly taught in a divinity school or seminary. It derives from the Greek theologia which is theo (God) and logia (logos, word or oral history and tradition.) Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle thought of theology as discourse of all things god, and the metaphysical nature of the divine.

I’m thinking that most Michael Jackson people are Pantheists at heart. If you’ve read “Dancing the Dream” and resonate with Michael’s reverence and passion for nature, animals, the landscape, the planet and the planet’s people—in other words all sentient life—you are a Pantheist.

“Earth Song” is a Pantheist anthem. Michael’s soaring vocals are inspirational and establish an expansive “vibe” that encompasses nature, the planet and all sentient beings. And it asks ‘What about us?’ in the spirit of the interconnectedness of all life—what Chief Seattle and people like John Muir and Aldo Leopold call “the web.”

Chief Seattle said: “what we do to the web, we do to ourselves.” He spoke of the land, the buffalo, the taking of only what you need and giving gratitude in reverence to the resources of nature.

Michael said the same things in “Earth Song.” He knew that when we destroy the web, we destroy ourselves. When we kill the rainforest which are considered the lungs of the planet, we kill ourselves. In order to have life, there must be breath. Michael revered nature, beauty and all life.

He identified with a single dolphin which had died caught in a net and could feel the presence of a dolphin in the sea. His Pantheism is in his poetry and in his lyrics. He loved all people of all cultural and ethnic backgrounds and even went so far as to identify with simple living and poverty by arranging to visit and sleep on the ground in a hut in order to experience it.

In “This Is It” he spoke about the breathtaking beauty of the planet and inspired the cast of the show by asking them to help “put back some magic into the world” and to speak about the window of opportunity and the time period available to us to save the planet from irreversible harm or the critical mass where the destructiveness of man and rape of the planet becomes not just possible but destined. He encouraged stewardship by saying “it’s up to us or it will never be done.” It’s the same thing the Hopi Elders have been saying all along about the prophesy for humankind on this planet in the philosophy of: “we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

How do you know if you are a Pantheist?

When you look at the night sky or at the images of the Hubble Space Telescope, are you filled with feelings of awe and wonder at the overwhelming beauty and power of the universe?

When you are in the midst of nature, in a forest, by the sea, on a mountain peak – do you ever feel a sense of the sacred, like the feeling of being in a vast cathedral?

Do you believe that humans should be a part of Nature, rather than set above it?

Do you love animals and believe they have rights? Do you accept that you are responsible for your pets, for all animals, for how land is used, food is grown and are you a vegetarian or concerned with ethical eating?

Are you skeptical about a male deity or god who sits on a throne in a vague place called heaven and who pushes buttons and pulls levers to control things on earth? And when a human messes up, he’s a vengeful and punishing figure?

Do you view the world and life as vibrant, alive and luminous?

Do you rather believe that “God” is a Presence that is sweeping in nature and extends far beyond a location or definition and encompasses Nature and the wider Universe?

Yet do you feel an emotional need for a recognition of something beyond the human entity and ego and is greater than your own self or than the human race?

If you can answer yes to most of these questions, then Pantheism is likely your natural religious home or is at least part of how you define your spiritual philosophy or beliefs.

At the heart of pantheism is reverence of the universe as the ultimate focus of reverence, and for the natural earth as sacred. Scientific Pantheism (Carl Sagan) or Natural Pantheism (Rachael Carson) has a naturalistic approach which simply accepts and reveres the universe and nature just as they are, and promotes an ethic of respect for human and animal rights and for sustainability of lifestyles that cultivate, nurture and protect rather than destroy the environment.

When scientific pantheists say WE REVERE THE UNIVERSE we are not talking about a supernatural and polarized or singular being, we are saying we practice awe and experience the sacredness of all that is.

We respect and embrace with our senses and emotions, the force of an overwhelming mystery and power that surrounds us.

We are part of the universe. Our earth was created from the universe and will one day be reabsorbed into the universe. We are made of the same matter and energy as the universe. We are not in exile here: we are at home. Paradise is not just out there somewhere out of reach but can be created and experienced here and now. If we believe our real home is not here but in a reality that lies beyond death, or if we believe that the numinous is found only in old books, or old buildings, or inside our head, or outside this reality, we are mistaken or in the midst of a grand illusion.

The universe creates us, preserves us, destroys us. It is deep and old beyond our ability to reach with our senses. It is beautiful beyond our ability to describe in words. It is complex beyond our ability to fully grasp in science. We must relate to the universe with humility, awe, reverence, celebration and the search for deeper understanding. It doesn’t fear the mystery; it embraces it.

 

The World Pantheist Movement Statement of Principles

1. We revere and celebrate the Universe as the totality of being, past, present and future. It is self-organizing, ever-evolving and inexhaustibly diverse. Its overwhelming power, beauty and fundamental mystery compel the deepest human reverence and wonder.

2. All matter, energy, and life are an interconnected unity of which we are an inseparable part. We rejoice in our existence and seek to participate ever more deeply in this unity through knowledge, celebration, meditation, empathy, love, ethical action and art.

3. We are an integral part of Nature, which we should cherish, revere and preserve in all its magnificent beauty and diversity. We should strive to live in harmony with Nature locally and globally. We acknowledge the inherent value of all life, human and non-human, and strive to treat all living beings with compassion and respect.

4. All humans are equal centers of awareness of the Universe and nature, and all deserve a life of equal dignity and mutual respect. To this end we support and work towards freedom, democracy, justice, and non-discrimination, and a world community based on peace, sustainable ways of life, full respect for human rights and an end to poverty.

5. There is a single kind of substance, energy/matter, which is vibrant and infinitely creative in all its forms. Body and mind are indivisibly united.

6. We see death as the return to nature of our elements, and the end of our existence as individuals. The forms of “afterlife” available to humans are natural ones, in the natural world. Our actions, our ideas and memories of us live on, according to what we do in our lives. Our genes live on in our families, and our elements are endlessly recycled in nature.

7. We honor reality, and keep our minds open to the evidence of the senses and of science’s unending quest for deeper understanding. These are our best means of coming to know the Universe, and on them we base our aesthetic and religious feelings about reality.

8. Every individual has direct access through perception, emotion and meditation to ultimate reality, which is the Universe and Nature. There is no need for mediation by priests, gurus or revealed scriptures.

9. We uphold the separation of religion and state, and the universal human right of freedom of religion. We recognize the freedom of all pantheists to express and celebrate their beliefs, as individuals or in groups, in any non-harmful ritual, symbol or vocabulary that is meaningful to them.

————————————

The Earth and the Reason- for Earth Day 2009

From the air
she reminds me
of an old woman.
Wrinkled skin,
hills and valleys
scars and dimples–
a complexion
older than time.

Four billion!
Four billion years
she has been becoming.
Has she too, pondered
her reason for being?

The water ran right there.
Hills puckered here
with gathers over there,
a plateau ends here,
the river meanders–
features of character
on the face of forever
in the spiral of time.

They say time waits for no one.
Does the Earth wait?
Has she waited?
For what? Whom?
Has she consciousness.
a self? Or
an accident of cause
waiting for effect?

All these millennia–
silent.
Never knowing,
never ending,
never not becoming;
while I become,
then disappear.

Today she is familiar,
greets me,
telling stories,
speaks with my tongue.
I ask her to remember
because she will be–
long beyond me.

A loudspeaker voice says
“fasten your seatbelts;
we begin our descent.”
We do descend to Earth,
down to her skin,
down to become matter.
To matter?
To call her “home.”

The Captain says we are
“preparing to land.”
I know that once again
I too prepare to land
somewhere outside this perspective,
outside its intimacy.

A sigh escapes
from somwhere deep,
a tear appears,
but a faint voice whispers
“I will remember.
You are my reason
and now my voice
and effect.”

BK (c) 2009

One Man’s Teepee

A dying fire licks the dark,
makes shadow fingers
that caress the walls,
salute brother wind,
hail sister moon
and beckon his return.

She stirs in dreams,
becomes the deer,
running, running,
gives head to wind,
hooves to forest,
races the edge of dawn
toward home.

A filly now,
she whinnies softly,
dreams his neck,
nuzzles her head,
breathes tangles of hair
not braided this night
for battle.

And now the great cat
curls and stretches,
arches her back
on bearskin mounds,
her breast remembering
the cup his hand makes
even in sleep.

The eagle soars,
listens the distance,
spies horse and rider,
swoops down to wake
from Shaman’s dreams;
rekindles a fire
to warm his night.

Her fingers smile,
trace rounded belly
to recall his love,
grow his seed,
seal the future
for her people.

The owl knows,
and wolf remembers:
medicine and legends,
a strong, proud race
and how one man’s teepee
was a nation’s dream.

BK (c) 2006

In continuing our series on expansion, it is important to visit “perspective.” Where you are seeing from determines what you will see. Who you are being colors your experience of the world. We live in a world of paradox, as paradoxical beings. There is the micro view and the macro view. I interpret that as “as above, so below” because the more I look, the more I find echoes in existence. What happens in my life echoes where I am in my psyche. What I attract is a measurement of who I am being.

Life is reciprocal. What you put out is what you will get back. If you focus on the world of conflict and drama and give that your rapt attention, guess what will show up in your life? If you are prone to doom and gloom, your mind is constantly scanning the horizon to find the darkest representations of life– so the snapshots of your mind will reflect that affinity and you will be “awfulizing” your world. Nothing will meet your standards because everything is after all… awful.

The human ego likes to think of itself as important. When someone behaves as if “the world revolves around me” they have never grown up. That is how an infant views the world, as an egocentric being. If there is discomfort, the infant wails until his discomfort as assuaged and his needs are met.

The infant learns if I am hungry, someone feeds me. If I am tired, I sleep. If I want something, I must have it and I am given it. Infants and kitties and puppies are cute and being cute helps to get your needs met so adults often think that if they are ”cute” everybody will find them loveable and their needs will be met. And then there are those who demand that their needs be placed on everyone’s priority list. They have grown up tantrums or manipulate to get what they want. We all know these people who have an inflated sense of self. The manipulate for attention, have drama, and suck all the air from the room.

 Then there are those whose spirit is magnanimous. They embrace all people. They see the “bigger picture” and understand that they are insignificant in the grander scheme of things or they understand their place in the divine plan and humbly show up for their mission. They don’t speak the same language as the egocentric individual. They don’t live in the same world. The egocentric person tends to have a cynical or suspicious view of everything because that is how their mind works. They starkly contrast with the more generous and magnanimous individual and they don’t understand them or are threatened by them and can unconsciously resent and wish to destroy them. Their world is colored by human misery and failure and they act to distance themselves from their own reality by pointing the finger at others, by comparing and competing and by acting on their projection onto others with destructive impulses. They see the world as a dangerous place and therefore and thereby make it dangerous.

There are the innocents or open hearted individuals who live in awe of beauty and splendor. They are untainted by the misery or rise above it to incorporate the beauty of existence. They accord everyone equal validity and behave as if everything and everyone is valuable, even sacred. They measure everyone by their own standard of excellence as demonstrated by a reverence of nature and beauty and often find their expectations disappointed or their hopes dashed by the intrusion of the human ego or human nature that is imperfect and self serving. They are not self serving so they can’t understand or relate to that world view just as the self serving person cannot fathom magnanimity. They view the generous or magnanimous as necessarily conniving because they themselves are. They tend to think them naive, foolish, silly or freakish. Instead of seeing a naive offender by comparison to their own sensibilities, they see a deliberate offender. They judge harshly because they are harsh people.

 I have made the bold statement that “Michael Jackson fans ‘get it’” and by that I mean they are not blind or one dimensional in their interpretation of the man and his life. They see in Michael what is reflected in themselves. When this understanding occurs at a deep level, they see the genius in the complexity and the innocence in the behavior because it is echoed somewhere in self. That is not to say that they don’t violate their own standards or that they aren’t occasionally (or more) hypocritical or succumb to human temptation or behave in a way beneath themselves, but to say that they have the capacity to be magnanimous and in service to others and the world. They saw Michael for who he really was because it lives in themselves. They see his humanitarianism, his soulful nature and his acts of kindness because the capacity lives in them.

Those who are warmaking individuals appeal to the violent. Positions of power attract the corruptible. Hollywood is a magnet for the flamboyant. We go where we find opportunity and nourishment. What we find there depends on whether we live from… abundance or scarcity. From judgement or from tolerance. From love or from fear. In other words, from the ego or from the soul. How you are comes from answering the question: “who is in charge?”

 I believe wholly and emphatically in that capacity that I spoke of. That capacity can change the world– guaranteed. It I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be here or be here still. In that spirit, I share with you…

I subscribe to and embrace the philosophies of many groups and organizations on the planet who are either humanitarian or cheerleaders for the planet and its inhabitants. My global concerns are refelected in the Institute of Noetic Science and The Union of Concerned Scientists. I tend to like global thinkers like Carl Sagan, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Edgar Mitchell (and many astronauts,) Gregg Braden, Peter Russel, Brian Green, Brian Swimme, Michael and Rickie Beckwith, Andrew Harvey, the Dalai Lama and others who look through a lens that shows them the view from that place of expansion.

The other day on Frontline, UCS Nuclear Engineer Dave Lochbaum recalled that UCS co-founder Henry Kendall “used to say that you can’t have but one half of a boat sink,” that here on Earth, we are all in it together.

Carl Sagan did a presentation where he used this slide (right.) If you look halfway down the stripe on the far right, you will see a little speck of light. That is the view of earth from the perspective of the Universe. It was taken from Voyager 1 launched in 1990 as it turned from 4 billion miles away and took this photograph. The streaks are just reflected glare from sunlight in the lens.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994 ( The earth photos are new satellite photos from NASA)

Michael Jackson held an expanded view of  the world, the Universe, life and music. You recognize it in him because the capacity lives in you.  Here are a couple more views from expansion– from different visionaries with different approaches saying the same thing as Michael was saying thirty years ago. Meet Gregg Braden and Michael Beckwith with Rickie Byars Beckwith and Faith from Agape.

_____________________________________________________

Addendum to Post:
The Compassion Project from Earth’s Avatar Compassion Team:

© Copyright 2005 Star’s Edge, Inc. Avatar®, ReSurfacing® and Star’s Edge International® are registered trademarks of Star’s Edge, Inc. All rights reserved

There is nothing so potent as an idea whose time has come. There is nothing so powerful as a technology (and perhaps meme) introduced into the world at precisely the time the world needs it. When people are spiritually thirsty, kindness offers them a quenching. When they are hungry, sustenance delivers them and beyond the crisis… it inspires.

In the interest of our continuing dialogue about “Expansion” and as a prelude to more conversation about it, I want to point out something you may not have thought about before. The world can change overnight. Human thinking and human direction can be shifted by a single event. And one person can change the world– or in one case in a story told here– can save it.

The world can change overnight.
That may sound like hyperbole, a huge tale, yarn or fish story, but it’s principally and absolutely true. Destructive trends can be changed; the collective mindset of humanity can be impacted; a danger can be haulted; humanity can turn on a dime; something can become obsolete or human consciousness can be impacted and awakened in an instant. The Hundredth Monkey can catch on; the tipping point can be reached; collective consciousness can reach critical mass; the game changer mental software is downloaded and suddenly… yes, it’s a new game. 

The day is coming when humanity says “I’m on it” and the world says “I got this.” 
“I’ll Be There.”
“Will You Be There?”

 Game changer moments:

• When the offshore drilling platform collapsed and oil spilled into the gulf; overnight the use of fossile fuels to power the future world became obsolete.
• When the tsunami hit Japan, overnight the safety and efficacy of using nuclear power as the best solution to fuel the world came into question
• One incident brought to a peak the growing and barely discernable disgust for tabloid journalism and its practice of phone hacking for headlines and profit. A public enemy was identified.
• One rogue cop (of many isolated but similar incidents) spraying pepper spray captured on camera embodied the abuse of power and authority.
• A space adventure gone awry captured the attention of the whole world as a nation scrambled to bring their astronauts home safely. The whole world held its collective breath during minutes of the communication blackout of re-entry into earth’s atmosphere; that same world let out that collective breath that erupted into a cheer as the Apollo capsule emerged into view.
• One man dragged from the cab of a truck and beaten galvanized a city into action despite its miguided methodology and intent.
• A single terrorist event encapsulated and demonstrated to the world the treacherous effects of religious intolerance.
• One young woman dying in the streets motivated an entire culture and region
• A chance location of a hurricane strike demonstrated to the world racism, classism white privilege and brotherhood all at the same time.
• A mining accident gained the attention of the whole world toward a group of men trapped beneath the earth.
• The chance happening of a natural disaster— an earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, volcano or accident, brings out extraordinary compassion in a race that appears mostly indifferent to the suffering of others of its species.
• A bullet to the head of a beloved congresswoman caused a whole nation to rethink political rhetoric and the violence in words and speech. Her struggle to recover and her courage brought a chamber of mature men and women normally staunch, mostly formal, and occasionally pompous– the American Congress– to tears.
• The death of a princess brought people weeping into the streets all over the world
• The death of a superstar found people both weeping and celebrating his life in the streets and almost crashed the Internet

Overnight!

The ego’s shadow and the consciousness that informs it can be flipped to bright shadow given the opportunity and the perfect moment. So, if you think one person isn’t powerful enough or one person can’t change the world, you are wrong. Some days it takes only one person to save it.

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov: Not On My Watch
The Enemy Who Saved the World

(c) 2010 Reprinted from “Playback: Stories that should be told” at Voices Education Project
(Original story and photos:)  http://voiceseducation.org/content/stanislav-yevgrafovich-petrov-not-my-watch 
contributed by Barbara Kaufmann

The nightly mantra went something like this: “When they do come and I get vaporized, I hope I don’t feel it. If there is no hope and nothing left, then please God, take me and everyone else straight to Heaven.”

The end was only and always, one millisecond away. I was deathly afraid of Russians, the word “Communist” brought shivers while the image of St. Basil’s Cathedral resurrected terror from the heart and bile from the stomach. No one in my generation expected to live past thirty.

If by some miracle I were to live, I vowed: “when I am a grown up, I will do something” because none of the adults were doing anything, and I couldn’t understand how they could let this madness go on. They spoke of the only viable retaliatory military option: “mutually assured destruction.” MAD. Mad? Viable? Not until I was an adult myself and decades into the peace movement as an activist, and in the Sister Cities program with Russians, did I learn just how close we came to doomsday. And ironically, it would be a Russian who would save us.

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Станислав Евграфович Петров) born 1939, and now a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Soviet Air Defense Forces, on September 26, 1983, suspended the madness and saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Petrov was on watch stationed in the Serpukhov-15 secret location near Moscow within the early warning system bunker code-named Oko. The newly inaugurated system signaled the launch of a U.S. Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile which was used for one purpose only—to launch a first strike or immediate counterstrike in case of nuclear alert or launch from an enemy. The Soviet Molnyia, vast elliptical orbiting satellites, were supposed to decrease the likelihood of natural phenomena being mistaken for a launch. However during that midnight Autumn Equinox in 1983, the sun’s reflection on high altitude clouds against the darkness of space mimicked the launch of first one, then later several, U.S. missiles on a trajectory toward the Soviet Union.

It was a particularly volatile time because just three weeks before this incident, the Soviet Air Force had shot down Korean Air Flight 007 with 269 people on board including United States Congressman Larry McDonald and several other Americans. President Reagan had implemented Able Archer 83 Defense System which the Soviets interpreted as an American first strike nuclear plan and policy. Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov was utterly convinced that the American government was planning an all out first strike nuclear attack against the Soviet Union and in anticipation, had implemented a LAW- launch at warning order instead of the usual required confirmation of actual attack. The confirmation would mean that Petrov notify his superiors only after noting the actual radar presence of missiles on the horizon of Soviet Air Space. Waiting for the radar to confirm an actual launch would mean loss of strategic retaliation advantage since waiting for that close range confirmation would lose valuable time for an effective retaliatory launch. Confirmation had been scrapped for the launch at warning dictum.

The LAW in MAD or Launch on Warning in a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario was a dangerous doomsday moment in the world’s close encounter of the third kind—a near third world war. Petrov’s orders were to alert the chain of command to any launch warning. He delayed. His logical reasoning intervened when he considered that a first strike by the U.S. would likely mean the launch of hundreds of missiles simultaneously, not just the few seen on his screen. He speculated, accurately so, that there was a computer error. The MAD doomsday before his very eyes was a reflective illusion.

While the Soviet government assured the world later that one man could not have made a unilateral decision to launch an all-out nuclear war, the climate at that moment most likely would have meant a “go” launch by superiors in immediate retaliation to any reported launch alert. Tensions were measured high and distrust was astronomical in those hot days of the cold war. Hasty and uncalculated actions at that moment in history might have meant the end to life as we know it on this planet.

Accounts vary as to what happened to Petrov as a result of his actions. He was, of course, grilled hard and incessantly by his superiors in an interrogation rivaled only by the KGB, FBI or CIA. He was both praised for his actions and reprimanded for not entering the incident properly in the military diary. He was not rewarded. In fact, had he been publicly recognized and applauded, his superiors would be embarrassed and the scientists behind the program would have been humiliated. For his efforts, he was assigned to a less sensitive post. He took early retirement and suffered a “nervous breakdown.” Analysts speculate that in the hair trigger paranoid climate of that incident, had Petrov reported a missile launch up the chain of command, the superiors with only moments to make a decision would likely have decided to launch. Petrov’s hesitation may have stayed an execution— of all life.

Stanilav Petrov was invited to the United Nations in New York City in May of 2004 where the Association of World Citizens presented him with an award and a trophy for his heroic action or in this case, inaction. The same day the Russian Permanent Mission Federation to the United Nations issued a press release contending that a single individual would be incapable of starting or preventing a nuclear war because of the failsafe procedures within government military protocols. However, Petrov’s role was crucial in making any kind of decision while he says he was just “doing his job.” CBS’s Walter Cronkite conducted an interview with Lt. Colonel Petrov and a documentary has been made of the incident that has yet to be broadcast.

All those Cold War years, the frightening 007 movie From Russia with Love, the radioactive symbols, the constant nuclear drills in schools, the eerie and piercing air raid sirens, the underground bunkers and fallout shelters, and the terror that lived in the children of a whole generation—was because of the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation by the Russians. Yet when the definitive moment came, it was a Russian who said to the death of the world and life as we know it: “Not on my watch;” and became the Soviet enemy and man who saved the world.

———————————————–

It was Anthropologist Margaret Mead who said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

If a few committed citizens can change the world, think what a few million Michael Jackson fans could do.

I do have some ideas and am working toward a launch. But I’d like to hear your ideas- in comments or to revb@innermichael.com

Arundati Roy said: “Not only is a new world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Today is that day. You have the breadth. Are you that breath?

Someone asked me what I thought about expansion in terms of current affairs, of Michael and in going forward. There is a change; I can feel it. The letters I am now getting from fans are much more thoughtful, thought provoking and serious. They are now exploring the spiritual value in their association, their awakened state and whatever their discovery via or with Michael Jackson.

Most are reports of personal growth or exploration as I have invited fans to stay in touch and update me about their progress. When I began Inner Michael, I was a touch point for fans, a confidante, a place to go for support and help and to ask questions. Lots of the questions had an undertone of fear, especially in the beginning. Many wondered what was happening to them. They were puzzled about their own feelings and were groping for understanding why they were so affected by Michael’s death.

I am still getting notes about how Michael Messages are helping. I suspended them after the chakra series and when I got busy but someday I hope to return to them or maybe even reincarnate them in another form.

I have mentioned before that this reaching out to me prompted a few visits to my own spiritual advisor—our associate pastor who identified this as a calling and asked if I would serve. How could I not show up, I asked her? I’ve been in that hurting place myself and my guts too have screamed “why, why, why?” when the world made no sense to me or something or someone I relied on was suddenly gone.

It’s the empty space that is so wrenching. It’s the senselessness of some deaths and the senselessness of human-inflicted tragedy. It’s the mental struggle to wrap your mind around something that is just, well… impossible. I recognized Michael’s death as a spiritual emergency for many, many people and I had just attended seminary for that training the summer before so I was in a unique position to guide people through their grief and to their own understanding.

Spiritual emergencies are nothing to sniff at or laugh at or dismiss as simple “fan idol worship” gone manic and out of control. Many people were in the midst of true spiritual emergency and that portends a shakeup of reality and major life changes. That kind of rattling invites the existential questions: who am I? Why am I here? What’s it all about? What is the meaning of life?

Why do humans have to suffer? Why does tragedy occur? Is there a God? It’s not an easy place to be yet there were some “journalists” or “talking heads” or “pseudo psychologists or arm chair analysts (and even real ones) who chalked it up to hysteria or irrational adolescent-type adoration. That is typical of ignorance—to eschew something you don’t fully know from thoughtful investigation or understand for lack of context. On top of a real crisis, fans were being marginalized or their real grief trivialized by their own culture. Their support system not only dissolved, but ridiculed them or dismissed them as mentally questionable and that grief seemed to be its own betrayal of Michael Jackson’s memory and legacy. The “crazy fans” meme was inadvertently perpetuated and that layered on even more grief.

It was the same kind re-victimization and layered on anguish that I’d often seen with pet owners who were admonished by well meaning friends to “just get over it” or “go get another cat” as if a new ball of fur could replace the old one who was a family member. Or the really troublesome comment many have heard: “good grief, it’s only a dog; get another one for goodness sake.” These are hurtful comments that serve to re-traumatize someone who is already bereft at their loss.

There was a fair amount of infighting among fans who initiated a kind of contest about who could cry over Michael the most or the longest which diminished and distracted from the real grief being felt. It was as if tears were trophies instead of a means to process a loss and invite healing. The healing became more and more difficult as pundits and critics and commentators ‘added insult to injury’ by dismissing Michael or worse, defaming further, his character.

Arguments erupted between “true fans” and “new fans” as if longevity was a measurement for loyalty or the magnitude of the grief. An important truth was overlooked that long term Jackson fans were hit hard by his loss because it was the last straw in a constant series of post event traumas. Long term fans had been through years of defamation and his death brought back not only all of that and the associated memories, but was a poignant reminder of their own helplessness to do anything to change it. They had endured years of this kind of assault on Michael and it was gut wrenching to them each time it happened and it had been going on for decades.

Michael’s loss also represented the end of an era, the loss of something beautiful and innocent, the loss of an opportunity to ever redeem him in the media, the loss of any opportunity for him to actually navigate a comeback and become beloved once again, the loss of any opportunity for vindication during his lifetime. For some, it was the closing chapter of their childhood and growing up years, the milestones marked by the Jackson Five or by Michael as a solo artist.

For some women it was the death of their first crush; for others it was the death of their hero. For many it was the death of the last man on earth who embodied hope now and hope for the future. For some it was the final blow in a world that had become all too cynical where Michael represented the antithesis of that. For long term fans it was the end to the attempt to make it like it once was, or better. Now there was no chance for that.

New fans wrote to ask why the death of this man whom they had never met had affected them so much; some hadn’t ever grieved so deeply for loved ones in the families so they wondered out loud how could a stranger mean so much? How could the death of someone they didn’t know personally and had never met be so hard to navigate, to grieve?

And the talking heads just kept droning on about how senseless and stupid it all was. Many resurrected the tabloid stories and legends that impacted so much of Michael’s life and diminished its, and his, value. They were blissfully unaware of how ignorant and incredibly insensitive they were because they didn’t understand the collective loss. So because they didn’t understand it, they did what human nature does when it doesn’t understand—they ridiculed. Themselves victims of the infected and sick media, they were disconnected from reality yet accused the fans of that very disconnection.  They thought themselves the “official voices” about all things Jackson not realizing that they were perpetuating a myth and a carefully, over time, deliberately constructed caricature that resulted in an incredibly inaccurate meme about a man and real human being. It was as if somehow his celebrity negated his humanity and he was once again, fair game. And it was the protracted “fair game” game itself that was the last unbearable straw for many of them.

Heaped on their grief was the planned Discovery Autopsy program, the ITV Kelvin MacKenzie sophomoric and mean spirited attack on Jackson and by proxy, his children who were claimed ‘better off without him.’ The glaring disconnect between a rampant and insidious epidemic of bullying in the culture and involving media, contemporarily affecting millions of children resulting in suicides, and the bullying of Michael Jackson already decades into it and continuing daily incredulously continued unabated. And the incidents of using Michael Jackson’s name to get attention, sell stories and make accusations indefensible because he was dead added to the deep anguish.

On top of that was the mystery of exactly how he died, the implications of addiction, the unsolved nature of his homicide, the at times flaunted freedom of his killer, and the constant accusations of “crazy” and “delusional” fans, and you have a recipe for taking the breath and the sanity of any reasonable person. Yet is it the general public and many members of the media who are delusional. They are the ones who never investigated, fact checked or looked into the veracity of the caricature or meme; they are the ones who perpetuated the hysterical myth. Yet they were calling the fans “hysterical” and “delusional.” And they are the same ones who see “darkness” as synonymous with “Michael Jackson.”

The irony was glaring and knee deep. It was all reminiscent of the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials or the later lynch mob mentality that killed real people based on a cultural infection and group think hysteria. It was the same kind of marginalization that infected Nazi Germany only the scale is different. But they were seemingly certain it didn’t rise to the level of destroying a race or the humanity of a culture and species, it was only smearing a pop star for sport and profit—something that Michael endured throughout his life. It’s the “only” part that is so very, very wrong and a way to make baseless excuses for bad behavior.

The parallels between Diana, Princess of Wales and Michael Jackson and even Dame Elizabeth Taylor were lost on a media and culture too busy bullying its celebrities and entertaining themselves with a voyeuristic and paternal snooping into private lives so popularized by Rupert Murdoch and the tabloid industry.

Even when Murdoch was taken to task by the British Parliament and Scotland Yard for phone hacking, there was no epiphany about how Murdochian media might have had something to do with Michael Jackson’s notoriety and reputation in his vilification and trial by media. Maybe even his death. There was a disconnect between understanding that the man had a sleep disorder likely induced by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that got progressively worse throughout his life. Nobody seemed to put it together that quite possibly the man couldn’t sleep because he was an innocent man relentlessly vilified and bullied by a hysterical press that behaved like aberrant cheerleaders leading the public in a cheer consisting of a frenzied deluge of projection. They, without realizing it, became tour guides to the practice of heaping humanity’s collective dark shadow onto a man objectified and made into its’ temporary target.

Once an enchanting little boy with the big voice, he went from beloved child star to the most hated and bullied man on earth. He was innocent and the court found him innocent because there was no case. Santa Barbara, an elitist, white and wealthy nearly oceanside town didn’t want a black in the neighborhood. Law enforcement drunk and corrupt with power targeted an innocent man just as they had many non-white and ethnic citizens who tried to settle and do business there. It’s an ugly truth that nobody wants to admit or look into.

And still today, fans deal with a faction of people who are called “haters.” Michael Jackson is a hated target for latent homosexuals who believed him gay and engage in hatefulness toward his fans to distract from their secret attraction and unconscious sexual agenda. They hurl hate speech and accusations about him toward fans. And he is still the target of haters who can’t bear to reveal their own ego’s shadow to themselves so they continue to project it—onto a dead man. Viewed from the outside, it’s pretty sick behavior and a form of sadistic bullying. Projection onto a live person is self treason and harmful enough, but projecting it onto a dead man is probably an working definition for the epitome of “insanity.”

The fans have been through a two year run up to a trial filled with breathless “breaking news” about their hero, with leaks and statements, with resurrected tabloid garbage and unanswered questions about death and who’s involved, about money and conspiracy theories, yet living with unanswered questions and perpetual injustice, the last installment of injustice causing his death.

Michael people are tired but that doesn’t mean they’re not resolute; that doesn’t mean they have lost their passion. The funeral is over. The run up is over. A long awaited trial is over. But the story is not over.

It’s the fans and Jackson admirers who are precisely those who are, because of their experience—strong in the way that Michael was strong—with a strength of character. They have been through the crucible and baptism by fire. They are among the few on this planet who are NOT deluded and not infected by the cultural meme. They know the media and the truth of the media. They are awake in ways that many are still asleep. They are among a minority on this planet who know how it could be, how it should be.  The fans know the seductive power of the dark side and how easily people are conscripted to evil by corruption involving money and power. They understand human weakness in the face of dangling the bait of money, power and the exclusivity of that 15 minutes of fame. They understand how values are corrupted by deliberate seduction with evil or malicious intent.

Michael people understand deeply the cynicism that accompanies “grownup” life. They know the heart of a child intimately and they grieve unconsciously or not for the loss of their own innocence, and collectively for humanity’s. They feel the world’s almost imperceptible turn toward increased indifference and cynicism. They feel an unrest and sense of obligation. They are tired and weary of the battle with an enemy so ephemeral and amorphous as to be practically invisible that is like shadow boxing with a ghost. Shadow is very much a part of their fight, of this fight. And so is a ghost. Not just the ghost of Michael and his legacy but of innocence and dignity lost in the stampede for commerce and feeding the machine, of childlike joy, freedom, creativity and magic… lost on a culture hungry for it and yet starving from their empty plate.

If the world ever desperately needed a Michael Jackson—it needs one now. It needs another one. But there will never be another. If the world ever needed its innocence and dignity and humanity back, it needs it now. Michael gave a whole generation, actually multiple generations—hope. He gave them Joy in his dance, hope in his lyrics, and magic in his work and his presence.

Michael is no longer here. But he has a stand in. An expansion is due and perhaps overdue, an expansion of “fan.” Let’s examine that next, shall we?