Can we find any life lessons in the nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan? What do the various components of a possible nuclear meltdown symbolize for us? Other than the apocalyptic doomsayers’ interpretation, there is a positive pearl of wisdom hidden in the symbolism of the situation. The deeper symbolic meaning of fire, water, and earth reveals a hidden lesson we can apply to prevent a global cataclysm; and instead, advance and grow as a world community.

In symbolic language fire represents heat, light, action, and male energy. It is primarily the element humanity has been favoring for the past 5,000 years. Water is fire’s polar opposite. It represents cool, dark, receptive, female energy. It has been primarily repressed for the past 5,000 years. Earth of course is a symbol of life itself in all its aspects as a unified whole of the masculine and feminine forces. Because we are made out of the same ‘stuff’ as earth, we are healthier when we are in balance with earth’s cycles, seasons and rhythms.

Everything in the universe is continually moving toward balance including our body, mind and spirit. We have been out of balance for a very long time because we have been living almost exclusively in a fire element and abusing the water and earth element. Endless wars, pollution air, sea and land, inhumane slaughter of animals and repression of women or the feminine aspect in men and women have brought the planet and humanity to the brink.

Symbolically speaking the nuclear threat of meltdown of overheated fuel rods and reactors (good ‘male’ words) tell us we are at the end of living with an unbalanced fire element. The cooling water element is needed in great abundance to balance the out of control fire element. If the cooling water doesn’t overcome the fiery overheated reactors, the end of many worlds may be the result.

Symbolically speaking, our world as a whole needs the feminine/water element to cool the overheated masculine/fire element before it heats to a point that it can’t be controlled. Over the past thirty plus years we have begun to address the need for the feminine attributes to have a seat at the table in order to bring balance. Men have been able to open up to their feminine aspects, and they have found great relief in being able to express their feelings. They don’t have to implode from overheating like a nuclear reactor without cooling water.

We need the balance of the water/feminine to maintain life. Water always flows to the lowest level. It doesn’t flow up hill. It is the opposite of fire, which seeks the highest level and devours everything in its path. The nuclear crisis is demonstrating what happens when fire and water get out of balance. If civilization continues to live primarily from the fire element it will consume itself. We must realize we are both masculine and feminine. We can adopt the symbolic lesson of this nuclear crisis and apply the water/feminine aspect to squelch the explosive fire/masculine of our personal and public lives.

In order for this change in perspective to occur the perception of the feminine needs to be redefined and elevated to be equal with the masculine. It has been demeaned and discounted. The feminine is not weak and impotent. It is incredibly strong, resilient, wise and measured. It is not impulsive or headstrong. It operates through cooperation, not control. It rests in quiet power, not gregarious loud control. It strives for unconditional love, which is the true power that gives life to all.

Neither the masculine nor the feminine should predominate. They need to be equally on board and working in tandem. It is not ‘either/or’. It is ‘both/and’. All of creation operates on this principle. Mankind has a choice to align with it or not. Hopefully we can choose wisely.

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There is a way to view this and other major catastrophes in order to learn some valuable life lessons. It feels as though everything on earth as well as in earth is being turned inside out. And it is. It is a universal creation pattern of life, death and rebirth. It is occurring constantly. We just don’t see it on such an immense scale as we have in Japan.

Solar flares are increasing affecting the electro-magnetic field on a planetary level as well as on an individual level. All life is electro-magnetic and resonates to the vibrations of the earth as well as the solar system. Our position in the Milky Way Galaxy also affects the electro-magnetic/chemical balance of man and earth. If we live in such a way that we are oblivious to these realities we will feel victimized by earth’s changes, as well as our own individual physical changes. If, on the other hand, we recognize that our bodies and earth are constantly seeking balance of all systems, then we can work with those changes by discerning what areas need to be balanced.

We have earthquakes, physically and emotionally also. I’ve been known to have a couple Mt. Vesuvius volcano experiences as well. Stress builds and builds until the container of all that energy can’t hold it any longer and it lets go. In many instances our explosions cause devastation that can never be repaired, as in Japan. If the stress can be released incrementally over time in a controlled manner, then major disaster can be averted. But when it is continually suppressed and ignored, it festers into crisis.

Earth is demonstrating that powerful pressure held inside must be addressed and brought to the outside before it explodes into unmanageable chaos. We hold fiery anger and resentments within to the point of exploding. It isn’t always visible on the outside, but major adjustments are being made inside and show up as organ failure, cancer, arthritis, etc. Our biography becomes our biology.

The other lesson to be learned from Earth is that nothing can live unless something else dies. We stay alive by eating life. Without the life giving food from Earth’s body we wouldn’t exist. Everything is moving in cycles of life, death and rebirth. In reality nothing is actually dying, or ceasing to exist. Energy cannot die. It just changes form. So the food we eat dies to its current form to become reborn as living tissue and blood in our bodies. Plants give us oxygen so we can live, and we expel carbon dioxide so they can live. What is death to us is life to them.

Earth has demonstrated to us that it is a living planet with fiery magma inside that erupts to create continents for human, plant and animal life to inhabit. We know which parts of her surface are likely to shift in earthquakes or volcanoes so we can choose to avoid them. The process of life, death, rebirth isn’t going to change just because we want it to or think it should.

Unlike plant life human beings choose how and where to live. We fall into hubris by thinking because we are special these types of disasters won’t happen to us. Or we simply act like the ostrich and put our head in the sand. The wiser choice is to acknowledge the universal process going on inside Earth and ourselves so we can flow with it instead of against it.

Living inside out incrementally is best. We prevent major upheavals by transforming negative energy to positive energy as it rises up within us. It may seem dark and deadly, but it holds the stuff of life within it. The old must die to birth the new.

This is how we sabotage ourselves when we buy into the illusion that we are broken and need to do ‘x, y, z’ to fix ourselves. All of Madison Avenue thrives on convincing us we are deficient and need their plan or product in order to be accepted, loved, successful or just plain alive. It is all an evil scheme based on the paradigm of “Problem – Reaction- Solution’.

Problem: “You are in danger of losing_______ if you don’t do, get or have _________.” Reaction: You believe the problem is real and that the one(s) telling you about the ominous problem have the solution. Solution: You react the way ‘they’ want you to by signing on to their program, product or belief system.

The reason the ‘problem, reaction, solution’ works so well is because we are such a shame-based world. We have become like sheep that desperately need a shepherd to tell us where to go and what to do, because we don’t believe we have the wisdom within us. It has been shamed out of us over millennia. (So don’t get ashamed by this fact!) It’s not our fault, or our parent’s fault or their parent’s fault. It’s just the way it’s been forever.

But now is a different time. I think we all feel that we are embarking on a new awareness of how Life works and what our place in the Universe is. We don’t need to buy into the Matrix slave mind set unless we want to remain irresponsible children. The new awareness requires we own our good traits and our ‘bad’ ones. We all have a little of both. If we don’t acknowledge our ‘bad’ or shadow side we are doomed to act it out and become a victim of it.

It is our unacknowledged shadow that buys into the problem –reaction- solution hype and lures us into giving our power away to authority figures that don’t have our best interests at heart. It is the part of us that says, “The devil made me do it”. If you detest prideful people, your shadow is prideful, but it is hiding from you in the darkness. You cover it with appearing humble or selfless, deceiving even yourself that you could be prideful. But until we all can acknowledge these shadow parts of us and then accept them, we are destined to act them out. They leak out in crooked ways and embarrass us at the worst possible times.

An example of this phenomenon is Elliot Spitzer of New York who hated prostitution and warred against it, only to be found hiring prostitutes himself; thus ruining his career. Rush Limbaugh railed against people addicted to drugs and then ended up a drug addict in rehab himself. Ted Haggard, head of a national evangelical religious organization that preaches against homosexuality was found to have had relations with several men, ending his reign as a religious leader.

Thankfully, none of us will go down in flames as these men did because of our hidden shadow side, but we will create havoc in our world to the degree we don’t come to terms with it. We must admit we all have one. It got installed in childhood by parents and teachers who told us we were selfish, too hyper, too _______; or, we were abused, neglected or brainwashed in shame based religions.

To be loved and accepted we created a persona that was the opposite of those ‘bad’ things and then we pretended that we no longer even had them anymore. But it was the negative part of our selfishness that pushed us to develop a more selfless, caring nature. We need both or we will won’t take care ourselves. You meet those self-sacrificing types all the time, and you want to strangle them! This is our shadow martyr side peeking out. So we learn to accept it, even appreciate it, so we can be selfless without a hook to it. We can give without strings attached.

Whatever we refuse to acknowledge in ourselves will lie in wait to devour us at the worst possible moment. Therefore, give yourself a present this New Year instead of a vacuous resolution. Get acquainted with your shadow and let it teach you how you can love and accept every part of you, regardless of what Madison Avenue tells you you’re missing.

Science, through the Human Genome Project, has recently discovered that our genes don’t control our physical and behavioral traits. This new discovery is akin to the discovery of fire! Up until now the old theory of genetic determinism imprisoned us into believing we were weak, frail victims of our heredity. “If mom died at 50, I probably will too.” Or, “My whole family is fat so I guess I just inherited those “fat genes”.

The new science called Epigenetics means “above” (epi) genetics. And “above” they went. They learned we don’t have very many more genes than lowly animals. What then accounts for the increased complexity of humans if not the genes? What influences whether or not you die at 50 like your mom or are fat like uncle George? The answer will shock you because it shocked the scientists.

First of all they discovered the nucleus wasn’t the brain of the cell that determined the health and nature of that cell. Rather, the cell’s brain was in its membrane. This is akin to the discovery of the wheel! Healthy cells in a Petri dish placed next to a dish of sick, toxic cells became toxic. They weren’t physically intermingled. It was strictly environmental influence. In cloning research, they discovered by placing neutral cells next to a dish of liver cells, the neutral cells became liver cells! The stimulus from the surrounding environment determined cell identity and not the genes.

In humans the emotions are the stimuli for our cells. Our thoughts via the brain create the emotions in our bodies. Emotions of love joy and peace build healthy cells and strengthen our immune system. Conversely the opposite emotions over time tear down the cells and weaken the immune system.

At this major crossroads as a civilization we are being gifted with this wisdom to enable us to abort a destructive mission of humanity and our planet. Our ancient ancestors knew all this viscerally of course. In our pride and arrogance we dismissed their knowledge as either too primitive, pagan or New Age woo-woo. But now we can accept it because science has proven it in the laboratory. Whee! However, on the flip side, we also have learned how some ancient civilizations destroyed themselves because they chose selfish power over selfless cooperation. They became like cancer cells that greedily take over the whole organism until they kill it. (Sounds like large corporation cells).

All of Nature including humans grow and increase on this principle of creation through cooperation. It is not survival of the fittest as Darwin proposed. It appeared that way on the surface, but upon closer examination, and with advanced technology, we now know that isn’t how life works. We must abandon all beliefs based on this violent non-cooperative model.
We must avoid horrific apocalyptic movies and books that scare the life out of us because they transform our healthy cells to toxic cells. Besides, apocalypse simply means “change”, not annihilation. The Mayan prophesy about 12/21/2012 does not say the world as a planet will cease to be. It says “business as usual” will cease because a change is happening to consciousness in all of creation. We are even seeing U-Tube videos of animals who are normally enemies playing together. Could this be a fulfillment of Isaiah 11:6 that foretell the new Heaven and the New Earth?
The implications of these new discoveries as to how life works are staggering and put us in the driver’s seat instead of the trunk. Each of us is a mini-world. We are each a self-contained universe with 50 trillion cells in one body. Most every cell has its own nervous, digestive, respiratory, musculoskeletal, reproductive, and immune system!
Imagine each of us creating an environment of peace and cooperation; joining with other like-minded souls to create a tsunami to cleanse all toxic cells from the Earth. Can we do it in time? Let’s start today.
NOTE: Information for this article is from a new book Spontaneous Evolution, Our Positive Future (and a way to get there from here) by Bruce H. Lipton and Steve Bhaerman, aka Swami Beyondananda

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We have been programmed since early childhood to think and act in certain ways. We go along with this program to avoid hassles, confrontations and conflict. We are unaware of the cost we are paying for this artificial comfort zone. We don’t realize that every emotion is stored in our body. Our subconscious mind records and stores every thought and emotion forever. If that thought and/or emotion is in harmony with our core intention it enhances our mood, our health and our environment.

However, if it is out of alignment, or just downright toxic, it tears down our cell structures, dampens our mood and contaminates our environment. Since we don’t observe this destruction at the moment it is occurring, we don’t connect the dots. But then a few days later, we get sick, have an accident, or fight with a loved one, etc. What we think are our good intentions are backfiring. We don’t realize we aren’t acting from our true intentions.

No one ever taught us that our very first priority in life was to know ourselves and set our intentions to live in integrity to that inner wisdom. We are all unique, magnificent creations with equally unique gifts to give the world, but most of us die with our song still in us. Our educational systems are geared to conformity with a single standard for all. We weren’t encouraged to be rugged individualists growing up. After all, they are much harder to manage and control.

But now as more and more information is being discovered as to how the mind and body work, and how we can access our subconscious mind; we have some tools to rewrite our powerless conformity programs and come into alignment with our true intention for our life. Knowledge is power. Knowing you are not your programs is the first step to breaking free of them. We each need to know our unique purpose for being here. Without a vision the people perish, Proverbs states. We can see ourselves and others perishing from lack of purposeful intention.

Intention clears our vision. It enables us to see what action to take that will be in alignment with our purpose in life. When confronted with a conflict, we can ask ourselves what our core intention for the situation is. Then we can act in a way that will lead to a resolution that is in harmony with that intention.

For example, if two friends have a fight, but the core intention of each one is to retain and nurture the relationship, then they will be able to find an agreeable resolution. However, if one doesn’t intend in their heart to keep the relationship; then no amount of negotiations, capitulations or apologies will work. Intention is the glue that keeps us together.

Intention is based on truth because it resides in the heart. Our mind may convince us we intend one thing, but we find ourselves doing another. We must be willing to examine our heart for the truth about ourselves in order to know ourselves. It is the intention of our heart to love ourselves because that is the only way we can ever love another. It is the intention our heart to do what is the right thing in every situation based on the Law of Love.

Every time we catch ourselves in unloving, disrespectful thoughts about ourselves or another, we know instantly we are out of alignment with our core intention to live from our heart with love. In that moment we can choose a different thought and be true to ourselves. Our unique purpose and accompanying gifts will emerge and blossom as we clear out and delete the corrupting programming. Then we can know first-hand the power of intention.

I think that human beings were created to grow and mature into compassionate creators like the Creator. This would be the highest calling. But upon observation of the world stage and its seven billion players, it doesn’t appear we have progressed past the first act.

What has gone wrong? How did we digress or devolve into such a sorry state of criticism, judgment and condemnation? We use our precious gift of language to bludgeon each other. We have had visitations of magnificent men and women demonstrating what a enlightened human looks like. They all said they weren’t the exception, but rather the example of what we all could be. Unfortunately, the masses managed to totally discredit them and/or murder them. But they did leave a blue print of what the human being could grow into.

These master teachers taught that our Truth meter was our heart. It remains connected to the Life Source and guides us to the higher calling throughout our lives. However, it gets drowned out by fears, cares and sorrows that sink deep roots when we are just very young children. We then build hard, dense walls around our hurt feelings and traumas and vowing to never have anyone penetrate our protective barriers.

Unfortunately, walls may keep some of the fears and sorrows out, but they also keep out love and joy in the process. The fear stunts our growth, makes us insecure and causes our world to resemble a kindergarten playground scene. Adults and rules are absent, which causes even more fear and a stronger desire to build bigger, thicker walls. So many are encased behind walls it seems natural and we don’t realize we’re not free.

We’ve forgotten the master teachers told us to be like them, so we no longer bother to compare our behavior to them. If we did, we might just wake up and realize we are more like the Prodigal Son in the pig pen. It is only when one acknowledges they are bottomed out and need help that they can begin a restoration.

However, it is very difficult to aspire to the higher calling of being fully humane when all around us our leaders are acting like five-year olds slinging mud at each other every day. Many of us probably feel we are a few steps higher on the ladder than they are. Plus, we are being fed to fear “them” 24/7 (including even our neighbors). They are encouraging us to take on a more radical “us vs. them” mentality. Divide and conquer seems to the goal here. But who is the unnamed conqueror behind the curtain pulling these levers? Good question!

Since we as individuals are cut off from our heart intelligence that would neutralize these assaults of fear mongering and mud-slinging, we get demoralized by it all, energy drained and anxious to hide at home and indulge some form of “numb out”. But we must not give in to these lethargic fatalistic urges. We DO have a higher calling. We ARE meant to be unique, magnificent creatures joyously creating beauty that inspire one another. Our hearts resonate to that beauty and truth always.

Many wise men and women today are advising us to turn off the T.V., stop reading the internet feeds of fear and terror, and get into the beautiful outdoors, breathe deeply and rediscover your Self. Fall deeply in love with that higher Self that knows unconditional love, true compassion, cooperation and peace. Then, after you’ve had a good fill up, go back out onto the world playground and speak your Truth. Refuse to cooperate with injustice. We can know in our hearts what ‘Right’ is and apply it in love. If many of us awaken out of the trance, we can tear down the walls that separate us and free ourselves from our prisons of fear, angst and apathy. Then we have a chance to bring some order to the playground and grow up. It is our Higher Calling after all.

However, like anything else, human beings tend to only play on the extreme ends of everything. (See? I just did it in this sentence) Well, the same is true of how we perceive independence and dependence. We’re either free willed powerful individuals or we’re weak, indecisive parts of a herd. This way of thinking is polarizing and destructive. We are currently experiencing that destruction on many levels in real time.

When our ancestors fought for independence from England they mustered courage to overturn the tyranny of taxation without representation. But our history books don’t often explore the dependence the brave men and women had on their deep inner knowing of Truth. That Truth was the real fuel for the fire of revolution to create a union of free souls regardless of their blood lines. Another revolution was needed one hundred years later to include all souls under that banner regardless of race or creed.

Without the inner dependence on eternal, universal truths the independence cannot hold up. This is true on an individual level as well as a national or world-wide level. The independence is an expression of the surrender to the greater force at the core or center. Much like a wheel cannot exist without connection to the strong center. We are dependent on the center to function.

As Gandhi and Christ and others taught, we grow from the inside out. We must BE the change we want to see in our own lives as well as the lives of others. Unless we deeply surrender to the process of examining our own motives and intentions, we are destined to go into the fray exposed in our most vulnerable areas. Dependence in this sense is humility. We are aware that we are all a work in progress. No one is perfect. We evaluate others on the basis of their inner intentions as we perceive them to be.

All this evaluating of ourselves and others takes work and it takes time. It cannot be done on a surface level with sound bytes. One cannot formulate a life-changing philosophy on Twitter! If we are lazy and we let the core of our wheel deteriorate, the outer rim will not hold. We must wake up and realize that the core needs attention. We must become dependent on our inner knowing and being that holds and safeguards the eternal truths.

We live in an extremely distracting culture; and, it is only going to become more so. We cannot wait until circumstances are ideal so we can contemplate these bigger ideas of why we are here and what it’s all about. We are going to have to go within and mine the gold in the midst of this Warring blender we’re swirling around in. We start by just being aware that the Truth exists in our hearts or our gut, if you will. Then we make the time to tune into it and really listen.

We can draft our own Declaration of Dependence. We promise to trust, honor and obey our inner voice. It is vital to know that the Truth operates by Love. If one’s inner voice is not in alignment with love and justice then more drilling down is needed. Our small ego-self is very adept at masquerading as Truth and Love, but one can always find the self-serving motive if they look hard enough.

America just celebrated Independence Day with much fan fare, fireworks and accolades to the warrior nation we are. We have that end of the spectrum down well. We could use more of the opposite end of the spectrum in the years to come.

Can we as individuals and as a nation admit that we don’t know it all? Can we admit we need to ask ourselves some hard questions? Can we admit we need to recognize we are all brothers and sisters on one beautiful planet on which we are totally dependent for our lives? I sure hope so.

We may chuckle at that quote, but most of us are live our lives from that stance. We don’t want to extend credit (or trust) to anyone unless they have proven to us that they will perform according to our conditions. They must earn our trust first.

But there is something inherently wrong with this paradigm, because no one has a written list of what qualifies one to be trustworthy. It’s pretty much a guessing game with very bad odds. Many times we ourselves don’t know specifically what we expect from others in order to trust them. We’re acting on automatic pilot when it comes to trust.

We react to others based on what we experienced as young children. If we were hurt, disappointed, betrayed, we will quite naturally be guarded adults and withhold trusting from others until they earn it. But no matter how many tests we put others through; they seem to eventually fail our “trust test”.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” We trust them to love us warts and all. We inherently understand that it is impossible to love someone you don’t trust. Without trust our fears and suspicions of others lead us to treat others as though they are guilty until proven innocent.

Developing trust is an inside individual job. We can only trust others to the degree we trust ourselves. At first we may think that we trust ourselves implicitly. But if we dig a little deeper we soon discover that we betray ourselves all the time. We break promises to ourselves. We let others violate our boundaries of self-respect and stuff our hurt feelings. Then we wonder why our immune system doesn’t work or we’ve just gained forty pounds to shield us from hurt.

Trust is linked to truth. If we are brutally honest with ourselves, honor our promises to ourselves, and forgive ourselves when we blow it; we will find ourselves willing and able to trust others. We trust others to the degree we trust ourselves. We love others to the degree we love ourselves. We cannot give what we don’t have. We can’t offer others water from our well if it is dry.

Naturally, no one is expecting that we would trust someone who has repeatedly done us harm. Nor would we trust someone who has proven by their actions that they have no conscience. That would be insane. But we are required to be wise judges so we don’t go as lambs to the slaughter.

The ability to discern the truth about ourselves or another is a God-given gift we all possess. Most of us haven’t opened it yet! However, we all have felt its presence within, but chose to ignore it or override it. It is that “gut shot” or heart knowing that rises up and says, “Pay attention here. This is important”. At this point we have a choice to either listen or turn off that inner voice.

None of us relishes going within and uncovering our inner demons of fear and selfishness, etc. But until we do, we will continue to project our fears outside ourselves onto others and distrust them. All of us are making silly mistakes every day, disappointing ourselves and others; and yet, we also do many loving, extraordinary things every day. Which aspect do we choose to focus on? Usually it is the negative one. We use this to judge ourselves and others…hence no trust…no love.

The key word here is ‘choose’. We are always at choice – only 100% of the time. No one can think your thoughts but you. No one can control your thoughts but you. You are 100% responsible for what you think. Albert Einstein said that happiness in life depends whether you think we live in a hostile universe or a friendly one. This is the bottom line, because if one believes it is hostile then they will be living in fear and not love, unable to trust others.

If we trust that ultimately we are safe, loved and in the care of a benevolent Creator, we can afford to make the choice to trust. And that will make all the difference.

The colorful Magic Bus tour starts at Union Square. It features 3D screens that periodically drop over the windows describing all the amazing and horrific events of 1967 which birthed the revolutionary summer of love. Glimpses of the city today – when the screens aren’t covering the windows – view Chinatown, the Haight, North Beach, the Financial District, Golden Gate Park’s Conservatory of Flowers ending back at Union Square.

In the process of revisiting the summer of love and all the emotions that it spawned, I was struck by how similar the summer of 2010 is to 1967. We currently are devastated by the greed, deception, fraud, unjust wars, etc., just as the youth were in the 60’s. Many then tried to make their voices heard by the establishment, but their cries fell on deaf ears and closed minds. Society was polarized. The 40-somethings were fighting to keep the ‘50’s materialistic Pleasantville mindset. It was pleasant on the surface only. Underneath it was inauthentic and toxic. Young people smelled it and rebelled.

All our young leaders who stood up for truth were killed. Despair was numbed by drugs, which eventually destroyed the benevolent mood of the summer of love and its inherent message. The movement had begun with the slogan “Make Love, Not War”. It championed the brotherhood of man, the unity of all under a banner of love with flowers as the symbol of a loving Universe. The ideas were magnificent obsessions, but were crushed as easily as flowers underfoot.

Unlike flowers, however, the everlasting gospel of Truth and Beauty cannot be crushed out of existence. It is still alive and can grow and even thrive if we awaken to hear the music. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. It wasn’t quite here yet in 1967, but it is here now in 2010. The planets are aligned and monumental changes are indeed occurring. The wind of change is more at our back now than it was in the ‘60’s. They were the lead wagon exploring a whole new consciousness on a mass scale. After 43 years we have had time to marinate in it, and it has changed the structure of our culture.

Many of the hippies that were literally “on the bus” in 1967 in San Francisco are alive and well and filling the part of mentors or sages for the awakened youth of today who are not willing to stand aside and see greedy criminals steal our country, our culture and our planet. Act II of the Summer of Love is the real deal. It is LOVE in all caps as an action verb. It is non-violence Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. style. It is awake and conscious and includes everyone from age 9 to 90.

What we have learned in forty three years is that talk is cheap. No one remembers what we say, but they never forget how we make them feel. Therefore, to effect a transformation of the world, we each have to be the change we want to see in the world. Then our very presence can lift others because we will be lighter and more loving. It isn’t what we are doing as much as it is who we are being.

In the ‘60’s many of us were running away from the realities confronting us from every direction. In the 21st century we need to be running toward reality, armed with truth and wisdom overlaid with compassion. There is strength in numbers; and therefore, it is imperative that we join and cooperate with others who share the vision.

If we make LOVE our driving creative force and the ultimate measuring stick of our progress, we can fulfill the promise of the ‘60’s. Let’s get “on the bus” and make love, not war.

Note: You may contact The Magic Bus for weekend rides throughout the summer in San Francisco, Union Square at www.antenna-theater.org

Taking the initiative, acting positively with intention is the way we move forward as individuals and a society. When we go unconsciousness and just react all the time, we stunt our emotional and spiritual growth. We can see this happening in real time right before our eyes. Polarized camps are facing off against each other everyday, yelling platitudes at each other. No one is progressing or learning anything.

The irony is that without the mass media, we would probably discover that most of us are on the same page when it comes to many issues that face us today. We want to have peace and security for our families, and the opportunity to support ourselves comfortably. But we get all agitated and inflamed when we absorb stories of strife from all over the world. It’s okay to stop listening to the avalanche of horrible news stories that we can do nothing about.

By eliminating the negative onslaught of reactive reporting we will have time and energy for positive input. This is where Yogi Wisdom can help us. Something simple on the end of a tea bag can be profound. Here are some priceless gems to ponder:

“When we practice listening, we become intuitive.” How wise is that? Listening is a lost art in our fast paced world overloaded with distractions. But if each of us made it a point to listen more than we speak each day and truly hear others, our whole world would shift.

In addition, Yogi says, “When we practice listening, we become intuitive.” Amazing, isn’t it? We all want to be intuitive and have super insight into baffling situations. But we must “Let our hearts speak to other hearts”. (another Yogi proverb) By doing this we would be able to understand one another. Think of what a world it could be if we took these Yogi wisdom sayings to heart:

“When ego is lost, limit is lost.”
“Love has no fear and no vengeance.”
“The mind is energy; regulate it.”
“Compassion has no limit…Kindness no enemy.”
“Life is a flow of love, your participation is requested.”

These speak for themselves and don’t need commentary. However, if we don’t meditate on the truths these proverbs provide we can slide into unconscious brutish behavior. If that continues too long, we stand a good chance of destroying ourselves as well as our planet. Violence in thought, word and deed begets more violence. Wars have never solved anything, but we don’t seem to learn this fact. Wars, fighting, and disrespectful arguing only fuels hatred and fear. As individuals we can’t do much to stop world conflict, but we do control our own neck of the woods.

Our influence in this world is limited to the people we can listen to heart to heart and see face to face. If we are doing that on a daily basis, we would have a city and country full of well adjusted, happy, productive people. That may sound outrageous, but I am convinced it’s true.

The last quote above about life being a flow of love; and your participation is requested is the focal point. If we want to be in the flow of love, we must listen to each other with compassion. We must try to hear what they are saying as if we were in their shoes, so to speak. Otherwise you can’t know what a friend or colleague is communicating.

Back in the day when actual debate was in vogue, diverse opinions were able to be thoroughly examined. People were able to make informed intelligent decisions about the issues. We need to attempt to resurrect a respectful debate climate in order to move forward as a society.

Ninety-nine percent of the time when people really listen and communicate with each other, they find agreement and solutions to their differences of opinions. The destructive habit of reaction leading to violence is eradicated. Let’s take a wise action and have a Yogi Tea Party instead.