Be Small

It's about control. 

I never thought I'd be advocating for some of the issues that I will be in the coming weeks and months ... but I now see, that "Social Engineers" ... and well meaning people who've been brainwashed by them ... are using issues of race, sex, sexuality, gender, and religion to insert fear and division as their way to control.

Yes, it's the same as it's always been... but subtle in its approach because the fear is often married to "niceness." Don't cave to clicks. Don't make the world smaller for another small person. If you slander, label, slur, or be-little anyone, what you're actually doing is making the world smaller for yourself.

QUESTION: Why aren't we focusing our anger on those greedy bastards holding and grabbing all the money instead of calling each other words like, "... bitches, fags, whores, punks, losers ... Lib-weirds, and all the zillion other words we use against our neighbors?

Afraid?

Black Religion: Hurting or Helping Us?

It seems we're at a point where we cannot advance without dealing with "The Spiritual." And no, I am most def NOT talking about religion. (Well ... I'm not recommending it, nor am I advising it.) Spiritual to me is a part of my body and my personal psychology. Take Yoga for instance. If my "life nerve" is tight, then my thinking is also tight... easily angered and reactive.

At my age, I'm forced to reflect that without mainstream Christianity, I would never have gotten sober and remained sane all these years. But I also see the limitations of the Black Church and ask: "If Christianity needs reformation--again, then do I have time to wait on it?"

• I reject the concept of a god that loves Baptist and hates Hindus. (What kind of god is THAT? That sounds more like the guy in the corner market down the street.)
  
  
• I reject the abomination of "Prosperity Christianity" that puts money at the forefront of God... even higher than the necessary concept of learning to love and accept ourselves so that we can love and accept others

• I reject the Christianity of The State ... this vile "religion" that tells us we must now kill Muslims ... because God wants us to have their oil. Naaa... don't sound right partna.
  
  
• The Christianity I got was almost a "Boogie-Man" religion. God wasn't just there to punish me, He didn't want me to think too much and would send me to hell if I took a Yoga class. ("Hmmm... if God created everything ... how come I can only put my money into the plate at the "JUmPin' JiviNg" Church"?)
  
  
• I love Gospel music ... but there's far too much externalization in service. Where's the time to, "Be still and hear my voice"? Meditation isn't owned by anyone. East and Western traditions do it. Jesus was both praying and meditating in the Garden of Gethsemane when they came for Him. And if Jesus is all of God, who was He praying to and why when we are to enter Heaven, are we expected to find Him sitting on the right hand of God The Father?? Bad theology for those who teach it and lazy theology for those who accept it.

To be a "Spiritual Warrior" means to go out beyond the fence line ... out beyond the boundary the "overly religious" warn you to stop. It is there we find the need to have faith because it is there we confront the archetypes of our minds and listen, learn what The Cosmic Christ ... the Great "I Am" is trying to teach us.

I advocate that we shed the limitations of the religion slaves were given by slave owners.
Explore the Eastern philosophies from whence our Western spirituality came from.
Accept yourself fully as you are... shadow and light... made in God's image...
Seek out people and places to guide you to your heart ... your own INNER Light and from there, connect to the One Soul that unites us all.

If "The Garden of Gethsemane was a state of mind ... a state of agony, then I likewise believe that "The Garden of Eden" was also meant to be a state of mind ... of innocence, virtue, and love. I want to spend more time ... "getting back to the Garden" than being lost in lust, pride, greed, envy, anger(fear) and sloth.

It's from here we can begin to rebuild bridges to each others hearts and minds... and begin to climb out of the dark prison that we've been locked in these past 30 years... or more...

Dick Gregory

Dick Gregory may be the only person on the planet right now who I can listen to talk about the current state of racism and oppression in America. It's just too late to discuss being a victim or to pay too much attention to the illusionary, "Oppressor."

If every human being is a spiritual being having a human experience, then being a "victim" ... or a "perpetrator" are merely roles we either choose to play or "attach" to and have difficulty letting go of. (This is only background babble because by now, most folks know this already... at least intellectually, if not emotionally.)

Dick Gregory has worn many hats. Among them being, social activist, comedian, writer, and entrepreneur, grandfather, and spiritual adviser ... but the thread that weaves them all together is that he is a healer. A "social counselor" that tells both the emperor and the field hand that they have no clothes ... that they've forgotten who they are ... and like the father, chides them to the point of awareness that yes, they can and must ... do better.

Please play the video below. Like Dr. Phil, John Bradshaw, and Jesus Christ, I too agree that the burden of unnecessary guilt and shame lie at the heart of America’s ills. I hope you’ll "YouTube" all his videos. He speaks to the healing heart of us all ... black, white, yellow, brown, red … male, female ... et al ...

Moving In Christ

I've reached a point where to continue posting info without including comments about the religious experience I've been going through that brought all this about ... is casing me to pause. I wanted to keep "church and state" separate. But I see now, it won't be easy because God pervades all ... and the devil is very active these days.

Let it suffice to say right now that all the difficulties I've been through in my life has been a result of my forgetting a relationship with God. When we do, God often removes His hand of Grace from us and allows those who love darkness (both human and spirit) to attack us. This has been soooo weird .... but this is a mild description of what happened to me.

But I can now go with confidence ....anywhere ... urban or rural, because I'm aware of the utter necessity of "moving in God's Will" ... not mine~and not man's nor woman's. The new "real" blog will have to have a separate page to document the spiritual calling we who are feeling the call to self-sufficenciy and healthier living through Green farming.

Slow Postings

Black Solutions is preparing to move to a paid site that will:

• Be more secure, and
• Present a deeper level of information

Please bear with us while we make this transition. The process will take a few weeks. It's amazing how fast things are happening once I began exploring and walking towards the JOY of my First Dreams.

My Buddhist landlord helped me with a recent quote from Gandhi:

Don't worry about all the world's problems .... "How will your next step help the poorest person on the planet?"

Mulling over that question creates both great opportunity and great wealth. But the "wealth" is not always monetary ... and when it is, shouldn't such funds be used to take care of the basic needs of you and your family ... and after that, care for those deserving poor who you can help?

[NOTE: You cannot help everyone ... and "everyone" who wants help ... is not "deserving."]

Eco Villages

Great things are occurring in Intentional Community organizations. Many today are looking at building Green and Permaculture planning in their process of creating sustainable living in rural as well as urban and suburban settings.

It's almost as if time spirits from the 60's went to school, experienced all the ups, downs and changes that life can bring, and now armed with "Green Master's Degrees", PhD’s in urban planning, psychology, and agriculture, are coming full cycle to the commune and readjusting their earlier fantasies of Utopia to fit the realities of today's world. Questions remain:

1. Who will watch my back when crime rates rise?
2. Where will I raise my children as predator populations increase?
3. With crack babies now raising meth babies, where will I find a quiet, peaceful place to live?
4. How will I earn a living in rural settings ... and perhaps even "flourish rather than just survive?"

I attest that this is a window of time when the answers to the questions are not only possible, but point to far greater rewards than we even imagine in these current cities of despair.

White American is on the move working in this direction. Why are we still anchored to places where there is little or no money, and where we are dying?

So Much Land To Be Free In

During the Great Depression, many people fled the drought-stricken region that stretched from Nebraska to the Texas panhandle. The struggles of those who stayed are the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Timothy Egan who follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains during the Depression, going from sod huts to new framed houses to basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out.

One of the most powerful and thought provoking aspects of "The Worst Hard Time" is the fact that the Midwest has never recovered from the Dust Bowl exodus. Even to this day, farmers in the Midwest going bust. "All across the Grain Belt stand abandoned homesteads, symbols of untold stories of failure, flight from the land, and even suicide." They leave behing land, farm homes, barns, etc...

Perhaps to entice urban-weary Brits, even the BBC did a story on Mid West Farmers Going Bust. But the Reverse Black Migration Movement is not about trying to become prosperous farmers as much as it is getting out of the way of the insanity and ever increasing cultural doom that life in Urban America is for us. Therefore, land with a farm house and out buildings, electricty, and water already on it is a huge gift just waiting for us. I dream of small Intential Communities of like minded black people with vision seeing this opportunity and sizing it.

A common Buddhist quote is: "Everything Changes." Sadly, what is true for the "American Farmer," may be a good thing for black people seeking to join the "Back To The Land" movement. (Click here for Wikipedia’s write up.)

Heretic or "New Theology"? Bishop Charlton Pearson

Have you ever stood outside... some place where it's hot, and just wished for a breath of fresh air? Well, I just felt one while listening to NPR. It wasn't a great, cool, "Winds of Change"kind of breath ... it was just a faint one ... a small whiff that moved the grass tops just a bit ... so faintly that you could miss it if you weren't paying attention. I'm always talking about why American (and especially Black America) needs to update its theology, knowing that we'll never be a monolythic people, SEVERAL updates ... hell ... newer versions completely are in great need. But I'm getting a head of myself.
The story was about a modern American "Heretic" and "This American Life" began the story with:

"The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson (pictured), an evangelical pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the Reverend, he was denounced by almost all his former supporters, and today his congregation is just a few hundred people. He didn't have an affair. He didn't embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse ... he stopped believing in hell..."

The power of this story is not that the good Revern got himself in trouble by using his God given brain to actually think about his subject ... it was that ... well, it's a viewpoint long overdue.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" goes the old saying. Well, it's obviously broke and the current nation-wide Meth / Crack / OxyContin epidemics prove it. Transpersonal Psychology says that addicion is a spiritual emergency.

In, "Reality Isn't What It Used To Be," Walter Truitt Anderson discusses the strange combination of issues we're currently walking around feeling ... or choosing not to feel. "We still have the same pre-modern Gods, yet we live in a postmodern world and it seems the theologians haven't kept up pace with the Space Age we entered 30 years ago ... let alone define The Divine in our post-modern, alienated, fantasy-fueled, drama ruled dysfunctional world of The New Millennium.

We're still battling with worn out, premodern concepts like:

• "God took my parents" *sniff* (where? ... um ... WHY??)


• God as Santa Claus (i.e. "If I'm a good boy, God will give me a new Mercedes!")


• If Jesus Chist lives only at MY church ... what's going to happen to good old Hapka at work?

So ... what exactly should religion do for us?

• Religion is supposed to help us make sense of our world.


• It's supposed to help us see The Divine increasinly in ourself and in others.


• It should give us the faith we need to be adults. (It's said you can't be a man without faith.)


• It's tasked with providing us with enough strenght to embrace "The Other" ... and the other isn't just the man or woman we hope to marry ... in todays world ... it's pretty damn near every body other than the person walking around in our shoes ... most days...

We obviously have enough guilt and shame. Guilt and shame are the key ingrediants for addiction ... as well as for Mental Illness... so shouldn't we have more guys and gals like Bishop Pearson walking around instead of fearfully nailing him OUT of the chruch ... because ... well ... because he's showing the emperor's lack of clothing ... despite all the money we've been giving so he could buy some?