ed conley's Blog

They stole our story

Ed Conley — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:34:50 EDT

If you want inspiring history everyday listen to Tom Hartmann on Air America from 12-3 p.m. I've read a number of his books, which are both spiritual and socially practical as they educate for enlightened action. But his radio program is a pulpit for democracy and freedom. Today he was describing our at the beginning of the Conservative Movement our American story was stolen.

Through think tanks and manipulation of the news flow, Conservatives changed our idea of government from being us to being an evil them. And then we began to think of the wealthy as being noble and the poor being lazy. Next we found ourselves divided into two warring camps with one side having God on its side and the other in league with the Devil. They stole our story of who we are.

Hartmann points out that America is the only country founded on an idea of freedom instead of a genetically linked people, like the French or Swedes. The Conservatives realized that whomever controls the story of us controls us, so they stole our idea of who we are and changed it into who we are not.

Obama is giving us back our story. Our story is that we are greater than we think we are. Our story is that we are one people, not two parties. Our story is that we are all in this together.

Ferry to Nowhere

Ed Conley — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:04:53 EDT

The Palin phenomena came in with a metaphor, The Bridge to Nowhere, and it may serve a double purpose, standing for the whole conservative party as we finally cross the waters it promised to carry us over. All political parties promise some salvation of sorts. A better metaphor might be a Ferry to Nowhere. What has happened is that we as a people are realizing that the conservative movement has been just that, a ferry that never docked. We've just been going back and forth over the river of time tooting the same horn, listening to the same pundants entertain us, and watching reruns of how good it's going to be when we arrive.
But the water suddenly got rough, and people began to throw up over the sides. Are we ever going to arrive, we began to ask?
And there on the water came this guy called Obama. He just stood there and looked at us turning green and holding onto the rail. How could he do that? He laughed. "Look," he said. "There is no water." And he danced a little to demonstrate that his feet weren't wet. We all ran to the side of the ship to look. "Oh, and another thing," he added. "There is no ferry or savior. You have to actually walk to the other side." He did a little walking motion to show how easy it was.
We looked at each other and a strange look came over our faces, almost a smile of sheepish recognition like when you are caught redhanded pulling the wool over your eyes. Then the ferry and the conservative movement just disappeared. Suddenly, we were now here.

Train wreck therapy

Ed Conley — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 11:22:02 EDT

We all know from personal experience, either our own or our friends and family, that disasters have a hidden positive side. They tend to wake us up. We humans like to set up our life like a toy train set with everything running smoothly here and there picking up pleasures and dropping off pains.
Here at Bevell's Hardware in Blackstone the mother of all train sets is laid out each Christmas season taking up a quarter of the store, and people come for miles to stand and watch the trains weaving through the various stops of small town life. But no matter how big or elaborate the train set it still goes in circles within a boundary that has no horizon. When train wrecks come, and they always do, we have to reach in and put the train back on its track.
When it comes to us humans and our little train sets of the mind, it is only when disaster comes that we have the opportunity to realize that we have been living within a contracted world where life goes in circles and sleeps in the illusion that every situation is a new event while in reality it is just a new form of yesterday. So any kind of shock is good when it comes to waking up from this dream of toy trains and small towns of familiar pleasures and shared pains.
Our nation is going through a shock therapy right now with the wreck of the financial train, and the government like a good train master is reaching in to put the trains back on their track. But this is also a time to realize that these wrecks are recurring disasters that have to do not with the tracks but our outdated train set. Our train layout is too small for the expanded global world of nations now. We have to lay an expanded vision of ourselves, one that is in harmony with the real world. The question at the voting booth this year is simple. Can the train master who's world view created our current train set have the wisdom to see a greater vision, or do we need a new train master, one who already has an expanded vision of who we are and can be?

The myth of the Western Savior

Ed Conley — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:58:30 EDT

I think we Democrats fail to realize the power of identity politics and the misplaced hope and need for a savior. Both Reagan and Bush came into our national town on a horse from the West with guns blazing and a Dirty Harry zeal to bring justice to our morally degenerate society that has fallen prey to evil doers, namely the government at home and commies (Reagan) and terrorists (Bush). With the marriage of the Evangelical belief in the coming of a savior in history to save the chosen tribe (namely them) and the politician of power, you have a populace (hopefully a dwindling segment) that waits with their lanterns held high for the first sign of the coming savior. In a world where myth and reality reinforce each other, facts carry little weight because facts get magnetized to fit the mythic story. Saying Palin and Bush are empty suits means nothing because in the Evangelical mind they are already empty illusions of their dream of the coming savior who is going to take human form. They even mocked Obama as being that savior to the deluded liberal masses, not realizing that they we looking at a mirror image of themselves.
The Evangelical mind has confused the Holy Spirit with excitement, and they need a constant tide of incoming wave of excitement to exist. Without excitement they run the risk of falling into the hollowness of their myth. So like a bigger and bigger balloon they have to keep pumping themselves up with a new excitement. The bigger the balloon, the greater the Holy Spirit they tell each other. So in all the policies that they adhere to expansion is good because expansion is increasing the size of their church/nation and reassures them that their suit is not empty. Like a hot air balloon, they can't afford to stop heating the air with excitement.
When the Republican Party turns to its base, it is turning to its excitement engine. But to start that engine it needs symbols of the savior, and we can see them trying to fit that western costume with its gun belts on Palin. She is being portrayed as Durga, the Hindu angry Goddess who comes in and slays the demons that have taken our nation hostage although they don't dare put a red bindu between her eyes. No, the target is the Liberals who have been long time demonized as the forces of Satan in the Evangelical myth. But what is really interesting is that McCain/Palin are now turning on Republicans as being the demons. They are trying to position themselves outside the myth where Republicans were always on God's side.
If you dream of the coming savior, you also have to dream that you need saving from some external force that has corrupted your world. In the Evangelical mind the world is at war for eternity, but there is a dual way of looking at this war. On one hand, salvation comes after death if you have been good. On the other hand, salvation comes in history if you have been good. And being good, of course, is defined by the myth. You are good if you are the right side of goodness. But this goodness needs badness for its own existence. The Evangelical goodness is defined by its current evil of the day, and when one evil goes, guess what, another one pops up. And with each evil, one needs a new savior. Ah, Republicans forever.
The only way to defeat a myth like this is to (1) see the myth as being not real, a dream of the mind; (2) and when the Republican machine attacks you (Obama), don't attack the attacker, attack out the myth. One attacks the dream, not the dreamer. For the dreamer to awake from his sleep, he cannot feel that he is being personally attacked because that just strengthens the dream. You are in the dream with him as his foil, and the stronger his enemy gets, the stronger he (his savior/identity) gets.
One must engage the dreamer without playing the rules of the dreamer's dream. And the field for this battle must be compassion. Just as Christ had compassion for those that were lost in their myth and crucified him, we have to have compassion for our fellow countrymen who are asleep in their myth. Compassion is the only sign we have that we are not also dreaming the dream of the Liberal who is going to save the world. Saviors only exist in myth. Only those who are awake can save themselves, and, here's the great paradox of the human mind: if you are awake, you don't need saving.

Don't marry your cousin

Ed Conley — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:49:29 EDT

One of the huge complaints in both the black and white community concerning education of black youth is their culture of anti-intellectualism. If a black kid, especially a black male in the average high school tries to achieve academic success he is branded as being "not like us."
So now we have half the country filled with "Joe six-packs and Sarah six-packs" who vote for people just like them, anti-intellectual, resentful of the educated and elites, and fearful of those with brown skins.
We have the black culture shooting itself in the foot by closing its doors to transcendence, and we have the white Americans doing the same thing when they identify with a candidate solely because he or she is "just like them."
No species survives by mating with its own family. Truth and liberation from the past can only come from outside your boundaries.

The Medium is the Message

Ed Conley — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:14:00 EDT

If McCain wins this election we will have seen our shadow and have four, eight, maybe twelve more years of winter where fear instead of hope, where image instead of substance dominates our political discourse—if you can call it that after what is happening. When lies work, we are in for trouble. Not only do we elect a president who has no integrity, but we will insulate ourselves from the global realities that are changing the world by worrying about our guns and abortion and our small town values. The powers of darkness will be empowered if McCain wins because in politics you do what works if power is your only goal. If winning is everything, then everything is OK.
Obama appeals to our higher nature and this election is a test to see if we can respond to our higher nature. Or have we been consumerized by media advertizing for so many decandes now that our discrimitation is functionally dead? Can we see behind the image? Can we see what the ad is trying to sell? Can we figues our when we are being manipulated? If not, then we are surely dead, just clones, just consumer robots running to the latest special to buy what we don't need because we've been frightened into not having it. The American dream will be just that, a dream.
While issues are important, but what this election really comes down to is our national future, and without being awake and aware we have no future; we only have more of the past. As China grows to super power status, and Russia gets pissed at our manipulation diplomacy, and terrorist lurk in the shadows of our collective mind, and we are addicted to foreign oil and foreign banks own our assets we worry about gun laws and reproduction. This is a collective neurosis.
But these are just code words for control. We are afraid of the changing world and that fear makes us susceptable to propaganda that uses symbols of control. This is a false control that leaves us only imagining that we have control of our destiny. The more our fear is stoked, the more easily we are herded into the slaughter house of our reason.
This is not only a time to vote; this is a time to wake up.

The Propaganda of Power

Ed Conley — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:10:36 EDT

What is this election really about? As a 25-year resident of Southside Virginia I’ve seen campaigns come and go and they all seem to come down to our guns and local control vs. outsiders who want to destroy our way of life by first taking away our guns. What this election is really about is fear vs. trying something different to solve our growing national and local problems.
We have reached the place in history where America’s decline is as evident as global warming, and in the pit of our stomachs we know we need to change our course of the last 40 years where war in it various forms have dominated our minds and policies. The call is out that now is the time for Americans to cooperate with nature, with other countries, and to accept the hard truth of our addictions to cheap foreign goods and oil. We are becoming China’s and Saudi Arabia’s selling field where we consume everything and produce nothing. The only thing that keeps us from reversing this downhill slide is the FEAR of losing control over our lives and our nation.
But our real enemy is not from outside forces, whether foreign or from the opposing political party. Our real threat is FEAR itself. A fearful mind makes choices not by reason but by symbols and code words that make us believe we have control when we don’t. The biggest code word for fear is gun control and the fear of its loss. To have a gun means you have control and power over others. So if I want to control your vote and what you choose your country to be, all I have to do is get you to fear that the Liberal is going to take away your guns and that he is weak on control. When we fear losing control, we have already lost control.
This same coded message if the Right has been working for 40 years and we have fallen for it every time, electing politicians whose real interest is in power and not meeting the global challenges. America has fallen behind because we have been held hostage to our own fear that we are losing control. Fear always brings what we are afraid of, and now we have lost control, not of our guns but our income, health care, education, jobs and world peace. We took our eye off the real threat and put our sights on a false target by demonizing the other half of our nation. Fear divides, and fear has divided our nation. Those who long for the good days of the old South got instead a new civil war of the national mind that has paralyzed our will and made us victims of the propaganda of power.
This election is about taking our freedom back from those who use fear to herd us to the voting booth and the slaughter of our reason. I challenge you to look deeply at your political position to make sure your have not anchored your choice in the quicksand of fear.

"Conservative Credentials trump experience"

Ed Conley — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:24:23 EDT

With the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican VP, we are witnessing an extraordinary surge of creative ways to shore up her experience quotient in order to avoid being asked in a debate, "Where's the beef?" While the efforts swing wildly from the sublime to the ridiculous, one of the best I've seen and perhaps the most revealing is "Conservative credentials trump experience." (Just aside for a moment, would we ever here a liberal say, "Liberal credentials trump experience?")

So lets look a little deeper into this thought process. First there seems to be a joining at the hip between conservative and religion as "conservative" in this usage is obviously elevated above mere political convictions. This is like saying faith trumps experience, or God trumps experience. (I'm reminded of the finger game where rock trumps scissors.) And this trump card is being played on the political game table from Palin's conservative hand that so far shows Guns, Abortion, and Creationism as the only face cards. Until more is revealed, these are the only credentials we have so far upon which to base our argument that conservative credentials is the trump card.

But lets take a look at the meaning of "credentials," since so much weight is being attached to them. First, credentials mean that one looks at reality through a particular set of iron clad convictions, and that you dare not flip-flop if you don't' want to have those credentials become a burning tire around your neck. So no matter what comes up on the river of life, you experience life from and through your past convictions. Everything you think and do is constrained by your conditioning, which are your credentials. You can't change. We are all held hostage by our credentials and our convictions.

Now here is the problem. Life IS change. Life is changing faster than we can barely tolerate, given that we all have our convictions of how things should be. So why do we want a leader that can't change, that can't adapt and find new policies that fit the new world? Why do we want a leader that when stuck in the mud just keeps spinning the wheels deeper and deeper? Credentials, no matter of what kind, won't allow us to find a creative way out of the mud. When we are imprisoned by our credentials, we keep doing the same thing hoping for a different result.

When we value credentials over experience, we value image over substance, fear over courage, and security over freedom. We take refuge in our credentials, our labels and self images. We find a safe harbor among like minded credentials. Credentials are the uniform of our tribe. They are the flags under which we march to war. Credentials tell us who we are. Credentials try to control our experience and keep us safe from life's change and challenge. But are we real? Only experience can tell us that.

You can tell

Ed Conley — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:19:05 EDT

You can tell sometimes when real change is coming, and last night with Obama's acceptance speech ending a flawless convention you could feel the ocean swell rising. When a tsunami approaches, animals sense it and head for high ground long before humans catch on. Usually we are the last to notice when something huge is coming.

We need to remember that before change can come, first their must be destruction. As for our country we can now see the damage clearly, what with 911 and the Bush followup with self inflicted damage to our nation.

For those who see the wave on the horizon and are ready to ride, their own lives undergo change as well. Change is not a superficial ripple. Real change is a wave that carries everything with it. One either rides it or drowns. Change has no favorites. Change doesn't mess around. God is change.

So as the tsunami of change moves across our nation, we can see those who are learning how to ride it and those who resist it. For those wanting to ride there is hope and renuewed energy; for those who don't there is only fear and stagnation.

Having a House Party

Ed Conley — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:37:02 EDT

I never thought I would be "politically active" (other than donated to Obama online), but tonight we're hosting a House Party for the Obama acceptance speech. This came about by talking to the Chase City Obama office manager who suggested it and then put my name in the online Obama network for this area. With Virginia being one of the battle ground states, we can expect more Obama offices to open and more knocks on our doors asking us to get involved in creating the country we want. We can expect more house parties.

You know, this message of Yes We Can is a deeply spiritual message that goes right to the core of our relationship with God and our self, a relationship that in our time is changing right beneath our feet. The existential question being asked is simple: are we the created or are we co-creators in this life we are all living? In other words, are we separate from God, just puppets in His show or some game of chance, or are we also the sleeping puppeteers who have unknowingly handed over the string of our life to our conditioned ego and social institutional powers? Do we have the power to create our world or are we just the created characters in some absurd play signifying nothing. Is our story given or can we write our own story? There are so many ways to frame the question but only one solution.

The fundamental message of Obama and his campaign is a spiritual one, a radical message when taken to the heart that awakens our souls and moves us to action. Yes we can take back America and our lives. Yes we can choose to be who we really are. Yes we can take affirmative action and change the stage of our play. We are the authors of our existence.

But for Obama and his message, this is not an intellectual belief, not an armchair philosophy; this is a belief with muscle. This is a faith with arms and feet and a voice. This election is a call to life and to reclaim our birth right of freedom from the frozen ideologies of the past.

So yes I'm excited about Obama, but not only for his personality, for his policies, and for his promise. I'm excited about Obama because I'm excited about our own freedom that Obama through his courage helps us get in touch with.

Earth tones

Ed Conley — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:05:55 EDT

When you look at the people in the Democratic convention, you see earth tones, all shades of earth from deep black through the shades of brown to light skin. And when listening to Michelle Obama's speech this morning (I didn't stay up last night), I felt grounded in the earth of family and the common life of working people. That's seems to be the undercurrent of this election: who is the most grounded candidate, who is in touch with the people, the country, the times, and himself?

And each candidate tries to frame the other as out of touch, ungrounded, and elitist. Bush beat Kerry because Kerry was defined as being an elitist--which has now become as nasty a word as liberal in the Republican lexicon.

If color is any guide, black and brown represent earth and the body while white represents sky and the mind. Emotion is pitted against reason in this dichotomy where in our culture mind is all to often at war with the body and its urges and values security most. So if you peel back the layers in this political drama we are playing out, you can see the play of colors where the controlling mind fears the earthy body and the riot of its undisciplined emotions.

This division between body and mind plays out in the political parties that divide the collective psyche of our nation. Republicans like to represent rational control; Democrats represent the clamoring of freedom's desire. It's rational male vs. emotional female, head vs. body, control vs. discord, white vs. black, and sky vs. earth. I know this is simplistic but the color scheme carries out.

But in truth this division is totally irrational and illusionary, and anyone who invests their identity in either side is betting on a hand that holds no cards. A mind that is at war with its own body is insane. A life that is at war with itself is unreal. Michelle Obama was very real.

This is a false fear issue

Ed Conley — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:05:22 EDT

(Letter to the Blackstone Courier-Record to be published next week)

In response to Mr. Pyle’s support of the recent editorial attack on Obama for his gun control views, I did a little research and found that the threat he poses to our safety here in Southside is wildly exaggerated and comes mainly from his being on the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based foundation that used its assets to “fuel a dialogue about how to address public policy issues like reducing gun violence,” said Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman.

Obama, who joined the board as a 32-year-old lawyer before he got into politics, reviewed over 1500 individual grant requests, and some of them were to study aggressive gun control policies, some of which were mentioned in Pyle’s letter. But the letter misleads us into thinking that these were Obama’s votes in the legislature.

“Not every [grant] got discussed,” said Carin Clauss, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who served on the board with Obama. “Some were just: ‘Yeah, we don’t have any problem with that.’ The primary function of the board was to identify the public policy issues that were going to be the subject of grants.”

So are we not looking at an irrational fear that Obama or anyone for that matter is coming to take away our guns and leave us at the mercy of the barbarians waiting at the gate. Fear always exaggerates the danger because fear impairs our vision.

“The other areas in which the foundation issues grants include reducing the influence of money in politics and boosting high culture in Chicago. Of the $219 million in grants approved from 1997 through 2002 — the years of Obama’s tenure for which the foundation has posted its annual reports online — the environment received $57 million, followed by education ($56 million), employment ($41 million), gun violence ($21 million), money and politics ($17 million) and culture ($6.5 million).”

So there you have it. Because of a few grants approved by a foundation board Obama was on, you are unlocking your gun cabinets and standing by the window. While the planet melts and China is set to overtake our economy and Russia is rattling its sabers, rural gun owners are afraid Obama is going to come and get their guns.

If this isn’t a false fear issue, I don’t know what is. Aren’t we better than this? Isn’t it time we woke up?

Every moment is a vote

Ed Conley — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:17:58 EDT

This morning I read on the Internet that McCain is surging in the polls and a sense of hopelessness surged in my mind: "Here we go. Deja vu all over again." Why does the candidate with the biggest pile of mud always win? Will the country wake up again after this election with another bush burning the country's future? Will people several years from now say, "I voted for McCain and I sure regret that." Will the youth of our country have to endure another defeat of idealism and settle for just more of the same? Will Obama put his plaque on the wall with the previous great hopes, Gore and Kerry?

But this play on the field of national politics, this political Olympics also plays out in our own soul. The battle between security and transcendence, between the fearful and the brave is always going on in every moment of our life. Each moment is a choice between the known and the unknown. Each moment offers us a world that is old or a world that has never been seen before. Each moment brings us another yesterday or an new tomorrow. Each moment we vote for fear or fearlessness; each moment we vote for the unreal or the real; and each moment we cast our ballot for darkness or light. Each moment we choose the world we are.

With our vote we can change the world. That is Obama's core message. But if we really are going to change the world, Obama is not the means, nor is McCain. Each of us is the world we live in, so if we are going to vote change, we have to vote fear out of office in ourselves. We have to say "the hell with it" and vote our courage. We just have to leap into the unknown of this mooment with a faith that says this world will be okay if I stop being afraid it won't be. Life is change, but we have to vote for it.

Beware of the extremes of the mind

Ed Conley — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 09:00:09 EDT

From Chogyam Trungpa this morning: “The neurotic aspect of the mind is always willing to fall into either the extreme of left or right. The right extreme is anger, the masculine extreme. The left extreme is passion, the feminine extreme. This symbolism is true and universal—a cosmic symbol.”

Looking back over the political divide of the last 40 years between the Nixon party of the right and the McGovern party of the left, you can see this cosmic symbol working its way out. There has always been an angry fist raised muscular side to the right that raises it rifle barrels against the passionate flower power of the left. And McCain evokes this masculine anger that wants to crush one’s enemies.

Do you remember how Odysseus got pass theses two extremes? He had his crew tie him to the mast and put wax in their ears. He could hear the siren's seductive call but could not react and drive the ship to destruction. The map Odysseus left us is simple: listen to the two sides but don't react. Let intelligence be your guide and you will find the middle way. Doesn't that sound like Obama?

But I believe the country is ready for the middle way and like Odysseus we will make our way between this Scylla and Charybdis that has been sinking our ships since WWII ended.

Will the real demigod please stand up

Ed Conley — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:25:50 EDT

Which do we want for the next four to eight years, a healer or a warrior? These were the questions that rose to my mind as I watched most of the debate last night between Oama and McCain on CNN. One big difference I noticed was that Obama answered questions with thoughtful detail, being careful to demonstrate that there were no simple answers and the solutions and progress required finding a middle way.

This was especially apparent on the question, what is evil? Obama broadened evil to include say a mother's abuse of her child and that one should pay attention to the causes of evil and address them. You could see in Obama's thinking that he was interested in finding ways out of the impasse of absolute framework of good vs. evil through understanding. Obama is a dialectical thinker whose intelligence never divides reality into two warring sides.

McCain, on the other hand, when asked about what you do with evil, he said simply with the force of a fist, "Defeat it." He went on to frame reality as a war between the forces of good and evil, and that our only course was to marshal our forces and fight to the death. If I wanted a general to lead my army, I would want McCain. But if I wanted a leader who would reduce my need for an army I would want Obama.

The choice seems simple: do we want to continue the "us against them" war of the last 40 years of good against evil, or do we want to heal the divisions in the world and create a new and better world? I thought it ironic that while McCain paints Obama as the hollow messiah that will capture the passion of the people and lead them over a cliff, it was McCain last night that reminded me of a demigod that would call the people to arms and lead them over the cliff of endless war and wasted resosurces.

Lets yoke our dragons

Ed Conley — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:33:28 EDT

While waiting for the Olympics to come on last night I dropped in on a history channel documentary about the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1912 (?), and if you want to find what awakened the sleeping dragon of China, this might have been the jab in its side that woke her up. China was humiliated by the Western powers in the small but very significant war (if you can call it that) where it failed to throw out the Europeans and Japanese who had arrogantly carved up China into market shares. With that humiliation a hundred years of turmoil began that has now ended with the coming out party of the 2008 Olympics.

But I couldn't help but draw the connection between China's awakening dragon (creative power) and our own struggle to ride our dragon. WWII awoke our dragon and we rode her to world power.

But the Cold War and the ideological divide that split the world made us forget how to ride our dragon. Only a whole mind can ride the dragon. And ever since WWII our national mind has been divided an at war with itself. A divided mind is a fearful mind, and dragons sense fear in their riders and will turn and burn them up with their breath of fire.

We have lost our wholeness over the last 40 years as division replaced division. Never mind what we were divided over, once the mind is divided it just finds new content to satisfy the formula. A divided mind is not a creative mind because a divided mind consumes itself in mindless conflict. While the planet dies, we worry over gun rights or school prayer.

And there was Bush at the Olympics, our great divider. And there is Obama—the man who is awakening our nation’s whole mind that transcends division. The passion we feel for Obama is our sleeping dragon that is now once more waking up. Both individually and collectively, something is stirring, something is getting warm, and we can feel a living movement once more. When the dragon stirs, we feel hope, we see potential, and we lose our fear.

China, lets yoke our rising dragons and save our planet.

Letter to Blackstone Courier-Record

Ed Conley — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:41:37 EDT

In response to last week’s editorial on Obama as a threat to guns and freedom, I found myself raising my writing hand and shouting like Charlton Heston of the NRA, “From my cold dead hands” that this blatant appeal to fear shall not win, not this time, not this election. Now I could spend this precious space listing Obama’s balanced approach to gun control, but what’s the point. Once branded as a LIBERAL no mater what he says you will believe he is still hiding behind a deceptive cover of words and policy shifts. Once a LIBERAL always a liberal, right?

If this long war between the blue and the red, the left and right, is to end we must get underneath this logic of fear that has kept our beloved nation shaking and paralyzed for 40 years. The subliminal message in the editorial is a warning that has been running in the south since the Civil War. “To arms, the Yankees are coming!”

There is something deep in the southern mind that fears invasion from intellectuals, especially northern ones who threaten to emasculate the southern male and defile their women. A liberal in the southern mind is a composite of all that will destroy our way of life—which in this urban age is really a bygone ideal of southern manhood. That knight on a horse went off to defeat the northern armies with his mere sword and courage. Now all we have is the myth and the fear.

Southern courage and dignity and freedom is real, to be sure, but the mythic layer that lies undisturbed by awareness makes us subject to manipulation by the politicians that know how to push our buttons. And the biggest buttons are LIBERAL and GUNS. Put those two buttons together and all logic is thrown out the window. We vote in herds for the button pusher’s chosen ones.

So, patriots of the south and our cherished values, lets put away our fear of invasion and take a look at the real world. As long as you have fear painted across your glasses you only see what your manipulators want you to see. Lets face it, if you vote from fear, it’s too late, you have already been invaded and captured by a foreign force that has taken your freedom and defiled your mind. Don’t let this fear win, not this time.

Sign of the times?

Ed Conley — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:30:17 EDT

Why are there no campaign signs in the front yards of Blackstone this year? Is it too early? During the last presidential election there were Bush and Kerry signs everywhere, more Bush than Kerry, to be sure. But around here, not much is showing. Is this a sign of this election?

I want to put up an Obama sign, but I feel some vague apprehension. Is it imaginary? I’ve never been politically active before, so maybe it’s just stepping out of my anonymity. I got an email from an Obama supporter not long ago who said when she put her sign out in front of her business, some customers were upset, as if she were flying the devil’s flag. She put up her sign. Another friend said she wanted an Obama sign, and then she joked about her house being fire bombed.

Is there more going on here than just an election? Why are we afraid of hope and a change from the dysfunctional past? I think this election reflects something personal in all of us. We have all had dreams of doing great things, of making a difference, of “being a contender” like the broken fighter in On the Waterfront. And we’ve all had our dreams busted up by hard reality, so maybe we’re afraid to get back in the ring again.

Disappointment is in the South’s genes after its youth and idealism were ground beneath the invaders boots from the North. And we all remember the 60s when the idealism of both whites and blacks fell from the bullets of madness. So the fear of disappointment runs deep in all of us. “Better not try, better not dream,” says the fear. Even the dysfunctional past is better than the uncertain future. It’s better to be safe than hopeful, the fear says.

This election—while on one level is about electing a president—on a deeper level is about the disabling chill of fear. So whom do we vote for? The few Republicans I’ve talked to about this sing the same refrain: “I’m afraid of Obama but I hate McCain.”

So there are three people running in this election: hope, fear, and hatred. Which of these candidates do you want as president? Remember, we are who we vote for.

Tear down these walls

Ed Conley — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:52:07 EDT

I watched Obama in Berlin and cried. It was not the speech but that wall of joyous faces and eager hands reaching for a touch from Obama that squeezed my heart and brought the tears. Here was a wall unlike any walls I have seen. A living wall of hopeful humanity was reaching to touch a hope, a possibility within them that was awakening. Obama was just a circuit connector that was sending their own energy and hope back to them.

Obama moved down the wall, reaching and connecting with as many hands he could find, and you could feel the energy grow and connect back with itself—something was alive, something was being released, and something was being awakened. And then it hit me. Seventy years ago in 1938 the grandparents of the people in this wall of faces were reaching out to touch Hitler, probably on this very spot, and they too felt that something was alive and being awakened. But it was collective ego nationalism that was being born; it was an “I’m special” mentality that was being forged.

Seventy years ago these hands were building a wall that would divide the family of man and bring millions to death and ruin. But Obama talked about tearing down the walls and freeing man from the artificial boundaries of the mind that divides the family of man. It’s not the walls of brick but the walls of thought that divide us now, he said.

How far these faces have come, these Berlin faces that now hope for a world without walls. We have to experience the suffering walls create before we can tear them down. Walls have a purpose when they make us see beyond. And Berlin has seen both sides of the wall. And so Obama comes with a wrecking ball and a truck full of hammers. “Come on world,” he says, “let’s tear down these walls. Now is our moment.”

Obama cooks a new recipe

Ed Conley — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:58:01 EDT

It seems Obama is unsettling the far left of the Democratic Party as he jumps around on the political dinner table sampling dishes on the right and the left side. What do they expect? Obama says in his speeches that he doesn't see right food and left food, he just sees food. And he said his style is to be free to sample the best from each side of the table. One recipe, one style of cooking, does not relieve us from the boredom and indigestion we have been suffering at the political table these last 40 years.

When the Republicans get elected, it's here, eat this, you'll like it. When the Democrats get elected, it's here, eat this, you'll like it. Lets mix it up a little. The other side of the table can't be all that bad. Every dish needs to be tried, at least once. Put a little of both on your plate. What we need is a new cook, one who is not afraid to experiment. Add a little of this, take away a little of that, and here, try this dish. If you don't like it, if it doesn't nourish you, then we will try something different, something you haven't eaten before.

What we want is creative cooking, intuitive cooking, a cook who has no fear of leaving the recipe and the old way of cooking.

It's the Intelligence, stupid.

Ed Conley — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 07:55:25 EDT

As Obama mania gathers itself into a wave moving thought our collective mind, raising everything with it, I wonder what we are really fascinated by? The daily news is so much foam at the crest, so we must step back to the shore and gaze at the whole wave as it puts our conventional waves in it shadow. So what is this wave and why do we love looking at it?

First off, we have nothing to compare it with. No other wave like this has come to our beach in many years. The big wave surfers have been hanging out past the break of the smaller waves, waiting for something they have never seen before. But they knew they would recognize it when it came.

When we recognize something, we can only do so because we already know what it is. One can't recognize something you have never seen before. But if you have never seen something before, and still you recognize it, then what it is that recognizes and what is being recognized?

To go back to the ocean metaphor, what we see in Obama is a living intelligence--an intelligence that does not see the present through the lens of the past, an intelligence that is quick and able to shift its balance to match the changing wave of the moment. We can recognize intelligence because we are that intelligence. Obama is but a mirror of ourselves. Intelligence knows intelligence like water knows water. Without the water, the wave would be but an empty shell.

Obama and the Unborn

Ed Conley — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:58:01 EDT

Obama and the unborn

While the abortion wars are not at the front lines of this election (yet), perhaps now is a good time to find common ground, as Obama would say. What is the common ground in the context of change? We are talking about real change here, not just a reshuffling of the same deck of cards. We want a new deck with faces that the other cards didn’t have; we want a new game where the stakes are not serious, where people don’t die because they are on the other side of the table. We want a game that is fun and not deadly. The old game is in the realm of the born. The old deck is the known, and we’ve just about worn the faces off these cards.

So what do we call the new deck? What is the name of the new game? We have to call it the unborn because it isn’t born yet. It has no name. That’s what real change is, the unknown and the unnamed.

Maybe that’s what the abortion wars on a deeper level have really been about—only it was a case of the misplaced unborn. The unborn fetus was a living metaphor for the unborn in us, the undiscovered country that is coming to be, a new world, a new life, an innocent original face. We all want to be born again.

Isn’t that what real change is about? Real change is about death into life and letting our known world dissolve into the new and unknown moment of what can be, of what must be born anew. The universe demands this death because God gets so bored with the same game and wants to have some fun. And what is God's game? Playing both sides against the middle, and the middle always wins.

A War of Bibles?

Ed Conley — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:41:35 EDT

From a piece on Huffingtonpost.com this morning there is a new slant on the election. Is God one or two?

“Dobson reserved some of his harshest criticism for Obama's argument that the religiously motivated must frame debates over issues like abortion not just in their own religion's terms but in arguments accessible to all people. He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the "lowest common denominator of morality," labeling it "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."

"Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?" Dobson said. "What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe."

The question this brings to my mind cuts to the basic idea of morality; is morality two or one? Is morality always my morality as right and your morality as wrong? Or is there one morality that grows out of its opposite? Is morality—is God, for that matter—two or one? Is there a whole larger than its parts?

Dodson builds his morality out of war, out of righteousness, and out of being the defender of morality. But to be a defender, you must have an attack. You can’t defend unless you have an enemy. If one takes the stance of a defender, you must by the nature of your self-definition look for and create an enemy. Without the enemy, you cease to exist. Without the un-chosen, you can't be the chosen.

So here you have Obama trying to find a way to an inclusive morality with Dodson holding out for an exclusive morality: one is New Testament, the other Old Testament. One is love your opposites; the other is eye for an eye. Is this election now a war between two Bibles? It may be.

Zen and the Art of Obama

Ed Conley — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:27:34 EDT

I can’t help but see the yin/yang mandala when I see Obama standing like a bridge between the black and white racial identities we are so conditioned by. When the pundits say this election is about race and we find ourselves wanting to avoid that tag, we shouldn’t. If race is our nation’s original sin—the sin that was there before our constitution was formed and was not addressed by our constitution and put off until a later day (like the Civil War)—then now is the moment when we must look at the root of this weed that has been choking our garden since the day it was planted.

Whether Obama will make good policies as president is not really the question. Any good candidate can make good policies, but only an Obama can bring our yin and yang together. You can see this mandala in his person and in his story. Out of his black yin comes his white yang; out of his white yang springs his back yin. Our culture is a black negative yin dancing with a white positive yang, and our sin is that we see them as conflicting opposites instead of a whole. Our cultural definition of being white and being black has become dependent upon the other for its existence. Blackness becomes not white, and whiteness becomes not black. Each opposite creates its mate for its own definition But wholeness has no opposite. Wholeness has no sin. Wholeness has no guilt. Wholeness has no definition, and with no definition there is no other.

So if Obama stands there with one foot on the shore of blackness and the other on the shore of whiteness and lets the two colors blend in his soul, then he stands for healing—whether he intends that or not. Hopefully, though, he doesn’t define himself as a healer, because then he would lose his wholeness and power by creating and needing someone to heal so he could be a healer. Wholeness is only whole when everyone is whole.

So let this mandala rise like the moon and the sun at dawn when both are present on the horizon; and let the positive and the negative fit together in one dance—like Fred and Ginger, one wearing white and the other black, so that each finds their wholeness in the other and not separate from the other.

Why be surprised?

Ed Conley — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:40:20 EDT

Today's Internet news said evangelicals are surprised by Obama's successful reach into their territory. And I thought why are they surprised? Maybe it's because the Christian message is being applied to politics for the first time in a long time. I find that message in the simple theme that runs through Obama's speeches and actions: find the common ground of basic goodness in both sides. Finding the basic goodness that is the ground beneath duality—the red and the blue in our politics—is the common message of both Buddhism and Christ. Obama just works it instead of preaching it. In Obama's world there are no boundaries.

Suddenly the lawn is blue

Ed Conley — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:04:31 EDT

A few years ago my lawn was so full of weeds that I couldn't even find much grass, so I had the lawn man come in and he just killed everything and planted small plugs of grass over the brown field. Today I have a thick lawn of green grass with hardly a weed in sight. But for awhile, if I were a bug, the lawn would have looked brown and no one could have convinced me that there was change coming, green grass instead of lifeless weeds.

Living here in Blackstone my bug view of the nation would believe that Virginia is still choked with Republican weeds, but if I stand back a little I can see green plugs of Obama grass growing everywhere and reaching out roots to close in all the brown areas.

There was a time when the Republican grass was rich and it covered the national yard, but thanks to Bush— who sprayed that green lawn with the red paint—the grass died and the weeds took over. After Obama is president and our lawn is green again, we'll look back and thank the yard man, George Bush, who just killed everything and made a new lawn possible.

The New Reformation

Ed Conley — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:43:28 EDT

When Martin Luther threw out the Pope and the Church as the mediator between the individual and God (the ground of being and power), he was just following the formula that is repeated through the ages when man grows separated and disconnected from his source. We're in such an age now, and Obama, like M. Luther nails his declaration of independence on the walls of (not the church) but the government. And Obama makes his declaration of independence and freedom our declaration. Without this awakening in us, there is only more sleep.

Don't move

Ed Conley — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:48:55 EDT

What must it be like to run for president and have the media attack you and even your wife seven days a week? My old school elementary school game of dodge ball comes to mind where you stand against a wall and people try to hit you with a ball. But now that I’m older, it seems to be more like meditation. One takes his or her seat in the center of the mind and gets bombarded with thoughts and feelings that rise and fall like foam on ocean waves, thoughts being the foam and waves being the feelings.

So Obama is sitting in meditation in the center of our social mind and a whole sea of thoughts begin to rise, each trying to unseat him, to make him react in anger, or to make him trip over his reaction. Like Satan or Maya attacking Jesus and Buddha, the social mind does its best to make the meditator move and become just another thought wave like it. The social mind wants to know if Obama is real or just another sound bite. We want to know if he sits in the center of his being or if he is just hanging onto a great script his ego wrote to get some credits

So in an inverse way, our media leads us from the unreal to the real. The game is: who can unseat Obama? So far, Obama is doing pretty good.

And for Obama, this meditation is his path to his own freedom as a person. All great meditators find their unique place to sit so they can discover the truth of their being. Obama just chose to do his meditation in public.

The Mediator is the Message

Ed Conley — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:00:49 EDT

I cannot help but find Obama a treasure house of mataphors that gives us insight not only into our unfolding political process but also into the inner structure of our very subjectivity. The key idea, I think, is that of reformation and replacing the existing mediator between the individual and the source of power. Obama runs on the promise of going directly to the people for power instead of going through the current power structure that puts corporations between the President and the people—which is really between us and our own power.

This metaphor goes all the way to be Protestant Reformation (and before that, of course) and the revolution that got rid of the Catholic church as the mediator between the individual and God (or source of power). Every age creates a new mediator between the individual and his power.

But this metaphor goes even further when we look at our subjectivity. Who is the false king in our interior universe? The king that sits on this interior throne is the ego-I, the little me that thinks it has to do everything in order to make the world safe for it and its dreams. Buddhism and the Sermon on the Mount are the reformations that dethrone this guy.

We are hungry to be connected to the source of being without having to go through a filter, an interpretor or mediator. Even reality TV reveals this desire that is awakening in every corner of our lives. The Internet has become the means to this end. We can bypass every power structure online. You can create yourself, the Internet says.

Obama is transforming the way the people connect to power. No wonder the power structures are trembling. They can feel the earth shake. And this goes to the fundamental question for kings and the people: do human beings have an innate intelligence that when awakened has the ability to make rational choices; or are human beings by nature irrational desire driving beings that have to be governed for their own protection. This was the question that created the American Revolution. This is also the question that has also put women a few steps down on the pyramid of power. And a question that Hillary answered.

Even our ego ponders this question. Should I surrender to God or stay the safe course? Is God there or isn't He? Can I make direct contact or do I need a false idol? The question is no longer asked forever when the answer is the awakening awareness that all the false idols are ME. Then clarity replaces the mediator and you are free. How do you know when you are free? When there are no more questions.

When pyramids fall

Ed Conley — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:44:49 EDT

An interesting Internet piece this morning on Huffingtonpost.com helped me understand the bulldozer power of Obama's online network as millions of volunteers that have been empowered by his website. Whenever the Internet meets a hierarchy, the pyramid falls, the article said, and the Clinton campaign just never caught up to Obama's race car. And McCain is still riding in a buggy.

If we listen, we can hear the pyramids falling all over the globe. People are being empowered everywhere. You can just imagine millions of veins and nerves growing and connecting as a new body takes form, and people who have had no voice before begin to speak. History happens with the speed of thought now. Suddenly humanity has a new brain and the common man a new body. The king is dead, long live the king.

But—for now anyway—the new king is us.

Through the blood

Ed Conley — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:07:56 EDT

On the way to WalMart I passed a church sign saying, Through the Blood, and last night we watched the awared winning movie There Will Be Blood, and this afternoon I'm watching a CNN documentary on 1968 and the spilled blood of Kennedy and King. There is a lot of talk and reflection now in the media about the meaning of Obama and the 40 years of cultural war that he wants to end. As this national meditation continues, it will become almost self-evident to the social consciousness that change isn't coming, change is already here. And as this consciousness reaches the tipping point, we will suddenly find ourselves free of the right vs. left war.

This war has been a division in our social consciosness. And we know how dysfunctional we are when our minds are divided: "Should I go here? No, I need to go there. Do I believe this or that? Here is the modern mind T.S.Elliott wrote about in his poetry. As individuals and as a country we have lost our sense of wholeness and our center. But through the blood there is healing; through the death of the split-mind there is forgiveness.

Fundamental Goodness

Ed Conley — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:08:45 EDT

Well, it’s over, the first leg of the journey of Black Obama to the White House, that is. Isn’t that a neat juxtaposition? How far we have come from the bowels of the slave ship—it was two hundred years ago that the slave trade was declared illegal but not slavery—to the steps of the White House.

From the first time I heard Obama speak at the 2004 Democratic convention, through the three books, two by and one about him, and through all the victories and defeats of the primary, I have been seeing what he has been pointing at and not focusing on his finger. Obama said it tonight in his victory speech. “I believe in the fundamental goodness of Amercans.”

That is so simple yet so profound. To believe, to see, and to feel, the fundamental goodness of mankind, not just Americans, wipes clean the slate of slavery in all its forms. Slavery can only exist when this fundamental goodness is seen proportionally. My tribe is fundamentally good, but not yours has been the common belief that divides humanity into an ever-changing duality of good vs. bad. To see the fundamental goodness in our brother is to turn the other cheek. This is the highest spiritual principal and the one upon which the whole New Testament and the teachings of Jesus take their stand.

Fundamental goodness cannot be seen unless one feels one’s own fundamental goodness. Fundamental goodness is the face behind the labels; it is the ocean behind the waves and the sky behind the clouds. In Obama’s Dreams of my Father, he shared his search for this fundamental goodness, the common face that looked out from behind all the different faces that ran through his blood like images on a New York street.

When you see Obama smile, that goodness shines through the personality—the black face, the male face, the Harvard face, the Democratic face—and you for an instant feel the goodness in yourself. That goodness leaps forth in the spaces between our words, in the silences between our labeling thoughts, and it brings our fears and doubts to rest in a peaceful embrace that is fundamental ground of our human nature.

The truth behind the anger

Ed Conley — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:12:21 EDT

Listening to Air America and the angry women, bitter women calling in about their sense of betrayal that their candidate is being cut loose, seems to be putting two historically disenfranchised groups against each other. If Obama was in Hillary's position, it would be the African Americans calling in about the unfairness of the system and the democratic party. Either way, its gender or racial discrimination that is fueling the split in the party.

There is no other explanation for the anger in these women's voices. They have identified with Clinton as a candidate for their own desire to be treated as an equal on the cultural playing field. Her loss is their loss. But for those that see themselves as the victim of discrimination, they can't help but see discrimination at play in the primary. The world is as we perceive it.

Look for Walt Whitman

Ed Conley — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:06:49 EDT

Yesterday, a friend sent me a DVD of a TV documentary on Walt Whitman and his life long writing of Leaves of Grass, and for two hours I was transported to a place that was both past and now. In his single eye, in his crystal clear vision, he held America together like a great mother. In all our diversity, he saw unity first, in all our pain, he saw healing, and in all our suffering, he saw tomorrow.

The great wave in Whitman’s America was the Civil War, and the great wave in our America is the Cultural War. Oddly, Lincoln was assassinated at the end of the war, while Kennedy (remember all those connections between the two?) was assassinated at the beginning of our war. Both wars were, if you boil out the lesser ingredients, about race. The first war was over the physical divide of slavery, the second war over the mental divide of racism. The war is the same; it just gets subtler. Are we looking for the roots, now?

So I don’t think we can understand what’s happening to our nation in this election without the larger context of Walt Whitman. He said he would be here if we looked for him, under foot in the grass or in the eyes of a stranger passing by. Or maybe he is in the vision of Obama who came to our battlefield flying a flag that united the colors of both opposing armies.

When earthquakes come

Ed Conley — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:08:01 EDT

Earthquakes are the great teachers of man, especially when they come to the mind, both collective and individual. In our recent history, 911 was such an earthquake. The collapse of our twin towers of pride and invincibility taught us in no uncertain terms that our ground, our very identity is shaky. Earthquakes make us revisit who we think we are and adjust our view of reality to the changing times. Change has a way of stepping ahead of mind; this creates a tension that results in an earthquake—or mind quake, if you will.

Obama is such a mind quake. He is shaking our notion of how things are and should be. And he has proven to be adept in standing calm while the earth shakes beneath us. To be a master of change you have to place your feet on both sides of the shifting plates—red and blue, for example— and find a balance that allows you to stand there like a waiter with a tray of drinks. People will notice that your glasses don’t rattle while they are diving under the tables.

This is how movements begin. We find a leader—or the leader finds us— who knows how to balance during the mind quake, and we stand with him, reaching out to others and pulling them to their feet. In this way, movement becomes stillness and change become stability.

The Quake is over

Ed Conley — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:34:03 EDT

Being old enough to have been awake during the earthquake of the late 60s when our culture split open and two huge plates began to shift and shake the earth, gives me a wider angle on our current political time.

I can sense that what is happening now with Obama and the new movement is the beginning of a new earth growing out of the rubble of the past. We have become bored with our forty years of a split culture that talks endlessly in tape loops of division. We have witnessed the rise and fall of one subdivision after another as our collective mind trembles with the after shocks of the 60’s quake.

A new consciousness is now rising, as if the field of battle has itself come awake and holds the two fighting armies within its embrace. Something is moving that is tired of the war, that finds no meaning in the old conflicts, and that stretches far beyond the reduction of everything to a simple either/or. Something is growing that doesn’t care for the old good and evil anymore. Some god has risen that can’t see the old enemies and the fears that held them apart.

The recent injection of the fear of assassinations into our hope of a new consciousness will not wound the healing. The assassinations of the 60s, the two Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King, Jr., were part of the death that comes before the life and a part of the quake that stirred this ground for a new earth.

History does not repeat itself when an old time is replaced by a newer and fuller time. The law of good and evil, of an eye for an eye, can be repealed by a larger consciousness that just bypasses the dysfunction and keeps its eye on the whole. The fear of assassination and the end of the dream is a baseless fear, for it is but a weapon of the past.

We have been wandering in the desert for these last 40 years, cast out of the garden by our fears. Now is the time for old fears to be laid to rest, because they have become so, so boring.

No more flip-flops

Ed Conley — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:28:24 EDT

The real meaning of flip-flop, the metaphor that took the presidential shoes off Kerry and Gore, is being exposed in the Obama campaign. The two flip-flops that have paralyzed our collective and individual American minds is black/white and Democrat/Republican. Obama offers the opportunity for us to transcend both and get on with our national life.

Here is the slight of hand trick that has caught us flip-flopping through history, from pain to pleasure, from fear to safety, back and forth like two feet going to the bathroom wearing flip flops.

In order for the mind to conceptualize white as a foreground object, the mind needs black in the background, and flip-flop, in order to define black as an object, mind needs a white opposite concept behind it. And the same goes with Republicans and Democrats.

In order to have a dancing duality of white/black, one has to entertain the illusion that they are two separate objects. But that is not true. White and black as concepts with all the qualities associated with them are two flips of the same flop. White is black and black is white. And the same with our political dance: each needs the other to exist. Each concept is defined by the other as what it is not. White needs black in order to be white, and black need white in order to be black. As long as we believe these concepts are separate there is no escape from their embrace and the struggle to be free from this seemingly endless war.

Obama frees us from flip-flopping because he provides us the model or paradigm of a consciousness that doesn’t see black and white or Red and Blue states. His consciousness in this matter is one, not two. And as he is undivided, he offers the prospect that we can be undivided too. And undivided mind is a free mind, and a free mind doesn’t have to wear flip-flops.

We need dumb bells

Ed Conley — Sat, 24 May 2008 07:07:07 EDT

We got an invite this weekend to my sister-in-law's New Bern home, a great place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there. Too many choices. Here in Blackstone life is simple. As if it were my karma to be a monk, Blackstone has been about as austere as a monastery. One store to shop in, Wal-Mart, in fact, there is just one of everything here. I always proclaim proudly that I can to to the bank and post office in Friday rush hour and be home in ten minutes.

There is even one mind set here. I woman emailed me yesterday about the static she was getting for putting an Obama sign in her front yard. There is only one flag flying over the minds in this area—it's not just Blackstone—and she choose to erect a different one. "Look at me, I'm different." It's the same in a monastery. Try getting out of step there and see what happens. Whack! You get hit with a stick.

So I told here that these people who are attacking your sign are your friends. It's easy to follow the flag of everyone else, but not so easy to raise your own. People are going to shoot at it. So here is your challenge, I told her. Fly your flag but don't hold any grievance against those who don't like it. That's part of the reason for flying your own flag.

It's like going to the fitness center to build up your body. You need some dumb bells to give your muscles resistance. But you don't get angry at the weights; you don't resent the pain they cause your body; no you just work with them. You transmute their resistance into your gold. They are what life has given you to make you strong and independent. Welcome them.

They are your true friends. Only your enemies can make you strong. But your strength will turn to flab unless you forgive them.

The other side of desire

Ed Conley — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:08:05 EDT

Comments by Clinton ignited some tender in the America psyche today when she suggested that some campaigns can end early or unexpectedly by assassination, referring to Bobby Kennedy's assassination in June, 1968. These remarks, whether intended or not, remind us of how fear can hold us hostage to the past. In fact, fear calls the past to us out of the future. Fear is a reverse craving that pulls what is feared towards us. Fear is the other side of desire, and both work equally well to keep us in bondage

Obama the Yogi

Ed Conley — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:18:50 EDT

Since yoga means union with the transcendent Self, and since transcendent means formless or just That, this Self of yoga can have any form you choose—or it wants—as long as you use that form as a pointer to the transcendent. It is all very illogical, but that’s what makes it so much fun. To know the transcendent Self, one has to use form—because the mind can’t function without form—as a bridge to the transcendent, or That, which is without form. The transcendent is always one step ahead of form, and form is always running breathlessly behind reaching out like the runner at a track meet stretching to touch the ribbon.

Obama is a yogi because he is reaching for that transcendent Self, that formless Us that we are each a part of. Whenever he points, he points to That. This Self, this background or ground of our individual consciousness is the floor upon which all our desires stand. But we become frustrated because when we get the form we think is the Self, it crumbles in our hand like a sand cookie.

So Obama keeps pointing, and he points at us. We are that transcendent formless Self, but we think that we are not. We are the ground of being, but we believe that we are floating in space. We are the source of the universe, but we have forgotten, and we believe we are just another object in space.

Now I’m most likely putting more on Obama than he is willing to carry, but my point is that Obama is a metaphor for us to use as we try to find that window to the transcendent. He is a hole in our cultural fabric that has closed all the windows to the transcendent, and through his pointing we find some light and a fresh breeze coming in. When the finger points, never look at the finger; always look at That to which the finger points.

Intelligence rising

Ed Conley — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:57:59 EDT

It didn’t take me long in reading Barack Obama’s Audacity of Hope, a book he wrote about his life in the Senate, to appreciate the intelligence operating behind his words. Obama reminds me of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, who wandered through American civilization observing the absurdity of the customs, beliefs, and habits of the people—with great and small intellects— he found there .

Intelligence is the ability to see the totality in the present moment, while intellect sees the present moment from the knowledge it as accumulated in the past. Intellect knows how to play the game; intelligence sees the game. Obama intelligently looks at the game of Washington politics with the fresh insight of a Huck Finn who finds himself elected to function in a dysfunctional system. Everywhere he turns there are double binds that hamstring anyone who tries to run the course.

In reading both of Obama’s books, one can observe his intelligence gracefully transcending the conflicting pairs of opposites—in his first book Dreams From My Father the fragments of his own identity and in his second book, the fragmented political system—and discover a greater whole that will bring balance back to the system.

Now I know why Obama is running for president. It’s the only intelligent thing for him to do. A true president is the one who can unite all the pairs of opposites, all the fragments into one intelligent whole. A successful president is a person who is Intelligence, one who has already united all his fragments within himself so that whatever he or she does creates wholeness and balance. A whole person creates wholeness, no matter what his intellect does.

Dodge the lasso

Ed Conley — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:53:44 EDT

This whole Rev. Wright drama makes me aware again how the political machines manipulate the power of belief. By throwing enough negative dots onto the collective mind screen (the media) at some point in time a shift happens in the public mind and a new picture emerges that is favorable to the opposing political interest that replaces the original positive one, which is, of course, favored by the other political machine. This is how each side tries to create the label to their advantage. Democrats have gone down under this barrage of dots over and over again because they just never believed in the power of the dot. One dot here, one dot there, was no problem. Then, BAM, out of no where the picture shifts and their candidate is branded and put out to pasture with the other retired democratic candidates.

We can see the same process gaining momentum now with Obama with both Hillary and McCain heating up their branding irons. Rev. Wright is their lasso. Can Obama dodge the lasso?

The color purple

Ed Conley — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:51:23 EDT

matchNow that the infighting between Clinton and Obama is winding down from exhaustion, the bell is already ringing for the next fight. In this corner, the welterweight from Chicago wearing blue, Baaaaarack OOOOOObama! And in this opposing corner, the light heavy weight seasoned fighter from Arizona, Jooooooohn McCaaaaaaain.! And so it begins.

Blows will go back and forth in the media, each side now punching back with lighting fast jabs, with the crowd letting out oooohs and ohhhhss for their favorites. Are we ready for a six-month match? Can we stand it? We’re going to be covered in blood and sweat sitting close to the TV or computer like we do.

And, of course, politics is an interactive sport. We fans can’t resist jumping up and throwing some punches our selves. But our punches are always yesterday’s punches, just old punches thrown by the media that we picked up off the floor and threw back in the ring. It’s hard to think clearly when you are at ringside and the crowd starts yelling for blood. After awhile, we don’t even know why we’re fighting. The fight takes on its own life, its own meaning. We cheer for the red or the blue and cheer for our color no matter what.

But this election, we hope, is different. As the two primary colors meet and mix in the ring of political battle, let us hope that those of us sitting at ringside can see a new color, the color purple. That’s what you get when you mix red and blue, the royal color purple.

Purple is the prize, purple is the trophy, and this is the winning color. So do we want this war of colors, like the war on terrorism to go on forever? Are we not ready to rise above gang warfare? Can’t we put this civil war to rest? That’s what we are in, you know, a civil war, only without muskets. Soldiers may not be dying on our home front, but we are dying as a nation.

So let us keep our eyes on the prize as our contenders for the crown slug it out. Let the match play itself out, but let us stay clear of the roar of the crowd and the blood in the air. Let us vote for the peacemaker, and that peacemaker is….us.

The language of power

Ed Conley — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:49:02 EDT

The Democrats lost power because they lost the language of the Biblical God at the same time the Republicans learned it. Prior to this revolution or turn of the page of power, there was no need for this language because God stood for both sides or neither side, but certainly not just one side. And so the Republicans captured the language of power.

And the God loving Democrat, to his bewilderment, has been unable to talk about God without being labeled a hypocrite at best or pagan at worst. Once you have ownership of the language of God anything the other side said is by default the language of Satan, and the Democrat is caught in a double bind out of which he cannot get.

In my recent debate in the local newspaper with Diane Otto, a Biblical authority, no matter what I said I could not be allowed to use the language of God because I was speaking from what appeared to be a reference to a false source, namely yoga and eastern religions.But it is our culture that has lost its reference point and has confused the language with that which is beyond language. We have confused the word "water" with the actual water that has no name. We have mistaken the Word of God in our mind for the Word that has no words. We have lost the sound of silence.

Now we have Obama beginning to stand before cross in his media projected image, trying to walk that narrow edge between speaking from the heart and speaking from the image. His challenge is this: can he speak the Word without losing his heart by pimping it out to the public for a few votes.

The eternal Sermon

Ed Conley — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:44:51 EDT

The current argument between Obama and McCain over negotiating with enemies is right out of the Sermon on the Mount. Be a peacemaker, love your enemies, said Jesus. And by love he didn’t mean giving in, as McCain interprets the scripture. And I was also struck by the comparison of Obama and JFK to McCain and Goldwater, 1964 vs. 2008,

the election JFK never reached as Dallas got in the way. Below are some quotes from a Salon.com article. “This was Kennedy, in a September 1963 speech before a conservative Mormon audience in Salt Lake City:

"We must realize that foreign policy in the modern world does not lend itself to easy, simple black and white solutions. If we were to have diplomatic relations only with those countries whose principles we approve of, we would have relations with very few countries in a very short time ... If we were to treat foreign policy merely as a medium for delivering self-righteous sermons to supposedly inferior people, we would give up all thought of world influence or world leadership."

A 71-year-old former military man is clearly not the leader America needs at this moment in its history. We need a leader who recognizes "that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient, that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem." A president who understands that "equating negotiations with appeasement and substituting rigidity for firmness" is "the pathway to war." This was President John F. Kennedy. And it could be President Barack Obama.”