I received an email the other day from yet another person really concerned about the polarization that's happening, not just in our politics (globally as well as nationally) but in our social interactions. 
The issue that triggered the email was the wide variation in what people consider facts, these days:
"... the problem with the rampant ignorance portraying itself as knowledge is that it can not be corrected, in any way that I can see. It serves itself entirely, like Frank Herbert (or was it Robert Heinlein) said of the Angry Mind, exists only for itself. These proclamations of absurd and impossible things are very disturbing more for that reason than for what they actually say. Data without any possible corrective feedback."

My response to this email, which is one of many expressing concerns about the issue was:

So... how about this: the world of negative/distressing polarity is pulling further and further away from the world of positive/loving polarity, and you're just observing it. How's that for an explanation? No need to try to change it, simply to hold to the love and trust that most of the folk who can feel it will come along, while those who can't will move in into their very different world. 
Like the cover of the original Make the World Go Away:

I received an email this week asking me about whether the body really needs to be weened off of medications "slowly and gently".  This was my reply...

Yes, in Truth, no medication is ever needed and there is no need to be limited by anything material. However, the way I think of it,

• the body is what the brain tells it to be;
• the brain has been programmed by our childhood and adult experiences and decisions;
• that programming has trained the brain to block input from the mind;
• as we learn to let the mind have more and more access to the brain, the brain gives the body new messages;
• the mind, our spirit, soul-Self, is infinite and unbounded;
• so the new messages move the body toward unlimited health, unbounded strength, and immunity to whatever is happening in the material world

For someone with training and experience in the medical world, stopping a medication will usually include "a need to wind down safely and slowly". For another (say, a guru in India) that's not an issue; nothing physical can have a deleterious effect on the body.
 
Now, as you're doing the clearing work, however, as you release and replace more and more of the brain’s programming, you will find that fewer and fewer of those old programs apply and more and more of your spirit-Self is your experience.
 
So, as you go along, if you're paying attention to what you're thinking, and that thinking is focused on the spiritual reality of you, rather than the past experiences of the physical-emotional body, AND you can trust yourself to deal with any issues that may come up, you can feel free to do whatever feels right in the moment. 

Be aware, though, that the brain's programming runs deep, so you may find there are ups and downs along the way, as you make the shift from one state of being/consciousness to another.

The second weekend of April this year was amazing! 
The full moon April 6 had all kinds of astrological and Wiccan overtones regarding the end of darkness and the emergence of new light, and was also the marker for the Jewish holy days of Passover (Pesach), honoring their deliverance out of bondage in Egypt, and the holiest of Christian days called Easter, honoring the resurrection of Christ out of the darkness of death. On Saturday Buddhists honored Wesak, the awakening of Prince Gautama into the Buddha, as he succeeded in overcoming the darkness of all his  demons and so was free and able to share his experience with others. And all of that is happening in the middle of the Muslim month of fasting called Ramadan, by which Arab nations have, for millennia, left behind old ways and entered into a new life, and during which the blessed prophet Mohammed experienced the revelations that became the Q'uran.

Whew! Billions and billions of people, all over the world, honoring the process of coming out of darkness into the Light! That's got to be making a difference in the collective consciousness of humanity!

Before this weekend happened, though, several people shared with me that they or their loved ones have been diagnosed with a mental condition that has become known as Alzheimer's disease.  Talk about darkness!
I thought I'd share with you all what I've shared with them...

First, such diagnoses are always so hard... sympathizing and sad you're having to deal with that! Having said that, though, there are several levels to approach the situation.
At the level of matter and the body:

• all diagnoses are someone's perception of material and behavioral indicators, based on their training and the current cultural norms;
• the presence of certain measures are high correlations, but not necessarily causative;
• the name alzheimer's has become a cultural blanket covering all kinds of ways that people have retreated from their current world - as is autism.

At the level of the mind:

• our individual mind is part of the infinite mind; there's no way that any of us can truly be cut off from the immediate and real full wisdom and understanding that is the divine, infinite mind;
• any experience to the contrary of that Truth is the result of past programming and current misunderstanding, based on current cultural norms;
• we can change old programming by focusing on images and feelings of Love and Well-being, and dissolving the thoughts that seem contradictory.

At the level of the metaphysical:

• the appearance of any dis-order is just that, an appearance that has emerged from a belief and the emotional baggage associated with that belief;
• Louise Hay says that the root of Alzheimer's is "refusal to deal with the world as it is; hopelessness; helplessness; anger;" and her response is "there is always a new way for me to experience life; I release and forgive the past and I move into joy."
• the Truth is that we all are experiencing the life that we have chosen by what we've been focusing on - which has usually been our fears - and that can change the instant we replace those fears with the intensely felt realization of Love's constant unfolding presence;
• as any one of us feels the Reality of Truth, those around us who are resonating with us may know that same Reality.

So, this is what I know.
In the One Mind, the Unity of all Life, all Wisdom, all Joy, all Truth, only well-being is possible. All else is a dream or nightmare and we can awaken from that nightmare by turning our attention, again and again, to the divine Light that surrounds and enfolds us now, feeling it at work in our lives. And, as we do so, the people around us begin to experience that Light, that Love, that Wisdom, and are freed from any nightmares of hopelessness, helplessness, regret, or guilt. And as we FEEL the Presence in our mind and body, they begin to feel it working within them to undo any past ideas or thought forms that were shaping their experience. As we accept the Power working in, through, and as us, we are no longer deceived by the media or the people who believe in the discord and disease of the nightmare, but are freed to experience more Light, more Love, more Well-being in our own lives. As our True Self becomes the focus and guide for our mind and body, moment-by-moment, our experience becomes more and more heavenly, and we are surrounded by people, places, and things that reflect the divinity that we truly Are.
So, in this time and place, with this diagnosis, I refuse to be caught up in the nightmare of the cultural norm, and I claim and accept the Truth, that all mind is one beautifully wise, knowing and remembering mind, that all being is well-being, and that the people I know and love are well and whole and on the path of their fulfillment. For so it is, and so I say Ah-men.

Copying these lines a few times, saying them aloud, and repeating the treatments in Emma Hopkins' Lessons 7 and 8 until you feel their power working through you would be very helpful right now. And this is not something that you do once. You do it until you KNOW it is handled and complete - which may take several hours, or even overnight (but you won't be drained by the process, as you'll be energized by divine Power!). And, if the symptoms remain or show up again, you do it again.

Charles Fillmore used to say "Pray first, and if that doesn't take care of it, call the doctor." So, if you and your beloved are convinced that the only real way to address the symptoms is with medication, which usually is evident by not seeing a cessation of symptoms after wholeheartedly doing this work, then by all means, use the meds and whatever else feels like it can help.

And keep doing the treatment, getting to the place where you KNOW without a doubt that you and your beloved are whole and well and living a full, wonderful life NOW.
​
I trust that those who have a need will find these words and use them...

   About 25 years ago, the man who wrote the Tao of Physics wrote an amazingly different book, called The Web of Life. He’s a physics professor at Berkeley, named Fritjof Capra. He had also written a book called The Turning Point, on where we were in history, which I had found as interesting as his physics book. About that time I was working with a woman on a systems text who had worked with him. I was asked to coordinate a conference of systems people in 1990 that was focused on the future, so I took the chance to reach out to professor Capra through her and ask him to be the keynote speaker at this conference.  When he heard it was a gathering of systems people he said he didn’t think he’d fit. I said not to worry, his Turning Point and his integration of eastern and western philosophy in The Tao of Physics was perfectly in alignment with our conference theme and he’d be just fine. He finally agreed, came, did his talk, and was very well received. Of course, he received a copy of our program and our proceedings as part of our thank you. I left my career as a systems scientist for the ministry a few years later and never heard from him again.
   A few years later, when The Web of Life came out I was blown away. The man had paid attention! He had integrated what we were talking about at that conference with his own understanding of how the universe works and said it in a way that any intelligent reader could make sense of! Wonderful!
   A few years later, I was asked to tea with one of my more “mature” former students – a retired engineer from IBM – and he said “I was participating in a class in Berkeley and one of our instructors was Fritjof Capra. When I asked him how he had come to do all this work in systems, he said “This woman in Portland called me and asked me to speak at a conference…”  Needless to say I was delighted – and, once more, blown away.
   Capra has since come out with a number of systems-thinking books, including A Systems View of Life, for which I am truly grateful… we need as many systems thinkers in the world as possible.
   Now, why am I telling you this story today?
   Because you who believe that there is One Power, One Presence, accept that we are all part of the Web of Life.    
​   Whew! There is only One. That One is Good. Here is only One, Good. Everywhere is only One. Everything, everywhere is the One that we call God, the Good, omnipotent.  
   So that means all beings are Good. They can’t not be! We might misunderstand them. They might be being Good in places we’d rather they were not, or ways we can’t see as Good right at the moment, but they MUST BE GOOD.

Almost everyone I see or speak with asks this question, these days. And I don’t blame them: it’s almost overwhelming how many people are expressing anger – and how much attention the media puts on it!
So let’s begin with the awareness that whatever is happening of this sort is greatly enhanced by all the media attention it’s getting. You know how it is: give kids attention for what they’re doing and they’ll do more if it; let people who are feeling lost and scared see an example showing them that acting out is okay, and they’ll act out.
Then let’s accept that the media’s job is to focus on what’s not working, not normal. When we do that what they’re talking about begins to slip back into – oh yeah, this is a one-in-several-thousand “man bites dog” news item.
Finally, let’s remember that the old rules of polite conversation (once called “manners”) were to avoid talking about religion, politics, sex, or money – for a reason! People have always tended to disagree, and sometimes fight, about those subjects! But today, those tend to be the primary topics of conversation, in all circles.
Recognizing all that, hopefully some of the distress we’ve been carrying has been reduced a little…
All that having been said, we are truly seeing increased fragmentation and polarization in our culture – across all nations and states. And, believe it or not, it’s a totally natural process, the result of several dynamics in the cultural system.
First, the shear number of people has been growing exponentially for decades, and all research on mammalian populations tells us that increased population density leads to increases in: gangs (polarized groups), violence, infanticide and miscarriage, and property theft.
Second, the business model of corporate greed has been globalized – which encourages competition and aggressive behaviors in workers, and requires assertive reactions by consumers and regulators.
Third, the cultural values of “acquire, accumulate, control” associated with that globalized culture, have led to the destruction and exploitation of our shared resource base, and so the behaviors associated with scarcity are increasing exponentially.
Fourth, the communications links across cultural groups have dramatically increased. But this is also the case within ideological groups, making it almost impossible NOT to have one’s belief system reinforced – it’s possible to live in an ‘information cocoon” that never challenges any of one’s ideas, however far from the actual “facts” (or other peoples’ experience) they may be.
So, the conditions for fragmentation and polarization are fully in place, and continue to expand exponentially. (No, it’s not Facebook or Google’s fault; they’re simply part of, and designed in a way they must reinforce, the process.)
David Bohm talks about the roots of this dynamic in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order[1]. Bohm, a 20th-century physicist specializing in quantum mechanics, saw that the way we teach and learn about the world encourages us to separate it into fragments:
…the prevailing tendency in science to think and perceive in terms of a fragmentary self-world vies is part of a larger movement that has been developing over the ages and that pervades almost the whole of our society today; … tends very strongly to re-enforce the general fragmentary approach because it gives men a picture of the whole world as constituted of nothing but an aggregate of separately existent “atomic building blocks”…
He goes on to say that this tendency has broad implications for how individuals see themselves:
One might in fact go so far as to say that in the present state of society, and in the present general mode of teaching science, which is a manifestation of this state of society, a kind of prejudice in favour of a fragmentary self-world view is fostered and transmitted… (…mainly in an implicit and unconscious manner)… men who are guided by such a fragmentary self-world view cannot, in the long run, do other than to try in their actions to break themselves and their world  into pieces.

​One more note about this virus…
 
In the science of mental healing practiced within the New Thought tradition it’s been found that every physical condition is reflective of, and a useful pointer to, a psycho-emotional condition. Looking at the SARScorona-2 virus from this perspective provides some possibly useful insights:

1. Virus infections in general tend to indicate issues around boundaries, letting another’s will override our own –
   • This virus in particular attaches to cells on boundaries that protect tissue.
   • In today’s world most people spend most of their time in work situations where they feel they must set aside their own intentions and preferences in favor of the manager’s or owner’s.
2. Respiratory illnesses in general, have to do with expression of ideas, opinions and emotions – the more difficult it is to breathe the more likely the issue is suppression of unexpressed thoughts and feelings –
   • This virus is most likely to affect the respiratory system
   • In today’s world, even though there are many ways to communicate, the expectation, both at work and in social situations, is that only certain kinds of things may be said or talked about
3. Illnesses associated with the heart generally have to do with ongoing fear – particularly of loss
   • The people most likely to deal with intense symptoms with this virus are those dealing with heart issues
   • In today’s world, the role of most media has become to point out all the reasons to be afraid, to the point where strangers are to be avoided and what was normal for people growing up even one generation ago seems irresponsibly reckless to most parents today.

Being aware of these correlations helps us understand why this particular experience is so widespread at this point in the history of our culture – which is, today, worldwide.

Continuing to explore the ideas in my last post, I had the realization that when the Unity of Spirit is thought of as the 3 aspects of the trinity, which are usually illustrated as 3 overlapping circles, there are actually 7 segments...

Recognizing that a 2-dimensional image doesn't even begin to portray the reality, it nonetheless begins to provide a framework for the experience and teachings of spiritually adept beings over the millennia - and hopefully gives us a way to make sense of the many terms and concepts that are floating around in different religions.
[NOTE: This and any other image on my site may be downloaded by right-clicking and copying. If you share it with others, please let them know where it came from. Thanks!]

Thoughts on Good Friday during the Corona Virus shutdown...
​
There is only one beingness, showing up in its own nature in, through, and as all that is, everywhere. That beingness, is-ness, essence, extends itself infinitely in all directions and as it does so, aspects of its fundamental nature cause some of what is being extended to be attracted to each other. In our universe Fermions (named after Enrico Fermi, the first person to split an atom) are the aspect of the one that tend to extend outward, and Bosons (named after Chandra Bose, the person who, along with Albert Einstein, discovered that some compounds cannot by taken apart) the aspects that tend to coalesce.
Complexity
As the fundamental beingness continues to extend, the tendency to coalesce shows up as nodes within it, and as they attract more Bosons and increase their patterns of attraction and extension in complexity, they reinforce the experience and expression of the nature of the beingness.
So, for example, the elements of our universe exhibit more and more tendency to extend themselves as they are more and more complex. Hydrogen, the simplest, is constantly attracting and coalescing with other atoms to maintain itself. The more complex elements, uranium and “heavy metals,” constantly radiate aspects of themselves outward. The galaxies, stars, and planets made up of these elements can be seen to extend these qualities still further
The compound chemicals these elements form in the galactic clouds and planets exhibit the same pattern. Simple sugars bind together; complex proteins constantly form and reform, working with other proteins to make still more complex molecules.
The simple life forms, like protozoa and bacteria, consume to form colonies and grow until they can consume no more and it’s impossible to get to the resources needed to maintain the cells within the colony. The fundamental beingness of all-that-is attracts and coalesces within them, but the pattern of interaction between coalescing and extension is too simple to do more. It’s more complex in multi-celled life forms, which are typically more mobile, and the shift from reproducing oneself to merging with another to reproduce makes the pattern even more complex.
Which then leads to the ever-increasing complexity observed in the evolution of life forms.  As each minute set of interactions occurs, attracting and extending at the molecular and cellular levels, layer upon layer of complexity can be seen to develop. The human brain, with its ganglionic bundle, on which is built a reptilian base, then a mammalian function, then a primate’s capacity to choose, and finally the integrative function connecting all of them with and in mutual support with one another, is a prime example of this process.
And with each layer of complexity comes an increased activity of the fundamental beingness, an increased capacity to choose to function in the same way.
Infinite Creation
So the question becomes: what is the functioning of the fundamental beingness, besides to extend itself and coalesce aspects of its extension? At the simplest level it is to continue to extend and coalesce in increasingly complex patterns. However, there is the fact of self-maintenance to consider. The beingness must maintain itself to continue to extend itself, which means there is a primal urge to benefit all aspects of being, to maintain the well-being of all within the whole.
So we are part of a creative process of extension and attraction, constantly working for the benefit of all the parts within the whole – all of which are continually creating through the same extension and attraction.
And since the whole process is extending out infinitely, it must therefore include infinite possibilities of nodes and structures. And each choice point, each time something coalesces or not, leads to another set of possibilities – and other universes.
In our universe, these possibilities have occurred within the framework of Fermions, Bosons, the elements they form, and the chemical compounds they form, leading to the various forms of life that have evolved over the millennia.
In other universes, though, this fundamental beingness may not be extending as the matter and energy that we see here. Fermions and Bosons may have their parallel in other forms besides matter and energy, so beingness may be extending as aspects of information, or patterns of connectivity, without the material base we’re used to. Or it may be extending as something we can’t even imagine.
A Second Universe
In fact, there are some universes that certain people have explored mentally where the tendency to extend and the tendency to attract seem to be exhibited as more like thought forms than the matter-energy forms of our universe. And across traditions and generations, around the world, thousands of people have described a realm in which people like us exist but without material form. Some call it the Astral plane; others say the “underworld” or the “overworld,” “dreamtime,” or simply another dimension of existence.