The Lifeboat Hour - 02/09/2014

I have a few observations on this edition of the Lifeboat Hour below

Ukraine, memes and a new consciousness

I have to say straight-off. for me this week's edition of the Lifeboat Hour was frankly disappointing, on several fronts.

What I have admired throughout, about Mike Ruppert, and why I have stuck with him throughout many controversies and changes of heart on his place, is his uncompromising analysis - the way he has seen the essence of what he turned his mind to.

That has allowed me to forgive things that have turned many people away from him.

Usually the denunciations have said more about his detractors than about Mike himself.

I think it has been giving so much time to covering and thinking about events in the Ukraine and Mike's response to them that has given me cause for reflection.

These were comments I made on my Facebook page which summed up what I have been thinking, and which I stand by today:

I have to say this right now.

We've looked at stuff that's happening round the world - Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya. But this stuff is deadly serious.

Uncle Sam is trying the same regime change stuff on the backdoor of Mother Russia. Putin will not take this lying down when innocent people are mown down by snipers paid for by the West, when Blackwater mercenaries strut around close to the border with Russia, when the West tries to wrest a Russian naval port (since the 18th C) away from Russia, while it supports the same Nazis both Russians and Ukrainians fought against in WW11.

There has NEVER been a more dangerous point in human history. In my darkest moments I think we may destroy ourselves before Mother Nature takes us.

It has been clear for some time that Mike, through various Facebook comments, has been disinterested in events in Ukraine.

Last night he said that they were a "distraction", and furthermore they reinforced the "meme of conflict".

He did go on to say that he has been guilty of this for years.

That he is no longer the warrior, but now a teacher

Presumably he is talking about himself (which is all we can talk about really).

Referring back to myself, I have never seen myself as "a warrior".

Simply, for me, it is a case of "once you have heard you cannot un-hear; once you have seen you cannot un- see"

I have an inner drive to tell the truth as I see it.

To "shine a light" where I can (if that's not too pretentious)

To bear witness to the decline of industrial civilisation, to our destruction of our own habitat and the demise of all (or most) of the human species.

I don't see myself as part of a "meme of conflict" by covering peace-shattering events in Ukraine.

Still less of dualism.

I don't see myself as part of a movement to give birth to 'a new consciousness'.

For, if we are looking at this from a spiritual point-of-view whatever is of the nature to be born is of the nature to die. (Sorry that is plagiarised from the Buddha).

That includes birth of a new consciousness.

It is only as permanent as our collective human bodies - as permanent as the human species itself - which is looking less permanent by the day!

However, there is the Unconditioned, the Unborn. That is of the nature of Consciousness (with a big C), of Totality, of Spirit, of God - however you want to describe it.

It simply is.

It doesn't need to be fostered or born. 

A word about duality and dualism. 

There is no doubt that in a relative sense duality (good vs bad, black vs white) does exist.

You cannot reject it.

The problem comes when we choose one over the other. It is tantamount (in Jungian terms) to failing to see and embrace our own evil, of failing to see the shadow.

I guess, at this level, Mike and I just see things a little differently.

I'll now leave you with the professor....

POSTSCRIPT

I wish to include these comments from a friend, Michael Green, because they express things so perfectly

I can't profess to be inside either of your heads, but I sense the anguish this is causing and hope somehow to be helpful. Actually, without meaning to sound like a doormat, I think each of you is right.

We like to think that what we want or do is somehow self-willed and arises of our own volition, but truly, that is virtually never the case. It always arises from an anterior source, from a level just behind our conscious ego, which we are more or less unaware of.

Right now, the great forces that are intruding on our consciousness (miucrocosm) and the world (macrocosm) often point to conflict, divisiveness and polarity of every kind. I think that's in the nature of the times and that, in itself, is neither good nor bad.

What we often tend to do in the face of that, however, is compulsively take sides. Us against them, me against you. It is transpersonal in nature and, in fact, it is occurring at every level, even if we do not recognize it.

It occurs too when talking about discrete levels of experience. Unity is deemed to be more important that duality, or vice versa, as if one side of the coin is ever really that much more important than the other. The either/or consciousness of our age, as opposed to both/and, must also be included here.

Personally, I understand MCR's desire not to be distracted by political events at this time. Part of me feels the same way, when faced with global warming and Fukushima. On the other hand, I also agree with Robin.

Ironically, I am one of the most radical people of all, since I truly see no way out of our present predicament other than a mass culling of most of the human race, and very quickly indeed.

People famously talk down "hopium" while simultaneously stating that they really wish that things were different, while I'm more hopeful than most while simultaneously disdaining to look at the trains as running in any way but right on time.

It's not a matter of belief for me. Rather, it's a matter of POV and perspective. What exactly do I mean?

I mean that it's ALL grist for the mill.

Here I include global warming, Fukushima, what is happening with the dam upstream from Hanford, what is happening in Carlesbad (NM), the progressive collapse of the American empire, its stalwart efforts to forestall the collapse, the "chess trap" into which America has just stumbled in the Ukraine, BRICS and the possibility of a whole new currency emerging (for a brief but glorious moment), Godzilla and the great earthquakes that are probably yet to be, the very real possibility of a fission-war - though hopefully a continuing reticence to pull the thermonuclear trigger - where all of it, without exception, up and down the line, is intimately connected with every other piece, no exclusions whatsoever.

IMO, the only "distraction" worth noting is when we fail to see how all the Velcro is connected. Since few of us presently can do that, least of all myself, we might wish to consider THAT to be the basis for any "New Consciousness" that's still in the oven and has yet to emerge.

Just saying.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

The last stanza of Blake's poem is also very luminous. It may be one of the most brilliant lines ever written. 
Unity. Duality. The whole Cosmic Enchilada. 
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/.../blake/to_see_world.html