Read the views and ideas from and about Stephen Cocconi – Citizen of Earth.
If you wanted a perfect example of the effect a Priest might have on the world of technology then Steve Jobs was it. Continue reading »
There is no question that I have a strange occupation. Not to me of course, but to most whom I meet. Depending on the person or the crowd with which I mingle, telling them that I am a channel is a bit like introducing a skunk as a household pet. Unimaginable! It is one method for ending conversations, not my intent, I assure you. Continue reading »
Happy Labor Day!
Well at least for those who are employed. Ever notice the more a person gets paid the more likely they are to think that almost everybody else doesn’t work as hard as they do? Maybe they believe that if people just quit whining, work harder and got a better job, they’d be able to get over themselves and get on with it. Just swallow a cup of Tea and it will all make sense. (Not!) Maybe they’re right? I hope they don’t have to put it to the test by losing their employment.
by Stephen Cocconi © 2011
The World Trade Center and the Pentagon were symbols of American indomitably in both Economics and Military powers, respectively. Calling the audience to understand how much of the Middle East has been cowed and controlled by the West from as far back as the Crusades almost 1,000 ago. Beings born into that part of the world, many Infant, but mostly Baby and a few Young Souls, have used that place to experiment with such lessons as racial and sexual discrimination, religious intolerance, and religious intolerance in the name of spiritual supremacy. All these factors made fertile ground for the rise of hatred in the Arab world and centralize it in a few extreme people like Osama Bin Laden. American’s and the West needed the wake-up call that suffering anywhere, in a world of 6 billion plus people, is suffering the will eventually felt everywhere. The Trade Center’s destruction was the event that brought to Americans awareness, that “we are all one”…like it or not.
The Icons smashed meant illusions dashed. Everyone is still reeling from the events of September 11th. For most Americans, the issue of safety was brought to the forefront. Michael said, “safety is an inner state” meaning that only when you are aware of your world and surroundings, and bring peace of mind because you trust your ability to survive, can you ever feel safe inside.
Freedom, but more particularly Liberty (the permission to move in an uninhibited fashion) may well be in question in the years to come. Americans have long believed that “unlimited consumerism” is the same as Freedom. This is the paradigm that corporate culture has instilled in many for a number of decades. In Michael’s view, the media culture of the United states has produced and is capable of the most sophisticated propagandizing of any society in history. Notice how well the media has turned the bombing in New York into a series of quick, sanitized, images, that evoke a strong emotion and then jump to another equally as shocking. Your system is jolted repeatedly until the only response is “numbness.” Michael’s admission to the crowd is: “Consider the source (meaning agenda) of where you get information.”
If not you, who? If not now, when?
What happens next? In Michael’s view, for the short-run, you will hear allot of “sabre-rattling”. But it is up to each American to begin the real quest for freedom. What this looks like, will begin as people redefining what icons like the “American Flag” mean to them. (Military strength, economic might, or due process, a nation of equality, and free speech.) With this redefinition, comes the personal responsibility to clear unhealed emotional backlogs. In the meditation of that evening, Michael lead the audience in several exercise designed to seek out and subdue the terrorist within each of us.
In the closing of the ceremony, all stood and sang “Amazing Grace.” People were able to leave the evening with a sense of peace and resolve. It is this “peace within” that Michael, like so many others in the healing and spiritual community, foretell as the only real long-run way to put an end to violence without. Yet, in the final analysis, to get to peace within, the denial of all the history that has preceded must be examined and reparations and amends, made.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
The Flag of the Corporate States of America
“We the executives of America’s corporations, in order to form a more impregnable conglomerate and indivisible merger, establish privilege, insure domestic equity, provide for our common defense, get everyone off welfare, and bless our security in perpetuity for ourselves and our posterity, do declare and enact this Charter for the Corporate States of America. Continue reading »
Since February, we’ve seen one Dictator in the Arab world after another fall because of the collective actions of citizens on the ground. Most of those actions have been bloody. Regimes of the powerful do not give over power easily. Continue reading »
Over the last several months, much of my mental process (such as it is 🙂 ) has been focused on how we think about value and worth and as an outgrowth how those assumptions have come to form our dominant economic systems. Continue reading »
My heart is glad to be an American. On this day I am grateful for and celebrate this land, this nation, our Constitution, free enterprise, but not financial and corporate capitalism. Today, I reassert that these are the values that make America great, not Walmart, not nukes, nor financial dominance. I claim the American Flag for Liberal values!
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