Printed in the Conscious Creation Journal
April-May 2000, Issue 11
The Tao of Gun – Spiritual Sovereignty and the Hypocrisy of Gun Control
by Richard Roberts
This essay addresses gun control and Second Amendment issues from a New Age perspective and develops the following themes:
It is hypocritical to affirm that human beings are responsible for their reality and at the same time ask the State to take away guns to make the world safer.
We are sovereign beings who have projected our sovereign rights onto others to control us by licensing our rights back to us as privileges.
There are no victims. There are no oppressors. We are responsible for our own self-defense, our own well-being and our own problems.
By supporting any State enforced gun control we deny our heritage as sovereign spiritual beings in human form. We also put ourselves, our loved ones and our communities at a statistically greater physical risk.
Making the world a better place comes through the personal transformation of consciousness, not through external State control.
The first step to regain sovereignty is discovering how much you’ve given away to the State and to the “good opinion of others.” A good way to discover that is apply for a gun license, buy a gun and — tell your friends.
You are still a sovereign being. Now, go create a miracle.
Copyright © 2000 Richard Roberts. All Rights Reserved.
Permission to cite and excerpt is granted provided material is unchanged, author is credited and this URL is referenced.
Last revision, February 2, 2000. Links invited.
Dedication
Introduction
New Age Hypocrisy
You Create Your Own Reality – Sometimes
Fear of the Responsibility of Personal Power
Bullets or Arrows?
Creative Visualization and Wishful Thinking
“Thank God I Don’t Have a Gun!”
Isn’t It Ironic?
3D Choices
Non-Violence and Self-Defense
The Right to Choose – (Defense)
Gandhi and Non-Violence
Christ, Non-Violence and Self Defense
The Medical Model
The Prozac Connection
Irritating Firearm Facts
The Second Amendment
Guns Save Lives
The Politics of Control
Legislating Safety
Cause and Effect
The Compassion Fascist
Unintended Consequences
Dying of Consumption
Just Try Buying a Gun
The Global Village
Disarming the Village
Seeds of Gun Confiscation
Some Historic Fruits of Gun Confiscation
For The Children . . .
Better Government or No Government?
Whom Do You Trust (with Power)?
The Ultimate Heresy
The Individual and Community
Exercise of Freedom
Energetic Solutions Instead of External Restrictions
Lighthouses of Prayer
Power of Prayer
Personal and Community Responsibility
Q&A
Spiritual Sovereignty
Waking Up
Acting In Consciousness
Reclaiming Power
The Sovereign Outlaw
Transmutation and Reverberation
Notes
Bibliography
Dedication
On April 30, 1999, Hollis Littlecreek, my flute teacher, mentor and friend, passed from this world. Hollis, an Anishinabe Native American elder who freely shared his teachings, was an important catalyst at many points in my life. How appropriate that on the day Hollis left, I would apply for my Massachusetts Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permit. I could imagine him laughing to himself. For while his pipe, his flutes and his tools were never far away, neither was his gun — and among those who visited with him, I was one of the most unlikely to get one.
Introduction
As I watched the hysteria grow after the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, I realized that if I would ever want a gun, best to get it now, because it would only be more difficult later.
I was under no immediate personal threat. In fact, whether traveling in India or driving cab in New York, I’ve always felt safe and protected. My reasons were more pragmatic — like buying a chainsaw now because you just learned you might not be able to buy one when you would need it.
I learned a lot buying a gun. I encountered Byzantine regulations and media programmed biases. I made surprising legal, factual and historical discoveries. I faced uncomfortable contradictions in my beliefs about personal power, sovereignty, and an individual’s rights and responsibilities within the community. I also reexamined my beliefs and actions and my responsibilities to the world our children will inherit.
After encountering some pretty strong anti-gun feelings when talking with New Age acquaintances, I ran a survey to better understand New Age sentiments toward guns. This article developed from that survey and the research and numerous conversations that followed.
New Age Hypocrisy
We say we create our own reality. We say we’re responsible for our experience. We say we attract the events in our life. We say our beliefs affect our experience.
We also say that agents of the State should be more active in regulating the purchase and use of guns. (See survey.) This is the same State we don’t trust to regulate Vitamin C. This is the same State that wages the drug war. This is the same State we don’t want irradiating our food. But, we want this State to regulate guns. In fact, many of us even think it’s a good idea that only agents of this State be allowed to have guns.
As Ann Coulter asks in a recent article in George Magazine, “Why is it that the same people who have the least confidence in the police and military are the most willing to allow only the police and military to have guns?”
I think most of us in the New Age community aren’t intentionally hypocritical, we just suffer from what I call the Paint Chip Syndrome. The paint chip looks great in the hardware store, but when you actually paint your wall, you wonder what you were thinking.
In one room in our consciousness, we agree with the Catholic mystic, Pierre Tielhard de Chardin that we are co-creators in creation. And as we study the Course in Miracles we learn there is no “other” to blame for our sorrow. Meanwhile, in another room in our consciousness we see someone in such pain that we’re moved to tears. No one should have to suffer that. Someone should do something. Someone or something is to blame. “There ought to be a law.” We start a petition, pass a law, illegalize a thing.
As Jane Roberts’ channeled entity, Seth, described, we carry contradictory beliefs. Each may appear logical within its own particular context, but when they’re set side-by-side in the same room, the contradiction is obvious.
A good example of this disconnect is in the survey. Nearly one fourth (23%) of the New Age respondents each individually agreed or strongly agreed with both of the following statements:
“Gun control laws only affect law-abiding citizens — criminals will still be able to obtain handguns illegally whenever they want.” and
“If the laws on gun ownership were stricter than they are now, the overall number of violent crimes would be reduced.”
How can we with one breath repeat Louise L. Hay’s first affirmation in her book You Can Heal Your Life, “We are each 100% responsible for all of our experiences”, and then with the next breath insist the State forbid a particular sharp object so our world will feel safer?
Affirmations not in alignment with our beliefs are impotent, no matter how emotionally soothing they feel at the time. Accepting and directing the power and creativity of our non-physical selves requires conscious, integrated and coherent focus.
You Create Your Own Reality – Sometimes
Some New Age folks play the parking space game. You know, visualize the parking space at the entrance to the supermarket on a busy Saturday and ta-da, there it is. I do it. Although I’ve not kept precise stats, I at least imagine it works quite well. It’s fun to take credit for a hard-to-find parking space. It’s less easy to take responsibility for a flat tire, or an accident, or an assault.
Accepting responsibility for everything may not be easy at first. You certainly won’t find much support for that approach on TV, or in magazines or newspapers. We cannot pick and choose the realities for which we’ll accept responsibility. We either get to own it all and live as the responsible sovereigns we are, or blame it all and playing the role of victim, look to others and the State for protection and compensation for our suffering.
The question is, “Who is responsible for my life?”
Fear of the Responsibility of Personal Power
Why do so many of us otherwise sensible and intellectually honest New Age folks support State mandated gun restrictions? I think one reason is that we’re uncomfortable with the full responsibility of our personal power.
I lived in an ashram for many years. It was a very seductive environment for me (at seventeen). I didn’t need to think too much. My life was figured out. Even my afterlife was figured out. All I needed to do was meditate, work hard, and participate in a few group activities. I knew I was in heaven and I was helping to bring enlightenment to the world. Whenever someone was thinking about moving out, everyone else would try to convince them to stay for their own good. But now I think there was another, more important reason. You had to keep people from leaving lest you doubt your own reasons for staying.
The dominant paradigm for much of our culture is the Cult of the Victim. It is a very seductive cult. We don’t need to think too much. Entire systems are in place to support us and reward us for our victimization. Sovereign people who accept the responsibility of their personal power threaten the Cult of Victim. So like crabs in a bucket who pull back any crab that tries to escape, the victim culture acts reflexively to squash acts of power.
Gun ownership is the quintessential threatening act of power to the victim paradigm. It’s like waving a pentagram in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600’s. Deep down folks know they’re responsible. But their denial requires they eliminate anything that reminds them of what they’re denying. That may explain much of the negative reactions to my owning and wearing a gun.
Gun ownership requires that a person acknowledge and ponder at great length the responsibility of their personal power. Nothing symbolizes that responsibility like putting on a gun. And nothing threatens someone who’s afraid of the responsibility of their personal power like someone wearing a gun.
Whom does the gun in the care of the good-hearted person threaten? It threatens the criminal, the State apparently, and also individuals who have learned to fear the responsibility of their personal power and the unpredictable potential of their spiritual sovereignty should it ever be free of externally imposed restrictions.
Bullets or Arrows?
I have a bullet on a necklace I sometimes wear. It gets interesting reactions and looks. My friend, who thinks the State should confiscate all guns, wears an arrowhead on his necklace and no one blinks an eye. Some tell me, “You’ve gone too far now,” “A kid could never sneak a bow and arrow to school,” or “We romanticize arrowheads because they remind us of a time before there were guns.”
For those who wish to return to a world without guns, do they really understand the implications and responsibility of taking away the tools which the outnumbered and overpowered need, which the women, the elderly, and the disabled need to protect their bodies and children from thugs with clubs or bows and arrows?
We revere Native Americans as keepers of wisdom. We honor them for sharing their teachings of prophecy, community living, and caring for the earth. Every New Age bookstore has shelves of books about the teachings and sufferings of Native Americans. Ironically, many of the people who buy “Free Leonard Peltier” bumper stickers and mourn the Indians’ loss of land and life at the hands of the “power hungry Christian, white, males of the United States”, now want the same State that took away the Indians’ lands and lives to take away the Indians’ guns — again!
All my friends who have significant Native American heritage either have guns or support people having guns. I wonder if that has anything to do with remembering a time when their grandparents’ grandparents really needed a gun and couldn’t get one.
Creative Visualization and Wishful Thinking
When we learn creative visualization we’re taught to define our objective clearly, see it as accomplished and release it, knowing it will occur. Just as in prayer, we put our supplication before the Lord not as a whine, but with thanksgiving that the result has already been accomplished. One thing that doesn’t work in visualization or prayer, is to instruct the Great Mystery or God or All That Is how you want your goal to be achieved.
We want a peaceful and free society for ourselves and our loved ones. That’s the goal, the prayer. And now we’ve presumed to instruct the Almighty how such goal is to be achieved by saying that the State should control the guns. Somehow the means became the goal. Presuming to know the correct means, we seek to impose those means on others. It’s against our best interests to limit God’s means to achieve our objective. Besides, how can you limit God? God is limitless.
Remember the bumper sticker, “Visualize World Peace”? Do we want world peace or do we want to live in peace? Both? Well, we’re only responsible for our world. As New Age author, Stuart Wilde says, “You don’t want to mess with world peace — all you want to do is be peaceful.” Perhaps people try to compensate for not being responsible for their own worlds by being responsible for everyone else’s world. Most people’s worlds are already quite peaceful — we just have to turn off our TVs and ignore the State alarming us to crisis after manufactured petty crisis.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and thus clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
— H.L. Mencken
We’ve mixed up wishful thinking with visualization. Imagining what a peaceful world will look like, we attack anything that doesn’t match our projection of the final picture. We decide that in a “perfect” world there will be no need for guns, so wishing we were in that world now, we say, “Get rid of guns.” But wishing doesn’t make it so. It’s not about the presence or absence of guns anyway, it’s about what’s in a person’s consciousness, not a person’s pocket.
The idealists dream of magic wands. But their wands don’t work, because as victims, they have denied their own power. So they project their denied power onto the State to perform magic through external control.
Just because weapons have been used (mainly by the State against its own people) to destroy people and cultures, does not mean that is the only use for personal firearms. “Get rid of guns!” does not equal “Get rid of war, hate and suffering.” This is a task of the heart, of the spirit, not a task to be given to the regulation writers of the State.
“Thank God I Don’t Have a Gun!”
Folks who haven’t accepted the responsibility of their own personal power and the results of their choices don’t seem to readily accept it in others. Perhaps folks who haven’t dealt with their own demons figure everyone else is just like them, ready to blow up at the next insult, and God forbid they have a gun.
In Rambo and the Dalai Lama, Gordon Fellman writes about his feelings while reading an account of firearms training at Jeff Cooper’s Gunsite Ranch,
I finished reading Gobson’s account with a gripping fantasy that I would take the Gunsite course. I wanted to feel the thrill and power Gibson did. I know murderous rage, but for the first time, I felt something in me that would like to soldier, to shoot and slay. I imagined killing Nazis in muddy battles in World War II and hunting down rapists and child-molesters in big cities and beating, strangling, and shooting them. I imagined myself, Rambolike, living on the edge, honing survival skills and cleverly fashioning weapons to destroy my enemies with perfect mastery and no aftermath of guilt.
From reading Mr. Fellman’s book I’ve gathered that he supports gun control and it’s no surprise if he thinks everyone is as full of the self-absorbed frustration, hate, anger, violence and revenge as he represents himself to be.
It’s almost cliche´ to read of the man who snaps and goes on some spree of violence: “He was such a nice, quiet man.”
Isn’t It Ironic?
Many in the New Age community support a woman’s right to choose to continue or end a pregnancy, but not her right to use a gun to protect her child.
Many support a woman’s right to control her own body, but not her right to protect it with a gun.
Many support the rights of the disabled to have access to bathrooms, theaters and restaurants, but not access to the effective personal defense of a gun.
Many support not “judging” others’ lifestyles, but then immediately judge those who choose to protect themselves and others with a gun.
Many support respecting the diversity of religions, cultures and sexual preferences, but not the diversity of choosing a gun to preserve the well-being of our selves, our families and our communities.
3D Choices
We make choices in 3D all the time. Many of those choices are about personal safety and defending our selves, our family, our home, our community and our planet. We put on our seat belts, install fire extinguishers, put our babies in child safety seats, lock our doors, recycle, organize to keep the local landfill away from the town reservoir. We stop using freon, asbestos and lead-based paint. We eat organic foods, exercise, use condoms, take seminars and go to ceremonies. We buy car insurance to protect our car, home insurance to protect our house and possessions, health insurance to protect our bodies and money. We even read books on psychic shielding.
We revere the Native American tradition of making choices based on what’s best for the coming seven generations. And then we support more gun control, the one thing that made all the genocides and massacres of civilians throughout history possible.
Non-Violence and Self-Defense
Christ’s view on self-defense was clear, asserts Douglas Kennard, a theology professor at Moody Bible Institute, a seminary in Chicago, and teaching karate sends the wrong message to churchgoers. “For those who are kingdom-bound, we should allow ourselves to be abused,” he says. “Even to the point of repeatedly being abused.”
— Wall Street Journal, Thursday October 28, 1999, front page article on teaching karate in churches
Many people are uncomfortable with the concept of self-defense. Some Christians, like the writer above, completely reject the concept. Some equate personal self-defense with the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) strategy of nuclear warfare. Some reject self-defense, because its need or preparation means failure to envision and create a better world. They would say that preparing to defend yourself simply reinforces the possibility of attack.
In spirit, we may know there is no death and even though there are times we may not fear death, this physical 3D experience is still precious. All beings have a right, inherent in their existence, to defend that existence in this beautiful 3D creation. All have a right and duty to preserve and protect their family’s and their community’s existence as well. This is not about competition. This is not about control. This is not about violence for its own sake. This is about honoring the sacredness of this experience of life in 3D. This is about honoring and protecting our own, our family’s and our community’s right to life, liberty and however we choose to pursue happiness.
Some utopian views may include no need for self-defense and I don’t begrudge such visions. But why are some folks so insistent all of a sudden that only the police, military and other agents of the State should have guns? Why are they so eager to take them away from regular folk? What’s the difference between the person who hits you and the person who ties your hands so that someone else can hit you? Whoever takes away your ability to defend yourself needs to be defended against.
In the atmosphere of today’s victim mentality, self-defense can be an irritating reminder of personal responsibility. Self-defense also can be an irritating reminder of spiritual sovereignty. Metaphysically, do we think events occur accidentally?
The Right to Choose – (Defense)
Since we are responsible (response-able), we have a right to choose how to respond. Actually, we can’t not make that choice.
Increasingly we are being trained to give our response-ability over to others. We are taught to seek help, not self-defend. We’re taught to call police (with guns, by the way) to respond after the fact to a day-care/school/church shooting, but we’re shocked at the idea of a private individual carrying a gun in a day-care/school/church. (See A Nation of Cowards.)
I imagine a person who lost a family member in a school or church shooting being offered a chance to replay the tragedy with only one difference — that an armed woman or man of good heart be present who might avert or lessen the tragedy. I can’t believe that even the staunchest supporter of gun confiscation would hesitate for a moment to give anything to replay the scene again — to have a woman or man of good heart at the scene with a gun tucked beneath their sweater
Many people expect benefits without responsibility. Not aware of the process, we hire others to do our messy work. Then we criminalize or demonize the activity for everyone else, so we don’t feel pressured to do it ourselves. For instance, some people who disdain the hunting and trapping of free, wild animals pay others to raise, kill and butcher animals under unnatural and often inhumane conditions. Some who support gun confiscation travel with their own armed bodyguards or police protection.
Some say you don’t need a gun because the police are there to protect you. However,
In 1856, the U.S. Supreme Court (South v. Maryland) found that law enforcement officers had no duty to protect any individual. Their duty is to enforce the law in general. More recently, in 1982 (Bowers v. DeVito), the Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit held, “…there is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents… but it does not violate… the Constitution.” Later court decisions concurred: the police have no duty to protect you.
– (various)
“Women are supposed to be ‘nice.’ They like to think of themselves as nurturing and they don’t like to think about hurting someone,” explains Dr. Helen Smith, 38, a forensic psychologist in Knoxville, Tennessee. Smith, who works with violent criminals in the courts, sees the aftermath of violence, some of it gun-related, on a near daily basis. Which is exactly why she says she’s pro-gun.
“I see so many women shot dead,” she explains. “An ex-husband comes back to the house, and if she doesn’t have a gun…” She says women hop on the gun-control bandwagon because it feels right, because they don’t understand how guns work, and because they don’t want to take the responsibility of protecting themselves.
“When women get on their high horse, what they don’t realize is they’re taking away someone’s right to self-protection,” she says. “If you want to die on the street, that’s fine.”
— Source
In 3D, all beings have the inherent right to protect themselves, their families and their villages from lethal force. To acknowledge that right, acknowledges the need for an effective response. You cannot acknowledge a right and at the same time deny the means to exercise it.
“The irony is, if you’re willing to kill a perpetrator, you probably won’t have to.”
— Massad Ayoob, Lethal Force Institute
Once I would have described myself as “non-violent” (in fact, once I was, to the point of never defending myself) — but after a lot of consideration I have decided that what I am now is “nonaggressive.”
Violence is the use of destructive force against an object, or a person who doesn’t welcome it. Unfortunately, self-defense often involves violence.
I cannot claim I am “non-violent” or “anti violence,” because I am pro self-defense. I simply believe that one should never INITIATE violence. I believe that most people would describe themselves this way if you put this distinction before them in those words.
— C.D. Tavares, author
Gandhi and Non-Violence
When discussing non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi comes to mind. I used to interpret non-violence as passivity in the face of violence, but Gandhi’s approach was never passive.
Gandhi believed non-violence had to be a choice. He said a mouse can’t be non-violent with a cat, because a mouse doesn’t have the potential to be violent with a cat. Indeed, non-violence is only possible from a position of power where there is the choice, the tools and the ready opportunity to be violent.
More importantly, Gandhi’s philosophy was about shifting paradigms, not conquering a violent opponent, as Mark Shepard writes:
How, then, to oppose injustice and reform society? I hoped that Gandhi held the answer. It seemed to me he had meant to work out just what I was looking for: a way of defeating and overthrowing the oppressors of the world, but by moral means.
That was my myth about Gandhi; that was my filter. I had to read an entire book and a half about Gandhi before it struck me — and it struck me hard — that Gandhi was not talking about defeating or overthrowing anyone.
Satyagraha — Gandhi’s nonviolent action — was not a way for one group to seize what it wanted from another. It was not a weapon of class struggle, or of any other kind of division. Satyagraha was instead an instrument of unity. It was a way to remove injustice and restore social harmony, to the benefit of both sides.
Satyagraha, strange as it seems, was for the opponent’s sake as well. When Satyagraha worked, both sides won.
That concept did not pass at all easily through my filter, and I understand why so many others miss it entirely. But it is, really, the essential difference between Gandhi’s Satyagraha and so much of the nonviolent action practiced by others.
You may wonder, how did Gandhi himself come to this amazing attitude? He said it this way: “All my actions have their source in my inalienable love of humankind.”
— Mark Shepard, “Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths”
Similarly, my objective with this essay is not merely to change gun confiscation laws or who’s in Congress. My objective is to bring about a greater awareness and acceptance of our responsibility for our world.
“No lasting change is ever wrought from without.”
— Ken Carey
Lasting change comes from waking up to our inherent personal spiritual sovereignty. To wake up, we first have to realize we’re sleeping. We have to realize just how unsovereign we’ve allowed ourselves to be treated. We gradually become aware of how our beliefs and assumptions are programmed and legislated — they’re not really our beliefs at all. They are what Taisha Abelar in Sorcerer’s Crossing calls a forced inventory in our memory warehouse.
The way I came face to face with my forced inventory and my programmed assumptions was to become familiar with guns and how we view them.
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”
– -Mahatma Gandhi, “Gandhi, An Autobiography”, page 446
Christ, Non-Violence and Self defense
Many accept Jesus Christ as the epitome of non-violence.
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
— Matthew 5:38,39
Actually, that’s excellent advice for any concealed carry gun safety class. You’ll find that folks carrying guns are extremely polite and go out of their way to avoid confrontation. If you’re getting slapped on your right cheek (more an insult than an assault) and your life and limb are not in grave, imminent and unavoidable danger, you should offer the other cheek before you even hint that you have a gun.
I doubt Christ intended this verse to apply to grave bodily harm or lethal force, (but whosoever shall cut off one arm, offer him the other also . . .).
For me, the key is in Christ’s admonition “that ye resist not evil.” As we’ll see later, the real change is to be made in the arena of energy and consciousness, not by confronting evil on its own terms which only reinforces it.
Also, the translation of the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13) is misleading. I recently learned the word that was translated “kill” actually means to “murder from a hidden place.” The commandment would more accurately be translated, “Thou shalt not murder.”
The Medical Model
Medicine is shifting from a mechanistic world view to a holistic world view. The field of medicine and health is developing consciousness based interventions instead of relying solely on mechanical interventions to address various “disease expressions.” The strictly mechanistic approach that removes the tumor and ignores the person and his or her world is accepted less and less.
“The mechanism of illness is not the origin of illness.”
— Dr. Deepak Chopra
Dr. Chopra teaches the need to trust spirit as we explore health and the origins of illness, even if it takes us past expected options.
These same insights also apply to society and the individual. We can no longer afford to assume that the mechanism of a social illness is the same as the origin of a social illness.
Illness is feedback, whether on the individual level or the social level. A tumor in the body can cause pain and suffering, even death. We now know that if we remove a tumor and the affected organ but ignore or leave unchanged the underlying cause, the body is frustrated and confused because the feedback the body created is gone, but the reason it created the feedback still exists. So the body sends another message and perhaps sacrifices another organ, and another.
Illness in society is no different. Violent attacks, whether with gasoline, fertilizer, knives or guns, are symptoms, feedback of an underlying cause. As long as we address only the symptom and not the underlying cause, the feedback will get louder and more insistent.
On the cellular level, the human body maintains a level of high alert. Macrophage cells, T-cells, B-cells and Natural Killer Cells roam the body on the lookout for cellular threats. When this cellular self defense system encounters a threatening cell, the Natural Killer Cells shoot a bullet of tumor necrosis factor that penetrates the cell membrane and kills the offending cell.
We know that our attitudes impact our cells’ performance. High stress and an attitude of “What’s the use?” is communicated to the immune system and the immune response cells take up the refrain of “What’s the use?” and allow diseased cells to proliferate. In the same way, if a person rejects the very concept of self defense, then what should we expect the Natural Killer Cells to do with that information?
The data from the 1990 Harvard Medical Practice Study suggest that 150,000 Americans die every year from doctors’ negligence — compared with 38,000 gun deaths annually. Why are doctors not declared a public health menace? Because they save more lives than they take. And so it is with guns. Every year, good Americans use guns about 2.5 million times to protect themselves and their families, which means 65 lives are protected by guns for every life lost to a gun.
— Dr. Edgar Suter, San Francisco Chronicle, 7/12/94, Opinion (p. A17).
The Prozac Connection
Guns are not the only item present when a murderer intent on killing another human being pulls the trigger. Drugs are almost always present. And not just the ones the State has decided to make illegal. No, the drugs that are often present are State approved SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, Serzone, Effexor, Anafranil, Fenfluramine (Fen-Phen and Redux), Deseryl, Meridia, and other serotonin increasing drugs.
Among the adverse signs and symptoms of SSRI antidepressants which Harvey Sternbach, M.D. lists the following in his report The Serotonin Syndrome are the following:
Insomnia or bad dreams, agitation or restlessness, hostility, anxiety, anger, violent thoughts and/or violence, suicidal thoughts or behavior, self destructive behavior, rage, panic, confusion, superhuman strength-energy, mood swings, unconcerned about consequences, out of control behavior, and altered personality.
Prozac – Panacea or Pandora
Prozac Survivors’ Support Group
Kids, Drugs, Guns and Psychopolitics
Irritating Firearm Facts
The focus of this essay is not the wisdom of America’s founding fathers in writing the Second Amendment. Nor is it about adding another bit of data to the ongoing statistical wrestling match over gun confiscation. This essay is primarily about our inherent spiritual sovereignty being at odds with relying on external State controls.
Nevertheless, here are some leads if you’re interested in facts. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the disagreement on this topic is rooted in facts. If it really were about facts, safety and well being, guns would be as common as seat belts, and gun training as accepted as drivers education.
The Second Amendment
“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
–U.S. Constitution
Some say that the Second Amendment acknowledges a preexisting individual right to keep and bear arms for both personal safety and to check inevitable state tyranny.
– Gun Cite
– The Supreme Court and the Second, essay by Don Kates, Jr.
– Second Amendment Foundation
– Independence Institute
– The Unabridged Second Amendment
Some say the Second Amendment only allows the states to have a militia, now called the National Guard:
– American Civil Liberties Union
– American Bar Association
Guns Save Lives
“If it saves the life of even one child, it’s worth getting rid of that gun!”
Unfortunately it’s not that simple. There’s volumes of research on this point. If there wasn’t a larger agenda at work here, and if it was just about the safety for our communities, our children and our elders, then gun ownership would be widely supported and encouraged. But then if it were about facts, doctors would be prescribing prayer circles for all post-op patients, too.
Some say that guns save lives:
– John Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime
– Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO)
– Links to Source Studies provided by Gun Owners of America
– GunTruths.com
– A Letter to Elizabeth
Some say that the presence of guns increases the likelihood of gun accidents and deaths:
– Handgun Control, Inc.
– Violence Policy Center
What do you think? Visit Oleg Volk’s survey and find out!
The Politics of Control
Keeping sharp objects out of reach is not always the wisest choice. Hollis once described how he learned not to touch hot stoves. His grandfather explained to him that when the stove was hot he shouldn’t touch it. Then Hollis touched the hot stove, his grandfather didn’t try to stop him and it burned him. Hollis never burned himself on a stove again. He also paid more attention to his grandfather’s suggestions.
One time while visiting friends, I watched their two daughters, ages four and six, pull out long sharp knifes from the drawer to serve some dessert. Their mom said it was okay. The girls had been carefully taught how to use them safely. Their parents had decided to teach them how to move safely in the world instead of trying to create a safe world for them.
In contrast, I once visited a house with an elaborate fence around the wood stove. While that child may not burn herself, she also has been insulated from the consequences of her choices. She also has no training in the personal responsibility of moving through an environment that hasn’t been made safe in advance.
Which child will be better prepared to act responsibly and care for herself and others?
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
— Herbert Spencer (1891)
Legislating Safety
Legislation is good for people who want something done, but who don’t want to do it themselves and certainly don’t want the responsibility for the solution working. Every time we clamor for agents of the State to “just do something” we give away more of our power, sovereignty, responsibility and freedom to the State. We reinforce the paradigm of State control every time we ask for legislation to make the world a better and safer place.
“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.”
–Thomas B. Reed (1886)
“If laws worked, there would be no crime.”
–Claire Wolfe
“There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.”
— P.J. O’Rourke (1993)
“An ye harm no one, do as ye will. This is the whole of the law.”
— Wiccan Creed
I find it interesting that the spirit of the Wiccan Creed is quite similar to the philosophy of the Libertarian Party:
“A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.”
— Who is a libertarian?
Cause and Effect
We’ve all heard of studies of rats kept in a small and crowded area. They exhibit all sorts of “bad” behavior, biting and scratching at each other. How to stop the violence? Are the claws and teeth the cause? Perhaps we should declaw and defang them.
As any good Vulcan would say, “That is illogical.” The presence of the claws and fangs are not the cause of the violent effects. And disarming people will not address the violence any more than will disarming the rats.
But we’re not rats, we are human beings!
Yes. And perhaps it’s time we realized that and take steps to extricate ourselves from our unnatural and stressful circumstances. We would do better to take responsibility and change our lifestyles than to ask the State to protect us from ourselves.
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
— Thomas Jefferson quoting criminologist, Cesare Beccaria
The Compassion Fascist
I remember sitting around the table with Hollis and every now and then we’d talk about what he called “do-gooders.” By “do-gooder” he meant people who, uninvited, poked their noses into other peoples’ lives and suggested what those people should do differently. For him the actions of do-gooders was both a source of entertainment and a good teaching aid, though he didn’t particularly enjoy being told to smoke less or eat differently.
Hollis had a lot to teach and share, but he rarely did so unless asked and I don’t remember him ever volunteering the word, “should.” If his advice was solicited, he would offer it tirelessly. If it wasn’t he would remain quiet, even if in his experience, the result of the person’s choices was about to be painful for them. He was very compassionate, but not a compassion fascist. He respected the person’s learning process and did not interfere. He was not responsible for them, and he believed if he imposed his unsolicited advice he would become responsible for the fruit of their actions and that was a responsibility he did not want.
He was as generous with his time, his advice, his tools and treasures as anyone I have met. He was compassionate. But he did not force his compassion on others and did not appreciate others forcing their compassion on him.
Nowadays we think an act is compassionate if it is for another’s good. But, how do we know what is good for someone else in the long run? If we think we know what’s best for others, then we’ve planted the seeds of accepting that maybe the State know what’s best for us. When we accept the State’s intervention in our lives in the name of a compassion that it defines, I believe we accept a mindset which sets the stage for the potential of great mischief.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.
— C.S Lewis
Unintended Consequences
Attempts to make the world safe, legislate morality or enforce a world vision can create unintended consequences. Usually the problem gets worse.
For example:
Prohibition – Objective: Stop people from ingesting a particular substance. Actual result: Creation of organized crime, loss of respect for law, criminalization of millions of Americans, invention of the “drive-by shooting.”
War on Drugs – So far, similar results.
Child-Proof Caps – Objective: Eliminate accidental child poisonings. Actual result: Increased child poisonings. People left the bottles around instead of putting them away because now they were safe. People also just left the caps off because they were so hard to remove.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children – Objective: Help suddenly widowed women with children get back on their feet. Actual result: By paying women as long as there is no man at home, and by increasing the amount paid for each additional child, we have more unwed mothers having more kids.
Pesticides – Objective: Less bugs, more food. Actual result: Poisoned food chain, pesticide resistant bugs and people with pesticide allergies.
Gun Control – Stated Objective: Reduce accidents and deaths involving the use of firearms. Actual result: Rapid increase in hot burglaries (while people are at home), rapes, assaults and assaults with a weapon.
See Australia.
See Great Britain.
See Switzerland.
Dying of Consumption
We’ve been programmed to be dissatisfied with what we have and seduced to believe we’ll be happy with the next whatever we acquire. Not only are we looking outside ourselves for our safety, we’re looking outside ourselves for our happiness in the perfect car, seminar, relationship, or paint color.
When the emphasis is on stuff and getting stuff, then more energy goes to concerns of safety, control and predictability and less goes to concerns about freedom, liberty and sovereignty. Comfortable and predictable consumption becomes more important than personal freedom and sovereignty.
One way to experience more sovereignty with time and finances is to exit the economic squirrel cage. Instead of earning more, consume less. I find it interesting that “consumption” also refers to “an infectious wasting disease affecting the lungs.” And in our culture, consumption as a means to fulfillment has become an infectious wasting disease affecting many lives.
We’ll all be dead soon. And the person who dies with the most toys is still dead. Toys are lots of fun, but that’s not where all the sweetness of life’s adventure is hidden. We can have lots of toys and still live in a prison. But to enjoy freedom and liberty and sovereignty, we have to wake up and walk out.
Rainbow Eagle, a Native American teacher, shares the teachings of the Peace Shield. He teaches that a community or a village is only as strong and free and independent as is each individual in that community. Strong and free individuals make for a strong and free community.
“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will loose that too.
— W. Somerset Maugham
[On ancient Athens]: In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all — security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
— Edward Gibbon
Just Try Buying a Gun
There is a lot going on in our shared social world that is easy to overlook. World-wide systems (Echelon) are in place that read our e-mail and scan our phones and faxes. We eat unlabeled altered food made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Hybrid seeds replace dwindling heirloom seed stock. Laws enable some state schools to diagnose and treat children without telling parents or the child’s doctor.
School principals may excuse any student in grades 7-12 school to obtain confidential medical services without the consent of the student’s parent/guardian.
— California Education Code 56010.1
Our buying habits and medical records are carefully cataloged and marketed. All that and more happens and you can miss it. I certainly did. Then I applied for a gun license.
I’ve since been photographed and fingerprinted and my life has been scrutinized by the FBI, the BATF, and various State Police throughout New England. If I move, even within the same town, I have to report immediately to more local and state agencies than does a murderer or child molester. If I don’t report, I loose my “right” to carry a gun forever. When I’m carrying my gun there are places I can’t drive, buildings I can’t enter, parks in which I can’t walk. In Massachusetts, I even become a criminal if I walk in the woods or cut across an open field during certain hours of the day.
So apply for a gun license. Think of it as an exercise to loosen your belief of who you think you are and where you think you live. You may find you don’t live where you thought. You may discover how you’ve been tricked into giving away your sovereignty. You may think about getting it back.
The Global Village
The Global Village is the ultimate oxymoron. There will be no town meeting in the Global Village. There will be no talking circle in the Global Village.
Talking with editor Eric Utne in 1977, anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “99 percent of the time humans have lived on this planet we’ve lived in groups of 12 to 36 people.” Perhaps it is our longing for that experience which makes the Global Village sound so good. Some say, “It takes a village to raise a child.” But what kind of child will the Global Village raise? As I hear strains of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, I imagine a Global Village intent on raising obedient bricks for the Global Village Factory and the Global Village Mall.
We are all humans and we share space on this earth. And yes, our experiences are becoming more intertwined. But does that mean our destiny is a Global Village where acceptable behaviors and beliefs are prescribed to us by an unseen council of elders?
Disarming the Village
I remember learning to look for the simple answer, the overarching, uncontradictable theory. One theory I’m unable to punch holes in is the Goal of Disarming the Global Village. While I don’t see a New World Order plot behind every local ordinance, I do believe there is an ongoing effort to disarm the Global Work Camp & Mall.
The mainstream media’s ongoing effort, as Noam Chomsky says in Media Control, is to “manufacture the consent” of the “bewildered herd”, To promote further gun control the media creates hysteria by providing a steady diet of slanted reporting on the civilian use of firearms. Supporters of right to carry laws are portrayed as shoot-em-ups who want to return to days of the Wild West.
Liberalizing concealed carry laws won’t lead to a return to the Wild West — though it wouldn’t be bad if it did. … in 19th Century cattle towns, homicide was confined to transient males who shot each other in saloon disturbances. The per capital robbery rate was 7% of modern New York City’s. The burglary rate was 1%. Rape was unknown.
— David Kopel – quoted in the Wall Street Journal, February 28, 1994 in “Have Gun, Will Eat Out”
I believe it’s good to be suspicious when an armed State wants to disarm its citizens. Why don’t they want the people able to defend themselves? What’s going on?
A friend responded to my survey with:
gunz,… don’t like ’em,… never will,…
gunz to all or gunz to none is my motto,…
but until there is no need for violence,… someone will find a way to get a bigger stone,…
— z
And when there is no more need for violence, when that awareness is shared among all self-aware sovereign beings, it won’t matter if any one is carrying a gun or not.
Seeds of Gun Confiscation
Rush Limbaugh got it right when he described the State’s gun control strategy:
Tragedy occurs with a criminal using a gun.
Pass more gun control laws.
Don’t enforce those laws.
Another tragedy occurs with a criminal using a gun.
Claim the previous gun laws were not enough. Pass more gun control laws.
Don’t enforce those laws.
Another tragedy occurs with a criminal using a gun.
Say that gun laws alone are not enough. We need to register everyone’s gun and pass more laws.
Register everyone’s gun. Don’t enforce the new gun laws.
Another tragedy occurs with a criminal using a gun.
Claim that obviously even registration is not enough. Start confiscating guns.
What is our fear that the State is playing to? We need seriously to ask, why the push to restrict, register and eliminate guns owned by people who aren’t agents of the State? All statistics show it’s not for the safety of the people. If it’s for the safety of the State, then why would the State be worried that good-hearted people own guns?
(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation . . . (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
— James Madison.
Some Historic Fruits of Gun Confiscation
I grew up in a small town with a large Armenian population. The boy who sat next to me in seventh grade home room would tell how his family was slaughtered and that his dream was to one day return and kill Turks. When I was in the seventh grade I learned the Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1917. What I didn’t learn in seventh grade was that in 1911, the Ottoman Turks enacted a gun control law, Article 166 Penal Code.
A scan of recent history reveals similar patterns.
In 1929, The Soviet Union enacted gun control law Article 166 Penal Code. From 1929 to 1953, the Soviet Union killed 20 million Russian anti-Stalinists and anti-communists.
In 1928, on April 12, the German Republic enacted the Law on Firearms & Ammunition. In 1938, on March 18, they enacted the Weapons Law. From 1933 to 1945, the Germans killed 13 million German Jews, Gypsies and anti-Nazis.
In 1935, China enacted gun control law Articles 186-7, Penal Code. On October 22, 1957, China enacted the gun control law Article 9, Security Law. From 1949-1952, China killed her communists. From 1957-1960, China killed her farmers. From 1966-1976, China killed her reformers. All told, China killed 20 million Chinese.
In 1871, on November 25, Guatemala enacted gun control Decree 36. On October 27, 1964, Guatemala enacted gun control Decree 283. From 1960 to 1981, Guatemala killed 100,000 Mayan Indians.
In 1955, Uganda enacted the gun control Firearms Ordinance. In 1970, Uganda enacted the gun control Firearms Act. From 1971 to 1979, Uganda killed 300,000 Ugandan Christians and political rivals.
In 1956, Cambodia passed the gun control Articles 322-8, Penal Code. From 1975 to 1979, Cambodia killed one million educated Cambodians.
But it can’t happen here in America, right? Not according to the JPFO’s review of Lethal Laws.
It did happen here. The conquest of North America by the European settlers of the future United States was accomplished by “the extermination of some Native American tribes and the near-extinction of others, by U.S. government forces . . . .” The forced march of the Cherokee people from the southeastern United States into Oklahoma along the “Trail of Tears” resulted in the deaths of a large fraction of the Cherokee population, and at best, differs quantitatively rather than qualitatively from the 20th-century genocides described in Lethal Laws. Hitler looked with admiration at how the United States government had cleared the continent of Indians, and he used the U.S. government’s 19th-century policies as a model for his own 20th-century policies of clearing Lebensraum for the German people.
Disarming citizens before killing or oppressing them is a time-honored American tradition. After the Civil War, the first act of the Ku Klux Klan (like the Khmer Rouge) was to round up all the guns in the hands of ex-slaves. Only then did other oppressions begin. From the middle of the nineteenth century to the first quarter of the twentieth, race riots in the United States usually took the form of white mobs rampaging against innocent blacks. Black attempts to resist or to shoot back were often followed with governmental efforts to disarm the blacks.
Has every country whose citizens allowed themselves to be disarmed suffered slaughter from their own State? Not yet.
Has any country’s citizens who kept their guns ever been slaughtered by their State? Never.
For The Children . . .
We make choices in 3D even as we explore out-of-body experiences and attend ceremonies. We choose food, clothes, schools and jobs. To keep and bear arms is also a choice. And if we’re still here after the year 2012, do we really want to leave our children in a police state when we die?
What kind of world are we allowing to be created for our children and the future generations?
If we don’t leave in spaceships or dimensional shifts of consciousness, do we want to leave our children in a reality identical to the realities that preceded each of history’s horrific slaughters
Better Government or No Government?
I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted upon more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, ‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
— Henry David Thoreau, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”
Isn’t that what we in the New Age work for? Isn’t that what shifting consciousness and raising awareness and working with energy is all about on a community and social level? The goal is not to have more sensitive masters controlling us with more enlightened laws. Enlightenment is not about State empowerment, it is about self realization. Enlightenment is about waking up and living each moment conscious of our divine spiritual sovereignty. Enlightenment is accepting the responsibility of our personal power. Enlightenment is embracing the inheritance of our free will to make free choices.
I believe we are on the threshold of unimagined possibilities. If we step across that threshold wearing the blinders of old patterns, we will see nothing new. Instead we will seek out those who will tell us what to do and what not to do, when to do it and when not to do it. And if we don’t find anyone, we shall create them. Perhaps that defines our situation right now. For with every breath we take, we walk across a threshold of unimagined possibilities. But with each breath we recreate the old world anew based on old beliefs and old fears.
When a baby elephant is trained for the circus, a steel band is placed on its foot and tied to a stake in the ground. Try as the baby elephant might, it cannot pull itself free from that stake. As the elephant grows it takes more than a stake in the ground to restrain its bulk and power. Yet that is all that’s needed, because early on the elephant learned it could not free itself from the stake.
We have grown. It’s time to pull at the stake made strong by programmed beliefs. If we can remember visions of freedom and unencumbered creativity, and if we can tolerate not having our hay brought to us twice a day, then we must pull and pull hard. We may even find that there was not steel, rope, or stake at all. It was just our programmed fear of freedom that made that confining stake seem so necessary.
All government, of course, is against liberty.”
— H. L. Mencken
Whom Do You Trust (with Power)?
When we collectively deny our power and responsibility and project it as the State, we create a momentum of control and force that can backfire in our faces. That’s the danger the earth is in now. The danger is from people who don’t trust themselves with their own power, who don’t want to be responsible for the results of their choices, who only want, as Earl Nightingale said, “to tiptoe their way safely to death.”
The result of our choices and our fears and our irresponsibility is the leviathan State we see before us now which, like Audrey II, the carnivorous plant in the Little Shop of Horrors, devours any who would try even to prune a branch, slow its growth or not bring it blood.
In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty.
— Leo Tolstoy
One of the test statements on my survey was, “Armed citizens are a necessary check on government.” One respondent, after checking off “Strongly Agree,” added the following comment:
Do you trust the government?
Does the government have guns?
— Survey respondent
Enough said.
The Ultimate Heresy
Priests who defend their claimed monopoly of speaking with God label as heretics any who would dare claim the experience themselves. The State defends its claimed monopoly of control and knowing what’s best for us by labeling any who claim responsibility for their own lives as a threat and a danger to society — a heretic to the Church of the State.
The ultimate heresy for the Church of State is a parishioner with a gun. All the priests and choir members and acolytes can be fully armed, but let a parishioner bring a gun into a pew and there will be hell to pay.
Government is the god of the modern liberal, and woe to them that fail to bow down before their golden idol. That, in a nutshell, is what the “gun control” issue is really all about; modern liberals, like Stalin’s followers, cannot abide any person having any power outside of government. Thus all rights are “granted” by government, and all instrumentalities in society must be subordinate to government. Anyone who might resist the golden-idol-god of government, in any way, is thus warring against their god and must be dealt with as a heretic. To own a gun is to have some limited ability to resist attack, even by the jack booted thugs of the government; thus, to own a gun is to be a heretic in the eyes of the modern liberal.
–email from ataylor
Keeping your gun means you have not yet submitted to the State’s ultimate authority over your life. You still retain a modicum of effective response to its growth and control.
Every large organization takes on a life of its own, independent of why it was created. The organization seeks to grow and insure its survival. The State does so by amassing control and eliminating threats to its survival. The State has set itself up as a god, giver of all things good to those who accept its growing controls. A free person with a gun is seen a threat to that State, whether or not she is. She is a heretic, free enough and strong enough to not run reflexively to the State for her safety. For the State’s well being, she and her kind must be made to see the light.
The Individual and Community
The way to the New Age is to begin living as if the New Age were already here. If we wish to live as free spiritual sovereigns here in 3D eventually, we must begin to live that way now. We begin, not by violently confronting and challenging the State’s controls (for which we are 100% responsible, remember?) but by acting in consciousness of our freedom, even if the acts are outwardly not yet those of a free human being.
As we resonate the conscious awareness of our sovereignty, we impact the collective consciousness. Each one of us is a vital and integral factor. Every drop in the vase preceding the “drop that overflowed the vase” counted. Every straw on the camel preceding its breaking back counted. Every monkey washing its fabled sweet potato preceding the “Hundredth Monkey” counted.
We are forming communities of awareness more than communities of acreage. We are beginning to live on what Ken Carey calls energetic “islands of the future.” These are not islands to escape to. For there is no one from whom to run. There is no one to conquer. No one who believes they are a victim can go to these islands — not the person who fears the State, not the person who fears the neighbor with the gun.
Exercise of Freedom
When I track back the jolt I first got when I put on my gun, I track the feeling back to not having been in the habit of acknowledging my inherent responsibility as a divine being experiencing 3D.
I wear my gun as a practice, a kriya, a Tao, a way. Inherently meaningless, but of great symbolic value because we have given it that. I wear it because I can. I wear it because it is a reminder of the sovereignty I am reclaiming. I wear it to add my part to shift the energy to the idea that wearing a gun is not inherently bad or dangerous. I practice at being skillful with it, as it is a tool which can be of service to the community for food or defense. I wear it because as people become more comfortable with the wearing of guns, with the right to keep and bear arms themselves, then the likelihood of a State tyranny becomes less. Wearing a gun is my part in shifting from victim mentality to responsible sovereign mentality, my part in reducing the power I project to the State.
We don’t have to defeat the State. We just have to understand that the State is our collective creation born out of not acting as the sovereigns we are. As we become more consciously sovereign, if enough of us can dissolve the fearful energy we’ve been feeding the State then perhaps the State’s fear-driven controls will begin to atrophy.
What you pay attention to grows. Don’t pay attention to the dismembering the State. Pay attention to remembering your sovereignty.
Recently, a friend asked me to call the Vermont governor in support of the Vermont supreme court gay marriage decision. I wrote her:
No. Supporting this is just another step in empowering the State by acknowledging that the right to marry is a State-granted privilege. Discussing this only makes sense if you accept the State’s power to dictate “hospital visitation/medical decisions, rights of survivorship, filing joint tax returns” in the first place.
Arguing this point gives implied consent for all the power we’ve mistakenly given the State regarding straight marriages in particular and regarding everything else in general.
Supporting this decision is a fundamentally misguided use of energy.
Freedoms are like muscles. Exercise them or lose them. Begin to exercise your freedoms, not because the Constitution or some statute says it’s okay. Exercise your freedoms because they are the inherent rights of sovereigns. But like any good exercise program, start slowly. Don’t start off fighting with the State (which tends to strengthen it ). Realize you’ve given your power away. Begin to get some exercise retrieving it. Wake up. If enough people wake up, then perhaps the violent revolutions which poured so much blood on the earth will not be necessary again.
Energetic Solutions Instead of External Restrictions
It is simplistic to think guns will solve everything. It is equally simplistic to think that making guns go away will solve anything. Shifting awareness is as easily done with a gun as without. My meditation and my connection with All That Is is neither hindered nor enhanced with the presence of those molecules of God which are in the form of a .357 in my belt.
Building on a strong spiritual foundation, we teach prayer and meditation. We share ancient mysteries and insights of sacred geometry and the merkaba. We set an example by transforming our own lives from fearful victim to loving sovereign.
Even as we teach personal responsibility and the physical skills necessary for moving safely and effectively in this 3D world, it is also important to learn and teach the metaphysical choices and understand their impact on our everyday 3D experience.
Here are two basic examples:
Lighthouses of Prayer
Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) has a program called Lighthouses of Prayer. Part of their activity is to walk streets of their neighborhoods in small groups of two or three and simply pray for the well-being of whoever dwells in each house they pass. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the churches got together and focused their prayers for a month in that manner. According to the CCC, the city experienced an otherwise unexplainable drop in crime for that period.
This is an excellent practice, regardless of your beliefs. Just walk your neighborhood with a friend or two, intending blessings on all the homes. Even when you’re by yourself, it is impactful and transformative to intend blessings to whomever you pass by or meet with throughout your day.
Power of Prayer
In medicine it seems we tend to dismiss what we cannot measure or bottle, but the power of prayer and its effect on healing have recently been the focus of much research and writing. In this interview for his book Healing Words, The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, author Dr. Larry Dossey says:
I must say that I was dragged into it kicking and screaming. I was a typical physician educated to believe in things that have some kind of apparent physical basis like medication, surgery, and radiation.
I had my come-uppance back around ’87 or ’88, when I discovered a study that really looked like good science. It showed that prayer made a major difference for heart attack patients at a coronary care unit. This study came out of San Francisco General Hospital. It was what is called a randomized, prospective double-blind study in which a prayed-for group did terrifically better on several accounts than an unprayed-for group. I was disturbed by the results. Did this mean there was something I should be doing that I wasn’t? So I began to poke around the literature, looking for other studies that might corroborate or invalidate this. I was stunned at what I found: There are easily 130 studies that show that if you take prayer into the laboratory under controlled situations, it does something remarkable, not just to human beings but to bacteria, fungi, germinating seeds, rats, mice and baby gerbils. One of the things that intrigued me about the studies was how this material has been marginalized. You certainly don’t hear anything about these studies in medical school. But after considering the evidence, I decided to incorporate prayer rituals into my medical practice. It seemed to me that not to do so was the equivalent of withholding a potent medication or a needed operation.
Personal and Community Responsibility
We are personally responsible for the results of our actions. Our immediate family and community often experience the results of our actions, for better or for worse.
Although many promote passive compliance with an attacker, that is definitely not the safest response to an assault. (see Armed Women Against Rape and Endangerment, AWARE). Passive compliance enables the aggressor as in any co-dependent violent relationship. Passive compliance further emboldens the aggressor to continue his assaults on other members of the community.
Violent crime is feasible only if its victims are cowards. A victim who fights back makes the whole business impractical. It is true that the victim who fights back may suffer for it, but one who does not almost certainly will suffer for it.
— Jeff Cooper, Principles of Personal Defense
An assault may not obviously be violent to destroy our wellbeing. For instance, we are responsible to ourselves and our family and our community for not staying in a job that is killing us. It’s time to honor our boundaries, boundaries we choose, not ones we’re told we should have.
Before we can be responsible for the community, we must be responsible for ourselves.
Q&A
These are some questions I’ve asked myself during this journey:
Aren’t you just attracting more violence by having a gun?
No. My interest in guns is from principle, not paranoia. Like the karate student who avoids fights as he improves, wearing a gun increases the care, awareness and grace with which I approach interpersonal relations.
How can you wear a gun and still say you’re for peace and love?
This question tells more about the mind set of the culture today than about the intentions of someone wearing a gun. Such a question probably wouldn’t have even occurred to anyone when I was born. As always, it’s more what’s in the heart than in the hand that matters.
If you create your own reality, why don’t you create one that doesn’t need guns?
I’ve never needed a gun. I probably never would have bought one if I didn’t see the State closing down my ability to get one later if the reason ever arose.
Jane Roberts’ Seth once said that at any moment any person has everything necessary to reverse any manifestation of illness, period. However, people who have grown up believing in traditional allopathic medicine should not stop seeing their doctors or using their medicines, otherwise they may get even sicker because they still fundamentally believe they need the doctor and the medicine.
Sometimes you can do all the cleansing, drink all the herbal teas, make all the lifestyle changes, and still you need to go to the doctor and have the lump removed. Just because one person may have cured themselves does not mean the other person can not go see a doctor. Even though I believe that so-called miraculous healings are possible and regularly occur, my health still benefits from doctors in my reality.
I also believe and hold the vision for a world in which a violent response is no longer necessary to preserve one’s safety and freedom. But, as my friend “z” said, “until there is no need for violence,” towards people who wish to live safe and free, there is a reason to have a gun. And when a violent response is no longer necessary to maintain our safety and insure our continued freedom, there would be no danger from people keeping their guns.
Do you want to live in a community where everybody’s carrying a gun?
It’s not my main criterium, but if many or most people did have a gun in the community I would feel safer and more comfortable. People knowledgeable about firearms are less likely to have accidents with them, people proficient with firearms can supply food and increase community safety.
Spiritual Sovereignty
All prophesies speak of the importance of these times. They speak of these next years as a time when we can further enslave ourselves or regain our sovereignty. Most of us say we want sovereignty. However, in Spiritual Sovereignty, Germane, channeled by Lyssa Royal, points out “though you claim you want spiritual and emotional sovereignty, you are actually perpetuating its opposite.”
We’ve created a system that perpetuates victimhood through our insurance system and our tort laws. We’ve created a State to control our rights in the form of licensed privileges — the right to travel becomes a drivers’ license, the right to marry becomes a marriage license, the right to self defense becomes a concealed weapons permit.
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.”
— Thomas Jefferson
If we are to regain our sovereignty, we will not do it by fighting the system — that only justifies and reinforces it. Even if an external revolution occurs, without a change in inner awareness, we will soon find ourselves back in the same unsovereign mess.
But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repairs of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself. And if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government…
— Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Or to put it another way . . .
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss.
— The Who
We must begin by taking responsibility for where we are.
The structures on your planet are in place and you’re struggling against them to change them, but you can’t see what you’re struggling against. The challenge now is to begin, in the darkness, to make out the shape that you have created to enslave yourself. We cannot express to you how powerful the changes will be on your planet when you begin relinquishing these old structures. You will do this layer by layer. Sometimes you may think you’re at the end, but there will be another five layers to go. It’s a very deep process you’ve created to protect yourself, believing that you yourselves need to be taken care of, protected, told what to do.
— Germane, through Llyssa Royal
The first step is to wake up and become aware of the power we have given away.
Now, examine day-to-day things. For instance, there are laws that make you wear a helmet when driving a motorcycle – protecting you – because it is assumed that you are not capable of protecting yourself, of being responsible for yourself. So something is imposed upon you. There are hand-gun laws – an attempt to control – because there is the belief in perpetrators and victims. This belief is constantly fed. Keeping drugs illegal is another false attempt to protect “innocent” people.
All of these systems you have set up prevent you from understanding what sovereignty is. Sovereignty is taking total, 100% responsibility for yourself as an individual, for your community and for your planet as a whole.
— Germane, through Llyssa Royal
Waking Up
Different events wake different people. The process of getting a gun woke me up. It woke me up to the kind of world that I and all of us collectively have allowed to develop. It also woke me up to the trajectory on which we have placed ourselves and our children.
For me, waking up means taking 100% responsibility for my life and my world. It means I’m responsible both for my own safety and well-being, and for the State that legislates how I am allowed to do that.
Acting In Consciousness
Once awake, what do we do? I imagine an inmate in a mental institution who stops taking his drugs and begins to see clearly and the first thing he realizes is “I’m a prisoner in a mental institution.” Strategically, it is better if he goes about his daily routine as if none-the-wiser than if he starts storming the doors and screaming at the guards.
One woman dutifully gets her driver’s license and marriage license and fills out her infant’s Social Security Card Application never giving it a second thought — it’s what you’re supposed to do. Another woman applies for a gun license and gives her fingerprints and has an FBI criminal check run on her so she can have a State license to protect herself and her children. However she does it in full consciousness that this is a charade. It serves no purpose to yell at the guard of the asylum. There is a tremendous difference in the energy beacon of the person who abides the regulations from a consciousness of sovereignty and one who abides them because, “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”
Acting in full consciousness of your sovereignty, even if you’re doing unsovereign play acting, I believe impacts the awareness of all and has the potential for creating a critical mass, a 100th Monkey Effect, wherein people who otherwise would not have considered the topic, begin to wake up to their own sovereignty.
Reclaiming Power
Any 3D acts must proceed from an inner transformation of awareness. The objective must not be to reclaim our sovereignty, our power, on the terms of the paradigm we’re trying to change. Otherwise the Audrey II of the State will eat you, just as it did at Randy Weaver’s home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho or at Mt. Carmel in Waco, Texas.
The objective is not to start a fight in the old age, but to move into the New Age. The shift will not occur because of dramatic license burnings. The shift will occur as people, one-by-one wake up to their inherent sovereignty, and begin to withdraw their energetic support from the system they’ve created to control them.
There are people at present who are starting to hear the voice of their conscience, who are processing their victimhood, who are beginning to see the true nature of the structure and how it was put there. And when they realize this in their own conscience, they can no longer keep it intact. They must follow their own integrity. In that choice to follow integrity – cleanly, clearly, with no anger – the structure begins to change. The issue is not the structure that is enslaving you, but the fact that you have allowed it to enslave you. If you can begin to understand why you’ve allowed this, why you’ve forgotten you put it here to begin with, then true sovereignty is right around the corner.
— Germane, through Llyssa Royal
Part of reclaiming our sovereignty here in 3D is through education and discernment. By understanding our history, our culture, the spiritual and perhaps the extraterrestrial heritage and intent of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights we begin to pick through what Germane calls the “layers of distractions that have solidified the structure itself.”
The more oppressive your structure becomes, the more individuals are going to feel the pressure. The more they will be spurred on to do their own research and the more they find out about their rights and their “privileges”, then the more they will begin exercising their rights. It’s not going to come by rejecting privileges; it’s going to come by exercising rights.
— Germane, through Llyssa Royal
The Sovereign Outlaw
Sovereigns are outside arbitrary laws of the State, out-laws if you will. The New Age is home for a sprouting awareness that is outside the State’s laws of fear and control. We are waking up. But there’s no need to yell, some are still asleep in fear, there’s no need to raise an alarm. As the book, E.T. 101 says, we’re “here to dismantle fear, not elicit it.” So we may have to “pass for white” for a bit.
My mental model is the French Resistance during World War II. As far as the French State saw, those in the Resistance were model citizens, obeying the speed limit and returning their library books on time. But behind the scenes they lived a different reality. Behind our scenes we are discovering new realities and making the energetic connections necessary to seed a new world with a new awareness. We are not here to overturn old laws and replace them with new laws. We are quietly and respectfully excusing ourselves from this particular party — there’s a better one down the street at a different awareness.
Don’t bother trying to change the way the host runs this party. Just realize you’re not having fun here any more. It’s time to leave. As you walk out, you might mention to a friend that there’s something better unfolding down the street. Eventually maybe even the host will find the new address.
Treatise Of An American Outlaw
All people who live subject
to other people’s laws
are victims.
People who break laws
out of greed, frustration, or vengeance
are victims.
People who overturn laws
in order to replace them with their own laws
are victims.
We outlaws, however,
live beyond the law.
We don’t merely live beyond
the letter of the law,
we live beyond
the spirit of the law.
In a sense, then,
we live beyond society.
Have we a common goal,
that goal is to turn the tables
on the nature of society.
When we succeed,
we raise the exhilaration content
of the universe.
We even raise it a little bit
when we fail.
— Unknown
I love the trite mythos of the outlaw. I love the self-conscious romanticism of the outlaw. I love the black wardrobe of the outlaw. I love the fey smile of the outlaw. I love the pot of the outlaw and the beans of the outlaw. I love the way respectable men sneer and say “outlaw.” I love the way young women palpitate and say “outlaw.” The outlaw boat sails against the flow, and I love it. Outlaws toilet where badgers toilet, and I love it. All outlaws are photogenic, and I love that.
“When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free”: that’s a graffito seen in Anacortes, and I love that. There are outlaw maps that lead to outlaw treasures, and I love those maps especially. Unwilling to wait for mankind to improve, the outlaw lives as if that day were here, and I love that most of all.
Criminals, because they’re plagued with guilt, often will surrender and go quietly.
Outlaws, because they’re pure, never will.
— Tom Robbins
“The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty — and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.”
— H.L. Mencken, February 12, 1923, Baltimore Evening Sun
The outlaw is the perfect model for the New Age. The outlaw who serves humanity by his very existence, by her refusal to accommodate herself to others’ chains of control. The outlaw — spiritual anarchist at heart — envisioning a free humankind no longer needing the controlling State. The outlaw whispers in the ear, “Psst, wake up, you’re free,” and another pair of outlaw eyes open. And outlaw bands, rejoicing at the swelling exhilaration content of the universe, surf energy waves onto the shores of islands of the future.
Transmutation and Reverberation
We are alive at a time of special wonder and magic. Within recent years we have experienced many new events, everything from Bible Code revelations to new crop circles, new waters and everything in between.
We are called upon to approach the future with faith, not fear. Turn aside the fear that others would plant in you. The choices you make in this moment echo back and forth throughout the corridors of time and beyond. This is the moment to make choices worthy of our heritage.
My “world” has always been beautiful and even amidst difficulties and calamities, I believe I shall be in the right place at the right time. My ultimate trust is in God/Spirit, not possessions and laws. My walk is in preparation and expectation for a spiritual miracle. And as part of that walk, I own, practice, teach firearms safety classes and carry a gun as a service to reinforce and energize this basic right through use. I know that as more do the same, with the world as it is now, our families will live in safer communities within a freer world. This is my calling. It is my small act, both energetically and practically. It is my part in this great mosaic of shifting consciousness.
This is not a call to arms, it is a call to awareness, a call to the service of humanity. In our waking, others, too, will waken and that move into consciousness will reverberate.
Begin now to live in the full and growing consciousness and responsibility of your sovereignty. You are free to make your choices just as others are free to make theirs. Let not the fear of the responsibility for your choices keep you or your neighbor in prison any longer.
You are free. You have always been free. If you do not realize your freedom now when will your realize it? Perhaps this is the message you sent yourself from the future so you would not oversleep. Perhaps this time you won’t push the snooze button again. As you awake, others will also as they feel the energetic sounds of a New Day. Realize your freedom, now. Begin to live as the sovereign you are, now. May that awareness bloom and grow throughout all your journeys through time and space and beyond.
In love and service,
Richard Roberts
Notes
Great care has gone into checking the accuracy of the facts and the authenticity of the quotations in this essay. If you believe that any fact or quote to be questionable, please email me. Thank you.
The firearms related photos are courtesy of Oleg Volk. Clicking some photos will provide a hi-res version. More excellent photos and information are at his site.
Bibliography
The titles which are linked below are available for review and purchase through amazon.com. When you click through to amazon.com from this site I get 5% of your purchases. I donate those commissions to the Gun Owners Action League’s (GOAL) of Massachusetts.
Abelar, Taisha, The Sorcerers’ Crossing, Penguin, New York, NY, 1992
Ayoob, Massad F., In the Gravest Extreme, Ayoob c/o Police Bookshelf, Concord, NH, 1980
Bird, Chris, The Concealed Handgun Manual, Privateer Publications, San Antonio, TX, 1977, 1998
Carey, Ken, Starseed, the Third Millennium, Harper, San Francisco, CA, 1991
Chomsky, Noam, Media Control, The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Seven Stories Press, New York, NY, 1991
Cooper, Jeff, Principles of Personal Defense, Paladin Press, Boulder, CO, 1989
Eagle, Rainbow, The Universal Peace Shield of Truths, Rainbow Light and Company, Angel Fire, NM, 1996
Eagle Feather, Ken, A Toltec Path, Hampton Roads Publishing, Charlottesville, VA, 1995
Fellman, Gordon, Rambo and the Dalai Lama, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 1998
Foundation for Inner Peace, A Course in Miracles, Foundation for Inner Peace, Mill Valley, CA, 1975, 1985, 1992
Keyes, Jr., Ken, The Hundredth Monkey, Visions Books, Coos Bay, OR, 1986
Hay, Louise L., You Can Heal Your Life, Hay House, Inc., Santa Monica, CA, 1984
Jho, Zoev, E.T. 101, The Cosmic Instruction Manual, Intergalactic Council Publications, Pagosa Springs, CO, 1990
Lott, John R., More Guns, Less Crime, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1998
Melchizedek, Drunvalo, The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, Vol. I, Light Technology Publishing, Flagstaff, AZ, 1998
Pirsig, Robert M., Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, William Morrow & Company, Inc., New York, NY, 1974
Roberts, Jane, The Nature of Personal Reality, Bantam Books, New York, NY, 1974
—- The Magical Approach, Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living, Amber-Allen Publishing, San Rafael, CA, 1995
Royal, Lyssa, Spiritual Sovereignty, Royal Priest Research, Phoenix, AZ, 1992
Schor, Juliet B., The Overworked American, Basic Books, New York, NY, 1992
Wilde, Stuart, The Secrets of Life, White Dove International, Taos, NM, 1990
Wolfe, Claire, 101 Things to Do ‘Til the Revolution, Breakout Productions, Port Townsend, WA, 1996
Copyright © 2000 Richard Roberts. All Rights Reserved.
Permission to cite and excerpt is granted provided material is unchanged, author is credited and this URL is referenced.
Links invited. You may email Richard Roberts at starseed@kersur.net. See below for further links for his site, flutes, and the subject of this article.
©2000, Richard Roberts. Printed in the April-May 2000 Issue of the Conscious Creation Journal. http://www.consciouscreation.com