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.
Safety and Freedom come from within.
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.
Ah, the wonderful sense of reverie that accompanies the rapture of self righteousness. This is the interior milieu of the fanatic. In America, the primary brand is the Fundamentalist Christian.