This truth is often missed. Perhaps your inner work’s momentum hasn’t quite gathered yet. Perhaps your struggles are still in your face. Delight in the fact that still elusive outward changes are a reflection of how you’re changing inside; they just haven’t quite taken form yet. And things may not be all that pretty inside. Instead of being neurotic that change hasn’t manifested, realize it’s in process; you’re working it.

The truth of the matter is that empowerment is ongoing. You have to climb a while before reaching a plateau. And then the path still continues.

Empowerment is personal power. It’s used for routine tasks such as getting up, making breakfast and going to work. It’s also used as self-determination and integrity. Personal power properly claimed and wielded, can bring you emotional freedom and peace of mind. There has to be a modicum of personal power to just survive, let alone thrive. Depending on your ‘story,’ your bio, you may have been raised in an environment that provided this. Then it can be built on. If not, and even if so most of us still need to work on it, personal power is personal: You must dust it off and let it shine. No one else can really do it for you.

Everything that we’ve shoved away, we shoved away with a curse; most of it came from the outside. With a curse comes a hiding, comes a shame. To dare to be seen and to speak from what’s authentic undoes a curse. It’s time to stop hiding behind some fiction of “bad me” and burn through to shining.  — Jeannie Zandi

With personal power comes tremendous trust and energy. You’re able to trust yourself, and life. It energizes your psyche which fuels your imagination, purpose and passions. It lifts you. Personal power can be a diamond in the rough, however. Its best use isn’t for you to impose your will over your circumstances. This can be destructive, short-lived, and in service of the ego.

Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less. — Ken Blanchard

Once personal power is actuated and exercised regularly in a balanced way, it begins to become empowerment. Empowerment is a settled resource, while personal power can fluctuate. Empowerment is lifelong and more of the spirit. Personal power giving way to empowerment is the transition from ego to soul. The soul is truth. When you know your spiritual truth, all other lies fall off. It’s a knowing that can’t become unknown.

This is the pinnacle of empowerment, but it doesn’t have to be fully reached before being radically effective in your life. You need empowerment in your career, for personal growth, to heal, for spiritual development. If you’ve put in the work to find some psychological wholeness, and also reached into your soul and are on a spiritual path, the practices you’re engaged in, the realizations that come, and the way of being that establishes itself in you are all naturally empowering. Over time it becomes firmer and firmer, more and more knowable and reliable. There’s a gentleness to empowerment, a detachment. Even with annoyances or more substantial issues that may still come up, empowerment once accessed filters into your life, and eases your way.

Truth is empowering. Everytime you turn to truth, it empowers you more. Knowing your true nature, and before that growing in understanding it, being it, experiencing life from its perspective is empowering with each encounter. Each moment of spiritual practice polishes your diamond.

Fear does arise on the way to empowerment. Fear is a many-headed beast. Therefore courage is a must. Ironically, you need courage to be empowered, and empowered to show courage. They are inextricably linked. One feeds the other. Courage is a fire that burns away fear. Empowerment keeps the fire going.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. — Ambrose Redmoon

Power is essential to life. Every living thing needs to be powered somehow. Humans are powered by soul consciousness, light, breath, life force, and food and water. Of these, consciousness is the overseer and director, and life force is the ‘electricity’ and subtle hub making each item work with all the parts of a human.

If consciousness and life force are trapped in past hurts, or projected into future worries they aren’t available now where you need them. Their power is diminished greatly, and you’re left powerless in the present. Loss of power is much more than lack of energy. It can lead to depression, confusion, and low vibration choices which exacerbate your situation.

To reclaim and cycle your power in through your present moments is an act of empowerment. Feeding old ghosts or giving juice to future fear dragons is disempowering. Your power is needed now, here with you.

But the greatest power is always love. Power can be used in the service of love, but not vice versa. — Ram Dass

…

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Granted, it’s a moving landscape of events, but what’s happening isn’t a mere uprising. It’s a global indicator. One that has been trending for some time, hidden to casual observance. This part of the world is a nexus. Because both Tunisia and Egypt are in North Africa, not only the Middle East is at play. This nexus has three major rivers running through it: the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris. Rivers have always been places where beginnings are generated for human societies and polities.

This area of the world has also been historically and presently intractable in a number of ways. If we look beyond the granular story of current developments, we see an overarching theme, which may have been missed if it had stopped in Tunisia, as it was barely covered in the news. Instead, it mushroomed into Egypt and conquered the world’s attention, because of Egypt’s size and role in the region.

Let’s look at the reasons this event is singular compared to most other similar events in history:

• It’s nonideological
• It’s nonreligious
• It’s nonviolent (at least until there was pushback)
• It’s leaderless or leadership is shared
• Its organization is decentralized
• It’s an outcry of the human will
• It has a domino effect in the region

What are some of the images that have emerged from these events?

• A protesting woman kisses a police officer.
• Christians protecting Muslims during prayer.
• The Egyptian military cordoning off protesters and checking IDs at Tahrir Square so other agitators don’t enter. The military is usually the regime’s enforcer, or the instrument of a coup! As far as I know, only the United Nations uses the military as a peacekeeping force.

These are truly nonordinary occurrences.

The Berlin Wall fell. Apartheid ended. Now there’s a transition in one of the most conflicted areas of our world. The people there are asking for some fundamentals, nothing more. All in a nonsectarian way. It’s an equalizing movement. It’s open source and fluid. It follows the truth that:

Power which no longer serves first becomes entrenched but eventually topples.

The dynamics of the world has a safety principle that corrects its trajectory. The world has a conscience and it speaks through such occurrences. This is coded in. It activates and sets itself into motion. It’s a code we know and recognize, therefore we bring it to  the world. It’s in the DNA of life. This is the future’s voice!

The reality is that we can always be someone and do something to help change the situation. Like us, our political leaders have positive seeds and negative seeds. They may be surrounded by people who don’t water to the good seeds in them. Their advisors continue to water the seeds of fear, craving, anger, and violence in them. We have to find ways to get in touch with our political leaders and help them. Protesting is a kind of help, but it should be done skillfully, so people see it as an act of love and not an attack. —Thich Nhat Hanh

Control is out. Rigid, top-down predatory structures can’t bring us the future. The future, if we would just listen to it, is telling us to embrace this moment. Its time has arrived and sends a clarion call.

Related:
Egypt, Transformation & Signs of a Planetary Culture

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The world’s healing traditions hold the wisdom that change includes cleansing. Cleansing is a process of reconciliation. The path to wholeness passes through all the blocks to wholeness. It can’t be any other way. The unhealed must be processed. This means it’s acknowledged and understood first. This leads to acceptance and insight. Finally, higher functional states open up.

While healing change brings support, relief, resources, possibility, strength and hope with it, it’s not without challenges, upheaval, pain and chaos. Fortunately, the “ugly” side of transformation is on the surface. When it’s seen, we have to bring this knowing to it. Otherwise it’s too confusing, emotions run high and it becomes highly reactive.

And we have to take the long view, realizing that healing and/or transformation is layered, whether it’s personal or societal. It can also be exponential, a true domino effect as seen in Egypt and the region in general. There’s a groundswell and a momentum which is self-powered and directed. It usually can’t be stopped because it has this truth embedded:

What no longer serves cannot remain.

There are many aspects of human civilization in the 21st century that no longer serve. All of them are coming up for review. A main reason these are such intense times is because we didn’t solve challenges when they were still small. Now, we can only respond and ensure the future is different. Sometimes we’re good at that, often not so much.

One thing is certain: Our response is definitely going to suffer and not match up if we’re overwhelmed and off center. Conscious, enlightened solutions can only come from our total being, and not only the rooftop of  intellect. Here’s a practice to address both the overwhelm and to ensure the clearest solutions:

© Pamir Kiciman 2010

You begin to breathe in and out, and you focus your attention on your abdomen. Why your abdomen? When you see a tree in a storm and you focus your attention on the top of the tree, you feel vulnerable. You have the impression that the tree is too fragile to withstand the storm, because the little branches and the leaves on the top of the tree sway violently in the wind. You have the impression that the tree will be blown away. But if you focus your attention on the trunk of the tree, you get a different impression. You can see that the tree is solid and rooted deeply in the soil, so you know the tree will withstand the storm.

You are also a tree, and that strong emotion is the storm that is approaching. If you don’t prepare for it, you may be blown away. To prepare means to begin mindful breathing and to bring your attention down from the level of thinking to the level of the belly, just below the navel. This is called belly breathing. Just focus all your attention on your belly and become aware of the rise and fall of your abdomen, which is the trunk of your tree. Don’t stay on the level of the brain because that is where the storm winds are blowing the hardest. It’s dangerous to stay at the level of your thinking. Go down and embrace the trunk of the tree just below the navel, where you will be safe.

—by Thich Nhat Hanh

To learn more about the importance of the belly, click here.

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From a spiritual wisdom perspective, the case has always been made that change and balance during change source inside an individual. On the other hand, activists of every stripe rely mostly on outer action. A third approach is engaged spirituality which can be defined as tapping spiritual truths while responding to titanic shifts.

The inner and outer worlds aren’t separate. This is the holistic truth. They interpenetrate and influence each other. One can’t get away from the other. We’re living in an age where meditation alone won’t solve our challenges. And outer action alone has never been a complete solution. Blending the two appears to be the skillful means. Humanity has been creating civilizations and building societies for thousands of years. Being active in the world seems to be rather well-known to us, although we’re not always that good at it. What seems to be less well-known and practiced is the inner realm of stillness. So let’s learn about it.

Would you like to save the world from the degradation and destruction it seems destined for? Then step away from shallow mass movements and quietly go to work on your own self-awareness. If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation. —Lao Tzu

Worldwide challenges demand our unrelenting will and presence. Corrective, preventive and innovative action must be taken collectively. Where such redeeming ideas originate is the larger question. Lao Tzu offers this (italics are mine):

Humanity grows more and more intelligent, yet there is clearly more trouble and less happiness daily. How can this be so? It is because intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom. When a society misuses partial intelligence and ignores holistic wisdom, its people forget the benefits of a plain and natural life. Seduced by their desires, emotions, and egos, they become slaves to bodily demands, to luxuries, to power and unbalanced religion and psychological excuses. Then the reign of calamity and confusion begins. Nonetheless, superior people can awaken during times of turmoil to lead others out of the mire. But how can the one liberate the many? By first liberating his own being. He does this not by elevating himself, but by lowering himself. He lowers himself to that which is simple, modest, true; integrating it into himself, he becomes a master of simplicity, modesty, truth. Completely emancipated from his former false life, he discovers his original pure nature, which is the pure nature of the universe. Freely and spontaneously releasing his divine energy, he constantly transcends complicated situations and draws everything around him back into an integral oneness. Because he is a living divinity, when he acts, the universe acts.

Action is invaluable to change. There is no change without action. At the same time, action by itself is without a living spirit. It falls short and can even reverse progress. The wellspring of ideas behind our actions must also be considered clearly. Action has wise ideas or ignorant ideas behind it. We have to find ways to increase the percentage of the former.

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Heart Light
© Pamir Kiciman 2010
Click to view full-size

We are a community of men, women and children.
We live, breathe and exist together in our community.
Our community is our home, even though we also have a roof over our own family.
Gathered under such roofs, we form neighborhoods.
We leave our neighborhood in the morning and return to it in the evening.
What is good for us is good for the community.
To protect our own is to protect the community.
What is best for the family is equally good for the community.

We are fond of boundaries.
Me, myself, my family, home, country.
My goods and future.
My health. My food. My money.
My beliefs and views.
Me. Mine. My own.

It’s natural to love one’s own.
It’s natural to shelter one’s own.
It’s natural to care more about your own.

Then again, we fight with our families and ourselves more often than with others.

Community is inside as well as outside.
Community is a state of mind.

Our state of mind is our first community.
It’s from our mind and heart that we decide how much to blame others.
Blame others for our own troubles.
If in our heart and mind we would find peace, we would find peace in our relationship with all people.

Relationship is a fact of life.
There are those we want to be with and those we have to be with.
We are in relation with others in many ways.
Our thoughts, feelings, needs, money, beliefs, views put us in touch with others.
These others are individuals, and groups of individuals that function as companies, institutions and governments.
There is a web of life. The stranger we see at the bank has similar relations.

We also share the web of life with Nature and its lifeforms.

The tree’s shade and a pet’s warmth are cherished. Wheat and oranges nourish us.
We relax and play at the beach. The web exists so that life works.

Are you ever angry at an apple you enjoy?

What makes us angry with people whether they are those we want to be with or those we have to be with?

Anger disappears when we share instead of hoard.
Anger disappears when we see that our family is similar to another’s family.
Anger disappears when we notice that the fruit tree that feeds us, feeds a child whose name we may not even know.
The same cotton that we wear is on someone else’s back, the same material on our feet protects another’s feet,
and the same steel that makes our car makes the neighbor’s car.

The sun shines on us all equally.

Peace appears when we emphasize similarities.
Peace appears when we honor natural variety.
Peace appears when we realize that everyone seeks the love we seek.
Peace appears when we accept that health; happiness and financial security are available to us as a human right and not at the expense of another.
Peace is seen in the web of life when we tell our fear to grow up!

There’s not a single person who doesn’t want the basics of life that we want.
These basics include tangible things as well as success, happiness, health, acknowledgment and fulfillment.
Since we have to participate in life in similar ways to attain similar results, is it not more productive to join efforts?
Is it not more powerful to manifest dreams with collaboration rather than competition?
Who wins when one person or group wins? Only that person or group and everyone else are losers.

Who’s the loser when everyone wins? The obstacles!

Obstacles are created by us and can be uncreated by changing our heart and mind.
For that we simply need willingness and reason.
Reason shows us that cooperation brings results.
Willingness takes us into our heart and mind where we develop flexibility and compassion.
When reason is coupled with forgiveness, we have a winning formula for social and personal success.

Let us remember that the formula of reason plus forgiveness has to be applied by citizen and leader alike.
Afterall, a leader is a citizen and a citizen is a leader.
Those who are elected or rise to prominence in some way are sanctioned as leaders, yet their power is in the hands of the people.

Forgiving leaders paves the path to start afresh.
Leaders returning that trust with sincerity and unwavering commitment, solidify the path.
People taking a real interest and becoming active with the power they have completes the shared responsibility of community.
Then everyone is on the same path, heading to unity and a better life for all.

Pain, grudges, disappointment, injustice, prejudice, lack of opportunity, education or housing, poverty, ill-health as well as all the other challenges of life, and the real solutions for these are the responsibility of every single member of society.

We are the only ones who can bring order to chaos.

We are the only ones who can bring peace to conflict.

We are the only ones who can bring sanity to anger and hatred.

We are the only ones who can correct errors.

We are the only ones who can heal wounds.

We are the only ones who can monitor each other for the good of all.

We are the only ones who can use reason to see that the web of life is inclusive and not exclusive.

We are the only ones who can forgive and move on.

The past keeps us in the past. The future is ours to live. The present is where we act, assert and voice our common vision.

Mother, father, child, business owner, politician, teacher, student, professional and unemployed, WE populate our communities.

We are the only ones who can make it a place worth living.

We are the only ones who can create a new history.

We are the only ones who can…

◊ ◊ ◊

To see more of Pamir’s meaning-making photography, visit his photoblog.

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But first let’s talks about dolphins. “Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans…” reports the Times Online. Their intelligence has been well documented. What’s new about this reporting is even more confirmation about what kind of intelligence dolphins have. And, for me, the most crucial point:

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

And:

The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions…

And:

The scientific research…suggests that dolphins are ‘non-human persons’ who qualify for moral standing as individuals…

Enough said.

Species are disappearing, have been disappearing at an alarming rate for quite some time now. ScienceDaily reported in October ’08 that “Earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of both plants and animals, with nearly 50 percent of all species disappearing…”

To find out the current classification of threatened species, visit IUCNRedList.org.

The dolphin news isn’t about extinction, but the ethics of the relationship humans have with Earth’s other lifeforms. Whether we recognize all species as “individuals” or not, as the ones endowed with self-reflection we are being asked to act.

That’s why the United Nations is launching the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) on Monday, January 11 with a special celebration in Berlin.

The 2010 IYB is promoting some important messages. First, humans are part of nature’s rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it. Second, biodiversity is essential for sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and the vital services our lives depend on. Third, human activity is causing the diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate; but we can prevent this loss. And fourth, we have made some achievements to safeguard biodiversity but we need to do much more and we must act urgently.

The fact of the matter is that biodiversity is closely linked to our own survival, if we were to ignore all its other significant aspects and narrowly focus on one alone. Find out more about the International Year of Biodiversity here and here.

You may also take these quotes into your Heart contemplation:

• There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. –Robert Wilson Lynd
• Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten. –Cree Indian Prophecy

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You can call in or listen online. You can even listen via iTunes. Visit this page to learn more:

Here’s the description of this particular show:

Weekly show on Natural Medicine, Hypnotherapy, NLP, Nutrition, Fitness with Dr. Michael Holt the founder of the Magi Institute of Natural Medicine and his special guests Pamir Kiciman to discuss Reiki.

Pamir Kiciman is a Soul Whisperer and Life Enrichment educator, and founder of Oasis Reiki. He specializes in Original/Classical Japanese Usui Reiki Training. He has worked in a variety of environments in 15 years of teaching, including time spent at Imperial Point Medical Center in South Florida. Pamir has also conducted Reiki Training at Florida Atlantic University’s College of Nursing. Recently, he was selected as a Featured Voice on Intent.com. Pamir has spent the last 15 years training himself and others in subtle energy, intentional healing, holistic health, meditation, spiritual psychology, nonduality, and world wisdom traditions.

Above all else, Pamir is dedicated to being a catalyst for a transformation by bringing soul and the teachings of Oneness to the forefront in individuals and in society at large. Pamir educates people through various channels, including his own Reiki Help Blog.

Reiki is most popularly known as a hands-on healing art, which it is in one of its applications. Hands-on Reiki is in fact rooted in spiritual discipline, the basis of which is meditation. Usui Sensei taught specific meditations. Similarly, Reiki is known as energy healing, which it does facilitate. What’s often missed, however, is that before energy can exist there first has to be consciousness. It is by participating in this primordial consciousness that Reiki fulfills its true purpose for practitioner and recipient alike.

And, October 15, 2009 is Blog Action Day once again: An annual nonprofit event, it aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

This year’s topic is focused on Climate Change, by unanimous voting.

The Reiki Help Blog has participated for the last two years. In 2008 the topic was poverty and I posted about the availability of clean, potable water to all populations of the world.

In 2007 the topic was the environment and as one of the earlier posts on this blog, I’m quite proud of this entry.

Climate change is not new to this blog. As stewards of our environment and spiritual practitioners, we are the only ones who can really do something about it!

Today we have ‘gurus’ and ‘pandits’ in every field, especially technology. Karma is mentioned on a popular bumper sticker, and used loosely in everyday conversation. It’s a complicated and complex subject.

I’ve found the following from one of the most respected Buddhist teachers dispensing dharma (look it up!) today, Pema Chödrön, to be very helpful. It avoids some of the more esoteric aspects of this involved teaching and presents a practical approach.

Please let me know how it has put things into perspective for you in comments below. (The bold sections are my highlighting.)

When something happens to us that we find really painful—an insult, a physical ailment, the loss of someone we love dearly—the Buddhist teachings train us to understand that we have just been given an opportunity to repay a karmic debt…The karmic understanding need not be religious nor an occasion for guilt. In fact, it can allow us to act without being guilt-ridden. Anything I cause someone else to feel, either pleasant or unpleasant, resulting from my words, actions, and activities, I myself will feel sooner or later. What goes around comes around. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it comes back in the same form, but somehow anything I’ve caused someone else to feel, I will feel at some point in the future. This system applies to good feelings as well, but my focus here is on the karmic repercussions that cause us to settle the score.

Therefore, when something unpleasant happens to me, I know it is a debt coming back. I have no idea what I did, so it’s not something I have to feel guilty about…I have no need to go into the history of how I got here. I just say, “I am feeling this.” At this point, I have a chance for the buck to stop here. This stimulus does not need to be the cause of evening the score in the usual pain-causing way.

Instead, at this point you can apply a meditation method that would circumvent the habitual score settling. Whatever practice you use, the point is to stay with the underlying uneasiness and lean into it. Connect with the natural openness of your mind. You can feel at this point that “this debt has just been paid.” At that point, there isn’t going to be any further debt to somebody else or to yourself, no further repercussions from this exchange except further awakening, further connecting with the natural openness and intelligence of mind, further connecting with warmth and loving-kindness toward yourself, further connecting with compassion and love for other beings. Those are the kind of results that our uncomfortable situations could give birth to…

Many people have stories like this. They put someone through something and then they experience it themselves, and somehow they know that they are paying back a debt. It has nothing whatsoever to do with punishment. It’s more like a law of physics. There’s no one punishing you. There is no master planner making sure you get it. There is no vengeance. It is just a principle that you sooner or later start to feel in your bones.

This approach to settling the score is that whenever something bad comes your way, it is always an opportunity for further healing. When things happen to you that you don’t like, you can either open the wound further or you can heal the wound. Instead of getting strongly hooked into thoughts like “I don’t like,” “I don’t want,” “It isn’t fair,” “How could they do this to me?,” “I don’t deserve this, or “They should know better,” it’s possible that you could train yourself so that the natural intelligence becomes stronger than your reactivity.

For most of us most of the time, our emotional reactivity obscures our natural intelligence. But if we become motivated to start contemplating the approach of seeing pain and discomfort as opportunities for healing—for becoming “one-with” and bringing people closer rather than splitting—our intelligence actually will get stronger than our emotional reactivity. If we take those opportunities for healing, the momentum of the intelligence will gradually start to outweigh the momentum of the reactivity…We’re not talking getting rid of the experience of getting hooked. We’re talking about when you get hooked, what do you do next? There’s a choice. The Buddha teaches us that we are always at a crossroads, moment by moment. We have the intelligence to make a choice, so let’s educate ourselves about what the implications of our choices are…We could choose to open the wound further, creating more suffering for ourselves and others, or we can choose to heal the wound.

The question we usually ask ourselves at this crossroads is, What will soothe me in this moment? The habitual response is that what will soothe me is to get what I want, to have my needs met, to get even, to straighten this all out so I come out with what I need. But we have seen what this choice leads to. We need to cultivate that other choice.

The choice I have been talking about doesn’t preclude resolving conflicts where parties have been in the wrong…Unfortunately when we see all this suffering we want fast results. Once again we might act on impulse and out of emotional reactivity, but if we look at the many examples of people trying to heal and settle the score in the intelligent way, we see that it takes time. The results are slow in coming, but from the larger perspective of natural intelligence and openness and warmth, the process is as important as the result. You are creating the future of the planet by how you work with injustice. You may not see it before your eyes immediately, but you are repaying a karmic debt…All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do…

October 15, 2008 is Blog Action Day, an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

I am once again happy to include the Reiki Help Blog in this effort. This year the theme is Poverty. Last year it was The Environment and you can revisit my contribution.

The organizers have suggested that a blogger may publish on the subject, donate, or promote Blog Action Day. I’ve chosen to do all three. Poverty is a complex global challenge. It would require serious study to fully grasp all its implications and intricacies (resources below).

Since action is often most effective when it’s practical, I’m going to focus on one area:

The availability of clean, potable water to all the populations of the world.

Currently over one billion people lack access to simple, life-sustaining clean water. That works out to be 1 in 6 of us. This also ties in with the lack of basic sanitation, which 2.6 people lack globally.

What does lack of clean water and basic sanitation have to do with poverty? Drilling a well can cost from $4,000 – $ 12,000. 

Unfortunately:

• Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day.
• More than 660 million people without sanitation live on less than $2 a day, and more than 385 million on less than $1 a day.
• Access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
• 1.8 billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometer, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 liters per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 50 liters of water a day flushing toilets (where average daily water usage is about 150 liters a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 liters day.)
• Some 1.8 million children die each year as a result of diarrhea.
• The loss of 443 million school days each year from water-related illness.
• Close to half of all people in developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
• Millions of women spend several hours a day collecting water.
• To these human costs can be added the massive economic waste associated with the water and sanitation deficit. The costs associated with health spending, productivity losses and labor diversions… are greatest in some of the poorest countries. (GlobalIssues.org–Causes of Poverty.)

Unsafe water and poor sanitation play a major role in the transmission of diseases including Diarrhea, Cholera, Malaria, and Typhoid. The lack of access to clean water and sanitation translates into lost educational opportunities, particularly for women and girls. Time spent collecting water – often many hours each day – means girls do not have time to attend school.  Studies show that girls are 12% more likely to attend school if water is available within 15 minutes from home versus a one hour’s walk. Young girls are also less likely to attend classes if the school does not have adequate and separate toilets for girls.  In addition, water-related illnesses increase absenteeism for all children and result in a loss of over 443 million school days globally each year. (One.org.)

Recently I came across charity: water, a non profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. charity: water says that “only! (my italics) $20 can give a person in Africa clean, safe drinking water for 20 years.” I donated then and I’m donating again today.

Please join me!

Our planet is 70% water. 97.5% of that is saltwater. This means only 2.5% is available for the 6 billion people on the planet today. We get our water from the 30% of freshwater that exists in underground lakes and aquifers – mainly by digging wells.  Many communities in developing nations often have a plentiful supply of clean water just below the ground, but no way to get to it. Here’s where we, and our partner organizations come in. The local community is engaged in the well building process, carrying out small tasks for free to reduce labor costs. This also encourages community participation and ensures community ownership after the project is complete. When the well is built, a water committee is formed. It generally consists of 6-8 people, half of them female. In the case of hospitals, the committee will generally consist of nurses and hospital staff. In schools, the committee would likely be comprised of teachers. (charity: water.)

While we’re on the subject of poverty, let me introduce two other organizations.

A) End Poverty 2015: This is the historic promise 189 world leaders made at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 when they signed onto the Millennium Declaration and agreed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are an eight-point road map with measurable targets and clear deadlines for improving the lives of the world’s poorest people. World leaders have agreed to achieve the MDGs by 2015. The eight goals are:

1. End Hunger
2. Universal Education
3. Gender Equity
4. Child Health
5. Maternal Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS
7. Environmental Sustainability
8. Global Partnership

B) ONE: A campaign of over 2.4 million people and growing from all 50 states and over 100 of America’s most well-known and respected non-profit, advocacy and humanitarian organizations. ONE seeks to raise public awareness about the issues of global poverty, hunger and disease and to ask our leaders to do more to fight these problems in developing countries.

You can sign the ONE Declaration.

You can also petition Senators Obama and McCain to keep their commitments to fight global poverty.

Thank you for your time, effort, donations, volunteerism, and heart.

It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.
-Albert Einstein

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
-Maya Angelou

I do not know what your destiny will be, but the one thing I know: the only ones among you who will really be happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
-Albert Schweitzer

Update 12/18/08: There’s a new effort today to donate to charity: water by Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting.

These clean energy technologies can cure our addiction to oil, stop the devastating effects of global warming, and bolster our economy—but only if America puts a cap on carbon pollution to unleash this future.

Solar:

Biofuels:

Wave:

Geothermal:

• Safety, recovery & healing for all affected by the Myanmar cyclone, China earthquake, USA tornadoes.
• Committing to a serious personal responsibility on environmental concerns & climate change & holding those in power accountable with our voices, demanding action.
• World food prices to normalize & shortages to correct.
• Oil prices to normalize & correct.

Here’s how we’re all a part of the challenge and the solution.

The sudden cataclysms that occur in nature, creating havoc and mass injury, are not ‘acts of God.’ Such disasters result from the thoughts and actions of man. Wherever the world’s vibratory balance of good and evil is disturbed by an accumulation of harmful vibrations, the result of man’s wrong thinking and wrong doing, you will see devastation….

Wars are brought about not by fateful divine action but by widespread material selfishness….When materiality predominates in man’s consciousness, there is an emission of subtle negative rays; their cumulative power disturbs the electrical balance of nature, and that is when earthquakes, floods, and other disasters happen.

–Paramahansa Yogananda

My good friend Bonnee over at Greening of Me blog has some beautiful ideas to share regarding all of this and I hope this will prompt her to share about working with the Elementals too:

The more practitioners that join together doing Reiki for change (for the greatest good of all sentient beings) the more intense the results.

Winds and fires are angels at work, waters purify and cleanse. Angels of destruction help us understand our errant thoughts, words, deeds.

This is ultimately the result of wrong focus. Self absorbtion. Too much focus on money, greed/lack causing imbalance. Nothing seen as sacred.

All is Love and we are in Grace. So ultimately all we need do is be that…Love. Love earth, each other, ourselves and all unconditionally.

We call on our nation’s leaders to swiftly establish and implement policies to bring about deep reductions in heat-trapping emissions. The strength of the science on climate change compels us to warn the nation about the growing risk of irreversible consequences as global average temperatures continue to increase over pre-industrial levels (i.e., prior to 1860). As temperatures rise further, the scope and severity of global warming impacts will continue to accelerate.

The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change unequivocally concluded that our climate is warming, stating with at least 90 percent certainty that the warming of the last several decades is primarily due to human activities. Global average temperatures have already risen ~ 0.7°C (1.3°F) over the last 100 years, and impacts are now being observed worldwide. Human-caused emissions to date have locked in further changes including sea-level rise that will intensify coastal flooding, and dramatic reductions in snowpack that will disrupt water supplies in the western United States. If emissions continue unabated, our nation and the world will face more sea level rise, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, snowmelt, flood risk, and public health threats, as well as increased rates of plant and animal species extinctions.

The longer we wait, the harder and more costly it will be to limit climate change and to adapt to those impacts that will not be avoided. Many emissions reduction strategies can be adopted today that would save consumers and industry money while providing benefits for air quality, energy security, public health, balance of trade, and employment.

All nations must commit to a goal designed to limit further harm. The European Union and a number of other countries have adopted a goal for limiting global warming to no more than 2ºC (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels. Emerging science must be regularly evaluated to assess whether this goal is sufficient.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change recognizes that all nations have a responsibility to curb global warming, consistent with their respective contribution to emissions and capacity to act. Recent analyses indicate the United States—even with aggressive action by other nations—would need to reduce its emissions on the order of 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050 to have a reasonable chance of limiting warming to 2ºC.

A strong U.S. commitment to reduce emissions is essential to drive international climate progress. Voluntary initiatives to date have proven insufficient. We urge U.S. policy makers to put our nation onto a path today to reduce emissions on the order of 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. The first step on this path should be reductions on the order of 15-20 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, which is achievable and consistent with sound economic policy.

There is no time to waste. The most risky thing we can do is nothing.

Learn more…

Today I purchased gas at $3.79 & 9/10ths (what’s that all about?!) using a website that helps you locate the best prices in your area.

More to the point, I’ve increased my gas mileage from 23 mpg to 24.2 mpg using Reiki. OK now I’ll be harassed by big oil & Detroit (NOT! Only a joke, that’s not my reality.)

Here’s how:

• When pumping keep your Reiki hand on the pump & intend better gas economy.
• Use Jakikiri Joka-ho (method for cleansing objects) on your car, intending that it burns fuel efficiently, that all car parts related to fuel are clean, work well & efficiently.
• When driving direct Reiki ahead of you so traffic flows, you get all green lights and there’s no stop & start.

It also helps to practice these commonsense steps:

• Consolidate your trips.
• Make sure your tires are inflated to the right pressure.
• Don’t carry excess & unneeded weight in your car.
• Drive below the speed limit.
• Accelerate slowly & evenly.
• Accelerate going downhill.
• Don’t weave in & out.

Please help us protect wild freshwater turtles in the southern United States from collection by commercial wildlife dealers. The Center has organized a coalition of conservation and health groups seeking to end the commercial harvest of freshwater turtles in four southern states and to stop the sale of contaminated turtles to domestic and international food markets.

Last month we petitioned Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas to ban all commercial turtle harvesting in public and private waters, to prevent further population declines of native southern turtle populations, and to protect public health. Turtles collected in these states and sold as food are often contaminated with mercury, PCBs, and pesticides.

Turtle dealers are harvesting massive and unsustainable numbers of wild freshwater turtles from the few southern states that continue to allow unlimited and unregulated take of turtles. Herpetologists report drastic reductions in turtle numbers and even the disappearance of many species in Georgia and Florida, particularly southern map turtles. The Center has identified nine turtle species vulnerable to collection in these states that may warrant listing under the Endangered Species Act.

Recent surveys by Oklahoma State University show depletions and extinction of freshwater turtles in many Oklahoma streams. Commercial turtle buyers in Oklahoma reported purchasing almost 750,000 wild-caught turtles from 1994 to 1999. From Dallas Fort Worth Airport alone, over a quarter million wild-caught adult turtles captured from 2002 to 2005 in Texas were exported to Asia for human consumption.

Please tell the states of Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas to give wild turtles a break. Your message will be sent to the wildlife departments and health departments in each of the four states.

Visit here to take action.

Also check out the informational & inspirational video below…

Largest Recall of Ground Beef Is Ordered

New York Times
By ANDREW MARTIN
Published: February 18, 2008

A California meat company on Sunday issued the largest beef recall in history, 143 million pounds, some of which was used in school lunch programs, Department of Agriculture officials announced.

The recall by the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company, based in Chino, Calif., comes after a widening animal-abuse scandal that started after the Humane Society of the United States distributed an undercover video on Jan. 30 that showed workers kicking sick cows and using forklifts to force them to walk.

The video raised questions about the safety of the meat, because cows that cannot walk, called downer cows, pose an added risk of diseases including mad cow disease. The federal government has banned downer cows from the food supply….(read the rest).

© Pamir Kiciman 2007

Related:
Ever-present Love
Threshold of Healing
Spiritual Love
The Self
Self & Divine
Existence
Wholeness / Duality
Order & Unity
Rounds of Incarnations
Pain
Searching

Everything Around Us

Environment. What does it mean? The word itself is derived from Middle English ‘envirounen,’ from Old French ‘environner,’ from ‘environ,’ around, with further connotations of ‘see’ and ‘circle’ (Dictionary.com). Everything we see around us. Furniture (often made from trees), appliances, sky, fields, cars, ocean, mountains, buildings. Environment can be indoors or outdoors. As Gary Synder says, however: “Cities and agricultural lands…are not ‘wild.’ Wild is a valuable word. It is a term for the free and independent process of nature. A wilderness is a place where wild process dominates and human impact is minimal. Wilderness need not be a place that was never touched by humans, but simply a place where wild process has ruled for some decades.”

Why is it so important? Because we live in it. We breathe it, touch and eat it, smell and admire it. We also hugely impact it in every way, in all its aspects. And it gets even more complex: “The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. So he kept his youth close to its softening influence.” (Standing Bear). We hurt the environment. This ends up hurting us. Does it also foster a wider disrespect? We live here, it’s unavoidable that we have an impact. That’s why it’s called a footprint. Can we make ours smaller and keep it out of each others’ face too?

The environmental concern is multi-faceted and every facet demands attention. To build on the momentum of a major environmental validation, let’s zero in on climate change. On October 12, 2007 Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Wangari Waathai, a former awardee said this: “When it was first announced that I would be receiving the Peace Prize in 2004, many people asked what does the environment have to do with peace? By choosing Al Gore and the IPCC for the award in 2007, the Nobel Committee have rightly brought to our attention that climate change is the single biggest threat to world peace we have ever faced.”

There’s that wider disrespect once more. Standing Bear again: “For him (Lakota), to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him….” Something is definitely going on here. Could it be that we’re in symbiosis, human to human, human to Earth, Earth to human?

We actually need greenhouse gases. A natural blanket of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere keeps the planet warm enough for life as we know it at a comfortable 15°C today. Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases have made the blanket thicker, trapping heat and leading to a global warming. Fossil fuels are the single biggest source of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.

The IPCC is the top authority on global warming, comprising more than 2,000 leading climate change scientists and experts. It agrees that human activity causes global warming. Here’s some data:

• If no action is taken on greenhouse gases, the Earth’s temperature could rise by 4.50°C (8.1°F) or more.
• The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average.
• Changing weather patterns threaten to exacerbate desertification, drought and food insecurity.
• Floods, sea level rise and extreme weather events.
• Climate change will hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest, but it will affect everyone.

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth website has this science (see sources there)

• The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.
• Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level.
• The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade.
• At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles.

If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences.

• Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years — to 300,000 people a year.
• Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.
• Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
• Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
• The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.
• More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.

Many greenhouse gas-emitting activities are now essential to the global economy and form a fundamental part of modern life. There too many underlying factors behind these findings, a confounding web of driving forces to list here. The one area where we have immediate influence is our own lifestyle, knowledge, willingness and worldview. “It is an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with self-reflexive consciousness that brings awareness of our own actions and the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world.” (Joanna Macy.) Self-reflexive consciousness doesn’t leave us any wiggle room. Since we are a species that possesses such a consciousness, one that can think for and about itself, reflect, assess and learn, we have to use it and use it keenly.

Our actions and what we invest in must be informed by the highest functions of this self-reflexive thinking. We actually have to use our noggin! Having this capacity puts the burden of responsibility on humans. It’s probably unrealistic to think that everyone in the ‘burbs is going to commute via carpool, public transit, bicycle or walking. Those choices are realistic for many people, and we do have the choice about what we drive and how we drive it. Do you drive an urban assault vehicle or what used to be known as a car? Do you drive at the speed limit, or weave in and out of traffic, speed, and end up at a red light with all the vehicles you just overtook, heart beating, shoulders tense, a scowl on your face, right foot ready to do it all over again?

Proper tire inflation can improve gas mileage by more than 3%. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. We’re not going to ask our kids to do homework by candlelight. But, we can replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch saves about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. There are lists of painless, practical actions we can take in the resources listed below. The point here is that it starts with one household using its noggin. Let’s not be naive either to think that individual action will be enough to stem current trends of more, bigger, faster, but we can start at home, in our own environment.

The Earth didn’t ask us for compensation as it went through it’s cosmic birthing pains, cooled and life began growing in its perfect environment. It doesn’t ask us today for anything when it generously produces wheat and apples, lets us build on its surface and displays the most incredible colors for our enjoyment. The Earth is still free. Humanity has a cost.

To offset this cost, we are being asked to first admit responsibility, then think responsibly, and finally go out and act in ways that reflect our understanding of the integrity that must be honored between Earth and human. Joanna Macy again: “…graced with self-reflexive consciousness, we are endowed with the capacity for choice–to take stock of what we are doing and change directions…Weaving our ever more complex neural circuits into the miracle of self-awareness, life yearned through us for the ability to know and act and speak on behalf of the larger whole. Now the time has come when by our own choice we can consciously enter the dance.”

The larger whole. Wider respect. Climate change to the degree implicit in irrefutable data now available, or even to a lesser degree simply means that society as we know it may breakdown. The already tapped irreplaceable resources of the Earth will probably be further monopolized by the few for the few, aggressively protected and distributed militarily, to which resistance will arise. Since this has happened throughout human history, even at times when resources were plentiful, it’s not a big jump that it can happen in a global crisis. This is not a doomsayer’s pessimism. Instead, it’s one way to connect the dots between global warming and global peace. Ultimately it doesn’t matter to what temperature we allow global warming to rise. We are already consuming nonrenewable resources at an alarming rate, climate patterns are affecting sustainability and species are disappearing. We need to cool it now, not wait and debate the possible end of civilization.

Traditionally peace is cultivated from the healing of hearts and minds, through forgiveness, understanding, compassion, education and active dialog. The playing field has changed. It’s no longer only the home, neighborhood, a border or region. Of the many things humans share, the planet is our most common ground literally. In bettering it, we better each other. In caring for it we care for each other. In mobilizing on its behalf we mobilize on each others’ behalf. In acting to reduce the causes of climate change we tend our own backyard, and those of total strangers in far off lands. Strangers or kin? Will my backyard stay green if yours is parched? What do we owe the Earth and ourselves, more importantly our children?

This writing ends here, but Standing Bear gives us a worthy model with which to begin: “Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle…This concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all…Everything was possessed of personality, only differing with us in form…We learned to do what only the student of nature ever learns, and that was to feel beauty…and the fact was appreciated that life was more then mere human manifestation; that it was expressed in a multitude of forms.”

___________________________________________________________

Resources:
The Alliance for Climate Protection
Sierra Club: Global Warming & Energy
World Wildlife Fund: Climate Change
UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

© Pamir Kiciman 2007

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