Like Dogs Chasing Our Tails

Congratulations to all those who supported the health care bill. Condolences to those who didn't. Why not call a truce and take a break before you resume your war?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're fighting an illusory fight, the product of beliefs and practices lodged within the mass consciousness that keep us perpetuating a drama of conflict to ameliorate the harshness of a system where some win while others lose.

I hate to break it to you, but it's a fight we can never win. Because we're like dogs chasing our tails, continually trying to catch something that always remains just beyond reach.

That something is to achieve what some call a just society, where there are only winners and no losers. The method is through social engineering and the effort to achieve social justice.

The idea at first seems to be a noble one, thinking that if we level the playing field so that all are equal in result, our lives and world will somehow be better. Assuming, of course, that those who espouse it know what they're doing and can bring about what they intend.

Underlying the effort is a belief that capitalism is inherently evil, and that workers can never share in the fruits of their labors unless they use government to take from the money-grubbing financiers and business owners and re-distribute it to those who need it more. Money is used to beget more money, sometimes with harsh results. And it comes only on the backs of the workers.

So to avoid that harshness, those with wealth and power need to be restrained through government intervention, and a big chunk of their assets siphoned off to benefit the have-nots of society. So major fights erupt to use government to restrain them and change the rules (or in the instant case, change our health care system).

When the forces for "change" succeed, they imstitute program after program to impose their view of a utopic society and right the perceived wrongs of their "greedy" opponents. But the more they do, the greater grows the weight of oppressive controls and centralized management, threatening individual incentives and creating more problems to fix.

But as we all know, control is an illusion. Besides, you can't fight human nature without risking the deterioration or collapse of a nation like that which happened in the Soviet Union. Here our profligate spending already has us on the brink of bankruptcy, so such a result is easily foreseeable for those who care to look.

There is of course a model of success they can point to -- China, with its robust economy. Why let a little thing like its people having no personal freedoms other than what the state says they can have get in the way?

But the way our system is set up, they never quite get to a place of absolute control, succeeding only to drag us down by a growing ball and chain. Ultimately our heritage of individual freedom and self-determination awakens and the people rebel, incited on by the forces of money and power that want to be freed from the heavy yoke of regulation.

And so it goes. With us in the middle. Either way, we lose, because neither extreme offers us what we really want -- peace and prosperity without abuse by either side. And all we're left with is the fighting.

It doesn't make sense to keep fighting in hope the side we identify with most wins, and until then giving them everything they need to do so. Their war doesn't create peace. Their objectives don't hold out the promise of prosperity. They only offer us the excesses of their respective policies carried to an ad nauseum extreme.

And the price they extract for not giving in to their demands is to force us to live in the midst of their war zone, no more at peace than those in any of the hot spots around our world.

What we really need is a change in attitude, as well as a shift away from the beliefs over which they fight. For when that cause is removed, then there's no nothing to fight against and no need for the power games to see who controls government.

Capitalism per se isn't the problem, nor even those with vested interests in keeping things the way they are. It's just a symptom of a prevailing view on life that we have to fight for what we want and take it from those who have it.

But it seems that even those who fight them don't really want things to change; at least, they don't give us the tools to do so. Rather, they prefer to fill our heads with ideas that support their efforts at control while we're kept in the dark about essentials like who we are, what we're about, and why we're here in the first place.

Efforts to explain that through religion have been manipulated by those who want to impose their views and resulted in great conflicts that still threaten our world. But the threat from science with its ever-changing assertions of fact doesn't serve us any better, fueling the godless secular movement that denies any sort of source or meaning for our lives other than the pursuit of our desires. All we're left with is their ongoing fight over the life-blood of human civilization -- money.

Yet even as they seize control of every facet of our lives, they never really teach us the ins and outs of money, what it really is, where it comes from, or how to get it -- much less how to keep it flowing abundantly in our lives, even during times of social transition.

Instead, we're force-fed an education that prepares us not to create a life where money flows easily, but rather to be funneled into jobs for which we don't get paid enough doing things we don't love. And then we wonder why we find ourselves living lives of discontent, filled with lack and struggle to get by -- a state that makes us easily manipulated by those who would use the system for their own ends.

We need to transform our system into one that doesn't require the dynamic tension between those who have money and those who want or need it. Money is a medium of abundance, and the more we understand how the manifestation of that abundance relates to the interplay between our inner and outer worlds, the more we can transform our efforts to get it and end the need to fight to control its flow.

If we want to move beyond this never-ending battle between those who have and those who want it, we must infuse our system with a consciousness that is now lacking -- a consciousness that can only come through increased guidance from our inner source and awareness that the next step in our evolutionary journey is to learn to co-create our common visions without the conflict we now use to keep ourselves apart.

It's time we wake up to the fact that we are the reason they can keep fighting they way they do. For they simply reflect the same beliefs and perspectives we've all bought into that cause us to assert our wills to get what we want, and run roughshod over anyone who gets in our way.

If we truly want to achieve the peace and prosperity that can be ours, we cannot continue on the way that we are. We must change. That change starts within us, and only through it can we let go of the things they dangle to garner our support for their battles.

Until we do, the only birthright we will enjoy is simply more of the same. More fighting. More abusive business practices. More governmental regulation and control over our lives. More fighting between political hacks who carry the sword for their respective sides.

Health care is not the be all-end all for a better world. Still, it can be a good thing to have, especially if motivated more by a desire to care for each other than to protect ourselves from a system run wild without doing anything to change the game that enables it.

We don't have to allow the system to continue on the way that it is. But to change it starts with us -- WITHIN US -- by realizing and reflecting more of who we are at our core in our daily affairs.

That change is within our reach now if we choose to make it. The question is whether we're ready to find a better way.

I suspect that many of us are. What about you?