2007 State of the Universe Address
Swami Beyondananada is Californian Steve Bhaerman, humorist, author and self-described ‘Optimystic’. As you can see, his humour (US spellers, humor) is delivered with gentle wordplays and much hippie wisdom underpinning it all. Check out his site, Wake Up Laughing and watch him in action here (here for dial-up—2 min sample of a live performance). Current-year addresses are located here, reproduced with his kind permission.
Swami Beyondananda’s
2007 State of the Universe AddressHumanifest Destiny
From Survival of the Fittest to
Thrival of the FittingestNote. This year, the Swami insisted on delivering the State of the Universe Address on February 2nd, Ground Hog Day because “it’s the closest anyone comes to seeing their shadow all year.” Said the Swami, “Look at us. America is the most heavily armed country in the world, and still we’re afraid of our own shadow. We seem stuck in a state of emergency, so we must declare a state of ‘emerge ‘n see’ instead. Like the ground hog, we must emerge from our separate little holes and see we are all in this together. And we must see our shadow — otherwise, we’re in for another long season of darkness. We must laugh at the shadow as well. I call on everyone to shine the light of laughter on the endarkened corridors of power, because there’s definitely something funny going on. May we wake up laughing and leave laughter in our wake.”
Another earth year has passed, and for what it is worth I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won’t be long before they’ll have to let the photon belt out another notch.
Meanwhile back here on our own little center of the universe, the human race seems to be racing against time. Those Concerned Scientists have just moved the Doomsday clock up to five minutes till midnight, and even some of the unconcerned scientists are getting concerned. With all due respect to Wilson Pickett, if this midnight hour ever comes it won’t be love that comes tumblin’ down. Well, maybe tough love.
The good news is, the alarm is getting louder, making it more difficult to hit snooze. The Chinese say crisis means opportunity, and opportunity sure seems to be knocking. If it knocks any harder, it’s going to knock down the door. The polar ice caps are melting — north and south — which means on top of everything else this crazy world now officially has bipolar disorder. No wonder the penguins are flocking to Hollywood. The polar bears are now on the Endangered Species List, right up there with us. We humans do seem to have the Endangering Species List pretty much to ourselves, though.
An Evolutionary Upwising!
Fortunately, people are waking up and wising up. An evolutionary upwising is gathering esteem all across America, and not a moment too soon. Confidence in the powers that be in power hit Iraq bottom last year, and once again — thanks to the Daily Show and Colbert Report — fake news was the greatest source of truth. The “we’re-going-to-heaven-and-everyone-else-can-go-to-hell” crowd continued to expose itself — in more ways than one — and more and more Americans awoke to the realization that the real abomination is to bomb a nation.
Riding on the groundswell of this upwising, the unarmed forces won an important victory in November. As predicted, the evolution was officially launched when the first big shot was fired the day after election day. And the farce was with us as well. The last two Republican Senators to concede defeat were Burns and Allen, and more than a few corrupt Congressfolk were shown the door and told to “say goodnight, disgracie.”
The President, meanwhile, stepped up his counterintelligence program to the point where just about everything he does runs counter to intelligence. But now it looks like even Republicans may be ready to put the “decider” through the decider mill, no doubt afraid that with two more years of this, the party of Lincoln and Ford might go the way of the Edsel.
Something else happened this year. Thanks to Al Gore the media finally warmed up to climate change, and global warming became a hot issue. As soon as “Inconvenient Truth” hit the theaters, the Bush Administration counterattacked with its own version of the story, “Convenient Lies.” And the biggest cause of global warming? Global warmongering. We humans spend over a trillion dollars a year on weapons of deadlihood when we could be weaving a web of livelihood. No wonder the ‘hood is so deadly. And we’ve rationalized this dysfunctional persistent “riches to rubble” war program as a “necessary evil” without bothering to stand for peace as a “necessary good.”
Are We As Smart As Our Cells?
Now if you used to hate it when your parents compared you to someone else saying, “if so-and-so can do it, why not you?” you’re probably not going to like what I’m about to tell you — but here goes. Our cells may be smarter than we are. At least they’ve figured out how to live together in peace and harmony. According to cellular biologist Bruce Lipton, we have a thriving 50 trillion cell community under our skin where every participating cell is cared for. Universal health care, full employment — truly no cell left behind. And the cells that do the most important work for the body as a whole, they get “paid” more. Our organs seem to get along too. You hardly ever hear about the liver cruising up the bile canal, invading the pancreas, and laying claim to the Islets of Langerhans.
Meanwhile back in the jungle, we pursue manifest destiny and survival of the fittest as our supposed biological imperative, except for one small detail. It doesn’t matter how fit the individual is, if the species doesn’t fit — then out it goes into the recycling pile. If you thought “The Man Without a Country” was a sad story, wait until you see “Man Without a Planet.” I hate to say it, but global warming may be nothing more than the Earth running a fever in the hopes of shaking a virulent parasite called homo ignoranus.
Now don’t get me wrong. There’ve been some really great people. Gandhi. Mother Teresa. Elvis. (That’s right, Elvis. I’ve been following his threefold path for years: “Love me tender … please surrender … return to sender.”) But anyway, there’ve been lots and lots of lots of really wonderful individuals. Individually, you won’t meet a nicer species. But put a bunch of us together, and we’re hell on wheels. Did you know that over the 20th century, war caused 260 million deaths? Why if someone did just one 260 millionth of that, it’d be all over the 6:00 news with details at 11. And if any one of us did what we allow “all of us” to do, we’d be put away forever. I guess they must have modified the Ten Commandments while we weren’t looking: “Thou shalt not kill, except in extremely large groups.”
Spontaneous Re-Missioning
I’ve said it before, but maybe it bears repeating. It could very well be that the Ten Commandments are just too much to bite off all at once. Maybe we should start with One Suggestion: “We’re all in it together.” Each and every one of us is one with the same One. The Universal Oneness. The universe has us surrounded, might as well surrender. In the Creator’s book, we are all number one — and when we’re all number one, there is never a need to treat anyone else like number two.
And perhaps instead of waiting for some Higher Power — or for that matter, some hired power — to save us, maybe it’s time to embrace the world as a fixer-upper instead of rejecting it as a tearer-downer. Maybe we’re all working for Habitat for Humanity, and making our habitat fit for humanity — and all other living things — is the ultimate do-it-yourself project. Let’s face it. Our Mother Earth is suffering from a bad case of us, and a miraculous healing is required. So, if we want a spontaneous remission, we humans must take responsibility for a spontaneous re-missioning. We must change our mission from manifest destiny and survival of the fittest to humanifest destiny and thrival of the fittingest.
Here’s another suggestion. Maybe we children of God manifest our destiny as humanity by finally becoming adults of God, and realizing we are the Creator’s creation created to create. In other words, we aren’t here to earn God’s love, we are here to spend it!
Creationism vs. evolution is a silly conversation, particularly when both are true. I believe we were created to evolve, otherwise Jesus would have said, “Now don’t do a thing till I return.” If we want to bring the Higher Power to earth, we must do it through our own words, thoughts and actions. Supply-side spirituality, I call it: Be more supplying and less demanding.
I have often said that if you are dissatisfied with the current programming, turn off your TV and tell a vision instead. So I will tell my vision for the new year and new millennium. I see the upwising going worldwide as billions of people realize that each of us is a cell in the body of humanity, totally unique just like everyone else. Sure, the world is currently being run by a very, very small elite of individuals, but look on the bright side — there are way, way more of us than there are of them. Where the healthy cells thrive, sociopathogens can never take hold of the body politic.
And what if each nation — like each organ of the body — set out its own mission to give its special gift to the world? It could be baklava, it could be bagpipes … anything that brings harmony instead of harm. No more harmaments, and a farewell to harms! Imagine a peacemaker implanted in the heart of every nation, and billions of individuals signing on to a worldwide Humanifesto ratifying the One Suggestion. Of course, the conditions might not change overnight, but the conditioning would. And if we shift the conditioning, a shift in conditions will surely follow.
Imagine all the nations of the world thriving together — in a great thrivalry — and manifesting our destiny as a humanity … to re-grow the Garden from the grassroots up, and have a heaven of a time doing it.
Can it be done? Well, consider the alternative. Are we going to just let our entire species flunk third dimension? Where’s your species spirit anyway?
I know what you’re thinking. The Swami is a hopeless optimystic, an overly-positive yea-sayer. But that is only because I understand that our future is not our past. Otherwise, why would we need a future? We could just all sit home and watch reruns. Each moment, we discard billions of universes as we choose one future over another. Beggar or billionaire, we’re all in the futures market. The question for each of is, which future are we investing in? Here’s the good news: There is a field of infinite possibility out there. And here’s the better news: It’s not a battlefield, it’s a playing field. The game is Humanifest Destiny, and we have om field advantage.
C’mon, omies. Let’s take the field.
© Copyright 2007 by Steve Bhaerman.
Pingback: The Swami Speaks « Can’t See the Forest