Author Archives: TeresaS

Result is kids loose, not one time but every time.  Pitting American’s right to bear arms against our children’s safety, all our safety, and kids will loose every time.  Every time.  No matter how much you say you love your children, or yourself or life, you will loose this battle.  Such an illogical, consistent result is a red flag that we are not asking the right question. The solutions being presented are also red flags that ignore, by choice, patterns that are irrefutable.

Such as violence begets violence, every time, even in the cases where it was the last resort. Violence is never the answer to peace, harmony and true safety, ever. It can’t be it is an opposite, it is not possible, anything short is an illusion we hang on to in order to justify our actions or beliefs.  If we arm our schools staff with guns, even kids with guns, what about all the other supposedly safe havens, movie theaters, churches, malls, parks and restaurants?

And then we are a militant state that looks no different than those countries we go to war with or condemn because they are not democracies like us.  All we create is a population that now has to fear our own government takeover (to justify having guns) and every one I see on the street.  We don’t need more fear, we need to move in the opposite direction. We have been living in fear for centuries and we are living and suffering the consequences today. One cannot allow, for new ways and ideas, if one is in fear and contracted.  Any solution that fosters and fuels separation is not a solution, no matter how you try and justify it, second amendment or any other.

There is no one answer, pill or direction that will solve this.  If you force me to start the solutions from this low vibration of guns versus kids, here is what I propose:

Six Steps to End Violence with Automatic Weapons

1. Background Check Payments. Require all background checks on any gun, and the must be paid for by the purchaser.  We require teachers to pay for their own background check, why are my tax dollars paying to approve your purchase?  Funds from this support the following recommendations.
2. Get real about the 2^nd Amendment, all you regardless of your position.  Update it for today’s reality.  If we took each amendment literally we would not have a predictable safe society.  We all have a right to own a car. We all have a right to drink as much alcohol as we want.  At some point those two in combination made our roads unpredictable and safe. It took one mother to loose a child and start MADD, to force society to make a sacrifice on our rights in order to provide a safe and predictable community.  We lived. We can still own a car or not. Still drink as much as we want.  If we combine the two in appropriately there are stiff penalties.   We are at the same point with automatic weapons designed to kill people, sacrifice for the good of the whole is required and will not come about by those who can only see their right out of context with the entire community’s rights.  Kids cannot compete with that, nor should they compete with adults who are supposed to be protecting them, not bargaining their risk against their selfish desires.
3. Buy back.  A serious by back campaign for guns designed to kill people in war.  All sales cease for public to purchase these guns.  Penalties are stiff enough to support and enforcement is as well.  All Americans fund it no matter what the price and we commit to it until it is done.  If folks want to try these out, join the military where you are trained to use them under specific circumstances.  Otherwise, make that sacrifice for a predictable safe society, really you can do it.  Two thirds of the population live in poverty and can’t feed their children, get over yourself, our future is not about you, it is about us.  It has worked in Australia if one is willing to view the data with an open mind.
4. Control ammunition. If somehow we still allow this atrocities ot be manufactured and available to citizens, then make the cost of ammunition so high, it is cost prohibitive for most of the mentally ill, criminals (the “other” guys) pay for them, along with the background checks of course.  Yes, that is an unfair tax, but so is loosing a child so you can have a luxury useless weapon in your gun cabinet, just because you can.  And since you can’t control when a lunatic will shoot at my child you should have a really high bar to owning a killer tool.  If it means that much to you to own it, you will find a way.  Chris Rock had it right, “bullet control. That way if Johnnie gets shot by a diamond bullet, you know he was a high ranking dude.”
5. Service.  In addition to a background check and high cost ammunition, potential assault rifle owners have to serve one year of service in 1) a facility or program that assists mentally challenged individuals, the kind of mental illness that does not send people to prison or residential facilities (good luck finding one) or 2) a family of a shooting victim.   Background checks fund the matching program; all work with these families is donated and tracked.  Care for these individuals’ falls on families who don’t have the skill, knowledge or resources to provide proper help and thus society pays.  Come on, it is only a year and you might learn something or make a friend, and you would really demonstrate your concern about the lack of care for these people. Just think if they got help, no more shootings and you could have even more assault weapons!
6. Mental Challenges.  We start to value children, teachers and mentally challenged people as real people, who count and are valued in our society. Currently, you only count if you are between 20 and 60 years of age and able to work and thus consume. If you are younger or older, or in that age but challenged to the degree you can’t operate at the going pace, you don’t count.  Period and true. If we valued children we would have systems and programs in place that made sure their time in the womb and first five years of life were the healthiest and nurturing as that is the best indicator of them succeeding as we want in life.  We would pay teachers what NFL quarter backs get versus less than the janitor at your office.  This issue is way beyond gun carriers. It is an American, global and human issue.  Until we get this right, innocent children will continue to pay the price.

Will this cost, sure it will. We are paying a price right now that is increasing.  You tell the mother or father of a child killed by a gun that there kid’s life is not worth it.  Anything short of real change is forcing more sacrifices.

So what is the real question if it is not guns versus kids?  The real question is how can we take care of each other so there is no need to have guns designed the kill humans?  This is the true debate, one that few are willing to have and work through, but until that is answered, all other questions are distracting and dead ends. When that is answered however, we will laugh at the current debate, recognizing it for what it is, ludicrous.

Barb Horn, allembracingchange.com

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As I sit here the eve of this election night. I am first grateful for the right to vote, knowing that women died and suffered to earn this right and never got to vote. But second, I sit here with all media off, committed to staying out of the vibration of fear. Letting go of whoever is the winner isn’t my business, it is the business of wisdom much larger than my small brain can handle. Letting in trust.  If I want my fellow Americans to stop acting from fear, then I have to stop myself.  Thus, it doesn’t matter who wins tonight, the work that needs to be done is inside me and you. Yes, whoever that is will have a big task at hand and it is the same as our task.

I could spew out my version of what is wrong with America, but I won’t.  There are many symptoms the latest manifested in our election system. We have turned that sacred process into a football game, focusing on getting a win but loosing site of the season and the lives of the players and fans.  We find ways to spend, according to one statistic about 936 million dollars on correspondence to tell you what to think.  That sends me on another highway, the one where I thought we had no money as a country.  We do, plenty of it.  We haven’t learned that money doesn’t buy happiness, even though the illusion is there.   Our wounds are much deeper and more complicated than money can fix.

We know we are not our property, status, positions, titles, houses and jobs. We are so much more. All of these are given to us so we can give back, serve.  The shadow side of this, the asleep side are those who gain possessions, titles, status and such and now think they have to defend it, protect it, hoard it, for if they don’t they will lose it all and then who would they be?  What would their life have been about?  You won’t even notice these behaviors because we are very sophisticated at this, but it is living out of fear never the less.  And real solutions never come from fear.  We know intellectually that when we die, none of this material stuff comes with us. We die like we live.

Why doesn’t it matter who wins tonight?  From the larger perspective, there are good people, heart centered people in a broken system that we call Washington DC, our government or our political system.  And until we the people change the system, real change, the kind we are all yearning for regardless of our party affiliation, will not happen.  It is a universal law like gravity.  All that is wrong with America can be found with what is asleep, out of whack in each of us.   Our outer world is a mirror of our inner world. We have tried so hard to find our differences we no longer look for similarities or common ground.

Each of us in our own way has contributed to this great separation. It is a separation of our hearts from our minds. This separation is reflected in every system, political, economic, education, social, health and environment.  It is the opposite of the truth, that there is no separation. The harder we try and make it, the more we suffer.   This is the beauty of natural disasters, which I wish on no community.  They are the great equalizers.  Storms, fires, tornadoes, tsunamis and earth quakes don’t separate who they hit, they hit all of us, Republican or Democrat, gay or heterosexual, legal or illegal citizen, white and black, fat and skinny, healthy and ill, natural disasters strike all humans.  And our response?  Is to unite, recreate community, restore, collaborate, and come together. It is instinctual because it is our natural way of being with each other.

Every ounce of energy that was spent this election telling us how to think and why so and so is bad, wrong or fill in the blank. Every time I or you repeated such things, we gave up our power, we created separation for the game, for the moment and put someone in a box and put ourselves in a box.   We created a separation from our own truth.  Perhaps more important than voting would be to find someone who disagrees with your solutions and sit down and listen.  Not for agreement, but just for understanding, another art we have lost in public discourse.  Understanding is not agreement, it is simply, I understand you and you understand me.

We will always have judgments about others that is what humans do; it is a technology we have wired inside us.  It is not the judgment; it is what we do with it.    Judgments, like feelings are there to tell us where we need to focus, what inside of us needs attention.  They are the opportunity to look inward and see what you are attached to that you can let go of now.  The stronger the judgment the bigger the mirror, the greater the reward.  If you find yourself reacting to this blog, that is a place for you to start.  Judgments not used as a mirror to look inward, but used to make your case, support your position, demonize and make others wrong or bad is what in the extreme causes and rationalizes wars and actions such as murder, slavery and rape. .

So, whoever is our next president will just be taking us down a path of awakening.  Awakening that there is no “place or times or ways of being, systems or policies” that will save us.  Only we can save ourselves.  If we do our inner work, then we will no longer tolerate football politics. When we operate from a place of power versus fear, we will create new and better ways of doing everything that honors everyone.  It is already happening if you look around.  As they say in France, the government is afraid of the people so we listen, in America, the people are afraid of the government, so the people are manipulated.  I am done with fear.  Go ahead Mr. President, do your best, but know I know the real work starts here in my own heart.

This blog strives to illustrate either:

1)    how we are operating from the old paradigm or set of beliefs, where we can get stuck, resist change or act from a vibration of fear, lack, limitation, competition and separation.

OR

2)    Conversely  to illustrate how some individuals and entities are operating from the qualities of where we are going, moving toward.  These qualities include community, unity and value complexity, relationship, wholeness and interdependence.

We are in the middle of a shift, in our galaxy, globe, country and culture.  It feels chaotic because the old is breaking down in every area (economy, health, education and environment for example) while the new is yet to be mainstream.  Where we choose to focus makes all the difference possible.  Those hanging on the old and stuck in fear will not be creating the new as you cannot create solutions and “allow” movement forward AND resist at the same time.  Change will only come from those willing to vibrate something other than any expression of fear.

And when you do focus on where we are going, the “window” or perspective you have changes how you experience events, relationships, our world and this shift. The quality of questions you ask increases and you find solutions, allow new ways, create collaborations to develop solutions. You don’t fight the old but create the new in such a way it is a no brainer to follow as the old crumbles. When enough of us awaken to this higher vibration, the shift will be complete and what we see and experience in the world will be better than we could ever imagine.

June 21st Article is:

Why Bambi Must Go

By DANIEL CRISTOL

Williamsburg, Va.

THIS month is the peak of spring bird migration, when New Yorkers flock to Central Park, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of refueling warblers.

But the treetops hold fewer feathered gems each spring, to the point that a typical middle-aged bird-watcher now feels triumphant upon seeing a single bay-breasted or Canada warbler, two of the dozens of disappearing species common in our youth.

Humanity’s assault on migratory birds includes a familiar litany of human-made perils — clearing of forests, predation by cats and poisoning by the toxic byproducts of agriculture and industry. But one of the biggest contributors to the decline in migratory bird populations has gone largely unnoticed: white-tailed deer.

By 1900, deforestation and unregulated hunting had reduced deer populations in the Eastern United States to tiny remnant clusters surviving in remote sanctuaries. But subsequent protective laws and aggressive habitat management allowed deer to bounce back.

To this day, wildlife managers slice intact forests into sunny woodlots that maximize the number of deer and the frequency of encounters between deer and hunters. Private landowners are encouraged by wildlife agencies to crisscross their forest acreage with tasty plantings of clover and wheat in support of what is now a burgeoning population of perhaps 50 million white-tailed deer — in some places as many as 75 deer per square mile.

For some, such an abundance of wildlife might add excitement to a Sunday drive or backyard nature adventure. But most of us have become all too aware that there is a downside to having so many hoofed neighbors in the form of disease-bearing ticks and front-end collisions.

Less appreciated, though, is how these millions of deer are quietly eating every palatable leaf within their reach across the eastern forests of North America. That’s very bad news for migratory birds.

Migratory warblers generally feed in the treetop canopy, but many treasured species — worm-eating, Kentucky and hooded among them — hide their nests in dense vegetation on or near the ground. Deep in the woods, buffered from suburban predators and rural pesticides, warblers should be able to nest in peace. But they can’t do so when hungry deer have demolished the forest understory.

Take a quick drive through forested terrain and see for yourself the stark browse lines, missing orchids and denuded shrubbery. The conclusion is inescapable: There are too many deer, and they are endangering the rest of our flora and fauna, including valuable timber and invaluable songbirds.

The typical solutions, like bringing back mountain lions and wolves to control deer, are no longer an option in most places, in part because of the forests’ proximity to humans. Deer hunting has lost its appeal for many younger Americans, and the population of new hunters in the East is most likely declining faster than the threatened cerulean warbler.

Nevertheless, the good news is that this is a problem we can fix — and fix quickly.

One easy step is to fence off select sections of the woods, creating deer-less oases. Researchers in Virginia and Pennsylvania have successfully fenced deer out of small forest plots, demonstrating that although deer severely alter the structure and composition of deciduous forests, vegetation and birds come roaring back when deer are excluded.

Fencing, however, is expensive, especially on such a large scale. An even easier solution is to go back to the source of the problem: stop managing our forests for deer.

Those early 20th-century strategies are a great conservation success story, but perhaps too much so: the deer are now being managed to the detriment of the rest of the ecosystem.

We need to seek balance and manage public land for fewer deer. Reducing deer numbers will mean healthier forests, fewer ticks and more warblers each May.

Daniel Cristol is a professor of biology at the College of William and Mary.

AllEmbracingChange.com paradigm shift:

Download “How Did We Get In This Mess?” Free framework that provides a framework to view the paradigm shift used in this blog. The shift from where we are to where we are going. When we look at topics from where we are going, which is a higher vibration than where we are, our questions change, our perspective shifts.

Why Bambi has to go illustrates a symptom of our current paradigm. Looking at how to manage the excess deer is asking the wrong question for long term, real change.  What paradigm created the system, patterns and events we see here with too many deer that then impact the bird habitat and populations?  Again, scientific reductionism, the belief we can take apart entire systems and put them back together how we want, or pull out pieces and alter them without impact all the other systems to which they are connected, known or unknown to us, is an extinct paradigm.  We know we cannot.  This article illustrates a small known reason that we do impact other systems (bird habitat) by altering another (management of deer).  In addition, the paradigm to cause no harm (don’t kill bambi) also doesn’t works in direct conflict with deer management practices that produce deer populations to hunt. The problem is deer don’t always follow management plans on paper.  In addition, we have removed natural predators based on another paradigm that they were bad , again removinga cog in the wheel.

What is the question from the new paradigm?  The new paradigm views whole systems, as whole, not individual parts.  We would not pull out speices and increase their numbers artifically, or remove entire species on purpose.  We would likely mimic Mother Nature and the carrying capacity of the natural environment and restore the broken links in the food pyramid.  This would likely include a change in how we view land, land ownership and/or land use.  Currently land ownership is based on another paradigm we can actually own a part of the earth, do what we want to it and not impact or have to deal with impacts to other systems. In other words the private land holdings that were part of an intricate ecological web of life are instantaneously removed by a realestate transaction. Tne new paradigm values connecctivity, community of resources and stewardship of these resources for a greater whole.  It may not mean we don’t have a piece of the earth we “own”, but the context in what we do with it would shift.

We want our questions to produce changes toward the shift and we do that by embracing the qualities of where we are going WHEN looking at the breaking down systems and associated problems today. Otherwise we will just continue to produce more of the not working same.