Note. 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 it’s 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. All rights reserved.
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