Manifesto 2008

CONSENSUS CULTURE: We are always in a trance state. We conspire with one another to create or confabulate consensus reality. Cultures and subcultures share tacit understandings which together are Cultural Trance States, an unconscious cohesion. All cultures are trance states with their own modified programming content - family, community, religion, nation. We have been programmed by repeated suggestion since birth. We don't question or doubt this deep trance. Nations and organizations also create lived trance states. We are surrounded by and absorbed in their powerful reality in the social cradle.

SHAME & BLAME: Addictive organizations and their false images (PR, spin, false fronts, false flags) are the infrastructure of an addictive society. Addiction leads to compulsiveness. Thus, we have become a shame-based society. Symptoms include grandiosity, confusion, self-centeredness, dishonesty, perfectionism, scapegoating, self-righteousness, paranoia, projection, defensiveness, fear and ethical deterioration.

TOXIC SHAME, the fuel of addiction, divides us from ourselves and others. In toxic shame, we disown ourselves and cover-up with a false self. Toxic shame has many disguises; it loves darkness and secretiveness. It stays in hiding and covers itself up with a myriad of behavioral cover-ups. Toxic shame is spiritual bankruptcy. Healthy shame is honest. It lets us know our healthy limitations and provides meaning. It is the basis of humility and spirituality.

DEPRESSION is the number one mental health problem. Stress is the number one killer. Often depression lurks behind compensatory manic activity. Our boom-bust economics, the irrationally optimistic housing bubble and over-extended credit reflect the same syndrome. We react to an illusion of scarcity with the illusion of control that blocks what we fear we can't handle. Personal or collective disaster leaves us dispossessed. Shock, disaster and economic downturn is a formula that can be manipulatively exploited to eliminate resistance.

For America to recover, she has to see through deep denial, acknowledge the realities of her shadow self, hold the tension of the opposites, and let go to the transformative process of self-actualization that promises rebirth at a higher level of integration, stabilization and functionality. We can become more conscious participants in our own self-unfolding and in course-correcting the ship of state toward positive directionality. We can understand, adapt and respond to our world better.

POST-TRAUMATIC CULTURE: PTSD is a chaotic, hyper-reactive state of being. Our cultural crisis is characterized by symptomatic numbing, dissociation, impulsive aggression, depression, denial, shame and anxiety. We are haunted by a sense of injury -- victimization. "Victim speech" is used for economic and military gain. First- and second-hand trauma shapes our central narratives of overwhelming personal and collective change.

COUNTERMEASURES: Mediated images of war and catastrophe can produce PTSD symptoms much like directly witnessing traumatic events, especially if one identifies with the victims. Providing a means of processing information and feelings, Internet may provide an antidote to toxic media images that induce panic. When we see history repeating itself, we flashback to similar unresolved events. Hampered by persistent high-level denial, time does not heal these collective wounds. Disclosure would be a start.

CREATIVE RE-PATTERNING: We need to eliminate the blocks to our maturation process as a nation, even if no nation can realistically survive being totally transparent. A nation can oversight itself internally just like an individual can do a "reality check." We've been stuck in pointless paranoia with a Draconian government, corporate feudalism and an unwinable war that has sucked us dry. Dynamic change and flux means finding our own way to an authentic relationship with self, others and world.

SELF-IMAGE: We need to make a quantum leap beyond our delusions in all these domains. Currently, we are getting "shock treatment." The Shock Doctrine (Klein) and "disaster capitalism" have been imposed abroad and domestically to reengineer societies reeling from disasters. This corporate warfare and economic policy are rooted in CIA electroshock experiments in torture. Ideally, we need breakthrough not breakdown. But our self-image, our national esteem has been damaged. Self image is linked to feelings of destiny, meaningfulness, significance, uniqueness and reason for being.

SOUL RETRIEVAL is the process of recovering what we've cut off, left or lost somewhere, or that was stolen or appropriated by someone else. Refuge is found in the human heart. Soul retrieval relieves trauma and fragmentation by mending the past and healing the future. The object of healing is to become whole...to embody soul. Wholeness is a process of reconciliation. Imagine what a more soulful nation might be like.

VISION: Each step in our history has been marked by a quantum leap in our Manifest Destiny driven by our expansive spirit and zeitgeist. If it is so that we "create our own destiny," it is time for America to manifest a better destiny in harmony with global values that support true democracy and our Constitutional freedoms. A more meaningful manifestation of our national spirit would prioritize universally spiritual ideals, like respect and compassion, over domestic and international power trips. To grow our citizenry and government need vision, communication and trust. We are the only species capable of long-term systematic planning, but we willingly sabotague ourselves for short-term gratification. We need to heal our relationship to self, others, and world.

CRISIS DRIVEN: The fact is, we live in a sick system and it impacts our quality of life from the inside out. If the USA was a person, that individual would be a toxic, narcissistic, territorial, workaholic control freak with boundary issues. Our violent nation is manipulative, dramatic, paranoid, compulsive and soon may become literally depressive. The housing market is in a depression, and that is symbolic of our condition. You have to wonder what all our irrational exhuberance and manic activity is hiding in the depths of America's soul. Just what is our collective "heart's desire?"

COMMITMENT TO TRUTH: What is our shared vision today? Shared visions arise from those truly committed to their personal visions. What is the true nature of this "reality" we are creating? Are we on purpose and achieving our collective destiny or has our country been hijacked by special interests? Why do we obsessively overwork, overspend, cover up, get aggressive and perpetuate sick organizations? How can we let go of our old national identity, pass through the 'neutral zone' and experience transforming rebirth? We need a paradigm that superimposes the new on the old. First comes a change in attitudes or worldview that embodies a different set of values in cultural rebirth.

CREATIVE STRATEGIES: How can we raise the bar? Shared vision uplifts our aspirations, gives us courage and ignites our spirit. It pulls us toward an overarching goal. It creates room for risk taking and experimentation by fostering long term commitment. We can extend principles and insights from personal mastery into the world of discipline, collective aspiration and shared commitment. The vision may come before its time is ripe, but we have to try, even to fail. We need a transition plan or crisis and confusion will arise. We can look to the past to get to the root of the problem.

MANIFEST DESTINY is the philosophy that created the USA in her westward expansion. But it didn't stop there; our penetration has gone global. America has lost her boundaries but Manifest Destiny is still a driving ideal of virtually endless expansion. This ideology is still creating America's history, powering our culture. But in our egotistical zeal we have spread ourselves too thin, like the Alexanders, Napoleans and Hitlers of bygone eras.

But does the rightful destiny of the American people include unlimited imperialistic expansion? We're running out of places and cultures to invade. As a restless territorial culture bent on acquisition and conquest, we have boundary issues. We are the dominators, but the only frontiers left are within ourselves. It is high-time we manifest a new vision of our collective destiny, beyond the materialistic, religious, utopian design.

If the buzzword "Intentionality" is to be properly applied, we have to move beyond the ego gratification and wish fulfilment of THE SECRET and apply it in a global context. We can choose to consciously engage in self and social transformation. In a strongly networked society, a bottom-up approach to order is the counterpoint to the old hierarchal dominator model that has permeated history -- participatory consciousness.

We are enmeshed in denial. We either don't know or don't want to know the details of global exploitation that undergird our consumer lifestyles. We don't have the rationalized right to destroy anything or anyone who gets in the way of our so-called freedom and independence. We aren't independent; all of humanity and life is interdependent. We aren't free; we have traded freedom for so-called security. Far from demonstrating our superiority, the immortal doctrine of international Manifest Destiny reveals the spiritual faultline in the Soul of America.