The Oil Spill is a Crisis of Consciousness--Time to Wake Up and Act

This is not the time to focus on blame, but the time to wake up and act. 

It has now been more than a month since the start of the BP oil spill at the in the Gulf of Mexico and the spill and its effects grow not just in scope, but in magnitude by the moment. The curious lack of priority coverage by the media has left us powerless to understand what is really happening or be a part of the solution, both in the immediate situation and in terms of expanding our awareness by understanding our own roles in the chain of demand and supply driven by lifestyles of unconscious consumption. And with our government appearing to be comfortable somewhat offhandedly painting BP as inept while still allowing them to manage something that is clearly out of their control, our attention is captured by a mindless tennis match of blaming and we are hypnotized into inaction.

As the oil spews its dark menace in the quiet depths of our collective unconsciousness, we blithely continue our dance of disconnection on the surface. Now is the time to act, to awaken ourselves and to make the choices that come with being conscious, being a part of the whole of Earth and being responsible for our actions and inactions.

During the energy crisis of the 1970’s we changed our awareness and that changed entire industries, but that awareness faded with time. With the Internet we can make that awareness come alive again even more quickly and effectively. We will drive the change we need if we become conscious of what is going on around us and act.

Here is what we need to do right now:

           

1.      Please use the share buttons at the bottom of this post or on the sidebar of this page to post it to bookmarking sites or social media sites (e.g. Twitter or Facebook) where others can find it or to send a link via e-mail.

2.      Call or e-mail your local media outlets (e.g. television and newspapers) and ask them to increase their coverage on this issue and let them know how important the issue is. And while you are at it, ask them to increase coverage on a daily basis of energy usage and sustainability issues.

3.      Contact the major television and Internet news networks and ask them to place a special news feature box on the main page of their Web site to provide constant updates (just like they did for Katrina).

      Here is a limited list of the major news sources on the Internet. Please contact any and all news providers you can think of.

            CNN:              http://edition.cnn.com/feedback/

            ABC:               http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3052660

            FOX:               http://www.foxnews.com/

            MSNBC:        http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32359544 (click the “Reader Inquiries” link)

4.      Call or e-mail your state's senators and congressmen and tell them that if the company that started this problem and doesn’t seem to be able to fix it can’t handle the situation, the federal government needs to move into gear in concert with any and every public and private sector resource available. This is not a drill.

And when you are done with that, start thinking about your own lifestyle and asking for and demanding information to help all of us become more consciously integrated citizens of planet Earth. We are not separate from her and we cannot live without her.

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way man thinks.” Gregory Bateson

Peace,

Anton Elohan Byers

Mother

I, alone once

Kiss our mother, Earth

            and turn my ear to listen

Her breath beseeches and bestows

Asking and giving, minerals and love

She gave me life, her cries are mine

She asks in that moment

Can I deny the divine?

~AEB

From what to eat for dinner to oil spills, it’s all about consciousness...

( www.intuisdom.com )

The single biggest spiritual lesson is always simply that that we each have choice to live a life that is more conscious, that we can participate in the world in healthy ways and help make that world a healthier place if we allow ourselves to be conscious of it. It doesn’t matter what the scale of our problems is--from a personal issue all the way up to issues that affect the health of our mother Earth--it’s all the same dynamic of effects from whatever our level of personal consciousness is. Whether we blame our parents, our spouses, the economy, the government or a company in charge of an oil rig for our misery, the act of blaming tends to obscure the rightful focus on our own complicity in the state of our affairs. And it is the consciousness of our involvement that will reveal our capacity to actually do something about it.

We have chosen to live lives of great excess that require identifying and tapping energy sources that pose massive risks to life on this planet in one way or another and in one scale of time or another (i.e. either today or in someone else’s generation). It is not always obvious to the average person how true this is. It is very easy to get lost in the television that tells us how we should live and trade the corporate machines our lifeblood of time for a few bucks that we then spend according to how we are told to. But the television is not the problem, corporations are not the problem, the government is not the problem, the media is not the problem and energy is not the problem.

We are the problem. We create the demand for products that require energy; we create the demand for energy itself; we control what corporations produce by our demands; we create governments, policies and regulatory bodies through our participation and lack of it; we decide what will and what will not happen by what we choose in every moment.

When we move to a state of consciousness that recognizes our connection to what is around us, recognizes that we are all part of the same manifestation of life and recognizes that we don’t need more than enough to live peacefully in cooperation with nature to make life fulfilling we will begin to make conscious decisions--trillions of them every day. Those conscious decisions will drive corporations, governments and economies to follow our lead. When we decide to walk more, fewer cars will be manufactured; when we decide to purchase local goods, less air pollution will be generated; when we decide to participate in government more, we will see a government that reflects our understanding; when we see those around us as the same as us, conflict will become unnecessary.

When we decide to take responsibility for our own individual actions by recognizing our integral place in the world and making appropriate decisions that use only what we need, we take back an enormous amount of control over the quality and health of our own lives. Let’s start making those decisions right now.

Peace,

Anton Elohan