Dan Hemesath's Blog

This is my final chapter on drug abuse prevention.  I dropped the section on the spiritual causes of drug abuse.  It may have put too many readers asleep.  But I think the remaining section summarizing a federal prosecutor’s  conclusions about drug abuse policy is too important to pass up.

IV. A federal Prosecutor’s take on the drug abuse problem

The best, and most honest summary of the drug abuse problem that I have come across, was written by John Kroger in his book “Convictions”

Ironically John Kroger was a successful federal prosecutor. Up until just a couple of years ago he worked as an Assistant US Attorney. After prosecuting several important narcotic cases, his conclusion is that the most effective way to deal with the problem of drug abuse is through treatment programs.

In general, prosecutors are more interested in convicting and locking up drug dealers, but Kroger looks at the complete futility of this approach. Despite the tens of billions that have been spent yearly in an attempt, over the past 40 years, to win the war and drugs, he notes that the statistics show that we are not winning this war through our present policy.

Drug abuse continues to go up. The availability of drugs is greater than ever. He describes in great detail how the billions we spend to eradicate drugs at the source, primarily in Colombia, has been and continues to be a dismal failure.

Attempts to seize drugs at our borders have also been ineffective. In spite of the occasional bust, over 90% of the drugs get through. Millions of cars and trucks cross the US border from Mexico every month. If we tried to search them all, traffic will be backed up into Guatemala.

Law enforcement in the United States is also largely ineffective. Drug dealers are caught and sent to jail, but there is a waiting line and of new dealers to take their place. In the United States, 16 million drug users spend over $60 billion on drugs every year. Leaders are willing to take the risks to get a piece of that pie.

An approach that makes sense is to reduce demand through treatment and prevention programs.

Yet over the last 30 years the percentage of government money earmarked for prevention and treatment has gone down while money for law enforcement has gone up. Why? Political expediency based on the public misperception. This is true even though studies have shown that every dollar spent on treatment saves the country four dollars. This figure was arrived at through studies that were conducted by at UCLA.

Back in the 70s we spent about 60% of our anti-drug money on treatment. Now it’s down to 33%.

II: Meeting social needs:

Peer Pressure

Peer pressure can be overcome in many ways when a child has a solid threshold of resistance, i.e. normal resistance to screwing up by using drugs. The job of parents and educators is to increase the threshold of resistance , to help their kids to avoid messing up their lives with drugs.  They can help by making sure that their child has some successes in his or her life.   This includes successes in making friends and successes in other areas. It makes little difference just what these successes are.

Isolation

We are far more technologically advanced than our parents and grandparents. Scientifically we’re ahead of most of the rest of the world.  But in the process of becoming mechanized and computerized, we have lost a great deal socially. We‘ve become terribly isolated and lonely. Because families have become much smaller we have less interaction with brothers and sisters.  We spend a great deal of time in our automobiles, usually alone, with windows up, with no contact with other people. Our schools have become so big that kids often get lost in the crowd afraid to reach out and make friends and no one even notices.

Because of fear, many old men and women and others are afraid to leave their houses. Millions of families are uprooted every year when fathers or mothers are reassigned to work in some other part of the country. Divorces divide families that already have little of the old extended family culture and structure. Millions of people desperately need love and friendship.

Is it any wonder that so many young people turn to drugs the group of drug users who pretend to offer the community and the friendship that the young person so badly needs?

So what can we do? Well, everybody can do something about this one. We can start hugging our kids again. We can arrange to have our kids spend some time with other kids that they like. — go roller skating with a group of kids over the weekend — invite them over for cookies — teach them how to dance, or learn how to dance with them. Have them learn how to play a social instrument like a guitar.

There must be a million ways to help build relationships. Never let a day go by in which you don’t stretch to practice the courage required to bring yourself closer to others and others closer to each other. This is important. We have to brand it into our brains. In the rush to raise our standard of living, we have forgotten what real quality of life is all about. A family with debts out the ears in a rented apartment can have much more quality of life than the successful professional living in 5000 square feet  in the best part of town. We know this in our hearts. Why doesn’t spill over into our lives?

III. Meeting physical needs:

Any comprehensive program to reduce the demand for drugs must also include plans to deal with the poverty of the inner cities — not giveaway programs — not more welfare, but the right kind of training and education to help people to help themselves.

No more big sweeping solutions, but individual solutions for individuals, small businesses still produce the majority of the new jobs in this country. I know that these are clichés, but they are true.

Talking about solutions, a book that came out a few years ago, “Small is Beautiful,” by Schumacher, still offers the best ideas that I’ve seen on the subject of helping the poor in this country and around the world. Having worked several years in Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in this hemisphere, I’ve given this subject a lot of thought.

I don’t feel that I have the answers, but I believe that I’ve seen some things that have a chance of working.  Programs that do give results, should be encouraged and taught — not copied — but encouraged in other places.

A project as simple as working on a small garden could have great long term benefits.  Learning about soil and how to renew soil through proper care and use  of  soil renewal techniques under the tutelage of  knowledgable volunteers can lead to a lifelong passion for learning more and working toward reclaiming land to feed the population and build soil that will sequester greenhouse gases and help reduce the effects of global warming.

This is not exaggeration or pie in the sky. The only obstacle is doing it. Give away programs don’t work, but programs where people are given the chance or means to help themselves, are the way to go. There’s the old saying about giving a man a fish and he will be hungry again tomorrow.  Teach him how  to fish and he will be eating for a lifetime.

The reasons people use drugs are fourfold:  1. Pyschological:  Lack of self-esteem and lack of purpose or role.  2. Social: lack of friends and family support. 3.  Spiritual: Lack of heroes or role models. 4. Physical: poverty and all that poverty entails.

This chapter deals with  #1 which is dealing with self esteem and a finding a meaningful role.

I. Meeting psychological needs through building self-esteem and through positive addictions

A. Building self-esteem:  Students of behavior tell us that the most fruitful way of building self-esteem is through greater amounts of unconditional love of parents for their child during the first five years of that child’s life. The child who receives this love is most fortunate. He or she will be able to deal with and bounce back from almost any situation imaginable. In my opinion the best and the most cost-effective method of drug abuse prevention in the world is the mother or father spending time with and giving full attention to their baby. This starts with fathers being there and helping out in the delivery room when their babies are born; parents watching TV with their children and explaining it to them — nothing magic — nothing complicated — just taking the time to be there.

That doesn’t mean that those of us who didn’t receive this kind of love, or who didn’t get quite enough unconditional love are doomed. The good news is that there are thousands of ways to build self-esteem and help young people feel good about themselves. The bad news is that they all take time and effort, but not necessarily money. More good news is that there are already millions of people doing a good job of preventing drug abuse and helping people feel good about themselves. Unfortunately we need millions more.

There is another piece of good news. There is something relatively unused that can be done. We can meet the problem head on: namely, with acts of positive reinforcement. The ability to give positive strokes should be a skill that is so highly regarded that it should be part of the skills in the repertoire of every person who works with children.

Many people in the position of forming young minds and attitudes are masters in precisely the opposite of building self-esteem. How many parents put the kids down time after time — telling them that they are dumb or that they are weak — or that they aren’t capable of doing certain things? How many teachers are there who criticize their students especially the students who aren’t so easy to work with? How about the coaches who ignore the athletes who are late boomers? How many instructors tell students that they have no talent even before the student has had time to develop certain skills?

All of us desperately need recognition. At times it has to be recognition only of our potential. Someone makes an act of faith in the hidden riches that lie inside us and we respond with the energy of champions. Or someone tells us that for no damn good and we prove him or her right by acting like we are no damn good.

The best schools, I’ve noticed, are the ones that give the most recognition and give it the most often and for the widest variety of activities — not just boys sports. Pretty soon they will have so many people actually earning recognition that it is like compound interest. It keeps growing and growing as long as honest investments are made

Kids need to feel good about themselves. We Americans are great salespeople. If we can sell anything from jeans with holes in them to pet rocks, we should be able to sell our young people on the truth of their inner worth, on their value as sacred beings, or their potential to be happy and to make others happy.

We should rightfully make young people (all people)  feel good about themselves. They should be the focus of our drug abuse prevention efforts.

Why can’t teachers look for good things that kids do so that they can give them a pat on the back, instead of putting them down for the things they do wrong — within the bounds of reason of course.

What sounds better? Billie, you had 30 mistakes in this test or Billy you got 20 of the answers right.

Of course there is the danger that positive reinforcement may be dished out as another technique — another method of manipulating people and their behavior, which will kill the whole concept before it gets off the ground. We all know the flatterer, the glad hander, the phony fawner who makes a mockery of the sincere compliment. Our praise must come from the heart or not at all.

But it would be worse, if because of fear or because of not knowing just how, we give no praise at all.

B. To meet the need of boredom or lack of passion in our youth we suggest positive addictions

Let’s face it.  It is not just drug users who are addicts. We are all addicts. An addiction can be a wonderful thing. An addiction may be  neatness, work, security, comfort, cars,and so forth, as well as a negative addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc.

Our aim shouldn’t be to stop addictions, but rather to create positive addictions in our lives — to substitute negative addictions with positive ones. Positive addictions make us feel good. They solve real needs in our lives. Drugs are taken because they are perceived to solve some need for the drug user. The drugs don’t deliver but the positive addiction does.

The happiest people are addicted to something productive — with something they love doing. For example I feel that I’m very fortunate because I love photography, and that’s how I make my living. It’s an addiction for me, but a good one.

We seem to be so afraid of even positive addictions, that we don’t always encourage them in our education system.

Example: if a kid gets his kicks out of studying and learning new things that are in the curriculum — like solving math problems, or learning about history, he’s in great shape. But let’s say this but some other kid doesn’t like those things, but gets a big kick out of creating original weird noises, or drawing pictures of monsters, or daydreaming, fantasizing plots for adventures. That kid may have some real skills, even marketable skills, but he gets clobbered in the school system.

What are some of these positive addictions? They can be a millions things, such as weightlifting, drawing cartoons, playing a musical instrument, jogging, printing photographs, computer mania, sports, dancing, reading. As long as the participant enjoys it and it doesn’t hurt oneself or others it’s all good.

Shotgun Shuba, the baseball player, practiced swinging a bat for hours every day. He wasn’t the most naturally talented ballplayer, but he developed one of the sweetest swings ever, and it paid off big dividends. Kids playing with computers develop skills that pay off in a big way. Kids playing with drawing pencils, with cameras, with charcoal, with wood — you name it — have done the same.

Over the past years, I’ve written several articles on drug abuse prevention. The articles are the product of my ten years of working in drug abuse treatment and prevention in three different California counties, along with a continued interest in the subject.

I have combined a number of these articles into  one paper which summarizes my current thoughts on the subject.  It’s a bit long for a single blog, so I’m dividing it into four chapters. I plan to post one chapter every two or three days until complete.  I want to make it available for any kind of re-publication, in whole or in part, or for use in classrooms — whatever.

I think think that it has some real value, but then I am be prejudiced. Your comments are welcome.

Chapter I The Problem

Perhaps the best, and most honest summary of the drug abuse problem was written by John Kroger in his book “Convictions”

Ironically John Kroger was a successful federal prosecutor. Up until just a couple of years ago he worked as an Assistant US Attorney.

After prosecuting several important narcotic cases, his conclusion is that the most effective way to deal with the problem of drug abuse is through treatment programs. The fact that he was a prosecutor gives his statements far more credibility than the same statements from someone whose background was drug abuse treatment or prevention.

In general, prosecutors are more interested in convicting and locking up drug dealers, but Kroger looks at the complete futility of this approach. Despite the tens of billions that have been spent yearly in an attempt, over the past 40 years, to win the war and drugs, he notes that the statistics show that we are not winning this war through our present policy.

Kroger points out how drug abuse continues to go up. The availability of drugs is greater than ever. He describes in great detail how the billions we spend to eradicate drugs at the source, primarily in Colombia, has been and continues to be a dismal failure.

Attempts to seize drugs at our borders have also been ineffective. In spite of the occasional bust, over 90% of the drugs get through. Millions of cars and trucks cross the US border from Mexico every month. If we tried to search them all, traffic will be backed up into Guatemala.

According to Kroger, law enforcement in the United States is also largely ineffective. Drug dealers are caught and sent to jail, but there is a waiting line and of new dealers to take their place. In the United States, 16 million drug users spend over $60 billion on drugs every year. (The costs to society are actually much more.)  Drug dealers are willing to take great risks to get a piece of that pie.

The only approach that makes sense is to reduce demand through treatment and prevention programs.

Doing his research, Kroger discovered that over the last 30 years the percentage of government money earmarked for prevention and treatment has gone down while money for law enforcement has gone up. Why? Political expediency based on the public misperception. Drug abuse treatment programs  prevent drug abuse  because a certain percentage of the drug abusers stop using drugs.  Not all drug abusers are cured by treatment programs, but studies have shown that every dollar spent on treatment saves taxpayers four dollars . This figure was arrived at through studies that were conducted by researchers at UCLA.

Back in the 70s we spent about 60% of our anti-drug money on treatment. Now it’s down to 33%.

After reading many  books, and after working in the field for over ten years, and following the situation for many more years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most fruitful area to place our efforts is not waging war on drugs, but in decreasing the demand.

Every year tons of cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs are seized before reaching the consumer. Effective? The records show that less than 10% of the drugs are discovered. The drug lords lose a few kilos here, a few tons there, but, as usual, about 90% of the drugs shipped are getting through. In fact the pushers have been so successful that they can intentionally slow down the supply in order to take fewer risks and keep the prices higher.

Does this mean that we should drop efforts in curbing the supply of drugs? Probably not, but enforcement should not be the main focus of our efforts.  We will always need law enforcement, at least within our own country and on our borders but it has it has been proven over and over, that law enforcement cannot do it alone—in fact – law enforcement has never come close to stopping illegal drugs.

If a solution will occur, and I think that it will someday, prevention or decreasing demand must be an indispensable piece of the solution.  Regardless of whether drugs are decriminalized, or penalties are stiffened even more, prevention is the only real answer.

Drug abuse right now it just may be the biggest problem our society faces. We’ve been fighting the battle against drug abuse for over 70 years, and it is worse now then it has ever been.

Vincent Bugliosi’s book, “Drugs in America”, tells us about the $120 billion of illicit drugs that Americans buy annually, about the thousands upon thousands of drug-related deaths and murders, as well as the incalculable human suffering, illness, and lost productivity. To call it a great problem is an understatement because normal problems are not as serious.

Only if we can take away the demand, will the problem significantly diminish. If we look at why people need drugs and fill those needs with something constructive, we’ve prevented the problem.

What is that need? In other words why do young people use drugs?

If we can answer this question accurately, then we have at least a chance to stop young people from using illegal drugs. Any other approach and we’re back to the same dead-end ballgame — dealing with symptoms instead of the cause. Let’s get to the real causes. If we go down a list of the causes of drug abuse in each of the major areas of life, psychological, social, physical, and the spiritual it would include the following:

I .Psychological Needs

Lack of self-esteem: If we don’t esteem ourselves, we can find all kinds of ways of escaping the pain and punishing ourselves for imagined guilt.

Lack of Interest: This is the absence of passion for positive pursuits. Much of what we have to offer our young people is boring and meaningless to them.

II. Social Needs

Loneliness, isolation, and non-belonging: Kids use drugs because they desperately want to belong to a group of caring human beings. Groups of drug users form a kind of community that meets this need for young people even if the drugs themselves don’t.

Peer Pressure:   This is especially deadly for the kids without friends. If just about everyone else in the group uses drugs, there is intense pressure on non-using kids to use drugs too.

III. Physical needs

The area of physical need is something that many people don’t like to hear anything about. As Americans we don’t like to think that in this great country anyone really hurts for the basic necessities like food, basic medicine, and shelter unless it is their own fault. Yet millions of people suffer from deadly grinding poverty, in spite of all the government and private programs. No, this is not the only cause of drug abuse, but it is an important factor. Young people living in the slums, in desperate poverty, see themselves as having nothing to lose and much to gain by involvement with drugs.

IV. Spiritual needs

1. Lack of a role or function for young people in society.  Years ago, when I was a kid growing up on a farm, the boys worked shoulder to shoulder with grown men, doing everything from picking corn, plowing the ground, and milking cows to put food on the table. When our ancestors were boys 15 and 16 years old some were warriors protecting their family and country from attacks by the enemy. My grandmother married to 17 years of age and had 10 children all them welcome hands to strengthen the family. In those days young people were given important and fulfilling roles at an early age. These roles made them feel important, even though it wasn’t easy. Today with the parents work so far removed from anything in which the kids can participate, there often seems to be no meaningful role for teenagers. And when a girl produces a child before completing college, whether she’s married or not, it certainly doesn’t have the status that it used to have.

2. The lack of inspiring examples or heroes for youths to live one’s life for a cause — the spiritual inspiration that in the past, drove many young people to lives of service. Examples of the Dr. Schweitzer’s, the missionaries in many different churches, to a great extent has been replaced by the inspiration of  greed as exemplified by numerous example of self serving leaders–religious and otherwise,

There are many inspiring people in the world today–many people who are truly heroes and role models.  But the noise of the material centered, consumer society is so loud, that the voices of our modern day heroes are too seldom heard.

Perfection not required

The aim of prevention isn’t to do everything perfectly. It is to do enough things right for a kid that he or she is able to maintain his or her life above the point of surrender to harmful drugs.

New or old solution?

In looking at the solutions that I propose, people often ask whether these solutions have been tried already.

The answer is, Yes, they have been partially tried. Where seriously tried, they have worked.The point is not that this is a matter of solutions that have been tried and found wanting. It is rather that the solutions want trying.

Preventing drug abuse is a demanding task on the level of  waging a world war.  But that is no reason to say we can’t make positive progress. We can and eventually we will turn the corner. But it will take the involvement of millions of people living with a bit less greed, a bit more compassion, and a bit more understanding.

In simple language, what do we have to do? That’s what my paper is about–to be elaborated in the coming chapters

Questions that come mind at this time of my life are: Have I given up too much? Have I gone too far in pulling back on the practice of many of our Catholic traditions?  Have I kept the essentials?  Have I kept the wheat and discarded the chaff?

What are the essentials? What is the wheat?  What is the heart and soul of any valid belief system?

The person who , I think, does a good job in answering these questions, is one of my heroes and role models, Karen Armstong.  She has wrestled with these questions for most of her life, and in the process, has become respected by the leaders of all the great religions, including Islam, Judaism, Christianity,  and Buddhism.

During her life to date, Karen has dealt with health problems, including epilepsy.  For years she found herself in a vocation that provided neither undersanding nor fulfilment, as a nun in the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.

On leaving the convent, she found her voice with her studies and writing.    Her early books tell of her struggle to understand the big questions surrounding religion and life.  She has continued writing, producing a series of books on St. Paul, Mohammed, Buddha, the Crusades, A History of Myth, The English Mystics of the 14th Century, The Bible, and number of other provocative subjects.

Her conclusion in studying the various great religions of the world, is that the one common element of all these religions is compassion. Whenever a religion of movement within a relgion deviates from the central emphasis of compassion, it ceases to serve a positive purpose.

Any of the texts of the bible, or any of the sacred books, that seem to advocate violence or anything other than compassion, must interpreted in an allegoric sense.

To check out  Karen Armstrong go to the “Charter for Compassion” website: http://charterforcompassion.org/   If you can watch the short video by Karen on Feb 28, 2008 without being deeply moved, you are different from me.

Compassion is not feeling sorry for others–rather it is making the effort to understand the point of view of others.  It is  having the empathy to put ourselves in the shoes of another.  It is not being a do-gooder, giving others what we think they need, rather it is giving others respect and the opportunity to find fulfulment just as we would like to find that opportunity.

Many people see compassion as weakness.  On the contrary to be compassionate requires great strength. It requires the faith, not to do good for others, but a faith in others–a faith that sees that we can’t make it on our own, but we can make it with others.

What does this have to do with my original questions of doubts about my ceasing to be a fully practicing Catholic? Just this: One can drop many religious practices. ceremonies, rituals, and beliefs, but to be saved, to be a child of God, whatever or whoever one sees God to be, we need to hang on to compassion for others–our  love and  faith in others, along with compassion and faith in ourselves.  If religious practices help us to to do this, keep and cherish them.  If not, keep compassion. Keep the golden rule.

Related:  You are probably familiar with this little poem, but I think it’s worth reviewing anyway.

Abou Ben Adhem by Leigh Hunt

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.

And saw within the moonlight of his room,

Making it light and like a lily in bloom

An angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold.

And to the presence in the room he said,

“What writest thou?”  The vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord

Answered “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said  Abou.  “Nay not so.”

Replied the angel.  Abou spoke more low,

But cheerily still, and said “I pray thee, then,

“Write me as one who loves his fellow men.”

The Angel wrote and vanished.  The next night

It came again with a great awakening light.

And showed the names who love of God had blessed.

And lo Ben Adhems’s name led all the rest.



Blog post number two

Before starting my blog, I want to express my appreciation to everyone who took the time to check out my first post, especially those who left comments. It has been such a busy time of the year in the studio that I haven’t had time to respond to everyone, but I still want to say, thank you.

Tom McMahon referred me to an article that I found most interesting along with a recommendation to read a book by Crick. I’ve purchased the books, but haven’t had time to read it yet.  No doubt it will help my thinking on these subjects.

I also appreciate Ed Walsh’s comments.  Some years ago I remember when Ed pointed out why Rev. Wright was wrong.  Wright was blasting away at the American people who have strayed from the eternal word of God in the scriptures. Ed comments opened my thinking on this subject. I hope that this can be the subject of a future blog posting.

One visitor was frank and told me that my first blog was too intellectual for him. I think that he is right, even though I tried to avoid big words.  Without stories, this subject matter is quite abstract. That’s why  I begin  this blog with a story:

In his book, “Ishmael”, Daniel Quinn tells of an experience  of the sacred that was important  in is life.    During his short-term training as a Trappist monk, he stepped outside one morning to work in the monastaery garden and was struck by a fresh vision of the world.

“I turned and faced the sunshine and the breath went out of me as if someone had punched me in the stomach. That was the effect of receiving this sight, of seeing the world as it is, I was astonished, bowled over, dumbfounded.

I could say that the world was transformed before by eyes, but that wasn’t it. The world hadn’t transformed at all; I was simply being allowed to see it the way that it is all the time.  I, not the world, was transformed.

Everything was burning. Every blade of grass, every single leaf of every tree was radiant, was blazing–incandescent with a raging power that was immistakably divine.”

My point is neither to place too much nor too little importance on Daniel Quinn’s experience.   It was  life changing enough for him that he wrote a novel about it for which he won a million dollar literary prize.  But that’s not my point. My point is that ordinary people like me–and most others I assume–don’t have experiences with radiant grass and blazing leaves. But such experiences are not necessary to see the miracles  around us.

It isn’t hard to see that there is more to life than just what we can see and touch — that there is a meaning beyond the material, that there is some essential and eternal basis for boundless hope and joy.

That’s why one of my favorite quotes in all the literature is from Willa Cather’s “Death Comes to the Archbishop”: “Miracles…rest not so much upon the faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”

William James in his “Varieties of religious experience” attempts to extract what is common to all religions. He calls these insights, “the reality of the unseen”. He also calls it the sense of the “more”. The more is what is always there, but becomes more real at the time of religious experience.

But are these religious experiences, or miracles, nebulous, or rare, or hard-to-reach?

It’s really simple and more available than generally supposed. It is simple reality — the visible and invisible, the interior and the exterior two aspects of reality.

Consciousness and what goes with consciousness, like the ability to observe, to analyze, to think about, to draw conclusions, to see the humor life, to laugh and cry are all part of the interior component of reality.

But more fundamentally, there is the exterior — the very laws of nature — laws beyond understanding — are available to us all the time. For example the law of inertia, of momentum, of gravity,  are all measurable, all usable; but just where these laws come from, are beyond science, beyond religion. The who, what, and why of gravity, of electro-magnetism,  and some of the other forces of nature are mysteries.  They bring up questions that just can’t be answered. .They just are the way they are.

Life and so many things in life are miracles.

It’s a miracle that we just are.

It’s miracle that we are alive.

It’s a miracle that we can love—love ourselves, love others, relate to others.

It’s a miracle that we can enjoy—enjoy peace, enjoy a breath of fresh air, enjoy good food, a cup of coffee, a child’s laughter, a friend’s smile, a good joke.

It’s a miracle that we can be aware or conscious of what is going on in ourselves and around us at this very moment.

The world around us is a miracle—the air, the earth, a breeze, plants, animals, stars, the sun, the moon, atoms, molecules, — the beauty — the variety

If we could be fully aware of the beauty and wonder of it all, it would be too much for our consciousness to handle all at once.  We have to back off and take it piece by piece.

If we could see fully the wonder and potential in ourselves, we wouldn’t be able to take it all in.

If we could see the inner beauty, variety, and potential for love, rapture, and fulfillment in other people, when we see them in the street, they would look like angels combined with rock stars, combined with super heroes in the spotlight.

Yes, there is another kind of miracle, which is a suspension of natural laws. This is the kind of miracle that scientists, I think correctly, reject. An example of a suspension of natural laws would be someone rising from the dead. It makes sense that in their studies and research, good scientists reject these kinds of miracles which go against natural laws. I am not writing about those kinds of miracles.  I leave that discussion up to others.  For this discussion I point out that the natural laws, the laws of science, are themselves, miracles.

A couple of the important ideas not well understood are these:

1. Just being or existing is a miracle. It is so simple. It is something that is true for all of us. But we go through life as good students, good scientists, saying that there are no miracles. Why marvel at anything. There are no miracles. But the simple fact is that we are all miracles. We are. That is something beyond understanding. You say — so what? Big deal — why dwell on it? We all are – we’re here — what’s new or different about that? Well, it is the biggest deal. Where did we come from? Where are we going? What are we? Why are we? Who are we? These are all mysteries.  They are beyond anything that we can fully explain with words.

2. We are conscious — we can observe and feel ourselves and others. We have a level of consciousness that allows us to observe and study ourselves, study others, study our surroundings, modify our behavior, modify the world we live in, relate to others, relate to ourselves, love ourselves, love others, experience joy, laughter, sorrow, hope, longing

Other creatures have consciousness too, but not at the same level as we as human beings possess it. They say that humans are the only creatures that laugh and cry — probably because we can look at things and see the way they should or could be to a greater degree than other creatures.

Scientists are studying consciousness, looking at it more and more closely, measuring what happens in our brains when we think different thoughts and experience different emotions.  It is amazing to see how the brain and the body reflect our thoughts with the observable changes.

Does that mean that scientists now know what consciousness is because they can observe the physical effects of thought? Does all of what consciousness is consist only of the movement of cells, molecules, electric impulses — all the physical changes that occur when we think, or laugh, or cry, or analyze etc.?

Wouldn’t that be like saying all that life is the movement of cells? Or that all literature is ink spots on pages?

The part of us that is interior, not seen, the part we refer to as “I”, uses thoughts which produces electrical blips and measureable changes in the brain, but, they are like the ink spots that carry the message of the Shakespeare’s immortal writings or the electromagnetic pulses that transmit the super bowl game, that keeps millions glued to their TV’s, or the sound waves the carried Lincoln’s Gettysburg address to his listeners. The important reality isn’t the electromagnetic pulses, the sound waves, or the ink spots forming letters on the pages, but the meaning that consciousness imparts and takes from these sound waves and specks of ink.

Consciousness and being:

Consciousness and being are both beyond what can be described with words. We see directly what they are and that’s it. It’s the most effortless exercise possible. If we make it hard, we miss the point. If we try to look someplace for an answer we miss the point. Being is here, it’s now, it’s always. It’s that easy. It’s that beautiful. Our consciousness simply is here and now. It is through consciousness that we live, love, laugh, cry, enjoy, share, and understand. Maybe we don’t understand that fully, but we do understand it well enough to appreciate the beauty and wonder of it all.

Does any of  this prove that there is a God? No. Do it prove that science is the only source of knowledge? No. But I contend that it does show that this world is so full of mystery that it doesn’t take a religious experience to see mysteries.

Living with gravity makes up our daily life.

Beyond the unchanging laws of gravity, momentum, nuclear energy and magnetism, there are the incredibly beautiful patterns of light, of matter, of still life, of plant life, of animal life, and of human life.

And beyond the patterns there is incredible and wonderful variety resulting from the laws of chance interacting with the unchanging laws, leading to the beautiful system of evolution — so complex that it never ceases to cause wonder, yet occurring within the context of the constant fixed laws or constraints of natural laws, imposing an over all order.

Seeing this can only be what Mircea Eliade refers to as a “hierophany” experience.– an event when the sacred shows itself or errupts into consciousness–something that words cannot describe.

It happens all the time in every person’s life. We just need to open our eyes, become aware, something that too many of us seldom do. We go through life pretty much like a blind, deaf persons attending a great rock concert — a concert where the Beatles, U2, Boston Pops, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis are all having a career night, and we don’t even know it.

What I would like to do is share some of the thoughts, opinions, experiences, and conclusions that I’ve accumulated over the last 71 years. I would also like to receive thoughtful comments on what I  post.  A person is never too old  to learn and grow and the minute that I think that my opinions or answers are the last word, I’ll know that I really am too old.

On the other hand, my hope is that I am able to express  some ideas that will have value others who are also looking for truth and understanding–or in the absence of contributing understanding,  maybe my other aim is to provide a bit of inspiration on occasion.

I’ve written down my thoughts on a fairly regular basis for almost 20 years now.  On rereading  what I’ve written, I realize that most of it pretty weak, but I would like to put some of  it on a blog to see what others have to say.  If there is a positive response, I will keep adding other chapters–some very short–none more than a few pages

I’ve read several books on consciousness over the last few years.  I wrote the following thoughts on consciousness back in July of ’08:

Thoughts on the Place of Consciousness 7/16/08

Consciousness makes us special.  Consciousness is pretty much synonymous with spiritual.  It is real, and the aspect of reality that provides meaning to life.

Consciousness exists as a whole spectrum. It is present in the lower levels of creation as well as the varying degrees of consciousness in human beings.

The more we say about consciousness and the more we study it, the more we realize how mysterious it is — how it is beyond words — beyond what can be fully studied by science — even though science can observe and measure a great deal of what happens in the brain, when we have different thoughts and different experiences.

Consciousness and love are both beyond that which can be quantified and packaged.

We talk about love, truth, and beauty, but without consciousness there could be no love, no truth, and no beauty.

Scientists often refer to consciousness as an epiphenomenon, which gives the impression that it is a phenomenon less essential —  perhaps less real than the phenomena that science studies.

Yet stepping back and looking at the big picture, all phenomena. without consciousness, would be nothing more then a mechanism without real meaning.

Any complete understanding of what is, needs to include consciousness. All great mystics whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or other looked at, studied, and experienced the interior, the spiritual — the realm of consciousness.

True comprehensive understanding of the universe and conscious beings in the universe embraces both the exterior and the interior. It embraces forms and that which observes these forms.

As Einstein said: science without religion is blind and religion without science is lame.

Either discipline without the other is incomplete.

Certainly religion that does not move beyond magic and myth, even if it teaches morality is incomplete, and can even be harmful.

Science that does not recognize the spiritual, which coincides with consciousness or the interior aspect of reality, is, to a great degree, incomplete.

Decisions based on incomplete understanding, lead to unfortunate results; for example, science that rejects all religion — even the understanding of true mystics — would have dire consequences. Some of these consequences were exemplified by what happened when the Nazis were in power in Germany. The scientists who totally reject to the interior — the spiritual — have come up with some very unethical practices. For example the scientists in big corporations who set up in foreign countries where laws do not protect the environment have poisoned the water supplies and done great damage to whole populations.

At the other extreme, primitive or fundamental religions, which reject the legitimate findings of science, also have extremely negative effects on the happiness and well-being of those affected. An example would be the exploitation of women and children, xenophobia and persecution of nonbelievers. Also all the suffering that results from false fears of damnation in the far-reaching effects of such beliefs, not to mention the countless wars throughout history, that were fought in the name of religion.

Before going too far on into this line of reasoning, we must ask the question: does lack belief in God inevitably lead to evil?  Do atheists have to be amoral or immoral?

My experience tells me that the answer is no. Many atheists — probably most atheists — are just as moral as believers.

Whether we believe or not, a sense of right and wrong is hardwired into us, as well as a desire to make a difference — to contribute to the good of mankind and the planet.

Unfortunately the experience of life for believers and nonbelievers causes some people’s wiring to change to become totally selfish or to lose their compassion — to become takers rather than contributors.

Is the path to becoming a taker i.e. a cancer cell in in the body of society —  shorter for the nonbeliever? It appears that there would be less pressure on the nonbeliever or the atheist to live by the rules — less pressure from peers, from society, and from personal beliefs. This seems to be corroborated by the fact that the majority of the monsters of recent history like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. were not believers. On the other hand the body of believers also produces its monsters, among them Osama bin Laden.

My conclusion is that there are factors deeper than belief or unbelief, that determine a person’s ability or lack of ability to contribute to society.

We need to distinguish between atheists who have a conscience and those who don’t. Atheists like John Lennon saw atheism as a way to escape from slavery of religious beliefs.

Also, we need to distinguish between believers who are stuck in the magic or mythical levels and those who have progressed beyond these levels to a pluralistic worldview and even to a cosmos centered level of thinking.

To sum up, the conclusion that I have arrived at is:

There are two kinds of atheism and there are at least two kinds of religion.

There is an atheism without much understanding — an atheism which rejects all religions because of the evils that it sees in some religions.

There is a religion without much understanding, which rejects all atheism because of the evil that it sees in some atheists. There is also a religion that rejects all science — sees all science as the enemy and believes that the Bible is the only answer to all of life’s questions.

Then there is a higher level of atheism, which embraces the good, the true, and the beautiful, while at the same time rejecting belief in God.

There is also religion it goes beyond the angry God or the vengeful God — a religion that embraces the good, the true, and the beautiful and sees the legitimate truth of science as a real value.

In other words neither atheism nor religion is the answer. We must specify what level of atheism and what level religion we are talking about.

Atheism that is only interested in showing the evil of religion hasn’t taken us anyplace good nor will it.

Religion that is only interested in denouncing the evil of atheism also misses the point.

But atheism that truly goes beyond pointing out the evils of superstition and myths and the excesses of religion, and maintains its quest for the good, the true and beautiful can lead to good results.  This was pointed out in the Vatican II Council. The statement was made in the Council documents, that salvation can be reached by nonbelievers, even by atheists of goodwill. These are the atheists without the baggage of superstition, who seek the good, and live with compassion.