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DAVID KORTEN MAR 18, 2020 (yesmagazine.org)

PHOTO BY ADA YOKOTA

The rapid spread of novel coronavirus has prompted government, business, and civil society to take dramatic action—canceling events large and small, restricting travel, and shutting down major segments of the economy on which nearly all of us depend. It is a demonstration of our ability, when the imperative is clear, for deep and rapid global cooperation and change at a previously unimaginable speed and scale.

There is an obvious desire to protect ourselves and our loved ones. But we are also seeing something more as communities mobilize to address the crisis—a sense of mutual responsibility, born of a recognition that we are ultimately bound to a common fate. The speed of the resulting global shift is beyond any prior human experience.

At the same time, the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic focuses attention in the United States on the disastrous deficiencies of a profiteering health care system. Corporations are competing only to increase their take from health expenditures while minimizing the amount of money they spend on providing care. This system is reasonably proficient in providing boutique care for the very rich at exorbitant prices, but it is disastrously deficient in addressing the health care needs of ordinary people affordably. It is similarly deficient in anticipating, preparing for, and responding to public health emergencies such as the one we are in now.  

I sense that as our eyes open to this reality, we are seeing a simultaneous awakening to the imperative to deal with a host of other system failures that imperil our common future. For example:

• An economic system that values nature only for its market price, ignores Earth’s limits, and wantonly destroys the stability of its climate and the health and purity of its air, water, and soil. This directly imperils our survival and well-being.

• Military expenditures that consume more than half of all federal discretionary funding to prepare for conventional wars of the past and engage us in unwinnable conflicts born of environmental and social collapse. This represents wasted resources that would be better applied to addressing the underlying sources of current security threats.

• A financial system devoted to generating speculative profits for the richest without the burden of contributing to meaningful livelihoods and security for those who do useful work. Money must serve us, not enslave us.

•An education system that promotes maximizing personal financial returns as the highest moral obligation to society. Education should prepare us to transform a self-destructive system into one that will support our long-term future.

For far too long, we have ignored the failures of a system that reduces ever more people to homelessness, incarceration, refugee camps, permanent indebtedness, and servitude to institutions devoted to conflict and the generation of unearned financial returns. The challenges are monumental and are likely to be addressed only as we begin to understand that business as usual is simply not an option.

We need leaders committed to effective government of, by, and for the people.

This is humanity’s wake-up call. As we awaken to the truth of the profound failure of our existing institutions, we also awaken to the truth of our possibilities and interconnections with one another and with Earth. With that awakening comes a recognition that we must now learn to live lightly on the Earth, to war no more, and to dedicate ourselves to the well-being of all in an interdependent world.

We in the United States also face a special challenge. We have much that the world admires. But far from being a model for others to emulate, we represent an extreme example of what the world must now leave behind.

As a nation, we have for too long battled over simplistic political ideologies that limit our choices to granting ultimate power either to government or corporations, both of which are controlled by the richest among us. The coronavirus pandemic is a powerful reminder that effective government committed to the common good is essential to our well-being, and that there is no place in our common future for politicians committed to proving that government cannot work.

We need leaders committed to effective government of, by, and for the people. These leaders must simultaneously recognize that the collective well-being of all depends on institutions in all three sectors—government, business, and civil society—that are effective at, committed to, and accountable for serving the well-being of the communities that create them.

These are challenging and frightening times. As we respond to the coronavirus emergency and the immediate needs of the people and communities impacted by it, let us also keep in view the systemic needs and possibilities that crisis exposes. Despite the trauma all around us, let us embrace this moment as an opportunity to move forward to create a better world for all.

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DAVID KORTEN is co-founder of YES! Media, president of the Living Economies Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, and the author of influential books, including “When Corporations Rule the World” and “Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth.” His work builds on lessons from the 21 years he and his wife, Fran, lived and worked in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on a quest to end global poverty. CONNECT:  Twitter

Wednesday 2:38PM•theonion.com

“I’M AS AFRAID OF THE FEAR AND THE PANIC AS I AM OF THE VIRUS.”

BY JON CHRISTIAN / March 19, 2020 (futurism.com)

New York governor Andrew Cuomo invoked nuclear war in a discussion of the coronavirus on Thursday morning, during remarks on CNN‘s New Day:

Should everybody stay home? Of course. Are we imprisoning people? No. Can you stay inside 24 hours a day? No. When you go out to shop or go out to take a walk and get exercise, social distancing. But look at your words, shelter in place, you know where that came from? That came from nuclear war. What it said is people should go into an interior room of their home with no windows, stay there until they get the all clear sign.

Needless to say, COVID-19 is presumably not as bad as an all-out nuclear war. Though, to be fair, neither we nor Andrew Cuomo could say for sure, having never experienced nuclear war.

But this is a serious public health crisis, and it’s forcing leaders like Cuomo to make tough decisions. He’s grappling here with the question of how firmly to crack down on New Yorkers leaving their homes during the outbreak — a delicate question of balancing the population’s physical health against its mental wellbeing.

Here’s more of his remarks this morning:

What I am least sanguine about is that we are battling two things, a virus and fear and panic. And I’m as afraid of the fear and the panic as I am of the virus and I think that the fear is more contagious than the virus right now. You take a place like New York City, we are at near panic levels, so what you say and how you communicate is very important.

Cuomo, who’s been governor since 2011 — and whose father, Mario Cuomo, held the same job during the late 70s and early 80s — has had a high-profile streak as he runs the state containing New York City, a cultural metropolis that’s expected to be slammed by the pandemic in coming weeks.

At moments, his remarks have come across as measured and realistic.

At other times… well:

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By Maria Popova (brainpickings.org)

We make things and seed them into the world, never fully knowing — often never knowing at all — whom they will reach and how they will blossom in other hearts, how their meaning will unfold in contexts we never imagined. (W.S. Merwin captured this poignantly in the final lines of his gorgeous poem “Berryman.”)

Today I offer something a little apart from the usual, or sidelong rather, amid these unusual times: A couple of days ago, I received a moving note from a woman who had read Figuring and found herself revisiting the final page — it was helping her, she said, live through the terror and confusion of these uncertain times. I figured I’d share that page — which comes after 544 others, tracing centuries of human loves and losses, trials and triumphs, that gave us some of the crowning achievements of our civilization — in case it helps anyone else.

Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem. Elsewhere in the universe, a star manyfold the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole, its exhale bending spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced, every poem and statue and symphony we’ve ever known — an entropic spectacle insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why.

In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the “heavenly breezes” Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made love and war and mathematics on a distant blue dot.

But until that day comes, nothing once created ever fully leaves us. Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries and countries and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die — in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love.

I will die.

You will die.

The atoms that huddled for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self will return to the seas that made us.

What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust.

March 18, 2020

A few days ago it gave me great satisfaction to come up with a sense testimony which seemed to clarify what has been going on these past few weeks and months. The sense testimony is this: “Political and biological corruption seems to be on the ascendant.”

I campaigned very hard for Bernie Sanders mostly for one reason: to get money out of politics. When large corporations and organizations like the National Rifle Association can buy politicians, what chance does public opinion really have?

For those who require a study to point out the obvious, Martin Gilens from Princeton and Benjamin Page from Northwestern did just that in 2014. Their conclusion: “When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” (See https://bulletin.represent.us/american-government-isnt-democracy/)

Former San Francisco Mayor and current San Francisco Chronicle columnist Willie Brown said in a recent column: “Sen. Bernie Sanders is already telling supporters that his campaign is a fight against the billionaire-dominated Democratic establishment. Black, white, gay, straight or whatever, if you don’t support the “revolution,” then you are either a greedy millionaire or an unwitting pawn of Wall Street interests.“

What Da Mayor pretends to misunderstand is that the “revolution” is against the billionaire-dominated Democratic establishment. So their money is exactly the problem and exactly what the Sanders campaign is revolting against.

My work for the Bernie Sanders campaign was not just political work. It was spiritual work. And you could feel it. I wasn’t just working for myself. I was working for generations yet unborn. And for generations more recently born than my own.

So when Bernie began losing states on Super Tuesday, the let down was devastating to me and many others. And then came the Covid-19 crisis. Thus my sense testimony: “Political and biological corruption seems to be on the ascendant.”

Today a nice young lady from the VA phoned me up and said that, due to the Covid-19 crisis, I would have to reschedule my VA appointment from March 24 to some time in June. She was so sweet that I found myself involuntarily wanting to cry out to her: “Please help me. I’m so scared.”

I didn’t. But it surprised me. I didn’t think I was that scared. So I can understand people who voted against Bernie. They’re scared too. And they think the DNC-approved candidate will make it all better.

I don’t think most of us really want democracy. We want to be taken care of. We want dependency.

Even in The Prosperos democracy is not very popular. Article IV, Section 6 of The Prosperos By-Laws: “The Executive Council may veto any action of the High Watch or of the Trustees; but such veto must be unanimous on the part of the Executive Council.”

Last year I proposed doing something about this draconian power imbalance by granting veto power to the High Watch and the Trustees. It was voted down by the High Watch by 10-4.

Thane Walker, guru-in-chief and founder of The Prosperos, was adamant about getting us to stand on our own two feet. Whether in our Translations or our RHSes or our life.

So to the corporate Democrats, to the Covid-19 fear-mongers and to the High Watch of The Prosperos, I repeat Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

To listen to the Podcast Click on: https://www.theprosperos.com/smtg-20200315-bollman

Russell Brand What does self isolation mean? What effect is Coronavirus and Covid-19 going to have on our mental health, society and culture? How are YOU coping with the quarantine? Subscribe to my channel here: http://tinyurl.com/opragcg (make sure to hit the BELL icon to be notified of new videos!)

conscioustv Bruce Lipton – ‘The Power Of Consciousness’ – Interview by Iain McNay Bruce is a cellular biologist who is the author of “The Biology Of Belief” and “Spontaneous Evolution”. He talks about his life, his work, and how he sees the predicament of the human race. The transcript of this interview is available to view here – http://www.conscious.tv/text/53.htm

Beautiful Life, foundations I, foundations II, foundations III, foundations IV, foundations V, Unity Radio

March 16, 2020 (cynthiaoccelli.com)

Sweet friend,

I care about how you feel right now. My goal for this note is to anchor you in your center, empower you to choose your strongest self, and soothe and steady you.

This note is a work in progress and I will continue to add resources to strengthen and ground you during this challenge. Please leave your comments and questions or use the contact us button on the bottom of the page. We are going to get through this. How you feel as you get through it is my concern.

xo,

Cynthia

Virtually the whole world is experiencing the impacts of measures to control the current viral pandemic. It’s alarming to witness entire countries close borders and stores and cancel flights, services, and events. It’s tragic that some people who contract the virus do not recover. All of this is factual and beyond your control.

Many people are cascading through intense cycles of fear in reaction to these out of control events and they’re panicking, hoarding, feeling paranoid that their very survival is at stake. Feeling and behaving this way is not beyond your control. In fact, this is the area you have great dominion over, your internal state.

Emotion is moving energy. It moves in our bodies and is highly contagious. Sadness, anger, joy, patriotism, and celebratory feelings are all examples of emotions that spread when enough people feel them. Fearful emotions spread like wildfire.

Check-in and Change

Before you read on, check-in with yourself. Be honest, no stiff upper lips or stoicism. How are you doing? Do you feel safe? Are you a little off? Or is everything inside you spiraling? Whatever your answer, it’s okay. Recognize it without judging it. Observe it. It’s not you. It’s a feeling.

This page is a resource designed to guide you to a grounded, centered state of fortitude.

Let’s get to work.

Listen to this show for audio to go with this page: Be the Eye of the Storm

Prime Yourself To Grasp This Information – Breathwork

Okay, I am working from the premise that you have done the breathwork in the drop-down above.

Right now, in the midst of change and uncertainty, you can work to help yourself into an increased state of calm and centered wholeness.

This note is broken into sections to speak to different aspects of this challenge and your mind. All of them are designed to put your feet on the ground and pull your mind out of fear. You can read it in order, or go to a header that feels interesting right now. Go to whatever you can grasp and then go back to what you skipped.

Challenge Navigation Guidelines

Here are some guidelines for handling this and most any significant challenge. Click the rule for an explanation of the guideline. Take them slow. Read each one and reflect on it. Take one into meditation. See yourself becoming better able to control your inner world. Your outer world will reflect your changes. This is the most important work.

I understand how my thoughts interact with my body and health.

Nothing happens in a vacuum; there is a connection at every level. Every act impacts someone or something else. This is true within our bodies too.

The CDC cites stress at the leading cause of disease. If you are living in stress, it is exacerbating all of the challenges you’re facing.

“Certain types of chronic and more insidious stress due to loneliness, poverty, bereavement, depression and frustration due to discrimination are associated with impaired immune system resistance to viral linked disorders ranging from the common cold and herpes to AIDS and cancer.  Stress can have effects on hormones, brain neurotransmitters, additional small chemical messengers elsewhere, prostaglandins, as well as crucial enzyme systems, and metabolic activities that are still unknown.  Research in these areas may help to explain how stress contributes to depression, anxiety and its diverse effects on the gastrointestinal tract, skin and other organs.” Stress.org

In addition to causing physical aging and disease, stress blocks inspiration, creative flow and the ability to see the bigger picture. From this contracted space we cannot create success, happiness, health or joy.

What is stress?
Stress is the result of your thinking. It comes from your thoughts about what you’re focusing on. Whether something is stressful or not is highly subjective. Many people experiencing today’s global challenge are not feeling stressed. I am among them.

I am not superior. I don’t have special qualities. I have lived a life that’s presented massive upheaval and life-changing challenges and it taught me that I can control what I allow to occur inside of me. I can control what I focus on. I can choose not to undermine myself or allow outside influences or circumstances to undermine me. I have worked myself up into frenzies that left me trembling in corners and relegated to desperation so intense that I just gave up.

At the bottom, I discovered how to operate my mind and body. I learned how my systems work and that if I wanted to thrive and connect with higher forces, I had to live at that level of energy.

The good news is you can learn and practice this for yourself and change the way you show up and feel during challenges.

Here’s a look inside the body’s response to your thoughts about events. Remember when you perceive life as scary and threatening you feel stressed. When you perceive life as an experience with challenges that you can handle you feel empowered. The state you end up in dictates your what how your autonomic nervous system responds.

Your body’s autonomic nervous system is made up of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. Here’s a table and a graphic to illustrate their different effects. While you read, consider which system is most often activated in your body?

Parasympathetic Response – Relax and Renew	Sympathetic Response – Stress and Defend
decreased blood pressure	increased blood pressure
hormones of relaxation and regulation flow (acetylcholine, oxytocin)	stress hormones spike and circulate (cortisol, epinephrine)
body relaxes and feels safe	body readies to flee from danger
digestion increases as blood flows	digestion slows as blood is diverted
feel calm, relaxed, able to assess circumstances patiently, reasonably, flexible thought, open to higher solutions, responsive	feel anxious, charges, unable to rest, or think with altitude, hyper-vigilant, and over-focused, reactive

There’s a lot you can do to help reduce stress reactions and move back into a state of relaxation and renewal. Here are some approaches:

1) The breathing process shared at the opening of this page when practiced for more than four minutes helps move the body from a stress reaction to the relaxation response.  Click here to go to it.

2) Meditation. Meditation is not thinking with your eyes closed. That’s actually going to allow you to stay stressed and will not create any changes. Meditation is a fast from thinking. Focus on your breathing. If you find it challenging to get quiet. Follow a guided meditation. I have some free ones here.

3) Massage and touch. If you’re home with healthy loved ones massage each other. If you have a pet, devote 10-15 minutes to just petting and connecting with them. If you’re alone, use a pleasant oil and rub your own hands, arms, neck, and shoulders. All of these bring you into the present and help the body relax.

4) News and media fast: Smartphone use has been shown to increase heart rate and lower autonomic nervous system activity. Take a break from all electronics and get back in touch with living in the present without being bombarded with fear-inducing information.

5) As mentioned in another section of this note, exercise has a miraculous effect on relaxation, hormones, depression, and well-being. It’s like taking anti-depressants. Find something that works for you at this time. Yoga (I do video classes on Youtube). Walking in nature. Stretch and do 20 push-ups, 50 squats, and 30 sit-ups (work up to this and take your time). Repeat 2-4 times if you’re conditioned. Clean your house with passion. Dance. Get creative.

6) Get into nature. If this is possible for you, do it. Get out under the sky and trees. Breathe and let nature restore and ground you.

7) Cultivate pleasure. What makes you feel really good and has no negative consequence? Do that. This rules out barrels of bonbons and a 72 hour Netflix fest. Consider being creative. Do you like to draw, paint, write, dance, sing?

I distinguish between what I can and can’t control.

Let go, release, step-away from everything that you have no influence over. Say a prayer and take your focus off of fear-based what if’s. Invest that energy into something you can impact (your health, your home, your mind, helping others in safe ways). 

Do something about what you can control.

What you can control:

– CDC’s recommendations for preventing the spread of the virus (click here to see them). It’s wise to be informed and to take proactive precautions. Take them for yourself and for your fellow humans. Accept them. Practice them. Move forward.

-Your emotional and behavioral response to this event.

-Who you talk with about this event.

-Your mental diet. This includes what you watch, read, and think about. Choose a reputable source of information and check it once or twice a day for information that may be relevant to your area and situation. Do not leave the news running, repeatedly check it on your phone, listen to news radio shows or other mediums that deplete and incite fear. Listen to my podcasts and radio shows here. I promise to leave you better off at the end of every show.

-Your physical diet, activity level, sleep hygiene, and internal well-being.

-The kindness, care, love, generosity, and compassion you give yourself and others.

–Your ability to find positive ways to use this time at home. Clean up. Organize. Exercise. Write. Read. Learn a language. Grow.

What you can’t control:

-The media and its scare tactics

-Panic-stricken and hysterical people. Your best chance to change them is to model being genuinely grounded and centered. Invest in you.

-Events outside of your home, family, or business. Let go.

-Politicians and community leaders. Do vote for what your calm heart and rational mind tell you.

-The daily shifts, surprises, and changes inherent to this event. Let go.

I know that my sound mind makes better choices and creates better outcomes.

Worrying, agonizing, doomsday prophesying, dark fantasies, and other wild rides into the abyss of your creativity, negativity, and imagination do nothing but weaken you mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Hypervigilance and worrying do not stop events from happening in the future. They rob you of present joy, sap your mental capacity, drain you emotionally, and undermine your health with stress hormones.

To thrive in the face of challenge and go on to better days, you must assert authority over your inner world and all that you can control.

Mental discipline is key here. If you tend toward spiraling out of control, interrupt the pattern by taking your attention completely off of the crisis. You do have the power to do this. Do the breathing exercise at the top of this page. You cannot successfully do this exercise and continue to ruminate or analyze in your mind.

Remind yourself often that by remaining gripped by negative thoughts and imaginings you are reducing your ability to make good choices and handle challenges. Further, your upset doesn’t change the events at all.

It is as though you’ve shown up to a battle with an opponent you have a strong chance of defeating and instead of dealing with them, you attack yourself.

Don’t empower the challenge.